Do gender and age influence agroforestry farmers' knowledge of tree species uses in an area of the Atlantic Forest, Brazil?

Abstract

Th is study aimed to explore the extent of knowledge of tree species and their uses by agroforestry farmers in the Vale do Ribeira, Brazil, to verify whether gender and age are related to species knowledge in diff erent use categories. Th e study was conducted using semi-structured interviews, guided tours, direct observation and collection and identifi cation of botanical material. Analyses were based on the frequency with which plants were mentioned. Forty farmers (17 women and 23 men aged 18 to 78 years) were interviewed. Th ere were signifi cant diff erences in the species richness cited exclusively by each gender; the number of species mentioned by men (36 sp.) was higher than by women (11 sp.). Men exhibited a greater knowledge of such categories as construction, organic matter, fuel, animal feed, technology and beekeeping, whereas there were no signifi cant diff erences for food, medical and other categories. Age was also a distinguishing factor; younger people mentioned the lowest number of species (74 sp.) compared to adults (163 sp.) and the elderly (150 sp.). Th e greater number of species mentioned exclusively by men may indicate the existence of specialized knowledge, whereas environmental constraints and the availability of plant resources may limit the knowledge of young people.

Gender and livestock feed research in developing countries: A review

“…(2006) reported that gender did not affect knowledge of plants browsed or grazed by animals, whereas Lunelli et al. (2016) and Balehegn et al. (2015) reported that it did.…”

What interferes with conducting free lists? A comparative ethnobotanical experiment

“…Items' order in lists, together with the number of times the item is cited, serves to calculate the Salience Index [9,10] that determines the cultural relevance of a term or element. However, some studies use the free list without taking the Salience Index into account in their analyses and only draw items based on the cross-list frequency of the item's mentions [11][12][13][14].…”

The Inextricable Link Between Food and Linguistic Diversity: Wild Food Plants among Diverse Minorities in Northeast Georgia, Caucasus

“…In the past decade, ethnobiology has sparked growing interest in understanding the role of diverse social, economic, and political drivers affecting local plant knowledge systems, among them gender (Ayantunde et al 2008;de Albuquerque et al 2011;Karambiri et al 2017;Luzuriaga-Quichimbo et al 2019;Montoya et al 2012), age (Bortolotto et al 2015;Brandt et al 2013;Lunelli et al 2016), socio-economic conditions (de Medeiros et al 2012;Stryamets et al 2015), religion (Bellia and Pieroni 2015;Pieroni et al 2015), and geopolitical changes (Pieroni et al 2017a;Sõukand and Pieroni 2016).…”