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N8 Agrifood conference, 12/7/2017, Durham University
The "context" for smallholder farming is a political ecology of agrarian change
Simon Batterbury LEC, Lancaster University simonpjb @ unimelb.edu.au
http://simonbatterbury.net
Keynote II by Ken Giller argued that the "context" for
smallholder farming has a significant effect on livelihood
outcomes and the success of technological interventions.
"Context" includes adaptive skill, and a wide set of
constraints. African farmers are quite capable of managing
their own genetic resources, innovating, finding markets and
diversifying livelihood systems in the absence of severe
structural constraints, as Paul Richards, Mike Mortimore,
Robert Netting and others have argued. But the
"constraints" operating in African and Asian farming systems
have been magnified in recent decades by large scale land
acquisitions, conflicts over land tenure, city growth, environmental challenges and
displacement through civil war and rebel groups. Responding to these problems is a
necessary precursor to achieving any widespread success through external technical
interventions; food security and 'Climate Smart Agriculture' first involves recognising,
understanding and tackling different forms of vulnerability, and the role of states,
corporations and elites in creating it. I develop some ideas about how to do so,
based on studies in Timor Leste, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Introduction
Thanks for the welcome and the opportunity, and to Ken Giller for mentioning the word
‘context’ in his plenary.
As my bio says I have lived and worked in Niger and Burkina Faso, East Timor and New
Caledonia as well as the US, UK and Australia. I am also married to a former farmer and
development worker with much more practical experience than me. These experiences
colour my remarks about agricultural sustainability.
Sustainability and access in context
Some years ago I worked on SWC and agricultural knowledge in West Africa, alongside
extension agents and project officials. In northern Burkina I came to see a Mossi village as a
base for operations that spanned West Africa, rather than as a tightly bounded ‘farming
system’. As a result of dealing with drought, adaptation involved diversification - people,
crops, and animals moved. This experience was invaluable and it forced me to engage with
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ideas of agrarian change rather than agricultural production in semi-subsistence societies
relying on millet and sorghum as staples –forces outside communities were changing what
was, and was not possible. I was also forced to revise some of the populist sentiment I had
as a student Burkina's socialist period under Thomas Sankara– social levelling and gender
equality did not endure or was not in place, and external aid donors were still needed. But
they were not ‘imperialists’ as Sankara had occasionally called them. Working alongside one
donor, I researched the impact of SWC techniques.
In Burkina and in Niger local livelihoods were planned out to some extent by careful
consideration about the year ahead, dealings with aid agencies and their offerings, and
financial and labour considerations. But ‘performance’ (innovation through practice) was
essential – the application of contextual knowledge and skill to local environmental and
social changes, and sometime pretty quickly, notably to drought and labour shortage in a
rainfed agricultural environment.
In post-independence E Timor, the dominant crop is maize but there is also urban and
overseas migration from communities that were extremely poor in the mid 2000s, while in
the francophone Pacific, Kanak Melanesian communities in northern New Caledonia remain
much more involved in the market economy [and mining] despite maintaining their root
crops, citrus trees, etc. New Caledonia has the highest incomes of the four countries, and is
still not 'decolonised'.
So my argument is that these contexts probably have greater importance for sustainable
futures than efforts to introduce new crop varieties tested in labs and in trials. Back in the
1990s we talked about, and saw, ‘improved’ varieties like 60 day millet penetrating into a
few communities – now the buzzword is ‘Climate smart agriculture’ [a grammatically
incorrect term, I should say]. The latter, anchored in low carbon farming, actually has
support from global and industrial firms, who are unlikely to provide technologies and
expertize for free. And Chandra et al (2017:836) warn that “vulnerabilities among the most
marginalized at local and global levels will amplify if 'climate-smart' policies sidestep issues
related to smallholder farmer rights, equitable distribution of agricultural resources and
hegemonic power relations. CSA interventions need to move beyond the farm level and
target inequality, unequal power relations and injustice beyond the farm to address socio-
political processes influencing livelihoods, food production, and vulnerability”. CSA should, if
it is to have any real meaning, place production in societal context. The role of agricultural
science in my view is about expanding the ‘practical range of choice’ [a term coined by the
geographer, Gilbert F White], not diffusing a [commercial] technology that locks anybody
into using a costly product. The direction of flow of agricultural knowledge can change
from farm to lab. I am talking about small scale farms in Africa, of course, not those locked
into supply chains.
Several years spent in an agriculture faculty at the University of Melbourne reinforces my
view that this point needs to be made repeatedly. The School of Land and Environment,
disbanded in the early 2010s, was an interesting venue for frequent debate between
researchers who work with farmers and Indigenous people in context on matters of justice
and access, and crop scientists some of whom worked only in the lab, but were concerned
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about global food security. The former were concerned about justice, fairness and access;
the latter with production enhancements. Context could have been the bridge.
Social sustainability or livelihood sustainability is the essential element of interest to small
scale farmers. Farming is not just about producing, but about living. This means having
sufficient food and water (access to resources), an absence of significant threats (human
and environmental), room to experiment which means room to adapt and diversify.
Amartya Sen calls these ‘freedoms’ and DfiD used to call them ‘capitals’, in the Sustainable
Livelihoods model which was briefly in vogue in British and globally in NGO development
policy (Batterbury 2008). Placing production in context was a good thing in the SL approach
and its ‘outcomes’ and ‘pressures/risks’ were usefully considered.
Access to resources in agricultural systems frames the context for social sustainability and
the endurance of livelihood systems. Closure of access is the ‘context’ for many rural lives,
resulting in demographic and economic pressures on remaining land or forests or fresh
water.
A sustainable livelihood does not involve depletion of livelihood chances by more powerful
actors or institutions. So in studying local agricultural innovation, we also need to recognise
the unpleasant actions of powerful actors. Without this, technical innovations in agricultural
systems risk being wiped out, or become meaningless.
Denial of access
Access to resources is not an additional concern for the social scientists to look at, but
central to everything to do with small scale farming systems. In SW Cameroon for example,
the fate of local farming systems, with women producing the majority of the food crops and
men the majority of commercial crops, is bound up not only in local dynamics of rights and
obligations, but also the effects of large scale land grabbing on some of Africa’s most fertile
soils, to produce oil palm (Ndi and Batterbury 2017). Fallowed and forest land allocated by
government is not ‘empty’ and available for foreign-owned plantations. More generally,
technologies to improve food productivity like new or manipulated crop varieties are
unlikely to succeed unless access to land is addressed, which means national-level land
reform policies, attention to local corruption over land deals [instituting regulations
equivalent to the best practice in western countries, but not necessarily through
privatization], and conflict reduction mechanisms for local disputes. We found that in
Cameroon many local people, particularly women denied access to markets, did not mind
some oil palm production, but that wanted to control it themselves, without the corporate
control, which disenfranchises them.
East Timor has some of the most chaotic land tenure in the world, due to Portuguese
colonialism, Indonesian occupation, UN mandates, and independence. Thus, communal land
tenure management was the de facto system operating since full independence in 2002,
with traditional conflict resolution mechanisms dating back thousands of years [including
prohibitions on fallowed land, and dispute resolution]. Trust in these traditional and
communal systems, which work, has endued until this year when a land Law was finally
ratified after almost 10 years in preparation, allowing private titles. Support for better
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access to land, rather than privatisation, came from many civil society groups (Batterbury et
al 2015). The Land Law is not a progressive solution to access, because it gives the state too
much power to usher in private and corporate agribusiness. In my time working there, crop
productivity was rarely raised as an issue – Chris Shepherd and others have shown that
maize farming, introduced by the Portuguese, has remained productive, although negatively
influenced by the colonial demands to produce cash crops (Shepherd and Palmer 2016).
‘Performance’ and innovation
This is not to deny individuals are paralysed by ‘contextual’ constraints on their livelihood
security. An example is the upland rice research in Sierra Leone that Paul Richards talked
about in his Indigenous Agricultural Revolution (1985) – farmer knowledge of rice varieties,
he found, was sufficient to select for field trials many varieties that could outperform all
plant breeding genotypes when trialled in field conditions. Knowledge is also gendered,
with women at the forefront. Richards developed this close scrutiny of ‘technologies in use’
into ‘technography’ – the ethnography of technology (Richards 2010). His argument,
latterly, was that practice or ‘performance’ generated learning, and knowledge. This is what
farmers in tune with the natural environment and context do, the world over.
Therefore, scientists could learn much more from farmers, who still may have need of their
expertise.
Social sustainability of livelihood systems
If we focus on the social sustainability of livelihood systems, we have a much more holistic
view of how to make an entire system sustainable. This involves in most cases, keeping
option for ‘exit’ open, in terms of formal and informal employment for men and women.
Particularly in non-equilibrating dryland environments, farming and pastoralism depends on
spatial and temporal flexibility, not so much on high yielding crop varieties and
fertiliser/pesticide packages.
Sustainability, in my view, is not about maintaining a given crop yield on a fixed land area
over time, but about maintaining a particular livelihood that allows for access to the
necessary resources, and social satisfaction, within the envelope of environmental limits.
We can say that many small scale farming systems, of the sort described by agrarian
sociologists and ethnographers from the Himalayas to the Amazon, did have sustainable
agricultural systems – even if they were not in a steady state and occasionally exceeded
local ecological limits. Robert Netting, Mike Mortimore, Eugene Anderson and many others
have shown this.
Most remarkable are the Sahelian farms I worked with through drought, the Timorese who
managed to grow food despite being bombed from the sea and chased by pro-Indonesian
militias in the 1980s and 90s, and the tribes of southern Arizona I met who farmed maize in
under 100mm of rainfall. This, when I lived in Tucson, occurred while we were eating
pesticide-laden vegetables trucked in from Sonora in Mexico.
Crop output-maximising measures of sustainability are really more of interest for
agribusiness, and commercial production systems. Within small scale farming systems
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supplying mainly local needs, we need to redress historical injustices and the vulnerabilities
created by denial of access. This is what groups like ours at LEC are concerned with. The
political ecology of small scale agriculture, which requires us explain why social
differentiation advances along with the commodification of rural places (Bernstein 2010),
gives us a sanguine attitude to economic growth imperatives as well, asking – who benefits
from the spread of production for the global market and [more locally] Africa’s 38%
urbanised population?
Conclusion
Responding to these problems is a necessary precursor to achieving any widespread success
through external technical interventions; food security and 'Climate Smart Agriculture'.
This first involves recognising, understanding and tackling different forms of vulnerability,
and the role of states, corporations and elites in creating it. Secondly, expanding the
'practical range of choice'.
I wonder as I peruse agriculture journals, if these lessons have been learned although I am
sure people at this meeting are aware. Plant breeding experiments need to be built on field
experience, not a few token visits to see field conditions, but seeing through a whole
agricultural cycle. This could help avoid the dialogue of the deaf in agricultural research [yep
I guess farmers and critics alike could be invited to lab experiments too, and occasionally
have] , and allows witnessing first-hand variability, intra-field soil fertility, erosion, pests,
and how these are managed in terms of labour, and the effects of that on class and gender.
There is good work – a favourite of mine is Andy Carlton working in Uganda, supporting
Twin Trading’ Fairtrade coffee, cocoa and nuts cooperatives from Tanzania up to remote
highland communities in DRC, exposing farmers to trading relationships that they can
control if they wish. And alternative farming efforts in the UK exist too, ‘off the treadmill’
and with food growing and sharing. Richards and others have constantly reminded us of the
power of quotidian agricultural knowledge, but uptake by agronomists is rare (see however:
Glover et al. 2016, Sumberg and Thompson 2012; Hubert et al. 2013). Awareness of
differentiation resulting from technology and crop choice is essential. The "context" for
smallholder farming is a political ecology of agrarian change.
References
Batterbury, S.P.J. 2008. Sustainable livelihoods: still being sought, ten years on. Presented at Sustainable
Livelihoods Framework: ten years of researching the poor African Environments Programme workshop, Oxford
University Centre for the Environment, 24th January 2008. 15pp.
Batterbury S.P.J, L.R.Palmer, T.Reuter, D. do Amaral de Carvalho, B. Kehi, A. Cullen. 2015. Land access and
livelihoods in post-conflict Timor-Leste: no magic bullets. International Journal of the Commons. 9(2): 619-647.
Bernstein, H. 2010. Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. Fernwood: Pluto and University of Michigan Press.
Chandra A., K.E. McNamara and P. Dargusch. 2017. The relevance of political ecology perspectives for
smallholder Climate-Smart Agriculture: a review. Journal of Political Ecology 24: 821-842. PDF
Glover, D., Sumberg, J., Andersson, J.A. 2016.The adoption problem; or why we still understand so little about
technological change in African agriculture. Outlook on Agriculture 45.1
Hubert B., Coudel E., Coomes O.T., Soulard C.T., Faure G., H. Devautour. 2013. Conclusion: en route…but which
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way? In Coudel E., Devautour H., Soulard C.T., Faure G., and B. Hubert B. (eds.) Renewing innovation systems
in agriculture and food. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers.
Ndi, F. and SPJ Batterbury. 2017. Land grabbing and the axis of political conflicts: insights from South-West
Cameroon. Africa Spectrum 52(1): 33-63.
Richards, P. 1985. Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: ecology and food production in West Africa. London:
Hutchinson.
Richards, P. 2010. A Green Revolution from below? Retirement address, Wageningen University.
Shepherd C. and LR Palmer. 2015. The Modern Origins of Traditional Agriculture: Colonial Policy, Swidden
Development, and Environmental Degradation in Eastern Timor. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.
171: 281–311. http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/22134379-17102005
Sumberg, J. and Thompson, J. (eds.). 2012. Contested Agronomy: Agricultural Research in a Changing World.
London: Earthscan.