Agriculture and crop production

After a monoculture phase, it is becoming an unavoidable necessity to diversify perennial crops (cocoa, rubber, palm or coconut oil) in humid tropical areas. Why and when should these diversification processes take place? What type of planter is involved? What are the constraints to diversification? How do public policies and private actions interfere? The authors answer these questions through fifteen case studies, mainly located in Africa and South-East Asia, thereby providing a better understanding of the economies of family plantations and their recent changes.

This work provides an overview of various models of sensitivity analysis and exploration of models developed in oceanography, fishery, environment, water management, ecology, agronomy, etc. It suggests an approach for choosing the method most suitable for its need and shows how to apply these methods in reality. It is targeting modellers and model users who wish to acquire or consolidate their understanding of analytical methods and exploring models through simulations.

Already a reference in this field, the guide updates and adds sixty new species and ninety photos, thereby offering a panorama of these garden, glasshouse and nursery pests. From rose aphids via all the butterflies and their caterpillars, it lists, details and illustrates everything you need to know: scientific classification, damage caused, distribution area, favourite hosts, biology and control methods.

It will win over entomologists, researchers, technicians, experts in horticulture and fruit growing and also amateur gardeners.

The work presents a sociological and historical analysis of transformations in French agriculture since the Second World War. The author shows that some farmers continue to invent unusual productive forms that withstand the on-going extension of industrial agriculture. The work has six chapters and can be a medium for teaching the history of French agriculture.

Based on archive documents and surveys, the author analyses the transformation of farmers, both men and women, since the beginning of the last century. It addresses the influences of post-war modernisation and group farming in the 1960s. It examines the changes in certain farming populations, pig breeders, organic farmers and also women. Lastly, the author presents the effects of a reconstructed work area (rurbanisation, for example) on today's farmers.

This work plots the crazy saga of natural rubber production on American soil since the end of the 19th century to date. Between quarrels of enthusiasts, agronomic experimentation, lobbying by oil industrialists and political about-turns, the guayule and a few other latex plants have shown the potential for founding a new industry entirely separate from the rubber tree that currently provides the world with natural rubber almost exclusively.

Genetic plant improvement aims to unite in a same genotype the variety and the maximum number of favourable genes for the traits to be improved. But which tools are used to achieve this? This book answers this question and shows that, since domestication, plant breeding has always been governed by genetic engineering.

Fruit of the photosynthesis of plants, the biomass is an essential resource for humans, supplying them with food, energy and materials. With its three sources (forest, crops and waste), the energy-biomass is restricted by the production capacity of soils and its competition with its other uses. Could it therefore contribute to the growing energy needs of humanity and to the energy transition that must take place to reduce our oil and gas consumption substantially?

How can cultivated plant biodiversity contribute to the transformation and the "ecologisation" of agriculture in Southern countries? Based on extensive field work in the Southern countries, a great deal of scientific progress is presented in all areas affecting agriculture (agronomy, plant breeding and crop protection, cultivation systems, etc.) in order to intensify the ecological processes in cultivated plots and at the scale of rural landscapes.

Ce numéro spécial des Cahiers Agricultures traite de la problématique du foncier dans les pays en développement, notamment les états africains, mais aussi au Brésil et en Indonésie. Il met en perspective le rôle du foncier dans les transformations du secteur rural (investissements privés, états, communautés d’acteurs locaux).