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A study was conducted to find out the yield gap, adoption pattern, determinants of adoption and constraints in adoption of soybean production technologies. The primary data was collected from 30 farmers selected on the basis of yield levels, as high, moderate and low in the Northern Hill Region agro-climatic zone of Madhya Pradesh. The study revealed that at overall yield level gap-I, II, and III were found to be 47.51%, 18.52 and 59.22%, respectively. More than 90% of respondents were not adopting land levelling, irrigation management, plant protection measures, seed treatment, and nutrient management due to various constraints such as lack of capital, high cost, lack of knowledge etc. Multiple regression analysis showed positive and significant impact of education on adoption of soybean production technologies. The model fitted was found to be bets fit with R2 60%.

With the decline in pineapple and sugar cane, the coffee industry has increased its importance in Hawaii's agriculture. Organic Kona coffee production is a relatively new commercial endeavor. Still plagued with technical production problems such as insect and weed control, organic Kona coffee is viewed as appealing to the organic food movement while commanding a higher price than conventional Kona coffee. The primary objective of this study is to compare the efficiency, profitability, and environmental impacts of organic Kona coffee production with conventional Kona coffee production. The optimal control theorem is applied and within the framework of environmental resource economics, organic farming is modeled as a sustainable production system with positive environmental externality. The conventional farming system is also modeled with negative environmental externality. Total welfare is calculated for each model and the conditions under which both welfare values are equal are examined. This comparison also focuses on the quantitative analysis of efficiency. Data collection involved interviewing 23 organic and 42 conventional Kona coffee farmers. According to the SPF (stochastic production frontier) analysis, the mean efficiency is 0.5775 for organic Kona coffee farming and 0.4696 for conventional Kona coffee farming. Fully efficient farms exist in both farming systems which suggests that other Kona coffee farms can increase their productivity. For the Kona coffee belt, the allocation of organic and conventional Kona coffee farms is important not only for profitability but also for examining environmental effects. The optimal control model applies the MCDM (multi-criteria decision making) approach which harmonizes net returns with environmental goals. Ensuing analysis determines the optimal proportion of organic and conventional Kona coffee farming fields as 0.25 to 0.75 in terms of optimizing community benefits or regional welfare. This optimization also requires a reduction in chemical inputs used in conventional farming as well as an increase in efficiency for both farming systems. The sensitivity analysis suggests that the chemical inputs reduction strategy (the Lagrange multiplier is -0.6855) has a larger impact in increasing regional welfare than the net returns increase strategy (-0.3145).

Soybeans are one of the most valuable crops in the world and are characterized by their multi-purpose uses: food, feed, fuel and other industrial usages such as paint, inks, and plastics. Out of 183.9 million tons of world supply/demand of soybeans in 2001-03 year, about 10% of them were directly consumed as food (5.9%) or feed (3.8%) but 84.2% of them were crushed into soyoil and soymeal. Soyoil is mainly processed to vegetable oil for human consumption and recently used as a biodiesel feedstock. Soymeal is used not only as feed for livestock (especially for pork and poultry due to its low fiber level) and aquaculture, but also as a good source of protein for the human diet in a variety of forms in different cultures. This paper analyzes the relationship of the demand for soybeans with economy at country and international levels. We use the county level domestic demand quantities with GDP data and apply an error correction mechanism (ECM) to estimate the long-term elasticities of demand for soybeans in the market/economy. Using the estimated long-term elasticities, the demands for soybeans are projected through 2030.

In 2007, the National Soybean Research Laboratory in collaboration with the Iowa Agricultural Statistical Service conducted a survey of the specialty soybean and corn activities in the State for the 2006 crop year. Out of 55,879 corn and soybean farmers in Iowa, 5,000 farmers were randomly selected and 2,369 farmers, responded, for a response rate of 47.4%. A key objective of the survey was to better understand, and then assess the state of differentiated or enhanced soybean and corn production in Iowa. The goal is to help farmers capture more value.

In 2007, the National Soybean Research Laboratory in collaboration with the Iowa Agricultural Statistical Service conducted a survey of the specialty soybean and corn activities in the State for the 2006 crop year. Out of 55,879 corn and soybean farmers in Iowa, 5,000 farmers were randomly selected and 2,369 farmers, responded, for a response rate of 47.4%. A key objective of the survey was to better understand, and then assess the state of differentiated or enhanced soybean and corn production in Iowa. The goal is to help farmers capture more value. This report is chiefly about soybean specialty crops, but a few points of comparison with corn specialty crops will be of interest. There is a companion report chiefly about corn that can be downloaded at the ageconsearch website.

Advanced colorectal cancer harbors extensive intratumor heterogeneity shaped by neutral evolution; however, intratumor heterogeneity in colorectal precancerous lesions has been poorly studied. We perform multiregion whole-exome sequencing on ten early colorectal tumors, which contained adenoma and carcinoma in situ. By comparing with sequencing data from advanced colorectal tumors, we show that the early tumors accumulate a higher proportion of subclonal driver mutations than the advanced tumors, which is highlighted by subclonal mutations in KRAS and APC . We also demonstrate that variant allele frequencies of subclonal mutations tend to be higher in early tumors, suggesting that the subclonal mutations are subject to selective sweep in early tumorigenesis while neutral evolution is dominant in advanced ones. This study establishes that the evolutionary principle underlying intratumor heterogeneity shifts from Darwinian to neutral evolution during colorectal tumor progression. Advanced colorectal cancers are characterised by intra-tumour heterogeneity dictated by neutral evolution. Here the authors analyse early colorectal tumours by whole-exome sequencing and find that Darwinian evolution determines the fate of early lesions in colorectal adenoma and carcinoma in situ.