Crop booms at subtropic frontiers: smallholder coffee production and agrarian change in Southwest China

Rural China is undergoing dramatic transformation along with modernization and globalization, driven by increasing capitalist engagement to increase commercial crop production. This phenomenon has been termed “crop booms” and was widely observed in tropical and subtropical frontiers of the Global South. International concerns about crop booms driven capitalist agrarian changes have been widely documented due to its unexpected environmental and socioeconomic outcomes, such as exacerbating large-scale land acquisition, socioeconomic inequality, and environmental degradation. However, knowledge gaps can be found from existing literature, mainly ignorance of voices needs of smallholder farmers and the role of the state behind crop booms. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper offers insights to crop booms and agrarian change through case studies of coffee plantations in Southwest China. Different from large-scale and capital-intensified crop booms in other regions, which often result in negative environmental and social consequences, this paper reveals relatively positive aspects of crop booms in which fewer land transfers occurred and enhanced benefit-sharing helped improve equality. Findings suggest that security of agricultural land tenure system, increasing both international and domestic market competition, and involvement in value-added processing activities all enable smallholder farmers to engage in coffee plantations with support from government agencies and international companies. In connection with crop booms and agrarian change, policy implications drawn from this research call for deeper understanding of local dynamics in agrarian change and investment from governments to improve land tenure security and market infrastructure across the Global South.