Swidden agriculture is by far the dominant land use system in the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia (SEA). It provides various valuable subsistence products to local farmers, mostly the poor ethnic minority groups. Controversially, it is also closely connected with a number of environmental issues. With the strengthening regional economic cooperation in SEA, swidden agriculture has experien...

Several writers on animal ethics defend the abolition of most or all animal agriculture, which they consider an unethical exploitation of sentient non-human animals. However, animal agriculture can also be seen as a co-evolution over thousands of years, that has affected biology and behaviour on the one hand, and quality of life of humans and domestic animals on the other. Furthermore, animals ...

Humans obtain a number of products from animals. These include food, clothing, medical materials, companionship and research knowledge to name a few. A valued ethic contends that it is inappropriate for one to treat another as a means to an end. In short, it is wrong to treat another as simply a product. Historically, non-human beings have not been included as “others” and thus their treatment ...

One of the earliest and most central insights of the literature on economic development is that development entails structural change. The countries that manage to pull themselves out of poverty and get richer are those that are able to diversify away from agriculture and other traditional products. As labour and other resources move from agriculture into modern economic activities, overall pro...

Tropical ecosystems sustain much of the earth’s biodiversity, provide countless natural products and services—both locally and globally—and play critical roles in the regulation of the climate and the carbon and hydrological cycles. The expansion of agriculture into tropical forest ecosystems will therefore have enormous impacts on factors such as human and animal health (Karesh et al., 2012), ...

The topic evolved from the belief that the new trend on traceability of products is related also to an appropriate mechanization and that each machine has to answer to the quality requirements of food needed by the market (Prof. Giuseppe Pellizzi, personal communication, 2002). In this paper, we address the topic of traceability in agriculture and what traceability means to the future of agricu...

Tropical ecosystems sustain much of the earth’s biodiversity, provide countless natural products and services—both locally and globally—and play critical roles in the regulation of the climate and the carbon and hydrological cycles. The expansion of agriculture into tropical forest ecosystems will therefore have enormous impacts on factors such as human and animal health (Karesh et al., 2012), ...

Tropical ecosystems sustain much of the earth’s biodiversity, provide countless natural products and services—both locally and globally—and play critical roles in the regulation of the climate and the carbon and hydrological cycles. The expansion of agriculture into tropical forest ecosystems will therefore have enormous impacts on factors such as human and animal health (Karesh et al., 2012), ...

Agriculture is one of the easiest sectors of the U.S. economy to disrupt, and its disruption could have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. and world economies. Agriculture in the U.S. accounts for 13% of the current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provides employment for 15% of the population. It produces high-quality, cheap, plentiful food for domestic consumption and accounts for more th...

for Appropriate Technology through a grant from the Rural Business-Cooperative Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. These organizations do not recommend or endorse products, companies, or individuals. NCAT has offices in Fayetteville, Arkansas (P.O. Box 3657, Fayetteville, AR 72702), Butte, Montana, and Davis, California. By George L. Kuepper, Holly Born, Janet Bachmann NCAT Agriculture Spe...