China has to feed 20% of the global population with only about 5% of the planet's water resources and 7% of its arable land. With such limited natural conditions, however, China's grain production has increased from about 200 kg per capita in 1949 to about 400 kg in the early 1990s. Hunger as a social problem has largely disappeared after being prevalent in China for several thousand years with...

Land conversion is often not carried out in a sustainable way. The loss of arable land and biodiversity, concern about food security and rising costs of infrastructure due to urban sprawl are just some of the problems under discussion. This paper compares Germany, China and Cambodia. The article points out that, despite huge differences in institutions and governance, unsustainable land use cha...

Three test-plot series have been performed to gather information on runoff of sulfonamides from manured arable and grassland after sprinkler irrigation. To prepare test slurries with defined aged residues, liquid bovine manure was fortified with sulfadiazine, sulfadimidine, and sulfamethoxazole and stored short-term. After test-slurry application, the arable land was treated by soil cultivation...

A multi-scale object-based classification was carried out using data from three different sensors to map classes of interest in the framework of the EPISTIS project. This project aims to highlight the spatio-temporal patterns that underlie the epidemiology of certain diseases and more particularly of bluetongue in this case-study. A SPOT5 10m XS image of Sardinia taken in the springtime was seg...

45 New Zealand's land-based primary industries & climate change: Assessing adaptation through scenario-based modelling The land-based primary industry sectors are essential to New Zealand's current and future export earnings. Evaluations of the impact of climate change and climate variability on the land-based sectors has to date been restricted to considering the sectors at a regional level. H...

The change of primary forest areas into arable land involves the transformation of relief and modification of soils. In this study, we hypothesized that relatively flat loess area was largely transformed after the change of land use due to erosion. The modifications in soil pedons and distribution of soil properties were studied after 185 years of arable land use. Structure of pedons and solum ...

Spatially isolating genetically modified (GM) maize fields from non-GM maize fields is a robust on-farm measure to keep the adventitious presence of GM material in the harvest of neighboring fields due to cross-fertilizations below the European labeling threshold of 0.9%. However, the implementation of mandatory and rigid isolation perimeters can affect the farmers' freedom of choice to grow GM...