"This paper describes the emergence of improved traditional planting pits (zaï) in Burkina Faso in the early 1980s as well as their advantages, disadvantages and impact.

Two increasingly shared perspectives within the international development community are that (a) geography matters, and (b) many government interventions would be more successful if they were better targeted.

This paper introduces a modeling method which simulates a village's response to population and market pressure. The method combines a linear programming model with a biophysical model of soil condition and plant growth.