"Banana Systems in the Humid Highlands of Sub-Saharan Africa: Enhancing Resilience and Productivity" addresses issues related to agricultural intensification in the (sub)humid highland areas of Africa, based on research carried out in the Great Lakes Region by the Consortium for Improving Agriculture-based Livelihoods in Central Africa (CIALCA). This book is a valuable resource for researchers, students and policymakers in agricultural economics and international development, covering agronomic, economic, policy, extension, and communication dimensions.

"I don't want to suppose. I want to know." -Julia Frances Morton

"Fruits of Warm Climates" is "the" encyclopedia for those who want to know. In one definitive volume, Morton explores the world of tropical and subtropical fruit, providing information on the history of the plants, cultivation techniques, food and alternative uses, nutrition, varieties, and much more. Written in a professional yet accessible voice, "Fruits of Warm Climates" is a must-have for anyone interested in tropical horticulture.

Valuable for researchers as well as home and commercial growers, "Fruits of Warm Climates" masterfully packages the essential information on familiar and not-so-familiar tropical fruit. With over 400 pages containing hundreds of images, the volume is overflowing with information on countless varieties of fruits. Years after its original publication, "Fruits of Warm Climates" remains a leading text on the subject and the pinnacle work of economic botanist Julia F. Morton. It is an important resource for every agricultural, research, and science library.

Julia F. Morton was Research Professor of Biology and Director of the Morton Collectanea (a research and information center devoted to economic botany) at the University of Miami. She received a D. Sc. from Florida State University in 1973 and was elected Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1974. She has held numerous positions in the field including President of the Florida State Horticulture Society, a member of the Board of Trustees of Fairchild Tropical Garden, and served on the Board of Directors of the Florida National Parks and Monuments Association. She is the author of 10 books and co-author of 12 others.

In most African countries, banana production has been consigned to subsistence production. However, a few countries, especially in Francophone West Africa, have recognised the commercial importance of banana, and have used their special relationship with France to export bananas. This has led to the dualization of the banana sector, with the traditional system existing side by side with a modern sector geared towards export trade. This book is one of the few comprehensive studies that have incorporated both the agronomic and economic aspects of banana production and marketing in Africa. It looks at all facets of banana production, from an historical perspective to the various traditional and modern technologies involved. The marketing aspect covers both the domestic and international trade, with emphasis on the preferential (ACP / DOM Lome Convention) and the open markets of the European Union. The book is a major contribution to understanding the internationalisation of the banana trade and to its ever-increasing investment portfolio, as the backbone of many a developing tropical economy. Although the emphasis is placed on Cameroon, other relevant African, tropical and subtropical banana-producing countries are mentioned where necessary, especially in the export sector where a degree of competition existed. Further, agricultural practices, soils, meteorological and climatological characteristics, pests and diseases, personnel and banana varieties grown, mean that findings in Cameroon are of relevance to other banana-producing countries, especially in Africa. Meanwhile, other African and tropical countries still contemplating entry into banana exports would benefit from the Cameroon experience. The book is of especial relevance to agronomists, entomologists, economists, farm managers, government policy makers, large, medium and small scale banana growers, and students and teachers in universities and schools of agriculture.

In the tropical and subtropical areas of the world, food grains make up the bulk of the diet for most people. Food grains together with fiber and specialty crops are also principal cash producers. It is with these commodities that this Guide for Field Crops in the Tropics and Subtropics concerns itself. The Guide deals with general situations; local applications are beyond the range of this moderate-size volume, but the basic information presented will permit area-by-area adaptations. This concise, up-to-date Guide is composed of 40 chapters. The first four are general introductory chapters, and treat rather extensively the important subjects of climate, soil, cropping, and farming systems as related to the tropics and subtropics. The other 36 chapters are divided as follows: 6 on cereal crops, 9 on food legumes, 6 on oil crops, 7 on root or tuber crops and bananas, 6 on major fiber crops and 2 on other cash crops. These chapters do not attempt to deal with the factors of providing inputs such as national supplies of fertilizer, insecticides and fungicides.

This book on 'Secondary Agriculture' discusses the goal of doubling farmers' incomes. The term 'secondary' has a bearing on climate change adaptation and its mitigation, small farm viability and profitability, food security, nutrition, sustainable utilization of natural resources, and optimal usage of produce from primary agriculture and farm incomes. Promoting secondary agriculture has implications on attaining sustainable development goals, which aim to connect primary, secondary and tertiary sectors by using slack/idle factors of production, such as land and labour, contributing to primary agriculture production, capturing 'value' in primary agricultural activities, and generating additional income at the enterprise level. In context to same, the chapters of this book have been designed to promote secondary agriculture through low-cost skills and technology applications in agriculture and by upscaling knowledge via integrating primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of agriculture. The motivation behind this book is to address the challenges of biotic and abiotic stresses facing the farming community; to increase farmers income through low-cost skills and technology applications in agriculture; to upscale knowledge by integrating primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of agriculture. The food processing sector in India is still in a nascent stage with only 8 per cent of the produce being processed as against 80-98 per cent in case of high-income countries (Government of India, 2008, 2010). The food processing sector is now receiving the boost with the annual growth of 13.2 per cent in registered food processing units during 2004-10 (Government of India, 2011). Against this backdrop, there is a strong need to strategically handle the situation in order to facilitate a self-sustainable and long-run growth of the sector, which is felt possible by focusing on Secondary Agriculture. Though not a panacea for all ailments of the primary sector, but it can definitely drive the growth.

Dating back to the nineteenth-century transplantation of a latex-producing tree from the Amazon to Southeast Asia, rubber production has wrought monumental changes worldwide. During a turbulent Vietnamese past, rubber transcended capitalism and socialism, colonization and decolonization, becoming a key commodity around which life and history have revolved. In this pathbreaking study, Michitake Aso narrates how rubber plantations came to dominate the material and symbolic landscape of Vietnam and its neighbors, structuring the region's environment of conflict and violence. Tracing the stories of agronomists, medical doctors, laborers, and leaders of independence movements, Aso demonstrates how postcolonial socialist visions of agriculture and medicine were informed by their colonial and capitalist predecessors in important ways. As rubber cultivation funded infrastructural improvements and the creation of a skilled labor force, private and state-run plantations became landscapes of oppression, resistance, and modernity. Synthesizing archival material in English, French, and Vietnamese, Aso uses rubber plantations as a lens to examine the entanglements of nature, culture, and politics and demonstrates how the demand for rubber has impacted nearly a century of war and, at best, uneasy peace in Vietnam.