Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Climate change creates new environmental conditions that stress all community
resources, although the most obvious is the impact on natural capital. These stresses
are felt unequally across communities and within communities, based on access
and control of resources. Both gender and ethnicity can limit access to and control
of different community capital stocks, making it particularly difficult for women and
ethnic minorities to adapt to the climate-induced changes.
Understanding that context and how different actors in the community truly under-
stand the soil as a resource and feel capable of improving it is critically important if
sustainable intensification is to occur. This is particularly so when confronted with cli-
mate change. A gender-aware perspective that acknowledges the influences of social
relations, cultures, beliefs, values, and attitudes on our understanding, experience, and
perceptions of the risks of climate change could contribute to a more balanced, nuanced
approach to the problem that can consider these multiple understandings (Skinner 2011).
Women in vulnerable communities adapt to changes in the environment caused
by climate and other forces. Many need to venture further to get wood and water.
They save seed from diverse sources, plant different varieties or species depending
on when it rains, have complex and diverse agricultural systems to minimize risk,
access a variety of wild foods, closely observe changes in flora and fauna, and adapt
their livelihood strategies to them. Access to and control of natural capital is often
contested (Allen 2003).
Technologies to improve natural capital often work at the community level. Putting
in small dikes and putting on more organic matter to retain moisture may lead to
the improvement of soil. Kassie et al. (2013) found that to be the case in Ethiopia.
Increasing organic matter in the soil increased its water-holding capacity. This was
far easier for local communities to understand than an abstract notion of soil organic
matter as an end in itself. As natural capital is extremely heterogeneous, attention to
place is critical for adaptation strategies.
Women and men in the same community tend to grow different crops; the specific
crop varies by place and gender (Doss 2002). Generally, women grow for home con-
sumption and local markets, while men are tied into longer value chains (Gladwin et
al. 2001). As pressure on land has increased, the crops that women grow have become
more diverse in southern Cameroon. There is more frequent and more intensive cul-
tivation of the women's crops, which increasingly provide family sustenance. That
diversification means changes in land use, including amount of lands cleared for culti-
vation, planting of different crops, different crop densities, and different fallow periods.
Gender and changes in the community shape agro-ecological practices (Guyer 1986).
Climate change has an immediate impact on natural resources. Farm communi-
ties and individual farmers have a long record of adapting to changes in rainfall and
temperature over time (OECD 2012b). However, current changes and the increasing
number of extreme events make the use of natural capital even more problematic
than before, influencing farm management practices, land use, what is produced, and
where it is produced.
Smallholders around the world are turning to indigenous roots and grains for their
basic food supply. Colonial regimes introduced exotic grains into soils that had not
coevolved with them. Examples are wheat and soybeans into the Americas and corn
and soybeans into Africa. These crops have quickly depleted soils of their organic
