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\"This revealing study shows how careful analysis of recent farming practices, and related cultural traditions, in communities around the Mediterranean can enhance our understanding of prehistoric and Greco-Roman societies. Includes a wealth of original interview material and data from field observation Provides original approaches to understanding past farming practices and their social contexts Offers a revealing comparative perspective on Mediterranean societies' agronomy Identifies a number of previously unrecorded climate-related contrasts in farming practices, which have important socio-economic significance Explores annual tasks, such as tillage and harvest; inter-annual land management techniques, such as rotation; and intergenerational issues, including capital accumulation \"-- Provided by publisher.

Demand for sustainably produced biomass is expected to increase with the need to provide renewable commodities, improve resource security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with COP26 commitments. Studies have demonstrated additional environmental benefits of using perennial biomass crops (PBCs), when produced appropriately, as a feedstock for the growing bioeconomy, including utilisation for bioenergy (with or without carbon capture and storage). PBCs can potentially contribute to Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (2023–27) objectives provided they are carefully integrated into farming systems and landscapes. Despite significant research and development (R&D) investment over decades in herbaceous and coppiced woody PBCs, deployment has largely stagnated due to social, economic and policy uncertainties. This paper identifies the challenges in creating policies that are acceptable to all actors. Development will need to be informed by measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of greenhouse gas emissions reductions and other environmental, economic and social metrics. It discusses interlinked issues that must be considered in the expansion of PBC production: (i) available land; (ii) yield potential; (iii) integration into farming systems; (iv) R&D requirements; (v) utilisation options; and (vi) market systems and the socio‐economic environment. It makes policy recommendations that would enable greater PBC deployment: (1) incentivise farmers and land managers through specific policy measures, including carbon pricing, to allocate their less productive and less profitable land for uses which deliver demonstrable greenhouse gas reductions; (2) enable greenhouse gas mitigation markets to develop and offer secure contracts for commercial developers of verifiable low‐carbon bioenergy and bioproducts; (3) support innovation in biomass utilisation value chains; and (4) continue long‐term, strategic R&D and education for positive environmental, economic and social sustainability impacts. Perennial biomass crops (PBCs) can potentially contribute to Common Agricultural Policy (2023–27) objectives provided they are carefully integrated into farming systems and landscapes. Despite significant research and development (R&D) investment over decades in herbaceous and coppiced woody PBCs, deployment has largely stagnated due to social, economic and policy uncertainties. This paper identifies the challenges in creating policies that are acceptable to all actors and discusses the interlinked issues: (i) available land; (ii) yield potential; (iii) integration into farming systems; (iv) R&D requirements; (v) utilisation options; and (vi) market systems and the socio‐economic environment.

Remote sensing has emerged as a new technique for collecting farmland data due to its rapid advancement, rising popularity, and application in social production practice. In order to understand and manage farmland resources in China, it is essential to account for and monitor high-standard farmland and its usage. Therefore, this work used satellite remote sensing empowered with various abilities for monitoring high-standard farmland by employing GF-2 high-resolution satellite images to identify targets and objects in Hebei and Guangdong provinces. Farmland occupation and utilization were analyzed by detecting destructions, underutilization, and overutilization, and converting farmland for other economic activities registered on a special field sheet for quantification. A statistical summary was compiled for the two provinces, and the results reveal that high-standard farmland irregularities were detected in both Hebei and Guangdong provinces. However, in Hebei province, this was due to domestic purposes, such as building home shelters and domestic factories. On a contract, the result shows that in Guangdong province, farmland was being converted for economic purposes on an industrial scale, such as high residential apartment blocks and new industrial zones, and environmental destruction. Furthermore, the results reveal that there is still a steady and continuous decline in arable land due to accelerated industrialization and population pressure, especially in the Guangdong provinces, which is a threat to national food security. The high interpretation accuracy demonstrates that high-resolution remote sensing is an effective farmland monitoring tool that can be used to advance policy formulation.

The Atlas of rural protocols in the American Midwest and the Argentine Pampas is structured along eight systems of organization: transport and infrastructure, land subdivision, agricultural production, water management, storage and maintenance, human habitation, animal management, land management. Each of these systems possesses a number of organizational types, material components, normative relationships, and spectra of performance, which become available through a manual of instructions for a Suprarural architectural environment. The research is based on a realistic-overriding ethics towards design that operates by abstracting and intensifying unexplored territorial phenomena.

The paper analyses the land use changes and subsequent impacts on local livelihoods due to land acquisition for JSW Bengal Steel plant at Salboni block of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, which was unproportionately delayed and ultimately suspended in 2014. The industrial plant acquired 4225 acres of land to set up a 10.0 mtpa (million ton per annum) integrated steel plant in the year of 2012. A stratified random sampling survey of both within and outside of project affected household (HH) was done before (2007) and after land acquisition (2012). Almost 700 HH lost their farm land, fodder farm and grazing land due to land acquisition. They spent the compensation money for unproductive purposes. The total monthly income of the family is reduced by 50%, only a selective few could manage to increase non-farm income. After losing, their farm land farmers were temporarily engaged as construction labours within the project area. Following suspension of the project perhaps, due to global recession and insufficiency of raw materials, most of these families become jobless.

\"Between 1970 and 1974 ten million Americans abandoned the city, and the commercialism, and all the inauthentic bourgeois comforts of the Eisenhower-era America of their parents. Instead, they went back to the land. It was the only time in modern history that urbanization has gone into reverse. Kate Daloz follows the dreams and ideals of a small group of back-to-the-landers to tell the story of a nationwide movement and moment. And she shows how the faltering, hopeful, but impractical impulses of that first generation sowed the seeds for the organic farming movement and the transformation of American agriculture and food tastes. In the Myrtle Hill commune and neighboring Entropy Acres, high-minded ideas of communal living and shared decision-making crash headlong into the realities of brutal Northern weather and the colossal inconvenience of having no plumbing or electricity. Nature, it turns out, is not always a generous or provident host-frosts are hard, snowfalls smother roads, and small wood fires do not heat imperfectly insulated geodesic domes. Group living turns out to be harder than expected too. Being free to do what you want and set your own rules leads to some unexpected limitations: once the group starts growing a little marijuana they can no longer call on the protection of the law, especially against a rogue member of a nearby community. For some of the group, the lifestyle is truly a saving grace; they credit it with their survival. For others, it is a prison sentence. We Are As Gods (the first line of the Whole Earth Catalog, the movement's bible) is a poignant rediscovery of a seminal moment in American culture, whose influence far outlasted the communities that took to the hills and woods in the late '60s and '70s and remains present in every farmer's market, every store selling Stonyfield products, or Keen shoes, or Patagonia sportswear. \"-- Provided by publisher.

As a result of de-collectivization and privatization, including the development of new holdings, based on private property, the dimension of types and shapes of property suffered some changes, as well as their evolvement in agricultural development. Nowadays, in the Romanian agriculture there are holdings based on private or mainly private property and holdings based on public or mainly public property. The defining cause of the current structural situation is represented by the evolution of public and private property relationship, during the post-communist period, evolution based on a confusing and incomplete legal framework, initially represented by the law of the land and its many related laws, which negatively influenced the formation and consolidation of new agricultural structures based on private property. The purpose of this study is to analyze the evolution of the relationship between public and private property in the post-communist period.

Encouraging smallholders to diversify their livelihoods has been a long-held policy objective of many governments to create resilient rural communities that can cope with seasonal variations in food production and price fluctuations in commercial markets. Due to the dynamic nature of smallholders’ livelihoods, the relative contribution of different sources to household income often remains unclear. Recent research in Indonesia used a household survey of a stratified sample of smallholders (n = 240) in eight villages (five districts) to obtain data of smallholders’ income and the relative importance of agroforestry. The research analysed income data from the same households (80%) collected in 2013, 2017 and 2020, providing longitudinal data of livelihoods and household income. Results revealed important information about the nature of Indonesia’s rural economy, whereby many smallholders received most of their income from off-farm sources (56% of income). While most smallholders still reported farming as their primary occupation, their families’ livelihoods are diverse and mainly supported by non-farm enterprises. Even the mix of farming enterprises is evolving, with agroforestry a prominent land-use and source of household income in Indonesia (29% of income), indicating that smallholders are intentionally diversifying their land-use and livelihoods. Our research found that conventional agricultural enterprises generated just 14% of household income, yet remains vital for household food security. The high proportion of off-farm income for smallholders has important implications for land management and rural development across Indonesia, as smallholders forgo intensification of their farming systems and instead opt for diversification—and at scale, creating resilient landscapes and livelihoods.

This book provides an overview of the World Bank's Eco2 cities: ecological cities as economic cities initiative. The objective of the Eco2 cities initiative is to help cities in developing countries achieve a greater degree of ecological and economic sustainability. The book is divided into three parts. Part one describes the Eco2 cities initiative framework. It describes the approach, beginning with the background and rationale. Key challenges are described, and lessons are drawn from cities that have managed to turn these challenges into opportunities. A set of four key principles is introduced. These principles are the foundation upon which the initiative is built. They are: (1) a city-based approach enabling local governments to lead a development process that takes into account their specific circumstances, including their local ecology; (2) an expanded platform for collaborative design and decision making that accomplishes sustained synergy by coordinating and aligning the actions of key stakeholders; (3) a one-system approach that enables cities to realize the benefits of integration by planning, designing, and managing the whole urban system; and (4) an investment framework that values sustainability and resiliency by incorporating and accounting for life-cycle analysis, the value of all capital assets, and a broader scope for risk assessment in decision making. Part two presents a city-based decision support system that introduces core methods and tools to help cities as they work toward applying some of the core elements and stepping stones. Part two looks into methods for collaborative design and decision making and methods to create an effective long-term framework able to help align policies and the actions of stakeholders. Part three consists of the Field Reference Guide. The guide contains background literature designed to support cities in developing more in-depth insight and fluency with the issues at two levels. It provides a city-by-city and sector-by-sector lens on urban infrastructure. The next section comprises a series of sector notes, each of which explores sector-specific issues in urban development.