In the northern Peloponnese, currants were grown in Patras, in Vostizza , and in the village of Sikionas, just West of Corinth. Currants also spread to the southern coast of Aetolia in towns along the gulf, including Lepanto , Anatolikon , and Messolonghi. From these locations, currants were shipped to the port of Patras, which became the bulking center for currants grown in Ottoman territory before their journey westward.Despite the continuing cultivation of currants in Ottoman Greece in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most currants were grown on the Venetian Ionian Islands during this time. The English traveler to the Ionian Islands Sir George Wheler wrote in the late seventeenth century that Zakynthos produced enough currants annually to fill five or six cargoes, and Kephalonia produced enough to fill three or four. At the same time, all the currant-growing regions around the Gulf of Corinth in Ottoman Greece—Anatolikon, Messolonghi, Patras, and Lepanto—together only produced enough to fill a single cargo.This continued throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century, even as currant cultivation abated substantially on Zakynthos and Kephalonia and intensified somewhat in Ottoman Greece. In the eighteenth century, currants circulated through the early modern trade networks that connected the major trading hubs of the Mediterranean, including Venice, Trieste, Livorno, Smyrna, and Constantinople. The primary market was England, but they were also destined for consumption in Holland and elsewhere in Europe. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were six million Venetian liters of currants being exported from the Peloponnese, mainly from Patras.On the eve of the Greek Revolution, currant cultivation was growing, but currants remained the product of isolated zones of specialization around the Gulf of Corinth and on the Ionian Islands. The currant-growing places were not yet united into a region—they remained small islands surrounded by a sea of diverse cultivation. First, the demand for currants in Britain,livestock fodder system the main currant-importing country, increased due to changing consumption habits.

This was just the latest development in a longer process. In the eighteenth century in Britain, the growing middling and trading classes had adopted new consumption habits. Demand for luxury items was previously limited to the old elite, but with the expansion of British trade and growing prosperity, there was an increase in demand for luxury items and non-essential food commodities from faraway places such as tea and sugar and the porcelain and silver with which to consume them.The Industrial Revolution in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries expanded this consumer class even more and increased demand for these commodities. Rituals were created to consume these commodities. For example, breakfast and tea-drinking were both new rituals that were introduced in Britain in the eighteenth century. These customs coincided with the introduction of hot beverages such as coffee, chocolate, and tea and the ceramic, silver, and steel commodities used to consume them. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was customary among middling and trading groups to consume a breakfast of bread and tea.One of the commodities that experienced a rise in demand was puddings, or sweet desserts made with sugar and dried fruit—particularly Greek currants. As described above, the market for currants in England to be consumed in puddings goes back to the fourteenth century or earlier, but because of new consumption patterns, around the middle of the nineteenth century, this market began to grow at a much faster rate. By the middle of the century, currants were the main export of the Peloponnese and of all of the Kingdom of Greece, and the UK was their principle market.The second half of the nineteenth century marks the period that Nikos Bakounakis calls the “age of pudding” in Victorian Britain.38 Pudding consumption rose in Britain among the lower and middling classes, and dried fruits were an essential ingredient in these puddings.The publication of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in 1843 popularized the holiday ritual of serving Christmas pudding made with dried fruit and adorned with a sprig of holly. Christmas pudding became a mainstay of the season, and other puddings became popular as year-round favorites.

The recipe for spotted dick, for example, which seems to date to an 1849 cookbook marketed to middle-class British housewives, calls for “Smyrna raisins” or sultanas to create the “spots.”Puddings became a sign of abundance and of the happiness of the bourgeois family— Greek currants became an essential ingredient in the aspirations of the upwardly mobile British population. Pudding consumption rose in Britain among the lower and middle classes, and Greek currants benefitted from this general trend. During the period from 1846 to 1876, the consumption of sugar and currants rose dramatically. Annual sugar consumption in England was 14 lbs. per person in 1846, but it grew to 60 lbs. in 1876. Currant consumption rose to a similar degree: total currant consumption in England was 14,000 tons in 1844, and it rose to 46,000 tons in 1874. Moreover, as the demand for dried fruit increased, currants also captured a greater relative share of this market. Currants displaced other types of raisins in London and Liverpool. In the years 1831 to 1840, 48% of the raisins consumed in these cities were currants. This number grew to 66% from 1860 to 1869.In the 1870s, 55% to 75% of Greek currants were being exported to Britain to meet this growing demand.As a French traveler to Greece wrote in the middle of the nineteenth century, “If Greece were to cease to produce these precious little black grains, there would be no more plum-puddings, nor plum-cakes, nor any of those dainties of which plums or currants are the foundation…. England would have been deprived of the purest of her pleasures, and Greece of the most certain of her revenues.”44 The demand from Britain was also promoted by greater access to the currant trade in the Peloponnese in the nineteenth century. During this time, Patras rose in importance to become the main port of the Peloponnese and one of the three main ports in the Kingdom of Greece alongside Piraeus and Hermoupolis. In the eighteenth century, Patras was an important regional port that served as a “bulking” or collecting center for the Gulf of Corinth and Elis. Smaller ports such as Vostizza and Lepanto sent their cargoes to Patras to be collected before being sent on to European ports to the West.

The other major ports on the Peloponnese—Navarino, Methoni, Coroni, and Nafplion—shared the rest of the peninsula’s trade. The French Revolution was a turning point for Patras, when the French lost their control over trade in the eastern Mediterranean. For the duration of the French Revolutionary period , Greek merchants dominated trade in the eastern Mediterranean more than any other group. As a result, the French ports such as Coroni declined. Moreover, with the implementation of the Continental System, the British turned to the Eastern Mediterranean for sources of commodities and for markets for their manufactured goods. Consequently, Patras enjoyed a greater relative share of the peninsula’s trade and increasing trade with Britain. During the French Revolutionary period,Patras handled 30% of all Peloponnesian exports to Western Europe, and the rest was divided among the peninsula’s other ports.46 After the Napoleonic Wars, the English displaced the French in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Italian ports declined, but Patras continued to grow through closer connection to British ports in the Ionian Islands and Malta. From 1815 to 1820, Patras’s relative share of the peninsula’s trade with the West suddenly doubled from 30% to 60%. Due to the disruptions caused by the French Revolution, Patras emerged as the dominant Peloponnesian port for trade with Western Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.During the Greek War of Independence, Patras was completely destroyed, the population left, and the land was not cultivated. The war was a violent break with the past, but Patras and its vineyards were able to recover quickly. The destruction left Patras as a tabula rasa. Under the influence of British demand for currants,hydroponic nft gully the city was remade into a port-city with its orientation shifted to the sea. Before the war, the center of  Patras was perched on a hillside, and the city was oriented inward toward its hinterland. After the war was over, the old town on the hillside was rebuilt, but a new city was also built on the coast beside the old city on land that was previously occupied by vineyards .The engineer Stamati Voulgaris who planned the reconstruction of the city moved the demographic and economic center of the city from the hills to the sea and made plans for a new port. Patras after the Greek Revolution was therefore a new city with a “double” landscape: the sea and the plains on the one hand, and the hills on the other.The newly rebuilt Patras sent most of its exports to Britain and its territories in the eastern Mediterranean. Patras continued to ship to the Italian ports, but the percentage of total exports from Patras that were bound for London, the Ionian Islands, and Malta reached 73%.Patras also began receiving imports directly from European ports. Before the revolution, Patras received European commodities after they had stopped first in a larger Ottoman port such as Smyrna.

As a part of the newly independent Kingdom of Greece, Patras received cargoes of textiles sent from British ports in the Ionian Islands and Malta. Patras also imported other manufactured goods and food commodities such as sugar, coffee, and pepper.51 By the 1830s, therefore, the currant trade and Greek trade with Britain were both concentrated in the port of Patras. The technological innovations of the Second Industrial Revolution lowered the speed and costs of transit, promoting the continuing integration of Greek agricultural production with Western markets. Most significantly, improved steam ship transport in the second half of the nineteenth century meant that Patras no longer needed to trade with Britain through the ports in its Mediterranean colonies but could trade directly with British ports. By the middle of the century, merchants had opened steam ship lines to carry currants directly from Patras to London, Liverpool, Falmouth, Newcastle, and Southampton, and Patras also began importing directly from British ports. Patras continued to trade with Malta and the Ionian Islands, but now there was a direct connection as well.Steam ship transport also deepened the currant growing region’s connections to North America. The United States had begun importing Greek currants as early as 1835 due to the efforts of the Chian merchants Andreas and Pantellis Phakiris and their merchant house based in Patras.London had a near monopoly on shipping currants to the US and Canada at first, but by the end of the nineteenth century, steam ships were leaving Patras bound directly for North American ports.54 In fact, currants were the sole reason for trade between Greece and the US. Until the very end of the nineteenth century, currants made up 90– 100% of Greek exports to the US.A technical innovation in the practice of currant cultivation in the Peloponnese may have also played a role in the spread of currant cultivation further to the west and the south in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was a technique called “girdling” or “ring-cutting” . Ring-cutting involved removing a thin strip of bark in a ring around the base of the vine, about 2–3 cm. wide. Ring-cutting was done in mid-May at the appearance of the first growth on the currant vines. Ring-cutting was strenuous work performed by skilled laborers called harakotes. If done right, ring-cutting caused the fruit to grow larger, but there was plenty of room for error, and the stakes were high. If the faltseta, or pruning knife, cut too deep, the vine would die, but if it did not cut deep enough, the cut would be ineffective. The harakotis also had to determine the appropriate width of the cut based on the quality of the soil and the age and strength of the vine. Weaker vines and less fertile soil required a narrower cut, and hardier vines and more fertile soil required a wider cut. Moreover, the task had to be completed within ten days, “as otherwise the ripening of grapes would not be uniform and problems would arise at harvest-time.”Because it was physically taxing, time consuming, and required special skill, ring-cutting was highly paid work.Ring-cutting was introduced in the Peloponnese in 1848 when the technique was first applied by workers who came to the peninsula from Zakynthos.

The old rules of land use had changed to the benefit of some and the detriment of others. Less affluent Greek villagers were forced to assume a greater risk of subsistence failure so that wealthier Greeks might profit, and many people were compelled to resist such changes. Suddenly, in the early 1890s, foreign demand for Mediterranean agricultural products evaporated, and the gains of export agriculture in Greece were swiftly reversed. The ensuing economic crisis sent the Greek government into bankruptcy. Free-standing companies formed to undertake land reclamation projects were also bankrupted, and their backers in Paris, London, Athens, and elsewhere saw their investments disappear. Small farmers in the Peloponnese who had gone into debt to plant their plots with currant vineyards could no longer sell their produce, and they could not command the resources needed for their own families’ subsistence. Indebted, impoverished, and unable to find work, many of them abandoned their land, often emigrating in search of new opportunities. At the close of the nineteenth century, after much effort and at great expense, the landscape, agricultural system, and settlement patterns of rural Greece had been reformed to better satisfy foreign demand for Mediterranean agricultural commodities—a demand that no longer existed. The consequences of this period were felt in Greece for decades. This dissertation comprises two parts,stacking pots each built around a regional case study of foreign demand for Greek agricultural products creating homogenous zones of monocultural specialization out of diverse and fragmented landscapes. Part one focuses on the first case study region: the coastal, currant-growing areas of southern Greece.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, growing foreign demand for Greek currants made them into a global commodity. Because of this, in the parts of Greece that could grow currants, agricultural practice shifted from diversified agriculture and transhumant pastoralism to the much risker pattern of permanent lowland settlement and year-round currant monoculture. The currant-growing region expanded as currant vineyards extended from traditional zones of specialization to encompass the north and west coasts of the Peloponnese, the south coast of Aetolia-Acarnania, and the Ionian islands of Zakinthos, Kefalonia, and Ithaki, with the attendant alterations made to the Greek landscape in these places. Chapter three describes how and why Greek currants became such a highly demanded global commodity in the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter four examines the consequent transformation in the Peloponnesian Greeks’ relationship with their environment as currant vineyards extended throughout the region and seasonal migration gave way to permanent lowland settlement. The physical landscape was also transformed as lowland wetlands were drained and hills were terraced to make the region better suited to intensive, specialized currant viticulture. The second part of this dissertation centers on the second case study region, Boeotia, in Central Greece. At the time that currants were taking off in the Peloponnese, different Greek products became profitable commodities in other parts of the country. In Boeotia, the most important crops were cotton and grains. Chapter five examines how demand for these Greek products created the imperative to drain a large lake in Boeotia and turn it into an irrigated estate for the intensive cultivation of cash crops. First, it describes the larger context within which these Greek goods became global commodities. Then, it describes the project to drain this lake to produce arable land for agriculture. Finally, chapter six describes how, after the physical landscape of Kopaïda had been transformed to suit these new imperatives, the region still had to be transformed socially and politically.

I conclude by examining the effects this period had on the long-term trajectory of development in Greece. The path of progress in rural Greece was neither straight nor smooth. As a result of landscape abandonment, rural depopulation, and the elimination of resources, the Greek rural economy remained impaired well into the twentieth century. Linear narratives of development in the Mediterranean have neglected the ways that the countryside of Greece was at its productive apex in the late nineteenth century, and they have also neglected the ways this early period of economic modernization stymied growth in the first half of the twentieth century. Before exploring these case study regions, the next chapter situates the present study within the historical literature on Modern Greece and the Mediterranean and elaborates on the methodological considerations underpinning this dissertation. Research in several disciplines has uncovered the effects of the incorporation of Mediterranean agricultural production into a global, capitalist system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The preponderance of research on this topic has come from an economic perspective. Economists and economic historians have demonstrated the ways development in Greece and the greater Mediterranean region during this time was tied to export agriculture, and they have also demonstrated the ways the globalization of Mediterranean agricultural production caused these countries to develop in a subordinate or “peripheral” position.1 Social and economic historical scholarship has also focused on the wide-ranging effects of the nineteenth century boom in Mediterranean commercial agriculture on the political organization of this region and the formation of classes and cultural identities.2 Despite compelling research on the long-term social and economic consequences of this period, the environmental transformations made in Mediterranean Europe in the nineteenth century to sustain intensive commercial agriculture are not well understood. The effects of global capitalism on the landscape and environment of the Mediterranean have been widely noted, but this area of inquiry has received less scholarly focus.

Recent scholarship on the Anthropocene and the so-called Capitalocene has brought these questions to the forefront. The spread of global capitalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had significant and often permanent environmental effects in developing countries worldwide, including air and water pollution, deforestation, resource depletion, severe erosion, and an overall decline in biodiversity due to the destruction of ecosystems. With respect to the Mediterranean in general and Greece in particular, many questions remain about the environmental changes brought by global capitalism, including the regional variations exhibited, the mechanisms of landscape transformation, and the long-term social and economy consequences. Despite this gap, there is a great potential for such an environmental history of Modern Greece building on more well-developed fields. In this chapter, I situate the present study within the existing scholarship on the social and economic history of the Eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century, agriculture and historical ecology in the Mediterranean, and the global environmental history of capitalism. First, I review the literature on the incorporation of the Mediterranean into the emerging global, capitalist economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries— this was the catalyst for the social and environmental transformations examined in the chapters that follow. In the second section, I argue that the scholarship on the historical ecology of the Mediterranean and “traditional” Mediterranean agriculture can help to contextualize the environmental changes seen in Greece in the nineteenth century. Finally, I situate this study within European, Mediterranean, and global environmental history. Here, I place the historical, anthropological,strawberry gutter system andarchaeological studies that have been done on Greece into a broader context and put them into conversation with the environmental historical literature on Italy, Egypt, Germany, and other places where the sub-field has enjoyed greater success. Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, labor and commodity markets in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean were more thoroughly integrated into a global economic system. The terminology commonly used to describe this process comes from World Systems Analysis. Immanuel Wallerstein developed the World Systems model to explain how capitalism functions on a global scale and how, because of market integration, some regions became rich and powerful while others seemed stuck in a trap of relative under-development. In Wallerstein’s model, the modern world-system—i.e. the capitalist world-economy—emerged in Northwestern Europe in the fifteenth century and slowly expanded by incorporating new labor and commodity markets. The expansion of the world economy divided the globe into three distinct zones that Wallerstein, borrowing from Dependency Theory and Andre Gunder Frank, termed the core, the periphery, and the semi-periphery. These categories reflect the distribution of wealth and functions within the system. The core regions imported raw materials from the periphery, manufactured them into finished products if necessary, and exported the surplus back to the peripheral territories for purchase and consumption. The core, therefore, possessed capital and the means of production, and the periphery supplied cheap, labor-intensive commodities.3Before this system emerged, the predominant world-system was the world empire. Unlike the modern world-system, which was singular, many world empires could coexist at once. Each world empire unified a single division of labor under a single state structure. Their economic integration was limited to the exchange of luxury goods. Strong world empires were capable of controlling production within their own domains, channeling revenue from production toward the center through taxation and controlling the distribution of wealth to keep the ruling class dominant. Weak world empires, meanwhile, were dismantled and incorporated into rival world empires. In contrast, the modern world-system unified a single division of labor within multiple state structures, and economic integration of states in this world-system went well beyond the exchange of luxury goods. The division of labor was no longer directed toward the maintenance of elite power within the state structure, as in a world empire. Instead, it followed a capitalist rationality and was directed toward the endless accumulation of capital in the world center.

World Systems Analysis has been one of the dominant paradigms for studying market integration in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean in the modern era. Inspired by this model, scholars since the 1970s have studied the incorporation of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans into the European economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using Wallerstein’s vocabulary, they initially termed this process “peripheralization.” Trade took place in a few major Eastern Mediterranean port-cities—Salonika, Smyrna, Patras, Beirut, and others—and these cities’ Jewish, Greek, Maronite, and Armenian populations acted as intermediaries between Ottoman commodity-producers and European merchants.5 These minority merchants began shipping Ottoman agricultural products, including staples, to Europe. Through this process of commodification, the Porte lost its power to control agricultural production within the empire, and as a result, agricultural production shifted to meet European market demands. In the Balkans, large estates called çiftliks were amalgamated to produce agricultural products to be exchanged with Europe.6 As the Ottomans ceased to be able to control the agricultural production within their own realms, the empire ceased to be a self-contained world-empire, and the agricultural production within the empire ceased to be an engine of the reproduction of imperial authority. Through tax farming and the rise of contraband trade with Europe, Ottoman agriculture became commercial, and the Ottoman labor market was integrated into the world labor market.7 In addition to studying the process by which regions were incorporated into the European economy as a periphery, scholars have also been interested in the social and political consequences of peripheralization, particularly through the formation of national and class identities. For example, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire into nation-states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is understood as an effect of market integration. The economic and intellectual ties ethnic minority merchants in the Ottoman Empire developed with the West facilitated the political transformation of the region. The creation of a cosmopolitan bourgeoisie and their conversations with the West helped to unravel the Ottoman Empire and reorganize the region politically into nation-states.As such, these cities are also considered sites of class formation. European economic penetration created commercial bourgeoisies that benefited from European capital as well as working class populations that resisted it, forming their class identities through labor organization and strikes.The world-systems model has been criticized for its adoption of a Eurocentric narrative that maintains that there was a single, modern European world-system into which the rest of the world was incorporated, overlooking the systems and networks that existed in these places before the moment of their incorporation.When applied to the Mediterranean, the model’s focus on “high commerce” may be said to “minimalize” the pre-modern economy—by neglecting the regional connectivity that existed well before the eighteenth century, the model does not take into account the dense trade in staples as well as luxury goods that occurred through the movement of small cargoes and was present since antiquity.Others have argued that World Systems Theory exaggerates the role of international influences as an explanation for Balkan economic under-development, and that Balkan “dependency” on Europe is too steep a claim.

Many studies illustrate that intensification can be unsustainable, but several notable projects in Africa and elsewhere have shown that sustainable intensification is possible and necessary to boost global crop production. Clearly, the world faces a looming and growing agricultural crisis. Yields are not improving fast enough to keep up with projected demands in 2050. However, opportunities do exist to increase production through more efficient use of current arable lands and increasing yield growth rates by spreading best management practices and closing yield gaps under different management regimes across the globe. A portion of the production shortfall could also be met by expanding croplands, but at a high environmental cost to biodiversity and carbon emissions. Alternatively, additional strategies, particularly changing to more plant-based diets and reducing food waste can reduce the large expected demand growth in food.We used annual crop census reports for harvested areas and yield from ,13,500 political units globally covering 20 years from 1989 to 2008 in this analysis though the database itself covers the years 1961 to 2008. The sum total of these census reports for the 20 years was approximately 1.8 million.Data were not available for all political units for each year. Details of the number of years data was available and its source is given in the Table S1. For the political units where data was missing for some years we estimated crop harvested and yield information using the average of the latest five years of reported data and constraining them with the reported numbers from the higher political unit as explained further in Text S1 and previous work. Population data and its projections per country were from the United Nation’s medium variant projections. Crop production was determined using the projected crop yields at current observed rates of yield change and harvested areas fixed at ,2007. Per capita harvested production is the ratio of production to population and a greater than 610% change from ,2007 is considered as significant either in the short- or long-term .While the relationship between the commercial agriculture sector and the Venezuelan state is often oppositional and conflictive,hydroponic nft this chapter argues that sectors of commercial agriculture also benefit from government policies.

This policy capture allows commercial farms to reproduce themselves and largely maintain their socio-economic position. Reading commercial agriculture and state relationships as conflictive, therefore, is incomplete and leaves relatively unpacked an important sector of Venezuela’s overall agro-food system. Specific relationships between the state and the commercial sector and the implications for reform of the smallholder sector are largely absent from contemporary analyses of the Venezuelan agrarian reform process that tend to focus almost exclusively on statepeasant relationships. This chapter addresses this analytical gap by considering relationships between the state, commercial agriculture, and the peasant sector. A more relational look between commercial agriculture and the Venezuelan state can also help problematize literature that characterizes the Chavista state as socialist in intention, if imperfect and incomplete in its implementation. The dynamics of commercial agriculture in the agro-food system reveals how agricultural policy in Venezuela’s petro-socialist context actively maintains commercial growers, the often-discursive ‘enemies’ of the agrarian reform. The state’s emphasis on raising production to maintain food availability in the face of scarcity and to reduce dependence of food imports, shapes policy in ways that help to reinforce the position of commercial agriculture, even as its stated policy emphasis is promotion of the smallholder sector and a reordering of agrarian social relations. The alignment of the major agribusiness federation FEDEAGRO—as well as FEDENAGA the cattle ranchers’ association—with the political opposition to the government, a number of high-profile fights over state land seizures, nationalizations of supermarket and agricultural input firms, and violence against peasants active in the agrarian reform process would seem to paint an overwhelmingly contentious picture of relations between commercial agriculture interests and the Venezuelan state. Indeed, landowners and commercial elites have stymied reform efforts through legal challenges, by wielding influence in local networks or regional institutions involved in agrarian reform, and by using violence against peasants involved in the agrarian reform process.

The land reform’s perceived attack on private property rights and the supposed failures of government intervention in the food system figure prominently in opposition critiques of the state. These oppositional aspects of the commercial sector vis á vis the state have often been portrayed in the literature on Venezuela as indicative of class conflict in a period of socialist transformation and representative of barriers to implementation of state policy . For example, Enríquez argues that roadblocks to reform in Venezuela’s land reform sector are in large part due to the functioning of ‘dual power’ in Venezuela, where Venezuela’s landed elite struggle to maintain their class position in a reform process that seeks to wrest control of the agricultural system and remake it privilege other actors and production systems. Enríquez argues the ‘old regime’ has been able to fight reform in the context of ‘brown areas’ , geographical, economic, political, or ideological spaces where old systems remain outside the control of the reformist state. These brown areas afford agricultural elites possibilities to block implementation of reforms that challenges their interests. In this reading, the Chavista government has been unable to completely capture state institutions in order to remake them to function for new, ‘socialist’ goals, or state institutions have failed to break landowner influence in specific areas of Venezuela. Harnecker’s analysis of the ‘revolutionary’ states of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador argues that an old state and an emerging, more progressive state coexist in a ‘relationship of complementarity’ during a transition to socialism . Harnecker argues that the ‘bureaucraticism’ of the old state can impede progress towards development of the socialist state via persistent ‘excessive centralization’ . If we apply Harnecker’s frame to the agrarian reform, the continued hold on prime agricultural land by commercial producers in Venezuela is explained primarily by reform policies being bogged down in the bureaucratic morass of state institutions charged with their implementation. In this reading, Venezuela is characterized as a state transitioning to socialism whose revolutionary goals are being blocked by barriers emerging from this amalgamation of an ‘old’ and ‘new’ state.

This dissertation, however, argues that a simple oppositional/class conflict role in agrarian relations between the landed class and state and agrarian reform sectors, and the related assumption that a socialist economy is the primary goal of state policy-making, is incomplete. Harnecker’s vision of an old versus new state can leave unexamined relations between the state and the capitalist sector that can inform how reformist/revolutionary states engage with this sector in strategies that balance economic and political needs. Enríquez’s argument that incomplete control over institutions and territories by socialist actors impedes the transformation of rural social relations does not address the state’s relationships with the commercial agriculture sector nor the broader political economy dynamics of a petro-state and how they shape both policy formation and implementation. By engaging with structural and policy dynamics between the capitalist commercial agriculture sector and the state, this chapter seeks to firstly, bring in the capitalist sector into an analysis of state agro-food policy in order to understand Venezuela’s greater agrarian political economy, while avoiding overly facile characterizations of relationships between the state, commercial agriculture, and the peasant sector as necessarily conflictive. Secondly, this chapter links this broader agro-food policy analysis to political economic dynamics of Venezuela as a petro-state. This is not to argue that class conflict between agrarian elites and the state is not central to agrarian dynamics. Class conflict does indeed permeate the agrarian reform. Rather I argue that understanding commercial agriculture’s relationship to the state from a more critical perspective illuminates constraints on policy formation and implementation in Venezuela as a reformist state pursuing a mixed-economy model in an extractive industry context. This chapter draws on the state of Portuguesa as a case study to illustrate the dynamics of commercial agriculture and Chavista agro-food policy. Portuguesa is one of the most important agricultural centers within Venezuela,hydroponic channel especially in cereal and oilseed production and related agro-industry. In 2001, Portuguesa produced over half of the country’s rice and 90% of its sesame . Indicative of its influence in agriculture circles, the president of FEDEAGRO is a grower from Portuguesa, who also heads ASOPORTUGUESA, an important local grower association. This chapter is arranged in three parts. Part one examines the historical formation of agrarian relations in Portuguesa and charts the state’s development of a vertically-integrated agro-industrial sector. Part two analyzes contemporary agricultural policy and relationships between the state and commercial agriculture within Portuguesa.

Part three places these agrarian dynamics within the broader political economy of Venezuela as a petro-socialist state and its orientation towards a mixed economy in its agriculture sector. Portuguesa, especially the agro-industrial center of Acarigua-Araure, is at the core of Venezuela’s breadbasket. Prior to the 1940s, however, the area around Acarigua was a thinly populated area of tropical forest mixed with savanna whose economy was based primarily in exploitation of forests for lumber, cattle ranching, and whose peasantry grew some staple crops as well as serving as occasional labor in sawmills . Portuguesa was, thus, not central to the agrarian economy in the pre-oil era that was based on plantation production of coffee and cacao for export. The transformation into Venezuela’s premier agro-industrial area grew out of centralized state development programs that restructured agrarian relations and land ownership patterns, mobilized state capital for the development of mechanized and largely capital intensive agriculture, and subordinated the 1960s agrarian reform program to serving the labor and raw material needs of the emerging commercial growers . The eventual result was the formation of a vertically integrated, commercial agrarian elite that dominated the socio-economic life of the region. By the 1940s, rising GDP from the expansion of oil production and rapid urbanization in Venezuela created a growing demand for agricultural products that outstripped domestic production capacity. In response, policymakers sought to modernize the agricultural sector to raise production to meet national food needs. Efforts to modernize the agriculture sector by the military governments ruling Venezuela in the 1940s and 50s saw the Portuguesa economy transform into a principal crop producer in the nation. The Venezuelan state was instrumental in the establishment of a production system oriented towards larger-scale mechanization of commodity crops that displaced the previous agricultural systems. Managed by the state institution the Venezuelan Public Works Corporation , the Rice Plan established mechanized rice production by distributing parcels of up to 200 hectares—the minimum size deemed necessary for the successful introduction of mechanization—and generous agricultural credits . Resistance to land redistribution by larger landowners and smallholders who used state land for pasturing, was broken by the state governor who seized estates and removed landowners and smaller-scale traditional users . The Rice Plan was developed to provision growing domestic, rather than export markets. Within five years of the program’s initiation, Venezuela was producing enough rice to cover domestic consumption. Yet the growth of the sector required expansion from the existing savanna areas into Portuguesa’s adjacent tropical forests driving deforestation. While cleared forests areas initially provided higher yields, putting forested land into production required larger capital outlays, and producers adopted a strategy of diversified production, planting sesame in the dry season—rice being grown in the rainy season—and eventually integrated maize and sorghum and sugarcane into production systems . These dynamics drove increased mechanization and continued intensification of land use in the region. Alongside the national Rice Plan in Portuguesa was an agrarian colonization scheme that brought in and distributed land to European immigrants primarily from Germany and Italy. As part of the Venezuelan agrarian reform program peasants were settled next to European colonists in the colony of  Turén under the assumption that they would learn ‘modern’ and ‘rational’ cultivation techniques from the Europeans . Agrarian reform beneficiaries, however, received smaller parcels and insufficient state credit support compared to the European colonists, leading to eventually abandonment of many plots with the now landless peasants migrating to urban areas or becoming farm workers on the more successful estates . Like in the Acarigua-Araure center, agricultural expansion displaced traditional land users and drove the replacement of tropical forests with plowed fields.

Human subjects in this research are protected under the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects, protocol number 2018-04-1136 , of the Office for Protection of Human Subjects at UC Berkeley.Siskiyou is a large rural county located in the mid-Klamath River basin in Northern California . Since the mid-19th century, immigrants have historically engaged in agriculture, predominantly livestock grazing and hay production, and natural resource extraction, primarily timber and mining . Public records demonstrate that although the value of the county’s agricultural output and natural resource extraction is declining, these cultural livelihoods still shape the area’s dominant rural values of self-reliance, hard work and property rights . For instance, one county document stated that Siskiyou’s cultural-economic stability depends on nonintervention from “outside groups and governments” and residents should be “subject only to the rule of nature and free markets” . Another document, a “Primer for living in Siskiyou County” from the county administrator, outlined “the Code of the West” for “newcomers,” asserting that locals are “rugged individuals” who live “outside city limits,” and that the “right to be rural” protects and prioritizes working agricultural land for “economic purpose[s]” . We heard a common refrain that localities will eventually succumb to the allure of a taxable, profitable cannabis industry. Indeed, interviewees in Siskiyou universally reported economic contributions from cannabis cultivation, especially apparent in rising property values and tax rolls and booming business at horticultural, farm supply, soil, generator, food and hardware stores . However, a belief in an inevitable free market economic rationality may underestimate the deep cultural logics that have historically superseded economic gains in regional resource conflicts . As one local store owner told us, “I’d give up this new profit in a heartbeat for the benefit of our society.” Many long-time farming and ranching families remain committed to agricultural livelihoods for cultural reasons , even as the economic viability of family farms is threatened by increasing farmland financialization ,hydroponic gutter corporate consolidation and biophysical decline . Many interviewees felt that the recent rapid expansion of county cannabis cultivation and corresponding demographic changes were a visible marker of broader tensions of cultural continuity and endangerment.

As the sheriff expressed, cannabis cultivation would “jeopardize our way of life … [and] the future of our children” . This sense of cultural jeopardy , echoed by numerous interviewees, materialized in a range of negative quality-of-life comments about cannabis cultivation: noisy generators, increased traffic, litter and blighted properties, and unsafe conditions for residents. Non-cannabis farmers also reported farm equipment and water theft, livestock killed by abandoned dogs, wildfire danger, illicit chemical use and poisoned wildlife. Some non-cannabis farmers expressed a sense of regulatory unfairness — that their farms were subject to onerous water and chemical use regulations while cannabis growers “don’t need to follow the government’s regulations.” Enabling cannabis cultivators to pursue state licensure would facilitate just such civil regulation, but some feared that regulating this crop as agriculture would threaten “the loss of prime agriculturally productive lands for traditional pursuits” . If nothing less than the county’s culture and agricultural order were considered at stake, it is no wonder that absolute, even prohibitionist, solutions emerged in Siskiyou, with the Sheriff’s Office having a central role in defending local culture.Siskiyou’s sparsely populated landscape has been home to illegalized cannabis cultivators at least since the late 1960s, largely in remote, forested, and public lands in the western part of the county. Medical cannabis’s decriminalization in 1996 inaugurated a modest expansion of cannabis gardens throughout the county . However, for the next 19 years, Siskiyou did not establish regulations for medical cannabis, in line with locally dominant ideologies of personal freedoms and property rights. Instead, the county relied on de facto management of cultivation by law enforcement and the court system’s strict interpretation of state law . In 2015, informed by public workshops held by the Siskiyou County Planning Division, supervisors passed the county’s first medical cannabis ordinance, which seemingly balanced concerns of medical cultivators and other county residents. Regulation would be overseen by the Planning Division, which placed conditions on cultivation , limited plant numbers to parcel size and would establish an administrative abatement and hearing process for complaints.

The Planning Division, however, had been without code enforcement officers since 2008 budget cuts. Though the county authorized the hiring of one civil code officer in 2015, the Sheriff’s Office felt that the Planning Division “needed outside help” and moved to assist. Soon, the county’s limited abatement capacities were overwhelmed by vigorous enforcement and a wave of complainants. County supervisors, responding to the sheriff’s 2015 reports on the “proliferation” of cannabis gardens on private property, moved to heighten penalties for code violations, place numerous new restrictions on indoor growing and ban all outdoor growing . These strict county measures, which discarded and replaced publicly developed regulations, stoked reaction. When the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors met in December 2015 to vote on these measures, advocates and cultivators presented 1,500 signatures to forestall its passage, a super majority of attending residents indicated opposition, and supervisors had to curtail 3 hours of public comment to vote. Despite this showing, supervisors passed the restrictive measures, prompting cannabis advocates to collect 4,000 signatures in 17 days to place the approved ordinances on the June 2016 ballot. Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Office enforced the new stricter regulations . The Sheriff’s Office assumption of code enforcement blurred the line between noncompliance with civil codes and criminal acts. Stricter ordinances, still in effect in Siskiyou, created a broad, nearly universal category of “noncompliance.” No one we interviewed, including officials at the Planning Division and Sheriff’s Office, knew of a single cultivator officially in compliance. One interviewee estimated that growing 12 indoor plants would cost $40,000 in physical infrastructure, in addition to numerous licensing and inspections requirements, effectively prohibiting self-provisioning. The Sheriff’s Office notified the public that it would initiate criminal charges against “non-compliant” cultivators, specifically those suspected of cultivation for sale , child endangerment or suspected drug trafficking . Since the county regulations produced a situation where no one could comply, law enforcement could effectively criminally pursue any cultivator. The slippage from civil noncompliance to criminality was mirrored in enforcement practices. Investigations were “complaint driven,” meaning not only that warrants could be issued in response to disgruntled neighbors upset about a barking dog on a cultivation site, as one person reported, but that police officers could serve as a kind of permanent, general complainant and take “proactive action” when they spotted code violations .

Administrative warrants allowed deputies to enter properties with a lower evidentiary bar than they would have needed for criminal warrants, leading one patients rights group — Siskiyou Alternative Medicine — to file a lawsuit alleging county violations of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure . In effect, cannabis’s criminal valences in the county endured through California’s shift of cannabis from criminal to civil provenance. Formerly illegal activities continued to be formally or informally treated as criminal matters,u planting gutter as researchers have noted with other stigmatized activities and groups, for example, after the decriminalization of sex workers in Mexico . Also, enforcement of civil matters can lead to substantive criminalization when those matters are stigmatized, as in the regulation of homelessness . While it is not unique for police officers to enforce civil codes, what is unique in Siskiyou County is the assumption of the entire civil process under the sheriff’s authority. To understand how this civil process became criminally inflected, in a county that voted for statewide cannabis legalization in 2016, one must first understand significant contextual shifts in who was growing cannabis where — and the challenge this posed to dominant ideas of land use, agriculture and culture. Since 2014, cannabis gardens have emerged on many of the county’s undeveloped rural subdivisions in unincorporated areas of Siskiyou. Subdivided into over 1,000 lots each in the 1960s, these subdivisions contain many parcels that are just a few acres in size and relatively inexpensive. Previously populated mostly by white retirees, squatters and a few methamphetamine users and makers, the parcels were often bought sight-unseen as investments or potential retirement properties, with most remaining unsold and undeveloped until the mid-2010s. In 2014, these subdivisions became destinations for Hmong Americans from several places, including Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Fresno; many of them cultivated cannabis. The inexpensive, sparsely populated, rural subdivisions enabled Hmong-Americans to live in close proximity to ethnic and kin networks, which multiple interviewees expressed was especially important for elders who had migrated to the United States as refugees after the Vietnam War. The county sheriff estimated that since the mid-2010s around 6,000 Hmong-Americans had moved to Siskiyou, purchasing approximately 1,500 parcels . In an 86.5% white county with just 745 non-cannabis farms and fewer than 44,000 people , this constituted a major demographic shift. Cannabis growers in Siskiyou’s subdivisions are especially vulnerable to detection. The subdivisions are often sparsely vegetated, dry and hilly, making them not only unproductive as agricultural lands but also highly visible from public roads, horseback, neighboring plots, helicopter and Google Earth. Green screen fencing, wooden stakes, portable toilets, generators, campers, plywood houses, or water tanks and trucks often signal cannabis cultivation but would be necessary for many land uses, especially since many lots are sold without infrastructure like water, sewer or electrical access. If detection of code violations depends upon visibility, Hmong Americans on subdivisions have been made especially visible and vulnerable to detection.

One lawyer, for instance, reported that 90% of the defendants present at administrative county hearings for code violations in fall 2015, when the first complaint-driven ordinance was put in place, were Hmong-American. One Hmong-American resident reported being stopped by police six times in 3 months and subjected to unfriendly white neighbors patrolling on horseback for cannabis — one of whom made a complaint for a crowing rooster, a questionable nuisance in this “right to farm” county. Numerous Hmong-Americans and sympathetic whites echoed these experiences. County residents confirmed their antagonism toward Hmong-Americans by characterizing them in interviews and public records as dishonest, thieves, polluters, negligent parents and unable to assimilate, and making other racializing and racist characterizations. While written regulations and enforcement profess race neutrality, in a nuisance enforcement regime based on visibility, Hmong Americans were more visible than others, leading many to argue that they were being racially profiled. Rhetoric emerging from the county government amplified racial tensions and visibilities. Numerous Sheriff’s Office press releases located the “problem” in subdivisions and attributed it to “an influx of people temporarily moving to Siskiyou” who were “lawbreakers” from “crime families” with “big money” and who threatened “our way of life, quality of life, and the health and safety of our children and grandchildren” . Just 2 days before the June 2016 ballot on the strict cannabis ordinances, state investigators responded to county reports that newly registered Hmong-American voters might be fraudulent or coerced by criminal actors and visited Hmong-American residences to investigate, accompanied by sheriff’s deputies . The voter fraud charges were later countered by a lawsuit alleging racially motivated voter intimidation; the suit was eventually dismissed for failing to meet the notoriously difficult criteria of racist intent. The raids may have discouraged some Hmong-Americans from voting, charges of fraud may have boosted anti-cannabis sentiment, and, one government official explained, “creative balloting” measures enabled some municipal voters in conservative localities to vote while others in more liberal places could not. The voter fraud charges, raids and legal contestation drew widespread media attention that further linked Hmong-Americans and cannabis. Amidst these now-overt racial tensions, the restrictive June 2016 ballot measure passed, allowing the Sheriff’s Office to gain full enforcement power over the “#1 public enemy to Siskiyou citizens … criminal marijuana cultivation” . Shortly after the June 2016 ballot measure affirmed stricter regulations, the Sheriff’s Office formed the Siskiyou Interagency Marijuana Investigation Team with the district attorney to “attack illegal marijuana grows” “mostly” around rural subdivisions . Within a month, SIMIT had issued 25 abatement notices and filed 20 criminal charges, in addition to confiscating numerous plants. Meanwhile, the Planning Division’s role had diminished — code enforcement officers were relegated to addressing violations not directly related to cannabis .

Historic water prices over the last 50 years for water deliveries from the Central Valley Project are listed in the 2000 Irrigation Water Rates Manual available at the library of the Bureau of Reclamation in Sacramento. Finally, the acreage of each district is derived with the help of geographic information systems of the irrigation district boundaries. Researchers also obtained observations on more than 15,000 groundwater wells in the Central Valley. Groundwater is a virtually unregulated resource and in many areas it provides a substitute for surface water in the event of a shortage. The depth of groundwater varies significantly, both spatially and temporally, between years and between months within a year. Researchers calculated the average well depth in the month of March, the beginning of the growing season, for each of the years 1990 to 1998 and then averaged the depths over these years. The groundwater depth at each farm location is derived as a weighted average of all well locations, where the weight is the inverse of the distance of each well to the farm to the power of 2.14—the exponent that minimizes the sum of prediction errors from cross‐validation. In the cross‐validation step each well is excluded from the data at a time and the depth is calculated using all remaining wells. There are several soil databases of potential interest to this analysis. In order of increasing detail, they are the: National Soil Geographic Database that relies on the National Resource Inventory , State Soil Geographic Database and Soil Survey Geographic Database . While SURGO is the most detailed soil database designed to allow erosion management of individual plots,there is no uniform reporting requirement for the United States. Furthermore, the observations in the June Agricultural Survey include all farms in the vicinity of a longitude/latitude pair, and hence, choosing field characteristics of one individual plot appears inappropriate. Instead,bato bucket the study uses the more aggregated soil database STATSGO, which groups similar soils into polygons for the entire United States.

Average soil qualities are given for each polygon. Although this soil database gives a first approximation of the actual average soil qualities, there might be significant heterogeneity, which is addressed in the empirical section. Finally, farmland close to urban areas has an inflated value compared to farmland elsewhere because of the option value of the land for urban development . Plantinga et al. examine the effects of potential land development on farmland prices and find that a large share of farmland value, more than 80% in major metropolitan areas, is attributable to the option to develop the land for urban uses. This study therefore constructed a variable to approximate population pressure by summing the population in each of the 7049 Census Tracts from the 2000 Census divided by the inverted square of the distance of the tract to the farm. Table 3‐1 displays the data’s summary statistics. This section presents the estimates for the hedonic regression with farmland value per acre as the dependent variable. The results are listed in Table 3‐2. The table uses feasible generalized least squares weights that account for the spatial correlation of the error terms.10Researchers conducted three spatial tests to test whether spatial correlation is indeed a problem. One test is the Moran‐I statistic . However, since this test does not have a clear alternative hypothesis, researchers supplemented it with two Lagrange‐Multiplier tests involving an alternative of spatial dependence: the LM‐ERR test of Burridge and LM‐EL test of Anselin et al. .The normal test statistic for the Moran‐I is 16.8, and the Lagrangian multiplier test are χ 2 ‐distributed with test statistics of 299 and 289, respectively. Therefore, all tests indicate that spatial correlation is indeed present. Hence the standard ordinary least squares estimate underestimates the true variance‐covariance matrix—OLS assumes all errors to be independent, even though they are in fact correlated. This suggests that standard OLS estimates of standard errors for hedonic regression equations generally might be misleading if the error terms among observations in close proximity are correlated. In fact, it is not uncommon in hedonic studies for variables to be statistically significant, yet to switch signs between alternative formulations of the model. Table 3‐2 therefore uses feasible GLS to construct the most efficient estimator by premultiplying the data by .

In the second stage, researchers estimated the model and use White’s heteroscedasticity consistent estimator to account for the heteroscedasticity of the error terms . The estimates in Table 3‐2 are based on observations with a farmland value below $20,000 per acre and water prices below $20. Including higher value observations in the analysis increases the R‐square of the regression, but the variable with the greatest explanatory power becomes population density. At the same time, the confidence levels for soil quality and water availability are reduced. Farmland with values above $20,000 per acre is generally close to urban areas, and the value of this land reflects what is happening in the urban land market, and the value of the future potential to develop this land for urban use—not what is going on in the local agricultural economy. Including these observations creates large outliers and results in estimates that are mainly driven by these outliers.Second, the research team excluded irrigation districts with expensive water prices from the analysis to get a better estimate of the net value of water. Only the net value of water, the difference between gross value and delivery cost capitalizes into farmland values. As an example, if the gross discounted value of an acre‐foot of water were $1000 and the annual delivery cost $50, the net value of the water would be zero . The researchers therefore test the sensitivity of the results to variations in water price by excluding irrigation districts with high prices from the analysis to get a better estimate of the net value of water. The coefficients on the climatic variables appear reasonable. The result for degree‐days implies that the quadratic form peaks at 1630 degree‐days. This is consistent with the agronomic literature, which indicates degree‐day requirements of this order of magnitude for several important crops grown in the Central Valley.While the coefficients are borderline significant under the feasible GLS model, the p‐value on the hypothesis that the linear and squared term on degree‐days is jointly equal to zero is 0.008, and degree‐days as a group are hence highly significant. One potential problem in the estimation using both the linear and squared variable is the high degree of colinearity between the two variables,dutch bucket hydroponic which will reduce the significance level of each individual variable. The correlation coefficient between degree‐days and degree‐ days squared is 0.98.

Another problem is that the variation in climatic variables with the Central Valley, the main growing region, is limited. In a related paper that examines the effect of degree‐ days on farmland values in the Eastern United States, the degree‐days variables are comparable in size and highly significant. Because many tree crops need cool nights, increasing temperatures substantially above the required degree‐days to grow a crop can only be harmful. The sign of the regression coefficient on water availability in Table 3‐2 makes intuitive sense: rights to subsidized surface water are beneficial. However, water rights have a price, as well as a quantity dimension. As mentioned before, only the net value of water capitalizes into farmland values. Therefore, the study tested the sensitivity of its results to variations in water price by excluding irrigation districts with high prices from the analysis, to get a better estimate of the net value of water. Restricting the sample to observations that have water rights with water prices less than $30, $40, and $50, and using no price restriction at all decreases the value of an acre‐foot from $809 in Table 3‐2 to $625, $583, $524, and $395, respectively, as the hedonic regression only picks up the net benefit of the water right. The linearity of the coefficient on water rights is confirmed when dummies for different ranges of water rights are included.14 The sample includes districts with zero private or federal water rights. These are districts that depend primarily on groundwater and state water. Since state water is very expensive, it is excluded from the estimation.15 Finally, a greater depth to groundwater is harmful, as it would result in larger pumping costs, but the coefficient of this variable is not significant. Soil variables have intuitive signs as well, and four of the five soil variables are significant at the 5% level. Higher values of the variable K‐factor indicate increasing erodibility of the top soil. Similarly, a higher clay content is also less desirable, as is low permeability, which indicates a soil that does not hold water. Finally, population density has a big influence on land prices: this variable is highly significant and of a large magnitude compared to the sample mean. The potential to sell agricultural land for urban development is often the most profitable option for farmers. The research team conducted several sensitivity checks, which are listed in Appendix 1. The results on water availability are remarkably robust, while the results for the variable degree‐ days are more sensitive to the particular implementation. However, the latter might be explained by the limited climatic variation in this project’s sample study. The team conducted a similar analysis for the Eastern United States with much larger variation in climatic variables, and find results that are again very robust and similar to the ones presented above. The coefficients on the climatic variables can now be used to calculate the impact of climate change on farmland values in California.

The impact of climate change on farmland values can be derived by evaluating the hedonic function both at the current climate and at a new predicted climate.First, note that a decrease in availability of federal and surface water would have a large and significant impact on the value of farmland. The coefficient on water availability is between $400–$850 per AF, depending on the price a district pays for water.Because researchers modeled surface water availability as additively separable from other exogenous variables, the impact is easily derived as the product of the value per AF and the decrease in water availability.As mentioned before, recent hydrological studies for moderate‐temperate climates utilizing a smaller geographic scale discovered that despite the increase in annual precipitation, the runoff during the main growing season , might actually decrease as a seasonality effect dominates the annual effect.The decrease in runoff translates into decreasing surface water availability, where the magnitude depends on the seniority of water rights. More senior water rights holders always get served first and are hence less prone to a decrease in water availability. For the same reason, junior rights holders will face potentially large reductions in availability. Given that the estimated value for cheap water is $809 per AF, a modest reduction of just 0.5 AF per acre will lower the value of the affected farmland by approximately $400 per acre. In this study’s degree‐day model, changes in temperatures have nonlinear effects on the resulting number of degree‐days. In fact, the study’s approach is conservative in the sense that temperatures above the upper threshold b2 = 32°C are assumed to have no impact on plant growth and 35°C are the same. The approach therefore assumes the marginal effect of further temperature increases to be zero, while some agronomic studies argue it should be negative.Table 3‐3 lists the average area‐weighted impact of a change in climatic conditions for three uniform temperature increases.The research team used the coefficient estimates from Table 3‐2 that corrects for the spatial correlation of the error terms.For comparison, the area‐weighted value of all observations in this study’s sample is $4,265. On average, the value of farmland in California would decrease by $482 per acre, or around 11%, under the hottest 3°C increase scenario. However, the distribution of impacts is quite different, ranging from large damages to modest benefits. Existing areas with a very hot climate—especially farms in the Imperial Valley—would face much larger relative decreases in value, while farmland around the Delta with its natural cooling mechanism would benefit slightly from an increase in temperatures, and hence degree‐days. Given the linear structure of the hedonic equation, the aggregate impact is simply a linear combination of the regression coefficients, and hence is itself normally distributed.

A mid-range projection forecasts up to 59 million residents statewide by 2050, with massive conversion of agricultural to urban land in the Central Valley, and cities such as Fresno doubling in population . Urbanization in California tends to consume lands with high quality soils and relatively abundant water supply due to their proximity to existing towns and cities in the valleys . Given such prospects of population growth, the purpose of this task was to develop future urbanization scenarios for Yolo County, and assess implications for agriculture, greenhouse gas emissions, and other issues related to land use change. Urbanization presents both opportunities and challenges for agriculture. In some regions, it does generate markets for agricultural products, such that farm production increases locally . But urbanization is more typically accompanied by challenges: the loss of agricultural land due to subdivision and development; vandalism at the urban edge ; and conflicts with new suburban residents about noise, odor, and potential spray drift associated with farming operations. If development takes place in a dispersed pattern that fragments agricultural land, farming may become difficult on some remaining agricultural parcels due to difficulties in moving farm machinery from field to field. Also, fragmentation and loss of farmland causes farmers to lose benefits associated with being part of a large farming community, such as sourcing inputs, accessing information, sharing equipment, and supporting processing and shipping operations . Impacts on agriculture from urbanization will then be disproportionate to the land area covered. Suburban or exurban development increases GHG emissions per land area substantially when compared with agricultural land uses .

It is useful to know the extent of these increases,blueberry packing boxes especially since California counties will need to demonstrate ongoing commitment towards reducing GHG emissions in response to state mandates, such as the Climate Action Plan that was adopted in 2011 for the unincorporated areas in Yolo County . In addition, land use planning for climate change can potentially set the stage for greater provision of other ecosystem services at the rural‐urban interface, such as regulation of environmental resources, biodiversity conservation, livelihood options, and business opportunities that build social capital . The A2 and B1 scenarios of the International Panel on Climate Change are based on story lines for higher and lower GHG emissions, respectively, which can be conceptually down scaled at local scales to explore how future local land use patterns will respond to climate change . A2 has higher economic and population growth, and less emphasis on environmental, social, and sustainability priorities than B1. The downs caled story lines can form the basis for spatial modeling of land use change and the challenges that would occur at the rural‐urban interface. In California, UPlan is a simple rule‐ based urban growth model used for regional or county level modeling . The spatial configuration of each land use type is based on demographics, land use designations of the General Plan , and on a set of attractors and detractors for land use change that can be informed by the story lines of climate change scenarios.The majority of California’s new residents will settle in urban areas in coastal counties and in the Central Valley. The Sacramento metropolitan region, where Yolo County is located, will house a significant portion of this growth. Projections prepared for the Sacramento Area Council of Governments Blueprint project in 2005 estimated a population increase from 1,948,700 persons in 2000 to 3,952,098 persons in 2050, i.e., >100 percent increase . The conversion of the region’s undeveloped land into urban, suburban, and exurban development often occurs at the expense of agriculturally productive land. 

Yolo County includes 653,452 acres according to the 2008 California Department of Conservation Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program . Agricultural land occupied 538,043 acres in 2008. About 87 percent of the acreage was in agricultural use . Land use was classified as 4.6 percent urban in the incorporated cities of Davis, West Sacramento, Woodland, and Winters. Important farmland was 57 percent, and livestock grazing land was 24 percent of the county’s acreage. In 1998, Yolo County alone contained about 43 percent of the prime farmland that existed within the Sacramento region , and it yielded the highest farm market values out of all the counties . Thus Yolo County is an important reservoir of productive farmland within the Sacramento metropolitan region. A net loss of about 30,000 acres of agricultural land occurred between 1992 and 2008, and this includes a net gain of about 16,000 acres of grazing land . New grazing lands were formed by draining parts of the Yolo Bypass along the Sacramento River and by transitioning dry‐farmed grain fields to grassland, such as near the Dunnigan Hills. Overall, only 1 percent of Yolo County’s total prime farmland was lost up until 2000 . Between 1998 and 2008, the rate of agricultural conversion to wetlands, especially along the Sacramento River for wildlife conservation, has increased to approximately 2,000 acres yr‐1 . Urbanization accounted for the loss of about 6,500 acres of agricultural land between 1992 and 2008 , i.e., approximately 406 acres yr‐1 . Most of this was prime farmland and farmland of local importance. Yolo County has been relatively successful at protecting agricultural land from urban conversion through land preservation programs, incentives for farmers, and land use policies that make it difficult to develop land zoned for agriculture. Yolo County’s population grew an average of 2.2 percent per year from 1985 to 2007, from 120,300 to 197,530 residents . But by 2050 the county’s population may reach 320,000 to 394,000 , depending on assumptions used in scenarios for either regional or statewide planning. This would result in an increased urban population and pressures to expand the current urban footprint.

Given the county’s geography, urban expansion will almost certainly occur at the expense of farmland and open space if growth is not restricted to infill development within existing boundaries. With respect to California’s climate change policies aimed at reducing GHG emissions 16 and Senate Bill 375 17 which connects land use planning with implementation of AB 32, urbanization onto agricultural land raises two important issues for the 2050 time frame: magnitude of the loss of agriculturally productive land that provides ecosystem services such as meeting the food needs of an expanding state and global population, wildlife habitat, and open space for residents; and an increase in GHG emissions from decentralized urbanization when compared with more compact, centralized forms of urban development that leave agricultural lands undeveloped. There is a need to better understand the relationships between urbanization, agriculture, and climate change, and their interrelated effects on ecosystem services. In order to understand the type, extent, and likely locations of urbanization in the county, we used UPlan GIS‐based software, a rule‐based, land use allocation model developed by the Information Center for the Environment at the University of California, Davis . UPlan is an open‐source, relatively simple model that can be run on a sub‐county area, a county, or a group of counties. It is a suitable model for broad‐brush urbanization modeling of large land areas using multiple development scenarios, and has been used by more than 20 counties in California,package of blueberries including a group of rural Blueprint counties in the San Joaquin Valley . In the past it has been employed to assess the impacts of urbanization policies and growth on natural resources , to understand the risk of wildfires in rural woodlands from urban growth , and to evaluate the effect of land use policies on natural land conversion . Households are divided into four residential land‐use types based on density parameters, while employees are assigned to nonresidential land use types , also by density. New development is divided by land use type and allocated across the landscape based on the geographic cells with the highest combined attraction weights and the user‐defined land use order. The model uses a cell size of 50 meters, roughly about half an acre. The final output is a map displaying the location, by land use type, of future urbanization.For the purposes of this project, we modified UPlan in several ways when compared to previous usages. Since our time frame is longer than in many previous applications, we no longer required that the model place growth in areas conforming to the current county General Plan. Land use politics and regulation can change greatly over 40 years, which is equal to at least two General Plan cycles in most California counties. Furthermore, the County Board of Supervisors by majority vote can approve zoning variances four times a year, allowing development that does not conform to a current General Plan and zoning code. Thus, the planning documents and zoning codes that are a short‐term deterrent to development may no longer be relevant in the longer term. The purpose of this project was also to model three significantly different scenarios, and restricting development to the current policy framework would make this difficult.

For these reasons we did not include the countywide General Plan land use designations. We also modified UPlan to allow development within existing urban areas, on the assumption that a significant amount of urban redevelopment is likely within the 2010–2050 time frame. Lack of an infill development option was a significant drawback with previous versions of UPlan. Sharply increased levels of infill are likely within more environmentally oriented future scenarios. Indeed, our AB32+ scenario assumes that 100 percent of development takes place within existing urban areas. This approach is likely to rapidly decrease GHG emissions because lifestyles of urban area dwellers tend to have smaller carbon footprints, such as less energy expenditure for transportation , as long as their economic actions do not increase to the point of significantly outweighing that benefit . Urban development is already increasingly taking the form of infill within the state’s largest urban areas, including Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, and infill development is a leading goal of the Sacramento region’s 2004 Blueprint vision for the future . Lastly, we established density categories that are relatively high by historical California standards, but fairly close to the density levels of recent development in the more urban portions of the state. Our categories were “Very Low Density Residential,” with an average lot size of one acre; “Low Density Residential,” with an average density of 8 units per acre ; “Medium Density Residential”, with an average density of 20 units per acre; and “High Density Residential,” with an average of 50 units per acre. The latter two categories are similar to densities currently being achieved within many of California’s more urban communities . Within each scenario, we also apportioned development differently between these types. The A2 scenario focuses primarily on Low Density Residential development, while B1 is relatively evenly split between High, Medium, and Low Density types, and AB32+ favors High and Medium densities. In terms of building types, the Medium Density category might consist of two‐ to three‐story apartment or condominium buildings with significant green space around them, while the High Density category might include three‐ to five‐story buildings in a more urban format. It is important to emphasize that none of these categories require high‐rise apartment living, although this development type is not forbidden, and might in fact be desirable for limited locations within the county during the study period.Several types of urbanization attractors are typically used in UPlan, including blocks with growth in the previous census period , freeway ramps, arterial streets, collector streets , and urban spheres of influence. To predict infill development more accurately, we added additional attractors such as existing commercial strips, shopping centers, freeway retail zones , existing neighborhood centers, and rail transit stations. In most cases adding these factors meant creating new GIS data layers with information from publicly available sources or visual analysis of Google aerial imagery. We took into account existing land uses within cities by creating a data layer of current zoning districts, and consolidating these districts into high and low infill potential layers. The first of these includes existing commercial and industrial land, which typically consists of relatively large parcels of land being used for relatively short‐lived purposes , owned by landowners who are likely to be open to profitable redevelopment over a 40‐year time frame.

Our econometric models related acreages of each major crop to relative crop prices and key climate variables that are expressed as 10‐year moving averages to represent the recent memory of growers’ decision making. In general, the data indicate significant influences of prices and only moderate influences of expected growing degree days, chill hours and precipitation on acreage of individual crops. Overall the data indicate that Yolo County climate change has played a moderate role in the evolution of crop acreage in Yolo County in recent decades. The models did not investigate many other factors that affect Yolo County crop acreages, such as irrigation water effects of climate change outside Yolo County, extreme events, or the potential influence of statewide or global climate change on relative prices,. We applied the estimated parameter values to down scaled GFDL climate projections to assess how future climate change in Yolo County may affect crop acreage patterns from 2010 to 2050. The results should not be interpreted as acreage forecasts. For example, we took no account of recent trends or expected changes in prices, technology, or other factors in projecting acreage change. Instead, we invesitgated the acreage impacts of two paths for climate change , holding constant the relative prices and other relevant drivers of crop acreage. An underlying assumption in our approach was that the basic relationships between climate and acreage that were estimated using the data from 1950 to 2008 apply to projected climate effects on acreage from 2010 to 2050. Average temperature is projected to rise in Yolo County under both scenarios, associated with winter temperature increases and the reductions in winter chill hours. The two climate scenarios diverge for the period after 2035 with the A2 scenario cooler during this period,garden grow bags despite a long‐term increase in temperature compared to B1. Among field crops, warmer winter temperatures are projected to cause wheat acreage to decline and alfalfa acreage to rise. This led to a small projected decline in total field crop acreage and projected increase in tomato acreage.

The largest impact of warmer winter temperatures is for projected wheat acreage. Using the historical relationships, climate change induces a decline in projected wheat acreage share from about 17.5 percent of crop acreage in 2008 to as low as 4 percent of acreage in 2050. Even though the projected change was significant for the acreage of certain crops, the overall impact on total crop acreage has been moderate. Some care must be exercised in interpreting our results. Our projections focused exclusively on the using historical patterns to project relationships between acreage change and climate change. They are not year‐to‐year forecasts. Further, our projections were based on the statistical estimates derived solely from historic data, meaning that factors other than climate do not change from their historic values. In terms of adaptation to climate change, however, these results indicate that farmer decisions may now need to be based more on uncertainty of climate than in the past, which is not incorporated in our projection .In California, demand for water from agriculture, industry, urban areas and the environment has meant that most watersheds in the state are consistently over‐allocated . In the near term, projections suggest that by 2020 demand for water will exceed the available supply by >2.4 million acre‐feet in average rainfall years and up to 6.2 million acre‐feet in dry years . In the long term, climate change and population growth will place additional demands on the state’s water resources .While there is uncertainty regarding the extent to which climate will change in any given location, there is a growing consensus that the impacts on California’s water resources will be outside the range of past experience . Consequently, state agencies such as the Department of Water Resources and the California Energy Commission have urged water managers at the regional, district, and local levels to examine the potential impacts of and responses to climate change as a part of their planning efforts . Past climate and hydrologic records provide ample evidence that climate change is already having a measurable effect on California’s water supply . For instance, statewide weather records show that mean annual temperatures have increased by roughly 0.6– 1.0°C during the past century, with the largest increases seen in higher elevations .

This warming trend has contributed to a 10 percent decline in average spring snow pack in the Sierra Nevada over the same period, which equates to a loss of approximately 1.5 million acre‐feet of snow water storage . Global climate models suggest that this warming trend will accelerate, with temperatures expected to increase by 2 to 6°C by the end of this century . While there tends to be less agreement among the climate models as to whether mean annual precipitation in California will increase or decrease, inter‐annual variability is already on the rise and projected to increase further during the latter half of this century . Since the relationship between precipitation and surface runoff is non‐linear, a minor decrease or increase in precipitation could have disproportionate effects on the state’s water supply . Some of the water supply vulnerabilities for agriculture and other sectors can be mediated through traditional infrastructure improvements or alternative water policies; for instance by expanding water storage, updating levies and aqueducts, interstate transfers, modifying the existing operating rules, expanding conjunctive use or groundwater banking . Many of these supply side adaptations also have important trade offs, namely high capital costs and/or significant environmental impacts . Shifts in temperature and precipitation are also projected to have significant implications for the demand side of California’s water balance. Higher temperatures will increase the demand for water from agriculture, as well as the losses associated with water storage, delivery and irrigation. Since agriculture accounts for approximately 80 percent of California’s water use, methods to manage and minimize agricultural water demand are seen as an important way to adapt to climate change . Local conservation strategies implemented by water managers and agricultural users tend to also be more economical than developing new supplies . Demand management options may include water pricing and markets, allocation limits, improved water use efficiency, public and private incentives for irrigation technology adoption, reuse of tail‐water, shifting to less water‐intensive crops, and fallowing . The degree to which climate change will impact both water resources and agriculture is likely to vary considerably throughout California . Thus, for climate impact assessments to be useful they must be conducted at a scale which is fine enough for regional and local water managers to integrate research findings into their planning and adaption efforts. One tool that has helped water resource managers integrate climate change projections into their decision making process is the Water Evaluation And Planning system .

WEAP is a modeling platform that enables integrated assessment of a watershed’s climate, hydrology, land use, infrastructure, and water management priorities. In California, WEAP has been used to model the impact of various climate change, land‐use and adaptation scenarios on the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Basins . Likewise, Mehta et al. used WEAP to evaluate potential climate warming impacts on hydropower generation in the Sierra Nevada. Joyce et al. combined these regional models into a statewide WEAP application that is being used for integrated scenario analysis by the California Department of Water Resource. While these large‐scale hydro‐climatic models have proven useful for state and regional water managers,tomato grow bags their spatial resolution is often too coarse to be of immediate value to local irrigation districts. The WEAP framework has the potential to address this limitation by developing local applications that use more refined input data and greater spatial disaggregation. Models developed at the district scale would also provide an opportunity to improve communication between water managers and climate scientists, cultivate a better understanding of the risks and uncertainties, and ultimately enhance the community’s capacity to adapt . In this study we use WEAP to build a hydrologic model of the Cache Creek watershed and to assess the potential effects of climate change and adaptive management on the water resources dispensed by Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. This district was chosen for several reasons. First, most studies examining climate impacts on the state’s water resources have focused on watersheds fed by the Sierra Nevada, while those originating in the Coast Range have received little attention. Examining the Cache Creek watershed therefore provides an opportunity to investigate how watersheds that are not reliant on Sierra Nevada snowmelt may be affected by climate change. A second reason is that Yolo County is the site of an ongoing interdisciplinary case study on agricultural adaptation to climate change carried out by the University of California at Davis and the California Energy Commission. As such, the hydro‐climatic analysis is further informed by locally relevant agronomic and socioeconomic data. While several integrated water management plans have been formulated for the District over the past decade , our work adds value in several ways. Unlike past studies, we simulate the hydrology of the catchments in Lake County which form the headwaters of Cache Creek. Since this analysis is conducted at the district scale, we are also able to capture the explicit operating rules and legal decrees which govern local water management decisions. We then use down scaled climate projections from two IPCC emissions scenarios to simulate the District’s future water supply and projected demand under one baseline and three hypothetical adaptation scenarios.Between 1970 and 2008, total irrigated agricultural area in the county averaged 332,000 acres, varying between a maximum of 395,000 acres in 1980 and a low of 280,000 in 1982 . As indicated in the economics section above, there has been an overall downward trend in total agricultural area.

The county covers a portion of two geomorphic provinces: the Coastal Range and Central Valley. Surface water supply comes from a number of drainages: the eastern and northern parts of the county depend on the Sacramento River, Colusa Basin Drain, and Yolo Bypass, while the western part depends on Cache Creek . Most of the water in Putah Creek supplies neighboring Solano County. Agriculture accounts for almost 95 percent of the approximately 1 million acre feet of the county’s total water demand. About 70 percent of that water is estimated to be supplied by surface water; the remaining is pumped from groundwater . The Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District service area covers 41 percent of the county’s irrigated area and is located in the western and central portion of the county . The District was established in 1951 and supplies surface water for irrigation from Cache Creek. The upstream reaches of the Cache Creek watershed are wetter and cooler than the valley floor. For example, average annual rainfall and temperature in areas upstream of Clear Lake are 988 millimeters and 13.3 °C respectively, compared to 560 mm of precipitation and 16.5 °C respectively in the valley. Snow does not occur in the watershed, except intermittently in high elevations. Upland soils to the west are well drained but shallow to bedrock composed of marine shales, silt stones, and sand stones. Lowland soils are part of alluvial fans, underlain by the Tehama formation . In the District, alfalfa, tomatoes, wheat, almonds, walnuts, wine grapes, and rice are the dominant crops.Two reservoirs located upstream in neighboring Lake County are critical for District water deliveries: Clear Lake and Indian Valley. The District purchased water rights from Lake County in 1967, amounting to a maximum of 150,000 acre feet annually. The actual amount available for District release in any given year is strictly controlled by the stipulations of the Solano Decree . In 1976, the Indian Valley reservoir was completed. Since it is owned and operated by the District, it allows greater flexibility in supplying water to its downstream customers. Water is delivered to customers via a network of canals and ditches downstream of Capay diversion dam. The District does not own or operate any groundwater wells for the purpose of meeting customer demands. However, many privately owned wells exist throughout the District, and landowners rely on these wells for domestic purposes and to add flexibility to their farming operations. The groundwater basin experienced some depletion of storage in the 1960s and early 1970s. The increased storage and provision of surface by Indian Valley Reservoir has been identified as a key factor in the recovery of groundwater levels in Yolo County in recent decades .

Although this model appears to be prevalent in the development of climate change adaptation content in Malawi as evident by the select few organizations that were referenced as content developers, it is not evident that this strategy leads to higher rates of adoption than more participatory approaches. In fact, several recent studies have affirmed that the innovation diffusion model used to disseminate new technologies to farmers does not necessarily lead to adoption in Malawi. Hermans et al. 2021 and Engler et al.2016 found that the adoption of climate smart agricultural practices in Malawi is a dynamic, multidimensional, and complex process. Additionally, this hierarchical process does not appear to allow for effective feedback from farmers who receive and interact with new technologies. My analysis also revealed that social network analysis is a useful tool to understand which extension providers in Malawi are central to the development of content and transfer of information and which organizations are on the edge or periphery of the network. The majority of organizations referenced in this study do not generate climate adaptation information, but are involved in the transfer of this information. It also appears as though clusters of organizations exist within the information sharing network. These clusters include government departments and select international and local NGOs, private sector partners involved in providing inputs to farmers, and religious-affiliated organizations. Social network analysis is a promising tool for evaluating the relationships and clusters present within extension networks in order to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses,plastic flower pots and power imbalances between organizations operating within a network. Future social network analyses should seek to incorporate an analysis of the ways in which hierarchies between organizations impact power imbalances as well as the transfer of information within an extension network. Within DLEC’s conceptual framework for analyzing Malawi’s extension system, governance structures, partnerships, linkages, and networks are recognized as crucial characteristics that impact the performance and effectiveness of EAS.

This study has reaffirmed the importance of strong relationships and ties among different types of organizations operating within Malawi’s extension network. This study has also revealed that these linkages are not only essential among high-level actors such as government departments and international NGOs, but also among farmers and farmer associations. In DLEC’s conceptual framework, the knowledge, behaviors, and adoption of agricultural technologies among farming households are seen as outcomes of Malawi’s EAS. Yet, strong relationships and networks formed by farmers may be just as important, if not more, in impacting the uptake of technologies. In order to strengthen DLEC’s EAS framework for Malawi, farmer networks should be included as a key component of the agricultural innovation system in addition to the existing components which include governance structures, organizational capacities, advisory methods, market engagement, livelihood strategies, and community engagement. I propose the following recommendations and areas of emphasis for future agricultural extension research to address climate change impacts in Malawi. First, there is a need for improved integration of organizations from lower governance levels in order to diversify the types of organizations operating in Malawi’s core extension network. Government representatives should also continue to facilitate platforms like the NACDC that involve diverse extension providers and allow for the vertical integration of information sharing among actors within different levels of government and farmers themselves. The increased diversification of organizations within the core network and facilitation of collaborative platforms will help to increase access to information, facilitate the transfer of knowledge, improve collaboration among extension providers, and increase the communication of consistent climate adaptation messages to farmers. In addition, extension providers should also focus on supporting farmers with specific and consistent agricultural technologies that will address climate change risks. The delivery of consistent climate adaptation practices such as conservation agriculture and good agriculture practices should be a top priority for extension providers. Future studies should also seek to analyze the efficacy of different advisory methods in disseminating information to farmers and rates of adoption of specific CSA practices. In terms of content development, increased engagement of farmers in the co-production of agricultural knowledge can help to facilitate greater adoption of climate adaptation practices.

Co-production processes allow for a participatory approach to content development through a combination of collaborative scientific review, dialogue, input from farmers, and joint decision making by researchers and participating farmers . Participatory research approaches can support collaborative farmer learning and innovative problem-solving. Participatory methods also value the institutional knowledge of local farming communities and can help to better understand the social interactions at play that influence the information available to farmers. This approach can be used to collaboratively develop agricultural improvements that allow farmers to effectively adapt to climate change. Additionally, women’s contributions to Malawi’s agriculture sector are vitally important to the success of the industry and the ability of farmers to adapt to climate change. Therefore, future studies should also incorporate an analysis of the gendered nature of EAS delivery and the role of women farmers in the co-production of agricultural content. Finally, organizations should continue to address resource challenges by providing tailored trainings for their staff and leveraging partnerships within the extension network to fill gaps in staffing capacity. New partnerships with donors and within the private sector could also help to increase funding for the delivery of EAS in Malawi. This research has several limitations that readers should be aware of as they interpret study findings and conclusions. First, due to the qualitative nature of this research and limited number of study participants, findings cannot be generalized the full population of extension providers operating in Malawi. This study included 19 participants who consented to participate in virtual interviews and is therefore not representative of all individuals or organizations providing EAS in Malawi. Once travel is permitted, this study should be replicated with in-person interviews with extension providers operating in Malawi and farmers that receive EAS. Second, due to travel restrictions imposed from the Covid-19 pandemic, in-person travel to Malawi was not possible during this research process. Due to the virtual nature of these interviews, only participants with access to internet were able to participate. A third limitation was the study protocol and questionnaire I developed.

Although I prompted participants to elaborate on their answers, the responses shared by participants were framed by my questionnaire. I strove to maintain an unbiased perspective of the responses provided by participants and the analysis of data by receiving input from local partners in Malawi. However, this study reflects my Western worldviews and positionality as a 27-year-old, Caucasian woman from the United States. A final limitation was the lack of scholarly research on social network analysis and climate change adaptation content development and dissemination in Malawi. This knowledge gap limited the my ability to draw comparisons between other researcher’s findings and form recommendations. Net tropical forest loss of 7 million hectares per year occurred between 2000 and 2010, with conversion to agriculture accounting for 86% of deforestation . Annual deforestation in tropical Asia during the 1990s reached up to 5.6 million ha yr−1 ,plastic garden container resulting in the emission of 1.0 Pg C yr−1 to the atmosphere . In Indonesia, the total forest area of 117 million ha in 1990 dropped to 89 million ha in 2011–2012 with primary, secondary and plantation forests occupying 45.2, 40.8 and 3.0 million ha, respectively . The average forest loss of 1.3 million ha yr−1 from 1990 to 2012 resulted from burning and conversion to agriculture, mining and infrastructure with Indonesia contributing to ∼10% of total global forest loss each year. Short-term changes in soil properties following conversion of tropical forests to agricultural land use are often pronounced and in most cases detrimental to sustainable agricultural production. In contrast to the Amazon rainforests supported by Oxisols and Ultisols , Indonesia’s rainforests are largely supported by volcanic soils, primarily Andisols. These Andisols support high agricultural productivity with some of the world’s highest human-carrying capacity being found on volcanic soils in Indonesia . With respect to greenhouse gases, Andisols are notable for having the highest soil carbon storage capacity among the mineral soil orders in temperate and tropical climatic regimes with an average carbon stock of 25.4 kg C m−2 . Matus et al reviewed soil carbon storage and stabilisation in andic soils and concluded that the most important mechanism of sorption of soil organic matter by short range ordered amorphous minerals is the ligand exchange. While short-term changes in properties of tropical rainforest soils have been extensively studied, there is a paucity of information concerning long-term changes in soil properties resulting from changing land use and management practices, especially with respect to Andisols. Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are reported to contribute up to 30% of anthropogenic emissions . Soils can be a major source or sink of GHG from terrestrial ecosystems depending on the ecosystem disturbance regime and soil management practices. Soil carbon storage is dependent on soil mineral constituents, with volcanic ash soil stypically having exceptionally high potential C stocks owing to their high content of active Al and Fe constituents . In Andisols, Chevallier et al. showed organic matter transformation to CO2 via microbial respiration was lower as allophane content increased. In addition, changes in land use/land cover alter organic matter quantity and quality, which are major factors controlling soil microbial biomass and activity . Given the high C stocks in Andisols, it is important to assess the fate of soil C following land-use conversion from forest to intensive agricultural production, especially with regard to rapid deforestation in the tropics.

Andisols have several unique properties that affect agricultural productivity, such as high P fixation, high organic matter concentrations, a clay-size fraction dominated by pH dependent variable charge, low bulk density, high porosity, high water retention capacity and high mesopore content . In particular, high P retention in Andisols can limit agricultural productivity by limiting plant availability of P. Currently, there is little information on how P retention and availability in tropical Andisols change with different land use and agricultural practices. Nitrate leaching characteristics in Andisols are also strongly affected by variable charged constituents as positive charges can retain nitrate enabling higher plant utilization efficiency. In southern Chile, Huygens et al. reported NH4 + and NO3 − retention of 84 and 69% of N fertilizer additions, respectively, after one year based on 15N pool-dilution and 15N tracer studies of forested Andisols. In Japan, the maximum nitrate adsorption by Andisols ranged from 0.4 to 7.0 cmolc kg−1 with the highest values occurring in soil horizons with high allophane content and low organic carbon content . Furthermore, Deng et al. evaluated the denitrification rates from eight Andisols under three different cropping systems in an intensive livestock catchment of central Japan and reported that N loss via denitrification from upland fields was almost negligible in spite of substantial N inputs . In addition to retention of NO3 − by positively charged colloids, a laboratory study by Matus et al. reported high retention of NO3 − in Andisols through transformation of NO3 − to dissolved organic nitrogen . In Indonesia, land use/land cover of Andisols is primarily native rainforest, tea plantation, horticultural crops, terraced paddy fields and other food crops. Land-use conversion from tropical rainforest to agriculture has taken place over long periods of time ; however, no rigorous studies have examined changes to Andisol soil properties over these time periods. In addition, several studies have examined microbial biomass carbon and CO2 measurements in topsoil horizons, however, MBC and CO2 measurements in subsoil horizons have been ignored although these measurements are crucial for explaining the exceptionally high carbon stocks in Andisols. Given the several unique properties of Andisols, it may be expected that these soils are more resilient to land-use change and agricultural management practices. Therefore, we hypothesize that the unique soil properties of Andisols lessen the negative impacts of land-use change from tropical forest to agriculture on soil physical, chemical and biological properties. The objective of this study was to take advantage of long term, land-use/land management changes to examine changes in several physical, chemical and biological properties of Andisols in tropical Indonesia following conversion of rainforest to tea plantation and horticultural crops.Samples were pretreated with H2O2 to remove organic matter and dispersed with dilute Na-hexametaphosphate. Silt- and clay-sized fractions were measured after sedimentation according to Stokes law.

The increase in variability of rainfall patterns, sudden and severe floods, prolonged droughts, and changing temperatures severely impact Malawi’s ability to grow food. Since 1960, the mean annual temperature has increased by 0.9 ° C . Recent studies conducted in Malawi show alarming evidence of rapidly warming temperatures with projected temperature increases of between 1.9 to 2.5 °C by 2055 . See Figure 1 from Sova et al., 2018 for a country-wide analysis of projected temperature and precipitation changes by 2050. Climate change poses addition challenges to maize production in Malawi. Researchers have discovered that warming temperatures in Malawi could lead to reduced planting seasons and significantly reduced maize yields . Researchers also find that yields decline for all major maize cultivars in Malawi using combined temperature and precipitation projections . GoM’s National Climate Change Management Policy identifies increased adoption of climate smart agricultural practices as a critical need for farmers in Malawi. According to the FAO, Climate Smart Agriculture practices encompass an approach to agriculture that helps to guide actions needed to transform agricultural systems to support sustainable food production given changing climatic conditions . CSA aims to sustainably increasing agricultural productivity, support adaption to climate change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through improved agricultural practices .CSA focuses on the implementation of sustainable interventions including improved soil management, soil and water conservation practices, development of resilient crop varieties, and agroforestry practices. Improving soil management includes practices such as conservation agriculture , soil fertility management, and diversifying farming systems to include multiple crops in order to reduce soil erosion and retain nutrients in the soil . CA encompasses farming practices including minimal soil disturbance through low- or no-tillage planting, maintenance of carbon-rich organic matter to cover and feed soils, and crop rotations . Soil- and water-conservation practices for agriculture emphasize crop residue management, mulching, terracing, rainwater harvesting,french flower bucket and efficient irrigation management . Planting resilient crop and early maturing varieties also supports the development of high-yielding, heat, drought, and pest-resistant crops.

Agroforestry is another CSA practice that involves integrating trees or shrubs into agricultural production systems. Agroforestry includes practices to improve fallows, grow crops alongside forest plantations, establish home gardens, grow multipurpose trees or shrubs, and integrate trees into animal pastures . The use of trees in agricultural systems reduces vulnerability to extreme weather events by improving soil fertility and moisture content, reducing erosion and diversifying production for farmers in case of crop failure . According to the FAO, the CSA interventions described above allow farmers to sustainably increase yields while adapting to impacts of climate change on agricultural systems . Adopting CSA practices is critical for developing effective climate change responses and continuing to support sustainable food production in Malawi. Extension and Advisory Services support rural development, improve food security, and enhance agricultural production systems across the world. Birner and colleagues p. 342, define EAS as, “the entire set of organizations that support and facilitate people engaged in agricultural production to solve problems and to obtain information, skills, and technologies to improve their livelihoods and well-being.” These services operate within a larger system of agricultural knowledge and information systems with actors that generate and share knowledge about agricultural technologies with farmers and information generators. Rivera and colleagues have categorized the key actors within agricultural knowledge systems into three types: education, research, and extension .At the center of the Agricultural Knowledge System are the farmers that act as the key clients of agricultural innovations, but also share information with extension institutions, research organizations, and agricultural educators as they field test new technologies and develop new agricultural innovations themselves. According to Lubell and colleagues p.1093, “agricultural extension enhances adaptive capacity when it manages knowledge systems in ways that help farmers react to changes in economic, social, and environmental processes.”

These knowledge systems are strengthened when actors collaborate to develop and deliver relevant information in order to enhance resilience and support sustainable livelihoods for farmers. There are numerous approaches or methods utilized by actors within agricultural knowledge systems to support farmers with EAS. The advisory methods utilized by extension providers vary depending on actor’s paradigms, goals, and resources. EAS providers use a variety of extension methods including the model village approach, demonstrations, field days, lead farmers, farmer field schools, mass media and participatory farmer research. Village meetings or the model village approach, are commonly used to create awareness about important agricultural issues, obtain approval from village leadership for proposed projects, and mobilize farmers to participate in new initiatives . Through this approach, community leaders work with extension agents, catalyze community buy-in for new projects, prioritize actions with local leaders, learn about key issues in the community, and design tailored extension plans to improve community management structures . Demonstrations are widely used by extension officers to disseminate information on new agricultural technologies to farmers. Demonstrations are conducted at research stations, training centers, and on farmer’s fields. This method is used by the public sector, NGOs, and the private sector to promote new seeds or agricultural inputs to farmers. Demonstrations show farmers how to implement a technology and the result of that technology on local crop systems . Field days are also used as an advisory method and are coordinated amongst extension workers and farmers to promote a meaningful learning opportunity between organizations, extension staff, and farmers. These field days allow extension and subject matter experts to receive feedback on new technologies and agricultural practices.

Field days may also, “attract a wide range of stakeholders who include input suppliers, donors, policymakers project staff civil society, and extension service providers” . Within this approach, participatory farmer research programs allow farmers to co-develop new technologies and innovations with researchers in order to increase adoption of those technologies. The Lead Farmer, or Farmer-to-Farmer approach, is used to help disseminate information and new technologies from fellow farmers who have adopted certain practices or gained new information. Lead Farmers have been shown to substantially increase rates of technology adoption, increase the number of farmers receiving extension services, and reduce the cost of extension services for farmers because they are often viewed as trustworthy and credible sources of information within a community. Farmer Field Schools are another method used to educate farmers and typically include groups of 20 – 25 farmers who meet regularly to discuss, modify, and experiment with new production practices. During Farmer Field Schools, farmers receive training from experienced facilitators. This method allows farmers to observe and test their own ideas while building agricultural content and skills. Finally, mass media or Information Communications Technology platforms are widely used to provide information to farmers. ICT platforms including radio are widely used by governments and NGOs to disseminate information to large groups of farmers.Agricultural extension and advisory services in Malawi date to 1903 when GoM began advising farmers on improved methods of cotton to be exported to Britain. In 1949, a severe drought led to widespread famine across Malawi. This disaster resulted in the development of a more centralized approach to advisory services by the government. Then in 1964, the Department of Agricultural Extension and Training was established to provide comprehensive training, agriculture, husbandry, home economics, irrigation, and credit services to farmers. The DAET was eventually separated into various departments and nongovernmental organizations became increasingly important dual extension providers. The Department of Agricultural Extension and Training eventually evolved to become the Department of Agricultural Extension Services and operates as one of the six departments within the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, Water, and Development . DAES is the main provider of extension services to farmers throughout Malawi and coordinates activities with district-level government partners. Additional departments under MoAIWD that support the dissemination of extension information in Malawi include Animal Health, Crop Production, Fisheries, Irrigation, and Land Resources and Conservation Departments. The six departments within MoAIWD including DAES are represented by eight Agricultural Development Divisions . These ADDs are further divided into twenty-eight District Agriculture Development Offices , one-hundred and eighty-seven Extension Planning Areas under the DADOs, and finally Sections which each comprise 5-15 villages and represent the smallest administrative unit . Staff at the EPA level are called Extension Agents and are tasked with, “conveying technical messages to farmers, forming farmer groups to carry out farmer demonstrations,bucket flower and linking farmers to credit institutions” . Technical experts from Malawi’s research institutions including Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources , the University of Malawi, Mzuzu University, and Malawi University of Science and Technology also support the development of new technologies and outreach messages to improve Malawi’s public extension system .

In its effort to decentralize Malawi, in 2000, GoM and DAES introduced a new agricultural extension policy. This new policy termed, “Agricultural Extension in the New Millennium: Towards Pluralistic and Demand-Driven Services in Malawi” promotes a pluralistic extension system that allows for the delivery of specialized services to farmers through multiple extension providers. This policy was introduced to allow for the participation of other extension providers apart from the government to more effectively respond to environmental, social, economic challenges impacting the development of the agriculture sector in Malawi . Through this policy, NGOs, farmer groups, and private industry could operate extension services to farmers throughout the country to complement government extension activities. In Malawi, agricultural extension providers also include non-profit organizations, farmer groups, and private companies. Dozens of local and international nongovernmental organizations provide extension services throughout Malawi and many are members of the Civil Society Agricultural Network . CISANET has a membership of over one-hundred organizations and provides policy advocacy support in programmatic areas including, “climate smart agriculture, markets and international trade, livestock and dairy development, governmental budget accountability, and nutrition and social protection” . NGOs providing extension services operate across Malawi and often utilize government extension staff to implement their program activities at the local level. The majority of NGO activities are, “funded by external donors through implementation contracts with predetermined targets and centralized control. The relatively small size of NGO efforts and the drive to differentiate themselves technically and operationally from other EAS service providers competing for the same contracts lead to an operational context characterized by a large number of actors employing variations of the same approaches and technical themes, all attempting to work with the DAES to achieve impact” . There are also several large donor-funded projects operating within the context of Malawi’s extension system. For example, the United States Agency for International Development has funded many multi-year, multi-million dollar projects such as Strengthening Agriculture and Nutrition Extension Services Activity implemented by the University of Illinois and United in Building and several projects implemented by Catholic Relief Services .The Farmers Union of Malawi is the main umbrella organization representing farmer interests and includes 93 member organizations that represent an estimated 350,000 smallholder farmers . In addition, the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi is a member-owned association of 108,000 farmers organized into approximately 43 farmer associations across Malawi. Private sector extension providers include actors supporting the production of agricultural commodities as well as, “agricultural input companies , and agricultural input retailers” . Private sector extension providers have been categorized by Simpson and colleagues as utilizing either push or pull business models. Push business models are utilized by agricultural input supplies and, “focus on the provision of additional value-added advisory services, such as advising related to consumers’ input purchasing decisions” . In contrast, pull business models are utilized by companies focusing on the production of agricultural commodities such as maize and often provide extension services to farmers in exchange for purchasing the commodities that the farmer grows. These extension services support the adoption of new technologies, practices, knowledge, and information that can help farmers overcome barriers to increasing crop yields, adapting to changing climatic conditions, and ensuring sustainable livelihoods of farmers. According to GoM, challenges remain in implementing effective services for maize farmers. These include a lack of coordination and communication amongst extension providers, conflicting messages disseminated to farmers by various stakeholders, and inadequate opportunities and support for engagement among stakeholders . Inconsistent recommendations provided by the extension system, particularly regarding climatic viability and best practices for the sustainable intensification of agriculture have remained significant challenges in Malawi.

The sample was stored in a 2 mL chromatography vial at 4 °C. For the quality control, all the experimental steps were carried out with the blank sample, the final sample solution was also stored in the 2 mL vial for further analysis.For the microplastics ranging 10–500 μm, the solution containing microplastics was ultrasonicated for 10–20 min. 20 μL of the sample was dropped on a glass slide each time until all the liquid was transferred. After the ethanol was evaporated, the slide was analyzed by the automated LDIR Imaging system . The automated particle analysis protocol within the Agilent Clarity software was used for all analysis. In the selected test area, the software used a fixed wave number at 1800 cm−1 to quickly scan the selected area and identified the particles . The software automatically selected a non–particle area as the background, collected the background spectrum, and performed morphological identification and infrared full spectrum acquisition on the identified particles. Sensitivity was set to the maximum. After obtaining the particle spectrum, the software automatically made a qualitative analysis with the standard spectra in the self-established database of Agilent. The setup was tested with standard PE pellets , and the hit quality index was >90 %. Considering the aging of MPs in environmental samples, hit quality was set to 65 % for identifying polymer compositions. Additionally, the information including the picture, size, and area of each particle was displayed in the quantitative results. For the 500 μm–5 mm microplastics, the suspected microplastic particles were selected under a stereoscope . ATR–FTIR was used to further identify the polymer composition. The spectrum range was 400–4000 cm−1 with a spectral resolution of 4 cm−1 ; 24 scans were performed. The spectra were compared to the standard spectra in the siMPle database . The polymer type, size, and shape were recorded by the software.Due to the limitation of Agilent 8700 LDIR imaging, that is, the thickness of MPs could not be detected, and fragments were classified as films. As shown in Fig. 5,procona florida container the abundance of microplastics with different shapes was film ≫pellet > fiber , with film accounting for 88.2 %, pellet accounting for 9.0 %, and fiber accounting for 2.8 %.

However, all the detected particles were films in the previous visual results in similar cotton fields , which meant that the detection method could affect the findings of MPs shapes. As shown in Fig. 6, PVC, PP, PE, and PA accounted for a relatively high proportion of the three shapes in all the soil samples. For instance, the proportions of PVC were 37.7 %, 25.3 %, and 13.8 %, respectively in fibrous, film, and pellet microplastics in the soil with 5-year mulching. PTFE also accounted for a relatively high proportion in the fibrous form in the soil with mulching years of 10 and >30 years. For all three shape categories of microplastics, the compositions of polymer types were greatly distinct. For example, in all the soil samples, the proportion of PA in the pellet was higher than that in the fiber and film, while the proportion of PP in the fiber was slightly higher than that in the film and pellet. In the soil with 20 years of mulching, the proportion of PVC in the pellet was more than those in the other shapes, while the proportion of PVC in other samples was fiber > film > pellet. The proportion of PTFE in the film was slightly higher than that in the fiber and the pellet. No clear pattern was observed for the rest of the polymer types.As is shown in Fig. 2, the exponential increase of microplastic abundances with the decrease of their sizes was observed, which is consistent with other studies . This may be caused by the further fragmentation of microplastics over time. Since microplastics in small sizes account for the vast majority, the detection limits of different quantification methods can significantly influence the findings of microplastics. To further understand the ranges of microplastic contaminations in agricultural soils, we performed literature research with respect to microplastic detection in farmlands . The highest abundance in previous studies was 320–12,560 particles/kg soil , accounting for <1 % of this study. The abundance of microplastics in this study was 100–106 times higher than that in other regions. In addition to the different regions of sampling, the quantitative method also greatly impacts the results. For example, visual identification under stereoscope which is most commonly used in soil microplastics studies can cause high false-positive circumstances when it comes to small sizes .

It is generally believed that one can correctly identify microplastics only for particles above 100 μm , and the false detection rates grow with the size decrease. Although the FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, or heating method has been used to assist the microplastic identification, most studies did this process after visual detection, which may still ignore the particles with small sizes. We have previously conducted a microplastic quantitative study with the visually microscopical method in the same place . The result showed that the abundances of microplastics were 80.3 ± 49.3, 308 ± 138.1, 1075.6 ± 346.8 particles/kg soil, respectively, in the cotton fields with 5, 15, and 24 years of film mulching, and all particles were PE identified by FTIR. In the current study, different methods were used to quantify the microplastics in the soils located in the sameregion, planted with the same crop, and mulched with a similar period. A total of 26 polymer types of microplastics were detected, and the abundance was approximately 103 times higher than those reported in our previous study. Therefore, with a different detection method, our finding suggested that the previous quantitative studies of soil microplastics may seriously underestimate the abundances and types of soil microplastics. Previous studies showed that the PE film mulching was a source of microplastics in farmland . The current study also observed that almost all microplastics with the size of 500 to 5,000 μm were PE film residual microplastics , which confirmed that mulching film was an important source of microplastics in agricultural soils. In the sampling region, where the sunshine is intense and the temperature difference between day and night is large, the plastic film was more susceptible to the harsh environmental conditions, become brittle, and fragmented into microplastics. The abundance of PE MPs ranging from 10 to 500 μm was about 100 times as much as that of PE MPs ranging from 500 μm −5 mm . The abundance of PE microplastics in the soil with film mulching for >30 years was significantly higher than that in the fields with less film mulching time, suggesting that the residual microplastics from the film may continuously accumulate in the soil. However, there was no significant increase of PE films in the smaller size than in the larger size in all samples.

This may be due to the dynamic equilibrium of MPs fragmentation as well as the detection limit. New films are applied every year thus MPs with relatively large sizes continuously enter the fields, and meanwhile, MPs constantly break into smaller pieces. Due to the detection limit of LDIR, MPs smaller than 10 μm are undetectable. If MPs’ detection technology breaks through the limitation of detection limit one day, the increase of PE films in smaller sizes may be observed. Considering that plastic film plays an irreplaceable role in agricultural production, future development of biodegradable film material would be essential. However, the polymer types of microplastics in 10–500 μm showed a significant difference from larger sizes , which suggested that microplastics with smaller sizes had other dominant sources. For example, irrigation was believed to be an important source of microplastics in farmlands , and may explain the high proportions of PP and PVC in this study. PP is one of the plastic types with the highest yield and consumption in the world , which has been widely used in daily life, such as small appliances, toys, plastic bags, clothing, water supply, and heating systems. Therefore, previous studies have observed PP microplastics in the wastewater treatment plants. For instance, Wang et al. investigated the microplastics in the influents and effluents from approximately 25 wastewater treatment plants and reported that PP, PE, and PS made up almost 83 % of the total microplastics. In this study, the irrigation water was from the Moguhu reservoir, the confluence of the effluents of several sewage wastewater treatment plants. Even though we did not investigate the microplastics in this reservoir, considering the wide application and frequent detection, we may conclude that the PP microplastics detected in the cotton fields were from the irrigation water. Parallelly,procona London container all the buried pipelines in the drip irrigation system were PVC plastic. The small particles falling off from the drip system may contribute to the PVC microplastics in the soils. This study indicated that the microplastics in soil were mainly distributed on the size of 10–50 μm, which could not be detected by visual counting methods. However, many studies have shown that fine-grained microplastics have a more serious negative impact on soil ecosystems . To establish the ecological baseline of microplastics, it is essential to establish a more precise standard detection method, and simultaneously study the environmental impact of microplastics with different particle sizes.The agricultural sectors of the United States and other developed countries have been subjected to a myriad of policies and regulations that have contributed to unsatisfactory production patterns and resource allocations both within and between countries. Furthermore, such policies have imposed heavy financial burdens on governments that have transferred substantial resources to support the farm sector. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade strives to improve the efficiency of agricultural trade and production patterns globally. It is proposed that GATT will reduce the set of permissible agricultural policy instruments, thereby eliminating some policy options that have contributed to several of the undesired consequences in the past. Used correctly, the feasible set of policies is believed to allow for a gradual down scaling of agriculture’s excess supply and to make the sector more flexible and progressive. Ultimately, once the restricted set of policies is introduced, it is expected that a sustainable growth path will be achieved.

A framework for assessment and setting of agricultural policy instruments is introduced in this paper It is used to investigate the impacts of some of the instruments considered for the policy reform following GATT; to analyze operational principles that allow effective implementation of these policies; and to consider issues of eligibility criteria, monitoring, and enforcement. This framework is derived from a political economic perspective on the characteristics of agriculture in developed countries, the causes for past policy interventions in agriculture and their shortcomings, and the ingredient for effective design and implementation of policy reform. This perspective is based mostly on the findings of research on political economics and is presented in the next two sections. It is followed by an analysis of the objective of the agricultural policy form , J model of setting specific policy instruments, and criteria for their analysis. These will be used in the last two sections to analyze a subset of proposed policy instruments and to address dynamic adjustment and implementation aspects of the policy reform. New innovations and practices have been introduced almost continuously. They have altered market conditions and have led changes in the structure of agriculture. Both public and private research contribute to this technological evolution. Hayami and Ruttan have demonstrated that economic conditions induce innovations, and the direction and nature of new technologies are affected by resource scarcities, relative prices, and regulations. The importance of economic incentives and conditions in affecting the evolution of agricultural technology in the United States is emphasized in Cochrane’s book. He argues that labor scarcity was the main problem of U.S. agriculture during the 19th century and that the major innovations during this period were mostly laborsaving devices StIch as reapers, thrashers, combines, and steel plows. These innovations allowed for fast expansion of the land base with relatively small numbers of settlers. While the yields per year of did not change much during the 19th century, U.S. output grew substantially as acreage increased.