In recent years there has been much interest in alternative sources of income for farmers. This is because economic theory suggests that demand for agricultural commodities is inelastic so that, as incomes in society as a whole increase, those of farmers do not necessarily keep pace Ð hence the current problems with falling real farm incomes. In contrast the demand for services is relatively el...

Ð An analytical construct of social capital is presented, followed by a case study from Sri Lanka. There, farmer organizations were established in the Gal Oya irrigation scheme in the early 1980s with a combination of roles, rules, norms and values that supported mutually bene®cial collective action. This produced measurable improvements in system performance and eciency. In the 1997 dry seaso...

Drawing upon unique transaction-level data from rural Ethiopia, this paper tests for general forms of imperfect competition among rural wholesale traders. These are key to the grain distribution system as they purchase from farmers and perform interregional trade. Tests show that traders in a typical source market engage in imperfectly competitive behavior in purchasing from farmers, driving do...

In popular and professional discourse, debate about the right to keep bear arms most often revolves around Second Amendment. But that narrow reference ignores a vast expansive nonconstitutional legal regime privileging guns their owners. This collection of gun rights confers broad powers immunities on owners go far beyond those required by Constitution, like bring private property against an ow...

A dedicated investment in smallholder farmers to enable them to improve their land use and productivity is critical to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth in African countries. The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (‘New Alliance’) focuses on public-private partnership (PPPs) with local investors and multinational corporations (MNCs) to produce food. However, this is unlikely to...

BACKGROUND The continuing urbanization in China has resulted in a loss of land and rights among farmers. The social security of landless farmers has attracted considerable research attention. However, only few studies measure the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of landless farmers by employing scientific standardized scales. By using five-dimensional European quality of life (EQ-5D) scal...

In this paper, we take a sustainability approach to examine whether local adaptation practices climate change are usually sustainable from an environmental and social point of view. Our hypothesis is that institutional trust key enabler the transition towards development. To test these concepts, analyse adaptive agricultural farmers in drought-prone Northwest areas Bangladesh through lens UN's ...

On Wednesday 8 th February, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association of the UK hosted a lunchtime lecture on “Securing Women’s Land Rights in Southern and Eastern Africa”. This event took place at the Houses of Parliament and was chaired by Heidi Alexander MP, with guest speakers Elizabeth Daley of Mokoro Ltd, Ruchi Tripathi of ActionAid International, and Simon Levine of ODI. The lecture was...

Governance and democracy have become widely recognized as prerequisites for sustained development (Johnson 1982; White and Wade 1988). Democratic governance fosters transparency, accountability, the rule of law, respect for human rights, civic participation, and civic inclusiveness – all of which are necessary for securing economic productivity, equitable distribution and state legitimacy. We e...

Understanding indigenous knowledge of soils has come to be seen as essential in understanding the local realities of farmer and may be critical for the success or failure of agricultural development. However, little effort has been made to capture the indigenous knowledge of upland farmers in northern Laos where many projects are working to develop sustainable crop production systems as alterna...