Agricultural technologies--the means employed to produce food and fiber--reflect the characteristics not only of environments but also of the people that devise and use them. The social science perspectives of variability in space and time can be used to generate comparative data which aid understanding of these issues. The studies reported in this book cross spatial and temporal boundaries in several dimensions. Scales range from farmers and herders to continents, and from seasons to centuries. Arid, semiarid, savanna, subhumid, humid and highland agroecosystems in Africa, Asia and Central and South America are included as is a wide range of commodities: sweet potato, cassava, sheep and goats, sorghum and pearl millet, as well as wheat, rice, maize and cattle. Chapters are based on papers presented at an IITA-Rockefeller Foundation Workshop held in Ibadan, Nigeria. The book is of interest to all social scientists concerned with agricultural development.

Text in English