As municipalities across the global North highlight urban agriculture as a marker of their ‘greenness’, how can we best understand how the spaces and practices of urban food production are governed? This article develops an analysis of urban agriculture as a complex site of governance in which numerous interests engage. We underscore the politics of governance, through which some actors resist the imposition of a narrowly normative and exclusive notion of urban agriculture and against which they envision and enact alternatives. The article contributes to efforts to transcend the often dichotomous framing of urban agriculture as radical or neoliberal, formal or informal, political or post‐political by employing ‘everyday governance’ and ‘everyday resistance’ as lenses through which to focus on the prosaic practices of engaging with, pushing back against, and stepping beyond the imposition of hegemonic models of urban agriculture. We argue that the co‐constitutive, ‘braided’ nature of urban agricultural governance is revealed through attention to the manifold forms of negotiation and resistance to formal urban agricultural governance. Moreover, our perspective highlights the ways that some practitioners are excluded by, challenge, or re‐vision formal definitions of urban agriculture. We draw on the cases of Portland, OR and Vancouver, BC to illustrate our argument.
Agriculture is one of the most fundamental ways in which human societies interact with the environment. The form and function of agriculture have important socio-political implications in terms of yields, labor requirements, variability and resilience, and elite control. Hawai‘i has been used as a model system for the discussion of coupled human and natural systems, and how the uneven distribution of agricultural opportunities has manifested in the political ecology. However, consideration of agriculture has emphasized forms with physical infrastructure documented through archaeology and have not included arboricultural forms that were extensive among Pacific Islands. We leverage existing, independent data sets to build and validate spatial models of two intensities of arboriculture across the Hawaiian archipelago: Agroforestry and Novel Forest. Model validation demonstrates good accuracy that includes both expected and unexpected sources of errors. Results of the models demonstrate that arboricultural techniques accounted for ~70% of the agricultural potential by area and ~40% of the agricultural potential by yield. Unlike existing agricultural forms modeled, such as flooded wetland terrace cultivation and rainfed field production, which have strong distributional patterns based on the age of the islands, arboricultural potential is well distributed across all the islands. The extent, distribution, and characteristics of arboricultural methods provide important augmentation of the current narrative of production dynamics and distribution, and the political ecology, of pre-contact Hawai‘i.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10487867
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Human Ecology
- Volume:
- 51
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 0300-7839
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 1113-1125
- Size(s):
- ["p. 1113-1125"]
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Since the last glacial maximum (
LGM ), many plant and animal taxa have expanded their ranges by migration from glacial refugia. Weeds of cultivation may have followed this trend or spread globally following the expansion of agriculture or ruderal habitats associated with human‐mediated disturbance. We tested whether the range expansion of the weedSilene vulgaris across Europe fit the classical model of postglacial expansion from southern refugia, or followed known routes of the expansion of human agricultural practices. We used species distribution modeling to predict spatial patterns of postglacial expansion and contrasted these with the patterns of human agricultural expansion. A population genetic analysis using microsatellite loci was then used to test which scenario was better supported by spatial patterns of genetic diversity and structure. Genetic diversity was highest in southern Europe and declined with increasing latitude. Locations of ancestral demes from genetic cluster analysis were consistent with areas of predicted refugia. Species distribution models showed the most suitable habitat in theLGM on the southern coasts of Europe. These results support the typical postglacial northward colonization from southern refugia while refuting the east‐to‐west agricultural spread as the main mode of expansion forS. vulgaris . We know thatS. vulgaris has recently colonized many regions (including North America and other continents) through human‐mediated dispersal, but there is no evidence for a direct link between the Neolithic expansion of agriculture and current patterns of genetic diversity ofS. vulgaris in Europe. Therefore, the history of range expansion ofS. vulgaris likely began with postglacial expansion after theLGM , followed by more recent global dispersal by humans. -
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Abstract Pathogen transmission between domesticated and wild host species has important implications for community ecology, agriculture, and wildlife conservation. Bumble bees provide valuable pollination services that are vital for both wildflowers and agricultural production. Intense concerns about pathogen spillover from commercial bumble bees to wild bee populations, and the potential harmful effects of pathogen spillback to commercial bees, has stimulated a need for practical strategies that effectively manage bumble bee infectious diseases. Here, we assessed the costs and benefits of a medicinal sunflower pollen diet (
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Abstract We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. As potent ‘canonical icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations.
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Abstract Habitat conversion to farmland has increased human‐wildlife interactions, which often lead to conflict, injury or death for people and animals. Understanding the behavioural and landscape drivers of human‐wildlife conflict is critical for managing wildlife populations. Staging behaviour prior to crop incursions has been described across multiple taxa and offers potential utility in managing conflict, but few quantitative assessments of staging have been undertaken. Animal movement data can provide valuable, fine‐scale information on such behaviour with opportunities for application to real‐time management for conflict prediction.
We developed an approach to assess the efficacy of six widely used metrics of animal movement to identify staging behaviour prior to agricultural incursions. We applied this approach to GPS data from 55 African elephants in the Serengeti‐Mara ecosystem and found tortuosity and HMM‐derived behavioural states to be the most effective for identifying staging events. We then assessed temporal patterns of defined staging at daily and seasonal scales and explored environmental and anthropogenic drivers of staging from spatial generalized logistic mixed models. Finally, we tested the viability of combining movement and simple spatial metrics to predict crop incursions based on GPS data.
Our approach identified staging behaviour that appeared to be driven largely by human activity and diurnal availability of protective cover from forest, riverine vegetation, and topography. Staging also varied substantially by season. Tortuosity and behavioural state metrics identified different staging strategies with distinct spatial distributions and anthropogenic drivers, and appeared to be linked to the juxtaposition between protected and cultivated lands. Tortuosity‐based staging combined with distance‐to‐agriculture produced promising results for pre‐event prediction of crop incursion.
Synthesis and applications . Our study found staging by elephants prior to crop use could be identified from GPS tracking data, indicating that a better understanding of movement behaviour can inform targeted and proactive human‐wildlife conflict management and inform spatial planning efforts. Our approach is extendable to other conflict‐prone species to assess pre‐conflict behaviours and space use and demonstrates some of the challenges and advantages of using animal behaviour to assess temporal and spatial heterogeneity in human‐wildlife conflict.
