ABSTRACT
Billions of dollars in development aid, the introduction of numerous technologies, and a multitude of studies of the social and physical environment have been applied to the food problem in Africa during the last quarter of a century. Production and commercial profits are the basic values of industrial agricultural development in the United States (US) Emphasis on increasing land and labor productivity, at the expense of decreasing capital and energy productivity, reflects values nurtured by an era of cheap energy and abundant capital in the West. In the view of many development and relief agencies, most influentially the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the African food crisis is the result of environmental, technical, agronomic, managerial, and economic problems within Africa. US agriculture is often held up as a model for agricultural development in Africa, and Land Grant University (LGU) agriculturalists are in demand by USAID and other development agencies as experts.
