The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and its Member States are making renewed efforts to revive agriculture in the region. Given that much of it is water-stressed, appropriate and sustainable land and water management practices are vital to achieving this objective. Recognising this, SADC's Land and Water Management Applied Research and Training Programme has convened two scientific symposiums. Held in Lilongwe, Malawi, in February 2006, the inaugural symposium brought together practitioners from 10 participating SADC countries to deliberate on land and water management for sustainable agriculture, and discuss how the most recent research and development advances in land and water management might be made more relevant to policymakers as well as the region's small-scale farmers. The edited contributions to this first symposium appear in this volume. The second symposium was held in Gaborone, Botswana, in February 2007, and brought together regional experts to discuss opportunities for improving water use and water use efficiency in agriculture in semi-arid and arid areas. The edited contributions to the second symposium appear in a companion volume entitled Land and Water Management in Southern Africa: Towards Better Water Use in Agriculture in Semi-Arid and Arid Areas (AISA 2008). It is hoped that these two volumes will help to disseminate regional expertise on land and water management to a wider audience, thus helping policy-makers and others to strengthen the agricultural sector in the region, and, in so doing, improve its food security and the wellbeing of its people.

A study of Botswana’s dual face of prosperity and poverty and that relates to its land use policies. Transformations on the Ground considers the ways in which power in all its forms—local, international, legal, familial—affects the collision of global with local concerns over access to land and control over its use. In Botswana’s struggle to access international economies, few resources are as fundamental and fraught as control over land. On a local level, land and control over its use provides homes, livelihoods, and the economic security to help lift populations out of impoverishment. Yet on the international level, global capital concerns compete with strategies for sustainable development and economic empowerment. Drawing on extensive archival research, legal records, fieldwork, and interviews with five generations of family members in the village of Molepolole, Anne M. O. Griffiths provides a sweeping consideration of the scale of power from global economy to household experience in Botswana. In doing so, Griffiths provides a frame through which the connections between legal power and local engagement can provide fresh insight into our understanding of the global. “Botswana is a darling of international donors and regularly praised as an upwardly mobile, prosperous and successful country. At the same time, it is characterized by poverty and exclusion, especially of women. In her insightful case study on land politics, Anne Griffiths effectively contrasts the image of a coherent state against myriad realities and confusion of competences on the ground. Based on decades of ethnographic fieldwork, this book masterfully demonstrates how in the realm of land and law, international, national, regional and local domains intersect and overlap, and come into conflict with one another.” —Andreas Eckert, Humboldt University Berlin “Anne Griffiths’ ambitious and original book reveals how the “global” is always situated in specific places and times through her insightful analysis of how land in Botswana has figured in practices, policy and politics from the standpoints of household, family, village, district, national and international levels. Griffiths’ astute use of political and legal history, legal documents, observation of statutory and customary law settings, multi-generational life histories and detailed ethnography enable her to provide a rich and informative account that goes well beyond the mantra of “the global in the local.” While insisting on foregrounding “the voices, perceptions, and experiences of people’s relationships with land,” Griffiths shows how these interact with national politics, policies, laws and legal practice and with the effects of international and global agencies and processes to produce inequality and class differences, despite some improvement in gendered patterns of land entitlement.” —Pauline Peters, Faculty Associate, Harvard Kennedy School and Center for African Studies

Framing the Global explores new and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of global issues. Essays are framed around the entry points or key concepts that have emerged in each contributor's engagement with global studies in the course of empirical research, offering a conceptual toolkit for global research in the 21st century.

Agricultural engineering, developed as an engineering discipline underpinned by physics, applies scientific principles, knowledge, and technological innovations in the agricultural and food industries. During the last century, there was exponential growth in engineering developments, which has improved human wellbeing and radically changed how humans interact with each other and our planet. Among these, “Agricultural Mechanization” is ranked among the top 10 in a list of 20 Top Engineering Achievements of the last century that have had the greatest impact on the quality of life. While many success stories abound, the problems of low appeal among students, identity crises, and limited job opportunities in many climes continue to trouble the discipline’s future in many parts of the world. Yet agriculture and agricultural engineering remain fundamental to assuring food and nutrition security for a growing global population. Agricultural, Biosystems, and Biological Engineering Education provides the first comprehensive global review and synthesis of different agricultural, biosystems, and biological engineering education approaches, including a detailed exposition of current practices from different regions. Key Features: Describes novel approaches to curriculum design and reform Outlines current and emerging epistemology and pedagogies in ABBE education Provides a framework to grow agricultural engineering in Africa and other developing regions Highlights the role of ABBE education in the context of the SDGs Presented in 3 parts and containing 42 chapters, this book covers the historical evolution of agricultural engineering education and discusses the emergence of biological and biosystems engineering education. It will appeal to engineers and other professionals, education planners and administrators, and policy makers in agriculture and other biological industries.