Conventional Wisdom Dictates That Improving Agricultural Productivity

In the 1990’s cereals and grain were popular in Africa, with over 60 percent of the land used for these crops (ita 2004). From the 1930’s to the 1990’s Africa saw a reduction of 13 percent in agriculture’s share (ita 2004). During the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was a period of drought that affected both the crops and native plant in the area (Boffa Dixon Garrity 2012), which may have contributed to the decline of agriculture’s share. Also, in 1992 the production of corn fell from 10 million to 3 million tons, due to the drought (ita 2004).

Poverty tends to impact society on several different levels, whether it may be through the impact of the economy, social effects, education, health, but most importantly malnutrition; which is said to be the most common effect of poverty. Poverty affects millions of Americans by limiting their choices to cheap and unhealthy foods. It also limits the physical access to healthy food choices as it relates to diet costs and reliable access to the proper resources, which in turn creates a direct correlation between poverty which leads to obesity, as well as other diseases.

Franklin D Roosevelt once said, “the history of every Nation is eventually written in the way in which it cares for its soil.” The United States began seeing sustainable management practices in farms, and healthier soil through this act. In 1982 through 2007, the United States soil erosion had declined by 43%” (Montanarella, 2015). Every year the United States loses about $400 billion dollars due to crop soil that is eroded. Soil is a limited resource and the largest resource for growing food, accommodating diverse ecosystems, and providing food resources. Therefore laws, acts, and provisions are necessary to protect this natural resource.

Soil is the word that literally holds this world together. Without the necessity of soil, we probably wouldn’t even be where we are today. It is the main support system for our earth because it holds the roots to the ground, keeping our ground in tact. When we can’t control what happens in nature, like the Dust Bowl, we may be hit with unexpected dangers, but when it comes to things we can control we need to act right away. In the 1930’s, with little to no rainfall, weak soil and no advanced technology the people in the great plains were headed for a major catastrophe. They had no control over the way their land was moving, so it just kept going and eventually ended up to be known around the world as the Dust Bowl. If they would have had the

Farming in Africa is inadequate and inefficient. The fertility of the soil is becoming depleted and severely reducing the amount of crops from each harvest (Ayieko). This problem is due to over farming the land and not allowing for crop rotation to replenish the nutrients in the soil. This is a practice that is used by most farmers around the globe. Continuing on this trend will risk the land becoming barren and unable to support plant life.

Poverty has been present since the beginning of time. In society, a majority of individuals were once equal to each other, due to reliance on the environment. For instance, the hunter-gather lifestyle had either a hunter or gatherer where one would hunt wild animals for the essentials, while another individual would gather the necessities. However, life was not secure due to the chance of sudden climate change and reduction of prey being present. This resulted in an inadequate “build from response” rate, leading to the scarcity of the necessary essentials needed to survive. 1 Similar to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was the farming era, where most civilians were living in poverty and relied on

Soil is the most important element for agricultural ecosystems. Healthy soil comes with beneficial microbes and insects. Unfortunately, these are often killed off by the abuse of pesticides. Healthy soil can produce strong crops that are less vulnerable to pests. Damaged soils often need strong fertilizers application to produce a high amount of crops. Soil quality can be amplified in many ways, including leaving crop remainders in the field after harvest and adding composted plant material (Union of Concerned Scientists) Compared to industrial agriculture, companies continue to damage and consume natural soil. While intensive plowing and monocrop (does not rotate) agriculture systems have caused nutrient exhaustion and soil erosion. Excessive application of fertilizers and pesticides has contaminated soils and polluted waterways (Grace Communications Foundations)

Along with water availability, another important factor is the soil’s fertility. Because of too much farming on the same piece of land, the soil’s nutrients start deteriorating over the years, and in the end, the soil is literally “mined of life”. Bad application of fertilizers also adds to this. Right now, East Africa is heavily reliant on imported fertilizers, but because of transportation costs and no nearby suppliers, East Africa is paying about 2~6 times the amount of of the world’s

“On the global basis, the soil degradation is caused by over grazing (35%), agriculture activities (28%), deforestation (30%), over exploitation of land to produce fuel wood (4%), and industrialization (4%).” 100% of what causes soil degradation is caused by humans and animals. 35% of the blame goes to the animals for over grazing, but the other 65% of the blame goes to the humans for agriculture activities and chopping down trees. Another example is, David Pimentel also states, “The bottom line on soil production is that it takes (on average) about 100 years to generate a millimeter of soil. This is about a human lifetime.” Although it is stated that animals contribute to land degradation, it’s only a small portion (35%). The main reason for loss of arable land is human development. Forests are cut down for farming space, fuel wood, or space to build some kind of industry. When land is being used and used, and no one manages it, it can become deplete; which means, the land is dried out and unable to grow vegetation. Soil production takes a long time, on average, it takes 100 years. 100 years is too long to wait for new soil to plant food.

Three harmful environmental effects of Poverty are degradation of forests, topsoil, grasslands, fisheries, and wildlife; no worrying of the long-tern environmental impact, the large population infested with poverty can leave a massive overall environmental impact. Three health effects include malnutrition, limited

Health is another issue that has been examined as a potential effect of living in poverty. A large amount of literature links low income to child health problems with studies showing that children in poverty are at a greater risk of infant, child and adolescent deaths (Children’s Defense Fund, 1994) along with malnutrition (Miller & Korenman, 1994) and numerous other health issues. These health issues can also be linked to the low quality living environment, as children in poverty are more likely to be exposed to toxins such as lead along with poorer air and water quality. These have been found to lead to cognitive deficits in children (Holgate, Samet, Koren, & Maynard, 1999).

Sub-Saharan Africa’s grain yields roughly one third of other developing regions of the planet. Part of the problem is Africa's age-old dependence on rain-fed agriculture in a savanna climate, where the risks of drought are ever present. Sub-Saharan Africa lacks the river-based irrigation systems of South and East Asia. Another urgent problem with Africa's agriculture is that Africa's soils have been depleted of nutrients because impoverished farmers have been unable to afford fertilizers to replenish their soils. Older techniques for replenishing soil nutrients, such as the rotation of farm lands, allowing the replenishment of nutrients on land left to fallow for 10 or 20 years, are no longer feasible. Rising land scarcity because of

This section attempts to give a general overview of some of the basic issues in the poverty-environmental degradation debate. The objective is to provide general highlights on the key perspectives of the poverty and environment relationships. This will provide a foundation for the discussions on the theoretical and conceptual framework presented later on in section 3.

The purpose of this review is to investigate the claims made by economists on why poverty is a reoccurring factor in developing areas, and whether or not that particular claim is indeed one of the reasons that these areas suffer from poverty. Poverty traps are one of the prominent factors in the reasoning behind poverty in developing areas; however, there are also many other supporting factors that reinforce poverty. Shepherd (2007) believes there is a point of equilibrium in

The situation keeps aggravating despite of several poverty alleviation programs that are implemented every year. The main reason for such failure, apart from the implementation issues, would be the measurement and numbers on which these programs are based. Appropriate measurement is central to analyzing and understanding poverty and its alleviation.