‘New friends,easier partners and bigger brothers’: The influence of the emerging powers on agriculture and food security in Malawi

Emerging powers are credited with influencing development cooperation, but field-based studies incorporating the viewpoints of recipient developing country actors are scarce. This article analyses the presence and the material, ideational and institutional influence of assistance in agriculture and food security in Malawi by the governments of Brazil, India, China and South Africa. The findings suggest first that, despite a similar and powerful discourse linking these four states, in practice the emerging powers' approaches diverge to a large extent. Second, the material influence of these emerging powers is relatively limited and consequently so is their influence on Malawi's decision-making process with regard to development. Finally, perceptions about the emerging powers' potential contribution to addressing development challenges differ greatly between the Malawian government and the traditional donor community. This difference arises from limited coordination and cooperation on the one hand and the importance of ideational influence on the other.     

‘Control Grabbing’ and small-scale agricultural intensification: emerging patterns of state-facilitated ‘agricultural investment’ in Rwanda

The Rwandan government's ongoing reconfiguration of the agricultural sector seeks to facilitate increased penetration of smallholder farming systems by domestic and international capital, which may include some land acquisition (‘land grabbing’) as well as contract farming arrangements. Such contracts are arranged by the state, which sometimes uses coercive mechanisms and interventionist strategies to encourage agricultural investment. The Rwandan government has adapted neo-liberal tools, such as ‘performance management contracts’, which make local public administrators accountable for agricultural development targets (often explicitly linked to corporate interests). Activities of international development agencies are becoming intertwined with those of the state and foreign capital, so that a variety of actors and objectives are starting to collaboratively change the relations between land and labour. The global ‘land grab’ is only one aspect of broader patterns of reconfiguration of control over land, labour and markets in the Global South. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the state is orienting public resources towards private interests in Rwanda, through processes that have elsewhere been termed ‘control grabbing’ [Borras et al. 2012 Borras, S.M., et al. 2012. Land grabbing and global capitalist accumulation: key features in Latin America. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 33(4), 402–416. doi: 10.1080/02255189.2012.745394[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 402–416].     

邓小平对农业经济发展理论的贡献

邓小平提出"粮食安全论",特别强调了农业发展的重心;提出"多种经营论",十分注重农业发展过程中的结构调整。     

浅谈农业信息化的开发和利用

中国已经加入世界贸易组织。要减少加入WTO对农业所产生的冲击,必须实现跨越式发展。而以信息化技术为先 导的农业商新技术将为这次跨越武发展提供机遇。因此,要抓住这一有利时机,加快农业信息化步伐,全面推动现代农业信息技 术在整个农业领域的渗透和应用,促进农业实现“两个根本性转交”,促进农业现代化的早日实现。     

农业法调整对象探析

农业法的调整对象,就是特定的农事关系,而不是一切农事关系,更不是农事关系以外的其他社会关系。农事关系,是指在农事活动过程中以农业生产为基础逐层交融而形成的具有内在联系的人与人之间和人与自然之间关系的总和。农业法所调整的农事关系主要包括农事组织关系、农民权益保护关系、农业资源环境关系、农业科技教育关系和农村社会保障关系等。     

重构我国用益物权体系的几点思考

我国现行的用益物权制度存在问题较多,严重影响了其实践作用的发挥。在重构我国用益物权体系时,不仅应对实践中争议较大的问题作出合理的解释,也要对缺漏之处及新情况、新问题做出积极的反映,最终形成以地上权、农用权、地益权、用益权为基础的民事基本法中的用益物权与特别法相辅相成的现代用益物权体系。