Why agronomy in the developing world has become contentious

By J. Sumberg, John Thompson, P. Woodhouse. 2013

117 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper we argue that over the last 40 years the context of agronomic research in the developing world has changed significantly. Three main changes are identified: the neoliberal turn in economic and social policy and the rise to prominence of the participation and environmental agendas. These changes have opened up new spaces for contestation around the goals, priorities, methods, results and recommendations of agronomic research. We suggest that this dynamic of contestation is having important effects on how agronomic research is planned, managed, implemented, evaluated and used, and is therefore worthy of detailed study. This is particularly so at a time when food security, rising food prices and the potential impacts of climate change on agriculture are in the policy spotlight. We outline a research agenda that should help illuminate the drivers, dynamics and impacts of this new ‘political agronomy’.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ba49227c2a69b2b16f85fbaeb87cf5e8cdaf1f37

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. P. Dorward
2. J. Pretty
3. Z. Bharucha
4. L. Klerkx

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. L. Klerkx
2. M. Schut
3. C. Leeuwis
4. Z. Bharucha
5. Baqir Lalani
6. G. Holloway
7. P. Dorward
8. H. Jochemsen

Citations in the corpus

• Smallholder farmers' motivations for using Conservation Agriculture and the roles of yield, labour and soil fertility in decision making (2016, background): “…also argued that in general there is a poor understanding of weed dynamics within a CA system which can have a bearing on farmer adoption of CA. Sumberg et al. (2013) also explored the recent debates surrounding CA and questioned the ‘universal approaches to policy and practice’ which may…”
• ‘Triple wins’ or ‘triple faults’? Analysing the equity implications of policy discourses on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) (2018, unknown): “These include, but are not limited to, discussions around multifunctional agriculture, sustainable land management, sustainable intensi fi cation, agroecological approaches and conservation agriculture, to name a few (Thompson and Scoones 2009; Sumberg et al. 2013).”
• Systemic perspectives on scaling agricultural innovations. A review (2016, background): “technology development and scaling (Sumberg et al. 2013).”
• Sustainable intensification in agricultural systems. (2014, background): “For example, evidence on outcomes from CA and the system of rice intensification (SRI) is mixed, and debate on the general applicability and scalability of these approaches has been ‘high profile, sustained and at times acrimonious and emotive’ (Sumberg et al., 2013, p. 71).”