For many family farms, migration is one strategy for reducing poverty and vulnerability to both natural hazards and economic risk. While more men typically migrate to work, the implications of this on the household are inconclusive, especially for the women who remain on the farms. This study employs a gender lens to examine the effects of economically driven migration on household decision-making, farm labor and disaster risk reduction, focusing on two disaster-prone regions with high poverty rates in Vietnam: Dien Bien (Northwest) and Ha Tinh (North Central Coast) provinces. Surveys of 228 households with at least one migrant worker showed a new generation of young male and female migrants, and that men over 30 years of age migrated for longer periods and more frequently than their spouses. Intrahousehold impacts differed according to risk strategies. In areas with a lower-risk coping strategy (Dien Bien), seasonal jobs coincided with periods of less intense farming activities. During the absence of male family members, women temporarily made more domestic decisions. In areas with a higher-risk adaptation strategy (Ha Tinh), farming was planned for longer absences; thus decisions remained largely unchanged. Remittances invested into agriculture contributed to shortening the recovery period after disasters and, in some cases, diversifying farming systems. The migrant’s absence was offset by relatives and neighbors as essential labor reserves. New resilient farming systems need to be disaster proof, gender-sensitive and free up labor.

Urgent climate challenges have triggered calls for radical, widespread changes in what we eat, pushing for the drastic reduction if not elimination of animal-source foods from our diets. But high-profile debates, based on patchy evidence, are failing to differentiate between varied landscapes, environments and production methods. Relatively low-impact, extensive livestock production, such as pastoralism, is being lumped in with industrial systems in the conversation about the future of food. This report warns that the dominant picture of livestock’s impacts on climate change has been distorted by faulty assumptions that focus on intensive, industrial farming in rich countries. Millions of people worldwide who depend on extensive livestock production, with relatively lower climate impacts, are being ignored by debates on the future of food. The report identifies ten flaws in the way that livestock’s climate impacts have been assessed, and suggests how pastoralists could be better included in future debates about food and the climate.

In discussions around food systems and the climate, livestock is often painted as the villain. While some livestock production in some places contributes significantly to climate change, this is not universally the case. This article focuses on pastoral production systems – extensive, often mobile systems using marginal rangelands across around half of the world’s surface, involving many millions of people. By examining the assumptions behind standard calculations of greenhouse gas emissions, a systematic bias against pastoralism is revealed. Many policy and campaign stances fail to discriminate between different material conditions of production, lumping all livestock systems together. Injustices arise through the framing of debates and policy knowledge; through procedures that exclude certain people and perspectives; and through the distributional consequences of policies. In all cases, extensive livestock keepers lose out. In reflecting on the implications for European pastoralism, an alternative approach is explored where pastoralists’ knowledge, practices and organisations take centre‑stage.