Tag: horticulture

The experimental dispositif therefore commanded how actants were to be organized and made to relate to each other within well-defined limits of space and time. This was done so that vitalities within its scope were channeled according to a predetermined notion of what desirable elements were to be made to flourish, and what undesirable ones were to be allowed to wither away or be forcibly diverged to its exterior. Incidentally or not, dispositif is the same word Foucault chose to name the apparatus through which power flows in society. Like most of those that followed on his wake, in his oeuvre Foucault was concerned mostly with the government of human life. The experimental dispositif is also a manipulation of relations of forces, but of a non-human kind. Other than that, the similarities are remarkable. Like the Foucauldian dispositif, it is sustained by a particular kind of knowledge, manifested in the three expertises concerned here. This manipulation is also strategic, in the sense that it had a clear direction: what it did was to translate normative parameters that were external to the experimental domain into a technical, either quantifiable or discreet , form. These parameters came from the upper scales of context previously outlined: from global trade to the filière, to assumptions about the peasant environment, these were scaled down, at the micro level of the dispositif, into a central concern with yields as the core experimental parameter. Even conservation – as explained in Chapter 4,nft hydroponic the chief purpose of no-till – becomes important inasmuch as it helps sustain productivity in the long run, and does not significantly undermine it in the short run.

The experiments sought to strike a balance between short-term, economistic demands for high productivity, and long-term demands for soil conservation. In all three project components, brought together into the dispositif’s nested structure, experimental adaptation ultimately converged towards this end: increased yields became the ultimate sign that the system was working and thriving in its new environment. Thus, in their experiments, entomologists were chiefly concerned with mapping out and anticipating potentially significant pests – that is, insects that could cause sudden and sharp decrease in yields . In the project parcel, standing just above the layer of cotton at regular intervals there were white triangular boxes; these were insect traps, the only visible artifact of the pest control component in the parcel. The boxes, brought from Brazil, sheltered cards smeared with pheromone for attracting male insects, meant for a survey of insect populations in the area – a preliminary work to devising a biological pest control strategy appropriate to local conditions. During the first year, as the Malian entomologist explained, “there were observations, not results. For scientific results, it is necessary that a statistic dispositif be put in place”. The entomology dispositif proper was assembled in 2011 on the vitrine simultaneously with the varietal assay. In this trial, technicians observed and registered the magnitude and kind of damage inflicted to the different cotton varieties so that the behavior of the Brazilian ones would be compared to their control counterparts across two treatments: one consisting in zero chemical control, the other consisting in pesticide spraying according to recommendations for the milieu paysan. In the varietal test on the vitrine, yield, measured as a projected amount of kilograms per hectare, was the main parameter for comparing the ten cotton varieties introduced by Embrapa among themselves and to their local counterparts .

In the first season, productivity was also the main criterion according to which the head breeder from the Malian institute selected the two best performing Embrapa varieties to move further into the no-till fields the following year, where they would join the local varieties acting as controls. Performance of the different cotton varieties was also observed and compared according to other factors: level of damage by insects and disease, plant development , and the technological criteria listed above. In these evaluations as in genetic improvement research at large, breeders strived to strike a compromise between competing external demands on the cotton plant: farmers preferred bolls with heavier grain, as they got paid by kilogram of unprocessed cotton; ginners were concerned with the proportion of lint in seed cotton weight; the textile industry had its own standards of quality and color. Whiteness and brilliance of the fiber, for instance, were emerging from the trials as traits with the potential to improve local cotton varieties through cross-breeding with the Brazilian ones. But these and other parameters only became important provided that the concerned variety was also productive compared to the others. Similarly, in the no-till trial, most measurements were geared towards evaluating the impact of this new crop management system on the yields of different cotton varieties and the cereals grown in association or rotation with it, as compared to the control situation . Thus, the dispositif aimed at figuring out the best possible balance between biomass and yields: while cover crops intercalated with main crops were expected to produce as much biomass as possible in order to keep the soil covered during fallow, they also competed for nutrients, water and sunlight with the main crop, therefore potentially impacting its yields.

This trial was therefore principally concerned with estimating the best sowing date for each combination of plants: one treatment prescribed sowing the cover crop on the same day as the main crop, the other fourteen days afterwards. Other factors measured in this experiment addressed physic-chemical characteristics of the soil, and indexes of plant vitality such as leaf analysis, plant height and density, and germination. Yields and productivity, the focus of the economy of vitalities managed by the dispositif, depended most fundamentally on the right amount and quality of nutrients to feed the crop plants . In this respect, agronomists explicitly deployed in their experimental work a suggestive foreign trade-like idiom of nutrient export and import. Export is a normal part of agriculture, as much of the biomass that is nurtured inside the fields leaves them along with the harvested crop; the challenge is to make sure that these lost nutrients are replaced by equivalent import, in the form of mineral or organic fertilizers. Chronic soil degradation becomes a problem when more nutrients are being exported than imported over the long run. In West Africa, as we saw, not only was there excessive export of nutrients through leaching, runoff and the cattle that feeds on crop residues, but there was far from sufficient import of nutrients through fertilizers. As a result, peasant cotton farms developed, so to speak, a serious “trade deficit” in nutrients with their surrounding environment. The inevitable outcome is reduced productivity. As with the territory of nation-states, this idiom was predicated on the delimitation of a bounded space in-and-out of which elements travel: not just the nutrients,nft system but actants that carry them or dis/enable their action such as water, insects, weeds, and the crops themselves. Much like in customs and immigration, this movement had to be registered, quantified and controlled . As represented schematically in the picture below, this bounded space was geometrically delimited and internally organized according to the dispositif: size and form of the overall area , number and arrangement of internal sub-divisions , distance between blocks , number of lines in each sub-block , number of plants per line . Import of nutrients through inorganic fertilizers focused on primary minerals indispensible to plant development. In the entire parcel, these were typically brought in along the lines of the complexe coton distributed in the milieu paysan: the elementary tryad NPK plus sulphur and borum, followed by a second dose of nitrogen through urea. Part of these nutrients left the parcel in the form of harvest – along with cotton bolls, maize ears, or sorghum heads. The rest of the biomass was measured by cutting out from the soil and weighing a square meter sample; it was then left on the fields, to be reabsorbed and made available for the next season’s crops.

Measured and registered every day on a black board in a common area in the research institute, rainfall was an uncontrolled variable – in fact, the only significant one – that the project fields fully shared with peasant farms. Rains commanded the opening of the season in both sites, since only after a first significant stint of rain has fallen it is possible to sow. In the project parcels, however, sowing did not always occur simultaneously with peasant farms: at points, cotton and cover crop seeds did not arrive from Brazil in time due to the ever-present bureaucratic hurdles discussed in the previous chapter. This did not compromise the realization of the experiments, but recombined the dispositif in terms of a sowing date different from the one practiced in peasant land. Unplanned constraints could be turned into useful trials, since the sowing date to be recommended to farmers was itself one of the problems local researchers had been struggling with, given the growing unpredictability of rain patterns in the region. Towards the end of Phase I, this date was purposefully anticipated in order to demonstrate how no-till dispensed with waiting for a significant stint of rain in order to be able to till and then sow. In testing how the new technologies responded to local rainfall, researchers were gradually adjusting the tests so that an appropriate combination of variables – seed varieties, sowing date and depth, spacing, combinations of crops – would make up as best as possible for the irregular rain patterns found in the West Africa savannahs. Insects were another kind of external actant that would come and go freely. The entomologists’ protocol involved observing and comparing the damage inflicted on the different cotton varieties according to two treatments: spraying on the calendar, as recommended to the milieu paysan, and no spraying. Like their fellow agronomists, the work of entomologists was ultimately concerned with controlling the flow of nutrients. But more than the foreign trade idiom found in the soils component, or the kinship framing typical of breeding science, the entomologists’ task was most often conveyed according to a militaristic language of warfare: to “defend” crops from “natural enemies” through different “fight methods” . It basically involved protecting the crops from external threat: to make sure their vitalities were not significantly exported, or diverted away from the cotton plants, by insects and other undesirable actants such as viruses, bacteria, or fungi. Other such entities – the nitrogen-fixing rhizobium bacteria, or insects that could act as natural enemies in biological control – were being recruited in the opposite direction: into the experimental effort. Therefore, whether these and other actants would be allies or enemies, depended on their relation with the target plants and on their effects in the economy of vitalities configured by the experiments. Plants other than the main crops such as weeds were discouraged or removed, while cooperative species such as cover crops were nurtured in a controlled manner. Even water and the mineral nutrients themselves could turn from friend to foe, if present in excess: they could cause, for instance, runoff or toxicity. In all cases, the ultimate parameter was their effects on crop productivity. Besides mediating transactions with the surrounding environment, internally to the parcel the dispositif organized a whole domestic economy of nutrients and vitalities. Spatialization prescriptions based on statistic models oriented how plants were supposed to be distributed in the area, linearly organized by forced settlement and displacement schemes of intercropping and alternate sowing. Spatialization was not just horizontal; researchers also looked at the plot according to a vertical axis where cotton and the other crops stood between two domains, one subterranean and one above the ground. The plants mediated much of the traffic between them, and were themselves regarded as segmented in terms of subterranean and aerial parts . For no-till, as remarked, what happened under the ground was as much or more important as what happened above it: soil was the ultimate repository of nutrients responsible for bringing about higher yields. A chief concern was to make sure that fertilizers were effectively captured by the roots and utilized by the rest of the plant so that they would not be “wasted” . Soil was itself regarded as a segmented domain: mineral elements accumulate and move differently across various its strata; while some tend to stay in place where it is applied, others are more mobile and tend to sink into greater depths.

As importantly, cotton breeding looks beyond the farm to the post-harvest scales of industrial processing and global trade – the so-called technological or industrial parameters, such as ginning out turn or quality of fiber . According to my interlocutors, cotton is not that complicated a plant to breed. In fact, the commercial varieties found on both sides of the Southern Atlantic are “kin”, ultimately coming from a common genetic poll. Although both South America and the African continent are origin centers of cotton species, the ancestors of most cotton grown in both places today came from the United States.Like so many other elements in the cotton production systems in both Brazil and West Africa, this common ancestry comes from a shared scale in the industrial and global origins of modern cotton remarked above. In fact, the scientific breeding of cotton varieties predated by a few decades the mid-twentieth century Green Revolution and its focus on germplasm exchange and variety improvement for high yields. U.S. upland cotton was introduced in Africa during colonial times for a practical reason: by the late nineteenth century, American cotton was the world standard according to which European spinning machinery was normally calibrated . Much of the work undertaken in the colonial research institutes and botanic gardens consisted in adapting these foreign crop varieties to the environmental conditions found in Sub-Saharan Africa, on the one hand, and to the demands and standards required by the global textile industry, on the other.

After independence, breeding remained a privileged research field in the national institutes,bato bucket which today develop and distribute their own improved cotton seeds to farmers. But in colonial times as today, to develop new varieties “drawing on the best of imported and local cotton” was not enough. Improved seeds required that rural extension programs be simultaneously implemented in order to change farmers’ traditional practices into “‘modern’ plowing, planting, and harvesting skills” . This is because, failing to transform the context into which improved varieties were to be introduced, these seeds would not be able to actualize their full productive potential: the more technified the seed, the tighter and more specialized has to be the socio-technical network sustaining it. This project component therefore faced the same basic challenges of the other two, concerning the availability of proper agricultural inputs, labor, and rains in peasant fields. But while the others, especially no-till, could be transformed more rapidly according to this new context, conventional improved seeds can only be changed through cross-breeding, which is an extremely slow, statistically oriented process. As with the other project components, in breeding the enrollment of human and nonhuman actants also went beyond cotton itself. Its annual capacity-building cycle also targeted breeders working with other plants commonly intercropped with cotton locally, such as sorghum, maize or rice. They were generally well trained and had good basic technical knowledge; several of them, especially the senior ones, had received college and graduate training abroad, in France and other European countries, the United States, or the former Soviet Union.

More than the other two project components, the breeding workshops dwelled largely on abstract technical topics such as genetic resource conservation, genic flow, and quantitative genetics – the more advanced stages of the latter, I must say, I had difficulty following up, even with the rudiments of this field I had learned during a cassava project with Ghana the previous year. Even if, as the Brazilian researchers themselves underscored, breeding is both a science and an art which requires an “eye” that can only be cultivated through experience, technical knowledge in this field required, more than in the others, increasingly specialized and sophisticated material apparatuses in order to be put to work. This was notably the case of statistical software: it was the only workshop where trainees were required to bring along an artifactual attachment, a laptop computer . In 2011, much of the trainings involved teaching how to use the new software: two open-source statistical programs that had been reverse engineered at a Brazilian university. Similarly, breeding was the component for which the African partners made most demands for material infrastructure, especially in biotechnological fields such as marker-assisted breeding. Many of the Brazilian researchers, however, were of the opinion that the high financial investment required for setting up and maintaining state-of-the-art biotechnology facilities generally did not yield worthy returns in terms of actual applications; in their own experience, it was cheaper and easier to outsource certain tasks to other labs.

Still, the project did accede to some of these demands: as Phase I was coming to an end in 2013, a biotechnology lab was being finalized in Sotuba, and a local researcher was to be sent to Brazil for training on how to run it. The rationale for the project’s decision-making in this case, as I understood it, was that in relatively resource-poor institutes such as the ones in the C-4 countries, the point of a lab like this was not necessarily to produce immediate, cost-beneficial results. It would, above all, fulfill a pedagogic function of supporting training and learning of junior researchers. For senior researchers, it would enable the practical enactment of a kind of advanced knowledge that would remain otherwise idle. In this sense, it would also have a sort of “prosthetic” effect: after being trained overseas, the knowledge acquired at the “centers” would go to waste without an appropriate material base through which it could be put work in their home institutes. More than the other project components, thus, breeding brought to the fore, at the scale of research institutes, an asymmetry similar to the one observed between research recommendations and peasant practices: that is, between available knowledge and the artifactual network required to put it in practice appropriately. Besides biotechnology, another sub-field where this appeared quite clearly in the project was genetic resources conservation.African institutes were generally limited to forms of conservation that require less “de-contextualization” , such as in farm, in situ, or ex situ. The cotton germplasm bank in Farako-ba was of this latter type, and included a range of creole cotton plants found across the country: some were as tall and lean as trees, others were low and bushy; some had light yellow flowers, others had dark pink or purple ones . After many breeding cycles over the course of decades, diversity of traits becomes narrower and related to hardly perceptible variables such as pelosity of the stem, length of fiber, relative capacity to absorb certain nutrients, or degree of yellowness. Even among breeders, increasing mediation by artifacts becomes necessary so that the precise difference in performance between the varieties can be ascertained: scales to weight harvest samples and statistically estimate productivity, soil and leaf analysis to calculate nutrient absorption,dutch bucket hydroponic or highly specialized equipment to measure the various technological parameters for quality of fiber. The African institutes had some of these artifacts, but not others, and rarely did they have their latest versions according to global standards. Moreover, none of them had fully functioning facilities for the more de-contextualizing forms of germplasm conservation such as cold chamber or in vitro tissue culture. Not surprisingly, this was part of the demands posed by the project partners, and again, they were partly fulfilled: a cold chamber was being built as part of the project’s central facilities in Sotuba, but not in the other institutes. Finally, the African partners showed significant interest in the possibilities for germplasm exchange opened up by the project.

What they sought in the Brazilian varieties was not the plants as such, but certain traits that could potentially ameliorate the varieties created by them and their predecessors in the national institutes. The introduction of Brazilian cotton varieties would provide for an always-welcome enlargement of the genetic pool available to the institutes’ cotton programs and their breeders. “Our cotton has good quality fiber, better even than the Brazilian, and it’s longer”, one of the C-4 breeders explained to me. “It’s also better adapted to our environment. But the Brazilian varieties have very good productivity”, and some had whiter fiber. For the Brazilians, quality of fiber and resistance to drought were traits of potential interest in the African varieties. This was an exchange between peer researchers; in spite of the narratives on resource plundering and biopiracy often associated with the global flow of genetic resources, as in bioprospection they do not necessarily lead to commercially viable products: “it’s always good to have this kind of germplasm around, just in case”, one of the Embrapa breeders put it plainly. Having being de-contextualized from its original assemblage in Brazil, relations between germplasm and context had to be remade anew at the arrival point: this was precisely what the breeding component’s adaptation experiments were about, as will be seen in the next chapter. But to take validated Brazilian varieties or cross-bred hybrids outside of the C-4 research institutes will be a whole other story. Rarely does one single variety carry all desirable traits, and systematic cross-breeding is a lengthy process: ten or more years may pass before a stable variety can be ready to be transferred to farmers. Aside from such technical issues, there are also explicitly political ones: the direct transfer of Brazilian varieties to African farmers as such will not necessarily be of interest to all local actors, and would call for an altogether different level of legal discussion in terms of cultivar protection and licensing procedures. This is one of the few areas where a potential remains for economic gain by public agronomic research institutes, rendered possible by the worldwide expansion of legal frameworks enforcing intellectual property rights . This makes breeding a more sensitive field than the other two, something that also concerns the ethnographer: indeed, at points some of my interlocutors seemed more worried about the identity of the plants than their human counterparts. As others have also remarked , in the age of IPR, anonymity seems to be as much an ethical matter for non-humans as for humans.Early on during fieldwork, in the CECAT course on seed production in 2010, I had learned that the seed is one of the most effective forms of technology transfer. That one small grain contains years, often decades, of research efforts by breeders and other experts that can, in such condensed and disembedded form, be taken to farmers with relative ease. A year later, in the C-4 project, I learned that to unravel all that knowledge and technology again out of the tiny seed once it gets to its new destination implies launching a whole other – reverse, if you will – translation chain in a socio-technical assemblage that will necessarily differ from the original. This difference between contexts, which seemed minor at the level of official discourse because based on analogies that took them for granted as shared preexisting backgrounds for relations, came to the fore at the front line where the researches operated; in fact, it became the very “stuff” on which they worked. How the new context differs from the original, and with what consequences for technology transfer, is not something that is given previously to the relation, but that is actively made by those who work across the new interface. Cooperation front liners from both sides of the Southern Atlantic were, in this sense, brokers; but rather than brokering flows of material and symbolic resources through a multi-layered social network, as normally emphasized by the literature on development , they brokered the making of social and natural contexts for the network itself. Technology transfer in this case turned out to be less about “rendering technical” through planned intervention than about demonstration, collaborative context-making and scaling operations, co-production between technology and context, and, as will be seen in greater detail in the next chapter, attention to the controls available to actors at various scales. These characteristics stem not just from South-South principles of horizontality or demand-drivenness, but from the organizational and practical conditions of Brazilian cooperation remarked in Chapter 1. Here, the technologies being transferred did not appear as “a blueprint for an ongoing reorganization of farming so that the latter corresponds with the assumptions and requirements built into the technological design” .

The fact that Brazilian cooperation is not based on direct transfer of resources to partners meant that the institutes had to pay upfront for some of the project’s operational activities, to be reimbursed later on. Another share of ABC funds was transferred to Africa in the form of daily allowances paid to employees from Embrapa, ABC and the African institutes while traveling on project missions, regulated according to UNDP standards. This cannot be but a rough sketch, since the entire accounting process is very complicated, detailed documental information was not always forthcoming, and this was not my privileged ethnographic focus. But it did interest me inasmuch as it impinged directly on the project’s front line activities, and this happened throughout. Already during the early months of project implementation in 2009, for instance, the Brazilian Cooperation Agency’s official for the project remained out of the loop for over a month, until he could be re-hired through another UNDP consultancy contract . Also at this stage, until all formalities for resource transfer through UNDP fell into place, project front liners had to rely on temporary fixes such as to transfer funds through the embassy, or make front payments on their own. But even when the ABC-UNDP system was on track, bureaucratic constraints on resource availability and transfer persisted ,blueberry packing boxes and were probably the most widespread qualm expressed by those involved in implementing the project. Along with the budget cuts during the Rousseff administration in 2010 and the unexpected political crisis in Mali in 2012, this was considered one of the chief “externalities” jeopardizing project execution.

The overarching issue here, also found in traditional aid , seemed to be that bureaucratic temporality and requirements were frequently at odds, if not outright contradiction, with the rhythm and needs of project activities on the ground. In the project’s early moments, needs regarding purchase of equipment or payment of personnel – basic tasks in any project implementation – would sometimes clash with standardized bureaucratic provisions. For instance, anyone formally hired in the project through UNDP, even a driver, would receive significantly higher pay than the local researchers’ salaries; or, UNDP would pose obstacles to changes in the purchase plan included in the original project documentation. The first project coordinator was particularly keen to underscore conflicts between bureaucratized provisions at the managerial level and the practice of project implementation as it unfolded locally: while a detailed project plan has to be crafted in advance of implementation, “accommodations that eventually need to be made [at the front line scale] can only appear during implementation”. Bids for equipment, licenses for exporting and importing seeds, rigorous bookkeeping required for auditing procedures – these and more sometimes made it difficult for researchers to strictly follow the project’s technical protocols, or introduced an extra time and energy burden to their work. At times, for instance, sowing happened after the optimal date due to delays in seed transfer from Brazil. The construction and equipping of lab infrastructure at the Sotuba station in Bamako, which was supposed to support the project’s training and experimental activities, were not concluded until Phase I was already coming to an end. “Nature can’t wait”, one of the Embrapa researchers put it, exasperated. “I want to tell you about this because it is really important that this be registered”. One of his African counterparts insisted along similar lines: “With France and other partners, things are more simple. This has to change.

One day Brazil will have to sort this out”. Everyone I met, including at the ABC and Itamaraty, was aware of these issues; but as remarked in Chapter 1, effectively addressing them would involve reforming cooperation legislation as well as the Brazilian Cooperation Agency itself; and this, as far as I could gather, wasn’t anywhere on the near horizon.At the project front line, not all Embrapa researchers were fully acquainted with, nor terribly interested in, the project’s political-commercial backdrop described in the previous section. For those who did, the tendency was to take to heart the project’s avowed purpose: to engage in an interest-free sharing of knowledge and technology with the ultimate aim of reaching those who really needed it, the African peasants. For those who did not, this disinterest and unawareness did not really seem to interfere with the practical task at hand – they were there quite simply to execute a task demanded by their home institution. Not that they did not care about the work they were doing in Africa. On the contrary, given that recruitment to work in this kind of project always had some leeway for negotiation with the heads of Embrapa’s decentralized units, and that researchers got little extra financial or career incentives for doing it, in most cases there seemed to be some degree of personal interest in it, even if a simple curiosity to get to know a different part of the world. In fact, I even wonder how representative of the ensemble of Embrapa staff is the sample of researchers I ended up with, since not everyone is willing to commit to a modality of project that does not normally bring the obvious professional benefits of scientific cooperation with Northern countries or other emerging economies, for instance in the Labex .While some seemed to take their work in the project as part of a routine job, others ended up developing a more personal kind of commitment towards it.

As I discussed with a Brazilian diplomat in Africa the somewhat uncertain future of South-South cooperation in the post-Lula era, he contended that “at this point, projects are moving forward because there is people out there willing to vestir a camisa” – literally, to “put on the jersey”, another soccer metaphor meaning to wholeheartedly embrace a challenge. My impression however was that this commitment stemmed less from a sense of historical indebtedness towards Africa, allegiance to South-South politics, or a sense of duty towards their home institution or the country, than from the concrete engagements they effectively came to establish with the other front liners – their African partners, but especially their Brazilian peers also involved in the project. For the Brazilian front liners, the project was an exceptional enterprise in their professional and personal lives, and it is not clear whether such dedication to group work could be reproduced on a regular basis – even if institutional incentives eventually come to concur to a routinization of motivations .This contrasted with many of the African cooperantes’ perspectives: for them, international projects were a major part of their institutes’ quotidian landscape. In general, these external resources were welcome, since their own states’ budget provided them with insufficient support. Individual researchers and managers do however negotiate their participation in projects, and, unless they see benefits, may choose not to commit . Through the Brazilian project, individual researchers got mostly immaterial benefits, such as expert support for their research work,package of blueberries capacity-building, or networking opportunities. The question of resource transfer was sometimes a source of discontent, especially by those in charge of managerial functions, but also researchers; occasionally, even they would have to disburse upfront personal resources to get project-related activities going. The fact that they were willing to do it even if a salary surplus or funds from other projects were not forthcoming indicates the personal interest and commitment the project was able to arouse in some of them. Brazilians, who got better and more regular pay by Embrapa than their African colleagues, would show less concern about financial incentives for participating in the project. But one point that was consistently raised instead regarded career incentives. “It’s been some time here in Embrapa that researchers have been made to follow the academic logic, and publish every year in good journals”, one of them explained to me. “The time we spend travelling for projects, then writing reports when we return – one for the ABC, one for Embrapa, sometimes more –, we could be writing an article for publication”. This grievance was further reinforced by the fact that projects of this kind typically do not involve new scientific work worth publishing, or at least not in the short term. Management of the cotton unit also expressed concerns about overburden, especially with respect to the project’s second phase and to the possibility of replicating it in other countries. Different from those in specialized development bureaucracies and their associated industry of consultancy firms and NGOs, front liners in this project were research scientists employed in national research institutions.

As such, their primary commitment was to their routine research work, which not always happened to be streamlined with the technical content of the project. This configuration seems to have a bright side, though: the fact that researchers from both sides recognize each other, and reciprocally value each other’s engagement in project activities, as researchers. African researchers were recognized for their good technical knowledge and sense of method, and their Brazilian partners were complimented for their skills in doing hands-on research work and non-patronizing ways. In spite of asymmetries in availability of material resources and infrastructure and some divergences in technical background, at bottom the work of an agronomist or a cotton breeder is not radically different in Brazil and in Africa. But this is not just a matter of common training, often in the U.S. or other parts of the global North . Embrapa researchers had not just been trained in these expertises at an early point in their lives and then went on to a career in development projects and consultancies; they have been continuously applying them to research work back in Brazil, sometimes in close contact with farmers. This was a major difference vis-à-vis Northern projects remarked by the African partners, and a far cry from the disconnections between expert developers and their target groups found in the literature on development . As I will discuss further ahead, this may entail a potential for robustness different than traditional aid’s.The task of the cooperantes initially recruited by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency was to draft the project document, and kick-start its implementation on African grounds. This involved diagnosing the “problem” with cotton production in the C-4 countries, and proposing means to address it. In much of the anthropological literature on aid projects, solutions appear as coming before problems – or, in what Tania Li calls problematization, local problems are framed according to technical solutions already available in the agencies’ expert apparatuses. In the C-4 Project, the framing of problems was also directed by technical expertise; but this involved less the implementation of policies and methodologies consolidated in the development apparatus than an intermittent and somewhat malleable process involving much ad hoc accommodation between various organizations, and in which the research institutes played an equivalent, or even larger, role than the cooperation agencies themselves. The project’s overall technical scope was already sketched at the level of the WTO Cotton Initiative, where the idea for a project between Brazil and the C-4 countries first came into being. The three technical areas eventually included in the final version – genetic improvement of cotton varieties; soil management; and integrated pest management – were however only vaguely indicated. A more precise diagnosis was elaborated through a series of missions of “technical-political character” to Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali, of which both Embrapa researchers and ABC officials took part.In 2006, a breeder from Embrapa’s cotton center was convened to execute a first fact finding mission to these three countries. Having had no significant experience working in Africa, he suggested that a retired Embrapa agronomist who did would come along with him . Both the diagnosis and ensuing recommendations were crafted in conversation with employees from the C-4 research institutes, government offices, and cotton companies. Their report produced a common diagnosis for the cotton sector in all four countries, identifying low productivities as the chief problem. Through conversations with researchers from the local institutes in West Africa and other cooperantes, the cause of low productivities was traced primarily to the poor nutrient content of soils and the “insignificant amount of fertilizers” used by local peasant farmers on the one hand, and to the irregularity of rain patterns in the region on the other.

If one takes society here in terms of domains like politics or the economy, for instance, Africa’s historical experience may seem to share more with that of Asia – and indeed, the latter is a favorite comparative counterpoint in academic and policy debates on economic development in Africa.Both continents ushered into national independences at around the same time, ended up split into many nation-states divided by largely arbitrary borders, and the pioneering experiences of India and other parts of the British and French colonial empires effectively played a part both in enticing liberation struggles and in shaping the politico-institutional legacy of colonialism in the African continent . Indeed, there is much debate among Africans as to why much of post-colonial Asia has succeeded in developing itself, while their own continent was left behind. In my experience, comparisons with Brazil or Latin America along the same lines are much less frequent; in The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon even mentioned Latin America as an example not to be followed by the newly decolonized world.118Perhaps even more than the assumption about shared cultures or natures, that of a shared development timeline seems to be the most widespread in South-South cooperation at large; after all, potentially it can encompass the entire global South. It is based on the assumption that, along their peripheral developmental path, emerging countries such as Brazil would have “accumulated expertise that could be shared with other southern countries facing similar challenges” . As with other discursive claims, this may stand for a shared past between world regions that have in fact come into closer contact only recently,grow bags for gardening such as Brazil and countries outside of its historical areas of influence in Africa.

Here, such un- or little-connected pasts are brought together by an abstract universal scale: the modernization timeline, which once ranked all countries according to a same classificatory grid of developed, developing, and underdeveloped. This common scale can be indeed regarded as an effect of Western discursive hegemony , sustained by an apparatus of economic and military dominance during Europe and the U.S.’s colonial and imperialist expansion. But the assumption of a shared development timeline present in the discourse of today’s emerging donors is neither an imposition from the North, nor a mystifying, contradictory legacy of their colonial pasts. Much to the contrary, it is a strategic deployment that aims to draw a line between North and South, this time to the latter’s benefit. This move in fact echoes another one, which took place over fifty years ago: in his mythic 1949 Point Four speech, which arguably first named international development as such , President Truman called for putting the United States’ “store of technical knowledge” to the service of developing nations . And just as, speaking in the immediate aftermath of the World Wars, he was “keen to distance his project from [Europe’s] old-style imperialism” , today’s emerging donors strive to differentiate South-South cooperation from “old-style” – that is, Northern – development aid. Like the U.S. in the aftermath of World War II, Brazil and others regard themselves, and are largely regarded, as emerging powers in a context of geopolitical and geoeconomic reaccommodation. But the U.S. never thought of itself as part of the Third World, while for emerging donors of today belonging to the same geodiscursive space as the world’s poorest countries – the global South – is at the very core of their self-assigned identity as donors. The narrative of modernization theory had allowed Truman to arrange the rest of the world along the same scale as the U.S.. But with Europe ruined by war, the American president was speaking alone at the top of the development ladder: this is what allowed him the “god trick” of claiming that his country had the solutions for everyone else’s ills .

Emerging donors, on the other hand, do not regard themselves as being at the top; but rather than being a handicap, it is this precisely this “subaltern expertise” Mawdsley that would make them better donors than the U.S. and the rest of the global North. And just as in the thirties Freyre’s culturalism frontally contested prevailing racial paradigms imported from Europe in order to turn a peripheral experience into a positive asset vis-à-vis central models, South-South cooperation today is partly built on a claim of failure of the world development project championed by the global North since Truman’s times. In this sense, it can be argued that South-South cooperation rides the wave of the decoupling of the two axes of the modernization timeline – that of time, and that of status – claimed by Ferguson for contemporary globalization. Ferguson argued for this decoupling in terms of a discursive and practical failure of the original, all-encompassing, unilineal modernization project. This recognition of failure would hold more, however, for some regions of the global South, while others would be still “offered a role in the convergence narrative” ; epitomes of these poles would be Sub-Saharan Africa on the former, and emerging economies such as the BRICS on the latter. But while “no one talks about African economic convergence with the First World anymore” , this is precisely what emerging donors have been talking about: this time, in relation to themselves rather than to the First World. Emerging donors do reject the notion of a single, un-situated “package” solution to the world’s problems along the lines of modernization theory. But as much of what goes on in South-South cooperation, this movement is highly ambivalent, since provincializing the North’s development god trick does not imply a rejection of the achievements of modernity as such, especially in technical fields like agriculture. While modernity is, as Ferguson suggested , indeed decoupled from a teleological timeline that follows point-by-point the North’s path, this is not about coeval societies negotiating separately their own brand of modernity either.

In South-South cooperation discourse, the developmental experience is resituated in time and space according to each country’s national developmental experience, against the backdrop of a historical experience of being at the world’s peripheries that is presumably shared by all of them. Indeed, during fieldwork, in all sorts of technical and non-technical contexts, it was common to hear Brazilians remark to their African colleagues how “we were in the same situation X years ago”. One Brazilian farmer I met in Ghana had even “calculated” how far back in time were local agricultural techniques: “around 80 years”. An idea behind the original Embrapa Africa model was to transfer technologies whose patents had already prescribed, but which could be nonetheless useful for Africans, since “varieties released in Brazil twenty years or more ago,garden grow bags in the public domain and even outdated in Brazil, can be very useful here given the countries’ technological backwardness” . While still following a teleology of progress, these notions manifest the decoupling noted by Ferguson: Africans do not need to absorb the latest development package wholesale, but could profit from some technologies that, even though no longer the cutting-edge in their sites of origin, could be better suited to their infrastructural conditions. A problem with this, as with “appropriate technology” kinds of schemes in general, is that African researchers usually do want the latest technology. Many of them have been trained in the global North and/or are well aware about the state-of-the-art in their own scientific fields, and often that is what they demand from cooperation partners. In spite of the demise of modernization remarked by Ferguson , one domain where teleology still holds sway and produces vast material effects has been precisely techno-science, especially technology research, development & innovation and its speedy treadmill. In Brazil-Africa cooperation, therefore, there is an ambivalent and sometimes contradictory coexistence of different temporalities on on-the-ground assemblages, somewhat along the lines of what Mbembe referred to as “time of entanglement”.This is reflected in Brazilians’ views on Africa’s agricultural development. The denial of coevalness found here was not grounded in inevitabilities or determinisms tracing the roots of African underdevelopment to any domain outside of history, be it biology or the environment. These reflected, rather, Brazilian actors’ own experiences, in two ways. On the one hand, and resonating with basic tenets of dependency theory, African underdevelopment was generally traced to its peripheral position in the world system, in a historical process that was regarded as having some analogies and connections with that of Brazil.

This appeared for instance in expressions of sympathy such as that “we have also been colonized”, or that both Brazil and Africa were still imposed unequal conditions by Northern countries in global trade. On the other hand, views on African development were largely refracted by views on Brazil’s own experience of domestic development, shaped by the hierarchical topography inscribed by internal coloniality. Denial of coevalness is not total, since it is not the case that African countries taken as a whole were regarded as being the past of Brazil taken as a whole. Part of what Brazilian front liners saw in African institutes was considered fairly “up to date”, such as the technical background of many African researchers. Other domains were, conversely, deemed more or less backward, such as the state of equipment and infrastructure in the research institutes. As one left the institutes to peasant areas, this temporalhierarchical continuum became more clearly mapped onto a spatial one, translated into comments along the lines of “we were in the same situation X years ago, and in some places in Brazil this is still the case”, or “here [in Brazil], we’ve passed through the stage where you [Africans] are now, but we’re still living all stages at the same time”. Indeed, many of the familiarities Brazilians recognized in African countries referred to the inferior term in coloniality’s dichotomies. African peasants were often associated with rural areas in the semi-arid hinterlands of the Brazilian Northeast, where a less technology and capital-intensive kind of family agriculture has historically prevailed. This contrasted both to the Center-West, characterized by large agribusiness farms, and to the South and Southwest, where family farmers make more intensive use of modern technologies and associational models like cooperatives. But as in all forms of coloniality – the iconic one being probably the cannibal/noble savage dyad –, the inferior term might carry contradictory connotations. Thus, while peasant agriculture was generally regarded as backward and unable to compete in the contemporary globalized world, for many at Embrapa it was also something to be defended and respected, including in terms of farmers’ special experiential wisdom for taking care of the land. These and other temporal-spatial analogies made during cooperation activities were however far from exhaustive; African farmers, policies, research institutes, soil, climate would never find a perfect fit in the Brazilians’ classificatory grids. Sometimes, these misfits would elicit a loosely articulated recognition of the complexities of Africa’s agriculture precisely through the contradictions it showed when compared to the Brazilian experience. Even if, in cooperation settings such as CECAT, these problematizations were not usually carried forward or systematized, they would inevitably lead to an acknowledgement of the potential difficulties for engaging in effective, sustained technical cooperation with African partners. Even in official discourse, Embrapa cooperantes tended to be more cautious than their counterparts in Itamaraty. Thus, in the concluding paragraphs of Paralelos, after over sixty pages of “parallels” one finds a somewhat dissonant caution note: “It should be kept in mind that this work is not a mere transfer of the experience obtained at the Brazilian cerrado, since there are significant socio-economic differences. Thus, the project to be implemented will take advantage of the lessons learned and the techniques developed in other Embrapa initiatives, considering the peculiarities of Mozambique” . This brief admonition about the significance of “socio-economic differences” between Brazil and Africa and the need to take into account the “peculiarities” of recipient countries as well as “lessons learned” on the ground in fact encapsulates a remarkable challenge: how to do technology adaptation and transfer in a domain like agriculture, which is highly contextsensitive? And how to do it without the bureaucratic apparatus and bountiful resources available to Northern donors and multilateral institutions? The remainder of this chapter will look closer at one of Embrapa’s South-South cooperation modalities – capacity-building trainings – to suggest how some of these questions have been explicitly raised and pursued by means of a mode of engagement that differs from that of Northern aid, and which I will characterize here as being based on demonstration rather than intervention.

While cooperation discourse was centered on confident expectations borne out by cultural and natural affinities supposedly shared by the two sides of the Southern Atlantic, those operating at the front line of cooperation showed a much more diverse range of concerns, addressing the multiple domains they encountered while making their way into Africa’s intricate development landscape. As it turned out, the idiom prevalent in the Brazilian diplomats’ discourse could also be found among most other emerging donors, and was just as often conveyed through presumed historical connections or analogies. Thus, in their cooperation efforts, Indians have evoked ties with Africa from pre-history – the landmass where India stands today broke off from the Southeastern part of Africa before it bumped into Asia to form the Himalayas – to the common struggle against colonization, where that continent would have figured as “the land of awakening of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi”, to language, food and Bollywood songs and films . The Chinese have made extensive use of a “rhetoric of commonality, analogous underdevelopment, suffering at the hands of colonialism and encouragement of self reliance” . Age-old sea trade and the imaginary of the millenarian Silk Road linking Asia to East Africa have been lavishly deployed by both Asian giants. Emerging donors from the African continent– South Africa and some Maghreb countries – have drawn on their alleged natural vocation to act as mediators between Sub-Saharan Africa and Northern and Southern donors.

Even those who do not enjoy significant historical ties with Sub-Saharan Africa, like the Japanese,round nursery pots are finding their way around this handicap by partnering up with those who do, like Brazil. When one looks closer at the historical record, however, a series of strategic “occlusions and associations” quickly emerges. Based on several case studies, some of them by anthropologists, Emma Mawdsley remarked for instance how China’s South-South rhetoric draws extensively on the Maoist era’s close engagement with Africa while in contemporary China itself, that period is a subject to be avoided ; how India’s “sanitized historical referents” have excluded “troublesome realities” like the expulsion or hostility against Indians in some East African countries, or their participation as lower-level officials in British colonization in Africa ; or how, in today’s reemergence of Poland as a donor, it is as if cooperation experiences during its socialist past “had never existed” . Therefore, all emerging donors have a “symbolic politics” of re-writing their joint history towards a naturalized narrative of affinities and commonalities.This chapter will discuss this symbolic politics in the case of Brazil-Africa relations. Although in this case the rhetoric of affinities and commonalities is equally prevalent, it has addressed with particular poignancy and tenacity a domain in which anthropologists have also made much investment over the decades: culture. The first section will probe into the historical roots of Brazilian diplomacy’s exceptional interest in culture, and discuss some of the contradictions to which this has led. I then go on to suggest some of the ways in which culture appeared at the front line practice of contemporary cooperation, as it was observed during fieldwork.

The last section takes up the claim that Brazilians’ views on Africa have been historically imbued with a persistent “culturalist grammar”, originally popularized by the work of sociologist Gilberto Freyre from the 1930’s onwards in Brazil, and later on in Portugal. Looking at Freyre’s ideas and their vulgarized version through the lenses of Said’s Orientalism, I elaborate the notion of nation-building Orientalism to suggest how Brazilians’ views on Africa have been shaped by the double directionality of coloniality discussed in the Introduction: on the one hand an internal colonialist concern with the incorporation of African descendants into the national polity, and on the other, Brazil’s sense of sub-alternity and quest for recognition vis-à-vis European and U.S. hegemony. In October 18th 2010, Embrapa’s brand new training center in Brasília opened its doors to its first cohort of African trainees, from 27 countries in both Sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb. In the opening ceremony, government officials and Embrapa managers received them with a warm welcome, urging them to feel at home, “brothers and sisters” of Brazilians as they are. A representative of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency opened the speaker series by presenting Brazil’s model of South-South cooperation along the lines described in Chapter 1: demand-driven, non-conditional, based on solidarity and free of commercial interests, tailored to particular conditions of recipient countries. In the case of Africa, he argued, success in adapting Brazilian experiences would be further linked to a series of enabling elements: ethnic and historical resemblances produced by past migratory flows; a common cultural heritage expressed in the arts, sports, food, music; natural and climatic similarities; and comparable challenges in developmental fields like agriculture or energy.

In his afternoon presentation, he addressed Brazilian culture: the country is highly mixed racially, he explained, with an “open, dynamic and versatile culture” marked by religious and racial tolerance. Both plural and original, it is diverse across the country’s different regions, while being capable of producing modern world-class “jewels” like Brasília. The assumption of “indissoluble cultural ties” between Brazil and Africa, and that Brazil’s unique cultural outlook owes much to African contributions in domains like food, language, music and other arts, sports and other bodily techniques, is one of the most recurrent threads in written and spoken official discourse on Africa-Brazil cooperation.A secondary one is the ample deployment of an idiom of kinship, especially that of siblinghood, where Brazil occasionally appears as a more mature brother. President Lula was one of its most enthusiastic users, and even his temperate successor Rousseff has maintained it; in their statements during trips to Africa or when receiving Africans in Brazil, irmãos e irmãs africanosor vizinhos próximoswere a sure reference. A third theme speaks of Brazil and African countries in terms of a common historical experience of having been subjected to colonization or imperialism, and the almost automatic ties of solidarity that would ensue from it. Different from Europe’s racialized rule that “relied on assertions of fundamental cultural differences between Europeans and Africans to legitimate imperial projects of civilizing improvements” , relations between Brazilians and Africans would be characterized by cultural familiarity and spontaneous affinities. The recurrence of these claims led me to ask the obvious questions: is this indeed the case? If not, what role is this discourse playing in contemporary rapprochements between Brazilians and Africans? How is it able to sustain itself in spite of its potential for contradiction vis-à-vis both front line practice and the historical record? One of the first things my research effort unveiled is that none of this is new; in fact, if it weren’t for some recent inflections, one would be tempted to suggest that contemporary discourse on Brazil-Africa cooperation is at least half-a-century old. In his reference book on Brazil’s international relations with the African continent, Brazilian historian José Flávio Sombra Saraiva remarked an “intriguing continuity” throughout the decades, despite oscillations in virtually all other domains: what he called,plastic flower pots in a formulation that I will take up here, the culturalist grammar of Brazil’s discourse on Africa. This rhetoric is not only long lasting but in many ways unique; according to Saraiva , it stands out sharply for its “emotional” elements, in contrast with the tone dedicated to other regions historically privileged by Brazil, such as Latin America, the U.S., and Europe. This grammar can be found with particular salience in the two other moments when Brazilian diplomats, policymakers and businessmen sought a closer approximation with their African counterparts.

One harks back to the first wave of independences in the African continent beginning in the late 1950’s, when Brazilian President Jânio Quadros inaugurated in 1961 an official foreign policy for the African continent which was carried forward by his successor João Goulart until his overthrow by a military coup in 1964. The first three years of military rule swung back to Brazil’s traditional Occidentalist alignment with Europe and the U.S., downplaying relations with African countries and other decolonizing nations. But this did not last long: in another shift around 1967, begun what Saraiva called the “golden years” of Brazil-Africa relations, which this time would last over a decade. Both Quadros and Goulart used to refer to Africa in today’s tropes of familiarity, a common cultural identity and history, and a natural bridge across the Southern Atlantic. Correspondingly, it was often taken for granted that Africans would be “naturally” receptive to Brazil’s gestures of political and cultural solidarity , and that the nascent African nations would be eager to learn from Brazil’s more mature post-colonial nation-state, including as an “example of complete absence of racial prejudice” . Brazil’s constitutive “Africanness” and its marginal position within the Western sphere were cast by Brazilian diplomats as a positive vocation for mediating between former European colonizers and the new “tropical civilizations” in Africa, or between the First and the Third Worlds at large – even to “lead the bloc of Afro-Asian nations” in its relations with the West . But if metaphors of approximation have framed the Southern Atlantic as Brazil’s “Eastern border” , an “inner sea” , or “no more than a ‘river’ between two continents” , the 1,600 miles that separate continental Brazil’s Easternmost portion from the Senegalese capital of Dakar have also been regarded as a line of key geopolitical importance for protecting the West from the communist threat . In spite of the discursive emphasis on spontaneous solidarity, geopolitics, global trade, and imperatives of national development played from the start a key part in shaping Brazil-Africa relations. In fact, this kind of rhetoric showed to be highly flexible to different uses; its basic logic would persist even when Brazil’s orientation towards Africa followed a very different direction than Quadros’ and Goulart’s distinctive Third-Worldism. In those moments when an engagement with decolonizing Africa was downplayed in favor of a realignment with the West, the culturalist grammar undergirded the confidence placed on the supposedly higher civilizing capabilities of Portuguese colonialism – of which Brazil itself would be the most finished exemplar. Supporters of Portugal would often deploy kinship or sentimental terms to describe its relations with former and current colonies, going to such lengths as to declare that “Our policy with Portugal is not really a policy. It is a family affair”, or that “I have no policy. I came here to love Portugal” . A common starting point in narratives about Brazil-Africa relations, including in SouthSouth cooperation discourse, is the arrival, in the 1550’s, of the first African slaves to the shores of recently “discovered” Portuguese possessions in South America. Most of them were shipped from slave trade outposts established by the Portuguese in what is today Angola, and in the Gulf of Benin in West Africa. By the late seventeenth century, Portugal had become a subaltern Empire politically and economically dependent on the British, and from the late 1700’s, Brazilians themselves had surpassed the Portuguese in direct trade with Africa . The nineteenth century, which saw a gradual receding of legal and then illegal slave trade across the Atlantic, is generally regarded as a moment of relative silence between Brazil and the African continent . During this period, the rising British Empire succeeded not only in significantly curbing the transatlantic traffic in slaves, but in consolidating its hegemony over South Atlantic trade routes . The encroachment of European powers on the African continent, which would culminate in the late nineteenth century “scramble” and from there in the effective colonial occupation of the African hinterlands, finished closing off the continent’s channels of exchange with Brazil. And this included Angola as well as all other Portuguese colonies – as part of its independence deal with Portugal in 1822, Brazil had renounced any attempt to gain control over its former colonizer’s possessions in the African continent. But the reasons for Brazil’s retreat did not refer solely to changing international arrangements: the first decades of independence were a key moment for internal colonialism and territorial integration, marked by multi-pleinternal rebellions and upheavals as well as by an outflow of retornadose specially to the Bight of Benin. Such returnees would become a central element in the twentieth-century reinvention of a shared tradition between Brazil and Africa .

Consequently, lower NO3 – concentration and lower NO3 – :Clratio are predicted in the silty loam vadose zone as compared to the sandy loam column. It is interesting to note that while greater NO3 – loss and denitrification are predicted for the silty loam vadose zone, carbon concentration associated with the shallow vadose zone are comparatively lower than for the sandy loam column. Moreover, the calculated pH is lower and iron concentrations are higher in the silt loam profile below the top meter when compared to the same depths within the sandy loam column . This suggests that chemolithoautotrophic reactions could be more important for these finer textured sediments. While both heterotrophic and chemolithoautotrophic reactions would be expected to result in a pH decrease , the greater decline in pH and concomitant increase in Fe+3 concentration suggests the importance of Fe and S redox cycling associated with the chemolithoautotrophic reactions in silty loam sediments . Evolving from these steady state conditions, scenario S1 suggests that denitrification is enhanced as floodwater infiltrates into the silt loam column. Model results indicate that saturation increases to 80% from 1 to 4 m depths and O2 decreases from 2.1 x 10-4 mol L-1 to 1.7 x 10-4 mol L -1 , resulting in 43% of the NO3 – being denitrified for this scenario . In comparison to the homogeneous profiles, the sandy loam with silt loam channel stratigraphy has higher calculated water contents and slightly lower O2 concentration within and surrounding the silt loam channel than the homogenous sandy loam column under steady state conditions . Calculated NO3 – concentrations are also similar between the homogenous sandy loam column and SaSi case,flower display buckets except for within and below the silt loam channel where lower NO3 – concentration was predicted .

For scenario S1, water content for the SaSi case increased in a manner similar to the homogenous sandy loam, except for within the silt loam channel, which increased from 60 to 81%. Figure 4 further demonstrates that the infiltrating floodwater resulted in an increase in NO3 – concentration between 1 and 3 m within the sandy loam textured soil, but a decrease elsewhere. Within the channel itself , lower nitrate and NO3 – :Clratio are predicted, suggesting higher rates of denitrification . Overall, the model results indicate that an average of 37% of the NO3 – concentration is denitrified in the SaSi case 60 days after flooding, with 35% denitrification occurring in the sandy loam matrix and 40% occurring within the silt loam channel. Furthermore, the silt loam channel has lower carbon and higher Fe+3 concentrations similar to the homogenous silt loam column again suggesting the importance of both heterotrophic and chemolithoautotrophic denitrification in these finer textured sediments. In comparison to the SaSi case, calculated water saturation and O2 profiles were markedly different between the homogenous silt loam column and the silt loam with sandy loam channel under steady state conditions . In particular, the sandy loam channel has lower calculated water content than the homogenous silt loam column . Further, greater gas flux within the channel resulted in 11-19% higher O2 concentration that penetrated deeper into the vadose zone as compared to the homogeneously textured column. NO3 – concentration are also estimated to penetrate deeper into the vadose zone in the SiSa case due to the high permeability of the sandy loam channel .

While carbon concentration also penetrated deeper in the vadose zone in the SiSa case, higher calculated O2 concentration did not allow for comparable rates of denitrification below 1 m in this case as observed in the homogenous silt loam profile. This is further confirmed by the lower NO3 – :Clratio, which indicates that transport processes dominate biogeochemical fluxes within this column . With scenario S1, the calculated water content increased to 48% saturation while the O2 concentration remained the same within the channel. The high permeability channel allowed for NO3 – to move faster and deeper into the vadose zone. Overall, calculated denitrification was lower in the SiSa case as compared to the homogeneous textured column. In the simplified ERT stratigraphy, similar patterns were observed such that high permeability channels transported water, O2, and NO3 – faster and deeper into the subsurface than low permeability regions . As a result, concentration profiles showed significant variability across the modeled domain even under steady state conditions. For example, the calculated O2 and NO3 – concentrations are an order of magnitude lower in the shallow vadose zone below the limiting layer than within the preferential flow channel. Higher NO3 – :Clratio within the channel further confirms that preferential flow paths transport higher quantities of dissolved aqueous species without their being impacted by other processes such as denitrification . Other interesting trends are shown by carbon and Fe+2 concentrations within the modeled column. Dissolved carbon in particular is predicted to have a lower concentration in the preferential flow channel and the matrix surrounding the channel than below the limiting layer. In contrast, the Fe+2 concentration is estimated to be higher in the matrix surrounding the preferential flow channel and below the limiting layer . For scenario S1, model results indicate that NO3 – moved through the preferential flow path faster and deeper into the profile, while the limiting layer acts as a denitrification barrier as evidenced by the decrease in NO3 – :Clratio.

The highest denitrification was estimated to occur in the matrix adjacent to the preferential flow channel , followed by intermediate nitrate reduction below the limiting layer and far away from the channel , while the lowest denitrification was estimated to occur within the channel itself . The confluence of higher amounts of C and NO3 – moving into a reduced zone could be the reason that the matrix surrounding the preferential flow channel has higher denitrification rates, while the regions further away from the preferential flow channel have lower amounts of microbially available C and NO3 – . In contrast, residence times are too short in the channel to allow for reducing conditions to develop. The ability of the entire vadose zone to denitrify would depend on the overall surface area of preferential flow paths to the rest of the surrounding matrix in the zone of flooding. Overall, we find that low permeability zones alone or embedded within high flow zones demonstrate highest denitrification rates across all soil profiles. Because the ERT column more closely approximates the heterogenity of our agricultural field site,flower bucket we use this column to demonstrate the impact of hydraulic loading and application frequency on nitrogen fate and dynamics. Simulated profiles of liquid saturation, NO3 – , NO3 – :Cland acetate for the simplified ERT stratigraphy for scenarios S2 and S3 are shown in Figure 9 and A3. It is interesting to note that AgMAR ponding under scenarios S2 and S3 resulted in fully saturated conditions to persist within the root zone only. In comparison, the 68 cm all-at-once application for scenario S1 resulted in fully saturated conditions to occur at even greater depths of 235 cm-bgs . This resulted in the NO3 – front moving deeper into the subsurface to depths of 450 cm-bgs under S1 compared to 150 cm-bgs for scenarios S2 and S3 . Much lower concentrations of NO3 – were found at 450 cm-bgs in scenarios S2 and S3 compared to S1 . Thus, larger amounts of water applied all-at-once led to NO3 – being transported faster and deeper into the profile. Surprisingly, model results indicate 37% of NO3 – was denitrified with scenario S1, while 34% and 32% of NO3 – was denitrified in scenarios S2 and S3, respectively. For scenarios S2 and S3, denitrification was estimated to occur only within the root zone. This was confirmed by NO3 – :Clratio that did not show any reduction with depth for these scenarios. A reason for this could be that acetate was not estimated to occur below the root zone, preventing electron donors from reaching greater depths for denitrification to occur. In contrast, model results for S1 indicate that acetate was leached down to 235 cm-bgs below the limiting layer. Overall, model results indicate that NO3 – did not move as fast or as deep in scenarios S2 or S3; however, the ability of the vadose zone to denitrify was reduced when the hydraulic loading was decreased. The main reason for this was that breaking the application into smaller hydraulic loadings resulted in O2concentrations to recover to background atmospheric conditions faster than the larger allat-once application in scenario S1. In fact, the O2 concentration differed slightly between S2 and S3. Because O2 inhibits denitrification, we conclude that these conditions resulted in the different denitrification capacity across application frequency and duration. In summary, we find that larger amounts of water applied all-at-once increased the denitrification capacity of the vadose zone while incremental application of water did not. However, NO3 – movement to deeper depths was slower under S2 and S3.

Because initial saturation conditions impact nitrogen leaching, we also simulated the impact of wetter antecedent moisture with 15% higher saturation levels than the base case simulation for the ERT profile. Simulated profiles of liquid saturation, NO3 – , NO3 – :Cland acetate for the simplified ERT stratigraphy under wetter conditions are shown in Figure 10. Model results demonstrate that the water front moved faster and deeper into the soil profile under initially wetter conditions for all three scenarios. Within the shallow vadose zone , across AgMAR scenarios, O2 concentrations were similar initially, but began differing at early simulated times, with lower O2 under wetter antecedent moisture conditions than with the base-case simulation. In addition, both oxygen and nitrate concentrations showed significant spatial variation across the modeled column. Notably, nitrate concentrations were 166% higher in the preferential flow channel compared to the sandy loam matrix under wetter conditions, while only 161% difference was observed under the base case simulation . Nitrate movement followed a pattern similar to water flow, with NO3 – reaching greater depths with the wetter antecedent moisture conditions. Under S1, however, at 150 cm-bgs, NO3 – decreased more quickly under the wetter antecedent moisture conditions due to biochemical reduction of NO3 – , as evidenced by the decrease in NO3 – :Clratio, as well as by dilution of the incoming floodwater. In the wetter antecedent moisture conditions, 39%, 31%, and 30% of NO3 – was denitrified under S1, S2, and S3, respectively. For S1, where water was applied all at once, more denitrification occurred in the wetter antecedent moisture conditions, however, the same was not true of S2 and S3 where water applications were broken up over time. This could be due to the hysteresis effect of subsequent applications of water occurring at higher initial moisture contents, allowing the NO3 – to move faster and deeper into the profile without the longer residence times needed for denitrification to occur. Thus, wetter antecedent moisture conditions prime the system for increased denitrification capacity when water is applied all at once and sufficient reducing conditions are reached, however, this is counteracted by faster movement of NO3 – into the vadose zone. Simluations from our study demonstrate that low-permeability zones such as silt loams allow for reducing conditions to develop, thereby leading to higher denitrification in these sediments as compared to high permeability zones such as sandy loams. In fact, the homogenous silt loam profile reported the maximum amount of denitrification occurring across all five stratigraphic configurations . Furthermore, the presence of a silt loam channel in a dominant sandy loam column increased the capacity of the column to denitrify by 2%. Conversely, adding a sandy loam channel into a silt loam matrix decreased the capacity of the column to denitrify by 2%. These relatively simple heterogeneities exemplify how hot spots in the vadose zone can have a small but accumulating effect on denitrification capacity . Note that differences in denitrification capacity maybe much greater than reported here because of increased complexity and heterogeneity of actual field sites when compared to our simplified modeling domains. Another observation of interest for silty loams is the prominence of chemolithoautotrophic reactions and Fe cycling observed in these sediments. In comparison, sandy loam sediments showed persistence and transport of NO3 – to greater depths. A reason for this is that oxygen concentration was much more dynamic in sandy loams, rebounding to oxic conditions more readily than in silt loams, even deep into the vadose zone .

The last two chapters will focus on one project , and the other three will provide a broader account of Brazilian South South cooperation. Here, what is lost in terms of depth is hopefully gained in terms of breadth. Had I focused only on the cotton project, for instance, I probably would not have had a real notion of the heterogeneity and shifting character of this phenomenon called “Brazilian SouthSouth cooperation”, and might have generalized an experience that turned out to be in fact quite particular, even within Embrapa itself. This is due not only to the way I entered the field, but to the way I left it. In other words, it has to do with the highly politically charged character of the phenomena that I am proposing to describe here . As with other ethnographies of developers, many things – important things – had to be either addressed indirectly or left out of writing altogether for ethical reasons. As Rottenburg remarked, differential access to information is itself part of the game in development networks, so there will always be a potential for interference and even harm by the ethnographer’s “external” gaze.20 My transit from field to desk – a step that, when completed, would normally mean the conclusion of the PhD project cycle – has been therefore shaped by a prospect: the reverse path, from desk back to field. In fact,procona flower transport containers I have had a previous experience with an academic publication going back to the field in a way that was, from my perspective, “unfaithful” to it.

I know already of a couple of field interlocutors who have quoted some of my writings about Brazilian South-South cooperation. This dissertation is therefore not a detached account, but, to use Jensen and Rödje’s Deleuzian-Strathernian idiom, a “specific exploratio[n] of multiple concrete interfaces at which … experimentation with the real takes place” . This way, it can be brought into generative connections with other academic works on similar phenomena, and hopefully also with the field: as these authors have further suggested, “if the relation between the explanation and explained is destabilized and rendered flexible, then one’s ambition cannot be to achieve a more or less adequate ‘matching’ of the two. Instead the aspiration must be to create associations that mutually enrich and reciprocally transform each part of the material” . By thus nurturing this dissertation’s relational potentials vis-à-vis both academia and the field in a direction that I see as productive for both domains, I hope it can be a step towards a more robust representation of / intervention on the emerging practical and discursive interfaces of South-South cooperation. This chapter looks at South-South cooperation as an emergent trend within the international development landscape. What was described in the vignette with which I opened the Introduction is not something one would encounter as frequently, say, even ten years ago. Both Brazil and China have been entertaining cooperative relations with various parts of the African continent since decolonization and even before that, but not with the same extension, purposefulness, systematicity, or visibility of today. And even though many of the processes, institutions, and individual actors engaged in contemporary South-South cooperation did exist previously, I suggest that the interfaces into which they are being brought together since the last decade or so are, indeed, emergent.

This claim is based on Brazil’s recent rise as a provider of cooperation, but the growing body of works on other emerging donors indicate that some of the trends I observed may be more generally shared among them. As virtually all commentators, academic and not, of these proliferating global interfaces remarked, the agents and processes that have been brought together under the rubric of SouthSouth cooperation are multiple, shifting, ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory. South-South cooperation is itself a contested term, not only in academia but in the field: various actors and institutions currently struggle with or against each other to codify it and stabilize their own account of what South-South cooperation is or should be. But in spite of the complexity of stakes and narratives, a claim that has been widely shared by those purporting to speak about, or in behalf of, it in Brazil and elsewhere is that it is something different than the development aid provided by Northern donors and multilateral institutions during the last half-century or so. This claim to difference is found both in self-accounts by emerging donors and in views on them by Northern donors and the recipients of cooperation. Difference may have opposite signals: competition or complementarity, positivity or negativity. Thus, one of the common framings of South-South cooperation has been neoimperialism; in this view, emerging donors would be merely reproducing the rapacious intentions and behaviors of their Northern counterparts, and even more perniciously because couched in a cloak of Third World solidarity. Another option is a negative assessment of emerging donors by those who stand by development aid: that through their heterodox and unaccountable practices, new donors would be jeopardizing the good work achieved by traditional aid thus far. A third perspective, which shares the latter’s sympathy towards traditional aid, views South-South cooperation as an embryonic, incomplete phenomenon, that has yet to catch up with the more mature form of development cooperation found in the global North and in multilateral institutions such as the World Bank or UNDP.

Finally, and closing the circle of this four-legged matrix, critics of Northern development aid may see in emerging donors a hope out of the latter’s neocolonial grasp over the global South. Between these poles, in practice there are multiple hybrids and combinations. During fieldwork, the most prevalent views involved the latter two; rarely did I come across manifestations of the first two among Brazil’s African partners. In Brazil and elsewhere in the emerging global South , even official self-accounts do not always fit squarely in one such options. In its multiple manifestations in the various governmental and nongovernmental arms involved in the provision of South-South cooperation, emerging donors’ views on themselves may also span polar ends: ranging from an oppositional, Third-Worldist discourse that they should remain independent from the North and frame their practices against those of traditional development aid , to a conciliatory, North-friendly narrative that South-South cooperation is here to complement, rather than to replace or oppose, aid delivered by traditional donors. Although my interlocutors in Brasília used to be much more explicit about these kinds of self-accounts than those implementing cooperation activities on the ground, I found more or less coherent versions of these two views among all of them – not rarely, ambivalently combined in the same person. The question of difference between South-South cooperation and its North-South counterpart found in the field also characterizes this dissertation’s engagement with the available literature. In the absence of an ethnographically and theoretically robust body of ethnographic works on emerging donors, this chapter’s privileged academic interlocutors will be studies based on development initiatives led by Northern donors or multilateral agencies. Two mainstream currents will be privileged here: works inspired by Foucault’s notions of discourse and governmentality , and actor-based approaches .The debates prevalent in this literature drew attention to three inter-related analytical domains, which this chapter will approach: historical genealogies of development cooperation; organizational architecture and dynamics; and discourse and de-politicization. Section 1 will sketch a brief historical account of South-South cooperation based on its relations with traditional development aid,procona valencia going back and forth between global scales and Brazil’s more situated standpoint. Against the backdrop of this situated genealogy, Sections 2 will set the terms for a discussion, to be pursued further in this dissertation, about whether, and in which sense, would South-South cooperation imply a re-politicization of a phenomenon marked, according to much of the anthropological literature on development aid, by de-politicization. Section 3 will provide an account of the organizational architecture and dynamics of Brazilian South-South cooperation, based on data collected during fieldwork and on secondary sources.

The chapter will conclude by claiming that this emerging phenomenon calls for an analytics capable of attending to open-endedness, ambivalences and contradiction, as well as to the historical density of particular South-South relations. I suggest that generative insights in this direction may be found in discussions on the postcolonial question in Latin America and elsewhere; the next chapter will put some of these to work with respect to Brazil-Africa relations.Brazil and other emerging donors are hardly newcomers to the international development scene. From its early beginnings, the Western development apparatus has included them, but mostly in the condition of beneficiaries of aid. This experience as recipients is relevant for their current transition to providers of cooperation, but this relation is not a simple one to track empirically . Moreover, South-South cooperation provided by individual countries is never an isolated, unidirectional effort, but part of a broader historical tide that has also included other emerging donors. This is a story about a changing world order, about an emerging multi-polar world that would have outgrown the regulatory shoes crafted by the hegemonic geopolitics that spanned much of the twentieth-century. It is a story told by many narrators, including – and claims to North-South opposition notwithstanding – the international development community itself. How would the story of international development, told by so many in the academic literature , look like from the other side of the North-South hemispheric divide? In historical approaches to South-South cooperation, a common way to begin has been with the emergence of the global development apparatus at large and the “making of the Third World” that ensued . From this perspective, SouthSouth cooperation shares Northern development’s two chief, interrelated historical vectors: the emergence of the global multilateral system in the aftermath of the World Wars, within which developing countries participated initially as subaltern parties and recipients of aid; and decolonization in Africa and Asia, which led to the formation of what would become the Third World. It was not until then that broad-based alignments across what is now best known as the global South could emerge as a formal engagement between independent nation-states. Against this broader historical canvass, Mawdsley singled out more particular “drivers or contexts” in her comprehensive work on emerging donors: “socialism, the NonAligned Movement, the United Nations South-South cooperation initiatives, the oil price rises in the 1970s, and European Union expansion” . The last two have little relevance for the case of Brazil, and in the others, it has participated quite differently than other emerging donors such as China, India, or Russia. A loyal, though at times ambivalent, member of the Western block along with most of Latin America, Brazil has been less permeable to the Cold War juggling for allegiances that marked decolonization in much of Asia and Africa.Cold War geopolitics was, on the other hand, key for understanding the early engagements within and between Asia and Africa during decolonization. Besides the former Soviet Union and China, smaller socialist countries such as Cuba, Vietnam and those in Eastern Europe participated in pioneer experiences of South-South collaboration in various domains, from financial to military, from technical to diplomatic . The non-aligned movement was also a direct outgrowth of Cold War politics, but emerging around a commitment not to align with either of the two blocs. If Harry Truman’s iconic 1949 Point Four program is widely referenced in both the academic and the development literature as marking the birth of international development,the 1955 Bandung Conference is often raised as a key historical landmark for horizontal cooperation between Third World nations.Even if the Conference’s original twenty-nine members – all from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East – were not equally committed to neutralism, they closed ranks firmly around the question of decolonization.Both in Bandung and in its sequel, the Non-Aligned Movement, Brazil and most of Latin America participated only as observers. As independences were gradually achieved and most of the original Bandung and non-alignment leaders eventually left power, the politico-ideological character of early alignments across the nascent Third World gradually gave way to pragmatic drives of a geopolitical and economic order . As will be seen, even if foreign aid was not a major theme in the Non-Aligned Movement, the purchase of the latter’s political language in contemporary South-South cooperation, including in Brazil, is remarkable.

If the potential support is not proportional to revenues, then the tangency will deviate so that the group with more political clout receives lower prices. Both of these situations can deviate from the case of the discriminating monopolist which would charge prices based solely on the relative costs of providing service to each group. Rosen, develop a cooperative game model that examines how coalitions might be built for water markets within a district . This model uses an approach developed by Sexton to assess the voting patterns of agricultural production cooperatives . In this cooperative setting, R&S examine if a policy which maximizes the net benefits fora number of individuals that represents the majority in the district will be chosen over another which maximizes the total net monetary benefits to the members of the district. R&S assume that a single popular vote institution is used to transmit political influence to the district’s board and managers.’ The implicit assumption is that political power is in proportion to the institutional allocation of votes. R&S examined the Imperial Irrigation District-Metropolitan Water District sales transactions and how lID farmers decided to accept or reject various sales terms and revenue allocations. R&S surveyed 31 farmers about their farm operations to estimate the net benefits from alternative trading scenarios. They then created a voter-decision model using a pair-wise voting procedure that simulated farmers’ choices based on the expected net benefits to each individual.

The result was that the policy which would have generated the greatest total benefits to district members-a defacto assignation of water rights to individual land owners before transfer-lost to a policy which gave the greatest net benefits to a majority of eligible voters-a combination of conservation measures to preserve water supplies to farms and a distribution of A useful institutional perspective is to compare how the operations and financing of water districts reflect the principles of cooperatives : these districts provide service “at cost” as non-profit organizations; benefits generally are distributed in proportion to use of the managed resource; returns to equity capital are limited and generally gained through directly-related activities, such as selling irrigated crops; and the district is controlled by the member-users, which meshes with the concept of vertical integration of the water supply with agricultural production. Several advantages exist in the cooperative management of input resources . The joint allocation of resources avoids the transaction costs and risks associated with markettype exchange institution, e.g., post-contract opportunism by a party . By extending or avoiding market power, it can encourage development of asset-specific relationships by removing risk of contract breach . And it provides a mechanism for avoiding, mitigating,25 litre plant pot spreading and sharing risk among members . The internalization of allocation decisions can avoid government interference in the exchange institution, e.g., federal reclamation law acreage limitations . The model presented here builds on the three political-economy models that explain district behavior from different perspectives, but rely on a common assumption. The assumption is that members try to influence district managers to choose management policies that distribute benefits in proportion to political power while maximizing aggregate benefits subject to that constraint.

The district’s objective, acting as a cooperative, is to maximize net benefits to all members, but the non-profit constraint means that the district’s “rents” must be distributed among its members indirectly, perhaps through changes in water rates or allocations. This distribution is the function of political power within the district, measured in terms of voting share in this case. Politically, water districts in California are marked by a variety of governance-selection schemes . Most of these are directed through state general district acts, of which there are 38 types; in addition, over one hundred special-district enabling acts were in place by 1994 . Selection of the governing board may be through a vote of eligible persons or appointment by the county board of supervisors. Eligible voters may be residents of the district and/or property owners. Votes may be counted as one-person/one-vote or be weighted by property acreage or assessed value per acre. California law tends to favor landowners in governance procedures . While the popular vote is predominate in older districts in the Sacramento and east San Joaquin Valleys, the property-weighted scheme has grown in use, especially in the west and south San Joaquin Valley served by the newer state and federal water projects where corporate farms, rather than family-owned farms, are more common . Even older districts have switched to land-owner enfranchisement.’ Each of the districts’ management-selection procedures give different incentives to district members and managers. Economic theory leads to an expectation that an assessed-property-value weighted voting scheme would most closely mimic that of a vertically-integrated firm. Agricultural property values reflect the net returns to crops, and to the degree that water application is correlated with land values, the votes would be allocated in proportion to implicit ownership and utilization of the water resource. However, because land values reflect other factors such as soil type and relative market location, value-based voting should not simply follow the same pattern as that for single-product firms.

District “ownership” shares are not necessarily in direct proportion to the value-added from water application, as would be case in a private enterprise where ownership would be based on output value, not input quantities. Acreageweighted schemes reflect a presumption that the amount of water applied per acre is roughly constant across farms and that marginal land values attributable to water use do not vary substantially across a district. This scheme is less likely to match the profit-maximizing interests of the landowners than value-based methods. A popular-vote method tends to divest the district from a solely profit-maximizing objective. Equitable distribution of benefits from district operations become more important. The interests of individual landowner farmers can diverge from that of the district, e.g. in the extra district sale of water rights. Finally, board-appointed districts represent an interesting enigma. In theory, because the district board supposedly represents the interests of the entire county, the decision-making process for the district should be quite divergent from maximizing the profits of those receiving water supplies. However, these agencies are relatively obscure except to those directly impacted, and these boards more likely are “captured” by their customers and reflect their informally-transmitted desires. In summary, it is evident that the motives for the districts can be quite different than the classic assumption of “profit-maximization. ” The various governance rules used by different types of districts, such as voting eligibility and weighting, can undermine some of the principles in cooperative management in achieving efficiency. Stated simply, managers are likely to distribute benefits from operations of the district in proportion to the political strength of its members rather than to economic contribution. Reliance on popular vote rather than property-weighted vote can create a wedge between those defined as members versus users, and benefits may be rebated on a basis different from use. These benefits might extend beyond simply delivering water to reassigning responsibility for water rights, deciding if water sales need approval to protect certain interests within the district, and setting district charges and taxes to achieve economic goals other than efficiency. In general, we might expect if the votes are distributed in proportion to the value of agricultural land,30 litre plant pots bulk then the district will act to maximize the value to landowners. If on the other hand, the electoral selection process uses a one-person/one-vote rule, we might expect that the district will attempt to maximize the value of water-related economic activity regardless of its ties to the land. These action can include maintaining the water resource for tenant farmers who do not hold title to the land but may have significant fixed investments in their farm, and considering local farm-service businesses if they are eligible to vote. An assessed-value-weighted voting scheme appears more likely than a popular-vote system to mimic the prototypical “firm” in economic modeling due to the closer correlation between the governance process and the distribution of benefits from water use. Water sales tend to benefit landowners because the districts’ rights are most frequently tied to the land. Thus, we expect property-weighted districts to be more receptive to selling into a water market than districts with other types of governance structures.

Using some assumptions about how the motives for various district members might differ, we can build a model that assesses how the various political structures might influence the districts’ management decisions. In a property-based voting system, we can assume that the preferred policies will tend to lead to accrual of district benefits in land values. For the popular vote structure, we must identify a proxy for those actions that target benefits towards water related activities. As the voting structure moves away from being directly proportional to the value of water use, we might find that the district’s manager will pursue policies that benefit non-landowners. Landowners are more likely to be focused on the bottom line=-for example, which generates more revenues per acre, growing crops or selling the water. On the other hand, tenant farmers require water to work their land-they are unlikely to receive payment for water sold by the landowner through a district. Local businesses also rely on farming activity, not just income flows to local landholders that might result from water sales. In a popular-vote system, the district may choose to both limit outside water sales so as to maintain farming activity, and to price water in a way that maximizes other related economic activity, e.g., fertilizer and equipment sales. Observing the former is difficult when water markets do not exist for many other reasons such as state policy. However, we may be able to find a suitable proxy for the latter.In the case of tenant farmers, they may be reluctant to plant high-value, water-saving crops due to uncertainty about the their tenure on the land. Orchard crops require several years before they reach maturity and must produce for up to two decades to recover the initial investment. Tenants tend to show higher discount rates than owners, leading to less investment in resource-conserving technologies that are capital intensive . More efficient irrigation technologies generally require sunk investment that can be lost by a tenant if the landowner takes action to stop farming on the land. In response to these risks, tenant farmers would be more likely to grow water-intensive field crops with less-efficient irrigation technologies. To support these practices, the district would lower the per unit price of water so that higher application rates do not cause higher costs, and rely on other revenue sources such as per-acre fees or taxes and electricity sales. Higher property taxes have the added advantage for tenants that the elasticity of demand for land limits the incidence of the tax on rents, i.e., landlords must absorb part of the tax in their rents to stay competitive in the agricultural land market. The existence of sharecropping arrangements reinforces this tendency because landowners often must pay the delivered water charge, which comes out of their rent earnings. Local businesses may prefer two types of outcomes. The first is that crops be grown that require a high level of purchased inputs, e.g., fertilizer or equipment. Field crops generate less employment per acre-foot of water than other crops , which might imply that other local inputs such as farm equipment are utilized to a higher degree in production. The second is that business activity remain at a fairly constant or growing level, and that it be of the same nature year-to year . This gives businesses a greater assurance that they will recover their investment in equipment, knowledge and good will. To serve both of these desires, the district will tend to establish pricing structures that do not penalize water use, particularly if the water is for long-established crops. Again, this perspective encourages support for a two-part pricing tariff in which the per water unit charge is relatively small compared to the fixed or property-based portion.This is done in a broad framework that encompasses a large number of districts. For this reason, the model developed here takes the perspective of a district as the decision-making unit. In this way, we can draw inferences about a broad range of districts while controlling for other factors that may influence their behavior, e.g., source of water, dominant crop type, the types of farming operations.

Oh et al. showed that US consumers are willing to pay higher prices if the fruit were grown locally in a wild friendly farming way that conserve birds.Birds can also play a detrimental role in agroecosystems, specially species of blackbirds , cardinals , doves and parakeets . These species can take advantage of the concentration of food resources in agricultural fields causing reduction in yields .The degree of crop damage may be related to the type of crop grown and other habitat features. For example, in Argentina monk parakeets were found to prefer sunflower instead of corn . According to Fuller-Perrine and Tobin major grape damage in North American vineyards is caused by European starlings , American crows , House finches and Common grackles . Somers and Morris reported that grape damage in Canadian vineyards was related mainly to the presence of the exotic European starling that were found in flocks from 5-200 individuals/daily, although some other native birds were also found but in reduced numbers and just a few times during the season. The same study showed that American crows were also found in large numbers but they did not forage in vineyards. There is spatial localization of bird grape consumption, where upper vine tiers and vineyard edges exhibited more damage than lower tiers and grapes growing at the center of the vineyard . In California, bird damage was estimated to cause profit loss in nuts of 9.6%, in grapes of 9%,best grow pots in berries of 5.7%, and in fruit orchards of 5% . Different techniques have been employed in order to reduce the damage caused by birds to crops.

Berge et al. reported that one effective method was the utilization of electronic devices that emit alarm sounds and distress calls that drive off birds. Although netting the crops was the most effective method to avoid bird damage, it is expensive. The use of nets that cover grapes was proposed as an effective way to control bird grape consumption , but other studies did not find this method to be as effective . Baldwin et al. reported that the most common methods used to avoid bird damage in California were frightening devices, exclusionary devices, and shooting.Agriculture has transformed nearly 40% of the earth’s surface , causing direct effects on wildlife populations, among them birds. Intensive agriculture is considered one of the main threats to biodiversity . Agricultural intensification has been linked with wildlife decline . For example, Karp et al. found in tropical agroecosystems that beta diversity is reduced by 40% under intensive agriculture.Implications of land use change are related not only to habitat loss, fragmentation and lack of connectivity in the agricultural matrix, but direct impacts on species. Global vertebrate extinction has increased significantly since the rise of industrial society when compared to historic and prehistoric times . This process of “defaunation” corresponds not only to a loss of species but also to shifts in species composition, function and interactions that impact the provision of ecosystem services and human well-being . Land use change is one of an interacting group of drivers of extinction . A worldwide multi-taxon study reported strongly negatively impacts on composition and diversity of species by land conversion from primary vegetation to agricultural landscapes, forest plantations, and urban areas . In a global analysis of local diversity affected by increased human population and land use change scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Newbold et al. showed that by the end of the century the within-the same land use of the most impacted habitats species richness will be reduced by 76.5% on average, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefied richness by 40.3% of 47 taxonomic terrestrial groups .

These impacts are more likely to disproportionally occur in countries with high biodiversity but economic poverty although this projection could change if there is sufficient social pressure to revert trends . For example, in Mexico the rate of crop expansion over native grasslands/shrubland in the Chihuahua desert, negatively impacted the overwintering habitat of 28 migratory species in North America . Pan-tropical bird occurrence and abundance decreases along a anthropogenic land use intensity gradient compared to undisturbed habitats . In Germany, models predict that conversion from agriculture to bio-fuel production in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will have negative effects on biodiversity. A loss of 10% of the present farmland bird population by 2050 is estimated with expansion of bio-fuel monocultures . In another case study of land use change and bio-energy crops, Everaas et al. modeled the impact on bird breeding of changes from current farms to bio-energy monoculture crops, and reported negative impacts for the majority of species analyzed, suggesting that biodiversity impacts of the spread of intensive monocultures in Germany cannot be mitigated only by conserving 10% of land surface set aside within farms, a current European agro-scheme practice.Under current global scenarios of land use change and scaling rates of per capita consumption, reconciling agricultural production and biodiversity conservation goals is a priority . Different approaches have been proposed in order to achieve these goals. One of the most debated questions is how can we best produce crops to enhance food security while conserving natural areas . Land sharing and land sparing strategies as well as a combination of both have been proposed . The land sharing approach proposes agroecology as a strategy to spatially, temporally, and biologically diversify farms and to increase the value of the agricultural matrix for wildlife habitat . This approach values the relationship of humans with nature and integrates traditional knowledge into management of agroecosystems .

The main contention of the land sharing approach is that low yields from non-intensive agriculture will promote agricultural expansion detrimental to natural areas . However, this yield gap argument has been contested by Ponisio et al. by meta-analysis showing that diversification of organic agriculture can reduce the yield gap between conventional and organic agriculture from ~19% to ~8%. Land sparing proponents have favored high agrochemical input levels aimed at enhancing crop yields and argue that with high production in target crop areas, natural areas land surface will be spared from conversion to crop production . However, current agrochemical use can impact non-target wildlife species. For example pesticide applications in arable farms decrease arthropods that are consumed by Yellowhammer in the reproductive season, negatively impacting their breeding performance . Use of highly toxic pesticides have a direct effect on bird population in US grasslands . Intensive systems proposed by land sparing proponents are characterized by low levels of biodiversity and low heterogeneity of agricultural landscapes . Monocultures can affect the bird species guild in different ways and deplete bird diversity . The land sparing approach assumes that current natural areas will be preserved by preventing further land use conversion to agriculture, but this theoretical assumption does not always hold due to market-driven economic incentives ,plants in pots ideas that promote land use changes linked to the expansion of bio-fuels and land-grabbing initiatives . A third approach for biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes proposes an integrated strategy where elements of land sparing and land sharing can be useful for conservation, depending on factors such as the levels of fragmentation, the socio-political conditions, and the level of previous disturbance of the environment . For example, spatial prioritization for conservation in South America shows that when the top 17% of priority areas were analyzed, the land sharing alternative resulted in a better conservation outcome than the land sparing alternative , although in some areas a mixed strategy better matched conservation priorities . In southeastern Australia, Michael et al. found that land sharing strategies were successful for birds, many of which are of conservation concern. However, land sharing had limited effects on conservation of other vertebrates , suggesting that mixed alternatives should be explored .Natural ecosystems provide irreplaceable biotic and abiotic conditions for birds, in particular for highly specialized forest-dependent birds, pollinators birds, migratory species, and endemics . Forest patches and fragments can contribute to higher bird diversity within the agricultural matrix and increase ecosystem services provided by birds . In Madagascar, Martin et al. compared a biological corridor of native vegetation and the surrounding agricultural matrix and found higher species richness in the agricultural mosaic of crops than in the corridor. In particular, some functional groups such as carnivores, terrestrial and sallying insectivores, and granivores were significantly more abundant within the agricultural mosaic, although the majority of these species were generalists and the endemic species remain associated to forest.

It should be emphasized that the agricultural mosaic is defined as a complex diversified system of different crops, where scattered trees, small forest patches, and other secondary habitats support various species. In a fragmented native forest in southern Chile, Carneiro et al. found that isolated native trees supported the abundance of the endemic parakeet within agricultural landscapes. Scattered trees provide key resources for refuge, roosting, nesting, feeding and connectivity within agroecosystems . Riparian corridors within a mosaic of low intensity managed crops provided significant habitat and connectivity for two forest specialist frugivorous birds in Costa Rica . Mangnall and Crowe found in South Africa that retaining native vegetation within a landscape with arable crops could increase bird species richness in comparison with monoculture crops. In the agricultural landscapes of the US Midwest, fragment size of riparian forest was positively related with the occupancy by Neotropical migratory bird species and species richness Forest edges represent ecotones between agroecosystems and native vegetation. These transition zones can host different bird species. In the North American Corn Belt Best et al. , reported that abundance of birds was higher along forest edges adjacent to corn fields in comparison with grassland edges or the center of cornfields. The same study, also stablished that bird abundance decreased in larger corn fields , which fits the patterns of land intensification suggested by Sauerbrei et al. . Similar results were recovered by Terraube et al. , who reported that the bird abundance of insectivores, under story gleaners, resident and migratory birds, cavity nesters and under story nesters increased in the interior of forest edges. Floristic composition and habitat structure were relevant for bird abundance and composition within the forest edges . Ecological and biological traits as well as natural history of different birds influence the adaptability of the different species to anthropogenic environments. For example, Figure 1 shows a number of different species enhanced by agricultural land cover in central Chile, where species composition changed between crop types but also between seasons . Examples of these varying associations of birds with crops, agricultural land cover, management, and ecosystem type are summarized in Table 1.Some bird species have a direct relationship with pastures and are considered grassland obligates, thus depending on agricultural management for their conservation . Cattle stocking at high density directly decrease habitat quality and influence the abundance of arthropods in prairie systems, which in turn influence the availability of prey for insectivorous birds . In a grazing experiment in Florida , Willcox et al. found that along with the loss of structural diversity in more intensively managed grasslands, total richness and abundance of birds decreased in monoculture grassland, although analysis by subgroups showed that some increased with the grazing intensity. Grasslands can also provide alternative feeding habitats, as in the case of the Austral Thrush in central southern Chile. Austral thrushes are considered frugivorous forest birds that, due to conversion of forest to grassland for cattle, were favored by the increase in soil annelids which complement their diet when fruit sources are scarce due to seasonal variation . In the case of the native grasslands of the southern cone of South America, the Pampas, land use change has converted most of the Pampas to rangeland or croplands . In the Pampas, vegetation structure was the main driver of the bird community composition . In terms of grazing pressure, low rates of nest destruction were found in Canada, although the nest destruction was positively correlated with grazing pressure . Silvopastoral systems combines grazing lands with trees and can be considered within the agroecological strategies of improve the agricultural matrix to support biodiversity . In Spain and Portugal ancient cork oaks known as “dehesa” and “montado” forest respectively, are used for different purposes but also can provide biodiversity and ecosystem services . In a “montado” systems, silvopastoral areas with higher heterogeneity supported high richness of bird guilds .

To draw these conclusions, we need to recall the conditions under which the model predicts conflict to occur. First, the model suggests that conflict is likely if aid causes a large shift in the balance of power between governments and insurgents. It should therefore be possible to avoid conflict by making sure that development projects do not affect this balance of power. One way of achieving this is to cooperate with both governments and insurgents in designing the project and delivering the aid. An example of this approach is a recent cooperation of Japan’s International Cooperation Agency with the MILF in extending aid to parts of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. However, while cooperating with insurgents can be a successful strategy in some cases, there are many contexts in which it may not be feasible or ethical. In these cases, we turn to the second condition under which our model predicts conflict: if insurgent attacks have a large negative effect on the probability that the project will be successful. This suggests that violence can be minimized by focusing aid on a small number of projects and heavily defending them. This would make it harder for insurgents to sabotage the projects and thus help deter violent attacks. In addition, it may be desirable to weaken insurgents’ capacity before the start of the project by military means, following a “clear, hold, build” strategy. While more research on the precise mechanism through which development projects cause conflict is needed, our research shows that by combining careful empirical and theoretical analyses,large plastic garden pots we can identify the causal effects of development interventions and use this information to draw conclusions for development policy.It has been over 30 years since China abandoned its large communal farms. Each “farm” had thousands of workers, assigned to production brigades.

The communes were run by inefficient and corrupt top-down management, and state monopolies procured farm production at fixed prices. The communal farming system was a complete disaster, underscored by the 1959–61 famine when an estimated 30 million Chinese residents starved to death. The communes were broken up in the late 1970s in favor of small, family-run plots with profit incentives tied to production and market-determined prices. The economic reforms that started in China’s agricultural sector in the late 1970s then spread to other parts of the economy and we all know the rest of the story. China has enjoyed very strong income growth and has emerged as a main driver of global economic growth. Deng Xiaoping moved China from a top-down planned economy to a market economy, and the results have been nothing short of phenomenal.Today, China produces 18% of the world’s cereal grains, 29% of the world’s meat, and 50% of the world’s vegetables. This success makes China the world’s largest agricultural economy, and it ranks as the largest global producer of pork, wheat, rice, tea, cotton, and fish. In fact, the value of China’s agricultural output is twice the U.S. total. See Figure 1 for China’s share of world food production across various commodities. With only 9% of the global sown area, today China produces about 20% of the world’s food—a miraculous turnaround since the struggles faced by China’s agriculture in the 1960s and 1970s under the collective farms. Despite predictions that China was going to starve the world, instead China has been able to balance its domestic grain supply and demand, with the exception of oil seeds.

Will this continue? After joining the WTO in 2001, China has played a greater role in world agricultural trade. China dramatically increased its trade dependence in agriculture, and it is currently the fifth largest exporter and fourth largest importer of agricultural products in the world. China’s substantial increase in fruit and vegetable production was a major factor behind its agricultural export growth. With imports growing faster than exports during the post-WTO accession years, China reversed its long-time status as a net agricultural exporting country to that of a net importing country since 2004. As expected, with liberalized trade and market forces at work, China increased its imports of land-intensive agricultural products. Most of the increased imports came from soybeans and cotton. Today cotton and soybeans account for 43% of China’s agricultural imports, a very concentrated portfolio. China is the world’s largest importer of soybeans and cotton, accounting for 60% of global soybean imports and 40% of cotton imports. China’s agriculture is supporting a population of over 1.3 billion people today, compared to about 500 million in 1950, on a relatively fixed agricultural land base and shrinking water supply. The tale of China’s agricultural success in meeting this challenge is two-fold. First, China has enjoyed very strong agricultural productivity growth, measured as the difference between growth of agricultural output and the growth of all inputs aggregated. Second, China has poured on farm inputs. China’s annual agricultural productivity growth rate was 2.5% from 1970– 2007, even higher than Brazil’s and much higher than in the United States . At the same time, China’s farmers have intensively applied more chemicals and fertilizer to their crops to try and overcome the limitations of scarce land and water. In the 1980s and 1990s agricultural production in China grew by 5.3% per year, much higher than in other populous countries such as India and Indonesia. Most of this growth came through yield gains rather than through increases in planted area. China boosted grain production by more than 50% during this time period. Grain production in 2010 was 80% above the 1978 level.

Per capita food supply in China rose from 2,328 calories per day in 1980 to 3,029 calories in 2000, a 30% increase in just 20 years. China’s chemical fertilizer use has roughly doubled over the past two decades while pesticide use and mechanized inputs have increased even faster. China has slightly less agricultural land than the United States, but its chemical fertilizer use is now double that of the United States. China uses about one-third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer and 31% of phosphate fertilizer on its 9% share of the world’s agricultural land. Unfortunately, the strong growth in chemical input use has resulted in considerable agricultural pollution.Let us not forget that China remains a developing country. In China 36% of the population still lives on less than $2 per day and most of these poor are in the countryside. Even though economic reform started in agriculture, non-agricultural economic growth has left the farm population to fall behind. The image we have of the new affluent Chinese consumers buying Gucci handbags in modern boutique shops does not apply to the nation’s farmers. China’s farms remain very small and the work remains highly labor-intensive and difficult. Almost 300 million workers remain in agriculture,raspberry plant pot and most farmers remain very poor, with per capita incomes about $1,000/yr—less than one-third of the average urban income. The proportion of agriculture in China’s GDP dropped from 28.1% in 1978 to 11.8% in 2010. Yet 38% of the labor force remains in agriculture , a ratio that is far too high given China’s level of development. As a result, labor productivity in agriculture remains low. Raising farmers’ incomes is one of the major policy challenges facing China’s policy makers today. This may require relaxing a long-standing policy goal of food self-sufficiency. National food security goals require a very high grain self-sufficiency percentage, and farmers typically earn less money growing grain compared to other higher-valued crops. Between 1981 and 2005, the percentage of people living below the poverty line dropped from 84% to 16.3%. This was part of the success story. But the challenge is that China’s Gini coefficient grew from 29 in 1990 to 42 in 2007, reflecting a strong increase in income disparity within a relatively short period of time. Income inequality in China is now similar to that in Mexico, but the irony is that China is a communist country.Income growth and urbanization, and the resulting changes in dietary patterns, particularly in developing countries like China, have important implications for food consumption and agricultural trade. Urbanization leads to a decrease in calorie consumption per person, but greater demand for processed food products. Low-value staples, such as cereals, account for a larger share of the food budget of the poor while high-value food items, such as dairy and meat, are a larger share of the food budget of the rich. So rising incomes are usually associated with increased demand for meat, horticultural, and processed food products.

In turn, increased demand for meat will result in increased demand for feed grains and protein meals. For instance, China’s per capita incomes have more than tripled in the past 20 years and, as a result, some dramatic changes in food consumption have taken place in that country. Per capita meat consumption has more than doubled in the last 20 years in China. Meeting increased demand for meat and other dietary changes will continue to be a challenge for China. This will require more water supplies because it takes about 2,000 liters of water to produce 1kg of wheat, compared to about 16,000 liters of water for 1kg of beef. Today, much of China’s agriculture is very irrigation-dependent. With 20% of the world’s population and 7% of its fresh water, China faces important water issues. Agriculture uses 76% of the country’s water, but it is facing greater competition from urban areas. In the relatively dry northern region, the water availability per person is only a quarter of that in the south. Yet the north is where almost half China’s population lives, and where most of its maize, wheat, and vegetables are grown. Groundwater is intensively used in the north, but not in the south. This means that water efficiency must be improved in the north. Pricing of surface water and groundwater could play a greater role in the allocation. China’s farmland essentially belongs to local governments, a holdover from the commune era. This means that land cannot be bought or sold by farmers, only leased. This raises a number of policy issues with respect to the transition of China’s agricultural sector towards a more modern industry. Lack of land ownership discourages investment and consolidation into larger and more efficient farms. Land-use rights are now attached to village residency, discouraging permanent out-migration from agriculture and keeping farm incomes low.Agriculture is arguably the sector of the economy most directly exposed to climate and thus likely to be affected by climate change. To date, however, there exists considerable disagreement about the magnitude of potential impacts. Disagreement stems from differences in both methodology and empirical measurement. The recent paper by Deschˆenes and Greenstone , henceforth DG, is an important contribution to the climate impact literature and to the debate on economic methodology. DG’s findings and conclusions hinge on two key factors: how they navigate the distinction between climate and weather, and the metrics they use for measuring both weather effects and economic impacts. In this paper we revisit DG in an attempt to reconcile differences between their work and our own. Climate scientists emphasize the distinction between weather and climate. Weather is what occurs at a particular moment in time – typically, precipitation and temperature. Due to natural variability, weather fluctuates from one hour to another, one day to another, one month to another, and one year to another. Climate, by contrast, is the long-run pattern of weather over time. To climate scientists, therefore, climate change has a very different significance from weather change. A change in weather is inherently short-run, while climate change is a shift in the long-run pattern. Because these are different phenomena, it is not surprising that they also have different economic implications. Differences between weather and climate have implications for the choice of an economic metric. When dealing with climate, the appropriate metric is some measure of the long-run profitability of using the land for agriculture – the equivalent of the permanent income from farming. This is an economic rather than an accounting measure, and it generally has to be inferred through some proxy.