ABSTRACTED FROM THE PREFACE: The origin of this report dates back to 2002, when the first Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) was carried out.

Migration has become a critical issue of our times in both transnational politics and the domestic politics of countries of the North and the South. The book considers the complexities of migration in Southeast Asia from multiple perspectives.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The overall QSEM program aims to provide a descriptive picture of rural life in Myanmar. It examines different livelihood strategies and activities, the wider factors that shape these strategies, and how the broader social and institutional features of community life affect people’s livelihoods choices and outcomes. Specifically, it explores how external assistance affects individual behavior, coping mechanisms, and community social structures. How do those social structures shape the local economic environment?

Siamese Rovsewood (Dalbergia cochinensis) has recently been listed on Appendix II of The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). This listing means that source countries are legally required to export only controlled quantities of rosewood with close monitoring and documentation, which is intended to ensure that the international trade is not detrimental to the survival of this species.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: This report provides a strategic assessment of the key issues, opportunities, constraints and choices facing Myanmar’s agricultural sector. Discussion focuses on pathways that will permit agriculture to contribute meaningfully to broad-based improvements in purchasing power and food security for the country’s many landless and vulnerable households. In doing so, it aims to assist public and private stakeholders who will be making the key investment and policy decisions governing future agricultural and food security trajectories in Myanmar.

The adoption of crop-livestock integration (CLI) among smallholder farmers in the developing countries is no doubt one of the solutions to food security, risk management, and poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. However, adequate assessment on the current status of CLI becomes necessary for the development and its evolution among smallholder farmers. This article presents a basic and multi-objective linear programming (LP) model to determine enterprise combinations of crop and livestock activities that maximize total gross margin (TGM) among small farms in the Eastern Cape Province.

Civil conflicts and the December 2004 tsunami have impeded the development of local fruit germplasm despite the inherent high quality and potential of Aceh’s fruit germplasm. Most of Aceh communities are composed of small scale farmers with land ownership averaging from 0.25 to 4 ha per capita; they plant various trees species (fruits, rubber, cocoa, etc.) in a mixed-tree based system (agroforestry) with extensive management. In Aceh' village markets most fruit is produced by local farmers.

Making the assumption that property rights might determine whether farmers adopt particular strategies, this study aims at modelling farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change by focusing on their property rights – declined as institutional arrangements on land and rights on land – as well as their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The case study took place in northern Benin (West Africa). In this zone, 308 farmers producing maize and adapting to climate change were randomly sampled.

The environmental consequences of agriculture are of growing concern. One example of these consequences is the effect of agricultural pollutants on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a world heritage-listed ecosystem lying off the tropical north-eastern coast of Australia. Pollutants from agricultural lands (fine sediments and attached nitrogen (N) mainly from grazing lands, and dissolved N and pesticides mainly from cropping) in catchments draining into the GBR lagoon threaten the health and resilience of this ecosystem.

Efforts to define and quantify soil quality are not new, but establishing consensus about a set of standardized indicators remains difficult. Also, the view of land managers is usually not taken into account when evaluating various sets of indicators. Our objective was to compare, in functional terms, soil quality assessments based on 29 indicators, a subset with 8 of those indicators, and 4 indicators selected independently by farmers, based on their perceptions of soil quality.

In Ethiopia, farmers’ adoption and continued use of introduced land management technologies have not been widespread to reduce soil erosion and soil fertility depletion to an acceptable level. An important set of factors in farmers’ use of improved agricultural technologies is generally known to be their possession of livelihood assets. This study examines the influence of ownership of livelihood assets in farmers’ decisions to use cattle manure as land improvement technology, which is currently being promoted by Ethiopia’s agricultural extension system.

Since the 1930s there has been worldwide concern about the effects and impacts of land degradation. After the problems experienced in the Dust Bowl in the USA, much attention was paid to soil and water conservation in both developed and developing countries. Initially Governments stimulated the establishment of physical control measures, such as terraces, check dams and reforestation. This was achieved through top-down regulations, and Forestry Departments were often in charge of the implementation.