Organic farming systems still depend on intensive, mechanical soil tillage. Frequent passes by machinery traffic cause substantial soil compaction that threatens soil health. Adopting practices as reduced tillage and organic matter retention on the soil surface are considered effective ways to control soil compaction. In tropical regions, however, the acceleration of soil organic matter decompo...

Organic farming systems rely on the management of biological cycles for the provision of nutrients, which are crucial to maximising the production from the system. Rotations based on the use of grass-legume leys are central to the concept of organic farming systems, because they have the potential to support both animal production, and a subsequent, exploitative, arable cropping phase. A major ...

this study investigated the effects of land size and two leased and private farming systems of machinery on economic efficiency and factors such as total production cost per hectare (ratio of total cost of agricultural inputs and operations to farm size), total income (ratio of product and byproduct value to farm size), yield (ratio of crop production to farm size) and degree of mechanization f...

Livestock farming has recently come under close scrutiny, in response especially to environmental issues. Farmers are encouraged to redesign their livestock farming systems in depth to improve their sustainability. Assuming that modelling can be a relevant tool to address such systemic changes, we sought to answer the following question: 'How can livestock farming systems be modelled to help fa...

Carbon sequestration in agricultural soils has the capacity to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to improve soil biological, physical, and chemical properties. The review of literature pertaining to soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics within Australian grain farming systems does not enable us to conclude on the best farming practices to increase or maintain SOC for a specific combina...

This thesis tests if certain technology choices are associated with a reduction in the proportion of farming activities in the agro-food system in Maine. Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson define appropriationism as the replacement of farming sector activities by industrial inputs. Based on the concept of appropriationism, industrial fanning systems using large amounts of synthetic inputs contribute ...

Environmental, social and economic attributes are important for the sustainability of a farming system. Comparing farming systems by considering only expected profitability ignores differences in both sustainability and in the riskiness of system returns. Further, in choosing between farming systems, the ability to survive various risks and shocks and continue in the future is important, i.e., ...

Socio-economic improvement of rural people especially women is one of the challenges in Bangladesh. While integrated farming system is the potential area of working opportunity of the women to improve their socio-economic conditions. Considering this issue, this paper was to examine the improvement of socio-economic status of women with increased participation in so-called “Integrated Farming S...

This paper presents a unified framework that will facilitate the implementation of future autonomous farming systems. It describes the coordination of information flow between what is called precision autonomous farming and Precision Agriculture. Precision Agriculture aims to fulfill the agronomical needs of the crop growth. Precision autonomous farming addresses the operation, guidance and con...