Population growth and climate change challenge our food and farming systems and provide arguments for an increased intensification of agriculture. A promising option is eco-functional intensification through organic farming, an approach based on using and enhancing internal natural resources and processes to secure and improve agricultural productivity, while minimizing negative environmental i...

The management of hydrologic catchments typically faces the challenge of keeping a reasonable balance between water quality demands and farming restrictions. In order to handle this problem it is most important to identify farming areas whose land use have a high influence on the nutrient leaching into the receiving stream. This identification can be regarded as a sensitivity analysis (SA). Cha...

Anecdotal evidence suggests that care farming practices have the potential to provide positive outcomes for young people in foster-care and residential care environments. A systematic review (searching; CINAHL, Web of Knowledge, PsychInfo) was conducted to explore how participation in care farming initiatives impacts attachment in children in foster-care and what aspects of care farming initiat...

This study was conducted with the objective of testing the hypothesis that tomato fruits from organic farming accumulate more nutritional compounds, such as phenolics and vitamin C as a consequence of the stressing conditions associated with farming system. Growth was reduced in fruits from organic farming while titratable acidity, the soluble solids content and the concentrations in vitamin C ...

Symbiotic associations can allow an organism to acquire novel traits by accessing the genetic repertoire of its partner. In the Dictyostelium discoideum farming symbiosis, certain amoebas (termed "farmers") stably associate with bacterial partners. Farmers can suffer a reproductive cost but also gain beneficial capabilities, such as carriage of bacterial food (proto-farming) and defense against...

Background: The study examined the impact of a contract farming scheme on the farmers’ income, food security, and nutrition. Methods: Simple random sampling was used to select 100 respondents for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics as well the Propensity Score Matching technique. Results: The major determinants of participation in contract farming included...

Drawing on interviews in Switzerland and New Zealand, we explore the concept of autonomy as part of a farming self. The farming self encompasses the dialectical relationship of autonomy as both value and tool that help us understand farmers within a wider set of economic, environmental and interpersonal relations. Farmers describe autonomy as a value in three related but slightly different ways...

In order to solve the problem that the performance of web application can't meet users' expectation when many users access dynamic data through the application, a data farming optimizing technique for web application is proposed. In the proposed technique, the web application is based on XML and the data are converted into XML format before being presented through XSL. To reduce page response t...

The benefits of organic farming to biodiversity in agricultural landscapes continue to be hotly debated, emphasizing the importance of precisely quantifying the effect of organic vs. conventional farming. We conducted an updated hierarchical meta-analysis of studies that compared biodiversity under organic and conventional farming methods, measured as species richness. We calculated effect size...

Organic farming practices have been promoted as, inter alia, reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture. This meta-analysis systematically analyses published studies that compare environmental impacts of organic and conventional farming in Europe. The results show that organic farming practices generally have positive impacts on the environment per unit of area, but not necessarily per p...