24 pages, The production mode of “high input, high yield and high waste” in the agricultural system poses a serious threat to the environment and the quality of agricultural products. Accelerating the adoption of green agricultural technology (GAT) by farmers is an emergency measure. However, according to microsurvey data, many farmers give up GAT within a year after adopting it. The implementation of this measure has been anticlimactic. Based on a survey of 1138 kiwi growers in Shaanxi Province, China, this paper builds a theoretical model and conducts empirical exercises to gain insight into the effects of perceived value, government support and their interaction with kiwi growers’ sustainable application of GAT. We find that perceived value and government support have a significant impact on the sustainable application of GAT. Government support plays a moderating role in the influence of perceived value on the sustainable application of GAT. Furthermore, in order to overcome the potential endogeneity problem caused by the two-way causal relationship between subjective variables, “owning a smartphone” was selected as the instrumental variable. The 2SLS model was used for endogeneity analysis, and the OLS model was used for the robustness test. This paper discusses the relevant theories and policy implications of environmental management.
16pgs, Humanity's growing appetites for food and energy are placing unprecedented yield targets on our lands. Chasing those ever-expanding land intensification targets gave rise to monocultures and sharpened the divide between food and energy production groups. Here, we argue that this does not have to be a zero-sum game if food and energy can be co-generated in the same land. Co-generation can lead to sustainable intensification but requires a paradigm shift in the way we manage our resources, particularly light. Using an extended model of plant photosynthesis and transpiration, we demonstrate how plants react to different incident light spectra and show that manipulating light could be effective for boosting land and water efficiencies, thus potentially improving soil health. This knowledge can possibly unlock the real potential of promising modern agricultural technologies that target optimization of light allocations such as agrivoltaics. This study suggests that the blue part of the light spectrum is less efficient in terms of carbon assimilation and water use and could be more effectively used to produce solar energy, while the red part could efficiently produce biomass. A sensitivity analysis to the most important crop and environmental variables (irradiance, air temperature, humidity, and CO2 concentration) shows that plant response to different light treatments is sensitive to environmental boundary conditions and is species-specific. Therefore, further research is necessary to assess which crops and climates are more suitable to optimize the proposed food-water-energy nexus.
5pgs, At a central Illinois feed mill, electricity from its rural electric co-op was exceeding grain costs as its biggest operating expense. With a new 3-megawatt solar array, the facility expects to reduce energy costs by about 50%.
