Yield Variability and Harvest Failures in Russia,Ukraine and Kazakhstan and Their Possible Impact on Food Security in the Middle East and North Africa

Exports from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan (RUK) help to improve global wheat availability and, hence, global food security. During the past 15 years, however, RUK wheat exports have shown high variability, mainly because they have been repeatedly diminished by severe harvest failures. We present an outlook for RUK wheat production and exports up to 2027, taking into account possible yield variability and harvest failures, and focusing on the impact on food security in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the world’s major wheat importing region. For the analysis we use the stochastic version of the Aglink-Cosimo model. Simulation results show that wheat yields in RUK are a major source of uncertainty for international wheat markets. The projected substantial increases in world market prices due to limited RUK wheat exports threaten food security in MENA and highlight the need for both stabilising RUK yields and novel complementary food security approaches to decrease MENA’s vulnerability to disruptions in agricultural world markets.     

Spatial analyses of emerging and fading wind energy landscapes in Denmark

The development of wind energy in Denmark goes back 30 years, during which the technology was commercialised, up scaled and a series of planning systems were developed. After the millennium, the impact on landscapes increased, the planning regime failed and economic conditions were worsened with the removal of the fixed feed in tariff. The earlier forerunner country is left in the lee of the internationally boosting wind energy business. From a land use policy view it is interesting to analyse how this has happened and what impact the planning policy has had on the landscape effect of wind energy. In order to analyse the impact of wind turbine development through times and on the population of a region, the present paper analyses by means of geographical information systems and in time steps. The spatial relations between population, landscapes and the wind turbine development from 1982 to 2007 were modelled for the Northern Jutland region by means of proximity, density and visibility analyses. Results indicate that development was not continuous and impact on landscape and population was closely related to technology development. The paper concludes on the use of these methods and on the effectiveness of planning regimes.     

The Palm Oil Import Demand in Middle East and North African (MENA) Countries

Abstract

The palm oil import demand in selected Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, represented by 10 single equation models, have been analysed through utilizing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique. The findings of the study show that the palm oil prices as well as the national income are significant determinants of palm oil demand across the 10 models. The prices of substitute oils in almost all countries have been found to play an important role in shaping the palm oil demand. Other factors such as high palm oil discount, the 1970s world petroleum prices boom, the anti-palm oil campaign, trade embargos on Libya and Iraq, and exchange rate also proved to be important factors affecting import demand for palm oil in some MENA countries.     

Is native timber tree intercropping an economically feasible alternative for smallholder farmers in the Philippines?

Integration of trees on upland farms in the Philippines has been slower than expected and desirable from an environmental perspective. Our economic and risk analysis points to current policies as part of the problem. The study compares three domesticated indigenous timber trees (Shorea contorta V., Pterocarpus indicus J., and Vitex parviflora W.) intercropped with maize against a benchmark of the widely used exotic mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla K.). We used a biophysical simulation model (WaNuLCAS 3.1) to represent interaction between trees and crops for a fundamental level of water, nutrient and light capture as the basis for production functions. External conditions affecting systems profitability were accounted for in the Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM). Elements of risk were introduced through Monte Carlo simulation. Study results revealed that from a farmer’s perspective intercropping systems provide similar (within an uncertainty range of + or ? 10%) returns to monocropping scenarios. When net subsidies and taxes are accounted for, social profitability evaluations favour tree intercropping at high tree densities. The net effect of the current bias in price policies towards food production therefore refrains farmers from making decisions to integrate trees on farms; a decision that is actually in the national interest on economic grounds, even without consideration of positive environmental effects.     

The War in Ukraine,Food Security and the Role for Europe

Food-security implications of the war in Ukraine are exacerbated by adverse weather events, spillover effects from the distortion of energy and fertiliser markets, and domestic policies that countries around the world have implemented in pursuit of food security. Estimates suggest that the cumulative effect of these channels in terms of restricting agricultural and food trade is in the order of over 10 times larger, and their cumulative effect on global food supply is on average three times more substantial than the direct agricultural supply disruptions in Ukraine. The latter, however, disproportionally impacts low-income countries that are particularly vulnerable to food supply shortages and price increases. In the case of the EU, although overall food availability is not at stake, food affordability for low-income households is a concern, especially when combined with rising prices of other essential goods, such as energy and transportation. To ensure the resilience of domestic and global food systems, the EU and its Member States should extend a set of already implemented policies, including better-targeted support for the low-income households in the region, implementation of trade facilitation measures via international cooperation, and support for agricultural production in the most vulnerable countries, and should also facilitate the restoration of Ukraine's lost agricultural assets.     

‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part II: The Global North Atlantic in the Ecological Revolution of the Long Seventeenth Century

‘Amsterdam is standing on Norway’– this was a popular saying in the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. There was more than one inflection to the phrase. Amsterdam was, in the first instance, built atop a subterranean forest of Norwegian origin. But southern Norway was also a vital resource zone, subordinated to Amsterdam‐based capital. This paper follows the movement of strategic commodity frontiers within early modern Europe from the standpoint of capitalism as world‐ecology, joining in dialectical unity the production of capital and the production of nature. Our geographical focus is trained upon the emergence of the Global North Atlantic, that zone providing the strategic raw materials and food supplies indispensable to the consolidation of capitalism – timber, naval stores, metals, cereals, fish and whales. I argue for a broader geographical perspective on these movements, one capable of revealing the dialectical interplay of frontiers on all sides of the Atlantic. From its command posts in Amsterdam, Dutch capital deployed American silver in the creation of successive frontiers within Europe, transforming Scandinavian and Baltic regions. The frontier character of these transformations was decisive, premised on drawing readily exploitable supplies of land and labour power into the orbit of capital. We see in northern Europe precisely what we see in the Americas – a pattern of commodity‐centred environmental transformation, and thence relative ecological exhaustion, from which the only escape was renewed global conquest and ever‐wider cycles of combined and uneven development.     

Continuity and Change: Some Observations on the Landscape of Agricultural Labourers in North Bihar, India

This paper is an attempt to catalogue and analyse the changes over two decades in the world of agricultural labourers in a backward region in India. It is primarily based on a series of field visits to two villages in Purnia district, located in the north-eastern part of Bihar. Changes in the living conditions of labourers are obviously connected to developments in the rural economy of the region and there are important linkages with developments elsewhere, including changes in the overall macro-economic policy regime. An attempt is made to trace these. Agricultural wage workers in the surveyed region are extremely poor by any reckoning, although a few of them have made some progress through state-sponsored programmes and migration. These developments have also contributed significantly to altering the relations of dominance and subordination, thus creating greater elbow-room for labourers. However, it is important not to overstate these small gains and there are serious doubts as to whether they can be sustained. It appears that some of the material correlates of labourers' well-being in the surveyed region are being affected adversely by the currently ascendant neoliberal policy regime. There are no signs of the emergence of mechanisms that might imply sustained significant improvements in the very fragile life and work conditions of these labourers.     

Development of the Balkan Countries: Where Does the European Responsibility Lie?

At this stage in its development, Europe faces special challenges. A united Europe, of the form that we might describe as an ‘open workshop’, is a challenge for 21^st century management, to create a peace-oriented and prosperous Europe. The principles of solidarity, sustainability and support applied within Europe are precious contributions to global strategies. What can the Balkan experience offer? The region is rich in natural resources and labour potential for accelerated economic and agricultural development. The European and Asian civilizations meet in this region. It offers labour and production potential as well as 60 million food consumers and important tourist destinations. The Balkan challenge is to utilize the European model of development and the forthcoming period must be used to prepare for membership of the EU. In the meantime the region must take advantage of local free trade zones, encourage team work amongst domestic and foreign experts on agricultural and rural development, reform education at all levels, launch well focused programmes of agricultural and rural development, complete the process of transition and of general privatization, create domestic brands with labels offering geographical origin and ensure that changes in agricultural policy are consistent with the direction of the EU's CAP.     

Twenty-five years of Living Under Contract: Contract farming and agrarian change in the developing world

The expansion of contract farming schemes through regions of the developing world in the era of the globalization of agriculture raises questions that are central to the study of agrarian political economy. Contract farming has extended the footprint of commodity production and integrated land and labour not otherwise captured in forms of direct production and marketing. 25 years after the publication of Living Under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, a foundational collection edited by Peter Little and Michael Watts, it is necessary to take stock of the most prominent developments in the practice of contract farming and in the political economy literature studying it. The ultimate contribution of Living Under Contract was framing contract farming as expressing the unevenness of power relations in agriculture and grounding it in specific political, historical and social contexts that were not examined in the mainstream accounts. This introduction to the special issue revisits the questions that have remained relevant or re-emerged in the political economy literature on contract farming; it raises new questions that reflect contemporary developments and it explains how the papers in this collection contribute to the expansion of the theoretical and empirical horizons of the research on contemporary contract farming in low and middle-income countries.     

Peasant agency in Ghana's oil palm sector: The impact of multiple markets on food sovereignty

This paper contributes to the debate on peasant differentiation and market integration in the food sovereignty literature by examining the smallholder‐oriented oil palm sector in Ghana's eastern region. Against the background of loosening entry barriers in global value chains, and through an analysis of farmers' different positions in palm oil's multiple markets, we witness peasant‐like patterning of production and strategic market participation among well‐situated non‐contract farmers. We propose that such interface settings where commodity relations are present, but do not penetrate fully offer valuable entry points for revisiting the role of global markets in peasant reproduction in the Global South. We consequently argue the need to replace the idealized category of “peasant” with an analytical category that can recognize social differentiation and reproduction through partial engagement with commodity markets.     

The hidden edifice of (food) sovereignty: Rights,territory, and the struggle for agrarian reform in Venezuela

This article seeks to make a critical contribution to the “sovereignty problem” in food sovereignty (FS) studies. Contemporary scholarship has largely struggled to answer the question of who or what is sovereign within the realm of FS politics—underpinned by the relocalisation of agrarian production, sustainable nature–society relations, and a radical democratisation of food systems. Although the most recent scholarship has made significant progress on this issue, I offer an alternative historical materialist account of sovereignty understood as the combination of rights and territory. From a critical Marxian perspective, I deconstruct the basis of sovereign power as the intersection between social property rights (exploitation) and territorial governance (political technology) congealed within both capital and the state. This approach thus provides some clarity as to the necessary breaks required to establish an FS regime (self‐directed labour and cooperative territorial governance). The framework is then applied to the case of Bolivarian Venezuela. While witnessing some important achievements, Venezuela's FS experiment has encountered a number of contradictions. As this case study shows, peasant struggles aiming to retake control over production and establish cooperative forms of governance must traverse the entire terrain of the state and thus affect a broader socialisation of society's sociopolitical infrastructures.     

Small‐scale commodity frontiers: The bioeconomy value chain of castor oil in Madagascar

The European Commission defines the bioeconomy as a “transition economy which seeks to increase efficiency, optimize use and decrease environmental impact through the reduction of waste and greenhouse gas emissions.” However, attempts to substitute or control nature through efficient bio‐based technology have not lived up to expectations and much of the industry still relies on globally sourced biomass to drive the bioeconomy. This article examines the social and political economic relations surrounding small‐scale production of the feedstock castor oil plant (castor, Ricinus communis) in the deep south of Madagascar. Theorizing the bioeconomy through the lens of a “small‐scale commodity frontier,” it builds from recent injunctions by Jason Moore to show how the appropriation of cheap nature (including paid and unpaid labour) is both historically and geographically co‐produced. The castor value chain is held up as a way to transform regional economies and a “silver bullet” to alleviate poverty and address food security in some of the most economically marginal areas of Madagascar. We adopt a regional and feminist political ecology approach to illustrate what is behind this discursive cloak of “development imaginaries,” making visible the social relations surrounding castor production and demonstrating the historical marginalization involved in producing the frontier.     

Perennial grain crops in the West Soudanian Savanna of Mali: perspectives from agroecology and gendered spaces

Perennial grain crops may play an important role in environmentally sound and socially just food systems for Africa. We study the future possibility of integrating perennial grains into Malian farming systems from the perspective of agroecology, and more specifically using a gendered space approach. We interviewed 72 farmers across the sorghum-growing region of Mali. We found that perennial grains offer a vision for transforming human relations with nature that mirrors the resource sharing of customary land tenure, including patterns of extensive and intensive land use in time and space. Women interviewees identified a broad set of potential advantages and challenges to perennial grain production. Advantages include reduced labour, saving seed, and improving food security. Women farmers were concerned about livestock, water access, and resource limitations. We argue that perennial grains may increase access to land and natural resources for women farmers. Perennial grains may improve soil quality, reduce labour early in the rainy season, and provision more resources from fallow lands. Pastoralists stand to benefit from improved pastures in the dry season. We conclude that investments are needed to develop viable crop types in consideration of the complexity of West African farming systems and the local needs of women farmers and pastoralists.     

Food,farmers, and the future: Investigating prospects of increased food production within a national context

With international food price shocks in 2008 and 2011, food security became a political priority in many countries. In addition, some politicians have recently adopted a more nationalistic stance. Against that background, this paper critically investigates the prospects of increased food production within a national context. We use a small, high-income country, Norway, as an empirical case. In 2012, the government set a goal of increasing agricultural food production by 20% by 2030. We ask: 1) How has food production in Norway developed before and after the goal was set? 2) What plans do farmers have, and what do they regard as the main obstacles to increased production? We apply a mixed method combining public statistics, a survey, and interviews. We analyze four production systems: a) milk; b) grass-based meat; c) combined pig and grain; and d) grain. These systems represent around 80% of the domestically consumed food produced on farms in Norway. Since 2000, aggregate food production has had a slight downward trend with periodic fluctuations. Based on a political economy approach, we identify land and labor as the most limiting factors. Capital is less of a hindrance and offers a potential for increased production. Farmers have modest expectations of increased production, though. This outlook resonates with the strong integration of agriculture into the wider economy, at both micro and macro levels, making it challenging to implement new policies and change farm practices on a broad basis. Increases in some specific products, however, are realistic.     

What socioenvironmental impacts did 35 years of export agriculture have in Mexico? (1980–2014): A transnational agri‐food field analysis

In this article, I propose to study environmental degradation and the deterioration of the health of workers and other inhabitants in regions of Mexico where intensive fruit and vegetable production for export has been developed. My proposition is that to understand the unsustainability of such agricultural practices in all their complexity, it is necessary to analyse historically the total agri‐food field of relations established by producers, distributors, and consumers in codependency with the natural environment. This analysis of the agri‐food field allows a multidimensional and multiscale study to be conducted of the hierarchical distribution of power and of economic benefits among the different social actors of the food system. This analysis also allowed us to study the development of the capitalist regime without going into the dichotomy of centre and periphery and to propose that it is a decentralized process with a multiplicity of locations that operates on the basis of mutual associations and influences between human and non‐human elements, with the active participation of a great variety of independent, collective, and institutional actors who have differentiated motivations, ranges of power and scales of value. The case study of Mexican export agriculture was the result of long‐term research based on a wide review of regional studies, field work statistics, and archives in Mexico and the United States. This cross‐border study makes it possible to identify asymmetrical transnational relations in a context in which the Mexican government has renounced its territorial and agri‐food sovereignty and Mexican consumers face greater vulnerability.     

Rule by bosses? Criminal political economies in South Asia

Mafia Raj provides fascinating ethnographic insight into South Asia's criminal bosses. But is “Mafia Raj” reducible to rule by bosses? And what explains the criminalization of capitalism in South Asia? While the volume does not answer these questions, it illuminates the need for an agrarian political economy of criminal capital.     

Toward understanding household preference for consumption characteristics of millet varieties: a case study from western Niger

In this study, we evaluate the preference of consumers in Niger for different tuwo or couscous characteristics using a random utility‐based choice experiment, ordered probit analysis, and tree‐based partitioning. Data were collected through a structured survey administered at four sites. Preferences are estimated for three products (couscous, fermented tuwo, and nonfermented tuwo) made from five pearl millet cutivars. We provide relative valuation for different traits by type of product. Results show that product taste, color, and textural attributes are important, especially for tuwo and couscous. Probit and partitioning results show that taste and color are the first attributes that consumers use to distinguish more preferred millet food products from less preferred millet food products. This should provide some direction for millet breeding programs and food processing of millet.     

Why Beautify the Plaza? Reproducing Community in Decentralized Neoliberal Peru

Peruvian development and government analysts criticize communities for irrationally using local development funds deriving from recently instituted political decentralization to beautify their villages rather than to improve infrastructural services, education and health, or to alleviate poverty. This paper challenges this critique by explaining why such cosmetic improvements are of interest to rural people. Using a case study of the peasant community of Allpachico, I argue that these projects encourage the return of pensioners and visits from migrants. Residents and migrants are mutually dependent as a result of livelihood strategies based on agriculture and the foreign‐controlled resource extraction sector over the past 80 years. The relative position of these two groups in the social reproduction of the vernacular community has changed with the Peruvian political economy. Currently, in the neoliberal resource extraction economy, residents pragmatically opt to maintain relations with those who have stable wage or pension incomes.     

Agricultural sustainability of fadama farming systems in northern Nigeria: the case of Karshi and Baddeggi

Nigeria is endowed with underground and surface water reserves, rich pastures and favourable agroecological conditions in the country's low-lying plains with alluvial deposits, popularly referred to as fadama lands. The 3,000,000ha of fertile soils with residual moisture offer attractive opportunities for the arable farmers to grow both season and off-season high-value crops. The potential and importance of fadama agriculture for food production and economic development is crucial, given rising food prices, climatic changes, environmental risks associated with ‘modern’ agriculture, modelled farming systems and population growth. Fadama areas are therefore of critical importance to the survival and economic development of millions of rural dwellers. This research surveys and analyses the sustainability of fadama farming systems in semi-arid northern Nigeria. Findings reveal a delicate interaction and negotiation across the formal and informal boundaries where traditional agricultural practices, based on an understanding of the particular physical reality and exploitation of natural synergies, are combined with inputs typical of conventional agriculture. African agriculture thus stands poised at a crossroads: whether to abandon tradition in favour of entirely ‘modern’ methods and export markets as often advocated in certain circles or to depend on time-tested indigenous knowledge systems and grassroots-defined development vision which combines popular livelihoods with respect for nature's systems.