Francisco Pichón

Settler households and land-use patterns in the Amazon frontier: Farm-level evidence from Ecuador

Abstract This article presents a detailed profile of colonists households that have settled in the Amazon region of Ecuador. It describes their socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, the natural resource base they control on their farms, and the land-use patterns that are emerging in this part of the Amazon frontier. The existence of a generalized pattern of forest clearing over time constrained by a “straitjacket” of natural resources (or the so-called peasant pioneer cycle) is challenged and attention is given to understanding the role of institutional and household-level factors in influencing the observed variation in land-use and forest-clearing strategies. The survey data which form the basis for the analysis were collected by the author in 1990 from a probability sample of 450 colonist households in the northeastern frontier region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The results suggest that although the natural resource base can act as a serious constraint on land-use options available to colonists, farmers inherit different production potentials in their land. The range of land-use options open to each is narrowed or widened depending on the households demographic and socioeconomic circumstances as well as the local and national policy and institutional context. The results given here are exploratory and intended to stimulate further discussion.

Survival Strategies among Rural Swazi Households: Historical, Ecological and Social Dimensions

Summary Catherine M. Marquette and Francisco Pichon, ‘Survival Strategies among Rural Swazi Housholds: Historical, Ecological and Social Dimensions’, Forum for Development Studies, 1997:2, pp. 307–320. The survival strategies of rural Swazi households (their dependence on off-farm labour, their lack of agricultural surplus and their lower reliance on farm production in general) have most frequently been explained in terms of rational economic behaviour. This article discusses other important historical, sociocultural, ecological and gender-related factors which have also shaped survival strategies among rural Swazi households in this century. Data referred to include the 1995 Swaziland Household Income and Expenditure Survey (SHIES), a recent 1996 Participatory Poverty Assessment conducted by the World Bank and historical sources. Diversified patterns of economic activity among Swazi households are traced back to economic and land-use changes occurring from the beginning of the century, traditional land d...