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Household Food Insecurity Access Scale, by debt level
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The operations of microfinance are exalted in mainstream development thinking as a key means of supporting smallholder farmers facing growing crises of agricultural productivity in the context of daily, ongoing, and often slow-onset climate disasters. Microfinance products and services are claimed to enhance coping and adap-tative capacity by facil...
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Context 1
... only 30.6% of households could be considered food secure, the rest were categorised as mildly (39.2%), moderately (26.9%), and severely food insecure (3.2%). Importantly, and as Table 2 shows, indebted households (<US $4,200) experienced greater food insecurity than non-indebted households across n = 216 n = 86 n = 94 n = 75 n = 74 n = 76 n = 621 ...Citations
... While these studies do not focus on food per se, they offer important insights on the relationship between shocks and food insecurity. Guermond et al. (2023), for example, elucidate how debt incurred because of climate shocks pushes rural precariats in Cambodia to borrow more money, work more, and sacrifice food quality and quantity. These studies also potentially enrich the scholarship on multiple stressors, including the double exposure framework, which has not fully examined precarity in its theorization. ...
... Finally, access to food worsened with food prices escalating and their ability to market their produce and catch affected by the rising fuel prices during high inflation. As the capital required to sustain fishing livelihoods during the high inflation period increased, many fisherfolk tended to cut short on their daily expenses especially food (see also Guermond et al. 2023). There was a tendency for the fisherfolk to sell almost all their daily fish catch in order to obtain more cash to be used for various equally important household expenses such as school fees and reduce the number of meals they consume (often sacrificing their first meal of the day). ...
The succession of shocks—sudden social and environmental crises, whether they be episodic or erratic, such as extreme weather events, pandemics, and economic recessions—has dire consequences on the ability of people, especially the vulnerable and precarious, to secure safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate foods. While the scholarship on multiple shocks and stressors is increasingly recognized in the academic literature, there remains a dearth in scholarship that critically interrogates the impacts of successive and overlapping shocks on the various dimensions and temporalities of food security. In this paper, we adapt the double exposure framework to examine how a triad of shocks—a catastrophic typhoon, the COVID-19 pandemic, and high economic inflation—has led to varying magnitudes of transitory and chronic food insecurity among the fisherfolk in coastal communities in Capiz, the Philippines. Drawing from field research, we illustrate that the succession of shocks induced a decline in household incomes, an escalation of dependence on credit, and the consequential accumulation of debt among the fisherfolk. Credit and debt have allowed the fisherfolk to sustain meal frequency to some extent during periods of high vulnerability, but the succession of shocks continued to aggravate their lack of access to nutritious food. Looming in the background is the gradual crisis of declining fish stocks, which may exacerbate the impacts of successive shocks in the future.
... Adaptation can also reshape the subjectivities of agriculturalists, enrolling them in new kinds of relationships with states and markets (Guermond et al., 2023;Mills-Novoa et al., 2020). Work on indexbased insurance in regions from Africa to the Caribbean, for example, has found that interventions to promote climate change adaptation through insurance-based financial instruments serve primarily to produce risk-bearing financial subjects through agricultural financialization (Johnson, 2013;Knudson, 2018), thus pulling more small producers more deeply into the global capitalist economy while leaving existing axes of vulnerability intact. ...
The agrarian question of the twenty-first century is the agrarian question of climate change. The classical agrarian question asked how capitalist development was reshaping fin de siècle agriculture and with what consequences. The answers often contradicted predictions, and thereby teleological notions of development. Today, we must ask how climate change adaptation and mitigation, alongside and through other ongoing processes of capitalist development, are reshaping agrarian lives, livelihoods, landscapes, and politics, and with what consequences. We argue that attention to the agrarian question is essential to understanding social, political, and economic transformation broadly in the time of climate change.
... Microfinance institutions play a crucial role in providing essential liquidity to affected communities and mitigating natural disasters linked to climate change (Sseruyange and Klomp, 2021). However, caution is warranted, as microfinance products for climate adaptation can inadvertently create debt cycles due to adverse weather conditions, offering short-term solutions without addressing underlying vulnerabilities (Guermond et al., 2023). In a study examining the impact of climate change on microinsurance programs for impoverished farmers in Malawi, various climateinduced precipitation scenarios were analysed. ...
Climate change poses a significant threat to agricultural productivity, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of its implications for both agricultural firms and capital lenders. This systematic literature review aims to elucidate emerging trends in addressing climate-related risks in agriculture and credit sectors. Drawing from a rigorous analysis of 39 articles sourced from Scopus and Web of Science databases, three key thematic dimensions have emerged: (i) agricultural lending and credit risk, (ii) green principles and sustainability, and (iii) the context of developing countries. From the impact of climate change on the recoverability of loans to the imperative of transitioning towards a greener and more sustainable economy, alongside the nuanced challenges faced by agriculture in developing countries, we analyzed prominent and recent literary approaches. The findings underscore the need to integrate climate change considerations into agricultural and credit policies. Policymakers and financial institutions should prioritize climate education for farmers and promote sustainable financial approaches. Anticipated climate risks will impact lenders’ capital reserves, necessitating portfolio adjustments. A deep understanding of climate change’s interplay with agriculture lending and credit risk is vital, urging proactive policy and practice. Addressing climate challenges in agriculture demands a multifaceted strategy encompassing tailored credit policies, improved access to credit, financial empowerment, and the mitigation of social inequalities. This review highlights the urgent need for proactive strategies to mitigate climate risks and ensure a resilient agricultural sector, emphasizing the crucial role of research and policy interventions in navigating the complex landscape of climate change impacts on agriculture.
... Rainfall patterns have diverged from historical trends, leading to more frequent droughts and floods. Together, high costs of debt-financed production and irregular climate conditions have dramatically increased the risks of agriculture for smallholder farmers (Guermond et al., 2023). ...
Against a backdrop of agrarian transformation, COVID-19 intensified translocal precarity among smallholder farmers worldwide. As scholars of economic geography and agrarian studies have shown, smallholder households increasingly struggle to reproduce themselves through agrarian livelihoods alone, with many households compelled to migrate to urban centres, both domestic and foreign, to find employment. Consequently, smallholder farmers now experience precarity shaped by the translocal spaces of both production and social reproduction. In this paper, based on a qualitative study of smallholders in northwestern Cambodia conducted from 2019 to 2023, we argue that COVID-19 deepened the translocal precarity of smallholder households, who already had to struggle with volatile commodity production and uncertain labour migration. We explain how the pandemic led to urban job losses and forced workers to return to rural homes and farming. On the farm, pandemic restrictions on cross-border trade of agricultural
inputs drove up production costs while competition for land between migrant returnees increased land rental fees, pushing many smallholders into debt traps following poor harvests. Indebted households responded by migrating to Thailand again, where labour demand for industrial production remained low after the pandemic, creating additional uncertainty about their migration journey. We conclude that the impacts of COVID-19 on smallholder households are usefully explained through the lens of translocal precarity. This approach reveals how the pandemic played out within a broader conjuncture of agrarian transformation, defined by adverse incorporation into transnational commodity markets, a lack of sustaining infrastructure in the countryside, and an increasingly debt-driven migration regime.
... Agrarian transitions encompass complex narratives of development, primarily triggered by the expansion of capitalist agricultural production models and agricultural commercialisation (Sugden et al. 2022). In the LMB, these transitions involve issues regarding state-imposed land controls for lease, transfers, and concessions (Baird 2020;Diepart and Sem 2018;Nanhthavong et al. 2022;Schoenberger et al. 2017), local and trans-border dynamics of livelihood change, poverty reduction, and rural development (Barney 2013;IOM 2021;Rigg 2006), as well as mounting household debts incurred from the shift towards commodified agricultural production (Green 2022b;Guermond et al. 2023). ...
... More often, farmers seek extension solutions, which go beyond technical aspects of farming. Pressing demands from farmers mainly revolve around accessing capital, such as loans from banks or micro-finance institutions, for agricultural development, or improving capacity to sustain their livelihoods (Baird 2023;Guermond et al. 2023;Green 2022b). While acquiring new skills and knowledge is essential, addressing these disconnections requires extensionists to step into famers' livelihood conditions and gain better understanding of their lives so as to deliver needed extension services. ...
Recent decades have witnessed widespread agrarian transitions in mainland Southeast Asia. This paper examines how agrarian transitions are shaped by multiple drivers of change, and how these interwoven processes have triggered shifts in agricultural extension practices in three countries in the Lower Mekong Basin: Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Drawing on interviews with experts working on the fields of agrarian studies and rural development, this paper argues that agrarian transitions not only put a strain on agricultural extension systems in responding to evolving needs, but they also stimulate the co-production of innovative agricultural extension models to address gaps left by the limited presence of extensionists. The study gains insight into challenges faced by extensionists, including a lack of resources, skills, and capacities to meet growing needs, which simultaneously urged them to excel in their work performance. The paper highlights the proactive role of ‘champions’ in orchestrating collective efforts towards the co-production of innovative agricultural extension models (e.g. Metkasekor), and the formulation of pluralistic extension platforms in enabling such ‘co-learning-to-act’ practices. By translating these insights into the broader contexts of agricultural and rural development in the Mekong region and beyond, this paper aims to make a two-fold contribution. First, it will assert how the ‘business-as-usual’ extension model has failed to adequately address emerging needs as a result of agrarian transitions. Second, it will provide pathways for the recognition and legitimisation of the pluralistic extension approach that fosters stakeholders’ co-learning and productive engagement in extension practices.
... By 2017, the industry found that 50% of borrowers across the country reported at least one subjective measure of over-indebtedness, with 28% insolvent based on objective measures (Green and Bylander 2021). Farm households have been squeezed between rising debt levels, driven by aggressive lending by the for-profit microfinance industry, and precarious rural livelihoods that are now insufficient to sustain households' basic needs (Guermond et al. 2023). A farmer in Battambang explained: ...
This article compares rural credit systems in Thailand and Cambodia in order to advance studies on financialization and rural development in South East Asia. In Thailand, the state remains a large provider of credit to farmers. In Cambodia, most farmers access credit from a globalized, private microfinance industry. Based on qualitative research carried out in 2021 and 2022, we argue that farmer debt has led to divergent outcomes in Thailand and Cambodia due to their opposing systems of rural credit developed over the past half-century. These systems were forged within historically specific conjunctures of international development policies, state–capital relations and domestic politics of debt. Consequently, Thailand’s farmers access credit from the state at significantly lower costs and with more support in various forms. Over-indebtedness is a problem for some farmers, but not because state-controlled financial institutions charge excessive interest rates. In contrast, the cost of private credit is higher in Cambodia, with many farmers facing overindebtedness with little to no support from the government. This article contributes to scholarship on financialization within South East Asia by demonstrating how the legacies and geopolitics of development, alongside the contentious politics of farmer debt, together shape the outcomes of rural credit systems.
... Smallholder farmers in particular have long been targeted for inclusion into formal financial markets, both in the Global North and South (Bernards, 2022). The financial ecologies approach developed so far lacks the conceptual and analytical tools required to explain how debt geographies in these regions intersect with agricultural production, thereby overlooking significant consequences of debt-driven agrarian transformation (Gerber, 2014;Green, 2022aGreen, , 2022cGuermond et al., 2023;Li, 2014;Ramprasad, 2019;Taylor, 2013). ...
... For example, throughout the 2010s, households increasingly borrowed to pay for their social reproduction, including housing, consumption, healthcare and education (Green & Bylander, 2021). Indeed, due to inadequate state expenditure on social services and other welfare programmes, the microfinance industry has facilitated the privatisation of social reproduction in the countryside (Green & Estes, 2019Guermond et al., 2023). ...
... Regional temperatures are on average 0.8°C higher than in 1960, subjecting households to more extreme heat throughout the year. Furthermore, a changing monsoonal weather pattern has increased the frequency of droughts and floods (Guermond et al., 2023). One farmer in Sala village told us, Our area has been flooded for three years in a row already, so our wet rice farming has been badly affected. ...
There is a growing interest in exploring contemporary financialisation in terms of the geographies of debt. Many economic geographers have adopted a financial ecologies approach to explain these geographies. While this approach provides analytical benefits, it nonetheless analyses debt almost exclusively in terms of consumer finance, thereby overlooking the relations of production in which many indebted households engage. To address this issue, I develop the agrarian financial ecologies concept, which both directs analysis towards the diversity of credit–debt relations in rural economies, and highlights the relationship between land, labour and debt in the process of agricultural production. I apply this concept to study farm household debt in Cambodia, where indebtedness has become a widespread problem among farmers facing rapid economic transformation in the countryside. By focusing on land and labour, I demonstrate how diverse credit–debt relations within Cambodia's agrarian financial ecology have produced uneven socio-spatial outcomes, namely debt-driven land dispossession. This paper advances geographic theory about the dynamics of value production, circulation and appropriation within geographies of debt. It also extends the empirical remit of existing financial ecologies scholarship by attending to the credit–debt relations that characterise many agrarian livelihoods today.
From IPCC reports to global asset managers and governments, calls for more green finance to fuel the sustainability transition are ubiquitous. Concurrently, the critiques of a benign embrace of financial techniques, products, and flows as solutions to the climate crisis are growing louder. As a field of inquiry, IPE has the right tools to address such controversies productively. Yet, we diagnose a lack of what we call a deep engagement of IPE with epistemic and practical questions of what green finance is, how it operates, and its outcomes. The ambition of this special issue is to develop a research agenda that examines the contemporary global and concrete forms of green finance and its governance in order to better understand the following dynamics: first, how political and economic power relations within global finance shape environmental governance outcomes, and second, how the climate crisis itself influences the governance of global finance. To facilitate such thinking, we propose to understand green finance as an evolving ecosystem in the broader web of global finance instead of a specific instrument, asset class or concept. We hold this to be a fruitful approach to engage questions of green finance in both a global and concrete manner across different sectors, geographies, actors, and structures. By acknowledging the global nature and implications of green financial flows, we can push forward thinking not only on climate change and environmental governance in IPE, but also turn attention to the ongoing contestations, contingencies, and crises of finance in the global political economy.
In recent years, a growing number of contributions on green finance have emerged, not only within economic geography but also increasingly from disciplines beyond it. With this Special Issue, we aim to engage with the ongoing debate around green and sustainable finance and its challenges, including concerns over greenwashing. Our extended editorial provides structure to this complex discussion by identifying four primary strands of literature that frame the field. Two of these strands adopt a more critical stance, combining analytical approaches and rigorous assessments that question the impact and ‘authenticity’ of green and sustainable finance schemes, approaches and policies. Most of the contributions and empirical case studies featured here align with these critical perspectives, which are introduced in greater depth in the second part of this editorial.
