TY - JOUR

T1 - Agricultural households in times of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic, livelihoods and land-use decisions

AU - Nolte, Kerstin

AU - Sipangule, Kacana

AU - Wendt, Niels

N1 - Funding Information: We are grateful to the associate editor and two anonymous reviewers with very constructive comments to an earlier draft version. We appreciate the help provided by Charlotte Bakker-Müller in proof-reading the manuscript. We thank the Development Data Group of the World Bank for providing access to their high-frequency phone surveys. We further thank the Our World in Data team, as well as the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford for their great efforts in providing data used in this paper.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic has profound impacts on agricultural households. We discuss how these impacts might affect the underlying drivers of land-use decisions. First, we conceptually extend models of (smallholder) land-use decision-making to assess how the pandemic affects the underlying drivers of land-use decisions. We then examine effects on agricultural households’ livelihoods, by drawing on high-frequency phone surveys from eight African countries and a literature review. We find that the COVID-19 pandemic affects these households’ livelihoods substantially, reflected for instance, by reductions in various income sources. We further find that households’ coping capabilities are weakened, meaning vulnerable households have difficulties to cope with the impacts of the pandemic. Agriculture is likely to become even more important in the years to come for households with very limited resources. Accordingly, we expect more labour-intensive uses of agricultural land. However, context matters and thus impacts on land-use are likely to be very variable.

AB - The COVID-19 pandemic has profound impacts on agricultural households. We discuss how these impacts might affect the underlying drivers of land-use decisions. First, we conceptually extend models of (smallholder) land-use decision-making to assess how the pandemic affects the underlying drivers of land-use decisions. We then examine effects on agricultural households’ livelihoods, by drawing on high-frequency phone surveys from eight African countries and a literature review. We find that the COVID-19 pandemic affects these households’ livelihoods substantially, reflected for instance, by reductions in various income sources. We further find that households’ coping capabilities are weakened, meaning vulnerable households have difficulties to cope with the impacts of the pandemic. Agriculture is likely to become even more important in the years to come for households with very limited resources. Accordingly, we expect more labour-intensive uses of agricultural land. However, context matters and thus impacts on land-use are likely to be very variable.

KW - Africa

KW - agricultural household

KW - COVID-19

KW - Land-use change

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85125316951&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/1747423X.2021.2020922

DO - 10.1080/1747423X.2021.2020922

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85125316951

VL - 17

SP - 134

EP - 160

JO - Journal of Land Use Science

JF - Journal of Land Use Science

SN - 1747-423X

IS - 1

ER -