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Pimentel, David; Huang, Xuewen; Córdova, Ana; Pimentel, Marcia

doi:10.1023/a:1024693414602

Cited by 46 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Basically, soil erosion affects crop productivity by reducing the availability of water, nutrients, and organic matter, and, as the topsoil thins, by restricting rooting depth (Lal 1984;Gachene et al 1997Gachene et al , 1998. Such major reductions in food-crop yields are particularly serious at a time in history when the growing human population continues to require increased quantities of food and more than 2 billion people in the world are malnourished (World Health Organization 1995; Pimentel et al 1997). …”

Section: Effects Of Soil Losses On Maize Crop Yieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining napier grass with leguminous shrubs in contour hedgerows controls soil erosion without competing with crops

et al. 2008

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We established hedges/barriers of calliandra (Calliandra calothyrsus Meissner), leucaena (Leucaena trichandra (Zucc.) Urban)) and napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum Schumach) and combination hedges of either calliandra or leucaena with napier grass on slopes exceeding 5% to study the effect of vegetative barriers on productivity of arable steeplands in central Kenya. Hedges/barriers were pruned regularly and biomass incorporated into the plots. Hedge plots were monitored for soil fertility, soil losses and maize crop yield changes. Inorganic-N concentration in the tree hedge plots was higher than in the control and napier barrier plots after 20 months. Napier grass barriers were the most effective in reducing erosion losses across the two seasons. The effectiveness of napier grass to significantly reduce soil erosion was detectable in one year old napier barriers. Soil loss from all the other one year old vegetative treatments was similar to soil loss from the control. Seventeen month old combination hedge plots recorded lower soil losses than tree hedges of the same age (P = 0.012). Maize crop yields throughout the trial period were high and similar for leguminous and combination hedge plots, but lower in the napier grass and control plots. Overall, we observed that the combination hedges seemed to provide a win-win scenario of reduction in soil erosion combined with improvement of maize crop yields and soil fertility enhancement. We conclude that vegetative hedges have a potential for improving soil productivity in arable steep-lands of the central highlands of Kenya, and that in adoption of vegetative hedges for this purpose there are trade-offs between soil conservation, soil fertility and maize crop yields to be considered.

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Section: Effects Of Soil Losses On Maize Crop Yieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining napier grass with leguminous shrubs in contour hedgerows controls soil erosion without competing with crops

et al. 2008

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“…The relationships between population and food are well established and have benefited from in-depth scholarly investigation (Bongaarts, 2011;McNicoll, 1984;Pimentel, Harman, Pacenza, Pecarsky, & Pimentel, 1994;Pimentel, Huang, Cordova, & Pimentel, 1997). However, there is no systematic analysis of how urbanisation affects contemporary food insecurity risks or how these potential risks are likely to be mitigated by increases in human development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urbanisation and Food Insecurity Risks: Assessing the Role of Human Development

Szabo

2015

Oxford Development Studies

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The phenomenon of rapid urbanisation across the world has become a topic of increased scholarly inquiry. Yet, little attention has been paid to how urban growth affects countries' food security and whether this association is modified by a country's level of development. The present study aims to fill this lacuna by examining the association between urbanisation and food security applying statistical modelling. The analysis uses country-level data, from the World Development Indicators and the United Nations' World Urbanization Prospects. Using a Food Insecurity Risk Index (FIRI) as the outcome variable, the results confirm a significant negative impact of urban growth on food security at the country level. It further finds that rapidly urbanising countries with the lowest levels of human development are most at risk of food insecurity.

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“…In this paper dedicated to the memory of Professor David Pimentel, we analyse the trajectories of plant traditional foraging in a few case studies aiming to assess these phenomena from the point of view of systemic sustainability, which involves both an environmental and a social dimension. Much of Pimentel’s research focused on sustainable agriculture and related food systems to “feed the world” in the coming decades that will see increasing population pressure on local resources (Pimentel & Hall, 1989 ; Pimentel & Pimentel, 2007 ; Pimentel et al, 1997a , b ). Foraging could theoretically be a possible strategy to improve food security, especially in politically and geographically remote contexts (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The nexus between traditional foraging and its sustainability: a qualitative assessment among a few selected Eurasian case studies

Aziz

Mattalia

Sulaiman

et al. 2022

Environ Dev Sustain

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Plant foraging is an important human ecological phenomenon being studied by a number of contemporary ethnobiologists as well as by a few social anthropologists among rural communities and, more recently, in urban environments. The sustainability dimension of foraging is, however, largely unexplored. We analyse a few case studies from recent field research and qualitatively assess both the environmental and social sustainability of diverse patterns of traditional foraging practices in three distinct human ecological environments (horticulturalism-, forestry-, and pastoralism-driven) located in the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, and North Pakistan, i.e. we address the question of when does traditional foraging become unsustainable and what factors may influence this. The main findings are multidimensional. First, in all case studies, we sometimes observed competitive foraging among the gatherers of certain wild food plants potentially causing ecological degradation; such unsustainable practices seem to be linked to the market pressure on certain species. However, also customs and norms promoted by states can be detrimental (former Soviet Union), as well as climate change (Eastern Europe), and marginalisation of some minority groups (Pakistan). Second, in the Mediterranean Syrian context, wild food plant resources are largely represented by widely available weedy “wild” vegetables, normally (but not exclusively) collected by women, and usually easily accessible; only very few wild food plants seem to be threatened due to specific market demands or to disequilibria created by household economic instabilities due to the recent war. We also argue that unsustainable foraging is enhanced by the abandonment of daily practices and continuous interaction with the natural environment and by the increasingly uneven distribution of active practical knowledge on wild food plants among the middle-aged and younger population. Facilitating the transmission of sustainable foraging knowledge and practices could be therefore crucial, also for coping with food insecurity in times of crisis; but for that to occur, holistic environmental and food educational frameworks, appropriate policies for fostering community-based biodiversity conservation and also social cohesion and communal management of lands should be seriously considered as well. Moreover, future gastronomic and eco-tourism initiatives, if organised in a thoughtful manner, could represent a positive turning point not only for the local small-scale economies of the considered rural communities but also for helping them to dynamically preserve the entire socio-ecological system underpinned in plant foraging and ultimately to better adapt to the current global crisis.

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Untitled

Cited by 46 publications

References 4 publications

Combining napier grass with leguminous shrubs in contour hedgerows controls soil erosion without competing with crops

Combining napier grass with leguminous shrubs in contour hedgerows controls soil erosion without competing with crops

Urbanisation and Food Insecurity Risks: Assessing the Role of Human Development

The nexus between traditional foraging and its sustainability: a qualitative assessment among a few selected Eurasian case studies

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