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This study examines agrobiodiversity production and consumption among indigenous people and smallholders engaged with cascading migration, coca, and water resource changes. Addressing the questions if and how agrobiodiversity is viable amid intensifying extra-local influences, it combines the theorization of a pathway that has emerged via infrastructure entanglements and the extended case study of local utilization practices. The theoretical orientation integrates key elements of political ecology and social-ecological systems. We undertook surveys, interviews, and ethnographic participant observation in 10 communities and villages of Cochabamba, Bolivia, between 1990 and 2013. Results show how agrobiodiversity was utilized at moderate-high levels in the land and water systems, foods, and other uses of indigenous peasants and smallholder farmers in the 1990–2013 period even as certain minor crops were significantly reduced. Moreover, the results reveal how agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods have functioned in production and consumption amid the infrastructure entanglements of migration, roads, and irrigation. Embeddedness as both quotidian resource capacities and contingent sociocultural symbols was hinged to agrarian change in these accelerated entanglements. Mobilities of both meaning and people in recent infrastructure entanglement is characteristic of the unfolding utilization of agrobiodiversity and agrobiodiverse foods. Social power in the complex contours of accelerated entanglement have furnished meanings ranging from the resistance politics of indigenous people and smallholders to the purposeful agendas of more powerful groups. The conclusion highlights how dynamic agrobiodiversity utilization has emerged via the pathway of indigenous people and smallholders who are engaged in cascading, extra-local entanglements.

Violent conflicts are frequently associated with detrimental or neutral effects on economic, social, and environmental development; by extension, one might expect similar effects on agrobiodiversity. However, as this study suggests, the impacts of conflicts are not necessarily all negative or neutral. Indeed, conflicts may also create favorable political conditions for the implementation of community-driven agrobiodiversity management. Drawing on ethnographic research in the indigenous central region of Chiapas, Mexico, where the insurgent Zapatista movement (EZLN) has a strong influence, we examine the impact of the agrarian conflict between this indigenous movement and the Mexican government on the development of agrobiodiversity conservation initiatives. Two research questions guide this paper: (1) What has been the impact of the conflict on communities’ subsistence agriculture and seed sovereignty? and (2) To what extent has the local seed sovereignty movement—an outgrowth of the Zapatista conflict—influenced agrobiodiversity conservation? Our findings suggest that the conflict has led to the implementation of grassroots agroecology and food and seed sovereignty projects that could ultimately strengthen agrobiodiversity in the communities under the influence of the Zapatista movement. We suggest that these projects highlight two elements essential for long-term agrobiodiversity conservation: first, the strategic relationship between agrobiodiversity conservation and these communities’ food security and seed sovereignty, particularly in the context of conflict; and second, the central role that peasant communities play in the preservation, reproduction, and evolution of agrobiodiversity. We conclude that the overall long-term impact of the Zapatista conflict on local agrobiodiversity has in fact been positive.

The analysis of agrobiodiversity has mostly neglected conditioning by violent conflict and related processes of social and agrarian change. Similarly, the violent conflicts literature has rarely considered interactions with agrobiodiversity, which involves social as well as biophysical processes. Considering their frequent spatial overlaps around the world, this paper introduces a themed issue investigating how agrobiodiversity and violent (post)conflicts transform each other and are often interdependent. To do so, we bring into dialogue previously disparate lines of research and present the empirical and theoretical contributions of the papers included in the themed issue. Based on this collective work, we call for further synthesis, whereby research working on agrobiodiversity meet and converge with research on violent conflict from various disciplines. The papers that compose this issue evidence how an integrative approach is not only analytically beneficial but also necessary for research supporting the sustainable resolution of conflict, the related conservation of agrobiodiversity and equitable human-environment relations.

The article considers directions of the agrarian modernization as presented in the four editions of the Soviet agricultural encyclopedia from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s. On the basis of some historical examples and theoretical concepts, the author explains the scientific, ideological and political significance of encyclopedias in the formation of social knowledge and ideology; shows how during the Stalinist period, the Soviet agricultural encyclopedias passed through several successive great leaps in the representation of agrarian knowledge under the accelerated Soviet modernization; stresses the manipulative way of managing agrarian knowledge and human capital in agriculture - on behalf of the leader and ruling party. The article describes the transition from the first Soviet encyclopedia of the 1920s, which focused on the modernization of peasant Russia, to the encyclopedia of the early 1930s, which denied the importance of the peasantry and praised the projects of large-scale industrial-agricultural production; many authors of the first peasant encyclopedia were repressed. The encyclopedia of the late 1930s reflects the fight against the authors of the previous encyclopedia of the great leap and the purges in the name of the ideology of the planning-management approach in the further modernization of Soviet agriculture. The encyclopedia of the late 1940s - early 1950s reflects the victory of the technocratic-bureaucratic worldview and personnel approach to the agrarian sphere, which prevailed in the agriculture of the USSR until the very end of the Soviet era. The author focuses on the influence of the subjective factor (political leaders, editors-in-chief and anonymous authors) on the ideology, topics and style of encyclopedic articles. In conclusion, the author notes that the strong ideological control and volatile political situation distorted knowledge in the Soviet agrarian encyclopedias, which negatively affected the quality of rural human capital and largely predetermined the stagnation of rural development in the late USSR.

The article covers the main directions of joint work of scientific-research institutions (SRI) of agricultural profile in the Siberian region and Siberian Scientific Agricultural Library (SibSAL) functioning within the structure of the Siberian Branch of VASKHNIL (Russian Agricultural Academy) since its establishment in 1969 up to the reorganization period of science reform (2013-2021). The specificity of library and information activity of departmental library and multilevel model of interaction with institutes to satisfy information needs of scientists and specialists of agrarian research institutes in pre-reform period is presented. The results of monitoring the state of library and information activities in the institutes that have influenced the development of the new concept of interaction with SRI are presented. Based on the analysis of reorganization processes, a new structure of scientific organizations of the agricultural profile of Siberia is presented, which is the basis for the development of a new paradigm of interaction between research teams and the Siberian Scientific Agricultural Library, which received the status of a branch of the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences as a result of the reorganization. The analysis carried out in the conditions of reform and reorganization changes on the basis of a questionnaire shows new trends in expanding the range of interests of scientists to the possibilities of the information potential of the SibSAL as the largest branch library in the region. In the context of the change of management and the destruction of organizational and functional ties of agricultural research institutes that have become part of the regional centers of the SB RAS, the orientation to the development and strengthening of communications with the central academic libraries of the regions and the restoration of interaction with libraries of agricultural education on a new basis is noted. The definition of the system structure of agricultural research institutes and educational institutions of the region within the new boundaries of departmental relations of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education will allow establishing the vector of interaction of the SibSAL as a system-forming link. This will enable the development of the main functional areas of library and information activities in the Siberian region.

Crisis provides opportunities for social and environmental reorganization. States claimed responsibility for much agrarian development during the first half of the 20th century through massive development projects in countries like India and the United States, but rural communities now encounter a plurality of legitimate responses to crisis. As Max Weber and his critics have shown, crises are opportunities for charismatic actors who may appear in the form of programs, tools, plants, and leaders – provided they assemble a passionate coalition of political supporters and offer a way to fulfill an aspiration derailed by the crisis. Plural models of alternative agrarian development reorganize political, social, and ecological relationships through commodities and didactic educational programs. In each case, charisma is tied to political relationships with potential for both collective action and violent Othering. Case studies from Indian agriculture at three scales show how such crises break from state and local programs, and how charismatic entities capitalize on that void to forge new alliances.

Despite Costa Rica’s efforts to promote international tourism, the economy continues to struggle with unprecedented unemployment rates due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially concerning for tourism-dependent regions, such as the Monteverde Zone, where most residents have abandoned land-based livelihoods in favor of tourism. This study uses photovoice to illustrate the ways that small-scale food producers have adapted to the unique challenges of the COVID-19 global pandemic in a region that was already experiencing a loss of agrarian identity. Overall, local food producers have been affected by the diminished tourism economy through the closing of restaurants and the decrease in tourists, causing them to experience crop loss. Food producers have adapted to the economic impacts of the pandemic by re-investing their efforts into a local economy. As part of this shifting strategy, some food producers have begun to expand, diversify, and embrace an approach to growing food that is in line with building more resilient models of food production and engaging with their clients in different ways. Using community-based participatory methods, this study illustrates how food producers have adapted to changes brought on by the pandemic, re-positioning some of these rural agrarian actors as prominent figures in the local food movement.

This article examines the implications of the land and agrarian reforms on ‘aliens’ and its multiplying effects on citizenship and their rights in Zimbabwe. It also interrogates the contested nature of citizenship in relation to land, agriculture and the rights of aliens. This is premised on a background where a frosty relationship has existed between aliens and the government, making them victims of the country’s land reform programme. Settler colonialism is shown as having partly contributed to contemporary challenges and despite its demise, it continues to influence land and agrarian disputes between the government, indigenous Zimbabweans and aliens. It is against this background that this article interrogates and tells a unique story of inclusion and exclusion in rural Zimbabwe. The country’s land reform programme is shown as having had deep seated socio-cultural, political and economic implications some which are now only becoming evident now. The paper uses strong field based empirical evidence, adopts an interpretive life history research approach and uses the conceptual lenses of T.H. Marshall’s distinction of social citizenship (civil political and economic) to show how land reform has reconfigured rural social and economic relations. The article shows that in post land reform Zimbabwe, citizenship remains a contested issue and socially, economically and politically aliens are at a disadvantage and are failing to enjoy the rights and privileges which are due to them as enshrined in the country’s laws. The article concludes that despite the politics of inclusion and exclusion in rural Zimbabwe, aliens continue to positively contribute to socio-economic and political processes in the resettlement areas.

The author notes that modern agricultural production has the character of specific entrepreneurial activity in special conditions, with a unique membership, whose activities are regulated by special legislation, which is structurally an institution of agrarian legislation. The author believes that the new agribusiness relations will be followed by the formation of a new specific legal institution of agrarian law - the institution of legal regulation of agrarian entrepreneurship with its own subject, principles, methods and content of statutory acts aimed to ensure the efficiency of commercial agricultural production under new and constantly changing conditions, as well as food and environmental security of the State.

Focusing on Jats of Western Uttar Pradesh (UP), North India, this commentary on India's farmers' protests provides an ethnographic and historical grounded picture of the larger political economic t...

The interlacustrine states and kingdoms were some of the most influential African kingdoms that arose during the Late Iron Age, after AD 1000. As agrarian tribal units, they evolved into chiefdoms, some becoming powerful centralized kingdoms engaged in interregional trade, warfare, and colonial expansion. The Rwandan political elite developed and manipulated complex royal rituals to sustain the state. We draw from archaeological, ethnographic, historical, and oral traditions to contextualize results from our recent excavations at Rubengera, the royal capital of King Kigeri Rwabugiri IV, who ruled Rwanda in 1874–1895. The study aims to understand how ritual knowledge and the technical expertise of various actors were collectively and collaboratively organized. This understanding is crucial for explaining how power dynamics between stakeholders were negotiated for or against the state’s sustenance.

Studies of projected agro-climatic variability on the productivity of small-holding farming livelihoods have been evaluated by indirect methods using simulation models on country or regional basis but few have been done at the community level. This study explores direct observation of the impact of soil and climate factors on crop and livestock livelihood systems in the three major agro-ecological zones of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It also analyzed their influence on small farmers’ choices of agrarian livelihood activities and the lessons learned for the suitability of agro-ecologically integrated agriculture as part of agrarian and food security reforms needed among small farming households in rural communities of South Africa. The impact of soil and rainfall on the crop and livestock livelihood choices of small-holders in the three major agro-ecological zones were explored. A cross-sectional survey was carried out among 223 small-holding farming households during the harvesting period of rain-fed farming season. Data on household livelihood activities were processed in monetary terms and subjected to gross margin and cost/benefit analysis. Geographic information system (GIS) mapping and statistical analysis were used to determine the association of small-holder maize revenue with agro-climatic variation. The results indicated that crop-based activities performed better in the Grassland zone, while livestock activities performed better in the Savanna zone. Small farms in the Karoo can only productively engage in livestock production. The results also showed that farming activities that combined more vegetable crops yielded greater profits than other field crops. Furthermore, the results indicate that the mixed cropping method remains one of the strategies for breaking-even and risk-bearing effort used by the small-holder farmers considering its cost-sharing benefits. Geographical information system (GIS) mapping further indicates that small-holders’ farming activity was not only affected by soil-climatic factors but by their management skills as well. We recommend agro-ecologically adapted policies and incentives for agriculture-based livelihood activities and intensified mixing of cropping systems among the small-holder farming households in the study area.

The article analyses the farm laws struggle in India which, at the time of writing (September 2021), has lasted more than a year. It aims to explain its unusually broad support base and to discuss the potential wider impact of the new social coalition that is emerging. It argues that the unity of the movement is forced upon the concerned social groups by the threat that the farm laws and, ultimately, the oppressive Hindu fundamentalist government poses to all of them. The involvement of the different social groups is analysed with a focus on exploitation and oppression along inextricably linked lines of class, caste, ethnicity and gender. This also includes a focus on the ongoing structural change in Indian agriculture and – at least as importantly – in the Indian economy at large. It is shown that this has exacerbated their predicament but also enabled the broad alliance. The article concludes that there are a number of different reasons why the farm laws struggle is important for exploited and oppressed groups as well as for capitalist farmers and that an important progressive aspect is its potential to disrupt the present government’s political oppression well beyond the agricultural sector. However, there is little evidence that the broad-based unity will persist beyond the farm laws struggle, as the alliance is crosscut by exploitation and oppression between its constituent parts, based on class, caste, ethnicity and gender.

Метою статті є осмислення аграристського дискурсу революційної публіцистики М. Грушевського. Методологічне підґрунтя становить міждисциплінарний підхід. Особливий акцент зроблено на структурно-функціональному системному аналізі історіографічних фактів та методі критичного аналізу документального матеріалу. Наукова новизна статті полягає у спробі спеціального аналізу концептуально-ідейних засад та проблемно-тематичного розмаїття публіцистики М. Грушевського революційної доби. Висновки. З’ясовано, що найбільше уваги в своїй публіцистиці М. Грушевський зосередив на подоланні атомізації лідерів та учасників українського руху. З огляду на це він оперативно виробляє нову об’єднавчу ідеологію для українства, котра повинна була відповідати вимогам моменту, багато в чому пориваючи зі старими культурницькими гаслами. Водночас історик доклав чимало зусиль для розбудови мережі українських засобів масової інформації, розуміючи, що без них не вдасться поширити ідеологію нового українства поза Київ. Тож на шпальтах відновлених та новостворених часописів він ділився з громадськістю власним розумінням актуальних викликів і пропонував для обговорення рецепти їхнього розв’язання. Доведено, що пишучи про потребу мобілізації українства, М. Грушевський закликає до свідомої та динамічної самоорганізації саме селянства як кількісно панівної верстви, котра в його розумінні була головною соціокультурною підставою розбудови української державності. З’ясовано, що публіцистика М. Грушевського виконувала ідейно-виховні, інформаційні та мобілізаційні функції. Доведено, що завдяки діалогічно сконструйованому дискурсу і зосередженості на проблемах народу, публіцистичні дописи голови Центральної Ради мали чималий резонанс, сприяючи зростанню політичної культури в широких селянських колах.

This systematic review analyzes all 260 studies published in the Web of Science on gender and climate change in Africa. While there is no strong methodological bias, comparative case studies and sex disaggregated analyses predominate from a limited set of countries. Many articles covered the agrarian sector by comparing women’s and men’s on-farm vulnerability to a changing climate based on their adaptation behaviours. Though this literature recognizes women’s important conservation, farming, and food responsibilities, it oftentimes generalized these contributions without providing evidence. A number of themes were covered by a very limited number of articles, including coastal areas, conflict, education, energy, migration, urban areas, and water. Overall, more justice-oriented research is needed into the socioeconomic structures that intersect with social identities to make certain people, places, and institutions more vulnerable. Investigations into the power dynamics between (social) scientists and African institutions are also needed as most articles reviewed stem from North America and Europe and are locked beyond paywalls. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-021-01631-w.

This article argues that, till date, a single paradigm dominates the discourse on agrarian crisis and farmers’ movement against the anti-farmer dictates of the Indian state. There is a pressing need for the organic intellectuals of the masses to build an alternative discourse to examine the agrarian crisis and its roots. To this end, the present article reasons that the neoliberal resolution of the agrarian crisis that the authoritarian-corporate nexus has imposed on the farming community will produce mass dispossession and displacement in India. It exposes the misery of traditional consciousness that rules over the current farmers’ movement in India. The article concludes that the agrarian crisis which is actually a crisis of small farmers and agricultural labourers requires modern consciousness for egalitarian and long-term resolution.

The Indian government’s latest series of farm laws (a set of three acts) have sparked protests by farmers around the country. This viewpoint argues that the new farm laws are designed to deepen capitalism within the countryside by liberalising agricultural trade in the country. It highlights the political economic logics of the new farm laws and outlines the contradictions inherent in these laws. It also argues that the agrarian dissent is fractured around the class lines and that we need broad movements for social justice to address growing socio-economic inequalities in the country.

espanolTras el motin de Esquilache, que puso en jaque el gobierno de Carlos III en la urbe capitolina y en numerosos puntos de la geografia, comenzo la militarizacion del orden publico peninsular. El estudio de la asonada jerezana es un ejemplo de protesta cotidiana resultado de factores muy particulares que desangraban a la plebe de la ciudad. Empero, las logicas encontradas en el mundo agrario jerezano tambien son similares a aquellas que subyacian en la protesta contra el ministro italiano. EnglishAfter the Esquilache mutiny, which put the government of Carlos III in check in the capital city and in many parts of the country, the militarization of the peninsular public order began. The study of the Jerez riot is an example of daily protest because of very particular factors that bled the city’s populace to death. However, the logics found in the Jerez agrarian world are also like those underlying the protest against the Italian minister.

Key moments of the American Civil War and the 1899–1902 South African War and their tragic immediate aftermaths remain powerful features of national memory in both countries. Over the past century, vengeful politicians and ideologues in both have transformed them into formidable stock-in-trade. Second-, third-, and fourth-hand accounts of the alleged churlish manner of the victorious armies, especially soldiers of African descent, were made into combustible timber for reactionary political campaigns. The perceived cruel turns of fate have made their way into literature, stage, and screen. The two wars afforded people of various races and social conditions opportunity to act upon their conceptions of a just society, albeit amid terrible carnage and loss. They also underscored the permanence of the industrial transformation of both countries. In the decades following these two wars most of the black and white agrarian populations discovered that state and agrarian elites had cynically manipulated and then extinguished their aspirations. Most often, for black agrarians, violence was the preferred instrument to pursue desired outcomes. Reconstruction in the American South was a paradox. The Civil War emancipated the slaves but left the entire South, especially upland cotton regions, economically backward. In Louisiana, especially, politicized violence to coerce black labor was pervasive. After the South African War, white violence against rural black people was widespread. Lord Milner’s Reconstruction Administration was more concerned to bring South Africa’s gold mines back into production than to stem the violence. The low-intensity violence of the postwar countryside became the backland route to apartheid.

Natural resource conflicts in Mali in the last decade represent an important case to visualise the interconnection between land and climate issues. The country has received significant international attention in recent years both due to the announcement of large-scale land deals and due to its perceived vulnerability to climate stress. At the same time, Malian peasant movements have formed important networks of resistance and have been leading the pilot implementation of village land commissions to recognise and manage community resources, based on a new Agricultural Land Law. This paper explores emerging trends in natural resource politics through the lens of interactions between land and climate policies and discourses. We analyse the growing use of the frame of ‘climate security’ to associate climate change, conflict and migration in relation to countries such as Mali, by looking into the possibilities that this frame could shift focus and blame towards conflicts between marginalised groups and further close space for bottom-up participation. As an alternative, we explore the relevance of a platform of agrarian climate justice and the possibilities and challenges of enacting some of its principles through the implementation of the village land commissions.

The objective of this research is to analyze the frameworks and views on the peasant question in Soviet Russia over the examined period. Using the historical, descriptive narrative, comparative, and typological methods, the authors look into the 1917 land reform, attempts to organize large-scale socialist agriculture in 1918–1920, the specific features of the temporary solutions to the peasant question in the period of the New Economic Policy, and the subsequent focus on industrialization and forced collectivization of agriculture. The authors conclude that the Bolshevik doctrine evolutionized and preserved full strategic continuity, having undergone several timely tactical adjustments. Each of these stages represented the Bolsheviks’ attempts to retain political control over the predominantly agrarian country, for which purpose the “leading” (in other words, the commanding, dictating, or domineering) role of the working class and the poorest layers of countrymen was persistently proclaimed in relation to peasants who produced surplus goods and had a different system of value (worldview) priorities.

Goal. To analyze the dynamics of land use of scientific institutions, enterprises and organizations of the Academy during the years of independence of Ukraine, as well as the legislative regulation of the use and protection of academic land, substantiation of directions and ways of legal protection, preservation, and improvement of the use of lands of NAAS. Methods. The dialectical method of scientific cognition — to study the state and development of an agro-industrial complex, preservation of the environment of the agrarian and industrial complex and development of domestic agrarian science; monographic — to study the scientific papers, regulatory framework, statistical information; abstract — to form conclusions and proposals for the preparation of legislation. Results. It is established that the proposed redistribution of land under the draft laws №№ 30121 and 30122 violates the current legislation on the transfer to private ownership of land of scientific and educational institutions, which have been in force since January 1992. Their rules may lead to the elimination of experimental and educational bases of agrarian scientific institutions and educational establishments. The right to a land share (share) can conditionally apply only to 20% of the total area of agricultural land, and not the entire area (100%), i.e. 80% of citizens have no relation to shares or units, and the essence of the law does not correspond to its name. The law violates the requirements of Art. 22 of the Constitution of Ukraine on the social right to work of 15 thousand employees of the research base of NAAS. Conclusions. It is proposed that the norms on land privatization of state institutions and enterprises of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and national branch academies of sciences should be removed from the bill.

This article deals with the issue of carrying out agricultural work on the sacred lands of ancient Attica (Athens region) in the IV century B.C. The author relies on epigraphic sources, which are inscriptions on stone steles containing texts of lease agreements on sacred lands of the IV century B.C, and also uses information from ancient authors. The author also attracts scientific works of domestic and foreign authors devoted to the problem of agrarian relations in the ancient Greek polis. According to the author, the analysis and study of agricultural work on the territory of the sacred lands of Attica deserves a separate article, since the study of this issue makes it possible to more thoroughly consider agricultural relations in the Athenian polis of the IV century B.C, to present the meaning of sacred land ownership. In the first part of the article, the author analyzes the types and nature of agricultural work on sacred lands (temenos). The second part is devoted to the problem of responsibility of tenants and landlords for the performance of work on the territory of temenos. As a result, the author comes to certain conclusions. In the fourth century B.C, the sacred lands of Attica required special care after the end of the devastating actions of the Peloponnesian War. The temenos were at the disposal of the polis, with demes and religious unions as their landlords. The leasing of land made it possible to ensure the stable preservation of the land fund, to ensure the agricultural development of the temenos. Tenants (private individuals) were required to provide careful care for the leased land. At the same time, the author draws attention to the fact that in some cases the tenants were very well-known, wealthy citizens of the polis, for whom participation in the lease of sacred lands was a kind of liturgy. In such cases, it is difficult to determine who performed agricultural work on the leased land, most likely, it was special employees, whose work was paid by the tenant. At the same time, according to the epigraphica, there was no sublease.

Desde os anos 2000, observa-se a difusão do programa de pesquisas em Capitalismos Comparados (CC), envolvendo três gerações de estudos interdisciplinares nos campos da economia política e da sociologia econômica sobre Variedades de Capitalismo (VoC). Com foco quase que exclusivo nos países desenvolvidos nas duas primeiras gerações, em sua terceira geração os estudos em CC passaram a se ocupar também dos países em desenvolvimento, principalmente dos países emergentes, como os BRICS (Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China e África do Sul). Contudo, apesar de os mais importantes estudiosos comparatistas nas ciências sociais sempre terem se preocupado com a questão agrária nas grandes transformações que deram origem e definiram os rumos do mundo moderno, é notável a ausência de temas agrícolas, rurais e alimentares nos estudos em CC. No intuito de superar parte dessa lacuna, o artigo explora o lugar da “questão agroalimentar” nas variedades de capitalismo dos BRICS e o papel desempenhado por esses países no reordenamento do “regime alimentar internacional”.

Recent decades have witnessed unprecedented agrarian transformations and mining sector-led development projects in the countryside of the Global South. This study explores the impact of land approp...

The ranking of the hierarchy and grouping of World Powers is not based exclusively on material indicators such as economics, natural resources, territorial extension, population size and military resources. It is necessary to consider the stage in which the transformational process of the post-Cold War International System is, the position in which a power stands, and general and specific historical trends. The present article proposes a classification that identifies the existence of four axes of world power: 1) the Anglo-Saxon military-rentier; 2) the semi-sovereign industriallydeveloped; 3) the semi-peripheral industrially-emergent; and 4) the agrarian, mineral and demographic peripheral., A classificação da hierarquia e agrupamento das potências mundiais não se baseia, exclusivamente, em indicadores materiais como economia, recursos naturais, extensão territorial, dimensão populacional e recursos militares. É necessário considerar o estágio em que se encontra a transformação do sistema internacional pós-Guerra Fria, a posição que uma potência ocupa no mesmo e as tendências históricas gerais e específicas. O presente artigo propõem uma classificação que identifica a existência de quatro eixos de poder mundial: 1) o militar-rentista anglo-saxão, 2) o industrial desenvolvido semi-soberano, 3) o industrial emergente semiperiférico e, 4) o agrário, mineral e demográfico periférico.

In the federal law No. 264-FZ of December 29, 2006 "On the development of agriculture" [1], the development of science and innovation in the field of the agro-industrial complex is defined among the main directions of the state agricultural policy (Article 5, paragraph 5). In the same federal law (Article 5, Clause 7), the main direction of the state agrarian policy is “improving the system of education, training and retraining of specialists for agriculture”. Scientific and technological support of agriculture is a vital necessity for the development of the industry in modern conditions, because the technologies and programs for the functioning of domestic agriculture that have been in force until now have exhausted the possibilities of conducting agricultural activities without introducing scientific advances in agricultural production in the field of crop production, animal husbandry, poultry farming and other areas of agricultural economy. Seed growing of potatoes and vegetables, both open and protected, remains a problem. And for some crops, imported seeds are used in production, which is a threat to food security and food independence of the Russian state. Practically, the same situation is in livestock and poultry farming, where breeding animals and breeding eggs purchased in foreign countries are used. Imported antibiotics and other veterinary drugs, as well as herbicides and pesticides and other agrochemicals used in Russian agriculture remain at risk. Despite the government decisions made, domestic agricultural producers, due to the lack of the necessary agricultural machinery and equipment in the Russian Federation, continue to purchase technical means and spare parts for them abroad, which causes risky situations, aggravated by financial instability in the world due to pandemic of the new coronavirus infection "Covid-19", economic sanctions and other negative factors. The above circumstances objectively call for the accelerated development of domestic agricultural science. This task should be carried out by students and postgraduates of agricultural universities using scientific laboratories within the walls of the university, graduates of agricultural universities and academies working in scientific institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences and other research organizations, as well as specialists working in agricultural organizations. In order to successfully solve the problems of scientific and technological development of agricultural production, researchers must receive the necessary knowledge and qualifications, and, most importantly, skills for research activities in the process of studying at an agricultural university.

In Cambodia and Ghana, the promotion of women's equal rights to food and land has occurred in parallel with processes of trade liberalization and agricultural commercialization. This article consid...

This article uses Black liberation theology (BLIBT) as a framework to theorize “the spirit” in the alternative food and sustainable agriculture movement. While BLIBT was formally named by theologian James Cone, it was born of the struggles of Black people in the United States who believed that God called Black people to be free, and God called Black preachers to preach Black liberation. I argue that Black liberation is a grounded vantage point to understand how some Black people might find freedom through food and agriculture. In the first potion of the paper, I make a claim for the importance of studying spirituality in agrarian and food spaces, whether or not a researcher is spiritually inclined. In the second portion of the paper, I delve deeper into Cone’s articulation of BLIBT, and explore how we might begin to theorize it as an agrarian mandate including: a call for an urgent food source, liberation of the individual Black body, community ownership of land, the spirit of Black religious spaces, an emphasis on land reparations, and the freedom to dream. I conclude with a call for why an attention to BLIBT is called for in our present moment.

Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) embarked on a genocidal program of sweeping economic, social, and political change. In an effort to modernize Democratic Kampuchea, as Cambodia was renamed, CPK officials forced the entire populace to clear forests; build dams, canals, and reservoirs; and grow rice in an effort to accumulate rapidly the necessary capital for industrialization. In doing so, upwards of two million people died from disease, hunger and malnutrition, torture, and execution. The broad coordinates of the genocide are well-established. To date, however, no scholarship has examined critically the role of non-human animals in the agricultural transformations initiated during the Cambodian genocide. Drawing on two bodies of scholarship, Agrarian Marxism and Animal Geographies, in this paper we examine the role of draught animals in the regime’s plans to build an economy around agricultural expansion and rice production for export. Specifically, we trace the new productive relationships into which Cambodia’s water buffalo and oxen became enmeshed, and the structures of violence within which these animals played an essential part. We find not only that the work of draught animals materially contributed to the CPK’s plans for state-building, but in the process, the new state–animal relationship became an exemplar of the idealized relationship between the CPK and its human laborers. We conclude that the human–animal relationship provides key insights into the mass violence that transpired in Democratic Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge and to this end encourage future engagement with interspecies relationships in the Cambodian context and in genocide studies more broadly.

This essay introduces and invites contributions to a new Journal of Peasant Studies Forum on ‘climate change and critical agrarian studies’. Climate change is inextricably entwined with contemporary capitalism, but how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world requires deeper analysis. In particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change is a vital focus for both thinking and action. In this essay, we make the connections between climate change and critical agrarian studies and identify competing, although overlapping, narratives. These narratives frame climate change debates and the way that the dynamics of climate change shape and are shaped by the rural world, whether through state policies, international governance, corporate influence, or agrarian struggles. We use a simple framework to examine different logics and strategies for anti-capitalist struggles that might connect climate change and agrarian mobilisations. We conclude with some overall reflections and suggestions for broad, guiding questions for future inquiry as part of the JPS Forum.

Em 1950, o Governo de Getúlio Vargas exerceu uma forte influência na formação dos profissionais agrários, através da federalização das escolas superiores agrícolas (Lei 1.055/50). Essa ação foi motivada pela necessidade de abastecer o mercado internacional, cuja economia se fragilizou após a Crise de 1929 e a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Logo, exigiam-se profissionais qualificados, para geração da modernização da agricultura e aumento da produção. Partindo desse contexto, este estudo realiza o levantamento do Estado de conhecimento sobre criação e evolução dos cursos em Ciências Agrárias em uma perspectiva nacional, com enfoque na Amazônia. A busca das produções científicas abrangeu o período de 1950 a 2021, ocorrendo em cinco bases de dados, a citar Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE), Bases de Dados da Pesquisa Agropecuária (BDPA), Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertação (BDTD); Banco de Dados Bibliográficos, da Universidade de São Paulo (Dedalus) e Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO). Foram resgatados 2.832 estudos, dentre quais 42 atenderam aos objetivos desta pesquisa. Com isso, constatou-se: a economia interna e externa foi fator determinante para expansão dos cursos (83,34%); a Agronomia é o dos cursos agrários mais referenciado nos estudos (28%); e a região sudeste é reduto das instituições de ensino superior (IES) com mais pesquisas sobre o tema pesquisado (28,60%). Destarte, ainda hoje, a ordem político-econômica é determinante para o crescimento das ciências agrárias, no tocante à implantação de IES, expansão dos cursos e pesquisas agrícolas.

In the article it is analyzed the policy of the centre of the further strengthening mono cultural clap in Uzbekistan that in undertaken measures on building of large irrigation canals and pumping stations in republic on the bases of archival sources and a historical material in 50-80 XX century. Besides, research showed that Soviet government, having outlined the appropriate political and economic goals in Uzbekistan, began to introduce into practical life a policy related to the development of the irrigation system and the construction of reclamation facilities.

The article explores general tendencies of the Jewish proletariat formation in Ukraine in the late 1920s and early 1930s, analyzes the dynamic of this phenomenon in the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR, and concludes that their growth rates coincided. It shows main tendencies of the increasing number of Jewish workers at industrial enterprises of Odesa and Kyiv, and also the main spheres of employment of the Jewish population according to the population censuses of 1926 and 1939. Also, it identifies reasons for the entry of the Jewish population into the working class of the USSR, which include economic (unemployment, hunger) and political one (the need to demonstrate loyalty to the new Soviet power). It shows that the policy of industrialization served as the impetus for the encouragement of broad circles of the population, including national minorities and the Jewish population in particular, to work at factories and plants. The article considers the sources of the proletariat formation in the USSR and suggests that among the Jews there was a high proportion of artisans, employees, and traders who were converted to workers, while the share of peasants was insignificant given the policy of agrarian settlement of the Jewish population pursued by the Soviet authorities. The mechanism of recruiting potential workers in the USSR is revealed. The author elucidates the description of life of Jewish workers in the Soviet press. Using the example of Jewish workers of the Shcherbynskyi mine, author shows the path of vast majority of unskilled Jews to factories and plants, and their transformation into workers. The research concludes that despite numerous difficulties of various kinds, the number of Jewish workers in the Ukrainian SSR was constantly increasing, which can be interpreted as a logical consequence of the need to adjust to new living conditions under the Soviet rule.

espanolA partir del estudio del caso de la comunidad de regantes del cauce del Romeral, este trabajo trata de contribuir al debate en torno al papel de los bienes comunes en la sociedad rural actual. Metodologicamente, se han etnografiado diferentes momentos de una de las asambleas del colectivo, indagando en las limitaciones organizativas a las que se enfrentan los comuneros. A partir de ese material se defiende que el caso analizado constituye un ejemplo ilustrativo del modo en que la crisis agraria de los espacios rurales amenaza la sostenibilidad de los sistemas comunales de riego. EnglishBased on the study of the case of the Romeral river irrigation community, this paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the role of common goods in today's rural society. Methodologically, different moments of one of the collective's assemblies have been ethnographed, investigating the organizational limitations faced by the communal farmers. Based on this material, it is argued that the case analyzed constitutes an illustrative example of how the agrarian crisis in rural spaces threatens the sustainability of communal irrigation systems.

The writing of this study aims to examine and analyze the role of BPN in resolving dual certificate disputes using the Contrarius Actus Principle (case study of BPN Maluku Dispute No. Reg. Case: 02/SKP/2018). This research is an empirical legal research, using a sociological approach. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded as follows: The resolution of the dual certificate dispute No. Reg. Case: 02/SKP/2018 by the Maluku BPN is based on the Contrarius Actus principle, so that the recommendation from the Maluku BPN states that in the context of orderly land administration the existence of a Property Rights Certificate Number 893/Tawiri on behalf of Simon Sipasulta as the last owner overlapping on the land of Ownership Certificate Number. 346/Tawiri on behalf of Marthen Hentiana is deemed necessary to be immediately canceled in accordance with the mechanism as stipulated in the Regulation of the Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/Head of BPN RI Number. 11 of 2016 concerning Settlement of Land Cases.

Do political institutions moderate the effect of environmental stress on social conflict? We posit that while the frequency of social conflict in developing agrarian states can increase during drought, democratic competition reduces conflict and can facilitate cooperation, reversing this effect. This hypothesis is tested on a sample of all districts in India over a period from 2001 to 2014. The dependent variable captures the number of crimes perpetrated against scheduled castes—so-called “untouchables”—and scheduled tribes—India’s Indigenous groups—during a given district-year. When the effect of drought is moderated using a local electoral competition index, findings show that although droughts increase the frequency of social conflicts where political institutions are weak, they reduce it where political institutions are strong. The results are robust to alternative operationalization choices. Our findings, thus, have relevance both to scholars of the climate–conflict nexus and to policymakers working to address climate change’s effects.

In this article, the authors investigate an urgent problem for the Belgorod region related to the provision of the agro-industrial complex of the region with highly qualified and innovation-oriented personnel. The results of the sociological research carried out by the authors convincingly indicate the existence of a significant gap between the requirements of modern employers to workers and the quality of knowledge, skills and abilities that university graduates currently possess. The overly theoretical nature of the education received and its isolation from the realities of production activity are noted. To eliminate the gap that has arisen, according to the authors, it is possible only if the mechanisms of social partnership between education and business are actively developed. On the example of the Belgorod State Agrarian University named after V.Ya. Gorin, the authors of the article investigate a successful example of organizing such a partnership.

La propiedad de la tierra es un tema que ha sido parte de los debates nacionales desde el comienzo de la República y que es abordado por el historiador Marco Palacios en su texto ¿De quién es la Tierra, en el que estudia la cuestión agraria en la década de 1930. En el marco de esta discusión académica, el objetivo de este texto es realizar una aproximación crítica del texto del profesor Palacios, a partir de reseñar las principales tesis del libro, para contrastar estas ideas con la perspectiva de otros autores. Así mismo, se busca reconocer la pertinencia y el papel que puede tener este documento en el contexto de los diálogos de Paz en la Habana, así como sobre la discusión de la cuestión agraria hoy en día.

This article explores whether mechanisation affects patterns of accumulation and differentiation in Zimbabwe's post land reform where policy consistently disadvantages smallholders. Is the latest m...

The hunger riots that Cameroon experienced in February 2008 were on the one hand a local manifestation of the world food crisis (2007-2008) and on the other hand, a result of ineffective agricultural policies implemented since the 1960s. The analysis of public food security policies in Cameroon from 1960 to 2008, highlights the inability of the latter to fight effectively against food insecurity and to bring Cameroonian agriculture out of the rut. These riots were likely to have a long-term effect on Cameroon's socio-economic trajectory. Because they were food for thought for the Cameroonian government, which ended up realizing that the constraints facing agricultural development felt an immediate need for solutions after the end of the riots. The post-riot strategies implemented by the Cameroonian government boil down to all the measures taken to stem the impact of the crisis and allow food security to all social strata. However, these economic redistribution strategies adopted by the Cameroonian government to allow the poorest to have access to food at an affordable price still fail to stem the situation. Literature relating to the riots of February 2008 in Cameroon abounds, but little is concerned with the analysis of the causes and post-riot government strategies, which is very crucial to understanding the origins of the problems facing the Cameroonian agricultural community today. This article examines the distant and immediate causes of the February 2008 hunger riots in Cameroon, including the post-riot strategies implemented by the Cameroonian government to combat food insecurity and the contribution of international partners.