Download Free Governing Agricultural Sustainability Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Governing Agricultural Sustainability and write the review.

Although GM crops are seen by their advocates as a key component of the future of world agriculture and as part of the solution for world poverty and hunger, their uptake has not been smooth nor universal: they have been marred by controversy and all too commonly their regulation has been challenged as inadequate, even biased. This book aims to understand these dynamics, examining the impacts of GM crops in diverse contexts and their potentials to contribute to sustainable agricultural futures. Part 1 draws on research from three global ‘rising powers’ – Brazil, India and Mexico – exploring the views of scientists, farmers and publics. Using a diverse array of ethnographic and qualitative methodologies, the book examines the dynamics that have underpinned the controversy in three diverse geo-political contexts, the manner in which dominant institutional framings have been closely aligned with the interests of powerful elites, and the multiple ways in which these have been resisted through local, symbolic and material practices. Part 2 comprises a series of short comment pieces from 11 leading social and natural scientists responding to the question of how to develop a policy framework for the responsible innovation of sustainable, culturally appropriate and socially just agricultural GM technologies. This innovative book offers new insights for researchers and postgraduates in Science and technology studies, Agro-ecology and Environmental Studies, Development studies, Anthropology, Human Geography, Sociology, Political Science, Public Administration, Latin American studies, and Asian studies.
This book presents a multidisciplinary collection of original contributions made by the leading scholars and practitioners on researching, building, and maintaining sustainable agricultural systems. Being the first of its kind, the book is divided into two volumes. This book presents a comprehensive and informed review of the current state of multidisciplinary knowledge on sustainability in agriculture. The gaps in the scholarly literature are identified and rigorously analyzed, presenting a clear picture of the promising research directions. The authors critically analyze the very concept of sustainable agricultural systems, primarily focusing on the interactions existing between their integral components and with external environments. Relying on the provisions of complex systems science, the scholars then discuss the best approaches and methodologies used to build a comprehensive understanding of agricultural systems, with relation to achieving and maintaining their sustainability. More than that, this book holds two rich sections on (1) agricultural economics and (2) rural sustainability. Understanding sustainable development as a movement toward clearly defined and measurable goals, a set of chapters explore those policies, practices, technologies, and management systems that have an impact on the sustainability of agricultural systems. Agricultural sustainability is an urgent issue to be addressed, and this book makes a unique contribution. Due to its practical focus, the book appeals to practitioners and policymakers working in agricultural economics, governance, and sustainability, not just academics. This is also a valuable resource for graduate students interested in agricultural systems, sustainability, as well as complex systems theory and practice.
Food security and sustainability are arguably the most important issues facing the agri-food sector at the beginning of a new millennium. In an era of globalization, where nation states appear to have a diminishing role in governing these matters, the existing and emerging power relations underpinning agri-food regulation demand renewed scholarly attention. Drawing upon the expertise of some of the most prominent writers in rural sociology, geography and anthropology, this book shows how globalization processes open up a new regulatory politics in which ‘non-political’ forms of governing play an increasingly influential role in shaping agricultural production and consumption. The first of its kind to critically and comprehensively examine new forms of governing and regulation, this important text explores the relationship between globalization and new sites, spaces and agents of agricultural regulation, using detailed case studies in developed nations to illustrate points made. Demonstrating the political significance of regulatory mechanisms extending beyond the state, the book also discusses the consequences for the governing of the agri-food sector.
This book encompasses a broad range of natural resource sectors, with discrete chapters on water, land, forestry, fisheries, mining, petroleum and agriculture. Given this broad range of areas, the focus of the publication is narrowed to provide an overarching holistic perspective that is supportive of a systems-thinking approach. Recognizing that there are many useful publications elsewhere that detail extensively the specific regulatory elements of sound laws in the respective areas, this book offers the specific prism of highlighting approaches that embrace the pillars of sustainable development, i.e. approaches that recognize and are informed by economic, social and environmental considerations and impacts.
Apart from food and raw materials, agriculture can also provide ancillary benefits such as landscapes, biodiversity, cultural heritage and thriving rural communities. This book offers a state-of-the-art overview of strategies for sustainable management practices and their implementation through the adoption of suitable instruments. Such practices aim to sustain and support the multiple functions provided by agriculture and natural resources in the rural countryside. The authors explore the value of alternative governance structures and examine the design of policy models and institutional mechanisms for a range of different countries and agricultural methods. The empirical results allow them to identify successful examples as well as recognize practices which have failed. They can then transfer positive policies to geographical areas or production systems where effective and efficient strategies for the sustainable management of natural resources are urgently needed. In doing so, the authors hope to improve the design, identification and implementation of appropriate policy instruments to help sustain the rural economy in the future. They also aim to strengthen the establishment of markets for nature which overcome institutional constraints. This timely new book explores emerging perspectives on multifunctionality in agriculture and the rural environment. It will be widely read by academics, researchers and policymakers with an interest in agricultural and resource economics, environmental governance and sustainable development.
This timely book provides an accessible insight into how the concept of sustainable development can be made operational through its translation into legal terms. Understood as a multidimensional legal principle, sustainable development facilitates coherent international law making. Using this notion as an analytical lens on the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, the book considers the unresolved question of what a sustainable and coherent agricultural trade agreement could look like.
Between 2013 and 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) undertook a survey of innovative approaches that enable markets to act as incentives in the transition towards sustainable agriculture in developing countries. Through a competitive selection process, 15 cases from around the world provide insights into how small-scale initiatives that use sustainable production practices are supported by market demand, and create innovations in the institutions that govern sustainable practices and market exchanges. These cases respond to both local and distant consumers’ concerns about the quality of the food that they eat. The book evidences that the initiatives rely upon social values (e.g. trustworthiness, health [nutrition and food safety], food sovereignty, promotion of youth and rural development, farmer and community livelihoods) to adapt sustainable practices to local contexts, while creating new market outlets for food products. Specifically, private sector and civil society actors are leading partnerships with the public sector to build market infrastructure, integrate sustainable agriculture into private and public education and extension programmes, and ensure the exchange of transparent information about market opportunities. The results are: (i) system innovations that allow new rules for marketing and assuring the sustainable qualities of products; (ii) new forms of organization that permit actors to play multiple roles in the food system (e.g. farmer and auditor, farmer and researcher, consumer and auditor, consumer and intermediary); (iii) new forms of market exchange, such as box schemes, university kiosks, public procurement or systems of seed exchanges; and (iv) new technologies for sustainable agriculture (e.g. effective micro-organisms, biopesticides and soil analysis techniques). The public sector plays a key role in providing legitimate political and physical spaces for multiple actors to jointly create and share sustainable agricultural knowledge, practices and products.
This book presents a modern framework for understanding and improving agrarian sustainability and its governance. It incorporates the interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organisation, Law, Sociology, Behavioural and Political Sciences) and suggests a new framework for analysis of mechanisms of governance of agrarian sustainability. Moreover, all available mechanisms affecting individual and collective actions for achieving economic, social, environmental, intra and inter-generational goals of sustainable development are embraced including formal and informal institutions ("rules of the game"), "invisible hand of market" (market competition), individual initiatives (codes of behaviour), contractual arrangements (private order), "visible hand of the manager"(fiat), collective decision-making (collective order), government intervention (public order), multinational actions (international order) and hybrid modes. The book provides effective tools for understanding, analysing and improving public policies, business strategies, and individuals and collective actions for sustainable development.
Sustaining our agricultural landscapes is no longer just a technical, scientific or even political problem, but it has evolved into a socially complex, so-called wicked problem of conflicting social governance and economics. This creates an extreme economic obstacle where the value of ecosystem services remains low and diffuse and the transactions costs remain high and multiple.Using Uber-like business platform technology and a shared governance model, a symbiotic demand for environmental benefits is created. Enabling multi-sector transactions for environmental benefits, this platform innovation would remedy the "tragedy of the commons"; the economic nemesis to achieving landscape sustainability. In a nutshell, to sustain our agricultural landscapes a transdisciplinary approach supported by a shared governance model housed within a multi-sided platform in needed. This book introduces an assessment framework identifying governance actors, styles and ratios for socio-ecological systems. The assessment uses a new governance compass to identify the types of actors completing which tasks and identifies the styles of governance used to complete the tasks. It is aimed to anyone involved in sustainability science, agricultural policy planning, or integrated landscape design.