The Development of Agriculture and Forestry in the Tropics [antikvár]

PrefaceIn December, 1959, Professor S. Herbert Frankel of Nuffield College, Oxford, an old friend and colleague deeply interested in the economies and ways of life in the tropics, suggested that I should write a short account of the more significant observations I had made during the various World Bank Missions and other forays in representative portions of these great regions.After discussing the proposal in principle with friends in the World Bank, Professor Frankel and Messrs. Faber and Faber, I considered with care the possible approaches I could make to this varied subjectvaried because of the very range of the countries, conditions, problems and human communities embraced. In the end I decided to attempt nothing detailed and highly technical, but rather to draw together within the broad classification of the patterns, the problems and the promise of agriculture and forestry in certain sectors of these regions, the matters I think are of more than ordinary importance in the development of agriculture and forestry. The points selected for discussion should provide scope for criticism from those who are concerned with the stimulation of progress in these still underdeveloped regions.But the form of narrative I have followed has its limitations: owing to the necessity for brevity in so wide a subject, I have been unable to deal with various matters which some rightly consider as vitally importantfor example, details of commodity crops, plantation production, and various patterns of' shifting cultivationnomadism, types of indigenous livestock and their' managementinland fisheries, and land tenure. For these shortcomings I ask forgivenessperhaps I may have the privilege of dealing with some of these in a later work.I must make it clear that my own travels have taken me only to Peru, Nicaragua and Costa Rica in Latin America, various countries in Africa and Ceylon and Malaya in Asia: for the rest I have depended upon references in World Bank reports and other literature. I have not included Oceania, notably Australia and New Zealand, because of the special nature of the agriculture, forestry and economics of these important and rapidly developing countries.16