Genetically modified (GM) crops first appeared commercially in the mid-1990s to what seemed a bright and promising future. Resistant to pests and the herbicides used to control weeds, these new crops were so popular with farmers that millions of acres were planted with them by the turn of the millennium. Today, GM crops are grown commercially by 8.25 million farmers on 200 million acres spread ...

The phrase ‘global land grab’ has become a catch-all framework to describe and analyze the current explosion of (trans)national commercial land transactions revolving around the production and sale of food and biofuels. Initially deployed and popularised especially by activist groups deeply concerned and opposed to such transactions from an environmental-agrarian justice perspective, the signif...

The consumption of crops fertilized with human waste represents a potential route of exposure to antibiotic-resistant fecal bacteria. The present study evaluated the abundance of bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes by using both culture-dependent and molecular methods. Various vegetables (lettuce, carrots, radish, and tomatoes) were sown into field plots fertilized inorganically or with cl...

Soil microorganisms play a crucial role in the biogeochemical cycling of nutrient elements and maintaining soil health. We aimed to investigate the response of bacteria communities to organic farming over different crops (rice, tea and vegetable) along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River of China. Compared with conventional farming, organic farming significantly increased soil nut...

The “convex hull problem” is a catch-all phrase for computing various descriptions of a polytope that is either specified as the convex hull of a finite point set in R or as the intersection of a finite number of halfspaces. We first define the various problems and discuss their mutual relationships (Section 26.1). We discuss the very special case of the irredundancy problem in Section 26.2. We...

Unduly optimistic views of the impacts of climate change on agriculture, drawing on the research of the 1990s, have helped to justify relatively complacent approaches to climate policy. In the last decade, newer research has identified more ominous climate threats to agriculture which should call for a revised perspective on climate policy. We review three categories of climate impacts on agric...

Transgenic crops expressing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins have been adopted worldwide, notably in developing countries. In spite of their success in controlling target pests while allowing a substantial reduction of insecticide use, the sustainable control of these pest populations is threatened by the evolution of resistance. The implementation of the "high dose/refuge" strategy for manag...

Abstract The herbicides that inhibit 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD) are primarily used for weed control in corn, barley, oat, rice, sorghum, sugarcane, and wheat production fields the United States. objectives of this review were to summarize 1) history HPPD-inhibitor their use States; 2) resistant weeds, mechanism resistance, management; 3) interaction with other herbicides; 4) fut...

The article provides information on the state of natural pastures and methods for improving degraded by overseeding perennial drought-resistant forage crops using resource-saving technologies adapted to conditions global climate change.

RISKS TO THE ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY POSED BY RESISTANT PESTS Many general questions and observations were made concerning the risk of pests, especially insect pests to a crop containing a transgenic pesticide, e.g., the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin. If pests cannot be controlled, food and fiber crops will be jeopardized and may negatively impact society throughout the world. As a result, ...