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Enabling food sovereignty and a prosperous future for peasants by understanding the factors that marginalise peasants and lead to poverty and hunger

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Abstract

Dominant development discourse and policy are based on crucial misconceptions about peasants and their livelihoods. Peasants are viewed as inherently poor and hungry and their farming systems are considered inefficient, of low productivity, and sometimes even environmentally degrading. Consequently, dominant development policies have tried to transform peasants into something else: industrialised commercial farmers, wage labourers, urban workers, etc. This article seeks to deconstruct three key misconceptions about peasants by explaining how and why marginalised peasants around the world face poverty and hunger. An explanation of the process of marginalisation of peasants through the influence of five “mediating factors” is put forward. It is contended that by addressing the mediating factors through policies devised with the active participation of peasants, the marginalisation of peasants would be reduced or eliminated. This would allow peasants to forge an adequate livelihood in rural areas based on their independent farming, and thereby contribute to the achievement of food sovereignty.

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Notes

  1. This would contribute towards meeting the first of the Millennium Development Goals which aims to halve the proportion of people in absolute poverty and halve the proportion of people suffering hunger, both from 1990 and 2015.

  2. It is only the proportion of rural people within the global population which has decreased. The absolute number of people living in rural areas, currently 3.4 billion, has and will continue to increase (based on data from ILO 2008).

  3. This “income” should not be interpreted in a purely monetary sense. Very often the “income” of peasants is not monetary, such as when their production is self-consumed (McCullough et al. 2008; Lipton 1977; van der Ploeg 2008) re-cycled or used in the farming system, or exchanged for other resources and services without the use of money (van der Ploeg, 2008). “For many… [smallholder] households the most important source of “income” is household production that is consumed at home” (McCullough et al. 2008: 33).

  4. The most recent estimate following the 2006–2008 global food price and economic crises said there are 1.02 billion hungry people in the world (FAO 2009).

  5. Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) rightly note that “socio-political and ecological or economic marginality are not necessarily correlated… “Marginalized” peasants can, and do, occupy smallholdings on highly fertile land” (p 21).

  6. This land does not solely refer to land owned by peasants with legal titles. It can be land they rent as sharecroppers or contract farmers, or otherwise occupy (illegally or without proper legal titles).

  7. “Sacks” are the common measure of beans and maize in the area; a sack weighs 60 kg.

  8. Johnson (1971b) explained that as most of the landlord’s revenue from the fazenda was derived from cattle, he allowed practically no sharecroppers to own donkeys, horses or cows, as these competed with his own cattle for pasture. The few sharecroppers that owned large livestock had to keep them restrained and provide them with their own feed. Furthermore, even on land which was rented out to sharecroppers, after they had harvested their yearly crop, the landlord reserved the right to graze his cattle on the stubble that remained. These kinds of practices might be a significant reason why “cattle ownership is often heavily skewed against the poor” (IFAD 2001: 114).

  9. The “baixo” refers to moist, low-lying areas where standing water is available for most of the year (Johnson 1971b).

  10. In Johnson’s study, sharecroppers paid a third of their food crop harvest to the landlord (Johnson 1971b), however around the world through history, it has not been uncommon for arrangements that required up to four-fifths or even five-sixths (Byres 1983). The interviewees stated they paid the landlord between 20 and 50 percent of their food harvest depending on the type of sharecropping arrangement.

  11. Johnson analysed the total value generated by a sharecropper working for a day on his own field and found it was four to five times higher than the average rate for a day of agricultural wage labour (Johnson 1971b; Johnson and Siegel 1969).

  12. What is meant by “own field” is the land where peasants grow their families’ food and cash crops. The discussion and diagram focus on the time dedicated to fields in order to keep the argument simple. However, as was previously mentioned, peasants engage in a range of agricultural activities. Therefore the actual factor is the amount of time peasants can dedicate to their own field and other related agricultural activities which are part of their agri-food strategy.

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Acknowledgments

I am profoundly grateful to the non-governmental organisation ‘Conviver no Sertão’ in Mirandiba, Pernambuco and to the peasant families in Feijão and Jardim communities. I also thank and greatly appreciate the support, advice and valuable comments from my supervisors Malcolm Hudson and Nazmul Haq. I thank the University of Southampton for their assistance and generous provision of a full studentship. I am grateful to Lavínia Pessanha (ENCE) and Ana Paula Ferreira (ActionAid Brazil) for kindly assisting me set up the field work. Lastly I extend my gratitude to the reviewers of this paper including my supervisors, Plutarco Naranjo and Daniel González.

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  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Southampton, University Road, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Sofia Naranjo

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Naranjo, S. Enabling food sovereignty and a prosperous future for peasants by understanding the factors that marginalise peasants and lead to poverty and hunger. Agric Hum Values 29, 231–246 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-011-9345-7

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