I know, I know. I said I would be posting more regularly, but life does get the better of me sometimes. Its not that there haven’t been things in need of updates, its just that I feel like I’ve got so many buns in the oven right now and they are all taking a long time to cook. But at last, some good news to share: I recently published a new academic article in the Journal of Peasant Studies!
I am very excited about this pub, as this is a journal that I have read for many years as a grad student and academic. It is known for its critical analysis of agrarian issues and a focus on small-scale farmers (“peasant” in this sense is not derogatory, but a direct translation of the Spanish term campesino). Its also home to its fair share of Marxist critiques and analysis, which makes me feel right at home.
This article, entitled Smallholder farming for sustainable development: lessons on public policy from the Cuban agroecological transition, is the third of four to come out of work I completed for my dissertation. It is a look at current issues in agrarian development, specifically the persistence of small-scale farming into the modern-era through the lens of Karl Kautsky’s idea of the The Agrarian Question.
Before I lose you by dropping some stuffy old Marxist references, allow me to explain. The Agrarian Question is a relatively simple concept. In short: Marxist theory was developed by analyzing the class dynamics of urban industrialized workers in Europe during the early to mid-1800’s. For many years, there was uncertainty as to how well such theories could apply to rural workers (i.e. small-scale famers). What would become of these farmers in the context of rising capitalism? Would they side with their proletariat compatriots in the cities? Or would they do something altogether different? These ideas composed what, in 1899, Russian theorist Karl Kautsky deemed “The Agrarian Question”, which has persisted ever since.
Because Marxists can be just as shortsighted as capitalists at times, the general understanding from Kautsky onwards was that, as capitalism developed in the countryside, consolidating and industrializing agricultural production, the small-scale farmers of the world would gradually disappear. But here we are, well over a hundred years since Karl Kautsky’s original predictions and guess what: small-scale farmers are still here and not just a few of them, but billions of them.
Small-scale agriculture still represents the livelihood of approximately 2 billion people worldwide, over a quarter of the global population. Many of these small-scale farmers, or smallholders, are in the developing world but there are also many millions in the developed world. Not only have they not disappeared, but these smallholders still produce a majority of the food consumed globally, and all of this even as industrialized farms still claim to be the ones that really “feed the world”.
My latest article uses this paradox as a jumping off point while also drawing from my research on small-scale agriculture in Cuba. For those that do not know, since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, Cuba has embarked on a radically different agricultural trajectory. While the collapse of Soviet support spelled doom for many industrialized farm in Cuba, it gave rise to an entirely different philosophy of agricultural development—one that centered small-scale farmers and low-input, sustainable methods through the practices and principles of agroecology. Over the decades, Cuba has enacted a series of policies that enable, rather than hinder the work of small-scale farmers. The results of this have been impressive from an ecological, economic and social perspective.
For my latest article in JPS, I use the Cuban case study as way to distill three overriding lessons on what kinds of policies are most beneficial for small-scale farmers. These lessons include policies that 1) secure land tenure, 2) localize food and knowledge systems, and 3) regulate market development/exposure.
I believe this work is important because so much of modern agricultural policies are still aimed at moving small-scale farmers out of agriculture (so called “depeasantization” or “deagrarianization”), or else turning them into wage-laborers on large-scale farms. But if agrarian history has shown us anything, its that smallholders aren’t going anywhere. Rather than designing development policies that hinder their ability and favor large-scale agricultural operations, we should be designing development policies that help smallholders reach their potential. Our global environment, society and economy will all be the better for it.
That is all of my ramblings for now. For those that have made it this far through my academic naval gazing, thank you for sticking in there. If you have the chance, give the article a read!
Here’s a link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2022.2072214