BACKGROUND This paper discusses U.S. agricultural pesticide use trends from 1964 to 2010 based on estimates developed from USDA surveys, and the influence of economic factors, agricultural policy, and pesticide regulation on aggregate quantities and mix of pesticides used. RESULTS Synthetic organic pesticide use grew dramatically from the 1960s to the early 1980s, as farmers treated more and ...

Rural road improvement that enhances access to input and output markets and agricultural extension services may aid agricultural technology adoption. There is a growing body of literature on the impact of rural roads on technology adoption. However, most studies have so far relied on cross-sectional surveys comparing households with and without road improvement, which have causal attribution pr...

BACKGROUND Epidemiologic studies have raised the possibility that some pesticide compounds induce the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), though the available evidence is not entirely consistent. METHODS We conducted a population-based case-control study in two Italian populations to assess the extent to which residence in the vicinity of agricultural crops associat...

The northeastern region of Bangladesh often experiences flash flooding during the pre-harvesting period of the boro rice crop, which is the major cereal crop in the country. In this study, our objective was to delineate the impact of the 2017 flash flood (that initiated on 27 March 2017) on boro rice using multi-temporal Landsat-8 OLI and MODIS data. Initially, we opted to use Landsat-8 OLI dat...

In dryland cropping systems, optimal yields require that nutrient supply matches the soil’s yield potential supported by available moisture. Conservation tillage systems that leave at least 30 percent of the soil surface covered by residue dramatically increase moisture retained in the soil compared to crop-fallow systems. This enables producers to plant two, three, or four consecutive crops, o...

The paper examines effects of agricultural extension on crop yields in Kenya controlling for other determinants of yields, notably the schooling of farmers and agro-ecological characteristics of arable land. The data we use were collected by the Government of Kenya in 1982 and 1990, but the estimation results reported in the paper are based primarily on the 1982 data set. The sample used for es...

Privately owned forests, wetlands, and crop-lands in the United States are disappearing at alarming rates due to development and erosion , according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on 7 December 1999. The report, which summarizes the USDA's 1997 National Resources Inventory (NRI), reveals that development has doubled during the last decade to-more than three mi...

The objective of this analysis was to integrate hydrologic, agronomic, and economic methods evaluate various management strategies by changing crop acreage better manage the declining resources Ogallala aquifer. A non-linear optimization model used estimate optimal water use, mix, yield, net returns over a 50 year period under dryland deficit irrigation scenarios in Texas High Plains. Results i...