Journal of Agrarian Change最新文献

{"title":"Distress in the fields: Indian agriculture after economic liberalization, By R. Ramakumar (Ed.), Tulika Books. 2022. pp. xxiv+484. INR 1500 (hbk). ISBN: 978-81-950559-0-6","authors":"John Harriss","doi":"10.1111/joac.12557","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12557","url":null,"abstract":"<p>If you are looking for a definitive account of agricultural policy in India over the years following the country's initially tentative economic liberalization in 1991, then this is the book for you. As the editor, himself the author of a long and magisterial introductory essay says, he and the authors of the 16 chapters of the book set out to achieve four objectives. They wanted to offer an extensive review of policies towards agriculture in the era of India's liberalization, setting them in the context of the longer history of agricultural policy, so as to provide both essential reading and an enduring work of reference. Ramakumar and his co-authors mainly from among the rising generation of Indian scholars (S. L. Shetty, a distinguished older scholar, is perhaps the principal exception among the mostly youthful authors) have succeeded in realizing these objectives. The book does not make for easy reading, nor does it provide quite as much of a sense as might have been expected of the distress that is certainly out there, in the fields of India, but it is undoubtedly an important work. Ramakumar's introduction links together arguments and findings from chapters that cover Land and Agrarian Relations (though there is actually rather little on agrarian relations); Investment and Expenditure in Agriculture; Agricultural Trade; Costs, Profits and Incomes; Credit and Insurance; and Agricultural Marketing and Food Security. All the chapters present analyses based on carefully assessed secondary data—attested in the long list of tables and figures at the beginning of the book—and some of them draw on primary data, notably from the village studies that have been conducted over many years by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies (FAS). It is perhaps because the Foundation has dealt quite extensively in some of its publications with changing agrarian relations (as in Ramachandran et al., <span>2010</span>; Swaminathan & Das, <span>2017</span>; Swaminathan & Rawal, <span>2015</span>) that the editor and authors did not think more extensive treatment necessary in this book. Still, more commentary on evidence concerning contemporary landlordism and on changing labour relations would have added to the book and helped to give readers more of a feel for how distress is experienced in the fields.</p><p>The overall argument of the book is briskly stated by Ramakumar: ‘even as capitalist development in agriculture proceeded, the liberalization agenda did not increase growth in agriculture; rather, it led to … agrarian distress’ (p. 1). Liberalization has led, he says, to a new set of contradictions; but given the rolling back of redistributive land reform and limited public investment in agriculture, inequality has remained entrenched, while ‘the new policies stymied the potential for a rise in income for a large section of the rural workforce’ (p. 1). The book provides a damning indictment of the economic ideology—centred on the idea of ‘getting the pric","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12557","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47068114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘There will be no law, or people to protect us’: Irregular Southeast Asian seasonal workers in Taiwan before and during the pandemic","authors":"Isabelle Cockel,&nbsp;Beatrice Zani,&nbsp;Jonathan S. Parhusip","doi":"10.1111/joac.12550","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12550","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper investigates the everyday lived realities of Southeast Asian migrant workers who left the formal sector of the labour market and entered the informal agricultural sector before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan. Drawing on observations of migrants' daily lives and farm work and 19 in-depth interviews, it delves into migrants' subjective experiences of vulnerability, paternalism, exploitation, and control at work due to a lack of legal protection and the illegality of their employment. Although the literature has identified a link between ‘running away’ from formal employment and seeking freedom, this research suggests a continuum between experiences of work in the formal and informal economic sectors. The paper sheds new light on mobility, work, illegality, and informality and how these have constantly shaped ‘runaway’ workers' subjective experiences of freedom and unfreedom during the pandemic.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"23 3","pages":"634-644"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12550","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48235864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contemporary agrarian, rural and rural–urban movements and alliances","authors":"Saturnino M. Borras Jr","doi":"10.1111/joac.12549","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12549","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Henry Bernstein has criticized the research agenda of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI), and the publications linked to it, for, among other things, not having specified which classes are supposed to comprise the proposed emancipatory rural politics. The <i>Journal of Agrarian Change</i> organized a special issue (published in January 2023) that takes Bernstein's critique as its point of departure. It emphasized the importance of movements of the working class that straddle the rural–urban corridor. I agree, but this should not be done by de-valuing the agrarian and the rural. The key challenge is in building agrarian, rural and rural–urban anti-capitalist movements and alliances within and between these spheres. This calls for more—not less—attention to agrarian movements seen from the inseparable domains of the agrarian, rural and rural–urban continuum in terms of academic research and political action. A starting point, and implication, of this broader unit of analysis and political intervention is an argument against a ‘too agrarian-centric’, or ‘merely agrarian’, mass movement-building and political mobilization to counter regressive populism and struggle against capitalism.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"23 3","pages":"453-476"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12549","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43031708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Migrant farmworkers: Resisting and organising before, during and after COVID-19","authors":"Vasanthi Venkatesh,&nbsp;Talia Esnard,&nbsp;Vladimir Bogoeski,&nbsp;Tomaso Ferrando","doi":"10.1111/joac.12546","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12546","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Migrant farmworkers are a ubiquitous but invisibilised, expropriated and exploited component of the global agricultural economy. Their conditions took centre-stage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fear of production disruption in the migrant labour-intensive sectors led to foreign workers being deemed ‘essential’ in many countries, and exceptional procedures and regulations were instituted that further increased their exploitation, illnesses and deaths. However, the pandemic has not merely exposed the long-established structures of racialised exploitation and expropriation in the domain of farm work. Although it exacerbated the precariousness of the living and working conditions defining the reality of migrant farm workers, there is evidence that the pandemic also strengthened farmworkers' individual and collective consciousness, along with forms of organisation and resistance. The symposium ‘Migrant Farmworkers: Resisting and Organizing before, during and after COVID-19’ explores two dimensions reflected in migrant farmworkers' realities during the pandemic. First, the contributions look at the general conditions defining power structures and material outcomes within the political economy of agriculture before and during the pandemic. Second, they explore the conditions under which resistance and solidarity emerged to question established structures of exploitation.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"23 3","pages":"568-578"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12546","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46036767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Manufactured regional crises: The Middle East and North Africa under global food regimes","authors":"Roland Riachi,&nbsp;Giuliano Martiniello","doi":"10.1111/joac.12547","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12547","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The current agrarian and food crisis in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has been interpreted through a number of tropes. Within the dominant mainstream discourse, the MENA region is often depicted as a homogenous geographical area characterized by dryness, infertile lands and poor water resources. How did imperialism, colonialism and the Cold War influence the MENA food systems? What were the effects of trade liberalization and neoliberalism on the agricultural systems in the region? These are some questions that this paper will try to answer using a geographical and historical-comparative analysis, through a food regimes lens. Understanding contemporary social relations dynamics cannot be limited to the recent period. Agriculture and food in the MENA region are anchored in the history of power relations ruled by flows of capital and the shaping of ecological transformations during the <i>longue durée</i> of capitalism and its corresponding modes of control and regulation.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"23 4","pages":"792-810"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12547","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47113477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The immaculate conception of data: Agribusiness, activists, and their shared politics of the future. By Kelly Bronson, Québec: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2022. pp. 224. C$ 37.95 (pbk)/C$ 130 (hbk). ISBN: 9780228011224 (pbk)/ISBN: 9780228011217 (hbk)","authors":"Summer Sullivan","doi":"10.1111/joac.12548","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12548","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;The promise and prominence of digital agriculture has attracted critical scholars who are guided by the underlying question: What, if anything, distinguishes digital agriculture from its industrial counterpart? Many have weighed in on this debate, but few have done so with such a deeply thoughtful, sharply argued and empirically rich approach as Kelly Bronson in &lt;i&gt;The Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists, and their Shared Politics of the Future&lt;/i&gt; (2022). She begins a book about agriculture in a curious way by detailing the Cambridge Analytica saga, one of the biggest data privacy scandals in recent history that changed the way everyday people engage with (and trust) popular platforms like Facebook and Google. After it was revealed that Big Tech was collecting personal data and selling it to political advertisers (ultimately used to influence United States presidential elections and Brexit), the public responded with a growing scepticism and even outright anger toward these companies, what Bronson and others refer to as ‘techlash’ (p. 9). Bronson argues that despite the public's increasingly critical eye toward Big Tech's amassment of sensitive data, there has not been a similar reaction to analogous forms of data extraction within the agri-food sector. This is where her book makes a crucial and timely intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;No longer concerned solely with synthetic implements, seeds or tractors, Bronson demonstrates through extensive fieldwork how incumbent agribusinesses like John Deere and Monsanto (recently acquired by Bayer) have shifted toward the mass accumulation of ‘big data’ on farms enabled by sophisticated digital technologies like sensors and drones. These agricultural-cum-data firms also devour start-ups aimed at disrupting agriculture, further concentrating their hold on the agri-food industry with drastic consequences for farmer autonomy. To be sure, most of Bronson's Canadian interviewees operate capital- and resource-intensive farms, contributing to scholarship surrounding the bifurcated market for agricultural technology (Bronson, &lt;span&gt;2019&lt;/span&gt;). In other words, these technologies are built for and available almost solely to industrial farmers with access to credit. She accordingly pays heed to this uneven dynamic by recalling the ever-relevant technological treadmill, where farmers become trapped within a predatory agricultural innovation adoption cycle (Cochrane, &lt;span&gt;1993&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;John Deere tractors, for example, are now equipped to collect plant-by-plant data through machine learning algorithms as they roam through the row crops. Just like Google or Facebook, John Deere—not the farmer—owns the data, which contains intricate information on everything from soil health to water levels. In a similar fashion to how Instagram orients its advertisements to a person's browser searches, a farmer's agricultural data are used by agribusinesses to sell tailored information back to the farmer who supplied","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12548","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45345497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Behind the ‘creative destruction’ of human diets: An analysis of the structure and market dynamics of the ultra-processed food manufacturing industry and implications for public health","authors":"Benjamin Wood,&nbsp;Owain Williams,&nbsp;Phil Baker,&nbsp;Gary Sacks","doi":"10.1111/joac.12545","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12545","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A global transition towards diets increasingly dominated by ultra-processed foods (UPFs) has occurred in recent decades to the detriment of public health and the environment. This study aimed to examine long-term trends in the structure and market dynamics of the global UPF manufacturing industry as part of broader efforts to understand the drivers of this transition. Using diverse methods, metrics and data sources, we examined several dimensions (e.g., industry concentration and profitability) according to an adapted structure–conduct–performance model. We found that the global UPF manufacturing industry has evolved to become a major component of global food systems, with its longstanding dominant corporations becoming some of the system's largest accumulators of profit and distributors of capital. It follows that reversing the global UPF dietary transition will require structural and regulatory changes to ensure that population diets, and food systems more broadly, are not subordinated to the interests of powerful for-profit business corporations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"23 4","pages":"811-843"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12545","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45096817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Adivasi migrant labour and agrarian capitalism in southern India","authors":"R.C. Sudheesh","doi":"10.1111/joac.12540","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12540","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper looks at a case of rural-to-rural movement of agrarian capital in southern India and the ways in which capital–labour relations are reworked to maintain oppressive forms of exploitation. Faced with an agrarian crisis, capitalist farmers from affluent communities of Wayanad, Kerala, take large tracts of land for lease in the neighbouring state of Karnataka and grow ginger based on price speculation. Landless Adivasis from Wayanad have served as labourers on these ginger farmlands for the past three decades. Recently, farmers have shifted to employing labourers from a Scheduled Caste (SC) from Karnataka. The change happened not just because of the lower wages the SC labourers were willing to work for but also because of the farmers' inclination to move away from Adivasis who have been resisting the poor working conditions on the farm. The story resonates with the broader dynamics of agrarian–labour relations amidst capitalist expansion and highlights the centrality of socio-political factors at play.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"23 4","pages":"755-770"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12540","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41341949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Discipline and resistance in southwestern Ontario: Securitization of migrant workers and their acts of defiance","authors":"Chris Ramsaroop","doi":"10.1111/joac.12541","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12541","url":null,"abstract":"<p>COVID-19 has had deep impacts on a wide range of vulnerable communities in Canada. Migrant agricultural workers in the southwestern region of Ontario were particularly impacted. Fearing the threat of the ‘racialized foreign other’, the Canadian state produced myriad securitization responses with heightened surveillance. This paper will examine both state and non-state forms of securitization and the response from both workers and activists such as the advocacy group Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW). While there has been ample discussion of how vulnerable migrant agricultural workers were affected during the pandemic, there has been less attention paid to how state policies have heightened and targeted specific groups such as migrant agricultural workers through modes of securitization. Central to this was to ensure that labour needs would be met to ensure the viability of Canada's multi-billion agricultural industry. This paper shows how securitization and control were vital to ensure no disruptions to production levels and Canada's role as a leading agricultural export producer.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"23 3","pages":"600-610"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12541","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48512048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Land, investment and migration. By Camilla Toulmin, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2020. pp. xxv + 241. £67.00 (hbk). ISBN 9780198852766","authors":"Christian Lund","doi":"10.1111/joac.12544","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12544","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Dark clouds of violence gather over the heads of the villagers in the Sahel. Insurgencies and banditry, motivated by a volatile mixture of well-founded distrust in government, misgivings about urban wealth capture and bitterness about decades of abandonment, terrorize the countryside. Laced with religious sentiments, oratory and decor, armed groups seem to develop ethnic, racial and geopolitical unrest. And when French, and other UN troops, struggle with Russian Wagner mercenaries to court the pleasure of the Malian government and to impose peace, chances are that something completely different is in store. Optimism seems foolhardy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yet, if we refuse to see the rural Sahelian population as mere human husks doomed to fade out of history as its predestined losers, we might see resilience, endurance and ingenuity. Against the odds, mind you. Camilla Toulmin's &lt;i&gt;Land, Investment and Migration&lt;/i&gt; is about continuity and change in rural Sahel. Forty-some years have passed since Toulmin's first visit to the village of Dlonguébougou in central Mali in 1980, representing more than a generation, more than 2/3 of Mali's post-independence history. We often rely on memory to compare the present with the past. But memories are not of the past, they are assemblages made in the present with the structure of a flea market and the credibility of a compleat angler. In contrast, Toulmin's comparison of the presence with the past does not rely on memory alone. Her book revisits the place and research that formed the basis of her first book, &lt;i&gt;Cattle, Women and Wells: Managing Household Survival in the Sahel&lt;/i&gt;, from 1992. With the historical documentation in hand, the new book is on firm ground to describe and explains the modest fortunes and more ample adversities that have been visited upon the villagers over the past four decades. Increasing pressure on land and looming insecurity has changed the conditions for all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Toulmin's approach is holistic. She engages the system of production in the Sahel and the social and political relations that are spun around classes of people, their interests, visions and actions. The analysis takes its point of departure in the farming system under the difficulties of climate change. Toulmin shows how farming integrates agroforestry and how wild trees are not as wild and unfarmed as an untrained observer would suspect. The landscape was always frugal, and the chapters show how different ‘famine foods’ create a necessary buffer for survival. The farming system itself is also quite intricate. By zooming in on different varieties of crops, the book makes a case for constant micro-adaptation which is only possible for people who know their environment well. The big question is whether the potential of the adaptive strategies will be exhausted in the face of climate change. The jury is still out on this one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another relentless pressure comes from land scarcity. Whereas land had seemed endlessly abundant when the ","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12544","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47142299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}