Topic
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.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
••
118 citations
01 Jan 1981
TL;DR: In the Plan Chontalpa in Tabasco, Mexico, a nutrition survey of 149 families demonstrated that dietary diversity, dietary quality, and nutritional status of preschool children are negatively associated with lower crop diversity and increased dependence on purchased foods as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Recent changes in the area of the Plan Chontalpa in Tabasco have greatly reduced the production of subsistence crops by rural families, resulting in decreased crop diversity and a concomitant increase in the degree of dependence on outside sources of food. Results from a nutrition survey of 149 families demonstrate that dietary diversity, dietary quality, and nutritional status of preschool children are negatively associated with lower crop diversity and increased dependence on purchased foods. Dietary deterioration is illustrated by the negative relationship found between nutritional status and increased sugar consumption. The assumption that a rise in income accompanying the adoption of commercial production will automatically lead to improved nutrition is challenged: income levels were not found to be consistently related to nutritional status. Children of families that have converted to cattle production, despite greater land availability and family incomes, do not have improved nutritional status. In the study area, where wages are low andfood prices are very high, the value of a higher degree of self-sufficiency in food is recognized, yet families continue to switch to cash crops due to the environmental, economic, and time constraints imposed by the system of commercial agriculture in which they participate. The solution is not to return to traditional subsistence farming, however, but to determine under what conditions a more progressive form of agricultural change can occur.
118 citations
••
TL;DR: The results show that teaching does indeed exist in hunter-gatherer societies, and support predictive models that find social learning should occur before individual learning.
Abstract: Hunting and gathering is, evolutionarily, the defining subsistence strategy of our species. Studying how children learn foraging skills can, therefore, provide us with key data to test theories about the evolution of human life history, cognition, and social behavior. Modern foragers, with their vast cultural and environmental diversity, have mostly been studied individually. However, cross-cultural studies allow us to extrapolate forager-wide trends in how, when, and from whom hunter-gatherer children learn their subsistence skills. We perform a meta-ethnography, which allows us to systematically extract, summarize, and compare both quantitative and qualitative literature. We found 58 publications focusing on learning subsistence skills. Learning begins early in infancy, when parents take children on foraging expeditions and give them toy versions of tools. In early and middle childhood, children transition into the multi-age playgroup, where they learn skills through play, observation, and participation. By the end of middle childhood, most children are proficient food collectors. However, it is not until adolescence that adults (not necessarily parents) begin directly teaching children complex skills such as hunting and complex tool manufacture. Adolescents seek to learn innovations from adults, but they themselves do not innovate. These findings support predictive models that find social learning should occur before individual learning. Furthermore, these results show that teaching does indeed exist in hunter-gatherer societies. And, finally, though children are competent foragers by late childhood, learning to extract more complex resources, such as hunting large game, takes a lifetime.
118 citations
••
TL;DR: For a substantial proportion of the population in impoverished nations, physical activity is more or less essential to earning a livelihood, rather than being just another activity aimed toward better health.
Abstract: For a substantial proportion of the population in impoverished nations, physical activity is more or less essential to earning a livelihood, rather than being just another activity aimed toward better health. To make ends meet, a subsistence farmer or manual labourer must start early in the morning
117 citations
••
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how settlers are responding to demographic and socio-economic change in an environment in which opportunities for land-use change are limited, and they conclude that economic diversification amongst smallholders creates new opportunities for the oil palm industry to formulate more innovative and sustainable policies that strengthen the palm industry in PNG while facilitating broad-based rural development.
117 citations