Abstract
In the Andapa region of northeast Madagascar, smallholders cultivating swidden hill rice (tavy) for subsistence are pressing against neighboring nature reserves. A dominant policy approach to reducing this pressure requires that smallholders abandon tavy and purchase rice from proceeds obtained from their environmentally sustainable commercial crops, vanilla and coffee. Economic liberalization policies have succeeded in stimulating the expansion of these commercial crops, but have failed to reduce tavy production. We ask why this dual (subsistence and commercial) production system persists. We test two explanatory views: that either market imperfections deny farmers full entry into the market, or that internal production goals or socio-cultural norms create barriers to full market participation. Results support the latter view, although not for reasons that have been associated with this view in past studies. We propose a new factor that may serve as a barrier to full-market immersion among Andapa tavy farmers, the social relations of property.
Highlights
Smallholder farmers in the Andapa Region of northeast Madagascar (Fig. 1) practice a dual production system involving slash-and-burn hill rice and irrigated paddy rice for subsistence and vanilla and coffee for the market
Farmers are encouraged to shift from tavy to paddy – a pathway that does not require giving up subsistence production (Messerli 2000; IFAD 2012)
Do Andapa farmers maintain self-provisioning because the rewards from producing coffee and vanilla are inadequate to support full immersion or because they are constrained from responding to market signals?
Summary
Smallholder farmers in the Andapa Region of northeast Madagascar (Fig. 1) practice a dual production system involving slash-and-burn hill rice (tavy) and irrigated paddy rice for subsistence and vanilla and coffee for the market. In the late 1800s, French and Reunionese colonial settlers established coffee and vanilla plantations in the sparselypopulated Andapa Valley, drawing in Malagasy immigrant labor dominated by the Tsimihety ethnic group (Fig. 1) (Neuvy 1989) These workers soon quit, claimed land in the surrounding foothills, and adopted the dual production system that remains today (Cabanes 1982). Smallholders in the irrigable Andapa Valley proper (Fig. 1) eventually shifted their commercial sector into paddy, becoming a Brice bowl^ for northeast Madagascar Those in the surrounding foothills (the subject of this study) maintained coffee and vanilla production (Neuvy 1989). Four farm family types are recognized: Type 1, land rich and high comm.; Type 2, land poor and high comm.; Type 3, land rich and low comm.; and Type 4, land poor and low comm. (Table 2; Fig. 3)
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