Water use by plant communities across years of varying water availability indicates how terrestrial water balances will respond to climate change and variability as well as to land cover change. Perennial biofuel crops, likely grown mainly on marginal lands of limited water availability, provide an example of a potentially extensive future land cover conversion.
This study presents the findings of research into the global socio-economic and environmental impact of genetically modified (GM) crops in the eighteen years since they were first commercially planted on a significant area.
Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development has projected low farm yields following its 2014/15 second Agricultural Production Estimate survey.
Weed Technology—As acreage under maize keeps on increasing in recent years, maize-attacking insects have become a widespread problem, including populations of the rootworm that have developed resis
Do the wet savannahs and shrublands of Africa provide a large reserve of potential croplands to produce food staples or bioenergy with low carbon and biodiversity costs? We find that only small percentages of these lands have meaningful potential to be low-carbon sources of maize (~2%) or soybeans (9.5–11.5%), meaning that their conversion would release at least one-third less carbon per ton of crop than released on average for the production of those crops on existing croplands.
