Implication of Multi-National Corporations (MNC’s) and Commercial Tea Plantation Agriculture on the Small Scale Farmers of Kericho in Kenya, 1963 -2010.

The introduction of tea as a cash crop in Kericho revolutionised farming among the Kipsigis of Kericho. While the independence of Kenya in 1963 was expected to come along with economic empowerment and freedom among its people, many still struggle to meet their daily needs and live below the poverty line. For Kericho residents, MNC’s continued their domination in plantation tea farming at the expense of the local communities who are wallowing in poverty. Although MNC’s contribute in the provision of social services to the local community as part of their corporate social responsibility, this assistance is a drop in the ocean considering the massive capital and technology that these corporations wield and which have been instrumental in relegating the small scale farmers to the periphery and creating dependency. This study explored the implication of MNC’s engaged in plantation tea farming in Kericho District (presently Kericho County) on local peasant farmers.

The Conventional and Modern Uses of Water Buffalo Milk in the Philippines

In Southeast Asia, milking of livestock is not common. In the Philippines, water buffalo (carabao) milk has been used since the Spanish colonial period of the 16th century. Milk is processed into cheese (kesong puti) or candy (pastillas). These customs are found in a few areas on the Islands of Luzon and Visayas. However, in 1996, following the launch of the Philippine Carabao Center (PCC), the uses of modern milk have been practiced nationwide using Murrah (buffalo), which produces more milk than a carabao. This paper analyzes the dairy transition currently occurring in the Philippines from the conventional uses of carabao milk to the modern uses of Murrah milk. Intensive fieldwork was broadly conducted in conventional and modern milk use areas of the country, with water buffalo management and milk use systems researched using participatory observation and interview methods. This study delves into how the conventional uses of water buffalo milk have helped support the livelihood of special farmers and whether recent government-backed projects, such as enhancing the ability of water buffaloes to produce milk, have made carabaos dispensable. The shift to modern milk uses, which relies on buffalo milk, has become a national project, in order to improve the subsistence of peasant farmers. This paper concludes that the modern dairy farming of Murrah is becoming popular in farming societies close to the PCC and that the dairy culture has changed from being a minor conventional regional system to a major industrial farming and business system to sustain the lives of local small-scale farmers.

Evaluation of Soil Erosion and Its Prediction Protocols around the Hilly Areas of Mubi Region, Northeast Nigeria

Soil erosion is a severe degradation phenomena that has since received huge attention among earth scientists in the developed worlds, and same efforts are now extending to Africa and other parts of underdeveloped worlds. This chapter focuses on collation, analyzing and appraising of soil ero¬sion studies around Mubi region, Northeast Nigeria, where the Mandara mountain ranges is notably responsible for spurring soil erosion. This chapter reviewed reports on the: (a) Mubi regional soil properties, erosion processes and principles of their occurrence, (b) soil erosion predictions using empirical and physically-based models by researchers, and, (c) economicimplications and managements of soil erosion in the region. This chapter reveals that classical and rill/ephemeral gully (EG) erosion features received more research attention than surface erosion such as splash and sheet. No information was reported on effects of landslides/slumping noticeable along rivers/stream banks around the region. The few economic analysis reported for soil nutrient and sediments entrained by concentrated flow channels were very high and intolerable to the predominantly peasant farmers in the region. It is hoped that the considerable volumes of erosion researches and recommendations assembled in this chapter shall be carefully implemented by prospective farmers, organizations, and residents in the Mubi region.

DEVELOPMENT OF A HAND-PUSH WEEDER FOR CUTTING WEEDS

An hand-push weeder was designed, fabricated and evaluated for household use and peasant farmers in order to mechanize cutting process and minimize the higher aggressive nature of weeds contrasted with harvests poising major danger to crop production, the invasion on soils is very high particularly during the raining seasons when soil moisture is high and plant development conditions are ideal. The major components of the weeder are the weeding drum and frame made of mild steel, adjustable handle made of galvanized steel, transmission system made up of belt and pulley mechanism, two wheels both at the front and rear. The highest weeding efficiency of 93.496% and field capacity of 0.055 ha/hr were obtained based on some parameters that influence mechanized weeding (soil condition, age of weed, number of weed, and optimum speed of the weeding machine been 1800rpm). The production cost of the weeder is $185 and it is powered by a 3 hp gasoline engine.

Triangulating Labor, Capital, and Land: Italian Emigrant Colonization in Latin America and the Contradictions of US Hegemony, 1947–1953

In the aftermath of World War II, Italy’s centrist leaders saw in the emerging US empire an opportunity to implement emigration schemes that had been in circulation for decades. Hundreds of thousands of Italian peasant farmers could perhaps be able to settle on Latin American and African land thanks to the contribution of US capital. This article examines the Italian elites’ obsession with rural colonization abroad as the product of their desire to valorize the legacy of Italy's settler colonialism in Libya and thereby reinvent Italy's place in the world in the aftermath of military defeat and decolonization. Despite the deep ambivalence of US officials, Italy received Marshall Plan funds to carry out experimental settlements in several Latin American countries. These visions of rural settlement also built on the nascent discourses about the ‘development’ of non-western areas. Despite the limited size and success of the Italian rural ‘colonies’ in Latin America, these projects afford a window into the politics of decolonization, the character of US hegemony at the height of the Cold War, and the evolving attitude of Latin American governments towards immigration and rural development. They also reveal the contradictory relationships between Italy's leaders and the country's rural masses, viewed as redundant and yet precious elements to be deployed in a global geopolitical game.

Food Sovereignty and Food Security: Livelihood Strategies Pursued by Farmers during the Maize Monoculture Boom in Northern Thailand

Northern Thailand is the center of a number of controversies surrounding changing cropping patterns, in particular related to deforestation driven by the expansion of maize monocropping by peasant farmers. Growing demand for maize by the global livestock industry has driven the conversion of land from forest and/or shifting cultivation to chemical-intensive maize, with associated environmental (i.e., forest encroachment and annual burning of fields) and social (i.e., farmer indebtedness) problems. Over the years, some of the same farmers have been exposed to ‘alternative development’ programs and projects, initially motivated by pressure to substitute for illegal crops and more recently by concerns over deforestation and particulate matter air pollution from the burning of crop residues. This scenario is made more heterogeneous by a variety of land tenure situations and greater or lesser degrees of community control over land and forest. Faced with varied situations, peasant families can pursue different livelihood strategies, particularly in reference to the degree to which their production is market oriented. Based on surveys and interviews with farmers in Nan and Chiang Mai provinces, over a range of the aforementioned circumstances, we contrast families who pursue what we define as food security (cash cropping to earn money to buy food), food sovereignty (primarily production for self-provisioning) or mixed (a combination of both) strategies. In terms of indicators such as indebtedness, we find greater benefits from the food sovereignty and mixed strategies, though we also find that these are limited by security of land tenure issues, as well as by the degree to which community management of resources is or is not present.

The Coca Leaf in Bolivian History

Coca is deeply interwoven into the political, economic, and social history of Bolivia from the Inca Empire to the 21st-century rise of President Evo Morales Ayma. As such, generations of Bolivians, from powerful hacendados to peasant farmers, have resisted efforts to destroy the coca leaf. Coca is a mild herbal stimulant cultivated and consumed by indigenous Andeans for centuries, and the primary material for making the potent drug cocaine. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish colonizers promoted coca production on large haciendas to supply mining towns, giving rise to a powerful class of coca hacendados that formed part of Bolivia’s ruling oligarchy after independence. In the early 20th century, the coca hacendados shielded coca from international drug control. Following the 1952 Revolution, agrarian unions replaced hacendados as guardians of the coca leaf. The unions formed a powerful social movement led by Evo Morales Ayma, an indigenous leader and coca farmer, against US-led efforts to forcibly eradicate coca. During the 1990s, Morales and his allies created a political party called the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). In late 2005, Morales was elected president of Bolivia and his new government deployed state power to protect the coca leaf.

Cultivating response: Peasant seed and plant–human collaboration in an agro-industrial heartland

Using Donna Haraway’s notion of “response-ability”, or the cultivation of the capacity for response, this paper seeks to understand seed saving and plant breeding as politically and ethically charged modes of interspecies communication. In Brittany, France, a region known for its industrial-scale fresh vegetable production, peasant farmers and organic plant breeders question the modernist plant breeding and agro-industrial paradigm, cross-pollinating ideas to produce new understandings of genotype-environment interaction, biodiversity and heredity. Plant liveliness is understood as politically transformative, constitutive of an agriculture that supports peasant farmer and crop plant creativity and self-determination. In contrast to F1 hybrids, open-pollinated semences paysannes (peasant seed) retain the ability to respond to environmental changes, adapt and evolve over (human and plant) generations. Farmers must in turn engage specific modes of attention, interpreting plant expressions and shaping future generations through rouging and crossing, selecting and saving, watching and learning from their crops. Mutual response is the foundation of interdependence, in which nonconspecific partners adjust to one another’s ways of being and doing in order to labor together. In remaining response-able, farmers reckon with the liveliness and agential capacities of plants, qualities that work against their subsumption into factory-like methods of cultivation. These communicative practices hint at the radical potential for interspecies resistance to monoculture within plant breeding and cultivation, practices that are so often molded by the interests of agro-industrial capital.