This book explores recent experiences in the effort to bring about a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The chapters focus on rice and maize, which are promising and strategic smallholder crops. Significantly, we find that an African Rice Revolution has already begun in many irrigated areas, using Asian-type modern varieties, chemical fertilizer, and improved management practices. Further, we find that the same technological package significantly increases the productivity and profitability of rice farming in rainfed areas as well. We also find evidence that that management training, when done well, can boost productivity on smallholder farms. This suggests that African governments can accelerate the pace of Africa’s Rice Revolution by strengthening extension capacity. The story for maize is wholly different, where most farmers use local varieties, apply little chemical fertilizer, and obtain very low yields. However, in the highly populated highlands of Kenya, a number of farmers have adopted high-yielding hybrid maize varieties and chemical fertilizer, as was the case in the Asian Green Revolution, apply manure produced by stall-fed cows, as was the case during the British Agricultural Revolution, and keep improved cows or cross-breeds from European cows and local stock, as was the case of the Indian White Revolution. We conclude that while rice in Africa has benefited from an Asian Green Revolution strategy that emphasizes modern seeds, inputs, and focused knowledge transfers, the success of Africa’s Maize Revolution will require a different system approach based on hybrid maize, chemical and organic fertilizers, and stall-fed cross-bred cows.

This open access book seeks effective strategy to realize a rice Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa based on more than ten years of research team’s inquiries into determinants and consequences of new technology adoption in rice farming in seven countries in this region. Rigorous statistical analyses are carried out by using valuable household data of rice farmers. The book is actually sequel to the two earlier books on the same subject published by Springer and edited by K. Otsuka and D.F. Larson, An African Green Revolution published in 2013 and In Pursuit of an African Green Revolution in 2016. The main message of the first book was that rice is the most promising cereal crop in SSA because of the high transferability of Asian rice technology, whereas that of the second book was that rice cultivation training programs are effective in significantly increasing rice yield in SSA. This third book has wider coverage in terms of topics, study periods, and study sites. It continues to show the significant impacts of rice cultivation training on productivity and newly demonstrates the high sustainability of the productivity impact of the training and the existence of spillover effects from trainees to other farmers by using panel data. We newly assess the important role of mechanization in intensification of rice farming, high returns to large-scale irrigation schemes, and the critical role of rice millers in improving the quality of milled rice. Based on these studies, this book provides clear pathways toward full-fledged Green Revolution in rice farming in sub-Saharan Africa.

This open access book discusses the current role of smallholders in connection with food security and poverty reduction in developing countries. It addresses the opportunities they enjoy, and the constraints they face, by analysing the availability, access to and utilization of production factors. Due to the relevance of smallholder farms, enhancing their production capacities and economic and social resilience could produce positive impacts on food security and nutrition at a number of levels. In addition to the role of small farmers as food suppliers, the book considers their role as consumers and their level of nutrition security. It investigates the link between agriculture and nutrition in order to better understand how agriculture affects human health and dietary patterns. Given the importance of smallholdings, strategies to increase their productivity are essential to improving food and nutrition security, as well as food diversity.

This paper examines closely the constraints in productivity improvements and evaluates available rice technologies looking at the heterogeneity of irrigated and rainfed ecologies in 10 regions in Ghana. Employing yield response models, profitability analysis, and adoption models, results show various practices contribute to yield improvements in irrigated and rainfed systems including chemical fertilizer use, use of certified seed of improved varieties, transplanting, bunding, leveling, use of a sawah system, seed priming, and row planting. Evidence also shows that extension services on rice production are limited and that intensifying extension services can contribute to increases in rice yield.

Population growth alone dictates that global food supplies must increase by over 50% in coming decades. Advances in technology offer an array of opportunities to meet this demand, but history shows that these can be fully realised only within an enabling policy environment. Sustaining Global Food Security makes a compelling case that recent technological breakthroughs can move the planet towards a secure and sustainable food supply only if new policies are designed that allow their full expression. Bob Zeigler has brought together a distinguished set of scientists and policy analysts to produce well-referenced chapters exploring international policies on genetic resources, molecular genetics, genetic engineering, crop breeding and protection, remote sensing, the changing landscape of agricultural policies in the world’s largest countries, and trade. Those entering the agricultural sciences and those who aspire to influence public policy during their careers will benefit from the insights of this unique set of experiences and perspectives.

This paper describes how modern service providers have emerged in the African agricultural sector, a subject that has been vastly understudied. The paper looks at providers of modern rice mills, power tillers, combine harvesters, and production services at a highly productive rice irrigation scheme in Ghana. These service providers earn net profits that are greater than the profits they would likely achieve from simply expanding rice production without investing in respective machines, suggesting that higher returns primarily induce the emergence of these modern providers. Surpluses and experiences from their years of rice production are likely to have provided the primary finance and knowledge required for entry. The service providers emerged by exploiting both the economies of scale and the economies of scope, keeping rice production as the primary source of income, instead of specializing only in service provisions. Key policy implications are also discussed.

A popular myth about the travails of Africa holds that the continent's long history of poor economic performance reflects the inability of its leaders and policymakers to fulfill the long list of preconditions to be met before sustained growth can be achieved. These conditions are said to vary from the necessary quantity and quality of physical and human capital to the appropriate institutions and business environments. While intellectually charming and often elegantly formulated, that conventional wisdom is actually contradicted by historical evidence and common sense. It also suggests a form of intellectual mimicry that posits a unique path to prosperity for all countries regardless of their level of development and economic structure. In fact, the argument underlining that reasoning is tautological, and the policy prescriptions derived from it are fatally teleological: low-income countries are by definition those where such ingredients are missing. None of today's high-income countries started its growth process with the "required" and complete list of growth ingredients. Unless one truly believes that the continent of Africa-and most developing countries-are ruled predominantly if not exclusively by plutocrats with a high propensity for sadomasochism, the conventional view must be re-examined, debated, and questioned. This volume-the second of the lOxford Handbook of Africa and Economics-reassesses the economic policies and practices observed across the continent since independence. It offers a collection of analyses by some of the leading economists and development thinkers of our time, and reflects a wide range of perspectives and viewpoints. Africa's emergence as a potential economic powerhouse in the years and decades ahead amply justifies the scope and ambition of the book.

Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World is the first comprehensive exploration of key emerging issues facing developing-country agriculture today, from rapid urbanization to rural transformation to climate change. In this four-part volume, top experts offer the latest research in the field of agricultural development. Using new lenses to examine today’s biggest challenges, contributors address topics such as nutrition and health, gender and household decision-making, agrifood value chains, natural resource management, and political economy. The book also covers most developing regions, providing a critical global perspective at a time when many pressing challenges extend beyond national borders. Tying all this together, Agricultural Development explores policy options and strategies for developing sustainable agriculture and reducing food insecurity and malnutrition. The changing global landscape combined with new and better data, technologies, and understanding means that agriculture can and must contribute to a wider range of development outcomes than ever before, including reducing poverty, ensuring adequate nutrition, creating strong food value chains, improving environmental sustainability, and promoting gender equity and equality. Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World, with its unprecedented breadth and scope, will be an indispensable resource for the next generation of policymakers, researchers, and students dedicated to improving agriculture for global wellbeing.

This Open Access book explores the multifaceted nature of agricultural and rural development in Asia and examines the extent to which the Asian experience is being replicated in contemporary Africa. This volume compiles the works of top scholars who provided analyses and evidences from household-level surveys collected for many years in several parts of Asia and Africa. The most important finding presented in this book is that African agricultural development has evolved following the pathways of Asian agricultural development. The common pathways are borrowed technology from abroad and adaptive research in rice farming; secured property rights on natural resources; adoption of ICTs; investments in human capital, including training; and launching of the high-value agriculture. In both continents, agricultural development started in the crop sector, which had a strong tendency to induce the dynamic development of other sectors in rural areas. [Resumen de la editorial]