In Elly Joy Kanini’s farmyard in Kenya’s Tharaka Nithi County, a few chickens perch while others peck for food, and a cock runs after a hen.

But when Kanani, dressed in a blue chequered apron and carrying a container of grain, walks past the chicken house and gives a familiar call, the yard is in no time packed with birds of many different colours, snapping up the grain almost before it hits the ground.

Kanini has been raising chickens for about four years, along with crops and other livestock, but she has not always reared the local variety of chickens that now make up her flock.

When palm oil farmer Isnin Kasno eventually retires, his three children will turn their backs on the family’s small plantation in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor. Like many ageing oil palm growers in Southeast Asia, the 58-year-old struggles to make ends meet from his 2 hectares (5 acres), and his adult children have little appetite for the physically demanding work and dwindling financial rewards.

“It makes me very sad,” said Kasno, who planted his land in 1983 after working in Singapore’s construction industry. “Soon, when I no longer have the energy to help with the harvesting, my only option will be to lease my farm.”

Birgitta Berglund has studied eider down farming areas and the special culture along the Norwegian Helgeland coast since the 1970s. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Cultural History at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) University Museum.

The coastal communities included eider duck egg and down harvesting, sealing and fishing villages, but Berglund’s greatest interest lies with the practice of eider farming.