A GENDER-SENSITIVE URBAN FACTORIAL ECOLOGY MALE,FEMALE, GROUPED,AND GENDERED SOCIAL SPACES IN SASKATOON

Significant social, demographic, and economic changes related to gender have occurred within North American cities in the past generation. It is hypothesized that these changes may have led to the emergence of distinct male and female social spaces that have not been fully accommodated within the classical urban factorial ecologies. This paper compares and analyzes four gender-specific data bases (male-oriented, female-oriented, grouped, and gendered) through a series of four factorial ecologies for census tracts in the city of Saskatoon, Canada. It is discovered that, at an aggregate level of analysis, both male and female social spaces are similar when assessed in terms of the composition of the components, the saturation levels, the correlations between components, and the spatial distribution of the component scores. However, separation of gender into different data sets leads us to the conclusion that subtle gender-specific differences, formerly masked by classical factorial ecologies, are clarified by this gender-sensitive approach. These subtle distinctions also lead us to question the validity of the labels traditionally attached to the components in classical factorial ecologies     

TROUBLING FIELDS: THE OPIUM POPPY IN EGYPT

ABSTRACT. Probably domesticated in Asia Minor, the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) may have reached Egypt by 1500 b.c.e. Egyptian opium was important historically for medicinal uses, but increasing recreational use led to eradication efforts by the early twentieth century. With the closure of Lebanon's Bekáa Valley as a source of raw opium, poppy cultivation began in the Sinai Peninsula after 1990. Unemployment attracts bedouin men to this dangerous occupation. A heroin epidemic in Egypt is attributed to them, but their very modest opium production suggests wrongly so. A package of development activities with emphasis on backcountry tourism is proposed as an alternative to poppy farming.     

Taking Stock: Farmers' reflections on the deregulation of Australian dairying

On 1 July 2000 significant changes to the regulation of Australian dairying came into effect. These changes eliminated subsidies to milk producers and removed barriers to the inter-State trade of dairy products. Victoria's dairy industry group was a powerful proponent of deregulation, because of the comparative advantage that the State's farmers have in production relative to Australia's other milk producers. However, the deregulation of the dairy industry was contested stridently by many stakeholders, particularly farmers and their representative groups in States other than Victoria. Even within Victoria some farmers were equivocal and some were opposed to the regulatory changes. This paper draws on interviews with informants in the Victorian dairy sector to reveal responses to the regulatory changes. The interviews indicate that opinion was divided before deregulation and remains so. The debate was largely between those who saw the regulatory changes as 'inevitable', some of whom thought it would be a 'good thing' and others who accepted, grudgingly, that it was simply going to happen, and those who thought there had to be alternatives that would avoid the expected adverse consequences.     

NGO LANDSCAPES IN THE MAYA BIOSPHERE RESERVE,GUATEMALA*

ABSTRACT. Political dimensions of conservation abound. The biosphere-reserve model, however, depoliticizes the landscape by neglecting politics as a shaper of ecologies. To illustrate this process of depoliticization, I examine discourses about environmental degradation, power structures engaged in implementing conservation measures, and emerging landscapes in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Conservationist discourses hold migrant farmers responsible for deforestation and land degradation in the Petén, to the neglect of wider socioeconomic conditions that perpetuate poverty in Guatemala. Sociospatial consequences include misdirected projects and landscapes that reflect the goals of nongovernmental organizations, not local people's needs and aspirations.     

情感地理视角下脱贫村农户情感重构——以湖南省十八洞村为例

以湖南省花垣县十八洞村为案例地,以“留守”农户和“返乡”农户为研究对象,基于情感地理视角,通过深度访谈法和参与式观察法探究了精准扶贫政策影响下农户情感重构及其重构机制。结果表明：1）脱贫村农户情感重构主要包括归属感、幸福感、风险厌恶感、相对剥夺感和失落感5个维度的重构,这些维度相互影响、相互制约。2）精准扶贫政策的实施使得脱贫村农户地方归属感上升,幸福感增强,风险厌恶感下降。然而,扶贫力度的不均衡导致农户间的相对剥夺感增强,传统文化的消解和社会关系的重构等使得农户产生失落感。3）在脱贫村农户情感重构过程中,农户认知是核心力量,政府行动起主导作用,企业行动发挥辅助作用。政府和企业行动通过重构乡村地域系统的物质空间、经济空间和社会空间刺激乡村地域主体即农户认知转变,继而引发情感的重构。     

"Poppies are democracy!" A critical geopolitics of opium eradication and reintroduction in Turkey

Historical scholarship in traditional geopolitics often relied on documents authored by states and by other influential actors. Although much work in the subfield of critical geopolitics thus far has addressed imbalances constructed in official, academic, and popular media due to a privileging of such narratives, priority might also be given to unearthing and bringing to light alternative geopolitical perspectives from otherwise marginalized populations. Utilizing the early-1970s case of the United States' first “war on drugs,” this article examines the geopolitics of opium-poppy eradication and its consequences within Turkey. Employing not only archival and secondary sources but also oral histories from now-retired poppy farmers, this study examines the diffusion of U.S. antinarcotics policies into the Anatolian countryside and the enduring impressions that the United States and Turkish government created. In doing so, this research gives voice to those farmers targeted by eradication policies and speaks more broadly to matters of narcotics control, sentiments of anti-Americanism, and notions of democracy in Turkey and the region, past and present.     

Constraints to effective adoption of innovative livestock production technologies in the Rift Valley (Kenya)

We surveyed small-scale farmers in the Kenyan Rift Valley province (Narok and Nakuru districts) to describe constraints to, and changes in, livestock production and to assess the extent to which farmers have adopted new technologies promoted by extension services. In the arid areas of southern Narok, farmers' main constraints were drought and disease. Farmers in Nakuru district, situated in the fertile highlands of the Rift Valley, were also affected by disease but also lacked markets and capital. Although 83% of the farmers had regular contact with extension services that provided advice on new technologies and livestock production innovations, only about half of the respondents implemented the proposed changes. Many of those who did change (38%) improved pasture/nutrition/manure management and relatively few (16%) improved their animal breeding practices. Results of a multinomial logit model revealed that, apart from the significant differences between the two districts, the nature of the advice and the expected outcomes had the strongest influence on the probability of successfully implementing changes to livestock production. The results further suggest that adoption of new technologies is limited by lack of knowledge, inadequate support and a failure to target local needs and conditions and empower livestock keepers.     

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.”     

Imagining the borderlands: Contending stories of a resource frontier in Muang Sing

Muang Sing in Luang Namtha province, an administrative district of northern Laos bordering Myanmar and China, has been portrayed by the Lao government and international development agencies as a ‘poor’ rural region in need of development. To developers, Muang Sing's remoteness from major towns and the livelihoods of ethnic people such as the Akha in the uplands based on swidden agriculture and opium production characterized ‘poverty’. To address this rural poverty, state and development agencies devised land use zoning that would demarcate and regulate various land uses in line with a rural development plan for the district. This vision for regulated development began to go awry, however, as farmers and traders in Muang Sing launched their own rapid social and economic changes. In contrast to the official image of a backward rural district in need of outside assistance, this paper portrays farmers and local entrepreneurs of the Muang Sing borderlands as actively transforming their lives and agricultural landscapes. This paper challenges the official version of a remote, poor district untouched by regional trade through a focus on narratives of local people. Ethnographic research reveals the dynamic micro‐processes of agrarian transformation during recent decades to highlight the centrality of borderland people in reworking their lives and agricultural landscapes through cross‐border relationships in China.     

“Die man is die hoof en vat voor”: Women's attitudes to land and farming in the communal areas of Namaqualand

In the former coloured rural reserves of Namaqualand, land is held under an evolving form of communal tenure. This study, using in-depth interviews with both women farmers and non-farmers in Namaqualand, explores women's attitudes towards land and their experience of agriculture. It finds that women gain access to land for residential and production purposes mainly through dependent relationships with husbands, fathers and sons, and that unmarried women find it virtually impossible to obtain land rights in their own name. In the event of divorce or widowhood, women are vulnerable to loss of land rights and other resources. Women were found to engage in a range of agricultural activities, both on land allocated for their own use and on land controlled by male relatives, while a few better-off women engage in independent livestock farming. While the South African government's land reform programme has extended the area of communal land and attempted to secure the rights of existing land holders, this has largely benefited existing male farmers and appears to offer little to women farmers. Women's attitudes to the patriarchal system of land holding were found to be largely conservative. Few are willing to challenge the highly gendered nature of land rights within families, and women generally feel excluded from public processes around land. Nonetheless, women in the study expressed a demand for more secure access to land and an interest in agriculture as part of wider livelihood strategies.     

黄土丘陵沟壑区生态系统服务对人类福祉的影响及其群体差异

生态系统服务对人类福祉的影响研究对于分析区域生态系统的社会贡献及有效减贫等方面具有重要的理论与实践意义。本文以地处黄土丘陵沟壑区的陕西省米脂县为例,在整合主客观人类福祉的基础上,基于生态系统服务可得性评估,利用结构方程模型定量分析了生态系统服务对人类福祉的影响及其群体差异。结果如下：① 生态系统服务对客观福祉和主观福祉具有显著正向影响,并通过客观福祉对主观福祉产生间接影响。农户属性对生态系统服务和客观福祉直接效应显著,对主观福祉直接效应不显著。② 生态系统服务对人类福祉的影响存在群体差异,纯农型与兼业型的服务可得性对客观福祉直接效应显著,而非农型不显著;纯农型与兼业型的服务可得性对主观福祉的直接效应明显大于非农型,且非农型间接效应不显著;非农型客观福祉对主观福祉的影响明显高于纯农型与兼业型。③ 生态系统服务对人类福祉影响的因子贡献与服务组合存在群体差异,即三类群体生态系统服务对福祉影响的差异不仅体现在服务类型及影响程度上,还体现在服务组合的差异上。     

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.     

Impact of Wheat Price Changes on Farmers’ Willingness to Participate in Fallow

After operating for four years, the fallow project in the groundwater funnel area of the North China Plain has produced an initial water-saving effect. However, groundwater funnel remediation is a long-term process, and grain price changes over time may affect farmers’ willingness to participate in fallow. Based on the estimation by the Cobb-Douglas production function, the relationship between farmers’ satisfaction with fallow compensation and planting income is analyzed based on survey data collected from farming households in Hebei, a typical province located in the groundwater funnel area. Using this data, the impact of wheat price changes on farmers’ willingness to participate in fallow is simulated. The results indicate wheat price changes affect farmers' expected planting income and consequently their willingness to fallow; 88% of farmers would be unwilling to participate in fallow with a 0.1 yuan per 500 g increase in the wheat price, whereas 71.4% of farmers would be willing to participate in fallow with a 0.2 yuan per 500 g decrease in the price. Finally, some policy implications are proposed, such as the recommendation that the fallow compensation should be adjusted according to the wheat price multiplied by the average wheat yield of the three years before fallow in the North China Plain.     

The farmer as a landscape manager: Management roles and change patterns in a Danish region

Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 111(2):107–116, 2011

Rural landscapes are mainly maintained and changed through farmers' decisions and practices. As a landscape manager the farmer has many different roles of which three roles related to the farm as a whole is investigated in this paper: producer, owner and citizen. Although most farmers take landscape decisions in all these three roles production based decisions are assumed to be more important for full time farmers than for hobby farmers who have their main income outside the farm and who may consider their farm more as a living place than as a production place. Based on a large survey carried out in Hvorslev, Eastern Jutland, Denmark in 2008 farmers' landscape practices are analysed in relation to their background, occupational status and view of their farms as a production place versus a living place. Altogether 377 farmers were interviewed and some comparisons are made to a similar survey in the same area in 1996. It was found that a significant proportion of farmers are hobby farmers who mainly see the farm as a living place and who to a large degree have different landscape practices than full time farmers have. The findings indicate that more research is needed to fully understand the reasons for and implications of the differences in landscape management practices.     

Perceptions of Environmental Change and Climate Concern Among Idaho’s Farmers

Climate change public opinion research has identified conservative political ideology as the primary predictor of skepticism about climate change’s anthropogenic causes. Most farmers in Idaho are politically conservative, but they are also a unique group for whom observing their environment is part of daily life and work. We use data from in-depth interviews with 30 Idaho farmers to examine the relationship between observations of specific environmental changes and climate concern. We find that while most farmers report noticing changes in precipitation patterns, growing season length, and winter temperatures, few farmers connect these with long-term global climate change. These findings have two important implications: 1) direct experience, even in the form of disruption to an individual’s economic security, is not enough to overcome the influence of political ideology on climate change beliefs, and 2) acknowledging climate variation is not sufficient to convince individuals that the changes are produced by human activities.     

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.     

Access to natural resources and conflicts between farmers and agro‐pastoralists in Borkena Wetland,north‐eastern Ethiopia

This case study on the Borkena wetlands in north‐eastern Ethiopia tells, through the voices of the inhabitants, the story of the occupation and management of an area where agro‐pastoralists (Urrane) and farmers have progressively settled. It shows how different policy changes and natural disasters have transformed the type of peoples' livelihoods and land use patterns in the wetland. It tells the history of relationships between smallholder peasants, irrigation farmers, commercial farms, and the Urrane, where conflicts as well as collaboration developed, and it shows how different stakeholders behave and consider their own situation. The study also reveals that development intervention by World Vision Ethiopia (WVE) had mixed impact on peoples' livelihoods in the wetland: sedentary peasants have benefited while the Urrane have been adversely affected. The main issue is the marginalization of pastoralists, with the denial of their traditional land use rights by three successive regimes and administrations. Any solution to the cohabitation of the different groups and livelihoods will have to address the issue of land rights for the pastoralists and promote the fair participation of all stakeholders in the future management of the wetlands. Good governance and the competence of the state actors at local levels are the crucial issues for the realization of the suggested solutions.     

农户生计转型及其生态效应研究进展（英文）

农户生计及其对生态系统的影响是反映人地关系的重要表征。合理恰当的农户生计策略既能满足人类福祉需求,也能促进自然资源的可持续利用,进而维持自然生态系统的健康稳定。学术界围绕农户生计变化、驱动机制及其生态效应等方面开展了大量研究,但关于农户生计转型的生态效应还存在较多争议问题。本文在搜集梳理相关文献基础上,辨析了农户生计的转型机制及生态效应的已有研究成果,并进一步探究了两者之间的耦合关系,发现农户生计的选择受到自然因素、主观意愿和社会政策三方面影响,而农户生计的转型改变了生产、消费、资源利用方式,进而影响着自然生态系统演化过程。文章建立了农户生计转型机制及其生态效应研究框架,最后提出了未来需要深入研究的方向：（1）探究农户生计转型驱动因子之间的相互作用及其对农户生计选择产生影响;（2）结合农户生计转型的驱动因子和生态效应,提出农户生计需求和自然资源利用的双向可持续策略。     

小农户融入农业产业链的选择偏好及异质性研究——以河南省为例

为更好地揭示小农户融入农业产业链的行为逻辑,基于河南省463户小农户的调查数据,运用选择实验法和混合Logit模型分析小农户融入农业产业链的选择偏好。结果表明:相对于龙头企业,小农户更倾向于以加入农民专业合作社的方式融入农业产业链,紧密的利益联结机制和政策扶持会显著提升小农户对农业产业链的融入意愿。小农户对龙头企业、农资供应服务、农业信贷服务、农业补贴的行为存在异质性。兼业情况、家庭年纯收入以及收入在村中所处水平是小农户行为异质性的重要来源,对小农户融入农业产业链具有显著的负向影响。     

Farm Size and Land Use Pattern Changes in Postsocialist Poland∗

The postsocialist transition resulted in widespread structural change in Polish agriculture, but fine-scale assessments of how these changes affected farming and rural landscapes are scarce. This article examines changes in farm sizes and land use patterns after the breakdown of socialism in Poland using micro-census data and satellite images. Our study area is Pyrzyce County. The analysis indicates a polarization of the farm size distribution (e.g., medium-sized farms disappeared) as well as marked changes in land use patterns (e.g., increasing field sizes and field aggregation). Interviews with farmers and stakeholders suggest that this shift can be explained by decreasing competitiveness of medium-sized farms in the emerging new agricultural value chain, which forced farmers to increase and intensify production or to downsize their farms, especially when the preference was for other occupations.