Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 416 pages
- Published by: Stanford University Press
- Edition: 1st Edition September 1, 1993
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0804721025
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0804721028
-
Book Dimensions:
9 x 6 x 1 inches
- Weighs: 1.4 pounds
Product Review
“A awesome work of scholarly synthesis. His book will long remain essential reading for all who claim an interest in debates about agrarian change.”—
The Geographical Journal
Product Description
This timely and convincing book challenges the myth that only modern, large-scale, mechanized, scienti1c agriculture can provide the food needed for the world's rapidly growing population. It is a detailed and innovative analysis of the agricultural efficiency and conservation of resources practiced around the world by smallholders. Using dozens of ethnographic examples the author argues that smallholder farming, wherever it takes place, is a viable alternative to today's dominant ideal of industrial agriculture, with its dependence on fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. The author critiques prevailing theories of the evolution of agriculture and the political economy of 'peasants' that consign smallholders to the status of inef1cient and outmoded anachronisms with primitive technology, grueling labor, and poverty. The author predicts that wherever people are plentiful and land is scarce, the distinctive adaptation of the smallholder will persist and 1/4ourish.
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