Poverty and unemployment in Botswana are the major problems that the government is focusing its effort and attention on. The overall government aim is to eradicate poverty and diversify the economy away from diamond mining to create sustainable jobs. Agriculture is traditionally thought to be a...

Sclerotinia rot is a disease caused by the fungus Sclerotinina sclerotiorum which affects a wide range of crops and causes major yield and economic losses. Crop rotation is an important strategy for minimising losses. A dynamic programming (DP) model was developed to study the trade-offs between...

Taylor et al. (2001) noted that well designed rotations are fundamental to organic farming systems. Rotations help organic systems achieve a balance between crops which deplete fertility, in particular nitrogen, and soil organic matter, and crops which restore fertility. The paper discusses the...

Sclerotinia rot is a disease caused by the fungus Sclerotinina sclerotiorum which affects a wide range of crops and causes major yield and economic losses. Crop rotation is an important strategy for minimising losses. A dynamic programming (DP) model was developed to study the trade-offs between...

Taylor et al. (2001) noted that well designed rotations are fundamental to organic farming systems. Rotations help organic systems achieve a balance between crops which deplete fertility, in particular nitrogen, and soil organic matter, and crops which restore fertility. The paper discusses the...

Willingness to pay models have shown the theoretical relationships between the contingent valuation, cost of illness and the avertive behaviour approaches. In this paper, field survey data are used to compare the relationships between these three approaches and to demonstrate that contingent...

Protected areas are often the source of agricultural pests and Xishuangbanna State Nature Reserve in Yunnan is no exception. The main pest associated with the Reserve is the Asian elephant Elephas maximus which causes damage outside the Reserve to agriculture as well as in the Reserve. However,...

Ecological, evolutionary and economic issues involved in introducing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), mainly in agriculture, are discussed. The ecological and evolutionary impacts identified hamper (economic) valuation of GMOs and their biosafety regulation and creates difficulties for...

The instability of prices and the hypothesis that speculative behaviour was one of its sources has brought renewed interest in the futures markets. In this paper, we concentrate on the European wheat futures markets (feed and milling) and the CBOT’s wheat contract as a comparison. The purpose...

Provides some background on concerns about the sustainability of agriculture, outlines and discusses views about what constitutes sustainable agriculture and contrasts the sustainability of modern industrialised agriculture with that of traditional agriculture. Then the question is considered...