Over the recent past, there has been a growing concern on the need for mapping cropping practices in order to improve decision-making in the agricultural sector. We developed an original method for mapping cropping practices: crop type and harvest mode, in a sugarcane landscape of western Kenya using remote sensing data. At local scale, a temporal series of 15-m resolution Landsat 8 images was ...

This study measures levels of technical, allocative and economic efficiency in agricultural crop production for Brazil in 1995. A nonparametric frontier model (DEA) under constant returns to scale was used. On average, the results suggest that the sector suffers from moderate technical inefficiency and from strong allocative inefficiency. If full technical efficiency were achieved, the crop pro...

The biomass-based energy sector will play an important role in our drive towards renewable energy. Switchgrass has been identified as one of the candidate-dedicated energy crops in the USA because of its various desirable traits. However, many challenges still exist in ensuring a commercially viable switchgrass crop that is sustainable and techno-economically feasible. This article reviews the ...

The world population is estimated to be 9.2 billion in 2050. To sufficiently feed these people, the total food production will have to increase 60% 70%. Climate models predict that warmer temperatures and increases in the frequency and duration of drought during the present century will have negative impact on agricultural productivity. These new global challenges require a more complex integra...

Seed is the basic input in agriculture. The quality of seed used by farmers determines the status of agriculture they practice. However, for maximum gain in productivity the use of both improved varieties and improved integrated crop management practices are required. Not only do they contribute to increasing productivity individually, but they also act synergistically. Seed of improved varieti...

In present world, inequality and uncertainty is high in section of agriculture production and food security of a great amount of people in developing countries is not supplied. Based on studies of international organizations, about a third of produced food for human consumption in worldwide is lost or wasted. While in developing countries, there is price enhancement, decrease in access to healt...

Drought is one of the major natural hazards that bring about billions of dollars in loss to the farming community around theworld each year. Drought is most often caused by a departure of precipitation from the normal amount, and agriculture is often the first sector to be affected by the onset of drought due to its dependence on water resources and soil moisture reserves during various stages ...

Maize is important in Uganda because of its dual function both as an income-generating cash crop and as a staple crop that improves food security. Three interventions on the maize sector are selected for a substantive cost-benefit analysis investigation, namely: 1. ―Increasing the utilization of commercial inputs‖the focus of the intervention is to overcome the low maize yield situation in Ugan...

Improved assessment methods for agriculture production systems are needed to identify the risks and opportunities related to global changes in climate, markets and policies, and the consequences of alternative options of coping with and mitigating the changes. This paper presents the AGRISIMU modelling framework developed for ex-ante assessment of alternative policy and management options meant...