Local Peasants Research Articles

SOCIAL PORTRAIT OF THE HEADS OF PARTY AND STATE GOVERNING BODIES OF KOMI AUTONOMIC REGION - KOMI ASSR IN 1920-1930s

Based on the archival documents analysis, information about the heads of the highest region party-state bodies in the 1920-1930s was researched. To compile a social portrait, questionnaires and registration lists of delegates of Komi regional party conferences, in which political elite was involved, were used. These sources contain personal data on age, nationality, party experience, social status and education of Komi Regional Committee secretaries of the RCP(b)-AUCP(b) and of regional executive committee chairmen, which are accessible for the study. Some common and distinctive features in the senior management social portraits were revealed. Chairmen of the regional executive committee were indigenous nationality representatives, who mostly had a secondary education, but more than half of the regional committee secretaries didn’t have it and were Russian. Despite the fact that the regional party organization was dominated by local peasants, the party and state bodies’ leaders by their social status mainly related to workers and employees, as prescribed by the party directives. Party experience was considered when appointing to a senior position, which was more than ten years for region managers, and complied with the requirements. The absolute majority became communists in the period 1917-1920 at the age of about 24-25 years old, but began to head regional party-state bodies in middle age, having by this time party, life, professional experience.

Воспитание сельских учителей в Виленском учебном округе в 1860–1870-х годах

One of the results of the educational reform of the 1860s was the formation of the regular personnel of village teachers. In Vilna educational district the goal was not to invite teachers from central Russia, but to train them on the spot by establishing special seminaries. Trained teachers were supposed to perform the role of «cultural brokers» – the intermediaries between local peasants and the outside world, between the culture of Russian intelligentsia and the culture of the Belarusian people. The article examines how officials and teachers of Vilna educational district saw the role of rural teachers as «cultural brokers» in the context of the linguistic and cultural diversity of the North-Western Provinces. According to them, the graduates of the pedagogical seminaries had to remain within the peasant estate and to keep in touch with their folk «roots». The special «mission» of the village teachers was in promoting the ideas of «Russian elements» and historical proximity to Russia among Belarusian peasants.

Before newspapers and the telegraph: information distribution in Livland more than two hundred years ago

This paper concerns information dissemination in the Livland province of the Russian Empire at the turn of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, when its rulers sent their orders to the provincial capital, Riga, by horse post. In Riga they were translated into German, and the ancient network of information dissemination used by the Lutheran Church was engaged. The orders of both the Empire and provincial rulers were delivered to Lutheran pastors, who announced this information to their parishes from the pulpit, speaking in Latvian or Estonian so as to be understood by local peasants (serfs), and allowed the texts to circulate around the manors of the parish. The infrastructure of the information network, its maintenance and threats, the speed of information distribution, information safety and security, and the fight against the delivery of false information are all topics of consideration. It is then concluded that information technology has changed drastically throughout time, but the problems it confronts remain quite similar.

Reducing poverty through the shared economy: creating inclusive entrepreneurship around institutional voids in China

Poverty reduction has increasingly become a core subject for researchers across the social sciences from economics to finance, management, and entrepreneurship. This study goes beyond existing management and entrepreneurship literature that has devoted significant efforts to exploring market-based ways for economic development, but has neglected poor people in rural areas excluded from participating in and accessing markets. In this study, the sharing economy is proposed as an effective way to resolve and reduce the poverty problem. We show how to overcome institutional voids by facilitating two fundamental mechanisms (i.e., building new markets, cultivating new participants) that bring together entrepreneurship, local peasants, and governments in building inclusive markets. We reveal omitted elements, such as geographic and temporal differences in market development across regions and times, as the key source of institutional voids in emerging markets. The analyses are conducted using data from multiple sources ranging from participant observation, retrieval of archival documents, and in-depth interviews covering 335 counties of 16,500 villages involved with Taobao in 2007–2017 in China. The findings shed insight on the studies on institutional voids, entrepreneurship, and the sharing economy.

KOMUNIKASI GERAKAN SOSIAL MELALUI PENYADARAN PETANI DALAM KONFLIK AGRARIA

Indonesia mempunyai sejarah panjang terkait konflik agraria yang menyertakan petani di dalamnya. Salah satunya seperti yang terjadi di Caringin, Sukabumi dimana petani berhadapan dengan perusahaan dalam konflik agraria. Petani menganggap ada dominasi ketidakadilan karena tanah yang mereka garap ternyata surat hak gunanya adalah atas nama perusahaan. Kondisi ini memunculkan gerakan sosial perlawanan dari petani yang dalam prosesnya banyak dipengaruhi oleh peran intelektual organik yang terdiri dari Organisasi non Pemerintah serta mahasiswa yang dibantu oleh tokoh tani lokal. Pengaruh tersebut salah satunya berupa penyadaran kepada petani. Penelitian ini bertujuan menganalisis strategi para aktor dalam proses penyadaran petani yang terbagi dalam kesadaran magis, naif dan kritis melalui komunikasi dialogis. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan studi kasus konflik agraria yang terjadi di Caringin Sukabumi antara petani sebagai penggarap lahan dan PT. SNN sebagai pemegang hak guna bangunan (HGB) atas lahan tersebut. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan strategi komunikasi dialogis membawa perubahan kesadaran petani menjadi lebih kritis walaupun kesadaran naif masih melekat sehingga memunculkan jenis kesadaran baru berupa kesadaran naif kritis.

Imagining a Better Future: Anti-colonial Protest and Social Debates in Santo Antão, Cabo Verde, 1945–1975

AbstractHow did the populations of a remote Cape Verdean island—Santo Antão—construct and formulate their goals of emancipation and social reform in the late colonial period? This article revisits the experiences of anti-colonial mobilisation in the island in the late 1960s, bringing them together with other narratives of social needs formulated by Santo Antão's populations. Those include the fears of being recruited for plantation labour in São Tomé e Príncipe, the objective of obtaining the improvement of social infrastructure, and the local struggles for water that became again more acute between 1945 and independence. The article shows that local experiences of Cape Verdean populations, of both the islands’ elite and local peasants, sharecroppers and fishermen, were much more complex than a simple, straightforward narrative of nationalist sympathies and activity. The internal conflicts outlined here also point to the numerous struggles that would shake Santo Antão's society after independence.

Fuzzy Cognitive Map Clustering to Assess Local Knowledge of Ecosystem Conservation in Ecuador

Smallholder farmers in developing countries such as Ecuador have contributed widely to ecosystem conservation. Although they have been affected by the consequences of climate change, the synergy of Pachamama care and technical knowledge has become key to sustaining dynamics in their local territories. This paper presents a combined methodology approach based on fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) to capture perceptions of ecosystem conservation. The purpose was to assess the impact of the “Biocorridors for Living Well” program on the application of local knowledge by smallholder farmers. The findings showed that program managers had a limited narrow focus based on the general program ideology, whereas peasants’ perceptions revealed a more complex map, highlighting the importance of building capacities beyond sustainable agricultural techniques. Also, both groups were aware of the contribution of ecosystem conservation to rural development. However, it is essential to stress that the contribution of smallholder farmers to conservation was critical, and most of the time, their efforts were not valued. Therefore, to scale up program outcomes, national and international institutions require an understanding of local peasants’ perceptions to guarantee action sustainability and to avoid repetitive actions in their local territories.

The state-led tourism development in Beijing's ecologically fragile periphery: Peasants' response and challenges

A top-down rural sustainable strategy via rural tourism has been recently advocated as a feasible and appropriate option to engage Chinese peasants of scenic mountainous areas to revitalize the local economy. The northern and western hilly Beijing being protected from urban expansion has turned out to be an ideal choice for its proximity to a potentially large middle-class clientele. We explore theoretically and empirically the contradictory unity between local peasants’ entrepreneurial undertakings (decentralized competition) and top-down tourism development plan (monopolistic centralization) in a mixed-governing “common-pool resource” (CPR) situation in local rural tourism in China. This paper contributes towards a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of local land use regulations on rural tourism development and the conflict-resolution in benefit sharing negotiations between local communities with public authorities and mega tourism project developers in the land expropriation and heritage conservation process. Supported by field surveys, two cases of tourism business are analyzed using the argument on CPRs and multilateral monopoly relating to access and rights of use of collectively owned rural land, and how this monopolistic power has been established in rural tourism development. Our study highlights the importance of the village autonomy in deploying their contestation and bargaining power in safeguarding their land rights and sustaining a vast ecological system and rural tourism commons, while accepting tourism as their newly established livelihood.

DIGTYARI WEAVING PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL IN 1926-1929

For the first time, the activity of the weaving vocational school in the village Digtyari (modern Chernihiv region) is analyzed. It was the leading educational institution of the middle level of vocational education of the Ukrainian SSR in the second half of the 1920s, in which the creators of traditional textiles studied. The students learned the skills of making carpets, embroidered shirts, and kerchiefs. On the basis of archival sources, the histories, educational process, composition of the teaching and student groups of the school during 1926-1929 are covered. Established in the fall of 1926, the institution was to train qualified master practitioners for the factory and handicraft arts industry, who had formed an artistic taste. The teaching staff initially consisted of local general education teachers and visiting instructors and teachers of special subjects (O. Reisfeld and M. Dyachenko). The institution was headed by uneducated communists Yu. Kozelev and S. Lutayenko. The students of the first set were mostly non-locals, orphans. But the second set already consisted mostly of children of local peasants and artisans. The school had a significant material base, which remained from the textile educational institutions that operated in Digtyary during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The main rooms were located on the right-wing of the main building of the palace complex of the Galagan estate. As a result of the study of the materials of the minutes of the meetings of the school council, the conflict situations that constantly arose between the managers and their supporters and visiting specialists and led to the departure of the latter from Digtyary were analyzed. The initial stage of the existence of the Digtyari weaving professional school, problems in relations between staff, and the originality of the contingent of the first set of students influenced the quality of their training. As it is clear from the available sources, during the first and the beginning of the second school year students worked both theoretically and practically, but due to lack of raw materials they could not produce a significant amount of full-fledged products. The school’s workshop worked on “factory” and, in part, “peasant” raw materials. At the end of the second year of study, students were already making work suitable for sale. The school operated in two directions. The visiting instructor, an experienced artist M. Dyachenko brought a new vision of teaching graphic literacy into the educational process. Weaving and embroidery instructors who either graduated from the textile schools previously existing in Digtyary (A. Reisfeld, V. Nikolskaya) or worked there for a long time (G. Tsybuleva) broadcast local traditions. During the years under study, about 100 students studying at the institution, and one graduation took place. Troubles in the personal relationship between teachers and school management and insufficient funding have affected the quality of education. But even in such conditions, students not only mastered special and general education subjects but also participated in exhibitions, made marketable products, engaged in research work. Curricula developed by M. Dyachenko and O. Reisfeld became a model for other craft educational institutions. And the textbook was written by O. Reisfeld - the first Ukrainian-language textbook on the technology of folk weaving. Keywords: Digtyari weaving professional school, Mykhaylo Dyachenko, Pryluky region.

TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTIONS TOWARDS THE ANDEAN CONDOR (Vultur gryphus LINNAEUS, 1758) IN THE CENTRAL ANDES OF COLOMBIA

Despite its cultural importance as a key component of the Andean landscape, some perceptions of rural inhabitants towards the Andean condor ( Vultur gryphus Linnaeus, 1758) persist, as they relate to the possible predation of domestic animals such as sheep and cattle. These perceptions are compounded by only a basic knowledge of the natural history of the species and have resulted in the historical persecution of the condors by the local peasant communities. We studied the variation of traditional knowledge about the Andean condor diet; comparing responses of adult women and adult men and adults and young people. We described the perceptions of rural farmers towards V. gryphus in Caldas and Tolima, Central Andes of Colombia. Adult men demonstrated a more detailed knowledge of the types of food of V. gryphus compared to adult women; but both adult men and women responded more accurately than both sexes of young people. Overall, the perceptions towards the condors were mostly positive. It is likely that the greater knowledge of adult men corresponds to the time they spend outdoors tending their crops and animals, while the younger generation receive their information through popular media, such as television, magazines and books, as well as educational materials. It is important to incorporate the gender perspective into conservation initiatives and educational programs to effectively protect the remaining endangered populations of condors in Colombia.

Desarrollo hidroeléctrico y reconfiguraciones territoriales históricas en la cuenca del rímac, en Lima, Perú

The paper analyses how hydropower development in the Rimac watershed in the region of Lima, Peru, has reconfigured hydrosocial relations between the different water users since the 19th century. It shows how the hydropower development was supported and sustained first, by discourses about modernity, civilization and the need to domesticate nature and people through engineering; and second, by an evolving alliance of convenience between the hydropower company and Lima City’s drinking water company. Yet, this development has not straight forwardly let to rural communities being deprived of water, but rather to new dependency and power connections that may even provide additional water to local peasants. Recently, the revival of hydropower development in the watershed as well as worries about the adverse effects of climate change stir concerns of rural communities about the distribution of benefits and their position within the ecological and socio-political networks of the Rimac territories.

Väärikas teos Eesti pulmatraditsioonidest võõramaalaste pilgu läbi / A good work on the wedding customs of Estonians as seen through the eyes of foreigners

In 2018 a remarkable book compiled by Ants Hein was published: „Vanaaja pulm. Valitud tekste ja pilte 16. sajandi keskpaigast 19. aastasaja viimase veerandini“ (Weddings of the Bygone Days. Selected Texts and Pictures from the Middle of the 16th Century to the Last Quarter of the 19th Century).
 Hein has assembled a decent collection of sources about the wedding customs of the local peasants, produced by foreigners travelling through and residing in the Estonian and Livonian provinces. The authors of the selected texts vary from visitors passing through to priests and private teachers who lived here for decades. The texts are presented in a chronological sequence, with thematic insights into contextualising topics, such as clerical advice to newly-weds from the 17th century, passages on festive foods, music and dances, an essay on sexual relations before marriage, and so on. The information about Estonian wedding customs is presented systematically and the wider social context is taken into account. Every excerpt is accompanied by a compiler’s comment, discussing the writer’s period and reason for visiting Estonia. Altogether approximately 120 diverse sources have been used in the collection.
 The outsider’s perspective is evident in the descriptions. Sources in the Estonian language, mostly the results of the great initiative of oral folklore collecting called for by Jakob Hurt, generally cover the period from the mid-19th century, but foreign written sources enable us to extend our ‘national memory’ to more distant periods of time and to a wider array of viewpoints and languages. It is an acknowledged ethnographic truth that in order to notice the most regular everyday details in a culture, one should not be brought up in that culture.
 The book is richly illustrated and the pictures form perhaps the most important part of it for a native craft researcher. Although some of the captions may be a bit far-fetched, the book as a whole is a valuable, rich and a praiseworthy contribution to the information that is available on the topic of Estonian weddings. Material has been gathered from the archives of Germany, Russia and Latvia; many documents have been translated into Estonian from German, which used to be widely spoken here, but has lost its importance among present-day Estonians. It is a pleasure and a privilege that such a book has been prepared for us.

Лес и спички

Лес и спички

Assessing farmers' perspectives on climate change for effective farm-level adaptation measures in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Agriculture is considered as the backbone of the economy of Pakistan. However, current changes in climate have been adversely affecting agricultural productivity. In this paper, perceived impacts of climate change on agriculture and adaptation towards it have been studied in Charsadda district (lowlands) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan through extensive field surveys, involving 116 farm households. Results have revealed that climate change factors including fluctuating temperature, evidence of yearly long droughts, and a steady shift in rainfall patterns have pressured the agriculture sector and livelihoods of the local peasants. The staggering floods of 2010 and 2011 in Pakistan have evidenced severe climatic changes in Pakistan. These countrywide floods have washed fertile soil in the study area that has directly contributed to losses in agricultural yield and increased vector-borne diseases in crops. The local farmers have commonly deployed adaptive measure such as crops diversification, changing fertilizer, and planting shaded trees to minimize the impacts of changes in climate. However, these adjustments measures are perceived as not appropriate for improving farm yield. Therefore, the study suggests that improved understanding of the climate change impacts and knowledge on adapting adequately will lead to no-regret adaptation. It will also help protecting farmer's lives and livelihoods and will boost their resilience towards changing climatic conditions. Graphical abstract .

JUST LIKE IN COLONIAL TIMES? ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE AND LOCAL REFLECTIONS ON ‘GRASSROOTS NEOCOLONIALISM’ IN AUTONOMOUS AND POSTCOLONIAL DAHOMEY, 1958–65

AbstractIn Dahomey (Benin) during the period of autonomy and the first years of independence, the reference to a colonial past was an important instrument and point of debate. Members of a new group of politicians used it to accuse trade union leaders to make unrealistic claims; local peasants mobilized it as their point of reference against infrastructure projects; officials discussed it to make sense of tax refusals, while locals invoked older forms of tax resistance they had practiced under colonial rule. This article follows the different relationships with the colonial past, through the regions of Abomey and Porto-Novo, and shows how these experiences were viewed by local residents and by nationalist leaders, such as Justin Ahomadegbé. It also serves as an example and an injunction to make use of the administrative postcolonial archive.

Correction of the object of social experiments D. A. Stolypin

The publication deals with the problem of correction of an object that occurred during the social experiment carried out by one of the first Russian sociologists, a follower of Auguste Comte, Dmitry Arkadievich Stolypin (1818 – 1893). In accordance with the level of development of sociological science of the last quarter of the XIX century the definition of the concept of «social experiment» was formulated. The reasons for the social experiment, conducted by D.A. Stolypin during 1874 – 1893 in Mordvinovka Village of Berdyansk District of Taurida Governorate (present Mordvinovka Village in Melitopol District of Zaporozhye Region) were identified. Among them, as the main ones, are indicated the crisis of landlord economy and peasant land shortage, in the conditions of the development of agrarian capitalism in the south of Ukraine. It is proved that the goal of the social experiment completely coincided with the direction of the search for social support in the village by the imperial top. The analysis of historical sources allowed the authors to establish that its essence was to create rental farms on landowner lands increasing the profitability of the latter and to popularize among the local peasantry the leading forms of intensive local economic management. Research revealed that in accordance with the sociological concept of D.A. Stolypin local peasants were the object of the experiment, who were asked to break economic ties with the rural community and get the farm in the medium-term lease. The formulation of criteria for comparative analysis made it possible to distinguish three stages in the course of the experiment – 1874-1877 years, 1878-1888 years, 1889-1893 years. The main argument in favor of such approach was not the fact of introducing changes in lease agreements with farmers as much as the involvement of peasants from different social strata in the experiment. Authors found that at the first stage farmers were the representatives of the kulak and prosperous strata of the peasantry, at the second – among the wealthy tenants there were peasants of medium welfare, and at the third – the wealthy and middle peasants were equally divided. The intermediate results of the social experiments by D.A. Stolypin, which were researched in terms of improvements of material facilities, increasing the area of cultivated land and monetary incomes, including farmers in the channels of upward vertical social mobility and changing their social status. At the same time, the article emphasizes that scientific heritage of O. Comte, A. Smith, G. Spencer, as well as the foreign experience of agrarian transformations and knowledge of local economic traditions which were used by sociologist-amateur betrayed the ideas of the formed farm settlement. Social experiment D.A. Stolypin is described in the publication as the longest in the history of national sociology.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE OIL INDUSTRY FOR THE POPULATION OF BORISLAV IN THE CONTEXT OF STEFAN KOVALIV՚S CREATIVE HERITAGE

On the basis of Stefan Kovaliv՚s creative heritage, the article describes the key problems and consequences for the local population during the development of the oil industry in Boryslav during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.It was found that S. Kovaliv՚s active interest in the history of his native land, namely, Boryslav and his suburbs began, apparently, from the time when on January 27, 1879 Drohobych District School Council appointed him as the temporary head of a four-year Boryslav school. It was at that time that Borislav turned into a large oil industrial centre, which gave its owners millions of revenues. However, the process had a number of disadvantages: the massive plundering of peasant farms, which led to the complete impoverishment of the local population. The article emphasizes that while working in Borislav S. Kovaliv had the opportunity to be a direct witness to those negative phenomena that were the result of the so-called oil boom in Borislav: the transformation of local peasants into poor rabbit workers, the loss of their elementary resources or material means of livelihood, mass drunkenness, begging, emigration, and the most painful problem – the mass of fatalities due to the neglect of elementary safety rules at oil factories.In the course of the study we found that S. Kovaliv paid a lot of attention to highlighting the most pressing and painful problems during the development of the oil and ozokerite industries in Boryslav. It is also emphasized that S. Kovaliv՚s creative heritage of Borislav՚s oil industry is rich, first of all his personal observations and vivid descriptions. The approach, in turn, makes it possible to truly ascertain the problems of living conditions and life of the population, which was burdensome during the upsurge of the oil boom in Boryslav during the lifetime and creative activity of the Borislav writer.The scenes outlined in the article are just an attempt to show those questions that were the subject of close attention of the Boryslav writer during the last quarter of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to which he drew attention and singled out in his writings.

TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTIONS TOWARDS THE ANDEAN CONDOR (Vultur gryphus LINNAEUS, 1758) IN THE CENTRAL ANDES OF COLOMBIA

Despite its cultural importance as a key component of the Andean landscape, some perceptions of rural inhabitants towards the Andean condor ( Vultur gryphus Linnaeus, 1758) persist, as they relate to the possible predation of domestic animals such as sheep and cattle. These perceptions are compounded by only a basic knowledge of the natural history of the species and have resulted in the historical persecution of the condors by the local peasant communities. We studied the variation of traditional knowledge about the Andean condor diet; comparing responses of adult women and adult men and adults and young people. We described the perceptions of rural farmers towards V. gryphus in Caldas and Tolima, Central Andes of Colombia. Adult men demonstrated a more detailed knowledge of the types of food of V. gryphus compared to adult women; but both adult men and women responded more accurately than both sexes of young people. Overall, the perceptions towards the condors were mostly positive. It is likely that the greater knowledge of adult men corresponds to the time they spend outdoors tending their crops and animals, while the younger generation receive their information through popular media, such as television, magazines and books, as well as educational materials. It is important to incorporate the gender perspective into conservation initiatives and educational programs to effectively protect the remaining endangered populations of condors in Colombia.

Rural Tourism in Globalizing Beijing: Reproduction of the Mountainous Suburbs into a New Space of Leisure Consumption

Rural tourism is increasingly becoming an important complementary service sector of major Chinese cities operating at their immediate adjacent suburban or rural zones. By promoting a green economy, such zones of rural–urban interface/interactions attract more and more public investments, business investors, and leisure seekers. Taking the Yanqi Nightless Valley of Huairou District, and the Ganyugou Village and Xibailianyu Village of Miyun District of Beijing as case studies, this paper investigates the private entrepreneurship, the local peasants’ business drive, and the role of the local governments in integrating the mountainous “backwater” into Beijing’s globalizing economy. Their joint efforts in reconstructing and branding rural tourism resorts, and the ways in which the rural socioeconomic setting was transformed into a post-productive, consumption-dominated, and creative-cum-quality service center is analyzed. The paper analyzes the success and failure of Beijing’s rural tourism business operations, and links their marketing with the capital city’s ambition to brand itself into a globalizing city. Results show that success is highly dependent on physical connectivity. Those seated at the “semi-periphery” with highways or other access corridors are capable of attracting large city clientele. Remote sites, on the contrary, can hardly benefit from the trickle-down process. Hence, a more integrative framework in favor of a more balanced development is finally addressed.

Integrated Emergy and Economic Evaluation of Huzhou Mulberry-Dyke and Fish-Pond Systems

The Huzhou mulberry-dyke and fish-pond system (HMFS) is a compound structure of agriculture with interaction among several subsystems, and it is an effective example of a circular economy by exogenous input and waste reduction to maintain a harmonious relationship between humans and nature. As increases in rural urbanization and transition of peasants occur, the traditional systems remain in a constant state of change, along with different kinds of adaptation models. In this study, two main existing models are examined by field investigation and extensive literature analysis. Emergy theory and methods are adopted to make a further quantitative analysis from emergy structure and indices synthetically and systemically. In this process, the models of HMFS are split into several subsystems, including mulberry dyke, fish pond, rape dyke, and silkworm, in terms of a modularization approach. The proportion of combinations among different subsystems is calculated by the average production level of local peasants. The empirical results of emergy analysis indicate that the two existent patterns of HMFS are themselves superior in terms of environmental capacity and commercial efficiency. The mulberry–silkworm–fish model possesses more sustainable characteristics than the rape–fish model by the mass flow and energy flux. In addition, the rape–fish model may obtain considerably better economic returns by more inorganic resources, and thus achieve higher economic benefits. Therefore, the rape–fish model may be an evolutionary model to make directions for further research and protection, while other adaptive units are introduced to form multiple systems.