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Abstract
Smallholder engagement with export commodities in Southeast Asia potentially offers a more inclusive development pathway than large-scale plantation production, which has been associated with the phenomenon of land grabs. This raises three questions which we explore in this paper: What are the agro-economic factors favouring or obstructing smallholders relative to plantations? What are the incentives for agribusiness firms to contribute to smallholder production other than by direct control of land? Can smallholder production be broadly inclusive in the face of internal differentiation and encroachment by external investors? We compare smallholder involvement with four cash crops which have experienced strong market demand – rubber, oil palm, cassava and teak – based on fieldwork in six Southeast Asian countries. We conclude that smallholder production can be a viable and inclusive strategy, contingent on the case-by-case confluence of a number of key factors which we enumerate.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Niels Fold, the editors and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Conference on Land Grabbing: Perspectives from East and Southeast Asia, 5–6 June 2015, Chiang Mai University; at the Southeast Asian Studies Symposium, 14–16 April 2016, University of Oxford; and at a seminar in the Department of Geography, University of Copenhagen, 31 May 2016. We would like to thank participants in those conferences for their feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 These latter features are characteristic of situations described as ‘adverse incorporation’ (McCarthy Citation2010, 821).
2 Hayami (Citation2010) makes a similar point about the influence of government policy on the early structure of the rubber industry in Malaysia (where the colonial government favoured British plantations) compared with Thailand (where a smallholder policy prevailed).
3 These are sometimes referred to loosely as ‘cooperatives’ but do not conform to the traditional definition of a producer cooperative or a multi-purpose cooperative which both require much higher levels of organisation and are rarely successful.
4 USD 1.00 = LAK 10,500.
5 A report in 2015 indicated that farmers in Luang Namtha had cut down 500–600 ha of rubber trees (Rubber prices may decrease in Luang Namtha Citation2015).
6 Compound growth rate computed from time series data in FAOSTAT (Citation2014).
7 The Iban constitute the largest ethnic group in Sarawak and are numerically dominant in the oil palm zone of Miri District.
8 USD 1.00 = MYR 4.03.These returns to labour are well above rural wage rates of up to MYR 30–35 per day.
9 For example, in Myanmar there are more than 15,000 ha of smallholder cassava grown in the Ayeyarwady Region supporting over 250 small-scale starch processors. By comparison, in Kachin State the Yuzana Company has a 100,000-ha cassava plantation (with 16,000 ha currently established) (Nyi Nyi Citation2015).
10 Teak was also introduced to Vietnam in the early twentieth century. It was almost eradicated in the French and American wars, but has been revived in recent decades.
11 Floresteca Group (Citation2015).
Additional information
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Notes on contributors
Rob Cramb
Rob Cramb is professor of Agricultural Development in the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His research focuses on agricultural development and agrarian change in Southeast Asia. He recently co-edited The oil palm complex: smallholders, agribusiness and the state in Indonesia and Malaysia (NUS Press, 2016) with John F. McCarthy. He is currently involved in research on cassava value chains in Southeast Asia.
Vongpaphane Manivong
Vongpaphane Manivong is deputy director of the Agriculture and Forestry Policy Research Centre in the National Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI), Vientiane, Lao PDR. He has published on rice intensification, livelihood diversification, migration and rubber smallholding in Laos and is currently involved in research on mechanisation of lowland rice production and improvements to smallholder cassava production in Laos. Email: [email protected]
Jonathan C. Newby
Jonathan C. Newby is an agricultural and natural resource economist with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) based in Vientiane, Lao PDR, and a research fellow in the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He has published on conservation farming in the Philippines, rice intensification in Laos and Cambodia, and smallholder teak production in Laos. He is currently coordinating a comparative project on smallholder cassava production and marketing in Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Email: [email protected]
Kem Sothorn
Kem Sothorn is a research officer with the Cambodian Development Resources Institute (CDRI) and a PhD scholar in the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He has conducted research on various aspects of agricultural policy in Cambodia and is currently studying the implications of the expansion of cassava production in Cambodia for rural livelihoods and agrarian change. Email: [email protected]
Patrick S. Sibat
Patrick S. Sibat is an agricultural and environmental scientist with a private rural development consultancy in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. Previously he was a soil scientist with the Sarawak Department of Agriculture. He has conducted research on social and environmental impacts of oil palm development and resettlement of rural communities, and has published on shifting cultivation and smallholder oil palm in Sarawak. Email: [email protected]