Placing Cambodia’s agrarian transition in an emerging Chinese food regime

Green, W. Nathan

doi:10.1080/03066150.2021.1923007

Cited by 22 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…It is surprising that PCPs, many of whom have been demanding relief from debts, are less indebted than others. But as scholars have shown, resource‐poor farmers might find even moderate debts to be onerous, due to factors like credit rationing or the phenomenon of banks and other lenders restricting supply of credit (Das and Laha 2017), the terms at which they get their loans (Taylor 2013), broader neoliberal policies (Sethi 2018), uncertainties in agricultural commodity prices (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2017; Green 2021), and recurring disruptions in income flows (Srivastava and Padhi 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Class and Vulnerability to Debt in Rural India: A Statistical Overview*

Kandikuppa

2021

Rural Sociology

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Rural indebtedness is a major development challenge confronting India. In 2018, scores of farmers protested rising household debt, and the popular coverage of the time asserted that farmers were under crushing debt. Combining data from the All-India Debt and Investment Survey with other sources and using a class analysis, I interrogate this "crushing debt" narrative. Rural households, depending on the socioeconomic and contextual vulnerabilities that they experience, are indebted in different ways. The rural elite borrow more loans and have higher loan amounts, while asset-poor households are more dependent on informal credit sources and also pay higher rates of interest. Households from the wage worker class are more likely to be over-indebted relative to others. I further find that petty commodity producers bear less debt burden and are less likely to be overindebted relative to other classes. These findings underscore the fact that rural indebtedness is a nuanced problem that manifests in a multitude of ways across India. *I would like thank Dr. Clark Gray, Dept. of Geography, UNC for reading the multiple drafts of this paper and providing timely feedback. I would also like express my gratitude to Ms. Pallavi Gupta, doctoral candidate at the Dept. of Geography, UNC for discussing and critiquing this paper from time to time. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers whose critiques were

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Class and Vulnerability to Debt in Rural India: A Statistical Overview*

Kandikuppa

2021

Rural Sociology

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“…While such transformations vary across the country, a common trend is farmers' growing dependence on agricultural commodity markets. Cassava and rice are two of the more important commodity crops for smallholder farmers in Cambodia, both deeply integrated into national and global production networks (Green, 2022b;Mahanty, 2019). As agrarian households become more dependent on the sale and consumption of commodities, they must take on more debt to finance their costs of production, often using loans obtained from MFIs and rural banks (Green 2020a;Guermond et al, 2022;Natarajan and Brickell, 2022).…”

Section: Cambodia's Duplicitous Debtscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This dependence means that their ability to repay loans is shaped by commodity prices beyond their control. Cambodia's agricultural commodity markets, particularly for rice, are structured by a powerful bloc of traders, processors, and distributors, who set the terms of trade for smallholder farmers (Green, 2022b). Yet like with a changing climate, these relations of production, exchange, and distribution are absent in the debtscapes of the cassava farmer and two rice farmers seen in Figure 1.…”

Section: Cambodia's Duplicitous Debtscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The developmental potential of microfinance is represented by those individuals, almost always men, who have access to finance to purchase machinery to compete on international commodity markets. Yet nowhere do these success stories mention that most farmers borrow money not to own their means of production, but to rent it (Green 2020a(Green , 2022b. Celebrating the purchase of machinery privileges only one side of a class relation: that of the wealthier, more well-connected farmer.…”

Section: Cambodia's Duplicitous Debtscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Duplicitous debtscapes: Unveiling social impact investment for microfinance

Green

2022

Environ Plan A

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Social impact investment for microfinance has become a dominant form of poverty regulation in the global south. These investments aim to alleviate poverty by extending financial services like credit to the world's poor, particularly smallholder farmers. The International Finance Corporation is a major player in this effort. It has channeled finance capital to microfinance institutions around the world through its Social Bond Program, among other mechanisms. In this paper, I analyze how the International Finance Corporation's impact investments depend on an ideological “way of seeing” poverty, informed by representations of agrarian landscapes, which mystifies the exploitative relations of microfinance debt. I term these representations duplicitous debtscapes. My analysis is based on research about Cambodia, where the International Finance Corporation is a key supporter of the country's biggest microfinance institutions. I argue that the duplicitous debtscapes of the International Finance Corporation and its Cambodian partners veil the conditions of production and social reproduction faced by indebted smallholder farmers, thereby legitimizing capital accumulation for impact investors. Yet these debtscapes are also contested. Thus, I further argue that the outcomes of debtscapes are shaped by the struggle over their representation. By studying impact investment in terms of the visual politics of debt, this paper contributes to scholarship about the financialization of poverty in development and financial geography.

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“…While China's import policies and practices have recently caused negative environmental impacts in relation to some commodified crops, most notably bananas, which are being exported from Laos to China (Bartlett, 2016; Phnom Penh Post, 2020), the situation with regard to rice represents a much more positive influence when it comes to environmental impacts. Thus, this article adds a new element to the variant of the agrarian question relating to the role of Chinese markets in affecting agricultural practices (see Akram‐Lodhi & Kay, 2010b; Bramall, 2009; Green, 2021; McMichael, 2020) and also to thinking about the influences that new organic markets have on the environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labour, mechanization, market integration, and government policy: Agrarian change and lowland rice cultivation in northeastern Thailand and southern Laos

Baird

Manorom

Piyadeth³

et al. 2021

Journal of Agrarian Change

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Over the last two decades, significant changes in lowland rice cultivation practices have occurred in mainland Southeast Asia. Here, we compare lowland rice farming in six provinces in northeastern Thailand and four districts in Savannakhet Province in southern Laos and consider the ways that agrarian change, including the deepening of capitalist relations, is occurring. Some of the most important changes taking place relate to increasing mechanization, remittances, changing bases of labour's simple reproduction, and the increased importance of international markets, especially for organic rice. These changes and associated government policies are having a considerable influence on agricultural practices. The Chinese market for organic rice from Laos is reducing pesticide and herbicides use and prolonging hand‐transplanting of paddy, while encouraging farmers to use uniform sized high‐yielding rice varieties, and abandoning local seeds. Rice exports from Laos are having both positive and negative environmental effects, indicating the nuanced influences of particular international markets and government policies.

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Placing Cambodia’s agrarian transition in an emerging Chinese food regime

Cited by 22 publications

References 41 publications

Class and Vulnerability to Debt in Rural India: A Statistical Overview*

Class and Vulnerability to Debt in Rural India: A Statistical Overview*

Duplicitous debtscapes: Unveiling social impact investment for microfinance

Labour, mechanization, market integration, and government policy: Agrarian change and lowland rice cultivation in northeastern Thailand and southern Laos

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