Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating Transitions in Agricultural Livelihoods: Global Change, Response Diversity, and Local Food Production

在过去的三十年里，学者和政策制定者越来越关注全球变化对美国和世界各地农村生计可持续性的负面影响。我们从研究中了解到，经济全球化和农民融入全球商品链往往导致经济依赖和排斥增加、粮食不安全和环境退化。这些动态对小农的生存能力造成了特别的损害，尽管如此，他们仍然生产着全球80%的粮食。鉴于这些全球挑战，最近的学术研究发现，农民主导的向当地粮食生产的过渡是农村发展的一条新的、可持续的道路。因此，了解促进向当地粮食生产的可持续过渡的因素对于推进支持未来农村发展努力的有效方案和政策至关重要。这项研究将为女性人类学家的博士培养提供必要的支持。它还将通过为三名农村青年提供助学金来建设当地的研究能力，并将加强国际科学合作。协作参与战略将使调查结果能够为规划工作提供信息，从而促进向农业社区提供更有效的支持。研究结果还将通过学术会议和以农业、环境和农村发展问题为重点的期刊上的出版物传播。研究将在东加勒比海的农村岛屿多米尼加进行。多米尼加是一个特别合适的研究环境，因为自20世纪90年代以来，那里的农业生计已经从出口商品生产过渡到当地多种形式的粮食生产。虽然这些过渡与包括高水平粮食安全和经济增长在内的积极成果有关，但目前人们对农民如何能够重新调整当地关系和生产和交换做法知之甚少。这项研究将侧重于三个地点的小农家庭，以便对不同社会和环境条件下的农业生计进行比较。调查人员将评估小农如何以及为什么通过减少出口生产来应对不断变化的全球环境。调查人员还将通过确定获得资源、市场和发展支助的不同途径如何反映农业做法的多样性，以及这些因素中的哪些因素促进农业家庭和社区的可持续生计成果，来评估这些应对措施的影响。调查员将进行长期的实地考察，进行调查和访谈，并参与和观察农业活动。这项研究的结果将为可持续农业转型提供一个模式；一个可以推广到其他面临类似全球动态的背景下的模式。

Over the past thirty years, scholars and policymakers have become increasingly concerned with the negative effects of global change on the sustainability of rural livelihoods, both in the United States and around the world. We know from research that economic globalization and the integration of farmers into global commodity chains often has resulted in rising economic dependence and exclusion, food insecurity, and environmental degradation. These dynamics have been particularly damaging to the viability of smallholding family farmers, who nonetheless continue to produce 80 percent of the global food supply. In light of these global challenges, recent scholarship has identified farmer-led transitions toward local food production as a new and sustainable path for rural development. Understanding the factors that promote sustainable transitions to local food production is therefore critical for advancing effective programs and policies that support future rural development efforts. This research will contribute essential support to the PhD training of a female anthropologist. It will also build local research capacities by offering assistantships for three rural youth and will enhance international scientific collaboration. Collaborative engagement strategies will enable findings to inform planning efforts that will facilitate the delivery of more effective support to farming communities. Results will also be disseminated via academic conferences and publications in journals that focus on agriculture, environment, and rural development issues.Research will be conducted in Dominica, a rural island in the Eastern Caribbean. Dominica is a particularly apt research setting because since the 1990s, agricultural livelihoods there have transitioned from export commodity production to diverse forms of local food production. Although these transitions are associated with positive outcomes including high levels of food security and economic growth, there is currently little known about how farmers have been able to rework local relations and practices of production and exchange. The research will focus on smallholder farming households in three sites that allow for comparison of agricultural livelihoods in distinct social and environmental conditions. Investigators will assess how and why smallholders have responded to changing global conditions by shifting away from export production. Investigators will also assess the impacts of these responses by determining how variable access to resources, markets, and development support reflect diversity in agricultural practices and which of these factors promote sustainable livelihood outcomes for farming families and communities. Investigators will engage in long-term site visits to conduct surveys and interviews, and to participate in and observe agricultural activities. Findings from this research will provide a model for sustainable agricultural transitions; one that can be generalized to other contexts facing similar global dynamics.