The Politics of Agricultural Market-Making in Jumla, Nepal

Organic Frontiers: The politics of agricultural market-making in Jumla, Nepal

Elsie Lewison

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

Organic Frontiers: The politics of agricultural market-making in Jumla, Nepal

Elsie Lewison Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography and Planning University of Toronto

2019

Abstract

In 2008, Jumla District, located in northwest Nepal, declared itself “organic.” The declaration was made in the context of a rise in identity-based territorial claims and reinvigorated state territorialisation following the end of a decade-long civil conflict. The declaration was also broadly aligned with a diverse range of socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable market-making initiatives targeting Nepal’s agrarian frontiers. Such initiatives have aimed to capitalize on the “quality turn” in globalized agro-food markets and expert re-assessments of the socio-ecological value of bio-diverse and chemical-free agro-ecologies.

These market development initiatives are framed as having the potential to conserve vulnerable frontier ecologies by rendering them economically valuable, while also extending market access into marginalized regions where farmers have been unable to compete with large-scale, industrial producers on the basis of price alone.

This dissertation builds on critical development, agrarian and governmentality studies and contributes to a growing body of critical scholarship studying alternative agro-food initiatives outside of the Global North.

Drawing on an analysis of state and donor archives, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic participant observation, I examine how changes in globalized food markets and expert understandings of frontier

ecologies are transforming governmental projects of market-making. Using Jumla’s organic district declaration and donor-led value chain development projects as examples, I demonstrate how eco- governmental discourses and development strategies are assembled within specific territorial logics and political agendas, resulting in multiple—and at times contradictory—priorities and approaches. The research further examines how ostensibly technical projects intended to develop socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable markets deliberately blur public-private boundaries. I argue that the new sites of state-society-market encounter created by these projects can bring markets into view as targets of political practice, particularly as development agents and subjects negotiate the contradictions between and within different market-making initiatives. While the politicization of markets can contribute to processes of accumulation and dispossession, it can also present new opportunities for rights-based claims-making.

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Acknowledgements

There are many, many people who gave their time and energy to supporting me and this research and to whom I am deeply grateful. First and foremost, I want to acknowledge and thank all those in Jumla who generously lent their time, patience, humour and insights—what I learned from our conversations extends far beyond the bounds of research and will continue to influence how I understand myself and the world around me for many years to come. I am thoroughly indebted to Sushmita Paudel and Chaturbhuj Malla for their thoughtful analysis, skillful approach to interviewing, logistical support and patient friendship for months at a time and over long uncomfortable journeys—I think of you both often. I am also sincerely grateful to Bimala Sapkota for taking time during her short weekends to drive to a mall to listen my terrible Nepali and read agricultural reports with me. I admire your courage and spirit and value the friendship that you extended to me. In Nepal, I want to also express particular appreciation to Dhan Bahadur Gautam and Dhan Bahadur Kathayat for their invaluable insights, logistical support and overall generosity. Thank you also to Krishna Paudel for his guidance early on in this project and for introducing me to many key themes and people. I also want to recognize all the staff at ForestAction Nepal, Community Action for Dignity, the Jumla District Agriculture Development Office and the Rajikot Horticulture Research station for their time and patience as I imposed myself on their daily routines. I am also indebted to Jeff Masse who was my first guide in the Karnali. Thank you for introducing me to Humla, sharing your trove of knowledge, and for your forbearance through some pretty sticky situations. Thanks additionally to Pema and Rinjin for welcoming me into their home in Simikot.

There are a number of infrastructural networks of people that made this research possible. First, I want to acknowledge and thank the Cornell Nepal community for being my first home away from home in Kathmandu. A sincere thank you to Banu and Shambhu Ojha for taking so many students under their respective wings over the years and teaching us with rigour and humour, to Kath March and David Holmberg for the hard work and energy that created and sustained the Nepal program, as well as to all the staff and associates at CNSP for their boundless patience and counsel. Thank you to Andrea Nightingale for her valuable perspectives on key themes in the research and advise in the early stages of the project and thanks to Kushal and Bidhya Gurung for their generous hosting and friendship. Another community of people to whom I owe a great deal is the Infrastructures of Democracy team including our peer researcher and collaborator colleagues. In particular, I want to extend sincere thanks to Lagan Rai, Shyam Kunwar and Tulasi Sigdel. I have learned so much about how to be a researcher from working with the three of you. I admire and hope to emulate the careful and thoughtful sensitivity with which you approach research and critical analysis.

In Toronto, I foremost want to thank my committee for their attentive engagement with the work and kind support through the rough patches of writing. Thank you to Neera Singh for making the world of affective materialism meaningful and tangible and to Scott Prudham for orienting me to the foundations political ecology and clarifying key theoretical lineages and concepts. Special thanks to my supervisors Katharine Rankin and Alana Boland for many years of encouragement and guidance. Their dedication to colleagues and students, and the high standards to which they hold themselves, is extraordinary. Our work together has fundamentally shaped how I approach research, theory and teaching. Peter Vandergeest and Ryan Isakson graciously agreed to be external examiners and I am grateful to them for the discerning feedback that they provided in the final stages of the dissertation. A big thank you also goes to the amazing community of fellow geography and planning graduate students at U of T. The opportunity to meet and learn from so many remarkable people during my time in graduate school has been invaluable. Particular thanks to Mai Nguyen and Melissa Gibson for their grounded wisdom during my first year in Toronto and to my PhD cohort and friends for their heart smarts and brilliance. Thank you also to all the members of the Political Economy and Ecology reading group for some of the best critical discussion and generative commentary that I have had the opportunity to take part in during my time in university.

Finally, I am enormously grateful to my family for their fortitude and understanding through a very long and obscure process. Thank you to all of my parents Dottie, Jim, Edie and Bob, and siblings Ellie, Liz and Fenris—and also Esther—for your support and encouragement along the way. And I am particularly, gratefully, indebted to my partner Alex Gatien without whose enduring equanimity, consolation in hard times and caring labour I could not have made it through to the end.

This research was generously supported by a Doctoral Research Award from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the AAG Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group Research Grant as well as funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC, its Board of Governors, or any of the funding agencies listed above.

Table of Contents

List of Tables ...... viii List of Figures ...... ix List of Abbreviations ...... x Chapter 1 | Introduction: Researching Ethical Market-Making, Why and How?...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 Research Questions ...... 4 Argument ...... 7 Reviewing the Literature ...... 9 Methods ...... 25 Introduction to the “Field” ...... 34 Conclusion ...... 43 Chapter 2 | Syāu Bhaneko Dhukha Apples Mean Suffering: Governmental Rationalities of Apples Take Root ...... 45 Introduction ...... 45 A New Nation Under Development ...... 46 Improving Nepal’s New “Agricultural Sector” ...... 50 Horticulture for the Hills ...... 55 Apples as a Blueprint for Development ...... 62 Conclusion ...... 66 Chapter 3 | Rōpnē Sutnē Ṭipnē Plant Sleep Pick: Apples and Agrarian Political Economies ...... 67 Introduction ...... 67 Nepal’s Agrarian Transition? ...... 68 Feudal Lords, Development Experts and Maoist Revolutionaries ...... 71 Agricultural Continuity and Change ...... 75 Diversified Livelihoods ...... 87 Apples in Diversified Livelihoods ...... 99 Conclusion ...... 106 Chapter 4 | Reframing Frontier Natures: Governmental Rationalities ...... 107 Introduction ...... 107 Eco-Governmentality and the Quality Turn ...... 109 The Quality Turn for Nepal ...... 111 Jumla Territorial Politics ...... 123 Jumla Frontier Agro-Ecologies ...... 128

Conclusion ...... 133 Chapter 5 | Capturing Organic Value: Governmental Technologies ...... 135 Introduction ...... 135 Frontier Regions of Commodification ...... 135 Populist Organic Apples ...... 137 Piloting Organic Market-Making ...... 143 Professionalizing Production ...... 147 Diverging Visions of Organic Jumla ...... 156 Conclusion ...... 159 Chapter 6 | Organic Limits: Unruly Apples and Blurry Boundaries ...... 161 Introduction ...... 161 Governmentality’s Limits and Brokers ...... 162 New Challenges in Production ...... 163 Addressing Production Problems ...... 171 Capturing Organic Value...... 180 Organic Dilemmas ...... 185 Conclusion ...... 189 Chapter 7 | Brokering Organic: Civil Servants, Civil Society and Local Autonomy ...... 191 Introduction ...... 191 Politicization and Brokerage ...... 193 Negotiating Organic Apples ...... 196 Strategic Engagements ...... 199 The Politics of Exclusive Inclusions ...... 204 Market-Making and Claims-Making ...... 211 Conclusion ...... 219 Chapter 8 | Conclusion: Ethical Market-Making and Food Sovereignty ...... 221 Introduction ...... 221 Review of Main Arguments ...... 223 Debating Sovereignty ...... 224 Multiple-Rationalities of Market-Making? ...... 227 Agrarian Frontier Perspectives ...... 228 Future Directions ...... 231 Conclusion ...... 233 Bibliography ...... 234

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List of Tables

Table 3.1: Nepal Human Development Reports Sector-wise Outputs

Table 3.2: Apple holdings, District Development Office survey 2008

Table 5.1: Partial List of development offices and institutions involved in apple development in Jumla

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List of Figures

Figure 1.1: Department of Agriculture Library, Kathmandu (own image).

Figure 1.2: Fruit Development Directorate Library Kirtipur (own image).

Figure 1.3: Agriculture trainings in Dillichaur (Left) and Khalanga (Right), Jumla (own images).

Figure 1.4: Apple trees (Left) and apples in a home storeroom (Right) in Kartikswami (own images).

Figure 1.5: Jumla in Nepal Map.

Figure 1.6: Focus VDCs Map.

Figure 1.7: Jumla Headquarters, Khalanga (own images).

Figure 1.8: Kartikswami, Jumla. Typical stone and cement house (Left) and view of a Kartikswami village across the river (Right) (own images).

Figure 1.9: Dillichaur, Jumla. Lasi’s new construction along the road (Left) and view of Tirku, an older high-elevation town (Right) (own image; photograph by Jeff Masse, 2014)

Figure 1.10: Kanakasundari, Jumla. Low-land village near the bank of the Sinja river (Left) and house in a high-land hill village (Right) (own images).

Figure 2.1: Nepal Master Plan for transportation infrastructure identifying north-south corridors (International Bank of Reconstruction and Development [IBRD], 1965, p. 55).

Figure 3.1: Bridge in the Sinja Valley (own image)

Figure 4.1: Jumla District Agriculture Development Office organic brochure.

Figure 4.2: Apple Farming and Marketing School Books, Grades 1 to 3.

Figure 5.1: Agriculture Market Service: Part 3. (Department of Agriculture, n.d., p. 36).

Figure 6.1: Apple sapling grafting by small-scale entrepreneurs in Humla district (own image)

Figure 6.2: Biological control of woolly apple aphid using Egg Parasitoid (Aphilinus mali) (own images).

Figure 6.3: Jumla organic apple branding (inclusive of certified and non-certified) OWF brochure.

List of Abbreviations

ADB Asian Development Bank JTA Junior Technical Assistant

CGIAR Consultative Group for International KEP Karnali Employment Project Agricultural Research KEPTA Karnali Employment Project Technical CIDA Canadian International Development Agency Assistance Programme

CIMMYT International Maize and Wheat LI-BIRD Local Initiatives for Biodiversity Research Improvement Center and Development

DADO District Agricultural Development Office MAPS Medicinal and Aromatic Plants

DFID Department for International Development MOAD Ministry of Local Development

DDC District Development Committee NARC Nepal Agricultural Research Council

DCF District Cooperative Federation NGO Non-Governmental Organization

DOA Department of Agriculture OCN Organic Certification Nepal

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization PAF Poverty Alleviation Project

FNCCI Federation of Nepalese Chambers of RAP Rural Access Project Commerce and Industry RCIW Rural Community Infrastructure Works HIMALI High Mountain Agriculture and Livelihood UNDP United Nations Development Programme Improvement USAID United States Agency for International HMG Her Majesty’s Government Development HVAP High Value Agriculture Project USOM United States Overseas Mission IBIRD International Bank for Reconstruction and VCD Value Chain Development Development VDC Village Development Committee IFAD International Fund for Agricultural WFP World Food Programme Development WTO World Trade Organization INF International Nepal Fellowship WUPAP Western Uplands Poverty Alleviation IPGRI International Plant Genetic Resources Programme Institute

IRRI International Rice Research Institute

Chapter 1 | Introduction: Researching Ethical Market-Making, Why and How?

Introduction

In Humla district, located in the far northwest of Nepal, a friend and I met a young man named Kalu while walking from Thechaya village to Simikot, the district headquarters. It had snowed recently but by now the snow had melted, exposing dry, brown slopes, traversed by almost indiscernible foot paths. The walk was a long one and we chatted along the way. He was from Thechaya, a compact village of about 300 households defying gravity near the base of a steep, rocky hillside in a narrow valley. The village was not wealthy, even by Humla standards, and residents worked hard to make ends meet—many of them relying on seasonal migration for manual labour. When he was young, Kalu had been sent away by his parents to live with relatives in Kathmandu during the Maoist conflict. Now he was in his late teens and was waiting to take his School Leaving Certificate exam (completed after grade 10). He had hopes of one day pursuing a BA in rural development, but for now the family couldn’t afford it.

He had just recently planted a number of apple trees on his father’s land and they were clearing another upland plot to plant more. I asked if he was interested in farming on his father’s land and he laughed at the question. No, he said, once people are educated, they want to get a job, only those without education stay on the farm. Was he hopeful about the future of apples? Maybe. In nearby Jumla district (where a motorable road had been opened about seven years earlier), some people had large orchards and he had heard that there was money to be made. He hoped that by the time his trees began bearing fruit, a road would be completed here in Humla too. Maybe then there would be some profit from the apples, but he didn’t sound too confident about the progress on the road. The government doesn’t work properly here, he remarked glumly, all of the political parties are the same. At a fork in the path below Simikot we exchanged farewells before parting ways.

I met Kalu in the first week of my research trip to the Karnali region, but our conversation touched on key themes that are core to this dissertation. For many folks living in rural Nepal, like Kalu, recent transformations brought by roads and commodity markets have been welcomed. “Traditional” relations of production and reproduction were, and are, physically demanding, precarious, and embedded in unequal relations of gendered, caste and class power. In my interviews with farmers and officials in northwest Nepal, few people recalled the old days with fondness—the notable exception was high caste men with office jobs,

1 2 nostalgic for an agrarian imaginary of honest, hard-working simplicity associated with their fathers’ generation. Improved access to markets has been widely understood to have contributed to a decline in food insecurity and has significantly decreased the direct labour burden of provisioning basic household supplies, particularly for women. Market integration is also transforming the cost-calculus of agricultural practices. New opportunities for consumption have increased the desirability of cash incomes, contributing to a gradual decline in the cultivation of some of the traditional crops that offer little to no exchange value. Livelihoods that have always been diversified are diversifying in new ways. While a growing number of people have secured coveted government jobs and started lucrative contracting companies, others are breaking stones for construction and engaging in longer term labour migration to India, where they often work for below market wages.

In this context of market integration and changing agricultural practices, we find ambitious new market- making interventions designed not only to increase incomes but also to address ecological and human health concerns. Instigators of market-making include the Nepali state, international financial institutions, bilateral donors, as well as foreign, national and local NGOs. Together they assemble a variety of globally circulating governmental rationalities and technologies. These interventions could be understood as neoliberal in that they are promoting the expansion and deepening of marketization in Jumla agriculture (for example, by drawing more people into existing markets for apples, while also creating new markets through the commodification of “organic”). Such interventions certainly align with the intractable market fundamentalism that has come to dominate globalized, elite political rationalities since the 1980s. Yet, as Ananya Roy argues in an essay addressing what she terms the “ethicalization of market rule,” to “simply name this ‘neoliberalism’ would be to gloss over the sheer depth and complexity of this moment” (2012, p. 108). Indeed, in the midst of growing enthusiasm for development models centred on ethical market- making, Nepal also became one of the first countries in the world to officially embrace the principle of “food sovereignty,” which was first included as a right of the people in the 2007 interim constitution. Food sovereignty—a concept most influentially defined and promoted by the global peasant movement La Via Campesina—speaks to a right to define one’s own agricultural and food policies—a “right to rights”, as Raj Patel puts it (2009, p. 663). At the center of debates over the substance of food sovereignty are questions about the appropriate role of markets and their relationship to principles of justice, democracy and autonomy.

Over the last few decades, critical discussions of markets in academic scholarship have been dominated by an increasingly unwieldy conceptualization of neoliberalism. Many critical Left scholars have long since become wary of how the term is used, paying closer attention to complex relationships between markets,

3 biopolitics and progressive commitments. Some have pointed to the need for creative engagements with new forms of market governance. James Ferguson, for example, asks can we “imagine new ‘arts of government’ that might take advantage of (rather than simply denouncing or resisting) recent transformations in the spatial organization of government and social assistance?” (2009, p. 169). In international development agents’ efforts to secure new forms of transnationalized hegemonies, to “suture” wounds (Gidwani, 2008, p. xiv), what opportunities do we find for new modalities of “make live” governmentality (Li, 2009)1 and new modes of political claims-making? These are the questions that have motivated my interest in the diverse array of ethical market-making efforts at work in Jumla.

The central concern of the dissertation is how expert re-assessments of the socio-ecological use value and potential exchange value of chemical free, diversified agrarian ecologies have informed new efforts to expand and intensify agricultural markets in areas that have remained at the peripheries of global capital circulations. I demonstrate the diverse and sometimes conflicting forms of “ethical” market-making that converge in agrarian frontiers as eco-governmental discourses and policy models are assembled within specific territorial logics and political agendas. In this context, contradictions between different ethical market-making initiatives further complicate efforts to commodify ecological and social values. Despite the ostensibly technical nature of many of these interventions, the deliberate blurring of public-private boundaries involved in ethical market-making projects can work to bring markets into view as targets of political practice, particularly as development agents and subjects negotiate the limits and failures of interventions. While the politicization of markets can lead to new opportunities for accumulation and dispossession, it can also create opportunities to contest how markets are governed and to assertions of local autonomy over markets. In this introduction, I present the research questions and an unpacking of the argument sketched above. I then provide a brief overview of some of the key scholarly debates in which this project intervenes; specific theoretical framings are taken up in more detail in the subsequent chapters. The literature review is followed by a discussion of methodology. In the last section, I provide a short tour of Jumla.

1 Tania Li (2009), drawing on the Foucauldian concept of biopolitics, discussed later in this chapter, distinguishes “make live” from “let die” biopolitical orientations to populations. Kerala, India is taken as an example of make live orientations that include support for social protections and services.

Research Questions

In my investigation of agricultural market-making in Jumla, apples figure centrally because of their prominence in agricultural development efforts dating back to the 1970s and, more recently, in a 2008 decision to declare Jumla to be an organic district. The history of apples in Jumla also poses an intriguing empirical puzzle related to the theme of market-making. From the 1980s through the 2000s, Jumla suffered from a significant over-production of apples, with no way of efficiently transporting them to external markets. How did Jumla end up with so many apples so many years before the infrastructure needed to market them materialized? Over the course of research, I encountered additional puzzles: Why did district power brokers declare Jumla to be organic? Why are farmers using illegal chemicals on rice and not apples? Why do many farmers insist on their own “laziness” in caring for apples? Together they speak to broader questions about uneven development in the countryside, development rationalities and their limits, struggles over the valorization of social and ecological use value, and the complexities of politics and resistance in the context of rapid agrarian transformations—all contemporary iterations of agrarian questions that have animated critical scholarly debate for well over a century.

The main analytical framing of the research centers on the governmental rationalities and technologies at play in apple development efforts. I am also, however, keenly aware of the limitations of governmentality studies and the importance of grounding an analysis of multiple rationalities through attention to political economy and affective relations. From this analytical perspective, the empirical puzzles that I encountered in Jumla coalesced around a central research question:

What governmental rationalities and technologies are at work in contemporary projects of ethical market- making targeting agrarian frontiers and what are their implications for the pursuit of food sovereignty?

This question can, in turn, be disarticulated in three sets of sub-questions:

• What governmental rationalities and technologies were at work in historical projects of agricultural improvement and how did they articulate with locally situated processes of agrarian change? • What governmental rationalities and technologies are at work in contemporary market-making interventions in Jumla and how do they differ from historical predecessors? • What limits have contemporary projects of market-making encountered and how are farmers and development actors appropriating, negotiating or contesting interventions in the context of these limits?

It is important to note that although the structure of the questions suggest a narrative arc leading from governmentality and political economy to politics and contestation, practices of negotiation and struggle are always imbricated within relations of governance and political economy. The constitutive role of political struggle is a key theme throughout the dissertation. The next section of this introduction further unpacks and contextualizes the concepts at play in these questions, however a few terms benefit from some immediate clarification.

First, I use the term ethical market-making to capture a logic of deliberate interventions intended to create socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable markets that has become increasingly prevalent in development discourse and practice. The term is intentionally nonspecific as it is meant to speak to the broadly utopian language of sustainable development and its win-win-win rhetoric with regard to social, environmental and economic concerns. Ethical market-making thus encompasses [a] the process of creating “fair” or “pro-poor” markets (distributing benefits to marginalized individuals either as producers or as consumers) as well as [b] the creation of markets for ethical commodities including environmentally sustainable products (such as organic certified products) or those explicitly labelled socially ethical (the most prominent example being fair trade certification). The interplay of these two dimensions can differ significantly from intervention to intervention; inclusive markets do not necessarily focus on ethical commodities while ethical commodity market development may not prioritize inclusion on either the producer or consumer end. However, many specific market development projects do invoke both dimensions in line with dominant sustainable development discourses.

Second, in my use of the concept of frontier I am drawing on the work of scholars who mobilize the idea in slightly different ways. The concept of the frontier presents a powerful mode of representation that works to (re)produce lines of difference separating an inside—of capitalism, the nation, civilization—from its constitutive outsides. Frontiers do political work through these practices of inclusion and exclusion— designating particular peoples, places and practices as wild, unruly, unproductive or dangerous, but also exotic, fragile and vulnerable. In doing so, they rationalize governmental projects of intervention, exploitation, protection and incorporation. In this sense the frontier represents a “zone of unmapping: even in its planning, a frontier is imagined as unplanned,” it is “an imaginative project capable of moulding both places and processes” (Tsing, 2003, p. 5100, p. 5102). Gururani and Vandergeest (2014), building on Peluso and Lund (2011), propose the term “frontier ecologies” to refer to “frontiers of ecological change where prior governance arrangements are being challenged and dissolved to make way for new governance arrangements” (2014, 344). For them, the term also works to invoke the idea of an edge, of “ecologies on

6 the edge of irreversible ecological change” and people vulnerable to the “exploitative reaches of the market and the state” (Gururani & Vandergeest, 2014, p. 344). Building on these theoretical elaborations, I argue that Jumla (and the Karnali region of which it is a part) has long figured as a “frontier” in geographical imaginaries in Nepal—one that poses both a political threat and new potentials for accumulation through the valorization of wild, unspoilt natural, and cultural heritage, that is now “on the edge” of change. The Karnali invokes paradoxical anxieties over the failure to modernize “backwards” regions and the threat of loss that modernization presents. Today, English language tourism sites capitalize on this imagery of the western frontier. The Karnali is described as “the ‘Wild West’ of Nepal, an area only recently opened for tourism,” making it “Nepal’s last frontier” (Lonely Planet, n.d.).

I also, however, find Timothy Mitchell’s mobilization of the concept of frontier useful, specifically in the analysis of processes of market-making. He (along with other scholars of performative economics) use the term frontier to illustrate how economic theories and discourses work to separate “the inside of the capitalist world from its supposed outside” (Ouma et al, 2013, p. 225). As Mitchell (2007) puts it:

The distinction between market and nonmarket or capitalist and non-capitalist should be considered not as a thin line but as a broad terrain, in fact a frontier region that covers the entire territory of what is called capitalism. The region is the scene of political battles, in which new moral claims, arguments about justice, and forms of entitlement are forged. (p. 247)

This use of frontier helps to bring into focus practices of market-making that work to render diverse qualities, or forms of value, equivalent and exchangeable through scio-technical processes of abstraction and commodification. I discuss how these processes unfold in the Jumla context in chapters 5 and 6.

Finally, I choose to situate my central research question in relation to the widely used and contested concept of food sovereignty for a couple of reasons. First, the growing body of critical food sovereignty scholarship has emerged as a key site for furthering not just critiques of global capitalism but also rigorous discussions around how to further alternative hegemonic projects, or what Fletcher speculatively identifies as a “liberation eco-governmentality” (2017, p. 312). Second, in Nepal, despite concerns over the lack of clear policy prescriptions, the principle of food sovereignty was carried over from the 2007 interim Constitution to the 2015 Constitution in Article 36. It was further codified with the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act, which came into force on September 18, 2018 and was enacted to implement the provisions stipulated in the Constitution. While the elaboration of mechanisms for implementation and enforcement remain lacking (Amnesty International, 2019), as McKay, Nehring and Walsh-Dilley (2014, p. 1175) observe in

Latin American contexts, food sovereignty policy initiatives have opened up “new political spaces” in struggles over the control of food systems. While food sovereignty does not feature explicitly in the main analysis chapters, it provides an important analytical and normative point of reference for the project. I return to take up the significance of this research for food sovereignty studies in chapter 8.

Argument

With these points of clarification in mind, I turn to a more detailed introduction of the core arguments of the dissertation. I make three interrelated arguments that correspond to the sub-questions sketched earlier in the introduction:

Question 1: What governmental rationalities and technologies were at work in historical projects of agricultural improvement and market-making and how have they articulated with locally situated processes of agrarian change?

Argument 1: Historical projects of agricultural improvement and market-making take shape within Green Revolution era knowledge systems and apples emerge as a development solution in the context of attempts to render Jumla’s agriculture legible. Despite periods of rapid expansion, apple markets cannot be easily understood as a forerunner of radical agrarian capitalist transition. Rather, for farmers, apples were understood to fit well in agrarian transformations involving increased livelihood diversification out of agriculture as well as cautious, low risk forms of commodity production. Governmental programmes of market-making take shape within historically and geographically specific knowledge regimes or ways of knowing and seeing nature. Similarly, farmer rationalities for participating in a given market- making project need to be understood in terms of situated rationalities of agricultural production or what Ramamurthy terms a “vernacular calculus of the economic” (2011, p.1035).

Question 2: What governmental rationalities and technologies are at work in contemporary market-making interventions in Jumla and how do they differ from historical predecessors?

Argument 2: Governmental rationalities of agricultural development in Jumla over the past decade reflect the rise of transnational eco-governmentality that prioritizes the development of various iterations of inclusive and sustainable markets. In Jumla, the commodification of organic in value chain development programmes has demanded transformations in agricultural practices that create new tensions with other programmes of ethical market-making. Ethical market-making in agrarian frontiers can be situated

8 within the rise of transnational forms of eco-governmentality informed by expert reassessments of the use values—and shifts in the exchange values—of non-industrialized agro-ecologies. However, we also find divergent and sometimes contradictory forms of ethical market-making as discourses and policy approaches are assembled within specific territorial projects and political agendas.

Question 3: What limits have contemporary projects of market-making encountered and how are farmers and development actors appropriating, negotiating or contesting interventions in the context of these limits?

Argument 3: Technical interventions to make high-value market linkages run up against unruly socio- natures (shaped in part by previous rounds of development interventions) and different, sometimes competing visions for sustainable, inclusive development. Ethical market-making deliberately blurs public- private boundaries through targeted market interventions, which in turn present new openings for the “politicization” of market-making. While ethical market-making interventions attempt to address market failures through depoliticized fixes, the contradictions and limits that they encounter can also make the politics of market-making visible in new ways, in turn bringing markets into view as targets of political practice.

In the following section, I provide a brief introduction to the analytical approaches that have informed my research questions and arguments as well as the debates in which they intervene. Although the primary methodological focus of this research is on governmental rationalities and technologies—which reflects a strategic decision on my part, in light of my particular positionality as a researcher in northwest Nepal (discussed further below)—the analysis in the dissertation is closely informed by a range of critical theoretical traditions in development studies and geography.

Reviewing the Literature

The Quality Turn

Over the last few decades, a number of scholars have identified a “turn to quality,” as a key shift within global agro-food systems. This quality turn is being driven by “the proliferation of alternative agro-food networks (AAFNs) operating at the margins of mainstream industrial food circuits” (Goodman, 2003, p. 1), changes in expert understandings of human and ecological health, and by what Friedmann has identified as an emergent “environmental-corporate food regime” in which “agrofood corporations are selectively appropriating demands of environmental, food safety, animal welfare, fair trade, and other social movements…” (Friedmann, 2005, p. 227). As Murdoch, Marsden and Banks (2000) point out, this quality turn is emerging:

…because many problems associated with the industrialization of food chains are steadily becoming apparent. In particular, concerns about food safety and nutrition are leading many consumers in advanced capitalist countries to exercise more caution in their consumption habits. A growing number of discerning consumers are demanding ‘quality’ products. (pp. 107-108)

Even within globalized agri-food markets, quality “is coming to be seen as inherent in more ‘local’ and more ‘natural’ foods” (Murdoch et al., 2000, p. 108) and defined in opposition to industrialized modes of agricultural production. The shifting definitions of quality in commercial agri-food markets reflects both the impact of social and environmental movements responding to the negative fallouts of industrialized agricultural production and related shifts in expert knowledge regimes. Health and safety are increasingly associated with smaller scale, non-industrialized production. This marks a contrast to the era when, for example, white bread was marketed for its purity and safety (Bobrow-Strain, 2008). Agricultural systems at the margins of global capital have also been identified as critical stores of diminishing agro-biodiveristy and vital to the long-term viability of agriculture itself. While changing significations of quality have generated support for the re-localization of food production (local, that is, in relation to the consumer), the association of quality with placed-based social and ecological embeddedness are also being harnessed in globalized agro-food networks. As work on global food systems has highlighted, we find a generalized shift among retailers from “competition based largely on price to one based on both price and quality attributes” (Konefal et al., 2005, p. 292; Busch & Bain, 2004; Goodman & Dupuis, 2002).

The “quality turn” in globalized agri-food markets has thus entailed key shifts in the potential economic value of non-industrialized agrarian natures including agro-biodiversity and chemical-free production (although, as we will see, potential economic value requires the right configuration of market actors and technologies to actually realize exchange value in practice). As scholars like Murdoch, Marsden and Banks observed almost two decades ago (2000, p. 108), “While much of the critical attention in agro-food studies has been focused on processes of globalization, industrialization, and standardization, there are good reasons for thinking that an ‘alternative geography of food’… is forcing itself onto the social science agenda.” They go on to argue that this:

…alternative geography begins to emerge because the local ecologies of quality food production are frequently to be found in areas that have escaped the industrialization processes that underpin globalization... This is most evident in agriculture, where the sustained use of output-enhancing technologies in the postwar period has frequently resulted in denuded agricultural ecosystems. Thus those areas that have largely remained marginal to industrialized agriculture are generally the very areas where quality production might thrive. The turn toward quality in consumption may then reveal a very different mosaic of productivity, one that contrasts in important respects with the dominant geographic distribution of food production activities. (p. 108)

Murdoch et al. are particularly interested in alternative geographies in the context of the “localization” of food in the Global North. Yet their insights on the new geographies of agriculture that emerge out of the quality turn are also relevant in relation to the changing dynamics and geographies of food production in the agrarian frontiers of capitalist agriculture in the Global South. Indeed, both mainstream (e.g. International Fund for Agricultural Development [IFAD], 2014) and critical literatures (Goldman, 2001; Friedmann, 2005; Ouma et al., 2015) suggest that the quality turn may play an important role in enabling the expansion (or penetration) of globalized markets deeper into agrarian frontiers. With re-assessments of the use and potential exchange value of non-industrialized agro-ecologies, areas that have remained peripheral vis-à-vis globalized circulations of capital—what we might call “frontier ecologies” (Gururani & Vandergeest, 2014)—promise potential comparative advantages for specialty crops and labels, whether due to niche production conditions or ecologies and socio-economic structures that appeal to the protective approach of labels like Organic and Fair Trade (for example, small family farming and environments viewed as “at risk”).

Mainstream development literature celebrates this changing mosaic as a sustainable development opportunity. New ethical markets have generated enthusiasm for the potential human and ecological health benefits of market expansion—encompassing biopolitical issues from chemical hazards and soil health, to

11 nutrition and agro-biodiversity. At the same time, quality markets are celebrated for their pro-poor, inclusive potential, opening new opportunities for market linkages for previously excluded smallholders who have been unable to compete with large-scale, industrial farming on the basis of price alone. New post- Washington Consensus development programmes, like those identifying as “value chain development” have been increasingly focused on creating inclusive and sustainable market linkages by means of targeted technical interventions.

For critical scholars of development and agrarian change, however, the implications of these new opportunities for marketization in frontier regions have not been as clear cut, nor as uplifting. Critical scholarship offers an array of theoretical perspective through which we might approach an analysis of new ethical market-making efforts. I make the case for an analytical approach that brings together contemporary agrarian political economy and Foucauldian governmentality studies, particularly as they have been taken up and re-worked by scholars drawing on post-colonial, post-human and feminist critiques. After a brief review of agrarian studies and governmentality studies, I consider more specifically how these literatures have informed different perspectives on socio-natural relations.

Agrarian Studies

It is important to preface this review of agrarian studies by pointing out that capitalist relations of production—which are central to the defining research questions of the field of agrarian studies—are, in many ways, conspicuously absent in Jumla and the processes that concern this dissertation. Capitalism features in fragments, almost peripherally, in the ideologies of development, the wage labour markets in India or in the arrival of Wai Wai instant noodles in Jumla Bazaar. Indeed, it is precisely the relative absence of generalized relations of capitalist production and consumption that constitutes the defining problematic of many of the development and market-making efforts that this research follows. At the same time, the failure of capitalism to take hold in Karnali agriculture speaks directly to the central concerns of early agrarian studies scholars. Furthermore, as I discuss below, attention to how the geographies of capital circulation and investment have transformed over the last century provides important context for rearticulating questions about the relationship of capitalism and agriculture in the contemporary moment, including for regions like the Karnali.

Early Marxist agrarian political economy was rooted in Marx’s understanding of capitalism as both an oppressive system—born through expropriation written “in letters of blood and fire” (Marx, 1990, p. 875)— and a historically progressive force. Progressive because, through its capacity to develop the material forces

12 of production and free men from the limits imposed by nature, it was a “necessary precondition of a more economically prosperous and socially humane society” (Akram-Lodhi and Kay, 2010, p. 181). It is through this lens that Marx and many thinkers in early socialist movements viewed the peasantry, “if small-scale peasant producers combined elements of being petty capitalists and labour, how could the complete development of the capitalist mode of production… take place?” (Akram-Lodhi & Kay, 2010, p. 181). In the 1890s efforts by Marxist political thinkers and strategists like Engels, Kautsky and Lenin to use Marx’s theories to both explain and revolutionize contemporary European political economy gave rise to the question, as Kautsky articulated it, of “whether, and how, capital is seizing hold of agriculture, revolutionising it, making old forms of production and property untenable and creating the necessity for new ones” (Kautsky, 1988, p. 12).

For Kautsky, it was strategic debates over whether and how to engage the peasantry in the revolution that prompted the research that would inform his influential 1899 The Agrarian Question. According to Alavi and Shanin, Kautsky began the study with stolid presumptions along the same lines as Lenin – that, as in petty craft production, concentration and centralization of capital would lead to the “dissolution of the peasantry and a polarisation of rural society into two classes” and that, as a social form, it was “destined to disappear under capitalism” (1988, p. xiii). Yet, as he proceeded with his analysis, he found himself explaining instead, against his own historicist instincts, a number of important reasons for the continuation of the peasantry even “within the general framework of capitalism” (1988, p. xiii). Certain aspects of agriculture present particular barriers, including the vulnerability to uncertainties of natural environments and natural barriers to mechanization as well as obstacles to acquiring contiguous land for expansion (Bernstein, 2010, pp. 89-91; Patnaik, 1979). Kautsky also pointed to the peasantry’s willingness to accept “underconsumption” and “excessive labour,” which allowed peasant farming to produce more profits for landlords than capitalist farming by underselling permanent wage workers (Kautsky, 1988, p. xvi).

Despite his own findings, Kautsky remained convinced that the peasantry’s “significance for the socialist movement is either negligible or negative” (Kautsky, 1988, p. xvi). He, much like Marx, saw the peasantry as inherently conservative, and viewed peasant movements—another important factor in the persistence of the peasantry—as counter-productive from the Marxist revolutionary standpoint. Indeed, when not directed at other Marxists, the focus of much of Kautsky and Lenin’s heated polemics on agriculture were the Populists (Narodniks in Russia) who were both vehemently anti-feudal and anti-industrial. In contrast to the Marxists, the populists were interested in the “preservation, not the decomposition of the peasantry” the basic resilience and capacity of peasant life to reproduce itself through the historical rise and fall of ruling social orders (Harrison, 1977, p. 324).

While much of the basis of the populist politics in Russia and elsewhere at the time was a particular appeal to ideas of the traditional and cultural values of agrarian life, Chayanov, a Russian economist working in the 1920s, began to systematically theorize the specific structure of peasant societies as a process of reproduction (Harrison, 1977, p. 324). He maintained, particularly, that the kinds of analytical tools and assumptions used in the study of capitalist economic systems are in a fundamental way not applicable to peasant economies in which categories like price, wages, capital, interest, rent etc. may not be present. In significant contrast to Lenin, Chayanov saw the category of class as having limited applicability within peasant society, understanding inequality instead in terms of cyclical patterns of accumulation and loss at the household level. Chayanov was somewhat ambiguous on the relationship of peasant economies to capitalism in the contemporary world. While he acknowledged that peasants could be subject to exploitation by their incorporation into capitalist relations, he was also insistent that peasant economies formed a socio- economic system that had existed, and continued to exist, outside of capitalism, operating on the basis of a different internal social and economic logic.

Different versions of agrarian populism, presenting an alternative to both capitalism and socialism, surfaced in reaction to the socially and naturally damaging impacts of capitalism and industrialization across the globe over the course of the 20th century (Brass, 1997, p. 204; Danbom, 1991; Williams, 1974). While the agrarian populisms of the early 20th century tended to be more in the romantic strain, the 1960s and 70s witnessed a renewed academic interest in questions of agrarian political economy, specifically in the context of de-colonization, the beginning of the Cold War, and concerns about the development of the Third World countryside. The debates that emerged were shaped by both a (re)discovery of Chayanov’s work on peasant economics as well as an interest in rethinking Marxist agrarian questions. Chayanov’s work, particularly in its more economistic forms, held strong appeal in the expanding world of international development, capturing “the commanding heights of certain international agencies and aid-giving bodies” (Scott, 1977, p. 245 in Byres, 2004, p. 17). The work suggested that equality and poverty reduction could, and should, be achieved through interventions (including land redistribution) that would support and reinvigorate an agrarian economy primarily composed of peasant owner-cultivators (Byres, 2004, p. 18).

The growing, if not hegemonic, influence of Chayanovian peasant economics in development literature, prompted an energetic renewal of interest in Marxist (and Leninist) agrarian political economy (Bernstein, 2009, p. 63). Byres, among others, expressed exasperation with the “potent, seemingly radical, appeal” of Chayanovian informed agrarian populism. He highlighted the invocation of an egalitarian, redistributive land-to-the-tiller rhetoric (Byres, 2004, p. 20) that ignores the contentiousness of redistributive politics as

14 well as key Marxist concerns regarding the articulation of agricultural economies in dynamic and expansionary global capitalist markets. By ignoring these questions, Byres argued that this “neo-classical neo-populism” served to both preclude consideration of sticky questions of class politics and “conjure away” the problems of capitalist industrialization (Byres, 2004, p. 19).

An important strain of agrarian studies debates concerned the “boundaries” of capitalist social relations and the diverse ways in which agriculture may be “seized” by capital. Agrarian studies scholars sought to understand the persistence of peasant farming not simply as a historical vestige but as a mode of production reproduced within the logic of capitalism itself. However, theoretical allegiances in these agrarian studies debates were also not clear-cut. Many scholars using Marxist political economy also incorporated elements of Chayanov’s work in attempts to understand of aspects of peasant society that were apparently resistant to the predicted advance of capitalist modes of production. Some lineages of scholarship have also been particularly attentive to agrarian capitalism as a geographically uneven world historical process encompassing transformations in regional and global economies, particularly processes of colonialism and imperialism. Work by agrarian studies scholars on diverse forms of colonial agrarian accumulation played an important role in re-working a diffusionist history of capitalism as “an internally driven force that arises in Europe and radiates out from there” (Hart, 2018, p. 385).

More recent work in this line by scholars like Bernstein (2004, 2006) and Araghi (1995, 2009, as well as McMichael 2005, 2012, to whom I return below) has argued that radical transformations in circuits of capital and forms of transnational accumulation over the course of the 20th century necessitate a significant reframing of the agrarian question as posed by Kautsky in relation to changing world-historical conjunctures. Working from diverse theoretical standpoints, this scholarship has posed new ways of understanding the persistence of “semi-dispossessed peasantries, those who have lost their non-market access to their means of subsistence but still hold formal and/or legal ownership to some of their means of production” (Araghi, 2009, p. 134). While the particular dynamics of these shifts are a matter of ongoing debate (a topic that I return to in chapter 3), the work demonstrates the continued importance of situating the dynamics of locally scaled agrarian change within world historical processes.

Continued interest in peasant politics constituted another key interest for agrarian studies. Understanding why they failed to join social movements that would apparently be in their interest, and how to reconcile what Gramsci’s work highlights as the contradictory presence of “passivity” (acceptance, isolation) and “turbulence” (resistance, collectivity) (Arnold, 1984, p. 160) – were questions that took on new significance in the context of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam (Skocpol, 1982). Early examples of the new wave of

15 studies of peasant movements and politics (Moore, 1966; Wolf, 1969), continued to focus largely on class dynamics and the “material and organizational advantages” (Skocpol, 1982, p. 354), and remained sceptical of the importance of what might be termed “cultural” factors. However, in the influential “history from below” approach developed by Marxist British historians like E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm, culture was inserted centre stage, in a deliberate attempt to counter the tendencies of what came increasingly to be seen as “crass economic reductionism” in Marxism.

An important influence for much of this new work was the discovery, beyond Italy, of Italian Marxist Antonio Grasmci, whose fragmented writings only began to circulate widely in the 1960s and 1970s. Gramsci’s Marxism, what he terms the “philosophy of praxis” in his prison writings, was attentive to questions of consciousness and culture, firmly rejecting crude economism. His subtle theory of hegemony and approach to historical materialism understood ideas and material relations as co-produced, thus opening space for a consideration of ideas as material forces. He believed that effective political mobilization required the development of a “true” or “organic” class-consciousness, rooted in everyday experiences of subordination and exploitation. Political work thus required attention to the historical sedimentations of experiences, beliefs and ideologies that constitute what he terms “common sense,” with the aim of clarifying them into an emergent “good sense.”

Building on Gramscian understandings of hegemony as a conflicted and contradictory process, Marxist scholars like Thompson sought to reinstate the subaltern as a meaningful subject in history (Arnold, 1984, p. 164). Thompson, for example, worked to counter reductionist accounts of 18th English food politics, pointing to the presence of underlying “legitimizing notions” within crowd actions, or a set of relatively well formulated grievances founded on a traditional view of societal norms and obligations that together could be understood to constitute “the moral economy of the poor” (1971, p. 79). His concept of “moral economy” thus took seriously the theoretical implications of populist agrarian sentiments. While Thompson’s research on the moral economy focused on the politics of consumption, James Scott’s work took up the concept in the sphere of peasant production. His work on the moral economy of the peasant brought together a Gramscian attention to cultural politics and consciousness with elements of Chayanov’s economic insights. For Scott the moral economy of the peasant could be understood as historically rooted, subjective beliefs about a right to subsistence that determined “where, in any given conjuncture, peasants ended up on the shadowy continuum between apparent quiescence and open rebellion” (Edelman, 2005, p. 332).

Theorizations of a moral economy pointed to the possibility of “regions of life,” embodied in the figure of the peasant “that exist in a relation of marginality and subordination to capital yet manage to remain, in some fundamental way, ‘exterior’ to it” (Gidwani, 2008, p. 218). The Subaltern Studies school, started by a group of South Asian scholars at the University of Sussex in 1979-1980, built on Thompson and Scott’s work, while aiming for a more radical break from what Chakrabarty termed the history of Capital, defined ultimately by the labour-capital dialectic. As Gidwani puts it, where agrarian studies posed an ontological “outside” to capital, postcolonial studies demanded a far more radical “decolonization of representation” a decentering of Capital as the dominant referent. As such, unlike agrarian populism, the effort is to “force an epistemic rupture in narratives that organize themselves through capital’s optic—and, by metonymic association, through the universalizing optic of Europe’s (provincial) modernity” (Gidwani, 2008, p. 218).

Subaltern studies scholarship has faced significant criticism for shifting attention away from the material basis of relations of power and exploitation,2 however the tensions that have surfaced in post-colonial engagements with Marxist theory have also set the stage for new approaches to agrarian studies. This includes scholars working in an explicitly Gramscian tradition (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2001; Moore, 1998; Hart, 2002) and more heterogeneous lineages, (Gidwani, 2008; Ramamurthy, 2011; Chari, 2004; Rankin, 2004) who are broadly attentive to the cultural politics and meaningful orders of signification (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2001, p. 115) at play in work, markets and value which “interrupt” the capital-labour dialectic. The scholarship highlights how farmer “economic” rationalities are embedded in historically sedimented, and materially situated, “structures of feeling” that tend to be stubbornly illegible to capital and calculative forms of expert knowledge.3 The concept of moral economy remains relevant not only in the lineages of academic theory, but also as a central pillar in contemporary agrarian movements.

As we see through this brief tour of agrarian studies, the scholarship offers both important insights for situating locally scaled processes of agrarian change and individual decision making within broader processes of uneven development at regional and global scales. At the same time, work on moral economies and subalternity points to the expansive lifeworlds—constituted through sedimented, co-productive material and discursive practices and experiences—overflowing and disrupting economistic analyses.

2 As Hall put it, it is “as if, since the economic in its broadest sense, definitively does not, as it was once supposed to do, ‘determine’ the real movement of history ‘in the last instance’, it does not exist at all!’ (Hall, 1996, p. 258). 3 Structures of feeling is a term developed by Raymond Williams to reference the social acceptability of specific social conventions and to nuance conceptualizations of hegemony. It speaks to the always incomplete nature of hegemony and trajectories of social life that are in process or emergent informed by “specific internal relations” (Williams, 1977, p. 132). “The ‘structure of feeling’ construct is thus a way of mediating between the macro and micro levels of analysis, or between “structure” in a structuralist sense and individual experience (what people actually feel)” (Dror, 2009, p. 848).

Governmentality and Biopolitics

Another interrelated focus of this dissertation concerns practices of governance, by state and non-state actors, that are involved in shaping processes of agrarian transformation—specifically in the context of transnational programs of international development with roots in the post-World War II period. Broadly, I approach questions of the state and governance through the lens of Jessop’s “strategic relational approach” which builds from a variety of theoretical standpoints—Gramsci’s work on the state in particular, but also scholars like Michel Foucault and Timothy Mitchell. A strategic relational approach rejects “attempts to capture the ‘essence’ of the state and aim[s] instead to elaborate useful theoretical and methodological tools to study its changing forms, functions, and effects” (Jessop, 2016, p. 54). One of the sets of theoretical “tools” that I mobilize to understand the rationalities and practices of development in this project are Foucauldian approaches to governance. I find the engagement with Foucauldian theory in development studies particularly useful in analysing the micro-techniques of power in relation to particular forms of knowledge and grids of legibility. At the same time, Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, discussed in brief above, provides an eminently productive approach to theorizing the state—particularly in grounding theories of coercion and consent in historical-material relations of power. In this introductory overview, I focus specifically on Foucauldian theories of governmentality and biopolitics. However, as I highlight below, I also argue that it is also important to hold these approaches in tension with the kind of “historical geographical materialism” (Ekers & Loftus, 2008, p. 700) that we find in Gramsci’s work.4

Governmentality is a much used, and much contested, concept. The neologism governmentality brings together the concepts of governance (the conduct of conduct) and mentalité (rationalities and subjectivities) and signals what Lemke describes as the reciprocal constitution of technologies of power and the political rationality underpinning them (Lemke, 2001). Foucault argued for the need to decenter an understanding of rule—to “cut off the King’s head” (Foucault, 1980, p. 121)—and attend to the mechanisms of government that operate through and beyond the formal institutions of the state. The approach to government “outlines ‘state’ power as an assemblage of institutions, procedures, knowledge etc.” that are nonetheless held together through relatively durable “regimes of truth in relation to institutionalized

4 For a more in-depth discussion of the promises and tensions involved in working across Foucauldian and Gramscian approaches to the state see (Ekers & Loftus, 2008). A number of scholars have both acknowledged the clear tensions between the two theorists’ conceptualization of power and the social but also made a case, like Ekers and Loftus, for working between both analytical approaches (e.g. Li, 2007; Birkenholtz, 2009; Patel, 2013; Jessop, 2016; c.f. Barnett, 2005).

18 practices—in other words, systems of power/knowledge” (Coleman & Grove, 2009, pp. 491-492). As such, a key concern is the diffuse, historically and geographically specific, processes of subject formation.

As scholars working with governmentality have highlighted, the evolution of the concept of governmentality in Foucault’s own lectures has created some tensions in how the term is used across the literature. While Foucault initially proposed the term in a triadic, chronological relation to what he termed sovereign and disciplinary modes of rule, later work suggests that in any given time and place we are likely to find multiple overlapping modes of governing (e.g. Lemke, 2001; Li, 2007; Gidwani, 2008). In a recent article Fletcher (2017) works to illustrate what he terms “multiple governmentalities” at work in contemporary environmental governance and further draws attention to Foucault’s suggestion of the possibility of a socialist governmentality that, “is not hidden within socialism and its texts. It cannot be deduced from them. It must be invented” (Foucault, 2008, p. 94, cited in Fletcher, 2017, p. 312).5 The recognition of multiple, overlapping, and sometimes competing, rationalities of rule has been an important insight for opening up analyses of neoliberal governmentality.

Scholars have found the analytic of governmentality particularly useful for illuminating key dynamics in neoliberal forms of governance that are not reducible to privatization and the retrenchment of public sector services (Rose, 1999; Jessop, 2016). Neoliberal rationalities have involved shifts from “government” to “governance,” in which governmental techniques are deployed “both to mobilize and to discipline the energies of civil society and, in so doing, govern social relations at a distance” (Jessop, 2016, p. 175). Associated processes include the “de-statization” of social and regulatory operations of the state by the private sector and civil society as well as the extension of the logic of the market ever deeper into the operation of the state and the social world. Neoliberal governmentality:

…indicates a new modality of government, which works by creating mechanisms that work ‘all by themselves’ to bring about governmental results through the devolution of risk onto the ‘enterprise’ or the individual (now construed as the entrepreneur of his or her own ‘firm’) and the ‘responsibilization’ of subjects who are increasingly ‘empowered’ to discipline themselves. (Ferguson & Gupta, 2002, p. 989)

Foucault’s interest in historically and geographically specific forms of state power also included attention to the emergence of new technologies of power-knowledge both at the scale of individual bodies— anatomo-politics—and that of the population—biopolitics. Biopolitics, which has proved a particularly

5 Foucault’s suggestion appears to bear resemblance to Gramsci’s explicitly open-ended vision for socialist hegemony as articulated through his philosophy of praxis, a point that I return to in chapter 8.

19 provocative analytic, is constituted through new forms of calculation and interventions that take as their focus the population or specific populations (in their imbrication with things) as the target of management and improvement. Foucault argues that, with the historical emergence of biopolitics as a predominant modality of rule, the object and justification of government increasingly revolved around the efficient “disposal of things” including humans and non-humans (Foucault, 1991; Lemke, 2001).6 The attention to efficiency and improvement was in turn reliant on scientific and expert forms of knowledge such as medicine, biology and, above all, economics.7 It was “thanks to the perception of the specific problems of the population, and thanks to the isolation of that area of reality that we call the economy, that the problem of government finally came to be thought, reflected and calculated outside of the juridical framework of sovereignty” (Gidwani, 2008, p. 8). Biopolitics was thus essential to the development of capitalism which depended on “methods of power capable of optimizing forces, aptitudes, and life in general without at the same time making them more difficult to govern” (Foucault, 1990, p. 171 cited in Ekers & Loftus, 2008, p. 704). Yet it also could not be understood as simply overdetermined by the logic of capital, a mere superstructural reflection of the base “truth” of relations of production.

A related contribution of the analytic of governmentality is attention to the diffusion of rationalities and technologies of subject formation within a variety of governmental spaces. As we will see, while neoliberal governmentality seeks to arrange things so that individuals, acting out of their own self-interest, do as they ought, rather than demanding their “internal subjugation” (Foucault, 2008, p. 260 cited in Fletcher, 2017, p. 312) a great deal of effort is also invested in attempts to train people to act in “rational” profit maximizing ways. Attention to the constitution of subjects through relations of power-knowledge challenges dichotomized understandings of struggle and resistance (not unlike Gramsci’s approach to hegemony and ideology see Ekers & Loftus, 2008, p. 705). Rather, power is relationally constituted, as something that “circulates through the social body in a myriad of relations” that together produce subjectivities. As such, “there is no autonomous subject; rather, subjects exist only in relation to other people, institutions, the state, the factory, and so on” (Ekers & Loftus, 2008, p. 705). As Li (2007) puts it:

6 Once again, attention to Foucault’s later writing makes clear that the emergence of biopolitics does not displace sovereign violence. As Gidwani points out, “violence is an ontological condition of biopolitical power and state logic” (2008, p. 87). Foucault provides one elaboration of the relation in his discussion of “state racism” which legitimates the “death of the bad race, of the inferior race… [to] make life in general healthier: healthier and purer” (Foucault, 2006, p. 255 cited in Coleman & Grove, 2009, p. 493). 7 Note that in the Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault (like Marx) uses the term “political economy” to refer to the classical economics of Smith and modern Liberalism in contra-distinction to what has come to be known as Marxist political economy, which focused on “the crucial relationship between political and economic processes [as] the way in which capitalism engenders, and is shaped by, political struggle between classes” (Sheppard, 2009, p. 548). See Foucault’s March 28, 1979 lecture for a discussion of political economy (2008, pp. 267-289).

In place of the familiar and often spatialized dichotomy, power here, resistance there, the analytic of governmentality draws our attention to the ways in which subjects are differently formed and differently positioned in relation to governmental programs (as experts, as targets), with particular capacities for action and critique. (p. 276)

Many scholars, however, have expressed reservations regarding the analytical robustness and politics of governmentality, particularly as it gained popularity across the social sciences. First, reflecting deeper schisms between post-modern scholarship and Marxist traditions (Dirlik, 1994), many scholars have pointed to a failure to ground an analysis of discourse and power-knowledge in historical-material relations. Governmentality, Mann argues, “begs the question of the social–historical (i.e. political) ground upon which its discursive constitution operates” (Mann, 2009, p. 340; see also Moore, 2005). A second set of concerns include tendencies towards a myopic Euro-centrism. Scholars like Stoler (1995) and Gidwani (2008) have challenged the propensity for governmentality studies to portray “governmentality as a Western and largely undifferentiated mode of power, thereby erasing its internal and imperial geographies” (Gidwani, 2008, p. 8). Ferguson and Gupta similarly point out that much of this work remained “strikingly Eurocentric” in its presumption of a “territorially sovereign nation-state as the domain for the operation of government” (Ferguson & Gupta, 2002, p. 990; see also Hart, 2006, p. 23).

A third criticism has focused on the analytical and methodological omission of the “messy processes of implementation” and “constitutive role of contestation” (Hart, 2006, p. 23). Particularly where methodologies remain confined to governing texts (which do figure prominently in this dissertation) there is a concern that a focus on the mentalities and technologies of rule can lead to “ritualized and repetitive accounts of ‘governing’ in increasingly diverse contexts” (O’Malley, Weir & Shearing, 1997, p. 514). Indeed, (echoing critiques of the Marxian History of Capital) the focus on governing texts and practices can lead to a stiflingly totalizing view of power, ignoring the multitude of affective relations and diverse technologies of self through which subjectivities are continually reproduced (Singh, 2013, p. 4).

While these critiques have drawn attention to key weaknesses in governmentality studies, a number of scholars have also taken up governmentality and biopolitics as useful tools, alongside other analytical approaches, in studies of transnational governance (including colonialism, empire and development) and in a wide range of state contexts. In critical development studies, the mobilization of Foucauldian analytics has always been first and foremost focused on the inadequacies, disjunctures and the grounded, messy contestations of rule (Ferguson, 1990; Li, 2007a, 2007b; Gidwani, 2008). As Gupta puts it, the focus is on “how governmentality is itself a conjunctural and crisis-ridden enterprise, how it engenders its own mode of resistance and makes, meets, molds, or is contested by new subjects” (2001, p. 69)—a dynamic that

Tania Li has theorized as the “limits” of governmentality. For Li, at the limits of crisis-ridden neoliberal governmentality we find not only disciplinary and sovereign violence but also critique and claims making. As Corbridge, Williams, Véron and Srivastava argue, the failures of governmental interventions also “become part of the technologies that people make use of to see the state and to make demands of it” (2005, pp. 44-45).

Postcolonial or decolonial reworkings of governmentality also offer incisive critiques of universalized imaginaries of the state and attendant concepts of citizenship, civil society and the “political.” This work has focused on the spatialization of states, the multiple, competing spaces of governmental rationality and practice, (Ferguson & Gupta, 2002; Gupta, 1995; Gidwani, 2008; Watts, 2003; Vandergeest, Ponte & Bush, 2015) and how forms of governmental rationality articulate in historically and geographically specific state formations (Véron, Corbridge, Williams & Srivastava, 2003). In this dissertation, I emphasize the importance of the ways in which different governmental rationalities inform, or are assembled within, differently spatialized political and territorial projects. Attention to spatially uneven governmental formations or processes also informs Partha Chatterjee’s controversial theorization of a “politics of the governed,” in which marginalized individuals and groups—incorporated into the state as part of populations requiring technocratic governance rather than rights-bearing citizens—vie for access to limited state resources through more or less illicit practices (Chatterjee, 2004, p. 66). I take up Chatterjee’s argument and the productive critiques that it has inspired in greater detail in chapter 7.

Finally, scholars have also appropriated and significantly re-worked the concept of biopower, specifically through the analytic of affect. While Foucauldian “biopower” identifies how “life has become the ‘object- target’ for specific techniques and technologies of power,” affect speaks to life as “that which exceeds attempts to order and control it” (Anderson, 2011, p. 28).8 Recent work on affective labour highlights its “capacities to produce and manipulate affects” and the “seamless flow between work and life” that together present a “biopolitical potential to produce sociality, society and subjectivity”—a potent form of biopower from below (Singh, 2013, p. 192). While affective labor is increasingly incorporated into systems of capitalist production, attention to affective labour nevertheless presents an important “ground for challenging capitalist projects” (Singh, 2013, p. 192) as it illuminates new ways of living and coming together in relations with a multitude of other bodies.

8 Foucault himself made this point, writing that it “is not that life has been totally integrated into techniques that govern and administer it; it constantly escapes them” (Foucault, 1978, p. 143 cited in Anderson, 2011, p. 29).

Governmentality and biopolitics, specifically as they have been stretched and put into conversation with other theoretical traditions like Gramsci’s historical materialism, provide useful tools for analysing the multiple intersecting and sometimes competing rationalities of governance at work in particular historical and geographical conjunctures. As these analytics have been taken up within postcolonial and critical development studies, scholars have emphasized the uneven geographies of governmentality and the many “limits” that any given governmental project encounters in messy and contested processes of implementation. In a similar vein, scholars have also challenged Foucault’s emphasis on technologies of domination, highlighting the vital and productive potentiality of biopower from below.

Political Ecology, Environmentality and More than Human Worlds

In this section, I examine how key themes and scholarly trajectories identified in the sections above articulate different approaches to socio-natural relations and more specifically how they relate to questions of frontier ecologies and processes of sustainable market-making.

A key development in agrarian studies not mentioned above, has been increased attention to biophysical processes, or “nature,” as a constitutive element of agrarian economies and politics. In comparison to work by scholars like Bernstein, in which ecological processes figure only marginally, more recent work on world-historical agrarian political economy has emphasized the importance of ecological dynamics in profit maximizing industrial agriculture (including increased consideration of lively materialities see Boyd, 2001). The burgeoning field of political ecology emerged out of early attention to the interaction of ecological processes and political economy, with scholars like Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) situating their studies of land management decisions within broader political economic relations and increasingly globalized markets.

Studies of agrarian change have also been influenced by related lines of “green” Marxist scholarship building on the second contradiction of capital (the degradation of the conditions of production). Work in this line has explored how ecological contradictions contribute to expansionary tendencies of capital, both territorial and technological, as processes of commodification penetrate deeper into farming practices through the “real subsumption” of nature (Boyd & Prudham, 2017). Interrelated crises of food and the environment are identified as driving the dramatic revaluations of land that have led to land grabbing (Borras, Hall, Scoones, White & Wolford, 2011) and ongoing expansion into new frontier ecologies (Moore, 2011). Similarly, McMichael (2013) points to the loss of “ecological capital” (the processes

23 through which a farmer restores and renews biological farming) as a key factor in processes of commodification and the subsumption of peasant farming within capitalist systems.

Scholars in agrarian political economy and food studies have also built on theories of the production of nature (Smith, 2008) to highlight capital’s ability to re-invent itself and transform changing understandings of the use value of ecological health into new opportunities for accumulation. Friedmann, for example, posits a dialectic of “creativity and appropriation between social initiatives and agrifood capitals” (Friedmann, 2016, p. 675) in which “agrofood corporations are selectively appropriating demands of environmental, food safety, animal welfare, fair trade, and other social movements” arising in response to the crisis of industrial agriculture (Friedmann, 2005, p. 227). A significant body of literature has addressed such processes in relation to organic markets, specifically the processes through which organic, which began as a social-environmental movement, has been transformed into a new form of value addition in increasingly transnational corporate commodity chains (Goodman, 2000; Galvin, 2011; Guthman, 2014; Raynolds, 2000; Goodman, M., 2004; Mutersbaugh, 2005; Getz & Shreck, 2006; Raynolds & Bennett, 2015).

The take up of political ecological questions within agrarian political economy provides an important foundation for understanding the expansion of “sustainable” markets into agrarian frontiers like Jumla. Changing socio-political valuations of agro-biodiverse and chemical free agriculture, prompted by widespread ecological crises created by profit maximizing industrial agriculture, offer new “green” frontiers of accumulation. However, understanding sustainable market-making in Jumla requires further attention to questions of governmental rationalities, biopolitics, and expertise, particularly given ongoing failures to attract capital investment and the complex interplay of conservation priorities and territorializing agendas. For these dynamics I turn to broadly Foucauldian approaches described above, particularly as scholars have applied them to the analysis of environmental governance.

In the 1990s, scholars began to expand on Foucault’s articulation of biopolitics—which primarily concerned human populations—to encompass non-human life as well. Taking up Foucault’s reference to “territory,” this work emphasizes the importance of both the specific “qualities” and the changing “intelligibility” of the territory on and through which political rationalities are exercised (Braun, 2000; Darier, 1999; Rutherford, 1993). A biopolitical lens calls attention to how populations and natures are made legible and governable through expert knowledges. As Patel points out in his 2013 history of the “long” Green Revolution, Foucauldian approaches bring to light “regimes of truth, and the biopolitical imperatives of the liberal state, to understand how problems of hunger, poverty, injustice and ecological destruction

24 have been understood through the prism of capitalism, how certain ideas have been made true or false” (Patel, 2013, p. 51).

Foucauldian approaches are also useful for understanding the diversity of actors involved in environmental governance and the diffusion of particular rationalities and technologies of subject formation (including both entrepreneurial and environmentalist) within a variety of governmental spaces, from state projects and NGOs, to women’s groups and schools. Predictably, much of the “environmentality” scholarship has focused explicitly on the expansion of neoliberal rationalities in the governance of nature, requiring new forms of expertise and technologies of measurement, calculation and enclosure to bring new market forms into being and to commodify natures for conservation as well as exploitation. However, recent attention to multiple governmentalities helps to distinguish neoliberal modalities from disciplinary forms of environmental governance, specifically efforts to produce responsible “ethical” environmental subjects (Agrawal, 2005; cf. Cepek, 2011) as well as a resurgence of sovereign neo-protectionist forms (Lunstrum, 2013, 2014; Buscher & Dressler, 2007).

Finally, although affective materiality does not figure prominently in this dissertation, it is important to highlight how attention to socio-natures within lineages of moral economy and subaltern studies, and related scholarship on biopolitics from below (Hardt & Dumm 2000; Anderson 2012; Singh 2013), has offered key insights into the history and contemporary dynamics of agrarian politics. In the 1990s, subaltern studies and “history from below” approaches began to take up questions of human-nature relations, bringing to light alternative environmental “histories from below” (Guha & Martinez-Alier, 1997). Similarly, scholars have challenged economistic accounts of the practices of natural resource dependent communities, pointing to the significance of affective and caring environmental relations that overflow use or exchange value calculations, intersecting with work on affect and biopolitics from below (Ingold, 2002; Gururani, 2002; Cepek, 2011; Singh, 2013).9 This scholarship takes the concept of moral economy in new directions as it highlights how sedimented structures of feeling are constituted not only by socially determined ideologies and relations of (re)-production but engagements with lively, affective, material bodies and processes (including co-productive relations with the “work of nature” see Battistoni, 2017). Attention to affective materialities helps us to better understand not only everyday interactions, but also the forms of subjectivity and collective sociality driving movements like La Via Campesina. I discuss a proposal for future research focused more specifically on these themes in chapter 8.

9 At the same time, scholars have also been equally active in deconstructing static and romanticized representations of ecological Others and traditional environmental knowledge (Agarwal, 1995; Gupta, 1998; Rangan, 2001).

In the following chapters, I build on the theoretical lineages sketched above. In chapter 8, I also elaborate further on food sovereignty scholarship to highlight potential insights from the research presented here. I make a case for a relational approach to food sovereignty that builds on elaborations of Gramscian and Foucauldian traditions. I suggest that the anti-programmatic, open-ended vision offered by food sovereignty might useful be elaborated through both Foucault’s challenge to the Left to articulate a new autonomously socialist governmentality and Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis.

Methods

The analytical approach to the research topic and questions informed the methodological approach (although I also acknowledge that theory, methods and politics are fundamentally indivisible). The core focus is on governmental programs. Rose, who applied Foucault’s approach to power-knowledge to the study of “advanced liberalism” argues that to study government “…is to start by asking what authorities of various sorts wanted to happen, in relation to problems defined how, in pursuit of what objectives, through what strategies and techniques” (Rose, 1999, p. 20). Yet, as we saw above, studies of government also risk reproducing myopic accounts of floating disembodied relations of “power” and offer little basis for understanding transformations over time and space. As Li (2007, p. 277) poses the problem:

What causes shifts in relations of power? How do the governing and the governed come to position themselves as adversaries? What can we discover about the conjunctures when reversals occur? Questions such as these require us to combine study of governmental rationalities with the examination of concrete cases and particular struggles—conjunctures at which power can be examined empirically, in its diverse forms and complex multiplicity, its instability, and above all in its historical and spatial specificity.

While the dissertation remains primarily focused on governmental rationalities and technologies of improvement, the methods were designed to go beyond the “prevailing rationality of government, the self- referencing, systematized, sanitized world of plans and documents” (Li, 2007, p. 279). The methodological approach includes attention to how rationalities unfold both in the terrain of “prickly” development subjects and the implementing institutions and agents of development programs. A key concern is how particular transnational rationalities and technologies of improvement are assembled into local political projects that reflect situated political economies and cultural politics. The study thus includes three basic domains of inquiry: governmental rationalities and technologies; agrarian political economy; subjectivities and everyday practice. The primary focus on governmental rationalities and technologies is reflected in a methodological emphasis on the study of donor and government archives, interviews with government and

26 donor agents, people participating in or exposed to development interventions and discourse, as well as participant observation in governmental programming. For data related to Jumla’s agrarian political economy, I rely primarily on secondary sources, supplemented with evidence from interviews. In addressing questions of political subjectivity and everyday practice I draw on observed discourses and practices based on interviews with both development agents and people targeted by (and excluded from) development projects, as well as participant observation.

Research Question 1, addressed in chapters 2 and 3, examines development rationalities of agricultural market-making and their articulation with locally situated political economies in historical perspective. Research Question 2, addressed in chapters 4 and 5, is focused on contemporary rationalities and technologies of “ethical” market-making. The significant shifts in the biopolitics of market-making highlighted through historical comparison also draws attention to dialectical relations of transnational governmental rationalities and political economies of “quality” in markets. Research Question 3, addressed in chapters 6 and 7, once again turns to the articulation of transnational governmentality in situated political economies and ecologies, and the forms of political subjectivity engendered as processes of exclusion involved in market-making come into conflict with multi-scalar “inclusive” biopolitics.

The methodological emphasis on rationalities and technologies is informed by consideration for my positionality as a researcher and how this shapes opportunities and limitations. I enjoyed relatively privileged access to governmental spaces and sources. Relevant donor archives were primarily in English and accessed online, through the University of Toronto library system, or via the Canadian federal reference library. Many relevant state documents were also in English reflecting the transnational dimensions of governmentality and how it is constituted through relations of uneven development at the global scale. I also found that my relative mobility, as well as my ethnicity and nationality positioned me as associated with foreign development institutions, which could facilitate access to donor and government offices, documents, libraries, trainings, meetings and interviews, albeit an access mediated by strategic choices on the part of governmental officers. My outsider status, language barriers, and presumed association with institutions of development, particularly in Jumla, also limited my ability to engage in questions of subjectivity with interlocutors in nuanced ways. I discuss some of these challenges and the experience of negotiating them in greater depth below.

Because of their centrality to governmental programs of market-making in Jumla, apples feature as a prominent thematic focus in the dissertation. As I mentioned above, the puzzle of apple overproduction was what initially drew my attention to the history of agricultural development in Jumla. The sometimes

27 spectacular efforts and failures to support apple markets in Jumla and other high hills districts present a provocative case for investigating rationalities and practices of market-making in agrarian frontiers. Indeed, value chain analyses of Jumla apples themselves constitute an important governmental technology of legibility that provide insight into diffuse governmental rationalities. However, the process of tracing the assemblage of actors, materialities and imaginaries involved in bringing a particular market into being illuminated not only the multiple governance strategies in relation to apples, but also how apple market- making has intersected and come into conflict with other programs of environmental and agricultural governance at work in the district.

The research brought me to: governmental offices, archives, private sector offices, super-, farmers-, and wholesale- markets in Kathmandu; government and donor offices in Surkhet, Humla, Mugu and Mustang; as well as offices and orchards across Jumla district. Below I discuss the three primary methods used— archives, interviews and participant observation. After a four-month exploratory trip, I returned for two extended research trips in 2014 and 2015 for a total of 10 months, of which about 7 were spent in the Karnali region. In 2014 and 2015 I relied on the support of research assistants. I began learning Nepali in 2012 and by the time I returned to Jumla in 2015 for a second round of research I had a basic proficiency and was able to lead interviews in Nepali. However, I continued to rely on support for speaking with older people using the Jumli dialect, and for navigating new and complex content. In 2014, I worked with Sushmita Paudel, a botany Masters student from Tribhuvan University from the south west part of Nepal and in 2015 I worked with Chaturbhuj Malla, a student completing a BA in English and Korean at Tri-Chandra College, from Mugu district, neighbouring Jumla. Both Sushmita and Chaturbhuj were absolutely invaluable providing not only to support with language barriers but also offering their own acute assessments of situations, forming friendships and connections in Jumla (not to mention being amazingly good-natured friends and travelling companions). Throughout the dissertation I use the term “we” when discussing interviews and events in which Sushmita or Chaturbhuj were participating. This is not, however, meant to imply that they share my views or analysis of the situation.

Archives

Because of the research focus on governmental rationalities and technologies, archives supplied an important source of data. Access to archival sources relevant to the history of horticulture development in Nepal and Jumla in particular was often challenging due to limited attention to archiving and organizing materials in state and NGO offices. Locating relevant materials in libraries often entailed systematically

28 searching through all of, or large sections of, the materials available (see Figure 1.1 and 1.2). The main physical libraries I used were those located at:

• Central Horticulture Centre (CHC), (housing the Fruit Development Directorate), Kirtipur, Lalitpur • Department of Agriculture, Hariharbhawan, Lalitpur • National Agriculture Research Center, Khumaltar, Lalitpur • Tribhuvan University Library (Newspaper collection and Regmi archives), Kirtipur, Lalitpur • New Era Pvt. Ltd., Kalopul, Kathmandu • District Development Committee Jumla, Khalanga

Primary forms of archival materials used: • Historical project documents and miscellaneous reports (access through online archives [USAID and World Bank]; by request though the Canadian federal reference library [CIDA]; at the DOA, New Era, CHC). • Contemporary documents and materials related to specific, donor sponsored, development projects (including reports, plans, third party assessments, meeting minutes, training materials and manuals) (accessed online or in person at DOA, New Era, CHC and district-based offices). • Government of Nepal national, district and Village Development Committee (VDC)-scaled policy and planning documents and miscellaneous reports (accessed online or at the DOA, CHC, NARC, and district state offices). • Annual or periodic reports from VDC, district and national state offices in Nepal (accessed at the DOA, CHC, NARC, and district state offices). • Miscellaneous reports and training materials and studies related to horticulture (accessed at NARC and the CHC). • Household and Agricultural statistical data (accessed online and in person at the national Bureau of Statistics, from the Jumla DDC and VDC offices). • Newspaper archives, particularly the Regmi collection, available at Tribhuvan University and through Cornell library system.

Figure 1.1: Department of Agriculture Library Kathmandu..

Figure 1.2: Fruit Development Directorate Library Kirtipur.

Interviews

The main groups of people I interviewed were people working for donors or projects, government officers at the national, district and the sub-district political designation “Village Development Committee” (VDC) scales, businesspeople, apple traders/wholesalers and apple producers, however, as mentioned below, the boundaries between these groups were often profoundly blurred. Recruitment of donor, NGO and state officers relied primarily on “cold calling,” often in person at the office. Sampling strategies for producers involved non-randomized stratified sampling aiming for a diversity of geographical locations, age, gender and caste/ethnic identities. Many of the most informative meetings and conversations, however, were through happenstance encounters. After travelling fairly extensively in the district, I chose three focus VDCs, Kartikswami, Kanakasundari and Dillichaur, in which to concentrate interviews with producers. Consent for interviews was obtained verbally and separate consent was obtained for recording. In order to ensure accuracy of translations, key transcripts were translated by either the person who was assisting me with the interview or another third-party translator. I listened to all interview recording and took detailed notes to supplement interview fieldnotes. Due to the expense of transcription/translation and the open-ended nature of interviews, relevant portions of interviews were selected to be transcribed/translated in full. Both interviews and fieldnotes were then coded in NVivo. In the dissertation names of interlocutors have been replaced to protect their privacy.

Relations of power and sedimented structures of feeling associated with development institutions were an important consideration in my approach to interviews. As we will see, there is a long tense relationship to programs of development in the Karnali region. As centuries of state exploitation made room for governmental programs of improvement in the second half of the 20th century, we find increased efforts to render Jumla people and environments legible, and therefore governable. Increased governmental attention to improvement has entailed the expansion of practices of survey and measurement. Jumla’s status as the headquarters of the Karnali, often ranked as the poorest and most remote region of the country, has made it a particularly desirable target for development programming for a wide array of state and non-state actors. As a staff member of one of the local NGOs commented, Jumla is like a “development laboratory.”

An important implication of the thronging of development actors to Jumla has been a barrage of survey activities targeting residents. The majority of development interventions require forms of quantitative assessments of impacts, constituted through baseline surveys and ongoing assessments—including questions about intimate details of people’s lives, from how much debt they carry to who makes decisions in the household. There is also with limited coordination and significant overlap between different

31 programs. The result has been widely reported survey or respondent fatigue exacerbated by (as we will see) histories of failed development promises. The experience of being inundated by researchers is a common one across Nepal; the survey team for the new Agricultural Development Strategy, for example, reported, that:

Time and time again the mission was advised that other missions have come through doing research. Views are canvassed that were then repackaged into current jargon of the methodology being used and then presented back to the interviewees in a workshop, invariably in the most elaborate building in town. About nine months’ later the cycle is repeated with another donor and or another methodology… on more than one occasion, the mission was advised that the interviewee was tired of being asked the same question by different agencies. All interviewees complained that they had seen very limited action stemming from their inputs. (PPTA Consultants, 2012, p. 276)

Respondent fatigue presents methodological and ethical challenges. Disappointment with the lack of outcomes of studies and frustration with repetition and the labour time demanded by surveys (and affective dimensions of being subject to the survey gaze) can contribute to a reluctance to participate, or to strategic participation in research and assessment. Disaffection and distrust present, on the one hand, a widely acknowledged problem for accuracy in both quantitative and qualitative studies. Indeed, there is a rich history of discussion around the factual inaccuracy of survey methods in Nepal (Thompson & Warburton, 1985; for a broader discussion of the challenges of survey data collection from the perspective of Nepal see Gill, 1993). Ethically, respondent fatigue compounds important ethical questions of conducting research from a position of power and privilege, to which I return below. My inability to influence any immediate change in governance policy or practice made it particularly important that I clearly explained my status as an independent researcher. The communication of this point was made easier by the presence of both foreign and Nepali researchers working in the district over the last several years, (as well as the growing number of young people in Jumla pursuing college and university degrees and pursuing their own research projects). However, countering the assumption that I was tied to a development agency required ongoing clarifications. In two interviews people also confronted me directly with the same sentiment expressed towards the research team quoted above, pointing out that someone like me had come by asking questions a year ago and nothing had happened.

Considerations of respondent fatigue and my positioning in relation to development contributed to a cautious approach to interviews as well as my decisions not to conduct a quantitative survey or to use a formal structure for interviews. In the first phase of research in Jumla, I focused on interviews with development agents and extensive informal conversations with apple producers across the district. The aim

32 was to develop a sense of important concerns as well as how and in what contexts people seemed interested in sharing their perspectives. In the second round of research in Jumla, I continued to conduct interviews with development agents as well as more formal but still semi-structured interviews with farmers/producers. The open-ended structure of interviews (as opposed to an extensive list of closed ended questions) was intended to engage those who were interested in sharing their experiences and limit the intrusion on those who were not. I aimed to encourage interlocutors to discuss issues and experiences of interest to themselves and their own opinions and views of development interventions. My intention was to treat all interlocutors as “key informants,” as opposed to divided into key informants and generic “farmers”—an approach that seemed particularly appropriate in the Jumla context given the often blurred boundaries of farmers, civil society and state actors.

An open-ended approach to interviews also allowed for significant flexibility. I did not organize formal focus groups however, particularly in village contexts, interviews often began as, or transformed into, informal focus groups as family members or neighbours joined in. While these could sometimes be chaotic, they also offered particularly important insights on contentious viewpoints or issues, as debates or differences of opinion emerged among individuals. I also found that interlocutors often had their own questions to ask of me, and that an informal structure created openings for dialogue. Many interviews turned to discussions of farming in Canada and topics ranging from the costs of living, to Canadian education systems and marriage traditions, to pensions and the responsibilities of children to their aging parents. In these cases, there seemed to be a shift, admittedly a small one, toward a relationality of information exchange, as opposed to extraction.

Participant Observation

In addition to interviews, participant observation was a key source of insight both in regard to governmental technologies of subject formation and the everyday ways in which development subjects and development brokers negotiated interventions. Important spaces of participant observation were agricultural development trainings, primarily apple-related trainings. Trainings that I attended included: a three-day vegetable training in Dillichaur, a women’s group training on cooperative management in Kartikswami; a three day apple processing training held at the Apple Processing Center, three days of a 30-day local resource person training (including trainings on apple development) at a local hotel conducted by the District Agricultural Development Office (see Figure 1.3), and a three-day apple value chain development training at the DADO. I also attended various district-scale workshops and programs, for example a women’s empowerment workshop involving most of the key political brokers in the district, a large official

33 meeting with a Kathmandu representative for the Apple Self-Reliance program discussed in chapter 5, cooperative meetings in different parts of the district, meetings between project staff and participants and various public events like public protests and holiday celebrations. Outside of Kathmandu (where I stayed with a young family involved in a sustainable development enterprise) I stayed in a variety of places including the spare room of the local office of an agro-biodiversity conservation NGO, as well as small hotels and private homes in Jumla, Mugu and Humla. With new connections and friendships, I was also generously invited into different aspects of everyday lives from picnics and birthday celebrations to the World Cup and local volleyball tournaments.

Figure 1.3: Agriculture trainings in Dillichaur (Left) and Khalanga (Right), Jumla.

Research and Responsibility

This project raises perennial questions of the ethics of research from a position of privilege, particularly pertinent for those working far from home. As a disaffected student of international development, it was an interest in studying the international development industry (and admittedly a love of mountains) that brought me to Nepal and then to Jumla. I set out with the objective of exposing neoliberal capitalist expansion at work, but was instead immersed in experiences that, to borrow from Chakrabarty, worked to provincialize Europe and decenter the History through which I had oriented myself. The study of Jumla’s past did offer windows into dusty corners of U.S. and Canadian histories (mostly of audacious ignorance) and I certainly encountered pervasive neoliberal discourses, but these were assembled into relations, institutions and processes that challenged not only my understandings of capitalist expansion but also what constituted capitalism and why it mattered. The many interlocutors to whom I owe what insights I managed to come away with—who generously shared their time, thoughts and experiences (and so many apples) with me—are unlikely to see any direct benefits, while I move on toward another degree. Above, I discussed

34 some of the small ways in which I attempted to realign the exchange of information in the context of interviews. Speaking to more abstract processes, my hope is that sharing Jumla residents’ experiences of market-making might contribute to the processes already underway in the district of addressing markets as “made,” and fundamentally political in their making, both within development discourses in Nepal and in other contexts (for example in classrooms). This is, however, by no means a claim to have addressed thorny ethical questions that will continue to profoundly unsettle my relationship to past and future research practice.

Introduction to the “Field”10

Apples

Given the central role that apples play in the programs of market-making explored in the dissertation, it is worth taking a moment to introduce them. The wild ancestor of our contemporary domesticated apples was likely Malus sieversii, a species still found in the mountains of central Asia in southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Their descendants have travelled far and wide. Apples are “extreme heterozygotes,” their genetic makeup includes variations, or alleles, which combine randomly producing unpredictable characteristics and marked differences from parents. Their genetic unruliness has made them both amazingly adaptable and stubbornly difficult to cultivate and tame. The range of genetic potential held in every seed has allowed them to adapt and thrive in new environments. At the same time, improved breeding is an unpredictable and prolonged process. Once identified, favoured breeds are propagated asexually by grafting a “scion” of a chosen cultivar onto a separate species of tree, which is called the “rootstock.” The difficulty of identifying new cultivars (many of them from chance seedlings or “pippins”) alongside the ease of replication through asexual reproduction put them at the center of early plant intellectual property struggles in the 1890s and early 1900s in the United States. Paul Stark of Stark Brothers Nursery and Orchards, who was introduced to the common ancestor of Delicious apples at a fair in Missouri in 1893, became the prime mover of the 1930 Plant Act in the United States, which would establish patent

10 The term field is in quotation marks to reference critiques of binary distinctions between field and home, or observation and writing that contribute to an “uncritical mapping of ‘difference’ onto exotic sites” and the “idea that knowledge derived from experience in ‘the field’ is privileged… while other, less localized relations disappear from view” (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997). More specifically, in the context of this project, given the focus on governmental rationalities and technologies, experiences in Kathmandu (as well as in my interactions with Canada-based development organizations like the International Development Research Centre) are also part of the body of observations that have informed the analysis.

35 rights for developers of new varieties of many asexually propagated plants (Bugos & Kevles, 1992; see also Diamond, 2010).

Delicious apples would go on to become by far the most widely grown cultivar of apple worldwide and they remain the mainstay of Jumla apple production. Apples made their way to Nepal by way of India. The British brought apple farming with them to India, particularly in the high hills of Uttarakhand (after capturing the region from the Nepali Gorkha dynasty) in the mid-1800s and sporadically infused new apple stock over the course of the 1800s. The person most famously associated with apples in the region, however, is Samuel Evans Stokes, a Quaker missionary from Philadelphia and graduate student at Cornell University who gave up his studies to move to northwest India. In 1914, Stokes reportedly brought Red Delicious saplings, bought from the Stark Brothers, and spent years trying to persuade neighbors in Himachal to plant them (Chandrashekhar, 2013). The sweetness of Delicious varieties, as opposed to the more sour British apples, appealed to tastes in the region and the Himachal apple industry was born, so the legend goes. It was from the hills of Himachal and Uttarakhand that apples were then brought to the hills of Nepal, a history that I explore in detail in chapter 2.

Figure 1.4: Apple trees (Left) and apples in a home apple storeroom (Right) in Kartikswami.

The adaptability of apples, including their remarkable hardiness in temperate climates of both the northern and southern hemisphere, has also produced intense global competition in apple markets and put them at the center of global trade skirmishes, often fought out over phytosanitary standards. Over the last decade, China emerged as a heavy weight in the apple business, supporting the development of massive, modernized orchards. The genetic homogeneity of apple cultivars, particularly when grown together in large monocultures, also renders them particularly vulnerable to disease. Conventional apple production is chemical intensive and apples regularly land near the top of the list of the U.S. based Environmental

Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list of fruits and vegetables with the most chemical residues. As Jentsch, an extension associate at Cornell puts it, “Today’s apple varieties are subject to perennial onslaught from a multitude of insect, disease, wildlife, weed and weather conditions, reducing a potentially profitable crop to a few worthless, worm riddled, scab encrusted fruits” (Jentsch n.d., p. 5). An organic apple market is growing (about 7% of the U.S. apple production by 2018), enabled by improved organic pest management technologies, disease-resistant cultivars, and organic price premiums (Peck et al., 2006; Delate et al., 2008). While the organic apple market also presents international opportunities, an “entanglement of regulatory bodies” has made this market even more difficult to navigate than the conventional markets (Peck et al., 2005).

Jumla District

We will be getting to know apples in more detail in the following chapters. In the last section of the introduction, I turn to Jumla and the three Village Development Committees in which interviews with producers were focused. It is important to note that between 2015 and 2017 political boundaries in Nepal underwent dramatic changes as Village Development Committees were consolidated into larger municipalities and districts grouped into seven provinces. Because I conducted my fieldwork before the majority of these changes took place, I use the old designations throughout the dissertation.

The area of Jumla district is 2,531 km2 and the elevation (according to most reports) ranges from 915 m. to 4,679 m. although Mt Patarasi peak stands at 6,424 m. (21,077 ft). Jumla lies in an intermontane basin between two arms of the Himalayan ranges—to the south is the Chakhure-Mabu range and another range runs from Kanjiroba Himal (6,700 m.) to Saipal Himal (7,000 m.) in Bajhang district to the north west (Bishop, 1978; Arita et al., 1984). Jumla is transected by two main river valleys. The Hima nadī (river) flows south in the Sinja valley cutting along the north west edge of the district to Nagma bazaar at the border with Kalikot. The Chaudabis khola (river or stream) flows out of the east, down from Patarasi and Kanjirowa Himal to become the Tila at Urthu gāuñ (village) and flows west through the central valley of the district, along the new Karnali Highway, to meet the Hima in Nagma.11 Jumla is located in a partial rainshadow, receiving the tail end of the monsoons moving west from the Bay of Bengal. The main rainy season has been in July and August bringing about 80% of the rain with a shorter season in December/January. However, the timing and amount is reportedly increasingly variable. In the cold months, temperatures drop below 0 C with snow present in high altitude lek areas of the hills, often used for pasture,

11 Transliterated Nepali words follow the ISO 15919 standard.

37 for up to six months of the year. Crops have been reportedly cultivated up to 4,000 m. elevation and on slopes up to 45 degrees with average field sizes of 0.05 hectares (Whiteman, 1985).

Until 2015, Jumla was one of five districts that made up the Karnali region and was made up of 30 Village Development Committees (VDCs), each containing roughly 9 wards. In 2015 several VDCs were agglomerated into a municipality and then in 2017, a process of national restructuring and political redistricting mandated by the new constitution created (after violent struggles across the country, including in Jumla) 7 new Provinces with Jumla squarely in the middle of an expanded Province 6, later renamed Karnali Pradesh. Internally Jumla was reconstituted with 1 nāgarpālikā (municipality) and 7 gāuñpālikā (rural municipalities). In this dissertation, I continue to use the original VDC boundaries as a referent because they are the boundaries used in most of the secondary sources available. Basic indices of quality of life have ranked Jumla low in comparison to other areas of the country, although not as low as neighbouring Karnali districts like Mugu. A 2013 Central Bureau of Statistics survey put Jumla at 70th out of 75 districts in wealth rankings. Telling statistics are those reporting basic health indicators, which are improving but still abysmal. Life expectancy in Jumla rose from 51 in 2001 to 63 in 2011 (61 to 69 in Nepal as a whole) and the percentage of children under age five who are malnourished declined from 74 in 2001 to 54 in 2011 (compared to 50 to 40.5 in Nepal) (UNDP 2004; UNDP 2014). These numbers also obscure the significant inequality in the district, which tends to fall along lines of caste, ethnicity and gender.

Figure 1.5: Jumla in Nepal.

Figure 1.6: Focus VDCs Kanakasundari, Kartikswami and Dillichaur.

Figure 1.7: Jumla Headquarters, Khalanga.

Today, Jumla bazaar (the district headquarters also called Khalanga), which is located near the center of the district along the Tila, is crowded with shops, sheltered under second story baloneys, and offices packed into more or less paved streets with tractors and trucks roaring up and down hauling goods and construction materials. The sound of the three to four air flights in and out of the small airstrip (still sometimes stopped for days or weeks at a time due to weather) are no longer as exciting as they used to be with the constant coming and going of “trippers” (dump trucks) and rickety passenger buses. The army barracks encircled

39 with barbed wire looms on a small hill over the town. The rounded gold roof and tall fluttering flags of Chandannath mandir (temple) are now obscured behind the crowd of three- and four-story stone buildings bonded with mud or cement topped with tin roofs. A few buildings sport bright paint jobs and have begun expanding into the rice fields below town and cropping up in the hills above. Colorful plastic goods and packaging are on display and the small dark hotels (usually a restaurant, tea shop and bar all in one) obscured behind banging screen doors sometimes feature small refrigerators and TVs hooked up to satellite dishes (see Figure 1.7).

Kartikswami VDC

Figure 1.8: Kartikswami, Jumla. Typical stone and cement house (Left) and view of a Kartikswami village across the river (Right).

If you head south down to the Tila, having to pick your way through rice fields that are periodically flooded, and proceed across a short footbridge spanning the river you arrive in Kartikswami VDC. Like in the headquarters, most of the buildings here are made of stone bonded with mud, but the sound of vehicles comes only from across the river. A wide, often dusty or flooded, footpath takes you from Pepalgau, following the river east, past the state owned bāgavānī demonstration horticulture farm, with its impressive aging apple trees spanning up the hillside, through several villages one after another (primarily high caste). Luxurious khet (irrigated land)—now seeing encroachment by urban sprawl—is spread out below the main path and apple orchards interspersed with other crops and state forest expand upslope (see Figure 1.8). Kartiksami was a VDC of “jobholders.” Office jobs are held mostly, though not exclusively, by members of upper-caste households. Many children were pursuing higher education and holding jobs outside of Jumla. A 2008 household survey suggested that almost 50% of households were drawing incomes from a

40 permanent job or pension, although there was significant inequality between Dalit12 (6.5%) and high caste (60%) households (Jumla DDC, 2008). Anecdotal evidence suggests that this percentage is higher today among the high caste villages and neighborhoods. In 2011, overall literacy rates were significantly higher than the district average as was level of schooling and school attendance.

Because of its proximity to the headquarters, and the number of well-connected households, Kartikswami residents had been recipients of early apple distributions. By 1989, about 35% of the total cultivated upland, rainfed land was being used for apple planting (New Era, 1989). By 2008, about 78% of households had trees, averaging about 48 trees each, and about half were at a productive age (Jumla DDC, 2008). When I interviewed people in 2014-2015, apple production was continuing to expand. As one man put it, “Wherever you have land, you are planting apples. You can find apple farms all over. You can see them on all sides [referring to hillsides]. There might be more on one side and less on another side. However, people have planted apples on all sides” (Kartikswami Farmer, September 28, 2015). Households in Kartikswami reported significantly greater support from the government offices and donor projects reflecting a generally more significant development presence than other more remote VDCs (for example 80% of households reported having a member in a women’s development group in 2008). Residents also enjoyed relatively good access to marketing outlets, selling apples in the headquarters and, for some, on subsidized government flights out of the district. When the Karnali Highway arrived in 2007, traders with trucks were a two to three hour walk away, although lack of a motorable bridge meant that there were still no motorable roads in the VDC as of 2015.

12 Dalit, which translates to broken, beaten down, or scattered in Hindi is a term that was popularized by B.R. Ambedkar in the 1970s as an alternative way of self-identifying for individuals and communities marginalized within Hindu caste systems, which rejected ideologies of domination.

Dillichaur VDC

Figure 1.10: Dillichaur, Jumla. Lasi’s new construction along the road (Left), at the time only accessible by tractor, and view of a tractor crossing the river (Right).

From the headquarters, if we stayed on the main road and walked east, past the airstrip and the state run horticulture research station at Rajikot, with its neatly manicured fields of apples, kiwis, and walnut varietal trials (among others), we would eventually head into the Chaudabis valley and Dillichaur VDC, crossing the river at a foot bridge carved out of a single massive tree. In Dillichaur villages are more dispersed, seated on outcroppings and tucked away in the hills. Again, for lack of a bridge, roads carved out by VDC budgets and Food for Work13 projects are accessible only by the tractors that can ford the river in the dry seasons. The first major town is Lasi, a new outpost of the older town of Japna across the river. Lasi was established along the road to take advantage of the tractor and foot traffic and in anticipation of road expansion. Lasi was mostly made up of stone buildings with blue tin roofs, including a brand-new hotel marketing itself to development trainings and the steady stream of office staffs (see Figure 1.9). Up in the hills we find remnants of the older building style. These houses were often built close together, made of beams and boards, supporting hardpacked earth with a flat roof, used for all kinds of daily activities, including drying and threshing grains. Houses were usually two or three storied with the bottom level used for livestock and the upper levels used for living and storage, the upper stories accessible either by virtue of being built into the hillside or by external log ladders.

13 Food for Work refers to public works projects led by organizations like the World Food Organization and Red Cross International that provided food in exchange for labour, primarily on community infrastructure projects. I discuss the history of Food for Work in Jumla in greater detail in chapter 5.

Patterns of change have been quite different in this area. Communities are predominantly made up of hill Chhetri families (discussed in chapter 3) and migrants from northern Jumla and upper Mugu. Livestock, including goats and sheep are more significant, and recently the collection and sale of wild plants and fungus has completely transformed local livelihoods. Education and literacy levels tend to be some of the lowest here in the eastern part of the district, and some older folks do not speak Nepali. Unsurprisingly rates of “job holding” are far less here (about 9% of households according to the 2008 Jumla DDC survey) although there were, it was said, lots of “politicians.” Dillichaur had become the favorite “remote area” for development projects due to the easy (flat) walkability. It was also here that the well-known anthropologist, Dor Bahadur Bista, who I introduce next chapter, attempted to establish a utopian casteless society and built the short lived Karnali Institute, which would later be looted during the Maoist conflict. Apples have a slightly more recent history, although the Chaudabis valley is said to have one of the best climates in the district for apples. By 2008, 90% of households had apple trees averaging about 30 per household but only 15% were producing (indicating that many were recently planted) (Jumla DDC, 2008).

Kanakasundari VDC

Figure 1.11: Kanakasundari, Jumla. Low-land village near the bank of the Sinja river (Left) and house in a high-land hill village (Right).

To get to our last stop on the Jumla tour, when starting from the headquarters there are two options. By 2014, you could, depending on road conditions, find a vehicle (like the buses that ran a couple of times a day, often packed to two or three times official capacity) and spend a long day jolting, bumping and creaking your way over to Nagma and up the still very rough Sinja road to Gautijula—the last roadside bazaar town before the road headed up the newly constructed and very treacherous mountain road to Mugu (paving of the Nagma-Khalanga section was already underway by 2015, greatly improving this ride). The other option was to walk, one long or two shorter days, heading up into the hills behind the headquarters, past the

43 beautiful campus of the Karnali Technical School constructed by missionaries in 1979, and into high pastureland with a few lone homesteads dotted here and there, and some stretches of washed out attempts to build motorable roads. Kanakasundari occupies the upper end of the Sinja valley, the famed birthplace of the Nepali language, with a generous valley bottom packed tight with paddy fields. Villages cluster in the valleys, near the fields, and are also nestled in the hills, some high up on ridges, closer to the grassy pastureland (see Figure 1.10).

Sinja valley is particularly associated with a long history of merchant trading (although it was also practiced by people across the district), with men travelling between the Tibetan and Indian borders. While these patterns have changed radically (discussed in chapter 3) about 80% of high caste households according to the Jumla DDC 2008 survey, and 40% of Dalit households continued to practice forms of trade and business, significantly higher than in other VDCs. Kanakasundari has not been as neglected as other VDCs that are even more difficult to reach from the headquarters (like Bumramadichaur, for example). However, in general, there has been far less state and development presence and during the conflict this area fell almost entirely into Moaist control. There were some early apple planting efforts here—in 1989 about 15% total cultivated upland, rainfed land was planted with apples—but the more recent enthusiasm for apples has been slower to take hold here. In 2008 about 87% of households had apples, about 15 per household, with a mix of new and old.

Conclusion

Jumla is a remarkable place in many respects. First, its “remoteness,” specifically in terms of modern forms of transportation infrastructure, is relatively exceptional in an age of global space-time compression, although in Jumla too connectivity is increasing rapidly. The context of historical remoteness and recently expanding connectivity also makes places like Jumla, remarkable as a site of diversified agro-ecologies that are now understood as both valuable and vulnerable, leading to a particular concentration of biopolitical attention. The decision to declare the district fully organic (discussed in detail in chapter 4) is also remarkable, although it echoes similar moves by national and subnational state actors throughout South and South East Asia (Vandergeest, 2006; Galvin, 2011). The specific experiences of Jumla are significant in addressing broader theoretical and political debates not because they present an exception to general trends but rather because they demonstrate the contingency of ethical market-making and the need for place- specific, fine grained research both for the sake of better understanding specific market articulations and advancing progressive politics through broad-based coalition building.

In the next chapter, I begin with a view of Jumla from Kathmandu, examining how the high hills of the Karnali figure in governmental rationalities in the developmentalist era of the 1960s and 1970s in Nepal. Chapter 3 then presents a more situated view of local political economies in historical perspective. Chapter 4 returns to the perspective of development planners in Kathmandu, as well as Jumla, looking at how shifts in domestic and transnational politics and political economy have informed changing governmental rationalities. The discussion in chapter 4 is followed by a closer look at specific interventions and the technologies of improvement that they employ. Chapter 6 explores the messy process of implementation as interventions unfold in everyday lives. Finally, chapter 7 takes up fraught questions of “politics,” examining how farmers engage with development agents and authorities to negotiate the opportunities and risks of ethical market-making.

Chapter 2 | Syāu Bhaneko Dhukha Apples Mean Suffering: Governmental Rationalities of Apples Take Root

Introduction

On a visit to a village in the Chaudabis valley, in eastern Jumla, I was directed to talk Man Bahadur, an elderly man who was particularly knowledgeable about the history of apples in the area. I found him in a group of older men, chatting on the roof of a neighbor’s house. He willingly obliged with a detailed history, including an anecdote about a time when the famous anthropologist, Dor Bahadur Bista visited Japan. Bista had moved to Jumla District in 1991 with the intention of founding a utopian, caste-free community based on principles of education and empowerment. At that time, tens of thousands of apple trees, planted in Jumla in the 1970s and 1980s, had begun to bear fruit. However, in this remote, roadless district, farmers had been unable to transport their apples to buyers, so the fruit had piled up and was being fed to the cows. In Japan, Bista tried to tell his hosts about the problems back home, but the Japanese misunderstood the point of the story. People in Japan knew the value of apples—there, one small apple was very expensive. So, hearing Bista they thought that Nepal must be highly developed. They thought that people were so wealthy, they could afford to feed apples to their cows! Man Bahadur laughed at the story as he told it—in Bista’s time, in the early 1990s, Jumla ranked as one of the poorest districts in one of the “least developed” countries in the world. Growing more serious, he said that at that time there was a saying in Jumla: “apples are suffering.”

Bista had in fact spent time in Japan and, while I was never able to confirm this particular incident, the story provides a glimpse into the history of market-making in the region, including the contradiction of overproduction in the context of malnutrition and consistent food shortages. In historical narratives, apples regularly figured as a symbol of development promises unrealized and rotting in the fields. Contemporary accounts of apple production in districts like Jumla tend to naturalize processes of market formation, obscuring decades of more or less failed efforts to introduce commercial horticulture in the high hills. In this chapter, I ask how it came about that food-poor Jumla farmers were feeding apples to their cows in the 1990s.

I argue that apples came to play a key role in development actors’ efforts to render the high hills and mountain regions of Nepal “legible,” specifically through the lens of Green Revolution technologies and rationalities. In this context, apples came to be understood and valued as representations of long promised but, as we will see, constantly deferred development for high hill regions of Nepal, and Jumla in particular.

45 46

I argue that while these initial schemes failed in terms of promoting commercial production, they succeeded in establishing a persistent blueprint for development, with a familiar and technical set of prescriptions for modernization.

I begin the chapter with a discussion of the consolidation of the nation-state in Nepal in the 1950s-1960s. Consolidation was accompanied by efforts to forge a new development apparatus, featuring institutions of survey and calculation aimed at rendering Nepal’s people and geographies legible for a new generation of development planners. Novel programs of agricultural improvement enabled by institutional expansion would reach into some of the most remote and “backwards” regions of the territory. The third section addresses the particular problems that high hill ecologies posed for Green Revolutionaries and their specific ways of seeing and ordering nature. The fourth section discusses how horticulture and apples specifically emerged as a dominant development strategy through processes of negotiation across development expert and farmer knowledges and rationalities.

A New Nation Under Development

Imagining the Nepali Nation-State

The consolidation of the developmental state in Nepal in the 1950s and 1960s entailed the end of a 300- year old oligarchy and the “opening” of the country to the wider-world under the modernizing rule of King Mahendra. The country of Nepal, with its present-day political boundaries, was brought into being through a series of military campaigns by the Shahs of Gorkha in the 18th century. In 1846, the elite Rana family usurped the Shah monarchy and shifted the seat of power to the Prime Minister’s office, which they controlled until 1951. Over the course of their rule, the Rana regime pursued a political strategy of isolation, restricting foreign presence and influence in Nepal while amassing significant wealth, on display in ostentatious stucco palaces. The relationship to the countryside was one of extraction by way of taxation and corvee labour (Regmi, 1978; Adhikari, 2008; Pigg, 1992, p. 497).

In the late 1940s, a growing opposition movement to the Rana regime found support in newly independent India. In 1951, the Indian government aided a coup that reinstated the long-marginalized monarchy and a multiparty parliamentary system was established in 1952. However, after a short, turbulent eight years of multiparty governance, the current King, Mahendra, suspended parliament and established a partyless Panchayat government. The partyless system was structured around a nominally decentralized system of local pañcāyat (a term that literally means assembly of five). King Mahendra legitimated the authoritarian

47 move with a claim that the traditional character of Nepal was inappropriate for modern party systems. Yet, the King was also a champion of modernization in other arenas, joining in post-WWII enthusiasm for social progress through modern technology. In contrast to the Rana policy of isolationism, Mahendra welcomed foreign diplomats and assistance from both sides of the Iron Curtain. Ideologies of development and modernization gradually began to displace the transparently extractive rule of the Ranas.

It was also with King Mahendra that an understanding of Nepal as a nation-state with “a sovereign, politically demarcated territory inhabited by a culturally unique people” began to take shape (Pigg, 1994, p. 496). Burghart argues that it is at this point in the history of the region that the nation of Nepal consolidated, as it became “the natives of Nepal and the quality of Nepaliness, rather than the king’s influence, which is spread throughout the realm to its very borders…” (1984, p. 121). However, this was also a Nepali nation structured specifically around the triumvirate of the monarchy, Hinduism and the Nepali language—an ideology that was, as historian Pratyoush Onta illustrates, elaborated and consolidated in national histories written in the Panchayat era. The Panchayat state actively worked to forge a national culture designed to “implant a vigorous and forceful patriotism among the youth” (Shah, 1993, p. 9 quoted in Onta, 1996, p. 38) and systematically silence and repress the cultural identities the many social groups who were not high caste, Hindu and from the hills. Discourses of development and modernity articulated with cultural politics in representations that associated “development” with urban, male, high caste culture and reinforced political hegemony.

Mahendra’s rule thus brought with it both a novel problematic of modernization and new biopolitical attention to the Nepali people and territory as objects of improvement. These dramatic shifts in internal state politics also coincided with the consolidation of a clearly defined project of international development—“the multiply-scaled projects of intervention in the ‘third world’ that emerged in the context of decolonization struggles and the Cold War” (Hart, 2010, p. 119). Nepal’s geo-political positioning along the Iron Curtain, between China and India, made the country a prime target for development aid. Significant assistance came initially from India, China and the U.S., followed by an expanding number of donor countries. Both the ideology and political economy of development were important in defining how Nepal came to position itself in the world of modern nation-states.

Constructing the Development Apparatus

The ambitions of the new Nepali developmental state would necessitate a massive expansion of the development bureaucracy. The United States Overseas Mission (USOM), later to become the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), played an important role in shaping the emerging administrative apparatus. The United States mission, driven by concerns to secure Nepal as a stable capitalist bulwark between communist Central Asia and South Asia, arrived in 1951 with an ambitious agenda to “set the country firmly on the road to economic modernization” (Isaacson et al., 2001, p. 1). Over the following decade, however, “donors began to grasp the complex problems involved in changing a subsistence economy into a modern one” (Isaacson et al., 2001, p. 1). Indeed, the project was really one of bringing into being a national Nepali “economy” as a “self-contained, internally dynamic, and statistically measurable sphere of social action, scientific analysis, and political regulation” (Mitchell, 2002, p. 4). It was also in this context that, for the first time, agriculture was represented as a separate “sector” of the economy.

Agriculture was a central focus for development interventions in the initial decades of assistance, along with health, education, and forestry. With a predominantly rural population practicing primarily subsistence farming, it was clear that any effort to develop the economy had to begin in with agriculture. The U.S. was particularly interested in pursuing agricultural interventions in line with the Green Revolution programs of agricultural modernization that they were promoting across the “Third World.” A first order of business was the expansion of the development bureaucracy—as Gidwani puts it (2008, p. 87), the “diagram of development” needed a machinery to “realize itself.” When donor agency teams arrived in Nepal in the early 1950s, their plans for reform were confronted with fundamental problems of legibility. When the USOM team arrived, they found only “three or four India-trained agriculturalists available to work” and “no information on population, settlement patterns, or farmer production systems, and no government planning unit interested in such data” (Isaacson et al., 2001, p. 23; Bowers, 1953). Even for the new Nepali recruits working in state agricultural offices, regional farming systems were often quite foreign. Despite an effort by early training programs to require that all recruits be “a ‘son of the soil,’ with knowledge of rural living and a desire to work among rural people” (Bowers, 1953, p. 36), requirements for literacy and English language abilities meant that the vast majority of recruits came from the small population of urban, formally educated, elite. According to USAID reports most agricultural officers, following the completion of their training, “preferred to remain jobless rather than be posted to rural areas” (Isaacson et al., 2001, p. 93).

U.S. development planners thus identified a pressing need to construct administrative bodies and an apparatus of knowledge production that would enable planners to render the people and territory of Nepal legible. Some of the first activities of development agencies focused on surveying. A “Swiss forward team made up of a geologist, an agriculturist, an electrical engineer and an architect” arrived on the cusp of political transition in 1950-1951 to conduct a survey of the development situation. They were followed by a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) survey field party that arrived in 1952 with “specialists in agronomy, irrigation, farm management, forestry and dairy processing” (Bowers, 1953, p. 31). In 1959, USOM began publishing “Economic Data Papers” in order to “circulate statistics and encourage analysis leading to better planning of economic development activities” (Isaacson et al., 2001, p. 17) and would later provide support for the first National Agricultural Census in 1962/1963. A related focus was the formation of institutions of agricultural development. A Department of Agriculture took shape in the late 1950s primarily with support from USOM (Isaacson et al., 2001, p. 28). 1959 saw the establishment of the Agricultural Extension Service, and an Agricultural Economics Section, accompanied by agricultural stations and demonstration farms for grain crops, horticulture, and livestock (Isaacson et al., 2001, p. 28). By the early 1970s, a review of the “Economic Situation and Prospects” of Nepal found that “Until very recently government staff concerns were limited to law and order functions. In recent years there has been a sizeable increase in research, agricultural extension, and agricultural servicing staff, even in remote areas” (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [IBRD], 1973, p. 43).

As in other countries targeted for Green Revolution reforms (Patel, 2013), training staff to populate these institutions was a core concern for USOM and other donors. In Nepal, opportunities for in-country training were restricted by the limited supply of educational institutions in the 1950s. While long-term plans included the establishment of institutions of higher education (including a School of Agriculture in 1957), in the short term, a program was initiated to send trainees to the U.S. and India (and later to countries such as the Philippines and Lebanon) to study subjects including agriculture, public administration, health and education. The majority of development programs in the initial decades were staffed by participants who were trained “on the condition that they would receive an HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] position in their field of study upon return” (Isaacson et al., 2001, p. 93). The state building supported by donors in agriculture and other arenas of government set the stage for a rapid expansion of the state bureaucracy that would absorb much of the elite and the small but growing middle class (Seddon, 1987).

Improving Nepal’s New “Agricultural Sector”

Agricultural development interventions in mid-twentieth century Nepal were informed by historically and geographically specific forms of scientific knowledge and technologies. In development planning, “problems” were framed through Green Revolution era discourses of overpopulation and Malthusian crisis (as opposed to, for example, exploitative state practices, Nepal’s marginal position in the region, or inequitable resource distribution, see Blaikie, Cameron & Seddon, 1980). The problem thus established, offered a clear solution: increased food grain production by means of imported, high yielding varieties, alongside programs of family planning. However, the technologies that defined this agricultural revolution—namely high yielding grains, specifically wheat, rice and corn, that were dependent on irrigation and chemical fertilizers—encountered significant obstacles in Nepal.

Through the 1950s and 1960s much of the agricultural development efforts in Nepal were focused in what was considered to be the higher potential Terai region—the lowland southern belt of the country. Prior agriculture expansion in the Terai had been relatively limited, in large part due to the prevalence of malaria in its swampy marshlands and tropical forests. However, in the eyes of foreign agriculturists, the region was ripe with opportunity. For Paul Rose, the director of the USOM mission in the early 1950s, places like the Rapti Valley in the Terai presented “‘many thousands of acres of beautiful, level fertile land’ that ‘looked about the same as the prairie must have appeared to the frontiersmen of America when they went West’” (Robertson, 2018). USAID mounted campaigns to re-engineer parts of the Terai to better accommodate their plans, including road building and mass malaria eradication programs (Robertson, 2018). While the Terai continued to pose difficulties for planners set on the commercialization and modernization (Sugden, 2009, 2013), the following decades did see a steady expansion of agriculture in the region. The hills, however, presented even greater challenges.

As agricultural development investment gained pace in the Terai, various reports and experts expressed growing concerns over development failures in the hill and mountain regions. Expert concerns over population growth and impending food shortages in the hills fused with new narratives of ecological crisis. In the 1970s, Nepal figured centrally in global discourses of mass deforestation and soil erosion, which were attributed to poor farmers expanding cultivation (e.g. Eckholm, 1976; see Blaikie, 1985; Angus & Butler, 2011). By the mid to late 1980s, these theories had been largely discredited by new critical scholarship demonstrating the variability and complexity of mountain ecologies (Thompson & Warburton, 1985), but the compelling logic of immanent crisis would continue to shape development planning into the 21st century (Blaikie & Muldavin, 2004).

The northern, mountainous reaches of the country were viewed as particularly backward, not only economically but also culturally—positioned problematically outside Nepali national identity—and in urgent need of improving development interventions. A 1969 report in the national newspaper Naya Samaj gives a sense of the sentiments:

The entire country other than the Terai is inaccessible. It is essential to develop all these areas. But the northern areas are inaccessible not from the viewpoint of transport facilities alone. Even the Nepali language and the Nepali dress have not reached there. Since lands in these areas are not very productive, they once provided the channel for trade between Nepal and the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China. But because of time and circumstances, this avenue of employment is now lost to the inhabitants of those areas. Rapid progress is being made in Chinese territory across the border. On this side of the border, however, people are still living in the Dark Ages. It is not unnatural therefore that an acute feeling of inferiority complex should develop among them. There is no need to say how harmful this is for the nation. For some years past, HMG [her Majesty’s Government] has been taking interest in the development of inaccessible areas. But not much concrete and constructive work has been done. Social and economic surveys are not being conducted in different inaccessible districts of the northern region. (Naya Samaj, April 22, 1969)

The report illustrates the central problem of legibility for new paradigms of improvement in the northern mountains—and mountain agro-ecologies played an important part in problems of legibility. High elevation environments in Nepal tended to feature “a high degree of plant endemism and a unique range of crop varieties finely adapted to local conditions” (Whiteman, 1985, p. 152). The rugged, hilly terrain presented hazards of landslides and erosion as well as significant seasonal and spatial variability—reflecting not only altitude-related differences in temperature and precipitation, but also the complex influences of slope and aspect (see Whiteman, 1985). Boasting some of the highest altitude rice cultivation in the world, Jumla agriculture is exemplary of the challenges facing Green Revolution experts.

The arid region where Jumla is located is a “transition zone between lower elevations, where a winter cereal is followed by a summer crop, and higher elevations where only one crop (either the winter cereal or a summer crop) can be obtained” and temperature and moisture are both near the “threshold of adequacy” for productive cultivation (Whiteman, 1985, p. 153). Farmers cultivate a diverse range of specialized crops to make the most of the challenging high elevation conditions. One of the most significant crops grown in Jumla is a red-tinted, cold-tolerant rice variety called marsī rice for which farmers followed unique, carefully timed practices of seed germination and transplanting to manage temperature constraints. Rice

(paddy) has long been particularly important for communities settled in the main river valleys in the region and is said to have been introduced by an important religious figure in a foundational moment in Jumla’s history. Paddy cultivation figures centrally in regional power structures due to its economic and cultural significance (Luintel, 2013, p. 45).14 In the 1970s and 80s, major food grains in addition to rice included millets (finger, common, and Italian millet), sorghum, wheat, barley, buckwheat and maize (the last of which, according to Bishop’s interviews, was introduced in roughly the 1950s). Other crops included dried pulses—specifically a diversity of bean varieties—soybeans, field peas, potato, amaranth, mustard, tobacco, cannabis and various vegetables and spices.

The crop diversity featured in Jumla farms was typical of hill cultivation in Nepal. The authors of a 1976 report on hill farming, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, noted that farms surveyed would “generally have 2-4 staple food crops… and as many as 40 to 50 other food crops, depending on location” (Moseman, 1976, p. 99).15 In addition to providing a range of use values, crop diversity could serve as insurance in bad years. The diversity of plants utilized by Jumla residents also extended beyond the farm into the forests. In 1986 Manandhar documented 125 species of non-farm plants, including a variety of fruit and nut trees, recognized by name and utilized for food, medicine and other daily or ceremonial purposes. Crop rotations and intercropping practices varied widely depending on the specificities of the plot, the year, and the constraints of the household. Simultaneous intercropping of two to four crops in a single field was common and “fitted with care to the specific local conditions and the family’s needs” (Bishop, 1990, p. 212). Remarkably, with the combination of carefully honed, location-specific cultivation strategies and intensive labour inputs, in the 1980s Jumla farmers were achieving productivity rates higher than the national average (Bishop, 1990; Shrestha, 1993).

Unsurprisingly, Green Revolution grains, developed in irrigated plains like those of Mexico’s Yaqui Valley, were not well suited to Nepal’s specialized and diversified hill and mountain agricultural systems. Following an extensive survey, the authors of the 1976 Rockefeller report conclude that the “materials, practices and approaches to development in other agricultural areas around the world have limited or at least uncertain applicability to these regions” (Moseman, 1976, p. 1). They found that there were “presently available few improved technologies which are widely adaptable and offer dramatic increases in Hill

14 Luintel argues that for high caste households living in the valleys, rice is “reflected in their ritual, economic, social [practices] and even the rhythm of their movement so strongly that the whole gamut of their living has been ritualized in and around paddy” (Luintel, 2013, p. 45). 15 Studies of Jumla’s high arid, high altitude agriculture have also found that genetic diversity within particular crops tends to be relatively low, reflecting the difficult production conditions leading to highly specialized varieties (Gauchan, Sthapit & Jarvis, 2003).

53 subsistence agricultural production… The analogy of the ‘irrigated wheat revolution’ does not apply to Hill agriculture production possibilities” (Moseman, 1976, p. 122). A couple of years before the Rockefeller report was released, a team from New Era—one of the first domestic development consulting firms in Nepal—arrived in Jumla to assess the situation and make recommendations for a planned (but never realized) Small Area Development Program. Their report comes to similar conclusions, emphasizing the barriers to grain intensification in the district. In addition to a general observation that Jumla is not well suited to grain production due to the arid, hilly terrain, the authors note that “‘modern’ agricultural techniques are heavily dependent on large-scale supplies of chemical fertilizers” and “[g]iven the costs of transporting fertilizer to areas as remote as Jumla, it is hard to see how this key innovation can be economically introduced to the Jumla area under present conditions” (New Era, 1976, p. 79).

Whiteman, an agronomist who was stationed in Jumla for several years in the late 1970s, echoed these conclusions about prospects for improving grain development in Jumla. He noted, for example, that even with the application of chemical fertilizers, it was often temperature, rather than nutrition, that was the major limiting factor for production in the area (Whiteman, 1985, p. 159). Whiteman was also impressed by the complexity of high hill agricultural systems and the variety of strategies that farmers had developed to cope with the difficult conditions. Working with the FAO sponsored Hill Agriculture Development Program, he ran a series of trials in collaboration with farmers. In a report, Whiteman (1979) cautioned planners that it should be:

…remembered that the farmers have been practising arable agriculture for centuries in Jumla district, and in order to survive in their marginal cropping environment have a fund of knowledge in managing their arable resources to a high degree of efficiency resulting in adapted cropping systems. Dramatic improvements are neither obvious nor easy. (Preface)

In a later 1985 article Whiteman points not only to the complexity of locally developed farming systems but also the particular challenges that the variable mountain terrain and remote location presented to outside expert interventions:

Not only has the extra-tropical mountain climate a strong seasonal variation with marked extremes, but its interaction with topography also produces a very marked spatial variation… This large local variation in growing conditions means that there is a strong agronomic treatment-site interaction so that responses to experiments are highly site specific. This creates difficulties in making generalized recommendations for application beyond the immediate site… The isolation and remoteness of mountain areas in developing countries [also] make it difficult to operate research stations, both in terms of logistics and in attracting qualified staff to live there. Consequently, the pattern has emerged whereby

the main research station, situated near the capital city in a completely different environment, finds it easier to extend centrally planned programmes to mountain locations with little consideration given to the specific problems in those areas. The emphasis is mainly on varietal evaluation using fertilizers at high rates. The hill stations thereby become a dumping ground for multi-locational test sites in the forlorn hope that some improvement widely adapted to both hill and lowland areas might be found. In such a situation, improvement becomes a random hit-or-miss affair. The content and methodology of research is only incidentally designed to be of direct benefit to farmers, rather than specifically so. In several cases pressure from the extension service for content for their work programmes has resulted in pushing an innovation which is merely a novelty and not an important improvement. (pp. 152-153)

The imbrication of agricultural practices in highly diversified livelihood practices rendered the hills even more of a challenge for development experts. By the 1970s and 80s, the complex political economies in different parts of the country were beginning to be systematically documented through the work of geographers and anthropologists. Anthropologists like Dor Bahadur Bista brought critical ethnographic attention to cultural systems while geographers like Harka Gurung documented the relationship between social systems and Nepal’s heterogeneous bio-geographies. In Jumla, the work of Barry and Lila Bishop is exemplary of the detailed studies that attempted to distill the complex livelihoods of the residents of the high hills. As Barry Bishop (1990) describes in his book Karnali Under Stress:

Only by some combination of six livelihood pursuits—agriculture, animal husbandry, home industry, exploitation of the wild biota, trade, and seasonal out-migrations for work can most of the population achieve subsistence… these vary between households within a village, between villages and between geographical areas… The temporal diversity within this economic system allows all of its components to be articulated or tied together by the spatial movements of people, animals, and goods. (pp. 157-158)

Social distance between farmers and agricultural officers further compounded the illegibility of local farming practices for development planners. In Jumla, centuries of exploitation and neglect by a Kathmandu-based state had contributed to a mutual hostility between residents and state officers. Indeed, even the Jumli language differed significantly from Kathmandu Nepali, posing a further barrier to communication. As the 1976 New Era evaluation reports:

It can be said emphatically that Jumla is not a popular assignment for government civil servants. Few officers posted to Jumla with whom project researchers talked failed to express desire for transfer. Many expressed pessimism regarding their jobs, disappointment with respect to facilities and allowances, and alienation from the people of the area whom they are supposed to be serving… Morale problems are seen statistically in absentee and

turnover rates… Very few of the key gazetted-level development personnel had spent any considerable period of time posted in the area… The average period of service in Jumla of those development personnel interviewed by project staff was less than one year… The general feeling of civil servants in Jumla seems to be that their assignments represent only token gestures of concern by the central government for the development problems of this remote area. (p. 186)

Such sentiments are reiterated in a later research report from 1993 for a project called Development Strategies for the Remote Areas of Nepal: “Jumli people have a great amount of resentment towards Nepali government employees, generally known as gorkhalis to Jumli people. The image of gorkhalis is a negative one. To a Jumli, gorkhali or jagire [job holder] is the name of the exploiter… After the advent of Panchayat system, the above exploitative system was abolished but the bitter feeling of resentment is still afresh. There is a strong feeling of us versus them” (Manandhar, 1993, pp. 62-63). An American Peace Corps volunteer I interviewed, who had been stationed in Jumla in the 1980s, confirmed the depth of the antipathy between Jumli people and state officials, noting that Jumla was like a foreign world to the government officers. The Jumla dialect was reportedly so foreign to government officials that over time the American volunteer stationed in Jumla was recruited by state officers as a translator between themselves and residents.

The unintelligibility of Jumla agriculture to development experts also dovetailed with geographies of power expressed in the cultural politics of food. Food traditions in the Karnali had long been subject to denigration by outsiders. Under previous ruling regimes, households in the region had been required to maintain a supply of lowland white rice to provision travelling state officials, and the politics of rice and local diets remain relevant today. Shahi, an important political figure from the region, commenting on regional marginalization, writes that “government civil servants have always looked down on us Karnali people. They have treated people who do not eat rice as pakheys [sic] (or uncivilized)” (Shahi, 2005, p. 9 cited in Adhikari, 2008, p. 167). In his book Food Crisis in the Karnali, Jagannath Adhikari demonstrates how hegemonic food cultures, centered around lowland white rice, fused with expert agricultural knowledges to further undermined local food systems, as traditional cereals and forest products were viewed as not only uncivilized but also irrelevant to food security concerns (Adhikari, 2008; Mahato, 2011).

Horticulture for the Hills

In face of the many barriers to agricultural intervention in hill and mountain cereal cultivation systems, development planners looked to alternative strategies. The possibility of commercial horticulture production in the hills had been identified by some of the first U.S. agricultural experts to arrive in Nepal

(Bowers, 1954, p. 28). The hills presented comparative advantages for certain horticulture crops and neighboring high hill Indian states offered models of successful commercialization. Over the next two decades, horticulture would become increasingly central to efforts to render the hills—viewed through framing problematics of food grain shortages and forest encroachment—legible to development planners.

The cooler climate of the hills was deemed appropriate for an array of horticulture crops, from temperate vegetables and vegetable seed to high value crops like saffron and ginger. However, it was perennial, temperate tree crops that emerged as a major development focus for the high hills and mountains. Hardier vegetable varieties like the brassicas, were embraced by many hill residents as a much welcome addition to household diets. Yet, large-scale production of vegetables tended to compete with food grains for quality land and labour, both of which were major constraints for households in the hills and mountains. Perennial tree crops, however, could fill a different ecological niche and were viewed as requiring relatively minimal labour inputs. Planners also viewed them as an environmentally-friendly alternative to the perceived destructiveness of cereal cropping in the hills. In the mid-hill regions, planners saw potentials for a variety of fruit and nut varieties, particularly citrus. In the high-hills and mountains, however, opportunities for different commercial horticulture crops were understood to be more limited. Particularly in the arid regions of Mustang, Dolpo and Jumla, apples and walnuts were identified as the two lone temperate horticulture products holding significant promise. Apples in particular require cooler temperatures and thrive on well- drained soils and sloping terrain (which helps to protect the trees against night-time frosts).

The potential for tree crops to transform remote mountain regions generated enthusiasm in Kathmandu. As nationalist anxieties about the proper utilization of national resources extended to the remote hills— reflecting the new biopolitical orientations of King Mahendra’s regime—tree crops were identified as a way of making use of land that was understood to be underutilized (uncultivated) or wasted on traditional, low value crops (like amaranth, buckwheat, and millets). As one enthusiastic editorial from the newspaper Gorkhapatra in 1969 put it:

During the current session of the National Panchayat, a suggestion was made that horticulture should be introduced on barren hills. Cannot we implement a green revolution on such barren hills even [sic] in this age of science? If this can be done, let us march ahead to do so. (Gorkhapatra, August 4, 1969)

Development planners similarly embraced horticultural possibilities. The 1976 Small Area Development Programme (SADP) team from New Era (1976), concerned with the challenges of intervening in cereal crops, threw their weight behind horticulture development:

Highest priority is assigned to the development of a fruit industry in Jumla. Climactic factors make the SADP area ideal for apples and possibly for grapes as well. Some local orchards are producing handsome profits for their owners already, and many farmers are highly motivated to imitate these examples. Rapid expansion of the number of fruit trees to approximately 40,000 in number (the amount needed to meet market prospects which can be predicted with confidence) is recommended. Establishment of nursery capability locally is also seen as a high priority. (p. viii)

Even the cautious Whiteman, writing a couple of years after the SADP team, was optimistic about the potential for apples in Jumla. In the preface to an extensive report on Jumla agriculture he remarks that the limited possibilities for improving the grain and legume crop situation: “is in marked contrast to that for horticulture tree and vegetable crops which are relatively new to the area and for which the region is ideally suited, and also a high demand for planting material exists” (1979, p. 1). He goes on to comment that “there is room for expansion as there are many pockets of rough and steep land totaling several thousand hectares that are unsuitable for ploughing but which are ideal for perennial fruit and nut crops and so there is the basis of an immediate extension programme” (Whiteman, 1979, pp. 1-3). In face of the challenges presented by high hills subjects and natures, apples provided a familiar solution to newly established development problematics, based on already existing models for development—specifically interventions in the hills of neighbouring India.

Looking to Indian Hill Horticulture

India offered a compelling model for solutions to the problems of the high hills of Nepal. In a 1954 report on the prospects for agriculture in Nepal, George Bowers, an American economist posted with USOM notes that there “has been much discussion on the possibility of fruit production in Nepal. Some believe that its wide range in climate and unlimited variety of topography make it almost ideal for excellent orchards…. Any skeptics are referred to Kashmir’s fruit as an example of what could be done under similar conditions” (Bowers, 1954, p. 28). The main areas of deciduous fruit production in India are in the north-western states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. As we saw in chapter 1, British colonists living in India began supporting the production of temperate tree crops like apples in the hills of India at the turn of the 20th century and by the end of the century apple had become one of the most important commercial crops in these states (Ghosh, 1999, p. 38). Commercial fruit production in the north-west began to expand rapidly in the mid-1960s, spurred by the expansion of transportation infrastructure and market protection measures. Apple production in India increased tenfold from 1966/67 to 1984/85. In Himachal Pradesh, for example, between 1960 and 1970 the area planted with apples “increased from 3,000 ha to 26,000 ha, production rose from 10,000 to 76,000 tons, and farmers involved from 7,000 to 30,000” (IBRD,

1973, p. 3). By 1973, apples were Himachal Pradesh’s main cash crop and fastest growing industry providing, as an IBRD report puts it, “the opportunity to move from subsistence to cash crop farming” (IBRD, 1973, p. i).

India would also become a key supporter of horticulture development in Nepal. The U.S., after some early experiments in horticulture development, focused their efforts on promoting their high yielding Green Revolution cereal grains in the Terai. India, and later Japan and Israel, stepped in to lead the effort to extend horticulture in the hills and mountains. In 1952, immediately following the overthrow of the Ranas, the Nepali state had established new orchards for warm temperate fruits at Singha Durbar, as well as a trial orchard for apples in Kakani⁠, about 25 km north of Kathmandu. In the 1960s and 1970s the Indian Cooperation Mission (ICM) sponsored the establishment of 14 horticulture stations around the country, including one in Jumla, as research and demonstration farms. Indeed, in 1967 a Horticulture Farm was one of the first government offices established in Jumla. The connection to Indian horticulture extended to agricultural officers’ experiences in the bilateral participant training programs⁠ funded by the U.S., as well as additional Indian sponsorship for post-secondary education for Nepalis in India. Many horticulture trainees were sent to the hill regions of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, including the individual who claims credit for the first fruit sapling distributions to Jumla. In a discussion of the early history of horticulture in Nepal he recalled that:

We were insisting that we needed to have a program in horticulture, since we were horticulturalists. And then the Indian Aid Mission came in and they… became involved in horticulture. I knew many of the professors from India who visited here… and they came as a counterparts to work with us. So, this is how we expanded the horticulture program in this country. (Government Officer, May 27, 2014)

Hill Horticulture in a National Economy

Over the 1960s and 1970s, horticulture, and perennial trees in particular, were assembled into the first planning visions of a national Nepali economy as a modern commercial crop. They figured centrally, for example, in the blueprints for a series of motorable north-south roads and an integrated national road network mapped out by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the predecessor of the World Bank) in the 1960s (IBRD, 1960, see Figure 2.1). Fruit and nut trees were rationalized as part of a strategy of national economic integration in which horticulture would supply incomes to hill residents to purchase grain surpluses from the Terai. It offered a vision for the productive utilization of “barren” land in the “backward areas,” built on an ambitious vision of modern forms of production and circulation⁠.

Figure 2.1: Nepal Master Plan for transportation infrastructure identifying north-south corridors (IBRD 1965, p. 55).

The interest in fruit development as a comparative advantage in the hills was formalized in Nepal’s fourth Five-Year Plan (1970-1975), which introduced a strategy to address the problem of the hills through a focus on “development corridors.” This approach identified road construction as a key investment “to open up the remote areas which have remained in isolation for centuries by providing transport and communication facilities” (National Planning Commission, 1971). Harka Gurung, one of Nepal’s leading academics—a national planner and a geographer by training—was influential in introducing the concept of strategic corridors to integrate the northern and southern regions of the country. He proposed dividing the country into four (later five) regions, each integrated by a north-south motorable highway, including a highway to Jumla. Gurung was critical of the dominance of the Kathmandu Valley, and he envisioned the corridor strategy as a means of addressing geographical inequalities. He was particular concerned with the then Far- Western region, which included present day mid- and far-west regions and, up to 1972/73, was receiving only 7.6% of the estimated development budget (National Planning Commission, 1975). The fourth national Five Year Plan envisioned projects that would develop the corridors as growth axes that aimed to integrate Terai, hill and mountain economies on the basis of comparative advantage.16 In the hills and mountains, the focus would be on the development of “surplus manpower and potential for increased production of horticultural crops and livestock” and the Terai “surplus food grains, supplies of consumer goods” (Moseman, 1976, p. 5).

16 For a more detailed account of the debates over road planning in this period see Rankin, Sigdel, Rai, Kunwar and Hamal (2017).

While the hill and mountain horticulture research and extension stations struggled with shortages of skilled manpower, inadequate budgets and low morale, the urgency for progress and pressure to utilize development budgets prompted a strategy of mass distributions of improved stock for horticulture, fisheries and livestock. Distributions included the airlifting of Australian Palworth and Merino sheep for research at the state sheep farm in Guthichaur, Jumla—a program that failed as many of the foreign sheep caught pneumonia shortly after arrival (Manandhar et al., 1993, p. 73). In 1969, the then head of the Remote Areas Development Board initiated a program to distribute fruit and nut tree saplings, apples in particular, in the Karnali region. Jumla, sporting a new STOL (short takeoff and landing) airstrip completed in 1968, was a focal point for sapling distributions. The activities were announced with fanfare in the national newspapers:

Kathmandu, April 9: 137,591 saplings of different fruits have been supplied to the Karnali, Narayani, Bagmati, Koshi and Gandaki Zones under a program sponsored by the Development of Agricultural Extension and the Horticulture Department, Technical assistance will be provided to every peasant under the Horticultural Development Program in these areas. (Gorkhapatra, April 11, 1969)

An officer at Remote Areas Development board at the time described the decision and process for the first major apple distribution as follows:

We received a bulk of money at the Remote Areas Development Board, I was stationed as a horticulturalist there at the time. They had no plan and so when the money came, I said give me the money. They said for what purpose? And I said we’d like to grow apples in the Jumla area of the Karnali zone and in Solokhumbu, Mustang, Halembu, and Sindapulchowk areas, and the proposal was accepted, I got the money. The plants came from Srinagar, India, they have a nursery there. At that time, the government of India didn’t allow us to send the plants to Nepal officially, but we smuggled them [laughing] we got two truckloads of apple saplings out to Kathmandu and then we had to get to Nepalgunj [a major town in the south west of Nepal]. The only plane that we had at the time was the Dakota, an old plane… We loaded as many plants as we could, I think we took three flights for two truckloads of saplings. And then from there we hired a small Pilatus Porter plane because the big planes could not go to Jumla. By Pilatus Porter it took me almost five days to carry all the plants from one Dakota load, with five to six flights a day from morning to evening. (Government Officer, May 27, 2014)

District agriculture officers and local leaders were instructed to encourage apple planting, despite their own limited familiarity with the fruits. A former mukhiyā (a term for a tax collector and local authority figure dating back to previous regimes see Bishop, 1990, p. 136) who had served as Pradhan Panch (the village council head) and later as a zonal president (sabhapati) in Jumla recalled that:

three to four lākh [one lākh equals 100,000] apple saplings were brought to Jumla from Kashmir… Then, 16 apple saplings were distributed per household. But at that time people didn’t understand the importance of apples. They thought, when will this plant bear fruit and when will we be able to eat it? They wanted a quicker result. Many people, half, even wasted the apple saplings… When I became zonal president, again one lākh apple saplings were brought to Jumla, and bāgavānī farm [the government horticulture farm] was established. The apple trees grew very well at bāgavānī farm, they started to bear fruit and we also established a few apple orchards. We told farmers, if you plant 100 apple trees you can get a profit of around 1 lākh rupees. No doubt. We told them to provide manure and pay attention to diseases and pest control, then only will the apple trees grow properly. We went to different villages and taught people about it. So, the trend of planting apples started in Jumla. We went to different places, visited apple farms and even congratulated and thanked those who had done well or established good apple farms. And when slowly apple trees started to bear small fruits then only people truly believed that apple trees could give fruits. So, more people wanted to plant apple trees and there was demand for apple saplings. My farm is also just on the other side of the river. Political leaders and other leading people established apple farms to encourage other people. (Government Officer, June 21, 2014)

A farmer in Dillichaur said that, at that time, even the kr̥ ṣi (a term that means agriculture but was often used to refer to agricultural extension agents) did not know how to plant apples. He told us that people used to plant apples like maize, wherever there was land. Eventually, where the livestock had not eaten them, the trees started to bear fruit. Then, he said, people began claiming things like, this tree was given to me by King Mahendra (Fieldnotes, June 23, 2014).

Farmer Experimentation and Buy-In

Apple planting could not have persisted without a foundation of interest and willingness to experiment on the part of cultivators. It is important to highlight that expert representations of the utility and value of mountain ecologies tended to differ markedly from the situated knowledge of farmers. For example, from the perspective of Jumla residents, the sloping lands targeted for apple development were far from wasted. Rainfed upland plots, planted with a mix of drought resistant grains and pulses, were crucial to household subsistence, particularly in years with bad weather. Even the uncultivated scrublands identified by Whiteman were used for grazing the livestock that were central to nutrient cycling, long-distance trade, as well as a wide range of daily needs and activities (Bishop, 1990; see chapter 2 for a discussion of the role of livestock in livelihood practices). Yet, despite the “tightness” of cropping systems in the hills (Moseman, 1976, p. 93), farmers were always interested in the potential benefits of diversification. The remarkable on- farm diversity in the hills was the product of continual experimentation. Unsurprisingly, it was via Jumla

62 residents, travelling to northwest India for winter work, that apples had first made their way into the district. Bishop documented apple saplings planted in household plots that had been brought home by people returning from trips in the early 1950s (Bishop, 1990, p. 239).

Tree saplings were relatively easy to trial since they could be inserted into existing cropping systems with minimal initial impact, posing relatively little short-term opportunity cost. It was only after several years that they would begin to shade out and compete with the crops below. Cultivators were also more inclined to experiment on the rainfed upland plots and uncultivated hillsides than in the economically and culturally significant, irrigated paddy land. As a farmer living near the Jumla headquarters recalled, “we used to plant apple trees in far uncultivated lands, being unsure of the production. Later we uprooted the plants from there and planted in our lands and started nurseries and farms.” The increased presence of state and development actors in Jumla contributed to a local market for apples and the prospect of potential profits also fueled local interest. Farmer willingness to experiment with apples, viewed as requiring relatively minimal investments, solidified their position as development experts’ favoured solution for improving Jumla agriculture.

Apples as a Blueprint for Development

The vision for horticulture development in Jumla had, from the beginning, been entangled with visionary plans for national connectivity. However, the promised corridor roads proved difficult to realize. After years of sapling distributions and apple promotion, a growing number of trees began to reach maturity and Jumla found itself awash in apples. While a limited number of apples were transported to markets in the western mid-hills and Terai by mules and porters, they were heavy and hopeful traders soon realized that the delicate fruits did not hold up well on the long bumpy journey out of the district. Older residents recalled a time when people made themselves sick trying to subsist on apples (Notes June 23, 2014). While today many people laughed at the stories of their own ignorance about apples, the attempts to subsist on the fruit also speak to the hard realities of food shortages. Hunger and malnutrition were particularly acute among women and marginalized communities, and apples offered limited use value in addressing their needs. Another New Era team, arriving in the district in the late 1980s, found a situation very different from that described by their colleagues in 1976. They reported that the “district faces a large deficit of food crops every year although the production of fruit especially apples, far exceeds the district demand,” leading to the conclusion that therefore, “endeavours to help meet the basic need requirements of Jumli people should be concentrated on facilitating the exchange of apples and other fruit for food and other daily necessities” (New Era, 1989, sec 8.2.1).

Suspended Infrastructures

While the apple supply was growing, the plans for Jumla’s connecting road were facing difficulties. The fourth Five Year Plan had “invited donors to assist in developing specific corridors” in each of the Development Regions that it identified (2001, p. 176). National planners appealed to USAID to develop the Nepalgunj to Jumla corridor, but the Americans declined, preferring “to assist national systems rather than concentrate resources in a single region” (Skerry et al., 1991, p. 176). By the fifth plan however, “the scope for entirely new road construction projects [was] externally limited” (National Planning Commission, 1975). In accordance with pressure from organizations like the World Bank, development focus shifted to less infrastructurally ambitious programs like donor managed integrated rural development programs (IRDPs). These programs divvied up areas of the country for bureaucratically complex projects designed to holistically address multiple development sector concerns in a single region, each under the management of a different donor agency. While road development remained a focus in these projects, there was increasing focus on expanding feeder roads connecting to existing trunk roads and approaching road development as one component within a broader range of development activities.

In the mid-1970s the Canadian government began surveying for a large-scale integrated development project in the as yet unclaimed Bheri-Karnali region that would include the road to Jumla. However, although the Karnali-Bheri Integrated Rural Development Programme (K-BIRD) ran into the 1980s, road building was never initiated. Indeed, the project was, by and large, considered a failure—dubbed the “the bird that never flew” (Gyawali, 2011; Dhungel & Field, 1991, p. 88). In a review of the program, Dhungel and Field found that the major cause of discontent among project beneficiaries in Jumla was the lack of progress on the road. “Unless this project is undertaken, no matter what has been done in other sectors, the people of Jumla… will not feel satisfied with K-BIRD activities” (Dhungel & Field, 1991, p. 88). While there were certainly more pressing reasons than apples that informed local desires for a road—including access to hospitals and cheaper commodities—lack of access to markets for the excess of apples served to compound experiences of “remoteness” in Jumla.17

Unable to find market outlets for apples, large numbers of productive trees were cut down or, as many people put it, “became firewood.” Other trees were simply neglected and “went wild” (Dillichaur Farmer, November 17, 2015). In retrospect, Kathmandu based planners like Harka Gurung acknowledged that the

17 Remoteness is in scare quotes here because it is a problematic term. It naturalizes socio-political relations that contribute to reproducing remoteness and tends to erase non-modern forms of mobility and connection. For more on the production of remoteness see Harms, Hussain, Newell, Piot, Schein, Shneiderman, Turner & Zhang (2014).

64 ambitious plans for commercialization in the hills would require far more involved interventions to support market development, including significant infrastructure investments. While Gurung was disappointed with the failure of the Nepali state and donors to follow through with the road corridor strategy he admits in an introduction to the fifth Plan that:

It has been realized that mere establishment of a few Government specialized farms as nucleus centers or distribution of improved herds, fingerlings [fish], and saplings is not sufficient to provide necessary thrust to the development of ‘livestock, fishery and horticulture’ in the country. (National Planning Commission, 1975, p. 11)

Similarly, the former head of the Remote Areas Development Board acknowledged the state’s failures to follow through with necessary supporting infrastructure for Nepal’s apple farmers:

In Himachal Pradesh, 30 or 35 years back, the World Bank invested 12 million dollars; it was a lot of money then. The best thing that they did, along with the plantation of these apple trees in HP was they established cold stores in Calcutta, Madras, Delhi and Bombay. And they also built roads for taking the apples out, and the railways were also there. They used to say that there was an apple train during harvest time; an entire train was used just for taking apples to the cold stores. In our case, it was haphazard. On our part, we planted with no concern for transportation. It was not integrated with the other sectors. (Government Official, May 27, 2014)

The above accounts speak to how available Green Revolution knowledge and technology regimes—along with political rationalities that aimed to promote food security by moving grain surpluses from the southern plains to the northern hills through the expansion of national markets—informed new development problematics that would continue to shape the trajectory of subsequent interventions.

A New Development Problematic

Even as apples began to pose a problem for Jumla residents—who had limited needs for their use value and minimal market outlets for realizing their potential exchange value—apple-driven commercialization had nevertheless been inscribed in visions for Jumla’s development in planning documents, development institutions, and the material landscape. The centrality of apples in development imaginaries is captured, for example, in the Bishops’ (1971) musings on Jumla futures in the early 1970s:

Change is on the way. Indeed, some has already arrived—the panchayat system, which in turn has brought improvements in education, growing awareness of the outside world

through the simple transistor radio, scattered government development programs…A Karnali farmer, then, will discard his cumbersome wooden plow for one of metal, and a woman will no longer denude a hillside by stripping trees for fodder, and an apple crop will find its way to distant bazaars. (p. 688)

In the meantime, the 1990s saw the introduction of new training programs to instruct farmers on proper methods of apple cultivation and new technologies for processing excess production, including dried apple slices, jelly and apple brandy (all of which relied on expensive imported ingredients and packaging and held minimal appeal in the Nepali market). State and development agents also took measures to bring at least some fresh apples to markets, including through the provision of subsidies for transportation and packaging. In the 1980s the state, by directive of the King, initiated significant subsidies for airlifting apples from the Jumla airport to Nepalgunj, a town near the Indian border. Many apples were shipped on the return flights of planes carrying food aid to the region managed by the Nepal Food Corporation and the state charged apple farmers only Rs 1.50 per kg of apples, in contrast to the standard Rs 18 per kg. Yet space on these flights was limited and only well-connected people near the headquarters were able to secure access to the service. The New Era team describes some of their concerns with this arrangement in the late 1980s asking pointedly, “Which farmers will be able to use the service? Who is to decide? (The carrier, the charterer, or someone else?)” (NewEra, 1989, section 2.1.4).

Several ambitious short-term projects were also initiated to bring apples to markets in bulk. From 1996 to 1999, for example, USAID led an initiative to link Jumla farmers with apple traders in Bangladesh. They formed the Karnali Apple Company (KAC) and supported exposure visits that brought Bangladeshi traders to Jumla and sent apple farmers to Himachal Pradesh. One year, they arranged the export of 50 mt of apples to Bangladesh, bought for Rs 16 per kg from Jumla farmers and sold for Rs 50 per kg. However, due to apple quality and transportation problems, only 14 mt were suitable for sale and Jumla apple traders could not meet the quantities necessary to justify renting a cold store. The traders from Bangladesh lost interest and the program came quietly to an end (SNV, 2011, p. 21).

The transportation subsidies would last well into the 2000s in the Karnali and in Mustang district located in the western development region, where apples had also been enthusiastically promoted by state offices and seen rapid expansion. A government officer working at the national Fruit Development Directorate recalled a remarkable initiative to transport Mustang apples by helicopter in the midst of the mounting Maoist insurgency (an insurgency which would eventually lead to the fall of the monarchy in 2006). He told us that, at the time, transportation was made even more difficult by the conflict and that farmers had proposed the idea of using helicopters. He recalled saying, “sure, why not,” to the request. They built seven

66 helipads in Mustang but could only run one pilot trip because the Maoists shut it down. He remembered later speaking to horticulturalists from other countries who apparently asked of him, “why are you spending all this money on transporting apples with helicopters and planes? It’s not sustainable.” He agreed that they were right, it was not sustainable (Government Official, July 10, 2014). The transportation support programs speak to the dramatic measures taken to sustain the hope of commercial apple development in the high hills and the extent to which the fruit had been entrenched in development imaginaries. As we will see in the following chapter, the plodding arrival of the long-promised road in Jumla would spur a new round of planting as well as new state and donor interventions in apple market-making.

Conclusion

The consolidation of a developmentalist state under King Mahendra entailed new biopolitical attention to the Nepali people and territory as objects of improvement. In the newly conceived agricultural sector, development problems were framed by Malthusian discourses of overpopulation and environmental degradation, which in turn suggested productivist approaches to agricultural improvement and concerns for the proper utilization of what was understood by experts as wasted land. While the search for land amenable to Green Revolution knowledge and technologies underwrote environmental engineering efforts in the Terai, the hills and mountains posed an even greater challenge. Diversified farming systems that were attuned to micro-variations in the heterogenous terrain and utilized an array of specialized mountain crops, posed significant problems of legibility for development experts.

In the context of ongoing efforts to render opaque Jumla geographies and livelihoods legible, apples offered a familiar path to development. Apple-led commercialization provided a manageable solution to under- development that conformed to existing knowledge and technology systems, immediately available in neighbouring India, and a model of smallholder market integration that complimented green revolution approaches to grain production in the south of the country. For farmers, apples were viewed as a relatively low risk opportunity to diversify diets and to incorporate a new product into existing patterns of trade and exchange that didn’t compete with core subsistence crops. Meanwhile, the very lack of adequate transportation infrastructure alongside various failings on the part of farmers to properly maintain their orchards, presented frameworks for improving interventions in the district for decades to come. The blueprint for apple-led development would remain remarkably persistent in places like Jumla despite ongoing failures to deliver necessary supporting infrastructures. The transportation subsidies provide an early example of the extent to which the state and donors were actively involved in making markets for apples and sustaining the specific vision of development that they promised.

Chapter 3 | Rōpnē Sutnē Ṭipnē Plant Sleep Pick: Apples and Agrarian Political Economies

Manko māyā hajur ko kahile pāune ho? Love of my heart, when will I find you? Humla Jumla gādima kahile jāne ho? Humla, Jumla, when will we reach you by car? Ḍuṅgā caḍhī rārā tāl kahile ghumnē ho? When will we roam and ride a boat on Rara lake?

Kunti Moktan, “Manko māyā” 2008

Introduction

Through the 1980s and 1990s sporadic efforts to improve and market apples continued to run up against the problem of transportation. In 1990, the long promised Karnali Highway was given top priority in Nepal’s Agricultural Perspective Plan, but the project only gained real momentum in 1999 with initiation of the World Bank’s Road Maintenance and Development Project (RMDP). The road to Jumla headquarters was officially completed in 2007, a year after the official end of the conflict—although both official end dates are perhaps better understood at moments on a continuum. The arrival of the Karnali Highway, and subsequent expansion of motorable roads in the district, intensified ongoing processes of local economic transformation. Among the many changes brought about by the promise and arrival of a road was a renewed enthusiasm for apples. The agricultural office reported that between 2006 and 2009 some 100,000 new saplings were planted per year in Jumla (SNV, 2011, p. 6).

Chapter 2 addressed how apples arrived in Jumla through governmental efforts to render local livelihoods legible and improvable. This chapter examines key transformations in Jumla livelihoods and modes of production at the turn of the 21st century, including the articulation of Jumla in transnational and globalized economies. I situate the discussion in current perspectives on the agrarian question and debates over how to understand smallholding “peasants” and agrarian politics in the context of globalized capitalism. Recent transformations in global food and agricultural markets are important for situating trends in Nepal, both in terms of slow to stagnant processes of agricultural commercialization and the semi-proletarianization of rural households. Areas like Jumla are exemplary of these trends, where participation in agricultural markets has remained largely confined to the sale of surpluses. With the extension of the road, we have begun to see an increase in market-oriented production. However, changing patterns also reflect a continued pursuit of subsistence in agriculture rather than accumulation (see Edelman, 2005, p. 334 for a review of similar trends in Latin America); the main shifts have been towards crops with relatively higher exchange

67 68 value, but that can also double as subsistence crops. While apples represent one of the only (and by far most significant) crops in the district grown primarily for market exchange, I challenge common development framings of apple planting in Jumla as commercialization in waiting, a sign of the imminence of a transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture—held back by lack of adequate transportation facilities. As one media report put is, “If only proper attention is received, Jumla apples shall not only reign the apple market but also become a means towards richness for Jumla farmers…” (NepalB2B, 2015: para 8). Instead, I emphasize how the appeal of apples lies in their specific articulation in livelihood strategies of risk reduction and diversification out of agriculture, in addition to their specific cultural and affective qualities.

Nepal’s Agrarian Transition?

Over the 20th century and into the 21st, the persistence of smallholder modes of agricultural production— often alongside rural poverty—has remained a significant point of debate in both critical political economic scholarship and mainstream development studies. While neo-classical development economics has focused primarily on market distortions, primarily attributed to state interference and inefficiencies, agrarian political economy, building on both Marxist and Chayanovian theories, has approached the question in different ways. One line of debate in these discussions has centered on what defines or constitutes “capitalist” agriculture. Scholars have scrutinized the “boundaries” of capitalist social relations and the diverse ways in which agriculture may be “seized” by capital. The debates are wide ranging—temporally and geographically (see for e.g. Friedmann, 1980; Gibbon & Neocosmos, 1985; Goodman & Redclift, 1985; Bernstein & Byres, 2001)—and have focused primarily on the nature of petty commodity production (PCP) or simple commodity production. Definitions of PCP vary.18 However, the term generally refers to the production of commodities for sale in a market by enterprises that rely exclusively or primarily on household labour, but that are “unable to exist and to reproduce themselves outside of circuits of the commodity economy” (Bernstein, 1986, p. 14 citing Gibbon & Neocosmos, 1985).19

The dynamics that we find in the Karnali, however, diverge from the classic concern with PCP because of the fragmented presence of relations of commodity production and the continued importance of subsistence production. This does not, however, mean that agrarian political economy, or indeed capitalism, is irrelevant

18 Friedmann’s approach, for example, is narrower than that of Gibbon and requires “the full commodisation of all elements of production” (Bernstein, 1985, p. 14; Friedmann, 1980). 19 Theories of the persistence of PCP under conditions of generalized commodity production include attention to capacities for self-exploitation by household enterprises and the tendency for capital to concentrate in the industrialised production of inputs and processing, leading to the “formal subsumption” of ostensibly autonomous small farmers by capital, particularly through debt relations (Akram-Lodhi and Kay, 2010, p. 188; Watts, 1998).

69 to Karnali farmers. As we saw in the introduction, other agrarian political economists have worked to situate localized dynamics within recent global political economic shifts. Bernstein, for example, identifies what he calls the “decoupling” of transnational capital accumulation from agriculture, with the implication that it is simply “no longer necessary that capital reorganise agricultural production” (Bernstein, 2006, p. 403). Araghi (2009) and McMichael (2004), while differing from Bernstein on a number of critical points,20 are similarly concerned with explaining “the creation of masses of semi-dispossessed peasantries, those who have lost their non-market access to their means of subsistence but still hold formal and/or legal ownership to some of their means of production” and who are “part of the potentially or partially mobile reserve army of migratory labour” (Araghi, 2009, p. 134). Such dynamics can include patterns of at least partial “re- peasantization” as pressures in urban and industrial employment drive marginalized people to seek some measure of refuge in subsistence production (Bernstein, 2001, p. 39). For semi-proletarianized households, ownership of land can continue to provide an important, non-commodified source of subsistence in the context of intense competition for employment in over-saturated labour markets (Akram-Lodhi & Kay, 2010, p. 274).

The semi-proletarianization of farming communities, occurring as households and individuals diversify into different kinds of employment as “footloose labour,” is particularly relevant in Nepal. As Seddon and Adhikari (2003) point out, Nepal has overall failed “to experience the kind of dynamic transformation, whether in agriculture (the ‘Green Revolution’) or in other sectors (significant industrialisation, for example), hoped for in the 1950s and 1960s – even after many decades of public and private investment, development planning and intervention, and a substantial programme of foreign loans by bilateral and multilateral agencies” (p. 15). Others would point out that such “failures” were also, at least in part, because of decades of foreign development intervention (see for example Shakya, 2018 on the death of Nepal’s garment industry following Structural Adjustment Programmes). It is true that market-oriented agriculture has grown significantly in the lower Terai belt of the country, however exchange value production has remained relatively limited in the hills and mountains (the differences are evident in the higher levels of

20 For Bernstien, at a global scale, capitalism has effectively “absorbed agriculture (including farmers not expelled from the land) into circuits of capital, turning agriculture into simply one of many sectors of accumulation and a major font of surplus labour” (Friedmann, 2016, p. 672). Araghi meanwhile, argues that the dominance of “global urban capital accumulation and corporate agro-food capital accumulation processes” (Araghi, 2009, p. 134) have created an “enclosure food regime” that “produces, transfers and distributes value on a world-scale and in so doing has an impact on the value of labour power and the production of surplus value on a world-scale” (Akram-Lodhi and Kay, 2009, p. 267). This position contrasts to that of Bernstein who views agrarian accumulation (entailing processes of class differentiation) as increasingly less relevant to globalized capitals. McMichael’s analysis differs in part in his emphasis on questions of politics, and the potential for a globalized peasant class for itself, as well as the role of ecological contradictions, which is largely ignored in Bernstein’s work. See Akram-Lodhi and Kay (2010) for a systematic comparison.

70 agricultural capital formation in the Terai see Pant et al., 2010, p. 35). A 2008 report on the Nepal labour force survey identified 73.70% of the population over age 15 as employed in subsistence agriculture as opposed to only 3.5 employed in market agriculture (Pant et al., 2010, p. 8). The slow rate of market integration is also evident in the input use statistics. Analysing data between 1990 and 2009, Pant et al point to slow increases in purchased fertilizer use and pesticide use “hovering at the 1990/91 level” (Pant et al., 2010, p. 20).21

As opposed to capital seizing hold of agriculture and “revolutionizing” agrarian modes of production through accumulation by dispossession or expanded reproduction, the tendency, particularly in the hills and mountains, has been for members of rural households to turn to non-agricultural forms of economic activity, both to achieve subsistence and to accumulate wealth.22 It is important to highlight that, in places like the Karnali, subsistence agriculture has always been integrated into diversified livelihoods. However, the increased availability of mass produced commodities and motorable roads (as well as political tensions along the northern border with China) have undermined many non-agricultural pursuits, requiring rural households to diversify in new ways. In Nepal, given the slow growth of national industries and urban employment, the “increasing reliance on income from non-farm sources has come to a small extent from the expansion of local non-farming activities, but to a major extent from migration—predominantly labour migration” (Seddon & Adhikari, 2003, p. 14; see also Blaikie, Cameron & Seddon, 2002). In the financial year of 2015/16, remittances comprised a remarkable 29.6% of GDP (Investment Board Nepal, n.d.).

Notably, off-farm diversification is prevalent not just for the poorest households but also for those with relatively greater assets. As Sunam and McCarthy point out, patterns of migration in agrarian areas of Nepal can actually deepen rural inequality as “the positive effects associated with migration are inaccessible to many of the very poor: those disadvantaged in terms of household assets, caste, gender and ethnicity” (2016, p. 57; see also Seddon, Gurung & Adhikari, 1998). Wealthier households also tend to invest resources in pursuing professional employment or non-agricultural enterprise (particularly construction and tourism), as well as permanent out-migration to countries with better social safety nets and higher wages. Limited domestic investment in agricultural enterprises, alongside meager foreign direct investment (agriculture attracted only about 0.3% of total foreign direct investment in the country) (Nepal Rastra Bank, 2018, p.

21 Overall the authors of the report conclude that “the capital stock is very poor in Nepalese farm households and formation of capital is poor. Agriculture particularly relies on human and animal powers and mechanization is very low. Low levels of irrigation and mechanization are the major reasons for low productivity, slow growth in agriculture, and lingering poverty among the rural farmers in Nepal” (2010, p. 33). 22 The Nepal Living Standards Survey found that between 1995/96, 2003/2004 and 2010/2011 the share of farm income in household income dropped from 61 to 47.8 to 27.7 while non-farm income rose from 22 to 27.6 to 37.2, and other income rose from 16 to 24.5 to 35.1 (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2012).

23) reflects Araghi’s observations of the “sluggish” pace of peasant differentiation (i.e. the consolidation of land and capital by wealthier households) in “national countrysides” (Araghi, 2009, p. 134).

Some studies have also pointed to the persistence of subsistence-oriented food production in hill and mountain areas as part of “livelihood strategies which seek on the one hand to maximise food self- sufficiency (as the basis for food security) and on the other to supplement this by income from paid employment or other economic activities to enable cash purchase of food grain to be made” (Seddon & Adhikari, 2003, p. 25). The projects of ethical market-making that we encounter in the following chapters emerge out of growing governmental concerns over the social and political consequences of persistent rural poverty as well as developmentalist concerns to stimulate investment in under-utilized resources. As we will see in the next chapter, reassessments of the socio-ecological use value of exotic and unpolluted agro- ecologies in remote areas of Nepal have given further biopolitical and economic impetus to new market- making efforts, particularly those targeting remote areas.

The accounts of transformations in global food and agricultural markets discussed here are useful in identifying trends in national and localized agrarian political economies—and in understanding how these trends are translated into technical problems by planners. However, as we saw in chapter 1, other lineages of agrarian studies, building on Chayanovian, Gramscian as well as feminist and postcolonial approaches, have demonstrated that “economic” decision-making also cannot be disentangled from cultural politics, situated knowledges, and affective relationality (Ramamurthy, 2011, p. 1035; Chari, 2004; Rankin, 2004; Gidwani, 2008; Singh, 2013; Gururani, 2002). Indeed, the reproduction of homo economicus in analytical accounts of the world can work to reproduce the value systems and social structures that many critical scholars aim to challenge. In this chapter, I present an account of agrarian change that includes attention to some of the key dynamics in cultural politics. I emphasize the disconnect between the situated logics of apple planting from the perspective of farmers and the profit-maximizing rationalities envisioned and assumed within development planning and interventions.

Feudal Lords, Development Experts and Maoist Revolutionaries

In order to understand contemporary processes of change in Jumla, and contextualize the continued popularity of apples, it is useful to begin with a brief history of population movements and regime changes in the region. The contemporary population of Jumla has been shaped by several waves of in-migration, conquests, displacements and periods of outmigration. Historians have traced settlements back at least two millennia and identified major patterns of migration into the area, starting in the third to fifth century AD

72 by an Indo-Aryan group of Khasa peoples from India (arriving by way of Garhwal and Kumaon) organized around a “social hierarchy of chiefs and warriors, priests, farmer-pastoralists, and no doubt slaves” (Bishop, 1990, pp. 77-78). These groups likely displaced or absorbed resident Tibeto-Burman groups who had arrived in earlier migrations from the east and north. From the 12th to the 14th centuries the Malla kingdom consolidated its power based in Jumla, with their summer seat in the Sinja valley. The kingdom encompassed a territory that spanned from Kaski to the east to into Tibetan provinces in the north, Kumaon to the west and Dang and Surkhet valleys to the south (Bishop, 1990, p. 76). The kingdom was organized around a feudal system of large land grants (birtā and jāgir) to elites who, according to the historical record, appropriated 50% or more of yields. The kingdom also exacted a variety of forms of taxes from its subjects, which historians believe were paid at least partially in coin (Bishop, 1990, p. 102). It was during the time of the western or Khasa Malla kingdom in the 14th century that we find the emergence of the Nepali language, sometimes called Khas-kurā.23

While early Khasa peoples likely followed animist belief-systems, the Karnali became a refuge for Buddhist Khasas driven out of Kumoan following forceful Brahmanization in Kumoan in the eleventh century. By the middle of the 12th century, however, Brahmanization reached the Khasa Malla kingdom and the Hindu religion and caste systems began to take hold in the region. Later migrations of people (mainly people identifying as Brahman and Rajput Ksatriya) from Rajasthan into Kumaon and Nepal further influenced the development of caste systems. The caste system that developed in the Karnali reflected the power of the existing Khasa aristocracy, making “no significant distinctions in status ranking between recent immigrants and indigenous Khasa” (Bishop, 1990, p. 88). The resident Khasa were given “clean” status with Khasa royalty (the Malla) and aristocracy (vassal clan chiefs) who controlled significant land and power assigned rank at the top of the Chhetri caste. Later in the eighteenth century this would become a specific caste designation Thakuri (derived from the Sanskrit thākura, meaning “chief”) distinguishing them from the Khasa commoners who had also been included in the Chhetri caste. Other major communities, who today often self-identify as Dalit, were not accorded “clean” status and included the occupational caste positions of Kami (smiths), Sarki (leather workers), Dami (tailors and musicians) and Badi (travelling musicians). The non-Hindu, Tibeto-Burman peoples in the area have held ambiguous caste positions, with many communities adopting their own internal caste hierarchies.

23 As Bishop notes, the Khasa dynasty and kingdom headquartered in Jumla is “referred to as western Mallas or Khasa Malla in order to prevent confusion with a twelfth to eighteenth century dynasty and kingdom in the Kathmandu Valley also known as Malla…” Khasas had previously used the suffix “-challa” which they replaced by the suffix “- malla.”… “after being exposed to the practice in the Kathmandu Valley. There a dynasty of Licchavi origin was emerging that already had assumed this honorific (meaning ‘protector’), thus emulating the more sophisticated dynasties of India” (1990, p. 74).

Among the non-aristocratic Khasa peoples, historians also point to a historical socio-economic divide between Tagadhari Chhetri, who were designated twice-born wearers of the sacred thread and Chhetri communities who drank liquor and were not viewed as twice-born (Bishop, 1990, p. 88; Sharma, 1971). Dor Bahadur Bista and Bishop use the term Matwali Chhetri, meaning liquor drinking, to distinguish the latter, although it is not a term in wide use in Jumla (see Mahat, 2011). The division between the groups is also referred to in geographic terms, since the social differences tend to reflect distinct agrarian niches. Based on these geographic terms Jumla can be divided into different regional designations with corresponding livelihood systems. One is Jiula or Jyula (meaning irrigated)—Tagadhari Brahman and Chhetri as well as members of Dalit communities, with livelihoods centered around rice-based agriculture in lower altitude khet (irrigated) land along the river valleys. A second is Pawai (referring to high elevation unirrigated land)—non-Tagadhari, or Matwali, Chhetri communities who settled primarily in higher altitude areas with livelihoods that have centered more on livestock and cultivation of pākho (non-irrigated) land (Manandhar et al., 1993; Luintel, 2013). Tibeto-Burman communities have historically established homes at even higher elevations and been more involved in pastoralism and trade, supplemented by a limited amount of agriculture. Trade and exchange between these groups, and between Tibet to the north and the Terai and India to the south, was a vital part of the diverse economic practices in the region.

By the 14th century, the Malla kingdom had fractured into fluctuating configurations of smaller hill states which were then annexed, through diplomacy, coercion and violence, by the Shah kings of Gorkha over the course of the 1700s. Jumla was one of the last kingdoms to fall to the Shah campaigns. Bahadur Shah succeeded in overthrowing the forces of Sobhan Sahi of the Jumla Kalyals in 1789, although organized resistance and sporadic mutinies continued years after the fall of the capital. The framework of the feudal system changed little under the Shahs although restrictions on movement and daily activities, as well as levels of taxation and demands for forced labour, intensified. The jāgir system for paying military personnel stationed in Jumla through land grants was revived, increasing pressures on peasant cultivators. In many contexts the ancient ādhiyā system of produce sharing between freehold or state landlord and cultivator or tenant, which “involved various remission mechanisms that made some allowance for years of poor harvest,” was replaced by more fixed and inflexible cash payments (Bishop, 1990, p. 133). Land taxes, and a variety of additional taxes, were collected by local influential men, known as a jimmawal (in lowland khet areas) or mukhiya (in upland pākho areas), who were awarded a contract to collect taxes that allowed them to keep up to 10 percent. According to Bishop, “The cumulative and combined effect [of these demands by state agents] was to strangle the bulk of the agriculturalists in the vicious downward spiral of subtenancy, insecurity, indebtedness, indentured servitude, and even slavery” (Bishop, 1990, p. 138). Jumla’s

74 population may have dropped as much as 40% in the Shah period due to outmigration, peoples’ inability to meet subsistence needs and increased vulnerability to crisis and disease. The rise of the Rana oligarchy in Kathmandu in 1846 continued modes of rule based primarily on exploitation and discipline.

The development era, ushered in with the overthrow of the Rana’s in 1952, brought some efforts to transform the deeply unequal feudal social systems established over the course of several centuries. As we saw in the previous chapter, this period witnessed a significant shift in the modality of rule towards strategies of governmental improvement—alongside continued discipline and repression, particularly under the Panchayat regime. We also find the introduction of new programs of national improvement with backing from international aid. A series of development projects were initiated with the aim of improving not only agriculture and natural resource management but also health and education. Major projects included the Small Area Development Project and the Karnali-Bheri Integrated Development Project, followed by NGOs in the 1990s (reflecting broader shifts in development modalities) including World Vision, International Nepal Fellowship (INF) and CECI-Nepal (a Canadian NGO). However, the economic and social changes brought about by the eventual arrival of a motorable road connection in 2007 were far more significant than these project-based efforts. The opening, and halting improvement, of the Karnali Highway, as well as the expansion of feeder roads throughout the district, significantly reduced the time and price of transportation both for goods and people (WFP, 2010; Budha, 2015).

Recent history in Jumla was also marked by experiences of the Maoist insurgency. The insurgency began in the western hill region in the mid-1990s and Maoist cadres moved into parts of Jumla as early as 1997 and began recruiting (Shrestha-Schipper, 2013). By the early 2000s Maoists had gained control of the Sinja valley and had significant influence in other parts of the district. Regions of Jumla were claimed as part of an “autonomous region” by the insurgents and the Maoists established parallel taxation systems and (to a limited extent) state institutions like courts. A prohibition on alcohol, led by women in the movement, was also formally imposed in many Maoist controlled regions. As the army pursued an aggressive counter- insurgency, however, many residents found themselves in the figurative and literal cross-fire of state and Maoists. The conflict prompted large-scale displacements including an exodus of youth who were sent out of the district to avoid recruitment. It also severely constrained peoples’ mobility within and beyond the district, which impacted both residents’ ability to maintain everyday agricultural and livestock activities and the mobility of goods into the region.

The impact of the conflict on local social structures is complex and highly contextual. Maoist ideology was centred on the eradication of feudal systems and the abolishment of caste and gender-based discrimination.

The agenda was pursued through strategies that included: the appropriation of larger-landholder properties and sometimes the murder of the owner; attempts at collective farming systems; enforced attendance at educational seminars and forcible recruitment of youth; as well as coerced violations of caste-based pollution rules and injunctions against religious practice more broadly. Ideological commitments also, however, competed with strategic considerations that in some cases favoured the recruitment of locally powerful actors. The exploitation of residents for food, housing and supplies, the coercive measures used to promote an egalitarian ideology, along with restrictions on religious and cultural practices and the violence that followed the insurgents, tended to undermine their popularity in Jumla, even among the marginalized people they aimed to liberate. Shrestha-Schipper (2013, p. 293) documents the experience of the Maoist occupation in Sinja, arguing that although the majority of Jumla voted for the Maoist candidate in the general elections following the peace accords, they did so primarily out of fear of continued violence. At the same time, many also viewed state security forces with mistrust due to their frequent abuses of power during the conflict, including sexual assault. There were reports of Jumla villages resisting the reinstatement of police posts in their vicinity following the peace settlement (Bharadwaj et al., 2007). The end of alcohol prohibitions also reportedly led to heightened insecurity for women, as increased alcohol consumption has been linked to rising rates of domestic abuse. Continued insecurity and various forms of trauma in the wake of the conflict have impacted not only material wellbeing in the district but also mental health and social relationships (Kohrt, 2009; Shrestha-Schipper, 2013).

Agricultural Continuity and Change

Contemporary agricultural practices in Jumla have been shaped by the interrelated physical geography and particular histories of social difference, state exploitation and development intervention in the region. Agricultural labour systems in Jumla reflect significant inequalities in access to land and have combined different forms of family, exchange, hired, tenant and caste-based labour systems. Contemporary dynamics in land and labour relations also speak to some of the broader shifts in agriculture in the hill and mountain areas of Nepal. These include: the decline of some forms of non-waged labour exploitation; new pressures on the availability of (cheap) agricultural labour as people have pursued alternative income opportunities, locally and abroad; and shifts in cropping patterns in response to the penetration of commodity markets, including patterns of both market-oriented production and declining investment. A brief overview of some of these processes is important for understanding the particular appeal of tree

76 crops like apples (discussed below). In this section, I draw on historical data consolidated by researchers like Bishop (1990) and data from the Nepal agricultural censuses conducted in 2001 and 2011.24

Land and Labour

The post-Rana regime brought several reforms intended to ease burdens for marginalized farming households. The state abolished compulsory labour requirements and introduced new land tenure and taxation policies including the Lands Act of 1964 which aimed to dismantle jāgir and birtā systems and limit the rent that landlords could charge to 50% of yields. It also attempted to place a ceiling on the amount of farmland that hill families could own at 4 hectares, although opposition by elites meant that land reform was largely unsuccessful. Inequalities in land ownership (both in terms of quantity and quality) remain significant, although legal reforms enabled a growing number of Dalit families to secure ownership rights to land (Bishop, 1990, p. 151).25 Overall the incidence of complete landlessness, even among Dalit families, has tended to be lower than in the Terai.26 Particularly as wealthier families have shifted their attention away from farming there have been continuing calls for land reform from civil society to redistribute land to those actively involved in farming (Paudel & Adhikari, n.d.).

Household members of family farms have long been the core labour force in all but the wealthiest households. Within households, gender-based divisions of labour are complex and differ significantly based on particular circumstances, inter-personal dynamics, social-political location, and time of the year, among other factors. Out of necessity, prohibitions on women’s labour outside the home (purdah) that were common for high caste women in lowland areas have generally not been followed in the region. Indeed, women in the Karnali have long borne a significant share of agricultural labour in addition to many of the domestic household responsibilities. Some chores like ploughing have been generally gendered male, and others, like the hauling and application of manure have been strictly treated as women’s work. However, as Bishop noted during his fieldwork, “work arrangements, of necessity, must be flexible. In those families of every caste stratum that lack men, or when all men are away for prolonged periods, women must assume

24 The 2011 agricultural census covered 17,774 of the 19,291 households in Jumla recorded in the population census (92%) including all households with a minimum level of agricultural operations (including livestock). The large majority of the farming population surveyed (87%) operated (whether owned or not) between 0.1 and 1 hectare of land, with only 4% operating holding larger than 1 hectare (a number that had actually declined over the previous ten years from 18% in 2001). 25 The 2004 Human Development Report (drawing on 2001 census data) estimated a GINI coefficient for land inequality of 0.461, which is significant but less than the national average of 0.544 and well below Terai districts like Kailali (0.655 and Sindhuli 0.700). 26 The category of “landless” also has complex and contested politics in Nepal, see for example, Ninglekhu (2017).

77 tasks normally reserved by and for men” (Bishop, 1990, p. 190). At the same time, there also tend to be significant inequalities in overall labour burdens for men and women in terms of labour-time, with women generally working much longer days. Increased reliance on non-agricultural incomes and emphasis on children’s education appear to be contributing to uneven gendered labour burdens in agriculture for at least some households.27

Non-waged labour exchanges among neighbours (often themselves relatives in some form or another) have also been essential to sustaining local agrarian livelihoods and form a central pillar of agrarian relations of production. Forms of labour, and other non-market, exchange have included periodic events such as home building, local infrastructure construction and maintenance, wedding parties, and “extending credit or unencumbered aid to hard-pressed families in times of crop failure” (Bishop, 1990, p. 191). Labour exchange has also been central to annual agricultural calendars. Livestock management (discussed below) has relied on collective labour pooling, as has irrigation management, the operation of ghatta grain mills, and exchanges of agricultural labour (known as parmā) during demanding times of the year, including transplanting and harvesting. Indeed, the long history of elaborate irrigation and bridge infrastructure development in the Karnali (some of which dates back 400 to 500 years), reliant on collective labour systems, has been widely celebrated in popular discourse (Adhikari, 2008, p. 106; Singh, 2028 [V.S], see Figure 3.1). I return to recent shifts in collective labour in greater detail below.

Figure 3.1: Bridge in the Sinja Valley, 2014

27 Within gendered divisions of labour there are also important differences based on one’s position in the family, with younger daughters-in-law often shouldering the heaviest labour burdens.

In meeting agricultural labour needs, families with limited available household labour or significant resources also hire daily labourers for a set wage. Wage labourers are drawn from any household that is having difficulty making ends meet, although in the past households developed standing agreements for labour services over the course of the year. Previously, wages were often paid in grain and meals but have increasingly moved to cash payments. The employment of wage labour is, however, limited to a relatively small number of surplus-producing households, while forms of reciprocal exchange continue to remain critical for a majority of farming households. According to the agricultural census, there was actually a reduction in the percentage of households employing labourers on farms between 2001 and 2011. In 2011, only 0.3% of farms maintained agricultural workers on a permanent basis, down from almost 1% in 2001, and only 11.4% employed agricultural workers on an occasional basis (with an average about 9 days per year per farm hiring) down from 23% in 2001. However, the use of labour on an exchange basis was significant in 2011, with 71% of households reporting the use of exchange labour averaging 20 days per farm exchanging.

The census data does not distinguish between “work for payment in cash or in goods” (CBS, 2013, p. 113). As such, the decline in labour employment may be due to shifts in a longstanding form of non-wage labour in Jumla known as jājmāni labour, rooted in feudal systems of caste-based occupational labour in which specific families in occupational castes are tied to upper caste families in patron-client (lāgi-lāgitya) relations of mutual obligation. While caste designations refer to specific occupations, many lāgitya would also provide agricultural labour—ploughing in particular. With the increasing penetration of mass- production commodity markets, many caste-specific occupations have been undermined by the availability of cheap goods in markets (although the role, for example, of Damai musicians in ceremonial roles remains an important one). The lāgi-lāgitya relationship was significant primarily in the lowland Jyula areas, where high caste families, particularly those identifying as Brahman, have tended to avoid agricultural work, and ploughing in particular, as far as possible. Agricultural work was traditionally compensated with established amounts of grain and sometimes access to a small amount of land as well as meals and occasional gifts (Gurung, 2003; Shrestha, 1993; Bishop, 1990).28 Today, many people insist that lāgi-lāgitya relations have declined or disappeared (although Shrestha-Schipper [2013] describes the continued significance in the Sinja valley into the late 2000s). Upper caste landowners I spoke to indicated that relations had changed as those providing labour began to demand cash compensation for their time. Those employing labour also

28 In a study from the 1990s based in a Jyula village in Kanakasundari, Shrestha (1993, pp. 19-25) found that every high caste household maintained relations with at least one Kami, Sarki or Damai household, who provided both their skilled occupational labour and about 6 days of agricultural work for which they received grains, paddy seedlings and gifts and special assistance during holidays and special events.

79 said that the rate for labour compensation had risen significantly in recent years, as people were finding wage work in other sectors. At the same time, growing nation-wide criticism of caste-based inequality and political activism among marginalized communities has also contributed to the move toward standardized wage relations (Shrestha-Schipper, 2013; Gaire, 2015).

Mahesara, an amiable and talkative high caste, middle-aged, woman living in Kartikswami described her views on some of the gendered and caste-related changes in production in the area. We spoke sitting on muddā (short stools) in front of her small shop with the standard assortment of soap, candy and booze. In addition to the shop, the household was a family of “job holders” and held a significant amount of agricultural land. She herself had a part time job at the postal office in town where her husband and son also worked. In response to a question about who will be doing agricultural work in the future she said:

We will definitely do it ourselves. We have the strength to do agriculture in the future too. It will be continued in some way. The people here do everything. They rear cattle, goats, do agriculture, go for a job, they do everything. It is especially difficult for us women. Some men have a job and help with household work, but most of them don’t want to, they just go for the job and come home, that’s all. If a woman gets a job, she also has to do everything in the house. She has to get the agricultural work done somehow, either by hiring people and spending her own money or by doing it by herself. As for men, if they have a job, they say they don’t have to do anything else, they have earned their money

We asked if the family did all the agricultural labour by themselves and she said no,

We need lots of people and we have to give them more money than before. Per person we give 600 rupees [per day]. We have to provide food to them in the morning and evening… We also have to tell them to do the work frequently and they get sullen with us when we tell them to work... Before it was just 300 rupees … You know, times have changed, it is very difficult for us to earn a living these days. In earlier days, people used to be identified as rich and poor, but these days they can’t be identified like this because those who used to be poor work and earn lots of money. Now we are equal with them because we have to pay them, and they take from us. They work, earn and have a good lifestyle and for us, we have to pay them, so we don’t have anything left. Hence it is equal between us. These days there is no discrimination between poor and rich people. (Kartikswami Farmer, October 31, 2015)

Social inequalities are certainly far from disappearing in Jumla as evidenced, for example, in census and household surveys showing significant economic disparities (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2012). But if Mahesara’s comments are not a great source of objective truth, what her representation of recent shifts does speak to are the complex cultural politics of changing agrarian relations and systems of exploitation in

80 relation to both gender and caste. Indeed, her observations resonate with both feminist and Marxian assessments of the power of the wage labour relation to obscure structural inequalities and social injustice. On the one hand, the social legitimacy of wage labour devalues unpaid domestic productive and reproductive labour while sanctioning forms of labour exploitation structured by inequitable property relations. On the other hand, changes in mechanisms of exploitation through the diminishment of patron client relationships and, in some cases, increased leverage on the part of labourers, have also unsettled longstanding cultural politics in ways that could also create openings to re-work relations of power. Overall, a widely stated impact of the shift toward cash economies and participation in wage labour has been the increased cost of agricultural labour.

Different relations of tenancy have offered another approach to land and labour exploitation in Jumla. These systems can take the form of either a fixed payment of cash or grains or a portion of the yield, often half (the previously mentioned ādhiyā system—a term derived from the word ādhā or half, with deep roots in old systems of rent and taxation, see Shrestha, 1997, p. 171). Given that agricultural land tends to be highly fragmented and dispersed across many different plots of land,29 households with large land holdings and limited agricultural labour have long relied on systems of tenant farming, particularly for those parcels more distant from the homestead (including parcels multiple days’ walk away). Some people we spoke with noted a rise in tenancy arrangements, particularly as the price of hired wage labour has increased and as members of wealthier families move into non-agricultural professions, often outside of Jumla, leaving women and the older generation to manage agricultural land. However, according to the census, the percentage of land under any form of rent remains minimal. In 2011, 87% of those cultivating or operating land reported owned all of the land they cultivated, roughly little change from 90% in 2001. No household reported cultivating exclusively renting land in 2001 or 2011. Of the total area of land included in the survey only about 1.2% in 2001 and 2.3% in 2011 was reported to be rented in some form.30

In recent years, scholars, officials, and the media have also pointed (often mournfully) to the decline of long-standing relations of local cooperation. The deterioration of community-based activities is attributed to a variety of factors but blame often centres on the introduction of outside funding for local projects and compensation for labour by the state and donors—what is often broadly referred to as “development dependency.” Adhikari, for example, notes that “nowadays most of these traditional rules and systems do

29 The average number of land parcels per household surveyed by the Agricultural Census was 7 in 2001/2002 and 9.3 in the 2011/12 census (National Planning Commission, 2013, p. 1). 30 Of these rental arrangements the majority were paying off a mortgage (debts), and a small percent were paying with a share of production (20% in 2001, 28% in 2011). Smaller numbers were renting for a fixed amount of money, fixed amount of production or in exchange for services.

81 not work. People have developed an expectation that government should [provide] support in all these activities. Because of donor agencies’ practice of paying for participation in development activities, it is difficult to organize village co-operation on a voluntary basis” (Adhikari, 2008, p. 165). Narratives of dependency also relate to concerns about the rise of individualism and selfishness. Indeed, frequent complaints about the lack of community spirit by Jumla residents appear to support such narratives. A middle-aged man from an upland village in Kanakasundari, for instance, echoed a common sentiment regarding the problem of community apple orchards (discussed in chapter 5) saying:

No one takes care of common property. People take care of personal orchards and neglect communal orchards. People don’t care and don’t pay proper attention to public property. It is true that everyone doesn’t feel the same way; for example, I personally feel I should contribute to public works, but others don’t feel that way. Therefore, communal projects decline instead of improving. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 27, 2015)

Complaints about corruption and theft within community projects were also common among farmers and development agents. The head of a local NGO, for example, spoke to the issue in his work:

We thought that we had to pursue collective business in initiatives like sheep raising and stationary-making. But when we started, we found that people were not responsible. For example, there were 20 families in one community organization, and they received 4 lākh rupees to purchase supplies. But one or two people in the group manipulated their position and cheated the others, some took more money, and some didn’t get any, and that led to conflict. After that experience, I said no more collective businesses, we will focus on individual businesses because then each person is responsible for their own loss… Because of the psychology in Jumla, I said no more collective business. (NGO Officer, September 20, 2015)

However, the dominant focus on development dependency and individualistic “psychology” also works to simplify and pathologize complex transformations at work in local political-economic relations. The disruptive impacts of the conflict and the out-migration of youth, for example, have certainly affected village-based relations of trust and cooperation. Shifts in community cooperation and labour systems also need to be situated in the context of broader changes in the regional agrarian political economy. Increased integration into cash economies, new opportunities for wage labour and the increased emphasis on education play an important role in transforming residents’ willingness and/or ability to contribute to voluntary labour systems. For instance, changes in animal husbandry, discussed below, and increased reliance on purchased items have made existing forms of labour pooling less significant for many households. Meanwhile, as we have seen, other forms of labour sharing, like parmā exchanges in

82 agricultural activities (including apple picking), do remain a key institution, particularly in the context of declining household labour availability. Histories of forced labour contributions to state projects and, as we will see in later chapters, the questionable appropriateness or feasibility of projects introduced by outside actors, further contribute to local resistance to voluntary participation and contributions. Rather than a dissolution of the local moral economy, new expectations of the state and donor agencies could be understood to reflect shifts in historically rooted, subjective beliefs about a right to subsistence. Such shifts are tied to transformations in regional and global political economies and the expansion of, as Edelman puts it (2005), “an urban imaginary and urban consumption expectations” in rural places, reflecting the increased convergence of rural and urban worlds (p. 337).

Crops and Commodity Markets

Looking to the changing composition of crops, we find shifts that reflect both the increased penetration of commodity markets and reduced transportation costs. However, shifts towards exchange value production have been gradual and reflect strategies oriented to risk reduction as opposed to profit maximization. In 2011, only 1% of farming households surveyed reported that the main purpose of production was for sale, up from 0.1% in 2001. In 2011, 98% also reported cereals to be the most important crop produced on the land that they were operating. 0.2% reported vegetables and another 0.2% non-vegetable horticulture (e.g. fruits and nuts) to be the main crop. At the same time, 83% reported that household agricultural production was insufficient for meeting household consumption needs, a significant increase from 44% in 2001. The strategies reported for meeting this gap reflect the diversified livelihood strategies discussed below and included in-district wage earnings, followed by wage earning from outside the district, borrowing, non- agricultural business, wages from outside the country, and pensions. A notable shift between 2001 and 2011 was the increased importance of in-district wage earnings and declining importance of out of country earnings, likely reflecting the growing importance of construction work described below (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2013, p. 84).

The arrival of the road, and the corresponding drop in transportation costs, has led to the relatively consistent availability of imported commodities in the district (not only the headquarters but also in smaller market areas). Prior to the completion of the Karnali highway, imported food was not widely available in Jumla, beyond the periodic supplies of airlifted food aid to the Karnali that began in 1972 (McDonough, 2014; Adhikari, 2008). Since 2007, the increasing accessibility of processed substitutes for important household goods, like oil, has led to a shift away from labour-intensive home production and a decline in associated crops. The reliable availability of rice, which has become “one of the most commonly purchased

83 goods” in the district (Palikhey, 2016, p. 32), has meant that households are shifting away from hardy, but less productive and (in some cases) labour intensive, pākho rainfed crops—particularly “emergency” crops (like proso millet, known locally as cinō) which were planted when adverse weather conditions prevented the planting of favoured cereals. Many of the indigenous crops, like millet, amaranth and buckwheat, also require laborious post-harvest processing and preparation practices, which contributes to pressures on tight labour budgets, particularly for women. As mentioned above, the declining ability of households to meet subsistence needs through their own agricultural production also speaks to increased integration into commodity markets as they have become more reliant on purchased food, primarily rice.31 This is not, however, to say that all households are able to meet basic household food demands. A 2009 study by the World Food Programme, for example, found that households had relied on credit for about 30% of total food purchases over the previous year, with almost 40% of households reporting relying on credit to purchase food through the lean season.32

Roads have also reduced the transportation costs of commodities out of the district (WFP, 2009, 2010). With the reduction in transportation costs many households have gravitated toward the production of crops with higher market value, specifically dried beans, potatoes and maize (and within these categories shifting from reportedly better tasting local varieties to more productive, introduced varieties). In interviews, farmers described these crops as grown both for household consumption and exchange, selling their surplus production of beans or potatoes, for example, to buy imported rice. As a Kartikswami resident explained the appeal of beans, you “may use beans for eating in the form of pulse [ḍāl] and also selling to earn money” (Kartikswami Farmer, September 28, 2015). The shift again reflects a gradual, rather than radical, process of transition in response to increased market integration, as subsistence crops with higher exchange value like beans and potatoes are being favoured over those with little to no exchange value like buckwheat, proso millet and foxtail millet. Importantly, the lack of economic value of indigenous crops must also be understood as entangled with a historical degradation and ridicule of local diets within upper and middle class, urban discourses—attitudes that are in a moment of complex upheaval and which I discuss in more detail in chapter 4.

31 A 2009 WFP study found that on average households were purchasing about 50% of rice consumed from markets, while home production made up about 20% and the National Food Corporation food aid (18%) and other NGO food aid (17%) made up the rest. The data speaks to significant market reliance given the growing importance of rice in regional diets. However, it is also important to note that this study also perpetuates the tendency to ignore the significance of other food grains and food crops for many households. 32 The study found that moneylenders provided the most common source of cash credit (45%) followed by family and friends (16%) and traders (14%) with an average annual interest of 31%.

Moreover, even with the shift to higher exchange value crops, many households continued to prioritize meeting household consumption needs, wary of over-reliance on the market—sometimes with good reason. In 2015, for example, conflict over the proposed constitution resulted in a blockade along the Indian border and the price of many goods including dried legumes increased rapidly as imports stopped. My colleague Chaturbhuj decided it would be a good idea to pick up a few kilograms of beans to bring back to his siblings in Kathmandu. However, in asking around, we found that most farmers had already sold their surpluses and remained very reluctant to part with supplies intended for household consumption, despite the inflated price. Indeed, during the blockade (which led to acute shortages of commodities like propane and petrol alongside rising prices for many consumer goods), Jumla residents frequently noted, often with some humour, how lucky we were to be in Jumla—where daily life remained largely unaffected—and not in Kathmandu— where people were suffering (an inversion of the common narrative of Jumla as a place of hardship and depravation). Again, even as access to market outlets are contributing to the transformation of cropping patterns, what we find is not a clear-cut transition out of subsistence agriculture, but rather a more gradual process of farmers taking advantage of new opportunities for exchange value capture, while limiting their exposure to new risks.

Finally, there are a few crops that farmers are planting solely or primarily for exchange value. A small number of people are engaged in the production of vegetables for sale, primarily oriented to the local markets in Jumla. However, the main crop produced first and foremost for exchange value, and sold outside of the district, were apples. By the 2011 agricultural census, about 70% of surveyed holdings reported having a “compact plantation” of apples, a number that continued to rise over the following years. I come back to more detailed discussions of apple planting below, as well as in later chapters.

Data on agricultural inputs offers another perspective on patterns of market integration in the district. The majority of seeds, for example, continue to be locally sourced through informal networks or farm-saved. The use of improved seeds, acquired through NGOs, district government agencies, agrovets (shops selling agricultural and livestock inputs) or in local markets is more significant in the crops that were more recently introduced or with long-standing state and international research support like rice, maize, wheat, potato, and vegetables. However, the 2011 census suggests that even in these crops the percent farmers relying exclusively on improved seeds remains quite low, with the highest being vegetables (16% of vegetable producing households) and potatoes (10% of potato producing households).33 Crops like amaranth, barley,

33 There are discrepancies in the 2001 and 2011 data on seed use because of the replacement of the category “Both” improved and local in the 2001 census with the category “Hybrid” in the 2011 census. As a result, the number of households using a combination of local and improved seeds is not specified.

85 buckwheat, finger millet, foxtail millet, and proso millet seeds, which have received relatively little government and donor attention until recently, tend to be entirely informally sourced (Palikhey et al, 2016, p. 26). Even among those crops with historical improvement efforts, however, trends in seed sourcing are not linear. In the case of rice, for example, the agriculture office released several improved cold tolerant varieties in 2002, after a blast infection devastated the local Jumli marsī varieties. However, by the mid- 2010s many farmers reported switching back to Jumli marsī due to the preferred taste and easier threshing characteristics (Palikhey et al., 2016, p. 11). The reported use of nutrition and pest management inputs, meanwhile, has remained much lower than the use of improved seeds. According to the agricultural census the number of farming households using purchased pesticides (which could include biopesticides) increased from just about 2% of faming households in 2001 to 4% in 2011 while purchased fertilizer has remained extremely minimal (decreasing from 0.2% to none). The establishment of the Organic District has undoubtedly shaped these reported trends—given the limited availability of affordable and effective biocides and bio-fertilizers. The illegality of chemical inputs may also impact farmers’ willingness to report use (an issue that I return to in chapter 6). However, the extremely low pre-Organic District levels of chemical use in 2001 do support the narrative of Jumla as largely “organic-by-default.”

Organic-by-Default

With the emergence of “organic” as a term claimed by social and environmental movements and then as a set of quality standards, the phrase “organic-by-default” has been taken up within development discourse to distinguish low-input farming practices, often in poor or marginalized places, that are deemed to be de facto organic—implying a lack of choice or agency on the part of farmers. Default organic farms and practices are contrasted to those deemed “organic by design” often located in areas where input intensive agriculture is the norm and/or where organic is associated with market value. The term organic-by-default was used frequently by development and government officials in Nepal to describe areas of the country were isolation and poverty were understood to have limited the reach of agricultural input markets. However, as Galvin, drawing on her work in Uttarakhand, India points out:

the expression ‘organic by default’ does not recognize as agentive the ways in which farmers act purposefully within and on their environment to enrich the soil that they cultivate through the care of livestock and the application of manure. Instead, the persistence of agricultural practices deemed traditional—though they are acknowledged to resemble contemporary organic production practices—are seen to be the result of ‘neglect’ as one official put it, or of isolation, rather than intentional and strategic actions in themselves. (Galvin, 2014, p. 122)

As we saw in the previous chapter, the agricultural practices in Jumla are, by necessity, highly purposeful and success requires intimate knowledge of the terrain, climate and plant characteristics. Organic and agroecology movements,34 as well as recent trends in critical scholarship, have begun to engage with ideas of the “work of nature” (Battistoni, 2017) or the intimate hybrid forms of socio-natural labour involved in processes of (re)production. Such ideas would be far from a novel revelation for farmers in the Karnali. Biophysical processes feature centrally in social life worlds and govern both everyday activities and, for some, the ability to fulfil subsistence needs (as reflected in this Karnali folksong hiuñ āyō himaculī bāṭa mēgha āyō mala bāṭa jaukō stu khānanu bhayō samaya varṣa bāṭa “snow came from the Himalaya, clouds came from the sky, one has to eat flour of barley, from the start of the year,” Shrestha, 2028 V.S., p. 49 cited in Adhikari, 2008, p. 134). It is certainly true that the ability of most farmers in Jumla to purchase manufactured or “improved” inputs has been restricted by shortages of cash and limited supplies, however the lack of choice signalled by the term organic-by-default fails to capture Jumla farmers’ critical assessment of multifaceted costs and benefits—as well as the affective materiality—of modern inputs. I return to consider the significance of farmer agency in relation to organic in chapters 6 and 7.

As we find in this brief overview, changes in agrarian political economies are certainly afoot in Jumla. However, as of 2011, very few farmers were engaged in agriculture primarily for the purpose of exchange, a number that increased only slightly from 2001. We find that most of the crops sold in market exchanges are subsistence crops like potatoes and beans, and that people are favouring these flexible crops with both use and exchange value. Apples are one of the few crops of limited subsistence use value that are being grown at a significant scale. While agriculture remains an important contributor to livelihoods for the majority of people in the district—often in the form of immediate use values—a declining number of people are relying primarily on agriculture to make ends meet. I examine some of the non-agricultural economic activities that people are pursuing in the next section. Finally, even as the wage labour relation is displacing existing forms of labour exploitation, the number of households employing agricultural labour appear to be decreasing, a trend that would conform to increased non-agricultural or out-of-district investments by land holders. Meanwhile, forms of cooperative exchange remain important for production throughout the

34 “Agroecology” is a widely used term that is defined in a variety of different ways. In the dissertation I sometimes use the term “agro-ecologies” to refer to the ecology of agricultural systems. However, today the term agroecology is more commonly used to indicate a specific approach to agriculture. USC, an organization focused on seed sovereignty, describes agroecology as using “farmers’ knowledge and experimentation as a starting place in contrast to the top- down delivery of agricultural science and technology. It is knowledge-intensive, emphasizing low-cost techniques that work with the local ecosystem. It takes a whole system approach to agriculture that considers a wide range of conditions and issues. Because it recognizes the particular nature of each ecosystem, agroecology can include methods such as organic farming, but does not specifically embrace any one particular method of farming” (USC n.d.; FAO n.d.)

87 district. Various forms of tenancy, while still relatively minor, are potentially increasing as landowners focus their attention and capital elsewhere.

Diversified Livelihoods

Although farming has historically been at the core of Jumla livelihoods, few households have ever relied solely on agriculture. With the limited availability of arable land and the difficulty and risk of farming at these elevations, in addition to exploitative social relations and highly unequal ownership of the means of production, poorer households have long relied on a diversity of strategies to make ends meet. More powerful families, meanwhile, have long benefited from access to non-agricultural incomes through proximity to state power, formerly extracted as taxes directly from the population and later as bureaucrats and office workers. In the last decades of the 20th century and into the 21st, however, we also find rapid changes in these non-agricultural pursuits, particularly with the declining significance of livestock and petty mercantilism alongside the increasing significance of wild mountain resources, construction, and services and retail.

Circulations of People, Animals and Things

As is the case in many arid and mountainous regions, livestock have played a key role in Jumla economies. For farming families, bovines (cows as well as buffalo in lower altitude areas) are relied on for ploughing fields.35 Bovines along with other livestock also play a critical role in nutrient cycling providing manure, the primary source of fertilizer for the young, acidic mountain soils. An old proverb “Without people there can be no king; without fertilizer there can be no crops” is one of many related to manure, pointing to its significance to basic household reproduction (Bishop, 1990, p. 215). Manure is collected in stalls where some animals are kept over the winter and partially composted before being carried to the fields. It is also introduced to fields by bringing animals to graze on land following harvests. The management of manure is a difficult job and has been traditionally been strictly done only by women. Access to both animals for ploughing work and sufficient manure is a problem for many households. Those with insufficient animals will borrow from neighbours to winter at their houses and to graze in fields or will resort to purchasing

35 Livestock also meet immediate consumption needs. Cows and buffalos (and sometimes sheep and goats) can be a source of milk, while sheep and goats provide an important source of meat in the region and are used for sacrifices as part of annual religious calendars and for important life events. Goats and sheep are also used for their hair (wool) and hides, to produce items that were used at home or occasionally sold. Karnali woollen products have been celebrated in recent years as part of a regional cultural revival. Horses are raised by some wealthier families and kept in part for transportation purposes but also for pleasure, prestige and for potential sale or exchange.

88 manure outright from neighbours with an excess. With a declining livestock population, shortages of manure have become an increasing concern in recent years.

Patterns of transhumance in Jumla are also important for understanding the significance of livestock and reasons for declining populations. Livestock have traditionally not been fed agricultural crops and instead maintained through seasonal movements to upland and lowland grazing areas. Individuals from a household or village are responsible for bringing animals to upland grazing land in the summer and to lowland regions in the winter when they are not needed in the fields. Seasonal grazing movements were also tied into trading patterns. Sheep, goats and horses were used as pack animals in seasonal migrations that corresponded to grazing patterns. While grazing land near villages (like forestland) was generally community controlled, and rightful access to these resources was and remains a matter of frequent dispute (particularly when people try to enclose fields for apple plantations), historically accommodations were made for those passing through areas on these longer journeys. Trade tended to involve variations of a trip north to neighbouring Mugu district and sometimes up to the Tibetan border in the summer with grain which would be exchanged for salt and wool and woollen products. These products would in turn be brought south on winter grazing trips and sold or exchanged for grains and other household items like soap, clothing, oil and sugar. This pattern had many complex iterations depending on factors like the quality of the harvest, the demographics and dynamics of the household as well as personal relationships. Those with limited resources or animals, also engaged in temporary migration to India, but to work on construction sites, on apple farms, as porters and sometimes as guards (Shrestha-Schipper, 2009/2010, p. 66).

Declines in the livestock population in the region have been significant in the last couple of decades particularly in higher hill areas (Shrestha, 1993).36 Several factors have contributed to this trend. Pressures on household labour supplies is one. In the past, young male family members were often tasked with extended grazing duties, however the growing emphasis on education (discussed below) has meant that young people are less available for these and other duties. The institution of community forestry and increased control over forests has severely limited grazing land access (Shrestha, 1993; Adhikari, 2008). In Jumla, the establishment of Rara National Park in neighbouring Mugu also significantly restricted access to northern grazing areas. Finally, trading patterns have been transformed by increased restrictions at the Tibetan border beginning in the 1960s and police check posts within Nepal. The expansion of commodity

36 Similarly Gaire notes that in his research in Jumla in the early 2010s that “Almost all participants agreed that income from livestock has significantly decreased in recent times… households cannot keep large herds because of declining family size, deforestation and community forestry programs banning livestock entry in the forest areas” (Gaire, 2015, p. 202).

89 markets has also rendered goods less valuable and the gradual improvement of transportation to Jumla has made household items increasingly accessible in the district bazaar. Restrictions on grazing land and the decline of trade have most significantly impacted higher altitude villages of Chhetri communities in Jumla and Tibeto-Burman communities across the region. Tibeto-Burman communities speaking Muwé-ke (or Mugom, Mugali), living in northern Mugu at the China border, have been hit particularly hard, as the mountainous region has little arable land to fall back on. As a result, many families have migrated south permanently to settle in Jumla bazaar and in the Chaudabis valley area.

Social relationships related to trade have historically constituted another key pillar of the agrarian political economy of Jumla. Special types of friendship, known as mit (a formalized pact of kinship) and ista (a more casual form of friendship), have played a key role in maintain relationships across far-flung geographical locations. They were often forged between Tibetan or highland Tibeto-Burman speaking communities and (primarily) Hindu hill communities. Marriage ties and kin networks have also played an important role in facilitating long distance trade. While some relationships, like mit, have declined significantly with the end of the salt trade, other forms of personal relations remain important in patterns of trade. Men from Jumla (primarily from the Sinja valley) who continue to engage in small-scale trade activities maintain relationships with shopkeepers on the southern border to lend money for winter trade trips (Shrestha- Schipper, 2009/2010, p. 69). As I discuss in chapter 6, personal relationships also remain significant in shaping patterns of trade as Jumla farmers become more involved in market-oriented production.

New Patterns of Movement

Even as seasonal north-south mercantile trade has declined, other forms of seasonal and temporary migration remain important sources of income for families. One source of income dependent on seasonal migrations that has risen dramatically in importance, has been the collection and sale of wild medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) also termed non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Various forms of wild non-timber forest and mountain products have been an important export from the region historically and today are finding significant markets in India and China. By far the most famous and valuable is yārsāgumbā or cordyceps, a hybrid caterpillar-fungus occurring as parasitic mushroom spores mummify ghost moth larva that live in the soil creating a spindly fungus that sprouts from the dead caterpillar’s head (Harvey, 2014). A spike in popularity of the caterpillar fungus in the 1990s, primarily in China, drove the price up and has enticed an expanding number of people to high mountain areas around Jumla, Mugu and Dolpo in search of yārsa. Between 2001 and 2011 the local market price of yārsa reportedly increased by 2,300% (Harvey, 2014). Those who have good luck can earn Rs 100,000 to Rs 700,000 in a month. Yārsa and other MAPs

90 have come to constitute a significant portion of household incomes for people in certain parts of Jumla and those with limited assets. In the north-eastern VDCs of the Chaudabis valley, where Dillichaur is located (close to the high mountain areas where most of the collecting takes place) MAPs, and yārsa in particular, have radically transformed the local economy. The trend can already be seen in 2008, with about a third of the population of Dillichaur reporting income from MAPs (compared to almost no one in Kanakasundari in the west or Kartikswami in the center) (Jumla VDC surveys, 2008). When I was there in 2014 during the harvesting season, the only people left in villages in Dillichaur were the sick, elderly and a few civil servants milling around with little to do. The local schools were closed because such a large percentage of the children had been taken to the mountains. While yārsa collection in particular is dangerous due to the high altitude, volatile weather, crowds and looting, and earnings are precarious and unpredictable, it has become a primary source of household income, particularly for the poorest households (Shrestha, Dhital & Gautam, 2017).

Petty mercantile (trading) practices do also persist to some extent, particularly among high caste men from both lowland and upland villages in the Sinja valley who have not secured government or development employment (jāgir). However, the common practice now is to take out loans to buy goods in India like carpets, jewellery and medicinal herbs that are then sold on foot (often door to door) in other parts of India or Nepal, including Kathmandu (Shrestha-Schipper, 2009/2010; Sherpa, 2010). More commonly people migrate temporarily for work in the south of the country or India. This is particularly the case in Dalit communities, where limited access to land, office jobs and capital for trade have meant that there are few alternatives to seeking wage labour. Many people have preferred to find work in the cooler temperate hills of north western India including construction labour and, as we saw in the previous chapter, in the apple orchards, particularly in Nainital (Kumaon, Uttarkhand), Kullu, Manalai and Shimla (Himachal Pradesh) where, in 2009, wages were reported to be around Rs 240 per day or Rs 7,200 per month (Sherpa, 2010, p. 10). Indeed, labour migration to Uttarkhand and Himachal Pradesh from Nepal is so significant that orchards in this region have become heavily dependent on Nepali labourers (Gulati, 2009; “Shortage of Nepali labour,” 2010; “Himachal’s apple farming,” 2013). However, even in wage labour, earnings could vary widely depending on the availability of work. The loans taken out for these trips, often from local moneylenders at high interest rates, can land people in debt traps. Those unable to repay loans can lose assets or end up working for the moneylender (Sherpa, 2010, p. 11).37

37 As Sherpa (2010, p. 11) reports, “The general practice was to take a loan of NRs 1500 to 3,000 to go to India…The migrant had to repay NRs 4,800 in the first six months on a loan of NRs 3,000; or NRs 7,680 within the next 6 months if he is unable to pay off the loan on time.”

The migration period has reportedly changed from two shorter trips in the summer and winter to one extended trip (about six months) in the winter. As Ganesh, a young man from a predominantly Dalit village in Kartikswami put it, “half our life is spent in India” (Kartikswami Farmer, September 28, 2015). A small but growing number of individuals are beginning to follow the large number of Nepali migrants headed to foreign countries beyond India (particularly UAE Saudi Arabia, Qatar, South Korea and Malaysia), but the number of these migrants is much smaller than in other areas of Nepal, in part due to the prohibitive initial cost of travel. In the late 2000s, the upfront cost was reported to be about Rs 100,000 which would be paid to an agency that arranges visas, transportation and employment (Sherpa, 2010, p. 11). As Ganesh explained, “we are very poor, so we go to India for jobs. We need visas to go other countries and we need around 2-3 lākh rupees to go abroad, except for India… We do not need a lot of money to go India, just the bus fare.” Just Rs 2,000-5,000 was sufficient to take them to Rupaidiha, a village in Uttar Pradesh, on the other side of the border from Nepalgunj. At the same time increased opportunities for in-district wage labour were also beginning to offer an alternative option to migration.

The Business of Constructing Development

By 2014-2015, a confusing web of alternately dusty and muddy roadways had carved their way along hillsides and through streams and rivers across Jumla. Many were unusable or dead ended in foot trails; in some cases, lone stretches of road were built prior to connections on either end through the logic of public works projects discussed in chapter 5. Along with roads came cement, roadside real estate speculation, and a boom of construction—frequently of buildings designed to be multi-use homes, stores, hotels and offices. The real estate boom, rapid expansion of urban development in the bazaar and growth of construction and business along the road (UNDAF, 2012, p. 9)38 has contributed to the rise of a lucrative construction contracting industry, including a sizable demand for labour in construction as well as in natural resource extraction of sand, rock, and wood.

Evidence of construction was evident across the district not just in the roads and buildings themselves but also the small roadside stone quarries, the trucks parked in river bottoms to carry sand shovelled out by young men, and the ubiquitous cast-off soles of shoes with a single hole in the middle—a tool used in the arduous process of manually hammering stones into gravel. Quantitative data on the industry is harder to come by, although data assembled for Human Development Reports in 2001 and 2011 gives some

38 According to a UN Field Coordination Office survey in 2012 “prices in Mahat and Chandanath VDCs vary between 6,000-25,000 NRs/m” (UNDAF, 2013, p. 9).

92 indication of these changes. If we take the estimated purchasing power parity (PPP) of the Nepali Rupee, agriculture and forestry were calculated to have the most significant contribution to the gross domestic product of the district, increasing slightly from PPP 53.2 to 94 million.39 Mining and quarrying as well as manufacturing were small but more than doubled. Construction rose from PPP 3.9 to 19.9 million and finance and real estate rose from 8 to 22.6 million. Notably, community and social services (including government and development employment) was also on the rise, increasing from PPP 7.4 to 17.3 million, indicating that construction was not the only source of non-agricultural employment. The next section introduces the growing significance of education and office work.

Education and Job Holding

Another major driver of transformation in regional agrarian economies has been the increased prioritization of education. In the 1960s, schools were established throughout the Karnali zone, including a high school in Jumla-Khalanga. While the overall proportion of the population with a secondary school education and beyond remains relatively low, the rise in school attendance is reflected in changes in literacy rates over the last few decades from an overall adult literacy rate of 23.4% in 1996 to 26.6% in 2001 to 44.4% in 2011. The gender imbalances are significant although decreasing with female literacy at about 9.3% compared to male literacy at 42.5% in 2001 and 41% and 68% respectively in 2011. Schooling for children was cited a major priority for people across the district and was often equated to development itself. An older man in Dillichaur, for example, centred the importance of education in an eloquent monologue on development in Nepal, which began with the statement, “Our country Nepal is very beautiful, and it should be developed. If development takes place everywhere in the high mountains in all directions, and all people have development, our children will have opportunities to study and learn. They will be educated” (Dillichaur Farmer, November 15, 2015).

39 Note that in coming to this number the authors of the Human Development Report obtained the total output per district “by multiplying the production and price. This output was used as an indicator to distribute the total gross value added by district” (2014, p. 82).

Table 3.1: Nepal Human Development Reports Sector-wise Outputs

Sector Gross Sector Output NRS millions Rs 2001 2001 PPP Rs 2011 2011 PPP Agriculture and Forestry 756 53.2 2316 94.0 Mining and Quarrying 2 0.1 68 2.8 Manufacturing 37 2.6 100 4.1 Electricity 1 0.1 6 0.2 Construction 56 3.9 491 19.9 Trade, Restaurants and Hotels 174 12.2 52 2.1 Transport, Storage, Communications 36 2.5 202 8.2

Finance and Real Estate* Financial Intermediation 148 6.0 Real Estate 409 16.6 Total 114 8.0 557 22.6 Community and Social Services* Public Administration and Defence 165 6.7 Education 116 4.7 Health and Social Work 50 2.0 Other Community & Personal Services 95 3.9 Total 105 7.4 426 17.3 Total Economic Value Added 1,282 90.2 4,475 181.7

Per Capita Income at Market Prices 14,942 1,051.5 45,022 1,827.9 Per Capita Income in USD 203 623 Per Capita Income in PPP USD 1104 1007 * Categories disaggregated in 2011

The opening of several post-secondary institutions in the district has significantly improved access to higher education. The Karnali Technical School, established in 1979 with the assistance of the United Mission to Nepal and focused on vocational training in Agriculture, Health and Engineering, has been particularly influential in providing improved access to professional career paths for better positioned Jumla residents. Jumla Multiple Campus was established in the headquarters in 1973 as a constituent campus under Tribhuvan University. Initially offering only certificate programs, they began offering a Bachelor of Education in 2003/2004, later expanding to a Master of Education and a Bachelor of Business (Bhatta et al., 2008, p. 248).

The cost of education has also, however, become a growing burden for asset- and income-poor families. While public school is officially free, in practice there are a number of associated expenses including books, clothes and school maintenance fees. Parents who can afford to, make an effort to send their children to private schools—including schools outside the district—due to concerns about the quality of public schools. A 2014 study in one of the more remote northern Jumla VDCs found that households were spending an average of Rs 12,356 annually on education expenses with an average per child expenditure of Rs 5,949 (Adhikari et al., 2014, p. 62). A Ministry of Agricultural Development District Profile reported households spending on average 24% of household incomes on education. As one young farmer from Kanakasundari put it, “It is very difficult to stay in this place now. It is the generation of education. We are supposed to send our children to Kathmandu for studies. The expenses are high, and our sources of income are very low” (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 5, 2015). As highlighted above, children and young adults’ attendance at school also means that they are less available to assist with agricultural and household tasks, increasing the labour burdens on parents. Mahesara from Kartikswami put it like this:

Nowadays everybody here is educated. Daughter-in-law, daughter, son, everyone is educated, everyone is occupied with their own business. Some go for studies, some go for jobs, that’s why nobody is interested in working hard on the land now. Before, there was no tradition of sending kids to school, some kids went to study, but some went to graze the cows and some were involved in agriculture, that was the system here before. Nowadays that system doesn’t exist, both sons and daughters are treated equally. All of them want to study, all of them want to find jāgir [office jobs] and if they can’t get a jāgir then they’ll go for business to earn a living. They say there isn’t any benefit in agriculture these days. (Kartikswami Farmer, October 31, 2015)

Another farmer from a high hill village in Kanakasundari provides a similar perspective on these generational shifts:40

We sell a small amount [crops like potatoes and beans]. We sell them and buy rice. Whatever we sell, we buy rice. People here used to eat barley, maize, millet but nowadays the kids don’t like to eat these things. Nowadays people have stopped planting these crops. After reading up to class 8/9 or 4/5, the young people go to search for jobs. When they find jobs, nobody is left to do farming. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 26, 2015)

Education was strongly associated with not only abstract ideas of development but also, as we can see from Mahesara’s comments, concrete hopes for young people to escape the dukḥa (suffering) of agricultural

40 The Maoist insurgency contributed to this generational divide in rural areas like Jumla as many parents sent their children to urban areas in the south or in Kathmandu for school to protect them from coerced recruitment and violence.

95 labour.41 Yet, as Morarji, writing in the Indian context, points out, the aspirations attached to education can also make it a “contradictory resource” when jobs fail to materialize for young people “yet their educated status contributes to the foreclosure of agrarian livelihoods” (Morarji, 2010, p. 50 see also Jeffrey, 2010; Gidwani, 2008). Many young people I met found themselves in just this situation, some having pursued technical education or even University, but unable to find formal employment and finding it difficult to imagine returning to their parents’ lives of hard physical labour. Their experiences were often also entangled with a profound sense of guilt regarding responsibilities for providing for families who had invested significantly in their educations with high hopes for their futures (see also Sugden & Punch, 2016).

Development planners in Nepal and beyond have pointed to the problem posed by socio-cultural devaluations of agriculture, historically rooted in understandings of agriculture as non-modern and undesirable, captured in sayings like, “if you don’t go to school, I’ll bring a hoe.” While agricultural modernization efforts and youth outreach programs are intended to counter the stigma, the cultural devaluations of agriculture are inseparable from economic devaluations as well as the lived experiences of labour, particularly for women. As a farmer, businessman and politician from Chandanath VDC put it:

What is stopping youth from farming is, on the one hand, lack of a supportive institutional environment for agriculture and, on the other hand, the fact that the government and society do not respect farmers. Farmers are ignored everywhere. Farmers are the ones who provide us with food, but people don’t think about is in this way. That’s why they are compelled to go to foreign countries for employment. (Jumla Farmer, June 30, 2014)

A conversation with Hari, the head of one of the large local NGOs, speaks to multiple connections between desires for education and a path out of farming as well as new pressures on agricultural labour supplies. He himself was from Jumla and had studied engineering in Ukraine before returning to Jumla to start an NGO. I cite Hari (an affable, physically large man with an even larger personality who was known for a tendency for hāwā kurā, windy speech or “hot air”) as an example of the discourses of agrarian change, specific to upper-caste folks living in Jyula (irrigated valley) areas.

Young people are not interested in agriculture, only old people. Young people are always thinking about going outside of Jumla, they study you know… I came back from Europe to Jumla, other educated people don’t think about coming back, they search for opportunities for themselves, as individuals. Because I studied in school here, I have social attachments here. In boarding [private schools] they develop no social attachment. Their

41 Indeed, education itself has become a major employer of educated people in rural areas; many young people, particularly women, said that they were hoping to find work as school teachers.

father and mother give them money and they think only of themselves. “Why should I think about others?” They think about travelled away from Jumla, those who have some money. They want to try to go to Surkhet and then to Nepalgunj and then to Kathmandu and after that to go outside Nepal. It is a problem that the Karnali young people are not engaged in agricultural businesses. You see in Jumla now problems in terms of ploughing the fields. People can’t be found for this work even if you pay them money. They demand 700, 800, 900. You know in the past Dalits ploughed the land, now young people are not going to do it, so you have some problems. You have land but no workers for the land, there are no workers, labour is more expensive now and production is less. If you want to plant our indigenous rice here, you invest 10,000 rupees and you get only 3,000 rupees in return… if the indigenous crops result in a loss, why would farmers plant the indigenous crops? (NGO Officer, September 20, 2015)

As I highlight below, for many, apples have come to represent an idealized form of agriculture more compatible with modernizing aspirations and the everyday practicalities of education—one that provides a source of income to pay for mounting school fees, is more manageable for households without the support of children, and more generally does not require the heavy labour (and social stigma associated with it) involved in traditional farming.

In Search of a Jāgir

The ultimate benefit of education, for most, was to secure a jāgir, a permanent job generally in an office. Jāgir is notably the same term used to describe the grants of land to locally positioned agents of the state (as an exploitative revenue source) in the Shah and Rana periods—a continuity that speaks to the kind of privilege attached to this kind of work. Jāgir often refers to government jobs but could also encompass civil society offices and professional work in the private sector. The expansion of local state and civil society offices—the latter funded largely by foreign donors and NGOs—provided an important expansion of jāgir accessible to better positioned families and a key incentive to pursue higher education.42 The significance of the state and donor development apparatus is critical for understanding processes of agrarian transformation in Jumla as well as an understanding the political-economic dynamics of the market-making interventions at the centre of this dissertation.

42 Many of the young people I spoke to who had made it into secondary education were closely attuned to trends or fashions in development funding and took these into consideration in their choice of study. Several in post-secondary agriculture degrees, for example, pointed to the growth of agricultural development programs as motivating their choice in degree.

In Jumla, many civil servants continue to come from outside of the district, and absenteeism and rapid turnover rates remain significant problems.43 However, the past few decades have also seen gradual but notable increases in the representation of people from Jumla in the lower ranks of civil service officers. Today, elite status and success in the district tends to be tied to securing access to employment in a state or development offices. As Mahat points out, writing about the Jumla context, because “the civil service is a major status and economic asset, there has been a keen contest between various actors and interests for controlling this prestigious resource” including practices of chākarī —an informal practice of attending on authority figures to cultivate favour, often structured by political party relations (see Bista, 1991, p. 89)— as well as outright forms of intimidation (Mahat, 2011, p. 48). Young people across the district said that they were in the process of studying in preparation for taking, or retaking, the lok seva or public service commission exam. A number of people described their situation or that of a family member by saying, nām nikāleko chaina, kē garnē? “their name wasn’t selected from the results of the exam, what to do?”

Non-state development employment has also increased in Jumla with the rapid expansion of international, national, and local NGO offices over the past few decades (as a farmer and businessman in Chandanath put it, it is like “one house one office” here). The expansion began following the 1990 opening of multi-party democracy but intensified post-conflict. The NGO boom was fuelled both by desires to participate in the newly opened public space and by donors interested in bypassing state agencies, which were viewed as inefficient and corrupt.44 As donor interventions, and jointly operated donor-state development initiatives, began to contract implementation out to NGOs and private consultants (foreign and domestic), local NGOs were established to take advantage of these new opportunities. At least in popular opinion, the opportunities for benefit presented by NGOs were often viewed as illegitimate, blurring into illegality. As an officer from the government livestock office put it:

You know NGOs are good business in Nepal, I’ve seen many poor people start NGOs and they get some funding and then they are able to raise themselves up. I think that in comparison to the government there is more corruption in NGOs, there are so many bad NGOs. We [in government offices] have no money! My office gets a budget of 2 karod

43 I met a number of civil servants who complained that their posting to Jumla was the result of their lack of political connections, and who were eagerly waiting transfers. 44 Routing implementation through NGOs was also necessary in some contexts where lack of state presence or Maoist influence made alternatives unfeasible. As an Asian Development Bank report explains, “During the conflict, many changes in the country’s development strategy occurred, including the rise of community-based groups and local NGOs who took on much of the responsibility for delivering development in the rural areas.” (ADB, 2015, p. 13). Similarly, a World Bank sponsored Poverty Alleviation Fund evaluation report notes that “funds were not disbursed through government channels but delivered directly to the community organizations, which lowered transaction costs between the resource origination and its destination, with positive results for efficacy and efficiency” (World Bank, 2017, p. x).

and most of it goes to salaries, there is only about 40 lākh left for development projects, what is there to steal? (Government Officer, September 23, 2015)

Whether or not NGOs are in fact more or less corrupt than state offices, the development money flowing through NGOs is certainly significant in transforming them into a “mechanism for local elites to shore up power” (Rankin, Nightingale, Hamal & Sigdel, 2018, p. 285), particularly in conjunction with influential party politics.45 NGOs in the Karnali region were particularly notorious for being embedded in party politics. A statement by a group of Jumla Dalit youth on the website Karnali Youth Voice, provides one perspective (among many) on the intersection of historical power relations and party politics in Karnali civil society and their impact on development outcomes. They describe NGOs and politics as the greatest business ventures available to the ruling families in the post-conflict period, giving the example of one of the most prominent and well-funded local NGOs in the region which was established in Jumla by a prominent local family just after the insurgency began. According to the statement, the family had been a target during the insurgency but joined forces with the Maoists when they entered the government after the peace accords and the political connections have helped to secure support for their “family business of [an] NGO.” The result, they argue is that foreign aid fails to reach the poor and marginalized people it is intended for. The authors go on to compare the dissipation of foreign aid to the melting of an ice cube on a sunny summer day (Karnali Youth Voice, 2015).

Notably, the distribution of access to education and professional, salaried jobs is highly uneven across social and regional geographies in Nepal, as well as within Jumla itself. In 2011, Kartikswami had much higher: levels of literacy; percentages of people between 5 and 25 currently attending school; and educational attainment, particularly in terms of those who had passed the exams to obtain a School Leaving Certificate following the end of class 10.46 The 2008 household survey also speaks to regional and caste-based differences in forms of employment. Bahun/Chhetri households consistently reported better access to salaried jobs and pensions, and overall access was significantly higher in Kartikswami at over 60% for Bahun/Chhetri households, a number that, based on anecdotal evidence, is likely higher today in all VDCs, but in Kartikswami in particular. In interviews with people from Brahman and Thakuri villages in Kartikswami, many insisted that around here, “everyone is a jobholder.” As we saw in Mahasara’s family, often households had multiple people with jobs in the district headquarters or other parts of the country.

45 The practices echo Lund’s point that powerful actors work to “combine their stakes in different fields of action and to manoeuvre with different registers of legitimacy” (Lund, 2006, p. 693). 46 The rapid growth in the importance of education in recent years, particularly for girls and women, is reflected in the fact that in 2008 Kartikswami women actually reported significantly lower levels of literacy than Kanakasundari and Dillichaur. Notably, Bahun/Chhetri women reported lower levels of literacy than Dalit women, consistent with historically more rigid gender-based inequalities in high caste households, particularly in lowland areas.

Private sector businesses are also growing in the district. The Jumla Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the local branch of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry—an umbrella lobbying organization that supports business interests—is a powerful actor in the district. Much of the private industry, however, is sustained through flows of state and donor investments through development-oriented contracting, particularly in construction and engineering. Personal and political affiliations across private and public sector boundaries play a critical role in determining how development funds are distributed and how accumulation is enabled (Rankin & Lewison, 2017; Rankin, Hamal, Lewison & Sigdel, forthcoming; Nepali, 2018). I return to reflect on the governance implications of the intersections of civil society, civil service, and party politics in chapter 4 and again in chapter 7.

Apples in Diversified Livelihoods

In the context of rapid agrarian change in Jumla, apples become particularly appealing for a number of reasons. As we saw in chapter 2, apples were a negotiated development intervention, filling a potential niche in complexly orchestrated, and for most people highly precarious, mountain livelihoods. The broader transformations in agrarian economies described above, further contributed to the allure of apples. In the popular press, the expansion of apple planting in the 2000s and 2010s was commonly framed as a sign of immanent agrarian transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture. As one enthusiastic media story put it, “If only proper attention is received, Jumla apples shall not only reign the apple market but also become a means towards richness for Jumla farmers…” (NepalB2B, 2015: para 8). Yet, while the potential to earn income was certainly an important factor, for most Jumla farmers, particularly in the 2000s as well as into the mid-2010s when I was conducting interviews, the move into apple production did not represent a high-risk, entrepreneurial move into competitive commercial agriculture. Rather we find a gradual, risk- averse, expansion of market-oriented production enabled and propelled by non-agricultural livelihood diversification and pressures on agricultural labour supplies.

A Growing Market

The domestic market for apples in Nepal has grown over the past few decades. The vast majority of demand for apples is met by foreign imports primarily from China and India. According to the Ministry of Agriculture Development, consumption grew from about 87,700 mt to 107,000 mt from 2010/2011 to 2015/16, and imports of apples increased from 45,300 mt to 66,000 mt (Subedi, Jian & Zhou, 2018, p. 19). While apple imports historically came predominantly from India, rising apple production in China and

100 expanding transportation networks have allowed Chinese apples to overtake Indian imports over the last decade. A 2011 SNV report estimated that in 2008/09, China supplied around 70% rising to 90% in 2009/10, with India’s market share declining from 29% to 9% (SNV, 2011, p. 29). Agricultural development planners in Nepal have long cited increasing the percentage of apple demand met by domestic production as an important development goal for the country.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, government subsidised flights and a small market for apples in the Jumla headquarters, as well as demand for home consumption, sustained a few larger apple orchards and scattered trees across the district. In the mid-1990s, however, the re-initiation of construction on the Karnali Highway prompted renewed enthusiasm for apples as a cash crop—enthusiasm which expanded rapidly in the 2000s. The agricultural office reported that between 2006 and 2009 some 100,000 new saplings were planted per year in Jumla. Official production reports vary significantly and are often conflicting, likely due to logistical challenges in conducting comprehensive surveys, different assessments of what quality of apples count in the measurements and the fact that many apples were not sold by weight.47 A survey in 1998/1999 reported a total production of 2,690 mt, a 2001 agriculture office report suggested 4,600 mt, while a 2006/2007 report indicated 4,557 mt. A 2008 survey by the district development committee found that nearly 60% of all households were engaged in apple production. This percentage was significantly higher in some VDCs; Kartikswami, Dillichaur and Kanakasundari, for example reported 78.3%, 81.5%, and 86.9% percent of households engaged in apple production respectively (see Table 3.2).

The potential to earn cash incomes was certainly part of the appeal of apples. As we have seen, the penetration of commodity markets, as well as the rising importance of education (and availability of health care for those who could afford it—another major demand on household finances), created increased need for money. The arrival of the road meant that people could finally realize the promised exchange value of apples as well as other crops with market potential. The growing enthusiasm for apples was fuelled in part by the rising prices (and before that, the anticipation of rising prices). While prices differ depending on quality and bargaining power, average farmgate prices reportedly rose from Rs 2 per kg in the mid-1990s to Rs 10 per kg in the early 2000s up to 2008, to average prices around Rs 27 per kg in 2014 (Atreya & Kafle, 2016, p. 17) (if we convert these prices to estimated PPP for that year to account for the effects of

47 As Krap points out in his analysis of apple incomes, “Few people in Jumla are keeping accounts of their harvest or income, so it was no surprise that most people had much trouble recalling the exact amounts” (2012, p. 28). The imprecise accounting can by further exacerbated by delays between harvest time and reporting (2012, p. 28). Moreover, in terms of determining net profits, there are challenges to estimating input costs, given that many households rely solely on household labour, manure (and some home-made pesticides as well) making input numbers difficult to quantify. Studies of incomes have also been relatively small and often use different indicators.

101 inflation, we find a less significant rise from PPP 0.2 in 1995 to PPP 0.7 in 2000 to PPP 1.6 in 2008). Yet the popularity of apples cannot be understood simply in terms of quantitative comparisons of relative exchange values and rationalities of profit maximization. Rather they need to be understood in their particular articulation with other livelihood practices.

Table 3.2: Apple holdings, District Development Office survey 2008

Apple Producing Number of Productive Trees Trees/ Caste Households % Apple Trees Number % of Trees Household

Dalit 78 1,178 194 16 14 Janajati 100 444 92 21 25 Bahun 90 16,861 2,460 15 28 Dillichaur Total 90 18,483 2,746 15 26

Dalit 89 383 183 48 5 Bahun 86 5,421 2,066 38 17 Total 87 5,804 2,249 39 14 Kanakasundari

Dalit 58 1,802 501 28 19 Bahun 84 14,682 6,332 43 43

Kartikswami Total 78 16,484 6,833 42 38

The Appeal of Apples

One important characteristic of apples was that they did not compete with core cereal crops planted in precious irrigated land. This was in contrast to vegetables, for example, which were also promoted as a cash crop for Jumla but with much less success because of their requirements for regular irrigation. As we have seen, several converging factors were also contributing to a generalized shift away from Jumla’s hardy, but less productive traditional crops: the reliable availability of relatively inexpensive staple commodities like rice and oil meant that a steady source of cash offered better security in case of bad weather; new access to markets encouraged the shift to subsistence crops with potential market value; and new pressures on the availability of agricultural labour were leading to less intensive planting practices, or even leaving land fallow, particularly on distant, upland plots. Apples were a welcome alternative to leaving land barren and the majority of apples were planted in these hard to reach, hilly plots.

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A second appealing characteristic for folks who were unable (due to a subsistence squeeze) or unwilling to leave land barren, was that apples, if properly spaced, could be intercropped with grains or legumes, particularly when young. This decreased the short-term opportunity costs of planting. Many people continued to plant food grain crops while the trees were young, and then shifted to bean intercropping as they grew taller. Farmers found that the trees grew particularly well with beans, benefitting from the nitrogen fixing capacity of the legumes. Apple-bean intercropping had become a popular crop combination on pākho land at the time of my research and was widely reported to be rapidly displacing other crop rotations.

Third, and importantly, most farmers also viewed apples as requiring significantly less labour than subsistence crops. This was particularly true at the time of the apple planting boom beginning in the 2000’s. An important element of this calculation was the fact that apples only had to be planted once and did not require the annual ploughing labour. Notably, as we have seen, ploughing labour was also specifically a male gendered responsibility—one that was particularly avoided by high caste men and had become increasingly costly in terms of hired labour. Even beyond the advantages of perennial production, however, apple culture and post-harvest activities also received limited investments in terms of time and money. As many people put it, including a chatty man from Kartikswami with a TV business (who I met over his afternoon chowmein at a hotel in the headquarters), the way of cultivating apples in Jumla was, rōpnē, sutnē, tipnē—plant, sleep, pick. The minimal annual labour demands of apples were particularly appealing in a context in which children and young people were in school, young men were migrating for longer stretches of time, and larger numbers of people were pursuing permanent employment or forms of income that diverted energies away from farming, including MAPs and construction labour.

Of course, as we will see in chapter 5, from the perspective of profit-maximizing development experts, the “plant, sleep, pick” attitude towards apples referred to an approach to apple orchard management that was “very poor” (SNV, 2011, p. 16). As described in an extensive survey conducted by the NGO SNV in 2009/2010, apples were generally watered only a few times the first year that they were planted.48 In spite of governmental programs promoting the use of pesticides and fertilizers, very few farms experimented with them. Prior to the 2008 ban on chemical inputs (discussed in the following chapter), pesticides were only used by the larger apple famers,49 (primarily Rogor – a pesticide used for sucking insects, like woolly

48 One common response to the question about irrigation was “it’s up to the gods” with a gesture to the sky. Another common response was cynical laughter, or anger, and the comment, “here we don’t even have enough water for drinking! No, we are not watering the apples.” 49 SNV offers an uncited estimated of about 5% of apple producers using pesticides prior to 2007.

103 apple aphid and San Jose scale) (SNV, 2011, p. 16). A larger percent would begin to use some of the organic alternatives introduced later but, as I discuss in greater detail in chapter 6, this was mostly limited to one relatively inexpensive product and in relatively small quantities. In terms of nutrition, trees generally only received applications of fertilizer in the form of household composted manure indirectly when producers fertilized intercropped beans or grains. Post-harvest approaches were similarly labour-saving with apples collected by shaking trees and packaged all together in boxes (often in repurposed beer bottle boxes).

Finally, a number of people also suggested that apple planting had become a fad or fashion of sorts, bound up with different forms of social value. Several people answered the question of why they had planted apples by saying, obliquely, that they didn’t know why, everyone else seemed to be planting apples. When I asked a schoolteacher in Sinja valley with a large old orchard why he had planted the trees, he responded by saying, because “apples are like Jumli identity.” The affective appeal of apples was often interwoven in discussions of reasons for planting. A former VDC chairman in the far eastern side of the Chaudabis valley, for example, told us that his inspiration to plant apples had come from his time working in orchards in India—a common experience. He described in detail his awe of the landscape during the period of bud break, when white flowers emerged. It was like snow, he said, but all flowers everywhere, during that time people don’t want to go inside because it is so beautiful. Others pointed to an element of competition motivating apple planting. Talking with a group of men in Ganesh’s village in Kartikswami, one said, “Now apple planting has become a fashion, when one person starts, other people follow. When I plant 10 trees, another brother might want to plant 10 or 15. And then I might think that I should plant 20 or so. There is a kind of competition that happens” (Kartikswami Farmer, September 28, 2015). The association of apples and a developed, prosperous future on the horizon was clearly one that was not only inscribed in assemblages of development planning, but also in everyday, affective, structures of feeling for people in Jumla and surrounding districts. Experiences in the orchards in India helped to reinforce an imaginary of apple-led development although, as we will see in chapter 6, this familiarity with India also contributed to calculated concerns about competition in globally integrated markets.

Narratives of Laziness

In chapter 5 and 6, I discuss in detail changing views of the labour and capital requirements of apples, specifically in response to experience, development interventions, and changing agro-ecologies. In my interviews in 2014-2015, I found provocative tensions within the discourse of the relative ease of apples. On the one hand, a general understanding of apples as requiring comparatively less labour and capital investment than other crops was still prevalent. An interview with a young man in Kanakasundari, for

104 example, captures this optimistic view of apples, specifically in comparison to traditional farming. He was from a Chhetri village in the hills where apple farming was just starting to bring profits due to the recent arrival of the Sinja trunk road. He spent his winters in India for labour, including in Himachal where he had worked on apple orchards. He said:

There is good possibility for apple farming here. We don’t have to do much labour for an apple tree. It will give around 5,000 rupees per year. There is not much trouble for this kind of farming… In the past there weren’t proper transportation facilities here, so we are still a bit backwards. Before people only thought to practice traditional farming, so they only did that. Now, there is a road and it is being blacktopped. Now there will be apple farming. There is no profit in traditional agriculture. There is only hardship, it is of no use (kām chaina). Let’s count only three apple trees. We can get 15,000 rupees from three trees. From that money we can buy three quintals of rice from the Terai. To produce that much rice is very difficult. In Shimla, Himanchal Pradesh, people with less property than us are living the life of millionaires as landlords, our land is being wasted. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 26, 2015)

We heard this basic narrative echoed by people across the district, including a middle-aged man from a predominantly Dalit village in Kartikswami, where apple cultivation had a long history and many people had had exposure to formal trainings years or even decades ago. He had a slightly less idealistic, but still positive, view of apples:

What to do with rice? To produce one kg of rice, you might have to spend like 200-250 rupees if you calculate all the costs. The cost for apples is only in the growing. We have to work hard for three years and if we fence it, after five years, each apple tree, if it gives like 1 quintal of apples and if we sell them at 30 rupees per kg, we earn like 3,000 rupees. If you have 30 plants, you will have 90,000 rupees. There is no profit from paddy field. At the end, to eat rice, you can buy rice. If three apple trees grow well, and bear fruit well, we will have 30,000 rupees. If we buy rice from this money, it will be sufficient for a family. It is easy too. In a paddy field, we have to work so hard, it is very difficult. We have to plough the field starting in Falgun [March-April]. In our case, it is not like planting rice in the Terai. It is very hard here. We have to plough the field in Falgun and prepare the nursery in Chaitra [April-May]. We have to go make irrigation canals. To prepare the paddy field, the ploughman has to plough the field three times at least in one place. The field has to be dug out three times. If you pay them daily labour costs, you are in for a huge loss. Planting rice results in loss. If you plant apples, and if they grow well, or if there is irrigation and if you use good fertilizer and take care, there will be a huge profit from apple. (Kartikswami Farmer, September 28, 2015)

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Yet, I also found that as a growing number of people in the district received official trainings on proper apple care, there was often a friction between the information of what they should do, and what they actually did in terms of apple management, a friction that frequently translated into descriptions of “laziness.” An older man from the same Chhetri village in Kanakasundari, for example, described his view of the situation:

We don’t take care of apple trees. We are planting other crops in our apple gardens. We don’t supply water and manure to apple plants, and then we are saying that they don’t grow well. No one puts manure, water and pesticides on their apple plants. People just think that they have apple trees and they should grow. They let them be, whether they bear fruit or not. For example, we have planted this āru [a local variety of peach that grows wild in the forests], we do nothing for these trees and they still bear fruit and people get benefit from them. But then people have the same understanding of apple trees. When we make apple gardens, we treat them just like an āru garden. If we plant an āru tree in the garden it will grow, but we need to labour for an apple farm. We have left our apple farms just as is after planting the trees. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 26, 2015)

A man from a high caste, lowland valley village in Kanakasundari—who held a good salaried job based in Kathmandu and whose family continued to maintain a diversified farm including paddy, both for household consumption and sale—described his perspective of the approach to apple farming in the district:

If we plant apples for commercial purpose, we may produce more apples. For this, we need to build fencing and we have to plant high-yielding plants. We have to feed them and take care of them on time, we have to trim them, and we have to spray pesticides. We have to do all these things for commercialization. We are a little too lazy to do the hard work. This is why we have not been progressing. Nepalis are too lazy to work hard. We have very few people who work hard. We have a habit of going around the village and talking with people, but we do not work hard. Everything is fine to us. This is why our apple plants are not growing as they should. Apple farming demands hard work, but we take it very easy [take it for granted]. We want to increase our income without working hard. It will give us short term benefit, but it will not be sustainable. (Kanakasundari Farmer, November 5, 2015)

The discourse of laziness speaks to the growing divergences between how apples articulated in existing, risk-averse and diversified livelihood strategies and the improving vision of development experts. The low input, low maintenance approach to apple production cannot be understood simply as ignorance, or a lack of technical knowledge—although it is certainly true that the introduction of the new plants involved a period of learning and experimentation. The “plant, sleep, pick” approach to apples was also embedded in a multifaceted, “vernacular calculus of the economic” (Ramamurthy, 2011, p. 1035) encompassing the growing convergence of rural and urban imaginaries, new generational divides and aspirations for the future, as well as continued emphasis on risk minimization and livelihood diversification. As highlighted

106 by one of the Kanakasundari farmers cited above, many farmers incorporated apples into the agro- ecological systems of their farms in much the same way they had long incorporated other fruit trees, allowing the “work of nature” to supply another seasonal offering that contributed to the diversity of household food supplies, something to offer guests and the potential for some profit as well. Apple trees were also beautiful and over time apples had come to be associated with Jumli identity in nuanced ways. However, such complex and situated rationalities of apple planting were not easily legible to expert development planners, for whom economic calculations were informed by narrowly defined strategies of profit-maximization in competitive markets. Discourses of laziness emerged out of the impossibility of reconciling farmer practices and development rationalities, and they circulated not only among experts (often framed in terms of a lack of entrepreneurialism) but also among farmers themselves—in ways that I found to be variously inflected with frustration and humour. In the next two chapters, I take a close look at the recent history of expert visions for improvement in Jumla. In chapter 6, I return to the theme of laziness to highlight how emergent “limits” in governmental rationalities of apple commercialization (and specifically organic apple commercialization) further contribute to the disjuncture between farmer and expert rationalities.

Conclusion

As we have seen, the history of the Karnali region has involved centuries of agrarian transformations. Local political economies are embedded in geographically wide-ranging circulations of people, animals, goods and ideas. Jumla is clearly in the midst of yet another moment of significant change, one defined by new infrastructures facilitating space-time compression. From one angle, that of optimistic development agents, Jumla could be seen on the brink of a radical agrarian transition, finally made possible by the long-delayed arrival of the road. Apples appear as the advanced guard of agricultural commercialization. In the 2010s, new ethical market-making interventions, centered particularly on the valorization of “organic,” which I address in the following chapter, operated on the basic assumption that apples represented the budding of as-yet-unrealized commercial opportunity. Yet, attention to the particular socio-natures of apples and situated farming rationalities, reveals a different understanding of the motivations for farming households. In this chapter, along with the last, my intention was to trouble a view of apple markets as a naturally emergent phenomenon. In the next chapter we turn to look at how the “organic-by-default” status of apples would be identified as the solution to problems of uneven development and sluggish agricultural investment in the context of globalized market integration. It was also, however, a solution that would necessitate a radical transformation of organic-by-default practices and their articulation in local agro-ecologies and livelihoods.

Chapter 4 | Reframing Frontier Natures: Governmental Rationalities

Introduction

In 2008, the 14th session of the Jumla District Development Council (DDC) announced its ambitious decision to declare the district “organic.” The announcement officially banned the sale and use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The district’s few agrovets (suppliers of agricultural and veterinary products) were required to restock with bio-chemicals. Statements were broadcast on Radio Karnali FM to announce the decision and the agriculture office’s materials and training programs were replaced with ones promoting organic production methods. The same year, the DDC initiated its one-house-one-orchard campaign, which committed to distributing 25 apple saplings to every household in the district.

The organic declaration, I was told, had been spearheaded by an enterprising Kathmandu-based bureaucrat then stationed at the Jumla district agriculture office. I was able to track down Ramjee in his current concrete box of an office in one of the interior buildings of the Department of Agriculture complex in Kathmandu. His office was lined with the standard cushioned wood chairs for visitors and, when Sushmita and I arrived, he was speaking with an older man who we learned was a colleague and long-time friend. Ramjee was a middle-aged man from the far west of Nepal who had been a bureaucrat in the agriculture sector for decades. He was hesitant to speak with us at first but became more animated over the course of the interview. He recalled his feat of negotiating support among district bureaucrats, NGO representatives and local politicians across party lines. When I asked him why he had led this initiative, his initial, pragmatic answer was that Jumla is a food-insecure district. They produce many things, he noted, “but people only want to eat rice.” Because they can’t produce enough rice, there can be no guarantee for food security. So instead they need to focus on “income security” Going organic made sense in Jumla because it was already “organic-by-default.” Jumla had apples, but the farmers didn’t know the worth of their product, he explained. In order to capitalize on the existing organic value, they decided to declare the district organic and teach people about the worth so that they would know the real price.

Later in our conversation, when I asked Ramjee how he had learned about organic methods, he launched into the virtues of organic farming. He included a personal story of his moment of awakening to organic. It was when he was younger, serving as an extension agent, going out to the field. He said he watched a woman spraying chemicals on her cucumber crop with a broom, without protection, “just like this!” he said, demonstrating the careless gesture with his hands. He spoke further about the risks of chemical agriculture for ecologies and human health and how he had begun to work to support organic initiatives in the country,

107 108 including supporting the formation one of the first organic producers’ groups in the Valley. As we wound up the interview Ramjee and his friend reminisced about growing up in agrarian areas and the hard work and dedication of their fathers’ generation; they also expressed a self-deprecating humour about their own “laziness” in their comfortable jāgir (salaried office jobs).

I begin with this conversation with Ramjee because it captures the multifaceted rationalities behind the new generation of agricultural development initiatives converging in Jumla in the late 2000s. The last chapter focused on situated political economies of apple planting in the context of agrarian transformations. These transformations echo those occurring in other parts of the hill and mountain regions, characterized by limited investments in agriculture and the continued diversification of agrarian livelihoods. This chapter turns to governmental rationalities of apples and of organic (organic-by-design as opposed to organic-by- default). It examines the converging governmental logics behind the organic district declaration and new development interventions focused on ethical market-making. The discussion here parallels that of chapter 2, which examines previous generations of agricultural market-making efforts in Jumla. Comparing the two foregrounds the continuities but also the changing “legibility” of Jumla nature, as it is rendered both visible and valuable in new ways through the rise of alternative food movements and the “quality turn.”

In this chapter, I make a couple of claims about the agricultural development interventions converging in Jumla in the late 2000s and 2010s. I argue that governmental rationalities of agricultural development in Jumla over the past decade reflect the transnational rise of new modalities of eco-governmentality including a dominant “neoliberal” focus on addressing social and ecological concerns through processes of ethical market-making. As discussed in chapter 1, ethical market-making refers to efforts on the part of planners and governmental actors to intentionally forge new market relations that aim to address, often interrelated, social and ecological objectives. Many of these interventions aim to take advantage of growing, but geographically uneven, demand for new forms of “quality” in food and agriculture that accord with changing understandings of ecological and human health. However, in Jumla, we find divergent and sometimes contradictory configurations of ethical market-making, as popular discourses and policy approaches are assembled within specific territorial and political agendas.

Jumla thus demonstrates the need for attention to the specific political conjunctures through which ethical market-making takes shape. Attention to the diversity of actors and agendas is important for the following chapters, in which I examine the specific technologies of ethical market-making targeting organic apples (chapter 5), and the limits and contradictions emergent within these projects (chapter 6). After a brief review of literature on the quality turn and its relationship to new processes of market expansion, I examine how

109 changing biopolitical calculations of the social and economic value of non-industrialized agro-ecologies have played out in the sphere of agricultural development policy in Nepal over the past few decades. The following section looks at how new rationalities of sustainable market-making map onto post-conflict territorial politics, focusing on Jumla specifically. I then describe the diverse actors and rationalities converging in Jumla agriculture, specifically in the post-conflict period. In the following three chapters, I focus on organic apple markets to highlight the limits of transnational eco-governmentality in the district.

Eco-Governmentality and the Quality Turn

As we saw in chapter 1, the “quality turn” in global food regimes has entailed a shift in the understanding and representation of quality in global agri-food markets, with quality increasingly (albeit unevenly) defined in opposition to key aspects of industrial agriculture. This shift has also involved changing expert understandings the use, and potential exchange, value of agricultural socio-natures in the frontier regions of capitalist agriculture—places that have not seen intensive capitalization of agricultural production and, as a result, have remained relatively free of chemical inputs and rich in agro-biodiversity. The planners of one of the new market-making projects in Jumla capture the optimistic logic, stating that their “niche-based mountain perspective views marginal lands not as a constraint to productivity but as a huge, untapped potential resource” (HIMALI n.d., point 181). Such re-evaluations have prompted efforts to capitalize on newly identified natural resources and opportunities to expand market access into areas long understood to be marginal and unproductive—areas that are also often characterized by poverty and socio-economic marginality. At the same time, such re-valuations shape biopolitical concerns to protect and conserve (selected aspects of) non-industrial agro-ecologies. Together, these imperatives have given rise to governmental interventions attempting to make markets that claim to be socially and ecologically ethical. Efforts are directed to extending “inclusive” markets—inclusive in the sense that marginalized people and places would now be able to participate—into impoverished areas, and conserving natural resources through the abstraction of new forms of market value (Friedmann, 2005; Murdoch, Marsden & Banks, 2000; Goodman, M., 2004; Vandergeest, 2006, 2009; Guthman, 2007; Galvin, 2011, 2014).

As we have also seen, however, critical academics and activists remain wary of these ethical market promises—pointing to the continuities in market-fundamentalism and the failure to address underlying ecologically and socially destructive tendencies that are embedded within competitive market logics, particularly when mediated by transnational corporations. For McMichael, “ethical” market-making, at least as pursued by large financial institutions, functions as a screen for processes of accumulation by dispossession. He argues that a new generation of market interventions aimed at including smallholders in

110 global markets operates as a form of spatio-temporal fix. Focusing on corporate-partnerships claiming to support socially inclusive, sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, he argues that these programs provide subsidized capital to agribusinesses to invest in smallholders—rationalized on the promise of increasing food security—and, in turn, create both an outlet for over-accumulated capital, a long-term source of agro-industrial products and a consumer base for agro-industrial commodities and credit. The result, for McMichael, is that new market-making models subject “peasants to ‘real subsumption,’ as agro- inputs replace former farming practices, and capital appropriates the labour of now nominal (essentially proletarianised) farmers” (McMichael, 2013, p. 674).

Friedmann also critiques optimistic enthusiasm for the progressive potentials of sustainable, or green, markets, pointing to the tendency under capitalism for new environmental values, emerging out of crisis moments of industrial production, to be re-constituted as opportunities for accumulation. Drawing on Guthman’s work, she points to the prospects for growth in eco-friendly alternatives following crises in U.S. agriculture in the 1980s, which “tempted many producers to shift from sustainable farming (a process and production orientation) to organic commodities (a product and marketing orientation)” leading to the sweeping subsumption of “much of the organic movement into an organic industry” (Friedmann, 2005, p. 231). Specifically, Friedmann argues that the institutionalization of new privatized regulatory regimes of quality, including for labour standards and environmental quality, have the potential to “deepen longstanding processes that dispossess and marginalize peasants and agrarian communities” (2005, p. 257).

Yet, as the Jumla case demonstrates, projects of ethical market-development do not necessarily function as Trojan horses for accumulation by dispossession.50 As we will see, governmental actors have struggled to attract investors and the district-scaled declaration of the entire district to be organic is positioned awkwardly between market-based logics, idealistic visions of sustainable farming, and coercive conservation. Markets are being mobilized by a diverse array of actors, all of whom identify possibilities for achieving socially and environmentally just outcomes. The specific politics of these claims varies significantly, and thus demand critical inquiry. Foucauldian perspectives are useful here in highlighting the refractive character of governance and the complex layering of authorities and political projects. In this chapter, I borrow from Michael Goldman who uses Foucauldian concepts to capture the convergence of rationalities of biopolitical conservation and of market expansion, identifying the rise of a transnational “eco-governmentality.” He describes a new global green governmentality in which, “unevenly transnationalized state and non-state actors have sought to ‘improve’ conditions of nature and populations

50 Friedmann’s work is also sensitive to the diverse politics of ethical market-making, see for example Friedmann and McNair (2008).

111 by introducing new cultural/scientific logics for interpreting qualities of the state’s territory” (2001, p. 501). However, while Goldman, much like McMichael, focuses on eco-governmentality as a screen for transnational processes of accumulation by dispossession, I am interested in the significant divergences and contradictions at work within eco-governmental rationalities—as specific programs of intervention map onto contingent governmental assemblages and socio-material terrains. As Li emphasizes, following Foucault, to govern “is to seek not one dogmatic goal, but ‘a whole series of specific finalities.’ Diverse ‘finalities’ may be incompatible, yielding interventions that are in tension with one another, or downright contradictory” (Li, 2007b, p. 9).

Jumla provides a remarkable microcosm of the diverse iterations of transnational eco-governmentality. Efforts to improve and extend markets—with organic apples at the forefront—are embedded in projects of state territorialization aimed at re-organizing socio-natures to facilitate market expansion and the commercialization of agricultural production. At the same time, governmental projects to promote sustainable agricultural markets do not—as Goldman finds in the Laos hydro-power context—“storm in on the wild bull of global economic integration” (Goldman, 2001, p. 517). Indeed, despite their ambitious aims, the market-making efforts in Jumla have struggled to draw petty commodity producers into competitive market relations. Rather, we find a wide variety of governmental interventions broadly aligned with what might be understood as varieties of transnational eco-governmentality in that they bring together market development and the conservation of frontier socio-natures. Within and between particular interventions, we find significant differences in the priorities and technologies engaged.

The Quality Turn for Nepal

In this section, I provide some context for how the quality turn in global agro-food regimes has informed governmental practice in Nepal. I focus specifically on the growing popularity of particular aspects of “alternative” agriculture, including organic production methods as well as the celebration of agro- biodiversity and “indigenous” food traditions within mainstream development. I point to organic and indigenous crops as arenas of increasing convergence in NGO, activist and donor agendas. In particular, I highlight how the quality turn has transformed how experts and policy makers situate and problematize remote areas like Jumla within development strategies. I begin by highlighting the growth of activist movements, farmer networks and NGOs tapping into transnational networks and discourses of alternative agriculture and then turn to how “alternatives” have become increasingly mainstreamed.

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Alternative Agriculture from Below

The term “alternative” agriculture is, in fact, not particularly well suited to the Nepal context. Alternative agriculture is meaningful only in opposition to something, generally industrialized, capitalist agriculture (often large-scale and globally interconnected). However, in Nepal, as we saw in chapter 3, agriculture remains primarily small-scale and only partially commercialized. In the 1960s, the introduction of Green Revolution programs of improvement led to the uneven take up of modern commercial technologies by farmers. In the Terai in particular, farmers have been integrated into commercial markets including the use of improved hybrid seeds and reliance on chemical inputs, many of which have long been brought across the “open” Indian border (Bhatta and Doppler, 2011, p. 165).51 Rapid urban expansion has also spurred commercialization in surrounding agricultural areas (while simultaneously encroaching on them). As we saw in chapter 3, one of the more significant trends in agriculture across rural areas of Nepal has been the diversification of livelihood strategies out of agriculture (as opposed to commercialization and industrialization), particularly as the younger generation has pursued labour opportunities abroad.

However, interest in “organic” as an explicit alternative to chemical agriculture gained momentum in Nepal in the 1990s. In the 1980s, individual advocates like Judith Chase, an American who started an organic farm in Bhaktapur in 1987, were some of the first people to begin to popularize the concept of organic with its specific transnational resonances. In the 1990s, following the end of state restrictions on the activities of NGOs, groups like Nepal Permaculture Group (NPG), founded in 1992, and Institute for Sustainable Agriculture Nepal founded in 1994 (Dahal et al., 2016, p. 159) embraced improved organic technologies as appropriate and accessible for low-income and resource poor farmers. Since the 1990s, there has been a mushrooming of NGO-led organic initiatives and they remain at the forefront of the organic movement in Nepal. Many have linked into international movements through organizations like International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). As Dahal et al. (2016) describe in their account of the history of the organic movement in Nepal, support for organic among many of these NGOs came out of both concerns for the ecological and health impacts of growing chemical use, as well as locally situated work with cash poor farmers for whom inputs were a difficult additional expense.52

51 Bhatta and Doppler (2011, p. 165), for example, note that the “import of fertilizers increased significantly after the 1997 Fertilizer Deregulation Policy and the 2002 National Fertilizer Policy were implemented, putting in place subsidies for the transport of fertilizers, particularly for farmers in the hills and mid-hills.” 52 It is not possible here to do justice to Nepal’s long and rich history of movements and activism that have consolidated around alternative and specifically “organic” agriculture over the last several decades. For a more comprehensive account of the history of organic in Nepal see Dahal, Sharma, Bhandari, Regmi and Nandwani (2016).

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By the 2000s, organic agriculture had also been incorporated into the agendas of several peasants and farmers associations aligned with different parties. The Maoist aligned All Nepal Peasants Federation (ANFP), a Via Campesina member organization, has been particularly vocal and situates organic within a more radical program to challenge market-fundamentalism and the IMF (ANFP, 2014). ANFP advocacy was instrumental, for example, in the inclusion of a right to “food sovereignty” in the interim constitution. However, in practice, even with a majority Maoist government following the 2008 elections, politicians were slow to pursue alternatives to the models of export-oriented, capital-intensive agriculture on offer by donors. In the 2010’s, for example, a USAID-Monsanto controversy shone a spotlight on the failures of politicians in Kathmandu to provide leadership for an alternative to donor-led commercialization and liberalization. In 2011, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) quietly announced a new partnership between the Nepalese Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives and Monsanto, a U.S.-based chemical and seed company infamous for its consolidation of power in the sector and aggressive use of this power to undermine farmer autonomy. News of the agreement, which intended to introduce and promote hybrid maize seeds to farmers, galvanized an urban-based “Stop Monsanto in Nepal” campaign that included social media advocacy and public demonstrations (Acharya, 2013; Regmi, 2013; Adhikari 2014, p. 34).

Vocal activists expressed particular disappointment with Maoist leaders for failing to live up to promises for alternatives to corporate capitalism. In a public “letter” to then Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, for example, critical academic Mary Des Chene, touched on the Monsanto protests: “In the ongoing struggles against the entry of Monsanto, arguably the world’s most dangerous corporation, there has been a striking absence of and silence from your party. In the whole struggle for food sovereignty, your party has been nowhere to be found, or on the wrong side of the barricades” (Des Chene, 2014). Notably, other reporting revealed a more complex story regarding the position of the government. Not only were Monsanto products already widespread in Nepal, government officials were not simply lined up behind corporate interests. Public activism led Parliamentarians to call a hearing with the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives and the Nepal Agricultural Research Council, which featured a frank discussion about the USAID agreement and agricultural policy concerns. Both Parliamentarians and representatives of the ministry expressed their concerns about the impacts of hybrid seeds in Nepal, particularly seeds from foreign corporations. However, they also pointed to Nepal’s lack of food security (in terms of self-sufficiency) and the pressure that they face from corporation and donors in driving agricultural policy (Shrestha, 2011b).

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The Stop Monsanto movement was remarkably successful, in part because of the receptive position of politicians and bureaucrats. The Natural Resources and Means Committee who called the hearing requested a report and scheduled a subsequent hearing. The public discussions led to a 2014 Supreme Court decision to temporarily ban genetically modified (GM) products in Nepal (although the original dispute had been over Monsanto hybrid seeds, not GM seeds) as well as temporary restrictions on the import of Monsanto non-GM hybrid seeds. Ram Dila Bhandari, chief seed development officer, said that his office “had also restricted Monsanto from supplying even hybrid seeds for the time being” because “there was intense pressure and criticism over Monsanto, we had no option other than to restrict it for some time” (“Monsanto Appeals for Unbanning Hybrid Seeds,” 2014).

Since the 1980s, the alternative and organic agriculture cause has gained popularity among activist and civil society organizations in Nepal. Many of the most vocal advocates have been urban-based intellectuals, civil society leaders and foreigners. Indeed, some critics of the movement have accused activists of idealism that is divorced from the everyday realities of most Nepali farmers. However, the traction of the organic movement in Nepal must also be understood in terms of its resonance with the concrete, situated experiences of many farmers. The growing number of farmer suicides across the border in India began to attract increased media attention in the 2000s and Nepali farmers saw instances of mass crop failures due to batches of faulty imported hybrid seeds, leading to protests and demonstrations (Koirala, 2014). Farmers expressed concerns over the ways in which chemicals interacted with the biophysical processes on their farms, the cycles of dependency created by fertilizer, and the toxic nature of pesticides (for examples from Jumla see chapter 6). Studies in areas with heavy chemical use in the 2000s suggest that most farmers were aware of negative environmental and health impacts of chemicals, even if there was limited technical knowledge of safety precautions (Shrestha, Koirala & Tamrakar, 2010; Atreya et al., 2012; Rijal et al., 2018).53 As such, while the formal organic movement had foreign and urban roots, and was vulnerable to accusations of idealism, principles of organic also resonated with the situated knowledges and experiences of many farmers across Nepal.54

53 A Kathmandu-based agriculture officer told me a story to illustrate his experience of farmer attitudes towards chemicals. He said that in the Terai, when a political strike had closed the roads and prevented fresh produce from reaching the market, farmers had dumped their produce on the road rather than taking it home to feed to their animals. They did this, he said, because they were concerned about the chemicals affecting their livestock (Government Officer, May 24, 2014). While I was unable to confirm this specific story, the anecdote points to a level of awareness and concern about the effects of chemicals among the farmers with whom he was working. 54 See Thottathil 2013 for a discussion of organic as a form of Polanyian “double movement” in the context of Kerala, India.

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Mainstreaming Alternatives: Organic

The Monsanto protests highlighted continued tensions between the priorities and politics of alternative agriculture proponents in civil society and the agendas of the national state and, more specifically, its donor- partners. However, from the 2000s on, we also find increased attention to elements of alternative agriculture agendas within mainstream agricultural development planning informed by the deepening hegemony of sustainable development paradigms. As scholarship has demonstrated, the consolidation of the sustainable development consensus over the 1990s and 2000s responded to social movement activism (like that of advocates in Nepal) and changing prospects for accumulation through the rise of “green capitalism,” shaped by changing patterns of consumption and new approaches to the “production of nature” (Smith, 2008; see also Lele, 1991; Watts, 2002; Friedmann, 2005). Trends in state and donor policy approaches in Nepal are informed by these broader ideological trajectories, as they articulate with domestic political dynamics.

Nepal’s donor-driven Agricultural Perspective Plan (APP), promulgated in 1995, provides an illustrative contrast to more recent agricultural policy approaches. Drafted by John Mellor Associates—a Washington DC, USA-based consulting firm—the APP featured a relatively narrow focus on input-driven commercialization and economic liberalization. Adhikari and Seddon argue that “whatever reservations might have been felt” about this policy line, they had been “suppressed in a context where there was a growing concern about food security, and successive governments of different political persuasions had ‘signed up’ to the Plan” (Adhikari and Seddon, 2003, p. 26). While the ambitious policy prescriptions and economic goals remained largely unrealized over the APP’s 15-year tenure, interim plans and policy documents reflect shifts in donor and state policy approaches, including increased attention to questions of ecological sustainability and conservation. Particularly in the years following the conflict, reinvigorated agricultural development planning reflected broader paradigm shifts, including the discourses of sustainable agriculture and interest in capitalizing on niche market opportunities.

National state support for alternative agriculture has tended to focus on the commercial potentials of growing markets for organic and exotic, specialty products. It is indicative, for example, that one of the first formal provisions for “organic agriculture” was in the National Agri-Business Promotion Policy of 2006. This policy document was “promulgated to provide momentum to agri-business promotion activities” and part of its focus was on the promotion of special production areas including “organic/pest free production” areas, as well as agriculture product export areas “to be developed in coordination with Special Economic

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Zones” (including one for Jumla) (PPTA Consultants, 2012, p. 203).55 In 2009 the government published officially sanctioned guidelines for organic certification processes.

As we can see, over the late 2000s and 2010s we find increased interest among state policy-makers and donors in organic agriculture but focused primarily on the “exchange value” potential of organic as a niche, value added, growth area for Nepal. The new Agriculture Development Strategy (ADS), which replaced the APP in 2015, is guarded regarding organic, mentioning it only once and specifically in the context of high value organic branding (Ministry of Agricultural Development, 2014, p. 193).56 A national assessment, compiled in preparation for the new Agricultural Development Strategy, stated that “it is considered that the concept of organics has been over-sold” (PPTA Consultants, 2012, p. 277). The ADS, like other recent donor-led value chain development projects (discussed below), recommend a more pragmatic focus on organic standardization through internationally recognized organic certification processes, limited to certain crops.

For policy makers in the Nepali state specifically, political concerns over growing dependence on food imports and declining national food self-sufficiency contributed to the narrower focus on the exchange value potentials of organic. The issue of self-sufficiency in terms of food production emerged as national priority in the late 2000s and has increased in prominence through the 2010s. Nepali leaders, particularly Communist Party Nepal (CPN) leader K.P. Oli who became Prime Minister in 2015, have continued to invoke a rhetoric of self-sufficiency or self-reliance demanding increased support for domestic agriculture and industry (including domestic hybrid seed and agricultural input production) as an alternative to foreign products. The potential negative impacts of a shift to organic on productivity has been an important talking point in debates over the merits of organic agriculture. For those concerned about self-sufficiency, interest in organic has been primarily directed not only to high value, niche commodities, but also to regions where production is already understood to be organic-by-default, as in the case of Jumla. The former General of the Department of Agriculture Bhairab Raj Kaini’s “Two Pronged Strategy” for agriculture in Nepal reflects a broader attitude among many Kathmandu planners. Kaini argues that “Nepal must increase its yields of food crops by using modern technologies including right fertilizers and plant protection chemicals.” But, alongside conventional agriculture aimed at increased food sufficiency, the government should also support

55 The Minister of Finance's 2009 Budget Speech (which, each year, announces important policy decisions for the coming year) includes the “arrangement for making available internationally recognized certificate will be made free of cost for the export of organic agricultural produces” alongside “Rs. 50 million to provide 50 percent capital subsidy on the cost of machinery equipment to the organic fertilizer factory to be established by cooperatives” (Budget Speech 2009, point 77). 56 The document does also call for support for organic and bio-fertilizer as “supplementary or complementary” to inorganic fertilizers (Ministry of Agricultural Development, 2014, p. 102).

117 organic agriculture, specifically for high value markets and in areas that are already largely organic-by- default. “Crops selected for organic farming should be geared towards both domestic and international markets. Areas where chemical pesticides and inorganic fertilizers are not in common use and Farm Yard Manure (FYM) and organic materials for compost are easily available are considered ideal for organic farming” (Kaini, 2014).

Donors, on the other hand, have remained more skeptical of political goals of national food self-sufficiency, focusing instead on increasing the competitiveness of Nepali products in regional and global markets. However, the approach to organic among donors more or less aligned with national policy makers’ emphasis on organic for exchange value. The World Bank's 2009 Project for Agriculture Commercialization and Trade (PACT), for example, was one of the first to focus on organic certification, in this case for coffee. Donor interest in organic also aligns with increasingly prominent commitments to sustainability. With steady pressure from environmental watchdogs and increased institutionalization of environmental impact assessments, a focus on specialty, niche markets for organic produce allows donors and projects to claim environmental conservation benefits in their market expansion projects—to tic the boxes as it were. The authors of IFAD’s High Value Agriculture Program Project Design Document illustrate this logic in their response to the environmental impact prompt: “As the focus is on the development of premium niche market value chains, which are often linked to organic and chemical-free production techniques, the production of high value crops under the project would most likely have a positive rather than negative impact on the environment” (HVAP Project Design Document, 2009, p. 42).

State and donor support for organic began with coffee and tea but growing regional and domestic demand for organics has prompted the expansion of interest to a broader range of potential export crops and products targeted to the organic markets in urban areas in Nepal and beyond. Domestic demand for organic was rising in large part in response to increased awareness of often unsafe levels of chemicals used agricultural products headed to urban areas in Nepal. In 2014, these concerns were making headlines following a Rapid Pesticide Residue Analysis Laboratory set up at the Kalimati Fruit and Vegetable Market in Kathmandu, which found that 15% of produce analysed had chemical “levels unfit for human consumption.” Other studies around the same time highlighted the extent to which banned pesticides were being used (Awale, 2014a; “Authorities Expand Inspections KTM Post,” 2016). As Awale put it, writing in 2014, “Suddenly the danger of pesticides is all over the mainstream media, and the Nepali public has a new awareness about poisonous vegetables. While urban consumers are faced with uncertainty about what is safe to eat, farmers have been affected by falling demand for produce” (Awale, 2014b).

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Concerns about pesticides have helped to fuel the expansion of organic retail outlets, particularly in Kathmandu. A small but growing number of high-end farmers’ markets in Kathmandu have offered one outlet for organic products, sold alongside fine cheeses made by an authentic Frenchman, fresh pasta, espresso and crepes. The prices and the social spaces of these markets, located in luxury restaurants and hotels, unabashedly cater to a narrow clientele of elites and foreigners.57 However, in the past decade, a growing number of specialty shops and distributors are marketing organic products in the Kathmandu Valley, catering to an expanding urban middle class (for example “Organic World and Fair Trade Future” and “Kathmandu Organics”). The expanding market share of supermarkets in urban areas, also catering to the middle class, is another important outlet for organic products.58

Mainstreaming Alternatives: Agro-Biodiversity

In recent years, agrobiodiversity has emerged as another area of sustainable development concern in national agricultural agendas. Donor-supported interest in agro-biodiversity conservation actually has a fairly long history in Nepal. Transnational, institutionalized, agro-biodiversity programs, and the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) (renamed Biodiversity International) specifically, grew out of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) network of research institutes responsible for the international development and deployment of improved seeds (the same seeds, critics point out, that are now threatening indigenous biodiversity). Institutionalized support for agro- biodiversity conservation consolidated in the 1990s alongside concerns for biodiversity conservation more broadly. Over time, focus has increasingly centred on the loss of agricultural biodiversity on-farm or in situ (as opposed to ex situ collection in seed banks).59 International biodiversity conservation efforts have been led by IPGRI/Biodiversity International and institutions like the Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species and International Centre for Underutilised Crops (which were merged under “Crops for the Future,” Joshi et al., 1998; Upadhyay, 1998; Chaudhary et al., 2004; Pratap & Sthapit, 1998 ).

In Nepal, the organization Local Initiatives for Biodiversity Research and Development (LI-BIRD) has been particularly influential in leading biodiversity conservation efforts in the country and a key partner in

57 For example, a farmers’ market at a high-end restaurant called 1905 was started in 2010. Another foreign-oriented restaurant and hotel called Yellow House began hosting a farmers’ market in 2013. 58 A 2015 study identified 22 organic outlets in Kathmandu and Lalitpur. At the time, the researchers estimated that these outlets encompassed “almost all outlets selling organic products, fully or partially” but acknowledged the lack of reliable sources accounting (Singh & Maharjan, 2017, p. 154). 59 Wood and Lenne (1997), for example, point to an “emerging paradigm” of on farm conservation initiatives at the time.

119 transnational agrobiodiversity initiatives. The organization was founded in 1995/1996 by a group of agricultural professionals connected with the Lumle Research Centre.60 LI-BIRD has a strong research mandate and has devoted much of its efforts to in situ field trials for neglected and indigenous crops. Since the founding of LI-BIRD, IPGRI/Biodiversity International has been a key funder of the Nepali NGO. LI- BIRD has also gained significant national recognition and have worked closely with state offices in policy formulation and program implementation.

As a party to the Convention on Biodiversity (which entered into force in 1994)—and part of one of Myers’ original biodiversity “hotspots” (Myers et al., 2000)—biodiversity conservation has received considerable policy attention in Nepal over the last couple of decades, including the 2007 Agriculture Bio-diversity Policy (2006/2007) with the stated objectives of protecting, promoting and utilizing bio-diversity and genetic resources for food security and poverty reduction (PPTA Consultants, 2012, p. 298). Nepal’s 2010- 2013 Three Year Plan explicitly mentions “conserving and utilizing agrobiodiversity,” specifically in view of promoting climate change resilience. In 2014, LI-BIRD also took a leading role in the creation of a new National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan.

In recent years, interests in in situ agro-biodiversity conservation have also dovetailed with changing knowledge regimes in food security (Malapit, Kadiyala, Quisumbing, Sunningham & Tyagi, 2013). In particular, we find increasingly nuanced attention to nutrition beyond simplistic calorie intake models. While concerns about nutrition in the 1990s focused primarily on fortification and bio-fortification61 (Kimura, 2013), there has been growing interest in linking nutrition goals to agricultural development policies. Nutrition driven agriculture has been focused on the promotion of diversified production and indigenous crops in particular, many of which have been identified as higher in nutritional value than commercialized grains and processed foods (United Nations System Committee on Nutrition, 2013, p. 54; National Planning Commission, 2012). Policy documents like the Multi-Sector Nutrition Plan, for example, recognize that “Minor crops like millet and buckwheat are very rich in minerals and fibres and food like yams and potato are rich in energy.” As part of its core programming the Nutrition Plan includes interventions in which, “apart from the conventionally promoted staple crops, the nutritional importance of the minor crops/indigenous crops will be shared with household members” in addition to recipe development activities (National Planning Commission, 2012, p. 38). Women, and mothers specifically,

60 The Lumle Centre itself was started as a skills training center for ex-Ghurka soldiers by the British. Ghurka soldiers refers to people from Nepal, or of Nepali descent, recruited to serve in the British army, a practice dating back to the early 1800s. 61 Fortification refers to the addition of nutrients to processed foods. Biofortification entails the modification of crops to produce more nutritious yields.

120 figure centrally in the biopolitics of nutrition and are the primary targets of nutrition-related interventions (see also Kimura, 2014; Jaroz, 2011).

Finally, attention to the ecological and nutritional benefits of minor, indigenous crops has informed the discourse a budding “local food” movement, primarily centered among the urban middle and upper class. The same venues promoting holistic organic products have also embraced the transnational popularity of local food, featuring various specialty products including millet flour, Jumla red rice, to seabuckthorn and nettle powder. Rising political tensions between Nepal and India in 2015 also contributed to the politicization of local foods. In 2015, when tensions with India flared over the rights of Madhesi (Terai ) communities in the new constitution, culminating in the multi-month border blockade, the ensuing shortages fuelled political rhetoric on the need for food self-sufficiency. Local foods (notably foods of the central hills, not those the Terai or mountains) were taken up as symbols of Nepali nationalism. In September 2015, ANFSU, the student wing of ruling coalition CPN-UML, “cooked Nepali traditional food ‘Gundruk’ and ‘Dhindo’ outside the gate of Indian Embassy in Lazimpat, Kathmandu” in a “symbolic protest against India’s ‘undeclared blockade’” (“UML students cook ‘Gundruk’ & ‘Dhindo’,” 2015).

Making Alternative Markets

Contemporary iterations of ethical market-making have been significantly shaped by the booming popularity of the analytical approach and policy toolkits of “value chain development” (VCD). The rise of value chain development speaks to a notable shift in agricultural development planning over the past decade or so.62 While scholars like Werner, Bair and Fernandez (2014) point out that the term value chain development has been widely applied to a variety of loosely similar private sector development strategies, its distinguishing feature hinges on a “whole chain” focus.63 In the agriculture sector, VCD programs

62 In a survey of value chain guidelines and manuals specific to forestry and agriculture, for example, Nang'ole, Mithöfer and Franzel (2011) review thirty-two from institutions ranging from INGOs/foundations (Practical Action; Helvetas; Catholic Relief Services; Ford Foundation), to international research institutes (International Potato Center; FAO; International Centre for Tropical Agriculture [CIAT]; International Institute of Rural Reconstruction; International Development Research Centre [IDRC]), to bilateral donors (GTZ; Danish Institute for International Studies [DIIS]; USAID) to the World Bank. Terms to describe methodologies of interventions also range widely and include: rapid market appraisal; participatory market chain approach (PMCA); participatory value chain analysis; rapid appraisals of chain performance; value chain promotion; chain development; chain empowerment; chain-wide learning; sub-sector analysis; sub-sector/value chain analysis. 63 Value chain development (VCD) contrasts with the orientation of programs like DFID's Market for the Poor (M4P), for example, which describes itself as aiming to “address identified systemic constraints and bring about large-scale and sustainable change” (Elliott et al. 2008, p. 102 cited in Humphrey & Navas-Alemán, 2010, p. 26). As such M4P tends to involve a complex diagnosis of policy options and a broad range of interventions, from property rights to basic education and health services whereas VCD interventions tend to focus on technical interventions at specific points in the value chain (Humphrey & Navas-Alemán, 2010, p. 26).

121 distinguish themselves from an earlier generation of agricultural development that had focused primarily on the production side of agriculture, targeting supports to farmers in the form of extension outreach and credit facilities. In contrast, VCD prioritizes “demand driven” interventions, aimed at addressing weak links in the chains connecting consumers to producers. In Nepal, many of the early, large-scale, value chain projects focused on standard, conventionally produced, high-value crops like vegetables, ginger and cardamom. Yet with the difficulty of establishing a competitive edge vis-à-vis neighbours like China and India, a number of VCD projects—particularly those targeted to the high hills and mountains—have been designed to take advantage of new market demands for exotic, niche and environmentally sustainable products.

Value chain development approaches are, as Ouma, Boeckler and Linder (2013, p. 228) point out, significant in that markets are “not seen just to be ‘there’ and ‘do’ things as soon as all obstacles have been removed, they have actively to be created and shaped by—among others—the work of development organizations.” The undergirding proposition is that markets can and should be engineered to be more socially inclusive and sustainable. What is also remarkable is the extent to which the rationality and vocabulary of value chain development has permeated the development world. Thus, while growing demand for more ethical products is viewed as an economic opportunity, states and donors are also identifying a need for active intervention to support the development of these ethical commodity markets. A Practical Action report, for example, discusses how markets “for commodities like organic fertiliser do not magically materialise; they need to be developed, in some cases by NGOs” (Cook, Henderson, Kharel, Begum, Rob, & Piya, 2006).

Value chain development has also begun to infiltrate biodiversity conservation approaches. Until relatively recently, agro-biodiversity programs were treated as largely separate from economic development, but the past decade has seen increased efforts to merge the objectives. The emerging field of “biodiversity economics,” for example, focuses on economic strategies for valuing and marketing biodiversity for conservation purposes and Nepal has been a key site for studies (Bardsley & Thomas, 2005; Smale, Bellon, Jarvis, & Sthapit, 2001; Pascual & Perrings, 2007). Value chain development has been taken up as a guiding model in both agro-biodiversity conservation and nutrition programming. Among other major conservation donors, Biodiversity International has developed a “holistic value chain approach for neglected and underutilized species (NUS),” which includes “market strategies that build upon agricultural biodiversity” with initial focus on Andean grains and minor millets in South Asia, including programs in Nepal in partnership with LI-BIRD. They collaborated, for example, on “Enhancing the Contribution of Neglected and Underutilized Species to Food Security and to Incomes of the Rural Poor,” a program which ran from

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2002-2004 and sought to build value chains for traditional millets through value addition (primarily in the form of new recipes for goods like cakes and cookies), but also through consumer education campaigns (Prasad et al., 2010, p. 107). Major donors like UNEP, GTZ, ADB and USAID have also sponsored programs that explicitly aim to address agro-biodiversity conservation through market development.

Notably, activist and organic advocacy NGOs have also become actively engaged in alternative agriculture market-making. LI-BIRD has increasingly embraced and incorporated value chain development logics into their programming, expanding well beyond their original research mandate to support initiatives like value chain financing. Groups like Nepal Permaculture Group have also become actively involved in supporting organic value chain development (Shrestha, 2013), partnering with international donors and Kathmandu based organic wholesalers like Organic World and Fairtrade Future. However, in contrast to the way that organic figures in many of the donor funded value chain development projects, targeted to high end, elite markets, organizations like Nepal Permaculture Group and LI-BIRD have tended to focus more on the situated ecology of production and the promotion of more locally-scaled markets to link nutrition, biodiversity and livelihood improvement.

As this discussion demonstrates, over the last few decades key elements of the alternative agriculture movement, like organic production methods and agro-biodiversity conservation, have increasingly been taken up within mainstream agricultural development agendas, often in line with governmental logics of extending and deepening commodification. At the same time, market logics are being harnessed to promote new biopolitical aims, reflecting changes in health and environmental concerns that are driving both consumer demand and biopolitical rationalities of governance. As Vandergeest has suggested in an analysis of the rise of organic agriculture in Thailand, over the past couple of decades, the paradigmatic “good farmer” of the Green Revolution era development imaginary “has been displaced by the new ecological farmer who protects food, consumers, the environment, and his own health through avoiding poisonous chemicals, and protects indigenous biodiversity in seed varieties” (2006, p. 17). It is also not only state and mainstream development actors who are embracing ethical market-making, but also a wide array of governmental actors including environmental and activist organizations. New understandings of the value of non-industrialized agrarian frontiers, have been harnessed in value chain development approaches aimed at engineering market extension into agrarian frontiers both in the name of improving pro-poor inclusive market access and ecological conservation. The above discussion thus speaks to the remarkable ubiquity, but also the diverse politics, of transnational eco-governmentality. I turn now to the Jumla context and an examination of how the above dynamics are playing out in relation to the particular political-territorial imperatives of the post-conflict moment.

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Jumla Territorial Politics

Post-Conflict State/Donor (Re)Territorialization

In order to understand how these diverse iterations of sustainable development rationalities have converged in governmental interventions in Jumla, it is important to attend to the political and territorial dynamics following the end of the decade long conflict between Maoist revolutionaries and the state. In Nepal, reassessments of agrarian frontiers—including initiatives aimed at preserving and capitalizing on Nepal’s non-industrialized agro-ecologies—coincide with new urgency to extend state presence, particularly in remote areas.

Road building was one manifestation of the imperative of state (re)territorialisation following the conflict, particularly in remote areas (World Bank, 2013; ADB, 2015).64 A key factor in the urgency for roads was the extension of the state security apparatus. The roads-security nexus was made particularly visible as the Nepali Army was recruited into the task of road building in the midst of the civil conflict. On the Karnali Highway, when the Department of Roads found itself “unable to arrange blasting operations and prepare the sites for private contractors to undertake civil works due to the ongoing insurgency” the Army completed the final stretch of the Highway to Jumla (World Bank, 2007, p. 5). The need for roads was, of course, associated with more than just securitization. They were also key to the extension of the modernized market relations that were envisioned as key to securing lasting peace. At least among development partners, it was “well recognized that the lack of opportunity for advancement in rural areas contributed to endemic poverty, which fuelled the conflict” (ADB, 2015, p. 16; Subedi, 2012). As a World Bank Road Sector Development Project (RSDP) report explains the logic “Given that exclusion and poverty have been the major drivers of conflict in Nepal, RSDP interventions can be considered to be associated with peace” (World Bank, 2016, p. 39).

Admittedly, attention to inclusive economic development was not a top priority in the immediate aftermath of the conflict—incoming aid focused primarily on immediate projects of relief and distribution (as in the public works programs discussed in chapter 5) and in the capital, as Subedi (2012) argues, economic agendas took a backseat to party politics. Moving into the 2010s, however, we find a shift toward more

64 The links between these rationalities are visible in projects like the ADB's Rural Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Sector Development Project which brought together “enhanced poverty reduction and inclusive development; improved and inclusive governance and decentralization; and strengthened support for rural infrastructure development [specifically roads]” (Asian Development Bank, 2015, p. 20).

124 concerted programs of economic integration.65 As a 2013 evaluation of a World Food Program project points out, “Donor partner and Government of Nepal key [informants] indicated that Nepal is seeing significant changes in the focus of development programmes. There is an increased focus on ‘market- driven’ programmes, including those from USAID (Feed the Future) and DFID ([Rural Access Programme] RAP)” (O’Reilly, Shrestha, Flint & Rupantaran Nepal Field Team, 2013, p. 49). Similarly, a 2013 International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) strategic assessment and planning report for Nepal, describes the organization’s shift away from “community-based natural resource management… in isolated, remote marginal areas in the hills and mountains” to a new strategy that, “prioritized commercialization of agriculture and high-value crops, and integrating farmers in the market.” The new strategy advocated “concentrating the support in selected―growth nodes or clusters in the poorest areas of the hills and mountains, mainly the road corridors with market access, while including more isolated communities through infrastructure investments such as community access roads” (IFAD, 2013, point 63).

While both roads and market access were celebrated across the political spectrum for their development impact, planners also recognized new threats, specifically in relation to environmental concerns. The completion of the Karnali Highway up to the Jumla headquarters in 2007, and the gradual improvement of road connectivity over the following decade, made Jumla a prime location for improving projects targeting frontier agro-ecologies. The expansion of the road network was clearly opening opportunities to realize and exploit the value of Jumla resources at new scales. At the same time, the road also generated concerns for the potential over-exploitation and pollution. New biopolitical anxieties over the health problems associated with the arrival of commercial processed foods in rural Nepal (alongside celebrations of the nutritional benefits of indigenous crops) added another layer of concern to the potential negative impacts of roads.

The 2012 Agricultural Development Strategy Assessment report (PPTA Consultants, 2012) speaks to these dual imperatives of development and conservation in Jumla (and the surrounding Karnali region) in the context of increased connectivity. In its profiles of the various eco-regions of the country the mid-western mountains eco-region (which is made up of the 5 districts of the Karnali), the main opportunities identified were: “Rich in biodiversity; Production of organic fruits; Export of [medicinal and herbal plants] MAPs; More communal land.” The threats were identified as: “Over exploitation of natural resources; Extinction of flora and fauna.” As we find here, the Karnali region is viewed as both valuable and vulnerable, precisely

65 The 2011 Budget Speech, for example, announced a Highly Remote and Backward Area Development Program in which introduced a “special program and made budget provision to expand the economic, social infrastructure and services in those districts of Karnali and Karnali vicinity, that are not been included in national development mainstreams due to difficult terrain…” (Ministry of Finance, 2011)

125 because of its frontier status in relation to commercial markets. The response to this situation of vulnerable value, is a call for carefully managed market development to sustainably exploit and thus conserve local agro-ecological values.

Karnali Autonomy and Regional Territorialisation

National state and donor actors were not the only ones interested in extending markets into remote regions. In Jumla, political leaders were also demanding greater integration into the national economy, specifically through improved roads. The particular geographical politics of the organic district declaration, however, were also informed by regional and district-scaled negotiations over territory and self-determination in the context of nationwide movements claiming regional autonomy. As we saw in the last chapter, shifts in institutions of governance over the course of the 1990s and 2000s were reshaping the presence of the local state in Jumla. While educational attainment led to increased representation of Jumla residents in government, nation-wide programs of decentralization in the 1990s also transferred authority and budgets to district and sub-district administrative bodies. The amount of funds transferred to village-level local government bodies increased significantly over the course of the 1990s and 2000s with the rationale of enabling “the local bodies to become the main channel for fostering and implementing local development” (United Nations Development Organization, 2009, p. v; Lewison & Rankin, n.d.). During the conflict, however, the legitimacy of the local state in Jumla seriously deteriorated. The suspension of elections (the term for the last, pre-conflict elected officials ended in 2002) left a vacuum of political power that was officially filled by under-resourced, state-appointed bureaucrats. Meanwhile, the Maoists pursued a policy of displacing the “old state” and by 2002, “this process had intensified to the point that a majority of the VDC offices in the country were effectively empty” (Asia Foundation, 2012, p. 2). As we have seen, in Jumla, Maoists gained control over a significant part of the district and installed parallel governance structures that were in operation through the end of the conflict.

Following the peace accords, local governance coalesced in a “consensus politics” approach. With the official dissolution of elected bodies in 2002, local bureaucrats like VDC secretaries found themselves “almost overnight” (as an Asian Foundation study puts it) responsible for all VDC functions, “without any local supervision or political legitimacy” (Asian Foundation, 2012, p. 4). In this context, bureaucrats turned to informal consultations with local power brokers, opening “an entirely new political space, outside of formal procedures, where government decisions were made” (Asian Foundation, 2012, p. 4). The Ministry of Local Development later approved the Local Self-Governance Regulations, which laid the groundwork for formalizing a system of “consensus politics” across the country in the All Party Mechanism and

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Integrated Plan Formulation Committees.66 Both were intended to promote coordination among the political parties acting in an advisory capacity. The APM was revoked officially in January 2012 in response to practices of collusion (The Carter Center, 2014). However, the systems of government established at this time have continued to operate informally in districts like Jumla. As Rankin, Nightingale, Hamal and Sigdel (2018, p. 286) point out, the consensus politics of the post-conflict period has worked to reproduce elite authority, but it has also required a degree of functional collaboration among multiple and overlapping interests to “actually plan and get things done.”

While district-scale governments struggled to re-establish their legitimacy, nation-wide struggles erupted over how to redraw political boundaries in the new constitution. Debates over the political geography of the new Nepali state were informed by identity-based political mobilizations for self-determination across Nepal. These claims were voiced both through and beyond the Maoist party, with a degree of support from donors and transnational indigenous peoples’ movements. Mobilizations claiming cultural and political space were concretized in calls for ethnically defined autonomous regions in the federal re-structuring of the country. Indeed, the proposal to map new state boundaries on the basis of ethnically defined territories became the most contentious single political issue in the decade following the end of the conflict. In Jumla, despite being numerically and politically dominated by high caste Hindus, political leaders sought to establish identity-based claims as a regional people facing a legacy of discrimination. The Karnali Liberation Front was one of several regional fronts that emerged in the Maoist insurgency, among a larger number of ethnic parties or “fronts” supporting the Maoists. According to a booklet published by a leader of the Karnali Liberation Front (Lal Bahadur, 1992/93) “Its objective is the restoration and autonomy of King Bali’s territories: Mugu, Humla, Dolpo, Jumla, Kalikot and part of Bajura” (Lecomte-Tilouine, 2004, p. 127; see also Upreti, 2009, p. 64).67

It is significant that Jumli identity projects have been rooted by the founding historical narratives of resistance to the Kathamandu-based Shah monarchy—a narrative that centers on high caste men and their acts of resistance. The identity-based autonomy movement helps to shore up hegemonic cultural-politics while also articulating claims vis-à-vis other regional movements and the central state. Political leaders have mobilized this place-based identity in specific political-territorial projects like the Karnali Autonomous Movement. The Karnali Autonomous Movement has been a much less significant political

66 The APM was to serve only as an advisory body to the Integrated Plan Formulation Committee an “inclusive group that consists of the VDC secretary, the health post in-charge, the public school headmaster, members from excluded groups and representatives of local NGOs, among others” (Asian Foundation, 2012, p. 14). 67 Lecomte-Tilouine points out that “it is worthy of note that this apparently Khas [the dominant hill Hindu ethnic group] liberation front has chosen a territorial label for itself” (2004, p. 127).

127 force than other identity-based movements including Adivāsī communities (the self-identified indigenous peoples of Nepal) and Madhēsī communities (those who culturally identify as people of the Terai region). However, the strength of territorial claims in the Karnali was made apparent in 2015 when a proposal to integrate the Karnali into an enlarged Western state spurred angry protests. Local politicians viewed the proposal as a threat to their political voice and mobilized political demonstrations in the district headquarters in which one person was killed.68 Importantly, in the case of the Karnali, autonomy was framed not in terms of secession and separation from the state but claims to special development funding to enable regional self-determination. Political rhetoric has centered on the Karnali’s rich natural resources and cultural heritage, which have been repressed by state exploitation and neglect. An excerpt from my interview with a prominent member of the Karnali Civil Struggle Committee provides a sense of the discourse of the Karnali Autonomous Movement.

Why does Karnali need a separate state? Because the Karnali was dominated by the Ghorkali [another term for Shah dynasty]. In 1846 [1790 A.D.]69 they captured our land, they killed the men above 12 years of age, our king went to Tibet, and they captured this place… our Nepali language is from Jumla, Sinja. We gave them language… and in return they captured us, they took everything… they captured the Karnali in 1846 and they only gave us a road in 2063 [2007 A.D.], only after 230 years. So we have said that we need a special state. They haven’t given anything to the Karnali; still we are in isolation, no electricity, no development, nothing. They have only dominated and exploited the Karnali people, natural resources, and cultural resources. They have taken everything; therefore, we need a special state, that is our demand… If the government gave us special power as a state, then we would organize. We have so many resources in the Karnali, 22 thousand megawatt electricity [potential from hydro], 1,500 different types of herbs, cultural resources, like language, temples, gompa [Buddhist monasteries or temples], tourism, Rara and Shey Phoksundo [famous lakes in the region], if the access was there, sadak [highway] not air access, if the highway access went to every VDC… then we could market our products, and raise our incomes. When road access reaches us then our opportunities will increase. Therefore, we have said to the government, if they provide three or four, five years of funding to the Karnali then they will see rising incomes. (NGO Officer, September 20, 2015)

As we can see from the rationale laid out above, projects of reclaiming a regional cultural heritage have intersected with revaluations of Jumla’s natural heritage. Local concerns over the loss of Karnali architecture, language and music dovetailed with concerns over threats to local biodiversity, natural beauty

68 Incidentally, some of the protestors also set fire to the horticulture research office at Rajikot, destroying the office. The office had previously been destroyed in the early 2000s by Maoists insurgents. I was told that it had been targeted because it was sited at a distance from the headquarters, making it hard for the police and army to protect. 69 He is using dates based on the Nepali calendar Vikram Samvat.

128 and indigenous crops. The reclamation of local food cultures has emerged as a key point of convergence for biopolitical (concerned with ecological and human health) and territorial (based on regional identity) projects. As we will see, celebrations of local food have also been coupled to new experimental market- making efforts in Jumla and beyond.

In this tumultuous political conjuncture, the “Organic Jumla” declaration resonated with more radical “populist” discourses while also presenting a vision for economic development and a reclamation of cultural heritage. It aimed to forge cooperation and buy-in among key actors within the district, while staking out a distinctive territorial identity within the nation at large—reframing its problems of remoteness and “backwardness” as a sustainable development opportunity. In doing so, district level political leaders assembled eco-governmental rationalities into regional territorializing project

Jumla Frontier Agro-Ecologies

In this section, I describe several different iterations of “eco-governmentality” in Jumla. Apples—which had been an entirely foreign crop just a few decades earlier, introduced with failed Green Revolution era programs of conventional agricultural modernization—had morphed into a symbol of Jumli identity and envoys of Jumla’s organic bounty. Meanwhile, interest in neglected, indigenous crop conservation merges with food security concerns and, remarkably, “high value” market development efforts. My focus is primarily on organic apples programs, but I also include consideration of how organic intersects with agro-biodiversity conservation concerns to highlight the diverse iterations of ethical market-making converging in Jumla (see Figure 4.1 for an illustration of district-scaled illustrations of the importance of organic).

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Figure 4.1: Jumla District Agriculture Development Office Organic brochure featuring both commercial crops like apples and cauliflower as well as celebrated “indigenous” crops like amaranth and millet.

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Apple is Jumla, Jumla is Apple

Āu sāthi āu hāmi euṭā khel khelau Come friend come, a game we will play Phal phul ko nām bhāne rāmro khel khelau” Let’s play the game called the name of the fruits Bhana sāthi himarā gāuñmā kē-kē phalphul Tell me friend what fruit is found in your village? pā'inchana? What are the fruits we eat to make health better? Śārīralā'ī nirōgī pārna kē-kē phalaphula Peach, walnut, apple, pear, kurpani and chuli khā'iñcana? The branches are hanging down because of heavy Āru, ōkhara, syā'u, nāsapātī, khurpānī ra culī fruiting Laṭaram'mai phalēkā chan rukhakā hāñgā jhulī We can start eating ripe fruit from Jeth Jēṭha bāṭai suru hunchana pākī kan khān We start eating to make our health better Śārīralāī nirōgī garna hāmī thālchau khān We have many types of fruits in our village too Hāmrī pani gāuñ gharamā dhērai tharī phal We get better from fruits as they make us healthy… Phalaphūlalē nirōgī banāi āuñdō raicha bal… There are also many types of apple, sweet and sour Syāu pani dhērai jātakā miṭhō ra amilā If the apples are ripe, we can see the ants Pākēkā guliyā syāumā gumdā chan kamilā We have different types of fruits Anēka tharī parikāra chan hāmrō phalaphūlakā So we have to eat them all and produce different Khānu parcha sabalē sāthī parikāra inakā. things

Selection from a song in the Jumla Apple Farming and Marketing school book, grades 1 to 3.

For many, apples were understood as central to Jumla’s new organic identity. As an officer visiting from the national fruit directorate put it in a meeting about a new state-led apple program (discussed in the following chapter), “apple is Jumla, Jumla is apple,” We saw at the beginning of the chapter that Ramjee’s own rationale for promoting organic in Jumla had centered on apples and the new export opportunities opened with the Karnali Highway. Government and development officers reiterated the logic of organic as a mechanism for adding value to commercial products, and apples in particular. As we saw in the previous chapter, enthusiasm for apples had burgeoned with the opening of the Karnali Highway. The improving road promised to unleash the market potential of apples, a potential that Jumla residents were clearly embracing. Yet, for state and donor agencies, current practices of production and marketing were also problematic, falling short of commercial potentials. Nepali apple farmers also faced fierce competition from large-scale Indian and Chinese orchards. The capture of organic value in price form promised to carve out a niche market for Jumla apples, raising incomes while providing an incentive to professionalize practices.

As we have seen, the presence and growing prominence of apples in the region emerged over time as a negotiated development compromise—it was, as Mosse (2005, p. 97) puts it, a process of “translating

131 idiosyncratic local interests … into demands that can be read as legitimate.” They occupied common ground between agricultural development officers charged with improving Jumla agriculture and residents in the midst of changing livelihood strategies. Yet apples had also become increasingly integral to the regional identity of the Karnali, and Jumla in particular. Apples even managed to find their way into primary and secondary school curricula. The 2007 National Curriculum Framework allowed schools to select two local, need-based subjects. In Jumla the two subjects identified by school officials were the Jumli language and apples. I interviewed the teacher in town who had been commissioned to assemble the curriculum and he described developing a passion for the subject. He wrote two levels of schoolbooks for lower and upper primary school students that included content ranging from songs and stories about apples to technical instructions for grafting saplings and producing jams and jellies (see Figure 4.2).70 With Jumla’s organic- by-default status now identified as a valuable Jumla asset, the apple, this time an organic apple, resurfaced as the symbol of Jumla’s prosperous future.

Figure 4.2: Apple Farming and Marketing school books, grades 1 to 3.

70 The enterprise had ended disastrously for him. He had fronted the money for publication and was never fully repaid by the school system. While the books were apparently only still in use in a few schools I spoke with adults who had used the schoolbooks to learn about techniques of apple cultivation to apply in their orchards.

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Reclaiming Food Heritage

Apple development projects focused on capitalizing on Jumla’s organic-by-default status through the capture of organic as a form of value addition. However, within the broadly utopian vision of the organic district declaration we also find other iterations of conservation and marketization targeting Jumla agro- ecologies, specifically centered on agro-biodiversity. Jumla has been a key site in agro-biodiversity conservation projects in Nepal for several decades. In 1997 Jumla was one of three sites chosen for the Nepal component of the global project on “Strengthening The Scientific Basis of In Situ Conservation of Agricultural Biodiversity” managed by the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) and Biodiversity International in collaboration with LI-BIRD (FAO, 2008, p. 31).71 LI-BIRD has become a relatively well- established presence in Jumla—more specifically in two sites in Talium and Haku VDCs—and the district has remained key field site for in situ conservation projects. Indeed, because of LI-BIRD’s historical presence in the district, Jumla agro-biodiversity has become—quite literally—their poster child for mountain agro-ecologies in need of conservation (see “Himalayan Superfoods” Sthapit, 2014). It has been a focus site for projects studying and conserving crops like red marsī rice, foxtail millet and amaranth.

Similarly, Jumla has been a target for mounting concerns over the negative health implications of improperly modernizing diets and has figured centrally in national discourses linking nutrition and indigenous crop conservation. In the Karnali, nutrition discourses have focused specifically on the long history of food aid programs in the region, which came to be understood as undermining local crop production and brainwashing people into eating monotonous and unhealthy diets of white rice (Adhikari, 2008). A 2013 news story about the Karnali captures these concerns:

Many argue the government’s decades-long rice subsidy programme has badly shaken the production of local indigenous foods that grow well in the area such as ‘kaguno’ [foxtail millet], barley, buckwheat, beans and finger millet, while also creating dependency on outside assistance. They say rice subsidies should be reduced and then stopped and replaced with incentives and activities to cultivate local crops. The subsidies have undermined the ability of local people to cope with shocks, they say. “We need to promote those traditional crops [like buckwheat] whose production has been undermined by the distribution of subsidized or free rice,” said Bashu Aryal, country programme officer of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development. “Seed intervention is the solution, not the distribution of rice.” (“Rethinking food insecurity in Nepal’s Karnali region,” 2013)

71 “The objectives of the project were to generate understanding of farmers decision making processes for in situ conservation of domesticated crops along with habitats of their adaptation, strengthening national capabilities to carry out research activities in the area and enhancing the value of agrobiodiversity by direct involvement of farmers and other stakeholders” (Gautam, 2008, p. 31)

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While food aid in the Karnali has been the target of particular criticism, biopolitical concerns about changing diets in the region echo broader concerns about the nutritional impacts of market integration across rural Nepal, particularly with the arrival of roads.72

Also reflecting broader trends, market-oriented approaches have been taken up in agro-biodiversity conservation in Jumla. Marsī rice in particular has received attention as a nutritional, threatened, and potentially high value indigenous crop. More recently, an expanding range of crops have been targeted for market-making efforts including beans, millet, buckwheat and amaranth. Local agricultural fairs were an important vehicle for agricultural diversity programming. A 2015 Food Festival and seed show for indigenous crops speaks to the vision for market-based. The description of the event from the Karnali & Our Pride Facebook page provides a sense of how improving governmental agendas intersect with reclamations of local traditions and cultural identities:

For the first time in Jumla, a Food festival and demonstration of seeds of indigenous crops has been organize[d] by the Regional Hotel Association of Jumla, coordinated with different line agencies… NGO’s and INGO’s working in district… There were forty stalls and many cultural groups performing deauda [a style of folk song], dramas and singing songs related to indigenous crops and their importance. In the stalls different food items prepared from local crops including millet and buckwheat were put on display for the protection, promotion and marketization of the local and indigenous crops of Jumla. Similarly, other local food items—cake and momos [dumplings] prepared from millet and mushrooms, pudding rice prepared from Jumli porso [sic] millet (chino), and activities like making organic pesticides were on display in the stalls. The Festival is organised with the objective of increasing incomes through the business of different food items by protecting and promoting different food crops and encouraging local farmers to be involved in the production of local crops. (Karnali & Our Pride, 2015)

Conclusion

The quality turn in food and agriculture—reflecting important shifts in the “historical geographies of ‘seeing’ and ‘ordering’ nature” (Braun, 2000, p. 14)—has led to re-valuations of agro-ecologies, particularly at the frontiers of industrial agriculture. New appreciation of the harms and risks related to capital intensive, industrialized food systems, have transformed political rationalities of improvement in places like Jumla. As opposed to occupants of wasted land with a backwards culture, Jumla residents have been gradually reframed as the stewards of valuable natural and cultural heritage in the discourses of

72 The topic of nutrition was so en vogue at the time of this research that I personally overlapped with at least 5 other foreign graduate students conduct research on changing diets and declining food diversity in the Karnali.

134 governmental planners and nostalgic, health conscious urbanites and Jumla political and civil society leaders have taken an active role in shaping this reframing. The mechanisms for stewardship, meanwhile, have tended to center on innovative forms of marketization and the valorization of socio-natural values through ethical markets. However, within the broad umbrella of ethical market-making, we find diverse iterations of eco-governmental rationalities—mobilized in both territorializing projects aimed at the extension of national and transnational markets into remote areas, and in assertions of local autonomy in the context of contested political geographies. The celebration of Jumla socio-natures is at once resonant with political subjectivities of local Karnali autonomy and national Nepali identity (in contrast from the 1960s when national identity entailed a suppression and exclusion of local food cultures) as well as global subjectivities of the responsible, local food consumer.

In state, donor and NGO promotional materials, converging projects that aim to valorize Jumla agro- ecologies are often presented as seamlessly complementary. World Vision’s ambitious nutrition project in Jumla, provides one example of this admixture, encompassing:

…new and improved varieties of seeds, seedlings and saplings, modern techniques of cultivation, protection and support to increase the production of indigenous varieties of cereals and grains and high value crops... Indigenous cash and cereal crops, fruit trees as well as non-forest timber products and medicinal herbs were [also] promoted as income- generation opportunities. (World Vision, 2010, p. 15)

The World Vision program (like the food festival) presents a utopian vision for organic Jumla, a vision of prosperous farmers conserving and celebrating Jumla’s natural and cultural heritage through both modernizing entrepreneurialism and the preservation of tradition. In the following chapters, I focus in on a specific slice of this heterogenous eco-governmentality—namely development programs supporting organic apple markets—in order to explore emergent limits in exchange value approaches to organic, and tensions between the different sustainable development rationalities at work in Jumla.

Chapter 5 | Capturing Organic Value: Governmental Technologies

Introduction

In the previous chapter we looked at how multi-scalar political rationalities converged in Jumla in the 2000s and informed the organic district declaration. I discussed the diffusion of a transnational eco- governmentality in which previously neglected and marginalized agrarian environments and populations come into view as needing protection and improvement through the extension and deepening of market relations. In these new governmental rationalities, markets are identified as a means of protecting vulnerable ecologies and human health, as well as addressing poverty, through the incorporation of marginalized populations into “inclusive” national and global markets. We also saw how the rationalities of inclusive, sustainable market-making are assembled within a variety of political and territorial projects.

In this chapter, I focus in on the governmental technologies deployed by a few specific development projects. While organic apples emerged as a focus of ethical market-making programs, there is a shift from populist and relief-oriented projects (immediately following the conflict) to ones focused increasingly on professionalization and economies of scale. Among new market-making interventions, I highlight how the commodification of organic has demanded deeper transformations in agricultural practices—from a mix of use value and exchange value production involving the sale of surpluses, towards competitive exchange value production. I begin the chapter with a brief review of scholarly approaches to market-making and the commodification of nature. This works provides a basis for understanding commodification as a far- reaching process of socio-material transformations. I then introduce recent apple market-making interventions and key differences in the governmental rationalities and technologies among them. Finally, I examine attempts to wrestle with tensions among the multiple aims of market development, ecological conservation and social inclusion within specific development projects. I highlight how significant responsibility for managing these tensions has been delegated to local development actors.

Frontier Regions of Commodification

Chapter 4 introduced value chain development, an analytical framework and model for intervention that has gained prominence within the development world. Value chain development (VCD) is one iteration of programs of “inclusive business” and ethical market-making that emerged in the “post”-Washington Consensus (WC) era, a period in which the failures of de-regulated markets in the 1980s and 1990s prompted diverse reform efforts (Sheppard & Leitner, 2010). New forms of selective market governance,

135 136 like VCD, were embraced as technical solutions to environmental and social market failures that also opened new frontiers of accumulation. As an applied model of development intervention, VCD aims to identify weaknesses in a given value chain and actively create linkages (both in the form of formal contract relations and more informal “trust building”) between individual firms and producers to achieve “win-win” outcomes. VCD works to deflect challenges to neoliberal ideologies of market efficiency—and ultimately the fundamental morality of markets—by providing a practical, versatile set of targeted tools (compiled in numerous value chain “toolkits”) for addressing market failures on a case-by-case (chain-by-chain) basis (Werner, Bair & Fernández, 2014). In doing so, they work to police the boundary of what can be thought of as political and attempt to insulate markets from the arena of political debate by offering technical fixes for harmful market externalities.

The revelation, in the post-Washington Consensus era, that markets must be made is not a new idea for social scientists and political economists. Critical scholarship has long worked to deconstruct and denaturalize processes of market formation from a variety of theoretical perspectives including Marxist political economy, Polanyian understandings of embedded markets, and science and technology studies. Performative economics, building on actor-network and assemblage theories, has been particularly influential in foregrounding the socio-technical processes through which markets are brought into being, sometimes referred to as process of “marketization” (Mitchell, 2007; Callon, 2007; Berndt & Boeckler, 2011, 2012). This work has challenged both neoclassical economics and some branches of Marxist political economy for taking markets for granted. As Ouma et al. (2013, p. 227) put it, “markets do not simply fall out of thin air when the environment is ‘enabled’, nor do they befall and subjugate local actors to inexorable global forces.” Performative economics has focused specifically on the regimes calculation, forms of representation, and networked “encounters” that constitute a market—a “careful and precarious arrangement of new relations and heterogeneous elements” that forge new links while severing others, distinguishing the “market” and its “constitutive other” (Ouma et al., 2103, p. 232).

Recent forms of ethical labelling and other efforts to commodify abstract natural and social values offer a particularly visible manifestation of attempts to solve problems of market externalities by simply shifting the boundary of the market and incorporating new forms of value into the realm of exchange. For economists, Mitchell argues, things get “stuck outside the market because they are not properly represented—by property records, prices, or other systems of reference” (Mitchell, 2007, p. 248). With similar resonances as Tsing’s use of the term frontier to describe a “zone of unmapping” (2003, p. 5100, discussed in chapter 1) Mitchell uses the term “frontier region” to describe the broad terrain that “covers the entire territory of what is called capitalism,” where ongoing negotiations over the boundary of what is

137 inside or outside of the market play out (2007, p. 247). Scholars working in both Marxist political economy and Polanyian traditions have also drawn attention to the processes of abstraction, enclosure, valuation and displacement that are involved in bringing forms of value that exist outside market relations into the world of abstract exchange values mediated by a money price (Callon, 2007; Mitchell, 2007; Ouma et al., 2013; Castree, 2003; Prudham, 2009). The commodification of ethical values, based on intangible “qualities,” poses particular challenges for marketization, requiring “constructs of trust, transparency, accountability, and the production, codification and commodification of meanings that are ostensibly coherent across the span from production to consumption” (Prudham & MacDonald, in press, p. 2). New ethical markets often necessitate the active construction and packaging of imaginaries of place and, in some cases, the “invention of tradition” (Prudham & MacDonald, in press, p. 2).

At the same time, an over-emphasis on the abstraction of value through mechanisms of representation can also overlook how processes of commodification also entail changes in the relations of production. It is “important to remember that abstraction is not sufficient for commodification to occur, nor is exchange the only nor perhaps even most salient feature of commodification” (Prudham, 2009, p. 131). Indeed, as we will see in the Jumla case, efforts to commodify organic value require broader transformations in agrarian livelihoods—shifts that would transform the relations of production, re-orienting farming to competitive markets and exchange value logics of production. I address some of the scholarly critiques of certification and the commodification of organic in more detail in the following chapter. In this chapter, I am interested in highlighting the different technologies of market-making deployed by development interventions centred on apples in Jumla. Together they reveal increasingly concentrated governmental efforts of “marketization” in Jumla and “the experimental testing of new ‘solutions’ for newly identified ‘problems’ of non-market relations” (Ouma et al., 2013, p. 232).

Populist Organic Apples

Apples, as we have seen, were central to the vision for organic Jumla. Within the overall rationality of organic as value addition for apples, however, we also find diverging political logics. In the initial years following the organic district declaration, organic apples were assembled into a variety of relief and “populist” development projects designed around inclusive and broadly equitable distributions of development resources in the post-conflict moment. One of the most ambitious apple development initiatives was the ēk ghar ēk bagaicā “one house one orchard” campaign (sometimes abbreviated to ēk ghar), which was launched in 2008, the same year as the organic declaration and a year after the cease fire. It aimed to distribute 25 saplings to every household in the district. The “one house one x” slogan echoed

138 a range of other inclusive development initiatives of the period, primarily focused on basic needs, including one house one solar panel, one house one toilet, one house one job, one house one Jersey cow, and so on. The ēk ghar program was initiated by the Jumla District Agriculture Development Office (DADO) and mobilized existing development budgets to purchase and distribute saplings to households across the district. The stated goal of the project was for at least 80% of households in the district to establish apple orchards. The campaign was explicitly oriented to the “poor, land poor, dalits and other disadvantaged households so they do not lag behind in establishing apple orchards” (Gaire, 2015, p. 170).73

A description of the program by Dinesh, a senior agricultural officer who had been involved in the initiation of the campaign, highlights both the local initiative and the degree of district wide collaboration behind ēk ghar ēk bagaicā:

Yes, that was totally a district program, some contributions came from NGOs to some extent, but the majority of the budget was from the DDC [district development committee]. Legally you have to invest 15% of the budget to the agriculture sector… at the VDC [village development committee] level, so the DDC decided to use the budget for the one house one apple farm campaign. The government gave the budget to the DDC and the DDC distributed to the VDCs and DADO, in close coordination with the DDC and VDC secretaries. [The DADO] made a three-year concept note… and said we’ll cover the technical issues, you invest your budget in providing 25 saplings per household, the quality will be measured by us, we’ll give trainings, but the budget was from the individual VDCs… [He laughed and said that when they reported the number of saplings planted] the Ministry of Agriculture didn’t believe DADO at that time; how can you afford this amount of saplings with this amount of money? You haven’t been given any money from the Ministry of Agriculture Development. (Government Officer, December 13, 2015)74

While ēk ghar ēk bagaicā had been initiated by local state actors, apples were also integrated into a variety of the post-conflict, relief-oriented projects as a form of productive asset. Not only had the conflict exposed Jumla residents to violence and intimidation, it had also had a devastating impact on local provisioning

73 The program included subsidies for saplings, a limited number of small farm tools like pruning shears, and trainings through farmers groups and cooperatives. The DADO also trained 234 local Agriculture Resource Persons from villages across the district to oversee sapling distributions and support training programs. 74 The rationality of the ēk ghar ēk bagaicā campaign aligns also with the One Village One Product (OVOP) program introduced by the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) in 2006. The approach was initially developed in Japan in 1980s and centers on the mobilization of local human, material, and cultural resources to create value-added products for domestic and foreign markets. While similar to other models of high value, market- oriented agriculture, OVOP places emphasis also on fostering respect for local culture as well as community belonging and a sense of pride in local identities (Fujimoto, 1992). In Nepal, OVOP was expanded into the One District One Product (ODOP) program in 2012, which identified focus products for all 75 districts in Nepal, including, unsurprisingly, apples in Jumla, although I did not encounter specific mention of the program in Jumla during my time there.

139 systems as agricultural activities became more challenging and peoples’ mobility in an out of the district was severally curtailed (Adhikari & Seddon, 2003; Seddon & Hussein, 2002). Many individuals and families with resources fled the region, those who remained faced an immediate crisis of subsistence. Following the cease-fire, humanitarian efforts began in earnest in the Karnali. Many took the form of “public works” projects which provided food and cash compensation for local labour to build public infrastructure and productive assets intended to bring long term benefits to the community. A number of public works projects, including the World Food Programme’s Rural Community Infrastructure Works (RCIW), the Karnali Employment Project (funded by the Ministry of Local Development), and the Red Cross, included the construction of both community and individual apple gardens in their food/cash for assets projects (O’Reilly et al., 2013; Karnali Employment Programme Technical Assistance [KEPTA], 2015a, 2015b).

In addition to direct inclusion in food/cash for work programs, apples were also included as a livelihoods activity in poverty alleviation projects targeted to the “poorest of the poor” in the mid to late 2000s. These included: the FAO funded Western Uplands Poverty Alleviation Program (WUPAP); the World Bank funded Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF); the social and economic development arm of DIFD’s Rural Access Program (RAP3); as well as the Jumla-based activities of the transnational charity organizations like International Nepal Fellowship (INF) and World Vision among other, smaller organizations like Shangrila. Some projects, like PAF and RAP3, provided micro loans to start apple orchards, while others like World Vision, INF, and WUPAP provided saplings, funded the construction of walls and cellar stores, and provided trainings on small-scale apple processing techniques. Here too we find a mix of community and private orchards.

These populist and relief-oriented approaches to apple development more or less aligned with a low investment “plant, sleep, pick” approach to apple production. While programs offered skills trainings and lamented poor orchard management in reports, they also approached apples as an additional, supplemental source of household income. Public works and livelihoods interventions targeted to the poor also aligned with the inclusive logic of the organic district. Recall that, according to Ramjee, the agriculture officer who reportedly prompted the organic campaign, the declaration had been motivated, at least in part, by the belief that poor farmers were being cheated out of the full value of their apples. The organic district declaration was thus envisioned as a way to secure a higher price for all Jumla farmers. Indeed, the organic district mandate was intended to coerce inclusion for the good of the district as a whole. As we will see below, this radically inclusive approach to organic comes into conflict with donor supported approaches focused on certification.

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By 2014, many of these distribution-oriented projects, and those linking apple planting to humanitarian aid had wound down. I encountered a good deal of criticism of sapling distribution programs from both development officers and farmers. The ēk ghar ēk bagaicā program, for example, was widely viewed as a failure, even by people who had taken a lead in planning it. Officers complained, for example, that people had come to pick up their apple saplings and then went home and, “tossed them over the roof.” Others echoed criticisms of sapling subsidies in ēk ghar. The owner of the largest nursery in Jumla told us that it “led to a discouraging attitude among farmers. They took plants to their orchards but did not take care of them as they used to because they were now getting the plants for free” (Jumla Farmer, June 15, 2014). Notably, one agriculture officer, provided a more sympathetic reading of this practice. As he put it “… since it was a VDC budget and the VDC budget is seen as something that everyone should have access to, the households that didn’t have land also took their 25 saplings” (Government Officer, December 13, 2015). Rather than ignorance or laziness, he interpreted the practice as farmers claiming their right to public resources, despite their inability to practically put them to use.

On the producer side, farmers complained that the support provided by ēk ghar and relief projects was minimal and often of poor quality. Many expressed frustrations with sapling distributions in particular. We spoke, for example, with one young from a Chhetri village, located high in the hills in Kanakasundari. He recalled that when WUPAP came, “per house, there were two, four saplings, they just gave the saplings and left.” His dismissive description spoke to the truncated nature of these interventions, distributing handouts with little in the way of long-term infrastructural or institutional support (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 27, 2015). A middle-aged man in Kanakasundari similarly recalled that the government “gave saplings at one time, two years they handed them out, they went around the villages and gave one, two saplings ward by ward, but then they all dried out” (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 26, 2015). Particularly in VDCs distant from the headquarters, like Kanakasundari, the promised 25 saplings of ēk ghar ēk bagaicā were often whittled down to just 2 or 3 per household. Many of the structures funded through humanitarian livelihoods projects, including apple orchards, were also deemed failures, in large part because utility and design had been treated as secondary to income generation priorities. A review of the Rural Community Infrastructure Works (RCIW) project, for example, found that many of the assets built were abandoned and out of use. In some cases, there was no trace of the asset at all (O’Reilly, 2013, Annex Vol I, p. 127).

Continued transportation problems were also an important factor in the failure of these post-conflict apple initiatives. While the completion of the Karnali Highway up to Khalanga (the headquarters) in 2007 was a significant moment, ongoing delays in upgrading the Highway, the poor quality of district and local roads,

141 and frequent road closures continued to present major obstacles for producers hoping to sell apples outside of the district. Poor quality roads and seasonal closures (as monsoon rains often washed out portions of track) posed a particular problem for apples because of the timing of the harvest and the challenges of storing apples. In the three years after the conflict, for example, the Karnali Highway was closed: July – November (2007); July – September (2008); July – December (2009) (WFP, 2010, p. 26)—dates that coincide closely with apple harvesting and transportation season. Despite the transportation challenges and disappointments, however, programs like ēk ghar and other donor and NGO projects did contribute to a massive expansion of apple planting in the 2000s moving into the 2010s, as discussed in chapter 3. According to DADO estimates, the number of hectares planted with apples expanded from 953 to 2,472 between 2008 and 2011 alone. Apple development programs fueled the increase through their mass distributions of saplings, which in turn contributed to the rise of a booming apple sapling business in Jumla, encouraging many people to invest in their own sapling nurseries. I discuss the sapling boom—and bust— in greater detail in chapter 6.

At the time of my research, a few public works programs were still in operation and apples continued to be one of the assets funded. Apples also remained a focus for small-scale poverty alleviation projects around the district. Yet, as noted in chapter 4, the 2010s brought a distinct shift away from relief-oriented projects towards economic growth-oriented activities, including agricultural market development and commercialization, often utilizing a “value chain development” (VCD) frameworks. The improving conditions of the Karnali Highway and the expansion of motorable road networks throughout the district made Jumla a prime target for value chain initiatives because it was poor and marginalized, but also “high potential.”

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Table 5.1: Main offices and institutions involved in projects and activities with an apple development component in Jumla

National State Regional/District State Implementing Project/Activity Donor(s) Office(s) Office(s) Organization(s)

Western Uplands International Fund Ministry of Local District Development Poverty Alleviation for Agricultural PACE Nepal (Local NGO) Development (MoLD) Council Fund (WUPAP) 2003 Development Surya Social Services Society (4S) (Local Poverty Alleviation Ministry of Local District Development World Bank NGO)/Karnali Sustainable Fund (PAF) 2004 Development (MoLD) Council Development Academy (Local NGO) Rural Community Ministry of Local District Development World Food Surya Social Services Infrastructure Work Development (MoLD) Council Programme Society (4S) (Local NGO) Programme 2007

Karnali Employment Ministry of Local Karnali Region Oxford Policy Management UKAID Program (KEP) 2006 Development (MoLD) Development Unit (Private Consultant)

District Agriculture One House One Development Office ______Orchard 2008 /District Development Council International Fund SNV (NGO)/Surya Social High Value Ministry of District Agricultural for Agricultural Services Society (4S) Agriculture Program Agricultural Development Office Development (Local NGO)/Karnali (HVAP) 2011 Development (MoAD) (DADO) (IFAD)/World Sustainable Development Vision Academy (Local NGO) High Mountain Agrifood Consulting Federation of Nepalese Agribusiness and Asian International, Inc./(Private Chambers of Jumla Chamber of Livelihood Development Bank Consultant)/TAEC Consult Commerce & Industry Commerce & Industry Improvement Project (ADB) Pvt. Ltd. (Private (FNCCI) (HIMALI) 2012 Consultant) Apple Self-Reliance Fruit Development District Agriculture Project 2012 Directorate (FDD) Development Office Department of Local District Development IMC International (Private Rural Access Program Infrastructure Council (DDC)/District UKAID Consultant)/HELVETAS 3 (RAP3) 2013 Development and Technical Office (DTO) (NGO) Agricultural Roads Micro-Enterprise Ministry of Industry, District Small Cottage UNDP/Australian Development Program Commerce and Industry Office Aid (MEDEP) 2013 Supplies National Agricultural Regional Horticulture Research Research Council Research Center, ______(NARC) Rajikot Fruit Development Apple Processing Directorate Centre/Bāgavānī Training (FDD)/Department of Horticulture ______Food Technology and Farm/Karnali Technical Quality Control School (KTS) District Education School Curriculum Office International Nepal BEE Group (Local Fellowship (INF)/ Miscellaneous Support ______NGO)/Shangrila (Local Red Cross/ NGO) World Vision

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Piloting Organic Market-Making

Beginning in 2009, new agriculture initiatives associated with the logic of value chain development aimed to harness, control and formalize Jumla’s burgeoning apple sector. A key focus of these efforts was the commodification of organic through the introduction of new forms of abstraction and representation. As we have seen, the emphasis on organic resonated with changing governmental rationalities associated with the “quality turn” in global food regimes. The organic district declaration served as a first move towards capturing organic value in Jumla. However, targeted value chain development (VCD) programs intensified efforts to commodify organic, introducing more pro-active market-making interventions. The concepts of value addition and upgrading are central to VCD approaches, seen as a way of enabling marginalized market actors to capture a greater portion of the value of commodities. The first concerted attempt to formally organize the commodification of organic value was a pilot project for the High Value Agriculture Project (HVAP). The pilot was designed by the Dutch NGO SNV and implemented in partnership with the Jumla based NGO Surya Social Service Society. The intervention began in 2009 in the midst of the rapid expansion of apple planting.

Significantly, for the value chain experts planning the HVAP pilot, organic value addition was key to rationalizing commercial apple production in Jumla, particularly given the highly competitive and globalized apple market in Nepal. As an SNV report puts it:

Whether the Jumla apple can take a serious domestic market share once the Surkhet- Jumla road is upgraded, does not only depend on production, but more importantly also on demand and whether it can compete with Chinese, Indian and Mustang apples… and/or whether Jumla is able to forge a niche market based on “organic.” (SNV, 2011, p. 25)

The pilot pursued the construction of new, high value, organic market linkages in a few different ways. The initial focus was, to borrow from Callon, Meadel & Rabeharisoa (2002), on abstracting organic value in a form that was standardized and comparable, yet also singular and precious. In addition, the pilot aimed to forge the linkages and relationships necessary to move commodities to urban centres where organic value could be realized, Kathmandu in particular. In order to abstract the quality of organic, the pilot introduced a formal system of organic certification. Indeed, Jumla apples were the first product to be certified under the new, 2009 domestic certification framework in Nepal recently approved by the central government (see SNV 2010).

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Commodifying organic required defining or bounding it. Both the organic district declaration and certification entailed definitions—bounding organic in a way that extracted it from complex socio- ecological relations of cultivation. These boundaries were not always intuitive and involved fine-grained distinctions between organic and conventional chemical agriculture. For example, some of the biopesticides introduced with the transition to the organic district, were themselves noxious chemicals. Bordeaux paste/mixture—a mixture of copper sulphate, lime and water which can be made into a thick paste for painting onto the bark or into a liquid that is sprayed over trees (Krap, 2011, p. 54)—was the main bio-pesticide promoted and used in Jumla because it was relatively inexpensive compared to other manufactured organic pesticides. The input is only allowed in limited quantities by some organic certification systems and it can be toxic when mixed improperly. Most farmers referred to it, like other chemical inputs, as auṣadhi, the generic word for imported or modern medicine.75

While the organic declaration had defined organic through the ban of certain groups of chemical inputs, certification took boundary-making further. It introduced not only a standardized definition of organic but also systems of oversight and monitoring that aimed to dis-embed organic from its place-based specificity and make it legible and equivalent in national (and eventually international) markets. This was understood as important not only for foreign market aspirations but also for targeting the growing supermarket sector in Nepal. For the pilot, SNV employed the services of a Third-Party certification firm, Organic Certification Nepal (OCN). OCN was the first, and at the time, only Nepal-based organic accreditation agency—at the time, a small company operating out of a bare-bones, third-floor office down a back alley in Kathmandu that has since grown substantially and become part of the transnational Certification Alliance offering internationally accredited inspection and certification services. The pilot sponsored the certification of 17 wards in three VDCs. The certification process involved the development of organic management plans, inspections, soil lab tests that had to be conducted in Kathmandu and required that farmers maintain detailed diaries of production activities. The wards were certified “organic in conversion” for a probation period of one to three years. According to Dinesh, it cost roughly Rs 2-3 lākh to certify one ward (Government Officer, April 18, 2014).

Communicating the quality of organic also required investments in packaging and presentation. The district began subsidizing special “Jumla Organic Apple” labelled cartons for packing apples through cooperatives in 2010. Certification introduced a new component of material labelling with stickers. As other “organic” stickers besides those supplied by OCN also arrived in Jumla, labels and cartons, became part of the bundle

75 This was in contrast, to the use of the term jaributī —a generic term for herbal and medicinal flora and fauna and the compounds derived from them—to describe the locally sourced pesticides.

145 of qualities in and of themselves. The pilot also launched an Organic Jumla campaign in Kathmandu that spoke to the urban imaginary of Jumla’s remoteness. The campaign involved, among other activities, a photo op in which traders gifted Jumla apples to then President Dr. Ram Baran Yadav and Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal. Advertisements aired on the radio and stalls were set up at busy intersections promoting the products and Organic Jumla brand.

Labelling and organic certification represented one step towards realizing an organic premium. However, organic is one in a bundle of qualities that would be compared in the market. In order to translate the quality of organic into “value added,” market makers also had to attend to the bundle of other qualities mediating what Callon et al. (2002) refer to as consumer “attachment,” stable preference for one good over comparable others in a market. Thus, alongside organic certification, SNV also instituted new practices of grading. Grading was, in itself, often identified as a cheap and simple way of adding value in value chain development toolkits. Grading works to standardize and bound quality in ways that can be easily translated into price values. As Cronon famously documented in the Chicago wheat exchange, grading was a key development in the emergence of large-scale agricultural commodity markets (Cronon, 1991). For apples in Nepal, grading involves sorting apples of the same variety into categories A, B, C and D, with a system that combines aesthetic specifications regarding a variety of factors including size, colour and shape.

Finally, actually realizing the value added of organic would involve first organizing producers to achieve economies of scale and then linking the remote producers to consumers with the ability and willingness to pay a premium for organic. In order to create this market linkage, DADO and SNV together organized farmers from nine existing cooperatives—groups that had been either inactive or involved only in saving and credit—into a District Cooperative Federation (DCF). The DCF then entered into a formal contract with a Kathmandu-based wholesaler, BH Enterprises, whom the project had actively sought out and recruited (SNV, 2011, p. 18). The DCF would purchase apples from farmer-members to fulfill their contract with the wholesaler. SNV helped to manage the translation of quality into price by negotiating the prices at which the DCF would purchase apples from farmers, distinguishing between certified and non-certified at grades A and B apples, (while C and D apples remained undifferentiated). Notably the DCF agreed to pay the different prices to the farmers despite the fact that their contract with BH Enterprises did not differentiate in price between certified and non-certified apples (Krap, 2012, p. 50). Because the apples were still “organic in transition” and because, on the consumer side, demand for certified organic Jumla apples remained limited (for reasons that I discuss in more depth in chapter 6), BH Enterprises determined that there was not sufficient demand to rationalize paying a premium for the certified apples.

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Under the supervision of SNV staff, the farm gate price (the price paid to the farmer when bought directly from the farm) that the DCF paid to the farmers for A grade apples was set at Rs 35 per kg for organic certified and Rs 25 per kg for non-certified, significantly higher than the average price of about Rs 10 per kg the previous year. In 2010/2011 “[a]round 1,200 apple producers in Jumla were able to earn U.S.$ 66,655” (Kanel, Baan & Shrestha, n.d.). The story was widely reported in both English and Nepali national media as well as blogs and grey literature including as a Best Practice example in a “Guidelines for Public Support to Organic Agriculture” published by IFOAM (Katto-Andrighetto, et al., 2017, p. 131; see also Elliot 2009; Lama, 2010; Sedhai, 2012; Chaudhary, 2012). The pilot was celebrated as a resounding success. An SNV promotional report, for example, announced:

The health conscious elite consumers in major cities are now aware about Jumla Organic apples and were seen to pay premiums up to Rs. 200 per kg (compared to non-certified apples that normally sell for Rs. 80-100). Jumla apples sold in Kathmandu supermarkets for up to Rs. 300. The outcome of the branding exercise has been that the Jumla Organic brand has been established in the minds of consumers. Jumla apples is (sic) by far the first produce to be certified as organic for the domestic market, drawing the attention of policy makers and regulators for immediate need for policy intervention in organic agriculture and special support packages to these sectors. Being the first domestically certified produce, local and national level media picked up the Jumla Apple story for broadcast on various national television channels as a success story. (SNV, 2010, p. 30)

The price increases for farmers that the pilot achieved were, however, precarious. The dramatic rise in prices from the previous year had been negotiated by project staff using their authority to work with the newly formed District Cooperative Federation and wholesaler to set prices. The price differential for certified and apples paid to farmers, was artificially imposed through the Cooperative Federation, which then sold all the apples to the wholesaler at one price. The extensive promotion campaign on the consumer side was funded by the SNV project. Government subsidies also played an important role in ensuring DCF cost recovery. Subsidies for cardboard cartons and transportation had amounted to Rs 337,500 and Rs 1,281,000 respectively. The total profit of the Cooperative Federation amounted to only about Rs 1,000,000. According to Krap, without the subsidies the DCF would have suffered losses of Rs 618,500 (Krap, 2012, p. 66).

The plan to improve Jumla’s apple value chain by capturing organic value and targeting high-end niche markets fit neatly with the logic of the pilot program—it promised to quickly boost the incomes of poor farmers while also supporting ecological sustainability. However, despite the outwardly celebratory rhetoric, even the authors of the final SNV report acknowledge that sustaining the organic apple market

147 would entail extensive, on-going interventions to maintain the “high value” market linkages as well as more extensive efforts to transform production practices.

Professionalizing Production

A New Generation of Market Making

In October of 2015, I spoke with Dipendra in Kanakasundari. He was in his late 40s or 50s and had made the decision to trade land, including valuable paddy fields, in order to buy additional parcels and consolidate a substantial tract across the river from his village for an apple plantation. He was a self-identified entrepreneur and said to us, “I feel proud to earn whatever comes from apples because they are my own earnings. I do not have ask for help; I do not have to deceive anyone. It is the return of my own labour.” He went on to point out that:

there are still a few people who have not yet planted apples. People used to think that they can produce millet, paddy and maize on their land. They’d say, what do those people [who have planted apple trees] do with those apples? What do they eat and feed their family? Some people still think this way. But now many have realized that this was short-term thinking. Now they believe that whatever we [entrepreneurs] did in the past was the right path. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 5, 2015)

Dipendra’s juxtaposition of himself and his reluctant neighbours speaks to the particular conjuncture of Jumla agriculture in the 2010s. As we saw in chapter 3, diversified livelihoods had gradually incorporated exchange value calculations in their production decisions, taking advantage of growing demand for produce in the district headquarters (Khalanga) and increased market opportunities opened by the road. Most Jumla households were already integrated into markets through wage labour and increased reliance on goods purchased in markets—the number of households were able to, or chose to, depend on their own production to meet subsistence needs was limited. Yet relatively few households were engaging in what might be called “commercial” farming. In other words—to draw from Wood’s analysis of the agrarian transitions—few were invested in exchange value production to the extent that they were subject to market pressures that demand the “maximization of exchange value by means of cost-cutting and improving productivity, by specialization, accumulation, and innovation” (Wood, 1998, p. 25).

In the value chain interventions following the SNV pilot, we find both continued efforts to forge new linkages and add value, as well as more concerted efforts to transform Jumla producers into competitive,

148 market-oriented, agri-business entrepreneurs, often described in broad terms as a need for “professionalization.” Improved production had, of course, long been a general priority in apple programs. However, earlier programs had focused on mass distributions of saplings and small equipment accompanied by technical skills trainings directed to large numbers of farmers’ groups. The new efforts to improve production would focus increasingly on not only transferring skills but transforming producers themselves—moulding entrepreneurial subject-orientations—as well as providing more significant investments in a smaller number of infrastructure projects there were larger in scale. The new mantra among local NGO and agriculture development officials was “professionalization” and “commercialization,” quality not quantity. Organic-by-design would also demand new forms of expert knowledge and technology, supplied (ideally) by private sector input producers, who would (ideally) be responding to new market incentives.

VCD visions for apple farming differed fundamentally from existing approaches to apple production. Quality apple care involved not only investing money and labour in timely and adequate inputs to manage nutrition and disease, but also labour-intensive processes of training and pruning trees, thinning fruits, and carefully hand picking and processing the apples. With increased investments in the orchards, apples would also have to be guarded against physical damage from livestock and theft by neighbours with walls and guards. As I discuss in the following section, a vision of professionalized farming also entailed increasingly divergent understandings of organic and sustainable agriculture, as well as social inclusion. Here, I introduce a few of the most significant agricultural market development projects in the district in the mid- 2010s, all of which eventually included apples as either their primary or one of their main focus crops in Jumla.

The High Value Agriculture Project (HVAP) was launched in 2011 in seven districts in the mid and high hills of the mid-Western and Western development regions of Nepal, following the completion of the SNV- led pilot. The primary funder was the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), an international financial institution and a specialized agency of the United Nations. SNV was contracted as the main implementing organization and local NGOs were contracted as district-based implementing partners. The project initially identified three value chains for support in Jumla: apples, vegetable seeds and off-season vegetables. The vegetable seed program was quickly abandoned due to lack of buyer interest. The off-season vegetable program fared better, however production remained small-scale and oriented to local and regional markets with no major contracts established with agribusinesses (a key aim of the project). HVAP identified itself as a value chain program, emphasizing value addition, and the development

149 of formal contract relations through the recruitment of “lead” or “anchor” firms.76 However, in practice, much of their activity focused on basic production supports.

The High Mountain Agriculture and Livelihoods Project (HIMALI), which launched several years after HVAP, also describes itself as a value chain project. However, where HVAP worked explicitly with farmers groups and agribusinesses, HIMALI was designed to support large-scale agribusinesses. HIMALI’s funder was the Asian Development Bank and the national level implementation was contracted out to a U.S.-based consulting firm Agrifood Consulting International, Inc., a Nepal based consulting firm TAEC Consult Pvt. Ltd. and the Agro Enterprise Center, the agricultural arm of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and industry (FNCCI) (established in 1991 by USAID). The project’s initial, intended focus in Jumla was livestock and Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (MAPs). In its first iteration the project had explicitly excluded apples. The main reason cited for the exclusion was that they wanted to avoid overlap with HVAP (according to an agricultural officer, another reason for the exclusion was a concern that apples took too long to generate profits). However, a year into operation, HIMALI conceded to pressure from local governmental officials and opened funding opportunities to apple entrepreneurs as well. They have since also included a broader array of products including dried beans and other local crops, a decision that I discuss in more detail in chapter 7. The project had intended to contract out district-level implementation to local NGOs but, for unspecified reasons, the NGO partner approach was abandoned and individual social mobilizers and local resource people were contracted instead.

A final major program related to apples in the district was the Ministry of Agricultural Development’s Apple Self-Reliance Program, which was announced in the national budget speech of 2011/2012. This national state-led program initiated an apple campaign for the five districts of the Karnali as well as Mustang and Manang. The main focus of the program was a new subsidy of Rs 100 per apple plant per year for three years, although this was only available to producers planting 150 or more trees on a minimum of 5,000 square meters of contiguous land with formal documentation of land ownership (lālapurjā). The subsidies would also be contingent on the results of regular inspections from the district development office to ensure

76 Anchor firms refer to large firms in the value chain that act as hubs with a key position in regional or global markets due to their relationship with suppliers. The term is often used interchangeably with “lead firm.” A USAID report offers a good overview of the term as used in the value chain literature: “lead firms can be defined as small, medium, or large firms that have forward or backward commercial linkages with a significant number of [micro, small and medium-scale enterprises] MSMEs. Examples of lead firms include buyers, traders, input suppliers, veterinarians, exporters and processors. Lead firms often provide important products or support to the MSMEs they buy from or sell to, as part of their commercial relationships with them. Examples include training, technical assistance and inputs. They are often engaged in aggregating the production of MSMEs, adding value to raw materials, and selling finished products in domestic and international markets” (Lusby, 2008).

150 that the plants were receiving adequate investments. The Self-Reliance program was not a value chain development program in the sense of taking an active role in forging market relations. However, one of the trainings I attended for the program billed itself as a value chain development training. The program was, notably, introduced in the same budget that announced the acceleration of plans to establish a special economic zone (SEZ) in Jumla—plans that have been reiterated in subsequent budgets. The 2016 budget speech explicitly stated that the Jumla SEZ is oriented to the establishment of apple processing ventures.77

Educating Entrepreneurship

May 2014, A Training in Kartikswami

In May, Sushmita and I garnered invitations to participate in an HVAP business literacy class, joining a women’s group meeting in Kartikswami. We had been invited by the mother of Ganesh, who had become our volunteer tour guide when we met him on the road one day. Ganesh was employed by one of larger local NGOs in town, after having previously worked for World Vision. He stayed most of the time in a house in the headquarters, but we met him on a Saturday as he was heading home for a visit to his parents’ house with his young daughter and some mangos. He invited us to come along for lunch where we met his mother, father, sister and a number of other visitors. His mother was short and talkative. She had been part of a women’s group since the late 1980s when it was established by Junior Technical Assistant (JTA) from the DADO.78 The group was currently being organized by HVAP, it was called mahilā tarakārī tathā kr̥ ṣaka samūha (women’s vegetable and fruit farmers group) and had 45 members. It had coalesced and dissipated over the years following the changing tide of development interventions. The NGO that Ganesh was currently working for also happened to be the local implementing NGO for HVAP.

The group had been on hiatus for about a month because of the harvest, but there was a meeting scheduled again for a few days later. We showed up at the appropriate time only to find that Ganesh’s mother was still out with the cows. After some confusion over whether or not the meeting had been cancelled or not, it was

77 A comparison of HVAP and HIMALI to the Apple Self-Reliance program speaks to the key differences between national state and donor logics of foreign market competition and the pursuit of self-sufficiency in agricultural products. While central state actors refer hopefully to organic apples as a potential high value export (indeed an exception for apple export supports was included in Nepal’s WTO compliance framework), apples have also been identified as one of the crops targeted for national self-sufficiency. The role of organic and organic certification in the Apple Self-Reliance Program remained more ambiguous, reflecting these tensions. 78 Junior Technical Assistants (JTAs) are the frontline extension agents for the District Agricultural Development Office. In Jumla, there were several JTAs assigned to cover different regions of the district who were posted at satellite offices.

151 confirmed that the women’s group meeting was indeed happening, and she led us down to a large new house, still under construction. When we arrived, there were about 20 women in a dim room sitting on cushions in a circle. Most of the women were older and dressed in traditional skirts, caubandī cōlō (a wrapped blouse), folded scarves on their heads and tennis shoes. About five were in their 30s or 40s and dressed in more modern kurtā survāl loose pants and long shirt often worn by women in the headquarters and younger women. Although we had shown up an hour late, others continued to trickle in after us. There were large pieces of colored paper taped to the wall with masking tape and a white board was set up against an adjacent wall.

The meeting was led by a social mobilizer, a serious young woman from the village, using a detailed curriculum provided by SNV. They had already completed the main apple curriculum and were on a chapter designed to educate participants about farmers groups and cooperatives. The social mobilizer diligently followed the curriculum, explaining the different roles in a cooperative and the importance of following rules. Meetings should be conducted for a common purpose, for example apple harvesting should be done around the 15th of Bhadra in order to get a good market price. Decisions should be made on the basis of voting. There was a significant section of the chapter devoted to the economic logic of cooperative marketing, illustrated with the metaphor of a leaky jug. She then turned to a section about social inclusion. We are all Thakuri and Brahmin here, she said, but it is also important to include Dalits, Janajatis and others. Also, we should respect everyone’s religions, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, but, she noted, we are all Hindu here so it’s easy. They then moved on to a discussion about the status of the group. One middle- aged woman spoke adamantly about the need for their group to form into a cooperative so that it would be easier to apply for project funding from the government, NGOs and INGOs. For many kr̥ ṣi (agriculture) projects, she pointed out, you need a cooperative. This was a proposal that received substantial support from the members and generated some animated discussion. They then moved on to calculator skills and the facilitator passed some around. Calculators were covered in some detail in the HVAP manual, however the women disbanded soon after to head back to their respective homes and duties.

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Figure 5.1: Agriculture Market Service: Part 3. (Department of Agriculture, n.d., p. 36).

The business literacy training illustrates the concerted efforts to foster entrepreneurial subjects in Jumla in value chain development projects (see Figure 5.1). Professionalization was often framed in terms of addressing the culture or bānī “habit” of Jumla people, which was understood to be lacking proper entrepreneurial characteristics. The mercantile sensibilities so important to Jumla livelihoods in the era of the salt trade were now out of place in an era of globalized competition. The lack of a productivist, profit- maximizing form of entrepreneurship was often identified as a problem of mindset specific to the Jumli people. A local Karnali politician, for example, gave a sympathetic reading of this Jumla mentality:

I think that there will not be an expansion of commercial apple farming because the psychology of people in Jumla is not oriented towards commercialization. They work just for their own livelihoods. They do not have big visions, farming is just for subsistence… they think it is enough, they do not think about increasing production to large scales, just enough for eating and selling a little. (NGO Officer, September 20, 2015)

People from outside the Karnali were often less generous in their assessments of the Jumla farmer mindset. Jumla farmers were frequently compared to their apple rivals in Mustang, specifically the Thakali people who were understood as hardworking entrepreneurs. For example, a senior Kathmandu agriculture officer, and former head of the Department of Agriculture, commented on Jumla’s failure to commercialize saying,

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“Well unfortunately Jumla people are different, unlike in Mustang. In Mustang people are enterprising. Jumla people are not enterprising… in Jumla, nobody was there to take the initiative, so we couldn’t help” (Government Officer, July 7, 2014). New development programs rolled out a variety of technologies aimed at changing this mindset by fostering professionalism and agricultural entrepreneurship in Jumla farmers— educating them about the potential value of their crops and instilling in them profit maximizing rationalities, including a willingness to take risks and make investments.

A key component of professionalizing farmers was promoting specialization. Specialization was necessary for achieving economies of scale that would rationalize investment and enable commercialization. In a three day apple training sponsored by the Apple Self-Reliance program, for example, the trainer—one of the agricultural officers who had initiated the “one house one orchard” campaign—began his hour-long power point on the fundamentals of value chains stating that “in foreign countries, people have one crop, one large piece of land but here we have a bit of land here, and a bit there, rice here, barley there… this is why farmers in Nepal are poor.” A training manual from HVAP, which I first encountered in the women’s agriculture group meeting in Kartikswami, illustrates (literally, with cartoons) the logic promoted in the programs. In Chapter 1, Part 2, a dialogue between an older, successful farmer and a young woman demonstrates the meaning of specialization and why it is necessary for progress and development. The positive, progressive depiction of specialized, commercial farming is contrasted in the following chapter with a description of traditional subsistence farming, which it describes as a “barrier to progress” (HVAP, 2014)

As we encountered in the women’s group, another key focus was business literacy, which diagnosed the problem of social exclusion in markets as a deficit in formal education and accounting skills. In addition to explanations of the economic logic of cooperative marketing and calculator skills, the HVAP training curriculum also included a discussion of the definition of the “market,” instructions on how to research market demand before deciding on what crops to plant and the importance of value addition.

Bigger is Better

Beyond trainings, new agricultural development programs also aimed to foster professionalization through a significant shift in their approach to targeting—namely a shift to high potential farmers for larger scale grants and subsidies. Grants for private assets and infrastructure investments were a substantive part of both HVAP and HIMALI. Indeed, while the projects represented themselves primarily in terms of “facilitating linkages,” among farmers in Jumla they were most well known for their granting facilities, which were

154 viewed as being very difficult to access. The Apple Self-Reliance program’s requirement of a minimum amount of contiguous land, (with the added burden of supplying formal documentation of land ownership) was particularly controversial. People across the district complained about the exclusionary character of the program, pointing out that only wealthy, powerful people had that much contiguous land. The requirement not only had the effect of targeting the subsidies to high potential farmers, it also functioned to encourage the consolidation and rationalization of patterns of landholding—an ever-present hurdle to the commercialization of agriculture in Nepal.

While the Self-Reliance program offered subsidies on a much larger scale to encourage entrepreneurial risk taking, HVAP and HIMALI focused on business development grants—also on a larger scale than previous poverty-reduction programs (like WUPAP and PAF), which had focused explicitly on the poorest households. The new business development grants required higher percentages of matching investment by entrepreneurs. Both projects used a system of multiple granting “windows,” large and small scale. HVAP framed these as funds targeted to agribusinesses and producers respectively, the smaller of which required less significant matching funds (20% versus 50%) and was aimed at producers seeking to improve or expand production (for assets like orchard walls, storage facilities, irrigation, and equipment). HIMALI, in its effort to support agri-business entrepreneurs, was initially targeted exclusively to individuals and companies. However, cooperatives were later included, and the project faced pressures to open grants to farmers’ groups as well.

In the grants to producers, new requirements for the submission of business plans and matching contributions served as another mechanism of professionalization and a means of targeting investments to high-potential farmers. Both HVAP and HIMALI required business plans from those applying for funds, which included detailed, quantitative assessments of production capacities and market demand. The professionalism promoted by the business plans involved changes that extended into everyday forms of knowledge and economic practice, like the conversion of weights and measurements to conform with formal market standards and processes of abstraction. We spoke, for example, with the young business officer of a women’s cooperative near Dillichaur who had recently completed a business plan for HVAP with support from the HVAP office staff. She complained to us about the hassle of converting manas (a measure of volume often used for grains, roughly a pint) and ḍōkō (the large woven baskets shaped in a V to carry goods) from to kilograms for the application.

The governmental technologies instituted to engender professionalism were onerous not only for Jumla farmers (particularly for the older generation), but also for the established, urban “anchor firm”

155 agribusinesses recruited by the projects. The problem was raised in an interview with the head of a wholesale businesses, a man with a sharp, rather cynical, sense of humour. He expressed his frustrations as we spoke in his office in Kathmandu:

I have turned down my proposal with HIMALI, I prepared a big proposal, I did a lot of things according to their norms, but at last I was tired, it was too much. It was always, you should do this, but if I did something then they would say oh it is still lacking, you should do it like this, and I kept improving, but there were always new norms. They would say one thing here in Kathmandu and another thing at the site level. We had been working with cooperatives of producers, and the main problem was that, according to their norms, producers needed to submit land registration documents as collateral, which was not possible. There were 100-200 people in the cooperative, that means that we would need to have 200 land certificates produced and submitted to the project, to the government, that was not possible—ok bye, bye I said. We cannot deal with your plan; it is not feasible… And you see, we are some of the most knowledge people, we know everything, we know their format—and even we had problems. So how can ordinary people—how can the small farmer or cooperative benefit from a program like that? Small people cannot afford this knowledge, they can’t afford the money needed to access this project, that might be the reason the project can’t reach the poor. We wanted to work with the cooperative, so that their livelihoods could be improved, but the opportunity was lost. Because it is the competitive grant, farmers also have to contribute 20%, 30% if the small farmer can't contribute how can they participate? They don’t have collateral; they can’t get a bank loan. This means that the project is not for the farmers it is for the rich… but even for the elite, for the competitive ones, it is still a challenge. (Wholesaler, June 17, 2014)

The wholesaler’s comments speak to the significant departure from the pro-poor approach of the earlier apple programs in HIMALI and HVAP. Yet, as I discuss in the following section, commitments to social inclusion were evident in a variety of strategies and accommodations aimed at balancing pro-poor and pro- growth aims.

In the apple market-making interventions active in Jumla in the mid-2010s, efforts to add value to apples by abstracting organic through new technologies of representation were accompanied by initiatives to transform relations of production. At the same time, contemporary donor rationalizations for the commercialization of apple production in a place like Jumla also relied on Jumla’s comparative advantage in organic, given the intensity of competition in the apple market posed by the scale of conventional operations in India and China. The newer generation of value chain development projects employed a variety of strategies aimed at professionalizing organic apple production, with particular focus on fostering entrepreneurial subjectivities and directing support to high potential actors. In the next section, I turn to

156 important tensions between different approaches to social inclusion and organic farming among apple development projects in the district.

Diverging Visions of Organic Jumla

Inclusive Exclusions

Value chain development projects in Nepal invariably claim to foster “inclusive” markets. Yet, as we see above, the new generation of agricultural commercialization projects in Jumla included a number of provisions targeted to risk-taking entrepreneurs, rather than people who are poor and vulnerable. A concern for the need to balance pro-poor and pro-growth aspects of programming was thus a central theme in new commercialization and market development interventions. The concerns for balance that we find in projects in Jumla reflect broader attention within both critical and applied development literature regarding the challenges and limitations of pro-poor market development, specifically given the multi-dimensional and structural nature of marginality, poverty and vulnerability. Applied scholarship has cautioned that “[v]alue chain development involving the poor needs to account for their diversified livelihood strategies and related risks and trade-offs” (Stoian, Donovan, Fisk & Muldon, 2012, p. 57), recommending a variety of additional assessment tools and interventions to account for such risks. As an IFAD value chain development manual puts it, when negotiating between pro-growth and pro-poor priorities, “at the end it may be a matter of careful balancing” (United Nations Industrial Development Organization [UNIDO], 2011, p. 26; see also Camagni & Kherallah, 2014).

To address issues of social exclusion, VCD projects in Jumla employed a variety of supports and complex targeting mechanisms in their efforts to reconcile pro-poor inclusion and economically sustainable market development. One strategy was to resolve tensions through a notably flexible definition of the term “inclusive.” The inception document for HVAP, for example, describes its approach to “social inclusion” as a strategy that specifically does not exclude “members of the project communities who may act as leaders, early adopters and risk takers” (IFAD, 2009, p. 12). In HVAP and HIMALI, the term “market inclusion” was also used to refer to the generation of employment opportunities, including low skilled agricultural labour, which provides a justification for project activities that could exacerbate processes of social differentiation and economic disparities. HIMALI very explicitly envisioned addressing poverty indirectly, through the promotion of agribusinesses that would increase demand for raw products and labour.

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Projects also, however, employed more substantive supports to achieve inclusion, reflected in complex, multi-layered targeting approaches. For example, at a national scale, HVAP and HIMALI were geographically targeted to economically underdeveloped regions. Within these areas, geographic targeting was based on investments in high potential growth clusters, specifically those with access to improved infrastructure. However, HVAP also included a small amount of additional funds aimed at improving the access of specially selected “poor remote communities” through infrastructure investments, like ropeways, tracks and suspension bridges. Interventions also had to arbitrate access to fundamentally limited project resources at community and household scales. Here we encounter similar attempts to balance the advantages of high potential “risk takers” and the needs of marginalized, households, which included a variety of special measures to enrol socially marginalized and risk-averse households in value chains. One approach was HVAP’s use of more holistic interventions for specially targeted producer groups. Selected groups were provided with substantial training, financial supports and in some cases access to carefully facilitated contracts with wholesalers and processors. Group formation, however, had to be carefully mediated in order to achieve desired inclusive representation. HVAP outlined pro-active, individualized outreach strategies to reluctant households to ensure more inclusive group enrolment, as well as expert oversight of the internal governance of producer groups (IFAD, 2015, p. 24). Similarly, in HIMALI local project staff were tasked with using “Interested Group Monitoring” (IGM) to “find potential proponents to invite and facilitate for agribusiness grant applications” (HIMALI, 2014, p. 11). Mid-project reviews that found that participation was not meeting social inclusion criteria (as we encountered in the Kartikswami women’s group) recommend targeted individual outreach to meet inclusion targets (HVAP, 2013, p. 17; Agrifood Consulting and TAEC Consult, 2013, p. 13). Both projects included special trainings for enterprises, cooperatives and farmers’ groups on sound business management and socially inclusive practices.

Granting mechanisms also faced tensions between commitments to inclusion and growth. In view of the barriers posed by complex application processes, projects drafted local staff, social mobilizers, and line agency officers to provide significant support to groups and individuals in drafting the onerous business plans. HVAP developed fill in the blank templates for each of its focus crops to help facilitate the process. HIMALI engaged a team of self-employed Local Resource Persons specifically to support “in providing assistance to cooperatives, farmers, farmer groups, and individual businesses in developing business plans that would help them to obtain project grants” (Agrifood Consulting and TAEC Consult, 2013, p. 7). Indeed, applicants were so reliant on this support that Agrifood Consulting International, the private development consultant for HIMALI, noted in their final report that “Virtually all of the newly established or expanding enterprises had their business plans written by an outside consultant; thus not being totally engaged in the

158 requirements and demands that are essential to develop a business” (2013, p. 15). Demand for support with business plans also spilled over to district agricultural staff. One officer said that they had been so overwhelmed with requests for support that they had decided to “make space” in the budget to pay underemployed youth to help farmers draft business plans.

HVAP has gone even further to address exclusions with a variety of special funds including a “Poverty Inclusion Fund” and broadly defined provisions for “Supplementary support to poorer households that are motivated to participate in the VCs [value chains] but have insufficient resources to make the transition from their existing livelihood systems” (HVAP Project Management Unit [PMU], 2014, p. 24). These funds were designed with highly flexible terms that could be adjusted on a case-by-case basis to meet the needs of particular groups and households including “financial top-ups for poor household’s cash contribution to investments” as well as “food security-oriented technical support to enable households with limited production land to make the transition to more market oriented production while reducing food security risks during the transition” (HVAP PMU, 2014, p. 24). Importantly, the eligibility to receive supplementary support under the “Social Inclusion Facility” was to be determined by local partner NGOs, guided by the project management teams, in consultation with the corridor-based horticulturist/agriculturist based on “assessed poverty status, capacity to participate in the VC and motivation of farm household” (IFAD, 2014, p. 24). Again, we find an emphasis on balancing often competing considerations in targeting mechanisms— with the responsibility for negotiating these considerations delegated to local development actors like NGO staff and agriculture officers.79

Valuing Organic

With the increased emphasis on specialization and commercialization within value chain development (VCD) programs, we also find important tensions in the meaning and rationale of organic. The logic of VCD is focused on income maximization. Organic is thus valued first and foremost for its ability to add value to products. New projects of commercialization envisioned agricultural production systems based on

79 The HVAP inception report further includes provisions for a “district-based Farming Systems/Food Security Facility” which was intended “to respond to possible negative repercussions on a household’s food security and the balance of crops in the farming system.” The Facility was designed to enable District Agriculture Offices “to provide support on food crop production and farming systems to participating value chain farmers” (IFAD, 2009, p. viii). While the Food Security Facility remained an empty byline in project budgets, with no participants or money spent as of 2016, it is remarkable for a few reasons. First, it stands in contradiction to the message of the project’s own training manuals which, as we saw in the training with Ganesh’s mother above, are focused on the promotion of specialization. Second, it speaks to planners’ awareness of the tensions at work in their own project and the potential risks it poses to participants. Finally, it once again delegates the responsibility for negotiating these latent contradictions in the rationality of inclusive markets to locally situated development actors.

159 specialization in high value products, economies of scale, and investments to improve efficiency. In this rationality, improved efficiency would be pursued up to the boundaries determined by the formal and informal aspects of organic qualification, which centred on the absence of certain kinds of chemical inputs and the parameters of quality established by grading standards. Intensification, specialization and the need to meet quality standards would, in turn, demand ongoing investments in inputs, including inputs purchased on the market. Meanwhile the lower yields and higher costs of labour and special inputs meant that it was particularly “important to brand goods as organically growing/produced to differentiate them between conventionally produced products” (HIMALI, n.d., p. 35).

As we can see, this approach to farming presents a significant break from longstanding production practices in Jumla, situated in diversified livelihoods and integrated farming systems (chapters 2 and 3). It also diverged from the logics of the organic district declaration in important respects. For one, certification introduced a competing system for determining the legitimate boundaries of organic. The organic district declaration technically included everyone and everything in the district, while certification was confined to specific farms with the cost of certification posing a significant barrier to entry (unless heavily subsidized by the state and donors). The emphasis on specialization—and apple specialization in particular—was at odds with the goals of conserving agro-biodiversity and the celebration of indigenous crops—goals that figured centrally in the broader organic district vision discussed in chapter 4. Indeed, the expansion of apples was a key contributor to the displacement of minor indigenous crops, both of which were planted primarily in sloping upland plots. Criticisms of apples from supporters of agro-biodiversity programs speak to the tensions between divergent visions for sustainable development—value chain development and approaches centered on agro-biodiversity conservation (Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research, 2016; NGO Officer, September 4, 2015).

Conclusion

This chapter explores commodification as a process of far-reaching socio-material transformations, examining key agricultural development projects in Jumla and the governmental technologies that they deploy in pursuit of ethical market-making, with a focus on organic apples. We see a transition in projects from populist and relief-based orientations to interventions focused on commercialization and high value market integration. Value chain development projects aimed to create high value markets through the commodification of the already present, intangible quality of organic, and by manufacturing encounters and relations of trust between producers and downstream agribusiness. Projects employed a number of technologies aimed at abstracting organic value on the market, including certification, grading and

160 labelling. Yet, it also became evident that an emphasis on the abstraction of value through mechanisms of representation was in itself insufficient, and that forging high value markets would require important changes in the relations of production.

The abstraction and commodification of organic in these development projects was presented as a way of supporting socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable market linkages. However, efforts by planners to transform relations of production in pursuit of commodification have also generated tensions within broad- based commitments to social inclusion and sustainable agriculture. Particularly in relation to organic agriculture, we find clear divergences between the narrow approach of value chain development projects— focused on certification and minimum technical standards—and the more radical vision of the organic district declaration—encompassing the district as a whole and a broader vision for biodiverse agro- ecologies. We also find tensions between and within projects in their approaches to social inclusion. In pursuit of ethical market-making, they employ a variety of approaches aimed at balancing pro-poor and pro-growth mandates: re-working definitions of inclusion; multi-layered targeting; and strategies of selective, individualized outreach. Responsibilities for negotiating this balance in practice often fall to local development agents, a dynamic that I discuss in greater detail in chapter 7.

Together, chapters 4 and 5 address novel governmental rationalities and technologies that aimed to protect and capitalize on the re-valuation of frontier agro-ecologies, while highlighting new divergences and contradictions within and between governmental projects. In the following chapter, I focus in on the limits of exchange value approaches to organic or the messy realities of implementation in which farmers find themselves positioned between conflicting governmental rationalities and technologies. Chapter 7 attends to the emergent “politics” of ethical market-making as farmers and development actors negotiate opportunities and challenges within these limits.

Chapter 6 | Organic Limits: Unruly Apples and Blurry Boundaries

Introduction

In 2014, a Republica80 article declared “‘Organic District’ A bane for Jumla!” It called the “organic district” declaration a “populist move taken without much research and geographic study” that remains “dependent on donors to certify their apples to export with ‘organic’ tag” (Pangeni, 2014).

By the time I arrived for fieldwork in Jumla, tensions between divergent rationalities of organic were beginning to show signs of strain, some of which are captured in the article quoted above. The “organic- by-default” approach to apples in the district was facing new agro-ecological challenges, while the enclosure and commodification of organic was facing problems in the arena of exchange. This chapter traces the emergent “limits” of inclusive, sustainable organic market rationalities. I argue that between newfound cultural and bio-political celebrations of Jumla natures, and the market-based logics of development interventions, Jumla farmers were asked to perform as both profit-maximizing entrepreneurs and stewards of ecological and human health. In practice, their approaches to organic did not conform neatly to either of these subject positions, but rather reflected specific sedimented experiences (or structures of feeling) and life worlds that were largely illegible to expert development rationalities.

In the previous two chapters, I described governmental rationalities and technologies aiming to protect and capitalize on expert re-assessments of frontier agro-ecologies. Market-based logics permeated development rationalities but manifested in different forms. We saw how value chain development projects attempted to formalize apple markets and add value through technical interventions to commodify organic and create market linkages. Achieving these aims would also demand deeper transformations of the relations of production and exchange. In this chapter, I turn to the limits of exchange value approaches to organic— which as we have seen also diverge from, and come into conflict with, the broader discourse of the organic district. I illustrate how farmers found themselves positioned between conflicting governmental rationalities. Chapter 7 turns to the “politics” of ethical market making, examining how farmers are engaging with development agents and authorities.

80 Republica is an English language national daily newspaper published by Nepal Republic Media Pvt. Ltd. in Kathmandu, Nepal.

161 162

I begin with a brief discussion of Tania Li’s elaboration of the concept of “limits” in studies of governmentality and its relevance to the literature on neoliberal natures. I then turn to the Jumla context. We see how technical interventions to create high-value market linkages ran up against the unruly socio- natures of previous rounds of development intervention and competing visions for sustainable, inclusive development. These points of tension manifest in new challenges to “organic-by-default” production, as well as barriers to realizing organic value addition in Jumla apples. In the last part of the chapter, I highlight a few of the ways in which such limits are experienced by Jumla residents.

Governmentality’s Limits and Brokers

Critical development studies has long been interested in development failures not as absences—something that did not happen—but rather as moments productive of new development rationalities, appropriations, and political subjectivities. As Tania Li puts it, “Governmental interventions are important because they have effects. They seldom reform the world according to plan, but they do change things” (Li, 2007a, p. 276). As such, Li argues that it is important to consider governmentality’s “limits.” The limits of governmentality, or of specific governmental interventions, arise in a variety of forms, including unruly populations and natures as well as lack of adequate knowledge and technique. As Ferguson (1990) demonstrates in the Lesotho context, the study of planners’ discursive framings of development problems tends to tell us as much, or more, about the development planners—their range of capacities and forms of measurement—as they do about the everyday realities of the proposed subjects of development.

Of course, governmental interventions are also not simply pre-formed projects that unidirectionally produce effects. In practice, development interventions are continually reproduced through processes of negotiation and “brokerage” (Lewis & Mosse, 2006). Li’s work on interventions as assemblages highlights how they must be held together through ongoing practices of negotiation in face of multiple, emergent limits. Actors continually work to sustain flows of development funding and “coherent representations of social realities” by tweaking interventions, and their contexts, to hold the assemblage together (Lewis & Mosse, 2006, p. 16). Yet such assemblages are also tenuous and temporary, sometimes falling apart in dramatic moments of failure or, more often, dissipating quietly into new iterations of improvement. Following scholars like Li (2007a, 2007b), Coombe (2007), and Corbridge, Williams and Srivastava (2005), I argue that studying the limits of governmental rationalities is useful, in part, because it can highlight potential points of political challenge.

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Scholarship on “neoliberal natures,” from both Marxist and Foucauldian perspectives, has worked to theorize the limits and contradictions of market-based environmental governance. This literature is extensive and wide ranging. Here I highlight a few particularly relevant insights for the current discussion. First, as illustrated in chapter 5, markets require abstract equivalent forms of value that can be measured quantitatively in price. Market-based environmental governance thus relies on the bounding, enclosure and abstraction of particular chunks of nature, processes that necessarily valorize some natures at the expense of others. Second, markets are shaped by the relations of supply and demand. The commodification of environmental goods and services relies on the existence of consumer demand and purchasing power. At the same time, as Guthman (2007) demonstrates in the case of ethical labelling, for the owners or proprietors of environmental goods and services, market-based governance also creates incentives to perpetuate or produce scarcity in order to maintain higher market values. Finally, processes of abstraction can never fully sever commodified chunks of nature from the socio-ecological life worlds in which they are embedded. However, the valorization of certain natures over others does tend to transform socio-ecological relations in ways that can have unruly and unpredictable effects (Boyd, 2001). Below I illustrate how these limits or tensions manifest in eco-governmental rationalities in Jumla.

New Challenges in Production

As we have seen over the last few chapters, there is a significant gap between the rationalities for apple planting common among many farmers production and those of development experts, specifically in the context of value chain development projects. In the low-investment “plant, sleep, pick” approach, apples were viewed as relatively low risk, requiring minimal labour and capital investment. They replaced crops now viewed as having fewer benefits, but could also be intercropped with other food crops, particularly when young, to further reduce risks. In this approach to apple farming, the trees were a good option for households facing labour shortages as the younger generation attended school or pursued different forms of non-agricultural employment. Populist and relief-oriented governmental programs like ēk ghar ēk bagaicā (one-house-one-orchard) and pro-poor livelihoods projects, more or less aligned with this low investment approach to apple farming. While poor orchard management provided a perpetual problem in need of ongoing development interventions, apple orchards tended to be viewed as an additional, supplemental source of household income for poor and marginalized households. In this context, the broadly inclusive character of the organic district declaration was presented as a way of helping cash-poor Jumla smallholders capture some additional value for their products.

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As we saw in the previous chapter, for the new generation of value chain development projects, however, the solution to development in the district demanded a more radical transformation of agricultural practices through a deepening of marketization, based on Jumla’s comparative advantages. As such, value chain projects focused on deepening the commodification of organic alongside support for increased specialization and competitive entrepreneurship. Definitions of organic were delimited by the boundaries of certification, and organic knowledge and technology was viewed primarily as the purview of the private sector, with projects aiming to support market development in the organic input industry. In this section, I examine how changing socio-natural relations associated with exchange value approaches to production— including new incentives to pursue quality production together with new agro-ecological challenges to “organic-by-default” approaches to apple farming—have contributed to increased demand for new forms of accessible and affordable organic knowledge and technology in Jumla. I discuss how these pressures are encountered and managed by governmental actors, as well as the limits presented by current institutions of knowledge production. In the following section, I turn to related issues of realizing organic value in the market and competing boundaries of organic.

Changing Market Incentives

Now everyone here is interested in apple farming. They love planting apples trees and they are continuing to plant even more. The more we plant, the more we get. This is what villagers and youths are thinking these days. When we can “drink the juice” of our work [benefit from the result of hard work], people are attracted to it. When there is a good result, people work hard, when there is no result, people do not work hard. When apple trees started to bear fruit and people started to earn 2 to 4 thousand rupees from an apple tree, they started to work hard in their apple orchards. When people can make money, it is obvious that they will become more involved and work harder. We go into the sky where there is no oxygen [referring to high altitude peaks], to bring back jaributī [medicinal plants], so why shouldn’t we take care of our trees? People take care of these trees now that they have understood that they can earn money from them. This is the development that is taking place now. (Dillichaur Farmer, November 15, 2015)

This statement from a man in his 50s or 60s, who we spoke with sitting on the roof of his small store in Dillichaur, speaks to the effects of the arrival of the road and the rising price of apples on people’s attitudes. He challenges the common development discourse characterizing Jumla farmers as lacking in entrepreneurialism, pointing out that if farmers are able to see real profits from their trees, they will work hard and invest in them. As we have seen, apple plants were generally hardy, but the reliable production of quality apples required additional labour and investments, including labour intensive practices of training and pruning trees, thinning apples, and protecting trees from physical damage.

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Yet, the growing number of farmers interested in raising their income from apples have also faced new demands on their knowledge and technological capacity to pursue improved apple production. In addition to labour, quality production demanded vigilant nutrition and pest management above and beyond basic maintenance. Adequate, quality fertilizer and water are key to good harvests and apples are prone to insects and disease. Indeed, conventional apple production is also notoriously pesticide intensive. In neighbouring India, apples were being sprayed with fungicides and insecticides like metacid, metasystox, diathane M-45, durmet, thiodan, monocrotophos, fenitrothion, and malathion as many as ten times per season in Shimla “both to control existing pests and diseases and to prevent the outbreak of diseases such as apple scab and red apple mite” (Partap & Partap, 2002, p. 82; Partap & Partap, 2001). Faith in pesticides was so dominant that a 2002 report found that some farmers also “believed that spraying with some of the chemicals, particularly fungicides improved the size, colour, and overall quality of the fruit” (Partap & Partap, 2002, p. 82). New incentives to improve the aesthetic quality of apples also changed what constitutes a problematic “pest.” Common pests in Jumla like scale and sooty mould, are generally not a threat to the tree itself and don’t significantly affect the taste of fruit, but they do have negative impacts on the appearance and thus market value.

As increased market opportunities contributed to the demand for new knowledge and technologies, several shifts in the broader agro-ecologies of apple production were also creating new problems for apple producers. Even farmers who were not as concerned with profit maximization were facing new challenges simply maintaining their orchards. New problems, including increased pest incidence, were associated with sapling quality, shifts in farming practices and a changing climate.

The Sapling Market Boom and Bust

By 2014/2015, there were a number of acknowledged threats to existing apple production systems and one of the most common concerns that I heard was related to problems of nursery management. Farmers, businesspeople and agriculture officers compared the poor quality of new saplings to those brought from Kashmir in the 1970s. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the growing demand for apple saplings, stimulated at least in part by the state and donor programs of sapling distribution that purchased saplings from nurseries, led to a shortage of saplings and rapidly rising prices. An SNV publication reports that from “2008 onwards farmers bought saplings at the rate of NRP 20 to 30 from private nurseries. The demand was so high that even the production of saplings by private nurseries could not meet the demand of local farmers. Even poor Dalit farmers bought apple saplings at NRP 20 to 25 per sapling from these private

166 nurseries” (SNV, 2011, p. 25). A few people I spoke with said that they had spent as much as Rs 45 per sapling from private nurseries at the height of the apple planting boom.

The District Agricultural Development Office (DADO) encouraged the establishment of private nurseries to help meet this demand, offering trainings on sapling grafting and nursery management. Given the shortage of saplings in state-owned nurseries and the volume needed for ambitious promotion programs like ēk ghar ēk bagaicā, the DADO turned to private nurseries. Nursery owners could make substantial profits, particularly at the height of demand. The nursery trainings were a double boon for the DADO, not only did they provide saplings for the programs, nursery entrepreneurs also provided shining examples of commercial success for reporting. The following are examples taken from the Jumla DADO Annual Report from 2010:

Success Story: Lilu Shahi earns a pocketful of money by selling a basket of saplings. Mrs. Lilu Shahi, who lives in Baarkotebaada, Kartikswami-6, Jumla district is the proprietor of Lakali Winter Fruits Nursery… In the year 2066/2067 [2011], she sold around 7,000 apple saplings, 5,000 walnut saplings and 1,000 āru [local peach] saplings and earned Rs 2 lākh (200,000) Plants from her nursery are even sent to Dolpa, Mugu and Kalikot. She is considered to be a successful and capable nursery owner. With the money earned from this nursery she has constructed a house for her family in Nepalgunj [a large town in the terai]. Her children go to an English medium boarding school. We extend out warm wishes for her progress in 2067/2068. (DADO Jumla Annual Report, 2066/2067 [2010])

Inspirational Story: Nursery owner Ambar Rawal. Five years ago, Ambar Rawal who lives in Talium-2, Jumla used to sell noodles in a small hut. His daily income was a mere Rs 100 and it was very difficult for him to live his life and fulfil his needs. He could not imagine further progress. Then he came in contact with the Agriculture Development Office and thought of establishing an apple nursery. He had a chance to be involved in a training related to the establishment of apple nurseries organized by DADO. He then registered his nursery in 2063 and after seeing good profit in this business he encouraged his neighbours to get involved as well. Now, six nurseries have been registered in Talium. In 2067/2068, he sold apple saplings for the programme ēk ghar ēk bagaicā and earned around Rs 6 lākh (600,000 selling each plant for Rs 29) including all expenses. Now, he has a quality life, his children go to private school, he has constructed a nice house with the facilities of solar power and television and he even has his own motorbike. He is known as a resource person for nurseries in Jumla district. (DADO Jumla Annual Report, 2066/2067 [2010])

Because specialty apple rootstocks were not widely available, the DADO encouraged the use of a locally available tree species known as edi mayal (or mel), Malus sikkimensis, a species of apple also known as Sikkim crabapple that is native to China, Nepal, Bhutan and parts of India (Rhodes & Maxtad, 2016). Edi mayal was accessible in the forest (although increased demand meant that it was becoming harder to find,

167 and the cost of seeds was going up) while scions were plentiful, available from any fully-grown apple tree.81 The cost of the special tape needed for grafting the scion to the rootstock and the labour time involved were the major investments, so it was a business that was accessible even to relatively cash-poor households (see Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1: Apple sapling grafting by small-scale entrepreneurs in Humla district.

Residents hoping to take advantage of the high prices hurried to invest in sapling production, learning the techniques from government trainings or from neighbours and family members. Many nurseries were unregistered and did not pay the tax required of them by the gharelu (office of cottage industry). Some with connections to the government horticulture research station, located just out of town in a place called Rajikot, began with the standardized quality saplings available there. However, many farmers had harvested their own edi mayal and simply collected scions from the best trees accessible. Most were not particularly concerned with the official name of the variety of the apple they were growing. A common response was simply that they were “mixed.” An older man from a Chettri town in the high hills near the border with Mugu captured the general sentiment well. When I asked what variety he planted, he replied “why do you need the name? We should just plant and get the production. One time I asked a woman what her caste was,

81 See chapter 1 for an overview of rootstock and scions.

168 she replied female. Likewise, if someone asks me what kind of apples I have, I will give my name for them. My orchard has apples” (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 11, 2015).

The number of nurseries swelled. In 2011, a total of 106 nurseries produced 490,000 saplings in Jumla (Gaire, 2015, p. 169, citing data from DADO, 2012). A couple of years later, surveys conducted for the Ten Year Agricultural Plan found that in the financial year 2013, 110 nurseries were operating in Jumla and the income from nurseries alone was Rs 75,00,000 (USD 69,050) (Jumla Ten Year Agricultural Plan) with an average income of Rs 68,000 per household (USD 626). Jumla was producing so many saplings that they were being exported to neighbouring districts in large numbers. In 2011, there was even an ill-fated attempt to bring Jumla saplings to Mustang, where they were also facing shortages. Half of the saplings died over the course of the seven-day journey (“Mustang Farmers Facing Shortage,” 2013). According to neighbours, the two brothers involved in the shipment were financially devasted and lost their land because of the venture.

After years of rapid apple planting, however, demand began to slow for reasons that included the long life of apple trees and the fact that government and donor supported sapling distributions were tapering off. Moreover, with the spread of the technical skills, many people had also begun grafting their own saplings for sale and private use. By 2014, there had been a major crash in the price of saplings. All over the district (but particularly in Talium and Dillichaur) nurseries were left overgrown and abandoned, packed with small, anaemic trees fighting to survive. The horticulture officer from Rajikot said that in 2013 they had had to destroy 28,000 high quality saplings due to lack of demand, and this year they couldn’t even sell 400—no one was willing to buy them (Jumla Government Officer, June 21, 2014)

In addition to losses sustained by people who had invested in the nursery business, the boom has also had more insidious long-term consequences for the farmers who were investing in apple farming. In 2014, farmers and development officials were beginning to voice serious concerns about the quality of the saplings that had been produced and distributed in this period. As a sapling producer from Kartikswami pointed out “Just to produce the plants is not a big deal. However, producing quality plants is a different matter” (Kartikswami Farmer, September 28, 2015). In some cases, quality issues had been immediately apparent to farmers planting saplings. Many people I spoke with said that they had started their own nurseries, not just to avoid the expense, but because they didn’t trust the quality of those distributed by the government or NGOs. Farmers reported saplings being already infected with diseases like woolly apple aphid or simply dying shortly after they were planted. For others, however, the poor quality of saplings would only become apparent after years of maintenance. Anecdotal evidence pointed to concerning trends

169 in the new generation of trees. Some farmers said that the new trees grafted with edi mayal were more prone to diseases, compared to the older generation of trees. Others were worried that the trees simply weren’t fruiting or that the fruit was of inferior quality. As the owner of a brand new distillery in Jumla put it, “everyone knows that apples have alternating years of production, if one year the apples don’t produce, people say oh it’s just an off year, but then they don’t produce again the next year, or the next year. There hasn’t been a good year in the last five years!” (Jumla Businessperson, July 19, 2018). His claims have been supported by recent reports of declining apple production, although yet to be substantiated with scientific studies (Budha, 2018).

Changing Agro-Ecologies

While sapling quality was very likely contributing to the lack of “on” years that the distillery owner pointed to, on-farm apple agro-ecologies were also changing, both due to shifts in farming practices and broader changes attributed to climate change. In terms of shifts in practices, the decline in livestock populations was putting pressures on the availability of manure, which, as we have seen, was critical for replenishing nutrients in arid mountain soils. The extent and increased density of apple planting across the district was also likely contributing to problems of disease incidence. More than a decade earlier in Himachal Pradesh, monocultures of Red Delicious, Royal Delicious and Richared, the same dominant cultivars that are found in Jumla, had given rise to serious disease outbreaks, including apple scab and red spider mites (Ghosh, 1999, p. 39). Several agriculture officers who I interviewed referenced the history of citrus plantations in Nepal’s Western mid-hills, where Citrus Greening Disease had swept through the region wiping out many of the orchards. They pointed out that with increased density of planting, Jumla could be vulnerable to a similar kind of outbreaks of diseases such as fire blight—a disease common in North America, but that had historically not been reported in the Karnali.

Both apple sapling quality and changing farming practices are related to the rise of exchange value orientations in apple planting, supported by governmental efforts. Specialization and intensification of production (albeit nowhere near the scale of orchards elsewhere in the world) transformed vibrant apple matter and contributed to unpredictable outcomes. At the same time, unruly natures of planetary and epochal scales were also disrupting apple production Jumla. A changing climate, and specifically rising temperatures, were another contributing factor in the appearance of new pests and diseases (Gaire, 2015, p. 178). Reports from SNV and HIMALI both highlight this issue and recognize the problems it would present for organic production specifically. An SNV report comments that with climate change, not only will pest management and pest resistant apple varieties “become increasingly more important” but also that

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“Pest management will not be as easy for organic production as for conventional production” (SNV, 2011, p. 17). A HIMALI report expresses similar concerns, pointing out that:

With global warming influencing negatively the incidence of crop pests and diseases there is a need for R&D [research and development] on alternative biotechnical approaches to the control of these problems… agrovets and GoN [government of Nepal] technical staff need to be familiarised with the alternatives to traditional chemical control methods and products made available. (HIMALI n.d., p. 35)

Climate change is also having other impacts on apple production beyond increased pest incidence. A major concern is the implications of rising temperatures on the minimum chill hours (temperatures between 0 and 7 degrees centigrade) that are required for bud development in apples. Declining periods below 7 degrees centigrade could necessitate wholesale replacements of apple varieties or a transition away from apple cultivation altogether, as has begun to happen in parts of Mustang and Himachal Pradesh (Khanal, 2015; Sen et al., 2015). Climate change was also affecting the unpredictability of precipitation. The rainfall records in Jumla show increasingly erratic and overall declining patterns of rainfall (Gaire, 2015, p. 176). Because the large majority of apples were planted on the sloping rain-fed plots, declining rainfall was a serious concern for apple production and other upland crops. As a middle-aged man in Kartikswami put it, “There is no water when we need it. When there should be rain, there is no rain. Nature has been deceiving us!” (Kartikswami Farmer, September 28, 2015). Agriculture officers suggested that lack of adequate water was one of the most pressing problems for apple production in the district. The rising frequency of unusual storm events has also been attributed to climate change. In the course of my fieldwork two large hailstorms in 2015 and 2016 obliterated apple yields in multiple VDCs.

As we can see, the long practices low-investment approach to apple production, a practice that relied on the labour of nature and prioritized risk reduction over profit maximization, was under threat on a number of fronts. Agro-ecological pressures were creating a need for new or additional approaches to nutrition and pest management. In turn, additional investments—including irrigation systems, hailnets, and even wholesale replacement of existing trees with new varieties due to a generation of poor quality saplings and climate change—would mean that reliable, high prices in the market (or significant, ongoing governmental support) would be increasingly important for rationalizing the continuation of apple production in the district, an issue that I take up in the second half of the chapter.

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Addressing Production Problems

Conventional vs. Organic Apples

As existing approaches to apple cultivation were proving increasingly inadequate, growing market connectivity and integration into cash economies was steadily lowering the transportation costs of imports into the region. Conventional chemical inputs, while legally banned, were increasingly accessible to a broader segment of Jumla farmers, undermining the organic-by-default assumptions on which much of the initial economic calculations had been based. In the launch of organic apple certification by SNV and DADO, the agrovets had dutifully restocked their shelves with a range of new bio-chemical inputs.82 Due to the limited availability and high cost of many of these products, state and donor trainings have largely confined their focus to the relatively inexpensive (and often subsidized or freely distributed), previously mentioned, “Bordeaux” paste/mixture.83 The compound can be effective for treating a number of pests, particularly fungal infections. However, it is largely ineffective for treating “sucking insects” like the woolly apple aphid, which is rampant in the district. Systemic pesticides like Rogor (an Organophosphate with the active chemical Dimethoate) are absorbed and spread throughout the plant making them much more effective at killing sucking type insects like aphids. A few other biocides were available on the market but they require more frequent application and are less effective than Rogor. Biocides were also expensive in relation to their chemical counterparts and not as widely applicable (Krap, 2012, p. 54).84

The use of chemicals was widely viewed among producers as an important advantage in achieving aesthetic quality, including the remarkable color and size of imported apples. For example, a group of men in a neighbouring VDC of Kanakasundari, all of whom had worked in apple orchards in Himachal Pradesh, described the remarkable effects of chemicals there. In response to a question about challenges of apple farming in Jumla, one of the young men commented:

82 A SNV report found that until 2008 “3 or 4 agro-vets of Jumla’s district headquarters used to be stocked for two thirds with chemical inputs, for mainly rice and vegetable production. In 2009, chemical inputs for agriculture were not available on the shelves and had been replaced by veterinary inputs. A few bio-inputs could be found, but according to the agro-vets there was no demand, nor could they give sufficient advice on their use. The only thing which is selling well for apple production is Bordeaux paste, which is allowed by most organic certification systems if used on a limited scale” (SNV, 2011, p. 22). 83 As mentioned in chapter 5, this is a mixture of copper sulphate, lime and water which can be made into a thick paste for painting onto the bark or a liquid that is sprayed over trees. 84 Organic standards also did not allow using wax to coat apples. The lack of wax was actually something that both people in Jumla and consumers in Kathmandu said that they valued about Jumla apples. However, wax does help ensure durability of apples in storage and transportation and it was another challenge that producers and traders highlighted.

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The first problem is that apple trees from Himanchal Pradesh are very shiny. Here the apple trees are rough and not shiny. There is a chemical input [literally auṣadhi or medicine] that they use that makes the trees healthy and shiny. The apple trees here do not get enough nutrients and are not healthy for that reason. The chemical provides food for the plants and also protects them from diseases. There are so many facilities in India. All the trees in India are sprayed to give apples good colour… in the months of Asar and Shrawan the raw apples are sprayed with chemical for colour. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 5, 2015)

An older man interjected to emphasize the point, “they will give an injection to cucumbers and the next morning they will be ready to eat. They have such chemicals.” In the apple orchards, he said “they wait until the buyer is coming, and then spray so that all of the apples shiny and red” (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 5, 2015). The chemical inputs that the men were referring to, include products like Ethephon, referred to as a “colour spray,” an ethylene-releasing compound used to advance ripening in apples (Ashraf, 2018). Other ripening agents like Seniphos (a mineral mixture of phosphorous pentoxide, calcium oxide, and nitrogen) are also available in India.

The inadequacies of current knowledge and technology for managing apples in Jumla was a common subject of discussion for the producers with whom I spoke. Several people explicitly complained about the organic district status and the lack of viable organic alternatives for chemical inputs. Take for example the frustrations expressed by farmers in two villages in Kanakasundari:

Now [Jumla] has been declared an organic area, so the district agriculture office does not let us use pesticides. So, the farmers find themselves in a difficult situation. If there are two apples growing together, the chance of them rotting [becoming diseased] is higher, so we need inputs [auṣadhi] for that, but the agriculture office does not allow us to use them. Farmers are facing a big problem. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 26, 2015)

If there were pesticides, then there would be more apple plantations. This is a remote place and chemicals [auṣadhi] do not reach here easily. People here are also not aware of them. There are no government officials to teach and give the necessary materials to farmers… They should provide proper pesticides for diseases; then only will apple farming be good here. They also don’t have enough knowledge themselves. They just roam here and there. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 5, 2015)

Integration into wage economies and the declining availability of farm labour also made labour intensive approaches to nutrition and pest management less appealing. Some producers mentioned locally sourced pesticide options but pointed to the extra labour time required to produce these. Farmers from two different villages in the Chaudabis valley told us:

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…we have to do more labour now. Using pesticides is an easy job. We could get it from market at the cost of 150 or 200 rupees. But to make organic pesticides is a bit difficult. We have to dig a ditch. It demands more work to prepare... But if we could get pesticides from the market, it would be much easier. To prepare organic pesticide, it demands a whole day to collect titēpātī [a kind of bushy, bitter medicinal herb], it takes 2 or 3 days to make a ditch ready and then we still have to go through a long process. First, we have to fill all the titēpātī in a plastic bag for decaying and let it rot. After that, we have to extract the liquid, and then the liquid should be stored in a drum for six months. They taught us how to prepare it, but it is very difficult. (Dillichaur Farmer, November 17, 2015)

The district has been declared organic. Since it was declared organic, we cannot use other fertilizers. In earlier days, we used to use chemical fertilizers. We could not carry compost the far distance to the upland fields. How can we take enough compost there? Who will do that? Everyone is going school. There is no one to take care of the cows. Who will do that? (Dillichaur Farmer, November 18, 2015)85

As a comparison, in lower Mustang, where apple markets had expanded earlier than in Jumla, problems with pests were reportedly driving the increased use of chemical pesticides in apples. There, the agricultural development officers—long responsible for encouraging chemical input use to increase production—were now expressing concerns about the negative impacts. Examples from agriculture reports from the district speak to these issues:

According to the technicians, the farmers have sprayed excessive amount of pesticides in the recent years which also killed the beneficial insects. This also has adverse effect on soil and human health. (Khanal, 2014, p. 15)

Tukuche village lies in the middle part of Mustang district. Farmers in this village have been growing delicious varieties of apple such as Red Delicious, Royal Delicious, Rich-A- Red Delicious. These varieties have been prone to pest attacks. Farmers have been resorting to spraying harmful pesticides to control them. The high levels of pesticide use was having a negative impact on the soil, environment, water resources and human health. (Narayan and Ghimire Farmer Field Schools, n.d.)

It is important to emphasize that the real or perceived short-term advantages of chemical agriculture vis-à-vis organic also need to be situated in the broader historical “production of nature” (Smith, 2008) and political economy of agricultural knowledge production. Agriculture officers I spoke with suggested that the agrovets (local retailers of agricultural and livestock inputs) played a key part in pushing chemical use

85 Our interlocutor in this case was from a relatively well positioned family in a town relatively close to the headquarters, which helps to explain the uncommon reference to prior use of chemical inputs.

174 in Nepal. As the manager of a wholesale company told me “the lower part of Mustang is more chemical dependent because they are more commercial, and because they were taught about chemicals. It is the duty of [agrovets to teach them] because they have to sell their chemical inputs, they have to sell to people, so they have to motivate them” (Wholesaler, June 14, 2017). An officer at the Fruit Development Directorate in Kirtipur echoed this assessment, pointing out that in the south of the country, where commercial farming has increased, “if farmers have a problem, instead of going to the DADO, they go straight to the agrovet where they are given strong chemicals that are very poisonous.” A problem, he pointed out, was that the government technicians learned technical knowledge in school, but often did not continue to learn. Because new inputs like hybrid seeds come directly from India, the DADO technicians know little about them, so the farmers go to the agrovets for the new seeds and instructions on how to plant and manage them (Government Officer, May 24, 2014).

A number of government officers and development workers contested the logic that organic was a trade- off in efficiency. In their continued support for the organic district they pointed out that chemical fertilizers tended to wash away on Jumla’s sloping plots (Jumla Government Officer, June 2, 2014) and that increased chemical fertilizer use contributed to increased pest incidence leading to a need for pesticides (Government Officer, July 14, 2014). Many farmers themselves pointed to the long-term problems associated with chemical agriculture, particularly chemical fertilizers. As one farmer put it “we had good apples during that time [of using chemical fertilizers]. But what we found was that chemical fertilizers eroded the soil. They made the soil very hard and dry like stones. And then if we did not use the chemical fertilizer, there was no production. We had to keep on using chemical fertilizer every year” (Dillichaur Farmer, November 18, 2015). However, even staunch defenders of the organic district pointed to the need for new knowledge and technologies to address mounting challenges discussed above including the problems of pest incidence.

The Limits of Local Knowledge Production

In order to understand why organic apple knowledge and technology figure as key limits to governmental rationalities of inclusive sustainable market-making for Jumla we need to take a brief tour of the institutional terrain of agricultural knowledge production and dissemination in Jumla. I take this matter up in some detail here because it is significant for understanding the forms of negotiation discussed in the following chapter. I highlight the challenges that organic apples posed to both farmer knowledge systems and under-resourced state institutions born out of the Green Revolution.

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Farmers came to the challenge of apple production with a great deal of expertise in situated agro-ecological relations of production. As we saw in chapter 2, “traditional knowledge” was always in process as farmers cautiously incorporated new crops. In our conversations about apples, farmers talked about experimenting with different approaches to management. Experimentation ranged from planting glass shards among tree roots to protect against mice, to grafting cuttings of other tree species onto apples to see what would happen. People speculated about what types of soil were best for the trees, the importance of planting them somewhere with a breeze, which side of the slope they fared better on at what elevation, and different strategies of applying water in the winter. For example, one farmer told us of the method he was trying out to treat fungal infections:

Another practice I am adopting is that during January-February when it is cold, I am forcing the cold water through pipes onto the trees. The water force helps clean the trees, and the frozen droplets help to kill the fungus. It can help a bit to get rid of these diseases. We have no other alternatives. Fungus has become a big problem. We have no way to control this fungus. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 15, 2015)

Many farmers, particularly those who had longer experience with apples, and those who had spent time in India, compared their abundance of experiential knowledge to the book learning of the agriculture technicians who came by. This was an observation that was actually echoed by several agriculture and NGO staff in the headquarters. A veteran staff member of agriculture projects in the district pointed out that “by looking at the small sapling the farmers can identify whether it will be golden or red in colour but a technician cannot. The technicians should be able to identify the variety of apple by looking at the leaf or branch, but they cannot. They study in Rampur [the main Agricultural University in the south of the country] and have never seen apple tree. If only they had studied in Jumla they would be able to identify apples” (NGO Officer, June 12, 2014). However, changes in agrarian political economy and ecologies were also posing new challenges to the maintenance and adequacy of existing knowledge systems. School and off-farm employment were keeping youth away from the farm and the knowledge of their parents’ generation.86 Meanwhile, as we see above, changes in the makeup of integrated farming systems and a changing climate were introducing rapid transformations. Apples also presented particular challenges for farmers. Not only were they still relatively recent arrivals, they also take a long time to mature and reproduction relies on asexual propagation methods difficult to manage at the individual farm level.87

86 For a discussion of declines in agro-ecological knowledge among the younger generation see Sugden and Punch (2016). 87 See also Stone (2016) and Gupta (1998) for a discussion of the limits of experiential agricultural knowledge systems, specifically in reference to Indian agriculture in recent history.

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In the rationality of value chain development projects, the private sector is the primary solution to new knowledge and technology needs. Value chain agribusiness funds were intended to foster not only downstream processers, but also upstream input suppliers. In this view, the price premium of organic produce would justify the extra cost not only of certification but also the higher cost and/or lower effectiveness of bio-chemicals—a key assumption that I return to below. Demand for improved organic inputs would, in turn, spur private-sector investments. Yet such entrepreneurship had been slow to take shape in the bio-input sector in Nepal. In light of this gap, HVAP and HIMALI did include some funds for supporting research and development. HVAP allocated money for one off field trials for selected high value crops. However, as one of the reports from the HVAP pilot project points out, in the absence of private sector investment, state institutions would need to play a more significant role since “projects and (I)NGOs will not easily invest into R&D” (SNV, 2011, p. 43). HIMALI included funds to support the capacity of state agriculture research and extension offices, but they were limited and not oriented to supporting long term research capacity. In Jumla, for example, HIMALI funds had gone to building a new Livestock Office and the purchase of equipment for the state-run apple processing center.

On their end, staff at the DADO had made some valiant efforts to fill the organic apple knowledge gap. Pressure fell particularly to a new officer, Bishnu, a young man from the district who had gone through the university (as opposed to technical school) system and typified the younger generation of book learning agricultural officers that farmers complained about. He dressed like a young urbanite in fashionable windbreakers and used well-designed PowerPoints and funny YouTube clips in trainings. He had a good rapport with the young, educated people who attended agriculture trainings in the headquarters, but interacted awkwardly with the older generation of residents actively engaged in farming. Bishnu was also frank about the limitations that he faced. In a formal meeting for the Apple Self-Reliance program with an expert flown in from the Fruit Development Directorate in Kathmandu, he pointed to the problem that apple projects were focused only on planting, while crop conservation was not given adequate attention. With inadequate support for plant protection, what could he do? He said that spray tanks were available and could be provided, but they didn’t have biopesticides to fill them due to lack of scaled up program support. He pointed also to the problem of knowledge in plant protection, highlighting for example the sukkhā (drying) condition that many producers were facing (I also encountered this in the field, where trees would begin to wither and then dry up and the cause was not apparent). We have been investigating the problem, he said, but they still haven’t identified the cause. Dinesh, another Jumla DADO officer (and also from Jumla), echoed the assessment in an interview:

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The major challenge in my opinion is lack of organic pesticide because research is very, very low, even you can say zero… on almost every farm you see aphids, … fire blight and lots of new diseases are going to appear, for fertilizer we can do something… because there are lots of organic fertilizer companies and even the Nepalese government has started to provide a subsidy… so fertilizer will not be a problem, but manufacturing organic pesticides and research—that is lacking. (Government Officer, December 13, 2015)

The DADO relied on the national agriculture office to consolidate information and recommendations provided to them by the Fruit Development Directorate, which in turn received this information from the National Agriculture Research Council or NARC, the main agricultural research body in the country. The national NARC office is responsible for managing and synthesizing research conducted at its regional research stations. However, NARC, which has long been poorly funded and politically subordinate to the Department of Agriculture, has also had a hard time fulfilling research needs and even maintaining control of its research centres. Through a series of bureaucratic re-organizations over the last few decades many of them were poached by other departments and Ministries. For example, in Mustang a station had been taken over by the Department of Agriculture, reportedly because it was well located in a popular tourist area. It had also been one of only two stations in the country conducting research on apples; the other station, now the only one in the country, was the one located in Rajikot, Jumla.

During my fieldwork, the Jumla NARC horticulture office faced a number of challenges in fulfilling its daunting mandate.88 It had been completely destroyed and occupied during the insurgency in 2002. The newly constructed main building was subsequently burned down again during my research in the summer of 2015 in the course of the district-wide protests over the new constitution. When I arrived in 2014, a man from the south named DB had been running the office for the last nine years. DB had an aversion to the cold and was stationed in Jumla despite his expertise in citrus. Over the years he had continued to fail in his attempts to lobby for a transfer. During his time stationed in Jumla, DB had, however, committed himself to apples. He began a PhD focused on apples, which involved several sets of experiments. Yet, as one of the only people (and potentially the only person) in the entire country conducting officially sanctioned field experiments with apples, he encountered some significant challenges. In his varietal trials, for example, NARC did not have active agreements for exchange of apple genetic materials, meaning that it was not possible to legally import new varieties of apples for varietal selection trials. While the Jumla station proudly displayed two varietal trials, featuring Canadian and Indian trees, the former had been

88 As an SNV report comments, “Currently, it is only the Jumla Horticulture Research Farm [Rajikot] doing initial R&D, but this will not turn Jumla and surrounding districts into the Himachal Pradesh of Nepal” (SNV, 2011, p. 43).

178 informally brought to the district by a Canadian NGO worker and the latter by an agriculture officer on a fieldtrip to India.

Figure 6.2: Biological control of woolly apple aphid using Egg Parasitoid (Aphelinus mali) Gairagaun, Jumla

One of the office’s major undertakings in the last few years had been a prestigious biological pest control field trial of Aphelinus mali, a parasitoid wasp that exploits the wooly apple aphid—a major pest in the district. The field trial had involved importing both Aphelinus mali and a French entomologist to advise the project. I visited the greenhouse that they had built for the wasps on a tour of the expansive grounds of the neglected horticulture farm (commonly referred to as bāgavānī “horticulture”). Information about the trial was presented on large posters in the office and highlighted in the glossy colour brochures that DB handed around (see Figure 6.2). But it had been, in practice, a failure as the insects were not well adapted to the cold weather. In DB’s opinion there had also been a lack of institutional support to give the project a real chance of success. He said that his office had held trainings for the major NGOs in the district and they had all agreed to start greenhouses to raise the wasps, but there had been little follow through.

DB pointed to several structural reasons that apples in particular had been neglected in areas of research and development. First, most of the agricultural schools were located in the south of the country where apples did not grow well (the oldest and most established of these is the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science in Rampur, Chitwan district in the Terai). He also pointed out that nobody wanted to work with tree fruits since field trials took so long to complete, it was just a bad career move (as he was well aware).

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Finally, as a high value, luxury crop, there was little in the way of transnational support for pomological research. DB, while touring me around the grounds at Rajikot, dreamed of an organization like IRRI, but for apples. Institutions like IRRI (the International Rice Research Institute), CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) and the World Vegetable Center were born out of Green Revolution era policies to increase global food production and have put significant resources research and development for basic staple crops. The same has not been true for luxury crops like apples.89

The need for accessible technologies, locally sourced where possible, was also a matter of concern for DB. He complained about elite producer demands for government support for things like special imported plastic baskets when locally made ones were just as good. In an experiment on post-harvest transportation he had included locally sourced materials as one of the packing options and was excited to point out that the local materials were just as effective as others. When I interviewed him, however, DB was not shy about his pessimism regarding the organic district. He had been one of the two lone dissenting voices in the meeting to affirm the organic district declaration in the first place (along with the agriculture research station representative). In the same Apple Self-Reliance program meeting in which Bishnu aired his frustrations and constraints, DB had also stood up to state his case. He pointed to the problems that farmers were facing because they couldn’t use chemicals, and said it was hard to identify adequate alternatives “we are not sitting idle putting oil in our hair” he insisted “we are trying” (June 21, 2014). When I returned in 2015, DB had finally been given permission to leave Jumla and return to Kathmandu to complete his dissertation. In the space of four months there had been two new directors of horticulture research and the current director was hoping to transfer as soon as possible. His background was also in citrus and he readily confessed that he knew nothing about apples.

DB’s frustration with organic reflected the constraints he faced in institutions born out of (and still embedded in) Green Revolution science. If infrastructures for the production of apple knowledge were limited, they were even more limited for organic knowledge. Even in Jumla, the field trials of apples were using non-organic fertilizers. Moreover, in comparison to conventional agriculture, effective organic methods are even more reliant on knowledge and technology that is embedded in and appropriate to localized agro-ecologies. The failed Aphelinus mali project, embraced as a promising alternative to

89 As mentioned in chapter 1, apples have long been at the center of struggles over property rights in plant breeding because of both the difficulty of improved variety production (because of genetic characteristics) and the challenge of restricting asexual propagation methods. Today, apples are governed by different forms of intellectual property including patents and trademarks while the institution of new apple “clubs” requires growers to join a particular and selective group to be able to grow some new varieties as a means of regulating quality and supply (van Zoreen, 2016; Clark, Brazelton Aust & Jondle, 2012).

180 chemical pest controls, speaks to the challenges to ecologically embedded organic research and development.

Capturing Organic Value

A key assumption in organic market making in Jumla was that it would help farmers secure premium prices for their products and profit from already present value. The mounting threats to production described above made securing consistently high prices even more important. The prices of apples sold directly by producers had improved significantly following improvements to the road, and there was increasing demand for Jumla organic apples in urban areas like Kathmandu. However, market making efforts continued to face problems enclosing and commodifying organic. Key contributing factors included: barriers to accessing high value organic markets; challenges in organizing and professionalizing exchange; as well as the competing boundaries of organic, reflecting divergent governmental rationalities.

Accessing High Value Markets

In the mid-2010s, the market for premium organic products in Nepal was still relatively small and confined to urban areas like Kathmandu and Pokhara. Outlets included supermarkets, farmers markets, and small enterprises marketing goods to foreigners and well to do urban residents. As discussed in chapter 4, for the state and donors, organic, was envisioned primarily as a form of value addition, particularly for export goods. Yet, for export, apples would require additional “qualifying” infrastructures to locate them as marketable apples in the international market-place, specifically phytosanitary certifications. Thus, for example, BH Enterprises, the wholesale company initially contracted for the SNV pilot, had initiated a sale of Nepal organic apples to Malaysia but ran into problems due to the lack of regulatory infrastructure in Nepal for monitoring phytosanitary standards.90 The majority of Jumla apples continued to travel down the Karnali Highway and into markets in the south of the country. In the past, some vendors had reportedly disguised the fact that Jumla apples were from Nepal, as they were considered to be of lower quality. More recently, Jumla apples have gained greater recognition, even in the Terai, and prices for good quality apples were comparable with those of Indian apples (Atreya & Kafle, 2016). However, as I discuss below, the quality measure has become the “Jumla” brand, as opposed to “organic” per se.

90 At the time, Organic Certification Nepal, the company contracted for certification work in Jumla, was also not part of an internationally recognized certification system.

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Professionalizing Exchange

Another factor contributing to the challenge of realizing consistent high prices for apples were the existing practices of exchange. For farmers, apple picking season arrived at a fairly busy time in the agricultural calendar. Those traders who arrived to buy apples at the farm gate were able to secure low prices, particularly if they brought their own labour, because residents had an interest in saving labour time. Apples were often picked before they were ready because they were vulnerable to theft and damage when left on the tree. Indeed, with rising apple prices, theft had become a significant problem in the district. Groups and individuals who had invested in orchards had begun hiring night guards for the apples as they ripened. As a result, many producers were eager to secure cash for the fruit, even if it was below the maximum potential price. Once picked, some producers described scrambling to get their apples to the truck stop when they heard through contacts that a truck was coming, so that they would not have to worry about risks associated with storing them. The problem of early harvesting was concerning enough that in 2015, the DADO had intervened by introducing a new regulation requiring traders taking apples out of the district to obtain approval from the office with a letter.

During the harvest season, Jumla apples were brought to markets across the south of the country and Kathmandu by all manner of enterprising individuals. Many traders came from the Sinja valley where, as we saw in chapter 2, there is a particularly strong historical tradition of trade. A select few were able to establish themselves in the elite farmers’ markets or small organic enterprises in Kathmandu or Pokhara. But many traders sold apples in the conventional wholesale markets like Kalimati and Balkhu. Around the city, traders would also avoid middlemen and set up shop on the side of the road to sell organic Jumla apples (see for example Mishra, 2014). As I illustrate below, while these initiatives demonstrate impressive entrepreneurship, the number of competing traders, alongside the multiple boundaries of “organic,” also presented a problem for securing organic premiums.

Bounding Organic

The competitive marketplace of Jumla apple sales posed challenges to realizing the desired organic price premiums in part due to the multiple, and often blurry, boundaries of organic. The SNV pilot project had introduced organic certification, along with carefully managed market linkages, in order to support value addition through formal, standardized systems of Third-Party verification (a form of “qualification”). Certification was viewed as necessary for capturing organic value in high end organic markets in Nepal and abroad. To this end, the HVAP pilot project had attempted to institute standard prices of certified and non-

182 certified apples of different grades. However, as illustrated in chapter 5, the price difference was artificially imposed by the project and absorbed by the intermediary, not the consumers. After the end of the pilot, the practice of standard pricing, including the attempt to maintain set prices for the different grades, was quickly abandoned and the District Cooperative Federation DCF had stepped out of the unprofitable role as intermediary. The authors of the final report for the SNV pilot cautioned that “If this price difference [between certified and non-certified apples] does not increase, this small difference will not justify organic certification from a financial perspective” (SNV, 2011, p. 23).

The attempt to distinguish some Jumla apples as more organic than others would continue to run into problems. The view of Jumla as remote and backward was strongly associated with a presumption that Jumla products were organic-by-default—an imaginary that was, of course, reinforced by the organic district declaration. Outside of niche markets, the boxes and stickers labelling their contents as Jumla apples tended to be more of a concern than certification (see Figure 6.3). As a Republica article describes the situation:

Jumla apples are facing the problem of branding as the farmers in the district have been sending them in foreign-made carton boxes because they haven’t yet received carton boxes with ‘Organic Jumli Apples’ imprints that the District Agriculture Development Office (DADO) was supposed to provide them with a subsidy. Traders say that it is hard to brand the apples as a local organic product because of packaging. They complain that due to the foreign-made carton boxes, consumers do not believe it is local organic apple from Jumla. Apple traders say that there have been instances when consumers simply returned the apples saying that the apples packaged in foreign-made cartons could not be organic apples from Jumla. “People don’t believe that the apples are from Jumla,” said Krishna Buda, an apple trader in the district. (“Jumla apples face branding problem,” 2017)

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Figure 6.3: Jumla organic apple branding (inclusive of certified and non-certified) brochure.

While the association of Jumla with organic-by-default undermined the exclusivity of certification, even the boundary of organic “certified” was blurred in practice. One day, for example, I brought a case of dubious certification that my investigations had uncovered to a meeting with Dinesh, an agricultural officer from Jumla. It was bag of apples marked “organic certified” that I had bought at a high-end Kathmandu supermarket. However, the bag was also marked as coming from Sinja, where there were no Third Party (Organic Certification Nepal) certified VDCs at the time. Presented with my evidence, Dinesh laughed and said, “Hm, yeah they don’t have certification” but, he pointed out reassuringly “by default everywhere is

184 organic… what they do there is that sometimes, they bring all of the apples together, even the Sinja apples together with the certified apples and no one is going to care.” He seemed un-phased by the issue, pointing out that “in Kathmandu, if you say this is a Jumla apple, everyone will say okay this is an organic apple.” Indeed, he suggested that the only reason that the certified apples might tend to be better was that farmers had to wait for the inspectors to come check the apples before they could sell them, which meant that they weren’t picked too early. We then proceeded to eat the incriminating evidence. As we broke into the apple package, he enthusiastically pointed out the smell, “they have such a good smell! You know, those apples that are grown using chemicals in Mustang, they look nice, but they don’t have this fragrance” (Government Officer, December 13, 2015).

For Dinesh, who was both a dedicated Jumla apple cheerleader and deeply committed to the ecological and human health benefits of organic, the priority was assuring me of the underlying issue of whether the apples were raised with chemicals or not. It was not policing the boundary of certified versus non-certified organic. Even the SNV pilot that introduced certification suggested that formal certification was not essential for organic marketing, again reiterating the need to establish a comparative advantage for Jumla apples. The authors recommend that “Even without certification, Jumla should continue promoting its apples as organic, as it is starting to make a name. As competing directly with the Indian and Chinese apples will be difficult, promoting the ‘organic’ brand will help to create a niche market” (SNV, 2011, p. 43).

However, not everyone was content with this lax approach to organic boundary policing. Projects like HVAP continued to recruit wholesalers to enter into contracts with selected producers. Yet the proliferation of enterprising individuals marketing Jumla apples posed a significant problem for these governmental efforts to make professionalized high value markets. The director of a wholesale company who had signed a formal contract with Jumla producers facilitated by HVAP, described the dilemma:

Another problem we saw with Jumla apples is that, if you buy an apple from us, its 150 rupees per kg, but there will be so many farmers who come here from Jumla selling the same thing, the same size, for 65 rupees per kg. That is a big problem that we face. So why [he said with clear exasperation] are they disrupting [undercutting] themselves! Consumers see the same apple that they bought at 65 rupees and they see our apples and they say how are you are charging us 150 rupees; how can that be possible? It’s because we add 30% to the price that we buy at. So, unless they solve this problem, unless there is an organized market, the organic apples will not do well.

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The problem is that they try to organize the market by linking the producers with marketers like us processors, but they couldn’t cover all of the population of farmers, so the ones who are ignored will be here with their product, no one can stop them. Once they are here, they might sell some amount, but still they might have a big volume left. One way or another their profit margins from the apples become less and less as the days go by, they are paying the hotel bill every day. In the end they will sell for 65 rupees per kg. So, it is a compulsion situation, but this practice will hamper the other traders as well. (Wholesaler, June 14, 2017)

As pointed out in the Republica article at the start of this chapter, organic certification had never been self- sustaining in Jumla. Over the following years most of the certifications were reportedly discontinued in Jumla because the actual price differentials couldn’t justify the expense. Jumla apples continued to be sold in select high end markets like supermarkets and the farmer’s market, but by entrepreneurs operating outside of the formalized managed contract systems envisioned by value chain projects. Meanwhile, the failure to enclose and commodify organic in ways that were legible and measurable for the state and donors—securing significant premiums over conventional markets—fuelled criticism of the organic district among national state and project planners. As I highlight in the following section, the tensions and contradictions between different visions of organic also placed Jumla farmers in a difficult position—asked to perform both environmental stewardship and competitive entrepreneurship even as ethical market- making efforts struggled to bring newly celebrated use values in line with exchange value.

Organic Dilemmas

While donors and state actors benefited from the vague and broadly inclusive discourses that embraced a suite of popular sustainable development aims, including agro-biodiversity conservation, organic production, poverty alleviation and market growth, Jumla producers faced the immediate challenge of navigating the limits and contradictions at work within these governmental projects. As we have seen, projects supporting profit maximizing apple production came into conflict with the inclusive mandate of the organic district as: [a] new agro-ecological challenges associated with commercial apple production have changed the cost calculus of organic (including as organic was increasingly understood as more capital and/or labour intensive than conventional cultivation, at least in the short term); and [b] projects have encountered challenges commodifying organic and achieving significant value addition.

Moreover, even as value chain development projects have encouraged residents to commercialize and specialize—and planners like Ramjee, who we met in chapter 4, rationalized the promotion of apples through the logic of “food security through income security”—food fairs and radio programmes encouraged

186 farmers to maintain on-farm biodiversity, and nutrition programs admonished residents for their monotonous diets of imported white rice and “junk food” like Wai Wai, a common brand of instant noodles. The tensions between the logic of organic for “income security” versus “use value” concerns for health and nutrition were not lost on Jumla residents. It is important to recognize that the relationships that people have to local food cultures in the Karnali are complex and embedded in histories of political marginalization, ideologies of modernity, and the affective materiality of specific foods. However, many residents did complain about the shift to eating crappy rice imported from the south. As one producer described the situation, “We sell [beans, apples and potatoes] and buy the rotten rice from Terai. We eat that. We sell our good products which we produce to the Terai and bring the rice which is kept for how long we don’t know” (Dillichaur Farmer, November 16, 2015). Or to take another account, “People have stopped eating our own local products and they have started eating modern things. They have started eating that rotten rice. They don’t eat the maize that is produced here anymore, they sell this maize and buy rice. We have millet here, but people only eat a little of these local products now” (Dillichaur Farmer, November 15, 2015).

Between the competing rationalities of the new “good farmer” of the sustainable development era (Vandergeest, 2006), farmer approaches to organic did not conform neatly to either “rational” profit maximizing entrepreneurship or altruistic environmental stewardship. First, as we have seen, concrete, affective experiences and knowledge of input intensive farming in the Terai and India informed a biopolitics from below in Jumla, as farmers expressed concerns over the impacts of chemical use on human and ecological health. Some explanations of these concerns did appear to reproduce aspects of the language used by agricultural officers. The chairperson of an HVAP group in Dillichaur, for example, explained the benefits of organic with direct reference to the trainings he had received:

…there is big difference between being organic and not. Being organic is very good for health, there are no bad impacts for those who consume the produce. Organic is very beneficial. Pesticides are not good for our health. Fruits may look good if we use chemical pesticides, but they will not be as tasty as organic and will also not be beneficial for our health. Farmers have come to understand many things about organic in trainings and seminars. (Dillichaur Farmer, November 16, 2015)

But support for organic was certainly not limited to the stiff discourse of development trainings. As we saw above, those with experience of chemical fertilizers had witnessed the negative agro-ecological effects. Concerns about the use of chemicals were embedded in relations of care for the health of not only agro- ecologies but also the bodies of the people and animals. Such worries were often expressed in relation to

187 the distrust of imported foods. As Happychuk et al. (2014) report in their study on dietary change in Jumla, focus group participants expressed concerns that chemical residues and the adulteration of imported foods (for example additions of low-quality rice) were contributing to poor health and sickness. We met a jovial, wisecracking older couple in a small valley in Kanakasundari, for example, who praised the organic status of their substantial apple farm. Their sons lived in Surkhet and they compared Jumla produce to the commercial farming in the south. The husband told us:

Our apples are fresh. Without any chemicals [auṣadhi]. Down there [in the south of the country], they put chemicals on chillies, pumpkins, rice etc. When we stayed in Surkhet, they put chemicals on all of the vegetables including cauliflower and potato. But these things [holding out an apple] are very fresh, nothing will happen to you even if you eat 10 or even 20 of our apples [laughing heartily] (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 10, 2015)

However, and secondly, the organic district declaration was not actually preventing the use of chemicals in the district. While the declaration made chemicals more difficult to access and prevented agrovets from openly marketing them in the district, the enforcement measures for use were reportedly minimal.91 It was a public secret that many people were in fact using chemicals in the district. I too saw famers carrying the fluorescently coloured liquids in repurposed water bottles and using them in their fields. The local radio station, Radio Karnali ran periodic announcements from DADO requesting that people stop using the chemicals (“Prāṅgārika pramāṇīkaraṇakā lāgi āntarika nirīkṣaṇa śuru,” 2014; “Argānika jillākai rupamā,” 2016; “Jhāranāsaka auṣadhi byuṭāklōr prayōga nagarna,” 2016; “Argānika jillā jumlā mā rāsāyanika viṣādīkō carkō prayōga,” 2018).

Yet, much to my initial surprise, even in candid conversations about the use of conventional chemicals, development officers and farmers both agreed that it was not apples that were the primary recipients of illicit chemical inputs—it was rice. In particular, it was the much prized local red marsī rice that has been central to both agro-biodiversity conservation interests and celebrations of local food cultures and Jumla identity (discussed in chapter 4). One of the primary reported reasons for chemical use had to do with labour shortages and the increasing cost of agricultural wages (discussed in chapter 3). Specifically, “Butachlor” an herbicide was used in rice fields to reduce the labour time required for weeding. Marsī was also particularly prone to disease and since the late 1990s (with a particularly serious outbreak in the mid-2000s) had been hit by fungal blast disease (Magnaporthe oryzae). Several years saw devastating losses for

91 When I asked an acquaintance what would happen if farmers were caught using chemicals, he laughed cynically and said “the officials just go like this—” he put his hand over his eyes and turned away.

188 households in the district, triggering food security warnings and emergency interventions. Many people switched to new rice varieties introduced by DADO or abandoned rice cultivation altogether (as was the case in Dillichaur). However, the older variety of marsī rice continues to be favoured for specific cultivation traits (e.g. shorter maturation time), eating quality, and cultural value. Many people continued to cultivate local varieties despite the higher risk of blast (Palikhey et al., 2016; Devkota, 2014). The use of chemicals lowers the risks associated with rice cultivation, particularly in the context of the changing climate (Buda, 2017). Chemical use in rice speaks to the continued importance of the use value of rice (including subsistence, socio-cultural and affective understandings of value) for many Jumla households and the particular positioning of Jumla farmers between subsistence and commodity production.

The reported lack of illicit chemical use in apples, on the other hand, aligns with another broader dynamic at work in farmer decision-making—continued resistance to high risk investments in pursuit of commercialization. Even as many Jumla smallholders shifted incrementally towards market-oriented production—tempted by new market opportunities—as we saw in chapter 3, the appeal of apples continued to be informed by a long-standing view of apple cultivation as requiring relatively limited investments in terms of time and money, particularly after the initial year. As we saw above, in the context of changing agro-ecologies, moves towards commercialization, whether organic or not, would demand not just addressing new pest and nutrition concerns but also additional investments to address potentially more significant threats to production, including weather events like hail, lack of sufficient and timely rain, and trees that were poor in quality or varieties vulnerable to rising temperatures. With so many uncertainties, many farmers remained unwilling or unable to make risky investments in pursuit of exchange-value production.

Even wealthier households with greater interest in commercialization and the ability to make such investments, expressed concern about the prospects of competing with apple producers in India and China. As we saw above, the use of chemicals was certainly viewed as an advantage in achieving the aesthetic qualities demanded in the apple market, but it was clear that the challenge of competing with Indian and Chinese apples went far beyond their use of pesticides to the sheer scale of production and levels of capital investment. We spoke, for example, with a man with a sizable apple farm—who was also a prominent businessman and politician—about his experience on an exchange tour to China led by SNV. He spoke to the stunning gap between Jumla farms and those he saw in China:

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The farmers don’t have to buy the land over there which is a great advantage for them, and they don’t have to fence either because they don’t leave the cattle out for grazing. There are roads to every farm, which makes the transportation cheaper and they have cold stores on every farm as well. They have covers to separate each apple on every tree. All the apples are covered; you cannot see a single apple without a cover. In this way they are safe from insects, pesticides, and hail. We don’t have any of this. One of the farmers asked me how many trees I have, and when I replied that I had 200, he just laughed at me. He asked me how can you do business with 200 apple trees? He had like a hundred thousand trees. He said that we need to cover management costs whether it is for 200 or 200,000 trees, so it would be cheaper if we had more apples. So, there is a vast difference between the production of Chinese and Nepali apples. Our farmers are doing it because they don’t have anything else to do. They were frustrated with everything else and thought they could have some benefit from the apple and that’s how they started with it. (Jumla Farmer, June 30, 2014)

Others also pointed to the unevenness of state supports and infrastructure in Nepal, China and India. As a man from Sinja valley put it: In India there is a road to every farm. Here there is not even a road to my village! (Kanakasundari Farmer, July 2, 2014)

Finally, Jumla residents strategically engaged with agricultural development projects in hopes of accessing the flows of development resources associated with different visions of “Organic Jumla.” Despite the fact that certification failed to take off, the DADO, HVAP, HIMALI, and other smaller-scale NGOs and donor projects, continued to engineer micro-market linkages and underwrite the costs of imported bio-chemicals, branding and labelling, and, more recently, provide support for productive assets like irrigation systems. Meanwhile, development funds channeled through organizations like LI-BIRD and World Vision, as well as new interventions by HIMALI, the Rural Access Project, and Mountain Partnership, provided incentives and subsidies to encourage participating farmers to maintain minor, traditional crops, despite their low market value. Projects of all kinds also provided additional incentives for participation including per diems for trainings and opportunities to participate in study tours. These flows of funding have been key to sustaining the broadly inclusive vision of the organic district in spite of limits and contradictions in practice. It is to the practices and politics of these strategic engagements that I turn in the following chapter.

Conclusion

In this chapter we examined the emergent limits in projects of organic apple market-making, particularly as they diverge from, and come into conflict with, the inclusive promises of the organic district mandate. I highlighted new challenges to existing, low-input approaches to apple production, not only from

190 governmental programs aimed at improving quality, but also broader agro-ecological dynamics related to shifts in farming practices and climate change. The resulting need for increased investment in nutrition and pest management as well as irrigation systems, hailnets, and even the replacement of existing trees, meant that reliable, high prices in the market (or significant ongoing governmental support) would become particularly important for rationalizing the continuation of apple production in the district. At the same time, the inadequacy of low investment approaches and declining costs of imported commodities, also meant that organic was increasingly viewed as more expensive than conventional production, at least in the short term.

Exchange value rationalities of organic—involving processes of enclosure and abstraction—have also faced problems realizing organic value addition in the market. Limited access to high end consumer markets, unruly traders and multiple, competing boundaries of “organic,” all posed barriers to securing the desired organic premiums in niche, high value markets. While farmers are called on to embody the aspirations of sustainable development as self-empowered, ecologically responsible entrepreneurs, they face limits and contradictions in the everyday economic logics of the organic apple business. Meanwhile they also experience broader contradictions in the rationalities of sustainable development as the form of sustainable entrepreneurialism embodied in organic apple development (concentrated on competitive specialization) comes into conflict with the cultural- and bio-politics of agro-biodiversity conservation and the preservation of “traditional” diversified farming systems.

Farmer responses to these competing demands of them as responsible development subjects, reflect their complex positioning between subsistence production, commodity production, and a variety of non- agricultural livelihood pursuits. These responses include the illicit use of chemical inputs, but also continued resistance to uncertain investments in agriculture. They also, as I discuss in the following chapter, include strategic engagements with development programs to minimize their own risk and make claims on governmental actors to address the various gaps, limits and exclusions in sustainable development rationalities.

Chapter 7 | Brokering Organic: Civil Servants, Civil Society and Local Autonomy

Introduction

One day, on a trip to Dhobighat in Kanakasundari, Chaturbhuj and I were instructed to speak with a “clever man” who had a large apple farm just up the valley. We found him with several other men preparing apples for making beer that would be turned into liquor. Dipendra, (who we also met briefly in chapter 5) was a tall man in his 50s or so wearing the men’s version of the Jumla farmer uniform, comprised of a wool vest, worn sport coat and ṭōpī (the traditional flat-topped Nepali hat). He was from Hat Sinja, across the river, but had bought and traded this land about 10 years or so ago with the intention of planting apples. So far, he had planted 200 trees and was planning on planting 100 more. He explained his logic for planting apples as he took us on a tour of his orchard, pointing out diseases and demonstrating proper pruning practices along the way. He first situated his vision for planting apples in a broader context of ideas of dependency, segueing fluidly from the scale of the individual farmer to that of the Nepali nation. “We should not always be asking for help. We should develop our habit of supporting others. So, we started producing apples.” Apples, he said, are something that Jumla can give back to Nepal and the wider world. “We will be providing something and also getting something [earning money].” You know, he continued, “there is no clapping of a single hand,” referring to the need for a give and take relationship. This was his personal motivation for starting apple farming, he said, “I want to commercialize apples and develop as a business. I would not farm other things, I would not go abroad to earn money, I would not depend on the government and I would be self-dependent on my own orchard. This is our goal [as Jumla farmers]. To achieve this goal, other institutions or organizations, be it donor agencies or international organizations, NGOs, could help us [farmers] to produce more and control the outbreak of diseases… This is what we are expecting and hoping of those organizations.” He went on to explain the urgency of this claim for support. “Now, when the diseases are breaking out in the district, we are very worried.” He said that the although the agriculture office had provided advice, “we cannot trust the expertise of agriculture office. They have not been able to control these diseases. They have not given us the right advice. This is due to lack of research… there is no research about the kind of soil that we have, what might be the appropriate treatments for this and so on” (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 5, 2015).

Across the district, Hari, a middle-aged man from Lorpa village in Dillichaur—who had grown about 50 apple trees over the years (planting just 10 or 15 each year, the cows and goats ate many)—made a similar claim, this time directed primarily at the state.

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If the DADO provides support to us, the future will be good. If the market price is good, it’s nice. This year the market price was good, and buyers came to our farm, so we didn’t have to take the apples to Surkhet or Nepalgunj. Things were good this year. But there is also the problem that there are no pesticides available. It should be like it is in India. There should be marketing of apples. There should be machines to make apple juice. The apples from India and China are coming into our country, and in the same way our apples should be exported outside the country. However, if there is no provision of services, the apples will just rot and go to waste. (Dillichaur Farmer, November 11, 2015)

Dipendra and Hari’s comments both, to varying degrees, reproduce discourses of self-sufficiency and responsibilitization that have been integral to market-making efforts in Jumla. They present a vision of Jumla farmers lifted from poverty through market-integration. Yet they also make claims on donors and the state (via myself and Chaturbhuj, in these cases) to provide the necessary means to achieve self-sufficiency, claims that resonate with the rhetoric of Karnali Autonomy movement discussed in chapter 4, as well as broader articulations of “moral economic sensibilities” in transnational peasant politics (Edelman, 2005, p. 338). In this chapter, I take up questions of how differently positioned actors experience development programs, negotiate their limits, and strategically engage with projects and discourses of ethical market- making.

As we saw in chapter 4, new interest in Jumla’s frontier agro-ecologies coincided with the complex politics of the post-conflict moment. This was a political conjuncture characterized by radical, anti-corporate and egalitarian discourses, new political dynamics that were linking territorial claims-making to cultural identity, and reinvigorated attention to state territorialisation in remote areas through programs of infrastructure expansion and market development. It was in this context that local politicians and district scaled governmental actors initiated programs like the organic district and one-house-one-orchard programs, which built on political claims to local autonomy and aimed to both celebrate and capitalize on Jumla’s long undervalued natures. The claim was that Jumla and the Karnali were rich in natural resources and could be self-sufficient and prosperous but had failed to develop due to political marginalization and exploitation. The claims underwrote demands for development resources that would enable residents to realize the full potential of the region.

In Jumla, the district-scaled political rationalities described in the paragraph above came into uneasy alignment with state and donor logics of market expansion and deepening. For donors, extending markets into remote areas of the country was seen as not only an important measure for economic growth but also peace-building. For national state actors, markets were similarly linked to political stability, but also to

193 goals of national self-sufficiency. Together, district, national and transnational agendas fueled ambitious development interventions to create markets that promised to be both socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable. Such efforts have generated flows of development resources that have helped to sustain both a diversity of organic and sustainable agriculture initiatives, including in situ agro-biodiversity conservation and high-end niche markets. These flows of resources have remained particularly important in view of the emergent “limits” in ethical market development discussed in chapter 6.

In this chapter, I argue that new forms of governmental intervention in markets, and the limits and failures of these interventions, create new openings for the “politicization” of markets. The gaps between the utopian promises of inclusive, organic market-making—particularly as institutionalized in the organic district—and the limits of individual projects, place real practical strains on farmers, who are faced with difficult decisions of where to invest their time and resources, as well as on the district development agents charged with supporting farmers. I argue that, on the one hand, the deliberate blurring of public-private lines in ethical market-making presents opportunities for new forms of enclosure and private accumulation, as powerful actors take advantage of their privileged access to development resources that are made available under the banner of sustainable and inclusive development. At the same time, these gaps or failures, particularly in the context of political restructuring, also create new spaces for practices of claims- making alongside discourses of corruption aimed at holding development agents and brokers accountable. This is not to suggest that subjectivities are delimited by experiences of governmental intervention and domination. Both subaltern studies and more recent work on biopolitics from below (both of which resonate with ideas of the “peasant way” in the food sovereignty movement, discussed in chapter 8) emphasize that situated lifeworlds exist well beyond the purview of governmental technologies. Rather as Corbridge et al. put it, development interventions and their failures make “the state” visible in new ways, creating new opportunities to “make demands of it” (Corbridge et al., 2005, pp. 44-45). Finally, local politicians, bureaucrats, and NGO officers have also appropriated biopolitical discourses in evolving assertions of local autonomy. Understanding the political implications of ethical market-making thus requires attention to locally situated political formations. Building on studies of brokerage and “geographies of mediation” (Simon, 2009), I examine how everyday negotiations and contestations over market-making resources intersect with discourses of rights and local autonomy.

Politicization and Brokerage

Donor and national state-led programmes of ethical market-making represent governmental efforts to roll out expert solutions to manage the problems of environmental conservation and social exclusion. In doing

194 so, they work to police the boundary of the ostensibly non-political sphere of the market by rendering social and environmental problems technical—a matter of simply introducing new techniques for capturing value and facilitating market linkages. Yet, as I argue in this chapter, the limits and failures of these technical fixes can also work to politicize markets in new ways. Here, I am drawing on Bob Jessop’s approach to processes of politicization-depoliticization, referring to the movement of the boundary or “lines of difference” that separate ostensibly non-political spheres or “themes” from those broadly recognized as proper spheres or themes of public debate and contestation. This is not to say that issues become political or nonpolitical—from Jessop’s Gramscian understanding of the state, practices of governance are always political, to the extent that they are involved in the reproduction and maintenance of hegemony. More specifically, Jessop points to how “attempts to redefine the dividing line between the political and the nonpolitical spheres can provoke controversies and contention about what properly belongs… within a given, positively demarcated, nonpolitical sphere,” like the market (2016, p. 48, see also Jessop, 2013). Thus, for example, efforts to extend the authority of technocratic expertise by making new kinds of adjustments to get market relations “right,” could provoke controversies that move market governance into the sphere of public debate, be it through political party rhetoric, civil society campaigns, civil disobedience, protest, or insurrection.

While Jessop’s conceptual approach usefully describes the boundary work that goes into policing what issues and subjects become politicized, it is also important not to lose sight of the forms of political practice that take place outside formal arenas of political debate and channels of influence. Subaltern studies scholars have been particularly concerned to highlight the political practices of those living at the edges of the social contract or “polity.” James Scott, whose work intersected with the subaltern studies scholars, famously called attention to forms of everyday resistance, or “weapons of the weak.” Everyday forms of resistance include acts that are largely “spontaneous, nonhierarchical and loosely organized” aimed at mitigating or subverting the effects of power (Sivarmakrishnan, 2005, p. 350). While such acts are often not recognized as political, Scott argues that they need to be understood as rooted in “hidden transcripts” and historically sedimented understandings of moral obligation and fairness.

Chatterjee is similarly concerned with bringing subaltern politics to light, specifically in the context of modern biopolitical states. Building on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, Chatterjee argues that, particularly in post-colonial contexts like India, “ideas for republican citizenship” tended to be “overtaken by the developmental state which promised to end poverty and backwardness by adopting appropriate policies of economic growth and social reform…” (Chatterjee, 2004, p. 37). According to Chatterjee, those populations identified as in need of improvement were often “only tenuously, and even then, ambiguously

195 and contextually, rights-bearing citizens in the sense imagined by the constitution.” However, they were “nevertheless acquiring a stake, strategically and morally, in the processes of governmental power” (2008, p. 38, 93). He argues that in this context, marginalized individuals and groups make claims on state resources by striking deals with “those who mediate for them in exchanges with the state and governmental agencies” (Corbridge et al., 2005, p. 250) and applying “the right pressure at the right places in the governmental machinery” (Chatterjee, 2004, p. 66), pressures that might include, as Gupta has shown, discourses of corruption (1998, 2012).92

It is, however, important not to romanticize everyday forms of resistance, which are also fundamentally circumscribed and embedded in multiple axes of power and domination. While Chattejee’s description of the “informal” and contingent political practice of the poor tends towards the celebratory—an arena of subaltern resistance—others are less optimistic, pointing out that informal and extralegal political negotiations also tend to rework state authority in line with localized power structures. As Véron et al. (2003, p. 5) put it in their study of party politics in West Bengal and Bihar, “poverty and powerlessness are the fate of those who lack political connections and who cannot successfully break the law when required to do so.” Chatterjee too acknowledges that not all marginalized groups are able to successfully apply pressures to gain access to governmental resources and that successes “are often temporary” (2004, p. 61). As such, a key question, particularly in Gramscian inspired subaltern studies, is how and when everyday, “common sense,” forms of resistance or claims-making translate into overt political programs.93

Returning to processes politicization-depoliticization, in this chapter I am interested in exploring how differently positioned actors negotiate governmental efforts to micro-engineer more ethical market relations, and the ways in which everyday contingent claims-making relates to more overt political agendas. I highlight how the strategic, informal, and sometimes illicit applications of pressure—informed by situated experiences and articulations of fairness—can inform trajectories of politicization in the formally

92 The argument resonates with Fuller and Harriss’ observation that rather than being in retreat from the state, many marginalized people use “the ‘system’ as best they can” in the expectation that they will “sometimes benefit from their own adequately competent manipulation of political and administrative systems” (Fuller & Harriss, 2000, p. 2.51 quoted in Véron et al., 2003, p. 4). 93 Chatterjee’s work has been criticized for its limited attention to these dynamics. Nigam (2012), for example, argues that within Chatterjee’s work leaves “no outside to the state’s governmental practices” and even violent insurgencies “only ever ‘seek an exceptional place within the order of governmentality’” (Nigam, 2012). As such, in his identification of a sphere of creative and contingent subaltern politics, Chatterjee’s political society also condemns subaltern agents to “everyday” political practice with no scope for “negotiating the terms of power and the content of that everyday” (Nigam, 2012 see also Baviskar & Sundar, 2008; Sundar & Sundar, 2012).

196 recognized “public sphere.” At the same time, the opportunity and capacity to exert pressure is delimited by intersecting axes of power including class, caste or ethnic identity, and gender.

Negotiating Organic Apples

In this section, I begin to examine the everyday politics of ethical market-making in Jumla. My entry point to the broader discussion of politicization are small-scale practices of claims-making in an agricultural training that, as we will see, are often mediated by humour and creativity. This is followed by a discussion of some of the ways in which Jumla residents negotiate their terms of participation in agricultural development interventions and place claims on the development resources flowing through ethical market- making projects—specifically in light of the limits and failures of these projects. We see how residents work within the margins and grey areas of formal targeting strategies to position themselves to benefit from these programs in ways that often deviate from their designated roles. They do so through everyday engagements with (and as) development brokers—primarily staff at district-scaled state offices and the NGOs that implement development projects—through networks and appeals to fairness.

My claim here is not that the kinds of everyday resistance and negotiation discussed here are unique to organic apple development projects. However, the everyday dynamics of negotiation and brokerage at work in organic apple projects are important for understanding how these projects are experienced and the kinds of claims making that they have engendered. Particularly in more recent value chain interventions, the stated aim of balancing competitive market potential and pro-poor social inclusion has introduced greater ambiguity in targeting frameworks. As we saw in chapter 5, ethical market-making interventions have incorporated a range of bureaucratic mechanisms designed to achieve this balance. Mechanisms rely on contracted consultants, NGO staff, social mobilizers, and local bureaucrats to manage the distribution of market-making resources—often at the scale of the individual firm or household—including the pro-active identification and recruitment of participants and the provision of ongoing support for navigating new development bureaucracies. With the increased scale of development resources available, exclusion from farmers’ groups and cooperatives has become a matter of growing concern, and farmers across the district have hastily formed new groups and enterprises in hopes of accessing new opportunities. Farmer demand for resources made available through development projects has also been influenced by the agro-ecological and market uncertainties and risks discussed in chapter 6.

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November 2015, A Training in Khalanga

In November 2015, I attended an exclusive three-day training sponsored by the Apple Self-Reliance Program. The training was being held in the small training hall on the second floor of the minimalist concrete DADO building. The room was filled with rows of colored plastic lawn chairs and floral fabric was hung to shade the windows for PowerPoint presentations that were interrupted at regular intervals by power fluctuations and technical difficulties. The first day was fairly uneventful and I introduced myself to some of the younger women camped out in the back. I made friends with Bina, an affable woman in her late-30s who lived not far from the headquarters. I had also been particularly impressed by a gruff and outspoken woman named Sushma who was from a neighbouring VDC. On the morning of the second day of the training I arrived promptly on time with the rest of the participants. We stood out on the balcony of the building looking out over the dusty road below the office, taking in the morning sun. Sushma complained that the trainer was not there on time and that all the participants got there on time, but the instructor would undoubtedly be late (which he in fact was, by about 20 minutes).

Inside, sitting in the back between Sushma and Bina, I asked if they got anything besides snacks for attending the training. I don’t know, said my new friend, maybe we’ll get some money, I haven’t heard. Sushma said, I heard that we’ll get 300. Per day or total? Bina asked. Per day, but still with that amount, you get a plate of momos (dumplings) and a tea and its gone. Bina nodded. Sushma said, we should ask for 500 a day and Bina agreed. Then they turned their attention to the snack yesterday. Bina complained to another woman across the room saying, after eating just canā (a dish from the Terai of soaked, spiced and toasted chickpeas) my stomach hurt all day. Yeah, canā is no good the woman replied. Also, Bina pointed out, six people missed the snack yesterday and didn’t get anything. Then another participant spoke up and compared it to another training where they had had māsu ciurā (meat with bitten rice), which, everyone agreed, was a proper snack.

After the first lecture of the day, we headed out into the hall to check out the snack. It was tea and biscuits. Bina looked at the biscuits and made a face, this was also a crappy snack—see how old and stale these biscuits are, she commented. Settling back in for the second half of the day, a tall older man, a teacher, who stood very straight and spoke with a great formality, stood up to make some comments about yesterday’s class. He observed that six people didn’t get snack and went on to comment pointedly that in comparison to these theory classes, practical classes were more useful. As he was reporting this the instructor, apparently not listening to what he was saying, left the room to deal with a technical problem. A young man in the back, laughing, called out for the teacher to stop. “The sir is gone,” he said, pointing out that

198 this speech was directed to him, “wait until he gets back!” The room chuckled as did the teacher and he sat down until the instructor returned.

Between complaints and joking banter, many of the attendees expressed genuine interested in learning new content. Many were also clearly familiar with the subject matter of the training. Sushma, talking quietly to herself in the back of the room, correctly anticipated the lecture content and answered the questions posed. The participants asked detailed questions that reflected significant practical experience. There was a long discussion, for example, about apple grading in which they expressed frustration with the rigidity of the system and its lack of consideration for the actual taste of apples. Sushma and Bina reiterated the teacher’s point that practical trainings with real trees were more useful than these theory classes, particularly for learning about pruning and pest management, which were two of their main concerns with regard to their orchards.

The next and final day of the training, one of the long-serving agriculture officers, who was from a VDC not far from the headquarters, gave a lecture about value chains. He had already taken one phone call mid- lecture, and ten minutes later answered his phone again and announced he had to leave. Sushma, sitting in the back with us, commented loudly, you talk about farmers always being in a hurry and not taking care, but you yourself are in a big hurry I see. As he left, she turned to me and said see, our trainers are no good. How can we improve with trainers like this?

Snack, to everyone’s dismay, was Wai Wai (packaged instant noodles). Everyone was complaining, I was sitting with a small group of women and a couple of young men inside the classroom when Sushma came in griping loudly. She marched up to the front of the room, erased the white board and commenced to write a defiant, and witty, logical sequence of complaint: 1) discrimination in snacks 2) no regulation of time 3) no fruit training participants without snacks plan. The women in the back were shy, but laughed and shouted suggestions. When the instructor returned, and the rest of the participants were called in, there was a small, performative, uproar about the snack. Even the very distinguished teacher chimed in, standing up to say primly, we are studying about how to be organic farmers here, the snack should be whole organic food as well, shouldn’t it?

Someone pointed out that another group taking a similar training at the hotel down the street had had chowmein and momos, those cost about Rs 50, Wai Wai could only be 10 to 30 rupees per person. The trainer listened to their complaints and said ok I’ll see if this claim about the other group is true and left the room. He was gone for some time. In the meantime, the group convinced one of the young women to take

199 her turn singing (a common interlude in trainings). She sang an impromptu verse about participants receiving pens and notebooks at the training. The trainer finally returned with the travel allowances and printed training completion certificates, which the participants seemed to deem an acceptable resolution. No one knew how much they were going to get. Bina told me that it isn’t a fixed rate, sometimes you get RS 1,500, sometimes Rs 900 you never know until the last day. Everyone was called up to the front one by one to get their money in envelopes. In the end Bina got Rs 900, people from Dillichaur got Rs 1,500, Urthu folks got Rs 1,200; Bina asked everyone how much they got. Then they were all called up to the front again for their certificates, for which there was clapping. There were some final closing statements, and then it was all over, and everyone headed home.

Strategic Engagements

Optimizing Trainings

Trainings offer one window into micro-political engagements with market-making development projects their limits. I have included this detailed description of a training because it speaks to some of the small, but strategic ways in which residents engaged with apple development projects and the kinds of everyday acts of defiance, which were often articulated through witty critique and cynical jokes. Humour is an essential political skill in Jumla.

In order to understand Sushma and Bina’s frustration with the training above, it is important to emphasize that development trainings can place a significant burden on residents’ limited labour time. This is particularly true for women who are specifically targeted in many participatory development activities. As we saw in chapter 5, trainings were a key governmental technology in apple development programs aimed at addressing technical skills and a more general lack of entrepreneurial orientation. All of the apple projects I encountered in the district (of which there were many) included trainings of some kind, often in coordination with the DADO, the horticulture research center at Rajikot, or bāgavānī, the horticulture farm. On the state and donor side, trainings offered a convenient way of significantly expanding the number of households “reached,” while spending down development budgets. As one disenchanted wholesaler put it, “Maybe they have a budget for training and they think that this will finish their budget, so they are not really committed to whether the training is practical or not” (Wholesaler, June 14, 2017). Given the time demanded by trainings, particularly if participants were coming from a VDC far from the headquarters, development projects faced pressures to make attending trainings worth the while.

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Technical knowledge would be the obvious reason for attending. In apple trainings specifically, many participants I spoke with, like Sushma and Bina, expressed interest in accessing new knowledge and skills, particularly from practical trainings (often referred to using the English word “practical”), which usually covered practices like pruning and training as well as the mixing and application of Bordeaux mixture— the mixture of copper sulphate, lime and water used as a fungicide—and locally sourced pesticides.94 However, as we saw in the last chapter, the production of new and applicable knowledge for trainings was an important limit facing development planners. Producers like Sushma and Dipendra expressed frustration with the static content of trainings, particularly in what were referred to as “theory” classes. Moreover, as we saw above, many participants were experienced apple growers and familiar with the fundamentals from previous trainings. Some folks I spoke with admitted that they had attended trainings but failed to implement what they had learned, either because they did not have sufficient apples or because they were unwilling or unable to invest the time and money to, for example, water trees regularly, invest in quality cutting instruments, or buy an expensive juicing machine.

There are multiple other factors besides applicable knowledge and skills that motivated attendance at trainings, differing from one individual to the next. For some participants, trainings could offer a break from work or family, or just a change of routine (as was the case, for example, for a young mother living in town, who was home alone during the day). Trainings could also be fun. A number of officers at the agricultural office incorporated songs, riddles and jokes into their lectures and made an effort to keep participants engaged. Attending trainings also helped to establish or reinforce relationships with development actors in the headquarters who, as we will see in the next section, played an important role in brokering access to development resources. Finally, a widely discussed rationale for attending trainings was access to material benefits. Participants were provided with travel allowances and, in some cases, materials like cutting shears, inputs like Bordeaux mixture, or processing instruments like the handheld machines for making dried apple slices—items that many people were unwilling to invest their own resources to purchase.

As in the case of the Apple Self-Reliance training described above, the terms of compensation for attendance were an important topic of discussion among attendees. Such concerns were raised, for example, by a group of trainees sitting on a table in the shade at an apple processing training at the state-run apple processing center, watching the more hardworking participants mash apples. I was sitting with a couple of

94 Apple pruning and training in particular require a good deal of practice to master and are often described as an “art and science,” “proper” techniques are debated and have changed significantly over the decades.

201 young women and two older men and one of the men asked the others if they thought they were going to receive slicing machines or not (referring the small handheld machines used to make the curled apple slices that were dried and sold in small packets). The older man sitting next to him said he didn’t think so and there was a brief discussion about whether or not they should ask about it. The first complained that at the DADO you got a juicing machine for a week training and his companions shook their heads and said no, no, it is only at a two-month training that you receive a juicing machine. One of the young women, a well- spoken 19-year-old studying agriculture at the local Karnali Technical School, said that she was pretty sure that the budgets for the training and the machines were separate, so it didn’t necessarily depend on the length of the training. The discussion ended as we were called over to observe the juicing machine in action. These kinds of casual conversations illustrate participants’ attention to mapping and assessing the cost- benefit ratio of different trainings.

As we saw with Bina and Sushma, attendees were often not shy about the importance of these forms of compensation. For some trainees I spoke to, the material benefits were the self-confessed primary motivation for attendance, as was the case for a young woman attending an extensive training for Local Resource Persons. The large majority of those in attendance at this particular training were young people in their late teens or early 20s and well educated by Jumla standards. Dinesh, who was one of the officers running the training said he was doubtful that many of them intended to actually continue farming on their parents’ farms. One day, after the training, Sushmita and I were sitting with Bimala who owned a small shop on the lower floor of the building where we were staying. A friend of Bimala’s stopped by with a young woman who was attending the training in town. The trainee was dressed in a nice, embroidered kurtā survāl (loose pants and long shirt) and wearing make-up with her hair neatly pinned. We learned that she was a relative of the head of the horticulture division at the DADO and that she was studying at a University in Nepalgunj. She had taken the training because she had heard that she would get Rs 1,600 compensation. But it turned out that they had mostly received tools and materials and only Rs 300 in cash. Because she had no use for the materials, she had handed them off to a friend in town. She also told us that Dinesh, had pressed her about why she was taking the class. He had asked if she was really going to be a farmer and had commented skeptically that he would be very interested to see what kind of farm she ran.

Like Bina and Sushma, some participants also attempted to negotiate for better conditions of participation, albeit in often small ways. According to staff on development projects, competition for development participants among state and donor projects had led to increasing rates for the cost of compensation for development trainings. A young man working for an implementing NGO complained about the role of NGOs in driving up the prices for training attendance. We met him at a newly constructed hotel in Dillichaur

202 where he was conducting a training on sustainable forest product harvesting. He said, first the government comes and pays people 100, 200 rupees to come to trainings and then the NGOs come and pay 400, 500, and then people start expecting more and more (NGO Officer, November 7, 2015).

Making Public Works Work for You

Trainings are certainly not the only arena in which we find practices of strategic engagement with apple and other agricultural development programs. In chapter 5, we saw similar forms of strategic engagement in food/cash for work projects in which assets like a community apple orchard were the negotiated by- products of public works programs. Failed projects were documented in donor reports and visible in the remains of abandoned orchards and cellar stores scattered across the district. A young man working for the Red Cross spoke to some of these issues from his personal experience. We met him at a hotel in Raralihi where he was conducting a WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) training with one of the women’s groups there. He discussed the failure of a Red Cross food for work apple plantation project in the village, acknowledging that people had clearly participated for access to the food. Due to limited access to land the trees had been planted in the rice fields. Not only had people neglected the trees in favour of rice but the trees had predictably become waterlogged and most had died promptly after planting. He compared the failure of the project to the dilapidated World Vision cellar stores that had been built in different parts of the district and largely abandoned. He pointed out that there is no incentive to repair these cellar stores if they break. If one organization doesn’t rebuild it, another one will come along and do it, he said. He went on to point out that the design of many of the cellar stores had been poor to begin with and that many of the apples stored in them had rotted (including a 50% loss of apples in an HVAP cellar store in a neighbouring VDC).

A jovial group of older men in Dillichaur recalled a couple of similar failed apple development projects in their village. Chaturbhuj and I spoke with them sitting on an embankment next to the main road (still inaccessible by motor vehicles) across from a small store owned by one of the men, who periodically called instructions to children looking to buy sweets. The conversation had come around to a recent community orchard initiative that they thought had been funded by RCIW. “One organization had granted some funds to buy apple trees and dig a ditch too. There are still trees there now” the storeowner said. “They were given rice to make a wall and to dig a ditch… they also received some money. Then it became common property, and no one paid any attention to it. No one took care of this common property. RCIW just provided some support once and then didn’t provide support again. Now no one is there to care for those orchards. All of the walls are destroyed.” A prickly older man interrupted, “People are not happy to contribute in a group,

203 they are always seeking a larger share. They spend time by gossiping and drinking alcohol. They do not work.” At that point another man interjected to point out defensively that “when the trees are not getting value in the market what can we do?” The older man continued “If people had worked hard, they would have earned a lot of money. They might have earned enough money to buy a vehicle. Instead they spend money by eating meat and drinking.” A young man at the edge of the group piped up saying that they had to have some treats like picnics when they work, and the men all laughed. The man sitting next to him joined in, “we must enjoy, mustn’t we? If we work for 2 or 4 days, we organize a party. We have meat, drink and other snacks for fun and enjoyment.” They all laughed. The storeowner leaned in and told us, of the last speaker, “his words might not be 100 percent true; you should probably filter some percentage of what he is saying.” (The jokes continued with someone commenting that he does not have the “capacity” to explain the truth well [capacity being one of the commonly used English words absorbed from development speak], to which someone else responded, pointing to the store “if he does not have capacity how could he make that building!?” contributing to hearty laughter) (Dillichaur Farmers, November 17, 2015).

In the discussion of the projects the men joked about using development resources for entertainment but also, pointedly, highlighted the poor planning of the project as at least one of the reasons for abandoning the asset, highlighting the strategic (and irreverent) logics of their engagement with development programs. The conversation also illustrates some of the tensions between strategic engagements and the discourses of undeservingness with which such practices were criticized and policed by neighbours and fellow farmers, a topic to which I return below.

As discussed in chapter 3, practices that are often referred to as “development dependency,” like the failure to repair a damaged cellar store or maintain an orchard, need to be situated in changing understandings of the responsibilities of the state and donors. As we see here, they also represent efforts on the part of individuals and communities to manage development activities to minimize their own outlay and risk. Entrepreneurial individuals and communities who were able to establish the requisite relationships and navigate the development bureaucracy could, for example, negotiate with multiple organizations to fund different parts of projects and reduce risk to themselves. Community orchards and cooperative enterprises were often fashioned from a patchwork of funding bodies and organizations, contributions that were advertised on crowded signboards in villages.95 In Lamra, for example, a group of residents had received

95 While project guidelines may include provisions for avoiding overlap this was often not followed in practice. As one project manager framed the problem, “there is lots of overlap. I have tried to advocate for less overlap, but with

204 support from the Karnali Employment Project (KEP) for the construction of a wall for a community orchard, but residents had delayed planting saplings for two years while they waited to hear if they would be receiving funding from the Asian Development Bank supported Community Irrigation Project to install an irrigation tank. Another community orchard in Lamra had received funding from KEP to build a wall as well as funding for 1,000 saplings and an irrigation tank from the World Bank’s Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF). However, after planting the saplings, people from the neighbouring VDC had uprooted the plants in protest, claiming rights to the land for grazing their animals. PAF funded a second round of saplings that were once again uprooted. When we spoke with community members, they had recently planted apples for a third time, this time with support from a local NGO called Bee-Group. Not all communities and individuals, however, were able to negotiate this kind of support.

The Politics of Exclusive Inclusions

It is important to recognize strategies of selective participation by residents as a form of negotiation, specifically in the context of the constrained avenues of political engagement available to those positioned as development subjects and in light of the limits of organic apple development rationalities outlined in the previous chapter. This view serves as an important counter-weight to narratives of development dependency or laziness. However, strategic negotiations and applications of pressure on development intermediaries are also mediated by intersecting axes of power and could reproduce or exacerbate unevenness. The uneven distribution of access to organic apple development resources was a point made emphatically by many people who found themselves excluded from such networks. In this section, I provide a few examples of Jumla farmers’ accounts of exclusion from ethical market-making, and organic apple interventions specifically. I highlight a moral discourse of hard work and laziness deployed by residents asserting their own claims to resources vis-à-vis those of their neighbours as well as discourses of corruption and lack of accountability on the part of state and donor actors.

Exclusive Groups and Clever Neighbours

A significant source of ire was the exclusive nature of the group approach used by agricultural (and many other sector) development interventions. In response to a question about the presence of the state and NGOs in the area, a man in his 40s or 50s in Dillichaur told us “maybe there was a training and those people who

all the organizations working, it is difficult. So, we have to proceed with our eyes shut” (Government Officer, July 10, 2014).

205 knew might have gone. Some people might have been called and the meetings might have happened. But we don’t know about that.” He recalled one organization, whose name he couldn’t remember, that had come to the village to train people in vegetable production and given them seeds:

Only 2 to 4 people in the whole village got seeds, we didn’t receive any help from them. Organizations make groups and the people who are inside the group are the only ones who are included in the meetings and who receive the materials that they provide. If 10 people attend the meeting, they will not let others have access to the materials. For example, there are 100 households here and around 200 to 300 people in the village. If there is a meeting held among 20 people about help from an organization, only those people will benefit, no one else in the village… Sometimes they don’t even make groups. Individually people will discuss with the NGO staff and receive the benefits. Ideally there should be a mass gathering, everyone should be called, and representatives should be selected, but it does not happen this way. Some people get together and make the groups. They will send their own people and form the group. That is the reason other people do not get the chance to participate. Only a limited number of people get the opportunity, whenever any help comes, they sign [referring to the attendance sheets used at meetings] and get the benefit. (Dillichaur Farmer, November 17, 2015)

Explanations of who was able to gain access to these groups and trainings were often framed in terms of cleverness, referencing forms of deception or the unfair mobilization of social capital. A woman we spoke with in Dillichaur, part of the steadily growing population of people moving down from the northern areas of Jumla bordering Mugu, described not only her own exclusion from the agriculture groups that were formed, but also divisions within the long-term resident community. “We are from out of town, but they don’t even tell people from their own village about the training. The cunning people in the village go by themselves… The people there are all jealous of each other.” A man from the same town spoke of his own experience of these divisions, describing acts of deception and cleverness:

Many different groups and organizations come here, and some people claim that they have more than 200 or 300 apples trees and that they grow many more apples than they actually do in order to get tools like machines for cutting apples (for making dried apple slices), making juice, etc. In fact, they are not being honest… In this village, people formed a separate committee in which those who didn’t have any trees were selected as the president and members of the committee. In this way, people were able to get access to support… The main thing that should be considered is who is interested in agriculture, who is devoted to apple farming, they should be visited at their farm, be observed, evaluated and rewarded. But here, there is not such a practice. People who make false claims about having like 400 or 300 apple trees, who in fact don’t grow even a quintal of apples, they are getting more support. Staff come to this village and simply organize a meeting and they trust what people

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claim in the meeting and then they submit the same information to the offices. This is what the practice is here. (Dillichaur Farmer, November 7, 2015)

As these accounts indicate, not only were groups frustratingly exclusionary, there were material consequences of being excluded. People spoke of the access to inputs and instruments including cutting shears for pruning, ladders, harvesting baskets, and machines for making sliced dried apples, all of which would represent significant expenses for many cash-poor Jumla farmers. An account of an acrimonious encounter over access to an agriculture training speaks to the intensity of some of these struggles and how they could intersect with local politics. We spoke with Manu Bahadur, who was a middle-aged man from a VDC along the Tila river, near the border with Kalikot. He described himself as a socialist and told us that he had been compelled to join the Maoists during the conflict. He had orchards as well as a small electronics repair shop along the side of the road. We interrupted a repair job of a half-dissected cell phone and sat on small stools while he launched into an extended account of his battles with the local leaders, who he referred to as feudal lords. These struggles included a dispute over access to a multi-day training for high value agriculture with a focus on apples.

Once, the district agriculture office selected me for training. But local phaṭāhā [a term meaning false, very cunning or deceptive people] did not allow me to participate. I did not care about the allowance given at training... One person was selected from our ward. The district office had sent me a letter. But the local people reported that I had already learned everything and that I did not need further training. And so they disqualified me and sent another person. I went to the agriculture office to ask why this other person was participating in the training. Why was I not given the chance to attend the training even though the district office had sent me the letter. They replied that the VDC [village development committee] nominated another person and I would not get the chance to attend. So, I came back home. The person who participated in the training from my village does not have even a single apple tree or any other fruit trees…

Those who have not been working in the field are attending trainings and those who have been working in the field are not getting opportunities to participate in the trainings. Hardworking and hard labouring people are not valued here. I work 24 hours a day. This is why Nepal never develops… A person who is not involved in agriculture, drinks alcohol and is involved in domestic violence was nominated for the agriculture training. This is bad… This is my suggestion. Provide training and support to people who are really interested and are actually involved in the business. The trend I am seeing up to today, is that when new people come to our district to provide trainings, they organize the training, distribute the training allowance and go back home. Only the tāthā bāthā [rich and clever] are enjoying those opportunities. Ordinary people are not getting any support. It is making no difference to people. Many training programs were organized here but only the rich and clever and their relatives get opportunities from them. (Jumla Farmer, June 18, 2014)

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People with political connections and other forms of social and economic capital were better placed not only to gain access to groups and trainings but also to bend and break the rules successfully. We find an example of this in relation to new requirements for land ownership documentation. New apple programs, in addition to focusing on larger scale projects, also included requirements for land ownership documents (lālpurjā). The requirement presented a major obstacle for rural residents as many lacked formal documentation of land ownership, either because land had not been formally registered or because it had been claimed without legal processes.96 Encroachment on public forest land was described as a common practice in areas at a distance from the district headquarters. While some poor households claimed new land to increase their subsistence crops, apples were described as a key contributor to recent practices of forest clearing, particularly because they could be planted on steep land and did not require annual ploughing. As Gaire reports from his research in Jumla:

Irrespective of their legal land holding size, many… are clearing forest to establish apple orchards. Participants said during interviews and focus group discussions that they have witnessed many of the apple orchards being established on such cleared land. Local forest officials interviewed for this research said most of the recent apple orchards are established illegally on forestland. Agriculture officers agree but said it was not part of their responsibility nor was it in their control. (Gaire, 2015, p. 176)

New requirements for landownership documents were included at least in part as a measure to prevent illegal enclosures, although the requirement also supported governmental efforts to rationalize and formalize land ownership.97 The requirements also, however, presented a barrier to many interested in accessing supports. A man in Dillichaur, for example, spoke to us about the challenge that the land ownership requirements posed for him:

The land where apples are planted needs to have a proper land ownership document. Then only will the DADO provide supports to farmers. There is a problem, however, because we do not have the land ownership document. You need a photocopy of the document and a recommendation from the Village Development Committee office. Then we need to submit an application to the DADO. [In order to obtain the land ownership document] the land measurement office has to come. Our land has not been officially measured by people from the government, so now this has become a problem for us…. What was forest land before has been transformed into agricultural land and there is no government certificate saying that it is our land. (Dillichaur Farmer, November 16, 2015)

96 During the conflict, the Maoists also burned the land registration office with the intent of abolishing the basis of private property claims, contributing to problems of documentation. 97 In some cases, like that of HIMALI, the documents were required as collateral for farmers’ matching contributions.

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While encroachment on public forest land was reportedly widespread, it was often well connected elites who were able to not only able to clear more land but also exercise the necessary influence to have this land registered in their names (see Gaire, 2015, p. 162).98 Manu Bahadur quoted above, for example, described in great detail a specific case of this near his home where, according to him, “the feudal lords in the area influenced the āmīn [the government staff carrying out the land survey] by bribing them in order to have them survey the forest area down to Nagma [a place name] as their private property. It was all done illegally… People with no land and not enough food to eat were once able to use this public land for their livelihoods, but the tāthā bāthā [cunning elites] surveyed all this public forest land as their private property” (Jumla Farmer, June 18, 2014).

Issues of corruption and unfair access to program benefits also emerged within the bureaucratic operation of market-making programs themselves. Two men heading up large agri-businesses currently working with Jumla farmers complained about the significant bribes or “commissions” that were required gain access to project supports. One local NGO officer in Jumla described HIMALI as a “mafia” while discussing his failure to secure support for a farmers’ group that he had been supporting. In the year after my fieldwork, concerns about the limitations of the granting facilities of value chain development projects, including problems of corruption, also began to surface in mainstream media. In a 2016 piece on HIMALI, for example, Lokmani Rai reported widespread criticism that it was primarily “locals with political connections and no farming experience” who were able to access the grants. In the article, residents complained that “many people who got the grants were never farmers to begin with,” while “many genuine farmers could not fulfill the legal procedures and therefore could not secure a grant” (Rai, 2016).

As we see in the accounts above, informal social networks and political influence clearly play an important role in mediating access to the groups, trainings and grants through which market-making interventions distributed the supports intended to bridge marginalized producers into competitive high value markets. Competitive and uneven access to development aid is, of course, not new or specific to agricultural development projects. Yet the lines of inclusion and exclusion in recent high value interventions have been the site of particular concern due to the ambiguity in their targeting mechanisms and the significant amount of support directed to individuals and groups through these programs.

98 Based on his extensive interviews in Jumla, Gaire found that economically and politically marginalized Dalit residents who were less able to take advantage of encroachment strategies for a reasons that included lack of time, the fact that the land that they had access to was less fertile, and the fact that elites were able to manipulate land surveys to have land registered in their name (Gaire, 2015, p. 162).

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Narratives of Corruption and Neglect

The narratives and language employed by those who objected to and contested the exclusions and limits of high value market-making projects are important as they offer insight into how concepts of fairness, accountability and even “rights” are constructed and reproduced. As we see above, narratives of laziness, deception and moral corruption permeate accounts of informal negotiation and claims-making practiced by neighbours. In using this language, residents challenge how inclusions and exclusions are arbitrated by interventions and assert their own claims to resources. Prominent in these moralizing discourses are ideas of hard work, which in turn police the boundary of who should be considered a real farmer. Notably, such boundary policing was not necessarily progressive. As we have seen, accusations of laziness could be directed at “feudal lords” but they were also targeted at marginalized households with limited assets, often infused with oppressive manipulations of caste and ethnicity. Gaire, for example, found that in their explanations for their Dalit neighbours’ relative lack of land, Brahman-Chettri interlocutors “blamed dalits for being lazy in the past and not willing to face the risk associated with farming the forestland” (see Gaire, 2015, p. 162). I encountered similar narratives of laziness directed at the Dalit community in day to day conversations.

Discourses of misconduct and corruption also extended to state and non-state development agents, holding them accountable for failures to provide adequate and inclusive supports. These accounts focused on the amount of state and donor resources eaten up in salaries for staff and the resources given to village leaders and elites, once again leaving few benefits for real farmers. As Dipendra from Kanakasundari put it:

Government officers are working 10 am to 4 pm for their salary and they’ll just transfer away in the course of time. They do not care about farmers’ problems. There should be one JTA [Junior Technical Assistant] per Village Development Committee. This JTA should go around the village and he should be available 24 hours. The district should monitor and supervise the JTAs in the villages. There should be strict rules. When JTAs come, they stay in hotels. They do not take care of farmers. They catch up with leaders, they provide water tanks to the leaders [to please them] even though the leaders do not have apple orchards. They do not give support to the people despite the fact that the people have many problems. (Kanakasundari Farmer, October 5, 2015)

Another farmer from Kanakasundari echoed this frustration, complaining that the agriculture office staff “come just as a way to get their salary or earn money and they leave. How are the apples? They don’t care… they come just for the sake of coming and leave without helping… They just roam here and there” (October 5, 2015). It was not just the state officers being held accountable for negligence though. A farmer and

210 politician from Chandannath, just outside of the headquarters levelled similar critiques of NGOs and their programs:

They advertise that NGOs have done a lot for the farmers but practically they have not done much… The DADO has said it is giving a 75% subsidy for the transportation [of apples] but not all the farmers can access this… They [NGOs and the district agriculture office] want to show that the government and foreign donors are working to support apple development in Jumla to get donations. If farmers receive 10-20% benefit, 80-90% goes to the NGOs to provide salary to the staff. Farmers are not getting as much benefit as the NGOs themselves. They advertise a lot but actually the farmers don’t get that much benefit. They take pictures, record some meetings and trainings on paper and show them to donors. They get money, but we don’t know how much is actually spent on farmers… Jumla has one house one office rather than one house one garden. Jumla has a lot of money from NGOs and government offices, but they spend the money on more NGOs and offices. We need cold stores here, vehicles, cartons, crates and netting. The money is not spent on the appropriate things… Nature has given everything to us [in Jumla], but the government is not able to manage resources properly. (Jumla Farmer, June 30, 2014)

Local NGO staff lodged similar complaints of the misuse of funding in the value chain projects for which they were contracted to work (indeed, the NGO staff that I spoke with were often the most open about their disaffection with the operations of NGO and INGOs in Nepal). One NGO staff person complained about their being a “battalion” of people at the head office of a large donor funded project. He told us that two karod rupees (20,000,000) had been spent over the first year of the project and in his opinion, there was nothing to show for it. He recounted a time when ten people had flown from the head office to Jumla for a two-hour cooperative meeting. When the weather turned bad and the public flights were grounded, they spent three lākh (300,000) to hire their own plane to fly back. Can you believe that? he said, ten people came for two hours, any local implementer could easily have conducted the meeting on their own (NGO Officer, April 18, 2014).

As Akhil Gupta points out, the discourses of corruption and abuse of power that circulate in everyday conversations and in the media encourage citizens to “expect state institutions to be accountable to them” as they actively contribute to the construction of the “state idea” in the popular imagination (1995, p. 388).99 As such, accounts of governmental short-comings are significant because “by marking those actions that constitute an infringement of such rights” the discourse of corruption “acts to represent the rights of citizens

99 I would argue that we might extend this observation to donors and NGOs as well. Indeed, the growing prominence of discourses of corruption in relation to donors and NGOs in Nepal speaks to changing imaginaries of the rights and responsibilities of these organizations in their often state-like capacities as governmental actors and public service providers.

211 to themselves” (Gupta, 1995, p. 389). In the following section, I look at how the everyday political engagements, including circulating discourses of neglect and corruption, intersect with and inform processes of politicization that are concerned not only with the negotiation of contingent benefits but also broader assertions of rights.

Market-Making and Claims-Making

The gaps between the utopian promises of inclusive, organic market-making—particularly as institutionalized in the organic district—and the limits of the projects themselves, have placed real practical strains on farmers who are faced with difficult decisions of where to invest their time and resources. As we have seen, the concrete experiences of instances of governmental failure can also engender practices of claims-making and discourses of neglect or corruption aimed at holding development agents accountable. As noted above, this is not to say that critiques and demands emerge as a spontaneous reaction to governmental failure. Practices of claims-making are informed by situated structures of feeling— concretions of affective experiences—that exceed projects of rule. Yet particular moments of failure can offer opportunities to articulate grievances as concrete demands. Tania Li argues that a focus on governmentality’s limits “points to the ever-present possibility of a switch in the opposite direction: the opening up of governmental rationality to a critical challenge” (Li, 2007, p. 276). Coombe makes a similar case for the emergent potential of “rights” at the limits of governmentality, particularly as development subjects appropriate eco-governmental biopolitical discourses of environmental stewardship (Coombe, 2007, p. 285; Corbridge et al., 2005, p. 19). While Coombe’s argument seems to allow limited scope for a biopolitics from below—a politics emergent from caring and affective material relations—she does highlight the strategic appropriation of governmental rationalities to further an alternative biopolitical agenda. As governmental subjects are called on to take responsibility for ecological sustainability as ethical entrepreneurs, the limits of market-based mechanisms open up new arenas for the articulation of moral economic claims and discourses of rights.

In this section, I argue that the practices of development brokerage are a key site in which everyday negotiations, strategic engagements, and discourses of corruption are translated into public articulations of demands. In popular transnational development discourse, development “brokers”—locally situated development agents such as district and VDC state officers, technicians, NGO staff, social mobilizers, resident politicians and other local authorities—are often “depicted either as ‘parasites’ preying on mismanaged aid” [elite capture] or more positively “as emanations of ‘civil society’ confronting adversity” (Lewis & Mosse, 2006, p. 12). However, a large and growing body of ethnographies of bureaucracies and

212 of development institutions has demonstrated the complex ways in which practices of brokerage are in fact key to sustaining development interventions amidst “different rationalities, interests, and meanings, so as to produce order, legitimacy, and ‘success’ and to maintain fund flows” (Lewis & Mosse, 2006, p. 16). Practices of brokerage, or what Simon (2009) terms “geographies of mediation,” hold together the tenuous assemblage of a development project in face of the inevitable limits that are encountered, like the ones we saw in the previous chapter. In Jumla, as we saw in chapters 5 and 6, responsibilities for creating inclusion and providing appropriate organic technologies fall heavily on locally situated development brokers— particularly local bureaucrats and NGO officers—who are charged with carrying out national state and donor interventions.

In Jumla, development brokers play an important role in mediating diverse forms of claims-making. Staff from district- and VDC-scale state offices—like the agricultural Junior Technical Assistants, plant pathologists, the officers in charge of overseeing training programs, and the director at the horticulture research office—as well as officers and social mobilizers at local NGO offices, all of whom are charged with the day to day implementation of development programs, are at the receiving end of everyday practices of negotiation and claims-making as well as discourses of corruption and negligence. They rely on residents’ cooperation—documented in the mandatory attendance sheets and group photographs taken at trainings and events—to maintain flows of development resources. In Jumla, many of the people in positions at local state and NGO offices themselves straddled the line of development agent and development subject. Government and NGO officers and staff were often from Jumla and had farms and apple orchards themselves. A number of them were members of cooperatives that had applied, or were applying, for grants from projects like HVAP and HIMALI and others had parents and extended family members who were involved in farmers’ groups.

In their position as brokers, the officers and staff at the frontlines of development implementation in Jumla not only mediated access to resources, they also acted as planners and worked to manage and govern the assemblage of state and donor projects. Local efforts to organize development activities often aimed to address gaps but did so in ways that remained embedded in local power dynamics. A conversation with the head of one of the prominent local NGOs provides an example of some of these practices. In response to a question about whether they had any training materials, he said:

For trainings we don’t use our own materials, we call someone from the DADO to come do the training. Before a training, a month before, we call everyone from all the offices around, from the DADO, from bāgavānī [horticulture farm], from MEDEP [UNDP Micro- Enterprise Development Programme] from the gharelu [cottage industry office], from the

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DDC and VDC and we say we have this much money for this training. Then the DADO says we can provide someone to do the training, and the gharelu says we can provide this much for supplies, a juicing machine etc. And the bāgavānī says we can provide these materials, and the VDC says we can provide this much for printing the books etc. We gather everyone together; it is very cooperative. (NGO Officer, November 11, 2015)

He then pointed to the collective effort between the DADO and various local NGOs to extend organic certification to Tatopani VDC as an example of this kind of cooperative approach. In this example, the effort to coordinate development activities was aimed to address the gap between the inclusivity of the organic district and the exclusivity of certification. While HVAP had subsidized organic apple certifications, it did so in only eight out of thirty VDCs. However, the decision to choose Tatopani is also notable. While Tatopani is home to a number of well-positioned, high caste families with jobs in state and NGO offices, its lower elevation makes it less ideal for apples, particularly compared to VDCs like Dillichaur, which also did not receive certification through HVAP. The decision to focus on Tatopani once again suggests the different axes of power that mediate development negotiations.

The Ten Year Agricultural Plan

The failures and limitations of ethical market-making projects have also prompted local development brokers to join in efforts to politicize agricultural governance at the national scale, including advocating for greater autonomy in district level agricultural governance and placing claims on central state offices and donors for the material resources necessary to support locally defined agriculture plans. Efforts to assert local control were consolidated in the formation of a Ten Year Agriculture Development Plan for Jumla published in 2015 by the district agriculture office (Kathayat et al., 2013). The initiative to create the plan came from staff at the DADO in cooperation with a lead NGO, CAD (Community Action for Dignity), along with support and encouragement from members of civil society organizations at the national scale. Later Fasnophoser, a Catholic NGO based in Switzerland, which was primarily focused on child sponsorships, became involved in working to develop similar plans in neighbouring districts. The individuals leading the Jumla Plan were also key actors in the Alliance of Agriculture for Food, based out of ForestAction Nepal. The Alliance included a number of groups advocating for alternative agriculture and food sovereignty including the Community Self Reliance Center, Karnali Agriculture and Food Concern Group, Nepal Agricultural Journalists Academy, Nepal Permaculture Group, Prerana Nepal, ForestAction Nepal, National Farmers Group Federation, National Land Right Forum, Centre of Agro- Ecology and Development, Community Development Organization, Clean Energy Nepal, OxFam, Care Nepal, Fastenopfer, and Action Aid (Paudel, Bhattarai & Subedi, 2016).

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The Jumla Ten Year Agricultural Plan was initiated in the midst of the highly contested drafting of the new national Agricultural Development Strategy (ADS), discussed in chapter 4. The Alliance led the civil society mobilization demanding greater public input in the drafting of the ADS, vocally objecting to the technocratic and non-democratic drafting processes dominated by foreign experts. The challenges were, in fact, relatively successful in changing the process to include more extensive civil society consultations, although Alliance members remained critical of the lack of clarity and specificity in the final document (Paudel et al, 2016). The Jumla plan was brought forward as part of the broader public challenge to the ADS planning process. The aim of the Jumla plan, as the lead district agriculture officer put it, “was to produce an agriculture plan based on the local needs, not on the ministry level rules and regulations” (Government Officer, December 13, 2015). Following the “consensus” governance approach in Jumla (discussed in chapter 3) the Ten Year Plan began with a meeting among relevant governing bodies and included bureaucrats, political parties and NGOs. The content of the Plan was based on consultation workshops carried out across the district aimed at developing a more accurate picture of the current status of agriculture and opportunities for commercialization. It also, importantly, involved mapping the status of agricultural funding across the various state and non-state development projects operating in the district in an effort assert greater autonomy in managing and coordinating these projects.100

While the Ten Year Plan included a focus on opportunities for supporting agricultural commercialization in the district and the valorization of Jumla natures, it also differed in some significant ways from the value chain development rationalities of donor and national state initiatives. One significant difference was the crops identified for prioritization that emerged out of the community consultations. To the reported surprise of those developing the plan, it was dried beans that were found to be the most profitable crop in the district at the time. As Dinesh, who headed the Plan development process noted, “in about 90% of the households we found that they were getting more money from beans rather than apples.” Beans were thus given top priority in the plan, followed by apples and potatoes, then vegetables, seed production and finally livestock. Notably, beans and potatoes were both crops that had been considered to have potential profit margins that were too low for value for high value market interventions, but both had the advantages of being durable and relatively hardy while also doubling as subsistence crops. As Dinesh put it, “if you sell 100 kg of beans it is enough to buy rice for 5 or 6 months, every household is getting on average 200 to 300 kg of beans, so if you only eat 50% and save 50% from that, you can get rice easily” (Government Officer, December 13, 2015).

100 Along similar lines, local agriculture officers set in place a system for the local implementing NGO for the HVAP project to submit regular reports to the district agriculture office, even though there was no mandate to provide one.

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As opposed to profit maximizing strategies, planners included consideration of both exchange and use value production. The Plan itself was divided into two parts, the first part focused on products that would be commercialized (although, as we see above, there is an emphasis on flexible crops that also had use value for producers), and the second part was focused on marsī rice, maize (Dinesh noted that “we have said that no new varieties of maize should be brought from outside the district, the local variety is doing very well”), finger millet and buckwheat as the crops that they should continue to focus on from a food security perspective. They argued that it is important to be realistic about what crops could be commercialized, for example, “commercial farming of this [marsī] rice is not possible in Jumla for many reasons,” but it is nevertheless important to devote resources to supporting crops like marsī that were important from the standpoint of food security and agro-biodiversity conservation. The authors of the Plan also upheld the organic district mandate but largely on the basis of use value arguments, (maintaining for example that chemical fertilizers were simply inappropriate for the mountain soils), while de-emphasizing the importance of certification, particularly for domestic markets. Finally, responding to the two major concerns raised by farmers in these consultations, irrigation and pest management, government actors also took steps to initiate the development of locally appropriate technologies. I address a couple of these initiatives in the following section.

Implementing the Plan with Beans and Snow

Sceptics in Jumla rightfully pointed out that it is one thing to write a plan and another thing to actually implement it. However, the claims to greater autonomy over local agricultural governance asserted by the creation of the Ten Year Plan were, to some degree, beginning to influence policy and development activities. One example of influence was in the selection of crops for commercialization efforts. Agriculture officers had already placed pressure on HIMALI to widen its scope of target crops to align with the district’s earlier focus on apples. As one of the officers put it, “we provided suggestions [to HIMALI] we said don’t just work in goat and sheep, this will not be adequate, because… almost every house has an orchard and we have been focusing on orchard farming as the major source of income… HIMALI can provide money for irrigation ponds, maybe buying some machinery and things that are applicable for apple farming.” In response, HIMALI had gradually expanded the range of high value crops it would support in Jumla to include not only apples but also beans and other traditional crops. Many of the recent HIMALI proposals from Jumla farmers have been for support of apple and bean intercropping.

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Following the findings of the consultations for the Ten Year Plan, Jumla officers also used the findings to petition the national agriculture office to begin providing support for bean production. As one of the officers put it, “We made a plan and that plan had an impact at the national level because we met the previous president and high officials in the department of agriculture and said that the Jumla beans have very good potential and we can do something with them.” Beans were given priority in the next budget cycle announced by the national agriculture office. More recently, a variety of new value chain development projects, in addition to HIMALI, have taken up the cause of Jumla bean development, including CONNECT, launched in conjunction with the UKAID funded infrastructure program Rural Access Programme 3 (RAP3), and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Office (FAO) programme called Mountain Partnership (RAP3, 2016; Mountain Partnership, 2015). True to value chain development rationalities, these projects have focused on high value branding for upscale supermarkets and foreign export. However, district development officers, NGO staff, and agribusiness entrepreneurs have all called for a focus on basic production supports including adequate physical infrastructure and public funding for locally appropriate agricultural research. The head of a Kathmandu-based wholesale company, for example, pointed to the nicely printed special label that the Mountain Partnership had provided for Jumla beans and told me that it was not enough to provide fancy labels. Instead, he said, they need to address production issues, there are production and quality problems requiring research, there should also be a well-equipped processing center and storage facilities (Wholesaler, June 14, 2017)

Like the wholesaler, agriculture development officers in Jumla have advocated for supports for appropriate knowledge and technology. Organic technology was a key focus. As we have seen, the declaration of Jumla to be fully organic—made independently, at the district scale—was backed by little to no technical support from regional and national offices or donors supporting organic value chains. While HVAP had introduced a limited number of manufactured organic inputs and made them available through project groups, farmers—particularly those excluded from subsidized access—pointed to the relative expense and limited effectiveness of these options. The district agriculture office, having initiated the declaration, faced pressures to address this critical gap. In response, they mobilized biopolitical discourses of responsible environmental stewardship to make claims on donors and the state for support. One example was a successful effort to petition the national government to extend programs of state input subsidies to include organic fertilizers. As the officer who advocated for the program described the situation, “When I joined the DADO office there was only 3000 kg of organic fertilizer getting subsidy from the central level, whereas Kalikot, Humla, Dolpa [neighbouring Karnali districts] they were getting 3 million [for chemical fertilizers], because at the central level they only provision a small amount of money for organic fertilizer, while other districts were getting around 30,000 kg of chemical fertilizer. But when you compare the

217 geographical features, [these districts] are not an appropriate place for chemical fertilizer. That’s why I demanded the organic fertilizer subsidy from the central level, from 3,000 kg to this year it was 25,000 kg, 25 metric tons” (Government Officer, December 13, 2015)

In another more ambitious effort, senior staff from a Jumla-based NGO coordinated with officers from the district agricultural office to appeal to HVAP’s implementing partner, SNV, for support. SNV, a Dutch NGO, agreed to allocate project money from a separate climate change resilience project to fund a pilot study of locally appropriate apple production methods and technologies. Because the DADO didn’t have a mandate for research, they reached out to Rajikot, the horticulture research station, “to give it a formal research structure.” Rajikot provided technical knowledge for developing the parameters of what to measure to demonstrate apple growth and health in the research project. One aspect of the SNV-funded trial was action research on organic pest controls focused on wooly apple aphid led by the young crop protection officer. The second aspect was trialling a system for snow harvesting for irrigation. The agriculture officer who pioneered the idea based on his previous work with HELVETAS, explained how it came about. “Based on the Ten Year Plan, the idea of snow harvest came up because every farmer was saying irrigation, irrigation is a problem and it is very true that it is a problem because all of the farms are on sloping land and there is no water source.” Harvesting rainwater, however, would not be of significant use “because in the rainy season the apples don’t need much water, the critical time that the apples need irrigation is from December up to April. At that time, it is very dry, but we do have the snowfall, so we can water from snow for April, May June. The first year we did just three [snow harvesting tanks]. The second year we went to 150 people and from them we had 20 to 30 people to note down the data.”

Once again, the snow harvesting project was not limited to identifying appropriate technology, they also sought to secure state support for making it accessible to farmers. “I want snow harvesting to be incorporated in the agriculture training directorate… this type of irrigation should be supported by the government of Nepal. It should be incorporated in the agriculture extension norms and budget because if it is not incorporated, farmers will have to pay all by themselves,” although he also pointed out that compared to standard irrigation systems, it also “doesn’t cost a lot, 7-8 thousand rupees, and if you collect snow 3, 4 times you can get 5 thousand liters of water which is sufficient for around 100 saplings.” In 2016, the SNV climate smart agriculture was set to be phased out, at a point when the Jumla trials were only half-way complete with just two years of data. The lead agriculture officer had prepared a concept note to continue the project by appealing to HELVETAS, other SNV funding sources and the Nepal government for continued support for the research and the chance to scale it up.

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The Antinomies of Local Autonomy

As this study of Jumla demonstrates, it is important to attend to the multiple, contradictory processes of place making at work in a given locality. Critics of decentralization have long argued that the distribution of governmental powers to local leadership is by no means necessarily more democratic, efficient, sustainable or pro-poor in its outcomes (Agrawal & Ribot, 1999; Ribot, Agrawal & Larson, 2006). Not only are local transformations limited by the webs of spatially extended relations through which a locality is constituted, decentralized power can also work to reproduce or exacerbate localized relations of domination and exploitation. While Jumla’s organic declaration could be read as a grassroots act of resistance to the harms of industrial agriculture, as we have seen, it was also led by bureaucrats and local elites and was, in many ways, aligned with national state and donor interests. Celebrations of local heritage and an embrace of Jumla’s agrarian past can also obscure historically-rooted relations of violence and exploitation by reproducing a development imaginary of homogenous kisānharu “farmers.” For example, the Jumla government and NGO officers with whom I spoke, who were almost exclusively high caste men, often trivialized the problem of limited access to land in Jumla. One NGO officer dismissed the question of land access saying, “the percentage of landless people in Jumla is equal to zero to one percent” (Jumla NGO, June 12, 2014). Another accused his fellow residents of selling their land “to Indians” and going to the Terai to claim that they were sukumbāsī, or landless squatters (Jumla NGO, September 20, 2015). The kinds of claims made at the local level have also remained less radical than those of national-scale food sovereignty advocates, like those based at ForestAction. Advocates based at national NGOs, for example, criticized the focus on subsidies for imported organic fertilizers and the continued support for apples. Similarly, demands for progressive land reform among national civil society advocates have remained conspicuously absent in Jumla-based discourses.

At the same time, tensions between the radical promises of inclusion and sustainability and the limits, or failures, of development interventions—in articulation with sedimented structures of feeling—can also prompt new pressures on state and NGO officers involved in agricultural development projects. As we find in the case of the Ten Year Plan, everyday forms of local critique and claims-making can intersect with the progressive aspects of transnational activism, like organic and food sovereignty movements. Development brokers, Mosse and Lewis argue, “deal in people and information not only for profit in the narrow sense of immediate reward, but also more broadly in the maintenance of coherent representations of social realities and in the shaping of their own social identities” (Lewis & Mosse, 2006, p. 16). Although informed by material relations of power and privilege, social identities are not static, and have the potential to be re- worked through participation in collective projects. Similarly, the spatially extensive relations through

219 which localities are constituted are also not fixed and, as we have seen, can be challenged and re-articulated, particularly when targeted by translocal coalitions.

In Unmaking Goliath: Community Control in the Face of Global Capital, James Defilippis, outlines a “relational” approach to local autonomy. He starts from a standpoint of political praxis, maintaining that the ability for locally embedded actors to exercise control over “footloose” capital is important for social justice outcomes. For Defillipis (2004):

A locality is not a thing, but is instead a set of relatively shared experiences and perspectives. It is a ‘common sense’ produced through the internal and external relationships in which those within a place are embedded. Autonomy similarly, is a form of power, and therefore not a discrete entity possessed by any person or institution. Instead autonomy is a set of relationships that the person or institution is able to control. So local autonomy is not about localities being able to act in isolation from outside forces. Instead, local autonomy is realized when actors within localities have recognized how they are connected to the extralocal world, and have transformed those connections so that they are better. (p. 9)

Relational autonomy offers a useful framework for critically analysing particular political conjunctures like projects of ethical market-making in contemporary Jumla. It offers a dialectical and spatially sensitive understanding of progressive politics that resonates with both Gramscian sensibilities of a “philosophy of praxis” and the lineaments of a potential “liberation environmentality” (Fletcher, 2017). I take this concept up in more detail in chapter 8 as I bring together the main arguments of the dissertation.

Conclusion

This chapter examined how differently positioned actors experience development programs, negotiate their limits, and strategically engage with projects and discourses of ethical market-making—often in ways that do not neatly align with romantic ideas of subaltern resistance. I argue that as ethical markets propose technical solutions to social and ecological concerns, the limits and failures that interventions encounter create openings for the politicization of market-making. I highlight the relationship between processes of politicization in terms of public discourse and debates over policy and the everyday politics of strategic negotiations and appeals to development brokers. On the one hand, we have seen how the deliberate blurring of state-market-society lines in ethical market-making presents opportunities for new forms of enclosure and private accumulation as powerful actors take advantage of their privileged access to development resources distributed under the banner of sustainable and inclusive development. Indeed, the effort to

220 balance tensions between competitive market potential and pro-poor social inclusion in ethical market- making creates ambiguities in targeting frameworks that leave them particularly exposed to manipulation.

At the same time, the limits and exclusions at work in ethical market-making can also create new opportunities for practices of claims-making and discourses of corruption aimed at holding development agents and brokers accountable. As we have seen, everyday negotiations and contestations over development resources (in this case, organic apple market-making resources specifically) can segue into practices of claims-making, impromptu planning and agendas pursued through the formal institutions of “civil society” and policy-making spheres. While uneven relations of power permeate both informal and formal arenas of “politics,” localized, materially-grounded, everyday claims-making can exert pressure on development agents to address pressing concerns. Such forms of locally situated claims-making can also intersect with politically powerful transnational movements to form influential political alliances.

Chapter 8 | Conclusion: Ethical Market-Making and Food Sovereignty

Introduction

The three years from 2015 to 2018 saw continuous political upheaval in Nepal. The new constitution, controversially proposed and promulgated in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes in April and May of 2015, prompted both celebration and protest across the country. Many expressed outrage over the reversal of a number of hard-won progressive commitments achieved in previous drafts of the constitution. By far the most contentious issues, however, were matters of regional political control as they intersected with identity politics. As we saw in chapter 4, in Jumla, a proposal to consolidate the Karnali into a much larger Western Province spurred Jumla-based politicians across all the parties to organize protests. The protests continued over several days and one young man was killed in a confrontation with the police. Similar protests broke out across the country in districts where proposed political geographical restructurings were opposed by both entrenched power structures and people hoping for change. While the protests in Jumla resulted in rapid (literally overnight) changes to the proposed boundaries, Kathmandu politicians were less responsive to demands in other parts of the country—a contrast that many have attributed to the fact that the Karnali mobilizations had been primarily led by high caste hill Hindus, in contrast to those led by Janajātī/Adivāsī (self-identified ethnic minority) and Madhēsī (those identifying with Terai-based communities) politicians. In the Terai, protests and the aggressive state response led to the deaths of over 50 people and a four-month long border blockade, resulting in only minimal compromise from the Kathmandu political establishment.

The new constitution created a slightly expanded Karnali province. In Jumla, the day of promulgation was celebrated with a parade through town—past government buildings still bearing angry slogans painted during the protests—and a ceremonial lighting of candles around the outlined map of Nepal in the town square. The constitution was followed by elections, including the first elections for local positions since 1997. The new political geography has entailed radical restructurings at all levels of the state. Many of the state offices and political geographic designations referred to in this dissertation are now obsolete. Village Development Committees have been consolidated into larger Municipalities (urban and rural). While districts still exist, their significance has been diminished relative to the new Provinces, of which there are seven in the country. Only two provinces retained former regional names, the Karnali and Gandaki. In the others, naming was such a contentious issue that most opted to be referred to by their number (with Sudurpashchim Pradesh translating simply to “far-west province”). In media analysis and popular discourse, people have expressed hope that the increased power of the Municipalities could increase local

221 222 control and accountability in governance. At the same time, there are also wide-ranging concerns over the unfolding processes of restructuring. Key concerns include doubts over the willingness of Kathmandu to meaningfully devolve power, the lack of capacity of newly elected officials to fulfill their responsibilities, and the potential for elections to solidify rather than undermine exclusive patronage relations in party politics.

Amidst these changes, we also find some radical plans proposed for the agricultural sector. In 2016, Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli—riding a wave of popular nationalism—announced an ambitious agenda to make Nepal self-sufficient in food grains within two years and declared seven agricultural “super zones” including one for Jumla apples (Khanal, 2016; “PM directs Agriculture Minister,” 2016). His administration has also made ambitious promises to make Nepal chemical fertilizer and pesticide free within the next ten years (although a subsequent proposal to build a massive chemical fertilizer plant at the 2019 Nepal Investment Summit appeared fundamentally at odds with the aim). The passing of the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty Act in 2018 has formally guaranteed a wide-range of farmers’ rights including access to organic technologies and protection from GMO crops, alongside access to markets, although civil society groups have pointed to a lack of specificity and implementation mechanisms in the act (Amnesty International, 2019). In the mainstream media, food sovereignty is often broadly interpreted as national food self-sufficiency and debates continue over questions of the relative importance of increased production versus ecological sustainability and conservation.

At the sub-national level, the Karnali remains at the forefront of organic reform. In 2018, leaders in the newly formed Karnali Province, decided to build on Jumla’s experiment and declared that the whole Province would be going fully organic. In the first year of its existence the Karnali Province allocated Rs 21.9 million from the Provincial budget to “prepare the basis for the construction of an organic state” including establishing local laboratories (“Karṇālī pradēśa ārgānika pradēśa!” 2018; Upadhyaya 2018). Meanwhile, critics of the organic Province have pointed to lack of concrete regional planning, infrastructure and awareness, as well as problems of market demand, particularly given that local authorities have acknowledged that organic certification is beyond the reach of farmers in the province (Thapa, 2018a, 2018b). The remarkable dynamics of agricultural politics in Nepal today bring into focus key tensions in the concept of food sovereignty. In this concluding chapter, I return to some of the key arguments of the dissertation and discuss their broader relevance for the study and politics of food and agriculture, and more specifically for the normative project of food sovereignty.

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Review of Main Arguments

My overarching concern in this work has been to address how expert re-assessments of the social and potential economic value of low-input, diversified, agrarian ecologies are transforming governmental projects of market-making in agrarian frontier regions and to consider implications for the pursuit of food sovereignty. I addressed these central concerns through a series of inter-related arguments unfolding across the three main sections of the dissertation.

Together, the first two chapters situate contemporary dynamics in historical perspective, attending to historical projects of agricultural improvement and key shifts in localized political economies. I argued that a development focus on apples emerged through a brokered compromise between development agents and Jumla residents. For state and donor actors, apples—and specifically apples integrated into national markets—were identified as a development solution in attempts to render Jumla agriculture legible and improvable within the confines of Green Revolution era knowledge systems. For farmers, apples were viewed as a source of potential exchange value that involved relatively minimal opportunity costs and were amenable to increased non-agricultural livelihood diversification. In the Polanyian tradition, this section works to denaturalize contemporary market relations, unveiling the planning and negotiation that went into producing apple markets. The section, following the work of Braun (2000), also demonstrates how political rationalities are situated in particular knowledge regimes, or ways of knowing and seeing nature. The historical, and geographical, specificity of expert knowledge is further emphasized by the transformations outlined in the following section.

Chapters 4 and 5 took up governmental rationalities and technologies at play in contemporary market- making efforts in Jumla. Here, I begin with a discussion of significant shifts in expert assessments of quality in food and agriculture—a shift that some have dubbed a “quality turn.” A new generation of interventions of ethical market-making have emerged, aiming to valorize newly celebrated forms of non-market socio- ecological “value” within markets. Ethical market-making, pioneered by political activists, was then embraced by governmental actors as a technical fix to market failures. I argue that the quality turn was particularly significant for “frontier regions” of capitalist agriculture like Jumla, where long ignored peoples and natures were brought into focus by regimes of transnational eco-governmentality. New political rationalities aimed to both conserve and capitalize on now valuable non-industrialized agrarian natures, such as organics and agro-biodiversity, as well as social relations, including imaginaries of cultural heritage and artisanal production. Despite the remarkable ubiquity of market-oriented eco-governmentality, however, I also argue that ethical market-making takes shape in divergent and sometimes contradictory

224 ways, as eco-governmental discourses and policy models are assembled within specific territorial logics and political agendas.

Chapters 6 and 7 build on Tania Li’s concept of the “limits” of governmentality to examine the messy processes of implementation. Focusing in on organic apple markets I argue that efforts to commodify organic value have come into conflict with ambitious visions for social inclusion and ecological conservation encompassed by the organic district declaration. These tensions are accentuated by failures to bring the exchange value of organic in line with biopolitical agendas. In the arena of production, we find emergent challenges to the existing “organic-by-default” approach to apple production due both to processes of commodification and external factors, particularly climate change. In the arena of exchange, development interventions have faced problems realizing organic value addition in the market due to challenges in managing: consumer preferences; practices of exchange; and the boundaries of “organic.” While the market-making interventions that I analyse have attempted to address tensions through depoliticized, micro-market fixes—carried out primarily by locally situated development actors—I argued that these forms of state-market-society entanglement can also work to bring markets into view as targets of political practice.

The arguments presented here are specific to Jumla and Nepal, however the research contributes to broader discussions in the scholarly literature and popular Left discourse, particularly in relation to food sovereignty. While enthusiasm for ethical markets speaks to the persistence of market fundamentalism, the term “neoliberal” alone fails to capture the diverse iterations and political possibilities of these efforts. I have framed my central research question in relation to the widely used and contested concept of food sovereignty (FS) with the aim of highlighting these possibilities. Before considering the broader significance of the research, however, the concept of food sovereignty requires some elaboration.

Debating Sovereignty

While interest in food sovereignty has exploded over the last decade, the question of how it would operate in practice has been a matter of significant debate, particularly among critical Left academics interested in the movement. The concept of FS was developed by social and environmental justice activists primarily in opposition to neoliberal government policies and corporate power in the global agro-food system. However, as the FS movement has expanded and various state and non-state governmental bodies, like Nepal and the Food and Agriculture Organization, have incorporated aspects of FS into governmental discourse and policy, the success has presented new challenges. Food sovereignty as a governing project has required an

225 elaboration of new kinds of governmental rationalities and technologies. While initially associated with food self-sufficiency, particularly at the national scale, movement leaders have been adamant that FS is not concerned so much with self-sufficiency as collective self-determination—the right of all peoples to determine and control their own food systems through processes of radical democratization. This stance has raised key questions about the nature of “sovereignty” in food sovereignty.

Questions of scale have presented a key point of debate in food sovereignty scholarship and activism, as well as within the broader field of alternative agro-food studies (Hinrichs, 2003; Allen, 2010). Particularly as advocates of FS have pursued concrete political strategies, questions of the appropriate scale of engagement have come to the fore in new ways. As Edelman puts it, “Food sovereignty theory has usually failed to indicate whether the ‘sovereign’ is the nation, region or locality, or ‘the people’. This lack of specificity about the sovereign feeds a reluctance to think concretely about the regulatory mechanisms necessary to consolidate and enforce food sovereignty…” (2014, p. 959). When confronted with the problem of scale in relation to normative questions of sovereignty, there has been a tendency within the movement to lean towards the local. While the original definition of food sovereignty by La Via Campesina in 1996 “focused on the rights of nations to develop their capacities to produce their own food,” by the 2007 Nyéléni declaration declaration, a key document outlining the principles of food sovereignty, the focus was increasingly on “localized food systems” that included not only the “bridging of the distance between producers and consumers” but also “re-localization of decision-making” (Burnett & Murphy, 2014, p. 1069).

The focus on localization in the discourse of FS activism has, however, reanimated longstanding debates over the politics of scale in agro-food studies. While early alternative agro-food systems literature often assumed that the localization of food systems—both in terms of governance and relations of production and consumption—would have beneficial and progressive outcomes, such assumptions have since been thoroughly problematized by both critical scholars and activists. DuPuis and Goodman, for example, argued in a widely cited 2005 article that understanding the implications of localization requires attention to how such processes relate “to various existing forms of power” (2005, p. 365). More specifically they point to how localization can: “reinforce local elites at the expense of other local actors”; “be a zero-sum solution because it can result in unproductive inter-regional competition”; and “may be open to deployment in a neoliberal ‘glocal’ logic” (2005, p. 365). Critiques of localization along these lines also have a long history in other areas of geography and cognate fields and, since the early to mid-2000s, they have found broad acceptance within critical agro-food studies.

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Scholars interested in food sovereignty have also expressed concerns about the promise of radical democracy in the context of competing interests, as well as tensions between individual and collective rights. Critics like Bernstein have pointed out that the reference to a common “peasant way” in FS can obscure significant differences in the class positions and political interests between, for example: migrant labourers immediately concerned with improved working conditions and legal status; indigenous communities struggling for control over territory; smallholder contract farmers engaged in the production of high value export crops; and capital-intensive family farmers in the U.S. and Canada (Bernstein, 2001, 2004, 2006; see also Brass, 2015; Jansen, 2015). If the peasantry does not constitute a proper “class,” what is the potential for political struggle to transcend transnational, and locally specific, lines of socio-economic difference? Similarly, scholars have raised concerns about tensions between the emphasis on democratic choice and specific collective commitments within the movement, including to agroecological production. Soper, for example, points to “the existence of peasant farmers who wish to continue being agriculturalists but do not wish to use their natural and human resources to grow agro-ecological food for local market consumption” (Soper, 2019, p. 5). Along similar lines, Bina Agarwal points out that:

…farm households, based on their specific constraints and priorities, may choose options that are contrary to the vision [of sustainable food crop production for local consumption], whereas limiting their choice would go contrary to the democratic principles of the right to choose that the [FS movement] forefronts. In fact, in particular contexts, restrictions on choice could—paradoxically—be detrimental in economic terms precisely for the small farmers whose interests the declaration seeks to represent, but who were not all party to its framing (Agarwal, 2014, p. 2149).

Acknowledging and responding to critiques, many FS scholars have argued for a more relational and process-oriented understanding of food sovereignty. Regarding questions of scale, scholars like Akram- Lodhi (2015, p. 573) have argued that while local food systems should not be reified, the shared experience of embeddedness in socio-material places can provide the common sense grounds for the emergence of alternative agendas for food and agriculture. In Jumla, farmers’ recalcitrance towards entrepreneurial risk- taking, and their efforts to hold state and donor actors accountable for providing adequate supports for farming livelihoods and market participation, speaks to the potential basis for alternative “moral economic sensibilities” (Edelman, 2005, p. 338). Moreover, as we have seen, everyday engagements with state agents and other power brokers at the local scale is a key relation through which marginalized actors “see the state,” engage with authority and articulate claims and grievances (Corbridge et al., 2005). At the same time, there is also a general recognition of the need for a multiscalar approach within the FS movement and

227 extensive translocal organizing continues to target national and global scaled policies and governing bodies. Importantly, when localized articulations of grievances are able to find common cause with translocal organizing, they can provide a basis for reworking how a given locality is “connected to the extralocal world” (Defilippis, 2004, p. 9). The ways in which processes of localization are invoked by many FS advocates align broadly with a more relational conception of place, cognizant of the relations of power and translocal ties that constitute any given locality.

Similarly, Alonso-Fradejas, Borras, Holmes, Holt-Giménez & Robbins (2015, p. 436) point out that it is “not that FS activists have not spotted [the] complicated dimensions of the movement-building process” highlighted by critical scholars. The FS movement, they argue, represents an “anti-systemic campaign for a comprehensive alternative food system” (Alonso-Fradejas et al., 2015, p. 444, emphasis added). As such, terms like “peasantness” or the “peasant way” should be understood as a “political rather than an analytical category” (McMichael, 2015, p. 199). The movement has also been clear, at least in its discourse, about the need to actively challenge all forms of social discrimination, including within the communities that constitute their membership. The practical contours of FS must emerge through political praxis that identifies common ground and constructs “a new ‘common sense’ that configures different subjects, identities, projects and aspirations, building unity out of difference” (Akram-Lodhi, 2015, p. 577, emphasis added). Furthermore, realizing socially and ecologically just production practices also requires transforming the broader political economic and governmental relations that constrain individual and community “choice,” specifically challenging technocratic approaches to economic management and opening market governance to debate and democratic decision-making. At the same time, if food sovereignty “seeks to move control over food systems to the local level,” then “by its very nature… each local food system will demonstrate different characteristics and privilege some dimensions over others, resulting in a diversity of local food systems” (Robbins, 2015, p. 453). Indeed, the ambiguity within the definition of food sovereignty that many critics find frustrating, is also essential to the movement’s conjunctural politics of praxis.

Multiple-Rationalities of Market-Making?

Within this broadly aspirational framework, FS activism is faced with the immediate question of how, and indeed whether, to actively engage in reworking, or creating new, market relations. An initial focus of food sovereignty was asserting national control over the regulation of international trade and, as stated in the 2007 Nyéléni declaration, prioritizing “local and national economies and markets” (“Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty, Nyéléni,” 2007). However, with the evolution of the political commitments

228 of the movement over time, the role of markets has become increasingly ambiguous. For many, the emphasis has moved increasingly to non-commodified market alternatives, like collective and community farming, as well as struggles for the de-marketization of key lifegiving materialities, or “productive assets,” like land, seeds and water.

I would argue that attention to the multiple governmental rationalities and strategies at work within actually existing market systems can help to challenge a “binary framework” of oppositional politics on the one hand and an uncritical embrace of the market on the other (Casper Fetterman & Defilippis, 2017, p. 179). Analytically, attention to a multiplicity of governmental rationalities and biopolitical agendas at work in projects of governance allows us to move beyond describing an increasingly expansive array of varieties of variegated neoliberalisms. Rather, it allows us to retain the core specificity of neoliberal governmentality— in which the market form is understood as the “organizational principle for the state and society” (Lemke, 2001, p. 200)—and attend to how neoliberal rationalities and technologies are inevitably entangled with other modalities of governance and rule. Delinking markets and neoliberalism in critical analysis opens space for considering alternative markets structured by institutional formations and networks that “operate by a different (and more equitable) set of rules” and are based on the “collective democratic governance of assets” (Casper Fetterman & Defilippis, 2017, p. 196).

Tensions and contradictions present between different rationalities and technologies of market-making can also offer strategic opportunities as they de-naturalize market logics in everyday practice. Instances of contradiction between commitments to competitive success, pro-poor inclusion and ecological sustainability—as we have seen in the Jumla case—raise moral and political questions about the governance of markets and market-making, in everyday, informal conversations as well as in the discourse of NGO actors, bureaucrats and politicians (sometimes framed in terms of corruption and neglect). Rather than making a priori determinations of what kinds of markets are good or bad, a relational understanding of FS suggests instead an approach focused on forging new common sense understandings of how markets could and should be organized through critical deconstructions of market-making in practice.

Agrarian Frontier Perspectives

The research presented here also contributes to a growing body of scholarship (including those studying food sovereignty) that is working to not only expand the geographic scope, but also decenter European and North American experiences in alternative agro-food systems studies. Critical studies of self-consciously alternative agro-food markets and non-market initiatives have tended to be focused in the Global North, or

229 on transnational commodity chains targeting consumers in the Global North (e.g. Goodman, DuPuis & Goodman, 2012). Yet, in many places outside the Global North, not only are historical food and farming traditions receiving new attention and interest, but political movements, civil society organizations and, as we have seen, states are actively supporting new agro-food practices and networks that are explicitly framed as alternatives to capital-intensive, industrialized agriculture. Here I highlight a couple of ways in which perspectives from agrarian frontier regions can contribute new analytical insights.

Within much of the alternative agro-food systems literature, particularly in the North American context, states have figured as regulators and a site of struggle between social movements and the interests of capital. Most prominently, states play the controversial role of codifying and enforcing quality standards, which are viewed as both a means of institutionalizing scaled-up alternative food systems, and a mechanism of depoliticization and cooptation (although recent scholarship has also focused on the transfer of such responsibilities to privatized, Third Party actors). With the growing popularity and influence of alternative food movements in the Global North, there has also been increased scholarly attention to the possibilities and perils of engaging the state, often through an examination of case studies, particularly at the local scale. In the literature on alternative agro-food commodity chains based in the Global South, meanwhile, the state has tended to be relatively absent, with social movements, NGOs, donor agencies and corporations taking center stage.

There is, however, growing scholarly attention to how state actors outside of the Global North are engaging with alternative agro-food movements (and vice versa). Much of the focus has been on South and Central America, where states like Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia have been at the forefront of unrolling experimental policies to support agro-ecological and community-based agriculture (McKay, Nehring & Walsh-Dilley, 2014; see also Wittman, 2015). Scholars have also begun to draw attention to the proliferation of state-led actions to institute alternative agro-food systems in South and Southeast Asia. In Nepal, districts besides those in Karnali Pradesh have also laid claim to green identities that include organic agriculture (Chettri, 2017). In 2008, Bhutan announced its objective to become 100% organic (Feuerbacher el al., 2018, p. 3). In India, Sikkim has pursued an aggressive agenda of converting the state to fully organic farming and states like Uttarakhand (see Galvin, 2014), Arunachal Pradesh and Kerala (see Thottathil, 2012) have also announced ambitions to become fully organic. Others, like Andhara Pradesh, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh have supported Zero Budget natural farming initiatives, which advocate for low to no-input agriculture. In the last few years, regional and national policy-makers have pushed to establish the whole northeastern region of India as an “organic food hub,” including launching the Mission Organic Value Chain Development for North Eastern Region project (Mukherjee, 2017; “NE set to be global organic

230 agriculture hub,” 2017; Jayan, 2019; for critical scholarly work on similar topics in the Southeast Asian context see, Vandergeest 2006, 2009; Latt & Roth, 2015).

While these diverse state engagements with alternative food systems certainly bear similarities to, and are often influenced by, state actors in the Global North, we also find significant differences. The ambitious, territorializing organic initiatives, for example—particularly common in agrarian frontiers across the Himalaya—represent a significant break from the approach to organic certification associated with transnational commodity chains and, as we have seen, can even come into conflict with such approaches. Moreover, as discussed in the previous chapters, understanding the Organic declaration in Jumla demands that we attend to the often blurred boundaries of the state (Gupta, 1995, 2012), transnational governmentalities (Goldman, 2001; Ferguson & Gupta, 2002), development brokers (Lewis & Mosse, 2006) and an expansive understanding of “political practice” (Chatterjee, 2004, 2008; Corbridge et al., 2005; Baviskar & Sundar, 2008; Sundar & Sundar, 2012). Foregrounding experiences outside the Global North in the alternative agro-food systems literature thus calls for not only a geographical broadening of research on the role of the state, but also greater engagement with diverse literatures and theorizations of the state that have contested Euro-centric theoretical traditions.

A second important set of critical insights offered by perspectives from outside the Global North, and from agrarian frontiers specifically, relates to the cultural politics of agriculture and farming. In Global North centered alternative agro-food scholarship there is a significant body of work exploring the cultural politics of agriculture and rurality. Such work has included, for example, attention to the intersections of conservative religious values and organic agriculture, the legacies of slavery that continue to shape the cultural politics of farming for the descendants of enslaved peoples; and the ways in which particular spaces of alternative food can be encoded as “white.” In the Global South context, meanwhile, there has been a great deal of attention to threats to traditional knowledge systems and movements to recover and revive foodways. Yet, there has been relatively less attention to how dominant framings of agriculture, situated experiences of relative remoteness (Harms et al., 2014), and the increased blurring of rural and urban lifeworlds (Edelman, 2005) shape the cultural politics of farming outside the Global North, particularly for young people.

While neoliberal globalization has “squeezed” peasant producers around the world—contributing to dispossession and the further subsumption of agriculture to capital—the convergence of urban and rural cultures also, as Edelman notes, makes it “necessary to consider the possibility of a new, contemporary rural moral economy, informed by an urban imaginary and urban consumption expectations” (2005, p. 337).

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As we saw in chapter 2, for many people in economically marginalized farming households, aspirations for themselves or their children and ideas of the good life may not prioritize, or even include, farming (Morarji, 2010, p. 50 see also Jeffrey 2010; Gidwani, 2008; White, 2012; Berckmoes & White, 2014; Leavy & Hossain, 2014). At the same time, as Mwaura has explored in the Kenyan context, discourses of professionalization and modernization are also mobilized by youth aiming to “construct and perform new identities as farmers” projecting themselves as “productive and socially respectable through different and locally understood neoliberal subjectivities” (Mwaura, 2017, p. 1310). Decentering European and North American experiences within alternative agro-food studies also then demands a more nuanced engagement with situated understandings of modernization, globalization and development, including subjective experiences of being left out and left behind.

Future Directions

The research presented in the dissertation raises a range of important questions for further exploration. Of many possible research trajectories, I suggest two that build on the themes that I raised in the previous section. The first is a deeper ethnographic engagement with the locally situated cultural politics of farming and biopolitics from below. As we have seen, the economic squeeze on farmers in Nepal that is contributing to diversification out of farming cannot be easily disentangled from long-standing cultural-political devaluations of farming labour and knowledge. Particularly important is attention to economic and political subjectivities among youth in Jumla and other agrarian areas newly connected to national road and communications networks. A better understanding of how they frame contemporary agrarian politics and potential futures, across lines of class, gender, caste and ethnicity, will be crucial to informing effective political organizing towards food sovereignty. While a younger generation of entrepreneurs are pioneering organic marketing in urban centres, how do their aspirations and priorities compare to their counterparts in districts like Jumla? How are caste-based and gendered labour norms experienced, reproduced or transformed among youth in the context of new educational opportunities, celebrations of local agrarian heritage, and changing market opportunities? How might sedimented experiences of agricultural labour exploitation in marginalized families or communities shape affective relationships to farming?

Relatedly, while the research presented here has focused primarily on biopolitics “from above,” specifically biopolitical rationalities that circulate through governmental institutions like the state, donor and NGOs, understanding the affective and relational basis of “common sense” among Jumla farmers requires closer attention to biopolitics “from below” (Hardt, 1999; Singh, 2013). How do intimate relations of care between human and non-human socio-natures inform “economic” decision making, or the “vernacular calculus of

232 the economic” (Ramamurthy, 2011, p. 1035), across class, gender, caste and ethnic lines? How do locally situated understandings of conservation and ecological care work compare to those of the state, donors, and NGOs? As young people spend more time in school, what is the significance of inter-generational knowledge gaps for the promotion of organic and agro-ecological farming systems?

A second trajectory for future research is outward looking—situating the contemporary political conjuncture in Jumla within broader processes of agrarian change and the politicization of food systems in South Asia. As discussed above, the last decade has seen a proliferation of state-led actions to institute alternative agro-food systems in South Asia. Building on methodologies of relational comparison (Hart, 2018; McMichael, 1990), what can we learn by bringing these biopolitical initiatives “into the same frame of analysis... as sites in the production of global processes in specific spatio-historical conjunctures, rather than as just recipients of them” (Hart, 2018, p. 373). Relational comparison cautions against understanding cases as variations of common processes; for example, approaching the promotion of organic value chains as variations of “green grabbing” by state-supported private capital as an effort to consolidate productive resources under the guise of sustainable development. The Jumla case suggests that such dynamics are certainly at play, but also inadequate to understanding the multiple, conjunctural forces at work in the emergence of organic agriculture policy assemblages. What might a relational comparative perspective reveal about how organic agriculture is articulating with contemporary (spatialized) politics of identity and state territorialisation, as well as with other biopolitical agendas like agro-biodiversity conservation, nutrition, and food “self-sufficiency,” in different contexts across the region? 101

Experiences of climate change offer another pressing rationale for relational comparison. The Jumla case speaks to the fundamental limits of state and donor biopolitical agendas to transform unruly agrarian socio- natures in line with governmental rationalities. Organic and agro-ecological farming systems pose particular challenges for expert knowledges precisely in their refusal of standardizing technologies and processes of industrial appropriation and substitution. An examination of how organic commitments are limited by and/or transforming processes of agricultural knowledge and technology production are particularly urgent as climate change brings increased levels of uncertainty and volatility to agro-ecologies.

101 The politics of organic has an ambiguous relationship with policy agendas of localization and self-sufficiency (e.g. “India to be Self-Sufficient in Pulses,” 2017; Khanal, 2016; “PM directs Agriculture Minister,” 2016; Kulkarni, 2018; Jitendra, 2018; Feuerbacher, 2018), with varying understandings of organic as aligned or opposed to the goal of food self-sufficiency.

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Conclusion

The socio-ecological risks and harms of industrial agriculture have prompted significant shifts in globalized food systems. Re-articulations of quality have given rise to new “geographies of food” and are playing an important part in enabling the expansion (or penetration) of globalized markets deeper into agrarian frontiers. Agrarian frontiers are targeted by governmental efforts to both protect and exploit newly identified natural resources. While the “easy response” to the expansion and deepening of marketization may be, as Gidwani observes, “to heap condemnation on economic liberalization and capitalist enterprise,” such a response also “suffers from lack of intellectual and political imagination” (Gidwani, 2008, p. x). Agents of market-making include not only Kathmandu state officials, international financial institutions and bilateral donors, but also a motley array of local state agents, private individuals and companies, as well as foreign, national and local NGOs. We find significant divergences in the political rationalities and agendas of these different actors, which defy easy classification as reformist or radical, particularly given the inter-connections forged through circulations of development funding. The Jumla case offers important insights into the diverse ways in which new actors and ideas are accommodated and folded into hegemonic relations. It also, however, reveals how stabilizing efforts to create more inclusive and sustainable markets are rife with contradictions that can bring market-making into view as a subject of political critique and contestation. While recent assertions of local autonomy in the Karnali remain entangled with historically entrenched hierarchies and state and donor power structures, they are also an important site of ongoing political negotiations over the emergent contours of food sovereignty.

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