Challenges of agriculture and food systems issues in China and the United States

China and the United States are the two most significant nations in the contemporary global food and agricultural network.In addition,they are two of the most important innovators with respect to the development of new crop varieties,agro-technologies,farm products,markets and consumer issues,such as consumer resistance to genetically modified foods,among others.In the face of an ever-complex web of interactions,technologies and products among producers and consumers in both nations,there are far more structural similarities than differences in the food and agriculture sectors of these two nations.This essay,adopting some of the themes of the Sino-American Symposium on Future Issues Affecting Quality of Life,presents a limited but representative comparative assessment of three of the most important shared challenges impacting the agricultural sectors of China and the United States for the period from 2000 to the present including 1)environmental challenges related to agricultural water supply,2)declines in farm labor and rural population,and 3)growing food-related concerns and challenges.For both nations,excessive and unsustainable groundwater consumption has lowered water tables and limited crop production.Rural populations and farm workforces in both nations are also declining,leading to labor challenges in both nations.Finally,concerns regarding food safety are also very similar with major challenges to the farm sector associated with consumer resistance to genetically modified food crops and sanitation issues linked to lengthening supply chains.All of these issues threaten the development of sustainable agricultural production systems.

Agricultural Multifunctionality Evolution and Research into Issues concerning Agriculture,Countryside and Farmers

From the point of view of agricultural civilization, the history of human civilization is the history of the development of the agricultural civilization. Accompanied by social progress and development of the times, the function of agriculture also experiences the expansion and deepening. In terms of economy, there is a process from mechanized farming to industrialization, then to informatization, modernization and internationalization. The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has also experienced and witnessed this process. In terms of "agriculture, countryside and farmers", the content is complex, diverse, profound, sharp, and changing, constantly testing and challenging our wisdom. When the Document No.1 in 2007 targeted modern agriculture, it indicated that new connotation was integrated into agricultural multifunctionality, standing at a new starting point. At present, the function of agriculture is still deepening; there are tremendous achievements and outstanding problems concurrently in issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers. We take the agricultural multifunctionality as breakthrough point for exploration and research.

Issues concerning Citizenization Cost Sharing of the Population Transferred from Agriculture: A Case Study of Chongqing

The citizenization of the population transferred from agriculture is an inevitable process for Chinese social transformation,and one of the core issues in the course of new urbanization. The core problem in citizenization of the population transferred from agriculture lies in cost.Taking Chongqing as an example,this paper calculates the total citizenization cost to be 125038. 7 yuan for the population transferred from agriculture. Through field survey and research,this paper analyzes the current situation of citizenization cost sharing of the population transferred from agriculture in Chongqing,points out some problems in cost sharing such as inadequate governmental financial capacity,absence of business and lack of personal affordability,and finally brings forward the corresponding policy recommendations.

The Issue of Precision Agriculture in International Trade： An Analysis in Terms of Subsidies

At the present time, world agriculture is influenced by a set of new technologies grouped under the generic name of precision agriculture （PA）. Based on a study of the cotton sector, this article examines the effects of adopting PA with regard to international trade. We examine whether PA can contribute to the further destabilization of the terms of trade between countries in Central and West Africa （CWA） and Northern countries. We show that PA can be used by Northern countries at the expense of CWA, since it is used to implement strategic commercial policies based on subsidies. These policies are made more credible by the fact that international authorities cannot easily condemn them.

Issues of "Agriculture, Rural Areas and Farmers" from the Perspective of Economy and Ideological System : Based on the Background of All-round Well-off Society

Based on CNKI core journals and CSSCI database, "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" were used as the key words to summarize 20 core articles and CSSCI articles with "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" as the key words from 2015 to 2020, so as to let more researchers have a deeper understanding and grasp of China s current problems of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers". Through the method of comparative analysis of studies, the problems that need to be solved in the work of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" were discussed, so that other scholars can further clarify the research results and experience of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", so as to deepen the reform of rural land system and steadily promote the work of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" in the future. This study can provide thinking and reference for deepening the reform of rural land system and steadily promoting the work of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers".

Nano/Micro-Structural Supramolecular Biopolymers: Innovative Networks with the Boundless Potential in Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture plays a crucial role in meeting the growing global demand for food while minimizing adverse environmental impacts from the overuse of synthetic pesticides and conventional fertilizers.In this context,renewable biopolymers being more sustainable offer a viable solution to improve agricultural sustainability and production.Nano/micro-structural supramolecular biopolymers are among these innovative biopolymers that are much sought after for their unique features.These biomaterials have complex hierarchical structures,great stability,adjustable mechanical strength,stimuli-responsiveness,and self-healing attributes.Functional molecules may be added to their flexible structure,for enabling novel agricultural uses.This overview scrutinizes how nano/micro-structural supramolecular biopolymers may radically alter farming practices and solve lingering problems in agricultural sector namely improve agricultural production,soil health,and resource efficiency.Controlled bioactive ingredient released from biopolymers allows the tailored administration of agrochemicals,bioactive agents,and biostimulators as they enhance nutrient absorption,moisture retention,and root growth.Nano/micro-structural supramolecular biopolymers may protect crops by appending antimicrobials and biosensing entities while their eco-friendliness supports sustainable agriculture.Despite their potential,further studies are warranted to understand and optimize their usage in agricultural domain.This effort seeks to bridge the knowledge gap by investigating their applications,challenges,and future prospects in the agricultural sector.Through experimental investigations and theoretical modeling,this overview aims to provide valuable insights into the practical implementation and optimization of supramolecular biopolymers in sustainable agriculture,ultimately contributing to the development of innovative and eco-friendly solutions to enhance agricultural productivity while minimizing environmental impact.

Leveraging User-Generated Comments and Fused BiLSTM Models to Detect and Predict Issues with Mobile Apps

In the last decade, technical advancements and faster Internet speeds have also led to an increasing number ofmobile devices and users. Thus, all contributors to society, whether young or old members, can use these mobileapps. The use of these apps eases our daily lives, and all customers who need any type of service can accessit easily, comfortably, and efficiently through mobile apps. Particularly, Saudi Arabia greatly depends on digitalservices to assist people and visitors. Such mobile devices are used in organizing daily work schedules and services,particularly during two large occasions, Umrah and Hajj. However, pilgrims encounter mobile app issues such asslowness, conflict, unreliability, or user-unfriendliness. Pilgrims comment on these issues on mobile app platformsthrough reviews of their experiences with these digital services. Scholars have made several attempts to solve suchmobile issues by reporting bugs or non-functional requirements by utilizing user comments.However, solving suchissues is a great challenge, and the issues still exist. Therefore, this study aims to propose a hybrid deep learningmodel to classify and predict mobile app software issues encountered by millions of pilgrims during the Hajj andUmrah periods from the user perspective. Firstly, a dataset was constructed using user-generated comments fromrelevant mobile apps using natural language processing methods, including information extraction, the annotationprocess, and pre-processing steps, considering a multi-class classification problem. Then, several experimentswere conducted using common machine learning classifiers, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Long Short-TermMemory (LSTM), and Convolutional Neural Network Long Short-Term Memory (CNN-LSTM) architectures, toexamine the performance of the proposed model. Results show 96% in F1-score and accuracy, and the proposedmodel outperformed the mentioned models.

Smart agriculture and nanotechnology:Technology,challenges,and new perspective

In the recent past,much nanotechnology research has been done in an effort to increase agricultural productivity.The Green Revolution led to the careless use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers,which reduced soil biodiversity and led to the development of disease and insect resistance.This article highlights the worldwide development and status of precision agriculture.Precision agriculture utilizes technologies and principles to manage spatial and temporal variability in agricultural production to improve crop performance and environmental quality.In precision agriculture(PA),information technology(IT)is used to make sure that crops and soil receive exactly what they require for optimal productivity and health.Precision farming includes the use of hardware i.e.,a global positioning system(GPS)and geographic information system(GIS),different software of GIS,and traditional knowledge of agriculture management practices.The benefits of precision agriculture can be seen in both the economic and environmental aspects of agricultural production.Only nanoparticles or nanochips can transport materials to plants in a nanoparticle-mediated manner and create sophisticated biosensors for precision farming.Conventional fertilizers,insecticides,and herbicides can be nano encapsulated to provide exact doses to plants through a gradual,continuous release of nutrients and agrochemicals.The main topics included in this article are the variability of natural resources,variability management;administrative districts;the impact of precision farming technologies on farm profitability and the environment;innovations in sensors,controls,and remote sensing,information management;trends in global application and acceptance of precision farming technologies;potential and possibilities of technology along with challenges in agricultural modernization.Modern equipment and procedures based on nanotechnology have the ability to solve many of the issues in conventional agriculture and might transform this industry.There are many challenges in the implementation of smart agriculture equipment and approaches in thefield as this technique uses both hardware and software.The cost of labour for managing IoT devices and the cost-of-service registration are included in the system operational cost.Additionally,there are operating costs related to the use of energy,maintenance,and communication between IoT devices,gateways,and cloud servers.In this review,nanotechnology is explored as a potential tool in precision agriculture,as well as the advantages of nanoparticles in agriculture,such as the use of fertilizers.By using precision agriculture,the food production chain can be monitored and quality and quantity can be managed effectively.

Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA) Instruction to Authors

Aims and Scope Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA),formerly Agricultural Sciences in China(ASC),founded in 2002,is sponsored by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences(CAAS),co-sponsored by Chinsese Association of Agricultural Science Societies(CAAsS).The latest IF is 4.8.JIA seeks to publish those papers that are influential and will significantly advance scientific understanding in agriculture fields worldwide.

Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA)Instruction to Authors

Aims and Scope Journal of IntegrativeAgriculture(JIA),formerly Agricuiltural Sciences in China(ASC),founded in 2002,is sponsored by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences(CAAS),co-sponsored by Chinsese Association of Agricultural Science Societies(CAAsS).The latest IF is 4.8.JIA seeks to publish those papers that are influential and will significantly advance scientific understanding in agriculture fields worldwide.JIA publishes manuscripts in the categories of Commentary,Review,Research Article,Letter and Short Communication,focusing on the core subjects:Crop Science Horticulture·Plant ProtectionAnimal Science·Veterinary Medicine·Agro-ecosystem&Environment·Food Science·Agricultural Economics and Management·Agricultural Information Science.

Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA)Instruction to Authors

Description Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA),formerly Agricultural Sciences in China(ASC),founded in 2002,is sponsored by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences(CAAS),co-sponsored by Chinese Association of Agricultural Science Societies(CAASS).

Journal of Integrative Agriculture (JIA) Instruction to Authors

Aims and Scope Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA),formerly Agricultural Sciences in China(ASC),founded in 2002,is sponsored by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences(CAAS),co-sponsored by Chinsese Association of Agricultural Science Societies(CAAsS).The latest IF is 4.8.JiA seeks to publish those papers that are influential and will significantly advance scientific understanding in agriculture fields worldwide.

Journal of Integrative Agriculture Instruction to Authors

Description Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA),formerly Agricultural Sciences in China(ASC),founded in 2002,is sponsored by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences(CAAS),co-sponsored by Chinese Association of Agricultural Science Societies(CAASS).JIA is a peer-reviewed and multi-disciplinary international journal and published monthly in English.JIA Editorial Board consists of 289 well-respected scholars of agricultural scientific fields.

A Study of the Issues concerning Development of China's Agricultural Product Logistics

With the improvement of people's living standards,people have placed higher demands on both quantity and quality of agricultural products. However,there are many problems in China's agricultural product logistics,such as long distance between processing,preservation,cold storage,packaging base and agricultural production base,great losses of agricultural products in the process of transportation and handling from production base,poor road conditions in rural areas,inadequate special vehicles,refrigerated trucks and sealed vans,low electronic information utilization rate during agricultural logistics transaction,and lack of agricultural product access mechanism in the agricultural wholesale market. Based on these problems,we bring forward the measures to improve the current agricultural product logistics.

Special Issue:Questions&Data for Better Science and Innovation Call for submissions

Editors Yang Wang,Xi'an Jiaotong University Dongbo Shi,Shanghai Jiaotong University Ye Sun,University College London Zhesi Shen,National Science Library,CAS Topic of the Special Issue What are the top questions towards better science and innovation and the required data to answer these questions?

Spatio-Temporal Agricultural Drought Quantification in a Rainfed Agriculture, Athi-Galana-Sabaki River Basin

This study employs a quantitative approach to comprehensively investigate the full propagation process of agricultural drought, focusing on pigeon peas (the most grown crop in the AGS Basin) planting seasonal variations. The study modelled seasonal variabilities in the seasonal Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Agricultural Drought Index (SADI). To necessitate comparison, SADI and SPI were Normalized (from −1 to 1) as they had different ranges and hence could not be compared. From the seasonal indices, the pigeon peas planting season (July to September) was singled out as the most important season to study agricultural droughts. The planting season analysis selected all years with severe conditions (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2017 and 2022) for spatial analysis. Spatial analysis revealed that most areas in the upstream part of the Basin and Coastal region in the lowlands experienced severe to extreme agricultural droughts in highlighted drought years. The modelled agricultural drought results were validated using yield data from two stations in the Basin. The results show that the model performed well with a Pearson Coefficient of 0.87 and a Root Mean Square Error of 0.29. This proactive approach aims to ensure food security, especially in scenarios where the Basin anticipates significantly reduced precipitation affecting water available for agriculture, enabling policymakers, water resource managers and agricultural sector stakeholders to equitably allocate resources and mitigate the effects of droughts in the most affected areas to significantly reduce the socioeconomic drought that is amplified by agricultural drought in rainfed agriculture river basins.

Enhancing Multicriteria-Based Recommendations by Alleviating Scalability and Sparsity Issues Using Collaborative Denoising Autoencoder

A Recommender System(RS)is a crucial part of several firms,particularly those involved in e-commerce.In conventional RS,a user may only offer a single rating for an item-that is insufficient to perceive consumer preferences.Nowadays,businesses in industries like e-learning and tourism enable customers to rate a product using a variety of factors to comprehend customers’preferences.On the other hand,the collaborative filtering(CF)algorithm utilizing AutoEncoder(AE)is seen to be effective in identifying user-interested items.However,the cost of these computations increases nonlinearly as the number of items and users increases.To triumph over the issues,a novel expanded stacked autoencoder(ESAE)with Kernel Fuzzy C-Means Clustering(KFCM)technique is proposed with two phases.In the first phase of offline,the sparse multicriteria rating matrix is smoothened to a complete matrix by predicting the users’intact rating by the ESAE approach and users are clustered using the KFCM approach.In the next phase of online,the top-N recommendation prediction is made by the ESAE approach involving only the most similar user from multiple clusters.Hence the ESAE_KFCM model upgrades the prediction accuracy of 98.2%in Top-N recommendation with a minimized recommendation generation time.An experimental check on the Yahoo!Movies(YM)movie dataset and TripAdvisor(TA)travel dataset confirmed that the ESAE_KFCM model constantly outperforms conventional RS algorithms on a variety of assessment measures.

Issues of Agricultural Sustainable Development in Environment with Limited Resources——A Case Study of Xinjiang

Based on natural resources in Xinjiang, some problems existing in agricul- tural sustainable development in Xinjiang were explored, such as simple agricultural structure （unbalanced development in different regions）, dispersed production pattern, and lower efficient water use for agriculture. Furthermore, some countermeasures for Xinjiang agricultural sustainable development were proposed as well, including ad- justment of agricultural structure for optimization of resource allocation, strict control of population for improvement of people education, strengthening of S＆T innovation for popularization of sustainable development, and construction of macro-adjustment mechanism of resources use for virtuous environment.

Issues of Eco-agricultural Industrialization for Big Qinling Eco-city Cluster

Firstly,the necessities of ecological agriculture development in Big Qinling Eco-city Cluster were discussed.Then,condition endowment of eco-agricultural industrialization in Big Qinling Eco-city Cluster was analyzed from the aspects of basic conditions and differential endowment of eco-agricultural industrialization.Finally,specific forms and functional orientation of eco-agriculture were pointed out.Countermeasures for the eco-agricultural industrialization in Big Qinling Eco-city Cluster were put forward.Firstly,the government guidance and the media publicity should be strengthened.Secondly,financial support for the eco-agricultural industrialization in Big Qinling Eco-city Cluster should be enhanced.Thirdly,branding strategies of eco-agricultural products in Big Qinling Eco-city Cluster should be implemented as soon as possible.

Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA)

Instruction to Authors Aims and Scope Journal of Integrative Agriculture(JIA),formerlyAgricultural Sciences in China(ASC),founded in 2002,is sponsored by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences(CAAS),co-sponsored by Chinsese Association of Agricultural Science Societies(CAAsS).