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There is much current controversy over whether the rights to seeds or plant genetic resources should be owned by the private sector or be common property. This book addresses the legal and policy aspects of the multilateral seed management regime. First, it studies in detail the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the Treaty) in order to understand and identify its dysfunctions. Second, it proposes solutions - using recent developments of the "theory of the...

This book presents evidence-based research on climate-neutral and resilient farming systems and further to provide innovative and practical solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the impact of climate change. Intensive farming systems are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, thereby contributing to global warming and the acceleration of climate change. As paddy rice farming is one of the largest contributors, and most environmentally damaging farming systems...

This book provides an accessible introduction to food inequality in the United States, offering readers a broad survey of the most important topics and issues and exploring how economics, culture, and public policy have shaped our current food landscape. Food inequality in the United States can take many forms. From the low-income family unable to afford enough to eat and the migrant farm worker paid below minimum wage to city dwellers stranded in an urban food desert, disparities in how we acc...

This handbook presents a must-read, comprehensive and state of the art overview of sustainable diets, an issue critical to the environment and the health and well-being of society. Sustainable diets seek to minimise and mitigate the significant negative impact food production has on the environment. Simultaneously they aim to address worrying health trends in food consumption through the promotion of healthy diets that reduce premature disability, disease and death. Within the Routledge Handbo...

This book examines conservation agriculture in India, discussing the current situation, levels of adoption, management practices and the future outlook of conservation agriculture in India, but also in other tropical and subtropical regions of the world. While conservation agriculture is proposed as an important means to combat climate change, improve crop productivity, food affordability and to protect the environment, the adoption of conservation agriculture in India, and south-east Asia mor...

The UN's Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for 'Zero Hunger' has refocused attention on hunger and malnutrition as major challenges for the 21st century and as essential desired goals for human development. This volume provides key insights on how these challenges for food security can be addressed globally and in a number of countries that face these challenges most acutely.According to the World Food Summit, food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access...

Lisa Clark's scholarly account of the development of the organic movement in the United States and Canada beautifully explains the decades-long transition from understanding organic production as inextricably tied to healthy soils, communities, and social justice ('process-based') to views of organics as meeting certain standards for marketing purposes (product-based). Read this book and you will care deeply about the difference in these views as well as understand current debates about the futu...

Poke, spam musubi, and loco mocos are currently the rage on the mainland United States, and restaurants serving "local food" have popped up not only in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle but also in Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC. Who could have predicted the popularity of over-the-top and carb-heavy plate lunches, spam musubi, and poke bowls? What explains this? One quick answer is Hawai'i Regional Cuisine. The twelve chefs who grandly announced in 1991 the establishment of what t...

This study examines the development and describes the advanced technology used for the construction and operation of the New Khanki Barrage in Punjab, Pakistan. It highlights the socioeconomic benefits of the project to communities. Among the notable impacts of the project is an increase in agricultural outputs and income of over half a million farming families. Communities, particularly women and girls, have also benefited from new health, education, recreation, and other infrastructure. The s...

The key to good policy analysis is asking the right questions about existing or proposed policies. This book explains how to analyze agricultural and natural-resource policy with particular emphasis on Australia. This text aims to develop a systematic theoretical framework that integrates economic efficiency and public choice analysis. It should enable students to understand the principles that underpin good policy-making, how economists understand and evaluate the policy-making process, and how...

Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise's Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country, agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have actually exacerbated food crises. Most of the world, Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what and how to grow. These same farmers - who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developi...

The title reviews policies and challenges in the agricultural economy which aim to promote equitable participation and transformation for a better future. South Africa is faced with urgent challenges - inequality has to be replaced with equity; poverty needs to be substantially reduced; living standards need to be improved; and growth needs to be maintained while keeping production internationally competitive. The agricultural sector has a crucial role to play in the process of achieving growth...

Since 2008, energy and food markets - those most fundamental to human existence - have remained in turmoil. Resource scarcity has had a much bigger global impact in recent years than has been predicted, with ongoing volatility a sign that the world is only part-way through navigating a treacherous transition in the way it uses resources. Scarcity, and perceptions of scarcity, increase political risks, while geopolitical turmoil exacerbates shortages and complicates the search for solutions. The...

A compelling look at the global trends that have led to today's obesity crisis The planet's 1.6 billion overweight people by far outnumber the 700 million who are undernourished. This figure would have seemed ludicrous just fifty years ago. As a result of unprecedented trends in technology, globalization, government policy, and the food industry that are changing how we eat, drink, and move, we now live in a world populated by overweight people with debilitating health problems. In this...

The Provisions of War examines how soldiers, civilians, communities, and institutions have used food and its absence as both a destructive weapon and a unifying force in establishing governmental control and cultural cohesion during times of conflict. Historians as well as scholars of literature, regional studies, and religious studies problematize traditional geographic boundaries and periodization in this essay collection, analyzing various conflicts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries t...

On an Empty Stomach examines the practical techniques humanitarians have used to manage and measure starvation, from Victorian "scientific" soup kitchens to space-age, high-protein foods. Tracing the evolution of these techniques since the start of the nineteenth century, Tom Scott-Smith argues that humanitarianism is not a simple story of progress and improvement, but rather is profoundly shaped by sociopolitical conditions. Aid is often presented as an apolitical and technical project, but the...

A consumer's guide to the food system, from local to global: our part as citizens in the interconnected networks, institutions, and organizations that enable our food choices. Everybody eats. We may even consider ourselves experts on the topic, or at least Instagram experts. But are we aware that the shrimp in our freezer may be farmed and frozen in Vietnam, the grapes in our fruit bowl shipped from Chile, and the coffee in our coffee maker grown in Nicaragua, roasted in Germany, and distribute...