Development agencies are funding the construction of an increasing number of roads in mountainous regions as access to outlying districts moves up the development agenda. Infrastructure is important as a first step towards sustainable development and these regions, despite their inhospitable terrain, are often home to large populations of subsistence farming communities. The regions are therefo...

Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. (April 2, 2018)—A new study in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) found that treating women subsistence farmers with just a single dose of a cheap deworming medication significantly improved their physical stamina for the grueling agriculture work needed for their family’s survival. The results of treatment could be twofold: improved health for farming women and incre...

In Sri Lanka, the majority of farmers are generally poor,and rely on subsistence agriculture. If these farmers can even partially be made responsive to market needs, as opposed to current household needs, they could cultivate at least some income generating crops, which if sustained, can reduce their poverty. However, high transaction costs associated with obtaining market information have cont...

The expanding demand for livestock products in developing countries is expected to drive changes in livestock farming systems, such as intensification and technological development. However, while large commercial farms can take advantage of these new opportunities, semi-subsistence agriculture will be the main option for many poor livestock keepers. Development pathways may depend on local and...

The study was undertaken to investigate the year-to-year and seasonal variations in stunting among preschool children living at subsistence level in rural Ethiopia. Five thousand five hundred and eight anthropometric measurements were taken in 678 children (324 boys and 354 girls). The study classified 11.4% and 54.4% of the measurements as wasted and stunted respectively. Stunting occurred mor...

Discourse on the origins and spread of domesticated species focuses on universal causal explanations or unique regional or temporal trajectories. Despite new data as to the context and physical processes of early domestication, researchers still do not understand the types of system-level reorganizations required to transition from foraging to farming. Drawing upon dynamical systems theory and ...

The human gut microbiota is impacted by host nutrition and health status and therefore represents a potentially adaptive phenotype influenced by metabolic and immune constraints. Previous studies contrasting rural populations in developing countries to urban industrialized ones have shown that industrialization is strongly correlated with patterns in human gut microbiota; however, we know littl...

Farming domesticated millets, tending pigs, and hunting constituted the core of human subsistence strategies during Neolithic Yangshao (5000-2900 BC). Introduction of wheat and barley as well as the addition of domesticated herbivores during the Late Neolithic (∼2600-1900 BC) led to restructuring of ancient Chinese subsistence strategies. This study documents a dietary shift from indigenous mil...

Nevertheless, the persistence, and even deepening, in Sub-Saharan Africa of a type of small farming that is getting smaller all the time and that demonstrates an even greater orientation toward low-level subsistence than was the case 20 or 30 years ago should be of great concern to all those working on poverty reduction objectives in the continent. The dynamics of small farming in Africa are po...