University of SaskatchewanHARVEST
  • Login
  • Submit Your Research
  • About
    • About HARVEST
    • Guidelines
    • Browse
      • All of HARVEST
      • Communities & Collections
      • By Issue Date
      • Authors
      • Titles
      • Subjects
      • This Collection
      • By Issue Date
      • Authors
      • Titles
      • Subjects
    • My Account
      • Login
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
      View Item 
      • HARVEST
      • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
      • View Item
      • HARVEST
      • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
      • View Item

      Competing Discourses of Sustainability in African Agriculture: A Case Study of the Sustainable Agriculture Discourse of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

      Thumbnail
      View/Open
      ALHASSAN-THESIS-2019.pdf (997.3Kb)
      Date
      2019-12-03
      Author
      Alhassan, Alhassan Yakubu 1990-
      ORCID
      0000-0003-0534-127X
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Level
      Masters
      Metadata
      Show full item record
      Abstract
      Despite wide acceptance of the importance and desirability of “agricultural sustainability,” the concept remains slippery and contested. While research has focused on links between sustainable practices and productivity, and the reasons why farmers do or do not adopt recommended measures, less is known about how the notions and expectations of sustainable agriculture are shaped and evolve over time. This study addresses this gap by investigating how a well-resourced organisation, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), frames sustainable agriculture and promotes it to stakeholders in African agriculture. The research seeks answers to three interrelated questions: 1) How does AGRA conceptualise sustainable agriculture? 2) How has AGRA’s framing of sustainable agriculture evolved? 3) How does AGRA communicate and promote its notion of sustainable agriculture to farmers and other stakeholders? The study draws on political ecology theory and employs sociological discourse analysis to investigate these questions using evidence from the annual reports of AGRA from 2008–2018. The findings reveal that AGRA’s definition of sustainable agriculture generally prioritises the use of industrial inputs to increase production on a targeted land base. This framing has its beginning as the promotion of “improved” seeds and synthetic fertilisers, enhanced market access and credit and financing for farmers, to advocacy for national policies that are favorable to these forms of intensification and market integration. AGRA promotes this framing to farmers through universities and other research institutions, government agencies, extension professionals, and farmer organisations. While this study’s primary focus is deconstructing the evolving discourse of agricultural sustainability in key public documents of AGRA, it also considers how the organisation has elaborated campaigns that appear to connect with broader concerns of agricultural sustainability but ignore the implications and complications of their own roles in promoting a particular agenda. The study contributes to the larger discussion of how discourses of ‘sustainability,’ climate change, hunger, and poverty, are deployed in the production and the reproduction of farming systems compatible with the development agendas of key commercial interests.
      Degree
      Master of Arts (M.A.)
      Department
      Sociology
      Program
      Sociology
      Supervisor
      Gertler, Michael E
      Committee
      Wright, Laura; Mitchell, Matthew I; Wotherspoon, Terry
      Copyright Date
      October 2019
      URI
      http://hdl.handle.net/10388/12472
      Subject
      Sustainable
      Agriculture
      Africa
      Agrifood
      AGRA
      Green Revolution
      Collections
      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
      University of Saskatchewan

      University Library

      © University of Saskatchewan
      Contact Us | Disclaimer | Privacy