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Human ecology and food discourses in a smallholder agricultural system in Leyte, The Philippines

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Abstract

Food systems are influenced by discourses held by individuals and institutions. Market oriented food security and food sovereignty are frequently presented as co-existing discourses in food systems. This paper documents how smallholder farmers embody market food security and food sovereignty discourses in their agricultural practices, and how these discourses prevent new forms of agriculture from developing given socio-political and institutional rigidity. A human ecology systems framework is used to analyse semi-structured interviews with 39 coconut producing smallholder farmers from Leyte, The Philippines. The results document how smallholders perceive market food security discourse as the main way out of food insecure situations, and thus continue to seek institutional support for maintaining a coconut based agricultural system. Farmers also perceive elements of the food sovereignty discourse, notably decision-making agency and agricultural diversification, as parallel strategies to improve their food security. The ongoing support for coconut production and inequitable access to training and knowledge in rural systems traps farmers into an agricultural system influenced by a long history of colonial institutions and social structures. The paper demonstrates that farmers are aware of the interventions required to diversify food systems towards higher value commodities, yet sovereignty is unlikely to be enabled due to maladaptive institutions and the associated access to new training and extension opportunities. The use of human ecology advances food scholarship through embedding a systems analysis into qualitative studies to reveal the influence of food discourses on food systems’ behaviour and outcomes.

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Notes

  1. Other authors attribute higher production but define a ‘small farm’ using different criteria. Herrero et al. (2017) attribute 56% of production of 41 crops, 7 livestock, and 14 aquaculture and fish products across 161 countries to farms of < 50 hectares. The ETC Group (2017) attribute up to 70% of global food supply to small farms, but to not define the criteria for defining small farms. Ricciardi et al. (2018) estimates are based on calories produced in 55 countries.

  2. The Nyéléni Declaration is well acknowledges as a critical juncture moment where social movements, scholars, and activists confirmed the relevance of food sovereignty for food systems thinking and practice.

  3. Excludes Samar Island.

  4. The smallest administrative political unit in the Philippines.

  5. Municipality is the equivalent of the anglosaxon concept of a town.

  6. Copra the dried meat of the coconut value-added raw coconut, often burnt in brick ovens in villages, and sold in bulk. Copra is often used to make coconut oils and other value added products for international markets.

  7. The 2014 scoping study included conversations with researchers, farmer groups, and farmers in the greater Manila region, Los Baños, Subic Clarke, and Isabela. The diversity of people spoken with narrowed the focus of the study to exploring the experiences of food insecurity. In 2015, a 1.5 day workshop was help with researchers and policy makers from the Philippines to confirm the value of systems approaches to study food security in the Philippines context.

Abbreviations

FAO:

Food and Agriculture Organization

SEARCA:

Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. This manuscript benefited from the intellectual support of the Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, Tira Foran, Lorrae van Kerkhoff, David Dumaresq, Robert Dyball and Thomas Sloan. Thank you Juernjakob Dugge and Stephanie Pulsford for graphics support.

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  1. Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, Building 10, Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Federico Davila

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Davila, F. Human ecology and food discourses in a smallholder agricultural system in Leyte, The Philippines. Agric Hum Values 37, 719–741 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-10007-6

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