2014 International Year of Family Farming

Last week in NYC the International Year of Family Farming was officially inaugurated. The first and most important aim of this international year promoted by FAO on this website is to 
"Support the development of policies conducive to sustainable family farming by encouraging governments to establish the enabling environment (conducive policies, adequate legislation, participatory planning for a policy dialogue, investments) for the sustainable development of family farming." 

Several events will be organized during the course of 2014, but most of them will be taking place at FAO in Rome and not in the countries where policy makers should be held accountable. In the face of landgrabbing and a call for a new green revolution, the promotion of this year is nevertheless something to react positively about. 

Based on my experience working for the EU at the UN and battling agaist the International Yr of Quinoa, which finally took place in 2013, it is though quite evident that these international years are not very effective in setting the agenda on the topics they are promoting. Will the International Yr of Family Farming be any different? Looking at the list of related publications you come across a poutporri of ideas related to subsistence farming (e.g. supply chain management, market connection, organic production...)which do not necessarily promote family farming in a cohesive way.   

Looking at the website from my geographic feminist perspective I do not see any reference to women subsistence farmers, who are actually the majority of food producers in family farming, especially in Africa. This lack of mention to women is worrying particularly after I have listened to this truthful portray of a Ugandan woman farmer´s day. 

Good news on grants to Matt Davies and Daryl Stump

Good news on funding for important and really good research by colleagues working on history of intensive agriculture in eastern Africa:

Matthew Davies has been awarded  a joint Leverhulme and Newton Trust Early Career Research Fellowship based at the University of Cambridge for his project Applied Agro-archaeology in Eastern Africa starting from January 2014.


Daryl Stump was earlier this year awarded a generous ERC Starting grant for The Archaeology of Agricultural Resilience in Eastern Africa

Congratulations Daryl and Matt!!!!

Deadline extended! CfP IGU Krakow 18-22 August 2014: Feminist participative methodologies: creating spaces of inclusion?

REMINDER
Deadline extended until the 27^th January! 

IGU Regional Conference, Krakow, Poland

CHANGES, CHALLENGES, RESPONSIBILITIES

18-22 August 2014

The Gender and Geography Commission is organizing nine paper sessions (see below for the descriptions) at the IGU Regional Conference in Krakow, Poland, 18-22 August 2014.  We would like to invite you to submit your abstracts (maximum: 500 words) on-line by Wednesday, 15 January 2014 at http://www.igu2014.org/index.php?page=call_for_papers.

(Note: Registration for the conference is required before you can submit your abstract on-line, but you only need to pay registration fees after you have been notified in mid-February as to whether your abstract has been submitted.  Information on travel grants is found at the end of this email.)

Important dates:

15 January 2014 - Deadline for submitting abstracts

25 February 2014 - Notification of results of abstract reviews

2 April 2014 - Deadline for early registration fee payment

15 May 2014 - Deadline for regular registration fee payment

If you plan to submit an abstract for (or have questions on) a specific session, please contact the respective session organizers directly. 

Feminist Participatory Methodologies: Creating Spaces of Inclusion?

Organized by Martina Angela Caretta (Martina@humangeo.su.se) and Yvonne Riaño (riano@giub.unibe.ch)

Feminist epistemology rejects the methodological ideals of objectivity and value-neutrality as one´s own experience and understandings can never be replicated (Colls 2012; Code 2006). Moreover, it claims that established theories of knowledge have perpetuated power asymmetries within science by according epistemic authority to privileged men´s experiences, which have been considered to be implicitly generalizable (Code 2006; Cope 2002).  Consequently, feminist epistemology aims to subvert the power-loaded relationship between the researcher and "the researched" and to let the voice of the research participants be heard through their participation in the research process as well as in the final texts and data produced. Despite an intense theoretical discussion on these issues we have fewer discussions so far on how to operationalize the former principles in our own research. How do we carry out a socially responsible research that aims at "investigating with the participants rather than about the research subjects" (Riaño 2012)? What forms of inclusionary spaces can be created to co-produce knowledge with the research participants? And how do we account for “the feminist imperative to form connections between personal accounts and theoretical discourse” (Kannen 2012:3)? These are crucial challenges for contemporary geographers that we would like to address in our session.

This session invites interventions and reflections on feminist participatory methodologies as possible tools to improve trustworthiness, mutual learning, transferability and confirmability of studies, giving “an accurate reflection of reality (or at least, participants ‘construction of reality)” (Cho and Trent 2006: 322) while at the sam time facilitating a less hierarchical relationship between the researcher and the research participants (Maynard 1994). 

In this spirit, we invite theoretical and empirical papers inspired by, but not limited to, any of the following themes:

• How can feminist participatory methods facilitate the process of (a) social and mutual construction of knowledge ? (b) the researcher positioning her/himself critically and reflexively, explaining her/his own partiality and also facilitating connections among participants?
• How does your method choice practically aims at overcoming the often hierarchical and exploitative relationships between the researcher and the research participants? What are ethical dilemmas and hurdles related to this question?
• How have you been personally challenged by such methodological choices? Authoetnographical reflections.
• Introjective and projective processes, misunderstandings as part of a mutually constitutive process that blurs boundaries between us and facilitates our reciprocal identification, intended as the capacity to grasp at least to some extent the other´s condition (Bondi 2003; Lagesen 2010).
• How can a feminist epistemological perspective enrich and problematize commonly used qualitative methods such as as participant observation, focus groups, qualitative interviews, mapping and GIS as well as member checking?
• What are possible problems that can rise both within academic circles as well as the research participants when using participatory methods?
• In cross-language and cross-cultural research, how do participatory methods bridge the distance (or not) between the researcher and the research participants? What is the role played by the assistant/interpreter in this process? What are specific challenges that emerge when researchers from the global North want to carry out research in the global South? What challenges would emerge in a scenario when researchers from the global South carry out participatory research in the global North?
• Last but not least, how do feminist participative methods encourage and facilitate the presentation of research findings to the research participants as well as to the public? What kinds of practical tools have you employed for bringing the knowledge back to the communities that co-produced it?

REFERENCES

Bondi, L. 2003. Empathy and identification: conceptual resources for feminist fieldwork. ACME: International Journal of Critical Geography, 2, 64-76

Cho, J., Trent, A., 2006. Validity in qualitative research revisited. Qualitative Research 6, 319–340.

Code, L. 2006. Women Knowing/Knowing Women: Critical-Creative Interventions in the Politics of Knowledge, in: Handbook of Gender and Women’s Studies Handbook of Gender and Women’s Studies. SAGE, 146–166.

Colls, R., 2012. Feminism, bodily difference and non-representational geographies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37, 430–445.

Cope, M. 2002. Feminist epistemology in geography. In Feminist geography in practice: research methods. Moss, P. (ed.). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. 43-56.

Domosh, M. 2003. Toward a More Fully Reciprocal Feminist Inquiry. ACME 2. Pp. 107–111.

Kannen, V., 2012. Pregnant, privileged and PhDing: exploring embodiments in qualitative research. Journal of Gender Studies 0, 1–14.

Lagesen, V.A., 2010. The Importance of Boundary Objects in Transcultural Interviewing. European Journal of Women’s Studies 17, 125–142.

Maynard, M. 1994. Methods, Practice and Epistemology in Maynard, M. Purvis, J. (eds.)  Researching women's lives from a feminist perspective. London : Taylor & Francis.

Riaño, Y. 2012. The production of knowledge as a "Minga": Challenges and Opportunities of a New Methodological Approach based on Co-Determination and Reciprocity". Working Paper Series MAPS: 3, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. ISSN : 1662-744X.

Engaruka on the Guardian: GMOs VS small scale farming?

While I was coming to work this morning I came across this article from the Guardian. At first, I thought "this really looks like kids in the school in Engaruka" and in fact the article was also about Engaruka. When I do my fieldwork in Engaruka I live by the school and reading the article brings back many memories of kids queuing for their githeri (mix of beans and maize) in what the journalist correctly describes as a "dust bowl", especially last August.

While farmers in Engaruka during interviews never mentioned that they are "are squarely in the middle of a global ideological war over agricultural technology", it is true that almost every year they get food rescue from the government. The food they produce is never enough to sustain themselves during a whole year. They harvest maize twice a year and beans just once a year in September, but crops can be easily impacted by droughts and wind erosion.

Finally, the article is a wake up call. While small holder farming shouldn´t be romanticized, it is true that there is a real risk that  GMOs end up in the hands of farming corporations with serious social impacts, as in India.

Update on Agrokultura and other news

In my last post, I discussed the possibility that Agrokultura (formerly Alpcot Agro) one of the largest Swedish investments in post-Soviet agriculture was about to be liquidated. The question was to be decided on Monday the 11th of November, but, as it turned out, an agreement was reached within the company to continue business. It would appear that there were discussions going on during this time (but I'm certainly not privy to anything and I would not really be interested, except to the degree that the departure point for any discussions reflected different views on the state of the agricultural sector in Ukraine and Russia), and there have been some major staff changes since the company announced the extraordinary shareholder meeting would be canceled, but the important thing is the company will continue on its course of reducing costs and consolidating its land holdings.

On a related note, I want to highlight an FAO report that was published recently on "Emerging investment trends in primary agriculture: a review of equity funds and other foreign-led investments in the CEE and CIS region." (I also want to give a shout out to Oane Visser from the Institute for Social Studies in the Hague who alerted me to this publication). This report focuses on all agricultural investments in this region, but since Sweden is a major player, it puts the Swedish actors in a larger context. Among other things, its says (p. 55): 

"The data show that the companies whose share prices fared best are those that have pursued disciplined business models that emphasize efficiency and performance from the start through a staged expansion process, and which kept costs under control. The best performing companies are all located in Ukraine (e.g. Continental Farming Group and Industrial Milk Company). Top-performing companies expanded from a relatively modest scale in manageable steps. Conversely, the share of prices of companies that acquired large tracts of land in a short time continue to struggle (e.g. Alpcot Agro and Black Earth Farming.)"    

This report also goes some way -- though much more work is needed -- towards differentiating different kinds of investments according to source country, investment vehicle, and destination country or region (including a broader international context) so that we can begin to make distinctions between different types of actors and investments. So for example, the authors of the report cite criticism of land-grabbing in developing countries that such developments may be more harmful than good for local populations, and go on to state: "an increasing body of evidence on the impacts of land grabbing in developing countries now reinforces this viewpoint." But then they say: "there are, however, important differences between land acquisitions and investment processes in CEE and CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] and some developing countries (namely those that give rise to the widely criticized land grabbing phenomenon)" (p. xiii).

There's a lot more of interest in this report, so I encourage you to read it. 

Landesque capital book now in press

In September, 2011, Thomas Håkansson and I convened an international workshop at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala to discuss the concept of landesque capital with the purpose of developing a book on the concept. The book is now in press at Left Coast Press. It has been a great time reading and editing all the intellectually challenging articles from this very committed group of scholars. In the introductory chapter we argue for the strength and usefulness of the concept of landesque capital. But this book also highlights some of the challenges and creative tensions of the concept as it is presently used. In sum the articles show that the concept of landesque capital opens up exciting possibilities for a comparative social science of past, present and future environments.   

Here is the content:

Chapter 1. Landesque Capital: What is the Concept Good For
Mats Widgren and Thomas Håkansson

Chapter 2. Economics and the Process of Making Farmland
William E. Doolittle

Chapter 3. Capital-esque Landscapes: Long-Term Histories of Enduring Landscape Modifications
Kathleen D. Morrison

Chapter 4. Taro Terraces, Chiefdoms and Malaria: Explaining Landesque Capital Formation in Solomon Islands
Tim Bayliss-Smith and Edvard Hviding

Chapter 5. World Systems Terraces: External Exchange and the Formation of Landesque Capital among the Ifugao, the Philippines
N. Thomas Håkansson

Chapter 6. Large scale Investments in Water Management in Europe and China, 1000-1800
Janken Myrdal

Chapter 7. Stonescape: Farmers’ Differential Willingness for Investment in Landesque Capital
Henrik Svensson

Chapter 8. The Social Life of Landesque Capital and a Tanzanian Case Study
Michael Sheridan

Chapter 9. The Temporality of Landesque Capital: Cultivation and the Routines of Pokot Life
Matthew I.J. Davies

Chapter 10. Irrigated Fields Are Wives: Indigenous Irrigation in Marakwet, Kenya
Wilhelm Östberg

Chapter 11. Correlating Landesque Capital and Ethno-political Integration in Pre-Columbian South America
Alf Hornborg, Love Eriksen and Ragnheiður Bogadóttir

Chapter 12. From Terraces to Trees: Ancient and Historical Landscape Changes in Southern Peru
Gregory Zaro

Chapter 13. The Antithesis to Degraded Land: Towards a Greener Conceptualization of Landesque Capital
Lowe Börjeson

Chapter 14. The Future of Landesque Capital
Tim Bayliss-Smith

MFS in Bangladesh – The Arsenic Crisis and Access to Safe Water

This week Louise Andersson a BA student in Geography shares with us her BA thesis fieldwork experience in Bangladesh. 

I recently came back from the 'Country of Bengal', which is what Bangladesh means in Bengali. Some may say that Bangladesh also can be called the 'Forgotten Country' due to its unfortunate preconditions, mainly in terms of natural disasters, poisoning catastrophes, grave corruption and of course, deep and widespread poverty.

I am a student at KG III currently finalizing my Minor Field Study (MFS) conducted in rural southwestern Bangladesh regarding the access to safe water - from a gender perspective. I am thus back from my first developing fieldwork experience.

Rural Bangladesh is currently facing a severe drinking water crisis. Millions of rural citizens lack access to safe water. This is due to groundwater sources contaminated by naturally occurring arsenic. Severe health problems are correlated with long term exposure to arsenic such as cancer and liver disease. One of the first symptoms is skin lesions (acnes) - also called Arsenicosis. People in Bangladesh afflicted with Arsenicosis suffer an enormous social stigma. For women, the situation is particularly difficult as a woman's attractiveness lies in her beauty which is often judged by her skin complexion. Being afflicted with Arsenicosis makes it difficult for single women to marry (on which future depends). The impact of the arsenic crisis and the access to safe water further affects women differently as it is exclusively women who fetch water for the household. When arsenic was found in almost all private tube wells, one to two public safe water tube wells have been installed in almost all of the six arsenic acute villages I visited. A consequence of this is a difficult dilemma now being faced by rural families, and especially by rural women: fetching safe water (arsenic free) from long distance outside of the homestead at the risk of being harassed/sexually assaulted - or to fetch unsafe arsenic contaminated water from a private tube well located within the homestead. As the symptoms of being arsenic poisoned are not immediate (it can take several years) families continue to consume arsenic contaminated water. A slow mass-poisoning of millions is thus taking place in rural Bangladesh right now – and the gender related differences of the impact of the arsenic crisis and the access to safe water are substantial. 

  

                             

 

     Skin lesions of Arsenicosis

   

I would summarize my first fieldwork experience as a quite 'earth shattering' experience. First and foremost because of the real and direct way poverty was encountered as I was interacting, communicating and engaging in marginalized people's life. It was also a new experience to me being exposed to so many more and also increased risks - which of course being in a developing country often implicates. The political situation in Bangladesh is unstable and tense. This year the political instability has spilled over into violence, where political rallies, riots and violent demonstrations have been frequent. The first months of the year Swedish UD advised not to travel to Bangladesh due to the political instability. The political situation when I went to Bangladesh in September was better, although it was announced by the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka to take precaution as strikes and demonstrations (so called Hartals) spontaneously can emerge. Death sentences of former parliament leaders charged for war crimes or crimes against human rights in the past - along with the fact that next election is soon to come (January 2014) - are main reasons behind the increased political instability.

The political instability more or less permeated my time in Bangladesh, although I learned to adapt to it. In order for us to plan our trips, phone calls were made everyday by my team to make sure no political meeting or demonstration was going to take place where we were going and we followed the news frequently. One day we could not go to a village due to a political demonstration. During my first days in Dhaka we accidently got stuck in a chaotic traffic jam, all of a sudden sirens were shouting and demonstrators came running from our right and passed our car. A political meeting was apparently taking place only a few blocks away from where we were. We could luckily move away from the area relatively smooth. Feeling more or less isolated further characterized my time, although I learned to adapt to this too. We could in the end however, conduct the fieldwork relatively undisturbed by the political instability.

The 25th of October implied the start of a three month long non-partisan government caretaker system determined by Bangladeshi constitution. This period is sadly associated with increased political instability. My main contact person now living in Sweden, mentioned this date and time to me before my trip to Bangladesh but he did not prevent me from going back home in November - so I thought it was going to be fine and therefore wanted to wait and see how the situation would evolve, while I was there. However, after a discussion with the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka and with native people around me, I was recommended to try to finish my study before the 25th of October. After a judgment of having well enough data to finish my study, I was a couple of days later back in Sweden, quite dazed and with a palette of mixed feelings, but with new experiences I highly treasure.

People of Kolarua (Koyla)

For more on Louise´s research see her blog www.safewateraccess.blogspot.com

African agricultural growth: who to believe?

In a recent article Prof. Magdoff defines the phenomenon of landgrabbing within the capitalist trajectory that led to the commodification of land which manifested itself in Africa through "dispossession by force" during colonial times and is now continuing through "accumulation by rural dispossession". Considering that 7 out of 10 nations in the list of the first land grabbing targets are African, we can question the rethoric of the African growth that is now prevailing in the media  and is even present in  art exhibits. 

A report by the Rockfeller Foundation, Agra and the Gates foundation depicts the picture of a rising continent where private investors can capitalize on innovations as mobile phones and "move agriculture from a development challenge to a business opportunity" (Rodin, 2). What was a challenge becomes an opportuniy for private investors. Maybe we should ask ourselves who are really these investors? Mostly international corporations that are riding on governments´corruption and capitalizing on "poor and degraded soils, non-existent irrigation systems, crumbling public infrastructures and insufficient access to credit" (Whitehead, 18). The recipe to solve this mess is presented as the good old Green Revolution mantra (improved seeds, fertilizers, mechanization). Yet, who will be reducing the yield gap will not be farmers themselves through government assistance but rather Cargill, Unilever and Nestlé which "have a long and positive tradition in linking their supply chains with African farmers....and....are flowing money into new crop processing zones to leverage private capital for African farming" (Whitehead, 19). 

As this graphic by the WB shows there is a great agricultural potential in Africa because 450m ha are unused and governments, even though they had committed, did not reach the investment target in agriculture: thus, leaving room for private investors.

The current growth paradigm is often produced with questionable metrics that are misused  to create the impression that people´s quality of life is improving while instead inequality is rising. This skewed interpretation of reality is being questioned by a recent survey by Afrobarometer reported on a NYT article today. And inequality is not manifested only between different social classes, but also between genders. Here is a timely special issues of the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension on women´s access to extension service. 

Agriculture should be left in the hand of small-holders  "some 2.5 billion people - to maximise yields and invest the savings in their health and education." according to the Oakland Institute. Their research, as our (soon to be published), shows also the knowledgeableness of farmers in using agro-ecological practices conserving soil and water resources for centuries. 

The New Green Revolution and current landgrabs on the other hand, with their industrial mechanized recipe, do not only only use agrochemicals to produce crops for export, but also disposses farmers that are left without an occupation and add to the Planet of the Slums. There are so many instances that show the negative effects of land grabbing (i.e. Uganda and Papua New Guinea), yet investors keep on claiming that the process of commodifying land should go hands in hands with sustainable development to "assist ah, actually work with local people". 

I am looking forward to a lively - yet facts based - discussion on this at the upcoming Global Land Project conference (Berlin 19-21 March 2014) where we we will have a session on smallholder irrigation agriculture. Browsing through the list of sessions and accepted abstracts it is evident that Africa land management, small and large scale agriculture and land acquisition are on the spot with around 20 abstracts and around 10 abstracts with a focus on irrigation. 

Might there be one less Swedish investor in post-Soviet agriculture?

Agrokultura, formally known as Alpcot Agro, has called an extraordinary shareholder meeting for November 11 2013 here in Stockholm. Founded in 2006, Agrokultura owns or leases a total of 281 000 ha in Ukraine and Russia. While the initial indication was that the meeting would be about selecting a new board and discussing their salaries, Agrokultura founder Björn Lindström stated in a recent  interview that he gave for the Swedish magazine Affärs Världen that he intends to call for a liquidation of the company because, as he says, he does not see near-term prospects for profitability. 

In August of this year, Agrokultura reported (see also the half year report) a loss of 76,9 million kr (about 12.4 million USD) for the first half of 2013, and much of its land remains unharvested. In 2012 for example they harvested on 126 000 ha. Legal disputes involved with the purchase of LandKom in 2012, which was supposed to allow Agrokultura to expand their operations in Ukraine, instead hampered consolidation and integration of their Ukrainian holdings (see Agrokultura's most recent annual report). 

The legal disputes were resolved towards the end of 2012, and Agrokultura has since moved this year to consolidate their Ukrainian operations around Lviv in western Ukraine, divesting around 24 800 ha in central and southern Ukraine (see this report). It is a trend in Ukraine that agroholdings  (or super large farms) are consolidating holdings and even decreasing them to focus on acquiring better machinery, infrastructure and improving crop production. In this regard Agrokultura has invested in increasing its elevator capacity and taken other steps to improve profitability.  

It should be an interesting meeting in November. (Again for the purposes of disclosure, I should mentioned that I own a tiny amount of shares in Agrokultura).

Where is the Swedish Black Earth?

I have a map here of where -- approximately -- Swedish land investments in Russia and Ukraine are located (The list of Swedish investments was posted earlier on this blog).  I have taken the information on where Swedish investments are located from the respective web-sites of these companies, which all list (or show) the oblasts (first order administrative units) they are active in. I have merely put a dot in each oblast for each company. I do not know in which raioni (second order administrative units) these companies have their farms, so there is likely to be positional inaccuracy with respect to the actual location. For example, both Black Earth Farming and Agrokultura (Alpcot Agro) are in oblasts in the central black earth district in Russia, but within these oblasts, I do not know if the farms/fields of one are to the west, east, north or south of the other. Indeed they are probably all intermixed within these oblasts. In any case, the dots themselves, according to the map scale, can be larger than one or two raioni put together. This is a first draft of the map, and the idea with this map was only to get a general idea of where the different Swedish companies have invested to discuss the geography of this investment and the question of consolidation of holdings. The source for the soil data is the Harmonized World Soil Database. 

Keeping in mind of course that Swedish companies constitute a fraction (albeit an important fraction) of all foreign agricultural investment in these countries, the geography of these investments are nevertheless interesting. The first point to make is that the bulk of farming takes places in a stretch of territory from western Ukraine, across northern Ukraine and into the Central Black Earth District of Russia (and then a little further east), in other words, the northern steppe and steppe-forest region. Though parts of this area actually fall outside the famed black-earth zone (particularly in Ukraine), this sweep of territory receives more rainfall compared to areas further south. As an official from Agrokultura said "A few units less sun is not going to bankrupt you, but getting no rain will" (quoted in this article) and indeed Agrokultura is consolidating its Ukrainian holdings around its hub in Lviv (in western Ukraine). It should also be said that this preponderance of Swedish investments in this stretch of territory corresponds to what Deininger et al (see previous post) report about where the largest farms are located in Ukraine. 

The need to consolidate operations is another aspect to discuss. On the one hand, agro-holdings or large farms like to spread out their land holdings to mitigate weather related risk. Drought is a regular occurrence in steppe agriculture, particularly the farther south one goes. Spreading investments  around a larger territory means that drought in one area can perhaps be mitigated by adequate rainfall in another. At the same time, this creates a logistical and supervision problem -- overseeing far-flung fields or farms -- and then it can be challenging to bring product to market. 

With respect to bringing product to market, Black Earth Farming in their corporate literature stresses their (relative) closeness both to the Black Sea and Baltic Sea for export purposes. Previously BEF had a cluster in Samara (in Russia), but they have closed that cluster down -- were the logistics too challenging?

Agrokultura and Trigon Agri stand out as being spread out over a large area. Trigon Agri has a milk producing cluster in Estonia and outside St. Petersburg, but they have also consolidated their land holding, swapping land in (again) Samara and Stravropol for land in Rostov in southern Russia, which, as their corporate literature says, is close to export outlets.  Agrokultura's dispersion reflects their purchase of LandKom (active in many oblasts in Ukraine), and Agrokultura has been working to consolidate their Ukrainian holdings ever since. (For the purposes of disclosure, I should perhaps mention here that I own a minuscule amount of shares in all three companies that are traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and that have invested in post-Soviet agriculture.)

There must be a balance between geographic diversity for the purposes of weather mitigation and consolidation for better operational oversight and logistical efficiency, and it would be interesting to study that question further. 

All comments, by the way, are welcome. I think these investments are interesting to follow, but it's not my main line of research. 

On returns to scale in agriculture

A short comment on Brian Kuns blogpost Constant returns to scale in Ukrainan agriculture :  Thanks Brian !  The term "returns to scale" opened up an easy googleable way towards empirical results on small scale vs. large scale agriculture: "returns to scale in agriculture". I did one full-time semester in Economics in 1970 so I am bit ashamed that I did not remember the economic jargon better. First hit referred to the well-known inverse relationship between farm size and output per acre. I find it a conundrum that much circulated articles like Jonathan Foley et al. Solutions for a cultivated planet and other in same genre are silent on the social organisation of agriculture. Foley emphasises that the floor rather than the ceiling needs to be raised (increasing area productivity on the worlds low productive farmlands rather than more nitrogen in US and Europe see interview with Foley) but does do not say whether agrobusiness or support to small-holders is the way forward. Foley also on a seminar in Stockholm did not want to answer whether large land acquistions or small holders was the solution.  I don't expect these (natural) scientists to raise the issue of equity, I just want them to include evidence based results from social science on area productivity.  And social scientists should speak with a much louder voice on the problem of feeding 9 billions in 2050.

Constant Returns to Scale in Ukrainian Agriculture?

Renowned world bank economist Klaus Deininger with co-authors recently published a report which studied the performance of super large farms in Ukraine compared to smaller scale farms. The results (on this question) were, well, ambiguous. This is reminiscent of Lerman et al's 2007 report which investigated whether smaller-scale family farmers (fermeri) in Ukraine (the average size of such a "family farm" is around 100 ha) are more efficient than larger scale farms (The Lerman et al report did not take into account the super large farm phenomenon as it was still an emerging trend when they were gathering data). Lerman et al's results were also ambiguous, i.e. "smaller-scale" family farmers were shown to have similar total factor productivity as larger scale corporate farm enterprises. So, here we have two competing theories. One, the so-called inverse-relation argument is that smaller-scale family-managed and owned farming is inherently more efficient than larger-scale operations. The other is that new technologies, plus a superior ability to access capital, allow super large farms to overcome some of the traditional obstacles that large-scale operations face (transaction costs, etc...). The empirical results in Ukraine do not support one or the other position (yet, it should be said). 

Nevertheless, Deininger et al show some really fascinating results. One is that raioni (municipalities or second level administrative units) that in 2001 had more concentration of land under fewer farms exhibited poorer productivity growth by 2011 compared to raioni with less concentration of land in 2001. Deininger et al's data show that much of the productivity growth between 2001 and 2011 is due to newer, more efficient actors entering the markets, so the presumption is that relatively high land concentration prohibits market entry of new actors. 

Second the geography of large-scale production has shifted. If in 2001, larger scale farms were concentrated in the east and south, they are now (in 2011) concentrated in a band stretching across the north of the country. 

By the way, their data did in fact show that output was highest for farms between 30,000 and 50,000 ha, but this advantage disappeared when they controlled for regional and farm level effects. Their data showed that profitability was highest for farms between 2000 to 3000 ha. 

One has to wonder does the Ukrainian evidence indicate that there are constant returns to scale in agriculture, as Deininger et al suggest, or does it show that Ukraine is where economic theories go to die? 

Notes from the field

I recently came back from the last fieldwork for my PhD during which I gathered data on the modes and practices of irrigation in the villages of Tot, Kenya and Engaruka, Tanzania. These two systems have a long history that has been documented by anthropologists, archaeologists and geographers (i.e. Sutton, Watson, Moore, Soper..). However they have not been studied in their current conditions and development, which is what my work is focusing upon. The peculiarity of these two system is that they are indigenous and they have been successful in making agriculture flourish in dry-land areas. Thus, in the context of the call for a new green revolution (for Swedish speakers see the article on this month Naturskyddsföreningen´s magazine) to close the yield gap and ensure food security - also through irrigation projects -, it is crucial to look at how indigenous systems have fared. This research can feed into the current debate on the Guardian on the sustainable water use in agriculture, which appears to favor local solutions.

Nevertheless the new green revolution is becoming apparent in the village of Tot, Kenya where the Red Cross started off an irrigation project. According to the Kenyan Red Cross livelihood officer  I interviewed, (who did not want to be recorded - ah, the challenges of the field!) sprinkle irrigation will allow for yr round production of cash crops i.e. green gram, onions and tomatoes that farmers will be selling to wholesalers in Eldoret.

While not yet operational, the project is already visible in Tot and has already modified the fields landscape. Here is a picture of a participant mapping exercise done under the Arron tree, where traditionally all decisions regarding irrigation are taken by male elders. On this same spot there is now a cement drain for the pipes of the Red Cross project. 

It will be interesting to follow up on this project and investigating how it will revolutionize agriculture in Tot and how farmers will autonomously use it in a few years time when the Red Cross will phase out. This last element is especially relevant in order to draw a comparison with the neighboring Italian Cooperation Wei Wei valley irrigation  project which is now being extended.

Hopefully carrying out such studies will be possible given that local authorities and representatives of the organizations dealing with these projects were available to meet, but not to be recorded. Such unexpected element represented certainly a big challenge for me as a a researcher, which brings me to the second point I want to bring up in this post: fieldwork challenges.

Conditions on the ground were quite challenging this time in the field. Not only weather related conditions as in Engaruka:

The scarce vegetation and the sandy soil were in fact the perfect mix for wind storms that forced my assistant and I to cover our mouth and nose to be able to breathe properly.

While geographical fieldwork has historically been a “male solo endeavor” (Frohlich 2002:50), being a single western white woman does not probably represent the ideal condition to carry out fieldwork in such a diverse cultural environment. Speaking Swahili made me even more aware of what was going on around me and more exposed to the psychological consequences of hearing stories about violence and abuse against women and children and understanding what men were shouting at me and my female assistants.

Fieldwork over these last three years has certainly changed me as a woman and as a researcher. I had not envisioned the instances I mentioned above before going to the field, because ethical and gender related dilemmas were never brought up in any conversation with fellow researchers, who happened actually to be mostly men. Now, at the end of my fieldwork endeavor, I realize that - and I am aware it is not rocket science - that female researchers in some environments are faced with a unique set of challenges which female students should be made aware of during their undergrad education.

Furrows in Africa -- canals in the Americas ?



Lowe Börjeson inspecting an abandoned irrigation "furrow"in Engaruka 1996.



An abandoned irrigation canal in Safford, Arizona US (April 2013).

A certain type of irrigation system in East Africa (known for example from Engaruka in Tanzania and Marakwet in Kenya) has now for a long time been recognised by the term "furrow systems".  In 1989 Bill Adams noted the following on this terminology:

"The term 'furrow system' is now too well established in the archaeological and anthropological literature to be dislodged, but it should be noted that it engenders some confusion with the engineering term for a certain method of field water application, known as furrow as opposed to border or strip irrigation. It may therefore be useful to call them ´hill furrow´ systems, thus marking their physical similarity to the systems of Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan" (Azania vol 24)

In the literature on these "hill furrow systems" in east Africa the term furrow is also most often used for the artificial watercourses from the intake to the fields and the social organisation around them is written about in terms like "furrow man", "furrow owners" etc. (My own texts on the African systems also use that terminology.)

In April I visited Arizona and was guided in the remains of the precolumbian Hohokam irrigation systems in the Phoenix/Tucson area and could note that what in Eastern Africa would have been a furrow was called a canal in the archaeological terminology on these systems.


A "furrow" leading water to the recent irrigated area in the lower part of Engaruka, Tanzania (Sept 2012)

As can be seen from the photos the size and shape of the canals in Arizona and the furrows in East Africa are close and there is definitely no reason to differentiate between them in the terminology. The irrigation engineering terminology is simple. Canals lead the water to the fields and on the field a furrow system is one of the possible ways of applying the water on the field (others being e.g. flooding, sprinkler and drip irrigation), . This is in line with the lexical difference between a canal and furrow in English -- and in many other languages. 


Bill Doolittle photographing furrow irrigation for cotton NW of Pima in Arizona








Water is spread in the field with the help of furrows, Iraqw´ar Da/aw, Tanzania (1996)

Although  the term hill furrow system is well established I nevertheless see a problem when different terminologies are used in different parts of the world for similar features. As Bill Adams recently commented (pers. comm.) the comparative examples in Asia are also now summarised under the term hill irrigation (see book by Linden Vincent) in the meaning of gravity flow canal irrigation in mountainous areas.

A more clear distinction between canals leading water from the rivers towards the fields and more temporary furrows for spreading the water on the fields (the latter can clearly bee seen in the lower parts of Marakwet) could also sharpen the research on the gravity fed canal systems of East Africa. Reference is sometimes made to furrow being a local term, but I have not yet come across a study discussing the terminology in the local languages (please comment!).

When it comes to terminology the global study of ancient irrigation systems and of ancient field systems more generally is almost in pre-scientific state. It is not only when it comes to irrigation that regional research traditions have come to dominate terminology (lynchets exists almost everywhere where agriculture was practiced, but seems in the literature to be confined to NW Europe etc etc). I am not expecting us to come up with a fine-grained Linnean taxonomy, but especially in the time of internet a consistent terminology opens up for interesting international comparisons and syntheses. (See for example the overview of social organisation of canal irrigation by Hunt and co-authors)

The origin of the term furrow for the irrigation canals in east Africa is not fully clear to me, but looking back to the period before archaeological research I first find the Scottish explorer Joseph Thomson who noticed the "employment of canals for irrigation" among the Marakwet. He learnt in a most surprising way of the canals since he pitched camp close to what he thought was a stream and found it dry in the morning. Only after negotiations was the canal again filled with water (Through Maasailand 1887).

In 1941 the district officer R.O. Henning published the article "The Furrow-makers of Kenya" in Geographical Magazine. The main emphasis in this article is his detailed knowledge of the irrgation system  and his admiration of the ingenuity of the Marakwet for their irrigation system. He nevertheless emphasises that the irrigation system is "primitive and small". There can be no doubt about his colonial attitude: "The African's only accomplishment of importance were singing and dancing, and iron-working" he writes.

Whatever the background for the usage of "furrows" for the irrigation canals in Eastern Africa it is nevertheless obvious that using furrows instead of canals makes them seem more simple in comparison to e.g. their American counterparts. Seeing the hill irrigation complex in East Africa as part of global pattern of indigenously developed canal irrigation systems (be it in the American South West or in Pamir) on the other hand, opens up for broader comparisons.
- - - -
POSTSCRIPT same afternoon

Reminded by an eager reader with better memory: Note that John Sutton uses the term canal for the main arteries bringing water from the rivers in Engaruka, and feeder furrows for lower rank artificial watercourses (See for example John Sutton: Engaruka: An irrigation agricultural community in northern Tanzania before the Maasai, 2000).

It also struck me that I needed to check the German terminology -- note therefore that Jigal Beez in his work on the Kilimanjaro irrigation Die Ahnen essen keinen Reis (Bayreuth 2005) consistently uses Kanäle for the canals (and also shortly discusses how Furchenbewässerung  - furrow irrigation -  rather refers to how the water is applied to the field than how it gets there.) Beez also shows that the Chagga word for the canals is mfongo  and that the Swahili word mfereji for canal or furrow is a loan from Arabic.
-------------------

Postscript dec 2014

A printed version, with more references,  of this blogpost can be found in the journal   Azania

More posts (doctoral and post-doc) in the ITN network on eastern Africa

More posts advertised in the ITN network: Resilience in East African landscapes -- this time in York. More to follow from Ghent and Uppsala.

Doctoral funding: Long-term ecosystem dynamics and societal interactions in the northern Kenya Rift Valley (Ewaso-Laikipia) and the Mt. Kilimanjaro region (Amboseli-Pare-Pangani) from swamp sediments.
https://jobs.york.ac.uk/wd/plsql/wd_portal.show_job?p_web_site_id=3885&p_web_page_id=167966


Experienced Researcher: Resilience in East African Landscapes: Identifying critical thresholds and sustainable trajectories
https://jobs.york.ac.uk/wd/plsql/wd_portal.show_job?p_web_site_id=3885&p_web_page_id=167964

More PhD positions in new ITN network

Two PhD positions in Social and Cultural Anthropology: “Globalisation, Landscape Fragmentation and Resilience in East African Landscapes”

At the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne

Deadline for applications is June 23rd, 2013

The department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne, announces 2 PhD-positions within a multidisciplinary and multi-partner research project titled Resilience in East African Landscapes: Identifying critical thresholds and sustainable trajectories – past, present and future (REAL). This is an EU funded Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN). The project has been invited to negotiations by the European Commission (proposal 606879, REAL). To fulfil Marie Curie mobility requirements applicants must at the time of recruitment by the host organisation not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc) in the country of their host organisation for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the reference date. Compulsory national service and/or short stays such as holidays are not taken into account. Interviews with shortlisted candidates are expected to be conducted between 11-12 July, 2013, via skype.

The overall project focus is on the temporal, spatial and social dynamics of human-landscape interaction in East Africa over the last millennia, with particular reference to the Ewaso Basin and Eastern Rift Valley in central Kenya, and the Pangani Basin & Amboseli catchment in north-eastern Tanzania & south-eastern Kenya. The anthropological sub-projects focus on (1) “Changing patterns of land use between town and hinterland: the expansion of horticultural industry, commoditized food production and natural-resource harvesting for global markets” and (2) “Landscape and land use fragmentation in the Ewaso Catchment/Laikipia Plateau”. While sub-project (1) will be located in the Naivasha basin subproject (2) will be situated in Northern Kenya’s Laikipiak District. Both areas cover a range of land use patterns (from highly commoditized to subsistence orientated), social-ecological histories (from communal ‘tribal reservation’ to freehold farmland) and are currently shaped by various forms of conflict and cooperation. In both areas the social relations are shaped by a high degree of inter-regional mobility. A core consideration of the project will be on how actors negotiate access to and forms of land use in a situation shaped by intense cross-scale dynamics, co-management of local, national and international actors, the ethnicization of resource conflicts and increasing social inequality.

PhD-candidates in this multi-partner project will be part of a network of early stage researchers and senior researchers involving several European and African universities and institutions (e.g. University of Uppsala, University of York, University of Cologne, Ghent University, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, University of Dar es Salaam) as well as industry partners. A number of doctoral courses and training events will be organised within the project.

Each position will be attached to one of the research projects (A or B) described below. Positions are expected to commence 1 September 2013, provided that the required funding is available. Applicants must clearly state which project they are primarily interested in. Both positions will include several months of fieldwork in relatively remote rural locations in Kenya and Tanzania.

For further information, please contact: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne, 50923 Cologne, Michael.bollig@uni-koeln.de

General conditions and requirements
Research at the department follows two research themes (for further information see the department’s web page). The announced positions are most closely related to the research theme on Historical Geography and Landscape Research.

Applicants must be, at the time of recruitment by the host organization, in the first four years (full-time equivalent) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree. According to the Marie-Curie Initial Training Network guideline a Monthly Living and Mobility Allowance will be paid salary will be paid according to the Marie-Curie Initial Training Network guidelines.

The duration of employment as PhD candidate corresponds to four years of PhD education, with some prolongation to accommodate for a share of teaching and other duties at the department. In addition to the standard evaluation criteria, the applicant’s merits in relation to the specific project themes presented below will be given weight. The doctoral thesis will be written in English and good skills in English are thus required.

Applicants must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc) in the country of their prospective  host organization for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the reference date.

Who is eligible to apply?

The applicant is required to fulfil the general eligibility requirement for Phd studies (a master or ”magister” exam). Additionally, the applicant should fulfil the special eligibility requirement i.e. to have achieved pass grades in at least 60 course points in the discipline of social anthropology or in an equivalent discipline (e.g. development studies, environmental change and management, related interdisciplinary courses on social-ecological relations etc). Applications will be assessed based on the following criteria:
- practical experience and academic background of relevance for the project, e.g. interview based fieldwork in East Africa or in a comparable rural environment
- knowledge of scientific theory and method of relevance to the research projects
- analytical ability and skills in writing, as demonstrated by a scientific report, paper or degree project thesis
- the applicants potential to contribute to and utilise the research environment at the department
- the applicants personal references

How do I apply?

A complete application should arrive at the following address no later than 23^rd June, 2013:
Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig
Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology
University of Cologne
50923 Cologne
Germany

Or, as one pdf-file by email to: michael.bollig@uni-koeln.de

The application must include the following documentation:

• Curriculum Vitae
• A short (1-2 pages) personal presentation (letter of intent) that explain why you are interested in studying for a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, which project(s) you are interested in, why you are interested in this specific research task and what skills you can bring to the project(s)
• Verified copies of education certificates supporting general and special admission requirements (e.g. Marie Curie mobility requirements) to the PhD student programme
• One example of an independently written paper or thesis authored by the applicant within the framework of his/her bachelor or masters level university education (if no thesis or paper is submitted your application will not be evaluated)
• References from two university lecturers or professors (with phone numbers and email addresses) who have taught the applicant and who have a good knowledge of the applicant’s academic achievements
• Ancillary documentation that the applicant wishes to be taken into consideration (e.g. other
reference letters).

Further information on the web:

- University of Cologne Graduate Education (web-site)
- Institute for Social Anthropology (web-site)

 

Project A: Changing patterns of land use between town and hinterland: the expansion of horticultural industry, commoditized food production and natural-resource harvesting for national and global markets

The ESR recruited to this project will study changing livelihood patterns in three settlements along the shore of Lake Naivasha over the last 50-100 years. Particular attention will be given to investigating a) the effects that large-scale agro-industrial production changes have had on land-use patterns and livelihoods; b) the socio-ecological consequences of peri-urban encroachment of Naivasha wetlands and its partial conversion to agricultural land and residential areas; and c) transformation of household economies through expansion of local market-oriented food production for the rapidly growing urban population. Methodologically, the project will combine local oral history, documentary sources (including grey literature), interviews with focus groups and individual stakeholders and social actors, and remote sensing data. These will be combined within a participatory GIS, following the model developed for ESR 8.

Project B: Land fragmentation in the Ewaso Catchment/Laikipia Plateau

Focusing on the Laikipia Plateau, Kenya, this project’s rationale derives from the observation that the pressure of decentralization, increasing mobility, and newly instituted mechanisms of communal management, is breaking up formerly more homogenous land use patterns. Where once private and communal farms and protected zones were clearly juxtaposed, there are now manifold types of land resource property, access rights and administration from commercial farms, conservancies constituted by private farms, and communal land with informal private titling, to private and state-owned conservation areas. This fragmentation renders any attempt at institutionalized regulation problematic and challenging. However, loose networks of local stakeholders increasingly cross-cut the boundaries of this fragmented land-use system to manage resources profitably and/or sustainably, occasionally partnering with governmental institutions but also often by-passing them. The ESR undertaking this project will study this land-use fragmentation across the Laikipia Plateau using published, archival and remote-sensing data sources, formal and informal interviews with the various stakeholders, and analysis of current attempts to negotiate new forms of tenure adapted to the changed social, economic and environmental contexts.

For further information, please contact: Prof. M. Bollig, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologe, Michael.bollig@uni-koeln.de