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Selbsthilfeinitiativen im ländlichen KwaZulu sind überwiegend im Handwerk tätig. Die Autoren untersuchen das Potential dieser Gruppen bei der Schaffung von Einkommen und bei der Verfolgung weiterer Entwicklungsziele. Der Schwerpunkt liegt bei organisatorischen Fragen mit einem Vergleich der Vor- und Nachteile von außen gemanagter oder unabhängiger Gruppen. (DÜI-Wsl)

Explores how people classified as rural "women" in the Mashonaland East Province of Zimbabwe define & constitute the rules of women & women's production when engaging in peasant farming groups & produce cooperatives, drawing on Michel Foucault's (1980) notion of truth regime & interviews. It is shown that these women face a number of truth regime representatives, eg, male relatives, state bureaucrats, representatives of aid organizations, & researchers, & each of these regimes seeks to implicate them in their version of the truth. Against these regimes, women adopt a variety of strategies, eg, simple acceptance of a particular regime, & following official stipulations publicly, but doing as they please informally. These women engage in the process of taking education where they find it & using whatever power is at their disposal to set a social agenda for change into operation. In these struggles, the notion of gender is accepted as an assumed category, & questions are framed in terms of which gender gets to hold power. Thus, while it is found that these women find spaces in dominant regimes in which to narrate common & differential experiences, this process constitutes a small reshaping of power rather than the formation of an alternative truth regime. D. M. Smith

The fragmentation of the Agricultural Real Estate in Romania, which is due to the lack of vision regarding the retrocession of the land and to the ineffective measures for reparcelling farmland, manifests by the existence of a record number of about 3422 million farms in Romania, of which about 92% have a utilized agricultural area (UAA) below 5 ha. The Romanian agricultural sector possesses about 30% of the total European farms but contributes only 3% to the total EU agricultural production. The association of local agricultural producers may be an alternative to reparcelling farmland on a short-term basis in order to reduce the fragmentation degree and increase the competitiveness of the national agricultural sector. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, 25 active groups of agricultural producers are registered in the South-East Region in 2018, where these associative entities have been recorded to have a low degree of viability. The paper proposes an analysis on the farmers&rsquo ; motivation regarding the access to/exit from a form of agricultural association and the identification of some alternatives for increasing the viability of the associative forms in the agricultural sector in the South-East of Romania. In this respect, a study was carried out on a sample of 16 entities that gave up their status of producer groups in the analyzed region in 2011&ndash ; 2018. The Fuzzy Set Quantitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) Qualitative analysis method was applied, which identified the main influence factors that have led to the disappearance of this associative form. We consider this study relevant for drawing attention to the main obstacles that Romanian farmers face in joining an associative form. The study has shown that mainly the factors directly influenced by government policies have led to the withdrawal of a relatively large number of producers from producer groups in the studied region.

This study examines the economic, social and environmental effects of alternative agricultural methods, traded through fair trade mechanisms, on producers in northern Thailand. These effects are compared with those of conventional agriculture and practised on the same farm). The chosen research projects and areas in Chiang Mai province, Thailand were the government alternative agriculture project at Village Three in Pong Yang, and the non-governmental organisations alternative agriculture project at San Pay Yang and the neighbouring San Leung. The government and non-government organisations involved in the extension and marketing of alternative agriculture are outlined and associated labelling and certification issues are addressed. Economic comparisons found that alternative agriculture is a viable economic alternative to conventional agriculture and mixed agriculture when non-farm income and home consumption are included. However, the larger average size of alternative agriculture farms and the external funding of the organisations involved with alternative agriculture, must also be considered. Social comparisons indicated that alternative agriculture results in educational and health benefits when compared to conventional agriculture. Environmental comparisons showed that on average alternative agriculture has the highest level of crop and livestock integration, the lowest number of artificial agricultural inputs used, and the highest number of alternatives to artificial inputs applied.

This study examines the economic, social and environmental effects of alternative agricultural methods, traded through fair trade mechanisms, on producers in northern Thailand. These effects are compared with those of conventional agriculture and practised on the same farm). The chosen research projects and areas in Chiang Mai province, Thailand were the government alternative agriculture project at Village Three in Pong Yang, and the non-governmental organisations alternative agriculture project at San Pay Yang and the neighbouring San Leung. The government and non-government organisations involved in the extension and marketing of alternative agriculture are outlined and associated labelling and certification issues are addressed. Economic comparisons found that alternative agriculture is a viable economic alternative to conventional agriculture and mixed agriculture when non-farm income and home consumption are included. However, the larger average size of alternative agriculture farms and the external funding of the organisations involved with alternative agriculture, must also be considered. Social comparisons indicated that alternative agriculture results in educational and health benefits when compared to conventional agriculture. Environmental comparisons showed that on average alternative agriculture has the highest level of crop and livestock integration, the lowest number of artificial agricultural inputs used, and the highest number of alternatives to artificial inputs applied.