Category Archives: ORIGINAL ARTICLE

‘For them farming may be the last resort, but for us it is a new hope’: Ageing, youth and farming in India

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Abstract

Based on an empirical exercise carried out in five villages of Odisha in eastern India, the paper looks into ageing of the farm population and the experiences and responses of farmers of various age groups to farming. The findings of the study indicate that agriculture is greying, farmers are getting older and the youth, particularly of higher and cultivating castes, are averse to farming. The unwillingness of these youths to join farming is mainly attributed to loss of social status, declining profitability in agriculture and discouragement of immediate ‘mentors’, the middle-aged farmers, caused by the perpetual decline of farm income and loss of social recognition. The hitherto nonfarming youths, belonging to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and service-rendering castes, especially the female youths, are joining farming to fill this gap, mostly as leased-in cultivators.

Illegibly legible: Outcomes of a land records modernisation programme in South India

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Abstract

This article analyses an initiative in 2017 to update and digitise textual land records in Telangana, a south Indian state. Its premise is that experiments to modernise land records have not met with pre-determined standards of success due, primarily, to the historically evolved contradictions around land as a resource and a commodity. In countries like India, the colonial policies on land and the post-colonial success of landlords to manipulate land records had already left the post-War task of ensuring conclusive land titles intractable. In more recent times, however, the agenda of land records modernisation has been absorbed by neoliberalism, which aims to create free land markets and replace traditional subsidies with direct cash transfers. This article shows that, consequently, the task of land records modernisation in Telangana became disembedded from agendas of agrarian egalitarianism and was rendered more complex—historical errors and exclusions were reproduced in new ways; technocratic solutions of the bureaucracy made governmental processes opaque; landed sections continued to subvert implementation; tenants were excluded from the land titles; and there were fears that the scheme would be misused to ease corporate land acquisition. Land records modernisation remains important for agrarian reform, but its success remains contingent on a greater appreciation among policymakers for the historical and political economy aspects of land ownership and possession.

Blaming the victim or structural conditioning? COVID‐19, obesity and the neoliberal diet

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Abstract

The energy-dense part of the neoliberal diet and obesity made for an explosive combination upon the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Energy-dense foods lie at the root of comorbidities associated with complications of the COVID-19 pandemic: overweight, obesity, diabetes, hypertension and so forth. Multiple medical studies have demonstrated the causal impact of overweight and obesity on more severe or lethal infections. Focusing on the case of Mexico, I will show that inequality strongly conditions what people can eat, so the issue is not simply a matter of personal choice or responsibility. My argument is twofold: (1) Mexico enjoyed its own ‘traditional’ diets through the mid-1980s, which included widely accessible fruits and vegetables. But (2) the neoliberal turn in the form of trade liberalization and deepening inequality caused a substantial reshaping of the diet in favour of energy-dense foods with lower nutritional value. The energy-dense segment of ‘the neoliberal diet’ has turned a large portion of Mexicans into a vulnerable population. But this is a class-differentiated diet with its healthy and nutritious components increasingly less accessible to the working classes. Recovering healthy diets in Mexico will require the recuperation of food sovereignty through the regeneration of its countryside and its peasantry. Agroecological methods of food production will also be needed to alleviate the climate change emergency.

Agrarian change in neoliberal Turkey: Insights from privatization of the sugar industry

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Abstract

This paper investigates the dynamics of neoliberal agrarian restructuring within the Turkish sugar industry, focusing on the 2018 privatization of the Alpullu Sugar Factory. The analysis examines the transformative impact of market dependence and land commodification on relationship of farmers with the agricultural sector. Specifically, it focuses on two significant neoliberal shifts that have altered the dynamics of farming. First, the withdrawal of state support in agricultural markets prompted farmers to diversify their income streams, leading to a transition from sugar beet cultivation to alternative crops and contemplation of urban migration. Second, in the 2000s, farmers, grappling with declining agricultural revenues, increasingly relied on private bank credits as a means of financial security. This shift was propelled by changes in agricultural policy regulations and the dissolution of state-sponsored credit systems. Employing a blend of qualitative and quantitative research methods, this study elucidated these complex transformations and their profound impact on agrarian livelihoods, land ownership shifts, production strategies and market relationships. The research revealed the complex interplay of social, economic and historical dynamics steering the trajectory of the Turkish sugar industry, providing valuable insights into neoliberal restructuring.

A framework for understanding land control transfer in agricultural commodity frontiers

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Abstract

Across the globe, the expansion of large-scale commodity agriculture is occurring not into empty space but over existing social systems. An understanding of the dynamics of expansion and associated impacts of commodity agriculture thus fundamentally requires examining how existing control regimes are dissolved and, simultaneously, how novel ones are assembled in order to make way for the changes in resources use that characterize these transitional moments. With this in mind, in this article, I provide a broad review of the strategies used to secure control over land prospected for agricultural commodity production, distinguishing between the tactics that are applied by agro-interested actors in order to ‘break down’ forms of existing land control, those they apply in parallel to ‘build up’ new control structures, and those strategies that are applied by actors (often smallholders) wishing to ‘hold on to’ the control that they have. I then present a framework for examining the dynamics of control transfer that builds on this analytical structure of ‘breaking down’, ‘building up’, and ‘holding on to’ control.

Indigenous collective land titling and the creation of leftovers: Insights from Paraguay and Cambodia

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Abstract

Collective land titling often drags on for decades, while private land concessions and holdings do not face the same problem, creating ‘leftovers’ of land available for Indigenous peoples to attempt to collectively title. In two ethnographic case studies in Cambodia and Paraguay, we analyse community-based Indigenous land titling by focusing on the on-the-ground dynamics of property relations, Indigenous livelihood shifts and ecological change. In both countries, large agricultural players implemented a staggering change in local landscapes through deforestation, configuring new realities that in turn feed into local environments and titling processes. Adapting their livelihoods to living in the leftovers, in Cambodia, the Indigenous Bunong shifted from rice to rubber as they navigated the slow titling process. In Paraguay, some Indigenous Guarani shifted from corn to cattle by renting out their collectively titled land. The case studies show that the liberal titling approach to secure Indigenous lands overestimates the ability of title to remove land from capitalist logics such as the push to rent or sell, while some spaces of autonomy are opened. We critique the liberal approaches to formalising title, where Indigenous struggles for their ways of life are funnelled into fighting for collective property.