There are 1.9 hectares of productive land available for each of the 6 billion people living in the world at present. In our industrialised Western society it is sometimes hard to realise quite how fundamental land is to our life on earth. The top six inches of land, which is soil, has to provide us with all our food. The land has to absorb much of our waste and is the catchment and filter for o...

The objective of this research is the replacement of hand weeding in organic farming by a device working autonomously at field level. The autonomous weeding robot was designed using a structured design approach, giving a good overview of the total design. A vehicle was developed with a diesel engine, hydraulic transmission, four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering. The available power and the s...

The ecological quality status (EcoQ) of intertidal mudflats constrained by Pacific oyster farming was assessed by single (H', AMBI, BENTIX and BOPA) and multimetric (M-AMBI and average score) index approaches in the Pertuis Charentais (SW France). Fifteen sampling stations were monitored seasonally for sedimentological features and macrozoobenthos in 2004. Sediments affected by oyster biodeposi...

Ecologically based farming conserves and improves the soil resource and protects environmental quality by using organic or natural resources without the application of synthetic chemicals. Soil quality assessment indicates the ability of management systems to optimize soil productivity and to maintain its structural and biological integrity. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of ecologica...

The present study was conducted to examine the impact of cage aquaculture on benthic communities in coastal areas (depth 25 to 50 m) from fish farming operations located along the southeastern Black Sea (Ordu-Perşembe, Trabzon-Yomra and Rize central). Sampling was conducted seasonally from April 2007 to 2009. Sediment samples were taken using Ekman Grab (box core- 0.04 m2). Temperature, salinit...

As a part of ANIPLAN, Norway wanted to look at health and welfare planning for calves in organic dairy production. One reason for this was relevant ongoing activity on calves in Norway. There was also information from earlier projects on welfare assessment (Good animal welfare in organic farming, Animal welfare in Arctic farming) in dairy herds, which showed that calf welfare is a challenge in ...

Sustainable agriculture, which is characterized by farming profitably while minimizing damage to the environment, is not easy to practice. “Conventional” agriculture in the USA is commonly considered to involve practices that have potential to damage the environment. These include tilling the soil excessively, overapplying readily soluble inorganic fertilizers (“chemical fertilizers”), and over...

Synthetic (e.g. urea) and organic fertilizers (e.g. compost) differed markedly in N isotope composition and the greater the difference between organic and synthetic fertilizer the more robust will be the differentiation of crops and vegetable grown under different farming systems. The objective of this study was to compare nitrogen and carbon isotope composition of organic fertilizers and manur...