Showing papers on "Subsistence agriculture published in 1990"

The Giving Environment: Another Perspective on the Economic System of Gatherer-Hunters

Abstract: For the past 25 years anthropologists have been interested in the relation between man and environment in reference especially to gathering and hunting societies. They have viewed these as "societies which by definition share the characteristic that their members obtain their food and other requirements directly from wild natural sources" (Woodburn I 980:95). Approaching the environments of these societies in terms of Western ecological criteria, they have examined how food collectors have adapted to them. For example, on discovering that giving without expecting an equivalent return is more common among food-gathering peoples than among any others and is a feature of most food-gathering societies, they have explained it as a way of reducing risk a kind of "collective insurance against natural fluctuations" (Ingold I980:I44; cf. Lee I968; Woodburn I972; Gould I982; Wiessner I977, i982; Cashdan I985; and Smith I988). This account, however, invoking modern economic and ecological ideas, is unlikely to be acceptable to foodgathering people themselves, for their own ideas about their environment are summed up by /Xashe, a !Kung mnan from Mahopa: "Why should we plant, when there are so many mongongos in the world?" (Lee I979:v). Furthermore, it makes little sense of these people's demand for generosity and practice of what has been recently described as demand sharing (Barnard and Woodburn i988:I2; Peterson I986:I). Why do they make constant demands for sharing and not require people to produce more (cf. Barnard and Woodburn I988: i I)? Why do they have this "collective insurance against natural fluctuations" when they have little difficulty in obtaining their material requirements and desires, setting these well within their capacity to achieve and allowing themselves much leisure (Sahlins i968:85-89; I972:I39), and when some of them have access to alternative sources from farming neighbours? Moreover, recent work has erased the "great divide" between food-collecting and food-producing peoples (Hamilton i982:232), showing that some gathererhunters (especially of Woodburn's [I980, I988] "immediate-return" type) have, and have had, close economic links with farming neighbours and have themselves pursued cultivation and husbandry periodically or occasionally (see Schrire I984, Headland and Reid I989, and case studies by Gardner I985, Endicott I984, and Bird-David I988). This work has led to doubts over how satisfactory it is to distinguish between them and other peoples in relation to their mode of subsistence and, hence, to explain their distribution practices in terms of that subsistence mode (see Barnard I983, I987; Williams and Hunn i982; Hamilton i982; and Schrire I984). Because the traditional approach has reached its limits with respect to certain important issues, in this paper another perspective on gatherer-hunters' economic arrangements is explored. This perspective suggests that gatherer-hunters are distinguished from other peoples by their particular views of the environment and of themselves and, in relation to this, by a particular type of economy that has not previously been recognized. They view their environment as giving, and their economic system is characterized by modes of distribution and property relations that are constructed in terms of giving, as within a family, rather than in terms of reciprocity, as between kin. This perspective is offered in reference to the South Indian gatherer-hunters called Nayaka, among whom I conducted fieldwork during I978-79 and again in I989,2

The farm-level economics of soil conservation: the uplands of Java.

Abstract: On the densely populated island of Java in Indonesia, the area of severely eroded upland is increasing at the rate of 1-2 percent per annum and now totals around 2 million hectares (ha), approximately one third of Java's cultivated uplands. Average population density in these areas is 600-700 people per sq km, although it may fall to 400-550 per sq km in severely degraded upper watersheds. With holdings averaging 0.4 ha or less, with up to 20-25 percent of the population being landless in some areas, and with yields for upland rice and corn averaging 0.9-2.5 tons/ha, the general pattern is one of poor, predominantly subsistence households seeking to increase their immediate basic food production by using cropping systems that result in high soil-erosion levels from their rainfed lands. In addition, significant erosion problems are caused by absentee and better-off farm owners cultivating highly profitable but erosive crops, such as vegetables, and by the failure to "police" state-owned tree plantations properly, particularly in preventing illegal fuelwood collection and agricultural conversion (Barbier 1987; Roche 1987; World Bank 1987b, 1988). This paper is concerned with the incentives for upland farmers on Java to adopt soil conservation packages as a means to control erosion and improve long-term land productivity and agricultural growth. The paper reviews the soil conservation "packages" currently offered to upland farmers and the factors influencing their adoption, as observed by existing farm-level studies. The appendix contains a model characterizing this behavior. As expected, farming households in Java are economically rational in their response to their environment, both physical and economic. Land tenure arrangements, soil characteristics, input and output prices, availability of offfarm employment, and discount rates all combine to influence acceptance or not of soil conservation. Government policies must take into account these variables if ffective programs are to be designed. This paper concentrates on the farmer's decision to invest in the control of soil loss and land degradation on privately owned and operated land in the Javan uplands. The additional erosion problems caused by the encroachment and conversion of "open access" and publicly owned forest lands for fuelwood, fodder, and shifting cultivation are not examined, as these appear to be of less importance (Donner 1987, 67-68). Thus, the following analysis is generally applicable to land degradation problems arising from sedentary upland cultivation in developing regions rather than those arising from shifting cultivation and "open access" degradation of forests (Lopez and Nicklitscheck 1988; Southgate and Pearce

Native Subsistence Fisheries: A Synthesis of Harvest Studies in Canada

Abstract: Subsistence fisheries, as distinct from commercial and recreational, exist throughout much of the Canadian North and satisfy local needs for fish protein. These fisheries have been investigated quantitatively only since the 1970s. Many of these studies are in the "grey literature"; methods of study and reporting are not standardized, and interpretation of data is often problematic. Nevertheless, some generalizations can be offered from a preliminary survey of harvest study data from 93 communities and from 10 regional studies representing Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. The data indicate a wide range of harvest values, clustering at about 60 kg of whole fish per capita per year. If these data are representative, there is a significant subsistence fishery sector important for the local economies of hundreds of communities. Most of these fisheries are not being reported in fishery statistics, nor are they being monitored and assessed.

War of Another Kind: A Southern Community in the Great Rebellion

Abstract: In this book Durrill describes in graphic detail the disintegration, during the Civil War, of Southern plantation society in a North Carolina coastal county. He details struggles among planters, slaves, yeoman farmers, and landless white laborers, as well as a guerrilla war and a clash between two armies that, in the end, destroyed all that remained of the county's social structure. He examines the failure of a planter-yeoman alliance, and discusses how yeoman farmers and landless white laborers allied themselves against planters, but to no avail. He also shows how slaves, when refugeed upcountry, tried unsuccessfully to reestablish their prerogatives--a subsistence, as well as protection from violence--owed them as a minimal condition of their servitude.

Weak foundations : the economy of El Salvador in the nineteenth century

Abstract: Hector Lindo-Fuentes provides the first in-depth economic history of El Salvador during the crucial decades of the nineteenth century. Before independence in 1821, the isolated territory that we now call El Salvador was a subdivision of the Captaincy General of Guatemala and had only 250,000 inhabitants. Both indigo production, the source of wealth for the country's tiny elite and its main link to the outside world, and subsistence agriculture, which engaged the majority of the population, involved the use of agricultural techniques that had not changed for two hundred years.By 1900, however, El Salvador's primary export was coffee, a crop that demanded relatively sophisticated agricultural techniques and the support of an elaborate internal finance and marketing network. The coffee planters came to control the state apparatus, writing laws that secured their access to land, imposing taxes that paid for a transportation network designed to service their plantations, building ports to expedite coffee exports, and establishing a banking system to finance the new crop. "Weak Foundations" shows how the parallel process of state-building and expansion of the coffee industry resulted in the formation of an oligarchy that was to rule El Salvador during the twentieth century. Historians and economists interested in the "routes to underdevelopment" followed by Latin American and other "Third World" countries will find this analysis thorough and provocative.

The effects of settler incursion on fish and game resources of the Yuqui, a native Amazonian society of eastern Bolivia.

Abstract: Increasing settlement and subsequent deforestation in the Amazon are disturbing animal habitats and placing pressure on indigenous peoples who depend on hunting as a means of subsistence. As policy makers attempt to address growing environmental and social concerns, anthropologists are often in a position to provide information relating to traditional subsistence systems and how these systems may be experiencing stress due to development. Crucial to this issue is the need for anthropologists to provide in a proactive manner quantitative, longitudinal resource use data to those in policy-making positions to document the effects of settler incursion on native subsistence systems. This paper will present data from the Yuqui, a foraging people in eastern lowland Bolivia who are experiencing increased pressure on faunal resources from settlers. Using data collected in 1983 and 1988, I will suggest that the Yuqui are beginning to exhibit hunting patterns consistent with known cases of game depletion. I will arg...

A Right to Survive: Subsistence Marketing in a Lowland Philippine Town

Abstract: This comprehensive report describes and analyzes the business activities of a market in a Philippine town of 15,000 people. Since as much as 90% of most Philippine families' earnings are used to purchase food, these data provide a picture of the important economic processes of the town. Dr. Szanton's study contains important implications for programs to encourage economic development and to improve nutrition and health in so-called third world nations. As is the case in all developing countries, three-quarters of the people in this town live in poverty, despite educational levels and natural resources that would support a higher standard of living. Such deprivation springs in large part from social institutions, particularly subsistence production and marketing patterns, which limit many individuals to producing no more than will satisfy their immediate needs. Dr. Szanton's insights into the social and economic operations of the marketing process suggest programs of action which may cope more effectively with the impediments to progress that lie in present production and marketing patterns.

The Dietary Repertory of the Ngandu People of the Tropical Rain Forest: An Ecological and Anthropological Study of the Subsistence Activities and Food Procurement Technology of a Slash-and-Burn Agriculturist in the Zaire River Basin

Abstract: Food acquisition and consumption behavior of the Ngandu, who are a Bantu people living in the Zaire basin, is described. The utilization ofplants and animals as foods is examined from food diaries recorded over a long period of time by two infonnants. The Ngandu are multi-subsistence strategists, utilizing widely and predominantly the resources of the forest. The Ngandu are almost self-sufficent with respect to their dietary needs. The food plants consumed by the two infonnants include 24 species of cultivated plants (representing 20 genera, 16 families) and 22 spp. of wild gathered plants (22 gen., 18 fam.) plus one unidentified sp. and 10 mushrooms. The animal foods consumed include 37 spp. (24 gen., 16 fam.) of mammals, 10 spp. (9 gen., 5 fam.) ofbirds, 29 spp. (23 gen., 18 fam.) offish, 12 spp. (10 gen., 8 fam.) of reptiles and 21 spp. (11 gen., 8 fam.) of insects. The cultivation ofcassava as the basic staple food is maintained by less labor-intensive efforts which make it much easier for the Ngandu to engage in various other subsistence strategies such as hunting. They use elaborate hunting techniques which enable them to utilize a wide variety of animal foods. For this reason, they have not needed to develop symbiotic relationships with the hunter-gatherers which are found between the Mbuti and the neighboring agriculturists in Eastern Zaire. Their self-sufficiency, which has been established by a thorough utilization of the forest resources, has been of substantial importance both in the process of territorial expansion and in the stability of the forest habitation. Complicated food taboos which seem contradictory to a maximal utilization of and conservation of resources are observed, and serve as sociallyregulating factors. Although such food restrictions may be a factor contributing to the reproduction of the forest resources as is the case with the Mbuti, the existence of the agriculturalists with their diversified subsistence strategies may act as an unfavorable factor which will lead to a shortage of the forest resources.

Perpetuating Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Link between Agriculture, Class, and State

Abstract: The Republic of Kenya is a land of stark contrasts. Its precapitalist policies have long attracted multinational investment and international loans. External capital is apparent to Western tourists in the capital city of Nairobi, an urban area with luxurious hotels, modern corporate and government offices, expensive automobiles, large sports stadiums, and numerous stores. But the modern features of Nairobi do not represent the real Kenya, the Kenya known to the vast majority of those in the country. The average Kenyan is not wealthy and does not possess Western-style amenities. Most Kenyans work in agriculture-related activities which range from subsistence farming to wage labor on large estates or plantations. In fact, recent statistics show that the agricultural sector employs over 81 percent of the labor force, contributes 65 percent to the value of total exports, and accounts for 31 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (World Bank, 1986a). In addition to an appreciable disparity in income between urban elites and agricultural laborers, there is also an uneven distribution of resources within the agricultural sector. The present structure of agriculture is closely linked to the colonial period, when Europeans controlled large-scale farms in areas with fertile land. Although few Europeans farm in Kenya today, the agricultural system is still inequitable and biased toward Africans with large farms. Inequality is evident in the distribution of farm land, the flow of capital in and out of agriculture, and the class structure that perpetuates this situation. The Kenyan state remains closely aligned with elite interests in both rural and urban areas, thereby maintaining an unproductive agricultural system that contributes to underdevelopment.

A global action plan.

Abstract: The major points in Worldwatchs plan involve 1) development of energy strategies which protect the climate 2) expansion of forests 3) a substantial increase in efforts to meet food needs and 4) a halt to population growth. The consequence of "business as usual" is severe economic disruption social instability and human suffering. Energy strategies must be prioritized and reordered within 10 years. A safe effective way to curb use of fossil fuels which produce CO2 and account for 50% of the global warming is to improve energy efficiency to develop renewable energy sources and to abandon use of nuclear power. Use of existing technology has the most immediate largest effect. Solar hydro wind and geothermal technologies are much slower to develop and implementation has greater initial costs. An internationally consistent fuel-based tax on carbon content is also recommended. Investment in energy efficiency will be offset by reduced fuel bills for consumers and businesses. Forests which store 3 times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere contribute to CO2 buildup when cut down. Expanding forest cover in tropical countries means finding other ways to earn quick foreign exchange stimulate regional development and expand settlement areas. 130 million hectares of trees need to be planted just to meet demands for fuelwood and industrial wood products and to stabilize soil and water resources. 15 billion trees need to be planted each year for the next 15 years. Large food production increases are still possible in India Argentina and Brazil but few gains are expected in Japan China western Europe and North America. Subsistence farmers can boost production by multiple cropping intercropping biointensive gardening and composting of organic wastes. If food reserves tighten redirecting grain from livestock which amounts to 33% of a harvest is the only option for feeding the poor. Family planning (FP) will be instrumental in assuring food security. Countries with high growth rates must follow China and Japan in curbing population growth rapidly. This entails government commitment and an active national population education program widely available FP services and widespread improvements in economic and social conditions particularly for women. The several billion dollars/year needed from industrialized countries should be considered a "downpayment on the future."

Land registration in Ghana: past, present and the future

Abstract: The establishment in the Gold Coast of commercial agriculture based on a permanent cultivation of the soil, the development of the mining and timber industries in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the concession boom that these events carried in their train, created favourable conditions for capitalist development for which the private ownership of the means of production is a prerequisite. However, at that time the basic means of production in the Gold Coast, i.e. the land, was generally held in common and was not privately owned.Colonialism, however, had the effect of establishing two systems of production in the country. The capitalist sector which became dominant was created at commercial and urban centres. The traditional communal system based on what, for want of a better term, one could call subsistence agriculture, remained at the periphery in the countryside. The dominant capitalist sector produced in its own image a class of property owners consisting of European, national and rural capitalists. Attempts by the latter to acquire lands to be privately owned gave rise to problems of insecurity of title. A machinery for land registration was thought to be the most adequate means of solving the problem.

Risk Sharing versus Low-Cost Credit Systems for International Development

Abstract: Low-cost credit programs in developing countries have failed to achieve agricultural technology adoption goals. This research attributes the failure to the inabiiity of poor farmers to, bear the combined business and financial risks p:'sed ly adopting new technologies and develops proposals for the design of credit programs that reduce these risks. Agronomic and socioeconomic data are combined through simulation and mathematical programming to analyze problems of decision making under risk for developing countries. The results will assist iii the design of new rural financial institutions conducive to the adoption of new production technologies by subsistence

The production of commodities : an introduction to Sraffa

Abstract: Introduction - A Subsistence Economy - Production with a Surplus: Subsistence Wage - Production with a Surplus: Wage above Subsistence - Price Variations and the Standard Commodity - Choice of Technique - The Quantity Equations and Duality - Introduction to Multiple-product Industries Models - Fixed Capital - Land - Joint Production - Review and Conclusions - Index

Evolution of Ethnodominated Marketing Channels: Evidence from Oman and Sudan

Abstract: Ethnic domination of marketing channels is very common throughout the developing world. The phenomenon often has become closely associated with volatile political issues, such as unequal distribution of wealth or perceived foreign domination of the national economy. Ethnodomination arises when an external commercially oriented economy penetrates a subsistence agricultural economy. Historical records on Oman show in detail how such a system functioned before the era of modern economic development. A cultural boundary separates market-oriented outsiders who operate wholesale and retail firms from the subsistence consumers who are brought into the market economy as petty producers and consumers. Such trade contact starts a process of cultural assimilation. Fieldwork and historical records from Sudan show how such systems can evolve under development. When the cultural boundary has shifted downward in the marketing channel, local people begin to acquire commercially oriented values which allow them to participate more fully in economic activities. However, actually moving into marketing channel activities requires capital, most of which is still controlled by the ethnic group dominating the channels. Modern development brings infusions of capital from outside the marketing system, and local people can begin moving into lower level channel activities easily. Once that happens, successful small retailers accumulate capital to move into wholesaling, and so on. The ethnic group which traditionally had controlled channels shifts investments from marketing into industrial production, and eventually ethnodomination of marketing will decline.

Evolution of Ethnodominated Marketing Channels: Evidence from Oman and Sudan

Abstract: Ethnic domination of marketing channels is very common throughout the developing work. The phenomenon often has become closely associated with volatile political issues, such as unequal distribution of wealth or perceived foreign domination of the national economy. Ethnodomination arises when an external commercially oriented economy penetrates a subsistence agricultural economy. Historical records on Oman show in detail how such a system functioned before the era of modern economic development. A cultural boundary separates market-oriented outsiders who operate wholesale and retail firms from the subsistence farmers who are brought into the market economy as petty producers and consumers. Such trade contact starts a process of cultural assimilation.Fieldwork and historical records from Sudan show how such systems can evolve under development. When the cultural boundary has shifted downward in the marketing channel, local people begin to acquire commercially oriented values which allow them to participate...

Modeling Oneota agricultural production: a cross-cultural evaluation

Abstract: By the early 20th century, anthropologists and archaeologists recognized that the distributional limits of Native American agriculture in the American Midwest were climatically determined. Wissler (I 9I 7: I 7), for example, stated that "Indian tribes had extended agriculture in the east to its physical limits." Somewhat later, Kroeber (1939) suggested that only in those areas with a growing season of i 20 days in four out of five years was maize agriculture a reliable subsistence strategy. The ioo-day frost-free isopleth represented the extreme northern limit of maize agriculture, a limit where only the fastestmaturing varieties were reliably productive and where "only a people long and deeply addicted to agriculture would have tried to farm" (I939:212). More recently, Yarnell (i964) also identified climate as the variable determining the limits of maize agriculture in the Midwest and found no ethnohistoric or archaeological evidence for maize production in areas with modern frost-free periods of less than I20 days. There is, however, some controversy over the causes of differences in the intensity of agricultural production2 within these limits. Two major archaeological cultures are recognized in the Midwest during the late prehistoric Mississippian period (ca. A.D. iooo-i650): Middle Mississippian and Oneota (Upper Mississippian). Although they overlapped to some degree geographically (Emmerson i988), Middle Mississippian was primarily associated with the central Midwest and Oneota with the upper Midwest. Originally defined in terms of material-cultural traits (Holmes I903, McKern I939), these cultures have come to be increasingly associated with disparate subsistence economies. The Middle Mississippian subsistence economy was apparently focused on intensive maize production. Maize was probably double-cropped where possible through either staggered or consecutive plantings (Riley i987), and hunting and gathering played less significant roles (but see Milner i990). The Oneota evidently practiced a less intensive form of maize agriculture as part of a mixed economy; the contribution of maize to the subsistence mix was less than or only equal to that of the contributions of hunting, gathering, and fishing (Brown i982). If maize was universally available in the Midwest by at least A.D. 900 (Asch and Asch I985, Conard et al. i984), why did the Oneota not practice maize agriculture with the same flourish as their nearby Middle Mississippian neighbors? To date, answers to this question have drawn from two general theories of agricultural intensification: neoMalthusian and Boserupian (cf. Brown i982). NeoMalthusian interpretations emphasize deleterious macroclimatic conditions, and Boserupian interpretations emphasize low population density. Archaeological data remain insufficient to test these competing interpretations. By asking the more general question what determines the intensity of agricultural production, it is possible to test the general theories of agricultural intensification from which these interpretations are derived and therefore shed light on the more specific question. The results of path analysis employing data from 56 Native American societies indicate that the Boserupian approach holds more promise.

An agricultural survey of subsistence farmers in the Nkandla district of KwaZulu

Abstract: In 1986 and 1987, an agricultural survey was conducted among 70 subsistence farmers in the Nkandla district of KwaZulu. The aims of the survey were to describe the farming system, identify constraints to agricultural production and make recommendations for future extension work in the area. No stock was sold in 1986/87. However, hides and meat obtained from slaughter and deaths may be valued at about R150,98 per household per annum. Poultry contributed R31,86 per household per annum. Veld has been irreversibly degraded in most of the study area, causing a major constraint to cattle production. However, short‐term in creases in poultry production are feasible. Cropping enterprises were dominated by maize, which was planted on 81% of the total field area and contributed about R413,86 per annum to household income. The most limiting constraints to maize yield were poor soil fertility and the related presence of witchweed (Striga asiatica), poor weeding (probably at the early post‐emergent stage of maize), la...

Ceramic Affiliations and the Case For Incipient Horticulture In Southwestern Manitoba

Abstract: The prevailing models of Late Prehistoric subsistence in southwestern Manitoba have been based upon the premise of a straightforward hunter/getherer economy relying upon the local ecology of the forest/parkland/plains biomes. In some cases, trade with the Middle Missouri Village Tribes has been incorporated as a "risk reducing" mechanism. These models propose a seasonal round exploiting the available natural subsistence resources at peaks of productivity and quality. Recent work at the Lovstrom and Johnas sites near Brandon on the Souris and Assiniboine Rivers, respectively, and at Lockport and Winnipeg on the Red River suggest that these models may be inadequate. The Lovstrom and Johnas sites indicate extended occupations by people using agricultural tools and whose ceramic affiliations appear to relate to groups in North Dakota and western Minnesota known to have practiced horticulture. Many of the distinctive ceramic traits which characterize vessels in these sites are not found in the usual Woodland assemblages recorded in southwestern Manitoba. It seems probable that these sites represent an expansion into southern Manitoba by groups from the south who practised horticulture as a part of their normal subsistence strategy. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.163 on Sat, 19 Nov 2016 04:31:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Canadian Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 14, 1990 59 It remains to be demonstrated whether these sites represent short term incursions by horticultural groups normally resident well to the south or whether their regular production of surpluses affected the overall subsistence strategies of other groups normally resident in the region.

Indigenous knowledge and economic production: the food crop cultivation, preservation and storage methods of a West African community.

Abstract: This paper examines specific cultivation, preservation and storage techniques for some selected staple crops in the food farming community of Ayirebi, near Akyem Oda, in southeastern Ghana. The traditional subsistence methods of Ayirebi farming households are well adapted to the social and geographical environments of the region. The long‐term future of developing African communities may well lie in building up thriving rural communities producing the food needed by the wider population. However, before this can be achieved, the particular food cultivation strategies of local communities need to be understood. Micro level studies such as this one will provide specific data vital to formulating and implementing a general agenda for national agricultural and economic development.

Labour input decisions of subsistence farm households in southern Malawi.

Abstract: The objective of the paper is the presentation of a farm-household model which allows an analysis of labour input decisions of rural households in an environment with risky agricultural technologies and off-farm employment opportunities. Labour input decisions are condensed into a stochastic linear programming framework, and applied to a typical rural household in Southern Malawi. Weak adoption of yield-increasing technologies is explained by different opportunity costs of time of family members and by the risky nature of income generated using traditional or yield-increasing agricultural technologies. The view that land-saving innovations will increase agricultural production is revised. Special extension programmes for family members with low off-farm employment opportunities are proposed to increase the adoption of those technologies. These programmes have the purpose of reducing anticipated subjective income deviations for yield-increasing innovations.

Agroclimatic Approaches for Improving Agricultural Productivity in Semiarid Tropics

Abstract: The semiarid tropics (SAT) is a region of limited, erratic rainfall and nutrient-poor soils. It is populated by more than 700 million people, most of whom live at subsistence levels and depend for their food on the limited production of small farms. Current yields are low and production is unstable because of aberrant weather. Semiarid tropics with 13% of the world’s land and 15% of its people produce only 11% of its food.