Implementing the livelihood resilience framework: an indicator-based model for assessing mountain pastoral farming systems

CONTEXT: Ongoing decreases in family farms and livestock numbers in European mountain areas are linked to multiple interconnected challenges. The continuity of such farms concerns society at large since they also act as landscape stewards, and their management influences the provision of ecosystem services. The livelihood resilience lens provides a means of examining how farm households respond and build their capacity to persist, to adapt to changes and shocks, and eventually transform what is understood as farming. While an increasing number of studies address livelihood resilience in different parts of the world, its link with livelihood strategies and how these enhance or erode livelihood resilience dimensions is still missing. OBJECTIVE: We built and applied an indicator-based framework to characterize the livelihood strategies of mountain livestock farming households in the Catalan Pyrenees (Spain) considering local historical trends, to assess how these strategies contribute to their adaptive capacity. METHODS: We combined sustainable rural livelihoods and livelihood resilience frameworks and operationalized them to: group farm households with similar livelihood strategies based on their income-generating activities; asses the influence of capital assets and context on the adoption of strategies; and relate these strategies with their performance in three dimensions of adaptive capacity, namely capacity for learning and adaptation, self-organization, and diversity. Information was gathered surveying a sample of 103 farm households. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: We identified five livelihood strategies showing different degrees of adaptive capacity. Farm households either intensified production (21.3% of the sample) or pursued various diversification pathways based on additional off-farm work (28.6%), rural-tourism activities (22.7%), or added-value production (13.3%). Pensioners (11.8%) had a low endowment of assets and presented the lowest estimates in several dimensions of adaptive capacity. In contrast, diversification into rural tourism scored higher in adaptive capacity, showing greater proactive capacity, farmer organization, and multiple income sources. SIGNIFICANCE: We explored the multidimensional issues that influence and are influenced by the livelihood strategies and their adaptive capacity at the farm household level. Our work highlights the relevance of including income-generating activities in addition to structural, technical, and socioeconomic variables in characterizing farming systems. It demonstrates the role of farmer involvement in formal and informal social cooperation networks in the sustainability and adaptive capacity of their households. To be successful, diversification strategies may require certain prerequisites in the farms, while strategies based on off-farm activities, although they support improved financial performance of the farm household, could also contribute to the displacement of agriculture from mountain areas

Reimagining invasions; the social and cultural impacts of Prosopis on pastoralists in Southern Afar

Abstract Whilst the environmental impacts of biological invasions are clearly conceptualised and there is growing evidence on the economic benefits and costs, the social and cultural dimensions remain poorly understood. This paper presents the perceptions of pastoralist communities in southern Afar, Ethiopian lowlands, on one invasive species, Prosopis juliflora. The socio-cultural impacts are assessed, and the manner in which they interact with other drivers of vulnerability, including political marginalisation, sedentarisation and conflict, is explored. The research studied 10 communities and undertook semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. These results were supported by interviews with community leaders and key informants. The benefits and costs were analysed using the asset-based framework of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and the subject-focused approach of Wellbeing in Development. The results demonstrate that the costs of invasive species are felt across all of the livelihood capital bases (financial, natural, physical, human and social) highlighted within the framework and that the impacts cross multiple assets, such as reducing access through blocking roads. The concept of Wellbeing in Development provides a lens to examine neglected impacts, like conflict, community standing, political marginalisation and cultural impoverishment, and a freedom of definition and vocabulary to allow the participants to define their own epistemologies. The research highlights that impacts spread across assets, transcend objective and subjective classification, but also that impacts interact with other drivers of vulnerability. Pastoralists report deepened and broadened conflict, complicated relationships with the state and increased sedentarisation within invaded areas. The paper demonstrates that biological invasions have complex social and cultural implications beyond the environmental and economic costs which are commonly presented. Through synthesising methodologies and tools which capture local knowledge and perceptions, these implications and relationships are conceptualised

Typologies of organic beef farms in Catalonia Typologies of organic beef farms in Catalonia

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To cite th is article / Pou r citer cet article Abstract. Organic livestock farming is going through remarkable increase in the last decades in Europe. This is also the case in Catalonia. However, little work has been done explicitly on the characteristics of the livestock farms undertaking to organic production. In order to filling this lacuna, the nature of organic beef farms has been examined in Catalonia. In 2008 structured interviews to farmers were conducted (n=37, being 16% of the total number of organic beef farms) and data was submitted to PCA and Cluster Analysis. The aim of this study is to characterise the organic beef farms to disclose the different management and adjusting strategies being carried out. Three typologies of organic beef farms have been distinguished: a first group characterised by young farmers with an intensive management (24%); a second group of motivated farmers to produce organically that have the continuity of the farming activity guaranteed (27%); and finally a third group of discouraged farmers that see their continuity threatened (49%). Results suggest that half of the organic beef farms in Catalonia convert to organic production manly for financial reasons, to continue with the farming activity. Keywords. Farm typologies -Livestock farming -Calf fattening -Calf rearing. Mots-clés. Typologies des fermes -Élevage -Engraissement de veaux -Élevage de veaux