75th Anniversary: 58) Research at the Rural Sociology Group: Agrarian Movements and Transitions in the Global South

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Lisette Nikol, PhD candidate at the Rural Sociology Group

How do small farmers in the Global South secure their livelihoods? How do capitalist dynamics and agrarian movements striving for alternatives shape these livelihoods? How can agrarian transition pathways address possible tensions between the needs of rural development, sustainable agrarian futures and a growing world population? What role do and should farmers play in imagining and realising these transition pathways and agrarian futures? How do we analyse and explain agrarian transitions in general and the farming systems realised by agrarian movements in particular?

These abstract questions summarise my research interests. My interests are motivated by a concern for an agrarian future that is socially just and environmentally sustainable, in which our farming populations and natural environment can thrive rather than be exploited.  

In my PhD research, I investigate diverse facets of an ongoing agrarian struggle in the wake of agricultural modernisation and the development of agrarian capitalism, paying particular attention to the concept of peasant autonomy. Peasant autonomy locates core critiques of modern agriculture with the commodity nature of production relations (Jansen et al. 2021). While the critiques alone are relevant, I find that research into agrarian movements is more interesting and useful if it examines how different agricultural systems promote distinct production relations and transition pathways that entail different dependencies on wider production relations, agro-ecosystems, social relations and agrarian movements. As a sociologist concerned with theory, I find it relevant to inquire into how various conceptual ideas of peasant autonomy, varying dependencies on diverse production relations and socio-material relations of farming systems can help us both explain ongoing transitions and imagine and realise future transitions .

Specifically, I am investigating an organic agriculture movement in the Philippines that is responding to the challenges posed by decades of Green Revolution-oriented agricultural policies. Providing alternatives to the agricultural modernisation programmes of the state, this farmer network facilitates a farmer-led rice breeding programme, trainings on organic cultivation and complementary livelihood-related aspects, and a Participatory Guarantee System to market organic produce locally.

I locate my work within a contemporary body of agrarian political economy that critically reflects on the broader effects of the capitalist dynamics in agriculture and the countryside (see e.g. Guthman 2004, Kloppenburg 2004, Bernstein 2010, Jansen 2015). Another body of theoretical work that informs my research agenda is an anthropology of technology development that looks at technological change in the context of agrarian development and transformation as contingent, society-technology relations (e.g. Bray 1986, Almekinders 2011, Jansen & Vellema 2011). Combining these two approaches allows for an interesting set of questions capable of addressing both social and material aspects that are vital to an overall understanding of agrarian movements and transitions.

An important part of my research looks at peasant autonomy and food sovereignty questions as concerning farmers’ relations to their means of production. Agrarian movements seemingly aim to reverse the separation of farmers from their means of production, such as seeds and the wider agro-ecosystem, as achieved by agricultural modernisation and development following a capitalist, industrial model. But how do efforts to mend this situation play out in particular empirical settings? In this question, I centralise the material dimension of farming and agro-ecosystems in interaction with social relations and farmers’ practices. I address two important sets of production relations.

First, I analyse the sorts of relations around seed that emerge in situations where seed activist initiatives are realised. It is important to understand how these relations are caught between agrarian capitalism and seed activism. Second, I focus on soil fertility management – a core of organic approaches often presented as key to realising an autonomous agro-ecosystem – as a site of tension and performance. How does a view on farming as ‘performance’ (cf. Richards 1993) or simply ‘making do’ to survive relate to views on farming as performing political farming narratives?

Another aspect of agrarian movements I find intriguing is their functioning as organisations, themselves firmly embedded in relations with and among farmers. When the work of agrarian movements gains importance for the livelihoods of rural and agrarian peoples, how should we understand the relation between movements and members, or the movement’s practical work in the context of agrarian livelihood strategies? Additionally, movements take on emancipatory roles, organising farmers politically and advocating on their behalf at various levels of government (Nikol and Jansen 2020). How do their narratives of agrarian futures and rural development relate to the narratives of its differentiated constituency, as well as those of the government?

A last avenue of my inquiry looks into the dynamics shaping and participation of farmers in national organic sectors. Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are promoted on a global scale as a cost-efficient and trustworthy alternative to third-party certification. Interestingly, the development of organic agriculture is caught in a tug-of-war between capitalist dynamics prompting its ‘conventionalisation’ and committed pioneers promoting values that critique the industrialised agricultural model (Nikol and Jansen 2021). I further investigate dynamics in the development of organic agriculture, specifically how PGSs seem a tool modelled after and complying with demands from conventional agriculture, as well as a tool to organise farmer participation, reclaim the narrative of organic agriculture and reorganise the relations that compose this sector.

How to explain ongoing agrarian transitions, and how to imagine and realise agrarian transitions in the future? In researching seed systems and plant-breeding, soil fertility management and integrated farming systems, the organisational and advocacy work of social movements and tensions between capitalist dynamics and ‘pioneer’ approaches in organic agriculture development, I aim to contribute relevant insights grounded in lessons from an agrarian movement in the Global South.  These questions and the experiences of the Philippine organic movement, will no doubt continue to engage me in the future and inspire future contributions to the literature. 

Almekinders, C. (2011). The Joint Development of JM-12.7: A technographic description of the making of a bean variety, NJAS-Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 57(3): 207-216.

Bernstein, H. (2010). Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

Bray, F. (1986) (1986). The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. Oxford [etc.]: Blackwell.

Guthman, J. (2004). Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California. Oakland: University of California Press.

Jansen, K. (2015). The Debate on Food Sovereignty Theory: Agrarian capitalism, dispossession and agroecology, Journal of Peasant Studies, 42(1): 213-232.

Jansen, K. and S. Vellema (2011). What is Technography? NJAS-Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 57(3): 169-177.

Jansen, K., M. Vicol and L.J. Nikol (2021). Autonomy and Repeasantization: Conceptual, analytical, and methodological problems, Journal of Agrarian Change (special issue on Autonomy in Agrarian Studies, Politics and Movements).

Kloppenburg, J.R. (2004). First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Nikol, L.J. and K. Jansen (2020). The Politics of Counter-Expertise on Aerial Spraying: Social movements denouncing pesticide risk governance in the Philippines, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 50(1): 99-124.

Nikol, L.J. and K. Jansen (2021). Rethinking Conventionalisation: A view from organic agriculture in the Global South, Journal of Rural Studies, 86: 420-429.

Richards, P. (1993). Cultivation: Knowledge or performance? In M. Hobart (Ed.), An Anthropological Critique of Development: The Growth of Ignorance,pp. 61-78. London:Routledge.

75th Anniversary: 57) Research at the Rural Sociology Group:  Researching Mexican coffee policies resulting from a political regime change

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Claudia Oviedo, PhD candidate at the Rural Sociology Group

Mexican coffee policies of recent decades have been highly criticised. Farmers, coffee organizations, academics, and development organizations have claimed that programmes implemented to promote coffee production in Mexico have been limited to assuring mere survival of farmers rather than promoting the necessary transformation of their livelihoods. One of the main criticisms of such programmes is that while the state provided plants, fertilizer, and sprayers through farmers’ organizations, due to clientelism many farmers did not receive the inputs they had been promised. Other criticisms include that such programmes have failed to involve effective commercialization strategies and have not provided adequate technical assistance, particularly with respect to disease management.

Collecting coffee beans – Photo by Erik García. 

In December of 2018, “leftist” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took office. Criticising previous neoliberal administrations’ lack of attention to rural areas, he promised his administration would benefit small farmers and that he would end corruption. To achieve this, his administration implemented the rural programme Sowing Life (Sembrando Vida) through the Ministry of Well-Being, providing approximately €250 monthly to farmers to plant deforested areas with fruit trees and annual crops using agroecological practices. The Ministry of Agriculture also launched the programme Production for Well-Being (Producción para el Bienestar), which also promotes sustainable coffee production, although with a much lower amount.

This PhD research analyses coffee policies implemented in 2019—he first year of AMLO´s administration, addressing the state’s conceptualization of farmers—essentially based on the size of their landholding—as well as its strategy for incorporating them principally into the organic market. Based on a Value Chain approach as well as Political Economy concepts, I found that those that farmers the state considers to be “small-scale” vary with respect to their level of control over the means of production. Furthermore, I conclude that selling to the organic market does not necessarily benefit all farmers and suggest the need to re-conceptualise the approach of public policy to “incorporating” coffee farmers into the market.

This study also addressed the political configuration of coffee programmes by unpacking the relationship among farmers, the state, and the coffee processing industry—namely Nestlé, as well as the interests of each of these actors and their strategies for obtaining their objectives. Two coffee trajectories were identified: one involving production of high-quality organic coffee and a high level of participation by the state and farmers´ organizations in policy development. The other trajectory is that of instant coffee, involving sale of lower-quality coffee to Nestlé. While several farmers’ organizations reject the latter trajectory, many farmers perceive benefits from cultivating coffee for this industry. Therefore, I urge policymakers and development agencies to allow for a variety of productive options rather than pre-determining a single production system.

Finally, this study addressed AMLO´s policy to reduce involvement of intermediaries by providing subsidies directly to farmers rather than through farmers´ organizations. Given that during previous administrations many representatives of these organizations retained a large part of the subsidies, many farmers welcomed this policy. However, its implementation has been characterised by operative problems and tensions between organizations and state personnel.  Some farmers´ organizations assured that not all such organizations are clientelistic; rather, they hold that they provide an essential mechanism for farmers to access more profitable marketing options. Meanwhile, the reactions of personnel from Sowing Life and Production for Well-Being contrasted significantly: as Sowing Life is extensively promoted by AMLO, and it does not stem from previous programmes, most personnel supported the reduction of intermediary policy. However, some staff of Production for Well-Being defended the work they had developed with farmers’ organisations and highly objected to the changes.

75th Anniversary: 56) Research at the Rural Sociology Group: Rethinking and Reimagining Urban Food Economies

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By Oona Morrow

I believe that research can do more than describe and critique what already exists but also contribute to the co-creation of more just and sustainable futures. My research is concerned with grassroots sustainability innovations that endeavor to make urban food economies more collective, equitable, and shared. I approach these practices from the theoretical perspective of diverse economies, care, and the commons. These concerns have led me to examine a diverse range of topics at multiple urban scales ranging from everyday and gendered practices of food self-provisioning; to food sharing, food waste, and community composting; to community gardening and urban agriculture; to circular agri-food systems and urban food policies. What unites these topics is not simply a focus on food and the city, but my particular approach which is both critical and reparative, and sensitive to dynamics of creativity and power in grassroots sustainability innovations. I have had the joy of working with community food initiatives in Boston, New York, Berlin, and more recently Amsterdam.

But what does this actually look like, how do I go about it, and how did I arrive here ?

I began my PhD in geography with an interest in gender and diverse economies, but without a clearly defined research topic. In the U.S. a PhD takes a bit longer, and with three years of required course work I had time to explore a number of research topics and sub-disciplines before I began my field work. I knew that I wanted to conduct long term, participatory, and careful research in a place I felt connected to. I also knew what types of theories and concepts excited me – these tended to more feminist, post-structural, interested everyday life as a site of politics and possibility, and committed to social justice and transformation.

I found my conceptual home and community in feminist geography, and a particular strand of post-structural feminist economic geography being woven by J.K. Gibson-Graham and the community economies collective. Rather than viewing the economy as a monolithic structure that is imposed on us and driven by logics of growth, capitalism, and so on – this group of scholar-activists take an anti-essentialist approach to the multiple economies we make and remake each day in ethical negotiation with all of the (human and more-than-human) actors we are interdependent with. Using the metaphor of the economy as iceberg, they urge researchers, activist, and policy makers to look beyond the tip of the iceberg (e.g. gross domestic product, monetary exchanges, waged labor, capitalist enterprise), and appreciate the abundant and diverse activities happening below the water line that contribute to the well-being of people and planet. From this vantage familiar (but often static) concepts like class, the market, and enterprise are broken down into more open categories that facilitate the recognition and appreciation of economic diversity, local assets, and the too often hidden and undervalued labors of care and commoning.

Going into the field for me meant staying home in Somerville, Massachusetts (a once affordable inner suburb of Boston) and observing what was happening around me in terms of gender and diverse economies. It turned out that there was an incredible amount of non-market, cooperative, and commons based activities happening around food provisioning, in domestic and community spaces, and that gender (as well as race and class) played an important role in how these activities unfolded. I conducted ethnographic and action research with households and community food initiatives involved in self-provisioning, urban homesteading, and urban agriculture. I attended zoning meetings in Boston, where urban agriculture was being debated and reframed as an economic growth strategy, rather than a livelihood strategy. I sat in dozens of backyards, held chickens, admired the dancing of bees, shared meals, attended foraging, garden tours, and bee hive tours, and participated in countless workshops organized by the Urban Homesteaders League (a skill sharing community founded by the social practice artist Lisa Gross). I also organized and supported several community food initiatives who were trying to work out more collective and cooperative ways of food provisioning.  In collaboration with the League of Urban Canners I conducted participatory mapping to uncover the urban food commons, knocked on doors to glean backyard fruit for community food preservation, and harvest and processed tons of fruit into jam. In collaboration with the humans and microbes I fermented food in home and community settings. And I interviewed people about these experiences.

My interest in the convivial and shared aspect of food provisioning eventually brought me to Dublin Ireland, where I joined a team of researchers exploring the sustainability potential of urban food sharing. Inspired by the diverse economies framework, we developed a crowdsourced database and map to “make visible” the economic diversity of food sharing in 100 different cities. Through ethnographic research with community food initiatives in Berlin and New York City I dug deeper into my core concerns with diverse economies, care, and commoning. I became fascinated with the legal and regulatory frameworks that shape these practices, especially around notions of risk. I spoke with food safety officers and food sharers who cared deeply about these risks. I rescued, carried, distributed, gifted, shared, prepared, cooked, and consumed tons of “food waste”. I sat in communal gardens and kitchens and spoke with people. And I fell in love with compost, and community composting in particular.

At the Rural Sociology Group I have continued my research agenda on diverse economies and urban food commons, and developed a new research agenda on careful circularity which explores the potential for constructing circuits of care and solidarity rather than merely closing loops in the circular economy transition. I work on these topics together with students and in participatory research on grassroots circular food innovations in Amsterdam. I’m supported in this work by a web of scholars, activists, institutes, and importantly artists who help me to not only think but also to dream by prototyping social innovations and possible futures in food provisioning, commoning, circularity, and diverse economies.

Publications related to this work

  • Morrow, O., & Davies, A. (2021). Creating Careful Circularities: Community composting in New York City. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
  • Morrow, O. (2021). Ball jars, Bacteria, and Labor: CO-producing nature through cooperative enterprise. Food and Foodways, 1-17.
  • Morrow, O. (2021) Food Commons in M. Goodman, M. Kneafsey, L. Holloway, and D. Maye. Food Geographies. Bloomsbury
  • Morrow, O., & Parker, B. (2020). Care, Commoning and Collectivity: from grand domestic revolution to urban transformation. Urban Geography, 1-18.
  • Morrow, O. (2020). Gleaning: transactions at the nexus of food, commons and waste.  In Eds. K. Gibson and K. Dombroski.  Handbook of Diverse Economies.  Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Hoffman, D., Poll, C., and Morrow, O (2019) Berlin’s Food Policy Council. RUAF UA Magazine 36: Food Policy Councils
  • Morrow, O. (2019) Community Self-Organizing and the Urban Food Commons in Berlin and New York.. Sustainability. Special issue “Community Self-Organisation, Sustainability, and Resilience in Food Systems.” Eds. M. Hasanov and M. Kneafsey
  • Morrow, O., & Martin, D. G. (2019). Unbundling Property in Boston’s Urban Food Commons. Urban Geography, 00(00), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.161581
  • Community Economies Collective, Morrow, O., St. Martin, K., Gabriel, N., Heras, A. (2019). Community Economies. pp. 56-61. in Eds. Antipode Editorial Collective. Keywords in Radical Geography: Antipode at 50. John Wiley and Sons. 
  • Morrow, O. (2019). Sharing Food and Risk in Berlin’s Urban Food Commons. Geoforum: Special Issue on Urban Food Sharing. Eds. A. Davies and D. Evans.
  • McKinnon, K., Dombroski, K., and Morrow, O. (2018) The Diverse Economy: Feminism, Capitalocentrism, and Postcapitalist Futures. In Eds. A. Roberts and J. Elias. Handbook of International Political Economy of Gender. Edward Elgar Publishers.
  • Davies, A.R., Edwards, M., Marovelli, B., Morrow, O., Rut, M., Weymes, M. (2017). Making Visible: Interrogating the performance of food sharing across 100 urban areas. Geoforum.
  • Parker, B. and Morrow, O. (2017) Urban Homesteading and Intensive Mothering: (Re) Gendering Care and Environmental Responsibility in Boston and Chicago. Gender, Place, and Culture.
  • Morrow, O. (2017) League of Urban Canners: Stewarding Urban Fruit Orchards. In Eds. Shareable. Sharing Cities: Activating the yrban commons. https://www.shareable.net/sharing-cities/
  • Morrow, O., Hawkins, R., Kern, L. (2015) Feminist Research in Online Spaces. Gender, Place, and Culture. 22(4): 526-43
  • Morrow, O., and Dombroski, K. (2015) Enacting a Post-Capitalist Politics through the sites and practices of life’s work. in eds. K. Strauss and K. Meehan. Precarious Worlds: New Geographies of Social Reproduction. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press ‘geographies of justice and social transformation series’ pp. 82-96.

Artists, Activists &  Initiatives who have inspired this work

Webinar 5: A Just Future for the Global Countryside? by Michael Woods @WoodsZzp

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A Just Future for the Global Countryside? by prof. Michael Woods, Aberystwyth University, Thursday March 31, 2022, 12.00-13.30 (CET).

The talk is part of the Rural Sociology 75th Anniversary webinar series ‘Looking back, Looking Forward: Setting a future agenda for rural sociology’. Watch recordings of the webinars series at Rural Sociology Youtube channel.

The event will be streamed by Teams. Email to mark.vicol@wur.nl to register yourself.

Thesis opportunity: Urban guerrillas in the countryside? The case of the M-19 in Colombia.

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The M-19 was an insurgent group active in Colombia from 1974-1990. It has recently enjoyed a brief moment of fame for careful viewers of the popular Netflix series Narcos, where it was rather simplisticallydepicted as being in cahoots with narco-traffickers. The movement is popularly understood as an urban movement and the M-19 did in fact emerge from middle class university environments in big cities like Calí and Bogota. It also carried out audacious symbolic attacks and innovative forms of communication with the Colombian population (for e.g. broadcasting its announcements on TV at half time during televised matches of the Colombian football team) in cities. What is less well known about the movement is that it also had an extensive and dynamic rural armed campaign in the south of the country. Although, smaller in number than better known groups like FARC, it achieved notable military successes by seizing regional cities and operating forms of rebel governance by providing schools, operating courts to punish criminals and re-distributing locally needed goods like wellingtons and tools.

The literature in conflict studies has emphasised how difficult it is for idealistic urban middle classes to win the support of often poorly educated and politically passive peasants. Indeed, the physical unsuitability of ‘soft’ city kids in adjusting to the hardship of rural life is often cited as a further obstacle to revolutionary movements’ success. For students interested in conflict studies, social movements and rebel governance, this is the chance to look at one of Latin America’s lesser known and often misunderstood movements. More broadly it will give students a chance to conduct research on mobilisation across the urban-rural divide.

Extensive data on the M-19’s mobilisation in Caquetá in southern Colombia is available in the National Center for Historical Memory digital archives. Students will learn about archival research, the analysis of primary sources and the coding of qualitative data. Using this data and secondary literature, students would analyse the way in which the M-19 overcame the disadvantages of its urban back ground to launch a rural guerrilla campaign. All the documents are in Spanish, so unfortunately the project is only suitable for Spanish speakers.

If you are interested in working on armed movements and can speak Spanish, please contact francis.oconnor@wur.nl