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This study evaluates the effect of social capital on farmers’ adoption of subsidized seedlings and fertilizer for cocoa farmers in Ghana. We distinguish three types of social capital: network social capital, relationship social capital, and community social capital. Network social capital refers to the peer-to-peer information flow about product benefits reaching farmers, therefore closing the information asymmetry that prevents farmers from social learning about crop risk management through inputs adoption. Relationship social capital considers the role of social status in getting facilitated access to inputs through connections with extension officers who facilitate information dissemination about input benefits, and moreover potentially help bypass the government criteria in getting access to inputs themselves. Finally, community social capital concerns the community collective income, community size and reachability relative to the cooperative main office.We find that network social capital has a significant effect on adoption of subsidized seedlings, to an extent where it allows farmers to bypass subsidy qualification criteria for access to seedlings imposed by the government. This applies even more so for group and village leaders. Subsidized fertilizer uptake, on the other hand, is less dependent on social capital. We argue that this difference results from the risk involved in adopting seedlings versus fertilizer. In the case of seedlings adoption, relying on information provided by the social network promotes sharing of benefits of hybrid varieties, and thus reduces the risk of its application. Adoption of fertilizer, on the other hand, is not correlated with social capital because fertilizer application is less risky to farmers. They can easily switch from using fertilizer to not using fertilizer. Access to both inputs is influenced by government inputs’ eligibility criteria, namely having mapped farm. However, we find that 15% and 29% of farmers respectively have access to seedlings and fertilizer, even though their farms are not mapped. Our findings suggest that for governments to stimulate uptake of substantive inputs, such as seedlings, subsidies should coincide with attention to social capital and fair distribution of inputs.

With 76% of the total main workforce in agriculture and more than 50% small and medium landowning households, the village provides an important case study for understanding agrarian resilience. The conceptualisation of resilience has been majorly confined to a system or a territorial boundary. Agrarian resilience too is commonly assumed to be driven by forces within the agriculture and the rural. i.e. land ownership remains constant, the labour of the peasantry is spatially limited to agriculture, the capital is generated within agriculture and the networks and skills of the peasantry is also confined to agriculture. This has underscored the role of factors and processes working outside the agriculture in conceptualising agrarian resilience. While the primacy of the agrarian processes cannot be denied, there are often processes working outside an agrarian system that can also enable resilience. i.e. the rural workforce can diversify its labour outside agriculture in the urban non-farm sector, capital can also be generated from sources outside the agriculture. In this context, using the case study of a village dominated by small and medium landowning households in the Patiala district of Punjab in India, the paper shows that resilience is driven by processes both within and outside agriculture.

In this article, the authors reflect on social consequences of the deagrarianization process, based on their study conducted in the Blaszki commune in central Poland. The study shows deagrarianization in the making, as the region is prone to land being concentrated among the largest farms and to the deactivation of the majority of smallholders. Our research indicates how farmers specialize, quit livestock farming, and endure work overload. It also shows attitudes among younger farmers, who in most cases reject farming as their future career. Among the social consequences of deagrarianization, we note the erosion of community life, conflicts between entrepreneurial farmers and smallholders, and growing distrust. We then reflect on the deagrarianization process's roots, which lie in anti-peasant prejudices and the modernization paradigm in Polish social sciences and in the public sphere.

In many countries of the global south, Governments have recently encouraged neoliberal economic policies which have seen large corporations controlling more of the production process. Some studies have welcomed these interventions, arguing they provide enhanced welfare and income prospects for local farmers. Others have been more cautious, arguing they provide new landscapes of economic hardship for small farming communities, both for those contracted to the corporate chains and those that are not. This paper provides a case study of the impacts of the expansion of contract farming by PepsiCo on small-scale farmers in a small village in West Bengal, India. Through a series of detailed focus group and subsequent one-to-one interviews, we explore whether these local farmers are financially better off when tied to contracts with larger firms, whether they benefit from enhanced training and knowledge about better farming methods and whether they feel they are involved in genuine partnerships and the consequent implications for relationships around status, power and trust. The paper concludes that there are many concerns over contract farming some of which have not been discussed in the literature to date. The paper also reports on different types of coping mechanisms operated by small or marginal farmers, which in some cases, breaches the contracts made with PepsiCo.

Neoliberal environmental logics have increasingly characterized China's grassland governance since the 1980s. The government has implemented a series of policies premised on the assertion that intensification and marketization will alleviate grassland degradation caused by overgrazing by increasing returns on production and thus enabling herders to raise fewer livestock. However, after several decades, overgrazing is more severe than ever. This study explains this outcome through the lens of political ecology. Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of data from field research in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, this study explores how market-based policies that aimed to allow herders to destock by improving returns on production have instead decreased production returns and exacerbated overgrazing. Results show that the development of market-based intensive production and herders' marginalized political-economic position have together eroded their ability to benefit from livestock production, causing a simple reproduction squeeze and a cycle of indebtedness that forces herders to overgraze. Overgrazing is not a result of herders' lack of knowledge or care for the grasslands. Instead, it is caused precisely by state policies aimed at increasing economic efficiency for the purpose of environmental improvement.

The 2008 Greek crisis has resulted in unexpected social-ecological transformations, including a back-to-the-land trend whereby people seek to reconnect to land-based activities. While it's been theorized that back-to-the-land trends contribute to enhancing people's resilience and may play a role in the growth of sustainable farming and rural revitalization, much remains unknown regarding the processes involved. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of 76 interviews of Greek back-to-the-landers, this article provides an in-depth assessment of the resources mobilized to go back-to-the-land as well as livelihood and land management outcomes. This article argues that using a livelihood approach contributes to further understanding counterurbanisation and back-to-the-land movements by shedding light on how people transform their livelihoods. The article posits that back-to-the-land trends need to be approached as livelihood transformations that are linked to a diverse set of mobilities and assets, rather than solely a migration process. The research shows that the Greek back-to-the-land trend is not homogeneous, ranging from subsistence to market-oriented small-scale farms and involves both rural and urban spaces; yet it is mostly ‘invisible’ to the State. These different types of back-to-the-land strategies reflect different initial starting points and may shift once capacity is acquired, illustrating the dynamic nature of back-to-the-land transformations. For instance, people with limited initial land knowledge experimented on urban plots before farming in rural areas. Most opted to engage in small-scale organic farming, hinting at the importance of the back-to-land trend for the growth of sustainable food systems in Greece. While going back-to-the-land helped households cope with crisis, there were limits to their ability to make a living and enhance their capacity without external support, especially in the context of a long-term crisis. Different back-to-the-land strategies require targeted support at different stages to ensure their viability and long-term sustainability.

Financial inclusion has been one of the key agendas for poverty reduction in development practices since the mid-2000s. However, informal finance has clearly not been completely replaced by formal finance in the Global South. This study examines labor-tying credit, which is one type of informal finance, and based on a case study in the Delta region of Myanmar, the study explores the reason for which it persists despite the promotion of financial inclusion policies. This paper found that credit–labor interlinked credits or advance wage payments from farmers to agricultural laborers persist because subsistence is still the key element of life for the poor in rural Myanmar. Formal finance, which includes microfinance and conventional types of informal finance such as credit from money lenders, is only a partial substitution. The poor must stabilize consumption or meet other basic needs in the lean season, and there is no better option or credit source available. In the reality of the subsistence-oriented poor, “How much is left?” is more important than “How much is taken?” Therefore, the high interest rates involved in labor-tying credit is not the major concern of its recipients because of the immediacy of such advances.

This paper explores the linkages established by second home developers and owners with local residents in host communities, and further discusses how these extra-local linkages stimulate amenity-led change and rural restructuring. Research, comprising a mix of semi-structured interviews and site visits, was conducted in Xingfu village, China. That research focused on the increasing importance of extra-local economic and social capital to consumption-driven rural restructuring. Urban incursion not only drives change in the rural economy, but also brings important landscape and community impacts: a once homogenous and stable community is now characterized by dynamism and heterogeneity. The research draws attention to interactions between extra-local and local actors over time, as the second home industry in the area grows, and aims to contribute greater understanding of the exogenous drivers of rural restructuring, especially in the Chinese and developing country context.

The breakdown of socialist agriculture in post-Soviet countries generated a large number of smallholders, of which only a minority turned to entrepreneurial agriculture. With the largest number of family farms per capita in Europe, Moldova represents an exemplary case study to explore the livelihood trajectories of these land recipients. Relying on an original smallholder survey, we analyse the role of farming in their livelihoods two decades after land privatisation. Two groups are identified: ‘peasants’, who represent a large majority, and ‘entrepreneurial’ farmers. The former tend to diversify their livelihoods off-farm; the latter turned agriculture into a proper full-time business but maintain a small-size compared to the corporate farms that succeeded the Soviet kolkhozy and sovkhozy. The two groups are found to share similar goals and values, but while ‘entrepreneurs’ pursue profit maximisation, ‘peasants’ set their working pace based on family needs. Still, some ‘peasants’ invest part of their off-farm income in agriculture to intensify production and commercialise ‘niche’ products. De-commodification, internalisation, mutual aid mechanisms, and reliance on ‘traditional markets’ emerge as strategies to preserve autonomy vis-a-vis risky modern markets, rather than a mere outcome of necessity. Despite such aspirations of most smallholders, EU-driven rural development policies require them to behave as ‘entrepreneurs’.

This study is a systematic review of literature on the impact of international migration on rural areas. We examined this impact on six rural welfare indicators, including labour, livelihood activities, income, food security, land use, and rural development. We selected 44 papers from a pool of 1544 articles published from 2007 to 2018. We found that the impact of international migration on selected indicators varies and are highly context-specific. The results point to the existence of heterogeneity in impacts, capable of creating a space of losers and winners among migrants and non-migrants households. The immediate impact is the loss labour effect, which leads to a process of feminisation of agriculture and the use of child labour. In the intermediate, this trend changes the power relationship in rural areas, briefly increasing the opportunities for the non-migrants household to control land. However, remittance helps the migrant household to move up in the income ladder, improving their food security, enabling the repurchase of land and causing a transition away from agriculture. We submit that international migration from developing countries could create a dynamic process of structural and functional transformations in rural areas, which may ultimately lead to a transition away from agriculture. We provide several policy implications and identified some research gaps for future studies.

Development policy narratives about gender in African agriculture have often emphasized that women tend to farm more for subsistence while men tend to farm more for cash. This gender division of labour is an important aspect of social inequality and food insecurity. However, gender divisions of labour are neither fixed nor universal. Drawing upon qualitative research conducted in northern Ghana, this article examines assumptions underlying development policy and practice about the gender relations of farming and food. This study argues that gender norms in the case do not neatly align with the prevailing conceptions that have shaped interventions. Male smallholders described their primary farming objective as being to produce enough food to feed their family, while women smallholders tended to describe their farming largely in terms of cash generation. This article also considers some of the negative consequences of this misalignment between projects and gender norms. In particular, projects geared at female farmers to support their subsistence production risk adding to their household responsibilities. Support to women only also risks alienating men, potentially causing conflict around the use of project support because women are not autonomous agents. Women rely on and negotiate their labour, harvests and family landholdings, as well as that of others. This negotiation can be disrupted due to interventions and wider environmental and agrarian changes. In short, programs that differentiate support based on misconceptions of context specific gender relations can have unanticipated negative consequences. This study suggests these consequences can persist even in practice that rectifies the tendency of practice to exclude women. Ultimately, development practice should be context specific and consider how gendered agriculture and food relations may be changing.

The adoption and diffusion of e-commerce in developing countries exerts a fundamental influence on economic growth and on people’s daily lives. The impacts of diffuse e-commerce platforms on rural China are exemplified by the sharp increase in the number of ‘Taobao villages’. The Taobao village is regarded as an effective means of revitalising rural areas and narrowing the rural–urban gap by both academia and the government. However, our case study in Zeguo Town, Zhejiang Province demonstrates that such an attitude seems over-optimistic. Supported by document review and semi-structured interviews with local government officials, village cadres and entrepreneurs of leading enterprises and also small and medium-sized workshops, our study reveals that the rapid growth of the local footwear industry in Zeguo Town is an outcome of the lowered capital barriers for entry brought through Taobao. In response to this rapid growth, migrants have flooded into the local industry and started their own businesses. As a result, the cost of production elements such as industrial land and labour rose significantly, threatening the survival of cost-sensitive enterprises. As rational economic subjects, entrepreneurs’ pursuit of low-cost spaces and local farmers’ provision of vacant houses to entrepreneurs contributed to an e-commerce-induced informality. Many small and medium-sized shoemaking workshops and Taobao online shops penetrated surrounding rural villages. E-commerce-induced informality not only challenged rural governance but also undermined the operation of leading enterprises as new small enterprises disrupt the pricing of products, labour costs and even affect the reputation of local industry. The current unregulated development and seemingly rapid growth only store up troubles in the future.

The exposure of vulnerable food systems to hazards often leads to outcomes such as food insecurity. In order to prevent such food insecurity, it is critical to understand the causal factors – or root causes – of vulnerability, particularly in a world of increasing risk. As such, this paper develops and implements a food system causal disaster vulnerability framework within the Bedamuni tribe of Papua New Guinea. Although changing, Bedamuni livelihoods remain centred on subsistence swidden agriculture, hunting, and gathering. The framework developed here considers food systems as socioecological systems that through, for example, ecosystem use, provision, and social institutions should ideally provide food security along with other forms of social and cultural welfare. As detailed in the paper, disaster vulnerability is considered a function of exposure (temporal and spatial), susceptibility (as historical, socio-human, psychological, economic, environmental, physical, cultural, and governance dimensions), livelihood resilience (as knowledge, power and participation, capabilities, assets, and social capital) and absorptive, adapttive, and transformational capacities. The study is based on in-depth mixed methods fieldwork undertaken in 25 villages throughout the Bedamuni territory and incorporates established ethnographic approaches (e.g., participant observation, garden and disaster transect walks, and interviews) and a novel culturally appropriate approach (e.g., 31 “longhouse stories” lasting 1–3 h). The study reveals the main drivers of increasing vulnerability relate to historical, ecological, social, and psychological dimensions of susceptibility and declining adaptive capacity. The need for transformational change is suggested but is hindered by declining self-efficacy, inertia and a lack of knowledge of how to address factors such as population growth, declining land productivity, climate change, and increasing garden pests and diseases. Taken together with high exposure to El Nino droughts (e.g., 1971/2, 1982/3, 1997, 2015/16) and earthquakes (e.g., ~1950, 2018), disaster vulnerability is concerningly high and participants suggest is increasing. This paper is an empirically grounded argument for using causal approaches that look beyond outcomes to identify drivers of vulnerability in food systems. The framework and empirical evidence presented provides researchers, NGOs, and policy makers guidance and entry points for reducing vulnerability and increasing the resilience of marginalised Indigenous food systems in Papua New Guinea and potentially beyond.

This paper examines the continuing impact of the 2007/08 financial crisis in rural Ireland, examining the vulnerability and coping strategies at the household scale. Therefore, rather than re-examining the causes of the financial crisis, in this paper we seek to focus on the responses to the crisis within rural households, primarily focused on the geographies of household vulnerability and household financial responses. In this context, Ireland provides an illustrative case study given its severe economic crash, as well as the urban focus of its current recovery. To examine these themes, the paper advances a holistic vulnerability/resilience framework tested through a household survey. This focuses on four key components of vulnerability/resilience – exposure, sensitivity, capacity of response, and adaptive capacity – for understanding how rural households respond to change. The results emphasise the negative impact that the crisis continues to have on rural households, suggesting that the national economic recovery is uneven and further entrenches urban-rural differences. Moreover, the ability of households to cope with the crisis related to pre-crisis household (e.g. financial literacy) or spatial attributes, suggesting the need to consider vulnerability and resilience within a holistic framework.

Government officials and representatives of corporations and international organisations promoting oil palm argue this crop brings development by creating numerous jobs for the rural poor, even through large-scale plantations. This study critically assesses this narrative as deployed in Mesoamerica and analyses oil palm labour regimes in two study regions in Mexico and one in Guatemala where both smallholders and private sector plantations are producing oil palm. Following a political ecology framework, we analyse labour practices as embodied and political, taking into account larger processes of agrarian change. Based on interviews and surveys of producers and field labourers, we found oil palm production was characterised by low employment rates (one job or less for every 10 hectares of land) and flexible labour regimes under which field labourers face uncertain, poorly paid and risky circumstances at work. The palm oil industry defines development narrowly, as access to income without social change, while it profits from contemporary and historical inequalities that have turned young men, many of them indigenous Maya, rural women, and Guatemalan peasants into cheap labour. However, in oil palm production, profit oriented neoliberal arrangements by the private sector clash with a peasant moral economy that emphasise the value of physical labour and smallholder-worker solidarity. Despite being highly profitable, the palm oil industry offers limited livelihood opportunities for field labourers.

This paper investigates the cumulative impacts of the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath (including policy changes) on young people in a sparsely populated rural area of northern England. The paper locates the research in the context of youth studies, Bourdieu's theory of practice, concepts of welfare regimes and welfare mix, and studies of the impacts of the crisis and austerity policies on the distribution of social and societal risk. The empirical findings reveal the challenges which faced young people in rural England before the financial crisis still persist. Moreover, the overwhelming reliance of young people on family for support generates further inequalities through what might be termed ‘secondary impact austerity’: young people feel indirectly and unevenly the economic effects and policy changes which impact on parents' and communities' ability to offer them support. Thus, changes to the welfare system, loss of services and less secure forms of employment exacerbate the transfer of social risk and the deepening of poverty for vulnerable groups. This is worsened in this rural area by the moral imperatives which stigmatise access to state and charitable support. Thus, moral capital and local habitus intersect with social, economic and cultural capitals in structuring inequalities.

Rural decline is an inevitable process as human society transforms from the agrarian to the urban-industrial economy, and further on to the knowledge economy. Through an extensive literature review, this paper aims to interpret why some rural areas decline while some others do not. The findings show that it is by the interactions between rural areas and the external environment that rural communities either grow, decline or even vanish. The paper emphasizes the necessity to improve rural communities' resilient capacity through adjusting their internal components' function and structure to survive the external changes. In this process, rural livelihood diversification, the creation of market oriented institutions and strong social capital are considered to enhance rural resilience and build up sustaining rural communities. Finally, three conditions for sustainable rural development in the knowledge economy are discussed: 1) development of new economic activities that can respond to potential urban demand; 2) local entrepreneurship that can establish and expand these new activities; and 3) social capital that can support the entrepreneurship in new activities with access to credits, labor, human capital, external markets and external knowledge for learning and innovation.

Rural livelihoods in developing countries are disproportionately vulnerable to multiple shocks and stresses that exacerbate vulnerability, which can result in increased dependence on natural resources. Several studies have been conducted on the safety net role of natural resources, which lower the impact of negative shocks on rural livelihoods. However, the role of social capital as a safety net that can potentially lower natural resource use when households experience negative shocks has been less studied. We examined the role of natural resources and social capital as buffers against negative shocks to reduce vulnerability in rural livelihoods. Using five years of panel data from a rural population in South Africa, multilevel models were constructed to quantify the influence of shocks, social capital and household socio-demographic characterization on three dimensions of natural resource use, namely the number of types of natural resources used, the frequency of natural resource use, and the quantities of natural resources used. Results show that household experience of negative shocks was consistently associated with a significant increase in all dimensions of natural resource use. However, and unexpectedly, social capital did not significantly reduce natural resource use when households experienced shocks. This in no way discounts the role social capital plays in cushioning households post experience of shocks, but rather indicates that reliance on social and natural capital could be complementary rather than substitutable coping strategies post experience of shocks. Efforts to secure rural livelihoods and achieve sustainability should thus focus on building household physical capital to reduce dependency on natural resources in rural households.

The current climate change trajectory is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (EWE), which have the potential to influence community food security. This research explores the influence of social capital on U.S. rural community responses to an EWE, and its impact on community food security. After the 2011 EWE Tropical Storm Irene in VT, both bonding and bridging social capital influenced rural community responses to the EWE. Communities with high levels of social capital prior to the EWE led to effective action improving and stabilizing community food security immediately after the event. However, low levels of social capital prior to the EWE did not negatively affect community response when bridging social capital was engaged by a central community actor during and after the EWE. Our findings indicate that rural communities with high levels of bonding and/or bridging social capital facilitates a collective community response to short-term community food security during and after an EWE. The findings also show that a community's sense of place is different depending on the level of community social capital present prior to an EWE. We discovered a connection between a rural community's access to and effective use of physical capital to help mitigate community food insecurity, and that community's level of bonding and bridging social capital prior to the EWE. We suggest areas for future research to investigate how rural social capital can help build/maintain physical capital to increase rural resiliency and expand adaptation capacity. As such, we suggest that promoting the use and development of social capital can build resiliency and adaptation to future EWE by promoting the growth of community social capital, both bonding and bridging, within rural communities.

Neoliberal economic reform has undermined industries in rural and ‘blue collar’ towns exacerbating uneven development and population decline. In response to calls to examine the variegated and often conflicting experiences of neoliberalism, we interrogate the community effects of industry closure in a small town in the South Island of New Zealand. Adopting a mixed methods study, qualitative interviews with affected residents describe decades of economic decline culminating in job loss from the remaining major employer. Job losses compromised a sense of shared identity and social interaction in a town where declining amenities provided few opportunities to practice incidental, public forms of citizenship. Analysis of the survey data indicated that one year on from the partial-closure of the major industry, a statistically significant, relative decline in community capacity was observed in the study community. This research provides evidence that a community's confidence in their self-management is directly impacted by economic context. This is the first study we are aware of that has (a) quantified changes in community capacity over time and (b) identified that industry decline has had a short-term, negative effect on community capacity. These findings suggest the devolution of governance to the local level may be less effective in times of economic flux.

Climate change adaptation has become an important aspect of research and policy agendas at different scales – globally, nationally and locally. One stream of thought relates to the thematic area of barriers or challenges that adaptation faces. This article explores local adaptation trajectories and challenges in a tribal development block in south India. Through the lens of key livelihood strategies pursued in the block – namely income from development interventions, migration and on-farm strategies – it explores the challenges and factors that contribute or have contributed, to impeding successful adaptation outcomes in Attappady. The article argues that development interventions (i.e planned adaptations) have not succeeded in addressing structural causes of vulnerability; they have, however, provided an important coping mechanism. Migration is a socially and culturally differentiated phenomenon and is not a viable diversification option for the most vulnerable population segments in Attappady. Finally, it is found that recent on-farm adaptation strategies present a case of maladaptation that promote marginalisation and are ill-suited to the local ecological and cultural landscape.

Previous studies of barriers and challenges for Fijian farmers engaging in agricultural markets have primarily focused on supporting semi-commercial farmers to better engage in higher-value domestic and export orientated supply chains. Despite substantial levels of hardship and poverty faced by subsistence based farmers living in rural Fiji; the barriers and challenges for engaging in markets for this cohort of farmers have not been identified. This finding is consistent with our review of contemporary literature on this topic, which highlights an international research intensity focused on small holder farmers’ transitioning from subsistence to commodity or market based agriculture. There is in contrast, relatively little known about the initial barriers restricting subsistence farmers from engaging in local agriculture markets. This area of research is particularly important, as engaging in markets has been promoted as a vehicle through which those in need can escape poverty and hardship. The aim of this article is therefore to understand, through qualitative research methods, the main limitations and barriers confronting rural communities of subsistence farmers across the island of Viti Levu, Fiji. From this broad base, we explore the additional challenges restricting rural women. Our research findings indicate that in addition to numerous infrastructural and physical challenges impeding female farmers, there is skepticism amongst the communities regarding the actual benefit of engaging in the market, given the high risks involved.

Across the world, microfinance (MF) has been recognized as an effective instrument for simultaneous reduction of poverty and long-term growth through creation of entrepreneurship. Available research does suggest that MF experiment in most cases was successful to reduce poverty, especially among poor women. However, evidence-based research on impact of MF initiatives on nature of entrepreneurial activities and on the psychological capital or potential of the entrepreneurs remains under-studied. This paper attempts to bridge the gap and seeks to diagnose the entrepreneurial behaviour of MF users in comparison to a comparative set of non-users in the same socio-economic climate in an emerging economy and the haven of MF, Bangladesh. The outcome variables considered are not just participation in income generating process, but specific qualitative attributes of entrepreneurship, including ability to innovative, bricolage, risk taking, marshalling etc. and also some quantitative indicators in the form of frequency of repeated loans and income generated there from that may offer proxy measures of scaled up and sustainable entrepreneurship. Data exploration posits that transformative entrepreneurship, which indicates sustainability of the venture to usher in prosperity, is rare among MF users. Small loan sizes, quick repayment cycles and repeated loans of MF institutions constrict the borrowers to opt for low-risk ventures, with women borrowers facing additional barriers as their gendered role force them to be less risky and follow traditionally accepted business modes, rather than making big headway. Using propensity score matching technique, the paper finds that easy access to credit through MF initiatives could not inculcate the psychological potential to bear risk and bricolage among the borrowers. Self-employment in micro enterprises, without much innovation and risk taking, has been the characteristics of overall income generating process of the model.

While studies of rural women and their participation in the innovation milieu continues to be championed, within the Republic of Ireland very few studies have been conducted on Irish women's participation and value in this sector, with much of the limited research being curtailed to the realm of Irish agriculture. Addressing the paucity of studies, this paper specifically explores the pioneering role of women in rural innovation in areas located along the west coast region of Ireland, to uncover the connection between these women's enterprises and the overall development of the Irish hinterlands. The paper is based on both qualitative and quantitative research with 54 female innovators, who shared their experiences and difficulties as an innovator in a peripheral region. As the work of rural women often goes unnoticed and unrecorded, this research employed a feminist perspective to gain a deeper understanding of the role of women in rural innovation. The findings of the research highlight the dual role of rural women as innovators; furthermore show female innovators as being of paramount importance for the overall development of Europe's rural regions. Despite their imperativeness as agents of positive change; offering as they do an alternative path to sustainable development for the Western regions, the women were unable to appreciate their significance due to patriarchal and hegemonic ideologies which still impact women residing in rural areas.

In an era of a highly digitalized society, Australia's rural areas continue to be at a digital disadvantage. With the increasing penetration of information and communications technology (ICT) into all public and private realms, there is a need to examine the deeply rooted digital divide and how it is intertwined with issues of social exclusion in rural communities. This study focused on remoteness as an indicator of digital exclusion, and investigated its relationship with other dimensions of social exclusion. A secondary data analysis using Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) regional data revealed that remoteness was a strong predictor of home Internet and broadband connectivity, but digital divide was exacerbated by other socio-demographic factors such as educational levels and employment status. When implementing digital inclusion strategies, both supply (infrastructure) and demand (education levels, industry sector, employment opportunities, socio-demographics) factors must be considered.

The amenity migration literature has been growing for close to four decades, paying specific emphasis to the causes and consequences of this phenomenon, characterizing and understanding the amenity migrants, and contrasting them to their counterparts. While these major topics have provided key contributions to the understanding of amenity migration, the literature lacks deeper knowledge of the factors that can lead to positive outcomes after such phenomenon. Particularly lacking are studies examining community-level processes that can help find ways to address the impacts associated with amenity migration. This study intends to move the literature on amenity migration forward by examining community-level factors associated with positive responses to the challenges posed by this phenomenon. By comparing two Costa Rican communities experiencing amenity migration, we respond to the question: What community factors lead to positive outcomes after experiencing amenity migration? The study found that the way the community feels about change and migrants, migrants’ perceived roles in the local economy, the relation between locals and migrants, and the existence/establishment of community development efforts are critical factors for positive outcomes.

Poverty is a challenge facing all countries and the international community as a whole. Promoting development, narrowing the rural-urban gap, eliminating poverty and achieving common prosperity are all ideals that humanity constantly pursues. Despite the great achievements have been made in poverty alleviation over the past three decades, the extent of poverty in rural China is still high. It is both necessary and urgent to fully understand the root and status quo of China's poverty and establish a scientific poverty relief system. Based on high resolution poverty data, this study systematically examined the status quo and spatial distribution characteristics of poverty in rural China and its driving mechanism. The results showed that the distribution of the Chinese rural poor exhibits a distinct spatial agglomeration feature. Poverty is mainly concentrated in the remote deep rocky mountainous areas, border areas and minority areas of central and western China and gradually gathers towards the southwestern region. The “islanding effect” may well appear in China's poverty-stricken regions in the future. The proportion of poor people in the northwestern and southeastern regions of the Hu Huanyong line was 16.4% and 83.6%, respectively, indicating the uneven distribution of the rural poor. Furthermore, further investigations indicated that suffering from illness is the greatest contributor to current individual or transient poverty in rural China. The lack of natural endowments, poor geographic conditions and fragile ecological environment are the main driving forces behind persistent poverty. Ultimately, we proposed that China implement a scientific, differentiated, sustainable, targeted and problem-oriented poverty alleviation strategy that can lift the country's rural poor population out of poverty by 2020 as scheduled.

From being a net food importer in recent decades, Brazil is now considered a successful case of agricultural production and export. However, this image of triumph and efficiency helps to conceal growing socio-ecological impacts and mounting uneasiness. The complex and contradictory landscape of contemporary Brazilian agribusiness represent a relevant example of the advance of agro-neoliberalism, which is both an economic and technological process of agriculture modernization and intensification, in accordance to liberalizing pressures, and also a politico-ecological phenomenon centred on market-based solutions to old and new production, innovation and justification questions. Based on qualitative research and three fieldwork campaigns, the article discusses recent politico-economic adjustments particularly in the State of Mato Grosso, in the Centre-West region, which is fast becoming the main area of agribusiness activity in the country. Empirical results demonstrate that agro-neoliberalism has been promoted through inventive public-private associations not for the purpose of domestic food security, but primarily for capital accumulation and to support sectoral interests and macro-economic strategies.

The role played by various institutions in the domestic agri-food systems of Caribbean nations has become an increasingly important area of research and policy attention. This paper assesses the main policies that have been implemented in Saint Lucia's agri-food system over two time periods (pre-1950 and 1950 to 2010), and analyzes their influence on formal and informal institutions. Results suggest that rule convergence in export (formal) and domestic (informal) agricultural production systems displaced informal institutions to a lower position in the institutional hierarchy. This institutional change has reduced interactions between farming community members, with negative implications for bonding and bridging social capital in the domestic food production system. Collectively, these changes have resulted in unintended outcomes associated with the decline of many rural communities. Our findings highlight the need to better identify bridging institutions in Saint Lucia's domestic agri-food sector that could help support shared rule-making, the decentralization of power and reciprocal knowledge flows amongst policy actors.

Tribal peoples globally are among the most vulnerable groups to climate change and variability. This is due to a combination of their relative poverty and their dependence on agriculture and natural support systems (NSS). Hence programmes that simultaneously help to reduce poverty and vulnerability to climate change are needed. The Indian Government has launched the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), an incentive-based programme addressing vulnerability to poverty, climate change and NSS by integrating natural systems (water, land, soil) and human systems (employment opportunities). Here we show that the vulnerability related to climate variability, agriculture, water and household economic conditions has decreased significantly due to MGNREGA interventions. Specifically, water availability, diversification of agriculture, crop yield and income have all increased. Besides the decreased vulnerability to climate change due to better access to water, the intervention has also increased employment opportunities and daily wage levels have almost doubled, thus improving the economic status of tribal peoples. These changes have led to improved living conditions, facilitating better adaptation to both natural and economic stresses. This case study illustrates the potential of well-designed government programmes to contribute to sustainable development through improving adaptive capacity and by combating poverty and vulnerability to climate change among marginalised people. Scopus

This article focuses on understanding the impact of microfinance on poverty reduction and wellbeing measures of health, education and living standards in Northeastern Mindanao, the Philippines. We employ a mixed method approach involving a survey of 211 microfinance client and non-client households. We find that little over one in five households are multidimensionally poor, with non-client households being poorer than microfinance client households. Our results show that microfinance has had a mildly positive impact on poverty reduction with incomes and savings of microfinance client households being higher than those of non-client households. Based on the impact of microfinance on poverty reduction, we argue that it is important that policymakers implement strategies for promoting and creating greater access to microfinance as this has the capacity to reduce poverty and improve the well-being of the poor and marginalised in the Philippines.

Within current rural research, an ongoing challenge has been to conceptualise the overarching dynamics driving rural transitions in affluent societies, while also recognising diversity and complexity in driving forces and trajectories over time and place. While amenity migration may continue to be influential, more recent research has revealed that there are multiple driving forces leading towards diverse multifunctional rural occupance modes and trajectories. With its oversupply of desirable rural destinations, transitions along the subtropical New South Wales coast have been marked by increasingly divergent socioeconomic trajectories, tied to perceived gradients in amenity and sequential gradients in affordability related to inherent and constructed place imagery. We explore early- and late-phase transitions in the Nambucca Valley, one region within this zone. Initially available at exceptionally low entry costs, a plentiful supply of former dairyfarms attracted undercapitalised migrants seeking a rural lifestyle and possibly a livelihood from on-farm or non-farm sources. With limited finances, near-zero borrowing capacity and an ill-informed, opportunistic approach towards initiating their prospective cropping and/or livestock ventures, newcomers were destined to fail. Notwithstanding its high natural landscape and liveability values, the Nambucca Valley has been bypassed during the later-phase, locationally selective commodification of rural hinterlands. With its now-entrenched image of disadvantage, Nambucca lacks the market-oriented positional values accruing to prime destinations elsewhere along the subtropical coast. Given the continuing inability of Nambucca's rural landholdings to support cropping and livestock livelihoods, and the compatibility between consumption and protection outcomes, there is a high probability of entrenching a complex multifunctional mode of rural occupance for the foreseeable future. In this mode, consumption of the countryside’ by residents with modest incomes will be most influential in shaping rural socioeconomic futures, but with desultory production and protection activity together with reduced inputs into property management shaping rural landscapes.

The livelihoods of Chinese rural households are undergoing a transformation amid urbanization. While participation in the urban economy has improved rural living standards, rural income has consistently lagged behind urban income, and a broader prosperity gap persists between urban and rural areas. How to increase rural income and reduce the rural-urban gap remains a major challenge for the Chinese government. This study examines rural livelihoods within the broader development context of China, paying particular attention to the interconnection between agricultural and industrial development. We further elaborate Arthur Lewis's insight about Unlimited Supply of Labor to illustrate the various social, economic, and institutional components that affect the two-sector development dynamics in the Chinese urbanization context. Through an in-depth case study of eight villages in Jiangxi Province, we analyze the complex processes that shape the livelihoods of rural households, which also provides the micro-socioeconomic foundations for the macro-level development dynamics. Our qualitative interviews and field observations enable us to develop a deeper understanding of the decision-making of rural households and the multifaceted constraints confronting them in developing viable livelihoods. We reflect from a systems perspective on how development, migration, and land policies may synergistically foster healthy rural-urban development dynamics. And this will help lift system-level constraints and facilitate rural households with different characteristics, situated in different local environmental settings, building robust livelihoods via different paths.

South Africa's infamous apartheid policies were not based on social, political, and economic injustice alone. They were also instituted environmentally with consequences that continue to scar the land and its people today. We offer the term environmental apartheid to refer to the use of the rural environment to deliberately marginalize racially defined groups, as well as the subsequent consequences of that marginalization. In the case of South Africa, the paradigmatic example of apartheid, environmental apartheid was largely instituted through rural marginalization, the use of rural space as an environmental means of marginalization. Although legal apartheid is over, environmental apartheid and its consequences continue to oppress Black South Africans, with devastating implications for their health, livelihoods, and ecological integrity. We illustrate these rural injustices through a case study of KuManzimdaka, a community of smallholder farmers on communal land in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province.

Relationships in which populations benefit from practices that harm other populations are environmentally unjust. Environmental injustice commonly occurs due to disparities in economic and political power, and it is typically analyzed along dimensions of race and class. However, an urban-rural dimension of environmental injustice exists, one that intersects with race and class. Rural environmental injustice can be characterized as a parasitic relationship between urban and rural communities because urban populations obtain most of their food and energy from rural areas and return their wastes to rural areas. We explore the negative consequences of agricultural and energy production in rural areas through two examples: industrial hog production in eastern North Carolina and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. The negative public health impacts of urban-rural environmental injustice come from human exposure to specific pollutants, degradation of the built environment, limits on popular democracy, and ultimately, suppression of the feedback between consumption and production that could lessen global environmental problems. Pressure to control the effects of industrial energy and agriculture systems is lessened because the urban majority does not experience environmental degradation that affects rural populations. A basic step towards reducing rural environmental injustice is to develop the scientific framework needed to monitor pollutants and health outcomes in rural places through partnerships between researchers and rural community members that promote broader goals of economic, racial and social justice.

Small towns in the rural periphery are often seen as the chronic patients of regional policy, constantly in need of care but never getting well. Even in highly developed and densely populated countries, such regions and settlements are scarred by economic decline and demographic shrinking, leading to a spatial form of inequalities that can be described as “peripheralisation”. The discourse on peripheralisation processes is relatively new. It was introduced by the German sociologist Karl-Dieter Keim (2006), who identified the socio-spatial decoupling of rural areas from the dominant processes of centralisation and the weakening of economic potential as central features of peripheralisation. In this paper Keim's approach is applied to analyse and to compare the current situation in two small towns that have experienced serious population decline from about 10,000 (1965) to about 4000 inhabitants (2015): Johanngeorgenstadt in Germany and Ōya in Japan. Although the course of regional policy in the two countries has differed to some extent, processes of peripheralisation have been similar in the two towns, including tendencies of economic downturn and a loss of original functions. Against this backdrop, the main finding of the paper is that market-oriented strategies like neoliberal austerity policy or a Keynesian approach have not yielded the expected positive results in the past and cannot be viewed as the remedy for small towns in decline as seen here. Since endogenous development approaches also did not play a major role in either case, it is concluded that strategies negating quantitative growth like Slow City and Life Beyond Growth, which focus on quality-of-life factors, well-being and deceleration, could be a viable alternative. However, more cross-country comparative research on peripheralisation processes and their connection with socio-economic decline in small towns amidst demographic change seems to be necessary.

This paper explores the historical transformation of the rural education system and the mapping of rural schools in ancient, modern and contemporary China to explain the problems of the Rural School Mapping Adjustment (RSMA) policy. The value and purpose of the rural basic education system and school mapping adjustment are “urban priority and urban oriented”, which is the fundamental reason for the failure of the RSMA. A diachronic study of the history of China’s urban-rural relationship indicates that the relationship of traditional China’s urban-rural education was a virtuous cycle in which the city and the countryside were completely equal and reinforced each other. The promotion of modern education in the late Qing Dynasty severely undermined that virtuous cycle, leading to an urban-oriented rural education and the destruction of traditional values and a loss of the traditional ways of teaching. Although China has attempted to reduce the disparity between cities and the countryside by increasing the public financial investment in rural basic education after achieving a universal basic education, our case study in a village in North China demonstrates that the urban-oriented school mapping adjustment takes a toll on the rural area and exacerbates the problem of educational inequality, which actually increases the gap between urban and rural areas and between the rich and the poor. The conclusion is reached that the Chinese government should strive to develop a rural-oriented and rights-based rural basic education system and school mapping adjustment.

Based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA) in China, this study uses multi-parameter income distribution function and decoupling theory to investigate rural poverty in China. We focus on how demographic structures and economic development have been restructuring the incidence of rural poverty. The study shows that the second kind of generalized beta distribution functions can fit the income distribution of China's impoverished population in rural areas. We discover that the income inequality of the impoverished population in rural areas has gotten worse. To some extent, income inequality will increase the difficulty of reducing poverty, although income increases can improve the living conditions of the rural poor. According to our analysis of decoupling theory, the positive impacts of economic growth on rural poverty alleviation have disappeared in most places. That is, economic growth cannot solve the problem of rural poverty, as previously assumed, and the increasingly serious aging of the population has become the key influencing factor of poverty incidence in most rural areas.

Wellbeing is gaining prominence in international development discourse as an alternative means of conceptualising and assessing progress against human development goals. This paper operationalizes the concept of social wellbeing (comprised of interlinked material, subjective and relational dimensions) as a framework for understanding the effects of agrarian change, as experienced by inhabitants of two villages in rural Southwest Bangladesh. Production of two ostensibly similar high value export crops (tiger shrimp and freshwater prawn) resulted in radically different trajectories of agrarian change and social wellbeing outcomes in the two villages. These were broadly positive in the village producing prawn, but broadly negative in the village producing shrimp. The paper links these divergent wellbeing outcomes to the ways in which peasant livelihoods became commodified in each village. Different patterns of commodification are shown to be linked to differences in the biological characteristics of the two organisms farmed. The paper demonstrates the theoretical, methodological and analytical utility of integrating social wellbeing and political economy of agrarian change perspectives in the study of rural development.

With economic progress, it was expected that smallholders would fade into history. This has been the experience in much of the global North and it was expected to occur as development proceeded in the global South. In East and Southeast Asia, however, smallholders have persisted in the face of rapid and profound social and economic transformation. This presents the core puzzle that the paper addresses: why has the farm-size transition not occurred in much of East and Southeast Asia? Why have smallholders stubbornly resisted the tide of economic history? The first half of the paper defines the smallholder and smallholding, sets out the historical evolution of smallholdings in the region, and explores the role of smallholders in national development. The second half of the paper explains the persistence of the smallholder through three explanatory lenses: the economics of smallholder farming; the role of farm policy; and the logics of smallholder-based livelihoods in a context of global integration. The paper concludes by setting out four possible rural futures for the wider East Asian countryside and smallholder.

While mobility has long been recognised to be a core dynamic affecting the consumption of rural housing very little is known about the politics that exist around the connections between mobility and rural housing. To investigate how mobility informs policy approaches to rural housing in Australia this paper brings together the concepts of the politics of mobility and governmentality. Through a case study examining housing policy discourses relating to rural and regional Australia from 1985 to 2000, this paper analyses the way in which various governmentalities of mobility have infused Australian rural housing policy. The paper finds that, during this period, mobility was an important governmental rationality informing Australian regional development and rural housing policies. This study contributes to the critical engagement with the mobility turn in contemporary rural studies by showing that a particular dimension of the mobility turn – the politics of mobility – can be augmented through the application of governmentality theory. Such an analytical approach enables a critical assessment of how such governmentalities of mobility contribute to constructions of the rural as problematic and the implications of such representations for rural regions and communities.

How do migrant colonists and indigenous populations differ in their land and labor allocation in the Amazon, and what does this imply for their income levels/livelihoods and the environment? We address this by analyzing patterns of on- and off-farm employment of rural populations, both mestizo and indigenous, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We use data from an unusual survey that covers both mestizo and indigenous households. As elsewhere in rural areas of the developing world, off-farm employment is found to be the principal income source for 68% of the population and accounts for 53% of total household income on average. Within off-farm employment, farm wage employment is most common for the poor, who usually have little human (education) or natural capital (agricultural land). For educated individuals, in contrast, non-farm wage employment is commonly the choice. In the Amazon, the government (national, provincial, municipal) is the main employer, which is linked to recent large government investment in infrastructure and decentralization, leading to significant expansion of non-farm employment opportunities for rural populations close to major towns. The implications of this for livelihoods, sustainable development and the environment are explored in the conclusions.

Critical commentators of agricultural/rural change in advanced economies have begun to refer to ‘neo-productivist’ pathways of change. However, conceptualizations of neo-productivism have so far largely failed to provide a robust analytical framework for understanding the propelling forces, processes and characteristics of complex modern agricultural pathways. This article analyses two key approaches used to conceptualize neo-productivism: an actor-oriented spatio-temporal perspective (the AOST approach) which focuses mainly on geographical and temporal-historical characteristics in the adoption of neo-productivist actor spaces, and structuralist interpretations which see neo-productivism predominantly as a response to macro-political regime change. There is an underlying assumption in both that productivist and non-productivist pathways of agricultural change can be identified in different guises and that the notion of neo-productivism can be situated in relation to productivist/non-productivist concepts. However, they differ in their temporal conceptualisations of agricultural change (i.e. neo-productivism as productivist resurgence versus productivist approaches adapted to match the new political realities of an era influenced by non-productivism), processes (i.e. non-productivist pathways forced by events ‘back’ towards productivist-dominated pathways versus neo-productivism as a shift from a state-led system of support responsible for driving state productivism, to market-based drivers enabled by the gradual withdrawal of the state), and spatial differentiation (i.e. complex geography of actor spaces in the adoption of neo-productivist pathways versus locked-in productivist pathways working alongside multifunctional agriculture). The article concludes with some critical thoughts about the utility of the term ‘neo-productivism’, but also argues that the term allows researchers to further nuance conceptualisations of the complex spatial, temporal and structural changes that characterise modern agriculture in any area of the globe.

The examination of social and ecological trajectories in two smallholder communities that experienced land conflicts in the 1980s provides empirical evidences for the formulation of a grounded political ecology of peasant resource use in Brazil's Mid-North. The approach is used to progressively track factors triggering different decisions, livelihood strategies and contrasting social relations. Today's discrepancies in land-use trajectories and social life were traced back to attitudes and the agency of local residents as they confronted socio-structural and ecological opportunities and constraints in the past. The cases reflected the contrast between a background of hierarchical, subordinated relations, and a more egalitarian social structure. Cooperation and agreement or discord and individual orientation resulted from social dynamics that marked the communities since land occupation in the 1920s. Kinship networks featured in one case enhanced collective action and welfare, while the lack of institutions regulating resource-use in the other case failed to establish a sustainable system.

[Extract] Scholarly debate about the conditions for, and extent of, 'neoliberal nature' continues to thrive. Rural researchers have contributed to this in many different ways, reflecting "the subjection of more and more areas of ... [rural] environmental life to the logics of capital accumulation" (Castree, 2007, p. 8). Over the last three decades rural places worldwide have arguably been transformed by the market processes and commodification of nature that are widely seen as trademarks of neoliberalisation. Longer term socio-demographic trends have been exacerbated by a combination of globalisation and neoliberal economic policies that have profoundly restructured "the material, social and economic conditions of life in rural areas"(Cocklin et al., 2002, p.2). The forms that this restructuring takes are varied, but include the withdrawal of or cuts in expenditure on services, reduced subsidies to agriculture, the liberalisation of international trade, and a shift to policies encouraging efficiency, self-reliance and competitiveness. Yet, while the social, economic and environmental impacts of neoliberalisation on rural communities and the farming sector are well documented (e.g., Cheshire, 2006, Coleman et al., 2004, Jaffe, 2006, McMichael, 2012, Nousiainen and Pylkkanen, 2013 and Wolf and Bonanno, 2014), there has been little systematic attempt to investigate the interplay between neoliberal principles and policies and the governing of rural environments. This is a significant gap since, as Woods (2011, p. 259) contends, "state regulation of the rural environment has increasingly been challenged, re-assessed and re-oriented by the application of neoliberal rationalities".

China's primary approach to addressing poverty in its rural areas has been geographic, through the targeting of loans, grants and public works at designated 'poverty counties'. The efficacy of this approach is increasingly being called into question as China faces entrenched poverty and rising inequality despite decades of rapid economic growth. At the same time, evidence is growing that recent reforms to fiscal policy have disadvantaged poverty counties, leaving them with limited resources with which to achieve poverty alleviation and rural service provision. This article considers how these two processes interact by explaining the pattern of resource allocation in a national poverty county in Shanxi Province. Evidence suggests that the county government, operating in a highly constrained fiscal environment, is betting on the strong. It concentrates resources in villages with better existing conditions to the detriment of poorer villages who are in greater need. Such a pattern of resource allocation amplifies existing inequalities and does little to address remaining poverty in rural China.