This study investigates how sustainability and its inherent values figure into farmers' discourse, i.e., how farmers and members of farming communities talk about sustainability. We conducted qualitative interviews of various individuals in a single Iowa community to determine whether the visions guiding their land management choices resembled at all the ideals of a sustainable agriculture. Using Kenneth Burke's concepts of identification and division, we rhetorically analyzed the interview transcripts.

India has an estimated area of 129 million ha of wasteland, which can be used for providing sustainable livelihood for millions of rural unemployed. An evaluation of enhancing income and employment generation and environmental externalities due to plantations on wastelands through cooperatives and self-help groups was done. The development process was set up in leased degraded lands in three north Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The capacity building processes like savings and micro-enterprise skills empowered resource-poor farmers.

Italy has always had a long dramatic history of extreme events such as landslides, flooding, land degradation and drought. Much has been done in terms of prevention and monitoring but still there is much left to do, in particular introducing innovative alert systems based on the integration of real‐time weather forecasting with national alert and protection systems.

BACKGROUND: Recent evidence indicates that some populations of European corn borer (ECB), Ostrinia nubilalis (Hübner), have declined to historic lows owing to widespread adoption of Bt corn hybrids. To understand current ECB populations in Pennsylvania field corn, the authors assessed larval damage in Bt and non‐Bt corn hybrids at 29 sites over 3 years. The influence of Bt adoption rates, land cover types and moth activity on levels of ECB damage was also considered.

Simple and widely adopted sustainable soil management (SSM) practices, especially improvements in the management and quality of farmyard manure (FYM), have enabled many thousands of small-scale farmers in the Middle Hills of Nepal to increase organic matter in their soils. This has been achieved without increases in livestock numbers or in the quantity of manure available. The organic matter contents have increased in all of five time series of on-farm topsoil monitoring over periods of one to three years, at rates varying from 2% to 27%.

Since the early 1980s, China has initiated a series of property rights reforms in the collectively owned forest area to motivate farmers in forest management. Assessment of farmers' behaviors in response to the reforms would be useful when policy adjustments are considered. This paper investigated farmers' participation and investment using labor and money input in forest management as indicators. The data were collected in Tonggu County in southern China.

China is the most populated country in the world with slightly more than half of the population is still living in rural areas. In the past couple of decades, rapid urbanization and industrialization have significantly changed the land use/land cover (LULC) pattern in rural areas, particularly those around the big cities in eastern China. Shandong Peninsula, a traditional agriculture area, also has witnessed rapid urbanization and industrialization.

This research analyzes the adoption patterns among cotton farmers for remote sensing, yield monitors, soil testing, soil electrical conductivity, and other precision agriculture technologies using a Multiple Indicator Multiple Causation regression model. Adoption patterns are analyzed using principle component analysis to determine natural technology groupings. Identified bundles are regressed on farm structure and operator characteristics.

In response to climate change, research is being undertaken to understand the on-farm greenhouse gas emissions and water use for agricultural systems and investigate options farmers may have for mitigating or offsetting emissions. In the present study, a life cycle assessment framework is used to determine on-farm GHG emissions and water use, and the overall 'cradle-to-farm gate' GHG emissions and water use attributed to beef production.