Today, the general public craves information on food and agriculture with an unprecedented passion. But the agricultural sector, unaccustomed to an interested and inquisitive society, has largely failed to respond to the public’s demands for information. Instead, corporations, time-pressed journalists, bloggers, media celebrities, film-makers, authors and concerned consumers jumped in to fill the void. Food is emotional, and these players - some well-intentioned and others not - got a lot of traction playing off consumer fears of the unknown. This critical and timely book explains how changing demographics, cultural shifts, technological advances and agriculture’s silence all combined to create the perfect storm – a great chasm between those who know, and those who don’t know, agriculture. The ramifications of a poorly-informed consumer base are now becoming clear in our policy debates and consumer-driven business decisions. There is a lot of common ground between the agricultural sector and their consumer base, but each group largely fails to appreciate it, and the consequences of such a divide grow increasingly dire. Drawing on a wide-range of expertise, from leading agricultural researchers to major agribusiness leaders to consumer advocates, Eise and Hodde lay out exactly why communication is so urgently critical to our modern-day agricultural system. They outline the major themes affecting agricultural communication – perception, emotion, technology, science - and what we can do now to improve the debate and safeguard our future food supply for generations to come.This book is suitable for those who study agriculture, environmental economics and mass media and communication.

Today, the general public craves information on food and agriculture with an unprecedented passion. But the agricultural sector, unaccustomed to an interested and inquisitive society, has largely failed to respond to the public’s demands for information. Instead, corporations, time-pressed journalists, bloggers, media celebrities, film-makers, authors and concerned consumers jumped in to fill the void. Food is emotional, and these players - some well-intentioned and others not - got a lot of traction playing off consumer fears of the unknown. This critical and timely book explains how changing demographics, cultural shifts, technological advances and agriculture’s silence all combined to create the perfect storm – a great chasm between those who know, and those who don’t know, agriculture. The ramifications of a poorly-informed consumer base are now becoming clear in our policy debates and consumer-driven business decisions. There is a lot of common ground between the agricultural sector and their consumer base, but each group largely fails to appreciate it, and the consequences of such a divide grow increasingly dire. Drawing on a wide-range of expertise, from leading agricultural researchers to major agribusiness leaders to consumer advocates, Eise and Hodde lay out exactly why communication is so urgently critical to our modern-day agricultural system. They outline the major themes affecting agricultural communication – perception, emotion, technology, science - and what we can do now to improve the debate and safeguard our future food supply for generations to come.This book is suitable for those who study agriculture, environmental economics and mass media and communication.

By 2050, we will have ten billion mouths to feed in a world profoundly altered by environmental change. How will we meet this challenge? In How to Feed the World, a diverse group of experts from Purdue University break down this crucial question by tackling big issues one-by-one. Covering population, water, land, climate change, technology, food systems, trade, food waste and loss, health, social buy-in, communication, and equal access to food, the book reveals a complex web of challenges. Contributors unite from different perspectives and disciplines, ranging from agronomy and hydrology to economics. The resulting collection is an accessible but wide-ranging look at the modern food system.

The report aims to provide a conceptual framework to address food security under conditions of water scarcity in agriculture. It has been prepared by a team of FAO staff and consultants in the framework of the project "Coping with water scarcity - the role of agriculture", and has been discussed at an Expert Consultation meeting organized in FAO, Rome, during the period 14-16 December 2009 on the same subject. It was subsequently edited and revised, taking account of discussions in the Expert Consultation and materials presented to the meeting. The purpose of the Expert Consultation was to assist FAO to better design its water scarcity programme. In particular, the experts were requested to provide recommendations on the range of technical and policy options and associated principles that FAO should promote as part of an agricultural response to water scarcity in member countries. The document offers views on the conceptual framework on which FAO's water scarcity programme should be based, proposes a set of definitions associated with the concept of water scarcity, and indicates the main principles on which FAO should base its action in support to its member countries. At the meeting, experts were requested to review the draft document and provide feedback and recommendations for its finalization. Issues that were addressed in discussions included: 3⁄4 Water scarcity: agreement on key definitions. 3⁄4 The conceptualisation of water scarcity in ways that are meaningful for policy development and decision-making. 3⁄4 The quantification of water scarcity. . 3⁄4 Policy and technical response options available to ensure food security in conditions of water scarcity. . 3⁄4 Criteria and principles that should be used to establish priorities for action in response to water scarcity in agriculture and ensure effective and efficient water scarcity coping strategies.

As technology continues to saturate modern society, agriculture has started to adopt digital computing and data-driven innovations. This emergence of “smart” farming has led to various advancements in the field, including autonomous equipment and the collection of climate, livestock, and plant data. As connectivity and data management continue to revolutionize the farming industry, empirical research is a necessity for understanding these technological developments. Artificial Intelligence and IoT-Based Technologies for Sustainable Farming and Smart Agriculture provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of critical technological solutions within the farming industry. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as crop monitoring, precision livestock farming, and agronomic data processing, this book is ideally designed for farmers, agriculturalists, product managers, farm holders, manufacturers, equipment suppliers, industrialists, governmental professionals, researchers, academicians, and students seeking current research on technological applications within agriculture and farming.

ctives of the study are: (i) to review current knowledge on vulnerability, past trends in climate, and impacts of climate variability and change on agriculture sector, and (ii) to explore technical and policy alternatives in order to cope with and adapt to impacts of climate variability and change more effectively. The study identified what the potential impacts are, considered what interventions are appropriate, and if and where they should occur. The scope of the study focused on broader policy directions and investment priorities in relation to climate change adaptation. The first two chapters of this book present overall background on the agriculture sector and vulnerability context. Chapter 2 specifically presents vulnerability of agro-ecosystems and food production systems in both temporal and special dimensions. Chapter 3 elaborates on the nature of climate variability and expected future changes in climate. The past trends in climate were described based on observation, analysi

This book showcases the power of economic principles to explain and predict issues and current events in the food, agricultural, agribusiness, international trade, natural resources and other sectors. The result is an agricultural economics textbook that provides students and instructors with a clear, up-to-date, and straightforward approach to learning how a market-based economy functions, and how to use simple economic principles for improved decision making. While the primary focus of the book is on microeconomic aspects, agricultural economics has expanded over recent decades to include issues of macroeconomics, international trade, agribusiness, environmental economics, natural resources, and international development. Hence, these topics are also provided with significant coverage.

Charting the political, social, and environmental history of efforts to conserve crop diversity. Many people worry that we're losing genetic diversity in the foods we eat. Over the past century, crop varieties standardized for industrial agriculture have increasingly dominated farm fields. Concerned about what this transition means for the future of food, scientists, farmers, and eaters have sought to protect fruits, grains, and vegetables they consider endangered. They have organized high-tech genebanks and heritage seed swaps. They have combed fields for ancient landraces and sought farmers growing Indigenous varieties. Behind this widespread concern for the loss of plant diversity lies another extinction narrative that concerns the survival of farmers themselves, a story that is often obscured by urgent calls to collect and preserve. Endangered Maize draws on the rich history of corn in Mexico and the United States to uncover this hidden narrative and show how it shaped the conservation strategies adopted by scientists, states, and citizens. In Endangered Maize, historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more than a hundred years of agriculture and conservation practices to understand the tasks that farmers and researchers have considered essential to maintaining crop diversity. Through the contours of efforts to preserve diversity in one of the world's most important crops, Curry reveals how those who sought to protect native, traditional, and heritage crops forged their methods around the expectation that social, political, and economic transformations would eliminate diverse communities and cultures. In this fascinating study of how cultural narratives shape science, Curry argues for new understandings of endangerment and alternative strategies to protect and preserve crop diversity.

African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and can help contribute to global food security. To achieve this Africa has to define agriculture as a force in economic growth by advancing scientific and technological research, investing in infrastructure, fostering higher technical training, and creating regional markets.