Edible insects have emerged in the past decade as a sustainable alternative to agro-industrial production systems and livestock-based diets. Despite the expansion of the market and increases in academic publications, a review of the rapidly changing field of edible insect research has yet to be published. Here we present a comprehensive and systematic review of the research on edible insect industrialization, the mass rearing of insects for human consumption, published in the year 2018. Our review provides an overview of the edible insect industry, as the field becomes more industrialized, and research addresses health, safety, and other concerns of consumers and legislators. This review provides an understanding of the scales of edible insect industrialization from (a) the microbiological level of insect rearing, to (b) the external production factors within rearing facilities, (c) the development of insect products, (d) consumer acceptance of industrially reared insects, and (e) social and moral concerns with the industry. We contextualize reviewed works in relation to earlier and subsequent publications on edible insects, providing a view of the bigger picture as insect-based products are poised to become more widely available to global consumers. Overall, this review provides an overview of the edible insect industry for environmental researchers and policymakers interested in the linkages between food, agriculture, and climate change, as well as recent progress, remaining challenges, and trade-offs of an industry with potential to contribute to more sustainable diets.
Cattle raising is currently the leading cause of deforestation in Amazonia, and an increasingly appealing and profitable way for a growing number of smallholders to make a living in the westernAmazon state of Acre, Brazil. The Acrean rubber tapper social movement contested the arrival of cattle ranchers in the 1970s and 1980s, but cattle raising has expanded among smallholder groups, including the rubber tappers, over the past 20 years. Building on the legacy of political-economic analyses of Amazonian cattle raising, this study argues for an expanded view of cattle raising by incorporating perspectives on the cultural constructions surrounding cattle and intergroup socioeconomic relationships. Data obtained from surveys and participant observation are used to examine the factors that have contributed to the expansion of cattle raising across three Acrean groups, each historically distinguished by their unique forms of livelihood and associated identities: forestextractivist rubber tappers, agricultural colonists, and large-scale ranchers. It is argued that three factors have contributed to the growth of cattle ranching among these groups: political and economic shifts, which have made agricultural and extractive livelihoods less competitive with cattle raising; the spread of positive cultural views surrounding cattle raising; and the transition of intergroup relationships from conflict to cooperation in the cattle industry. [cattle raising, cattle culture, political ecology, Amazon] The initial expansion of cattle into the Brazilian Amazon in the 1970s and 1980s was mostly limited to large-scale ranchers in the eastern Amazon states of Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment Vol. 33, Issue 2 pp. 95-106, ISSN 2153-9553, eISSN 2153-9561. Although cattle were disdained in the 1980s for their role in rubber tapper/rancher conflicts and forest destruction, most rubber tappers now agree Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment 100 Vol. 33, No. 2 December 2011 Group Wealth Poverty Progress Decadence Rubber tappers Cattle 85% Extractivism 85% Cattle 75% Extractivism 60% Colonists Cattle 95% Extractivism 90% Cattle 85% Agriculture 55% Ranchers Cattle 70% Extractivism 100% Cattle 50% Extractivism 85%Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment
The Amazonian frontier, shaped by developmentalist policies in the 1970s and 1980s and a socio-environmental response in the 1990s, has historically been a site of widespread violence and environmental destruction. After the imposition of new environmental governance measures in the mid-2000s, deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon dropped to historic lows. Many analyses of this 'greening' of Amazonia operate within a limited historical perspective that obscures complex and still-evolving contestation among diverse actors and projects. The long-term evolution of the frontier is illustrated dramatically in the municipality of São Félix do Xingu (São Félix). Emerging as a 'contested frontier' in the 1970s, São Félix in the early 2000s lost over 1000 km 2 of forest annually, but since the mid-2000s, the municipality has entered a period of 'greening'. This contribution deploys a historical political ecology framework to analyse how decades of agrarian frontier change and land conflicts among actors on the ground interacted with shifting national policy debates. Nearly a half-decade of field research in São Félix is combined with data from a 2014 field 'revisit' to situate the current 'greening' of policy and discourse within the longer term history of frontier development, revealing positive social and environmental developments and persistent contradictions and uncertainties.
In recent years, environmental values have become increasingly important for understanding human–environment relationships and transitions towards sustainability. Pluralistic valuation seeks to account for values associated with the diversity of human–nature relationships. Relational values (RV) have been proposed as a concept that can aid in plural valuation. RV concern the relationships that people have with their environments. Most RV studies focus on ‘desirable’ or ‘beneficial’ RV that contribute to pro‐environmental actions and sustainable outcomes. We argue that RV could be expanded to understand values that may be less environmentally beneficial. We focus our analysis on RV that exist in ‘simplified’ landscapes. Drawing on our research on cattle‐based livelihoods in Latin America, we highlight potential approaches to the study of RV in such simplified landscapes. We then build on the examples to examine themes and principles of RV with the aim of stimulating discussion about how the concept might be refined and expanded to study a broader range of human–environment relationships. Overall, our aim is to contribute to plural valuation and offer preliminary suggestions for how RV might expand to capture the complexity of values, from those that are desirable to those which contribute to environmental degradation. Expanding the scope of RV research and the depth of the RV concept can help to understand the challenges to sustainability and contribute to the shared goals of sustainability that motivate values research. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
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