This article presents local knowledge on ecosystem management by analyzing and discussing traditional tillage practices applied by smallholder farmers as a response to drought risks in dryland areas of Mpwapwa District, central Tanzania. Farming activities in the area wholly depend on rain-fed systems. Information from key informants and in-depth household interviews indicate that farmers in this area use three different traditional tillage practices—no-till (sesa), shallow tillage (kutifua), and ridges (matuta). Available information suggests that selection of a particular practice depends on affordability (in terms of costs and labor requirements), perceived ability to retain nutrient and soil-water, and improvement of control of erosion and crop yield. In this area, smallholder farmers perceive no-till practice to contribute to more weed species, hence more weeding time and labor are needed than in the other two practices. The no-till practice also contributes to low soil fertility, low soil moisture retention, and poor crop yield. No plans have been made to introduce irrigation farming in these marginal areas of central Tanzania. Thus, improving the ability of the tillage practices to conserve soil moisture and maintain soil fertility nutrients using locally available materials are important tasks to be carried out. This will ensure the selection of practices that will have positive influence on improved crop yields in the area.
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Traditional Tillage Systems as Drought Adaptation Strategies of Smallholder Farmers: The Case of Semi-Arid Central Tanzania
Riziki S. Shemdoe, Idris S. Kikula, and Patrick Van Damme
In Nature and Culture
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2009
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 191–207 (17 total)
Food Activism in Italy as an Anthropology of Direct Democracy
Cristina Grasseni
This article presents qualitative and quantitative findings on provisioning activism in Italy, focusing on Solidarity Purchase Groups (Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale, GAS). By using quantitative data about GAS growth, numerical consistence and economic impact and through ethnographic insights based on prolonged fieldwork, it identifies the GAS movement as an ecological, economic and political counterculture. I discuss the implications for policy efforts at the regional and state level, highlighting both potentials and shortcomings of promoting GAS as means to sustainable development. In particular, I identify the issues of trust, informality and direct democracy as distinctive of GAS practice. However, this positions solidarity economy vis-à-vis policymaking in a potentially oppositional rather than interlocutory stance.
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2014
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 77–98 (21 total)
Mega-Plantations in Southeast Asia
Landscapes of Displacement
Miles Kenney-Lazar and Noboru Ishikawa
( Ahrends et al. 2015 ; Carlson et al. 2013 ; Fox et al. 2014 ). The development of plantations in the region is characterized by both large-scale land concessions or estates and the conversion of land by millions of smallholders. For rubber, a crop that
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2019
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 63–82 (20 total)
Toxic Sensorium
Agrochemicals in the African Anthropocene
Serena Stein and Jessie Luna
, rising imperial powers—especially the United States—worked industriously to open markets across the continent for toxic substances to be inserted into smallholder cash cropping. Pesticides figured prominently in the burgeoning apparatus of foreign aid
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 87–107 (21 total)
Mobile Phones, Farmers, and the Unsettling of Geertz's Moroccan Suq/Bazaar Economy
Hsain Ilahiane
In this article, I examine how and to what effect mobile telephony is used by smallholder farmers in the Saharan frontier of south-eastern Morocco. Specifically, I investigate how farmers use mobile phones to redefine market information
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2023
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 98–112 (15 total)
Becoming an Agricultural Growth Corridor
African Megaprojects at a Situated Scale
Serena Stein and Marc Kalina
( Briceno-Garmendia and Foster 2010 ), AGCs are considered a novel way to coordinate simultaneous investments in commercial agribusiness and smallholder farmer livelihoods with various sectors, usually combining public and private investments, and built in
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2019
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 83–100 (18 total)
Safe milk and risky quinoa
The lottery and precarity of farming in Peru
Astrid B. Stensrud
agribusiness corporations and the increasing volatility of global food markets. As in the rest of the world, smallholder farmers—or peasant farmers—are being pushed to become capitalist entrepreneurs and thus forced into high-risk gambling in the “free market
Nature’s Market?
A Review of Organic Certification
Shaila Seshia Galvin
As organic food becomes more widely available, great faith is placed on the seal or logo that certifies organic status. This article treats the mark of certification as a starting rather than an end point, critically reviewing literature from diverse national and regional contexts. Exploring questions concerning the extent to which organic certification assists or undermines the goal of ecological sustainability, abets the advance of large-scale agricultural capital, and supports the livelihood of smallholder farmers, the article considers the theoretical foundations, methodologies and modes of inquiry that have guided studies of organic agriculture and certification. It brings this research into conversation with literatures on audit cultures, quality, and with ongoing nature-culture debates. Through critical review of the literature and the author's extensive fieldwork with organic smallholders in northern India, the article suggests possible directions in which the literature may be expanded and advanced.
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2011
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 48–67 (20 total)
Men Who Shout at Goats
Agrarian Cultivation and Gendered Slaughter on an Azorean Island
Tim Burger
Abstract
Across many world regions, the informal slaughter of livestock occupies an important place in rural day-to-day realities. This article examines killing goats on São Jorge Island to show how attention to slaughter enhances our understanding of gendered selfhood, human–animal relations, and the impacts of depopulation. Building on ethnography of smallholder farmers who see their masculinity and livelihoods endangered by demographic decline, I argue that their idea of agrarian cultivation underwrites verbal hostility against animals. Male farmers’ concept of cultivation, here conceived as productive order-making between a threatening ‘natural’ and a desirable ‘domestic’ domain, is hence an ambivalent moral idiom. In moments of slaughter, the frustration about the difficulties of cultivation is expressed as men deriding goats to salvage a desired image of manhood and competence.
Organized criminals, human rights defenders, and oil companies
Weaponization of the RICO Act across jurisdictional borders
Lindsay Ofrias and Gordon Roecker
Abstract
This article examines how the world's arguably largest oil disaster, in the heart of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, has become a testing ground for new global forms of corporate power and the criminalization of dissent. Following the ongoing “trial of the century” between Chevron Corporation and plaintiffs representing tens of thousands of smallholder farmers and indigenous people affected by the disaster, we look at how the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act has been applied against the affected people and their lawyers to sidestep the norm of international comity and alter the parameters for pursuing environmental justice. Specifically, we point to how the case—and a new crop of cases following suit—has threatened to criminalize the use of “lawfare” as a “weapon of the weak.”