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This article examines the work of 'Fundación Entre Mujeres' (FEM), a feminist peasant collective organized in cooperatives and working on food sovereignty, agro-ecology, and the economic, ideological and organizational empowerment of peasant women in the dry corridor of Nicaragua. I argue that by centring an ethics of care and the sustainability of human and more-than-human life in their thinking and responses to the food and climate crises, FEM has opened a space of radical contestations to a dominant capitalist and patriarchal rationale and worldview that is at the core of these crises and mainstream approaches towards agricultural transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Description of the production condition and level of performance is the first step in improving production performance. The study described the indigenous cattle reproductive performances, management practices and production limitations in north-western Ethiopia. Multistage purposive and random sampling methods were used to select the study sites/districts and households. A semi-structured questionnaire (320 interviewees), focus group discussions (12) and personal observations were used for data collection. Chi-square (χ2) test, the least squares mean and the ranking indexes were the statistical methods employed for data analysis. Livestock composition, reproductive performance and production constraints of cattle showed significant differences (p < 0.001) between agro-ecological zones. Cattle were the dominant livestock species, with mean numbers of 18.3 ± 9.9, 8.1 ± 3.2 and 5.4 ± 2.5 heads in the lowland, midland and highland agro-ecological zones, respectively. The mean ages at first mating of bulls, first service of heifers, first calving and calving interval of cows were best in the highlands, while the midland agro-ecology had the worst performance. Feed shortage (Index = 0.4) and disease prevalence (Index = 0.25) were the main cattle production problems. Natural pasture was the main feed source for cattle in the study areas. The study revealed a significant effect agro-ecology on landholding, cattle management practices, species composition; cattle herd structure, reproductive performances and cattle production constraints. This implies that the socioeconomic characteristics, management-level constraints for production and performance level of the livestock stock are important for developing improvement strategies for smallholder livestock production in different agro-ecological zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local knowledge on climatic conditions which hitherto was used to predict the likelihood of weather outcomes is under threat of extinction due to lack of documentation coupled with a gradual decline in its knowledge transfer. Using participatory and ethnographic research approaches including focus groups discussion, key informant interviews, in-depth interviews, and purposively selecting small-scale farmers in the Upper East Region of Ghana, this study has identified key local climatic knowledge that would contribute to achieving sustainable agro-ecological practices. The study found that plant phenology like the sprouting of Faidherbia albida and the presence of Ficus carica are relevant for sustainable agro-ecological practices. Also, the frequency or otherwise of rains and the colour (perceived) and appearance of the water of the first rain at the onset of the rainy season presupposes the likelihood of the rainfall pattern in that year. Some animal and bird behaviour such as the movement of migratory birds, which was used to predict the likelihood of weather patterns or seasons, has been adversely affected by the changing climatic conditions. This knowledge is very relevant for agro-ecological practices since it enables farmers to plan ahead of seasons, which contributes to improving the adaptive capacity of small-scale farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Cover and management (C) and support practice (P) are the most dynamic factors of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation- a widely used model to estimate mean annual soil loss. The aim of this study was, therefore, to determine C- and P-factors for four land management practices and three land use types in three agro-ecologies: Guder (highland), Aba Gerima (midland), and Dibatie (lowland) through selecting a rainfall erosivity (R)-factor model. We collected two seasons' daily soil loss data from 42 runoff plots. Compared to the control, the P-factor in cropland ranged from 0.15 to 0.53 for soil bund, 0.18 to 0.5 for fanya juu, and 0.06 to 0.44 for soil bund with grass; and in non-cropland plots from 0.03 to 0.42 for trench with exclosure. The C-factor ranged from 0.004 for teff to 0.64 for chili pepper in crop land; and from 0.001 in degraded bushland to 0.49 in grassland for non-cropland. Overall, the average P-values decreased in the order midland > highland > lowland for cropland plots and highland > lowland > midland for non-cropland plots. Accurate determination of C- and P- factor values for the local conditions helps greatly improve soil loss prediction in this basin and other similar regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the multidimensional livelihood vulnerability of smallholder farmers to climate change-induced shocks in Dinki watershed, northcentral highlands of Ethiopia. The data were collected through a cross-sectional survey conducted on 288 households, six focus group discussions, and 15 key informant interviews, complemented with 30 years of rainfall and temperature data obtained from the National Metrological Agency. The Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) framed within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and vulnerability (LVI-IPCC) approach was used to measure households' livelihood vulnerability on the agro-ecology unit of analysis. In each agro-ecology, the LVI and LVI-IPCC were calculated as well as one-way analysis of variance was used to test differences between agro-ecological zones. The findings indicate that the vulnerability dimensions and major components varied between agro-ecological zones (p < 0.001). The result also reveals that increased sensitivity to water and health facilities, recurrent exposure to climate change-induced shocks, poor technology utilization, and limited livelihood diversification practices are principal factors contributing to mounted sensitivity, exposure, and overall livelihood vulnerability of the lowland agro-ecology. The finding suggests that designing resilience-building adaptation strategies based on the agro-ecology unit of analysis is sound to reduce the vulnerability of smallholder farmers to climate change-induced shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the impacts of Nepali farmers' climate change perceptions on their farming practices over the last three decades (1980–2014). Results from a survey with 496 farmers show that nearly all farmers attributed changes in crop varieties and cropping patterns mainly to technological and market-related factors and not to climate change. A comparison between perceptions and meteorological data shows that while perceptions of changes in maximum temperatures did match observed trends, perceptions of changes in minimum temperature and rainfall did not. The results indicate that the climate change message in the past 30 years has not been definite enough to have a consistent impact on either farmers' perceptions or their farming practices. This may impede farmers' adaptive capacity in dealing with increasingly severe future climate change impacts. Because of large variations in the micro-climate of the study locations and the locations of the weather stations from which we obtained the meteorological data, the results need to be treated with caution. However, we suggest that for farmers to effectively adapt to climate change, it may be necessary for responsible state and non-state actors to improve their communication on expected climate change impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until his early death in 1985, at age 51, the Tunisian agronomist Slaheddine el-Amami carried out a path-breaking research program at what was then the Centre de Recherche et de Génie Rural. He wrote technical studies ranging from the agricultural capacities of the unjustly-marked-as-barren Kerkennah Islands, to possibilities for drip irrigation, to attempts to quantify the energy use of Tunisian agriculture, to a wide-ranging investigation of indigenous hydraulic systems. There is little explicit mention in this work of a then-dominant strand of heterodox Arab and Third Worldist social science – the emphasis on delinking, or removal from Western commodity, technical and financial flows. Yet through an examination of his work in the context of the delinking paradigm, as put forth by scholars like Samir Amin, Fawzy Mansour and Mohamed Dowidar, I show the use and need for independent agronomic expertise to be deployed within analytical paradigms such as delinking, forged by heterodox political economists. Through delinking, countries could proceed on a path of auto-centered development. The possibility and time frame of delinking is necessarily a socio-technical question linked to indigenous capacities, technical and natural, and the social relations with which they are woven. It is also a question of creating and mobilizing a surplus in the agricultural sector. Through examining Amami's life's work, I show the use and need for interdisciplinary methods and research programs, which must braid the social and natural sciences – if not simply take threads from each to create a holistic knowledge – in order to arrive at appropriate developmental programs. Such knowledge and programs were appropriate in that they offered ways of working agriculture without capital-intense inputs – thus resolving rather than aggravating current account imbalances and labor surpluses. They also relied on a decentralization of planning, based on the skills and knowledges of the direct producers. In analyzing such knowledge, systematized in the work of Amami, I will also show how moving from underdevelopment to development requires a mélange of knowledges. Crucial and neglected are those knowledges which have been developed to inform sustainable ways of living on land-bases, in order to produce the rural surplus which is the sine qua non of a successful move beyond developmental malaise in the Global South. I will then link this to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Synthesis Report, showing this paradigm's continuing relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how farm interns, as a new group of non-waged agricultural workers, have come to support marginally or non-profitable agro-ecological farms in Ontario, Canada. Are farm interns potential agents of social change alongside farmers or are they being recruited onto farms because of the precarious economic situation of their agro-ecological farm hosts? I engage with this question through drawing on debates in agrarian studies arguing that farm interns should be understood as a contemporary manifestation and negotiation of the agrarian question that re-works a number of historical agrarian trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural landscapes offer unique habitats for many species. Because agriculture is a major land use worldwide, changes in farming practices can have major repercussions for biodiversity. Particularly in Western Europe, ongoing intensification and scale enlargement but also land abandonment and poor agricultural practices leading to land degradation form a major threat to agrobiodiversity. Agro-ecological farming practices are suggested as an alternative way of farming in order to conserve and enhance biodiversity. Yet knowledge about what factors explain farmers' adoption of agro-ecological farming practices is fragmented and incomplete. In this paper, we offer a holistic framework that specifies these factors and how they are interconnected. The framework is illustrated and refined by means of a case study analysis of almond farming in Andalusia. The chosen case represents a specific localized farming practice that currently negatively impacts biodiversity but for which agro-ecology forms an attractive alternative regarding biodiversity. The case study demonstrates that our framework offers a useful tool to systematically identify the different factors that affect agro-ecological farming adoption, interlinkages between factors and particularly the more structural barriers to agro-ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution draws on original data relating to a land settlement case in Araponga, an administrative area in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The settlement of the land and subsequent building of robust, more self-dependent, land-based livelihoods have followed a joint experimentation trajectory in which the agro-ecologicalisation of agrarian production practices to regenerate and enrich the resource base has been coupled with effective institutional reform and the creation of a favourable institutional setting. Key to this grassroots transformation process has been the enrolment of various strategic actors in a collaborative support network by a mediating change agent. The paper argues that the Araponga case represents a particular expression of re-peasantisation. The Araponga project has evolved without the involvement of landless peoples' social movements such as theMovimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra(MST). This has been crucial to its character and impact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article critically examines and analyzes place-based as well as network-based strategies of alternative development organizations that claim to be building sustainable social and solidarity economies (SSE) in the political context of neoliberal globalization. While the Indian state and market forces are actively promoting the neoliberal agri-food system, alternative development organizations are working with farmers to build the SSE based on the principles of democracy, inclusiveness, reciprocity, cooperativism, and socioecological sustainability. Using a case study approach, this article analyzes how SSE initiatives are aiming to reclaim control over the local agri-food sector. Specifically, this article examines how community development organizations mobilize farmers based on the principles of agro-ecology and the politics of seed and food sovereignties. This article uses the Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an alternative community development organization in south India, as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The objectives of this study were to investigate constraints affecting sorghum production and farmers' approaches ofStrigamanagement in the semi-arid regions of Tanzania. Focus group discussions based on a semi-structured questionnaire and observations following transect walks were used for data collection. Only 35%, 15%, and 10% of the farmers from Igunga, Kishapu, and Meatu districts, respectively, reported growing newly released varieties. The major constraints affecting sorghum production in the study areas includedStrigainfestation, drought, storage pests, damage by birds, a lack of access to improved varieties, and a lack of access to production inputs, such as fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides and herbicides. Hand weeding, crop rotation, fallowing, intercropping, and organic manure application were the most common practices of farmers for reducingStrigainfestations, but most farmers (79.7%) had little knowledge of the best recommendedStrigamanagement practices. About 65% of the farmers did not use fertilizers and herbicides for soil fertility improvement and weed management, respectively, creating favourable conditions forStrigainfestation. A systematic breeding programme aiming at improving sorghum varieties for Striga resistance, including farmers' preferred traits, should be designed and implemented to increase the adoption of these new varieties by the farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Commercial production of fig (Ficus carica), in Brazil is based on the cultivar Roxo de Valinhos, which is highly susceptible to diseases and pests. The aim of this study was to evaluate rust resistance of 34 fig landraces accessed from urban and rural areas of the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil and cv. Roxo de Valinhos against rust (Cerotelium fici) The experiments were conducted in 2013 and 2014 at EPAGRI-Lages (27°35?W, 50°05?South) and IFC-Concórdia (27°11?W, 52°4?South), Santa Catarina, Brazil. Biweekly assessments of incidence and severity of rust started 30 days after transplantation and continued until the end of fruiting. Genotypes of thick, purple fruits from Lages (HTPL) and from Western Santa Catarina (CTPW) and the genotypes of thin, purple fruits from Lages (BThPL) and from Western Santa Catarina (FThPW) were highly resistant to rust. The availability of fig landraces that are rust resistant indicates that fig orchards can be diversified with local genetic resources less vulnerable than the highly vulnerable commercial cv. Roxo de Valinhos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agro-ecology and food sovereignty movements of southern Chile promote alternatives to the hegemonic agro-export regime that dominates the landscape. We explore these mobilizations and the strategies they employ, with a particular focus on a network of peasant women “seed curators.” The global agri-food complex relies on a flat and universalizing spatiality of land as resource and food as commodity, in which the character and fate of individual places is of little importance. This is paired with a hierarchical monopolization of knowledge, where producers become recipients rather than creators and custodians of agricultural inputs and know-how. In response, peasant movements have given birth to alternative spatial practices based on horizontal networks that join together interdependent producers and places. By sharing traditional and agro-ecological knowledge, cultivating alternate circuits of exchange, and building urban–rural partnerships, these movements seek to reshape the horizons of possibility both for peasant communities and for the broader agri-food system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article tracks the debate about development in theory and practice, moving from the global level of the development debate to the rice fields of the Philippines. The authors offer a reframing of the development debate through the lens of ‘vulnerability’ versus ‘rootedness’ in social, environmental and economic terms. They argue that food and farming are currently at the leading edge of the development debate and of the vulnerability versus rootedness frame. They demonstrate this through their field notes from research with small-scale, rice farmers in the Philippines who have transitioned from chemical-intensive to organic production. The authors then show how their research results mesh with those of others and examine the significance of this farming ‘revolution’ for a transformation of the overall development paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Diversity indices are often considered by landscape planners as easy to calculate and informative for planning procedures. The main objective of many landscape planners using such indices is 'to obtain the magic number'. The misinterpretation of the real significance of diversity values that this indicates is alarming because it could induce conceptual traps and the promotion of poor strategies for ecosystem and landscape management with serious ecological, economic, and political implications. This paper highlights the need to plan reliable diversity analysis based on a good understanding of the relevant theory. The quantitative values of indices obtained should be used as the basis for planning only after a critical and qualitative interpretation of such indices by professional ecologists and considering local features, history, constraints and the human disturbances affecting the ecological units studied. The aim of this short communication is to promote a critical use of biodiversity indices while furnishing some further points of discussion on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diversity of agro-environmental conditions among wheat-based farming systems in the mountainous regions of Nepal may favor the development and production of multiple narrowly adapted varieties over a few broadly adapted varieties. Sixteen genotypes were tested using Participatory Varietal Selection (PVS) trials at farmers' fields in three districts in the Kathmandu Valley. Grain yield was the trait most preferred by farmers, followed by tillering, resistance to diseases, drought, and lodging. Farmer selection of optimal genotypes varied over time and location depending on agronomic and climatic pressures, indicating a preference by farmers for growing multiple, narrowly adapted varieties. Production potential of PVS genotypes averaged up to 142% greater than the most widely grown variety, RR21. With farmer participation in the selection process in different agro-ecological micro-niches of Nepal, both yield potential and yield stability of wheat should increase significantly, thereby providing farmers with the economic means to sustain the current small-scale agriculture suited to the mountainous terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attainment of acceptable levels of land and labor productivity and low external input use is not a mutually exclusive proposition. This study examines characteristics of a range of current specialized dairy farming systems (DFS) and mixed (crop-livestock) farming systems (MFS) in Cuba to determine their efficiency in the process of food and feed production. The central question was whether the favorable results of MFS realized in a small-scale experimental system were also attainable in larger, commercial farms. To this end, we collected data on 93 farms from around the country for a period of 1 year. The farms were classified according to four predictor variables: farm type, years since conversion from DFS to MFS, proportion of land allocated to crops in rotation and farm size. Farms were compared based on 12 pre-selected Agro-Ecological Indicators (AEIs) by using analysis of variance and Tukey's HSD tests. The 12 AEIs were also subjected to a principal components analysis and related to the four predictor variables by reduced-rank regression, also known as redundancy analysis. Three farm types were distinguished: mixed farming experimental (MFe), mixed farming commercial (MFc) and specialized dairy farming (DFS). Total energy output per unit of farm area was on average four to six times higher on the mixed farms than on the specialized dairy farms, while protein output three to four times higher. Milk yield per unit of forage area was highest on MFe (2.4 Mg ha-1 yr-1), followed by MFc (1.7), while it was much lower (0.7) on DFS. The redundancy analysis revealed that MFe did only slightly better than MFc and was most opposite to DFS in terms of AEIs. In conclusion, the previous experimental findings were confirmed nationwide, thus demonstrating the benefits of MFS for agro-ecological performance in Cuba. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the relative risk of exposure of different human populations to food-borne aflatoxins; the types of health impact that may be incurred by dietary exposure to aflatoxins; and possible strategies likely to mitigate risks to human health. Risk of exposure is examined in a global context comparing risk of toxin exposure by levels of national socioeconomic development. Then risk of exposure is reexamined in the context of agro-ecology, distribution of toxigenicity of Aspergillus flavus, and social factors that influence food management practices. The effects of aflatoxin exposure on human health are explored in three sections: human disease and nutritional status, carcinogenicity, and child growth and development. The section concerning mitigation of the effects of aflatoxin on human health contrasts efficacy of regulation, food basket modification, and production-side agriculture intervention. It is concluded that risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in developing countries, such as West Africa, may be addressed by vaccination for hepatitis B virus(HBV) and other public health options. Young children in West Africa who are chronically exposed to aflatoxin in foods and who consume nutritionally deficient diets have been shown to be stunted and underweight, as measured by World Health Organization(WHO) Z-scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing a more widespread diffusion of sustainable agricultural practices as part of progressing rural sustainable development is being hampered by different modes of environmental social thought. This introduction to this special issue on 'Reconstituting of nature through rural development practices' argues for a realignment of social theory and empirical practice in considering the real potentiality of alternative and emergent rural development cases. The social science of agro-ecology is introduced as an initial framework within which to assess such alternatives and emerging tendencies. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]