Groundwater provides a reliable tap to sustain agricultural production, yet persistent aquifer depletion threatens future sustainability. The High Plains Aquifer supplies 30% of the nation's irrigated groundwater, and the Kansas portion supports the congressional district with the highest market value for agriculture in the nation. We project groundwater declines to assess when the study area m...

Global food demand will strongly rise over the next decades, due to population growth, average income increases, and trends towards higher consumption of animal products. Agricultural and food production already account for 70 percent of total freshwater withdrawals in the world. In addition, future water demand from private households, industry and for environmental purposes will also rise. Ov...

This paper examines the effect of conflict on agricultural production of small-farmers. First, we develop an intertemporal model of agricultural production in which the impact of conflict is transmitted through two channels: violent shocks and uncertainty brought by conflict. The model shows how conflict induces sub-optimal agricultural decisions in terms of land use and investment. We test the...

Integrated, interdisciplinary crop performance forecasting systems, linked with appropriate decision and discussion support tools, could substantially improve operational decision making in agricultural management. Recent developments in connecting numerical weather prediction models and general circulation models with quantitative crop growth models offer the potential for development of integ...

Understanding how precipitation inter-annually changes and its implication in agricultural drought and production change in winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) growth season is critical for crop production in China. MODIS Temperature-Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) and daily mean precipitation time series for the main growth season(Feb. to May) of winter wheat from 2000 to 2010 were used to ana...

To study crop recommendation fertilization of the rural farmers as the main in our country, the paper took towns and villages of Hua County as the study area, took recommendation fertilization of wheat, maize and peanut as the study object, designed model components of crop balance fertilization by using Object-Oriented technique, and developed the decision-making system about crop recommendati...

1 State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China, 2 The Cooperative Innovation Center for Sustainable Pig Production, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China, 3 Key Laboratory of Development of Veterinary Diagnostic Products of Ministry of Agriculture, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China, 4 Hube...

Biodiversity conservation and agricultural production are often seen as mutually exclusive objectives. Strategies for reconciling them are intensely debated. We argue that harmonization between biodiversity conservation and crop production can be improved by increasing our understanding of the underlying relationships between them. We provide a general conceptual framework that links biodiversi...

The Agricultural sector has the greatest potential for improving rural livelihood and eradicating the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). By the end of the GTP period, the government seeks to double yields of smallholder farmers largely by scaling-up best practices, producing high value crops, expanding irrigation development and promoting natural resource conservation. A substantial increase...