Over the past twenty years, agricultural biotechnologies have generated chronically unresolved political controversies. The standard tool of risk assessment has proven to be highly limited in its ability to address the panoply of concerns that exist about these hybrid techno/organisms. It has also failed to account for both the conceptual and material networks of relations agricultural biotechn...

In recent decades agriculture has undergone rapid technological and structural changes. This development has raised concerns about the sustainability of modern agriculture and motivated an interest in alternative and, perhaps, more sustainable agricultural systems. Agriculture involves both ecological and social systems, and research in agricultural systems therefore faces the dual challenge of...

Rice paddies are artificial wetlands that supply people with food and provide wildlife with habitats, breeding areas, shelters, feeding grounds and other services, and rice paddies play an important part in agricultural ecological systems. However, modern agricultural practices with large-scale intensive farming have significantly accelerated the homogenization of the paddy field ecosystem. Mod...

The purpose of this study is to identify factors affecting the sustainability of production systems in Shushtar township. Since agricultural production cooperatives have special importance in the region economy, identifying factors that threaten the sustainable and continuous production is of great importance. This survey has been conducted in crop year 2011 and the required data have been coll...

Studies on agricultural production practices advance within international literature and new methods are proposed in order to assess the agricultural sustainability, either at farm or macro level. The present paper builds on these advancements and develops a synthetic Eco-(in)efficiency index by employing a directional distance function—data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. This index is used ...

Objective: Today, addressing the issue of sustainability especially in agriculture has received more attention. Sustainability in the systems of Canola cultivation depends on many factors like ecological, social and economic dimensions and understanding these factors can result in formulation of policies and strategies for sustainable agricultural development. Methods: 8961 Canola farmers of Qa...

Sustainability has recently become a buzzword for agricultural programs in education, extension, research, and government policy. For effective communications among those teaching, studying, and practicing agriculture, it is essential that there be some agreement as to the definition of the term sustainable agriculture. The definition should be general enough to accommodate th wide range of agr...

Land degradation is a global concern. In tropical areas it primarily concerns the conversion of forest into non-forest lands and the associated losses of environmental services. Defining such degradation is not straightforward hampering effective reduction in degradation and use of already degraded lands for more productive purposes. To facilitate the processes of avoided degradation and land r...

Cimarron County, Oklahoma and Union County, New Mexico, neighboring counties in the Southern High Plains, are part of a vital agricultural region in the United States. This region experiences extended periods of cyclical drought threatening its ability to produce, creating an incentive for extensive center pivot irrigation (CPI). Center pivots draw from the rapidly depleting High Plains Aquifer...

The productivity of the American farmer has increased dramatically over the last century. One hundred years ago a farmer produced enough to feed 15 people and over 40% of the US population was involved in agriculture-related businesses. Today the produce from an average farmer feeds 130 people and farmers represent less than 2% of the U.S. population. The increases in agricultural productivity ...