Livelihood Assets and Strategies among Rural Households: Comparative Analysis of Rice and Dryland Terrace Systems in China

Abstract

The livelihood of peasant households is one of the selection criteria of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and a critical factor that affects agricultural heritage system conservation and inheritance. Taking the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces System (HHRTS) and Shexian Dryland Terraces System (SDTS) as examples, we investigated 304 households through a participatory rural appraisal method to discuss the livelihood assets and strategies of households in agricultural heritage systems. From the viewpoint of livelihood strategies, household strategies can be divided into pure agricultural, nonagricultural, and part-time agricultural strategies. The livelihood strategies of households in the HHRTS feature a higher proportion of nonagricultural, while those in the SDTS have a diverse distribution. With respect to livelihood assets, we constructed a livelihood assets accounting framework to highlight the important role of traditional culture and information technology in agricultural activities. The average livelihood assets value in the HHRTS and SDTS was 2.249 and 1.832, respectively. Then, applying the multinomial logit model, we quantitatively analyzed the relationship between livelihood assets and strategies. The results show that in both terrace systems, the understanding of traditional agricultural knowledge is important to suppress the shift of pure agricultural households to nonagricultural or part-time agricultural households. Therefore, in order to achieve dynamic conservation of terrace systems, it is necessary to effectively increase the cultural assets level of households, especially farmers' understanding of traditional agricultural knowledge.

Local Wisdom to Overcome Covid-19 Pandemic of Urug and Cipatat Kolot Societies in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia

“…Indigenous people have been able to create various sources of income to survive disasters. Livelihood strategies are divided into three, namely working purely in agriculture, parttime working in agriculture and other fields, and non-agriculture (Yang et al 2018). This strategy includes a strategy of diversification of livelihoods.…”

Natural Disasters, Public Policies, Family Characteristics, or Livelihood Assets? The Driving Factors of Farmers’ Livelihood Strategy Choices in a Nature Reserve

“…Many empirical studies show that factors influencing the choice of livelihood strategy by households can be divided into two types-exogenous factors and endogenous factors ( Figure 2). Exogenous factors include the natural environment that households are in, as well as the policies and systems that they are subject to [28][29][30][31][32], while endogenous factors include livelihood assets and family characteristics of households [12,21].…”

“…Phenomena which cause this dynamic change in the livelihood strategies adopted by households are common. At the micro level of households, it is manifested as the change from a pure agricultural household to a part-time agricultural household or non-agricultural household, or the development process from a pure agricultural household to a major agricultural household or a professional agricultural household; at the macro level, it is manifested as a higher level of diversification and non-agriculturalization of the livelihood strategies adopted by households [9,21]. Therefore, focusing on and studying the choice of livelihood strategy by households among nature reserves and its influencing factors is of important theoretical and realistic significance.…”

Classifying Livelihood Strategies Adopting the Activity Choice Approach in Rural China

“…However, most, if not all, of these studies are targeted in local areas. For example, Fang et al [14] analyzed the sensitivity of livelihood strategy to livelihood capital in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River; Liao, Barrett and Kassam [22] studied livelihood diversification in Xinjiang; Liu and Liu [23] selected suburban Shanghai as the research object; Wu, Li and Hou [17] and Ding et al [24] examined determinants and temporal and spatial changes of livelihood patterns in Inner Mongolia; Hua, Yan and Zhang [21] and Yang et al [25] focused their studies on the Tibetan Plateau; Yang et al [26] compared livelihood assets and livelihood strategies between two terrace systems located in Yunnan and Hebei Province respectively; Zhang et al [27] identified multi-level determinants of livelihood strategy choices in Henan Province; etc. Studies targeted in the vast rural areas of China are rare because it is time-, labor-and money-consuming to collect data on a large geographical scale.…”