From protecting peasant livelihoods to essentializing peasant agriculture: problematic trends in food sovereignty discourse

ABSTRACT

In response to neoliberal food and agriculture policy, peasant movements fought for increased state support of the small-farm sector. Vía Campesina now proposes agroecology and localized trade as environmental solutions to the current climate crisis by advocating for the ‘peasant way.’ This discourse is problematic because peasant farmers are not inherently supportive of local, sustainable food. Drawing on ethnographic field research with indigenous peasant communities in the rural highlands of Ecuador, this article illustrates how existing peasants practice chemical-intensive, monocrop, and export-oriented production. In using peasant as an ideal type rather than an historical ethno-class, post-development scholars essentialize peasant agriculture.

KEYWORDS:

• Food sovereignty
• peasant livelihoods
• indigenous communities
• agroecology
• Ecuador

Notes on contributor

Rachel Soper is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Channel Islands. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, San Diego. Her work is published in Agriculture and Human Values and Current Perspectives in Social Theory.

Notes

1 Copbrobich is also known as COPROBICH, which stands for Corporación de Productores y Comercializadores Orgánicos Bio Taita Chimborazo. ‘Bio Taita’ is Kichwa for ‘Our Father,’ referring to the snow-capped volcano Chimborazo. In English, this translates to the Corporation of Organic Producers and Sellers ‘Our Father’ Chimborazo.

2 Confederación de Nacionalidades y Pueblos Indígenas del Ecuador [Confederation of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Ecuador].

3 Federacion Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indigenas, y Negras [National Federation of Peasant, Indigenous, and Afro-Ecuadorian Organizations].

4 Ley Orgánica del Régimen de Soberianía Alimentaria [Organic Law of the Food Sovereignty Regime].

5 Programa Nacional de Negocios Rurales Inclusivos [National Program of Inclusive Rural Businesses] is part of CADERS [Projecto de Competitividad Agropecuaria y Desarollo Rural Sostenible; Agricultural Competitiveness and Sustainable Rural Development Project], which is part the Plan Nacional de Buen Vivir [National Plan for Good Living]. CADERS’ objective is to increase rural household income and promote food sovereignty.

6 The names of the communities, as well as the names of respondents within those communities are all pseudonyms.

7 While other scholarship on peasants and broccoli in the central highlands of Ecuador (Cotopaxi) finds rural proletariat wage-workers to be marginalized by agribusiness firms (Martínez Valle 2017), the peasants in my study (Chimborazo) nevertheless wanted to further their global market ties and even expand to new non-traditional agricultural exports like asparagus and artichokes.

8 Just like cocao producers in Henderson (2017b, 79), they practice agroecology to better situate themselves in export markets.