Author: Keijiro Otsuka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400757603
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
This volume explores the usefulness of the Asian model of agricultural development for Africa, where, even before the recent world food crisis, half the population lived on less than on dollar a day, and a staggering one in three people and one third of all children were undernourished. Africa has abundant natural resources; agriculture provides most of its jobs, a third of national income and a larger portion of total export earnings. However the levels of land and labor productivity rank among the worst in the world. The book explains Africa’s productivity gap and proposes ways to close it, by examining recent experience in Africa and by drawing on lessons from Asia.
Author: William G. Moseley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317288068
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
This volume examines the dominant neoliberal agenda for agricultural development and hunger alleviation in Africa. The text reviews the history of African agricultural and food security policy in the post-colonial period, across a range of geographical contexts, in order to contextualise the productionist approach embedded in the much heralded New Green Revolution for Africa. This strategy, supported by a range of international agencies, promotes the use of hybrid seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides to boost crop production. This approach is underpinned by a new and unprecedented level of public–private partnerships as donors actively work to promote the private sector and build links between African farmers, input suppliers, agro-dealers, agro-processors, and retailers. On the consumer end, increased supermarket penetration into poorer neighbourhoods is proffered as a solution to urban food insecurity. The chapters in this volume complicate understandings of this new approach and raise serious questions about its effectiveness as a strategy for increasing food production and alleviating poverty across the continent. This book is based on a special issue of African Geographical Review.
Author: Peter B.R. Hazell
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
Author: Matthew A. Schnurr
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228000459
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
As development donors invest hundreds of millions of dollars into improved crops designed to alleviate poverty and hunger, Africa has emerged as the final frontier in the global debate over agricultural biotechnology. The first data-driven assessment of the ecological, social, and political factors that shape our understanding of genetic modification, Africa's Gene Revolution surveys twenty years of efforts to use genomics-based breeding to enhance yields and livelihoods for African farmers. Matthew Schnurr considers the full range of biotechnologies currently in commercial use and those in development - including hybrids, marker-assisted breeding, tissue culture, and genetic engineering. Drawing on interviews with biotechnology experts alongside research conducted with more than two hundred farmers across eastern, western, and southern Africa, Schnurr reveals a profound incongruity between the optimistic rhetoric that accompanies genetic modification technology and the realities of the smallholder farmers who are its intended beneficiaries. Through the lens of political ecology, this book demonstrates that the current emphasis on improved seeds discounts the geographic, social, ecological, and economic contexts in which the producers of these crops operate. Bringing the voices of farmers to the foreground of this polarizing debate, Africa's Gene Revolution contends that meaningful change will come from a reconfiguration not only of the plant's genome, but of the entire agricultural system.
Author: Timothy A. Wise
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620974231
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
"A powerful polemic against agricultural technology." —Nature A major new book that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expert Few challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050—at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response, corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise's Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests. Most of the world, Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what and how to grow food. These same farmers—who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—can show the way forward as the world warms and population increases. Wise takes readers to remote villages to see how farmers are rebuilding soils with ecologically sound practices and nourishing a diversity of native crops without chemicals or imported seeds. They are growing more and healthier food; in the process, they are not just victims in the climate drama but protagonists who have much to teach us all.
Author: D. Bräutigam
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230374301
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Since 1957, more than 45 African countries have received aid from China, yet until recently little has been known about the effectiveness or impact of this assistance. Bräutigam provides the first authoritative account of China's experience as an aid donor in rural Africa. In a detailed and highly readable analysis, the author draws on anthropology, economics, organization theory and political science to explain how China's domestic agenda shaped the design of its aid, and how domestic politics in African countries influenced its outcome.
Author: Andre Bationo
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 904812543X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 1339
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Book Description
Africa can achieve self sufficiency in food production through adoption of innovations in the agriculture sector. Numerous soil fertility and crop production technologies have been generated through research, however, wide adoption has been low. African farmers need better technologies, more sustainable practices, and fertilizers to improve and sustain their crop productivity and to prevent further degradation of agricultural lands. The agricultural sector also needs to be supported by functional institutions and policies that will be able to respond to emerging challenges of globalization and climate change.
Author: Elenita C. Daño
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789832729082
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 63
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Book Description
Author: Patrick Kilby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429575297
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 118
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Book Description
This book reviews the Green Revolution, starting with its inception and development from the 1940s to the 1970s, and leading to what is commonly referred to as a second Green Revolution in the 2000s. Building on the historical assessment, it draws insights for contemporary policy debates and demonstrates important lessons for the here and now. ‘Green Revolution’ refers to the technical measures employed to increase food (particularly grain) production, based mainly on improved seed varieties for higher yields and pest resistance. For it to be successful the Green Revolution often required land reform, investments in irrigation and fertilizer supply that were not available to women and marginal farmers. This book analyses three underlying principles that have guided green revolutions: the political environment in which they were set; how they contributed to both the successes and challenges the Green Revolution continues to face; and the systemic institutional barriers for access to these agricultural production advances, with a focus on how gender relations limit the inclusion of women even when they are the principle cultivators and farm managers. The book draws on experiences in Mexico, India and China, examining government policy, the role of the family farm, and key issues around the inclusion of women. In doing so, this book connects the history of the Green Revolution with contemporary policy debates on the developing world, particularly in relation to Africa and Asia, around foreign aid and agricultural research. It also specifically establishes that greater inclusivity for women and other marginalised farming communities will significantly enhance the effectiveness of these programs. Interlinking themes of development policy, gender, and agricultural research, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of agricultural development, food security, and sustainable development, as well as policymakers and practitioners working in international aid and agri-food policies.
Author: Joseph DeVries
Publisher: CABI
ISBN: 0851995640
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Improved food security, led by increased productivity among Africa's many small-scale farmers, has been the aim of significant national and international effort in recent decades. It has proved to be one of the most critical challenges facing humankind. This book grew out of a two-year exploration conducted by the food security theme of The Rockefeller Foundation focusing on the potential for crop genetic improvement to contribute to food security among rural populations in Africa. It provides a critical assessment of the ways in which recent breakthroughs in biotechnology, participatory plant breeding, and seed systems can be broadly employed in developing and delivering more productive crop varieties in Africa's diverse agricultural environments. It also presents an analysis of current plant breeding and biotechnology strategies for the key crops in Africa including: maize, sorghum, cowpea, rice, and cassava. The book will appeal to plant breeders, biotechnologists, and seed distributors as well as policy-makers in the area of agricultural development.
