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Land-use change is increasingly influenced by complex socioeconomic and environmental interactions that transcend spatial, institutional, and temporal scales. These interactions challenge classical place-based land system analysis and require new analytical approaches equipped for tackling processes, flows, and feedbacks over distance. The recently proposed telecoupling framework offers interesting perspectives for bringing place-based and process-oriented research together in the study of land-use change. However, few studies have explored the influence and implications of telecouplings in local land-use changes. One reason for this is that the framework still faces challenges for application in empirical research. Here, we offer a qualitative operationalization of the telecoupling framework to explore its relevance and applicability in a case of local land-use change. Investigating the case of a recent boom in commercial banana cultivation in Luang Namtha Province, Lao PDR, we use a grounded empirical approach starting with the observed land-use change at the village level. We then trace flows and distal processes influencing the conversion to banana cultivation from the perspectives and experiences of the local actors involved. The results identify four prominent material and immaterial telecouplings at various spatial and temporal scales, as well as some potential feedbacks. This complexity points to the need for interdisciplinary research because the processes involved in creating telecoupled land-use change transcend the boundaries of any one discipline. Overall, however, telecoupling presents a strong heuristic lens for examining and describing distal causal relations in land-use change in a manner that does not favor a specific analytical scale or type of interaction.

Precise segmentation of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-captured images plays a vital role in tasks such as crop yield estimation and plant health assessment in banana plantations. By identifying and classifying planted areas, crop areas can be calculated, which is indispensable for accurate yield predictions. However, segmenting banana plantation scenes requires a substantial amount of annotated data, and manual labeling of these images is both timeconsuming and labor-intensive, limiting the development of large-scale datasets. Furthermore, challenges such as changing target sizes, complex ground backgrounds, limited computational resources, and correct identification of crop categories make segmentation even more difficult. To address these issues, we propose a comprehensive solution. First, we designed an iterative optimization annotation pipeline leveraging SAM2’s zero-shot capabilities to generate high-quality segmentation annotations, thereby reducing the cost and time associated with data annotation significantly. Second, we developed ALSS-YOLO-Seg, an efficient lightweight segmentation model optimized for UAV imagery. The model’s backbone includes an Adaptive Lightweight Channel Splitting and Shuffling (ALSS) module to improve information exchange between channels and optimize feature extraction, aiding accurate crop identification. Additionally, a Multi-Scale Channel Attention (MSCA) module combines multi-scale feature extraction with channel attention to tackle challenges of varying target sizes and complex ground backgrounds. We evaluated the zero-shot segmentation performance of SAM2 on the ADE20K and Javeri datasets. Our iterative optimization annotation pipeline demonstrated a significant reduction in manual annotation effort while achieving high-quality segmentation labeling. Extensive experiments on our custom Banana Plantation segmentation dataset show that ALSS-YOLO-Seg achieves state-of-the-art performance. Our code is openly available at https://github.com/helloworlder8/computer_vision .

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) play a key role in improving agricultural production, enhancing socio-ecological resilience, and mitigating rural poverty. However, the use of ICTs for agricultural development among smallholder farmers, especially in the least developed countries, still lags behind. It is therefore critical to understand distinct attitudes among heterogeneous smallholder farmers that determine use of ICTs, such as mobile phones. Moreover, data-driven empirical studies on the use of mobile phones in smallholder settings are still scarce. We bridge this knowledge gap by evaluating the link between the use of mobile phones and various farming types of smallholder farmers in Rwanda. Using the principal component and cluster analysis, we analyzed 690 banana farming households across eight of the 10 major agro-ecological zones of Rwanda and developed a typology of banana farms. We identified three distinct farm types based on a combination of various farmer characteristics and farm operations and endowments, namely the beer banana, livestock-based, and the cooking banana farm types. These farm types clearly differ in terms of ownership and use of both basic and smart mobile devices. Farmers in the cooking banana farm type are far more likely to own and use smart mobile phones than in other types. Regression results further indicated that farm type, gender, and education have significant correlations with the perceived usefulness of mobile phones in agriculture. Major barriers to using ICT-based agricultural services were 1) low awareness of the existence of ICT services, 2) limited availability of ICT services, 3) lack of technical know-how, 4) relatively high prices of ICT devices, and 5) low levels of ICT literacy. This empirical study provides strategically important insights for the transition to digital agriculture in the context of smallholder farming systems.

This study demonstrated the use of fuzzy logic approach in mapping land limitations for agricultural land use planning using publicly available data for the province of Marinduque, Philippines. The paper focused only on the two major crops in the province, coconut, and banana. Based on the results, slope is the major factor limiting the production of these two crops. Slope is identified as a limitation in approximately 80% and 18% of the agricultural land of the province for coconut and banana production, respectively. Other land limitations for coconut production in the province include rainfall, soil, and combination of these factors with slope. In the case of banana, soil and combination of this factor with slope were identified as land limitations.

Climate change and environmental stress limit the growth of plants, including bananas. A systematic review and analysis of the topic are presented for the first time to identify physiological, biochemical, and molecular factors that may confer tolerance to climate change in Musa spp. Searches were conducted in six databases using pre-established inclusion and exclusion criteria (Web of Science, PubMed Central, SAGE, Google Scholar, Wiley, and Scopus Journals). A previously established process and inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to avoid publication bias. This systematic review was specifically focused on the Musa spp. production to climate change, the number of studies included was limited to only 76 articles. This indicates the need for additional research in this area and a potential change in research trends toward other strategies for mitigating the effects of climate change in bananas. Based on the review outcomes, we found a connection between changes in several climatic factors, which impacted banana production, and the cultivation of bananas in various geographic locations. Recently, few comprehensive studies on the effects of water stress on bananas have been conducted, however, they have yet to address the impacts of flood stress. Research gaps were identified addressing the characteristics of banana production and how this varies with location, elevation, and management factors, as well as the effects of changes in drought, water stress, and temperature. Evidence-based innovations are needed to reduce the effects of climate change in banana production.

Certification of banana plantations is widely used as a device for protecting and improving socio-economic conditions of wageworkers, including their incomes, working conditions and—increasingly—voice [related to labour relations and workplace representation]. However, to date, evidence about the effectiveness of certification in these domains is scarce. We collected detailed field data on (1) economic benefits for improving household income, (2) social benefits for labour practices, and (3) the voice of wageworkers focusing on identity and identification issues amongst wageworkers at Fairtrade certified banana plantations and comparable, non-certified plantations in the Dominican Republic. We used different types of regression models to identify significant relationships. Econometrical analysis of survey results complemented by field observations and outcomes from in-depth stakeholder interviews indicate that the impact of Fairtrade certification on wageworkers’ economic benefits is rather limited. However, the impact on the voice of wageworkers (job satisfaction, sense of ownership, trust), is more evident. On Fairtrade certified plantations workers are more satisfied with the course of life and better represented. Thus while the additional value of Fairtrade certification on primary wages seems limited, Fairtrade has relevant positive effects on the labour force, particularly by delivering in-kind benefits, offering a sense of job-security, improving voice and enabling private savings. Benefits of (Fairtrade) certification, but also other interventions with a similar purpose, might therefore not be discerned in terms of economic benefits such as wages or basic labour conditions that are under direct control of (inter)national law, but they should be identified in terms of social benefits and improved norms of conduct for wageworker engagement.

Agriculture in the Canary Islands has greater limitations than in the rest of Spain due to the cultivation areas being geographically limited and the abrupt orography of the archipelago. As a result, in certain situations, tillage of the land is more complex and costs increase. This study focuses on the island of Tenerife and aims to identify the determining variables that directly affect the price of agricultural land, considering the type of crop. For this purpose, a survey was designed for farm managers on the island of Tenerife and, after analysing the responses, we focused on tubers, legumes, vineyards, bananas, and cereals. A multilinear regression model showed that the highest land price corresponds to those farms destined for banana production, with a value of 16.52 €/m 2 . The price of agricultural land on the island of Tenerife was found to be eight times higher than the European average. The main factors impacting this value are irrigation, the orography of the land, and the presence of farm buildings.

Land-based production provides societies with indispensable goods such as food, feed, fibre, and energy. Yet, with economic globalisation and global population growth, the environmental and social trade-offs of their production are ever more complex. This is particularly so since land use changes are increasingly embedded in networks of long-distance flows of, e.g., material, energy, and information. The resulting scientific and governance challenge is captured in the emerging telecoupling framework addressing socioeconomic and environmental interactions and feedbacks between distal human-environment systems. Understanding telecouplings, however, entails a number of fundamental analytical problems. When dealing with global connectivity, a central question is how and where to draw system boundaries between coupled systems. In this article, we explore the analytical implications of setting system boundaries in the study of a recent telecoupled land use change: the expansion of Chinese banana plantation investments in Luang Namtha Province, Laos. Based on empirical material from fieldwork in Laos in 2014 and 2015, and drawing on key concepts from the ‘systems thinking’ literature, we illustrate how treating the system and its boundaries as epistemological constructs enable us to capture the differentiated involvement of actors, as well as the socio-economic and environmental effects of this land use change. In discussing our results, the need for more explicit attention to the trade-offs and implications of scale and boundary choices when defining systems is emphasised.

Smallholder banana farmers in Kenya grapple with declining farm productivity and low market prices in a fragmented, broker-dominated market. To address these challenges, the Kenya National Banana Development Strategy advocates for the adoption of contract farming. This research utilizes Difference-in-Differences (DID) regression analysis to assess the impacts of smallholder participation in banana contract farming on farm productivity and income. The empirical results reveal positive impacts, emphasizing the potential of contract farming to enhance productivity, increase incomes for smallholder farmers, and invigorate rural economies. These findings provide valuable insights into the efficacy of contract farming as a strategy for addressing challenges in banana farming. To maximize this potential, the study recommends policy interventions, including increased government support, improvements in infrastructure and market accessibility, reinforced institutional backing, and the promotion of sustainable practices. These measures aim to secure enduring benefits for both farmers and food marketing firms in Kenya. This study examines the effectiveness of contract farming in addressing the struggles of Kenyan smallholder banana farmers. The study finds that participating in contract farming leads to increased farm productivity and income for these farmers. These findings highlight the potential of contract farming to revitalize rural economies. To maximize these benefits, the research recommends policy changes, such as increased government support and improved infrastructure, to create a sustainable and mutually beneficial system for both farmers and food companies in Kenya.

Despite the national increase in banana production, Kepok banana farmers in Sikka Regency have experienced a sharp decline in both production and income. This study aims to analyze the factors affecting the income of Kepok banana farmers in Sikka Regency by examining the role of production as a mediating variable between key determinants—price, land area, labor, and capital—and income levels. The study employs a quantitative research approach using survey methods to collect primary data from Kepok banana farmers in Sikka Regency. The sampling technique applied is simple random sampling, ensuring proportional representation from 21 sub-districts. Out of a total population of 2,123 farmers, a final sample of 354 farmers was randomly selected. The collected data was analyzed using Partial Least Squares (PLS) through SmartPLS to examine the relationships. The study found that price, land area, labor, and capital all have a positive and significant impact on the production of Kepok bananas in Sikka Regency. Production itself plays a crucial role in influencing farmers' income, alongside price, land area, labor, and capital, all of which have a direct positive and significant effect on income. Production mediates the relationship between price, labor, and capital with farmers' income, indicating that these factors contribute to higher production, which in turn increases income. However, production does not mediate the effect of land area on income, suggesting that while land expansion increases production, its direct impact on income may be influenced by other factors beyond production volume alone.