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"The conference was organized by the three editors of this book and took place on August 15-16, 2012 in Seattle."--Preface.
For nearly a century, scientific advances have fueled progress in U.S. agriculture to enable American producers to deliver safe and abundant food domestically and provide a trade surplus in bulk and high-value agricultural commodities and foods. Today, the U.S. food and agricultural enterprise faces formidable challenges that will test its long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience. On its current path, future productivity in the U.S. agricultural system is likely to come with trade-offs. The success of agriculture is tied to natural systems, and these systems are showing signs of stress, even more so with the change in climate. More than a third of the food produced is unconsumed, an unacceptable loss of food and nutrients at a time of heightened global food demand. Increased food animal production to meet greater demand will generate more greenhouse gas emissions and excess animal waste. The U.S. food supply is generally secure, but is not immune to the costly and deadly shocks of continuing outbreaks of food-borne illness or to the constant threat of pests and pathogens to crops, livestock, and poultry. U.S. farmers and producers are at the front lines and will need more tools to manage the pressures they face. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 identifies innovative, emerging scientific advances for making the U.S. food and agricultural system more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. This report explores the availability of relatively new scientific developments across all disciplines that could accelerate progress toward these goals. It identifies the most promising scientific breakthroughs that could have the greatest positive impact on food and agriculture, and that are possible to achieve in the next decade (by 2030).
"Innovation and entrepreneurship are ubiquitous today, both as fields of study and as starting points for conversations among experts in government and economic development. But while these areas on continue to attract public and private investments, many measurements of their resulting economic growth-including productivity growth and business dynamism-have remained modest. Why this difference? Because not all business sectors are the same, and the transformative gains of some industries have been offset by stagnation or contraction in others. Accordingly, a nuanced understanding of the economy requires a nuanced understanding of where innovation and entrepreneurship occur and where they matter. Answering these questions allows for strategic public investment and the infrastructure for economic growth.The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, the latest entry in the NBER conference series, seeks to codify these answers. The editors leverage industry studies to identify specific examples of productivity improvements enabled by innovation and entrepreneurship, including those from new production technologies, increased competition, new organizational forms, and other means. Taken together, the volume illuminates whether the contribution of innovation and entrepreneurship to economic growth is likely to be concentrated, be it selected sectors or more broadly"--
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requested that the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources of the National Research Council (NRC) convene a panel of experts to examine whether publicly funded agricultural research has influenced the structure of U.S. agriculture and, if so, how. The Committee to Review the Role of Publicly Funded Agricultural Research on the Structure of U.S. Agriculture was asked to assess the role of public-sector agricultural research on changes in the size and numbers of farms, with particular emphasis on the evolution of very-large-scale operations.
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 provides a review of precision agriculture technology development, followed by a presentation of the state-of-the-art and future requirements of precision agriculture technology. It presents different styles of precision agriculture technologies suitable for large scale mechanized farming; highly automated community-based mechanized production; and fully mechanized farming practices commonly seen in emerging economic regions. The book emphasizes the introduction of core technical features of sensing, data processing and interpretation technologies, crop modeling and production control theory, intelligent machinery and field robots for precision agriculture production.
This book has been developed from a workshop on Technological change in agriculture and tropical deforestation organised by the Center for International Forestry Research and held in Costa Rica in March, 1999. It explores how intensification of agriculture affects tropical deforestation using case studies from different geographical regions, using different agricultural products and technologies and in differing demographic situations and market conditions. Guidance is also given on future agricultural research and extension efforts.
Precision agriculture (PA) and its suite of information technologies-such as soil and yield mapping using a global positioning system (GPS), GPS tractor guidance systems, and variable-rate input application-allow farm operators to fine-tune their production practices. Access to detailed, within-field information can decrease input costs and increase yields. USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey shows that these PA technologies were used on roughly 30 to 50 percent of U.S. corn and soybean acres in 2010-12. Previous studies suggest that use of PA is associated with higher profits under certain conditions, but aggregate estimates of these gains have not been available. In this report, a treatment-effects model is developed to estimate factors associated with PA technology adoption rates and the impacts of adoption on profits. Labor and machinery used in production and certain farm characteristics, like farm size, are associated with adoption as well as with two profit measures, net returns and operating profits. The impact of these PA technologies on profits for U.S. corn producers is positive, but small. Keywords: Crop production information technologies, precision agriculture, variablerate technology, soil tests, global positioning system maps, guidance systems.
Handbook of Agricultural Economics, Volume Five highlights new advances in the field, with this new release exploring comprehensive chapters written by an international board of authors who discuss topics such as The Economics of Agricultural Innovation, Climate, food and agriculture, Agricultural Labor Markets: Immigration Policy, Minimum Wages, Etc., Risk Management in Agricultural Production, Animal Health and Livestock Disease, Behavioral and Experimental Economics to Inform Agri-Environmental Programs and Policies, Big Data, Machine Learning Methods for Agricultural and Applied Economists, Agricultural data collection to minimize measurement error and maximize coverage, Gender, agriculture and nutrition, Social Networks Analysis In Agricultural Economics, and more. Presents the latest release in the Handbook of Agricultural Economics Written and contributed by leaders in the field Covers topics such as The Economics of Agricultural Innovation, Climate, Food and Agriculture, Agricultural Labor Markets, and more