Worldwide consumption of cheese has increased over the years. The average Swede consumes somewhere around 20 kilograms of cheese per year, which is an increase of a 100 % over the past 50 years. One of the most popular kinds of cheese during the past decades is mozzarella, due to its? use as pizza cheese. Flavor and consistency differ between the traditional kind, made out of buffalo?s milk, and the industrially made kind, made out of cow?s milk.

A possible way to reduce pollution and slow down the process of global warming is to increase the usage of renewable energy sources. One of these renewable energy sources is solar power. With the aid of solar panels and solar cells the energy from the sun can be transformed into both heating and electricity. The requirement to use the sun in this fashion is a suitable surface, for example a big roof, an angle between 40-60 degrees and that the surface should be exposed to the south. Almost every farm meets these requirements.

Swedish agriculture has gone through big changes in the latest 60 years. The farm sizes have increased, which has led to raised tractor and machinery sizes and therefore increasing problems with soil compaction. A method to reduce these problems is to implement controlled traffic farming, CTF. All field operations are then concentrated to specific tracks by using GPS guidance. The aim of this work was to study how the tillage regime, with or without CTF, affects the soil, with the main focus on macroporosity. In Säby close to Uppsala, and Alnarp close to Malmö, randomized block trials has been carried out, and the data has mainly been taken from these trials.

The demand for food, feed, fibre and fuel has increased in Uganda over the past 50 years due to population growth. Recurring extreme climate events such as drought and flooding, in combination with large-scale land degradation, have led to declining crop yields. Lack of equipment, money and socio-economic issues has contributed to low yields. However, the soils in Uganda have the potential to produce much higher yields than they do today. This study, which was carried out in April-June 2013 in Kkingo District, south-east Uganda, examined the effects of agroforestry on yield of cooking bananas in small-holder farming systems. Six farms practising agroforestry and six farms with no agroforestry, which were chosen in cooperation with the NGO Vi Agroforestry, were compared.

Every year begomovirus infections cause severe constraints to the tomato production in Nicaragua. Extensive yield losses are followed by large economical losses, both for the country and the single Farmer. During recent years the use of begomovirus resistant or tolerant tomato cultivars has increased in Nicaragua as an effort to improve yields. Still, begomovirus infection is a large threat to the tomato production. Therefore, ongoing work in Nicaragua is focusing on finding new, better, begomovirus tolerant or resistant tomato cultivars.

The background to this paper is the fact that many products are demonstrated to show the consumer value of the product. This is generally the fact when it comes to agricultural products, such as tractors. The growing number of models makes this even more import for the retailer to perform a demonstration that really catches the interest of a prospect customer. One problem is that these demonstrations are expensive and many small retailers have difficulties to afford demonstrations of every model. Together with Åhmans Traktorcentrum AB a market investigation was conducted. The company has its primary sales area in the region of Östergötland and north part of Småland. Åhmans Traktorcentrum AB is a John Deere dealer.

Automatic milking systems (AMS) have been in commercial use since 1992 and have since 1998 increased a lot. The objective of this study has been to examine the development of udder health on farms converting to AMS. The study also included a comparison of how udder health developed depending on how farms handled cows with mastitis. This was because farms choose to either milk cows with mastitis in a separate barn or in the milking robot. Other studies on udder health on commercial farms have shown that somatic cell count increases both among individual cows and in the bulk milk when converting to an AMS. No differences between before and after converting to AMS in the proportion of cows treated for mastitis can be found in the literature.

This Master?s thesis is one of two parts of a combined project called Sustainable development around the Lake Victoria, the purpose of which is to investigate the importance of local anchoring and active participation in the work towards sustainable development. The present study aims to investigate whether men and women are empowered by the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) process promoted in their villages by the VI Agroforestry Project Masaka/Rakai. The study is primarily based on interviews with Farmers within the project area and brings up a local perspective on the concepts sustainable development, active participation and empowerment. The study shows that to improve the Farmers? livelihood and to create a sustainable development in the community, the Farmers have to be actively involved in, and in control of, the process.

Wheat yield depends on the number of ears per m2, the number of kernels per ear and the kernel weight. By knowing the ability of different cultivars to compensate for the different yield components and knowing which yield component that is the most important for the final yield, the Farmer can match the cultivar and management to the location. The objective of the study was to investigate how the yield components of winter wheat vary depending on genotype, environment, sowing density and date of sowing.Seven varieties were grown in four locations in Sweden with three different sowing densities and with an early and a late sowing date. On each experimental site, the surviving plants after winter were counted, as well as the number of shoots at early and late spring and the number of ears. Ten ears from each site were cut at three different occasions, starting from the time of blooming, with 200 day degrees between each cut.

In today?s genetic evaluation of Swedish beef cattle, mainly traits that are directly related to productivity are measured. However, other traits, such as temperament and mature cow weight affect the economy of the Farmer, as well as the welfare of the animals. This thesis evaluates possible ways of measuring new traits, with focus on temperament and mature weight of suckler cows. The goal is to examine the possible benefits of including these traits in the Swedish breeding scheme.

The Swedish processor Findus contracts approximately 500 pea producers annually to secure the company?s supply of green peas for human consumption. A production contract, which has had roughly the same design for decades, regulates the relation between Findus and the pea producers. Agriculture is typically a risky business. The main sources of risk in agricultural production are production risk and price risk.

To reconstruct a building is a long-term investment for Farmers and it is important that people with different qualifications are involved at an early stage for making the system adapted to the animals as well the animal keeper. Therefore, ethologists who can contribute with their expertise are needed to design the system and get it to function well for the animals.A Swedish Farmer who planned to rebuild her stall for tied dairy cattle to a loose-housing system for recruitment heifers for milk production asked me as an ethologist to find a system which can be fit to her existing tie-stall barn for 30 dairy cows, considering the animal needs in terms of movement, social interactions and play behaviors, and to theoretically compare the system with other systems with respect to the behaviors mentioned.The theoretical comparison between different systems was made through a scientific literature review.In agreement with the animal keeper I set out to fit a system with feeding cubicles, a system with cubicles and a system with deep straw bedding to the barn. After measurements were taken and preliminary drawings were outlined it was found that only the feeding cubicle system was possible to fit to the barn.The space provided will limit the animals to perform some playing behaviors. To decrease aggressive interactions between animals even thought a limiting area it is possible to provide partitions between resources animals compete around to prevent that more than one animal can get success to the resource at a particular place at one time. To increase the animal movement in the system the water trays were moved to the outer wall instead of kept in contact with the stalls.Although this report provides guidelines for rebuilding, other competences regarding building construction and a pre-test of the suggested building solution according to Swedish legislation are needed before the rebuilding can start.The results are directed mainly to the owner of the barn, but the literature review can be used by other cattle Farmers and might bring increased understanding of the possible effects of different building solution on the animals..

This thesis is a part of the project "Sustainable harvesting and storage of sugar beets, more sugar to practice". The work has included a large part of practical experimental work with weight measurement, graduation and storage planning. The aim of the project is to be able to see whether the cultivars react differently in different storage conditions. The project has included storage under controlled conditions to give as accurate results as possible. To be able to mimic the Farmers own preconditions the samples was harvested with a conventional Holmer.This project has two parts, one concerning the nature, time and temperature on storage where a number of different cultivars where investigated during three different recording times, two different temperatures and controlled in a controlled environment.

For the company to work well, it is necessary with a good economy, a high qualitative production and a well working system concerning the environment: the whole cycle on the farm needs to be working. At the same time, debaters about the environmental impacts are also requiring higher demands for the dairy Farmers and therefore also the management programs. Management programs for feed evaluation calculations have been more developed over the years. Big amounts have been invested in the new feeding system with NorFor, but no one seems to have asked the dairy Farmers what they themselves want to spend their money on, and what they need help with. For the dairy Farmers it is necessary that the whole company is controlled in the right way, and much more than just feed evaluation is included in this.

Changes in the environment are affecting the world market, and pressures from several stakeholders? are forcing different enterprises to adjust to the current situation. Farmers? difficult working conditions and environmental impacts of the conventional cotton production in India have been highlighted. The small-scale production that is characterising India?s cotton Farmers implies an insufficient competition power.