This chapter introduces food systems and organic farming, outlines the development of organic farming in Southern Africa, and grapples with the idea of sustainable development; drawing on earlier work of the author entitled Sustainable Development: Developing What to Sustain Whom? a conceptual...

This chapter examines the impact of organic as well as a double (organic and Fair Trade) certification on material input costs, using data collected in 2012 from smallholder black pepper farmers in India. An important outcome is that, contrary to conventional expectations, organic and double...

This chapter discusses the multitude of nanotechnology applications that could lead to increased productivity in agriculture. It touches upon the use of the technology for early detection of pests, diseases, nutrient deficiencies, delivery of nanoagricultural inputs, seed treatments, as well as...

This chapter examines India's livestock sector, highlighting the problem of low productivity and presenting an overview of the country's dairying sector and its milk, poultry, egg and meat production. The need to arrest genetic erosion of indigenous breeds, develop climate-resilient livestock...

This chapter proposes several strategic actions to accelerate agricultural growth in India, including: increased capital investment in agriculture; supply of growth-oriented inputs at farmers' doorsteps; improvement of field crop productivity; emphasis on rainfed agriculture and a new era approach; ...

This chapter looks at the most common and most important limiting factors to farm productivity in African agriculture and examines whether conservation agriculture (CA) can increase the efficiency of their use. It is concluded that CA is not a low-input system (although it can be a low external...

The development of Indian agriculture is driven by input subsidies and farm technology. Therefore this chapter examines which of these is more important for agricultural development. The study evaluates the effects of price and non-price factors on factor demand, crop output supply and demand, as...

This chapter provides the context for why it is important for a farm to be efficient in terms of its use of inputs and how these translate into outputs. In particular, the global macroeconomic and policy conditions that provide an impetus to examine efficiency at the farm level are outlined in...

This chapter focuses on the link between livestock and zoonoses in sub-Saharan Africa. The role of poverty, keeping livestock beside or inside houses, low level of agricultural intensification and input use, and eating bushmeat in the emergence and persistence of zoonoses is described. The...

This introduction defines integrated soil fertility management (ISFM), explains why there is the need for the handbook and describes how the handbook can be used for farming systems development in sub-Saharan agriculture (SSA). ISFM is a set of soil fertility management practices that necessarily...