Many sustainable agricultural practices are based on local and traditional farming knowledge. This article examines the conservation and loss of three traditional practices in the Bolivian Altiplano that agronomic research has shown increase the resiliency of small farmers in the face of climate-related risks. These practices are the use of…

Using data from two postfrontier rural settings, Nang Rong, Thailand (N = 2,538), and Chitwan Valley, Nepal (N = 876), this article examines agricultural push factors determining the out-migration of young people age 15 to 19. We focus on different dimensions of migration, including distance and duration. Our study examines a wide array of…

In the United States, for various reasons, fewer farm families rely solely on their farming operations for their livelihoods. As the structure of agriculture changes and farm families adjust their livelihood strategies, do the discourses around gender relations in households also change? This article analyzes the portrayal of women's roles in…

Analysts have heralded the principle of "multifunctionality" undergirding the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy "Second Pillar" support mechanisms as a "new...and strong paradigm" for agriculture (van der Ploeg and Roep 2003), with the potential to re-embed social, environmental, and ethical concerns into…

This article analyzes off-farm work among subsistence-level farmers in the Santarem region of the Brazilian Amazon. We build on the literature on rural livelihoods in the Global South by exploring how the opportunity to work off the farm is embedded in social relationships. We additionally differentiate our analysis by type of off-farm work, and…

The number of the world's food insecure rose at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Despite these negative developments, however, a 2010 United Nations report argues that food security could be improved if development efforts are supported by government programs that target smallholder farmers. This report is significant…

Khorezm Province is located in the Amu Darya lowlands of Uzbekistan, where unsustainable use of irrigation water has led to the Aral Sea crisis. This study deals with the question of how farmers in Khorezm perceive water and its management and how this facilitates or prevents water conservation, or "water saving," in irrigated…

Often organized as grassroots, nonprofit organizations, many farmers' markets serve as strategic venues linking producers and consumers of local food while fulfilling multiple social, economic, and environmental objectives. This article examines the potential of farmers' markets to play a catalyst role in linking local food systems to the social…

In the 1990s, Mexican immigration dispersed spatially, leading to the emergence of many "new destinations," in nonmetropolitan areas of the United States. Previous studies constrain the scope of the analysis to the United States, limiting our understanding of how new destinations are formed. We place new destination formation into a…

This article examines the influence of community context and land use on the monthly odds of first birth in a society in the midst of dramatic fertility transition. The theoretical framework guiding our work predicts that proximity to nonfamily services should delay first births by creating opportunities for competing nonfamily activities and…

Within the political economy of agriculture and agrofood literatures there are examples of approaches that reject simple dichotomies between alternatives and the mainstream. In line with such approaches, we challenge the assumption that alternative agriculture, and its attendant improved environmental practices, alternative management styles, less…

Organic agriculture is perceived as being more sustainable than conventional agriculture. However, while there is a growing interest in, and market for, organic products, large-scale conversion to organic agriculture is not taking place. Even though conversion from conventional to organic dairy production is not especially difficult in theory,…

The highly volatile auction system in Australia accounts for 85 percent of ex-farm wool sales, with the remainder sold by forward contract, futures, and other hedging methods. In this article, against the background of an extensive literature on price risk strategies, we investigate the behavioral factors associated with producers' adoption of…

In contrast to those of other industrialized western European countries, France's agricultural community continued to represent the majority of the national population for a long time and only became one of many minority groups at the end of the twentieth century. It then came under the influence of various trends, sometimes conflicting but…

We undertake a comparative investigation of how neoliberal restructuring characterizes the third food regime in the three North American countries. By contrasting the experience of the two developed countries of the United States and Canada with that of the developing country of Mexico, we shine some empirical light on the differential impact of…