An independent, peer reviewed journal for policy makers and practitioners in agriculture and related industries, assessing the interactions between population growth, resources, the environment and climate change.
Introduction
The situation in Africa is dire.
Even before the recent world food crisis, a stag- gering one in three people and a third of all children were undernourished and more than one half of all Africans (about 300 mil- lion people) lived on less than one dollar per day, and the continent was becoming increasingly dependent on relief aid from abroad.
As a result of the recent food price increases, the FAO estimates an addition- al 100 million Africans were driven further …
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the construction of irrigation and water conservation projects reached a peak in the 1960s and 1970s with farmland irrigation area of about 45 Mha (1) nationwide. This provides the base from which farmland can achieve its potential. In the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of limited and fragmented investment in the long term, this in turn gives rise to widespread agricultural infrastructure disrepair and functional degradation.
Given the …
