Industrial or “Green Revolution” agriculture depends upon petroleum to manufacture and spread fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides and to power irrigation systems that act upon crops selected to increase agricultural yield. It has been criticized on the grounds that it has favored mainly rich farmers and caused serious environmental pollution. Now a second “Green Revolution” is being proposed...

Regional agricultural projects based on water resource development have many potential impacts on social and natural environments. In this research, potential long-term environmental problems of the Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP) related to water resources, land use, land degradation, agricultural pollution and demography are analysed from a systems perspective. The analysis focuses on th...

Diversity and species composition of carabid beetles were investigated at Quzhou county in the North China Plain. The study area was originally affected by high salinity and desalinized in three stages in 1973, 1978 and 1982. At sites desalinized in 1982, carabids were sampled at field margins as well as inside fields to investigate the role of field margins as refuge habitats. Furthermore, sam...

Concerns about sustainability in agricultural systems centre on the need to develop technologies and practices that do not have adverse effects on environmental goods and services, are accessible to and effective for farmers, and lead to improvements in food productivity. Despite great progress in agricultural productivity in the past half-century, with crop and livestock productivity strongly ...

increasing growth of population leads to increase in human activities such as agriculture and industry, which these activities increasing and irregular usage of fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides result in soil and groundwater pollution. meanwhile, vulnerability assessment can play important role in the management of polluting activities. in this research a new method has been proposed fo...

Hazardous substances including persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic substances (PBTs), are chemicals which do not degrade easily in the environment. They typically accumulate in fatty tissues and are slowly metabolized often resulting in increased concentration through the food chain. Pesticides have also been used for breeding animals mainly to protect them from infestation of pests. The mai...

ventional monocultural crop systems often supported by high inputs of pesticides and fertilizers to sustainable agriculture. Although precise definitions of sustainable agriculture vary, one key aspect is a reduction in agrichemical inputs with a corresponding shift to alternative crop protection strategies, such as cultural practices, organic amendments, resistant or tolerant crop varieties, a...

The agricultural production system in Sri Lanka consists of two traditional and well-defined components. One is the plantation section, established during the colonial period, consisting of large units, and producing perennial crops such as coffee, tea, rubber, and coconut mainly for export. The other is the smallholder sector comprised of small farms which produce most of the country’s rice, v...

The study employed a Stochastic Frontier Production approach to determine the future investment strategies that can enhance the production of rice in Punjab, Pakistan. The data is collected from 200 farmers in the year of 2005 from two Tehsils of Sheikhupura district which is one of the major rice growing districts of Punjab province. The results of stochastic production function indicate that ...

The aim of this study was to generate an easy to use index to evaluate the ecological state of agricultural land from a sustainability perspective. We selected environmental indicators, such as the use of organic soil amendments (green manure) versus chemical fertilizers, plant biodiversity (including crop associations), variables which characterize soil conservation of conventional agricultura...