Tourism is often seen as a tool for poverty alleviation and community development. This article highlights community-based tourism as a possible strategy for the development of poor communities. It further investigates how specific cultural contexts––in this case, that of rural Mpondoland, South Africa––can contribute to positive community-based tourism development outcomes. In this sense, the local culture is not seen as a tourist attraction but as a resource on which community-based tourism development can be built. The article locates community-based tourism within a more general strategy of diversifying rural livelihoods. Poor households in rural areas meet their needs through a combination of livelihood strategies and community-based tourism is seen as an additional means to meet household needs. In addition, local culture becomes a tourism resource using indigenous foods, arts, and crafts as tourism attractions. Food is one example of a local cultural resource that has the potential to facilitate a number of community benefits.

Khat is a bushy plant whose leaves are chewed for their stimulant effect. Although khat has been a boon to the local economy, a suspected disadvantage is that there has been a decrease of land dedicated to rice and vegetable crops. Concerns about khat stem from genuine issues of food security but also from a moral panic targeted at this recreational drug crop. The major finding is that a decrease in vegetable production has not been primarily caused by khat but instead by a decline in the market for vegetables and decayed local infrastructure supporting vegetable production and transport. We also found that most farmers prefer to grow food crops alongside their khat, and many grow khat on marginal lands. Furthermore, khat helps many individual farmers increase food security because of the income it provides. The general significance is to point out that drug crops have a unique place in discussions of food security because of both the high amount that buyers are willing to pay and because of public condemnation of recreational drugs.

Food insecurity is a significant socioeconomic problem, particularly in developing countries where most households operate at the subsistence level. In the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea, where the fame that comes with being a skilled gardener who annually produces an enviable pile of yams, and where the series of exchanges that ensue are of the utmost social importance, current trends of reduced soil fertility and crop yields threaten not only to compromise food security but also to rend the very fabric of Trobriand social order and identity. While the magnitude of the problem may well be inflated as a tool for political playmaking, the results of a (real or perceived) “food security crisis” in the Trobriand Islands has significant implications for local leadership, exchange obligations, and sense of self.

This paper examines participation of residents from the Montaña Baja region of central Guerrero, Mexico, in the Mexican government's seasonal migrant laborer assistance program. The program has many functions, most notably serving as the hub linking migrant workers with agribusinesses elsewhere in Mexico. An archive of regional registrants for the 1999–2000 agricultural season is analyzed to infer patterns of local labor mobilization. We test the hypotheses that residents from larger communities and communities alongside roads are more likely to participate and we offer an explanation for their recruitment. Our explanations draw on understandings of patronage networks and the recruiting strategies of labor contractors. Our findings are significant and provide insight into the impact of clientelist networks on labor mobilization.

Food is an active component of social and political process in times of daily plenty and in times of extreme scarcity. Routinized modes of foodways are hard to dislodge, even when resources and broad lifeways are violently disrupted. Ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological examples attest to the improvisational ability of individuals and communities when faced with food shortage. Using illustrations from around the world, I explore how approaches to linguistic practice contribute to discussions of starvation management. I posit that cultural redefinitions of food and foodways help to negotiate extreme circumstances and may extend even into postcrisis periods.

In the present study, ten species of indigenous edible plants of Eastern Crete were collected, recorded, and botanically classified. Moreover, a survey study was conducted regarding the collection and use of edible wild greens in today's diet of the inhabitants of Eastern Crete. The results of the study showed that there is a positive correlation between the collection and consumption of edible wild plants and the age and profession of the collector. It was also clear that greens that are abundantly found and grow in nearby areas are preferred. Older people identify and collect a larger number of different species of plants compared with younger people. This fact demonstrates the risk of losing important nutritional information, although a large percentage of the sample teaches others the art of identifying and collecting wild plants.