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In the face of increasing global population, water scarcity and the need to tackle poverty in developing countries, various projects and organisations have promoted low-cost irrigation technologies for smallholder farmers. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) International Development Enterprises (iDE) is one well-known organisation that took up the challenge to re-engineer conventional irrigation technologies with the explicit objective to meet the needs of smallholder farmers. iDE perceives low-cost irrigation technologies for individual smallholder farmers as a potential solution to rural hunger and poverty. With these goals in mind, iDE started the Rural Prosperity Initiative (RPI), implemented in Myanmar, Nepal, Ethiopia and Zambia, financed by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Re-design criteria for the irrigation technologies are low investment cost, rapid returns on investment, suitability for various small plots, and simple operation and maintenance (Postel et al., 2001; Keller, 2004; Polak et al., 2007). Technologies developed include low-cost plastic tanks for collecting and storing rainwater, pressure and suction treadle pumps for lifting water, low pressure sprinklers as well as drip emitters for efficient water application. Moving away from the traditional practice of simply ‘handing-out’ technological innovation to farmers, iDE operates with a market-based or business approach. The idea is to support farmers so that they can invest in and craft their own way out of poverty by increasing crop productivity and income from marketable surpluses. In this idea, the rural smallholder figures as a (potential) entrepreneur, producer and customer, rather than as a beneficiary and recipient of aid.

In the face of increasing global population, water scarcity and the need to tackle poverty in developing countries, various projects and organisations have promoted low-cost irrigation technologies for smallholder farmers. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) International Development Enterprises (iDE) is one well-known organisation that took up the challenge to re-engineer conventional irrigation technologies with the explicit objective to meet the needs of smallholder farmers. iDE perceives low-cost irrigation technologies for individual smallholder farmers as a potential solution to rural hunger and poverty. With these goals in mind, iDE started the Rural Prosperity Initiative (RPI), implemented in Myanmar, Nepal, Ethiopia and Zambia, financed by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Re-design criteria for the irrigation technologies are low investment cost, rapid returns on investment, suitability for various small plots, and simple operation and maintenance (Postel et al., 2001; Keller, 2004; Polak et al., 2007). Technologies developed include low-cost plastic tanks for collecting and storing rainwater, pressure and suction treadle pumps for lifting water, low pressure sprinklers as well as drip emitters for efficient water application. Moving away from the traditional practice of simply ‘handing-out’ technological innovation to farmers, iDE operates with a market-based or business approach. The idea is to support farmers so that they can invest in and craft their own way out of poverty by increasing crop productivity and income from marketable surpluses. In this idea, the rural smallholder figures as a (potential) entrepreneur, producer and customer, rather than as a beneficiary and recipient of aid.

This book focuses on empirical experiences related to market development, and specifically new markets with structurally different characteristics than mainstream markets. Europe, Brazil, China and the rather robust and complex African experiences are covered to provide a rich multidisciplinary and multi-level analysis of the dynamics of newly emerging markets. This book analyses newly constructed markets as nested markets. Although they are specific market segments that are nested in the wider commodity markets for food, they have a different nature, different dynamics, a different redistribution of value added, different prices and different relations between producers and consumers. Nested markets embody distinction viz-a-viz the general markets in which they are embedded. A key aspect of nested markets is that these are constructed in and through social struggles, which in turn positions this book in relation to classic and new institutional economic analyses of markets. These markets emerge as steadily growing parts of the farmer populations are dedicating their time, energy and resources to the design and production of new goods and services that differ from conventional agricultural outputs. The speed and intensity with which this is taking place, and the products and services involved, vary considerably across the world. In large parts of the South, notably Africa, farmers are ‘structurally’ combining farming with other activities. By contrast, in Europe and large parts of Latin America farmers have taken steps to generate new products and services which exist alongside ongoing agricultural production. This book not only discusses the economic rationales and dynamics for these markets, but also their likely futures and the threats and opportunities they face.

This book focuses on empirical experiences related to market development, and specifically new markets with structurally different characteristics than mainstream markets. Europe, Brazil, China and the rather robust and complex African experiences are covered to provide a rich multidisciplinary and multi-level analysis of the dynamics of newly emerging markets. This book analyses newly constructed markets as nested markets. Although they are specific market segments that are nested in the wider commodity markets for food, they have a different nature, different dynamics, a different redistribution of value added, different prices and different relations between producers and consumers. Nested markets embody distinction viz-a-viz the general markets in which they are embedded. A key aspect of nested markets is that these are constructed in and through social struggles, which in turn positions this book in relation to classic and new institutional economic analyses of markets. These markets emerge as steadily growing parts of the farmer populations are dedicating their time, energy and resources to the design and production of new goods and services that differ from conventional agricultural outputs. The speed and intensity with which this is taking place, and the products and services involved, vary considerably across the world. In large parts of the South, notably Africa, farmers are ‘structurally’ combining farming with other activities. By contrast, in Europe and large parts of Latin America farmers have taken steps to generate new products and services which exist alongside ongoing agricultural production. This book not only discusses the economic rationales and dynamics for these markets, but also their likely futures and the threats and opportunities they face.

This book debates the emergent proprieties of rural and peri-urban South Africa since land and agrarian reforms were initiated after the transition to democracy in 1994. It explores how these reforms have broadened options for the use of land and natural resources. Reform-minded policies in South Africa have assumed that if access to land and other natural resources is less problematic, the use of these resources would be intensified which in turn would alter the structure and dynamic of rural and urban poverty. Reforming Land and Resource Use in South Africa examines in detail, and from several disciplinary perspectives, whether and how this has occurred, and if not, why not. A key argument that this collection pursues is whether land reform has resulted in transformed use of natural (i.e. land, crops, cattle, rangeland, wild products etc.) and other strategic resources (labour, knowledge, institutions, networks etc.), and the value communities and household place on them. The contributions explore a combination of new or alternative meanings of land, including a look beyond crops and cattle per se to include the collection and selling of wild products, as well as a discussion of how land for agriculture has become redefined by land reform beneficiaries as urban land, for settlement and urban employment opportunities, in addition to urban-based agricultural activities. This book pursues an analysis of land reform dynamics at various levels of aggregation. National and regional level analyses of poverty and the ramifications of the property clause are combined with analyses at disaggregate levels such as the land reform project or village.