This is an edited, multi-authored volume reporting the results of a decade-long interdisciplinary research project (1990-1999), the Research Program on Sustainability in Agriculture (REPOSA). The project was undertaken by the Wageningen Agricultural University (WAU), based in the Netherlands, and conducted in Costa Rica with two resident partner agencies, the Tropical Agricultural Research and ...

Cesar Alberto Meza-Herrera, Luis Carlos Hernández-Valenzuela, Antonio González-Bulnes, Manuel Tena-Sempere, Jose AbadZavaleta, Homero Salinas-Gonzalez, Miguel Mellado, Francisco Veliz-Deras Chapingo Autonomous University, Universitary Regional Unit on Arid Lands, Mexico; Department of Animal Reproduction, INIA, Madrid, Spain; University of Cordoba, & CIBER Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutriti...

There is a growing recognition that the interrelations between agriculture, food, bioenergy, and climate change have to be better understood in order to derive more realistic estimates of future bioenergy potentials. This article estimates global bioenergy potentials in the year 2050, following a "food first" approach. It presents integrated food, livestock, agriculture, and bioenergy scenarios...

Amid the increasingly heated atmosphere that surrounds the buildup to the Copenhagen meeting at the end of the year on new measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the recent call by the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, for people to cut back on meat consumption was a surprise suggestion. Give up meat for one day per week at least initially “and decre...

—Wolves (Canis lupus) have recolonized many areas of the Midwestern United States, prompting concern over the possible risk wolves may pose to livestock producers. To better understand the risks wolves may pose to livestock, we initiated a 3-y study examining the food habits of wolves in an agricultural area of northwestern Minnesota and their relation to depredation records of livestock losses...

This paper addresses the context of decisions about the application of biotechnology in livestock agriculture. It specifically addresses the role of transgenic livestock in agriculture. Key innovations in livestock genetics and reproductive technology in the last century have laid the foundations upon which genetic engineering can be applied to livestock in the post-genomics era. Transgenesis i...

Resilience is one of the three core properties of social‐ecological systems, mixing adaptability and transformability. Flexibility can be defined in terms of diversity of procedures and the speed at which they can be mobilized by one organization. The analyses performed are presented in terms of levers that farmers can deploy to protect their management systems against market uncertainty. These...

This paper focuses on extracts from a recent comparative analysis of livestock and land use surveys across a range of agro-climatic conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, based on information from systematic low level aerial reconnaissance and complementary ground studies in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan and Tchad, between 1980 and 1993. Results indicate a highly significant relationship between lives...

This paper designs and implements an intelligent ubiquitous sensor network architecture for agricultural and livestock farms which embrace a variety of sensors and create a great volume of sensor data records. For the sake of efficiently and accurately detecting the specific events out of the great amount of sensor data which may include not just erroneous terms but also correlative attributes,...

To document trends in land use and herbaceous production, 71 field sites sampled among cropped fields, fallow fields and rangelands in the Fakara region (Niger) were monitored from 1994 to 2006. The overall trend in land use confirmed the historical increase of the cropped areas since mid 20th century, at an annual rate of 2% from 1994 to 2006. This trend is the result of changes in the relativ...