Landless Families Research Articles

The lure of land: Peasant politics, frontier colonization and the cunning state in Sri Lanka

AbstractThis paper studies the contradictions of peasant politics in Sri Lanka’s dry zone frontier in a highly militarized colonization scheme (‘System L’ of the Mahaweli Development Programme in Weli Oya in northern Sri Lanka). Through a detailed ethnographic study of the life histories of settlers who came in two waves to this scheme (1980s and post-2009), we show the workings of what we call the ‘lure of land’: first, as the (al)lure that attracts landless families to live out the mythical dream of becoming a paddy farmer; second, this lure of land is intimately tied to a nationalist territorial aspiration that transforms the settler into a patriotic colonizer of the land: due to its strategic location in the frontier zone between Sinhalese and Tamil inhabited territories, settlers became ‘home guards’ who live on and protect the frontier. But the lure of land is not without contradictions: Life in the frontier is dangerous (for the early settlers) and economically precarious (for the early and late settlers), because the state is unable to deliver the promise of land and water. Government officials deploy various tactics of repeatedly deferred promises and subtle threats to discourage settlers to abandon the colonization scheme despite the settlers’ precarious life conditions, disappointments, and frustrations. A ‘cunning state’ thereby betrays its own ‘frontiersmen’, while safeguarding its nationalist territorial agenda.

Participatory Livelihood Vulnerability Assessment of the Forest Dwellers: A Study of Fifteen Tribes and Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in the Eastern Indian Region

This study aims to undertake the Participatory Livelihood Vulnerability Assessment (PLVA) of forest dwellers in the Jharkhand and Odisha states of eastern Indian region. The study covers 15 tribes that included 8 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) and 7 other tribes from eight districts of Jharkhand and Odisha. The authors combined both participatory and survey-based approaches and used the simple indexing method for PLVA. They observed that landless families were among the most vulnerable. The forest dwellers have poor access to education and health. Both minor forest produce and social-welfare measures are important safety nets for the forest dwellers. There is, however, better access to banking, pukka houses, toilets and so on. Furthermore, attention is required to strengthen livelihood opportunities for the forest dwelling communities.

In Northern Brazil, Landless Families Resist to Persist

As we ride the bus back to Belem from the Terra Cabana community, landless activist Moises points out the bloom of construction sites along the main and only highway through this section of norther...

Role of integrated crop-livestock systems in improving agriculture production and addressing food security – A review

Integrated crop-livestock systems (ICLS) can be productive, sustainable, and climate-resilient agricultural systems compared to specialized and intensive systems. This review explores the beneficial traits and contributions of ICLS to food security, social and economic benefits, and resilience, and proposes strategies to adopt ICLSs in low-, medium-, and high-income countries. Currently, global food security faces two main challenges. First, one in nine people do not have sufficient protein and energy in their diet, of those 50% are smallholder subsistence farmers and 20% are landless families in the low-and medium-income countries (LMICs). Second, specialized intensive agricultural practices often cause soil and environmental degradation. ICLS is an agricultural practice that could play a significant role in mitigating these challenges. The diversified cropping systems in ICLS can improve the productivity of the principal crop as well as enhance food security through increasing nutritional indicators such as food consumption score and household dietary diversity especially for rural households. An ICLS, therefore, could be a key for achieving food and nutritional security and environmental sustainability both in short and long-terms. While ICLS practices have increased over time, there are still adoption challenges due to lack of investment, sustainable awareness, lack of skills by the producers, and market competition. In LMICs, successful implementation of ICLS requires organizational and/or institutional support to create new marketing opportunities and adoption of ICLS can be improved if government policies provide capital, markets, and educational services to subsistence farmers. These government policies can also increase the producer's knowledge, change farmer's attitudes and enhance trust in organic matter management for sustainable soil management. Therefore, agricultural scientists are challenged to provide fundamental and credible information to integrate crop and livestock production systems so that worldwide adoption of ICLS can be used to increase the agricultural production compatible with food and nutrition security. • Diversified cropping systems in ICLS can improve the productivity of the principal crop as well as enhance food security. • Successful implementation of ICLS requires organizational and/or institutional support to create new marketing opportunities. • Livestock in the ICLS plays a key role in the functioning of the farm through providing animal source foods. • Practicing ICLS would avoid negative consequences of agricultural production such as the loss of biodiversity.

Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present

Bolivia's eastern lowlands form a landscape of the future. They tempt landless families with hopes of prosperity and tantalize governments both revolutionary and reactionary with dreams of export-driven development. Ben Nobbs-Thiessen takes seriously these dreams and the spaces on which they converge in Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present. An ambitious, transnational history of migration and environment in the lowlands, this book juggles three different migratory streams: colonists from the Andean highlands, Okinawan farmers, and Mennonites who settled in Bolivia via Mexico and Canada. The confluence of these groups on land already inhabited by Indigenous communities after the Bolivian Revolution of 1952 reshaped Bolivian political and economic power in the twentieth century.After a century of wars in which Bolivia lost valuable territory and resources to its neighbors, the revolutionary nationalists of 1952 were anxious to populate and control the least connected and largest section of Bolivia. The idea of developing the lowlands through roads and settlement provided an answer to many Cold War anxieties, including for US government officials. Bolivian officials concerned about growing numbers of unemployed and politicized workers in the highlands encouraged colonization schemes in the lowlands. Meanwhile, US diplomats, concerned about the frustrated economic expectations of Okinawan youth as well as Mennonite “model farmers in search of a model crop,” saw new possibilities for prosperity in the Bolivian frontier (p. 190). Each of these communities justified their belonging in this frontier and made claims for themselves by performing what Nobbs-Thiessen calls agrarian citizenship.Landscape of Migration's first three chapters cover the nationalist revolutionary period from 1952 to 1964, establishing the histories of each migratory stream and the ways that state and settler performed agrarian citizenship. Making extensive use of both public and private archives across multiple continents, Nobbs-Thiessen shows Andeans, Mennonites, and Okinawans articulating settler legitimacy as the transformation of unruly frontier into national wealth. Landscape of Migration bridges both internal and external migration in its analysis, understanding that while Andeans and Okinawans performed their belonging in different ways, both were settlers in an unfamiliar landscape whose histories share meaningful resonances. The last two chapters of the book address the period of military dictatorship and neoliberal democracy after 1964, focusing on development projects by missionaries, nongovernmental organizations, and Mennonite soy farmers. An epilogue brings us to the present, in which Bolivia's lowlands form just one portion of the transnational empire of soybeans that now dominates the Amazon and its inhabitants.The first chapter is a standout. Here Nobbs-Thiessen explores postrevolutionary image making of and in the lowlands through film, written narrative, and photography, focusing on the work of filmmaker Jorge Ruiz. Nobbs-Thiessen describes a national romance with the lowlands, which Andeans felt in both political and nationalist terms. His analysis gives room for both nationalist anxieties and bonanza dreams, whether through oil, gold, or soybeans. The chapter considers the context of these narratives' production as well as their circulation and the material places that they traverse. This chapter would make a fine addition to undergraduate classes on film or environmental history.Bolivia's march to the east is an old story, but Nobbs-Thiessen is part of a new generation of scholars rethinking the legacies of the 1952 revolution. Landscape of Migration contributes admirably to this rethinking, weaving migration, development, and environment into a dynamic, compelling narrative and reminding Andeanists of the lowlands' importance to nation building long before Santa Cruz's economic power came to compete with that of La Paz. Nobbs-Thiessen also insists on writing Bolivia's history as inherently transnational while remaining deeply rooted in regional and local context, an endeavor that he rightly notes is rare in Bolivianist scholarship. Concerned with questions of belonging and the ways that migrant communities make claims in unfamiliar spaces, Nobbs-Thiessen explores the racial underpinnings of citizenship in the part of Bolivia that considers itself the whitest and least Indigenous. Here the book could have spent more time with the lowland region's many non-Andean Indigenous inhabitants, especially as Andean settlers and lowland Indigenous communities increasingly contest the same spaces in Bolivia's pluricultural present. Nobbs-Thiessen's analysis of the settler underpinnings of agrarian citizenship does not sidestep these questions, even as Landscape of Migration leaves their full consideration for another book.Landscape of Migration is both an environmental history of a landscape's production and a history of migration and belonging across multiple archives. Such a project establishes a high bar for future scholars in the field and raises tantalizing questions. Nobbs-Thiessen begins his fifth chapter following Mennonite settlers and Che Guevera's guerrillas on simultaneous visits to neighboring patches of lowland frontier. Both are dreaming of future success; both are stymied by the same wet weather. Has there ever been a better landscape on which to imagine the perils and ambitions of the Latin American twentieth century?

Squarter Question and Politics of Settlement Schemes in Trans-Nzoia Kenya: Some Conceptual and Theoretical Reflections

Historically, in most African countries settlement schemes have always been established with the aim to settle displaced persons or to provide landless families and squatters with land. Conventionally, these schemes have been regarded as a means to increase agricultural production and to further rural development through optimal utilisation of physical and human resources. In Kenya, the transfer of expatriate-owned farms began a few years before Independence. In retrospect, the most important characteristic of the process was not the transfer from European to African ownership but the break-up of many large farms in smallholder units, although there was considerable variety in types of settlement. From the very beginning, the settlement policy of the government of Kenya had to serve political as well as development objectives. By 1930s squatter labour had become the main source of labour on settler farms and estates and as such servicing the colonial economy. As such, squatting was a response on the part of ordinary people to the changing structure of the colonial economy, when Africans became a subordinate part of a system of capitalist production. The administrative framework of ordinances and policies that structured rural-urban migration first impelled men to seek wage labor and gradually brought whole families to the cities. This study looks at theoretical and conceptual issues on land settlements in relations to squatter problem in Nzans-Nzoia.

Livelihood income sources of landless and marginal rural households in Haryana

The present study was conducted in four districts two each from Eastern and Western zones of Haryana. Total 300 household from different landholding categories were selected from four villages of the selected districts. Finding revealed that majority of landless families was mainly through wages followed by livestock and in most of the cases it was less than 2.5 lakh per annum. As regards marginal land holding farmers, major source of income of both males and female was wages and private work. The income of large majority of marginal farm families was below Rs. 2.5 lakh per annum.

When Machines Take the Beans: Ex-Ante Socioeconomic Impact Evaluation of Mechanized Harvesting of Mungbean in Bangladesh and Myanmar

Agricultural mechanization has spread across much of Asia since the 1960s. It has increased agricultural productivity and reduced arduous farm work. However, differing impacts for smallholders and hired laborers, and for men and women, require careful consideration. This study analyzed, ex-ante, the likely social and economic tradeoffs of mechanizing the mungbean harvest in Bangladesh and Myanmar. We used a mixed methods approach combining survey data from 852 farm households with in-depth interviews in four villages. Partial budget analysis shows that mechanical harvesting of mungbean is not yet profitable for most farms. There is nevertheless an incentive to mechanize as the associated timeliness of the harvest reduces the risk of harvest losses from weather shocks. Men and women farmers expect time savings and reduced drudgery. The results confirm that hired workers depend on manual harvesting for income and status in both countries. Most hired workers are landless married women with limited access to other sources of income. In the short term, farmers are likely to combine manual harvests and a final mechanized harvest of the indeterminate crop. This could mediate the impact on hired workers. However, in the long term, it will be necessary to facilitate income-generating opportunities for women in landless rural families to maintain their well-being and income.

People, primates and predators in the Pontal: from endangered species conservation to forest and landscape restoration in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.

This study describes the 35-year progression of activities in the Pontal do Paranapanema region of São Paulo State, Brazil. These activities began as a research project on the conservation ecology of the highly endangered Black Lion Tamarin and broadened into a landscape-scale restoration and conservation project involving the active participation of hundreds of landless families that colonized the region. Rather than viewing these colonists as a threat, a non-governmental organization arose to address their needs, providing training and support livelihoods. Local communities were engaged in conservation and restoration activities focused on studying the movement patterns of endangered species, environmental education programmes, planting native trees along riparian corridors, establishing coffee agroforestry plantings and initiating community-managed nurseries for the production of local native seedlings and non-native fruit trees. Farmers gained knowledge, income and food security, and developed a sense of ownership and shared responsibility for protecting wildlife, conserving forest fragments and restoring forests. Land sharing and restoring forest functions within an agricultural landscape matrix created new opportunities for people and endangered wildlife. We explore how key factors and partnerships critically influenced the landscape trajectory and conclude with lessons learned that may be relevant to sustainable landscape initiatives in other contexts.

Análise temporal do uso e ocupação do solo do município de Lucas do Rio Verde – MT a partir de dados de sensoriamento remoto

A ocupação do município de Lucas do Rio Verde – MT teve início na década de 70, porém, foi intensificada em 1981 com a migração de 203 famílias de sem-terra do Rio Grande do Sul, dando origem ao município. Assim, com a consolidação do agronegócio na região, a implantação de agroindústrias e a perspectiva da ampliação no cultivo de grãos, a tendência é que ocorra uma dinâmica migratória intensificando o desmatamento do bioma local para expansão das atividades agropecuárias e urbanas. Desta forma, o mapeamento do uso e ocupação do solo é de suma importância para garantir o crescimento e o planejamento do município. Logo, o objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar as modificações ocorridas entre os anos de 2007 e 2017 no uso e ocupação do solo do município de Lucas do Rio Verde – MT, através das técnicas de sensoriamento remoto e geoprocessamento. Foram utilizadas imagens do satélite TM/LANDSAT 7 para elaboração dos mapas através do software ArcGIS e o software ENVI, com auxílio do Google Earth para obter resultados próximos da realidade. Os resultados mostraram que houve aumento significativo nas áreas de cultivo agrícola e decréscimo nas áreas de floresta nativa e solo exposto após a implantação de agroindústrias na região.

Microcredit and Women's Empowerment

This paper aims to examine whether the microcredit (MC) programme, a financial mechanism to provide small amount of credit to the poor, had improved the status of poor women in the family as well as in society i.e. empowerment status of women. The research is based on primary survey of three settlements in the periphery of Bandipur Municipality of Tanahun district. For survey, a sample of 30 women were selected which represented 15 percent women beneficiaries of microcredit from the study area. The respondents were selected by using systematic random sampling. In addition to questionnaire survey, KII with six local persons and two FGDs were also conducted. The paper has used the conceptual framework of Sara Longwe (1990) to examine women empowerment. The findings are derived by comparing the position of women in various family affairs such as access to finance, control over income and expenditure, children's education and participation in social meetings etc., prior to and after participation in MC programmes. The results showed that most of the females who received microcredit reported socioeconomic empowerment through access to capital, control over resources, decision making power, etc. The findings, however, varied with regard to Dalit, Janajati and Brahmin/Chhetri women and those women in hard core poverty and landless families are still out of the reach of MC programmes. Those who are engaged in income earning activities with the MC need to be supported financially and technically to upscale their business so that the cumulative effect would also contribute to the improving various macro-economic indicators of the economy.

CHANGES IN RURAL POVERTY AFTER POLAND’S ACCESSION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION

The purpose of this paper is to assess changes in the risk of poverty in European Union Member States and the extent of poverty in rural areas and farming households after Poland’s accession to the EU. The above aspect was consid- ered against the background of urban residents and other so- cioeconomic groups of households. The study was based on EU-SILC, Eurostat and CSO data. For a comparative assess- ment across EU countries, the poverty and/or social exclusion risk index was used. For a comparative assessment of rural and urban areas, the following basic poverty thresholds (as es- timated by the Central Statistical Office), were used: extreme poverty (subsistence minimum), relative poverty and statutory poverty. Despite the high level of socioeconomic development in the European Union, the risk of poverty or social exclusion is widespread and varies strongly across countries, regions and social groups. In Poland, rural areas are more affected by poverty than urban areas, mainly because rural households have lower incomes than urban households. The risk of pov- erty in the EU has declined. After the accession to the EU, Poland has experienced a decrease in the extent of poverty. This positive change was the combined result of many factors, mainly including an increase in incomes of the farming and rural population. In Poland, income disparities between rural and urban residents and between farm and landless families have decreased. Reducing poverty and social exclusion is one of the most important goals of the EU social policy.

Current status of goat husbandry and scope for improving its productivity in Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh

A study was undertaken in selected districts of Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh states, to understand the current status of goat husbandry and identify suitable interventions to enhance productivity and income of goat keepers. Approximately 87.2% families in the study area were living in poverty and 93% goat keeping families belonged to small, marginal or landless families. While 47.5% goat keepers owned less than 5 goats across the study area, over 73% goat keepers were small flock owners in Bihar and a majority of them were dependent on extensive grazing. This was predominant in Odisha where over 99% goat keepers were dependent on extensive grazing while in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, less than 20% families were dependent on extensive grazing. PPR was the major disease, but FMD, enterotoxaemia, goat pox and HS were also reported with low intensity. Goat mortality was high at 33.5% in Bihar, 26.6% in Odisha and 20.6% in Uttar Pradesh. Goat husbandry was mainly looked after by women. Over 80% goat keepers sold their goats in their villages itself. The income from goats has been significantly low at ₹ 4,068 per family in Bihar, while it was slightly higher at ₹ 10,748 in Odisha. Assured breeding and health care services and financial support are needed to enhance the income of goat keepers. Hence, priority should be given to build their capacity for developing value chain and mobilise critical services for improving the production.

The Political Morphology of Drainage—How Gully Formation Links to State Formation in the Choke Mountains of Ethiopia

To understand why soil erosion is persistent despite three decades of massive investments in soil conservation, this paper explores how drainage and soil conservation change a hill slope in the Choke Mountains. By paying close attention to the practices that reshape the hill, we account for the active roles of people and material flows in shaping their identities, forms, and power relations. Social relations can be read in the landscape as their material outcomes are literally scoured into the hill slope. Such a material reading of Ethiopia's “developmental state” reveals three issues: First, drainage and soil conservation practices are configured by particular historical regimes of land distribution and rent appropriation. Second, the power of the Ethiopian government's model of the developmental state derives from the exploitation of this configuration by a new coalition of landholders and government officials. Government officials mobilize landholders to construct terraces in exchange for government support in conflicts over land and input distribution. When the terraces create obstructions that can trigger flooding, landowners convert them into drains and divert drainage flows to plots sharecropped by landless families. Consequently, the yearly mobilization for terrace construction does not halt soil erosion but further aggravates it. This continues because the performance of this yearly ritual affirms the authority of landholders and government agents. Third, landless families which fail to live up to the model of the “farmer interested in soil conservation” have created a competing “trader model” with its own institutions. The denial of their non-farmer identities by landholders and officials fuels generational conflicts over drainage which deepen the fractures in the hill and pose a challenge to government authority. Land degradation thus embodies both the powers and the limits of the developmental state.

The political economy of land struggle in Brazil under Workers' Party governments

AbstractThis paper analyses the agrarian policies of the governments of Presidents Lula (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016) in the light of the contradiction between the historical support for land reform and agrarian social movements by the Workers' Party (PT) on the one hand, and the PT's more recent electoral and political alliances with agribusiness on the other. After more than a decade of progressive administrations, key government programmes have only accounted for marginal gains and in some cases setbacks, symbolized by the failure to expand the expropriation of new land and settle landless families on an adequate scale. The collapse of those alliances and 2016's impeachment process of President Rousseff marks the end of that cycle, highlighting strategic and policy failures. The paper examines government actions, the historical causes and roots of land conflicts, and struggles for land and territory, as well as the difficulties of mobilization. The paper focuses upon political disputes, particularly new processes of criminalization, economic disputes, surrounding the role of agribusiness, and the challenges related to struggles for land and territorial rights in a situation ruled by a progressive party and governments.

Exploring unobserved heterogeneity in perinatal and neonatal mortality risks: The case of an Italian sharecropping community, 1900–39

Previous researchers have found that traditional determinants explain only a limited part of the variation in perinatal and infant mortality at the family level. In the study reported in this paper, we explored the factors that make the perinatal/neonatal death risk more heterogeneous across families. We estimated logistic regressions with cluster random effects at the maternal level, using data from the Italian village of Granarolo from 1900 to 1939. We estimated the effects of selected predictors on perinatal/neonatal mortality and unexplained inter-family variation. We found that non-rural skilled and lower-skilled workers experienced higher perinatal and neonatal mortality risks. Unexplained heterogeneity at the maternal level was lower for women living in sharecropper families than for those in landless labourer and non-rural worker families. Unexplained perinatal and neonatal mortality components were also due to socio-economic differences and were not necessarily related only to maternal biological features or shared genetic frailty.

Enrolment pattern and Profile of Scheduled Caste Girl Students

<div><p><em>Half of the scheduled caste (SC) girl students were in the age group of 16-18 years followed by 33.0 per cent who were above 18 years of age and the age of remaining 17.0 per cent students was between 13-15 years. Maximum number of students were Haijans (34.0%) followed by dhanak (27.0%), balmiki (13.0%), odd (11.0%) and khatik (10.0%); and majbhi sikh & bajigar caste respondents were less than five percent (3.0% and 2.0%, respectively). Majority of them were from joint families (78.0 %) with family size between 6-8 members (71.0%) and aspired to be graduate ( 52.0 %) and be in teaching profession (37%). Average number of siblings of the respondents was 2.48 wherein girls outnumbered boys. Illiteracy rate among their female sibling (6.9%) was more than two times higher than male siblings (2.8 %).<strong> </strong>Their mothers were home makers (48.0%) and fathers were labour (53.0%) in maximum number of cases. Majority (69.0%) of the SC girl students were from landless families. </em></p></div>

Social distances decrease of body height and the maturation rate of Polish girls in urban and rural population in the period 1967–2009

The aim of the study is to present social distances in biological development of youth in the period of changes in economic and political situation in Poland.
 Material and methods: 1. Nationwide study of children and adolescents aged 7.5 to 19.5 years started in 1979 and repeated every decade till 2009, 2. Survey conducted in the region of eastern Poland in 1987 and 2007, 3. Study of rural girls repeated four times between 1967 and 2001. The differences in body height and age at menarche between the inhabitants of towns and rural areas, as well as the differences between rural girls determined by diversified source of income for the family, will be presented. The age at menarche (AM) in each study was calculated using probit method. A monotonic decrease in body height differences between the inhabitants of towns, and girls living in rural areas was observed. On the basis of nationwide studies arithmetic means of the differences in terms of age were 1.9 cm in 1979 and 0.82 in 2009. At the same time, differences in the AM among girls in compared agglomerations decreased from 0.36 to 0.26, respectively. In eastern region of Poland the difference in body height between the residents of towns and villages in 1987 was 1.76 cm, and in 2007, only 0.38 cm; the difference of AM decreased from 0.41 to 0.14 years.
 The research conducted on inhabitants of rural areas has shown the earliest maturation and slightly greater body height for girls from landless families and the latest maturation and the smallest body height for the daughters of farmers. The differences in AM between the two groups decreased from 0.53 years in 1967 to 0.15 in 2001. The political transformation (1989) unequally influenced people on different levels of urbanization, different socio-professional groups and residents of various regions of the country, but was reflected in the results of anthropological research.
 The largest social advancement measured in terms of acceleration of maturation in the period covered by the research was characteristic for rural girls, especially the daughters of farmers.

Lives of Brothel Based Sex Workers in Khulna, Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a Muslim dominated country in south Asia where sex trade is mainly illegal but open secret. Only few workers have license and provide service in registered brothels. Banisanta brothel is one of the registered bawdyhouses in Khulna where 110 sex-workers were living in 2014. They entered into the profession because of a variety of socio-economic reasons. The factors of entering women into sex work in Banisanta brothel were observed by cross sectional study in July 2014. The sex-workers were mainly illiterate, aged range between 25-35 years, from rural areas, as well as landless families. About half of them entered the profession willingly because of low family income. Some other reasons identified by survey were being cheated, sold to the brothel and forced. More than half had experience with other labour market before sex work but left job because of harassment, poor income coupled with physical assault and sexual abuse, as well as poor working condition. Majority was aware of STI/STD as a result of receiving counselling, advice to use condom and other health related services from different organizations. Although drinking water was not enough and hard to collect, as well as using unhygienic latrine mainly, they were not suffering frequently from water borne diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery or jaundice.

Birth and Growth of M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai

The M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) set up as a not-for-profit scientific trust with M. S. Swaminathan as the Founder-Chairman in 1988 is dedicated to sustainable agriculture, natural resources management and rural development. Relevant science and ecotechnologies are harnessed for fostering human livelihood and conservation of nature. MSSRF has developed biovillages and modern ICT-based Village Knowledge Centres (VKCs) for skill and knowledge empowerment respectively of the rural communities. Ecotechnologies are the resultant of lending frontier technologies with traditional knowledge and ecological prudence of the indigenous communities. These have pro-nature, pro-poor and prowomen orientation. The evergreen revolution of MSSRF is designed to fight both the famines of food and rural livelihoods. As against the bureaucratic 'top-down' approach, MSSRF practices 'bottom-up' and participatory approach. The VKCs with lab to land and land to lab linkages provide solutions almost instantaneously to the problems of the small and marginal farming, fishing and landless rural families. These are briefly discussed in the paper.