A Brief Report On Dryland Farming

Over the next forty years, global population is expected to reach nine billion people. This increase in population, combined with expected economic growth, will cause an increase in food demanded and inevitably drain the resources we use for food production. So far, agriculture has been able to respond positively to the rising demand for crop and livestock products. However, farmers are already faced with many new challenges associated with feeding an expanding global population. Farmers must now meet strict new emissions requirements and produce more food on fewer acres while minimizing their environmental footprint. The demand for food is expected to grow substantially in the next couple decades. Some of the factors affecting an increase in food demands are population growth, rising incomes of individuals, food supply factors, and biofuels.

While the Midwest may be “the breadbasket of the United States,” the Central Valley of California is the entire rest of the Thanksgiving meal on the table for the country. With its fertile soil, Mediterranean climate, and expansive flat land, the Central Valley produces more than 250 different crops that produce more than $20 billion annually, meaning it provides over half the produce grown in the United States. Recent droughts, recession, and growing urbanization in California have changed the conversation around farming practices and the large role family farms still play in the state. Popular opinions circulating the urban areas were calling into question the sacrifices farms were making throughout the drought, believing they got a

Annotated Bibliography Pennick, Edward ““Jerry””. "The Struggle for Control of America's Production Agriculture System and Its Impact on African American Farmers." Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 5, no. 1 (2011): 113-20. doi:10.2979/racethmulglocon.5.1.113. The South African agriculture, mainly the smallholders have been impacted negatively by the advancement of technology in this industry. There have been arguments about the best suitable type of food and fiber for not only Americans, but the whole world. As population increased, both corporate and sustainable agriculture were introduced to regulate the future of agriculture. Although a large number of African Americans in southern rural area of America counted on agriculture

During the year of following WWl, the demand for farming had increased greatly. Many farms in the midwest continued to expand to meet the demand, tilling up prairie grasslands to make new fields for crops. After the demand was over, the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act )authorized the federal government to try and raise farm prices and force farmers to plant less (Foner 816). This worked to a point and forced many to leave their farms and move to the cities or to the west coast. The problem was during the early 1930’s the country was under a great drought, causing this now exposed soil to dry up even faster and begin to blow around. The winds would often blow for days, carrying soil particles as far east as New York City. Families that remained

If you’re looking for things to do in Canton, TX this fall, look no further than YesterLand Farm. YesterLand Farm, just 10 miles away from Canton’s famous First Monday Trade Days, started out as a choose-and-cut Christmas tree farm in 2000 but over the years has become a family-friendly playground that is a throwback to the good old days when parents and kids could have fun together in a safe, wholesome atmosphere.

Today, in the United States, farmers and ranchers produce a wide variety of commodities for food, fuel, and fiber in response to markets. These farmers understand and recognize the significance of managing their soil as well as their plant productivity. America’s farmers are true professionals because crop production is a very complex business.

With the drought targeting the agricultural community in California, many farmers are starting to research more ways on how to become drought efficient. The two common methods of farming are organic and conventional. Different farming methods have their own way on affecting the public health and the environment through herbicides and pesticides. Some of the benefits of organic technologies are higher soil organic matter and nitrogen, lower fossil energy inputs, and conservation of soil moisture and water resources (Pimentel and Hepperly 2008). Conventional farming can be more ecological by adapting some of the organic technologies. The objective of this literature review is to better understand the problems that arise from being in a drought, the water supply, and how farmers are adapting to the change in climate.

Stichler and Livingston (1999) previously stated that a major advantage of winter wheat compared with other small grain species that could be grown for winter forage production is its excellent tolerance to abiotic stresses including cold and drought. In addition, wheat forage has relatively high nutritive values including high protein, energy values, minerals, and low fiber concentrations, compared with barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), oat (Avena sativa L.), and rye (Secale cereale L.) forages. Generally, forage yield of winter wheat from late November to early March is more consistent and productive than that of the other species (Denman and Arnold, 1970; Watson et al., 1993). Bockus et al. (2001) and Watson et al. (1993) mentioned that susceptibility of winter wheat to Hessian fly [Mayetiola destructor (Say)], leaf rust (incited by Puccinia triticina), and several virus diseases could be obstacles for successful winter forage production, especially in early planted regions.

In the past few years Australia’s sunflowers production has especially grown. The sunflowers production has been able to create one to two million tonnes of oilseed crops each year. There are two major areas for sunflower production in Australia which are Queensland and New South Wales. There is also a growing industry growing in Western Australia. To create a full successful sunflower farm you need multiple machinery and equipment. There are nine peace’s of machinery and equipment that are needed for the sunflower which is Subsoiling, Field cultivator, Planter, No-till planter, Fertilizer spreader, Sprayer, Combine, Grain cart and Grain truck. Weeds affect sunflowers by slowing the growth rate down by stealing all of the sunflowers nutrients. The more weeds there are the slower the sunflower will grow. The weeds also will affect how much water the sunflower will get so it will affect the health of the plant. Weeds can cause the death of the flower. With the incising demand for sunflower, farmers have used more fertiliser to inhales the sunflower growth. The famers have used

Desertification is a term few people recognize and even fewer are concerned about. This paper will cover what desertification is along with why it is a global crisis, what the root causes of desertification are, what can be done to reverse the harm full desertification process, it will also cover how farmers can work together to prevent future desertification.

Agriculture is one of the major sector becoming vulnerable to climate-change. Increased incidences of abiotic and biotic stresses are likely to cause serious negative impact on crop production. Abiotic stress is defined as the negative impact of non-living factors on the living organisms in a specific environment. The non-living variable must influence the environment beyond its normal range of variation to adversely affect the performance or individual organism in a significant way. This leads to decrease in the productivity by more than 50% in major crop plants which are growing word wide (Bray et al., 2000). Increased water stress, reduction in rainfall and increased air temperature are the major reasons for yield decline in wheat and paddy crops in many parts of South Asia. The average increase in temperature per decade is measured to be 0.28 ºC over land and 0.12 ºC over ocean and predicted that it is likely to rise further to a maximum of 2.5 ºC by 2050 and 5.8 ºC by 2100 (Jones et al., 1999; Grover et al., 2011). The principal abiotic stresses in India are drought or soil moisture stress, high temperatures, soil salinity/alkalinity, low pH and metal toxicity stresses that affect nearly two-thirds area forming parts of the arid and semi arid eco systems (Grover et al., 2011).

The human population is projected to reach 10 billion by 2050. This growth will demand almost twice of currently globally produced agricultural products. However, long periods of intensive agriculture have resulted in soil nutrient depletion, salinity accumulation, and acidification of agricultural soils, resulting in an overall reduction of the soil’s ability to support a growing population (Godfray et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2013, Tillman et al 2011, Ray et al 2013). Despite the fact that soil is one of the mankind’s most essential and threatened resources, supporting food production, wildlife biodiversity, and playing a central role in biogeochemical cycling (Carpenter et al., 2009). Currently, one of the main practices applied to

For along time smallholder agricultural systems has depended on inorganic fertilizers to supply the nitrogen required for crop growth as well as maintaining or slowing the rate of carbon loss. However, in other cases especially in Nitrogen limited environment of cereal based cropping systems (such as Mzimba district), fertilizer additions can actually enhance soil carbon loss (Snapp and Pound, 2008). The continued use of inorganic fertilizers has reduced soil carbon in the district and hence reduced the water holding capacity of the soil. Sustainable use of fertilizers is accompanied by the availability of residues in the soil however an emerging challenge is that recently there has been a competing demand for residues between crops and livestock. The clearing of land in search for settlement land and opening of new farming land has led to reduced forest areas and/or grasslands where livestock used to graze and consequently, they depend solely on crop residues. This competition reduces the availability of residues to replenish soil organic matter and in the process the resilience of the agricultural systems. The outcome of the loss of resilience if increased reduced soil fertility and eventually low productivity.

Sorghum bicolor is an essential staple cereal crop in dryland regions of the world and it has adapted to a wide range of climatic environments with intraspecific phenotypic variation across clines for flowering time, plant architecture and inflorescence architecture (Thurber et al. 2013; Morris et al. 2013; Lasky et al. 2015; Zhang et al. 2015). For instance, in the West African region, climatic gradient occurs from mangrove swamplands and humid tropical rain forest in the coastal regions of Atlantic ocean in the south to arid environments up north at the edge of the Sahara desert. Sorghum phenotypic variation varies along this climatic gradient. Open panicle sorghum types are predominant in the humid regions while semi-compact to compact panicle types are predominant in the semi-arid and arid regions. The diversity of climatic zones often vary from country to country in the region. The Nigerian geographical landscape is divided into about 8 agroclimatic zones based on precipitation pattern. Sorghum is a major cereal in the northern regions of Nigeria, which

These are some images which will describe the crop cultivation over here in a more better way-: