Success in Agricultural Transformation PDF Download

Author: Isabelle Tsakok
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500880
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
To lift and keep millions out of poverty requires that smallholder agriculture be productive and profitable in the developing world. Do we know how to make this happen? Researchers and practitioners still debate how best to do so. The prevailing methodology, which claims causality from measures of statistical significance, is inductive and yields contradictory results. In this book, instead of correlations, Isabelle Tsakok looks for patterns common to cases of successful agricultural transformation and then tests them against other cases. She proposes a hypothesis that five sets of conditions are necessary to achieve success. She concludes that government investment in and delivery of public goods and services sustained over decades is essential to maintaining these conditions and thus successfully transform poverty-ridden agricultures. No amount of foreign aid can substitute for such sustained government commitment. The single most important threat to such government commitment is subservience to the rich and powerful minority.

Author: John W. Mellor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319652591
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
This book examines the role of agriculture in the economic transformation of developing low- and middle-income countries and explores means for accelerating agricultural growth and poverty reduction. In this volume, Mellor measures by household class the employment impact of alternative agricultural growth rates and land tenure systems, and impact on cereal consumption and food security. The book provides detailed analysis of each element of agricultural modernization, emphasizing the central role of government in accelerated growth in private sector dominated agriculture. The book differs from the bulk of current conventional wisdom in its placement of the non-poor small commercial farmer at the center of growth, and explains how growth translates into poverty reduction. This new book is a follow up to Mellor’s classic, prize-winning text, The Economics of Agricultural Development. Listed as a Best Books of 2017: Economics by Financial Times.

Author: Paul K. Conkin
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081313868X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.

Author: Ellen Hillbom
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415684951
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This book uses a global history approach in order to reach a greater understanding of the agricultural transformation process, using a wide number of comparisons over time and space. The book seeks to identify key factors for agricultural transformation, through the use of micro level case studies, and to assess their importance in a global perspective.

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: Xinshen Diao
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198845340
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Using Ghana as a case study, this work integrates economic and political analysis to explore the challenges and opportunities of Africa's growth and transformation.

Author: Dorosh, Paul A., ed.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896296911
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
Ethiopia has experienced impressive agricultural growth and poverty reduction, stemming in part from substantial public investments in agriculture. Yet, the agriculture sector now faces increasing land and water constraints along with other challenges to growth. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System: Past Trends, Present Challenges, and Future Scenarios presents a forward-looking analysis of Ethiopia’s agrifood system in the context of a rapidly changing economy. Growth in the agriculture sector remains essential to continued poverty reduction in Ethiopia and will depend on sustained investment in the agrifood system, especially private sector investment. Many of the policies for a successful agricultural and rural development strategy for Ethiopia are relevant for other African countries, as well. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System should be a valuable resource for policymakers, development specialists, and others concerned with economic development in Africa south of the Sahara.

Author: Ganesh Thapa
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9813296488
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 652

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Book Description
This book addresses some key strategic questions related to agriculture in the context of major contemporary developments and emerging challenges in Nepal such as the changing role of agriculture with economic growth, structural transformation in reducing poverty, improving nutritional outcomes, and addressing the challenges of climate change. The book also suggests policy measures to improve the delivery of critical inputs and services and ensure the participation of marginal and smallholders in high-value chains. Further, it discusses how the new federal system and governance structure will affect the delivery of agricultural technology and services. The book is divided into five parts. Part I discusses macro-issues in the agriculture sector, while Part II focuses on agricultural productivity growth and its main drivers. The third part explores diversification in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors by farmers and other rural people for livelihood improvement, while the fourth part deals with agricultural trade and marketing issues, highlighting policy implications and recommendations in the areas of immediate focus and further research. Lastly, Part V addresses institutions and governance issues, which are vital for agricultural development. In the final chapter, the editors summarize and synthesize the book’s main findings and develop a policy agenda for addressing the many challenges faced by the agriculture sector in Nepal, so as to make it more productive, competitive, sustainable, and inclusive. The book offers a rich source of analytical information on various aspects of agricultural development in Nepal and will be of immense value to policymakers, development partners, civil society, students, and those interested in the economic and agricultural development of not only Nepal, but also other developing countries.

Author: C. Peter Timmer
Publisher: A E I Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
This monograph, A World without Agriculture, was the 2007 Henry Wendt Lecture, delivered at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C. on October 30, 2007. The Wendt Lecture is delivered annually by a scholar who has made major contributions to our understanding of the modern phenomenon of globalization and its consequences for social welfare, government policy, and the expansion of liberal political institutions.

Author: Carolyn Sachs
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609384156
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
A profound shift is occurring among women working in agriculture - they are increasingly seeing themselves as farmers, not only as the wives or daughters of farmers. In this book, farm women in the northeastern United States describe how they got into farming and became successful entrepreneurs despite the barriers they encountered in agricultural institutions, farming communities, and even their own families. The authors' feminist agrifood systems theory (FAST) values women's ways of knowing and working in agriculture and has the potential to shift how farmers, agricultural professionals, and anyone else interested in farming think about gender and sustainability, as well as to change how feminist scholars and theorists think about agriculture.--COVER.