Centre for Integrative Ecology (CIE), School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia.
Centre for Integrative Ecology (CIE), School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Jun 1;719:137464. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137464. Epub 2020 Feb 21.
Smallholder agriculture is a major contributor to global food production and is vital for ensuring food security in many developing countries. Smallholder agriculture is a typically complex and heterogeneous social-ecological system that is especially susceptible to climatic variability. Research has often focused on examining climate impacts on crops in smallholder agriculture. However, the resilience of smallholder agriculture in terms of maintaining yield remains largely unexplored. We empirically quantified the resilience of rice, wheat and maize to climatic variabilities for the Far Western Province of Nepal. We calculated resilience indices (RI) comparing the anomalies of actual yield in agricultural statistics to the expected yields generated by a process-based yield simulation model for nine districts across the Terai, Hill and Mountain regions of the province. Based on the sustainable livelihoods framework, we then assessed the degree to which indicator variables correlate with resilience. The results demonstrate the variability of resilience across regions and crops. Terai, Hill and Mountain regions were found to be resilient in wheat, rice and wheat, and maize, respectively. Each region has maintained resilience in at least one crop suggesting that smallholder farmers have prioritised food subsistence. While Nepal's current Agricultural Development Strategy is focused on boosting yields in the Terai, we found the region to be less resilient overall compared to the Hill and the Mountain regions. Theory-driven capital indicators exhibited a weak and often contradictory relationship with resilience. Such indicators, used in isolation, could therefore misguide the resilience assessment in the absence of complementary fine-scale exploratory social research necessary to explain the drivers of resilience in smallholder agriculture and infer policy decisions.
小农农业是全球粮食生产的主要贡献者，对于许多发展中国家确保粮食安全至关重要。小农农业是一个典型的复杂和异质的社会-生态系统，特别容易受到气候变率的影响。研究通常集中在考察小农户农业中气候对作物的影响。然而，小农户农业在维持产量方面的恢复力在很大程度上仍未得到探索。我们通过实证方法量化了尼泊尔远西部省份水稻、小麦和玉米对气候变率的恢复力。我们计算了恢复力指数（RI），将农业统计数据中实际产量的异常值与基于过程的产量模拟模型为该省特莱、丘陵和山区的九个地区生成的预期产量进行了比较。根据可持续生计框架，我们评估了指标变量与恢复力的相关性程度。结果表明，不同地区和作物的恢复力存在差异。特莱、丘陵和山区在小麦、水稻和小麦以及玉米方面表现出恢复力。每个地区都至少在一种作物中保持了恢复力，这表明小农农民已经将粮食生存作为优先事项。虽然尼泊尔目前的农业发展战略侧重于提高特莱地区的产量，但与丘陵和山区相比，我们发现该地区的整体恢复力较低。理论驱动的资本指标与恢复力之间的关系微弱且常常相互矛盾。因此，在缺乏必要的补充性小规模探索性社会研究以解释小农农业恢复力的驱动因素并推断政策决策的情况下，单独使用这些指标可能会误导恢复力评估。
