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This paper brings advances in weather data collection and modeling, and developments in socioeconomic climate microsimulations to bear on the analysis of the implications of climate change (CC) in the design of public policies to combat food insecurity. It uses new downscaled predictions of future climate in 2050, derived from three Earth System Models calibrated with a new historical weather station dataset for Peru. This climate data is used in a three-stage socioeconomic microsimulation model that includes climate risk, and deals with the endogeneity of incomes and simultaneity of expected food consumption and its variability. We estimate the impact of CC on agricultural yields, and find results consistent and fully bounded within what the global simulations literature has found, with yields falling up to 13% in some regions. However, we show that these drops (and increases) in yields translate to much smaller changes in food consumption, and also surprisingly, to very minor impacts on vulnerability to food insecurity. The document explores what explains this surprising result, showing that in addition to characteristics that are specific to Peru, there are household and market mediating mechanisms that are available in all countries, which explain how changes in yields, and corresponding farm incomes have a reduced impact in vulnerability to food insecurity. Finally, in light of these findings, we explore which policies might have greater impact in reducing food insecurity in contexts of hunger prevalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on environmental change often highlights the importance of public policies as a key driver of land use and land cover change. However, demonstration of policy impacts in agricultural settings has been hampered by the lack of systematic analysis across landholders, who may not universally adopt government policy incentives, or time periods, which may be associated with differing policy regimes. This paper evaluates the importance of voluntary adoption of policy incentives offered by Peruvian government administrations over two decades for land-use among small farmers in the Peruvian Amazon. The analysis focuses on whether farmers adopted one or more policy incentives in order to observe the effects on land uses including mature forest, agricultural crops, cattle pasture, and secondary growth. We employ multivariate statistical models to estimate the effects of policy adoption while controlling for other factors. The findings show that distinct policies are associated with particular land-uses and largely follow expectations. Specifying policy incentives promulgated by governments and differentiating among adopters and non-adopters advances understanding of the impacts of public policies on land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological research in the Andes has emphasized agriculture to the detriment of all other modes of production. A marked bias towards research on the coast, where crop farming predominates, and prejudices arising from the prevailing agro-centric perspective has given rise to a wealth of information concerning agricultural adaptations to this vertical environment. This paper seeks to redress the balance by investigating the precocious nature of agro-pastoralist traditions in the north-central highlands of Peru (ad 1000–1570). I challenge current ideas concerning the mainstay of subsistence in the Prehispanic high Andes that essentially emphasize farming to the detriment of other modes of production. Rather, I argue for a rich tableau of closely articulated groups of agro-pastoral and mixed farming communities ensconced in the kichwa , suni and puna areas of the cordillera. In these mixed communities the archaeological evidence suggests that it is the camelid herders who controlled and exercised power over the mixed farming communities with a concomitant specialization and intensification of the pastoralist economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]