Presentation short abstract

Building on my fieldwork in Czechia, this contribution aims to investigate the analytical and political relevance of the category of a ‘farmer’ in the context of the country’s landscape of agricultural production.

Presentation long abstract

Building on my fieldwork in Czechia, this presentation aims to investigate the analytical and political relevance of the category of a ‘farmer’ in the context of the country’s landscape of agricultural production.

Czechia has the largest average arm size in the EU (ca.130ha). This outstanding size of farms is complemented by a messy ownership structure where, as a result of privatisation of the socialist agriculture in the 1990s, most farms are either owned by hundreds of owners-shareholders or have been bought up by a handful of Czech oligarchs—a class with a growing interest in investing in agricultural production.

Furthermore, in the transition to market capitalism, formerly collectivised land had been returned to its pre-socialist owners, and today more than 2 million Czechs own a piece of agricultural land, which they lease to the farms. This results in a situation where any single farm often operates within ownership structures containing hundreds, if not thousands, of people. This is complemented by a shift to less labour demanding agricultural production and a steady decline of the people working in agriculture (ca.1% of the population).

Thinking from within this conjuncture, is ‘farmer’ still a category with political, economic, or material meaning in such financialised and fragmented agricultural landscape? If yes, who is it? The agronome, the land owner, the oligarch,or the worker?

This presentation hopes to put into conversation different visions of agricultural production/labour and thus offer a post-socialist perspective to a discussion that often privileges a Western European category of a small-farmer.