Plant nutrients are important for all life on earth and are also important as fertiliser infood production all over the world. Because of this, plant nutrients are of great valuebut they also bring problems. As an example, the loss of nitrogen and phosphorusfrom agriculture and urban society's sewage systems contributes to some of today?smajor problems in water environment. Another problem associated with plantnutrients is that finite recourses are used in the production of mineral fertilizers.

The aim of my study is to answer the question whether there is a potential for services by working horses in the Swedish municipalities. The Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Swedish Farmers Union (LRF) has started a cooperation called Climate School (Klimatskolan), with the purpose to increase knowledge in environmental and climate related issues in context of agriculture. This Master thesis is in the framework of the Climate School.Global warming is a problem that gets much attention today. Global warming and climate change are two subjects that are very much in focus on the political agenda. The municipalities of Sweden have a big responsibility concerning environmental work and to develop their own environmental thinking.

This essay is comparing two authors and the way they make use of and explain some of the archaeological methods and artifacts through their books.The first author is the Swedish archaeologist Stig Welinder, who has written Jordbrukets första femtusen år (The First Five Thousand Years of Agriculture). The second author is the American archaeologist and writer Adrian Praetzellis, who has written the book Death by Theory.These books are very different in some ways, but not in others. The main difference is that Death by Theory is belles-lettres while Jordbrukets första femtusen år is science.Both authors explain and in some way apply the use of the terms ?artifact? and ?ethnoarchaeology?, which is the two main subjects of comparison in this essay. The way they present these subjects, through their different styles of writing, is compared and discussed.

Increasing attention is being given to acid sulphate soils wherever they occur. The problems that leaching sulphate soils gives with significant lowerings of pH and mobilization of heavy metals influence large spectra of our society from fisheries to agriculture to construction. Mapping these soils is consequently of great importance and the methods of doing this is very much lacking in function and precision. This study was therefore carried out to investigate whether conductivity in running water can be used as a simple instrument to identify acid sulphate soils in the catchment. 31 coastal streams in the county of Västerbotten were analyzed for different catchment properties such as occurence of marine sediments and basic water chemistry including conductivity and sulphate.

The following essay is a descriptive and analyzing study in how the local Tanzanian NGO MVIWANYA works to disseminate sustainable agricultural technologies to the farmer households in Rorya District, Mara. It also presents and analyzes the reception and impacts these new technologies have on the households. Information was gathered during two weeks of field work at the organization in Tanzania. It was conducted empirically through interviews with and observations of small-scale farmer members of MVIWANYA and the staff of the organization. The gathered material is analyzed and presented with the help of a theoretical model designed by Birner et al.

The agriculture throughout the world is becoming increasingly deregulated and this has affected the prices of raw materials to fluctuate at a higher degree than earlier. This in turn has made it interesting and in some cases even necessary for the trader as well as the producer to gain knowledge about the trade instruments available to ensure a good enough price for their produced goods. This study encompasses a number of ways to trade grain and oil plants in order to clarify what differences there are in the several contracts that exist in the present situation, economical as well as practical. The various trade instruments available to the producers on the Swedish market are described in the theoretical part of this study. The study also contains a simple arithmetic example, based on historical prices collected from grain traders and trading floors, in order to point out the differences in the economical outcomes depending on the business strategy used to sell the produced goods. The study shows the importance, as a producer, of being able to use and take advantage of the different trading instruments at hand to monitor and exploit the shifts in the market. From an economical point of view it is not enough to just excel at farming but knowledge about the market functions and the trade instruments at hand is also required to be able to secure a good enough price for your goods.

Ethiopia is the country with most livestock per capita on the continent of Africa. There are 34.5 million cattle that are used for drought, meat- and milkproduction and 85% of the population rely on agriculture for their survival in some way. Milk is produced in four main systems, through pastoralism in the lowlands, in mixed crop-livestock systems in the highlands, in and near big cities with only one or two cows, and in intensive farming systems. There are 17 cattle breeds in Ethiopia and some of them are more suitable for milk production than others. Several environmental and economic problems arise from livestock holding in the country, for example overgrazing, low production due to feed shortage, low quality of the avaible feed and non-existing breeding programs.

Several scenarios point toward a future where we are far more people on Earth than today, where most of those people will live in cities and where oil no longer dominates in the transport systems and in agriculture as an energy source and where less energy will be available to us. The report investigates what areas in traditional ecological knowledge that can contribute to the transition that follows a future with less energy and establishes three areas with the potential of becoming important: areaspecific biological knowledge in societies that are more dependent upon its surrounding environment and its natural prerequisitesthe local management of these biological resources, which often means a fair sharing and sustainable handling of the resources and which has been observed in Nobel price awarded Elinor Ostrom?s researchthe world views that lie behind how the environment is considered and managed, world views that can inspire and point toward how we in the future should formulate world views that do not give the destructive modern management of the environment It is also noted that the magnitude of the city living in the future is a historical news and that very little research has been done in how traditional knowledge can be transferred into this kind of living..

Trade is important for every country in the world. Commodities are transported between rich and poor countries everyday. Some of the trading partners are EU and Ethiopia, this because of less expensive commodities from EU than they are in Ethiopia. The most important agricultural commodity is wheat. Ethiopia is a poor country, whose inhabitants mostly are living on agriculture.

Today?s community requires an increase in food production. Animals are today bred so that they produce more than their ancestors did. Production has been the most important and breeds with the highest production levels have therefore become popular. Many of the old local breeds have become extinct or are about to become extinct because of this trend.

This is a thesis written at the Swedish University of Agriculture inAlnarp within the landscape architecture education. The essay dealswith the landscape architect's professional identity and how it isdescribed in different contexts along with how it is perceived byprofessional landscape architects.Misunderstandings and preconceptions concerning the landscapearchitect's professional identity is common, both within and outsidethe branch of industry that includes the vocation. This raises problemswithin the industry and for the individual landscape architect. To findout if the root of the problems lies in available descriptions of theoccupation a study has been made. The study includes how thelandscape architect is defined in easily accessible information fromthe internet and in literature as well as in industry-orientedinformation such as dissertations and information from SverigesArkitekter (the Swedish Architects).

The study was performed for the Swedish Regional Forestry Board in Södra Götaland. The study examines broadleaf plantations on former farmland that were planted between 1991 and 1996 with subsidy payments for conversion of farmland into forest. In particular, the study reviews forests planted in 1991-92 and 1994-96. In the early 1990s, Swedish agriculture was deregulated and direct subsides to farmers ended. The Swedish state instead granted farmers financial support and offered incentives for conversion of farmland and investments in order to make their unproductive land productive. The state supported conversion of farmland to broadleaf forest, forest for energy biomass production, or establishment of wetlands on former farmland. The County Administrative Boards and Regional Forestry Boards together monitored the planting of broadleaf forests.

The marketing strategies discussed in today?s literature are often developed for larger compa-nies and are therefore poorly fitted for smaller businesses with little resources, such as the small resort Enaforsholm Fjällgård in Jämtland. Hence, this paper focuses on presenting and discussing the marketing strategy storytelling and whether it is applicable to Enaforsholm Fjällgård. This mountain resort was given to the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KSLA) in 1937 as a trust fund to be managed in the spirit of the grantor A.W. Bergsten.

Urban agriculture is a current topic and this study examines the possibility of cultivating on balconies in the city. The study was performed at Uppsala University and examines, from a structural engineering perspective, how different existing balcony/terrace structures are affected by cultivation. A cultivation balcony defined in the study as a balcony/terrace which is specifically designed for cultivation. Three units of study have been selected according to this criterion. Four factors were examined, these were loads, moisture/water, economy and cultivation.

This thesis examines the ongoing European political debate on the links between livestock production and climate change. In the end of 2006 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released their report Livestock?s long shadow, showing that livestock production represents some 18 % of the total global greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the European Commission?s position and response to this question since the release of the report.Using Arne Naess? argumentation analysis, statements made by the Commission will be systematically organized and broken apart.