S. Ryan Isakson

Food and finance: the financial transformation of agro-food supply chains

This article draws upon existing literature to document and describe the rise of finance in food provisioning. It queries the role of financialization in the contemporary food crisis and analyzes its impacts upon the distribution of power and wealth within and along the generalized agro-food supply chain. A systematic treatment of key nodes in the supply chain reveals four key insights: (1) the line between finance and food provisioning has become increasingly blurred in recent decades, with financial actors taking a growing interest in food and agriculture and agro-food enterprises becoming increasingly involved in financial activities; (2) financialization has reinforced the position of food retailers as the dominant actors within the agro-food system, though they are largely subject to the dictates of finance capital and face renewed competition from financialized commodity traders; (3) financialization has intensified the exploitation of food workers, increasing their workload while pushing down their real wages and heightening the precarity of their positions, and (4) small-scale farmers have been especially hard hit by financialization, as their livelihoods have become even more uncertain due to increasing volatility in agricultural markets, they have become weaker vis-à-vis other actors in the agro-food supply chain, and they face growing competition for their farmland. The paper concludes by identifying themes for future research and asking readers to reimagine the role of finance in food provisioning.

Eliminating market distortions, perpetuating rural inequality: an evaluation of market-assisted land reform in Guatemala

Abstract The signing of the Guatemalan Peace Accords in 1996 sought to end nearly four decades of civil war and to rectify what many have identified as the root cause of the violent conflict: the countrys extremely unequal distribution of land. To achieve this aim, the agreement embraces the strategy of market-assisted land reform. The agrarian strategy has done little to level the countrys agrarian structure, however, as the quantity of land that has been transferred is minimal and often of poor quality. Moreover, rather than alleviating poverty, the market-led strategy has indebted its intended beneficiaries. In part, the failure of the programme results from the limited political and financial support that it receives from policy makers. But its shortcomings are also rooted in the inherently flawed model of market-led agrarian reform, a strategy that disembeds land from its political and cultural contexts and envisions it as nothing more than a transferable commodity. To placate demands for land, Guatemalan officials have implemented a land rental programme that does little to redress the deep economic inequalities that plague Guatemala and underpin its political instability. A more comprehensive land reform is justified.

Introduction: New directions in agrarian political economy

For four decades, The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS) has served as a principal arena for the formation and dissemination of cutting-edge research and theory. It is globally renowned as a key site for documenting and analyzing variegated trajectories of agrarian change across space and time. Over the years, authors have taken new angles as they reinvigorated classic questions and debates about agrarian transition, resource access and rural livelihoods. This introductory essay highlights the four classic themes represented in Volume 1 of the JPS anniversary collection: land and resource dispossession, the financialization of food and agriculture, vulnerability and marginalization, and the blurring of the rural-urban relations through hybrid livelihoods. Contributors show both how new iterations of long-evident processes continue to catch peasants and smallholders in the crosshairs of crises and how many manage to face these challenges, developing new sources and sites of livelihood production.