a r t i c l e i n f o Land degradation in drylands is one of the major environmental issues of the 21st century particularly due to its impact on world food security and environmental quality. Climate change, shifts in vegetation composition, accelerated soil erosion processes, and disturbances have rendered these landscapes susceptible to rapid degradation that has important feedbacks on regio...

Abstract The ongoing fragmentation of pastoral drylands is a matter concern throughout Africa. Using the example rangelands in northern Baringo County, Kenya, that were under uniform use until late twentieth century, we trace land-use and land-cover changes (LULCCs) since 1980s. Based on ethnographic, historical, remote sensing data, show how bush encroachment dryland farming have led to increa...

Dryland farming strategies in the High Plains must make efficient use of limited and variable precipitation and stored water in the soil profile for stable and sustainable farm productivity. Current research efforts focus on replacing summer fallow in the region with more profitable and environmentally sustainable spring and summer crops. In the absence of reliable precipitation forecasts for t...

Japan's rice sector is supported by high prices paid by consumers that allow many farm households to maintain small rice farms. Japan's government controls trade within a tariff-rate quota and imposes a prohibitively high tariff on imports outside the quota. Within Japan, diversion programs pay farmers to substitute other crops for rice since, without government-mandated diversion, supply would...

Successes • Many people showed up at the public meeting. • The citizen group wants to continue beyond the MERIT project. • Increased level of knowledge on both sides of the table. • A deeper understanding of pesticide sources and precautionary actions. • Implementation of cooperative farming contracts is not only a question of money. • There are new opportunities to establish waterworks coopera...

Dryland rivers are renowned for their periods of ‘boom’ related to the episodic floods that extend over vast floodplains and fuel incredible production, and periods of ‘bust’ where the extensive channel network is restricted to the permanent refugial waterholes. Many of these 15 river systems are unregulated by dams but are under increasing pressure, especially from water abstraction and overla...