White gold: the commercialisation of rice farming in the lower mekong basin
Fecha
2020Autor
Cramb, Rob
Director(es)
Cramb, Rob
Documentos PDF
Resumen
The development story told of Southeast Asia usually focuses on processes
of urbanisation, industrialisation, and rapid sectoral change, which have
propelled economic growth and thus delivered rising incomes, improving
standards of living, and declining poverty. Where, however, does farming
and agriculture, and in particular, the region’s signature crop, rice, fit into
this story? It is not a simple one, because many of the trends anticipated
by scholars and policy-makers have not materialised, while others have
worked out far more rapidly than anyone expected. Indeed, some of the
trends, or the absence of them, appear on first sight to be puzzlingly at odds.
Landholdings have not—generally—amalgamated into larger units of
production, which might drive labour productivity increases. Mechanisation
of some aspects of rice agriculture has proceeded rapidly, even in countries
that remain poor and seemingly in rural labour surplus. Questions and
concerns regarding food security stand alongside the disintensification of
some aspects of production, even land abandonment. Most rice farms are
sub-livelihood in size, but living standards in the countryside continue to
improve and poverty to decline. Parents make huge sacrifices to educate
their children so that they can escape the drudgery of rice farming, but
nonetheless stay rooted in—and to—their natal lands. Production is
increasingly commercialised, but farmers in some areas seem to adopt
semi-subsistence mindsets in their approach to rice farming.
Palabras clave
Rice Farming; Lower Mekong BasinColecciones
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