- The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society
- List of Contributors
- How is Food Political? Market, State, and Knowledge
- Science, Politics, and the Framing of Modern Agricultural Technologies
- Genetically Improved Crops
- Agroecological Intensification of Smallholder Farming
- The Hardest Case: What Blocks Improvements in Agriculture in Africa?
- The Poor, Malnutrition, Biofortification, and Biotechnology
- Biofuels: Competition for Cropland, Water, and Energy Resources
- Alternative Paths to Food Security
- Ethics of Food Production and Consumption
- Food, Justice, and Land
- Food Security, Productivity, and Gender Inequality
- Delivering Food Subsidy: The State and the Market
- Diets, Nutrition, and Poverty: Lessons from India
- Food Price and Trade Policy Biases: Inefficient, Inequitable, Yet not Inevitable
- Intellectual Property Rights and the Politics of Food
- Is Food the Answer to Malnutrition?
- Fighting Mother Nature with Biotechnology
- Climate Change and Agriculture: Countering Doomsday Scenarios
- Wild Foods
- Livestock in the Food Debate
- The Social Vision of the Alternative Food Movement
- Food Values Beyond Nutrition
- Cultural Politics of Food Safety: Genetically Modified Food in France, Japan, and the United States
- Food Safety
- The Politics of Food Labeling and Certification
- The Politics of Grocery Shopping: Eating, Voting, and (Possibly) Transforming the Food System
- The Political Economy of Regulation of Biotechnology in Agriculture
- Co-Existence in the Fields? GM, Organic, and Conventional Food Crops
- Global Movements for Food Justice
- The Rise of the Organic Foods Movement as a Transnational Phenomenon
- The Dialectic of Pro-Poor Papaya
- Thinking the African Food Crisis: The Sahel Forty Years On
- Transformation of the Agrifood Industry in Developing Countries
- The Twenty-First Century Agricultural Land Rush
- Agricultural Futures: The Politics of Knowledge
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This article examines the worsening food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. It discusses how food production has failed to keep pace with population growth, partly due to low farm productivity. Because most Africans are farmers, lagging production per capita translates into little or no rural income growth, and hence little or no increase in the capacity to purchase food. Decades of lagging farm productivity have resulted in a doubling of the number of Africans living in extreme poverty, from 150 million in 1980 to approximately 300 million in 2013. The analysis then turns to the reasons behind the government’s failure to boost farm productivity. The article also considers the potential solutions to the current food and farming crisis.
Keywords: food crisis, sub-Saharan Africa, food production, farm productivity, agriculture policy, hunger, poverty
Robert L. Paarlberg, Professor of Political Science, Wellesley College
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- The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society
- List of Contributors
- How is Food Political? Market, State, and Knowledge
- Science, Politics, and the Framing of Modern Agricultural Technologies
- Genetically Improved Crops
- Agroecological Intensification of Smallholder Farming
- The Hardest Case: What Blocks Improvements in Agriculture in Africa?
- The Poor, Malnutrition, Biofortification, and Biotechnology
- Biofuels: Competition for Cropland, Water, and Energy Resources
- Alternative Paths to Food Security
- Ethics of Food Production and Consumption
- Food, Justice, and Land
- Food Security, Productivity, and Gender Inequality
- Delivering Food Subsidy: The State and the Market
- Diets, Nutrition, and Poverty: Lessons from India
- Food Price and Trade Policy Biases: Inefficient, Inequitable, Yet not Inevitable
- Intellectual Property Rights and the Politics of Food
- Is Food the Answer to Malnutrition?
- Fighting Mother Nature with Biotechnology
- Climate Change and Agriculture: Countering Doomsday Scenarios
- Wild Foods
- Livestock in the Food Debate
- The Social Vision of the Alternative Food Movement
- Food Values Beyond Nutrition
- Cultural Politics of Food Safety: Genetically Modified Food in France, Japan, and the United States
- Food Safety
- The Politics of Food Labeling and Certification
- The Politics of Grocery Shopping: Eating, Voting, and (Possibly) Transforming the Food System
- The Political Economy of Regulation of Biotechnology in Agriculture
- Co-Existence in the Fields? GM, Organic, and Conventional Food Crops
- Global Movements for Food Justice
- The Rise of the Organic Foods Movement as a Transnational Phenomenon
- The Dialectic of Pro-Poor Papaya
- Thinking the African Food Crisis: The Sahel Forty Years On
- Transformation of the Agrifood Industry in Developing Countries
- The Twenty-First Century Agricultural Land Rush
- Agricultural Futures: The Politics of Knowledge
- Index
