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2. Smallholders at Risk: Monoculture expansion, land, food and livelihoods in Latin America
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Greater investment in agriculture is needed to reduce rural poverty and improve food security. This means not simply increasing supply but ensuring that adequate, nutritious food is accessible to every person at all times. How investment is made, its context and conditions, is at least as important as how much is invested.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, Markets, and Food
- Political Geography:
- South America and Latin America
3. Who Wants to Farm? Youth Aspirations, Opportunities and Rising Food Prices
- Author:
- Jennifer Leavy and Naomi Hossain
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Who wants to farm? In an era of land grabs and environmental uncertainty, improving smallholder productivity has become a higher priority on the poverty and food security agenda in development, focusing attention on the next generation of farmers. Yet emerging evidence about the material realities and social norms and desires of young people in developing countries indicates a reasonably widespread withdrawal from work on the land as an emerging norm. While de-agrarianisation is not new, policymakers are correct to be concerned about a withdrawal from the sector: smallholder productivity growth, and agricultural transformation more broadly, depend in part on the extent to which capable, skilled young people can be retained or attracted to farming, and on policies that support that retention. So who wants to farm, and under what conditions? Where are economic, environmental and social conditions favourable to active recruitment by educated young people into farming? What policy and programmatic conditions are creating attractive opportunities in farming or agro-food industry livelihoods?
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, and Food
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Latin America
4. Divide and Purchase: How land ownership is being concentrated in Colombia
- Publication Date:
- 09-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Land distribution in Colombia is extremely unequal, with concentration of land ownership among the highest in the world, and second highest in Latin America after Paraguay. Inequality in access to land is closely linked to rural poverty, and is both a cause and a consequence of the internal armed conflict that has ravaged the country for more than half a century. During this period, violence and forced displacement have caused dispossession involving up to 8 million hectares – more than the area currently devoted to agriculture throughout the country.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Democratization, Economics, and Reform
- Political Geography:
- Colombia and Latin America
5. Taxation in Paraguay: Marginalization of small-scale farming
- Author:
- Déborah Itriago
- Publication Date:
- 05-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Paraguay's tax system is insufficient to provide the resource base to eradicate poverty in the country, and has done little or nothing to achieve a more equal distribution of income and wealth. Two major taxation reforms over the last decade have done little to alleviate the fiscal injustice that is generated partly by the low tax reciprocity of the soy agribusiness – Paraguay's main export crop. Meanwhile, programmes to support small- scale farming receive a level of public financing accounting for just 5 per cent of public expenditure. With one of the highest levels of unequal land ownership in the world, labour informality at very high levels and poor environmental regulation of soy producers, the livelihoods and ecosystems of Paraguay's small-scale producers are at risk. There are serious loopholes in Paraguay's tax system that must be addressed in order to deliver a fairer, progressive taxation system that will allow the country to meet its social objectives.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Environment, International Trade and Finance, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Latin America
6. Combating Rural Poverty and Hunger Through Agroforestry in Bolivia
- Author:
- Kate Kilpatrick
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- In contrast to intensive agricultural practices that require widespread forest clearing, agroforestry systems combine tree growing with the production of other crops or animals. By promoting tree planting, biodiversity, and long-term resource husbandry, agroforestry can be an economically and environmentally sustainable option for small-scale farmers who are struggling to combat the impacts of climate change. For hungry and food-insecure communities, agroforestry creates more resilient agricultural systems where the risk of crop failure is spread between diverse crops.
- Topic:
- Security, Agriculture, Economics, Environment, and Food
- Political Geography:
- Latin America and Bolivia
7. The Struggle for a Pro-Poor Food Policy in Guatemala
- Author:
- Kate Kilpatrick
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- The 2008 food price crisis had a devastating impact on poor Guatemalans. This was followed by widespread crop failure and a food emergency in 2009, affecting an estimated 2.5 million people (de Schutter 2010). With a heavy reliance on imported staple grains and the most productive lands allocated to export crops, Guatemala's food system is broken.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Poverty, and Food
- Political Geography:
- Latin America and Guatemala
8. What Happened to the Seasons? Changing seasonality may be one of the major impacts of climate change
- Author:
- Steve Jennings and John Magrath
- Publication Date:
- 10-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- The timing of rain, and intra-seasonal rainfall patterns are critical to smallholder farmers in developing countries. Seasonality influences farmers' decisions about when to cultivate and sow and harvest. It ultimately contributes to the success or failure of their crops. Worryingly, therefore, farmers are reporting that both the timing of rainy seasons and the pattern of rains within seasons are changing. These perceptions of change are striking in that they are geographically widespread and because the changes are described in remarkably consistent terms. In this paper, we relate the perceptions of farmers from several regions(East Asia, South Asia, Southern and East Africa, and Latin America) of how seasons are changing, and in some cases, how once distinct seasons appear to be disappearing altogether, and the impacts that these changes are having. We then go on to ask two critical questions. Firstly, do meteorological observations support farmers' perceptions of changing seasonality? Secondly, to what extent are these changes consistent with predictions from climate models? We conclude that changing seasonality may be one of the major impacts of climate change faced by smallholder farmers in developing countries over the next few decades. Indeed, this may already be the case. Yet it is relatively unexplored in the literature. We also suggest some of the key adaptation responses that might help farmers cope with these changes.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Climate Change, Development, and Energy Policy
- Political Geography:
- Africa, East Asia, and Latin America