Farming systems for pest control, based on the stimulo-deterrent diversionary strategy or push-pull system, have become an important target for sustainable intensification of food production. A prominent example is push-pull developed in sub-Saharan Africa using a combination of companion plants delivering semiochemicals, as plant secondary metabolites, for smallholder farming cereal production...

This paper tests whether structural change in US agriculture is an important channel to TFP growth and evaluates the relative impact of (i) public research and education policies, (ii) private R&D and market forces, and (iii) government farm programs on structural change. We specify a structural econometric model, fit it to US state aggregate data, 1953–1982, and use the associated reduced-form...

Understanding how natural resources co-evolve with management practices is fundamental to all questions concerning their sustainable management. In the search for new pathways of sustainable development we seek to understand how comparable initial conditions in agro-ecosystems lead to fundamentally different resource conditions. Agro-ecosystems are characterized by a high diversity, path depend...

Livestock farming has recently come under close scrutiny, in response especially to environmental issues. Farmers are encouraged to redesign their livestock farming systems in depth to improve their sustainability. Assuming that modelling can be a relevant tool to address such systemic changes, we sought to answer the following question: 'How can livestock farming systems be modelled to help fa...

Conversion to organic agriculture describes the process of learning and implementation of changes on the farm towards a more sustainable and natural way of farming. The form the process takes depends on the local circumstances and the predisposition of the farmer or the community, and it varies from farm to farm. The more knowledge a farmer has about the concepts and practices of organic farmin...

Relationship between public and private sector is becoming an increasingly important issue in management of agricultural extension services. The need for a strong linkage could be identified as the gap between desirable and current situation. In this research, the differences among current and desirable situation in six diverse dimensions was calculated. The current and desirable situation was ...