The status of genetic resource conservation in centers of crop diversity remains disputed. Recent case-study findings of persistent maize diversity in Yaxcaba, Yucatan, a municipality in southeast Mexico, have raised questions on earlier reports of widespread losses across the crop’s center of diversity in Mexico. We break down patterns in maize varietal richness in southeast Mexico to show that temporal trends in Yaxcaba are subsumed under spatial variation in this broader region and consistent with an overall loss of diversity.

Climate change could increase the frequency and duration of droughts that affect Mexico. This is particularly worrisome because many agricultural communities in the country are poor and with limited capacities for adaptation. This study estimated the impact of droughts on rural households’ wellbeing in Mexico, specifically on per capita earnings, poverty, and children’s school attendance. To do this, we focused our empirical analysis on the effects of the 2011 drought, one of the worst droughts that have affected Mexico in the past 70 years.

AbstractThis paper contributes to the literature by testing the effect of a household's relative position on its subjective well‐being. Our results show that both self‐perceived status and relative income have significant effects on the subjective well‐being of households located in the Peruvian Amazon. The paper also considers negative random shocks and shows that non‐agricultural shocks have a negative effect on subjective well‐being.

Global climate is changing rapidly, and it is not clear if agricultural producers in developing countries will be able to adapt fast enough in order to mitigate its negative effects. In order to be willing to take adaptation measures, farmers need to perceive that the climate is changing or could change, and they need to attribute enough weight to this perception to take action. During the last two decades, the literature that examines farmers’ perception of climate change has gained ground, but it is still scant.