Examining the Impacts of Oil Palm Expansion Upon Food System Vulnerability in the Lachuá Ecoregion, Guatemala

The Socio-Ecological Ramifications of Boom Crops: Examining the Impacts of Oil Palm Expansion upon Food System Vulnerability in the Lachuá Ecoregion, Guatemala

Anastasia Hervas

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Geography & Planning and School of Environment University of Toronto

The Socio-Ecological Ramifications of Boom Crops: Examining the Implications of Oil Palm Expansion upon Food System Vulnerability in the Lachuá Ecoregion, Guatemala

Anastasia Hervas

Doctor of Philosophy

Geography & Planning and School of Environment University of Toronto

2018

Abstract

Integration of contract farmers into oil palm production schemes has been

advocated as a strategy for spurring rural development and improving food

security in the global South. In Guatemala, oil palm contract farming has been

promoted through a contentions government program, which has led to rapid

expansion of the crop in the country’s northern lowlands, including the Lachuá

Ecoregion where this study is set. In this thesis, the socio-ecological food

systems framework is used to demonstrate ways in which oil palm expansion

has altered food system vulnerability and adaptation capacity in an oil-palm

dominated community in the Lachuá Ecoregion, as compared to a neighbouring

community with minimal oil palm presence and prevalent staple maize farming.

Effects of oil palm on local land transactions, employment, and household

income are examined in relation to cross-scalar dynamics of self-provisioning

and market-provisioning of food. Ecological variables including the conditions

of forests, water, and soil nutrient cycling are also considered as they lead to changes in local food access and consumption patterns, notably the reduced consumption of fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs. This study challenges the official narrative that smallholder oil palm cultivation catalyses rural development, improves food security, and deters peasant land sales. Results indicate that oil palm expansion has accelerated land sales and put pressure on subsistence farming, while providing limited benefits to the host community – namely non-inclusive and precarious jobs. At the same time, it exacerbated many existing food system vulnerabilities, such as degraded soils and shrinking forest resources, and introduced new ones, including increased exposure to global commodity shocks. The study concludes that, in the absence of profound efforts to address the underlying causes of food system vulnerability, the promotion of cash crops like oil palm will exacerbate inequalities in food access and weaken the food system overall.

iii

Table of Contents

Table of Contents ...... iv

List of Tables ...... viii

List of Figures ...... ix

List of Appendices ...... xi

Preface: Limitations, Disclaimers, and Acknowledgements ...... 1

Chapter 1 ...... 11

1. Introduction ...... 11

1.1 Introduction ...... 11

1.2 The Study ...... 13

1.3 Thesis Outline ...... 16

Chapter 2 ...... 19

Frameworks and Methods ...... 19

2.1 Origins and transformations of ‘food security’ ...... 19

2.2 Cash crops and food security...... 23

2.3 Targeting smallholders and contract farmers ...... 25

2.4 Oil palm contract farmers and development ...... 28

2.5 The food security link ...... 35

2.6 Socio-ecological systems: a parallel narrative ...... 38

2.7 Methods: situated SEFS ...... 41

2.7.1 Food security in SEFS ...... 44

2.7.2 Defining vulnerability and adaptation ...... 45

2.7.3 Study region ...... 48

2.7.4 Participant communities ...... 50

2.7.5 Data collection methods ...... 51

2.7.6 Data Analysis and Limitations ...... 55

2.7.7 Contribution to SEFS ...... 57

2.8 Synthesis ...... 57

Chapter 3 ...... 59

Literature Review: Cash Crops in Guatemala ...... 59

3.1 From conquest to export capitalism ...... 59

3.2 Democratic reforms ...... 63

3.3 Government-led developmentalism ...... 64

3.4 Neoliberal restructuring ...... 66

3.5 New agrarian extractivism? ...... 68

3.6 The Guatemalan oil palm boom ...... 72

3.7 ProRural/ProPalma – emergence of oil palm contract farmers ...... 74

3.8 Oil palm, development, and food security in Guatemala ...... 78

Chapter 4 ...... 84

Land, Labour, and Development in the Oil Palm Host Community ...... 84

4.1 Introduction ...... 84

4.2 Formation of Palm and Maize Villages ...... 85

4.3 Agriculture in the Lachuá Ecoregion ...... 86

4.4 Oil Palm Growers in Palm Village ...... 88

4.5 Land distribution in Palm and Maize Villages...... 89

4.6 Land history in Palm and Maize Villages ...... 91

4.7 Oil palm and outcomes for employment ...... 98

4.8 Recruitment and labour relations on oil palm operations ...... 99

4.9 Oil palm and outcomes for household income ...... 108

4.10 Oil palm and outcomes for wages ...... 109 v

4.11 Oil palm contract farming and future prospects for development ...... 110

4.12 Discussion ...... 114

Chapter 5 ...... 119

Oil Palm Expansion and Staple Food Access ...... 119

5.1 Introduction ...... 119

5.2 Results ...... 121

5.2.1 Food access, maize cultivation and harvest size ...... 121

5.2.2 Land holding size ...... 124

5.2.3 Land tenure ...... 125

5.2.4 Employment ...... 126

5.2.5 Ten-year changes in food access ...... 127

5.2.6 Oil palm expansion and staple crop displacement ...... 130

5.2.7 Cost of maize production ...... 131

5.3 Discussion ...... 135

5.3.1 Oil palm and self-provisioning of maize ...... 135

5.3.2 Oil palm and market provisioning of food ...... 138

5.3.3 Role of self-provisioning and market provisioning in food access ...... 140

Chapter 6 ...... 144

Oil Palm and Food System Vulnerability ...... 144

6.1 Introduction ...... 144

6.2 Food system characteristics ...... 146

6.3 Food system vulnerabilities ...... 148

6.4 Oil palm and staple maize access ...... 153

6.5 Oil palm access to firewood ...... 154

6.6 Oil palm and food consumption diversity ...... 155

6.7 Market provisioning and food consumption diversity ...... 158 vi

6.8 Oil palm and environmental threats ...... 163

6.9 Water resources ...... 165

6.10 Soil nutrient cycling ...... 168

6.11 Discussion ...... 171

Chapter 7 ...... 175

Conclusion ...... 175

7.1 New agrarian extractivism and food system vulnerability ...... 177

7.2 Pathways forward ...... 181

Bibliography ...... 187

Appendix A – Field Interviews ...... 222

Appendix B – Community Workshops ...... 223

Appendix C – Store Owner Survey Guide ...... 224

Appendix D – OPG Interview Guide ...... 227

Appendix E – COCODE Interview Guide ...... 228

Appendix F – GREPALMA Interview Guide ...... 229

Appendix G – Household Survey Guide (English) ...... 230

vii

List of Tables

Table 1: Oil palm producer categories* as referred to in this thesis...... 30

Table 2: Terms used in this thesis...... 47

Table 3: Maize cultivation tasks per manzana of land (Source: interviews with three maize farmers)...... 87

Table 4: Characteristics of oil palm growers in Palm Village (from 2015 survey)...... 88

Table 5: Community and sample* land tenure characteristics...... 90

Table 6: Land sales in Palm Village out of 42 sampled households*...... 93

Table 7: Land sales in Maize Village out of 40 sampled households...... 93

Table 8: Oil palm employment in Palm Village*...... 103

Table 9: Average annual maize harvest and food access*...... 123

Table 10: Change in food access over 10 years*/ ...... 127

Table 11: Correlation analysis of per unit maize production costa...... 133

Table 12: Households (HH's) engaging in regular or occasional self-provisioning of different foods in Palm and Maize Villages...... 147

Table 13: Food system characteristics, their associated stresses/shocks/threats, existing adaptation strategies and limiting factors in Palm and Maize Villages (not an exhaustive list)...... 149

viii

List of Figures

Figure 1: Map of Guatemala (base map from d-maps.com) ...... 14

Figure 2: Socio-ecological food system. Modified from Ericksen et al. 2010, originally in GECAFS 2009...... 45

Figure 3: Guatemalan crude palm oil production and exports 1993 – 2016...... 74

Figure 4: Size of landholdings in Palm and Maize Villages owned by the surveyed households...... 90

Figure 5: Size of landholdings in Palm and Maize Villages rented by the surveyed households ...... 91

Figure 6: Land Use Change in Palm and Maize Villages 2006-2017...... 94

Figure 7: Main reasons cited for not considering oil palm employment to be viable in the long term ...... 104

Figure 8: Main reasons given for leaving previous oil palm employment...... 105

Figure 9: International Prices of Crude Oil and Palm Oil (1990-2018) ...... 112

Figure 10: Confidence in food access by community...... 122

Figure 11: Confidence in food access by size of productive land holding (rented or owned) in Palm Village and Maize Village...... 124

Figure 12: Land tenure and food access ...... 125

Figure 13: Food access and employment type (permanent or temporary) of the main employment-based income source in the household ...... 126

Figure 14: Main reasons for increased difficulty in growing staple crops over the last 10 years...... 131

Figure 15: Farmer from Palm Village comparing maize crop grown with (right) and without (left) fertilizer. (November 2014) ...... 137

Figure 16: Changes in diet between 2007-2015 (approx.) in Palm and Maize Villages...... 156

Figure 17: Reasons for reducing consumption or switching to purchasing different types of food ...... 158

Figure 18: Guatemalan consumer price index country average and Alta and Baja Verapaz provinces average (2011-2016) ...... 161

Figure 19: Ten-year changes in the frequency of water shortages according to household survey ...... 166

Figure 20: Coping strategies for water shortages in Palm Village...... 167

List of Appendices

Appendix A – Field Interviews

Appendix B – Community Workshops

Appendix C – Store Owner Survey Guide

Appendix D – OPG (Oil Palm Grower) Interview Guide

Appendix E – COCODE Interview Guide

Appendix F – GREPALMA Interview Guide

Appendix G – Household Survey Guide

Preface: Limitations, Disclaimers, and Acknowledgements

Over a decade ago, ago I was on a trip in Guatemala. At the time, I was in the middle of the third year of my undergraduate program and I had just switched my major from Statistics and Economics to Geography, much to the disappointment of my parents, who were upset about both – my program change, and the fact that I went to a strange and dangerous country. Nonetheless, after five semesters of my eyes glazing over supply and demand curves, calculus proofs and probability distributions, my inner idealist took the reins and sent me on a journey to discover how the world was outside of my elite backyard.

Growing up in a Western society, I have inevitably accrued many biases, which the reader may see come out throughout this dissertation. In the end, I am only capable of perceiving my own version of reality, and I apologize for my misunderstandings, which will never cease to be aplenty. My understanding, and perhaps the root of my criticism towards the western way of life that I am currently living, is also shaped by my childhood memories that I still have a hard time putting into context. My family immigrated to Canada when I was a grade schooler, in the mid ‘90s, from the ruins of the Soviet Union. I remember living in a terribly dirty city, where there was no such thing as a pothole-free road or an intact payphone. The playgrounds were broken, the stores frequently ran out of food, and nobody ever had money. It was a scary time for people who already had very little, to live on a rollercoaster of hyperinflation, mass privatization and corruption, listening to reporters on one of the two available (state-owned) TV channels in the city tell the country to brace itself for a meagre future. Once there was a radio interview of a government official who told people something along the lines of ‘we have to prepare to sacrifice a generation’. This would have been my generation, which I am very grateful that my parents were not willing to sacrifice.

My childhood stories sometimes invoke a feeling of sympathy, or even sadness, in my compassionate Canadian listeners. ‘It must have been so hard being so poor’, they say. In truth, I do not remember myself ever being poor. The Soviet Union was not a poor country, it was a world power. Even as it crumbled, the people were called to remember the wealth of discoveries and accomplishments that came from the mighty Soviet science and

1 2 engineering, the unmatched depth of philosophical thought from the great Soviet theorists and writers, the world-renowned arts, the profound history, the coveted knowledge about life that, according to the Soviet leaders, no one else had. Whatever was happening in the ‘90s did not change that Grandpa Lenin1 gave us so many things - so many wonderful opportunities. I understood that we were not living in luxury because luxury was not for us. We were not supposed to be rich show-offs living frivolously, but to be smart, decent, and good citizens. This is what I was taught to aspire to – the top grades, the piano recitals, the math competitions. It is a strange world, where a grade schooler looks the other way from malnutrition, bad water, and dangerous streets. I had the capabilities and the real opportunity to attain the accomplishments that were of top value in my society2, so there is no way that I could have been poor.

To a child, strange and inexplicable things can very quickly become the norm. Experience suggests that it is not so different for an adult. For instance, in the still-intact Soviet Union, it was normal for a family of four to be assigned a two-bedroom apartment that already had a family of three living in it3. This would be a rather shocking prospect in the modern Western society. For me, in the ‘90s, it quickly became normal that the price for a loaf of bread should rise from a few rubles to a few hundred rubles, within months. After the union collapsed, the countries of the former Soviet bloc were forced on a ‘shock therapy’ course towards yet another norm, one that was well established in the west. Shock therapy, endorsed by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and by Western governments, consisted of a series of radical top-down reforms aimed at causing fundamental and irreversible social, economic, and political change of the society (Murrell 1993). This rapid and fundamental change entailed an absolute rejection of existing socio-political structures,

1 Children were encouraged to affectionately refer to the late Lenin as ‘grandpa’.

2 Echoing the Capability Approach to human development, stemming from the work of Amartya Sen (1999).

3 One could not purchase a home since real-estate was not privately owned. Dwellings were therefore assigned by authorities according to the tenants’ work location and other factors. Shared apartments were not uncommon.

3 coupled with a complete reconstruction (in Russian: ‘perestroika’4) of the economy with all of its consequences, including hyperinflation in 1991-1992 (Murrell 1993). Thus, Russia underwent a period of massive and swift privatization, decentralization, and other neoliberal reforms – a rough transition that, combined with a rise in corruption and crime, yielded chaos, devastation, and dispossession of many. As my father once said, ‘the one good thing that Yeltsin did for us, is that he allowed us to leave5’. After surviving more than a decade of social, economic, and political collapse, it is not surprising perhaps that many Russians raised during the Soviet time, continue to remember it fondly, even questioning why the union needed to be broken, despite its numerous problems.

I may have lived through the tail end of the Soviet dissolution, but I am by no means a Russian scholar. My memories cannot explain or make adequate judgments on what had actually happened or why. What I am suggesting here is simply that the lens through which I write this dissertation is shaped by my experience, which is both heavily sceptical of and profoundly attached to the Western way of life, ideas, and approaches to development. Perhaps I have an ingrained distaste for outsider-led market-based development interventions because they remind me too much of shock therapy. Of course, I am also a hypocrite for believing that Russia is better off now than during the time when I played in the mud.

I am also suggesting that sometimes it is tempting for an outsider academic to judge and prescribe solutions to problems for a society with which he/she is out of touch. Incidentally, this very thing happened in ‘90s Russia, where a group of scholars – both national and foreign – came up with the shock therapy strategy without any meaningful public engagement, which led to many unprecedented consequences for the Russian people (Murrell 1993). Thus, through the course of this project, I have made an effort to engage with the people in the setting of my study, to promote a two-sided dialogue and co-creation

4 The ‘perestroika’ reforms introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s are thought by many to have precipitated the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

5 Speaking of Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1999, opening up borders for emigration.

4 of knowledge. I acknowledge, however, that though my efforts were sincere, they were also limited by a number of factors - from language barriers to lack of time and resources. My hope is that these efforts were at least enough to maintain the integrity of the project and to benefit the participants in some way.

The last point that I want to make through my personal accounts, is that in traveling from place to place and living in one country and another, I have realized how challenging it is to see, and even more – to understand change, even if you are right within its epicentre. The Soviet Union was rightfully infamous for its extensive censorship in the media, in education, at work, and in nearly all other aspects of social life. The average Soviet citizen had little to no access to foreign information, and as a result had very limited insight of what was happening in the world outside of the Soviet Union, or the ability to discern what was happening right in front of them.

In the case of present-day rural Guatemala, access to quality information is a real problem. Although censorship is not a suitable term to use here, my fieldwork has led me to conclude that the information that is made available to an average Guatemalan campesino (or ‘peasant farmer’) is minimal and extremely biased and/or conflicting depending on the source, while reliable information tends to be systematically withheld. For instance, an oil palm business will offer a starkly different description of the environmental impacts of oil palm, than a guard from the national park. At the same time, any documents from an official environmental impact assessment, if such exist, are nearly impossible to obtain for a well-connected academic, much less a villager without an internet connection (who may also not be able to read, or speak Spanish). And thus, in the rapidly (and I would say, radically) changing landscape of Lachuá, I managed to find many villagers who had very little or no idea about what oil palm even was, much less the speed and the degree to which it had been spreading around the country over the recent years. Some villagers had no idea that there were oil palm plantations just a couple of miles down the road; some knew, but had no concern about this. Even in the village that is hosting the plantations described in this study, many survey participants expressed a neutral or mildly positive opinion about the presence of the plantations, even after they had complained about the ecological deterioration and other negative consequences that they themselves had attributed to oil

5 palm establishment. The common thread was that nobody could really be sure of what the oil palm was doing to their region, or what future prospects it would bring or take away. I therefore hope that my work could bring an outsider perspective that, despite its flaws, might still be useful in providing context-specific knowledge that is not always accessible.

Sadly, there is a lot missing from the story compiled in this dissertation. One prominent theme in the literature concerning cash crops, including oil palm, in Guatemala is the prevalence of violent conflicts stemming from land grabbing (Alonso-Fradejas 2012). I do not examine the dynamics of conflict in this dissertation, but it should be acknowledged that much like the rest of the country, the Lachuá Ecoregion had seen its share of protests and land conflicts. However, one observation from my fieldwork was the tacit support for oil palm from the majority of the host community members (or, at least, a lack of a loud opposition force). One possible explanation is that in this case study, the oil palm growers are contract farmers, most of whom continue to reside in the community. In the documented cases of mass protests and evictions, the culprits were large corporations that took over vast swaths of land, effectively destroying communities within a short period of time (Alonso-Fradejas 2012). Therefore the dynamics of land control grabbing are different in this case study, and the changes associated with oil palm encroachment are more gradual and sometimes difficult to spot. Even now, many villagers are not aware that some of their neighbours’ plots have already been surrounded by oil palm and will soon likely be sold and diverted to oil palm cultivation.

It can be also be tempting to explain the lack of vocal opposition to oil palm by suggesting that perhaps the benefits of oil palm (through employment opportunities, for example) indeed outweigh the purported costs. In the eyes of many villagers, the palm cultivation has added to the scarce pool of jobs available in the Ecoregion, while others hold out hope that more jobs will become available with more expansion. Incidentally, job creation, along with lucrative profit opportunities for smallholder oil palm farmers were among the basic premises of the ProRural government program that promoted the crop in 2007-2008 (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011). Emphases on much needed rural jobs along with the (so far, largely unfulfilled) promises of other benefits of oil palm-based development still pervade the discourses presented by local oil palm growers and

6 proponents. At the same time, for many community members, not much has palpably changed since the arrival of palm around 10 years ago, as most (about 80%) still grow maize for household consumption on their own or rented land, and deal with the everyday struggle to provide for their families. In this poverty-laden region, few can afford to shift their attention away from the day-to-day, and to devote the time and resources to understand and to challenge the emerging big picture. Many villagers continue to operate as if they will continue to be able to farm staple crops in the foreseeable future, and are only now beginning to recognize that there is less and less land available in the community, and fewer and fewer non-oil palm jobs. Needless to say, the implications of the global commodity price fluctuations, geopolitics, financial and food crises, and the growing biofuel economy seldom enter the dinner table conversations in Lachuá in the context of how oil palm could throw a tiny community into a macroeconomic whirlwind. When trying to survive day-to-day, it is not always easy to see the high-level processes of dispossession taking place.

In truth, the discussion on boom crop conflicts and geopolitics merits its own dissertation. However, the preoccupation with global-scale changes and policy decisions affecting unsuspecting poor communities in the global South is one of the main concerns that motivated me to do this study and to take on a broad multi-faceted and multi-scalar framework like the socio-ecological food system (Ericksen 2008b). The intent of this approach is, among other things, to demonstrate the fragility and resilience of the socio- economic situation of the participant communities, and the ways in which the spread of a global commodity like oil palm is making them even more vulnerable, as it in many ways compromises the long-term sustainability of local food and water provisioning. The consequences of this, as the study will demonstrate, are already becoming apparent especially for the households that are excluded from oil palm employment and thus do not draw any benefits from it.

I want to acknowledge another issue that I did not address in my fieldwork or in my subsequent research to a full extent, but I believe it to be a crucial element in the ongoing material dispossession of the rural Maya (especially with regard to land), and a potentially important factor for improving food security, health, and livelihood stability. To illustrate, I

7 want to turn back to the very beginning of this preface, and I hope the reader will excuse another personal anecdote.

Some years ago I was on a trip in Guatemala. Among other activities, I took part in a traditional Mayan ceremony, to which at the time I did not attribute much significance other than it being a ‘neat experience’. A Catholic friend’s family invited a Mayan priest to perform the service in their backyard in Guatemala City, which involved a ritual fire with incense, flowers, cigars, and other sacred elements. I do not remember much from the ceremony other than there being a lot of smoke, and at one point the priest looking directly at me and telling me that I should come back to Guatemala, to which I assuredly answered ‘yes, I will come back’. I believe that somehow with that statement, through some mystical forces I bound myself to returning, but that is a separate story.

What I feel is relevant to this dissertation from the experience is what I learned later – that is, how uncommon these ceremonies are in Guatemala. At the time, I was oblivious to the oddity of the event: that this Mayan ceremony was, of all places, held in the capital city and for an open-minded Catholic family and a foreigner. All the while, in the Mayan villages where I did my fieldwork years later, not once had I witnessed or heard of such a ceremony taking place, nor heard of any Mayan priests. Scarcely, I heard references to Tsul-tak’a (Mother Earth) in conversation, and some other broad understandings (like the sacredness of maize, for instance), but it seemed to me that the details have been lost. I realized that during the lengthy period of civil conflict in Guatemala, complete with systematic killings of knowledge-bearing Mayan elders, the people have been dispossessed of their cultural heritage which kept them alive and thriving for hundreds of years before colonization (Ybarra 2010).

This devastating reality became all the more clear during one of the community workshops that I, along with my colleagues from San Carlos University, had run. After I presented my project plan to a group of community leaders and asked for feedback about my plan and about oil palm in general, a very elderly toothless man stood up and delivered a long speech in a calm but directed manner. The speech was in Q’eqchi, so I managed to gather only a portion of it through a translator. Among other things, the old man talked about how a long time ago, the villagers would perform a ceremony lasting several weeks just to cut

8 down a single tree. The tree – a living being and gift from Mother Earth – had to be given the proper respect. It was inconceivable to thoughtlessly chop the tree down, much less an entire forest. The old man also spoke about sacred caves that exist in the region and called for an effort to revive some of the old spiritual traditions and practices, particularly to teach the younger generations. Though the old man seemingly said almost nothing about oil palm, his overall message, as I understood it, was that it was necessary to strengthen the people so as to avoid further dispossession (whether it be through oil palm encroachment or anything else).

Evidently, as I found out later through my interactions with locals, NGOs, and other researchers, very few villagers still possess substantial knowledge about medicinal plants, or even traditional foods and cooking methods. Some NGOs (e.g. Ixcape Cobán) have recently begun to address these issues by providing workshops on traditional Mayan cooking in hopes of improving nutrition and food security in Mayan populations. Other organizations (e.g. El Pilar Forest Garden Network) have launched efforts to recover the ancient knowledge of forest garden cultivation. Mayan forest gardens have been traditionally used to produce a multitude of nutritious foods, and were an integral part of a sustainable and resilient food system. Indeed, there is archaeological evidence supporting the idea that Mayan forest gardens existed in the Lachuá Ecoregion hundreds of years ago (Avendaño 2012).

The analysis that I provide in this work acknowledges the role of traditional knowledge in socio-ecological food system resilience. However, I personally feel that its role is understated in the framework that I use here. For what it is worth, I stand with the toothless elder on his point about fostering inner strength and spiritual identity as an integral basis of resistance, inclusively in maintaining a sustainable food system that provides enough for everyone.

To that note, I also do not wish to completely denounce cash crops or to ignore their inevitable role in feeding seven billion people on our planet. I see this as a moment to reflect on the methods used to introduce and support cash crop production in this study region, the details missed, and the power relations involved in producing the outcomes discussed herein. I hope that this study brings the world at least tiny step closer to equity

9 and justice in the global food system, so as to make participation in cash crop production a true opportunity for the rural poor upon whom the system rests.

I wish to acknowledge the multitude of people and organizations without whom this project and this dissertation would not have been possible. The funding for this project was provided by the International Development Research Council (IDRC) – Latin America and the Carribbean Research Exchange Grant (LACREG), as well as the University of Toronto Department of Geography, and the School of Environment through the generous support of the Arthur and Sonia Labatt Fellowship and the Eric Krause Fellowship.

Profound thanks are owed to the people of Lachuá who graciously opened up their homes and shared their stories. My deep gratitude goes to the leaders of the two villages in this study, who not only welcomed me and my associates, but also generously offered countless hours to facilitate workshops, surveys, and interviews in their communities6. A special thanks is owed to the oil palm growers who participated in this study, for their openness, integrity and good will. Much is owed to Oscar Rojas and Tania Montenegro – the keenest research assistants that one could ask for, who have been outstanding colleagues and friends in the field. The local Q’eqchi’ translators who worked with us were indispensable in helping us to bridge the difficult communication and cultural barrier with the villagers. Thank you also to Julio Morales for his insight and support. It has been a true privilege to get to know and work with all of the colleagues and participants of this project.

I am not sure how to properly acknowledge Carlos Avendaño, to whom I feel I owe a lot of this work. Carlos was a friend and a mentor throughout the course of this project, and his love and passion for Guatemala and its people were the source of much of my inspiration for this undertaking. In short – thank you for changing my life. Also, a warm thank you to the Avendaño family for their incredible kindness and support during my fieldwork.

6 At the cost of not giving proper acknowledgement, names and affiliations of research participants and communities are omitted in this dissertation so as to preserve confidentiality and ensure safety of the participants.

Immeasurable thanks to my family, especially my husband Mauricio, whom I credit with my physical, mental, and emotional survival during my work on this project. His love, patience, and wisdom have been my happiness in the good times and my light in the dark times. Thank you for being with me. Thank you to my son, Michael, for being such a good sport while mommy was away, and for always being a ray of sunshine. Thank you to my parents, who are the reasons why I got the many opportunities that I have had in my life, including this project. Thank you to the rest of my family, and my good friends, for always being there for me.

Thank you to all of my mentors at the University of Toronto, especially Ryan Isakson who is incredibly insightful and has taught me a great deal about research, and about life. His guidance has kept me on the good path. Thank you to Danny Harvey for being so supportive of my work all these years, and to Christian Abizaid and Scott Prudham for their indispensable advice. Thank you to my peers in the Geography department and the School of Environment, to all of the professors and administrators who have made my time in the University of Toronto unforgettable in all the best ways.

A special dedication to my friend Marius Gangan, whom I dearly miss. May you rest in peace, surrounded by love and light.

Chapter 1 1. Introduction 1.1 Introduction

In recent decades, the thriving global demand for agricultural commodities, coupled with market speculation, has spurred rapid expansions in oil palm cultivation all over the world (Clapp and Isakson 2018; Borras et al. 2015). Being one of the most versatile and cheapest oil seed crops to produce, oil palm gained momentum as cultivation spread into new regions, including Guatemala. Until the mid-2000s, Guatemala remained a negligible palm oil producer on the world stage with a total annual production volume of about 100 000 MT7. The situation took a drastic turn in the late 2000s. Guatemalan palm oil production began to climb exponentially, reaching 740 000 MT in 2016 - constituting a six-fold increase in a mere decade. By 2017, Guatemala was a top producer of the crop in Latin America – second only to Colombia, which has more than 10 times that amount of land (USDA 2018).

The push for oil palm in Guatemala was largely driven by a handful of private interests seeking to take advantage of soaring global prices for palm oil and its derivatives and explore new opportunities in the biofuel sector. Ever a servant to domestic and foreign elites, the Guatemalan government quickly followed suit, and began to actively promote oil palm to smallholder farmers in the northern lowlands of the country through the 2007-08 ProRural program (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Alonso-Fradejas 2012). At the time, ProRural was one of many examples of smallholder-focused cash crop promotion initiatives, which came into fashion in international development in the 2000s (UNCTAD 2015; HLPE 2013; Miller and Jones 2010). In Guatemala, oil palm was touted as a rural development opportunity, capable of bringing urgently needed jobs to remote and poverty- plagued corners of the country (ProRural 2010, 2009; Banco Mundial 2009). Rooted in the

7 The major global producers of palm oil – Indonesia and Malaysia – each produced around 15 million MT in the same years (USDA 2018).

12 rationale of generating employment and raising local incomes, the National Food Security Strategy (PESAN 2009) included oil palm as a key component, along with other cash crops and staple maize.

Guatemalan oil palm expansion inevitably came at the expense of other land uses. In the northern lowlands, where much of the oil palm expansion took place, the crop spread over grasslands, grazing lands, wetlands, as well as sizeable stretches of rainforest and lands previously used for growing traditional food crops such as maize and beans (Alonso- Fradejas et al. 2011). Activists soon began to sound the alarm as word got out about violent evictions of (primarily indigenous) peasants by wealthy farmers, corporations, and land brokers (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011). Some scholars have pegged the government as complicit in the land grabs through its tacit support of large agribusinesses, minimal oversight of the rapid crop expansion, and facilitation of risky contract-farming schemes of the ProRural program (Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011). Nevertheless, the focus of the government’s official narrative remained on the socio- economic benefits of cash crops, development of otherwise ‘idle’ land, and interestingly – on the need to curb peasant land sales, which was among the purported goals of ProRural.

The sudden slump in palm oil price in 2008 followed by the withdrawal of U.S. investment from the Guatemalan oil palm sector temporarily quelled the spread of oil palm in the country (Guereña and Zepeda 2013). ProRural was also dismantled during government restructuring after just one year of operation. Several programs under ProRural were transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture (MAGA), while ProPalma (the subsidiary responsible for promoting oil palm) was effectively discontinued, with its funding transferred over to a farmers’ association in the northern lowlands. The subsequent corruption and questionable management of ProPalma funds left many of its smallholder participants in financial trouble (Solis et al. 2013). Despite the setbacks in the latter 2000s, oil palm production continued to rise, led by large oil palm corporations such as Palmas del Ixcán, Naturaceites, and Reforestadora de Palmas del Petén (REPSA), along with contract farmers who persisted after the restructuring of ProRural.

As poverty and food insecurity continued to beleaguer the regions of the country hosting oil palm plantations, questions were raised about the actual benefits of introducing the

13 crop as a rural development strategy. In particular, concerns surfaced over the livelihood losses of dispossessed indigenous farmers (Alonso-Fradejas 2012), the instability and precariousness of oil palm employment (Hurtado and Sanchez 2012), losses of other agricultural jobs (Dürr 2016), and overall limited benefits for local incomes (Mingorría et al. 2014). To make matters more serious, in the summer of 2015 an alleged spill from a palm oil refinery in the northern province of Petén resulted in severe pollution of over one hundred kilometres of La Pasión river, resulting in widespread death of fish, tainted drinking water, and compromised livelihoods for dozens of communities along the river. The incident was widely termed an ‘ecocide’, sparking waves of local protests and igniting new debates about the ecological harm of unchecked palm oil production as it directly affects local access to safe food and water (Sánchez and Obando 2016).

To date the actual development outcomes of oil palm expansion in Guatemala have not been extensively studied. Previous oil palm-related research in Guatemala had focused on the socio-economic outcomes (Dürr 2016; Mingorría et al. 2014; Hurtado and Sanchez 2012) and land grabbing (Alonso-Fradejas 2012) in areas dominated by large oil palm agribusinesses, with a very limited look at contract farmers (Alonso-Fradejas 2011). Furthermore, despite the growing public concern over the environmental impacts of ongoing and poorly-monitored oil palm expansion, academic work on the subject remains sparse, particularly in relation to food insecurity.

1.2 The Study

The study in this thesis looks at oil palm contract farmers and the socio-ecological impacts of oil palm in the host communities, particularly on the local food system. The research was conducted in two indigenous villages in the Lachuá Ecoregion (Figure 1) in the northern lowlands of the Alta Verapaz province, where one of the villages – henceforth referred to as Palm Village – has been the setting of rapid oil palm expansion since 2006. The second village – henceforth known as Maize Village – is a neighbouring community with, so far, minimal oil palm presence, where the cultivation of staple maize and remnants of secondary forest constitute the main land use types.

Figure 1: Map of Guatemala (base map from d-maps.com)

The central research question of this work is how has the expansion of oil palm – an ostensibly lucrative global commodity crop and the centrepiece of former rural development and food security programs – altered the socio-ecological food system in the hosting

15 community, and with it the dynamics of food provisioning, access, diet, and development prospects of the community. To address this question, this research was driven by three overlapping research objectives. The first goal was to investigate how oil palm has reshaped the dynamics of land sales and labour in the host community – including access to employment, changes in wages, and implications for household income. The second objective was to determine the role of oil palm in altering household access to staple foods. The third objective was to understand the ways in which the introduction and expansion of oil palm has transformed the regional food system, particularly its impacts on food access and consumption and the social, economic, and environmental aspects of food production. Specifically, the study aimed to examine if and how the introduction of oil palm has reconfigured vulnerability in the system and the associated dimensions of food insecurity.

The analysis is carried out through the socio-ecological food system framework (Ericksen 2008b), which incorporates social, economic, and environmental aspects of the food production, distribution, and consumption across scales. This framework situates food- related activities within human and biogeophysical processes that lead to outcomes for food security, social and environmental welfare (Allen and Prosperi 2016; Ericksen 2008b). Food security within this framework is the outcome of a sustainable and resilient socio- ecological food system, and is comprised of three main pillars: food utilization, access, and availability, which are (re)produced through a set of food system activities pertaining to the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food (Allen and Prosperi 2016; Ingram 2011; Ericksen 2008b). As further discussed in Chapter 2, this framework captures ecological processes and reflexive relationships between different food system elements that can be obscured in the absence of a system-type view. It was therefore chosen for its strengths in cross-scalar interdisciplinary analysis. The analysis carries insight into how landscape change leads to different food security outcomes for social subgroups and creates/intensifies vulnerabilities in the local food system as a whole.

The main conclusions of this study dispute the mainstream narrative that the promotion of smallholder oil palm cultivation results in significant positive outcomes for development and food security in the host communities (USAID 2014; Deininger et al. 2011; World Bank 2011, 2007; FAO 2011). Instead, it is shown here that oil palm expansion has done little to

16 boost the local food system by ways of spurring economic development, while at the same time, it exacerbated many existing food system vulnerabilities and introduced new ones. It has done so by:  Accelerating land sales and putting pressure on local land resources;  Creating limited, non-inclusive and precarious job opportunities while eliminating other types of agricultural employment;  Escalating pressure on subsistence farming by driving up farming costs, thereby compromising long-standing food access ‘safety nets’; and  Compromising local sources of nutritious perishable foods, leading to a decrease in access to and consumption of these foods.

Furthermore, oil palm expansion has come with many ecological costs including the depletion of soil, water, and forest resources. Interview results also hint at additional social costs (requiring further investigation) including road damage, upsurge in pests and pest-related diseases, and heightened inter and intra-community conflicts. All of these effects have contributed to rising inequality in staple food access, decreasing variety and nutrition of consumed foods, and increased sensitivity of the host community to volatility in global commodity markets. At the same time, the observed benefits from oil palm employment and increased wages have been limited, short-lived, and only accessible to a portion of households in the host community.

1.3 Thesis Outline

This thesis is broken down in the following way.

Chapter 2 introduces the key concepts and analytical paradigms that frame the analysis. It describes the evolution of ‘food security’ as a concept and situates the role of oil palm contract farmers in the broader development and food security discourse. The socio- ecological food system (SEFS) framework is discussed as a basis for analyzing food system vulnerability in the Lachuá case study. The data collection and analysis methods of the project are explained within the parameters of the situated SEFS framework. A closer look at the history, as well as the social, economic, and environmental characteristics of the two

17 study villages is provided. The ethical considerations and limitations in data collection, analysis, and interpretation are explained.

Chapter 3 situates the current oil palm boom in Guatemala within the broader history of cash crops in the country. Reviewing cash crop development from the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, through neoliberal restructuring in the 1980s, to recent booms of global commodity crops (i.e. oil palm and sugarcane), the chapter suggests that the contemporary oil palm boom is part of an emerging ‘new extractivist’ regime. The chapter concludes with a review of scholarship on oil palm’s impacts on rural development and food security in Guatemala.

Chapter 4 hones in on the issues surrounding land and labour in the two communities. The primary questions considered in this chapter are: What effects did the introduction and expansion of oil palm have on land control, employment opportunities, and incomes for household in the host community? Which households had benefitted from these changes and how? The entitlements approach (Drèze and Sen 1989; Sen 1981) is used here to understand how oil palm shapes rural livelihoods, endowments, and food entitlements. Principal findings include that oil palm has produced limited and short-lived benefits for a portion of the host community, while extinguishing other types of agricultural employment, accelerating land sales, and putting pressure on subsistence farming. In other words, oil palm has helped improved food entitlements for some at the expense of others, while endowments have been compromised for most members of the community.

Chapter 5 goes further to examine how the socio-economic and ecological changes in the communities have impacted staple food access. The key research questions of this chapter are: how has the increasing presence of oil palm altered staple food production/provisioning in the host community? How has this translated into staple food access for different households? The main conclusion is that oil palm expansion has undermined the production of staple maize, exacerbated inequality in food access, and eroded ‘safety nets’ for food access in a region fraught with precarious employment. At the same time, income benefits derived from oil palm employment have been insufficient to boost food access for most households.

Chapter 6 contextualizes the results in the socio-ecological systems framework. In addition to staple foods, the chapter looks at how the variety, quality, and prices of different types of food have changed alongside oil palm expansion on a household and community scale. The chapter also considers the environmental implications of oil palm expansion on the local food system, especially with regard to deforestation and possible effects on water availability and quality. Finally, it discusses how the resultant social, economic, and environmental changes translate into food system vulnerability. The key findings include that oil palm has contributed to the disappearance of certain nutritious food in the study communities, compromised ecological resources, and heightened the host community’s exposure to external shocks such as global oil palm price fluctuations. Furthermore, food insecurity is exacerbated by the scalar differences between (beyond- community) food system shocks and stresses and (within-household) adaptation strategies.

The concluding Chapter 7 illustrates how food system vulnerability is exacerbated in the emerging new agrarian extractivist regime in Guatemala. Overall, this case study problematizes the vision of market-based poverty-alleviation strategies that are centered on cash-crop promotion to smallholders, and suggests that cash crops such as oil palm can only bring real benefits to agricultural regions as part of an otherwise diverse, equitable and sustainable food system. The key message that emerges here is that inequalities and vulnerabilities in food systems have to be taken seriously when devising development approaches. In the context of the Lachuá Ecoregion, which suffers from a number of serious food system vulnerabilities, oil palm promotion on its own is not an adequate – and is in many ways a detrimental – rural development intervention. Efforts to address the core causes of vulnerability and strengthen and diversify the food system – including supporting staple crop farmers, fostering education and diversification of livelihood activities, and protecting ecological resources – must be kept at the core of rural development and food security strategies.

Chapter 2 Frameworks and Methods 2.1 Origins and transformations of ‘food security’

Guatemala’s ProRural was but one example of state programs promoting cash crops to smallholders around the world with the purpose of stimulating rural economies and enhancing food security (FAO 2011; Rist et al. 2010). In the 2000s, the integration of smallholder agriculture into global production chains – inclusively for oil palm – became the centerfold of international development and food security forums (c.f. USAID 2014; Deininger et al. 2011; World Bank 2007, 2011). Despite the highly variable outcomes from cash crop adoption by smallholders around the world (Nkongho et al. 2014; Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013; McCarthy 2010), the pervading food security discourse continues to serve as the theoretical backbone for programs advocating for cash crops.

To conceptualize the role of cash crop production in the mainstream food security and development discourse, it is useful to begin with the evolution of food security as a concept. Emerging out of the 1972-75 world food crisis, the food security discourse is seen by some scholars as a response to the failing postwar food regime and development project (Fairbairn 2010; Friedmann 2005). The regime, which advocated for the injection of capital and agricultural technology together with (primarily US- originated) food aid as a means of accomplishing global ‘freedom from hunger’, culminated with a doubling-to- tripling of grain prices that caused widespread famines responsible for killing millions around the world (Gerlach 2015; Fairbairn 2010). The causes of the price spike were complex, encompassing a variety of factors including the effects of El Niño-induced droughts and poor harvests, the emergence of an energy crisis in 1973, rising global demand for food, as well as politically mandated food export restrictions in the US, Canada, and Australia (Gerlach 2015). The masses of poor consumers who were unable to cope with augmented prices were left in the dust.

19 20

The terrible consequences of the events in the early 1970s pushed global authorities to re- think their approach to food and hunger. The United Nations World Food Conference of 1974 invoked the new frame of food security in calling for:

‘…the establishment of a world food security system which would ensure adequate availability of, and reasonable prices for, food at all times, irrespective of periodic fluctuations and vagaries of weather and free of political and economic pressures’ (UN 1974).

This framing effectively put onus on nation states to ensure the availability of food, also implying that cooperation at the international level to maintain food stocks and level prices was imperative. State action, including government intervention in markets (e.g. in an effort to fix ‘reasonable prices’ for food), was central to the early food security frame as governments were tasked with reinforcing national-level food supplies (Fairbairn 2010). While food aid continued to figure into the food security model, priorities began to move towards national agricultural development so as to increase production and solidify control over national food supplies.

In the 1980s, the food security discourse – influenced significantly by the work of Amartya Sen (1981) – saw a shift away from the macro-scale, partly in recognition of existing within-nation inequalities that left certain sub-populations in hunger despite ample supply at the national level. Sen attributed hunger to failures in food entitlements, where entitlement of a person is defined as ‘the set of alternative commodity bundles that can be acquired through the use of the various legal channels of acquirement open to that person’ (Drèze and Sen 1989). Simply put, food entitlement implies the ability to access food through various means that can include self-provisioning or participation in income generating activities such as wage labour and commercial agriculture (FAO 2003). Entitlements are not only economic (e.g. having the means to purchase food), but also political (e.g. politics can enable or suppress food access). If a set of individuals were to lose their entitlements, they would suffer from deprivation regardless of the amount of food available in the country (Sen 1981).

Much of Sen’s work endeavoured to advance the entitlements approach, inclusively, to understand how and why entitlements change. He posited that entitlement depends on

21 initial endowment (assemblage of resources legally owned by a person) and the exchange entitlement mapping or e-mapping, which defines how endowments are translated into entitlements (Drèze and Sen 1989; Sen 1981). Therefore, an entitlement failure could occur in the event of endowment loss, or as a result of failure in exchange or transfer (Rubin 2007). Among other events, falling wages, falling cash crop prices, and rising food prices can provoke changes in endowments and/or exchange relations, which can adversely impact individuals within the context of their legal, political, social, and economic position in society (Sen 1981). At the same time, however, entitlements cannot only be seen as individualistic. Rather, they are socially constituted, and command over food entitlements is continually negotiated and fought over, including during times of crisis (Watts 1991).

Sen’s entitlement approach garnered much praise as well as criticism. From a theoretical perspective, Sen’s contributions had fundamentally reoriented the food security discourse towards the examination of access rather than availability as a central tenet of food security. Secondly, Sen’s influence instituted a scalar shift in food security analysis towards the individual8 rather than the state (Fairbairn 2010), although Sen recognized the state as having a role in creating and guaranteeing entitlements. Thus, in steering away from the Malthusian conceptualization of famines as a rather simplistic geographic problem of food production and consumption, Sen’s work urged deeper consideration of poverty and disenfranchisement. Individual purchasing power was recognized as one of the key factors in determining who had economic access to food (Rubin 2007). Also important was the individual’s access to productive resources, that Sen termed endowments, which poor populations often lack (Sen 1981).

In practice, Sen’s framework offered several pathways for intervention to alleviate hunger. Improved productive technologies, social security programmes or other types of relief provided by the state were among the suggested ways to guarantee minimal entitlements,

8 It is worth noting that much of the recent work on food security had been conducted using the household as the principal analytical unit. The household was also the central unit in Sen’s (1981) work, although he recognized its insufficiency in capturing the differential food allocation between household members.

22 particularly in dire circumstances (Sen 1981). Furthermore, the entitlement approach called for the state to mediate certain aspects of exchange conditions – notably the legal relations of ownership, contracts, and labour (Sen 1981). However, most analyses and practices ignored Sen’s more progressive proposals, and instead focused exclusively upon his concerns with exchange conditions. Many interpretations of Sen’s work, rather paradoxically, deflected obligation away from state governments, particularly in turning the analysis towards individual purchasing power. In the mainstream development discourse, food security had become about individuals operating in a free market, and their food entitlements were therefore more a product of their individual choices than their systemic context (Fairbairn 2010; FAO 1997). Consequently, policy emphasis shifted towards economic development of poor regions and public investment in food production where food was categorically treated as a commodity (FAO 1997; World Bank 1993).

In departure from Sen’s framework, which continued to advocate for state action albeit without an explicit challenge to the dominant neoliberal ideology and its innate power structures, the World Bank (1986; 1996) led the food security discourse towards market orientation and liberalization of trade. The move was entrenched in the broader trends within mainstream economics at the time. A number of policy makers and scholars alike were advocating for export-led agricultural development as a means of generating employment and achieving growth (Timmer 1992; Lundahl 1991; Adelman 1984; Singer 1979). Following suit, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also confined the role of governments to keeping political stability, providing infrastructure, and maintaining effective legal frameworks and favourable trade policies to allow for smooth functioning of markets and encourage foreign investment (Fairbairn 2010; FAO 1997). The duty to provide safety nets for the poorest populations, though still recognized as a role of national governments, conspicuously took a back seat to the liberalization of agricultural trade, which was deemed necessary to generate profit and raise purchasing power in order to ensure food security (Fairbairn 2010; FAO 1997).

The currently prevalent definition of food security is the one that had been established during the 1996 World Food Summit:

‘Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’ (FAO 2008, 2003)

This definition encompasses four main dimensions of food security: physical availability of food, economic and physical access to food, utilization of food (including cultural appropriateness and nutrition), and the stability of these dimensions over time (FAO 2008). Further work had been done to distinguish different causes and types of food insecurity – such as chronic versus transitory food insecurity – and the ways in which they can be overcome (FAO 2008). This food security definition, its components, and its implied interventions can be criticized for their many inadequacies, particularly in their failure to address larger systemic processes causing poverty. This definition also says nothing about how and where the food was produced or consumed. For instance, in accordance with this definition, it is possible to be food secure in prison or under a dictatorship, and regardless of whether the food was produced using slave labour and at the cost of environmental destruction (Patel 2009b). Nevertheless, despite its shortcomings, the methodological salience and practicality of the 1996 food security definition has kept it as the grounding frame for much of the work investigating food access and nutrition to date (FAO 2011).

2.2 Cash crops and food security

With the rise of neoliberal logics in agricultural policies during the 1980s, global food security came to be associated with efficiency gains from regional specialization in food production, coupled with liberalized international trade (Clapp 2015). The theory of comparative advantage was frequently invoked to support structural adjustment policies calling for the deregulation of capital, finance, labour, and trade, and devaluation of currency in favour of unrestricted foreign direct investment and stimulation of export markets (Llambi 1994). The key argument underpinning the comparative advantage rationale was that countries should embrace their specific endowments – including land, climate, labour costs, and technology – and specialize in the production of goods that entail the least opportunity cost and yield maximum efficiency gains (Clapp 2015). In pursuit of competitiveness, non-traditional export crops, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, were adopted in many Latin American countries throughout the 1970s-90s (Llambi 1994).

Meanwhile, the global North (i.e. the U.S., Canada, and European countries) dominated global grain production given a favourable temperate climate and prevalence of mechanized farming (albeit, usually with state support) (Clapp 2016). At the same time, countries of the global South moved away from staple grain production and became increasingly reliant on grain imports. Such was the case in Guatemala, which had become a net-importer of staple maize in the 1980s as the cultivation of non-traditional crops took hold (Isakson 2014).

The proponents of the comparative advantage approach saw specialization and trade liberalization as essential to the enhancement of food security, claiming that the resultant production efficiency and greater competition had done their job in lowering food prices and increased consumer purchasing power (Lamy 2011; Sun et al.1999; Fan et al. 1994; Greenaway et al 1994; World Bank 2007; FAO 2003). Thus, the promotion of cash crops as a means of improving food security in poverty-stricken rural regions fit smoothly into the market-centered development paradigm that emerged in the 1990s. Within this paradigm, food security was conceived as a consequence of other development goals, particularly the generation of new income sources and employment in regions that otherwise had little else. In introducing much-needed jobs and spurring economic activity, cash crop production could purportedly raise incomes and purchasing power of local residents, thus boosting their entitlements and access to food (c.f. Sen 1981).

This neoliberal vision of development and food security took shape in the active promotion of high-demand export crops and non-traditional crops in developing countries. High- value labour-intensive fresh fruits and vegetables were extensively promoted throughout the 1970s and ‘80s by states in the global South, following the policies – and pressures – from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and USAID (Conroy et al. 1996). The production of coffee was encouraged throughout Africa, Latin America, and Vietnam under a similar umbrella of development policies in the 1990s and 2000s, culminating in the ‘coffee crisis’ of the early 2000s when a global oversupply led to plummeting prices (Chauvin et al. 2012; Hallam 2004).

Despite the variable results of cash crop promotion initiatives, this development approach continued to be deployed in recent decades, particularly with respect to the rising global

25 commodity crops or flex crops. Flex crops are crops with many possible uses including food, animal feed, fuel, fiber, and industrial materials. With growing interest in biofuels as fossil fuel alternatives, flex crops have landed at the center of discourses on emerging bioeconomies. In having multiple and presumably interchangeable demand centers, flex crops are particularly attractive to investors seeking to mitigate risk while taking advantage of price spikes in booming markets. As such, flex crops such as sugarcane, soy, corn, and oil palm, have recently become the subject of large investments and unprecedented expansion, thus playing a profound role in shaping contemporary agrarian transformations and reconfiguring agricultural economies in the global South (Borras et al. 2015).

It is pertinent to note that the rising interest in flex crops is distinctly tied to the increasing presence of financial actors in the food sector (i.e. ‘financialization’ discussed in the following chapter), which has marshalled a shift of power towards investors and financial institutions in agriculture (Borras et al. 2015; Clapp and Isakson 2018). The push for oil palm development in Guatemala and other parts of the world, was incentivized not only by the insatiable global demand for palm oil and its derivatives (i.e. the physical products of the crop), but also by the interests of domestic and foreign investors to partake in lucrative markets, including financial markets (Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2016). On the surface, oil palm was integrated into rural development strategies as a high-demand crop, with the expectation of generating employment and raising rural incomes. Other benefits, including building of infrastructure and improving food security, were often implicitly lumped together with plantation establishment and job creation (FAO 2011; Guereña and Zepeda 2013). However, little consideration was afforded to the systemic causes of poverty and food insecurity, or the implications of altering the local power dynamics via the introduction of a global commodity crop.

2.3 Targeting smallholders and contract farmers

In the 2000s, food security and rural development saw another discourse shift. International agendas for sustainable development, poverty reduction, and food security had turned their focus to smallholder farmers. The shift had inevitably been in part due to the recognition of the proportional role of smallholder farmers in the global production of

26 crops. Even amid the increasing dominance of multinational agribusinesses in the global food regime (McMichael 2005), small scale farming is hard to ignore as it continues to be the globally predominant form of agriculture. Smallholder farms of less than 5 hectares collectively account for more than 80% of global rice production, as well as a sizeable portion of global cotton, sugarcane and oil palm (estimated to be around 40%) (Samberg et al. 2016). In their 2016 paper, Lowder et al. (2016) estimated that 72% of farms around the world are smaller than 1ha. Furthermore, amalgamated at the global scale, smallholder farms produce around half of the human-consumed food calories, making them extremely important for global food security. Small or family farms are particularly vital in supporting the poorest regions of the world, where they often supply the vast majority of locally-consumed calories and are an important source of rural employment (Samberg et al 2016; HLPE 2013; FAO 2011).

One of the key tenets behind the push to support small scale farmers had been the idea that small scale family operated farms use land more efficiently than large scale farms, while being generally more responsive to new markets and technologies (Deininger and Feder 1998; World Bank 1994). Since small farms employ primarily family labourers, they have a greater incentive to increase productivity and less need to spend resources on supervision (Deininger and Feder 1998). The idea of an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has since been challenged, but not necessarily disproven (Ali and Deininger 2015). Nevertheless, it has been instrumental in shaping land and agricultural policies in the 1990s and 2000s, and continues to emerge in development research (c.f. Paul and Githinji 2018).

A range of policies in support of smallholder farmers were put forward – all conforming to the food security framing and in step with the previous goals leading to continued liberalization and internationalization of agriculture. Enhancing smallholder productivity and integrating smallholders into value chains were the key preoccupations. Improvement of rural infrastructure, support of innovation in rural governance, technological transfer, facilitation of investment and access to finance were declared as the most urgent needs of struggling smallholders (UNCTAD 2015; HLPE 2013). Advancement of contract farming, a general strengthening of public-private partnerships, and effective assimilation of

27 smallholders into national and regional markets were among the chief recommendations of the FAO, specifically aimed at alleviating chronic smallholder food insecurity (HLPE 2013; McMichael 2013; Miller and Jones 2010). Citing the 2008-2009 food crisis as a special concern, the IMF echoed a similar imperative of improving smallholder productivity and boosting domestic agricultural production and exports as a targeted remedy for food insecurity caused by rising food and fuel prices in the global South. The IMF went further to recommend the full liberalization of agricultural commodity markets, elimination of subsidies and price controls, and removal of trade barriers (IMF 2017).

In line with the recommendations from international organizations, promotion of contract farming emerged as a popular ‘win-win’ development tactic that would bring together the large players in agricultural markets with small farmers so as to open up new opportunities for both. However, the tactic has been heavily interrogated in literature, particularly for its propensity to severely limit the farmers’ agency while saddling them with a disproportionately high risk burden. Contract farming terms tend to lock purportedly ‘free’ farmers into exploitative relations with more powerful actors in the supply chain (Watts 1990). As per Little and Watts (1994), contract farmers are vertically coordinated in a way that their production decisions are shaped by the buyer-processor’s contractually specified obligations regarding product quality, quantity, price, and farming inputs and/or management. In many cases, agribusinesses form regional monopsonies for purchasing independently-grown crops. Thus, they hold unprecedented power in the production relations without necessarily having to own, and take on risks for, the entire production process (Oya 2012; Clapp 1988). The transfer of risk from agribusiness to farmer via contract is a substantial factor in the marginalization and exacerbated vulnerability of the contract farmer. Dealing with contract farmers means that the agribusiness does not directly bear the risks associated with soil productivity, climate, crop disease, pests, or even problems with farm labour (Clapp 1988).

It also cannot be ignored that the largest share of the value in agricultural value chains is increasingly concentrated in processing, distribution, and retailing, thus dis-incentivizing investment in crop cultivation (Lawrence and Dixon 2015; Burch and Lawrence 2007; Gibbon and Ponte 2005). Some scholars have suggested that contracting outgrowers is in

28 fact an effective mechanism of labour exploitation and cost reduction for agribusinesses. Specifically, contracting with farmers allows the agribusinesses to reduce supervision costs, exploit non-waged household labour, avoid responsibility for upholding good working conditions, and bypassing labour laws (Oya 2012; Herath and Weersink 2009; Carney 1988; Clapp 1988; De Schutter 2011b; Glover and Kusterer 1990).

Despite the concerns about the significant drawbacks for farmers, contract farming continued to be entrenched in food security objectives and asserted as the prescription of choice for the development of many struggling rural regions in the global South. Farmers in developing countries were (and continue to be) routinely encouraged to harness their comparative advantage and adopt cash crops (Isakson 2014; World Bank 2007; Conroy et al. 1996) in order to generate higher returns and take advantage of rising food prices rather than fall victim to them (IMF 2017; World Bank 2007; Balat and Porto 2006). This logic was a prime basis for the ascent of non-traditional export crops in Guatemala, including and winter vegetables, and later- oil palm (further elaborated in Chapter 3).

2.4 Oil palm contract farmers and development

Over the last two decades, oil palm cultivation had been extensively promoted as a pro- poor rural development strategy by multilateral organizations and by national governments including those of Indonesia, Malaysia, Ghana, and more recently – Guatemala (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Obidzinski et al. 2012; World Bank 2011, 2007; FAO 2010; McCarthy 2010; PESAN 2009). One of the main objectives, as stated in the 2007 World Bank report, has been to integrate contract farmers into agricultural value chains, and thus ‘bring [smallholder] agriculture to the market’. As was previously the case for other cash crops, the push for oil palm development followed the rationale of generating employment opportunities and raising incomes thereby improving food security in rural areas otherwise plagued by unemployment and poverty (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; FAO 2010).

Among the challenges of disentangling the socio-economic consequences of oil palm expansion in producer regions is the variety of production models and contracting arrangements that exist (see Table 1 for disambiguation of terms used in this thesis), and the power relations that exist between different producers and other actors in the value

29 chain. Oil palm producers can be multinational agribusiness conglomerates such as Wilmar and Cargill, which own and operate numerous large oil palm plantations, processing plants, and other facilities in one or several countries (Salerno 2016; Obidzinski et al. 2012). In such instances, large agribusinesses acquire vast tracts of land and subsequently cover them with oil palm, amounting to swift and drastic changes to the landscape and to the livelihoods of local residents (Salerno 2016; Obidzinski et al. 2012). In Indonesia - currently the largest oil palm producer in the world – the oil palm sector is dominated by a cluster of these multinational groups, including Cargill, Lyman, Sinar Mas and Wilmar. Together, they control several million hectares of oil palm plantations in the country (Obidzinski et al. 2012).

On the other side of the spectrum, there are individual farmers who are sometimes successful agro-entrepreneurs with substantial land holdings, and other times smallholders operating a few hectares of land. Smaller farmers nearly always work under contract with large agribusiness, though contracting terms can vary substantially. For instance, the agribusinesses in Southeast Asia have established partnerships with thousands of contract farmers, many of them smallholders, through a variety of out-grower and contract schemes (Obidzinski et al. 2012; Hall et al. 2011; Rist et al. 2010). In 2009, smallholders accounted for approximately 40% of the 7.1 million ha land area dedicated to oil palm production in Southeast Asia (Fischer 2010). Smallholders also make up a substantial portion of oil palm producers in West Africa, although the expansion of oil palm in Africa continues to be driven by large agribusinesses with well-established links to regional and global markets (Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013).

In Southeast Asia, versions of hybrid smallholder-large plantation models have also been implemented, though contracting terms and support provisions have changed substantially over time (see Hall et al. 2011; McCarthy 2010). In Indonesia, some well-established smallholders had recently begun to grow oil palm without contracts. However, they are usually from villages with previous ties to oil palm agribusinesses (Gatto et al. 2018; Euler et al. 2016).

Table 1: Oil palm producer categories* as referred to in this thesis. Term Definition

Agribusiness Large, often multinational, private or public corporations controlling vast estates typically ranging from 1000ha to over 20000ha (Sheil et al. 2009 in Comte et al. 2012)

Contract Refers to oil palm growers that are not directly owned or operated farmers/growers/ by a large agribusiness. They can be family-based or other private producers farms, typically working under contract with a large agribusiness. Contract farmer landholdings can vary in size from less than 2ha to several hundred hectares. Those operating on less than 50ha of land9 are regarded as smallholders (c.f. Vermeulen and Goad 2006 in Comte et al. 2012). Some contract farmers employ wage labourers.

*These are contestable definitions, which do not reflect the full spectrum of producer types and characteristics. Oil palm contract farmers in Guatemala range substantially in terms of land holding size.

The relationship between contract growers and their buyer-processors is complex one – embodying both dependency and subjugation. Contract oil palm growers are essentially never independent from large agribusinesses, as they typically rely on their processing facilities and market connections to sell their product. The quickly-decomposable oil palm fruit requires a reliable and efficient production, transportation, and processing system that must be readily accessible to the growers. Failure to process the fruit within 48 hours results in complete harvest loss. Therefore, to stay viable, palm growers must have access to a processing facility that is located within a feasible distance and has adequate capacity to process the required volume of fruit (Hall et al. 2011). With exception of some micro- enterprises in Africa, where farmers (or gatherers of native wild oil palm fruit) hand- process their harvest in small volumes (Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013), contract

9 Though 50ha of land may not seem small in absolute terms, the oil palm farmers who operate in this category are relatively small-scale producers in the Guatemalan context. In 2003, 83% of oil palm production in the country occurred on landholdings of over 453 ha in size; 59% of oil palm was produced on landholdings between 906 and 2264 ha (Isakson 2014; INE 2004).

31 producers generally depend on contract arrangements with the nearest extraction plant to process, and typically buy, their fruit (Hall et al. 2011). Extraction plants are usually owned and operated by large agribusinesses for processing harvests from their own plantations, as is the case in Guatemala (Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013). In Honduras, the oil palm industry is likewise dominated by large agro-firms, which own and operate high-capacity extraction plants and refineries, and play a defining role in controlling and monitoring the value chain at the local level (Fromm 2007). As in many other places, small-scale Honduran contract producers are constrained by deficient infrastructure, farming technology, and access to credit, with some farmers coming to rely on their contracting agribusinesses for extension services. In turn, agribusinesses provide very limited assistance while imposing product standards on their suppliers, which small-scale farmers may or may not be able to cope with in the long run (Fromm 2007).

Despite criticism from (largely) academics, governments and multilateral development institutions have been eager to promote smallholder oil palm cultivation as a pro-poor development strategy, particularly in Africa and Latin America (USAID 2014; Deininger et al. 2011; World Bank 2011, 2007; FAO 2010). The limited empirical research to validate the approach has shown that the development impacts of oil palm cultivation can be highly variable and contingent upon a large set of factors, including pre-existing social relations, geographical location (e.g. proximity of growers to markets), and terms of incorporation into the oil palm business sector (Obidzinski et al. 2012; McCarthy 2010; Gasparatos et al. 2010). Still, some scholars found that contract farming in general has negligible impact on the growers’ poverty, due to the monopsonistic relationship between the growers and the buyer (Sivramkrishna and Jyotishi 2008). Others have argued that the specific contracting terms have been key in determining which oil palm farmers (and their host communities) prospered and which came to be comparatively worse off (Gatto et al. 2018; McCarthy 2010). In some instances, positive income and employment trends have been observed (Mingorría et al. 2014; Koczberski 2012). Under favourable contract conditions accompanied by sufficient government support with input provision, technical assistance, loan subsidies, and public investments in infrastructure, some Indonesian oil palm farmers

32 have flourished, with observable spillover effects10 in their home villages (Gatto et al. 2018). In Malaysia, oil palm has been credited with substantially reducing poverty in the agricultural sector (Arif and Tengku 2001). However, not everyone had benefitted equally from oil palm expansion with the already well-off and well-connected farmers tending to benefit the most (Euler et al. 2017; McCarthy 2010). On the other hand, farmers in poorer, more remote villages, typically had a hard time obtaining benefits, especially if they lacked the skills and experience in oil palm cultivation (Obidzinski et al. 2012). Some of the Indonesian producers, particularly smallholders entering into the business under unfavorable contract terms, have remained trapped in or slid deeper into poverty (McCarthy 2010). Studies from Africa and Southeast Asia have also raised concerns about the ability of small-medium contract producers to compete with larger enterprises without government support. Lower crop yields (which can be 3 times less per land area than yields in a large plantation within the same region), limited bargaining power, and higher vulnerability to economic and environmental shocks are some of the major issues that the capital-limited producers have faced (Nkongho et al. 2014; Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013; Li 2011).

In general, oil palm cultivation comes with formidable risks related to uncertainties in the production chain (e.g. fluctuation of farming input prices) and associated commodity markets (Norwana et al. 2011; Gasparatos et al. 2010). Taking up oil palm cultivation can be particularly treacherous for smallholders as the crop entails high initial investment and input costs that smaller producers are often unable to advance without aid programs or taking on significant debt (Alonso-Fradejas 2011; Gasparatos et al. 2010; McCarthy 2010). Smaller and asset-poor farmers are also less able to cope with risks, while wealthier farmers can use their assets to get them through adverse price movements, environmental events, and other shocks. Further to the their initial economic standing, the contract farmers’ opportunities and risks can differ substantially between policy and institutional

10 In Gatto et al. (2018), spillovers included public and private infrastructure investments that came along with contract schemes, which all village residents benefitted from regardless of their relationship/participation with oil palm.

33 environments and access to support schemes (i.e. credit, skills training, access to farming inputs) (Obidzinski et al. 2012; McCarthy 2010).

Researchers have argued that the engagement of the state in actively assisting and providing resources to contract farmers is critical for ensuring their inclusion into the oil palm sector under favourable terms and achieving rural poverty reduction (McCarthy 2010; Hickey and du Tout 2007). It has also been suggested, however, that while oil palm may provide a way to prosperity for some smallholders, it may also reconfigure social relations in a manner that eventually works against the poor11 (McCarthy 2010). It follows that even the best pro-smallholder policy on its own, is not likely to be enough to generate inclusive and sustainable development.

Overall, the socio-economic impact of contract oil palm growers on the communities where they operate has not been well understood. Some researchers have claimed that farmer contract schemes can be more effective in reducing rural poverty than the establishment of large agribusiness-operated plantations, as the out-grower approach results in more even income distribution and is more inclusive of unskilled labour (USAID 2014b; Nkongho et al. 2014; Arndt et al. 2010). Some instances of successful oil palm contract farms have been documented, where the farmers generated wealth that trickled down and created secondary economies in their host communities (Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013; Li 2011; Rist et al. 2010; McCarthy 2010). Contract producers have been credited with generating employment, including opportunities for women, thereby contributing to poverty alleviation due to increased household income (Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013; Norwana et al. 2011; Warner and Bauer 2002). Remarkably, some prosperous oil palm smallholders in Malaysia have even been able to offer higher wages than their neighbouring plantations belonging to large agribusinesses (Li 2011). At the same time, the overall volume and quality of employment opportunities generated by oil palm cultivation has been questioned

11 For instance, when the terms of incorporation into the oil palm sector involve high cost barriers, the poorer farmers may be included under the conditions that do not allow them to prosper (McCarthy 2010). Setting the farmers up for struggle carries implications for the farmers themselves, as well as their labourers and host communities.

34 in development literature. A sizeable portion of the documented oil palm work has been temporary and/or seasonal with wages that are not enough to escape poverty (Gasparatos et al. 2010). Those lacking skill in oil palm cultivation have often not able to obtain oil palm employment at all (Obidzinski et al. 2012).

The employment opportunities and overall development value that the oil palm farmers bring to their communities are contingent upon the farmers’ own success, and are therefore diminished under unfavourable conditions or highly exploitive and/or restrictive contracting terms (Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013; Obidzinski et al. 2012; Li 2011; McCarthy 2010). In dire cases where contract farmers are unable to maintain adequate production and/or cover the debt they accrued when acquiring inputs, they themselves can be forced to become wage labourers to supplement their farm income, or even to sell their land (Li 2011; McCarthy 2010). In such scenarios, particularly where oil palm expansion extinguishes other livelihood options, host communities risk landing themselves in a bleak position of dependence on the oil palm economy (including the associated input sector) within which they are increasingly marginalized, and as a result face even deeper poverty (McCarthy 2010; Hickey and du Toit 2007).

The case study presented in this thesis challenges the mainstream narrative that the promotion of oil palm to contract farmers necessarily yields positive rural development outcomes. Echoing earlier concerns (Norwana et al. 2011; McCarthy 2010; Hickey and du Toit 2007), it is shown here that small-medium contract oil palm producers can be highly vulnerable to global commodity market fluctuations, which severely limits their capacity to offer stable and equitable employment or to contribute to local development in other ways such as building infrastructure or driving secondary economies, contrary to what has been suggested in international development forums (FAO 2011). In step with earlier literature, the results from this study suggest that contracts for oil palm production often compel the exploitation of household labour on contract farms and contribute to the development of precarious labour terms and poor working conditions (c.f. De Schutter 2011; Glover and Kusterer 1990; Carney 1988). Furthermore, the continued expansion of oil palm extends the vulnerability of the households in the host community by extinguishing other types of

35 agricultural jobs and livelihood options, thereby reinforcing simultaneous dependence and marginalization of the host communities within the oil palm sector (c.f. McCarthy 2010).

One of the key issues that is unpacked in the context of the case study is the link between the adoption of oil palm and the effects on rural incomes – for the smallholder growers of oil palm, their employees and employee households, and the remaining households that are not employed by oil palm growers. Similar to earlier studies in Southeast Asia (Obidzinski et al. 2012; Gasparatos et al. 2010), it is shown here that the bulk of the employment offered by contract oil palm growers is precarious and non-inclusive – in some ways even more so than in large oil palm agribusinesses operating in neighbouring regions. Unlike some cases in Southeast Asia (c.f. Gatto et al. 2018), no significant positive spillovers were observed. Households that were not directly benefitting from oil palm in their village were only burdened with negative social, economic, and environmental consequences of the crop, leading to greater inter-village inequality.

Overall, this case study problematizes the widely purported positive relationship between high-demand cash crop establishment and rural development, as the producers are shown to be highly vulnerable to global commodity market conditions, while the remaining households in the host communities reap limited and temporary benefits and endure potentially high social, economic, and environmental costs from oil palm in their communities.

2.5 The food security link

The relationship between cash crop cultivation and food security remains a highly debated topic in academia and in policy forums. The debate takes form in many dichotomies, each riddled with its own questions and controversies. Disputes in relation to specialization versus diversification in farming systems, production for local consumption versus international crop buyers, smallholders versus large agribusinesses, and even food versus fuel (or both?) have been deliberated in one or another way in the context of food security goals (Michler and Josephson 2017; Anderman et al. 2014; Godfray et al. 2010; Tanenbaum 2008).

Case studies of food security impacts from cash crop expansion are few and widely spread out geographically, with an even smaller subset examining oil palm. The main conclusion that can be drawn from the available literature on the topic is that the relationship between cash crop expansion and food security in producer regions is far more complicated than has been insinuated in the mainstream development discourses, where enhanced food security is assumed to be an automatic consequence of rising incomes (IMF 2017; UNCTAD 2015; HLPE 2013).

Yet, empirical studies have shown that even in instances where increases in household income and other benefits were observed, the outcome for food security has not always been clear. For instance, if rising household income from cash crop adoption is accompanied by a rising food prices, the net result may be a net loss in purchasing power, especially if the producers continue to buy a sizeable share of their consumed food (Anderman et al. 2014, De Janvry and Sadoulet 2010). Furthermore, in cases where the expansion of cash crops causes environmental degradation, food products obtained from the local forests and water bodies can also become scarce (Obidzinski et al. 2012). Therefore, the variety and nutrition of the locally available food may decline as well (Anderman et al. 2014). Even more complex is the relationship between cash crop expansion and the food security of neighbours [or community members] who do not cultivate the cash crop, some of whom may be benefitting from cash crop employment and income, while others not. To date, this relationship had not been well studied.

One of the central concerns surrounding cash crops, which are often set for export, is their tendency to displace the production of locally-consumed staple crops. Contrary to the comparative advantage logic that has dominated in development approaches (Lamy 2011; FAO 2003; World Bank 2007), some studies have emphasized the importance of continued staple crop cultivation amid cash crop expansion, especially for households living in severe poverty (Anderman et al 2014; Kamoyo et al. 2015; Negash and Swinnen 2013; Komarek 2010; Isakson 2009). For instance, a study of oil palm and cacao producers in Ghana revealed that the intensity of household cash crop production was associated with a decline in food availability, access, and utilization. Blame was placed primarily on the parallel rise in the prices of food staples and increased competition for land caused by the cash crop

37 boom (Anderman et al. 2014). A reduction in subsistence crops had rendered many households more prone to food gaps since the main staple crops in this region (cassava, maize, and plantains) provide a more continuous flow of income and consumable food compared to the irregular lump sum payments generated by cash crops (Anderman et al. 2014). Food gap periods can also coincide with seasonal food price variations, which further compromise food access for the poorest people in the region. Indeed, smallholder staple crop production has previously been lauded for its importance in cushioning households from food price shocks (De Janvry and Sadoulet 2011; Baiphethi and Jacobs 2009; Isakson 2009).

Furthering the challenge against the imperative of harnessing comparative advantage, this thesis re-emphasises the importance of continued support for local staple crop cultivation for sustaining inclusive agricultural jobs, maintaining equity in the local food system, and reducing the risk of hunger. The presented analysis reveals a complex relationship between the local staple crop (in this case, maize) production and the implication of oil palm presence in the community with respect to farm size, input requirements and costs, labour costs, and other factors. In placing oil-palm-related income gains in the context of the concurrent strains on local food production and rising food costs, limited improvement and rising inequality in food access are revealed. Moreover, oil palm expansion has compromised local access to specific kinds of foods – namely fresh perishable fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Therefore in expanding the food security question to include local diet and nutrition, oil palm expansion has so far tended to create problems that are not easily addressed by market dynamics and require specific consideration. The socio- ecological food systems framework was chosen as the methodological approach to better encompasses the socio-economic and environmental factors leading to changes in diet and nutrition.

In short, the results presented in this thesis raise questions about the efficacy of the strategy to promote cash crops to smallholders as a means to improve local food security, especially when equity, risk, nutrition, and implications for the environment are taken into account. Put within Amartya Sen’s entitlement framing (Drèze and Sen 1989; Sen 1981), it can be said that the ongoing expansion of oil palm is eroding the communities’

38 endowments, including farmland, forest, soil, and water resources, thereby limiting their current food entitlements and future development prospects. At the same time, employment and income benefits from oil palm do not adequately translate into increased purchasing power and food entitlements for the majority of residents.

2.6 Socio-ecological systems: a parallel narrative

One of the goals of this thesis is to incorporate environmental variables into food security analysis, and move towards a more interdisciplinary understanding of food security within a dynamic socio-ecological system. To achieve this, the situated socio-ecological food systems (SEFS) framework is used as the basis of analysis. The purpose is to unpack not only the immediate observable ecological and socio-economic impacts of oil palm on local food entitlements, but also to track the broader changes in food system dynamics that will likely impact the communities’ endowments and long-term development prospects. At the same time, the situated SEFS approach allows for the incorporation of historical, social and political relations into the analysis of the causes of vulnerability.

The SEFS framework emerged out of socio-ecological systems (SES) studies linking earth science and ecosystem management with human activities. As defined by the Stockholm Resilience Centre (2018) – a think tank that promotes resilience theory in environmental and development organizations – the socio-ecological system is a dynamic, complex, and adaptive system where human and non-human entities interact. The genealogy of contemporary resilience thinking can be traced back to the influential work of the ecologist C.S. Holling, who sought to re-orient the field away from the equilibrium-centered approach to ecosystem understanding, towards recognizing ecosystem complexity, heterogeneity, and inherent instability (Walker and Cooper 2011). Holling’s earlier research (Holling 1973) challenged the preceding conceptualization of resilience, which was tied to the time that an ecological system would take to restore itself back to the (presumably long-term) stable equilibrium state after a perturbation (Lewontin 1969; Odum 1969). Holling suggested instead that the concept of ecological resilience should incorporate the system’s ability to absorb (at times, extreme) changes in its variables and parameters and still persist (Holling 1973). In their later work, Holling and his colleagues went further to theorize that all ecosystems and socio-ecological systems undergo non-

39 linear ‘adaptive cycles’ comprised of four phases: rapid successional growth, stable equilibrium, collapse, and spontaneous reorganization leading to a new growth phase (Holling 2001; Gunderson and Holling 2002). Spreading beyond ecology, this research of socio-ecological resilience proposed that resilience, and indeed crisis and collapse are integral to the co-evolution of societies and the biosphere (Walker and Cooper 2011).

Walker and Cooper (2011) argue that Holling’s later work garnered influence in the policy arena partly due to its close alignment with Friedrich Hayek’s theory of free market dynamics and social evolution. Presenting the failures of centrally-planned economies as counter-example, Hayek advocated for decentralized and floating price signalling systems and criticized the Keynesian welfare state and neoclassical equilibrium models (Hayek 1945; 1967). Though he did not formally cite Holling’s work, Hayek invoked concepts of resilience, complex adaptive systems, and self-organization to support his theories of spontaneous market order of capitalism, and back his stance against counter-evolutionary state control, inclusively, denouncing the 1972 Limits to Growth report commissioned by the Club of Rome (Walker and Cooper 2011).

Early socio-ecological systems (SES) research aimed to visualize human-environment interactions in their complexity and to understand the long-term environmental consequences of human activities (Allen and Prosperi 2016). Similarly, works on adaptation, vulnerability, and resilience examined communities’ social interactions and social-environmental interactions, in terms of the communities’ capacity to adapt to and/or absorb change. The analytical core of these studies typically held concepts including self- organization, social networks, knowledge building, adaptive management, insurance, and other constituents of ‘adaptive governance’ (Adger 2006, 2009; Agrawal and Perrin 2009; Folke 2006; Nelson et al. 2007; Olsson et al. 2006). In the last two decades, these aspects of the SES framework have gained considerable ground in international institutions aspiring to ‘build resilience’ in the face of looming large-scale threats such as climate change, financial crises, pandemics, and terrorism (World Bank 2008; World Economic Forum 2008; Walker and Cooper 2011). SES and the resilience framework are now widely deployed analytical lenses for evaluating the dynamics of social-economic-environmental

40 systems and have become highly influential on policy making for sustainability (Leach 2008).

Despite the growing appeal of SES for vulnerability/resilience analysis and environmental governance applications, a number of scholars have critiqued the framework for giving insufficient attention to context, history, and the causal factors of vulnerability and its under-theorization of social structures and power(Watts 2015, Cote and Nightingale 2011; Walker et al. 2006). The framework’s over-emphasis on physical shocks, system structure and institutional function (trying to ‘get the rules right’), they argued, gave inadequate consideration to cultural values and power relations that govern social transformation and impact environmental change (Cote and Nightingale 2011). Furthermore, the focus on feedbacks between the social and ecological processes and, more generally, placing social and ecological spheres within the same epistemology, could result in obscured understandings of social action and overlooked roles of place-specific historical, cultural, and political conditions (Cote and Nightingale 2011; Walker et al. 2006). Walker et al. (2006), for instance, cautioned against homogenizing the perspective of society, where in fact some changes that are seen as ‘positive’ by one social segment can be heavily opposed by another (c.f. Taylor 2015; Harrison and Chiroro 2017).

Going further, Watts reprehends SES for its altogether problematic amalgamation of society and nature (Watts 2015). He rejects the idea of a transcendent adaptive socio-ecological order, and argued for the need to recognize that the ecological system is construed in different ways by different communities and classes (c.f. Blaikie 1985), and is commodified and monetized by capital (c.f. Harvey 2014). Furthermore, Watts questioned the capability of SES to address key sources of social vulnerability that lie in structures of domination, contestation of power, and accumulation of capital (Watts 2015). Particularly problematic is Holling’s theorization of capital, where it is reduced to ‘the inherent potential of a system that is available for change, since that potential determines the range of future options possible’ (Holling 2001). In other words, for Holling, capital is understood as an ahistorical category where power and class relations are effectively ignored, and the crisis tendencies of capitalism are perceived as inherent to complex adaptive systems. Opposing this view, Watts argues that adaptation, resilience, and other SES concepts must themselves be

41 recognized as hegemonic forms that are un-challenging to capital, which he sees as the dominant ecological system (Watts 2015).

The emergence of resilience as a preeminent development goal has occluded inquiry into the causes of vulnerability, which has troubling implications for the treatment of poor people in development policy and practice. Walker and Cooper (2011) highlight this in their critical analysis of the UNDP’s 2008 report, Roots of Resilience, in which poor communities are tasked with becoming more socially and economically resilient by scaling up localized and decentralized ecosystem-based enterprises. Walker and Cooper argue that, in this vision, the development objective for the poor is no longer improved living conditions and the affluence of the First World, but mere survival (i.e. just getting by, coping). This leads to broader questions concerning resilience as a measure of meaningful development and the dangers of over-emphasizing of the poor’s ability to survive as opposed to regulating the social processes that produce their marginalization and vulnerability (Walker and Cooper 2011; Watts 2015).

2.7 Methods: situated SEFS

While some of the deeper questions concerning the implications of SES thinking in development still stand, much of the recent SES work has given considerable attention to the socio-economic aspects and power dynamics that shape vulnerability and resilience (Leach et al. 2018; Hall et al. 2015; Ribot 2014; Allen 2010; Liverman 1990). As has especially been the case in socio-ecological food systems (SEFS) research, empirical studies have sought to understand the sources of vulnerability and poverty leading to food insecurity in particular places (c.f. Ericksen 2008b; Eakin and Luers 2006; Luers et al. 2003). By integrating context-specific political ecology-type analysis with SES, many researchers have taken strides to address the weaknesses of SES while taking advantage of its strengths.

One of the key contributions of SES/SEFS research to the food security discourse has been the comprehensive integration of environmental processes and the increased recognition of their importance to food security, especially in the context of global environmental change (Allen and Prosperi 2016; Ericksen et al. 2009). Though not unproblematic in its

42 treatment of vulnerability (e.g. sometimes missing out on a thorough examination of power-laden dynamics of agency), SEFS work has drawn due attention to the multi-scale challenges of increasingly globalized food systems amid significant environmental constraints and large-scale threats including climate change, biodiversity loss, and other aspects of ecological degradation (Ericksen et al. 2009; Leichenko and O’Brien 2008). Environmental implications become especially relevant in oil palm research given the large-scale land use changes attributed to oil palm expansion, which have the potential to severely disrupt food systems at local and global scales (Borras et al. 2015; Gregory and Ingram 2008). Since the cultivation of oil palm continues to be championed as a strategy to enhance food security, it is important to consider the linkages and feedbacks between environmental changes related to the development of oil palm and the various social, ecological, and economic aspects of food systems.

The SEFS framework has also been instrumental in directing attention to the so-called ecological slow variables, which are crucial for long-term stability and food security, yet often tend to be overlooked (Walker et al. 2014). Slow variables are aspects of the ecological system that remain relatively constant over time due to the system’s self- regulation. These include water cycling, forest regeneration, soil fertility, and other landscape functions. Because slow variables form the basis of ecosystem resilience, pushing them beyond their critical thresholds can trigger a transition of the system to an irreversible new state (Garmestani and Allen 2014). Though large-scale ecological changes, including those associated with flex crops, can trigger significant shifts in slow variables, this topic remains a significant gap in food security research.

Another contribution of SEFS to food studies is its potential to capture cross-scalar reflexive relationships between different food system elements, which can be obscured in the absence of a system-type view (Ostrom 2009). The critical importance of cross-scalar analysis for understanding food security has become particularly evident as food production and distribution arrangements are becoming increasingly globalized and intertwined in ways that carry hard-to-predict consequences for food producers and consumers (Foran et al. 2014; McMichael 2005). More generally, SES has been lauded for its analytical potential in drawing out connections between distant places and sectors,

43 interaction of drivers at nested scales (e.g. global, national, local), and temporal variations – which are especially relevant for predicting future vulnerabilities and constructing forward-looking policies (Eakin et al. 2009). While caution must be exercised to avoid more apolitical applications, a SEFS approach to research on agrifood provisioning is increasingly pertinent in light of the rising prevalence of globally-linked inter-sectoral policies (e.g. climate change mitigation policies mandating the expansion of biofuel use), mounting speculative investment in food and agriculture (Clapp and Isakson 2018), and the need to link ‘siloed’ research streams (e.g. water and energy security) given their strong relation to food security (Loring et al. 2013; Ericksen et al. 2009). SEFS thus remains important in analyzing human-environmental food systems in both the academic and policy-making arenas (Ingram 2014; Ericksen et al. 2010).

The framework adopted in this thesis resembles what Cote and Nightingale (2011) refer to as the ‘situated resilience approach’, applied to the SEFS framework in Ericksen et al. (2010). The situated approach, as used here, integrates the analysis of food system structures and properties with the local historical, social and political relations. Thus, the approach expands less contextualized applications of the SEFS framework, enabling engagement with issues of power, exclusion, privilege, and in/equity as socio-political drivers of vulnerability. In addressing one of the key weaknesses of the earlier conceptualizations of SES, the approach taken in this thesis does not homogenize the participant population, but explicitly disaggregates different social groups to draw out the dynamics of power, exclusion, and exploitation that contribute to vulnerabilities in food systems. Furthermore, to understand the underpinnings of poverty and food insecurity in the study site, the current oil palm boom in Guatemala is examined within the broader history of cash crops in the country (Chapter 3). The implications of the expansion of this global commodity crop in and around the Lachuá Ecoregion are explained in relation to the history of rural development policies that have been instrumental in marginalizing indigenous populations and the rural poor in general. The current characteristics and configurations of the local food system are thereby positioned as products of political mandates, social change, and the globalization of agricultural value chains. Therefore, the ways in which power operates within the socio-ecological food system at different scales, the distinction of social groups that are dis/advantaged by the expansion of oil palm (i.e. a

44 change in the system), and the roots of the existing social vulnerabilities are brought to the centre of the system analysis (Cote and Nightingale 2011).

Lastly, in addressing the problematic implications of SES-based development for the poor (Watts 2015; Walker and Cooper 2011), resilience in this thesis is not treated as the ‘end goal’ of development, but rather as a necessary aspect of development. Rather than overlooking issues of power and the processes producing social vulnerability, the analysis in the following chapters incorporates, among other factors, the struggles with land tenure security, labour rights and conditions, socio-economic marginalization of certain groups, and the subordinate position of local growers within the global oil palm industry. The results thereby advocate for development approaches that address the sources of vulnerability and create resilient and equitable pathways forward.

2.7.1 Food security in SEFS

Within the SEFS framework (Figure 2), food security, along with social and environmental welfare, are described as outcomes of a sustainable and resilient socio-ecological food system. Borrowing from the FAO formulation, food security in SEFS is comprised of three main pillars: food utilization, access, and availability, and the stability of these variables over time (FAO 2008; Ericksen et al. 2010). These pillars are (re)produced through a set of food system activities pertaining to the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food (Allen and Prosperi 2016; Ingram 2011; Ericksen 2008b). The food system is situated within a larger socio-ecological system and is acted upon by environmental drivers (e.g. change in land cover, water availability and quality, climate) and socio-economic drivers (e.g. demographics, socio-political context, economic change), while generating environmental and socio-economic feedbacks (Ericksen et al 2010).

Figure 2: Socio-ecological food system. Modified from Ericksen et al. 2010, originally in GECAFS 2009.

Following the SEFS schema (Figure 2), the following chapters examine the food system activities in the study site – that is, how, where, and by whom food is produced, processed, distributed, and consumed. The changes to the land and labour conditions (Chapter 4), provisioning of staple foods (Chapter 5), and environmental consequences of land use change (Chapter 6), brought about by the expanding oil palm are discussed in association with the pillars of local food security: food availability, access, and utilization. The introduction and spread of oil palm is linked to processes, conditions, and forces from within and beyond the study communities, which have altered the ways in which food is obtained and consumed. Existing and emerging food system vulnerabilities and limitations to adaptation are then drawn out along with the ways in which they differentially impact different segments of the local population.

2.7.2 Defining vulnerability and adaptation

The conceptualization of vulnerability in SES studies has remained a widely contested topic. In earlier SES research, the definition of vulnerability closely followed that of the preceding risk-hazard research and human ecology, where it was understood in close

46 relation to a particular natural hazard12 for human populations within a geographical region (Burton et al. 1993). In parallel social research, the definition of vulnerability was largely derived from Amartya Sen’s entitlement theory. In Sen’s work, vulnerability was understood as deprivation from entitlements, or loss of command over food through economic, legal, and/or political means (Sen 1990). Watts and Bohle (1993) expanded the definition of vulnerability to encompass class relations, situated institutions, and power relations that shape the uneven ability to hold and exercise entitlements. They conceptualized vulnerability as a space where deprivation could be driven by economic relations (especially market relations), powerlessness of certain individuals or groups to claim and enforce entitlements, or processes of exploitation (Watts and Bohle 1993).

Some scholars maintained that vulnerability studies overemphasized social dimensions while giving little if any attention to the ecological (Adger 2006; Walker 2005). In later SES studies that endeavored to better integrate natural and social systems, the vulnerability concept was refined to encompass the exposure to hazards or shocks/stressors (i.e. contact with the stressor), sensitivity13 to stress, and coping or adaptive14 capacity (Ericksen 2008b; McCarthy et al. 2001). Stressors, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, in turn, are produced through both social and natural conditions and are situated in cultural and political relations of power that mediate decision making15 (Cote and Nightingale 2011).

12 The hazard is understood as what people are potentially vulnerable to. Vulnerability is therefore closely tied to the characterization of the hazard or stressor and its expected consequences (Eakin and Luers 2006).

13 As per Adger (2006), sensitivity refers the degree to which social actors or a system is affected by perturbations.

14 Coping and adaptation are similar concepts, although coping typically refers to the reactive, short-term management of a stress. Adaptation usually refers to long-term, proactive measures to ensure food security in the foreseeable future. Both coping and adaptation imply more than just access to resources, but also the existence of effective resource management strategies and the ability to organize and deploy these strategies (Ericksen 2008b; Eakin 2005; Barrett and Carter 2000).

15 It is worth noting that even though the conceptualization of vulnerability has been fairly well developed in academic literature, anti-poverty programmes on the ground have tended to obscure and over-simplify its meaning, often using ‘vulnerability’ synonymously with ‘poverty’ (Chambers 2006).

Following Ericksen (2008b), Adger (2006), and Chambers (2006), vulnerability in this thesis refers to susceptibility to harm (e.g. food gaps) and encompasses two dimensions: (1) heightened exposure to risks, shocks, or stresses; and (2) difficulty in dealing with shocks and stresses (see Table 2). In this conceptualization, powerlessness to shield from shocks and manage stresses emerges as a key aspect of vulnerability (Chambers 2006), particularly in producing inequity in food access (Dreze and Sen 1989; Cote and Nightingale 2011). Following Watts and Bohle (1993), the vulnerability of particular individuals or groups can also be traced back to their social standing with respect to market relations, political and institutional relations of power, and the structural-historical configuration of class relations.

Table 2: Terms used in this thesis. Term Definition Vulnerability In food systems, vulnerability is the state or characteristic of the system that results in failure to deliver food security for all members of the population (Ericksen 2008a). Specifically, it is the state/characteristic that renders at least some food system actors susceptible to harm due to 1) heightened exposure to risks, shocks, or stresses; and 2) difficulty in dealing with shocks and stresses (Ericksen 2008b; Adger 2006; Chambers 2006).

Sensitivity to The degree to which a system and the actors in it are affected by a shock/stress/perturbation perturbation (Adger 2006).

Adaptation Implementation of proactive measures to ensure long-term food security (Ericksen 2008b; Barrett and Carter 2008; Eakin 2005).

Coping Short-term management of a shock/stress (Ericksen 2008b; Barrett and Carter 2008; Eakin 2005).

Resilience Good outcomes despite high risks, sustained competence under conditions of threat and recovery from shocks and stresses (Boyden and Cooper 2007).

The sensitivity and adaptive capacity depend heavily upon the inherent characteristics of the food system, and not only on the type or intensity of the shock (Eakin et al. 2007; Ford et al. 2006). Endowments (i.e. physical, social, or other assets) and entitlements to use them tend to be the key factors determining the capability to cope and/or adapt to stressors, particularly on a household scale. However, no less important are the social, political, and class dynamics as they not only enable or disable action (Eakin et al. 2007;

Bohle 2001), but also determine (a) how endowments and entitlements are distributed and (b) how and by whom the management practices are shaped (Cote and Nightingale 2011).

Giving close attention to the uneven distribution of entitlements, the thesis culminates with an analysis of food system vulnerability and adaptation options, as they have been and continue to be molded by oil palm expansion. The analysis highlights the limitations of existing coping/adaptation strategies and vulnerabilities that have deep historical roots and are subject to mounting environmental and market pressures at different scales. Resource and knowledge constraints, along with institutional weaknesses and limited decision-making power are shown to exacerbate local inequalities and impediments to food access.

2.7.3 Study region

The Lachuá Ecoregion is situated in the north of the Alta Verapaz province in Guatemala, also forming a part of the Franja Transversal del Norte (Northern Transversal Strip). The Franja is a resource-rich region containing much of the country’s reserves of petroleum, minerals, wood, and lands fit for lowland crops such as melons, rubber, and oil palm (SEGEPLAN 2011). In the 1960s-70s it was targeted as a key frontier territory for the development of agro-exports and other extractivist activities (Grandia 2012). In the 1970s, a highway was built along the Franja next to a 235 kilometre-long oil pipeline to increase access and solidify control over the region (Grandia 2006).

The Franja was fraught with conflict during the civil war, and was the setting of many government-sponsored massacres of indigenous Mayan communities through the 1970s- 80s (Ybarra 2010). Military officers staked claims to vast expanses of land, so much so that the Franja became known as the ‘General’s strip’. In Lachuá, military officers claimed thousands of hectares of land, particularly near petroleum wells and along the highway (Grandia 2012; Solano 2000). Land conflicts did not cease after the signing of the peace accords in 1996, as demand for land continued to grow with increasing population, encroachment of cattle ranch pastures and monoculture plantations, and expanded petroleum exploration. Oil palm cultivation was initiated in the region in the late 1990s by large agribusinesses, including Olmeca and Palmas del Ixcán, and later, promoted to

49 farmers through ProRural/ProPalma. Much of the land in the Franja remains contested with many civil war survivors residing on land without, or with legally insecure, land titles (Granovsky-Larsen 2013; Ybarra 2010).

The Lachuá Ecoregion consists of the Laguna Lachuá National Park and its buffer zone, together encompassing 51,608 ha. The national park was initially founded in 1976, and officially recognized as a protected area and biodiversity refuge in 1996 (Avendaño et al. 2005). In 2006, the park and part of its buffer zone were also designated as a protected wetland of international significance under the Ramsar Convention, being an important habitat and biodiversity centre (Ramsar 2014). Despite the protection efforts and treaties, the Lachuá Ecoregion lost about 4,895ha of forest between 2000 and 2010 to land clearing for subsistence agriculture, cattle pastures, and commercial agriculture (REDD desk 2018). The warm climate (annual temperature ranging between 25°C and 28°C) and plentiful rain (~3000mm/yr) makes the region ideal for oil palm cultivation (Granados-Dieseldorff et al. 2012), which has been an important driver of land use change in recent years.

The buffer zone is home to approximately 50 villages populated almost entirely by indigenous Q’eqchi’ Maya. Many households are engaged in subsistence farming, often in combination with wage labour on neighbouring agricultural fields and other enterprises. Some also engage in subsistence hunting and fishing in the region’s remnant forests and waterways (Quezada et al. 2014).

The Alta Verapaz province, where Lachuá is located, has the highest proportion of indigenous Maya residents of all other provinces in the country. Over 80% of the province’s population is indigenous, 79% being Q’eqchi’, with only 10% non-indigenous residents (INE 2014). Alta Verapaz also has the highest rate of extreme poverty in the country (37.7%) and the lowest literacy rate (60.2%) (INE 2014). Similarly, the Lachuá region is characterized by a very low standard of living, low education and literacy rates, and lack of access to basic services, including sanitation and healthcare facilities for many households.

2.7.4 Participant communities

Research was mainly conducted in two neighbouring communities – hereafter referred to as Palm Village and Maize Village. At the time of the survey, Palm Village had approximately 95 households while Maize Village had about 140. The village centres are located approximately 5km apart, however, some agricultural parcels belonging to members of Maize and Palm Villages directly border each other. Both villages also border the Laguna Lachuá National Park and are close to a major road. Land use in Palm Village is dominated by oil palm cultivation by farmers working under contract with Palmas del Ixcán – a large agribusiness that owns thousands of hectares of oil palm plantations in and around the Lachuá Ecoregion. Farming on owned or rented plots, most households cultivate staple maize for consumption, selling any surpluses that they may produce. Remaining land is occupied by other cash crops (mainly rubber), and forest remnants – although considerable deforestation has taken place over the last 10 years. Agriculture in the region and land use changes are further discussed in Chapter 4.

Both communities were set up as ‘model villages’ during the civil war, which allowed for easier surveillance and control over the rural population (Taylor 2007). In the ‘model villages’, houses are conglomerated in the village centres, along with local stores, churches, and other amenities, while crop fields are dispersed on the outskirts of the villages. In some cases, farmers have to walk more than a kilometre from their house to reach their crop field, sometimes having to cross fields that belong to other villagers. Model villages have a dark history in Guatemala. Some villages were re-constructed in this fashion following previous destruction of villages by the military. Army officers would then demand that all houses be built in close proximity to one another. Villagers would be closely watched through conscripted civil patrols, paid informants or ‘spies’, and periodic visits from military officials. The end goal was to exert a high level of social control, by means of surveillance, peasant ‘re-education’ campaigns16, intimidation, detention, and forms of violence ranging to the most extreme (Manz 2004).

16 Some accounts state that the military used torture and other techniques to rid the people of ‘communist’ ideas (Manz 2004).

The initial establishment of Palm and Maize villages in the 1980s inevitably played a formative role in setting up dynamics of power, distributing endowments among the founding community members, rousing social tensions, and defining the characteristics of the current food system. The extent to which the villages’ specific histories defined their subsequent development is unclear due to a lack of formal records and the unwillingness of residents to speak about this sensitive subject. For many participants, the prospect of being ‘watched’ by outside researchers may have been met with apprehension, even if it was not expressed. It is therefore important to recognize that the researcher’s observations are also influenced by the participants’ reactions to the research process, which are inevitably coloured by the region’s history and individual experiences. It is also important to recognize that violence and militarization of the region during the 1980s is likely an important (if insufficiently explored) factor contributing to food system vulnerability.

2.7.5 Data collection methods

The research design and data collection was intended to capture a large set of variables relevant to understanding food system characteristics, functions, and outcomes for different groups in the villages. However, the main sample is limited to two communities situated in a particular location. In principle, this study follows an intensive research approach, where the aim is to understand place-specific processes, changes, and participant behaviour, while context plays an important explanatory role (Sayer 2010). In keeping with the situated SEFS framework, research participants were observed concretely within their specific environment and socio-political circumstances (as opposed to using statistical indicators). However, the study is not ethnographic. While the data collection methods – consisting of a household survey in Palm and Maize Villages, a series of formal (in-depth) and informal (shorter) interviews, three community workshops, and a short survey of four local store owners (two in each community) – allowed for considerable depth in engagement with participants, it was not an immersive experience as is typical of ethnographic studies (Fine 1993).

The chosen approach (i.e. survey instead of ethnography) entails that results are limited in detail and familiarity with social and cultural nuances, for instance, understanding how

52 participants ascribe meaning to certain occurrences, circumstances, or particular aspects of their lives, including intra-community dynamics. Nevertheless, the survey was strategic in capturing a large number of socio-economic and ecological variables that the SEFS framework calls into consideration. The complementary use of semi-structured interviews, community workshops, and secondary sources allowed for a deeper engagement with the historical and political dimensions of vulnerability.

Researcher bias as well as positionality and social status (i.e. power and privilege) of the research team are other important limitations of the study, as they may have influenced participant responses, translation, and interpretation of the responses. It is important to recognize the history of violence and military surveillance in the region (see section 2.7.4 above), which has likely shaped the respondents’ attitudes towards outside researchers and influenced responses. Some participants may have been wary of engaging with researchers and/or strategic in the portrayal of their experiences and relationships with their neighbours (for instance, participants generally refrained from openly talking about conflicts with their neighbours in the village). Furthermore, the cultural and experiential disconnect between the researcher and the participants has likely produced gaps of understanding and introduced bias into the analysis.

While members of the research team were trained in the ethical procedures (including but not limited to free and informed consent and withdrawal, anonymity, protection of data, and sensitivity to the respondents), the existing relationship between interviewees and local translators as well as the perception of the participants regarding foreign researchers may have shaped responses. Gender relations, class, age, race, indigenousness/non- indigenousness, and education are some of the factors that may have played a role in forming certain perceptions, creating pressure, and inducing trust/distrust, despite the researchers’17 efforts to foster inclusivity and receptiveness. Despite the constraints that it entailed, working with locals proved necessary for procuring access to the communities,

17 For instance, both male and female research assistants and translators participated in the in-person survey distribution.

53 and overall advantageous in building a positive relationship with the respondents, who are not always open to foreigners and researchers.

The strength of the methodology lies in the possibility of incorporating a large array of social, economic, and environmental variables, as well as including a variety of perspectives including those of very poor and disadvantaged households and relatively well-off oil palm growers. The data collection strategy therefore reflects the aims of the SEFS framework, which seeks to capture a broad set of social and ecological processes leading to differential outcomes of food security for different participant subgroups, including a desire to situate these dynamics in the local political, economic, and social contexts. To these ends, I deployed a mix-methods data collection strategy that entailed, semi-structured interviews, a household survey, community workshops, a store owner survey, and land use data from Google Earth and aerial photographs.

Semi-structured interviews18 were conducted throughout 2014 and 2015. I conducted interviews with a variety of relevant actors, including local leaders (multiple interviews on different occasions with four male leaders from Maize Village and two from Palm Village), three oil palm growers (male) in Palm Village, day labourers from oil palm farms (4 informal interviews with male workers in Palm Village), male and female residents and leaders from other communities in Lachuá, two male national park employees, two officials (male and female) from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN- Ministerio de Ambiente y Recursos Naturales), four representatives of local NGOs (male and female), and one (female) representative of the Guatemalan Union of Oil Palm Growers (GREPALMA – Gremial de Palmicultores de Guatemala). (See Appendix A for a list of interviews conducted).

Household survey: the household survey was carried out in October-November 2015, with help from two student research assistants from University of San Carlos in Guatemala City (one male, one female) and three local translators (two male and one female). The survey

18 Prior to the survey, consultations were carried out with local authorities of Community Development Councils known as COCODEs (Consejos Communitarios de Desarrollo)

54 was administered in person, and covered topics including household demographics and characteristics including work, income, crop cultivation, land transactions, sources of food and household necessities, changes in food access and consumption, environmental changes, water access, and impacts of oil palm on the community. Many survey questions were open-ended, inviting the interviewee to elaborate on and explain their experiences. See Appendix G for the household survey guide.

A sample of 42 households was selected in Palm Village, and 40 households in Maize Village. Sampling was stratified by geographic location, where a random set of 4-5 households was picked in different parts of the community. In 19 households, the survey respondents were male heads of the households, while in the majority of cases (n=46) respondents were female. In 17 cases, both male and female heads of the households, and sometimes other household members, were present at various parts of the survey. Some households had more than one member working as wage labourers on an oil palm farm, or having had previously worked on an oil palm farm. In these cases, where possible, a part of the survey was disaggregated to include different opinions from different oil palm workers.

Community workshops: Three community workshops were conducted throughout 2014 and 2015, in partnership with students and professors from the University of San Carlos. All of the workshops were conducted in Maize Village, although participants from other communities in Lachuá, including Palm Village, were also invited. The format of the workshops was fluid and semi-formal, with some participants joining late and/or leaving early. Workshop topics were variable, and not exclusively oil palm related. The objectives of the workshops were to establish a positive relationship with local communities, to conduct exploratory research (e.g. to understand the main issues and pressing concerns of communities in the region), to solicit feedback and suggestions on proposed research projects, and to answer questions and share preliminary results. Two of the workshops had attendance of 15-30 people (evenly mixed male and female) at a given point of the workshop. One of the workshops had predominantly female attendance, with many small children. All of the participants were invited to share their thoughts, although males tended to be more forward with their opinions, while females generally observed. A separate workshop on food and nutrition was conducted by researchers from San Carlos

University in 2015, with some of the results of this workshop shared in this thesis (Chapter 7). See Appendix B for a description of the community workshops.

Store owner survey: Conducted in December 2015. Two storeowners in each community (Maize Village and Palm Village) were asked a series of questions about food and product procurement and sales. See Appendix C for the store owner survey guide. Data from store owner interviews were utilized in chapters 5 and 7 to analyze the trends in food availability and diet.

Supplementary land use data was obtained from Google Earth and aerial photographs, not shown in this thesis to preserve anonymity of the participant communities.

2.7.6 Data Analysis and Limitations

Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted. Survey data was analysed using Microsoft Excel and R statistical software (R Core Team, 2016), to explore and compare the food system attributes and outcomes for the two communities and sub- populations within them (for instance, households that depend on oil palm plantation employment and those who do not). Following exploratory analysis and diagnostic tests and correlation analysis, comparisons of means were performed using the Student’s t-test, and the Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric test where it was not possible to assume normality of the variable distribution – for instance, household employment income (Pohlert 2014). Both, Student’s t and Kruskal-Wallis tests, assume independence of observations, which is difficult to ascertain in this study due to the close geographic proximity and of the participant households and study communities. Therefore, statistical test results presented here should be interpreted with caution. Correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationships between different farming cost factors and per-unit maze production cost to understand the relationship between oil palm expansion and maize farming.

Representation and generalizability are among the key limitations of the study methods. The household survey sample is considered to be statistically representative of the population in the two individual communities at a 95% confidence level and a 13% margin of error (Mendenhall et al. 2006). Overall, the collected data is constrained by its context, sample size and diversity. Intra-household diversity or the social complexities of the

56 studied communities are not adequately reflected in the data. The survey statistics are also not intended for extrapolation to the region as a whole, but rather to explore the community-specific processes leading to the observed outcomes of the oil palm expansion. Furthermore, the study villages have a different social, economic, and environmental histories than even other villages within the same ecoregion, implying limitations as to how the study results can be applied beyond the communities studied (Sayer 2010). Some elements of the food system are nonetheless common and/or apply to the regional scale and beyond, thus warranting consideration in other Guatemalan contexts. Examples include processes of exclusion from employment, precarization of labour (Chapter 4), and environmental degradation (Chapter 6), which have already been observed as outcomes of oil palm expansion in other parts of Guatemala.

As discussed above, some of the earlier applications of SES failed to adequately conceptualize agency, and to capture social dynamics and politics of power and inequality – concerns that are of central importance in political ecology and other social sciences (Foran et al. 2014). With the situated SEFS approach, qualitative analysis of interviews and workshops was instrumental not only for contextualizing survey results, but also for understanding inter and intra community dynamics and power relations, and for identifying causal processes of vulnerability (c.f. Sayer 2010). However, further research, including the use of more ethnographic methods, would be needed to expand the depth, detail, and explanatory power of the results. For instance, more intensive qualitative research would help to explore questions regarding the individual experience of oil palm workers, household dynamics, social conflicts, and gendered differences within the food system (Sayer 2010).

At the same time, expanding the analytical scope to include more scientific methods (e.g. climate, soil and water quality analysis, biodiversity studies, etc.) would strengthen the analysis of ecological piece of the socio-ecological food system, including the implications of the neighbouring protected area. This thesis is intended as a stepping stone for further ecological research, as it identifies some of the key environmental concerns that are currently impacting the food system.

2.7.7 Contribution to SEFS

Among the main criticisms of the SES framework – or SEFS in food system studies - have been its difficulty in application due to the volume and diversity of data required to conduct a full system analysis, as well as the complexity of the analysis itself (Stojanovic et al. 2016). More active case study application of the framework has been identified as a critical part of moving SEFS research forward (Ericksen 2008b). Case study application is particularly important for developing ways to address the causes of social vulnerability and steer the framework’s development away from flat and apolitical conceptualizations of food systems, towards a more socially, politically, and historically grounded research.

By demonstrating its practical application to multi-variable food system analysis, this study is aims to move the SEFS framework beyond conceptualization towards the active development of policy prescriptions. To date, policy application of SES/SEFS has been limited and/or problematic (c.f. Walker and Cooper 2011). The adaptive co-management governance model is one of the few notable example of SES thinking in resource management (Armitage et al. 2008). This decentralized model, which emphasizes power- sharing, knowledge co-creation, and learning, among other features, has found its way into policy forums, though examples of on-the-ground implementation have been few, small- scale, and with various rates of success (Plummer et al. 2017, 2012; Foran et al. 2014). Case studies have been instrumental in identifying problems with adaptive co- management, including insufficient consideration for underlying power relations and social conflicts that problematize the prospect of ‘collaboration’ prescribed by the model (c.f. Gondo 2011). This study advocates for the development of a situated SES/SEFS approach that integrates the aspects of social vulnerability, particularly when confronting issues entailing significant ecological and/or other livelihood repercussions (Allen and Prosperi 2016; Foran et al. 2014).

2.8 Synthesis

This chapter outlined the historical origins of the food security concept as it appeared in and shaped the mainstream development discourse. The above overview illustrated the changing role of cash crops within international agendas for rural development and food

58 security, culminating with the recent push for the integration of smallholder cash crop producers into global production chains through programs like Guatemala’s ProRural. Along with problematizing market-based (particularly cash-crop-based) approaches to strengthening food security, the purpose of the above account was to demonstrate some of the limitations of food security as a framework, with the socio-ecological food systems (SEFS) framework proposed as an alternative. Though it has its own limitations, it was argued here that situated SEFS is better suited for incorporating ecological aspects and scalar dynamics of food provisioning into food security analysis, which are particularly important in the case of the global commodity crop (oil palm) expansion in the socially, economically, and ecologically vulnerable setting of Lachuá. The following chapter lays out the historical context of oil palm cultivation in Guatemala, linking it to the broader development and food security discourse, and revealing the roots of vulnerability in the study region.

Chapter 3

Literature Review: Cash Crops in Guatemala

Guatemala has historically been a targeted site for export crop development. From the time of the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, the political economy of export agriculture in Guatemala has taken many forms, culminating in what Alonso-Fradejas (2015) calls financialized and flexible agrarian extractivism. This chapter outlines the history of cash crop production in Guatemala from early ‘traditional’ exports to the emerging contemporary agrarian extractivist regime. Unlike previous eras of agrarian development, the new regime is exceedingly driven by financial actors taking advantage of ‘flexible’ narratives19 and reconfiguring labour relations to further de-value rural labour. The chapter concludes with an overview of contemporary oil palm boom in Guatemala and its influence on rural development and food security.

3.1 From conquest to export capitalism

Guatemala has long been recognized as a birthplace of agriculture. Some 8,000 years ago, the Mayans that inhabited the Mesoamerican region domesticated endemic plant species to develop an array of crops of modern significance, most notably cotton and maize (Vavilov 1992). While the many questions and debates remain about the nature of the social relations and agricultural practices of the pre-Columbian Maya, researchers have shown the pre-conquest agriculture was rich in diversity and complexity. For instance, Teran and Rasmussen (1994) described a highly productive and genetically diverse milpa system in pre-Columbian Yucatan, which was upheld by communal land ownership and support from the ruling class. Other accounts spoke of gardens across the Mayan Mesoamerica, where cultivation of maize, beans, chillies, spices, and squash was common in extensive orchards and in household gardens. The overarching consensus is that the Mayan civilization had

19 As further explained in section 3.5, discursive flexibility is particular to flex crops such as oil palm. Hunsberger and Alonso-Fradejas (2016) argue that flex crops can be woven into multiple legitimizing discourses, which gives their proponents leverage to maneuver through regulatory constraints, and stifle social opposition.

60 well-developed agricultural technologies and management practices well before colonization (Whitmore and Turner II 1992; Gutierrez and Fust 2011). While milpa agriculture is still widely prevalent in Mesoamerica and continues to serve as a cornerstone of rural livelihoods in the country, its contemporary relevance was undoubtedly shaped by the forced insertion of Mayans into the global food economy by colonial powers.

The Spanish conquest of (what is now) Guatemala began in the 1520s, with two decades of plunder, turmoil, and disease brought by the conquistadors in search of elusive – and, in some cases, not so elusive – riches (Grandin 2000). By the 1530s, the Spanish had established control over many territories from Chiapas to Belize, though their success with subduing the Q’eqchi’20 Mayans had been initially limited (Grandia 2012). In the 1540s, the Spaniards began using religious conversion of the Q’eqchi’s by Dominican priests as an alternative means of conquest (Todorov 1984). Although this method was deemed ‘peaceful’ by its proponents, it incorporated forceful resettlement of native peoples and transformation of the Q’eqchi’ economy to fund the church coffers (Grandia 2012). Through the decades that followed, religious conversion continued to play a central role in breaking indigenous identity and shaping agrarian change in Guatemala. Reconfiguration of Mayan settlements by the Dominicans and the introduction of coffee to the region by the Jesuits in the 1700s, are examples of the earlier influences of Christian sects in Guatemala (Grandia 2012). Christian religions maintained a powerful social and political presence in the country, and to this day remain a strong yet divisive aspect of Guatemalans’ ethnic identities (Althoff 2017).

During the colonial period (the 1520s to independence from Spain in 1821), the Spaniards expropriated large swathes of land from the indigenous population, and coerced the natives into working on large privately owned estates (haciendas) (McCreery 1994). Haciendas were owned by the Spanish elite, producing export crops such as cacao, sugar,

20 There were many Mayan ethnic groups in Guatemala including Q’eqchi’ (which remain prominent in the northern lowlands), Itzá, Pocomchi’, Kaqchikel, K’iche’, Mam, Ixil, and others.

61 cotton, and indigo and cochineal dyes21 (Wagner et al. 2001; Jonas 1991). Cheap labour was essential for the colonial extractivist economy, which was already strained by trade restrictions and high transport costs to Europe. In the 1601, a repartimiento system was formally established to address the issue of hacienda labour shortages, whereby indigenous towns were forced to provide a determined number of workers during certain parts of the year (Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes 1995). Black slaves were also used on haciendas and in other occupations up until shortly after independence. However, their use was limited due to high costs of bringing them from abroad as well as fears of revolt (McCreery 1994). The drafted repartimiento workers therefore remained the single most important source of agricultural labour in the colonial period.

Following Guatemala’s independence from Spain in 1821, the liberal elite sought to restructure the economy, giving rise to export-based capitalism. Their liberal elite saw building of transport infrastructure – particularly railways and ports, as a key to progress (Colby 2006). Furthermore, they began promoting the cultivation of a globally traded commodity – coffee. While efforts to diversify commercial agriculture also took place – such as a 1932 decree to exempt previously uncultivated fruits, indigo, cotton, and achiote22 from taxes – coffee quickly seized the focus of agricultural elites (Wagner et al. 2001). In the latter half of the 19th century, the Guatemalan agricultural sector was characterized by massive foreign investment into coffee plantations, solicited by the government through large land grants to foreigners, elimination of export taxes on coffee, and enforcement of exploitative labour laws – which were key to the success of these labour-intensive enterprises (Campbell 2003). The system favoured the influx of European farmers by giving them access to prime farmland, while sidelining the native population to forced labour and marginal-quality farmland (if any). Thousands of hectares of land that were earmarked for private investors were confiscated lands from indigenous communities that did not have secure land titles (Grandia 2012; Comisión de Apoyo 2002).

21 Cochineal and indigo were the principal export products up until the early 1800s, followed by cacao and cotton (Wagner et al. 2001)

22 A shrub grown for its orange-red seeds used to make food colouring.

During this time, part of the indigenous population was forced to move to less fertile land to continue subsistence farming (von Braun et al. 1989). The rest was effectively converted into a feudal labour force, with over 40% of the population living on coffee plantations (King 1974). The predominant labour regime was that of debt peonage, where the plantation owners paid wages that were so low that the workers were kept in permanent debt (Grandia 2012). The regime was enforced by government mandates such as a law requiring an employer to ask for all potential employees to present a note stating that they had no outstanding debts (Cambranes 1985). The fact that plantations were reliant on cheap labour was well-understood, and as such, the extreme exploitation of labour was accepted as a keystone of export-based capitalism (Grandia 2012).

The liberal government’s ambitious and costly railway projects that were intended to connect major coffee producing regions with ports and urban centers culminated at the end of the 19th century, with the collapse of world coffee prices (Colby 2006). In order to complete the Northern Railroad connecting Guatemala City to the western coffee lands and Puerto Barrios on the Carribean coast, the liberal dictator Estrada Cabrera solicited investment from the United Fruit Company in exchange for a 99-year lease on 168,000 acres of land along the rail route (Colby 2006). United Fruit, which already held vast land holdings throughout Central America and the Caribbean, established banana plantations on the concession lands, adding Guatemala to its growing list of ‘banana republics’ (Bucheli 2008).

Cabrera was succeeded by a series of short-term leaders, until the infamous dictatorship of Jorge Ubico took hold in 1931. Ubico was a strong supporter of US elites, including the United Fruit Company, as well as a staunch anti-communist. His labour policies were thus aimed at maintaining a steady supply of workers for labour-intensive plantations, and suppressing any kind of actions concerning labour rights (Bucheli 2008). His initiatives included a 1934 vagrancy law that required those who owned less than 2.8 hectares of land to work 100-150 days as wage labourers (Lovell 1988). He also legalized the physical punishment and even murder of ‘rebellious Indians’ by landowners (Bucheli 2008). Alongside indigenous Mayan workers, migrant labour from the West Indies, Jamaica, and Barbados became prevalent in the banana plantations of the labour-scarce north coast

(Colby 2006). The division of roles (e.g. managerial vs. heavy labour), payment systems, and even medical care on United Fruit plantations was extremely racialized. Plantation managers, who were predominantly white and ladino23, were paid monthly salaries and enjoyed easy access to hospital care. Indigenous Mayan, West Indian, and black migrant workers performed heavy manual labour for which they were paid per task, and often endured severe violence from their employers and managers (Colby 2006). Racial discrimination and violence was deeply engrained in social institutions, and was readily taken advantage of by United Fruit and other agri-businesses as a means of controlling their labour force.

3.2 Democratic reforms

In the 1940s, the paradigm shifted with the first democratically elected presidents: Arévalo (1945-1951) and Árbenz (1951-1954). The fall of the Ubico dictatorship was followed by radical constitutional reforms, which, among other things, criminalized racial discrimination, legalized labour unions, established a 40-hour work week, and banned private monopolies (Bucheli 2008). For the most part, however, these provisions did not have enough reach to improve peasant rights in the countryside.

After succeeding Arévalo, Jacobo Árbenz instituted the Agrarian Reform Law, which effectively abolished debt slavery and gave the government the power to expropriate idle land from large plantations and other foreign estate lands. The government distributed the land to the landless families, many of whom were former plantation employees (Brockett 1998). Árbenz’ reforms also included a large expropriation of land from the United Fruit Company, which at the time was the biggest employer, landowner and exporter in Guatemala thanks partly to a 1924 government grant of 188,399 hectares of fertile land (Wittman and Saldívar 2006; Thiesenhusen 1995). This sparked a conflict between the government and United Fruit, which at the time had strong ties with the political elite in the United States. In particular, United Fruit was connected to John and Allen Dulles, who were, respectively, the US Secretary of State and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

23 Mixed race between the Mayan natives and the Spanish

64 under President Dwight Eisenhower and had previously conducted legal work for the United Fruit Company. The U.S. undersecretary of State, Walter Bedell Smith, would later become the CEO of the Company (Schlesinger and Kinzer 1999). In consequence, Árbenz was quickly overthrown in a CIA-orchestrated coup, under the justification of protecting U.S. corporate interests and warding off ‘communist threat’ (Wittman and Saldívar 2006).

Following the coup, many of Árbenz’ reforms were nullified (Bucheli 2008). About 80% of the beneficiaries of Árbenz’ land reform either fled or were turned back into plantation workers by the newly instated military regime (Grandia 2012). Some 8,000 peasants were murdered in the process of returning the land (Jonas 1991).

3.3 Government-led developmentalism

The ever-widening social inequalities following the coup provoked a long and bloody civil war, with one military dictatorship getting replaced by the next – all intent on quelling indigenous insurgencies, or even the threat of them, by any means necessary. The three decades of military dictatorships that followed the 1954 coup were marked by violence and repression, including hundreds of government-sponsored massacres of Mayan villages and forced resettlements until the 1980s (Ybarra 2010). During this time, the military dictators pursued government-led developmentalist policies for agrarian development and continued rural colonization (Wittman and Saldívar 2006).

In 1956, under the guidance of U.S. advisors, the military government established a new land policy that reversed some of the distributive efforts of the preceding Árbenz administration. The new policy, which came to be known as the Rural Development Program, aimed to boost the export economy via cattle, timber, and cash-crop expansion24, emphasizing comparative advantage – the basis of the prevalent developmentalist logic of that time (Grandia 2012). The program included a resettlement plan of thousands of poor

24 U.S. advisors recommended increasing coffee and cotton production, as well as diversifying to other export crops – mainly rubber and cacao (Streeter 1999).

65 farmers to ‘agricultural development zones’25, creation of technical aid programs, and building of infrastructure including roads, irrigation, housing, health facilities, and schools (Pearson 1963). Despite being labeled a great success by the U.S. and International Development Services26 in tackling the peasant landlessness problem, the Rural Development Program benefitted only 5,265 families in seven years, most of whom were relatively well-off ladinos27. The newly-established technical aid agency – Servicio Cooperative Interamericano de Agricultura (SCIDA) – was also directed primarily towards ladino farmers to assist with seed, fertilizer, pesticide and farm machinery (Streeter 1999). Likewise, government loans funnelled through credit agencies such as Banco del Agro were mostly reserved for well-off cash crop farmers, with total loans granted to maize and bean farmers amounting to a meagre 2% (Streeter 1999). In all, the post-coup developmentalist project endeavoured to turn indigenous peasants away from subsistence farming, which was deemed ‘primitive’ by the U.S. advisors, and retain them as a cheap agrarian labour force.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the government continued to maintain the interests of the agro-export elite and pursued economic development in targeted frontier territories, including the Pacific coast and the Franja Transversal del Norte (Northern Transversal Strip), both as a means to expand extractivist activities and to solidify control over these regions (Grandia 2012). The National Institute of Agrarian Transformation (INTA) was one of the bureaucratic instruments of this new wave of colonization. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, INTA sold over 600,000 hectares of government-owned land to private owners. Although landless rural families were eligible to obtain land through the program,

25 ‘Agricultural development zones’ were established on lands donated by the United Fruit Company, on state-owned farms, or privately-purchased lands. This initiative was largely motivated by the U.S. officials’ fear of more social strife and communist uprising (Streeter 1999).

26 International Development Services (IDS) was a non-profit consulting firm that was hired by the U.S. state department to lead agrarian development in Guatemala. IDS activities were funded mainly by the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) – a U.S. government agency responsible for distributing foreign aid between 1955 and 1961 (Streeter 1999).

27 By comparison, Arbenz’ agrarian reform benefitted more than 500,000 people in less than two years (Berger 1992).

66 the main beneficiaries had been a handful of large landowners who acquired large extensions of prime agricultural land (Hough et al. 1982). INTA also facilitated many land claims for military officers, particularly in the resource-rich Franja region (Brockett 1998). The rural poor mainly received small plots of land for subsistence purposes, and at that, with many restrictions such having to pay off their land debt in 10 years, not being able to sell the land for 10 years or more, and not being issued a definitive title to the land (only a provisional title) until the debt was completely paid off (Lastarria-Cornhiel 2003). In some cases INTA issued land to Q’eqchi communities under a common title. However, the bureaucratic process, particularly with respect to Q’eqchi individual and community claims, was highly inconsistent, confusing, slow, and constantly changing. Q’eqchi’ claimants were highly vulnerable to (perhaps purposeful) record discrepancies and corruption of INTA agents (Grandia 2012). As a result, many small landholders were discouraged by the lengthy and burdensome titling process and eventually sold their land via the informal economy, sometimes for a fraction of its value (Grandia 2012; Solano 2000).

3.4 Neoliberal restructuring

The transition towards neoliberalism and corporate capitalism in the agrarian sector in Guatemala was part of the longer trajectory that began in the 1950s. By the 1980s, the Guatemalan government had run up considerable foreign debt, which it was unable to resolve on its own (Conroy et al. 1996). It then turned to international financial institutions and foreign aid to rectify its growing deficit. In exchange for loans, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank imposed a set of structural adjustment policies to open up land markets, liberalize trade, and promote corporate investment (Wittman and Saldívar 2006; Hansen-Kuhn 1993). Together with USAID, international lenders pushed for the cultivation and export of non-traditional crops (NTX) including winter vegetables (e.g. snow peas and broccoli), melons, tropical fruits, and spices (e.g. cardamom, mace, and nutmeg) (Isakson 2014).

NTX crops in the Guatemalan case refer to crops that were not previously produced in the country for export (e.g. tropical fruits, vegetables, etc.). One distinction between NTX and traditional exports is that many NTX crops were explicitly promoted to smallholder

67 farmers (von Braun et al. 1989). Secondly, NTX went hand-in-hand with the promotion of modern farming technologies including synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and high-yielding seed varieties. These technologies came to pervade not only NTX farming, but also farming of subsistence crops, leading to the growing dependence of subsistence farmers on expensive inputs (Carey 2009). Thirdly, NTX were a part of a wider bundle of structural adjustment policies aimed at liberalizing agricultural investment and trade and invoking the comparative advantage logic, which suggests that Guatemala should leverage its natural endowments and low labour costs to produce high value exports28 (Isakson 2014, Barham et al. 1992).

Efforts to maintain the purported comparative advantage included suppressing efforts to organize worker unions and promoting privatization of communal lands, as part of a broader program to subdue any political mobilization by the peasants (Wittman and Saldívar 2006; Hansen-Kuhn 1993). By the early 1980s, Guatemala had an enormous landless and sub-subsistence population and no political will to pursue land reforms (Brockett 1998). Instead, expanding NTX production was conceived as a way to absorb the surplus low-skilled labour while generating foreign exchange dollars to repay foreign lenders (Isakson 2014a). The World Bank, along with other international proponents of NTX, further touted the approach as capable of generating positive socio-economic spillover effects such as poverty alleviation, improved access to food, and creation of new opportunities in input industries and processing (World Bank 2007; Thrupp et al. 1995). This rhetoric mimicked a broader global discourse promoting market-based strategies and trade liberalization as the path towards pro-poor development (Fairbairn 2010).

Government cut-backs on agricultural technical assistance and credit combined with a parallel emergence of USAID-funded NTX assistance led many peasant farmers to abandon (at least partly) their staple crop cultivation and switch to NTX in the 1980s-1990s (Conroy

28 Notably, Green Revolution technologies and NTX cultivation in Guatemala were also presented by proponents as an antithesis to communist ambitions. Thus, the adoption of NTX by peasants was sometimes motivated by the desire not to be perceived as ‘backward’ or ‘communist’ (Carey 2009).

68 et al. 1996). However, not all adopters of NTX fared out well. The farmers’ success was contingent on a number of factors including their initial economic standing, access to support, and the timing of their market entry (Carletto et al. 2011). Some of the earlier adopters of NTX, including the smaller farmers, were able to derive substantial income gains from NTX, at least in the short term (von Braun and Immink 1994; Immink and Alarcón 1992). However, with the progressive deterioration of support services and growing global competition in the 1990s, many NTX producers, particularly those that were more resource-poor, were driven to abandon NTX and in some cases go back to staple crop cultivation (Isakson 2009, 2014; Carletto et al. 2011). A panel study found that early adopters of NTX who took advantage of the NTX boom in the 1980s and subsequently withdrew from production fared out better in the long run than those who adopted NTX later and/or stayed in NTX production for an extended time despite the unfavourable market conditions (Carletto et al. 2011). On a larger scale, the widespread displacement of staple crops by NTX, has contributed to a growing national dependence on imported agrochemicals and maize over the last three decades, which had largely negative consequences for the food security of the rural poor (Isakson 2014).

3.5 New agrarian extractivism?

The 1996 Peace Accords formally ended the civil war in Guatemala. The agreement had a number of ambitious (official) objectives including implementing programs to facilitate more equal distribution of land, protect community-owned lands, and recover and redistribute land previously obtained through corrupt means (Palma Murga 1997). Many of these proposals were abandoned, with a notable exception of the continued land titling and cadastal registry efforts (Ybarra 2010). Ultimately, securing land tenure did not do much to address the underlying causes of peasant vulnerability and instead, formalized the existing inequalities and uneven power relations29 (Gauster and Isakson 2007). However, the official government position saw tenure security as a step towards resolving land

29 It has been suggested that land titling can be used as a method of avoiding agrarian reform, and in Guatemala’s case – institutionalizing the military-led land distribution during the civil war, which was common particularly in the Franja region (Ybarra 2010).

69 conflicts, creating opportunities for farmers through creating loan collateral, and facilitating more fair, ‘free’, and peaceful land transactions (Deininger 2003; World Bank 1998; c.f. de Soto 2000).

The re-conceptualization of land as a ‘commodity’ and ‘collateral’ was largely a reflection of the emerging development narrative of the time, which trended further away from state developmentalism and more towards the development of institutions to facilitate the efficient functioning of markets. In this vision of rural development, a primary role of the government is to facilitate the financial inclusion for farmers, mainly through enabling their access to credit. Farmers, on the other hand, are expected to effectively harness credit by transforming risks into opportunities and selecting the best inputs and growing practices given their unique set of goals and endowments (Taylor 2012; Soederberg 2013). This development model lay in the broader context of the ‘financialization’ of the global food economy, where agricultural production and food provisioning are increasingly mediated through financial instruments and logics and oriented towards the generation of financial profits. (Isakson 2014b; Clapp 2016; c.f. Epstein 2001; Krippner 2011).

The globalization and financialization of agriculture has been distinctly correlated with the rise of so-called ‘flex crops’. Flex crops are crops with many possible uses including food, animal feed, fuel, fiber, industrial materials, and others. In having multiple and assertedly interchangeable demand centers, flex crops are particularly attractive to investors seeking to mitigate risk while taking advantage of price spikes in booming markets (Borras et al. 2016). Thus, fueled by massive international investments, the land area dedicated to the cultivation of flex crops has expanded at an unprecedented rate in different parts of the world. Guatemala, among other developing countries, took up flex crop cultivation – mainly of sugarcane and oil palm – as part of its rural development strategy (Dürr 2016; Alonso-Fradejas 2012).

Alonso-Fradejas (2015) suggests that the rise of oil palm and sugarcane in Guatemala during the 2000s has been a constituent of a new wave of agrarian transformation, which he terms the flexible and financialized type of agrarian extractivism. Flexibility in this extractive regime refers to two key aspects: flexibility of the labour regime in flex crop cultivation, and discursive flexibility of flex crops in global narratives. As I discuss in the

70 following paragraphs, both have been instrumental in de-valuing rural labour, and reconfiguring labour relations towards repression and precarization. At the same time, financialization of agriculture has worked to disadvantage smallholder flex crop producers and undermine subsistence farming (c.f. Isakson 2014b). Specifically, the rise of speculative activity in the agricultural sector and related markets, which is particularly relevant to investor-driven flex crop booms, has introduced new uncertainties in agricultural production and exposed farmers, particularly marginalized producers in the global South, to intensifying processes of dispossession and exploitation (Isakson 2014b; Spratt 2013). Financialization has also strengthened the position of food retailers in agro- food supply chains and pushed food produces – particularly small-scale farmers – into a weaker and more vulnerable position in the global food system and in relation to their larger competitors (Isakson 2014b).

A key feature of labour flexibility in this regime is ‘functional dualism’, or the coexistence and complementarity of the subsistence agricultural economy with the commodity- producing sector. Most peasant households in Guatemala tend to engage in multiple livelihood activities – often a combination of subsistence farming and wage labour (Isakson 2014; de Janvry and Sadoulet 2011). Following Ellis (1993) peasant households are defined here as those that derive their livelihoods mainly from agriculture using family labour in farm production, and constitute units of both production and consumption. Peasants are only partially integrated into markets, which also tend to be incomplete. This distinguishes peasants from capitalist family farmers that operate within developed product and input markets.

Peasant farmers in Lachuá typically lack enough land to be entirely self-sufficient and thereby become dependent on other sources of income. While some peasants earn income by selling crafts or running small stores, the vast majority rely on wage labour. At the same time, because returns from wage labour are so low and uncertain, the peasants/labourers continue to rely on subsistence farming to fulfill a portion of their consumption needs. Consequently, like their counterparts throughout the global South, peasant farmers in Lachuá include both capitalist and non-capitalist activities into their broader livelihood strategies (c.f. Bryceson et al. 2000; Ellis 2008; Isakson 2009).

On a broader scale, this ‘semi-proletarianization’ of peasant livelihoods (Kay 2000) has the systemic effect of lowering subsistence wages for agricultural labour by factoring out the value of the worker’s family production on the subsistence plot, thereby reducing the cost of social reproduction to employers (de Janvry and Garramón 1977; de Janvry 1981). In this way, the peasant sector remains dependent on the existence of a capitalist sector, while the capitalist sector, given the co-existence of subsistence farming, underpays its labourers and generates a higher profit than its competitors that must pay their workers a living wage. As theorized by de Janvry (1981), this articulation of capitalist and non-capitalist relations of production can be ‘functional’ for certain trajectories of capitalist development.

The flexibility of the labour regime on Guatemalan oil palm and sugarcane plantations also draws on the progressive erosion of rural employment opportunities as flex crop cultivation takes over land that has previously been used for staple crop production. Oil palm and sugarcane require less labour than traditional staple crops on the same size of land parcel (Dürr 2017; Alonso-Fradejas 2015). Furthermore, small-scale staple agriculture has linkages to local small and medium trading and processing sectors, thus adding more local jobs and keeping a larger share of profits within the region (Dürr 2017). By eroding rural employment options, flex crop expansion sets up the conditions for heightened worker exploitation and higher employment uncertainty.

The discursive flexibility specific to flex crops results from the entanglement of these multi- use crops in global discourses on food security, renewable energy, climate change mitigation, energy security, and democratization – each encompassing narratives appealing to common societal interests, while serving corporate objectives (Borras et al 2015; Levidow et al 2013). Discursive flexibility gives the proponents of flex crops the strategic ability to choose or switch between multiple legitimizing discourses favouring flex crop development, allowing them to maneuver through regulatory constraints and social opposition (Hunsberger and Alonso-Fradejas 2016). This way, flex crops are uniquely positioned to obfuscate labour issues and stymie resistance, while governments are given an ethical platform to reduce government intervention in agriculture and favour self- regulation of flex crops and related markets (O’Laughlin 2008).

While functional dualism in itself is not a new phenomenon, in combination with discursive flexibility, loss of rural employment options, and undermined small-scale and subsistence farming through financialization, it has facilitated downward pressure on agricultural wages. The dramatic expansion of flex crops in Guatemala and the entrenchment of these crops in multiple discourses and complex global commodity supply chains is producing repressive and hyper-commodified rural labour relations never seen before, with few alternative livelihood options and little recourse for resistance (Alonso Fradejas 2015).

3.6 The Guatemalan oil palm boom

Oil palm is one of the two major flex crops that have seen unprecedented growth in Guatemala over the last three decades. Globally, palm oil production has climbed exponentially since the 1960s. Indonesia and Malaysia have been the leaders in palm oil production, together accounting for nearly 85% of total global output as of 2018 (USDA 2018). Colombia, Ecuador, and Honduras remained relatively minor producers (less than 100,000 MT) until the 1980s. However their production increased steadily, with Colombia now producing over 1.5 million MT of palm oil per year, and Ecuador and Honduras producing 610,000 MT and 580,000 MT respectively. Guatemala – a latecomer to the oil palm market – production of the flex crop was relatively insignificant until the 1990s, with its production isolated a small number of farms on the southern coast and piedmont. The expansion of oil palm in Guatemala over the past three decades has been remarkable. In less than 25 years it surpassed both Ecuador and Honduras in production volume. Between 2000 and 2016, palm oil production in Guatemala climbed six-fold (USDA 2018). Currently, Guatemala produces about 740,000 MT of crude palm oil, making it the second-largest (after Colombia) oil palm producer in Latin America (USDA 2018, see Figure 3).

Considerable debate remains regarding the drivers of the enormous demand growth for palm oil, especially in recent years. A number of researchers have connected the surge in demand to growing biofuel markets driven, among other things, by concerns about climate change, energy security, and rising petroleum prices (Hameed and Arshad 2008; Carter et al. 2007). The relative contribution of the biofuel sector to palm oil demand has been

73 challenged, especially since palm oil continues to be primarily used for food consumption30 (Sanders et al. 2013). However, biofuel mandates in developed countries – notably the European Union31, and increasingly in developing countries, have undoubtedly fueled speculation and catalyzed the rising global investments in palm oil (Nupueng et al. 2018; Castiblanco et al. 2015; Borras et al. 2010; Dauvergne and Neville 2010). At its onset, the development of the Guatemalan oil palm sector was likewise propelled in part by international biofuel investors, where speculation that international oil prices would continue to rise attracted large sums of financial capital that funded the acquisition of farmland throughout the country’s northern lowlands (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; c.f. Borras et al. 2016).

Nearly all of the crude palm oil produced in Guatemala is exported, mostly to Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany, and El Salvador32 (UN Comtrade 2018). The total land area dedicated to oil palm cultivation in the country is uncertain as different sources indicate vastly different figures. Banco de Guatemala estimated that oil palm covered about 23,800 ha in 2001, which increased to about 60,000 ha in 2010 and 82,600 ha in 2014 – amounting to nearly a 250% increase over 13 years (Banco de Guatemala 2014). Another source suggests that over 100,000 ha were already planted with oil palm by 2010 and that the area expansion had been far greater and more rapid than reported by official sources (Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011). Much of the recent oil palm expansion occurred in the northern lowlands of the country, including the Lachuá Ecoregion, where this case study is based.

30 It has been suggested that lower production costs of palm oil, relative price between palm and soy bean oil, and consumer preferences may have played a significant role in pushing up palm oil demand (Priyati 2018; Sanders et al. 2013)

31 Recognizing that the expansion of oil palm is a primary driver of deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia due, the European Union recently voted to ban palm oil in biofuels as of January 2021 (Friends of the Earth Netherlands, 2018).

32 It is difficult to ascertain the final use of the product after it had been exported.

800

700

600

500

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1000 1000 MT 300

200

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1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Year

Production Exports

Figure 3: Guatemalan crude palm oil production and exports 1993 – 2016*.

*Data source: USDA 2018; UN Comtrade 2018.

3.7 ProRural/ProPalma – emergence of oil palm contract farmers

The Guatemalan oil palm boom was spearheaded by large agribusinesses including Olmeca and Palmas del Ixcán, with contract farmers coming into play in the late 2000s. Alongside the oil palm expansion efforts by large firms, the Guatemalan government (through the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock) began to formally promote contract oil palm cultivation around 200833 through the ProPalma program, which was a subsidiary the ProRural program aimed at supporting rural development (Guereña and Zepeda 2013). Oil

33 The program was financed through FONADES (National Development Fund) created in 2006. However, the exact start date of ProRural and ProPalma activities are unclear. Guereña and Zepeda (2013) assert that ProPalma was implemented in 2008 and effectively ended a year later when a number of ProRural programs were directed to the Ministry of Agriculture (MAGA) and the ProPalma trust fund was transferred to ADINC for administration. Other sources suggest that ProRural was still active, in partnership with ADINC, until 2012 (Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011).

75 palm cultivation was explicitly included as part of the national food security strategy in 2009 (PESAN 2009), with the rationale that the generation of rural employment and income would improve food security34 (Guereña and Zepeda 2013).

It should be noted when ProRural was initiated in the mid 2000s, global prices for oil palm were at record highs. The rising demand for palm oil in the food industry and the newly created demand in the energy sector sent the oil palm prices soaring (World Bank Data, 2015). Many expected oil palm to become a sought-after biodiesel feedstock, since it was among the cheapest and least resource-intensive oil crops to produce. As more countries around the globe implemented biofuel blending mandates as part of their climate change mitigation and energy security strategies, massive global investments into the crop began to pour in (Borras et al. 2015; Hall 2011). For instance, Palmas del Ixcán in 2007 was initially established for the purpose of producing oil palm for biodiesel, as a subsidiary of a U.S. based company Green Earth Fuels (Solis et al. 2013). Driven in part by foreign biofuel finance (at least in the beginning), Palmas del Ixcán began to purchase thousands of hectares of land in the Guatemalan northern lowlands – mainly in the Chisec and Ixcán regions of Alta Verapaz and El Quiché. At the same time, the government initiated ProRural/ProPalma to promote oil palm cultivation to farmers in the same regions and to arrange buyer contracts with Palmas del Ixcán (Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011). Oil palm expansion in the area thereby occurred via two fronts: (1) direct purchasing of land by Palmas del Ixcán agribusiness, and (2) government-sponsored efforts to incorporate farmers into the oil palm supply as contract producers for the same enterprise.

To encourage contract farmers start their oil palm farms, ProRural/ProPalma offered seed capital, seedlings, fertilizers (enough for at least the first year) to small-scale producers35 (<24.5 ha), several months of training workshops, and a 25-year contract with a buyer – Palmas del Ixcán. At its conception ProRural intended to invest over 42,000 quetzales

34 PESAN’s vision of oil palm in food security had been rather contradictory, as expanding monocultures were also identified as a threat to food security via displacement of basic grains (PESAN 2009). 35 Oil palm contract farmers in Guatemala range substantially in terms of land holding size: can be less than a hectare to over 100 hectares or anything in between.

(approx. 5500 USD) per producer annually36 over a period of three years while the oil palm trees matured. When the producers begin to sell the fruit, they would start to pay back the amount by selling the fruit at a discount (Guereña and Zepeda 2013). In other words, growers were given an advance on the costs of inputs, which were later deducted from the cost of the fruit.

After a short time in operation (~one year) ProRural was restructured and most of its subsidiary programs were passed onto the Ministry of Agriculture (MAGA). The administration of the remaining ProPalma funding, however, was transferred to the Association of Farmers for the Comprehensive Development of the Northern Basin and the Chixoy River (ADINC)37. From the start, ADINC was plagued with controversy over allegedly incorrect debt and payment records, contract discrepancies, and other issues that put many oil palm growers at an increased disadvantage. Some farmers claimed that ADINC did not deliver all of the promised farming inputs and financial support, rendering them unable to pay their debt because of insufficient harvest, and in some cases having no choice but to sell their land. Some growers left the association and initiated lawsuits (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Solis et al. 2013). Despite the controversy, ADINC continues to administer contracts with Palmas del Ixcán for over 300 smallholder oil palm producers covering over 2100 ha of land, including the debt repayments from ProRural/ProPalma through ADINC (interviews; Guereña and Zepeda 2013).

The oil palm boom in the Guatemalan northern lowlands experienced temporary setbacks in 2008-2009, when the palm oil prices hit a sudden slump, and in 2011, when Palmas del Ixcán temporarily slowed its acquisition plans following the withdrawal of U.S.

36 The investment was considered an advance on future production without interest or collateral. However, some beneficiaries claim to have received less than a quarter of that amount in the first year of the program (Guereña and Zepeda 2013). 37 ADINC is the Association of Farmers for the Comprehensive Development of the Northern Basin and the Chixoy River, supported by government and international aid. Initially the main objective of ADINC was to promote agriculture of staple crops, maize and beans, to sell in local markets. In the late 2000s, it expanded its scope to include cash-crop promotion, particularly oil palm (Guereña and Zepeda 2013).

77 investments38 (Guereña and Zepeda 2013). Palmas del Ixcán initially intended to expand its own plantations to 25,000 hectares by 2013, in addition to working with 800 producers under contract (covering approximately 4000 ha of land). However, by 2013 it purchased only about 5000 ha of land, which was substantially less than originally planned (Guereña and Zepeda 2013), and contracted with less than half of the initially proposed 800 farmers.

Even with the slowdown, oil palm production in Guatemala continued to rise. By 2016, the country produced over 500,000 MT of palm oil per year, signifying a five-fold increase in less than ten years (USDA 2018). However, aside from the members of ADINC, the contribution of contract farmers to the country’s total palm oil output is not well documented. There are several possible causes of the lack of clarity regarding the role of contract farmers. Beyond the administrative challenges and transaction costs associated with keeping track of their contract farmers, large agribusinesses may not want to make too much information available. One issue that has been observed but not widely studied is the difference in working conditions between agribusiness-owned plantations and their contracted suppliers. According to some interviewees, contract farmers who hire wage laborers also tend to pay less and be more open to hiring children than large agribusinesses. Therefore, documenting information about their vendors may provoke undesired scrutiny for the oil palm agribusinesses. Another issue is that disclosing vendor information may complicate the agribusiness’ prospects of obtaining sustainability certifications. For example, the Roundtable for Sustainable Oil Palm has only recently started a certification program for smallholder oil palm producers. However, this program is aimed at smallholder groups or cooperatives, and is therefore not suitable for certifying individual producers who may be selling fruit to a large agribusiness (RSPO 2016).

Despite the lack of records, it is known that oil palm contract farming is not unique to the Chisec and Ixcán regions or to Palmas del Ixcán. Naturaceites – another large oil palm

38 Green Earth Fuels cited economic losses during the 2008 financial crisis as their reason for pulling out of the Guatemalan venture. However, it has been speculated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to strip palm oil-based biodiesel of its ‘renewable’ fuel designation due to concerns over deforestation, may have also been a factor in the company’s decision to withdraw from oil palm (Guereña and Zepeda 2013).

78 agribusiness that operates in various parts of Guatemala – also works with contract farmers (Naturaceites 2016). Further differences between contract farmers and large agribusinesses are discussed in Chapter 4 in the context of their development implications in the host communities.

3.8 Oil palm, development, and food security in Guatemala

Much like the earlier NTX initiatives, ProRural/ProPalma promoted oil palm through a pro- poor rhetoric. By offering peasant producers an opportunity to enter into what was, at the time, a booming commodity sector, ProPalma proponents claimed that the program would generate development in some of the poorest parts of Guatemala, and curb the problem of land sales (interviews; Solis et al. 2013; Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011). However, reminiscent of the NTX programs, ProPalma’s actual development outcomes have been mixed as they sometimes worked against the poor, especially if participants had entered the market late, under adverse terms, or with inadequate support (Isakson 2014; Solis et al. 2013; Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Carletto et al. 2007).

In the emerging agrarian extractivist regime, the small-scale oil palm contract farmers are subordinated into the vertically integrated supply chains under highly restrictive conditions, with consequences for their workforce and host communities. As some of the poorer and most vulnerable members of the oil palm production complex, contract farmers are subsumed in such a way that they no longer collect the surplus value and land rent, and are rendered progressively weaker with respect to other actors in the supply chain, and susceptible to market volatility (Alonso-Fradejas 2015; c.f. Watts 1994). The exploitative relationship between contract growers and large agribusiness was set up with the initial contract arrangement through ProPalma, which included a 25-year purchasing agreement between the farmers and Palmas del Ixcán. This agreement was one of the key determining factors for the producers in deciding to cultivate oil palm as it guaranteed them a buyer for their product, which was not the case with a number of previous cash-crop promotion

79 schemes headed by NGOs and government agencies39. However, the contract provided no other guarantees and left the landowners solely responsible for all aspects of production, transportation of the fruit to the buyer’s processing facility, and managing risks of crop failure. Furthermore, the contract pegged the purchase price of oil palm fruit to the international price of petroleum40 (from interviews with oil palm growers), thereby forcing the farmers to share the risk of commodity price fluctuation, including if prices fall below production costs.

In the contract arrangement, the buyer is also free to apply its own quality standards in its management of suppliers (c.f. Watts 1994). If the quality of the fruit is below average (i.e. if the fruit has low juice/oil content), the weight of the harvest is lower, and thus the grower bears the cost of the poor harvest. The producer also assumes all risks, from environmental (e.g. droughts, crop disease), to economic (e.g. rise in fertilizer costs), to social and political (e.g. employee management, community relations, land conflicts, etc.). This way, the contract arrangement formalized the dependency of the producers on their sole purchaser while assigning nearly all of the risk burden to the contract farmers and linking their fate directly to global commodity price fluctuations. Furthermore, the heavily constrained farmers are forced to contend with growing competition for their farmland, and to compete with large enterprises deploying modern farming techniques and biotechnologies (Alonso-Fradejas 2015).

The subordinate position of Lachuán contract farmers in the oil palm sector and its implications for development and food security in the host community are discussed in Chapter 4. The results in this study largely confirm the earlier suggestions that small flex- crop (oil palm) producers are particularly vulnerable to global commodity price

39 From interviews with oil palm growers and community leaders. One community leader recalled instances of agents coming to the region to promote cash crops such as cardamom and never returning to purchase the harvest as initially promised. 40 Another sources suggests that the purchase price is calculated as a fraction of international oil palm price (Alonso-Fradejas, personal communication). The reason for the discrepancy is unclear, but may be due to variations in contract terms with Palmas del Ixcan and/or ADINC, or misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of the pricing scheme. For instance, some oil palm producers have accused ADINC of debt miscalculations and contract irregularities (Guereña and Zepeda 2013).

80 fluctuations, which carries negative consequences for employment, wages, and food security in their host communities.

To date, not much research exists documenting the effects of ProPalma and the subsequent oil palm expansion on rural development and food security outcomes. Most existing studies of oil palm in Guatemala have focused on agrarian conflict and land grabbing (Granovsky-Larsen 2013; Alonso-Fradejas 2012; Grandia 2012; Ybarra 2010), with others looking at regional economic impacts of oil palm (Dürr 2016), labour issues on oil palm plantations (Hurtado and Sanchez 2012), and some aspects of socio-economic impacts on households such as income, maize self-sufficiency, and time spent on social activities, family, personal care, and rest (Mingorría et al. 2014). However, these works have pointed to significant problems caused by large agribusiness expansion, with little mention of contract farmers and their impacts on host communities. A few studies have touched on implications of oil palm on food security, though not extensively (Gómez 2016; Mingorría et al. 2014). None of the existing studies have examined socio-ecological resilience or food system vulnerability, which is a gap that is addressed in this thesis.

Overall, the existing literature on oil palm cultivation has questioned the benefits of the crop for rural development, particularly for the poor. Dürr (2016) found that replacing maize cultivation with oil palm decreases regional employment by about 30%, mostly due to the loss of forward-linked jobs in petty trading and local processing. Furthermore, because most of the generated wealth tends to leave the region (heading directly towards national and transnational firms), substitution of maize with oil palm decreases regional income by about 40%. Dürr (2016) concluded that maize generates a far more inclusive and pro-poor development than oil palm. The study presented in this thesis further examines the problem of uneven development by differentiating the impacts of oil palm on different types of households and outlining the processes leading to the disadvantage of vulnerable households in the host community.

Other studies (Mingorría et al. 2014; Hurtado and Sanchez 2012) also scrutinized employment generation by oil palm companies, mainly with respect to a lack of job security, poor working conditions, unfair pay, and highly oppressive and exploitative employment dynamics. Mingorría et al (2014) noted that oil palm employment is

81 associated with increased household income, although the significance of the increase is reduced when taking into account other aspects of household productivity (e.g. income over time spent on work; less time on other productive activities). This thesis extends the existing research of oil palm employment to farmers working under contract with an agribusiness, including the implications for household income.

Studies looking explicitly at food security outcomes of oil palm in Guatemala have been largely absent. Among those that have, Mingorría et al. (2014) suggested that the rising prevalence of oil palm wage labour in household livelihood strategies can compromise maize self-provisioning, potentially leading to lower food security. Specifically, they found that households whose member are wage workers on oil palm plantations have generally lower maize productivity as a result of having less time for maize cultivation. Their study also concluded that women whose husbands or sons worked on oil palm plantations have less time to rest and participate in community activities as they need to spend more time on household chores and tending to maize fields (c.f. Agarwal 2000). Though the study hints at declining food security and general wellbeing in the oil palm producing communities, these impacts were not treated in depth. More research is necessary to understand how and why the development of oil palm shapes the various dimensions of food provisioning, including procurement and consumption, and whether its impacts are similar in contexts beyond Mingorría et al.’s (2014) case study.

A confounding aspect of understanding rural food (in)security in Guatemala is that many households partake in a combination of subsistence farming and wage labour, which can be impacted in different ways by external shocks such as spikes in food prices (De Janvry and Sadoulet 2011; Isakson 2009). The implications of oil palm expansion on wage labourers’ household incomes and staple food cultivation and access are discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 5 further unpacks the interactions between wages and staple crop cultivation outcomes, which are particularly reflected in the cost analysis of maize cultivation, as well as the increasing importance of cost minimization strategies such as non-waged exchanges.

A scarcely explored aspect of development and food security in Guatemalan oil palm literature is the environmental impact of the spreading monoculture. Negative impacts of oil palm plantations on biodiversity, soils, and water resources have been documented in

82 other parts of the world (Carlson et al. 2014; Lee et al. 2013; Obidzinski et al. 2012; Comte et al. 2012), though not explicitly in correspondence with food system dynamics. Environmental concern has recently peaked in light of the 2015 ecological disaster in La Pasión River when an alleged toxic spill from an oil palm processing facility belonging to REPSA (Reforestadora de Palma de Petén SA) caused massive die-off of fish and contamination of water used by dozens of downstream communities (an allegation that the company continues to deny) (Zepeda 2017). While the incident garnered international attention for the widespread ecological damage and serious livelihood impacts on the local (predominantly poor) population, systematic socio-ecological studies concerning oil palm are lacking, particularly in regard to regular oil palm farming operations that do not immediately result in a striking ‘ecocide’ event like the La Pasión spill41 (Water Grabbing 2016). One undergraduate thesis study of a community in Chisec hinted at compromised food security from encroaching oil palm plantations, citing deforestation, increased prevalence of disease-carrying pests, and declining water resources among the main issues (Gómez 2016). Similar issues have been documented in the oil palm dominated community in this study, and incorporated into a comprehensive analysis of the local food system and socio-ecological resilience of the host community.

Nearly all of the oil palm studies in Guatemala point to the rising pressure on land as a key issue compromising the development prospects of host communities, aggravating conflicts, and heightening local food insecurity (c.f. Gómez 2016; Mingorría et al. 2014; Alonso- Fradejas 2012; Grandia 2012). Oil palm has been notoriously problematic in permanently (and sometimes forcibly) displacing indigenous Maya subsistence farmers in favour of large-scale monocrop plantation establishment, typically owned by large agribusinesses (Alonso-Fradejas 2012). Interestingly, the ProRural-led smallholder integration into the oil

41 Several study participants mentioned that oil palm and other plantations in different parts of the country have been known to alter river flows and possibly contaminate water bodies, which has been condemned as ‘water grabbing’. Affected communities are often frustrated at their lack of recourse for such occurrences as allegations are difficult to prove without complex, lengthy and expensive scientific studies.

83 palm business was marketed explicitly as a way to curb land grabs42 (interviews; Alonso- Fradejas et al. 2011). The logic behind this claim was that land acquisitions were a matter of choice and that, if presented with a viable and profitable livelihood practice, peasants would continue to farm their land rather than sell it. It has been suggested, however, that ProPalma was little more than an instrument of the government’s tacit support for large- scale oil palm expansion, since it ultimately brought more hectares of land under the (indirect) control of agribusinesses (Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011). Watts (1994) has noted that contract farming is a form of the ‘vertical coordination’ of production by capitalist enterprises, which he argues can be a more secure source of profit than the vertical integration of all production stages. As described in Chapter 4, there are evident differences in land acquisition dynamics between large agribusinesses and the oil palm producers in this study. However, supporting earlier observations (Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011), it is found here that the contract farming of oil palm under ProRural still increases the oil palm sector’s control over farmland, which is reflective of a similar land-grabbing pattern by smallholders in the Southeast Asian oil palm boom (Hall 2011; Hall et al. 2011).

42 While curbing land sales was not an official objective of ProRural/ProPalma, government officials were known to present the program in this way to potential participants in order to garner support (interviews; Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011)

Chapter 4 Land, Labour, and Development in the Oil Palm Host Community 4.1 Introduction

The establishment of oil palm contract farms, working under contract with Palmas del Ixcán, in Lachuá was spearheaded by the state program ProRural/ProPalma around 2007. Boosting rural incomes, creating employment, and stimulating rural development were among the purported main goals of the program, along with discouraging peasant land sales. While curbing land transactions was not explicitly stated as an official objective in the program documents, participants – including the oil palm growers in this study – had recalled the program being presented to them as a means of dissuading peasants from selling land by providing them with the lucrative alternative of producing a high-demand crop (c.f. Alonso-Fradejas et al. 2011). An underpinning assumption, of course, was that land sales to oil palm growers and their brokers is a choice.

This chapter examines the role of oil palm farms in the dynamics of land sales, the changing labour conditions, and the socio-economic development in the participant communities. The presented results challenge the official pro-oil palm narrative, suggesting that oil palm has contributed to the precarization43 of labour and increased the vulnerability of the host communities to global commodity price fluctuations. Furthermore, contrary to the claims of ProRural officials, the program appears to have done little to preclude land sales, and instead put additional pressure on local land resources and spurred land sales geared towards oil palm production. At the same time, the benefits from oil palm have been limited to short-term gains in employment and income for a minority of the community

43 Precarization refers to the tendency of the labour market towards more insecure and less predictable employment conditions such as short contracts, subcontracts, lack of benefits, and general lack of protection for the employee from bad employer practices and poor or dangerous working conditions (see Standing 2011).

85 members, while the social, ecological, and economic costs of oil palm have mounted for the majority of community members.

4.2 Formation of Palm and Maize Villages

Both, Palm Village and Maize Village were formed in the 1980s, at the tail-end of the Guatemalan 36-year civil war, which officially ended with the signing of the UN-sponsored Peace Accords in December 1996. As was the case for many communities in Lachuá, they were designed as ‘model villages’ (see Section 2.8.4) and their settlement was initiated partly by families of military and former-military officers organizing with other families into peasant associations. As they migrated to the area, the founding families obtained substantial parcels of land, typically ~17ha per family. In some cases, notably in Maize Village, the association members were eventually able to secure a title, authorized at the time by Guatemala’s national land institute, INTA44, and later by its land bank

FONTIERRAS45 (interviews, see also Ybarra 2010 and Granovsky-Larsen 2013).

In the years following the civil war, the Lachuá Ecoregion had been the subject of rapid change. Much of the change stemmed from the various post-war development initiatives sponsored by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and USAID (Lastarria-Cornhiel 2003). Development projects included the construction of a major highway spanning the Franja region, construction of hydroelectric dams46, and the re- opening of several petroleum wells (Solano 2012). At the same time many villages, including Palm and Maize Village, had experienced considerable population growth, which added to the pressure on local resources and demand for land.

Much like other communities in Lachuá and further along the Franja, Palm and Maize villages have seen little development beyond the introduction of various cash crops over

44 National Institute of Agrarian Transformation, created by the law 1551 in 1962. 45 ‘Fundo de Tierras’ or the Land Fund, created after the 1996 peace accords to eventually replace INTA in 1999. 46 At least two major, and highly contentious, hydroelectric projects are underway on the neighbouring Chixoy and Icbolay Rivers.

86 the years (including cardamom, rubber, pineapple, and oil palm), pasture, and small-scale tourism to the nearby national park. To date, government investment into local infrastructure, health, and education has been minimal, with most initiatives organized and funded by community members themselves, private outside donors, and through partnerships with universities and other organizations. For instance, some schools in the region have been wholly funded by NGOs. In another example, doctors were invited to the communities as part of a research project, and they provided medical check-ups and other services during their stay (interview data). Although such initiatives have been fruitful, they have generally been short-term and limited in scope due to a lack of funding continuity. For instance, doctors continue to visit the region, but only on an intermittent basis, schools persistently suffer from inadequate access to educational materials and shortage of qualified staff, and at least one school has closed down in recent years when its supporting NGO could no longer provide funding. Both villages continue to struggle with a lack of sanitation infrastructure – i.e. no running water or any type of water treatment facilities, limited access to medical care and other services, and overall poor quality of life.

4.3 Agriculture in the Lachua Ecoregion

Maize and beans are the main staple crops cultivated in the region. In Palm and Maize Village, most households cultivate maize on their own or rented plots of land (further discussed in Chapter 5). Most households cultivate two maize harvests per year. Maize is typically planted in October to be harvested in March. The second harvest is grown from May to September. Beans take about three months to mature and can be harvested three times per year. Table 3 summarizes the tasks involved in a typical maize growing cycle and the approximate number of people and time required to perform them per manzana of land47. In some cases, if fewer people (and/or slower workers) are available to perform the task it may take a longer time to complete, or vice versa. The time and difficulty level of the tasks also depends on the location of the parcel, terrain, weather, overall condition of the

47 A manzana is a common measure of land area in Guatemala that is equivalent to 0.7ha

87 field, and other factors. Some farmers apply fertilizer three times per growing cycle, while others only once or not at all depending on soil fertility and access to fertilizer.

Bean cultivation involves similar tasks except for fertilizer application. However, weeding and harvesting require more people and/or time per land area. Most seed varieties are hybrids and few households practice intercropping of maize and beans. Men perform most farm tasks, however, women also help when needed, especially at harvest time. Women also dry and manually shell the maize, as well as clean and sort beans.

Table 3: Maize cultivation tasks per manzana of land (Source: interviews with three maize farmers) Maize cultivation task Approximate Approximate number of days number of needed to perform task people needed to perform the task Clearing land for cultivation 16 1-2 (including controlled burning) Sowing seeds 8 1 First fertilizer application 5 1 (or one person can do it in three days) Herbicide application 8 1 Second fertilizer application 5 1 Manually weeding the field 8 1 (or one person can do it in eight days) Harvesting 15 1 (more days depending on the number and abilities of the workers)

Other crops grown in the Lachuá Ecoregion include cardamom, rubber, pineapple (previously a major crop grown in Palm Village), melons, and peanuts. Some villagers have fruit trees (orange, banana, papaya) on their properties that they occasionally harvest and in some cases sell – though this is not a significant income source in the two study villages.

4.4 Oil Palm Growers in Palm Village

All except one of the oil palm growers in Palm Village got their start through the ProPalma program in 2007 and live in the community (see Table 4). The remaining oil palm grower (OPG6 in Table 4), also a contract producer, is an absentee landowner possessing the largest oil palm plantation in Palm Village, along with other landholdings in a number of communities in the region. All of the oil palm growers, including OPG6, are part of the ADINC association that manages contracts with Palmas del Ixcán. However, OPG6 is the only grower who has substantially expanded his plantation over the last few years, and is continuing to buy land to convert to oil palm. The second community – Maize Village – currently has minimal oil palm presence (two relatively small plantations of 28.5ha and 5ha). Most of the land is dedicated to the cultivation of maize, remnants of tropical forest, and secondary forest.

Table 4: Characteristics of oil palm growers in Palm Village (from 2015 survey). Oil Palm Oil Palm Total Notes Grower Area Landholdings in (OPG) Owned Palm Village OPG1 7 ha 7 ha Has 7 ha of forest-covered land in another Lachuá community OPG2 7 ha 17.5 ha Has forest on remaining 10.5 ha OPG3 7 ha 16.8 ha Forest on 7.7 ha, maize on 1.4 ha, and beans on 0.7 ha OPG4 28 ha 28 ha Has land in another part of Guatemala dedicated to other crops OPG5 70 ha 99 ha Has forest, corn, and other crops on his land parcel, in addition to oil palm OPG6 336 ha 675+ ha Absentee landowner; also has a rubber plantation in Palm Village, as well as other businesses, including export of forest products

Resembling other examples from Honduras (Fromm 2007) and Southeast Asia (McCarthy 2010), the contract relationship between the oil palm growers in Palm Village with Palmas del Ixcán is highly restrictive and exploitative. The agribusiness (Palmas del Ixcán) sets the

89 quality standards and purchase price for oil palm fruit, while providing insufficient assistance to the farmers in terms of inputs and extension services. The contract farmers are therefore put in the position of having to maintain the necessary quality and quantity of production while contending with risks such as price fluctuations with minimal to no support. The situation is complicated by frequently changing government regulations and ADINC’s problem-plagued management (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Solis et al. 2013).

These issues notwithstanding, the oil palm growers, especially ones with larger land holdings, are substantially better off than the vast majority of households in Palm and Maize Villages. However, as in other cases around the world (c.f. McCarthy 2010; Clapp 1988), Palm Village oil palm growers were relatively well off to begin with – enough as to allow them to make the initial investment in their farms, wait three to four years for their first harvest, and weather the problems with ProRural. For instance, prior to cultivating oil palm, OPG5 sold a cattle ranch. Other oil palm growers likewise had savings from previous ventures.

4.5 Land distribution in Palm and Maize Villages

At the time of the survey (2015), over 450 hectares of land in Palm Village was covered in oil palm (see Table 4) compared to about 33.5 ha of oil palm in Maize Village. Aside from the striking difference in the number and size of oil palm plantations, the distribution of land among peasants is similar in the two villages. Table 5 shows the characteristics of land tenure type (rent versus owned) in the surveyed households. The largest portion of the surveyed households rent agricultural land parcels (48% in Palm Village and 58% in Maize Village), followed by households that own land (38% in Palm Village and 33% in Maize Village)48.

48 There are eight cases in total where a household own land while also renting land. In three of these cases, households own land that is in a different village (far away), so they rent land close by. In two cases, households own land in the community where they live, but rent land in a different village with more fertile soil. In three cases, households own and rent a parcel in the village where they live because they are in the process of transitioning ownership (e.g. inherited land a year ago).

Land ‘ownership’ here is used in a problematic sense, referring to the occupation of land, without necessarily having legal documentation in accordance with the current laws. Many land owners in both villages remain ‘in the process’ of finalizing paperwork due to the challenges posed by the country’s problematic land tenure procedures and recourses, rooted in the historical marginalization of peasants, bureaucratic inconsistencies, law- changes, and other issues described in Chapter 3.

Table 5: Community and sample* land tenure characteristics. Household Land Tenure Number of Households in Sample Palm Village Maize Village Own land 16 (38%) 13 (33%) Rent land (do not own) 20 (48%) 23 (58%) Neither own nor rent land (landless) 6 (14%) 4 (10%)

*Palm Village has 92 total households, sample n=42. Maize Village has 135 total households, sample n=40.

Owned Landholdings by Size 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 <0.7 0.8-1.4 1.5-2 2.1-3.4 3.5-6.9 7-19.9 20-50

Numberrespondent of households Size of agricultural land parcel (ha)

Palm Village Maize Village

Figure 4: Size of landholdings in Palm and Maize Villages owned by the surveyed households*.

*Oil palm growers and cases where a household owns land in a different community are excluded. Twenty seven of the surveyed households in each village do not own land.

Rented Landholdings by Size 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 <0.7 0.8-1.4 1.5-2 2.1-3.4

Numberrespondent of households Size of agricultural land parcel (ha)

Palm Village Maize Village

Figure 5: Size of landholdings in Palm and Maize Villages rented by the surveyed households*.

*Cases where a household also owns land in these communities are excluded.

The distribution of the land parcel size is also similar in the two villages. Owned land holdings ranged in size in the two communities (Figure 4). However, the vast majority of the rented holdings in both communities are ~0.7 ha (1 manzana49) in size, with the remainder of rented holdings being less than 1.5ha (with one exception in Palm Village, see Figure 5). All of the renters in both communities used land for subsistence agriculture, with a few cases where households also sold a portion of the cultivated staples from their harvest for income. Cultivation on owned or rented plots is further discussed in Chapter 5, in connection to food security.

4.6 Land history in Palm and Maize Villages

The recent land transactions in Palm and Maize Villages are rooted in the social and economic conditions during and following the initial establishment of the communities. The population of the Franja region, inclusively Lachuá, has been predominantly poor and

49 Manzana is the commonly used land unit in the region, equivalent to approximately 0.7 hectares.

92 socially marginalized. Some communities have experienced massacres and other violent events in the 1980s, which have left lasting scars (Ybarra 2010). The region remained fraught with social and political tensions even after the civil war officially ended. The multitude of institutional inadequacies of land titling in the country created further complications for local land users, disadvantaging first and foremost the poorest and otherwise marginalized sub-populations in the region.

The prominent military presence amid the high socio-economic inequality along the Franja had significantly influenced the processes of land acquisition. Military influence was particularly evident in Palm Village, which had been a site of ongoing conflict between peasants and military officials in the 1980s. Interviews with Palm Village residents and community leaders revealed a number of instances in which military officers bought land in the community from very poor families or families in crisis (e.g. health emergencies) for prices significantly below market value, sometimes with the use of threats and/or violence.

Table 6 summarizes the number and size of land parcels sold and reasons for sale in Palm Village. Prior to 2006, all of the land buyers had been military officers or intermediaries purchasing land with the intention of either establishing cattle ranches themselves, re- selling to cattle ranchers, or holding land in hopes of opportunity in ecotourism (interviews, c.f. Ybarra 2010). All, except two of the sales were ‘crisis sales’ by households dealing with illness or other family emergencies, or struggling with poor harvests due to low soil quality. Two households also received pressure from the buyer, but did not wish to elaborate.

The prospect of starting cattle businesses was among the military officers’ chief interests in the land in the 1980s-90s. The official recognition of the Laguna Lachuá National Park as a protected area of archeological and cultural importance in 1996 brought additional interest for local land and its ecotourism potential. For the peasants in Palm Village the process of asserting land claims became even more difficult. In addition to the pressures from military officers and land speculators who were buying up land along the Franja, peasants now had to contend with competing land claims by the Ministry of Culture. Some peasants have even blamed ministry officials for stifling peasant land registration through corrupt and underhanded means (c.f. Ybarra 2010).

Table 6: Land sales in Palm Village out of 42 sampled households*.

Sale date Number Total Currently Sold Sold to Reasons for sale of trans- hectares occupied by directly to interactions sold oil palm (ha) oil palm mediary producers Before 2006 5 105 88 0 5 Family crisis (2), illness (3), poor soil (2), buyer pressure (2) 2006-2010 5 103 103 2 3 Poor soil (2), debt (2), need for money (2), parcel surrounded (1) 2011-2015 4 50.5 50.5 4 0 Poor soil(1), parcel surrounded (1) Total Sales: 14 258.5 241.5 6 8 Likely to sell 3 36 in near Parcel surrounded by palm future

* Some quoted multiple reasons for the land sale. In 4 cases, the participants did not wish to disclose their reasons for sale.

Table 7: Land sales in Maize Village out of 40 sampled households. Sale Date Number of Total hectares Currently occupied Reasons for Transaction sold by oil palm (ha) Sale s Before 0 0 0 Illness (1), 2006 debt (1), need 2006-2010 1 17.5 0 for money (1), 2011-2015 5 40.5 0 other (1) Total Sales: 6 58 0

Contrary to their high hopes, the earlier land buyers had limited success with their planned ventures. Ecotourism in the region did not take off as expected and the local cattle ranches suffered from insufficient productivity. The generally poor forest-type soil (Monzon 1999) was deemed a culprit for failing cattle businesses. Two former ranchers in Palm Village claimed that their cattle failed to thrive because the pasture soils were too low in minerals, causing the cows to fall ill. The ranchers did not anticipate this problem when they initially moved into the region.

Figure 6: Land Use Change in Palm and Maize Villages 2006-2017. Source: Google Earth; own land area calculations. Location, scale, complete village boundaries, and other identifiable landmarks are not shown. Total land area of each village is ~1000ha.

The promulgation of ProRural and its integrated supports for oil palm cultivation around 2007 brought a change in course for land investment in the area. Lured by the promise of a high-value crop with a 25-year buyer guarantee, at least one of the cattle ranchers converted his pasture to an oil palm farm. Following suit, all of the intermediary buyers in Palm Village, whether cattle ranchers or land speculators, eventually re-sold their land to oil palm growers (c.f. Grandia 2012).

The history of land transactions in Maize Village is markedly different from Palm Village despite their proximity and ecological similarities (Tables 6 and 7). Figure 6 illustrates the land use changes in the two communities. Palm Village is distinguished by the remarkable spread of oil palm between 2006 (just before the onset of oil palm) and 2017, by which time the oil palm overtook about 50% of the total land area of the village. As growers of oil palm mentioned in interviews, the first oil palm farms (labeled as ‘mature’ in the figure) were planted on what appears to be pasture land. However, the subsequent spread (‘young oil palm’ in the figure), largely occurred over previously forested land (~60%) and land used for other crops (~40%), including staple maize. At the time of the interviews in 2015, seven out of the original 21 founding families in Maize Village still had their land. The other families sold land for various reasons, with some parcels changing hands several times in a few years. Some sold their land to cattle ranchers and subsequently obtained work on the ranches, others sold to land speculators or to other peasants. Similar to Palm Village, ranching did not expand much in Maize Village.

Although this study does not fully explain the historical divergences in land acquisitions and uses between Palm and Maize Villages, it does indicate that the introduction of oil palm changed the dynamics of land sales50. After the government began to promote oil palm cultivation under the premise of discouraging land sales, the land sales continued in both villages for the same reasons as before: mainly debt, illness, and general need for money. However, starting around 2006, with the purported benefits of ProRural/ProPalma on the horizon, all of land purchases in Palm Village were explicitly earmarked for oil palm

50 Though it does not appear that oil palm has (yet) accelerated land sales, it certainly did not preclude them.

96 cultivation. Furthermore, as the oil palm expanded, some land parcels became surrounded by oil palm, forcing their owners to sell, especially when oil palm growers would not grant them passage to their parcel. As of 2015, out of the remaining 12 households (non-palm growers) in the survey that still owned land in Palm Village, seven were recently approached by an oil palm grower to sell their land. In three of these cases, the parcels were entirely or almost entirely surrounded by oil palm, and will likely have no choice but to sell in the near future. It should be noted that so far only one of the oil palm growers (OPG6) in Palm Village has engaged in aggressive land acquisition, although this is by no means a unique case among contract farmers in the northern lowlands. Such kind of pressure had not been a factor in the land transactions in Maize Village, except in one case where a relatively small section of a parcel was sold because it was surrounded by a rubber plantation. Up until 2017, only two relatively small oil palm farms (28.5 ha and 5 ha, the latter not shown in Figure 6)51 have been established in Maize Village. In both instances, the transition to oil palm took place around 2010, when an absentee landowner adopted the cash crop. Otherwise, forest and the subsistence farming of maize remained the dominant land uses in the community.

While deforestation in Maize Village should not be overlooked, it has been notably less than in Palm Village. Between 2006 and 2017, the area of forested land decreased by ~90ha in Maize Village compared to double that in Palm Village. Furthermore, in Maize Village most of the forest has stayed as a large (~200ha) parcel, while the forest remnants in Palm Village have become very fragmented and separated by extensive tracts of oil palm monoculture. The large forest area in Maize Village is attributable to the fact that it is a community forest. It does not have a single owner, and any decisions concerning its use are made by the community council (COCODE). In an interview, one of the COCODE members in Maize Village explained that most of the council members have so far been adamant on keeping the forest. However, he had also mentioned that some other

51 Land sales to oil palm growers in Maize Village were not in the random household sample and are therefore not reflected in Table 7.

97 community members who have been trying to get on the council, had proposed selling the forested land to oil palm farmers or other monocrop producers.

It appears that community leadership has, so far, played a pivotal role in maintaining forest cover in Maize Village, as well as keeping oil palm development at bay. For example, COCODE members in Maize Village had publicly conveyed a negative attitude towards oil palm plantations during community workshops, and in interviews. The view of Palm Village residents as ‘poor people who have lost their land’ and ‘now they can’t do anything’ was routinely expressed, and the suffering of the people in Palm Village and elsewhere was often held up as an example of what could happen when villagers sell their land to oil palm. Those who sold their land were either characterized as exceedingly poor and without options, or vilified for their reprehensible choices. For instance, in an interview, one of the Maize Village community leaders referred to the neighbour who sold his parcel to an oil palm grower (one of the two in Maize Village) as ‘a man without a head’. ‘He sold his land and bought a fancy car with the money’ the leader recounted. ‘But then the car broke and he didn’t have anything. So stupid, the man. He had to move away.’

Education and keeping land for future generations were presented as an ideal. As one of the community leaders said, ‘Thank God, I’m giving my children a chance to study. If they do not want to work the plot, they can look for work… but what happens when the children are not studying [] and the parents sell their plots? What are they going to do? Are they going to steal, or what?’

In addition to the pervading attitudes and community leadership, the causes of oil palm establishment or lack thereof require further investigation. However, survey results and interview data suggest that the heated social conditions (e.g. military pressure, violent events) in Palm Village that facilitated the dispossession of marginalized peasants in the 1980s-90s, also played a role in precipitating the establishment of oil palm. However, for reasons not immediately clear, Maize Village did not experience conflicts of the same severity and were relatively more successful with staple crop cultivation and keeping their plots. Environmental conditions such as depleted soils and limited water, in conjunction with other social and historical circumstances, may have also been a factor in land sales.

Although the general soil characteristics are similar between the two communities, parts of Maize Village appear to have maintained fertility more so than in Palm Village (further discussed in Chapter 6), possibly due to differences in temporal patterns of land use and overuse (survey results; Monzon 1999).

4.7 Oil palm and outcomes for employment

Boosting much-needed employment in rural areas is among the main rationales for supporting boom crops, including oil palm. Small-medium contract farmers are often portrayed as innovative entrepreneurs and equitable employers in mainstream narratives (Deininger et al. 2011, World Bank 2011, 2007), although evidence to support these claims has so far been limited. Studies from Southeast Asia found cases of smallholder plantations hiring more workers per hectare on average compared to a large and more capital intensive operations, thus having an overall positive impact on local employment (Li 2011; Deininger et al. 2011; Friends of the Earth et al. 2008). By contrast, the consequences of large-scale land acquisition by oil palm agribusinesses have often been negative, and sometimes devastating, for the host communities (Li 2011; McCarthy 2010).

Much like in Southeast Asia, cases have been observed in Guatemala where large agribusinesses generated fewer jobs than anticipated. Many of the jobs were then given to migrant workers, leaving the host communities in deeper poverty and with fewer livelihood options (Dürr 2016; Mingorría et al. 2014; Grandia 2013; Hurtado and Sanchez 2012). Furthermore, a disturbing trend had been observed in Guatemala, where an agribusiness would purchase the entire land area of a community, and immediately proceed to indiscriminately convert all land use into a monocrop plantation. This type of radical change was witnessed in two communities in the region during fieldwork in 201552. Following the purchase, a large portion of the residents – typically those who were unable or unwilling to obtain work on the plantation or were otherwise perturbed by the

52 One of the communities was a remote village in the Lachuá Ecoregion. The second community was in the Ixcán region adjacent to Lachuá.

99 transformation of the village – were forced to leave in search of other livelihood opportunities (c.f. Grandia 2013).

The results presented in this thesis indicate that oil palm production by contract farmers can indeed carry more advantages for the host community than large agribusinesses – or, more accurately, fewer losses. Contrary to the drastic outcomes for communities whose entire land area had been bought by an oil palm agribusiness, Palm Village has, so far, been able to maintain a degree of diversity in land use and other livelihood options remain besides wage labour on oil palm plantations. However, while oil palm production in Maize Village has indeed generated some employment, it was found that the purported development benefits from oil palm in the village had not lived up to the expectations roused by mainstream development narratives. In the case of Maize Village, oil palm employment on contract farms has been just as, if not more, precarious as similar work on large agribusinesses in terms of job security, safety, and equity. Furthermore, the recruitment practices on the plantations are highly exclusive and trending more and more towards hiring of migrants.

4.8 Recruitment and labour relations on oil palm operations

Some 100 kilometres north of Lachuá, in the municipality of Sayaxché, El Petén, Hurtado and Sanchez (2012) documented the hiring and workforce management practices of oil palm agribusinesses. They found that recruitment is typically conducted on a semi- informal basis, where potential candidates are contracted by cell-phone and subsequently picked up and transported to their work site by truck53, with little assurance other than verbal agreement (see also Guereña and Zepeda 2013). Migrant workers are usually hired on short-term contracts (2-3 weeks) without guarantee for future re-hire, which is a common exploitative practice for minimizing cost and risk to the employer (Hurtado and Sanchez 2012).

53 Trucks are not designed for transporting passengers and do not have standard safety features such as seats or seatbelts for the workers. Transportation therefore carries its own substantial safety risks.

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Oil palm agribusinesses in Sayaxché typically conduct all of the hiring, management, and compensation of the plantation’s labour force through contratistas, or contractors. Contratistas are put in charge of most worker-related issues – from labour disputes to health emergencies such as snake bites or injuries on the plantation – which they are often neither trained for nor have the necessary resources to handle effectively and fairly. The people chosen for this job are always community leaders who are specifically sought out for their social status in order to maintain a hierarchical power structure that discourages worker complaints (Hurtado and Sanchez 2012). However, contratistas themselves are also vulnerable in serious dispute situations, as the agribusiness may well claim ignorance and leave the contratista to answer for the consequences for an escalated issue. In this way, the agribusiness removes itself from responsibility for worker safety and fair compensation while taking advantage of already existing power relations in the communities to maintain control over its workforce (Hurtado and Sanchez 2012). Furthermore, the agribusiness’ semi-informal recruitment process, high employee turn- over, and poor record keeping leaves many workers out of the line of sight of monitoring, paving way to precarious employment where the business is able to dissociate itself with the worker in the event of a problem arising54 (Guereña and Zepeda 2013). Agribusinesses have also been known to declare only a small portion of their workforce to the Ministrio de Trabajo y Prevision Social (MTPS)55 and Instituto Guatemalteco de Seguridad Social

(IGSS)56 to further cut costs and evade responsibility for their labour force (Hurtado and Sanchez 2012).

The oil palm agribusiness management practices, as described by Hurtado and Sanchez (2012), are highly problematic in their tendency to propagate precarization of labour. Precarization refers to the tendency of the labour market towards more insecure and less predictable employment conditions such as short contracts, subcontracts, lack of benefits,

54 No interviews with Palmas del Ixcán representatives were carried out to confirm these findings in the context of this study. 55 MTPS looks after official employment statistics. 56 IGSS provides social insurance and health benefits to workers.

101 and general lack of protection for the employee from bad employer practices and poor or dangerous working conditions (see Standing 2011). The agribusinesses’ deliberate strategies of distancing themselves from labour management and compensation are particularly problematic.

The oil palm labour regime on the contract farms in Palm Village bears a few important differences from the agribusinesses in Sayaxché. One major difference is that all of the oil palm farm owners, with exception of one (OPG6), live in the village and are thus inextricably part of the community. Secondly, the owners of the plantations, especially the smaller ones (7 ha), perform some of the manual labour themselves alongside their hired workers, and also actively participate in employee management. Having no opportunity to dissociate themselves from their employees or from the community, maintaining positive relationships is a high priority. For instance, in the past, oil palm growers relied on the community for help to resolve conflicts with other villages and so called ‘invaders’57. In January 2015, oil palm growers dealt with ‘invaders’ from another village who set fire to the oil palm, and reportedly stole over 100 tonnes of fertilizer. Though the specifics (and exact intentions) of the incident were not immediately clear, following the incident, the community gained interest in preventing more altercations in their village and mediating oil-palm-related disputes with other villages.

Another crucial difference is that contract farmers tend to hire local people that they know instead of migrant teams, at least initially. This allows members of the host community to benefit from oil palm employment opportunities more so than in communities hosting large agribusinesses (interviews). Among all of the surveyed households in Palm Village, only one instance was recorded where a household member was unable to get oil palm work because the work teams were full, and this had occurred on one of the smaller plantations. Nevertheless, inequity in the hiring process and in the work itself, is a serious issue. Plantation owners and/or hiring managers routinely exclude applicants based on

57 ‘Invaders’ was the term used by the oil palm growers and a few other residents in Palm Village. However, it is a highly problematic term since the purported ‘invaders’ may not see themselves as ‘invaders’ in this long- standing and highly complex conflict space.

102 personal bias and exclusive criteria. In all instances (seven total) in the survey where candidates were not able to obtain work on an oil palm plantation, the applicants were rejected because of a negative - or lack of - relationship with the team leaders, gender, and in one incident a physical disability. That is, on the surface, oil palm work was seemingly available to all of the locals who sought it. However, the applicants had to be deemed ‘able’ and ‘qualified’ by the employers, often on subjective terms.

The perceptions of ‘ability’ and ‘qualification’ for oil palm employment strongly permeate the community, preventing some residents from even considering applying. In three cases, respondents stated that they feel that they cannot apply for oil palm work because they are too old. Similarly, women often do not think of oil palm plantations as an employment option, assuming oil palm work to be ‘men’s work’. For example, a female head of an impoverished all-female household explained why nobody in the household had tried to obtain oil palm employment: ‘We are just women. We cannot do this kind of work’. Therefore, while there may not be a great deal of conspicuous discrimination from the side of the employers, there is an expectation among the community members that oil palm jobs are only for a certain type of worker – namely a young healthy and strong male. This expectation alone acts to marginalize many members of the community.

Women in particular find themselves in a difficult position within the oil palm labour market in Palm Village. Only 6 out of 50 oil palm labourers within the survey in Palm Village were female. None of them held a permanent position, and were instead sporadically recruited for one to several days for a specific task such as preparing seedlings in the plant nursery or collect oil palm seeds that fall on the ground during harvest. The seed collectors are paid per sack collected, which prompts the women to bring their children or other family members to help collect more seeds. Since harvest happens only once every two weeks, seed collectors work just 2-4 days per month.

Child labour is a delicate subject for oil palm growers in Palm Village. Large agribusinesses generally do not hire minors. However, refusal to hire minors is not regarded favorably by the people in the region as many families count on their children for help with the household income. Child labour is highly prevalent in the region, with most youth (especially boys) beginning to work around the age of 10, with those continuing to attend

103 school doing so on the weekends. One of the oil palm growers adamantly stated, ‘No, no, no. On the farm, it is forbidden to have those who are under-aged. [They can be hurt with] machetes, or get bitten by a snake.’ However, he then reluctantly admitted that ‘we put them all to collect seeds. Because people want to earn money, [including] women [and children]… but informally, voluntarily’. The dangers of the oil palm work are intensely problematic for minors and women, however, their informal or so called ‘voluntary’ participation on the farms leaves them with even less protection than the formal employees.

The majority of the work on oil palm farms is reserved for healthy and strong males who are able to cope with its physical demands, while working quickly and efficiently. However, even for male workers, permanent positions are rare. Similar to large plantations, most of the manual labourers on the farms in Palm Village work on temporary contracts, typically 15 days at a time, trimming and taking care of the oil palm trees, fertilizing, and harvesting the oil palm fruit. Many workers are not able to perform the tough physical labour for a long time. Those who manage to obtain permanent jobs are usually in supervisory roles or have less physically demanding positions such as security guards.

Table 8: Oil palm employment in Palm Village*. Oil Palm Employment Types Viable Long Term (opinion)

Employment Type Frequency Yes No Unsure Permanent 14 35% 57% 7% Temporary 27 0% 63% 37% Sporadic 9 0% 89% 11%

*Sample includes individuals with experience of working on oil palm in Palm Village (n=50). ‘Permanent’ employment refers to full-time (40+ hours/week) non-seasonal employment that is expected to continue; ‘Temporary’ employment constitutes short contracts (typically 15 days) usually with a chance to return; ‘Sporadic’ refers to occasional employment for one or several days without assuming that the employee will return. Table modified from Hervas 2019.

Table 8 shows that none of the temporary or sporadic labourers felt confident in the long term potential of their employment. Nearly everyone cited extreme physical demands of the work and unjust pay (or a combination of the two) as their reasons. Even the workers with permanent oil palm employment had little confidence in the long-term viability of their jobs, with only 35% believing that they can maintain their oil palm employment in the

104 foreseeable future. These were security guards and labourers in supervisory roles with correspondingly higher wages. Payment discrepancies were prevalent, especially among the temporary and sporadic labourers. Some workers complained that sometimes they would not be paid for a full day of work if they did not complete their assigned task, or if they were caught taking a break. In a few cases, the labourers experienced instances where they were forced to work extremely long hours but were never paid for the extra hours (Figure 7).

Excessively long hours

Unjust pay

Work too physically taxing

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % of responses

Figure 7: Main reasons cited for not considering oil palm employment to be viable in the long term*.

*Sample includes responses from individuals (n=36) in Palm and Maize Villages currently working on an oil palm plantation in Palm Village.

Due to the extreme physical strain and poor working conditions, oil palm employment is generally not desired in Palm Village if other employment options are available. Far more common than the surveyed workers being denied employment were instances of workers leaving their positions at the oil palm plantations, either voluntarily58 or because they were dismissed, and not returning (see Figure 8). Only three of the 19 surveyed former oil palm

58 ‘Voluntarily’ is a contestable term here considering that many workers quit because they were faced with unfeasible demands of their employer, such as 12+ hour days of hard physical labour.

105 workers were let go because there was no more work available. The most commonly cited reasons for quitting oil palm jobs were the extreme physical demand of oil palm labour, unjust pay, and unreasonable expectations of the employer. Many former employees expressed that they would prefer almost any other job to oil palm work, and were not planning to return. It should be noted, however, that in 15 out of these 19 cases, the respondents’ households either rented or owned land, and as such were not completely dependent on wage labour for sustenance. However, out of the remaining four landless cases, three respondents emphasized that they would return to oil palm employment if given the opportunity and if no other work was available. In another landless household where an older male head currently holds oil palm employment, the female head expressed concern that he may not be able to endure the work much longer and that the family is worried about their future livelihood because other types of employment are scarce. The dependency on grueling oil palm work among landless households is an alarming tendency, particularly as the oil palm continues to expand over other agricultural land, meaning that it is the becoming the only opportunity for wage labour in the village.

Other (found better work, too far)

Pay dispute

Unjust pay for extremely hard work

Work too physically taxing/ unreasonable expectations

No more work available

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Number of responses

Figure 8: Main reasons given for leaving previous oil palm employment*.

*Sample includes responses from individuals (n=19) in Palm and Maize Villages who have previously worked on an oil palm plantation in Palm Village and left (modified from Hervas 2019).

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The lack of benefits or health insurance are another source of precariousness on the oil palm farms in Palm Village. Although similar issues have been documented on large agribusiness-owned plantations (Mingorría et al. 2014; Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Hurtado and Sanchez 2012), some agribusiness employees have been able to obtain basic health insurance and other benefits, particularly as agribusinesses have faced greater pressure from government enforcement and sustainability certification bodies such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil - RSPO 59 (interviews). To date, small-medium contract farmers have generally been unable to offer such benefits to their workers due to greater market pressures discussed later in this chapter.

In addition to the existing sources of precariousness in oil palm jobs, the tendency of oil palm farms in Palm Village to hire locals may be altogether short-lived. As the largest plantation owned by OPG6 continues to expand, it has been increasingly hiring migrant workers, with plans to employ more in the future. The migrants have been accused of causing many problems in Palm Village and the prospect of hiring more migrants has angered community members. In addition to taking jobs from locals, migrants have been blamed for incidents of theft, violence, and sexual assault. Compromised public safety is an increasing concern in Palm Village as more unfamiliar male individuals routinely linger in the community on a temporary basis.

Overall, survey results suggest that the oil palm sector has generated local employment opportunities in Palm Village. However, these jobs have been mostly temporary, non- inclusive, undesirable in the long term, and otherwise precarious. Oil palm provides scant opportunities for women, older people, or people with physical disabilities, leaving them excluded from the oil palm economy. Furthermore, survey respondents expressed that as the oil palm took over land in the community, some of the other agricultural employment, including pineapple and cardamom cultivation, had disappeared. Although employment trade-offs are difficult to confirm due to a lack of historical employment statistics in Palm Village, the spreading oil palm inevitably limits other possibilities for land use, leaving local

59 Roundtable on Sustainable Oil Palm is a global organization that issues sustainability certificates to oil palm producers (RSPO 2016).

107 residents with fewer alternative agricultural employment options. This may come to be particularly devastating to landless households if they become excluded from oil palm employment. By contrast, in Maize Village, even some of the most disadvantaged households – including all-female households and elderly households – have been able to procure work in their neighbours’ maize fields, and have expressed greater income security than those in Palm Village.

A commonly cited objective of cash crop proponents is the creation of linkages to other economic sectors leading to the generation employment up-stream and down-stream in the cash crop value chain, and stimulating secondary (i.e. processing) and tertiary (i.e. services, sales, etc.) economies (World Bank 2007). This claim has been previously challenged in relation to the regional economic effects of boom crop agribusinesses – namely oil palm and sugarcane – in Guatemala, which have been observed to generate fewer agricultural and non-agricultural up/down-stream jobs in the producer regions than traditional food crops and their supply chains (Dürr 2016; 2017). Like Dürr ‘s (2016, 2017) studies in the South Coast and the Verapaces, the study of Palm Village has not revealed evidence of any significant secondary or tertiary economies in the community linked to the contract farmers. The value chains are similar to those associated with the agribusinesses observed by Dürr (2016). With the agricultural inputs for oil palm being produced and brought in from elsewhere, and all of the raw fruit being transported out and sold to a processing plant, oil palm brings little opportunity for local entrepreneurship. Much of the profit from oil palm in Palm Village is also transferred out of the community, with the agribusiness that purchases, processes, and redistributes the oil palm products appropriating much of the added value (Dürr 2016). Evidently, two variety stores in Palm Village have seen very little or no increase in sales since the arrival of oil palm, and no new businesses with linkages to the oil palm sector have established in the community in the last few years aside from the oil palm growers themselves. On the other hand, staple maize production is not only more labour intensive, but also gives way for micro-enterprises (e.g. to mill and sell maize products to the local market), providing more local jobs (Dürr 2016; 2017).

It has been shown here that oil palm has so far come with few benefits to the host community; namely a handful of precarious, non-inclusive, underpaid, and short-lived jobs.

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At the same time, it has pushed out other types of agriculture, and continues to threaten maize production with growing pressure on land. The development implications of these trends are worrisome, amounting to increasing dependence of the host community on oil palm, marginalization of those excluded from oil palm labour, and the looming decline of the agricultural job pool available to locals as more work is distributed to migrants.

4.9 Oil palm and outcomes for household income

The introduction of oil palm into Palm Village has had a largely positive impact on income and wages at the household level60 (for those participating in oil palm employment), as well as the community as a whole. Households in Palm Village whose primary source of monetary income61 is oil palm work had a slightly higher income than those who relied on other agricultural wage labour, which mainly consists of work on other crops in the region. No significant difference in income between these two groups was found in Maize Village. However, 73% of the households with a family member currently working on an oil palm plantation in Palm Village experienced an increase in their annual household income as a result of the oil palm employment62. Some of the oil palm workers received a substantially higher day wage than they had in their previous job (up to 50% increase). These results are consistent with another study from the Polochic Valley of eastern Guatemala, where oil palm employment was found to increase household income (Mingorría et al. 2014).

60 Calculating and comparing household income can be problematic in this study for several reasons. First, the job market in the study region is highly dynamic due to the recent establishment of new industries (e.g. petroleum wells) and the temporary nature of many jobs. It is common for a household member to work one type of job for a period of time (e.g. a few weeks or months) before moving to another, or even work two or three jobs simultaneously depending on the immediate circumstances and the needs of the household and job availability. Secondly, total household income also depends on other factors, including the composition of the household. For example, if the household has a child who has become old enough to work, their income will increase. Given these labour market characteristics, the impact of oil palm on income in this study is discussed in terms of changes in day wages and current income patterns with the assumption that these can quickly change.

61 Here, income or monetary income excludes any non-monetary earnings types such as crops grown for household consumption. 62 Oil palm farm owners who work on their own plantations were not counted as employees of their operation in the survey.

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Though the increase in household income due to oil palm labour seems a positive outcome, only about 30% of the households in Palm Village depend primarily on oil palm labour (for >50% of total monetary household income) with the remaining two-thirds relying more heavily on other income sources. Furthermore, of the households participating in oil palm employment to some degree, only about a third rely completely or almost completely (for >80% of total monetary household income) on oil palm wages, while other households supplement a significant portion of their income with wages from other agricultural and non-agricultural jobs and sale of crops from their owned or rented plots. Also, about 85% of the households participating in oil palm labour in Palm Village continue to produce maize for their own consumption and have expressed the intention to continue growing maize.

These results illustrate that even though oil palm is an important source of employment in Palm Village, with nearly 75% of households currently participating or having recently participated in oil palm employment, other sources of income remain key in sustaining the majority of the households in the community, including most of the households participating in oil palm employment. The results also highlight the continued importance of subsistence agriculture in the oil palm-dominated community as a means of supplementing income and improving household food security, especially given the precarious and non-inclusive nature of oil palm work. The implications of oil palm and maize cultivation on food security are discussed in Chapter 5.

4.10 Oil palm and outcomes for wages

Wages on agribusiness-owned oil palm plantations have been a contentious issue in Guatemala, as they have largely lagged behind the country’s minimum wage legislation (Hurtado and Sanchez 2012). The case of contract farmers in Palm Village is not much different. The average oil palm day wage on the contract farms in the village was 59 Q63 (standard deviation = 14) at the time of the survey in 2014-15, with manual labourers earning between 40 and 60 Q/day (mean 52+-5.9 Q/day). This was substantially lower

63 About 7.8 USD, based on 1 USD = 7.6 Q exchange rate in December 2015.

110 than the country’s legal agricultural minimum of 74.9 Q/day (in 2014). Wage data from large oil palm agribusinesses in nearby Sayaxché from Hurtado and Sanchez (2012), show similar day wages in 2010: 50 Q/day for manual labourer and 60-80 Q/day for a worker in a supervisory role. Interview responses from Palm and Maize Villages suggest that wages on large plantations, at least in some parts of Guatemala, may have gone up since 2010 and are generally higher than those on smallholder palm farms, although more definitive data is needed to confirm this.

Perhaps a more striking outcome is that the introduction of oil palm in Palm Village had caused an overall increase in agricultural day wages in the community. Survey participants and community leaders in Palm Village indicated that before oil palm cultivation began in the community around 2007, the average agricultural day wage was about 30-40 Q/day. Upon establishment, the oil palm growers began to offer higher wages to attract workers. As a result, other employers had to match these day wages to continue operations. Interestingly, this effect did not occur in the nearby Maize Village, where the average agricultural day wage continues to be around 45 Q/day, which is about 15% lower than agricultural wages in Palm Village.

The increase in average day wages in Palm Village has been beneficial for households that are dependent on wage work and able to obtain jobs, but problematic for farmers who rely on day labourers to produce maize for household consumption. Dependence on hired labourers is particularly common among households with labour constraints, such as female-headed households or the elderly. A rise in average wages has increased economic pressure on these vulnerable households by adding to the already high labour costs of subsistence farming. This issue is further discussed in Chapter 5 in challenging the common claim made by cash crop proponents that higher wages translate to higher food security in rural regions (Deininger et al. 2011, World Bank 2007).

4.11 Oil palm contract farming and future prospects for development

A prevalent concern with regard to smaller-scale oil palm production – such as that seen with the contract farmers in Palm Village – is the eventual inability to compete with large

111 agribusinesses that have access to more efficient technology, access to credit, and other facilities (De Schutter 2011). While contract farmers in this thesis are not in direct competition with their contracting agribusiness, they are forced to contend with rising production costs and fluctuating prices on their product. The prices of oil palm are, in turn, partly determined by the potentially lower costs of large-scale, capital intensive producers. Thus, it was the smaller producers in particular, who struggled to stay in business when oil palm and petroleum prices collapsed from their peak in 2008. Survey and interview results show that the smaller oil palm producers have been ill positioned to weather the global fluctuations in petroleum prices, which determine the sale price of their oil palm fruit according to their contract with Palmas del Ixcán 64. Between 2006 and 2016, the average annual variation in petroleum prices has been about 35%, with 5 of the 10 years seeing price drops of over 40% within a single year (Figure 9). Similarly, the international price of crude palm oil varied between 555 USD and 995 USD per metric tonne between 2006 and 2009, peaking at 1290 USD/MT before sliding to 575 USD by 2015. Both oil palm and petroleum prices had fallen from their peak in 2008 when ProPalma went into effect. Massive price fluctuations create uncertainty for farmers, making it difficult to budget and plan for the appropriate use of inputs and to hire permanent labourers.

64 As discussed in Chapter 3, discrepancies exist with respect to the calculation of oil palm sale price. According to Alonso-Fradejas (personal communication), growers receive 14% of the CIF Rotterdam price for their fruit (Palm Oil Analytics 2018). However, two oil palm growers in Palm Village claimed that the fruit price is calculated based on petroleum price. The reason for the discrepancy is unclear, but may be due to variations in contract terms with Palmas del Ixcan and/or ADINC, or misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of the pricing scheme.

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1400.00 140.00

1200.00 120.00

1000.00 100.00

800.00 80.00

600.00 60.00

Palm Palm Price Oil (USD/mt) 400.00 40.00 Crude Crude Oil Price(USD/bbl)

200.00 20.00

0.00 0.00

1992 2003 2014 1990 1991 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2015 2016 2017 2018

Palm Oil Price (USD/mt) Crude Oil Price (USD/bbl)

Figure 9: International Prices of Crude Oil and Palm Oil (1990-2018). Source: World Bank Commodity Price Data

A 7 hectare oil palm farm in Palm Village profits between $8,500 and $13,000 USD annually, assuming a good harvest and a relatively high price for oil palm fruit (approx. 500 Q/tonne of fruit). Although $8000+ USD is considered a sizable family income in the region, for an oil palm producer it is not guaranteed since it is contingent upon a broad range of factors, from commodity prices, to the cost of fertilizer and transport, to environmental variables such as rainfall and crop disease. Small oil palm producers (7 ha) in Palm Village are particularly sensitive to falls in the fruit price, where even a 5% drop in revenue can result in a profit drop of up to 14%65. Furthermore, the cost of hiring workers for these small produces makes up 30-40% of the total operating expenses, with fertilizer constituting much of the remaining cost. Because oil palm harvest size and quality is extremely dependent on fertilizer, this expense remains more or less constant, while

65 Calculated from survey data for OPG1, OPG2, and OPG3.

113 producers only cut back on labour costs when necessary (e.g. if palm oil prices drop significantly). It is not surprising then that for small oil palm producers, not only is it cost- prohibitive to offer permanent full-time jobs (much less benefits), but in hard times they tend to cut even the temporary jobs, turning instead to family labour. Furthermore, given the current input and fruit price volatility, an introduction of a 25% wage increase (which would take the current oil palm wages in Palm Village up to the legal agricultural minimum) would render the small producers unviable. Unless fruit prices rise substantially, small producers would simply not be able to afford to pay their labourers more or to offer more job security.

The larger contract producer in Palm Village – OPG6 – takes a similar cost-reduction strategy of saving on labour. As he expanded his operations, he began to hire more and more migrants on short contracts. While this is upsetting to the residents of Palm Village, from the perspective of OPG6, hiring migrants may well be necessary given the extremely physical nature of the required work (which many are not able to do for a long time), and the increasing risks from market volatility66. OPG6 is arguably more shielded from insolvency than the smaller producers in Palm Village, due to the sheer volume of his production (and possibly other sources of wealth). The smaller producers, having fewer assets to insulate themselves, find themselves vulnerable to adverse changes in oil palm and input markets, and may well face dispossession in the near future. One of the 7-ha oil palm growers had already considered cutting down and replacing oil palm with another crop. He has not yet done so because this endeavour would require a substantial investment and carry its own risks. Of particular concern is that the network of roots left by oil palm trees are said to make it extremely difficult to cultivate crops on the land once the palm trees are gone.

These results are in support of earlier studies examining labour relations in contract farming. The oil palm farmers’ subordinate position with regard to the other actors in the value chain not only limits their income, but also their production choices. Following Glover and Kusterer (1990), the lack of ‘exit’ alternatives for struggling contract farmers

66 Further research is needed to evaluate other poorly understood risks such as climate change.

114 further exacerbates their vulnerability and exploitation. The viability of the oil palm contract farmers is thereby reflective of the broader dynamic of functional dualism, wherein the viability of capitalist development is dependent on the ability to pay semi- proletarianized peasants low wages. Relatedly, the contracts integrate oil palm farmers into market dynamics that compel them to exploit their employees and household labour (e.g. children helping with seed collection). In other words, the vulnerability of the oil palm contract farmers spills over onto their workforce, which is forced to contend with low wages, precarious working conditions, and minimal recourse for resolving problems with their employers (Oya 2012; De Schutter 2011b; Glover and Kusterer 1990).

These findings suggest that there is likely no ‘quick fix’ for improving the labour conditions on oil palm contract farms, because worker exploitation and low pay seem to be the consequences of the broader oil palm market conditions, within which the contract farmers are heavily constrained by the unfavourable terms of their incorporation into the globalized oil palm value chain. For the host community, this spells a very risky future, since the more the oil palm expands, the more it eliminates other types of agricultural work, the more Palm Village as a whole becomes reliant on oil palm and correspondingly vulnerable to global market volatility. This is particularly detrimental to the individuals and households that are already excluded from oil palm labour, or may become excluded in the future. These results put under serious question whether there is, in fact, any future development potential from oil palm, beyond the precarious jobs that it currently provides, some of which are already slated for migrants.

4.12 Discussion

The results discussed in this chapter challenge the official narrative that the promotion of oil palm contract farming in northern Guatemala had meaningful development impacts in the host communities. The benefits from employment and increased wages have been limited and short-lived for most of the households participating in oil palm labour, and non-existent for excluded households. Pushing up day wages has also put additional pressure on subsistence farmers, especially the vulnerable households with labour constraints. Furthermore, the initial establishment of smallholder oil palm cultivation through ProRural has not stopped peasant land sales in Palm Village, and, paradoxically,

115 the current oil palm expansion is accelerating land sales as more plots become surrounded by oil palm. At the same time, the relatively smaller oil palm producers are particularly vulnerable to global commodity price fluctuations, and their vulnerability directly affects their employees and their employees’ households. Furthermore, the future development possibilities in the host community are put at risk as other livelihood options are extinguished by the expanding oil palm.

Surrounding peasant land parcels by oil palm plantations is a known tactic frequently deployed by oil palm agribusinesses to force peasants to sell land (Mingorría et al. 2014; Guereña and Zepeda 2013). Earlier studies have shown that this strategy was facilitated by the land titling process that was mandated in the 1996 Peace Accords (Gauster and Isakson 2007). The regularization of the land market facilitated the commodification of land and rendered many already vulnerable peasants to pressure from agribusinesses and other extractive industries, particularly in resource-rich regions of Guatemala. The same had evidently occurred in Palm Village. As a representative of a local NGO put it:

‘The issue is that the collective agrarian heritage has been lost… now individual or private owners are no longer a group or collective… now everyone cares for their own skin… although they do community activities [and they have] COCODEs, they do not have the community figure anymore. Each one is an individual owner.’

At the same time: ‘here, we are illiterate – eighty something percent, how would it not affect the territory? […] they live day by day. They are not like the ones who still have one hundred quetzals and know that tomorrow they are still going to eat. They do not even have those hundred quetzals for the next day’.

In doing nothing to address the causes of poverty and social marginalization of the largely indigenous peasant population, land regularization merely expedited land transfer to the well-off class. In some cases, the titling process itself was used as a means of transferring land to a new owner (Gauster and Isakson 2007). In other cases, a lack of secure land title had been a factor in mass evictions of peasants in favour of agribusiness-owned plantations (Alonso-Fradejas 2015). While it is not a crippling issue for a wealthy and well-connected land owner, the lengthy, expensive, and logistically and bureaucratically difficult titling

116 process has been a major impediment for vulnerable indigenous peasants to securing land rights, putting them at further risk of losing their land to more powerful players.

It is also shown in this thesis that pressuring peasants to sell land via surrounding is a tactic that is not unique to large agribusinesses, and can just as well occur in an area with small-medium-scale contract producers. Land-grabbing by smallholders has been witnessed in the Southeast Asian oil palm boom, especially in ‘frontier’ regions, where the boom provided an impetus for various actors to bid for the control of newly valuable land67 (Hall 2011; Hall et al. 2011). Many Southeast Asian oil palm smallholders were aided by neo-liberal joint government/private corporation schemes through the mid-1990s, similar to Guatemala’s ProRural. In their work on Southeast Asian crop booms, Hall, Hirsch, and Li (2011) describe uncannily similar rural development narratives deployed by the proponents of these boom crop promotion programs, where the pro-poor claims essentially provided a basis to legitimize the boom-induced exclusion of natives from the land. While more research is needed to further understand the complexities of land transfer processes in Lachuá, it is clear that oil palm promotion favoured the better-off farmers who were capable of footing the costs and managing the risks of initiating an oil palm plantation, and even more so upon the cancellation of ProRural. The poorer farmers were either barred by the high start-up costs of oil palm cultivation, or suffered tremendous losses when ProRural funds were transferred to and were mismanaged by the ADINC association (interviews; Solis et al 2013).

The tensions caused by the politics of land registration had further complicated the issue. Up until recently, most of the land transactions (listed in Tables 6 and 7) that took place in Palm and Maize Villages involved unregistered land or land in the long process of registration. In an interview, a community leader who was among the founders of Maize Village explained that the burdensome land legalization process took 30 years to complete. During those three decades, other families had arrived in the community who were not part of the initial land titling application. Some ended up purchasing land (illegally, in

67 The land acquisition pattern by wealthier smallholders is also a part of the classic model of socio-economic differentiation in the countryside (c.f. Kautsky 1988; Lenin 1920)

117 technical terms) from the founding families, renting, or remaining landless. Furthermore, as is the common case in Guatemala, some of the smaller parcels that are deemed too expensive to legally register can remain in legal limbo indefinitely (Lastarria-Cornhiel, 2003). Evidently, not all of the oil palm growers in this study operate on fully registered land. In this context, ProRural program may have served as an important ally for oil palm agribusinesses in a region fraught with land tenure disputes, as it helped to convert large tracts of land to oil palm while off-loading any legal risks from the agribusinesses. In other words, agribusinesses such as Palmas del Ixcán managed to solidify their presence on the land via contract farms, thus avoiding having to purchase the land and expose themselves to possible land disputes. Thus, in addition to the exploitative relationship with the agribusiness (c.f. Watts 1990; Little and Watts 1994), the oil palm farmers in Palm Village are also vulnerable to legal risks involving land.

The results of this study show that the anti-land-sale pretence of ProRural is not substantiated. Instead, the vulnerable peasants were made more vulnerable through the increased pressure on land in this frontier region, on top of the long-standing issues of poverty, social and political marginalization, and insecure tenure. Thus, ProRural and the oil palm production that it triggered, appears to have set off a new cycle of peasant dispossession in Palm Village, this time geared specifically towards the oil palm sector.

This case study problematizes the broader debate on market-based poverty-alleviation strategies that are centered on cash-crop promotion to contract farmers. Similar to Li’s (2011) findings in Southeast Asia, the prospects are limited with respect to the protection of labour interests in smallholder oil palm cultivation in Guatemala, in the face of the volatile and competitive global markets. From this perspective, ProRural, among other market-based development strategies, can be criticized for their lack of attention to labour as well as their narrow, short-sighted, and non-inclusive vision of rural development. Supporting earlier critiques (Li 2011; McCarthy 2010), it is suggested here that any government intervention to promote a cash crop, especially oil palm with its physiological and geo-political peculiarities, must at the absolute minimum be mindful of the smallholder contracting terms with bigger players and the long-term implications for labour and livelihoods in the host communities. Furthermore, in the case of the Guatemalan northern

118 lowlands, this study highlights the need to support subsistence farming and the production of staple crops, as these continue to be key for sustaining impoverished households and providing employment, especially for those excluded from oil palm work (c.f. Dürr 2016). The instability of global markets warrants a special emphasis on the diversification of production in order to buffer the community from severe price and/or demand shocks in a particular sector (c.f. Ellis 1993). However, as will be elaborated in Chapter 7, diversification is not a simple proposition, and must be approached with care.

A comprehensive rural development strategy needs to address the core reasons for land sales, which include pressures from predatory buyers and general poverty. Moreover, cash crops alone do not address other important aspects of development such as access to education and healthcare, and the maintenance of ecological resources. In any scenario, the introduction of a cash crop cannot ‘solve’ the long-standing socio-economic problems emanating from a history of indigenous oppression, dispossession, and conflict. Indeed, their introduction to an uneven socio-economic context has the potential to exacerbate underlying inequalities.

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Chapter 5 Oil Palm Expansion and Staple Food Access 5.1 Introduction

The expansion and intensification of cash crops has long been the prescription of choice for the enhancing food security in the global South (World Bank 2007, 2011; Conroy et al. 1996). The food security objective is often folded into cash crop promotion programs, usually as an implicit consequence of employment and income generation leading to improved food entitlements (c.f. Sen 1981). The National Food Security Strategy (PESAN 2009) in Guatemala deployed a similar rationale for promoting oil palm, as well as other crops, through programs such as ProRural.

To date, the empirical evidence for the effectiveness of such programs and policies remains thin, especially with regard to the connections between income, employment, and food access in crop producing regions. The relationship between the presence of cash crops in a community and food access for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of production and/or employment is a particularly under-researched topic. A key source of complexity is that cash crop expansion tends to be coupled with the displacement of existing small-scale production of staple crops, which can raise food insecurity for some portions of the local population (Anderman et al. 2014; Kamoyo et al. 2015; Negash and Swinnen 2013; Komarek 2010).

In the previous chapter it was shown that oil palm expansion in Palm Village has displaced staple maize farming to some degree, with more displacement likely in the future. However, similar to findings of previous studies (Mingorría et al. 2014; Ofosu-Budu and Sarpong 2013; Li 2011; Rist et al. 2010), oil palm did improve incomes for the producers and their waged employees to some degree, although employment has been generally precarious and not accessible for many members of the community. Moreover, it has been observed that the establishment of oil palm pushed up agricultural wages in Palm Village, including wages for day labourers on subsistence maize plots.

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This chapter goes further to examine how the socio-economic changes brought by the oil palm have impacted local food access, particularly to staple maize. Maize was chosen as the analytical focus due to its high prevalence in local diets as well its cultural and spiritual importance for the indigenous Maya. Rural Guatemalans consume an average of 454 grams (or 1 lb.) of maize per day; the grain accounts for 72% of calories and 82% of protein consumed (Fuentes et al. 2005; Immink and Alarcon 1992).68 Other studies have observed that Guatemalan peasants tend to persist in their efforts to grow maize for household consumption (Isakson 2009), and that maize consumption tends to remain relatively constant regardless of households’ changes in employment and income (Mingorría et al. 2014). The relationship between oil palm in the community and maize provisioning dynamics are unpacked in this chapter. Distinctions are made between the impacts on market provisioning (purchasing) and self-provisioning (growing some or all) of the consumed staple maize with implications for access in different types of households - namely, those depending on oil palm employment and those that do not (and/or are excluded from it).

Drawing upon survey data, this chapter is focused on household access to food and how it may be impacted by employment (both on and off oil palm), income, and various aspects of maize cultivation, including cost factors. Participants were asked whether, and how often, they experience uncertainty regarding food access – i.e. times when they do not know that they will have food to eat during a given week or possibly go without food. Households whose responds reported that they do not generally experience food uncertainty are classified as having ‘regular food access’ in this analysis, while households who responded that they experience food uncertainty one or more weeks per year are classified as having ‘irregular food access’. While food access is considered in general, special attention is allotted to access to maize, since it is a key component of the local diet and is the main staple food grown in the region. The emphasis in the analysis is on the regularity and continuity of food access throughout different circumstances and different times of the

68 When urban areas are considered, maize is the source of 65% of the carbohydrates and 71% of the protein in Guatemalan diets.

121 year, as the bare minimum to avoid hunger. However, some households categorized as having ‘regular food access’ may be constricted in the variety and nutritional quality of foods that they are able to regularly obtain, even if they may not perceive this to be the case. The variety, nutrition, and cultural significance of food are examined in the following chapter.

The results in this chapter demonstrate that food access benefits are limited even for the households that have experienced an increase in income due to oil palm employment, while the cultivation of maize continues to be an important pillar for household food access. At the same time, oil palm expansion is increasingly undermining maize production, which has long served as the foundation of local food security, especially as a ‘safety net’ for food access in a region fraught with precarious employment.

5.2 Results

5.2.1 Food access, maize cultivation and harvest size

Survey results indicate that the households in Maize Village are overall significantly more confident in their food access than in Palm Village (Figure 10). Nearly 70% of the surveyed households in Maize Village claim that they do not typically experience a lack of food in the household or uncertainty with regard to having food access at different times of the year. In contrast, about half of the surveyed households in Palm Village experience regular food gaps (compared to 23% in Maize Village), ranging between twice a year (e.g. during between-harvest periods) to multiple times a month primarily due to irregular or uncertain job prospects.

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80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

% of % respondent households 10%

0% Regular uncertainty of Occasional uncertainty of Confident of having food having food access having food access access

Palm Village Maize Village

Figure 10: Confidence in food access by community*.

*Maize Village has higher rates of regular food access than Palm Village.

Food access in both communities was significantly associated with growing maize (Table 9). Out of those who do not grow maize, 70% were not confident in the regularity of their food access, compared to 45% of those who do grow maize for household consumption. The difference in access is more pronounced in Palm Village, where nearly 90% of non- maize-producing households expressed uncertainty about regular food access, though many maize growers (63%) were also faced with periodic food gaps, suggesting that there are other important variables that shape access to food in the village.

As one might expect, food access is associated with a larger average harvest size (Table 9), though the difference in food access is only statistically significant between small and medium harvests in Maize Village. Small harvests in both communities are usually consumed in the households, while a portion of the medium and large harvests is typically sold on the market, generating monetary income. The difference in food access between small and medium harvest in Maize Village likely reflects the additional access to income

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from a medium (as opposed to small) harvest69. No significant relationship was found between food access and per-unit maize production cost, as further discussed below.

Table 9: Average annual maize harvest and food access*.

Total Maize and Palm Village Palm Village Maize Village Food Access Food Access Food Access Irregular Regular Irregular Regular Irregular Regular Grows maize for 45% 55% 63% 42% 31% 69% consumption (n=65) Does not grow maize 70% 30% 89% 11% 50% 50% for consumption (n=17)

Small harvest (n=21) 62% 38% 75% 25% 54% 46% Medium harvest (n=27) 41% 59% 60% 40% 17% 83% Large harvest (n=12) 33% 67% 50% 50% 17% 83%

Kruskal-Wallis rank sum tests for differences in food access between populations (low p-values, in bold, correspond to significant differences in food access between the given groups) Both Villages Palm Village Maize Village p-value p-value p-value Grows vs. does not grow maize for 0.0581 0.0859 0.3261 consumption a Small, Medium, and Large Harvests 0.2076 0.6271 0.0992 Small and Medium Harvests 0.1500 0.4817 0.0580 Small and Large Harvests 0.1198 0.3519 0.1375 Medium and Large Harvests 0.6649 0.6831 1

*Category of average maize harvest size (grains stripped from cob, i.e. ‘shelled’): small= 700kg or less; medium = 700kg - 1800kg; large = 1800kg or more. Exact harvest size may fluctuate from year to year depending on various factors. a Note that the sample of non-producers of maize is small, especially in Maize Village (n=8), so the aggregated (both villages) sample comparison is a better indicator in this case.

69 Some of the revenue from maize sales may be used to purchase other food items, which would explain the positive correlation between harvest size and food security.

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5.2.2 Land holding size

Respondent Households 2 5 2

5 1 2

3 1 1 0 Large Producers Medium Producers Small Producers Marginal Producers Landless

Palm Village - Food Secure Palm Village - Food Insecure Maize Village - Food Secure Maize Village - Food Insecure

Figure 11: Confidence in food access by size of productive land holding (rented or owned) in Palm Village and Maize Village*.

*Number values inside the bars correspond to the number of households who earn income from oil palm wage labour within each category. Marginal farmers are households with 0.7ha in cultivation or less; small farmers cultivate on between 0.7ha and 2.8ha; medium farmers between 2.8ha and 5.6ha; and large farmers cultivate on more than 5.6ha of land (c.f. ENCOVI 2006; De Janvry and Sadoulet 2010). Maize is the most commonly cultivated crop (others include beans, peanuts, cardamom, and fruits); three oil palm growers are included in the ‘large producers’ category.

Figure 11 illustrates how access to food varies according to farm size across the two villages. The most prominent trend is that irregularity of food access is more prevalent in Palm Village than in Maize Village in all categories of landholding size. A significant difference is notable in the small and marginal producer categories – the most common farm sizes in rural Guatemala (De Janvry and Sadoulet 2010) - where far smaller portion of

125 small and marginal producers suffer from irregular food access in Maize Village (29% and 30% respectively) than in Palm Village (57% and 81% respectively). All but one of the households that rely on oil palm wage labour for the majority of their income are small, marginal, or landless households. The majority of the households that are dependent on oil palm wages in Palm Village have irregular food access, while the three oil palm reliant households in Maize Village do not typically experience irregular food access.

5.2.3 Land tenure

Total Both Villages Palm Village Maize Village 100% 100% 100%

80% 80% 80%

60% 60% 60%

40% 40% 40%

20% 20% 20%

0% 0% 0% Owned Rented Owned Rented Owned Rented

Irregular Food Access Irregular Food Access Irregular Food Access Regular Food Access Regular Food Access Regular Food Access

Figure 12: Land tenure and food access*.

*Total (p=0.0634); Palm Village (p=0.04678); Maize Village (p=0.3332) K-W tests.

Land tenure is also associated with regularity of food access. As illustrated in Figure 12, households that own their land are generally more confident about their ability to access food than renters. In Palm Village, over two-thirds of land renters have irregular food access compared to about 43% of landowners. In Maize Village, nearly 80% of landowners felt confident in having regular food access compared to 60% of renters, however the difference in Maize Village is not statistically significant given the respective variations. As discussed later, the strong association between food access and land tenure in Palm Village is attributable to the growing threat of displacement by the expanding oil palm sector.

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5.2.4 Employment

Similar to land, the security of employment is also associated with access to food. Figure 13 shows that households whose members hold what they consider to be permanent jobs have more regular access to food than those with temporary employment. In Palm Village over 78% of households with temporary employment suffered from irregular food access compared to 58% of households with permanent employment. In Maize Village, the difference in food access between households with temporary employment (61% regular access) and permanent employment (80% regular access) was not as large.

Total Both Villages Palm Village Maize Village 50 20 25

40 20 15 30 15 10 20 10 5 10 5

0 0 0 Permanent Temporary Permanent Temporary Permanent Temporary Job Job Job Job Job Job

Irregular Food Access

Numberrespondent of households Numberrespondent of households Irregular Food Access Numberrespondent of households Irregular Food Access Regular Food Access Regular Food Access Regular Food Access

Figure 13: Food access and employment type (permanent or temporary) of the main employment-based income source in the household*.

*Households without significant employment income are excluded (e.g. those whose income comes from crop sales, savings, or remittances).

Other household characteristics were tested for their significance to regularity of food access. Somewhat surprisingly, the household demographics including the number of working age males (10 – 65 years old70) in the household and the ratios of dependents to

70 Males typically begin to work at age 10 in the study region.

127 work age males and work age adults, were not significant determinants of household food access overall. However, instances were observed where household food access improved as male children grew up and started working, and decreased in older households that were having trouble finding and/or maintaining work because of age.

5.2.5 Ten-year changes in food access

Survey respondents were asked to compare their current household food access to ten years ago (i.e. better, worse, or the same) and describe the reasons for the changes. The ten-year time frame corresponds to when the oil palm was first established in the region, including Palm Village, and had begun to spread.

Table 10: Change in food access over 10 years*/ Palm Village Maize Village HH relies on oil palm wage Total (39 Total (40 HH) labour for most (>50%) of HH) HH income Change in food no (25 HH) yes (14 HH) access Better food 20% 50% 31% 8% perception access now over the last 10 Worse 32% 29% 29% 15% years food access now No change 48% 21% 40% 77% p < 0.05 Kruskal-Wallis changes in food uncertainty in Palm Village by reliance on oil palm wage labour p < 0.01 Kruskal-Wallis differences in food uncertainty by community

*Better food access refers to fewer incidences of food access uncertainty periods now compared to ten years ago. Oil palm growers are excluded.

Table 10 shows that the emergence of oil palm in Palm Village is associated with a dramatic split in community members’ ability access food. While nearly a third of the households reported improved food access, about the same number of households complained of declining access. This stands in stark contrast with Maize Village, where the vast majority (77%) of the surveyed households in Maize Village have not experienced any changes in food access.

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Whether a Palm Village household’s access to food has changed over the past decade is strongly associated with the households’ reliance on oil palm wages. Households deriving most (>50%) of their income from wage labour on oil palm farms fared differently depending on the conditions of their current oil palm employment, their previous employment situation, and other household characteristics. Most of the households in Palm Village that experienced an increase in food access were those relying on oil palm employment. Meanwhile, most of their neighbours for whom access had worsened relied upon non-oil palm income sources, including households that were excluded from oil palm employment. While this might imply that the development of oil palm has positively contributed to food access in the village, it is important to recognize that the good-fortune of some has also been the misfortune of others. Furthermore, as discussed below, ‘improved’ food access does not mean that a household is now ‘food secure’.

Among the households in Palm Village whose access to food access has remained the same over the past 10 years, regardless of whether or not they were dependent upon income from oil palm, most were food-secure to begin with and they had other sources of income that insure their continued access to food. These households either (i) had members with permanent and relatively well-paying jobs, including caporales71 on oil palm plantations, school teachers and workers at the electrical company or other businesses; (ii) received remittances from family members in large cities or abroad; or (iii) had fall-back savings from previous work, family, or land sales.

Of the oil palm-reliant households whose food access has improved in the last ten years, almost all had a member with a permanent oil palm job. In two cases, family member(s) had temporary job(s), but with some assurance of continued employment72. However, even though these households had seen an improvement in their food access, all except one household still remained food insecure, with most households experiencing regular food

71 A caporal typically manages the work process and is in charge of worker recruitment on the plantation. 72 In one of the cases, the worker has a good relationship with the plantation owner who provides regular employment. In the second case the household has three work age males with oil palm employment with the assumption that at least one will have work at a given time.

129 gaps (twice a year or more). All, except two landless households, grew maize for consumption on either owned or rented land.

Of the non-palm-reliant households, those whose food access had improved attribute the improvement to finding better jobs (e.g. teacher) or kids growing up and helping with household income. Despite the improvements, almost all still had irregular access to food.

In the oil palm-reliant households whose food access had worsened in the last ten years, two had temporary and two had permanent oil palm jobs, including an older household where the male oil palm employee was finding the work more and more difficult to endure physically. All of them attributed their decreased food security on either increased food prices, or on deteriorating fall-back options for lack of employment including: poor harvest, less land available for maize in the community as a result of oil palm expansion, and the loss of forests (due to expanding oil palm) where they had previously sourced food.

The non-palm-reliant households reporting worsened food access in the last ten years attributed their hardship to three causes, all of which were at least partially related to the introduction of oil palm. They included (i) increased difficulty in finding work, (ii) higher food prices, and (iii) having to purchase more goods (e.g. food, firewood) instead of getting them from forests, which have since been displaced. In three cases, the households were excluded from oil palm work due to old age or illness/injury and had fewer options for employment because the oil palm displaced other types of agricultural activities with less physically demanding labour (e.g. maize, cardamom). All of these households had insecure food access and relied on temporary or sporadic jobs.

Overall, food access remains a pervasive problem in Palm Village, even in instances where access has improved over the last ten years. Improvement has been primarily contingent upon obtaining reliable permanent employment, whether on oil palm farms or elsewhere. However, oil palm provides mostly temporary and precarious employment, and at the expense of other types of agricultural employment (as it displaces other crops), deforestation, and the associated loss of forest-based livelihood activities.

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5.2.6 Oil palm expansion and staple crop displacement

The previous chapter (Chapter 4) showed that that oil palm in the oil-palm dominated community has displaced and continues to displace staple maize cultivation. While land transactions occurred for various reasons prior to the adoption of oil palm around 2007, there has since been a significant increase in land sales, nearly all of which have been geared towards oil palm. Furthermore, as some oil palm growers expanded their farms, they occasionally surrounded the parcels of their neighbours, hindering their passage, and ultimately exerting tremendous pressure on the peasant owners to sell their parcels. While surrounding parcels is a well-known tactic used by large agribusinesses to pressure peasants into selling their land, this and other recent studies found that small-medium contract farmers can also deploy a similar strategy as they seek to capture land in frontier conditions (Guereña and Zepeda 2013; Hall et al. 2011).

In Palm Village, the rapid acquisition of land by palm growers has reduced the amount of land devoted to maize while increasing pressure on the remaining land.. The encroaching oil palm farms have also occupied land that was once used to cultivate other cash crops like pineapple and cardamom, and displaced tropical rainforests that had traditionally been an important source of firewood and foods such as herbs, mushrooms, fruits, and game meat. For many community members, though, the loss of maize-land poses the greatest challenge to their food security. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of the households in Palm Village expressed greater difficulty in cultivating maize since the onset of the oil palm boom, citing the declining availability of land as the main reason. As a result, some community members have been forced to stay on less-productive land, over-exploit land, travel longer distances to their parcels, and simply have fewer options for improving or altering their maize cultivation (Figure 14).

In the neighbouring Maize Village, nearly a third of respondents maintained that the cultivation of maize had not become more difficult over the past decade, compared to only 15% in Palm Village. While 57% of Maize Village households have indeed also faced increasing difficulty in growing maize and beans over the past decade, they did not cite the decreasing availability of land that was such a prominent concern in Palm Village. Instead,

131 they were preoccupied with the challenges associated with the availability and cost of fertilizer, the drying of land, crop disease, and difficulty in acquiring seeds.

No change in difficulty

Seed Availability

Crop Disease

Soil Moisture

Fertilizer

Less Land

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 % of respondents

Maize Village Palm Village

Figure 14: Main reasons for increased difficulty in growing staple crops over the last 10 years*.

*34 respondent households in Palm Village and 30 in Maize Village (some respondents mentioned more than one reason).

5.2.7 Cost of maize production

The connections between household food access, waged employment and self-provisioning are complex since both employment and maize cultivation are important for sustained food access. Self-provisioned maize continues to be an important household food source in both communities, and is an important fall-back resource in times of inadequate employment. Furthermore, many of the surveyed households that did not participate in oil palm employment relied on wage labour on neighbouring maize fields. Correspondingly, many subsistence maize farmers depended on hired day labourers especially during key points in the growing cycle, such as harvest time.

In the previous section, it was shown that increased pressure on land is a clear consequence of oil palm expansion and is a mounting issue for local maize cultivation.

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While land availability is an essential prerequisite, maize cultivation also depends upon access to land (e.g. affordability of rent), as well as access to labour and inputs such as fertilizer. A correlation analysis between the maize production cost per unit (46kg) of shelled maize and the different cost components, was conducted to determine the relative importance of each component, and thus to better understand the possible trade-offs between oil palm-generated employment and self-provisioning of maize, as they pertain to food access (Table 11).

The correlation analysis, summarized in Table 11, shows that fertilizer was a significant factor in maize production cost in both villages. The cost of hiring labourers was a significant factor in Maize Village, but not in Palm Village. The cost of land rent was an important variable in Palm Village, but not in Maize Village. A larger harvest in Palm Village tended to significantly decrease per-unit production costs, which was not the case in Maize Village, where some smaller farmers were also able to keep production costs low. Land tenure was not in itself a significant factor in production cost, but rather not having to pay rent reduced harvest costs for land owners in both communities.

Importantly, in the sample, less than half (29/54)73 of the maize producing households were able to keep their per-quintal maize production cost below 100 Quetzales, which is the average market price for purchasing a quintal of maize74 in this region. Most of the maize producers (16/29) with per-quintal cost of higher than 100 Quetzales are from Palm Village, while the majority of farmers (17/25) with lower than 100 Quetzales per-quintal costs are from Maize Village.

73 Excludes farmers who grow maize in other communities (i.e. neither Palm nor Maize Village) 74 The market price can fluctuate seasonally by approximately 20%.

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Table 11: Correlation analysis of per unit maize production costa. Maize Production Per-Unit Cost: Correlation Analysis

Combined Palm Village Maize Village Notes Palm Village only only and Maize Village Variables Pearson Sig. Pearson R Sig. Pearson R Sig. R Fertilizer Use 0.2804 ** 0.0050 ns 0.3278 * Only two households in Palm (yes) Village do not use fertilizer Fertilizer Cost 0.7578 *** 0.7658 *** 0.4250 ** (Q/quintal) Hire Day 0.3865 *** 0.0448 ns 0.6265 *** Some households may hire day Labourers (yes) labourers regardless of the size of Day Labourers 0.1689 ns 0.1556 ns 0.6295 ** their harvest. Cost (Q/quintal) Rent Cost (Q) 0.4369 *** 0.4542 ** -0.2734 ns Rent cost and harvest size are Harvest Size -0.3043 ** -0.3843 ** -0.2843 ns less important in Maize Village where work-for-rent schemes are common Work Age Males 0.0397 ns 0.0260 ns -0.0331 ns Working age males in household Transport Cost 0.1015 ns -0.0296 ns 0.1812 ns and transport cost are not (Q) significant factors in per unit maize cost

Significance Codes: p < 0.01*** ; p < 0.05** ; p < 0.1* ; ns= no significance

Maize Production Cost (Quetzals) to produce 1 quintal (46kg) of maize (grains stripped from the cob) Cost Fertilizer Use: (no=0, yes=1) the household regularly uses fertilizer to grow maize Fertilizer Cost: Cost (Quetzals) of fertilizer to produce 1 quintal (46kg) of maize (grains stripped from the cob) Hire Day Labourers: (yes/no) the household regularly hires paid day labourers for the maize field Day Labourers Cost: Cost (Quetzals) to hire day labourers to produce 1 quintal (46kg) of maize (grains stripped from the cob) Rent Cost: Total cost (Quetzals) of renting land ; zero if work for rent Land Tenure Household owns land (0); household rents land (1) Harvest Size: Category of average maize harvest size (grains stripped from cob): small= 700kg or less; medium = 700kg - 1800kg; large = 1800kg or more. Exact harvest size may fluctuate from year to year depending on various factors. Work Age Males Number of work-age males in household Transport Cost (Q) Total annual transportation cost (quetzals) associated with harvesting maize

a. The monetary value of the time spent on working the field and the opportunity cost are not taken into consideration in this analysis.

Several reasons were found for the striking differences in maize production costs and cost factors between the two communities. First, the farmers in Palm Village tended to adhere

134 to the norm of monetary payment for day labour regardless of harvest size or other factors. Therefore, the monetary costs for labour tended to be similar between maize producers. Similarly, Palm Village farmers paid cash for land rent based on local market prices, with higher rent prices translating to higher maize production costs. In Maize Village, however, no-market exchanges for these key inputs were more common. Farmers that managed to keep their per-quintal production costs lower than market purchase price deployed at least one (in most cases many) cost reduction strategies such as:

- paying for land rent with labour (e.g. working on 0.35ha of the landlord’s land in exchange for renting 0.7ha for personal use) - renting land for free from family member or friend - paying for labour with labour (e.g. helping a neighbour with harvest in exchange for help with own harvest) - receiving free labour from immediate and/or extended family or friends - not using fertilizer (mostly in Maize Village) - using fertilizer to obtain a larger harvest, even on a marginal-size plot of land (0.7ha or less)

Furthermore, because the agricultural day wages in Palm Village were about 15% higher than in Maize Village as a result of oil palm establishment, it was more costly to hire day labourers in Palm Village, making maize production more expensive for many producers75. At the same time, the norm of monetary payment for labour leaves little room for reducing production costs by engaging in labour-for-labour exchanges.

No significant association was found between maize production cost and employment on oil palm plantations, although there may be a relationship between oil palm employment

75 There was no significant difference in average per-unit production cost between communities. This is due to the large within-community variation in production costs. However, many more Maize Village producers managed to keep costs below the market purchase price of maize.

135 and maize farm productivity, as had been suggested by Mingorría et al. (2014). However, further investigation is required to determine this.

5.3 Discussion

5.3.1 Oil palm and self-provisioning of maize

The maize production unit cost analysis has several implications. First, fertilizer is a significant and often unavoidable expense for maize farmers in both villages. In Maize Village, however, using more fertilizer appears to be a strategy for marginal farmers to be able to intensify production on their land plots, giving them an opportunity to earn monetary income from a portion of their harvest, or to save it for future consumption. However, in Palm Village, where decreasing harvest size is correlated with increasing cost, it is the farmers with the smallest harvests that tend to incur higher per-unit production costs. Second, because paying day labourers adds significant cost for the maize producers, keeping wages low and/or saving on labour costs by using family labour or participating in labour exchange schemes is vital for maintaining the viability of maize cultivation. Similarly, lowering the rent expenses either through land ownership or by participating in work-for-rent schemes can be crucial for keeping the production costs below the market price threshold.

The prevalence of labour exchange schemes in Maize Village gives maize farmers more flexibility to adapt to their given economic situation. For example, if at a certain point a farmer has limited cash funds s/he may choose to partake in labour exchange and use the saved funds to obtain fertilizer and ensure a better harvest. Whereas in Palm Village, a similar farmer would have to distribute the funds between the cost factors, thus potentially risking a lower harvest resulting in even higher per-unit production cost. Therefore, non- monetary exchanges function not only as a means to lower the ongoing labour and rent expenditures, but also as a sort of insurance to prevent maize productivity decline during difficult economic times.

While the origins of the differences in non-market exchange practices between the two communities are unclear, familial and neighbourly relations of trust and reciprocity play a key role in preserving the culture of non-monetary exchanges. There is some evidence to

136 suggest that oil palm expansion may be contributing to the deterioration of social relations in Palm Village by introducing a source of conflict and causing social divides. In the interviews, some community members mentioned an increased prevalence of theft since the arrival of oil palm, where some villagers have resorted to stealing firewood from their neighbours’ land parcels because much of the common forest had been cut down and is now covered in oil palm. Another interviewee complained of plantation guards stopping bypassing villagers, asking questions, and issuing threats. ‘I used to be able to walk freely in my village,’ one respondent noted. ‘Now I feel like it’s not my village any more’. Furthermore, Palm Village had experienced problems with theft and assault involving migrant labourers, as well as conflicts with other villages because of broken roads (destroyed by heavy oil palm trucks) and protests against oil palm. Overall, there is palpable tension in the community around oil palm, with some residents regarding it as essential to their livelihoods, and others expressing resentment towards oil palm supporters and community members who sold land to oil palm growers. In addition to other problems, further breakdown of social relations in Palm Village could further undermine the economic sustainability of maize production and the adaptive capacity of maize farmers.

Oil palm expansion can compromise the affordability of maize production in several other ways. One of the consequences of oil palm establishment in Palm Village was the effect of pushing up agricultural day wages in Palm Village. Though this may be beneficial for some wage labourers, it is detrimental to households reliant upon their labour, especially those lacking the fall-back of a widespread labour exchange culture. Households with labour constraints such as female-headed and elderly households stand to be the most affected by regressing maize production and affordability. Incidentally, these households are also the most likely to be excluded from the physically intense oil palm employment, thus compounding their vulnerability within an oil palm dominated community.

The escalating pressure on land in Palm Village also makes it more difficult to obtain productive and accessible land by leaving less and less land available for expanding maize

137 production and driving up land prices76. While the effect on rent price is currently unclear, the declining availability of land is alarming many renters in Palm Village, with some lamenting of the prospect of not having land for growing maize in the near future. It is not surprising then that land ownership (as opposed to renting) is significantly associated with Palm Villagers’ confidence in their ability to access food, but not in Maize Village, where renters feel more confident about having future access to rented land.

Figure 15: Farmer from Palm Village comparing maize crop grown with (right) and without (left) fertilizer. (November 2014)

Overexploitation of land is another concern associated with heightened land pressure, as it would necessitate higher fertilizer costs and make maize agriculture less sustainable over time. The traditional Mayan milpa system, which involves intercropping, especially with nitrogen-fixing legumes, and land rotation, is already impossible for most maize growers in more land-scarce Palm Village. Some farmers there have reported losing entire crops over the last few years due to insufficient fertilizer (see Figure 15 for comparison). In addition to augmented fertilizer dependence, residents are becoming concerned about the declining availability and quality of local water resources affecting their maize crops and everyday lives. The broader ecological impacts of large-scale monocrop expansion, including the

76 Many elements affect land prices in the study region including land tenure status, ecological attributes, and circumstantial factors (e.g. if the seller is desperate for a quick sale and/or is taken advantage of by the buyer). However, interviews and surveys indicate a steep upward trend in land prices, with a couple of land owners even strategically holding uncultivated land with the expectation of eventually selling to an oil palm grower at a higher price.

138 long-term impacts on soil and water cycling are discussed in the following chapter (Chapter 6).

5.3.2 Oil palm and market provisioning of food

Wage employment remains the key source of household income for both Maize and Palm Villages, of which a portion is allotted to purchasing food. Evidently, most survey participants correlated their food gap periods with gaps in employment, and improvement in food security with improvement in employment (e.g. finding a stable job) with an oil palm farm or another employer.

Oil palm plantations are an important source of temporary and permanent employment in Palm Village. However, as described in Chapter 4, the vast majority of the jobs are offered on a temporary basis, mostly in the form of 15-day contracts. The nature of oil palm employment on the smallholder plantations in Palm Village is very precarious and non- inclusive, as the work does not come with health benefits, employment security, or assured safety standards. The results in the previous chapter showed that none of the surveyed temporary employees felt confident about the long-term feasibility of their employment, due primarily to the extreme physical demand of the work. Even out of the permanent employees, only 35% had confidence in the long-term viability of their jobs, all of them being in supervisory or less physically demanding roles. The inequitable hiring practices on oil palm farms, which provide no guarantee for re-hiring or recourse for discrimination, compound the struggle of community members excluded from oil palm work or vulnerable to future exclusion due to age, injury, or other reasons.

The results presented in this chapter suggest that oil palm employment increased food access in Palm Village only for the households whose members were able to procure a permanent job on an oil palm farm, or have some other assurance for continued employment. Improvement in food access, however, did not mean that the households necessarily became food secure. Most of the households relying on oil palm employment, both temporary and permanent, remained unconfident of regular food access, even if they had better food access now compared to ten years ago.

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On the other hand, many households (32%) in Palm Village that did not rely on oil palm employment as their primary source of income had experienced a deterioration in food access over the last ten years. Increased difficulty in finding work due to fewer options for employment was the main cited reason, especially for households that are excluded from oil palm labour. For many households, the inequity and precariousness of oil palm jobs combined with the disappearance of other agricultural employment opportunities were a cause of worry regarding the future of work prospects and food access in the community.

Curiously, in Maize Village with the overall better food access, residents with permanent jobs were less common and there was no significant difference in food access between households with temporary and permanent jobs. Most temporarily-employed residents in Maize Village worked on neighbouring maize fields, with some occasionally going to other communities to look for day jobs, including on oil palm farms in Palm Village. Temporary maize workers in Maize Village were generally more confident in their ability to find regular work than those in Palm Village. Furthermore, work on maize fields is generally not as physically intense as oil palm work, and is customarily performed by family members with varying abilities. It was found that some of the most vulnerable households in Maize Village (e.g. very poor, elderly, all-female households) have been able to obtain work on their neighbours’ maize fields or earn money for cleaning, shelling, and sorting maize, obtaining at least enough to feed the household.

Because maize work is more inclusive by physical nature and by custom than oil palm work, it contributes to better food access for a diversity of household types, thus avoiding a polarization effect seen in Palm Village where maize employment is rapidly disappearing. This result complements an earlier study by Dürr (2016), where traditional maize cultivation (compared to oil palm) was found to generate more local forward-linked jobs, leading to a greater proportion of wealth staying in the region. Further to Dürr (2016), the maize economy in this study site tends to generate more inclusive and pro-poor development than oil palm, with direct implications for the food security of vulnerable households. The vast majority of households in Maize Village (nearly 70%) feel confident in their food access regardless of the terms of their employment (temporary or permanent), and over three quarters of the households feel that their food access had remained stable

140 over the last ten years. In Palm Village, however, oil palm employment is causing a divide in food access outcomes between those who are employed and not employed by oil palm, and between those who are employed on varying terms. As the oil palm continues to expand over other agricultural lands, thus eliminating other agricultural employment options, food access may become further hampered for those who are not able to benefit from oil palm employment.

5.3.3 Role of self-provisioning and market provisioning in food access

Since food access is tied to both employment and maize self-provisioning, it becomes necessary to understand the relative importance of each, and the role of each in the average rural household’s livelihood strategy. In the mainstream development discourse, the creation of rural jobs via the promotion of smallholder (and large-scale) cash crop cultivation has been long advocated as an avenue for rural development, even if it comes at the expense of reducing purportedly inefficient subsistence farming (World Bank 2007, 2011; Conroy et al. 1996). Some studies have challenged this vision, stressing instead the importance of staple crop cultivation for food security, especially during periods of low employment and food price shocks (Anderman et al. 2014; De Janvry and Sadoulet 2011; Baiphethi and Jacobs 2009; Isakson 2009).

In this study, maize cultivation appears to be an important risk77 mitigation strategy for households, the majority of which lack other ‘safety nets’ for accessing food during difficult times. In the absence of sufficient government assistance or other social support systems, households are left vulnerable to hunger when they experience a drop in income (e.g. when employment is not available or inaccessible) or when crops fail, etc.). This sentiment is often reflected in the way villagers talk about maize, suggesting that it is not an easily replaceable livelihood component even if more wage work happened to be available. For instance, an older respondent acknowledged the benefit of added employment from oil palm in the community, at the same time adding ‘but if I cannot work, who will take care of my family? If we have maize at least we can eat’.

77 Risk here refers to the probability of an event occurring, in this case an event of a food gap (Ellis 1993).

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Respondents frequently referred to maize cultivation as part of their identity, and treated it almost synonymously with food in a broader sense. For example, one respondent expressed her anxiety about oil palm encroachment: ‘If there is no more land to grow maize, what will we eat? We will have to leave’. The concern came up repeatedly, even among families who had members working on oil palm plantations and were benefitting from the income. ‘Maize is something we can eat. We cannot eat the oil palm’. Similarly, most of the landless households, particularly younger families or families that have recently moved into this frontier region, take up work in hopes of saving money to purchase their own plot of land and grow maize in the future. For them, maize is an inextricable part of their Mayan culture, but also a means of attaining stability and ensuring continuity for the future generations.

A glaring problem, however, is the high average per-unit cost of maize production in the two communities, where more than half of the respondent farmers self-provision maize for more than what it would cost to purchase the same amount on the market, not including the value of their own labour and opportunity cost. While this can be conceptualized as growth-stifling productive inefficiency, it can be argued that it is simply an investment that is precisely motivated by the food access objective. In a region where the fleeting labour market often leaves households without an income source for uncertain periods of time, the added per-unit maize production cost is a sort of premium to reduce the risk of food gaps when market-provisioning of food may not be possible. Furthermore, the household has much more control over its subsistence maize cultivation than over its monetary income, especially in the common situation of reliance on temporary work. In dire times, it is much more likely that a household can find ways to reduce maize cultivation expenditures (e.g. cutting down on fertilizer or asking family and friends for help with farming tasks) than to increase its income to meet its immediate needs. Incidentally, it was found that food access was not associated with lower maize production cost, but only with whether a household cultivated its own maize. The food gap risk is further reduced in the presence of non-monetary exchange options, prominent in Maize Village, giving residents additional flexibility to maximize their productive resources to adapt in times of financial constraint.

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The negative effect of the oil palm expansion on maize production a significant issue given the importance of cultivating maize for regular and continuous household food access. In Palm Village, many oil palm-reliant and non-oil palm reliant respondents who have experienced declining food access blamed deteriorating fall-back options for obtaining food when there is no available work. Declining access to land was a primary cause for worry as a matter that is making maize cultivation more difficult, and as a direct problem for food access. Waning fall-back options also included disappearing forest resources, which have historically been a source of certain food types (e.g. game meat, forest fruits, herbs, and mushrooms).

The results shown here are illustrative of the ‘safety-first’ principle previously observed in peasant economies. Adhering to the principle, peasants living close to the subsistence margin seek first to avoid potentially catastrophic failure, rather than seek potentially higher but riskier returns (Scott 1976). In doing so, the risk-averse peasants often sacrifice productive and/or economic efficiency, as well as refrain from adopting innovations or practices that carry a substantial level of uncertainty (Ellis 1993). From this perspective, the threat of further oil palm expansion may, in fact, be contributing to the unwillingness of peasants in Palm Village to abandon maize farming despite the high per-unit costs. Because the spread of oil palm is exacerbating several types of uncertainty78 in the village, particularly uncertainty regarding continued access to land and uncertainty over market fluctuations, it is reinforcing risk-averse behaviour, especially for poorer households (Ellis 1993).

Overall, the above findings suggest that while oil palm establishment has resulted in improved food access for certain households in Palm Village, namely the minority that were able to secure permanent or otherwise reliable employment, it has done little for rest of the community by ways of improvement. The results also echo an issue raised in previous studies, that an increase in monetary income may not necessarily yield an

78 Uncertainty refers to events for which it is not possible for the decision-maker to attach probability to. (Ellis 1993).

143 increase a household’s purchasing power (Anderman et al. 2014; De Janvry and Sadoulet 2010). About a third of the surveyed households in Palm Village, both with and without oil palm employment, have experienced a decline in their food access over the last ten years, with many pointing to rising food prices as a main reason79. In addition to having to pay more for food, some households indicated that they must also now pay for firewood and for forest herbs, which used to be freely available before local forests were cut down. This once again puts into question the security benefits of shifting away from self-provisioning towards market-provisioning of food.

Given the marked importance of maize self-provisioning and the restricted benefits of oil palm for household food access in the host community, this thesis advocates for programs and policies that support staple crop cultivation, as well as efforts to improve access to more equitable and stable employment. Social assistance which includes employment insurance, health benefits, education and training programs, and community building, can play a central role in reducing food gaps and allow rural households the opportunity to more efficiently allocate their productive resources and catalyze development. Better oversight is urged for the environmental impacts of cash crop expansion as well as abatement and/or compensation mandates for the loss of ecological resources.

79 The prices of food and other basic necessities in Guatemala have risen steadily over the last decade, inclusively for key staples such as maize, beans, rice, and wheat (INE 2017; c.f. De Janvry and Sadoulet 2010).

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Chapter 6 Oil Palm and Food System Vulnerability 6.1 Introduction

Claims of improved food security from flex crop establishment have been problematized in literature, citing issues with unequal access to employment, real wages, working conditions, and other socio-economic factors that could impact food security within a given context (Anderman et al. 2014; Isakson 2014; McCarthy 2010). In the previous chapter (Chapter 5) it was shown that oil palm expansion has undermined staple food access and exacerbated inequality for Palm Village residents as it has not generated sufficient employment or income benefits to improve food security for the vast majority of households. At the same time, ongoing encroachment of oil palm onto the remaining staple crop fields and forested lands is threatening long-term food access with shrinking employment options and possibly the deterioration of social relations and the elimination of fall-back strategies for obtaining food.

In this chapter, the results from Chapter 4 and 5 are re-contextualized within the situated socio-ecological food system (SEFS) framework described in Chapter 2 (see also Ericksen 2008a; Allen and Prosperi 2016; Cote and Nightingale 2011) to demonstrate ways in which oil palm expansion has led to considerable changes in the food system of the producer region. Other dimensions of the food system, including food consumption/utilization, variety and nutrition are examined in relation to food system vulnerability and adaptation capacity. Furthermore, the potential environmental consequences of oil-palm-altered landscapes are explained, as they lead to changes in local food access and consumption patterns. Special attention is given to ecological slow variables80, namely water and soil nutrient cycling, and their role in long-term food system resilience.

80 From Chapter 2: ecological slow variables are aspects of the ecological system that remain relatively constant over time due to the system’s self-regulation. These include water cycling, forest regeneration, soil fertility, and other landscape functions. Because slow variables form the basis of ecosystem resilience,

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The results suggest that oil palm expansion has exacerbated many existing food system vulnerabilities and introduced new ones. While oil palm has done little to boost the local food access by ways of spurring economic development, it has contributed to the disappearance of certain nutritious foods in the study communities, compromised ecological resources (e.g. water, forest, and soils), and heightened the region’s exposure to external shocks (e.g. oil palm price fluctuations). Furthermore, food insecurity is exacerbated by the scalar incongruence between (beyond-community) food system threats, shocks and stresses, and (primarily within-household) adaptation strategies in relation to self- and market- provisioning of food. The analysis highlights the importance of supporting traditional agricultural systems, strengthening environmental protection, and instating stricter regulation of the spread of cash crops in land-scarce, food insecure, and otherwise vulnerable regions. Institutional capacity building at community and beyond- community scales is needed to help households cope with shocks and foster equity and resilience in the food system.

The layout of this chapter is as follows. The chapter begins with a descriptive analysis of the principal food system characteristics, including the key processes and limitations involved in self-provisioning and market-provisioning of food. Then, the primary links to shocks and adaptation/coping strategies are identified with respect to the main food system characteristics and activities. The impacts of the introduction and expansion of oil palm are then explained in relation to the food system characteristics and vulnerabilities. Specifically, the land, labour, and staple food access dynamics discussed in the previous chapters are placed within the socio-ecological food system framework, along with provisioning and consumption patterns of other foods. Finally, the ways in which oil palm has altered food system vulnerabilities are explained, along with suggestions to improve the resilience of the local food system.

pushing them beyond their critical thresholds can trigger a transition of the system to an irreversible new state (Garmestani and Allen 2014)

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6.2 Food system characteristics

Both self-provisioning and market-provisioning play an important role in obtaining food in Palm and Maize Villages. Over 80% of the households in the two villages access food through a combination of self-provisioning (primarily of maize, in a few cases beans, and forest products) and market provisioning of these and other foods.

Table 12 lists the categories of foods that are often, but not exclusively, self-provisioned in the study villages. Maize is the most common self-provisioned type of food. Most households in both villages obtain all, or part of, their consumed maize from their owned or rented farm plots. A few households also cultivate beans. Staple crop agriculture in the communities is entirely rain-fed. Farming tasks including planting, cleaning and weeding the fields, applying agrochemicals, and harvesting, are usually performed by hand, with minimal machinery use (e.g. portable pumps for herbicide application). Most maize farmers in both villages use chemical and/or organic fertilizers due to declining soil fertility over the last decade. A few farmers with sufficient land and other productive resources observe fallow periods and/or plant nitrogen-fixing bean varieties for a period of time or in conjunction with maize.

Some villagers keep poultry for eggs and meat, although typically not enough for household self-sufficiency in these products. A few households have fruit trees (e.g. orange, banana, papaya) and certain vegetables (e.g. chayote) on their farm parcels or near their houses. However, as discussed further in this chapter, the consumption of fruits and vegetables is generally very low in both communities.

A number of villagers participate in hunting, fishing, and gathering of foods and firewood that are still available in local forests and waterways. Maize Village has some remnants of tropical forest on privately-owned lands and on common village property. Palm Village has few and smaller remaining forest plots. The disappearance of forest is more pronounced in Palm Village, where much of the forest had been cut down over time to make room for crops and pasture. Whether cut by oil palm producers or by previous landowners, most of the previously forested land is now covered by oil palm, with more expansion on the horizon (see Chapter 4). Oil palm growers, in particular, have been responsible for clearing

147 forest remnants in riparian zones. Palm Village residents reported that shrinking forest plots combined with population growth have led to mounting scarcity of forest-based foods and resources (e.g. firewood), with possible impacts on local water resources – discussed later in this chapter.

Table 12: Households (HH's) engaging in regular or occasional self-provisioning of different foods in Palm and Maize Villages. Types of Food Common self-provisioning % of surveyed HH’s % of surveyed HH’s method in Palm Village in Maize Village

Maize Farm cultivation 83% 88% Beans Farm cultivation 5% 5% Fruits (e.g. orange, Cultivation on farm parcels banana, papaya, and/or house gardens No data – however, self-provisioning of fruits pineapple) and vegetables was observed in both Vegetables (e.g. Cultivation on farm parcels communities. chayote, carrots, and/or house gardens onions) Poultry (chickens, Keeping poultry near the 26%* 13%* turkeys) and eggs house Game meat Hunting in forests 0% 5% Herbs and Gathering in forests and farm 14% 20% Mushrooms parcels Fish Fishing in local streams 14% (half of these fish 25% (all except one in rivers far outside of respondent fish in the community) local rivers) Firewood Gathering from farm 65% (4 cases of 80% own/rented parcels, forests, gathering fallen fronds from family/neighbours, and from oil palm farms) in a few cases from oil palm farms

*Numbers are likely higher than the percentages indicated in the survey. Chicken deaths were reported in the previous year due to disease. Some households gave up chicken-rearing because of this, though they mentioned that they may re-consider in the future.

Market-provisioning (purchasing) is the prevalent sourcing method for many types of food. Households purchase foods from a handful of small local stores, and occasionally from the nearest towns. The closest town, however, is located about 10km away and is not easily accessible for most villagers who do not own a vehicle and/or live far from the main road. The owners of the local stores are also villagers with various financial and transportation constraints. They obtain some of their marketed products from neighbours within their communities (e.g. fruits from villagers with fruit trees on their plots), from trucks that pass

148 by the villages (e.g. beans are often purchased from trucks), or from the nearest towns. Choice of products and their respective sources are dictated in part by local availability and by the individual means of the storeowners to be able to purchase, transport, and store goods.

A critical and ongoing issue in both villages is the availability and quality of water, both for supporting farm production and for everyday household use. For their household water supply, villagers in both communities depend on shallow wells and small streams. Some wells and streams become dry during the summer season – an issue which had notably intensified in Palm Village over the last decade. Both villages suffer from a lack of sanitation infrastructure, leading to a general lack of water management capacity and prevalence of water-borne diseases.

Villagers use basic firewood stoves for cooking, rendering them highly dependent on firewood. Firewood has become tougher to self-provision over the years, making it more difficult and expensive to acquire.

6.3 Food system vulnerabilities

The characteristics of the similar food systems in Maize and Palm Villages are associated with significant vulnerabilities due to their susceptibility to shocks of environmental (e.g. drought) and socio-economic (e.g. surges in food prices, drop in employment, etc.) origin, and limited adaptive capacity (Ericksen 2008a,b; Adger 2006; Chambers 2006). Table 13 outlines some of the main characteristics of the food systems with their corresponding vulnerabilities, threats/stresses/shocks, and existing adaptive strategies, and limiting factors. It is not, however, an exhaustive list. ‘Adaptation’ and ‘adaptive capacity’ as referred to in this chapter includes the coping mechanisms to short-term stressors (e.g. seasonal water shortages) as well as the potential to adapt to future change in a more proactive way (c.f. Ericksen 2008a, further explained in Chapter 2).

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Table 13: Food system characteristics, their associated stresses/shocks/threats, existing adaptation strategies and limiting factors in Palm and Maize Villages (not an exhaustive list). Food System Common Stresses, Existing Factors Limiting Adaptation* Characteristics Shocks, and Threats Coping/Adaptive or Activities Strategies * In addition to general lack of financial/other resources, little/no access to credit or outside assistance, which are common factors Production Rain-fed Droughts; higher Minimal Lack of infrastructure (e.g. agriculture temperatures and irrigation systems) drying of soils Dependence on Decreased availability Minimal; plant nitrogen- Little possibility to observe fertilizer and affordability of fixers; observe fallow fallow periods due to land fertilizer periods scarcity; soil degradation; regenerating soil typically reduces yields in the short- medium term (Carey 2009) Land scarcity Soil degradation, Intensify production Limited farmer mobility due to biodiversity loss; land constraints deforestation Labour Expensive farm labour Shift to – or intensify – Limited options for labour- intensiveness family labour; participate constrained households (e.g. in labour exchange elderly, all-female) relying on hired labourers Large areas Pests; biodiversity loss; Increase pesticide use; Limited community control dedicated to oil income diversity loss; look for oil palm over land use change decisions; palm oil palm price shocks; employment; look for Limited land and other types of conflicts over land other employment further employment in surrounding away regions Shrinking forest Biodiversity loss; lower Minimal; preserve Limited community control remnants availability and remaining forest if over forest on private lands; regeneration of some possible; minimize insufficient resources for forest plant species; small hunting/gathering from protection and enforcement of forest remnants more forest protected forest vulnerable to disturbance; changes in water cycling Insecure land Pressure to sell land Efforts to secure land Limited control/participation in tenure titles; develop intra- land use change decisions in the community relationships; community; institutional sell land and relocate difficulties involved in titling land Low diversity of Greater probability of Minimal Land scarcity; time, resource, produced food far-reaching and knowledge constraints; ramifications from a dependence of commercial single shock; low fertilizers that are not nutritional diversity conducive to intercropping

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Inequity in Environmental Efforts to develop intra- Poor and inequitable access to and disturbances, community relationships; management of resources; limited ability to environmental and collaborate with NGOs, current land reform initiative is increase resource degradation, researchers, and other ineffective and often facilitates productive market shocks, income communities the concentration of resources loss; ‘land grabbing’ by landholdings; little opportunity powerful actors for innovation due to time/resource/knowledge constraints; institutional weakness (e.g. little capacity for oversight and taking action)

Processing Dependence on Shrinking forest Gather firewood further Limited access to oil palm firewood resources; price away; purchase and/or farms; transportation logistics increases transport firewood from and costs elsewhere; gather on oil palm farms Dependence on Droughts; water Use neighbours’ wells; get Limited open water sources; local streams and shortages; land use water from further away neighbours wells and streams wells for water change; pollution can dry up; difficulty in (drinking and transporting water food processing) Lack of water or Water-borne diseases, Purchase water filter; boil Availability and affordability of sewage pollution water; purchase chemical water treatment tools treatment water purifiers

Distribution Self-provisioning Harvest loss; low Eat more purchased food Limited family/community food/nutrition if possible; decrease resources; physical ability to diversity; consumption and/or grow/obtain food (e.g. health environmental shocks; diversity of consumption; problems and disabilities); prices of agricultural rely on family/community distance from towns; inequity inputs help in employment and wage pay Purchasing Limited local Eat more self-provisioned availability of food if possible; decrease purchasable food; food consumption and/or price shocks; income diversity of consumption, loss; affected physical rely on family/community ability to work help Poor Lacking and/or broken Locally-led efforts to Institutional capacity; infrastructure roads diminish food improve roads community resource limitations access Low economic Intermittent/stopped Minimal Limited diversity of locally- activity supply of certain foods available food General poverty, Time/resource/knowledge low standard of Any type of shocks or Minimal; strengthen intra- constraints living intra-households issues community relationships Inequity in (e.g. illness) distribution; dependent on own income or self-provisioning

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Consumption High proportion Maize harvest and/or Minimal; some Some evidence of false beliefs of staple (maize) market prices; educational efforts about foods and loss of cultural consumption low nutrition diversity; knowledge and connection to Low variety in diseases related to food; time/resource/knowledge consumed food nutrition (e.g. diabetes) constraints Limited knowledge about nutrition and/or preparation of different foods

Table 13 shows that many aspects of local food production, processing, distribution, and consumption, are associated with a number of shocks and stressors. Land scarcity, growing dependence on fertilizer, and the labour-intensive nature of staple maize farming, as discussed in Chapter 5, renders maize farmers vulnerable to events affecting labour dynamics (e.g. rising costs of farm labour), affordability of farming inputs, and heightening pressure on land. Distributional aspects of the food system, including purchasing and transportation are similarly affected by the overall poverty of the region producing barriers to food access, particularly for the poorer or otherwise constrained households (e.g. via physical disability). At the same time, the already few coping/adaptation options are further limited by various factors such as time, resource, and knowledge constraints, limited control over decision making, institutional weaknesses and other constraints.

A notable common thread in types of threats and stresses for a large portion of the food system characteristics is the susceptibility to environmental disturbance and change. Environmental factors such as depletion of water resources and drought, biodiversity loss, forest loss, and pollution, not only have the potential to impact maize farming, but also the diversity of locally-produced food, as well as the cost and safety of food processing and consumption. It is worth noting that food security and development prescribed by international aid organizations and governments, particularly initiatives promoting flex crops, seldom consider the full ecological repercussions of their proposed interventions (Allen and Prosperi 2016; Foran et al. 2014). The analysis presented here calls for more systematic consideration of the environmental sphere of the food system.

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Another common theme within the summary Table 13 is the incongruence in scales between threats and adaptive strategies. Some of the most severe system threats, stresses, or shocks stretch beyond the reach of the community. These include environmental changes, market shocks, deficient infrastructure linking local food markets to distant suppliers, and pressures on land stemming largely from beyond-community land market dynamics81. At the same time, the coping/adaptation options that are accessible to the local population are minimal and highly constrained by the limited resources and capabilities of individual households. The lack of government and other beyond- community assistance means that struggling households can, at most, rely on help from their neighbours within the community (e.g. use neighbours’ wells in times of drought, pool community resources to improve local roads), and build collaborations with other communities and local NGOs82. In other words, household and community-level institutions may help to mitigate adverse events that strike individual households (i.e. ‘idiosyncratic shocks’), but there are few protections against events that simultaneously impact a large portion of a community (i.e. ‘covariate shocks’).

When possible, households often adapt to shocks by altering within-household behaviours, which are usually intended to remedy the symptoms of a system shock rather than address its cause. For example, when the ability to self-provision food is compromised by harvest loss, households will typically adapt by purchasing food, decreasing household consumption, or turning to family or friends for help. Such options, however, are not universally available; poorer households generally have lower adaptive abilities. Moreover, such adaptive strategies do not address the root causes of uneven vulnerabilities

81 For example, it was shown in Chapter 5 that government-led promotion of oil palm had contributed to land sales in Lachuá and other parts of the country. Stemming from the historical marginalization of rural indigenous populations, land tenure insecurity coupled with inadequate social supports has contributed to the pressure to sell land. 82 The limited number of projects that had gotten off the ground, typically in collaboration with NGOs, researchers from public universities, or with other communities, tended to be small in scope, intermittent, and largely constrained by funding and lack of local expertise. In one example, a locally-run NGO ran a series of health and nutrition workshops for women with the help of foreign volunteers. However, volunteers were notoriously difficult to recruit due to limited outside funding and tough local living conditions (interview data). Plans were repeatedly put on hiatus due to a lack of volunteers and financial constraints.

153 nor do they resolve any of causal factors that generate risks or produce adverse outcomes like harvest loss. Therefore, prolonged inability to grow enough food may lead to sale of land or other assets due to a lack of other recourse. Household-level coping/adaptation capacity of the vast majority of households is severely hampered by the deep poverty in the region. Poverty also limits the degree to which households are able to assist other households in times of need. For the same reasons, most households lack resources to contribute to community-level capacity-building initiatives.

An important outcome from the lack of outside support is that households have greater capacity for adaptation in their self-provisioning activities than in market-provisioning. For instance, during a period of low monetary resources, a household may have options for decreasing expenditures in maize production such as decreasing fertilizer use or asking for family help with farming to avoid paying day labourers. However, little can be done when a household relies on purchasing food, since it is difficult or impossible to generate more income on demand. That is, households that grow their own food have more options for coping with income loss than those that acquire their food in markets. From this perspective, vulnerability analysis confirms the results discussed in Chapter 5, explaining why maize self-provisioning continues to be an important pillar of food access, despite its perceived inefficiencies and potentially high costs. On the other hand, households that acquire food on the market may be less susceptible to localized environmental events such as crop disease, which emphasizes the importance of diversity in agricultural systems.

Overall, the food system observed in the study region is highly vulnerable to various types of shocks and disturbances, and with limited capacity for adaptation and improving food security. The following sections analyze the changes in the food system that have been induced by the emergence and spread of oil palm in the affected communities.

6.4 Oil palm and staple maize access

The oil palm-centered development vision first and foremost aims to deepen reliance upon market-based entitlements by emphasizing employment and income generation as means for acquiring food (World Bank 2011, 2007; PESAN 2009; c.f. Sen 1981). Self-provisioning in this vision tends to be sidelined as cash crop expansion often comes with the

154 displacement of small-scale staple crop cultivation (Anderman et al. 2014; Kamoyo et al. 2015), which was observed in Lachuá.

As detailed in the previous chapters, the introduction and expansion of oil palm in an already vulnerable food system has resulted in several changes in local provisioning and the distribution of staple maize. First, oil palm has indeed generated wage and increased the incomes of some households. However, higher income did not always translate to improved staple food access due to the precariousness of oil palm jobs and other shocks and stresses in the food system such as rising food prices. Those households that were excluded from oil palm jobs and relied on other agricultural employment eroded by the spread of oil palm suffered overwhelmingly negative effects on their to access food through market channels.

The effect of oil palm expansion on the self-provisioning of staple maize has been largely negative. Shrinking land resources, increasing labour costs, and heightening social tensions caused by oil palm contributed to increased difficulty and costs of growing staple maize. No significant positive impacts of oil palm on local maize production were observed. It follows that the introduction and spread of oil palm had the overall effect of compromising maize self-provisioning at least to some degree, while market provisioning improved only for a portion of the village residents and declined for others. As elaborated on later in this chapter, these oil palm-induced changes in the food system have translated to higher susceptibility to shocks and reduced adaptive capacity in the affected community.

6.5 Oil palm access to firewood

Households in Palm and Maize Villages rely on firewood for cooking. The majority of households (65% in Palm Village and 80% in Maize Village) continue to self-provision firewood (Table 12). However, out of the households who generally self-provision firewood in Palm Village, nearly all expressed increased difficulty in doing so over the last ten years, and 35% reported having to occasionally purchase wood when they cannot find it for free and/or have to pay more to transport it from forests or land parcels that are further away (compared to ten years ago, when free wood was locally abundant). Nearly two-thirds (63%) of Palm Village respondents specifically blamed deforestation for their

155 increased difficulty in self-provisioning (or having to switch to purchasing) of firewood in the last 10 years. Of these, 36% pointed to oil palm as the culprit of deforestation. Furthermore, two respondents mentioned that there have been incidents of firewood theft from parcels in Palm Village, causing problems in the community. Four more respondents expressed that their neighbours no longer allow other people to gather wood on their land parcels, whereas a few years ago this was not a problem. Four respondents reported that they gather wood from local oil palm farms. However, access to oil palm farms is not open to everyone, and is becoming increasingly restricted.

In Maize Village, many respondents also mentioned that it has become more difficult to gather wood locally over the last ten years, forcing them to have to go further to find wood. However, for the vast majority this has not translated to increased financial costs (although time-cost may be significant in some cases). Maize Village residents did not mention deforestation in their community and no theft or problems with restricted access were reported.

6.6 Oil palm and food consumption diversity

Apart from access to basic staples, the food system framework also considers the diversity of locally accessible and consumed foods, along with their nutritional and cultural attributes (Ericksen 2008b). In the portion of the household survey discussed here, respondents were asked to elaborate on any changes in their diets over the last ten years. The ten-year time frame corresponds to the period of arrival and expansion of oil palm in the region with corresponding land use changes, including deforestation, as well as the emergence and growth of local stores that sell food.

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5 Numberhousehold of responses

Fish

Rice

Eggs

Meat

Fruits

Herbs

Beans

Maize

Cheese

Cooking oil Cooking

Vegetables

Game meatGame

Condiments Mushrooms

Instant soup Instant

Frozenchicken

Instant noodles and pasta and noodles Instant Sweet drinks, candy, chips candy, Sweetdrinks,

Eat more Eat less Switched to purchasing

Figure 16: Changes in diet between 2007-2015 (approx.) in Palm and Maize Villages. (Source: household survey)

Figure 16 illustrates the changes in diet in the two communities (combined), where many households reported eating fewer nutritious foods, including vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, fish, fruits, and game meat. At the same time, processed foods and low- nutrition/high-sugar foods such as sweet drinks, candy, chips, instant soup, and noodles, and pasta, have seen the greatest increases in consumption. Interviews with store owners confirmed that ‘junk foods’ and processed foods were now indeed among the most commonly purchased products, while ten years ago they were not easily available. Consumption of the most common staple foods including maize, beans and eggs has remained largely unchanged as the population continues to rely on these foods for the bulk

157 of their caloric intake83. All of these foods, except fish, have been traditionally sourced from forests and agricultural land parcels, which have been progressively shrinking in the last ten years. The primary cited reason for the decrease in the consumption of vegetables, fruits, herbs, fish, and game meat was that all of these foods had become less available in the communities for one or another reason (Figure 17).

It is important to note that no substantial differences were found between the two communities with regard to diet changes. That is, both communities have seen similar decreases in the consumption of nutritious perishable foods and growing consumption of processed foods, suggesting that oil palm expansion in Palm Village does not by itself explain these changes. However, the notable difference between the two communities is the nature of the stress that contributed to the diet changes. Much like with firewood, Palm Village respondents explicitly blamed deforestation (complete and permanent disappearance of forest) for decreased access to forest-sourced foods. The respondents in Maize Village explained that they can no longer find certain foods in the forest, presumably because they have been over-harvested.

Fragmentation of forest is known to accelerate biodiversity loss by stifling seed dispersal and regeneration of certain plant species (Benítez-Malvido and Martínez-Ramos 2003; Hill and Curran 2003), which can be exacerbated by over-harvesting. While regeneration of some species can potentially be fostered through better forest management in Maize Village (Hill and Curran 2003), the forest loss in Palm Village leaves little possibility of return for forest-sourced products in the near future, especially where the previously forested land is now occupied by oil palm plantations. Therefore, the adaptive responses to the loss in self-provisioned food consumption diversity are more limited in Palm Village as a result of a permanent food system shift. However, it is also important to recognize that Palm and Maize villages are neighboring each other and their forested plots are not

83 Processed sugar (beyond the sugar content of other foods) is also a major source of calories as it is frequently added to dishes and drinks. High sugar consumption was notable in both communities. With only four exceptions, surveyed households consumed at least 2 pounds of sugar per week. Many households consumed between 6 and 10 pounds of sugar per week, with some cases consuming over 15 pounds per week.

158 independent from an ecological perspective. Fragmentation in Palm Village may be contributing to biodiversity loss in the forest remnants in Maize Village. Further research is required to investigate this issue.

Cannot find in forest

Fruit No longer available in community

Hunting prohibited

Cannot find in forest Game meatGame Deforestation

Cannot find in rivers Fish

River disappeared/low water

Unproductive soil

No longer available in community

Mushrooms Cannot find in forest

Herbs, Vegetables, and Herbs,Vegetables, Deforestation

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Number of household responses

Palm Village Maize Village

Figure 17: Reasons for reducing consumption or switching to purchasing different types of food (Source: household survey)

6.7 Market provisioning and food consumption diversity

According to proponents of market development, market provisioning should be able to replace the missing foods – or provide substitutes – by bringing them from other places to

159 fulfill demand (FAO 2017; Biswas and Pinstrup-Anderson 1985). However, this logic does not hold in this case study for several reasons. First, the two small (less than 200 households each) and largely poor communities in this study do not generate sufficient demand to attract products. Some of the smaller and more remote communities in the region do not have any stores, or have very small stores with an even more limited variety of products (observed during field work).

Second, the local storeowners catering to the local demand are themselves are faced with a multitude of constraints. Storeowners in the two communities are capital-limited local entrepreneurs who use the store for supplemental income, not the main income (storeowner interviews). Because the storeowners sell to an impoverished customer base, they have low sales volume and slim profit margins. Similar to their neighbours, they obtain the majority of their sold products from the nearby towns or from trucks that pass by on the main road. Foods that are the most readily available and in regular supply in stores are beans, eggs, sugar, and processed foods, all of which have a long shelf life, and are fairly easy to transport and store.

Transportation and storage represent significant access and cost barriers for carrying highly perishable foods such as vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, and fish, which have seen the most notable decline in consumption. As a result of the disappearance of their local sources, herbs, mushrooms, and fish have become rare and almost never available in local stores. Fruits are available occasionally in Maize Village, but almost never in Palm Village due to lack of local growers84. Vegetables including cabbage, onion, chayote squash, potato, and carrot, tend to be available in low and intermittent supply, depending mostly on local production in small quantities. Local sourcing of perishables is thereby essential not only for self-provisioning, but also for market-provisioning to households in these villages. At the same time, the provisioning capacity of store owners, as well as their adaptive capacity

84 Interestingly, pineapple was a commonly sold fruit in Palm Village when it hosted a pineapple plantation. However, after the pineapple plantation was replaced with oil palm, pineapples have entirely disappeared from Palm Village stores.

160 to shocks at local and larger market scale, is similar and strongly connected to the rest of the households in the community.

The prospects of market provisioning are further compromised by trends in food prices. Figure 18 shows the price trends of the increasingly consumed store-bought processed foods in the two communities (instant soups, various sweets, and soft drinks) as compared to price trends in staples (maize and beans), vegetables (including chayote squash, carrot, onion, and radish), fruits (tomato, orange, and banana), and commonly used herbs (spearmint and coriander).

Consistent with survey results indicating increasing food prices, the national data (INE 2017) show a rise in average maize and bean prices in Alta Verapaz (inclusively in Lachuá) and Baja Verapaz provinces. Much more dramatic, however, had been the rise in prices for the perishable fruits, vegetables and herbs. Prices for basic cooking vegetables/fruits including onions, carrots and tomatoes, have more than tripled in the Verapaces in just five years. Prices of oranges, radish, and chayote squash (a common vegetable in Lachuá) have climbed ten-fold in the Verapaces, while the price for herbs surged upwards 25 times between 2011 and 2016 (INE 2017). While the prices averaged across the country had also gone up, in some cases substantially (e.g. five times for oranges and chayote and seven times for spearmint), the corresponding price increases for fruits, vegetables, and herbs in the Verapaces have been far more pronounced – in many cases more than double the country-wide averages. The only foods that have maintained a relatively constant price (or seen minor increases) have been the processed foods. In fact, the prices of all of the processed foods listed in Figure 18 have increased less than 20% between 2011 and 2016 in the Verapaz provinces, and at lower rates than the country average.

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Figure 18: Guatemalan consumer price index country average and Alta and Baja Verapaz provinces average (2011-2016)*

*for (a) local staple foods – maize and beans, (b) processed foods - instant soup, soft drinks and sweets (candy, chocolates and chewing gum), (c) herbs – spearmint and coriander, (d) common vegetables – chayote squash, onion, radish, carrot, (e) fruits – tomato, orange and banana. Base Year: 2010. Source: INE 2017

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Though the causal dynamics involved in consumer price changes are complex, the trends clearly indicate that some of the previously common nutritious foods are not only becoming unavailable through self-provisioning, but are also rapidly becoming unavailable and unaffordable on the market. It follows that the local availability and accessibility of these foods remains contingent upon local sourcing to avoid transportation and storage constraints. It also follows that, as it currently stands, incremental income gains are likely insufficient to allow for more market-provisioning of these foods. Incidentally, numerous households that have experienced a gain in income because of oil palm employment (or other means) have also reported eating fewer fresh nutritious perishables that were no longer locally found/produced.

The dietary shift illustrated in this study is not unique. Other studies of remote rural communities in Mesoamerica have associated the transition away from traditional self- provision-based food systems towards market dependency with declining nutrition and health (Ibarra et al. 2011; Soto-Méndez et al. 2011; Chávez et al. 2003; Uauy et al. 2001). Insufficient understanding of traditional food systems along with development interventions that favour large-scale land use conversions and/or the establishment of protected areas have been instrumental in reducing the consumption of traditional foods and introducing calorie-rich nutrient-deficient processed foods (Ibarra et al. 2011; Correal et al. 2009; Mertz et al. 2009). Studies from other parts of the global South have found similar food market trends, in that that markets for fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious but perishable foods tend to develop more slowly than staple grain markets. This, in turn, is accompanied by widening price differentials between the two commodity groups, which is seen in this case study (c.f. Naylor 2016; Nesheim and Nestle 2015; Pingali 2015; Anderman et al. 2014), high levels of malnutrition, stunted growth, and micro-nutrient deficiencies, notably in rural populations (Soto-Méndez et al. 2011).

In addition to supporting previous findings (Naylor 2016; Anderman et al 2014; Ibarra et al. 2011), it is proposed here that the negative impact on food and nutritional variety is a consequence of the tension between scales of the (larger-scale) food system shocks and stressors (including market fluctuations) and in the local adaptation capacity (at household-community scale). Consumer food access in the study villages is closely tied to

163 household- and community-scale production, especially for nutritious perishables. Meanwhile, the local food markets are too small to attract an influx of affordable outside goods. When oil palm was introduced into the food system, it failed to generate sufficient purchasing power in the local market to spur the introduction of diverse foods from outside the communities. At the same time, it compromised (at least to some degree) within-community production of these foods (e.g. fish, herbs, other nutritious perishables). Another study has shown that on a regional scale, oil palm business is also inferior to traditional staple crop production in terms of generating employment and secondary economies, thereby fostering inequality and other negative distributional effects that create food system vulnerabilities (Dürr 2016).

In addition to issues pertaining to the production and distribution of nutritious foods, field observations point to social/cultural knowledge and norms having an important role in food consumption patterns. Interviews with community members and researchers working in the region have indicated that much of the local population has a generally low level of knowledge about the cultivation, consumption, and nutrition value of foods that are not locally common. For example, some villagers have said that they do not eat certain vegetables because they do not know how to cook them. Moreover, misconceptions about nutrition are prevalent. During a 2015 workshop conducted by researchers from the University of San Carlos Guatemala, residents from one of the study villages showed highly inconsistent beliefs about food. For instance, some villagers believed certain vegetables (e.g. cabbage, carrots, potatoes) to be ‘unhealthy’, while processed sugar was sometimes perceived as ‘healthy’. Oddly, some participants also regarded rice and staple beans as ‘unhealthy’. While further research is needed to better understand social perceptions and sources of misconception with regard to food, there is an evident need for education in preparing and incorporating different foods into the diet.

6.8 Oil palm and environmental threats

The ecological costs of oil palm are frequently overlooked in studies of the crop, particularly as they apply to the host communities’ future development prospects and implications for the food system. In Palm Village, oil palm cultivation has resulted in significant deforestation. At least 55% of the oil palm expansion, recorded through the

164 land transactions in the survey, has occurred over land that was tropical rainforest before 200685. Survey respondents also complained that since the arrival of oil palm, Palm Village has experienced a depletion of water resources, that is, lower levels of water in wells and the drying of streams. Many villagers attribute this increase in water scarcity to deforestation by oil palm growers, particularly in riparian zones. Furthermore, oil palm growers in Palm Village have been blamed for altering the flow of a small river that serves as an important water source for a downstream community. Uncontrolled oil palm expansion along with inadequate water resource management is particularly troubling given a lack of water infrastructure in the region. Furthermore, this area has been designated as a protected wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in 2006 (CONAP, n.d.), yet oil palm expansion in the region has so far gone largely unchecked.

Oil Palm expansion in Palm Village has been associated with other costs to the community, including higher incidence of disease transmitted by oil palm pests86, and destruction of roads by heavy oil palm trucks (interviews). Road damage has become a significant issue in the ecoregion, so much so that in September 2015, a neighbouring community issued a written complaint to oil palm growers in Palm Village asking them to stop using their roads. Residents of the same village had also orchestrated road blockades to restrict the movement of oil palm trucks.

Negative environmental impacts of oil palm plantations have been recorded in studies from Southeast Asia (Carlson et al. 2014; Lee et al. 2013; Obidzinski et al. 2012; Comte et al. 2012). Conversion of forested landscapes to oil palm plantations has been linked to soil erosion, soil nutrient leaching, reduced water quality, and reduced aquatic ecosystem

85 Calculated from aerial photographs and Google Maps, supported by survey data on firewood provisioning (Section 7.5). Raw data is not presented in this thesis to preserve the anonymity of the participating communities. 86 Oil palm is associated with a number of pests, such as the whitefly, which can be vectors for human- affecting illnesses (GREPALMA 2016; Morales et al. 2005). Palm Village residents have become concerned about an increase in flies (‘moscas’), mosquitos and diseases, especially in children, since the arrival of oil palm. Public health studies on the subject are lacking.

165 health (Carlson et al. 2014; Comte et al. 2012; Ng et al 2003; Goh et al 2003). Forest clear- cutting has been long known to increase nutrient losses to streams, thereby contributing to soil degradation while compromising water quality (Bruijnzeel 1994). The forest quality in riparian zones was found to be particularly important for maintaining healthy freshwater ecosystems, particularly in oil palm dominated landscapes (Luke et al. 2016).

The food system in Palm and Maize villages is intricately connected to the local environment and is thus highly vulnerable to environmental change. Degraded soils and water resources are the most prevalent environmental vulnerabilities, which have been exacerbated by oil palm expansion. Insufficient environmental impact assessment and oversight of oil palm expansion, as well as the absence of effective impact monitoring and mitigation practices is putting local ecosystems at immediate risk and compromising long- term resilience of the food system.

6.9 Water resources

Nearly 60% of the surveyed households in Palm Village expressed that they have experienced an increase in water shortages over the last ten years (Figure 19). During shortage periods, many wells in the community dry up for a period of time, forcing residents to seek water elsewhere. Overall, the residents of Palm Village reported an increase in the frequency and severity of shortages since the arrival of oil palm in the community. For instance, some wells have noticeably lower water levels during the dry season (December to April) and some wells that did not previously get dry now have a tendency to become completely dry in certain times. Furthermore, many residents reported lower water levels in the local streams, and that some streams have altogether disappeared from the village.

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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30%

Respondent households 20% 10% 0% Palm Village Maize Village

Increased water shortage No change

Figure 19: Ten-year changes in the frequency of water shortages according to household survey*.

*n=39 in Palm Village and n=39 in Maize Village.

A number of respondents blamed deforestation and oil palm expansion for the increase in water shortages. Survey and interview results provide evidence that some of the streams, including those that used to run through now oil palm-covered land, have indeed disappeared from Palm Village. Furthermore, a downstream community had issued complaints of lower water levels in a small river since the establishment of oil palm on the river’s shores. A focused scientific investigation is required to confirm the causal dynamics of changing water levels, including possible changes in climate, groundwater flows, and water usage patterns. However, ample literature exists which supports the connection between altered water cycling and deforestation, especially in riparian zones (Luke et al. 2017; Sweeney et al. 2004). Almost all of the riparian vegetation had been cut down alongside the streams within oil palm farms in Palm Village (field observations), which has very likely affected stream flow and water quality, as observed in other studies (Luke et al. 2017; Carlson et al. 2014).

Adaptation strategies to water shortages are constrained by the limited open water sources in the community and the lack of water-carrying infrastructure. During shortages, villagers typically turn to their neighbours for water if their neighbours’ wells have not also dried up

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(Figure 20), or to nearby rivers, streams, or springs, if they are accessible and not dry. Some villagers resolve to purchasing water, mostly for drinking, while relying on neighbours’ wells and other sources for water for other household uses. Furthermore, the nearby national park (a protected area) is an important source of water for Palm Village residents during times of shortage. Over 30% of residents reported going to the park for water when their wells are dry. However, this figure is likely to be larger because many villagers are aware of the restrictions associated with protected areas and therefore may not want to admit taking water from the park. The ecological ramifications of using water from the protected area are an important avenue for further research, especially since some water uses may be polluting (e.g. washing clothes in a stream) and not well monitored.

Purchase water

Park

Nearby spring

Nearby river

Neighbours' wells

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% Respondent households

Figure 20: Coping strategies for water shortages in Palm Village*.

* n=29 households. Several households reported more than one coping strategy.

While the qualitative findings in this study do not provide a conclusive account of the water cycling dynamics in the area, they do warrant further study of oil palm impacts on local water resources, particularly since water level changes have distinctly coincided with changes in land use. Concerns are compounded by the limited household adaptation

168 options which not only compromise the continuous availability and safety of consumed water, but may also be putting further pressure on the remaining water resources including those within protected areas. These trends are particularly alarming given that the region is a protected wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention (Ramsar 2014). If water cycling is indeed threatened by the expanding plantations, long-term negative consequences for biodiversity and productivity of the region are implied. Sufficient and healthy water resources are essential for resilient socio- ecological food systems, and thus need to be adequately managed to ensure long-term food system sustainability (Ericksen 2008b).

6.10 Soil nutrient cycling

Along with water cycling, soil changes are examples of slow variables that require further investigation as they may be amplifying the vulnerability of the local food system. Soils in the ecoregion are generally poorly-drained, low in fertility, and are best suited to support forests and some types of silviculture, with limited agricultural potential (Monzon 1999). Despite the growing distress over the progressive depletion of soils in both communities, no coordinated soil monitoring practices are currently in place. Much of the concern has emerged from the augmented need for - and the higher cost of - fertilizer, which has become essential for many staple crop farmers in the area. Similarly, oil palm growers rely on ample fertilizer to maintain production (as discussed in Chapter 5). Aside from the associated costs, the surveyed farmers did not generally mention other concerns with respect to fertilizer use, and spoke about fertilizer application as an established routine that for many had no alternative. Only a few staple crop farmers, all of whom owned sufficiently sized land parcels, spoke of other soil management practices such as fallowing and planting nitrogen fixing bean varieties (see Chapter 5). The scarcity of land leaves less and less opportunity for periodically resting the land, which is practically impossible for small-parcel owners and renters.

The increasing pressure on land is most palpable in Palm Village, where land parcels continue to be rapidly bought up for oil palm, which is already directly impacting access to staple foods for many households (Chapter 4). In addition to altering immediate food access, land pressure – together with insufficient soil monitoring and systematic

169 management - is also threatening long-term ecosystem resilience, with inevitable consequences for long-term food security. For instance, fertilizer application alone does not ensure a sustained nutrient balance in the soil, especially in the absence of regular monitoring. Fertilizer can provide certain nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and potassium87, in specified quantities. However, it does not replenish organic soil matter, which is an important aspect of soil structure and fertility (van der Pol and Traore 1993). In some cases, fertilizers have been shown to negatively impact microbial communities in the soil (Winings et al. 2016), or deliver minimal benefit as well as harm water resources through leaching (Dubos et al. 2017; Comte et al. 2015; Duwig et al. 1998). Furthermore, because of their financial constraints, the farmers in this study, including oil palm growers, are not always consistent in the timing, quality, and methods of fertilizer application with unknown long-term risks to soil fertility and water quality88 (Woittiez et al. 2017).

Uncontrolled oil palm expansion carries its own specific risks for local soils and nutrient cycling. Oil palm is a highly fertilizer-dependent perennial crop that requires vigilant management, including carefully tailored timing and rotation of fertilizers and organic matter, to maintain soil quality (Pauli et al. 2014). Cultivation under conditions of insufficient/ineffective management and land scarcity can lead to intensive soil degradation and water pollution (Guillaume et al. 2016; Comte et al. 2012). While more research is needed to document the land management practices of individual plantations in this study region, the removal of ground vegetation and deforestation of riparian zones are key issues that have already been observed, considering that ground vegetation is important for reducing nutrient leaching and soil erosion, and protecting waterways (Comte et al. 2012). Furthermore, previous studies have linked deforestation to the decline of microbial biomass and diversity in tropical soils (Borneman and Triplett 1997; Bossio et

87 Effects are highly variable and depending, among other things, on the type and quality of the fertilizer used. Fertilizer choice is most often constrained by financial resources for the surveyed households.

88 A similar pattern was observed on some Honduran oil palm plantations, where resource-constrained plantation managers applied fertilizer without knowing if it was needed or not as they never took soil samples (Fromm 2007).

170 al. 2005), and even more so when forest is converted to oil palm (Lee-Cruz et al. 2013). Bacterial soil communities are a crucial component of nutrient cycling, as they perform many functions including regulating soil pH, soil carbon, and the content and availability of phosphorus, calcium, and other nutrients (Yang and Insam 1991). Thus, they need to be studied further in the context of the Lachuá Ecoregion.

Another poorly-understood issue is the practicability of shifting land use away from oil palm after the establishment and maturation of the trees. Oil palms have extensive and dense root systems that can stretch for several meters away from the tree base, and are concentrated in the top 60cm of soil (Jourdan and Rey 1997). Although the Lachuá Ecoregion typically receives ample rain (>2000mm/year) (INSIVUMEH 2003), several local farmers as well as former oil palm plantation workers relayed concerns regarding the permanent drying of soils on oil palm plantations, as well as the density of oil palm roots not allowing for the cultivation of other crops after the trees are cut down. This issue, along with the considerable economic barriers involved in altering crops, may significantly obstruct response to oil palm-specific shocks to the food system (e.g. a drop in global oil palm prices making local oil palm cultivation unviable).

Due to the absence of comprehensive studies, little is known about the effects of oil palm and other land uses on the soils and nutrient cycling in this land-scarce region. A number of surveyed staple crop farmers have expressed desire to improve soil management but also frustration with their incapacity to do so due to lack of training and government support. While the oil palm growers in Palm Village have received some training and support from the ProPalma program, most cannot afford to invest in regular updated training and do not have access to supports aimed at large agribusinesses through organizations like GREPALMA (Gremial de Palmicultores de Guatemala, GREPALMA 2017). Better access to training, along with other efforts to support different kinds of farming, are urgently needed to improve land management practices and to boost the resilience of local agricultural production.

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6.11 Discussion

Chapters 4 and 5 illustrated that the residents of Palm Village were unevenly impacted by the expansions of the cash crop in their community, where about a third of the surveyed households experienced an improvement and another third experienced deterioration in food access since the establishment of oil palm. The differential impacts are expressed in the food system vulnerability analysis, where the positive effects from oil palm expansion mostly apply to a subset of the population. The limited group of oil palm beneficiaries, including growers and their employees, obtain additional flexibility to switch between self- provisioning (at least for those who have that option) and market-provisioning of food, thereby increasing their capacity to adapt to some, but not all, food system shocks. However, as in the case of community-wide increases of agricultural wages – what could be a benefit to agricultural wage workers could serve as a disadvantage to labour-constrained households, and even those same wage workers.

What vulnerability-focused analysis (summarized in Table 14) brings to the forefront is that oil palm has intensified exposure to threats, stresses, and shocks in the already fragile food system, and the vast majority of them apply to the entire village. In other words, even the households that may have benefitted from oil palm in one way or another way will have also suffered the negative consequences of oil palm along with the rest of the community. The most telling examples include the reduction in access (or decreased affordability) to firewood and the availability and access to fresh nutritious foods.

Another result of the analysis is that while many stresses and risks of shocks are exacerbated, the capacity to adapt/cope to them is also diminished. For instance, as the diversity of locally available employment is eroded, so are opportunities for obtaining new job skills and experience that could increase household coping capacity to shocks in a particular sector. The mounting consequences of ecological degradation, including depleted soil and water resources, are threatening the long-term ability to grow food, provision food from waterways, and to safely process and consume food. If oil palm continues to expand (a likely trajectory based on results in Chapter 4), it will inevitably further restrict access to remaining land, thereby compromising resources for the production of staple foods and the much-needed diversification in food production.

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Further shrinkage of forested patches will also render them more vulnerable to disturbance (Craven et al. 2016), with precipitating effects on water cycling and food and firewood provisioning from forests (such as those that have already been witnessed). Therefore, oil palm has weakened (and continues to weaken) the local food system as a whole, despite the benefits felt by some.

Table 14: Summary of observed effects of oil palm expansion on food system vulnerabilities (increased exposure to shocks, increased magnitude of stress, and/or decreased capacity to cope/adapt). Positive effects of oil palm expansion on food system vulnerability (decreasing vulnerability): Beneficiaries Disadvantaged Community-wide increase in Agricultural wage workers Staple grain producers that rely agricultural wages brought by on wage labour; especially oil palm labour constrained HHs; oil palm growers; wage workers (if fewer jobs available because employers cannot afford hired labour) Increased household income for Households of oil palm workers oil palm employees (mostly young able-bodied males); some workers who are also staple grain farmers (can afford more fertilizer) More available oil palm Oil palm workers (mostly young Everyone (indirectly) from employment able-bodied males); migrant workers prevalence of precarious labour

Negative effects of oil palm expansion on food system vulnerability (increased vulnerability): Affected subpopulations Notes Higher pressure on staple Staple farmers Limited mobility; more intensive farmland farmland use and greater need for fertilizer Staple grain wage labourers Less overall work available Workers excluded from oil palm Less non-oil palm work available Everyone Lower nutritional diversity (decreased availability nutritious perishables); compromised back-up plans for food shortage periods Higher pressure on forested Everyone Lower nutritional diversity; land; fewer forest resources compromised back-up plans for food shortage periods; decreased availability and increased costs of firewood; smaller forest patches more vulnerable to disturbance Lower diversity in employment Those excluded from oil palm Less opportunity for learning and opportunities employment; everyone innovation

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Rising inequality in staple food At least one third of the Palm Already experiencing diminished access Village households access

Deterioration of inter- and Everyone Obstructing cooperation to manage intra-community relations existing resources; impeding institutional development Increased pressure on water Everyone Lower access to water; higher risk of resources water-borne diseases; long-term water cycle effects Possible soil degradation Everyone Inhibiting long-term food production Damage to roads by oil palm Everyone Inhibiting food access and mobility; trucks increasing social tensions Higher exposure of Palm Village Oil palm growers; oil palm Local economy more tied to volatile to global commodity shocks employees and their global oil palm markets households

Even more prominent is the introduction of a substantial vulnerability to global oil palm market shocks, over which neither the oil palm contract farmers nor their host communities have any effective leverage. It appears, in fact, that oil palm has broken down some of the community-level adaptive capacity, which is crucial in dealing with large-scale shocks such as a downturn in the oil palm market. The growing powerlessness to shield the community from shocks is a key aspect of the emerging vulnerability (c.f. Chambers 2006), particularly in producing inequity in food access in the region (Dreze and Sen 1989; Cote and Nightingale 2011).

Other concerning trends include precarization of labour, rising inequality in food access, and deteriorating inter- and intra-community relations as a result of damaged infrastructure, firewood scarcity, impeded transit, and problems with migrant labourers. These trends are likely to form long-term roadblocks to institutional development, cooperation, and capacity-building efforts at the community and beyond-community scales. In other words, the spread of oil palm is deepening the social vulnerability (c.f. Watts and Bohle 1993) of the host community by deepening its dependence on commodity markets within which it is severely marginalized, while weakening local institutions that could help counteract the negative effects of oil palm and build resilience. Given these trends, it is not surprising that most of the current adaptation strategies to food system shocks remain at level of the household, and have little impact beyond the household. For instance, in response to shrinking land resources or employment prospects in their community/region,

174 households can tweak their work strategies (e.g. redistribute family labour roles on their farm; look for employment closer or further away), food provisioning approaches (e.g. shift toward/away from purchasing food) and consumption (e.g. eat more of or refrain from eating certain foods). Meanwhile, very little can be done at the household level to address beyond-community disruptions or to counteract further changes in the food system (e.g. to limit the spread of oil palm).

Evidence presented here suggests that oil palm has brought some development benefits, including employment opportunities and increased incomes for some households in the host community. Higher household income can give some households additional flexibility to switch between self-provisioning and market-provisioning of food. However, oil palm has exacerbated many food system vulnerabilities by heightening the magnitude and risk of exposure to shocks, threats, and stresses and reducing the adaptive capacity of the system as a whole. As oil palm continues to spread, consuming additional land and other ecological resources and overtaking other employment opportunities, the food system will likely continue to see rising inequality in food access and other social and ecological vulnerabilities.

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Chapter 7 Conclusion

The two communities in this case study have struggled with chronic poverty and food insecurity long before the introduction of oil palm into the region. Even now, the food production, access, and consumption patterns in Maize Village and the oil palm-dominated Palm Village continue to share many similarities. However, the ongoing expansion of oil palm in Palm Village is altering a number of food system elements in food production, distribution, and consumption, in a way that exacerbates existing vulnerabilities, reduces adaptative capacity, and threatens food security now and in the future.

The analysis using the socio-ecological food system framework has highlighted the importance of preserving ecological health – an often overlooked aspect of food security – in maintaining food system resilience. In Palm and Maize villages, many attributes of the food system are tied to ecological variables that have a high impact on local food production, access, and consumption. The spread of oil palm has occurred without consideration of the impacts on the limited local water resources, soil quality, and forests. The apparent but insufficiently investigated or monitored effects on water, in an area that lacks water infrastructure and management, are highly worrisome as residents continue to depend on shallow wells and streams for their basic needs. An equally troubling issue is that Palm Village residents have so far been unable to deal with many of the consequences of environmental degradation, including declining water availability (and likely, quality) and the increasing risk of vector- and water-borne diseases. The residents’ current adaptation strategies, such as drawing water from shallow, typically dirty, streams when wells are empty, and using park water for drinking and other activities such as laundry, are likely heightening residents’ health risks and further polluting the remaining water.

Ecological resources are also critical for all members of the two communities for continuing production of staple crops and retaining access to nutritious foods that are not easily attainable on the market. As shown in Chapter 6, strictly improving individual purchasing power does not do much to improve nutrition or counteract ecological and socio-economic problems faced by households. When accompanied with rising food prices, income gains

176 are reduced – if not completely erased – with respect to the market-provisioning of food, particularly for nutritious foods with higher transportation and storage costs.

Food system analysis has shown that pressure on land is linked to an array of elements in food production and access, all of which have been negatively impacted by oil palm expansion. Land-based livelihood and food provisioning activities remain essential for the local population, regardless of whether they own/work on oil palm farms. The seizure of control over local land resources by oil palm growers is leading to heightened pressure on staple farmland and forested land, which is exacerbating the vulnerability of the food system to any type of shock. As demonstrated in Chapters 5 and 6, local production of staples and local sourcing of fruits, vegetables, herbs, other types of food and firewood remains important for the majority of households in the region that struggle with intermittent and precarious employment. It is particularly critical for marginalized households such as those that are excluded from oil palm employment for one or another reason (as detailed in Chapter 4). Diminishing land resources for staple crops and forests therefore not only compromise food security at the village level, but also deepen intra- village inequality and significantly reduce adaptation/response options, especially for the most resource-poor.

Oil palm employment and the associated income generation have been the focal points of the rationale underpinning oil palm promotions initiatives like ProPalma, and permeating the broader discourse of cash crops as catalysts of rural development and food security. The results of this study illustrate that these benefits are not sufficient to strengthen food entitlements and reduce food system vulnerability as in the Lachuá case. This is particularly evident in the sample of households of oil palm employees in Palm Village, only half of which saw their oil palm wages translate into better staple access. Yet, despite the improvement, all except one of these households remained food insecure, suggesting that the improvements are marginal and insufficient. By contrast, in Maize Village, staple food access remained the same for most (77%) of households, with nearly 70% of the surveyed households being confident in regular food access at all times of the year. The much higher confidence in regular food access persists despite significantly lower average agricultural wages in Maize Village (Chapter 4) and similar prevalence of temporary jobs. While Maize

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Village is by no means without deep socio-economic problems, the stark contrast in the regularity of staple food access – a bare-minimum life necessity – suggests a less vulnerable and more equitable food system in Maize Village.

The role of oil palm in fueling inter- and intra-village conflicts is an issue that warrants further investigation. As outlined in Chapter 5, cooperation between households contributes to lowering maize cultivation costs and maintaining safety nets for times of hardship. Breaking down relationships can thus immediately compromise food access, as well as impede institutional development and coordinated action for dealing with system stressors. While more research is required to explore this issue, the presented results suggest that given the limitations of the current food systems in the two villages, community development may be more important for retaining food access than job creation strictly speaking.

7.1 New agrarian extractivism and food system vulnerability

The contemporary agrarian transformation in the Guatemalan countryside, termed by Alonso-Fradejas (2015) as ‘new agrarian extractivism’ of surplus value, is evident in this case study. As the oil palm expanded at the expense of staple maize, forests, and other types of agriculture, it devalued labour by eroding other-than-palm employment options (c.f. Dürr 2016; Alonso-Fradejas 2012), propagating precarization, and threatening subsistence agriculture – thereby deepening dependence on oil palm jobs. While the observed rise in agricultural wages in Palm Village (discussed in Chapter 4) seems to counter the proposition that the emerging regime devalues labour, this is arguably a minor – and perhaps a temporary – boon for the local wage labourers that is overshadowed by the larger trends of labour precarization (c.f. Hurtado and Sanchez 2012), undermining of subsistence agriculture (c.f. Mingorría et al. 2014), and rising food prices (i.e. reduction of real wages). The exclusivity of oil palm employment, the overwhelming lack of confidence in the long-term viability of oil palm work (Chapter 3), as well as the staunch unwillingness to abandon subsistence agriculture despite its high and rising costs (Chapter 4), all speak of uncertainty in the local labour market and the risks of relying on market provisioning for food. Thus, the ‘functional dualism’ – that is the co-dependence of the subsistence economy

178 and commodity production – is not only maintained, but is further entrenched with continued oil palm expansion.

Furthermore, unlike previous forms of agrarian extractivism, the push for oil palm and its associated seizure of land control, has been driven heavily by financial actors and investors far removed from oil palm cultivation, and controlled through the (flex) global commodity value chains (Alonso-Fradejas 2015). This trend is illustrative of financialization in agriculture described in Isakson (2014b) and Clapp and Isakson (2018), which has exacerbated uncertainty in agricultural production and disproportionately affected smallholders and subsistence farmers (Spratt 2013). This case study also exemplifies the shift of power that a global commodity crop like oil palm brings into the impoverished host community. In his 2016 paper, Gillon analyzed the dynamics of value and control in the flex crop agri-industrial systems, asking ‘flexible for whom?’. In reality, the ‘flexibleness’ of flex crops is harnessed at the top end of the value chain, that is, by the corporate actors and investors with the power and resources to ‘flex’ products between demand centres and ‘flex’ the corresponding narratives between legitimizing discourses (Hunsberger and Alonso-Fradejas 2016; Borras et al. 2015). At the same time, power and capital are removed from the land, the farmers, and the agricultural labourers (Gillon 2016).

Much like the case of U.S. corn farmers described in Gillon (2016), oil palm farmers and wage labourers in Lachuá have been sidelined from the negotiation of value distribution within the oil palm complex. Instead, their agency was effectively limited by the initial contracting terms devised by government officials and Palmas del Ixcán under ProPalma in 2007-08, and the historical socio-economic inequalities in land ownership/control and labour relations in the Guatemalan agrarian sector. In the case of Palm Village, although the oil palm contract farmers are in many ways more connected to their host communities and their workforce than large agribusiness-owned plantations, they are subsumed in the larger oil palm sector in a way that they themselves are marginalized. The contract farmers’ resource constraints, and their dependence on, and lack of control over, the global

179 oil palm prices, renders them vulnerable to adverse market events89. Thus, in re-orienting local agriculture away from locally processed and consumed products towards far- removed global markets, power is consolidated at the level of investors and large market players, and taken away from the local small-scale producers, their employees, and the impoverished consumers in their host communities. This shift is manifested as vulnerability in the local food system, where the communities are becoming increasingly dependent on the global oil palm market within which they are severely marginalized.

An aspect of the new agrarian extractivism (as per Alonso-Fradejas 2015) that had not yet been thoroughly explored in literature is the role and value of nature. The case study in this thesis framed natural elements and processes as constituents of the local food system, where the research participants were illustrated as placing value on the environment for its functions related to food provisioning90 (in other words, the natural endowments translatable into food entitlements). However, the environmental functions are valued by local residents (including oil palm farmers) insofar as their tangible utility in their livelihoods can be perceived, mostly through the experience of loss (e.g. water shortages, loss of forest-food stocks). In the absence of comprehensive monitoring or, for that matter, the absence and/or inadequacy of environmental assessments for oil palm projects, leaves the local population without a basis for measuring and understanding the functions of environmental variables in their food system and other aspects of their livelihoods. Without monitoring, it is particularly difficult to recognize changes in ecological slow variables, which are critical for long-term ecosystem resilience (Garmestani and Allen 2014). It can be seen in this case study that in the oil-palm-based agrarian extractivism, the value of ecosystem function is largely ignored (and thereby discounted), while the local actors with interests to protect it are disempowered.

89 These could range from commodity market dips to surges in input price surges, changes in international policies (e.g. biodiesel mandates), and divestures (e.g. divestment of Green Earth Fuels from Palmas del Ixcán in 2011). 90 This is not to say that the participants’ views on the natural environment are limited to this conceptualization.

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The in-flexibility of flex crop (i.e. oil palm) growers and their host community is also expressed in the socio-ecological food system as the reduced capacity to adapt to system stressors or shocks, especially on the ecological side. As value-appropriation and flexibility increases at the level of beyond-community corporate finance, the local ecosystems suffer from reduced flexibility/adaptability as they are overburdened by the crops’ ecological requirements. As a result, all aspects of the food system that are linked to ecological health are made more vulnerable and less capable of adaptation to further change. For example, as sections of forest become more fragmented and disconnected because of oil palm encroachment, the resilience of the forest ecosystem will decline, making it less tolerant to natural and human-induced disturbances (Craven et al. 2016). Changes in forest cover, particularly in riparian zones, alter stream conditions and water cycling, potentially leading to unrecoverable losses in ecosystem function and resilience (Luke et al. 2017; de Souza et al. 2013). These ecological changes have already weakened the food system in Palm Village, leading to lower nutritional diversity (due to diminished availability and access to nutritious perishable foods), compromised back-up plans for periods of low employment or food shortage, and consistent problems with water access. So far, any economic benefits from oil palm have not been anywhere enough to counter these losses – for instance to invest in forest conservation, water infrastructure and monitoring, alternative food provisioning strategies, and education and training required to carry out such projects.

The burgeoning agrarian extractivist regime driven by the rapid and unchecked oil palm expansion in the study region is seen as exacerbating existing food system vulnerabilities, and fostering new ones. An important issue that was not sufficiently explored in this thesis is that resilience in food systems is becoming critical with the onset of climate change. Central America is projected to experience potentially severe climate change effects that would deeply threaten food security in the entire region, and beyond (UNFCCC 2016). Changes in rainfall are of particular concern, as they will adversely affect crop yields and available water. A drastic reduction (15-20%) in Central American maize and bean production is expected by 2025 (Eitzinger et al. 2012), as well as sharply declining yields in economically important cash crops such as coffee (Laderach et al. 2017). Having a high water requirement, oil palm productivity is also likely to suffer under dryer conditions (Carr 2011). Studies have called for urgent efforts to help farmers adapt to climate change.

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Some key recommendations for improving adaptation have included: supporting and empowering smallholder farmers through extension services and training, building networks, fostering knowledge-exchange and cooperation, investing in infrastructure (e.g. irrigation), and securing land tenure (Harvey et al. 2018; Kumasi et al. 2017). It pertains to note that the new agrarian extractivist regime in the Lachuá case is not supporting these pathways to adaptation, but is observably breaking them down. As it stands, climate change may very soon become the single most potent threat to food provisioning in the study region, which, along with much of Central America is projected to be disproportionately affected by droughts in the near future (IPCC 2014). Oil palm business does not hold the ability to counteract these changes in climate and will very likely also suffer from them. Therefore, the resilience and adaptive capacity of the socio-ecological food system must be taken seriously in an already highly vulnerable region like Lachuá, and thus must be thoroughly considered in any rural development strategy.

7.2 Pathways forward

The results shown here advocate stopping, or at the very least slowing down and carefully monitoring the expansion of oil palm in the Lachuá Ecoregion as oil palm does not suffice as a development strategy, and even less so as a food security strategy. Instead, other pathways to reduce vulnerability and increase adaptation capacity are suggested, including: - Addressing long-standing vulnerabilities (land rights, poverty), investing in infrastructure (water, roads), education, and social services - Supporting traditional agriculture, building safety-nets, ensuring a fair distribution of risk - Building institutional capacity and networks; funding research and environmental monitoring - Diversifying local food production

Lachuá is a product of a history rife with dispossession and systemic oppression of the indigenous peasants. The vulnerabilities of the socio-ecological food system can be understood as symptoms or realizations of the social conditions that have been moulded over time. Oil palm was therefore inserted into a space of deeply ingrained poverty, socio-

182 economic inequality, insecure land rights, already-progressing land scarcity, and ecological fragility. Perhaps the biggest folly of this approach to development was that it did not seek to address these long-standing vulnerabilities, and as such, it exacerbated many of them (why should it not have?). Without a conscious effort – and funding – to support education, health, social services, and infrastructure, it seems unavailing to hope that a cash crop will manifest improvements in these areas. A fruitful development strategy cannot shy away from acknowledging the historical injustices that have caused existing vulnerabilities, and addressing them in a conscientious way. The socio-ecological food system analysis suggests that beyond-community assistance (e.g. from government) is needed due to the social and economic limitations of individual households and communities, and the growing prevalence of beyond-community stressors/shocks (e.g. ties to global markets; climate change). At the same time, efforts to empower the communities, households, and individuals are also important for reducing their vulnerability and increasing their capacity to adapt.

Furthermore, development strategies must be more mindful of risk for the different socio- economic groups (particularly the very poor), that is entailed in the proposed activities or changes to the food system. In the case of contract farmers of oil palm (or other crops), a fairer distribution of risk between the parties of the contract must be established – that is, to allocate more risk to the contracting agribusiness which is better positioned to weather price and production shocks (c.f. Cahyadi and Waibel 2015; Gatto et al. 2018). Provisions must also be made in consideration of the evolving risks associated with climate change.

Many scholars have argued that effective development strategies must support subsistence farmers through subsidizing farming inputs, technologies, training, and not least – helping peasants secure land rights and curb land grabbing (Copeland 2018; Dürr 2016; Alonso- Fradejas et al. 2011; de Janvry and Sadoulet 2010). Promoting agro-ecological practices using farmer-to-farmer networks is a potential pathway to diversifying agriculture, improving soil quality, reducing dependence on agrichemicals, and increasing resilience to environmental stressors. The approach has seen some success in Central America in helping to decrease agrichemical use while significantly increasing crop yields (Altieri and Toledo 2011; Holt-Gimenez 2002). Farmer-to-farmer extension networks have also proven

183 effective, cost-efficient, and successful in building local capacity (Bunch 1990; Holt- Giménez 2006). Like other approaches, however, transformation towards agro-ecology requires time and overcoming of barriers, and thus cannot be seen as an immediate workable alternative to subsistence farming under current socio-economic conditions and knowledge constraints (c.f. Carey 2009). The vital role of subsistence agriculture in local food provisioning should not be understated, as well as its role in generating relatively equitable (though still precarious) employment91. Following Copeland (2018), ‘meeting peasants where they are’ – that is, supporting them in their pursuit of better conditions within their current choice of livelihood (i.e. traditional farming) – would create a practicable basis for deeper social transformations needed to remedy the historical roots of vulnerability and build a resilient and sustainable food system, whether it be through agro- ecology or another pathway.

As demonstrated in Chapter 5, maintaining inter-community cooperation and support networks has been integral to keeping subsistence farming affordable in Maize Village (e.g. via work-for-rent and work-for-work schemes). Similarly, building relationships and networks can go a long way in bringing in and co-creating knowledge, fostering innovation, and strengthening adaptation capacity in the communities. Access to reliable information is a pervading challenge in the ecoregion, which is largely devoid of computing/internet services, libraries, and other data/learning facilities. Oil palm is a befitting example, as much of the locally available information about the crop had come from the oil palm growers themselves and from the earlier oil palm promotional campaigns92. Connecting the communities with researchers and other credible sources of information can support informed decision-making and empower community members. Therefore, fostering peer networks (c.f. Altieri and Toledo 2011; Holt-Giménez 2006) can be complemented with

91 A number of research participants have themselves expressed the need for support for maize cultivation, especially in light of the rising costs of fertilizer and other inputs. 92 That notwithstanding, in one of the community workshops in Maize Village it was apparent that most participants did not know much about oil palm beyond hearsay from neighbours. Even a couple of participants who had some familiarity with the crop did not know where it had come from, what it was used for, or how widespread it had become in the country.

184 strengthening partnerships with universities, international researchers, and NGOs. To date, some initiatives led by San Carlos University professors and students have been effective in providing advice, leading studies relevant to the community93, and even conducting classes at the local schools. University-led workshops have also served as forums for dialogue with leaders from other villages in the ecoregion, and a means of engaging the local youth to start their own initiatives94. Linking academic services to the needs of rural communities (e.g. extension services) is one way to bring the necessary tools and expertise to tackle the critical water issues in the communities via ecological research, water research and monitoring, and community training/engagement. So far, however, most community-based, academic, and networking initiatives, have been heavily constrained by funding and unsustainable in the long-run. While community projects and network-building can be productive and cost-effective in stimulating development, they require consistent funding. Such initiatives should also not be construed as a substitute for long-term funding needed to establish basic healthcare, sanitation, education, and other essential infrastructure and services.

Last, but no less important, is the necessity to diversify local food production (via adoption of agro-ecological or other practices), specifically in an effort to increase ongoing access to nutritious foods, reduce food purchasing expenditures, and reinforce fall-back food provisioning options for times of shortage. Diversification of food production is an important means of mitigating risks within the peasant economy, including those of pests and crop disease, soil degradation, and adverse weather/environmental events (Ellis 1993) While it may appear a fairly simple and intuitive proposition, experience in the field suggests that the dynamics of provisioning and consumption choice are far from straight forward. Many questions remain not only about the potential constraints in fruit,

93 Examples are numerous. During field work for this project, I have seen San Carlos students do projects on micro-basin mapping (to better understand water flows for recommending toilet facility placement and other planning uses), garbage disposal methods, food nutrition and safety, crafts and woodworking. In the past, researchers also helped to bring in doctors to one of the communities to conduct a health assessment, brought educational materials, and trained locals in various skills. 94 For example: begin taking well measurements to track changes in water levels; forming a music group.

185 vegetable, and herb cultivation (i.e. is it possible and affordable?), but also with respect to the cultural relationship with food (i.e. what governs food choices and motivates changes in food production and consumption?). A telling example is a large citrus tree in Palm Village whose fruits are more often used as soccer balls than eaten. The perceptions of ‘healthiness’ or ‘unhealthiness’ of foods, as well as the limited knowledge on nutrition and food preparation are important research avenues to consider.

At least two initiatives to diversify food production and diet in indigenous Mayan communities have recently taken hold. A small NGO based in the town of Cobán, some three hours away by car, had begun conducting cooking workshops in Mayan communities, including one in Maize Village in 2015. The workshop was very well received in the community, particularly because it focused on traditional Mayan recipes using foods that are available and/or can be grown locally. Another initiative began around 2007 in Belize to build a network of Mayan farmers (currently in Belize and Guatemala) and train communities in cultivating Mayan forest gardens. This collaborative effort incorporates many principles of agroecology (Altieri and Toledo 2011), and works to teach and share knowledge about cultivation and use of plants, soils, gardening techniques, and forest conservation (El Pilar Forest Garden Network 2011). One of the key goals of the network is to preserve (and revive) the cultural heritage of the Maya, including traditional knowledge about plants, and sustainable agricultural practices of the Maya forest95.

The two examples of Maya-focused initiatives represent important steps forward in empowering Mayan communities through culturally relevant community development. However, their scope of reach has been very limited and contingent upon (small, irregular) funding and circumstantial factors. A much more concerted effort and on-going funding is required to up-scale projects like this. As it currently stands, significant support is needed in the two study villages to achieve food system diversification – including assistance in

95 There is archeological evidence that Mayan Forest gardens existed in the Lachuá Ecoregion before colonization (Avendaño 2012) – a fact that has inspired interest in some community members to learn more about traditional forest gardening.

186 obtaining seeds and other inputs, (re)learning specific cultivation techniques, and training in nutrition and food preparation.

The key recommendations from this case study include promoting culturally-appropriate agricultural diversification and healthier food consumption, along with community-based training and network-building. However, supporting staple crop agriculture and investing in health, education, infrastructure, and other social services remain the top priorities for maintaining the residents’ access to basic life necessities. Oil palm or no oil palm, future development strategies must focus on food system resilience and equity. For any cash crop to yield benefits, existing vulnerabilities must be remedied, and adaptative capacity must be built not only at the household scale, but also at community, regional, and national scales so as to be able to successfully respond to systemic change.

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Yang, J.C. and Insam, H. 1991. Microbial biomass and relative contributions of bacteria and fungi in soil beneath tropical rain forest, Hainan Island, China. Journal of Tropical Ecology 7:385–393.

Ybarra, M. 2010. Living on Scorched Earth: the political ecology of land ownership in Guatemala’s northern lowlands. Doctoral Thesis, University of California, Berkeley.

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Zepeda, R. 2017. Human rights and environmental impacts of palm oil in Sayaxché, Guatemala. Oxfam report.

Appendix A – Field Interviews

Field interviews conducted for this project. 1. Maize Village community leader 1, male April 10, 2014. 2. Maize Village community leader 2, male April 10, 2014. 3. Two employees of local NGO1, female April 10, 2014. 4. Maize Village community leader 2, male April 11, 2014. 5. Two MARN (Ministry of Natural Resources) employees, male and female April 12, 2015. 6. Maize Village community leader 2, male January 13, 2015. 7. Maize Village community leader 3, male January 13, 2015. 8. Maize Village community leader 4, male January 14, 2015. 9. Maize Village store owner 1, male January 14, 2015. 10. Maize Village resident couple (oil palm wage labourers), male and female January 14, 2015. 11. Maize Village community leader 2, male April 12, 2015. 12. Two Palm Village residents, female April 13, 2015. 13. Palm Village oil palm grower (OPG4), male April 14, 2015. 14. Palm Village community leader 1, male April 14, 2015. 15. Palm Village community leader 2, male April 14, 2015. 16. Employee of local NGO2, male April 14, 2015. 17. Leader of another community in Lachuá, male April 16, 2015. 18. Residents of a remote community in Lachuá, male and female April 16, 2015. 19. Leader of another community in Lachuá, male April 16, 2015. 20. Palm Village community leaders (COCODE) 2 and 3, male, Appendix E April 15, 2015. 21. Two oil palm day labourers from Palm Village, male April 20, 2015. 22. Oil palm grower in Palm Village (OPG4), male April 25, 2015. 23. Two national park employees, male April 26, 2015. 24. GREPALMA representative, female, Appendix F April 28, 2015. 25. Oil palm grower (OPG4) in Palm Village, male October 20, 2015. 26. Oil palm grower (OPG1) in Palm Village, male October 20, 2015. 27. Oil palm grower (OPG5) in Palm Village, male, Appendix D October 20, 2015. 28. Employee of a local NGO3, male October 23, 2015. 29. Two Oil Palm day labourers from Palm Village, male October 24, 2015. 30. Palm Village, oil palm employee, male October 24, 2015.

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Appendix B – Community Workshops

1. Workshop 1, April 12, 2014.  Introduction of project to community members in Maize Village  Members and/or leaders from other communities in the Lachuá Ecoregion were also present  ~25 total attendees, mostly adult males.  Solicited feedback on proposed oil palm project.  Participants had many questions about oil palm, including: . What is oil palm for? How is it consumed? . Where does oil palm come from? Does it grow in Canada? . Do other places where oil palm grows have similar problems? . What can we (researchers) do to help? . Is it possible to give more workshops in other villages?

2. Workshop 2, January 10, 2015.  Mapping workshop about land use in Maize Village  ~40 attendees, mostly women and children.  Participants created maps of land use in their village – current versus 10 years ago.

3. Workshop 3, April 11, 2015.  Presented project proposal to leaders from Palm Village, Maize Village, with leaders from at least three other villages in Lachuá also in attendance.  ~12 total attendees, mostly adult males.  Participants brought up many issues they believe to be relevant in the ecoregion, such as fungus and moscas (flies) from oil palm affecting residents’ health, possible contamination of rivers by oil palm growers, young people leaving villages to look for jobs elsewhere, lack of access to credit for subsistence farmers, need for training for subsistence farmers, and poverty.

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Appendix C – Store Owner Survey Guide

Maize 1. Do you sell maize? Yes__ No__

Sells maize: 2. Where do you get the maize (e.g. from people in community, camioneros, canabal, etc.)? 3. Is this a reliable/consistent source of maize? a. If no, why not? 4. Do you purchase the maize from them (and re-sell)? 5. What is the price that you pay for the maize when you buy it? 6. Is the price different at different times of the year? a. What are the maize prices at different months? 7. Has the price of maize changed in the last 10 years? a. How has it changed (price 10 years ago, 5 years ago, now)?

8. Are there times in the year when there is no maize available to sell? a. When? b. Why? 9. How much corn do you sell per month? Jan Feb March April May June July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

10. What is the price of maize that you sell it at? a. Is the price different at different months? If yes, what are the prices at diff months?

Beans 1. Do you sell beans? Yes__ No__

Sells beans: 2. Where do you get the beans (e.g. from people in community, camioneros, canabal, etc.)? 3. Is this a reliable/consistent source of beans? a. If no, why not? 4. Do you purchase the beans from them (and re-sell)? 5. What is the price that you pay for the beans when you buy it? 6. Is the price different at different times of the year? a. What are the bean prices at different months? 7. Has the price of beans changed in the last 10 years?

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a. How has it changed (price 10 years ago, 5 years ago, now)?

8. Are there times in the year when there is no beans available to sell? a. When? b. Why? 9. How much beans do you sell per month? Jan Feb March April May June July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

10. What is the price of beans that you sell it at? a. Is the price different at different months? If yes, what are the prices at diff months?

Vegetables and Fruits 1. Do you sell vegetables? Yes__ No__ 2. Which vegetables do you usually sell? 3. Where do you get the vegetables that you sell? 4. How much vegetables do you normally sell in a week (all together)? 5. Are there specific months when you sell fewer vegetables? a. Which months? b. Why?

6. Do you sell fruits? Yes__ No__ 7. Which fruits do you usually sell? 8. Where do you get the fruits that you sell? 9. How much fruits do you normally sell in a week (all together)? 10. Are there specific months when you sell fewer fruits? a. Which months? b. Why?

Eggs 1. Do you sell eggs? Yes__ No__ 2. Where do you get your eggs?

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“Junk Food” (Candy, chips, soft drinks, etc) 1. Where do you get the junk food that you sell (e.g. buy from cantabal, etc.)? 2. How much junk food (chips, candy, soft drinks, etc.) do you sell in a week (~total in Quetzales)? 3. Has the amount increased or decreased in the last 10 years? a. Why? 4. Has the price of junk food changed in the last 10 years? a. How/how much?

General 1. What are the most common food items that people buy from your store (the most important income source for the store)? 2. Are there any food types that you sold before (10 years ago), that you don’t sell any more? a. What are they? b. Why don’t you sell them any more? 3. Are there any food types that you didn’t sell 10 years ago, but you sell now? a. What are they? b. Why didn’t you sell them before? 4. Where are your customers from? (e.g. this community, other communities?)

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Appendix D – OPG Interview Guide

Sample interview guide for OPG4 and OPG5. There were three total interviews with OPG4, who provided information beyond the question listed here. 1. How did you start growing oil palm? 2. How did you finance your start? 3. Did you buy land in order to start your oil palm farm? 4. Do you work under contract with Palmas del Ixcán or another company? 5. What is the size of your farm? 6. How many workers do you employ? 7. How do you hire your workers? 8. For how long do you generally hire your workers? 9. How are your workers paid? 10. Where are your workers from? Are they from this community or other communities? 11. Do you hire from other communities? Why/why not? 12. Who do you sell your fruit to? 13. Who transports the fruit? Where? How? 14. Are there any rules for establishing an oil palm farm in Guatemala? 15. Are there any environmental rules? 16. Are there any rules about consultations with the community? 17. Do you think oil palm is a good business? Why/why not? 18. Are you planning to expand production in the future? Where?

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Appendix E – COCODE Interview Guide

Interview with two COCODE representatives (community leaders) from Palm Village. 1. Can you tell us about the history of the community? 2. What are the main income/work opportunities in the community? 3. What are the main reasons, that you know of, for people to sell land in the community? 4. What are the main economic problems in the community? 5. Are there conflicts within the community, that you know of? 6. Are there conflicts between residents of this community and other communities, that you know of? 7. Do land owners in the community generally have titles to their lands? 8. What are the main benefits of oil palm in the community? 9. Are there any problems associated with oil palm in the community? What kind of problems? 10. We want to conduct an in-depth study about oil palm in the community, and in the rest of the ecoregion. Do you have any questions that you would like to have answered from this study?

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Appendix F – GREPALMA Interview Guide

Interview guide for GREPALMA representative. This was the preliminary guide, however, the interview turned out quite different. The representative also had a presentation and video that she shared. 1. How did GREPALMA start? 2. Why did it start? 3. There was a government initiative in 2007-2008 to promote oil palm. Do you know about it? 4. Who are the members of your organization? 5. What are there any requirements to obtain membership? 6. How do you unite the oil palm producers? 7. What are the benefits of being a member of GREPALMA? 8. (Referencing the ‘Law Enforcement’ pillar from the GREPALMA website) a. What do you enforce? b. How do you enforce it? c. If one of your members has a problem with people breaking the law, how do you help them? 9. Do you engage the communities in which the oil palm businesses work? How? 10. (Referencing the ‘Social and Environmental Commitment’ pillar from the GREPALMA website) How do you promote awareness? 11. Do your members have any environmental certifications?

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Appendix G – Household Survey Guide (English)

A. CHARACTERISTICS

Respondent 1. Respondent gender: male __ female __ 2. Respondent age group: 15-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 60+ 3. Level of education of respondent: None___ grade 5 or less___ some high school__ some university__

4. (interviewer observation) Respondent’s level of Spanish: Zero__ Basic__ Medium__ Strong__ 5. How long have you lived in this community? ______

6. Current Household (People living in the same house for at least 6 months)

Household member Age For kids: does he/she go to school?

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7. Former household members (last ~7 years)? E.g. kids that moved away

Household member Age Where is he/she Does they Does your now? continue to household help contribute to support the household him/her (e.g. (e.g. send send him/her money)? money)?

8. Household assets

Asset type How many does household own? Store Car/pickup truck Motorcycle Molina Cattle Chickens Large tools (e.g. chainsaw)

Interviewer Observations: - jot down before/after interview 9. Observations regarding quality of housing: i. Building material (wood/brick/concrete/other) ii. Size of house (2-floor/large/small) iii. Floor type (mud/other) iv. Furnishings – overall quality v. Decorations vi. Overall impression

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B. LAND PARCEL(S) 10. Does household have land parcel(s)? Yes __ No __

YES, HOUSEHOLD HAS LAND PARCEL(S) 11. How many parcels does the household currently have? ___ 12. Total size of parcel 1 (manzanas): ______

13. PARCEL 1 LAND USES *** NOT including land that the household rents out to other people PARCEL 1 - Land Uses (past and present)

Time 1 use Area (mz) Time 2 use Area (mz) Time 3 use Area (mz) When? (e.g. 2 Present Present ? ? yrs ago) -> Corn/milpa

Beans

Forest

Cattle

Parcel 1 – Land Uses (continued)

Time 4 use Area (mz) Time 5 use Area (mz) Time 6 use Area (mz) When? (e.g. 2 ? ? ? yrs ago) -> Corn/milpa

Beans

Forest

Cattle

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IF HOUSEHOLD HAS A SECOND PARCEL:

14. Total size of parcel 2 (manzanas): ______15. PARCEL 2 LAND USES 16. PARCEL 2 (if relevant) - Land Uses (past and present) *** NOT including land that the household rents out to other people Time 1 use Area (mz) Time 2 use Area (mz) Time 3 use Area (mz) When? (e.g. 2 Present Present ? ? yrs ago) -> Corn/milpa

Beans

Forest

Cattle

Parcel 2 – Land Uses (continued)

Time 4 use Area (mz) Time 5 use Area (mz) Time 6 use Area (mz) When? (e.g. 2 ? ? ? yrs ago) -> Corn/milpa

Beans

Forest

Cattle

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IF HOUSEHOLD HAS A THIRD PARCEL:

17. Total size of parcel 3 (manzanas): ______18. PARCEL 3 LAND USES *** NOT including land that the household rents out to other people PARCEL 3 (if relevant) - Land Uses (past and present)

Time 1 use Area (mz) Time 2 use Area (mz) Time 3 use Area (mz) When? (e.g. 2 Present Present ? ? yrs ago) -> Corn/milpa

Beans

Forest

Cattle

Parcel 3 – Land Uses (continued)

Time 4 use Area (mz) Time 5 use Area (mz) Time 6 use Area (mz) When? (e.g. 2 ? ? ? yrs ago) -> Corn/milpa

Beans

Forest

Cattle

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LAND TENURE

19. Does your household rent your land parcel(s)? All rented__ partly rented__ not rented__

If the parcel (or part of parcel) is rented:

20. Who is the parcel rented from? ______21. What is the price of the rent? ______

22. Does your household own your land parcel(s)?

All owned__ partly owned__ not owned__ If the parcel is (or part of parcel) is owned:

23. Does your household hold a formal title (ownership) or possession of the parcel? Yes__ No__ 24. Do you rent out part of your owned land to other households? Yes__ No__

If Yes, owns land and rents to other households: 25. How much do you charge for rent?

If the parcel is neither rented nor owned: 26. Describe the possession terms of the parcel.

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LAND USE

If household grows crops on parcel(s)

27. Do you sell a part of what you grow? Yes__ No__

If Yes (sell part of crops):

28. Annual crop sales

Crop How much is sold per year? (e.g. 10 Selling Price (Q/unit) kg)

29. Who do you sell to? (neighbours, town?)

30. Do you use agrochemicals on your plot? (fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide) Yes_ No__

If Yes (use agrochemicals):

31. How much do you spend on agrochemicals per year? If No (no agrochemicals):

32. Why do you not use agrochemicals?

33. From your household, who works on the parcel?

Family member Main tasks Only works (male head of family, during key son/daughter, etc) periods (e.g. planting, harvest)

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Do you hire laborers to work on your parcel? Yes__ No__

If yes (hire laborers for parcel): 34. What type of work are they hired for, how many laborers, and what are the costs?

Type of work (e.g. Crop How many For how long are the Cost of laborer planting, cleaning, hired laborers hired for? (Q/day or another harvesting, etc.) laborers? measure)

35. Which community (communities) are the laborers from?

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36. What are the other significant expenditures for crop production on your parcel?

Expenditure type Cost (Q)

______

CHANGES IN LAND HOLDINGS

37. At any point in the last 10 years, has your household had less land than it has now (less parcels, or smaller parcel)? Yes__ No (same amount or more)__

If Yes (household had less land before): 38. How much land did you have before? 39. Why did you decide to acquire more land?

If No (household did not have less land before): 40. In the last 10 years, has your household had any more land than it has now (more parcels, or larger parcel)? Yes__ No__ If Yes (household used to have more land)

41. Which community was the additional land in? 42. What was the size of the additional land? 43. Until when did your household have the additional land? 44. What were last the land uses of additional land, while your household had it? Land Use Type Area

Forest

Crops

Cattle

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45. Did your household own the parcel or was it rented? Owned__ Rented __ Combination__ Neither__ (Owned or

combination to 69; Rented to 76; Neither to 78)

If additional land was owned or combination:

46. Was it sold? Yes__ No__

If Yes (additional land was sold):

47. Who was it sold to? ______48. If you know, what did the buyer intend to use the land for? ______49. What was the selling price? ______50. Why did your household sell the land? ______

If No (additional land was not sold): 51. What happened to the additional land? ______

If additional land was rented: 52. Who was the additional land rented from? ______53. Why is your household no longer renting the parcel? ______

If additional land was neither owned nor rented: 54. What happened to the land? 55. Do you feel that your household is better off without the additional land? Why/Why not?

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NO, HOUSEHOLD DOES NOT HAVE LAND PARCEL

56. In the last 10 years, has your household had any land parcel? Yes__ No__

If Yes (household had land parcel in the past): 57. Which community was the parcel in? ______58. What was the size of the parcel? ______59. Until when did your household have the parcel? ______60. What were the main land uses of the parcel? Land Use Type Area

Forest

Crops

Cattle

If crops were grown on parcel: 61. Did your household own the parcel or was it rented? Owned__ Rented __ Combination__ Neither__ (Owned or

combination to 91; Rented to 97; Neither to 99)

If land was owned or combination:

62. Did your household have a formal title to the land, or possession? 63. Was the land sold? Yes__ No__

If Yes (land was sold):

64. Who was it sold to? ______

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65. What was the selling price? ______66. If you know, what did the buyer intend to use the land for? ______67. Why did your household sell the land? ______

If No (land was not sold): 68. What happened to the additional land? ______

If land was rented: 69. Who was the additional land rented from? ______70. Why is your household no longer renting the parcel? ______

If land was neither owned nor rented: 71. What happened to the land?

72. Do you feel that your household is better off without the additional land? Why/Why not?

C. HOUSEHOLD INCOME SOURCES 73. Does anyone from your household currently work on a palm farm / plantation? Yes__ No__ If someone from household works on palm:

74.

Household Member Name of Farm How long Temporary Compensati working on palm farm farm location have they ? (1 year or on (Q/day) (communit worked on less) y) palm farm? 1.

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Palm worker 1:

75. Did you/household member need any special qualifications or experience to get the job at the palm farm/plantation? If so, what kind?

If palm job is temporary:

76. How long is the working period? 77. Is there an opportunity to return for another working period in the future?

If palm job is not temporary: 78. How long do you/household member expect to continue to work there? 79. Do you consider the job at the palm farm/plantation to be a reliable long-term job (e.g. for 5 years)? If not, why not?

Palm worker 2:

80. Did you/household member need any special qualifications or experience to get the job at the palm farm/plantation? If so, what kind?

If palm job is temporary:

81. How long is the working period? 82. Is there an opportunity to return for another working period in the future?

If palm job is not temporary: 83. How long do you/household member expect to continue to work there? 84. Do you consider the job at the palm farm/plantation to be a reliable long-term job (e.g. for 5 years)? If not, why not?

Palm worker 3:

85. Did you/household member need any special qualifications or experience to get the job at the palm farm/plantation? If so, what kind?

If palm job is temporary:

86. How long is the working period? 87. Is there an opportunity to return for another working period in the future?

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If palm job is not temporary: 88. How long do you/household member expect to continue to work there? 89. Do you consider the job at the palm farm/plantation to be a reliable long-term job (e.g. for 5 years)? If not, why not?

Palm worker 4:

90. Did you/household member need any special qualifications or experience to get the job at the palm farm/plantation? If so, what kind?

If palm job is temporary:

91. How long is the working period? 92. Is there an opportunity to return for another working period in the future?

If palm job is not temporary: 93. How long do you/household member expect to continue to work there? 94. Do you consider the job at the palm farm/plantation to be a reliable long-term job (e.g. for 5 years)? If not, why not?

---

95. What are the main benefits of having a household member work on an oil palm farm/plantation? 96. Are there any negative aspects to having a household member work on a palm farm/plantation? Yes__ No__ 97. What are the negative aspects?

98. Has your household income increased, as a result of the household member(s) working on a palm farm/plantation? Increased__ Decreased__ the same__ If income increased:

99. By how much, approximately has it increased? If income decreased:

100. By how much approximately has it decreased? 101. Why has it decreased?

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102. A result of the household member(s) working on a palm farm/plantation, has your household income become more reliable and consistent throughout the year?

More reliable__ Less reliable__ the same__

103. Has the oil palm work enabled your household to make large purchases that you couldn’t make before, for example work tools, electronics, vehicles, etc.? What kind of purchases?

104. Have the children (under 10 yrs) in your household (if applicable) benefitted from a household member working on oil palm? If yes, how have they benefitted?

105. In your opinion, do palm farms/plantations offer good employment opportunities? Why/why not?

106. Other main sources of household income (for both cases: if household members work on plantation and not)

Family member Type of work (e.g. labor Number of Amount Monetary cost (Q) of (male head of on other months in a year earned (Q) conducting the activity family, farms/construction/oth they engage in on monthly (e.g. materials, son/daughter, er) this activity basis transportation) etc)

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If NO household members work on a palm farm/plantation

107. Has anyone from your household ever worked on a palm farm / plantation in the past (in this or another community)? Yes__ No__

Yes, a household member worked on palm in the past:

108. Was it a temporary or permanent job? If temporary:

109. How long was the working period?

110. Was it owned by a large agribusiness (e.g. Palmas del Ixcan), or by a private owner (finquero)? 111. Where was this palm farm/plantation located? 112. When did you/he/she work on a palm farm/plantation? 113. What were the main benefits of having a household member work on a palm farm/plantation? 114. If there were any negative aspects to having a household member work on a palm farm/plantation, what were they? 115. Why did the household member stop working at the palm farm/plantation? 116. Given the opportunity, would you/he/she work on a palm farm/plantation again?

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117. Did anyone else from your household try to get work at a palm farm/plantation and could not get it? Yes__ No__

If NO household member has ever worked on palm in the past:

118. Did anyone from your household ever try to get work on a palm farm/plantation? Yes__ No__

If yes, household member unsuccessfully tried to get work on palm

farm/plantation:

119. Was it owned by a large agribusiness (e.g. Palmas del Ixcan), or by a private owner (finquero)? 120. Why did you/he/she not get the job?

D. HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION

Food 121. Which types of food does your household usually EAT (and BUY)?

Food Type How much is consumed per Usually Cost of food (if week (unit) in household Buy BOUGHT): Q/unit

Corn

Beans

Rice

Pasta

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Eggs Chicken

Sugar

Cooking Oil

122. Does your household obtain any food (i.e. fish) or other products (not food) from rivers and lakes?

Food/product type Amount used (per week**)

123. If household obtains food/products from rivers and lakes: which rivers/lakes do you usually obtain them from?

124. Does your household obtain any food or other products from the forest (e.g. plants, animals)?

Food/product type Amount used (per week**)

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125. If household obtains products from forest: which forest(s) do you usually get these products from?

126. Are the river/lake products more or less difficult to get now than before (5-7 years)? Why? 127. Are forest products more or less difficult to get than before (5-7 years)? Why?

128. Is firewood used in your household? Yes__ No__

No, firewood is not used in household: 129. What is used instead of firewood? 130. Where does your household obtain this fuel?

Yes, firewood is used in household: 131. Where do you usually get the firewood? 132. Who, from your household, collects the firewood? 133. How long does it take to collect the firewood? 134. Is it more or less difficult to collect it now, compared to before (5-7 years)?

Water 135. Where do your household obtain water for household use? 136. Where does your household obtain its water for drinking? 137. How is your drinking water usually treated (boiling, filtering, other)? 138. Are there ever times when your household has a shortage of water? Yes__ No__

Yes, household experiences water shortages:

139. How often do water shortages happen? 140. Are there any specific times or seasons when water shortages happen more often? If so, what are they? 141. What does your household do when there is a shortage of water? 142. Are shortages more or less frequent than they were before (5-7 years ago)? Why?

143. Out of the foods you currently eat, in the last 5-7 years, have there been changes in where you obtain the food (e.g. used to grow, but now buy or buy somewhere else)? Yes__ No__

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If Yes, changes in sources of household food:

144. Describe the changes in food sources

Food Type Where did Reason for change (e.g. price difference, difference in you get it availability, etc) before?

Corn

Beans

145. Are there any foods that you and people in your household used to eat 5-7 years ago that you no longer eat? If so, which foods? Food no longer consumed Reason why no longer consumed

146. Are there any foods that you and the people in your household eat LESS now than 5-7 years ago? If so, which foods? Foods eaten less Reason why eaten less

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147. Are there any foods that you and the people in your household eat recently that you never used to eat 5-7 years ago? If so, which foods? New foods consumed Reason why they were not consumed before

148. Are there any foods that you and the people in your household eat MORE now than 5-7 years ago? If so, which foods? New foods consumed Reason why they were not consumed before

149. In your household, is there ever uncertainty about whether or not you will have enough food to eat in that week? Yes__ No__

If Yes, there is uncertainty about food in household:

150. Why does this happen? 151. How often is there uncertainty in your household about having food to eat? 152. Are there certain months of the year when there is more uncertainty? If so, what are they, and why?

153. In the last 5-7 years, has your certainty about having food to eat improved, gotten worse, or the same? Improved__ Worse__ The same__

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If worse or the same: 154. What do you believe caused the changes?

Oil Palm in the Community

Livelihood Activities 155. In your opinion, since the establishment of oil palm, has it become easier or harder to obtain employment (in general, not necessarily on oil palm) for people in your community? Easier__ Harder__ The same__

156. If Easier/Harder, why?

157. In your opinion, since the establishment of oil palm, have some jobs disappeared in your community? If so, what kinds of jobs disappeared?

158. In your opinion, since the establishment of oil palm, has it become easier or harder to farm staple crops (corn, beans) for people in your community? Easier__ Harder__ The same__

159. If easier/harder, why?

Water

160. Since the establishment of oil palm (in the last 5-7 yrs) have has your household experienced any more difficulty accessing water, compared to before the palm came (e.g. less water in general, blocked rivers)? Yes__ No__

Yes, noticed changes in availability of water:

161. What kind of changes? 162. What, in your opinion, are the causes of these changes?

163. Since the establishment of oil palm (in the last 5-7 yrs) have you noticed any difference in quality of water that you use in your household?

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Yes__ No__

Yes, noticed changes in quality of water:

164. What kind of changes?

E. OIL PALM: GENERAL OPINION 165. In your opinion, what kind of benefits have the oil palm farms brought to your community?

166. In your opinion, have the oil palm farms in your community brought problems to your community? If so, what kinds of problems?

F. PALM LAND TRANSACTIONS

ONLY If household OWNED land and SOLD it to a palm grower OR SOLD PART OF their owned land to a PALM GROWER 167. When your household sold your land to the palm grower, can you describe how did the palm grower approach you (e.g. friendly/ open to negotiation/was there pressure)

168. What were the main reasons for selling the land? 169. When your household sold the land, did the buyer offer anything in return in addition to the purchase money for the land? Yes__ No__

If yes, palm grower offered additional benefits: 170. What did they offer (job on plantation, improved roads, etc)? 171. Did they provide the benefits that they promised? Yes__ No__

If no, palm grower did not provide promised benefits: 172. Which benefits did they fail to provide?

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173. Overall, do you feel that your household was compensated fairly for the land that you sold? Yes__ No__ If no, feels that compensation was not fair:

174. Why do you feel that it was not fair? 175. What would you consider to be fair compensation?

If household OWNS land and DID NOT sell to a palm grower 176. Has your household ever been approached by an oil palm grower to purchase your land? Yes__ No__

If Yes, household was approached by oil palm grower: 177. Did they try to pressure your household to sell? Yes__ No__

If Yes, tried to pressure: 178. How did they try to pressure your household? 179. How did your household respond to the pressure? 180. What compensation did the palm grower offer for your land? 181. Did you consider this to be fair compensation? Yes__ No__

182. What were the main reasons for your household refusing to sell the land?

If no, household was never approached by oil palm grower 183. If your household was approached by an oil palm grower, do you think you would you consider selling your land? Yes__ No__

If yes, would consider selling land: 184. What are your main reasons for considering selling the land? 185. What would you consider to be a good compensation offer for your land? 186. What do you think your household will do after selling the land?

If no, would not consider selling land: 187. What are your main reasons for not considering selling the land?

Much of the content of Chapter 4: Land, Labour, and Development in the Oil Palm Host Community was published in 2019 in The Journal of Peasant Studies (Hervas, A. 2019. Land, development and contract farming on the Guatemalan oil palm frontier. The Journal of Peasant Studies 46(1): 115-141. 10.1080/03066150.2017.1351435).

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