Wild food collection and nutrition under commercial agriculture expansion in agriculture-forest landscapes

Rikke Brandt Broegaard,Laura Vang Rasmussen,Neil Dawson,Ole Mertz,Thoumthone Vongvisouk,Kenneth Grogan

doi:10.1016/j.forpol.2016.12.012

Rikke Brandt Broegaard, Laura Vang Rasmussen + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2016.12.012

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Abstract

Wild food constitutes a substantial part of household food consumption around the world, but rapid land use changes influence the availability of wild foods, which has implications for smallholders' food and nutrient intake. With increasing commercial agriculture and biodiversity conservation efforts in forested tropical regions, many shifting cultivation systems are being intensified and their extent restricted. Studies examining the consequences of such pressures commonly overlook the diminishing role of wild food. Using a combination of collection diaries, participant observation, remote sensing, and interviews, we examined the role of agriculture-forest landscapes in the provision of wild food in rapidly transforming shifting cultivation communities in northern Laos. We found that wild food contributed less to human diets in areas where pressure on land from commercial agriculture and conservation efforts was more intense. Our results demonstrate that increasing pressure on land creates changes in the shifting cultivation landscape and people's use thereof with negative effects on the quality of nutrition, including protein deficiency, especially in communities adjacent to core conservation areas. Our study shows the importance of adopting a more nutrition-sensitive approach to the linkages between commercial agriculture and biodiversity conservation (and the policies that promote them), wild food provisioning, and food security.

Highlights

Nutritional outcomes for rural inhabitants are determined not by food production in a landscape or even household incomes, but are highly influenced by access to and control over the resources which make up a person's diet (Sen, 1983)
Commercial agriculture is rapidly increasing in forested tropical regions, thereby transforming many subsistence-oriented shifting cultivation systems towards more commercial agriculture, often in accordance with national policies aiming at economic growth (Hall, 2011; Hall et al, 2011; van Vliet et al, 2012)
While wild food collection in principle can take place throughout the landscape, we distinguish between the collections according to the habitat type where it took place, as we show in the results section

Summary

Introduction

Nutritional outcomes for rural inhabitants are determined not by food production in a landscape or even household incomes, but are highly influenced by access to and control over the resources which make up a person's diet (Sen, 1983). Commercial agriculture is rapidly increasing in forested tropical regions, thereby transforming many subsistence-oriented shifting cultivation systems towards more commercial agriculture, often in accordance with national policies aiming at economic growth (Hall, 2011; Hall et al, 2011; van Vliet et al, 2012). These land use changes influence local people's income levels and possibly the amount of food purchased, and affect the availability of wild food as forests, fallows, and agricultural fields are converted to more intensive agriculture (Padoch and Sunderland, 2013). Global efforts to reduce deforestation and increase the proportion of terrestrial land in protected areas, for example through Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) schemes and Aichi Target 11 of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, often result in a recentralising of control and reduced access to these resources for local populations (Ribot et al, 2006; Sandbrook et al, 2010; West et al, 2006)

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Results

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