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.

Social structure, reasonable gain, and entrepreneurship in Africa

Abstract: In the context of desperate poverty, characterized by households at subsistence level that experience economic loss and social fracture, explanations for why individuals undertake entry into entrepreneurship are limited. We find that individuals rely on their social relationships to enable entrepreneurial activities that have the potential to create a reasonable income gain. In a sample of 1,049 households in rural Kenya, we test whether the disintegration of social structure attenuates entrepreneurial behavior. When coupled with factors such as income loss, gender of the household head, and access to communal resources, social structure plays a pivotal role in entrepreneurial action. We propose that the search for reasonable income gain is a key driver of entrepreneurial action at subsistence levels, thereby adding to behavioral explanations of entrepreneurship.

Wild Yams Revisited: Is Independence from Agriculture Possible for Rain Forest Hunter- Gatherers?

Abstract: The hypothesis that energy-rich wild plant foods are too scarce in rain forest to allow subsistence by foraging peoples independently of agriculture lacks a firm empirical basis Data on availability of wild plant foods such as wild yams are sorely lacking, and where quantitative information is provided to support the hypothesis, it usually concerns extent of use of wild plant foods: low availability is tacitly inferred from low use We explore the alternative hypothesis that “extent of use” underestimates availability of wild yams and other wild plant foods; these foods are present in large enough quantities to support hunter-gatherers, but have become increasingly neglected with increasing availability of cultivated plant foods Thus, the subsistence of contemporary rain forest foraging peoples, in which extensive relationships with sedentary farmers appear to be universal, may be a somewhat distorted reflection of their subsistence in the pre-agricultural past Drawing on data from ecology, archeology, ethnohistory, and linguistics, we argue that pygmy foraging peoples of the western Congo basin were present in rain forest environments before the advent of farming villagers

What happens to traditional knowledge and use of natural resources when people migrate

Abstract: The study investigates traditional knowledge of forest plants in a community (La Quetzal) inhabited by people who returned to Guatemala at the end of the civil war, after 10–12 years in exile in Southern Mexico, and now are in the process of constructing a new community in the Lacandon jungle in the Peten, Guatemala. We ask if the basis of knowledge and the use of natural resources change when people migrate. The relevance of vascular plant diversity for consumption and other daily needs of the population is explored. Relatively few species are presently used, with the exception of timber species, where knowledge seems to be increasing. Traditional knowledge has been maintained in certain areas such as medicine. Nature as such is regarded as important primarily as potential monetary capital and not for its subsistence capital. We find that the refugee situation has led to the introduction of global consumption patterns. Still there continues to be a dynamic local intuitive knowledge arising directly from practical experiences. Two interlinked factors have been the driving forces altering the knowledge and the use of natural resources by the people in La Quetzal: Change in the natural environment and change in the social and economic environment.

Wildlife farming: an alternative to unsustainable hunting and deforestation in Neotropical forests?

Abstract: Wild animals have been a source of food and income through subsistence hunting by forest-dwelling people in Neotropical countries in spite of the fact that hunting appears to be unsustainable as it leads to the depletion of wild fauna. Laws in Brazil and other Latin American countries forbid hunting but allow the commercial use of captive-bred animals. Notwithstanding the fact that this is a controversial topic among conservationists, in this paper we propose that wildlife farming in the Neotropics can be an alternative to the over-hunting and deforestation that are carried out for the production of traditional food and pastures for livestock. This review sets out this proposal, and discusses the implications for tropical forest integrity and rural population dependency on forest resources. We discuss the ecological and economical advantages of wildlife farming and its constraints as a conservation tool, using collared peccary (Pecari tajacu) farming in the Amazon region as a model. Productivity levels may reach 19,000 times higher than those obtained from the management of peccaries from forests in the Amazon region. This can be achieved with an easily obtainable diet composed of forest fruits and locally available agricultural by-products. Therefore, establishing captive management programs for peccaries is an effective way of avoiding wild stock depletion, deforestation, and guaranteeing the livelihood of forest dwellers in the Neotropics. However, it is essential that governmental and/or non-governmental agencies be involved in providing subsides to establish peccary farms, provide technical assistance, and introducing peccary captive breeding centers to supply founder stock.

On the Origins of Domestic Rye— Secale Cereale : the Finds from Aceramic Can Hasan III in Turkey

Abstract: Wheat, barley and peas, traditional grain-crops of the Western World are, by now, well known to have originated in the Near East. It was the cultivation of the wild ancestors of these crops, beginning soon after the end of the last European Ice Age, that eventually led to an utterly new way of life for most of the population of Europe and Western Asia, a new Neolithic culture based on food production and complete with appropriately adapted tool assemblages and relatively permanent living structures. Soon, from different parts of the Near East, this new pattern of subsistence based on wheats, barleys and pulse crops spread in all directions. One direction led up the Balkan Peninsula and into Central and, eventually, Northern Europe where the Near Eastern, Neolithic, cereal-pulse culture spawned temperate-adapted versions of just the same patterns of subsistence.Rye, however, has played no part in this story as told to date, this despite the fact that, as Europeans, we automatically associate rye with wheat and barley, the two other providers of our ‘daily bread’.