This paper employs multiple regression analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of yieldraising techniques available to medieval farm managers (reeves) using a panel dataset of 49 manors held by the Bishop of Winchester from 1349-70. There are three main interesting findings. First, annual weather variation, modelled with climate reconstructions, was highly significant in explaining annual yield ...

There has been a resurgence of interest in the impacts of agricultural productivity on land use and the environment. At the center of this debate is the assertion that agricultural innovation is land sparing. However, numerous case studies and global empirical studies have found little evidence of higher yields being accompanied by reduced area. We find that these studies overlook two crucial f...

Does the intensification of agriculture reduce cultivated areas and, in so doing, spare some lands by concentrating production on other lands? Such sparing is important for many reasons, among them the enhanced abilities of released lands to sequester carbon and provide other environmental services. Difficulties measuring the extent of spared land make it impossible to investigate fully the hyp...

Climate change could pose a major challenge to efforts towards strongly increase food production over the coming decades. However, model simulations of future climate-impacts on crop yields differ substantially in the magnitude and even direction of the projected change. Combining observations of current maximum-attainable yield with climate analogues, we provide a complementary method of asses...

A potential application of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is to monitor crop yields over large areas. The study concentrated on the spring Mheat areas of North Dakota and South Dakota for several years (1989-1992). The NOAA AVHRR data was carefully analyzed to minimize processing and sampling errors. Sums of biweekly NDVI county averages over an eight week period from heading...

High temperatures are detrimental to crop yields and could lead to global warming-driven reductions in agricultural productivity. To assess future threats, the majority of studies used process-based crop models, but their ability to represent effects of high temperature has been questioned. Here we show that an ensemble of nine crop models reproduces the observed average temperature responses o...

The spectrum of risks that affect the income of agricultural producers and agribusinesses is quite broad. The two predominant risks are: price risk, reflecting variations in market prices for agricultural commodities and production inputs; and production risk, which encompasses variations in the volume or quality of the commodity produced. This note focuses on one of the most pervasive producti...

The importance of using technical progress factors in agriculture varies from one country to another and the influences of these factors on yields and agricultural production are essential. Thus, in this paper we considered necessary and appropriate to achieve the dynamic analysis of the main factors of technical progress in agriculture referring to agricultural technical endowment, fertilizers...

1 Pete Smith has been a Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 8 " Agriculture " of the IPCC Working Group III fourth assessment report "Mitigation of Climate Change". Abstract Energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions are closely linked. This paper reviews agricultural options to reduce energy intensities and their impacts, discusses important accounting issues related to system boundaries,...

Many developing countries implement programs and policies to increase or maintain soil fertility, with the objectives of increased crop yields and decreased poverty. However, few countries give emphasis to the biological management of soil fertility (BMSF) compared to more traditional approaches. Ethiopia emphasizes the use synthetic fertilizers to increase food security and reduce poverty, wit...