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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010264944 | S494.5.A43 A475 2011 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Agrobiodiversity provides most of our food through our interaction with crops and domestic animals. Future global food security is firmly anchored in sound, science-based management of agrobiodiversity. This book presents key concepts of agrobiodiversity management, critically reviewing important current and emerging issues including agricultural development, crop introduction, practical diversity in farming systems, impact of modern crop varieties and GM crops, conservation, climate change, food sovereignty and policies. It also addresses claims and misinformation in the subject based on sound scientific principles.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
This book is simultaneously very good and very bad; Lenne (agricultural consultant, UK) and Wood (formerly, Agrobiodiversity International, UK) are the authors of 70 percent of its content, and their writings reflect that full spectrum. At its best, the book takes a contrarian view to industrial agriculture as an inimical foe to biodiversity and cogently argues that industrial agriculture is neither as rare nor as damaging to nature as environmentalists suggest. T. Kuyper and K. Giller's chapter on below-ground biodiversity is excellent in this respect. Furthermore, food production trumps other ecosystem functions in a food-scarce world and can proceed only if industrial agriculture is conducted in an environmentally benign manner. At its worst, Lenne and Wood's bias destroys their description of the work as a critical review. Despite the book's title and some of the chapter titles, the authors scarcely address a link between agrobiodiversity management and food security. Consequently, this is a poor addendum to their original contribution on the topic, Agrobiodiversity: Characterization, Utilization, and Management (1999). As a stand-alone work, this book gives biased treatment to agrobiodiversity management. But it would be a robust counterpoint to equally biased work positing global multinational food conspiracies and the essentiality of indigenous food security. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and researchers/faculty. M. S. Coyne University of Kentucky
Table of Contents
| Contributors | p. vii |
| Acknowledgements | p. viii |
| 1 Agrobiodiversity Revisited | p. 1 |
| 2 Food Security and Agrobiodiversity Management | p. 12 |
| 3 Agrobiodiversity Management and the Origins of Agriculture | p. 26 |
| 4 Crop Introduction and Agrobiodiversity Management | p. 53 |
| 5 Utilization of Crop Diversity for Food Security | p. 64 |
| 6 Impact of Introduction of Modern Varieties on Crop Diversity | p. 87 |
| 7 Transgenics Can Enhance Crop Diversity - Under Certain Circumstances | p. 99 |
| 8 Management of Crop-associated Biodiversity Above-ground | p. 111 |
| 9 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning Below-ground | p. 134 |
| 10 Agrobiodiversity Conservation Policy: a 'Tragedy of Errors' | p. 150 |
| 11 Can the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Approach Ensure Future Food Security? | p. 170 |
| 12 Agrobiodiversity Management for Climate Change | p. 189 |
| 13 Agricultural Revolutions and their Enemies: Lessons for Policy Makers | p. 212 |
| Index | p. 229 |
