African Farmers and Their Environment in Long Term Perspective

这个项目包括1995年5月在荷兰瓦赫宁根举办一个讲习班。 研讨会将有11名美国学者和17名来自欧洲和非洲的学者参加。 主题是根据长期的人种学研究，审查和发展有关非洲农业生产力的知识。 学者们将讨论到目前为止所学到的东西，并制定研究战略，以填补空白，并促进我们对非洲农业高生产率和低生产率原因的理解。 所涉及的观点将把对地方系统的详细研究与更大规模的区域和全球变化研究结合起来。 这次会议是重要的，因为非洲人口增长率远远高于粮食生产增长率。 从社区和决策的角度了解农业生产力的变化，有助于规划人员制定政策，提高非洲粮食生产的增长率。

This project involves a workshop to be held in Wageningen, Netherlands, in May 1995. The workshop will involves 11 US-based scholars and 17 scholars from Europe and Africa. The topic is the review and development of knowledge about African farming productivity based on long-term ethnographic studies. Scholars will discuss what has been learned so far and work out research strategies to fill in the gaps and advance our understanding of the causes of high and low productivity in African agriculture. The perspectives involved will join detailed studies of local systems with larger scale regional and global change studies. This conference is important because rates of population growth in Africa are far higher than rates of growth of food production. Understanding the variations in agricultural productivity from a community-based and decision-making perspective can help planners design policies to improve the rate of growth of African food production.