Department of Geography, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Mar 30;107(13):5780-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0905892107. Epub 2010 Mar 25.
Forest cover transitions in the developing tropics are conditioned by agricultural change. The expansion, intensification, and diversification of agricultural land uses are tied to regional economic/environmental regimes and decisions of local farming households. Land change science and agrarian systems research share an interest in the drivers of household strategies, land use impacts, and typologies of those land uses/drivers. This study derives a typology of farming households in southern Mexico based on emergent patterns in their land use combinations and analyzes their household and policy drivers. The results reveal broadly diversified household land use portfolios as well as three emergent clusters of farmstead production orientation: (i) extensive subsistence-oriented conservationists, (ii), dual extensive-intensive farmers, and (iii) nonextensive diversified land users. Household membership in these clusters is uneven and strongly related to tenancy, land endowments, wage labor, and policy subsidies. Although most households are following a nonextensive agricultural strategy incorporating off-farm incomes, the likelihood of a regional forest transition remains debatable because of the disproportionate deforestation impacts of the less common strategies. Conservation development policies in the region need to accommodate diverse smallholder farming rationales, increase off-farm opportunities, and target sustainable development with the assistance of community conservation leaders.
发展中热带地区的森林覆盖变化受农业变化的影响。农业土地利用的扩张、集约化和多样化与区域经济/环境制度以及当地农户的决策有关。土地变化科学和农业系统研究都对农户策略、土地利用影响以及这些土地利用/驱动因素的类型学感兴趣。本研究基于墨西哥南部农户土地利用组合中的新兴模式，推导出了一种农户类型学，并分析了他们的家庭和政策驱动因素。研究结果表明，农户的土地利用组合呈现出广泛多样化的特征，同时也存在三种新兴的农场生产导向集群：（i）广泛的以生计为导向的自然资源保护主义者，（ii）双重广泛-集约型农民，以及（iii）非广泛多样化的土地使用者。这些集群中农户的成员身份参差不齐，与租户、土地禀赋、工资劳动和政策补贴密切相关。尽管大多数农户都在采取一种非广泛的农业策略，将非农业收入纳入其中，但由于不太常见的策略会带来不成比例的森林砍伐影响，区域森林转型的可能性仍然存在争议。该地区的保护发展政策需要适应多样化的小农户经营理念，增加非农业机会，并在社区保护领袖的协助下，以可持续发展为目标。
