Illusions, hunger and vices: smallholders, environmentalism and the green agrarian question in Chiapas' biofuel rush
Creators: name: Castellanos-Navarrete, Antonio
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Anthropology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: 140201 Agricultural Economics
subject: FOS: Economics and business
subject: 149902 Ecological Economics
subject: Geography
subject: Sociology
subject: 70101 Agricultural Land Management
subject: FOS: Other agricultural sciences
subject: 70199 Agriculture, Land and Farm Management not elsewhere classified

description: Activists and environmentalists all over the world have been successful in framing biofuel crops as drivers of deforestation, land grabbing and rural indebtedness – effectively reversing earlier promotional pronouncements of biofuels as the answer to ecological problems. The counternarrative has now become the dominant narrative. But one important question has remained unanswered: if biofuels are responsible for a large range of social and environmental impacts, why do so many smallholders and poor farmers participate in the production of these crops? Foregrounding this research on key principles from agrarian studies and political ecology literature, this thesis addresses this question for the case of the recent biofuel expansion in Chiapas (Mexico). In this region, oil palm and jatropha, both promoted as biofuels, have been embraced and rapidly planted amongst smallholders, thus stirring an environmental conflict that put environmentalists and an important faction of rural communities at odds with each other. Using data gathered in the oil palm plantations of Chiapas, we find that the stream of critical studies that followed the 2000s biofuel expansion has not adequately theorised smallholder participation in the production of biofuel crops and in the biofuel expansion. Research has frequently either focused on the relations between agrarian capital and rural producers or on the environmental impacts of biofuel cultivation, ignoring the interface between the two domains. Seeking to address this research gap and believing that theoretical and not just empirical contributions can be made from interrogating this nexus, we look at these two domains together through the green agrarian question framework. This thesis attempts to provide an interdisciplinary understanding of the local drivers underpinning smallholder participation in the production of biofuel crops in Chiapas.Through the green agrarian question, this thesis focuses on changes in land access, with particular emphasis on enclosure, on the terms of incorporation of rural producers into the biofuel chain, on state-peasant relations and on environmental degradation. The analysis of these four issues, and how they interplay with each other, provides the basis to understand why smallholders in Chiapas shift to oil palm production. Firstly, the oil palm expansion in this region has not lead to significant changes in land access. The existence of the ejido land tenure in Mexico, a form of tenure in which land ownership is not fully liberalised, limited both processes of land grabbing and ‘dispossession by the market’. Secondly, state intervention in the palm oil sector has provided smallholders with favourable terms of incorporation. It also has permitted the creation and/or strengthening of rural organisations that offered smallholders some opportunities to gain leverage with the state and industrial capital. Third, smallholders have embraced oil production as it harmonised well with local ideologies that considered rural modernisation and agroindustrialisation – historically promoted by the state – as desirable forms of production. And fourthly, oil palm producers have perceived this crop as particularly appropriate to the local environmental conditions and as a possible solution to specific agricultural problems.<br>In the field of agrarian studies, biofuels, including oil palm, are considered as a particularly detrimental form of agrarian capital for both rural producers and the environment. In this context, smallholder participation in the production of biofuel crops is often explained based on coercion or deception, ignoring the more variegated and nuanced ways that smallholders engage with biofuel. This perspective suggests rural agency is highly limited and unidimensional. The green agrarian question framework as developed this thesis, in contrast, is an attempt to capture the highly uneven character of agrarian capital for the biofuel case as shaped by state interventions or by the particular environmental dynamics of the study regions, and recognises that social responses to capital are as complex as they are heterogeneous. Based on this theoretical framework, rural agency in relation to biofuels is better understood when three different levels are considered. First, at the economic level, it is important to consider rural agency not only in relation to individual responses to short-term economic signals but also as a collective relation between rural classes and agrarian capital. Second, at the political level, this thesis proposes to approach agency through a more balanced understanding of power than that offered by classical conceptions of ideological domination. The concept of hegemony defined as a shared, albeit power-laden, political order seems particularly apt for this purpose. Third, at the material level, social agency by rural producers can also be shaped by environmental change. The focus on material practices can serve to reveal how environmental conditions might modify the relation of rural producers to capital. Thus, smallholder participation in the production of biofuel crops is the outcome of a complex process of political construction in which economics, hegemony, and the environment all play an important role. Under this approach, rural producers are considered key actors of wider social processes linked to capital and power – not passive recipients but active agents who influence the trajectories of development of their regions in complex ways.<br>