Human Constraints in Extending the Use of Forage Legumes in Mediterranean Areas

Abstract

The integration of forage legumes into farming systems in Mediterranean areas has been impeded by various elements of human behavior and organization. At the level of the international system, concern among development theorists and practitioners has increasingly been focused towards economic policy leverage and away from technology evaluation and transfer. Additionally, ley farming, which is most highly developed in Australia, is subject to the structural problems of technology transfer from one peripheral region of the global political economy to another. At the level of national agricultural policies, commodity price distortions and inappropriate manpower training constrain the expansion of forage legume cultivation. At the level of local farming systems, the principal constraints are patterns of land tenure, with privately owned farms generally too small to permit replication of classic ley farming and the separation of cropping from livestock raising. Farming systems in the region are increasingly variegated as a result of the modernization and bimodalization of agriculture, hence strategies for the dissemination of legume cultivation will have to be tailored to sharply different types of farming systems.