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- Convenors:
-
Agata Hummel
(University of Warsaw)
Paula Escribano (University of Barcelona)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Panels Network affiliated
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 22 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
The aim of the panel is to explore to what extend it is possible to maintain rural self-sufficient livelihood practices in the context of the regulations of Common Agricultural Policy in Europe and the global market. We would like to discuss what value the EU grants to smallholders.
Long Abstract:
Europe is immersed in the market economy. Nevertheless, ethnographic testimonies reveal the importance of self-sufficiency, self-provisioning and domestic economy for livelihoods of people, especially in rural areas. Self-sufficiency may play a role of buffer in times of crisis and is significant in terms of identity and social cohesion.
Nevertheless, public policies are designed to promote large agricultural companies by means of subsidies or complex legal requirements which make it hard to survive for the small farmers. Rural development programmes benefit mostly medium and big agricultural enterprises. Bureaucracy labyrinths, the prohibition of traditional practices such as home slaughter of livestock or of the surplus sale through informal channels are some examples of the regulations that hamper self-sufficient livelihoods. The EU rural development programmes and the imposition of the regulations of Common Agricultural Policy shape European agriculture creating a great distance between agricultural companies, competing in a market economy, and agricultural practices of people embedded in local livelihood strategies.
The aim of the panel is to explore the influence EU policies have on self-sufficient rural livelihoods in Europe and the strategies people adopt in order to function in the adverse legal environment. We would like to discuss if, given the legal context, it is possible to maintain livelihood practices out of market economy and to what extend? What value does the EU grant to small farming, and if and how it protects household agriculture? What plan does the EU have for the future of smallholders? Theoretical and ethnographic contributions are welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 22 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
Self-sufficiency is at the heart of the self-perception of high-altitude farmers in the Eastern Alps. Political institutions have their own reasons for subsidising farmers. How do they deal with the contrasting factors: the local situation of their farmsteads and the monetary influx from outside?
Paper long abstract:
High-altitude farmers in South-Tyrol (Italy) live and work in the mountain belt of the Eastern Alps, on the upper limit of rye and wheat cultivation. Being located between 1200 and 1900 m above sea level, some of their farmsteads are among the highest and their meadows among the steepest in Western Europe.
Since the late 1970s, the regional government had heavily subsidised these farmers, facilitated the modernisation of cowsheds and milking installations and thus developing the necessary infrastructure to ensure that the farmers could remain on their farms and would be able to market their produce. Keeping the mountain sides cultivated is not only crucial for ecological reasons but also for the tourist industry on which the region depends heavily. It is as "landscape conservationists" that farmers receive subsidies from the EU. Self-sufficiency is fundamental for their self-image and even more so, since they live on isolated farmsteads, far away from villages, urban centres and transit zones.
An ethnographic research project recently started by the University of Bolzano (Italy) brings high-altitude farmers into focus. In this paper, I will discuss
how they deal with the constraints, chances and obstacles that EU policies and subsidies present how they deal with the constraints and obstacles that EU policies and subsidies present - as well as with the challenges and chances.
How do they approach the seeming contradiction between the self-sufficiency that is at the centre of their work and the resources that they receive - and need - from outside agencies?
Paper short abstract:
By drawing on fieldwork in Diois, a territory in Southeastern France with a long history of neorural settlement, this paper shows how the articulation with the larger capitalist society affects any alternative lifestyle and self-sufficiency projects.
Paper long abstract:
In order to problematise the idea of peasant self-sufficiency in capitalist societies, this paper will investigate the counter-urbanisation movement in France. The first wave of neorurals - or urbanites recently settled in the countryside - was an offspring of the May 68 anti-capitalist movements. This wave sought to create autarkic communes that would engender a different society. The majority of social scientists agree that these experiments failed. And, yet, in the mid-1970s, they were followed by another, less "radical" wave. This second wave carried an environmental critique and thought to propose an alternative to capitalist productivism not through autarky, but through peasant-way-of-life articulated around the household and the village. By drawing on fieldwork in Diois, a territory in Southeastern France with a long history of neorural settlement, this paper shows how the articulation with the larger capitalist society affects any alternative lifestyle and self-sufficiency projects. The long and sustained, yet continuously transforming, French neorural movement points to the difficulties to propose real "new peasantries."
Paper short abstract:
The entry into the EU represents a historical milestone in the milk-producing farms of Galicia: the intensification of specialization in milk production but also the almost disappearance of traditional practices and the appearance of bureaucratic burdens. In this context, different strategies arise
Paper long abstract:
The entry of Spain into the EU is an important milestone in the small dairy family farms in Galicia (Northwest of Spain) that deeply transformed their livelihoods. The application of the CAP entails an intensification of specialization in milk production, but also the disappearance of traditional practices and bureaucratic burdens with which it is difficult to deal with and practically terminates with the self-sufficiency of these farms. All this together with the enormous indebtedness that the application of one of the mains meassures of the CAP - the milk quota- implies for these families (because the assigned quota was lower than the actual production). In the midst of this situation, claims such as that of the just price (versus the subsidies of the CAP) along with other strategies that allow them to maintain their livelihoods their identity and social cohesion -in danger precisely because of the application of these policies- arise.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the role of European, national and regional policies regarding the viticulture sector of El Penedès and what are their effects on the sustainability of small agriculture farming. In this region, three large enterprises control and establish the rules and values of exchange.
Paper long abstract:
The paper discusses the role of policies at several scales regarding the viticulture sector of El Penedès (Spain) and what are their effects on the sustainability of small agriculture farming.
El Penedès is a historically viticulture area and this activity has been essential both in its economic development as in its identity construction. Throughout the twentieth century, family and subsistence farming, with a certain diversification of crops, became a market-oriented economy, with a strong degree of mechanization, grape monoculture and the dependence on chemical inputs. Thus, viticulture shifted from being the center of households' economy to being a job or an economic complement for few family members.
This last summer, grape prices dropped to levels that jeopardize the sustainability of many of the farms that see as the final prices do not even cover production costs.
In this context, the sector suffers a new violent penetration of agribusiness which places farmers at the crossroads between the market economy marked by the monopoly of three large companies that prioritize quantity to quality and the export market, the regulation at different scales that have been proved as inefficient to ensure the continuity of agricultural practices embedded in local livelihood strategies and a territorial model that points to a conversion of agricultural land into industrial and logistics. For example, with the future passage of the Mediterranean corridor through the area.
In this context, farmers sustainability is threatened and farmers demand a just price that ensures economic viability as well as rural livelihood sustainability.
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this presentation is to analyze the social, political and economic challenges rural self-management initiatives from Catalonia face in the process of starting and developing their projects and what is happening with the self-sufficiency economy.
Paper long abstract:
The research addresses the problem of different conceptualization of peasants by different groups - rural self-management initiatives (RSIs) and the public administration in Catalonia, Spain - and its application in order to achieve particular interests. RSIs are being founded by people who move from cities to the countryside for ideological and/or practical reasons to implement the so called 'peasant lifestyle' and 'peasant economy'. However, RSIs are not recognized by public policies. The aim of this study is then to analyze the social, political and economic challenges rural self-management initiatives face in the process of starting and developing their projects. In order to achieve our research objective we will explore what imaginary of peasant/neo-peasant and peasant economy RSIs share and what the practical outcome of this imaginary is. We will also study institutions that dominate the field of rural public management in Catalonia, their imaginary of peasant/neo-peasant and rural production, and the legal consequences of this imaginary. Finally, we will analyze the strategies that rural self-management initiatives adopt in order to survive in the current legal context. We will also try to conceptualize the term 'neo-peasants' drawing from the literature and our fieldwork results, and to comprehend how this concept is related to the current debate on peasants in Anthropology.