I the past, agricultural markets have been well integrated. Markets for different energy commodities, especially liquid energy products, also have been tightly linked. But agricultural markets and energy markets have not been closely correlated. Table 1 contains partial correlation coefficients between pairwise prices (both levels and first differences) of corn, soybeans, crude oil, gasoline, a...

Over-exploitation of groundwater resources for irrigated grain production in Hebei province threatens national grain food security. The objective of this study was to quantify agricultural water consumption (AWC) and irrigation water consumption in this region. A methodology to estimate AWC was developed based on Penman-Monteith method using meteorological station data (1984-2008) and existing ...

The paper described the movements of agricultural growth and FDI to agriculture, and determined the causality between the two variables. Agricultural growth was represented by real agricultural GDP growth rate and FDI represented by a ratio of inward FDIs to agriculture as a ratio of agriculture value added. Between 1966 and 2008, growth showed significant movements across the zero line. Over t...

BACKGROUND agricultural pesticide poisoning is a major public health problem in the developing world, killing at least 250,000-370,000 people each year. Targeted pesticide restrictions in Sri Lanka over the last 20 years have reduced pesticide deaths by 50% without decreasing agricultural output. However, regulatory decisions have thus far not been based on the human toxicity of formulated agri...

— Across sub-Saharan Africa agricultural subsidy programs have again become a common strategy for combatting rural poverty, increasing agricultural production, and reducing food insecurity. Despite a large literature examining subsidies’ effects on output and welfare, little is known about their political effects. This paper examines Malawi’s Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme, one of the lar...

Non-point source (NPS) pollution has been increasingly serious in China since the 1990s. The increases of agricultural NPS pollution in China is evaluated for the period 2000-2008 by surveying the literature on water and soil pollution from fertilizers and pesticides, and assessing the surplus nitrogen balance within provinces. The main causes for NPS pollution were excessive inputs of nitrogen...

The international prices of many agricultural commodities have increased significantly over the past two years. After falling sharply during the global financial crisis, the IMF Food Price Index has increased by 50 per cent since the end of 2008 and is now above its earlier peak in mid 2008. Supply disruptions have been an important factor behind the recent rise in the relative price of food, w...

China’s urbanization has resulted in significant changes in agricultural land use. However, understanding of the linkages between urbanization and fertilizer use intensity is limited. Using county-level panel data for Henan Province, 1995–2008 and panel econometric models, we investigate the impact of urbanization and other socioeconomic factors on fertilizer use intensity, with a focus on the ...

Microbiology and atmospheric processes: biological, physical and chemical characterization of aerosol particles D. G. Georgakopoulos, V. Després, J. Fröhlich-Nowoisky, R. Psenner, P. A. Ariya, M. Pósfai, H. E. Ahern, B. F. Moffett, and T. C. J. Hill Agricultural University of Athens, Athens, Greece Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany ...

Ancistrocerus waldenii waldenii (Viereck 1906) is newly recorded from West Greenland. This is a new northern limit for the species.