A Story of Post‐Fordist Exploitation: Financialization and Small‐Scale Maize Farmers in Turkey

Abstract

AbstractAfter the implementation of economic restructuring policies in Turkish agriculture, farming communities experienced significant changes in the patterns of agricultural production over the last decade. The dramatic shift from labor‐intensive field crops to maize farming represents such a change, particularly for small‐scale farmers, since high‐yield maize farming is driven by private agrifood corporate demand. In this article, I explore how this shift influences the relations of production in agriculture through a commodity‐system analysis of the maize sector in Turkey. Through the qualitative analysis of the semistructured in‐depth interviews and secondary data, I find that small‐scale farmers are able to participate in maize farming, even as their dependence on production credits to participate in industrial maize farming crucially reduces their bargaining power with private industry. I argue that the traditional Marxist approach, accumulation by dispossession, is not sufficient to explain the participation of small‐scale farmers. Instead, I propose a new concept, entrepreneurial exploitation, to describe the participation of small‐scale investors in the post‐Fordist regime. Thereby, I point to the important role of expansion of credit markets as a consequence of financialization.