Protection and management of intellectual property rights over unique crop genetic resources, biodiversity, new cultivars in crops and unique products from crops attains significance in the back drops of globalisation and trade liberalisation. Members of WTO, including India are taking earnest efforts to protect the sovereign rights over crop genetic resources and biodiversity by enacting specific Acts. A deep knowledge about these Acts and their implications is essential for achieving their specific goals.

A soil survey and mapping program financed by the municipality of Gazi located on the north–central part of Crete was carried out. The studied area is characterized by a moist meso-Mediterranean climate and different degrees of land degradation from human activities. Surface soil horizons are eroded, resulting in fertility decline for olive trees, the dominant crop. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture classification, the soils at higher altitudes are classified as Entisols xerorthents and those at lower altitudes as E. xerofluvents.

Policy-makers consider participatory reforestation and forest resource management to be the key to reducing the problems of deforestation and forest degradation. In this regard, the government of Ghana introduced a modified taungya system as a mechanism to restore degraded forest reserves under the National Forest Plantation Development Programme to allow landless farmers access to land for temporary crop production and secured tree tenure rights.

Understanding the complexity of agricultural systems requires insight into the human–environment interactions. In this paper we used survey data to analyze land system change and its relation to farmer’s attitudes in a typical agricultural region of Northeast China, focusing on land tenure, crop choice and intensification. Our survey shows that land transfer was fairly common across the study area: average farmland acreage per household almost doubled from 1.3ha by early 1980s to 2.6ha by early 2010s, especially due to urban migration of farmers.

Why do many smallholder farmers fail to adopt improved land management practices which can improve yields and incomes? The reason is not always because these practices are uneconomical but sometimes it is because resource poverty prevents farmers from taking advantage of yield and income enhancing agricultural practices. In this study we examine the relative merits of using a carbon payment scheme compared to a subsidy policy to help reduce the cost of specific land management practices with productivity and ecosystem benefits such as carbon sequestration.

Amazon ecosystem degradation profoundly impacts life supporting processes of global importance such as climate regulation, as well as local conditions for livelihoods. In Peru's highland jungle, an expanding deforestation front of forest conversion to agriculture has vastly transformed the landscape. Small–scale farming, the main driver of forest degradation, and consequently household natural resource management affect ecosystem functionality. To investigate farmers' attitudes and priorities to services provided by the ecosystems (ES) we interviewed 51 farmers, both local and colonists.

The pastoral resources in eastern Sudan are changing under the combined impact of increasing anthropogenic activities such as clearance of natural vegetation and the effect of state policies that favour crop farming against pastoralism. Remotely sensed data are used to detect spatial and temporal changes from 1979 to 2009 in the land use/land cover (LULC) across three study sites. Areas of natural vegetation have been reduced from 26.1% in 1979 to 12.6% in 1999 and further to 9.4% in 2007. The majority of this reduction went into agricultural land.

This paper reviews the constraints and challenges of paddy farming in Taiwan. Based on those evidences, a set of eco-friendly rice farming practices raised by SRI principles are proposed from exploratory SRI trials conducted in Taiwan.

Research studies aimed at integrating socio-economic and geo-bio-physical factors are increasingly being used in order to improve our understanding of the causes and effects of land-use change and to support sustainable landscape development. In line with such approaches, the study reported in this paper addresses land-use change and its drivers in the peripheral area of the Pyrenees National Park (PNP), France. The focus is land-use change on private farmland currently utilised by the farmers.

The objective of this paper is to contribute to progress in the choices of strategies for further development of goat farming in the 21st century. During the last 20 years, the number of goats around the world increased (by about 60%) not only in the countries with low income (75%) but also in those with high (20%) or intermediate (25%) income.

Cotton is an important cash crop and a means of survival for Zimbabwe’s smallholder farmers who are located in the semi-arid areas. However, it is plagued by a wide variety of pests. The cotton industry in Zimbabwe came up with sustainable pest management strategies which include within the season rotation of bollworm pesticides, a closed season and acaricide rotation scheme. The land reform programme brought new players in the cotton industry and it was critical to determine their knowledge on the pest management strategies.

SUMMARYPoor households in Cameroon rely on trees and tree-based products like the bark of Prunus africana (Hook.f.) Kalman (Rosaceae) (henceforth called Prunus) that are harvested from the wild. Due to unsustainable bark harvesting practices, the European Union, which is Cameroon's main market for Prunus bark, banned its importation. To reduce pressure on existing natural stock, research and development organizations introduced innovations to encourage farmers to plant Prunus trees.