This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resources. The annual global cost of land degradation due to land use and cover change (LUCC) and lower cropland and rangeland productivity is estimated to be about 300 billion USD. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for the largest share (22%) of the total global cost of land degradation. Only about 38% of the cost of land degradation due to LUCC - which accounts for 78% of the US$300 billion loss – is borne by land users and the remaining share (62%) is borne by consumers of ecosystem services off the farm. The results in this volume indicate that reversing land degradation trends makes both economic sense, and has multiple social and environmental benefits. On average, one US dollar investment into restoration of degraded land returns five US dollars. The findings of the country case studies call for increased investments into the rehabilitation and restoration of degraded lands, including through such institutional and policy measures as strengthening community participation for sustainable land management, enhancing government effectiveness and rule of law, improving access to markets and rural services, and securing land tenure. The assessment in this volume has been conducted at a time when there is an elevated interest in private land investments and when global efforts to achieve sustainable development objectives have intensified. In this regard, the results of this volume can contribute significantly to the ongoing policy debate and efforts to design strategies for achieving sustainable development goals and related efforts to address land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

Argentina poses a challenge to economists, economic historians, political scientists, and other concerned with the interrelationship of political and economic forces in developing nations. Although possessed of most of the attributes generally thought necessary for rapid and self-sustaining development, her economy has barely kept up with the population increase, and living standards of large segments of the population have not advanced. The causes of this paradox have never been adequately explained. Ferrer interprets the economic stagnation of Argentina in historical terms, tracing the evolution of the country's economy through four separate stages, beginning with the colonial era in the sixteenth century. Most attention is given to the period of "nonintegrated industrial economy," from 1930 to the present. According to Ferrer, modern Argentina was formed in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the country was integrated into the world economy as a large producer and exporter of agricultural products. The great influx of immigrants and foreign capital led to a rapid disintegration of the traditional society, which had been composed of isolated regional economies with a low level of economic and social development. The Pampa area, an "open space" that had been largely uninhabited, became the nucleus of the subsequent expansion because of its rich land resources and humid and temperate climate. The dislocation of the international economy after the world economic crisis of the 1930's and the rigidity of the Argentine agricultural economy, confronted the country with need to industrialize and diversify its economic structure. Some progress has been made along this road, but Ferrer attributes Argentina's postwar difficulties to the lack of proper answers to the problems of an agricultural economy in transition to a modern industrial society. The author relates economic data to the broader social and political issues. He forsees a definitive confrontation between two social and economic forces: one favoring maintenance of the status quo, the other advocating an enlightened policy of basic industrial growth. The outcome of this confrontation will have a profound impact on the future of Argentina and, indeed, all Latin America. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the political economy of soybean production in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, by identifying the dominant private and public actors and control mechanisms that have given rise to a corporate-driven, vertically integrated system of regionalized agricultural production in the Southern Cone of South America. The current agricultural boom surrounding soybean production has been aided by aggressive new agro-technologies, including biotechnology, leading to massive organizational changes in the agricultural sector and a significant rise in the power of special interest groups and corporations. Despite having similar initial production conditions, the pattern of economic activity surrounding soybean production in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, continues to be largely determined by the needs of the multinational corporations involved, rather than national considerations of comparative advantage. The author uses these findings to argue that the new international model of agricultural production empowers chemical and trading multinational companies over national governments.

The Agricultural Outlook 2019-2028 is a collaborative effort of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. It brings together the commodity, policy and country expertise of both organisations as well ...

Industrial Development in a Frontier Economy is pioneering microanalysis of 59 Argentinean corporations between 1890 and 1930 that explains Argentina's failure to develop an efficient manufacturing sector, even as countries in similar circumstances successfully modernized.

In the early part of this century, Argentina was one of the most affluent nations in the world. Since then, the Argentine economy has experienced long periods of stagnation and recession. Larry Sawers links the country's economic failure to the backwardness of the interior, which comprises 70 percent of the area of the country and in which nearly one-third of the population resides.The interior's poverty, according to Sawers, is caused by the scarcity of agricultural resources and by serious inequalities in the distribution of those resources. The region is poorly endowed, land has been degraded through abuse and overuse, and most farmers work tiny, unproductive plots. Moreover, most of the products of the interior are produced for highly protected domestic markets and face stiff competition and falling prices in world markets. Recent reforms in Argentina have dramatically aggravated the economic crisis of the interior.Sawers shows how the poverty of the interior has contributed to the dismal performance of the Argentine economy as a whole. He emphasizes the deleterious effects of extensive emigration from the interior to the major urban areas that are unable to absorb the human tide. Additionally, the national government has taxed the more prosperous regions in order to subsidize the interior, placing a severe drain on the federal government budget and worsening inflation. The effects of the interior's poverty on the nation are also political. Sawers argues that the backward political system in the interior exacerbates the worst features of the national political culture and governance, which in turn pose profound obstacles to economic progress.