Agricultural & Resource Economics

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Wheat (Agricultural & Resource Economics) Wheat is any of a number of species of the genus Triticum within the grass family of Poaceae. Wheat is an important grain food crop supplying the second highest caloric intake... More »


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Department of Agriculture (USDA) The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is part of the United States federal government with primilary responsibility for matters related to agriculture, farming, forestry, and... More »


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Overgrazing (Agricultural & Resource Economics) Overgrazing is herbivory (animal comsumption of plants) that extracts an unsustainable yield of floral biomass from an ecosystem; however, the term is most often... More »


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Integrated Farm System Model The Integrated Farm System Model With tighter profit margins and increasing environmental constraints, strategic planning of farm production systems is becoming both more... More »


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US-Russian High-tech Crop Map Main Image: Tamara Smekalova (right), head of the Agrobotany Department, shows Stephanie Greene, ARS plant geneticist, herbarium specimens at the N.I. Vavilov Institute of... More »


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Environmental Services Markets in Agriculture Environmental goods and services are the benefits society obtains from the environment and ecosystems, both natural and managed, such as water filtration, flood control,... More »


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Agriculture I (Agricultural & Resource Economics) Humans began to cultivate food crops about 10,000 years ago. Prior to that time, hunter-gatherers secured their food as they traveled in the nearby environment. When they... More »


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Agriculture II (Agricultural & Resource Economics) Humans began to cultivate food crops about 10,000 years ago. Prior to that time, hunter-gatherers secured their food as they traveled in the nearby environment. When they... More »


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California (Agricultural & Resource Economics) California, situated on the Pacific coast of the USA, is the third largest state of the United States in land area and most populous state. The 2009 population... More »


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Mississippi River (Agricultural & Resource Economics) The Mississippi River drains the largest river basin in North America, and is one of the major rivers of the world. The Mississippi River watershed is the fourth largest in the world, extending from the Allegheny Mountains in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. The watershed includes all or parts of 31 states and two Canadian provences. The watershed measures approximately 1.2 million square miles (3.1 million square kilometers), covering about 40% of the lower 48 states. The Mississippi drains most of the United States between the Appalachian Mountains in the east and the Rocky Mountains in the West. The mainstream of the Mississippi River has headwaters rising at Lake Itasca, Minnesota and flows approximately 2340 miles (3765 km). Though the longest part of the river includes the the Missouri River which flows approximately 2540 miles (4088 km) before joining the... [[Mississippi River (Agricultural & Resource Economics)|


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Greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture Agricultural lands occupy 37% of the Earth’s land surface. Agriculture accounts for 52% and 84% of global anthropogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Agricultural soils may also act as a sink or source for carbon dioxide (CO2), but the net flux is small. Many agricultural practices can potentially mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the most prominent of which are improved cropland and grazing land management and restoration of degraded lands and cultivated organic soils. Lower, but still significant mitigation potential is provided by water and rice management, set-aside, land use change and agroforestry, livestock management and manure management. The global technical mitigation potential from agriculture (excluding fossil fuel offsets from biomass) by 2030, considering all gases, is estimated to be ~5500-6000 megatonnes (Mt) CO2-eq. yr-1, with economic... More »

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Agriculture and Greenhouse Gases In both industrialized and developing nations, agricultural production of greenhouse gases (GHG) is a significant component of worldwide GHG emissions. There are major contributions to methane production from livestock grazing and rice farming, as well as incomplete combustion of petroleum products in mechanized agricultural equipment. In developing countries agricultural production of greenhouse gases is a much higher percentage of total GHG emissions than for developed countries. For example, rice farming in China and Southeast Asia and livestock grazing in several South American countries contributes proportionately more agricultural GHG than corresponding farming activity in most Western countries. Elimination of overgrazing practises and reduction of dependence of rice farming provide significant opportunities for reducing GHG emissions. There are also large contributions to... More »


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Plant (Agricultural & Resource Economics) A plant is any one of the vast number of organisms within the biological kingdom Plantae; in general, these species are considered of limited motility and generally manufacture their own food. They include a host of familiar organisms including trees, forbs, shrubs, grasses, vines, ferns, and mosses. Conventionally the term plant implies a taxon with characteristics of multicellularity, cell structure with walls containing cellulose, and organisms capable of photosynthesis. Modern classification schemes are driven by somewhat rigid categorizations inherent in DNA and common ancestry.[1] Throughout most of the history of science from Aristotle to Linnaeus and into the 20th century, species were divided into two kingdoms: animals and plants. Driven by DNA characterizations and other modern analysis, fungi and bacteria have now been removed to separate kingdoms; in particular,... More »


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International Food Security Assessment: 2012-22 Food security is estimated to improve slightly in 2012 as the number of food-insecure people in the 76 countries covered in this report declines from 814 million in 2011 to 802 million in 2012. The share of the population that is food insecure remains at 24 percent. Over the next decade, the share of the population that is food insecure is projected to decline from 24 percent in 2012 to 21 percent in 2022, but the number of food insecure people is projected to increase by 37 million. Regionally, food insecurity is projected to remain most severe in Sub-Saharan Africa. Food-insecure people are defined as those consuming less than the nutritional target of roughly 2,100 calories per day per person. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) has, since the late 1970s, reported annually on food security in a number of developing countries. A key... More »