One Acre And Insecurity

When left to raise four children alone, their librarian mother relies on a practical volume with the title One Acre and Security. In a small house on nearly an acre the family struggles to raise most of their own food, but the results are mixed and sometimes hilarious. Read on to see how repeated crises and complications require creative parenting solutions.

This interdisciplinary study applies human rights theory to the problems of rural poverty in the Third World. Considering the interdependence of minimal food and health security with minimal assurance of basic freedoms, political scientist Alan G. Smith traces the linkage to the need of the food-insecure to seek clientelistic dependencies on better-off neighbors—relationships that often operate to restrict freedom of choice. In contrast to conventional rural development aid, which can introduce new client dependency if pursued alone, Smith stresses the need to find other forms of aid that would provide the option of assured minimal survival while avoiding the constraints imposed by dependency. Arguing for bolstering bottom-up human rights momentum, he suggests the transfer of appropriate tools into the hands of the target group. Recipients would make use of them to enhance autonomous food-crop production, thereby making client dependency a matter of choice rather than necessity. Smith illustrates the Third World predicament of food insecurity leading to infringement of rights by drawing together empirical evidence from Bangladesh, Botswana, and Tanzania. He further argues that respect for human rights involves a duty on the part of advantaged nations to address the Third World predicament with practical measures fully consistent with human rights, and for each of these three country cases, Smith recommends direct locally specific minimalist aid. His model, its practical illustration, and recommendations should be valuable to academics and students in the fields of rural sociology, anthropology, and political science—especially those focusing on human rights, poverty, and Third World development—as well as bureaucrats and consultants in the development aid field.

Highlights the changing population scenario during the last ninety years in a developing region of India. It embodies relevant information about characteristics of population in Madhya Pradesh, viz., growth trends, age and gender composition, literacy rate, and occupational structure in the first half of the book while the population-resource relationship, and regionalisation of population have been discussed in the second half. A separate chapter has been devoted to the comparative analysis of population trends in the developing and the developed world.

This title was first published in 2001. This text is an exercise in learning from the voices of the communities living in Indian villages near urban areas. It is concerned, primarily, with learning what these communities have to say on their well-being and livelihoods and is, therefore, an attempt to record and register as much as possible of what these communities say. Agriculture in urban areas of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh plays an important role for livelihoods and in supplying foodstuffs to communities and markets. It constitutes a major source of income both for landowners and labourers. The study then looks at the relationship between agriculture and urban areas, and the phenomenon of industrialization/urbanization. In presenting these perspectives, the farmers gave insights into some related issues such as the role of agriculture in their livelihoods, the nature of agricultural constraints and the the impact of air pollution on quality of life.

Events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have drawn the subject of food security firmly into the public eye. This timely Handbook examines and responds to this pertinent topic, offering calculated solutions to food insecurity. Exploring an international range of perspectives surrounding food security, it illustrates clear links between food and broader social welfare policy and economic determinants.