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Environmental and Economic Dilemmas for Farm-households in Africa: When ‘Low-input Sustainable Agriculture’ Translates to ‘High-cost Unsustainable Livelihoods’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Allan R.C. Low
Allan R.C. Low
Affiliation:
Agricultural Planning Adviser, Department of Planning, Ministry of Agriculture, Private Bag 13184, Windhoek, Namibia.
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Extract

Calls for small-scale farmers to move away from the use of purchased inputs in order to make farming more environmentally sustainable are being increasingly voiced on the strength of ecological arguments. These arguments, backed up by technical information on natural resource-loss or degradation, and by descriptions of sustainable indigenous systems which use few external inputs, are often persuasive. However, they can also be simplistic and misleading.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1994 , pp. 220 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1994

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