Assessment of Hydroplanting Techniques and Herbicide Tolerance of Two Native Hawaiian Cjroundcovers with Roadside Re-vegetation Potential

Roadside re-vegetation utilizing native groundcovers is a new initiative in Hawai‘i. To develop establishment and maintenance protocols, large-scale propagation and selective weed control techniques for potential species need to be tested. This study evaluated hydroplanting techniques and screened pre- and post-emergence herbicides for establishing Fimbristylis cymosa and Sporobolus virginicus. Hydroplanting trials indicate that F. cymosa can be efficiently established through hydroseeding while S. virginicus can he hydromulched using auxin treated apical cuttings. Oxadiazon and oryzalin can be safely used in transplanted F. cymosa plugs but not seedlings. Fluazifop-p-butyl and aminopyralid can be safely applied in plants > 28 days old while sulfosulfuron should only be spot sprayed. For S. virginicus, oxadiazon, oxyfluorfen, sulfosulfuron and aminopyralid can be used for transplanted plugs while carfentrazone + MCPA + mecoprop + dicamba and triclopyr should only he spot sprayed. Information gathered from the study has been incorporated into establishment protocols for the two species

Achieving sustainable irrigation water withdrawals: global impacts on food security and land use

Unsustainable water use challenges the capacity of water resources to ensure food security and continued growth of the economy. Adaptation policies targeting future water security can easily overlook its interaction with other sustainability metrics and unanticipated local responses to the larger-scale policy interventions. Using a global partial equilibrium grid-resolving model SIMPLE-G, and coupling it with the global Water Balance Model, we simulate the consequences of reducing unsustainable irrigation for food security, land use change, and terrestrial carbon. A variety of future (2050) scenarios are considered that interact irrigation productivity with two policy interventions— inter-basin water transfers and international commodity market integration. We find that pursuing sustainable irrigation may erode other development and environmental goals due to higher food prices and cropland expansion. This results in over 800 000 more undernourished people and 0.87 GtC additional emissions. Faster total factor productivity growth in irrigated sectors will encourage more aggressive irrigation water use in the basins where irrigation vulnerability is expected to be reduced by inter-basin water transfer. By allowing for a systematic comparison of these alternative adaptations to future irrigation vulnerability, the global gridded modeling approach offers unique insights into the multiscale nature of the water scarcity challenge

Global Drivers of Land and Water Sustainability Stresses at Mid-century

We quantify the local stresses related to land, water and nitrate leaching (spatially resolved at ~10km x 10km cells) across the continental U.S. arising from expansion and intensification of agriculture between the present and 2050. The stresses are decomposed into those due to population and income growth, climate change, biofuel demands and productivity improvements – both in the U.S. and abroad. We also highlight how these local stresses depend on local climate, soils, nitrogen applications and irrigation practices and identify the tradeoffs associated with achieving individual sustainability objectives. For example, restricting irrigation expansion puts added pressure on non-irrigated cropland expansion and intensification of production in the remaining cropped areas. The tradeoffs, and in some cases synergies, between achieving environmental, food security and farm income objectives are explored

Market-Mediated Effects: What Are they? And why are They Important for Geospatial Analysis of Sustainability Policies

Market-mediated effects can mitigate or amplify the intended effects of sustainability policies. They can also have unintended consequences, including inducing new sustainability stresses or threatening food security. It is important to understand these effects when designing sustainability policies. This paper provides prominent examples of market-mediated effects of a variety of sustainability policies in the food, energy, land and water nexus. This paper reviews the empirical evidence on market-mediated impacts of economic policies generally and then provides a review of recent geospatial modeling aimed at capturing these impacts in the context of local and regional land and water sustainability policies. The paper also discusses the challenges of designing sustainability policies that are effective in the face of market-mediated effects

Heat stress on agricultural workers exacerbates crop impacts of climate change

The direct impacts of climate change on crop yields and human health are individually well-studied, but the interaction between the two have received little attention. Here we analyze the consequences of global warming for agricultural workers and the crops they cultivate using a global economic model (GTAP) with explicit treatment of the physiological impacts of heat stress on humans' ability to work. Based on two metrics of heat stress and two labor functions, combined with a meta-analysis of crop yields, we provide an analysis of climate, impacts both on agricultural labor force, as well as on staple crop yields, thereby accounting for the interacting effect of climate change on both land and labor. Here we analyze the two sets of impacts on staple crops, while also expanding the labor impacts to highlight the potential importance on non-staple crops. We find, worldwide, labor and yield impacts within staple grains are equally important at +3 ∘C warming, relative to the 1986–2005 baseline. Furthermore, the widely overlooked labor impacts are dominant in two of the most vulnerable regions: sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In those regions, heat stress with 3 ∘C global warming could reduce labor capacity in agriculture by 30%–50%, increasing food prices and requiring much higher levels of employment in the farm sector. The global welfare loss at this level of warming could reach $136 billion, with crop prices rising by 5%, relative to baseline

Improving information flow on tree farming policies on private land through the radio School On The Air program

Improving information flow in a particular knowledge system helps a project achieve its goals and objectives. Inevitably, information could make the participation of all project stakeholders possible. One of the research projects of ACIAR on smallholder tree farming in Leyte, the Philippines, is the Radio DYAC’s School on the Air (SOA) program on tree farming policies on private land. This program seeks to improve people’s knowledge and awareness − particularly the smallholder farmers on government policies related to tree registration, harvesting, transport and marketing. It also aims to inform private landowners and other stakeholders on tree growing, educate them to improve their understanding on tree farming policies, and motivate the tree farmers to register their trees and adopt related tree farming policies. Since this was a collaborative project, the local government units in the three purposively chosen project sites of ACIAR (Hindang, Bato and Isabel) provided the transportation expenses of their farmer-graduates during the SOA graduation. The Development Communication students of the Visayas State University (VSU) also produced the SOA’s dramatized spots and jingle. For the research component using paired samples test on means, a highly significant difference (

Agricultural R&D investments in Brazil: global responses and local spillovers.

Abstract: Brazil has made significant investments in public agricultural research and development (R&D) over the past 50 years. This policy priority has allowed the country to achieve high levels of total factor productivity (TFP) growth, especially in the past two decades. These investments have benefitted consumers, both in Brazil and worldwide. Brazil had not fully recovered from a recent economic recession (mid-2014 to 2016) when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the global economy. Before COVID-19 public agricultural R&D expenditures in Brazil had already declined compared to its 2000-2017 levels. The fiscal deterioration in the wake of this pandemic could further jeopardize Brazil?s capacity to invest in agricultural R&D. This paper explores the potential consequences of such a slowdown in public agricultural R&D expenditures in Brazil, and hence on productivity growth rates, land use, agricultural output, yields, and food prices at both the national and global levels over the 2017?2050 horizon.Virtual Conference

Analysis of the nexus between population, water resources and Global Food Security highlights significance of governance and research investments and policy priorities

BACKGROUND: Analyses of sensitivity of Global Food Security (GFS) score to a key set of supply or demand factors often suggest population and water supply as being the most critical and on which policies tend to focus. To explore other policy options, we characterised the nexus between GFS and a set of supply or demand factors including defining including population, agricultural and industrial water-use, agricultural publications (as a surrogate for investment in agricultural research and development [R&D]), and corruption perception index (CPI), to reveal opportunities for attaining enduring GFS. RESULTS: We found that despite being the primary driver of demand for food, population showed no significant correlation with GFS scores. Similarly agricultural water-use was poorly correlated with GFS scores, except in countries where evaporation exceeds precipitation and irrigation is significant. However, GFS had a strong positive association with industrial water-use as a surrogate for overall industrialisation. Recent expansions in cultivated land area failed to yield concomitant improvements in GFS score since such expansions have been mostly into marginal lands with low productivity and also barely compensated for lands retired from cropping in several developed economies. However, GFS was positively associated with agricultural R&D investments, as it was with the CPI scores. The apparent and relative strengths of these drivers on GFS outcome amongst countries were in the order: industrial water-use ˜ publication rate ˜ corruption perception > agricultural water-use > population. CONCLUSIONS: We concluded by suggesting that to enshrine enduring food security, policies should prioritise (1) increased R&D investments that address farmer needs, and (2) governance mechanisms that promote accountability in both research and production value chains. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Yield gap analyses to estimate attainable bovine milk yields and evaluate options to increase production in Ethiopia and India

Livestock provides an important source of income and nourishment for around one billion rural households worldwide. Demand for livestock food products is increasing, especially in developing countries, and there are opportunities to increase production to meet local demand and increase farm incomes. Estimating the scale of livestock yield gaps and better understanding factors limiting current production will help to define the technological and investment needs in each livestock sector. The aim of this paper is to quantify livestock yield gaps and evaluate opportunities to increase dairy production in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, using case studies from Ethiopia and India. We combined three different methods in our approach. Benchmarking and a frontier analysis were used to estimate attainable milk yields based on survey data. Household modelling was then used to simulate the effects of various interventions on dairy production and income. We tested interventions based on improved livestock nutrition and genetics in the extensive lowland grazing zone and highland mixed crop-livestock zones of Ethiopia, and the intensive irrigated and rainfed zones of India. Our analyses indicate that there are considerable yield gaps for dairy production in both countries, and opportunities to increase production using the interventions tested. In some cases, combined interventions could increase production past currently attainable livestock yields