Indigenous irrigation systems have been a central feature of Asian agriculture since prehistoric times, and reflect technical knowledge with a proven record of sustainability. Modern agricultural development efforts often ignore this indigenous knowledge, replacing traditional infrastructure...

Considerable attention has focussed on the potential of indigenous agricultural knowledge for sustainable development. Drawing upon fieldwork on the soil and water management principles of rice farming systems in Senegambia, this paper examines the potential of the traditional system for a...

During the 1980s many communities turned to grassroots activities to promote economic development, rather than relying on industrial recruitment strategies. We evaluate the characteristics of these projects, their benefits and costs, and obstacles they face in the development process. The data...

Michigan's approach to sustainability does not conflict with its efforts to reindustrialize state agriculture. As currently applied, agricultural sustainability remains a one-dimensional concept tightly focused on the condition of production resources and the larger physical environment. The...

The goals and values of economic development strategies vary according to the individual communities that employ them. While economic development strategies are aimed at increasing jobs, income, and community wealth, the issue of who gains and who loses from economic change is often overlooked....

Zimbabwe's communal farmers are now less food secure than they were two generations ago. The roots of this decline lie not only in the confinement of Africans to marginal land but also in the historic forced replacement of their sustainable, indigenous farming system with one whose productivity...

Rural development and economic change has generally been associated with growth and the in-migration of nonlocal firms or their branch plants and offices. Such change has been critiqued and at times resisted because of its implicit “urbanism” and conflict with rural values and modes of...

This analysis is based on a combination of participant observation, census data, and an agricultural survey in two Kenyah Dayak communities in East Kalimantan: isolated Long Ampung, and “modernizing” Long Segar. The dramatically higher rice yields per household in the more “modern”...

The paper investigates the characteristics of the global restructuring of the agricultural and food system that has occurred in recent years. Emphasis is placed on the emergence of the “Food and Natural Resource Question” and its relation to the “Agrarian Question.” It is argued that...