The traditional lifestyle and beliefs of pastoralists and small-scale farmers with confined livestock, together with certain farming environments, create favourable conditions for the spread and transmission of brucellosis. The risks associated with these practices are difficult to control because of a lack of alternatives and simple and/or affordable solutions. Brucellosis affects the health a...

Mean serum cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations were higher for two groups of sedentary middle-aged and elderly men than for a group of physically-active, middle-aged farmers, all from rural Puriscal, Costa Rica. The mean serum cholesterol, triglyceride, and high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-risk factor levels of the three groups were all higher than the comparable US means. Dietary fat and...

In the Near East, nomadic hunter-gatherer societies became sedentary farmers for the first time during the transition into the Neolithic. Sedentary life presented a risk of isolation for Neolithic groups. As fluid intergroup interactions are crucial for the sharing of information, resources and genes, Neolithic villages developed a network of contacts. In this paper we study obsidian exchange b...

Kenya joined the ranks of sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries implementing a targeted input subsidy program for inorganic fertilizer and improved seed in 2007 with the establishment of the National Accelerated Agricultural Inputs Access Program’s “Kilimo Plus” initiative. Implemented from 2007/08, Kilimo Plus aimed to provide 50 kg each of basal and top dressing fertiliser, and 10 kg of improve...

In the last few decades, within the rhetoric of the “information age”, there is a growing enthusiasm for the (potential) benefits of the dissemination of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This is further enhanced through eGovernment projects undertaken on a worldwide scale. However, a number of issues seem to defy such optimism as far as rural areas are concerned. The critical ...

Agronomic research suggests Australian farmers may increase wheat yields by 13 to 47% and reduce risk of crop failures by sowing crops earlier than is currently practiced. This study investigated the potential to use remote sensing to assist in evaluating changes in farmer sowing date practices in response to research recommendations, using study paddocks in the southern Australian cropping reg...

Rangelands are the main sources of forage for livestock feeding by localpeople. Beside forage production, rangeland ecosystems provide many other goods andservices such as medicinal plants, recreation, soil and water conservation, wildlife habitat,fishing, hunting, hiking, etc. Nevertheless, there are no much information about the waythat local communities think about the rangelands goods and s...

There has been a paradigm shift towards reclamation of wastewater from high cost to low cost effective technology for treatment of sewage and resource utilization for economy driven activities.Under appropriate conditions, sewage fed fisheries would reduce the cost of fish production by utilizing the sewage induced natural plankton and become cost effective because of savings through chemical f...

In this paper, a biorefinery complex in Thailand was assessed vis-à-vis sustainability. The complex studied includes plantations of sugarcane and a biorefinery system composed of several units including, a sugar mill, power plant, ethanol factory and fertilizer plant. The assessment aimed at evaluating the environmental and socio-economic implications relating to molasses-based ethanol producti...