Tenant Farmers Research Articles

Seed struggles and food sovereignty in northern Malawi

In this paper I use seeds in Malawi as both an analytical lens and an empirical focus of study to examine how food sovereignty is threatened or enhanced in a particular location and time. I argue that while food sovereignty was eroded for smallholders through neoliberal reforms to the agricultural system, community and kin practices help to maintain food sovereignty. The intersection of gender and class dynamics, combined with state policies, however, works to undermine food sovereignty for particular groups in northern Malawi. Historical processes of exclusion, dispossession and exploitation changed the division of labour and reduced time and land for diverse farming systems. State policies reduced knowledge and availability of preferred local varieties. While peasants, particularly women, have considerable knowledge of seed varieties, and seeds continue to be exchanged in agrarian communities, young women, tenant farmers, food insecure younger couples and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)-affected families are particularly vulnerable to reduced food sovereignty, in part due to gender inequalities, unequal land distribution and social stigma. New efforts to strengthen food sovereignty need to build on community and kin relations, while addressing social inequalities. Understanding the struggles and relations linked to seeds helps us to understand ways in which food sovereignty is undermined or strengthened.

Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia by John J. Zaborney (review)

Reviewed by: Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia by John J. Zaborney Nicholas Wood (bio) Keywords Slavery, Virginia, Slave trade Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia. By John J. Zaborney. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012. Pp. 218. Cloth, $42.50.) Examining an understudied topic, John J. Zaborney demonstrates the extent, variety, and importance of slave hiring in antebellum Virginia. Slave hiring was a profit-maximizing practice that often belied paternalistic notions of slavery. Planters with surplus slaves could supplement their income by hiring out a few slaves or hire them all out while traveling for extended periods of time. Churches, orphanages, and schools raised funds by hiring out slaves they owned for that purpose. Males and females were hired in roughly equal numbers as field hands, domestic servants, coal miners, and railroad builders. By the 1850s slave hiring was so commonplace that rental agreements were standardized and preprinted, as were insurance policies for hired slaves working in especially dangerous occupations. Drawing on deep archival research and weaving many compelling anecdotes into a coherent whole, Zaborney demonstrates how the hiring process shaped the lives of white Virginians, the enslaved, and the institution of slavery itself. Zaborney characterizes the existing scholarship on slave hiring as "polarized: hired slaves either enjoyed nearly full autonomy, which weakened slavery generally, or they endured ruthless exploitation" (2). While this binary is somewhat exaggerated, it helps place Zaborney's work in the context of larger debates about slave agency and the compatibility of slavery and modernization. He argues that "most Virginia hired slaves' experiences differed little from those of nonhired slaves and that slave hiring made Virginia slavery stronger, not weaker, during the years before the Civil War" (3). Slave hiring helped slaveholders adapt to the dynamic and unpredictable economic changes that characterized the market revolution. Hired slaves also helped build transportation infrastructure and worked in factories, demonstrating the compatibility of enslaved labor with a modernizing economy. Renting slaves could create conflicts of interests between owners and hirers, thus creating opportunities for slaves to exert a greater level of agency, themes examined at length in the only other full-length study on [End Page 580] the subject.1 By contrast, Zaborney focuses more on the mutual interests of white Virginians and the ways that slave hiring increased white solidarity. It helped reduce class tensions by allowing tenant farmers to rent slaves they could not afford to buy and thereby achieve the "free and independent status [of] white men who controlled slaves" (108). Hiring a female domestic slave could save a white wife from household drudgery, allowing her to emulate middle-class gender ideals without the full expense of slave ownership. For white men, attending slave hiring days (generally at the start of the year) provided opportunities to publicly display their masculinity and mastery as they examined slaves and haggled over prices. Thus the economic, cultural, and social implications of slave hiring increased support for slavery even among non-slave-owning whites. Zaborney gives examples of some slaves who earned significant sums of money through incentives for overtime, or turned the competing economic interests of owners and hirers to their own advantage. But he also reports cases in which slaves' attempts to exert agency resulted in whipping or sale as punishment, arguing that slaves' agency remained sharply curtailed in most situations. Moreover, even when slaves successfully used opportunities created by hiring to exert more influence over their own lives, it was generally with the goal of mitigating problems resulting from being hired out in the first place, such as family dislocation and brutal work conditions. As Zaborney shows, slaves always struggled to preserve a level of stability and autonomy in their lives, but hiring created at least as many problems as opportunities. Throughout his book, Zaborney touches on connections between slave hiring and the domestic slave trade. Slave owners and hirers viewed renting slaves as an alternative to the domestic slave trade; slaves were more likely to be hired out at least once than they were to be sold; and slaves who created trouble for their owners or hirers might be sold as punishment. Like the slave trade, slave hiring...

“This receipt is as safe as the Bank”: Reading Irish Culinary Manuscripts

“This receipt is as safe as the Bank”: Reading Irish Culinary Manuscripts

Farmer attitudes to vaccination and culling of badgers in controlling bovine tuberculosis

Controversy persists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland concerning methods of controlling the transmission of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) between badgers and cattle. The National Trust, a major land-owning heritage organisation,...

Eliminating Malaria in the American South: An Analysis of the Decline of Malaria in 1930s Alabama

Until the 1930s, malaria was endemic throughout large swaths of the American South. We used a Poisson mixture model to analyze the decline of malaria at the county level in Alabama (an archetypical Deep South cotton state) during the 1930s. Employing a novel data set, we argue that, contrary to a leading theory, the decline of malaria in the American South was not caused by population movement away from malarial areas or the decline of Southern tenant farming. We elaborate and provide evidence for an alternate explanation that emphasizes the role of targeted New Deal-era public health interventions and the development of local-level public health infrastructure. We show that, rather than disappearing as a consequence of social change or economic improvements, malaria was eliminated in the Southern United States in the face of economic dislocation and widespread and deep-seated poverty.

CAFOs and Environmental Justice: The Case of North Carolina

On the coastal plain of eastern North Carolina, families in certain rural communities daily must deal with the piercing, acrid odor of hog manure—reminiscent of rotten eggs and ammonia—wafting from nearby industrial hog farms. On bad days, the odor invades homes, and people are often forced to cover their mouths and noses when stepping outside. Sometimes, residents say, a fine mist of manure sprinkles nearby homes, cars, and even laundry left on the line to dry.1 Today’s industrial-scale farms—called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—house thousands of animals whose waste is periodically applied to “spray fields” of Bermuda grass or feed crops.2,3 The waste can contain pathogens, heavy metals, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria,4,5 and the spray can reach nearby homes and drinking water sources. The odor plume, which often pervades nearby communities, contains respiratory and eye irritants including hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.6,7,8 A growing body of research suggests these emissions may contribute not only to mucosal irritation9 and respiratory ailments10 in nearby residents but also decreased quality of life,11 mental stress,12,13 and elevated blood pressure.14 The home of a minority family in Kenansville, North Carolina, situated next to a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. Dust, odors, and manure from CAFOs can reach nearby residents’ homes, including their laundry. Although the Midwest is the traditional home for hogs, with Iowa still the top-producing state, North Carolina went from fifteenth to second in hog production between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s.15 This explosive growth resulted in thousands of CAFOs located in the eastern half of the state—squarely in the so-called Black Belt, a crescent-shaped band throughout the South where slaves worked on plantations.16,17 After emancipation many freed slaves continued to work as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. A century later, black residents of this region still experience high rates of poverty, poor health care, low educational attainment, unemployment, and substandard housing.18,19 The clustering of North Carolina’s hog CAFOs in low-income, minority communities—and the health impacts that accompany them—has raised concerns of environmental injustice and environmental racism.20 As one pair of investigators explained, “[P]eople of color and the poor living in rural communities lacking the political capacity to resist are said to shoulder the adverse socio-economic, environmental, or health related effects of swine waste externalities without sharing in the economic benefits brought by industrialized pork production.”21 Although North Carolina is not the only area with environmental justice concerns vis-a-vis CAFOs, it has become one of the best studied.

21st Century Crofting: Strengths and Opportunities for Community Development

Scotland has one of the most uneven land ownership patterns in the world. In a country of 5.2 million people, about 969 people control 60% of the land. Over 20% of privately owned land in Scotland is held in some form of offshore or beneficial ownership (Committee on the Inquiry of Crofting, 2008). This land ownership pattern has a unique expression in the northern and western parts of the Scottish Highlands and Islands with a 300-year-old system of tenant farmers known as crofters. Unlike other tenant farmers across the world, crofters have gained legal rights to stay on the land if they are productive. While crofting has managed to survive, there are competing resources for land in rural Scotland; urbanites from England and Glasgow view rural Scotland as sites for holiday homes, thus raising land prices. Further, as with other places around the world, market forces in Scotland are merging small parcels of land into larger tracts for agriculture. This qualitative case study examines crofting on an island off the western coast of Scotland. Our primary research question is: Is there a sense of solidarity among residents about crofting for the island's economic vitality and its role in sustaining or preserving local culture?

Understanding Farmers' Views on Soil Conservation: Demonstration of Analytical Techniques Through a Case Study in Sri Lanka

A suite of analytical techniques is demonstrated that helps understand why farmers use certain soil conservation measures and not others. Decision tree modeling, a ranking exercise, and a sorting exercise are used. These reveal determinants of the soil conservation measures used by farmers and the criteria on which their preferences and perceptions are based. The techniques, which enable thorough, swift investigation, are suitable for use by extension officers, researchers and farmers themselves. Demonstration in a village in Sri Lanka indicated that the conservation measures used by farmers were determined by the farmers’ perception that soil was eroding, availability of male labor, land tenure, the farmers’ preferences, and tenant farmers’ attitudes toward constructing measures on rented land. The farmers’ preferences were based on technical knowledge of the measures, practical experiences of using them, and the labor and skill involved. Interestingly, farmers’ perceptions of the measures were based on technical criteria alone.

Mormonism and American History: An Interview with Matthew Bowman

Mormonism and American History: An Interview with Matthew Bowman Randall Stephens A NEW GENERATION OF HISTORIANS—SOME WITH ROOTS in the faith and others without—is plumbing the depths of Mormon history to present the complicated story of a faith that is woven into the fabric of American history. One of those is Matthew Bowman, visiting assistant professor of religion at Hampden-Sydney College. He is the author of The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (Random House, 2012) and has written for the New Republic, the Washington Post, Slate, and a variety of other publications. Historically Speaking editor Randall Stephens recently spoke to Bowman about Mormonism in American culture and politics and the state of Mormon history. Randall Stephens: In 2012 there was much talk about the so-called “Mormon moment.” A popular Broadway musical and Mitt Romney’s candidacy shined a spotlight on the faith. I would be interested to hear what you made of the increased media attention on Mormonism and its history. Matthew Bowman: I think the Mormon moment was both more and less important than it seemed. Most Mormons I talked to seemed rather bemused by the whole thing: many of them don’t feel odd, or different, or out of place in America, and one lesson I think many learned from the Mormon moment was that much of the rest of the country does in fact find them a curious and insular group. Recent survey numbers seem to indicate that most Americans don’t feel like they learned a lot about Mormonism, but they have slightly more favorable opinions of Mormons after the attention the church got in 2012. I think that’s probably right. One under-rated effect of the whole thing is the influence the moment has had on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself. The rise of non-official Mormon voices, the negative attention that some church practices received, and other like events pushed the church to clarify some lingering issues that deserved attention. To cite only one example, in February 2012 a Brigham Young University professor repeated to a reporter some outmoded theological theories to explain the old policy that denied ordination to the priesthood and access to most worship done in Mormon temples to Mormons of African descent. Many of these explanations had to do with the notion that black people were spiritually inferior to white people in some way, and though the church reversed the policy in 1978, it never formally repudiated these theories. But after this professor appeared in the Washington Post, the church issued the first formal statement rejecting them. In the long run, the church will be healthier for it. Stephens Why did Mormonism develop when and where it did? Click for larger view View full resolution An illustration from Charles Mackay, The Mormons, or, Latter-day Saints: With Memoirs of the Life and Death of Joseph Smith, the “American Mahomet” (London, 1852). Bowman: This is a classic question that lends itself to two equally interesting answers. Mormonism, of course, got its start among those descendants of the Puritans who moved west in the 18th and early 19th centuries seeking greater economic opportunities. Joseph Smith was the son of an impoverished tenant farmer and his wife, both of whose families had suffered economic dislocation and both of whom were, in different ways, spiritual seekers. One interpretation is that Mormonism was a manifestation of Jacksonian America’s burst of religious freedom, egalitarianism, and democratic ethos. This interpretation emphasizes that the early Mormons, including Joseph Smith, were uneducated in theology, constructed a largely lay priesthood, and sought to restore the power to interpret God’s will to prophetic figures rather than a trained priestly class. Alternatively, we can think about Mormonism as a reaction against Jacksonian America’s steady erosion of traditional Anglo-American social structures. Joseph Smith, after all, created a complex priestly hierarchy, and the theology of polygamy that he and Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders developed meant that 19th-century Mormonism expressed a strongly patriarchal culture, which put white males at the top speaking on behalf of God. Stephens Has the relationship between Mormons and the U...

The Secret of Shangri-La: Agricultural Travels and the Rise of Organic Farming Discourse

The Secret of Shangri-La: Agricultural Travels and the Rise of Organic Farming Discourse

Should Burns have been a vet?

IN Edinburgh, Robert Burns was referred to as a ‘Ploughman Poet’, who ‘stood manfully at his plough, sickle and flail’, and he called himself a ‘ploughman, bred at a plough-tail’....

New Deal Photographs of the Hoosier State: Farm Tenancy, the Great Depression, and the Young Girl who Lived Through it All

New Deal Photographs of the Hoosier State: Farm Tenancy, the Great Depression, and the Young Girl who Lived Through it All

Tending Our Vines:

The partnership and friendship of John Jay and Richard Peters reflect two extraordinary individuals who helped to plant the seed of American independence and nurture it in diverse ways for more than half a century through a long and devoted association. Toward the end of their lives, Peters wrote to Jay, “my recollections of the long and sincere love and friendship I have undeviatingly cherished for you afford to me the most gratifying and cordial satisfaction.” Their correspondence reflects two men with many shared interests but two distinct personalities. Both men were well educated and successful attorneys before the outbreak of the Revolution to which both became deeply committed. While their careers took different paths, their friendship strengthened over time and found expression in many unexpected ways as they “tended their vines.”

Ordinary Farmers Living Anarchist Time: Arishima Cooperative Farm in Hokkaido, 1922–1935

AbstractThis paper offers a fresh anarchist history of modern rural experience at the heart of Japan's modernization project in Hokkaido. The rationalization of agricultural methods and the establishment of big farms in Hokkaido worked by tenant farmers served the dual purpose of both colonizing and modernizing Japan's northern frontier. Against the idea of progress imbued in that colonial project, the anarchist and celebrity writer, Arishima Takeo, liberated his tenant farmers by dissolving his tenant farm in Niseko in 1922. The farmers were made the new cooperative owners. Members of the farm, made famous during widespread tenant-farmer disputes, believed they stood at the heart of progress. ‘Sōgo fujō’ (mutual aid) was viewed as an ethic for social transformation, democracy and elimination of hierarchy that linked the farmers with the wider world. It was the farmers’ consciousness of working in a new era, better than ever before, that made them modern. Their community offers us a case study of the imagination and experience of modern temporality amongst the most unlikely subjects of the modern, ordinary agricultural laborers in rural Asia in the early twentieth century. This anarchist history challenges the conceptual framework that has categorized rural Japan as the seat of conservative politics, nativism and traditionalism, and the antithesis of modernity.

Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South

Which was the biggest cotton plantation of them all? The Delta Pine and Land Company of Mississippi may have been more famous, but Robert E. “Lee” Wilson's empire in Mississippi County, Arkansas, actually had greater acreage as of the 1920s, as one learns in this wide-ranging plantation biography by Jeannie Whayne, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas. Whayne has previously written on Arkansas agriculture (A New Plantation South, 1996) and explains that she had abandoned plans to study the Wilson plantation because, seemingly, no company records survived. The chance discovery by repairmen in the 1990s of a false wall and a room full of records and correspondence induced Whayne to reconsider. The project was suggested by Mike Wilson, a descendant of the founder and then head of the company, but the independence of Whayne's perspective is evident throughout. As with conventional biographies, the mode imposes certain constraints on the narrative, so that the book does not offer a definitive treatment of any one historical event or development. The powerful personality and drive of Robert Wilson dominate the first seven chapters, conveying a vivid sense of his roots as the son of a pioneering but middling (four hundred–acre) planter, family hardships, and relentless land acquisitions, timbering, and swamp drainage activities that paid off handsomely. But it is often difficult to determine whether the Wilson plantation stands as an archetype for emerging trends in southern business and technology or as the great exception to prevailing norms. For example, in 1935 Wilson was accused by the Southern Tenant Farmers Union of changing from a sharecropping to a day-labor system, throwing hundreds of families on relief. But the available records do not allow Whayne to determine the truth of the accusation (pp. 204–5).

Studiare, lavorare a Bologna nel Medioevo: forestieri/stranieri in città

Foreign students who attended the University of Bologna during the Middle Ages contributed to creating the reputation of the city and to deepening its capacity to attract students from cross over Europe. The city had, however, from remote times, experimented with welcoming practices (temporary or not) and experienced significant events in the circulation of persons. It was not just in the Middle Ages that such introductions of people coming from other regions can be verified in the Bolognese territory. A great immigration was decreed by Rome in the 2nd century B.C. with the establishment of a Latin colony and the transfer of 3,000 families of tenant farmers from central-southern Italy. Even if the migratory processes in the history of Bologna were numerous, this contribution nevertheless directs its attention to the 12th -13th centuries, a period that, thanks to the presence of the Studium and to economic activities, forced the city to confront anew an elevated number of students. It should be specified that while in present-day terminology those whose mother tongue is not Italian are called foreigners, in the Middle Ages all those who did not belong to the Bolognese district were called forenses (foreigners). In particular certain events concerning foreigners will be analyzed on the basis of data obtained from fiscal sources at the end of the 13th century.

Gender, Generation and the Experiences of Farm Dwellers Resettled in the Ciskei Bantustan, South Africa, ca 1960–1976

This paper examines the experiences of farm dwellers resettled in rural townships in the Ciskei Bantustan during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on the oral testimonies of elderly residents of Sada and Ilinge townships, the paper shows how gendered and generational inequalities within households were crucial factors shaping individuals' experiences of resettlement from the farms. The paper engages with an older literature that regarded the abolition of labour tenancy and linked resettlement programmes as the final stage of farm tenants' proletarianization. It highlights the problems of this linear narrative, and argues that men and women experienced and understood this process in radically different ways. Male labour migration and the remnants of farm paternalism meant that while resettlement cemented the status of migrant men, for women and non‐migrant men this process was characterized by contradiction: on the one hand, escape from the spatial hegemonies of farm paternalism and, on the other, heightened economic exposure.

Land rights and rental systems: implications for management of conflicts related to land in sawah-based rice production systems in Nigeria

This study examined the land rights and rental systems followed by sawah rice farmers in Nigeria. The study was conducted in six states in Nigeria that use sawah rice tech- nology: Kwara, Ondo, Niger, Ebonyi, Kaduna, and Abuja, which is the Federal Capital Terri- tory. A total of 124 sawah farmers were selected for participation based on their involvement in sawah-based rice production. Data used in this study were collected from October 2009 to January 2011 in all the sawah sites in Nigeria. T-test was used to determine significant differ - ences in the yields and farm sizes of landlord and tenant farmers. The land tenure system practiced in the lowlands is governed primarily by inheritance (71.8%), with temporary ar- rangements made through rentals (37.1%). Tenants pay ₦12,000 ha -1 year -1 in land-for-cash agreements and 5% of the total yield of rice in land-for-paddy agreements. Generally, agree- ments between landlords and tenants are verbal, binding, and honored by both parties. Land conflicts occur when either party breaches the agreement and always result in the landlords taking over the land. Significant differences in the farm sizes (t = 3.424 P<0.05 = 0.02) and yields (t = 3.167 P<0.05 = 0.01) of landlord and tenant farmers were found. The findings of the study indicate the importance of secured land tenure, which affects the practice of sawah and the productivity of rice farming. Sustaining and improving sawah rice production in the study area will require addressing the land tenure issues of both landlords and tenants.

Exploring Opportunities for Enhancing Innovation in Agriculture: The Case of Oil Palm Production in Ghana

We carried out a study using key informant interviews, focus group discussions and individual interviews to explore opportunities to enhance innovation in the oil palm sector in Ghana. Current technical innovations at the farm level are insufficient to promote sustainable oil palm production and to alleviate poverty because of overriding institutional constraints at the larger-than-farm level. Oil palm was selected for the study for three main reasons: (1) It is considered a national priority crop because of its potential for reducing poverty, (2) It has a wide geographical coverage and (3) It is considered as both food and cash crop. Oil palm has evolved in the past 40 years from a public-sector to a private-sector crop. The study identified the following main actors in oil palm production: small private farms that produce about 80% of the crop; large-scale industrial estates with their network of smallholder and out-grower farmers who produce to supply their large-scale mechanized processing mills; small-scale semi-mechanized processing mills, medium-scale mechanized mills and secondary processors. Opportunities that will make it rational for farmers to invest in increased production and improved sustainability include: (1) creating institutional conditions that will enable small-scale processors to be integrated into the value chain; (2) organising farmers to be able to negotiate for better deals for themselves; (3) improve system of distribution of improved planting material in regions where accessibility to seedlings of the high-yielding tenera hybrid variety is difficult; and (4) developing new tenancy rules and arrangements that improve the income of tenant farmers and encourage them to invest in increased productivity.

The political ecology of land management in the oil palm based cropping system on the Adja plateau in Benin

The Adja plateau (Benin) is densely populated by tenant and landowner farmers engaged in oil palm based cropping. Landowners use oil palm sap for the production of sodabi (a local spirit), and an oil palm fallow (if no crops are grown beneath the palms) to restore soil fertility. In this area, growing oil palm for its oil is uncommon. Tenants access the land under specific contracts but are not allowed to plant oil palm. They grow food crops beneath the oil palm and extend the cropping period by severely pruning the palms because their right to grow food crops terminates when the palms reach a height of 2m. The competing claims between landowners and tenants and between oil palm and annual food crops result in conflicts over practices that either degrade or restore soil fertility. Using a political ecology perspective, we examined how two overlapping institutions shape access to and management of the land: the customary tenure system and the legal system that was introduced to regulate titling and contracting. These institutions have divergent implications for tenants and landowners, in terms of both social equity and land management practices. The implications of this institutional patchwork (bricolage) for joint learning to achieve sustainable agriculture are discussed.