Recreation and agroforestry: Examining new dimensions of multifunctionality in family farms

Multifunctionality serves as an analytical framework to recognize many services that farms provide to their surrounding communities and society. This study explores an often overlooked dimension of multifunctionality by examining different recreational services provided by landowners in Missouri and analyzing the relationship between recreational multifunctionality and the practice of agroforestry. The latter provides multiple economic, environmental and beautification benefits that involve trees in the landscape. Results show that family farms provide several recreational services for their household members and others, and the existence of synergies between the recreational function of the farmland and agroforestry practices, consistent with the transition to strong multifunctionality. The recreational use of the land is positively associated to the cognitive (i.e., perceived knowledge) and affective (i.e., willingness to adopt) attitudes towards agroforestry. Results also show that the higher the perception of intrinsic (i.e., planting trees for wind protection and carbon sequestration) and economic (i.e., perceived economic benefits and flood protection) values of agroforestry, the more recreational use of the land. This study exemplifies the interactions between two little examined farmland functions providing insights for a comprehensive value assessment of family farms. Other academic and practical implications of the study are also detailed.     

Bolivian farmers and alternative crops: Some insights into innovation adoption

The Bolivian Institute for Agricultural Technology, with financial and technical backing from USAID/Bolivia, has recently intensified its efforts to develop and promote cropping systems to serve as alternatives to coca cultivation in the Chapare region of Bolivia. A study was conducted in which 85 farmers were visited and interviewed in order to identify problems faced by farmers of the Chapare, understand the farming practices of the region, and determine the attributes of the new crops that were contributing to their adoption or rejection. Interviews were conducted in an informal manner using an interview guide consisting primarily of open-ended questions. The results of this study indicate that the capital outlay required and the expected profitability, both economic and otherwise, are the attributes of the new crops which most strongly influenced farmers' initial adoption/rejection decisions. The major obstacle to innovation adoption in the Chapare seems to be new crops whose adoption presents unacceptably high levels of risk coupled with low anticipated profitability. Recommendations for the development of the alternative crops program and the Chapare region conclude the paper.     

Farmers,the Practice of Farming and the Future of Agroforestry: An Application of Bourdieu's Concepts of Field and Habitus

Abstract Agroforestry, the practice of raising crops and trees together in ways that are mutually beneficial, provides farmers with an alternative to more conventional farming practices. In this paper, we apply Bourdieu's concepts of “field” and “habitus” in an attempt to better understand the practice of farming and the role that agroforestry may have in farming systems. Analysis is based on qualitative and quantitative interviews of farmers and other key informants in two regions, Fox‐Wyaconda Watershed in northeast Missouri and Scott County in southeast Missouri. Within the field of farming, farmers emphasized the importance of economic, family and rental relations. Important habitus considerations include different interpretations of what constitutes farming and what constitutes forestry. Based on Bourdieu's theoretical framework, we offer three alternative paths of social change that may lead to more widespread utilization of agroforestry.     

关于深化上海农村改革的若干思考

上海深化农村改革应着力发展现代农业经营的"三类主体":家庭农场、农民合作社和农业企业;着力保障农民的"三项权利":农民的土地承包经营权、农村集体经济组织成员权利和农民宅基地用益物权;着力盘活农村的"三块土地":农村承包土地、农民宅基地和农村集体建设用地;着力完善涉农的"三项制度":农产品价格形成制度、农业支持保护制度和土地征收制度;着力提升农村公共服务的"三项水平":农村义务教育水平、农村社会保障水平和农村医疗服务水平。     

Does land ownership make a difference? Women's roles in agriculture in Kerala,India

Drawing on a 12-month study, this paper explores the role of women in agriculture in Kerala, India. Despite claims that women enjoy high status in Kerala, economic, social, and cultural factors interplay to reinforce gender differences in ownership, control over, and access to critical agricultural resources, including land. Although women may gain access to land through inheritance, marriage, or informal networks, none of this guarantee effective control over it. The traditional rights of women to land have not been adequately recognized: the gender gap in the ownership and control of property is the only most significant contributor to the gender gap in the economic well-being, social status, and empowerment of women. The existing socioeconomic changes and crisis which render agricultural land as a main source of livelihood, is leading nair women's share of land being sold, with gains going to men, thus decreasing women?s ownership of land to the status of male-controlled dowry. The case of the Christian succession laws in Kerala illustrate that legal provisions alone can have a limited impact on changing gendered power structures. The role of women in agriculture needs to be recognized, and institutional support must be increased in order for women to gain access to agricultural inputs and technology, which in turn, leads to better agricultural practices and a higher income from farming in the country. Most importantly, there should be a concerted effort to enable women to function as independent farmers who control their own land.     

Farmers and Pawns: The Role of Migrants in Agrarian Conflicts and Rural Resistance in Sumatra,Indonesia

Land grabbing in relation to boom-crop production or nature conservation triggers displacement and dispossession of local communities as well as rural resistance often culminating in violent conflicts over land. In Indonesia, company-initiated oil palm production on debatable territories also stimulates migration into these contested rural areas by individual farmers who seek to become part of the boom-crop economy. Based on discussions on land grabbing and land rights this article deals with the appropriation of land by independent migrant farmers and their role as another new party in conflicts over land. The role of rural migrants in land conflicts in Jambi Province, Sumatra is shown through two case studies. The case studies highlight the importance of customary local elites and their strategic employment of social identity and political authority to facilitate land seekers’ access to contested land. The local elites transcend conceptual boundaries to generate a profitable counter-business with a set of individual stakeholders and brokers who profit from the dispossession of the masses. The case studies reveal that the migrants’ presence is essential to rural resistance and a contested resource of economic and political benefit to various stakeholders at the same time.     

Regulating Land Development: Local Market Structures and Structured Markets

Current rounds of economic restructuring together with the changing priorities accorded to agricultural production are leading to significant shifts in rural property and tenure relations. This paper analyzes these processes with reference to rural Britain; it reports on empirical evidence collected in the county of Buckinghamshire in southeast England. Two significant types of new rural land development are considered—small-scale industrial units arising out of the conversion of agricultural buildings and golf course developments and their ancillary leisure-based activities. Post-war productionist forms of regulation and particularly established types of agricultural tenure are now being modified by farmers and nonagricultural interests committed to the development of rural land. New demands and market structures are requiring more diversity and flexibility by which land is owned, occupied, and used. These emergent, more flexible macro tenures are based on new sets of social and political alliances between farmers, developers, and local planning systems. Agricultural land is increasingly being viewed as a capital rather than as a productive asset associated with more volatile and regionally defined markets whose regulation is formative.     

Migration,insecurity and identity: The Nepali dairymen in India's Northeast

The migration of the Nepalis to Northeast India for cattle grazing and dairy farming since the last years of the nineteenth century evolved as a mainstay of later Nepali migrations in the twentieth century. It is significant that this group of migrants enjoyed active colonial patronage, along with the labourers and Gurkha soldiers in the army, but was among the first to face the impact of changing colonial land and taxation policies. Government policies of exclusion and nativist attitudes in post-independence India caused them considerable insecurity about their status in the region. This paper highlights the evolution of the Nepali dairy farmers as an important economic group within the larger group of Nepali migrants in Northeast India, and looks at the issues that led to a redefinition of their relations in the host country and articulations for reassertion/or search for an identity in India.     

Why institutional environments for agroforestry seed systems matter

Rethinking the logic of institutional environments aiming to facilitate agroforestry smallholders in economic development, this article compares smallholder input supply systems for crop and tree seeds in sub‐Saharan Africa and reflects on two basic challenges: (1) how to develop a large number of relevant tree crops for different agroecologies, (2) how to reach smallholders in rural areas. Policy options for improving agroforestry input supply systems are discussed, whereby our article concludes with suggestions how sectoral approaches for crop seed systems can be modified to agroforestry seed‐seedling systems. Biophysical differences have practical implications for how the logic of the ‘African green revolution’ would be translated into a corresponding revolution for agroforestry.     

Traditional or Economic Values? Analyzing Absentee Landowner Attitudes Amid Social and Agricultural Transformation in Japan

Agricultural landownership in Japan has changed drastically over the last century due to post-World War II land reforms and cultural, political, and economic shifts in the subsequent decades. Initial land reform shifted the concentrated ownership of land from the wealthy to small-scale farmers. But as Japan industrialized and became more urban-centered, a substantial amount of rural land has been left abandoned or unmanaged by descendants of those farmers. This paper analyzes the attitudes of absentee agricultural landowners in Japan to better understand the prevalence of economically rational versus traditional attitudes toward land ownership. We draw on the rural sociological literature on place attachment to hypothesize why some absentee landowners feel a strong tie to the land of their ancestors, while others would be willing to sell for a reasonable price. We use unique survey data obtained from 466 absentee agricultural landowners in Japan. Logistic regression results indicate that attachment to place, gender, age, educational attainment, and usage of land is significant predictors of whether landowners hold traditional, rather than economic, values. We discuss the implications of these findings for the future of sustainable agricultural land management in Japan.     

Liberalisation,gender, and the land question in sub-Saharan Africa

This article focuses on land reform initiatives undertaken in sub-Saharan African countries since the late 1980s. Section 1 sheds light on the changes in land tenure during the economic liberalization of the region. Section 2 briefly examines the gender-blind "mainstream" theoretical debates on land, and gender-sensitive studies on land issues. Section 3 offers insights on land issues in Africa from a gender perspective. Sections 4 and 5 reviewed the cases of Tanzania and Zimbabwe who have undergone a radical transition in terms of institutional land reforms since the 1980s, and the impact of economic and political liberalization on women's access and rights to land. Drawing on the two case studies, this paper is a call for policy makers, researchers, and activists to refocus their attention to these neglected issues.     

Exploring the Feasibility of Farmers' Rights

In many developing countries, there is concern that a conventional system of plant breeders' rights provides no rewards to farmers for their role in the conservation and enhancement of agro‐biodiversity. To redress this imbalance, developing countries are incorporating farmers' rights provisions in their plant variety protection legislation. This article examines the feasibility of farmers' rights provisions based on intellectual property rights. It argues that the farmers' rights provisions crafted by some developing countries will involve enormous operational difficulties, while IPR‐based farmers' rights are unlikely to provide significant economic returns to farmers or farming communities. At the same time, farmers' rights provisions, as currently conceived, are likely significantly to dilute the incentives for innovation provided to institutional plant breeders.     

Trust, tenure insecurity, and land certification in rural Ethiopia

This paper assesses the impact of a land certification program in Ethiopia on the level of interpersonal and institutional trust among households in the Amhara region. The land certification program is designed to enhance land tenure security of farmers, by maintaining (egalitarian) status quo land distribution and equity concerns. The major contribution of the analysis lies in the exogenous nature of the program which addresses the endogeneity problems that characterize related studies, assessing the impact of policy related variables on trust. The effects of the land certification program on trust are identified both by the difference-in-difference approach and by non-parametrical analysis of average treatment effects. Overall trust is found to be enhanced by the certification program, with trust towards formal institutions being more responsive to the program than interpersonal trust. The major policy implication of the result is that trust could be invested on through policy changes regarding the economic betterment of societies.     

Human–environment interactions in South Florida's Everglades region: Systems of ecological degradation and restoration

This chapter examines the societal drivers of environmental change in South Florida's Everglades region during the past 150 years. This historical geography is developed through the use of a conceptual framework constructed to facilitate the analysis of human–environment interactions and nature–society systems of ecological degradation and restoration at the regional scale. The framework is composed of four basic interlinked components: interaction mechanisms (e.g., land use, direct resource utilization, pollution and external inputs, resource competition), feedback mechanisms (e.g., basic needs, quality of life, environmental ethics), control systems (e.g., governmental regimes, legal institutions, resource management), and the societal context (e.g., population and demographic patterns, social structure and organization, technology, economic conditions, societal values). A primary objective of this chapter is to determine the presence and importance of each of these components during the process of environmental change over the period of study—1845 to 1995.Data for the analysis are drawn from primary and secondary sources on the environmental, social, economic, and political history of South Florida. The results indicate that although elements of each component were present throughout the entire period, different elements of each component play more significant roles at differing moments. The shifts in importance are used to define four periods of environmental change within the region. The periods are the following: (1) frontier settlement (1845–1900), focused on basic needs acquisition and direct utilization of the resource base; (2) drainage and land conversion (1900–1930), focused on population and economic growth, land use change, and increased resource management and competition; (3) flood control and consolidation (1930–1950), focused on inputs from external sources and infusion of advanced technology, the development of governance and social structures, and increased concern for quality of life; (4) postwar boom, flood control, and water supply (1950–1970), focused on accelerated land use change, increased pollution, and further heightened concern for local quality of life; and (5) period of limits (1970–1995), focused on pollution and resource competition concerns, a developing regional environmental ethic and amenity values, and environmental preservation governance strategies.Taken together, the five periods represent the differing nature–society systems through which South Florida's regional ecosystem was degraded and which is now entering a phase of restoration.     

Land use dynamics and ecological transition: the case of South Florida

This study examines the process of land use change in South Florida. Through this discussion, a conceptual model of ecological transition is developed and presented. The model is built on the general principles of neoclassical economic theories of land rent, behavioral models of resource use, and an historical geographic account of environmental change. Central to the paper is the specification of the theoretical link between demographics, market and service demands, land use, and ecological change. This study focuses on the nature and drivers of environmental change that has occurred in South Florida since 1900. The region studied includes the southern Florida Everglades and the surrounding area. The analysis determines that massive land useland cover has taken place in the region, particularly since the end of World War II. These landscape changes are conceptualized by a model that links regional demand for both agricultural and residential land through the agency of hierarchical forces. In this model, landscape evolution and natural areas encroachment are articulated as a dynamic process in which the regime of interaction between human systems and land use changes. Three main time periods for regional ecological transition are defined: (1) frontier closure (2) articulation of a system of cities with coupled agricultural hinterlands serving national and international markets. Differing land use change dynamics are identified as specific to each time period.     

A Dryland Cropping Revolution? Linking an Emerging Soil Health Paradigm with Shifting Social Fields among Wheat Growers of the High Plains

Once reliant on year-long periods of unvegetated fallow, dryland farmers are reaping environmental and economic benefits by replacing fallow with a crop, a practice called cropping system intensification. However, in the U.S. High Plains, transitions to intensified cropping systems have been slow relative to other regions, and cropping systems have stratified into varying degrees of intensity. Prior attempts to explain the wave of cropping system intensification have largely focused on simple economic rationales, and thus we lack a critical understanding of the social dynamics underlying the revolution in semi-arid cropping systems. We examined the motivations, perceptions, and social interactions of dryland farmers that practice different levels of cropping system intensity in Colorado and Nebraska. Building on Carolan's application of Bourdieusian social fields to agriculture, we identify overlapping fields expressed among interviewees. While these fields are reflected in farms' different degrees of intensification, they can be used to help identify and locate farmers associated with the emerging soil health (or regenerative agriculture) movement. The paper concludes by identifying strategies for change, some which would serve to reshape social fields, and others which leverage existing social positions and relationships to enable farmers to overcome the barriers constraining cropping system intensification.     

城市化中理性土地征收模式的创新：“谋发展”与“保民生”——温州征地的经验和启示

城市化中非理性的土地征收行为,容易给城市建设的＂品质＂留下＂经济隐患＂和＂社会风险＂。温州城市建设中的土地征收模式,既有＂自下而上＂民众诉求＂抛砖＂的推动,又有＂自上而下＂政府主导＂引玉＂的改革,其典型特点是回应被征地群众的＂民生诉求＂问题,通过＂三分三改＂给予农民＂携土地资源用益物权＂入城的市民身份,并创造农民可以＂自由择业＂的＂宜农则农、宜商则商、宜工则工＂的经济环境,使得失地群众生活＂有依靠＂、工作＂有奔头＂。温州征地模式,既有其成功的独特性,又有可以推广的普遍性,科学总结温州城市化建设中土地征收的成功经验,对于指导城市化建设中土地征收和谐化有着重要的理论与实践意义。     

Coping with transition through organisation: Techiman Market,Ghana

This paper examines the effects of transition to a market-driven economic model upon the activities of women traders in Techiman Market, Ghana. The experience suggests that trading associations, with their regulation of trading relationships and social provision for members, can under specific conditions, preside over considerable expansion and innovation in the trading system with possible benefits for farmers and urban consumers. Some of those specific conditions are the result of government policy on infrastructural investment and price deregulation. The authors describe the background of Techiman Market, women traders' organizations, indigenous traders' associations, the control of trade, social support networks, and externally-funded alternative organizations.     

Pluralism and ethnic conflict in Tanzania's arid lands: the case of the Maasai and the WaArusha

In Tanzania, the Maasai and Waarusha tribes are experiencing conflict because differences in their modes of productions and economic strategies undermine the peaceful coexistence that they have enjoyed since the 18th century. The Maasai are pastoralists, while the Waarusha are agricultural subsistence farmers who are encroaching on the best pasture lands. A sketch of the history of the two groups shows that the Maasai reached the peak of their land holding in 1880 before the arrival of European colonists who seized land and restricted the Maasai to a semi-arid reserve but allowed the Maasai to remain an autonomous and powerful group. The Waarusha began encroaching on Maasai land after independence due to land and population pressure. While closely tied, each group looks down on the other, and Maasai ascendancy has given way to Waarusha challenges. After independence, the tribal and ethnic rule that was protected by the colonial system was disrupted to allow for increased internal migration and new patterns of settlement. The rights of land ownership were transferred from tribes to the State, allowing privileged groups to benefit. The Waarusha began to engage in illegal land-grabbing and to encroach on the Maasai preserve using legal and illegal means. The Maasai view land as collective property and have had difficulty retaining title of traditional lands in the face of population pressure. This loss of grazing land has forced the Maasai into a mixed economy that depends upon agricultural production as well as livestock production. In the meantime, the Waarusha have deliberately sought political office to gain power to secure their holdings. Immediate action is needed to produce 1) a policy on spontaneous settlement, 2) an immediate adjustment of legal procedures for land acquisition, 3) a land tenure policy that equally emphasizes agricultural and livestock production, and 4) controls on undue expansion of subsistence agriculture into semi-arid rangelands.     

Queer Farmers: Sexuality and the Transition to Sustainable Agriculture

Intimate relationships are foundational to farm viability. They affect how farmers share tasks, earn income, and access land, yet the role of sexuality and heteronormativity in agriculture remains understudied. Furthermore, queer people are largely ignored as potential farmers by the sustainable agriculture and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements. I document the lived experiences of queer farmers, an underresearched group, through participant observation and interviews with 30 sustainable farmers of various genders and sexualities in New England. I use a queer perspective to illuminate sexualized and heteronormative patterns in sustainable agriculture. Whereas the perception of rural heterosexism can discourage queer participation in agriculture, queer farmers faced less overt heterosexism than they expected. However, they did experience heterosexism particular to sustainable agriculture, and confronting it might jeopardize relationships important for economic and environmental sustainability and land access. Some farmers were attracted to sustainable agriculture for reasons specific to gender, sexuality, and anticapitalist values. I argue that sexuality and heteronormativity are embedded in farmer recruitment, retention, and land acquisition, which are critical for the transition to sustainable agriculture. I offer the sustainable agriculture movement a lens for envisioning alternatives for farm families, homes, and workplaces.