Cheryl Palm's research while affiliated with University of Florida and other places
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Publications (177)
Deep tropical soils with net anion exchange capacity can adsorb nitrate and might delay the eutrophication of surface waters that is often associated with many temperate croplands. We investigated anion exchange capacity and soil nitrate pools in deep soils in the Southern Brazilian Amazon, where conversion of tropical forest and Cerrado to intensi...
Low investment in profitable technologies contributes to persistent poverty. Many farmers in developing countries invest too little in fertilizer despite evidence that fertilizer is profitable. This field experiment investigates a two-part explanation: (1) farmers are reluctant to invest without farm-specific evidence of profitability, possibly bec...
Diversification is a common livelihood strategy for rural households in developing countries, with diversification being either a choice or necessity depending on individual household contexts. Using two waves of data (from 2009 and 2011) for 1773 households from eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, we examined livelihood diversification and its...
Recent analyses indicate that global fruit and vegetable (F&V) production will need to increase by 50%-150% by 2050 in order to achieve sustainable and healthy diets for 10 billion people. Although global production of F&V has grown by 50% during the last two decades alone, simply scaling up current systems of F&V production, supply chains, and con...
Use of mineral fertilizers is essential to enhance crop productivity in smallholder farming systems of Sub-Saharan Africa, but various studies have reported 'non-responsiveness' where application of inorganic fertilizers does not lead to satisfactory yield gains. This phenomenon is not well defined nor are its extent and causes well understood. In...
In seasonally dry ecosystems, which are common in sub‐Saharan Africa, precipitation after dry periods can cause large pulses of nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas, and of nitric oxide (NO), a precursor to tropospheric ozone pollution. Agricultural practices can change soil characteristics, affecting trace N gas emissions. To evaluate the effects...
Following discussions at the 6th International Nitrogen Conference, Kampala (24th–27th November 2013), the delegates agreed the Kampala Statement-for-Action on Reactive Nitrogen in Africa and Globally. The Statement-for-Action highlights the global challenge of aiming for just enough nitrogen: enough to meet human needs for food, fuel and fibre, wh...
Fertilizer use in African agriculture is extremely low—just 4% of global fertilizer use, with an annual average of only 8 kg nutrients ha⁻¹ in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A major focus of a new African Green Revolution is increasing inputs of nitrogen (N) to help restore soil fertility to soils that have experienced decades of nutrient depletion. The...
Fertilized temperate croplands export large amounts of reactive nitrogen (N), which degrades water and air quality and contributes to climate change. Fertilizer use is poised to increase in the tropics, where widespread food insecurity persists and increased agricultural productivity will be needed, but much less is known about the potential conseq...
Declines in soil fertility and limited access to inorganic nitrogen (N) fertilizer constrain crop production in Sub-Saharan Africa. The incorporation of organic residues could increase nutrient mineralization and replenish soil carbon (C), however, the effect that long-term residue management (10+ years) has on maize (Zea mays L.) yields and soil n...
Tropical dry forests in eastern and southern Africa cover 2.5 × 10⁶ km², support wildlife habitat and livelihoods of more than 150 million people, and face threats from land use and climate change. To inform conservation, we need better understanding of ecosystem processes like nutrient cycling that regulate forest productivity and biomass accumula...
Significance
Understanding relationships between poverty and environment is crucial for sustainable development and ecological conservation. Annual monitoring of socioeconomic changes using household surveys is prohibitively expensive. Here, we demonstrate that satellite data predicted the poorest households in a landscape in Kenya with 62% accurac...
Background:
The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) was a 10 year, multisector, rural development project, initiated in 2005, operating across ten sites in ten sub-Saharan African countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In this study, we aimed to estimate the project's impact, target attainment, and on-site spending.
Methods:...
Meeting food security requirements in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will require increasing fertilizer use to improve crop yields, however excess fertilization can cause environmental and public health problems in surface and groundwater. Determining the threshold of reasonable fertilizer application in SSA requires an understanding of flow dynamics and...
The characteristics of very high resolution (VHR) satellite data are encouraging development agencies to investigate its use in monitoring and evaluation programmes. VHR data pose challenges for land use classification of heterogeneous rural landscapes as it is not possible to develop generalised and transferable land use classification definitions...
Crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa remain stagnant at 1 ton ha(-1) , and 260 million people lack access to adequate food resources. Order-of-magnitude increases in fertilizer use are seen as a critical step in attaining food security. This increase represents an unprecedented input of nitrogen (N) to African ecosystems and will likely be accompanied...
Agricultural intensification in Sub-Saharan Africa has the chance to increase yields and food security while minimizing environmental contamination and protecting remaining native ecosystems. Targeting intensification to areas of high production potential including clayey, deep tropical soils on gently sloping lands will reduce leaching and runoff...
A vibrant, resilient and productive agricultural sector is fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Bringing about such a transformation requires optimizing a range of agronomic, environmental and socioeconomic outcomes from agricultural systems – from crop yields, to biodiversity, to human nutrition. However, these outcomes are...
Soil organic matter is critical to sustainable agriculture because it provides nutrients to crops as it decomposes and increases nutrient-and water-holding capacity when built up. Fast-and slow-cycling fractions of soil organic matter can have different impacts on crop production because fast-cycling fractions rapidly release nutrients for short-te...
Improved understanding of soil fertility factors limiting crop productivity is important to develop appropriate soil and nutrient management recommendations in sub-Saharan Africa. Diagnostic trials were implemented in Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria and Tanzania, as part of the African Soils Information Service (AfSIS) project, to identify soil fertil...
Fertilizer applications are poised to increase across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but the fate of added nitrogen (N) is largely unknown. We measured vertical distributions and temporal variations of soil inorganic N following fertilizer application in two maize (Zea mays L.)-growing regions of contrasting soil type. Fertilizer trials were established...
Soil organic matter is critical to sustainable agriculture because it provides nutrients to crops as it decomposes and increases nutrient- and water-holding capacity when built up. Fast- and slow-cycling fractions of soil organic matter can have different impacts on crop production because fast-cycling fractions rapidly release nutrients for short-...
Synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer has enabled modern agriculture to greatly improve human nutrition during the twentieth century, but it has also created unintended human health and environmental pollution challenges for the twenty-first century. Averaged globally, about half of the fertilizer-N applied to farms is removed with the crops, while the...
Soil fertility declines constrain crop productivity on smallholder farms in sub-Saharan Africa. Government and non-government organizations promote the use of mineral fertilizer and improved seed varieties to redress nutrient depletion and increase crop yields. Similarly, rotational cropping with nitrogen (N)-fixing legume cover crops or trees is p...
Over the past half-century, the paradigm for agricultural development has been to maximize yields through intensifying production, particularly for cereal crops ( 1 ). Increasing production of high-yielding cereals—wheat, rice, and maize—has replaced more nutrient-rich cereals, which has eroded the content of essential dietary nutrients in the worl...
Functional trait research has led to greater understanding of the impacts of biodiversity in ecosystems. Yet, functional trait approaches have not been widely applied to agroecosystems and understanding of the importance of agrobiodiversity remains limited to a few ecosystem processes and services. To improve this understanding, we argue here for a...
There are national and regional efforts aimed at increasing fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa, where nitrogen (N) inputs must be increased by an order of magnitude or more to reach recommended rates. Fertilizer inputs increase N availability and cycling rates and subsequently emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a powerful greenhouse gas and the pr...
Tropical smallholder agriculture is undergoing rapid transformation in nutrient cycling pathways as international development efforts strongly promote greater use of mineral fertilizers to increase crop yields. These changes in nutrient availability may alter the composition of microbial communities with consequences for rates of biogeochemical pro...
Striving to achieve increased agricultural production with inclusive growth and reduced environmental impact requires a means of assessing and tracking the various components of these three dimensions. Some programs track livelihoods (income, food security, nutritional security) through household surveys, other programs monitor crop production by f...
1.Fertilization may impact ecosystem processes that sustain agriculture, such as nutrient cycling, by altering the composition of soil microbial communities that regulate such processes. These processes are crucial to low-input, smallholder tropical agriculture, which supports 900 million of the world's poorest people. Yet little is known about how...
National and regional efforts are underway to increase fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa, where attaining food security is a perennial challenge and mean fertilizer use in many countries is 2O). We established experimental plots with different rates of N applied to maize (Zea mays) in a field with a history of nutrient additions in western Kenya...
Background/Question/Methods
Africa is currently the place of interest for increasing agricultural production to meet local food security but also to meet the increasing demand for global commodities, including bioenergy. Yields and improved inputs use have stagnated at low levels throughout Sub-Saharan Africa for several decades, matched by high...
The Emissions Gap Report 2013 from the United Nations Environment Programme restates the claim that changing to no-till practices in agriculture, as an alternative to conventional tillage, causes an accumulation of organic carbon in soil, thus mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration. But these claims ignore a large body of experiment...
There are a growing number of initiatives that aim to increase fertilizer use in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa in support of the African Green Revolution. Numerous reports indicate a high variability in yields within and between farms; this could affect the crop’s response to fertilizers and therefore their efficiency. Such variability has been...
This was a cross-sectional study conducted in the first Millennium Village in Western Kenya. We compared the food security status of households affected by HIV/AIDS to households not affected by HIV/AIDS. We also identified coping strategies adopted by members of food insecure households.
315 Households were included in the study, consisting of 169...
Background/Question/Methods
Soil microbial communities are known to dominate most biogeochemical processes. These processes—and thus the diversity and composition of the microbial communities that drive them—are essential for the functioning of ecosystems, both in natural and managed, agricultural settings. Efforts to feed growing human populatio...
Background/Question/Methods
Nearly 80% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face problems of nitrogen (N) scarcity, which in tandem with poverty causes food insecurity and malnutrition. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa has set a goal of increasing fertilizer use in the region six-fold by 2015. While this will improve crop product...
Agricultural intensification is usually seen as bad for ecosystems and ecosystem services. This perspective comes from areas with high yields and food security where too many inputs are applied. The situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is far different; yields are low, food insecurity is high, and too few inputs are applied. Increased inputs, especially...
Background/Question/Methods
The intensification of agriculture in the temperate zone has fed a growing world population but has caused widespread pollution of the atmosphere and waterways as a result of nitrogen fertilizer losses. As intensive agriculture spreads across the tropics, the interaction between tropical soils, climate, and management...
Adequate nutrition lies at the heart of the fight against hunger and poverty (Sanchez et al. 2005). Great strides in reducing hunger through increases in agricultural productivity have been made worldwide; however, more than 900 million of people remain chronically underfed, i.e. do not have access to continuously meet dietary requirements (FAO 200...
There is a tenuous relationship between the world's rural poor, their agriculture, and their surrounding environment. People reliant on farming for their livelihood can no longer focus on current food production without considering the ecosystem processes that ensure long-term production and provide other essential resources required for their well...
Simultaneously addressing multiple Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has the potential to complement essential health interventions to accelerate gains in child survival. The Millennium Villages project is an integrated multisector approach to rural development operating across diverse sub-Saharan African sites. Our aim was to assess the effects...
The development of effective agricultural monitoring networks is essential to track, anticipate and manage changes in the social, economic and environmental aspects of agriculture. We welcome the perspective of Lindenmayer and Likens (J. Environ. Monit., 2011, 13, 1559) as published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring on our earlier paper, "...
In sub-Saharan Africa, ~ 40% of children <5 y old are stunted, with levels that have remained largely unchanged over the past 2 decades. Although the complex determinants of undernutrition are well recognized, few studies have evaluated strategies that combine nutrition-specific, health-based approaches with food system- and livelihood-based interv...
Malawi has spearheaded an unprecedented policy change in sub-Saharan
Africa (SSA) since 2005 when it started a widespread agricultural inputs
subsidy program (AISP) targeting small farmer maize production with
mineral fertilizer and improved seeds. Since then, the mean N fertilizer
load has increased significantly, from ~ 0 to a modest 35 kg N/ha o...
Over the last several decades, agricultural soils in many parts of
sub-Saharan Africa have become depleted of nitrogen (N) and other
nutrients, creating challenges to achieving food security in many
countries. At only 7 kg N ha-1 yr-1, average fertilizer application
rates in the region are an order of magnitude lower than typical rates
in the Unite...
Africa's smallholder agricultural systems face unique challenges in
planning for reducing poverty, concurrent with adaptation and mitigation
to climate change. At continental level, policy seeks to promote a
uniquely African Green Revolution to increase crop yields and food
production, and improve local livelihoods. However, the consequences on
the...
Most emission estimates of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) from African agriculture at a continental scale are based on emission factors, such as those developed by the IPCC Guidelines. Here we present estimates from Africa from the EDGAR database, which is derived from the IPCC emission factors. Resulting estimates indicate that N2O emissio...
Legumes play an important role in farming systems in East Africa. Legumes are not only a source of food and fodder but also
play a key role in improving soil fertility. As a result of the increasing pressure on land, the traditional fallow periods
needed for land regeneration have shortened. Similarly, most farmers in the region do not use fertiliz...
Background/Question/Methods
Recent experimental studies have provided evidence that greater species richness can increase the ability of plant communities to support multiple ecosystem functions. If biodiversity-ecosystem function research is to improve understanding of how and when ecosystem services depend on biodiversity, it will be necessary t...
List of main sources used to establish nutritional composition database used in this study.
(DOC)
List of edible, characterized plant species that were identified at the study sites.
(XLS)
Dendogram for nutritional FDtotal taking into account the 17 nutrients listed in Table 1. Species are abbreviated as first three letters of genus plus first three letters of species. Full species names are outlined in Table S3.
(TIF)
Background:
In Sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of children under five years in age are chronically undernourished. As new investments and attention galvanize action on African agriculture to reduce hunger, there is an urgent need for metrics that monitor agricultural progress beyond calories produced per capita and address nutritional diversity essential...
Malnutrition affects a large number of people throughout the developing world. Approaches to reducing malnutrition rarely focus on ecology and agriculture to simultaneously improve human nutrition and environmental sustainability. However, evidence suggests that interdisciplinary approaches that combine the knowledge bases of these disciplines can...
This speaker will focus on the central role of nitrogen in development related to food security in Africa. She will highlight the various tradeoffs related to environmental services and biodiversity, climate change and human health and well-being. Examples of policies and programs aimed at minimizing these tradeoffs will be presented.
This book, inclusive of 19 chapters, provides discussions on the benefits and limitations of food-based approaches for the prevention and control of micronutrient malnutrition. Different chapters focus on specific relevant topics, including current developments in food-based approaches and their program applications, relevance of agricultural inter...
Reducing extreme poverty and hunger is the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG). With undernutrition contributing to one third of all child deaths, improving nutrition is a precondition for accelerating progress towards other MDG targets. While the role of technical interventions such as micronutrient fortification and supplementation in reducin...
In order to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on halving the number of people suffering from hunger in Africa, both the Hunger Task Force of the UN Millennium Project and the African Green Revolution target a substantial increase in crop production from the current cereal yields of below 1t ha-1 to 3t ha-1. Meeting such a target require...
Background/Question/Methods
Ecosystems provide multiple services to society. While most research on ecosystem services has not addressed interactions between ecosystem services, compelling evidence for large-scale and long-term ecosystem service interactions has emerged recently, arguing for redoubled work on ecological mediation of interactions...
Background/Question/Methods
Over the last several decades, agricultural soils in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa have become depleted of nitrogen (N) and other nutrients, creating challenges to achieving food security in many countries. At only 8 kg N/ha/yr, average fertilizer application rates in the region are an order of magnitude lower than t...
To feed the world without further damaging the planet, Jeffrey Sachs and 24 foodsystem experts call for a global data collection and dissemination network to track the myriad impacts of different farming practices.
Potential interactions between food production and climate mitigation are explored for two situations in sub-Saharan Africa, where deforestation and land degradation overlap with hunger and poverty. Three agriculture intensification scenarios for supplying nitrogen to increase crop production (mineral fertilizer, herbaceous legume cover crops--gree...
The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) was initiated in 2005 to implement the
recommendations of the UN Millennium Project for achieving the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). The project is carried out in 14 sites in hunger and
poverty hotspots in diverse agroecological zones in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
The interventions and results for increasi...