Anatomy of a boom: Cassava as a ‘gateway’ crop in Cambodia's north eastern borderland

Abstract

This paper examines how a boom in industrial cassava served as a 'gateway' to intensify capitalist relations in Cambodia's north eastern borderland. Situated on Cambodia's border with Vietnam, Mondulkiri province has experienced a rapid increase in cassava production and trade since 2006, with transformative consequences for the region's forests and farmers. Using field data from 2012 to 2014, we explore how the boom ignited and intensified over time, through a conjuncture of conditions. Alongside strong market demand for cassava, these included resource abundance (soil fertility, timber, land, labour), connectivity to markets and cross border networks, and facilitative governance conditions. Over time, the boom strengthened capitalist relations, particularly through farmer debt and the revalorisation and accumulation of land. However, unlike booms of tree crops elsewhere, we argue that it is the very impermanence of cassava that is formative here, because the crop's short-term nature and low overheads facilitate practices like land laundering and land mortgaging. Like the 'gateway drugs' that were believed to place users on a path to addiction and risk, this paper shows that gateway crops such as cassava may similarly place farmers on a trajectory of more intense competition and reduced choice in their engagements with capitalist modes of production.

Archetypical pathways of direct and indirect land-use change caused by Cambodia’s economic land concessions

“…Multiple use commodity crops, or flex crops (Borras et al 2016), such as cassava and sugar cane, can substitute for other commodities of the same type (i.e., food crop for food crop) or of different types (i.e., food crop for fuel crop; Wadhwa and Bakshi 2013), resulting in a relatively stable market demand. Furthermore, low capital-intensity crops, like cassava, are often a gateway crop (Mahanty and Milne 2016) for smallholders into commodity-oriented production because of characteristics of low agricultural inputs, easily cultivated on newly cleared land with minimal improvement, and relatively quick cropping cycle. These attributes also make these crops likely candidates for commodity crop production by smallholder through iLUC in proximity to or introduced by LSLAs.…”

From rice fields to financial assets: Valuing land for microfinance in Cambodia

“…The commercialisation of rice agriculture is now a national trend in Cambodia as farmers have become increasingly dependent on commodity markets (Beban & Gorman, ; Diepart & Sem, ; Mahanty & Milne, ). National government policy has contributed to this shift, as the government has actively promoted an export‐driven agricultural policy (RGC, ).…”

“…There is evidence to suggest that household debt to microfinance institutions has contributed to these agrarian changes in Cambodia (Mahanty & Milne, ; Ovesen et al., ). In particular, household debts have outpaced agricultural income: average microfinance loan sizes are now nearly three times larger than per capita income (Bylander, ).…”

Foreign demand for agricultural commodities drives virtual carbon exports from Cambodia

“…In response to this, in 2012 the Cambodian government put a moratorium on new ELCs, as well as a partial revocation of poorly-performing ELCs (Mahanty and Milne 2016, Hunsberger et al 2017, Ingalls et al 2018b. This might have reduced the areal extent of ELCs to about 1.2 million ha (Ingalls et al 2018a).…”