New markets, old struggles: Large and small farmers in the export agriculture of coastal Peru

Abstract

Although the output of high-value crops in Peru has increased during the era of ‘globalization’, producers still tend to contextualize this development in relation to the 1969 agrarian reform. Considered here is how large and small farmers in the Cañete region perceive the changes that have occurred in agriculture since a generation ago, with particular reference to market competition and the implications of the new economic conditions for environmental sustainability. Despite the fact that farmers located at each end of the rural hierarchy experience the economic impact of globalization differently, small cultivators exporting their produce to the international market being particularly vulnerable to its laissez faire regime, they nevertheless share a common belief in the importance of agriculture for the well-being of the nation. The latter, it is suggested, is a discourse that reproduces much of the ideology associated historically with the agrarian and foundation myths.