The agrarian reform experiment in Chile: History, impact, and implications
This paper presents what is known about the role of agrarian reform and the subsequent counter reform in producing a successful dynamic evolution of Chilean agriculture.
This paper presents what is known about the role of agrarian reform and the subsequent counter reform in producing a successful dynamic evolution of Chilean agriculture.
Years of continuous cultivation with little or no use of external inputs to restore soil nutrients has resulted in a situation in which crop production in a number of African countries is now limited by nutrient deficiencies – nitrogen, in particular, which is crucial to healthy plant growth. This widespread problem has been described as a “nitrogen drought”. Attempts to remedy this situation using only organic inputs have largely failed to keep up with the rate of nutrient loss.
The need for countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa to build more productive, modern, and market-oriented
farming sectors is one of our most pressing development
challenges. In coming years, African agriculture will have
to increase food production and expand and intensify value
chains in order to meet changing demand on the part of a
rapidly expanding and urbanizing consumer base. The process
of doing this will enable African countries to begin pushing
Successful development experiences have demonstrated the greater efficiency achieved with a growth strategy based on small and medium-scale farmers (SMFs). This study is sought to identify potential agribusiness models for enhancing inclusive growth through NGOs partnerships with SMFs in Myanmar. The paper illustrates that agricultural sector in Myanmar is characterised by already high land inequality and landlessness, and low productivity of most SMFs.
Agricultural production in Cambodia is concentrated in the northwestern districts bordering Thailand, on the central plains surrounding the Tonle Sap Lake and its river systems, along the Mekong and Bassac rivers towards the Mekong delta, and in the northern and northeastern provinces. In 2012, the total land-use area under major agricultural crops was about 4.015 million ha. Rice is the dominant crop, occupying about 2.968 million ha; non-rice crops are grown on about 1.047 million ha (MAFF 2012).
The type of agrarian structure employed to produce tropical commodities affects many dimensions of land use, such as ownership inequality, overlapping land rights and conflicts, and land use changes. I conduct a literature review of historical changes in agrarian structures of commodities grown on the upland frontier of mainland Southeast and South Asia, using a case study approach, of tea, rubber, oil palm and cassava.
For centuries, farmers in the mountainous region of mainland Southeast Asia have practiced shifting cultivation, with plots of land cultivated temporarily and then allowed to revert to secondary forest for a fallow period. Today, more than one million hectares have been converted to rubber plantation. By 2050, the area under rubber trees in the montane regions of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and China's Yunnan Province is predicted to increase fourfold.
Despite the many transformations taking place in Myanmar, its agricultural sector is lagging. A high proportion of rural households remain poor and food insecure as a result. This article examines the underlying causes of poor agricultural performance through a combination of literature and secondary data review combined with extensive field interviews with a broad range of key informants in the main agricultural zones of the country. We identify key structural changes that are needed to unleash smallholder-led agricultural transformation and broad-based rural economic growth.
This paper presents a case study of land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes from 1975 to 2014 in the central highlands of Ethiopia and traces out its impact on socioeconomic conditions of the local community in the study area. We used four time series Landsat satellite images, that is, Landsat MSS (1975), Landsat Thematic Mapper (1986), Enhanced Thematic Mapper (2000), and Landsat 8 OLI scenes (2014), to investigate the changes in LULC.
Effects of land use and management on plant and pollinator diversity at the local scale have been reported. However, there is little information available on the spatial and temporal aspects of plant‐pollinator mutualist diversity relative to farm management. Information on these aspects will provide a better understanding of agri‐environment schemes in a conservation context.
This study used linear programming (LP) to analyse land-use alternatives in the traditional Umbundu farming system in the Angolan central highlands. Farmers of the region have traditionally produced maize and pulses for subsistence and vegetables and timber as cash crops. Different pasture and forest fallow rotations are used along catena production sites. The system is labour-intensive and uses animal traction. LP problems were formulated and solved for a baseline land-use alternative, improved diet alternative and maximal timber production alternative.