Author: Elon Hamilton Gilbert
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural extension work
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Author: Elon Gilbert
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Author: ELON GILBERT
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Author: James C. McCann
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674040740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Sometime around 1500 AD, an African farmer planted a maize seed imported from the New World. That act set in motion the remarkable saga of one of the world’s most influential crops—one that would transform the future of Africa and of the Atlantic world. Africa’s experience with maize is distinctive but also instructive from a global perspective: experts predict that by 2020 maize will become the world’s most cultivated crop. James C. McCann moves easily from the village level to the continental scale, from the medieval to the modern, as he explains the science of maize production and explores how the crop has imprinted itself on Africa’s agrarian and urban landscapes. Today, maize accounts for more than half the calories people consume in many African countries. During the twentieth century, a tidal wave of maize engulfed the continent, and supplanted Africa’s own historical grain crops—sorghum, millet, and rice. In the metamorphosis of maize from an exotic visitor into a quintessentially African crop, in its transformation from vegetable to grain, and from curiosity to staple, lies a revealing story of cultural adaptation. As it unfolds, we see how this sixteenth-century stranger has become indispensable to Africa’s fields, storehouses, and diets, and has embedded itself in Africa’s political, economic, and social relations. The recent spread of maize has been alarmingly fast, with implications largely overlooked by the media and policymakers. McCann’s compelling history offers insight into the profound influence of a single crop on African culture, health, technological innovation, and the future of the world’s food supply.

Author: Derek Byerlee
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781555877767
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Intended for policymakers and scholars, the 15 contributions in this volume are divided into two sections: the first provides six country case studies of the evolving maize economies of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria. The second part synthesizes major technological, institutional, and policy issues with chapters on research and extension, soil fertility, seed and fertilizer delivery systems, and marketing and price policy. Paper edition (754-0), $29.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 648

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Author: A. Shepherd
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1349262110
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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This book examines the paradigm shift in rural development from an industrial to an holistic approach to technology development, from a technocratic to a participatory approach to management, and from resource control by big organisations to local resource management. It provides a broad-ranging assessment of agriculture and local-level institutional development and sets out a range of agendas for development practice, management and policy into the twenty-first century.

Author: James McCann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Corn
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Author: Melinda Smale
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Corn
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Keijiro Otsuka
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 4431556931
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book explores recent experiences in the effort to bring about a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The chapters focus on rice and maize, which are promising and strategic smallholder crops. Significantly, we find that an African Rice Revolution has already begun in many irrigated areas, using Asian-type modern varieties, chemical fertilizer, and improved management practices. Further, we find that the same technological package significantly increases the productivity and profitability of rice farming in rainfed areas as well. We also find evidence that that management training, when done well, can boost productivity on smallholder farms. This suggests that African governments can accelerate the pace of Africa’s Rice Revolution by strengthening extension capacity. The story for maize is wholly different, where most farmers use local varieties, apply little chemical fertilizer, and obtain very low yields. However, in the highly populated highlands of Kenya, a number of farmers have adopted high-yielding hybrid maize varieties and chemical fertilizer, as was the case in the Asian Green Revolution, apply manure produced by stall-fed cows, as was the case during the British Agricultural Revolution, and keep improved cows or cross-breeds from European cows and local stock, as was the case of the Indian White Revolution. We conclude that while rice in Africa has benefited from an Asian Green Revolution strategy that emphasizes modern seeds, inputs, and focused knowledge transfers, the success of Africa’s Maize Revolution will require a different system approach based on hybrid maize, chemical and organic fertilizers, and stall-fed cross-bred cows.