Documenting the transition to plantation agriculture: Long term and comparative study of ecological change and human impacts

University Of Hawaii, Honolulu

Investigators

Abstract

Because of the rise in global demand for agricultural commodities, large land areas continue to be converted from smallholder subsistence crop production to plantation-based production of highly remunerative immediate-return crops, such as cacao, palm oil, cassava, eucalyptus and rubber. Critics claim that this transformation represents a new era of enclosures and constitutes a "global land grab," which has negative effects on social equity and environmental sustainability. Advocates acknowledge the impacts of the changes but argue in turn that agricultural commodity production represents the most efficient use of the resource base in many developing countries, and their best hope for economic modernization. Social scientists who seek to understand the impacts of these transformations on rural people have likewise been divided. Many studies have focused on the economic marginalization that accompanies loss of land and the transition from mixed subsistence economies to dependence on wage labor. Yet some researchers have demonstrated that various indicators of well-being in fact improve as rural residents become more integrated with national markets. This award supports scientific research on this debate: Is agricultural conversion and restructuring good for local people or not? Because this process occurs throughout the world, including in the United States where it has been ongoing for over a century, it is important to have a better understanding of its consequences. The research will use Cambodia as a manageable and appropriate test case; there, smallholder farmers have lost their traditional resource base and have been relegated to the in-between spaces at the edges of the new enclosures. Dr. Jonathan Padwe (University of Hawai'i at Mânoa) will survey land-use patterns and well-being across a series of highland villages. He will collect data to inform both sides of the debate: fine-scaled study of land-holding, resource use, and social differentiation as well as data on nutrition, well-being, and household economy. The study will make synchronic and diachronic measurements of the impact of new land regimes. Synchronic analysis involves the study of land use and well-being across a range of villages, from those that are directly affected to those that are indirectly affected. Diachronic analysis involves the comparative study of land use and well-being in a single village where ten-year longitudinal data are available. Findings from this research will contribute to our understanding of the impacts of the transition to plantation-based commodity production at a human scale, informing both theoretical debates and development policy on an issue of global importance.