In the last decade the systems approach to agricultural research has begun to subsume the older reductionist approaches. However, proponents of the systems approach often accept without critical examination a number of features that were inherited from previously accepted approaches. In...

The paper investigates the crisis of Portugese agriculture and the challenges connected with Portugal's integration into the European Economic Community (EEC). An historical overview of the economic and social development of the agricultural sector since the 1950s is provided. Additionally, a...

Social forestry, in contrast to traditional forestry, is intended to meet biological/environmental, procedural and equity goals. Social forestry projects may not fulfill this multiplicity of goals either because priority is given to a single goal or because various factors including the...

A farming systems approach to development has meant many things over the past 15 years, depending on its institutional and ecological setting, its target populations, and the goals motivating its implementation. Despite the diversity of approaches, and the sometimes rancorous discussion over...

In this paper, the author points out that although by-passed by international development assistance in many parts of the world, women have been providing skill and labor for agricultural production, as well as subsistence of food, water and firewood for their families. Some of the assumptions...

This essay examines the growing concerns about disciplinary narrowing occurring in agricultural research and the prospects of ameliorating the detrimental effects of disciplinary compartmentalization while capitalizing on its positive effects. The general model for agricultural science is that...

This paper reports the results of a survey of the teaching of courses in agricultural history in the seventy-four Land Grant institutions in the United States and its territories. It concludes with the expression of concern that the subject matter, agricultural history, is nearly a dying field,...