Improved fallows: a case study of an adaptive response in Amazonian swidden farming systems

Many smallholders in the Amazon employ swidden (slash-and-burn) farming systems in which forest or forest fallows are the primary source of natural soil enrichment. With decreasing opportunities to claim natural forests for agriculture and shrinking landholdings, rotational agriculture on smaller holdings allows insufficient time for fallow to regenerate naturally into secondary forest. This case study examines how Peruvian farmers use “improved fallows” as an adaptive response to a situation of decreasing soil fertility and how the farmers describe the rationale underlying the various actions taken in these modified fallow systems. The results indicate that farmers establish improved fallows using contextual ecological knowledge and various techniques to introduce a large diversity of tree species. This practice is also used to restore degraded land to agricultural production. The tasks of maintaining productivity on agricultural land and reforesting degraded areas is becoming increasingly urgent in the Amazon, making agricultural practices that involve reforestation and tree management highly relevant. Since swidden farming systems are the basis for the livelihoods of most Amazon smallholders, good farming practices elaborated by swidden farmers are important for sustainable small-scale family farming systems in the Amazon.     

Redemptive communities: Indigenous knowledge,colonist farming systems,and conservation of tropical forests

This essay critically examines the emerging view among some ethnologists that replicable models of sustainable management of tropical forests may be found within the knowledge systems of contemporary indigenous peoples. As idealized epistemological types, several characteristics distinguishing “indigenous” from “modern” knowledge systems are described. Two culturally distinctive land use systems in Latin America are compared, one developed by an indigenous group, the Huastec Maya, and the other characteristic of colonist farms in Rondonia, Brazil. While each of these systems reflects a different cultural-historical tradition, I argue that the process of knowledge formation and cultural adaptation is coevolutionary and continuous in both cases. The very concept of “indigenous” as a discrete analytic category is questioned; indigenicity alone cannot explain local adaptation of farming systems. Rather than dichotomize indigenous and colonist knowledge as inherently different categories, differences in land use patterns between such social groups may be more accurately viewed as reflecting different points on a single epistemological continuum.     

粮食安全背景下“非粮化”的演化特征、形成机理及突破路径

随着土地流转和规模化经营的加快,"非粮化"问题越发凸显。为保证我国粮食安全,本文从历史角度分析我国"非粮化"的演化特征,并从土地、劳动力、市场和政府四个视角讨论"非粮化"的形成机理。研究发现:"非粮化"在不同历史阶段呈现"去粮化"与"趋粮化"交替波动特征。"非粮化"现象背后的主要原因是市场经济背景下粮食作物的经济效应较弱,进而导致劳动力和土地等生产资料从第一产业向第二、三产业转移,加之近年来耕地质量下降、政府过度强调GDP和"伪生态化"问题等。因此应强化土地监管、培养新型职业农民、加大粮食科技投入以及完善对地方政府的考核体系。     

Planners or performers? Reflections on indigenous dryland farming in northern Burkina Faso

Indigenous agricultural practices in semiarid West Africa must be seen as dynamic operations that serve different ends. These ends are not only agricultural, but symbolic. By highlighting how farmers in the Central Plateau region of Burkina Faso organize their farming strategies, the “agriculture as performance” arguments developed by Richards (1987, 1993) can be both challenged and extended from the humid forest zone of West Africa. Farmers, it can be argued, are also keen “planners;” in order to meet their goals they invest considerable effort in overcoming ecological constraints, and also spend time forging links with various institutions working for agricultural development. Technologies and ideas from multiple sources—including those from some innovative development institutions — are incorporated in agricultural planning and practices in different ways, by different farmers, and for different reasons. The prospect of locally initiated and managed agricultural change emerging on the Central Plateau will be dependent upon this dialogue between farmer innovation, local organizations, and development projects. Agricultural systems are, in many cases, consciously “constructed” through sustained investment in the land and in natural resource management. Dryland management efforts need to recognize the strategic and planned nature of these activities, if they are to work with farmers who are actively building and improving their own livelihood systems.     

农户种植耕地的来源与差异研究--以云南省525户农户为例

基于云南省525户农户的随机问卷调查结果,研究农户种植耕地的来源与差异。结果显示,农户种植耕地绝大部分来源于自家承包地,而只有少部分来源于转入;农户之间的耕地流转活动仍处于较低水平,农户家庭种植面积相对偏小且较为细碎化,应采取措施来促使农户转入耕地。     

我国农业集约化规模经营的瓶颈、根源及对策

本文认为：农业集约化规模经营的瓶颈是农业生产力水平不高,农民就业和保障单一,小农意识浓厚;根源是农地产权不清晰。为了解决小农经济对接大市场的困难,缓解农村人地高度紧张矛盾。文章提出：在目前政府实行一系列惠农、利农政策的有利形势下,农业完全可以适时提出集约化规模经营;政府需要特别关注的是农地承包经营权方面的法律体系建设,加快农村土地承包经营权转让的市场建设,加大农村富余劳动力的培养力度,真正实现农民自觉参与农业集约化规模经营中来,彻底解决当前小农户、大市场的矛盾。     

Zuni farming and united states government policy: The politics of biological and cultural diversity in agriculture

Indigenous Zuni farming, including cultural values, ecological and biological diversity, and land distribution and tenure, appears to have been quite productive and sustainable for at least 2000 before United States influence began in the later half of the 18th century. United States Government Indian agriculture policy has been based on assimilation of Indians and taking of their resources, and continues in more subtle ways today. At Zuni this policy has resulted in the degradation and loss of natural resources for farming, reduction in the number of Zuni farmers and their control over farming resources, individualization of rights in farmland, consolidation of farm fields, and declining biological diversity in agriculture. The Zuni Sustainable Agriculture Project with the Zuni Irrigation Association and the Zuni community, are now working to revitalize sustainable Zuni farming, based on traditional values, knowledge, and technology, combined with modern knowledge and technology where appropriate. The United States government can support these efforts through appreciation of the need for Zuni control and the potential value of cultural and biological diversity.     

Place,Taste, or Face-to-Face? Understanding Producer–Consumer Networks in “Local” Food Systems in Washington State

In an increasingly globalized food economy, local agri-food initiatives are promoted as more sustainable alternatives, both for small-scale producers and ecologically conscious consumers. However, revitalizing local agri-food communities in rural agro-industrial regions is particularly challenging. This case study examines Grant and Chelan Counties, two industrial farming regions in rural Central Washington State, distant from the urban fringe. Farmers in these counties have tried diversifying large-scale processing into organics and marketing niche and organic produce at popular farmers markets in Seattle about 200 miles away. Such strategies invoke the question, “How are ‘local’ agri-food networks socially and geographically defined?” The meaning of what constitutes “local” and/or “sustainable” systems merits consideration in the linking of these rural counties with distant urban farmers markets. Employing historical, in-depth interview and survey research, we analyze production and consumption networks and the non-market systems that residents in these counties access for self-provisioning and food security.     

《齐民要术》“杷”“劳”关系考——《齐民要术》“耕—杷—劳”耕作技术体系申论

农史学界一般认为北方旱地农业"耕-耙-耢"相结合的耕作技术体系形成于《齐民要术》时期,然而《齐民要术》完整记载"耕-杷-劳"配合的耕作技术只出现三次,更多的地方只提"耕劳"而不提"杷"。因此,农史学界所持的观点还需要在深入分析《齐民要术》中"杷""劳"关系的基础上进行确证。《齐民要术》"杷""劳"关系的考察,有助于从理性上明确认识"耕-杷-劳"旱地耕作技术体系的形成,也有助于深化古代耕作制度史的研究。     

Managing the fallow: Weeding technology and environmental knowledge in the Krobo district of Ghana

The paper explores the relationship between environmental knowledge and farming and fallowing strategies on degraded forest land in the Upper Manya Krobo district of southeastern Ghana. Changes in cropping strategies are related to the expansion and transformation of frontier agrarian settlement, increasing population density, social differentiation, and land hunger. As a consequence land degradation has become a serious problem among the smaller farmers with insufficient land to allow fallow recuperation. Small farmers' awareness and perceptions of the processes of degradation are explored, as are possible innovative contributions to the development of agroforestry research. But labor constraints often prevent the farmer from developing practical systems of fallow management. Local environmental knowledge reveals important insights into the processes of fallow degradation, potentials for fallow management, constraints that farmers face, and some problems that might emerge with the transformation of current agroforestry technology to farmers' fields. It is suggested that this knowledge should not be abstracted from its socio-economic context. The problems that local farmers' knowledge reveal are in this respect as important as questions of its efficacy and potential as a resource.     

Adoption of precision agriculture technologies by German crop farmers

In recent years, precision farming has been receiving more attention from researchers. Precision farming, which provides a holistic system approach, helps farmers to manage the spatial and temporal crop and soil variability within a field in order to increase profitability, optimize yield and quality, and reduce costs. There has been considerable research in farmers’ adoption of precision agriculture technologies. However, most recent studies have considered only a few aspects, whereas in this study a wide range of farm characteristics and farmer demographics are tested to gain insight into the relevant aspects of adoption of precision farming in German crop farming. The results of a logistic regression analysis show that predictors with positive influence on the adoption of precision farming are agricultural contractor services such as an additional farming business, having under 5 years’ experience in crop farming, having between 16 and 20 years’ experience in crop farming, and having more than 500 ha of arable land. However, having a farm of less than 100 ha and producing barley are factors that exert a negative influence on the adoption of precision farming. The results of this study provide manifold starting points for the further proliferation of precision agriculture technologies and future research directions.     

A “curious blend”: The successful farmer in American farm magazines, 1984–1991

Mass media images offer audiences models for how to perform the social roles they depict. Opinions and other attributes of credible media models may likewise be embraced by audience members seeking to identify with those models. Thus farm magazine narratives about “successful” farmers may encourage readers to model or aspire to featured farmers' production and management techniques and ascribe legitimacy to models' responses to current agricultural issues. However, production of agrarian images in the mass media — including images of farms, farmers, and farmers' values — are inevitably biased such that media representations of successful farmers selectively present objective characteristics in terms of the media's own ideological frameworks, which in turn reflect the dominant ideology of the social relations in which the media are engaged. As a first step in identifying farm magazines' role in creating social models for farmers, this study analyzes articles featuring “successful,” “leading,” or “innovative” farmers in leading agricultural magazines. The featured farmers are categorized according to enterprise characteristics and characterizations of them and their management philosophies. Findings show that farmers in farm magazines have larger than average operations and are portrayed in a way that blends a “farming as business” orientation with more conventional agrarian values but that generally omits non-business aspects of farm life.     

Exclusions in inclusive programs: state-sponsored sustainable development initiatives amongst the Kurichya in Kerala,India

We critically discuss the impact of sustainable development initiatives in Kerala, India, on biodiversity and on women farmers in the matrilineal Adivasi community of the Kurichya-tribe in Wayanad. By contextualizing development programs regarding the specifically gendered access to land, division of labor, distribution of knowledge and decision-making power, we situate our analysis within the theoretical framework of feminist political ecology. We first outline women’s gaining of social and political space in local self-government institutions (Panchayath) and then critically discuss the impacts of women’s farming groups (Joint Liability Groups: JLGs). Decentralization and development programs have aimed at empowering women and reducing poverty through improved food security. However, little success has materialized, as patriarchal power structures concerning decision-making processes as well as control over the most valuable resources (land and rice) and traditional knowledge have been maintained. Whereas women’s self-help groups (Kudumbasree) in Kerala have enhanced their position, women’s farming groups (JLGs), by contrast, have brought little betterment. In some cases they have even downsized women’s management and knowledge of resources related to agriculture and do not integrate or enhance Kurichya women’s knowledge. As some women are now introducing high-yielding rice seeds and fertilizer and as it is impossible for them to control land and get access to traditional rice seeds—the domain of men—we contest the notion of women being considered the preservers of agrobiodiversity. We argue, rather, that the construction and transformation of ecological traditional knowledge is highly dependent on the gendered multi-scaled power structures of state and community.     

Lost in translation: incomer organic farmers, local knowledge, and the revitalization of upland Japanese hamlets

Upland Japan suffers from extreme depopulation, aging, and loss of agricultural, economic, and social viability. In addition, the absence of a successor generation in many marginalized hamlets endangers the continuation of local knowledge associated with upland agricultural livelihoods and severely limits the prospects of rural revitalization and development. Resettlement by incomer organic farmers represents an opportunity to both pass on valuable local knowledge and rejuvenate local society. Survey and interview data are used to explore the knowledge dynamics at play in upland Japan between local and incomer organic farmers. Using a “knowledge culture” framework, socio-cultural and symbolic barriers and spatial conditions limiting local knowledge exchange are identified and analyzed. Despite a number of reasons to suggest affinity and natural alignment toward knowledge sharing, each group’s ideas of “legitimate knowledge” and acceptable behavior have contested the field of communication and confused the negotiation process. Building on previous studies of farmer’s knowledge networks, examples in this study suggest that negotiation between knowledge cultures can be facilitated by both active means and intrinsic factors, and be derailed because of physical and temporal symbolic references. The degree to which locals and incomers collaborate and identify with each other as stakeholders with a common future may determine the extent to which local knowledge, especially local knowledge from past agricultural regimes, can play a role within upland endogenous development.     

State intervention and farmer creativity: Integrated pest management among rice farmers in Subang,West Java

The 1989 National Integrated Pest Management Program in Indonesia is a case of a breakthrough in national policy to enhance the ecological balance by conserving natural enemies and diminishing the indiscriminate use of pesticides in the protection of food crops. The Program provided training to agricultural officials and farmers to shift their perspectives in pesticide use through “knowledge transmission” rather than the transferal of “technological packages.” This paper examines how farmers, with the novel understanding they had, responded to the persisting top-down policy of the “complete credit packages” from the government rice intensification agencies and the recurrent outbreak of pests in 1990–1992. IPM knowledge and training provided initial understanding of, and the stimulus to discover, unknown phenomena on the basis of which farmers improved their knowledge and learning capacity. Constraints largely came from the inflexibility of the subsidized scheme of inputs and the inadequate explanation and extension services provided to farmers     

How knowledge deficit interventions fail to resolve beginning farmer challenges

Beginning farmer initiatives like the USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP), farm incubators, and small-scale marketing innovations offer new entrant farmers agricultural training, marketing and business assistance, and farmland loans. These programs align with alternative food movement goals to revitalize the anemic U.S. small farm sector and repopulate landscapes with socially and environmentally diversified farms. Yet even as these initiatives seek to support prospective farmers with tools for success through a knowledge dissemination model, they remain mostly individualistic and entrepreneurial measures that overlook structural barriers to productive and economic success within U.S. agriculture. Analysis of the BFRDP’s funding history and discourse reveals a “knowledge deficit” based program focused on the technical rather than the structural aspects of beginning farming. This is contrasted with qualitative analysis of beginning farmer experiences in California’s Central Coast region. The discrepancies between the farmer experiences and national structure of the BFRDP program ultimately reveal a policy mismatch between the needs of some beginning farmers and the programs intended to support them.     

晋西北耕地利用状况及驱动力分析——基于宁武县5个典型村的调查

采用半结构访谈与参与式地理信息系统相结合的方法研究了晋西北的耕地利用状况,调查了位于晋西北宁武县5个村农户的具体的种植业状况,并从自然、经济、社会、政策、技术5个方面分析了耕地利用状况形成的驱动力。结果表明:①目前在晋西北范围内的这5个村的耕地利用状况是不可持续的,但仍保留有一些优良的传统农作方式。②自然条件差是研究区耕地利用状况产生的客观因素,种植业经济效益低下是直接原因;社会因素包括农村家庭开支加大、耕地细碎化等;政策因素主要表现在国家对农业的支持与保护力度仍不够,农村社会保障体制、耕地流转及监管不完善等;技术因素是基层农技服务工作严重缺乏。     

农户兼业对土地利用行为及其效率的影响——基于苏州、南通、宿迁市的调研

基于江苏省233户实地调研数据,分组对比分析不同兼业类型农户资金投入、劳动投入、肥料投入、土地经营规模等变量各总体均值间的差异;模型估计农户兼业对土地利用效率的影响。发现农户兼业降低了土地利用强度、降低了土地生产率,但对资金和劳动投入产出率影响不大。建议加快推进农村体制改革,优化农村产业结构,推动二兼农户离农,大力发展农业规模化、专业化经营。     

Conservation of Traditional Rice Varieties in a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System （GIAHS）：Rice-Fish Co-Culture

The traditional rice-fish farming system is selected as a "globally important agricultural heritage system" (GIAHS) by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Global Environment Facility (GEF), etc. In Zhejiang Province of China, where the pilot site for this GIAHS farming system is located, we compared the use of traditional rice varieties in rice-fish co-culture and rice monoculture. Further, we determined how traditional rice varieties were performed in this rice-fish system. Only 19% of the farmers who practiced rice monoculture planted traditional varieties while 52% of farmers who practiced rice-fish co-culture planted traditional varieties. Traditional varieties represented 13% of the total land cultivated under rice in the rice-fish system but only 2% in the rice monoculture system. In the rice-fish system, yield was lower for traditional rice varieties than hybrid varieties but application of fertilizers and pesticides was also lower. In a field experiment in the rice-fish system without pesticides, rice planthopper numbers and sheath blight incidence were lower from three traditional varieties than one hybrid variety; yields were 8 to 32% lower from the traditional varieties than the hybrid. Our results showed that traditional rice varieties can be preserved through conserving GIAHS rice-fish co-culture. Our study also indicated that traditional rice varieties can survive in the rice-fish system because these varieties are helpful to the whole system and beneficial to the farmers.     

西北地区“农二代”生存困境与对策

基于西北地区"农二代"在普通高等教育后存在更为严重的就业困难、职业技术教育整体来说并不完善、进城打工容易成为在城市生存却又融不进城市生活的"边缘人"、回乡务农和创业面临诸多障碍、"卖地换钱"带来巨大隐患的生存困境,建议政府从工作素质、投资帮扶、普法教育、农村政策、民生问题等方面进行改革,通过加大投入、政策支持、教育引导的举措帮助普通"农二代"摆脱生存困境。