Feeding forages produced by early and frequent harvests may improve animal performance. This paper evaluates how harvesting regimes (HRs) in grass silage production influence optimal use of inputs and profitability in two types of Norwegian dairy farming systems: a mountain grassland farm and a...

A lot of attention in the debate on the 2014–2020 programming period of the EU CAP and rural development policy revolves around the policy's contribution to enhancing resource use efficiency, decreasing environmental impact, restoring ecosystems and how to ensure more efficient and effective...

Conservation agriculture (CA) is promoted as a promising technology to stabilize or improve crop yields in Africa and Madagascar. However, small-scale farmers face difficulties to retain soil cover, mainly because of competing uses for the biomass produced, especially to feed cattle. To explore...

Most of the hydro-economic models used for assessing the environmental impact of agricultural policies are deterministic and can only reflect uncertainties through analyses of scenarios. In this article, we propose a methodology to assess uncertainty using Monte Carlo simulations. Taking three...

In Afghanistan, where 80% of the population is rural, irrigated agriculture using surface water is an extremely important economic activity. With the advent of the New Water Law, highly localized and centuries-old agricultural water management traditions are giving way to more modern centralized...

Crop rotation is a long-standing agricultural practice whose agronomic and economic benefits are well documented. The crop rotation decision at the farm level is very complex with a myriad of factors which can ultimately impact observed net returns from the decision choice. Network models have...

Are there any economic policies able to break the vicious circle of the poverty trap in rural areas of poor countries such as Burkina Faso? To help answer this question, a detailed analysis of production systems has been used to elaborate dynamic household models. A mathematical programming...

The 2003 CAP reform considerably affects cropping patterns in European agriculture. At the same time the imperatives of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) are expected to modify irrigation decisions especially in Southern Europe where irrigated agriculture utilizes about 70–80% of total...

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...