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.