Agriculture And Agro Industries Journal

This book explores the impact of industry 4.0 on agricultural supply chains, exploring how changes such as increased digitisation, automation, and the digital value chain, will impact food production globally. At a time when increasing population and environmental degradation puts stress on food supply chains, traditional farming operation models struggle to maintain both sustainability and transparency. Industry 4.0 could lead to digitalised ways of farming and agricultural production processes that will transform the traditional operating and process models to digital, data-intensive methods focusing on analytics and decision-making practices. This book aims to provider the reader with an understanding of the concept of Agriculture 4.0 in relation to supply chain management. Different applications of Agricultural 4.0 supply chains are discussed in relation to their respective advantages and disadvantages. Dr. Stella Despoudi is Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chan Management at Aston University and Adjunct Lecturer in Supply Chain Management at the University of Western Macedonia, Greece. Dr. Konstantina Spanaki is a Lecturer in Information Management at Loughborough University, UK. Dr. Oscar Rodríguez-Espíndola is a Senior lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management at Aston University and a member of the Aston CRISIS centre, UK. Dr. Efpraxia Zamani is a Senior Lecturer of Information Systems at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Industrial agriculture is generally characterized as either the salvation of a growing, hungry, global population or as socially and environmentally irresponsible. Despite elements of truth in this polarization, it fails to focus on the particular vulnerabilities and potentials of industrial agriculture. Both representations obscure individual farmers, their families, their communities, and the risks they face from unpredictable local, national, and global conditions: fluctuating and often volatile production costs and crop prices; extreme weather exacerbated by climate change; complicated and changing farm policies; new production technologies and practices; water availability; inflation and debt; and rural community decline. Yet the future of industrial agriculture depends fundamentally on farmers’ decisions. In Defense of Farmers illuminates anew the critical role that farmers play in the future of agriculture and examines the social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities of industrial agriculture, as well as its adaptations and evolution. Contextualizing the conversations about agriculture and rural societies within the disciplines of sociology, geography, economics, and anthropology, this volume addresses specific challenges farmers face in four countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. By concentrating on countries with the most sophisticated production technologies capable of producing the largest quantities of grains, soybeans, and animal proteins in the world, this volume focuses attention on the farmers whose labors, decision-making, and risk-taking throw into relief the implications and limitations of our global industrial food system. The case studies here acknowledge the agency of farmers and offer ways forward in the direction of sustainable agriculture.

An instructive and comprehensive overview of the use of biotechnology in agriculture and food production, Biotechnology in Agriculture and Food Processing: Opportunities and Challenges discusses how biotechnology can improve the quality and productivity of agriculture and food products. It includes current topics such as GM foods, enzymes, and prod