A survey of China's plant biotechnologies shows that China is developing the largest plant biotechnology capacity outside of North America. The list of genetically modified plant technologies in trials, including rice, wheat, potatoes, and peanuts, is impressive and differs from those being worked on in other countries. Poor farmers in China are cultivating more area of genetically modified plants than are small farmers in any other developing country. A survey of agricultural producers in China demonstrates that Bacillus thuringiensis cotton adoption increases production efficiency and improves farmer health.

Despite the strong signal of El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on climate in the Indo-Pacific region, models linking ENSO-based climate variability to seasonal rice production and food security in the region have not been well developed or widely used in a policy context. This study successfully measures the connections among sea surface temperature anamolies (SSTAs), rainfall, and rice production in Indonesia during the past three decades. Regression results show particularly strong connections on Java, where 55% of the country's rice is grown. Two-thirds of the interannual variance in rice plantings and 40% of the interannual variance in rice production during the main (wet) season on Java are explained by year-to-year fluctuations in SSTAs measured 4 and 8 months in advance, respectively. These effects are cumulative; during strong El Nino years, production shortfalls in the wet season are not made up later in the crop year. The analysis demonstrates that quantitative predictions of ENSO's effects on rice harvests can provide an additional tool for managing food security in one of the world's most populous and important rice-producing countries.

Nitrate leaching from agricultural soils can represent a substantial loss of fertilizer nitrogen (N), but a large variation in losses has been reported. We report N leaching losses under four N fertilizer treatments and two farmer's fields in the Yaqui Valley, Mexico. In these irrigated wheat systems, farmers typically apply 250 kg N as anhydrous ammonia (knifed in) or urea (broadcast), with 75% applied directly before planting and 25% at the time of the first post-planting irrigation. Over two wheat seasons, we compared typical farmer's practices to alternatives that applied less N and more closely timed fertilizer application to plant demand. Field lysimeter measurements and predictions from a water transport simulation model (called NLOSS) were used to determine the amount of N leached over the season. Approximately 5 and 2% of the applied N leached below the root zone with the typical farmer's practice in 1995-96 and 1997-98, respectively. The alternative treatments reduced N leaching losses by 60 to 95% while producing comparable economic returns to the farmers. Leaching losses from the two farmer's fields were substantially higher (about 14 and 26% of the applied N). Our results indicate that the typical farmer's practice leads to relatively high N leaching losses, and that alternative practices synchronizing fertilizer application with crop demand can substantially reduce these losses.

Global aquaculture production is growing rapidly, with production more than doubling in weight and by value from 1989 to 1998. With many capture fisheries catches peaking, scientists, governments, and international organizations all point to aquaculture as the most important means to increase global fish supplies.

The aquaculture industry in the United States, which is dominated by freshwater catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) production, generates about one billion dollars each year. Marine aquaculture comprises roughly one-third of U.S. production by weight, and despite rapid increases in salmon and clam production, growth of U.S. marine aquaculture has been slow on average. Efforts to develop marine aquaculture in the open ocean could catalyze future growth.

Aquaculture has a number of economic and other benefits. But if it is done without adequate environmental safeguards it can cause environmental degredation. The main environmental effects of marine aquaculture can be divided into the following five categories:

1) Biological Pollution: Fish that escape from aquaculture facilities may harm wild fish populations through competition and interbreeding, or by spreading diseases and parasites. Escaped farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) are a particular problem, and may threaten endangered wild Atlantic salmon in Maine. In the future, farming transgenic, or genetically modified, fish may exacerbate concerns about biological pollution.

2) Fish for Fish Feeds: Some types of aquaculture use large quantities of wild-caught fish as feed ingredients, and thus indirectly affect marine ecosystems thousands of miles from fish farms.

3) Organic Pollution and Eutrophication: Some aquaculture systems contribute to nutrient loading through discharges of fish wastes and uneaten feed. Compared to the largest U.S. sources of nutrient pollution, aquaculture's contribution is small, but it can be locally significant.

4) Chemical Pollution: A variety of approved chemicals are used in aquaculture, including antibiotics and pesticides. Chemical use in U.S. aquaculture is low compared to use in terrestrial agriculture, but antibiotic resistance and harm to nontarget species are concerns.

5) Habitat Modification: Marine aquaculture spreads over 26,000 marine hectares, or roughly 100 square miles. Some facilities attract marine predators, and can harm them through accidental entanglement or intentional harassment techniques.

A number of technologies and practices are available to prevent or mitigate these environmental problems. Options to make U.S. aquaculture environmentally sustainable include:

1. Developing strong effluent guidelines for aquaculture under the Clean Water Act;
2. Supporting National Marine Fisheries Service and Fish and Wildlife Service activities under the Endangered Species Act to protect wild Atlantic salmon;
3. Establishing an environmentally protective permitting program for offshore aquaculture;
4. Improving state oversight of aquaculture;
5. Championing research and development investments and cost-share incentives for sustainable aquaculture practices;
6. Establishing a federal approval process for transgenic fish that mandates evnironmental protection;
7. Supporting market incentives for environmentally sound fish-farming;
8. Developing bilateral agreements with Canada to study and minimize the impact of salmon-farming on wild salmon stocks

Feeding the World is a sizable volume that covers the nature of current foor problems; the scientific underpinnings of food production, including their environmental implications; a delineation of the various resource bases that serve agriculture; the basics of food comsumption, diets, and nutrition; the role of animal products; an assessment of postharvest losses; and an analysis of China's future capacity to feed itself.

The overall effects of policy reforms enacted during the 1990s in Mexico on financial and economic profitability of Yaqui Valley agriculture are assessed in this study, which describes the reforms,examines how exogenous shocks affected the reform process,and documents how rural people and institutions adjusted to the changed circumstances. Virtually all of the reforms affected Yaqui Valley farmers because of the commercial character of their agriculture (relatively large, irrigated wheat farms), their close proximity to the US,and the new "openness" of Mexico's economy. By almost any standard,the reforms were both wide-ranging and successful, at least as measured in efficiency terms, yet the Yaqui Valley's rural communities face significant challenges at the start of the 21st century. The ejido communities have lost cohesiveness and even larger-scale farmers in the private sector face serious income problems. More generally, farmers have yet to find profitable new production systems, including the associated marketing institutions, which are consistent with greater reliance on world agricultural prices and diminished dependence on explicit and implicit subsidies from the government.

The Evolving Sphere of Food Security seeks to answer two important questions: How do the priorities and challenges of achieving food security change over time as countries develop economically? And how do the policies used to promote food security in one country affect nutrition, food access, natural resources, and national security in other countries? The volume presents the many faces and facets of food security—their symptoms, their roots, and their possible remedies—through the lens of a multidisciplinary group of scholars. The authors share personal stories of research and policy advising from their field experiences to provide readers with a real-world sense of the opportunities and challenges involved in promoting food security at local to global scales. Their observations from countries around the world demonstrate how food security is tied to security of many other kinds: energy, water, health, climate, the environment, and national security. The book’s main goal is to connect these areas in a way that tells an integrated story about human lives, resource use, and the policy process—a story about global food security.

Prior to the 2000 election The Aspen Institute convened a distinguished group of science, business, and environment leaders as a hypothetical committee to advise the new President on global environmental policy. Experts prepared this set of policy memos to tell the President, concisely and in understandable language, "what he should know" and "what he should do" about climate change, biodiversity, population, oceans, water, food and agriculture, and other problems. A thematic summary of the groups conclusions, written by Co-chairs Donald Kennedy of Stanford University and Roger Sant of the AES Corporation, communicates the urgency of the challenges, the complexity of the interrelated issues, and the optimism necessary to tackle them.