Outlook on Agriculture

The potential for the increased use of pasture legumes in the tropics has excited the imagination of many scientists. Substantial resources have been directed in the past three decades to finding adapted plants and to understanding how these may be incorporated in farm practice [1]. The expectations of these programmes are directed to increased animal production and sometimes to the stabilization of cropping systems.

The importance of ruminants in the world agricultural economy needs no emphasis. Greater understanding of the complex digestive processes peculiar to the rumen suggests various ways in which the effectiveness of ruminant nutrition can be substantially increased.

Although pig rearing on a subsistence basis is still important in many countries, the industry is rapidly becoming both larger and more sophisticated in many parts of the world. This article reviews the ways in which existing scientific knowledge—especially in genetics—can be applied to meet exacting market demands and what further progress can be expected.

In the last few years soilless cultures have been vigorously developed in Holland. Although many different substrates have been used, rockwool is the most popular. The first Dutch experiments carried out by Verwer at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering in Wageningen used rockwool and nutrient film technique (NFT). Since then many new growing systems have been developed. Nutrient solutions and control equipment have been improved, while investment and annual costs have decreased. Initially, only cucumbers and tomatoes were grown on rockwool and NFT, but now peppers, eggplants, chrysanthemums, roses, carnations, and other crops are grown by this or related systems.

Weed control ranks as one of the most time consuming and expensive activities of agricultural production. Since the control of weeds is a major production activity of agriculture, the method employed affects the community at large. The interrelation and linkages between technological change in weed control and the rural community is the topic of this paper.

It has long been known that seed yields of the faba bean (Vida faba L.) are highly variable, and that a major determinant of this variability is the number of pods produced per plant. All known reports have shown that the total number of flowers initiated is always substantially greater than the eventual number of pods reaching maturity. Mechanisms which control the survival or loss of buds, flowers, and developing pods are, therefore, of direct importance in determining the productivity of the crop.