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Urbanization has threatened rural communities' livelihoods worldwide, changing their agro-food systems from locally produced traditional items to industrialized foodstuffs. The main objective was to investigate the relationship between livelihood conditions and the agro-food transition process in rural communities of the Center-West, Northeast, and Amazon regions of Brazil. We hypothesized that traditional agroecosystems and local food habits changed with greater access to market economies. The study was conducted with semi-structured questionnaire interviews to verify agro-food patterns, subsistence farming, natural resource use, and socioeconomic conditions. Moreover, we used stable isotope ratios from the inhabitants' fingernails to determine the food source and trophic chain diversity. Data from questionnaires were analyzed using a Bayesian clustering model to characterize the socioeconomic conditions and agro-food patterns among rural and urban communities. The isotopic data were appraised through a nonparametric model to assess food differences among Brazilian regions and different community types. The Bayesian model allowed us to determine the optimal number of groups according to descriptive socioeconomic and agro-food variables sorted by each specific location. We also verified a food change from C3 (more natural) to C4 (more processed) with an increase in δ13C and a decrease in δ15N in the city and town localities. This indicates a livelihood shift from locally produced foods to processed items toward urban areas. Although remote villages showed more maintenance of their agro-food systems, increased access to market economies and the supermarket diet is changing the livelihood conditions of rural communities, which can compromise their traditional farming and food sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the nutritional transition has been encroaching on remote rural areas of developing countries where feeding patterns are shifting from unprocessed foods to industrialized processed goods. Such changes in the Amazon region have been detected, for instance, by comparing the natural carbon (13C:12C) and nitrogen (15N:14N) isotopic ratios of people living in riverine communities with urban dwellers their putative diet. In this study, we considered how landscape variables impacted food consumption by comparing fingernail isotopic ratios of individuals in the rural settlement of Costa do Caldeirão located in the floodplain (várzea) of the Solimões River, and in the rural settlement of Paquequer located in a non-flooded area (terra-firme) near the Madeira River banks. A total of 70 fingernails were sampled for carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis during the low water period and again during the high water period from the same residents of the várzea and terra-firme. The consumption of C4-like resources (e.g., frozen chicken and canned meat) increased in both rural settlements during the high water period when C3-like resources (fish, cassava, rice, beans) are less available due to the flooding of lowland areas, but this difference was more pronounced in the terra-firme. The higher consumption of C4-like resources in the várzea compared to the terra-firme shows how seasonal flooding is a key factor influencing food security and health, due to stark variations in river water levels. While fish and farinha are still important staple foods, differences within rural settlements suggest that, besides seasonal variation and changes in water levels, other factors such as age, origin, and income may be crucial to understanding individual dietary behavior change in line with the nutritional transition model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]