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This research investigates gender-based constraints and opportunities to the dissemination of conservation agriculture based on a case study with smallholder farmers in the village of Pichangva, Rattanakmondol, Battambang Province, Royal Kingdom of Cambodia. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, including focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, household surveys, and participatory mapping, we explore the effect of conservation agriculture on men's and women's allocation of labor, gendered power relations in intra-household negotiations, and access to resources and information. I found that conservation agriculture has the potential to decrease men's and women's workload and drudgery in cash crop production and generates opportunities for other work; however, this may contribute to an increase in women's "triple workload" as they invest part of this "extra time" in additional domestic and community responsibilities. I also found that gender intersects with other factors to limit men's and women's access to and control over resources, access to information, and participation in household negotiations. These findings could have implications on smallholder farmers' decision to experiment with conservation agriculture. / Master of Science / CCRA-7 (Gendered Knowledge)

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Laszlo Kulcsar / Environmental, economic and social conditions have changed drastically throughout Great Plains farming communities. In Southwest Kansas, the Ogallala Aquifer supports extensive agricultural industries and family farms through hyper-extraction of groundwater resources. Capitalistic ventures in farming have led to socials changes like declining community populations, out-migration of youth and family farm transformations. The relationship between environmental change, economic development and social changes is explored through a case study of Haskell County Kansas. Interviews were conducted to understand residents' perspectives of declining environmental resources available to achieve continued economic development by way of family farming. Residents also explain social changes that have resulted from evolving economic conditions and increasing use of groundwater resources.

While previous research on African smallholder agriculture has been criticized of focusing on the sole factor of population pressure as driver of agricultural degradation or intensification, the present study tries to nuance this debate by providing empirically grounded research, exploring the dynamics behind local agro-ecological change. The thesis specifically studies the dynamics behind small-scale farmers’ crop choices in relation to their management of trees in cropland in Gera District, Ethiopia. Drawing on situated landscape interviews and focus group discussions with farmers combined with observations and interviews with agriculture officials, a contextual understanding of local agro-ecological processes emerged. While political ecology was used as an overarching framework, the concept of landesque capital served as an analytical tool to explore how external and local forces interact at the point of the land management decision. It was found that external factors sometimes have a reinforcing effect at the local scale, but when top-down interventions are incoherent with bottom-up priorities, a conflict occurs. In this way, local dynamics and external drivers constitute an interacting dialectic, with a set of unintentional synergies and trade-offs eventually forming agro-ecological landscape change. / Examining mismatches between management and the supply of ecosystem services in Ethiopian agroecosystems across scales in space and time

This thesis aims to investigate the attitudes towards organic farming and how agricultural space is understood among organic farmers in the Swedish region of Halland and then to relate this to the ongoing discussion on multifunctional agricultural transition. The research is based on a field study on nine different organic farms in Halland, where qualitative interviews have been conducted for the creation of the empirical results. Using the theory of planned behavior and the concept of the “good farmer”, the thesis has revealed that the organic farming community in Halland is heterogeneous and different perspectives and attitudes are expressed about organic farming and agriculture. While the farmers are driven by many aspects of organic farming, the attitudes towards agriculture are often in line with traditional productivist ideals highlighting clean fields and high yields, even though many organic farmers have started to question the traditional norms often due to the different conditions met by organic farmers. Due to the various attitudes represented, the range within the multifunctional agricultural spectrum is rather wide were some organic farmers understand agricultural space more in line with productivist ideals while others express attitudes in line with organic farming principles, suggesting a strong multifunctional understanding of agricultural space.