Soils, Land and Food: Managing the Land during the Twenty-First Century / Edition 1

by Alan Wild

Overview

A major challenge of the twenty-first century is to ensure sufficient global food production to cope with the burgeoning world population. This book follows the development of techniques of land management and discusses reasons why some agricultural projects have succeeded while others have failed. Alan Wild shows how surveying and protecting soils before new land is brought into cultivation, raising soil fertility, increasing inputs, and improving economic conditions all help to increase food production. He emphasizes the need for both economic change and technological intervention in developing countries where, in many cases, food production will need to more than double in the next fifty years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521527590
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/09/2003
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.67(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Managing land for food production in the twenty-first century: an outline; 2. Natural resources for sustainable development; 3. The development of agriculture and systems of land management; 4. Maintaining and improving soil fertility; 5. Land degradation and its control; 6. Raising yields: use of fertilisers; 7. Raising yields: water for rainfed crops and irrigation; 8. Managing change for land use; 9. Increasing and sustaining agricultural production; 10. Increasing agricultural production: examples of Africa, India and China; 11. Prospects, uncertainties and summary; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"[A] concise overview...This book will be useful for those interested in increasing their understanding of how future agricultural production will attempt to meet increasing needs and uncertainties involved in that attempt." Soil Science

"An excellent introduction and synthesis of soil and land management in the evolving context of developing farming systems and global food production." Quarterly Review of Biology

From the Publisher