北方生态脆弱区农户兼业对耕地利用的影响(英文)

当前我国农户兼业现象十分普遍。本文基于在内蒙古太仆寺旗的农户调查数据,采用单因素方差分析法,对生态脆弱区农户兼业及其对耕地利用的影响进行了研究。结果表明:当前研究区农业劳动力非农就业和农户兼业现象十分突出,而兼业程度不同的农户,其经营土地的方式差异明显。非农就业户通过将其土地转给其他农户而脱离了农业耕作,这同时满足了其他农户扩大土地经营面积的愿望。种植结构差异不大,均体现为劳动生产率高的作物具有优势;对于有耕地利用行为的纯农业户、I兼型农户和II兼型农户,随着兼业程度的增加,物质投入增加,说明农户兼业使其资金约束减小,增加了资金投入能力,但是在劳动力约束下,兼业农户的劳动力投入减少,且务农劳动力"妇女化"、"老龄化"和"文化低"等现象突出;作物单产和土地净收益纯农业户大于兼业农户,说明劳动投入对土地产出更为重要。文章最后认为建立农业劳动力非农就业与耕地利用相互协调的机制,是解决生态脆弱区生态安全与农业生产之间矛盾的重要途径。     

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.     

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.     

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.     

农户对农业绿色生产技术响应的影响因素 ——以青岛市为例

利用青岛市黄岛区和即墨区10个村庄共213个农户的实地调研数据,通过Logistic模型从秸秆还田、农家肥还田以及可降解农膜和绿色农药使用等方面考察农户对不同农业绿色生产技术的响应差异及影响因素。结果表明:(1)农户对农业绿色生产技术响应的影响因素确有差异。其中,施用绿色农药由农户资金情况主导,秸秆还田受种植结构和政策宣传影响较大,农家肥还田对土地规模要求较高,可降解农膜使用受种植结构影响较大。(2)户主和家庭特征对农户响应行为影响显著。(3)宣传与政策有利于促进农户采纳农业绿色生产技术,尤其是农户参与秸秆还田方面。针对结论提出了加强政策宣传与支持、开展专项教育培训、建立专项金融体系等政策建议。     

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.     

What kind of intensification? Agricultural practice, soil fertility and socioeconomic differentiation in rural Burkina Faso

In rural Burkina Faso, intensification has been an uneven process that has resulted in social costs, particularly in the form of uneven distribution of assets and disparate environmental trade-offs. This study examines the effects of wealth status on agricultural practice and soil fertility, arguing that differences in the practices of wealthier and poorer farmers lead to differential social and environmental outcomes. Two concerns are highlighted. First is the role of poverty in environmental degradation. Much of the debate about the role of wealth and poverty in environmental outcomes in developing countries has pinpointed poverty as the main causal explanation. Using studies of agricultural practices and soil fertility from several villages in southwestern Burkina Faso, this paper will counter this dominant view by showing that wealthier farmers farm much larger areas, have fewer trees in their fields, and use higher levels of animal traction which, in turn, has led to lower levels of soil fertility. A second concern is that while poorer farmers may have agricultural practices that minimize environmental degradation, their exclusion from key institutions that provide access to resources has serious livelihood consequences and potentials for increasing socioeconomic differentiation. The agricultural practices of wealthier farmers, while not optimal environmentally, result in higher levels of household wealth. A paradox emerges that while poorer farmers are conserving environmental resources, they are doing so at the expense of economic development and well-being.     

The emerging small-scale cattle farming sector in Uzbekistan: Highly integrated with crop production but suffering from low productivity

Even two decades after independence in 1991, the agricultural sector of Uzbekistan remains regulated by the government, prescribing the number of cattle head per agricultural area or imposing mandatory cash crops. The policy makers are insufficiently informed about the bottlenecks in the different livestock production units and base their policies mainly on general knowledge. This study analyzed the two major cattle farm types in the Khorezm province, 56 medium-scale farms (LS; on average 22 ha) and 80 household farms (HH; on average 0.2 ha). While LS farms produced more metabolizable energy and crude protein than required by their own ruminant livestock, the feeds produced by HH farms covered only a third of the requirements. Despite their limited farm size, the HH farmers took an active part in the commercial farming sector, for example, through the purchase of inputs for cattle and crop production, and product sales. The HH farms generated higher relative crop yields than their LS counterparts, while cattle productivity of both was comparable, albeit low. The present findings can be considered as a benchmark for monitoring developments in the cattle sector and as a source of information for directing improvements in feed supply, cattle health and husbandry.     

“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.     

Rural Women's Self-concepts and Aspirations as Members of Selected Voluntary Organisations in New Zealand, Australia and Canada

Evidence from questionnaires completed by members of five rural women's organisations in 1994 and 1995 (three traditional and two younger organisations) clarifies the motives women have, and the identities they assume, in joining these organisations. The older organisations attract women who wish to make a commitment to their community but newer organisations attract women who see themselves as farmers, or as employees and professionals in the agricultural industry. This represents a major shift in gender dimensions of rurality that has taken place during the last twenty years or so. It indicates a ‘mobilisation’ of rural and farm women who seek to participate fully - in their productive role and in the public sphere - in the attempt to maintain the viability of family farms and rural communities. The role that organisations for men and women play in constituting the meaning of gender is discussed.     

Cross‐border rubber cultivation between China and Laos: Regionalization by Akha and Tai rubber farmers

This paper is a multi‐sited ethnography of cross‐border rubber cultivation between China and Laos. Smallholder minority rubber farmers from Xishuangbanna (China) have forged successful informal share‐cropping arrangements to grow rubber trees on the land of relatives and friends in neighbouring Laos. By becoming rich and entrepreneurial rural citizens, Akha and Tai farmers have also, in their own eyes, raised their own ‘quality’ (suzhi) and see themselves as ‘modern’. By examining various meanings of ‘modern’ in China, and contrasting the rubber farmers' experience with Jacob Eyferth's notion of rural ‘deskilling’, this paper shows how through learning to plant, cultivate and tap rubber, these farmers have taken on the discipline and technical knowledge of ‘modern’ workers and become ‘skilled’. By rising in ‘quality’, minority farmers on China's periphery challenge the entrenched binaries of urban/rural, modern/backward, prosperous/poor and Han/minority nationality. Xishuangbanna minority farmers acknowledge that they are also ‘backward’ in the Chinese social hierarchy, but their extension of rubber cultivation to kin and others in Laos has confirmed their modernity as dispensers of development, technical know‐how and ‘superior’ Chinese culture to Lao farmers who are ‘backward and poor’. In contrast to large state rubber farms that have failed to establish rubber plantations in northern Laos, minority farmers have created regionalization.     

Remnants of the Waikato: Native forest survival in a production landscape

Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of conservation of native biodiversity on privately owned farmland in New Zealand. Based on surveys of Waikato dairy farmers as exemplars of intensive agricultural practice, it examines factors that influence the survival of native forest on land with potential for commercial production. Results suggest that a significant proportion of Waikato dairy farmers regard native forest favourably, although the proportion of farmers who actively conserve their forest is small. Factors that assist the persistence of native forest on dairy farms include personal characteristics of the farmer, past accidents of history which have left forest remnants in place, and physical characteristics of the farm such as topography. While the conservation of native biodiversity within this intensively farmed landscape is strongly influenced by political economy pressures that encourage production, non‐utilitarian motives such as aesthetic enjoyment and family heritage can serve to counter the production ethic.     

Kilofarms in The Agricultural Heartland

Kilofarms are farms of 1,000 acres or more. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Census of Agriculture has few tabulations of data by farm size, but geographical analysis suggests some of the characteristics of kilofarms. Their operators are part‐owner farmers. Their land and buildings are worth several millions of dollars, and their gross annual income is well over the $250,000 necessary to provide an acceptable level of living for a contemporary farm family. Kilofarmers concentrate on growing crops of corn and soybeans for cash sale, and they rely on computers and Internet access to help them make marketing decisions.     

农户土地用途变更空间决策行为分析——以江苏省常熟市、如东县和铜山县为例

在理解农户土地利用决策机制的基础上,利用江苏省的铜山县、如东县和常熟市329份农户问卷调查数据,采用Tobit模型以及方差分析方法探讨了影响农户土地用途变更空间决策的影响因素。研究表明:自主经营人数比重越高,农户选择改变用途地块的距离就越远,而打工导致的劳动力转移对于农户土地用途变更空间决策则没有显著影响;农户的存款越多资金越充足,农户改变用途地块的距离可能就越远;相对于铜山县,如东县和常熟市两地农户改变土地用途的地块距离相对较远;变更后地块的用途不同对于改变用途地块的选择也有影响,变更为渔业养殖用地则通常会选择离家较近的地块,而在种植业内改变用途,通常会选择离家较远的地块。     

水城县沙坡村农户经济行为调查研究

通过对贵州省水城县沙坡村 80家农户的抽样调查分析 ,发现农户的经济行为是农民适应周围自然、资源环境和社会经济结构的反应。重点讨论了农户的就业方式及其就业结构、农户在农业和非农业领域的就业行为特征及其形成原因。由于农民掌握的知识、技能主要集中在农业生产领域 ,限制了他们在非农领域的经常性就业。临时性的非农就业虽然能够在一定程度上增加农户的家庭收入 ,增强农民与外部世界的接触和交流 ,但对于贫困山区的资源配置、环境保护和农村社会经济结构转型的作用还不明显。作者对此提出了相关建议。     

Farmers’ Dual Roles in Food Safety:Perceptions and Countermeasures

Farmers are both the producers and consumers of food, and as such have a dual role in food safety: they both generate risks and are exposed to them. Based upon a survey of the food production and consumption habits of 140 farm households and long-term research in two villages in Yunnan province, this study found that rural families are highly dependent on the market for food production and consumption. In their role as consumers, farmers are aware of food safety risks and concerned about them, but their ability to protect themselves is limited. They do so primarily by avoiding certain products and growing as much of their own food as possible. At the same time, in their role as producers, farmers engage in practices, primarily the overuse and inappropriate use of fertilizer and pesticides, that are damaging to food safety and the environment. There is therefore a disconnect in their roles as consumers and producers that needs to be addressed if policy goals for improving food safety and reducing the use of agricultural chemicals are to be achieved. Farmers need more information about food safety risks related to the products they consume themselves, and technical guidance on the safe use of farm chemicals when growing food for market. However, such measures will not be effective unless the external pressures on farmers are also addressed, through consideration of market incentives to use farm chemicals and the impact of consumer demand.     

Impacts of Non-farm Employment of Rural Laborers on Agricultural Land Use: Theoretical Analysis and Its Policy Implications

During rapid urbanization and industrialization process, non-farm employment of rural laborers has emerged as a prevalent phenomenon in rural areas of China and become an important driving factor for changes in agricultural land use. This article attempts to theoretically analyze the impacts of non-farm employment of rural laborers on agricultural land use based on economic frameworks. As rational agents, farmers aim to maximize their income and follow equilibrium principles when they decide how to allocate their labor forces (or working time) in two departments (farm and non-farm) and how to use their agricultural land with different quality and location. The income earned by non-farm employment is higher, and there exists a comparative advantage between labors, as a result the quantity and quality of labor input in agricultural land use decreases. With the limitation of labor input during agricultural land use decision-making of farm households, on the one hand, land with higher quality is still utilized by farmers. On the other hand, poor quality land will be less well managed and is more likely to be abandoned. Non-farm employment of rural laborers and the rising of opportunity costs will result in abandonment of poor quality land, and great importance should be attached to this by policy makers.     

Development without Intervention: A Successful Self‐Reliance Initiative of Rural Development and Urban Growth in The Sudan

We investigate the complex relationship between small‐scale farming, urban‐rural remittances and rural development. We highlight a successful, innovative self‐reliance approach in which traditional farmers changed their mode of production, improved their income, and enhanced rural development, including urbanization, in Shubbola village of western Sudan. The major initial driver was investment from remittances by family members who had migrated to urban centers, thus overcoming the problem of access to credit/capital. Consequently, the increased use of tractor technology helped farmers overcome agricultural labor shortages, and increase their farm size and productivity. Increased income from remittances and farming broadened economic and social improvements, including lifestyle and the built environment. In the process, Shubbola has grown into a viable and vibrant town, providing its residents with diverse socioeconomic services and modern infrastructure. This case illustrates the potential of development from within with minimal direct input from the government, nongovernmental organizations, and international donors.     

大都市郊区农户生计多样化及对土地利用的影响——以北京市大兴区为例

以北京市大兴区为例,采用农户调查数据,设计不同资源群体农户分类评价指标体系,利用非系统聚类方法将农户划分为5类(①中等资源禀赋,中等非农收入;②高等资源禀赋,中等非农收入;③中等资源禀赋,低等非农收入;④纯农户;⑤非农户),进而分析了不同资源群体农户的生计多样化特点及对土地利用的影响。研究表明:(1)在大都市郊区,农户类型1～3、纯农户和非农户分别采取了农业和非农兼顾、留在农业和脱离农业的生计策略。(2)农户类型1～3和纯农户中,70%农户生计多样化指数分布在2～3之间,且依然呈现粮食作物播种面积较大,选择比例最高,其次是经济作物。(3)农户类型1～3和非农户中,以就地转移方式非农就业是农户家庭劳动力安排的主要选择,且非农就业劳动力年龄最轻和教育水平最高。(4)大都市郊区土地非农化的转型特点促使农户从类型1～4被动地向类型5转化,土地利用效益低下也持续推动了农户生计多样化,同时,农户生计多样化会引发粮食生产能力停滞不前、土地流转和产权调整大规模顺势而生、土壤养分富集等土地利用现象。     

A local landscape in transition between production and consumption goals: can new management arrangements preserve the local landscape character?

Around towns in the Alentejo region, the landscape is dominated by a characteristic agricultural small-scale mosaic. These areas are central in the region landscape character – even if the large-scale latifundia landscape of the extensive silvo-pastoral systems is most commonly associated with the region. In the last two decades, these parcels became extremely attractive for new comers, who settle in the rural context as residents, week-end visitors, being often also lifestyle farmers. The paper presents a case study landscape, in Montemor-o-Novo, a small town 100 km from Lisbon, highly subject to the pressure for consumption uses, by urban users. The study shows that the new owners, even if they have settled in the area due to the tranquility and social bindings of the rural, end up doing farming, with new or reshaped production objectives, markets and models, but at the same time maintaining the traditional farm systems. Thus, the landscape character is maintained, so far. Nevertheless, the role of these neo-rurals and lifestyle farmers is still an unseen role, both by the agriculture and the planning sectors. And thus the question is, whether the combination of actors and land management drivers will continue maintaining the landscape in the future.