Empirical evidence shows that biodiversity conservation policies implemented in agriculture sector in many OECD countries have not been environmentally effective nor cost-effective. There are several new policy mechanisms available to improve both environmental effectiveness and the cost-effectiveness, including spatially differentiated payments and conservation auctions. In this paper a theore...

2. The origins of agriculture and the shift from hunting and gathering to committed agriculture is 3. regarded as one of the major transitions in human history. Archaeologists and anthropologists have 4. invested significant efforts in explaining the origins of agriculture. A period of gathering 5. intensification and experimentation and pursuing a mixed economic strategy seems the most plausib...

E. Lichtfouse (ed.), Organic Fertilisation, Soil Quality and Human Health, Sustainable Agriculture Reviews 9, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4113-3_1, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract ‘Greening’ the green revolution will not be suffi cient to reduce hunger and poverty and conserve biodiversity. The increasing cost of oil and fertilizers, and the deterioration of the climate and glob...

We develop a static simulation model to analyse income losses and income risks at aggregated agriculture sector level. Our empirical case study is based on farm level records for direct payments claims (IACS data) and covers the period 2010–2011. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the impact of different levels of risk on income trends. Results show that 80% of farms are extremely de...

After briefly describing the origins and recent history of agroecology, the author critically reflects on what makes agroecology fundamentally different from climate smart agriculture (CSA). This article focuses in particular on the more transformative elements of the agroecology and food sovereignty paradigm to clearly identify overlaps and divergences with CSA and explore its incommensurable ...

Endangered forest-grassland mosaics interspersed with expanding agriculture and silviculture occur across many parts of the world, including the southern Brazilian highlands. This natural mosaic ecosystem is thought to reflect alternative stable states driven by threshold responses of recruitment to fire and moisture regimes. The role of adaptive human behavior in such systems remains understud...

At the core of the current agricultural system is a clear focus on increasedproduction, with increased intensification as the answer to current global societal andenvironmental issues. It is clear to many however that following a business as usual pathwill put increased tension on the already stressed planetary boundaries. Climate change,economic and demographic evolutions w...

Among the myriad complications involved in the current food crisis, the relationship between agriculture and the rest of nature is one of the most important yet remains only incompletely analyzed. Particularly in tropical areas, agriculture is frequently seen as the antithesis of the natural world, where the problem is framed as one of minimizing land devoted to agriculture so as to devote more...

A maize rhizosphere isolate was phenotypically and genotypically characterized and identified as Enterobacter spp. bacterium. Germinated seeds were inoculated, the plantlets were sown in vermiculite and in soil and grown under laboratory and field conditions, respectively. The adherence, colonization and plant growth promotion capability of Enterobacter sp. UAPS03001 was evaluated in "Rojo-Crio...