Relationships among Production Systems, Preschool Nutritional Status, and Pesticide-Related Toxicity in Seven Ecuadorian Communities: A Multi-Case Study Approach
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Among small Andean potato farmers, greater pesticide use and better linkage to markets are promoted as ways to improve farm outputs and incomes. The health of household members is assumed to improve with higher incomes, although evidence to support such an assumption remains scarce. OBJECTIVE: Using a multidisciplinary approach, we sought to characterize agricultural systems producing potatoes and to assess relationships between these characteristics and farm household health indicators. METHODS: We included seven communities linked to a regional agricultural potato production platform (socioorganizational "space" for potato commercialization) in Chimborazo, Ecuador. The unit of analysis was the community, each of which was classified according to its level of intensity of potato production as more intensive, intermediate, or less intensive. Data on crop management, household food intake, child anthropometry, and impacts of pesticide use on adult health were collected by survey. RESULTS: The net income from potato production was similar in communities with more intensive and intermediate production systems and lower in those with less intensive systems. However, deficits in protein intake were more common among children in communities with more intensive systems (63%) than among those in communities with intermediate (53%) and less intensive (37%) systems. Deficits in thiamin and riboflavin intake were more prevalent in communities with more and less intensive systems than in those with intermediate systems. In contrast, the prevalence of moderate chronic malnutrition, as measured by height-for-age, was greater among children in communities with less intensive systems (27%) than among those in communities with intermediate (5%) and more intensive (7%) systems. Across all intensities, frequent use of highly hazardous pesticides was associated with adverse health effects. CONCLUSIONS: Agricultural development programs need to work more cross-sectorally to realize the potential health benefits associated with intensification of production.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".