Agrarian Change Research Articles

Tractors, states, markets and agrarian change in Africa

ABSTRACT Mechanisation has made a comeback to agricultural policy in Africa, encouraging scholars to revisit seminal literature on induced innovation. Recent studies emphasise the role for markets in addressing Africa’s mechanisation gaps and warn about past government failures to be avoided. The trust in the ability of markets to offer optimal solutions is debatable. Markets are shaped, as states are, by the interests of their most powerful players. A history-informed analysis of mechanisation and agrarian change in Africa sheds light onto how states and markets are co-constituted. The much-hyped rise in demand of tractors by medium-scale farmers can be linked back to earlier government intervention. And today’s public-private partnerships for mechanisation services illustrate how private interests shape public policy. Top-down tractor programmes continue to largely bypass smallholder farmers, though some are able to benefit. Though tractors are only one element of a complex story of agrarian change in Africa, they illustrate the enduring process of commodification of land, farming and agrarian relations that benefits the few and subjugates the many.

Fighting change: Interactive pressures, gender, and livelihood transformations in a contested region of the Colombian Caribbean

Livelihood insecurity emerges from the interaction of factors and pressures affecting people’s ability to cope with change. Yet, the effects of interactive stressors on the dynamic nature of livelihoods and their underlying gendered relationships are still unexplored. We evaluated a case study in Maria La Baja, a municipality in the Colombian Caribbean severely affected by the Colombian armed conflict and oil palm expansion. With the pacification of the conflict in the late 2000s, traditional inhabitants aimed to reconstruct their livelihoods amidst a context of reduced access to resources. We assessed how local livelihood strategies have been affected by the interplay of socio-political distress, agrarian change, agrobiodiversity loss, seasonality, and unequal access to resources for men and women. We conducted surveys and interviews to 1) characterize local livelihoods and their transformations; 2) evaluate current livelihood insecurity and pressures; and 3) assess whether disruptions in local livelihoods have equally affected men and women, and influenced their mechanisms to cope with change. Current livelihoods in Maria La Baja have been largely characterized by months with water, crop and income scarcity. These effects have been shaped by the reduced access to resources and social control that resulted from the armed conflict and oil palm expansion. Such pressures also induced the spatial segregation of women. Diversification of livelihood activities was a coping strategy to overcome the effects of resource scarcity. Despite segregation by gender, diversification was greatly conducted by women. Women-led diversification may become more important in contexts of increasing socio-ecological change.

Masters of the countryside and their enemies: Class dynamics of agrarian change in rural Java

AbstractThis paper scrutinizes class dynamics of agrarian change in rural Java. Updating the literature of agrarian change on the island in the 21st century, the study shows how the agrarian ruling class (capitalist farmers and landlords) and classes of labour in contemporary rural Java negotiate over wages and working conditions, mediated by a local institution called a “village meeting.” Apart from dominating the agrarian landscape, capitalist farmers and landlords also occupy powerful positions in non‐agricultural spheres of village life and make themselves “the masters of the countryside.” The discussion on the struggle between the masters of the countryside and their enemies in the classes of labour offers a new understanding of how agricultural wages and working conditions are adjusted in Java. Our study of a Javanese village also highlights the importance of exploring the complexity of class location to understand the nature of class relations. Looking at both class location and class relations in a single analysis offers a fuller understanding of the class dynamics of agrarian change.

Critical junctures, agrarian change, and the (re)production of vulnerability in a marginalised Indigenous society

• Many societies globally and throughout Papua New Guinea have experienced significant capitalist-driven agrarian change. • The Bedamuni have remained marginal to the extractive industry-led development seen throughout the country. • The Bedamuni have experienced (non-capitalist) agrarian change, which has increased their socioecological vulnerability. • I explore key historical and contemporary critical junctures and show how vulnerability has been (re)produced over time. • I problematise essentialist, universal narratives about the drivers of vulnerability in marginalised Indigenous societies. Marginalised agrarian societies are suggested to be the most vulnerable to environmental hazards and other perturbations. There are competing explanations for this phenomenon, which include: a lack of development, global environmental change, and the development process itself, or capitalism more specifically. All three causal arguments are compelling, but typically offer only partial explanations. With most societies experiencing significant capitalist-driven agrarian change over the last few centuries (e.g., depeasantisation, dispossession, proletarianisation), the critical agrarian change literature is biased towards these studies. Here I explore one of the most marginalised societies in Papua New Guinea, the Bedamuni People of Western Province. After 60 years of Western contact, at the time of fieldwork (2018), they remained shifting horticulturalist who had not been disposed of their land, had no commodity production and very limited opportunities for paid work. By exploring agrarian change within Bedamuni society since first Western contact (1962) and the arrival of missionaries (1968), and employing the concept of critical junctures, I critically unpack some of the root causes of heightened socioecological vulnerability. In the Bedamuni case study, and likely in many other societies, it is not just lack of development, environmental change, or the development process itself, it is all these things, and more, concomitantly. With the resource and commodity frontier almost upon them, and many Bedamuni desiring it to come, it is critical to understand the root causes of growing hunger. I argue that the development approach being driven by powerful actors will not meaningfully address this crisis and, in fact, may exacerbate the processes and factors that have produced heightened socioecological vulnerability. This paper problematises essentialist, universal narratives about the drivers of vulnerability in marginalised Indigenous societies in the global South. Whilst universal explanations can be insightful, we must not forget the centrality and specificity of space and place in development research.

Dependent convenience: Migration, agrarian change, and socioecological sustainability in Dakshinkali, Nepal

Rural transformation in Nepal is characterized by accelerating out‐migration, along with shifting aspirations for becoming “developed” or “modern,” which are associated with urban and foreign infrastructure and consumption. In this context, I examine how convenience practices and technologies interact with the social processes of migration and how they together impact people's life choices and produce socioenvironmental and health consequences. Using the term dependent convenience, I argue that “dependency” and “convenience” are two sides of the same coin. Dependent convenience operates by (a) shifting tastes and norms across generations, (b) perpetuating reliance on labor out‐migration and undermining subsistence production, and (c) producing new environmental and health consequences, the resolution of which is in turn dependent on a range of other yet‐to‐be‐developed supporting infrastructure. The study shows that the development of market economy and convenience technologies drives entangled, path‐dependent processes that ultimately undermine socioenvironmental sustainability. A focus on convenience offers a new perspective to illustrate the entanglement of social, economic, technological, and ecological processes in rural Nepal. The study aims to validate or reaffirm the necessity of grassroots interventions for reorienting development toward meaningfully addressing local needs and sustainability.

Risk Perception and Lowland Rice Farming Change in Savannakhet Province, Southern Laos

Abstract Lowland rice cultivation is changing in southern Laos. A formalised survey and informal interviews in the lowlands of Savannakhet Province indicate that while some farmers still raise water buffaloes, farmers now mainly use hand-held mechanised ploughs to till their fields. More chemical fertilisers are being used, and improved seed varieties have become dominant, with native varieties disappearing. Due to these changes, rice yields have increased substantially, with many more farmers selling surplus rice. The trade-offs are, however, not simple. Through applying the lens of risk perception, this article presents data about how lowland rice farming—the main occupation for rural people in Savannakhet Province—has changed over the last twenty years, critically assessing how farmers perceive and act upon risk during this time of rapid agrarian change.

Twenty-five years under the wind turbines in La Venta, Mexico: social difference, land control and agrarian change

ABSTRACT As wind energy investments expand across rural areas, unique class dynamics and accumulation patterns result from this industry. The ejido La Venta town has hosted wind farms since 1994, allowing us to analyse the effects of wind power on patterns of social difference, land control and agrarian change. By drawing on agricultural censuses and on 40 interviews with landowners, this paper argues that wind energy investments shift patterns of land control, through fostering land-based incomes, over the long term. The result is enhanced social differentiation benefitting landowners with more than 20 hectares and pauperising those with small tracts of land.

The Different Existing Patterns of Landholding System that Determine the Mode of Agrarian Change: A Case Study of Tangkhul Nagas

Abstract: This paper focuses on the way tribal communities conceptualised the importance of land, and the different type of landholding pattern system that has affected this agricultural community. There are various intricacies involved in defining the ownership of land: It includes who should own the land and to whom the land should be given out in the form of leasing out for a cultivation purpose? For example, the so called “clan land” should be confined to the clan not outside. This paper, therefore, is an attempt to look at various customs and rituals which have an influence upon the various kinds of landholding ownership system and to make a specific case study of Tangkhul Nagas, situated in the Ukhrul district of Manipur, Northeast India. Keywords: Agricultural community, private land, clan land, community land, modernity, Christianity

Trouble and strife: demographic shocks, agrarian change and marriage in Portuguese Timor

ABSTRACT Marital exchange between origin ‘houses’ is central to Timorese narratives and has been a central concern of anthropological study of Portuguese Timor and independent Timor-Leste. This article challenges the notion of stable patterns of marital exchange between named houses across time. Drawing on data from the colonial census, this paper finds a severe imbalance in the sex ratio during the first half of the twentieth century. Starting from subsistence agriculture, demographic shocks, the head tax and the introduction of forced coffee cultivation, the paper identifies the neglect and mistreatment of females, inflationary pressures on the bride price, increasing polygamous marriage and significant maternal mortality as key causal mechanisms that led to a highly imbalanced sex ratio. These dynamics impacted the age of marriage for men and women, and resulted in a sharp increase in the number of men who were unable to marry.

Seeing the Urban from the Agrarian: Emerging Forms of Agrarian Urbanization in India

Conventionally, the city has been the dominant conceptual basis for understanding urban processes. The rural, on the other hand, is assumed to be external to the city, which is supposedly subsumed by the global forces of capitalist urbanization. Such a conceptualization underestimates the complex ways in which the rural, with its distinct agrarian dynamics of land, labor and capital, is significant in understanding the processes of urbanization that are anchored in geographies beyond the city. Using the framework of “agrarian urbanism” (Gururani 2019), this paper focuses on a small town, Patran, located in the Patiala district of Punjab and argues that contemporary processes of urbanization are deeply entrenched in the rural and its agrarian dynamics of land and caste. By focusing on agrarian changes that were driven by colonial policies of land rights and ownership, and state-led agrarian development strategies in post-independent India, this paper argues that instead of assimilating the rural, urbanization in predominantly agricultural contexts both mirrors and differs from the old forms of agrarian relations and leads to the coproduction of the rural, albeit in new ways.

Secondary Forests and Agrarian Transitions: Insights from Nepal and Peru

We provide an analytical contrast of the dynamics of secondary forest regeneration in Nepal and Peru framed by a set of common themes: land access, boundaries, territories, and rights, seemingly more secure in Nepal than Peru; processes of agrarian change and their consequences for forest-agriculture interactions and the role of secondary forest in the landscape, more marked in Peru, where San Martín is experiencing apparent agricultural intensification, than in Nepal; and finally processes of social differentiation that have consequences for different social groups, livelihood construction and their engagement with trees, common to both countries. These themes address the broader issue of the necessary conditions for secondary forest regeneration and the extent to which the rights and livelihood benefits of those actively managing it are secured.

Reversing Channels and Unsettling Binaries: Rethinking Migration and Agrarian Change under Expanded Border and Immigration Enforcement

Unauthorized migration under global regimes of border and immigration enforcement has become more risky and costly than ever. Despite the increasing challenges of reaching, remaining in, and remitting from destination countries, scholarship exploring the implications of migration for agricultural and environmental change in migrant-sending regions has largely overlooked the prevalent experiences and consequences of “failed” migration. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Central America with deportees, this paper demonstrates how contemporary migration at times reverses the “channels” of agrarian change in migrant-sending regions: instead of driving remittance inflow and labor loss, migration under contemporary enforcement can result in debt and asset dispossession, increased vulnerability, and heightened labor exploitation. Diverse migration outcomes under expanded enforcement also reveal a need to move beyond the analytical binary that emphasizes differentiations between migrant and non-migrant groups while overlooking the profound socioeconomic unevenness experienced among migrants themselves. With grounding in critical agrarian studies, feminist geographies, and emerging political ecologies of migration, this paper argues that increased attention to the highly dynamic and diverse lived experiences of migration under expanded enforcement stands to enhance our understanding of the multiple ways in which contemporary out-migration shapes livelihoods and landscapes in migrant-sending regions.

The subversive practice of counting bodies: Documenting violence and conflict in rural Brazil

AbstractThis paper appraises Pastoral Land Commission's (CPT) practice of documenting the violence and conflict that has taken place in the Brazilian countryside since 1975. Based on 10 interviews with CPT National members and other primary sources, the paper conceptually explores the organisations' subversive practice of compiling and publishing data on this type of violence, hence producing emancipatory knowledge that supports progressive agrarian change. Although the state benefits from having such knowledge obscured, CPT's efforts shine a light on conflicts in the countryside and frame them as such. Documenting as a technology of resistance has been crucial for Brazilian social movements and scholar‐activists and has significant potential for reproduction elsewhere.

‘Murderous energy’ in Oaxaca, Mexico: wind factories, territorial struggle and social warfare

ABSTRACT This article examines the struggle against the new Électricité de France (EDF) wind park, Gunaa Sicarú, in Unión Hidalgo (UH), Mexico. Foregrounding Indigenous land defense, the article refers to wind energy as ‘wind factories’ to discuss agrarian change in the region. Revealing the counterinsurgency colonial model as a foundational approach to extractive development, the article argues that the distribution of money, Sicarios (hitmen) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are instrumental to engineering ‘social acceptance’. Moreover, the liberalism underlining NGOs, if not careful, advances processes of infrastructural colonization and, consequently, wider trajectories of (neo)colonialism.

Who owns the mud? Valuable leftovers, sociotechnical innovation and changing relations of production in artisanal gold mining (Burkina Faso)

AbstractThe expansion of artisanal gold mining has contributed to agrarian change in most of the global South—including West Africa: the sector offers interesting examples of technological and socio‐economic change, reflecting broader dynamics in the political economy of mining. In this article, we rely on our multisited ethnography to show how innovations in gold processing—particularly, the shift from mercury‐based to cyanide‐based techniques—reconfigured power relations and organizational patterns in the artisanal mining sector in Burkina Faso. We show that, in the context of structural transformations and pressure from powerful actors, the mechanisms of value creation, the definition of property rights and the relations of production remained open for negotiation and redefinition. Bringing attention to new scenarios opened by the shift to cyanide for processing gold—a transformative factor in many gold mining areas across the world—our analysis contributes to a broader reflection on the nexus between the trajectories of sociotechnical innovation and the ongoing power struggles in the informal economies of resource extraction.

Entanglements of agrobiodiversity-food amid cascading migration, coca conflicts, and water development (Bolivia, 1990–2013)

This study examines agrobiodiversity production and consumption among indigenous people and smallholders engaged with cascading migration, coca, and water resource changes. Addressing the questions if and how agrobiodiversity is viable amid intensifying extra-local influences, it combines the theorization of a pathway that has emerged via infrastructure entanglements and the extended case study of local utilization practices. The theoretical orientation integrates key elements of political ecology and social-ecological systems. We undertook surveys, interviews, and ethnographic participant observation in 10 communities and villages of Cochabamba, Bolivia, between 1990 and 2013. Results show how agrobiodiversity was utilized at moderate-high levels in the land and water systems, foods, and other uses of indigenous peasants and smallholder farmers in the 1990–2013 period even as certain minor crops were significantly reduced. Moreover, the results reveal how agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods have functioned in production and consumption amid the infrastructure entanglements of migration, roads, and irrigation. Embeddedness as both quotidian resource capacities and contingent sociocultural symbols was hinged to agrarian change in these accelerated entanglements. Mobilities of both meaning and people in recent infrastructure entanglement is characteristic of the unfolding utilization of agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods. Social power in the complex contours of accelerated entanglement have furnished meanings ranging from the resistance politics of indigenous people and smallholders to the purposeful agendas of more powerful groups. The conclusion highlights how dynamic agrobiodiversity utilization has emerged via the pathway of indigenous people and smallholders who are engaged in cascading, extra-local entanglements.

On- and non-farm adaptation in Senegal: understanding differentiation and drivers of farmer strategies

ABSTRACT Rainfed farmers in Sudano-Sahelian West Africa have long adapted to variable growing conditions. Today, in response to intersecting pressures from climate change, soil fertility loss, and socioeconomic change associated with globalization, these farmers are working to build more resilient livelihood systems. This study examines farmers' perceptions of environmental change and socioeconomic transition in Senegal and the drivers and constraints on their adaptive responses, with particular attention to the interplay of on- and non-farm livelihood strategies amid concerns about changing weather. Semi-structured interviews with 47 farmers provide insight into individual lived experiences while surveys and multinomial regression drawing data from approximately 500 farmers point to broader patterns in perceptions and adaptive strategies. The findings indicate that most Senegalese farmers perceive substantial environmental change that is amplifying ongoing processes of agrarian change, increasing reliance on non-farm livelihoods and youth migration in particular. While the most resource-constrained farmers rely primarily on prayer—likely an expression of limited alternative strategies—those most concerned about weather changes turn to diversified livelihood strategies. This study illustrates an evolving relationship between farmers and non-farm work amid environmental and socioeconomic change in rural Africa, with implications for development initiatives aimed at supporting farmer adaptation to climate change.

Humanising agricultural extension: A review

• Agricultural extension has struggled to account for socio-political factors. • Power is an unavoidable essence of agricultural extension. • The rendering of power, place, and people inhibits effective agricultural extension. • Expert extensionists have the power to humanise agricultural extension. Agricultural extension is booming. This interest is critical in the context of numerous pressing issues linked to agrarian change and rural development. Because of its importance, extension has attracted significant critique for its persistent exclusion of social and political factors. In this light, the history of extension can be thought of as a paradigm composed of approaches aimed at increasing agricultural production through the transfer of technologies from experts to farmers, and a series of criticisms of technology transfer as hampered by neglect of socio-political factors, a process labelled ‘rendering technical’. By reviewing criticisms of extension for its rendering of socio-political factors, we account for the rendering of power, place, and people. Equally important, we offer examples that consolidate critiques in order to open the possibility that humanized extension may more successfully support farmers. Our review is an effort to engage extensionists in order to speak about power to those who attempt to speak truth to power.

Revisiting agrarian questions of capital: examining diversification by capitalist farmers in Punjab, India

While economic diversification by capitalist farmers in India is a commonly accepted fact, it is rarely analysed through the lens of agrarian questions of capital. This paper argues that questions about the movement and transformation of agrarian capital continue to be significant in understanding contemporary processes of agrarian change and rural development. However, these need to be studied by looking beyond the agrarian transition debate in contexts where agrarian capitalism has consolidated itself and non-agricultural capitalist development is not fuelled by agrarian capital. Using the case of the state of Punjab and drawing on intensive field research, the paper examines a broad spectrum of non-farm investments and activities of large capitalist farmers, including agriculture-based business, non-agricultural business, education-based diversification and international migration. It shows that both industrial investments and mobility through education have been limited. International migration is a preferred, but also risky, channel for the utilisation of agrarian surplus. The analysis takes seriously experiences of failure of non-agricultural businesses, resulting in the circulation of agrarian capital across the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. This both further strains accumulation within agriculture and reveals the limits to productive investment in the non-agricultural economy imposed by historically specific social, political and economic conditions.

Gender and generation in rural politics in Myanmar: a missed space for (re)negotiation?

ABSTRACT The changes that have swept rural Myanmar, transforming landscapes and affecting livelihoods, have ignited rural politics and civil society and grassroot organizations' strategies to counter, resist, negotiate and adapt to these changes. Rural politics have centred on broad calls for agrarian and environmental rights and social justice that do not address women's rights, gender and generational justice explicitly. Based on fieldwork carried out in Myanmar's Taninthary region, and engagement with grassroots organizations, I examine how gender and generational power dynamics play out, transform and are transformed in processes of agrarian and environmental change and rural politics.