A random collection of my agriculture photos (and captions) from Africa and from the U.S.

Cooperatives often work well for bulk purchase and secure storage of inputs

Product sales often involve long waits for transport

(Notice the boy sleeping by his cotton bales, at the loading ramp in the background)

Farmers may have to improvise!

Grain silos are pretty similar everywhere—they just differ in size.

Plowing is hard work

Seed samples at an experiment station in Senegal

Large-scale grain mills are a relic of colonial times

Small-scale mills are much more cost-effective

Here in Mali, stored forage will feed animals inside the family compound

Food aid is widespread – and its packaging is often re-used

This family in Burkina Faso has invested heavily in rock bunds to limit erosion

Farmers often plant their cereal grains (such as corn) right next to a legume (such as peanuts).

Here, they are planted together in microcatchments, to concentrate the available rainfall around the plants.

Grain marketing offers significant scale economies

Seed production is dominated by smaller, local companies

(Local seed companies like the mom-and-pop brand shown above often use genetic material from large public-sector research institutions and private biotech companies, but those traits must be bred into locally-adapted crop varieties. The multiplication and distribution of the resulting seed requires a high degree of local knowledge, and offers limited scale economies.)

In the photo below, somewhat larger regional seed company (CPS seed) is advertising seed that incorporates the Round-Up Ready trait licensed from Monsanto.

New seed varieties are continually being introduced by rival seed companies, who use data from controlled experiments and roadside demonstration plots to advertise their effectiveness.