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ABSTRACT
New policy directions supporting small-scale, ecologically diverse agriculture often remain un-reconciled with decades of modernist agricultural development. We examine the case of campesino grape producers in the Central Valley of Tarija, Bolivia, and how and why they combine commercial grape production with species-level agrobiodiversity. High production costs and ecological and economic risks of viticulture, alongside other species’ sociocultural and economic values, are factors informing campesino production strategies. The importance of agrobiodiversity for campesino viticulturalists, however, is underrecognized by rural development authorities and we discuss opportunities to narrow the persisting gaps between rural development theory and practice in the Central Valley.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the research collaborators, key informants, JAINA–Comunidad de Estudios, RIMISP–Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rural, Asociación de Turismo de San Lorenzo, Gobernación Sub-Sección San Lorenzo, and the other organizations and individuals who made this research possible. Thanks also go to Justin Geisheimer for his help producing Figure 1 and to Ingeniera Fidelia Romero Lopez, Profesora Leonela Valdez, and Marina Pastrana for their collaboration, patience, and many insights and helpful suggestions during data gathering.
Funding
The authors thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their financial support (research grants to Dr. Davidson-Hunt: SSHRC 410-2010-1818 and 890-2011-0113; and SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, Doctoral Scholarship to Katherine Turner: 767-2011-0128), and the Canadian International Development Agency and Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada’s Students for Development Program (Individual Internship Award to Katherine Turner).
Notes
1. All materials in Spanish, including documents and interviews, are translated to English by the authors.
2. A list of household codes is included in Table 2 under Household ID #. Other interviews are identified by category (e.g., sector key informant) and numbered according to appearance in the text. Other information related to the identity of research participants is withheld to protect their anonymity.
3. Numbers are mean ± standard deviation.
4. Many temporary agricultural workers come from surrounding rural communities in the Central Valley (author’s field notes, October 26, 2012 and October 11, 2013). One household (V-5) has also had international volunteers through WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms; http://www.wwoof.net).
5. Pearson Product Moment Correlation found no significant relationship between the variables. (Pearson’s r = −0.44, t = −1.71, df = 12, p = 0.11. With V-3 excluded from sample, Pearson’s r = 0.35, t = 1.24, df = 11, p = 0.24).
6. These costs are 2010 figures reported by FAUTAPO. All other prices we refer to have been converted from Bolivian Bolivianos to American dollars at the average exchange rate in 2013 of 6.95 BOB to $1 USD.
7. Many artisanal wine producers in the town of San Lorenzo do not produce their own grapes, instead purchasing them from Uriondo or Santa Ana (e.g., artisanal wine producers 01 and 02).
8. The household with the largest vineyard (V-3) was the only household who reported preferring crop insurance to netting.
9. Some producers were observed to space rows 1–1.5 m apart (author’s field notes, October 15, 2013), significantly less than the 2.3–2.5 m distance used by CENAVIT and FAUTAPO in their test plots (see Muñoz Oller Citation2010::2; Muñoz Oller and Romero Citation2013:5)
10. This dam and reservoir delinked viticulture from the alluvial fields and river systems that had previously bounded the production zone and allowed dramatic expansion in the Tarija Municipality (Contreras Villaseñor and Elías Pastor Citation2012). Nearly half of all grape production in the Central Valley is irrigated by the San Jacinto project (FAUTAPO Citation2010a:9).