Search

Tobacco use is associated with an annual global economic cost of two trillion dollars and mortality of half of its regular users. Tobacco leaf cultivation is the starting point of the tobacco cycle. Tobacco farming employs millions of small-scale tobacco farmers around the globe, most of whom are out growers who rely on the tobacco industry. This paper aims to map the regions of greatest tobacco production globally (i.e., the US, Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, and Zambia) and tobacco use rates in these locations. Smoking rates were higher in those areas, except for India, where important population subgroups reported an upward trend for tobacco smoking. In general, there was a relationship between tobacco farming and tobacco smoking. Tobacco farming may lead to a higher risk of tobacco use and lower adherence to tobacco control policies. Therefore, promoting viable alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers must have dual benefits. Additionally, specific health prevention policies might be necessary for those populations reporting higher tobacco use and lower perception of tobacco-related health risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article has as objective to analyze the emergence in El Salvador of family farming and the social category family farmer. To that purpose, this article uses mainly two theoretical concepts: family farming and policy transfer. Evidence suggests that the appropriation of the social category "family farmer" in El Salvador responds to an update of formerly used concepts small producer or commercial producer. Hence, it's not possible to find technical, theoretical or methodological grounds to justify the use of family farmer as new social category in El Salvador. The adoption of family farmer comes as a result of a policy transfer enhanced by three vectors: political affinity between Brazil's and El Salvador's presidents, bureaucrat's paper and work performed by intergovernmental organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent political measures in Brazil, in conjunction with new environmental policies, could reverse previous achievements that had put the country at the forefront of social policy making. This article discusses the implications of Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) for social policy. It is based on qualitative methods, namely, semi-structured interviews with subscribers from six administrative regions who participated through digital platforms. The results indicate that the factors determining consumer participation in CSA are health impact, strengthening local production, environmental concerns, and eating as a human right and political act. This article also demonstrates the need to promote participation among low-income and socially vulnerable families in CSA and to firmly connect food and nutrition security policy with health, and environment aimed at poverty alleviation. The novelty of this research lies in its consideration of the implications of CSA for environmental preservation and the promotion of a healthier and sustainable food system, namely for the low-income population, which can lead to the growth of eco-social policies in developing welfare states in the global south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Food security is a major global challenge of the XXIst century. • Good governance is a key player in reducing poverty and increasing food security. • Family farming, complementary to large-scale farming, is crucial to global food security. Abstract Ensuring food security is one of the main challenges of the 21st century in developing countries. The aim of this study is to analyze how public policies contribute to the strengthening of family farming in order to increase the food security. The study encompasses a literature review of the relations between public policies, family farming and food security and relates them with a review of the main policy framework in Brazil. The results show that the Brazilian policy framework in terms of strategies to strengthen food security is intrinsically focused on family farming and, in fact, these policies contribute to enhancing food security. Thus, family farming, in conjunction with large-scale farming, is crucial to Brazilian and global food security. Even though there are some scientific publications on food security and official reports on the subjects in Brazil, little has been written about family farming as a strategy for public policies to enhance food security in Brazil. Therefore, this paper can potentially contribute to the literature on good governance in terms of agriculture and food security policies by presenting the well succeeded case of Brazil since the early 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Brazilian Review of Economics & Agribusiness / Revista de Economia e Agronegócio is the property of Brazilian Review of Economics & Agribusiness / Revista de Economia e Agronegocio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Nanotechnology is regarded by many authors as the base for the next industrial revolution. The prefix "nano" is equivalent to 10 m. Manipulation at the nanometric level can modify properties such as color, conductivity, reactivity, melting point, among others, creating new applications for materials. It is seen as a multidisciplinary science with applications in distinct sectors, such as physics, chemistry, biology, materials, and information, among others. In Brazil, the policies of support to nanotechnologies started in 2001, and since 2007, nanotechnologies were identified as a strategic area for the Brazilian government, due to their innovation potential, market growth, and the benefits related to their use. The food and agriculture sector, object of this study, is among the areas that can be benefited from using nanotechnologies. Considering the importance of the sector for the Brazilian economy, this paper aims to identify and to describe the research that involves nanotechnology in the food and agriculture sector. To do this, an application through the software VOSviewer has been made by means of studies published in the database Scopus. To identify how investigations have evolved over time, the search was divided into three different periods: 2001-2005, 2006-2009 and 2010-2013. The results pointed out four trends: 1. use of the biosensors, especially for contamination detection; 2. use of active packaging, biodegradable and containing indicators of deterioration and contamination; 3. encapsulation for delivery of nutrients; and 4. risks and benefits, regulatory frameworks. The results may provide means to develop policies that support and promote nanotechnology to the food and agriculture sector, as well as to suggest research objects for identifying the current phase of these technologies in Brazil. The prospection made also contributes to identify business opportunities for Brazilian businessmen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural is the property of Sociedade Brasileira de Economia e Sociologia Rural and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Highlights: [•] The present paper aims at evaluating the effect of regional policies in the agricultural field. [•] Regional systems are evaluated through the Directional Output Distance Function (DODF). [•] The DODF approach considers pollutant emissions as undesirable output. [•] Results show that there is a link between public policy and environmental performance of agricultural systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing fishing effort has caused declines in shark populations worldwide. Understanding biological and ecological characteristics of sharks is essential to effectively implement management measures, but to fully understand drivers of fishing pressure social factors must be considered through multidisciplinary and integrated approaches. The present study aimed to use fisher and trader knowledge to describe the shark catch and product supply chain in Northeastern Brazil, and evaluate perceptions regarding the regional conservation status of shark species. Non-systematic observations and structured individual interviews were conducted with experienced fishers and traders. The demand and economic value of shark fins has reportedly decreased over the last 10 years while the shark meat trade has increased slightly, including a small increase in the average price per kilogram of meat. Several threatened shark species were reportedly often captured off shore and traded at local markets. This reported and observed harvest breaches current Brazilian environmental laws. Fishing communities are aware of population declines of several shark species, but rarely take action to avoid capture of sharks. The continuing capture of sharks is mainly due to a lack of knowledge of environmental laws, lack of enforcement by responsible authorities, and difficulties encountered by fishers in finding alternative income streams. National and regional conservation measures are immediately required to reduce overfishing on shark populations in Northeastern Brazil. Social and economic improvements for poor fishing communities must also be implemented to achieve sustainable fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The calculation of robust estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions due to agriculture is essential to support the framing of the Brazilian climate change mitigation policy. Information on the future development of land use and land cover change (LULCC) under the combination of various driving factors operating at different spatial scale levels, e.g., local land use policy and global demands for agricultural commodities, is required. The spatially explicit land use model, LandSHIFT, was applied to calculate a set of high-resolution land use scenarios for Southern Amazonia. The time frame of the analysis was 2010-2030. Based on the generated maps, emission coefficients were applied to calculate annual NO, CH, and CO emissions from agricultural soils (croplands and pastures). The results indicate that future land use pattern and the resultant greenhouse gas emissions in Southern Amazonia will be strongly determined by global and regional demands for agricultural commodities, as well as by the level of intensification of agriculture and the implementation of conservation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (Routledge) is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article investigates the seemingly contradictory policies adopted by the Brazilian state to prevent land grabs in one region while encouraging agribusiness investments in another. The government recently initiated a programme intended to regularize titles of 300,000 homesteaders in unassigned public land in the Amazon region. This effort in state making over a largely illegible landscape is aimed at offsetting large-scale illegal land grabs and ongoing (though significantly curtailed) deforestation. In contrast, legal large-scale agribusiness investments are exacerbating deforestation and the concentration of land ownership in the Cerrado region through well-established state mechanisms. While the imposition of legibility may regulate land concentration and degradation, legible landscapes also facilitate investments that drive both concentration and degradation. The author argues that the regularization programme undertaken in the Amazon structures land grabbing nationally - not because large amounts of public land are in fact being privatized through regularization, but because it actively undermines land redistribution programmes elsewhere in the country and consolidates transportation and production infrastructure in the Amazon-Cerrado transition zone. The state-making framework developed here captures the heterogeneity of global land grab processes, indicating the ways in which these are obstructed but not discarded by different government agencies, stalled but not yet overturned by Brazilian civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article intends to reflect upon what lies in the intersection between two premises: (1) that science, and in particular the social sciences, can contribute towards informing both decision-making and the formulation of public policies aimed at improving human welfare; and (2) that the role of agriculture in the conservation of biodiversity is an extremely relevant contemporary issue, hence the need to study it in greater depth. The relationship between agriculture and biodiversity has been subjected to recent questionings, both in society and in the realm of public policies, as a result of growing concerns about the environmental changes caused by anthropic action. However, despite the increase in the number of studies on family-based agriculture, and on biodiversity in Brazil, the research funding available for researching the relationship between those two broad themes is still incipient. Against this backdrop, we shall pursue two main objectives with this study: (1) to investigate how the role of family-based agriculture in the preservation of biodiversity has been approached by the social sciences in Brazil, with a focus on articles published in Brazilian scientific journals over the last 20 years that are available online; (2) to elaborate an inventory of the knowledge available on this issue in order to test a methodology for a comprehensive literature review to help decision-makers involved with public policies as it is suggested by the evidence-based policy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent successes, Brazilian income (cash) transfer policies remain controversial, and alternative approaches to income redistribution are being actively considered. This article contributes to this debate, analysing the effects of several alternative policies for income redistribution in the Brazilian economy using a computable general equilibrium model. Simulations were conducted consistent with the following policies: direct transfer of income, reduction of taxes, and incentives to agricultural exports. The results suggest that transfer of income is the most effective in promoting redistribution of income, with a positive impact on the level of welfare of the poorest households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. This article reviews changes in the social contexts of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon from the 1970s to the 1990s, moving from the household to the global level. Methods. I draw on satellite imagery, state publications, farm surveys, ethnographic field work, and policy analyses for a comparative analysis that shows how land cover, agriculture, demographics, politics, and markets have changed over time. Results. Alterations in the social contexts of deforestation appear on all levels considered, from household demographic evolution and new land use strategies to a regional demographic transition and the emergence of cattle and timber economies, to a “greening” of Brazilian development policy and changes in national land markets, to multilateral bank loans for new infrastructure and local-international alliances between grassroots and environmental organizations. Conclusions. The social contexts of deforestation are very complex and changing and call for greater attention by social scientists to land cover and land use change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]