Can there be food sovereignty here?

Abstract

A central figure in the food sovereignty movement is the ‘middle peasant’, a cautious figure who balances food with cash-crop production, guided by a strong aversion to ecological and market risk. Drawing on long-term field research in highland Sulawesi, Indonesia, this article explains why farmers switched from food to mono-crop cacao production, and a stable middle peasantry did not emerge. It outlines their reasons for the switch, their struggles to make ends meet on small plots of poor-quality land, and the rapid polarization that soon arose. Ironically, their farm-dependence increased their vulnerability. Unlike farmers in many parts of the world who appear to be autonomous but are actually supported by state transfers, remittances or wage work, these farmers were on their own. Competitive capitalist relations quickly emerged and took on an especially virulent, almost textbook form. These relations were compulsory. Farmers with inadequate plots of land, and newly landless highlanders, could not opt out, challenging notions of food sovereignty framed in terms of liberal notions of choice. Even when small-scale farmers are untouched by land grabbing or corporate schemes, as in this case, expanding their capacity to exercise control over their food, their farms and their futures is still a huge challenge.

Keywords:

• middle peasants
• capitalist relations
• compulsion
• polarization
• Indonesia
• cacao
• social movement

Acknowledgements: Thanks to the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for supporting my research, and to the journal's reviewers for sound advice.

Additional information

Tania Murray Li teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy and Culture of Asia. Her publications include Land's end: capitalist relations on an indigenous frontier (Duke University Press, 2014), Powers of exclusion: land dilemmas in Southeast Asia (with Derek Hall and Philip Hirsch, NUS Press, 2011), The will to improve: governmentality, development, and the practice of politics (Duke University Press, 2007) and many articles on land, development, resource struggles, community, class and indigeneity with a particular focus on Indonesia.