agriculture

This article aims to disclose the nature and underlying causes of the recent food crises focusing on both conjunctural and structural factors; to analyze the socio-economic and geopolitical impacts of food price increases; to identify the possible strategies to minimize the trade-off between the increase of agricultural production and the sustainable use of natural resources.

This article focuses on perceptions and memories of the “Groundnut Scheme”, an enacted peanut monoculture in East Africa and one of the largest colonial agricultural development initiatives in history, trying in particular to trace the different functions that were assigned to the social and ecological landscape of Tanganyika.

The film tells the story of two cotton farming villages in East Africa: one organic, one heavily industrialized.

Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso presents intriguing evidence for plant intelligence.

Ron Finley recounts his experiences planting vegetable gardens in unexpected places in South Central Los Angeles.

This film examines how Mexico City—home to 22 million people—is trying to become water sustainable.

Using the Central Coast of California as a case study, this article argues that a nexus of ambitious growers and a growing state agricultural bureaucracy worked to create a “brand name” and teach cultivation approaches with increased production and expanded markets. But these same actors also made efforts to keep the long-term health of the industry and the community in mind.

Four centuries of colonial extraction lead to severe ecological degradation of the forests and soils of the Atlantic region of Brazil. This article discusses the management of soil fertility and the relationship between agricultural practices and forest stands based on agricultural manuals published in Brazil over a period of more than two centuries.

Recent research on Africa has emphasised conservation and trypanosomiasis control as the major factors, which first motivated colonial officials and scientists to embark on forestry preservation and bush clearing policies. This paper contends that in Chepalungu, Kenya, forestry preservation and bush clearing were implemented with the objective to create a racially and tribally segregated landscape.