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Africa is not achieving its potential in food trade, increasing the risk of widespread hunger and malnutrition. This column argues that the most serious problems for the continent are problems of political economy and barriers along the value chain. The good news is that, despite demand for food throughout Africa predicted to double over the next decade, governments can act now to overcome these…

For the past 20 years, more and more countries have been affected by desertification – and not just because of climate change. Experts say that some agricultural practices have also had disastrous effects.It’s not the desert on the move but farming land that is slowly disappearing, contrary to what most people believe. “The mental picture we have is one of a sandy desert and dunes…

The Convention to Combat Desertification is an integral part of the Rio/Johannesburg process. Dryland problems will most probably still be more intractable in the future because of the effects of climate change. This means, that the whole conetx of sustainable development must be brought to bear on the problems of the drylands. In Johannesburg, considerable attention was paid to the…

In this article the author examines the interrelationship between lifecycle ritual, in the form of disposal of the unclean dead, and certain agrarian concerns and rituals of the Russian rural community relating to the early summer and, more specifically, to the Whitsun period. In so doing she hopes to shed some further light on a puzzling belief; namely that the interment, both in consecrated…

Desertification was one of the first big environmental issues, attracting international public attention long before the major environmental concerns of today, such as biodiversity, climate change and deforestation. International attention, brought about by severe droughts in the Sudanese-Saharan regions in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Africa, led to the United Nations Conference on…

This paper examines the problem of managing municipal commonage land in the Nama Karoo, which is increasingly being used by black or coloured emergent farmers. Many of these live in the towns and have very little agricultural experience or knowledge, and some are unemployed farmworkers. The paper presents findings from a survey of emergent farmers who use municipal commonage in Philippolis in the…