Green Revolution In Sub-Saharan Africa Research Articles

Japanese Agricultural ODA and Its Economic Impacts: Technological Assistance for the Rice Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa

Since 2008, JICA has made great efforts toward doubling rice production in Sub-Saharan Africa in 10 years. This study explains JICA's approach and projects and reviews the research findings on JICA's rice training projects. The trainings on rice cultivation practices increased the rice production of the training participants, not only in the short term but also in the long term. The training benefits seem to spill over to the neighbors within the same irrigation scheme. When introducing upland rice to areas where rice was not grown, selecting areas suitable for rice cultivation is a key for sustainable adoption and production.

Transferability of Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa: Impact Assessment of Rice Production Technology Training in Northern Ghana

Transferability of Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa: Impact Assessment of Rice Production Technology Training in Northern Ghana

The Rwandan agrarian and land sector modernisation: confronting macro performance with lived experiences on the ground

ABSTRACTRwanda has embarked on an ambitious policy package to modernise and professionalise the agrarian and land sector. Its reform fits into a broader call – supported by major international donors – to implement a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa. After 10 years of implementation, there is increased production output and value-addition in commercialised commodity chains. These are promising results. However, poverty reduction, particularly in more recent years, seems limited. Moreover, micro-level evidence from the field calls into question the long-term sustainability of the agricultural and land sector reform. In this article, a group of researchers, having engaged in in-depth qualitative research in a variety of settings and over an extended period, bring together their main research results and combine their key findings to challenge the dominant discourse on Rwanda as a model for development.

A Green Revolution for Sub-Saharan Africa: Past Failures and Future Prospects

The continuing population growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has contributed to a decline in cultivated area per farming population. Consequently, food insecurity is increasingly becoming a major concern in this continent. To ensure food security, a Green Revolution, which dramatically increases crop yield, must be introduced. But, several major questions are being raised: why did SSA fail to achieve a Green Revolution in the past? What are its future prospects? What should be done to realise a Green Revolution in SSA? This article answers these questions based on an examination of crop yield trends, literature review and the results of our own case studies in SSA.

Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications of Imposed Innovation for the Wellbeing of Rural Smallholders

Green Revolution policies are again being pursued to drive agricultural growth and reduce poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. However conditions have changed since the well-documented successes of the 1960s and 1970s benefitted smallholders in southern Asia and beyond. We argue that under contemporary constraints the mechanisms for achieving improvements in the lives of smallholder farmers through such policies are unclear and that both policy rationale and means of governing agricultural innovation are crucial for pro-poor impacts. To critically analyze Rwanda’s Green Revolution policies and impacts from a local perspective, a mixed methods, multidimensional wellbeing approach is applied in rural areas in mountainous western Rwanda. Here Malthusian policy framing has been used to justify imposed rather than “induced innovation”. The policies involve a substantial transformation for rural farmers from a traditional polyculture system supporting subsistence and local trade to the adoption of modern seed varieties, inputs, and credit in order to specialize in marketable crops and achieve increased production and income. Although policies have been deemed successful in raising yields and conventionally measured poverty rates have fallen over the same period, such trends were found to be quite incongruous with local experiences. Disaggregated results reveal that only a relatively wealthy minority were able to adhere to the enforced modernization and policies appear to be exacerbating landlessness and inequality for poorer rural inhabitants. Negative impacts were evident for the majority of households as subsistence practices were disrupted, poverty exacerbated, local systems of knowledge, trade, and labor were impaired, and land tenure security and autonomy were curtailed. In order to mitigate the effects we recommend that inventive pro-poor forms of tenure and cooperation (none of which preclude improvements to input availability, market linkages, and infrastructure) may provide positive outcomes for rural people, and importantly in Rwanda, for those who have become landless in recent years. We conclude that policies promoting a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa should not all be considered to be pro-poor or even to be of a similar type, but rather should be the subject of rigorous impact assessment. Such assessment should be based not only on consistent, objective indicators but pay attention to localized impacts on land tenure, agricultural practices, and the wellbeing of socially differentiated people.

Water Response of Upland Rice Varieties Adopted in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Water Application Experiment

Whether a rice Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa becomes a reality critically hinges on how far productive upland rice cultivation diffuses in the region. In order to quantify the drought tolerance, the rate of water response and the contribution of yield components to changes in yield due to water availability of upland rice varieties used in sub-Saharan Africa, we conducted water application experiments in Namulonge, Uganda, using NERICA 4, NERICA 10, NARIC 2 and Yumenohatamochi, with five different levels of water application. We found that the NERICA varieties were most drought tolerant, followed by NARIC 2. Yumenohatamochi did not withstand the lowest amount of water application of 378 mm. The results suggested that the minimum water requirement was around 311-400 mm per season for the three varieties used widely in East Africa, and around 420-600 mm for Yumenohatamochi, an upland variety in Japan famous in its drought tolerance. It was estimated that an additional water application of 1 mm increased rice yield by 11-12 kg /ha for the upland varieties tested. The high water response of upland rice was brought about by high water response of four yield components, among which the rate of grain filling contributed most to the increase in yield, followed by number of panicles/m2, number of grains per panicle and 1000- grain weight, in the order of the degree of contribution, for all the varieties tested.

Water Response of Upland Rice Varieties Adopted in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Water Application Experiment

Whether a rice Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa becomes a reality critically hinges on how far productive upland rice cultivation diffuses in the region. In order to quantify the drought tolerance, the rate of water response and the contribution of yield components to changes in yield due to water availability of upland rice varieties used in sub-Saharan Africa, we conducted water application experiments in Namulonge, Uganda, using NERICA 4, NERICA 10, NARIC 2 and Yumenohatamochi, with five different levels of water application. We found that the NERICA varieties were most drought tolerant, followed by NARIC 2. Yumenohatamochi did not withstand the lowest amount of water application of 378 mm. The results suggested that the minimum water requirement was around 311-400 mm per season for the three varieties used widely in East Africa, and around 420-600 mm for Yumenohatamochi, an upland variety in Japan famous in its drought tolerance. It was estimated that an additional water application of 1 mm increased rice yield by 11-12 kg /ha for the upland varieties tested. The high water response of upland rice was brought about by high water response of four yield components, among which the rate of grain filling contributed most to the increase in yield, followed by number of panicles/m2, number of grains per panicle and 1000- grain weight, in the order of the degree of contribution, for all the varieties tested.

An Inquiry into Constraints on a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of NERICA Rice in Uganda

Summary In Uganda, New Rice for Africa (NERICA), a high-yielding upland rice variety suitable for the African environment, was introduced to increase food security and reduce poverty in rural areas in 2002. However, more than 50% of the NERICA adopters in 2004 had abandoned it in 2006. The regression results indicate that the low profitability of NERICA relative to alternative crops in variable rainfall areas explains the massive dropout. It is also found that the profitability of NERICA production was low when farmer-produced seeds were used in 2006, suggesting the weak dissemination of appropriate information on seed production to rice farmers.

RICE GREEN REVOLUTION IN ASIA AND ITS TRANSFERABILITY TO AFRICA: AN INTRODUCTION

Drawing on the experiences of Asian countries, we attempt to identify the transferability of Asian Green Revolution to sub-Saharan Africa by examining whether there is a common set of factors affecting rice yields in the two regions. We have attempted to propose the strategy to realize a Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa based on lessons learned from the comparative studies included in this special volume.

Food and Population: D. Gale Johnson and the Green Revolution

Previous articleNext article No AccessFood and Population: D. Gale Johnson and the Green RevolutionRobert E. EvensonRobert E. EvensonYale University Search for more articles by this author Yale UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 52, Number 3April 2004 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/383338 Views: 107Total views on this site Citations: 8Citations are reported from Crossref © 2004 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Awnindra K. Singh, R.M. Singh, Ayyam Velmurugan, R. Rahul Kumar, Utpal Biswas Harnessing Genetic Resources in Field Crops for Developing Resilience to Climate Change, (Jan 2018): 597–621.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813064-3.00022-3James Roumasset Population and Agricultural Growth, (Feb 2018): 10475–10487.https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2275Glenn Davis Stone, Dominic Glover Disembedding grain: Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines, Agriculture and Human Values 34, no.11 (Apr 2016): 87–102.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-016-9696-1Derek D. Headey, T.S. Jayne Adaptation to land constraints: Is Africa different?, Food Policy 48 (Oct 2014): 18–33.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2014.05.005Keijiro Otsuka, Donald F. Larson Towards a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa, (Dec 2012): 281–300.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5760-8_13Robert E. Evenson Chapter 14 The Scientific Origins of the Green and Gene Revolutions, (Jan 2008): 465–496.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1574-8715(07)00014-0James Roumasset Population and Agricultural Growth, (Dec 2016): 1–13.https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_2275-1Nikos Alexandratos Countries with Rapid Population Growth and Resource Constraints: Issues of Food, Agriculture, and Development, Population and Development Review 31, no.22 (Jun 2005): 237–258.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2005.00064.x

Sustainability in the Diffusion of Innovations: Smallholder Nontraditional Agro‐Exports in Guatemala

I. Nontraditional Agro-Exports in Guatemala Since the late 1970s, Guatemala, like a number of other developing countries, has experienced an extraordinarily rapid growth in the production of nontraditional agro-exports (NTXs). The share of agricultural exports coming from NTXs grew from less than 6% in 1980 to more than 22% in 1992. Rationales behind the promotion of NTXs by governments and development agencies include seeking foreign exchange earnings, alternatives to depressed market conditions for traditional export crops, and rural poverty reduction. As part of the packages mandated by structural adjustment and trade liberalization programs, many national governments, including Guatemala’s, introduced policies in favor of NTX producers, such as export facilitation procedures, subsidy programs, and fiscal reforms. Trade agreements such as the Generalized System of Preferences and the Caribbean Basin Initiative created additional incentives for NTX exporters. In the Guatemalan context, private organizations and trade associations, such as the Association of Exporters of Nontraditional Products, played a catalytic role in promoting NTXs in the 1980s. As a potential new approach to rural development, international donors have invested heavily in the promotion of NTXs among smallholders. One such effort that received considerable attention is the agricultural cooperative Cuatro Pinos that was founded in 1979 with financial assistance from a Swiss development agency. Cooperative membership grew tenfold in the following 10 years, reaching more than 1,900 members in the late 1980s and operating in ten different villages. Pre-NTX agriculture in the region was dominated by the milpa sys-