Intensive Agriculture, Rural Livelihoods and Labour: Social Science Perspectives on the Global Food System
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Intensive Agriculture, Rural Livelihoods and Labour: Social Science Perspectives on the Global Food System Sarah Ruth Sippel, Leipzig University (Germany) “The grapes that sit upon the supermarket shelves are mute; we cannot see the fingerprints of exploitation upon them or tell immediately what part of the world they are from. We can, by further enquiry, lift the veil of this geographical and social ignorance […] in so doing we find that we have to go behind and beyond what the market itself reveals in order to understand how society is working [and] to tell the full story of social reproduction.” Harvey (1990, p. 423) • How are intensive agriculture, rural livelihoods and seasonal labour mutually intertwined? • What are the social costs of ‘eating fresh’? Earthscan Food and Agriculture Agri-Food Agri-Food The Edited by Neoliberal Neoliberal Jörg Gertel and Sarah Ruth Sippel Sector Seasonal Workers Regime in the in Mediterranean Agriculture The Social Costs of Eating Fresh Alessandro Bonanno Alessandro and A. Wolf Steven Edited by Places of agricultural production inside and outside of Europe are related and compete with each other Places are immobile but commodities, capital and actors are mobile Supply to the north (EU market (CAP), EU entry price system, buyer-driven commodity chains, e.g. European retailers) Capital investments directed to the south (EU subsidies, private capital) Changing labour regimes: from family labour to seasonal migrant labour Moving north and west Social reproduction gets complex, spatially stretched and fragmented Flexible Incomes availability But: also precarious employment secures livelihoods Seasonal Livelihood recruitment security Social reproduction Degradation of natural resources (e.g. water scarcity, groundwater depletion, land degradation, environmental pollution) Example 1 Sans papiers: A social identity Example 1 Sans papiers: A social identity “We don’t bug people. We’re not people who look for a fight or drink or break stuff. That’s it, you go for a coffee, you don’t bother people and you never go picking fights.” (Farid, 2006, Orange) Example 1 Sans papiers: A social identity “The feeling of inferiority and social isolation does not encourage resistance and group mobilization … the only hope for improving their situation remains individualistic and involves becoming legal. [T]he migration status, operating on the state of mind of the people it defines, breeds particular attitudes, thus creating worker categories that will satisfy the specific needs of Western economies.” (Potot 2014: 93) Example 2 Gender: migration control and family planning Example 2 Gender: migration control and family planning “The [family] attachment principle improves the rate at which the women return and my duty as a public service is to facilitate their return.” (Director of International Placement, ANAPEC, Casablanca 2010) Example 2 Gender: migration control and family planning “Fathia (26) has been working in Spain seasonally for four years. When she wanted a third child she arranged to get pregnant just before the beginning of the season so that she could have the first part of her pregnancy in Spain while still being able to work, then returned home and gave birth in the fall as soon as possible so that the child would be old enough that she could leave again the following year.” (Hellio, 2014) Example 3 Rural income structures Marrakech Asni/Marrakech H i g i n s h A t l a s M o u n t a Oulad Berhil Ouarzazate N10 s s u o S d u e A7 O AhmarAhmar Agadir TaTTaroudanta Oulad Teima Inezgane Ait Melloul SebtSebt El-Guerdane © S. R. Sippel MEDITERRANEAN SEA ATLANTIC LLagfifatagfifat OCEAN ATLANTIC OCEAN BBiougraiougra CChtoukahtouka Rabat s KKhmisshmiss AitAit AAmiramira i n t a u n Ait Baha o Marrakech M s a t l A Agadir i ALGERIA t n N1 Tiznit A 0 10 20km Study area Citrus fruit plantation Major city Airport Greenhouse production City Harbour Argan forest Main road River Map basis: AMS (1958); GoogleMaps (2011) Example 3 From self-employed agriculture to agricultural wage labour Example 3 From self-employed agriculture to agricultural wage labour Social costs ‘First, there are the well-studied and monetarily measurable costs of intensive agriculture, which materialize as financial loss, debts, economic decline or environmental damage. … ‘… Second, there are less visible costs that undermine rural livelihoods, these are inscribed into the conditions of social reproduction; … ‘ ‘… Third, there are embodied costs that often unfold beyond economic measurement, manifesting themselves physically as well as emotionally as stress, fear, alienation, loneliness, … .’ (Gertel & Sippel 2014: 250).