ABSTRACT
The main objective of this article is to present a reflection on the importance of socio-territorial movements in the face of actions to combat social inequality in this pandemic period, 2020-2021. In this sense, the article deals with a debate on COVID-19 and the impacts resulting from this pandemic. It discusses the emergence of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), its solidarity actions and the debate on the Popular Agrarian Reform Plan. This study ends with a presentation of data, resulting from the result of a questionnaire applied online on society's vision of the MST. Finally, the article presents a reflection that highlights the peasantry, which, despite all the subordination that has been going through over the centuries and has been suffering from the impacts arising from the agribusiness development model, has much to contribute to the development of regions, when we see actions that guide new possibilities of producing, consuming and protecting nature, boosting the quality of life in the countryside and in the city.
ABSTRACT
The Landless Workers' Movement (MST) has participated in several solidarity actions since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, above all, the donations of food produced in land reform territories (settlements) and in land struggle territories (camps). Food donations highlight the importance of agrarian reform for food production, the reduction of social inequalities, the promotion of agroecology and food sovereignty. All these elements are intrinsic to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations. This study highlights the importance of agrarian reform and the contribution of movements to achieve the SDGs, in a context in which the State moves in the opposite direction to what is proposed by the Agenda. The data on solidarity actions were collected on social networks and on the MST website, systematized in a spreadsheet and mapped with the Philcarto software. Results are discussed with the support of bibliographies, UN documents and interviews with MST leaders. The analysis indicate that socio-territorial movements have been building sustainable territories that contribute to the SDGs.
ABSTRACT
During the period of the COVID-19 pandemic and social isolation, the farmers of the 20 de Marco agrarian reform project had to adapt the way they market their products so that it was possible to continue the Agroecological Fair extension project, which was carried at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS)/Tres Lagoas Campus. In March 2020, with the suspension of on-site activities at the university, the strategy found to maintain sales was the online sales system and home deliveries. The objective of this paper is to present the paths of this action, analyzing how the spatialization of the consumption of agroecological products in the urban fabric of Tres Lagoas during the pandemic period took place. Despite the social commotion that marked this tragic moment in the history of the country, the settled farmers and the UFMS/Tres Lagoas Campus extension project team remained active in carrying out activities that contributed to the success of the spatialization of urban consumption and maintenance of farmers' income, investing in agroecological educational actions on conscious consumption and the importance of agrarian reform.
ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the debate on the issue of hunger and the agrarian question, seeking to demonstrate the direct relationship between both themes, and the existing hegemonic rural development model in Brazil, where the logic of capital has defined agricultural production and distribution, conditioning them culturally to the parameters dictated by the Brazilian State. Based on the above, it is possible to show that state-financed agriculture favors the intensive use of pesticides and heavy machinery, maintaining the historic land concentration and prioritizing the production of raw materials (commodities). The worsening situation of hunger in the world and in the country highlights the urgency of the debate and the need to deepen its determinants in order to promote not only emergency actions, but also structural ones. It is also discussed that, in contrast to this model, several collective subjects, especially rural social movements, build sustainable alternatives for the relationship with the land, the environment and rural communities, and have agroecology as a banner of struggle. The article also brings the actions developed during the COVID 19 pandemic by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) which, in line with the class solidarity they defend, effected the distribution of healthy foods to the urban peripheries and showed the importance of peasant agriculture to food production and the fight against hunger.
ABSTRACT
The article aims to estimate the dynamics of agricultural land prices in nominal and real terms and to assess their differentiation due to land localisation and land quality in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the period preceding the pandemic in Poland. The results of the analysis, showed that during the five years before the pandemic the rate of growth of the arable land prices was high. In the first year of the pandemic, the prices were stable, but in the second one, the prices soared. The rate of growth was higher than the rates in the previous years. One of the reasons for the excessively high increase was inflation. The appearance of urban households on the land market was another reason. The restrictions imposed on society due to COVID-19, combined with the development of remote work opportunities, resulted in a rise in the interest in purchasing residential real estates in rural areas and increased demand for agricultural land. This phenomenon will have long term multidimensional effects for rural areas. Moreover, the quick growth of land prices, despite the existing legal barriers to trade, means that land is regarded more and more as an regular investment good. The rapid growth of agricultural land prices increases the attractiveness of agricultural land as a speculative good. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that during the pandemic, the relation of the prices of fertile land to prices of lower quality land decreased. Probably this phenomenon will be an important barrier to the improvement in the area structure of the Polish agriculture.
ABSTRACT
The process of creating a Participatory Guarantee System (SPG) in the state of Alagoas has mobilized a diversity of subjects in the territories, such as family farmers, agrarian reform and land credit settlers, indigenous people, campers and landowners. The effective participation of the members of the participatory system is one of the guiding principles of the SPG, which, due to the current reality of the public health crisis caused by the pandemic (COVID-19), had to be improved through digital technologies. The present study aims to highlight the strategies used to carry out a relevant step in the process of creating the GSP, referring to the choice of the name that will represent the network of farmers and collaborators within the Participatory Conformity Assessment Organization (OPAC) at the national level. national. To face the difficulty of accessing the internet in rural communities, as well as the restricted access to cell phones and computers, three digital tools were used, specific to each stage of the process. The methodology was considered effective and ensured the participatory character of the SPG "baptism" process, which became known as SPG Bem Viver.
ABSTRACT
The novel Corona virus pandemic has been extremely overwhelming at all levels causing massive economic setbacks for many countries including South Africa. The country witnessed an unprecedented scaling-down of its national economic activities, which called for an emergency response from the government. Several Covid-19 relief schemes were instituted by the government to ensure that farms of all sizes would survive. A support fund of R1.2 billion was allocated to the agriculture and food sector through the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD). The fund was primarily meant to assist financially distressed small-scale farmers to ensure continued production and food security for the country. This study collated the conditions for financial Covid-19 stimulus support required from smallholders and analysed several factors that prevented some members of this vulnerable group from benefitting from the relief funds. These factors include complexities associated with satisfactorily categorizing smallholder producers, productivity, marketing and policy challenges, glitches in formalising smallholder producer operations, the farm-business record keeping pitfall, and the exclusion of subsistent producers. The paper suggests some possible corrective measures that could allow for more inclusive support to these categories of farmers;some of which includes a simple but robust financial traceability system for the farmers, and a need to continue to push for the completion of national registration process of smallholder producers.
ABSTRACT
This study aims to describe the role of women landowners, analyze their involvement in land management assistance from the Land Redistribution Program, and their contribution to achieving household welfare during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research method uses a qualitative approach. The research was conducted in Jarangan Village, Pasuruan Regency, East Java Province, Indonesia. Data were collected through structured interviews, in-depth interviews, participatory observation, checklists, and documentation. The technique of determining informants is using snowball sampling and Key Informants are determined by purposive sampling. Data analysis used Harvard Model gender analysis, qualitative analysis of Nvivo 12 QSR software, and contribution analysis. The results of the study show that there are three roles of women's landowner in land redistribution management, namely productive, reproductive, and social. The results of the QSR Nvivo 12 Word Frequency Query, the word 'Pond' is the word with the most frequency that appears, namely 12.50% of all research data sources on the involvement of men farmers in the program. Meanwhile, for women farmers, the word 'Processing' is the word with the highest frequency, which is 3.25%. The men farmer contributed Rp. 34,436,441,/year or 62%. Meanwhile, women farmers contributed to the household economic welfare of Rp. 21,522,775,-/year or 38%. However, women farmers can allocate their time to continue to carry out their reproductive roles in the household.
ABSTRACT
Since the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s, policymaking at a national and continental level has increasingly turned to agricultural commercialisation as the foundation for Africa's long-term nutrition and food security. However, socio-economic inequalities, land tenure and food insecurity, as well as livelihood and income precarities remain widespread challenges. The effects of shocks, such as COVID-19, have overlaid emergent and entrenched patterns of social differentiation that shape access to resources, markets, and other opportunities for those involved in commercial agriculture. This paper considered the impacts of COVID-19 on value chains in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, to ask: (1) What can political settlements analyses tell us about agricultural value chains and responses to COVID-19 in the countries studied? (2) How are structures and power relations throughout the value chains and actors' responses to COVID-19 related to social differentiation in the context of African agriculture?
ABSTRACT
This article presents a compilation of the history of rural development in Colombia, through the economic political complex articulated with reality and its conflicts, which have generated an adverse episode for the competitiveness of the agricultural sector an d in turn an impact on the economic, social and cultural level. Afteraward, analyzing the actors, the complexity of the agricultural sector related to land ownership, analyzing the impact of factors such as biological risks, economic openness and peace agreements as new alternatives to generate competitive, sustainable development for communities, environment and territories. Finally, some alternatives are resolved that can achieve favorable changes in the sector, considering the implementation of the peace accords, the decentralization of the country, the recovery of ancestral knowledge and the strengthening of public institutions through research.
ABSTRACT
This article shows how the agricultural commodity markets and the land market have gained noticeable strength since fall 2020 due to COVID-19. Record government support, historically low interest rates, and surging agricultural exports led to a near-10% hike in farmland values for almost all Midwestern states. The two most recent quarterly surveys on farmland values of agricultural lenders by the Federal Reserve Banks of Kansas City and Chicago are presented in this paper. Moreover, the surging crop and land prices offer optimism to landowners, producers, and agricultural professionals, and once again proves the resiliency of agricultural real estate values. The estimates from an online survey on land value trends and crop prices for corn and soybean in Iowa were provided. Overall, agricultural professionals expect a continuation of the growth spree in farmland values in their local service areas over the next 18 months.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus pandemic has emphasized the strategic importance of the domestic agriculture sector, by disrupting the usual food chains and forcing countries to turn to domestic producers. Croatia has a great potential, but issues such as the size of farms, land ownership and lack of financing opportunities have led to a constant increase in imports of agricultural products and decrease in the percentage of cultivated land. The focus of this paper is on financing opportunities of agriculture companies in Croatia. Companies can benefit from using financial leverage if they have high enough return on assets to be able to borrow funds at interest rates that are lower than return on assets. Successful using of financial leverage will result in increasing return on equity above the level of return on assets. The main objectives of the paper are to investigate: (1) the level of profitability of agriculture companies in Croatia, (2) if companies are successful at using financial leverage, (3) if the size of the company is an important factor when it comes to using financial leverage, (4) if there is a difference between the potential of agriculture companies to use financial leverage when compared to other non-financial sectors. By analyzing the period 2015-2019, research results showed that a certain number of agricultural companies in Croatia is limited from expanding their operations due to low profitability and unfavorable borrowing. A positive aspect is that small agriculture companies are generally not in a disadvantage when compared to medium and large companies. However, a negative aspect is that companies from other non-financial sectors are in a more favorable position due to higher return on assets, making it easier for them to use financial leverage successfully.
ABSTRACT
This paper explores reasons why some commercial producers in South Africa are expecting to quit and sell their farms, and others are not. Of 450 respondents to a voluntary survey, distinctly different groups of producers emerged concerning their longer-term strategic planning and how they experience and absorb current threats and challenges. Unsupervised learning on the dataset is imposed using a cluster analysis to explore the commonalities and the underlying factors why producers would expect to exit or not. Factors that the researchers hypothesised might play a role included a producer's age and financial position, rural safety concerns, labor problems, industry-related problems, and opportunities for off-farm earnings. The factors the potentially exiting producers had in common were financial difficulty, which was uncorrelated to turnover, problems with access to dependable labor, uncertainty regarding land reform policy, and rural safety concerns. Intention to retire also played a role, although to a lesser extent. It is more often a combination of factors, rather than a single factor, that makes a producer more likely to decide to quit and sell in the future. With the exclusion of farm safety concerns and labor problems, the identified factors in this study are in step with those found internationally.
ABSTRACT
With the inclusion of a locally traded soybean oil futures contract, that is dual-listed and cash-settled of the Chicago Board of Trade futures contract, the South African Futures Exchange (SAFEX) aimed to provide local soybean crushing plants, the opportunity for managing their exposure toward the variation in soybean oil prices using effective hedging strategies. Which is only viable assuming adequate liquidity, that is currently lacking in these futures contracts. The soybean oil contract used for hedging local price exposure should also reflect local import parity and/or be correlated to local price movements. Therefore, with most soybean oil usually being imported from Argentina, one would expect SAFEX soybean oil futures contracts to reflect the cost of imported soybean oil from Argentina. Hence, the research study used the Engle-Granger (1987) cointegration approach, alongside a range of diagnostic tests to determine whether SAFEX soybean oil futures contracts, that is dual-listed and cash-settled of CBOT settlement values is a misspecification and whether or not SAFEX soybean oil futures contracts should rather be based on the Argentina free-on-board soybean oil prices which is a much better representation of South Africa's import parity and local industry prices.
ABSTRACT
Agribusiness has never left the scene and, in recent decades, there are no setbacks, it is expanding towards the Cerrado, the Amazon and the Pantanal. Always deforesting and eliminating what prevents and questions its unrestrained growth. After all, for there to be expansion it is necessary to have available territories (often treated as idle, empty) to be appropriated. This was the case in the heyday of the so-called progressive governments, which benefited from the commodity boom and continues today in the midst of a time of economic, political, health and social crisis. However, we live in a particular moment: the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been plaguing the entire globe since the beginning of 2020 and which is used by the Brazilian government to "passar a boiada". Thus, the objective of this article is to point out elements that allow reflection on how the government of Jair Messias Bolsonaro (without a party) in such a short term has strongly impacted the agrarian and environmental issue. This text comprises the presentation of number 58 of Revista NERA, which has ten important contributions on the complexity and multiscale nature of the agrarian question.
ABSTRACT
This article talks about the challenges and importance of regenerative agriculture. The author redefines regenerative agriculture in reference to what the farmers really experience in present days. As with sustainable agriculture, regenerative agriculture must not only meet the needs of people as consumers but also as producers/farmers and members of civil society. Regenerative farms that fail to meet these needs will not be widely adopted by farmers or sustained by the societies in which they function. A sustainable regenerative agriculture must be socially responsible and economically viable as well as ecologically regenerative. In conclusion, the author says that the regenerative potential of communities and societies depends on their willingness and ability to make it economically feasible for farmers to create and sustain negentropic farming systems. People can increase the usefulness of energy and transform solar energy into electricity. People can also increase the efficiency of food processing and distribution. But people cannot transform solar energy into food. People, including farmers,must be willing to confront the inconvenient realities of regenerative agriculture.
ABSTRACT
While vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 were launched worldwide, a drama has been unfolding in the Moroccan countryside. It has been marked, over the last couple of decades, by rapid agrarian transformation, manifestations of which have included expanding irrigation frontiers and the increasing growth of high-value crops. These dynamics rely strongly on female agricultural wageworkers. Although they earn low wages, their income is crucial and is used to care for loved ones by paying for school fees, rent, electricity, and medicines. These workers, therefore, cannot afford to quit their jobs. However, most female wageworkers in Morocco are employed without a contract or social security cover. While working in an informal environment and living already in a precarious situation, little is known about how the pandemic has affected them. In this article, the researchers seek to supply some of this information by drawing on the authors' commitment over almost a decade of covering female wage-workers' experiences in different agricultural regions in Morocco. Additionally, since March 2020, the researchers have conducted 30 phone interviews with female laborers and farmers in the Saiss and in the coastal area of the Gharb and Loukkos. Using the pandemic as a focus, our results illustrate the inherent contradictions upon which Morocco's agricultural boom has been founded. Although many female laborers are de facto heads of household or contribute in fundamental ways to the household income, they continue to be considered as secondary earners or as housewives, leading to low structural wages. Moreover, these women assume the prime responsibility for all domestic tasks, which are not economically recognized or valued. Consequently, they face new challenges in addition to their already precarious situations. Reduced work opportunities and limited state support have led to financial and psychological hardship which jeopardize their own and their family's survival.
ABSTRACT
This discussion paper brings together a series of studies undertaken through the Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM) collaborative research programme flagship project on the governance of natural resources, that focused on the dynamics of pastoral women and land. The studies were undertaken between 2018 and 2021, and focused on Ethiopia, Tanzania and India. It was anticipated that in each country there would be three components to the research: (i) contextual analysis, including a review of policy and legislation;(ii) studies on understanding the land tenure security of pastoralist women and the relationship to local investments in land and resources;and (iii) studies on the impact of development or gender-focused interventions on land tenure security of pastoralist women and their investments in land and resources. Due to limited resources and the large scope of the project together with unanticipated challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the research had to be more 'opportunistic' and 'reactive' and not all questions were addressed to the same degree in all countries.
ABSTRACT
The following article proposes to debate the countryside-city interections correlacting questions related to the begining of Covid-19 dissemination and the food system based on agribusiness against the role and chalenges of land reform, of settlements and agroecology in face of sanitary and socialeconomic crise. Its elaboration came trhough reflections instigated by soliday actions and articulation between peasents and urban workers promoted by social moviments during the pandemy, and field work performed in the doctorship research scope developed in geography post-degree program of Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia da Universidade Estadual Paulista "Julio de Mesquita Filho" - FCT/UNESP, about the experience of commercialization shorts circuit in settlement areas on Sao Paulo state, as a dialog tool and articulation with the urban environment and the accumulation of forces to promote the processes of espacialization and territorialization of popular land reform and agroecology.
ABSTRACT
This book delivers new conceptual and empirical studies surrounding the design and evaluation of land governance, focusing on land management approaches, land policy issues, advances in pro-poor land tenure and land-based gender concerns. It explores alternative approaches for land management and land tenure through international experiences. Themes include Islamic tenure, reverse migration, matriarchy/matrilineal systems, structural inequality, tenure-responsive planning, land-related instabilities and COVID-19, urban-rural land concerns, women's tenure bargaining, tenure-gender nexus concerns in developing and developed countries.