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How and why do we think about food, taste it, and cook it? While much has been written about the concept of terroir as it relates to wine, in this vibrant, personal book, Amy Trubek, a pioneering voice in the new culinary revolution, expands the concept of terroir beyond wine and into cuisine and culture more broadly. Bringing together lively stories of people farming, cooking, and eating, she focuses on a series of examples ranging from shagbark hickory nuts in Wisconsin and maple syrup in Vermont to wines from northern California. She explains how the complex concepts of terroir and goût de terroir are instrumental to France's food and wine culture and then explores the multifaceted connections between taste and place in both cuisine and agriculture in the United States. How can we reclaim the taste of place, and what can it mean for us in a country where, on average, any food has traveled at least fifteen hundred miles from farm to table? Written for anyone interested in food, this book shows how the taste of place matters now, and how it can mediate between our local desires and our global reality to define and challenge American food practices.

\"Ordinary white rice is nutrient poor, it consists of carbohydrates and little else. About one million people who subsist on rice become blind or die each year from vitamin A deficiency. Golden rice, which was developed in the hopes of combating that problem by a team of European scientists in the late '90s, was genetically modified to provide an essential nutrient that white rice lacks: beta carotene, which is converted into vitamin A in the body. But twenty years later, this potentially sight- and lifesaving miracle food still has not reached the populations most in need, and tens of millions of people in India, China, Bangladesh, and throughout South and Southeast Asia have gone blind or have died waiting. Supporters claim that the twenty-year delay in Golden Rice's introduction is an unconscionable crime against humanity. Critics have countered that the rice is a \"hoax\", that it is \"food's gold\" and \"propaganda for the genetic engineering industry\". Here, science writer Ed Regis argues that Golden Rice is the world's most controversial, maligned, and misunderstood GMO. Regis tells the story of how the development, growth, and distribution of Golden Rice was delayed and repeatedly derailed by a complex but outdated set of operational guidelines and regulations imposed by governments, and sabotaged by anti-GMO activists in the very nations where the rice is most needed. Regis separates hyperbole from facts, overturning the myths, distortions, and urban legends about this uniquely promising superfood. Anyone interested in GMOs, social justice, or world hunger will find \"Golden rice\" a compelling, sad, and maddening true-life science tale.\" -- Provided by publisher

PURPOSE: Residues in field crops grown and harvested for human consumption are the main contributor to overall human exposure toward agricultural pesticides for the general population. However, exposure from crop residues is currently not considered in life cycle assessment practice. We therefore present a consistent framework for characterizing human toxicological impacts associated with pesticides applied to agricultural crops in the frame of life cycle impact assessment based on state-of-the-art data and methods. METHODS: We combine a dynamic multicrop plant uptake model designed for evaluating human exposure to residues for a wide range of pesticide-crop combinations with latest findings of pesticide dissipation kinetics in crops and post-harvest food processing. Outcome is a set of intake fractions and characterization factors for 875 organic pesticides and six major food crops along with specific confidence intervals for each factor. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Intake fractions aggregating exposure via crop residues and exposure via fractions lost to air and soil for pesticides applied to agricultural crops vary between 10⁻⁸ and 10⁻¹ kg intake per kilogram applied as a function of pesticide and crop. Intake fractions are typically highest for lettuce and tomato and lowest for potato due to differences in application times before crop harvest and soil as additional barrier for uptake into potato tubers. Uncertainty in intake fractions is mainly associated with dissipation dynamics in crops, where results demonstrate that using pesticide- and crop-specific data is crucial. Combined with the uncertainty in effect modeling, characterization factors per pesticide and crop show squared geometric mean standard deviations ranging from 38 to 15,560 over a variability range across pesticide-crop combinations of 10 orders of magnitude. CONCLUSIONS: Our framework is operational for use in current life cycle impact assessment models, is made available for USEtox, and closes an important gap in the assessment of human exposure to pesticides. For ready use in life cycle assessment studies, we present pesticide-crop combination-specific characterization factors normalized to pesticide mass applied and provide default data for application times and loss due to post-harvest food processing. When using our data, we emphasize the need to consult current pesticide regulation, since each pesticide is registered for use on certain crops only, which varies between countries.

A significant amount of the world's economy is based upon the international trade of agricultural produce. For the producing countries, a growing concern is the potential economic and ecological damage that invasive species could cause. While threats can be decreased through the regulation of items potentially carrying invasive species, the effect of such restrictions on international trade also needs to be considered. A balance must therefore be met that permits the transfer of produce while filtering out unwanted pests. Drawing on the author's extensive experience, the social and financial implications of phytosanitary trade barriers are reviewed. This book offers valuable and comprehensive coverage of pest related barriers and strategies for their implementation.

Pakistan is vulnerable to climate change, and extreme climatic conditions are threatening food security. This study examines the effects of climate change (e.g., maximum temperature, minimum temperature, rainfall, relative humidity, and the sunshine) on the major crops of Pakistan (e.g., wheat, rice, maize, and sugarcane). The methods of feasible generalized least square (FGLS) and heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation (HAC) consistent standard error were employed using time series data for the period 1989 to 2015. The results of the study reveal that maximum temperature adversely affects wheat production, while the effect of minimum temperature is positive and significant for all crops. Rainfall effect towards the yield of a selected crop is negative, except for wheat. To cope with and mitigate the adverse effects of climate change, there is a need for the development of heat- and drought-resistant high-yielding varieties to ensure food security in the country.

Challenges to crop sector arising from changing temperature and rainfall cause losses to food crop productivity in particular and agriculture sector in general. The present study aims to see the farm households' perception and adaptation to climate change and to determine the effects of adaptation on food crop productivity in Pakistan using cross-sectional data collected from Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan. Probit model is used to evaluate farmer’s understanding of climate change and its associated institutional, socio-economic and demographic variables. Results show that the majority of farmers have experienced the changes in rainfall (76%) and temperature (79%). Socio-economic and demographic variables such as education above primary schooling years, number of earners, medium farm size, NGOs, and access to information sources, namely radio and neighboring farmers, are significantly related with perception of climate change. Propensity score matching method (PSM) is employed for examining the factors influencing adaptation to climate change and the effects of adaptation on food crop productivity. Results of PSM indicate that male household heads, family size, matriculation education, households having access to credit, information source, land quality, perception of rainfall and rented land are significantly related with adaptation to climate change. Productivity gains for adapters are 0.04% and the productivity gains for non-adapters are 3.8% if they adapted. The study suggests the need to invest in farmer’s education, improve information sources and skills of existing extension staffs on climate change and adaptation measures. The study posits to increase access to viable credit programs, enabling farmers to invest in adaptation strategies to cope with climate change.

Plant Factory: An Indoor Vertical Farming System for Efficient Quality Food Production provides information on a field that is helping to offset the threats that unusual weather and shortages of land and natural resources bring to the food supply.As alternative options are needed to ensure adequate and efficient production of food, this book.

Accurate identification of non-food crops underpins food security by clarifying land-use dynamics, promoting sustainable farming, and guiding efficient resource allocation. Proper identification and management maintain the balance between food and non-food cropping, a prerequisite for ecological sustainability and a healthy agricultural economy. Distinguishing large-scale non-food crops—such as oilseed rape, tea, and cotton—remains challenging because their canopy reflectance spectra are similar. This study proposes a novel phenology-aware Vision Transformer Model (PVM) for accurate, large-scale non-food crop classification. PVM incorporates a Phenology-Aware Module (PAM) that fuses multi-source remote-sensing time series with crop-growth calendars. The study area is Hunan Province, China. We collected Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 optical imagery (2021–2022) and corresponding ground-truth samples of non-food crops. The model uses a Vision Transformer (ViT) backbone integrated with PAM. PAM dynamically adjusts temporal attention using encoded phenological cues, enabling the network to focus on key growth stages. A parallel Multi-Task Attention Fusion (MTAF) mechanism adaptively combines Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 time-series data. The fusion exploits sensor complementarity and mitigates cloud-induced data gaps. The fused spatiotemporal features feed a Transformer-based decoder that performs multi-class semantic segmentation. On the Hunan dataset, PVM achieved an F1-score of 74.84% and an IoU of 61.38%, outperforming MTAF-TST and 2D-U-Net + CLSTM baselines. Cross-regional validation on the Canadian Cropland Dataset confirmed the model’s generalizability, with an F1-score of 71.93% and an IoU of 55.94%. Ablation experiments verified the contribution of each module. Adding PAM raised IoU by 8.3%, whereas including MTAF improved recall by 8.91%. Overall, PVM effectively integrates phenological knowledge with multi-source imagery, delivering accurate and scalable non-food crop classification.

Background Weather-related risks thwart agricultural productivity gains especially in the face of climate change. Agricultural insurance serves as a reliable risk mitigation instrument for coping with climate-related hazards. This notwithstanding, agricultural insurance penetration among smallholder farmers in the global south remains low. This study investigated the access and acceptability of agricultural insurance among smallholder food crop farmers in Ghana. Method The study employed a mixed-methods approach involving both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The study was carried out in the Northern, Volta and Western regions involving 7 communities in 5 districts. A total of 200 farmers were sampled through a multi-stage purposive sampling and interviewed. A cross-sectional survey involved 100 respondents under the quantitative approach whilst the qualitative study engaged additional 100 farmers. Results The results show that smallholder farmers’ access and acceptability of agricultural insurance is low (14%) and scarce but ironically considered useful by many (90%) as an effective tool to deal with agricultural risks. Inadequate knowledge about agricultural insurance products constituted the most stated reason (64%) for the scarce adoption rate, followed (23%) by the unavailability of insurance products in areas needed but absent. A few (5%) reported insurance to be expensive. Acceptability and accessibility of agricultural insurance are further influenced by gender, educational level, low knowledge, information asymmetry and wrong perception concerning agricultural insurance products. Sense of security and reduced impact of climate variabilities constituted important benefits guaranteed by agricultural insurance. Conclusions Agricultural insurance access and acceptability is constrained by limited knowledge of agricultural insurance products. It is recommended that more insurance companies be incentivized to augment already existing efforts by Ghana Agricultural Insurance Pool (GAIP) to enroll more smallholder farmers. The government can consider bundling existing insurance products with credit or inputs under the Planting for Food and Jobs Programme (PFJ) to improve uptake and accessibility of agricultural insurance.