Seeds for African Peasants PDF Download

Author: Esbern Friis-Hansen
Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute
ISBN: 9789171063656
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

View

Book Description

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309164540
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 378

View

Book Description
This report is the second in a series of three evaluating underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply. The volume describes the characteristics of 18 little-known indigenous African vegetables (including tubers and legumes) that have potential as food- and cash-crops but are typically overlooked by scientists and policymakers and in the world at large. The book assesses the potential of each vegetable to help overcome malnutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and create sustainable landcare in Africa. Each species is described in a separate chapter, based on information gathered from and verified by a pool of experts throughout the world. Volume I describes African grains and Volume III African fruits.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309176891
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 405

View

Book Description
Scenes of starvation have drawn the world's attention to Africa's agricultural and environmental crisis. Some observers question whether this continent can ever hope to feed its growing population. Yet there is an overlooked food resource in sub-Saharan Africa that has vast potential: native food plants. When experts were asked to nominate African food plants for inclusion in a new book, a list of 30 species grew quickly to hundreds. All in all, Africa has more than 2,000 native grains and fruitsâ€""lost" species due for rediscovery and exploitation. This volume focuses on native cereals, including: African rice, reserved until recently as a luxury food for religious rituals. Finger millet, neglected internationally although it is a staple for millions. Fonio (acha), probably the oldest African cereal and sometimes called "hungry rice." Pearl millet, a widely used grain that still holds great untapped potential. Sorghum, with prospects for making the twenty-first century the "century of sorghum." Tef, in many ways ideal but only now enjoying budding commercial production. Other cultivated and wild grains. This readable and engaging book dispels myths, often based on Western bias, about the nutritional value, flavor, and yield of these African grains. Designed as a tool for economic development, the volume is organized with increasing levels of detail to meet the needs of both lay and professional readers. The authors present the available information on where and how each grain is grown, harvested, and processed, and they list its benefits and limitations as a food source. The authors describe "next steps" for increasing the use of each grain, outline research needs, and address issues in building commercial production. Sidebars cover such interesting points as the potential use of gene mapping and other "high-tech" agricultural techniques on these grains. This fact-filled volume will be of great interest to agricultural experts, entrepreneurs, researchers, and individuals concerned about restoring food production, environmental health, and economic opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa. Selection, Newbridge Garden Book Club

Author: Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000569101
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

View

Book Description
This book offers a fresh analysis of third wave popular protests in Africa, shedding light on the complex dynamics between political change and continuity in contemporary Africa. The book argues that protests are simultaneously products and generators of change in that they are triggered by micro-and-macrosocial changes, but they also have the capacity to transform the nature of politics. By examining the triggers, actors, political opportunities, resources and framing strategies, the contributors shed light onto tangible (e.g. policy implementation, liberal reforms, political alternation) and intangible (e.g. perceptions, imagination, awareness) forms of change elicited by protests. It reveals the relevant role of African protests as engines of democracy, accountability and collective knowledge. Bringing popular protests in authoritarian and democratic settings into discussion, this book will be of interest to scholars of African politics, democracy and protest movements.

Author: Thomas J. Bassett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521788830
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

View

Book Description
The literature of Africa is dominated by accounts of crisis and gloom. But Thomas Bassett, a distinguished American geographer well known in the field of development, tells an unusual story of the growth of the cotton economy of West Africa. One of the few long-running success stories in African development, change was brought about by tens of thousands of small-scale peasant farmers. While the introduction of new strains of cotton in French West Africa was in part a result of agronomic research by French scientists, supported by an unusually efficient marketing structure, this is not a case of triumphant top-down 'planification'. Employing the case of Côte d'Ivoire, Professor Bassett shows agricultural intensification to result from the cumulative effect of decades of incremental changes in farming techniques and social organization. A significant contribution to the literature, the book demonstrates the need to consider the local and temporal dimensions of agricultural innovations. It brings into question many key assumptions that have influenced development policies during the twentieth century.

Author: Timothy A. Wise
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620974231
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

View

Book Description
"A powerful polemic against agricultural technology." —Nature A major new book that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expert Few challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050—at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response, corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise's Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests. Most of the world, Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what and how to grow food. These same farmers—who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—can show the way forward as the world warms and population increases. Wise takes readers to remote villages to see how farmers are rebuilding soils with ecologically sound practices and nourishing a diversity of native crops without chemicals or imported seeds. They are growing more and healthier food; in the process, they are not just victims in the climate drama but protagonists who have much to teach us all.

Author: David Gisselquist
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821339916
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 168

View

Book Description
World Bank Technical Paper No. 364. The trade policies of the countries of the Andean Group--Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela--are in the midst of rapid change, particularly in agriculture, where trade policies are being overhauled and trade rules rewritten on domestic, regional, and global levels. This paper highlights the trade options open to each country by looking at agricultural policy in light of general trade policy. The report also discusses the particular role the Andean Group is playing and how the trade pact may influence the liberalization of agricultural markets.

Author: Clare O'Grady Walshe
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030128709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

View

Book Description
"It is my expectation that respect for the critical importance of seed sovereignty will in due course be recognised by member states of the United Nations to be as critical to global peace and security as the UN Charter demands in respect of State sovereign equality, justice, human rights and economic and social wellbeing for all peoples."—Denis J. Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary-General 1994-98 "A constructive contribution to our understanding of what is going wrong and what can go right in the complex area of seed sovereignty."—Dervla Murphy, renowned travel writer and adventurer "Keeping seed diversity alive is the secret ingredient, not just for the good, nutrient-dense food that every cook, gardener and farmer/producer needs, but for strengthening our resilience in the face of multiple environmental threats. This compelling and timely book helps us to understand what we are up against and how we can overcome it."— Darina Allen, internationally renowned cook, founder of Ballymaloe Cookery school and President of the East Cork Convivium of Slow Food This book studies the relationship between globalisation and seed sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides comparative case studies of the most recent Kenyan and Ethiopian seed laws, as well as a study of seed sovereignty 'on the ground' in a locality within Ethiopia. Based on extensive fieldwork, it identifies the interests and motivations of transnational seed corporations, global philanthropic organisations, state actors, and local farmers. It finds significant differences in the wording of seed laws and the exercise of seed sovereignty, applying theories of globalisation to help us better understand these varied outcomes. It shows that seed sovereignty has the potential to be shared between local, national, regional, and global authorities, but in different ways in different countries and localities. In the face of what might sometimes appear to be unstoppable global forces, these findings suggest that the exercise of seed sovereignty can be transformed even in a highly globalised world.

Author: Mariagrazia Alabrese
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000550532
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 271

View

Book Description
This is the first book to address and review the United Nations' Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2018. Food security and sustainable agri-food systems, responsible governance of natural resources, and human rights are among the key themes of the new millennium. The Declaration is the first internationally negotiated instrument bridging these issues, calling for a radical paradigm change in the agricultural sector while giving voice to peasants and rural workers, recognised as the drivers of more equitable and resilient food systems. The book unfolds the impact of the Declaration in the wider realm of law and policy making, especially concerning the new human rights standards related to access and control of natural resources and the governance of food systems. The chapters in the book touch on a broad array of topics, including women’s rights, the role of and impact on indigenous peoples, food sovereignty, climate change, land tenure, and agrobiodiversity. Voices from outstanding scholars and practitioners are gathered together to inform and trigger a further debate on the negotiation process, the innovative and potentially disruptive contents, the relations with other fields of law, and the practical scope of the Declaration. The volume concludes with a collection of case studies that provide concrete examples to help us understand the potential impacts of the Declaration at regional, national, and local levels. This book is the first comprehensive tool to navigate the Declaration and is designed for students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of food and agriculture law, peasant, agrarian and rural studies, human rights and environmental law, and international development and cooperation. Chapter 6 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Author: Leah Penniman
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603587624
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 369

View

Book Description
Recipient of the 28th Heinz Awards for the Economy: Leah Penniman James Beard Foundation Leadership Award 2019: Leah Penniman Choice Reviews, Outstanding Academic Title "An extraordinary book...part agricultural guide, part revolutionary manifesto."—VOGUE Named a "Best Book on Sustainable Living and Sustainability" by Book Riot In 1920, 14 percent of all land-owning US farmers were black. Today less than 2 percent of farms are controlled by black people—a loss of over 14 million acres and the result of discrimination and dispossession. While farm management is among the whitest of professions, farm labor is predominantly brown and exploited, and people of color disproportionately live in “food apartheid” neighborhoods and suffer from diet-related illness. The system is built on stolen land and stolen labor and needs a redesign. Farming While Black is the first comprehensive “how to” guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latinx Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color. Farming While Black organizes and expands upon the curriculum of the BLFI to provide readers with a concise guide to all aspects of small-scale farming, from business planning to preserving the harvest. Throughout the chapters Penniman uplifts the wisdom of the African diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described—from whole farm planning, soil fertility, seed selection, and agroecology, to using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, sharing stories of ancestors, and tools for healing from the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation on the land. Woven throughout the book is the story of Soul Fire Farm, a national leader in the food justice movement. The technical information is designed for farmers and gardeners with beginning to intermediate experience. For those with more experience, the book provides a fresh lens on practices that may have been taken for granted as ahistorical or strictly European. Black ancestors and contemporaries have always been leaders—and continue to lead—in the sustainable agriculture and food justice movements. It is time for all of us to listen. "A moving and powerful how-to book for Black farmers to reclaim the occupation and the contributions of the BIPOC community that introduced sustainable agriculture."—BookRiot.com "Leah Penniman is . . . opening the door for the next generation of farmers."—CBS This Morning