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\"Saka's work discusses the peasants' agrarian revolution in the Huasteca Potosina between 1879 and 1884, and the national and cultural implications it had for Mexico\"-- Provided by publisher.

Rural social movements have in recent years adopted agroecology and diversified farming systems as part of their discourse and practice. Here, we situate this phenomenon in the evolving context of rural spaces that are increasingly disputed between agribusiness, together with other corporate land-grabbers, and peasants and their organizations and movements. We use the theoretical frameworks of disputed material and immaterial territories and of re-peasantization to explain the increased emphasis on agroecology by movements in this context. We provide examples from the farmer-to-farmer movement to show the advantages that social movements bring to the table in taking agroecology to scale and discuss the growing agroecology networking process in the transnational peasant and family farmer movementLa Vía Campesina.

James Scott's \"The Moral Economy of the Peasant\" (1976) appeared at a time when \"peasant studies\" had begun to occupy an important place in the social sciences. The book's focus on Vietnam, as well as its novel argument about the causes of rural rebellion, attracted widespread attention and unleashed acerbic debates about peasants' \"rationality\" and the applicability of concepts from neoclassical economics to smallholding agriculturalists. In this article, I analyze E. P. Thompson's notion of \"moral economy\" and Scott's use of it to develop an experiential theory of exploitation. I then discuss other influences on Scott, including Karl Polanyi, A. V. Chayanov, and the Annales historians. \"Moral economy\" and \"subsistence crisis\" are concepts that Scott elaborated mainly in relation to village or national politics. In the final section of the article, I outline changes affecting peasantries in the globalization era and the continuing relevance of moral economic discourses in agriculturalists' transnational campaigns against the WTO.

The following article explores the point of view of members of La Confederation Paysanne in France around the concept of One Health. When interviewed on One Health, a notion that is allegedly rather new to them, the French peasants involved in the consultation have expressed some degree of scepticism, particularly because One Health is becoming more and more a mainstream topic in international fora. The farmers’ main fear is that One Health may turn out to be imposed as a new top–down, ‘one size-fits all’ approach. Within the peasant community, the balance between human, animal and environmental health has traditionally been pursued and achieved through an ever-evolving practice of peasant agroecology. In their view, agroecology represents a local and tailored response to challenges within the farming environment.

For centuries, traditional farmers have developed diverse and locally adapted agricultural systems, managing them with ingenious practices that often result in both community food security and the conservation of agrobiodiversity. This strategy of minimizing risk stabilizes yields, promotes dietary diversity, and maximizes returns using low levels of technology and limited resources. These microcosms of agricultural heritage still cover no less than 10 million ha worldwide, providing cultural and ecological services not only to rural inhabitants, but to mankind generally. These services include the preservation of traditional farming knowledge, local crop and animal varieties, and native forms of sociocultural organization. By studying these systems, ecologists can enhance their knowledge of the dynamics of complex systems, especially the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function and practical principles for the design of more sustainable agroecosystems appropriate to small farmers. Novel agroecosystem designs have already been modeled on successful traditional farming systems.

Since the neoliberal turn in Latin America the rural economy and society has experienced a great transformation. Corporate capital and transnational agro-industries have taken hold of agriculture radically transforming the economic and social relations of production leading to the precarization and feminisation of rural labour as well as the intensification of work. Peasant farmers were further squeezed having to increasingly find off-farm incomes, largely through precarious wage labour activities, so as to make a living thereby furthering the process of proletarianization. The 'new rurality' and 'territorial' approaches tried to take account of these transformations but they are found wanting. Instead, a political economy view to the agrarian question is found more promising. A counter-movement to neoliberalism has emerged spearheaded by indigenous peoples and the rural poor, sometimes linked to the transnational peasant movement 'Via Campesina'. Their main aim is to construct an alternative agrarian system based on 'food sovereignty' which is promising but also controversial. Desde el giro neoliberal en América Latina la economía y sociedad rural han experimentado una gran transformación. El capital corporativo y las agroindustrias transnacionales se han apoderado de la agricultura transformando radicalmente las relaciones económicas y sociales de producción que llevan a la precarización y feminización de la mano de obra rural, así como a la intensificación del trabajo. Los campesinos enfrentan condiciones cada vez más difíciles teniendo que buscar con mayor frecuencia ingresos fuera de la finca, principalmente a través de actividades salariales precarias, con el fin de ganarse la vida impulsando con ello el proceso de proletarización. Los enfoques de la 'nueva ruralidad' y 'territoriales' trataron de explicar estas transformaciones pero tienen limitaciones. En cambio, una visión desde la economía política sobre la cuestión agraria se estima más prometedora. Movimientos contestatarios del neoliberalismo han surgido encabezado por los pueblos indígenas y la población rural pobre, a veces vinculado al movimiento campesino transnacional 'Vía Campesina'. Su principal objetivo es la construcción de un sistema agrario alternativo basado en la 'soberanía alimentaria', que es prometedor, pero también polémico.

A meta-regression analysis including 167 farm level technical efficiency (TE) studies of developing and developed countries was undertaken. The econometric results suggest that stochastic frontier models generate lower mean TE (MTE) estimates than non-parametric deterministic models, while parametric deterministic frontier models yield lower estimates than the stochastic approach. The primal approach is the most common technological representation. In addition, frontier models based on cross-sectional data produce lower estimates than those based on panel data whereas the relationship between functional form and MTE is inconclusive. On average, studies for animal production show a higher MTE than crop farming. The results also suggest that the studies for countries in Western Europe and Oceania present, on average, the highest levels of MTE among all regions after accounting for various methodological features. In contrast, studies for Eastern European countries exhibit the lowest estimate followed by those from Asian, African, Latin American, and North American countries. Additional analysis reveals that MTEs are positively and significantly related to the average income of the countries in the data set but this pattern is broken by the upper middle income group which displays the lowest MTE.

Africa missed out on the scientific breakthroughs that revolutionized agriculture in Asia. However, with locally developed and locally relevant technologies, a built-up human and institutional capacity, and supportive national policy and leadership, an African Green Revolution can be a reality.

Rural and agricultural modernization and industrialization (RAMI) increased in recent decades in a multiscalar way. RAMI has implied the rural landscape transformation through the arrival of industrial models. These processes have not been linear or unidirectional; heterogeneities, opposites, mosaics, hybridizations, new interactions, problems, and tensions, between traditional and industrial agriculture and other agriculture types, have emerged. We tackle and problematized the RAMI processes, which is a complex and a real-world problem, from Sustainability Science (SS) and transdisciplinarity. Thus, considering studies and experiences in different rural areas in the world, an epistemological positioning is presented, which allows overcoming scientific frontiers and relating it to rural sustainability. We delve into the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (LPB), Mexico, an area with a strong agricultural tradition (“milpa” systems). Recently, the presence of industrial agriculture (mainly avocado monoculture and berry greenhouses) has increased, occurring the coexistence between peasant-entrepreneurs, indigenous–non-indigenous, and new-rural. The article aims to understand comprehensively the emerging complexities from the RAMI, deepening LPB’s real case. The epistemological approach developed allow us to conceive the interaction and possible complementation between traditional agriculture, industrial agriculture and other agriculture types, and the emergence of an included middle that corresponds to an “emerging complexity”. Finally, relevant topics and questions are highlighted.

China finally underwent its modernizing (i.e., with increased labor productivity and incomes) agricultural revolution in 1980 to 2010, through dynamics unlike those of most other previous agricultural revolutions. It is \"hidden\" because the revolution has not come so much from the conventional and readily apparent increases of certain crops' output by weight due to new inputs, but rather mainly by the switch from grain production to more and more higher-value agricultural products like meat-poultry-fish, milk-eggs, and fruits and higher grade vegetables. That change has been driven by a revolution in the food consumption patterns of the Chinese people that came with rising incomes mainly from nonagricultural development. A comparison of China's agricultural history with others tells about the interactions of multiple factors, not just the role of markets and/or technology, or property systems, but rather their interactions with population-to-land resource endowments, differential rural-urban relations, state actions, and historical coincidences. China's is in fact most like India's, rather than \"East Asia's,\" though even then with important differences stemming from its revolutionary legacies.