1,720,977 research outputs found
RELATIONSHIP-BASED LENDING FOR DIVERSIFIED AGRICULTURE SYSTEMS IN CANADA: HOW TRUST AND COMMUNITY MAY TRANSFORM FINANCIALIZED AND GENDERED FOOD SYSTEMS
No full textOur food systems, once controlled by community and built for regions, are now global in scale and serve the interests of international financial organizations and multinational agribusiness corporations. Financialization, the term referring to the increased presence of financial actors, markets, institutions and incentives have gained importance in the organization and functioning of the economy, including agriculture & land, is an issue of increasing attention in academic and policy circles. This new trend, an increasing role of these actors in financing agriculture, means agricultural production’s primary goal has shifted from food production to cash production. Current agricultural finance habitually chooses projects based on potential for asset development rather than community benefit. Those who are most likely to opt into diversified and sustainable production such as women, people of colour, of those new to the industry struggle to fund their projects. Current unsustainability is underpinned by work dynamics and social relationships that only further perpetuates gender inequity. In this paper I argue offering trust- based loans to under-represented farmers transforms power imbalances created by financialization. The research asks: to what extent do farm women in Canada use trust-based lending to grow and sustain their farms; how does informal lending influence how women farm; and in what ways does access to informal lending shape rural communities and their food systems in Canada? I used purposive snowball sampling to identify and interview ten participants, six farmers and four lenders, using semi-structured interviews. Results show farmers using trust-based loans indicates the way they farm includes community benefits and meet personal environmental and social outcomes, including local economic development. The farmers noted a strong sense of trust between lender, borrower, and customer. Many indicated without such trust as collateral loans, they would not be in business. As researchers, community activists, and not-for-profit organizations seek resolutions to our financialized food system, trust-based loans may be of significant import
Beyond blanket solutions : examining the potential of community seed banks to improve maize seed security in Northern Malawi
Full text linkMaster's thesis project examining the potential of community seed banks to improve maize seed security in Northern Malawi using original data collected over 5 weeks of fieldwork in Malawi. Data collection was funded through the ACCESS Seed Security project (PI: Ola Westengen) at Noragric.In Malawi, maize seeds are a sociopolitical currency and the Malawian government’s primary tool for addressing severe and chronic food and seed insecurity. The large-scale government and donor-sponsored seed subsidy program (FISP) favors the distribution of commercial hybrid/OPV seed in order to augment yields; yet policy analysis suggests that exclusively addressing these seed security through formal seed sectors risks undermining local systems of seed exchange. These informal systems have been documented repositories of locally-adapted crop varieties that possess a variety of desirable production and organoleptic qualities. Recently, community seed banks (CSBs) have emerged as an alternative, NGO-led development initiative aimed at improving local seed security through providing a plethora of social and economic services beyond germplasm storage. To understand the role CSBs in maize seed systems, 60 semi-structured interviews were conducted with smallholders in two districts of Northern Malawi as part of a cross-sectional case study. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected pertaining to maize seed access opportunities, farmer preferences, and patterns of seed adoption; findings were used to compare CSB members with non-members. Despite widespread interest in adopting commercial seed to obtain higher yields, farmers’ maize variety evaluations indicate higher levels of satisfaction for local varieties when considering production and post- production characteristics. CSB members show lower levels of satisfaction for commercial maize than other farmers. These findings indicate that CSBs can expand farmers’ frame of reference by providing members with both a variety of seeds that meet a diverse set of preferences and serving a platform for exchange and experimentation. CSBs can therefore be viable complements to formal seed systems by encouraging farmers to grow a variety of cultivars while also providing access to local varieties that possess desirable organoleptic qualities that commercial seeds generally lack. This study invites future research surrounding CSB viability, as its findings have wider implications for the potential of bottom-up, locally-based development interventions to improve smallholder farmer seed security in Sub-Saharan Africa.ACCESS Project (Noragric, NMBU)submittedVersionM-A
The Peasant and Her Smartphone: Agrarian Change and Land Politics in Myanmar
No full text292 pagesThis dissertation investigates how farmers, officials and activists navigate Myanmar’s contemporary political and agrarian transformations. I root my analysis in a particular agrarian landscape—the Kalay Valley—that provides a window onto environmental change and ethnic encounter in a privileged site of Southeast Asian state formation: the seam of the hills and the plains. Ethnographic research in and beyond Kalay allows me to examine how two different ethnic groups, the Burmans and the Chins, negotiate the changing values and meanings of land as collective territory, individual property and a source of livelihoods and community life. Recent economic liberalization and legal reforms have achieved neither democratic nor rural transition, as conventionally conceived. Rather, they have brought new technologies of production, communication and rule into the lives of Myanmar’s 35 million farmers, tools that shape both the stakes and terms of struggles on and for land. Each of three parts of the manuscript makes a distinct contribution that advances scholarship on environment, society and state. First, I bring together scholarship on ethnic and territorial boundary-making with insights from political ecology and agrarian studies to show how the erasure and recovery of political borders is embedded in the creation and closure of smallholder agrarian frontiers. Second, I contribute to debates on property, authority and state formation by analyzing Myanmar’s contemporary land reforms and proliferating land claims through the interlinked analytics of legal debris, elastic land, risky rights and performing property. Third, I bring classic agrarian questions of capital, labor, and class into conversation with work on rural-urban connections and the nascent field of digital geography to analyze the adoption of tractors, combine harvesters and smartphones. I highlight the role of new internet connections in sustaining communities across virtual and physical space, theorizing the ‘digital village’ as a simultaneously rural and virtual sphere, in which both soil and seasons, and the affordances of Facebook, structure social life and land politics
Agroecology in the United States: Pathways Toward Agroecosystem Redesign and Agri-Food System Transformation
No full text201 pagesIn Chapter 1, I report the results from a field experiment conducted in Maryland and New York that compared the yield and quality trade-offs among four cultivars per winter cereal species (barley, cereal rye, and triticale) grown as forage and harvested at eight crop growth stages. Although barley cultivars maintained higher quality than cereal rye and triticale, yield was substantially lower. Cereal rye exhibited a desirable balance between yield and quality early in the season, whereas triticale provided the benefit of a slightly longer “harvest window” to obtain high-quality forage later in the season. In Chapter 2, I assessed the effect of winter cereal cover crop cultivar selection among three species and cover crop termination-soybean planting date on cover crop growth stage and biomass, weed biomass, soybean density and yield, and cover crop reseeding in organically managed no-till planted soybean production. Differences among species indicated that triticale performed better than barley and as well as cereal rye in terms of biomass production, weed suppression, and soybean yield, but the effect of cultivar was inconsistent across response variables and sites. In Chapter 3, I analyzed a national survey of organic fruit and vegetable farmers, which showed that fewer agroecological practices were used and a greater degree of “conventionalization” was observed on large farms. Intercropping, insectary plantings, and border plantings were at least 1.4-times more likely to be used on small (0.4–39 cropland ha) than large (≥405 cropland ha) farms, whereas reduced tillage was less likely and riparian buffers were more likely on small than medium (40–404 cropland ha) farms. In Chapter 4, I used a mixed-methods analysis of national survey results and findings from interviews with farmers in California and New York to assess the labor-intensity of agroecological practices. I showed that farmers who did not use agroecological practices perceived a greater labor requirement than farmers who had experience using a given practice; labor shortages were more problematic on medium and large farms; and the main strategy on large farms for managing labor-related challenges was to increase mechanization, despite already being the most mechanized farm type across sizes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Considerations for Enhancing Participation and Data Accuracy in Geospatial Research in Rural Areas: Experiences with PGIS in Northern Malawi
No full textRural environments are experiencing rapid changes that must be explored to understand, enhance, and facilitate positive changes and adapt to detrimental changes. However, the information researchers can obtain about the environment to identify effective management strategies for rural resources is hindered by several factors. Participatory geospatial research presents an approach that integrates local voices to map the facts and values of rural people and represent environmental changes. Here, we draw on more than six years of participatory geospatial research in rural northern Malawi to identify and present various considerations that participatory geospatial researchers and planners should be mindful of when working with rural people to enhance participation in research and improve spatial data accuracy. Based on experiences using various research methods and activities applied in several transdisciplinary collaborative research projects, we posit that rural geospatial researchers should keenly consider i) ethical issues concerning data collection, analysis, and representation, e.g. taboos and sacred spaces, ii) integrating local spatial ecological knowledge of people about the environment, and iii) economic conflicts and gender dynamics that tend to disempower and limit participation in research and affect data quality. Considering these would build rapport between participants and researchers to facilitate active participation and data accuracy
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Intergenerational participatory discussion groups foster knowledge exchange to improve child nutrition and food security in northern Malawi
No full textThis article assesses the effectiveness of a participatory, intergenerational, dialogue approach in addressing gender and generational conflicts related to both child nutrition and agriculture. Analysis of 46
interviews and 3 focus groups with smallholder farmers in rural agrarian communities with high rates of child malnutrition in northern Malawi suggested that participatory discussion can lead to positive change, including increasing child feeding frequency and dietary diversity. An intergenerational, transformative, and holistic approach to nutrition education which integrates agricultural and gender issues can effectively address sensitive conflicts within households and communities
that affect child nutrition, and come up with local solutions
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