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Against a backdrop of agrarian transformation, COVID‐19 intensified translocal precarity among smallholder farmers worldwide. As scholars of economic geography and agrarian studies have shown, smallholder households increasingly struggle to reproduce themselves through agrarian livelihoods alone, with many households compelled to migrate to urban centres, both domestic and foreign, to find employment. Consequently, smallholder farmers now experience precarity shaped by the translocal spaces of both production and social reproduction. In this paper, based on a qualitative study of smallholders in northwestern Cambodia conducted from 2019 to 2023, we argue that COVID‐19 deepened the translocal precarity of smallholder households, who already had to struggle with volatile commodity production and uncertain labour migration. We explain how the pandemic led to urban job losses and forced workers to return to rural homes and farming. On the farm, pandemic restrictions on cross‐border trade of agricultural inputs drove up production costs while competition for land between migrant returnees increased land rental fees, pushing many smallholders into debt traps following poor harvests. Indebted households responded by migrating to Thailand again, where labour demand for industrial production remained low after the pandemic, creating additional uncertainty about their migration journey. We conclude that the impacts of COVID‐19 on smallholder households are usefully explained through the lens of translocal precarity. This approach reveals how the pandemic played out within a broader conjuncture of agrarian transformation, defined by adverse incorporation into transnational commodity markets, a lack of sustaining infrastructure in the countryside, and an increasingly debt‐driven migration regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of stimulating domestic production is multifaceted and has a long history of study. At present, it is particularly relevant due to the introduction of restrictive measures, including the termination of supplies of a number of foreign goods to the Russian Federation. As one of the possible measures to increase the production of goods by Russian companies and entrepreneurs, the authors consider a new incentive mechanism of redistribution of value added tax (VAT) received by the federal budget, which implies the direction of the amounts of social grants taking into account the economic activity of the region associated with the production of value added on its territory. The purpose of the article is to justify a new methodology that includes a financial mechanism for redistributing the amounts of VAT in the form of grants to producers, aimed at creating effective budgetary incentives for regions to organize their own production of goods. For this purpose, the experience of VAT distribution in two BRICS countries — Brazil and China — is considered. In addition, the article summarizes effective measures of Germany, France, Greece, Austria and Norway to optimize calculation and payment of VAT, which resulted in economic growth. Discussion. One notable approach proposed by the authors to create a new incentive mechanism for redistribution of VAT revenues to the federal budget. This mechanism involves the allocation of social grants depending on the economic activity of the regions, particularly related to the production of valueadded goods on their territory. This approach represents a departure from traditional fiscal policies aimed at aligning incentives with local production. Results. This research represents a significant contribution to the ongoing debate on stimulating domestic production. By advocating a new mechanism of VAT redistribution and drawing on international experiences, the study seeks to address the challenges posed by restrictive measures and promote economic growth in the Russian Federation.

This paper posits that the majority of "smallholders" in contemporary China are commodity producers who must engage in various commodity exchanges to carry out agricultural production and accomplish their social reproduction. Consequently, "smallholder" refers to a family-based economic operation model, rather than a social identity or psychological identification. Within this framework, the study focuses on the intricate relationships between smallholders, various commodity markets, and other market participants. Specifically, it examines two aspects: the relationship between smallholders and capitalized large-scale producers and other agriculture-related capital entities, and the relationship between smallholders and the commodified labor force. The paper argues that the interaction between smallholders and capitalized large-scale producers is not a zero-sum game of mutual replacement; except in certain areas, smallholders are not driven out of agricultural production by large-scale capitalized producers, but coexist and interact with them in various ways. On the other hand, smallholders heavily rely on short-term hired labor for their agricultural production, and many also become wage earners themselves, participating in the agricultural production of other producers and earning wage income. Compared to the expansion of capitalized large-scale production, the most significant challenge facing China's smallholder economy, as this paper contends, is the intergenerational reproduction crisis brought about by the aging of the labor force and the urbanization of the younger generation. 摘要: 本文认为今天中国的"小农"绝大多数都是商品生产者，必须通过各种商品交换才能进行农业生产、并完成自身的社会再生产。因此"小农"所指的是一种家庭经济运营模式，而不是一个社会身份或心理认同。在这个认识框架下，我们在考察小农经济时，要关注的是他们与各种商品市场及其中的其他成员的复杂关系；本文因此着重考察两点：小农与资本化的规模生产者以及其他涉农资本的关系和小农与商品化的劳动力的关系。本文认为小农与资本化的规模生产者之间不是一种此消彼长、相互替代的零和关系；除了在个别领域里，小农并不会被资本化的规模生产者赶出农业生产，而是以多种方式与资本化的规模农业共存与互动。而另一方面，小农不仅在很大程度上依赖短期的雇佣劳力来完成其农业生产，而且很多小农自己也成为雇佣劳力，参与到别的生产者的农业生产中并获得工资性收入。相比于资本化规模生产的扩张，我认为中国小农经济所面临的最大的挑战是因劳动力的老龄化和下一代人的城市化所带来的代际更替的危机。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While international trade in agricultural commodities can spur economic development especially where governance is strong, there are also concerns about the local impacts of commodity production and their distribution on the environment and on people. The sustainable development goals (SDGs), though seeing trade as a means to support their achievement, recognise the need to address potential negative social and environmental impacts. It is therefore important to assess the contribution of international trade to the SDGs in commodity production areas. The environmental impacts of commodity production are widely acknowledged, but much less is known about its social impacts, and how this affects poverty reduction objectives across different dimensions. Impacts on human wellbeing and equity depend on a multitude of factors, including resources, systemic conditions and outputs of production. Through a broad literature review on soy, coffee, cocoa and palm oil, we show how studies have addressed different aspects of these factors and their impacts. The paper demonstrates how efforts by actors in global supply chains are related to a large number of SDGs and their targets. We link the social impacts and factors to the SDGs and a list of potential indicators and variables to guide operationalisation of assessments in new empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the increase in the number of animals, the number of animal farms specialized in the production of goat milk also increased, the number of farms equipped with mechanized milking systems, milk pasteurization lines, pasteurized milk bottling, combined slaughterhouses, etc. increased. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate sustainable development as one of the current requirements of the economic efficiency of livestock farms, by ensuring the complete value chain with complex and perfect inputs. The methods of observation, monograph and comparison were used in the elaboration of this work. The data presented in the respective work were accumulated from the statistical researches of the husbandry entities in the country, the official data of the National Bureau of Statistics of Moldova and from the dedicated works on this topic. The results pursued in this research point to the identification of the economic capacities of the goat breeding sector in the Republic of Moldova by making investments in the dimension of increasing the gross added value of the business. The research conclusions allow us to state the availability of reserves by tracking the quality and quantity of production determined by increasing the contribution to the value of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While international trade in agricultural commodities can spur economic development especially where governance is strong, there are also concerns about the local impacts of commodity production and their distribution. Previous frameworks have primarily focused on trade effects on environmental conditions in production regions, as well as economic growth and food security. Instead, we develop a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of agricultural trade on multidimensional wellbeing and equity. The purpose of the framework is to guide the analysis of the impacts of trade on people, by identifying the core concepts and organising the complexity of the local social impacts of global value chains. The framework is supported by evidence from studies on trade in soy, coffee, cocoa, and palm oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Strpić’s book on Marx’s critique of political economy, the analysis of political and economic reception of Marx serves as starting point for the author’s assignment of contemporary position and relevance of Marx’s analysis. Both actualization and return to Marx always occur in the times of crisis, therefore his intellectual fate depends on changes within contemporary capitalism and its alternatives. In Marx’s analysis, the paradox of theoretical incompleteness stems from his aim for ideal epistemology of capitalism, which is also present in later Marxist interpretations, even Strpić’s. The contemporary problem of Marx lies in the metaphysics of theory of value and in the whole structure of commodity production, which prevents ontological transition of value, capital and capitalism. His approach is physiocratic more than it is pecuniary, and more economic than it is political. This is why Jacques Bidet’s reconstruction of Marx in the terms of modernity is based on “metastructure”, which is a universal politically legal point that is not present within Marx’s critique of political economy. Such a different approach presupposes understanding capitalism as inherently a political project. As it is proven by the author, political capitalism is not a special form of capitalism, nor it is historically connected with contemporary capitalism of the 21st century (in China and elsewhere), but is moreover its universal historical form. Marx’s critique of political economy turns out to be contemporary precisely at this overlooked point of his analysis. Political capitalism as “capitalism in general” demonstrates its relevance in the analysis of contemporary crises, which are not just politicaleconomic, but also ecological and even pandemic. In a series of crises of political capitalism we are faced with a choice between real autocratic “barbaric capitalism” and more utopic “cosmopolitan” eco-socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the application of information theory and game theory to questions arising in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Karl Marx's critical reformulation of Smith's analysis in Capital. After introducing the key theoretical concepts of entropy-constrained behavior and the social interaction model, the paper applies them to some central issues in Marxian and classical political economy: the long-period method analysis of commodity production, the social division of labor, commodity production and money, alienation, and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Transparency has been used as a metaphor for direct social perception since antiquity. This essay studies variations in transparency rhetoric as ideological elements of broader social changes. In the eighteenth century, an individualist form of transparency language emerged with the spread of commodity production. In the mid twentieth century, bureaucratization associated "transparency" with a planned individualization that worked to mask, legitimize, and facilitate undemocratic bureaucratic control. This essay argues that Marxists should learn to recognize and avoid such misleading connotations and outline their own theory of transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mülkiye Dergisi is the property of Mulkiye Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The reinvestment of rural agrarian surplus is driving capital accumulation in Zimbabwe's countryside, providing a scope to foster national (re-) industrialisation and job creation. Contrary to Bernstein's view, the Agrarian Question on capital remains unresolved in Southern Africa. Even though export finance, accessed through contract farming, provides an impetus for export cash crop production, and the government-mediated command agriculture supports food crop production, the reinvestment of proceeds from the sale of agricultural commodities is now driving capital accumulation. Drawing from empirical data, gathered through surveys and in-depth interviews from Hwedza district and Mvurwi farming area in Mazowe district in Zimbabwe, the findings of this study revealed the pre-eminence of the Agrarian Question, linked to an ongoing agrarian transition in Zimbabwe. This agrarian capital elaborates rural-urban interconnections and economic development, following two decades of deindustrialisation in Zimbabwe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 2010 earthquake, many stakeholders in Haiti and across the globe worked together to increase Haitian mango harvest for export, ostensibly as a way to improve people's lives. To date, however, no study has examined how such an increase may be affecting the producers beyond statistical measures. Using archival research and fieldwork in the Artibonite Department in Haiti, this article examines the social consequences of the labour process of Haitian peasants as they pick and process mangoes for export. After describing the biogeography of the mango, I describe the different systems of labour used in mango harvesting. I argue that the growth and harvesting of Haitian mangoes for export reflects social differentiation between those who can organize labour according to monetized relations and those who incorporate the domestic unit into commodity production. Furthermore, as more production shifts to work based upon monetized relations, the balance of economic power shifts towards adult men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]