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Local is not fair: indigenous peasant farmer preference for export markets

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Abstract

The food sovereignty movement calls for a reversal of the neoliberal globalization of food, toward an alternative development model that supports peasant production for local consumption. The movement holds an ambiguous stance on peasant production for export markets, and clearly prioritizes localized trade. Food sovereignty discourse often simplifies and romanticizes the peasantry—overlooking agrarian class categories and ignoring the interests of export-oriented peasants. Drawing on 8 months of participant observation in the Andean countryside and 85 interviews with indigenous peasant farmers, this paper finds that export markets are viewed as more fair than local markets. The indigenous peasants in this study prefer export trade because it offers a more stable and viable livelihood. Feeding the national population through local market intermediaries, by contrast, is perceived as unfair because of oversupply and low, fluctuating prices. This perspective, from the ground, offers important insight to movement actors and scholars who risk oversimplifying peasant values, interests, and actions.

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Notes

  1. La Vía Campesina is commonly referred to as Via Campesina in English-language publications.

  2. In other work, I examine the question of how agro-ecological indigenous peasant farmers are. This article focuses on the question of international trade.

  3. This literature also acknowledges disadvantages associated with fair trade certification, such as higher labor costs.

  4. The names of all communities and community members have been changed to protect their confidentiality.

  5. SPP stands for Símbolo de Pequeños Productores, or Small Producer Symbol. SPP is a new initiative emerging out of the fair trade movement, in order to distinguish small producers from the large, even corporate-owned, plantations who are now eligible for fair trade certification.

  6. It should be noted that eliminating middlemen is indeed a principle of the food sovereignty movement.

Abbreviations

FSM:

Food sovereignty movement

UNCTAD:

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

SPP:

Símbolo de Pequeños Productores

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to Jeff Haydu and Leon Zamosc for their feedback on this paper and guidance throughout the research process.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA

    Rachel Soper

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  1. Rachel Soper
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Correspondence to Rachel Soper.

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Soper, R. Local is not fair: indigenous peasant farmer preference for export markets. Agric Hum Values 33, 537–548 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9620-0

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