Globalization and the Agrarian Question: Divergent Development of Two Export-Oriented Farming Communities

Abstract

Purpose

This paper compares the agrarian development of two indigenous communities in the highlands of Ecuador who specialize in nontraditional agricultural exports (NTAE). It brings together the peasant theory with literature on the environmental impact of globalization.

Methodology/approach

Through a comparative ethnography, based on six months of participant observation and interviewers, I illustrate the differences in production processes and explain the divergent trajectories of agrarian modernization.

Findings

I found that NTAE impacted the two communities differently: one became more ecologically sustainable and the other became more environmentally exploitative. However, neither case fits squarely within the framework of modern/traditional or peasant/capitalist. Instead of traditional environmentalism and individualistic exploitation, we see the reverse: individualistic environmentalism and traditional exploitation. That is, ecological methods are paired with individualistic competition, and environmental exploitation takes place within a system of communal solidarity.

Practical implications

With buyer-driven organic certification standards, global integration does not always lead to ecological degradation. For quinoa growers, traditional production practices persist not as resistance to global capitalism but as a strategy to access high-value export markets. Broccoli farmers, although exploitative of local natural resources and their own health, do so within communal institutions that buffer against individualistic risk-taking.

Originality/value

This comparative case presents an alternative depiction of modernization as complex and nonlinear.

Citation

Soper, R. (2015), "Globalization and the Agrarian Question: Divergent Development of Two Export-Oriented Farming Communities", States and Citizens: Accommodation, Facilitation and Resistance to Globalization (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 34), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 235-260. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-120420150000034010