The Inca Berry in Ecuador
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The Inca Berry and los Uvilleros The struggles around the production of a new global superfood in Ecuador’s Northern Andes. Master Thesis SDC – 80433 Wageningen University & Research Centre International Development Studies Sociology of Development and Change Supervisor: dr. Elisabet Rasch Second reader: dr. Michiel Köhne Student: Renée Beune Student number: 911005062110 Though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. -Rebecca Solnit, 2016 Cover picture: Uvilla farmers jostling around a barrel of organic fertilizer that was handed out at a promotional workshop for the usage of the products of Organicom – a brand for organic agricultural products. At a plot in the community with most Uvilla farmers in the region, 18-04-2016 Abstract This thesis dives into the dynamics around the production of the Inca Berry, a fruit that is part of the so-called Superfoods trend: a trend thriving on the anti-globalist sentiments behind moral consumption. This berry becomes a vehicle for globalization processes in Ecuador’s Northern Andes, where it is produced by small scale farmers. The focus of the thesis is on the friction between the global neoliberal market and local farmers’ agency. It shows the negotiation processes that these farmers apply to shape their engagements with global forces in their own ways – to create hybrids. The agency and non-agency they have in shaping these hybrids is explored. Two struggles are central for Inca Berry farmers. First, a financial struggle is created by the exploitative production structure, making it possible for payments by the main exporting company to arrive very late, leaving farmers severely indebted and eventually excluding them from the market. Second, Inca Berry farmers do not have enough experience and assets to comply with the mandatory organic standards that come with producing the berry for exports. It turns out that the rollback of the state that comes with neoliberal rescaling processes deepens inequalities of capital and knowledge, limiting their agency and thus their capacity to negotiate, making farmers unable to give their wished shape to the hybrid local-global engagements they become part of. Acknowledgements I want to thank my supervisor dr. Elisabet Rasch for her support, ideas and constructive clear feedback and for ‘taking me back’ when I was all sad and unsupervised. Thanks to her alignment I was able to create this thesis using my own vision and ideas, making it a work of which I am proud to say it is mine. Next to that I want to thank my second reader Michiel Köhne for helping dot the I’s and cross the T’s. The most important people that have made this research possible were my informants. I want to thank the companies that gave me access to their factories, offices and their precious information and strategies. And especially the farmers, mis queridos Uvilleros, mil gracias for letting me into your homes, fields and lives and for sharing your struggles and Uvillas with me. I also want to thank the NGO I worked with (‘NGO X’), which has been very valuable and kind in providing me with access to the field, a cosy office to work in, knowledgeable local colleagues and my warm host family. I am extremely grateful to this family too, thanks to them I had (and still have) a home far from home: a safe and joyful basis from which I could perform my fieldwork. I would never have reached a masters’ title without my loving environment in the Netherlands. I thank my dear friends for always being there, especially Henrike for her wisdom and structurally violent academic advice, and Roxane and Jana for believing in me more than I did myself. Lastly I want to warmly thank my parents for their continuous support during my years of studying. Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................................................................... 8 Globalization: friction, hybridity and negotiation ............................................................................................. 8 Glocalization: neoliberalism and the rescaling of responsibilities ............................................................ 11 Neoliberal agrarian restructuring, peasants and non-traditional exports ............................................. 13 Peasant (non-)agency, inequality and exclusion ............................................................................................... 15 Methodology ........................................................................................................................................................................ 18 The when and where of the research ..................................................................................................................... 18 The research population ............................................................................................................................................. 18 Methods for data gathering ........................................................................................................................................ 22 My position in the field ................................................................................................................................................ 23 Activist anthropology – engaging with struggles .............................................................................................. 25 1. The consumer side of the story: moral consumption, Superfoods and the Inca Berry .................... 27 1.1 Moral consumption: the ‘agency of consumers’ ......................................................................................... 27 1.2 The rise and fall of Superfoods .......................................................................................................................... 28 1.3 A mythical superfood: the Inca Berry ............................................................................................................. 29 1.4 Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................................................... 30 2. La historia de la Uvilla: the Inca Berry in Ecuador ........................................................................................... 32 2.1 The lost crop of the Incas? ................................................................................................................................... 32 2.2 Ecuador’s neoliberal approach to development ........................................................................................ 33 2.3 Turning Uvilla into an export crop .................................................................................................................. 35 2.4 Export growth & future predictions ................................................................................................................ 36 2.4 Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................................................... 37 3. Los Uvilleros ..................................................................................................................................................................... 38 3.1 Hybrid ‘local’ culture ............................................................................................................................................. 38 3.2 Composing local (-global) livelihoods ............................................................................................................ 40 3.3 Uvilla as a source of income ............................................................................................................................... 43 3.4 Re-embedding through Uvilla: an alternative for flowers ..................................................................... 44 3.5 Inspiration to start: micropolitics through networks .............................................................................. 46 3.6 Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................................................... 47 4. From seed to fruit to factory: The process and structure of a violent marriage ................................. 48 4.1 The starting process : necessary investments ............................................................................................ 48 4.2 Becoming a técnico: restructuring of agricultural practices ................................................................. 49 4.3 Company A’s organization structure: evading responsibilities .......................................................... 51 4.4 Los pagos no vienen: farmers’ points of view on delayed payments .................................................. 54 4.5 Es como un matrimonio: company’s points of view on delayed payments ..................................... 56 4.6 Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................................................... 58 5. Organic cultivation: Consumers’ agency and farmers’ survival ................................................................. 59 5.1 Organic agriculture vs. the global neoliberal market ..............................................................................