Agrarian Frontier Research Articles

Motofish and Trashfish: Food values and rifts at the agrarian frontier

At the resource frontier of Prey Lang Forest in Cambodia, a new food regime marks multiple rifts in the social fabric. As the forest gives way to rural road development, migrant incursions, and cash cropping, long-term residents lament the paucity of available food. At the same time, new migrants suggest that there is now more food than ever. Based on how food is defined, we find one food, motofish, that emerged as a significant semiotic sign. It is a fish, regardless of species, that is farm-raised and carried from the market to the village by motorbike. It is opposed to a real fish that grows by itself in a river or stream. Long-term Kuy and Khmer residents of the forest see the fish as a sign of destruction and loss, because there are so few fish in the rivers and streams. New migrants see motofish as part of a new abundance coming to this remote corner of the world where there used to be no food. This abundance is facilitated by Cambodia's growing fish farming industry, fed by wild-harvested 'trashfish' and subsidized soy pellets. Motofish is more than a sign of gastropolitics, as it marks a rift in the semiotic landscape through which individual and collective worlds emerge. We use this worldmaking fish to launch a discussion of both the epistemic and metabolic rifts of agrarian transformation and how these rifts are interpreted by different actors in the same landscape: One that recognizes the metabolic rift and the other that carries with them its epistemic cleansing.

Did it pay to be a pioneer? Wealth accumulation in a newly settled frontier society

AbstractEuropean settler colonies are often thought to have been characterised by a continued expansion of the landed frontier, which impacted the distribution of wealth across their settler populations. Hampered by a lack of data, few studies have been able to study this in depth. How does settlement timing affect wealth and wealth accumulation when frontier expansion is not a smooth, continuous process? Was it the case that pioneers reaped greater economic benefits from locating their farms on superior land, or would they be disadvantaged compared with later arrivals owing to limited infrastructure or greater risk of conflict with indigenous populations? In this paper, we use a unique dataset that allows us to analyse the link between time of arrival and wealth accumulation in a colonial agrarian frontier society: the Graaff‐Reinet district in South Africa's Cape Colony between 1786 and 1850. We find that those who arrived early located their farms in the more climatologically suitable areas of the district and utilised their superior lands to accumulate wealth more quickly than latecomers. However, owing to institutional changes that favoured later British arrivals, we also show that the existence of an early‐arrival premium did not mean persistence in land ownership.

A narrative of suffering and soil: Swedish migration and settler colonialism in northeast Argentina

ABSTRACT This article examines the narrated memory of a Swedish settler colony in northeast Argentina. Recently, scholarly attention has turned to how migrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed to colonizing processes in the Americas as they established themselves on lands already inhabited by Indigenous Peoples. The settlement of Swedish migrants in Misiones is here regarded as part of a strategy of settler colonialism advocated by the Argentine state in order to extend the agrarian frontier further and thereby ‘civilise’ and secure the nation’s rural landscape through the presence of white settlers. From this perspective, the aim of the article is to understand how the historical macropolitical framework of settler colonialism in Argentina is interwoven in the collective and individual narratives of Swedish descendants in present-day Misiones. The article draws on ethnographic interviews and observations made in Misiones between 2017 and 2019. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 individuals along with walk-along observations at seven Swedish community sites. The article argues that a central narrative of memory among the descendants of Swedish settlers relies upon certain elements crucial to settler colonial societies. However, while this narrative structure is intrinsic to settler colonialism, it must also be analysed as part of a migration narrative. This article brings forth new empirical material from a site in Latin America where Swedish migration history has not previously been studied ethnographically. Further, it brings the study of migration, colonial settlement, and indigenous dispossession together through its analysis of a settler narrative in the particular context of settler colonial history of Misiones.

Land as an Intermittent Commodity: Ethnographic Insights from India’s Urban–Agrarian Frontiers

Drawing on their respective ethnographies of urbanisation in Gurgaon (now known as Gurugram) and thwarted industrialisation in Singur, the authors argue that plots of land owned by smallholders are intermittent commodities. Following Igor Kopytoff’s lead, they focus on commoditisation as a process and adopt a biographical approach to consider the social life of land. The article contends that individually owned plots potentially go in and out of circulation but never get fully commodified, nor do they remain fully non-commodified. With the rising speculative value of land, neither market price nor monetary compensation fully substitutes land ownership. Hence, the landholders express regret and even resentment on having to part with their land. The ambivalence speaks, in part, to the complex attributes of land and the relations of authority, distinction and status associated with it. To maintain their caste-based status, the landowners use land as leverage. They hold on to land or demand better compensation to reiterate the land–caste–power nexus spatially.

Agrarian Frontier Expansion and Conflicts over Labor

This article explores large-scale industrial agriculture and related conflicts over labor in Brazil. It does so through an analysis of the industrial transformation of the sugarcane sector in São Paulo state, a representative case of recent agricultural changes and their effects on wage workers, trade unions and their struggles.

Make bloom and let wither: Biopolitics of precision agriculture at the dawn of surveillance capitalism

Precision agriculture is an assemblage of data-driven agricultural technologies, discursively articulated as a clever gambit against climate-induced food insecurity. Agritech companies engage in data grabbing as an accumulation strategy and to influence farmers’ behaviors, opening new agrarian frontiers for surveillance capitalism. Wielding big data to manage and optimize species within food production systems becomes a biopolitical calculation of “make bloom and let wither,” with implications for the agrarian question of labor. Drawing on mixed methods fieldwork from South Dakota and Vermont, we document how different actors perform and contest agri-algorithmic subjectivities, producing novel terrains of food politics and neoliberal state-citizen relations.

After the Rice Frontier: Producing State and Ethnic Territory in Northwest Myanmar

ABSTRACT Scholarship on resource frontiers has often privileged moments of discovery and sites of spectacular infrastructure and extraction. Yet smallholders can alter socio-ecological landscapes in ways that structure spatial and political possibilities even after resource rushes wane. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research to illustrate how agrarian frontier histories shape contemporary ethnic and territorial boundary-making. In Kalay Valley, activists drew on the colonial principle of ethnic separation and aligned with a national turn towards territorialisation to successfully advocate for restoring the colonial boundary. But efforts at demarcation contrasted with historical practices of cultivating ambiguity on the rice frontier, spurring new forms of border work. I argue, first, that this case demonstrates a change in how land is governed in Myanmar – from a regime of cultivated ambiguity, towards one of negotiated delineation – and, second, that it underscores the need for greater attention to the ways in which agrarian frontier practices shape racialized territorialisation.

Tough Tradeoffs: Coca crops and agrarian alternatives in Colombia

This paper compares coca with mainstream agrarian economies in Colombia. It shows that the country's legal and illicit sectors share several fundamental characteristics and processes. Due to its very illegality, coca is endowed with positive characteristics that are not easily found elsewhere: it is a productive – even in the absence of basic public goods –, familial, labor intensive, smallholder agriculture, relatively resistant to monoculture. Furthermore, different processes of social change have mitigated some of the typical problems of agrarian frontiers linked to global markets. In turn, its illegal status also imposes extreme costs over peasants and other social sectors. On the one hand, due to coca producers can escape from the “reproductive squeeze” and extreme pattern of land concentration that affect other peasants; on the other, coca becomes an unending source of risk and distress. This contradiction puts peasants in front of very tough tradeoffs, which in turn demand a careful reconsideration of what “alternative” development can mean in the Colombian context.

The Making of a Pastureland Biome: American Scientists, Miracle Grasses and the Transformation of the Brazilian Cerrado

Abstract This article examines the history of leguminous grasses in the Brazilian Cerrado between the early 1950s and early 1970s. The westward expansion of the Brazilian agrarian frontier was a massive ecological transformation, propelled by a transnational process that relied on a series of actors beyond the national borders, most notably the Rockefeller-sponsored IRI research institute. However, as the article demonstrates, this epistemic transformation was also crucially complemented by the ecological potential of a set of leguminous grasses that gave an essential contribution to the ecological reconversion of the Brazilian Cerrado . These sturdy nitrogen-fixing species grew extensively - and mostly autonomously - on these arid territories, propelling agrarian development in the region. However, while the successful interaction between anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic actors led to successful techno-scientific and economic results, it also led to severe socio-environmental consequences.

Spices as the saviour? The complex vulnerabilities of three commodity crop booms and ethnic minority livelihoods in Yunnan's agrarian frontier

Commodity crops are redefining land use and rural smallholder livelihoods across Asia. These crops often have boom‐bust cycles with important implications for the drivers of farmer entry into and exit from particular cash crop opportunities. This paper offers a comparative analysis of the boom‐bust processes of three popular spice crops cultivated in Yunnan Province, southwest China. Drawing from agrarian frontiers and rural livelihoods literature, we disentangle the vulnerability contexts associated with black cardamom, cinnamon and star anise production, finding that farmers cultivating these spices face a combination of interlocking forms of vulnerability. Despite the monetary potential that each crop offered during its ‘boom’, the associated environmental, economic and political vulnerabilities caused most farmers to exit their production, responding with myriad on‐farm and off‐farm diversification strategies. Using a multi‐sited ethnographic approach, we draw on 52 in‐depth interviews with ethnic minority cultivators, spice traders and local government officials to untangle the complexities associated with cash crop production in this agrarian frontier, the interwoven vulnerabilities that result in their ‘busts’ and the coping and adaptation strategies that smallholder farmers employ. Our findings underline the importance of disaggregating farmer vulnerabilities and the need for more nuanced policy responses to adequately support small‐scale farmers.

A land full of opportunities? Agrarian frontiers, policy narratives and the political economy of peace in Colombia

In many post-war countries, the relative security brought to rural areas is construed by government officials and business actors as an opportunity for development. This is particularly true for marginal areas, where opportunities for economic development had previously been hindered by the threat of violence. This provides a favourable context for the construction of commodity frontiers. Through the case of Colombia, I show that one of the main challenges faced by frontier policy narratives amounts to differentiating wartime dispossession from peacetime legitimate accumulation. This poses intractable challenges to policymakers and business actors, as it fuels the contradictions between peace consolidation and post-war development.

¿Qué hay detrás del café? Transformación agrícola, mercado de tierras y sociedades comerciales en la producción cafetera del Valle del Cauca (1900-1930)

Este artículo busca examinar el crecimiento de la producción cafetera en Valle del Cauca entre 1900-1930. Este fenómeno será estudiado desde los factores que lo hicieron posible en el mercado interno, centrando su análisis en dos pilares claves: (i) la expansión de la frontera agraria a nivel comercial (mercado de tierra) y (ii) el papel desempeñado por las casas comerciales especializadas en las actividades de producción, procesamiento y exportación del grano. Los resultados de esta investigación señalan que cada uno de los cambios implementados a nivel regional repercutió en la modernización de la agricultura. Además, se muestra que la exportación de café ayudó a arraigar la conexión con el mercado mundial, lo que a su vez derivó en nuevas oportunidades económicas para los actores (productores, comercializadores y empresarios) al acceder a mercados, créditos, puertos y mercancías. Esta construcción fue posible gracias a la información consignada en las fuentes analizadas dentro del ámbito local y regional, como los protocolos notariales que permitieron detallar las transacciones que efectuaban los actores sobre la tierra y dentro del ámbito de los negocios comerciales, así como las relaciones de crédito existentes; además de la gran variedad de fuentes contemporáneas que entregarían datos sobre el mundo de la economía cafetera.

Integrating pattern-based modelling and political ecology in land-use change research: the case of Mexican dry tropics

ABSTRACT Agricultural and extractive frontiers experiment rapid landscape transformation. Land-Use Sciences and Political Ecology are complementary approaches for analysing how landscape transformations are related to biophysical conditions, and socioeconomic, cultural and political processes developed at global, national and local scales. This study examines such relationships in a long-standing agrarian and resource frontier in southern Mexico for the 1986–2015 period. We combine insights from: (1) a quantitative land use/land cover change pattern-based model, involving a weights of evidence and cellular automata simulations, and (2) a qualitative content analysis of literature and of local actors’ perspectives. Two grand frontier processes have developed in this region: NAFTA-related agrarian transition toward intensification and the establishment of wind farms. Both were triggered by global forces and new forms of land and resources use, but mediated by national-to-local ecological, socioeconomic and political processes, producing particular landscape transformations.

The Politics of Lineage: Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier

This paper traces the shifting loci of community in rural Haryana (“the Delhi frontier”) in the early nineteenth century, focusing particularly upon caste and kinship. It suggests that categories later identified by bureaucrats and scholars as “caste” and “tribe” in this region were in fact simply broad ethnic labels that represented only very abstract communities. It will further demonstrate that in this mobile agrarian frontier, kinship categories (such as the clan) had historically crystallized around the control of land. By implication, kinship was a vehicle of resource consolidation, whose boundaries were determined at least in part by this pragmatic consideration. An appreciation of the political dimension of kinship brings complexity to our understanding of rural politics, highlighting that the “village community” was far from being a historically stable polity.

Translating Tierra Baldía: Land, Landscape, and the Becoming of Frontier Terrain in Northwestern Ecuador

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the creation of a remote parish in the Intag region of northwestern Ecuador in 1940 as a way to explore the articulation and enactment of tierra baldía (unclaimed land) in twentieth century Ecuador. I highlight how discourses of tierra baldía factored into the symbolic transformation of the Intag region from a remote backwater to a prized agrarian frontier, how spectres of Intag’s resource potential animated a conflict between neighbouring counties, and how farmers in Intag navigated this dispute in the process of settling these terrains prior to parish formation. In moving between these registers, I approach tierra baldía as both land and landscape, drawing attention to practices of resource translation and the assorted alignments and contingences that they promote and depend upon.

Avance de la frontera agraria moderna y difusión de nuevos sistemas técnicos. La creación y reestructuración de infraestructuras de transporte y almacenamiento de granos en el norte cordobés

The territorial expansion of the agribusiness productive model marked the opening of so-called modern agrarian frontiers in Argentina at the end of the 20th century. It is a complex process of spatial transformation that was mainly expressed in the country through the spread of soybean cultivation, which extended its surface from 5 to 20 million hectares between 1990 and 2015. The present article aims to make a contribution to the study of the characteristics adopted by this phenomenon, taking as reference the case of the northern departments of the province of Cordoba (Rio Seco, Sobremonte and Tulumba) during that period. It focusses on the diffusion of new technical systems, considering the creation and restructuring of transport and storage infrastructures in the study area. It analyzes a set of technical objects that make viable -and evidence- the concretion of the project of occupation and use of the space of the large agroindustrial companies, whose main purpose is to ensure a greater movement and fluidity for the export of agricultural commodities.

From contested to ‘green’ frontiers in the Amazon? A long-term analysis of São Félix do Xingu, Brazil

The Amazonian frontier, shaped by developmentalist policies in the 1970s and 1980s and a socio-environmental response in the 1990s, has historically been a site of widespread violence and environmental destruction. After the imposition of new environmental governance measures in the mid-2000s, deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon dropped to historic lows. Many analyses of this ‘greening’ of Amazonia operate within a limited historical perspective that obscures complex and still-evolving contestation among diverse actors and projects. The long-term evolution of the frontier is illustrated dramatically in the municipality of São Félix do Xingu (São Félix). Emerging as a ‘contested frontier’ in the 1970s, São Félix in the early 2000s lost over 1000 km2 of forest annually, but since the mid-2000s, the municipality has entered a period of ‘greening’. This contribution deploys a historical political ecology framework to analyse how decades of agrarian frontier change and land conflicts among actors on the ground interacted with shifting national policy debates. Nearly a half-decade of field research in São Félix is combined with data from a 2014 field ‘revisit’ to situate the current ‘greening’ of policy and discourse within the longer term history of frontier development, revealing positive social and environmental developments and persistent contradictions and uncertainties.

Segurança alimentar em assentamentos com ênfase ambiental:

Este trabalho é uma análise da segurança alimentar de agricultores familiares, em uma região de “fronteira agrária” na Amazônia. A pesquisa foi realizada no assentamento do PDS Virola Jatobá, município de Anapu, Pará. Nessa modalidade de assentamento, os agricultores utilizam as áreas de uso alternativo com atividades agropecuárias e as áreas de reserva legal com o extrativismo e manejo florestal comunitário. Realizaram-se 32 entrevistas e aplicação de 75 questionários socioeconômicos nas unidades de produção familiar com o objetivo de se identificar os valores de produção, consumo e renda, bem como compreender as transformações socioprodutivas. Os resultados da pesquisa permitiram a elaboração de uma tipologia, a partir da atividade preponderante na geração de renda, apontando para mudanças não apenas nas práticas tradicionais de produção em função das questões ambientais, mas também sobre o próprio modelo de produção agrícola, com diferentes estratégias na formação de renda.

Jaime Jaramillo Uribe (1917–2015)

Jaime Jaramillo Uribe (1917–2015)

The ecological-evolutionary theory, migration, settler colonialism, sociology of violence and the origins of ancient Israel

AbstractThis paper looks at the question of the origins of ancient Israel from the perspective of four social-scientific based approaches. These are the ecological-evolutionary theory developed by Gerhard Lenski, theories of migration and settler colonialism and a sociological approach to violence developed by Sinisa Malesevic. It shows how the four theories fit together well and provide a comparative framework for interpreting both biblical and archaeological data, rendering it plausible to see early Israel as a settler colonial agrarian frontier society that was considerably based on migration from outside and where violence played a significant part in the formation and development of that society.