Exploring Agrodiversity

Brookfield, Harold

doi:10.7312/broo10232

Cited by 181 publications

(101 citation statements)

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Section: The Domesticated Landscapes Of the Bolivian Amazon 24smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As seen through the lens of evolutionary ecology (including optimal foraging theory), native peoples stress short-term, selfish benefits over long-term goals and thus do not practice resource conservation (Alvard 1994, 246 CLARK L. ERICKSON 1995). Other researchers argue the opposite: that natives enhance biodiversity as resource managers (Balee 1989(Balee , 1994(Balee , 1995(Balee , 1998a(Balee , 1998bBrookfield 2001;Denevan and Padoch 1988;Maffi 2001;Posey and Balee 1989).Both sides are beginning to agree, however, that there is no "natural" baseline or benchmark of pristine wilderness that should be used as a standard for comparisons (Bennett 1962; Denevan 1992;Hunter 1996;Stahl 1996). The question of whether human activities are positive or negative becomes complicated if humans played a major role in creating the very landscapes where biodiversity and nature are said to exist.…”

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8. The Domesticated Landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon

Erickson¹

2006

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology

203

139

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IS A comprehensive concept in anthropology referring to the cultural and genetic control of plants and animals and the processes of adopting farming and living in permanent settlements. Native Amazonians domesticated and cultivated a variety of crops (but few animal species) many millennia before the arrival of Europeans. In this chapter, I explore a simple hypothesis: that Amazonian peoples of the past invested more energy in domesticating entire landscapes than in domesticating individual plant and animal species. Through landscape engineering and the use of simple technology such as fire, the past inhabitants "domesticated" the forest, savanna, soil, and water of the Bolivian Amazon, which had profound implications for availability of game animals, economically useful plants, overall biomass, and regional biodiversity. Because the signatures of human activity and engineering are physically embedded in the landscape, archaeology can playa major role in studying these phenomena. The pre-Columbian peoples of the Bolivian Amazon built raised agricultural fields, practiced sophisticated water-management techniques, and lived in large, well-organized communities millennia before European contact. They rearranged soils, altered drainage, constructed earthworks, made marginal lands productive, and in some cases may have increased local biodiversity.Two themes that are now recognized as myths-one of a pristine environment and the other of the ecologically noble savage-have long dominated the popular and scientific literature on Amazonia. The myth of the pristine environment is the belief that the Americas consisted largely of undisturbed nature before the arrival of Europeans, who subsequently destroyed the environment with their agriculture, mining, and city building. The myth of the ecologically noble savage is the idea that past and present indigenous peoples always existed in harmony with this undisturbed nature. In both myths, nature 236 CLARK L. ERICKSON is imagined as being in a state of perpetual equilibrium with old, undisturbed forests as the ideal form.Environments portrayed as being in this pristine state are often those with low populations of native peoples practicing "traditional" lifeways. Most or much ofAmazonia was considered such a place. In the past few decades, however, research has shown that this state was recently created and not the product of timeless harmonies. Indeed, much of what has been viewed as "pristine wilderness" in the Amazon is the indirect result of massive depopulation after the arrival of Europeans. Within a century, Old World diseases, slavery, rnissionization, resettlement, and wars eliminated the great majority of the indigenous inhabitants from these landscapes. As a whole, Amazonia did not return to its sixteenth-century population level until the twentieth century. Historical ecologists have shown that before that depopulation occurred, native peoples directly determined much ofAmazonia's environmental structure and content. Thus, present-day Amazonian landscapes were sha...

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Section: The Domesticated Landscapes Of the Bolivian Amazon 24smentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

8. The Domesticated Landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon

Erickson¹

2006

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology

203

139

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“…Previously, agrobiodiversity was considered chiefly as a source of the stocks of genetic resources and corresponding raw material for "improved" crops and livestock [4]. By contrast, we adopt and advance a new understanding of agrobiodiversity that places emphasis on its relations to current livelihoods and human well-being [5][6][7][8], including the function of agrobiodiversity in diet quality and health. Ecological interactions [2,[9][10][11] including vegetation, soil biodiversity, water resources, and the diversity of landscape and agroecosystem components are also integral to agrobiodiversity.…”

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confidence: 99%

Toward the Integrated Framework Analysis of Linkages among Agrobiodiversity, Livelihood Diversification, Ecological Systems, and Sustainability amid Global Change

Zimmerer

Vanek

2016

Land

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Scientific and policy interest in the biological diversity of agriculture (agrobiodiversity) is expanding amid global socioeconomic and environmental changes and sustainability interests. The majority of global agrobiodiversity is produced in smallholder food-growing. We use meta-analyses in an integrated framework to examine the interactions of smallholder agrobiodiversity with: (1) livelihood processes, especially migration, including impacts on agrobiodiversity as well as the interconnected resource systems of soil, water, and uncultivated habitats; and (2) plant-soil ecological systems. We hypothesize these interactions depend on: (1) scope of livelihood diversification and type resource system; and (2) plant residues and above-/belowground component ecological specificity. Findings show: (1) livelihood diversification is linked to varied environmental factors that range from rampant degradation to enhancing sustainability; and (2) significant ecological coupling of aboveground and soil agrobiodiversity (AGSOBIO assemblages). The environmental impacts of livelihood interactions correspond to variation of diversification (migration, on-farm diversification) and resource system (i.e., agrobiodiversity per se, soil, water). Our findings also reveal mutually dependent interactions of aboveground and soil agrobiodiversity. Results identify livelihood diversification-induced reduction of environmental resource quality with lagged agrobiodiversity declines as a potentially major avenue of global change. Our contribution re-frames livelihood interactions to include both agrobiodiversity and ecological systems. We discuss this integrated social-environmental re-framing through the proposed spatial geographic schema of regional agri-food spaces with distinctive matrices of livelihood strategies and relations to biodiversity and resources. This re-framing can be used to integrate livelihood, agrobiodiversity, and ecological analysis and to guide policy and scientific approaches for sustainability in agriculture and food-growing.

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“…Population growth increases land scarcity and promotes agricultural intensification (Boserup 1965), while markets create demand for cultivated commodities (Netting 1993, Brookfield 2000. Land abundance, along with the market attraction of rubber and labour shortages, has caused the indigenous people in Kalimantan to cultivate extensive rice swiddens and rubber gardens (along with other tree crops).…”

Section: Smallholders Production and Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In swidden cultivation, which is characteristically constrained by labour shortages, farming is oriented towards a high return to labour, or production per unit of labour. Brookfield (2000) emphasises capital and skills as the key elements of agricultural transformation besides labour. However, increases in productivity may not necessarily follow an increase in labour input.…”

Section: Smallholders Production and Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pursuing Livelihoods, Imagining Development Smallholders in Highland Lampung, Indonesia

Kusworo¹

2014

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Exploring Agrodiversity

Cited by 181 publications

References 0 publications

8. The Domesticated Landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon

8. The Domesticated Landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon

Toward the Integrated Framework Analysis of Linkages among Agrobiodiversity, Livelihood Diversification, Ecological Systems, and Sustainability amid Global Change

Pursuing Livelihoods, Imagining Development Smallholders in Highland Lampung, Indonesia

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