Typology and Characterization of Amazon Colonists: A Case Study Along the Transamazon Highway

This study develops criteria for classifying the actor groups shaping frontier development along the Transamazon Highway colonization project in the Brazilian Amazon, as a basis to improve understanding of their specific contributions to environmental degradation and socio-economic development. Based on an analysis of responses to questionnaires by 93 colonists representing different migration trajectories, production systems, socio-economic strategies and deforestation patterns, actor groups could be statistically classified according to their type of production and level of capitalization. A property size threshold discriminating small and largeholders in the study area is presented and compared with previous attempts to establish such a threshold. Largeholders practicing large-scale cattle ranching and smallholders practicing diversified family agriculture were found to be the two predominant colonist types. Smallholder farming practices were found to be more appropriate to the local environmental conditions than those implemented by cattle ranchers.     

Smallholders and the ‘Household Responsibility System’: Adapting to Institutional Change in Chinese Agriculture

During the last quarter century, China’s agricultural sector has undergone a dramatic transformation from collective to private production under the so-called “Household Responsibility System.” This incentive system, designed to increase yields, reallocated communal land to peasant households, creating hundreds of millions of smallholders with relative autonomy over land use decisions and crop selection. Based on recent ethnographic research, this paper discusses the smallholder farming system of a mixed-ethnic community that intensively cultivates small land plots for subsistence and market exchange in China’s populous southwestern province of Sichuan. The paper characterizes the smallholder system in terms of biodiversity of plant and animal species, market distribution of crops, multiple cropping systems, and labor and technology inputs. The paper also describes how smallholders adapt their agricultural practices and decisions to changing market conditions and agricultural policies. Significantly, these adaptive strategies focus on shifting to the production of various cash crops, including melons and mangoes. Implications for the long-term viability of China’s smallholders, particularly in ecologically and economically marginal areas, are also discussed.

Small ruminant production in smallholder and pastoral/extensive farming systems in Kenya

A survey was conducted by way of personal interviews with 562 respondents comprising 459 farmers and 103 butchers/traders in selected districts in the central and western parts of Kenya, consisting of three predominantly smallholder and four predominantly pastoral/extensive districts. The study aimed to provide a better understanding of smallholder and pastoral/extensive sheep and goat farming systems in the tropics, by taking Kenya as an example. The results showed that 58% of the pastoral/extensive farmers and 46% of the smallholders indicated livestock as their main activity. Small ruminants ranked closely behind cattle in their importance. Thirty-four percent of the households kept only sheep, 18% only goats and 48% both species. The survey demonstrated the relative importance to the farmers of tangible benefits of farming sheep and goats (e.g., regular cash income, meat, manure and, in the case of goats, milk) versus intangible benefits (e.g., the role of small ruminants as an insurance against emergencies). Regular cash income and an insurance against emergencies were the highest priorities. Seventy-eight percent of the farmers reported animal sales over the previous 12 months of the survey date. Of these sales, the income was spent on school fees (32%), purchase of food (22%), farm investment (18%), medical expenses (10%), off-farm investment (9%), social activities (5%) and re-stocking (4%). Indigenous genotypes were predominant among the pastoralists and mixed crosses predominant among the smallholders. A range of traits: growth rate, body size, body shape, drought tolerance, meat quality, fertility, disease and heat tolerance, prolificacy and temperament were all considered important for both sheep and goats in both farming systems and across the different genotypes. Compared with other pure breeds, the Red Maasai sheep and the Small East African goats were rated poorly in terms of body size, body shape, growth and fertility, but highly in terms of drought and (for the Red Maasai) heat tolerance by both smallholder and pastoralist farmers. In general, crosses were perceived less favourably than indigenous pure breeds. Body size and performance ranked as the most important traits in the choice of breeding males. Approximately half the farmers inherited their males, reared them on the farm and kept them for an average of 2–3 years. Uncontrolled mating within the household's flock was predominant in both farming systems. Over 98% of the farmers reported incidence of disease, especially pneumonia (in pastoral/extensive areas), helminthosis, tick-borne diseases, diarrhoea and foot-rot. Over 95% of the farmers fed supplements in both dry and wet seasons. Pure exotic and indigenous × exotic genotypes fetched higher prices than indigenous genotypes due to their heavier body weight. In conclusion, the foregoing issues need attention in genetic improvement programmes, with more emphasis on the conservation and utilisation of indigenous small ruminant genotypes.     

The role of economic incentives and social norms in forest resource management

Forests are experiencing increasing pressure from human activities, which is leading to rapid deforestation and loss of ecosystem services. Although deforestation occurs for a wide range of reasons, one important reason is that landowners lack a long-term management view. I suggest that both economic incentives and social norms will work differently to reduce landowners’ motivation to deforest and to help landowners identify the long-term benefits that will be obtained by sacrificing short-term gain.     

Does agricultural efficiency contribute to slowdown of deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon?

Historically, agricultural production in the Amazon has been painted as the most environmentally impacting activity. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the increase in agricultural efficiency and the slowdown of deforestation rates in the past decade, correlating these data with municipalities’ agricultural specialization. With the data from the 2006 and 2017 Brazilian Agricultural Census we classified municipalities according to its vegetal or animal specialization and estimated a production frontier using the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), considering a set of production factors and technological variables. Our results demonstrated that most part of municipalities have no specialization or are based in cattle ranching activities, and the overall agricultural efficiency in the Amazon municipalities grew from 69.5% in 2006 to 74.1% in 2017. The new institutional path in the 21st century contributed to slow deforestation in agricultural activities through an increase in productivity (yield/ha) in the last decade, mainly for vegetal production. Cattle ranching also increased output and efficiency, but it remains the most environmental impacting activity. However, several municipalities could not develop their agricultural production value relative to the most productive areas, suggesting that some factors —technological and productive— that could lead to output increase are not being efficiently allocated, which results in concentrating deforestation in inefficient systems and limiting the effectiveness of current policies. Technological diffusion, especially for small farmers, and private support in environmental issues could contribute to slowdown deforestation without loss of agricultural output.     

Land Use Patterns in the Brazilian Amazon: Comparative Farm-Level Evidence from Rondônia

Since the 1970s the Brazilian Amazon has received over 1 million migrant farm households from other regions of the country, many of whom were attracted to government-sponsored frontier settlement programs that offered free tropical forest land. As a result, pressures on tropical forests have intensified along several settlement corridors throughout the region. Despite their importance as agents of landscape change, surprisingly little is known about the land use practices of these farmers. This paper briefly reviews the research literature on smallholder land use patterns in Amazonia, describes the recent history of one important agricultural land settlement program in the western Brazilian Amazon state of Rondônia, and, based on 240 household surveys conducted in three separate settlement locations in the state, highlights key differences in land use patterns among the rural population. Typologies of farming systems are presented on the basis of cluster analysis of land use data and ANOVA tests. The findings indicate considerable complexity and heterogeneity in smallholder farming systems. Spatial variations in farming system types may be due to geographic differences in soil regimes, the social histories of specific communities, and site-specific responses to exogenous variables.     

Involution's dynamic others

Many scholars have debated Geertz's characterization of Java as a site of social and economic involution, in which impoverished peasants worked ever harder to achieve static results. Fewer have taken up his characterization of Indonesia's Outer Islands as a zone of extremes: islands of dynamic export production, often dominated by indigenous smallholders, surrounded by ‘a broad sea of essentially unchanged swidden making’. Taking Geertz's analysis as a point of departure, I use comparisons across distinct conjunctures to explore the conditions under which smallholder production becomes dynamic, and to reflect on the role of culture in social and economic change.     

Lifetime productivity of dairy cows in smallholder farming systems of the Central highlands of Kenya

Evaluation of lifetime productivity is sensible to target interventions for improving productivity of smallholder dairy systems in the highlands of East Africa, because cows are normally not disposed of based on productive reasons. Feeding strategies and involuntary culling may have long-term effects on productive (and therefore economic) performance of dairy systems. Because of the temporal scale needed to evaluate lifetime productivity, experimentation with feedstuffs in single lactations is not enough to assess improvements in productivity. A dynamic modelling approach was used to explore the effect of feeding strategies on the lifetime productivity of dairy cattle. We used LIVSIM (LIVestock SIMulator), an individual-based, dynamic model in which performance depends on genetic potential of the breed and feeding. We tested the model for the highlands of Central Kenya, and simulated individual animals throughout their lifetime using scenarios with different diets based on common feedstuffs used in these systems (Napier grass, maize stover and dairy concentrates), with and without imposing random mortality on different age classes. The simulations showed that it is possible to maximise lifetime productivity by supplementing concentrates to meet the nutrient requirements of cattle during lactation, and during early development to reduce age at first calving and extend productive life. Avoiding undernutrition during the dry period by supplementing the diet with 0.5 kg of concentrates per day helped to increase productivity and productive life, but in practice farmers may not perceive the immediate economic benefits because the results of this practice are manifested through a cumulative, long-term effect. Survival analyses indicated that unsupplemented diets prolong calving intervals and therefore, reduce lifetime productivity. The simulations with imposed random mortality showed a reduction of 43% to 65% in all productivity indicators. Milk production may be increased on average by 1400 kg per lactation by supplementing the diet with 5 kg of concentrates during early lactation and 1 kg during late lactation, although the optimal supplementation may change according to milk and concentrate prices. Reducing involuntary culling must be included as a key goal when designing interventions to improve productivity and sustainability of smallholder dairy systems, because increasing lifetime productivity may have a larger impact on smallholders’ income than interventions targeted to only improving daily milk yields through feeding strategies.     

Responses of tropical fruit bats to monoculture and polyculture farming in oil palm smallholdings

The oil palm industry is one of the main economic drivers in Southeast Asia. The industry has caused tropical deforestation on a massive scale in producing countries, and this forest conversion to oil palm agriculture has decimated the habitat of numerous native species. Monoculture and polyculture practices are two distinctive oil palm production systems. We hypothesize that polyculture farming hosts a greater diversity of species than monoculture farming. Habitat complexity in smallholdings is influenced by multiple farming practices (i.e. polyculture and monoculture). However, little is known about the effects of such farming practices in smallholdings on mammalian biodiversity, and particularly frugivorous bats. Our study aimed to find the best farming practice to reconcile oil palm production with biodiversity conservation. Mist-nets were used to trap frugivorous bats at 120 smallholdings in Peninsular Malaysia. We compared species richness and the abundance of frugivorous bats between monoculture and polyculture smallholdings. We investigated their relationships with vegetation structure characteristics. Our results revealed that species richness and abundance of frugivorous bats were significantly greater in polyculture smallholdings than monoculture smallholdings. We also found that 28.21% of the variation in species richness was explained by in situ habitat characteristics, including the number of dead standing oil palms and immature oil palms, non-grass cover, height of non-grass cover, and farming practices. The in situ habitat quality was closely associated with oil palm farming management. Commercial growers should implement polyculture rather than monoculture farming because polyculture farming has positive effects on the abundance and species richness of bats in oil palm production landscapes.     

West African Cattle Farmers’ Perception of Tick-Borne Diseases

Worldwide, cattle production is struggling to face the negative impacts caused by ticks and Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus is one of the most harmful ticks for livestock. Most of the people in West Africa depend on cattle farming and subsistence agriculture. The presence of ticks on cattle is a major problem faced by smallholder farmers who fight for their livelihood. National and regional tick control programs could assist these rural communities in protecting their livelihoods against ticks and tick-borne diseases, but only if they take into account the targeted herders and their perception on cattle management and tick control. This paper aims to provide a better insight in the socio-economic characteristics of Beninese cattle farmers, and their perception on tick burden, as well as to document common tick control strategies. Different tick species and their seasonality are well understood by cattle herders. For tick control, many still use manual tick removal, especially in the north of the country. The high cost of acaricides, the lack of financial means of African farmers, and of the local stockbreeders in particular, limits the use of acaricides in livestock breeding in Benin. While aiming to increase the meat or milk production of their animals, stockbreeders who can afford it sometimes turn to an abusive use of acaricides, which might in time lead to an increase in tick resistance. This study remains one of the rare studies to report extensively on the perceptions of West African cattle herders.     

Development of livestock production in the tropics: farm and farmers’ perspectives

Because of an increasing demand for animal-source foods, an increasing desire to reduce poverty and an increasing need to reduce the environmental impact of livestock production, tropical farming systems with livestock must increase their productivity. An important share of the global human and livestock populations are found within smallholder mixed-crop–livestock systems, which should, therefore, contribute significantly towards this increase in livestock production. The present paper argues that increased livestock production in smallholder mixed-crop–livestock systems faces many constraints at the level of the farm and the value chain. The present paper aims to describe and explain the impact of increased production from the farm and farmers’ perspective, in order to understand the constraints for increased livestock production. A framework is presented that links farming systems to livestock value chains. It is concluded that farming systems that pass from subsistence to commercial livestock production will: (1) shift from rural to urban markets; (2) become part of a different value chain (with lower prices, higher demands for product quality and increased competition from peri-urban producers and imports); and (3) have to face changes in within-farm mechanisms and crop–livestock relationships. A model study showed that feed limitation, which is common in tropical farming systems with livestock, implies that maximum herd output is achieved with small herd sizes, leaving low-quality feeds unutilised. Maximal herd output is not achieved at maximal individual animal output. Having more animals than required for optimal production – which is often the case as a larger herd size supports non-production functions of livestock, such as manure production, draught, traction and capital storage – goes at the expense of animal-source food output. Improving low-quality feeds by treatment allows keeping more animals while maintaining the same level of production. Ruminant methane emission per kg of milk produced is mainly determined by the level of milk production per cow. Part of the methane emissions, however, should be attributed to the non-production functions of ruminants. It was concluded that understanding the farm and farmers’ perceptions of increased production helps with the understanding of productivity increase constraints and adds information to that reported in the literature at the level of technology, markets and institutions.     

A regional analysis of Barí land use intensification and its impact on landscape heterogeneity

Since pacification 30 years ago, the Barí of northwest Venezuela have aggregated in villages and have begun to produce cattle and some crops for sale in regional markets. This research analyzes satellite imagery to compare patterns of land use among Barí settlements that differ in their population size, cattle holdings, and distance to nearest marketplace. These comparisons indicate that settlement history mediates the effect of population pressure and herd sizes on land use. Moreover, intensification of land use is associated with greater deforestation and a more heterogeneous landscape, but less biodiversity in woody species.     

The production‐ecological sustainability of cassava,sugarcane and sweet sorghum cultivation for bioethanol in Mozambique

We present an approach for providing quantitative insight into the production‐ecological sustainability of biofuel feedstock production systems. The approach is based on a simple crop‐soil model and was used for assessing feedstock from current and improved production systems of cassava for bioethanol. Assessments were performed for a study area in Mozambique, a country considered promising for biomass production. Our focus is on the potential role of smallholders in the production of feedstock for biofuels. We take cassava as the crop for this purpose and compare it with feedstock production on plantations using sugarcane, sweet sorghum and cassava as benchmarks. Production‐ecological sustainability was defined by seven indicators related to resource‐use efficiency, soil quality, net energy production and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results indicate that of the assessed systems, sugarcane performed better than cassava, although it requires substantial water for irrigation. Targeted use of nutrient inputs improved sustainability of smallholder cassava. Cassava production systems on more fertile soils were more sustainable than those on less fertile soils; the latter required more external inputs for achieving the same output, affecting most indicators negatively and reducing the feasibility for smallholders. Cassava and sweet sorghum performed similarly. Cassava production requires much more labour per hectare than production of sugarcane or sweet sorghum. Production of bioethanol feedstock on cultivated lands was more sustainable and had potential for carbon sequestration, avoiding GHG emissions from clearing natural vegetation if new land is opened.     

Carrot or Stick? Modelling How Landowner Behavioural Responses Can Cause Incentive-Based Forest Governance to Backfire

Mitigating the negative impacts of declining worldwide forest cover remains a significant socio-ecological challenge, due to the dominant role of human decision-making. Here we use a Markov chain model of land-use dynamics to examine the impact of governance on forest cover in a region. Each land parcel can be either forested or barren (deforested), and landowners decide whether to deforest their parcel according to perceived value (utility). We focus on three governance strategies: yearly incentive for conservation, one-time penalty for deforestation and one-time incentive for reforestation. The incentive and penalty are incorporated into the expected utility of forested land, which decreases the net gain of deforestation. By analyzing the equilibrium and stability of the landscape dynamics, we observe four possible outcomes: a stationary-forested landscape, a stationary-deforested landscape, an unstable landscape fluctuating near the equilibrium, and a cyclic-forested landscape induced by synchronized deforestation. We find that the two incentive-based strategies often result in highly fluctuating forest cover over decadal time scales or longer, and in a few cases, reforestation incentives actually decrease the average forest cover. In contrast, a penalty for deforestation results in the stable persistence of forest cover (generally >30%). The idea that larger conservation incentives will always yield higher and more stable forest cover is not supported in our findings. The decision to deforest is influenced by more than a simple, “rational” cost-benefit analysis: social learning and myopic, stochastic decision-making also have important effects. We conclude that design of incentive programs may need to account for potential counter-productive long-term effects due to behavioural feedbacks.     

The faint promise of a distant market: a survey of Belém's trade in non-timber forest products

Increased trade in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) has been promoted as one possible means to slow tropical deforestation by increasing the economic value of intact forest. A market survey of NTFPs occurring in the Capim River basin in eastern Amazonia, Brazil demonstrated that the reality for many smallholder communities in frontier and remote regions includes chronic transportation difficulties, high variability in fruit production, perishable products and lack of market expertise. In some communities, declining abundance of NTFPs due to logging and fire has resulted in a lack of forest products to even meet subsistence needs. In areas close to cities where transportation is assured and where forest clearing has eroded the natural occurrence of some valuable native NTFPs, smallholders who manage and successfully market native fruit and medicinal species are overcoming these obstacles. In frontier regions undergoing rapid transformation, however, decline in locally used and regionally marketed NTFPs currently pose detrimental consequences for communities. Findings suggest that an overemphasis on NTFP marketing has diverted attention from local livelihood, resource access and subsistence issues.     

Balancing on a Planet: Toward an Agricultural Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century

Robert Netting had a central role in establishing agricultural anthropology. Many people rightly remember him as an astute ethnographer of farming communities, focused on analyzing the empirical details of changing patterns of household composition, land holding size and labor use. Yet, during his career he was increasingly concerned about the sustainability of smallholder vs. conventional industrial agriculture models on a global scale. Thus, Netting also had an important role in laying the foundation for the development of an agricultural anthropology for the twenty-first century, an anthropology that shows how smallholders balancing on an Alp can help us to understand how we might balance on this planet. This paper analyzes Netting's contribution to the future of agricultural anthropology in three key areas: the environment, population, and agriculture relationship; farmer knowledge and epistemology; and models for global sustainability.     

Impact of eucalyptus and pine growing on rural livelihood: the lesson from Bukoba area, north western Tanzania

Sustainable resource management intends to allocate resources in such a way that unnecessary deterioration of biophysical and socio-economical systems is avoided. In Bukoba Area where rainfalls are plenty, evergreen grasslands were expansive and forests were limited, eucalypts ( eucalyptus spp.) and pines ( pinus spp.) were grown on grasslands for preventing land degradation through deforestation and for providing additional source of income for rural poor. This study shows that in addition to detrimental consequence of eucalyptus and pine forests on soil resources, conversion of Bukoban grasslands to forests has negatively impacted livelihood of the rural poor. Growing eucalypts and pines on grasslands prevented a farming system that enabled integration of grasslands, cattle keeping and crop production. Consequently, the grasslands role of nutrients cycling was disrupted, food crop production reduced, home-gardens productivity declined, majority deprived important livelihood asset and foreign income flow into the area reduced.     

Trees,soils, and food security

Trees have a different impact on soil properties than annual crops, because of their longer residence time, larger biomass accumulation, and longer-lasting, more extensive root systems. In natural forests nutrients are efficiently cycled with very small inputs and outputs from the system. In most agricultural systems the opposite happens. Agroforestry encompasses the continuum between these extremes, and emerging hard data is showing that successful agroforestry systems increase nutrient inputs, enhance internal flows, decrease nutrient losses and provide environmental benefits: when the competition for growth resources between the tree and the crop component is well managed. The three main determinants for overcoming rural poverty in Africa are (i) reversing soil fertility depletion, (ii) intensifying and diversifying land use with high-value products, and (iii) providing an enabling policy environment for the smallholder farming sector. Agroforestry practices can improve food production in a sustainable way through their contribution to soil fertility replenishment. The use of organic inputs as a source of biologically-fixed nitrogen, together with deep nitrate that is captured by trees, plays a major role in nitrogen replenishment. The combination of commercial phosphorus fertilizers with available organic resources may be the key to increasing and sustaining phosphorus capital. High-value trees, ''Cinderella'' species, can fit in specific niches on farms, thereby making the system ecologically stable and more rewarding economically, in addition to diversifying and increasing rural incomes and improving food security. In the most heavily populated areas of East Africa, where farm size is extremely small, the number of trees on farms is increasing as farmers seek to reduce labour demands, compatible with the drift of some members of the family into the towns to earn off-farm income. Contrary to the concept that population pressure promotes deforestation, there is evidence that demonstrates that there are conditions under which increasing tree planting is occurring on farms in the tropics through successful agroforestry as human population density increases. <br>     

Understanding Smallholder Participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services: the Case of Costa Rica

This paper uses household survey data to examine factors associated with smallholder households that enroll in Costa Rica’s longstanding payments for ecosystem services (PES) program. To date, most evaluations of this sort have focused on larger landowners. Results from this study show that smallholders enrolled in PES tend to be older, wealthier, and have access to non-farm salaried income. These features match enrollment patterns of larger landowners in that enrollees tend to be relatively wealthy and only marginally engaged in agriculture. In addition, smallholders on state agrarian reform lands are significantly less likely to enroll in PES. These results indicate that targeting PES toward smaller landowners does not necessarily equate to a policy that reaches the rural poor, and suggests that further work is needed to address the access barriers to this program for economically marginal landowners.     

The greenhouse gas abatement potential of productivity improving measures applied to cattle systems in a developing region

Developing countries are experiencing an increase in total demand for livestock commodities, as populations and per capita demands increase. Increased production is therefore required to meet this demand and maintain food security. Production increases will lead to proportionate increases in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions unless offset by reductions in the emissions intensity (Ei) (i.e. the amount of GHG emitted per kg of commodity produced) of livestock production. It is therefore important to identify measures that can increase production whilst reducing Ei cost-effectively. This paper seeks to do this for smallholder agro-pastoral cattle systems in Senegal; ranging from low input to semi-intensified, they are representative of a large proportion of the national cattle production. Specifically, it identifies a shortlist of mitigation measures with potential for application to the various herd systems and estimates their GHG emissions abatement potential (using the Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model) and cost-effectiveness. Limitations and future requirements are identified and discussed. This paper demonstrates that the Ei of meat and milk from livestock systems in a developing region can be reduced through measures that would also benefit food security, many of which are likely to be cost-beneficial. The ability to make such quantification can assist future sustainable development efforts.