Matthew A. Schnurr
I am a Professor in the Department of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. My research interests focus on the politics of agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Salas, D., Sheik Heile, A., Schnurr, M.A., de Jong, M., Duff, M., Swanson, K. (2026). Seas of unfreedom: A scoping review of labour exploitation as a structural feature of global fisheries. Marine Policy, 191, 107147.
Global fisheries face a dual crisis of ecological decline and widespread labour exploitation. While “modern slavery” in fisheries has attracted significant attention, the evidence remains fragmented across disciplines, obscuring the systemic nature of the problem. This scoping review maps the current state of knowledge on labour abuses in marine-based fisheries and identifies critical geographic, thematic, …
Schnurr, M.A., Shilomboleni, H., Taylor, A. & Dowd-Uribe. (2025). Towards a more pluralistic approach to evaluating the farm-level impacts of new breeding technologies in sub-Saharan Africa. Genome, 68.
The Green Revolution’s objective of increasing yields precipitated an approach to impact evaluation that relied predominantly on econometric analyses to measure yield differences and how those differences impact farmer incomes. This paper explores the legacies of this assessment scholarship for New Breeding Technologies (NBTs) in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines three pervasive assumptions underpinning econometric-informed evaluative …
Shilomboleni, H., & Schnurr, M. A. (2025). Are disruptive agricultural technologies compatible with agroecology? Npj Sustainable Agriculture, 3(1), 21-25.
Agroecology has emerged as a credible approach to achieving sustainable and resilient agrifood systems. But the role for disruptive agricultural technologies within agroecology remains contentious. This paper examines the potential congruence for technology-driven and agroecology-driven approaches to agricultural development. We examine two case studies from east Africa—one focused on user-centered digital technology in Ethiopia and …
Fairbairn, M., Faxon, H.O., Montenegro de Wit, M., Bronson, K., Kish, Z., Ruder, S.L., Ezirigwe, J., Abdella, S., Oguamanam, C., & Schnurr, M.A. (2025). Digital agriculture will perpetuate injustice unless led from the grassroots. Nature Food, 6, 312–315.
Situating digital agriculture within recent histories of uneven agrarian development reveals its potential to perpetuate injustice. To avoid this outcome, we argue for innovation processes that centre the needs, knowledge and priorities of communities who work the land.
Addison, L., Gore, C., Bawa, S., & Schnurr, M.A. (2025). From negotiated to covert: married women’s agency in staple crop value chains in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and Uganda. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 59(1), 91–112.
This article examines married women’s agency in marketing and income use for staple crops grown on jointly held fields in four African countries: cowpea in Ghana, maize in South Africa and Kenya, and matooke banana in Uganda. The article is based on a series of workshops in each country in which small-scale farmers participated in …
Fischer, K., Crossland-Marr, L., Mollaoglu, E. P., Ely, A., Glover, D., Schnurr, M., & Stone, G. D. (2025). Citizens as consumers: styles of reasoning about agricultural biotechnologies and publics. Science as Culture, 1–23.
In research and policy there is a dominant style of reasoning about the contribution agricultural biotechnologies can make to resolving major global challenges. In this reasoning, consumer scepticism is a major hindrance to deploying biotechnology and there is a significant focus on understanding consumer opinion in order to manipulate it. Analysing the historical role given …
Schnurr, M. A., Gore, C. D., Addison, L., Bawa, S., Taylor, A., Nsereko, H., & Mujabi-Mujuzi, S. (2024). The gendered value chain of matooke banana and its implications for tissue culture adoption in Uganda. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 1–24.
Tissue culture banana is promoted as a form of micro-propagation that can aid farmers in managing pests and disease in Uganda, the country with the largest per capita consumption of banana in the world. But uptake amongst smallholder farmers remains low. This study recruited 71 farmers from five banana-growing districts in Uganda to assess how …
Rock, J., Schnurr, M.A., Kingiri, A., Ely, A., Glover, D., Stone, G.D., and Fischer, K. (2023). The knowledge politics of genome editing in Africa. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 11 (1): 00143.
How is the promise of crop genome editing viewed by scientists working with or aspiring to work with the technology, by development experts seeking to mold public perceptions and policy attitudes toward genome editing, and by donors that provide funds for genome-editing research for agricultural applications in sub-Saharan Africa? In this article, we present data …
Rock, J., Schnurr, M.A., Kingiri, A., Glover, Stone, G.D., Ely, A., & Fischer, K. (2023). Beyond the Genome: Genetically Modified Crops in Africa and the Implications for Genome Editing. Development and Change.
Genome editing — a plant-breeding technology that facilitates the manipulation of genetic traits within living organisms — has captured the imagination of scholars and professionals working on agricultural development in Africa. Echoing the arrival of genetically modified (GM) crops decades ago, genome editing is being heralded as a technology with the potential to revolutionize breeding …
Schnurr, M.A., Rock, J., Kingiri, A., & Lieberman, S. (2022). Are genetically modified and genome-edited crops viable strategies for climate-change adaptation among smallholder farmers? Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 58, 101216
Genetic modification and genome editing are laboratory techniques that allow plant breeders to alter an organism’s DNA with the aim of enhancing the expression of beneficial traits. Both have been touted as pro-poor breeding technologies that can help smallholder farmers in low-income countries adapt to climate change. This review assesses the evidence showcasing both the …