The History of Agriculture in Ethiopia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. McCann
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Over Time

Ethiopia’s highlands and their lowland peripheries offer a distinctive and, in many ways, ideal setting for human habitation and the evolution of agricultural ecologies. The ranges in climate variability by season and over time framed a sophisticated set of crops, agricultural practices, and local political ecologies. Chief among these was the development and use of the single-tine ox-plow (i.e., the ard or scratch plow) that integrated endemic annual crops with secondary crop introductions and, in some areas, cultivated or intercropped with perennial crops such as ensete and coffee. Animal husbandry to sustain animal traction and pastoral livelihoods in regional ecologies was essential, over time, to regional economies and their political ecologies. Agricultural patterns existed at the heart of cultural diversities and periods of political conflict and accommodations. In some areas of the south (Sidamo), southeast (Harar highlands), and southwest (Jimma), coffee cultivation complemented annual grain cropping. Yet the plow in its current form as a dominant tool appears in rock painting dating as far back as 500 ad. That technology was both efficient and persistent. While Ethiopia’s plow agriculture dominated the region’s political ecology over more than two millennia, in the late 20th century Ethiopia’s agrarian economy began an inexorable set of changes. New crops (such as maize), urbanization, and global migration of peoples and commodities (oil seeds, fibers, and grains) brought new seeds, inputs, and pressures to adapt to change, particularly for smallholder farmers and new enterprises. Heavy investments in dams and irrigated agriculture also foretell new agricultural landscapes of riverain areas that will need to coexist with the classic highland smallholder farms. The story of maize in Ethiopia’s agricultural history is emblematic of the struggle between pressures for change and the inertia of tradition felt by farmers. Their agrarian adaptation to new methods, new materials, and a new climate will play itself out in existing geographies and natural contours.

scholarly journals Woodlot farming by smallholder farmers in Ganderbal district of Kashmir, India

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 752-759
Author(s):  
Azeem Raja ◽  
M. A. Islam ◽  
T. H. Masoodi ◽  
P. A. Khan ◽  
A. A. Wani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Cultivated Land ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Growing Stock

Forest degradation and deforestation are serious threats to resource conservation, subsistence livelihoods and rural income diversification. Woodlot farming on farms has been established as a potential option to increase forest resources from agricultural landscapes and remove human pressure from forests. The study investigated the land-use and landholding pattern, woodlots types and species preference and extent of spatial distribution, land allocation and growing stock of woodlots in the Ganderbal district of Kashmir. Multistage random sampling technique was employed to select 349 farm woodlots from 12 sample villages. Secondary sources were used to collect village-level data on land-use and landholding pattern. Primary data concerning the trees were collected through farm woodlot inventories. The data were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics. Results revealed that the total land area in the sample villages is 888.60 ha; 521.60 ha (58.70%) is cultivated land, which is mostly (80.78%) occupied by 1244 marginal farmers. The prevalent woodlots established were plantations of Populus, Salix, Robinia or mixed species. The farm woodlots (61.59 ha) contributed 11.81% of cultivated land and 6.93% of the total geographical area. The average growing stocks of woodlots were estimated to be 204.05 m3/ha for Populus, 191.77 m3/ha for Salix, 109.51 m3/ha for Robinia and 62.31 m3/ha for Mixed. The findings suggested that woodlot farming is the key alternative for forest resource production, livelihood resilience and socioeconomic improvement; hence, the policy must be implicated towards the promotion of woodlot farming by re-orienting the land use through farmer’s motivation and technical, financial and farming input assistance.

Resistance to Colonial Conservation and Resource Management

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Beinart ◽  
Lotte Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Popular Resistance ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Agrarian Systems

In the remaining chapters we will focus increasingly on the response by colonized people to competition for, and commodification of, conquered environments. Political conflict over natural resources had deep historical roots in the Empire, and these issues were not resolved by dominion status for the British settler states nor decolonization after the Second World War. They fed into the politics of decolonization and into environmental debates within and beyond the post-colonial Commonwealth. Subsequent chapters traverse the moment of decolonization and explore elements of late twentieth-century political ecology. In South Asia and Africa state attempts to control and regulate natural resources changed power relations in the countryside and triggered popular resistance. Through conquest or annexation, some colonial and protectorate governments not only alienated large swathes of territory, but also assumed responsibility for and asserted rights over the natural environment. The governments of settler states moved to protect environments from careless settlers who ransacked it for wildlife or timber, and from indigenous peoples whose land-management systems were regarded as destructive. In some cases conservators recognized that European settlers wreaked more havoc than indigenes; Sim said of the Cape forests that the ‘Hottentot and Bushman inhabitants … were not intentionally destructive … But the advent of European civilization boded greater ill to the forests, and rapidly enough that ill has been accomplished.’ And some, such as Howard, saw value in local agrarian systems. But although regulation could affect all colonial subjects, it tended to bear most heavily on indigenous people. Colonial governments introduced policies of excluding humans from protected areas, as well as a wide range of other measures aimed at curbing customary user rights and maximizing state revenue. Stiff penalties were introduced to punish those who broke the new regulations, and thus the rise of bureaucratic conservationism often led to the criminalization of local resource extractors. In settler colonies the privatization of land transformed socio-environmental relationships, barring local communities from accessing resources they had long regarded as communally held and managed. In some early colonial settlements, this process echoed the enclosures of common land in eighteenth-century England. At a fundamental level it changed the value people placed upon land, setting in train a process towards individualized tenure, commercialization, and subdivision of territory.

scholarly journals Artificial lawn people

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 548-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Brooks ◽  
Robert A Francis
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Cultural Expectations ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Artificial Grass ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Dynamic Relationships ◽  
Shed Light

This paper explores a new artificial political ecology through a novel digital methodology. The emotional impacts of the replacement of living turfgrass landscapes with synthetic simulacra are researched via a netnography of animated and polarised online discussion. We investigate how the cultural use of domestic lawns has extended into the creation of non-living artificial lawns and how the environmental values of these new landscapes are debated. Synthetic polymer (plastic) grasses are increasingly being used as alternatives to turfgrass in domestic gardens, changing urban ecologies. We examine the emotional landscapes that are reproduced in online discourse. Paul Robbins showed that a certain suite of behaviours constitutes ‘Lawn People’. Here we demonstrate that ‘Artificial Lawn People’ act in reference to cultural expectations of a ‘good’ lawn to produce non-living, homogeneous, green and tidy gardens, yet their actions spark fierce criticism from others who do not value this new synthetic nature. Our research involved analysis of 948 online discussion posts, and introduces a secondary notion of ‘artificial people’ as our subjects were anonymous contributors to virtual public debates on the environment: generating impassioned polyvocal contestation. Mumsnet.com is a space of heated discussion between proponents and opponents of artificial lawns. We identify three topics: (i) emotional responses: artificial grass is polarising, and its social value contested; (ii) bio-physical affects: plastic fibres impact human and non-human life and (iii) environmental values: turfgrass replacement influences local and global political ecologies. The conclusions shed light on the dynamic relationships between the emotional values of living and non-living landscapes.

scholarly journals Visceral Encounters: A Political Ecology of Urban Land, Food, and Housing in Dubuque, Iowa

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Chennault ◽  
Klavitter ◽  
Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Community Gardens ◽  
The Body ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Community Gardening ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Racial Relations ◽  
Food Gardening ◽  
Political Ecologies

Through a praxis of co-authorship between a university scholar and two community gardeners/organizers/activists, this article showcases the ways in which knowledge, practices, and relationalities emergent in community gardens in Dubuque, Iowa USA directly engage with the politics of food, land, and housing. The authors engage in co-authorship across university and community boundaries to ontologically reframe knowledge production and draw critical attention to the everyday livelihoods and political ecologies experienced within marginalized communities. We use extended conversations and interviews to analyze the food, land, and housing issues that emerge in the context of uneven racial relations and neighborhood revitalization. We then organize our analysis using a Political Ecology of the Body (PEB) framework to consider how people’s bodily, emotional, and social lives impact their relationalities with food, gardening, and neighborhood spaces. Our findings show that community gardening efforts are transforming the Washington and North End neighborhoods—even if these changes appear to outsiders to be small-scale or difficult to measure—while also calling attention to the anti-oppression and anti-racism work that remains to be done. Our co-authorship demonstrates how community gardeners and university partners can work together to contest histories of marginalization and foster more socially just relations.

scholarly journals Factors Associated with Household Food Security in Zambia

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2715 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Nkomoki ◽  
Miroslava Bavorová ◽  
Jan Banout
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Household Head ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Household Food Security ◽  
Food And Nutrition Security ◽  
Nutrition Security ◽  
Household Food ◽  
Food And Nutrition

Food security is a global challenge and threatens mainly smallholder farmers in developing countries. The main aim of this paper is to determine factors that are associated with food security in Zambia. This study utilizes the household questionnaire survey dataset of 400 smallholder farmers in four districts conducted in southern Zambia in 2016. To measure food security, the study employs two food security indicators, namely the food consumption score (FCS) and the household hunger scale (HHS). Two ordered probit models are estimated with the dependent variables FCS and HHS. Both the FCS and HHS models’ findings reveal that higher education levels of household head, increasing livestock income, secure land tenure, increasing land size, and group membership increase the probability of household food and nutrition security. The results imply that policies supporting livestock development programs such as training of farmers in animal husbandry, as well as policies increasing land tenure security and empowerment of farmers groups, have the potential to enhance household food and nutrition security.

scholarly journals Centering the Korle Lagoon: exploring blue political ecologies of E-Waste in Ghana

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 448
Author(s):  
Peter C Little ◽  
Grace Abena Akese
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Ecological Restoration ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Flood Control ◽  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
River System ◽  
Toxic Waste ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
Political Ecologies

<p>Among emerging studies of the global political economy and ecology of electronic waste (or e-waste), few directly explore the already complex waste trades and materialities in relation to the general political ecology of water, flood control, dredging, and neoliberal ecological restoration. Even fewer focus on how this political-ecological challenge is unfolding in a West African context where ocean-based e-waste trades have played a dominant role. This article engages this particular domain of blue economic critique by focusing on Ghana in general and what we shall call "blue political ecologies of e-waste" in particular. The article focuses on e-waste politics unfolding in and around the Korle Lagoon in Accra, Ghana. The Korle Lagoon is an urban marine space of intensive land use, toxic waste disposal, social life, and urban ecological restoration. Amidst heavy contamination, there are attempts to rehabilitate the lagoon through the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project, an ecological science and restoration project focused on the Lagoon and its river system in the metropolitan area of Accra. It showcases the neoliberal complexities of ecological restoration. Importantly, situated in a multi-use marine environment, the project also highlights, we argue, a political ecological moment that is both about things 'blue', like water quality concerns, but also about other things non-blue such as contestation over land and housing, 'green' international NGO intervention on e-waste risk mitigation, and desires for new urban ecologies. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2015 and 2018, this article contributes to blue political-ecological research and critique in Africa by asking: how do e-waste politics leak into discussions of the blue economy along the Korle Lagoon in Ghana? What are the promises and prospects of a blue political ecology of e-waste in general, and in Africa in particular?</p><strong>Key Words</strong>: Political ecology, Ghana, e-waste, lagoon contamination, ecological restoration

scholarly journals Experiences from a National Landscape Monitoring Programme—Maintaining Continuity Whilst Meeting Changing Demands and Opportunities

Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Grete Stokstad ◽  
Wendy Fjellstad
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Rate Of Change ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Monitoring Programme ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Landscape Monitoring ◽  
Cost Efficient ◽  
Over Time

Over the past few decades, there has been increasing interest in recording landscape change. Monitoring programmes have been established to measure the scope, direction and rate of change, and assess the consequences of changes for multiple interests, such as biodiversity, cultural heritage and recreation. The results can provide feedback for multiple sectors and policy domains. Political interests may change over time, but long-term monitoring demands long-term funding. This requires that monitoring programmes remain relevant and cost-efficient. In this paper, we document experiences from 20 years of the Norwegian Monitoring Programme for Agricultural Landscapes—the ‘3Q Programme’. We explain how data availability and demands for information have changed over time, and how the monitoring programme has been adapted to remain relevant. We also discuss how methods of presentation influence the degree of knowledge transfer to stakeholders, in particular to policy makers.

Commerce, Coalitions, and Factor Mobility: Evidence from Congressional Votes on Trade Legislation

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL J. HISCOX
Keyword(s):  
Trade Policy ◽  
Capital Mobility ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Factor Mobility ◽  
Congressional Voting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Trade Politics ◽  
Over Time ◽  
American Trade ◽  
Trade Legislation

The extent to which political conflict over U.S. trade policy has led to clashes between broad-based class coalitions has varied significantly over time during the past two centuries. I argue that much of this variation can be explained by changes in economywide levels of interindustry factor mobility. Class distinctions between voters are more economically and politically salient when interindustry mobility is high; when mobility is low, industry distinctions become more critical and tend to split apart broader political coalitions. I report evidence indicating large changes in levels of labor and capital mobility over the last two centuries. These changes coincide with significant shifts in the character of American trade politics. Analysis of congressional voting on 30 major pieces of trade legislation between 1824 and 1994 provides evidence of large swings in coalition patterns.

scholarly journals Estimates of Soil Renewal Rates: Applications for Anti-Erosion Arrangement of the Agricultural Landscape

Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fedor Lisetskii
Keyword(s):  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Quality ◽  
Humus Horizon ◽  
Agricultural Landscape ◽  
Soil Formation ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Crimean Peninsula ◽  
History Of ◽  
T Values ◽  
Over Time

Engineering and geographic substantiation of the anti-erosion organization of agricultural landscapes requires not only differentiated estimations of erosion losses, but also commensurate (in terms of space–time scales) estimations of the soil loss tolerance. The main approaches for determining the participation of estimations of soil formation in the substantiation of erosion tolerance have been defined. This study is aimed at justifying the methods of incorporating the results of pedogenesis modeling into computational methods for organizing agricultural landscapes. This paper presents the results of a study of the process of formation of the humus horizon and the accumulation of organic carbon in soils, based on soils from archaeological sites in the Crimean Peninsula over a period from 25 to 2000 years ago, with differences in climate and parent rock, in a region with a thousand-year history of human activity. The patterns of variation in the thickness of the humus horizons over time and the accumulation of carbon were determined, and estimates for the rate of the pedogenesis were obtained. In connection with the slowing of the rate of pedogenesis over time, the chronofunction of the change in the thickness of soils (of both exponential and logistic types) may be applied and, on this basis, it is possible to calculate the rates of the formation of the humus horizon depending on the morphological status of the soils. During re-naturation of highly degraded soils, maximum renewal rates may take place only with a very high input of organic matter, which is crucial to take into account in the development and implementation of programs for the rehabilitation of degraded lands. Under the conditions of slope agriculture, the rationale for T-values should be linked to many factors of the input and consumption of organic carbon, which provides a logical mathematical model of the formation of soil quality. For soil quality management on agricultural lands, a formula for calculating T-values, using an equation where the rate of pedogenesis is associated with a variety of changes in soil organic carbon, is proposed in this article.

scholarly journals Grassland-to-crop conversion in agricultural landscapes has lasting impact on the trait diversity of bees

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaëtane Le Provost ◽  
Isabelle Badenhausser ◽  
Cyrille Violle ◽  
Fabrice Requier ◽  
Marie D’Ottavio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Habitat Loss ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Habitat Destruction ◽  
Land Use History ◽  
Pollinator Decline ◽  
Plant Trait ◽  
Trait Diversity ◽  
Bee Communities ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Context Global pollinator decline has motivated much research to understand the underlying mechanisms. Among the multiple pressures threatening pollinators, habitat loss has been suggested as a key-contributing factor. While habitat destruction is often associated with immediate negative impacts, pollinators can also exhibit delayed responses over time. Objectives We used a trait-based approach to investigate how past and current land use at both local and landscape levels impact plant and wild bee communities in grasslands through a functional lens. Methods We measured flower and bee morphological traits that mediate plant–bee trophic linkage in 66 grasslands. Using an extensive database of 20 years of land-use records, we tested the legacy effects of the landscape-level conversion of grassland to crop on flower and bee trait diversity. Results Land-use history was a strong driver of flower and bee trait diversity in grasslands. Particularly, bee trait diversity was lower in landscapes where much of the land was converted from grassland to crop long ago. Bee trait diversity was also strongly driven by plant trait diversity computed with flower traits. However, this relationship was not observed in landscapes with a long history of grassland-to-crop conversion. The effects of land-use history on bee communities were as strong as those of current land use, such as grassland or mass-flowering crop cover in the landscape. Conclusions Habitat loss that occurred long ago in agricultural landscapes alters the relationship between plants and bees over time. The retention of permanent grassland sanctuaries within intensive agricultural landscapes can offset bee decline.

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