Agricultural Market Reforms and Potato Farmers' Strategies in the Pueblo Llano Valley, Venezuelan Andes

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Abstract Agricultural market reforms initiated by successive Venezuelan governments in the 1990s have triggered a complex set of coping strategies in the Venezuelan Andes. A case study in the Pueblo Llano valley showed that some of the most important livelihood strategies used by farming households to cope with economic uncertainty during the period of research (1994–1999) were land expansion, plot dispersion, and an increase in sharecropping arrangements. However, in constructing these strategies, farming households had to draw on social and cultural resources (ie kinship) as a mechanism to access more land, inputs, and labor.