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1 – 4 of 4Malnutrition is widespread and affects about one-third of humanity. Increasing production and consumption of vegetables is an obvious pathway to improve dietary diversity…
Abstract
Malnutrition is widespread and affects about one-third of humanity. Increasing production and consumption of vegetables is an obvious pathway to improve dietary diversity, nutrition and health. This chapter analyses how climate change is affecting vegetable production, with a special focus on the spread of insect pests and diseases. A thorough literature review was undertaken to assess current global vegetable production, the factors that affect the spread of diseases and insect pests, the implications caused by climate change, and how some of these constraints can be overcome. This study found that climate change combined with globalization, increased human mobility, and pathogen and vector evolution has increased the spread of invasive plant pathogens and other species with high fertility and dispersal. The ability to transfer genes from wild relatives into cultivated elite varieties accelerates the development of novel vegetable varieties. World Vegetable Center breeders have embarked on breeding for multiple disease resistance against a few important pathogens of global relevance and with large evolutionary potential, such as chili anthracnose and tomato bacterial wilt. The practical implications of this are that agronomic practices that enhance microbial diversity may suppress emerging plant pathogens through biological control. Grafting can effectively control soil-borne diseases and overcome abiotic stress. Biopesticides and natural enemies either alone or in combination can play a significant role in sustainable pathogen and insect pest management in vegetable production system. This chapter highlights the importance of integrated disease and pest management and the use of diverse production systems for enhanced resilience and sustainability of highly vulnerable, uniform cropping systems.
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Eileen Bogweh Nchanji and Imogen Bellwood-Howard
This chapter uses a feminist political ecology perspective to demonstrate how gender interacts with access to land as a re/productive resource in Tamale, a rapidly urbanizing city…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter uses a feminist political ecology perspective to demonstrate how gender interacts with access to land as a re/productive resource in Tamale, a rapidly urbanizing city in West Africa. The study gives insight into the strategies that vulnerable groups employ to gain access to resources.
Methodology/approach
An ethnographic field study was carried out over 16 months, taking a case study approach involving interviews, participant observation and focus groups.
Findings
Women’s access to land is restricted in order to guarantee their labor for household reproductive tasks and inheritance. Yet they are using various traditional and contemporary strategies to reconcile their landless status with their food provisioning responsibilities. These involve forging networks with individuals and development institutions as well as harvesting and marketing. As land markets accelerate, these strategies become more important, even though they offer no guarantee that a woman can provide what she needs to her household. Formalized institutions aiming to give women access to land do not necessarily fulfill those functions if they are naive of the historical and cultural context.
Practical implications
Marginalization of groups of people, such as women, with regards to resource access is a result of complex interlocking historical processes that are often a result of dominant groups’ efforts to retain power.
Social implications
We confirm that gender is a primary element organizing access to land. The way this is performed in Northern Ghana results from the construction of tradition through post/colonial, religious and neoliberal contexts.
Originality/value
The originality of this work lies in its use of in-depth ethnographic data.
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