Author : Bertram Hughes Farmer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 34,37 MB
Release : 1984-05-03
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780521249423
This book is a critical examination of the truth behind the stereotype that there is a Green Revolution in agricultural technology. Twenty-one specialists in the field of development studies look at the reality of agrarian change, either through historical analysis, or through in-depth village field-work, or from their experience as development planners.
Author : Sigrid Schmalzer
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 34,37 MB
Release : 2016-01-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 022633029X
In 1968, the director of USAID coined the term “green revolution” to celebrate the new technological solutions that promised to ease hunger around the world—and forestall the spread of more “red,” or socialist, revolutions. Yet in China, where modernization and scientific progress could not be divorced from politics, green and red revolutions proceeded side by side. In Red Revolution, Green Revolution, Sigrid Schmalzer explores the intersection of politics and agriculture in socialist China through the diverse experiences of scientists, peasants, state agents, and “educated youth.” The environmental costs of chemical-intensive agriculture and the human costs of emphasizing increasing production over equitable distribution of food and labor have been felt as strongly in China as anywhere—and yet, as Schmalzer shows, Mao-era challenges to technocracy laid important groundwork for today’s sustainability and food justice movements. This history of “scientific farming” in China offers us a unique opportunity not only to explore the consequences of modern agricultural technologies but also to engage in a necessary rethinking of fundamental assumptions about science and society.
Author : Patrick Kilby
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 118 pages
File Size : 22,82 MB
Release : 2019-03-04
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0429575297
This book reviews the Green Revolution, starting with its inception and development from the 1940s to the 1970s, and leading to what is commonly referred to as a second Green Revolution in the 2000s. Building on the historical assessment, it draws insights for contemporary policy debates and demonstrates important lessons for the here and now. ‘Green Revolution’ refers to the technical measures employed to increase food (particularly grain) production, based mainly on improved seed varieties for higher yields and pest resistance. For it to be successful the Green Revolution often required land reform, investments in irrigation and fertilizer supply that were not available to women and marginal farmers. This book analyses three underlying principles that have guided green revolutions: the political environment in which they were set; how they contributed to both the successes and challenges the Green Revolution continues to face; and the systemic institutional barriers for access to these agricultural production advances, with a focus on how gender relations limit the inclusion of women even when they are the principle cultivators and farm managers. The book draws on experiences in Mexico, India and China, examining government policy, the role of the family farm, and key issues around the inclusion of women. In doing so, this book connects the history of the Green Revolution with contemporary policy debates on the developing world, particularly in relation to Africa and Asia, around foreign aid and agricultural research. It also specifically establishes that greater inclusivity for women and other marginalised farming communities will significantly enhance the effectiveness of these programs. Interlinking themes of development policy, gender, and agricultural research, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of agricultural development, food security, and sustainable development, as well as policymakers and practitioners working in international aid and agri-food policies.
Author : Joshua Eisenman
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 427 pages
File Size : 18,20 MB
Release : 2018-04-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0231546750
China’s dismantling of the Mao-era rural commune system and return to individual household farming under Deng Xiaoping has been seen as a successful turn away from a misguided social experiment and a rejection of the disastrous policies that produced widespread famine. In this revisionist study, Joshua Eisenman marshals previously inaccessible data to overturn this narrative, showing that the commune modernized agriculture, increased productivity, and spurred an agricultural green revolution that laid the foundation for China’s future rapid growth. Red China’s Green Revolution tells the story of the commune’s origins, evolution, and downfall, demonstrating its role in China’s economic ascendance. After 1970, the commune emerged as a hybrid institution, including both collective and private elements, with a high degree of local control over economic decision but almost no say over political ones. It had an integrated agricultural research and extension system that promoted agricultural modernization and collectively owned local enterprises and small factories that spread rural industrialization. The commune transmitted Mao’s collectivist ideology and enforced collective isolation so it could overwork and underpay its households. Eisenman argues that the commune was eliminated not because it was unproductive, but because it was politically undesirable: it was the post-Mao leadership led by Deng Xiaoping—not rural residents—who chose to abandon the commune in order to consolidate their control over China. Based on detailed and systematic national, provincial, and county-level data, as well as interviews with agricultural experts and former commune members, Red China’s Green Revolution is a comprehensive historical and social scientific analysis that fundamentally challenges our understanding of recent Chinese economic history.
Author : Vandana Shiva
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 33,76 MB
Release : 2016-01-14
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0813166810
The Green Revolution has been heralded as a political and technological achievement—unprecedented in human history. Yet in the decades that have followed it, this supposedly nonviolent revolution has left lands ravaged by violence and ecological scarcity. A dedicated empiricist, Vandana Shiva takes a magnifying glass to the effects of the Green Revolution in India, examining the devastating effects of monoculture and commercial agriculture and revealing the nuanced relationship between ecological destruction and poverty. In this classic work, the influential activist and scholar also looks to the future as she examines new developments in gene technology.
Author : James E. Horne
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 23,6 MB
Release : 2001-08-22
Category : Nature
ISBN :
The authors define sustainable agriculture as "the umbrella term for approaches to agriculture that are environmentally friendly, profitable, and fair to farmers and ranchers." One of Horne's positive solutions to agribusiness-as-usual is to pay farmers to implement sustainable practice, rather than pay them later to clean up pollution or compensate for overproduction. Horne's eight goals of sustainability are healthy soil, increasing water conservation and quality, managing organic waste without pollution, safer pest management, adopting livestock and crops more adapted to nature, increased biodiversity, energy conservation, increased profitability, and reduced risk. Horne hopes to convert farmers to sustainable agriculture with folksy lines like: "I feel like I'm carrying on in the pioneer spirit of Oklahoma-- breaking new ground, looking for a better life. What keeps me going is the knowledge that the good earth will sustain us if we treat her right." Horne is president of the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Oklahoma. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
Author : Ben Lowe
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 38,6 MB
Release : 2009-11-19
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0830878211
We are facing planet-sized challenges. Climate change and environmental crises can be pretty immobilizing, and we can fall into the temptation of thinking that we can't make a difference. But it's not just about what we can do on our own to make a difference. It's about what we can do when we mobilize together as a movement and combine for community action. Activist Ben Lowe calls the present generation to come together and care for the earth in a way that recent generations have not. Telling real-life stories of community organizing on college campuses across the nation, Lowe shows us that little things can make a big difference when we all work together. We now have an opportunity to show the world what it looks like when Christians care for the planet God gave us, so that future generations can live sustainably. This is our moment. This is our issue. Come join the green revolution.
Author : Benjamin Robert Siegel
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 49,26 MB
Release : 2018-04-26
Category : History
ISBN : 1108695051
This ambitious and engaging new account of independent India's struggle to overcome famine and malnutrition in the twentieth century traces Indian nation-building through the voices of politicians, planners, and citizens. Siegel explains the historical origins of contemporary India's hunger and malnutrition epidemic, showing how food and sustenance moved to the center of nationalist thought in the final years of colonial rule. Independent India's politicians made promises of sustenance and then qualified them by asking citizens to share the burden of feeding a new and hungry state. Foregrounding debates over land, markets, and new technologies, Hungry Nation interrogates how citizens and politicians contested the meanings of nation-building and citizenship through food, and how these contestations receded in the wake of the Green Revolution. Drawing upon meticulous archival research, this is the story of how Indians challenged meanings of welfare and citizenship across class, caste, region, and gender in a new nation-state.
Author : Pamela A. Matson
Publisher : Island Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 28,59 MB
Release : 2012-09-26
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1610911776
Seeds of Sustainability is a groundbreaking analysis of agricultural development and transitions toward more sustainable management in one region. An invaluable resource for researchers, policymakers, and students alike, it examines new approaches to make agricultural landscapes healthier for both the environment and people. The Yaqui Valley is the birthplace of the Green Revolution and one of the most intensive agricultural regions of the world, using irrigation, fertilizers, and other technologies to produce some of the highest yields of wheat anywhere. It also faces resource limitations, threats to human health, and rapidly changing economic conditions. In short, the Yaqui Valley represents the challenge of modern agriculture: how to maintain livelihoods and increase food production while protecting the environment. Renowned scientist Pamela Matson and colleagues from leading institutions in the U.S. and Mexico spent fifteen years in the Yaqui Valley in Sonora, Mexico addressing this challenge. Seeds of Sustainability represents the culmination of their research, providing unparalleled information about the causes and consequences of current agricultural methods. Even more importantly, it shows how knowledge can translate into better practices, not just in the Yaqui Valley, but throughout the world.
Author : Norman Nadeau
Publisher : Hatherleigh Press
Page : 211 pages
File Size : 42,24 MB
Release : 2012-07-10
Category : Nature
ISBN : 1578264340
Ever Wonder What A Green Renewable Sustainable World Would Look Like? With the state of our world and its limited resources, more and more people are trying to lead a greener lifestyle in order to do their part. The Green Revolution provides comprehensive information associated with adopting daily practices that will ultimately sustain, not deplete, precious natural materials in an ever-growing population. Renewable energy expert Norman Nadeau leads by example as he details how he has committed his life to living green. From the application of solar and wind turbine technology, to recovering energy embedded in places one may not expect (such as animals’ manure), The Green Revolution highlights the highly sustainable system Norman Nadeau developed for his family farm. The Green Revolution serves as a broad introduction for those who want to conserve rather than squander. At this very important turning point in our planet’s history, this book offers the principles by which anyone can live in the most sustainable way possible.
