Sustainability of Rice in the Global Food System


Book Description

Food security; Food system; Rice production systems: challenges for rice research in Asia; Rice production systems: biodiversity; Economic considerations; Case studies.




Sustainable Agriculture and the International Rice-Wheat System


Book Description

Addressing a topic of major importance to the maintenance of world food supplies, this reference identifies knowledge gaps, defines priorities, and formulates recommendations for the improvement of the rice-wheat farming system. The book reveals new systems of rice intensification and management and illustrates the application of no-till and conser




Sustaining Global Food Security


Book Description

Population growth alone dictates that global food supplies must increase by over 50% in coming decades. Advances in technology offer an array of opportunities to meet this demand, but history shows that these can be fully realised only within an enabling policy environment. Sustaining Global Food Security makes a compelling case that recent technological breakthroughs can move the planet towards a secure and sustainable food supply only if new policies are designed that allow their full expression. Bob Zeigler has brought together a distinguished set of scientists and policy analysts to produce well-referenced chapters exploring international policies on genetic resources, molecular genetics, genetic engineering, crop breeding and protection, remote sensing, the changing landscape of agricultural policies in the world’s largest countries, and trade. Those entering the agricultural sciences and those who aspire to influence public policy during their careers will benefit from the insights of this unique set of experiences and perspectives.




Building a More Sustainable, Resilient, Equitable, and Nourishing Food System


Book Description

On July 22-23, 2020, the Food Forum of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a virtual workshop that explored the integration of the health, societal, economic, and environmental effects and future needs of the food system. The main objective of the 1.5-day workshop was to understand how to achieve a more sustainable, resilient, equitable, and nourishing food system. Workshop sessions examined three main dimensions of the food system: vulnerabilities, resiliency, and transformation. The workshop included discussions on global change, access to health and food, resiliency in complex dynamic systems and resiliency for the future, and consumption- and production-oriented strategies that could transform the food system. This publication highlights the presentation and discussion of the workshop.




Rice Production Worldwide


Book Description

This book addresses aspects of rice production in rice-growing areas of the world including origin, history, role in global food security, cropping systems, management practices, production systems, cultivars, as well as fertilizer and pest management. As one of the three most important grain crops that helps to fulfill food needs all across the globe, rice plays a key role in the current and future food security of the world. Currently, no book covers all aspects of rice production in the rice-growing areas of world. This book fills that gap by highlighting the diverse production and management practices as well as the various rice genotypes in the salient, rice-producing areas in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Australia. Further, this text highlights harvesting, threshing, processing, yields and rice products and future research needs. Supplemented with illustrations and tables, this text is essential for students taking courses in agronomy and production systems as well as for agricultural advisers, county agents, extension specialists, and professionals throughout the industry.




Experimental Auctions


Book Description

Economists, psychologists, and marketers are interested in determining the monetary value people place on non-market goods for a variety of reasons: to carry out cost-benefit analysis, to determine the welfare effects of technological innovation or public policy, to forecast new product success, and to understand individual and consumer behavior. Unfortunately, many currently available techniques for eliciting individuals' values suffer from a serious problem in that they involve asking individuals hypothetical questions about intended behavior. Experimental auctions circumvent this problem because they involve individuals exchanging real money for real goods in an active market. This represents a promising means for eliciting non-market values. Lusk and Shogren provide a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of experimental auctions. It will be a valuable resource to graduate students, practitioners and researchers concerned with the design and utilization of experimental auctions in applied economic and marketing research.




Sustainable Intensification


Book Description

Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.




Sustainable Food Security in the Era of Local and Global Environmental Change


Book Description

This volume discusses a broad range of vital issues encompassing the production and consumption of food in the current period of climate change. All of these add up to looming, momentous challenges to food security, especially for people in regions where malnutrition and famine have been the norm during numerous decades. Furthermore, threats to food security do not stop at the borders of more affluent countries – governance of food systems and changes in eating patterns will have worldwide consequences. The book is arranged in four broad sections. Part I, Combating Food Insecurity: A Global Responsibility opens with a chapter describing the urgent necessity for new paradigm and policy set to meet the food security challenges of climate change. Also in this section are chapters on meat and the dimensions of animal welfare, climate change and sustainability; on dietary options for mitigating climate change; and the linkage of forest and food production in the context of the REDD+ approach to valuation of forests. Part II, Managing Linkages Between Climate Change and Food Security offers a South Asian perspective on Gender, Climate Change and Household Food Security; a chapter on food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa; and separate chapters on critical issues of food supply and production in Nigeria, far-Western Nepal and the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Cameroon. Part III examines Food Security and patterns of production and consumption, with chapters focused on Morocco, Thailand, Bahrain, Kenya and elsewhere. The final section discusses successful, innovative practices, with chapters on Food Security in Knowledge-Based Economy; Biosaline Agriculture in the Gulf States; Rice production in a cotton zone of Benin; palm oil in the production of biofuel; and experiments in raised-bed wheat production. The editors argue that technical prescriptions are insufficient to manage the food security challenge. They propose and explain a holistic approach for adapting food systems to global environmental change, which demands the engagement of many disciplines – a new, sustainable food security paradigm.




Food Systems Failure


Book Description

This book provides a critical assessment of the contemporary global food system in light of the heightening food crisis, as evidence of its failure to achieve food security for the world's population. A key aspect of this failure is identified in the neoliberal strategies which emphasize industrial efficiencies, commodity production and free trade-ideologies that underlie agricultural and food policies in what are frequently referred to as 'developed countries'. The book examines both the contradictions in the global food system as well as the implications of existing ideologies of production associated with commodity industrial agriculture using evidence from relevant international case studies. The book's first section presents the context of the food crisis with contributions from leading international academics and food policy activists, including climate scientists, ecologists and social scientists. These contributions identify current contradictions in policy and practice that impede solutions to the food crisis. Set within this context, the second section assesses current conditions in the global food system, including economic viability, sustainability and productivity. Case study analyses of regions exposed to neoliberal policy at the production end of the system provide insights into both current challenges to feeding the world, as well as alternative strategies for creating a more just and moral food system.