Revolution In Asia Research Articles

“A bloodless social revolution”: Land reform and multiple cropping in Cold War Taiwan, 1950–1979

Societal Impact StatementMultiple cropping, the cultivation of several crops on the same land in a year, occupied an important part of Taiwan's agricultural research from 1950 to 1970. This research originated in the context of Taiwan's land reform and diversification programs and their connections to the government's political ambition to maximize food production. The study of how multiple cropping was politicized and depoliticized by different actors helps to expand the narratives of the Green Revolution in Asia, analyze their legacies, and highlight Taiwan's role in the international exchange of visions of agricultural development during the Cold War.Summary Scholars have recently expanded the history of the Green Revolution to move beyond the narrative of North–South technological diffusion. This article enriches the scholarship with the case of multiple cropping in Taiwan and its connection to Cold War geopolitics. Rice productivity in postwar Taiwan was boosted through a land reform launched by the Sino‐American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR) in the 1950s. Backed by American aid and staffed by scientists from the Republic of China (ROC) government, the JCRR envisioned to turn tenant farmers into landowners so as to encourage labor input and adoption of seeds and fertilizers. By 1960, the JCRR presented its reform as a “bloodless social revolution” and extended its focus to multiple cropping through a diversification program. The JCRR further created the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in 1971 to spread Taiwan's breeding and cropping techniques. The ROC's diplomatic isolation in the 1970s, however, prompted the center to reinterpret Taiwan's success in multiple cropping from a political achievement to a technological triumph, thus reinforcing the technology‐driven narrative used by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Through Taiwan's influences on IRRI's rice breeding and multiple cropping research, this paper illustrates that the history of the Green Revolution requires more complex narratives. In addition, with Taiwan's political and economic transition since the 1980s, farmers began to reclaim their voice and influence agricultural policies. The case thus highlights the need of democratic participation in agricultural research, a concern that remains relevant today.

Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History by Arnold Pacey and Francesca Bray

Reviewed by: Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History by Arnold Pacey and Francesca Bray Jennifer Karns Alexander (bio) Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History Revised and expanded edition. By Arnold Pacey and Francesca Bray. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. Pp. 338. Arnold Pacey collaborates with Francesca Bray in a new edition of his classic survey, Technology in World Civilization (TWC). What a delight it is! A wealth of examples appears: cooking stoves with ceramic linings (Kenya), gas-engine dynamos (England), astrolabes with beautifully etched tympans (Marrakesh), a machine for reeling silk (China)—and these examples come just from the illustrations—alongside concise and satisfying technical descriptions: how block printing was done and early guns cast and the significance of semiconducting materials. The first edition offered a strong interpretive framework, which is slightly different and more precisely drawn in the new one. Less apparent is the interest in technology transfer that previously motivated Pacey; more developed is the concept of technological dialogue and frameworks of environmental constraint and industrial movements and/or revolutions (as plural processes that happened more than once). TWC gives us a "thousand-year history as a continuous, global process of dialogue or exchange" (p. xv) among and beyond China, West Asia, Africa, South America, the Islamic Mediterranean, India, and Europe, broadly considered. The book is a model of concrete discussion and historical specificity, with every technology tied to specific places, people, and times. We see important historical debates as scholars saw them: Karl Wittfogel and hydraulic civilizations; Christopher Freeman and waves of innovation; Tessa Morris-Suzuki and technology transfer as creative, not copying. Pacey and Bray move from the iron industry of Asia around the year 1000 to technological complexes of nomadic Mongol culture and different agricultural regions of China and the Middle East. Next come movement, trade and technologies of transport, and agroecology in the Americas. A three-way dialogue appears in mining in Zimbabwe under the Portuguese and in the crops the Portuguese had introduced: maize and peanuts from the Americas that endured long after [End Page 578] the Changamire drove the Portuguese off Zimbabwe's southern plateaus. Gunpowder empires illustrate Japan's experience with firearms, unification, and international withdrawal. Printing and books brought "new methods for handling technical information and formulating technical (and managerial) ideas" (p. 112), expressed in machine drawings and in factories and plantations, as in the novel organization of plantation sugar production on Madeira and strict divisions of labor that came to characterize later manufacturing. The new TWC is a book for our time, as we reassess our technological heritage in light of its effect on our planet's climate. About halfway through, TWC turns to the development of industry and patterns that endure. Language that in the previous edition suggested general approbation of industrial development has been excised: a "decisive advantage … [in] material production" gained by the West has become simply a "situation very different" (p. 128) from elsewhere. Pacey and Bray offer industrial movements rather than a singular industrial revolution: in Britain of "steam engines, iron, and coal" (p. 129) and changes in productive organization; in India of textiles and supporting chemical industries and in wooden ship building. Railway empires show the imperial ambitions of Europe and Japan. Scientific developments influenced and drew from technology: electricity and chemistry in France and Germany; nuclear research seemingly, and worryingly, all over the place. The inescapable dialogue of technology with health, food, and basic needs appears in discussions of public health and infant mortality, the green revolution in Asia, agroforestry in the Americas, and everyday cooking technologies in recent African history. The final chapter carries TWC into our current century, using the concept of waves of innovation—that is, innovations interacting and bunching together—to trace the continued significance of semiconductors and communications and the developing importance of photovoltaics and new batteries. TWC concludes with a discussion of environmental limits, climate change, and the need for a "radical switch to non-polluting energy sources" (p. 258) to power a twenty-first-century industrial revolution. This final chapter marks the most significant change from Pacey's first edition, which concluded with a chapter on "Survival Technology in the Twentieth...

Officious Aliens: Tatars' Involvement in the Central Asian Revolution, 1919–21

Officious AliensTatars' Involvement in the Central Asian Revolution, 1919–21 Norihiro Naganawa (bio) A gentle wind of the East has brought you, angels.Look upon the sky, stars created the celestial body.Upon your arrival, the Ferghana rubs its head on the ground.You saw, flowers blossomed for you at your every step.You felt, we finally became calm before your compassionate eyes.Thanks to you, we bring our valuable aspirations into being.Not until the heavenly homeland is cleansed of devils,Not until Satan falls silent will we lay down our gunsBefore your eyes newspapers and books, weapons in hands. In the press organ of the Communist Party of Turkestan, the Uzbek poet "Chıghatay" eulogized the First Volga-Tatar Infantry Brigade, which had arrived in the Ferghana Valley in mid-January 1920 to fight the Basmachi, anti-Soviet insurgents.1 This ode sheds light on an unusual node in the establishment of Soviet power in the region, raising questions. Why were Tatars there? Why were Tatar soldiers struggling by means of newspapers and books? How did Tatars themselves see their mission? Were they mere useful pawns of the Bolsheviks who shared the locals' faith? How should we evaluate their relationship with the local population and its native elite? The Tatar Brigade's operations in the Ferghana Valley undermine a canon of Civil War literature, which has developed discretely along the lines of [End Page 63] regions and national republics.2 True, Soviet historians of the Civil War in Central Asia did not fail to mention the Tatar Brigade's praiseworthy role in battles against the Basmachi and the political education of the local population in the Ferghana Valley. But their pivotal concern was to prioritize native titular peoples' alliance and collision with the Soviets, while downplaying any coherent trajectory of the Brigade's mediating operation in Central Asia.3 More recent fundamental works, too, have inherited this line of analysis and narrative. Marco Buttino attributes the Soviets' changing tactics in their struggle with the Basmachi in the Ferghana Valley and their attempt to create a separate Muslim Red Army to a contentious rivalry among native Muslim Communists led by Turar Rysqulov (1894–1938), their Russian "colonial" counterparts in Tashkent, and representatives from Moscow; Tatar units of the Red Army appear in minor, accidental episodes showing them to be dubious elements prone to violence.4 Adeeb Khalid and Hisao Komatsu are no exceptions, either. Of course, their contribution is different, as they manifestly demonstrate the agency of local intellectuals, the Jadids, in fulfilling their own vision of modernity, which had already taken shape under tsarist colonial rule, amid their struggle with another Bolshevik vision of modernity. Although Khalid does mention Tatar agents during the Civil War here and there, their role should be clarified to provide an intricate picture of the natives' early encounter with Bolshevism.5 [End Page 64] This article excavates a hitherto fragmented and underrated layer of the Central Asian revolution. Exploring the Tatar intermediaries' predicaments when they came into contact with the Muslim population in Turkestan and Bukhara, I assess strengths and vulnerabilities in the early Soviets' transmission of power to the fractured empire's borderlands. First, I analyze the Tatar Brigade's struggles and negotiations with the Basmachi to illuminate the profound dilemmas that belied the Brigade's self-presentation as a Bolshevik "civilizer," a view that its political workers strove to impose on both the soldiers and the local population. Second, I show the rise and fall of those individuals from the Tatar Brigade who were involved in the two watersheds of the revolution in Central Asia: the replacement of leadership inside the Communist Party of Turkestan in July and the conquest of the Bukharan Emirate in September 1920. The Tatar rendering of Bolshevik language—such as reinforcement of the class struggle, liberation of the oppressed East from capitalism and imperialism, and self-determination—enabled Tatar agents to recruit indigenous men to the Red Army and to engage in elite politics well enough to harness the Turkestan Party to Moscow's will. Yet once they looked identical to Russian colonialists in the turbulent aftermath of the Bukharan Revolution, the very logic...

Theory, Practice and Challenges of Agroecology in India

ABSTRACT With the Green Revolution in Asia, the gap in agricultural yield with the developed world has been closed, while the gap in farm labour productivity has greatly widened. This reveals a deepening agrarian and environmental crisis in India. The industrial mode of production has led to the massive use of costly industrial inputs to increase yields and offset economies of scale that are almost impossible to achieve in this densely populated country. Such a development path is a trap for millions Indian micro-farmers and their natural capital. We then unveil the promises of a type of agroecology called ‘natural farming' that has developed in Andhra Pradesh, a State in South India. Andhra’s natural farming has pioneered the adoption of technical and organizational innovations that could lead to the first large-scale agroecological transition in the world. But in 2019, these local innovations were accused of following a regressive path and endangering the country’s food security. This attack reveals the current omnipotence of the industrial sociotechnical regime over science, as well as a conception of science and progress antithetical to agroecology.

Idealizing inflorescence architecture to enhance rice yield potential for feeding nine billion people in 2050

Rice serves as the staple food in meeting the energy needs of more than half of the global population. Several high-yielding, semi-dwarf rice varieties, including the milestone variety IR8 that was developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) through the introduction of the semi-dwarf1 (sd1) allele of GA20-ox-2 gene and the beneficial allele of HIGH TILLERING AND DWARF 1/DWARF17 (Wang et al., 2020), doubled the yield over traditional germplasm and contributed to the Green Revolution in Asia.

Академик Нодари Симония – последний марксист

The author traces and analyzes the career and activity of Academician Nodari Aleksandrovich Simoniyа (1932–2019), a prominent orientalist and expert in international relations who headed the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2000–2006. The article reveals the formation of the general worldview and academic views of N. Simoniа, assesses his contribution to the study of the East after the collapse of the colonial system and the formation of young independent states. The author acquaints the reader with the views of the Academician on the European, Asian and Russian revolutions, with his approach to understanding the processes of contemporary world development, explains his civil position, both under the Soviet regime and in post-Soviet Russia. N. Simonia combined a detailed knowledge of realities in the Eastern regions he studied – primarily Southeast Asia – with a deep theoretical approach to the study of complex processes in the East after the end of World War II. Over time, the interests of the Academician went beyond the East, to which he devoted several decades of research. At the turn of the 1990s‑2000s, his attention was attracted by the problems of global world development, as well as the development of post-Soviet Russia. All the works of N. Simonia – he published 18 books and dozens of articles in Russian and foreign academic journals – were written by him, as he himself admitted, on the basis of the Marxist methodology. But Simonia’s Marxism had nothing in common with vulgar ideas in Bolsheviks’ teachings of Marx and their “theory of Marxism-Leninism”. At the same time, the Academician criticized not only Stalin and Lenin, but also Marx himself, who succeeded only in deep analysis of contemporary pre-monopoly capitalism. N. Simonia criticized the Soviet model of socialism as well, believing that there has never been any real socialism in the USSR. He was equally critical of the “liberal” turn of the Russian intellectual elite after 1991, blaming its radical faction, which influenced President Boris Yeltsin, for instilling in Russia a model of the “worst”, as he wrote, “the most parasitic version of bureaucratic capitalism”. For Simonia, the latter was associated with Indonesia under Sukarno. But even there, not to mention Japan and South Korea, the business elite has never been antipatriotic, as it happened in modern Russia. In his opinion, the Russian model of capitalism turned out to be unlike either the Western or the Eastern model, and the modernization, which Russia urgently needs, is inseparable from genuine democratization, but should not represent an imitation of democracy, as is the case.

Who is resilient in Africa’s Green Revolution? Sustainable intensification and Climate Smart Agriculture in Rwanda

Under the banner of a "New Green Revolution for Africa," agricultural intensification programs aim to make smallholder agriculture more productive as well as "climate smart". As with Green Revolutions in Asia and Mexico, agricultural innovations (hybrid seeds, agronomic engineering, market linkages,and increased use of fertilizer and pesticides) are promoted as essential catalysts of agriculture-led economic growth. Intensification programs are now frequently linked to Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), which attempts to build resilience and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing crop yields. This article considers who and what is resilient in Africa’s Green Revolution. We report on a multi-season study of smallholder food producers' experiences with Rwanda’s Crop Intensification Program (CIP) and related policies that aim to commercialize subsistence agriculture while implementing CSA. . We suggest that there are fundamental limits to the climate resilience afforded by CSA and development efforts rooted in Green Revolution thinking. Our findings illustrate that such efforts foreground technology and management adjustments in ways that have reduced smallholder resilience by inhibiting sovereignty over land use, decreasing livelihood flexibility, and constricting resource access. We put forth that rural development policies could better promote climate-resilient livelihoods through: 1) adaptive governance that enables smallholder land use decision-making; 2) support for smallholder food producers’ existing agro-ecological strategies of intensification; 3) participatory approaches to visualize and correct for inequalities in local processes of social-ecological resilence Such considerations are paramount for meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and building climate-resilient food systems.

Embracing the Smart-Home Revolution in Asia by the Elderly: An End-User Negative Perception Modeling

There has been a rapid growth in the Internet of Things (IoT) enabled smart-homes recently. Although these IoT powered smart-homes offer new opportunities, their household penetration is quite low. The main objective of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the reasons underlying the end-user resistance to the adoption of the IoT enabled smart-homes, with elderly people as the target population. Due to a rapid increase in the worldwide elderly population, various forms of information and communication technology (ICT) services are used for their well-being, and hence the target of this paper. A very few research has focused on the end-user experience of using smart-homes with all of them using an acceptance-based approach. Using different negative-perception modeling, we try to identify the main barriers to smart-home usage by the elderly people. Accordingly, an online survey was conducted with 254 elderly people across four Asian countries. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test our theoretical model having ten constructs. Two constructs (perceived-uselessness and self-efficacy) were found to be non-significant, while the remaining proved to be significant (innovativeness, perceived-reliability, perceived-interoperability, service-cost, privacy-concern, psychological-barrier, home administrative policy, and government-policy). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research studying the IoT enabled smart-homes using a resistive approach and should provide the groundwork for further research in user-experience studies with IoT technology.

Seeking justice in Green Revolutions: Synergies and trade-offs between large-scale and smallholder agricultural intensification in Rwanda

Agricultural intensification has long been a core focus of agrarian change research. Work demonstrating the capacity of rural societies to innovate in the face of scarce resources has helped counter and complicate the neo-Malthusian narrative that scarcity causes land degradation. Intensification has also featured prominently in agricultural development programs and policies aiming to spur economic growth in the global South. Intensification agendas drove Green Revolutions in Asia and Mexico in the 1960s and underwrite ongoing development efforts throughout sub-Saharan Africa. These large-scale intensification programs rely on adoption of ‘improved’ seed, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and agro-engineering to increase yields of staple crops. These external visions of intensification often fit poorly with cultural-ecological realities of smallholder farming systems where producers pursue locally-viable intensification strategies tailored to complex social-environmental systems. However, little work has explored how various intensification models can overlap and hybridize. In this paper, I explore intensification as a social-environmental process with empirical material from Rwanda, where a recent large-scale agricultural intensification campaign intersects with centuries of smallholder-led intensification. I demonstrate that these polarized strategies of intensification converge as tradeoffs for some and synergies for others, leading to uneven rural livelihood outcomes. Considering agricultural intensification as a plural, dynamic, and contested social-environmental process situated within broader currents of agrarian change helps nuance binary depictions of intensification programs as purely success or failure. Moreover, understanding how modes of intensification hybridize may help enhance justice in Green Revolutions by facilitating more constructive dialogue among smallholder communities, researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners.

Genomes of 13 domesticated and wild rice relatives highlight genetic conservation, turnover and innovation across the genus Oryza

The genus Oryza is a model system for the study of molecular evolution over time scales ranging from a few thousand to 15 million years. Using 13 reference genomes spanning the Oryza species tree, we show that despite few large-scale chromosomal rearrangements rapid species diversification is mirrored by lineage-specific emergence and turnover of many novel elements, including transposons, and potential new coding and noncoding genes. Our study resolves controversial areas of the Oryza phylogeny, showing a complex history of introgression among different chromosomes in the young ‘AA’ subclade containing the two domesticated species. This study highlights the prevalence of functionally coupled disease resistance genes and identifies many new haplotypes of potential use for future crop protection. Finally, this study marks a milestone in modern rice research with the release of a complete long-read assembly of IR 8 ‘Miracle Rice’, which relieved famine and drove the Green Revolution in Asia 50 years ago.

Limits to Green Revolution in rice in Africa: The case of Ghana

The Ghana National Rice Development Strategy in 2009 was developed to double rice production by 2018 with a 10% annual increase and to reduce overreliance on imports and help achieve national food security, increased income, and reduced poverty. Data show that rice production has been increasing at 7.5% annually since 2009, but most of this (6%) comes from land area expansion, and only 1.5% comes from productivity improvements. National average rice yield remains at 2.2–2.5ton per hectare (t/ha) compared to the potential achievable yields of 6–8t/ha based on on-farm trials.Employing yield response models and profitability analysis, results show various practices contribute to yield improvements in irrigated and rainfed systems in 10 regions in Ghana. Evidence also shows that extension services on rice production are limited and that intensifying these services can contribute to increases in rice yield. While some technologies can contribute to increasing yields, marginal increases in yield from these technologies in rainfed systems are not high enough to match the productivity growth achieved during the Green Revolution in Asia. Expansion of irrigated areas, coupled with market infrastructure, will be necessary to boost rice productivity and production in Ghana.

New Revolutionary Agenda: The Interwar Japanese Left on the "Chinese Revolution"

To achieve socialist revolutions in Asia, the Third Communist International (Comintern) recommended to Asian revolutionaries the strategy of a united front comprising the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie, which would prioritize the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle. The early Japanese Communist Party (JCP) (1922–1926) resisted this recommendation, which lumped together colonized India and semi-colonized China with the only empire in Asia, Japan. The JCP insisted on the priority of the domestic national struggle, arguing that without toppling the imperial government at home by means of a socialist revolution, there could be no dismantling of Japanese imperialism and therefore no Chinese Revolution. After the outbreak of Japanese aggression in China in 1927 (the first Shantung intervention in May of that year) and the rise of popular nationalist support for the empire at home, members of the Japanese Left recognized that they had failed to properly engage with Japanese imperialism in Asia. Based on Comintern archives and the writings of leading Japanese Communists, this article argues that, as a strategy to rebrand and redeem itself in the new critical situation in Asia, the Japanese Left began to regard the Chinese Revolution as the only path to liberation, not only for Asia but for Japan as well.

EL PRINCIPO DEL BUEN VIVIR O “SUMAK KAWSAY”, COMO FUNDAMENTO PARA EL DECRECIMIENTO ECONÓMICO

<p>Con el Neoliberalismo como modelo económico imperante en los últimos 30 años, el comportamiento consumista de la mayoría de las sociedades occidentales y mediorientales que se incorporaron a la economía mundial desde la revolución asiática, ha jugado un papel importante en la consumación de mayores recursos naturales, ya que concentraron su desarrollo inicial en el uso y exportación de materias primas y bienes del sector primario de las economía. Debido a que la idea de progreso occidental se afincó, entre otras cosas, en el consumo indiscriminado de bienes ‘efímeros’, el ritmo de frenético de la productividad y el reemplazo de los bienes que pasan de moda por la obsolescencia programada, han generado mayor contaminación y deterioro ambiental.</p><p> </p><p>En este sentido, el artículo argumenta sobre la necesidad de implementar otros modelos o ideales de vida y de progreso ante el daño ambiental y social generado por la explotación de los recursos naturales en los países latinoamericanos durante el periodo del neoliberalismo, y el creciente nivel de contaminación y generación de desechos. A partir de los postulados de Vattimo (1994) sobre el fin de la Modernidad, se argumenta sobre el fin de la idea de progreso occidental y la emergencia de otros ideales y estilos de vida. Finalmente se exponen las razones que hacen necesario el cambio de modelo instando a la reducción voluntaria del consumo y el decrecimiento económico como alternativas de desarrollo desligadas de la idea progreso postulada en el mundo occidental, con base en la cosmovisión ancestral kichwa del Buen Vivir o Sumak Kawsay.</p>

Global market integration increases likelihood that a future African Green Revolution could increase crop land use and CO2 emissions.

There has been a resurgence of interest in the impacts of agricultural productivity on land use and the environment. At the center of this debate is the assertion that agricultural innovation is land sparing. However, numerous case studies and global empirical studies have found little evidence of higher yields being accompanied by reduced area. We find that these studies overlook two crucial factors: estimation of a true counterfactual scenario and a tendency to adopt a regional, rather than a global, perspective. This paper introduces a general framework for analyzing the impacts of regional and global innovation on long run crop output, prices, land rents, land use, and associated CO2 emissions. In so doing, it facilitates a reconciliation of the apparently conflicting views of the impacts of agricultural productivity growth on global land use and environmental quality. Our historical analysis demonstrates that the Green Revolution in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East was unambiguously land and emissions sparing, compared with a counterfactual world without these innovations. In contrast, we find that the environmental impacts of a prospective African Green Revolution are potentially ambiguous. We trace these divergent outcomes to relative differences between the innovating region and the rest of the world in yields, emissions efficiencies, cropland supply response, and intensification potential. Globalization of agriculture raises the potential for adverse environmental consequences. However, if sustained for several decades, an African Green Revolution will eventually become land sparing.

Socialist Revolutions in Asia: The Social History of Mongolia in the Twentieth Century

July 01 2014 Socialist Revolutions in Asia: The Social History of Mongolia in the Twentieth Century IrinaMorozova, Socialist Revolutions in Asia: The Social History of Mongolia in the Twentieth Century. New York: Routledge, 2009. 293 pp. Sergey Radchenko Sergey Radchenko Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Sergey Radchenko Online ISSN: 1531-3298 Print ISSN: 1520-3972 © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2014 Journal of Cold War Studies (2014) 16 (3): 224–225. https://doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_r_00463 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Sergey Radchenko; Socialist Revolutions in Asia: The Social History of Mongolia in the Twentieth Century. Journal of Cold War Studies 2014; 16 (3): 224–225. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_r_00463 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsJournal of Cold War Studies Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Blue Revolution in Asia: Upgrading and Governance in Aquaculture Value Chains

Summary In this article, we examine the upgrading trajectories of selected aquaculture value chains in four Asian countries and the links between upgrading and three factors of value chain governance: coordination mechanisms; types of drivers; and domestic regulation. We find instances of improving products, processes, and value chain coordination—while “moving up” the value chain is rare. We also find that the type of value chain driver and the quality of the domestic regulatory framework are main facilitators of upgrading. We conclude by highlighting lessons on the potential, limits and risks of upgrading the “blue revolution” in Asia.

The quiet revolution in Asia's rice value chains.

There is a rapid transformation afoot in the rice value chain in Asia. The upstream is changing quickly-farmers are undertaking capital-led intensification and participating in burgeoning markets for land rental, fertilizer and pesticides, irrigation water, and seed, and shifting from subsistence to small commercialized farms; in some areas landholdings are concentrating. Midstream, in wholesale and milling, there is a quiet revolution underway, with thousands of entrepreneurs investing in equipment, increasing scale, diversifying into higher quality, and the segments are undergoing consolidation and vertical coordination and integration. Mills, especially in China, are packaging and branding, and building agent networks in wholesale markets, and large mills are building direct relationships with supermarkets. The downstream retail segment is undergoing a "supermarket revolution," again with the lead in change in China. In most cases the government is not playing a direct role in the market, but enabling this transformation through infrastructural investment. The transformation appears to be improving food security for cities by reducing margins, offering lower consumer rice prices, and increasing quality and diversity of rice. This paper discusses findings derived from unique stacked surveys of all value chain segments in seven zones, more and less developed, around Bangladesh, China, India, and Vietnam.

High rural population density Africa – What are the growth requirements and who participates?

A large and increasing proportion of agricultural growth in Africa must come from continuous gains in land productivity in areas of high population density and hence with already relatively high yields. What that requires is analogous to the green revolution in Asia. Several features differentiate the African situation. Those include greater diversity in cropping pattern including a historically larger and more widespread tropical commodity export sector. The physical infrastructure in rural Africa is far inferior to that of most Asian countries. While the greater diversity of agriculture calls for a larger and more diverse institutional structure the reality is that the research systems, the ancillary education systems to spread innovation and the rural financial systems are generally greatly inferior to those of Asia at the beginning of the green revolution. Ethiopia’s record of a steady six to seven percent growth for agriculture and nearly halving of rural poverty demonstrates that with the right policies and investments a very poor country starting with poor physical and institutional infrastructure can bring a major contribution from agriculture growth to increased GDP and reduced poverty. As in Asia, the bulk of accelerated agricultural growth will come from small commercial farmers. They have sufficient farm income to reach or exceed the poverty level. Those are farms with, depending on the country, as little as 0.75 hectares to a few tens of hectares of land. They comprise up to half the rural population and produce on the order of 70–80 percent of agricultural output. They are in general not poor. The poor have inadequate land to reach the poverty level, initially with much underemployment, and with substantial non-farm employment. The primary driver of poverty reduction is the small commercial farmer spending on the order of half of increased income on nontradable, employment intensive goods and services from the rural non-farm sector.

Leadership transfer in the Asian revolution: Mao Zedong and the Asian Cominform

On the eve of the victory of the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong became interested in creating an Asian Cominform. Although Stalin agreed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should lead the Asian revolution and agreed in principle to the idea of an Asian Cominform, he was not in favour of immediate action. After hearing Moscow's opinion, the CCP started to train communist cadres from Asian countries. The CCP gained actual leadership of the Asian revolution after China's entry into the Korean War. Although the Asian Cominform was not formally established, China became the centre of the Asian revolution in the 1950s.

アジアの緑の革命とサブサハラ・アフリカのコメ・稲作

アジアの緑の革命とサブサハラ・アフリカのコメ・稲作