Negotiating within the framework of the household to gain access to labor is itself a process that transforms the household. Within households individuals have different production interests related to their social status. Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and surveys among farmers and state agricultural organizations, I show how the state and its policies create conditions within which farmers make operating decisions and shape their conceptions of farming. The results indicate that intensification of cattle grazing is possible even on acid, infertile lowland tropical soils, and that small landholders intensify cattle grazing by increasing labor investments in pasture and animal management when markets for dairy products are favorable. As returns to labor from cattle grazing diminishwith intensification, farmers diversify into intensive permanent cash crops or off-farm labor.
Risk is a key factor influencing intensification and diversification decisions.
Trees remain important even on intensively managed farms to meet household subsistence needs and provide environmental services, but overall intensification of land use is accompanied by intensification of forest land uses and substitution of purchased products for forest products. Understanding the processes of land use choice behind intensification of diversification is critical to the development of sustainable land uses. Recent fieldwork from Inner Mongolia contradicts this optimism. Data and participant-observation reveal that enclosures, as implemented through village level social context, actually compound grazing problems for most residents and the wider ecosystem. Expanding household enclosures function to intensify hyper-critical stocking ratios on highly vulnerable range land, exacerbating wind and soil erosion processes across vast territories only to protect small isolated fields dedicated to poorly financed fodder cultivation.