IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agisys/v115y2013icp83-94.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Agrarian change, agricultural modernization and the modelling of agricultural households in Tibet

Author

Listed:
  • Brown, Colin
  • Waldron, Scott

Abstract

Powerful forces of agrarian change are at work in western China while the government has stepped up efforts to “modernize” agriculture. Major components of the modernization process are to disseminate improved crop and livestock breeds and adjust changing agricultural structures including a shift from staple food crops to more specialized crop-livestock systems. This paper explores the changing role of agriculture and the impacts of new agricultural structures on household livelihoods through a detailed model of farm households. The model aids understanding of the complex dynamics and choices faced by farm households that consume much of their own food production but who are under great pressure to specialize and engage in more commercial activities both on- and off-farm. The model draws on detailed information and case studies in Tibet, a region that reflects the marginal productivity, ethnic diversity, rudimentary market systems and development challenges of much of western China. The model results demonstrate that even in the context of agrarian change, agriculture continues to play a significant role in the livelihoods of these Tibetan farm households. They also highlight how mooted specialization paths, despite significantly increasing household returns, fundamentally change the nature of these farm and household systems and risks faced by these households. The detailed modelling enables identification of tight labour constraints, feed gaps and other changes to farm and household systems brought about by the specialization. Such information is crucial in guiding refinements to marketing systems and institutional and policy settings needed to strengthen and smooth out the process of agrarian transition in western China.

Suggested Citation

  • Brown, Colin & Waldron, Scott, 2013. "Agrarian change, agricultural modernization and the modelling of agricultural households in Tibet," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 83-94.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:115:y:2013:i:c:p:83-94
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2012.09.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X12001461
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agsy.2012.09.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tittonell, P. & van Wijk, M.T. & Herrero, M. & Rufino, M.C. & de Ridder, N. & Giller, K.E., 2009. "Beyond resource constraints - Exploring the biophysical feasibility of options for the intensification of smallholder crop-livestock systems in Vihiga district, Kenya," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 101(1-2), pages 1-19, June.
    2. Lu, C. H. & van Ittersum, M. K. & Rabbinge, R., 2004. "A scenario exploration of strategic land use options for the Loess Plateau in northern China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 145-170, February.
    3. Lisson, Shaun & MacLeod, Neil & McDonald, Cam & Corfield, Jeff & Pengelly, Bruce & Wirajaswadi, Lalu & Rahman, Rahmat & Bahar, Syamsu & Padjung, Rusnadi & Razak, Nasruddin & Puspadi, Ketut & Dahlanudd, 2010. "A participatory, farming systems approach to improving Bali cattle production in the smallholder crop-livestock systems of Eastern Indonesia," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 103(7), pages 486-497, September.
    4. Colin Brown & Scott Waldron & John Longworth, 2011. "Specialty products, rural livelihoods and agricultural marketing reforms in China," China Agricultural Economic Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 3(2), pages 224-244, May.
    5. Jikun Huang & Jun Yang & Scott Rozelle, 2010. "China's agriculture: drivers of change and implications for China and the rest of world," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(s1), pages 47-55, November.
    6. Komarek, Adam M. & Waldron, Scott A. & Brown, Colin G., 2012. "An exploration of livestock-development policies in western China," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 12-20.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Colin Brown & Jing Zhang & Deqing Zhuoga & Weisi Baiyang & Lava Yadav, 2021. "Market integration and agricultural development: The case of Tibet's ruminant livestock industries," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(4), pages 818-837, October.
    2. Komarek, Adam M. & Bell, Lindsay W. & Whish, Jeremy P.M. & Robertson, Michael J. & Bellotti, William D., 2015. "Whole-farm economic, risk and resource-use trade-offs associated with integrating forages into crop–livestock systems in western China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 63-72.
    3. Colin Brown & Lava Prakash Yadav & Jing Zhang & Deqing Zhouma, 2019. "Sustainability of Agricultural Diversity in the Farm Households of Southern Tibet," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-13, October.
    4. Zhang, Yihao & Wu, Ya & Yan, Jianzhong & Peng, Ting, 2022. "How does rural labor migration affect crop diversification for adapting to climate change in the Hehuang Valley, Tibetan Plateau?," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    5. Matthys, Marie-Luise & Acharya, Sushant & Khatri, Sanjaya, 2021. "“Before cardamom, we used to face hardship”: Analyzing agricultural commercialization effects in Nepal through a local concept of the Good Life," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Komarek, Adam M. & Bell, Lindsay W. & Whish, Jeremy P.M. & Robertson, Michael J. & Bellotti, William D., 2015. "Whole-farm economic, risk and resource-use trade-offs associated with integrating forages into crop–livestock systems in western China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 63-72.
    2. Komarek, Adam M. & McDonald, Cam K. & Bell, Lindsay W. & Whish, Jeremy P.M. & Robertson, Michael J. & MacLeod, Neil D. & Bellotti, William D., 2012. "Whole-farm effects of livestock intensification in smallholder systems in Gansu, China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 16-24.
    3. Le Gal, P.-Y. & Dugué, P. & Faure, G. & Novak, S., 2011. "How does research address the design of innovative agricultural production systems at the farm level? A review," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 104(9), pages 714-728.
    4. Monjardino, M. & Philp, J.N.M. & Kuehne, G. & Phimphachanhvongsod, V. & Sihathep, V. & Denton, M.D., 2020. "Quantifying the value of adopting a post-rice legume crop to intensify mixed smallholder farms in Southeast Asia," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    5. Jin, Shaosheng & Guo, Haiyue & Delgado, Michael S. & Wang, H. Holly, 2017. "Benefit or damage? The productivity effects of FDI in the Chinese food industry," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 1-9.
    6. Lin, Benxi & Du, Ruiying & Dong, Zekuan & Jin, Shaosheng & Liu, Weipin, 2020. "The impact of foreign direct investment on the productivity of the Chinese forest products industry," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    7. Ponsioen, Thomas C. & Hengsdijk, Huib & Wolf, Joost & van Ittersum, Martin K. & Rotter, Reimund P. & Son, Tran Thuc & Laborte, Alice G., 2006. "TechnoGIN, a tool for exploring and evaluating resource use efficiency of cropping systems in East and Southeast Asia," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 80-100, January.
    8. Liu, Min & Huang, Jikun & Dries, Liesbeth & Heijman, Wim & Zhu, Xueqin, 2020. "How does land tenure reform impact upon pastoral livestock production? An empirical study for Inner Mongolia, China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    9. Wenting Wang & Longbao Wei, 2021. "Impacts of agricultural price support policy on price variability and welfare: Evidence from China's soybean market," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(1), pages 3-17, January.
    10. Chang, Hui-Shung Christie & Gloriana, Sionita & Ilham, Nyak, 2020. "Factors Affecting the Demand for and Supply of Beef in East Kalimantan," Australasian Agribusiness Review, University of Melbourne, Department of Agriculture and Food Systems, vol. 28(3), August.
    11. Hammond, Jim & Rosenblum, Nathaniel & Breseman, Dana & Gorman, Léo & Manners, Rhys & van Wijk, Mark T. & Sibomana, Milindi & Remans, Roseline & Vanlauwe, Bernard & Schut, Marc, 2020. "Towards actionable farm typologies: Scaling adoption of agricultural inputs in Rwanda," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    12. Jing You, 2014. "Dietary change, nutrient transition and food security in fast-growing China," Chapters, in: Raghbendra Jha & Raghav Gaiha & Anil B. Deolalikar (ed.), Handbook on Food, chapter 9, pages 204-245, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Rufino, M.C. & Dury, J. & Tittonell, P. & van Wijk, M.T. & Herrero, M. & Zingore, S. & Mapfumo, P. & Giller, K.E., 2011. "Competing use of organic resources, village-level interactions between farm types and climate variability in a communal area of NE Zimbabwe," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 175-190, February.
    14. McDonald, C.K. & MacLeod, N.D. & Lisson, S. & Corfield, J.P., 2019. "The Integrated Analysis Tool (IAT) – A model for the evaluation of crop-livestock and socio-economic interventions in smallholder farming systems," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    15. Scott Waldron & Colin Brown & Adam M. Komarek, 2014. "The Chinese Cashmere Industry: A Global Value Chain Analysis," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 32(5), pages 589-610, September.
    16. Kai Chen & Minggang Cai & Yun Wang & Bin Chen & Xiaomeng Li & Canrong Qiu & Shuiying Huang & Jionghui Sun & Xiaoyan Liu & Bihua Qian & Hongwei Ke, 2020. "Organochlorine Pesticides in Sediment of Zhang River Estuary Mangrove National Natural Reserve: The Implication of Its Source Change in China’s Mangroves," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-18, April.
    17. van Oort, P.A.J. & Wang, G. & Vos, J. & Meinke, H. & Li, B.G. & Huang, J.K. & van der Werf, W., 2016. "Towards groundwater neutral cropping systems in the Alluvial Fans of the North China Plain," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 131-140.
    18. Diogo, Rodrigue V.C. & Schlecht, Eva & Buerkert, Andreas & Rufino, Mariana C. & van Wijk, Mark T., 2013. "Increasing nutrient use efficiency through improved feeding and manure management in urban and peri-urban livestock units of a West African city: A scenario analysis," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 64-72.
    19. Min, Shi & Liu, Min & Huang, Jikun, 2020. "Does the application of ICTs facilitate rural economic transformation in China? Empirical evidence from the use of smartphones among farmers," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    20. Wang, Xiaobing & Huang, Jikun & Rozelle, Scott, 2017. "Off-farm employment and agricultural specialization in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 155-165.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:115:y:2013:i:c:p:83-94. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.