Subsistence agriculture

About: Subsistence agriculture is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8069 publications have been published within this topic receiving 156876 citations. The topic is also known as: subsistence farming.

Living with transition in Laos : market integration in Southeast Asia.

Abstract: 1. Managing and Coping with Transition Part 1: Setting the Context 2. New Poverty and Old Poverty: Livelihoods and Transition in Laos 3. Subsistence Affluence or Subsistence Struggle? Unpicking tradition and Illuminating the Past 4. Poverty, Inequality and Exclusion Part 2: Constructing the Argument 5. The Best of Intentions: Policy-Induced Poverty 6. Market-Induced Poverty: Market Integration and Social Differentiation 7. Making Livelihoods Work Part 3: Putting It Together 8. Summarising the Case Bibliography Appendices

Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: evidence from the bioarchaeological record

Abstract: The population explosion that followed the Neolithic revolution was initially explained by improved health experiences for agriculturalists. However, empirical studies of societies shifting subsistence from foraging to primary food production have found evidence for deteriorating health from an increase in infectious and dental disease and a rise in nutritional deficiencies. In Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (Cohen and Armelagos, 1984), this trend towards declining health was observed for 19 of 21 societies undergoing the agricultural transformation. The counterintuitive increase in nutritional diseases resulted from seasonal hunger, reliance on single crops deficient in essential nutrients, crop blights, social inequalities, and trade. In this study, we examined the evidence of stature reduction in studies since 1984 to evaluate if the trend towards decreased health after agricultural transitions remains. The trend towards a decrease in adult height and a general reduction of overall health during times of subsistence change remains valid, with the majority of studies finding stature to decline as the reliance on agriculture increased. The impact of agriculture, accompanied by increasing population density and a rise in infectious disease, was observed to decrease stature in populations from across the entire globe and regardless of the temporal period during which agriculture was adopted, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and North America.

Socioeconomic obstacles to HIV prevention and treatment in developing countries: the roles of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Abstract: This paper explores the socioeconomic obstacles to HIV prevention and treatment in developing countries. The opening sections explain the historical origins of structural adjustment programs and their characteristics. Structural adjustment programs undermine the social fabric of many developing countries and potentially promote behaviors which place people at increased risk of HIV infection. The authors discuss the declining sustainability of the rural subsistence economy development of a transportation infrastructure migration and urbanization and reductions in spending on health and social services. Social and economic interventions are needed to stem the spread of HIV and care for those who are already infected. While a substantial amount of biomedical research has been conducted socioeconomic aspects of the AIDS epidemic have often been ignored. For HIV transmission in developing countries to be substantially reduced economic policies which may have promoted the spread of disease must be modified. An alternative development strategy consists of satisfying peoples basic human needs shifting from an export-driven economy to diversified agricultural production in the interest of securing regional self-sufficiency supporting marginal producers and subsistence farmers and placing greater emphasis upon human resource development in developing countries. Moreover the IMF and World Bank need to change their policy to one which is truly about cooperative development while the charters of the IMF and World Bank need to be altered to permit the cancellation or rescheduling of debt. These institutions should also play a leading role in the restructuring of debt owed to private lenders.

Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces: Consumption and Entrepreneurship beyond Literacy and Resource Barriers

Abstract: In August 2006, 85 academicians and practitioners from industry and the nonprofit sector came together on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago for a conference unlike others in recent management research history. This conference focused on the subsistence marketplace and its constituents – the billions of individuals and families living in substandard housing, with limited or no education; having limited or no access to sanitation, potable water, and health care; and earning minimal incomes. Subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs have been largely ignored by contemporary marketing and management research and practice, but are poised to become a driving force in 21st century economic and business development. It is expected that as many as 1 billion new consumers wielding discretionary income will enter global markets before 2020. In addition, even among those consumers who lack discretionary income, it is expected that they will be much more active in the marketplace in the near future, because of expanded access to products and information through the Internet and wireless technologies (Davis & Stephenson, 2006). Moreover, the combined purchasing power of these consumers, already in the trillions of dollars, is likely to grow at higher rates than that of consumers in industrialized economies. These factors come together to suggest that consumer markets will need to adjust radically to the needs and demands of these emerging markets over the next 2 to 3 decades, even though companies and scholars across the business disciplines know very little about subsistence consumers. It was this need for knowledge about subsistence marketplaces that inspired the conference and the research presented here.