Corn was an important crop for people who lived in the area that became Illinois before the Europeans first set foot here; it was the staple food crop of the people who lived in the Cahokia area some 1,000 years ago. It was a crop of choice when Europeans settled and started to farm in Illinois, and acreage in the state first reached 10 million acres in 1895. Acreage over the past 100 years has...

Food security and economic welfare strongly depend on agricultural production, the loss of this production can be a serious challenge for food security and economic welfare. Agricultural production is also influenced by environmental and climatic factors so that the variations of climatic parameters can trigger extensive fluctuations in agricultural production. This study classifies climate cha...

The European corn borer completes two to three generations per year in Illinois. Fourth and fifth instars tunnel in stalks, causing disruption in the flow of water and nutrients in the plants. The cavities created by the borers may weaken stalks and ear shanks, resulting in lodging or dropped ears. Before the advent of Bt corn, producers attempted to control European corn borers, if the need ar...

Silvopasture practices are being advocated as a means of maintaining pine forest acreage in the southeast United States; however, scientific data on the design and management for optimum tree growth are lacking. Studies were conducted near Booneville AR to determine the effects of weed control, irrigation, soil fertilization and protection from cattle grazing on the establishment of loblolly pi...

This paper looks at the phenomenon of sharp spikes in onion prices almost every alternate year. The shows that acreage and production onions have increased over years, thus there seems to be no problem supply shortages. shortages are created by some weather event, which leads do not last for more than 3-4 months. To get this problem, government usually resorts instant export bans, jacking up mi...

water shortage crisis is an issue that has led to drastic changes in different agricultural policies, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. uncertainty in the amount of resources, e.g. water, used for agricultural production entails risk for farmers' income and cropping pattern changes. in the present study, the robust optimization model was used for optimal allocation of arable lands of khor...

water is an essential yet constrained commodity for human communities and ecological systems depend on it. with population growth and economic development, water resource is increasingly declining. over the past two decades, because of changes in population and climate, and relative welfare increase, the per capita consumption of water has increased. thus, optimal use of available water resourc...