Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Agricultural Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy Adaptation of farmland management strategies to maintain livelihood by the Chagga people in the Kilimanjaro highlands Yuri Ichinose a, ⁎ , Hirokazu Higuchi b , Ryosuke Kubo a , Tomohiro Nishigaki c , Method Kilasara d , Hitoshi Shinjo a , Shinya Funakawa a a Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Yoshida honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan b Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawaoiwake-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan c Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), 1-1, Owashi, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki 305-8686, Japan d College of Agriculture, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, P.O. Box 3008, Tanzania ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Agroforestry Genetic diversity Home garden Land management Small farming Sustainable agriculture ABSTRACT Smallholder farmers attempt to adapt their farmland management through multiple strategies in order to secure their livelihood against external stress factors. Cultivating diferent species and genotypes of crops is one of the strategies implemented by smallholder farmers to maintain their livelihood. In the Kilimanjaro highlands, the Chagga people run small-scale farming. Traditionally, they cultivate diverse varieties of banana and cofee in home gardens in high-altitude areas and maize in low-altitude foothill farms. However, this type of farmland management had to be altered gradually in response to changes in external factors. This paper examines the role of cropping practice and diverse banana genotypes in the livelihood of the Chagga people, to understand how they altered their farmland management strategy to adapt to the current socio-economic circumstances, based on interviews, observations, and genetic analysis of banana. Our results showed that the Chagga people had altered their farmland management strategy by increasing banana and maize cultivation and decreasing cofee culti- vation in the home garden based on the signifcance of each crop in their livelihood. The importance of banana cultivation for the livelihood of Chagga people has been recently recognized as an income source in addition to a staple food because of its increasing demand in neighboring big cities. Maize cultivation in home gardens has expanded because of the steady increase in the household demand of maize over the last 40 years and the decrease in size and ownership of foothill farms. Conversely, cofee cultivation as a household income has declined because of a reduction in cofee prices in the world market and increasing challenges in its cultivation. Additionally, the Chagga people accurately distinguish and use 11 types of bananas in their daily diet and cultural use. Maintaining diverse genotypes of bananas in home gardens is one of the adaptation strategies that bring stable food supply and income, and consequently enable them to maintain their livelihood under changing socio-economic circumstances. 1. Introduction Small-scale farming systems have contributed to local and national food security and multiple ecosystem services (Ricciardi et al., 2018; FAO, 2014b; IFAD and UNEP, 2013). In Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 80% of the food supply is provided by smallholder farmers (IFAD and UNEP, 2013). Small-scale farming is characterized by small farm- land size (< 2 ha), reliance on family labor, low input of external re- sources, and low output of productivity (FAO, 2014b; Tittonell and Giller, 2013). For ensuring long-term global food security it is essential to understand how smallholder farmers maintain their small-scale farming and livelihood in response to external stress factors. Agriculture is one of the key means of smallholder farmers' liveli- hood, which is defned on the basis of capabilities, assets, and activities required for a means of living (DFID, 2001). To secure the sustainability of their livelihood, smallholder farmers constantly change their farm- land management by adopting multiple strategies—they expand, in- tensify, and diversify their agricultural systems to secure livelihood against external factors such as population increase, global market forces, climatic change, declining soil fertility, disease, and consumer demands (OECD/FAO, 2016; Loison, 2015; Tittonell and Giller, 2013; Altieri et al., 2012). Implemented farmland management is highly di- verse because of specifc agricultural conditions and livelihoods in diferent ecosystems and regions (Tittonell et al., 2010). This https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2020.102829 Received 11 June 2019; Received in revised form 20 March 2020; Accepted 25 March 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: yurijpjp@gmail.com (Y. Ichinose). Agricultural Systems 181 (2020) 102829 Available online 02 April 2020 0308-521X/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T