Author: Ashok K. Mishra
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000336271
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 431
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Book Description
Debates about public expenditure in the agricultural sector have reopened in many developing and emerging economies because of high budget deficits and changes in public opinion. As a result, agricultural policy in many of these countries is beginning to take a more market-oriented approach to agrarian problems, most notably through the introduction of contract farming. This book explores the policy issues around contract farming and its transformative potential and addresses the lack of empirical research on this topic by focusing on South Asia: principally India, Bangladesh and Nepal. The book first addresses the effects of contract farming (vertical coordination) on productivity, food security indicators (yield, consumption expenditures, prices), employment and input usage. Then it draws lessons from the South Asian case studies on the impact of institutional changes, like contract farming, on income and food security of smallholder households. The core of the book includes case study chapters on several commodities that are produced under contract farming, including vegetables and fisheries in Bangladesh, low-value crops in Nepal and coffee in India. Other chapters also explore contracts, storage, input usage and technical efficiency in these cases. This book serves as an essential guide to academics, researchers, students, legislative liaisons and think tank groups interested in agrarian issues, agricultural economics and agricultural policy in emerging economies and particularly in South Asia.
Author: Diao, Xinshen, ed.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896293807
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 548
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Book Description
Agricultural mechanization in Africa south of the Sahara — especially for small farms and businesses — requires a new paradigm to meet the needs of the continent’s evolving farming systems. Can Asia, with its recent success in adopting mechanization, offer a model for Africa? An Evolving Paradigm of Agricultural Mechanization Development analyzes the experiences of eight Asian and five African countries. The authors explore crucial government roles in boosting and supporting mechanization, from import policies to promotion policies to public good policies. Potential approaches presented to facilitating mechanization in Africa include prioritizing market-led hiring services, eliminating distortions, and developing appropriate technologies for the African context. The role of agricultural mechanization within overall agricultural and rural transformation strategies in Africa is also discussed. The book’s recommendations and insights should be useful to national policymakers and the development community, who can adapt this knowledge to local contexts and use it as a foundation for further research.
Author: David R. Harris
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1934536512
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
In Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia, archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the Neolithic period. It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British, Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge of the Karakum desert. This project has demonstrated unequivocally that agropastoralists who cultivated barley and wheat, raised goats and sheep, hunted wild animals, made stone tools and pottery, and lived in small mudbrick settlements were present in southern Turkmenistan by 7,000 years ago (c. 6,000 BCE calibrated), where they came into contact with hunter-gatherers of the "Keltiminar Culture." It is possible that barley and goats were domesticated locally, but the available archaeological and genetic evidence leads to the conclusion that all or most of the elements of the Neolithic "Jeitun Culture" spread to the region from farther west by a process of demic or cultural diffusion that broadly parallels the spread of Neolithic agropastoralism from southwest Asia into Europe. By synthesizing for the first time what is currently known about the origins of agriculture in a large part of Central Asia, between the more fully investigated regions of southwest Asia and China, this book makes a unique contribution to the worldwide literature on transitions from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
Author: Cecilia M. Tsu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019973478X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
Garden of the World examines how overlapping waves of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrants fundamentally altered the agricultural economy and landscape of the Santa Clara Valley as well as white residents' ideas about race, gender, and what it meant to be an American family farmer.
Author: Rie Makita
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317224523
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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Book Description
In addition to constituting an evolving area of inquiry within the social sciences, agricultural certification, and particularly its Fair Trade and organic components, has emerged as a significant tool for promoting rural development in the global South. This book is unique for two reasons. First, in contrast to existing studies that have tended to examine Fair Trade and organic certification as independent systems, the studies presented in this book reveal their joint application within actual production settings, demonstrating the greater complexity entailed in these double certification systems through the generation of contradictions and tensions compared with single certification systems. Second, the authors, who are both Asian, reveal the realities of applying Fair Trade and organic certification systems within Asian agriculture. In doing so, they challenge the fact that most Fair Trade studies have been undertaken by Western scholars who have tended to focus on Latin American and African producers. Drawing on a wealth of grounded case studies conducted in India, Thailand, and the Philippines, this pioneering study on double certification makes a significant contribution to studies on Fair Trade and organic agriculture beyond Asia.
Author: Mingsan Khāosaʻāt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
This book presents an extensive account of the green revolution's effect on the performance of Asian agriculture over the past two decades, as well as the second-generation problems that the green revolution is now experiencing.
Author: V. S. Vyas
Publisher: Academic Foundation
ISBN: 9788171887262
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 610
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Book Description
Commemorative volume published on the 75th birth anniversary of V.S. Vyas, economist from Rajasthan, India; most of the papers presented at a seminar held at Jaipur in February 2008.
Author: Joanna Boestel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134682751
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
A comparative study which describes and analyses the contribution of agriculture to the economies of East Asia. Until now, little attention has been paid to the agricultural sector which actually underpins industrial and commercial development. Recently, this sector has become the focus of increasingly bitter economic disputes, especially over protection and the use of import tariffs. A comparative framework is used, employing case studies from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea to highlight both the common characteristics of agriculture's role in East Asian development, and features particular to the political economy of agriculture in each country.
Author: Birthal, Pratap S.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 39
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Book Description
Over the past few decades, the agricultural sector of Southeast Asia has experienced robust growth and undergone a structural transformation albeit differentially across the countries in the region. The main aims of this paper are to understand the process of transformation and sources of growth in agriculture in the broader context of economy-wide changes in domestic and international markets, and to suggest technological, institutional and policy measures for faster, efficient and sustainable growth. Our findings show faster growth in agriculture in comparatively low-income countries, with technological change, area expansion and diversification being the main drivers. On the other hand, agricultural growth in high-income countries has been relatively slow, and driven by price increases, mainly of the export-oriented commercial crops, such as oil-palm, rubber and coconut; and also, by area expansion. In view of the fixed supply of land and high volatility in global food prices, area and price driven growth is unlikely to sustain in the long-run. For efficient, sustainable and inclusive growth, the recourse has to be with exploiting potential of (i) existing and frontier technologies, by investing more in agricultural research and extension systems, and (ii) diversification of production portfolio towards higher-value food commodities by strengthening institutions that link farmers to remunerative markets; and investing in post-harvest infrastructure for food processing.
Author: Lakhwinder Singh
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429559127
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
This book looks at agricultural systems and rural economies in Asia through the prism of alternative innovation systems, alternative public policy and institutional changes. The massive shifts within the agricultural economy in Asia, geared towards increasing production, has had a direct effect on the livelihood of a large mass of people in rural societies, causing financial and social distress. This book explores a wide range of solutions, such as the role of education, improving technical skills and human capital, along with interactive learning in R&D, harnessing ICTs and institutional innovations, to see how these problems can be alleviated. The volume looks at how these methods can help formulate alternative ways to build sustainable and inclusive agricultural societies, ensure food security, sustainable growth and agricultural productivity. This book, rich in theoretical and empirical matter, will be useful for academics and researchers interested in agricultural innovation, development studies and agricultural economics. It will also be of interest to policymakers and thinktanks working towards inclusive social development and sustainability in Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
