More than three decades have elapsed since the passage of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act with its stated goal of zero discharge of pollutants into the nation's waterways. Yet, water quality remains poor in many locations and considerable loading of pollutants continues. This is particularly true for agricultural sources of water pollution and is typified by the Upper Mississippi River ...

STICS-MACRO is a process-based model simulating the fate of pesticides in the soil-plant system as a function of agricultural practices and pedoclimatic conditions. The objective of this work was to evaluate the influence of crop management practices on water and pesticide flows in contrasted environmental conditions. We used the Morris screening sensitivity analysis method to identify the most...

Conventional agriculture systems of production often lead to environmental degradation, economic problems and even social conflict. The efficacy of agriculture systems conducive to the economic, environmental and social sustainability of farming operations has been demonstrated, yet the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices is not widespread. This study evaluates the barriers of sustai...

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are increasingly recognized as a significant hazard of agricultural occupation. In agricultural jobs with significant physical labor, MSDs are typically the most frequently reported injury. Although not as lethal as tractor roll-overs, MSDs can result in disability, lost work time, and increased production costs. MSDs increase production costs as a result of wor...

among well-known managerial practices to protect scarce biological resources, payment for ecosystem services is an efficient and effective policy tool to manage such resources and its application is attracting a growing interest in the world. this is why, in addition to clarifying the role of such a policy tool to encourage farmers to modify their irrigation system to reduce pressures on water ...

Agricultural intensification is associated with the use of great amounts of agrochemicals that may result in the accumulation of metals in soils, and –subsequently—agricultural products and food chain. Nowadays, this is a major concern for many Iranian agricultural products, necessitating scientific researches on the issue. Therefore, the present study has been conducted to evaluate the level o...

This study proposes the use of marginal abatement cost curves to calculate environmental damages of agricultural systems in China's Loess Plateau. Total system costs and revenues, management characteristics and pollution attributes are imputed into a directional output distance function, which is then used to determine shadow prices and abatement cost curves for soil and nitrogen loss. Marginal...

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Among agricultural pesticides, herbicides comprise the most employed group in agriculture. The main function of these chemicals is to control weeds, weed competition reduces produc‐ tivity, without significantly impacting crop yield. Weeds tend to compete with crops by extracting essential elements from the soil, water, intercepting light and CO2, interfering in the culture development and affe...