Convincing data now show that temperatures are increasing, and that changing precipitation patterns are already affecting agriculture. Predicted future impacts vary by region, but all are projected to suffer productivity declines by the late twenty-first century unless successful mitigation measures are implemented soon. Exacerbating the climate change challenge, doubling of overall crop produc...

Patterns of crop diversification of modern agricultural technology, especially during the period of the Green Revolution in the late sixties and early seventies, there is a continuous surge for diversified agriculture in terms of crops, primarily on economic considerations. Indian agriculture is increasingly getting influenced more and more by economic factors. This need not be surprising becau...

Data on agricultural and natural resource management typically have spatial patterns related to the landscapes from which they came. Consequently, econometric models designed to explain the determinants of humans’ natural resource management practices or their outcomes often have spatial structure that can bring bias or inefficiency to parameter estimates. Although econometric tools are availab...

A long history of household-level research has provided important local-level insights into climate adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector. It remains unclear to what extent these strategies are generalizable or vary across regions. In this study we ask about three potential key factors influencing farming households’ ability to adapt: access to weather information, household and agri...

Organic farming has become increasingly popular in the world. This is mostly attributed toescalating consumer concerns over the impacts of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on humanhealth as well as growing concerns over environmental pollution derived from modernagricultural practices, such as rising greenhouse gas emissions and water contaminations. Butdoes organic farming actually displace...

Mapping crop patterns with remote sensing data is of great importance for agricultural production, food security and agricultural sustainability. In this paper, a hierarchical clustering method was proposed to map cropping frequency from time-series Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Enhanced Vegetation Indices (EVI) data and the spatial and temporal patterns of cropping freq...

Abrupt and persistent changes in regional climate patterns have happened in the past, and according to models, may happen again in the future. These sudden and prolonged shifts have negatively impacted the well being of people and can compromise the ability of societies to sustain into the future in a desirable way. It is therefore important to determine which places might be vulnerable to abru...

LAYOUT Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes responsibility for choosing the study topics and guaranteeing its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the interpretation and findings se...

Transgenic crops, a new product of agricultural biotechnology has its own share of environmental risks and benefits. Present agricultural management practices and new ecosystems have their own impacts on the environment and further any additional negative effect of transgenic crops may mitigate their positive impacts as well as increase the background value of negative impacts due to new agricu...