Climate forecasting has emerged as an adaptation option for agriculture to better cope with climate variability. We use a coupled climate-crop-economy modeling system to analyze the value of climate information (VOI) in Spain for the domestic agricultural sector and for international...

Over the past three decades major changes have occurred in Australia's beef industry, affecting productivity and potentially the amount of resources used and environmental impacts from production. Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach with a ‘cradle-to-farm gate’ boundary the changes...

Annual cropping systems dominate the earth's global cropland and contribute significantly to agriculture's overall impact on the environment. Ecological succession and thermodynamics provide useful frameworks for conceptualizing these systems and elucidating the mechanistic basis for their...

The annual net primary production (ANPP) of temperate grasslands and production of livestock industries is predicted to decrease in southern Australia with future climate change. By using biophysical modelling, we address productivity and profitability of grazing systems while considering...

The area under cultivation of oil palm has undergone considerable growth in Mexico, but yields are far below their potential. This is related to the low rate of adoption of new or improved technologies and practices in areas such as plantation management and farm administration. This study...

Knowledge on farm diversity provides insight into differences among farms, enables scaling from individual farm to farm population level and vice versa, and has been used in the definition of recommendation domains for introduction of novel technologies. Farm diversity can be broadly described...

Australia has one of the highest forest clearing rates in the world. Over the past 200 years, it has lost about 40% of total forest cover with consequent environmental problems such as soil and wind erosion, dryland salinity and biodiversity loss. The Australian Government has introduced a...

•We apply concepts from vulnerability and resilience to sustainable intensification in drylands.•We challenge the predominant “security-versus-intensification hypothesis”.•Some forms of intensification can increase vulnerability and are therefore unsustainable.•Agricultural intensity...

Conventional agricultural practices have often been associated with negative externalities, such as land degradation, pollution of soil and water resources, loss of biodiversity, and decreased provision of ecosystem services (ES). In response to these negative effects, the number of...

The cropping sector in Australia contributes 2.5% of national greenhouse gas emissions, not accounting for the historical loss of soil carbon. The Australian Government is developing policy initiatives targeted at farmers to encourage changes in management practices that aim to reduce emissions...