Showing papers on "Subsistence agriculture published in 1989"

Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya

Abstract: 1. The demand for revolution: the agrarian origins of Mau Mau Appendix 1A. Kinship and stratification 2. Material interest and political preference: the agrarian origins of political conflict 3. Institutional structure, agricultural development, and political conflict 4. From drought to famine: the dynamics of subsistence crises Appendix 4A. The buying center program 5. The politics of food crises Appendix 5A. Famine: Meru, August 1984.

Biological efficiencies in multiple-cropping systems

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes the biological efficiencies in multiple-cropping systems. Many multiple-cropping systems persist on farms on which resources are limited and the level of new technology is low. Intensive cropping systems, often with mixtures of species, have reached high yield levels using pesticides, improved cultivars, and other high-input technology in countries such as China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Thailand. Multiple cropping of cereals, grain legumes, and root crops forms the basis of farming systems for many subsistence farmers in the developing world. The most intensive use of time and space occurs with the simultaneous or near-simultaneous plantings of two or more crops. Detailed growth analysis and measurement of resource use are being used to broaden the knowledge base on competition and productivity. Double cropping, which includes two crops in the field in a sequential pattern, provides opportunity for much greater temporal interception of total radiation through the year compared to any single crop, unless that one crop has an extremely long growth cycle. Pest management in multiple-cropping systems is also elaborated.

Women in the Third World: Gender Issues in Rural and Urban Areas

Abstract: Social scientists critique womens roles and their status in developing countries. They specifically look at their roles in child care housework subsistence farming employment and health care. They address status by examining wider societys value and meaning given to womens roles which in turn reflect and influence gender relations. They highlight the ideological and practical gender inequality that is incorporated into development. The majority of women in this book are low income women since poverty is widespread in developing countries and most of the literature covers low income women. They 1st examine women in rural areas then those in urban areas. 5 major themes relevant to gender questions are used. Households present the 1st theme since they are the fundamental site for sexual division of labor. The next theme is reproduction meaning transformation of good and services for household use (nonincome generating activities) as well as welfare family planning health care and urban housing and services. Reproduction in the former meaning limits women from partaking in public life and politics. The 3rd theme is production which refers to all income generating activities. In rural areas however it is often more difficult to distinguish between production and reproduction because of the intermediate category of subsistence farming. The 4th theme incorporates both policy and planning. They look at agricultural and rural development planning; urban planning including housing programs service provision and community development projects; and government and development agencies consideration of women and womens work. The last theme is rural-urban migration. They attempt to make generalizations about each major developing country region: Latin America the Caribbean Middle East and North Africa Sub-Sahara Africa South Asia and Southeast Asia.

People making history: the last ten thousand years of hunter-gatherer communities in the Thukela Basin

Abstract: The primary aim of this paper is to document and explain the 10000 BP - AD 1800 history of the Thukela Basin hunter-gatherers The primary information for this study comes from my excavation, between 1981 and 1984, of eight rock shelters in the upper Thukela catchment My aims and theoretical orientation have altered substantially since the project's inception They have changed from being concerned primarily with ecological phenomena to the reconstruction of a regional social history As part of this redefinition I have developed a critique of South African Later Stone Age (LSA) studies from the early 1960s, arguing that the predominant ecological approaches of this period are inadequate in dealing with past human societies My reason for adopting a socially orientated historical approach concern the social relevance of archaeology, and the need to generate the best possible insight into past societies I submit that historical materialism offers a very valuable framework for social historical analysis The theoretical and methodological propositions germane to this study are presented I then concentrate specifically on Thukela Basin hunter-gatherer history The periods dating to before and after 2000 BP are dealt with separately because of the arrival of farmers in the Thukela Basin around AD 500 A study of the 10000 - 2000 BP subsistence strategies and occupation density suggsts that this society experienced a process of intensification It is proposed that this phenomenon results from social structural changes An analysis of the material culture remains and the subsistence strategies suggests that the initial alliance network which covered most of the research area disintegrated before 4000 BP and was replaced by three such networks I submit further, that a gender related struggle was the main component informing this society's historical development I argue that women moved from a position of low status to higher status, principally by increasing their subsistence contribution, coupled with their control over the food they collected Considering the 2000 BP - AD 1800 period, emphasis is placed on hunter-gatherer/farmer relations and the social development of hunter-gatherer communities It appears that up to AD 1000, these groups enjoyed close, equitable relations Inadequate information inhibits our assessment of their relations after AD 1000, but it is suggested that the hunter-gatherers may have become clients of the farmers The conclusion highlights the advantages of my socially oriented approach, by comparing the knowledge generated by it and the ecological approaches used in South African LSA studies Finally, future avenues of research are suggested To cite this article: Mazel, A D 1989 People making history: the last ten thousand years of hunter-gatherer communities in the Thukela Basin Natal Museum Journal of Humanities 1 : 1-168

The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America

Abstract: I N I904 Max Weber read a paper comparing European and American agrarian society at the International Congress of Arts and Sciences, held as part of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. Weber, who had traveled across America for three months before the meeting, visiting both cities and farms, contrasted the feudal social relations still found in parts of Europe with capitalist agriculture in the United States. European peasants had traditionally produced to support a seigneurial class and to supply their own needs. "The past two thousand years," he concluded, "did not train the peasant to produce in order to gain profit." In contrast, "the American farmer is an entrepreneur like any other" and had long since become "a rationally producing small agriculturist." This was especially true in northern wheat-producing areas, where a farmer was "a mere businessman" who believed in "absolute economic individualism." The Civil War had destroyed the "aristocratic, social, and political centers of the rural districts," thereby consolidating capitalist agriculture.' The issues Weber raised have been a mainstay in agricultural history for over half a century. Early debates revolved around questions of subsistence agriculture and self-sufficiency on northern farms in the colonies and the new nation and the timing of the development of commercial

Motherhood and subsistence work: the Tamang of rural Nepal.

Abstract: Minute-by-minute observation of individual women over the period of a year provides a reliable and valuable description of their daily activities. The extent to which Nepalese rural women vary their subsistence responsibilities during pregnancy and lactation is examined by comparing mothers with a non-childbearing sample. The remarkable behavioral similarity between the two groups of women when workloads are high is explained by reference to childcare practices and labor constraints prevailing in the community.

From Hunters to Herders: Subsistence Change as a Reproductive Strategy among the Mukogodo

Abstract: SMITH, GRAFTON ELLIOT. i928. Conversion in science. (Huxley Memorial Lecture.) London: Macmillan. STENT, GUNTHER S. I972. Prematurity and uniqueness in scientific discovery. Scientific American 227:84. TOBIAS, PHILLIP V. 1948a. Racial discrimination i the medical schools. Trek I2(3):i8-i9. . 1948b. Danger of state-enforced \"apartheid\" in Union's universities. The Star, October. . 1948c. Open letter to university councils, senates, and academic staffs, from the president of NUSAS. MS. . ig5o. A set-back to youth: The National Youth Conference, Bloenfontein. Common Sense 11:197-98. . I95 I. The African in the universities. NUSAS Handbook Series, October, pp. 4-30. . 195 3a. The problem of race identification: Limiting factors in the investigation of South African races. Journal of Forensic Medicine I(2):113-23. . i953b. University apartheid opposed. Natal Mercury, December 30. . i956. Chromosomes, sex-cells, and evolution in a mammal. London: Percy Lund, Humphries. . 1957. The progress of desegregation i the United States of America and its lessons for South Africa. Education League of South Africa Newsletter I. . I96I. The meaning of race. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations. . I962a. \"A re-examination of the Kanam mandible.\" Proceedings of the IVth Panafrican Congress of Prehistory and Quaternary Research (L6opoldville, August 1959), pp. 34I-60. Annales Serie Qu-8? 40. . I962b. On the increasing stature of the Bushmen. Anthropos 57:80I-IO. . I967. Olduvai Gorge. Vol. 2. The cranium and maxillary dentition of Australopithecus (Zinjanthropus) boisei. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . 1972. \"Growth and stature in Southern African populations.\" The human biology of environmental change (Proceedings of a conference held in Blantyre, Malawi, April 1971), pp. 96-104. London: International Biological Programme. . 1975a. Stature and secular trend among Southern African Negroes and San (Bushmen). South African Journal of Medical Science 40:145-64. . 1975b. \"Anthropometry among disadvantaged peoples: Studies in Southern Africa,\" in Biosocial interrelations inpopulation adaptation. Edited by E. S. Watts, F. E. Johnston, and G. W. Lasker, pp. 287-305. The Hague: Mouton. . I978a. Variants of the secular trend in the mean stature of adult human populations [abstract]. Journal of Anatomy i26:669. . I978b. \"The secular trend in African peoples,\" in Mankind and medicine in the third millennium. Edited by A. J. Brink and C. M. Lewis, pp. 64-74, 92-93. Johannesburg. . I986. Physical stature in disadvantaged countries: Johannesburg blacks have not grown taller this century. South African Journal of Science 82:585-88. . I988. \"War and the negative secular trend of South African blacks with observations on the relative sensitivity of cadaveric and non-cadaveric populations to secular effects.\" Proceedings of the 5th Congress of the European AnthropologicalAssociation, Lisbon, I986, vol. I, pp. 45 I-6I. . I978. Olduvai Gorge. Vol. 4. Homo habilis: Skulls, endocasts, and teeth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wage, Trade, and Exchange in Melanesia: A Manus Society in the Modern State

Abstract: Ponam Island, a small community in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, is the subject of this innovative study. The authors extend the criticism within anthropology of ethnographies that attempt to analyze village communities without reference to the nations of which they are a part, and that equate the traditional and the exotic with the untouched. They do so by describing the links between a peripheral village society and Papua New Guinea's national economy and institutions, in a way that will interest all those concerned with development and underdevelopment. The analysis focuses on major socioeconomic areas of village life: education, migration, wage employment, and remittance; trade, commerce, and exchange; subsistence fishing; ceremonial exchange. The authors' findings challenge the idea that colonial and Western-oriented encroachment leads to the decay of village societies or to their adopting Western values and practices. Ponam has been under significant Western influence for almost a century, yet the society has not decayed. It remains flourishing and generative, uniquely itself and neither blindly traditional nor mindlessly Western.

Research on the Efe and Lese populations of the Ituri forest, Zaire

Abstract: Since 1980, as part of the Ituri Project, researchers have been studying numerous aspects of the biology, health, economy, and social relations of Efe (Pygmies) and Lese villagers living in the Ituri Forest region of north-eastern Zaire. The Efe are seminomadic people who hunt and gather forest resources for their own consumption and for exchange with sedentary subsistence farmers. The Lese are Sudanic-speaking subsistence farmers who practice shifting slash-and-burn horticulture and live in semipermanent villages. Relations between the Efe and Lese have been close for many generations and extend beyond economic exchange to include most aspects of ritual and social life. This paper serves as an introduction to five subsequent papers that report findings from research on these two forest-living populations. It provides background information concerning the ecology and history of human occupation of the Ituri region of central Africa; it describes the study area and the study populations; it discusses how the annual subsistence cycles of the Efe and Lese relate to rainfall and food availability; and it provides further information concerning Ituri Project research during the last 7 years.

Kofyar Cash-Cropping: Choice and Change in Indigenous Agricultural Development

Abstract: Amidst failures in planned development by government and international agencies, Netting, Stone, and Stone examine what appears to be a highly successful process of “spontaneous” economic development in Nigeria over a period of thirty years. The Kofyar of Plateau State have been gradually migrating from their homeland in the Jos Plateau to take up cash cropping. They have been obliged to change the social organization of labor as they have changed from shifting to intensive agriculture, and have become increasingly dependent upon market interactions to satisfy what have become basic needs. Among their accommodations to the requirements of the new system of production include cooperative and exchange labor groups, though labor is mostly organized on a household basis, as households have grown larger and more complex. Kofyar colonization of the fertile valley region for the purpose of cash cropping resulted from the individual decisions of thousands of farmers that independent subsistence agriculture was less attractive than the benefits of having a cash income, and all that cash could buy, even at the cost of harder work and dependence upon others. They made the transition on their own, first using indigenous tools and techniques, then learning new practices through their own experience of what worked and what did not. The authors attribute the success of this colonization in large part to the absence of government interference.

Impact of roadside agriculture on subsistence hunting in the Ituri forest of northeastern Zaire

Abstract: Records of 428 hunter captures were used to assess if large areas of secondary forest surrounding roadside horticulturalists' settlements were successfully exploited for wild game, a primary source of protein in the diet of the local human population. Data show that such forest within the Ituri region of Zaire is frequently and successfully exploited for wild game by subsistence hunters. Fauna exploited and capture weights are comparable from hunts conducted in secondary and climax forest. This study concludes that areas of regrowth forest surrounding horticulturalists' villages can and do provide substantial quantities of wild game for consumption by local inhabitants. Whether exploited faunal populations could withstand the more intensive exploitation associated with higher human population densities and widespread market hunting is, however, questionable.

Crisis and Response: Risk-Buffering Behavior in Hellenistic Greek Communities

Abstract: Crisis and Response: Risk-Buffering Behavior in Hellenistic Greek Communities In the wake of the severe famines of the past twenty years, historians have become more sensitive to the problems of nutritional standards, food supply, and food shortage. In this article, I argue that the historically documented increase in the incidences of subsistence crises in the poleis (states) of Greece during the Hellenistic period, 323144 B.C., was due to a change in the delicate balance of riskbuffering mechanisms that they had developed to cope with the frequent but unpredictable fluctuations in crop yields and food supply. In order to make this argument convincing, I set forth the theoretical framework employed in this study. Then I demonstrate that climatic change cannot be blamed, and that it could not possibly provide a sufficient explanation for the increase in subsistence crises. We must seek the cause elsewhere. I argue that there was an increase in societal vulnerability created by the largescale structural changes wrought by the formation of large, heterogeneous empires. As a result, many of the traditional coping mechanisms developed by Greek society were rendered impractical or ineffective. In Greece, as opposed to Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these subsistence crises did not degenerate into famines. Instead, new institutions were developed or old ones were changed, which, although efficacious in stopping famines, paradoxically increased the frequency of subsistence crises. The peasantry was able to acquire subsistence security, but at a cost.1

From Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to provide a simple economic general equilibrium model of one of the most important prehistoric eventsthe transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. It is hoped that such a model will help focus the discussion about this important occurrence and that it will aid in identifying the implications of the many hypotheses that have been put forth to explain why, when, and where the transition to agriculture took place. Viewed in the proper time frame, the transition to agriculture was dramatic in terms of the large number of people and the relatively short time period involved, as well as the enormous accompanying changes in the way people lived their lives. For about 4 million years man lived by harvesting wild foods. Slightly more than 10,000 years B.P. (before the present) the transition to agriculture began, and by 2,000 years B.P. the vast majority of people depended on agriculture as their main form of subsistence.' Of course, it was not only subsistence pursuits that changed. For example, estimates of population growth rates for the early agricultural period (Neolithic) are around 100 times greater than those for the hunting-gathering period.2 Estimates of population density are correspondingly higher for the agricultural period. It has been claimed that the transition in France was accompanied by a hundredfold increase in population, as opposed to a tenfold increase between the period of early farming and the present.3 The early theories of the transition, dating back to the Greeks, viewed the human economy as developing in a series of stages, with agriculture being the last stage.4 These were later modified by the introduction of environmental differences to explain why in some regions development stopped short of the last stage, or why development took place at different rates across regions. This approach fell into disfavor when the traditional sequence of stages (hunting-gathering, pastoral nomadism, agriculture) was shown to be incorrect. Rather than altering the sequence of stages, a different approach became

The role of local natural enemies in population dynamics of Chilo partellus (Swinh.) (Pyralidae) under subsistence farming systems in Kenya.

Abstract: The present article is one of a series of papers in preparation in which an ecological approach to developing a sound biocontrol programme for cereal stem borers is proposed and outlined. The proposed approach involves detailed population estimation and analysis in relation to crop phenology to determine the role of local natural enemies, evaluation of biocontrol potential of promising biocontrol agents, developing mass rearing and release technology and monitoring the impact of the biocontrol programme. In the example used to illustrate the first step in such a programme, life table analysis of data from a 2-year study on Chilo partellus on maize and sorghum under subsistence agriculture in Western Kenya, showed local predators (and unidentified factors) to contribute up to 97.6 % of generation mortality of the borer in the age interval from egg to early instar larva, while parasitoids and pathogens contributed less than 1 % mortality in the various life stages. Hence, a programme involving conservation and augmentation of local predators and introduction of selected exotic parasitoids of this borer seems appropriate. This represents an attempt to apply life table analysis, taking into account plant phenology, in studying interacting populations under subsistence farming conditions.

Interlinked modes of exploitation in Indian agriculture during transition: A case study

Abstract: The article examines the nature of interlinked modes of exploitation on the basis of evidence from three villages in Uttar Pradesh (India). It is argued that the interlocked relationships arise out of a prior set of production relationships and the strategies of subsistence and accumulation of different classes, which may themselves change under certain conditions. The latter determine not only the form but also the dynamics of such relationships, and are, in turn, limited by the ways in which surplus can be appropriated. It is shown here that the interlocking displays systematic inter‐village features. With increasing capitalist penetration, such relationships are a significantly more important source of labour mobilisation.

A Woman’s Place is in the Home

Abstract: In pre-industrial society the father ruled over the family. However, women had a definite work role within the family, and hence also in society. Women’s moral inferiority may well have been widely acknowledged but they were seen as physically capable of hard work. All members of the family helped to produce their means of subsistence. In working-class families the Industrial Revolution brought a decline in the fathers’ control along with the possibility of a life outside the family for women. This brought a kind of ‘freedom’ for working-class women but in so doing it deprived them of a definite work role and status, enforcing a new kind of dependency which made it necessary for them to sell their labour power outside the family.

Developing a partnership of indigenous peoples, conservationists, and land use planners in Latin America

Abstract: Illustrating from a rich body of case material, Poole's report reflects a shift away from the traditional view - represented by certain national parks and similar protected areas - that indigenous peoples be allowed to occupy and use an area's resources following rules set by conservationists. Under the new paradigm that is developing, indigenous peoples are seen as an integral part of protected area planning through agreements worked out in partnership with conservation authorities. An example of this new approach is the role that indigenous peoples are playing in the design of biosphere reserves. Poole suggests that the Bank and other development organizations pay more attention to vernacular economies - economies based on local resources, used either for subsistence or as a source of revenue. He also recommends more research into economics and resource implications of these local activities to harvest wild resources, especially in environmentally delicate areas such as tropical rainforests.

Contemporary aboriginal women and subsistence in remote, arid Australia

Abstract: This thesis is an account of the role of contemporary Aboriginal women in subsistence. It refers to women living on remote outstations in the Sandover River region of arid, Central Australia. In this post-traditional situation, women's subsistence contribution combined foraging with the use of purchased foods. Their foraging contributed a small, but nutritionally important, component of the diet. However women devoted more time to foraging than to other subsistence activities. A sexual division of labour existed whereby men hunted regularly to provide fresh meat, while women were largely responsible for purchasing and preparing store foods. Substantial technological change was evident, but traditional values continued to shape contemporary subsistence practices. While women had abandoned the most onerous of their traditional tasks, they retained a central role in subsistence. Their contribution, though much changed, was essential to the maintenance of families and households. The subsistence work undertaken by women comprised one aspect of their productivity which also included child-care and household management. Anthropological models of subsistence that have emphasized the aspect of sexual separateness in the traditional division of labour have been influential in the analysis of women's role and social change in Central Australia. This modern ethnographic data, however, highlighted the inter-dependence of women and men. It suggests that subsistence is, and was traditionally, a sphere of domestic life within which the inter-relationship of women and men is a prominent and necessary feature.

Did New England Go Downhill

Abstract: Evidence from landscape history and agricultural censuses does not support the thesis of a regionwide nineteenth-century decline in farming for New England. On the basis of output per farm acre, New England has been one of the most productive agricultural regions in the United States. Urban and industrial growth and associated changes in rural culture are more important than comparative advantage in explaining the actual post-1900 decline in agriculture. THE decline of New England agriculture remains one of the best-known, generally accepted themes in American historical geography. Told and retold, the tale has become part of the region's identity, especially since the 1927 publication of the article A Town That Has Gone Downhill by James Walter Goldthwait.1 Most New Englanders know something of how farmers abandoned the rocky, infertile, hilly fields at the first opportunity and migrated to the flat, rock-free, fertile soils of the Midwest, which became the American breadbasket and heartland. The grid of stone walls running through the forests of New England and the current lack of much agriculture there reinforce this interpretation and give it the stature of common sense. The traditional interpretation of New England agriculture was best summarized in a widely cited couplet attributed to the father of Ezra Stiles, an eighteenth-century president of Yale College: "Nature out of her boundless store / Threw rocks together, and did no more."2 A popular history published slightly more than a decade ago described nineteenth-century New Englanders as leading a "monotonous, bare, subsistence life" of "marginal, selfsufficient farming."3 Similar interpretations are found in academic works.4 Yet the true picture was not so simplistic. Based on analysis of agriculturalcensus data, nineteenth-century landscape views, and contemporary agricultural commentaries, the thesis advanced in this article is that the longterm geographical pattern for the region has been misrepresented. The conventional interpretation has portrayed the celebrated decline as the inevitable response of a slim resource base to midwestern competition and has distorted the timing, size, and significance of the decline. * I thank David Lowenthal, Diane Mayerfeld, Joseph Miller, and John Western for reading drafts of this article. ' James Walter Goldthwait, A Town That Has Gone Downhill, Geographical Review 17 (1927): 527552. 2 Cited in Chard Powers Smith, The Housatonic: Puritan River (New York: Rinehart, 1946), 235. 3William F. Robinson, Abandoned New England (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1976), 42, 44. 4Ladd Haystead and Gilbert C. Fite, The Agricultural Regions of the United States (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 29. * MR. BELL is a doctoral candidate jointly in sociology and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06511. NEW ENGLAND DOWNHILL? 451 THE TRADITIONAL MODEL Between 1927 and 1950, Goldthwait, Harold F. Wilson, John D. Black, and the contributors to the New England Studies Program of the American Geographical Society worked out what could be called the traditional model of the New England agricultural decline.5 The AGS-sponsored program sought to understand "the highly critical state" of New England agriculture with particular attention . . . to problems that spring from the relations of man to the natural elements of topography, rock structure, soil, and climate."6 In later refinements of the model, its basic components remained unchanged.7 The model emphasized the stoniness and the infertility of New England soils and the hardscrabble, subsistence characteristics of its farm economy. It argued that subsistence farming on stony soils led to the early construction of stone walls to clear the land for cropping, the rapid agricultural decline in the region, and finally widespread farm abandonment in preference for midwestern prairie lands. Numerous writers also showed a predilection for social-Darwinist and environmental-determinist explanations of the forging of the Yankee character amid the hard New England hills and the subsequent impoverishment of the rural stock as decline ensued.8 Several originators of this model had connections with Harvard University, and much of the popularity of the model must be attributed to a series of dioramas known as the Harvard Forest models, put together between 1931 and 1941. The dioramas portray step by step the clearing, field abandonment, and subsequent regrowth of the Harvard Forest land at Petersham, Massachusetts. Stone walls dominate the views, with virtually no wood fencing; the walls arise from the initial act of clearing the land and do not change as the dioramas proceed through time (Figs. 1-3). The implication is that the walls originated from a land so stony that it had to be cleared of rocks before farming could begin. That image fits well with the traditional interpretation of New England as a region extremely poor in natural soil resources. Decent productivity on these rocky, "essentially infertile soils" was deemed possible only by "heavy fertilization."9 5 New England's Prospect 1933 (edited by John K. Wright; New York: American Geographical Society, 1933); John D. Black, The Rural Economy of New England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950); Harold Fisher Wilson, The Hill Country of Northern New England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936); Goldthwait, footnote 1 above. 6 Annual Report of the Council, Geographical Review 18 (1928): 318; John K. Wright, New England, Geographical Review 19 (1929): 479-494, reference to 485. 7 Clarence Danhoff, Change in Agriculture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969); Robert Eisenmenger, The Dynamics of Growth in New England's Economy, 1870-1964 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967); Hugh Raup, The View from John Sanderson's Farm: A Perspective for the Use of the Land, Forest History 10 (1967): 1-11; Howard S. Russell, A Long Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1976). 8 Black, footnote 5 above, 23; Danhoff, footnote 7 above, 114; Wilson, footnote 5 above, 149-152. 9 Raup, footnote 7 above, 6. 452 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW Advocates of the traditional interpretation usually described New England agriculture as declining rapidly subsequent to the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and of the railroads shortly thereafter, which allowed production from the better agricultural lands of the Midwest to compete locally. Depending on the area under study, the research placed the peak of New England agriculture at anywhere from 1830 to 1850.10 Although these authors were aware that the dates applied only to specific sites in New England, they were read to be and were intended to be representative." However, one supporter did rather grudgingly note the continued vitality of New England agriculture through 1880 at least.12 Before the ascendancy of what is now the traditional, accepted model of decline, there was a lively debate concerning the agricultural capabilities and future of New England. Against the interpretations that later became almost totally dominant, supporters of New England agriculture pointed to high yields and good prices that farmers received and argued that farms were productive, competitive, and financially viable.13 As one supporter stated early in the twentieth century, "We have been obsessed with the stale idea that New England was a sucked orange, with respect to its human enterprise and its opportunity."'14 In the remainder of this article I present evidence to revive this counterargument. STONE WALLS AND STONY SOILS To anyone familiar with the large areas of bare rock, thin soil, and stony till in New England, an argument for high farm productivity may not seem 10 Louis A. Wolfanger, Economic Geography of the Gray-Brownerths of the Eastern United States, Geographical Review 21 (1931): 276-296; Harvard Forest Models, Fisher Museum of Forestry, Harvard Printing Office, Cambridge, Mass., 1975; Raup, footnote 7 above, 6; Goldthwait, footnote 1 above; Wilson, footnote 5 above. 11 Harold Fisher Wilson, Population Trends in Northwestern New England, 1790-1930, Geographical Review 24 (1934): 272-277, reference to 272. 12 Black, footnote 5 above, 142-144. 13 A. L. Loveland, Life on New England Farms, Cultivator 37 (1872): 99-100; Frederic Hathaway Chase, Is Agriculture Declining in New England?, New England Magazine NS 2 (1890): 448-453; New England: What It Is and What It Is to Be (edited by George French; Boston: Chamber of Commerce,

Carrying capacity of the eastern ecological gradient of Kenya.

Abstract: Kenyas rate of natural population increase exceeds 4.0%/year. At this rate Kenyas population of 23.5 million will expand to >35 million by the year 2000. Rural migrants are being forced out of the highlands into marginal arid and semiarid regions to the east and south in the eastern ecological gradient including Meru Kitui Machakos and Kajiado districts. The people have become victims of marginalization by which the productivity of a unit of land declines relative to the demands of its occupants. The concept of carrying capacity means the number of people a given area can sustain over the long term. In Maasailand 3.5 standard stock units (450 kg each) are required per adult equivalent for full subsistence about 7 cows/person. For the Maasai pastoralists carrying capacities were examined at 2 levels of subsistence: 100% from the herds and 80% from the herds; 2 technological levels; and population-growth rates of 2% 2.5% and 3%/annum. Using the median 3.5%/year population-growth scenario these districts will have almost 5 million inhabitants in the year 2000. Poverty at technology level I for 40% of them or for 2 million people is implausible. Technology level II implies that current rural-development programs will succeed with technological innovations for farm households access to credit and markets for their produce. Level II is likely to prevail toward the end of the century for the majority of farmers. Level III necessitates best agricultural and livestock technology as well as the best management. At most 25% of the households of the eastern ecological gradient could enter this realm by the year 2000. Current strategies of voluntary family planning rural development emerging from an antiquated extension system inability to address inequity in land distribution and laissez-faire resource management are inadequate to deal with the pace of change.

Moose Hunters of the Boreal Forest? A Re-examination of Subsistence Patterns in the Western Subarctic

Abstract: Many descriptions of lifestyles in the western subarctic region have been built on the premise that the hunting and use of moose was a central feature of those lifestyles. While this may be true, it is worthwhile to question the time depth that underlies this adaptation and the degree to which it may have applied to former societies inhabiting the boreal forest region. Any such effort must include an analysis of available faunal remains from archaeological sites in that region. A consideration of the faunal record suggests that the intensive utilization of moose is relatively new in the western boreal forest, or at least was not widely characteristic of the late Holocene period. Thus, it cannot be assumed that the archaeologically designated late prehistoric "Athapaskan tradition" was isomorphic with modern subsistence regimes. To the degree to which large game played a central role in Athapaskan lifestyles, it was caribou, rather than moose, that seems to have dominated in the northern ecotonal region. Fish and small game seem to have dominated in importance in the southern coastal forest region, with a mixed subsistence economy characteristic of the central region. Historical factors, primarily involving widespread fires, habitat disturbance and impacts on predators, seem to be most responsible for the increase in moose numbers during the past century. The role of fire is particularly critical and may have had great influence on the nature and stability of past subsistence regimes in the boreal forest region, including impacts on both large and small game. Key words: moose, western Subarctic, boreal forest adaptations, faunal analysis, fire ecology, late Holocene period, optimal foraging theory, Athapaskan tradition

Adaptation to marginal land amongst the peasant farmers of Zimbabwe

Abstract: (1989). Adaptation to marginal land amongst the peasant farmers of Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies: Vol. 15, Politics of Conservation in Southern Africa, pp. 384-389.