Topic
Broadacre
About: Broadacre is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 205 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2707 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
TL;DR: Clubroot caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae affects the Brassicaceae family of plants, including many important vegetable and broadacre crops, and a multifaceted or integrated approach is being used to manage clubroot.
Abstract: Clubroot caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae affects the Brassicaceae family of plants, including many important vegetable and broadacre crops. In the last 20 years increasing intensity of vegetable production and the rapid growth in popularity of oilseed rape as a broadacre or arable break crop have increased the severity of clubroot and the area of land affected in both the vegetable and broadacre industries. Resting spores of P. brassicae are long-lived in soil, but the number of spores can be reduced through crop rotation, fallowing, chemical application, and management of brassica weeds. The host-pathogen system is responsive to a range of control measures, including calcium and boron amendments, manipulation of soil pH, and fungicide application. Molecular tests have been developed to predict disease and resistant cultivars are available for some crops. Increasingly, a multifaceted or integrated approach is being used to manage clubroot. This approach has been particularly successful in vegetable production systems.
191 citations
TL;DR: The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that more than 800 million people engage in urban agriculture and produce more than 15% of the world's food as discussed by the authors, which has been accompanied by an increase in media coverage, including that urban agriculture can decrease greenhouse emissions, "climate proof" farms, help solve food security for growing urban populations and provide chemical free food with no risk of pests and diseases.
141 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that large farms achieved higher productivity by changing production technology rather than increasing scale alone, highlighting the disparity between returns to scale and returns to size in the industry, suggesting that productivity improvement among smaller farms can be made through increasing their ability to access advanced technologies, rather than simply expanding their scale.
Abstract: A positive relationship between farm size and farm productivity is often considered to be largely due to increasing returns to scale in farm production. However, using farm-level data for the Australian broadacre industry, we found that constant or mildly decreasing returns to scale is the more typical scenario. In this study, the marginal returns to various farm inputs are compared across farms with different sizes. We found that large farms achieved higher productivity by changing production technology rather than increasing scale alone. The results highlight the disparity between ‘returns to scale’ and ‘returns to size’ in the industry, suggesting that productivity improvement among smaller farms can be made through increasing their ability to access advanced technologies, rather than simply expanding their scale.
131 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that for agriculture to deliver knowledge-based sustainable intensification requires a new generation of Smart Technologies, which combine sensors and robotics with localised and/or cloud-based Artificial Intelligence (AI).
95 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used bioeconomic farm modelling and employed eight measures of complexity to examine the profitability and complexity of a wide range of broad-acre farming systems in Australia.
Abstract: Modern farming in Australia is no longer simple. Farms are large, multi-enterprise businesses underpinned by expensive capital investments, changing production technologies, volatile markets and social challenges. The complexity of modern broadacre farming leads to the question: what is the nature of the relationship between farm business complexity and farm profitability? This study uses bioeconomic farm modelling and employs eight measures of complexity to examine the profitability and complexity of a wide range of broadacre farming systems in Australia. Rank order correlations between farm profitability and each measure of complexity show inconsistent relationships, although the most profitable farming systems are found to be reasonably complex on several criteria. Among the set of highly profitable systems are found some characterised by less complexity. A commonly acknowledged feature of farm business complexity is the annual workload of the farmer, yet the trade-off between farm profit and this workload is found not to be large. A case is outlined where the farmer’s annual hours worked could be reduced by 9 per cent for a 3 per cent reduction in farm profit. If farmers’ workloads are proving problematic now, and in the future, then agricultural R&D, service delivery and policy development will need to focus more on being highly attractive to increasingly time-poor farm managers.
92 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 5 |
| 2020 | 4 |
| 2019 | 4 |
| 2018 | 8 |
| 2017 | 10 |
| 2016 | 12 |