At 4:00 am, Leonida Wanyama lit a lantern in her house made of sticks and mud. She was up long before the sun to begin her farm work, as usual. But this would be no ordinary day, this second Friday of the new year. This was the day Leonida and a group of smallholder farmers in western Kenya would begin their exodus, as she said, “from misery to Canaan,” the land of milk and honey.Africa’s smallholder farmers, most of whom are women, know misery. They toil in a time warp, living and working essentially as their forebears did a century ago. With tired seeds, meager soil nutrition, primitive storage facilities, wretched roads, and no capital or credit, they harvest less than one-quarter the yields of Western farmers. The romantic ideal of African farmers––rural villagers in touch with nature, tending bucolic fields––is in reality a horror scene of malnourished children, backbreaking manual work, and profound hopelessness. Growing food is their driving preoccupation, and still they don’t have enough to feed their families throughout the year. The wanjala––the annual hunger season that can stretch from one month to as many as eight or nine––abides.But in January 2011, Leonida and her neighbors came together and took the enormous risk of trying to change their lives. Award-winning author and world hunger activist Roger Thurow spent a year with four of them––Leonida Wanyama, Rasoa Wasike, Francis Mamati, and Zipporah Biketi––to intimately chronicle their efforts. In The Last Hunger Season, he illuminates the profound challenges these farmers and their families face, and follows them through the seasons to see whether, with a little bit of help from a new social enterprise organization called One Acre Fund, they might transcend lives of dire poverty and hunger.The daily dramas of the farmers’ lives unfold against the backdrop of a looming global challenge: to feed a growing population, world food production must nearly double by 2050. If these farmers succeed, so might we all.

The oil palm is the world's most valuable oil crop. With palm oil production increasing by more than 50% in the last decade of the twentieth century and set to double in the next twenty years, it has never before been so important to understand the history, use and cultivation of this fascinating crop.There have been many new developments since the third edition of The Oil Palm in 1988, particularly in the fields of clonal propagation, agronomy, breeding and molecular genetics. This new edition has been completely rewritten, and is the first book to record and explore these and many other developments. The book traces the origins and progress of the industry, and describes the basic science underlying the physiology, breeding and nutrition of the oil palm. It covers both cutting-edge research, and wider issues such as genetic modification of the crop, the promise of clonal propagation, and the effects of palm oil on human health. The practical problems of maximising yield of oil and kernels are discussed in relation to the present 'yield gap' and oil extraction rate decline in Malaysia. The oil palm is also compared to the soya bean and other oil crops, and the recent history of the price of oil palm products is considered in the light of this. The Oil Palm makes an essential contribution to oil palm research and will be an indispensable reference and guide for agricultural students, researchers and all those working, worldwide, in the oil palm industry.

Now in a concise edition created expressly for students and general readers, this widely hailed study traces the transformation of the tropics in modern times. Exploring the central role of the United States in the ongoing devastation of tropical lands, Richard Tucker shows how, in the late 1800s, American speculators first became participants in the centuries-long history of European economic and ecological hegemony in the tropics. Beginning as buyers in the tropical ports of the Atlantic and Pacific, they evolved into land speculators, controlling and managing the areas where tropical crops were grown for carefully fostered consumer markets at home. As corporate agro-industry emerged, the speculators took direct control of the ecological destinies of many tropical lands. Supported by the U.S. government's diplomatic and military protection, they built private empires in the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and West Africa. Yankee investors and plantation managers mobilized engineers, agronomists, and loggers to undertake what they called the "Conquest of the Tropics," claiming to bring civilization to benighted peoples and cultivation to unproductive nature. In competitive cooperation with local landed and political elites, they not only cleared natural forests but also displaced multicrop tribal and peasant lands with monocrop export plantations rooted in private property regimes. In a masterful narrative, Tucker highlights the unrelenting pressure that the demands of U.S. consumerism placed on fragile tropical lands. The forced domestication of widely varied natural systems ultimately led to a devastating decline in biodiversity. The author brings his analysis to life with a series of vivid case studies of sugar, bananas, coffee, rubber, beef, and timber—each a virtual empire in itself. All readers who are interested in environmental degradation and its links to the world economy will be enlightened by this nuanced history.

Most countries in South-East Asia have established smallholder dairy farming industries through social welfare and rural development programs to provide a regular cash flow for poorly resourced farmers. These farms are now being treated as accepted rural industries and require a more business-minded approach based on changes to farm profitability.Business Management for Tropical Dairy Farmers gives smallholder dairy farmers the business management skills they will need to remain sustainable. It shows how to budget cash inputs to match cash outflows during different seasons of the year, and how to invest wisely in improving cattle housing and feeding systems.It will require farmers to make greater use of formats and structures for farm costs and returns allowing them to be aware of the relative importance of all their financial inputs in terms of cost of production per kilogram of milk produced on the farm. It will also allow them to make more meaningful and timely decisions by correctly costing planned changes to their routine farming practices.The book will also be of use to support organizations to more clearly define the key drivers of profit on smallholder farms, and to government departments and national dairy organizations to routinely evaluate and update their industry policies.This book will draw on detailed financial analyses of small holders in many south and east Asian countries, such as Pakistan, Thailand and Malaysia, and will be a companion volume to Tropical Dairy Farming.Features· Demonstrates how small scale dairy farms can make profits· Presents various methods to determine cost of production and takes all the costs of dairy farming into account including imputed costs such as family labor or depreciation· Gives concise summaries of various key aspects of production technology, such as feed and herd management· Introduces concepts such as marginal responses and partial budgets· Discusses methods to recognize and diagnose poor farm profitability

Agricultural ecology, or agroecology, deals in general with the structure and function of agroecosystems at different levels of resolution. In this text/reference, the authors describe in terms of agroecology the tropical environments of sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin and Central America, focusing on production and management systems unique to each region.

Tropical island species and ecosystems are threatened worldwide as a result of increasing human pressure.  Yet some of these islands also lend themselves to restoration, as they are physically defined units that can be given focused attention, as long as resources are available and clear conservation targets are set.  Cousine Island, Seychelles, is a tropical island that has received such intensive restoration.  From a highly degraded island in the 1960s, the island has now been restored to what is believed to be a semblance of the natural state.  All alien vertebrates have been eradicated, as have 25 invasive alien plants.  Cultivated plants are now confined to one small section of the island.  Poaching of nesting marine turtles has been stopped, leading to an increase in turtle breeding numbers.  The shearwater population has increased in size with poaching activities under control.  The Sooty tern has also returned to the island to breed.  The coastal plateau has been restored with over 2500 indigenous shrubs and trees, which have now grown into a forest carpet. There are strict quarantine procedures on the island, keeping it free of rats, mice, various alien invertebrates and potentially invasive alien plants.  Three threatened Seychelles endemic land birds (Seychelles warbler, Seychelles magpie robin and Seychelles white-eye) have been introduced and are thriving, with these introductions contributing to both the magpie robin and the white-eye being downgraded from CR to EN (the warbler remains at VU).  Ecotourism, and nature conservation for the local inhabitants, have been introduced in a way that does not reduce the improved compositional, structural and functional biodiversity of the island.  The result of the restoration effort appears to be sustainable in the long term, although challenges still remain, especially with regards to adequate clean water and a non-polluting power supply on the island.  Cousine is thus paving the way in the art and science of tropical island restoration as a legacy for future generations.There is no other book available on this case study.  The need for the book arises from the fact that here is a positive note for conservation in these times of so much negative news on the state of our environment.  More importantly, the book shows how such restoration should be done, and is therefore a model for many other islands around the world.  The book has many illustrations so as to give the book wide appeal and literally to show what can done in terms of restoration.  All this is based on much scientific detail, including many new data.  The aim is, by way of example, to demonstrate how practical restoration, based on sound scientific research, can be carried out for the betterment of ecological integrity and ecosystem health.

Agricultural research, extension and education can contribute greatly to enhancing agricultural production in a sustainable way and to reducing poverty in the developing world, but achievements have generally fallen short of expectations in Africa. In recent years, growing economic and demographic pressures - coupled with the entry of new market forces and actors - have created a need and an opportunity for more interactive approaches to development. Understanding the existing innovation processes, recognizing the potential for catalysing them and learning how to support joint innovation by different groups will be the key to success. This book covers new conceptual and methodological developments in agricultural innovation systems, and showcases recent on-the-ground experiences in different contexts in Africa. The contributions show how innovation is the outcome of social learning through interaction of individuals and organizations in both creating and applying knowledge. It brings examples of how space and incentives have been created to promote collaboration between farmers, research, extension and the private sector to develop better technologies and institutional arrangements that can alleviate poverty. In 25 broad-ranging chapters the book reflects cutting-edge thinking and practice in support of innovation processes in agriculture and management of natural resources.

This book provides a systematic exposition of the design features of constructed wetlands, and their management (in terms of siting, physical maintenance, and operation). Only very few books (or chapters) have been published on constructed wetlands in tropical conditions and none are current. The selection of plant species, managing their growth and harvesting cycles, and the impact these have on the attenuation of organic and inorganic pollutants, nutrients, and pathogens would be of interest to students and practitioners of the art working under tropical conditions. The potential of constructed wetlands as a low-cost intervention for developing countries in tropical regions that faced water pollution problems, in particular, deserves to be explored systematically.

First published in 1940 and long out of print, Fernando Ortiz’s classic work, Cuban Counterpoint is recognized as one of the most important books of Latin American and Caribbean intellectual history. Ortiz’s examination of the impact of sugar and tobacco on Cuban society is unquestionably the cornerstone of Cuban studies and a key source for work on Caribbean culture generally. Though written over fifty years ago, Ortiz’s study of the formation of a national culture in this region has significant implications for contemporary postcolonial studies.Ortiz presents his understanding of Cuban history in two complementary sections written in contrasting styles: a playful allegorical tale narrated as a counterpoint between tobacco and sugar and a historical analysis of their development as the central agricultural products of the Cuban economy. Treating tobacco and sugar both as agricultural commodities and as social characters in a historical process, he examines changes in their roles as the result of transculturation. His work shows how transculturation, a critical category Ortiz developed to grasp the complex transformation of cultures brought together in the crucible of colonial and imperial histories, can be used to illuminate not only the history of Cuba, but, more generally, that of America as well.This new edition includes an introductory essay by Fernando Coronil that provides a contrapuntal reading of the relationship between Ortiz’s book and its original introduction by the renowned anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. Arguing for a distinction between theory production and canon formation, Coronil demonstrates the value of Ortiz’s book for anthropology as well as Cuban, Caribbean, and Latin American studies, and shows Ortiz to be newly relevant to contemporary debates about modernity, postmodernism, and postcoloniality.

Sustainable crop production is vital to ensure that supplies of fresh vegetables and their products are readily available. However, food security still remains a huge problem in areas of the world, including the tropics and sub-tropics, where communities rely solely on subsistence farming to meet their day-to-day food demands. It is evident that food production needs to become more sustainable to ensure economic stability and poverty reduction. With this in mind, Tropical Vegetable Production addresses the problems surrounding vegetable production in developing countries. Divided into two parts, this volume discusses first the principles and practice of tropical vegetable production, from site selection, security and management to seeds, crop preparation and pesticides, and second, provides details of those crops which are of particular importance in developing countries.