Paper 2: Food Systems

WeekNine_AgroIndustrializationOtherwise.pptx

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Agro-Industrialization Otherwise?

Week of Monday, March 15th (week Nine)

Last week, we examined some of the features of the contemporary agro-food system. As we saw, food has become increasingly commodified. Corporations are more involved in food production, and food is globally traded more than ever before. Last week, we also saw that some observers consider this development largely negative for peasants in the Global South. For example, Chung’s work on Tanzania demonstrated that agrarian development was displacing production for self-consumption and with it peoples’ ability to provide for their families. The supposed benefits of large-scale sugar production hadn’t materialized. Next week, we’re going to consider alternative food systems, or cases where production for self-consumption according to agro-ecological methods is prioritized instead of production for the market using inputs produced by agri-firms.

But for this week, we’re considering three pieces of scholarship which argue that agro-industrialization doesn’t necessarily negatively impact peasants in the Global South. Rather, in order to understand the impact of agro-industrialization, we must consider the terms on which smallholders come to produce agro-commodities and the types of support they are given by the state.

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Paper Two (March 21)

Module 2: Agricultural Modernization

From Farming To Agriculture: Intro to Agricultural Modernization

Agro-Industrialization Otherwise

Alternative Food Systems

So, here we are, the second week in our model on agro-industrialization.

LABOR

FOOD (for factory workers)

Imperative for cheap food

Last week, we considered Patel and Moore’s argument that capitalism is premised upon a system of cheap food.

Therefore, there is not a one-way relationship between the farm and the factory. Farms produce food for factory workers and create children that become factory workers. But at the same time, the factory (and here the factory is really a symbol for the wage relation under capitalism) creates an imperative, or a compulsion, for the transformation of farming.

Factory owners want their rate of profit to increase. One way to increase the rate of profit is to cheapen the cost of labor by reducing the cost of workers’ food. So the wage-labor system creates a compulsion to transform farming into agriculture, to produce more food in less time.

SOURCE: Bernstein, H. (2010). Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. VA: Fernwood Publishers.

FARMING

“what farmers do and have done through the millennia: cultivate the soil and raise livestock, or some combination of the two, typically within a system of established fields and pastures” (p. 62)

Typically local in scope

Embedded in simple divisions of labor

AGRICULTURE

“farming together with all those economic interests and their specialized institutions and activities, ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ of farming, that affect the activities and reproduction of farmers” (p. 65)

Global in scope

Embedded in complex divisions of labor

We talked about one of the implications of cheap food is that is hastening this transition from FARMING to AGRICULTURE.

Mixed impact of Green Revolution

Globally grain output and yields more than doubled between 1950 and 1980 AND food prices declined

But…Heavy use of fertilizers AND increased yields did not necessarily feed rural hungry

EX. Mexico – Green revolution crop, ‘wheat’ produced by commercial farmers for urban markets; peasants continued to produce corn using traditional practices

And so, the promise of agriculture is that it will be MUCH MORE productive than farming.

*And so, we looked at the case of the green revolution – a method of agriculture dependent upon hybrid seeds and fertilizer

*And so, we saw that during the green revolution era, output and yields more than docubled *But there were some negative consequences…(1) heavy use of fertilizers bad for environment (2) increased yields did not go to the Rural poor

Last week we had a couple case studies, we went to Tanzania and read Chung’s argument that conversion of ‘farmland’ to ‘agriculture land’ by Swedish company in Tanzania was having a deleterious impact on the rural poor. They were experiencing ‘in situ displacement’ loss of access to land on which they depended for social reproduction. We also went to Chili and saw impacts of agriculture more mixed – some women experienced jobs created by grape economy as liberating and appreciated cash income to purchase commodities. Others less sure.

SOURCE: Bernstein, H. (2010). Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. VA: Fernwood Publishers.

RETURN TO FARMING

“what farmers do and have done through the millennia: cultivate the soil and raise livestock, or some combination of the two, typically within a system of established fields and pastures” (p. 62)

Typically local in scope

Embedded in simple divisions of labor

AGRICULTURE OTHERWISE

Global in scope

Embedded in complex divisions of labor

I argued in the last class, there are two main responses to the perceived negative consequences of the transition from ‘farming to agriculture’….

Last week, we looked at how this transition from farming to agriculture is highly ueven.

High productive ag. Sectors mostly found in Global North.

In Global South, ag. Sector less productive and so more people concentreated within.

I want to introduce this data on food security.

Food insecuirity is an issue most places in the world including in the US. ONE in FOUR people globally are moderately or severely food insecure (lack enough access to safe and nutritious food) including in the US.

In the US ¼ households experienced food security in the pandemic (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers)

Food pantry at FIU: https://studentaffairs.fiu.edu/get-support/student-food-pantry/index.php

But issues of access to food more of a problem in the South than in the North.

*This chart does not include countries with less than 2.5% undernourished…

So ¼ people is member of small-farmer family. And small farmers are members of world’s population most likely to be living in extreme poverty.

And so, one idea for how to do ‘agriculture otherwise’ or how to do agriculture without all the negative consequences for the rural poor/subsistence farmers is…what if we get the small farmers involved in agriculture?

And, I want to point out, that this is a very mainstream idea.

Chung wrote about a land grab in Tanzania. And last week, we watched a portrayal of a land grab in Ethopia by the Guardian.

Land grabs, understandably, got a lot of negative attention in the international media.

Because of negative consequences resulted from transition from ‘farming’ to ‘agriculture’ activist groups have claimed that globally traded food commodities should not be produced in the GS

Exemplary of this approach is the Mangrove Action Project. Here is a video in which they instruct consumers in the GN not to eat shrimp grown in GS.

Activists will say, countries in the GS shouldn’t produce it. For instance…Mangrove Action Project…

(Watch through 4:30)

No doubt at least in part as a response to this, many mainstream international development organizations (like the World Bank) are arguing that the transition from farming to agriculture shouldn’t displace small farmers BUT instead it should work through small farmers.

And in fact, small farmers should become agriculturalists.

So this video was produced by the World Bank and it was about a research project which was trying to get a better understanding of how small farmers use money. But it also gives some depiction of the life of small farmers…not a lot of extra money, but in this video, the farmer was at least able to produce more of what is family eats..But clearly didn’t have enough for all their wants, education etc.

So the idea is that these farmers need to become more integrated into the market (mention their relations with food distrbutors), to use modern methods (hybrid seeds, fertilizer) and that will raise their standard of living. Does that seem like a good idea? What are some of the positive and negative consequences of small farmers taking up agriculture?

[Discussion]

***

Agriculture = Good

World Bank

Spurs economic growth

Reduces rural poverty

Offers link to market in remote, uneconomic areas

Agriculture = Bad

NGOs

Corporate agriculture will dispossess small farmers of land, livelihood, means of social reproduction

Weakens the food security of the most vulnerable actors

Scholars today, take the idea, maybe ‘agriculture’ itself isn’t good or bad, but depends on the way that its implemented.

So, I’d like you to entertain this idea today as we go into our readings.

We don’t have to accept this idea – can leave thinking (a) always good (b) always bad BUT we’ll consider the argument that its not the commodity that is good or bad but the terms on which the farmer becomes incorporated into agriculture.

Oil Palm: Background

World’s most versatile vegetable oil (and doesn’t contain transfats)

Found in cosmetics, adhesives and many other products

Important biofuel

10% of global cropdom

85% grown in Malaysia and Indonesia

Image and information: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/19/palm-oil-ingredient-biscuits-shampoo-environmental

85% Malaysia/indonesia

Jambi, Indonesia

Indonesia, 17,000 islands; 267 million people; world’s most populous muslim-majority country / 4th most populous country

Jambi on Sumatra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lev1mnonUM

Research Questions

What are the characteristic trajectories of agrarian change associated with oil palm expansion?

What causal processes lead to the key distributional outcomes that we can identify and how is this related to processes of differentiation?

What are the characteristic trajectories of agrarian change associated with oil palm expansion? What causal processes lead to the key distributional outcomes that we can identify and how is this related to processes of differentiation?

Methodology

Fieldwork in Jambi (2004 – 2009)

Interviews with local actors (farmers, land brokers, entrepreneurs, local officials)

Survey

What causal processes lead to the key distributional outcomes that we can identify and how is this related to processes of differentiation?

Inclusion/Beneficial Inclusion –

Exclusion

“Adverse Incorporation” – inclusion in commodity chains on disadvantageous terms such that poverty is the ultimate result

Anyone remember adverse incorporation?

What causal processes lead to the key distributional outcomes that we can identify and how is this related to processes of differentiation?

Prosperous Farmers

Progressive Farmers

Poor Farmers

Laborers

*Pre palm oil characterized by relative equality in landholdings.

*prosperous farmers = 22,000 USD per year; inferior planting material but fertilizer

*progressive; income 8000 USD per year; less land and capital than former category but as their holdings mature may be able to shift up *Poor farmers =2500; no inputs; small holdings; had to take lots of off farm activity to make ends meet

*Laborers = had lost their land or had migrated from Java

What causal processes lead to the key distributional outcomes that we can identify and how is this related to processes of differentiation?

Temporal Variation

State Developmental New Order

Transitional KKPA

Post-1998 “laissez-faire”/Reformasi

Geographic Variation

State-supported oil palm scheme

Private development (no state support)

New Order Regime (1966 – 1998)

“Developmental Agenda”: financed infrastructure, directed agricultural extension

Nucleus estate-transmigration program

20% (estate area) / 80% smallholder

State facilitated access to land (“accumulation by dispossession”), infrastructure development, and credit

Transmigrants received free land and credit in exchange for submission to agribusiness model

“accumulation by dispossession” = land formerly forest land/ swidden agriculture practiced

Transitional Period: KKPA (1998 – 2008)

Encourage private sector initiative, facilitate FDI, accelerate crop development

State withdrawal

State still provided incentives for companies to invest in oil palm

BUT management is completely given over to company

Melayu villagers provided the land / company provided development capital

sukarno v. Suharto?

“accumulation by dispossession” = land formerly forest land/ swidden agriculture practiced

Reformasi Period: Laissez-Faire (2008 -)

“Neoliberal State” – shift to market-driven policies; Further withdrawal of the state

*state formerly absent but individual members of state working to enlarge landholdigns

What are the characteristic trajectories of agrarian change associated with oil palm expansion?

Exogenous Expansion

Agribusiness initiated “ injection of inputs into formerly remote settings”

Coordinated through the contract

Scheme mediates the terms of inclusion (i.e. cooperatives, division and allocation of land, credit relations)

Endogenous Expansion

“Individuals embrace the new opportunities offered by expanding commodity markets for oil palm”

Coordinated through the open market

Farms develop oil palm plots independently (difficulty – access to capital, planting material, fertilizer)

Generally vulnerable landowners more exposed under endogenous than exogenous

State, at least in early period (but with great variability) involved in distributing land to villagers/ensuring villagers received land Also agribusiness supported in support for smallfarmers (with financing)

Latter period – smallholders likely to sell land as more prosperous landowners seek to acquire it and they don’t yet realize what it is worth AND/OR commonland is privatized AND/OR villagers have need for cash/livelihood distress; also no access to improved materials; and…can disadvantaged in selling

Implications

Initial State-agribusiness intervention gave smallholders and entrepreneurs access to capital, technology, and land

After state withdrawal, these prosperous farmers could use their economic/social power to gain control of more land

Other smallholders continue to attempt to take up palm oil but without the advantage of state-facilitated capital, technology

Need a “developmental state” – technical support, improved planting material, government price-setting, supervision of land tenure

So what do you think? Do you think with a developmental state, we should support the farming of palm oil in Indonesia as a development strategy?

Before we discuss this question, let’s watch one more video.

Need pressure on the state.

Would this initiative likely correct problem? Why or why not?

Summary of Findings

Changes associated with oil palm expansion are highly variable

Need to distinguish exogenous processes of agribusiness expansion from endogenous commodity market expansion

Commodity-specific nature of oil palm has implications for agrarian outcomes

Vulnerable landowners more exposed to risk under the laissez faire scenario than under state-agribusiness mode

Effect of oil palm on rural farmers’ livelihoods depends on the terms in which smallholders are incorporated into oil palm economy

Summarize in one sentence – “changes associated with oil palm expansion are highly variable”

Wants to resist simplifying narrative – it is either good or bad, for it depends…way it depends…

Alliance for a green revolution in Africa – funded by bill and Melinda gates

Move on now to Rwanda. Here we won’t be talking about a specific crop BUT rather about the government of Rwanda’s overall orientation to agriculture.

Vision 2020: Rwanda Agricultural Reform

“A sustainable agricultural sector…where farming is seen as a business, rather than subsistence, activity. This will create a sector that uses its comparative advantage, for example in labor-intensive, high-value crops, to compete in open regional and international markets” –Rwanda Gov’t Report, 2010 cited in Huggins 2014

SOURCE: Bernstein, H. (2010). Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. VA: Fernwood Publishers.

FARMING

“what farmers do and have done through the millennia: cultivate the soil and raise livestock, or some combination of the two, typically within a system of established fields and pastures” (p. 62)

Typically local in scope

Embedded in simple divisions of labor

AGRICULTURE

Global in scope

Embedded in complex divisions of labor

Gov’t goal is to hasten this transition from FARMING to AGRICULTURE.

Want high productivity, want greater integration into markets, more use of improved planting materials.

Land constraint – so want to promote value added agriculture, highly branded crops.

*Govt of Rwanda aims to reduce number of people in ag sector from 90% to 50%

Agriculture Development Policy in Rwanda (2007 - )

“Chain Integration”: “the increasing connection of smallholder farming with upstream and downstream activities such as seed and fertilizer supply and the selling of crops to processors and traders”

“Upgrading”: “efforts to improve the quantity and quality of agricultural production”

Crop Intensification Program (2007 -)

Zoning

Improved seeds and fertilizer (subsidized or free)

Extension

Cooperative Formation

Each cooperative has a business plan to increase productivity, value added etc. Govt supports cooperative in realization of the plan.

Govt exercises influences on processors/purchasers to make sure farmers get fair price

Crop intensification program – 7 crops for regional specialization (maize, rice, wehat, beans, soybeans, irish potato, cassava) (huggins 2014)

*yields have doubled and in some cases tripled

“The Rwandan government is [attempting to bring about] a muscular and ambitious transformation of agrarian society into a diversity of production units formally named as cooperatives and integrated through contracts with businesses upstream and downstream of the farm.”

Facets of Rwanda’s Agrarian Strategy

“Productivist developmentalism”

“A concern with general well-being”

“a top-down statism which aims to reorder agrarian society”

Agriculture = Good

Increases productivity

Spurs economic growth

Reduces rural poverty

Offers link to market in remote, uneconomic areas

Agriculture = Bad

“Gov’ts agrarian strategy leads to differentiation”

Govt strategy is authoritarian

Again there are a couple lens through which can be viewed.

*good emphasize how it works through the smallholder instead of displacing as we saw in Ethopia and Tanzania last week

Critique of Gov’t of Rwanda Agrarian Policy

Control Grabbing: “the power to control land and other associated resources such as water to derive benefit from such control” (Borras et. al 2012 cited in Huggins 2014)

“Primary dynamic is transfer of control away from the smallholder petty commodity-producing farm households, towards state agencies”

Policy-making is a state driven affair; smallholder majority has little voice

Ex. Farmers can be fined for growing an unapproved crop outside of the zone

Ex. Cooperatives founded by elite and small farmers can be pressured to join

Ex. “Can we eat flowers?”

Market crops risky for subsistence farmers…

Harrison Response

Laissez-faire won’t work: peasants coming together to upgrade at their own initiative is “a pleasing political image” but won’t likely attract foreign investment or generate large-scale taking up of new crops and methods so if we want this outcome state intervention is inevitable

Peasants have complex attitudes toward the state, “a desire not to be imposed upon by the state and an anxiety that the state might leave them behind…and they might not get access to the benefits of ‘development’”

What do you think about this state-driven transition from farming to agriculture? Should peasants be left alone or do you think the government is right to pursuit this transition?

Aquaculture in the Global South: In Popular Perception

Industrial Narrative = Agriculture is Bad

Farmed fish consumption in the Global South is destined for Global North/elite

Degrades environment and does little to help those in GS

Industrial, input-intensive farms

Small-scale Narrative = Agriculture is Good

Low intensity small-scale fish farming contributes to food secure and producer incomes

Small-scale farms with minimal inputs

Decline in natural fisheries…

Third reading today considers the transition from farming to agriculture through the lens of aquaculture in the Global South

The Global Trade in Shrimp

Statistics: Infofish (L); Thai Frozen Food Association (F)

Shrimp is among the most globally traded of animal proteins. In America, we import the vast majority of the shrimp that we consume; whereas Thailand exports the majority of shrimp it produces.

Shrimp is part of an international trade in fresh fruits, vegetables and animal proteins that has grown enormously since the 1980s. The direction of the trade is largely from the Global South to the Global North.

This trade is often celebrated as it is purported to be beneficial for consumers in the Global North (who can acquire shrimp despite a decline in natural fisheries) and to producers in the Global South for the livelihoods that it creates.

Shrimp Consumed in US

Imported Domestic 0.92 0.08

Shrimp Farmed in Thailand

Exported Consumed Domestically 0.85 0.15

Aquaculture in GS in fact

Aquaculture produces range of low-moderate value fish

Aquaculture has driven down the price of fish making it more affordable

Urban food security in GS a huge concern…gets fish to the market

Most fish produced by the “missing middle” – commercially-oriented farmers who use some inputs to produce fish for domestic markets

Key Considerations

Consideration of question of transition from ‘farming to agriculture’ must be informed by empirics

Consideration of question of transition from ‘farming’ to ‘agriculture’ must consider the needs of urban consumers

Short piece, so parts we can’t consider:

-what are implications of these ‘middle-scale’ for rural neighbors…leading to differentiation and/or dispossession -should urban consumers be eating fish (describes this in some detail in article…or is there a better way to feed urban consumers?)

-are middle-scale farms best way to grow fish…

Agriculture = Good

World Bank

Spurs economic growth

Reduces rural poverty

Offers link to market in remote, uneconomic areas

Agriculture = Bad

NGOs

Corporate agriculture will dispossess small farmers of land/livelihood/means of social reproduction

Weakens the food security of the most vulnerable actors

Thoughts at end of class?

Transition from farming to agriculture. Is it good? Is it bad? Or do you want to say like the authors today that is nuanced.,,,

SOURCE: Bernstein, H. (2010). Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. VA: Fernwood Publishers.

RETURN TO FARMING

“what farmers do and have done through the millennia: cultivate the soil and raise livestock, or some combination of the two, typically within a system of established fields and pastures” (p. 62)

Typically local in scope

Embedded in simple divisions of labor

AGRICULTURE OTHERWISE

Global in scope

Embedded in complex divisions of labor

Next week we consider a return to farming