Grain Farming Articles
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Seeds of change in sub-Saharan Africa
In the late 1900s, as per-acre grain yields moved to 3 metric tons per hectare in South and Southeast Asia and Latin America, 5 metric tons per hectare in China, and 10 metric tons per hectare in North America, Europe and Japan, there’s one place where production stagnated big time: sub-Saharan Africa, where loss of soil fertility on small farms trapped grain production at an unsustainable ...
By Ensia
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Peru: Olmos irrigation project sparks development debate
The recently launched irrigation and hydropower Olmos megaproject in Peru is hailed a ‘masterpiece of engineering’ aimed at stimulating rural development — but some fear the initiative will mostly benefit big companies. The project will bring water from the Atlantic side of the Andes to the Pacific side through a tunnel in the mountains, to irrigate the arid Olmos Valley in the ...
By SciDev.Net
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Assessing the fate and effects of an insecticidal formulation
A three‐year study was conducted on a corn field in Central Illinois, USA, to understand the fate and effects of an insecticidal formulation containing the active ingredients phostebupirim and cyfluthrin. The objectives of the current study were to 1) determine the best tillage practice (conventional versus conservation tillage) in terms of grain yields and potential environmental risk, 2) ...
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We’re farmers – of course we’re optimistic
"People think that farmers are unwise, that we only work with our hands. But that’s not true, we work with our brains,” says German farmer Thomas Kläber. The sun is breaking through the clouds and shedding its light on the golden fields. We’re in the German region of Brandenburg that surrounds the capital Berlin, and while most people tilt their heads backwards enjoying ...
By Yara UK Ltd.
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Glyphosate-based herbicides on weeds management and maize performance under conservation agriculture practices in eastern Kenya
A three-season research study was conducted at Embu Agricultural Research Station farm to determine the effect of glyphosate-based herbicides on weeds management and maize ( Zea mays L. ) performance under zero-tillage conservation agriculture practice. Glyphosate herbicide sprays were prepared from Roundup Turbo product at the rate of 2.5 L ha –1 and Roundup Weathermax at 1.5, 2.5 and 3.0 L ...
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Chicago Council lists three-decade changes in greenhouse gases and average temperature
In 2011, we wrote a column, “Global warming is happening: How should farmers respond?” (http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/549.html). In that column we began by saying, “There was a time when one could legitimately argue that there was a lack of scientific agreement over the issue of the role of humans in global warming and even whether we were in a cooling or warming period. It is ...
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Convert Agriculture Waste Into Energy
India is mainly an agricultural county and is also the largest contributors in the GDP of the country. Agriculture provides employment to a huge population of the rural India. This was not the case suddenly post-independence in India. Various steps were taken to make India as a reliable agricultural country. Steps such as green revolution were taken in several five years plan. This has made India ...
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Can We Prevent A Food Breakdown?
By Lester R. Brown As food supplies have tightened, a new geopolitics of food has emerged—a world in which the global competition for land and water is intensifying and each country is fending for itself. We cannot claim that we are unaware of the trends that are undermining our food supply and thus our civilization. We know what we need to do. There was a time when if we got into trouble ...
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Can the World Feed China?
By Lester R. Brown Overnight, China has become a leading world grain importer, set to buy a staggering 22 million tons in the 2013–14 trade year, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture projections. As recently as 2006—just eight years ago—China had a grain surplus and was exporting 10 million tons. What caused this dramatic shift? It wasn’t until 20 years ...
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U.S.-India: Dealing With Monsoon Failure
The scene plays out in India. At a reception, I met the head of Indian operations for Esso (now ExxonMobil). When I asked him how business was, he said it was great. In particular, diesel sales to fuel irrigation pumps were nearly double the previous year’s level. Why? Because farmers were pumping continuously to try to save their crops. Soon after, I met an embassy staff person, an avid ...
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The 1996 “Freedom to Farm” Farm Bill
The period of U.S. farm bills where the instruments were designed around compensation policies that used price support/supply management programs allowing farmers to remain in production during long periods of low prices—the result of four centuries of publicly-sponsored developmental policies—ended with the adoption of the 1996 Farm Bill. In some important ways, the demise of price ...
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Ultra Fine Feed Hammer Mill
About Ultra Fine Feed Hammer Mill SWFL series ultra fine feed hammer mill is a new grinding device which applies to all sizes of feed plants. It can grind all grain products such as corn, broomcorn, wheat, rice, etc. after sieving, iron removing and mixing stages. The ground products can be further processed as animal feed, especially suitable for shrimp, turtle, eel and other llittle animals. ...
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Many Countries Reaching Diminishing Returns in Fertilizer Use
When German chemist Justus von Liebig demonstrated in 1847 that the major nutrients that plants removed from the soil could be applied in mineral form, he set the stage for the development of the fertilizer industry and a huge jump in world food production a century later. Growth in food production during the nineteenth century came primarily from expanding cultivated area. It was not until the ...
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Farmers banded together to tackle early price and income problems
Few weeks ago in this column we looked at the earliest agricultural policies that were put in place by the European settlers and their descendants in what is now the United States. For the most part, though not exclusively, the policies can best be described as developmental policies because they 1) increase the supply of inputs, 2) decrease the cost of inputs, or 3) improve the quality of ...
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Moving Up the Food Chain
For most of the time that human beings have walked the earth, we lived as hunter-gatherers. The share of the human diet that came from hunting versus gathering varied with geographic location, hunting skills, and the season of the year. During the northern hemisphere winter, for instance, when there was little food to gather, people there depended heavily on hunting for survival. Our long history ...
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Boost grain preservation before production
Better grain storage would save money and feed over a billion, says Digvir S. Jayas. It deserves more attention. Annually over 2.6 billion tonnes of grains — cereals, oilseeds and pulses — are grown and then stored along the chain from producers to consumers. Most countries do not systematically report how much grain becomes unfit for human consumption during storage, but anecdotal ...
By SciDev.Net
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Science’s role in growing diverse, nutritious food
Can science meet the demand for more diverse and nutritious food? Jan Piotrowski investigates. The riots that swept Africa in 2007 and 2008 in response to the spiralling costs of staple crops brought the effects of food shortages into sharp focus. Images of unrest circled the globe, and the consequent instability brought to the forefront of political debate a question that had long been out of ...
By SciDev.Net
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Evaluation of the AquaCrop model for simulating yield response of winter wheat to water on the southern Loess Plateau of China
The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of the FAO-AquaCrop model in winter wheat in the southern Loess Plateau of China. Multi-year field experimental data from 2004 and 2011 were used to calibrate and validate the model for simulating biomass, canopy cover (CC), soil water content, and grain yield under rainfed conditions. The model performance was evaluated using root ...
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Grain Yields Starting to Plateau
By Lester R. Brown From the beginning of agriculture until the mid-twentieth century, growth in the world grain harvest came almost entirely from expanding the cultivated area. Rises in land productivity were too slow to be visible within a single generation. It is only within the last 60 years or so that rising yields have replaced area expansion as the principal source of growth in world grain ...
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Cutting food loss and waste will benefit people and the environment, says new study on World Environment Day
One out of every four calories produced by the global agricultural system is being lost or wasted, according to new analysis. This situation poses a serious challenge to the world’s ability to reduce hunger and meet the food needs of the rapidly-expanding global population. Released on World Environment Day (WED), which this year carries the theme “Think.Eat.Save - Reduce Your ...
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