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Question: Synergistic Change and Smallholder Agriculture in Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica

Answer: The fate of the family farmer has long been the subject of debate among academics, policy makers and social activists. In light of national development policies which promoted the modernization of agriculture and the production of agricultural exports as a means to raise rural incomes and support to industrial growth, family farmers were seen variously as ‘subsistence-oriented ‘communalists’, unwilling to embrace capitalism; as helpless victims overpowered by the capitalist system; or as backward, inefficient, and ‘tradition-bound’ producers, unable to move successfully into that system’ (Sick, 2008a, p. 6). Marxist scholars predicted the demise of the smallholder farmers who would be unable to compete with larger and more powerful producers, while economists and organizations like the World Bank advocated the transition of smallholders into non-agricultural sectors of the economy, so as to leave agricultural land available to be consolidated into larger, more efficient units of production.
While both processes have occurred, smallholders (somewhat surprisingly) persist (Rigg, Salamanca, & Thompson, 2016). Today agriculture continues to provide the foundation for the livelihoods of millions throughout the world. While estimates vary, over 90% of farms worldwide can be classified as family farms 1 (smaller-scale farms that rely predominately on live-in family labour) that produce crops and livestock on roughly 53% of the world’s agricultural land (Graueb et al., 2016, pp. 5–6, see also FAO, 2014; World Bank, 2007).
In the new millennium, scholars, practitioners, policy makers and activists have renewed their interest in family farming, not just in terms of their position vis-a vis the modernization of agriculture and transitioning economies, but in recognition that it continues to be the basis of millions of rural livelihoods and the backbone of many regional economies. For many, sustaining smallholder agriculture is ‘the best means to promote rural development, sustain rural livelihoods, and ameliorate rural poverty’ (Rigg et al. 2016, p. 119). And following the world food crisis of the early 2000s in particular, family farming is increasingly advocated as a significant means of more sustainably contributing to food security. Marking this shift in attitude towards smallholder farming and its potential to alleviate poverty and provide better food security for millions, in 2014 the United Nations launched the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF). Nevertheless, continued rural poverty, high rates of rural out – migration and declines in the relative importance of agricultural production to rural household incomes remind us of the precarious position of family farmers and have raised alarms and their future in today’s world.
In this chapter I examine changes in smallholder agriculture in terms of processes of de-agrarianization in Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica, a canton that since the mid-twentieth century overwhelmingly has been reliant on smallholder coffee production. Drawing on my 1990–1991 ethnographic research with coffee-producing households in two farming districts in the canton, subsequent research on alternative coffee markets in 2006, and a re-study (2010–2012) of a sub-sample of these same farming households and their now adult children, 2 I analyse the ways in which changing demographic patterns, new socio-cultural trends, diversifying national and regional economies, ever-uncertain international markets and a general shift away from agriculturally based livelihoods are affecting farming households who, for the most part, have been reliant on export agriculture. This longitudinal lens allows for a better understanding of the conditions which have been shaping rural economic change, livelihood strategies and smallholder agricultural production in this region. I argue that while occupational multiplicity and non-farm-based livelihoods (especially among the younger generation) are on the rise in Perez Zeledón, smallholder agriculture continues to play a substantial role in the livelihood strategies of both young and old and in the regional economy, not in spite of these trends, but because of them.

(Source: , 30 Sep 2021)

Source Link: https://doi-org.onlinedatabase.librarynet.com.my/10.1108/S0190-128120170000037003