Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Cultural and Economic Logic of Small-Scale Farming

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

Once a local practice, much contemporary agriculture takes place on commercial farms and plantations that distribute their products worldwide. With the world's agriculture concentrated onto large commercial farms, many producers elsewhere have abandoned farming for more profitable industries, such as tourism. Yet, it is widely recognized that food security depends on maintenance of a diversified economy that includes at least some modicum of local food production. This project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, investigates this economic niche of local farmers, who continue to farm even as economic benefits wane. The researcher asks why people chose to continue traditional livelihoods and self-sufficiency even when it seems to counter economic self-interest. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations invested in discovering more effective means of navigating food insecurity, improving economic and agricultural policies, and promoting environmental, cultural, and economic sustainability. Dana Conzo, under the supervision of Dr. Krista Harper of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will explore why agricultural producers remain committed to small-scale farming when participation appears to not be in their short to medium-term economic interest. It tests a classic hypothesis in economic anthropology that human economic behavior is often driven by materially irrational but culturally strategic aims. This project will be conducted in St. Kitts; the Caribbean has long been recognized as an ideal laboratory for examining longitudinal political economic trends because of its long engagement with capitalist production and colonialism. St. Kitts' integration into the global economy began as a sugar producer and has continued as a luxury tourist destination, making it an appropriate location to investigate how and why people maintain cultural practices in changing cultural, economic, and political landscapes. Using a range of established ethnographic and geographic techniques for data collection and analysis, such as participant observation, interviews, and spatial analysis in ArcGIS, the investigator will interview small-scale agricultural producers and trace the island's food and economic flows. The findings will contribute to debates in economic anthropology about autonomy, food security, land and labor practices, and globalization. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.