Agricultural Wealth Research Articles

Barley grain at Upp\xe5kra, Sweden: evidence for selection in the Iron Age

A metric analysis on hulled barley grain from the Iron Age regional centre of Uppåkra and surrounding sites in southern Sweden has identified a variation in the size of the grain found on these archaeological sites. Large, high-quality grain was found more frequently at Uppåkra when compared to sites in the surrounding area, where smaller grain was more frequent. The observed large grain found at Uppåkra was, however, restricted to only a few house contexts, including hall-buildings, while other contexts on the site, such as areas dedicated to craft production, had barley assemblages containing smaller grain, similar to the size range found on the surrounding sites. The intra-site variation between different contexts at Uppåkra points to a degree of sorting for larger grain and that this variation between grain assemblages was the result of selection after the crop processing was completed. The distribution of grain size at Uppåkra shows a pattern that indicates that the high-quality barley grain was indented for specific individuals or households. The different contexts at Uppåkra have together produced a record spanning the first millennium ad, representing almost the whole existence of the site. The evidence for selection of larger grain can be seen in the hall-buildings throughout most of the first millennium ad, although less prominently during the Late Roman Iron Age (ad 200–400), while during the Migration Period (ad 400–550) several houses on the main site Uppåkra had assemblages of large grain size. The distribution of grain size at the regional centre Uppåkra shows a pattern that indicates that the handling of large high-quality barley grain was part of a spatial organization, and such organization is similar to other functions observed on the site. The long-term record of grain size patterns across time shows that a structure for handling grain was already in place during the early phase of the settlement and that it remained for centuries. This study indicates that the affluence otherwise seen at the regional centre Uppåkra from an abundance of high-status objects, could also include agricultural wealth, with extensive access to high-quality grain.

Omride Palatial Architecture as Symbol in Action: Between State Formation, Obliteration, and Heritage

Omride Palatial Architecture as Symbol in Action: Between State Formation, Obliteration, and Heritage

Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650−1820 by Trevor Burnard

Reviewed by: Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650−1820 by Trevor Burnard Paul G. E. Clemens (bio) Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650−1820 Trevor Burnard Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015 355 pp. Trevor Burnard’s new book is a response to Russell R. Menard’s challenge to scholars to historicize three things: the development of largescale British colonial sugar, rice, and tobacco plantations; the gang labor system of slavery they generally employed; and the dominance of the planter class in the colonies with such systems. That is, rather than assume an almost natural evolution of small farms into ever-larger colonial staple plantations, historians need to investigate when, how, and why large plantations were brought into existence. Burnard, like Menard, brings to this exploration of the causes and consequences of the plantation system a broad background of research in the archival sources of both the colonial Caribbean and southern mainland colonies. The result is a provocative book that is about both more and less than its title suggests. It has little to say about merchants and the enslaved, and a good deal to say about ordinary whites and their commitment to regimes dominated by great planters. Planters, Merchants, and Slaves provides a synthesis of the social-economic history of the plantation colonies from the 1970s to the present. Work by Menard, Lorena S. Walsh, David Eltis, and B. W. Higman looms large in this project, but to name such key scholars is to underplay the breadth of Burnard’s reading and his skill in bringing so many historians into the conversation. The “plantation complex” was defined, Burnard writes, by “large-scale landholding and slave-based labor forces, hierarchical and race-based management systems; export orientation; high-value per capita output; and the application of scientific techniques of management to improve productivity” (4). It was a system born of violence and “more modern than backward” (5), “with plantations that were highly productive and profitable enterprises” (4). He explicitly rejects scholarship that has argued that by the late eighteenth century, the Caribbean plantation economies were collapsing, and he links his work with recent writings on slavery and capitalism. Chapter 1, framed by Daniel Defoe’s 1721 Colonel Jack, provides an over- view of Burnard’s argument about the rise of large plantations worked by [End Page 212] the labor of enslaved blacks. He distinguishes the process in Barbados, where the system took root, from that in Jamaica, Virginia, and northern South America, where the plantation complex evolved later and apparently more slowly. In chapter 2, Burnard argues that white violence toward enslaved blacks was central to the creation of the plantation complex, especially in Jamaica. Chapter 3, although bogged down a bit with numbers, makes the case that the plantation complex was “at least as profitable and probably a good deal more efficient … than any other form of money making … in the early modern world” (103). In chapter 4, Burnard turns to Jamaica as a case study, working with a literature to which he has already contributed significant scholarship and introducing new research on land prices and the consolidation of farms into plantations. The fifth chapter explores the fundamental importance of the American Revolution to the history of the British Atlantic plantation complex. In an epilogue, Burnard speculates on some of the key historiographic questions in scholarly debates about British colonial slavery and racism. These chapters do not always hang together as much as one would like, and certainly are far less than a full look at British “plantation societies,” but they provide the reader entry points to and a synthesis of the richness of the social-economic history of the last half century on the British plantation system on the southern mainland and in the Caribbean. This study is worth careful attention for its synthetic quality alone, but here I will focus on three themes advanced by the author. Burnard argues that large plantations were more efficient agricultural wealth producers than small farms. Why then did they take so long to come to dominate the economies of Jamaica and Virginia? The answer, he suggests, is labor discipline. Planters needed to find...

Lamluda: from the excavation to the archaeometric analysis

AbstractIn the last ten years the Archaeological Mission of Chieti University in Cyrenaica has investigated, through intensive field surveys and excavations, several contexts of the Cyrenaicanchora. Among the many recorded settlements, Lamluda is the most interesting because of its urban organisation, productivity and location at the intersection of the main road network. Our aim is to present the preliminary data from the mapping, survey and excavation of the site, including the results of the archaeometric analysis and the epigraphic study. Among the copious ceramic finds the Roman coarse wares and amphorae are particularly numerous, dating mainly to the Imperial, Late Roman and Byzantine periods. The pottery illustrates not only the longevity of the settlement, which lasted until the eighth or ninth century AD, but also helps to trace the evolution of agricultural wealth and trade. Through archaeometrical and archaeological research it is possible to identify the main local products and their circulation, as well as the imported or exported amphorae and hypothesise on the nature of their contents.

Confronting Inter-Regional Disparities in Nigeria

Disparities in endowments of agricultural, mineral and commercial wealth across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones determine the rates at which the different regions can grow. Economic activities and growth are concentrated in four regions, while the remaining two regions are largely excluded from the growth processes. This calls for urgent efforts to make economic growth more inclusive. Investing in fast and efficient rail links between rich and poor regions is suggested as a win-win national re-distributive strategy that could bring resource-poor regions closer to needful inputs, ensure benefits of growth are more evenly distributed across regions without hurting any of the resource-rich regions, ultimately eliminate inter-regional growth disparities, and ensure the peaceful coexistence that is required to sustain growth. Nigeria needs a strong national economic intelligence apparatus like the defunct National Economic Intelligence Committee (NEIC) to, among other things, provide the foresight required henceforth to ensure that regional growth divergence is prevented rather than cured.

Sustainable Development: Mathematical Approach and Simulation Studies

The question of sustainability has assumed great importance in the contemporary context of development scenario emerging at global as well as local levels. The prime objective is to achieve the development without destruction. But the degrading environment accompanied with the problems of extinguishing species of flora and fauna which constitute the life support system, have been falsifying the objective. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the sustainable development by identifying a few measurable correlates of sustainable development and present a mathematical approach for its application with special reference to developing economies. In addition to stability analysis, we have derived a criterion for coexistence of agricultural wealth, industrial wealth and the population residing in the area of system under consideration. It has been established that agro-based small scale industries be promoted to meet out the depreciation cost of industrial products, so that the industries survive and the development is sustained.

Al-Qaradawi’s Juristic Perspectives On Zakah of Agricultural Wealth as Reflected in His Fiqh Al Zakah

This paper discusses al Qaradawi’s perspective on several issues in zakah of agricultural wealth. It analyzes his juristic views on the issues as reflected in his master piece Fiqh al Zakah. This paper focuses mainly on three issues, namely, nisab of agriculture, deduction of debts and expenses and zakah on rented land. It is found out that al Qaradawi’s perspectives on zakah of agricultural wealth based on the maqasid and he goes beyond the typical approaches of many Muslim scholars who only rely on the usul fiqh methods in deducing the rulings from the legal texts in Al Quran or Al Sunnah.

Growing Community-University Research Partnerships in the San Joaquin Valley

Abstract If great agricultural wealth represents the visible front of the San Joaquin Valley, the costs of producing that wealth remain hidden backstage in the form of multiple environmental problems. Despite its history of political activism, the Valley remains an area beset by social inequity and environmental problems. In this context, a new collaborative research paradigm developed, which came out of a symposium that brought together members of grassroots organizations, legal services entities, organizers, policy advocates, media representatives, service providers, and community researchers. This collaborative research project aims to foster and conduct research that was actually responsive to the needs of the Valley's most vulnerable communities. The process of creating Community University Research and Action for Justice (CURAJ) involved creating new relationships of trust and power between academic researchers and community members and provides important lessons for community driven research.

Farm Boundaries as Agroecological Systems

South-central Pennsylvania, framed by the great folds of the Appalachians to the north and west, by the Mason-Dixon Line to the south, and by the rise of hills that bound the lower Susquehanna River to the east, was claimed by settler-farmers of western European descent during the early and mid-eighteenth century. They utilized river and stream valleys to gain access to the fertile lowlands and rich uplands of the region, following in the steps of surveyors to mark farm boundaries with timber fences cut from the cloak of forest. The social and ecological imprint of these boundary structures has endured for hundreds of years.

Early Limits of Local Decolonization in São Tomé and Príncipe: From Colonial Abuses to Postcolonial Disappointment, 1945–1976

The administration of Sao Tome's rural interior and of some coastal rural areas—home of at least one third of the archipelago's population—was mainly a two-man show in the early years after decolonization. While the crucial decisions about the future of the country's main economic activity and source of agricultural wealth (the cocoa plantations or rocas situated in these zones) were made at government level and in the president's office, and while these plantations formally had a strong degree of self-administration in the form of the Comissoes Administrativas Provisorias (Provisional Committees of Administration) later becoming the Comites de Accâo Politica (Committees of Political Action: both CAP), the control of everyday life lay in the hands of the labor inspectorate. Inspector-General Francisco Martins Xavier de Pina and his auxiliary, Americo Goncalves da Graca do Es pirito Santo, had an enormous task and held power over the lives of thousands of workers on the plantations. Both officials had been appointed during the transition phase before 12 July 1975, when Sâo Tome e Principe became an independent state.1 Struggling for a short time with the complicated bureaucratic heritage that had been left by the colonial admin istration, both officials rapidly established a routine of work. During 1976 the two officials were constantly active in visiting the different plantations, in hearing the complaints of laborers, plantation officials, and owners, and in processing information coming from the

Characterization, classification and land use management of flood plain soils of central Cross River State, Nigeria.

The floodplain soils of Central Cross River State are extensively cultivated for food crop production and contributes nearly 60% of the agricultural wealth of the inhabitants. Knowledge of their characteristics, classification and management will enhance their productive potential and facilitate technological transfer. Profile pits were escavated in levee and backswamp locations in two communities with extensive floodplains and studied. Based on morphological and other analytical characteristics, the soils were classified according to USDA soil Taxonomy and correlated to FAO/UNESCO soil map of the world legend. Backswamp soils were classified as Vertic Tropaquepts while levee soils were classified as Typic Tropustuepts at sub-group level of the USDA soil Taxonomy. The FAO/UNESCO equivalent of these soils is Luvisol. The major limitations of these soils are high acidity (low pH), low available phosphorus and poor drainage. Backswamp soils were superior in most fertility indices assessed than levee soils. Soil pH in these soils had a high positive correlation with CEC, available phosphorous and base saturation with “r” values of 0.79, 0.76, and 0.75 at p0.01 significant level. The floodplain soils can be efficiently managed through the use of water control mechanisms, construction of efficient low cost drainage systems, construction of giant heaps and application of phosphatic fertilizers/NPK high in phosphorus. The backswamps can be dammed for fish farming.

Estrategias de desarrollo local a partir de productos alimentarios típicos: el caso del vino de la costa en Buenos Aires, Argentina

EN ARGENTINA LAS NOCIONES DEL DESARROLLO RURAL Y DEL LOCAL TIENDEN A IMBRICARSE MUY RECIENTEMENTE. HASTA MEDIADOS DE LOS AÑOS NOVENTA, EL DESARROLLO RURAL ERA ENTENDIDO SÓLO COMO UNA ACTIVIDAD DESCENDENTE QUE SE LLEVABA A CABO EN LAS REGIONES MÁS POBRES DEL CAMPO, PERIFÉRICAS A LA REGIÓN PAMPEANA (NÚCLEO PRODUCTOR DE RIQUEZAS AGROPECUARIAS DEL PAÍS). POR OTRO LADO, EL DESARROLLO LOCAL SE CENTRALIZABA EN INICIATIVAS POPULARES (COMO LA AUTOCONSTRUCCIÓN O LAS REDES SOLIDARIAS) QUE SE DESENVOLVÍAN EN EL ESPACIO URBANO MÁS MARGINAL. SIN EMBARGO, RECIENTEMENTE SE HA COMENZADO A CONSIDERAR LA POSIBILIDAD DE REDINAMIZAR REGIONES POSTERGADAS (AUN AQUELLAS INCLUIDAS EN LA ZONA PAMPEANA) CON BASE EN INICIATIVAS LOCALES QUE TOMEN COMO PUNTO DE PARTIDA EL RESCATE DE LAS PRODUCCIONES AGROALIMENTARIAS TÍPICAS DEL ÁREA. ESTE TIPO DE ACCIÓN SE CONECTA CON LA MUTACIÓN EN EL PATRÓN DE CONSUMO ALIMENTARIO QUE SE EXPERIMENTA EN EL COLECTIVO CONSUMIDOR URBANO, EN EL CUAL ADQUIERE UNA IMPORTANCIA CRECIENTE LA REVALORIZACIÓN DE LOS IMAGINARIOS RELATIVOS A LO RURAL, AL RESCATE DE LA TRADICIÓN, A LA NATURALIDAD. EN ESTE TRABAJO PRESENTAMOS UN ANÁLISIS DE TALES CAMBIOS EN EL PATRÓN DE CONSUMO, HACIENDO HINCAPIÉ EN EL PAPEL QUE DESEMPEÑAN LOS LLAMADOS PRODUCTOS TÍPICOS. EL ANÁLISIS DE CASO LO EFECTUAMOS SOBRE UN TIPO PARTICULAR DE VINO (DENOMINADO VINO DE LA COSTA) QUE SE ELABORA EN UN ÁREA FUERTEMENTE POSTERGADA DE LA RIBERA PAMPEANA. CON BASE EN ESTE ESTUDIO SE ESBOZAN ALGUNAS LÍNEAS DE ACCIÓN Y UNA MATRIZ DE FORTALEZAS Y DEBILIDADES DE TAL ESTRATEGIA DE DESARROLLO RURAL LOCAL.

ANNE G. HANLEY. Native Capital: Financial Institutions and Economic Development in Saa Paulo, Brazil, 1850-1920. (Social Science History.) Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 2005. Pp. xviii, 286. $55.00

This book by Anne G. Hanley is an important contribution to our understanding of the institutional mechanism that helped the state of São Paulo emerge as the economic powerhouse of Brazil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Hanley is the first scholar to examine closely the means through which the financial sector transferred agricultural wealth to the growing urban-industrial sector in the 1850–1920 period. She convincingly refutes the long-held view that the modernizing elements in late nineteenth-century Brazil were foreign owned or foreign controlled and shows that the dynamism of São Paulo's economy stemmed instead from domestic institutions. In the 1880s most banks serving the São Paulo economy were increasingly dominated by coffee planters, who had a substantial equity stake in them. Under their influence these banks shifted away from merchant-inspired banking practices to loans that were secured by collateral placed with the banks. Thus the “shift from...

Reports on Philippine Industrial Crops in World War II from Japan's English Language Press

Japan's occupation of Southeast Asia placed enormous stocks ofthe region's industrial crops under Japanese control. English language Japanese news? paper reports from the Philippines suggest that the invaders grossly underutilized this vast storehouse of agricultural wealth. Washington's pre-war oil embargo severely crippled military and civilian transport services throughout the war, and Japan's conversion of cane sugar into fuel alcohol and butane for aviation fuel failed to generate successful outcomes. Also, as the Pacific War eliminated cotton imports from the United States, India, and Egypt, placing numerous Japanese textile factories in jeopardy, Tokyo attempted to replace Philippine cane sugar plantings that previously served US markets with raising raw cotton for Japanese textile interests. In the Philippines, how? ever, multifarious bottlenecks crippled all ofTokyo's wartime farm projects. Though the Japanese occupation was short-lived, it demonstrated Tokyo's intention to adjust the Philippine economy into a dependent relationship with Japanese industries.

Reports on Philippine Industrial Crops in World War II from Japan’s English Language Press

Abstract Japan’s occupation of Southeast Asia placed enormous stocks of the region’s industrial crops under Japanese control. English language Japanese newspaper reports from the Philippines suggest that the invaders grossly under-utilized this vast storehouse of agricultural wealth. Washington’s pre-war oil embargo severely crippled military and civilian transport services throughout the war, and Japan’s conversion of cane sugar into fuel alcohol and butane for aviation fuel failed to generate successful outcomes. Also, as the Pacific War eliminated cotton imports from the United States, India, and Egypt, placing numerous Japanese textile factories in jeopardy, Tokyo attempted to replace Philippine cane sugar plantings that previously served US markets with raising raw cotton for Japanese textile interests. In the Philippines, however, multifarious bottlenecks crippled all of Tokyo’s wartime farm projects. Though the Japanese occupation was short-lived, it demonstrated Tokyo’s intention to adjust the Philippine economy into a dependent relationship with Japanese industries.

Agricultura ecológica y cooperativismo en Andalucía: una fórmula de desarrollo alternativa

La agricultura ecológica es un sistema de producción que aspira a compaginar el respeto al medio ambiente, la producción de alimentos de calidad sin el uso de sustancias químicas de síntesis, y una mayor rentabilidad que la producción agraria convencional. El modelo agroecológico, especialmente en aquellas iniciativas gestionadas bajo formas de economía social (sociedades cooperativas), se afianza en Andalucía como una eficaz alternativa a la desestructuración y desarticulación del panorama agrario andaluz. A través de un estudio de caso en la comarca de Los Pedroches (Córdoba), este texto analiza las causas del crecimiento de este sistema productivo, así como los principales obstáculos para su consolidación.

The importance of comprehensive agricultural education in land-grant institutions: a historical perspective.

Any thorough examination of the present and future of agricultural education must certainly begin with a look into its past. Since the creation of the United States, many leading American philosophers have viewed a strong agrarian culture as the bedrock of American vigor. These same philosophers repeatedly noted the significance of comprehensive agricultural education to a nation rich in agricultural wealth. The signing of the Agricultural Colleges Act legitimized the concept of formal education in the agricultural sciences and provided funding for such education. The Act, which came to be known as the Morrill Act, after one of its primary authors, stressed the importance of comprehensive education. In fact, the inclusion of liberal studies was specifically mentioned in the Morrill Act and was defended repeatedly by Morrill himself. Comprehensive education prevented graduating technically trained students who were lacking in the basic outcomes of education--critical, comprehensive problem solving, cohesive thought, and effective communication. However, throughout history, the demands of a growing population coupled with rapid advancements in scientific knowledge led to a gradual move away from comprehensive education in agricultural sciences toward increasing specialization, resulting in more narrowly trained students. Today's agricultural students are technically well versed but often lack the skill and knowledge required for cohesive thought and critical problem solving. Addressing the multitude of challenges facing leaders in the future of agriculture requires much more than technical skill. These challenges require quick, yet careful thinkers and communicators who can respond to changing market structure and consumer demand in a dynamic way. Students who are a product of a conscious move toward amalgamation of burgeoning scientific knowledge and technical prowess with an integrative education emphasizing relationships between disciplines would better serve tomorrow's agriculture.

A dynamical economic model of sustainable agriculture and the ecosphere

This paper addresses relationships between structural parameters of a complex three-dimensional system and agricultural wealth subject to a minimum safe standard for the ecosphere. The subsystems are the ecosphere, agriculture, and industry. Their interaction is modeled by a dynamical system based on the predator prey paradigm. It is demonstrated that the system may surpass certain local and global bifurcations. The later ones lead to appearance and disappearance of strange attractors. The presence of strange attractors connotes poor predictability. Sustaining agricultural systems requires the ability to predict departures from preferred reference states and in the limit to predict approaching extinction. A suitable model needs to be heuristic. Such a model should provide several features for managers and policy makers. It should incorporate learning about the minimum sustainable ecospheric threshold, preferred reference states, and the dynamics of departures from those reference states. Predictions of the model should reveal how to maneuver parameters in order to achieve ‘favorable’ system dynamics. That is why most of our attention is placed on exploring the range of parameters in which strange attractors occur or do not occur. The policy problem for sustainable agriculture is consequently defined as preventing strange attractors from appearing. Simulations show that strange attractors may be avoided and replaced by stable periodic trajectories or stable nodes by changing the coefficient of ecospheric recovery, terms of trade, or the productivity of the ecosphere in agricultural uses. Agricultural terms of trade and ecospheric recovery coefficients are partially substitutable in sustaining agriculture and improving predictability. The results suggest that sustainability is sensitive to learning processes which address tradeoffs among the parameters, minimum thresholds of persistence for the ecosphere and mutualism in economic predation.

Equilibria and dynamics in an economic predator-prey model of agriculture

Long run trajectories for the shares of agricultural, industrial and ecospheric wealth in open interacting economic system are modelled by a three-dimensional system of ordinary differential equations using a predator-prey paradigm. For the two-dimensional case, corresponding to an ecosphere in equilibrium, stability properties are determined and possible bifurcation behaviour is described and interpreted. Bifurcation values for the parameters are described for the cases of less developed and industrialized economies. Discovery of rich dynamics, including the possibilities of bifurcations leading to creation of new attractors, offer promise that this modelling approach may shed greater light on the conditions under which economies may move to more desired levels of agricultural wealth. The model predicts that an agricultural economy ages by slowing its learning, seeking and obtaining greater stability, eventually leading to trapping. Efforts external to an economic system, such as freer trade or foreign aid require complementary endogenous restructuring of parameters to avoid regression to stable nodes or foci, or to limit cycles. Economic restructuring needs to focus on enriching the dynamics of system behaviour.

THE ?ROMANISATION?of TURDETANIA

Turdetania was one of the Iron Age cultural blocks which emerged after the disintegration of Tartessos in the later 6th century BC. It corresponded largely to the lower Guadalquivir valley of southern Spain. From the early 2nd century BC it formed the heart of the Roman province of Hispania Ulterior and, from the later 1st century BC, Hispania Baetica. This paper sets out to examine the Romanisation of the region from an indigenous perspective rather than a Romano-centric viewpoint. Until the mid-first century BC Roman impact was negligble and merely served to reinforce the Turdetanian prestige goods economy. Subsequently, however, the foundation of coloniae and a consequent increase in commercial activity were catalysts for rapid change. A new hierarchy of dominant and dependent centres arise and, by the early 1st century AD, the agricultural wealth of the region was being more directly exploited for Rome's benefit. This relatively ‘delayed’Romanisation is interpreted as native resistance to cultural change.