Political Ecology of Industrial Crops

Abubakari Ahmed, Alexandros Gasparatos, Abubakari Ahmed, Alexandros Gasparatos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000431209
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book employs a political ecology lens to unravel how industrial crops catalyse ecological, agrarian, socioeconomic, and institutional transformation.

Using the conceptual tools and perspectives of political ecology, namely multi-scalar analysis and attention to marginalisation, social difference, and discourses and narratives, this volume provides a critical and comprehensive assessment of the transformative power of industrial cropping systems. It presents a truly international overview by drawing on a range of case studies from the global South, including soybeans in South America, cashew nuts in Guinea Bissau, cotton in India, maize in China, jatropha in Ghana, sugarcane in Peru and Eswatini, and oil palm in Ghana and Peru. The unique case studies are put into perspective with chapters introducing the key concepts of political ecology and critical dimensions of industrial cropping systems related to large-scale land acquisitions, land grabbing, and marginal land. The individual chapters employ different approaches all rooted in political ecology, thus offering a rich overview of how the field engages with such cropping systems. Overall, this volume contains valuable propositions for improving current policies and practices in industrial crop settings in both developed and developing countries.

Through its comprehensive and interdisciplinary outlook, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of political ecology, agrarian studies, development studies, and ecological economics.

Part I

Introductory

1Industrial crops as agents of transformation

Justifying a political ecology lens

Abubakari Ahmed, Marcin Pawel Jarzebski and Alexandros Gasparatos

Industrial crops: Definition, uses, and modes of production

Industrial crops are crops whose products have important non-food uses such as fibre, bioenergy, and biomaterials (Singh, 2010) (Table 1.1). Some industrial crops such as cotton, tobacco, or jatropha have products with strictly non-food uses, as they cannot be used for direct food consumption or as an input to the food industry. Other industrial crops such as oil palm, sugarcane, and soybean have both products with non-food uses and products that are integral components of the food industry, without being staple food crops (Singh, 2010) (Table 1.1). Finally, a few staple food crops such as maize, wheat, and potatoes have products with important industrial uses (Table 1.1) (Chapter 10).

Some industrial crops are practically mono-functional, as their products are used solely or overwhelmingly for a single end-use such as fibre (e.g. cotton), recreation (e.g. tobacco), energy (e.g. jatropha), or biomaterials (e.g. rubber). Other industrial crops, such as sugarcane, are multi-functional, as their products have multiple uses in the food (i.e. sugar), energy (i.e. ethanol, electricity), and chemical (i.e. bioplastics) industries (Singh, 2010).

In this respect, industrial crops are defined by their functionality and end use (Table 1.1) rather than the mode of their production. In fact, as discussed below, industrial crops are produced in very diverse systems across the world ranging from large-scale intensified plantations to extensive smallholder farms (Singh, 2010).

For this edited volume, we adopt a rather broad definition of industrial crops that encompasses crops whose products have clear industrial uses such as bioenergy and biomaterials and non-food crops whose products are important inputs in the food industry (e.g. cocoa, coffee). It is worth noting that some crops can be considered as industrial in some geographical contexts, and non-industrial in others. For example, maize is clearly an industrial crop in the US, as it is a major feedstock for bioenergy and biomaterials. However, in other geographical contexts, maize has a few industrial uses (e.g. China) (Chapter 10) or practically no such uses (e.g. in sub-Sahara Africa) (Jarzebski et al., 2020).

Table 1.1 Major industrial crops, uses, and production patterns in 2019

Crop	Uses					Production (Mt)	Main producing countries
	Food industry	Bioenergy	Fibre	Biomaterial/biochemicals	Recreation
Cashew nuts	✓					4	Ivory Coast, India, Burundi, Vietnam, Philippines
Cocoa	✓					5.6	Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Ecuador
Coffee	✓					10	Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, Ethiopia
Cotton		✓	✓			82.6	China, India, USA, Brazil, Pakistan
Jatropha		✓				NA	China, Indonesia, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique
Jute			✓	✓		3.4	India, Bangladesh, China, Uzbekistan, Nepal
Linseed	✓		✓			3.1	Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, China, USA
Maize	✓	✓		✓		1148.5	USA, China, Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine
Miscanthus		✓		✓		NA	USA
Mustard seed	✓	✓				0.7	Nepal, Russia, Canada, Myanmar, Ukraine
Oil palm	✓	✓				410.7	Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Nigeria, Colombia
Potatoes	✓	✓		✓		370.4	China, India, Russia, Ukraine, USA
Rapeseed	✓	✓		✓		70.5	Canada, China, India, France, Ukraine
Rubber				✓		14.6	Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, China
Sisal			✓	✓		0.2	Brazil, Tanzania, Kenya, Madagascar, Haiti
Soybean	✓	✓				333.7	Brazil, USA, Argentina, China, India
Sugar beet	✓	✓				278.5	Russia, France, Germany, USA, Turkey
Sugarcane	✓	✓		✓		1949.3	Brazil, India, Thailand, China, Pakistan
Sunflower seed	✓	✓				56.1	Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, Romania, China
Switchgrass		✓		✓		NA	USA
Tea	✓					6.5	China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Vietnam
Tobacco		✓			✓	6.7	China, India Brazil, Zimbabwe, USA
Wheat	✓	✓				765.8	China, India, Russia, USA, France
Note: There are no reliable global statistics about the production and major producing countries for jatropha, miscanthus, and switchgrass. The major producing countries for these three crops were identified through a literature review.
Source: (FAOSTAT, 2021).

There is a large variability in industrial crop production systems depending on the crop, intended market, production location, and various other contextual environmental, socioeconomic, and institutional factors (Figure 1.1). Mindful of the large diversity of industrial crop systems globally, the most common production modes include: (a) large-scale systems (e.g. plantations); (b) smallholder-based schemes; and (c) hybrid systems (Figure 1.2). Such systems are integrated in very diverse landscapes containing different configurations of agricultural land and natural vegetation (Gasparatos et al., 2018).

Figure 1.1Main modes of industrial crop production.

Adapted from (Gasparatos et al., 2015).

Figure 1.2Direct land use change from the main modes of industrial crop production.

Adapted from (Gasparatos et al., 2018)

Large-scale production systems can be sub-divided into large-scale farming and plantation farming depending on ownership and labour practices (Gibbon, 2011). A common characteristic of all these systems is their much larger size compared to family farms (see below), which can extend from a few tens of hectares to several thousands of hectares depending on the crop and the region (Saravia Matus et al., 2013; Smalley, 2013) (Chapter 3). Thus, large-scale production systems tend to convert rather extensive areas, adopt monocultural practices, entail land consolidation processes, and rely on hired labour (Gibbon, 2011; Smalley, 2013). The owners and investors of large-scale production systems are equally diverse, usually including national or multi-national private companies, state agencies, parastatal bodies, or joint partnerships (Chapters 3, 5, 8, 9, and 11).

Smallholder-based production is mainly undertaken at the level of individual family farms and can take many forms depending on, among others, land allocation, land consolidation, agricultural practices, and integration in industrial crop value chains (Jelsma et al., 2017; Jezeer et al., 2018; Kuivanen et al., 2016; von Maltitz et al., 2019). For example, some smallholders tend to allocate part of their land for industrial crop production, setting aside the remainder for food crop production, while others specialise entirely in industrial crop production, essentially converting all their land into small industrial crop plantations. Some crops such as sugarcane or oil palm require the almost-complete farm conversion, especially if produced under irrigated conditions or outgrower arrangements (von Maltitz et al., 2019; Jelsma et al., 2017). In terms of market integration, industrial crop smallholders can enter in dedicated contractual arrangements with plantations (i.e. sell all their output) receiving in return agricultural inputs and extension services (e.g. outgrower schemes), while others can remain independent selling to different buyers depending on market signals (Ahmed et al., 2019c; von Maltitz et al., 2019) (Chapters 8 and 11).

Hybrid production systems combine large-scale production areas (e.g. core plantations) and smallholder-based schemes (Brüntrup et al., 2018) (Chapter 8). As mentioned above, these smallholders can be contractually linked to single buyers through outgrower schemes, or sell to multiple buyers depending on market signals. Hybrid systems are more common for crops such as sugarcane and oil palm that are perishable and whose production benefits from achieving economies of scale (Ahmed et al., 2019c; von Maltitz et al., 2019) (Chapters 8 and 11).

History and drivers of industrial crop production

In many parts of the world, industrial crop production has traditionally been a major agricultural activity with a long legacy. For example, industrial crops such as cotton, flax, and sugarcane have had multiple centres of domestication across the globe, with their production spanning many thousands of years. Other industrial crops such as coc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of figures
• List of tables
• About the authors
• Part I Introductory
• Part II Ecological transformation
• Part III Agrarian transformation
• Part IV Socioeconomic and institutional transformation
• Part V Synthesis
• Index