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The Upper Yangtze River Basin comprises a densely-populated agricultural region with mountainous and hilly landforms. Intensive cultivation has been extended onto steep hillslopes, which constitute the principal source area for sediment production. Soil conservation on sloping arable lands is thus of utmost priority for persisting sustainable agricultural production and maintaining sound ecosystem services. Although there have been many soil conservation techniques, either promoted by the government or adopted by local farmers, the practiced area was very limited relative to the total area affected by soil erosion. This paper attempts to introduce four popular soil conservation measures on sloping arable lands in this region to enhance a broader scale of implementation, including hedgerow buffers, level trenches, sloping terraces and limited downslope tillage. These practices, although developed from local farmers’ indigenous knowledge for productive purposes, have well conformed to our contemporary understanding of soil erosion processes on sloping landscape affected by human disturbances, were of sound suitability to regional manual tillage agriculture and more trade-off-efficient on rill prevention, runoff harvest and nutrient management.

It is often said that innovations create winners and losers. All innovations are somewhat disruptive, but some have more distributed effects. We have a sense of who the winners are and how much they gain. Yet, how much do losers actually lose? Organic farmers frequently like to publicly announce that they are the losers following the commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops, yet consumers in search of non-GM products have helped increase demand for organic products, something that would not have occurred in the absence of GM crops. Are organic farmers really losers? This article lays out the argument that were it not for the commercialization of GM crop varieties in the mid-1990s, organic production and food sectors would not be at the level they enjoy today. That is, the commercialization of GM crops has made the organic industry better off than had GM crops not been commercialized. Theoretical modelling of the organic benefits is complemented by supportive market data. The article concludes that in spite of numerous vocal offerings about the adverse impacts suffered by the organic industry due to GM crop production, the organic industry has gained significantly from that which they vociferously criticize.

To achieve agricultural sustainability, basic land planning would allocate more areas for specific land uses with high ecosystem service values. However, this has always failed because of its low economic interest. Paying farmers would be effective for its implementation. To overcome previous studies’ limitation in spatial display, we developed a novel approach with a spatially explicit land use plan under payment policy. It integrates the tradeoff analysis into a traditional land use optimal allocation system. The land allocation system generates an origin land use scenario. Our method analyzes farmers’ tradeoffs in changing crops by adopting payment policy. Finally, the origin land use map is reallocated. The newly reclaimed region of Yili, China is studied as a representative area. Our tool established a tradeoff curve indicating the adoption proportion of farmers changing other land use types to clover, which is a specific crop with high ecosystem service values, at different payment prices. Areas adopting the payment policy were identified, and corresponding spatial distribution maps of land use re-allocation were generated for the tradeoff curve. Sensitivity analysis validated the robustness of our model. Results demonstrated that our method can provide more spatial and economic information for sustainable land use planning.

Biofuel plantations have been hyped as a means to reinvigorate Africa’s rural areas. Yet there is still apprehension about the negative environmental and social impacts of large-scale commercial biofuel production around rising food prices, land grabbing, ecological damage, and disruption of rural livelihoods. Given the extent of Jatropha curcas production in Ghana and Ethiopia and Castor bean (Ricinus communis) in Ethiopia, this paper presents the results of a study that assessed the socio-economic implications of industrial Jatropha plantations on local livelihoods in Ghana, and of industrial Jatropha and Castor plantations on local livelihoods in Ethiopia. This study used primary data collected from 234 households in Ghana and 165 in Ethiopia. The cultivation of Jatropha and Castor has had several important effects on local livelihoods in the study sites, most notably decreases in household landholdings due to the arrival of industrial Jatropha or Castor plantations; and the resulting changes these plantations have caused in household socio-economic status, food security, fallow periods, and fodder availability. We consider how a lack of meaningful consultation between local people, their traditional authorities and the biofuel company managers, along with shortcomings in each country’s broader land acquisition process and poor land use information, may have contributed to these overall negative effects on local livelihoods. We conclude by suggesting several ways that emerging biofuel industries could be improved from the perspective of local people and their livelihoods.

More than40%of US grain is used for energy due to the Renewable Fuel Mandate (RFS). There are no studies of the global distributional consequences of this purely domestic policy. Using micro‐level survey data, we trace the effect of the RFS on world food prices and their impact on household level consumption and wage incomes in India. We first develop a partial equilibrium model to estimate the effect of the RFS on the price of selected food commodities—rice, wheat, corn, sugar, and meat and dairy, which together provide almost70%of Indian food calories. Our model predicts that world prices for these commodities rise by 8–16%due to the RFS. We estimate the price pass‐through to domestic Indian prices and the effect of the price shock on household welfare through consumption and wage incomes. Poor rural households suffer significant welfare losses due to higher prices of consumption goods, which are regressive. However, they benefit from a rise in wage incomes, mainly because most of them are employed in agriculture. Urban households also bear the higher cost of food, but do not see a concomitant rise in wages because only a small fraction of them work in food‐related industries. Welfare losses are greater among urban households. However, more poor people in India live in villages, so rural poverty impacts are larger in magnitude. We estimate that the mandate leads to about 25 million new poor: 21 million in rural and 4 million in the urban population.

AbstractNutrient management is an important part of ensuring sustainable forest production. Essential concepts for managing site nutrients are built on the knowledge of types of soil, tree nutrient demands, and how these are impacted by silviculture, harvesting, and other management practices. Managers must clearly define forest management objectives, and how bioenergy production or carbon dioxide‐offset objectives require special consideration. Managers must examine how silviculture, harvesting, and other management practices might affect nutrient pools and availability. Soil fertility management practices are designed in response to these evaluation steps. Fertility management alternatives may include altering management practices that affect the distribution of harvested tree branches, foliage, and tops, as well as addition of fertilizers, nitrogen‐fixing plants, or wood ash. Planting on sites with pre‐existing nutrient deficiencies may require adding nutrients to obtain merchantable tree growth over the short and long term. Nutrient management principles may also be required to minimize off‐site impacts of management practices, for example, on water quality or climate change. Managers must determine what nutrients are needed on forested sites, amendment rates, and timing, and take into account the relationships among nutrients, soil, climate, and plant processes throughout the rotation. Soil and foliar analysis and the use of soil and plant bioassay tools can assist in these evaluations. Sustainable management practices require that nutrient control strategies evaluate economic and energy balances, and if necessary, modify management practices, including nutrient amendments, to ensure that they are sustainable. Examples of forest nutrient management practices are described.This article is categorized under:Bioenergy > Systems and InfrastructureEnergy and Development > Science and MaterialsEnergy and Development > Economics and PolicyEnergy and Development > Climate and Environment

The human species has evolved to dominate the biosphere: global anthropomass is now an order of magnitude greater than the mass of all wild terrestrial mammals. As a result, our dependence on harvesting the products of photosynthesis for food, animal feed, raw materials, and energy has grown to make substantial global impacts. During the past two millennia these harvests, and changes of land use due to deforestation and conversions of grasslands and wetlands, have reduced the stock of global terrestrial plant mass by as much as 45 percent, with the twentieth‐century reduction amounting to more than 15 percent. Current annual harvests of phytomass have been a significant share of the global net primary productivity (NPP, the total amount of new plant tissues created by photosynthesis). Some studies put the human appropriation of NPP (the ratio of these two variables) as high as 40 percent but the measure itself is problematic. Future population growth and improved quality of life will result in additional claims on the biosphere, but options to accommodate these demands exist without severely compromising the irreplaceable biospheric services.