Culture Agriculture Food and Environment最新文献

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.

The situation of agriculture in the West Bank since October 7, 2023 is a continuation of an ongoing process of destruction, confiscation, and enclosure witnessed prior to that date. The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture (2024) estimates that the total damage to Palestinian farmers and herders from October 7 to December 31, 2023 has been US$ 22,585,410. Many of the issues farmers in the West Bank are currently facing are only slight variations on a theme of persistent violence that they have endured for decades, but the more marked shift is in the pace of change since October 7. Dozens, if not hundreds, of communities are suddenly at risk of displacement, while in some places displaced peoples are already numbering in the thousands. The agricultural forms that sustain the most livelihoods in the West Bank are oleo-culture and herding, both of which have been central targets by the Israeli army and settlers.

This most recent colonial aggression is not an aberration but rather a continuation of the settler program in Palestine. What is happening in the West Bank today cannot be compared to the scale of devastation in Gaza, but that speaks more to the horrors occurring in Gaza. The extent of settler attacks, settlement expansion, army incursions, clashes, and assassinations of youth that have occurred in the West Bank since October 7 has not been seen since the 2000–2005 Second Intifada. Meanwhile, rapid decreases in access to land, water, and income are eroding people's ability to sustain themselves and their families.

As a Mediterranean country, Palestine is composed of several micro-regions. The West Bank starts from its western end at elevations of 200 m above sea level and reaches over 1000 m in several places. East of the hills is the Jordan Valley, which drops to 276 m below sea level at the city of Jericho. The Jordan Valley is the vegetable basket of the West Bank, where the villages and Jericho have ample irrigated agriculture, while Bedouins inhabit the area between the irrigated lands and the hills in its north–south stretch. To the west and north of the hills are the coastal plains, which make up the districts of Qalqilya, Tulkarim, and Jenin, which together are the site of over 50% of national olive oil production. To the south of the hills are the fringes of the Naqab desert, represented by the city of Hebron and its many populous towns. Hebron produces most of the West Bank's grapes and grape products and is where much of the country's herding activities take place.

As part of the 1994 Oslo Peace Process, the West Bank was divided along different lines of control, with Area A being under Palestinian administrative and security control, Area B under Palestinian administrative and Israeli security control, and Area C under Israeli administrative and security control. These arrangements were meant to be only temporary until a more comprehensive peace agreement could be reached. However, permanent peace

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.

Within the existing literature on livelihoods, there is a paucity of research examining the livelihood of the elderly from ethnic communities, and of the few studies on elderly livelihoods, scholars tend to focus on their agricultural labor engagement and ignore other forms of activity. In this study, we investigate the elderly livelihood choices and the multiple survival practices in a Miao town in China's Midwest, which was chosen as the first case for the Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) program. Using the dual lenses of age and ethnicity, we describe the history of household livelihoods in the region, and how agricultural participation, the production of ethnic artisan goods and ritual practices are uniquely employed by Miao elders (compared to their Han peers) to achieve self-sufficiency. We consider how being Miao has certain advantages in tackling elder poverty. Alongside agricultural labor, Miao elders can engage in recognized handicrafts for sale; they can also engage in customary ritual practices as a recognized ethnic minority which would otherwise be prohibited and contribute to social cohesion. This is the first anthropological study conducted in Midwest China that centers on the livelihood and practices of age-advanced group with an ethnic identity in a globally aging context.

This article frames what one of my collaborators calls nuestra ciencia (our science) as a concept that expresses a transborder worldview based on region-specific scientific land and healing practices. I trace the ways Indigenous science came into fierce conflict with the twentieth-century wave of Anglo settler-colonial land grabs in south Texas and how the resulting force of mass agriculture enabled mass destruction and biodiversity loss in the region. It offers an environmental, archival, and ethnographic analysis of curanderismo (Mexican traditional medicine) as science and explores its relationship to settler colonialism, environmental degradation, and processes of racialization in relation to health, science, and medical technologies, as well as tracing the ongoing material record of its practice. I frame Mexican transborder healing traditions (curanderismo and plant medicine) as serious social, scientific, and ecological processes. I make it clear that although this practice is often considered a Mexican tradition, de-Indigenized mestizos also practice, exploit, and appropriate it, while its roots lie in Indigenous lifeways and knowledge.

Natural wine is produced with organic grapes without the use of additives. As a social phenomenon, it comprises rural winemakers and urban consumers interconnected by a vibrant global community of distributors, bloggers, experts, and associations. Despite its continuous growth since the early 2000s, the movement has sparked global public interest since the French recognition of the vin méthode nature certification in 2020. Here we delineate the evolution of the natural wine phenomenon from its origins to its current situation. It will be argued that rather than a social movement or an alternative food network, natural wine can be better understood as a food phenomenon exhibiting a sustainable alternative mode of production and consumption that unites a loose coalition of diverse actors. In exploring the constant tensions involved in the ongoing redefinition of natural wine by social actors, we will analyze their different understandings of locality, naturalness, and ethical food production.