A more circular food system is increasingly proposed to address the challenge of feeding a growing world population while limiting environmental impacts and resource use. A circular food system prioritises resources for direct food supply to avoid feed-food competition. The role of animals is to upcycle resources unsuitable or undesired for human c...
Agriculture in the lowlands of south Brazil is of strategic importance at the national level, since it supplies around 80% of the rice consumed by the Brazilian population. In Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in Brazil, three million hectares of lowlands are ready for grain-based agriculture. Of this area, about half is fallow, partly used...
Plant associations are determined by complex interactions with their environment depending on resource availability, landscape features, and periodic disturbances that shape the structure and functions of these communities. Forests, savannas and grasslands extend across the global land surface, contribute to planetary processes and provide ecosyste...
The competition for land has become an issue of major concern and cause of conflict, especially between pastoralists and crop farmers, but also between pastoralists and nature conservation institutions. The Biosphere Reserve of W in Benin Republic (WBR) and its surrounding lands are located in the agro-pastoral contact zone in West Africa, enabling...
Animal health authorities in the European Union nowadays consider voluntary approaches based on a neoliberal model of cost and responsibility sharing as a tool for controlling livestock diseases. Policy makers aim for policies that are soft and optional, and use insights from behavioural economics and social psychology. Voluntary approaches are fle...
Assessing unconsciousness in livestock at different stages of the slaughter process is a legal requirement according to EU legislation. The assessment can be based on absence of readily observable indicators (behavioural indicators, physical signs and reflexes) or, under experimental conditions, by recording and subsequent assessment of brain activ...
Sustainable livestock production systems are needed to feed the larger, more urban, richer and older world population in 2050. Quantitative information about the sustainability performance of existing livestock production systems can aid the debate of which actions could be developed and implemented. Strong points of conventional and organic dairy ...
Animal manures are major sources of nutrients and organic matter, to be used to fertilize crops and improve soil quality. However, when not properly managed, these manures release considerable amounts of ammonia (NH3), nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) into the air, and nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) to water bodies, which create a range of un...
Mahlet Teka Anche. (2016). Estimating host genetic effects on susceptibility and infectivity to infectious diseases and their contribution to response to selection. PhD thesis, Wageningen University, the Netherlands Genetic approaches aiming to reduce the prevalence of an infection in a population usually focus on improving host susceptibility to a...
Sub-Saharan Africa countries face the challenge of reducing rural poverty and reversing the declining trends of agricultural productivity and the high levels of soil nutrient depletion. Despite of numerous efforts and investments, high levels of poverty and resource degradation persist in African agriculture. The Millennium Development Goals Report...
