Water And Cereals In Drylands

First Published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This topic is central to contemporary concerns for more sustainable agricultural development. This is a well-written and clear book, with excellent data, tables and illustrations, addressing issues of water use, climate change, poverty and small farmers. The authors are highly respected and complement each other's acknowledged international expertise.' Professor Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK 'This useful guide shows that there is great potential for increasing the productive capacity of smallholder farms in the drylands via a range of water management techniques, from the simple to the more complex. Providing a theoretical grounding and a practical guide, Water and cereals in the drylands will appeal to workers on-location as well as students, researchers and policymakers.' New Agriculturalist Cereals are by far the most important source of food throughout the world, either directly for human consumption or indirectly in the form of animal feed for livestock products consumed as food. With world population set to rise to nine billion by 2050, there is an urgent need to examine ways to increase cereal production. Indeed recently the future of cereal production and consumption has been complicated by rising energy prices and the economics of biofuels, which are competing for the use of cereals. One way to increase cereal production is by the more effective use of marginal dryland areas. This book reviews the potential for increased cereal production in drylands across the world, from the USA, Australia and Southern Europe to Asia and Africa. It describes how improved water conservation, water harvesting and investment options can contribute to this, and suggests policies for the more efficient use of existing natural resources in order to lessen the dependence of agriculture on further irrigation development.

This book is a ready reference on recent innovations in dryland agriculture and reinforces the understanding for its utilization to develop environmentally sustainable and profitable food production systems. It covers the basic concepts and history, components and elements, breeding and modelling efforts, and potential benefits, experiences, challenges and innovations relevant to agriculture in dryland areas around world.

This contributed volume describes management practices based on interdisciplinary and convergence science approaches from different disciplines of agricultural science to enhance the resilience of dryland agriculture. The main focus of this book is to address the current issues and trends along with future prospects and challenges in adopting salient agricultural management practices in drylands globally under a climate-change scenario. Climate change and global warming have profound repercussions on increasing frequency, severity, and duration of droughts and/or floods, which may have implications for future productivity of dryland agriculture, e.g., more water shortages or abundances and high or low runoff rates, diminished crop yields, and reduced water productivity. In past few years, many technological advancements and management strategies have been evolved to tackle the climate-induced risks of dryland agriculture considering interdisciplinary and convergence approaches that integrate knowledge from multi-disciplines. This book is an attempt to bridge the gap in literature by unraveling controversies and characteristics of dryland ecosystems under the changing climate and dealing with detailed procedures of applying the advanced practices adapted to climate change for management of dryland agriculture. This edited book is of interest to ecologists, economists, environmentalists, geologists, horticulturalists, hydrologists, soil scientists, social scientists, natural resource conservationists and policy makers dealing with dryland agriculture. This book offers a broad understanding of dryland agriculture and assists the reader to identify both the current as well as the probable future state of dryland agriculture in a global context.

Throughout history, man has, by over-use, consistently reduced the productive capacity of dry lands. This degradation of one-third of the land area of the globe is, unfortunately, increasing. In recent years, world interest has turned to the problems of pollution of the environment and the impending food shortage as world population grows explosively. Thus the attention of international and other agricultural bodies has turned to the need for preserving and developing more effectively the agricultural potential of these areas. This book provides a comprehensive review of present knowledge of the agriculture of dry lands, with special emphasis on measures for conserving their natural resources. Management practices are described which aim at optimizing productivity of rainfed and irrigated agriculture without adverse effects on sustainability. Land use in the dry regions, and its evolution throughout history is described and analysed, and the lessons to be learnt from destructive technologies are stressed. In particular, current proposals for an alternative agriculture are discussed and their justification is questioned. This is a generalist work, which specialists can also find interesting, not only in their own discipline but as a concise way of acquainting themselves with the state-of-the-art in associated fields. Increasing specialisation with each discipline using its own vocabulary leads inevitably to communication problems, and the need for multi-disciplinary teams makes inter-discipline communication indispensible.

This edited volume is devoted to the examination of the implications of the inevitable changes wrought by global change on the welfare and livelihoods of tens of millions of people who live in dryland regions. Global change is more than just climate change and the ramifications of changing trade patterns (geopolitical and economic aspects), the shift to the market economy, demographic factors (population growth, urbanization and re-settlement), receive attention here. Land use change specialists, policy makers and natural resource management agencies will find the book very useful. Chapters focus on examples that are drawn from a number of sources including previously unpublished studies on the impact of climate change, markets and economics on pastoralist and dryland farming households. The key focus is to provide readers with insights into the real world implications of change (including an analysis of the drivers of change) on these vulnerable groups within dryland societies. The role of humans as agents of these changes is canvassed. A regional analysis of the world's drylands is also performed including those in Australia, Argentina, India, North America, China, North Africa, Central Asia and Southern Africa.

Soils are neither good nor bad, but some have inherent or acquired characteristics that may or may not suit our intended use. Unsuitable characteristics are considered to be soil problems, soil constraints or soil limitations. Only twelve percent of global land is right for agricultural production without much limitation. Some soils have severe limitations for crop production. These soils are so called ‘problem soils’. Many of them do not have enough fertility to be productive; some are arid and saline; some are very sandy and dry; and some are wet and waterlogged for most of the growing season. The global demand for food, wood, fuel, fiber, medicine and other plant products for the 7.2 billion current world population has created such an immense pressure on global soil resources that even the most fertile soils are losing their productive capacity. We are being compelled to bring more and more unsuitable or marginally suitable soils under cultivation. Unless innovative and integrated soil, crop and environmental management practices are adopted for their improvement and sustainable use, further degradation is inevitable. This book, Management of Soil Problems, identifies the problems and discusses management options in a smooth and reader-friendly style. It will be useful for students and professionals of soil science, agriculture, forestry, geography and environmental sciences.