Group compositions: the politics of technology implemented in smallholder farming

Harro Maat

doi:10.2458/v25i1.22389

Abstract

This article investigates the connection between performance, group, and society. The argument is that group formation around particular farm operations and the details of the activities they engage in are an expression of the preferred way of technology implementation. The argument is developed using Paul Richards' notion of agriculture as performance. Two cases are presented. The first is the composition of a spraying team for weed control in smallholder oil palm production in Sumatra, connected to a global agreement on sustainable oil palm production, known as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The second case is about a team of women transplanting young rice seedlings on prepared paddy fields in a village in Uttarakhand, India. A new way of rice transplanting was introduced by a local non-governmental organization, known as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). The analysis shows that group performances provide essential information about how introduced plans, regulations and material designs are reworked and turned into meaningful and effective changes to agricultural practices. The article concludes that these activities are not merely technical adjustments but in themselves express arguments about the preferred way of organising farming, farm labor, and payments. Performing groups thus exert a form of bargaining power against development actors.Keywords: Group performance, smallholder farming, technology transfer, political acts

Highlights

This article addresses the crucial role of group activity in agriculture
The key task we focus on is to transplant very young seedlings, of about 8-15 days old, in a grid pattern specified of 25 by 25 centimetres
The two cases presented, independent as they are, show a very similar pattern of rearrangements made to tasks and group formation

Summary

Introduction

This article addresses the crucial role of group activity in agriculture. Stressing the importance of collectives and groups in agriculture seems to state the obvious. The argument developed here is that group formation and group confirmation through shared activities is an important addition to existing notions of collective action in rural development and the powers at play in agricultural change. Musicians interact with the stage and scenery in which they perform, including anticipating and reacting to the audience These interactions together result in what Tim Ingold (1993: 160) called "the achievement of resonance." A. performance, more generally understood as a shared operational practice, constitutes the collective. The first case is about a group of workers in a cooperative smallholder oil palm scheme in Sumatra, Indonesia and in the second case involves following a team of rice farmers in Uttarakhand, India These two cases are presented to show some of the common patterns emerging in group performances in different environments and in response to very different kinds of introduced changes to these practices. The specific tasks presented here, as performed by the two different groups, are both part of a wider set of tasks, fully presented and analysed in the two mentioned thesis reports

The social and technical interaction of performing groups

Methods

Spraying teams for sustainable oil palm production

Transplanting rice under SRI

Findings

Discussion and conclusion