This paper analyzes the effect of landowner risk preferences and land quality on the optimal mix of vertically integrated production and contracted production of an energy crop in a region characterized by heterogeneity in landowners’ risk preferences and land quality and with riskiness of returns from both energy crop and conventional crop production. We examine the determinants of the decisio...

Pollination contributes to an estimated one third of global food production, through both the improvement of the yield and the quality of crops. Volatile compounds emitted by crop flowers mediate plant-pollinator interactions, but differences between crop varieties are still little explored. We investigated whether the visitation of crop flowers is determined by variety-specific flower volatile...

To obtain higher yields, farmers may excessively use pesticides when they grow crops (like rice, vegetables, or fruit), causing moral hazard behavior. This paper examines how Chinese farmers’ moral hazard behavior in crop production is influenced by their traditional culture. A semi-parametric logistic model is used to investigate the impact of Chinese traditional culture on farmers’ moral haza...

A variety of non-chemical alternatives to methyl bromide (MB) fumigation of soil for horticultural crop production have been researched in the USA. Non-chemical alternatives are highly desirable but difficult to implement to reproduce the benefits normally obtained by preplant fumigation of soil in strawberry production. Production of pathogen-free, high-quality planting materials using steam a...

Current soil management strategies are mainly dependent on inorganic chemical-based fertilizers, which caused a serious threat to human health and environment. The exploitation of beneficial microbes as a biofertilizer has become paramount importance in agriculture sector for their potential role in food safety and sustainable crop production. The eco-friendly approaches inspire a wide range of...

Introduction Conservation tillage systems using sweep plows or field cultivators leave a high percentage of crop residues on the soil surface, which protects the soil from wind and water erosion (Johnson, 1950; Jones and Johnson, 1982; Allen and Fenster, 1986; Johnson et al., 1974). These systems have been successful in semiarid areas because meager rainfall after plowing does not allow weeds t...

Pollination is a well-studied and at the same time a threatened ecosystem service. A significant part of global crop production depends on or profits from pollination by animals. Using detailed information on global crop yields of 60 pollination dependent or profiting crops, we provide a map of global pollination benefits on a 5' by 5' latitude-longitude grid. The current spatial pattern of pol...

Many studies have compared corn-based ethanol to cellulosic ethanol on a per unit basis and have generally concluded that cellulosic ethanol will result in fewer environmental consequences, including nitrate (NO3(-)) output. This study takes a system-wide approach in considering the NO3(-) output and the relative areal extent of hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) due to the introduct...

If climate change affects pollinator-dependent crop production, this will have important implications for global food security because insect pollinators contribute to production for 75% of the leading global food crops. We investigate whether climate warming could result in indirect impacts upon crop pollination services via an overlooked mechanism, namely temperature-induced shifts in the diu...

Low variability of crop production from year to year is desirable for many reasons, including reduced income risk and stability of supplies. Therefore, it is important to understand the nature of yield variability, whether it is changing through time, and how it varies between crops and regions. Previous studies have shown that national crop yield variability has changed in the past, with the d...