Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia (ChATSEA)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/1807/72649

When the countries of Southeast Asia became independent shortly after the end of the Pacific War, their populations were predominantly rural and agricultural, but today the region is rapidly urbanizing, and developing industrial and market-based economies. The ChATSEA project was conceived to study this transformation. Directed by Professor Rodolphe de Koninck, holder of the Canada Chair in Asian Research at the University of Montreal, the research team comprised 28 scholars, drawn primarily from economic, cultural and environmental geography but also included participants working in various other disciplines. The team members represent 21 different universities and research institutions: 10 in Canada, 7 in Southeast Asia, 2 in Europe and 1 in Australia.

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The Retreat of Agricultural Lands in Thailand
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2008) Leblond, Jean-Philippe
For much of the last century, the expansion of agriculture was a dominant force transforming Thailand’s landscapes, but since the 1990s the dominant ― yet often overlooked ― trend is one of agricultural retreat. This shift started in the 1960s and 1970s and is most intense in provinces of the central region where urbanization has proceeded rapidly. However, the decline of agricultural lands can now be seen in diverse geographical contexts in all regions of the country. Using secondary sources and recent fieldwork conducted in northern Phetchabun province, the paper describes three types of agricultural decline occurring in Thailand: private conversion to other land uses, land confiscation by the state and voluntary abandonment of agricultural lands. Although the latter type has rarely been reported in Thailand, it was found to be of particular importance in the study region, at least from the 1980s to early 2008. Its existence is explained by a cost‐price squeeze in maize cultivation and the difficulty to find profitable and marketable replacement crops in rainfed areas. Politically, voluntary land abandonment created opportunities and facilitated the seizure of agricultural lands by forest authorities. Economically, it increased the costs of production of remaining maize farmers in zones where abandonment was important. This illustrates how agricultural retreat in Thailand must be seen as the result of distinct, but at times interacting, sets of processes.
Agrarian Transition in Northern Thailand (1966-2006): from Peri-urban to Mountain Margins
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2009) Bruneau, Michel
This study focuses on agrarian transition in four Northern Thailand villages, located both in periurban area and mountain margins, on a relatively long period of 36 to 40 years (1966-2006). Small handicraft or semi-industrial businesses that were not around in 1970 are now found in the remote villages. Forest environment protection measures are resulting from NGO interventions since 2000 and State aid: stop in slash and burn agriculture, construction of small dams, fire prevention corridors development and night surveillance in critical times. In peri-urban villages, businesses located in the neighbouring town or villages provide home working or attract workers from the village. This explains increase in non-agricultural income, as well as seasonal or temporary labour mobility, in these villages whose appearance still remains essentially rural. The vast majority of households and individuals rely either on both agricultural and non-agricultural activities or solely on non-agricultural ones. However, agriculture is still present, including subsistence rice culture, as a way of life or cultural fact (inherited community structures), even though population practicing this activity is aging.
Marketing Strategies and Community Culture: Certified vegetable farming and consumer markets in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2009) Wyatt, Brett
Certified vegetable farmers in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand use different strategies to gain access to vegetable markets. These markets are constituted by commodity networks bounded by different regulatory institutions, farm leaders, assemblers, retailers and consumers. Certified farmers’ strategies are based on factors such as price, reseller and assembler ideology, consumer preference for local vegetables, and the desire to participate in community culture. This research demonstrates how certified vegetable commodity networks are constituted by analyzing the information provided by 324 survey participants regarding consumer practices, attitudes and perceptions of certified vegetables. This research also draws from an extensive field investigation of certified farming practices and site inspections of retail locations in Chiang Mai to explain how farmers’ strategies are used to gain access to these networks. This paper identifies the importance of local vegetables to Chiang Mai consumers and how they are used as a marketing strategy by certified farmers.
Ethnic Politics, Migrant Labour and Agrarian Transformation: A Case Study of the Hmong and Shan in a Royal Project in Northern Thailand
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2009) Latt, Sai S.W.
This paper investigates the relationship between ethnic politics and agrarian transformation. Experiences of Hmong and Shan minority/migrant groups in a Royal Project in Northern Thailand are considered. Interviews and surveys with 40 Hmong employers and 25 Shan workers were conducted in summer 2007. The study reveals that ethnic politics, in particular the construction of the Hmong and Shan identities, have shaped agrarian transformation in the Doi Soong Royal Project. In other words, the construction of the Hmong as 'governable subjects' enables the Royal Project to continuously introduce new agricultural practices such as 'environmentally friendly' agriculture. Although this agriculture is financially distressing for the Hmong, the Royal Project could insist on it because the financial costs are off-loaded onto the Shan labourers, who are constructed and treated in Thailand as ‘illegal’ and ‘economic immigrants’, which eventually facilitates the agrarian transformation. This study also suggests that the understanding of agrarian transformation needs to go beyond the questions of land, income diversification and rural-urban migration towards paying attention to ethnic politics, migrant labour relations, and cultivation practices.
Of Rice and Spice: Hmong Livelihoods and Diversification in the Northern Vietnam Uplands
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2009) Tugault-Lafleur, Claire; Turner, Sarah
Highland ethnic minority Hmong livelihoods in Sa Pa district, Lao Cai province, northern Vietnam resonate with adaptability, having flexed to accommodate and respond to diverse macro level political and economic circumstances through time. This paper focuses on this flexibility during the socialist and post-socialist periods. We illustrate the decisions of the State that have directly affected Hmong households in the Northern Highlands during this transition, and then, using ethnographic fieldwork data, turn to concentrate on Hmong reactions and their survival and coping strategies during these two contrasting periods. We then focus on current day Hmong livelihood portfolios, unravelling the specific features that allow Hmong households to adapt to local level political and economic transformations, including the creation of a National Park and limits to forest resource access as well as emerging market opportunities.
Cultivating Alternative Livelihoods Strategies and Gender Identities in Naga City, Philippines
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2009) Hill, Kathryn
This paper examines how livelihood diversification and labour intensification in peri-urban areas are also sites in which gender relations are unsettled and (re)configured. With the aim of strengthening the links between feminist and agrarian change scholarship, I present an ethnographic account from Naga, a medium-size city in Bicol, Philippines, to explore how daily discourses and practices of livelihood change are implicated in (re)producing social identities along gender, as well as class and geographical, lines. In the first part of the paper, attention is devoted to the ways in which gender is constituted in the state policies and programs governing agrarian change. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with state officials, civil servants, local academics and NGO leaders, I highlight how local state practices and policies are both implicated in people’s tendency to diversify, and imbued with discourses that are inherently gendered. In the second part, the location and scale of analysis shift to one location expressive of these official discourses; Pacol, a small farming community located on Naga’s peri-urban fringe. Specifically, I consider how state-fed gendered discourses are (re)enacted in the process of livelihood diversification; how they are worked through in intrahousehold activities, decision-making and other performances.
Agrarian Transitions in Sarawak: Intensification and Expansion Reconsidered
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2009) Cramb, Rob A.
Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo, has experienced the rapid conversion of forested land to large‐scale plantation agriculture in the past two decades, suggesting that capitalist agricultural expansion has been the driving force in the agrarian transition taking place. This paper draws on the seminal work of Ester Boserup to re‐examine the notions of agricultural intensification and expansion as they apply to agrarian change in a sparsely populated frontier territory such as Sarawak. By adopting a more detailed historical and geographical perspective, it is possible to discern three major agrarian transitions in Sarawak – the transition to shifting cultivation, the transition to smallholder cash crops, and the transition to large‐scale plantation agriculture. These transitions are partly overlapping in time and space, resulting in a layering, not only of different land‐use systems, but also of claims to tenure and territory, giving rise to a more highly contested and differentiated landscape than implied in a simple view of agricultural expansion. The paper concludes that expansionist agrarian policies that fail to acknowledge this complex historical and geographical layering invariably encounter the kinds of conflict, resistance, and losses experienced during the third agrarian transition in Sarawak.
Paddy Crop Transition after 31 Years of Green Revolution: Restudy on Farmersʹ Communities in Northern Peninsular Malaysia
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2010) Ahmad, Raiha
This paper, based on a restudy of De Koninckʹs (1992) research, discusses the impact of transition on two farmersʹ communities after 31 years of Green Revolution. In addition to geographical diversification, this study examines the impact of transition on employment diversity and mobility, paddy production and yield and land use patterns and charts changes in paddy production and yield in two communities based on data from1975, 1986 and 2006. This study is based on interviews conducted with 58 respondents in Kampung Matang Pinang and Kampung Paya Keladi. When considered along with research from 1975 and 1986, the data from 2006 show that implementation of the Green Revolution has driven increases in the socio‐economic status of the farmers, as reflected in indicators such as job diversification and expansion of infrastructures and facilities. While paddy crops retain heritage value and continue to represent a major economic resource for both communities, the impact of environmental development, the increase of paddy production and the drops of employment in paddy field are more evident in the case of Kampung Paya Keladi as compared to Kampung Matang Pinang.
Contested Upland Landscapes: the Meanings of Feed corn and Upland Farmer Identities
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2010) Rakyutidharm, Atchara
Feed corn farming is expanding throughout the forested uplands of Thailand. Although feed corn is a significant global commodity, several factors are working to drive the transformation of these upland landscapes and quicken the spread of feed corn plots. These changes cannot be completely understood under the rubric of global market forces. Similarly, the upland farmers who have adopted feed corn as a main cash crop cannot be understood simply as the passive and unfortunate victims of economic globalization. This paper discusses the agency of local farmers and their influence on the expansion of feed corn farming. I argue that farmers have adopted feed corn farming as they struggle with the imposition of conservation policies and ideals. Despite agro‐economic globalization, the conservation ideals of actors from outside of the commodity chain have crucially impacted the agricultural practices of local farmers.
Aquaculture for Rural Development: An Asymmetrical Initiative
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2010) Katigbak, Evangeline O.
The aquaculture sector in the Philippines has seen tremendous growth over the last three decades. Its growth is largely supported by both national and various local government units as aquaculture is seen to support food security programs in the country’s drive towards economic development. This is in response to food security challenges at the present and in the future, and also because growth in the sector is seen to increase export gains in the country. This study provides an analysis on how aquaculture development, which has largely been driven by the international demands for seafood, has impacted the livelihoods of coastal dwellers in the Philippines. The study captures local communities’ responses to this initiative as seen in the experiences of the people of Infanta, Quezon. It details the assertion of local peoples of their rights over mangrove areas, which are common property resource, against more economically and politically powerful fishpond developers who are not from the municipality. The study hopes to add further to the understanding of how conversion of mangrove areas to fishponds is transforming livelihoods and identities of peoples in the local communities. This research employs political ecology in locating the ecological transformations and the consequent changes in livelihoods and identities of the local population in Infanta.
Population Displacement and Forest Management in Thailand
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2010) Leblond, Jean-Philippe
In the 1980s in Thailand, it was estimated that 10 million people were occupying land legally defined as forest (thereafter legal forest). During the following decades, a variety of state agencies tried to solve the problem through applying a mixture of population displacement projects and legalisation by granting usufruct rights or full land ownership to illegal squatters. This article focuses on the first approach, which has become the most high‐profile state intervention in forest areas. Previously published information on the subject is scarce and mostly anecdotal. The paper therefore attempts to supplement the debate by offering the first comprehensive review of conservation‐induced displacement (CID) across Thailand, focusing on the 1986‐2005 period. Results show striking inequality first in the geographical distribution of CID projects and ethnic composition of the people displaced. I find that Khon Tai (Southerners), Central Thais, Khon Muang (Northerners) and Karen have scarcely been affected by CID while the opposite is true for Northeasterners and particularly for non‐Karen hill tribes. Results also suggest that the number of people displaced by forest management, which amounted to at least 51,000 people from 1986 to 2005, has significantly declined since c. 2001. I propose a series of explanations of these peculiar results, and discuss their significance in light of Thailand’s changing forest policies. My interpretation rests heavily on the nature and evolution of the state motivations for CID projects, particularly those pertaining to geopolitical questions, and the unequal yet increasing political costs and constraints in implementing CID projects.
Intertwined lives: household dependence and the livelihood strategies of morning glory (Ipomoea aquatica Forskal) producers in desakota areas in mainland Southeast Asia
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2010) Salamanca, Albert M.
This paper describes a livelihood – the production of morning glory (aka rau muong, kangkong or pak bung) ‐ popularly practiced in the desakota regions of mainland Southeast Asia. This paper shows that the interaction between spaces and livelihoods produces different livelihood strategies, which are in turn circumscribed within the social, economic and spatial contexts of each city. The tangible imprint of these strategies is on the degree of dependence of households on a particular livelihood. Using the livelihood framework as a basis for variable selection and data from household surveys, the key factors that explain the household’s livelihood strategies are teased out with degree of dependence on this vegetable for income as the dependent variable. The results showed that a key livelihood strategy among the morning glory producers in Bangkok is the direct involvement of the wife in the production system. In Hanoi, the key livelihood strategy is the dual deployment of both the husband and the wife in the production system but such dependence decreases when the wife’s age increases and attained higher education. In Phnom Penh, the involvement of the husband in the production system is the most important livelihood strategy of the households. In other words, the stock of human capital (particularly in terms of the direct involvement of the wife, husband or both) in the household has primary importance in understanding how households strategise to maintain or heighten the levels of benefits morning glory production.
Agrarian Class Formation in Upland Sulawesi, 1990‐2010
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2010) Li, Tania M.
Since colonial times, there have been reports of rapid class formation on Southeast Asia’s forest frontiers, when people start to plant cash crops and became indebted to co‐villagers and traders. Colonial officials were often alarmed at the enthusiasm of highlanders for the latest boom crop, and their neglect of food production. Stable mixes of food and cash crop production did emerge in some areas, especially where land was abundant, but where land was scarce, class differentiation could be steep and rapid. This paper provides an ethnographic account of class formation, tracked over a period of twenty years in one corner of highland Sulawesi. In 1990, the indigenous highlanders all had access to ancestral land on which they grew rice and corn as food, together with tobacco or shallots for cash. By 2009, the land was covered in cacao and clove trees, and few people were growing any food at all. Some farmers had accumulated large areas of land, while many of their neighbours and kin had become landless and jobless too, as there is little demand for their labour. In contrast to lowland areas in which class‐based divisions are entrenched, highlanders had no previous experience with agrarian differentiation. Hence, they had no mechanisms to prevent the accumulation of land in a few hands, claim a right to work, or spread the profits. The paper explains why the transition occurred so quickly, and how the highlanders handled the increasingly unequal social world their actions created. It also considers the consequences of landlessness at a conjuncture where the forest frontier has closed, and there is no industrial development to generate new jobs. A truncated agrarian transition in which exit from agriculture is not followed by entry into wage work, makes livelihoods radically insecure.
Political Ecology of the Agrarian Transition: Case studies in the Uplands of Lao PDR
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2011) Lestrelin, Guillaume
The agrarian transition is one of the most important processes of socioeconomic change that has occurred over the past three centuries. While abundant, the related scientific literature exhibits significant lacunae as regards links between socioeconomic change, ecological dynamics and environmental politics. This study describes how ecological change and mainstream environmental discourses have played a critical and mutually reinforcing role in shaping the agrarian transition in two Laotian villages. In response to land degradation and declining agricultural yields, villagers have engaged in a dual process of livelihood diversification and de‐agrarianisation. Mainstream discourses on land degradation have also constituted an indirect, yet important source for local change. In particular, the idea that Laos’ development is threatened by a ‘chain of degradation’ ‐ stretching from upland poverty, shifting cultivation and deforestation to downstream siltation of wetlands and reservoirs ‐ has had wide‐ranging impacts on rural development policy. Land reform and resettlements have thus aimed at ‘rationalizing’ local access to upland resources, delineating conservation areas and bringing remote populations closer to markets and state services. In the two study villages, they have engendered critical agricultural land shortage and fostered livelihood diversification and de‐agrarianisation. Understanding patterns of agrarian change requires thus paying careful attention to both ecological conditions and environmental knowledge. Ecological change is both cause and consequence of livelihood change while environmental knowledge conditions directly local adaptation to ecological change and, through its impact on policy and regulation, local livelihood constraints and opportunities.
Livelihood Change around Marine Protected Areasin Vietnam: a Case Study of Cu Lao Cham
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2011) Brown, Paula C.
This paper focuses on how marine protected areas (MPAs) impact on livelihoods in Vietnam. The paper turns the MPA focus away from the traditional focus upon biodiversity conservation and toward the livelihood implications of MPA regulation. Empirical evidence is used to explore livelihood impacts of MPA intervention through regulation of fishing as well as livelihood replacement. The agrarian transition lens is broadened beyond its traditional land‐based focus to consider “aquarian transitions” occurring in the coastal zone. Aquarian transition is used as an analogue of agrarian transition to examine the specific influences of the aquatic context upon livelihoods regulation and change. MPA‐associated livelihood interventions occur against a backdrop of dynamic change taking place in the coastal zones of developing countries that form a dominant influence on local economies. Past experience shows that alternative livelihoods interventions may fail to take into account of how such broader forces might shape people’s livelihood choices in the coastal zone. This study examines how these livelihood dynamics play out at the local level via empirical results from one case study site, and is complemented by ethnographic research on national policy development. The implications of the study are considered in relation to recent MPA and small scale fisheries policy developments in Vietnam, as well as to broader MPA livelihood practice in developing country contexts.
Seaweed: The Nature of a Global Cash Crop in the Caluya Islands, Philippines
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2011) Arnold, Shannon
The rapid uptake of seaweed cultivation by smallholder entrepreneurs in the Caluya Islands, Philippines has both transformed rural lives and helped rejuvenate traditional agrarian and fishing livelihoods of people there. While eucheuma seaweed is farmed as an aquaculture cash crop, it has not resulted in the same marginalization that has been documented in other communities reliant on export crops such as shrimp. This paper presents ethnographic research conducted between May and September of 2007. Using political ecology theories, I argue that it is the combination of local socio-economic factors with the unique material nature of seaweed that has created a positive impact for the community and allowed it to be integrated beneficially into existing social structures. My research in this area aims to contribute to an understanding of how certain market integration relations are produced and why particular outcomes lead to marginalization of communities while others, as in this case, have more sustainable and just outcomes.
Tourism, Industry and Protected Areas: Contested Coastal Livelihoods in Southern Luzon, Philippines
(Canada Research Chair in Asian Studies, 2011) Saguin, Kristian
Coastal environments in the Philippines are experiencing significant ecological and economic transformations, often driven by the juxtaposition of small scale fisheries with emerging strategies for globally‐ oriented development. This paper examines the transformation of two southern Luzon fishing villages in Mabini, Batangas due to the expansion of tourism‐driven marine conservation and industrial development, and assesses the resulting impacts on municipal fisherfolk livelihoods. The study argues that development policies and plans formulated at the national and regional scales are translated unevenly into local coastal environmental changes, which in turn influence how fisherfolk make a living. Mabini’s municipal fisherfolk, bear the most immediate impacts of ecological changes and resource‐use restrictions but respond using a variety of livelihood strategies and diversification to ensure survival.

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