This chapter focuses on the rural dimensions of the ‘two economies’ debate, and in particular on the question of what contribution land and agrarian reform can make to reducing inequality and addressing the structural nature of rural poverty in post-apartheid South Africa. It suggests that the problem needs to be conceptualised in terms of an ‘agrarian question of the dispossessed’, that can on...

Brazil has presided over the most comprehensive agrarian reform frontier colonization program on Earth, in which ~1.2 million settlers have been translocated by successive governments since the 1970's, mostly into forested hinterlands of Brazilian Amazonia. These settlements encompass 5.3% of this ~5 million km2 region, but have contributed with 13.5% of all land conversion into agropastoral la...

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This paper examines the structures of information transfer to the agricultural (production) and agro-alimentary (transformation and commercialization of the products) sector within Spain. A historical perspective is provided to better illustrate the reality and complexity of Spain with regard to the systems of agrarian extension, agricultural research, resources provided by Spain’s central admi...

The Grand Prairie of east central Illinois was notorious for a marshy environment that prevented dense agricultural settlement until late in the nineteenth century. While recent historicalegeographical scholarship has focused on innovations in drainage technology, drainage-related laws and institutions, and the ecological impacts of wetland reclamation, it has largely failed to account for the ...

Explaining Agricultural What explains differences in agricultural and agrarian and Agrarian Policies policies across couJntries and in Developing Countries over time? Why do countries in Developing Countries dpalniM ozc adopt, and maintain, policy regimes that reduce efficiency Hans P. Binswanger and increase rural poverty? Klaus Deininger What are the conditions for countries to initiate equit...

Resilience deals explicitly with change and provides a middle ground between the social and the environmental sciences. However, a growing critique by social scientists questions the ability of resilience thinking to adequately examine the social dimensions of change. The question that emerges is how social scientists should engage with resilience. We addressed this question by comparing resili...

BACKGROUND The global pattern of varying prevalence of diseases of affluence, such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, suggests that some environmental factor specific to agrarian societies could initiate these diseases. PRESENTATION OF THE HYPOTHESIS We propose that a cereal-based diet could be such an environmental factor. Through previous studies in archaeology and molecular e...