The Relationship Between Soil Degradation, Rural Livelihoods, and Household Well-Being

该项目的目标是更好地了解土壤退化与农村贫困之间的联系。土壤退化是农业和其他用途土壤生产力的下降，通常是长期持续农业使用而不添加无机或有机肥料的结果。人们普遍认为，土壤退化是破坏小农生计的一个关键因素，特别是在发展中国家，小农占世界最贫困家庭的很大一部分。由于缺乏将土壤退化与家庭福祉联系起来的数据，对这一问题的范围和严重性的科学认识受到限制。这个问题在东非部分地区特别令人感兴趣，那里农村贫困普遍存在，农业产量低且停滞不前，很少有农民有资源给他们的田地施肥。为了解决这个问题，本项目将考虑乌干达的情况，这个国家的土壤退化和农村贫困特别严重。该项目的核心是建立一个新的数据集，将11年期间土壤生产力和家庭福祉的变化联系起来。在2003年进行的大规模家庭和土壤调查的基础上，将对相同的家庭进行再次访谈，并对农业地块进行重新抽样和分析。本文将利用多元统计技术对这一新的纵向数据集进行分析，以检验三个核心假设：(1)2003年土壤生产力较差的家庭在11年期间将经历更多的幸福感负面变化和更多的外迁；(2) 2003年贫困家庭土壤生产力的负向变化更大；(3)当考虑到其他影响时，幸福感和土壤生产力的变化将呈正相关。这项研究的结果将推动有关人口与环境关系的理论。改善土壤退化和减少农村贫困是贫穷国家农业和发展政策的中心目标，但迄今为止，这些政策的实施对这两个过程之间的联系缺乏科学理解。该项目将为土壤退化的严重程度和驱动因素以及土壤生产力对东非和世界其他地区农村家庭福祉的贡献提供重要的新见解，土壤退化也是一个问题。研究结果将通过在科学会议上的报告传播，并将提供给决策者。该项目由北卡罗莱纳大学教堂山分校、普渡大学、国际粮食政策研究所和乌干达国家农业研究实验室合作开展。它将支持两名研究生，并将整合到北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校和普渡大学现有的本科课程中。该项目由美国国家科学基金会地理与空间科学项目和国际科学与工程办公室（OISE）共同资助。

The goal of this project is to better understand the connections between soil degradation and rural poverty. Soil degradation is a decline in the productivity of the soil for agriculture and other uses, and is usually the result of long-term continual agricultural use without the addition of mineral or organic fertilizers. Soil degradation is widely perceived to be a key factor undermining the livelihoods of small farmers, especially in the developing world, who represent a large fraction of the world's poorest households. Scientific understanding of the extent and severity of this problem has been limited by the absence of data that links soil degradation and household well-being. This issue is of particular interest in parts of East Africa, where rural poverty is endemic, agricultural yields are low and stagnant, and few farmers have the resources to fertilize their fields. To address this issue, this project will consider the case of Uganda, a country where soil degradation and rural poverty are particularly severe. The core of the project is the construction of a new dataset that links changes in soil productivity and household well-being over an 11-year period. Building on a large household and soil survey conducted in 2003, the same households will be re-interviewed, and agricultural plots will be re-sampled and analyzed. This new longitudinal dataset will be analyzed using multivariate statistical techniques to test three core hypotheses: (1) Households with poor soil productivity in 2003 will have experienced more negative changes in well-being and more out-migration over the 11-year period; (2) Households that were poor in 2003 will have experienced more negative changes in soil productivity; and (3) Changes in well-being and soil productivity will be positively correlated when other influences have been accounted for. Findings from the research will advance theories about the relationship between demography and the environment.Ameliorating soil degradation and reducing rural poverty are central goals of agricultural and development policies in poor countries, but to date these policies have been implemented with little scientific understanding of the connections between these two processes. This project will provide important new insights into the severity and drivers of soil degradation, as well as the contribution of soil productivity to the well-being of rural households in East Africa and other parts of the world where this is also an issue. The results will be disseminated through presentations at scientific conferences and will be made available to policy makers. The project is collaboration between the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Purdue University, the International Food Policy Research Institute, and the National Agricultural Research Laboratories of Uganda. It will support two graduate students and will be integrated into existing undergraduate courses at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and at Purdue University.This project is supported through co-funding between NSF's Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).