Intensive Cropping


Book Description

Explore new concepts for maximizing crop yields! Intensive Cropping: Efficient Use of Water, Nutrients, and Tillage is a compilation of current information on the interdependence of and synergies among water, nutrients, and energy in regard to increasing crop performance. This book explains the need for intensive cropping and explores the technologies and practices necessary for proper management of water, nutrients, and energy. With Intensive Cropping you will learn how to improve the quantity of the world's most important crops using methods that will minimize harm to the environment. This essential guide is a state-of-the-art account of the concepts and practices concerning the integrated use of water, nutrients, and energy in intensive cropping. Intensive Cropping combines basic and applied aspects of soil-water, nutrients, and energy management to help you optimize your crop yields and maximize the efficiency of intensively farmed regions. In Intensive Cropping, you will explore the need for extreme farming and related concerns and concepts, including: reducing runoff, deep seepage, and evaporation losses supplementing irrigation with surface and ground water understanding the process of water uptake and its effects on root dynamics and water use reducing leaching, erosion, and gasseus losses in your fields using combinations of organic manures, crop residues, chemical fertilizers, and biofertilizers for soil maintenance implementing conventional and emerging tillage systems, such as conservation tillage for improving soil quality examining case studies of contrasting edaphic requirements of rice-wheat systems Intensive Cropping brings you up-to-date on recent advances in the field, supported by relevant experimental observations on environmentally safe and effective ways to increase crop performance. By examining this new research on increasing crop production, you will be able to successfully increase crop yields in various climates and support the growing global demand for such resources.










Sustainable Market Farming


Book Description

Growing for 100 - the complete year-round guide for the small-scale market grower. Across North America, an agricultural renaissance is unfolding. A growing number of market gardeners are emerging to feed our appetite for organic, regional produce. But most of the available resources on food production are aimed at the backyard or hobby gardener who wants to supplement their family's diet with a few homegrown fruits and vegetables. Targeted at serious growers in every climate zone, Sustainable Market Farming is a comprehensive manual for small-scale farmers raising organic crops sustainably on a few acres. Informed by the author's extensive experience growing a wide variety of fresh, organic vegetables and fruit to feed the approximately one hundred members of Twin Oaks Community in central Virginia, this practical guide provides: Detailed profiles of a full range of crops, addressing sowing, cultivation, rotation, succession, common pests and diseases, and harvest and storage Information about new, efficient techniques, season extension, and disease resistant varieties Farm-specific business skills to help ensure a successful, profitable enterprise Whether you are a beginning market grower or an established enterprise seeking to improve your skills, Sustainable Market Farming is an invaluable resource and a timely book for the maturing local agriculture movement.




Intensive Farming


Book Description




Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing


Book Description

Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories and Policies examines and assesses the interdependence between sustainability and wellbeing by drawing attention to humans as producers and consumers in a post-human age. Why wellbeing ought to be regarded as essential to sustainable development is explored first from multifocal theoretical perspectives encompassing sociology, literary criticism and socioeconomics, second in relation to institutions and policies, and third with a focus on specific case studies across the world. Wellbeing and its sustainability are defined in terms of biological and cultural diversity; stages of advancement in science and technology; notions of citizenship and agency; geopolitical scenarios and environmental conditions. Wellbeing and sustainability call for enquiries into human capacities in ontological, epistemological and practical terms. A view of sustainability that revolves around material and immaterial wellbeing is based on the assumption that life quality, comfort, happiness, security, safety always posit humans as both recipients and agents. Risk and resilience in contemporary societies define the intrinsically human ability to make and consume, to act and adapt, driving the search for and fruition of wellbeing. How to sustain the dual process of exploitation and regeneration is a task that requires integrated approaches from the sciences and the humanities, jointly tracing a worldwide cartography with clear localisations. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers interested in sustainability through conceptual and empirical approaches including social theory, literary and cultural studies, environmental economics and human ecology, urbanism and cultural geography.




Cropping Systems In The Tropics (Principles And Management)


Book Description

Land And Soil Are Non-Renewable Natural Resources. The Nature Has Taken Thousands Of Years To Create An Inch Of Fertile Soil. Mismanagement Of This Precious Resource Is A Sin Against Nature And Will Play Havoc With The Fortunes Of The Country. Many Parts Of The Country Have Already Come To The Brink Of Devastation Through Injudicious Usages, Over Exploitation Of Natural Resources Resulting In Unsustainable Productivity Of Crops.Modern Concept Of Cropping System Is Based On The Principle Of Effective Utilization Of Soil Water, Nutrients And Light For Sustainable Crop Productivity. This Book Gives The Basic Principles And Broadly Accepted Definitions Terms Frequently Used In The Literature. A Short-Review Of The Cropping Systems Work Done In The Tropics, Particularly In India Is Presented.In This Revised Edition, Contents Of All The Chapters Have Been Revised To Give Orientation Towards Management Of Sustainable Crop Production Systems. A New Chapter On Farming System Is Also Added In Tune With The Latest Trends. Information Available On Perennial Crop-Based Cropping Systems, For Example High Density Multi Species Cropping Systems Involving Coconut And Arecanut Is Updated. The Various Management Aspects Of Sustainable Cropping Systems Are Discussed And The Research Methodology That Could Be Adopted Is Elucidated. Possible Future Lines Of Work Are Given In The Final Chapter.This Book Will Prove To Be Of Immense Value Not Only To The Research Workers But Also To The Teachers And Students And Above All Farmers And Individuals Who Are Desirous Of Improving Sustainable Crop Production Systems.




Climate Change Impact and Adaptation in Agricultural Systems


Book Description

The focus of this book is future global climate change and its implications for agricultural systems which are the main sources of agricultural goods and services provided to society. These systems are either based on crop or livestock production, or on combinations of the two, with characteristics that differ between regions and between levels of management intensity. In turn, they also differ in their sensitivity to projected future changes in climate, and improvements to increase climate-resilience need to be tailored to the specific needs of each system. The book will bring together a series of chapters that provide scientific insights to possible implications of projected climate changes for different important types of crop and livestock systems, and a discussion of options for adaptive and mitigative management.




Crop Rotation


Book Description

This book tackles the issue of using crop rotation to increase food production and secure it for the growing population of the future. Crop rotation can be a solution of food gaps in the developing counties. Crop rotation plays an important role in attaining soil sustainability and in controlling pests and weeds. It can alleviate damage caused by climate change by reducing losses in productivity of the crops, minimizing soil fertility loss and increase irrigation water productivity. This book also includes the reviews of a large number of crop rotations that have been published internationally, and additionally, the crop rotations that have been implemented in Egypt have a unique characteristic to them and therefore, a large number of those reviews have also been included.