Smallholdings, Livelihood Strategies and Public Policies in Europe: The Issue of Self-sufficiency

Abstract

At the time of publication of this special issue, Smallholdings, livelihood strategies and public policies in Europe: the issue of self-sufficiency, it has become increasingly crucial to rethink the livelihood strategies and forms of production and distribution characterizing small farms and the ways in which these farms are shaped by public policies. The outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine comes at a time when smallholdings are attempting to recover from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and has affected food supplies worldwide. Europe has been forced to reorganize the supply chain and is suffering rates of inflation that have not been seen for years.

In Spain, for example, the truckers' strike has contributed to grounding fishing fleets. Dairy farms are forced to throw away milk because it is not profitable to collect, while the grain shortage leads to a lack of supply in supermarkets. During the lockdown, the Spanish State restricted the production, distribution, and consumption of goods to formal activities and channels. This led to the exclusion of forms of supply that were not oriented to the market economy (Gascón 2020). Policies of this kind overlook “peasant economies” (Narotzky 2016), depriving them of revenues, although demand for local and organic food is increasing in rural and urban areas for reasons relating to health and security (Batalla et al. 2020; Escribano, Hummel, and Milano 2020). This situation highlights the dependency of livelihood strategies on transnational flows of commodities and the lack of a regional food policy to ensure a secure supply via sustainable local systems. Policies and regulations do not always nurture life or meet people's real needs. At times, they are designed to create competitive holdings in the market with little regard for the consequences at the micro-scale.

For years, Europe has been immersed in a market economy underpinned by a system of neoliberal policies. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), introduced in 1962, is the main European Union public policy to have shaped agro-industrial production, rural life, and landscapes and ecosystems in Europe. The policy has been detrimental to prices and harmful to ecosystems and health (FAO, UNDP, and UNEP 2021). Rural areas have also been influenced by productivist and post-productivist paradigms based on agricultural industrialization, commercialization, intensification, and specialization, as well as increasing use of biochemical inputs and corporate involvement in the sector, among other aspects (Wilson 2001). These paradigms changed the role of smallholdings in livelihood strategies, producing the perfect conditions for the industrial agri-food system to grow and become more concentrated.

Agricultural entrepreneurs have displaced traditional peasants, and the agrarian sector is becoming professionalized in a context of globalizing markets (Van der Ploeg 2010, 14). The global race for development is increasing the distance between agricultural companies competing in the market economy and people engaging in agricultural practices as part of local livelihood strategies. Labyrinthine bureaucracy and limitations on traditional practices such as home slaughter of livestock or surplus sale through informal channels are just a few examples of regulations that hamper self-sufficient livelihoods. Much before the present moment Polanyi (1944) referred to “the silent transformation as a way describe an economic shift from striving for subsistence to searching for profit. In this contemporary scenario, smallholdings are akin to a pre-productivist agricultural regime “characterized by high environmental sustainability, low intensity and productivity, weak integration into capitalist markets and horizontally integrated rural communities” (Wilson 2001, 92).

From a political perspective, neoliberal governmentality involves “techniques of the self” that transform the passive “objects” of state policy (i.e., farmers) into active subjects of their own subjectification (Shore 2012). The State is withdrawing its responsibility for citizen welfare and leaving small farms' survival down to individual efforts rather than addressing structural and political factors.

Despite the supremacy of the market economy and neoliberal policies, ethnographic research has shown the importance of self-sufficiency, self-provisioning, and domestic economy for people's livelihoods, especially in rural areas. Millions of peasant households around the world produce many of the raw materials that they process and consume at home (Gudeman and Hann 2015). In 2010, peasant households contained 1.2 billion productive units, equivalent to two-fifths of humanity (Van der Ploeg 2010, 12).

Self-sufficiency is resistant to easy transformation for several reasons. First, subsistence can act as a buffer in times of crisis. Small farms can alleviate economic and social crises through forms of production that are not entirely market-oriented (Hilmi and Burmi 2016). In this regard, self-sufficiency and self-provisioning may be viewed as the last refuge of the dispossessed (Leonard and Kaneff 2002). Second, self-sufficiency intertwines with identity and social cohesion. Far from being displaced by the market economy, Gudeman and Hann (2015) show that self-sufficiency takes on new meanings and functions in its coexistence with the market economy and the globalized world.

This special issue aimed to explore the influence of the European Union's (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on smallholdings' livelihood strategies and how it relates to self-sufficiency and the professionalization and commodification of the agriculture and livestock sector. Drawing on a variety of case studies, we reveal the different strategies adopted by smallholdings to survive within a particular legal framework.

Smallholdings may take the form of small family farms when kinship plays a prominent part in organizing the work. This is true of the case study presented by Patricia Homs in the Penedés (Spain), where the impact of the “aggressive intrusion of the market” on small grape production makes it impossible for small family farms to be economically profitable. Homs illustrates how the capitalist moral economy impedes “imagining real non-exploitative socioeconomic relations” and “reinforces existing patterns of capital accumulation.” A lack of protection forces farmers to constantly adapt to the demands of agribusiness.

In the case of high-altitude farms in South Tyrol (Italy), Almut Schneider shows the apparent contradiction between building an identity based on self-sufficiency and surviving on subsidies from the State, which make it possible for farmers to continue to sell their products. Despite this, the pressures of “the capitalist moral economy” push them towards mechanization, which requires major investments in machinery to increase productivity and can result in over-indebtedness.

Ieva Snikersproge retraces the historical evolution of peasantry and neorural movement in France to show how subsistence occupies a minor role for creating peasant-like livelihoods that are relatively autonomous from the capitalist market pressures. This is so because pro-modernization agricultural policy has driven down agricultural goods’ prices, making it difficult to live from agricultural production. CAP subsidies have become indispensable for agriculture-based livelihoods, but their current form tied to agricultural surface size is encouraging farm upscaling and disadvantaging small, peasant-like farmers on the agricultural goods market.

In the neo-peasant movement in Catalonia (Spain), the focus is on preserving peasant-like agriculture. Agata Hummel and Paula Escribano present a lifestyle that seeks to provide for households' basic needs within the austerity model. Neo-peasants demand a relaxation of regulations in the sector to allow for traditional practices: “all we want from the authorities is to be left alone.” They show how differences in power enable some logics to prevail over others. Public policies pressure neo-peasants to act in non-legal spheres, criminalizing their practices (cf. Carrier 2018) or forcing them to disappear.

André Thiemann and Kristīne Rolle in the case of Latvia show the ability of small farmers to adapt the new EU regulations for their own purposes. Different strategies are used combining formal and informal economic practices in order to create a business-oriented export cooperative or a cultural NGO. It is of special interest how public policies undervalue local value chains and how small farmers nonetheless become “players in hegemonic struggles over reimagining Latvian nature.”

Collectively, this special issue demonstrates that the risk of disappearance facing small farms in the EU today depends largely on the specific political and economic context. Public policies may strengthen smallholdings by reinforcing self-sufficiency and food sovereignty or pressure them further by plunging them into illegality, hindering small-scale food sovereignty.