Changing lives, changing fields: Diversity in agriculture and economic strategies in two caboclo communities in the Amazon estuary

Rural residents of the Amazon estuary (caboclos) have long integrated diverse, small-scale agriculture into a complex livelihood system. In response to government restructuring, market shifts, and regional urbanization patterns, caboclos in the Amazon estuary have significantly modified their economic strategies over the past 15 years. This dissertation examines economic change in the caboclo communities of Carvao and Mutuaca, Brazil. In the study site, residents describe a process of change whereby "nature"---agricultural areas, forests, and waterways---has lost its central importance to survival. In Carvao, livelihood change is characterized by community-wide shifts away from agriculture, as residents replace farm income with non-farm, urban income in the form of government wages, pensions, and welfare benefits. In Mutuaca, residents also incorporate non-farm income into a rural-based livelihood system, but are increasing the production of the acai palm (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) in agricultural areas. Through an interdisciplinary research approach that draws on methods from ethnobotany, ecology, and anthropology, this dissertation has two main objectives. The first is to examine the state of agriculture in Carvao and Mutuaca---communities where agricultural production is being downsized and simplified. This study highlights both variation in farming strategies and patterns of agrobiodiversity in fields and home gardens. The second goal is to outline a new model of economic production in Carvao and Mutuaca based on a concept of hybridity, where urban income is combined with "age-old" rural activities. Results from property visits, interviews, and botanical surveys indicate that contrary to research on global agricultural change, which documents the erosion of agrobiodiversity with the reduction of farm area and with market integration, farmers in Carvao and Mutuaca cultivate high levels of agrobiodiversity in fields and home gardens. Research also indicates that livelihoods have become more urban in nature and thereby contradict previous ethnographic representations of caboclo economic life. This dissertation argues, however, that recent changes be viewed as a historical continuity. Residents' quick incorporation of urban income into a rural livelihood system demonstrate villagers' sense of opportunism and flexibility---traits that have long been central to caboclo economic strategies---and have ensured continual access to natural and social resources in a dynamic landscape.