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Nowadays, rapidly increasing production, use and disposable of plastic products has become one of the utmost environmental issues. Our current circumstances in which the food supply chain is demonstrated as containing plastic particles and other plastic-based impurities, represents a significant health risk to humans, animals, and environmental alike. According to this point of view, biodegradable plastic material aims to produce a more sustainable and greener world with a lower ecological impact. Bioplastics are being investigated as an environmentally friendly candidate to address this problem and hence global bioplastic production has seen significant growth and expansion in recent years. This article focuses on a few critical issues that must be addressed for bioplastic production to become commercially viable. Although the reduction of fruit and vegetable waste biomass has an apparent value in terms of environmental benefits and sustainability, commercial success at industrial scale has remained flat. This is due to various factors, including biomass feedstocks, pretreatment technologies, enzymatic hydrolysis, and scale-up issues in the industry, all of which contribute to high capital and operating costs. This review paper summarizes the global overview of bioplastics derived from fruit and vegetable waste biomass. Furthermore, economic and technical challenges associated with industrialization and diverse applications of bioplastics in biomedical, agricultural, and food-packaging fields due to their excellent biocompatibility properties are reviewed. Review of the diverse types and characteristics of sustainability of biobased plastics Improved pretreatment technologies can develop to enhance greater yield Enzyme hydrolysis process used for bioplastic extraction & hasten industrial scale-up Focus on technical challenges facing commercialized the bioplastics Detailed discussion on the application for sustainability of biodegradable plastics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lanarkshire led in the manufacture of agricultural implements and machines from the late eighteenth century onwards. Helped by natural resources, the early and rapid rise of industrialization and infrastructure, businesses created innovative products that were in demand. This paper investigates the makers of agricultural implements and machines in Lanarkshire, especially outside Glasgow, as innovators and leaders in the trade. It looks at their character, why they were innovative and the implements and machines they were renowned for. Although activity began from the late-eighteenth century, the primary focus is on the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Chinese firms' operations in the Zambian and Malawian cotton sectors with emphasis on the manner and effects of knowledge transfer. As new players in the arena, Chinese investors have adopted business models and management styles that differ from those of previous foreign investors in the region. Their low-cost and low-risk approaches have helped them grow quickly in these two countries and seize considerable market share from the established Western investors. Through an in-depth case study and comparison with Western companies, the author reveals that the Chinese investors flexibly modify conventional knowledge transfer channels like labor training, demonstration, and forward and backward linkages to fit their business models and local socio-economic contexts. Simultaneously, they take advantage of China's strength in manufacturing and experiment with synergistic development in the industrial sector to overcome growth constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally found that human capital has had positive effects on industrial development and economic growth. But the relationship between formal education, work practice, industrial development and economic growth, and changes over time, remains unclear, largely because of a lack of empirical evidence. This note argues that an investigation of the Danish dairy industry can contribute to further our understanding of the impacts and limitations of formal education and practice. It describes unique sources that can be used to construct a database, which in turn can be used to make an empirically solid investigation of whether, and how, knowledge learned at school and through practice contributed to technological changes, diffusion of technology and increased productivity in the Danish dairy industry from the 1860s to 1920, a period when this industry went through a technological and industrial transformation. The purpose of this planned investigation will be to fill a gap in Danish historiography, but also to contribute to the wider literature about the role of education and practice in innovation with empirical evidence, and by further developing concepts of knowledge and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmers in Canada are older and more capitalized than ever before. Meanwhile, farmland values continue to rise. These forces together are generating unprecedented shifts in farmland relations, marked by increasing reliance on rental tenure and the rise of hybrid owner-renter consolidating farmers. This paper explores these dynamics in Ontario and asks how they are impacting on-farm agroecological stewardship. To do so, we begin with a review of the land and property relations literature as well as farmland and agricultural change in Ontario. We then briefly review agroecological issues and concepts that are important for linking on-farm agroecological health to aformentioned farmland and agricultural changes. From here, we use survey, interview and soil sample data collected from grain farmers across Ontario to elucidate relatively new shifts in land tenure and use dynamics. We argue that this complex set of forces is interacting to produce an appealing set of conditions for financial investors, while restricting access to farmland for less-capitalized farmers. We then show how these shifts are divesting capital and attention from agroecological health. We conclude with a reflection on how the state has been mediating and contributing to these dynamics, and urgently call for land policy that prioritizes social and ecological principals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the beginning of the 1950s, milking machines increasingly replaced former agricultural workers in West German stables who now preferred better-paid jobs in the industrial sector. The investment necessary for the milking machines led to new ideas about economic thinking and production-optimization, which changed the interplay among human, animal and technology. Within less than two decades, cattle farming in the Federal Republic of Germany changed from an animal-lacking, devastated economic branch of manual labour to a mechanized profit-oriented industry, which produced more than was demanded. This essay challenges the prevailing historical interpretation in which the industrialization of farming has been described as one of the last stages of capitalism's penetration of society. Central aspects of capitalism remained unfulfilled: there was neither a free market nor individual autonomy of entrepreneurs, and wage labour literally vanished within the barns. A close-up view of the practices at the place of action reveals an arbitrary mixture of efficiency and care that made the industrialization of animal farming differ from the traditional narrative of capitalistic expansion. When animals are the resources to be utilized, capitalist economic activity reaches its limits at the point where the animals' vital processes begin to malfunction. By bringing together human-animal studies with economic history, this article offers new insights into the role of animals as living beings in history as well as into the expansion of capitalism in an economic sector that continued to operate according to its own rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports about the environmental conditions prevailing in Malaysia. Some of the environmental health problems of Malaysia include infectious diseases of developing societies and the chemical health problems in developed societies. The main economic activities of forestry, agriculture and mining in Malaysia are affected by the momentum of land development and its related disruptions. There was a time when rivers served as the life stream of Malaysia's rural communities but today, these water resources have been destroyed by urbanization and industrialization. Not only this, the beaches of Malaysia have been polluted by sewage wastes.

This article analyzes how strategies for capitalist accumulation drove the industrialization of chicken husbandry and increased consumption of chicken products in Japan. By the start of the Showa era, leaders in the Japanese chicken industry sought to promote larger and more productive operations through the adoption of Western breeds. Following the upheaval of World War II, the US facilitated three major changes for Japanese chicken husbandry: expanded grain exports from the US in the 1950s; the importation of specialized breeds in the 1960s; and the Japanese industry’s emulation of American corporations in the 1970s. The connections between Mitsubishi and KFC-Japan illustrate how Japanese firms implemented new organizational structures that allowed them to profit from the chicken industry in multiple ways. I suggest that the increases in consumption of chicken meat and eggs in the Japanese diet indicate the advancement of capitalist strategies for overcoming the barriers to industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tells the history of the industrial and biotechnological development of large-scale corn agriculture, from a new materialist perspective. Addressing the large-scale economy of industrial food production as a form of more-than-human configuration, it demonstrates how corn has been made into a quintessential commodity and factor of production for a consumption-based economy. Set within discourses around the climate crisis, this account critically assesses the Anthropocene and its advocacy for human accountability in regards to the exploitation of nonhuman matters. I ask: who is the Anthropos? How does it/he/she meet with its domesticated subjects, or rather makes them into domesticable materials? Telling the history of corn monoculture from a new materialist standpoint exposes this industry’s distribution of agency, power and control across a diversity of human and nonhuman actors. This is at the centre of this article’s three sections: (1) an argument for inscribing extractivism within new materialist literature, (2) an account of the industrialization of corn monoculture, exposing the industry’s main mechanisms and economic endeavours, as well as its ramifications with a biopolitics of invasion and (3) the biotechnological development of the industry and its shifts from a biopolitics of vegetal matter to an informational extractivism and a necropolitics of killable life. Thus I argue that if the industry of corn monoculture belongs to a broader network of detrimental industries characteristic of the Anthropocene, the geological Anthropos is not to be understood as synonymous with the human species, but as a very restrictive ecology of humans and nonhumans, including corporate, industrial, technoscientific and extractive actors. As such, the article emphasizes the moral necessity of rupturing with the narrative of the Anthropocene, a discourse better suited for supporting existing mechanisms of domination and exploitation constitutive of the economy of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underdevelopment in Venezuela is often understood as a product of oil dependence, weak state capacity or a subordinate position in the international division of labor. Yet all of these should be seen more asconsequencesof underdevelopment rather than its causes. This contribution posits an alternative explanation for underdevelopment in Venezuela based on rural property relations and their impact on industrialization and the diversification of the local economy. An in-depth case study of one of Venezuela’s most important agricultural regions seeks to uncover the internal productive logic of the region’s large rural estates, and argues that the dominance of these ‘latifundios’ and the resulting rural economy are at the root of underdevelopment in Venezuela. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Brazil has emerged as an agro-export powerhouse: from being a net-agricultural importer and food aid recipient as recently as the 1960s and 1970s, it has now become the world’s third largest agricultural exporter, after the US and EU. What is more, Brazil’s new role as a major agricultural trader has provided an important foundation for its enhanced status and influence in global economic governance, as an emerging power and one of the ‘BRICS’. This paper analyses how such a remarkable transformation was brought about. I argue that Brazil’s emergence as an agricultural powerhouse was the result not of its natural factor endowments, but extensive intervention on the part of the Brazilian state that had the effect of constructing a new comparative advantage. This transformation was propelled by state-driven innovation and related policies that opened up massive new areas of the country to agriculture, enabled it to shift to producing goods in direct competition with the world’s dominant agricultural exporters, and generated significant gains in productivity and competitiveness. The irony is that the intention of these policies, initiated in the 1970s, was to foster industrial development in Brazil as part of its import-substitution industrialisation programme, yet they wound up having precisely the opposite effect – transforming Brazil into one of the world’s dominant agricultural powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes on hunger, as the second challenge in the history of mankind. The humankind was found to have survived the first major challenge of the scientific age, the nuclear war between the two nuclear superpowers, which are the United States and Russia. Hunger seems to be created by the first challenge which is also a part of the scientific revolution. Humankind may have had contributed to multiple production in agriculture and industry, but the increase in production has only benefited one third of mankind, while the other two thirds are affected especially in the aspect of safe childbearing and child rearing.

African agriculture’s importance for sustainable development is well appreciated. Indeed, recent years have seen a thorough reappraisal of the sector. What are less well understood, however, are the drivers that reallocate scarce human and physical resources across occupations and space, and without which agriculture and industrial development, and hence structural transformation, will stagnate. One such endogenous driver is entrepreneurship. This paper begins with the reappraisal of African agriculture and focus on the literature on entrepreneurship in Africa’s structural transformation. Then a conceptual model to describe how entrepreneurship reallocates farmers out of agriculture into non-agricultural activities and locations is presented. Recent empirical evidence that is broadly consistent with this model is discussed. Implications and challenges for entrepreneurship development policies and further research are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports in the issue on the topics including one on agriculture or family business, the other on urban policy making and the third on industrialization.

Changes in scale and economies of Australia’s productive agricultural lands from small-scale family owned farms of mixed stock/crop production to large-scale agglomerations of vast monocultures especially grains and cotton will be examined. Rural heritage listing is concentrated on nineteenth century colonial rural homesteads, woolsheds and associated processing buildings and estates, mainly the built components of a designed landscape, or on forested lands in national parks and conservation reserves. Heritage landscapes associated with intensive production on small holdings specialising in vegetables, vineyards or orchards are under threat from subdivision for suburban expansion and rural lifestyle or hobby farms with associated development of utilities and access routes. The decline in sheep farming and its replacement in some regions by grain-growing agglomerations and the national spread of cattle raising has led to much abandonment of rural infrastructure. Agriculture has become more productive, but many cultural landscapes have not been identified as such for protection under local planning schemes. How much change should be permitted in small-scale ‘traditional’ rural landscapes and when do large-scale agri-business landscapes become significant? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution deals with agricultural dynamics in late-Imperial Russia. Based upon a comprehensive micro-level data set on annual yields between 1883 and 1913, we provide insight into regional differences of agricultural growth and the development prospects of Russian agriculture before WWI. Making use of the fact that contemporary Russian statistics distinguished between mostly communally governed open fields and privately owned land, we are able to test the implications of different land tenure systems for agricultural yield growth. In a broader sense, we seek to challenge the common narrative of Russia as an exception to the pan-European picture of economic development during the era of industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rural livelihoods in the northeastern Thai borderlands have moved away from being predominantly agrarian, yet farming remains a desirable alternative for many people. The empirical findings from fieldwork in a village in the northeastern Thai–Lao borderlands indicate how dependence on agriculture is determined by family contexts, such as land ownership, education level of household members, their gender and age. Cheap Lao labour and government price-support policies have enabled farmers to remain in production and diversify. Some educated rural people have successfully found employment opportunities outside the village as migratory wage labour, and are able to attain higher social status back in the village. Successful migrants have invested their earnings on cash-crop production and become rural entrepreneurs. Conversely, less educated migrants were unsuccessful in finding good jobs in the city and viewed agriculture as a more favourable alternative and valuable security. Geographical, cultural and economic specificities conditioned rural transformation and contributed to increasingly diverse and geographically extended livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's Hokkaido region is popularly known as “Milkland,” underscoring the importance of the local dairy industry. Nevertheless, milk production costs in Japan are much higher than in surrounding nations and in order to bolster the domestic industry, for example justifying large subsidies, a constant “crisis state” has to be maintained by government and related agencies. In this paper I argue that the rhetoric of food security has a particular and lengthy history in Japan. It is generally communicated in terms of safety, risk, and self-sustainability, the need to protect Japan and Japanese from a series of ever-contingent threats both real and imagined. Concomitantly, there are essential misunderstandings between governmental agencies and dairy farmers rooted in the different identities and livelihoods that arise in “culturing” differing agricultures. As a result, official agencies claiming to protect the dairy industry in fact, through a mix of nationalist imagination and bio-scientific ignorance, work against it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Growing populations, farming into virgin lands and industrialisation over the last two centuries have led to relentless destruction of native biota on land and sea and there is growing awareness that this process of extinction of species could be accelerated by human-induced climate change. Farming virgin lands poses the risk of destroying unique native species while agriculture and conservation appear to be two diametrically opposed endeavours. This approach is undergoing serious rethinking by scientists, farmers, policy makers and other interested groups who argue for cooperation in finding a solution. Two recent books underline this change in thinking. Linking Australia's Landscapes (Fitzsimons, Pulsford, & Wescott, 2013b) and Nature and Farming (Norton & Reid, 2013) demonstrate how careful management of farms and conservation areas could be mutually beneficial. For this to be fully realised, there is need for greater cooperation between farmers and conservationists so that knowledge is shared and common goals and vision identified. Social workers and other social scientists also have an important role to play as conservation and sustaining biodiversity is a concern for all humanity as we deal with the consequences of climate change, industrial pollution, species extinction and diminishing protected conservation reserves due to human encroachment. These two publications are, therefore, very timely and useful resources for agricultural and environmental sciences students, academics, policy makers and researchers as well as farmers and general readers in Australia and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spike in global food prices in 2007–08 not only led to riots on several continents; it also reawakened fears about the world's future ability to feed itself, as growing populations place greater demands on agricultural systems operating in increasingly difficult environmental and climatic conditions. With more than half the world's people and high levels of inequality, Asia lies at the centre of the global food-security challenge of the twenty-first century. The region – especially China and India – is drawing on world stocks and importing more staples, as its own farms strain to meet the growing middle classes’ desire for more meat and processed foods. Meanwhile, the smallholder farmers who supply 80% of the continent's food confront continued poverty, as they struggle to raise output in the face of creeping environmental degradation, looming water shortages and the unpredictable effects of climate change. As thisAdelphishows, there are no simple solutions. Today, rice is exported while some households still go hungry, unrest grows as land is appropriated for biofuels or industry, and nations compete over waters and fishing rights. Only integrated policies that take into account the complex socio-economic and political aspects of food security have any chance of succeeding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reconstructs the evolution of a multinational fruit processing company from Ghana. Starting from the perspective that firms more generally aim at achieving stability in intra- and extra-organisational relations, the article explores the practical means (organisational forms, resources, technologies, strategies and routines) through which the case study company achieved relational stability in global markets, but also shows how this was eroded in changing market environments. Extending out from this case study, the article also addresses the questions why some agro-business firms in Africa have developed more sophisticated high-value market connections while others have not and whether foreign direct investments can serve as catalysts for agro-industrialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the survey of regional development conditions in India. It states that U.S.-based specialists and geographers have developed the survey and used multiple definitions of development and region. It mentions that the development is conceptualized in various dimensions such as in terms of income and agriculture. It adds that Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are unorganized sectors which continue to be essential in India's economy.

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That researchers look for the inverted-U shape in inequality in the arbitrary periods of arbitrary countries underlies the divergent empirical evidence across studies. To point to the right context for the pattern, this paper establishes a formal mechanism in line with Kuznets' explanation that relates to the industrialization-cum-urbanization phases of closed trade regimes. The mechanism involves an interaction among urban-rural sectoral size differences, agricultural tastes/income, and migration, and predicts an inverted-U shape in inequality in the following way: (i) widening differences in the sizes of urban and rural sectors due to exogenous shocks affect negatively the agricultural tastes/income, worsening inequality; (ii) increasing sectoral size differences and decreasing agricultural tastes/income jointly foster intersectoral migration; (iii) migration acts, in turn, as an equilibrating effect, improving the income distribution. Empirically testing these predictions, non-Sub-Saharan developing countries' data support the mechanism, while data from developed and Sub-Saharan African countries provide little support, as per our prior expectations. This highlights a contrasting evidence on the inverted-U shape across country groups of differing development stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses ethical issues raised by automation systems in animal farming. These systems automatically collect various kinds of information about an animal and allow the farmer to monitor it remotely. It is argued that the relationship between the farmer and the individual animal is becoming increasingly distant and impoverished. Although this may protect the animal from some negative interactions, it is less clear whether use of these systems will lead to an increase in positive interactions of the kind beneficial for animal welfare. Furthermore, the measurement of specific parameters replaces observation of the animal as a whole, which may affect the perception of the animal. As automation systems replace traditional tasks, the role of the farmer is changing drastically. This may lead to deskilling in the farmer, which in turn may affect animal welfare. The value of automation systems in increasing productivity is clear; however, this paper questions the extent to which these systems can be used to enhance animal welfare. It is argued that ethically acceptable development of automation systems for farm animals can only be achieved if these systems prove to be beneficial in respect of animal welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Development Report 2008 (WDR-2008) on agriculture and development has been received with much expectation and controversy. This paper welcomes some aspects of the WDR-2008 that help us reinvigorate some debates on agricultural development, so far marginalised in international development policy agendas. The paper, however, focuses on some critical problems in the report and the World Bank's stance on agriculture. First, there are tensions between advocacy and research and between the World Bank's rhetoric and operational realities. Secondly, the report suffers from the usual adherence to superficial win-win scenarios that mask conflict of interest and power relations. Thirdly, the WDR-2008 is caught in a tension between neo-populist pro-small farmer views and 'modernist' pro-agribusiness stances. Fourthly, the analysis of agricultural development in isolation from broader development processes and especially without a systematic analysis of industrialisation and agriculture-industry relations seriously limits the analytical and empirical value of the report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefits of today's Indo-globalization have bypassed those most in need: the nearly 70% of the workforce that remains in agriculture. Only about 1.3 million of the total workforce have a tangible stake in India's vaunted New Economy. While that globalized sector lifts the aggregate economy toward nearly double digit growth, there will be little of China's labor-intensive industrialization to take up the slack as 70 million Indians enter the workforce over the next five years. This is a country with more indigenous billionaires than any except the US, yet one in three of the 1.1 billion population subsists on less than $1 per day. These are not the wages of substantive democracy, or even sustainable plutocracy. Globalized India will sink or swim by how well it negotiates its coming clash between haves and have-nots. Talk of a “Shining India” almost always omits reference to the rising scourge of Naxalism in the derelict countryside. The rural meltdown has reached such a scale that the usual Naxalite question must be reversed. Instead of asking how the movement became so widespread, we should ponder why it is not wider still. There is no doubt that the Other India will fight back against globalization on these terms. The only question is whether this resistance can be brought into the fold of mainstream Indian politics, thereby producing a uniquely democratic Indo-globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the aid effectiveness literature by investigating the type of economic growth that foreign aid spurs. The impact of foreign on agricultural growth and industrial growth is examined. Results provide strong evidence to suggest that foreign aid is effective at increasing the former in recipient countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1978, there has been a remarkable diversification trend in rural China, characterized by an impressive development of rural enterprises. The main objective of this paper is to understand the forces driving this agro-industrial diversification with a particular attention paid to two categories of factors, agricultural income risks and institutional factors. Using a panel data of 28 Chinese provinces from 1986 to 2001, we show that the diversification decision is jointly determined by relative return between agriculture and rural industry, climatic risks, price volatility of agriculture products, ownership evolution of rural enterprises, and government's food security concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the extent to which social change in Turkey's First Republic (1923–60) conforms to, or deviates from, patterns of European development outlined by the sociologist Michael Mann. Of primary interest is the role that the state played in the changes which emerged from the industrialisation process. The particular focus here is on the political and economic responses by the different Turkish regimes to issues arising from labour organisation and class formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, less than 3% of the 250,000 plant varieties available to agriculture are in use. Sources of (agricultural) biodiversity are under threat and disappearing in many regions. Increasing industrialisation of agriculture and top-down agricultural research have contributed to this dependence on a relatively few plant varieties. This article argues that new approaches to agricultural development research are needed to conserve agricultural diversity, improve crops, and produce food of quality for all. Such an approach should enable small farmers on marginal lands to participate as equal partners alongside agricultural scientists, fairly sharing their know-how, expertise and seeds. Three case studies illustrate how farmers and plant breeders are working together in a diversity of agro-ecological, socio-economic and political contexts to put these new approaches into practice. New forms of collaboration are producing an increase in diversity and a number of promising improved varieties in terms of yields, agronomic traits and taste. These varieties are showing better adaptation to the local environmental conditions without requiring extra external inputs. Long-term success requires that these efforts be backed up by supportive policies, by actions to ensure that policies are implemented, and where necessary by related legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A two-country, two-sector new geography model where workers are imperfectly monitored is used to examine the relationship between falling trade costs and unemployment. It is shown that as trade costs fall over time the world naturally falls into an industrialized core and an agricultural periphery. Globalization has a positive effect on employment in the core in both the short and long term. The periphery suffers employment losses in the short term but can gain in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the general trends in industrial development in Taiwan since 1950. Focus on the transformation of the country from a level of poverty to prosperity; Shift from agriculture to technological industries; Recognition of the impact of U.S. education on the economic recovery efforts of Taiwan; Areas critically affected by international education.

This article examines a new role for contract farming in developing countries in the light of the industrialisation of agriculture and the globalisation of world markets. A theoretical rationale for contracting in developing countries is developed on the basis of adopting new institutional economic theory for the purpose of matching governance forms to market failure problems and transaction characteristics. The history of contract farming is reviewed, together with the advantages and disadvantages to the various players, for the purpose of developing a list of key success factors, problems and some possible solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature suggests that food, fiber, and raw material sectors differ from manufacturing in significant ways. However, there is no analytical basis for engaging the particular challenges of nature-centered production, and thus the distinct ways that industrialization proceeds in extractive and cultivation-based industries. This article presents a framework for analyzing the difference that nature makes in these industries. Nature is seen as a set of obstacles, opportunities, and surprises that firms confront in their attempts to subordinate biophysical properties and processes to industrial production. Drawing an analogy from Marxian labor theory, we contrast the formal and real subsumption of nature to highlight the distinct ways in which biological systems - in marked contrast to extractive sectors - are industrialized and may be made to operate as productive forces in and of themselves. These concepts differentiate analytically between biologically based and nonbiologically based industries, building on theoretical and historical distinctions between extraction and cultivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes the results of a recently completed study of agricultural change and agricultural policy in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, in order to consider what might be learnt, as regards agriculture's role in the economy during and since industrialization, from placing Japan in a comparative East Asian context. It outlines the broad similarities in the experience of the agricultural sector in the three countries as 'miracle growth' took place and goes on to suggest some common factors underlying these similarities which would justify the construction of an 'East Asian model' of agriculture's role in industrialization. These include the economic, political and social significance of rice cultivation; the institutions of the 'bureaucratic developmental state' as they operate in the agricultural sector and the prevalence of the part-time, 'pluriactive' farm household. The article concludes by asking what the delineation of such a model might contribute to understanding of the political economy of agriculture in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanisation rates in China have been low compared to other countries at similar stages of development. We examine recent trends in China's urbanisation process in the context of a disequilibrium supply and demand model for urban residents with relative urban food consumption as a proxy for wages. This model takes into consideration the roles of the agricultural and industrial sectors in the context of a non-market economy where institutional arrangements and policy regimes play important roles in determining urbanisation levels. We find persistent periods of disequilibrium prior to the introduction of reforms in 1978. Throughout the post-reform era there has been a markedly improved balance between urban population levels, urban food consumption, and industrial and agricultural production levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay constructs a preliminary argument concerning the position of the peasantry in the twin transitions: the first to industrialisation, and the second, towards socialism. In the poor developing country launching upon both simultaneously, the agrarian question bifurcates into two dichotomous sets of issues. The first concerns the instrumentality of the agricultural sector in assisting industrialisation through the provision of investible resources which the nascent industrial sector cannot generate from within or elsewhere. The second set treats the rural sector not as the continued object of exploitation in the form of primitive socialist accumulation, but rather as the subject of socialist development. The two are obviously interdependent, but in the context of a range of widely observable socialist industrialisation strategies, also frequently incompatible. It is argued that according primacy to accelerated industrial growth generates inter-sectoral imbalances which are resolved through the adoption of expeditiously selective commoditisation and institutional policies, especially in the rural sector, which inexorably divert the trajectory of societal transition away from any socialist direction. The general argument would obviously not apply uniformly to varying concrete specifications, although a fair illustration of it is provided by Ethiopia since 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a brief sketch of the socio-economic condition and urbanization of Bulgaria and Romania. Before World War II Romania was among the backward agrarian countries on the European continent, with weak industry and raw material extraction developed in but a single direction. There was a settlement structure to match, marked by a low concentration of population in towns and the complete predominance of rural communities. The turning point came with the onset of socialist industrialization. Romania thus became a country that has undergone profound changes in its economic and settlement structure, changes associated with extensive migration from the countryside to the towns and the growth of commuting to work in urban industrial centers. On the other hand Bulgaria has been among the European countries where urbanization has been proceeding most rapidly. The rate is a direct result of socialist industrialization carried out in the form of building large works and plant complexes and of socialization in agriculture, which has released labor for other sectors of the national economy. This country, which in the pre-war era was completely agrarian, started to develop its industry with only one quarter of its population living in urban communities. In 1950 rural population still amounted to 72.6% of the total, but in the course of twenty years this proportion has declined to the extent that today over half the Bulgarian population lives in urban settlements.

Discusses the Soviet Union's goal to increase the effectiveness of the industrialization of agriculture in order to boost social production. Structural changes in the economy due to industrialization; Decline in the share of expenditures on wages in agricultural production costs between 1956 and 1975; Conversion of agriculture to large-scale machine production; Minimization of total production costs per gross output.

Presents the changes in the organizational and technological structure of production brought about by the industrialization of agriculture in the Soviet Union. Domination of machines over manual labor; Increase in the division of labor and specialization of producers; Mass character of homogeneous products; Patterns of industrial development in the agroindustrial complex.

Focuses on the economic and social problems in the industrialization of the agriculture system in Soviet Union. Features of modern industrialization of agriculture; Demands of stage-by-stage development of agriculture; Need for a comprehensive approach to the improvement of agriculture.

This article presents information on the role of agriculture as an important precondition and cause of industrialization. There is no social scientific theory in a strict sense which includes relevant causes of development procedures in general and industrialization procedures in particular. In purely descriptive terms, to explain industrialization means to determine the causal factors, which have effected the change of social life from gathering and hunting via farming and established agriculture to an industrial economy. An explanation of industrialization must therefore expose the development of the internal conditions of the agricultural way of production which leads to a migration of the working population out of the primary sector. In agrarian societies, 70-90 percent of labour force is employed in the primary sector. Both the classic school of economics and historical and development research have largely overlooked the role of agriculture for bringing about industrialization. Causal complex conditioning industrialization seems to be defined by food production and population increase.

This article focuses on the reform of the Hukou system. During the 1950s, the People's Republic of China adopted a development strategy, the core element of which was rapid industrialization. The main target was output maximization through high accumulation; strong emphasis was put on the growth of heavy industry, while agriculture was neglected and even discriminated against. In order to make the industrialization process as efficient as possible, growth of the urban population (for urban areas were where most industry was located) was restricted. This was done by encouraging urban dwellers (especially women) to enter the labor force, limiting employment in service industries, and adopting a capital- rather than labor-intensive approach to industrial development. Prior to 1978, this led to a situation where the proportion of nonagricultural workers in the total population grew more rapidly than the proportion of the urban population. Urban wages were generally higher than rural incomes especially on a household basis, because of increased female labor participation and urban dwellers were given a wide range of welfare benefits.

Discusses the relationships between intensive economic development and agriculture. Role of agriculture in the overall economic development plans; Information on the integration and industrialization in agriculture; Prospective sociological changes and influences in agriculture.

In this article the author focuses on the relationship between agriculture and industry in Egyptian economic development since 1938. The author remarks that to test predictions derived from the economist W.A. Lewis theory of growth against Egyptian data may throw some light on the relevance of the model. Lewis assumes disguised unemployment in the subsistence sector. This implies that the supply curve of unskilled labour to industry is perfectly elastic. The operation of the model is familiar. As long as the industrial real wage remains constant and provided that profits are re-invested, the share of profits in national income will increase. And since larger profits mean larger investment capital formation will also grow relatively to national income. According to the author the preliminary question to ask is whether Lewis's assumption with regard to disguised unemployment applies to Egypt. The development of employment in Egyptian industry since 1937 in relation to migration from rural sectors has also been studied.

This paper discusses the problems of industrial development in Asian countries which show high densities of rural population and contrasts their probable pattern of industrialization with that of economically more highly advanced European countries. When an approximately equal proportion of the population of western European countries was dependent upon primary production, as is the case now in agriculture in most Asian countries, agricultural densities were only roughly a fourth as great as in Asia to-day. Yet in western Europe despite emigration of "surplus" labour and relatively large capital supplies, industrialization proceeded only fast enough to skim off the net addition to population in primary production. In Asia population press tire is higher than in Europe in the past arid capital is scarcer. Hence it is not probable that industrialization will proceed to the same degree arid in the same form as in. Europe. In place of generally large-scale production, many small and cottage industries are likely to develop These have lower productivity and hence lower wages than large industry, and the persistence of small-scale industry will impose the need to maintain separate labour markets for large and small industry. The maintenance of existing harriers or the introduction of new impediments to social mobility can be expected to provide a mechanism for an imperfectly "universalist" labour market in Asian countries and the continued existence of non-competing groups ha the industrial labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deals with the industrial development of branches of social production. Information on the process of industrial development; Details on the interrelations between industry and agriculture in industrially developed countries; Status of Soviet Union's agriculture.

The article focuses on the programs initiated by the Italian government in the 1950s to improve social and economic conditions in the southern part of the country. From the time Italy became politically united in 1851 to the end of World War II, while the Italian North progressed into a fairly industrialized and prosperous territory, the Italian South stagnated and in many respects experienced a social and economic regress. Beginning in 1950 with the establishment of the Fund for the South the Italian government acted with decisiveness. It promoted the utilization of the available resources when it directed, promoted and carried out investment programs. The industrialization aspect of the program was, at the beginning, limited to the provision of tax, subsidies and credit facilitation to private enterprises. The program, as the figures presented above demonstrate, aimed at the improvement of agriculture and the speeding up of fixed social capital formation. The Italian government chose to immediately emphasize agricultural development because agriculture was the main occupation of the majority of the southern population, because the southern territory was well suited for the cultivation of special crops which could be readily absorbed by domestic and foreign markets and also because investment in agriculture could be carried out through the utilization of domestically available resources so as not to create balance of payments difficulties.

The article focuses on the implication of point four for the scientists in the U.S. and underdeveloped countries. Point Four is a cooperative venture which consists of irrigation project, new transportation systems, and industrial mechanization as their standard programs. The program is a catalyst for getting more efficient agriculture, more manufacturing and industrial development, and greater efficiency in administration and government where needed. The implementation of the Point Four program is in the hands of the statesmen, however, they need the help of scientists to gain technical knowledge and advice without charge for the development of the Point Four Program.