INTRODUCTION Occupational exposure to noxious dusts, gases, and fumes most likely contributes to obstructive lung disease. We studied whether self-reported farming work is associated with non-reversible airways obstruction. METHODS Following the burden of obstructive lung disease (BOLD) study protocol, we surveyed a gender-stratified population-based sample of 2,200 adults aged 40 years and o...

During the last decades, high-efficiency farming equipment has been developed in the agricultural sector. This has also included efficiency improvement of moving techniques, which include increased working speeds and widths. Therefore, the risk of wild animals being accidentally injured or killed during routine farming operations has increased dramatically over the years. In particular, the nes...

Clustering was used to divide dryland farming areas in western Iran into homogeneoussub-regions to identify dryland farming potential, considering drought impacts. Clusteringutilized eight algorithms/four indices to detect optimal number of clusters. Ward’s algorithmvalidated by Silhouette index, produced the best result by detecting 7 dryland farming clusters.Based on similar P/ETo values, fou...

Forest farming in North America is becoming popular as a way for landowners to diversify income opportunities, improve management of forest resources, and increase biological diversity. People have been informally " farming the forests " for generations. However, in recent years, attention has been directed at formalizing forest farming and improving it through research and development activiti...

This study endeavors to evaluate the effects of farmers’ training program on the adoption of improved farming practices, the output of rice farming, and the income as well as the profit from rice farming by employing an ex-post non-experimental data in Sierra Leone. It was established that participating in farmers’ training program increased the possibility of adoption of the improved farming a...

Pollination of insect pollinated crops has been found to be correlated to pollinator abundance and diversity. Since organic farming has the potential to mitigate negative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity, it may also benefit crop pollination, but direct evidence of this is scant. We evaluated the effect of organic farming on pollination of strawberry plants focusing on (1...

Organic sheep and goat farming is on the rise in Germany and the EU. Many consumers see organic farms as an example of the "intact world" of farming and rural living. Agrienvironmental schemes support conversion from conventional towards organic farming. Only few know how difficult organic sheep and goat farming is from animal welfare, ecological and economic perspective. Newcomers particularly...

In modern farming, it is indispensable to monitor the field environment, crop conditions, and farming operations. To support these activities at farm level, we have developed several types of farm operation monitoring systems based on various needs of farms. FVS (Farming Visualization System) is one of such systems and designed in order to record and replay all the information of farming operat...

One issue of great concern to many researchers is the rapidly vanishing biodiversity in the face of intensive agricultural methods. Organic techniques offer an alternative, but evidence of their effects has often been based on studies that were poorly designed, limited in scope in terms of the species examined, or local in scale. Meta-analysis of published studies differing in methodology and s...

The sustainability of breeding activities in 15 pig farming systems in five European countries was evaluated. One conventional and two differentiated systems per country were studied. The Conventional systems were the standard systems in their countries. The differentiated systems were of three categories: Adapted Conventional with focus on animal welfare, meat quality or environment (five syst...