Decreased wheat production in the USA from climate change driven by yield losses rather than crop abandonment

An increase in global average surface temperature over the 21st century will affect food production. There is still uncertainty if the source of the production losses caused by climate change could be driven either by lower yield or reduced area harvested. We use county-level production data on winter wheat coupled with fine-scale weather outcomes between 1981-2007 to examine the impact of climate change on winter wheat production in Kansas. We decompose the total impact of weather variables through both the yield and harvested acreage channels. We find that an insignificant portion—both in terms of magnitude and statistical significance—of the production losses are due to reduced harvested acres (i.e., crop abandonment). The proportion harvested only account for 14.88% and 21.71% of the total damages under RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 and neither effect is statistically significant. An implication of this result implies that studies that only examine climate impacts on harvested yields are not significantly underestimating the climate change impacts on production

A Tool for Biotechnological Advancement 1

Bioinformatics has been a useful tool for the advancement and enhancement of biotechnology in recent times with its application in various fields. Bioinformatics has thereby helped invent useful products and create solutions to problems in aspects including utilization of the genome attributes of various living organisms to acquire a better understanding of their biology. It has been used to understand the biology of pathogenic microorganism’s product developments such as reverse vaccinology, drug discovery, personalized medicine, waste clean-up, climate change, and crop improvement. We highlight, in the section, some of the bioinformatics components of biotechnology that are used for translational research in the life sciences

Agribusiness Model in Africa: A Case Study of Zambeef Products PLC

Zambeef is one of the largest integrated agribusinesses in Zambia with operations in other West African countries and annual gross revenues of approximately $255 million USD. Its group strategy is to increase efficiency and capacity in primary production and expand the retail and wholesale distribution channels to ultimately increase market share. Zambeef’s success lies in the vertical integration of its activities from primary production to the end user through extensive retail networks. The company’s vertical business model has made the group prominent and it is one of the few African companies listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange

Marginal cost of carbon sequestration through forest afforestation of agricultural land in the southeastern United States

One tool to mitigate climate change is to sequester carbon through changes in land use. The purpose of this study is to analyze the cost-effectiveness of carbon sequestration through afforestation of cropland via the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the United States. We use the correlated random effects (CRE) probit model to estimate the impact of an increase in the CRP rental payments on land use transitions between cropland and forest. Our estimates are used to simulate land use change and carbon sequestration supply curves over different time horizons. Increasing the CRP rent to reflect the social cost of carbon of $154/tonne of carbon increases annual carbon sequestered by 7.42 million tonnes, 23.58 million tonnes, and 34.96 million tonnes over 1, 5, and 10-year horizons

Economic Analysis of Sorghum Silage Potential for Dairy Industry in the Texas High Plains

The objective is to evaluate the economic feasibility and potential water savings to a dairy of replacing corn silage with BMR sorghum silage; and to estimate the potential economic benefits and water savings (current & future) to the region from adoption of this practice. Economic analysis was conducted for different scenarios to estimate irrigated sorghum silage potential in the Texas High Plains to meet the feed requirements of ever growing dairy industry. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted to know the effects of yield on the amount of water that will be saved, feed requirement, acreage to cultivate and cost of production. The cost of production for corn silage is higher than the cost for sorghum silage. More acreage, irrigation water and feed requirement will be needed if sorghum silage is used to replace 100% of the corn silage needed to feed the dairy cow inventory unless there is an increment in yield per acre of sorghum silage between 24 -26 tons per acre. More water can also be saved if the yield per acre of dryland sorghum silage can be increased substantially so that the effect of cost of production can be reduced in relation to the high number of dryland sorghum acreage needed to meet the feed requirement through irrigated sorghum-dryland combination