Changing climatic conditions impose a challenge both to biodiversity and food security. The effects of climate change affect different aspects of the plant or crop, such as morphological and phenological aspects, as well as yield. The effects of greenhouse conditions might be comparable in some cases to a permanent extreme disturbance in climate and weather, thus, contributing to our knowledge ...

Intercropping of agricultural crops with woody species is an age-old practice in traditional farming systems in the tropics. Food production is the major aim of subsistence farmers with most of their farmland being allocated to food crops rather than to trees and shrubs. Due to increasing population and scarcity of productive lands that cannot sustain intensive exploitation, one method that has...

The extent of genetic diversity in food crops is important as it affects the risk of attack by pathogens. A drop in diversity increases this risk. Farmers may not take this into account when making crop choices, leading to what from a social perspective is an inadequate level of diversity. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: Q1; Q2; C72

Conservation agriculture (CA) is promoted as a cropping system that has potential to alleviate poor crop yields in smallholder farming while protecting the environment. It involves maintenance of permanent soil cover, diverse crop rotations and/or interactions; and minimum soil disturbance. CA is associated with crop residue management challenges due to low crop biomass yields and crop-livestoc...

Small-holder farmers often develop adaptable agroforestry management techniques to improve and diversify crop production. In the cocoa growing region of Ghana, local knowledge on such farm management holds a noteworthy role in the overall farm development. The documentation and analysis of such knowledge use in cocoa agroforests may afford an applicable framework to determine mechanisms driving...

European resistance to GM crops — the result of one of the most highly effective environmental campaigns and ongoing worries about environmental damage — is set to be challenged by soaring food prices and a new enthusiasm on the part of farmers. A new study finds European farmers who grow genetically modified crops enjoy higher yields and revenues than conventional growers. A team from the Join...

INTRODUCTION In Zambia, agriculture continues to be an important source of livelihood, supporting about 70% of the population. The country’s agriculture sector is dominated by small scale rural farmers, who largely depend on rain for crop production, mainly due to the absence of irrigation equipment in most rural communities. Thus any change in climate, mostly manifested as an increase in frequ...

The study was conducted to ascertain the potential feedstuffs available for livestock management in three senatorial districts of Cross River State, Nigeria. A total of 192 structured questionnaires were administered to sole livestock and crop-livestock farmers in 24 villages at eight per village. At collection only 176 were retrieved from the respondents representing the farm households. Data ...

Agricultural biotechnologies, and especially transgenic crops, have the potential to boost food security in developing countries by offering higher incomes for farmers and lower priced and better quality food for consumers. That potential is being heavily compromised, however, because the European Union and some other countries have implemented strict regulatory systems to govern their producti...