Sustainable bioenergy production from marginal lands in the US Midwest.

Legislation on biofuels production in the USA and Europe is directing food crops towards the production of grain-based ethanol, which can have detrimental consequences for soil carbon sequestration, nitrous oxide emissions, nitrate pollution, biodiversity and human health. An alternative is to grow lignocellulosic (cellulosic) crops on 'marginal' lands. Cellulosic feedstocks can have positive environmental outcomes and could make up a substantial proportion of future energy portfolios. However, the availability of marginal lands for cellulosic feedstock production, and the resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, remains uncertain. Here we evaluate the potential for marginal lands in ten Midwestern US states to produce sizeable amounts of biomass and concurrently mitigate GHG emissions. In a comparative assessment of six alternative cropping systems over 20 years, we found that successional herbaceous vegetation, once well established, has a direct GHG emissions mitigation capacity that rivals that of purpose-grown crops (-851 ± 46 grams of CO(2) equivalent emissions per square metre per year (gCO(2)e m(-2) yr(-1))). If fertilized, these communities have the capacity to produce about 63 ± 5 gigajoules of ethanol energy per hectare per year. By contrast, an adjacent, no-till corn-soybean-wheat rotation produces on average 41 ± 1 gigajoules of biofuel energy per hectare per year and has a net direct mitigation capacity of -397 ± 32 gCO(2)e m(-2) yr(-1); a continuous corn rotation would probably produce about 62 ± 7 gigajoules of biofuel energy per hectare per year, with 13% less mitigation. We also perform quantitative modelling of successional vegetation on marginal lands in the region at a resolution of 0.4 hectares, constrained by the requirement that each modelled location be within 80 kilometres of a potential biorefinery. Our results suggest that such vegetation could produce about 21 gigalitres of ethanol per year from around 11 million hectares, or approximately 25 per cent of the 2022 target for cellulosic biofuel mandated by the US Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, with no initial carbon debt nor the indirect land-use costs associated with food-based biofuels. Other regional-scale aspects of biofuel sustainability, such as water quality and biodiversity, await future study.

Land cover and landscape changes in Shaanxi Province during China's Grain for Green Program (2000-2010).

This study examines landscape changes in the context of China's national Grain for Green (GFG) policy, one of the world's largest "payment for environmental/ecosystem services" (PES) programs. We explored landscape structures and dynamics between 2000 and 2010 in Shaanxi Province, the Chinese province with the greatest amount of cropland conversion and reforestation in recent decades. We used Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)-derived data and landscape metrics for six land cover classes to determine (1) the major land cover changes during enforcement of the policy, (2) the spatial and temporal variations in these changes, and (3) the effects of land cover changes on landscape structure and dynamics. The results suggested that provincial-level land cover changes modestly reflected the goals of the GFG. Over the 10-year study period, the forest and grassland coverages expanded from 95,737.9 to 97,017.4 km(2) and from 37,235.9 to 40,613.1 km(2), respectively, while the cropland coverage decreased from 59,222.8 to 54,007.6 km(2). The conversion direction differed regionally: the targeted croplands in Shanbei, namely, types III and IV, were mainly transformed into grassland while those in Shannan were mainly transformed into forestland. Reforestation was associated with increased inter-landscape aggregation and connection. Despite this large-scale reforestation trend, we found notable and significant differences in the land cover changes at the subprovincial level.

[Tobacco farming in Italy receives more funds in comparison to tobacco control]. / La tabacchicoltura in Italia riceve più fondi del controllo del tabagismo.

In the European Union almost 300,000 tons of raw tobacco are produced every year, contributing for 4% of the world production. In Italy, tobacco crop produces around 90,000 tons/year and is concentrated in Veneto, Tuscany, Umbria and Campania Regions. In 1970, Common Market Organisation provided a virtually unlimited support for European tobacco production. After 2004, funds progressively has been cut by half, even though the other half has been given for restructuring or reconversion of tobacco farms through the Rural Development Plan. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control recommends conversion of tobacco crops, although there are no effective measures. Tobacco production requires large quantities of chemicals (pesticides, growth regulators, fertilisers), with significant workers' exposure if applied without personal protective equipments. Pesticides may have genotoxic, teratogenic, immunotoxic, hormonal, and carcinogenic effects. Tobacco itself may cause also a disease called "Green tobacco sickness" syndrome, as a consequence of nicotine dermal absorption due to skin exposure to tobacco leaves. In Italy, financial resources for tobacco production and restructuring/conversion to other crops of previously tobacco planted fields are available. On the contrary, anti-smoking media interventions do not receive funds comparatively relevant as those for tobacco production.

Alternative crop residue management practices to mitigate the environmental and economic impacts of open burning of agricultural residues.

Deliberate open burning of crop residues emits greenhouse gases and toxic pollutants into the atmosphere. This study investigates the environmental impacts (global warming potential, GWP) and economic impacts (net cash flow) of nine agricultural residue management schemes, including open burning, fertilizer production, and biochar production for corn residue, rice straw, and sugarcane leaves. The environmental assessment shows that, except the open burning schemes, fossil fuel consumption is the main contributor of the GWP impact. The fertilizer and biochar schemes reduce the GWP impact including black carbon by 1.88-1.96 and 2.46-3.22 times compared to open burning. The biochar schemes have the lowest GWP (- 1833.19 to - 1473.21 kg CO2-eq/ton). The economic assessment outcomes reveal that the biochar schemes have the highest net cash flow (222.72-889.31 US$2022/ton or 1258.15-13409.16 US$2022/ha). The expenditures of open burning are practically zero, while the biochar schemes are the most costly to operate. The most preferable agricultural residue management type is the biochar production, given the lowest GWP impact and the highest net cash flow. To discourage open burning, the government should tailor the government assistance programs to the needs of the farmers and make the financial assistance more accessible.

Mechanism and capacities of reducing ecological cost through rice-duck cultivation.

BACKGROUND: Rice-duck cultivation is the essence of Chinese traditional agriculture. A scientific assessment of the mechanism and its capacity is of theoretical significance and practical value in improving modern agricultural technology. RESULTS: The duck's secretions, excreta and their treading, pecking and predation decrease the occurrence of plant diseases, pests and weeds, enrich species diversity and improve the field environment. The rice-duck intergrowth system effectively prevents rice planthoppers and rice leafhoppers. The control effects can be up to 98.47% and 100% respectively; it also has effects on the control of Chilo suppressalis, Tryporyza incertulas and the rice leafrollers. Notable control results are found on sheath blight, while the effects on other diseases are about 50%. Harm from weeds is placed under primary control; prevention of weeds is sequenced by broadleaf weeds > sedge weeds > Gramineae weeds. Contents of soil organic matter, N, P and K are improved by the system; nutrient utilization is accelerated, resulting in decreased fertilizer application. Greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 1-2% and duck fodder is saved in this system. There is also an obvious economic benefit. CONCLUSION: Compared to conventional rice cultivation, rice-duck cultivation shows great benefits to ecologic cost and economic income.

Overcoming undernutrition with local resources in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Even in the 21st century, undernutrition is a challenge to be overcome. In the year 2009, 1.02 billion people were reported as food insecure and 180 million children were undernourished. Food insecurity and undernutrition are more than a lack of food energy: they are not reflected countrywide by prevalence means; they are mostly not permanent but seasonal; they are mostly not caused by insufficient amounts of food being produced; and they first affect parents and later children. Food insecurity and undernutrition often manifest themselves as micronutrient deficiency. While undernutrition is still a challenge for global nutrition, a second challenge has arisen: preventing caloric overnutrition. In various countries, food pyramids or food circles have been plotted supporting nutrition education and illustrating the challenge. Such integrative approaches are desirable for all countries of the world, as in all countries, to a smaller or larger extent, undernutrition and caloric overnutrition are the problems of today and tomorrow. The International Assessment of Agriculture for Science Technology and Development (IAASTD) has paid attention to the inescapable interconnectedness of agriculture's different roles and functions in the world and in all societies. Overcoming undernutrition with local resources means first protecting and promoting the use of local resources against imports of low-priced processed foods from subsidised production in industrialised countries; second, it means developing education and training material for regional food production with a nutrition orientation; and third, the experiences of organic farming can contribute much to support farmers in developing countries in planting their indigenous varieties and applying integrated pest management strategies.

Regional distribution of nitrogen fertilizer use and N-saving potential for improvement of food production and nitrogen use efficiency in China.

BACKGROUND: An apparently large disparity still exists between developed and developing countries in historical trends of the amounts of nitrogen (N) fertilizers consumed, and the same situation holds true in China. The situation of either N overuse or underuse has become one of the major limiting factors in agricultural production and economic development in China. The issue of food security in N-poor regions has been given the greatest attention internationally. Balanced and appropriate use of N fertilizer for enriching soil fertility is an effective step in preventing soil degradation, ensuring food security, and further contributing to poverty alleviation and rural economic development in the N-poor regions. RESULTS: Based on the China Statistical Yearbook (2007), there could be scope for improvement of N use efficiency (NUE) in N-rich regions by reducing N fertilizer input to an optimal level (≤180 kg N ha(-1)), and also potential for increasing yield in the N-poor regions by further increasing N fertilizer supply (up to 116 kg N ha(-1)). For the N-rich regions, the average estimated potential of N saving and NUE increase could be about 15% and 23%, respectively, while for the N-poor regions the average estimated potential for yield increase could be 21% on a regional scale, when N input is increased by 13%. CONCLUSION: The study suggests that to achieve the goals of regional yield improvement, it is necessary to readjust and optimize regional distribution of N fertilizer use between the N-poor and N-rich regions in China, in combination with other nutrient management practices.

Bt cotton and farmer suicides in India: an evidence-based assessment.

Bt cotton is accused of being responsible for an increase of farmer suicides in India. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of evidence on Bt cotton and farmer suicides. Available data show no evidence of a 'resurgence' of farmer suicides. Moreover, Bt cotton technology has been very effective overall in India. Nevertheless, in specific districts and years, Bt cotton may have indirectly contributed to farmer indebtedness, leading to suicides, but its failure was mainly the result of the context or environment in which it was planted.

The work of local culture: Wendell Berry and communities as the source of farming knowledge.

When Wendell Berry and others criticize contemporary agriculture, their arguments are often dismissed as naive and grounded in longstanding agrarian myth, rather than engagement with contemporary problems. But Berry's proposals developed in response to a series of learning methods he encountered, and options for advocacy he explored, during the 1960s and 1970s. Agricultural institutions sought to assign more power to institutionalized scientific knowledge, shrinking the role of farmers. Berry sought an alternative definition of knowledge, drawing upon his training as a writer, as well as his experiences with manual farm work and the methods of environmentalist organic growers. He eventually concluded that only a community of farmers could produce and store effective knowledge and insisted that knowledge must be tacit -- largely situated in locality, skills, and culture. His ideas had little influence on most people employed in contemporary agriculture. However, those ideas profoundly shape the work of sustainable food advocates, such as Michael Pollan, who like Berry fear reductionism and celebrate the values of traditions.

Agrofuels capitalism: a view from political economy.

This article considers the global expansion of agrofuels feedstock production from a political economy perspective. It considers and dismisses the environmental and pro-poor developmental justifications attached to agrofuels. To local populations and direct producers, the specific destination of the crop as fuel, food, cosmetics or other final uses in faraway places is probably of less interest than the forms of (direct or indirect) appropriation of their land and the forms of their insertion or exclusion as producers in global commodity chains. Global demand for both agrofuels and food is stimulating new forms (or the resurgence of old forms) of corporate land grabbing and expropriation, and of incorporation of smallholders in contracted production. Drawing both on recent studies on agrofuels expansion and on the political economy literature on agrarian transition and capitalism in agriculture, this article raises the question whether "agrofuels capitalism" is in any way essentially different from other forms of capitalist agrarian monocrop production, and in turn whether the agrarian transitions involved require new tools of analysis.

Power is sweet: sugarcane in the global ethanol assemblage.

New alliances between Brazil and the US for ethanol production, transport, and trade are revitalising and expanding the centuries -old sugarcane plantation system in the Americas. In this paper I adopt the concept of global assemblages, building on the work of Aihwa Ong, Stephen Collier, and Saskia Sassen, to draw the contours of an "ethanol assemblage," which includes states, corporations, growers, technologies, urban consumers, and rural communities and landscapes. Though important to conceptualise agrofuels as a global phenomenon, it is also necessary to recognise the distinct regional patterns that cohere around various aspects of this polymorphous industry. Therefore, I focus on alliances around sugarcane ethanol, paying particular attention to the role of Miami as a global city serving as a gateway to information, investment, and commodities for the public/private and national/transnational entities that are engaged in the hemispheric project of ethanol promotion, production and distribution.

The politics of biofuels, land and agrarian change: editors' introduction.

This introduction frames key questions on biofuels, land and agrarian change within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. It identifies and explains big questions that provide the starting point for the contributions to this collection. We lay out some of the emerging themes which define the politics of biofuels, land and agrarian change revolving around global (re)configurations; agro-ecological visions; conflicts, resistances and diverse outcomes; state, capital and society relations; mobilising opposition, creating alternatives; and change and continuity. An engaged agrarian political economy combined with global political economy, international relations and social movement theory provides an important framework for analysis and critique of the conditions, dynamics, contradictions, impacts and possibilities of the emerging global biofuels complex. Our hope is that this collection demonstrates the significance of a political economy of biofuels in capturing the complexity of the "biofuels revolution" and at the same time opening up questions about its sustainability in social and environmental terms that provide pathways towards alternatives.

Fields of dreams: negotiating an ethanol agenda in the Midwest United States.

Corn ethanol production is central in the United States' agrofuels initiatives. In this paper I discuss corn ethanol production in Iowa, USA and examine several dynamics: farmers' positions in agrofuel supply chains; struggles around the construction and operation of agrofuel refineries; the politics of ethanol production and regulation; and the ecological consequences of increased corn production. I argue that current US agrofuels production and politics reinforce longstanding and unequal political economic relationships in industrial agriculture. I also argue that the politics of US agrofuels, focused on carbon accounting for greenhouse gas reduction and energy security, privilege urban and other actors' social and ecological interests over those of rural places of production.

Creating an agricultural world order: regional plant protection problems and international phytopathology, 1878-1939.

Beginning in 1878 with the International Phylloxera Convention of Berne, international conventions have sought to relieve national agricultural industries from two specific burdens. First, by defining phytosanitary practices to be enforced by national plant protection services, these conventions attempted to prevent the introduction of plant diseases and pests into national territories from which they were previously absent. Second, by standardizing these practices - especially through the design of a unique certificate of inspection - the conventions attempted to eliminate barriers such as quarantines affection international agricultural trade. The succession of phytopathological conventions seemed to epitomize the coalescence of an international community against agricultural pests. What actually coalesced was bio-geopolitics wherein plant pathologists and economic entomologists from North America and the British Empire questioned the so-called internationality of the environmental and economic specificities of continental European agriculture, embodied in "international" conventions. Although an international phenomenon, the dissemination of agricultural pests provided opportunities for cooperation on a strictly regional albeit transnational basis that pitted bio-geopolitical spaces against each other. This article retraces the formation of these spaces by analyzing the deliberations of committees and congresses that gathered to define an international agricultural order based on the means to prevent the spread of plant diseases and pests.

Guatemala's green revolution: synthetic fertilizer, public health, and economic autonomy in the Mayan highland.

Despite extensive literature both supporting and critiquing the Green Revolution, surprisingly little attention has been paid to synthetic fertilizers' health and environmental effects or indigenous farmers' perspectives. The introduction of agrochemicals in the mid-twentieth century was a watershed event for many Mayan farmers in Guatemala. While some Maya hailed synthetic fertilizers' immediate effectiveness as a relief from famines and migrant labor, other lamented the long-term deterioration of their public health, soil quality, and economic autonomy. Since the rising cost of agrochemicals compelled Maya to return to plantation labor in the 1970s, synthetic fertilizers simply shifted, rather than alleviated, Mayan dependency on the cash economy. By highlighting Mayan farmers' historical narratives and delineating the relationship between agricultural science and postwar geopolitics, the constraints on agriculturists' agency become clear. In the end, politics, more than technology or agricultural performance, influenced guatemala's shift toward the Green Revolution.

What is the cost of integration? Evidence from an integrated health and agriculture project to improve nutrition outcomes in Western Kenya.

Integrated nutrition and agricultural interventions have the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of investments in food security and nutrition. This article aimed to estimate the costs of an integrated agriculture and health intervention (Mama SASHA) focused on the promotion of orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) production and consumption in Western Kenya. Programme activities included nutrition education and distribution of vouchers for OFSP vines during antenatal care and postnatal care (PNC) visits. We used expenditures and activity-based costing to estimate the financial costs during programme implementation (2011-13). Cost data were collected from monthly expense reports and interviews with staff members from all implementing organizations. Financial costs totalled US$507 809 for the project period. Recruiting and retaining women over the duration of their pregnancy and postpartum period required significant resources. Mama SASHA reached 3281 pregnant women at a cost of US$155 per beneficiary. Including both pregnant women and infants who attended PNC services with their mothers, the cost was US$110 per beneficiary. Joint planning, co-ordination and training across sectors drove 27% of programme costs. This study found that the average cost per beneficiary to implement an integrated agriculture, health and nutrition programme was substantial. Planning and implementing less intensive integrated interventions may be possible, and economies of scale may reduce overall costs. Empirical estimates of costs by components are critical for future planning and scaling up of integrated programmes.

Diversification of de-agrarianization? Income diversification, labor, and processes of agrarian change in southern and northern Malawi, mid-1930s to mid-1950s.

This article investigates the links between market-oriented activities and subsistence production among peasant farmers in the Thyolo and Mzimba districts in Malawi from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. The two districts were chosen because of their differences in terms of land-labor ratios, quality of soils, and structure of market engagement. Exploring the different paths of agrarian change in these two districts demonstrates that they were dependent on the structure of market engagement and its effects on the supply and flexibility of labor. African agricultural history is best understood when agricultural systems are viewed in connection to the overall economic activities of rural households. More simply put, the dynamics of agrarian change in rural Africa cannot be understood without linking such changes to the wider economy and their impact on local labor processes.

"Poorly co-ordinated structures for public science that failed us in the past"? Applying science to agriculture: a New Zealand case study.

This paper examines the effectiveness of applied science in a case study of two aspects of livestock and human poisoning in New Zealand, from the earliest European contact in the 1770s through to the 1950s. It considers the role and value of government science first in attempting to solve a problem that continues to affect New Zealand farmers, killing according to one estimate between 10 and 15 percent of their stock annually. Second, it addresses a related problem that has a much longer history of human poisoning, but that turned out to have quite unexpected causes in New Zealand. From this analysis, the historic bases on which present-day science funding policies were "reformed" in the 1990s are questioned.