Global support for Conservation Agriculture (CA) as a pathway to Sustainable Intensification is strong. CA revolves around three principles: no-till (or minimal soil disturbance), soil cover, and crop rotation. The benefits arising from the ease of crop management, energy/cost/time savings, and soil and water conservation led to widespread adoption of CA, particularly on large farms in the Amer...

Biogas production technologies commonly involve the use of natural anaerobic consortia of microbes. The objective of this study was to elucidate the importance of hydrogen in this complex microbial food chain. Novel laboratory biogas reactor prototypes were designed and constructed. The fates of pure hydrogen-producing cultures of Caldicellulosiruptor saccharolyticus and Enterobacter cloacae we...

As a ruminant species, goats are able to valorize fibrous feeds and non-protein nitrogen to produce meat and milk in extensive feeding systems. They are also able to attain high production levels when they have the potential and receive a diet of high nutritive value. There is a trade-off between the cost of the diet and increased production, which needs to be evaluated in the context of climat...

This study delineated strategies for enhancing food security in the Mano River Union (MRU) countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In addition, it identified and analyzed past food production and agro-industrial projects implemented by the MRU along with exemplary agricultural and food production, processing, storage and marketing projects in Liberia and Sierra Leone, for lessons and suc...

AIM Conservation conflict takes place where food production imposes a cost on wildlife conservation and vice versa. Where does conservation impose the maximum cost on production, by opposing the intensification and expansion of farmland? Where does conservation confer the maximum benefit on wildlife, by buffering and connecting protected areas with a habitable and permeable matrix of crop and n...

Membrane distillation (MD) and osmotic distillation (OD) are emerging athermal processing techniques of great interest in agro-food production where the most part of products is sensitive to thermal treatments. With respect to conventional methods, MD and OD are competitive alternatives, able to work in an environmental-friendly and cost-efficient way, for preserving the nutritional and sensori...

more attention and are increasingly seen as sustainable options to many of the land management practices in developing countries. In current attempts to identify methods of sustainable agricultural intensification and food production, agroforestry is put forward as a key future land-use practice due to its large potential for climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as its role in prot...

Agricultural intensification is critical to meet global food demand, but intensification threatens native species and degrades ecosystems. Sustainable intensification (SI) is heralded as a new approach for enabling growth in agriculture while minimizing environmental impacts. However, the SI literature has overlooked a major environmental risk. Using data from eight countries on six continents,...