Industrialized livestock production can be characterized by five key attributes: confinement feeding of animals, separation of feed and livestock production, specialization, large size, and close vertical linkages with buyers. Industrialized livestock operations—popularly known as CAFOs, for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations—have spread rapidly in developed and developing countries; by the early 21st century, they accounted for three quarters of poultry production and over half of global pork production, and held a growing foothold in dairy production.
Industrialized systems have created significant improvements in agricultural productivity, leading to greater output of meat and dairy products for given commitments of land, feed, labor, housing, and equipment. They have also been effective at developing, applying, and disseminating research leading to persistent improvements in animal genetics, breeding, feed formulations, and biosecurity. The reduced prices associated with productivity improvements support increased meat and dairy product consumption in low and middle income countries, while reducing the resources used for such consumption in higher income countries.
The high-stocking densities associated with confined feeding also exacerbate several social costs associated with livestock production. Animals in high-density environments may be exposed to diseases, subject to attacks from other animals, and unable to engage in natural behaviors, raising concerns about higher levels of fear, pain, stress, and boredom. Such animal welfare concerns have realized greater salience in recent years.
By consolidating large numbers of animals in a location, industrial systems also concentrate animal wastes, often in levels that exceed the capacity of local cropland to absorb the nutrients in manure. While the productivity improvements associated with industrial systems reduce the resource demands of agriculture, excessive localized concentrations of manure can lean to environmental damage through contamination of ground and surface water and through volatilization of nitrogen nutrients into airborne pollutants.
Finally, animals in industrialized systems are often provided with antibiotics in their feed or water, in order to treat and prevent disease, but also to realize improved feed absorption (“a production purpose”). Bacteria are developing resistance to many important antibiotic drugs; the extensive use of such drugs in human and animal medicine has contributed to the spread of antibiotic resistance, with consequent health risks to humans.
The social costs associated with industrialized production have led to a range of regulatory interventions, primarily in North America and Europe, as well as private sector attempts to alter the incentives that producers face through the development of labels and through associated adjustments within supply chains.
Article
CAFOs: Farm Animals and Industrialized Livestock Production
James M. MacDonald
Article
Causes of Soil Salinization, Sodification, and Alkalinization
Elisabeth N. Bui
Driving forces for natural soil salinity and alkalinity are climate, rock weathering, ion exchange, and mineral equilibria reactions that ultimately control the chemical composition of soil and water. The major weathering reactions that produce soluble ions are tabled. Where evapotranspiration is greater than precipitation, downward water movement is insufficient to leach solutes out of the soil profile and salts can precipitate. Microbes involved in organic matter mineralization and thus the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur biogeochemical cycles are also implicated. Seasonal contrast and evaporative concentration during dry periods accelerate short-term oxidation-reduction reactions and local and regional accumulation of carbonate and sulfur minerals. The presence of salts and alkaline conditions, together with the occurrence of drought and seasonal waterlogging, creates some of the most extreme soil environments where only specially adapted organisms are able to survive. Sodic soils are alkaline, rich in sodium carbonates, with an exchange complex dominated by sodium ions. Such sodic soils, when low in other salts, exhibit dispersive behavior, and they are difficult to manage for cropping. Maintaining the productivity of sodic soils requires control of the flocculation-dispersion behavior of the soil. Poor land management can also lead to anthropogenically induced secondary salinity. New developments in physical chemistry are providing insights into ion exchange and how it controls flocculation-dispersion in soil. New water and solute transport models are enabling better options of remediation of saline and/or sodic soils.
Article
Citrus History, Taxonomy, Breeding, and Fruit Quality
Paolo Inglese and Giuseppe Sortino
In May, every year since 1857, in the great park of Sans-Souci in Potsdam just outside Berlin—a park begun in 1745 by Emperor Frederick II of Hohenzollern and expanded a century later by Frederick William IV—the doors of the great Orangerie open in and a Renaissance-style garden called Sizilianischer Garten is set up. On horse-drawn carriages, large olive and citrus trees are brought outdoors, and are then raised in masters.
For the young European who, in the second half of the 18th century and in the first decades of the following, traveled to Italy to see and study Renaissance culture and the remains of Greek civilization, the citrus species and fruits and groves of southern Italy became the ultimate symbol of beauty and a sort of status symbol of wealth, particularly that of landowners. Nothing is more expressive of the fascination of their fruit than Abu-l-Hasan Ali’s 12th-century writings: “Come on, enjoy your harvested orange: happiness is present when it is present. / Welcome the cheeks of the branches, and welcome the stars of the trees! / It seems that the sky has lavished gold and that the earth has formed some shiny spheres.”
Indeed, Citrus spp. are among the most important crops and consumed fruit worldwide. Their co-evolution due to a millennial agricultural utilization resulted in a complexity of species and cultivated varieties derived by natural or induced mutations, crossing and breeding the “original” species (Citrus medica, Citrus maxima, Citrus reticulate, Fortunella japonica) and their main progenies (C. aurantium, C. sinensis, Citrus limon, Citrus paradisi, Citrus clementina, etc.). Citrus spread from the original tropical and subtropical regions of southeast Asia toward the Mediterranean countries of Europe and North Africa and, after 1492, in the Americas, not to mention South Africa and Australia, where they still have a very important role. Citrus species, wherever they have been cultivated, quickly became the protagonists of the letters and the arts, as well as the markets and gastronomy, and can even be found in religious ceremonies, such as for Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot). Studies on Citrus botany, cultivation, and utilization have been pursued since the early stages of the fruit’s domestication and grew following their introduction in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Australia. Citrus research involves many different aspects: such as the study of citrus origin and botanical classification; citrus growing, propagation, and orchard management; citrus fruit quality, utilization and industry; citrus gardening and ornamentals; citrus in arts and manufacturing.
Article
Classification and Mitigation of Soil Salinization
Tibor Tóth
Soil salinity has been causing problems for agriculturists for millennia, primarily in irrigated lands. The importance of salinity issues is increasing, since large areas are affected by irrigation-induced salt accumulation. A wide knowledge base has been collected to better understand the major processes of salt accumulation and choose the right method of mitigation. There are two major types of soil salinity that are distinguished because of different properties and mitigation requirements. The first is caused mostly by the large salt concentration and is called saline soil, typically corresponding to Solonchak soils. The second is caused mainly by the dominance of sodium in the soil solution or on the soil exchange complex. This latter type is called “sodic” soil, corresponding to Solonetz soils. Saline soils have homogeneous soil profiles with relatively good soil structure, and their appropriate mitigation measure is leaching. Naturally sodic soils have markedly different horizons and unfavorable physical properties, such as low permeability, swelling, plasticity when wet, and hardness when dry, and their limitation for agriculture is mitigated typically by applying gypsum. Salinity and sodicity need to be chemically quantified before deciding on the proper management strategy. The most complex management and mitigation of salinized irrigated lands involves modern engineering including calculations of irrigation water rates and reclamation materials, provisions for drainage, and drainage disposal. Mapping-oriented soil classification was developed for naturally saline and sodic soils and inherited the first soil categories introduced more than a century ago, such as Solonchak and Solonetz in most of the total of 24 soil classification systems used currently. USDA Soil Taxonomy is one exception, which uses names composed of formative elements.
Article
Crop Rotation and Climate Change Adaptation in Argentina’s Agriculture Sector
Ariel R. Angeli, Federico E. Bert, Sandro Díez-Amigo, Yuri Soares, Jaquelina M. Chaij, Gustavo D. Martini, F. Martín Montané, Alejandro Pardo Vegezzi, and Federico Schmidt
During the past two decades, extensive agriculture, particularly soybean production, has progressively replaced other crops in Argentina. This transformation was driven by economic, technological, environmental, and organizational factors, such as the increasing demand for agricultural commodities, technological advances, organizational innovations, and climate fluctuations. The expansion of soybean production has brought a substantial increase in agricultural revenue for Argentina. However, the predominance of soybean cultivation poses significant challenges, such as diminished soil fertility, reduction and increased variability in crop yields, ecological imbalance, increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and vulnerability to climate change.
Crop rotation, particularly balanced crop rotation, may result in very large positive impacts on soybean yields, especially in unfavorable climatic conditions such as those experienced during the La Niña ENSO phase in Argentina. In addition to this positive impact on agricultural productivity and climate adaptation, in some contexts crop rotation may also contribute to the reduction of GHG emissions, increased input energy efficiency, and improved environmental outcomes.
The 2018 Argentinian Association of Regional Consortia for Agricultural Experimentation and Inter-American Development Bank (AACREA-IADB) Integrated Crop Rotation Database compiled and harmonized the information from agricultural diaries kept by Regional Consortia for Agricultural Experimentation (CREA) members in Argentina from 1998 to 2016. This new consolidated data set has replaced previous regional templates, and it is expected to continue to be expanded with new information periodically, offering opportunities for further research on the impact of crop rotation on climate adaptation and on other topics in agricultural and environmental economics.
Article
Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture across Africa
Laura Pereira
Confidence in the projected impacts of climate change on agricultural systems has increased substantially since the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. In Africa, much work has gone into downscaling global climate models to understand regional impacts, but there remains a dearth of local level understanding of impacts and communities’ capacity to adapt. It is well understood that Africa is vulnerable to climate change, not only because of its high exposure to climate change, but also because many African communities lack the capacity to respond or adapt to the impacts of climate change. Warming trends have already become evident across the continent, and it is likely that the continent’s 2000 mean annual temperature change will exceed +2°C by 2100. Added to this warming trend, changes in precipitation patterns are also of concern: Even if rainfall remains constant, due to increasing temperatures, existing water stress will be amplified, putting even more pressure on agricultural systems, especially in semiarid areas. In general, high temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns are likely to reduce cereal crop productivity, and new evidence is emerging that high-value perennial crops will also be negatively impacted by rising temperatures. Pressures from pests, weeds, and diseases are also expected to increase, with detrimental effects on crops and livestock.
Much of African agriculture’s vulnerability to climate change lies in the fact that its agricultural systems remain largely rain-fed and underdeveloped, as the majority of Africa’s farmers are small-scale farmers with few financial resources, limited access to infrastructure, and disparate access to information. At the same time, as these systems are highly reliant on their environment, and farmers are dependent on farming for their livelihoods, their diversity, context specificity, and the existence of generations of traditional knowledge offer elements of resilience in the face of climate change. Overall, however, the combination of climatic and nonclimatic drivers and stressors will exacerbate the vulnerability of Africa’s agricultural systems to climate change, but the impacts will not be universally felt. Climate change will impact farmers and their agricultural systems in different ways, and adapting to these impacts will need to be context-specific.
Current adaptation efforts on the continent are increasing across the continent, but it is expected that in the long term these will be insufficient in enabling communities to cope with the changes due to longer-term climate change. African famers are increasingly adopting a variety of conservation and agroecological practices such as agroforestry, contouring, terracing, mulching, and no-till. These practices have the twin benefits of lowering carbon emissions while adapting to climate change as well as broadening the sources of livelihoods for poor farmers, but there are constraints to their widespread adoption. These challenges vary from insecure land tenure to difficulties with knowledge-sharing.
While African agriculture faces exposure to climate change as well as broader socioeconomic and political challenges, many of its diverse agricultural systems remain resilient. As the continent with the highest population growth rate, rapid urbanization trends, and rising GDP in many countries, Africa’s agricultural systems will need to become adaptive to more than just climate change as the uncertainties of the 21st century unfold.
Article
Crop Production Resilience through Biodiversity for Adaptation to Climate Change
Charles A. Francis
Adaptation of cropping systems to weather uncertainty and climate change is essential for resilient food production and long-term food security. Changes in climate result in substantial temporal modifications of cropping conditions, and rainfall and temperature patterns vary greatly with location. These challenges come at a time when global human population and demand for food are both increasing, and it appears to be difficult to find ways to satisfy growing needs with conventional systems of production. Agriculture in the future will need to feature greater biodiversity of crop species and appropriate design and management of cropping and integrated crop/animal systems. More diverse and longer-cycle crop rotations will need to combine sequences of annual row crops such as maize and soybean with close-drilled cereals, shallow-rooted with deep-rooted crops, summer crops with winter crops, and annuals with perennials in the same fields. Resilience to unpredictable weather will also depend on intercropping, with the creative arrangement of multiple interacting crop species to diversify the field and the landscape. Other multiple-cropping systems and strategies to integrate animals and crops will make more efficient use of natural resources and applied inputs; these include systems such as permaculture, agroforestry, and alley cropping. Future systems will be spatially diverse and adapted to specific fields, soil conditions, and unique agroecozones. Production resilience will be achieved by planting diverse combinations of species together in the same field, and economic resilience through producing a range of products that can be marketed through different channels. The creation of local food webs will be more appropriate in the future, as contrasted with the dominance of global food chains today. Materials considered “waste” from the food system, including human urine and feces, will become valuable resources to be cycled back into the natural environment and into food production. Due to the increasing scarcity of fertile land, the negative contributions of chemicals to environmental pollution, the costs of fossil fuels, and the potential for the economic and political disruption of supply chains, future systems will increasingly need to be local in character while still achieving adaptation to the most favorable conditions for each system and location. It is essential that biologically and economically resilient systems become productive and profitable, as well as environmentally sound and socially equitable, in order to contribute to stability of food production, security of the food supply, and food sovereignty, to the extent that this is possible. The food system cannot continue along the lines of “business as usual,” and its path will need to radically diverge from the recognized trends toward specialization and globalization of the early 21st century. The goal needs to shift from exploitation and short-term profits to conservation of resources, greater equity in distribution of benefits, and resilience in food supply, even with global climate change.
Article
Crop Rotations, Fallowing, and Associated Environmental Benefits
Faisal Nadeem, Ahmad Nawaz, and Muhammad Farooq
Planned crop rotation offers a pragmatic option to improve soil fertility, manage insect pests and diseases, and offset the emission of greenhouse gases. The inclusion of legume crops in crop rotations helps to reduce the use of external nitrogen inputs for legumes and other crops because legumes may fix the atmospheric nitrogen. This also helps to reduce the environmental pollution caused by volatilization and leaching of applied nitrogen. The inclusion of allelopathic crops in rotation may be useful to suppress noxious weeds due to release of the allelochemicals in the rhizosphere. The rotation of tap-rooted crops with shallow rooted crops may result in efficient and productive use of nutrient resources and conservation of soil moisture. Continuous monoculture systems may cause the loss of biodiversity. Land fallowing is an efficient agricultural management technique mostly practiced in arid regions to capture rainwater and store it in the soil profile for later use in crop production. During fallowing, tillage operations are practiced to enhance moisture conservation in the soil. Keeping soil fallow for a season or more restores soil fertility through nutrient deposits; increases organic matter, microbial carbon, and soil microbial diversity; and improves the soil’s physical properties, including aggregation stability and reduced soil compaction due to decreased traffic. In addition, fallowing of land provides biological means of pest (weeds and insects) control by disrupting the life cycle of pests and decreasing reliance on pesticides. Land fallowing can help offset the emission of greenhouse gases from agricultural fields by reducing traffic and increasing carbon sequestration within the soil. Summer fallowing may help to preserve moisture in diverse soil types in the rainfed regions of the world, although it may reduce the carbon sequestration potential of soils over the long term. Energy resources are decreasing, and the inclusion of energy crops in crop rotation may be highly beneficial. Many of the processes, factors, and mechanisms involved in crop rotation and land fallowing are poorly understood and require further investigation.
Article
Cultivation and Environmental Impact of Corn
Emerson Nafziger
Corn ranks first among crops in quantity produced globally, owing to its high yield and to its value as a food for humans and domestic animals. While its water-use efficiency is high compared to that of other crops, the production of high corn yields requires a great deal of water; the availability of water largely determines where the crop is grown. As a high-yielding grass species, corn also requires a substantial supply of nutrients (especially nitrogen) from external sources, including manufactured fertilizers and organic materials such as animal or green manures. This, along with the need to manage soils, weeds, insects, and diseases, makes corn production environmentally consequential.
Corn captures large quantities of sunlight energy through photosynthesis, but its production requires large external inputs of energy, coming mostly (in mechanized production) from fossil fuels. So even though the crop’s high yields moderates the environmental cost per unit of grain produced, minimizing the external environmental consequences of large-scale corn production is an important goal in the quest for greater sustainability of production of this important crop.
Article
The Cultivation and Environmental Impact of Mushrooms
Shu Ting Chang and Solomon P. Wasser
The word mushroom may mean different things to different people in different countries. Specialist studies on the value of mushrooms and their products should have a clear definition of the term mushroom. In a broad sense, “Mushroom is a distinctive fruiting body of a macrofungus, which produce spores that can be either epigeous or hypogeous and large enough to be seen with the naked eye and to be picked by hand.” Thus, mushrooms need not be members of the group Basidiomycetes, as commonly associated, nor aerial, nor fleshy, nor edible. This definition is not perfect, but it has been accepted as a workable term to estimate the number of mushrooms on Earth (approximately 16,000 species according to the rules of International Code of Nomenclature). The most cultivated mushrooms are saprophytes and are heterotrophic for carbon compounds. Even though their cells have walls, they are devoid of chlorophyll and cannot perform photosynthesis. They are also devoid of vascular xylem and phloem. Furthermore, their cell walls contain chitin, which also occurs in the exoskeleton of insects and other arthropods. They absorb O2 and release CO2. In fact, they may be functionally more closely related to animal cells than plants. However, they are sufficiently distinct both from plants and animals and belong to a separate group in the Fungi Kingdom. They rise up from lignocellulosic wastes: yet, they become bountiful and nourishing. Mushrooms can greatly benefit environmental conditions. They biosynthesize their own food from agricultural crop residues, which, like solar energy, are readily available; otherwise, their byproducts and wastes would cause health hazards. The spent compost/substrate could be used to grow other species of mushrooms, as fodder for livestock, as a soil conditioner and fertilizer, and in environmental bioremediation. The cultivation of mushrooms dates back many centuries; Auricularia auricula-judae, Lentinula edodes, and Agaricus bisporus have, for example, been cultivated since 600 ad, 1100 ad, and 1650 ad, respectively. During the last three decades, there has been a dramatic increase in the interest, popularity, and production of mushrooms through farming worldwide. The cultivation methods can involve a relatively simple farming activity, as with Volvariella volvacea and Pleurotus pulmonarius var. stechangii (=P. sajor-caju), or a high-technology industry, as with Agaricus bisporus, Flammulina velutipes, and Hypsizygus marmoreus. In each case, however, continuous production of successful crops requires both practical experience and scientific knowledge.
Mushrooms can be used as food, tonics, medicines, cosmeceuticals, and as natural biocontrol agents in plant protection with insecticidal, fungicidal, bactericidal, herbicidal, nematocidal, and antiphytoviral activities. The multidimensional nature of the global mushroom cultivation industry, its role in addressing critical issues faced by humankind, and its positive contributions are presented. Furthermore, mushrooms can serve as agents for promoting equitable economic growth in society. Since the lignocellulose wastes are available in every corner of the world, they can be properly used in the cultivation of mushrooms, and therefore could pilot a so-called white agricultural revolution in less developed countries and in the world at large. Mushrooms demonstrate a great impact on agriculture and the environment, and they have great potential for generating a great socio-economic impact in human welfare on local, national, and global levels.
Article
Environmental Footprints of Modernization Trends in Rice Production Systems of Southeast Asia
Reiner Wassmann
Assessing the environmental footprints of modern agriculture requires a balanced approach that sets the obviously negative effects (e.g., incidents with excessive use of inputs) against benefits stemming from increased resource use efficiencies. In the case of rice production, the regular flooding of fields comprises a distinctive feature, as compared to other crops, which directly or indirectly affects diverse impacts on the environment. In the regional context of Southeast Asia, rice production is characterized by dynamic changes in terms of crop management practices, so that environmental footprints can only be assessed from time-dependent developments rather than from a static view. The key for the Green Revolution in rice was the introduction of high-yielding varieties in combination with a sufficient water and nutrient supply as well as pest management. More recently, mechanization has evolved as a major trend in modern rice production. Mechanization has diverse environmental impacts and may also be instrumental in tackling the most drastic pollution source from rice production, namely, open field burning of straw. As modernization of rice production is imperative for future food supplies, there is scope for developing sustainable and high-yielding rice production systems by capitalizing on the positive aspects of modernization from a local to a global scale.
Article
Cultivation and Impact of Wheat
Peter Shewry
Wheat is the most widely grown food crop in the world and the dominant staple crop in temperate countries where it contributes between about 20% and 50% of the total energy intake. About 95% of the wheat grown is hexaploid bread wheat, with tetraploid durum wheat being grown in the hot dry Mediterranean climate and very small volumes of ancient species. About 80% of the dry weight of the mature grain is starchy endosperm. This is the major grain storage tissue, which is separated by milling to give white flour, the outer layers and germ together forming the bran. However, white flour and bran differ significantly in their compositions, with white flour being rich in starch (about 80% dry wt) and protein (about 10% dry wt) and the bran rich in fiber, minerals, vitamins, and phytochemicals.
Most of the wheat consumed by humankind is in the form of bread, noodles, pasta, and other processed foods, and the quality for processing is determined by two major characteristics: the grain texture (hardness) and the viscoelastic properties conferred to dough by the gluten proteins.
In addition to being a source of energy, wheat also contributes protein and a range of other essential and beneficial components, particularly dietary fiber. However, because most of these components are concentrated in the bran, it is important to increase the consumption of whole grain products or to improve the composition of white flour. Although there is concern among consumers about possible adverse effects of consuming wheat products on health, these are unlikely to affect more than a small proportion of the population, and wheat should form part of a healthy balanced diet for the vast majority.
Article
Cultivation, Improvement, and Environmental Impacts of Tea
Mainaak Mukhopadhyay and Tapan Kumar Mondal
Tea, the globally admired, non-alcoholic, caffeine-containing beverage, is manufactured from the tender leaves of the tea [Camellia sinensis (L.)] plant. It is basically a woody, perennial crop with a lifespan of more than 100 years. Cultivated tea plants are natural hybrids of the three major taxa or species, China, Assam (Indian), or Cambod (southern) hybrids based on the morphological characters (principally leaf size). Planting materials are either seedlings (10–18 months old) developed from either hybrid, polyclonal, or biclonal seeds, or clonal cuttings developed from single-leaf nodal cuttings of elite genotypes. Plants are forced to remain in the vegetative stage as bushes by following cultural practices like centering, pruning, and plucking, and they are harvested generally from the second year onward at regular intervals of 7–10 days in the tropics and subtropics, with up to 60 years as the economic lifespan. Originally, the Chinese were the first to use tea as a medicinal beverage, around 2000 years ago, and today, around half of the world’s population drink tea. It is primarily consumed as black tea (fermented tea), although green tea (non-fermented) and oolong tea (semifermented) are also consumed in many countries. Tea is also used as vegetables such as “leppet tea” in Burma and “meing tea” in Thailand.
Green tea has extraordinary antioxidant properties, and black tea plays a positive role in treating cardiovascular ailments. Tea in general has considerable therapeutic value and can cure many diseases. Global tea production (black, green, and instant) has increased significantly during the past few years. China, as the world’s largest tea producer, accounts for more than 38% of the total global production of made tea [i.e. ready to drink tea] annually, while production in India, the second-largest producer. India recorded total production of 1233.14 million kg made tea during 2015–2016, which is the highest ever production so far.
Since it is an intensive monoculture, tea cultivation has environmental impacts. Application of weedicides, pesticides, and inorganic fertilizers creates environmental hazards. Meanwhile, insecticides often eliminate the fauna of a vast tract of land. Soil degradation is an additional concern because the incessant use of fertilizers and herbicides compound soil erosion. Apart from those issues, chemical runoff into bodies of water can also create problems. Finally, during tea manufacturing, fossil fuel is used to dry the processed leaves, which also increases environmental pollution.
Article
Dairy, Science, Society, and the Environment
Christopher Lu
Dairy has intertwined with human society since the beginning of civilization. It evolves from art in ancient society to science in the modern world. Its roles in nutrition and health are underscored by the continuous increase in global consumption. Milk production increased by almost 50% in just the past quarter century alone. Population growth, income rise, nutritional awareness, and science and technology advancement contributed to a continuous trend of increased milk production and consumption globally. With a fourfold increase in milk production per cow since the 1940s, the contemporary dairy industry produces more milk with fewer cows, and consumes less feed and water per liter of milk produced. The dairy sector is diversified, as people from a wider geographical distribution are consuming milk, from cattle to species such as buffalo, goat, sheep, and camel. The dairy industry continues to experience structural changes that impact society, economy, and environment. Organic dairy emerged in the 1990s as consumers increasingly began viewing it as an appropriate way of both farming and rural living. Animal welfare, environmental preservation, product safety, and health benefit are important considerations in consuming and producing organic dairy products. Large dairy operations have encountered many environmental issues related to elevated greenhouse gas emissions. Dairy cattle are second only to beef cattle as the largest livestock contributors in methane emission. Disparity in greenhouse gas emissions per dairy animal among geographical regions can be attributed to production efficiency. Although a number of scientific advancements have implications in the inhibition of methanogenesis, improvements in production efficiency through feeding, nutrition, genetic selection, and management remain promising for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from dairy animals. This article describes the trends in milk production and consumption, the debates over the role of milk in human nutrition, the global outlook of organic dairy, the abatement of greenhouse gas emissions from dairy animals, as well as scientific and technological developments in nutrition, genetics, reproduction, and management in the dairy sector.
Article
The Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis
William Ruddiman
Throughout the 1900s, the warmth of the current interglaciation was viewed as completely natural in origin (prior to greenhouse-gas emissions during the industrial era). In the view of physical scientists, orbital variations had ended the previous glaciation and caused a warmer climate but had not yet brought it to an end. Most historians focused on urban and elite societies, with much less attention to how farmers were altering the land. Historical studies were also constrained by the fact that written records extended back a few hundred to at most 3,500 years.
The first years of the new millennium saw a major challenge to the ruling paradigm. Evidence from deep ice drilling in Antarctica showed that the early stages of the three interglaciations prior to the current one were marked by decreases in concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) that must have been natural in origin. During the earliest part of the current (Holocene) interglaciation, gas concentrations initially showed similar decreases, but then rose during the last 7,000–5,000 years. These anomalous (“wrong-way”) trends are interpreted by many scientists as anthropogenic, with support from scattered evidence of deforestation (which increases atmospheric CO2) by the first farmers and early, irrigated rice agriculture (which emits CH4).
During a subsequent interval of scientific give-and-take, several papers have criticized this new hypothesis. The most common objection has been that there were too few people living millennia ago to have had large effects on greenhouse gases and climate. Several land-use simulations estimate that CO2 emissions from pre-industrial forest clearance amounted to just a few parts per million (ppm), far less than the 40 ppm estimate in the early anthropogenic hypothesis. Other critics have suggested that, during the best orbital analog to the current interglaciation, about 400,000 years ago, interglacial warmth persisted for 26,000 years, compared to the 10,000-year duration of the current interglaciation (implying more warmth yet to come). A geochemical index of the isotopic composition of CO2 molecules indicates that terrestrial emissions of 12C-rich CO2 were very small prior to the industrial era.
Subsequently, new evidence has once again favored the early anthropogenic hypothesis, albeit with some modifications. Examination of cores reaching deeper into Antarctic ice reconfirm that the upward gas trends in this interglaciation differ from the average downward trends in seven previous ones. Historical data from Europe and China show that early farmers used more land per capita and emitted much more carbon than suggested by the first land-use simulations. Examination of pollen trends in hundreds of European lakes and peat bogs has shown that most forests had been cut well before the industrial era. Mapping of the spread of irrigated rice by archaeobotanists indicates that emissions from rice paddies can explain much of the anomalous CH4 rise in pre-industrial time. The early anthropogenic hypothesis is now broadly supported by converging evidence from a range of disciplines.
Article
Early History of Animal Domestication in Southwest Asia
Benjamin S. Arbuckle
The domestication of livestock animals has long been recognized as one of the most important and influential events in human prehistory and has been the subject of scholarly inquiry for centuries. Modern understandings of this important transition place it within the context of the origins of food production in the so-called Neolithic Revolution, where it is particularly well documented in southwest Asia. Here, a combination of archaeofaunal, isotopic, and DNA evidence suggests that sheep, goat, cattle, and pigs were first domesticated over a period of several millennia within sedentary communities practicing intensive cultivation beginning at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. Resulting from more than a century of data collection, our understanding of the chronological and geographic features of the transition from hunting to herding indicate that the 9th millennium bce and the region of the northern Levant played crucial roles in livestock domestication. However, many questions remain concerning the nature of the earliest predomestic animal management strategies, the role of multiple regional traditions of animal management in the emergence of livestock, and the motivations behind the slow spread of integrated livestock husbandry systems, including all four domestic livestock species that become widespread throughout southwest Asia only at the end of the Neolithic period.
Article
Economics, Agriculture, and Famines
Noel Russell
There are continuing developments in the analysis of hunger and famines, and the results of theoretical and empirical studies of hunger and food insecurity highlight cases where hunger intensifies sufficiently to be identified as famine. The varying ability of those affected to cope with the shocks and stresses imposed on them are central to the development of food insecurity and the emergence of famine conditions and to explaining the complex interrelationships between agriculture, famine, and economics.
There are a number of approaches to understanding how famines develop. The Malthusian approach, which sees population growth as the primary source of hunger and famine, can be contrasted with the free market or Smithian approach, which regards freely operating markets as an essential prerequisite for ensuring that famine can be overcome. A major debate has centered on whether famines primarily emerge from a decline in the availability of food or are a result of failure by households to access sufficient food for consumption, seeking to distinguish between famine as a problem related to food production and availability and famine as a problem of declining income and food consumption among certain groups in the population. These declines arise from the interaction between food markets, labor markets and markets for livestock and other productive farm resources when poor people try to cope with reduced food consumption. Further revisions to famine analysis were introduced from the mid-1990s by authors who interpreted the emergence of famines not as a failure in markets and the economic system, but more as a failure in political accountability and humanitarian response.
These approaches have the common characteristic that they seek to narrow the focus of investigation to one or a few key characteristics. Yet most of those involved in famine analysis or famine relief would stress the multi-faceted and broad-based nature of the perceived causes of famine and the mechanisms through which they emerge. In contrast to these approaches, the famine systems approach takes a broader view, exploring insights from systems theory to understand how famines develop and especially how this development might be halted, reversed, or prevented.
Economists have contributed to and informed different perspectives on famine analysis while acknowledging key contributions from moral philosophy as well as from biological and physical sciences and from political and social sciences. Malthus, Smith, and John Stuart Mill contributed substantially to early thinking on famine causation and appropriate famine interventions. Increased emphasis on famine prevention and a focus on food production and productivity led to the unarguable success of the Green Revolution. An important shift in thinking in the 1980s was motivated by Amartya Sen’s work on food entitlements and on markets for food and agricultural resources. On the other hand, the famine systems approach considers famine as a process governed by complex relationships and seeks to integrate contributions from economists and other scientists while promoting a systems approach to famine analysis.
Article
Economics of Climate Change Adaptation
Babatunde O. Abidoye
To view climate change adaptation from an economic perspective requires a definition of adaptation, an economic framework in which to view adaptation, and a review of the literature on specific adaptations (especially in agriculture). A focus on tools for applying adaptation to developing countries highlights the difference between mitigation and the adaptation decision-making process. Mitigation decisions take a long-term perspective because carbon dioxide lasts for a very long time in the atmosphere. Adaptation decisions typically last the lifespan of the investments, so the time frame depends on the specific adaptation investment, but it is invariably short compared to mitigation choices, which have implications for centuries. The short time frame means that adaptation decisions are not plagued by the same uncertainty that plagues mitigation choices. Finally, most adaptation decisions are local and private, whereas mitigation is a global public decision. Private adaptation will occur even without large government programs. Public adaptations that require government assistance can mainly be made by existing government agencies. Adaptation does not require a global agreement.
Article
Economics of Low Carbon Agriculture
Dominic Moran and Jorie Knook
Climate change is already having a significant impact on agriculture through greater weather variability and the increasing frequency of extreme events. International policy is rightly focused on adapting and transforming agricultural and food production systems to reduce vulnerability. But agriculture also has a role in terms of climate change mitigation. The agricultural sector accounts for approximately a third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, including related emissions from land-use change and deforestation. Farmers and land managers have a significant role to play because emissions reduction measures can be taken to increase soil carbon sequestration, manage fertilizer application, and improve ruminant nutrition and waste. There is also potential to improve overall productivity in some systems, thereby reducing emissions per unit of product. The global significance of such actions should not be underestimated. Existing research shows that some of these measures are low cost relative to the costs of reducing emissions in other sectors such as energy or heavy industry. Some measures are apparently cost-negative or win–win, in that they have the potential to reduce emissions and save production costs. However, the mitigation potential is also hindered by the biophysical complexity of agricultural systems and institutional and behavioral barriers limiting the adoption of these measures in developed and developing countries. This includes formal agreement on how agricultural mitigation should be treated in national obligations, commitments or targets, and the nature of policy incentives that can be deployed in different farming systems and along food chains beyond the farm gate. These challenges also overlap growing concern about global food security, which highlights additional stressors, including demographic change, natural resource scarcity, and economic convergence in consumption preferences, particularly for livestock products. The focus on reducing emissions through modified food consumption and reduced waste is a recent agenda that is proving more controversial than dealing with emissions related to production.
Article
Effective Practices in Mitigating Soil Erosion from Fields
Vincenzo Bagarello
Soil erosion by water is a natural process that cannot be avoided. Soil erosion depends on many factors, and a distinction should be made between humanly unchangeable (e.g., rainfall) and modifiable (e.g., length of the field) soil erosion factors. Soil erosion has both on-site and off-site effects. Soil conservation tries to combine modifiable factors so as to maintain erosion in an area of interest to an acceptable level. Strategies to control soil erosion have to be adapted to the desired land use. Knowledge of soil loss tolerance, T, i.e., the maximum admissible erosion from a given field, allows technicians or farmers to establish whether soil conservation practices need to be applied to a certain area or not. Accurate evaluation of the tolerable soil erosion level for an area of interest is crucial for choosing effective practices to mitigate this phenomenon. Excessively stringent standards for T would imply over expenditure of natural, financial, and labor resources. Excessively high T values may lead to excessive soil erosion and hence decline of soil fertility and productivity and to soil degradation. In this last case, less money is probably spent for soil conservation, but ineffectively. Basic principles to control erosion for different land uses include maintaining vegetative and ground cover, incorporating biomass into the soil, minimizing soil disturbance, increasing infiltration, and avoiding long field lengths. Preference is generally given to agronomic measures as compared with mechanical measures since the former ones reduce raindrop impact, increase infiltration, and reduce runoff volumes and water velocities. Agronomic measures for soil erosion control include choice of crops and crop rotation, applied tillage practices, and use of fertilizers and amendments. Mechanical measures include contour, ridging, and terracing. These measures cannot prevent detachment of soil particles, but they counter sediment transport downhill and can be unavoidable in certain circumstances, at least to supplement agronomic measures. Simple methods can be applied to approximately predict the effect of a given soil conservation measure on soil loss for an area of interest. In particular, the simplest way to quantitatively predict mitigation of soil erosion due to a particular conservation method makes use of the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE). Despite its empirical nature, this model still appears to represent the best compromise between reliability of the predictions and simplicity in terms of input data, which are generally very difficult to obtain for other soil erosion prediction models. Soil erosion must be controlled soon after burning.
