Small-scale, artisanal livestock production is framed as ''other'' by conventional livestock producers, and rural communities. This alterity, although not without cost, allows women to be involved as active entrepreneurs and managers in artisanal livestock production and also allows farmers to pursue management strategies with the explicit purpose of enhancing animal welfare. The case study presented here, an artisanal goat dairy farm managed by three women, demonstrates that by embracing feminine care identities, these women carve a space for themselves within livestock production in which they can pursue their own economic and affective goals. Analysis of ethnographic data also demonstrates that farmers' decisionmaking regarding animal production is based on both affective and instrumental concerns. If we are to understand and operationalize the affective component of farmer decision making based on the livestock-farmer relationship, we must begin to consider to what extent livestock themselves are social actors.
Prevailing agricultural systems dominated by annual crop monocultures, and the landscapes that contain them, lack resilience and multifunctionality. They are vulnerable to extreme weather events, contribute to degradation of soil, water, and air quality, reduce biodiversity, and negatively impact human health, social engagement, and equity. To achieve greater resilience, stability, and multiple ecosystem services therein, and to improve socioeconomic outcomes, we propose a practical framework to gain multifunctionality at multiple scales. This framework includes forages within agroecosystems that have the essential structural features of diversity, perenniality, and circularity. These three structural features are associated with increased resilience, stability, and provision of several ecosystem services, which in turn improve human health and socioeconomic outcomes. This framework improves understanding of, and access to, tools and materials for promoting the adoption of diverse circular agroecosystems with perennial forages. Application of this framework can result in land transformations that solve sustainability challenges in agriculture if policy, economic, and social barriers can be overcome by a transdisciplinary process of equitable knowledge production.
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