The tractor industry reported a strong 28. 3% growth in sales volumes during 2009-10, thereby ending the phase of cyclical correction that had pulled down tractor sales during the preceding two years (200709). Significantly, the revival of 2009-10 happened despite the drought-like conditions in many States during the kharif1 season dampening sentiments. The key factor enabling the demand growth of 2009-10 was strong rural liquidity, […]

Around 10,000 years ago, a dramatic transformation occurred in parts of the Near East that forever affected the human experience. These were the economic and social changes from hunting and gathering subsistence strategies, which characterised over 99 per cent of our long tenure on Earth, to ones emphasising food production and settling down in small villages. This was not an easy transition, nor was it […]

Spedding (1988) defines agriculture as “an activity (of Man), carried out primarily to produce food and fibre (and fuel, as well as many other materials) by the deliberate and controlled use of (mainly terrestrial) plants and animals”1. Inherent in this definition is the importance of agriculture and its impact on the lives of virtually all human beings around the world. Through their ability to control […]

Technological inputs in modern-day farming will not just increase farm efficiency, but will also yield a higher quality end product. The world population is constantly growing. That accounts for nearly 7.5 billion people who need to be fed at least three meals a day for a basic, healthy living. As per experts from the UN, at this rate the population will grow to nearly double […]

Southwest Asia is a region surrounded by seas and mountains and lies at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and Asia. Southwest Asia was the center of development of the earth’s civilizations. Towns emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia and highlands of Iran and Anatolia by 7000BC and some of these became centers of chiefdoms. The first efforts to form empires are documented and are used […]

The industrialization process is historically based on the expansion of the secondary sector in an economy dominated by primary activities. Thus, industrialization can be termed as the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial one. It is a part of a wider modernization process, where social change and economic development are closely related with […]

Front page Acknowledgement Chile: Food and Agriculture Republic of Chile is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west Chile is one of South America’s most stable and prosperous nations. It has been relatively free of the coups and arbitrary governments that have blighted the continent. The shape […]

Agriculture is the dominant activity of poor countries such as Zimbabwe, which enhance our understanding of the dualistic. In the amplification of agriculture in economic development, a leading question is how agriculture contributes to economic growth and there seems to be a paradox in the role of agriculture in economic development. A well- known economist Simon Kuznets played an imperative role in coming up with […]

Since the time men learnt to grow crops, agriculture has been the main source of food. Today, most of the people in all parts of the world, especially in developing countries, are engaged in agricultural activities. Human is mainly a grain-eating animal. In Asia, most of the people eat rice. In Europe, North America and Australia, wheat is the main food crop. If rice and […]

Gustave Flaubert wrote his novel Madame Bovary in the mid-nineteenth century as a satirical comment on the upper middle class, those who were just rich enough to pretend to be rich. Flaubert loathed them and wrote his novel to make them appear as the fools that he thought them to be. His loathing for the upper middle class of 1850’s France stemmed from the ideals […]