IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/cidhav/37.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

African Land Ecology: Opportunities and Constraints for Agricultural Development

Author

Listed:
  • R. L. Voortman
  • B. G. J. S. Sonneveld
  • M. A. Keyzer

Abstract

Current agriculture in Sub-Sahara Africa is undeveloped and the Green Revolution has left the continent largely untouched. Poor performance is often related to a number of socio-economic factors. In this paper we argue that there are also some specifities of natural resources, namely local homogeneity and spatial diversity of the pre-dominant Basement Complex soils, that imply that simple fertilizer strategies may not produce the yield increases obtained elsewhere. Keywords: Sub-Sahara Africa, Agro-Ecology, Land use, Land resources, Basement Complex, Green Revolution, Micronutrients, Fertilizer Policy

Suggested Citation

  • R. L. Voortman & B. G. J. S. Sonneveld & M. A. Keyzer, 2000. "African Land Ecology: Opportunities and Constraints for Agricultural Development," CID Working Papers 37, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:cidhav:37
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidwp/pdf/037.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rainer Thiele, 2003. "Price Incentives, Non‐price Factors and Agricultural Production in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Cointegration Analysis," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 15(2‐3), pages 425-438.
    2. Francisco Ayala-carcedo & Manuel González-Barros, 2005. "Economic Underdevelopment And Sustainable Development In The World:Conditioning Factors, Problems And Opportunities," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 95-115, January.
    3. Nkonya, Ephraim & Pender, John & Kaizzi, Kayuki C. & Kato, Edward & Mugarura, Samuel & Ssali, Henry & Muwonge, James, 2008. "Linkages between land management, land degradation, and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Uganda," Research reports 159, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    4. Nkonya, Ephraim M. & Pender, John L. & Kaizzi, Crammer, 2004. "Determinants Of Soil Nutrient Balances And Implications For Addressing Land Degradation And Poverty In Uganda," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 20279, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    5. Nin-Pratt, Alejandro & Johnson, Michael & Magalhaes, Eduardo & You, Liangzhi & Diao, Xinshen & Chamberlin, Jordan, 2011. "Yield gaps and potential agricultural growth in West and Central Africa," Research reports alejandronin-pratt, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    6. Kelly, Valerie A., 2005. "Farmers' Demand for Fertilizer in Sub-Saharan Africa," Staff Paper Series 11612, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    7. Masters, William A & McMillan, Margaret S, 2001. "Climate and Scale in Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 167-186, September.
    8. Crawford, Eric W. & Jayne, Thomas S. & Kelly, Valerie A., 2005. "Alternative Approaches for Promoting Fertilizer Use in Africa, with Particular Reference to the Role of Fertilizer Subsidies," Staff Paper Series 11557, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    9. World Bank, 2008. "Uganda Sustainable Land Management : Public Expenditure Review," World Bank Publications - Reports 16807, The World Bank Group.
    10. Guido van Hofwegen & Gertjan A. Becx & Joep A. van den Broek & Niek B.J. Koning, 2007. "Unraveling the unsustainability spiral in sub-Saharan Africa: an agent based modelling approach," Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal, Croatian Interdisciplinary Society Provider Homepage: http://indecs.eu, vol. 5(2), pages 112-137.
    11. Nkonya, Ephraim & Kaizzi, Crammer & Pender, John, 2005. "Determinants of nutrient balances in a maize farming system in eastern Uganda," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 155-182, August.
    12. Nkonya, Ephraim & Gicheru, Patrick & Woelcke, Johannes & Okoba, Barrack & Kilambya, Daniel & Gachimbi, Louis N., 2008. "On-site and off-Site long-term economic impacts of soil fertility management practices: The case of maize-based cropping systems in Kenya," IFPRI discussion papers 778, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    13. Headey, Derek D. & Jayne, T.S., 2014. "Adaptation to land constraints: Is Africa different?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 18-33.
    14. Nkonya, Ephraim & von Braun, Joachim & Mirzabaev, Alisher & Le, Quang Bao & Kwon, Ho Young & Kirui, Oliver K., 2013. "Economics of Land Degradation Initiative: Methods and Approach for Global and National Assessments," Discussion Papers 158663, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    15. Wairegi, L.W.I. & van Asten, P.J.A., 2010. "The agronomic and economic benefits of fertilizer and mulch use in highland banana systems in Uganda," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 103(8), pages 543-550, October.
    16. Nkonya, Ephraim M. & Gicheru, Patrick & Woelcke, Johannes & Okoba, Barrack & Kilambya, Daniel & Gachimbi, Louis, 2006. "Out of Site out of Mind: Quantifying the Long-term Off-site economic Impacts of Land Degradation in Kenya," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21344, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    17. Prem S. Bindraban & Rudy Rabbinge, 2011. "European food and agricultural strategy for 21st century," International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 9(1/2), pages 80-101.
    18. Simeon Ehui & John Pender, 2005. "Resource degradation, low agricultural productivity, and poverty in sub‐Saharan Africa: pathways out of the spiral," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 32(s1), pages 225-242, January.
    19. Paul Collier & Jan Willem Gunning, 1999. "Why Has Africa Grown Slowly?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 3-22, Summer.
    20. Pettersson, Jan & Wikström, Johan, 2013. "Peeing out of poverty? Human fertilizer and the productivity of farming households," Working Paper Series 2013:1, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    21. Conceição, Pedro & Levine, Sebastian & Lipton, Michael & Warren-Rodríguez, Alex, 2016. "Toward a food secure future: Ensuring food security for sustainable human development in Sub-Saharan Africa," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-9.
    22. Masters, William A & McMillan, Margaret S, 2001. "Climate and Scale in Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 167-86, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

     sub-sahara africa; agro-ecology; land use; land resources; basement complex; green revolution; micronutrients; fertilizer policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N57 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - Africa; Oceania
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wop:cidhav:37. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.