Global food security will remain a worldwide concern for the next 50 years and beyond. Recently, crop yield has fallen in many areas because of declining investments in research and infrastructure, as well as increasing water scarcity. Climate change and HIV/AIDS are also crucial factors affecting food security in many regions. Although agroecological approaches offer some promise for improving...

About 130 studies were analyzed to compare farm-level energy use and global warming potential (GWP) of organic and conventional production sectors. Cross cutting issues such as tillage, compost, soil carbon sequestration and energy offsets were also reviewed. Finally, we contrasted E and GWP data from the wider food system. We concluded that the evidence strongly favours organic farming with re...

Safety assessment for genetically-engineered crop plants includes assessment for allergic responses. To facilitate this assessment, serum banks should contain well-characterised sera from patients with confirmed food allergies. A serum is defined as well-characterised if it is taken from a patient who has a convincing history of allergic responses to a known allergen or an allergen-containing f...

Measures are being taken toward land restoration and explosive remnants of war clearance to aid in worldwide food security. Global demining and ordnance removal efforts are contribiting to health improvements and land availability for sustainable crop growth. This article discusses the problem of food security in the twenty-first century and briefly reviews three sets of concerns that are conve...

Until recently in the developed countries, food prices had been moving in one single direction – downwards – for almost a generation, while the prices of agricultural products had been falling for almost thirty consecutive years. 2008, however, saw a turnaround in the negative trend of food prices, with most crop prices on the global markets doubling in nominal terms and making newspaper headli...

Regional crop yield prediction is a significant component of national food security assessment and food policy making. The crop growth model based on field scale is limited when it is extrapolated to regional scale to estimate crop yield due to the uncertainty of the input parameters. The data assimilation method which combines crop growth model and remotely sensed data has been proven to be th...

Info for Advertisers Larger Cover January 11, 2012 Volume 60, Issue 1 Pages 1-538 EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES ANALYTICAL METHODS BIOACTIVE CONSTITUENTS BIOFUELS AND BIOPRODUCTS CHEMISTRY CHEMICAL ASPECTS OF BIOTECHNOLOGY/MOLECULAR BIOLOGY CHEMICAL ASPECTS OF FOOD SAFETY CHEMICAL CHANGES INDUCED BY PROCESSING/STORAGE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF FOODS/FEEDS CROP AND ANIMAL PROTECTION CHEMISTRY ENVIRONMENT...

Regulatory guidelines for assessing the safety of new food crops developed using biotechnology were published in the early 1990s, before the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops. Many GM crops are now widely adopted as 77% of global soybean and 26% of maize production is from GM varieties. The early safety assessment guidelines seem to work as there are no proven cases of harm from t...

Rainfed agriculture occupies 68% of India’s cultivated area and supports 40% of the human and 60% of the livestock population. It produces 445 of the food requirement, thus has and will continue to play a critical role in India’s food security. However, aberrant behaviour of monsoon rainfall, eroded and degraded soils with multiple nutrient and water deficiencies, declining ground water table a...