Download or read book Sustainable Intensification written by Jules N. Pretty and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.

Download or read book Cooperatives the State and Corporate Power in African Export Agriculture written by KARIN. WEDIG and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agriculture is a major contributor to Africa's GDP, the region's biggest source of employment and its largest food producer. However, agricultural productivity remains low and buyer-driven global value chains offer few opportunities for small producers to upgrade into higher value-added activities. In recent years, the revival of Africa's cooperatives has been celebrated by governments and international donors as a pathway towards inclusive agricultural development, and this book explores the strengths but also the issues which surround these cooperatives. The book scrutinizes the neoliberal ideal of economic prosperity arising through the operation of liberalized labor markets by illuminating the discriminatory nature of Uganda's informal labor relations. It points to the role of cooperatives as a potential instrument of progressive change in African export agriculture, where large numbers of small producers depend on casual wage work in addition to farming. In contrast to the portrayal, advanced by some governments and rarely questioned by donors, of an unproblematic co-existence of small producers' collective action and big capital interests, the author calls for a re-politicized debate on the Social and Solidarity Economy. As part of this, she highlights the adverse political and economic conditions faced by African cooperatives, including intense international competition in agricultural processing, inadequate access to infrastructure and services, and at times antagonistic state-cooperative relations. Supported by wide-ranging interdisciplinary evidence, including new ethnographic, survey and interview data, this book shows how cooperatives may be co-opted by both the state and corporations in a discourse that ignores structural inequalities in value chains and emphasizes poverty reduction over economic and political empowerment. It provides a critique of New Institutional Economics as a framework for understanding how institutions shape redistribution, and develops a political economy approach to explore the conditions for structural change in African export agriculture.

Download or read book Agricultural Extension Worldwide written by William M. Rivera and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1987, Agricultural Extension Worldwide presents an international perspective on agricultural extension and highlights extension as an integral function of agricultural development. Agricultural extension is one of the largest nonformal problem-solving educational systems in the world. It is generally concerned with transferring knowledge and research to farmers but may include services to other target audiences such as farm families and rural youth, as well as serve for developing rural community resources. In sixteen chapters, various major systems of extension are discussed along with factors that make for their success or failure, including the linkages required and the policy and financial supports necessary to make them effective. This book is a must read for scholars and researchers of agricultural economics, agricultural policy and agriculture in general.

Download or read book Progress in Agricultural Geography Routledge Revivals written by Michael Pacione and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second half of the twentieth century, significant changes were occurring within the agricultural industry, including an increase in efficiency and government intervention, as well as expanded and more complicated patterns of trade. This comprehensive volume, first published in 1986, reflects how these developments challenged the field of agricultural geography. Considering agricultural innovations, farming systems, government policy and land ownership, this title provides an essential background to students with an interest in agricultural methods, distribution and reform.

Download or read book Managing Cover Crops Profitably 3rd Ed written by Andy Clark and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2008-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover crops slow erosion, improve soil, smother weeds, enhance nutrient and moisture availability, help control many pests and bring a host of other benefits to your farm. At the same time, they can reduce costs, increase profits and even create new sources of income. You¿ll reap dividends on your cover crop investments for years, since their benefits accumulate over the long term. This book will help you find which ones are right for you. Captures farmer and other research results from the past ten years. The authors verified the info. from the 2nd ed., added new results and updated farmer profiles and research data, and added 2 chap. Includes maps and charts, detailed narratives about individual cover crop species, and chap. about aspects of cover cropping.

Download or read book A Small Farm Future written by Chris Smaje and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern classic of the new agrarianism "Chris Smaje...shows that the choice is clear. Either we have a small farm future, or we face collapse and extinction."—Vandana Shiva "Every young person should read this book."—Richard Heinberg In a groundbreaking debut, farmer and social scientist Chris Smaje argues that organizing society around small-scale farming offers the soundest, sanest and most reasonable response to climate change and other crises of civilisation—and will yield humanity’s best chance at survival. Drawing on a vast range of sources from across a multitude of disciplines, A Small Farm Future analyses the complex forces that make societal change inevitable; explains how low-carbon, locally self-reliant agrarian communities can empower us to successfully confront these changes head on; and explores the pathways for delivering this vision politically. Challenging both conventional wisdom and utopian blueprints, A Small Farm Future offers rigorous original analysis of wicked problems and hidden opportunities in a way that illuminates the path toward functional local economies, effective self-provisioning, agricultural diversity and a shared earth. Perfect for readers of both Wendell Berry and Thomas Piketty, A Small Farm Future is a refreshing, new outlook on a way forward for society—and a vital resource for activists, students, policy makers, and anyone looking to enact change.

Download or read book Grain by Grain written by Bob Quinn and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A compelling agricultural story skillfully told; environmentalists will eat it up." - Kirkus Reviews When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family’s farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn’t health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics. But as demand for organics grew, so too did Bob’s experiments. He discovered that through time-tested practices like cover cropping and crop rotation, he could produce successful yields—without pesticides. Regenerative organic farming allowed him to grow fruits and vegetables in cold, dry Montana, providing a source of local produce to families in his hometown. He even started producing his own renewable energy. And he learned that the grain he first tasted at the fair was actually a type of ancient wheat, one that was proven to lower inflammation rather than worsening it, as modern wheat does. Ultimately, Bob’s forays with organics turned into a multimillion dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. In Grain by Grain, Quinn and cowriter Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, show how his story can become the story of American agriculture. We don’t have to accept stagnating rural communities, degraded soil, or poor health. By following Bob’s example, we can grow a healthy future, grain by grain.

Download or read book Agricultural Household Models written by Inderjit Singh and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far. The model assumes that households are price-takers and is therefore recursive. The decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor. Comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies. The empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive. The book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households, marketed surplus, the demand for nonagricultural goods and services, the rural labor market, budget revenues, and foreign exchange earnings. In addition, it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition, nutritional status, health, saving, and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings. Methodological topics, primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions, along with aggregation, market interaction, uncertainty, and market imperfections are discussed. The most important methodological issues - the question of the recursive property of these models - is also discussed.

Download or read book Wheat and Barley Grain Biofortification written by Om Prakash Gupta and published by Woodhead Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wheat and Barley Grain Biofortification addresses topics associated with the alleviation of malnutrition in globally diverse populations via wheat and barley biofortification. The book synthesizes the current trends of malnutrition across the globe, the need for wheat and barley nutritional enhancement and how agronomic, microbial and molecular understanding of biofortification can help in devising significant approaches and strategies. In addition, it includes discussions on potential genetic variability available and their efficient utilization in wheat and barley for molecular breeding for nutrients, challenges and opportunities for bioavailability, and technical advancement for analysis of bioavailability. - Addresses the need for wheat and barley biofortification to address global nutrition demands - Places emphasis on the current agronomic and molecular understanding of biofortification - Discusses the potential utilization of genetic variability - Highlights the economics of biofortification over fortification technology

Download or read book The Structure and Reform of Direct Taxation Routledge Revivals written by James Meade and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1978, The Structure and Reform of Direct Taxation presents the full findings and recommendations of the ‘Meade’ committee set up by The Institute for Fiscal Studies. It represents the most important contemporary examination of the structure of UK taxation and direct taxation systems in general. The results of two years’ intensive research and discussion by this independent committee are presented as a report under the joint authorship of an outstanding team of tax experts. The committee brought together professional practitioners-lawyers, accountants and taxation administrators-and academic specialists in fiscal studies, and here provides a unique review of direct taxation which is comprehensive, singularly original and full of good sense. The book begins with a return to first principles, restates the objectives of a good tax system and analyses existing structures. It goes on to examine the feasibility of basic reforms which would allow the system to become more straightforward in operation and which would base taxation on what individuals take out of the economy rather than on what they put into it.

Download or read book Routledge Revivals Agriculture in France on the Eve of the Railway Age 1980 written by Hugh Clout and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1980, this compact and useful book uses the earliest volumes of government-published statistics, and with the aid of computer-generated cartography, transforms the numbers there reported into an arrondissement-by-arrondissement comparative picture of French agriculture in the mid-1830s. Clout reviews problems of rapid population growth, scarcely adequate domestic food supplies and primitive systems of transportation, while attention is drawn to spatial variations in agricultural activity and productivity. Commercial, high-yielding farming was best developed in a northern multi-nuclear region, comprising of Ile-de-France, Normandy and Nord, with smaller foci of commercial orientation along an eastern axis from Alsace to Marseilles and in western areas from the Loire to the middle of the Garonne valley. Clout concludes that the revolutionary promise of national economic unity was far from being realised in the 1830s and was not to be achieved until national systems of transport and education were firmly established later in the nineteenth century.

Download or read book Incentives and Agriculture in East Africa Routledge Revivals written by Mats Lundahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agriculture is at the centre of the economies of many developing countries, and its stagnation and poor performance across large parts of Africa is a major cause for concern. First published in 1990, this book focuses on the nature and role of incentives in agricultural organization and production in East Africa, looking in particular at the political and ideological determinants of that role. Mats Lundahl analyses ways of improving agricultural performance, and considers the ‘African socialism’ of Julius Nyerere in contrast with the market-led approaches, which he favours. A detailed title, this volume will of interest to all those concerned with the issues of rural development, including students of development studies, economics, and African studies.

Download or read book Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe written by Robert S. Duplessis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-09-18 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the end of the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution, the long-established structures and practices of European agriculture and industry were slowly, disparately, but profoundly transformed. Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, first published in 1997, narrates and analyzes the diverse patterns of economic change that permanently modified rural and urban production, altered Europe's economy and geography, and gave birth to new social classes. Broad in chronological and geographical scope and explicitly comparative, the book introduces readers to a wealth of information drawn from thoughout Mediterranean, east-central, and western Europe, as well as to the classic interpretations and current debates and revisions. The study incorporates scholarship on topics such as the world economy and women's work, and it discusses at length the impact of the emergent capitalist order on Europe's working people.

Download or read book Food Fights Routledge Revivals written by and published by Routledge. This book was released on with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Southern Provisions written by David S. Shields and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-03-23 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From grits to deep-fried okra, from barbecue to corn bread, Southern food stirs greater loyalty and passion than any American cuisine. Yet as the crops that once defined it have disappeared, much of the flavor has leeched out of Southern cookery until today. Thanks to a community of devoted chefs and farmers, and one indefatigable historian, Southern heirloom greens and grains and with them America s greatest cuisine--are being revived. Searching the archives for evidence of how nineteenth-century farmers bred their enormous variety of vegetables and grains, and of their contemporaries tastes and cooking practices, David S. Shields has become a key figure in the effort to reboot Southern cuisine. "Southern Provisions" draws on ten years of research and activism to tell the story of a quintessentially American cuisine that was all but forgotten, and the lessons that its restoration holds for the revival of regional cuisines across the country. Shields vividly evokes the connections between plants, plantations, growers, seed brokers, markets, vendors, cooks, and consumers. He shows how the distinctiveness of local ingredients arose from historical circumstances and a confluence of English, French Huguenot, West African, and Native American foodways. Shields emphasizes the Southern Lowcountry, from the peanut patches of Wilmington, North Carolina; to the Truck Farms of the Charleston Neck, South Carolina; to the sugar cane fields of the Georgia Sea Islands; to the citrus groves of Amelia Island, Florida. But the book also takes up the cuisine of New Orleans and other areas of the South and the nation, and even the West Indies. Offering a fascinating panorama of America s culinary past, "Southern Provisions" also shows how the renovation of traditional southern ingredients will enable cooks to take regional cuisine into the future."

Download or read book The Revival of Agriculture written by Rural Reconstruction Association and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Land Problem in the Developed Economy Routledge Revivals written by Andrew H. Dawson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land is an important finite commodity in the modern world. In the past wars have been fought over it and land shortage has been the cause of many famines. In modern times debates rage over just how land should be controlled by government and over whether land should be publicly or privately owned. This book, which was first published in 1984, surveys the major problems and debates connected with land use in the modern developed world. The opening chapters examine the main components of the problem and describe the development of the debate about land from Malthus onwards. The book then analyses land policy in a number of different countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, and Eastern Europe. This book is ideal for students of geography and economics.