2. Debates over agriculture in the Global South Flashcards
Remarkably similar descriptions of peasants from development economics to modernisation theories
Peasants seen as the antithesis to modernity and a threat to food security: but also the solution
Subjugated to state interests, incorporated or give way entirely
Cite this for discursive constructions
Handy (2009) A long history of blaming peasants
La Via Campesina - a movement emerging from L America in 1993 embracing peasantry and smallholder agriculture
A collective identity as resistance against industrialism
Desmarais (2007, 2008, 2012)
A more critical view of peasant food sovereignty
Food sovereignty - the right of people to control their own food systems
1) smallholders cannot feed the world; 2) there are no peasants left anyway - this is a simplistic label, 3) tropes are used as strategic essentialis, but what about the gender/intergenerational relations?
Bernstein (2014)
How Bill Gates and agribusiness are fucking smallholders up the proverbial arse.
Bill Gates has funded multiple government/private initiatives to spread technology to GS in New Green Revolution
Legal initiatives in GS such as Ghana’s Plant Variety Protection Act which targets the seed sovereignty of farmers - their sharing, saving and cultivation of crops according to personal needs e.g. through patents
Seed is a site of socio-political resistance. Its material nature (natural ability to replicate) makes it a reluctant commodity that is difficult to control
Zaitchick (2023)
Modernist view of Africa. Don’t like these guys!
Authors argue that Africa needs mass urbanisation and huge production increases if it is to meet food demand.
Think that we focus too much on integrating smallholders into the system.
This sort of goes backwards in time back to the high-modernist view.
Collier & Dercon (2014)
Propaganda piece on the first GR and the NGR.
Claims the GR was an act of philanthropy in partnership with the U.S. govt.
Describes typical African smallholder as a subsistence farmer that doesn’t use technology in a precarious existence
We need more inputs and better tech
We also need to link the theoretical additional crops to the market
Microfinance, lending programmes and PPPs etc
Rockefeller Foundation (2006)
Smallholder development can actually reduce poverty because they are efficient and equitable.
However, the rise of neoliberal capitalism means that we need to make the inputs more affordable - the market is the issue, not the smallholders
Hazell et al (2010)
