Making agro-export entrepreneurs out of Campesinos: the role of water policy reform, agricultural development initiatives, and the specter of climate change in reshaping agricultural systems in Piura, Peru

Abstract

To increase agricultural exports across the Global South, countries are seeking to transform agrarian landscapes and the nature of campesino or smallholder agriculture. These agricultural reforms, however, do not exist in isolation. They work in conjunction with water policy reform to reshape agricultural systems and the people who manage these landscapes. While there has been significant research on agrarian change under neoliberal reform, few scholars have conducted empirical studies that examine how agricultural policy leverages water policy reform to generate changes across agricultural landscapes. Drawing on the case study of the Piura River basin in Northern Peru, this paper first explores how the IWRM inspired 2009 Water Resources Law furthers the state's agricultural development priorities by shifting water toward agro-export production. Secondly, this study demonstrates how climate change is being discursively mobilized as an emerging driver of water scarcity to legitimize these water reallocations. Thirdly, this case highlights how these water reallocations work in concert with the reinstatement of targeted agricultural support programs that seek to transform smallholder farmers into “agro-export entrepreneurs” but with meaningful exclusions. This study contributes to the limited scholarship on the 2009 Water Resources Law in Peru and also raises broader questions regarding how IWRM water management, climate change adaptation discourse, and agricultural development policy collectively promote the globalization of smallholder agriculture.