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The book explores the pattern of rural development in contemporary India from a multidisciplinary and historical perspective. The essays overcome the limits of disciplinary approaches to provide a comprehensive analysis of the processes of change and growth at work in the Indian countryside and to review the social and cultural dynamics that have led to the contemporary situation. Providing an analysis of the economic, political and social changes experienced in rural India, they examine the interactions between actors and institutions at different levels. Some contributions focus on the impact of state policies on rural development and on the rationale of capitalistic expansion in the India...
Contributed articles on economic aspects of agriculture in India.
This study is undertaken to quantify the benefits of contract farming (CF) on farmers’ income in a case where new market opportunities are emerging for smallholder farmers in Nepal. CF is emerging as an important form of vertical coordination in the agrifood supply chain. The prospect for CF in a country like Nepal with accessibility issues, underdeveloped markets, and a lack of amenities remains ambiguous. Contractors find it difficult to build links in these cases, particularly when final consumers have quality and safety requirements. However, a lack of other market opportunities makes the contracts more sustainable. The latter happens if there are product-specific quality advantages be...
Improving women’s access to land is high on the agricultural policy agenda of both governmental and non-governmental agencies. Yet, the determinants and rationale of gendered access to land are not well understood. This paper argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households. It explains the importance of social norms, perceptions, and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels: (1) the household/family, (2) the community, (3) the state, and (4) the market. The framework is applied to Ghana. Norms on household and family organization and on men’s and women’s responsibilities and capabilities play a...
This book is a historical review of international food and agriculture since the founding of the international organizations following the Second World War, including the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and into the 1970s, when CGIAR was established and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was created to recycle petrodollars. Despite numerous international consultations and an increased number of actors, there has been no real growth in international assistance, except for the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The book concurrently focuses on the structural transformation of de...
This paper studies the decision of a firm that sells an experience good to delegate quality control to an independent monitor. In an infinitely repeated game consumers’ trust provides incentives to (1) acquire information about whether the good is defective and (2) withhold the good from sale if it is defective. If third-party reports are observable to consumers, delegation of monitoring lessens the first and dispenses with the second moral hazard concern but also creates agency costs due to either limited liability or lack of commitment. In equilibrium the firm controls quality without an independent monitor only if trades are sufficiently frequent and consumer information about quality is sufficiently precise. This result holds under different assumptions about feasible contracts, collusion, verifiability of reports, joint inspections, and the number of firms that hire the third-party monitor. If third-party reports are not publicly observed, delegation can be optimal only if two or more firms hire the third-party monitor because then both moral hazard concerns are present under delegation.
The perceived limits to producing food for a growing global population have been a source of debate and preoccupation for ages. Both experts and the public have been vigilant when regarding the world food situation and outlook. The global agricultural vision has recently moved from eliminating hunger and poverty to a new focus on food security, nutritional security, climate change and economic opportunity. The overall approach can be classified into four strands: food for peace, food for growth, food for the planet, and food for health. This book discusses global agricultural revolutions and visions both in general and from regional, continental and national perspectives, with a particular focus on the World Trade Organization and markets. It will serve as inspiration for historians, practitioners and policy-makers in the field of global agriculture in determining a roadmap for global leaders in years to come.
The 2015 Global Hunger Index suggests that despite progress in reducing hunger worldwide, hunger levels in 52 of 117 countries in the 2015 Global Hunger Index remain “serious” or “alarming.” Since achieving and maintaining food and nutrition security (FNS) remains a goal for all countries, it is important to understand the individual, national, and global factors that affect FNS. This paper proposes an analytical framework to identify and analyze the respective roles of key long-term drivers of FNS. We start by identifying what the key variables affecting FNS are at the household and country level, and then we continue by defining what the main exogenous or endogenous drivers affecti...
Conference partnered by many government and international agencies.