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Food Riots and Protest: Agrarian Modernizations and Structural Crises
Abstract
Food riots in the developing world have (re)gained momentum coinciding with converging financial, food, and global energy crises of 2007–08. High staple food prices across the world, and increasingly un-regulated food markets, have highlighted among other things the political dimensions of food-related protests. This has been the case especially in the MENA region but also in Sub Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Latin America where food-related protests have often been catalysts to contest wider processes of dissatisfaction with authoritarian and corrupt regimes. After many years of silence, food-related struggles have begun to receive more attention in the academic literature. This has mostly been in the context of emerging debates on land grabbing, food security/sovereignty, and social movements. Yet there have been few attempts to provide a systematic enquiry of existing analytical perspectives and debates, or a clear assessment of what some of the political and economic implications may be, for what now seem to be persistent food protests and social struggles. This article tries to fill this gap by mapping and reviewing the existing and emerging literature on urban and rural food-related protests. It also explores theories and methodologies that have shaped debate by locating these in an alternative world-historical analysis of political economy. The article includes, but also goes beyond, a critical review of the following authors and their important contribution to ongoing debate; Farshad Araghi; Henry Bernstein; Henrietta Friedmann and Philip McMichael; Jason Moore; Vandana Shiva, the World Bank and FAO publications and recent special issues of Review, Journal of Agrarian Change and Journal of Peasant Studies.
... (Hart 2002(Hart , 2006. As many poorer farmers have lost access to land and water in Egypt, they have initiated rural movements that engaged in struggles against liberalisation (El Naggar 2012;Keshk 2012;El Nour 2015;Bush and Martiniello 2017;de Lellis 2019). Similar struggles have been initiated in other developing countries such as India (Murari 2015), Burkina Faso (Engles 2021), and countries across Latin America (Vergara-Camus 2014; Tilzey 2020). ...
... Edelman andBorras (2016, p.3 cited by Engles (2021) believe that the "incompleteness of the transition to capitalism in agriculture" has been driving such peasant movements in recent decades. The institutions of neo-liberal governance have failed to represent the needs of an agrarian poor, and in many cases, added to the economic burdens of small-scale producers who are unable to compete with large scale producers in national and international markets (Bush and Martiniello 2017). Again, we argue that climate change is exacerbating these broader political-economic risks in Egypt, which need some further introduction. ...
... Likewise, drought has been seen to spark conflict in Syria (Gleick 2014;Kelley et al., 2015;Abel et al., 2019), Yemen (Glass 2010;Sowers and Weinthal 2010;Suter 2017), Sudan (Selby and Hoffmann 2014;De Juan 2015) and Kenya (Opiyo et al., 2012;Adano et al., 2012;Scheffran et al. 2014). Unrest in Egypt has also been seen to be driven, at least in part, by climate change-induced food crises (Null and Prebble 2013;Sternberg 2013;Maystadt et al. 2014;Bush and Martiniello 2017;Ayeb and Bush 2019) and shortages in resources such as water (IRIN 2010;Swain 2011;OOSKAnews Correspondent 2012a, 2012bHamama and Charbel 2015;Local Press Report 2015;Pacific Institute 2020). Consequently, Egypt, and potentially the Middle East and North African region in general, is not immune from further waves of societal instability driven by a combination of environmental change, rising poverty rates, unemployment, rapidly growing population, absence of proper political institutions, and high dependency on food imports, in association with a stuttering rural transition. ...
In this study, we explore the relationship between Egypt's agrarian transition and farmers’ perceptions of environmental risks and opportunities for climate change adaptation. Drawing from agrarian studies and rural development pathways in Egypt, we highlight structural challenges in addressing vulnerabilities of households in agrarian communities to environmental change. Our evidence comes from 350 landholders and agricultural labourers in rural Damietta, a governorate in the northeast of the Egyptian Nile Delta Region. We categorize households into three groups based on their reliance on agriculture for income, corresponding to different agrarian transition models. We find that vulnerabilities and capacities for climate change adaptation vary among these groups, with those heavily dependent on agriculture being the most vulnerable, despite having greater awareness of agricultural risks. They exhibit limited capacity to respond effectively – both in and ex situ, indicating a need for targeted support as environmental pressures increase due to climate change.
... The dramatic surge in food prices, such as wheat prices rising by 130% in the first three months of 2008, placed immense pressure on already vulnerable populations, worsening food insecurity and sparking social unrest. The 2008 crisis exemplified how the combination of financial instability, rising energy costs, and escalating food prices resulted in widespread protests and riots in numerous African nations (Bush & Martiniello, 2017). This unrest stems from the inability of many African households to afford essential goods, leading to feelings of desperation and anger that often spill over into the streets. ...
... According to Watts (1983, as cited in Bush & Martiniello, 2017), food riots should not be viewed as isolated occurrences but rather as acute demonstrations of the structural and historical underdevelopment patterns that both shape and are influenced by the political economy of food, especially in the African context. The "silent violence" associated with hunger represents a persistent characteristic of societal structures in the Global South, emphasizing the enduring nature of food insecurity and its deeply rooted origins (Bush & Martiniello, 2017). ...
... According to Watts (1983, as cited in Bush & Martiniello, 2017), food riots should not be viewed as isolated occurrences but rather as acute demonstrations of the structural and historical underdevelopment patterns that both shape and are influenced by the political economy of food, especially in the African context. The "silent violence" associated with hunger represents a persistent characteristic of societal structures in the Global South, emphasizing the enduring nature of food insecurity and its deeply rooted origins (Bush & Martiniello, 2017). As discussed by Bush and Martiniello, these structural patterns are elucidated through dependency theory and the centerperiphery theory, which underscore the peripheral position of Southern nations within the capitalist metabolism. ...
This thesis critically examines the role of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in reinforcing authoritarian governance and economic dependency in sub-Saharan Africa, using Ethiopia and Uganda as case studies. The research explores the paradox of development aid, where instead of fostering democratic governance and sustainable development, ODA has often bolstered authoritarian regimes and exacerbated economic dependencies. Grounded in theories of dependency and critical development studies, the thesis argues that the structures of global capitalism, along with historical and contemporary forms of economic subjugation, are perpetuated through the aid apparatus.
... Large-sland acquisitions that promoters have considered as 'development opportunities' and critics labelled as 'land grabs' escalated in the last couple of decades as a result of converging and mutually reinforcing financial, food and energy crises (Borras & Franco 2012). Their resurgence, which presents historical continuity and changes with previous waves of colonial land dispossession, especially in settler colonies (Martiniello 2017), emanated from broader dynamics of restructuring of the neoliberal corporate food regime dominated by the agro-industrial system (McMichael, 2013;Kay 2017), contributing to alter existing pattern of land tenure and use: from food for national markets to cash crops for international markets, and from forest land to farmland and/or intensive cattle rearing, and mining. Ostensibly, Africa has been the epicentre of 'a new scramble for land' (White et al. 2012;Moyo, Yeros & Jha 2012), with countries such as Madagascar, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Liberia, Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), being among those most affected. ...
... It needs the constant deployment of coercion to create the preconditions for the expansion of capitalist frontiers. Although Marx's view of primitive accumulation was meant to be transitionary, the persistent socio-economic marginalization and the use of violent means to expropriate and displace smallholder farmers are still ravaging many agrarian economies (Bush & Martiniello 2017) making existing land regimes and agrarian social structures increasingly fragmented and fragilized. ...
... And yet critics have cautioned against the widespread assumptions that outgrower models are generally better than upright land acquisitions in terms of dispossession or impact on livelihoods (Vicol 2017). Studies of outgrower schemes based on sugarcane cultivation in Africa have questioned win-win assumptions showing a more complex set of dynamics, including: the creation of new dependencies and power relationships particularly in relation to land access in Malawi (Adams et al. 2019b), the shift from broad-based to narrow-based livelihoods on the Zambian sugar belts (Manda et al. 2020), the differential and adverse incorporation of petty commodity producers in vertically structured value chains in the Kilombero valley in Tanzania (Martiniello 2017); the gendered nature of the process in Malawi and the health and work implications in Mozambique (Adams et al. 2019a;O'Laughlin 2017). ...
... While the position that conflicts aggravate food insecurity has been well established (GRFC, 2022;Brück & d'Errico, 2019;Weezel, 2018), the reverse effect is widely debated. Some researchers argue that acute food insecurity could diminish conflicts (Brinkman & Hendrix, 2011), others argue that it can spark conflicts (Smith 2014;Bellemare 2015;Bush & Martiniello 2017) while others insist on a two-way causal relationship between the two (Lin et al., 2022;Delgadoet al., 2021). Blankenberger (2016) on the other hand found that the relationship between conflicts and food insecurity is statistically insignificant. ...
... In the context of state fragility and weak institutions, episodes of food insecurity coupled with natural disasters and forced displacements can lead to conflict outbreaks. For example, high volatility in food prices and acute food shortages have been found to trigger incidents of conflict (Bellemare 2015;Bush & Martiniello 2017), while spikes in food price levels especially in urban areas have been shown to increase the risk of socio-political unrests (Smith, 2014). Helland and Sørbø (2014) report that violent food riots took place in 40 countries in 2007-2008 following the rise in food prices. ...
Food insecurity and conflicts are among the greatest concerns of many developing countries today. This study sought to examine the long-run effect of conflicts on food insecurity in the CEMAC subregion by using data from FAO, ACLED and the World Bank for the period 1990-2021. To achieve this aim, annual food insecurity and conflict indices were constructed for each country. By employing the panel dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), panel fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and pooled mean group (PMG) estimators, the study found that conflicts significantly aggravate food insecurity in the subregion. A unit increase in the conflict index leads to an increase in the food insecurity score by 0.3 to 0.5 units. A bi-directional causality was found between conflicts and food insecurity. On this basis, it is recommended that CEMAC countries invest in promoting peace, security and patriotism which can be achieved through strong institutions, dialogue, multilateral cooperation and civic education.
... Consequently, the curtailment of Ukraine's capacity to produce and export wheat caused by the Russian invasion has had major impacts on the global wheat market. While disruption to global trade and the explosion in prices 2 Indeed, spikes in the price of wheat during the sharp escalation in commodity prices in 2007-2008 led to riots and significant political and economic disruption in many African and Middle Eastern countries (Berazneva &Lee, 2013 andBush &Martiniello, 2017). due to this invasion have caused harm to wheat consumers across-theboard, the impacts have been especially pronounced for the countries that rely heavily on Ukrainian wheat. ...
... Consequently, the curtailment of Ukraine's capacity to produce and export wheat caused by the Russian invasion has had major impacts on the global wheat market. While disruption to global trade and the explosion in prices 2 Indeed, spikes in the price of wheat during the sharp escalation in commodity prices in 2007-2008 led to riots and significant political and economic disruption in many African and Middle Eastern countries (Berazneva &Lee, 2013 andBush &Martiniello, 2017). due to this invasion have caused harm to wheat consumers across-theboard, the impacts have been especially pronounced for the countries that rely heavily on Ukrainian wheat. ...
... Or, les récentes crises alimentaires (Berazneva & Lee, 2013;Bush & Martiniello, 2017;Clapp & Moseley, 2020) ont permis l'émergence d'une nouvelle considération du rôle de l'agriculture dans la vulnérabilité. Elle considère que le problème vient moins de l'importance du secteur agricole dans l'économie que de son efficience, c'est-à-dire sa capacité à nourrir la population du territoire concerné (Clapp, 2017). ...
... However, conventional wisdom was recently challenged by the 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 international food crises. These led to demonstrations and food riots in several countries, mainly in the developing world (Bush & Martiniello, 2017). The increases in global commodities prices were a major cause of these events. ...
Cette thèse propose une double approche économique et zootechnique de l’élevage allaitant à la Réunion. Malgré de fortes incitations politiques à son développement, ce secteur voit aujourd’hui son rôle dans le développement rural remis en question. Pour répondre à ces controverses, nous avons conduit une étude de la contribution du secteur de la viande bovine à la réduction de la vulnérabilité économique structurelle. Pour ce faire, nous avons montré dans un premier temps que la dépendance alimentaire est un facteur de vulnérabilité important pour les petits espaces insulaires. Nous nous sommes appuyés sur la construction d’un indice composite de vulnérabilité construit grâce à une méthode de pondération endogène pour des questions de robustesse. Dans un second temps, nous avons cherché à identifier les filières agricoles les plus à même de réduire la dépendance alimentaire de la Réunion. La filière bovine allaitante est apparue comme la plus prometteuse du fait de sa forte structuration, de sa capacité à valoriser des ressources locales et de la possibilité de gagner des parts de marché dans une logique de substitution des importations. Nous avons ensuite conduit une étude des déterminants de la dynamique passée du secteur de la viande bovine à la Réunion. Nous avons mis en évidence que cette production répond principalement à des déterminants économiques qui, par l’intermédiaire de décisions des éleveurs, ont entraîné une dégradation des performances zootechniques des animaux. Nous avons également montré comment la réaction de la coopérative face à cette situation a permis de relancer la croissance du cheptel et de la production. Par la suite, nous nous sommes intéressés aux paramètres influençant la productivité du cheptel allaitant réunionnais par la construction et l’analyse d’un modèle démographique. Nos résultats ont montré que les performances de reproduction et de croissance sont les plus importantes pour augmenter la productivité. À partir de ces éléments, nous avons construit des scénarios d’évolution en collaboration étroite avec la coopérative. Ces scénarios ont en particulier intégré des éléments sur l’amélioration des performances des animaux, des changements de pratiques des éleveurs et des changements dans l’organisation de la production au niveau de la coopérative. Nous avons montré que l’amélioration des performances, le rajeunissement du troupeau, l’introduction d’insémination artificielle sexée et l’engraissement à l’herbe sont des moyens de développement de la filière allaitante réunionnaise. Notre thèse donne des arguments pour reconsidérer le rôle de l’agriculture dans la vulnérabilité économique structurelle de la Réunion et démontre l’intérêt du développement de l’élevage allaitant pour réduire cette vulnérabilité. Elle présente également des pistes de réflexion pour les décideurs et les acteurs du terrain dans l’objectif d’augmenter la production de viande bovine à la Réunion. Elle constitue une étude approfondie des raisons et des moyens du développement de la filière bovine allaitante à l’échelle d’un territoire insulaire tropical.
... The reclaiming of the right to land and resources-water, fishing, mining, and so on-lied at the heart of many mobilizations in the 2000s (Baron and Belarbi 2010;Allal and Bennafla 2011;Bogaert 2015) and constituted some of the driving forces of the social protests since 2011. It is therefore crucial that we revise and renew our analyses of the dynamics of democratization and include 'the margins' as important sites of political transformation and innovation (Bayat 2013;Tsing 1994;Wolf 2010;Bush and Martiniello 2017;Borras and Franco 2013). ...
Since 2011, Morocco has been experiencing major politicalupheavals. From the February 20th movement to the birth of theHirak Al-Rif in 2017, numerous mobilizations broke out all overthe country. Each of these mobilizations has its own specificities,both in terms of the forms of demands and the contexts in whichthey took place. This article aims to make a productive contribu-tion to this global reflection by offering an innovative rereadingof the dynamics of social and political transformation in NorthAfrica, more specifically in Morocco. It does so by analyzing theincreasing social conflicts between the State’s efforts to privatizeland and natural resources to revitalize the economy, and margi-nalized populations who resist their dispossession. It will examinehow 2011’s revolutionary movements opened new opportunitiesfor marginalized communities to claim their rights. As a result ofthe destabilization of existing power structures, power relationsbetween marginalized groups and the State have become increas-ingly radicalized: from the struggle for housing and access topublic services—primarily water and electricity—in informal urbanareas to the struggle for land rights and access to resources inrural areas. Throughout the article, it will be shown that thesemobilizations have challenged, in their own way, the methods bywhich the Moroccan state appropriated and managed its territory.
... Woertz (2013), for example, pointed to the centrality of the 'food for oil' geopolitics in shaping the relationship between Western and Arab countries. Martiniello and Bush (2017) linked the incorporation of the MENA region in the international food system to the colonial and post-colonial agrarian modernizations and the contemporary patterns of food dependency. Similarly, Ayeb and Bush connected neoliberal agrarian reforms in the Westernbacked regimes of Hosni Mubarak, former president of Egypt, and Zine el Abideen Ben Ali of Tunisia, as the catalyst for small farmer landlessness, rural poverty, and land fragmentation in the countryside (Ayeb and Bush 2019). ...
... Food waste accounts for 17% of global total food production, posing a serious threat to food security and the environment (Bush and Martiniello, 2017). In 2019, approximately 931 million tons of food were wasted, 26% of which was from food service (UNEP, 2021). ...
Purpose
This study aims to test the compensatory consumption theory with the explicit hypothesis that China's new-rich tend to waste relatively more food.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the authors use Heckman two-step probit model to empirically investigate the new-rich consumption behavior related to food waste.
Findings
The results show that new-rich is associated with restaurant leftovers and less likely to take them home, which supports the compensatory consumption hypothesis.
Practical implications
Understanding the empirical evidence supporting compensatory consumption theory may improve forecasts, which feed into early warning systems for food insecurity. And it also avoids unreasonable food policies.
Originality/value
This research is a first attempt to place food waste in a compensatory-consumption perspective, which sheds light on a new theory for explaining increasing food waste in developing countries.
... The World Bank wields the strongest financial and administrative muscle, including scores of consultant 'experts' in dialogue with North African governments. Situating government policy and contemporary funding initiatives within the long trend of World Bank strategy, since 1970, food insecurity has worsened and so too have the living conditions and poverty of most small-scale family farmers and landless people (Bush 2016;Bush and Martiniello 2017). IFI policy has advanced trade-based food security that has ignored small-scale family farmers, except when adaptive self-reliance is called upon to promote managed sustainability (Moyo 2016). ...
This article examines recent international financial institution and national government policy in North Africa intended to address the climate emergency. It focuses on the role of the World Bank and general policy trends since the 1970s. These policy trends fail to understand the continuing centrality of small-scale family farming to social reproduction and food production. The article stresses the significance of historical patterns of underdevelopment, and the uneven incorporation of North Africa into global capitalism. An understanding of the longue durée is crucial in understanding why, and how, agrarian transformations have taken the form that they have, and why national sovereign projects and popular struggles offer an alternative strategy to counter imperialism and neo-colonialism. International financial institutions’ preoccupation with policies of mitigation and adaptation to climate change fails to address how poverty is generated and reproduced.
... Various authors have promoted agroecology as a way out of the vicious circle of food insecurity, degradation, deprivation and vulnerability (Ayeb & Bush, 2019;Bush & Martiniello, 2017) by providing better protection of the soil; cutting the use of fuel, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation water; and also addressing broader issues of rural poverty (Bocchi & Maggi, 2014;Hathaway, 2016;Mashapa et al., 2013). However, to implement sustainable agroecosystems we need to modify the socio-economic determinants governing what is produced, and for whom it is produced (Altieri et al., 2017). ...
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the most water-scarce region in the world. Recent research suggests that agroecology could be a basis for sustainable agriculture. We assess the spread of agroecology in the region and explore the prospect of self-organization among farming communities as an indicator for self-determination of the farming system. The focus is on Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. We present empirical data and propose an analytical framework for capturing the conditions for self-organizing arrangements in a transition to agroecology.
... In McMichael's conceptualization, there is a 'fundamental contradiction' (McMichael, 2013a, p. 60) between agro-food capital and the world's 'peasantry,' holding that there is a 'growing movement,' opposing the workings of the global food regime, frequently identified as the transnational peasant and small-farmer movement La Vía Campesina. Going beyond the identification of increasing inci-dence of 'food riots' across the world -especially since the convergence of crises in 2007/8 (Bush & Martiniello, 2017) -we find that McMichael, in Polanyian terms, perceives Vía Campesina as representing a 'counter-movement' responding to the crisis tendencies of the present conjuncture (see also Jakobsen, 2018b). This is where we find food regime scholarship most overly politicized, aligning explicitly with Vía Campesina as an act of resistance to the dominant traits of the 'brokenness' of international development in food and agriculture. ...
At a current moment of politicized global debates surrounding food and agriculture, in which the manifold socio-ecological consequences of unsustainable development are increasingly evident, food regime analysis offers an ambitious approach to our understanding of the structuring of food relations in global capitalism. With a particular emphasis on the so-called ‘third’ food regime ostensibly arising in the period of unprecedented globalization in agri-food systems since the late 1980s, scholarly debate has paid sustained attention to corporate power and influence, as well as to the uneven ramifications of the global food regime for social justice and environmental transformations. Lately, evolving scholarship has increasingly acknowledged new configurations of power, with shifts towards the ‘South’ and the ‘East’ shaping an increasingly ‘multipolar’ or ‘polycentric’ food regime in the 21st century. This chapter traces current debates in food regime literature to take stock of these emergent dynamics. After having presented key characteristics of the food regime approach, the chapter outlines the vocal debate surrounding the ‘third’ food regime and, thereafter, proceeds to explore recent scholarship pertaining to new configurations of power including the ‘rise’ of China in the realm of agro-food.
... Those policies often led to civil discontent and massive 'bread riots' since the 1970s (Walton & Seddon, 1994). Along with many demands for social justice, recent Arab uprisings emphasized again the political dimension of food (Bush & Martiniello, 2017). The food crisis was metaphorically described as 'the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back' by Walden Bello (in Holt-Giménez & Patel, 2012, p. iv). ...
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 longue durée of capitalism and its corresponding modes of control and regulation.
Keywords: agrarian change, food systems, land tenure, Middle East and North Africa, political ecology, political economy
... Accordingly, individuals highly exposed to violent conflict exhibit lower calorie intake and dietary diversity (Tranchant et al., 2021). Inversely, high levels of food insecurity drive the likelihood of onset and intensity of violent conflict (Bellemare, 2015;Brück & d'Errico, 2019;Bush & Martiniello, 2017). Hence, in order to break out of the vicious violent conflict-food insecurity cycle, external aid is crucial, for example in the form of food or agricultural support (Abraham & Pingali, 2020), where food aid is shown to decrease the incidence of violent conflict (Mary & Mishra, 2020). ...
Agricultural interventions are one of the key policy tools to strengthen the food security of households living in conflict settings. Yet, given the complex nature of conflict-affected settings, existing theories of change might not hold, leading to misinterpretation of the significance and magnitude of these impacts. How contextual factors, including exposure to conflict intensity, shape treatment effects remain broadly unconfirmed. To address this research gap, we apply an honest causal forest algorithm to analyse the short-term impacts of an agricultural asset transfer on food security. Using a quasi-experimental panel dataset in Syria, comparing treatment and control households two years after receiving support, we first estimate the average treatment effect, and then we examine how contextual factors, particularly conflict, shape treatment heterogeneity. Our results show that agricultural asset transfers significantly improve food security in the short-term. Moreover, exposure to conflict intensity plays a key role in determining impact size. We find that households living in moderately affected conflict areas benefited significantly from the agricultural intervention and improved their food security by up to 14.4%, while those living in no or high conflict areas did not. The positive effects were particularly strong for female-headed households. Our findings provide new insights on how violent conflict determines how households benefit from and respond to agricultural programming. This underscores the need to move away from one-size-fits-all agricultural support in difficult settings towards designing conflict-sensitive and inclusive interventions to ensure that no households are left behind.
... However, conventional wisdom was recently challenged by the 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 international food crises. These led to demonstrations and food riots in several countries, mainly in the developing world (Bush and Martiniello 2017). The increases in global commodities prices were a major cause of these events. ...
... The vector connecting both variables is usually food prices. Food (price) riots are a phenomenon observed up to the present day [87][88][89][90]. While empirical evidence suggests that food security crises as consequence of rising food prices are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for social unrest, the expectation of food insecurity can be a strong motivator to engage in protests or riots [91]. ...
There is a vivid scientific debate on how climate change affects stability, resilience, and conflict dynamics of human societies. Environmental security and collapse theory are theoretical approaches that claim severe negative impacts of climatic disasters on political stability, allegedly through the vector of food insecurity. Yet there is a disconnect between this work and the rich body of knowledge on food insecurity and society. The literature is fairly unanimous that (a) drought does not necessarily lead to famines, since (b) famines have a political context that is often more important than other factors; in addition, (c) famines and the distribution of suffering reflect social hierarchies within afflicted societies, and (d) even large-scale famines do not necessarily cause collapse of a polity’s functioning, as (e) food systems are highly interconnected and complex. As an illustrative case, the paper offers a longitudinal study of Malawi. By combining environmental history and analysis of Malawi’s idiosyncratic (post-)colonial politics, it discusses the possible connections between droughts, food insecurity, and political crises in the African country. The single-case study represents a puzzle for adherents of the “collapse” theory but highlights the complex political ecology of food crises in vulnerable societies. This has implications for a formulation of climate justice claims beyond catastrophism.
... In this paper, we build on Bush and Martiniello's (2017) observation, exploring the relation between urban unrest and the social-economic crisis in Lebanon and the rural and agrarian change that occurred there since the early twentieth century. We argue that the analysis of the rural landscape can be seen in through line structures, like the banking secrecy laws that protestors rallied against in the streets, which also allowed for an unfettered flow of speculative capital in Mount Lebanon's smaller towns and villages. ...
Research on the Southwest Asia North Africa region often focuses on turbulent upheaval and landscape change in urban areas, and less on the rural and agrarian spaces left behind. In this paper, we look at the varying trajectory of landscape change in two neighboring villages in Mount Lebanon with similar geophysical characteristics but very different ecologies and economies. We show how these paths were mediated by capital flows and the changing modes of production and livelihoods. Looking through the lens of the Agrarian Question, we argue for its continued importance in understanding rural landscapes and their place in capitalist development.
... In the most severe conditions, individuals may assert agency against such constraints through collective action. For example, increases in food prices that threaten food security often provoke riots, especially among urban groups and when society has broader discontent with the status quo [125,126]. ...
The major threat to human societies posed by undernutrition has been recognised for millennia. Despite substantial economic development and scientific innovation, however, progress in addressing this global challenge has been inadequate. Paradoxically, the last half-century also saw the rapid emergence of obesity, first in high-income countries but now also in low- and middle-income countries. Traditionally, these problems were approached separately, but there is increasing recognition that they have common drivers and need integrated responses. The new nutrition reality comprises a global ‘double burden’ of malnutrition, where the challenges of food insecurity, nutritional deficiencies and undernutrition coexist and interact with obesity, sedentary behaviour, unhealthy diets and environments that foster unhealthy behaviour. Beyond immediate efforts to prevent and treat malnutrition, what must change in order to reduce the future burden? Here, we present a conceptual framework that focuses on the deeper structural drivers of malnutrition embedded in society, and their interaction with biological mechanisms of appetite regulation and physiological homeostasis. Building on a review of malnutrition in past societies, our framework brings to the fore the power dynamics that characterise contemporary human food systems at many levels. We focus on the concept of agency, the ability of individuals or organisations to pursue their goals. In globalized food systems, the agency of individuals is directly confronted by the agency of several other types of actor, including corporations, governments and supranational institutions. The intakes of energy and nutrients by individuals are powerfully shaped by this ‘competition of agency’, and we therefore argue that the greatest opportunities to reduce malnutrition lie in rebalancing agency across the competing actors. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on food systems and individuals illustrates our conceptual framework. Efforts to improve agency must both drive and respond to complementary efforts to promote and maintain equitable societies and planetary health.
... Although Marx's view of primitive accumulation was meant to be transitionary, the persistent marginalisation and the use of violent means to displace smallholder farmers are still pertinent in many agrarian economies (Bush and Martiniello 2017). Africa has become the epicentre of land expropriation due to the perception that its land is underutilised (Matondi et al. 2011) and thus could be acquired easily with minimal or no payment (Anseeuw et al. 2012). ...
Recent decades have witnessed unprecedented agrarian transforma�tions and mining sector-led development projects in the countryside
of the Global South. This study explores the impact of land appropria�tion for gold mining on customary land tenure systems and rural live�lihoods in Ghana. Data were gathered through face-to-face
semi-structured and structured interviews with 120 affected farmers,
key informant interviews (seven participants), and three focus group
discussions (28 participants). The findings show a growing tendency of
customary authorities being coopted into the wider assemblages of
economic and political actors who are benefiting from the land appro�priation by the state and mining companies. As a result, customary
authorities have become facilitators and the manu longa of the state.
The study demonstrates how gold mining companies have exploited
centuries-old traditional land allocation and governance practices to
suppress reactions from below and how this has led to increased social
differentiation and social tension in northern Ghana. In conclusion, land
expropriation for gold mining has resulted in a transformation in the
Ghanaian customary land tenure system, producing a marked shift from
agrarian to non-agrarian livelihoods, increasing household food inse�curity and societal tension, and creating a new class of (near-)landless
farmers in the rural communities
... Although Marx's view of primitive accumulation was meant to be transitionary, the persistent marginalisation and the use of violent means to displace smallholder farmers are still pertinent in many agrarian economies (Bush and Martiniello 2017). Africa has become the epicentre of land expropriation due to the perception that its land is underutilised (Matondi et al. 2011) and thus could be acquired easily with minimal or no payment (Anseeuw et al. 2012). ...
Recent decades have witnessed unprecedented agrarian transformations and mining sector-led development projects in the countryside of the Global South. This study explores the impact of land appropriation for gold mining on customary land tenure systems and rural livelihoods in Ghana. Data were gathered through face-to-face semi-structured and structured interviews with 120 affected farmers, key informant interviews (seven participants), and three focus group discussions (28 participants). The findings show a growing tendency of customary authorities being coopted into the wider assemblages of economic and political actors who are benefiting from the land appropriation by the state and mining companies. As a result, customary authorities have become facilitators and the manu longa of the state. The study demonstrates how gold mining companies have exploited centuries-old traditional land allocation and governance practices to suppress reactions from below and how this has led to increased social differentiation and social tension in northern Ghana. In conclusion, land expropriation for gold mining has resulted in a transformation in the Ghanaian customary land tenure system, producing a marked shift from agrarian to non-agrarian livelihoods, increasing household food insecurity and societal tension, and creating a new class of (near-)landless farmers in the rural communities.
... 4 This import of cheap cereal contributed to a structural dependency on imported food, and the region is now highly dependent on imports, with states such as Egypt being one of the biggest importers of wheat in the world (Mitchell 2002). With this considered, food is deeply political, it is at the heart of social struggles that have unfolded across the region; spikes in food prices have led to unrest and the trade in commodities carries a strategic significance (Bush and Martiniello 2017). 5 The construction of the first and second food regimes were characterised by a linear North-South axis. ...
The role of non-Northern capitals within the corporate food system is a matter of increasing debate within food regime literature. This article intervenes on this discussion by proposing that the Arab Gulf states are a new capital within the corporate food system. It argues that the emphasis on the role of the state, which has drawn definitions of mercantilism, has led to the exceptional and reifying treatment of this entrant. As a result, this analytical focus has obfuscated the manner that new capitals such as the Gulf states have acted as a force of continuity, as well as change. KEYWORDS Corporate food regime; the state; Gulf Arab states The role of non-Western capitals in the formation of the corporate agribusiness food system has received increasing attention within food regime literature (Belesky and Lawr-ence 2018; Borras et al.
... In Africa, not only has there been ongoing poverty and hunger amidst massive agricultural investments, but most of those investments have gone into non-food and/or export-oriented crops while investment priorities are, in turn, increasingly determined by speculative interests (Clapp and Isakson 2018;Dixon 2019;Hamann 2020;Salerno 2017). This trend has been especially pronounced since the financial crisis of 2008-2009, leading to asset bubbles, rising prices, increasing imports, greater financialisation of agrarian life (involving worsening indebtedness and economic precarity) and intensifying protest (Ayeb and Bush 2019;Bush and Martiniello 2017). Not coincidentally, these events have occurred in tandem with huge dietary changes in Africa over the past 40 years (Dixon 2019). ...
African countries are subject to competing visions of agricultural
development. Efforts to “scale up” technocratic, market-based
approaches focus on productivist indices (yields, income) rather
than food access. Alternatives advocate agro-ecological practices,
re-adoption of indigenous crops and state investment in
agricultural extension. We introduce here six case studies on these
contested visions from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Egypt, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania. Dominant
agricultural development approaches neglect differences across
class, geography and gender relations as well as marginalise many
smallholders. Nevertheless, the everyday practices of small-scale
food producers in Africa may strengthen their abilities to navigate
and influence agrarian change.
RÉSUMÉ
Les pays africains sont soumis à des visions concurrentes du
développement agricole. Les efforts pour «intensifier» les
approches technocratiques fondées sur le marché se concentrent
sur des indices productivistes (rendements, revenus) plutôt que
sur l’accès à la nourriture. Les alternatives préconisent des
pratiques agro-écologiques, la réadoption des cultures indigènes
et l’investissement public dans la vulgarisation agricole. Nous
présentons ici six études de cas sur ces visions contestées: Burkina
Faso, de la République démocratique du Congo, de l’Égypte, du
Mozambique, du Rwanda et de la Tanzanie. Les approches
dominantes du développement agricole négligent les différences
entre les classes, la géographie et les relations entre les sexes et
marginalisent de nombreux petits exploitants. Néanmoins, les
pratiques quotidiennes des petits producteurs alimentaires en
Afrique peuvent renforcer leur capacité à naviguer et à influencer
le changement agraire.
... In Africa, not only has there been ongoing poverty and hunger amidst massive agricultural investments, but most of those investments have gone into non-food and/or export-oriented crops while investment priorities are, in turn, increasingly determined by speculative interests (Clapp and Isakson 2018;Dixon 2019;Hamann 2020;Salerno 2017). This trend has been especially pronounced since the financial crisis of 2008-2009, leading to asset bubbles, rising prices, increasing imports, greater financialisation of agrarian life (involving worsening indebtedness and economic precarity) and intensifying protest (Ayeb and Bush 2019;Bush and Martiniello 2017). Not coincidentally, these events have occurred in tandem with huge dietary changes in Africa over the past 40 years (Dixon 2019). ...
African countries are subject to competing visions of agricultural development. Efforts to “scale up” technocratic, market-based approaches focus on productivist indices (yields, income) rather than food access. Alternatives advocate agro-ecological practices, re-adoption of indigenous crops and state investment in agricultural extension. We introduce here six case studies on these contested visions from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania. Dominant agricultural development approaches neglect differences across class, geography and gender relations as well as marginalise many smallholders. Nevertheless, the everyday practices of small-scale food producers in Africa may strengthen their abilities to navigate and influence agrarian change.
... To mitigate the effects of the sugarcane supply crisis, KSWL tried to source sugarcane from distant districts in Masindi and raised the price per ton of sugarcane from 85,000 in April 2016 to 160,000 Ugsh in April 2017. Thus, the sugar consumer price raised from 5000Ugsh in December 2016 to 8000 Ugsh in May 2017 generating widespread popular resentment (Bush & Martiniello, 2018). ...
Contract farming schemes have recently been portrayed by global development agencies as an alternative to 'land grabs', promoting processes of inclusive development through the integration of smallholders within global agro-industrial production complexes. The paper takes issue with such argument, using the case-study of contract farming scheme at Kakira Sugar Works in Uganda as empirical terrain for this investigation. It argues that despite contract farming schemes at first sight appear not to generate dispossession or displacement, they lead to forms of expulsion and/or marginalization of poor smallholders from sugar agro-poles through social differentiation. It also maintains that rather than being the antithesis to land enclosures, contract farming represents one instance of global neoliberal agricultural restructuring, functional to the expansion of the sugar frontier at cheap costs. This process, which I term sugarification, involves the maximization of value extraction from farmers, its appropriation by agribusiness and finance capital, and a regime of production which devaluates labour (wage and family) and nature, while dramatically affecting existing livelihoods and landscapes.
... However, conventional wisdom was recently challenged by the 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 international food crises. These led to demonstrations and food riots in several countries, mainly in the developing world (Bush and Martiniello 2017). The increases in global commodities prices were a major cause of these events. ...
... Analysis of the relationships between regime type (protests more likely in cities in democracies and semi-authoritarian regimes) and price movements (protests most likely when staple prices spike) (Arezki & Bruckner, 2011;Berazneva & Lee, 2013;Hendrix & Haggard, 2015) provide an overview of the conditions under which food riots may be triggered, but are limited in their analysis of these as political events (Demarest, 2015). Examined closely, drawing on approaches to food contentions and movements, riots articulated both a common frustration about the crisis of subsistence created by food price spikes, and a political critique of the agri-food and political system that enabled it, fingering domestic market actors for collusion or other malpractice (Bohstedt, 2016;Bush & Martiniello, 2017;Hossain & Kalita, 2014;Patel & McMichael, 2009). Some of the 21st century food riots also amplified into wider political struggles, regime change, and even revolution (Johnstone & Mazo, 2011;Lagi, Bertrand, & Bar-Yam, 2011). ...
Food has become both a pivotal topic in development and a lens through which to integrate and address a range of contemporary global challenges. This review article addresses in particular the interrelationship between food and sustainable, equitable development, arguing that this is fundamentally political. We offer a set of approaches to understanding food politics, each underlain by broader theoretical traditions in power analysis, focused respectively on food interests and incentives; food regimes; food institutions; food innovation systems; food contentions and movements; food discourses, and food socio-natures. Applications of these approaches are then illustrated through a set of problematiques, providing a (selective) overview of some of the major literatures and topics of note in food politics and development. Starting with the role of the state and state-society relations in different forms of food regime, we then consider the role of science and technology (and its discourses) in shaping agricultural and food policy directions before looking in more detail at rural livelihoods in agri-food systems and the politics of inclusive structural transformation. Broadening beyond agri-food systems then brings us to interrogate dominant narratives of nutrition and review literature on the cultural politics of food and eating. A concluding section provides a synthesis across the cases, drawing together the various approaches to power and politics and showing how they might be integrated via an analytical framework which combines plural approaches to describe different pathways of change and intervention, raising critical questions about the overall direction and diversity of these pathways, their distributional effects, and the extent of democratic inclusion in decisions about food pathways. We find this extended ‘4D’ approach helpful in highlighting current food systems inequities and the political options for future food systems change, and conclude by considering how it might be harnessed as part of a future interdisciplinary, engaged research agenda.
This essay draws from critical agrarian studies and the history of farmer’s movements in India in order to shed light on a central problem that the Marxian political ecology of agriculture must confront: how can we develop an ecologically adequate approach to agrarian questions without falling into populism? Or, put differently, how can we reformulate the intuitions of food sovereignty movements through the perspective of the ‘global worker’, thus revealing the ‘unity of the diverse’? It does so by reflecting on debates surrounding the meaning of the agrarian questions in the 21st century, responses to the farmers’ struggle against the so-called new farm laws, and the crisis confronting capitalist world-ecology in the neoliberal era. In particular, the essay thinks through the Bernstein–McMichael debate in the context of the recent farmers’ struggle. It concludes by posing some problems that the Marxian political ecology must confront today.
This paper explores the violence stemming from food riots in Latin American countries that have been triggered by recurring food crises in the twenty-first century, particularly impacting impoverished rural populations. The marginalized sectors of emerging countries, whose demands for basic rights such as the right to food go unaddressed by the State, may resort to protests that can escalate into confrontations. The recurrent food crises exacerbate the struggle to meet the basic needs of those who are unable to subsist regularly. This research focuses on a region that has received less scholarly attention compared to Africa and Asia, and examines indicators such as land grabbing, climate change, demographic pressures, political polarization, as independent variables to elucidate the association with food riot occurrences. The collected data and statistical analysis confirm the hypotheses, although further studies are required to enhance the performance of certain indicators.
From Iran and Mozambique to France’s Gilets jaunes , consumer energy protests are ubiquitous today. Little historical scholarship has so far explored such “fuel riots,” the problematic moniker bestowed by contemporary policy scholars. This article argues for disaggregating the homogenous crowd of so-called rioters, instead analyzing why particular socioeconomic groups persistently take to the streets. To do this, it sketches an energy-centered approach to class with both structural and subjective axes. This analytic is applied to a comparative history of two of the best-documented energy protests of the last half-century. During the 1970s, independent truckers blocked American highways to protest the high price of motor fuel. A decade later, half a million North Indian farmers mobilized to demand cheaper and more reliable electricity. Half a world apart, the two movements shared key characteristics. They were the expression of specific class fractions whose material interests were conditioned by heavy dependence on state-mediated energy supplies. Awkwardly located between big capital and wage labor, both truckers and farmers owned stakes in the carbon-intensive means of production that left them exposed to volatility in energy quality and pricing. Both mobilized in reaction to perceived breaches of state-centered moral economies of energy which threatened this dependence, leveraging their power to interrupt supplies within the circulatory systems of fossil fuel society. Even as both movements failed in their own terms, their political resistance helped to lock in place consumer subsidies for cheap carbon-intensive energy. Such energy protests deserve a central role in our environmental histories of fossil fuel society.
Agricultural modernisation is a longstanding goal of China’s Party-state. Since the early 2000s, it has pursued this goal through policies designed to facilitate land consolidation and support the expansion of large agricultural enterprises – ‘New Agricultural Operators’ (NAOs). In this paper we explore the effect of these policies on the livelihoods of a cohort of smallholder orange growers in the mountainous regions of Hubei province and the local political economy. An analysis of data from a 2019 survey of 266 households and interviews with villagers, agribusiness executives, cooperative leaders, and government officials, we find smallholder farmers are earning good incomes as independent commodity producers, withstanding attempts by local officials at land consolidation, and bypassing NAOs to self-determine their own modes of production and exchange. Our results speak to the ongoing debate about the future of smallholder farming in China, identify the strengths and limitations of recent state-centric analyses of agrarian transition, and re-iterate the pitfalls of the central government’s agricultural modernisation agenda.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is (in)famous for its structural adjustment programs, which provide fresh credit for borrowing governments in exchange for market-liberalizing policy reforms. While studies have documented a causal relationship between structural adjustment and political instability, scholarly understanding of the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain perfunctory. The received wisdom is that IMF policy conditions generate material hardship which then drives political instability. We advance an additional pathway—that instability is also prompted by alienation effects related to the foreign imposition of policies. Drawing on a sample of up to 168 countries between 1980 and 2014, we test for the presence of both mechanisms. Our results suggest that there are alienation effects, indicated by a persistent protest-inducing impact of IMF program participation when controlling for market-liberalizing conditions, and especially when programs are concluded by left-wing governments and non-repeat borrowers. We also find evidence of hardship effects, indicated by a positive relationship between the intensity of fiscal austerity required and the number of protests. Our findings have important implications for the relationship between structural adjustment, contentious politics, and the role of international organizations in domestic policy reform.
A monthly panel dataset was used to empirically examine the role of food prices in the emergence of social unrest in various geographic regions of Egypt between 1998 and 2013. A media discourse analysis traced reports in two leading Egyptian newspapers about social unrest, overall dissatisfaction with the government, and food price inflation. A fixed effects binary logit panel model has found that the probability of social unrest is statistically related to macroeconomic control variables such as domestic and global food prices, and GDP per capita. Higher temperatures were associated with an increased likelihood of social unrest through their influences on food production and yields, and price volatility in domestic food markets. In addition, the results support to the hypothesis that social unrest in developing countries has a strong "spatial" dimension, where urban dwellers were found to have a greater capacity to engage in collective action leading to social unrest. Finally, media reports about food price inflation were also statistically related to the occurrence of social unrest; but the estimated effect of overall dissatisfaction with institutional quality is even higher. Overall, the results suggest that soaring food prices, despite significant, were unlikely the single most important reason for social unrest in Egypt.
Critical agrarian studies represents an emerging and vibrant field of research that unites scholars and activists from various disciplines concerned with understanding agrarian life, livelihoods, formations and their processes of change. From the origins of the agrarian question to peasant studies to critical agrarian studies, there has been a resurgence in this field characterized by theoretical and methodological pluralism and innovation. Its internal variety, controversies and even contradictions represent its strengths rather than a weakness. This Handbook brings together contains a wide range of contributions from scholars of various backgrounds and perspectives who are united by their enthusiasm for critical analysis of, and controversies about, historical and contemporary social structures and processes in agrarian and rural settings. The Handbook is comprehensive, the first of its kind, and brings together many of the leading scholars and activists in critical agrarian studies in an attempt to lay down the key parameters of an emerging field. With over 70 contributions, the Handbook is designed as a go-to resource for graduate students, young scholars and activists interested in critical agrarian studies, covering the origins of the field, key concepts, methodologies, regional perspectives, contemporary debates, and trajectories.
Elections are contentious by design, but contentious election outcomes—from democratic backsliding to widespread protests and violence—occur regularly and represent significant challenges to both domestic and international stability. This review essay explores three specific outcomes of contentious elections (i.e., failed democratization, democracy protests, and election violence) using three recent, influential books on these topics. It highlights several, overlapping causal mechanisms, including those focusing on structural characteristics, actor behavior, and election cycle dynamics. It also explores four cross-cutting themes (i.e., democratization, electoral history, structural constraints, and money in politics), as well as three areas for future research (i.e., overlooked actors, election integrity, and international factors).
This chapter considers the domestic and international ramifications of the financialization of US agriculture. It finds that the wave of uprisings in the Middle East from 2010 to 2011 coincided with a period of heightened prosperity for farmers at the very top of the US income hierarchy. We argue that the dynamics of financialization link these two phenomena together. On the one hand, financialization has generated significant benefits for super-rich farmers relative to other agricultural producers. On the other hand, it probably exacerbated food price volatility. Sharp food price rises, in turn, accentuated long-standing political grievances in the Middle East and helped catalyse a wave of protests that has variously resulted in revolutionary upheaval, consolidated authoritarian rule and bloody civil war. We predict that during the next upsurge in agricultural prices, weakly regulated futures markets may once again compound market instability and trigger further social turmoil.
Under what conditions do increasing food prices lead to urban unrest? Existing literature suggests a positive correlation between food prices and social unrest. Meanwhile, there is a large variation in the consequences of increasing food prices, indicating that this phenomenon has a heterogeneous effect across different contexts. The theoretical focus on grievances in the existing literature appears to be insufficient for explaining the variations in outcome. This study asks whether specific features in the domestic institutional setting can explain why food-price induced grievances sometimes lead to unrest and at other times do not. Specifically, the article argues that the manifestation of unrest when food prices increase is moderated by the degree to which the state represses societal organizations. Civil and political society have the potential to channel collective dissent around food-related grievances, as these organizations provide existing mobilization structures that people can draw on to engage in collective action. Further, they can translate an individual-level grievance into a group phenomenon by politicizing the cost of food through the formulation of grievance frames. If the state represses existing societal organizations that can help aggrieved individuals engage in collective action to voice discontent – or introduces barriers to initial mobilization – this will likely reduce the possibility of unrest when food prices go up. Using institutional data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project combined with the Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD), the findings suggest that repression of societal organizations decreases the likelihood of unrest when food prices rise.
This article addresses why the rights of peasants and agrarian violence matter to justice promotion work that seeks to lay the groundwork for future peace and stability. Its central contention is that while rural people have participated in transitional justice processes, the field is yet to engage with peasants as a distinct social group, with the social, economic and political issues they face, and with agrarian structures and processes that underlie ongoing violence against them. This article argues peasant rights and agrarian violence matter in light of four rural trends: that peasants in post-transition societies are routinely exposed to complex patterns of direct and indirect non-war violence; that justice interventions may be expected in societies where there have been large-scale agrarian protests; that the root causes of conflict are frequently located in structures and processes of agrarian change; and that rural grievances associated with poverty and marginalisation are enabling the rise of authoritarian populism. The article reflects on the demands that these trends put to research and practice, arguing that developing responses to agrarian violence favours a radical, more transformative approach on agrarian justice that engages with wider agrarian political economies and issues of class and gender.
Small island spaces are confronted with significant disadvantages that ultimately result in strong economic vulnerability. The conventional literature emphasizes the main role of agriculture in generating structural vulnerability. Specifically, the higher the weight of agriculture compared to other sectors is, the more structurally vulnerable an economy is. However, the recent food crises revealed that the economic dependence on agriculture is not a problem on its own, but the issue is rather the efficiency of this sector along with the orientation of domestic production towards diversification and food self-sufficiency. In this paper, we thus propose a new structural economic vulnerability indicator based on the assumption that promoting the local agriculture could boost development. We insert the share of the agriculture sector in the GDP proxied by imported food dependency into the ‘official’ economic vulnerability index. Moreover, for robustness, the proposed indicator is obtained based on an endogenous weighting system derived from data envelopment analysis. Finally, our simulations for a sample of 131 developing economies point out that considering food dependency reduces dramatically the exposure of small island economies to structural vulnerability.
While health and climate science recognize a clear linkage between infectious diseases and effects of climate change, outbreaks and disasters are frequently framed as standalone crises in public discourse. Drawing on public policy image framing literature, this paper examines effects of crossover in climate change and infectious disease discourse on policy outcomes in global infectious disease. Employing Factiva coding, I conduct a statistical analysis of infectious disease discourse and its effect on the global health policy agenda between 1990 and 2019. I find a positive relationship between climate change framing of infectious disease and global policy outcomes, significant at the 0.1 level, alongside qualitative evidence that securitized and environmental framings may have mutually reinforcing effects in elevating infectious disease on the global policy agenda.
The Republic of Yemen has concurrently fallen victim to political and climatic disruptions causing the largest cholera epidemic. Recent conditions in Yemen provide a perfect paradigm of how conflict and climate magnify public health system insecurities, generating infectious disease outbreaks, like Vibrio cholerae. Population resistance to such infections depends on cooked foods, clean-water, and a proficient health infrastructure. This paper highlights the relationship between epidemic cholera, Yemeni civil war and climate fluctuations. Using publicly available data for cholera activity, migration, and rainfall variability we examine Yemen’s crisis. The research findings implicate conflict induced migration and the Civil war interfered with public health infrastructure; and extreme rainfall attributed to cholera amplification. Reflecting on the health catastrophe, authors promote diplomacy to mitigate health infrastructure degradation in Yemen.
Globally, negative climate change impacts on public health are addressed using a
variety of managerial approaches. In donor-funded initiatives, project-based
approaches dominate, however an emerging literature questions the effectiveness of the
classical project management (CPM) style for complex project environments.
Building on this emerging literature, two climate change and health interventions in
Southeast Asia are analysed from CPM and rethinking project management
(RPM) perspectives. The CPM approach supports better monitoring and reporting,
while the RPM approach achieves higher levels of perceived legitimacy, which can foster
long-term change. Because of the complexities around both public health and climate
change, RPM approaches are particularly relevant. RPM helps to deal with uncertainty
and a multiplicity of stakeholders, and better supports long-term sustainability of
project outputs and outcomes.
Globally, negative climate change impacts on public health are addressed using a variety of managerial approaches. In donor-funded initiatives, project-based approaches dominate, however an emerging literature questions the effectiveness of the classical project management (CPM) style for complex project environments. Building on this emerging literature, two climate change and health interventions in Southeast Asia are analysed from CPM and rethinking project management (RPM) perspectives. The CPM approach supports better monitoring and reporting, while the RPM approach achieves higher levels of perceived legitimacy, which can foster long-term change. Because of the complexities around both public health and climate change, RPM approaches are particularly relevant. RPM helps to deal with uncertainty and a multiplicity of stakeholders, and better supports long-term sustainability of project outputs and outcomes.
The Republic of Yemen has concurrently fallen victim to political and climatic disruptions causing the largest cholera epidemic. Recent conditions in Yemen provide a perfect paradigm of how conflict and climate magnify public health system insecurities, generating infectious disease outbreaks, like Vibrio cholerae. Population resistance to
such infections depends on cooked foods, clean-water, and a proficient health infrastructure. This paper highlights the relationship between epidemic cholera, Yemeni civil war and climate fluctuations. Using publicly available data for cholera activity, migration, and rainfall variability we examine Yemen’s crisis. The research findings implicate conflict induced migration and the Civil war interfered with public health
infrastructure; and extreme rainfall attributed to cholera amplification. Reflecting on the health catastrophe, authors promote diplomacy to mitigate health infrastructure degradation in Yemen.
How does food access affect the mobilization of collective violence? The upsurge in rioting in 2008 drew broad attention to the relationship of food and conflict, as scholars and policymakers sought to understand the mobilization and variation of rioting events. Studies have shown a robust relationship between conflict and food prices, noting an increase in incidents of violent conflict during times of high global prices. This study furthers the theory on the role of food access in riot mobilization, investigating the mechanisms by which changes in food access translate into collective violence. Using detailed, first-hand accounts of rioting in 2007 and 2008, this study investigates the motives and grievances of the community members where riots occurred and the relationship of those grievances to food access, while contrasting these accounts to communities that did not engage in rioting. In the cases presented, a change in food access motivated protest and violence involving existing grievances rather than explicitly addressing food access. In this way, food changed the meaning and severity of existing grievances. The cases studied add to our understanding of concurrent upsurges in food riots by outlining the ways that food access interacts with local contexts to initiate violent conflict, stressing the presence of existing actors who use decreased food access to mobilize resources to address existing grievances. While media accounts highlighted food access as the primary concern of food rioters, this study argues that many ‘food riots’ were not, in fact, directly motivated by food access. Rather, changes to food access can aid in mobilizing protests around a range of grievances, some unrelated to food access. Efforts to address the causes of food-related instability will be unsuccessful if they focus solely on food access without addressing the primary motivating grievance and understanding how food access relates to that grievance.
South African corporate agribusiness and large-scale commercial
farmers have been major players in the current acquisitions of
large tracts of very fertile land in southern and eastern Africa
through massive investments in large-scale commercial farming,
food processing, the production of biofuels and eco-tourism. By
emphasising the significance of analysing the changing capital
smallholder relationship in historical perspective, the paper explores
continuity and change in the agrarian social structure and the land
use dynamics of the Kilombero valley. It argues that smallholders
are differentially and adversely integrated within agribusiness-led
vertically organised agri-food chains consolidating and widening
existing patterns of social inequality.
In 2007 and 2008, the world witnessed the return of one of the oldest forms of collective action, the food riot. Countries where protests occurred ranged from Italy, where ‘Pasta Protests’ in September 2007 were directed at the failure of the Prodi government to prevent a 30% rise in the price of pasta, to Haiti, where protesters railed against President Préval’s impassive response to the doubling in the price of rice over the course of a single week. Other countries in which riots were reported included Uzbekistan, Morocco, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal, India, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mexico, and Argentina, and some commentators have estimated that 30 countries experienced some sort of food protest over this period (Jafri, 2008).
Food security, like development, is a universal ideal. But like development, food security is ultimately a political relationship, with consequences for who decides what is produced for whom and under what conditions. This chapter examines the circumstances under which the food security relation expresses changing conditions of social reproduction, focusing on the tensions arising from the undermining of national provisioning by corporate globalization. The central thesis is that while the patterns of social reproduction of the current neo-liberal regime and its social-democratic predecessor have not been independent of capitalist social relations, they diverge sharply in support of public versus private rights, and structures of public accountability and social sustainability and security.
This article views the food riot as not simply a demand for staple foods, but about the wider political economy of food provisioning. From a world-historical perspective, the food riot has always been about more than food-usually signaling significant transitions in political-economic arrangements. Food riots are, in other words, political, and therefore their interpretation needs to be threaded through endogenous political debates and power struggles, to see the articulation of international economic relations behind protests with local struggles and organized alternatives to existing structures of power. That is, the protests themselves are agentic moments in movement toward an alternative that is best captured in the term "food sovereignty." Accordingly, the spread of food riots has a great deal to do with a specific kind of rebellion against the political economy of neoliberalism.
By most accounts, the twentieth century has been one of the most revo-lutionary periods in world history, not just politically but economically and socially as well. In one key respect, however, the end of the century resembles its beginning. The entire world appears to us, as it did a century ago, to be integrated in a single market in which states are said to have no choice but compete intensely with one another for increasingly mobile capi-tal.
This introduction frames key questions on biofuels, land and agrarian change within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. It identifies and explains big questions that provide the starting point for the contributions to this collection. We lay out some of the emerging themes which define the politics of biofuels, land and agrarian change revolving around global (re)configurations; agro-ecological visions; conflicts, resistances and diverse outcomes; state, capital and society relations; mobilising opposition, creating alternatives; and change and continuity. An engaged agrarian political economy combined with global political economy, international relations and social movement theory provides an important framework for analysis and critique of the conditions, dynamics, contradictions, impacts and possibilities of the emerging global biofuels complex. Our hope is that this collection demonstrates the significance of a political economy of biofuels in capturing the complexity of the 'biofuels revolution' and at the same time opening up questions about its sustainability in social and environmental terms that provide pathways towards alternatives.
On Wednesday 18 April 2012, between 80 and 100 women from Amuru District in northern Uganda stripped naked in a protest to block their eviction from land they claim is rightfully theirs. They did this in front of representatives of the Local District Board and surveyors of the sugar company Madhvani Group, the firm seeking land in the area for sugarcane growing. By resisting dispossession and challenging state violence, small-scale poor peasants reiterated the political salience of rural social struggles and highlighted the significance of land and agrarian questions. By placing social struggles over control, access and use of land and existing social relations - property and labour regimes - at the core of social analysis, this papers aims to contribute to further understanding both the character of contemporary land grabs and the nature of peasant resistance. It argues that escalating rural social protests manifested in both everyday, hidden practices of resistance and moments of open, militant contestation are aimed at (re)establishing and securing access to means of social reproduction. Yet these struggles cumulatively embody claims of land sovereignty and autonomy vis-à-vis capitalist markets and state.
This article introduces this special collection on food sovereignty. It frames the collection in relation to a broader political and intellectual initiative that aims to deepen academic discussions on food sovereignty. Building upon previous and parallel initiatives in ‘engaged academic research’ and following the tradition of ‘critical dialogue’ among activists and academics, we have identified four key themes – all focusing on the contradictions, dilemmas and challenges confronting future research – that we believe contribute to further advancing the conversation around food sovereignty: (1) dynamics within and between social groups in rural and urban, global North–South contexts; (2) flex crops and commodities, market insertion and long-distance trade; (3) territorial restructuring, land and food sovereignty; and (4) the localisation problematique. We conclude with a glance at the future research challenges at international, national and local scales, as well as at the links between them, while emphasising the continuing relevance of a critical dialogue between food sovereignty activists and engaged scholars.
This article critically reflects upon conceptual and analytical questions that affect the practical implementation of food sovereignty in Uganda, a country often labelled as the potential breadbasket of Africa. It proposes to look at the integration of food and land-based social relations in the context of localised and historical–geographical specificities of livelihood practices among Acholi peasants in northern Uganda as a way to ground the concept. It argues that many of the organising principles at the core of the food sovereignty paradigm are inscribed in the socio-cultural and ecological practices of peasant populations in northern Uganda. Yet these practices are taking place in an increasingly adverse national and international environment, and under circumstances transmitted from the past, which enormously challenge their implementation and jeopardise the future of food security and sovereignty prospects for peasant agriculture.
This paper analyses the relationship between small farmers and revolution in Egypt by describing their role in the current uprising and redefining the track and stages of the revolution’s development, as well as evaluating the historical relationship between small farmer uprisings and the urban elite. The paper provides a historical reading of the peasant uprisings and the way in which the urban elites have ignored their struggles. The study confirms that revolution is not a moment but a long process socially constructed and the peasant uprising in 1997 was the first spark of a protest wave that culminated in January 2011.
Online access to the article: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7SQ5umqd6rsvHYnPPGgg/full
This paper proposes a theoretical approach that de-centers ‘food’ in food-related research, placing social life as the point of departure for a critical analysis of food systems and the search for alternatives. Using a relational conception of food as a nexus of multiple, intersecting social-historical processes, a ‘people-centered’ approach illuminates the social elements that can inform resonant and locally inflected strategies for food sovereignty, particularly for urban communities in the USA. Building on theoretical concepts of primitive accumulation, articulation, and everyday life, as well as empirical work with the Chicago-based Healthy Food Hub, this paper explores the relationship between everyday food practices and historical processes of proletarianization as they are produced, reproduced, and contested at multiple conjunctures. In these spaces of contestation, the capacity for diverse communities to re-articulate social relations through everyday food practices could provide a potentially powerful pathway not just to food sovereignty, but an alternative to life under capitalism.
The article examines the relationship of riots to more organised and sustained protests by trade unions and other established oppositional organisations. It focuses on protests related to the 2007-2008 food and fuel price crisis. In a case study on Burkina Faso, actors, means and achievements of the popular struggles are analysed. It is argued that protests by the trade unions on the one side and riots on the other relate to one another. Both present struggles by different segments of the popular classes that sometimes use different means but emerge from the same structural causes and address the same problem.
This book analyses both the historic trajectories of agricultural development in the Middle East, and how the globalisation of food production has impacted domestic food security and food sovereignty. The volume draws on original research conducted on the causes and consequences of food security in the Middle East at national and regional levels as well as household and individual levels. Impacting the formulation of thinking on food security in the Middle East is a historical memory of food shortages and dependency on food aid schemes. If past economic and political factors led to disruptions in food availability, this provides a rationale for why Middle Eastern states might currently be considering means by which to achieve food self-sufficiency. A central theme throughout this volume centres on the impact rentier earnings have had on the development of agriculture in the Middle East or on the lack of domestic investment in the sector. Other topics include historic food regimes; the political economy of food; urban agriculture; Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) investments in foreign agriculture; the supermarket transition; food insecurity in the West Bank; the nutrition transition and obesity in Qatar; among other theoretical and empirical studies.
What does it mean to be marginalized? Is it a passive condition that the disadvantaged simply have to endure? Or is it a manufactured label, reproduced and by its nature transitory?
In the wake of the new uprising in Egypt, this insightful collection explores issues of power, politics and inequality in Egypt and the Middle East. It argues that the notion of marginality tends to mask the true power relations that perpetuate poverty and exclusion. It is these dynamic processes of political and economic transformation that need explanation.
The book provides a revealing analysis of key areas of Egyptian political economy, such as labour, urbanization and the creation of slums, disability, refugees, street children, and agrarian livelihoods, reaching the impactful conclusion that marginalization does not mean total exclusion. What is marginalized can be called upon to play a dynamic part in the future -- as is the case with the revolution that toppled President Mubarak.
Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.
Critical ethnographies and methods of relational comparison provide tools for reconfiguring area studies to challenge imperial visions of the world; for illuminating power-laden processes of constitution, connection, and disconnection; and for identifying slippages, openings, contradictions, and possibilities for alliances. Crucial to this project are Lefebvrian conceptions of the production of space. In developing these arguments, this essay also intervenes in recent discussions of so-called "primitive accumulation" as an ongoing process. It does so by drawing on research into connections between South Africa and East Asia, and using these relational comparisons to highlight the significance of specifically racialized forms of dispossession and their salience to struggles currently underway in South Africa. These examples underscore how critical ethnography and relational comparison provide a crucial means for "advancing to the concrete"-in the sense of concrete concepts that are adequate to the complexity with which they are seeking to grapple.
The Priority Plan for the Economic Recovery of Africa (PPERA), adopted by the OAU in 1986, is the negation of the principles of the Lagos Plan of Action, in that it gives an excessive place to external aid. This chapter is concerned to bring out the meaning and stages of this retreat and to propose an explanation based on the agro-food policies of the capitalist states of the centre. -from Author
Since the 1950s, the Near East region has witnessed two development strategies with different objectives and intended beneficiaries. The first was an anti-poverty scheme designed to benefit poor peasants (fellaheen). Its core was a distributive land reform and large-scale public land reclamation and settlement schemes. The second development strategy emerged around the mid-1980s in response to the foreign debt relief programmes that were being adopted and the conditions that these programmes imposed with regard to macrostabilization policy and structural adjustment programmes prescribed by powerful Western creditors and designed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The distributive impacts of these economic reforms had adverse effects on the rural poor, small farmers who were net food buyers and the increasing numbers of landless workers. Real wages and per caput income also declined. The most worrying aspect of the available estimates is a projected increase in the number of people living in absolute poverty in the predominantly affluent Near East (excluding Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia), from 80 million in 1990 to nearly 110 million in 2000. Given the increasing scarcity of cultivable land in the arid Near East, which is caused by serious water shortage and the high costs of irrigation, the prospects for the present generation of rural poor are gloomy if the current trend continues.
Cheikh Diouf, from the rural community of Diakhao, walked out of a courtroom in Dakar in mid-April a free man. He was found not guilty of charges that he had “disturbed order” in Senegal’s parliament. The week before, he had managed to slip past security guards at the country’s National Assembly. As parliamentary deputies, during a break in their deliberations, walked to a restaurant in the building, Mr. Diouf brandished an empty rice sack on which he had written “The people are hungry.”
This chapter explores a series of issues that seem to have been ignored in the many debates about Egypt’s post-25 January uprising and the toppling of dictator Hosni Mubarak.1 I want to ask why it is that Egypt’s small farmers have been ignored or abjected (cast out) of debates about Egypt’s economic and political future. And I want to mention some of the reasons for this in the context of what elsewhere have been called agrarian questions (Bernstein, 2004, 2006). These questions relate broadly to issues of accumulation, production and politics. Does agriculture in Egypt have the capacity to generate food and non-food output that exceeds an amount necessary for self-provisioning, and, if it does, what obstacles prevent this potential being realised? And what policy would be needed to ensure a more equal distribution and consumption of food in Egypt, where more than 30 per cent of Egyptian children are stunted because of dietary constraints yet 35 per cent of adults are obese (FAO, 2013, p. 23). To what extent has capitalist production become generalised in rural Egypt? Is there widespread wage labour, or (just) the expansion of market activities and dispossession of opportunistic landlords and smallholder pre-capitalist farmers, who may block increases in productivity, restrict accumulation, and operate on the basis of patron-client relations and non-market imperatives? And at the level of politics, have large-scale peasant movements, independently or in class alliance with workers and other social forces, promoted policies for social justice and economic transformation (Akram-Lodhi and Kay, 2010, pp. 255–256; Bernstein, 2010)?
This book analyses both the historic trajectories of agricultural development in the Middle East, and how the globalisation of food production has impacted domestic food security and food sovereignty. The volume draws on original research conducted on the causes and consequences of food security in the Middle East at national and regional levels as well as household and individual levels. Impacting the formulation of thinking on food security in the Middle East is a historical memory of food shortages and dependency on food aid schemes. If past economic and political factors led to disruptions in food availability, this provides a rationale for why Middle Eastern states might currently be considering means by which to achieve food self-sufficiency. A central theme throughout this volume centres on the impact rentier earnings have had on the development of agriculture in the Middle East or on the lack of domestic investment in the sector. Other topics include historic food regimes; the political economy of food; urban agriculture; Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) investments in foreign agriculture; the supermarket transition; food insecurity in the West Bank; the nutrition transition and obesity in Qatar; among other theoretical and empirical studies.
Starts with the recognition that globally, the development strategies implemented in Africa since independence have neither aimed at achieving the priority task of an agricultural revolution, nor really aimed at any significant industrialization, but basically extended the colonial pattern of integration in the world capitalist system. The priority target of achieving the agricultural revolution clearly calls for industrialization, but a pattern of industrialization quite different from the conventional one. This chapter attempts to show the ways in which this pattern presupposes some form of "delinking' from the system governing the economic global expansion of capitalism. This national and popular content of development, in its turn, is virtually inconceivable without significant change toward democratization of the society, allowing for an autonomous expression of the various social forces and creating the basis for a real civil society. -from Author
In 2006-08, food shortages became a global reality, with the prices of commodities spiraling beyond the reach of vast numbers of people. International agencies were caught flatfooted, with the World Food Program warning that its rapidly diminishing food stocks might not be able to deal with the emergency. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.
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Until about four decades ago, crop yields in agricultural systems depended mainly on internal resources, recycling of organic matter, built-in biological control mechanisms, and natural rainfall patterns. Agricultural yields were modest but stable. Production was safeguarded by growing more than one crop or variety in a field as insurance against pest outbreaks or severe weather. Inputs of nitrogen were gained by rotating major field crops with legumes. Growing many different types of crops over the years in the same field also suppressed insects, weeds, and diseases by effectively breaking the life cycles of these pests. A typical corn-belt farmer grew corn rotated with several crops including soybeans as well as the clovers, alfalfa, and small grains needed to maintain livestock. Most of the labor was done by the family with occasional hired help, and no specialized equipment or services were purchased from off-farm sources. In these types of farming systems the link between agriculture and ecology was quite strong and signs of environmental degradation were seldom evident. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.
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India embraced liberal economic policies in 1991, and since has dismantled trade barriers, encouraged privatization, and promoted activities that are supposed to lead to economic growth. Such open economic policies have been mandated by the Structural Adjustment program of the International Monetary Fund, as a response to the budget deficits, currency crisis, and rising foreign commercial debt crisis. The post liberalization era has seen strong economic growth in India. At the same time, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of farmers who committed suicide, mostly due to rising and unmanageable debt burden. A staggering 190, 753 farmers have taken their lives between 1995 and 2006. This has created quite a political stir, leading to the government's Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme (2008). This paper explores all the direct and indirect channels through which the structural adjustment program affects farmers' lives. I argue that the cook-book approach of debt waiver programs cannot be sufficient unless the reasons behind farmer indebtedness are addressed. © Common Ground, Arpita Banerjee-Chakraborty, All Rights Reserved.
A biopolitics of the population, when it succeeds in securing life and wellbeing, is surely worth having. It has become urgent in rural Asia, where a new round of enclosures has dispossessed large numbers of people from access to land as a way to sustain their own lives, and neoliberal policies have curtailed programs that once helped to sustain rural populations. At the same time, new jobs in manufacturing have not emerged to absorb this population. They are thus "surplus" to the needs of capital, and not plausibly described as a labour reserve. Who, then, would act to keep these people alive, and why would they act? I examine this question by contrasting a conjuncture in India, where a make live program has been assembled under the rubric of the "right to food", and Indonesia, where the massacre of the organized left in 1965 has left dispossessed populations radically exposed. © 2010 the Authors, Book Compilation © 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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The rural and agricultural origins of the Tunisian revolution
Far from being a punctual and localized response against an authoritarian regime, the popular explosion that shook Tunisia in 2011 has deep roots, which refer generally to the growing socio-spatial inequalities that have accompanied development processes. It has in particular close ties with the rural and agricultural crisis, as evidenced by farmers and peasants’ protest movements before and after January 2011. Calling for a better access to resources, the right to regroup in autonomous and representative organizations, as well as a better protection of farmers’ interests, these protest movements continue to generate reduced attention by the new government, which on several occasions has reaffirmed its adherence to neoliberal models of agricultural development. In the absence of consideration of demands from the social actors involved in farming activities, and in the absence of initiatives to associate them in the reflection on problems of the agricultural sector, it very likely that there tensions and conflicts, the root causes of which have not yet received adequate treatment, will exacerbate in the future.
It is the crisis of negative Keynesianism that is at the heart of the current critical point, and which is leaving its global institutions - the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank-with no solution other than transferring the costs to the South (and to the South within the North). By adopting this logic, the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen followed exactly in the footsteps of these institutions. The failure of the Copenhagen climate talks is indicative of the depth of the crisis of "long Keynesianism" that has exhausted its positive and negative ways of dealing with the "unsustainability" of global capitalism.
This article develops the concept of accumulation by displacement to denote (1) the global appropriation of wndder-reproduced labor power (predicated upon dispossession of formerly self-reproducing peasantries) and (2) the accumulation of spaces of surplus nature. From the labor-in-nature perspective, the concept of surplus nature (as distinguished from necessary nature) is utilized to critique the developmentalist view of nature as an (external) object rather than a human relationship internal to the production of social life. This perspective helps to conceptualize the current crisis of global capitalism as a crisis of under-reproduction, of which the food crisis is only one expression. The long food crisis, as conceptualized in this article, expresses the limits of cheap ecology as supported by cheap food regimes and oil regimes. The end of cheap ecology will decisively rule out all externalizing solutions to capitalist crises.
Protected areas now encompass nearly 13 percent of Earth's terrestrial surface. Crucially, such protection often denotes exclusion – of farmers, of pastoralists and of forest-dwelling people. Engaging with the biopolitical implications of these displacements, this paper explores the emergence of an increasingly widespread type of resistance to conservation in the developing world: guerrilla agriculture, or the illicit cultivation of food within spaces zoned exclusively for the preservation of nonhuman life. In doing so, it undertakes a comparative analysis of three groups of farmers at Mount Elgon, Uganda, which support an overarching strategy of illegal cultivation with a variety of nonviolent, militant, discursive and formal-legal tactics. Far from passive victims of global economic and environmental change, we demonstrate how the struggles of farmers at Mount Elgon are frequently effective at carving out spaces of relative autonomy from both conservationists and the Ugandan state apparatus.
