Intensive Agriculture, Rural Livelihoods and Labour: Social Science Perspectives on the Global Food System

Transcription

1 Intensive Agriculture, Rural Livelihoods and Labour: Social Science Perspectives on the Global Food System Sarah Ruth Sippel, Leipzig University (Germany)

2 The grapes that sit upon the supermarket shelves are mute; we cannot see the fingerprints of exploitation upon them or tell immediately what part of the world they are from. We can, by further enquiry, lift the veil of this geographical and social ignorance [ ] in so doing we find that we have to go behind and beyond what the market itself reveals in order to understand how society is working [and] to tell the full story of social reproduction. Harvey (1990, p. 423)

3 How are intensive agriculture, rural livelihoods and seasonal labour mutually intertwined? What are the social costs of eating fresh?

4 Earthscan Food and Agriculture Edited by Jörg Gertel and Sarah Ruth Sippel Seasonal Workers in Mediterranean Agriculture The Social Costs of Eating Fresh

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9 Places of agricultural production inside and outside of Europe are related and compete with each other Places are immobile but commodities, capital and actors are mobile

10 Supply to the north (EU market (CAP), EU entry price system, buyer-driven commodity chains, e.g. European retailers)

11 Capital investments directed to the south (EU subsidies, private capital)

12 Changing labour regimes: from family labour to seasonal migrant labour Moving north and west

13 Social reproduction gets complex, spatially stretched and fragmented But: also precarious employment secures livelihoods Flexible availability Incomes Seasonal recruitment Livelihood security Social reproduction

14 Degradation of natural resources (e.g. water scarcity, groundwater depletion, land degradation, environmental pollution)

15 Example 1 Sans papiers: A social identity

16 Example 1 Sans papiers: A social identity We don t bug people. We re not people who look for a fight or drink or break stuff. That s it, you go for a coffee, you don t bother people and you never go picking fights. (Farid, 2006, Orange)

17 Example 1 Sans papiers: A social identity The feeling of inferiority and social isolation does not encourage resistance and group mobilization the only hope for improving their situation remains individualistic and involves becoming legal. [T]he migration status, operating on the state of mind of the people it defines, breeds particular attitudes, thus creating worker categories that will satisfy the specific needs of Western economies. (Potot 2014: 93)

18 Example 2 Gender: migration control and family planning

19 Example 2 Gender: migration control and family planning The [family] attachment principle improves the rate at which the women return and my duty as a public service is to facilitate their return. (Director of International Placement, ANAPEC, Casablanca 2010)

20 Example 2 Gender: migration control and family planning Fathia (26) has been working in Spain seasonally for four years. When she wanted a third child she arranged to get pregnant just before the beginning of the season so that she could have the first part of her pregnancy in Spain while still being able to work, then returned home and gave birth in the fall as soon as possible so that the child would be old enough that she could leave again the following year. (Hellio, 2014)

21 Example 3 Rural income structures ATLANTIC OCEAN Agadir Inezgane Ait Melloul Chtouka Marrakech A7 Biougra Khmiss Ait Amira Lagfifat H i g h A Ahmar Oulad Teima Ait Baha t l a s M o u n Sebt El-Guerdane t a i n s Taroudant Asni/Marrakech Oulad Berhil ATLANTIC OCEAN Agadir Rabat N10 O u e d S o u s s Marrakech Ouarzazate S. R. Sippel MEDITERRANEAN SEA ALGERIA N1 Tiznit A n t i A t l a s M o u n t a i n s km Study area Citrus fruit plantation Greenhouse production Argan forest Major city City Main road Airport Harbour River Map basis: AMS (1958); GoogleMaps (2011)

22 Example 3 From self-employed agriculture to agricultural wage labour

23 Example 3 From self-employed agriculture to agricultural wage labour

24 Social costs First, there are the well-studied and monetarily measurable costs of intensive agriculture, which materialize as financial loss, debts, economic decline or environmental damage.

25 Second, there are less visible costs that undermine rural livelihoods, these are inscribed into the conditions of social reproduction;

26 Third, there are embodied costs that often unfold beyond economic measurement, manifesting themselves physically as well as emotionally as stress, fear, alienation, loneliness,. (Gertel & Sippel 2014: 250)