Traditionally, the management of manure nutrients has focused primarily on the production, collection, storage, and field application of manure. By contrast, a total systems approach expands this focus to include concerns about human and animal health, odor and fly control, nutrient import and handling, ration balancing and feeding management to optimize dietary nutrient utilization, management...

Global increases in consumption of chemical nutrients, application of pesticides, and water withdrawal to enhance agricultural yield have resulted in degraded water quality and reduced water availability. Efforts to safeguard or improve environmental conditions of agroecosystems have usually focused on managing on-farm activities to reduce materials loss and conserve habitat. Another management...

Lameness in sows is an emerging disease condition with major effects on animal welfare and economics. Yet the direct impact on reproduction results remains unclear. The present field study investigated the impact of lameness and claw lesions throughout the reproductive cycle on (re)production results of sows. In five farms, a total of 491 group-housed sows were followed up for a period of one r...

The Australian Government‘s proposal to put a price on carbon is likely to have a significant impact on the price of farm inputs (diesel, fertiliser, water and electricity). Furthermore, offsets (reduction or removal of greenhouse gas emissions that counterbalances emissions elsewhere in the economy) are a potential area of expansion of interest to the agricultural sector. Agrichar is one of th...

Aflatoxins are well recognized as a cause of liver cancer, but they have additional important toxic effects. In farm and laboratory animals, chronic exposure to aflatoxins compromises immunity and interferes with protein metabolism and multiple micronutrients that are critical to health. These effects have not been widely studied in humans, but the available information indicates that at least ...

The efficient use of fertilizer nitrogen (N) is crucial to sustainable human nutrition. All crops receive significant amounts of additional N in temperate environments, through fixation or fertilizer use. This paper reviews progress towards the efficient use of fertilizer N by winter wheat (Triticum aesitivum L.) and spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) in the UK, acknowledging that on-farm this ...

Agriculture is the largest user of water on the planet with a 70% of all freshwater withdrawals. Today the growing scarcity and competition for water among agricultural, industrial, commercial and residential sectors are pushing the water managers to allocate water more efficiently. In this scenario the use of methodologies and tools for better monitor and schedule the irrigation water for the ...

This paper develops a model to understand the mechanism that might explain how land rights security may facilitate labor specialization. The theoretical framework suggests that with secured land rights, households with high farming ability are likely to invest in land while households with low farming ability tend to investment in human capital and migrate. Land security is identified as whethe...

*James C. Ascough II, Marvin J. Shaffer, Gregory S. McMaster, Gale H. Dunn, Lajpat R. Ahuja, and Mark A. Weltz, USDA-ARS-NPA, Great Plains Systems Research Unit, 301 S. Howes St., P.O. Box E, Fort Collins, CO 80522; Dana L. Hoag, Colorado State University, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Fort Collins, CO 80523; *Corresponding Author: ascough@gpsr.colostate.edu ABSTRACT The Gr...

The output supply and input demand are closely interlinked to each other. Therefore, any change in input and output prices affect the input demand and output supply simultaneously. The present study used cross sectional cum time series data of Vidarbha region of Maharashtra state for cotton crop for the ten years from 1999-00 to 2008-09 were collected from the Agricultural Prices and costs Sche...