Showing papers on "Subsistence agriculture published in 1998"

Defining small-scale farmers in the south african context

Abstract: South African agriculture is comprised of mainly two categories of farmers—the subsistence farmers in the former homeland areas and the large-scale commercial (mainly white) farmers. This is in contrast with the situation in many other countries in the world where one would find a whole range of farm sizes, ranging from the very small or subsistence farmer to the very large farmer/agribusiness. The paper highlights the situation of small-scale farmers in an international context and compares it with the South African situation that is totally different. Within this context, this paper has as basic premise that in South Africa the concept of “small-scale farmer” is usually value-laden, creates wrong impressions and is often viewed in a negative light. “Small-scale” is often equated with a backward, nonproductive, non-commercial, subsistence agriculture that we find in parts of the former homeland areas. This paper endeavours to correct the negative perceptions towards small-scale farms by redefining the sm...

Modern Food Sharing Networks and Community Integration in the Central Canadian Arctic

Abstract: From June 1992 to July 1993, research on wildlife harvesting and subsistence was conducted among a sample of householders in the Inuit community of Holman. In an earlier paper, the authors examined the involvement of younger Inuit in subsistence hunting, noting that despite the sweeping political, social, and economic changes that have been experienced in Holman and across the Canadian North, hunting remained an important sociocultural and economic activity for some members of the sample group. This paper focuses specifically on the informal socioeconomic mechanisms employed by Holman Inuit for the distribution of wild resources and compare the present range of such activity to that observed by Stefansson, Jenness, Rasmussen, and Damas in their work on Copper Inuit food sharing. These data indicate 1) that the sharing form most frequently cited ethnographically, obligatory seal-sharing partnerships, is more irregular than formerly; and 2) that voluntary, nonpartnership-based sharing remains an important element in the contemporary economic system.

Scientific and local classification and management of soils

Abstract: A critical comparative analysis of howfarmers and scientists classify and manage soilsreveals fundamental differences as well assimilarities. In the past, the study of local soilknowledge has been predominantly targeted atdocumenting how farmers classified their soils incontrast to understanding how such classificatoryknowledge was made use of in actually managing soilsfor sustaining production. Often, classificatorydesigns – being cognitive and linguistic in nature –do not reflect the day-to-day actions in farming.Instead of merely describing local soil classificationin relation to scientific criteria, understanding howdifferent types of ethnolinguistic soil categories arerelated to crops, climate, subsistence needs,fertility, market demand, and cultural norms of thesociety would be far more effective in focusingresearch and development efforts.

Soil Constraints on Northwest Yucatan, Mexico: Pedoarchaeology and Maya Subsistence at Chunchucmil

Abstract: The soils and subsistence of ancient Maya Chunchucmil in northwestern Yucatan are the focus of this paper. Today and historically, the population and crop yields here have been very low. Archaeological field work, however, has shown the Late Classic site to be highly populated with densely packed walled mound and field groups. It is enigmatic that this high ancient Maya population existed in a region of meager crop and soil potential. This enigma is addressed by investigating contemporary Maya agriculture, geoarchaeological evidence, and soil potential for intensive agriculture. The local Maya soil classification of kancab and boxluum synthesizes the Alfisols, Inceptisols, and Mollisols described here. The major soil limitations are shallowness, broad areas with no soil, insufficient water holding capacity, and variable deficiencies in phosphorous, potassium, and zinc. Evidence for intensive agriculture and alternative crops can be seen in widespread field walls compartmentalizing the landscape, sascaberas, and preliminary phosphate fractionation signatures. q 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. INTRODUCTION Studying potential agricultural productivity and forms of intensification to ad- dress the riddle of high ancient Maya populations is keenly important to both ar- chaeology and tropical agricultural development. In the Maya Lowlands historical populations have been very low and agricultural methods very extensive, but some prehistoric populations are estimated to have been very high for hundreds of years. The conditions for agriculture in these tropical lowlands present many challenges, and this poses the basic question of how did ancient Maya high populations feed themselves. This article approaches this question by analyzing the soil potential around the current village of Chunchucmil, Yucatan (Figure 1), Mexico, which lies in the midst of a large site dating mainly from the Maya Late Classic (A.D. 550 - 830). Ironically, this site must have been both very densely populated and also one of the Maya world's most limited agricultural environments. This article first re- views the archaeological landscape and environmental and agricultural history of the region. Second, based on field and laboratory testing, the article describes soil diversity and fertility in the geoarchaeological context of each environmental zone. Lastly, it explores the potential for alternative crops and intensive agriculture.

Modeling the Sustainability of Subsistence Farming and Hunting in the Ituri Forest of Zaire

Abstract: We used empirical data to simulate the imiapacts, over the next 40 years, of subsistence-level agricull- tural clearing and bushmneat consuimption on forest resouirces within the recently established Okapi Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Zaire. Satellite imagery, human population census datca, anad fieldl measurements were used to calculate present and projected impacts of agricultural clearinig on forest cover. Data on per calp- ita meat consumption and the species captured by hunters wvere comlbined ivith relevant ecological data to es- timate ratios of consumption to production and to assess the sustainiability of hunting. Even with projected population growth of nearly 300% among local conimwstunities over 40 years, sufficient secondaciry forest is available that agricultural clearing uwill have minimnal effect on mature forest throughout most of the reserve. Impacts on the reserve'sfauna will be more dramatic, particularly within 15 km of villages, where mnost hunt- ing currently occurs. Subsistence exploitation offorest antelopes may be sustainable in much of the reserve (especially if high estimates of game production are used), but as the humlan population continues to in- crease duikers will likely be over-hunted. Primate populations do not appear to be threatened in the niear fi- ture in those areas where bow hunters exploit monikeys, but an increase in this specialized activity in other regions of the reserve and growing humian populationis could change this. Although acdditiomial surveys of commonly hunted species throughout the Okapi Wildlife Reserve are essential to enhanicinig the precision of the simulation, our results suggest that mitigation efforts shoulcd be designed and implemented nowu if the long-term effects of domestic bushmneat consumption are to be addressed.

The ethics of archaeology, subsistence digging, and artifact looting in Latin America: point muted counterpoint

Abstract: The author portrays the indigenous populations who engage in subsistence digging of sites in Latin America both as a means of supporting themselves economically and as a way of connecting themselves to their past and their ancestors who left the buried remains as a type of gift to their descendants. The article is also critical of the mainstream archaeologists, who, according to the author, hide behind the veil of scientific objectivity. Finally, the author juxtaposes the varying competing interests, particularly against the backdrop of denial of basic human and economic rights in these regions, and poses the question, to whom should these cultural remains belong?

Meat and Strength: The Moral Economy of a Chilean Food Riot

Abstract: The policies of a Latin American government drive food prices up; unions and neighborhood associations in the capital city organize a demonstration; the government caIls in the army; many people are killed; an uneasy truce prevails. As area specialists and indeed most newspaper readers and television watchers know, such sequences of events arc common in recent Latin American history. Such events seem familiar. not only because they appear regularly in journal articles, in books, in headlines, and on the evening news, but also because they can be easily fitted into plausible narrative frames. The actors (desperately poor masses, unresponsive governing elites) are well known, and they are engaged in a common sort of conflict (debates in public arenas over economic policies). The opening event in the narrative, a sudden rise in food prices, can be understood as one of the natural vicissitudes of an underdeveloped economy. Most readers, accustomed to hearing of such occurrences, would not be likely to question the direct links from the first event to the second. the public expression of political discontent, and then to the third, the repression by the government. This article examines one such set of events, which took place in Santiago, Chile in 1905, and compares it to food riots in other parts of the world. The analysis draws both on ways in which these events resemble other food riots and on ways in which they differ from them. The claims of the urban poor in this instance to have a right to subsistence and the rejection of these claims by elites are familiar to students of food riots in other parts of the world. The linkages among the three events in Chile in 1905, though. are less typical. for three reasons. First. the rise in food prices is a puzzling trigger of the riot, since the policy that caused the prices to increase took place years before the demonstrations and repression. Second, the foodstuff that was in dispute was not a common grain such as wheat or rice that provides the bulk of subsistence and whose price and availability form the key issues in most food riots, but meat, a luxury item that formed a small portion of the diet of much of the population of Chile at the time. Finally.the link between the protest demonstration and the repression is complex rather than simple. since the demonstration itself went through several peaceful stages before violence broke out. This sequence of stages is of particular interest because it suggests that the participants were concerned not only with assuring their access to certain foods but also with maintaining certain ritualized forms of public behavior.

The challenge of deforestation in tropical Africa: reflections on its principal causes, consequences and solutions

Abstract: Economic development is dependant on factors including capital, labour force and natural resources. Forests are natural resources which, if properly managed, can provide habitats for animal and plant species, pasture for livestock, wood for shelter, timber and fuelwood, land for agriculture and can have a favourable effect on weather and climatic patterns. Nevertheless, deforestation has been a widespread phenomenon in tropical Africa, with an annual forest clearance of between 1·3–3·7 million ha. This paper reviews the pattern of deforestation in tropical Africa by examining its causes and consequences, as well as assessing the prospects for the attempts being made to control it. It identifies forest clearance for subsistence farming as the principal determinant of deforestation, but does not consider the ignorance of small-scale farmers as the underlying cause. Given the deteriorating agricultural production, the paper argues that the principal issue is not how to stop forest depletion, but how to manage forest resources to enable the community meets its objectives on an effective, fair and efficient basis. An approach which releases part of the rural population from the land or provides an alternative form of a secure livelihood is an example of the sustainable strategies for managing forests. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Smallholders in the Maya Lowlands: Homage to a Garden Variety Ethnographer

Abstract: Ancient Maya subsistence practices and their relation to the rise and decline of Maya civilization have long been the subject of archaeological debate. Traditionally Mayanists correlate subsistence strategy with political economy, positing that a change in one must correspond to a change in the other. Since smallholders, as defined by Netting, can exist within a variety of political and economic systems, their ubiquity in the Maya Lowlands may explain why household studies often fail to detect political or economic change at a macro level. The absence of smallholders, however, may correlate with the depopulation of many Maya cities at the end of the ninth century.

The colonial encapsulation of the north- western namibian pastoral economy

Abstract: The inhabitants of Kaokoland, Himba and Hereto, have recently gained prominence in the discussions concerning a controversial hydro-electric power scheme in their region. They are depicted as southern Africa's `most traditional pastoralists' by groups opposing the dam and those demanding it. The article describes how Kaokoland's pastoralists suffered tremendously from the politics of encapsulation the South African government adopted against them. Having been enmeshed in interregional trade networks, commodity production and wage labour around 1900, they were isolated by the South African government within a period of twenty years. Buffer zones for the commercial ranching area and prohibitions on movement across other newly invented boundaries limited their spatial mobility. Trade across borders was inhibited altogether. Pastoralists who had diversified their assets during the previous fifty years and had taken the chance of a first wave of commercial penetration were forced back on to subsistence herding. We have difficulty. We cry. We are imprisoned. We do not know why we are locked up. We are in gaol.... The borders are closed. The borders press us heavily. We cannot live. We are in a kraal.(1) Glorified by Namibia's booming tourism industry, the Himba of northwestern Namibia (Kunene Province, but still mainly known as Kaokoland) are cherished as the last remnants of the `old Africa'. Photographs depicting them as a traditional pastoral people anointed with red ochre and wearing leather garments decorate Windhoek's shops and major tourism magazines. The heated debate over a huge hydro-electric scheme on the Kunene, right within the area the Himba live in, has made Kaokoland one of the most highlighted corners of rural southern Africa. Television stations have taken up the issue, and minority rights groups are protesting at the death of yet another indigenous culture and the destruction of a scenic, allegedly untouched, landscape. At the same time the Namibian government sees the dam as a unique chance for the local population to develop. Although prodam and anti-dam campaigners disagree on many points, they are united in describing the Himba as an isolated group of herders who have clung to ancient lifeways, untouched by modern commodity exchange and cut off from the vicissitudes of the global system. Remoteness, isolation, subsistence herding detached from the economic transformations brought about by colonialism are stereotypes that most African herder societies are confronted with. They are deemed to live in bounded self-sufficient communities, to accumulate livestock beyond economic rationality and at the cost of a fragile environment (the infamous `cattle complex') and to derail any form of development with their pronounced conservatism (cf. Bonte and Galaty 1991:3-4 for a comprehensive critique of such conceptions). Waller and Sobania (1994: 45), however, argue that `much of the debate over pastoralism and its development in modern Africa unfortunately takes place in the virtual absence of any historical context...'. While their ideas are developed on the basis of case studies from East Africa, the same misconceptions are continually applied to herding societies in southern Africa. Current economic formations found in northern Namibia are not to be understood as mere adaptations to an arid environment.(2) They are profoundly shaped by a century of colonialism: boundaries restricted their spatial mobility, a prohibition on livestock trading forced them into subsistence herding and the forced internal relocation of large numbers of people led to environmental degradation. Recent economic and environmental problems within the pastoral economy of north-western Namibia are in many ways similar to those other African pastoral economies have to cope with (cf. Shipton, 1990; Ensminger, 1992; Galaty and Johnson, 1990; Galaty and Bonte, 1991). In Namibia's national economy Kaokoland's herders play only a marginal role. …

Agriculture and monopoly capital

Abstract: Native Americans and the European settlers who subsequently occupied the territory of the United States developed an agricultural and food production system that was largely self-sufficient. Most families produced, processed, and consumed their own food. Families made many of the tools and produced most of the seed they needed, and raised their own animal power. Few items were purchased for food production and processing, but there was very little surplus food or fiber to sell. The family controlled its food system from seed to plate—the ultimate integrated food system. The purpose of colonies, however, was to send raw materials including food and fiber products back to the mother country. The industrial revolution and the development of industrial cities, first in England and then in the United States, required that farmers produce a larger and larger surplus of food for the growing urban market. Government policy encouraged farmers to produce an ever greater excess of food and fiber and to do so with less and less labor. Thus agriculture evolved from a subsistence agriculture to a commercial agriculture in which the role of the farm family was to produce for the market. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Agriculture and Monopoly Capital

Abstract: Native Americans and the European settlers who subsequently occupied the territory of the United States developed an agricultural and food production system that was largely self-sufficient. Most families produced, processed, and consumed their own food. Families made many of the tools and produced most of the seed they needed, and raised their own animal power. Few items were purchased for food production and processing, but there was very little surplus food or fiber to sell. The family controlled its food system from seed to plate—the ultimate integrated food system. The purpose of colonies, however, was to send raw materials including food and fiber products back to the mother country. The industrial revolution and the development of industrial cities, first in England and then in the United States, required that farmers produce a larger and larger surplus of food for the growing urban market. Government policy encouraged farmers to produce an ever greater excess of food and fiber and to do so with less and less labor. Thus agriculture evolved from a subsistence agriculture to a commercial agriculture in which the role of the farm family was to produce for the market. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Managing bushmeat hunting in Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract: Projected rates of agricultural clearing in the Ituri Forest of north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo range from 0 to 0.1 per cent per year and suggest that deforestation for subsistence agriculture is not an immediate threat to the integrity of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve (OWR). If the human population continues to grow at over 3 per cent per annum, and bushmeat continues to be a major source of income for rural communities, subsistence-level exploitation of bushmeat may, however, not be sustainable. This paper proposes management approaches that address the demand for and supply of bushmeat, which are targeted at those political districts within the OWR where hunting is the greatest threat to populations of bushmeat species. These management approaches are designed to help conserve the Ituri's natural resources without compromising the health and income security of rural communities.

Lifestyle options and economic strategies: Subsistence activities in the Mississippi Delta

Abstract: Subsistence and informal economy are contrasted in their utility as sociological concepts and their ability to explain a variety of activities in two rural Mississippi Delta communities. Literature on subsistence stresses that the desired outcome of participation is not an increase in income but the social rewards of participation itself. Two underlying dimensions of participation in these activities are documented through the literature and through a confirmatory factor analysis of empirical data: life-style choice and economic strategy. These were constructed into indexes and examined individually and in combination as dependent variables using regressors at the community, household, and individual levels. Community ties were weakly associated with participation in such activities. White people and those with higher incomes participated more in lifestyle choice oriented activities. Participation in general was statistically related to households needing less weekly income and being of larger size. Potential connections with persistent rural poverty are discussed.

Plant genomics: More than food for thought

Abstract: In all but the poorest countries of South Asia and Africa, the supply and quality of food will rise to meet the demand. Biotechnology, accelerated by genomics, will create wealth for both producers and consumers by reducing the cost and increasing the quality of food. Famine and malnutrition in the poorest countries may be alleviated by applying genomics or other tools of biotechnology to improving subsistence crops. The role of the public sector and the impact of patent law both could be great, but government policies on these issues are still unclear.

Modeling Agricultural Production Strategies in the Northern Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico

Abstract: Diversification in agricultural techniques is a common strategy of risk minimization in nonindustrial societies. However, attribution of suboptimal behavior to risk minimization without consideration of the structure of risk and its environmental context obscures the complexity of agricultural decision-making. The productive potential of a prehistoric agricultural system that includes floodwater and dry farming and stream irrigation is modeled using Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis to evaluate whether diversification occurred as a response to population pressure or as a risk buffering strategy. The estimated productive potential of floodwater and irrigation farming is sufficient to have supported the estimated local population, suggesting that risk buffering is a more likely explanation. Floodwater farming and stream irrigation form a dual strategy that is effective at reducing risk. However, the potential of dry farming for subsistence production is insufficient for buffering more than a 2% productive shortfall. We propose that, within this generally risk-averse economy, dry farming was oriented toward the production of nonsubsistence crops such as cotton.

Growing Oca, Ulluco, and Mashua in the Andes: Socioeconomic differences in cropping practices

Abstract: Farmers in Andean communities depend on complex farming systems that combine native and introduced crops, production for subsistence, and production for the market. Home to the well-known potato, the Andean region is also the native place of hundreds of lesser known varieties of tubers such as oca, ulluco, and mashua. Using data from interviews and field observation in the Peruvian community of Picol, we describe the economic and social relevance of these tuber crops in the context of the local farming system. A cross-case comparison of households is used to examine the relationship between socioeconomic status and the allocation of family resources. We also explore how different agricultural practices relate to the biodiversity of indigenous tuber crops.

Prices,local measurement units and subsistence consumption in rural surveys: an econometric approach with an application to Ethiopia

Abstract: For many research problems in developing countries, some information on prices faced by households is required for the analysis, but these prices are not readily available from household surveys, nor is it straightforward to observe them, especially if subsistence consumption is a substantial part of consumption. Furthermore, quantities consumed and produced are often in local units presenting further problems for the analysis. Building on Deaton’s (1987) seminal work, we provide an econometric approach to estimate prices and quantity conversion factors from household expenditure data.. We use panel data from rural Ethiopia to illustrate the approach and to investigate the potential quality bias in the estimation of the prices. In an application we show that the conclusions about poverty changes over time are significantly affected by using less appropriate strategies to convert local units and to value subsistence consumption.