Agriculture Engineering Agricultural Sciences Series

"Agriculture Engineering is a technologically sophisticated field that offers bright career prospects and opportunity in any country around the world, and in various sectors. Agriculture is the world's largest and most important industry feeding and clothing an ever growing world population. However, agriculture is growing in many new ways as energy from biofuels become important to our economy and new biotechnologies create additional uses for agricultural waste and byproducts. Biofuel use and other on-farm sustainable operations along with better technologies bring new hope that engineering agriculture can provide for more people. Engineering is the input that permits this industry to produce our most basic needs without requiring the efforts of the whole population. Rural areas, especially in developing countries, are facing with numerous social, economical, cultural and environmental problems. In the most cases there is a growing concern because only very few farmers or inhabitants are able to follow contemporary, sustainable and environment-friendly methods in farming systems. The consequences of this are numerous, such as: poverty, significant migration to urban areas and unplanned suburban settlements. This has a significant impact on the national economy, demography, and environment. This book entitled Agriculture Engineering provides a scientific discussion of techniques and approaches leading to a higher degree of efficiency in agricultural production, the responsible use of natural resources, a cleaner environment, greater sustainability, value-added processing and other subjects of interest to agricultural engineers. It also includes economic considerations and policy issues of interest to agricultural engineers and other disciplines. It disseminates fundamental and applied knowledge in almost all area of agricultural sciences from agronomy to animal sciences, and particularly agricultural engineering."