Multifunctional agriculture (MFA) has emerged as a key concept in science and politics with respect to the future of agriculture and rural development in the recent decade. Overall, MFA implies that in addition to their main function in production and support of rural livelihood, the agricultural activities have some other advantages for the environment including the conservation of water and s...

An assessment of the current state of bacterial inoculants for c ontemporary agriculture in developed and developing countries is critically evaluated from the point of view of their actual status and future use. Special emphasis is given to two new concepts of inoculation, as yet unavailable commercially: (i) synthetic inoculants under development for plant-growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) (Ba...

We study the historical origins of cross-country differences in the male-to-female sex ratio. Our analysis focuses on the use of the plough in traditional agriculture. In societies that did not use the plough, women tended to participate in agriculture as actively as men. By contrast, in societies that used the plough, men specialized in agricultural work, due to the physical strength needed to...

Application of information and communication technologies in various agricultural branches is done by using the Precision Agriculture methods and approaches. Beekeeping is old and traditional branch of agriculture where still many manual operations are done to care bee colonies and observe the apiary state and conditions. Information technologies can be used in the beekeeping to partly support ...

Due to the high demand for pest control in Sri Lankas’ rice paddy cultivation practices, the number of new pesticides has been recently introduced. However, the new pesticides, which are flowing into the agriculture sector of Sri Lanka, appeared to be used by farmers without obtaining proper application guidance from the suppliers or from extension services. As a result, the exposure to harmful...

Alternative agricultural systems that emphasize ecological and community resilience provide a bridge between traditional agriculture and natural resourcemanagement. These can be referred to as agri-ecological systems and include systems such as Organic Agriculture, Biodynamics, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), Permaculture, Farmers Markets and Community Gardens. This paper reports on curr...

and forestry. To solve some of the problems in forestry and agriculture, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and the Saarland Ministry of Economics founded the Cooperative Agents and Integrated Services for Logistic and Electronic Trading in Forestry and Agriculture (Casa) project. The Casa project focuses on developing an agentbased information and trading network (ITN). In ...