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Agri-biotech multinational enterprises (MNEs) are persisting to push genetically modified plant varieties (GMV) worldwide including emerging countries as a technological solution for sustainable development. However, in emerging countries, the structure and effectiveness of regulation and compliance measures to ensure human and environmental safety are much less developed. There are three types of concerns: the economic risks faced by farmers while using existing low-yielding conventional seed varieties, in the face of inadequate institutional mechanisms and safety nets, the long-term environmental risks, and finally, risks posed by other possible externalities. In an attempt to provide some insight on the aforementioned debate, this chapter focuses on a commercially successful GMV—namely genetically modified cotton, also referred to as Bt cotton. The literature on adoption of Bt cotton is first examined, and its findings are confronted with the reality of the introduction and diffusion of Bt cotton in India to derive inferences on how MNE and emerging countries’ governments can manage coexistence. Our findings indicate that in order to be successful, MNEs have to establish the sociopolitical legitimacy of GMV through investment in outreach with regulatory authorities, government departments dealing with the environmental and bio safety, farmer groups, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). MNEs also have to keep in mind that pricing and high technology fee can become an impediment for the legitimization of technology. Finally, MNEs can partner with NGOs to educate and accompany farmers to maximize their livelihood, while preserving the ecological sustainability of their farm lands.

This introductory chapter evidences the need to push again to the fore research undertaken in Southern European countries, highlighting its Mediterranean features and how they relate to old and new theoretical and political debates. Consequently, in this first chapter we describe the main aim of the book as well as how the subsequent chapters contribute to fulfill this quest outlining the structure of the book.

The paper analyzes the adaptive behavior of farmers in the Yunnan province of China, where drought is occurring more frequently. We focus on the experiences with adaptation to climate change by farmers in the rural areas of China.

The research is based on a survey and a number of in-depth interviews of key stakeholders in a drought-stricken region.

Where the government is not always coming forward, the farmers take initiatives to adapt to the new situation of drought. Different mechanisms are being used, some linked to government policies and subsidies, other initiatives are initiated by the farmers themselves, individually or in small groups.

More research on the livelihood strategies is necessary to better understand what these strategies mean for the household income and hence for the survival chances of poor households.

Climate change encourages local actors to play a role in drought adaptation, developing policies for mitigating the consequences of drought, trying to create water markets and involving local companies and water user associations. The research suggests stimulating the initiatives of the farmers and to create an enabling environment for them.

Without government policies we will see growing inequalities in the rural areas of China.

We studied how in the case of drought farmers react to adapt to the new reality. Different adaptation strategies are distinguished and their relation to different government policies is established. We observed that farmers find their own solutions and create their own governance structures to assure for example supply of additional water to their fields.

Purpose – This chapter introduces the book collection and sets the theoretical framework for the subsequent chapters.

Design/methodology/approach – The approach of the book is to re-interpret major challenges to global agriculture – particularly climate change and the food crisis of 2008 – as demonstrating shocks to the resilience of global food systems.

Findings – Using resilience to shocks as a key quality of food systems enables recent crises to be understood as central to the ongoing dynamics of food systems rather than simply atypical events. Alongside climate change and food security, other potential shocks are identified: biosecurity, energy, financial and volcanic.

Originality/value – This framework establishes new criteria for examining the potential merit of multifunctional and neo-liberal policy regimes with world food systems.

The present study investigates the contribution to farm women's empowerment of the ‘young farmers’ programme that has been run by the Greek state since the early 1990s. The ‘young farmers’ programme aims to attract young people (men as well as women) into agriculture in order to renew the aged farming population, providing economic incentives to young people (up to 40 years old) entering farming or to newly established young farmers. The programme is based on Chap. II, article 8, Reg. 1257/99 (and the previous structural regulations) and operates through the Community Support Frameworks implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development and Food. The Ministry also provides a number of supplementary national incentives to young people wishing to become established in agriculture (Law 2520/97).

This chapter presents a case study on smallholder vulnerability and adaptation to long-term desiccation in the West African Sahel. Climatologists recognize Sahelian desiccation as a long-term multi-decadal dry period that persisted from roughly 1968 to 1995. This study draws on fine-scale ethnographic and daily rainfall data to elucidate local perspectives on this broad regional process. As such, this provides a window on the local lived experience of regional climate variability.

This study draws on multiple periods of ethnographic fieldwork in two different Mossi areas in north-central Burkina Faso (West Africa). Fieldwork consisted of key informant interviews, household surveys, and participant observation. The authors incorporate daily precipitation data from two meteorological stations provided by the General Directorate of Meteorology of Burkina Faso. Researchers assembled this data and graphed daily rainfall totals for individual rainfall seasons in the years preceding each period of fieldwork. The qualitative and quantitative data are analyzed by using a Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) framework.

The study finds that local perceptions of increased rainfall variability correspond to patterns evident in daily rainfall records for individual stations. Additionally, the authors document how rural producers are negatively affected by both intra-seasonal and multi-decadal rainfall variability. Mossi smallholders have adapted through new cropping patterns, livelihood diversification, and investments in agricultural intensification. These adaptations have been largely successful and could be adopted by other Sahelian groups in their efforts to adapt to climate change.

Fieldwork took place over several years in two different departments and five localities. The two anthropologists used a common livelihoods analytical framework but different research protocols over this time span. Thus, the data collection was not systematic across all locations and time periods. This limits the degree to which results are representative beyond surveyed localities at their respective points in time.

This study presents local views and perceptions of regional climate variability and ecological change. It is a rare bottom-up perspective supplemented with precipitation data.

The post-Cold War period allowed the U.S. nuclear legacy of ecocide to be declassified and made public. The policy of nuclear secrecy, evident in Russia (see Mironova et al., this volume), was not merely an eastern practice. Western nuclear releases were kept equally under wraps. In England, for example, the Windscale disaster was not fully disclosed until 1987.¹ Likewise, releases from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, in Washington State, and other U.S. nuclear sites were kept undercover until the same period. The irony was that Americans learned of many of the nuclear skeletons in their closet around the time that Russians learned of theirs (see Mironova et al., this volume). It would appear that glasnost was contagious.

This chapter uses the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS) 7 datasets to investigate and examine the effect of rural non-farm diversification and its implications on agricultural (tree-crop) farming sector inequalities and sustainable development in Ghana. Applying a Gini-decomposition method and/or technique within a quantitative approach, the study outcome indicates the average non-farm income thus, increased income inequality among tree-crop smallholder rural livelihoods and households. Income diversification by farm households has gained the attention of governments, policy makers, and researchers because of its commonness and contribution to socio-economic development especially in developing countries. Aggregationally, non-farm self-employment reduced income inequality, and non-farm wage employment income led to an increase in income inequality. Increased rate of educational enrollment and achievement is the most important variable of non-farm income inequality. Government effort at expanding tree-crop acreages and improve yields have to degree achieved its intended policy implementation, increased rate of educational achievement could undermine the socio-economic policy cohesion and sustainable development of rural livelihood, communities, and national economy. Tree crop policies should take account of the spatial distribution of tree-crop commodity production and in particular, the implication and effect of rural non-farm diversification on agricultural sector inequalities.