This book reviews contaminants of emerging nature affecting the agroecosystem and includes important information regarding the their sources, types, transportation, environmental threats and strategies to decontaminate the affected agroecosystems. The contents of this volume will help the policy makers and environmental engineers in combating the continuously rising threats to cultivated ecosystems.

In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.

This book reviews concepts and recent advances of biotechnological approaches for livestock production. Indeed, biotechnologies have recently emerged as powerful tools for animal breeding, genetics, production, nutrition, and animal health. Applications to the production of livestock such as cattle, camel, and poultry are detailed. Chapters also present biotechnological applications for diagnostics, animal nutrition, and animal food production.

This book presents advanced knowledge and techniques to improve food quality, such as organic farming, fertilization using waste, reducing arsenic in food, soil restoration, forage production in arid regions and weed control. Agriculture is actually facing two major challenges, feeding an ever-growing population and providing safe food in the context of pollution, climate change and the future circular economy.

The technological revolution in farming practices has allowed us to clear and cultivate more land, grow plants and animals faster, and kill a greater variety of pests and diseases than ever before. Unfortunately, these efficiencies are proving to be unsustainable in the long term and have created problems such as soil structural decline, erosion, salinity, soil acidification, loss of fertility, nutrient loading of waterways, dams and a build up of chemical residues. This book is about foreseeing and understanding such problems and addressing them before it is too late. John Mason examines all these problems and explains the concepts and long-term benefits of sustainable farming systems such as permaculture, biodynamics, organic farming, agroforestry, conservation tillage, and integrated hydroculture. Sustainable Agriculture 2nd Edition also looks at important issues such as monoculture versus polyculture, the use of hybrids, selection criteria for plants and stock, integrated pest management and preparing a farm for droughts and floods. Other areas examined include diversifying into farm tourism and value adding before selling produce.

A move towards more flexible, sustainable agricultural practices is increasingly being seen as the way to address or avoid environmental and economic problems associated with existing, predominantly intensive, farming systems. Through case studies taken from around the world, this book examines the implications of adopting more ecologically sound agricultural practices, both at the level of individual farmers and at the level of larger-scale agro-ecosystems such as water catchments. The emphasis of the book is on human and social aspects, rather than on agronomic or economic considerations, focusing on the learning processes necessary for change to be implemented and, in turn, on the facilitation of that learning through participatory approaches and appropriate institutional support and policy structure.

Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.