Agrobiodiversity and Technology in Resource-poor farms

CÁCERES DANIEL

INTERCIENCIA

INTERCIENCIA

Lugar: Caracas, Venezuela; Año: 2006 vol. 31 p. 403 - 410

0378-1844

Farms managed by peasants are traditionally considered as containing a high level of agrobiodiversity. However, the internal heterogeneity of their farming systems, and the links between agrobiodiversity, technology and peasant livelihood strategies have been much less explored. In order to explore these relationships, a comparison was carried out between two groups of resource-poor farmers in Northeastern Argentina: agroecological farmers and tobacco growers. The results suggest that the high agrobiodiversity observed in these farms rests on four main diversification strategies: genetic, spatial, temporal, and management diversification. Agrobiodiversity is also the result of the type of technologies used within these farms and the conditions within which the productive processes take place. Despite the fact that both groups of farmers have a very similar farm structure, a shared technological matrix, and the same fine-grain logic underlying their approach to farming, their farms showed markedly different levels of agrobiodiversity. Agroecological farmers managed more than three times as many species as did tobacco growers. They also devoted significantly more species to self-consumption and self-input. The findings described here have implications for rural development and policymaking, since the embracement of different approaches to farming can produce very different impacts on both peasant livelihoods and the environment.