Beyond the unions: The Pembillai Orumai women's strike in the south Indian tea belt

The article examines an extraordinary wildcat strike led by women tea workers against a giant tea plantation company and dominant trade unions in the south Indian tea belt of Munnar. It employs situational analysis to examine the larger processes that led to the strike, implications for the workers, and to the wider socio‐economic relations in the tea belt. It is argued here that in addition to the exploitative plantation production and the poor implementation of welfare measures, the strike was largely fuelled by and directed against union corruption and the breach by union leaders of egalitarian relations in the workers' society. At the end, the article calls for an understanding of local conceptions of inequality, injustice, and humiliation as forces that have the potency to initiate and intensify labour resistance under exploitative production relations.     

Labour Migration and Gendered Agricultural Relations: The Feminization of Agriculture in the Ejidal Sector of Calakmul,Mexico

We examine the nature of the ‘feminization of agriculture’ in the semi‐subsistence, peasant production sector of southeastern Mexico, as associated with male labour out‐migration. Presenting findings from empirical work with smallholder producers, we discuss the impact of men's migration to the United States on women's participation in agriculture and gendered relations of agricultural production. In 2007, we conducted a survey of 155 semi‐subsistence, smallholder households in six ejidos. This survey was supplemented by ethnographic research in a single ejido. Our findings demonstrate the need to distinguish between farm labour and management in this sector, and the potentially significant (but focused) changes in the local relations of agricultural production wrought by gendered patterns of labour migration – specifically in tenure, land‐use decision‐making and the management of hired labour.     

Mapping historical and contemporary agrarian transformations and capitalist infiltration in a complex upland environment: A case from eastern Nepal

The relationship that mountain communities have with global capitalism are complex, being mediated by a diverse topography and ecology, both of which provide opportunities for capital accumulation, while also isolating older, “pre‐capitalist” modes of production. This paper takes a case study valley from Nepal's eastern hills, tracing over two centuries of agrarian change and evolving interactions between “adivasi” and “semi‐feudal” economic formations with capitalism. In recent years, the expansion of markets, rising demand for cash, and climate stress have solidified migrant labour as a core component of livelihoods, and the primary mechanism of surplus appropriation from the hill peasantry. Through a focus on three altitudinal zones, however, it is demonstrated how the trajectory of this transformation, including the interactions with persisting pre‐capitalist formations, is mediated by both political–economic processes and the local agro‐ecological context.     

Land size and productivity in the livestock sector: evidence from pastoral areas in China

This article explores the relationship between land size and productivity in the livestock sector. Household panel data from pastoral areas in northwestern China were analysed. Results suggest an inverse relationship (IR) between land size and the number of livestock per ha. IR can be largely explained by labour input intensity, which is negatively correlated with land size. We find that household’s labour demand is not separable from household’s labour supply and households’ decisions to rent land and hire labour for grazing are significantly related to the labour–land endowment ratio. These findings are consistent with the Chayanovian explanation that labour input intensity varies with farm size due to unobserved interhousehold variation in shadow wage rates. In addition, participation in the labour market does not significantly influence the IR for the employer, while the practice of land renting reduces, but does not eliminate, the IR for the lease. These findings point towards the potential for using factor markets to optimise pasture‐based livestock production scale, and the need to promote the factor market development to achieve efficiency in resource use.     

The potential impact of climate change on Taiwan's agriculture

This paper intends to estimate the potential impact of climate change on Taiwan's agricultural sector. Yield response regression models are used to investigate the climate change's impact on 60 crops. A price‐endogenous mathematical programming model is then used to simulate the welfare impacts of yield changes under various climate change scenarios. Results suggest that both warming and climate variations have a significant but non‐monotonic impact on crop yields. Society as a whole would not suffer from warming, but a precipitation increase may be devastating to farmers.     

An accelerating treadmill and an overlooked contradiction in industrial agriculture: Climate change and nitrogen fertilizer

In this article, we explore if and why farmers are responding to the impacts of climate change with practices that increase greenhouse gas emissions. Our examination focuses on heavy rainfall events and Midwestern corn farmers' nitrogen fertilizer management. Due to climate change, the frequency and intensity of heavy rain events is increasing across the Midwest. These events increase nitrogen loss to the environment and introduces economic risks to farmers. Drawing from a theoretical framework that merges O'Connor's second contradiction of capitalism and Schnaiberg's treadmill of production, we argue farmers' responses to these events reflect the second contradiction, increasing contributions to climate change, and are shaped by treadmill‐like political‐economic pressures. We examine this using a qualitative sample of 154 farmers across Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan. Given profit imperatives, adapting farmers in our sample primarily used increased nitrogen application rates to reduce their vulnerability to heavy rains. As nitrogen rate is directly associated with nitrous oxide emissions, this adaptive strategy is effective but increases agricultural contributions to climate change. This preliminarily suggests that the political‐economic structure encourages farmers to respond to climate change in ways that accelerate the environmental contradictions of industrial agriculture.     

COVID-19 and the power of indigenous,Mexican-origin farmworker families in the US Pacific Northwest

Over the last several years—in the context of US political upheaval, ongoing crises related to climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic downturn—indigenous, Mexican-origin farmworker families in Washington State have engaged more intensely in class struggle through acts of solidarity and forms of collective action, in part through independent labour unions, worker cooperatives and mutual aid. This article chronicles the labour struggles that led to a notion of class rooted in family units of production and that strengthened transnational solidarity in resistance to racist forms of exploitation in the agricultural sector. Class organization rooted in family and solidarity has allowed indigenous agricultural workers in Washington State to face COVID-19 and incidents driven by climate change, which syndemically compounded existing community health crises, from a place of power. Focusing on the experience of farmworker families in Washington State, I outline agricultural employers' exploitation of workers during this period of increased vulnerability and the strength of farmworkers' resolve to take their health and well-being into their own hands.     

Productivity and Environmental Performance in Marketing Cooperatives: An Analysis of the Spanish Horticultural Sector

The paper analyses the productivity of marketing cooperatives incorporating environmental inputs/outputs. In the European agriculture, expectations for attaining sustainable and competitive agriculture rely to a great extent on the cooperative sector's ability to adapt to new market conditions. These challenges have led marketing cooperatives in the fruit and vegetables sector to consider improvements in productivity and sound environmental performance. The study analyses the total factor productivity related to environmental variables in this sector using a parametric‐stochastic approach and panel data on Spanish cooperatives over the period 1994–2002. Additionally, the determinants of environmental productivity are examined econometrically. The estimates obtained show an increase in efficiency for the period under study and a relationship between productivity changes and management factors, such as labour quality, capital intensity and environmental spillover.     

Public works programmes and agricultural risk: Evidence from India

The agricultural sectors in many low- and middle-income countries remain highly vulnerable to weather risk, a vulnerability that will only intensify under climate change. The globally trending public works programmes have the potential to impact weather-related agricultural risk. I explore the impact of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) on weather-related agricultural risk. My empirical strategy explores the staggered roll-out of NREGA and random weather fluctuations. Using a nationwide panel of data, I find that NREGA makes crop yields more sensitive to low rainfall shocks. I posit that these results are consistent with a labour market channel, by which NREGA increases nonfarm labour supply in low rainfall years, and an income channel, by which NREGA leads to riskier agricultural practices. These results highlight the importance of understanding how social protection programmes shape agricultural risk.     

Delayed monsoon,irrigation and crop yields

Most of the empirical literature assessing the impacts of climate change on agriculture has modeled crop yields as a function of the levels or deviations in the growing-period rainfall. However, an aspect that has received little attention in the empirical literature relates to the relationship between the timing of monsoon rains and crop yields. Using a pan-India district-level panel dataset for 50 years, this article investigates two interrelated issues critical to understanding the impacts of weather-induced agricultural risks and their management. It first examines the impact of the timing of monsoon onset on crop yields and then assesses the role of irrigation in mitigating its effects. The article finds that the delayed onset of monsoon is detrimental to crops, and its effects are realized beyond the rainy season. The findings also demonstrate that irrigation helps mitigate the harmful effects of delayed monsoon. Finally, to link these findings to farm-level adjustments, the article shows that farmers explicitly adjust the timing of irrigation in response to delays in monsoon rains.     

Climate change impacts on investment in crop sowing machinery*

A model of investment in crop sowing machinery is applied to wheat production under current and projected climatic conditions at several locations in south‐western Australia. The model includes yield responses to time of sowing at each location given current and projected climatic conditions. These yield relationships are based on wheat growth simulation modelling that in turn draws on data from a down‐scaled global circulation model. Wheat price distributions and cost of production data at each location, in combination with the time of sowing yield relationships are used to determine a farmer's optimal investment in crop sowing work rate under each climate regime. The key finding is that the impacts of climate change on profit distributions are often marked, yet mostly modest changes in investment in work rate form part of the profit‐maximising response to climate change. The investment response at high versus low rainfall locations mostly involves increases and decreases in work rates, respectively. However, changes to investment in work rate within a broadly similar rainfall region are not always uniform. The impacts of climate change on investments in work rate at a particular location are shown to require knowledge of several factors, especially how climate change alters the pattern of yield response to the time of sowing at that location.     

Moving up the processing ladder in primary product exports: Sri Lanka's "value-added" tea industry

Governments in many developing countries, influenced by the experience of the East Asian newly industrialized countries, have adopted policies to enhance domestic processing of primary commodities as a tool for accelerating employment growth, export revenues, and development. Sri Lanka has traditionally exported tea in the form of bulk (commodity) teas, but “value‐added” teas such as packaged teas, tea bags, etc., have expanded in recent years. This article examines factors affecting the processing of value‐added tea products in Sri Lanka by modeling export supply behavior. Estimates of the long‐run relationship and short‐run dynamics of export supply are presented and discussed. The price of value‐added tea relative to bulk tea, and industry capacity, are identified as the main determinants of export supply, while exchange rate changes have no discernible effect. The policy implications of the analysis for enhancing further expansion of such value‐added teas are presented. These are of interest for both policy makers and development analysts. In particular, the reasons that undermine the effectiveness of exchange rate policy as an instrument to stimulate value addition of primary products have much relevance for similar developing countries.     

Demand for temperature and rainfall index insurance in India

Weather index insurance has been attracting considerable attention from academics and policymakers. This study investigates the demand for two types of index insurance sold in India: temperature index insurance for dry season and rainfall index insurance for subsequent monsoon season. Using data from randomized subsidy experiments, we separate purchase and quantity decisions and investigate how demand for rainfall insurance is correlated with demand for temperature insurance sold in the previous season. We find that the price (premium) does not influence purchase decisions per se but does significantly influence quantity decisions. The quantity demanded is less price‐sensitive for subsequent rainfall insurance than it is for temperature insurance. We also find that purchasers of temperature insurance tend to buy rainfall insurance more often than nonpurchasers do. However, a one‐time subsidy does not influence on subsequent demand, suggesting no price‐anchoring effect.     

Crossbred cow adoption and its correlates: Countable adoption specification search in Sri Lanka's small holder dairy sector

Considerable specification choice confronts countable adoption investigations and there is need to measure, formally, the evidence in favor of competing formulations. This article presents alternative countable adoption specifications—hitherto neglected in the agricultural‐economics literature—and assesses formally their usefulness to practitioners. Reference to the left side of de Finetti's (1937) famous representation theorem motivates Bayesian unification of agricultural adoption studies and facilitates comparisons with conventional binary‐choice specifications. Such comparisons have not previously been considered. The various formulations and the specific techniques are highlighted in an application to crossbred cow adoption in Sri Lanka's small‐holder dairy sector.     

The politics of the forest frontier: Negotiating between conservation,development, and indigenous rights in Cross River State,Nigeria

Nigeria's once thriving plantation economy has suffered under decades of state neglect and political and civil turmoil. Since Nigeria's return to civilian rule in 1999, in a bid to modernize its ailing agricultural economy, most of its defunct plantations were privatized and large new areas of land were allocated to ‘high-capacity’ agricultural investors. This paper explores the local tensions associated with this policy shift in Cross River State, which, due to its favorable agro-ecological conditions and investment climate, has become one of Nigeria's premier agricultural investment destinations. It shows how the state's increasing reliance on the private sector as an impetus for rural transformation is, paradoxically, crowding out smallholder production systems and creating new avenues for rent capture by political and customary elites. Moreover, as Nigeria's most biodiverse and forested state, the rapid expansion of the agricultural frontier into forest buffer zones is threatening to undermine many of the state's conservation initiatives and valuable common pool resources. The paper goes on to explain why and how private sector interests in Cross River State are increasingly being prioritized over natural resource protection, indigenous rights over the commons, and smallholder production systems.     

Labour Demand in the Post‐apartheid South African Wine Industry

In 2013 the minimum agricultural wage in South Africa was increased by an unprecedented 51%. We use data on 77 Western Cape Province wine grape farms from 2005–2015 to estimate the impacts on employment. Previous post‐apartheid labour market reforms increased minimum wages substantially, but re‐entry to global markets after sanctions were lifted increased demand and this preserved jobs in the wine sector. However, by 2005 this demand growth had largely ceased. The long‐run wage elasticity for permanent employees was found to be ?0.4, but for casual workers the figure was ?4.7, so the 51% wage increase is likely to decimate casual employment in the future. Thus, the poorest and most vulnerable casual workers lose most in terms of jobs, incomes and secure livelihoods, whereas 80% of full‐time staff benefit from the higher minimum wages. Thus, the minimum wage change is likely to increase the gap between privileged permanent staff and casual workers. This result is not surprising in view of the long‐standing interdependence between farmers and their permanent workers in wine grape production.     

New markets and technological change for the traditional cereals in semiarid sub-Saharan Africa: the Malian case

During the last three decades in sub‐Saharan Africa, development and research resources have concentrated on the higher‐rainfall and irrigated regions, especially on export crops and the principal food crops grown there. There has been much less concern and investment in semiarid regions without irrigation. Another negative factor has been the lack of public policy concern with the profitability of the basic food crops. With good weather, prices collapse. With bad weather, governments and NGOs dispense food crops as food aid or at subsidized prices. This article documents the importance of the demand side to facilitate diffusion of new technologies for the basic food commodities of semiarid regions—the traditional cereals. With farm programming models aggregated into a sector model, the combination of technological change and demand shifts for sorghum are evaluated in one semiarid region where the traditional cereals are concentrated. It focuses on combining policies to increase the prices farmers receive after introduction of technologies that use higher input levels. It also compares benefits of a strategy that focuses on yield and demand increases for a traditional cereal of the semiarid region, sorghum, with two alternative strategies for the higher‐rainfall zone.     

Demand for improved fish feed in the presence of a subsidy: a double hurdle application in Kenya

Fish farming households’ demand for improved fish feed from the private market in Kenya is potentially influenced by the government's feed subsidy program. This article applies the double‐hurdle model to a cross‐section of fish farms to analyze demand for improved fish feed from private markets, and whether the government feed subsidy program has an effect on private demand for improved feed. The results indicate that households’ decisions to participate in the improved feed market are affected by the quantity of improved feed received from the government. Once the participation decision has been made, we find evidence of crowding‐in of the private improved feed sector; that is, the government's allocations of subsidized feed appear to increase private sector demand. In addition, the price of improved feed negatively affects the quantity purchased as expected. Education, extension contacts, and ease of marketing matured fish increase household propensity to purchase improved feed commercially. Policies that help reduce the price of improved feed such as reduction in tariffs on imported feeds and feed ingredients will foster demand for the feed, as will policies that facilitate marketing of fish at reasonable prices by households.     

The restructuring of Italian agriculture and its impact upon capital–labour relations: Labour contracting and exploitation in the fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain of the Lazio Region,Central Italy

Labour contracting is anywhere on the rise globally, even in fully developed capitalist countries. Far from being an anomaly in the smooth everyday functioning of the economy, contractors are a crucial node in facilitating and ensuring global capital's control over local labour regimes. This article uses a global value chain perspective to investigate the re‐emergence of gangmasters and gang labour in the agricultural sector of Lazio, Central Italy. It analyses the fruit and vegetable supply chain formation and configuration in the Lazio Region with the aim of identifying the underlying processes leading to the creation of gangmasters by capital to have a cheap and disposable, especially migrant, labour force. It also intends to give a more nuanced understanding of labour contracting in this context.     

Causes of Changes in Agricultural Employment in Slovenia: Evidence from Micro‐data

This paper analyses labour adjustment in and out of agriculture during transition to a market economy. A multinomial logit model is used to determine the factors that affect these processes. The results show that elderly, less educated and full‐time employees on a farm are more likely to continue with farming. Inflow of labour into agriculture is largely associated with the unemployment and retirement of farm household members. Age, education and investment in human capital are the key factors that improve the quality, mobility and flexibility of labour, which is crucial for efficient labour adjustment at the micro‐level and sector level. Better‐educated individuals are more likely to enter into employment in non‐agricultural, particularly service, activities.