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: Lynam, John
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896292126
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 459
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Book Description
This book—prepared by Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI), which is led by IFPRI—offers a comprehensive perspective on the evolution, current status, and future goals of agricultural research and development in Africa, including analyses of the complex underlying issues and challenges involved, as well as insights into how they might be overcome. Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara is at a prospective tipping point. Growth has accelerated in the past decade, but is unsustainable given increasing use of finite resources. The yield gap in African agriculture is significant, and scenarios on feeding the world’s population into the future highlight the need for Africa to expand its agricultural production. Agricultural Research in Africa: Investing in Future Harvests discusses the need to shift to a growth path based on increased productivity—as in the rest of the developing world— which is essential if Africa is to increase rural incomes and compete in both domestic and international markets. Such a shift ultimately requires building on evolving improvements that collectively translate to deepening rural innovation capacity.
Author: Cyrus G. Ndiritu
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
On no other continent is the need for agricultural research greater than it is in Africa. Nowhere are the complexities of producing well- adapted agricultural technologies more binding, yet the basic institutions supporting agriculture are some of the weakest in the developing world. In Africa, the challenge of increasing food supply to keep pace with population growth and rising urban demand, of producing the agricultural technologies that will fuel that process, and of designing the basic institutions that will create and deliver these technologies, remains largely unfulfilled. Transformation of Agricultural Research Systems in Africa: Lessons from Kenya analyzes Kenya's experiences in transforming its Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) over time. Kenya was chosen because it is the third largest agricultural research system in sub-Saharan Africa, and it has been reorganized to make it more efficient in serving the needs of small- scale farms in national, regional, and global markets. The authors are highly seasoned professionals with years of experience in crafting institutional innovations. This case study can be used to draw implications for other research systems in sub-Saharan Africa.
Author: Lisa C. Smith
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896297675
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 157
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Book Description
Author: Alan de Brauw
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303088693X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
This book provides a thorough introduction to and examination of agricultural value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, the authors introduce the economic theory of agri-food value chains and value chain governance, focusing on domestic and regional trade in (and consumption of) food crops in a low-income country context. In addition to mainstream and heterodox thinking about value chain development, the book pays attention to political economy considerations. The book also reviews the empirical evidence on value chain development and performance in Africa. It adopts multiple lenses to examine agricultural value chains, zooming out from the micro level (e.g., relational contracting in a context of market imperfections) to the meso level (e.g., distributional implications of various value chain interventions, inclusion of specific social groups) and the macro level (underlying income, population and urbanization trends, volumes and prices, etc.).Furthermore, this book places value chain development in the context of a process the authors refer to as structural transformation 2.0, which refers to a process where production factors (labor, land and capital) move from low-productivity agriculture to high-productivity agriculture. Finally, throughout the book the authors interpret the evidence in light of three important debates: (i) how competitive are rural factor and product markets, and what does this imply for distribution and innovation? (ii) what role do foreign investment and factor proportions play in the development of agri-food value chains in Africa? (iii) what complementary government policies can help facilitate a process of agricultural value chain transformation, towards high-productive activities and enhancing the capacity of value chains to generate employment opportunities and food security for a growing population.
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251308713
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 150
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Book Description
This framework presents ten interrelated principles/elements to guide Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization in Africa (SAMA). Further, it presents the technical issues to be considered under SAMA and the options to be analysed at the country and sub regional levels. The ten key elements required in a framework for SAMA are as follows: The analysis in the framework calls for a specific approach, involving learning from other parts of the world where significant transformation of the agricultural mechanization sector has already occurred within a three-to-four decade time frame, and developing policies and programmes to realize Africa’s aspirations of Zero Hunger by 2025. This approach entails the identification and prioritization of relevant and interrelated elements to help countries develop strategies and practical development plans that create synergies in line with their agricultural transformation plans. Given the unique characteristics of each country and the diverse needs of Africa due to the ecological heterogeneity and the wide range of farm sizes, the framework avoids being prescriptive.
Author: Calestous Juma
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190237236
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 355
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Book Description
African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and can help contribute to global food security. To achieve this Africa has to define agriculture as a force in economic growth by advancing scientific and technological research, investing in infrastructure, fostering higher technical training, and creating regional markets.
Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896294056
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Author: Felix I. Nweke
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Cassava is Africa's second most important food crop. The cassava transformation that is now underway in West Africa is fueled by new high yielding TMS varieties that have transformed cassava from a low-yielding, famine-reserve crop to a high-yielding cash crop for both rural and urban consumers. The book highlights the role of cassava as a "poverty fighter" by increasing cassava productivity and driving down the cost of cassava in rural and urban diets.
Author: Peter D. Little
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299140649
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Wracked by poverty, famine, and drought, Africa is typically represented as agriculturally stagnant, backward, and crisis-prone. Living Under Contract, however, highlights the dynamic, changing character of sub-Saharan agrarian systems by focusing on contract farming. A relatively new and increasingly widespread way of organizing peasant agriculture, contract farming promotes production of a wide variety of crops--from flowers to cocoa, from fresh vegetables to rice--under contract to agribusinesses, exporters, and processers. The proliferation of African growers producing under contract is in fact part of broader changes in the global agro-food system. In this examination of agricultural restructuring and its effect upon various African societies, editors Peter Little and Michael Watts bring together anthropologists, economists, geographers, political scientists, and sociologists to explore the origins, forms, and consequences of contract production in several African countries, particularly Kenya, the Gambia, Zimbabwe, and the Ivory Coast. Documenting how contract production links farmers, agribusiness, and the state, the contributors examine problematic aspects of this method of agrarian reform. Their case studies, based on long-term field work and analysis on the village and household level, chart the complex effects of contract production on the organization of work and the labor process, rural inequality, gender relations, labor markets, local accumulation strategies, and regional development. Living Under Contract reveals that contract farming represents a distinctive form in which African growers are incorporated into national and world markets. Contract production, which has been a central feature of the agricultural landscape in the advanced capitalist states, is an emerging strategy for "capturing peasants" and for confronting the agrarian question in the late twentieth century.
