Survival of the Fittest, Is land tenure the litmus? Contending with power dynamics in Land Tenure in Diversifying Farming Systems for Adaptive Capacity.

19Jan 2022 by

Research proposal in APA 7th edition.  This research should be tailored to the Jamaica context, specifically rural development, and agriculture. I have put the background to the topic and the “Research” below, please read for guidance and specification of the research. Please bid only if you are competent in the area- I am willing to guide the writer along the development of the paper to ensure it is within expectation. The research proposal should include:
Working Title AbstractIntroduction/Background Significance of research Literature Review Research Objectives Research Questions Methodology Anticipated Conclusion References

About this Research Topic
Climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustaining equitableresource production for a growing population present an anthropocene triplechallenge for humanity. Climate change impacts agriculture through morefrequent heat waves, droughts, and other extreme weather events, shiftingprecipitation patterns, the spread of new diseases and pests, and alteredgrowing seasons. Agriculturalists also face a global trend toward food systemsimplification through market concentration, land consolidation, and crophomogenization, which together impair farm-level flexibility and innovation,and expose them to transnational market shocks and stressors. The increasinglyrapid loss of biodiversity, including crop genetic diversity, adds to thesechallenges by constraining farmers ability to maintain critical ecosystemfunctions in the face of climate change.
These interrelated challenges produce farm-level shocks and stressors, to whichagriculturalists must be able to effectively respond and adapt in order topreserve livelihoods, communities, and food systems. A crucial question in thecontext of the triple challenge, therefore, is how the social and ecological structure of farmingsystems impact adaptive capacity.
Adaptive capacity generally describes the capacity of a system to respond tochanges, especially climate change. For the purposes of this Research Topic, wedefine agricultural adaptive capacity as the extent to which agriculturalsystems can respond to the triple challenge in ways that, at a minimum,preserve core social-ecological functions, and which ideally open pathwaystowards enhanced and resilient functioning. An increase in adaptive capacityreduces vulnerability and increases resilience to stressors and shocks.Diversity is an important aspect of both proactive and reactive responses tochange, by spreading risks and enhancing flexibility. An important area of inquiry is how social,ecological, cultural, economic, and policy factors, and their multi-level andmultiscalar interactions, underlie the adaptive capacity of farming systems.Specifically, how could changes in farming systems increase adaptive capacityin ways that simultaneously promote multiple dimensions of sustainability?Industrial agriculture may be able to incrementally and temporarily increaseadaptive capacity to certain stresses produced by the triple challenge, suchas, by developing more stress tolerant genotypes or by promoting commodity cropinsurance policies. However, given that industrial agriculture has been a majorcontributor to intensifying the triple challenge in the first place, measuresthat move towards further simplification will likely exacerbate stressors andundermine future agro-ecosystem adaptive capacity while failing tofundamentally improve sustainability.
Building on the paradigm of agroecology, the diversified farming systems (DFS)lens emphasizes functional relationships between biodiversity and ecosystemservice provisioning. DFS recognizes a spectrum of socio-ecological practicesthat farmers can flexibly employ in different combinations to increase multipleecosystem services that provide critical inputs to agriculture. These practicescan help simplified agricultural systems transition toward becomingagroecological systems. Moreover, DFS tend toward participatory innovation incollaboration with traditional centers of agricultural research and development(e.g. universities), as well as localized control over food systems that mayrebuild regional resilience or resistance to global simplification. But to whatextent, and how, can DFS increase the adaptive capacity of agrifood systems?While the flexibility of DFS may facilitate local adaptation to a variety ofchanging conditions, the resulting heterogeneity of management practicescomplicates efforts to study or predict how these systems respond to the triplechallenge.
The research should address these topics (examples below) from aninterdisciplinary or transdisciplinary perspective, which may include empiricalfield studies, conceptual advances, place-specific case studies, comparisonsacross cases (e.g. various regions), and meta-analyses. Specific interest is inthe research addressing the adaptive capacity and DFS from diverse geographicperspectives and that compares adaptive capacity across a spectrum ofdiversified and simplified farming systems.
Examples of work that could feature in this Research Topic include howdiversifying farming systems impacts responses to different types of stressorsin any agricultural system (including non-food systems, e.g. forestry); howadaptive capacity emerges, develops, and is shared; and other topics,
Examples of types of stressors:-Drought and heat waves– Novel pests, diseases, or invasive species– Natural disasters– Farming marginal lands– Farm labor and migration– Farmland financialization– Mechanization and automation– Market volatility– Supply chain management and vertical integration
How adaptive capacity emerges:– Transitions in intensive agricultural landscapes– Supporting and learning from indigenous practices– Building soil health– Open-source or participatory breeding– Novel institutions– Multi-level coordination– Climate change mitigation promoting climate change adaptation
Evaluating outcomes of adaptation:– Food security– Nutrition– Rural livelihoods– Climate change readiness/preparedness– Food sovereignty– Biodiversity preservation

The Research
This research aims to develop how Diversified FarmingSystems (DFS) may contribute to adaptive capacity in order to confer resilienceto agricultural systems. In this perspective research, it is argued that aframework for DFS and adaptive capacity must adequately contend with the roleof farmland tenure on the shape of food systems to be both internally coherentand socially redistributive. Yet, both DFS and adaptive capacity scholarshipdeemphasize or mischaracterize the role of farmland tenure in favor ofecosystem dynamics. This research paper, should bring together lessons from theagrarian change literature and established critiques of resilience thinking todemonstrate core problems with a framework aimed at linking DFS to adaptivecapacity without adequately addressing the role of farmland tenure. Namely,applying resilience thinking as a framework to understand food systems changeprioritizes concern over final states or processes of farming systems and mayignore who has the power to adapt or who derives benefits from adaptation. Thecritiques of resilience thinking inform that the result of this apoliticalelision is (1) entrenchment of neoliberal logics that place responsibility tocultivate adaptation on individual farmers and (2) provisioning of legitimacyfor land tenure systems that can most readily adopt DFS, without understandinghow well these systems distribute public benefits. Resilience reformers callfor ways to include more power aware analysis when applying resilience thinkingto complex socio-technical systems. The research is to suggest that centeringthe role of land tenure into the frameworks of DFS and adaptive capacityprovides a lens to observe the power relations that mediate any benefits ofagricultural diversification. Integrating analysis of the social and legalstructures of the food system into the DFS for adaptive capacity formulation isa crucial step to transforming resilience thinking from an apolitical tool totransformative and power-aware applied science.
 
 
 
Keywords: Adaptivecapacity, Diversified farming systems, Biodiversity loss, Livelihoods, Climatechange, Ecosystem services, Food system simplification, Anthropocene