Soils, Land and Food: Managing the Land During the Twenty-First Century

ISBN-13: 9780521527590 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 258 str.

Alan Wild

Opis

A major challenge of the twenty-first century is to ensure sufficient global food production to cope with the burgeoning world population. This book follows the development of techniques of land management and discusses reasons why some agricultural projects have succeeded while others have failed. Alan Wild shows how surveying and protecting soils before new land is brought into cultivation, raising soil fertility, increasing inputs, and improving economic conditions all help to increase food production. He emphasizes the need for both economic change and technological intervention in developing countries where, in many cases, food production will need to more than double in the next fifty years.

Recenzje

'Soils, Land and Food is worthy and well informed … make library acquisition requests for it, and include it on student reading lists! It should also be purchased as an invaluable source of sound information, with its rich, wide-ranging list of references. The scope of the book is indeed impressive … always accessible to an academic reader from another specialty …' European Journal of Soil Science

Spis treści

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Managing land for food production in the twenty-first century: an outline; 2. Natural resources for sustainable development; 3. The development of agriculture and systems of land management; 4. Maintaining and improving soil fertility; 5. Land degradation and its control; 6. Raising yields: use of fertilisers; 7. Raising yields: water for rainfed crops and irrigation; 8. Managing change for land use; 9. Increasing and sustaining agricultural production; 10. Increasing agricultural production: examples of Africa, India and China; 11. Prospects, uncertainties and summary; References; Index.