Alternative food initiatives are appearing in many places. Observers suggest that they share a political agenda: to oppose the structures that coordinate and globalize the current food system and to create alternative systems of food production that are environmentally sustainable, economically viable, and socially just. This paper examines the potential of these initiatives through the lens of the concepts of 'alternative and oppositional' social movements and 'militant particularism and global ambition' developed by Raymond Williams and David Harvey. The three sections of this paper review (1) the current discussion of common themes and strategies in agrifood initiatives within the academic literature; (2) the history of these initiatives in California; and (3) results of our interviews with 37 current leaders of California organizations. We suggest that further understanding these initiatives, and success in the goals of the initiatives themselves, requires us to look past their similarities to examine their differences. These differences are related to the social forms and relations that have been established in the places from which these initiatives arise. 'Social justice,' in particular, may be difficult to construct at a 'local' scale. r

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Land-use change, a major driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem service degradation, is caused by intertwined local and regional forces that shape human-environment interactions. In order to understand the interacting effects of local processes and national policies on landscape changes, we studied two districts of contrasting demographic and land-management histories in southwest Ethiopia. Our main objectives were to understand the extent of forest cover changes through time, and to explore how deforestation rates correlate with (a) local changes in settlement, demographic conditions, and livelihood practices, and (b) broader changes in land-tenure and agricultural development policies in Ethiopia. We found that: (a) over 36% of the forests were lost since 1973, (b) deforestation rates varied through time due to changes in land-tenure and agricultural development policies, and (c) rates also varied between the two districts with higher rates in Yeki that correlated with demographic pressure from resettlement and agricultural expansion, and lower rates in Decha associated with lower population pressure and in response to forest conservation practices and higher non-timber forest benefits to local communities. The interactions in agricultural policy, land-tenure, demographic dynamics, and conservation policies with forest stability or decline suggested by this study shows the importance of carefully considering the undesirable effects of resettlement and agricultural development policies and the need to support community forest conservation that also benefits local people.

a b s t r a c tWhen natural ecosystems are degraded owing to land-use changes, humans will increasingly rely on managed landscapes for biodiversity and ecosystem services. In landscapes with ongoing foresteagriculture transitions and agricultural intensification, we need to understand the impact of land-use changes on ecosystem service provisioning and the relative roles of remnant forests and managed landscapes in ecosystem service delivery. Using socio-ecological surveys in southwest Ethiopian agroecosystems, we assessed the impact of land-use changes on forest-based ecosystem services and livelihoods, and the prospects for coffee agroforests to provide complementary forest-based ecosystem services. We found that over 67% of provisioning and <50% of cultural and regulating forest-based services can be provided by semi-forest and garden coffee systems. Most forest-based cultural, regulating and supporting services cannot be substituted in coffee agroforests since these services are largely concentrated in the forest remnants. The extent to which people substitute or complement those losses in coffee agroforests depends on the livelihood strategies and socio-cultural practices of local people, management intensity, and policy and demographic factors that affect agroecosystem intensification.

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