Culture Agriculture Food and Environment最新文献

Cambodian social and economic systems are in an era of transformation as the nation transitions from its history of war and tragedy into a future shaped by more democratic institutions and free market policies. During the 1970s, under the Khmer Rouge, the people of Cambodia were forced to live communally and survive through collective agriculture. Starvation, hard labor, knowledge destruction, and summary execution resulted in a nation facing high levels of poverty, intellectual loss, and food insecurity. Today, while strides have been made to increase economic and social outcomes, the predominantly rural country is still characterized by a weak educational system and economic dependence on agriculture. To better understand the role of the Khmer Rouge era on agriculture, a qualitative comparative case study analysis of Cambodian agriculture pre- and post-Pol Pot regime was conducted. Results indicate that the Khmer Rouge reduced labor availability, stunted rice production output, collectivized and centralized farming systems, intensified production, and created an overall loss of crop diversity and knowledge. It is necessary to understand the influence that the conflict had on Cambodian agricultural systems to assure the nation is able to transition from an unsustainable, extensification-based agriculture system to a diverse, sustainably intensified agricultural landscape.

Wild plant consumption confronts a decline in terms of natural resources, traditional knowledge and mainstream engagement, despite efforts to integrate it into global diets. However, migrants, whose culinary traditions and lifestyle are often grounded in foraging practices, represent an underexplored resource in this regard. Therefore, the study aims to explore the dynamics behind migrants gathering and consuming wild edible plants in their host environments and how their related food knowledge is transferred and reproduced in this new milieu. Based on 36 semi-structured interviews and ethnobotanical participant observation conducted during 2021–2023, the paper focuses on everyday foraging practices among Vietnamese migrants in Japan and Germany. The results reveal that foraging practices are driven by migrants' aspirations to create a sense of place through daily interaction with local, seasonal, and wild plants that often substitute for culturally significant ingredients in their home cuisine. As settlement progresses, migrant's foraging valuation gradually shifts toward intrinsic meanings, including cultural continuity, welfare maintenance, and social connections, rather than culinary imperatives. This integration of migrant traditions and utilization of oft-neglected plant species also contributes to biocultural diversity, facilitating migrant community building and the resurgence of wild cuisine.

This ethnographic study explores perceptions of the quality or goodness of rice among two agrarian communities in northern Bangladesh. In Bangladeshi rice markets, socio-cultural perceptions of the appearance and texture of rice are seen to determine the quality and taste of rice. This paper foregrounds the invisible actors—the embodied ways of knowing and practicing of rural agrarian workers—to unravel how they perceive, appreciate, and interpret the quality of rice across gendered and classed body politics. Evidence from the practical and relational aspects of their eating habits suggests that the eater's sensory experience of quality and tastiness is grounded on how the rice grains are grown and processed. Qualification is a continuous process that awakens the eating body's active participation in the experience of cooking, eating, and metabolism. By introducing the idea of agrarian taste, this study presents a new way of understanding how rural agrarian workers preserve the complex and rhizomatic embodied knowledge on the authenticity and adulteration of the qualities of rice and brings new insight into the scholarship of food, nutrition, agriculture, and the environment.

A study was conducted with coffee growers from the municipalities of Caldono (Cauca) and Pitalito (Huila) in Colombia. Workshops, participant observation and farm visits were used to identify elements to understand (a) practices to the care of the environment, (b) the perception of the use of plastic materials, and (c) perspective toward biodegradable packages in their practices. Among the main results are an awareness for the care of the water resource and the care of the trees as its main contributions to the protection of its environment. In both communities, the problem is perceived due to the management of plastic waste and its influence on environmental deterioration due to poor management. They also recognize that the development of biodegradable bags can contribute to caring for their environment and make their economic activity more sustainable.

Arceño, MA. On Winegrowers and More-than-Human Workers in Ohioan and Alsatian Vineyards. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment. 2021;1:36–46.

The Acknowledgement section was incomplete. Prior to the final sentence, it should have included the following statement: “My work throughout Alsace would not have been possible without the support of Dr. Marie Thiollet-Scholtus and the LAE research group, for whom I am equally grateful for hosting me at the Grand-Est Colmar research center at the INRA (now known as the INRAE).”

During the mid-1990s, a banana river irrigation farm that was launched in Southwestern Burkina Faso by a returning emigrant refugee spread throughout the region as far as neighboring Ghana. With relative abundant fertile, arable farmland in Ghana, easy access to input and modest capital mobilization by a few Ghanaian University lecturers to clear farmland and construct ridges and lay pipes for irrigation, a new cash crop production was set in motion. This paper analyzes the implication of this innovative rural agricultural intensification in the Ghana side of the border by shifting the angle of analysis away from narratives of transnational African agricultural commercialization driven by foreign corporations to instead focus on the role played by the local elite. The paper demonstrates that the viability of this irrigated farming can be attributed to imported banana crop variety, local rural producers' entrepreneurial zest, and enhanced existing cross-border ties and commercial opportunities made possible by the construction of a strategic regional highway linking the farm sites with large urban and market centers in Burkina Faso.

In 2019, the Maya Leaders Alliance unveiled “The Future We Dream,” a vision document sharing a common interest among the Mopan and Q'eqchi’ Maya people of Belize for a future in which they are committed to sustaining a reciprocal relationship with and stewardship of the land. In this context, this paper shares results from three communities bordering a forest reserve who were asked to identify important practices, which they considered “traditional” and “environmentally sustainable,” as part of a collaborative NGO project to promote indigenous forest management. Through analysis of data collected alongside Indigenous Community Promoters (ICPs), it explores how these terms were defined and deployed to discuss healthy forests and healthy communities. The paper discusses how collaborative and community-led data collection addresses both the need to decolonize sustainability discourse and produce better data for better project outcomes (Maya, traditional ecological knowledge, forest management, environmental sustainability, indigenous land rights).

In the Mesilla and Rincon Valleys of southern New Mexico, prolonged drought, climate change, increased competition for water, and an ongoing lawsuit with Texas over groundwater pumping create precarity in regard to long-term water resources for agricultural production. As the sector that uses the most water in New Mexico, agricultural participation in water conservation is critical. Using ethnographic data, along with the key concepts of horizons of the future and scale, I examine barriers to addressing water-scarce futures in the present. Ultimately, I argue that adding a multiscalar approach to the established framework of “horizoning work” can generate collaborative water conservation efforts with localized, temporally limited scopes to facilitate farmer participation in efforts to address water-scarce futures.

With the emergence of social distancing, the shutdown of schools and restaurants, and increased anxieties about in-person farmers markets in early 2020, local farmers and food distributors quickly pivoted to digital tools to manage their farms and connect with buyers. In this paper, we explore the role of a seemingly simple digital tool in shaping alternative agrarian relations during the pandemic-induced local food boom: the spreadsheet. Through interviews with farmers and food distributors across urban, periurban, and rural landscapes in the United States (U.S.), we show how spreadsheets and other digital tools have helped farmers manage demand during the COVID-19 pandemic while also presupposing costs, benefits, and efficiencies for these alternative agricultural food spaces. Ultimately, many local farmers found themselves pursuing goals of simplicity, labor efficiency, and expansion-oriented growth as they made sense of their farm data. Reflecting on these values, and the spreadsheet data underlying them, became a point of tension for farmers who place a high importance on diversification, stability, and interpersonal interactions. By attending to how these data are tracked, we gain deeper insights into how farmers and other stakeholders think about agrarian futures: who does the work, what gets planted, who's buying, and who benefits.