FREEDOM IN THE MAKING FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND SMALL FARMER CULTURE IN GRENADA FROM SLAVERY TO NEOLIBERALISM AND BEYOND By MATTHEW KOPKA A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2013 1 © 2013 Matthew Kopka 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people smoothed my path through this dissertation and I extend grateful thanks to all of them. My mother offered the plane ticket that made my first trip to Grenada possible. Steve Humphrey and the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) offered the Graduate Alumni Fellowship that enabled me to pursue the project with a degree of independence, in keeping with the timetable of a middle-aged person with family responsibilities. Heidi and Jeff Hans-Peterson offered friendship and cheap lodging in Gainesville, helping me to save my fellowship earnings for travel. Grenville Barnes was an unstintingly cheerful, encouraging, and insightful dissertation director. Fred Royce provided inspiration and good counsel, including in several moments of doubt. Carmen Diana Deere provided the first encouraging responses to any query I put to my committee—her reading and criticisms of the draft dissertation improved the final product greatly. Joan Flocks, Faye Harrison, and Florence Babb also offered insightful readings and repeated helpful advice. Annette Desmarais generously agreed to join my committee after a brief meeting and offered some of the most searching and useful criticism I received, especially of the second draft of the manuscript. I am also grateful for funding from the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and the School of Natural Resources and Environment for travel to Tampa that made it possible to participate in a panel about food sovereignty, where I presented some of my early findings. In Jamaica, Rachel Moseley-Wood and her husband Alan Wood offered their home and loving kindness to my family. In the Dominican Republic Juana Ferrer and her extended family, including her brother Papo, offered aid and comfort—including to my grateful family—far beyond the call. 3 In Grenada, Elliot Bishop was an unfailing source of knowledge, ideas, and testimony about the small farmer struggle, listened to repeated presentations of my ideas about food sovereignty and Grenada, and prodded me in many useful directions; I also thank Frankie Lewis for his contributions to our bull sessions. Sandra Ferguson offered great feedback and patient support, even for my early morning calls; her courage is an inspiration. Reginald Buddy, Bernadette Roberts, and Lindy Roberts provided their food, ideas, and even their beds to me, becoming cherished friends. Joseph Gill allowed me to work with him for a week at the WHAPCO farm at Calivigny, and to pick his brain about Grenadian agriculture and history; I will always revere his example. Dion David, archivist at the Grenada National Library, unearthed various materials that enrich this study, including the pamphlet that provides its governing concept. I am grateful to her and the library staff, who encouraged me to work in the children's room at the library for several weeks in 2010, surrounding me with happy chatter and air conditioned comfort. Michael Alexis, who believed in what I was doing, was a gracious and generous landlord. I also thank the following people who in addition to Bishop, Buddy, and Ferguson, examined Chapter 5 and offered their frank criticism along with numerous corrections, additions, and ideas. They include Grenada Cooperative Bank Senior Program Officer and former Agency for Rural Transformation and Grenada Cane Farmers Association employee Peter Antoine; former Marketing and National Importing Board Chairman and former ART Secretary-General and MNIB Board Chairman Byron Campbell; Grenada Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture Coordinator Cosmos Joseph; Cane Resuscitation Committee Chairman and former Grenada Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute 4 Agronomist Dr. Ken Buckmire; and Grenada Permanent Secretary of Finance Isaac Bhagwan. Textual and other errors—as well as hard-headedness—remain my responsibility alone. In St. Vincent WINFA official Arthur Bobb was a forthcoming host, as were Wilberforce Emanuel, Steve Maximay, and Claude Cambridge. Among other people who provided advice, encouragement, or feedback during the process are Hilbourne Watson, Trevor Brown, Tony Weiss, and Raymonde and Phillip Anderson. My grateful thanks to them and to the many Caribbean people who gave me directions, offered rides, and saw me further down the road. My greatest debt, finally, is to my wife, Candace Ward. In addition to her affectionate support, her sensitive readings and re-readings of the manuscript and able editorial attention improved it immeasurably. To her the sun, moon, and stars. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 3 LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... 10 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 11 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... 12 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: PRODUCING FOOD SOVEREIGNTY ...................................... 17 Early Project Phases............................................................................................... 19 FS, The Vía Campesina, and Dissertation Questions ............................................. 22 Political Ecology, History, and Lived Experience .................................................... 26 Project Design and Timeline ................................................................................... 29 Chapter Overview ................................................................................................... 33 2 FOOD SOVEREIGNTY CONTEXTS: THE CARIBBEAN IN THE WORLD, GRENADA IN THE CARIBBEAN ............................................................................ 40 Overview ................................................................................................................. 40 Development, Agriculture, and the Caribbean ........................................................ 41 Cultivating Independence: Defining Peasant .......................................................... 44 Peasants: Objects of Development or Modern Subjects? ................................ 48 Peasantry and the Peasant Mode as Elective Resistance ............................... 50 Subsistence in Theory, Subsistence in Practice ..................................................... 53 Primitive Accumulation, the English and Caribbean Peasantries ............................ 58 The Metabolic Rift ................................................................................................... 61 Plantation Economics and Agriculture .................................................................... 65 The National Economy............................................................................................ 70 Neoliberalism and the Poor Countries .................................................................... 71 Structural Adjustment ....................................................................................... 74 Impacts of Neoliberalism on Agriculture and Food ........................................... 76 Conclusion: A Global Food Crisis ........................................................................... 78 3 GRENADA’S FOOD SOVEREIGNTY INHERITANCE: PLANTATION, PROVISION, PRODUCTION .................................................................................. 84 Overview ................................................................................................................. 84 The First Peoples and Early Colonial History .......................................................... 85 The Plantation System and the Imperial Matrix ...................................................... 87 6 Provision ................................................................................................................. 91 Houseyards ............................................................................................................. 93 The Provision Ground System, Its Constituents and Uses ..................................... 95 Developing An Internal Marketing System .............................................................. 99 The Role of Provisioning in Fédon's Revolution .................................................... 102 Multiple Cropping Systems: Foundation of Provision Growing and Small Farmer Productivity ........................................................................................................ 103 A Landless Freedom: Emancipation Planning and Peasant Food Production ...... 106 The Post-Emancipation Peasantry and Free Village Movement ........................... 108 The Maroon and Other Institutions of Reciprocity .......................................... 109 Distinguishing Features of Caribbean and Grenadian Peasantries ................ 112 Land Sales ..................................................................................................... 115 The Roles of Race