Agrarian Transition Research Articles

Challenges of making a new farmer: a case study of Thailand’s Young Smart Farmer program

ABSTRACT In the recent years, there has been a global decline in the number of farmers contributing to the agrarian transition. Therefore, this study delves into the case study of Thailand's ‘Young Smart Farmer (YSF)’ program, designed to counteract the declining farmer population. The study seeks to elucidate the motivations behind individuals opting to become new farmers and the challenges they face. It revealed five primary motivations to embrace farming: profitability, well-being, traditional and cultural values, taking over the family business, and social influences. This study also identifies the current challenges encountered by Thai farmers, including issues related to agricultural production, marketing, assets, seasonality and unexpected shocks, and criticism. To improve the program’s effectiveness, this study recommends four key strategies: establishing knowledge certification linkages, refinement of workshops and training content, expanding farmer networks, and implementing policies aimed at nurturing new farming talent.

Conceptualising climate change vulnerability across the agrarian transition: The example of Egypt

In this study, we explore the relationship between Egypt's agrarian transition and farmers’ perceptions of environmental risks and opportunities for climate change adaptation. Drawing from agrarian studies and rural development pathways in Egypt, we highlight structural challenges in addressing vulnerabilities of households in agrarian communities to environmental change. Our evidence comes from 350 landholders and agricultural labourers in rural Damietta, a governorate in the northeast of the Egyptian Nile Delta Region. We categorize households into three groups based on their reliance on agriculture for income, corresponding to different agrarian transition models. We find that vulnerabilities and capacities for climate change adaptation vary among these groups, with those heavily dependent on agriculture being the most vulnerable, despite having greater awareness of agricultural risks. They exhibit limited capacity to respond effectively – both in and ex situ, indicating a need for targeted support as environmental pressures increase due to climate change.

Dispossession after War: A Feminist Political Economy Perspective

“Post war” has been highlighted as an arena in which, under the banner of reconstruction, processes of accumulation by dispossession are often intensified. This conceptual article explores gaps in how “dispossession” is typically defined, to deepen understanding of the complex, gendered modalities that occur in post-war, when the population is already living in the wake of wartime land dispossession. Through an interdisciplinary feminist political economy and conflict studies lens, “dispossession” as a concept is interrogated beyond the original Marxist meaning of separation from the means of production via wholesale agrarian transition. The article argues that, in the long post-war “moment,” gendered dispossession might occur in three interrelated ways, all connected to wartime dispossession. The first is bodily dispossession which occurs through shifting forms of patriarchy. The second is dispossession manifesting within reconfigured social reproductive relations. The third is piecemeal dispossession, through the embedding of other capitalist relations, including lifetime debt. HIGHLIGHTS A feminist approach to dispossession reveals its less visible and its gendered dimensions. Conflict-related dispossession consists of more than mass land expulsion during war. In post-war, dispossession connects to both state and capitalist logics of accumulation. Dispossession can have different modes: it is an embodied process, occurs through social reproduction, and can happen covertly. A feminist re-conceptualization contributes to analyses of violence against women in war and post-war.

Trade‐offs and synergies between dimensions of well‐being among smallholder farmers in Savannakhet province, Lao PDR

AbstractAgrarian transition is often seen as a pathway towards sustainable development and increasing well‐being for rural households. However, empirical evidence on trade‐offs and synergies between different dimensions of well‐being as a result of agrarian transitions is lacking. We conducted a cross‐sectional survey of 360 households across 12 villages in Savannakhet province, Lao PDR. We find evidence of synergies across different farmer types and between all included well‐being dimensions; economic, food security, health, and gender equality. However, for intensive paddy rice farmers, synergies are predominantly positive, while for non‐intensive cash crop farmers synergies are mostly negative. These findings indicate that development in one well‐being dimension may provide improvements in other dimensions, but that benefits can be difficult to achieve for some types of farmers. Our results further suggest that rural development policies focussing on a single well‐being aspect, for example supporting non‐farm incomes, may have co‐benefits beyond the immediate development targets.

Addressing Rural Poverty, Efficacy of MGNREGA and Migration Against Agricultural Productivity: Case of Kalahandi, India

ABSTRACT Poverty remains a major challenge for the countries of the global south. Decent employment opportunity, a crucial determinant of poverty reduction, is increasingly becoming elusive for those countries regardless of a decent rate of economic growth. There is a growing separation of economic growth and employment growth under the aegis of neo-liberal economic policies. Economic growth, instead of becoming inclusive, turns out to be “jobless” or “job loss.” Failing to reverse this trend, “Active Labour Market Policies” (ALMPs) in the form of “Public Works Programmes” (PWPs) have emerged as a major strategy to reduce unemployment and poverty. Secondly, rural–urban migration is very much relied upon for the same. Raising agricultural productivity, a crucial question of “agrarian transition,” well evident and verified across the globe, is, however, becoming oblivion in the fight against poverty. In this context, based on a primary survey of 300 households in the poorest regions of India, this paper endeavors to investigate the relative strength of MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), rural–urban migration, and land productivity on poverty. The study suggests that an agrarian-centric intervention is more effective in dealing with poverty as compared to MGNREGA (ALMPs) and migration.

Examining socio‐ecological transitions and new human–wildlife relations in farming landscapes of the Nepal Himalaya

AbstractWildlife invasion into farmlands is emerging as an acute problem in the Himalayas, threatening farm‐based livelihood systems of smallholder rural communities. The problem is severe in the areas where successful forest restoration has been achieved by community forestry programmes alongside massive outmigration. Such evolving dynamics have created new conceptual and empirical discourses on conservation, nature‐society relations and human‐wildlife interactions, as some wild animals have become pests for farming communities. Consequently, the historical co‐existence and relationships between subsistence communities and local ecosystems have been destabilized. By mobilizing the concepts of forest transition and agrarian transition, we explore these new and emerging relationships between the growing wildlife problem and deteriorating people's livelihood by examining the nature, extent and drivers of the new human‐wildlife interactions and provide critical insights towards effectiveness of current policies and practical responses.

How agricultural extension responds to amplified agrarian transitions in mainland Southeast Asia: experts’ reflections

AbstractRecent decades have witnessed widespread agrarian transitions in mainland Southeast Asia. This paper examines how agrarian transitions are shaped by multiple drivers of change, and how these interwoven processes have triggered shifts in agricultural extension practices in three countries in the Lower Mekong Basin: Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Drawing on interviews with experts working on the fields of agrarian studies and rural development, this paper argues that agrarian transitions not only put a strain on agricultural extension systems in responding to evolving needs, but they also stimulate the co-production of innovative agricultural extension models to address gaps left by the limited presence of extensionists. The study gains insight into challenges faced by extensionists, including a lack of resources, skills, and capacities to meet growing needs, which simultaneously urged them to excel in their work performance. The paper highlights the proactive role of ‘champions’ in orchestrating collective efforts towards the co-production of innovative agricultural extension models (e.g. Metkasekor), and the formulation of pluralistic extension platforms in enabling such ‘co-learning-to-act’ practices. By translating these insights into the broader contexts of agricultural and rural development in the Mekong region and beyond, this paper aims to make a two-fold contribution. First, it will assert how the ‘business-as-usual’ extension model has failed to adequately address emerging needs as a result of agrarian transitions. Second, it will provide pathways for the recognition and legitimisation of the pluralistic extension approach that fosters stakeholders’ co-learning and productive engagement in extension practices.

Territorial strategies of forestry and agricultural corporations in Uruguay – the Southern Cone region of Latin America

ABSTRACT Agribusiness is the main mechanism of spatial fix for international capital in the Uruguayan agricultural sector. Transnational corporations are the driving force behind the most significant agricultural transformations witnessed in the twenty-first century. The objective of this study is to gain insights into the territorial strategies employed by agribusiness corporations in Uruguay and to identify the resultant territorial changes linked to their expansion. The findings of this study reveal that these corporations: (i) prioritise the expansion over efficient territories with favourable agrarian structures; (ii) they significantly alter the preexisting agrarian structure – establishments size, intensity of land use and socioeconomic relationships; (iii) they give rise to new territorialities characterised by one-way agrarian transitions towards more capital-intensive uses. These transitions are linked to the intensification of land use, mounting pressure on land prices, and the deepening of processes of proletarianisation. This study stands as a significant milestone, as it is based on georeferenced data from land managed by companies. It provides evidence to support the argument that corporate encroachment in Uruguay exacerbates the processes of land concentration and exclusion, thus affecting the equitable distribution of wealth and resources. The article provides a general framework that can be applied to understanding corporate expansion in other regions.

Indigenous People’s Land Rights in Post-Soeharto Indonesia

Abstract One of the challenges during the democratic transition from the New Order regime to the Reformasi era was advancing the idea of an agrarian transition to reconcile structural inequalities regarding land ownership. However, this transition was unfortunately not accompanied by a rearrangement of land ownership to allow the practice of land-grabbing inherited from the New Order regime to persist in contemporary Indonesia. This article examines the reasons behind the failure of the agrarian transition in Indonesia, by focusing on case studies in Tegalrejo Village, Malang Regency and the Pamona indigenous peoples, Poso Regency. We argue that the modus operandi of land-grabbing practices is highly dependent on state power and weak protection of communal land rights. By explaining these two factors, this article provides recommendations to strengthen the community’s position in dealing with land-grabbing practices by limiting the power of the state and encouraging land reform aimed at securing community land rights.

Particulate Matters: Air Pollution and the Political Ecology of a Boundary Object

Air pollution now affects 92 percent of the global population and is responsible for one out of nine deaths, nearly two thirds of which occur in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. Emerging work on the political ecology of air pollution examines how its noxious effects are unevenly distributed across social categories such as race and class. Geographers know much less about the social mechanisms through which air pollution and its risks and mitigation efforts are calculated, however. Situated within northern Thailand’s haze crisis and its broader agrarian transitions, we employ ethnographic and geospatial methods to theorize air pollution as a boundary object. Throughout the region, uncertainty over the causes and constitution of air pollution and its flexible interpretation have driven the development of civil society sensor networks and the adoption of portable Air Quality Index monitors and hot spot locating apps. These increasingly widespread technologies not only democratize data but also play a growing role in shifting environmental narratives of seasonal air pollution. By homing in on the boundary work of air pollution, however, we argue that although new, more widely accessible modes of knowledge production can seemingly reduce uncertainty and shift environmental policy, they can also obscure the long-standing political-economic inequalities on which environmental problems are based. This article advances current debates at the nexus of political ecology and science and technology by demonstrating how particulate matter matters differently within and between social groups and the role of sociality in environmental change and the production of political space.

Forest Tales? Unravelling Divergent Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) Maps and State Narratives in Vietnam’s Northern Uplands

The Vietnamese state has advocated for the sedentarization and market integration of upland northern farmers over the past thirty years, leading to both agrarian and forest transitions. This article presents a comprehensive land use and land cover change (LULCC) analysis of two adjacent upland borderland districts, Phong Thổ and Bát Xát, in northern Vietnam, spanning two neighboring inland provinces, Lai Châu and Lào Cai. These districts are primarily home to ethnic minority farmers who are encouraged by Vietnamese state officials to not only protect forests but to also transition toward cash crop cultivation from less intensive semi-subsistence agriculture. Our LULCC maps, covering the period from 1990 to 2020, revealed a reduction in the speed by which closed-canopy forests were disappearing. During interviews, state officials were confident that this was due to a range of state policies and state-sponsored initiatives, including the promotion of tree crops and payments for forest environmental services. Our own fieldwork in the region suggests other factors are also supporting this decline in deforestation rates, rooted in ethnic minority farmer livelihood decision making. Some state officials were also able to point to factors hindering a more positive result regarding forest cover, including population pressure and new infrastructure. Interestingly, despite our positive findings on Land use and land cover change (LULCC) related to forest cover, one-third of state officials, upon reviewing our LULCC maps, firmly maintained that errors had occurred. Some even proposed that there was an actual rise in forest cover. Our study shows that these discrepancies raise compelling questions about officials’ political motivations and ongoing pressures to uphold the central state’s reforestation and agrarian transition discourses.

From fields to factory – women and plantation-wood processing in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic

ABSTRACT Industrial timber plantations and their processing have been promoted by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) government to generate rural employment and reduce economic reliance on the agriculture sector. Using a comparative case-study approach at two wood-processing factories, this paper seeks to understand the existing roles of women in wood processing and how they compare with men in terms of employment, compensation and developmental opportunities, as well as the broader socio-economic factors that enable their employment. Findings show that women were well-represented in the workforce in both cases because management valued purported gendered attributes such as patience [ot-thon] and attention to detail [la-iat]. Demand for employment by rural women of all ages reflects the broader forces of agrarian transition in Lao PDR, including the desire for regular off-farm income to meet the expectations of a contemporary lifestyle. Gender balance in the factory workplace was found to be enhanced by mechanisation, which increased the roles under which women may be employed, and by access to certified markets by companies, which required adherence to international labour standards, including conditions such as maternity leave and carer’s leave. The prominent role of women in wood processing in Lao PDR contrasts with that in Australia because extended families can provide unpaid childcare and other domestic support to working families that ameliorates inflexible work practices, which exist in both countries.

Reducing fossil fuel dependency in smallholding farming in l'Horta de València, Spain: A socio-metabolic approach

To favor transition towards sustainable agricultural systems, the agricultural sector needs to reduce its dependence on external inputs. From an ecological economics perspective, this requires the simultaneous fulfillment of a gross energy surplus on the farm (production condition), and a greater recirculation of the production extracted from the agroecosystem (reproduction condition). Using eight smallholder farms, this study focuses on the processes of recirculation and externalization of biomass, materials and energy flows in the agroecosystem. This is carried out through analyzing the MEFA (Material and Energy Flow Analysis) matrix by means of energy return on the investment indexes of inputs or externalizations (EFEROI), recirculations (IFEROI), joint efficiency (NPPact EROI) and labour efficiency (W EROI), all of which impact upon farm-scale decision-making related to yield and cost-benefit situations. Agrarian fossilization indices are applied to include an assessment of farm non-renewable energy profiles. The results indicate a restriction of inputs in conventional farm-operators and a troubling use of indirect fossil-fuel in organic operators, together with a weakening of the agroecosystem reproductive processes by means of external inputs for both systems. To guide the agrarian transition, farming strategies need to focus on reducing indirect fossil-fuel energy consumption, rather than relying on technological substitutions.

Understanding the patterns of agrarian transformation: state-mediated commercialisation and deagrarianisation in Kashmir

ABSTRACT This paper examines the significant agrarian transformations in India’s Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is witnessing a rapid transition into commercial farming and, simultaneously, an increasing trend of deagrarianisation. The study uses a mixed-method approach to investigate why farmers adopt commercial farming in this region and how the processes of deagrarianisation, reconfiguration of land use, and deepening commodification have become inevitable for many small and medium-scale farmers as a result of this process. In the analysis, our empirically tested theoretical model confirms that institutional factors in terms of state support work as a significant driver toward commercialisation. We then argue that combined with the stimulus of the state, a vigorous process of neo-extractivism is being promoted, which renders the substantive changes in agrarian transitions by displacing the subsistence sector. The study highlights that this contemporary commercialisation is altering the social and physical landscape and driving broader forms of dispossession and consolidation of farmlands at micro-levels. Furthermore, it raises questions about the fundamental role of the Indian state’s neo-extractivist policies in a politically contested region.

Between necessity and compulsion: opium poppy cultivation and the exigencies of survival in Badakhshan, Afghanistan

ABSTRACT Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Badakhshan, a borderland province in the northeast of Afghanistan, the paper explores the role that opium poppy cultivation has played in a marginal high-altitude economy. Framed by the analytic of ‘narco-frontiers’ and the puzzle of the persistence of small farmers in uneven agrarian transitions, the paper investigates the diversity of market and non-market institutions that operate across the means of production of opium. Rather than seeing opium poppy production as the vanguard of an agrarian transition, it is suggested that it is more of a rearguard action to ensure survival.

Rethinking agrarian transition in Southeast Asia through rice farming in Thailand

This paper contributes to new understandings of agrarian transition for smallholder rice farming in Southeast Asia through quantitative data analysis from Thailand’s two main rice growing regions. Despite economic modernization models predicting a farm-size transition of smallholder agriculture to large-scale commercial farms with the onset of industrialization and urban employment opportunities, we find rice farmers continue to persist and defy anticipated trends, but not uniformly. We conducted a comprehensive survey in 2019 with rice farming households in twelve provinces in Thailand’s Central Plains and the Northeast on how a host of dynamic farming variables have changed from 2000 to 2019. Rather than the concentration of smallholder rice farms into large commercial farms, we find that the size of smallholder rice farms has remained remarkably consistent across study sites. Our comparative data analysis advances an interrelated set of key explanatory variables that go beyond land size to explicate the variegated nature of agrarian transition: access to resources, household farm labor, farm inputs, agrarian finance, and government support. Our study demonstrates the need for taking into consideration (sub-)regional specificity of material conditions and multi-scaled forces, as well as geographical proximity to advantageous factors, in shaping variegated trajectories of agrarian transition. Smallholder rice farmers and rice production is not about to significantly decline in either region of Thailand nor the rest of Southeast Asia, at least for the next several decades, but will increasingly be defined by changing demographics, growing environmental and climatic challenges, and consolidating global rice production supply chains.

Effect of planning policies on land use dynamics and livelihood opportunities under global environmental change: Evidence from the Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta faces significant challenges in supplying Vietnam and its export market countries with agricultural commodities, while ensuring livelihoods and providing living space to its growing population in the context of climate change and the country’s agrarian transition. Anthropogenic factors, such as the construction of dykes to control river flooding, river sand mining, the further development of triple-cropping rice production, and infrastructure development, together with climate change impacts on sediment and water availability, are all combining to threaten agricultural production. One of the key challenges in sustainable development is the need to identify plausible future states of agricultural-based socio-ecological systems which draw upon differing strategies of land management, and to characterise the impacts of these systems on both the landscape and employment. It was hypothesised from the literature and rapid rural appraisals that each land system can only provide a certain number of jobs, which was further demonstrated using binomial regressions. We show that the odds of being employed are lower for intensive agricultural systems (OR=0.78 for triple rice; 0.91 for intensive aquaculture) than for diversified systems (OR=1.16 for rice-aquaculture; OR=1.63 for mixed fruit trees). Drawing from workshops with local and national stakeholders, we then used Earth observation and national census data in a spatial land use systems dynamic framework to simulate two alternative Mekong Delta futures based upon the climate pathway RCP 4.5 in combination with two existing policies (i) Resolution No. 124 (Specialisation) which promotes triple crop rice and aquaculture intensification and (ii) Resolution No. 639 (Diversification), which states that there should be a development of sustainable rice aquaculture and crop diversification. Based on the quantitative objectives of each policy, we estimated likely changes of services provided by land use systems if either policy were to dominate. The estimated impacts of each future scenario on the provision of employment ultimately indicate that policies with a diversification development paradigm will provide more employment (+0.9%) than policies with a specialisation paradigm (−46%), and that current policies have potentially conflicting consequences. Decisions driving towards intensive farming risk triggering rural unemployment and outmigration, potentially exacerbating urban poverty in major cities such as Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh City. On the other hand, decisions aiming at increasing diversified agricultural systems can help secure more job opportunities. Our results indicate that spatial planning policies should rely on a broad-based assessment of land system services that include employment and environmental impacts to ensure a just transition towards resilient and environmentally sustainable rural territories.

In the shadow of state-led agrarian reforms: smallholder pervasiveness in rural China

Agricultural modernisation is a longstanding goal of China’s Party-state. Since the early 2000s, it has pursued this goal through policies designed to facilitate land consolidation and support the expansion of large agricultural enterprises – ‘New Agricultural Operators’ (NAOs). In this paper we explore the effect of these policies on the livelihoods of a cohort of smallholder orange growers in the mountainous regions of Hubei province and the local political economy. An analysis of data from a 2019 survey of 266 households and interviews with villagers, agribusiness executives, cooperative leaders, and government officials, we find smallholder farmers are earning good incomes as independent commodity producers, withstanding attempts by local officials at land consolidation, and bypassing NAOs to self-determine their own modes of production and exchange. Our results speak to the ongoing debate about the future of smallholder farming in China, identify the strengths and limitations of recent state-centric analyses of agrarian transition, and re-iterate the pitfalls of the central government’s agricultural modernisation agenda.

Agroecology and Agrarian Transitions: Current Debate in India

The article critically evaluates the attempt by the Modi government to promote the model of zero-budget natural farming (ZBNF) as an alternate path to agrarian development in India. It is well apparent from the analysis of the National Mission on Natural Farming (NMNF) guidelines that the advocates of natural farming have chosen to turn a blind eye to the constraints of Indian agrarian structures in the shift away from selective delinking for food security to global integration, with landlord capitalists and corporate capital in control of the path formation. The cheap nature and cheap labor outlook is built in the input correction emphasis of natural farming and in the assumption of “zero budgets” for the farmer and the government. The ZBNF model will prevent the NMNF from tackling the landscape, structural, and system-level challenges of agrarian transformation. Significant barriers to the adoption of agroecological approaches can be expected to arise due to the lack of commitment to help the peasants and landless proletariat with the protection of the commons and the public investment needed for the promotion of agroecological approaches.

The 'new' Customary Land Tenure in Zambia: Implications for Women's Land Rights and Livelihoods

ABSTRACT: This paper argues that the formalisation of customary land through a rural certification programme in Nyimba District, Zambia, has triggered the establishment of a new tenure regime that transcends the dualism between western legal forms of private property and idealised customary systems. Within this agrarian transition, the number of social conflicts over land boundaries have fallen, at least in the short term; women's perceptions of tenure security have improved, and women's participation in land administration at the local level has increased. In addition, a significant number of married women have registered residential land and farmland in their own names. However, the transition has also produced a number of negative impacts. Multiple land claims by women have been dismissed and men have continued to dominate power relations in the district. Certification has not necessarily led to greater access to credit, improved agricultural productivity, or a rise in investment. Informal land markets have become more expensive with certification producing a veneer of legitimacy for buying and selling customary land even though such transactions remain, strictly speaking, illegal. On the other hand, agrarian support has been skewed to the benefit of wealthier, better-connected, and dominant women with land-holding certificates and to the detriment of less-powerful women. Accordingly, many of the envisaged benefits of formalisation through an evolutionary approach to land tenure rights have not been realised. The argument developed in this paper is based on original field data obtained through quantitative household surveys, indepth interviews and focus group discussions.