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Sudan is the largest country in Africa and boasts the largest farm in the world. Sudan is a predominately agricultural economy; agriculture employs more than eighty percent of the country's labour force and its industry. The national agricultural research institutions are charged with the key responsibility of implementing sustainable agricultural growth and development in Sudan. By adoption of demonstrable benefit farms, the research institutions view their contribution as providing improvements to traditional Sudanese practices rather than focusing on developing new techniques. Any research institution must have methodsof improving farming practices and the pertinent test of their relevance is improved management practices. Crop productivity is extremely low and does not exceed thirty percent of the level attained in research or demonstration fields; the difficult economic position of the country has adversely affected the activities of the agricultural research institutions; technology generation is greatly hampered; the extension service is fragmented and its efforts are conned to a small number of farmers; the research institutions are weakened due to frequent staff turnover, lack of continuity in the research agenda and inadequacies in management and hence their impact is limited. The main purpose of this study is to critically evaluate the implementation capacity constraints which exist in formal agricultural research and the impact this has on thedevelopment of the agricultural sector of the Sudanese economy. The study also attempts to provide a better understanding of the relationships between low productivity in Sudan and the determinants of this. The data for this research were obtained from a field survey carried out in 1999. In the survey, a total of 120 farmers from the Gezira Scheme, 84 researchers from the Agricultural Research Corporation, 33 academic staff from the Gezira University as well as extensionists from the Central State were successfully interviewed. The research explores various aspects of the internal technology transfer system and the productivity gap in traditional agriculture. A critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature on technology transfer has been conducted in the study. It is obvious that economic analysis alone will not provide a satisfactory solution to the type of problems investigated in the study as these issues and problems also have political and socio-cultural dimensions. Therefore, the proposed solutions simply seek to change the behaviours of both individuals and institutions. To do this it is necessary to recognise all the dimensions of the technology transfer problem. This study provides insights into the influence of demographic, socio-economic, cultural, technical and decision-making factors on technology transfer and productivity in Sudan. The thesis concludes with discussion of key policy implications and areas for further research. The findings of this research should assist in guiding planners and policy-makers in improving the internal technology transfer system and perhaps in enabling agricultural productivity to improve in the Sudan.

This dissertation reassesses earlier economic models of the agricultural systems of the Early Islamic period (c. 636–1099 CE) in the Levant in light of new empirical archaeological evidence. In the four journal articles that comprise this dissertation, I investigate the variability of agricultural economies at four Early Islamic sites in modern-day Israel through the analysis of archaeobotanical remains (seeds, fruit, plant parts, wood charcoal). In the first article, I analyze botanical remains from the coastal city of Ashkelon. I identify the suite of crops and agricultural practices employed, reconstruct local practices of arboriculture, and describe non-local plants available through regional trade. Spatial analyses identify private grain storage, preferred constructional materials, and the discrete separation of household and refuse space. Such analyses provide insights into the intersection of agricultural and artisan economies in an urban setting. In the second article, I combine historical and archaeological evidence to investigate arboriculture at Ashkelon. Arboriculture, the cultivation of long-lived perennial tree and vine crops that provide long term harvests of fruit, can be understood as investment in land and urban development. Integrated analysis of historical and archaeobotanical evidence indicates that the inhabitants of Ashkelon specialized in arboriculture as a means to supply both subsistence and craft economies. In the third article, I investigate the production and consumption of agricultural plant products at the coastal city of Caesarea Maritima. Spatial analysis of wood and non-wood plant remains, features, and artifacts reveals cereal processing debris across multiple rooms in a former warehouse, revealing a socioeconomic shift from a storage area to a crop processing space. Such a shift aligns with similar patterns of diversified uses of space that characterize the Early Islamic period in which the focus of economic production shifted away from export to local consumption. In the fourth article, I investigate how farmers’ agricultural choices were driven by political, social, and environmental conditions. Through an intersite analysis of archaeobotanical assemblages from four archaeological sites—coastal Ashkelon and Caesarea Maritima, and inland Tel Shimron and Neby Zakaria—I determine that production and consumption of plant resources are affected more by a settlement’s socioeconomic function than by its environmental setting.

In this study, an attempt is made to analyse the effect of village organization and associated improved farm technology on income distribution in rural Bangladesh. The study uses empirical data collected through an intensive survey of rural families from eight villages of Mymensingh district. Three important village organizations, namely the Integrated Rural Development Programme, the Shimla and the Swanirvor were covered, taking two villages from each type. Also, two traditional villages were covered to facilitate comparisons. The design of the sample was a stratified random sample with proportional allocation. The samples provided one year's data for the year 1980-81 on households' incomes. Data were analysed using simple statistical techniques. The main purpose of the study was to critically examine the hypothesis that the institutional approach represents a 'third way of development' and that growth and equity can be simultaneously promoted in rural Bangladesh through the techno-economic programmes like IRDP, Swanirvor and Shimla. Analysis of cross-section data, however, points to the contrary. The results show that the average level of household income is likely to improve in absolute terms, but the distribution of income is likely to worsen in the organized villages compared with traditional villages. The greater share of benefits of the village organizations with associated improved technologies seems to have accrued mainly to relatively larger landowners whereas very small farms and landless rural households were only limited beneficiaries. Over time, the process of land alienation has been more accentuated in the organized villages than the traditional ones. With regards to productivity, there is a tendency towards diseconomies of scale in both the organized and the traditional villages. The results of the study suggest that the neglect of existing inequality of land ownership and power may lead to a failure of the village organizations with associated improved technologies in the fulfilment of twin objectives - growth and equity - in rural Bangladesh. If any programme for increasing income and reducing inequality is to be successfully implemented, land ownership patterns along with other related issues have to be taken into account. Implications of the findings for framing rural development policy and for conducting further research are discussed.

This thesis attempts to show the value of farm-level studies as useful additions to aggregated, national or regional models that are used to analyse the effects of policy on an agricultural economy. A literature survey (Chapter 2) illustrates many applications of the aggregated approach to the problems that scarce or costly energy will pose for agriculture. It is argued that viewing potential responses to such energy scenarios at the level of the farm business is likely to yield greater understanding of the ways such scenarios will impact on existing farm systems. Such an approach has application both to the concerns the energy problem poses for the farming community and to the needs of policy-makers in the spheres of agricultural and energy policy. Indeed, it is a feature of policy oriented aggregated studies in agriculture that they often have to make assumptions about the response of the farm sector (for example, the price elasticity of demand for fuel) that can only be verified by detailed study of farm systems, or groups of farm systems. Thus this approach can provide real benefits to those whose concern is the future of farming in New Zealand. A multi-period mixed integer programming model (based on linear programming) is fully specified (in Chapter 3) and used to simulate activity on a case-study mixed cropping farm in Canterbury. The model is validated and run to show the effects, first of imposed fuel rationing and second of energy price increases, on the optimal farm system. Increased prices of fuel and the indirect effects they have on the prices of other inputs are estimated and used in the second scenario. Results of these analyses quantify changes in the optimal system in terms of input use, output and the balance of enterprises within the farm system. These results are also expressed in terms of performance criteria: profitability (measured as total revenue less variable and semi-fixed costs), efficiency of support energy use and marginal products of inputs. Generally, results show that net revenue maximising farm systems are resistant to change under very large energy price increases, despite profitability being rapidly affected (i.e. the optimal use of resources changed little whereas the level of profit at the optimum changes markedly). Such a result shows that farm fuel demand is price inelastic. This contrasts with results under fuel rationing, where farm systems change under even small (i.e. less than five per cent) cuts in the use of fuel for productive purposes and profitability declines slowly (i.e. the optimal use of resources changes quite markedly, whilst net revenue declines rather more modestly). Shadow price results indicate a rapidly increasing marginal value of fuel as its use is restricted. The concluding chapter discusses the implications of the scenarios tested both for the particular farm and for policy-makers. Prospects for further development and application of the model are also discussed. A bibliography and appendices layout sources of reference and data used in specifying the model.