According to scholars who fall into what might be called the “demography is destiny” school, such as Mendras and Daugbjerg , now that farmers no longer have the numbers to be crucial and/or decisive alliance partners, they have lost political relevance. This political decline is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the rise and fall of agrarian parties. As their core population declined, however, these parties faded into irrelevance or transformed into centrist or environmental parties . For example, Sweden’s once powerful Agrarian Party, founded in 1910, was a key source of support for governments headed by the Social Democratic Party in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. As Sweden’s rural population shrank, however, the party’s political relevance declined dramatically. In 1958, the Agrarian Party was renamed the Centre Party, and its traditional rural and agricultural interests were replaced by a platform promoting environmental and green interests. Moreover, the Social Democrats found new coalition partners, and the Centre Party was cast into the opposition. In short, farmers used to have political influence because they were a large voting bloc. With their decline in population, however, farmers no longer had the numbers to attract coalition partners. As opportunities for alliances diminished, so too did the farmers’ ability to influence policy outcomes. The demographic perspective would expect CAP support to decline with farmer population. Yet such accounts ignore past examples of small group influence. Gershenkron for example,vertical farming hydroponic describes how landed elites in interwar Germany , despite accounting for only a sliver of the population, continued to steer the nation’s agricultural policy for nearly a century.

The low price of grain from Eastern Europe and the United States threatened the livelihood the Junkers, who operated large, grain-growing estates. However, the Junkers combined manipulation of the peasants and an alliance with heavy industry to protect agricultural subsidies, preserve an authoritarian social order prior to World War I, and undermine the Weimar Republic in the interwar period . The case of the Junkers demonstrates that, even when its members represent only a small percentage of the population, a group can be politically influential. While the “demography is destiny” literature correctly identifies population decline as a challenge for farmers and farmer syndicates, it does not fully consider the possibility that farmers, like other small groups in the past, may be able to overcome demographic decline and continue to exert out sized influence. It assumes that farmers and their organizations are static, and cannot evolve in order to maintain their political influence as their numbers wane. Yet CAP spending figures indicate that farmers continue to exercise political influence. Declining numbers may have changed the ways in which farmers exercise power, but they have not eliminated that power.A second set of arguments claims that the rapidly changing global economic climate is overtaking farmers and blunting their ability to shape policy , Daugbjerg , Frieden and Rogowski , Hennis , Keohane and Milner , and Potter and Tilzey. Scholars in this camp contend that in an increasingly globalized world, groups that are globally uncompetitive and oppose liberalization, such as farmers, will become marginalized in policy debates. Lower costs of international transportation, along with global liberalization reforms, has made trade cheaper and more prevalent. The effects of maintaining closed markets in a globalized world grow while sheltering agriculture behind a wall of tariff barriers, income supports, and inflated prices becomes increasingly costly. Thus, as countries around the world open their markets and lower barriers to trade, those segments of business, industry, and labor that stand to gain from liberalization have increased incentives to mobilize for reform.

Under these conditions, the protectionist demands of the much smaller farming population should be overwhelmed by the growing pro-liberalization preferences of consumers, industry, and business. In addition, while the farmer population continues to shrink, the expense placed on consumers and tax payers, like having 40% of the EU budget go to less than 5% of the population, appears increasingly egregious. Globalization arguments would predict a dramatic reduction in CAP budget and a sharp turn away from protectionist policies and towards market-liberal measures. Yet outcomes of major trade negotiations do not fully match this prediction. Although trade liberalization has occurred, CAP spending commitments remain high, and farmers have successfully defended their subsidies. Consider the Uruguay Round of the GATT. The UR, launched in 1986, was supposed to be concluded in 1990, but delays in the agricultural negotiations resulted in no conclusion being reached until 1994, doubling the expected length of the round. What is more, the central goal of the UR was to reduce subsidies to farmers. Yet, due to the efforts of farmers and their representatives, an agreement could only be reached and the round concluded once precisely the sort of payments targeted for elimination were redefined so as to be exempt from GATT/WTO regulations. Despite accounting for only a sliver of both the workforce and GDP, farmers stared down industry and services, delayed GATT negotiations for four years, and ultimately prevented reformers from cutting farmer subsidies. Farmers held the GATT agreement for ransom, ensuring the protection and continuation of their subsidies before allowing a deal to be reached. As the example demonstrates, farmers’ interests are not doomed to being swept aside or overwhelmed by the preferences of consumers, business, and industry. A consistent pattern has emerged whereby trade policy movement in a liberalizing direction has been accompanied by hefty side payments and/or policy concessions to farmers. Farmers have essentially been paid to accept liberalization.

Traditionally, CAP programs paid farmers based on how much they produced, offered guaranteed purchase prices, and assured the purchase, storage, and dumping of excess product. The programs were all labeled by the GATT/WTO as trade distorting. Instead of simply eliminating these trade distorting programs and forcing European farmers to compete on the open market, CAP programs were reconfigured so that farmer incomes could still be maintained, but in ways that did not violate WTO rules on trade distortion. Specifically,vertical planters for vegetables the CAP moved from supporting agricultural prices to subsidizing farmer incomes. The CAP became GATT compatible, but at no loss to farmers. Ultimately, while scholars in the globalization school expect farmers to be eclipsed in the move toward the market, in reality, contemporary farmers have been able to adapt to this trend, making market liberalizing measures compatible with the preservation of farmer incomes. Farmers are not prisoners of globalization; they are agents who have shaped the character of globalization in ways that protect their interests and preserve their incomes.A third set of arguments contends that farmer preferences are at odds with those held by the general public. Scholars including Berry , Inglehart , Kitschelt ; Montpetit , and Yearly describe the rise of a so-called post-materialist culture since the late 1970s. Post-materialism refers to a shift in political values and norms away from traditional political priorities such as economic growth and social order to new concerns, notably environmental protection, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights. Green parties have typically taken on the mantle of advancing these goals. Green parties have been successful politically and in many cases have come to replace communist parties as key alliance partners for Social Democrats and Socialists. Such “red-green” alliances have governed a number of European countries, including Germany , France , Finland , and Norway . In addition, Inglehart notes, “in recent decades, social class voting has declined and now shares the stage with newer post-materialist issues that emphasize lifestyle issues and environmental protection.” This change in how voters mobilize and vote should threaten farmer interests, with politicians targeting voters via issue area, like women’s rights and environmental protection, as opposed to making direct appeals to social classes, like farmers. The increased salience of environmental and animal welfare issues is particularly threatening to the CAP. European consumers have become more concerned about the quality of food production, with an increased interest in animal welfare and good environmental practices.

Eurobarometer surveys reveal that European consumers want a CAP that produces food that is safe to eat and that is not harmful to the environment. While 90% of respondents in a 2001 Eurobarometer poll expressed a belief that the CAP should “ensure that agricultural products were healthy and safe”, only 36% thought that “food bought could be safely eaten” . As the survey indicates, there is a vast disparity between what the public thinks the CAP should be doing and what it believes the CAP actually does. The traditional CAP is widely regarded as bad for both the environment and animal welfare. By guaranteeing high prices and a market for all output, the CAP incentivized farmers to produce as much food as possible, no matter the cost to the environment. A major side effect of this policy was the heavy use of pesticides and nitrates to maximize yields. A quantity-oriented approach was also at odds with animal-welfare standards. Given that the central elements of the CAP run contrary to increasingly influential post-materialist values, scholars in this school would predict a decline in support for and commitments to the CAP. Arguments in the post-materialist camp predict that policies that promote harmful environmental practices will be gradually eliminated, notwithstanding the opposition of farmer organizations. A further implication of these arguments is that policies will be enacted that protect the environment and/or guarantee the provision of food that is both safe and of a high quality. For these authors, farmers will be forced to go along with a shift from quantity-based production to quality-based production at considerable economic cost. The CAP has certainly felt the pressure of post-materialist values. Over the past several rounds of CAP reform, policymakers have striven to “green” European agriculture. New policies that focus on improving environmental practices are not just a threat to farmers, however. Such initiatives have offered opportunities for farmers to obtain more support. In exchange for greater regulation of the way that they farm, farmers have been able to extract subsidies for following “good farming practices,” such as reducing their use of nitrates and pesticides. In other words, farmers have ridden the green wave to more subsidies and income-boosting programs and policies.While many scholars provide compelling accounts of farmer power from the 19th century to the immediate post-war period, explaining contemporary farmer power poses more of a challenge. The reason is that the principal source of influence that the literature identifies for farmers, demographic and economic dominance, no longer exists. My dissertation therefore builds on and updates these arguments in order to provide an understanding of contemporary farmer power. My argument has three parts. The first examines why agricultural policy reform is so difficult. Despite globalization, changing European values, and demographic and economic decline, farmers have remained politically influential. Contemporary farmer power stems from the ability to access politicians on both the left and the right, to manipulate public opinion, to control the policy space, and to leverage the broader importance of food production. Because farmers continue to be powerful actors, technocrats and policymakers must contend with their influence. Another obstacle to agricultural retrenchment is agricultural policy itself. Just as postwar welfare states have been shown by Paul Pierson to have generated their own political support base and locked in certain kinds of social spending, so the CAP has mobilized farmers in defense of agricultural spending. Indeed, for a variety of reasons, cutting agricultural spending may be even more difficult than cutting social spending. The second part of the argument explores the circumstances that may make CAP reform possible. When CAP reform occurs in isolation, as a purely agricultural or budgetary issue, little or no change is possible. Conversely, when CAP reform is part of a broader agenda, such as adding new members to the EU or negotiating global trade agreements, more far-reaching change becomes possible as the introduction of new issues and actors may dilute farmer influence. Even in these circumstances, however, reforms are constructed so as to preserve farmer incomes. Finally, the third part of the argument describes and explains the character of agricultural reform when it does take place. Here again, my work links with the literature on welfare state retrenchment, specifically that of Paul Pierson. I illustrate how CAP reformers use many of the same tactics identified by Pierson as central to the retrenchment of the social welfare state.

Korea is an important export destination for many products and typically ranks among the top six export destinations for California agriculture overall. With lower import barriers that would accompany the KORUS FTA, there is significant potential for expanding California agricultural exports to Korea. Agriculture was at the center of the negotiations and delayed completion of the deal until the very last hour. It also will be at the center of attempts to ratify the agreement in the legislatures of the two countries. In the end, Korea resisted rapid and complete opening of agricultural markets and the United States was not successful in achieving comprehensive free trade in agriculture as soon as possible. These negotiating positions followed from typical pressures on governments to protect weak industries from imports and to support strong exporters. Overall, the agreement provides for gradual elimination of Korea’s high tariffs for most export commodities of interest to California agriculture. Importantly, exceptions include rice, for which a previously negotiated quota is in place and no new market opening was achieved, and fresh citrus fruit, for which high seasonal tariffs that limit shipments of oranges and mandarins will remain. Because its costs are high and U.S. barriers are already quite low, Korean agriculture has no potential to expand its tiny agricultural exports to the United States. We find that U.S. and California agriculture will expand exports to Korea substantially if free trade is allowed. Some of that increase in exports from California would be derived from trade diversion from other exporters, such as Chile, Australia, New Zealand, and China. This diversion follows from the KORUS FTA lowering the net price in Korea of U.S. goods relative to those of suppliers from other countries. In some cases these goods from other countries have tariff advantages now that would be redressed by the KORUS FTA.

Additional exports contribute positively to the California economy,greenhouse benches whether by diversion of other global sources or replacement of local Korean supplies. From a global perspective, trade diversion may reduce global welfare if products from the United States that currently have lower tariffs replace lower cost products from other exporters that would have higher relative tariffs after the KORUS FTA. To better understand the potential for implementation and the likely impacts of the negotiated agreement, this report outlines major characteristics and concerns within Korean agriculture and shows where Korean agriculture is most vulnerable to expanded imports that affect Korean producers negatively. We also point out significant gains to Korean food buyers. By analyzing impacts among Korean farmers and consumers, we can improve understanding of the Korean situation and opposition to the agreement in the legislature. This study provides detailed information on the potential effects of the KORUS FTA for California agriculture on a commodity-by-commodity basis. This helps California agriculture better appreciate and communicate what is at stake for California commodities. The report catalogs agricultural exports from California to Korea commodity by commodity. It also reviews existing trade barriers that limit exports to Korea, considers explicitly the export positions of major competitors, and examines the size of the Korean market for each commodity. This information helps us to assess the degree to which agricultural exports to Korea have been constrained by trade barriers and the potential additional exports that the Korean market can absorb. We provide a detailed market analysis for many important California products. We find that better access to the Korean market would create significant opportunities for dozens of major commodities.

California has the potential to more than double its current exports of about $280 million within a few years and to continue to expand exports as barriers fall gradually on products that are politically sensitive in Korea. For example, lower tariffs and fewer other barriers would allow important export expansions for citrus products, tree nuts, dairy products, beef, grapes and grape products, stone fruits, strawberries, fresh and processed vegetables, flowers and ornamental horticulture, processed tomato products, olives, hides and skins, cotton, and hay. Expanded agricultural output to serve greater demand for California products in Korea will also cause additions to farm employment and expansion of the agricultural economy past the farm gate. The state of the U.S. and global economy in 2009 provides further impetus for encouraging more open international borders for trade. Countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have pledged to resist new trade restrictions and reduce trade barriers to avoid letting the collapse in trade become even more of a drag on economic recovery. The agricultural industries in the U.S. and California are looking for sources of new growth given the decline in domestic demand. Better access to the Korean market could be one source of additional market opportunity for major California commodities.The Republic of Korea1 and the United States signed a free trade agreement on April 1, 2007. Although the bilateral negotiations have been finalized, the agreement must be approved by each country’s legislature in order for implementation of the agreement to take place, but it faces considerable opposition in each country. In the United States, the Bush administration slated passage of the Korean FTA as a major goal for 2008. The Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement has the potential to be a significant demand driver for California agriculture. The Korean economy, comprised of almost 50 million consumers, has been growing rapidly for decades and has per capita income that exceeds those of many European countries and approaches that of Spain.

The United States is already Korea’s top supplier of a broad variety of agricultural products at $3.5 billion in 2007. The United States is the number one supplier to Korea of such farm products as almonds, fresh cherries, hides and skins, poultry, soybeans, corn, and wheat. As a relatively large, relatively high-income country with a well developed food and fiber distribution system, Korea is a major market for agricultural goods of the type produced in California. As the country has become more developed over the past 40 years, Korean agriculture has become less competitive with imports and potential imports. Korea has relatively little arable land per capita and is now a highly urban country with agriculture accounting for only 3% of gross domestic product and about 7% of the population. Korea’s many small farms have relied on high government-protected commodity prices to maintain farm incomes comparable to rapidly improving urban incomes. Nonetheless, the average age of farmers has been rising. And because young people have avoided farming, the farm population has been declining rapidly in number. Despite high import tariffs, tight import quota quantities, and restrictive sanitary and phytosanitary regulations, South Korea has become a major agricultural importer with imported products comprising an increasing share of food consumption expenditures. Korea is an important export destination for many products and typically ranks among the top six export destinations for California agriculture overall. With lower import barriers that would accompany the KORUS FTA, there is significant potential for expanding California agricultural exports to Korea. This bilateral agreement, which lowers tariffs on Korean imports of U.S. products, is expected to help the United States compete against other countries, especially China and Australia, and, as a consequence,plant benches to expand U.S. sales in the Korean market. Agriculture was at the center of the negotiations, delaying completion of the deal until the very last hour. It also will be at the center of attempts to ratify the agreement in the legislatures of the two countries . In the end, Korea resisted rapid and complete opening of agricultural markets and the United States was not successful in achieving comprehensive free trade in agriculture. These negotiating positions followed from typical pressures on governments to protect weak industries from imports and to support strong exporters. Agricultural costs of production are high in Korea and U.S. barriers to imports from Korea are already quite low. Therefore, it is generally accepted that Korean agriculture has no potential to expand its limited agricultural exports to the United States. We fi nd that the significant agricultural effects for California are that U.S. and California agriculture will expand exports to Korea substantially if free trade is allowed. Some of that increase in exports from California would be derived from trade diversion from other exporters, such as Chile, Australia, New Zealand, and China. This diversion follows from the KORUS FTA lowering the net price in Korea of U.S. goods relative to those of suppliers from other countries. In some cases, such goods from other countries have tariff advantages now that would be redressed by the KORUS FTA. Additional exports contribute positively to the California economy, whether by diversion of other global sources or replacement of local Korean supplies.

From a global perspective, trade diversion may reduce global welfare if products from the United States that currently have lower tariffs replace lower cost products from other exporters that would have higher relative tariffs after the KORUS FTA. Because of the size of the Korean economy and the height of pre-existing trade barriers, the KORUS FTA is broadly acknowledged as the most commercially significant free trade agreement the United States has negotiated in nearly twenty years. Several factors underscore the significance for California agriculture of comprehensive and rapidly established free trade with South Korea. First, California agriculture is a major supplier of many fruit, vegetable, and tree nut products. It is also a large supplier of hay, rice, cotton, beef, and dairy products. Second, exports have recently accounted for more than 20% of California agricultural production and are important for the economic success of many commodities . Third, Korea has a large and well-developed consumer base for California agricultural products. Korea has long been an important market for California agriculture even as the leading export commodities have changed over time . Fourth, Korea has high trade barriers for many of the products supplied by California agriculture. Therefore, the potential for expanded imports from California is large. Finally, Korea has little or no potential to increase exports of agricultural products to the United States. Korean domestic prices are high and very few Korean agricultural products could compete successfully in the U.S. market. We find that better access to the Korean market would create significant opportunities for dozens of major commodities. California has the potential to more than double its current exports of about $280 million within a few years and to continue expanding exports as barriers fall gradually on products that are politically sensitive in Korea. For example, lower tariffs and fewer other barriers would allow important export expansions for citrus products, tree nuts, dairy products, beef, grapes and grape products, stone fruits, strawberries, fresh and processed vegetables, flowers and ornamental horticulture, processed tomato products, olives, hides and skins, cotton, and hay. Expanded agricultural output to serve greater demand for California products in Korea will also cause additions to farm employment and expansion of the agricultural economy past the farm gate. The rest of this report builds on these general points to consider more specifically the basis for these broad conclusions. It is important to understand some background information before delving into the details of the agreement and its implications. In Part 1, we provide a general background about the negotiation initiation and process; summarize the nature of the Korean economy, especially in agriculture; and describe the two countries’ trade positions. Understanding pre-existing overall and bilateral trade will help us appreciate the scope of interaction between the two economies, further understand the potential for trade, and see how the KORUS FTA fi ts within the context of Korea’s society, economy, and agriculture. We then turn our attention to California agriculture and its role as an export provider. Part 2 gives a snapshot of California agriculture that focuses on export commodities. Part 3 provides detailed information on how the KORUS FTA eliminates or reduces the trade barriers currently in place for products important for California agriculture. In Part 4, we discuss the impact of free trade on both Korean and California agriculture. We summarize the impacts for key commodities and commodity groups. The final section concludes the report. Much of the report consists of a series of detailed tables and charts that show trade patterns and current Korean trade barriers.

Regardless of the source of N, whether derived from N2 fixation, fertilizer, or other exogenous source, N cycles through soil, and the rate and manner in which it cycles matters fundamentally to its availability and loss . Soil has the capacity to not only provide plant-available N through soil organic matter turnover, but also to buffer its supply to plants— whether internal N or exogenous N—and control the loss of unused N to the environment by storing N as organic matter or binding N in the soil mineral matrix. As a result, accounting for soil N is integral to optimizing N use . Perhaps the single most important impact of the soil N cycle on NUE is the soil’s capacity for helping to match the timing of soil N availability with periods of plant N demand. In natural ecosystems, the presence of diverse plant species having different life histories, including perenniality, means that at least some species will be actively demanding N whenever soil conditions permit N release from soil organic matter. The result is a relatively tight N cycle: when N available for loss is instead taken up by plants, loss is at least partially averted. For example, fertilized perennial biofuel crops lose little-to-no nitrate– N to drainage, yet NO− 3 loss in drainage of fertilized corn is no different from unfertilized soybean . This highlights that a lack of synchrony between crop N demand and soil N availability is the primary reason for environmental N losses. How can the agricultural N flow be managed to improve NUE? The various processes depicted in Figure 1 serve as reminders of the major interventions that can be used as levers to adjust the flow of N through the system in such a way as to minimize inputs and losses while maximizing N capture and output. We held a workshop in 2019 to discuss problems associated with N in different agricultural cropping systems and to examine promising research and development avenues to solve these problems. Four broad areas of needed endeavor were identified: soil N cycling, systems agronomy, BNF,aeroponic tower garden system and plant breeding as shown in Figure 2. Strategies in each of these areas were organized into a matrix from low-to-high risk and low-to high reward .

In the sections below, we review briefly the state-of-the art in these areas, consider current frontiers in R&D, and propose an integrated set of strategies to increase by 2050 global cropping system NUE and protein yield by 50%, while simultaneously reducing N losses from crop production by 50%. As discussed above, N is used most efficiently when its availability in soil is synchronized with crop demand . Nitrogen synchrony is rare and difficult to achieve in annual monocultures typical of most high productivity agriculture. Most grain crops, for example, have a 90–100 day growing season and accumulate biomass and N at a significant rate only for 30–40 days mid-season. In the maize example above, N uptake can reach the astonishing rate of 5 kg N ha−1 day−1 . This high rate is sustained for only 3–4 weeks and it falls to nil quickly. Meanwhile, soil microbial processes that cycle N between various organic and inorganic forms are active whenever soils are not too dry or too cold to support biological activity, i.e., much of the rest of the year. This asynchrony between when N is available and when N is needed creates windows of N loss and is a principal cause of low NUE in most cropping systems . Depending upon cropping system and environment, achieving synchrony can be challenging as a result of variable weather, timing of equipment and labor availability, and other limitations and sources of uncertainty. First, plant N demand can be difficult to predict based on the data available at fertilizer decision time points and possible future weather scenarios. Second, estimating the N-supplying power of the system is difficult, particularly in mesic climates where N inputs from mineralization of soil organic matter and N outputs/losses to denitrification and leaching into groundwater exhibit large variation from year-to-year and field-to-field. Addressing these issues inherent to cropping systems remains challenging. The most commonly used N fertilizers readily dissolve into soil solution as mobile N ions that are subject to loss if not acquired by crops or retained by soils. Low NUE characterizes crop systems where transient or permanent N supply exceeds crop demand ; soil has a low capacity for N retention due to low organic matter content, coarse texture, and/or presence of weathered clay minerals with low ion exchange capacity; and climate and agronomic management promote N loss when there is high rainfall, heavy irrigation, or temporary water logging.

The difficulty in synchronizing N supply and demand is exemplified by mechanized sugarcane cropping, where farmers apply all fertilizer early in the crop season because crop height and summer rain prevent field access later. Sugarcane grows over 10 months or longer. Large pools of soluble N, high rainfall and/or irrigation, and an initial low crop N demand drive N losses from sugarcane soils in the first months . To compensate for this risk, sugarcane farmers in the main producer countries apply, on average, twice as much N fertilizer as is required by the crop . The range of N fertilizer use spans from near perfect use of fertilizer N at 100% , 60% to only 10% . Fertilizer timing with most or all fertilizer applied before the cropping season is also common with maize in the US Corn Belt, where crop height and wet fields can also hamper in-season applications. There are many management options available for increasing NUE through matching N supply with crop demand and thereby mitigating loss of N from agroecosystems. Many tools and best management practices are intended to help farmers apply nutrients in a “4R” management framework—using the right N source at the right rate, right time and in the right place. Basic, or low-tech, approaches involve adjusting timing or rates without needing different equipment. Beyond that, a range of precision N tools that detect chlorophyll and other crop vigor-related measures and agronomic techniques combined with weather forecasting are now available to support improved nutrient management. Spatial synchrony can be as important as temporal synchrony for matching soil N availability to plant demand. This is true both at the plant scale, ensuring soil N is most available close to growing plants, as occurs with furrow mulching and fertilizer banding, and at the field scale, where erosion and other geomorphological processes have created sub-field regions of low fertility. Using satellite images with 30 × 30 m sub-field resolution in 8 M cornfields across 30 Mha of the U.S. Midwest, Basso et al. identified that low-yield sub-field areas covering over half of the region had low NUE , in contrast with high-yield, high-NUE areas . The N losses from low-yield areas could explain a major portion of the average annual 1.12 New fertilizer formulations are a target for improving NUE of crop systems, primarily aiming to slow solubilization and the conversion of fertilizer N to more mobile forms while plant N demand is low. Globally, efforts are accelerating to improve N fertilizers, from nanotechnology formulations to achieve targeted release profiles, to supplying N as part of organic matter to slow the N release . Fertilizers and application technologies are being designed to take the physiological needs of crops as an entry point for fertilizer development . Enhanced efficiency fertilizers are formulations with coatings that consist of polymers or other materials that prevent immediate solubilization,dutch buckets for sale or with added inhibitors to temporarily slow the activity of urease enzymes and that of nitrifying microbes.

Several meta-analyses have reported small, but consistent, positive yield responses to N fertilizers treated with urease inhibitors, nitrification inhibitors, or a combination of both . The variability in yield response to these treatments has been attributed to interactions among genetics, environment, and management . EEFs containing urease inhibitors were successful in paddy rice systems, increasing average NUE by 29% and reducing N losses by 41%, while the various types of EEFs in wheat and maize systems are generally less effective , and yield responses may be site-specific . However, meta-analyses have also exposed possible pollution swapping when applying nitrification inhibitors, where a decrease in N2O emissions coincides with an increase in NH3 volatilization . Of additional concern is that some enzyme inhibitors can be transported to surface waters and non-biodegradable polymer coatings can impact soil biota such as earthworms . Alternative slow release fertilizer formulations are being developed, for example with biodegradable polymers that soil microbes can consume . Crop N physiology must be considered in all N fertilizer regimes. While NO− 3 and NH+ 4 are considered the main N sources for crops, all plants that have been examined can use organic N . The exact proportion of inorganic and organic N acquired by plants remains unknown , but the presence of soluble organic N in soils is well-documented. Soluble organic N is associated with reduced losses, which might motivate the development of alternative, organic N-based fertilizers, nutrient management, and crop breeding . Comparing the fluxes of inorganic and organic N forms in differently fertilized sugarcane soil, the estimated root intake rate for amino acids matched soil fluxes, while fluxes of NH+ 4 and NO− 3 exceeded the root intake rate . To maximize NUE, the release rate and forms of N should match the crop’s N acquisition capacity . Organic matter, including recycled organic wastes , has potential as an N source, and is widely used, though not always with the aim to supply nutrients . The overall effects of organic fertilizers are difficult to disentangle because soil physical, chemical, and biological properties are altered. Compared to inorganic fertilizer only, field experimentation often shows benefits when organic and inorganic fertilizers are supplied together due to interacting effects of improved micro-nutrient and soil microbial community status . In a global meta-analysis, Xia et al. found that substituting up to 50% of the mineral fertilizer N with fresh or composted manure increased grain crop yields, crop N uptake, and N use efficiency, but substituting more than 75% of mineral fertilizer N with manure negatively impacted yields. The authors also reported environmental benefits of integrative management, including a reduction in N losses and improvement in soil organic carbon content. On the other hand, regional trends for NUE in the USA are negatively associated with the proportion of total N from livestock excreted N, largely because manure is treated as waste rather than a nutrient . Net anthropogenic N balances for these regions are also high, indicating elevated risk of environmentally-concerning losses . Thus, there is both need and opportunity to repurpose nutrient-rich wastes as fertilizers, which requires formulating suitable nutrient stoichiometry and N release profiles to avoid N over- or under-supply of target crops. Managing the release of N from crop residue and as well from endogenous soil organic matter stores during the growing season is a difficult proposition. Tillage, developed primarily for weed control, has been traditionally used for this purpose but inefficiently so—tillage occurs 6–8 weeks prior to high plant demand for N, leaving a significant intervening window for N loss as accelerated microbial activity mineralizes soil organic N stores. A purported advantage of no-till is to avoid this quick release ofN, and while subsequently slower mineralization rates avoid the early pulses of N associated with tillage, there is little evidence that no-till reduces exogenous N needs and, by inference, improves NUE. No-till does, however, appear to reduce off- season N losses as more of the N immobilized in crop residues persists in accumulating soil organic matter until a new equilibrium is met. Improvements to soil porosity and other physical properties related to soil structure can also keep inorganic N from being easily leached , though beneficial effects on gaseous N losses are less clear . Improving the adsorption capacity of soils, or the ability to bind ions to soil components, is another approach used to control soil N cycling. NUE of maize and rice systems improved substantially when adding clay, such as zeolite, most likely due to enhanced NH+ 4 retention .

An in situ mesocosm experiment was conducted to assess the N contribution from shallow groundwater upwelling to the total crop N uptake budget. Rice was grown in the field in 61 cm x 47 cm x 40 cm rectangular plastic mesocosms. After tillage, the mesocosms were installed by burying them in the soil such that the upper rim was level with the soil surface. Soil was removed to install the mesocosms, and then the soil was replaced by depth within each mesocosm. Mesocosms were seeded at the same time as the rest of the field. Two treatments were replicated four times in an RCBD design at Sites 1 and 2. The treatments receiving shallow groundwater had 3.5 cm diameter holes drilled in the base to remove 23% of the base area and facilitate water movement between the interior and surrounding subsoil. Treatments without holes excluded shallow groundwater . Surface irrigation water was able to move freely across the surface of all mesocosms. Because surface water is moving uniformly across the surface of each mesocosm treatment, there is no net effect of surface irrigation water N on the assessment of groundwater N contribution. Fertilizer P and K were applied to ensure these nutrients were not limiting plant growth; no N fertilizer was applied. Ten cm long Rhizon MOM pore water samplers were installed at 20 cm depth inside each + groundwater and—groundwater treatments, and additionally at 45 cm depth outside the—groundwater treatment to measure pore water NO3-N and NH4-N throughout the growing season. Soil pore water was sampled six times during the growing season when fields were flooded. Pore water samples were collected using evacuated Exetainer vials acidified with 0.25 mL 1.0 M H2SO4 to pH 2.For determining the amount of N mineralized from field residue during the winter fallow season, chicken fodder system residue samples were collected in fall 2011 and again in spring 2012 to quantify the change in N content of residues during this period.

Residue samples were oven dried and prepared for analysis as described earlier for above ground biomass samples. These samples were used to determine pre- and post-decomposition total C and N in the residue. Estimates of winter decomposition of the rice residue were based on 2011 harvest yield data and spring residue sampling in 8 m2 plots with five replicate samples from each site. Spring samples were collected from the experimental site where all field residue was subsequently removed for the 15N-labeled residue experiment. Residue was weighed in the field and sub-samples were taken for analysis. Soils were analyzed for extractable mineral N using a cold 2 M KCl extraction within 48 h of sampling. Mineral N content was determined using colorimetric methods for NO3-N and NH4-N analyzed on a Shimadzu UV-160 spectrophotometer . The remainder of each sample was air-dried and saved for further analysis. Soil pH, total P, and total K were analyzed at the UC Davis DANR lab, and total C and N were analyzed at the UC Davis Stable Isotope Facility. Soils sampled from the 15N-labeled residue experiment at harvest to 30 cm were sent to the UC Davis Stable Isotope Facility for 15N, total N, and total C analysis using an Elementar Vario EL Cube or Micro Cube elemental analyzer interfaced to a PDZ Europa 20–20 isotope ratio mass spectrometer . Water samples were analyzed using the colorimetric method for extractable NO3-N and NH4-N. Plant tissue total C, total N, and atom % 15N analysis was carried out by the UC Davis Stable Isotope Facility using a PDZ Europa ANCA-GSL elemental analyzer interfaced to a PDZ Europa 20–20 isotope ratio mass spectrometer .Total above ground N uptake in the 15N-labeled residue treatment without N fertilizer was 135 kg N ha-1 and 128 kg N ha-1 . The lower N uptake in these plots compared to the N omission plots described previously could be due to increased N immobilization driven by the crop residue treatments in this experiment. Based on final 15N enrichment at harvest, results indicate less than 3% of the rice N uptake was supplied by the prior year’s crop residue: only 1.9 kg N ha-1 and 3.8 kg N ha-1 .

Of the 15N-labeled residue, 50–70% was recovered in the soil, similar to other studies , suggesting it will potentially be available to subsequent crops and subject to other losses . The contribution to N uptake from the 15N-labeled residue in this study is conservative due to losses that occurred during the partial decomposition prior to incorporation, but the value is still in agreement with earlier studies which show limited contribution from residue in the first year following incorporation of the residues. At each site in this study, when no residue was applied, there was no significant difference in total N uptake compared to the total N in the crop when 15N-residue was applied , suggesting immobilization occurs when rice residue is applied. The intensity of immobilization of soil N is controlled by the chemical characteristics of rice crop residues, and by an increase in soil microbial biomass stimulated by the addition of fresh, labile residue-C. These observations are relevant for N availability during the growing season, even as N immobilization in flooded soils is lower compared to aerobic soils due to reduced microbial activity. The high level of indigenous N supply as shown by the high crop N uptake in the no-residue treatment and the apparent immobilization of 15N-residue supports the conclusion that residue N only contributes a minor amount to the subsequent rice crop. However, considering the cumulative effect of incorporating residues over multiple growing seasons has been found to supply close to20 kg N ha-1 to the crop. Site 1 had higher crop N uptake than Site 2 across all treatments , possibly due to an additional wet-dry cycle that stimulated residue mineralization early in the season at this site .Surface water samples collected during the growing season had levels 0.7 mg L-1 NH4-N and 0.3 mg L-1 NO3-N at all sampling times, making irrigation water a negligible source of N for the crop . The low N concentrations in the surface water also suggest that the N attributed to shallow groundwater was not from surface water that percolated into the subsurface. Using the inlet surface water N concentrations multiplied by ETa , it was estimated that irrigation water contributed 2.9 kg N ha-1 and 3.0 kg N ha-1 . In contrast, shallow groundwater provided 40–60 kg N ha-1 toward total plant N uptake.

Total above ground N uptake in the + groundwater treatment was 122 to 188 kg N ha-1 which was significantly higher than in the—groundwater treatment which was 83 to 127 kg N ha-1. This finding was unexpected and shows that upward movement of previously mineralized N in the shallow groundwater may contribute a substantial amount to total crop N demands in this system. Pore water samples from inside the mesocosms yielded low N concentrations throughout the season ,fodder systems for cattle reflecting active and continual crop uptake. The natural abundance 15N signature of the rice plants suggests that the primary source of N was the same in the presence or absence of shallow groundwater: 0.3685 atom % 15N for both treatments at Site 1, and 0.3683–0.3685 atom % 15N in+ groundwater and—groundwater treatments at Site 2. This indicates a 0.0024–0.0026 atom % 15N enrichment relative to urea , suggesting that N from below 40 cm is likely the result of SOM mineralization. Additionally, samples of groundwater from deeper wells at each site showed high levels of NH4-N up to 18.8 mg L-1 as deep as 5.2 m, and no detectable NO3-N . Because there was no accumulation of NO3-N at depth and because this system is characterized by alternating aerobic and anaerobic conditions, leaching is not evidenced and residual fertilizer from previous years was most likely denitrified and lost from the system. It is therefore reasonable to attribute these subsurface N sources to SOM mineralization.Based on field residue samples collected in fall 2011 and spring 2012, the crop residue remaining at each site prior to spring tillage indicates that approximately 45% of the residue biomass decomposed during the fallow season . Similar values are reported elsewhere for the same residue management practices in California. Accounting for this rate of decomposition is important because it represents rapid C losses and reduces the annual net C balance compared to the total residue biomass input at harvest. Accounting for fallow season decomposition was also the impetus for the partial decomposition of the 15N-labeled residue prior to incorporation in the spring, bringing the C:N ratios of the two materials into close approximation . Losses of C from residues during the fallow season exceeded N mineralization from the residue over the same period, where only an estimated 16.9 to 21.0 kg N ha-1 mineralized . Soil samples from late spring immediately prior to flooding the fields showed NO3-N accumulation of 20.3 to 42.1 kg N ha-1 , a pool of N that for the purposes of this model we assumed was denitrified and lost following flooding. The lower soil NO3-N observed at Site 1 is likely due to an additional early season irrigation flush at this site which may have caused additional N losses. Denitrification and NH3 volatilization are the primary loss mechanisms, and leaching is generally minimal in rice systems.

The fallow season N losses not accounted for in this model result in a lower estimate of winter SOM-N mineralization and consequently decrease the final soil C loss estimate. However, these possible uncertainties are minor as the vast majority of SOM-N mineralization occurred during the growing season .Total annual SOM-N mineralization, the sum of growing and fallow season mineralization, was 302 kg N ha-1 and 279 kg N ha-1 . Based on the C:N ratio of the soil and the total annual N mineralization, the total annual mass of soil C mineralized was 4345 kg C ha-1 and 4136 kg C ha-1 . Accounting for the annual C input from crop residue following fallow season decomposition, the net C loss was 2473 kg C ha-1 and 2241 kg C ha-1 when NUE is assumed at 50% . Soil C loss from this rice system is lower than reported values for other agricultural peat land systems in temperate regions which ranged from 3700–8600 kg C ha-1 yr-1 . Similarly, modeled soil C losses from neighboring islands in the Delta where upland crops are grown ranged from 5000 to 15000 kg C ha-1 yr-1. The lower soil C losses estimated in this study are likely due to the seasonal flooding of the rice fields which reduces SOM oxidation in the system relative to conventional upland crops or pasture. Lower values of NUE correspond to higher rates of soil C loss because an assumption of lower N uptake implies more N, and thus SOM, was mineralized relative to plant N uptake. In general, fertilizer NUE ranges between 30 to 70% in rice systems. In this study, we are considering a range of NUE slightly higher, from 50% to 70% because no accumulation of N was observed in the soil-water system during the growing season based on pore water and soil sampling , suggesting mineralization was fairly synchronized with plant uptake. Also increases in NUE yield marginally smaller reductions in soil C loss, and standard errors are greatly diminished at 50% NUE and above, meaning that within this range the final net soil C loss estimate is less sensitive to the NUE assumption . There is reason to believe the NUE in this N fertilizer omission system is above the 50% threshold, as well-managed rice systems in California have reported NUE above 70%. Considering the effect of our NUE assumption on estimated soil C loss, the probable range of 50–70% NUE would give a range of estimated net soil C loss from 1246–2473kg C ha-1 yr-1 and 1149–2241 kg C ha-1 yr-1 . Using the calculated range of net soil C loss from this study, it is possible to estimate the corresponding soil subsidence under rice production at this site. Because of the limited resolution of soil bulk density measurements in this study, the correlation between soil C loss and subsidence is dependent on an assumption about the fraction of subsidence due directly to C loss versus the effects of compaction and consolidation of the remaining mineral soil material.

While I find that doubling agricultural productivity under either existing high or counterfactual low trade costs does lower food prices, the effects on farmer incomes are dramatically different in the two cases, with net agricultural revenues actually falling by 71.4% under existing high trade costs and increasing by 12.4% under counterfactual low trade costs. These results underscore the importance of implementing policies to lower trade costs and improve market access in tandem with technology adoption initiatives. This chapter is most closely related to a recent literature on trade costs along intranational spatial transportation networks that has expanded rapidly since the seminal work of Donaldson 2012. Atkin and Donaldson 2015 estimate the distance-dependent component of intra-national trade costs within two sub-Saharan African countries using price and origin data for specific, narrowly-defined manufactured goods. Sotelo 2015 uses a richer dataset from Peru to explore how intra-national trade costs lower agricultural productivity by preventing agricultural producers in particular locations from specializing in the crops in which they have a comparative advantage, a mechanism which is less important in the African context for the range of crops that I consider. This chapter goes beyond the existing literature in several important ways, including covering a larger network of African markets and using a dynamic monthly model with storage, which I show is important for identifying when trade occurs so as to avoid underestimating trade costs and welfare effects. In my case, using a static annual model underestimates trade costs by 23% and welfare effects by 33%. The balance of this chapter proceeds as follows. In Section 2, I describe the context and data. In Section 3, I present my model. In Section 4, I detail my estimation strategy, present my estimates for the model parameters including trade costs,dutch buckets and examine the goodness of fit of my estimated model. In Section 5, I present the results of my counterfactual analysis and robustness checks. Section 6 concludes.Due to data limitations and comparability issues, I restrict my attention in this chapter to the consumption and production of the six major staple cereal grains: maize, millet, rice, sorghum, teff, and wheat2 .

Table 1.1 shows the relative share of cereal grains and other categories of agricultural goods in production value, caloric intake, and gross value of international trade in sub-Saharan Africa. Although they make up only 17.2% of the total value of agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa, cereal grains are by far the most important source of calories in African diets. Tubers like cassava and yams are another important source of staple carbohydrates, but their perishability and low value-to weight ratios severely constrain their trade and storage. Cash crops like cocoa and tea make up the largest share of the value of African countries’ international agricultural trade, but they differ from cereals in that their production is often localized near ports or in certain geographic niches and is nearly all exported to the world market. Grain trade in sub-Saharan Africa can be roughly classified into two types: farm-to market and market-to-market trade. Although farm-to-market trade may involve much higher trade costs than market-to-market trade due to extremely poor rural infrastructure, I will not be able to capture farm-to-market trade and trade costs in a continent-level model due to data limitations and will focus exclusively on market-to-market trade instead. One important difference between the two types of trade is the level of competition — while farm-to-market trade may be conducted by relatively few traders with significant market power, market-to-market trade at the level considered here tends to be highly competitive with many traders, low firm concentration ratios, homogeneous products, and few barriers to entry . I will therefore assume that traders are competitive price-takers. Grain is bought and sold in thousands of open-air markets across sub-Saharan Africa. I seek to identify and include in my model the larger, regionally important hub markets that collect grain from surrounding smaller markets for trade with other hub markets. I do so in three steps. First, I include the 178 towns and cities in my 42 countries of interest which have a population of at least 100,000 people and are at least 200 kilometers apart . Second, I add smaller towns that are located at important road junctions or ports. Third, I add additional major towns in countries which still have high population-to-market ratios after my first two steps.

Together these steps produce a list of 263 markets . In order to be able to include a particular market in my model, I must have grain price data for it. Using my “ideal” list of 263 markets, I conducted an exhaustive search for monthly grain price series from these markets and obtained price series for 230 of them. I then used maps of road networks and navigable waterways to identify the pairs of these markets between which direct trade is feasible. A map of my final network of 230 markets with the 413 direct links between them is shown in figure 1.3. A complete list of markets and further details on the market selection process are contained in the appendix. The median market town has a population of 207,000, and the median transport distance between directly linked markets is 337 kilometers. Among the 230 markets, I identify 30 major ports that trade with the world market and include direct links between them and the most important world market for each crop . I also treat Johannesburg, South Africa like the world market for maize in my model due to its special circumstances3 . The monthly grain price series for the 230 markets cover a 10-year period from May 2003 to April 2013. The price series include series for the 6 cereal grains most produced and consumed in sub-Saharan Africa – maize , sorghum , millet , rice , wheat , and teff 4 . In each market, only a subset of these major grains are sold – 54 markets have price series for 1 grain, 111 have series for 2 grains, 24 have series for 3 grains, and 41 have series for 4 grains. Maize is by far the most common grain with price series from 180 of the 230 markets, followed by rice , sorghum , millet , wheat , and teff .Of the 512 total price series, 42% were obtained from the World Food Programme’s VAM unit and 25% from FAO’s GIEWS project, which both maintain online databases of staple food price series collected by themselves or by national government agencies. The remaining 33% were obtained directly from national ministries of agriculture and statistical offices or through USAID’s FEWS NET project, non-governmental organizations,grow bucket and other researchers. Each original source typically employs teams of surveyors who observe and record prices at multiple points of sale in each location on a weekly or monthly basis and then relay them to analytical teams in the capital city who compile and publish monthly and annual reports. The price series are not all complete — the average series has 72 observations worth of data.

The original price series are in local currency. Of the 512 series, 76% are identified as retail price series for quantities ranging from 0.5 to 3.5 kg, while the remaining 24% are identified as wholesale price series for quantities ranging from 50 to 100 kg. I convert all price series to USD/kg using monthly exchange rates and conduct a statistical analysis of 37 series for which I have both retail and wholesale prices that fails to reject a hypothesis of equality between retail and wholesale prices. This is consistent with interviews of market participants which suggest that separate retail and wholesale markets typically do not exist and that prices per kilogram often do not vary with quantity sold. Details on this statistical test as well as the grain types and data sources by market are contained in the appendix. Across all time periods and all markets, average prices are $0.41/kg for maize, $0.44/kg for wheat, $0.45/kg for both millet and sorghum, $0.58/kg for teff, and $0.84/kg for rice. Regressions with market fixed effects comparing price levels within particular markets show maize significantly cheaper than sorghum, which is significantly cheaper than millet and wheat, which are significantly cheaper than teff, which is significantly cheaper than rice . My next step is to acquire production and population data for sub-Saharan Africa and assign each of the 230 markets a monthly production and population to match its monthly prices. I start by obtaining annual national totals for production of all cereal grains from FAO and annual national totals for population from the UN Population Division. To allocate the production data by month, I use agricultural calendar data from FAO to divide the continent into three zones: a Northern Hemisphere zone with a single annual grain harvest in October , an Equatorial zone with a larger grain harvest in July and a smaller grain harvest in December , and a Southern Hemisphere zone with a single annual grain harvest in May 5 . Allocating the national-level data by market is more challenging. I first obtain GIS grid cell level data for population and production of each crop for the year 2000 at the 5 arc-minute level from the GAEZ project of FAO and IIASA and the Harvest Choice project of IFPRI and the University of Minnesota6 and use it to derive the percentage of national population and production of each crop belonging to each grid cell.

Under the assumption that these percentages stay constant during my study period, I combine them with my monthly national production and population data to get monthly production and population series at the grid cell level. The final step is to assign grid cells to particular markets. I do this by constructing market catchment areas following the methodology of Pozzi and Robinson 2008. The underlying assumption of this methodology is that if producers and consumers in a given grid cell have to choose one of the markets in the network at which to sell and buy their grain they will choose the market to which they can travel in the least time. To identify which of the 230 markets is the closest in terms of travel time for each of the 292,000 grid cells, I combine information from the following GIS datasets: the roads layer from the World Food Programme’s SDI-T database7 , the FAO Land and Water Division’s Rivers of Africa and Inland Water Bodies in Africa datasets, the USGS-EROS Global 30-Arc Second Elevation dataset, the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Global Land Cover 2000 dataset, and the US Department of State’s Large Scale International Boundaries and Simplified Shoreline datasets. Following Pozzi and Robinson 2008, I assign different average travel speeds to different categories of road and different average walking speeds to different land cover classes, and I then adjust these speeds based on the degree of slope of the terrain. I assign inland water bodies and rivers with Strahler number of at least 4 a travel speed of zero 8 . I also assign a travel speed of zero to international borders so as to keep market catchment areas within countries to match my national production and population data. Combining all of this information, I assign each pixel a travel cost in minutes and then use a least-cost path algorithm to identify the minimum travel time from each grid cell to any market in the network. I then assign each grid cell to the market catchment area of its nearest market in terms of travel time. Figure 1.4 shows maps of estimated grid-cell level travel time to the nearest market in the network and the resulting market catchment areas. Once each grid cell has been assigned to a market catchment area, it is straight-forward to add up the production and population data for all of the grid cells in a given market catchment area and assign the total production and population to that market and its price series. Although my 512 price series do not include a price for every grain in every market, 86.3% of total cereal grain production in my countries of interest is covered by a price series in its associated market.

Preliminary research shows that vineyards and alfalfa show no significant yield penalties after controlled flooding from the end of winter to early spring when the fields overlay highly permeable soils . Thus, land parcels planted with vineyards, pasture , idle lands , grain and hay crops , and field crops, which likely are fallowed in the wet season, were deemed suitable for Ag-MAR.Geospatial data of existing surface water conveyance infrastructure were provided by nine water management agencies . For the remaining surface water districts, conveyance infrastructure was digitized from publicly available maps and aerial images. In areas where surface water conveyance infrastructure was visible in air photographs, features were digitized at a scale of 1:10,000. GIS data of larger conveyance infrastructure were obtained from the California Open Data Portal . Groundwater well capture zones are defined as the areal extent and volumetric portion of a groundwater system that contribute discharge to a particular well . Captures zones were derived for all domestic wells in rural communities using the California Department of Water Resources’ Online System for Well Completion Reports and the California Central Valley Groundwater-Surface Water Simulation Model .C2VSim was used to extract a generalized groundwater flow field for the study area. C2VSim is an integrated surface water-groundwater model based on the finite element code of the Integrated Water Flow Model capable of accounting for reservoir deliveries, stream flow, stream diversions, canal distribution systems, irrigation, runoff, crop water uses, vadose zone processes, and groundwater-surface water-irrigated landscape interactions typical of irrigated agricultural basins . The model domain covers the entire CV alluvial aquifer. More information on the model development, calibration and validation, and application for Ag-MAR can be found in Brush et al. , Brush and Dogrul , and Kourakos et al. .

The fine grid model version was used to extract a quasisteady-state representation of the regional groundwater flow field ,hydroponic nft channel taken as the mean of the monthly flow fields from October 2005 to September 2015, to best inform recharge efforts.In the State of California, construction of a new well must be reported to OSWCR. Well locations in OSWCR are reported at a 2.6 km2 resolution by stating the centroid coordinates of the 2.6 km2 Public Land Survey System section a well is located within . For this study, well logs of 27,482 domestic wells located within the study area were downloaded from OSWCR. Wells located within a 1.61 km radius of any of the 288 rural communities were extracted, reducing the number of domestic wells to 7,673 . Well logs were screened for completeness of the following well construction information: well depth, depth to the top of the well screen, and depth to the bottom of the well screen . For wells with incomplete records, well status modeling was used to impute missing information, specifically the depth to the top of the well screen and the submergence depth of the well pump .Investigation and mapping of factors that increase vulnerability to or probability of natural and socio-economic hazards can provide a useful way to prioritize where efforts should be focused . To determine community vulnerability to change in groundwater supply, data describing domestic well failures, domestic well reliance, pesticide applications, land subsidence, and socio-economic factors were used.A thematic layer describing “domestic well failures” was generated using domestic well construction logs, groundwater table information, and self-reported drinking water supply shortages . The California Household Water Supply Shortage Reporting System contains information on self-reported household drinking water supply shortages due to well failure, well under performance, or loss of surface water supply. During the 2012–2016 drought, 867 wells were reported dry within our 288 rural communities. However, this is assumed to be an underestimation of the actual water supply shortages experienced during the 2012–2016 drought, since reporting is optional and many rural communities likely lack access to these tools.

Submergence of the well screen and pump intake are desired to ensure proper well function . The initial installation of the pump intake is usually above zt to minimize costs of screen installation and to maximize the capacity for useable water production . It was assumed that the cost of rehabilitating wells to alleviate well production losses caused by falling groundwater levels would be prohibitive for rural communities. Thus, the analysis assumed that pump intakes would remain at some depth above zt and wells would become inactive if the groundwater level dropped below the pump intake . Since the OSWCR contains no information on the pump intake depth, a submergence value, hs, was calibrated using the reported well failures as a validation data set. Submergence in this study is defined as the depth of the top of the well screen below the groundwater table. Depth to the groundwater table and estimated zt values were used to quantify changes in well status between Spring of 2011 and Fall of 2015 . Groundwater depths at each well location were extracted from interpolated seasonal groundwater levels spanning the entire shallow to semi-confined CV aquifer system . To calibrate the required submergence value, hs, zt values were compared to predrought and post drought groundwater levels to identify wells that became inactive as a result of groundwater level declines. Using the reported well failures in rural communities as validation data, the required pump submergence value was calibrated to be hs = 10 m for which the model estimated 923 well failures during the drought period, most of which were concentrated in the northeastern region .Many rural communities in the southern CV are not connected to municipal water supply systems and generally rely on a single water source, typically a groundwater well, which puts them at risk of water supply failures . Water supply connection density is a metric that describes the pressure exerted on community drinking water supply sources, given as the ratio of active public water supply sources to water supply connections in each community .

Lower values indicate a higher per capita reliance on active public water supply sources, indicating the community has lower water supply security. Communities that rely on a single public water supply source are especially vulnerable to shortages and contamination, as the failure of a single source compromises the community’s entire water supply. In the study area, 91 rural communities only have a single public water supply source of which more than 75% rely on groundwater. Communities solely reliant on unregulated domestic wells do not have any access to public water supply sources and as such, are the most vulnerable to shortages and contamination. The communities reliant on single or unregulated sources are concentrated in the northeastern and eastern regions of the southern CV.Prolonged and unsustainable groundwater pumping causes severe settling or sinking of the land surface due to subsurface compaction of earth materials, known as land subsidence . Land subsidence rates estimated with In SAR technology between May 2015 and September 2016 was used in this analysis. The data reveal two major subsidence bowls in the northwestern and eastern regions of the southern CV and the development of a new hot spot between them . Land subsidence is of particular concern because it directly affects major surface water conveyance systems and threatens the integrity of shallow, domestic wells.Socio-economic parameters of poverty status, linguistic isolation,nft growing system and educational attainment were selected as unique and complementary factors contributing to community vulnerability to change in groundwater supply . Socio-economic data were obtained by block group from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey’s 5-year estimates for 2011–2015 and processed using the R library tidycensus .

For each of the three parameters described below, demographic percentages were calculated for all block groups in the region. If multiple block groups intersected a community, an area-weighted average was calculated and the value was applied to each respective community. Poverty status is defined as the percentage of the population for whom the ratio of income to national poverty level in the previous 12 months was below one . Poverty status is believed to contribute to community vulnerability as poorer households have less financial capacity to preemptively address or remediate water supply shortages . Linguistic isolation is defined as the percentage of households that are limited English-speaking households . Households that have limited English-speaking capacity are to a lesser extent able to engage with administrative authorities to voice concerns or resolve problems, and thus have increased community vulnerability . Educational attainment is defined as the percentage of population over 25 years of age, who have completed some education above the high school level . Educational attainment can influence risk perception, skills and knowledge, and access to information and resources, hence less educated populations may be less empowered to prepare and recover from resource shortages .A GIS-based MCDA was used to combine the biophysical, hydrological, and social-ecological data listed in Table 1 to delineate and prioritize locations for multi-benefit Ag-MAR. An equal weighting scheme for thematic layers and proposed rankings of categorical features was adopted in this study following recommendations of Visser and based on the variability present in existing recharge mapping studies . The well status model was used to impute missing well data and provide a more spatially complete estimate of the domestic well failures that occurred during the 2012–2016 drought. Of the 27,482 domestic wells in the study area, 2,907 wells were excluded from the model development because the top of the well screen was shallower than the predrought groundwater levels in spring of 2011. The remaining 24,575 wells were used to estimate the depth to the top of the well screen, zt, using Equation 1. Of the 7,673 domestic wells located within the rural communities, 291 wells were missing zb and the total completed well depth information, thus zt could not be estimated. However, zt was estimated for 279 of the 282 wells only missing zt data. For these 7,673 wells, well capture zones were estimated using groundwater modeling and particle tracking. Most of the capture zones delineated for the domestic wells within rural communities are concentrated in the northeastern and eastern regions of the study area, where the majority of the communities and domestic wells are located . Figures 5b and 5c focus in on the Orosi and Cutler communities east of Dinuba, CA, and the Okieville community, west of Tulare, CA. Both maps show a diverse pattern for the particle exit points of each well highlighting major differences in the groundwater flow velocity, well depths, and lengths of the well screen across the domestic wells in the study area. Well capture zones extend generally between 1 and 6 km upgradient of wells . Some neighboring wells show clear differences in groundwater flow direction and upgradient capture area, which are likely due to differences in well depth and well screen length .Community vulnerability index values were classified into five classes representing “Extreme Vulnerability,” “Very High Vulnerability,” “High Vulnerability,” “Moderate Vulnerability,” and “Low Vulnerability” . Communities classified as extremely vulnerable are concentrated in the eastern part of the study area while highly and very highly vulnerable communities are mainly seen in the northern and northeastern part of the southern CV . There are clear differences in the mean theme scores between the most and least vulnerable communities . For example, in the 30 communities classified as extremely vulnerable, on average, 44.6% of the population live below the poverty line, 30.7% of the households are limited English-speaking, and only 8.1% of the population above 25 years have completed some education above a high school degree. Extremely vulnerable communities are also characterized by higher well failure rates, greater land subsidence, and higher pesticide applications on fields surrounding these communities . In these communities, on average, over 99 households rely on a single water supply source .These communities had, on average, much lower well failure rates during the 2012–2016 drought, less land subsidence, and no reported applications of the seven active ingredients contained in pesticides known to pollute groundwater. These communities also have a much lower percentage of the population living below the poverty line , a lower percentage of households that are limited English-speaking , and a higher percentage of the population above 25 years that have completed some education above a high school degree .

Anthropological considerations about cattle-related beliefs and behaviors along the lines of the bovine mystique problematic were, at bottom, irrelevant. In other words, it did not matter why West African peasants wished to keep their livestock and resisted to interventions aimed at changing their cattle-related practices. The fact was that they did, and it was up to the project to adapt to these circumstances rather than the other way round. This working notion of the milieu paysan in the C-4 countries was, in its broad outlines, the one miniaturized in quantifiable form as the control situation in the adaptive experiments set up in the various project plots. It did not correspond to how peasants actually did things, but to how they were supposed to be doing them if they followed the technical recommendations crafted by the research institutes and delivered by local extension agents. The African partners and their Brazilian counterparts did not however close their eyes to the potential – or better said, inevitable – “noise” between research stations and the peasant environment. Rather, as will be discussed shortly, they recognized that peasants were likely to both follow and not follow the recommendations. This ambiguity reflects the broader “uncaptured peasantry” problematic discussed, among others, by Mamdani . As this author remarked in his critique of two polar approaches in academia and policy-making circles,African peasants are neither capitalists in the waiting, eager to be freed from the shackles of state patronage, nor labor of a pre- or antimarket kind that have failed to be successfully captured by the state or global capital. It is neither one nor the other; the challenge is to trace empirically how processes of capturing peasant labor for global markets have succeed or not,stackable planters but most likely have been caught somewhere in-between. This “in-betweenness” resonates with some of our previous discussions: the cotton filière’s relations with global processes, the technology trap remarked in Chapter 3, or the lag between soft and hard domains discussed in Chapter 2.

In fact, in its general outlines, it could even be extended to describe the postcolonial condition at large. And as many postcolonial scholars have done , rather than striving to overcome these ambivalences and contradictions, the project tried to work through some of them, with the tools it had at hand. The next section will describe a third spatial-temporal scale assembled by the project, in fact its most visible face: the so-called parcelle.The picture above, taken in October 2011 at the Sotuba research station, shows four Malian peasants who had been randomly approached in a cotton farm not far from Bamako, and invited to come see the project grounds. They were shown how cotton was supposedly grown in the milieu paysan, alongside how cotton would be grown using the new seeds and crop management techniques brought from Brazil. Little by little, the project technician explained to the farmers what was new about the plot with the Brazilian technologies, while pushing off the branches to call attention to the residues from the previous year’s crops in-between the lines; inviting them to feel the temperature difference across the height of the cotton plant, significant enough to be noticed without the need of a thermometer ; and taking them to notill’s chief visual enabler, the pit, where they had access to what was going on with the plants’ roots under the ground . This kind of comparative device is basic to adaptive research and transfer anywhere; new technologies are not just introduced into a random sample of the local environment. It is always against a certain rendition of “business-as-usual” that they will be experimentally calibrated, and comparatively evaluated. This evaluation is done not just by researchers and technicians, but by those who are to be the ultimate recipients of the technologies: in this case, peasant farmers. This rendition of the local context is therefore as constructed as the one to which it will be compared, that includes the travelling technologies.

But the Malian peasants in the picture were impressed by both sides in the experiment: not just the crop lines managed using the Brazilian technologies, but the control situation representing the milieu paysan, yielded beautiful and loaded plants. At a first glance and without expert guidance, the differences between them would not be easily perceived, but both were clearly more productive, healthy and homogeneous than the plants found in their own fields . This is not surprising, given the discussion already made here – even if the seed sowed in the experimental fields and in the farms were the same, the assemblages of which they were part were very different. Research institutes had not only more resources at their disposal, but much more control over their experimental fields; they were in this sense closer to the original context where technologies were developed in Embrapa’s own research stations. This was especially true of the project plot in Sotuba, which enjoyed a budget of its own, full time technicians, and the dedicated presence of the Brazilian project coordinator, himself an agronomist. The only significant environmental variable that was not controlled – in other words, that was fully shared between experimental and farmer fields – was rainfall. What these peasant farmers were seeing however were not finished technologies, ready to be brought to their fields, but adaptive experiments. These fields had a hybrid character. On the one hand, they were experiments, generally structured along the same lines of the ones routinely set up in research stations both in Embrapa centers in Brazil and elsewhere in the African institutes. In this sense, they brought non-humans into the project assemblage in a controlled and directed manner. On the other, they were demonstration sites, assembling various kinds of humans as a supporting public for the project. The project’s main experimental field was located in the Malian institute’s research station in Sotuba, in the outskirts of the capital city of Bamako. Brazilians referred to it as parcela, and the Africans as parcelle – the English equivalent land parcel is close enough to be maintained here. While technically speaking, parcel refers to the area where the experiments were being performed, the word was used more broadly to identify the piece of land that the Malian institute had assigned to the project. Different from its counterparts in the other three project countries, this parcel was supervised closely by the Brazilian project coordinator along with the Malian experts in each of the three components .

The local institute provided the project with two local technicians to be full-time at the researchers’ disposal in order to execute the experimental protocols and other project tasks . The project grounds in Sotuba were made up of two parcels, side by side. The smaller included a varietal test where the ten new cotton varieties brought from Brazil were being adapted and displayed,stacking pots alongside their five regional counterparts. It also contained an in situ seed bank for cover crops brought from Brazil , and part of it grew local cereals as a preparation for future no-till essays. The same written word, vitrine, was used to designate this half of the parcel in both French and Portuguese, so I will keep it here.The remainder of the parcel, twice as large as the vitrine, contained the no-till test fields, the largest and most visible of all plots . At the left corner as one entered the main gate, one could spot the only building within the parcelle, a small shack built by the project to store equipment and seeds. It was located right by one of the few trees that were left to stand within the fenced area, under which visitors and project workers would happily gather for a break from the scorching Sahelian sun. A bit farther behind the shack, in front of the first field stood a couple of panels, identifying the project and displaying a schematic picture of the no-till production system. As one walked further through the aisle that separated this cotton field from the maize field to its right, another couple of panels stood on each side: one showed the symptoms of nutritional deficiencies in the cotton leaves, and the other did the same for maize . Like the pit , these were key visual enablers in the parcelle. Other panels, set up in the vitrine, displayed a schematic description of pest control modalities.When I got there in September 2011, the other half of the maize field grew niébé, a leguminous plant that has abundant biomass and fixates some nitrogen – two common criteria in Embrapa’s no-till research in Brazil. But different from crotalaria, niébé was used locally for food – something which could potentialize adoption of the system by peasants. Towards the end of that season, local women hired by the project harvested the niébé beans and the corn ears, while the stalks and straw – the biomass – were kept in place as a variable to be measured in that experiment. After a sample of the production harvested was carefully weighed and recorded, these and whatever other edible grain was produced were informally distributed to the local community, or donated with a bit more formality at charity events by the Brazilian ambassador and/or his wife. Between the two parcels, I would occasionally see a boy playing a monotonous beat in a drum; it was to scare away the birds, eager to get at the loaded heads of sorghum in the vitrine. On the extreme opposite side of the no-till parcel, behind the crops, a guardian – a middle-aged man from Côte d’Ivoire – would sit down everyday during the evenings and nights. Just a few meters from him stood the wall that separated the Sotuba station from the surrounding community; without surveillance, maize ears would not wait in the stalks to be harvested by the project.

These, as well as the women who harvested the crops and performed other operations such as weeding were recruited from the local community through the channels already available at the institutes, and were paid by the project. Its demonstration aspects were a bricolage of elements from different technology transfer methods commonly deployed by Embrapa in Brazil . Embrapa research units normally include unidades de demonstraçãothat display to farmers the institute’s technologies, so they can be evaluated and perhaps adopted by them. It may include a direct comparison with alternative methods deployed by local farmers, as was the case with the C-4 Project plots. Vitrine, which means “display window”, is also a demonstration device. In Brazil, they are set up in events such as agricultural fairs, where new technologies are displayed and explained through short lectures delivered to farmers and the specialized media. Treino & visita, which involves continuous training of technicians and extension agents in charge of disseminating the technologies among farmers through “visits”, resonates with the project’s capacity-building cycles and more informal training of local technicians. Finally, there were elements of dias de campo , when multiple farmer groups and individuals were invited to come see the technologies at the institute’s experimental stations, or on pilot tests set up in farmers’ land.Who were the addressees of demonstration in this case? The parcel’s first public was the researchers and technicians from the C-4 institutes who worked for the project. They weren’t however mere spectators: researchers participated in the design and evaluation of experimental protocols, while technicians worked in implementing them. Besides this core group, demonstration targeted other researchers and technicians working in the local research institutes and adjacent agencies , but not formally within the project. They were recruited as trainees for the capacity-building cycles, and were expected to become multipliers of the project’s technologies. Much of their training took place outdoors on the parcel, and the chief aim of demonstration in this case was to produce a “paradigm shift” in their minds – in particular, about not tilling the soil, which seemed counter-intuitive to most of them. For the technology to disseminate, this ultimately would have to happen along the entire transfer chain: as a Burkinabe agronomist put it, “in order to succeed in convincing others, we have to be ourselves convinced”.

Indeed, as some of my interlocutors in the African institutes remarked, there can be marked imbalances in terms of access granted by local chiefs to peasants depending on their kin and patronage networks, and differences in ethnicity, age, gender, or migration status. Especially for immigrant peasants and those in areas of high pressure on arable land, the assignment of land plots to households by village authorities is far from secured. “It can be taken from the peasant at any time, if for some reason the elders decide that the true owner of that piece of land is somebody else”, one of the Burkinabe researchers explained to me. These issues stretched far beyond the technical scope of the C-4 Project. Nonetheless, as Brazilian front liners quickly learned, they impinged directly on the possibilities of transferring Embrapa technologies to peasant land. Most germane to the project was the fact that this situation tended to discourage long term planning and farmers’ investment in the land plots they worked. And no-till was considered a technique that necessarily requires long term thinking, since many of the benefits driving its original development are not immediately evident in the short term. In terms of the project’s main problem – productivity –, the benefits of soil conservation are manifested less as immediately rising yields than as preventing their decrease in the long run. And while the agronomist or planner sees both, the peasant – my interlocutors insisted – sees only the former. As will be resumed in the next chapter, the question of evidence – how to convince farmers that the problem exists, and how to demonstrate that the proposed solution is working or will work – became one of the keys to the project’s technology adaptation and transfer strategy. Finally, no-till’s third and last pillar – crop rotation – involved yet another set of context making and scaling operations. Crop rotation is a major piece of context in Brazil’s experience with no-till cotton: if in much of West Africa cotton has been “king” since colonial times, in Brazil’s late-century agricultural boom cotton has thrived on the heels of queen soybean.

In the aftermath of the boll weevil crisis,hydroponic nft system cotton re-emerged during the “soybean cycle” 200 as a succession culture to that which is today the paramount crop in cerrado agriculture, largely aimed at export to Asian markets. In a common configuration, cotton is planted in the window that was opened in the cerrado agricultural calendar by the introduction of more precocious varieties of soybean, with life cycles as short as 100 days. This means that, between the harvest of soybean and the end of the rainy season, there is enough time to plant a second crop , and sometimes even a third one of pasture for feeding cattle. Even though some Embrapa researchers showed nuanced views about this highly intensive and technified production system,it was this configuration – rather than that of smallholder cotton production in the Northeast – that they presented most often to African partners. This seeming in congruence only appears as paradoxical, however, if one takes the scale of property size and capital-intensity. In fact, by and large, Brazilian and African peasants do not grow cotton for the same market: the latter produce for the same world market in which Brazilian large-scale farmers sell their cotton, while Brazilian smallholders produce mostly for domestic or niche markets such as organic or colored cotton. African peasant farmers are faced with higher demands in terms of productivity, timing, or quality standards. Technically speaking, in no-till crop rotation follows a logic similar to that of conventional agriculture: to recycle and better utilize soil nutrients, interrupt the cycle of pests, diseases and adventitious weeds, and improve soil structure by alternating root types. Project front liners did not foresee many difficulties here, as West African peasants already grew cotton amidst a diversified pool of crops, and did some rotation between them. This was however done differently than in the Brazilian cerrado. In West Africa, at current levels of technification of production, rain patterns typically allow for only one crop per year. In-between, there is a long dry season of around seven months – also known locally as “hunger season” – which is, according to many of my local interlocutors, getting increasingly lengthier “due to climate change”.

Other plants are therefore intercropped with cotton simultaneously, competing against it for land, labor and inputs.This complementary-competitive relationship between cotton and food crops has been one of the defining features of the system in West Africa, and, as will be seen in the next chapter, of peasant decision-making locally. The idea was that the improvement of cotton production within a mixed system would bring in its stead more and better food crops, and vice-versa. “I say that cotton can be the main food crop in these countries”, the project coordinator was fond of saying. This ambivalent coexistence between cotton and food crops is also a legacy of French colonialism. In its modern version,cotton was already born as an industrial and global crop. Since it did not grow well in Europe’s temperate climate, cotton was encouraged in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere by all colonial powers as an export item to metropolitan markets.More than any other crop, it shares the iconicity and global character of the economic sector that raised it to world prominence: the textile industry. A central stage of the origin story of Western modernity so powerfully recounted by Marx in Das Kapital, the textile industry and its associated cotton supply chain played an important part in the process that led to the abolition of the slave trade during the Pax Britannica, and from there to the scramble for Africa later on in the nineteenth century. The “cotton famine” during 1861-65 – a period of acute supply shortages caused by the civil war in the U.S., by then the largest world cotton producer – was a key factor in pushing Britain and other industrializing European nations to tighten their imperial grasp over tropical possessions in Asia and Africa . As Mamdani eloquently framed this link between nineteenth-century colonialism and Western Europe’s Industrial Revolution, “in [the] constellation of raw materials that would feed European manufacturing, the pride of place belonged to cotton. The three c’s that Livingstone claimed would together rejuvenate Africa were cotton, Christianity, and civilization”.In much of colonial Africa, cotton was, as Mamdani put it, the “archetypical forced crop” . As such, it participated in colonialism’s regime of compulsions that gave rise to the overall food versus cash crop dichotomization remarked in the previous chapter. In the case of West Africa, historians prefer to talk about a mixed system featuring both coercion and market incentives, which confronted peasants with “a set of constraints and opportunities over which they often had little control” .

Even today, no peasant farmer is, strictly speaking, forced to plant cotton; but they often have little option outside of it. This may be also reflected at the level of nation-states; as I once heard a group of Beninese agronomists teasing their Chadian colleagues as they arrived early in the morning for one of the project meetings, “What are you guys doing here anyway? Why do you even bother with cotton? You have oil!” As far as the technical make-up of no-till is concerned, however, production scale, market destination, or property size are not constraining factors per se. No-till is a highly flexible crop and soil management system,nft channel and there are endless possibilities of permutation within and between the three pillars; what adaptive research does is precisely to try to find the best fit according to each “context”. In Brazil, the system is applied to a broad variety of crops, from soybean to trees, from beans to pasture; it is found from cold regions in the Brazilian South to hot and humid Amazonic conditions; from large-scale, mechanized, input-intensive industrial agriculture to small agro-ecologic family farms. Moreover, its adaptive potential goes beyond the domain of “nature” proper, including “social” factors in terms for instance of what crops will be chosen , what outcome will be emphasized , or what kind of productive structure is available locally . Thus, adaptation to each production region, and ideally to each production unit, is an inherent feature of the technique itself: research is a continuous effort, even after technology transfer to farmers has been accomplished. It became essential, therefore, to enroll the African researchers into the project’s effort not just formally. In the world of development, participation in projects in itself is not so much the problem; as especially actor-centered approaches have shown, local actors have their own interests in engaging with foreign partners, and will do it even if for only as long as projects last . In the C-4 Project, the effort was, rather, to nourish a commitment with a longer term research enterprise – in other words, to achieve robustness beyond its organizational scope as described in the first section. In this sense, the C-4 researchers were encouraged to gradually take the reins of technical decision-making in the adaptive research process. Brazilian front liners recognized this as a slow and to some extent open-ended process: “What we’re doing here is sowing a seed. The benefits will be not for these children you see, but for their children and grandchildren”, the project coordinator would tell me every once in a while. Note that he did not say “the benefits, if there are any” – despite all the difficulties envisaged in adaptation and especially transfer to farmers, there was a confidence, which the African agronomists tended to share, that the technology was good, and that one day it could bring concrete benefits to West African peasant farmers. At this stage, however, no one could predict the exact form – or most likely, forms – that no-till and its accompanying systemic components would take in their new environment. As one of the Embrapa researchers put it, referring to the difficulties involving soil cover, “who knows, maybe in West Africa no-till will end up with only two pillars”.

As De Laet and Mol’s bush pump, no-till was regarded as fluid enough to remain functional even if one of its three legs went missing as it made its way across the Southern Atlantic. But while the project did take into account the potential constraints involved in transferring the Brazilian version of no-till to West African peasant farmers – especially the problem of cattle, land tenure and agricultural inputs –, not all were incorporated into the experimental work . Many, or perhaps most, of these ended up being bracketed out so that the Embrapa cooperantes would first focus on making sure that their partners in the local institutes acquire robust scientific mastery over the technique itself. The African front liners dealing most immediately with no-till, usually agronomists by training, had at least basic knowledge about its underlying logic, and local versions of no-till could be found in some patches of rural areas for instance in Burkina Faso.But these were quite limited in number and scope, and few of the local agronomists had received systematic training or done specialized research on the system previously to the project. An important exception was the project’s head agronomist in Mali, who worked for a few years on no-till as part of a project with the French CIRAD210 and wrote his PhD dissertation based on that experience. But even the agronomists from the other institutes seemed to have developed a particular interest in the technique, and along with it, in the project itself. In fact, my impression was that within this project, agronomists were more valued and enjoyed a leading role that they may not normally have in their institutes, at least when compared to breeders, weed scientists, entomologists and other researchers whose work tend to relate more closely to the development of commercial products such as improved seeds and agrochemicals. On the other hand , the kind of research work agronomists did often brought them closer to farmers and the latter’s own ways of taking care of the crops and the land. In the project’s two other technical components, the adaptation process unfolded at a slower pace.

This is a different kind of engagement than the one described in the literature about traditional aid, based on a highly bureaucratized apparatus aimed at intervening in broad swaths of local realities in a planned manner, subsidized by authoritative knowledge specialized in the field of development – which I will synthesize here under the rubric of “intervention” . The concluding section will elaborate on the notion of demonstration to characterize this alternative mode of engagement, and suggest some of its effects on Brazilian cooperation’s potential for robustness.The previous section begun with the hope, manifested in President Lula’s words when he inaugurated the CECAT in 2010, that Embrapa’s technical cooperation would help raise Africa’s crop production to Brazilian levels. The account of the capacity-building trainings provided in this chapter made evident however how little technical and hands-on they in fact were. I was left wondering, then, exactly what type of capacity was being built there? My suggestion is that, rather than effectively transferring knowledge or technology across the Southern Atlantic, this work of capacity-building could be better characterized as an effort to make a context for relations that had little precedent. There was, above all, a clear diplomatic aspect to the trainings. With them, their sponsor, the Brazilian Cooperation Agency, realized its guideline of concentrating resources in order to make cooperation more standardized, less costly, and more visible to a wider African public. In each round of trainings, Brazilians had access to representatives from a broad sample of African countries at a relatively low cost. There were moments in which this drive became explicit, such as when the campaign of José Graziano, a former minister of Lula and then candidate to head the FAO,blueberry box was briefly discussed in CECAT and pamphlets were distributed to the African trainees. But most often, diplomacy’s intentions were loosely articulated, consisting simply in advertising Brazil to African countries.

In the words of one of the Embrapa speakers, “it is hoped not only that particular technologies will be discussed here, but that each of you will take home a message that Brazil is a brother country, which wants to share what it has learned with its African brothers”. The demonstration of Brazil’s “developmental success” involved elements and procedures that came out of Embrapa’s, not Itamaraty’s, experience as a research institute. I would like to conclude by suggesting that this mode of engagement through demonstration has two vectors. On the one hand, it relates to the broader organizational assemblage of Brazilian cooperation, which, as argued in Chapter 1, has led to a more “hands off” approach. On the other hand, it stems from the kind of work that Embrapa employees were used to perform domestically – and which also happens to resonate well with the general principles of South-South cooperation described in Chapter 1. Early on in this dissertation and elsewhere , I claimed that Brazilian cooperation has been inspired less by the international development apparatus’ expert protocols and policies than by sector-specific, domestic experiences, and that institutions operating at front line like Embrapa, and even their individual agents, enjoyed significant autonomy from the level of policy to design and implement projects and trainings. In the case of Embrapa, this has been reflected in the fact that demonstration as display of technological achievements is not something crafted specifically for its South-South cooperation activities. It is a major part not only of its techno-political domestic routine, but also of technology transfer in agriculture at large. In this sense, Embrapa cooperantes’ mode of engagement with African partners has been largely mirrored on their relations with the Brazilian government and public on the one hand, and farmers on the other. In the emic jargon, technology transfer, or TT, is the stage that follows Research & Development ; it refers to the transfer of technologies already validated by research to farmers. Agronomic research is itself carried out with an eye on adoption by farmers, for instance by taking into account the cost of technologies being developed.

In the Embrapa decentralized units visited by the African trainees, crop technologies are not confined to trial fields; they are set up in demonstration units that are both experimental sites and displaying windows for farmers and other kinds of lay publics. Embrapa researchers occasionally carry out terrain TT activities such as dias de campoand treino e visita . Many of these techniques are based on models disseminated globally by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, but Embrapa and other local institutions have improved and adapted them over the decades. Even though extension services to farmers are not really part of Embrapa’s mandate, 164 the institute does engage in other modes of technology transfer. It has a TT department centered on seed production and “technological business” , for dealing with more entrepreneurial types of farmers. It also makes its own investment in reaching out directly to all kinds of farmers through different media . During the CECAT trainings, African partners were taken on a tour to Embrapa’s modern media facilities, including its own TV and radio studio, and a large graphic press for producing booklets, manuals, and other dissemination and publicity materials targeting farmers and the general public. Embrapa also participates regularly in other modalities of technology transfer held by the private sector, such as agricultural fairs and expositions. In all these, new technologies are demonstrated to farmers, who will adopt them only if they see advantages relatively to what they already deploy, usually conceived in the form of productivity gains or some other economic parameter. This is, as one of the cooperantes put it, part of an “open” system where technical recommendations are not imposed on farmers but demonstrated to them. It is up to the farmer to go on the market after the seeds, fertilizers, and whatever other inputs he decides he needs – be it at Embrapa or elsewhere. As will be seen in the chapters that follow in the case of cotton, this contrasts with the picture found in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, more akin to the colonial development “toolkit” mixing coercion and market signals, and to a “Green Revolution” model of technology diffusion166 where formal extension channels are top-down and “closed”, whatever falls outside of it being largely left to little regulated informal markets.

Finally, as we have seen, demonstration has also been part of Embrapa’s daily routine in another way, this time addressing less farmers than another kind of public: government and the Brazilian society at large. Since its early beginnings, the institution and its employees have been constantly called to give an account of themselves in terms of impacts on national development, lest they would run the risk of going underfunded or even perishing. In their demonstrations during cooperation activities, cooperantes were providing a similar kind of self-account, convinced as they were that part of the solution for their African partners,blueberry package at least from the point of view of research, would be to do the same. Therefore, by carrying out demonstration in both technical and non-technical domains, Embrapa cooperantes were not doing anything radically different than they used to do domestically. But here they were being asked by an external agency to address a public they did not have significant relations with. For these relations to multiply and produce concrete effects on the African landscape, researchers and other cooperantes did not count with the established channels they enjoyed in Brazil, linking them to other research institutions, farmers, politicians, the media, and so forth. As a result, Brazilians came to regard African partners themselves less as recipients of cooperation than as vital and necessary mediators for its initiation and reproduction. Much of the former’s efforts during the trainings were towards enticing the latter’s interest in the Brazilian experience, and their participation in the comparative effort being proposed. From these attempts at engagement, however, something may or may not come out. There are those who participate in international cooperation activities mostly as an opportunity to travel around, to meet and network with new people for a variety of purposes, or simply to save some money on daily allowances. Embrapa personnel consciously tried to avoid having trainees who privileged these motivations, but they had little influence over assignment procedures, which happened back in African countries. But even when this was not the case, networking could take a life of its own and become largely self-referred, as happens in much of traditional aid . In CECAT, indeed, rarely did interactions show a potential for robustness. This would require not only extending interpersonal and inter-institutional relations beyond the scope of cooperation itself, but embedding them in preexisting socio-technical assemblages. From the point of view of the Brazilian cooperantes, this kind of follow-up was a next step to be taken by the African partners, if so they wished. Demand-drivenness had to be therefore constant, not just a kick-start for beginning a relation – much the less a nice word to put on a PR brochure or institutional power point. Many of the Africa trainees did express interest for instance in returning to Brazil for long-term study, or in proposing joint scientific projects with Embrapa researchers. But most of them expected that further support for this would come from their partners; and although Brazil does have some provisions in this respect such as research funding and scholarships for the global South, they were limited in number and scope, and were not generally streamlined with technical cooperation activities.

Today, moreover, these same African countries, institutions, and even individuals are being courted by a growing number of international partners – just like Brazil, China, Australia, India and many others have been eager to generously share with Africa their successful agricultural experiences. But rather than creating a smooth, enclosed context for themselves, these relations become inevitably caught up in Africa’s rugged “entangled landscapes”, where “multiple spatialities, temporalities, and power relations” meet and combine in manifold, overlapping assemblages. The two chapters that follow will describe one of these assemblages, formed around the C-4 Project in West Africa, and look at how context-making, demonstration and the question of robustness have appeared in the case of a full-fledged technology transfer project.A corollary to this naturalization is that, as the technology travels from center to periphery, it is no longer seen as having social ties to its departure point. That is why, in policy oriented views on technology transfer, this process is reduced to closing the gaps between the technology and its new, less developed context: this, a truly “social” one. Correspondingly, people – local farmers, researchers, technicians, policymakers – become the chief challenge: in order for the gaps to be closed, they are expected to change themselves according to the new technology, more than the other way round. Indeed, STS scholars working from / on the global South have variously noted how, in Latin America and elsewhere, the “social” entanglements of techno-science come to the fore more visibly . Much of this perception stems from the perceived lag between techno-scientific practices in the peripheries and those in the centers. What happens, then, when technology travels along a South-South axis? It must be clear by now that, more than geographic locations, center and periphery indicate a kind of relation, and that South-South relations may be ambivalent and even contradictory in this respect. Thus, as I will try to show below, in the C-4 Project relations were asymmetrical in terms of the direction in which knowledge, technologies and resources flowed, and of the relative availability of these on both sides. Yet, they were not marked by the intervention, imposition, or patronizing – in one word, the verticality – often remarked for Northern aid. Moreover, similarly to what was argued in the previous chapter for the capacity-building trainings, more than “rendering technical” , engagement through demonstration most often denaturalized the travelling technologies by laying bare some of their socio-technical entanglements on both the provider and recipient sides. The transfer process therefore appeared as a co-production between technology and context in a more explicit and reflexive way than is described in the STS literature referenced here. Neither is this literature sufficiently attentive to two key dimensions of technology transfer foregrounded in my account: the scaling moves that are performed by the actors themselves, and the asymmetries they perceive not only between recipient and donor countries, but between different levels of context within these countries.

Elsewhere I have suggested how both Freyre’s original oeuvre and its subsequent popularization have been tied to postcolonial concerns stemming from Brazil’s historical experience of double colonization . Here I will retrace how the interest in culture Freyre bequeathed to Brazilian diplomacy has been shaped by a similarly multi-layered postcolonial topography, directed both inwards and outwards to the Brazilian nation-state.After reading Black Skin, White Masks, Freyre’s reference to the Brazilian mestizo sailors as “caricatures of men” has retrospectively stricken me as a somewhat Fanonian moment. But the situation here is different: it is not about seeing oneself being seen by a other, as tragically happened with Fanon in the train . This was a member of Brazil’s white elite looking at exemplars of the mixed-race Brazilian populace and seeing them as they would have been seen by a other – this time not a French child but an “American traveler”. Freyre’s gaze at the mestizo seamen is that of internal colonialism; but this inferiorizing gaze is itself profoundly shaped by another relation of subalternity, vis-à-vis a hegemonic other. In this sort of two-directional double consciousness – to use Du Bois’s term –, the Creole elite intellectual’s subjectivity is torn between these two relations, one where he is the master and the other where he is the slave, and where both counterparts are at once other and self to him. In these recollections,growing bags a disheartened young Freyre would have been comforted had somebody convinced him that those men’s “mongrel aspect” stemmed less from biology than from an unfavorable environment that made them “sick”.

A few years later, Freyre would – according to Pallares-Burke , in retrospect – identify that somebody with no one other than Franz Boas, the founding father of American culturalist anthropology. In a context of “intense preoccupation” with “Brazil’s destiny”, Boas’s defense of culture as an analytical alternative to race came in handy as a solution for the “age-old question” of miscegenation faced by Freyre and “others of his generation”. At that moment in Brazil, race-based thinking was not only prevalent among many scientists and intellectuals, but sustained a whitening ideology that proposed the augmentation of the European component of the Brazilian population through immigration as a way out of the degeneration straitjacket imposed by miscegenation . The Master and the Slaves’ tour-de-force therefore consisted precisely in turning what was up to then regarded as a hindrance to the flourishing of “Brazilian civilization” into a unique positive asset for the country’s nation-building at a moment when this was in high demand.The replacement of an analytics of race with one of culture allowed not only for discounting biological explanations according to which the solution to the problem of miscegenation would be a dubious whitening process,but for a shift in self-consciousness whereby Brazil came to see itself as more “civilized” than racially segregated nations like the United States. Even though Freyre’s story is itself more complex, what came down in history as Brazil’s nation-building commonsense was the notion of the Brazilian Volksgeist as a harmonious mixture of the three races, with the African component occupying center stage side-by-side the Portuguese.In the miscegenation of races prompted by the Portuguese’s supposedly inherent tendency to mix with tropical peoples would lay Brazil’s national character, its unique contribution to the Herderian garden of the common good – one could hypothesize, another echo of the Romantic vein Freyre shared with the Boasian school. As the dimension of culture was brought to the foreground, its underbelly – race – became eclipsed without however disappearing: it became a spectral presence in Brazil’s dealings with Africa and African-Brazilians.

As I have argued , Freyre’s postcolonial thrust was therefore not anticolonial strictly speaking, but was a response to a context of “double colonization” where the cultural legacy of the former Portuguese metropolis became not only a sort of “friendly colonialism”, but itself an element of subaltern affirmation vis-à-vis a new hegemony, that of Western Europe . But The Masters and the Slaves was also predicated on a sort of internal postcolonial thrust whereby Freyre tried to simultaneously rescue the lost prestige of his own subaltern region, the Brazilian Northeast, by elevating the status of its culture from regional to national. Colonial sugar estates in the Northeastern coast are, after all, the stage on which the foundational myth of Brazilian nationhood is played in Freyre’s masterpiece. By the time he was writing it, this region had long lost the political and economic weight it held during colonial times to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the Southeast. From the standpoint of this new domestic hegemony, the Northeast came to be seen in terms of the same dichotomies through which Brazil saw itself in relation to Western normativity – traditional/modern, backwards/progressive, rural/urban . Finally, a couple of decades later, Freyre’s ideas folded back into Portugal’s own colonial imaginary: while his 1933 classic focused on the cultural formation of the Brazilian nation, from the 1950’s onwards similar claims were extrapolated to the second wave of Portuguese colonization, in Africa and Asia . Lustropicalismo thus became a transnational alternative to Western European normativity based on “a distinct mode of ‘assimilation’ engendered by the Portuguese colonial presence in the tropics based on the three pillars of miscegenation, cultural fusion and absence of racial prejudices” . Just as the racial harmony ideology appealingly catered to nationalist appetites in Brazil, Lusotropicality was eagerly taken up by the ideological apparatus of the Estado Novo regime to shore up its colonial project against mounting independence struggles in Africa and international pressure by, among others, the United States, the United Nations, and the nascent non-aligned movement.

Many Brazilians joined Portugal’s ranks in this ideological struggle, not the least Gilberto Freyre himself, who “found a patron in the Portuguese government, and seized upon what he saw in the Portuguese African colonies as a present-day laboratory demonstrating the processes of cultural and racial mixture that he described in colonial Brazil” . Freyre’s vulgarized after-life in Brazil and in Portugal unfolded largely through channels like diplomacy, the educational system, and dimensions of popular culture such as music or soccer . As is often the case, in this process of popularization the richness of Freyre’s genius was reduced to a simplistic, usable version. As such, it was able to circulate farther and amalgamate into later waves of nation-building and international projection efforts in Brazil and elsewhere, reaching up to present South-South cooperation activities. Along this way, as we saw, contradictions inevitably sprang up between such imaginations about Africa and Brazilians’ concrete engagements with Africans. The way Brazilians’ views on Africa have been infused by Freyre’s ideas is highly suggestive of parallels with Edward Said’s Orientalism. In this, I am particularly inspired by Said’s claim that when the West looks at the East as its other,nursery grow bag it sees it less in its coeval actuality than in terms of imaginations that have more to say about the seers than those who are being seen – that respond “more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object” . Thus, as in Orientalism, in Brazil’s official discourse on Africa the latter does not always figure as an actual, coeval, heterogeneous continent; much too frequently, it is an imagined Africa, homogeneous and frozen in time somewhere between the sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries – when the last wave of African slaves arrived in Brazil. But differently from Said’s original notion, this imagination stems not from the imperial impetus of Western powers, but from ideologies supporting the construction of Brazil as a nation, and more specifically, the place of Africans in it. Here, the African appears less as an ambivalent other or as a clearly distinct part of the self than as part of a hybrid self that is distinguishable through dimensions like arts, music, bodily techniques, food, language – in one word, culture. Here I will refer to this modulation of Orientalist discourse as nation-building Orientalism. Nation-building has been a more commonly deployed term to describe the historical process that I am otherwise referring to here, following subaltern studies and Latin American postcolonial scholars, as internal colonialism . This terminological option conveys more clearly what is for me the key contrast vis-à-vis Said’s account of Orientalism: the empire-building character of British, French and U.S. discourse on the Orient. Other than that, the discursive mechanics follows similar lines, and the nation-building version of Orientalism may be even thought of as a historical outgrowth of it. Said himself had suggested as much when he envisaged the potential of this kind of discourse to travel beyond hegemonic centers and be appropriated by the subaltern: in Orientalism, he had wished to call the attention of “formerly colonized peoples” to “the dangers and temptations of employing this structure [Orientalism] upon themselves or upon others” .

This is precisely what Brazil and other post-colonial nation-states have done, in relation to subaltern groups such as Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples . But as our discussion of Freyre has shown, the addressee of nation-building discourse is not limited to those who are being internally colonized. This inward coloniality implicates an outward one, directed to hegemonic centers in relation to which post-colonial nations see themselves as subaltern, and from which they seek recognition. To become a donor is, as I have suggested in Chapter 1, one of the ways in which this pursuit of recognition has been currently carried out by Brazilian diplomats.Much of the mismatches and contradictions pointed out in this chapter, both historically and contemporarily, have to do with the notion of culture implicit in Brazil’s nation-building Orientalism. The culture Africans are assumed to share with Brazilians has an essence, is bounded, and has changed very little throughout the centuries; it has an ontological quality that is conducted through specific material and ideational channels , being therefore separable from other domains like politics, the economy, and so forth. Although anthropologists have helped create it, this is a notion of culture that most of them have abandoned by now. Norbert Elias’s classic historical discussion of the emergence of the German Kultur in opposition to the French and English civilization or civilisation had already pointed to how culture has always been, from its modern beginnings, fundamentally political: a productive notion in certain historical formations attending to situated political stakes; in short, a cultural politics. The foregrounding of presumed affinities in the domain of culture prevalent in Brazil’s views on Africa may seem to fall in line with academic arguments stressing the centrality of nontextual forms of “embodied subjectivity” in Africa’s trans-Atlantic diaspora, in prominent works such as Gilroy’s Black Atlantic .But from the point of view of this dissertation, what it indicates most forcefully is the peripheralization of both regions during the rise to hegemony of the West, and its dominance in other dimensions such as economy, political institutions, and knowledge. Thus, what would be the proper terrain for relations across the Southern Atlantic was eventually left to what is understood, according to Western modernity’s normativity, to belong to the domain of culture . This is also linked to the fact that, to a large extent, it is in this dimension that African-Brazilians have most often excelled in Brazil. Both fieldwork and the historical literature show that Brazilian diplomats, government officials, businessmen, or technical professionals were and are mostly fair-skinned; most black Brazilians involved in cooperation with Africa, on the other hand, have been “cultural” agents such as athletes, musicians, or actors. In other words, internal coloniality has largely reproduced its external counterpart, which relegated Africa itself to the most peripheral end of the world system . One of my suggestions therefore is that the insistence in bringing culture to the fore of Brazil-Africa relations is an outwards projection of an unresolved internal problem of how to deal with Brazil’s domestic race relations – what I wished to indicate here through the notion of nation-building Orientalism. In this sense, the problem is not that questions of race and culture have been misplaced or misconceived in Brazil’s diplomatic discourse on Africa; it is, rather, that these should not have been there at all, at least not at forefront position they have occupied throughout the decades. In this sense, assertions that domestic race-based movements would be an “internal arm” of Brazil’s Africa policy , or that quilombola communities and other African-Brazilian groups should mediate South-South cooperation efforts , may make little practical sense, especially in technical fields like agriculture.