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Agriculture provides the most essential service to mankind, as production of crops in sufficient amounts is necessary for food security and livelihood. This chapter examines the question of whether organic agriculture can produce enough food to meet future demand. This question relates to a moral imperative and any evaluation must therefore be based on objective scientific facts excluding ideological bias, political correctness, economic incentives or environmental opinions. The chapter begins by defining the conditions necessary for a stringent evaluation of crop yields and explains potential pitfalls. Yield data from national statistics, organic and conventional long-term experiments and comparative studies are then compiled and evaluated, followed by a discussion of the main factors behind low-yielding production. In a global perspective, the scientific literature shows that organic yields are between 25 and 50% lower than conventional yields, depending on whether the organic system has access to animal manure. The amount of manure available on organic farms is usually not sufficient to produce similar crop yields as in conventional systems and therefore green manures are commonly used. However, organic crop yields reported for rotations with green manure require correction for years without crop export from the field, which reduces average yield over the crop rotation. When organic yields are similar to those in conventional production, nutrient input through manure is usually higher than nutrient addition in conventional agriculture, but such high inputs are usually only possible through transfer of large amounts of manure from conventional to organic production. The main factors limiting organic yields are lower nutrient availability, poorer weed control and limited possibilities to improve the nutrient status of infertile soils. It is thus very likely that the rules that actually define organic agriculture, i.e. exclusive use of manures and untreated minerals, greatly limit the potential to increase yields. Our analysis of some yield-related statements repeatedly used by advocates of organic agriculture reached the following conclusions: Organic manure is a severely limited resource, unavailable in quantities sufficient for sustaining high crop yields; legumes are not a free and environmentally sound N source that can replace inorganic fertilisers throughout; and low native soil fertility cannot be overcome with local inputs and untreated minerals alone. Agricultural methods severely limiting crop yields are counter-productive. Lower organic yields require compensation through expansion of cropland – the alternative is famine. Combining expected population growth and projected land demand reveals that low-yielding agriculture is an unrealistic option for production of sufficient crops in the future. In addition, accelerated conversion of natural ecosystems into cropland would cause significant loss of natural habitats. Further improvement of conventional agriculture based on innovations, enhanced efficiency and improved agronomic practices seems to be the only way to produce sufficient food supply for a growing world population while minimising the negative environmental impact.

The 'socioenvironmental state' conceptualisation probes how contested, shifting, emergent boundaries of the state contain the possibilities for transformative change in the Anthropocene. The paper outlines a research programme capable of addressing the questions: who becomes authorised to govern change, who is required to make changes on the ground, and what subjectivities and pathways emerge in the context of rapid rate change? The conceptualisation unpacks three boundaries: state– society, its socionatural emergence, and the relationships between boundary-making and belonging to address these questions and better account for the successes and failures of attempts at governing an uncertain, rapidly changing world. In this analysis, 'environmental change' arises as a stochastic, relational becoming – ecologies and resources are emergent with the social-politics of governing them – suggesting that more analytical attention is required on how 'environmental challenges' and their 'drivers of change' are conceived and delimited. Together, these theoretical insights help reveal the way that the micro-politics of local resource use and the contradictory acceptance and refusals of authority and subjection are not only products of, but also productive of, larger scale political economies, socionatures, governance, and political struggles. The aim is to contribute towards a reimagination of political authority that begins to capture the complex interplay between our attempts at governing a changing world and the inadvertent authorisations, inclusions, and exclusions that we produce in those efforts. The paper partially illustrates the conceptual ideas with an account of forestry and climate change in Nepal. In a context wherein programmes to govern resources have become of global concern, probing the implications of these points is crucial. It is not only that states govern resources with particular consequences for 'environmental change' or 'sustainability', but also that the act of governing resources (re)produces the socioenvironmental boundaries of the state with profound implications for how future transformations can unfold.

The new technological advances have brought a revolution on how economic agents interact with society and markets. Nowadays, the use of virtual currencies is more frequent in the financial transactions and bitcoin has been defined as the most important world cryptocurrency due to its high market capitalization and its technological infrastructure. Several studies have been conducted to discuss bitcoin advantages and disadvantages; however, few papers in literature have examined its connection and influence on the stock market. The objective of this paper is precisely cover this gap. Firstly, by providing tools and concepts to understand bitcoin's dynamic, and then determining its relationship with stock market indexes. In that context, this manuscript examines the definition and function of bitcoin in the global world and its presence in Ecuador. Besides, exploratory and visual analyses are provided using the evolution of bitcoin and other market indexes. Finally, a linear correlation is computed between bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, stock exchange indexes and commodities. The results in this study, employing visual and statistical analyses, demonstrated that bitcoin has: a strong relationship with other cryptocurrencies; a lineal correlation, not as strong as the previous one, with the main stock market indexes; and no linear correlation with commodities.