<p>The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of community involvement on management of water tanks in the Arkavathi sub-basin in the state of Karnataka, South India. Water management was analysed from a socio-environmental perspective, with emphasis on village-level stakeholders’ roles and perceived responsibility. The efficiency of community participation was investigated by comparing two villages having undergone the same World Bank launched program to restore water bodies traditionally used to sustain the livelihood of the rural population. In one village there was a resistance towards how the implementation of the tank rejuvenation project had been performed, in the other there was no local involvement.</p><p>A minor field study was conducted by visiting the two villages. Qualitative interviews were held with village-level stakeholders of three age groups, to analyse changes over time in knowledge and attitudes. Additionally, ocular observation and photo documentation were made of the study areas. Some informal interviews were carried out with members of an external non-governmental organisation and locals in the study villages. The collected data were analysed by comparing the results for the two villages, as well as the results of the different age groups and genders.</p><p>There were significant differences in awareness and sense of responsibility, but not knowledge, between the two villages. In the village with a community involvement resisting the governmental scheme for tank renovation, this involvement had proved to be of some advantage to the local community. Contrary to the guidelines, the governmental implementation of the water management strategy did not include local stakeholders’ participation, nor were the tanks restored. Overall, the villagers considered the tank management to be the responsibility of external authorities. There were generally no significant differences between the age groups or men and women, though there were indications of a lower level of knowledge and awareness in women. Absence of effective institutions for water management on all levels as well as difficulties in mainatining efficient village level leadership for community participation are factors causing a major gap between planning and implementation.</p>

Environmentalists, social scientists, and economists have long critiqued the enduring impacts of the Green Revolution’s diffusion of agricultural technologies throughout the Global South. However, largely missing from the myriad analyses is the relationship between those technologies, namely pesticides, and health outcomes. This thesis explores the social and biological mechanisms through which excessive pesticide use culminated into adverse reproductive health outcomes for rural women in the Global South. Drawing together the history of the Green Revolution’s use of DDT, its social and economic impacts, and the biology of pesticide contamination in women’s bodies exposes how the Green Revolution situated women in spaces of increased pesticide exposure. Together, the gendered nature women’s social and biological susceptibilities resulted in impaired reproductive functioning. The most common reproductive impacts of DDT contamination are breast milk contamination, spontaneous abortion, and preterm delivery. Analyzing an intricate web of social, economic, and biological factors through the theoretical lenses of ecofeminism, structural violence, and dialectics illustrates how women’s negative health outcomes are a new, and unacknowledged legacy of the Green Revolution.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of community involvement on management of water tanks in the Arkavathi sub-basin in the state of Karnataka, South India. Water management was analysed from a socio-environmental perspective, with emphasis on village-level stakeholders’ roles and perceived responsibility. The efficiency of community participation was investigated by comparing two villages having undergone the same World Bank launched program to restore water bodies traditionally used to sustain the livelihood of the rural population. In one village there was a resistance towards how the implementation of the tank rejuvenation project had been performed, in the other there was no local involvement. A minor field study was conducted by visiting the two villages. Qualitative interviews were held with village-level stakeholders of three age groups, to analyse changes over time in knowledge and attitudes. Additionally, ocular observation and photo documentation were made of the study areas. Some informal interviews were carried out with members of an external non-governmental organisation and locals in the study villages. The collected data were analysed by comparing the results for the two villages, as well as the results of the different age groups and genders. There were significant differences in awareness and sense of responsibility, but not knowledge, between the two villages. In the village with a community involvement resisting the governmental scheme for tank renovation, this involvement had proved to be of some advantage to the local community. Contrary to the guidelines, the governmental implementation of the water management strategy did not include local stakeholders’ participation, nor were the tanks restored. Overall, the villagers considered the tank management to be the responsibility of external authorities. There were generally no significant differences between the age groups or men and women, though there were indications of a lower level of knowledge and awareness in women. Absence of effective institutions for water management on all levels as well as difficulties in mainatining efficient village level leadership for community participation are factors causing a major gap between planning and implementation.

<p>The aim of this field study was to analyze, by taking into consideration the small farmers' perspective, the possibilities and obstacles for an implementation of a Green Revolution in southern Niassa, Northern Mozambique.</p><p>We also highlighted the following question:</p><p>In what sense are the findings in Asia, presented by Djurfeldt, relevant for the situation in southern Niassa?</p><p>The analytical framework used is based on the scheme developed by Nitsch and Åkesson. This scheme has been used to understand the small farmer's relationship toward the technology linked to the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution is a result of an initiative to resolve the food crisis by increasing crop yields and augmenting aggregate food supplies. By the 1970s it become known as a 'package' consisting of improved seeds, farm technology, better irrigation, and chemical fertilizers.</p><p>We have chosen to use Göran Djurfeldt's, a Swedish professor at the University of Lund, concept of the Green Revolution in Asia. Through his findings, he concludes that the success of the Green Revolution in this area is not only due to the technology but also that the strategy was a state-driven, small-farmer based, and market-mediated which arose due to particular domestic and geopolitical factors.</p><p>By taking this in consideration we conclude that neither the state, market nor the geopolitical context are working in favor of a Green Revolution in Mozambique, however the factors are vital if a Green Revolution will succeed in Niassa. The small farmers have to deal with many obstacles if a Green Revolution will be possible. To summarize the small farmer’s attitude toward the Green Revolution we look at the individual circumstances, the direct surrounding and the society in general. We first concluded that the small farmer does not have much knowledge about the Green Revolution. This makes it hard for her or him to have an opinion neither about it nor about the techniques related to the Green Revolution. Secondly, the small farmer have several reason to why she or he do not want to implement the Green Revolution, due to risk taking, tradition, former bad experiences with new technique etc. Thirdly, there are also numerous obstacles that hinder the small farmer to implement the Green Revolution technology. Those are the small farmer's health and time, the lack of extension workers, the international and the domestic agricultural politics, and the lack of inputs and credits etc.</p>

Dominant narratives of the green revolution focus on the top-down dissemination of technology produced by global scientific networks into developing regions or nations, but comparatively little scholarship has been produced regarding the forms of local knowledge which were transferred during the same process. This thesis will examine several important sites of interaction between formal scientific networks and indigenous knowledge with a focus on moments of historical transition in methodology. A main contention of this thesis is that this dissemination was not just a top-down flow of Western technology into Indian villages, but was rather a dialectical process by which class interest and reductionist science moulded the interaction between disparate knowledge systems. The focus will be an exposition of changes in research methodologies pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Indian Agriculture Program, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, and the founder of an indigenous knowledge database NGO, Anil Gupta.

Dominant narratives of the green revolution focus on the top-down dissemination of technology produced by global scientific networks into developing regions or nations, but comparatively little scholarship has been produced regarding the forms of local knowledge which were transferred during the same process. This thesis will examine several important sites of interaction between formal scientific networks and indigenous knowledge with a focus on moments of historical transition in methodology. A main contention of this thesis is that this dissemination was not just a top-down flow of Western technology into Indian villages, but was rather a dialectical process by which class interest and reductionist science moulded the interaction between disparate knowledge systems. The focus will be an exposition of changes in research methodologies pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Indian Agriculture Program, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, and the founder of an indigenous knowledge database NGO, Anil Gupta.

Bibliography: leaves 488-505. / Microfiche. / xx, 505 leaves, bound 28 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1991. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 317-337).

The new philanthropy is increasingly seen as a panacea and an alternative source of global development finance for rural development, especially in developing countries. The theoretical underpinning of the new philanthropy entails the idea that the private sector, led by philanthropists and civil society organisations in social policy issues can lead to more effective outcomes through partnership. The existing literature on the new philanthropy mainly focuses on its economic or commercial impact. This is particularly the case in the rural parts of Ghana; there has been very little research on the new philanthropy’s impact on the livelihoods of the poorest segments of society. Therefore, this research investigates the impact of new philanthropy on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana in order to fill the gap. The study employed ethnographic research, utilising qualitative techniques involving 20 stakeholders in philanthropy and livelihood affairs and 100 smallholder farmers. The research findings suggest that there is a significant relationship between philanthropic sponsored interventions in Ghana and an increase in smallholder farmers’ yields. The few farmers who purchased improved seeds and other agricultural inputs registered significant increases. However, this study identified some bottlenecks inhibiting access to agricultural inputs by smallholder farmers. Majority of smallholder farmers revealed that they could not afford them (seeds, chemical fertilizer and other inputs) despite the subsidies. Furthermore, rainfall variability gives rise to fluctuating food production from one season to another; meanwhile, there is a lack of strategy from philanthropic practitioners to address the variability in rainfall. Through philanthropy, other methods of faming such as irrigation farming agroecology, and permaculture could be exploited to the benefits of smallholder farmers. The outcomes of this study have policy implications for philanthropic practitioners. This study shows that the failure to involve farmers directly in decisions that affect their livelihoods is a major cause of livelihood interventionist programme failures in Ghana. Thus, this study argues that understanding the socioeconomic dynamics in the Northern Region and amongst the farmers should be an important part of policy formulation for philanthropic involvements seeking to improve livelihood of smallholder farmers. Lastly, the study called for a separate policy framework for philanthropy that would have a key objective of mobilising private philanthropic resources to support steady economic growth and sustainable development, dealing directly with recipients.

abstract: "Wide adaptation" is an agricultural concept often employed and seldom closely examined. Norman E. Borlaug, while working for the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) on an agricultural project in Mexico in the 1950s, discovered that some tropical wheat varieties could be grown over broad geographic regions, not just in Central and South America but also in the Middle East and South Asia. He called this wide, or broad, adaptation, which scientists generally define as a plant type that has high yields throughout diverse environments. Borlaug soon made wide adaptation as a core pillar of his international wheat program. Borlaug's wheat program rapidly expanded in the 1960s, and he and his colleagues from the RF heavily promoted wide adaptation and the increased use of fertilizers in the Middle East and India. These events led to the green revolution, when several countries rapidly increased their wheat production. Indian wheat cultivation changed radically in the 1960s due to new technologies and policy reforms introduced during the green revolution, and farmers' adoption of 'technology packages' of modern seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation. Just prior to the green revolution, Indian wheat scientists adopted Borlaug’s new plant breeding philosophy—that varieties should have as wide an adaptation as possible. But Borlaug and Indian wheat scientists also argued that wide adaptation could be achieved by selecting only plants that did well in high fertility and irrigated environments. Scientists claimed, in many cases erroneously, that widely adapted varieties still produced high yields in marginal, or resource poor, areas. Many people have criticized the green revolution for its unequal spread of benefits, but none of these critiques address wide adaptation—the core tenant held by Indian wheat scientists to justify their focus on highly productive land while ignoring marginal and rainfed agriculture. My dissertation describes Borlaug and the RF's research program in wide adaptation, Borlaug's involvement in the Indian wheat program, and internal debates about wide adaptation and selection under favorable environments among Indian scientists. It argues that scientists leveraged the concept of wide adaptation to justify a particular regime of research focused on high production agriculture, and that the footprints of this regime are still present in Indian agriculture. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2015