In Western Kenya, smallholder dairy production is becoming incrementally commercialized through the commodification and sale of milk through formal market channels. While commercialization is often construed as a way to boost rural livelihoods through increased income from milk, emerging evidence suggests that married women are not directly benefiting from formal milk market participation. This critical issue of gender power imbalance has been framed by development interventions in economic efficiency and social justice perspectives, but thus far interventions in the sector have (...) not addressed how underlying social-market mechanisms embedded in gendered ideology influence smallholder engagement in dairy commercialization. Drawing on feminist theories of power and social embeddedness, this study investigates how gendered power relationships materialize and influence formal milk marketing engagement and practices in Western Kenya. Facilitated discussion groups with smallholder farmers revealed the gendered ideologies and norms that ascribe masculinized meaning to cattle, milk, and commercial enterprise. Key informant interviews with commercial dairy management and farmers were used to identify current practices for increasing women’s formal market participation—namely, direct payments to women for milk deliveries. Findings from this study indicate that cattle and formal dairy market participation are imbued with gendered meaning that create legitimacy around men’s privilege over dairy proceeds. Interventions in the sector aimed at addressing gender power imbalances must acknowledge this dynamic, and accept the social trade-offs and gendered costs of dairy commercialization. (shrink)

This article reflects on how Agriculture and Human Values has approached women, gender, and agriculture over the years based on a content analysis of the journal. Overall, the journal has a long history of dealing with these issues with increasing interest over time. The predominant research themes in this area are women on farms; gender, agriculture, and environment; and gender, agriculture, and intersectionalities. Feminist political ecology constituted the major theoretical orientation of this scholarship. Two themes in gender scholarship that received (...) scant attention were masculinities and sexualities. Although many articles focused on women and gender over the years, little evidence exists that the findings from this research penetrated the main issues in the journal. Studies in which gender is not the central focus, such as those related to sustainability, work, and supply chains, would benefit from attention to feminist work in these areas. (shrink)

Traditional agricultural systems in Mediterranean Europe were characterised by diversity and multifunctionality, and polycultures played a fundamental role in them. Some of these farm systems and the traditional agricultural practices linked to them have now largely disappeared, but they are increasingly recognised as a valuable source of agroecological knowledge. In this study, we seek to recover the long-lost experience from a traditional Mediterranean intercropping system that combined the cultivation of vines and cereals. Using local historical resources available for a Catalan (...) village for the second half of the nineteenth century, we compare the characteristics and functioning of intercropping and monocultures of vines and cereals using socioeconomic and agrarian metabolism indicators, and discuss the advantages of the traditional intercropping system as an adaptation to the productive limitations of the agroecosystem (particularly in terms of soil quality and productivity, and availability of labour and draft force), but also as a peasant economy strategy that responded to a multifunctional balancing rationale. This way, this research contributes to recovering the knowledge and experience of a long-lasting traditional crop system that had been used until the second half of the twentieth century, and provides an understanding of the rationale and advantages of traditional Mediterranean crop systems beyond productivity and profit maximisation strategies. (shrink)