Africa's Emerging Maize Revolution

Africa's Emerging Maize Revolution
Author: Derek Byerlee
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 322
Release: 1997
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781555877767

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Intended for policymakers and scholars, the 15 contributions in this volume are divided into two sections: the first provides six country case studies of the evolving maize economies of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria. The second part synthesizes major technological, institutional, and policy issues with chapters on research and extension, soil fertility, seed and fertilizer delivery systems, and marketing and price policy. Paper edition (754-0), $29.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In Pursuit of an African Green Revolution

In Pursuit of an African Green Revolution
Author: Keijiro Otsuka
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2015-11-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 4431556931

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This book explores recent experiences in the effort to bring about a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The chapters focus on rice and maize, which are promising and strategic smallholder crops. Significantly, we find that an African Rice Revolution has already begun in many irrigated areas, using Asian-type modern varieties, chemical fertilizer, and improved management practices. Further, we find that the same technological package significantly increases the productivity and profitability of rice farming in rainfed areas as well. We also find evidence that that management training, when done well, can boost productivity on smallholder farms. This suggests that African governments can accelerate the pace of Africa’s Rice Revolution by strengthening extension capacity. The story for maize is wholly different, where most farmers use local varieties, apply little chemical fertilizer, and obtain very low yields. However, in the highly populated highlands of Kenya, a number of farmers have adopted high-yielding hybrid maize varieties and chemical fertilizer, as was the case in the Asian Green Revolution, apply manure produced by stall-fed cows, as was the case during the British Agricultural Revolution, and keep improved cows or cross-breeds from European cows and local stock, as was the case of the Indian White Revolution. We conclude that while rice in Africa has benefited from an Asian Green Revolution strategy that emphasizes modern seeds, inputs, and focused knowledge transfers, the success of Africa’s Maize Revolution will require a different system approach based on hybrid maize, chemical and organic fertilizers, and stall-fed cross-bred cows.

Africa’s Green Revolution

Africa’s Green Revolution
Author: William G. Moseley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1317288068

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This volume examines the dominant neoliberal agenda for agricultural development and hunger alleviation in Africa. The text reviews the history of African agricultural and food security policy in the post-colonial period, across a range of geographical contexts, in order to contextualise the productionist approach embedded in the much heralded New Green Revolution for Africa. This strategy, supported by a range of international agencies, promotes the use of hybrid seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides to boost crop production. This approach is underpinned by a new and unprecedented level of public–private partnerships as donors actively work to promote the private sector and build links between African farmers, input suppliers, agro-dealers, agro-processors, and retailers. On the consumer end, increased supermarket penetration into poorer neighbourhoods is proffered as a solution to urban food insecurity. The chapters in this volume complicate understandings of this new approach and raise serious questions about its effectiveness as a strategy for increasing food production and alleviating poverty across the continent. This book is based on a special issue of African Geographical Review.

Maize and Grace

Maize and Grace
Author: James C. McCann
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2007-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674265904

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Sometime around 1500 AD, an African farmer planted a maize seed imported from the New World. That act set in motion the remarkable saga of one of the world’s most influential crops—one that would transform the future of Africa and of the Atlantic world. Africa’s experience with maize is distinctive but also instructive from a global perspective: experts predict that by 2020 maize will become the world’s most cultivated crop. James C. McCann moves easily from the village level to the continental scale, from the medieval to the modern, as he explains the science of maize production and explores how the crop has imprinted itself on Africa’s agrarian and urban landscapes. Today, maize accounts for more than half the calories people consume in many African countries. During the twentieth century, a tidal wave of maize engulfed the continent, and supplanted Africa’s own historical grain crops—sorghum, millet, and rice. In the metamorphosis of maize from an exotic visitor into a quintessentially African crop, in its transformation from vegetable to grain, and from curiosity to staple, lies a revealing story of cultural adaptation. As it unfolds, we see how this sixteenth-century stranger has become indispensable to Africa’s fields, storehouses, and diets, and has embedded itself in Africa’s political, economic, and social relations. The recent spread of maize has been alarmingly fast, with implications largely overlooked by the media and policymakers. McCann’s compelling history offers insight into the profound influence of a single crop on African culture, health, technological innovation, and the future of the world’s food supply.

Innovations as Key to the Green Revolution in Africa

Innovations as Key to the Green Revolution in Africa
Author: Andre Bationo
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 1339
Release: 2011-08-30
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 904812543X

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Africa can achieve self sufficiency in food production through adoption of innovations in the agriculture sector. Numerous soil fertility and crop production technologies have been generated through research, however, wide adoption has been low. African farmers need better technologies, more sustainable practices, and fertilizers to improve and sustain their crop productivity and to prevent further degradation of agricultural lands. The agricultural sector also needs to be supported by functional institutions and policies that will be able to respond to emerging challenges of globalization and climate change.

Africa's Gene Revolution

Africa's Gene Revolution
Author: Matthew A. Schnurr
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2019-11-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0228000459

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As development donors invest hundreds of millions of dollars into improved crops designed to alleviate poverty and hunger, Africa has emerged as the final frontier in the global debate over agricultural biotechnology. The first data-driven assessment of the ecological, social, and political factors that shape our understanding of genetic modification, Africa's Gene Revolution surveys twenty years of efforts to use genomics-based breeding to enhance yields and livelihoods for African farmers. Matthew Schnurr considers the full range of biotechnologies currently in commercial use and those in development - including hybrids, marker-assisted breeding, tissue culture, and genetic engineering. Drawing on interviews with biotechnology experts alongside research conducted with more than two hundred farmers across eastern, western, and southern Africa, Schnurr reveals a profound incongruity between the optimistic rhetoric that accompanies genetic modification technology and the realities of the smallholder farmers who are its intended beneficiaries. Through the lens of political ecology, this book demonstrates that the current emphasis on improved seeds discounts the geographic, social, ecological, and economic contexts in which the producers of these crops operate. Bringing the voices of farmers to the foreground of this polarizing debate, Africa's Gene Revolution contends that meaningful change will come from a reconfiguration not only of the plant's genome, but of the entire agricultural system.

Maize and Grace

Maize and Grace
Author: James McCann
Publisher:
Total Pages: 68
Release: 1999
Genre: Corn
ISBN:

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