From bridges and tunnels to nuclear waste repositories, structures require that soils maintain their design engineering properties if the structures are to reach their projected life spans. The same is true for earth dams, levees, buffers, barriers for landfills, and other structures that use soils as engineered materials. Yet soil, a natural resource, continues to change as a result of natural and anthropogenic stresses. As the discipline of soil properties and behaviours matures, new tools and techniques are making it possible to study these properties and behaviours in more depth.

This manual concentrates on running a small-scale cooking oil business and covers important aspects such as production, processing, quality control as well as marketing, packaging, branding and customer care.

Three-quarters of the world’s poorest billion people live in rural areas, and the vast majority depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and survival. Encouraging the growth of the agricultural sector is therefore one of the most effective ways of tackling poverty and reducing hunger and malnutrition.

This ACS Symposium Series title addresses global warming, one of the most pressing environmental concerns of our times. The agricultural sector is the largest source of global anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4), both of which are potent greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. The book provides a comprehensive overview of important issues related to greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural systems, including measurement of greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural fields, development of alternative management practices as mitigation measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and greenhouse gas accounting methodologies and modeling.

The focus of food science and technology has shifted from previous goals of improving food safety and enhancing food taste toward providing healthy and functional foods. Today’s consumers desire foods that go beyond basic nutrition—foods capable of promoting better health, or even playing a disease-prevention role. To meet this need for innovation, academic research must be combined with the development and commercialization strategies of industry.

This book examines the state of food insecurity in the world and provides an overview of the Obama Administration’s global hunger and food security initiative, called "Feed the Future".

This book provides projections for the agricultural sector through 2020. Projections cover agricultural commodities, agricultural trade, and aggregate indicators of the sector, such as farm income and food prices. The projections are based on specific assumptions about macroeconomic conditions, policy, weather and international developments, with no domestic or external shocks to global agricultural markets.

This book examines projections of two key determinants of food security: food production and import capacity of the countries. Domestic food production performance plays the most critical role in food security, particularly for regions like Asia and sub-Saharan Africa that depend on grain supplies. Conversely, imports play a significant role for regions like Latin America and North Africa that depend on positive trade terms.

Maize (Zea mays L.) commonly called corn, field corn, or Indian corn belongs to the Poaceae (Gramineae) family. It grows almost anywhere, although approximately 50% of the world’s maize is produced in the USA. It is one of the 3 major grain crops world-wide and extremely important for human and animal consumption (15 to 56% of total daily dietary caloric intake), food processing and other commercial activities in many developed and developing countries.

Organic fertiliser refers to materials used as fertiliser that occur regularly in nature, usually as a by product or end product of a naturally occurring process. Organic fertilisers such as manure have been used in agriculture for thousands of years; ancient farmers did not understand the chemistry involved, but they did recognise the benefit of providing their crops with organic material.

This book presents an overview of the cultivation of the potato, pointing out some aspects in relation to its production, consumption and importance for consumer health. The aim is to offer a glimpse of the forest rather than the single tree, but not failing to focus on "a few trees".

Rice is one of the most important food crops around the world and feeds over half of the global population. Hence, the study of rice productivity is vital to assuring an adequate food supply for all. In this book, the authors present topical research in the study of the production, consumption and health benefits of rice.