Agricultural change, raising production & land management

Farming never stands still. Across Namibia and the wider world, land use is changing — small subsistence plots become large commercial farms, hoes and oxen give way to tractors, governments reform who owns the land, and young people leave the farms for the towns. In this AS lesson we examine what that change does to people, to the economy and to the environment, sorting the social, economic and environmental implications side by side. We then assess how a Low Income Country can raise its food production — irrigation, high-yielding-variety seeds, fertiliser, mechanisation, land reform, credit and extension — weighing each method's gains against its risks, and studying the Green Revolution as our required LIC case study. Finally we discuss how farmers conserve and manage the land so it keeps producing: terracing, contour ploughing, crop rotation, agroforestry, conservation agriculture, controlled grazing, water harvesting and Namibia's proud communal conservancies. Throughout we use real Namibian problems — soil erosion, salinisation, bush encroachment and water depletion — and real Namibian solutions.