Neoliberalization of Agrobiodiversity and the Livelihood Struggles of the Small-scale Farmers Under the Integration of Global Seed Market

Abstract

The emergence of neoliberalism influencing farmers’ livelihood and the governance of plant genetic resources, like seeds, cannot be simply understood, especially in the recent shifting seed regime of Thailand. In order to understand how the small scale farmers in Northern Thailand are integrated into contract farming for hybrid seed production under global seed companies and into conservation of agrobiodiversity under socio-environmental movements, this study turns to see the connection between neoliberalism, environmental change and environmental politics through investigating the neoliberal policies vis-à-vis agrobiodiversity in relation to the small-scale farmers’ livelihood struggles. Seeing neoliberalism as a process in relation to socio-natural changes can help us in investigating two important phenomena, as the contradictory neoliberal environmental governance, simultaneously shaping the seed manipulation of local farmers: integration of farmers into a contractual labor under the globalization of the seed market and the rise of socio-environmental movements. The field site of this study was conducted mainly in Nan Province. This study applied the multi-sited and actor-oriented approaches with a political ecology framework. It relied on several sources of both quantitative and qualitative information, such as field observation, questionnaires, interviews, texts, and online databases. The intensive fieldwork was conducted during 2011-2013. For collecting baseline data, a village survey was conducted and 56 households were randomly selected. Then, Microsoft Excel was used to compile the data sets for the descriptive statistics and simple cross-tabs. Some farmers were also interviewed to better understand about their response to market integration and socio-environmental movements. These data are useful, as the empirical evidence, in understanding the limits of neoliberal development and the politico-ecological possibilities as well as constraints for small-scale farmers to engage with heterogeneous actors. The study mainly found that, while neoliberalism affected the seed-related agrobiodiversity governance and farmers’ livelihood landscape during the global seed market integration, there were articulations of inter-and intra-state policies, as well as ideologies, that contributed to the complexity of commodification and conservation of agrobiodiversity in Nan Province among heterogeneous actors. By this, it is irreducible to see neoliberalization of agrobiodiversity as a monolithic, complete programme and being formed only from above. To explain more, firstly, this study found that the controls of contracting seed companies on the production and labor processes were implemented while the state’s policies enhanced the role of the private seed sector in capital accumulation. Still, not passively, many small-scale farmers engaged with the hybrid vegetable seed production as the complementarity of their changing livelihood conditions. Secondly, while aiming to empower the small scale farmers through the scheme of Farmer Field School to conserve and develop the plant varieties as part of agrobiodiversity conservation and concern on farmers’ rights, the socio-environmental movements, in part, re-constructed “Nature” and governed the peasantry as an environmental subject under the conservative power. Lastly, this study found that farmers’ everyday farming practices as part of the politico-ecological struggles are more complicated beyond grasping them only in terms of formal and advocacy politics. Rather, this needs to be seen through the cultural politics in everyday practices. Under difficulties to manage their farm resources as well as relations among actors, small-scale farmers have relied on many livelihood strategies in order to cope, to a different degree, with such circumstances. By this, they produce the situated “agrobiodiversities”, contributing to the assemblage of peasantries and natures. However, this study insists that there were unevenness found in the agrobiodiversity degradation across different landscapes and in the agrobiodiversity conservation through various socio-environmental movements. Under the context of global seed market integration, not every farmer can fully accumulate capital to engage with agrobiodiversity conservation. This calls for further research and policy making in order to carefully assess and differentiate the neoliberal policy vis-à-vis agrobiodiversity in the multi-scalar politics.