The use of activity diaries for understanding the daily lives of farmers and their livelihood choices

This paper reviews the use of activity diaries in two Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) projects in PNG: a smallholder cocoa project in the East New Britain province (ASEM/2006/127) and a smallholder coffee project in Eastern Highlands province (ASEM/2008/036). Both projects were similarly concerned with identifying the production constraints on cocoa- and coffee-farming households and to better understand the range of socioeconomic and cultural factors influencing farmer decision-making and the allocation of household labour among various livelihood activities. In PNG, the household is the principal production unit underpinning livelihood activities such as commodity production. It is at the household level that decisions and negotiations are made regarding the organisation, mobilisation and management of family and extended family labour. Thus, examining in detail the daily economic and social livelihood activities of household members, through time-allocation studies, helps researchers to understand more comprehensively the factors influencing smallholder decision-making regarding livelihood choices, agricultural practices and the adoption of agricultural innovations. This paper outlines two different techniques using activity diaries employed in the projects, and discusses the methodological advantages and challenges of these techniques in smallholder studies in PNG

Forms and Processes of Settlement Pressure on Natural Systems

The process of urbanisation is considered one of the most significant anthropic alterations of the environmental framework, and the present study attempts to understand the spatial characteristics of urban growth and their impacts on envi- ronmental components in two metropolitan areas of Sicily. Such rapid and unplanned urbanisation in Sicily has increased during the last three decades causing severe pres- sure on various natural resources. In this situation, the level of fragmentation and isolation of natural areas risks becoming worse. The question assumes a particular relevance in those local territorial portions, such as some urban and periurban areas, presenting relevant conditions of naturality close to highly built environments. Such landscapes are usually affected by forms of human pressure that have determined intense deterioration processes, that urban and regional planning tools were not able to control and reduce. Empirical evidence of this study suggests that alternative urban patterns generate differential effects on the environmental system. Starting from this evidence, in this article we explore the reciprocity relationship between built envi- ronment and open territory, with the aim of identifying possible strategies to manage the phenomena of urban sprawl in the metropolitan context

Women's and Men's Work: The Production and Marketing of Fresh Food and Export Crops in Papua New Guinea

© 2019 Oceania Publications Fresh food markets have been a fixture of the social and economic landscape of urban and rural PNG since colonial times. They were often the first points of engagement with the market economy, especially for women, who as small-scale producers, sold surplus produce from their food gardens located on communally-owned land. Although local food markets have remained an important livelihood for women, the later adoption and expansion of perennial export cash crops like coffee and cocoa overshadowed food production for local markets as men dominated export crop production on land alienated from communal ownership for decades or permanently. New forms of social relations of production and more exclusive forms of land tenure emerged to accommodate export crop production that were very different from those governing the production and marketing of fresh food. Market values and a trend towards individualisation of production with less capacity to mobilise labour through reciprocal labour exchange networks have characterised export crop production. With the income benefits captured largely by men, women began redirecting their labour to fresh food production where they were able to exercise more control of production and income while still mobilising labour through indigenous labour exchange arrangements. Attempts by men to appropriate the income of women and sons’ labour in export cropping were greater during flush periods when income levels were high, and they were less likely to attempt to appropriate this income in low crop periods when incomes were lower. However, with the recent emergence of female entrepreneurers earning relatively large sums of money in large-scale, profit-driven vegetable production, the moral frameworks governing food production are coming to resemble those governing export crops, and making labour more difficult to mobilise. Despite women being key players in these changes, we argue there is an emerging risk that men will attempt to assert control over this income or move into vegetable production themselves and possibly marginalise women in the process