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This work explores an efficient integration of IoT devices based on context awareness in the agricultural sector. A four-layered framework is proposed in which automation techniques are embedded to get real-time context aware insights from the ecosystem of IoT. The framework is evaluated using a strategic tool called threats, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths (TOWS) matrix to measure the performance of automation techniques. This analysis points out various opportunities to innovate the livelihood of agrarian society around the globe.

This dissertation examines the social and material life of uncertainty in rural India. Specifically, I examine how cultivators apprehend, manage, and capitalize on the endemic and emerging risks of agriculture in villages of central India. While farmers have always been exposed to the vagaries of climate and market, the emerging uncertainties of anthropogenic climate change and liberalized agri-commodity trade have transformed agriculture into a gamble on the monsoon and the market. Theorizing agriculture as an increasingly speculative enterprise, this dissertation outlines the material and imaginative work this entails, its differentiation across key axes of social inequality, and entanglements with kinship and ritual, patronage and policy, and hierarchy and obligation. Rather than view agriculture through an undifferentiated lens of crisis, decline and nostalgia, this dissertation foregrounds the ways that cultivators forge uneven futures within a changing rural landscape.��This question of how agrarian risk is shaped by broader political-economic, cultural and environmental processes is grounded in an ethnographic study of everyday agricultural decisions and practices in Malwa, a predominantly agricultural region in western Madhya Pradesh, which has witnessed rapid agrarian transformations over the last two decades. The region’s agricultural growth has been significant, particularly through the cultivation of high-risk, high-value horticultural crops. At the same time, the state government has also been at the forefront of adopting and implementing policies of risk-management, from yield-index insurance to price-support schemes. Against this backdrop, I trace the emergence of moral and political economies of risk and responsibility across five key sites: the monsoon rain, insurance claims, market speculation, groundwater extraction, and caste distinction. I argue that ideologies of risk have become deeply entrenched in the countryside, tied to legacies of the Green Revolution technology, neoliberal agricultural and an emerging ethic of entrepreneurialism. Across these sites, I show how farmers deploy both religious and secular vocabularies of risk, fate, and destiny to apprehend uncertainty, grapple with the past, and act on the future. Ultimately, I demonstrate how state policies that aim to manage risk actually exacerbate uncertainties and heighten existing inequalities in the countryside, even as they offer novel spaces for capital accumulation, social mobility and political claim-making in the countryside.�

In the context of neoliberal financialization, what is the role of debt in agrarian change? To address this question, I combine insights about debt from rural political ecology and development finance scholarship in order to analyze the relationship between changing agroecological practices and household indebtedness in a Cambodian rice- farming village. In the past two decades, Cambodians have borrowed from commercial microfinance institutions at the highest rate per capita of any country in the world. With fewer Cambodians farming, and agricultural production increasingly commodified, researchers have begun to study how the fast growth of Cambodia's microfinance industry contributes to these changes. By building upon the concept of financial landscapes, which highlights the diversity of social and material relations of debt in rural economies, I argue that agrarian change in Cambodia is entangled with rising household debts used to fund both agricultural production and social reproduction. I describe how non-monetary debt obligations underpinned labor-intensive rice agricultural practices in the 1980s and early 1990s, but have since been replaced by monetary debt used to fund household basic needs and commodified agricultural production. To make my argument, I draw upon 20 months of ethnographic research within a farming village in Kampot Province. This article contributes to rural political ecology and development finance scholarship by exploring debt in its diverse material and social forms at a time of deepening financialization, and how these debt relations in turn shape the economic and agroecological contours of contemporary agrarian change.

In spite of the insight commonality may have concerning agrarian practice, fact is that nowadays agricultural science diligence is accurate, precise, data-driven, and vigorous than ever. The emanation of the technologies based on Internet of Things (IoT) has reformed nearly each industry like smart city, smart health, smart grid, smart home, including “smart agriculture or precision agriculture”. Applying machine learning using the IoT data analytics in agricultural sector will rise new benefits to increase the quantity and quality of production from the crop fields to meet the increasing food demand. Such world-shattering advancements are rocking the current agrarian approaches and generating novel and best chances besides a number of limitations. This paper climaxes the power and capability of computing techniques including internet of things, wireless sensor networks, data analytics and machine learning in agriculture. The paper proposed the prediction model of Apple disease in the apple orchards of Kashmir valley using data analytics and Machine learning in IoT system. Furthermore, a local survey was conducted to know from the farmers about the trending technologies and their effect in precision agriculture. Finally, the paper discusses the challenges faced when incorporating these technologies in the traditional farming approaches.

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.

Unlike the rest of the state of Punjab in India, cotton remained the dominant monsoon crop in the southwest region till the 1990s. As it has been increasingly replaced by paddy in recent decades, this paper asks what this shift in cropping pattern reflects about the state’s agrarian capitalism. Towards an analysis of this question, it builds on James Scott’s idea of ‘political crops’ in the earliest states and places it in conversation with scholarship in critical agrarian studies, political ecology and commodity studies to account for relations of power under contemporary capitalism. Drawing on intensive primary research in the region, the paper contrasts the power relations generated by the production and circulation of the two crops. It shows that larger farmers are more likely to cultivate paddy due to better access to irrigation, and that the shift to paddy is threatening to make redundant the labour of landless Dalit women, who do cotton-picking, and increasing dependence on migrant male labour for paddy-transplanting. It also demonstrates how the different end uses of the two crops and the predominance of the private sector in the cotton markets versus the hitherto state-led nature of the paddy markets produce differential risks for farmers and traders. The paper concludes by suggesting that the shift from cotton to paddy represents capital intensification in response to Punjab’s mature capitalist conditions in agriculture but also results in new contradictions and axes of political struggle.

Protected geographical indications (PGIs) are an increasingly popular strategy for securing price premiums on food products in the interest of preserving associated rural livelihoods, however they often fail to show clear benefits for small or otherwise marginalized farmers. Their environmental record for supporting low-impact farming practices is also mixed. This case study of the PGI for Spanish almond-based desserts Turron de Jijona and Turron de Alicante details a yet unstudied form of such failures, where manufacturers seeking to scale production removed the requirement to source their primary ingredient (almonds) from the region's low-input farms and opted for intensively produced ingredients imported from abroad. This uprooting of turron from its agroecological origins highlights how the GI designation creates tension between the need to legitimate a product as rooted in traditional agrarian lifeways and the incentive to expand exports by industrial means. While previous studies show how such tension can result in agricultural intensification benefitting larger landholders within a given region, I argue this inequity and ecological risk operates at a global scale. Importantly, the turron case reveals that “quality” of a product is a moving target shaped not only by culinary legacies but also forged by a global political economy of agriculture suffering chronic overproduction. Finally, the role of the state in structuring PGI institutions more inclusively and adjudicating conflicts among actors along the value chain is fundamental to the capacity of these programs to achieve social and environmental goals.

This study examines agrobiodiversity production and consumption among indigenous people and smallholders engaged with cascading migration, coca, and water resource changes. Addressing the questions if and how agrobiodiversity is viable amid intensifying extra-local influences, it combines the theorization of a pathway that has emerged via infrastructure entanglements and the extended case study of local utilization practices. The theoretical orientation integrates key elements of political ecology and social-ecological systems. We undertook surveys, interviews, and ethnographic participant observation in 10 communities and villages of Cochabamba, Bolivia, between 1990 and 2013. Results show how agrobiodiversity was utilized at moderate-high levels in the land and water systems, foods, and other uses of indigenous peasants and smallholder farmers in the 1990–2013 period even as certain minor crops were significantly reduced. Moreover, the results reveal how agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods have functioned in production and consumption amid the infrastructure entanglements of migration, roads, and irrigation. Embeddedness as both quotidian resource capacities and contingent sociocultural symbols was hinged to agrarian change in these accelerated entanglements. Mobilities of both meaning and people in recent infrastructure entanglement is characteristic of the unfolding utilization of agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods. Social power in the complex contours of accelerated entanglement have furnished meanings ranging from the resistance politics of indigenous people and smallholders to the purposeful agendas of more powerful groups. The conclusion highlights how dynamic agrobiodiversity utilization has emerged via the pathway of indigenous people and smallholders who are engaged in cascading, extra-local entanglements.

Violent conflicts are frequently associated with detrimental or neutral effects on economic, social, and environmental development; by extension, one might expect similar effects on agrobiodiversity. However, as this study suggests, the impacts of conflicts are not necessarily all negative or neutral. Indeed, conflicts may also create favorable political conditions for the implementation of community-driven agrobiodiversity management. Drawing on ethnographic research in the indigenous central region of Chiapas, Mexico, where the insurgent Zapatista movement (EZLN) has a strong influence, we examine the impact of the agrarian conflict between this indigenous movement and the Mexican government on the development of agrobiodiversity conservation initiatives. Two research questions guide this paper: (1) What has been the impact of the conflict on communities’ subsistence agriculture and seed sovereignty? and (2) To what extent has the local seed sovereignty movement—an outgrowth of the Zapatista conflict—influenced agrobiodiversity conservation? Our findings suggest that the conflict has led to the implementation of grassroots agroecology and food and seed sovereignty projects that could ultimately strengthen agrobiodiversity in the communities under the influence of the Zapatista movement. We suggest that these projects highlight two elements essential for long-term agrobiodiversity conservation: first, the strategic relationship between agrobiodiversity conservation and these communities’ food security and seed sovereignty, particularly in the context of conflict; and second, the central role that peasant communities play in the preservation, reproduction, and evolution of agrobiodiversity. We conclude that the overall long-term impact of the Zapatista conflict on local agrobiodiversity has in fact been positive.

Drawing on political-ecological vulnerability theory, this paper analyzes the impact of illegal-drug cultivation and its related violence on smallholder agrobiodiversity in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Oaxaca is a global agrobiodiversity hotspot where cannabis and opium poppy have been widely cultivated for decades. The study is based on 76 structured/semi-structured interviews with imprisoned farmers, harvest gatherers, and former soldiers in four state prisons. Results show that illegal-drug crops and native-food crops complement each other until a threshold of violence is crossed, which leads to the abandonment of agriculture due to murder, imprisonment, and out-migration. The specialization of smallholder agriculture in illegal-drug crops tends to favor crossing the threshold of violence. In most municipalities in this study, however, rather a diversification process took place in which illegal-drug crops were incorporated to food production systems, reducing both the exposure and the sensitivity of smallholders to structural and direct violence. Other adaptation strategies involved local organization and militarization of smallholders for collective-risk management and territorial control. Ultimately, by comparing five vulnerability scenarios, this paper argues that the combination of peasant organization, militarization, and crop/livelihood diversification in Oaxaca mitigates the violent agrarian change associated with this illegal economy, while conserving agrobiodiversity.

The analysis of agrobiodiversity has mostly neglected conditioning by violent conflict and related processes of social and agrarian change. Similarly, the violent conflicts literature has rarely considered interactions with agrobiodiversity, which involves social as well as biophysical processes. Considering their frequent spatial overlaps around the world, this paper introduces a themed issue investigating how agrobiodiversity and violent (post)conflicts transform each other and are often interdependent. To do so, we bring into dialogue previously disparate lines of research and present the empirical and theoretical contributions of the papers included in the themed issue. Based on this collective work, we call for further synthesis, whereby research working on agrobiodiversity meet and converge with research on violent conflict from various disciplines. The papers that compose this issue evidence how an integrative approach is not only analytically beneficial but also necessary for research supporting the sustainable resolution of conflict, the related conservation of agrobiodiversity and equitable human-environment relations.

This article combines a brief overview of the theoretical approach of the Vienna School of Social Ecology with a report on the results of a long-term study on the coincidence of countries’ first access to fossil fuels with social revolutions. The theoretical approach views societies in a system-theoretical perspective as hybrids of materiality and meaning, with "social metabolism" and "colonization of nature" as key links. Historical changes in the energy metabolism of societies are viewed as key drivers of change in social organization, distinguishing broadly between foraging and agrarian societies, both solar based energetically, but distinct by the latter applying elaborate colonization technologies that allow for higher energy returns at the price of a higher labor burden, the emergence of cities, and land-based steep social hierarchies. Finally, we report on a series of studies on the coincidence of countries’ access to fossil fuels as allowing a transition to industrial societies, again on a much higher energy level. The very early transition phase ("critical energy transition period"), as we show empirically for a large number of countries worldwide across the past 500 years, was typically marked by what we characterize as social revolutions. Finally, we ask what societal changes a next energy transition, required to avoid catastrophic climate change, will bring about., Historical Social Research Vol. 48, No. 1 (2023)

This article analyses processes of exploitation, accumulation and social reproduction in rural Java. Using fieldwork in a primarily agrarian and a predominantly non-agrarian village, it underlines the ways in which pluri-active labouring class households contribute to processes of accumulation through a variety of forms of petty self-employment and wage-labour–above all sharecropping and female homework, which is interwoven seamlessly with reproductive labour. Agrarian accumulation is dominated by traders and absentee capitalist landowners. Forms of exploitation are linked to petty capitalism's relationship to capital-in-general. The article briefly discusses the potential for labouring class collective action given the villages' relatively flat social structures.

The article considers directions of the agrarian modernization as presented in the four editions of the Soviet agricultural encyclopedia from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s. On the basis of some historical examples and theoretical concepts, the author explains the scientific, ideological and political significance of encyclopedias in the formation of social knowledge and ideology; shows how during the Stalinist period, the Soviet agricultural encyclopedias passed through several successive great leaps in the representation of agrarian knowledge under the accelerated Soviet modernization; stresses the manipulative way of managing agrarian knowledge and human capital in agriculture - on behalf of the leader and ruling party. The article describes the transition from the first Soviet encyclopedia of the 1920s, which focused on the modernization of peasant Russia, to the encyclopedia of the early 1930s, which denied the importance of the peasantry and praised the projects of large-scale industrial-agricultural production; many authors of the first peasant encyclopedia were repressed. The encyclopedia of the late 1930s reflects the fight against the authors of the previous encyclopedia of the great leap and the purges in the name of the ideology of the planning-management approach in the further modernization of Soviet agriculture. The encyclopedia of the late 1940s - early 1950s reflects the victory of the technocratic-bureaucratic worldview and personnel approach to the agrarian sphere, which prevailed in the agriculture of the USSR until the very end of the Soviet era. The author focuses on the influence of the subjective factor (political leaders, editors-in-chief and anonymous authors) on the ideology, topics and style of encyclopedic articles. In conclusion, the author notes that the strong ideological control and volatile political situation distorted knowledge in the Soviet agrarian encyclopedias, which negatively affected the quality of rural human capital and largely predetermined the stagnation of rural development in the late USSR.

The article covers the main directions of joint work of scientific-research institutions (SRI) of agricultural profile in the Siberian region and Siberian Scientific Agricultural Library (SibSAL) functioning within the structure of the Siberian Branch of VASKHNIL (Russian Agricultural Academy) since its establishment in 1969 up to the reorganization period of science reform (2013-2021). The specificity of library and information activity of departmental library and multilevel model of interaction with institutes to satisfy information needs of scientists and specialists of agrarian research institutes in pre-reform period is presented. The results of monitoring the state of library and information activities in the institutes that have influenced the development of the new concept of interaction with SRI are presented. Based on the analysis of reorganization processes, a new structure of scientific organizations of the agricultural profile of Siberia is presented, which is the basis for the development of a new paradigm of interaction between research teams and the Siberian Scientific Agricultural Library, which received the status of a branch of the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences as a result of the reorganization. The analysis carried out in the conditions of reform and reorganization changes on the basis of a questionnaire shows new trends in expanding the range of interests of scientists to the possibilities of the information potential of the SibSAL as the largest branch library in the region. In the context of the change of management and the destruction of organizational and functional ties of agricultural research institutes that have become part of the regional centers of the SB RAS, the orientation to the development and strengthening of communications with the central academic libraries of the regions and the restoration of interaction with libraries of agricultural education on a new basis is noted. The definition of the system structure of agricultural research institutes and educational institutions of the region within the new boundaries of departmental relations of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education will allow establishing the vector of interaction of the SibSAL as a system-forming link. This will enable the development of the main functional areas of library and information activities in the Siberian region.

Crisis provides opportunities for social and environmental reorganization. States claimed responsibility for much agrarian development during the first half of the 20th century through massive development projects in countries like India and the United States, but rural communities now encounter a plurality of legitimate responses to crisis. As Max Weber and his critics have shown, crises are opportunities for charismatic actors who may appear in the form of programs, tools, plants, and leaders – provided they assemble a passionate coalition of political supporters and offer a way to fulfill an aspiration derailed by the crisis. Plural models of alternative agrarian development reorganize political, social, and ecological relationships through commodities and didactic educational programs. In each case, charisma is tied to political relationships with potential for both collective action and violent Othering. Case studies from Indian agriculture at three scales show how such crises break from state and local programs, and how charismatic entities capitalize on that void to forge new alliances.

A survey was carried out on ethnoveterinary practices used by Fulani agropastoralists for maintaining the health and treating of livestock diseases in Ido agrarian community of Oyo State, Nigeria. Information was collected from fifty cattle herders using interview method with the help of Hausa interpreter and with the aid of questionnaires. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (cross tabulations) to generate frequencies and percentages. Plants used for various ethnoveterinary and ethnomedicinal purposes were revealed. Information on the type of animals kept and management practices used by the respondents show that 48% kept cattle, goat and sheep. 14% kept cattle and goat, 36% kept cattle and sheep, while 2% kept cattle only. All the respondents agreed to stomach and intestinal worms as the prevalent ruminant diseases in the area. However, 86% of respondents reported seasonal appearance of worm infestations during wet season, while 14% both seasons. Higher percentage of respondents (80%) adopted the use of traditional medicine and conventional drugs in treating animals. 88% showcased the effectiveness of such combination of traditional and conventional drugs as being very effective. 20% of the respondents used the whole plant in formulating herbal preparations. Urbanization, seasonal variations and unquantifiable dosage have been highlighted as challenges encountered in the use of ethnoveterinary medicine in Ido agrarian community. 12% used decoction method of preparation, 50% used infusion, while 30% mixed plant with non-plant to formulate herbal preparations in solving the problem of helminthiasis and other diseases. The respondents who used local remedies claimed the knowledge of ethnoveterinary was passed from the parents to the children, and this keeps going from generation to generation. The results obtained from this study show that the awareness and the availability of ethnoveterinary plants among Fulani agropastoralists in Ido agrarian community of Oyo state is high, and this is responsible for the high patronage and usage of ethnoveterinary plants in this community. Intestinal worm infestations are the prevalent livestock disease encountered by the Fulani agropastoralists in the study area.

Jogos tornam o ensino-aprendizado mais dinâmico e poucos trabalhos sobre o ensino de bioquímica na educação superior com auxílio de jogos são publicados. Neste trabalho objetivou-se conhecer a perspectiva docente sobre jogos no ensino-aprendizagem em bioquímica. A metodologia seguiu viés qualitativo com entrevista a oito professores de bioquímica nos cursos Ciências da Saúde, Ciências Biológicas e Ciências Agrárias de Instituições de Ensino Superior reconhecidas pelo Ministério da Educação. Quatro professores entrevistados não conheciam jogos como ferramenta didática. Contudo, os que utilizaram os jogos relataram melhora na compreensão dos estudantes e maior participação tornando o processo prazeroso. Portanto, são necessários investimentos em produtos e métodos facilitem o ensino-aprendizagem. Jogos são importantes para viabilizar experiências prazerosas e enriquecedoras no ensino de bioquímica.

Despite Costa Rica’s efforts to promote international tourism, the economy continues to struggle with unprecedented unemployment rates due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially concerning for tourism-dependent regions, such as the Monteverde Zone, where most residents have abandoned land-based livelihoods in favor of tourism. This study uses photovoice to illustrate the ways that small-scale food producers have adapted to the unique challenges of the COVID-19 global pandemic in a region that was already experiencing a loss of agrarian identity. Overall, local food producers have been affected by the diminished tourism economy through the closing of restaurants and the decrease in tourists, causing them to experience crop loss. Food producers have adapted to the economic impacts of the pandemic by re-investing their efforts into a local economy. As part of this shifting strategy, some food producers have begun to expand, diversify, and embrace an approach to growing food that is in line with building more resilient models of food production and engaging with their clients in different ways. Using community-based participatory methods, this study illustrates how food producers have adapted to changes brought on by the pandemic, re-positioning some of these rural agrarian actors as prominent figures in the local food movement.

La estacionalidad y residencia urbana de los asalariados agrícolas promueven su inserción en trabajos no-agrícolas, así como de otros miembros de sus hogares. Este artículo analiza la combinación de inserciones laborales para la provincia de Tucumán, tanto a nivel de los individuos como de los hogares. La construcción de una tipología de hogares permite mostrar un cambio significativo en las formas tradicionales de reproducción de los hogares de asalariados agrarios. Se utiliza información proveniente de una encuesta realizada a hogares con asalariados agrícolas y de entrevistas a trabajadores.

RESUMO: Na geografia agrária, o território constitui-se como um elemento central para a investigação de problemáticas ligadas ao campo e estudar esse conceito é necessário para o entendimento das perspectivas teóricas presentes nos estudos geográficos. O objetivo principal dessa pesquisa foi analisar a aplicação do conceito de território nos estudos da geografia agrária brasileira a partir de uma revisão bibliográfica dos Anais do Simpósio Internacional de Geografia Agrária (2003 -2019). A escolha desse evento científico decorreu da relevância desse espaço no âmbito das publicações da área de Geografia Agrária. No conjunto da revisão realizada, ficou evidente a relevância de autores como Claude Raffestin, R. Haesbaert, Marcos A. Saquet, Milton Santos, Marcelo L. de Souza, Bernardo M. Fernandes e Ariovaldo Umbelino de Oliveira. Ademais, o conceito de território foi tratado sob diferentes perspectivas, sendo prevalente uma abordagem multidimensional. Palavras-Chaves: Território; Geografia Agrária; Epistemologia