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requires steady transmission, electricity for charging, and affordable airtime. All
three are more likely to be problematic in rural, poor and sparsely populated
areas (Watts 2008). The use of cellular phones for leisure purposes might
also divert limited economic resources from strategic agricultural inputs like
fertilizers, pesticides or equipment. In Uganda people were found to sacrifice
travel or food purchases to pay phone service costs (Diga 2008). Nevertheless
the use of cellphones has brought new opportunities for improving the
livelihoods and wellbeing of vast numbers of people. The multi-purpose nature
of cellphones has opened up many possibilities beyond leisure communication,
such as getting information on job opportunities and crop prices, and receiving
automatic messaging as reminders to take medicines on schedule (Aker and
Mbiti 2010). They are also useful as early warning devices: they reduce the need
to travel to the nearest communication post, thus speeding up communication
as well as response actions (Andersson et al. 2009).
In a recent South African study, commercial farmers noted the importance of
their cellphone networks for combating the disastrous effects of wildfires (Wilk
et al. 2013). The recent spread of cellphones among smallholders offers great
potential for including them in such networks, thereby covering large tracts of
land previously excluded. As societal divisions in South Africa have historically
limited inter-racial meeting places, networks that can include commercial as
well as smallholder farmers are practically non-existent. Cellphone networks
provide opportunities for long-range communication between these two groups
that could ease contact. As wildfires are projected to increase in the area in the
future due to higher ambient temperatures, including smallholders in the
fire-fighting cellphone networks could heighten the adaptive capacity of the
community at large.
The lifestyle case
In the 1980s, de-collectivization in China began to distribute rights to
households, creating an agricultural system consisting of millions of individual
household farms where farmers could lease land for up to 15 years (Ostwald et
al. 2007). Agricultural markets were established, where individual farmers are
free to sell their produce as they choose. In the province of Xinjiang, this led
to a shift from cotton production to more diversified agriculture. Concurrently
China in general and Xinjiang in particular have experienced recent rapid
economic growth, particularly in urban areas.
According to household interviews in Xinjiang, the new food habits of the
growing urban middle class, including organically grown products, meat and
wine, as well as an interest in leisure activities, have rapidly increased prices as
well as market demand (Wilk et al. 2014). The interest in tourism and travel has
been growing among all but the poorest of farmers, making local people not only
producers but also consumers of tourist services. Interviewees also explained
that subsidies and favourable tax reductions have been offered to facilitate the
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