Pesticide-related Food Safety Risks: Farmers’ Self-protective Behavior and Food Safety Social Co-governance

This article investigates the sources of vegetables consumed by farmers, their perception of pesticide-related food safety risks and the behaviors they engage in to protect themselves, and explores the implications for the social co-governance (shehui gongzhi) of food safety emphasized by China’s recent Food Safety Law. The research site is a county in Yunnan Province where vegetable growing is the major source of income and livelihood for local farmers. We surveyed 417 farmers and collected 776 vegetable samples from 377 surveyed farmer households and tested them for organophosphate and carbamate pesticide residues using PR-12N Rapid Detection Instrument for Pesticide Residues. The results showed that farmers know about the risks to food safety caused by pesticides used in vegetable growing and they purposely avoid these risks by mainly consuming vegetables planted in home gardens or private plots that use little or no pesticides. Vegetable samples from these private plots had the lowest positive rate of pesticide residues (6.10%), compared with vegetable samples from commercial farmland (13.73%) and markets (12.66%), and the difference was statistically significant (X²=9.69,0.005相似文献   

The adoption of a local food concept in post-communist context: Farm shops in Czechia

The article examines an alternative food network evolution in the post-communist context in Czechia in general and farm shop developments in particular. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with farm shopkeepers operating in Czechia. The results revealed that the development of the farm shop network was significantly shaped by the communist past of the country. While consumers’ demand for quality food contributed to the initiation of developments in local food movements such as farm shops in Czechia, the inconvenient structure of the farming sector, comprising a limited number of small-scale farmers, hindered the development. Although the farm shops usually operate as middlemen by reselling goods produced by a range of farmers, farm shopkeepers expressed significant awareness of the sustainability principles of the local food concept and dissociated themselves from unethical practices of large retailers. Nevertheless, the author finds that the local concept is used in a flexible manner to meet customers’ demands. Despite obstacles faced by farmers when developing their own farm shops, there is significant potential in ‘Czech-type’ farm shops operating solely as retailers. However, the author concludes that the threat of the diversion from the sustainability principles of the local food concept should not be neglected.     

Female Farmers in Canada, 1971–1986*

The discussion of agricultural restructuring has often failed to include farm women, particularly those who own and operate their own enterprises. Accordingly, this research presents an overview of Canadian female farm operators, who are a growing component of the farm operator population. Using previously untabulated data from the 1971, 1981, and 1986 censuses of agriculture and population, the study draws comparisons to male farmers in Canada and female farmers in the United States. The census data show that the socioeconomic and farming profile of Canadian female farmers differs from that of their male colleagues, and that the differences in certain key characteristics (such as farm size, sales, and commodity type) are becoming more noticeable over time. This raises questions about whether female operators are in danger of becoming marginalized from mainstream production, and whether their needs as a minority group among agricultural producers are being recognized.     

Queer Farmland: Land Access Strategies for Small-Scale Agriculture

Farmers struggle to afford farmland because competing land uses raise prices higher than what farmers earn, especially in small-scale and sustainable agriculture. Farmers often depend on an intimate partner’s income or labor to access land, yet few studies investigate sexual relationships in farmland access. I interrogate how sexuality shapes land access for small-scale agriculture through participant observation and interviews with 25 queer farmers in New England. I find that queer farmers’ sexual identities and relationships influence where they farm, who they live and work with, how they afford the land, and how they learn to farm. I argue that finding land, labor, credit, and knowledge are intertwined, heteronormative processes of capital accumulation shaped by racism and sexism. Queer farmers’ experiences navigating heteronormativity suggest the relevance of sexuality to land conservation and food justice, limits of organizing land access through sexual relationships, and alternatives to the “family farm.”     

Aquaculture and the Postproductive Transition on the Maine Coast

Aquaculture is the global food system's fastest growing sector. The postproductive transition—the shift away from commodity production toward more consumption‐oriented land uses—is common in many coastal areas as well. This paper examines the intersection of these trends in a U.S. state, Maine, with expanding aquaculture and extensive coastal, rural economic and demographic change. It examines interactions between coastal landowners and aquaculture farmers at aquaculture lease hearings in the state's three main aquaculture regions. Landowners are often uncertain about aquaculture because it is new and unfamiliar. Farmers use lease hearings to educate coastal landowners about farm operations, and farmers respond to concerns by altering their operations to fit landowners’ priorities. However, comparative analysis of the three regions reveals divergent histories and geographies leading to different levels of conflict. This study shows the value of applying rural postproductive transition theory to coastal regions and aquaculture development.     

Can we sustain sustainable agriculture? Learning from small-scale producer-suppliers in Canada and the UK

There has been particular interest in 'alternative' food over the last 10 years, with many policymakers and researchers throughout the Minority World following a growing number of consumers and producers in supporting organic farming and a host of 'alternative' food networks. To date, there has been a tendency for theory and policy to emerge somewhat divorced from the grounded practices and experiences of producer-suppliers themselves within these networks. Urging a shift from 'alternativity' to 'sustainability' as a more critical and valuable tool to analyse food networks, this paper draws upon in-depth ethnographic research with small-scale producer-supplier case studies in south Wales and southern Ontario. In so doing it explores often overlooked voices and stories within sustainable food discourses. Focusing on the value of farmer-led understandings and responses, the paper highlights important implications for policymakers and consumers and outlines future research on sustainable food networks.     

Empowering Freetown’s women farmers

In Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone, rapid urbanisation combined with the lingering impacts of the devastating decade long civil war (1991–2002), has left large portions of the population without reliable work or income. One response to this has been an increase in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) which provides participants with employment, income and food security. According to local government estimates, women comprise around 80% of Freetown’s UPA community, and many women rely totally on UPA as a livelihood strategy to feed and support their households. This article focuses on the experiences of these women farmers, and in doing so sheds new light on their vital contribution to Freetown’s growing UPA community who are not thus far represented in published literature. Globally, women are also underrepresented in UPA literature, and as a result their distinct challenges are not well understood. Reporting on field-based research, this article identifies challenges facing Freetown’s women farmers, including land tenure, access to clean water, limited capital for purchasing tools, fertilisers, and pesticides, and difficult relationships with government, NGOs, and other farmers. The manner in which these challenges manifest themselves in relation to women farmers, as distinct from their male counterparts, are identified, and opportunities for Freetown’s UPA community to support and empower women farmers will be highlighted.     

Coping with land scarcity. Farmers' changing land-use and management practices in two mountain watersheds of Nepal

In this study some light is shed on farmers' changing land-use and management practices in two mountain watersheds located in the Western Hills of Nepal. The study is based on a survey of 300 households, group discussion, interviews of key informants, and field observation in project and non-project watersheds conducted from April to September 1999. Confronted with shrinking landholding size, owing to a steadily growing population and scarcity of non-farming employment opportunities, farmers in both watersheds have gradually intensified land use and cultivated new crops to increase farm production and income. They are shifting from cereal crops to livestock husbandry, particularly along the road in the project watershed, and to vegetables and other cash crops in the accessible foothills of the non-project watershed. They have also adopted various structural and biological measures to control soil erosion, landslides, gully expansion and soil nutrient loss in order to maintain or enhance land productivity. The degree of adoption of the structural and biological measures is higher in the project watershed than in the non-project watershed. Contrary to the traditionally held belief of some researchers, population pressure on a finite land resource has brought about positive changes in land-use and management practices. Farmers have innovated and adopted different land management technologies to increase farm production as they are exposed to the risk of food insecurity because of shrinking landholding size and land degradation.     

Resource management and agriculture in the periurban interface of Kumasi,Ghana: Problems and prospects

This paper outlines pressures on agricultural land in periurban Kumasi, Ghana. A survey of agricultural practices underlines the recent and rapid transition from agricultural to urban land use in the periurban interface, and shows how farmers are reacting by reducing fallow periods. Farmers are also intensifying agriculture near streams and rivers through increased use of irrigation, in response to growing urban markets for a wider range of vegetables. We identify specific problems of water resource pollution and waste management, with particular reference to farmland irrigation. We report results of composting interventions as a community‐based waste management strategy. We consider integrated organic waste recycling as a generic strategy to help protect periurban natural resources, to enhance food production through nutrient recycling, and to improve community sanitation.     

Capitalising the farm family entrepreneur: negotiating private equity partnerships in Australia

ABSTRACT

Research on the financialisation of land and agribusiness has highlighted major shifts in agri-food systems globally. Yet these accounts tend to focus on the activities of financial actors, and few take seriously the role of farmers in negotiating investments in land and agribusiness. Farmers in the global North may be well placed to benefit from partnerships with financial investors, although little is known about the way that such partnerships are formed. Australian studies of farmer agency have been productive in examining farm family entrepreneurs and globally engaged farmers who work beyond the farm gate to organise supply chains. This paper adds to these studies by providing insights about a capitalising farm family entrepreneur, who successfully negotiated and entered into a direct equity partnership with a large foreign pension fund. Several observations are significant: the exceptional skill, time and expense required to negotiate these partnerships; the role of consultants and non-human actors in structuring them; and the spatially- and temporally divergent farm development practices that are enabled by a shift from debt to equity financing. These observations are indicative of a new adaptive strategy of family farmers to shifting financial landscapes and of emergent family, corporate, and financial farm hybridity.     

A level playing field? Improving market availability and access for small scale producers in Johannesburg,South Africa

Rapid urbanisation has resulted in an increase in urban poverty in the developing world. In response, some governments in developing nations are increasingly considering urban agriculture to combat poverty. However, understandings of formal intervention to link small scale urban food producers to urban markets are still limited. This paper will present findings from a tentative study of the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market; a farmers' market located in Johannesburg, Gauteng province, South Africa. Results from a survey of urban farmers suggest that a free market economy may not provide equal benefit between large and small scale urban producers. Key findings reveal that beneficial relationships and risk-sharing mechanisms are key for urban producers to access this urban market.     

Impacts of Land Fragmentation and Cropping System on the Productivity and Efficiency of Grain Producers in the North China Plain: Taking Cangxian County of Hebei Province as an Example

Land fragmentation is widely known to have an impact on farm performance. However, previous studies investigating this impact mainly focused on a single crop, and only limited data from China are available. This study considers multiple crops to identify the impact of land fragmentation (LF), as well as cropping system (CS), on farm productivity and the efficiency of grain producers in the North China Plain (NCP), using Cangxian County of Hebei Province as an example. Detailed household- and plot-level survey data are applied and four stochastic frontier and inefficiency models are developed. These models include different sets of key variables in either the production function or the inefficiency models, in order to investigate all possibilities of their influences on farm productivity and efficiency. The results show that LF plays a significant and detrimental role, affecting both productivity and efficiency. A positive effect is evident with respect to the CS variable, i.e., multiple cropping index (MCI), and the wheat-maize double CS, rather than the maize single CS, is usually associated with higher farm productivity and efficiency. In addition to LF and CS, four basic production input variables (labor, seed, pesticide and irrigation), also significantly affect farmers’ productivity, while the age of the household head and the ratio of the off-farm labor to total labor are significantly relevant to technical inefficiency. Policies geared toward the promotion of land transfer and the rational adjustment of cropping systems are recommended for boosting farm productivity and efficiency, and thus maintaining the food supply while mitigating the overexploitation of groundwater in the NCP.     

CHALLENGES TO FAMILY FARMING IN CHINA*

ABSTRACT. China's agricultural sector requires reforms to assure farmers and consumers of fair prices while protecting the environment and permitting sustainable growth in the coming years. The affluent eastern province of Jiangsu is an appropriate site in which to explore the effects of agricultural reforms on rural households and, in turn, the effects of these households on the environment. We compare two surveys (1987 and 1996), of 100 households each, of farmers in Huaiyin and Huai'an Counties, Jiangsu Province. Indicated are chronically low economic returns on grain, moderate returns for livestock, and the highest returns for vegetables. Unfortunately, the production of livestock and vegetables requires more farm chemicals, inorganic fertilizers, and placement of field plastic‐all of which are associated with greater environmental problems.     

Social agency and networked spatial relations in sustainable agriculture

Agriculture in the USA is in social and economic crisis, but sustainable agriculture is gaining unprecedented popularity among producers and consumers. This article examines the agency articulated by farmers and activists in the sustainable agriculture community in Pennsylvania to exploit ruptures in the conventional food system and develop new forms of food provisioning in local economies. Actor-network theory offers roads out of structure/agency dialectics and proposes new possibilities for understanding structure as a network, and agency as the outcome of networking. The research shows agency to be an outcome of collectivities, but is also contingent on leadership, partially distributed throughout the network and not necessarily emancipatory for all enrolled actors.     

A Comparison of Awareness,Attitudes, and Usage of Water Quality Conservation Practices Between Amish and Non-Amish Farmers

This study provides a unique examination of Amish farmers’ awareness of water quality issues and their attitudes toward and use of agricultural conservation practices compared with small non-Amish farmers in Northeastern Indiana. There is minimal research about the conservation beliefs and behaviors of this growing and highly diverse ethnoreligious minority, who have faith-based technological restrictions and are often hesitant to work with community outsiders, especially the government. We find that, compared with non-Amish farmers, Amish farmers have limited awareness of the linkages between common agricultural practices and broader water quality problems and lower levels of adoption of conservation practices, with the exception of cover crops. This information is essential for conservation practitioners who need to work with a diverse range of agricultural producers to increase the uptake of conservation practices that address critical water quality concerns.     

Staging the Local: rethinking scale in farmers' markets

Local food has become a significant focus of food studies analysis in recent years with much of this work identifying the potential environmental, social and economic benefits of food localisation. However, a growing body of literature destabilises these assumed benefits with research now questioning the utility of scale in assessing food system outcomes. This paper explores this destabilisation by examining how concepts associated with the ‘local’ have been deployed by the Capital Region Farmers Market (CRFM) in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). This leads to two key conclusions: firstly, the practical case study confirms theoretical insights highlighting the instability of the local, identifying how it is animated in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways often in response to conventional market forces; and secondly, we argue that the role of farmers' markets may not be best understood through the lens of the local but, rather, through their role in facilitating citizen engagement with the food system via the direct consumer–producer relationship at markets and the characteristics of the food purchased there (i.e. freshness and quality). In these ways, farmers' markets can disrupt conventional forms of engagement with the food system, creating a space that enhances social embeddedness and which may promote new forms of consumer understanding of food systems.     

Converting to organic agriculture—Danish farmers' views and motivations

Expanded organic food production has been an issue of public debate in Denmark since its promotion by two government-sponsored plans. Yet the number of organic farms, constituting 5% of alt Danish farms, is still small. Farmers' attitudes and motivations around converting their farms to organic agriculture were surveyed in the counties of Ribe and Vestsj?lland in order to assess the feasibility of expansion. New organic farmers come either from the ranks of conventional farmers or from ‘beginners’ who initiate organic agriculture from the start. Only 7% of conventional farmers plan to convert their farms by the year 2003, but beginners will have increasing importance and augment the number. Farmers most frequently mentioned consideration for the environment as a reason for conversion. A considerable expansion of organic agriculture will be difficult, due to an insufficient number of farmers interested in organic agriculture. A high number of less productive hobby or spare-time farmers among new organic farmers also hinders expanded organic food production. Organic agriculture shows parallels to conventional agriculture, with a surplus of very small and very large farms, regional specialisation, and oil-farm specialisation.     

Rebuilding the Brazilian rainforest: Agroforestry strategies for secondary forest succession

Does the adoption of agroforestry by small farmers in the Brazilian Amazon promote secondary forest succession on the degraded pastures and crop fields? New results from a small-scale farm agroforestry demonstration project, the Rondônia Agroforestry Pilot Project (RAPP) that began in 1992 are presented in this paper. In 1992, 242 farmers were surveyed by a stratified random sampling protocol, 50 of whom were selected to participate in the RAPP, constituting its experimental group. The remaining 191 farmers served as a control group. Farmers from both groups were re-surveyed in 2002 (after 10 years) and again in 2010 (after 18 years). Annual site visits to the experimental group farms were conducted from 1993 through 2003 to monitor agroforest plot development and management, and changes in pertinent socio-economic and household demographic characteristics such as household capacity, production systems, and social participation. Differences in property size, number of people permanently residing on the property, and social participation were found between the experimental and control group, with the experimental group having larger properties, more residents, and more participation in mutual aid associations. Control group farmers were also more reliant on cattle production (based on 2009 sales) despite having similar amounts of pasture as farmers in the experimental group. Within the experimental group, very few differences were found between farmers based on the type of agroforestry plot: timber, mixed or non-timber. Remote sensing analyses reveal long-term (10 years+) spectral differences in terms of the similarity to primary forest of both the agroforestry plots and the entire properties of the farms in this study. Experimental group farmers with mixed or timber-based agroforestry plots allowed more secondary forest succession to occur in and around their plots than farmers with non-timber plots. Although, on average, farm properties have become less spectrally similar to primary forest since 1992, properties with agroforestry plots tend to have more secondary succession and/or primary forest on their land in 2011. Several example properties are shown to illustrate the tendency of farmers with agroforestry plots to allow more secondary forest succession to occur on their land.     

Markets, ethnicity and environment in a vulnerable landscape: the case of small-scale vegetable production on the Jos Plateau, Nigeria, 1991–2001

This paper explores changing socio-environmental interactions in the vegetable producing areas of the Jos Plateau over the decade 1991–2001. It considers the pressures of market forces and ethnic competition and the tensions which arise as interactions between the two are played out in a fragile physical, social and institutional environment. The region has seen a remarkable expansion in irrigated vegetable production, as dry season surveys in 1991 and 2001 attest. Local farmers appear extremely positive in their perceptions of change, pointing not only to expanded production, but also to other improvements, like growing percentages of children in school and improved transport. But behind this rosy view of change there are tensions and a series of unresolved questions which may soon have to be addressed. We examine the changing nature of socio-environmental interactions over the decade and ask whether and how current levels of production can be sustained in the context of a currently largely unregulated production system and growing competition for land. Given the important role of the Plateau as a source of temperate fruit and vegetables in West Africa, these questions have significance far beyond the Plateau region itself.