There currently exists a large push for the use, improvement, and expansion via landscape modification of dedicated biofuel crops (feedstocks) in the United States and in many parts of the world. Ecological concerns have been voiced because many biofuel feedstocks exhibit characteristics associated with invasiveness, and due to potential negative consequences of agronomic genes in native wild p...

The development of genetically engineered (GE) crops has focused predominantly on enhancing conventional pest control approaches. Scientific assessments show that these GE crops generally deliver significant economic and some environmental benefits over their conventional crop alternatives. However, emerging evidence indicates that current GE crops will not foster sustainable cropping systems u...

Expenditures on agricultural research in the public sector, including the International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) have stagnated and in some cases, declined sharply in recent years. This has focused attention on issues of efficiency of agricultural research systems, especially the number, size, scope, type, and locations of their programs. This paper examines the issue of research e...

Sewage effluent for land application is becoming an increasingly important source of irrigation water in many semi-arid regions of the world. Two main approaches to the use of sanitation to upgrade effluent for reuse in agriculture were analyzed: (i) sanitizing to the level required for each crop; or (ii) upgrading all effluent to the sanitary level mandated for unrestricted irrigation (<10 fec...

Crop irrigation uses more than 70% of the world's water, and thus, improving irrigation efficiency is decisive to sustain the food demand from a fast-growing world population. This objective may be accomplished by cultivating more water-efficient crop species and/or through the application of efficient irrigation systems, which includes the implementation of a suitable method for precise schedu...

In 2010, concerns regarding Japan’s excessive dependence on imports for food and energy caused the Japanese government to introduce subsidies to stimulate biofuel crop production. In this paper, we study the viability of price subsidies and certain other policies with respect to increasing the production of biofuel crops. First, we estimate the elasticity of the supply of Japanese agriculture w...

Addressing the global challenges to water security requires a better understanding of humanity's use of water, especially the agricultural sector that accounts for 70% of global withdrawals. This study combined high resolution-data with a GIS system to analyze the impact of agricultural practices, crop type, and spatial factors such as drainage basins, climate, and soil type on the Water Footpr...

This article investigates the transition dynamics related to Jatropha developments in Mozambique. The analysis focuses on how structural conditions (infrastructure, institutions, interaction and collaboration and capabilities and resources) enable or constrain interactions between niche-level Jatropha experiments and incumbent energy, agriculture and rural development regimes in Mozambique. Inv...

Current soil management strategies are mainly dependent on inorganic chemical-based fertilizers, which caused a serious threat to human health and environment. The exploitation of beneficial microbes as a biofertilizer has become paramount importance in agriculture sector for their potential role in food safety and sustainable crop production. The eco-friendly approaches inspire a wide range of...

In the next decade, India is likely to witness changes in its cotton and textile sectors as many of the constraints on production, marketing, and trade of cotton and textile products are set to be eliminated. Some of the internal constraints include export constraints on yarn, government fixing of cotton ginning and pressing fees, and subsidization of raw cotton production. Similarly, one of th...