Comprehensive Overview of Rural Development, Environmental Issues, and Economic Planning

LESSON Nine

One. Integrated rural development - the broad spectrum of rural development activities, including small-farmer agricultural progress, the provision of physical and social infrastructure, the development of rural nonfarm industries, and the capacity of the rural sector to sustain and accelerate the pace of these improvements over time.

Two. Green Revolution - the boost in grain production associated with the scientific discovery of new hybrid seed varieties of wheat, rice, and corn that have resulted in high farm yields in many developing countries.

Three. Agrarian system - the pattern of land distribution, ownership, and management, and also the social and institutional structure of the agrarian economy.

Four. Latifundio - a very large landholding found particularly in the Latin American agrarian system, capable of providing employment for more than twelve people, owned by a small number of landlords, and comprising a disproportionate share of total agricultural land.

Five. Minifundio - a landholding found particularly in the Latin American agrarian system considered too small to provide adequate employment for a single family.

Six. Family farm - a farm plot owned and operated by a single household.

Seven. Medium-size farm - a farm employing up to twelve workers.

Eight. Transaction costs - costs of doing business related to gathering information, monitoring, establishing reliable suppliers, formulating contracts, obtaining credit, and so on.

Nine. Landlord - the proprietor of a freehold interest in land with rights to lease out to tenants in return for some form of compensation for the use of the land.

Ten. Sharecropper - a tenant farmer whose crop has to be shared with the landlord, as the basis for the rental contract.

Eleven. Tenant farmer - one who farms on land held by a landlord and therefore lacks ownership rights and has to pay for the use of that land, for example, by giving a share of output to the owner.

Twelve. Moneylender - a person who lends money at high rates of interest, for example to peasant farmers to meet their needs for seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs.

Thirteen. Subsistence farming - farming in which crop production, stock rearing, and other activities are conducted mainly for personal consumption.

Fourteen. Shifting cultivation - tilling land until it has been exhausted of fertility and then moving to a new parcel of land, leaving the former one to regain fertility until it can be cultivated again.

Fifteen. Cash crops - crops produced entirely for the market.

Sixteen. Staple food - a main food consumed by a large portion of a country's population.

Seventeen. Interlocking factor markets - factor markets whose supply functions are interdependent, frequently because different inputs are provided by the same suppliers who exercise monopolistic or oligopolistic control over resources.

Eighteen. Diversified (mixed) farming - the production of both staple crops and cash crops and simple animal husbandry typical of the first stage in the transition from subsistence to specialized farming.

Nineteen. Specialized farming - the final and most advanced stage of the evolution of agricultural production in which farm output is produced wholly for the market.

Twenty. Scale-neutral - unaffected by size; applied to technological progress that can lead to the achievement of higher output levels irrespective of the size (scale) of a firm or farm.

Twenty-one. Land reform - a deliberate attempt to reorganize and transform agrarian systems with the intention of fostering a more equal distribution of agricultural incomes and facilitating rural development.

LESSON Ten:

One. Global warming - increasing average air and ocean temperatures. Used in reference to the trend that began in the mid-twentieth century and attributed largely to human industrial, forestry, and agricultural activities emitting greenhouse gases.

Two. Climate change - nontransient altering of underlying climate, such as increased average temperature, decreased annual precipitation, or greater average intensity of droughts or storms. Used in reference to the impact of the global warming phenomenon. Note the distinction between changes in weather (which varies within a climate) and changes in climate that alter underlying probabilities of weather outcomes.

Three. Environmental accounting - the incorporation of environmental benefits and costs into the quantitative analysis of economic activities.

Four. Environmental capital - the portion of a country's overall capital assets that directly relate to the environment, for example, forests, soil quality, and groundwater.

Five. Sustainable development - a pattern of development that permits future generations to live at least as well as the current generation, generally requiring at least a minimum environmental protection.

Six. Sustainable net national income - an environmental accounting measure of the total annual income that can be consumed without diminishing the overall capital assets of a nation (including environmental capital).

Seven. Environmental Kuznets curve - a graph reflecting the concept that pollution and other environmental degradation first rises and then falls with increases in income per capita. There is evidence that this holds for some pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter in the air, but not for others, such as emissions of greenhouse gases.

Eight. Biomass fuels - any combustible organic matter that may be used as fuel, such as firewood, dung, or agricultural residues.

Nine. Desertification - the transformation of a region into dry, barren land with little or no capacity to sustain life without an artificial source of water.

Ten. Soil erosion - loss of valuable topsoils resulting from overuse of farmland, and deforestation and consequent flooding of farmland.

Eleven. Deforestation - the clearing of forested land either for agricultural purposes or for logging and for use as firewood.

Twelve. Total net benefit - the sum of net benefits to all consumers.

Thirteen. Marginal cost - the addition to total cost incurred by the producer as a result of increasing output by one more unit.

Fourteen. Producer surplus - excess of what a producer of a good receives and the minimum amount the producer would be willing to accept because of a positive-sloping marginal cost curve.

Fifteen. Consumer surplus - excess utility over price derived by consumers because of a negative-sloping demand curve.

Sixteen. Scarcity rent - the premium or additional rent charged for the use of a resource or good that is in fixed or limited supply.

Seventeen. Present value - the discounted value at the present time of a sum of money to be received in the future.

Eighteen. Marginal net benefit - the benefit derived from the last unit of a good minus its cost.

Nineteen. Property rights - the acknowledged right to use and benefit from a tangible (e.g., land) or intangible (e.g., intellectual) entity that may include owning, using, deriving income from, selling, and disposing.

Twenty. Common property resource - a resource that is collectively or publicly owned and allocated under a system of unrestricted access, or as self-regulated by users.

Twenty-one. Externality - any benefit or cost borne by an individual economic unit that is a direct consequence of another's behavior.

Twenty-two. Internalization - the process whereby external environmental or other costs are borne by the producers or consumers who generate them, usually through the imposition of pollution or consumption taxes.

Twenty-three. Public good - an entity that provides benefits to all individuals simultaneously and whose enjoyment by one person in no way diminishes that of another.

Twenty-four. Public bad - an entity that imposes costs on groups of individuals simultaneously. Compare with public good.

Twenty-five. Free-rider problem - the situation in which people can secure benefits that someone else pays for.

Twenty-six. Clean technologies - technologies that by design produce less pollution and waste and use resources more efficiently.

Twenty-seven. Private costs - the direct monetary outlays or costs of an individual economic unit.

Twenty-eight. Pollution tax - a tax levied on the quantity of pollutants released into the physical environment.

Twenty-nine. Social cost - the full cost of an economic decision, whether private or public, to society as a whole.

Thirty. Absorptive capacity - the capacity of an ecosystem to assimilate potential pollutants.

Thirty-one. Greenhouse gases - gases that trap heat within the earth's atmosphere and can thus contribute to global warming.

Thirty-two. Biodiversity - the variety of life forms within an ecosystem.

Thirty-three. Global public good - a public good, whose benefits reach across national borders and population groups.

Thirty-four. Debt-for-nature swap The exchange of foreign debt held by an organization for a larger quantity of domestic debt that is used to finance the preservation of a natural resource or environment in the debtor country.