Results by title
61 books match the query 'Agribusiness' and 3 start with g
Global Value Chains and Uneven Development
Corporate Strategies and Class Dynamics in Argentinian AgribusinessChristin Bernhold
Campus Verlag, 2022
An empirical examination of the development pitfalls involving global value chains.
Are global value chains (GVCs) opportunity structures for economic upgrading, job creation, and poverty reduction? At least, this is what institutions like the World Bank suggest. However, the present book shows that this is not a tenable position—either on empirical or theoretical grounds. The study is conceived as an empirical ideology critique of the mainstream GVC approach, especially of its focus on upgrading as a development strategy. It is based on in-depth empirical research into upgrading strategies in Argentinian grain and oilseed value chains and their ramifications. Here, corporate actors organized along agribusiness value chains have demonstrated fairly successful trajectories of firm-level upgrading and, at the same time, employed the chain metaphor from the standpoint of specific business interests rather than a general development interest. Christin Bernhold devised the concept of “upgrading in and through class differentiation” to show how firm-level upgrading is based on, and at the same time re-shapes, class and power relations—shaping the uneven geographies of capitalism rather than eliminating them.
Are global value chains (GVCs) opportunity structures for economic upgrading, job creation, and poverty reduction? At least, this is what institutions like the World Bank suggest. However, the present book shows that this is not a tenable position—either on empirical or theoretical grounds. The study is conceived as an empirical ideology critique of the mainstream GVC approach, especially of its focus on upgrading as a development strategy. It is based on in-depth empirical research into upgrading strategies in Argentinian grain and oilseed value chains and their ramifications. Here, corporate actors organized along agribusiness value chains have demonstrated fairly successful trajectories of firm-level upgrading and, at the same time, employed the chain metaphor from the standpoint of specific business interests rather than a general development interest. Christin Bernhold devised the concept of “upgrading in and through class differentiation” to show how firm-level upgrading is based on, and at the same time re-shapes, class and power relations—shaping the uneven geographies of capitalism rather than eliminating them.
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Grass Roots
A History of Cannabis in the American WestNick Johnson
Oregon State University Press, 2017
Marijuana legalization is unfolding across the American West, but cultivation of the cannabis plant is anything but green. Unregulated outdoor grows are polluting ecosystems, high-powered indoor grows are churning out an excessive carbon footprint, and the controversial crop is becoming an agricultural boon just as the region faces an unprecedented water crisis.
To understand how we got here and how the legal cannabis industry might become more environmentally sustainable, Grass Roots looks at the history of marijuana growing in the American West, from early Mexican American growers on sugar beet farms to today’s sophisticated greenhouse gardens. Over the past eighty years, federal marijuana prohibition has had a multitude of consequences, but one of the most important is also one of the most overlooked—environmental degradation. Grass Roots argues that the most environmentally negligent farming practices—such as indoor growing—were borne out of prohibition. Now those same practices are continuing under legalization.
Grass Roots uses the history of cannabis as a crop to make sense of its regulation in the present, highlighting current efforts to make the marijuana industry more sustainable. In exploring the agricultural history of cannabis, There are many social and political histories of cannabis, but in considering cannabis as a plant rather than as a drug, Grass Roots offers the only agriculturally focused history to date.
To understand how we got here and how the legal cannabis industry might become more environmentally sustainable, Grass Roots looks at the history of marijuana growing in the American West, from early Mexican American growers on sugar beet farms to today’s sophisticated greenhouse gardens. Over the past eighty years, federal marijuana prohibition has had a multitude of consequences, but one of the most important is also one of the most overlooked—environmental degradation. Grass Roots argues that the most environmentally negligent farming practices—such as indoor growing—were borne out of prohibition. Now those same practices are continuing under legalization.
Grass Roots uses the history of cannabis as a crop to make sense of its regulation in the present, highlighting current efforts to make the marijuana industry more sustainable. In exploring the agricultural history of cannabis, There are many social and political histories of cannabis, but in considering cannabis as a plant rather than as a drug, Grass Roots offers the only agriculturally focused history to date.
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Green Barons, Force-of-Circumstance Entrepreneurs, Impotent Mayors
Rural Change in the Early Years of Post-Socialist Capitalist DemocracyNigel Swain
Central European University Press, 2013
An exemplary study in comparative contemporary history, this monograph looks at rural change in six countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. In the 1990s most of these nations experienced a fourth radical restructuring of agricultural relations in the twentieth century, and all went through the dramatic transition from communism to capitalism. The author analyzes attempts to activate democracy on a local level and recreate farming structures and non-agricultural businesses based on private ownership and private enterprise. He describes the emergence of a new business class that seeks to dominate local government structures; the recuperation of former communist farming entities by former managers; and the transformation of peasants into rural citizens, who nevertheless remain the underdogs. Swain exposes common features as well as specific divergences between the six countries; he portrays the winners, losers and engineers of transformations. He situates his themes in a wider context that will appeal to a broad range of social scientists and historians.
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