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While experts agree that poverty, population, energy prices, climate change, and socio-political dynamics undermine global food security, there is no agreement on effective strategies to meet this challenge. For example, some promote “high tech” solutions (e.g. biotechnology) designed to boost yield while others prefer local food systems. To better understand these debates, this article explores four perspectives from the literature: (1) technology to increase food production; (2) equitable food distribution; (3) policies to reduce pollution and waste; and (4) community action to promote sovereign food systems. The paper concludes with recommendations on how food scientists can navigate these controversies to help research and policy making.

The Internet of things (IoT) aims to connect everything and everyone around the world to provide diverse applications that improve quality of life. In this technology, the preservation of data privacy plays a crucial role. Recently, many studies have leveraged machine learning (ML) as a strategy to address the privacy issues of IoT including scalability, interoperability, and resource limitation such as computation and energy. In this paper, we aim to review these studies and examine opportunities and concerns related to utilizing data in ML-based solutions for privacy in IoT. We, first, explore and introduce different data sources in IoT and categorize them. Then, we review existing ML-based solutions that are designed and developed to protect privacy in IoT. Finally, we examine the extent to which some data categories have been used with ML-based solutions to preserve privacy and propose other novel opportunities for ML-based solutions to leverage these data sources in the IoT ecosystem.

As the world’s population increases, demand for poultry products will continue to increase. To meet this demand, one candidate mechanism to increase production is to increase housing and manage more birds. However, this practice, along with labour shortages and increasing biosecurity practices will make it increasingly difficult for producers to monitor the production, health, and welfare status of all their birds. Employing smart poultry management systems is necessary to increase production while minimizing costs and the use of resources. Smart poultry management systems include precision livestock farming (PLF) technologies such as smart sensors, automation of farm processes, and data driven decision making platforms. Many new technologies will have great implications for poultry production in the areas of the poultry house environment, bird welfare, precision feeding, and rapid detection of infectious disease. As smart sensors collect data in real-time on a variety of parameters from poultry operations, large amounts of data will be generated. To make best use of this data, big data analytical tools must be employed to produce data driven decisions. Additionally, the devices that will be incorporated into smart poultry management systems will be connected to the Internet allowing for the formation of Internet of things (IoT) farm networks. IoT technologies allow for communication between farm sensors, devices, and equipment, and will lead to the automation of multiple farm procedures. The following review discusses the areas of impact that new smart sensor technologies will have on poultry operations and describes how sensor technology is related to big data analytics and IoT systems, and how these technologies can enhance production in the poultry industry. Additionally, challenges to the described systems and technologies will also be highlighted and discussed.

There is an emerging consensus among academics and resource managers that successful resource management systems must be developed locally and account for a diverse range of political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors. In this research we evaluate and categorize the fishers' perspectives on the environmental, economic, social, and legal impacts of transitioning from a private property system to community fisheries in Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake. Specifically, this paper uses interview results (N = 523) to assess the perceptions of local communities following a reform in 2012, whereby a commercial leasehold system was replaced with a community-based fishery management system. Results demonstrate that this conversion of fishery management systems is perceived as helping to improve economic, environmental, and legal conditions at the macro-level, but improvements in economic productivity at the individual level are inconclusive. This paper reveals the inherent complexity, benefits, and trade-offs involved in community-based management by exploring fishers' perceptions. One implication of this study is that the data reinforce the importance of participatory engagement in the development of resource management systems.

Global food security and agricultural land management represent two urgent and intimately related challenges that humans must face. We quantify the changes in the global agricultural land footprint if the world were to adhere to the dietary guidelines put forth by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), while accounting for the land use change incurred by import/export required to meet those guidelines. We analyze data at country, continental, and global levels. USDA guidelines are viewed as an improvement on the current land-intensive diet of the average American, but despite this our results show that global adherence to the guidelines would require 1 gigahectare of additional land-roughly the size of Canada-under current agricultural practice. The results also show a strong divide between Eastern and Western hemispheres, with many Western hemisphere countries showing net land sparing under a USDA guideline diet, while many Eastern hemisphere countries show net land use increase under a USDA guideline diet. We conclude that national dietary guidelines should be developed using not just health but also global land use and equity as criteria. Because global lands are a limited resource, national dietary guidelines also need to be coordinated internationally, in much the same way greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly coordinated.

Global food security and agricultural land management represent two urgent and intimately related challenges that humans must face. We quantify the changes in the global agricultural land footprint if the world were to adhere to the dietary guidelines put forth by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), while accounting for the land use change incurred by import/export required to meet those guidelines. We analyze data at country, continental, and global levels. USDA guidelines are viewed as an improvement on the current land-intensive diet of the average American, but despite this our results show that global adherence to the guidelines would require 1 gigahectare of additional land-roughly the size of Canada-under current agricultural practice. The results also show a strong divide between Eastern and Western hemispheres, with many Western hemisphere countries showing net land sparing under a USDA guideline diet, while many Eastern hemisphere countries show net land use increase under a USDA guideline diet. We conclude that national dietary guidelines should be developed using not just health but also global land use and equity as criteria. Because global lands are a limited resource, national dietary guidelines also need to be coordinated internationally, in much the same way greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly coordinated.

Sustainably feeding the next generation is often described as one of the most pressing “grand challenges” facing the 21st century. Generally, scholars propose addressing this problem by increasing agricultural production, investing in technology to boost yields, changing diets, or reducing food waste. In this paper, we explore whether global food production is nutritionally balanced by comparing the diet that nutritionists recommend versus global agricultural production statistics. Results show that the global agricultural system currently overproduces grains, fats, and sugars while production of fruits and vegetables and protein is not sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the current population. Correcting this imbalance could reduce the amount of arable land used by agriculture by 51 million ha globally but would increase total land used for agriculture by 407 million ha and increase greenhouse gas emissions. For a growing population, our calculations suggest that the only way to eat a nutritionally balanced diet, save land and reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to consume and produce more fruits and vegetables as well as transition to diets higher in plant-based protein. Such a move will help protect habitats and help meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

Following widespread food riots in 2008, many people argued that high food prices cause political instability and civil unrest in the form of food riots. However, subsequent research has demonstrated that political, cultural, and economic factors confound the impact of price in determining whether a food riot occurs. This paper contributes to this growing body of literature by exploring: (1) the relationship between household demographic characteristics and reported intent to riot due to future food price rises, and (2) the relationships between people’s diets and their reported intent to riot due to future food price rises. We hypothesize that local context, including demographic factors and dietary patterns, combine to predispose some groups of people to riot when food prices rise. This hypothesis is tested using household surveys (N = 300) and three focus groups discussions (N = 65) carried out in three cities in the Central African nation of Cameroon that experienced widespread food riots in 2008. Results show that some 70% of the respondents would riot if food prices went up. Also, in the event of food price rises: (1) households in Cameroon’s major cities are more likely to riot than the citizens of smaller cities, (2) Households with relatively higher educational level, high incomes, are less likely to riot. Finally, the relationship between dietary patterns and propensity to riot is not straightforward as changes in consumption of different food groups influence propensity to riot in different ways. Overall, this paper demonstrates that preemptive strategies designed to avoid future food riots in Cameroon must take into consideration these spatial, demographic, and dietary factors.

Increasing on-farm crop diversity is one agroecological approach to enhancing food self-sufficiency that helps small-scale farmers keep their food systems stable by reducing risks associated with stressors, such as a pest outbreaks or droughts. But understanding how crop diversity and food self-sufficiency are related is unknown. To explore this complex relation, this study presents household data (n = 1664) from Nepal to test the hypothesis that families with high crop diversity enjoy greater household food self-sufficiency. Data are presented for three districts that are representative of three distinct agroecological regions of the country: (1) Sarlahi, which is affluent, market-oriented, and on the plains; (2) Makwanpur District in the hills, which has well-developed integrated farm production; and (3) the mountainous District of Humla, which has the poorest quality environment and is the most remote. Results show that in the Humla District, families with greater crop diversity were more self-sufficient. In contrast, farmers in Makwanpur, who have already established a high degree of crop diversity based on vegetable production, do not benefit from additional crop diversity in terms of their ability to provide for themselves. Finally, data from Sarlahi show that families’ food self-sufficiency benefits from crop diversification. We conclude that boosting crop diversity is a viable strategy for maintaining stability in food systems, but this varies depending on the accessibility of a farm and, in particular, access to markets.

This article examines different depictions of the challenges presented by food insecurity and how these depictions influence programming and policy. Using a content analysis methodology, we contrast 3 distinct bodies of food security literature: (1) recently published scientific papers; (2) international development agencies project documents; and (3) reports and policy documents produced by Sub-Saharan African governments. Analysis reveals 2 main narratives: a “crisis narrative” that views food insecurity as a “production” crisis, common in the scientific and aid agency documents, and a “chronic poverty narrative” that views food insecurity as fundamentally linked to poverty and low economic development, predominantly in the African policy documents. By identifying and describing these 2 distinct narratives, our goal is to initiate a debate around the hegemony of narratives, especially the production crisis narrative. In particular, we are concerned that the notion that we are facing a “food production c...

The purpose of this paper is to explore how socioeconomic and technological shifts in Canadian and American food production, processing, and distribution have impacted resilience in the food system. First, we use the social ecological systems literature to define food system resilience as a function of that system’s ability to absorb external shocks while maintaining core functions, such as food production and distribution. We then use the literature to argue that we can infer food system resilience by exploring three key dimensions: (1) the diversity of the food system’s components, (2) the degree to which the components are connected, and (3) the degree of decision-making autonomy within the food system. Next, we discuss the impacts of industrialization on these three factors within Canada and the USA. Specifically, we show how processes of corporate concentration, farm-scale intensification, mechanization, and the “cost-price squeeze” have led to a decrease in ecological and economic diversity, a high degree of spatial and organizational connectivity, and a diminished decision-making capacity for individual farmers. While this analysis is qualitative and heuristic, the evidence reviewed here leads us to postulate that our food system is becoming less resilient to external shocks such as climate change. We conclude by discussing four possible strategies to restore resilience and suggest a more transformational shift in food system politics and practice. Specifically, we argue that publicly led multifunctional policies may support more diversified production while programs to promote food system localization can increase farmer autonomy. However, these shifts will not be possible without social-structural corrections of current power imbalances in the food system. This policy discussion reinforces the value of the social ecological framework and, specifically, its capacity to produce an analysis that interweaves ecology, economy, and power.

Many are worried that the global food system is entering a period of intense volatility driven by a combination of climate change and population growth. One way to address this problem is for governments and the international community to store more food as a buffer against crisis. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of food storage as a component of a robust food security strategy in the twenty-first century. We do this by first drawing on historical examples from ancient Rome and China, where preindustrial government designed extensive systems that ensured adequate food storage to keep food systems stable. Next, we review the links between food storage and price volatility in the last 20 years and demonstrate that the size of food stores (and in particular grain reserves) directly relates to price volatility. Third, we explore three different types of policies designed to promote grain reserves, the US’s “ever-normal granary” policy, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, and the Strategic Grain Reserve in Africa. In this third section, we show how there has been a decline from state-owned strategic grain reserves in favor of a more market-oriented approach that is dominated by a handful of powerful corporations who maintain sophisticated supply chains. Because data on the amount of food supply these corporations hold in storage are proprietary secrets, it is impossible to assess how resilient or vulnerable this makes our food system. Finally, we conclude that over time, food storage has fallen in and out of favor, criticized for being expensive yet often shown to play an important role in protecting poor consumers in times of food crisis. Given the lack of data on current levels of supply chain and household storage, more research is needed to evaluate the scale at which food storage systems should be implemented to ensure food system resilience as well as the most effective mechanisms to govern and manage them.

Urban agriculture is being promoted as an important part of a sustainable food system. Whether urban agriculture can play a significant role in feeding the world's population, however, is unclear. In particular, the literature provides little guidance on how much food could be produced in Western cities. This research addresses some of this gap by presenting the results of a survey conducted with 50 backyard gardeners that explored how much food they produced and what these gardens used in terms of land, labour and capital. Data comes from Guelph ON, a mid-sized Canadian city west of Toronto, and was collected over the 2012 gardening season. Results indicate that home vegetable gardeners produced an average of 1.43 kg of fruit and/or vegetable per m2 gardened. This means that the value of these garden products would be worth $4.58USD/kg if bought in a grocery store. When these data were extrapolated up to the city level, results show that self-provisioning could produce approximately 200,000 kg of food – enough to feed 2900 people. When labour is valued at minimum wage, producing this food required $35.86USD/kg of inputs. When labour is not valued, this dropped to $10.82USD/kg. There are wide variations in the data; the productivity of the most and least productive gardens varied by nearly 2 orders of magnitude (the range was 0.08–5.18 kg/m2 and 0.3 h/kg and 21.9 h/kg). Three key conclusions stand out: (1) there is impressive potential when only the most productive are considered as an illustration of what could be produced; (2) as it is currently practiced, only a fraction of potential production is happening; and (3) for urban self-provisioning to meet its potential, a major increase in the area gardened and gardening skill is required.

Transcending disciplinary boundaries is becoming increasingly important for devising solutions to the world’s most pressing issues, such as climate change and food insecurity. Institutions of higher education often present challenges to teaching students how to work and innovate on transdisciplinary teams. We first define transdisciplinarity and like concepts, using these to review databases of three major funding agencies (CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC) for awards given to inter- and transdisciplinary programs across ten fiscal years beginning 2005-2006 and ending 2014-2015 to identify trends in funding as an indicator of skill need. We then search for programs offering transdisciplinary learning opportunities at Canadian universities accounting for 71% of all students. Though the proportion of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary funded research grants has risen considerably, we found only a few examples of interdisciplinary learning opportunities for students in post-secondary education programs. Generally, while students were able to take a range of courses, instruction remained discipline-specific. Specifically, Canadian undergraduates lack an in-program, experiential, transdisciplinary learning opportunity. We propose a framework (ICON) as a solution to fill this gap. Using senior independent study courses, which often have built-in curricular flexibility, students can participate with ICON while still obtaining credit towards their degrees. We conclude that transdisciplinary education opportunities are an essential part of the undergraduate experience and should be recognized across degree programs.

Indigenous traditional methods of saving and storing seeds are often seen as viable alternatives to purchasing hybridised seeds for small-scale farmers across the developing world. Nevertheless, little research has been conducted on which particular seed saving methods are most effective. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to both document and test the efficacy of different traditional seed saving methods practiced by small-scale farmers in rural Malawi. Methods involved conducting both a survey and semi-structured interview with 40 small-scale farmers all of whom practiced different forms of traditional seed saving. A representative sample of sorghum and maize seeds were collected from each of these farms and grown in laboratory conditions to test the efficacy and germination rates of seeds stored using different practices. The results revealed that farmers used a wide range of indigenous seed saving techniques that include burning animal manure and covering seeds with the resulting ash to being stored in cloth bags or ceramic containers. The impact of these methods range considerably. Some methods, such as smoking the seeds over the cooking fire, proved ineffective, and germination rates were very low in seeds treated in this way. However, other methods, such as grinding up a local leaf into a powder and covering the seeds with the powder, were as effective as treating the seeds with commercial fungicides. Furthermore, these indigenous methods cost a fraction of the amount of commercially available methods' cost and are also much less expensive than buying seeds annually. The implication of this research is that it is important for researchers to test the efficacy of traditional seed saving methods as a way of establishing best practices and developing appropriate agricultural management practices that will help farmers alleviate poverty. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Current agroecological approaches to farming have provided a limited understanding of transformations to sustainability, particularly in subsistence agrarian economies of geographically isolated regions of the world. Some suggest mitigating social and ecological impacts of modern industrial farming while others advocate for local adaptation to changes in socioecological systems, such as climate change, extreme weather events, and biodiversity loss. This article investigates effective pathways of fundamental transformations in technologies, livelihoods, and lifestyles referred to as “agricultural sustainability transitions” in the Karnali Mountains, the most impoverished region of Nepal. Findings suggest that neither management of change referred to as transition management nor adaptation to change referred to as adaptive management effectively leads to agricultural sustainability transitions in this region of the country. An integration of these two approaches, which this article theorizes as “adaptive tr...

This paper examines four broad policy and public responses to the American Dust Bowl in the 1930s as a way of exploring how society today could address our own “food crisis”. More particularly, in the Dust Bowl some argued that solutions would be found by engineers and farmers who would develop new ways of watering dry fields. A second group believed that inappropriate political and economic incentives had led to bad farming practices prior to the drought and this contributed to wide-spread erosion. To this group, the best solutions included governmental regulation of farm practices. A third group focused on the welfare of individuals, arguing that creating a social safety net to protect marginalized families was the highest priority. Finally, there were commentators who advocated for a smaller scale, ecological, and holistic approach to farming. Today, the same four perspectives are present in debates about how to maintain global food security in light of population growth, high energy prices and climate change. Exploring the similarity of the discourses between today's food crisis and the one that hit American society 80 years ago reveals that advocates of the four different camps are motivated by very different principles. Briefly, proponents of technological solutions base many of their arguments on the assumption that human ingenuity is capable of producing extremely productive food systems. The managerial arguments, by contrast, are based on the idea that the natural environment can be rationally and efficiently managed using scientific principles. The social welfare narrative seeks to create a more equitable food system. Finally, the ecological and holistic narrative argues that diverse, small scale and local food systems are a prerequisite for long term sustainability. The primary contribution of this paper, therefore, is to expose these deeply held ontological tensions as a way of arguing that policy makers today must de-politicise arguments and use the principles embedded in all four narratives when designing programmes to ensure that the 21st century does not face a repeat of the crisis of the 1930s.

A methodological framework is proposed for participatory scenario development on the basis of evidence from the literature, and is tested and refined through the development of scenarios for the future of UK uplands. The paper uses a review of previous work to justify a framework based around the following steps: i) define context and establish whether there is a basis for stakeholder engagement in scenario development; ii) systematically identify and represent relevant stakeholders in the process; iii) define clear objectives for scenario development with stakeholders including spatial and temporal boundaries; iv) select relevant participatory methods for scenario development, during initial scenario construction, evaluation and to support decision-making based on scenarios; and v) integrate local and scientific knowledge throughout the process. The application of this framework in case study research suggests that participatory scenario development has the potential to: i) make scenarios more relevant to stakeholder needs and priorities; ii) extend the range of scenarios developed; iii) develop more detailed and precise scenarios through the integration of local and scientific knowledge; and iv) move beyond scenario development to facilitate adaptation to future change. It is argued that participatory scenario development can empower stakeholders and lead to more consistent and robust scenarios that can help people prepare more effectively for future change.

When food prices spiked in 2007–8, urban Africa experienced more instances of food riots than any other part of the world. Problems were then encountered again during the 2010–11 food price spikes. This paper explores the cases of 14 African countries where food riots occurred during these two periods by presenting a qualitative content analysis of news reports on the riots drawn from both global and local African news sources. This analysis highlights the ways in which the media portrayed the links between food price rises and food riots in Africa. Briefly, our results show that the international media generally portrayed poverty and hunger as the factors that linked the incidence of food price rises with the occurrence of riots. By contrast, the African media tended to portray food riots as being caused by a more complex set of factors, including citizen dissatisfaction and people’s ability to mobilize. Exploring both the international and local interpretations of the drivers behind the food riots is important for the understanding of the multi-scalar and multifaceted factors that shape increasing food insecurity in urban Africa.

This article presents results from a survey of community food projects, and explores the relationships between organisational type, rationales and the barriers that prevent each from increasing the scale of their operations. Organisations were divided according to their primary rationale (e.g. rural economic development and distribution), and then subdivided – by form – as a non-profit, private business, governmental agency or cooperative. Data from the interviews and surveys were coded using a qualitative grounded theory approach, to reveal the barriers experienced by each. Overall, access to long-term stable income is a recurrent theme across all types of projects, but income sources dramatically change how these organisations prioritise barriers. Similarly, the organisation's primary rationale and experiences influence the interpretation and approach to collaboration and education. Despite these differences, our results suggest a large degree of convergence that cuts across organisational forms and rat...

Understanding farmers’ perceptions of how rainfall fluctuates and changes is crucial in anticipating the impacts of changing climate patterns, as only when a problem is perceived will appropriate steps be taken to adapt to it. This article seeks to: (1) identify southern African farmers’ perceptions of rainfall, rainfall variations, and changes; (2) examine the nature of meteorological evidence for the perceived rainfall variability and change; (3) document farmers’ responses to rainfall variability; and (4) discuss why discrepancies may occur between farmers’ perceptions and meteorological observations of rainfall. Semi-structured interviews were used to identify farmers’ perceptions of rainfall changes in Botswana and Malawi. Resulting perceptions were examined in conjunction with meteorological data to assess perceived and actual rainfall with regards to: what was changing (onset, duration or cessation), and how it was changing (amount, frequency, intensity or inter-annual variability). Most farmers pe...

The purpose of this paper is to identify which of the world's cereal producing regions are likely to become vulnerable to climate change over the 21st century by identifying those regions that will be (1) exposed to climatic stress and (2) have a limited capacity to adapt. First, we use a global hydrological model to identify regions likely to be exposed to drought, defined here as a location where the available soil moisture is projected to decline by the 2050s and 2080s relative to the mean soil moisture observed between 1990 and 2005. Second, we use agricultural, meteorological and socio-economic data to develop models of adaptive capacity and run these models to show where adaptive capacity is likely to decline by the 2050s and 2080s relative to the baseline period of 1990–2005. Third, we contrast the hydrological and adaptive capacity model outputs to identify “vulnerability hotspots” for wheat and maize. Here, a vulnerability hotspot is defined as a region that the models project as likely to experience both a decline in adaptive capacity and in available soil moisture. Results from the hydrological model project significant drying in many parts of the world overt the 21st century. Results from the adaptive capacity models show that regions with the lowest overall adaptive capacity for wheat include much of western Russia, northern India, southeastern South America, and southeastern Africa. In terms of maize, regions with the lowest adaptive capacity include the northeastern USA, southeastern South America, southeastern Africa, and central/northern India. When taken together, this study identifies five wheat and three maize growing regions likely to be both exposed to worse droughts and a reduced capacity to adapt. For wheat, these are: southeastern USA, southeastern South America, the northeastern Mediterranean, and parts of central Asia. For maize, our analysis suggests that vulnerability hotspots are: southeastern South America, parts of southern Africa, and the northeastern Mediterranean.

Conventional food systems are viewed by the literature as unsustainable in that they provide consumers with convenience while disconnecting them from producers thus leading to environmental and social problems. By contrast, sustainable or “alternative” food systems are viewed as correcting such problems. Wholesale produce auctions, which are well established in the Old Order Mennonite community, are physical sites where large quantities of produce are sold through a competitive bidding process to local buyers. These are seen as a way of better connecting producers and consumers and thus realizing a more sustainable food system. However, this potential has not been tested. Therefore, this paper explores two produce auctions in southwestern Ontario, Canada, using an interview based methodology (N = 48) and demonstrates that despite wholesale produce auctions offering many opportunities to promote the benefits of alternative food systems, produce auctions are limited in that they fail to provide a practical and functional way of distributing food to individual consumers. Overall, this research highlights what appears to be a tension in the alternative food systems literature: producers and consumers may be simultaneously looking for the sustainability benefits associated with “alternative food systems” without wanting to sacrifice any of the convenience found in conventional food systems.

The long-term viability of pastoralism has been a constant theme for discussions. The progress of knowledge on the sustainability of pastoralism under global environmental change has been notable in the last years. To better characterize this vulnerability, we have examined the existing scientific knowledge about the three dimensions of vulnerability, being exposure illustrated by the existing climate trends and non-climate transformations, sensitivity by the impacts of these on pastoral resources and pastoral land conversions, and adaptation by the adaptation strategies developed by the pastoral communities. A qualitative meta-analysis was conducted to explore patterns and trends across the literature. From this, six different pathways of vulnerability being followed by pastoral communities were identified: Encroachment, Re-greening, Customary, Polarization, Communal and No-alternative. The results point that the livelihood options of pastoralists are generally becoming narrower. Four major forces are identified as exerting determinant influence on the co-production of the vulnerability of pastoralism: (i) the double exposure to climate and non-climate transformations, (ii) the persistence of unfavorable development policies, (iii) the great vitality of adaptation, and (iv) the multifaceted role of markets. We point that it is crucial to distinguish between the component of vulnerability inherent in any economic activity devoted to the use of natural resources, which is the usual business of pastoralism, and the component of vulnerability linked to external forces that disturb the usual working of the pastoral production strategies., FLG has a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral contract financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and financial support by SUR and Departament d’Economia i Coneixement of the Catalan Government.

This paper builds on national- and regional-level vulnerability assessments by developing and applying a livelihood vulnerability index at the community and household scales to explore the nature of climate vulnerability. It provides innovative methodological steps in relation to livelihood assessment to identify the vulnerability of households and communities to drought. This will help to improve drought vulnerability assessments in Ghana and more widely as it shows extra information can be obtained from local-level vulnerability assessment that may be lacking in national- and regional-level analysis. The research employs quantitative and qualitative data collected through participatory methods, key informant interviews and a questionnaire survey with 270 households across 6 communities in two regions in Ghana. Results show that within the same agroecological zone, households and communities experience different degrees of climate vulnerability. These differences can be largely explained by socioeconomic characteristics such as wealth and gender, as well as access to capital assets. Results identify vulnerable households within resilient communities as well as more resilient households within vulnerable communities. These outliers are studied in detail. It is found that outlier households in vulnerable communities have an array of alternative livelihood options and tend to be socially well connected, enabling them to take advantage of opportunities associated with environmental and economic changes. To sustain and enhance the livelihoods of vulnerable households and communities, policymakers need to identify and facilitate appropriate interventions that foster asset building, improve institutional capacity as well as build social capital.

Many studies warn that climate change may undermine global food security. Much work on this topic focuses on modelling crop-weather interactions but these models do not generally account for the ways in which socio-economic factors influence how harvests are affected by weather. To address this gap, this paper uses a quantitative harvest vulnerability index based on annual soil moisture and grain production data as the dependent variable in a Linear Mixed Effects model with national scale socio-economic data as independent variables for the period 1990–2005. Results show that rice, wheat and maize production in middle income countries were especially vulnerable to droughts. By contrast, harvests in countries with higher investments in agriculture (e.g. higher amounts of fertilizer use) were less vulnerable to drought. In terms of differences between the world’s major grain crops, factors that made rice and wheat crops vulnerable to drought were quite consistent, while those of maize crops varied considerably depending on the type of region. This is likely due to the fact that maize is produced under very different conditions worldwide. One recommendation for reducing drought vulnerability risks is coordinated development and adaptation policies, including institutional support that enables farmers to take proactive action.

This study evaluates new multi-scale, multi-indicator methods for assessing the vulnerability of crop production to drought at a national and regional scale. It does this by identifying differences across and within ten regions of Ghana, a country that faces many climate and crop production challenges typical of sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, we illustrate how a quantitative national and regional study is a critical first step in assessing differences in the drought sensitivity of food production systems and show how such an assessment enables the formulation of more targeted district and community level research that can explore the drivers of vulnerability and change on a local-scale. Finally, we propose methodological steps that can improve drought sensitivity and vulnerability assessments in dynamic dryland farming systems where there are multiple drivers of change and thresholds of risk that vary in both space and time. Results show that the vulnerability of crop production to drought in Ghana has discernible geographical and socioeconomic patterns, with the Northern, Upper West and Upper East regions being most vulnerable. Partly, this is because these regions have the lowest adaptive capacity due to low socioeconomic development and have economies based on rain-fed agriculture. Within these regions we find considerable differences between districts that can be explained only partly by socioeconomic variables with further community and household-scale research required to explain the causes of differences in vulnerability status. Our results highlight that national and regional scale multi-indicator vulnerability assessments are a vital (and often ignored) first step in assessing vulnerability across a large area. These inputs can guide both local-level research and also demonstrate the need for region-specific policies to reduce vulnerability and to enhance drought preparedness within dryland farming communities.

Although many of today's ecological, climatic and socio-economic problems seem unprecedented, similar events have occurred in the past. As such, historic periods of climatic and economic volatility can be used as a way of developing frameworks for analyzing today's predicament. Western Europe's “middle ages” (circa 11–14th century) may be one such case. By the 12th century, medieval Europe had shifted from the subsistence agrarian economy that emerged following the collapse of the Roman Empire to one where spatially dispersed trade in agricultural commodities helped support a complex society that devoted considerable resources to cultural works. This shift was facilitated by new institutional arrangements centred on monastic orders that provided access to both new agricultural and food processing technologies as well as trade routes. These institutional arrangements contributed to population growth and land clearing. All of these factors increased the wealth of society but also concentrated this wealth in a small number of communities that were dependent on an ever-increasing and exploited hinterland for resources. Ultimately, this created a tightly coupled continent-wide subsistence system that was vulnerable to the weather, economic and disease shocks of the 14th century when Europe's population declined by perhaps 50%. In exploring this history, the goal of this paper is to draw on a diverse theoretical body of literature (that includes resiliency theory, landscape ecology, political science and ecological economics) to develop a series of hypotheses about how large-scale complex civilizations can become vulnerable to climate change.

Support of urban agriculture can be used as a route to reducing urban poverty across Sub-Saharan Africa. However policy makers require more precise information on how it contributes to alleviating food insecurity and poverty problems. This study in Malawi's two main cities (Lilongwe and Blantyre) revealed two predominant 'types' of urban farmers: (i) low-income, less educated, often female-headed households, who use urban agriculture as an insurance against income losses and who can employ skilled workers to support their livestock activities; and (ii) middle- and high-income, often male-headed households, that undertake urban agriculture for personal consumption and hire significant numbers of unskilled workers. Within the low-income group, there are some female headed-households who are now receiving significant income from livestock programmes having been provided with initial external support from a non-governmental organisation. Our findings suggest a need for a two- pronged policy approach to try and improve the overall effectiveness of urban agriculture support, namely to (1) target poor women with extension and development project support; and (2) support wealthier farmers to increase the employment opportunities associated with urban agriculture. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rural areas are subject to changing and often competing demands. Where agricultural production was once paramount, it now competes with other ecosystem services such as carbon storage, rural amenity, and wildlife habitat. If rural areas are to be managed to produce this broad range of goods and services, then more diverse and complex management regimes are needed. This paper explores the literature on property rights before using a ‘property rights bundle’ approach in the UK uplands to (1) examine the distribution of property rights between stakeholders in a multi-resource system and (2) evaluate the effect of state intervention on the redistribution of property rights and the resulting management regimes. Private land owners were found to be the dominant type of property rights holder and private property the dominant management regime in the uplands of the UK. Government intervention has also created private-state regimes for some public goods such as biodiversity but common property management is still in its infancy with regards to ecosystem services and few stakeholders have claimant rights over resources. As a result, many stakeholders are unable to influence management to produce the goods that they want. A property rights perspective highlights that single management regimes alone are unlikely to manage land sustainably for both private and public goods. Instead, a complex mix of private, private-state and common property regimes are found to be emerging in this multi-resource system. These mixed management regimes have the potential to produce sustainable outcomes but only if the appropriate management regime is matched to each resource, if links are developed between each regime to deal with conflict and if mixed management is adaptable enough to cope with new and changing demands.

Summary This study examines the effect managed rotational burning has on soil water and runoff water compositions at the end of a 10 year burning cycle and into the year following a managed burn. This study includes aluminium, iron, calcium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, sulphate, chloride, bromide, fluoride, phosphate and nitrate along with pH, conductivity and DOC. The main findings of this study are: 1. The presence of burning leads to lower concentrations of species associated with deep water sources in both soil and runoff waters. 2. Following burning, soil water has increased concentrations in shallow soil water components (i.e. Al, Fe). Conversely runoff water shows a decrease in the concentration of shallow water components 3. Principal component analysis shows that in the post-burn period, soil water is less mixed with rainwater and runoff water becomes more rainwater-like in composition, i.e. compositions of soil and runoff have diverged as a result of the burn.

Summary The management of the UK uplands by rotational burning and grazing is a widespread practice that aims to control the development of vegetation in order to create suitable habitats for grouse and sheep. By modifying the above ground biomass it is possible that above and/or below ground hydrological regimes may be altered. This study investigates the effect burning has on various hydrological parameters of an upland blanket bog. The study was conducted on a long-term experimental site examining different combinations of managed burning and grazing intensities. The study has found that: (1) Although depth to water table shows strong seasonal trends, the shallowest water tables were found on those sites that were burnt every 20 years and grazed by sheep. The deepest water tables were found on those sites that had never been burnt. (2) In the year following a managed burn, water tables on those sites that were burnt were significantly shallower than before the burn. (3) Hydraulic conductivity, as determined by dipwell slug tests, was found to be significantly lower on those plots that were burnt every 20 years. (4) Runoff occurrence was recorded and occurred at a significantly greater frequency on those sites that had recently been burnt. (5) By using antecedent weather conditions, significant parameters were found that could be used to model runoff generation. This paper demonstrates how the use of managed burning in upland settings can affect various hydrological responses of the peatland. These variations in hydrological response will have important consequences on DOC export through changes in water table and the partitioning of precipitation into runoff.

Why is it that sometimes small droughts trigger serious crop losses while in other cases even large droughts do not have such a major effect? In this paper, we identify socio-economic indicators associated with sensitivity and resilience to drought for each of China's main grain crops (rice, wheat and corn). Provincial harvest and rainfall data (1961–2001) are used to calculate an annual “crop-drought vulnerability index”. We separate “sensitive cases” (where significant harvest losses occurred in years with only minor droughts) and “resilient cases” (where harvest losses were minimal despite there being a major drought) and explore the socio-economic characteristics of these different situations. Results show that sensitive cases were particularly common in economically poor landlocked provinces and in wealthy coastal areas that have a limited land base. In such “sensitive cases”, the size of the rural population and the quantity of agricultural inputs were negatively correlated with drought vulnerability, while for resilient cases, vulnerability was negatively correlated with the abundance of land. This leads us to propose a series of drought-vulnerability typologies based on the extent to which land, labour, capital, agricultural technology, and infrastructure buffer or exacerbate the effect of a drought event.

1. It is widely appreciated that management shapes the dynamics of many ecological systems, but ecologists rarely consider the reverse interaction, that is, the ecological influences on management decisions. Reciprocal feedback between management and ecology can cause complex system behaviour. Therefore, better predictions about how external policy-drivers or climate change will affect semi-natural ecosystems may be made when both the ecological and human dimensions are considered. 2. We develop a spatially-explicit model of moorland vegetation dynamics and management decisions about sheep grazing and heather burning in the Peak District National Park, UK. Competition between dwarf shrubs, bracken and graminoids is mediated by grazing, dwarf shrub age (determined by burning rotation) and environmental gradients. Management decisions depend on vegetation cover in a model parameterized through interviews with upland managers. 3. Current management regimes are designed to reverse historical dwarf shrub losses, and simulations suggest that this reversal should occur in the future. After equilibration, grazing densities fall and dwarf shrubs have expanded from their current distribution, mainly at the expense of graminoids. This causes more land to come under managed burning, but current intensities are maintained. 4. Enforcing winter or summer grazing densities influences model vegetation cover and causes other aspects of the management strategy to adapt. For example, when summer grazing is banned, dwarf shrub cover increases and there is a shift towards grouse moor management. 5. Simulations with warmer temperatures indicate that climate change may increase bracken invasion of the moorland and prevent re-vegetation of bare peat. This is associated with a reduction in managed burning that causes the dwarf shrub community to become dominated by the older, degenerate growth phase. 6. Synthesis and applications. Our model suggests that current management paradigms could achieve their aim of restoring historically degraded moorland over the coming century, but that climate change may prevent this from occurring. One application of the model would be to try to design management paradigms that are robust to this. As such, models of coupled human–natural systems can provide a valuable tool for assessing the impacts of policy decisions and climate change on semi-natural ecosystems at landscape scales.

Summary The burning of heather and grass to maintain a mosaic of different aged vegetation stands is a widespread management practice in the uplands of the UK. However, there is concern that burning also releases dissolved organic carbon (DOC) into drinking water supplies. This study was based on a long term experiment examining different rotational burning cycles and grazing intensities on upland vegetation. The study aimed to understand the effect these management practices have on water quality both in the long term and in the short term following a managed burn. The study has found that: 1. At the end of a burn cycle, DOC concentrations in soil water or runoff water are not significantly affected by burning treatment. However colour (absorbance at 400 nm) was found to be significantly lower on 20 year burn plots than unburnt controls. 2. In the weeks following the burn there were peaks in DOC concentration and colour in the soil water of burnt plots compared to unburnt controls but these peaks were short lived and neither DOC concentrations nor colour were significantly elevated 1 year after burning. 3. The composition of the DOC in soil water and runoff water is not affected by burning treatment; rather, the variation in data is controlled by time of sampling and season. 4. Values for three carbon parameters (absorbance at 400 nm, DOC concentration and specific absorbance) are significantly lower in runoff water than soil water. 5. Grazing does not significantly affect carbon parameters in soil water at the end of a burn cycle however grazing effects can be seen in runoff water at the end of a 10-year burn cycle.

Land use patterns influence the long-term productivity of agro-ecosystems and result from socio-economic as well as biophysical and climatic drivers. This paper qualitatively examines how past demographic and political-economic changes in southern Romania twice led to vulnerable socio-economic and agro-ecological systems. Drawing on this case study, we establish broad-brush hypotheses identifying some of the potential causes of vulnerability. We suggest that vulnerable systems appear more likely to occur when socio-political uncertainty combines with a lack of off-farm employment in regions where there are abundant natural capital stocks that can be quickly liquidated.

In some cases, even relatively minor perturbations to growing season rainfall cause major harvest losses. In other cases, harvests are unaffected even by major rainfall perturbations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate possible socioeconomic reasons why some regions' harvests are especially sensitive to changes in rainfall using rainfall and agricultural data from eastern China. Results suggest that for wheat and maize farmers, technical inputs were significant factors for maintaining harvest levels in low rainfall years. Rice harvests were more dependent on indicators related to access to labour. This work provides a preliminary step to quantitatively assess characteristics that enhance adaptive capacity in different cropping systems.

This paper discusses potential policy options available to local and municipal author- ities, to achieve reductions in energy usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Researchers conducted surveys with 112 SMEs, and the results have been used to disaggregate the category of 'SME' into sub-sectors based on industrial sector, two measurements of employee size and annual turnover. A statistical analysis identifies key characteristics and behaviours of the sub-sectors of firms and discusses the type of policy measure these groups of SMEs would probably respond to. The key results of the research indicate that cate- gories of firms differ in terms of energy use behaviours, internal constraints and atti- tudes toward possible policy options. The paper presents a 'policy matrix' to represent the most and least likely policy options to achieve energy savings from different categories of SMEs. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Moorlands are unique environments found in uplands of the temperate zone including in the UK, New Zealand and Ireland, and in some high altitude tropical zones such as the Andean paramos. Many have been managed through grazing, burning or drainage practices. However, there are a number of other environmental and social factors that are likely to drive changes in management practice over the next few decades. Some moorlands have been severely degraded and in some countries conservation and restoration schemes are being attempted, particularly to revegetate bare soils. Native or non-native woodland planting may increase in some moorland environments while atmospheric deposition of many pollutants may also vary. Moorland environments are very sensitive to changes in management, climate or pollution. This paper reviews how environmental management change, such as changes in grazing or burning practices, may impact upon moorland processes based on existing scientific understanding. It also reviews the impacts of changes in climate and atmospheric deposition chemistry. The paper focuses on the UK moorlands as a case study of moorland landscapes that are in different states of degradation. Future research that is required to improve our understanding of moorland processes is outlined. The paper shows that there is a need for more holistic and spatial approaches to understanding moorland processes and management. There is also a need to develop approaches that combine understanding of interlinked social and natural processes.

Most scholarship on rural–urban migration in Sub-Saharan Africa demonstrates that migrants tend to move in a “circular” fashion and only spend short periods of time in cities before returning home to rural villages. However, some scholars working on the impacts of climate change on migration suggest that deteriorating environmental conditions may undermine rural livelihoods and lead people to move to cities for longer periods of time. If this is true, then climate change threatens to accelerate urbanisation and lead to renewed stress on urban infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to explore these positions and we do so by collecting survey [n = 241], in-depth interview [n = 75] and focus group [n = 123 participants] data from rural and urban Malawi. Two key results stand out as significant. The first is that migrants in Malawi's capital city tend to stay in the urban environment for longer periods of time than conventional understandings of migration would predict. The second key result is that climate change may actually lead, in the case of Malawi, to reverse (i.e urban–rural) migration. This is because many of the people in Malawi's cities depend on products produced in rural environments (e.g. food and fuelwood). If climate change undermines rural livelihoods, then many urban residents will find the basis of their livelihoods removed and will likely respond by moving back to rural villages. Overall, our results, therefore, suggest that in at least one case the effect of climate change on migration may not be to increase migration towards cities but to stimulate an exodus from cities and back to the rural countryside.

Throughout human history, food production has had to adapt to continuously changing environmental circumstances. In most cases, these challenges are met without any great hardship. In other cases, seemingly small environmental problems (such as droughts or floods) have devastating consequences. This suggests some food systems are more vulnerable than others. Assessing and identifying which regions are vulnerable to environmental problems, however, is challenging because food systems represent constantly evolving systems where farmers continually make decisions that help adapt to changing circumstances. Many existing theoretical frameworks to assess vulnerability fall along a continuum from those that are too macro (because they are based on large-scale generalizations that ignore local contextual issues) or are too micro (because they are so site specific that they obscure general trends). A landscape ecology approach offers an interesting compromise whereby scholars have used a small number of local variables (such as the diversity of species present in the system and the extent to which individuals in the system are connected to other individuals) to characterize the vulnerability of ecosystems to shocks such as wildfires and pest outbreaks. However, preliminary research suggests this approach may not work particularly well on human managed ecosystems. As such, this paper uses a range of historical examples (such as the Irish Potato Famine and El Nino induced famines in the late 18th century) to integrate these frameworks to help identify vulnerability within food systems to environmental changes.

Sustainability indicators based on local data provide a practical method to monitor progress towards sustainable development. However, since there are many conflicting frameworks proposed to develop indicators, it is unclear how best to collect these data. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the literature on developing and applying sustainability indicators at local scales to develop a methodological framework that summarises best practice. First, two ideological paradigms are outlined: one that is expert-led and top–down, and one that is community-based and bottom–up. Second, the paper assesses the methodological steps proposed in each paradigm to identify, select and measure indicators. Finally, the paper concludes by proposing a learning process that integrates best practice for stakeholder-led local sustainability assessments. By integrating approaches from different paradigms, the proposed process offers a holistic approach for measuring progress towards sustainable development. It emphasizes the importance of participatory approaches setting the context for sustainability assessment at local scales, but stresses the role of expert-led methods in indicator evaluation and dissemination. Research findings from around the world are used to show how the proposed process can be used to develop quantitative and qualitative indicators that are both scientifically rigorous and objective while remaining easy to collect and interpret for communities.

Some models anticipate that liberalized agricultural trade will lead to increased crop diversity, while other models make the opposite claim. These positions were explored in southwestern British Columbia, Canada where, between 1992 and 1998, government subsidies and other measures designed to protect horticultural farmers were lifted, exposing these farmers to foreign competition. Public hearings on the future of agriculture provided an opportunity to tap the knowledge and experience of people affected by this transition. Analysis of transcripts from these hearings, which was confirmed by industry data, shows that trade liberalization has led to the loss of the local fruit and vegetable processing industry. Stakeholders saw the loss as a major factor affecting the choice of crops grown locally. To test this assertion, crop diversity data were analyzed, differentiating crops grown for the processing industry from those grown for the fresh market. Results show that crop diversity increased for processing crops but not for fresh crops. Farmers who used to produce commodities for the fruit and vegetable processing industry seem to have been forced to find new crops to cope with the decline in the processing industry. Here then is a case where the effects of trade were indirect (they were mediated by another variable: the loss of the processing industry) and variable (they differed for the two groups of crops). This may have significant environmental implications as scientific research shows that diverse agro-ecosystems are better able to withstand pest outbreaks and require less agri-chemicals than simple systems.

The modern environmental management literature stresses the need for community involvement to identify indicators to monitor progress towards sustainable development and environmental management goals. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of participatory processes on sustainability indicator identification and environmental management in three disparate case studies. The first is a process of developing partnerships between First Nations communities, environmental groups, and forestry companies to resolve conflicts over forest management in Western Canada. The second describes a situation in Botswana where local pastoral communities worked with development researchers to reduce desertification. The third case study details an on-going government led process of developing sustainability indicators in Guernsey, UK, that was designed to monitor the environmental, social, and economic impacts of changes in the economy. The comparative assessment between case studies allows us to draw three primary conclusions. (1) The identification and collection of sustainability indicators not only provide valuable databases for making management decisions, but the process of engaging people to select indicators also provides an opportunity for community empowerment that conventional development approaches have failed to provide. (2) Multi-stakeholder processes must formally feed into decision-making forums or they risk being viewed as irrelevant by policy-makers and stakeholders. (3) Since ecological boundaries rarely meet up with political jurisdictions, it is necessary to be flexible when choosing the scale at which monitoring and decision-making occurs. This requires an awareness of major environmental pathways that run through landscapes to understand how seemingly remote areas may be connected in ways that are not immediately apparent. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pressing global environmental problems highlight the need to develop tools to measure progress towards “sustainability.” However, some argue that any such attempt inevitably reflects the views of those creating such tools and only produce highly contested notions of “reality.” To explore this tension, we critically assesses the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), a well-publicized product of the World Economic Forum that is designed to measure ‘sustainability’ by ranking nations on league tables based on extensive databases of environmental indicators. By recreating this index, and then using statistical tools (principal components analysis) to test relations between various components of the index, we challenge ways in which countries are ranked in the ESI. Based on this analysis, we suggest (1) that the approach taken to aggregate, interpret and present the ESI creates a misleading impression that Western countries are more sustainable than the developing world; (2) that unaccounted methodological biases allowed the authors of the ESI to over-generalize the relative ‘sustainability’ of different countries; and, (3) that this has resulted in simplistic conclusions on the relation between economic growth and environmental sustainability. This criticism should not be interpreted as a call for the abandonment of efforts to create standardized comparable data. Instead, this paper proposes that indicator selection and data collection should draw on a range of voices, including local stakeholders as well as international experts. We also propose that aggregating data into final league ranking tables is too prone to error and creates the illusion of absolute and categorical interpretations.

Modern society depends on complex agro-ecological and trading systems to provide food for urban residents, yet there are few tools available to assess whether these systems are vulnerable to future disturbances. We propose a preliminary framework to assess the vulnerability of food systems to future shocks based on landscape ecology's ‘Panarchy Framework’. According to Panarchy, ecosystem vulnerability is determined by three generic characteristics: (1) the wealth available in the system, (2) how connected the system is, and (3) how much diversity exists in the system. In this framework, wealthy, non-diverse, tightly connected systems are highly vulnerable. The wealth of food systems can be measured using the approach pioneered by development economists to assess how poverty affects food security. Diversity can be measured using the tools investors use to measure the diversity of investment portfolios to assess financial risk. The connectivity of a system can be evaluated with the tools chemists use to assess the pathways chemicals use to flow through the environment. This approach can lead to better tools for creating policy designed to reduce vulnerability, and can help urban or regional planners identify where food systems are vulnerable to shocks and disturbances that may occur in the future.

According to literature,insecure land tenure biases against soilconservation on farmland. However, there islittle evidence to test whether farmers need toown their land to conserve it, or if long-termleases are adequate. One way to infer whetheror not different land tenure arrangementspromote long-term management is throughanalyzing the types of crops planted on fieldswith different land tenure arrangements.Perennials, forage legumes, grasslands, andgrain are all important parts of sustainablecrop rotation in southwest British Columbia butprovide little cash return in the year they areplanted. Annual crops provide a high cashreturn but create soil conservation problems ifthey are planted too often. A comparison offields with different land tenures showed thatfarmers who own their land plant moreperennials, grain, and forage legumes thanfarmers who rent fields. Few differences wereobserved on fields with different leaselengths. This study leads to three overallconclusions. First, although results confirmthe literature, and insecure land tenure is areal obstacle to long-term soil conservation,it is not possible to assume that long-termleases will substitute for land ownership.Second, it is possible to use relativelyeasy-to-gather data on crop history to assessthe impact of tenure on farming. Third,intervening variables, in this case a programthat pays farmers to plant grasslands,over-rides the effect of insecure land tenureand creates incentives for owner-operators andtenant farmers alike to use crop managementthat protects soil fertility in the longterm.

Summary Improved typing of horse classical MHC class I is required to more accurately define these molecules and to extend the number identified further than current serological assays. Defining classical MHC class I alleleic polymorphism is important in evaluating cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses in horses. In this study, horse classical MHC class I genes were analyzed based on reverse transcription (RT)-PCR amplification of sequences encoding the polymorphic peptide binding region and the more conserved alpha 3, transmembrane and cytoplasmic regions followed by cloning and sequencing. Primer sets included a horse classical MHC class I-specific reverse primer and a forward primer conserved in all known horse MHC class I genes. Sequencing at least 25 clones containing MHC class I sequences from each of 13 horses identified 25 novel sequences and three others which had been described. Of these, nine alleles were identified from different horses or different RT-PCR and 19 putative alleles were identified in multiple clones from the same RT-PCR. The primer pairs did not amplify putative non-classical MHC class I genes as only classical MHC class I and related pseudogenes were found in 462 clones. This method also identified classical MHC class I alleles shared between horses by descent, and defined differences in alleles between horses varying in equine leukocyte antigen (ELA)-A haplotype as determined by serology. However, horses sharing ELA-A haplotypes defined by serotyping did not always share cDNA sequences, suggesting subhaplotypic variations within serologically defined ELA-A haplotypes. The 13 horses in this study had two to five classical MHC class I sequences, indicating that multiple loci code for these genes. Sequencing clones from RT-PCR with classical MHC class I-specific primers should be useful for selection of haplotype matched and mismatched horses for CTL studies, and provides sequence information needed to develop easier and more discriminating typing procedures.