Internationale Betrekkingen/Internationale Organisatie
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Creating a Fertile Soil for Social Change?
Organic Agriculture and Peasant Autonomy in Uganda
I
Index
Masterthesis ... 1
Internationale Betrekkingen/Internationale Organisatie ... 1
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen ... 1
Index ... I List of Abbreviations ... II List of Tables and Figures ... II Introduction ... 1
Overview ... 1
Motivation ... 2
Chapter division ... 4
Methodology ... 6
Chapter 1: Can Organic Agriculture Save Peasant Autonomy? ... 8
1.1 Defining Peasantry and their Autonomy ... 8
1.2 Redefining Peasantry and their Autonomy ... 10
1.3 Peasant Autonomy and the Post-war International Food Order ... 12
1.4 Peasant Autonomy and the Corporate Food Regime ... 13
1.5 Organic Agriculture as a Vehicle for Alternative Development. ... 18
Chapter 2: Peasant Autonomy in Uganda: an Historical Overview ... 22
2.1 1894-1945: Peasant-State Relations the Colonial Uganda Protectorate ... 22
2.2 1945-1980 Uganda In, Then Out, of the Post-war International Food Order ... 24
2.3 1981-now: Re-building the State in the Light of the Corporate Food Regime ... 26
Chapter 3: Peasant Autonomy and the Organic System in Uganda ... 30
3.1 The Impact of Certified Organic Agriculture on Peasant Autonomy in Uganda ... 30
3.1.1 Cotton: Leaving Peasants Hanging by a Thread ... 32
3.1.2 Coffee: a Black and Bitter Future? ... 34
3.1.3 Sesame: Another Dead-end Street? ... 35
3.1.4 Fruit: a Fresh Impulse? ... 37
3.1.5 Vanilla: Sky-high Profits with Low Inputs? ... 39
3.2 Non-certified Organic Agriculture Outside Contract Farming ... 41
Chapter 4: The Dissemination of Organic Knowledge in Uganda ... 43
4.1 Methodology ... 44
4.2 Knowledge Dissemination Through Internal Control Systems ... 47
4.3 Knowledge Dissemination Through Community-based Learning Programmes ... 50
4.4 Knowledge Dissemination Through Farmer Field Schools ... 53
Conclusion ... 58
References ... 61
II
List of Abbreviations
A2N Africa 2000 Network
BINGO A business and industry-oriented NGO CDO Cotton Development Organisation
EPOPA Export Promotion of Organic Products from Africa ESAF Enhancing Structural Adjustment Facility programme FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations FFS Farmer Field School
GATT General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs ICS Internal Control System
IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development IFOAM International Federation of Organic Movements IMF International Monetary Fund
IPM Integrated Pest Management
IPPM Integrated Production and Pest Management NAADS The National Agricultural Advisory Services NGOs Non-governmental organisations
NRA/NRM National Resistance Army / National Resistance Movement
PEEST Poverty Eradication through Environmentally Sustainable Technologies PEAP Poverty Eradication Action Plan of the Ugandan Government
PMA Plan for Modernization of Agriculture of the Ugandan Government SAP Structural Adjustment Programme by the World Bank
UNDP United Nations Development Programme VEW Village extension worker
List of Tables and Figures
Table 3.1 Organic Exports for Uganda in 2006, Listed by Export Volume...28 Figure 4.1. Capabilities Matrix for the Generation of Knowledge by Peasants...43 Figure 4.2. Capabilities Matrix for the Generation of Knowledge by Peasants in the Case
1
Introduction
Overview
This thesis analyses the role of organic agriculture in the struggle for peasant autonomy. It does so by looking at the development of the organic agriculture sector in Uganda, beginning in the mid-1990s, when organic agriculture in East Africa experienced its first growth (Walaga 2005). The main research question in this thesis is as follows: To what extent has the adoption of organic agriculture since the mid-1990s by Ugandan peasants contributed to their autonomy?
2 inputs, which also make the peasants dependent on these firms on the input side of production. Organic agriculture that is not primarily directed to export can be beneficial for peasant autonomy by increasing their capabilities and providing higher food yields, but here too peasants can become dependent on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and have problems selling their excess produce on the markets as the local market is no priority of the Ugandan agricultural policies.
The analysis of the knowledge dissemination in the organic sector shows that of the three most common methods of organic knowledge dissemination, only one can be said to be stimulating autonomy of the peasants. Community-based learning programmes designed by NGOs allow the peasants to adopt organic techniques that are suitable to their environment and gives them the confidence that they are agents of their own development. In the other two methods of knowledge dissemination, this is not the case. The teaching of agricultural knowledge by export companies is cut to a minimum once it does not become cost-effective for the companies involved and the Farmer Field Schools operated by the FAO are designed around corporate inputs such as high-yielding seed varieties.
The conclusion is that organic agriculture in itself does have qualities that are beneficial for peasant autonomy, but two factors counteract this effect in Uganda: the peasants practicing organic agriculture sector are largely dependent on agribusiness for inputs and income generation and the market access for organic farmers is compromised by the monopolistic current neo-liberal government policies that aim at expanding the export sector rather than stimulating the internal market.
Motivation
3 fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides are only used in modern agricultural systems, traditional systems are often called “organic by default” (Hillocks 2002, 19; van Elzakker and Leijdens 2010; Kidd 2004, 138). However, traditional practices that are called “organic by default” differ from organic agriculture in two important ways. Firstly, adopting organic agriculture is a conscious decision to systematically improve yields and soil nutrition, for farmers using traditional “organic by default” agriculture it is often a lack of access to modern means. Not only the entry point of organic and traditional agriculture is different. The result of adopting organic agriculture and agriculture that is “organic by default” is far from the same either. The number of organic techniques used by organic farmers is much greater than traditional farmers use. Organic agriculture produces higher yields as well (Aigelsperger, Njuki and Hauser 2007).
The organic food and farming movement has always manifested itself as a cultural movement. That is to say: the goal of the organic movement has not been to directly oppose government policy and actively lobby to abolish or establish laws. Rather, the goal has been to change how society views nature and agriculture and to try to promote more sustainable perceptions (Reed 2010, 3). However, since the 1990s, organic agriculture has found its place in the discourse of another, more socially engaged, movement: the movement for food sovereignty (Perfecto, Vandermeer and Wright 2009, 129). The food sovereignty movement tries to put a spin on the old term food security (the human right to have access to food), as this term has been proven to fall short of its goal due to the way the global food system has evolved (McMichael 2004, 171). Food sovereignty adds to the current definition of food security the rights of food producers to establish their own terms regarding production and the right not have their means and goals dictated by global policies (Perfecto, Vandermeer and Wright 2009, 9). The final goal of food sovereignty is to change the global food system in such a way that the basic dignity of all humanity is restored (Schanbacher 2010, x).
4 Agriculture Programme of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (FAO 2011).
A second motivation for writing this thesis is the diversification of organic production in recent years. Production is slowly spreading from developed countries to countries in the global South. Although still just exceeding 5% of the total volume of trade in organic produce, by 2004, the export of organic products from the South to the North totalled more than US $500 million (Goldberg 2008, 275).
To assess the social dimension of organic agriculture and the impact of organic agriculture in developing countries, this thesis will focus on the organic agriculture sector in Uganda. Uganda is an interesting case study, as it has the most developed certified organic sector in Africa. Approximately 122.000 hectares of farmland is devoted to certified organic produce, making it the only African country to have its acreage of certified organic produce to exceed 1% of the total of arable land (IFOAM 2006, 27–35). What makes it even more interesting is that industrialised farms are not a big factor in Uganda. Most agriculture still takes place on traditional smallholder farms by peasants who still rely on traditional practices that are “organic by default”. As the adoption of organic agriculture is a direct transition from traditional practices, the effects of the arrival of organic agriculture on rural communities are directly visible. By choosing this case study, this thesis can also have a role in the ongoing debate over the future of farming in Africa (Collier 2010 217). Does the future of African farming lie in subsistence farming, small-scale commercial farming or large-scale industrial farming?
Chapter Division
5 Secondly, the creation of agricultural knowledge owned by the peasants themselves reduces the dependency on the market for expensive technological inputs needed for production. Before analysing what the effects of organic agriculture are on peasant autonomy in Uganda, it is necessary to explain how peasant autonomy in Uganda has developed and what the current position of peasants in the Ugandan society is. This is addressed in the second chapter where the main question is: To what extent has the autonomy of peasants in Uganda evolved in accordance with the theory of the global food regime? I will argue that, throughout history, Ugandan peasant have been in control over their means of production and relatively autonomous. Uganda did not fully integrate in the global food regime until 1986, when the Museveni regime came to power. The restructuring of the state in accordance with the Structural Adjustment Programmes opened up Ugandan agriculture to corporate market pressures.
In chapter three I will look deeper into the relationship between the expanding Ugandan organic agriculture sector and peasant autonomy. The main question will be: To what extent has the adoption of organic agriculture shifted the production patterns that were already in place due to the global food regime and to what extent does this affect peasant autonomy? I will argue that organic production increases peasant autonomy by allowing simultaneous growing of premium cash crops for the international market and staple foods for the self-subsistence. However, the organic markets are controlled by a few corporations that have the power control prices, production standards and production patterns.
6 Methodology
In order to study the relation between peasant autonomy, the global food regime and organic agriculture, this thesis will examine the specific case of organic farming in Uganda. Looking for evidence of global phenomena by researching a local case is not as contradictory as it might seem. Philip McMichael has dubbed this method incorporating comparison in his 1990 article with the same name. McMichael put this method forward as an alternative to both the comparative-analytic method favoured by modernist theory and the encompassing comparison used by Marxist world-system theory scholars (McMichael 1990).
McMichael notes that the modernist comparative-analytic method has a tendency to compare units that are nominally the same, specifically nation-states. To define all societies of people as nation-states requires the abstraction of variables, such as historical and cultural development, as unique for each nation-state unit, which leads in turn to negligence of the trans-boundary nature of these developments (Ibid., 390). In the world-system theory framework, the focus on nation-states is abolished in favour of the view that arrangements of capital and labour relations in the world (the world economy) are taken as the most important units of analysis. Although McMichael favours the general outlook of world-system theory over modernist theory, he is no less critical of the method of encompassing comparison used by proponents of the world-system theory such as Wallerstein and the historical sociologist Tilly. By stating that all events are mere local expressions of an all-encompassing world-system, world-system theory scholars rule out the uniqueness of certain cases as rigorously as modernist neglect the international dimension. By presuming that the world economy is the dominant force of social relations and then looking for clues of this force in local cases, world-system theory scholars fit history in their social theory, rather than sociologically analysing history (McMichael 1990, 391). McMichael’s concern about this tendency is shared by Quadagno and Knapp in their analysis of the debate on the methodology of historical sociology. They conclude that descriptive accuracy should be preferred to analytic power, especially when increased analytic power threatens to distort evidence (Quadagno and Knapp 1992, 505).
7 moment (McMichael 1990, 393). Both forms of incorporating comparison try to construct the history of a social phenomenon by analysing its different parts. Note how this is different from the method of encompassing comparison where the whole is analysed to given meaning to its parts (Ibid., 386).
8
Chapter 1: Can Organic Agriculture Save Peasant Autonomy?
Introduction
In this first chapter I will present the theoretical framework that forms the structural backbone of the thesis. The main question in this chapter is: To what extent does the adoption of organic agriculture address the loss of autonomy that the peasants have experienced since the rise of the global food regime?
The chapter will start with a definition of the peasantry and peasant economy. This is followed by an historical overview of the way peasant economy and peasant autonomy has been analysed in scientific literature. I draw upon the work of Archetti, Fossum and Reinton (1970), and argue that peasant autonomy is defined by three dimensions: control over their means of production, such as land, water and tools, access to the market and control over plot management. In the second part, more attention is given to how peasant autonomy has evolved over the past 50 years. I will argue that the main threat to peasant autonomy in the current global food regime is the growing dependency of peasants on agribusiness corporations for both their inputs and their output. After establishing this dependency on agribusinesses as the major threat to peasant autonomy in the current food regime, I will argue that adopting organic agriculture can reduce this dependency in several ways. Organic agriculture has the potential to increase household food security through higher yields and the need for intercropping cash crops with food crops. It could also reduce dependency on agribusiness companies by increasing farmer knowledge and the role of the farmer in the production process.
1.1 Defining Peasantry and their Autonomy
9 primarily involved in agriculture and primarily oriented towards self-subsistence – primarily, not exclusively. Wolf was even more explicit in his 1960 work Peasants when he stated that peasant communities have always been connected to larger economic systems (Wolf 1966). Saul and Woods, in an article on the peasantry in Africa, are even more explicit and state that peasants by definition “are involved, through rights and obligations, in a wider economic system which includes the participation of non-peasants (Saul and Woods 1987). These rights and obligations cannot always count on the consent of the peasants themselves. Teodor Shanin (1987, 3) stresses that peasants need to sell their excess produce to buy commodity services that they cannot produce themselves and for the fulfilment of obligations to holders of political and economic power. Shanin argues that the peasant lives in an ‘underdog’ position towards the holders of power and calls this domination by outsiders a defining characteristic, or facet, of the peasantry.
Wolf (1966, 49-59) distinguishes four forms of outside power, or domains, that have attempted throughout history to have ultimate ownership or control over the use of the land that is worked by the peasants. The fist form of domain, according to Wolf, is the patrimonial domain, where the surpluses are taken by a lord who has inherited this right through kinship. Very similar is the second form, the prebendal domain, where it is not a hereditary lord claiming entitlement to the surpluses, but a person, or a group of persons who have been granted a certain position, like medieval clergymen or governors. The third form is the mercantile domain, where the land has been commodified and rented out to peasants in turn for a yearly sum of money. The last from according to Wolf is the administrative domain. The administrative domain has its roots in the prebendal domain, as power is in the hands of individuals that are appointed, in this case by the state. The administrative domain goes further than the previous three, in as much that the state and its representatives strip the peasants of most of their choices in the production process.
10 Via Campesina (2003), who state that their philosophy of food sovereignty includes the access of peasants and landless people to land, water, seeds, and credit; all basic inputs for production.
The second dimension of peasant autonomy, according to Archetti, Fossum and Reinton, is the extent to which the peasant has access to the market. Bebbington (1999, 2037) also argues that markets are vital for peasant populations as they enable them to sell excess production and acquire assets that they otherwise lack the access to. Bebbington also notes that peasants generally need an intermediating agent to get access to the market. When these intermediating actors, or middlemen, wield economic or political power over the peasants, they will take a larger part of the excess produce as transaction costs, taxes or, in severe cases even deprive the peasant from all their excess produce through violent pressures (Archetti, Fossum and Reinton 1970). The less powerful the position of the middlemen in the process is, the more autonomous is the peasant population in marketing the excess produce.
Lastly, the third dimension that Archetti, Fossum and Reinton stress is the degree of management the peasant has over his plot, by which they mean the question “to which extent the peasant can distribute his own resources by selecting his kind of crop [...] and the relation between subsistence and cash crop.” This aspect of peasant autonomy also resonates in the principles of the current peasant movements, arguing for the rights of rural communities to decide what and how to produce (Perfecto, Vandermeer and Wright 2009, 9).
1.2 Redefining Peasantry and their Autonomy
When Archetti, Fossum and Reinton set out their theoretical framework in 1970, the question of peasant autonomy had almost exclusively been framed in the tenant-landlord relationship. This has not only been the case within analyses of the patrimonial and prebendal domains, but it is also seen in analyses of the mercantile domain. Lenin, for example, also argued that the peasant-landlord remained the main dichotomy, even with the arrival of capital in the rural areas. Lenin argued that the rise of the capitalist mode of production in agriculture only further secured the dependency of the peasants on their landlord (Lenin 2004|1899).
11 been true, but Archetti, Fossum and Reinton failed to see the rise of a new type of outside agent that has the ability to wield power over the peasants: agribusiness. Agribusiness corporations have become such a force in rural areas over the past half century that Kearney (1996) suggests that a fifth domain should be added to the analysis of Wolf: the domain of agro-industrialisation. Just like the administrative domain evolved from the prebendal domain, agro-industrialisation has its roots in the mercantile domain. To understand the new forces peasants are exposed to, it is necessary to better understand the developments within the mercantile domain.
When describing the four domains, Wolf (1966, 48) already argued that in the mercantile domain the clash between the capitalist economy and the peasant economy had led to the commodification of the two main inputs for peasants: land and labour. The process of land commodification started during the enclosure movement of 16th-century England. Peasants lost access to common land that had been previously free to use, but were now turned into private property. As a result, the peasants had to compete with each other to become tenants on the land, which were owned by private landlords. The landlords, whose income depended heavily on the production on their lands, started to lend out land, not on custom leases based on tradition, but economic leases based on maximum profitability, preferring tenants who achieved high productivity (Wood 2010, 52-54).
When land becomes a commodity for which one needs to pay rent, peasants have to sell enough of their excess produce to secure the future of their most precious input, the land. Where peasants first had full freedom over all of their earnings, it is now necessary to reinvest a sum of the earnings directly to secure land rights for the upcoming year. Putting a price on inputs like land thus directly affects the balance between the amount of earnings spent on subsistence and savings. Ellen Wood (2010) adds that, in a closed peasant household, the return for the labour put in is the satisfaction of their own needs, which is a stable given. When selling production on the market to obtain cash, peasants lose control over the price they are going to receive for their work, as market demand is a lot more volatile than the household demand. Peasant production is moving away from the demand-driven peasant economy and has to keep in line with the capitalist approach to keep costs as low as possible to secure the highest margin possible. Ellis (1992, 4) argues that the inability to control prices causes peasants to be vulnerable to market pressures, even though they are not fully integrated in the world market.
12 the likes of Lenin and Kautsky at the end of the nineteenth century (Kay en Akram-Lodhi 2010). The advance of non-rurally produced manufactures meant that yet another part of the inputs needed for peasant production was outside peasant control and more of the earnings needed to be paid upfront to cover the next harvesting season. The next part of the chapter will show how the rise of the agro-industrial domain over the past half century has caused peasants to lose even more control over their inputs and how the rise of agribusiness also started to compromise the other dimensions of peasant autonomy.
1.3 Peasant Autonomy and the Post-war International Food Order
13 on specialisation in one or two crops. The second pillar was protection for the US farmers from foreign competition by the new trade rules laid down in the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) (McMichael 2004, 54). This policy resulted in overproduction in the USA and enabled the US food industry and US Aid programmes to deliver staple foods such as wheat and maize at a much lower price to urban areas in developing countries than the local peasant farmers in those developing countries themselves ever could.
This dumping of cheap staple grains, mostly wheat, led to traditional food and farming in industrialising countries being replaced by cheaper imports, sometimes even leading to changed diets to incorporate wheat-based products (Ibid, xx). The low prices of wheat helped the developing countries to support their rapid industrialisation by keeping their labour costs down in two ways. Firstly, by keeping the prices of living low the the demand for higher wages was reduced. Secondly, the peasants in the developing countries were outcompeted and lost their main income, leaving them with no other option than moving to the city in the hope to find a new job there. This influx of low-skilled workers to the city also kept labour prices low (McMichael and Kim 1994, 32).
The set of global food policies that enabled this dumping of staple foods has been dubbed the wheat complex. The wheat complex, combined with food aid programmes, has been the major source of food import dependency in the Third World since the 1980s (Friedmann 1990). The wheat complex has also led to several other consequences for the peasant populations in those countries The rural-urban migration in the countries of the South was often strengthened by local phenomena such as declining per capita production of staple foods, increasing levels of child malnutrition, rising rural unemployment and landlessness, degradation of the environment and agricultural grounds and lower levels of investment (Myhre 1994). As local peasants were outcompeted by the imported wheat it became economically unviable to produce the local staple crops. This evolution left the peasants with fewer options what to grow on their land, also diminishing peasant autonomy.
1.4 Peasant Autonomy and the Corporate Food Regime
14 also rose due to the 1973 oil crisis that led to spikes in the price of artificial fertiliser (Friedmann 1993, 44-59). The high prices allowed some developing countries to step into the agricultural market as producers, becoming the so-called New Agricultural Countries. These countries pursued mercantilist policies and were helped by the green revolution. (Friedmann 1982).
The green revolution is the name given to the spread of specially bred, hybrid seed varieties of regular crops (mostly wheat and rice) that will produce high yields per square meter when exposed to large amounts of (chemical) fertiliser. The high-yielding crops had been specifically selected to be resistant to the high levels of fertiliser, but the environment in which they were being harvested could not cope with all the fertiliser, which is toxic in large quantities. Therefore, large amounts of water were needed to run off the excess fertiliser, resulting in the need of large irrigated fields. These moist irrigated fields, in turn, are the ideal breeding ground of many pests and plant diseases, which needed to be exterminated by applying large amounts of (chemical) pesticides and herbicides. Implementing the green revolution required the adoption of the complete package of high-yielding seeds, chemical fertilisers, irrigation and chemical pesticides and herbicides (Perfecto, Vandermeer and Wright 2009, 129).
The green revolution created new markets for producers of biochemical products such as fertilisers, pesticides and seeds for high-yielding crops. The bundling of inputs by the big transnational companies necessarily reduces the freedom of peasants to control their own means of production. As pointed out by Byé and Fonte, once the decision is made to harvest a crop, a new package of fertilisers, herbicides and seeds is needed. As changing to another crop or seed variety will mean changing this entire package, the threshold to change becomes a lot higher (Ibid., 252) This problem of irreversibility and inertia when adopting new technologies undermines peasant autonomy to control their means of production. The last comments assume that the peasants in question have the means to acquire these agro-chemical inputs. This is often not the case, with only the rich farmers or corporations being able to buy these inputs, leading to increased income disparity (Dhanagare 1987).
15 Increasing agricultural yields was therefore already identified by the Truman legislation as one of the four points to battle communism. The required (green revolution) technologies to achieve these high-yields were distributed through charities like the Rockefeller Foundation or USAID (Reed 2010, 62).
Pascal Byé and Maria Fonte have shown how these advances in chemical and bio-technology have re-shaped the paradigm of agro-food production. The first herbicides were produced to facilitate forms of mechanical tilling. The chemical formulas of the herbicides, however, have become more valuable than the mechanical aspects of farming and are now the focus point of the new technical paradigm (Byé and Fonte 1994, 252). In the words of Buttel (1990, 167), the advance of biotechnology has altered the structure through which resource priorities are determined. The best known example might be the introduction by agribusiness company Monsanto of a new seed variety genetically modified to be resistant to large amounts of glyphosate, the main active ingredient of Monsanto’s own herbicide Roundup (Vara 2004). Agri-businesses offering such coherent packages have the opportunity to gain the edge over competitors (Byé and Fonte 1994, 253). Where the green revolution was primarily driven by the ambitions of the states, this revolution, the gene revolution, has been driven by corporate interest to expand the packages offered to farmers (Davies 2003).
16 new export policies favouring cash crops for export instead of staple crops that could feed the local population, taking this choice away from the peasants.
As the Cold War tensions relaxed and the Soviet Union eventually dissolved, the agribusiness corporations took over from the states as the dominant force in regulating the global supply chains of food, trying to organise a stable pattern of production and consumption by influencing policy decisions in food-producing countries (Friedmann 1993, 52). These include agricultural policies endorsing export (McMichael 2008, 209). These policies have a deep impact on peasant autonomy. As pointed out in the analysis on the SAPs, peasant autonomy on the output side of production is restricted when incentives are given to produce cash crops. A specifically powerful tool that agribusiness companies use, is contract farming. Agribusinesses offer a contract to small farmers in which the corporations will promise to provide inputs and/or credits, while the farmer promises to produce according to the standards expected by the company. If the final produce fulfils the expectancies of the corporation, it will buy the produce from the farmers. The price can be pre-mediated or dependent on the quality. Little and Watts (2004, 9) define contract farming as “forms of vertical coordination between growers and buyers-processors that directly shape production decisions through contractually specifying market obligations[...], [the agribusiness] provides specific inputs, and exercise some control at the point of production […]”.
17 corporations when negotiating the contracts, even when they work cooperatively (Rich 2010, 122; Havnevik et al. 2007).
In short, the rise of a global food system after the Second World War has affected peasant autonomy by undermining all three dimensions as set out by Archetti, Fossum and Reinton. The ownership of production inputs changed dramatically. Through the competition that came from the artificially cheap foodstuffs exported by the United States and Europe, peasants were driven into poverty. Some quit and moved to the cities, the richer farmers tried to face the competition by adopting similar technologies such as machinery and, later, agro-chemicals. So, the richer peasant population had to acquire more inputs from outside the farm and the poor were outcompeted by the cheap imports. The rise of the agro-industrial domain did not only increase the importance between off-farm inputs, but also had a profound impact on what they produced. The SAPs put pressure on the governments to adopt policies that were directed on increasing national exports. Increased corporate power has led to the implementation of policies that prefer the growing of cash crops over staple foods for local subsistence. Lastly, contract farming agreements have expanded rapidly under the new corporate food regime, seriously curtailing peasant management over their plot, their inputs and their free access to the market. This has lead to dependency on the agribusinesses and restricted the freedom of peasants to decide what crops to produce.
18 appear to prefer to live a life stuck in a state semi-proletarianization rather than stick to the traditional peasant way of life.
1.5 Organic Agriculture as a Vehicle for Alternative Development.
As shown in the paragraph above, the restructuring of the global food system has struck a blow to peasant autonomy. To what extent does the adoption of organic agriculture address this reduction in peasant autonomy? As has been shown in the introduction, the nature of organic agriculture has always been defined by technical aspects, most prominently the rejection of chemical fertilisers and chemical-based pest and weed control. How can organic agriculture, if it is merely defined by technical indicators, be a force to create more autonomy for the peasant population? The last part of this chapter will show how organic agriculture differs from conventional agriculture and how adoption of organic agriculture influences the three dimensions of peasant autonomy.
When looking at the effect of organic agriculture on the first dimension of peasant autonomy, the control over farm inputs, the answer is straightforward. By rejecting the use of the agro-chemicals, the organic movement rejects part of the agribusiness complex itself. The objection to a certain technology is in itself not a social objection per se, but if it is repeated over time it might become a base for resistance (Rouse 1994, 113). So, reverting to traditional techniques because one cannot afford the chemicals is different from consciously adopting an approach that excludes chemicals. As organic agriculture provides an alternative to chemical inputs, its deployment can be seen as a statement to reject the system behind the chemical inputs. Organic agriculture is this sense can be seen to address the cultural dimension of peasant autonomy, as it symbolises the rejection of corporate farming. It is no coincidence that during the protests against the WTO in Seattle in 1999, the protesters were given free organic apples as a symbol of hope (Edelman 2009).
19 developed countries (Hillocks 2002, 19; Raynolds 2000, 302). Due to the high costs and the investments involved in adopting organic agriculture, the only viable way for peasants is to sell their produce on the organic markets in the developed world is to participate in a contract farming agreement with an export company. These export companies can either be local branches of multinational agribusiness enterprises trading in commodities or small traders that are directly linked to global retail companies that stock the supermarkets of the North. This is specifically true for Sub-Saharan Africa (Bolwig, Gibbon and Jones 2009). As I pointed out earlier in this chapter, contract farming is one of the aspects of the modern food systems that most compromises peasant autonomy in the South.
The third dimension of peasant autonomy is the extent to which peasants can exercise control over what they produce. This dimension is of course also inhibited by the trend towards contract farming agreements within the organic sector. However, it seems that organic agriculture, even when conditioned by contract farming agreements, can increase the control peasants have over their own plot. In conventional agriculture, the fertility of the soil is managed by artificial inputs. In organic agriculture soil fertility is managed not just by replacing chemical fertilisers with animal manure, but also through a set of other systems, such as crop rotation and intercropping. The need to rotate crops or plant more crops together gives farmers a bigger freedom to decide the output between foods and cash crops. Shreck, Getz and Feenstra (2006, 443) analysed the organic sector in California and showed that almost three-quarters of the farmers produce 10 or more different crops. 30% of the farmers sold only produced one cash crop for sale on the market, while using the rest primarily for their own consumption. Raynolds (2000, 302) argues however that, while theoretically sound, there is not yet a global set of conclusive evidence to support the assumption that crop rotation and intercropping indeed make a difference to improve self-sufficiency.
20 process and over their own production. This is the case, because organic agriculture is based on knowledge that the farmer can obtain and reproduce instead of having to rely on knowledge that is protected intellectual property of outside agents and only comes on the farm in the form of a finished product, such as chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Padel (2001) makes use of E.M. Rogers’ definition of knowledge and concludes that organic agriculture is more reliant on software (skills and practices) than hardware (off-farm inputs), leading to more freedom for the farmer. Schanbacher (2010, 103-113) directly links the increasing knowledge of the farmer as a base for human development in rural areas, by making use of the capabilities approach as put forward by Sen (1989) and Nussbaum (1999), A larger role of the peasant in the food system will leave him with more options and a greater capability to develop his life in the direction he desires and thus gaining more autonomy. In the fourth chapter of this thesis I will examine whether the adoption of organic agriculture in Uganda has enabled the peasants to build up their own body of knowledge which allows them to act more autonomously.
Conclusion
Over the past fifty years, however, the global food system has undergone such a change, that peasant autonomy should not only be defined vis-à-vis a landlord, but also in relation to another new actor, the agribusiness firm. An analysis of the developments in the global food system in the last fifty years shows that the advent of global agribusiness has compromised peasant autonomy on all three important dimensions: control over the inputs they need for production; market access for selling their excess produce; and control over plot management. Peasants practising organic agriculture remain dependent on agribusiness corporations for market access. However, organic agriculture does provide some advantages over the conventional food system and organic agriculture could give peasants more autonomy in relation to the big agribusiness corporations. Organic agriculture rejects agro-chemicals, the cornerstone of the input packages offered by the agribusiness companies. Instead of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, organic agriculture has developed practices of intercropping and crop rotation in order to maintain soil nutrition levels. These techniques blur the line between growing cash crops and growing food crops which will allow peasants to have more control over the relation between growing crops for self-subsistence and for sale.
22
Chapter 2: Peasant Autonomy in Uganda: an Historical Overview
Introduction
After having discussed the relation between the peasantry and agricultural restructuring in the first chapter, it is now time to turn to the case study of organic agriculture in Uganda. However, before diving head-first into the case study, I will give an overview how the aforementioned global developments in the food system have manifested themselves in the specific local context of the Ugandan agricultural sector and affected the autonomy of the Ugandan peasantry and the relations between Ugandan peasants and the Ugandan state. I find this approach necessary to analyse what features of organic agriculture sector in Uganda are distinct when compared to the general position of peasants in Ugandan society.
This chapter is ordered chronologically, analysing the autonomy of the Ugandan peasants from the peasant societies that were in place at the end of the nineteenth century to the impacts on smallholder farmers of the latest agricultural policies set in motion at the turn of the new millennium. The main questions that I will try to answer in this chapter is: To what extent has the autonomy of peasants in Uganda evolved in accordance with the theory of the global food regime? In order to formulate an answer to this question, I will analyse how changes in the global food regime have affected the three dimensions of peasants autonomy discussed in the first chapter: control over inputs, access to the market and control over land use. The chapter is cut up in three chronological periods, reflecting the three global food regimes as distinguished by Friedmann and McMichael, the colonial food regime, the post-war food regime and the corporate food regime. In the first part I will take a look how the agricultural economy of Uganda was adjusted by the advance of British colonialism and the first food regime, covering the period from 1894 till the Second World War. The second part will turn to the integration of Ugandan agriculture into the new international food regime after the Second World War and how the prolonged periods of civil war and the collapse of the state in Uganda has reversed this trend of integration. The last part will turn to the post-civil war period from 1986 to recent times, reflecting on the position of the Uganda peasants in the new Ugandan state whose agriculture policies have been instated in the corporate food regime, as its institutions have developed under years of structural adjustment and modern agricultural reform.
23 The history of the peasantry in Africa is generally different from the history of peasants in other parts of the world. Due to the extensive nature of agriculture in Africa, the distinction between pastoralists and peasants is often negligible and pastoralist tribes are sometimes also included in studies that analyse the African peasantry (Saul and Woods 1987). African peasants are also distinct because they historically tend to have had more secure land rights than peasants in Europe or Asia (Bunker 1987, 253). In the area we now call Uganda, right up until the formal colonisation by the British Empire, the peasants were generally freeholders that paid part of their excess produce as a tribute to a king or chief. In the terms of Eric Wolf, the peasantry in Uganda were living under patrimonial domain with a relatively strong control over their land. The kingdoms in Uganda were very powerful. The most powerful, the Buganda empire, proved to be a formidable opponent for the British colonial army. In 1894, the Buganda empire, situated on the Northwest banks of Lake Victoria, brokered a deal with the British which made Buganda the core of a newly-formed protectorate called Uganda. Due to the relative power of the Buganda empire, the Ugandan agricultural system was not directly taken over by officials of the British colonial administration. The Buganda ensured the continued existence of the local Mailo agricultural structure. In the Mailo system, peasants had almost complete free control over their land and a large amount of autonomy (Twaddle en Hansen 1998).
24 2.2 1945-1980 Uganda In, Then Out, of the Post-war International Food Order
When the colonial system gave way to the post-war international food order, the agricultural economy of Uganda started to show a pattern that is coherent with the food regime theory as set out by Friedmann. The population of Kampala, the capital city, was expanding rapidly during the first twenty-five years after the Second World War due to the influx of rural poor from other parts of the country. As a result, a big class of wage earners began to emerge in Kampala. (Jamal 1988, 684). Once Uganda became independent in 1962, the government of president Obote adopted several policies that were tailored to the new urban workers. The policy were an example of a phenomenon called urban bias and distributed wealth from the rural to urban populations. Taxes on coffee and cotton were raised during the last years of colonialism and the first years of independence to a total of 21% and 31% respectively. Especially the cotton growers in the arid North and West were the victim of the policy of urban bias. Many peasants lost the capacity to make a living on the countryside and moved to Kampala, looking for wage employment (Young, Sherman and Rose 1981, 47-49). The taxation regime also caused a shift from cotton to coffee in the fertile area around Kampala, the territory of the old empire of Buganda. The cultivation of cotton was pushed out to less fertile soils that were previously devoted to food production and total food production in the South of Uganda suffered (Ibid.,53). This, coupled with the rise of population in Kampala, meant that the South of Uganda at that time was not food self-sufficient and dependent on food derived from North Uganda and imports (Jamal 1988, 684). This was also seen in the food patterns in Kampala. The original Buganda inhabitants stuck to the traditional diet that used plantains as the staple crop. The migrants from other parts of Uganda adopted a diet that centred around the use of the non-traditional maizemeal (Ibid.).
25 crippled the trading sector (Ibid., 22). The mass expulsion of the Ugandan population of Asian origin in 1972 left the country without experienced private traders. The lack of a trading class and violence by marauding troops led to a sharp increase of the transaction costs. Transaction costs rose to such an extent that that dependence on the market for selling produce became a sincere vulnerability. Violence also hit subsistence farmers, as their storage facilities were prone to being victims of looting by bands of armed rebels and soldiers of the Amin regime, but overall Uganda subsistence farming proved a more secure strategy than engaging in marketed farming (Bunker 1987, 227-228; Collier and Pradhan 1998, 23). Other examples of the economic civil war are the decision of the Amin regime to further centralise the coffee boards, strengthening the state monopoly, leading to lower prices for the producers (Young, Sherman and Rose 1981). Peasants also lost their formal rights to land by a decree passed by Amin in 1975. However, in practice, not much changed in the land management on the ground and land-grabbing has been relatively scarce in Uganda (Gibbon, Havnevik and Hermele 1993, 75; Rugadya 2003).
26 production to subsistence farming in the rural areas and the rise of urban subsistence farming, by the end of the Amin regime and the whole of Uganda had again become virtually self-sufficient in terms of food production (Jamal 1988, 684).
27 (Gibbon, Havnevik and Hermele 1993). As a result, the growth in the agricultural sector has only barely exceeded population growth in the first years of SAPs (Twaddle and Hansen 1998, 14). Disappointingly, the liberalisation of the state monopoly under the first SAPs did not result in more direct access to the markets for the peasants. Private traders have simply supplanted the state as principle buyers and peasants still only received a small fraction of the total revenue. In 1988, the prices paid at the farm gate for coffee were only thirty percent of the price for which the coffee was exported, with most of the revenue going to state taxes and in the pockets of private traders. In the nationwide plantain trade, state taxes were low (only ten percent), but traders took seventy percent of the total revenue. Plantain cultivators received less than a fifth of the price for which the plantain was traded on the markets. This formed a stark contrast with the locally traded beans, where sixty percent of the revenue went to the farmers (Gibbon, Havnevik and Hermele 1993, 77).
Part of the World Bank strategy for Uganda was to encourage diversification of the coffee. Coffee was the only crop to have retained a steady output during the years of civil war because its main production centres were relatively close to Kampala and border regions and trading could continue. Diversification was deemed necessary to reduce the dependence of Uganda on a single export crop to obtain foreign currency. As seen above, in the late 1980s the export tax on coffee was raised to fifty percent (Ibid., 31). In order to speed up the process of diversification, the Museveni regime tried to open the Ugandan agricultural sector and persuade foreign companies to invest in the cultivation of non-traditional food crops (Dijkstra 2001, 2). In 1990, the Enhancing Structural Adjustment Facility programme (ESAF) was launched and a set of pro-business policies were introduced. First, the government issued certificates to companies exporting non-traditional agricultural exports. Then, the companies that held these certificates were offered tax holidays and duty exemptions on capital and construction materials. It may not come as a surprise that the process to acquire these certificates was prone to bribery (Ibid., 6-9). Even though the ESAF brought advantages to private companies, private investment in the agriculture sector remained fairly low. Especially the corporate input sector in Uganda was underdeveloped, since the government had not been able to facilitate the green revolution in the previous decade and Ugandan smallholders and local traders lacked the funds to acquire the chemicals themselves (Ibid., 67).
28 subsistence agriculture into commercial agriculture (Muhumuza 2003, 10). Amongst the strategies of the PMA are: more decentralisation; remove government interference from the market and hand it to the private sector; supporting the dissemination of productive enhancing technologies; guaranteeing food security through the market, promoting commercial specialisation over self-subsistence (PMA 2011). In practice, the PMA adheres strictly to the lines set out by the SAPs and promotes decentralisation, privatisation and export (Bahiigwa, Rigby and Woodhouse 2005, 482).
There are serious questions whether the PMA strategy of supplanting peasant agriculture with commercial agriculture is the right mechanism to tackle the problem of poverty. A large part (70-80%) of the rural population is relying on subsistence farming, while rural poverty is only forty percent. This means many people living of subsistence farming are not in poverty (Ibid., 486). There are even indications that parts of the measures of the PMA are even increasing rural inequality. The National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) for example was established to provide agricultural extension services to the rural population. As an example of government within SAP regulations, NAADS does not provide agricultural advice itself, but matches local farmer groups with private parties that can provide these services (Reniers 2011 , 5). It can be argued however that the NAADS programme does not reach the poorest part of the rural population. In line with the overall strategy of commercialisation of the PMA, NAADS regulations stipulate that technological advice will only be given to projects that are purely commercial. This means that people can’t get technical assistance for crops if they produce partly for self-subsistence. The whole NAADS system is biased towards the rural well-off, who can afford to invest in purely commercial crops and therefore creates rural inequality (Friis-Hansen 2008, 510).
29 Conclusion
In short, the Ugandan peasantry was first integrated in the world food system to provide luxury goods for British wage workers. During the period of colonisation, the Ugandan peasants remained in control of their land. The access to land became important during the period of the Amin dictatorship and the subsequent, as it allowed wage workers in the city to flee the city and return to rural areas to embrace subsistence farming again. The period of Amin’s reign and the civil war destroyed state institutions and reversed the integration of Uganda in the post-war global food regime. Since the NRA/NRM have returned peace in most of Uganda in 1986, the country has embraced the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the World Bank and, subsequently, policies that promote diversification and commercialisation of peasant agriculture. These policies promote the arrival of foreign corporations and increase rural inequality and the dependency of peasants on private parties.
30
Chapter 3: Peasant Autonomy and the Organic System in Uganda
Introduction
After having set out the theoretical framework for the thesis in the first chapter and having given an overview of the situation of the peasants in Uganda in the second chapter, I will now present evidence from the organic agriculture sector in Uganda. In this chapter, I will take a look at the development of the organic agriculture sector in Uganda and analyse how it has affected peasant autonomy when compared to the rest of the agricultural sector. The main research question in this chapter is: To what extent has the adoption of organic agriculture shifted the production patterns that were already in place due to the global food regime and to what extent does this affect peasant autonomy? The analysis will focus on the three dimensions of peasant autonomy that have been discussed in the first chapter: to what extent the peasants control their own inputs, to what extent they can freely enter the market and to what extent they are able to control their own output in terms of cash crops and food crops. Organic production in Uganda can be split in two categories: one market orientated, directed towards the production of cash crops for export, and one community orientated, that first and foremost focuses on increasing subsistence production (Walaga and Hauser 2005). I will analyse the export sector in the first part of this chapter, followed by the community-based approach in the latter part.
31 Ugandan organic products by export volume. In the following part of this chapter, I will analyse the production processes of the four leading organic export crops (cotton, coffee, sesame and fruits) to see what the effects of organic contract farming are on peasant autonomy. Furthermore I will analyse the production of vanilla as it has seen a great rise in recent years (Gibbon, 2006). Michael J. Watts (1994) has pointed out that such a commodity-based approach is prone to putting too much emphasis on the technical characteristics of the different production processes, while obscuring other social factors involved, such as labour and property rights. Keeping this caveat in mind, the analysis given here aims to bring to light, rather than to obscure, the social relations of organic export farming by analysing the different appearances of the organic export sector throughout the different commodity chains. This method of describing social problems by analysing its different instances is in line with the methodology of incorporating comparison, as set out in the introduction.
Table 3.1 Organic Exports for Uganda in 2006, Listed by Export Volume
Product Export volume in
tonnes Percentage Cotton 3.875 49,2 Coffee 1.705 21,6 Sesame 1.124 14,3 Fruits 835 10,6 Cocoa 280 3,6 Vanilla 35 0,4 Hibiscus 15 0,2 Chilly Pepper 5 0,1 Fish 3 >0,1 Barkcloth 1 >0,1 Shea 1 >0,1 Total 7.877 100
Adapted from: Bouagnimbeck 2008
32 are literate, in order to reduce the need for support and thus reducing costs. This development is not just confined to organic export companies in Uganda. It is a well documented phenomenon in contract farming, both worldwide (Little 2004, 223) and in Uganda (Kidd 2004, 143). If one would only take the contract farmers into account, a distorted image of the impact of contract farming on the overall peasant population can arise as only the well-off peasantry can participate. In their own research, Bolwig, Gibbon and Jones found that the average farm size in acres of organic contract farmers in a certain coffee scheme in Uganda was more than a third larger than non-certified coffee growers in the region and the number of coffee trees on the organic farms was almost double the average. As pointed out in the second chapter, this tendency to cherry-pick the richer peasants is reinforced in Uganda by the policies of the NAADS. As the NAADS only offers technical assistance to projects that are entirely commercial, only those peasants can participate who have enough capital to invest and are willing to make the transition from a peasant lifestyle to becoming a commercial farmer. In the upcoming analyses, these caveats are taken into account, pointing also to the effects that the establishment of certified organic agriculture has on other peasants in the community and the changes in (intra-household and gender) labour relationships.
3.1.1 Cotton: Leaving Peasants Hanging by a Thread
Cotton has been an important cash crop in Uganda since the times of British colonisation and it is no surprise that a cotton project in the Lango region was the first project in Uganda to receive organic certification (Gibbon 2006). Since this first project, which involved 200 farmers, organic cotton production has been adopted by 24,000 smallholder farmers in 2000 (Hine and Pretty 2007, 29).
33 cotton farming is so dependent on these food crops, it increases the food self-sufficiency of the peasants and the control over the acreage devoted to cash and food crops (Bo Weevil Organic Cotton, Uganda Radio Network 2009a). This especially true when compared to the traditional and conventional cotton farmers in Uganda. Research by Pali et al. (2011) shows that 81% of conventional Ugandan cotton farmers do not achieve household food security and are prone to food shortages.
While control over food crop production in organic cotton production is higher than in conventional cotton farming, in other aspects organic cotton production does not seem to offer other benefits for peasant autonomy. Just as in conventional agriculture, peasant autonomy in organic cotton production is heavily curtailed by the state monopoly on cotton seeds. When the Ugandan government started to liberalise the cotton market in 1994, the Cotton Development Organisation (CDO) was established to oversee the process of liberalisation. The CDO kept a state monopoly on seed supply and intended to protect smallholders by offering easy access to cottons seeds of export quality. The variety of cotton distributed indeed ensures a high quality cotton suited for export, but it is very prone to pests and therefore less suited to organic cotton production (Nilsson 2010, 16; The Daily Monitor, 2008). The monopoly of seed distribution by the Cotton Development Organisation has also led to shortages (UGPulse, 2008). Corporate organic cotton manufacturers, or ginners, are trying to take advantage of these problems by evading the seed monopoly and offering subsidised organic cotton seeds to smallholders in a contract farming scheme, promising to buy the cotton once harvest time comes (Uganda Radio Network 2009b).
34 At farm level, organic cotton production seems beneficial for peasant autonomy, as it promotes locally developed techniques that enhance food production while maintaining stable cotton yields. However, engaging organic cotton production makes peasants vulnerable to exploitation by agribusinesses. The CDO that was designed to protect cotton farmers in a liberalised cotton market does not deliver inputs that are useful for organic cotton production. If peasants switch to organic cotton production to enhance food production, they are driven to enter into a contract farming scheme with a big agribusiness firm which strongly compromises their autonomy.
3.1.2 Coffee: a Black and Bitter Future?
After the introduction of organic agriculture in Uganda through the Lango cotton project, the next few organic projects all involved the traditional cash crops. Apart from cotton this meant in the first place coffee (Gibbon 2006). As pointed out in the previous chapter, coffee was one of the few crops that maintained a relative high rate of production, even through the periods of the Amin regime and the following years of conflict.
The impact of organic coffee production on the food production has been described as negative, with most coffee producers not being able to produce enough food for self-subsistence (Bolwig and Odeke 2007). It must be said, however, that food production in the areas also suffered other setbacks in recent years due to outbreaks of diseases in plantain, a crop harvested in the same area as coffee. However, the overall acreage that peasants devoted to other food crops, such as maize and sweet potato, was reduced too in order to make more room for coffee production (Ibid). Peasants had to replace the loss in food production by buying more food crops on the market than when they were growing coffee in a traditional way. Also, women lost their own income of selling additional food crops and moved to working on the family coffee plants.
35 the export market. This is partly due to the powerful position of the coffee exporters, caused by the deterioration of competition on the liberalised organic coffee market in Uganda. The oligopolistic behaviour is not induced by government policy, but due to the fact that only large companies have the ability to hedge and survive the severe price fluctuations on the world coffee markets (Baffes 2006, 7). There were five export companies active on the organic coffee market in Uganda by the end of 2006, although new companies are poised to enter the market (Gibbon 2006, UgoCert).
Another result of the strong position of the export companies are the high demands they can place on the coffee producers. Kawacom only buys coffee that is of “suitable quality”. Coffee that is deemed not to be up to standard then has to be sold to conventional traders, without the premium (Ibid.). The organic export companies only buy coffee that has been processed on the farm. Processing involves removing the pulp around the bean by hand and leaving it in the sun to dry and is a costly process in terms of labour and time that is not always practised in conventional farms. It is a strategy of many peasants that have coffee to sell some of their unprocessed coffee beans early and the rest, processed, later in the year. This results in less overall income, but allows them to pay for off-farm needs at an earlier stage. Organic farmers can still do this (and are doing so), but they have to sell the unprocessed coffee on the conventional market and will lose out on the organic premium, so they are more inclined to process all of the coffee in order to sell it to the export company. The extra labour needed for the processing is recruited within the family and is often done by women. The end result is that the household as a total will be earning more, but that this comes at the expense of the income of the women. The time now used on coffee processing, would normally be used to perform other (off-farm) activities such as the sale of food crops on the local market. The earnings of these activities would belong to the women themselves (Bolwig, Gibbon, Odeke and Taylor, 2007).
In short, the cultivation of organic coffee growing remains limited to peasant smallholders using family labour. While generating more household income, organic coffee production poses three problems for coffee producers. Food production declines, the powerful position of coffee traders gives uncertainty over the price and the powerful position of companies leads to production demands that alter labour relations within the peasant household.
3.1.3 Sesame: Another Dead-end Street?
36 self-subsistence for a long time (Grolink and Agro Eco 2007). Sesame is ranked by the government as a non-traditional export crop and under impulse of the diversification policies and the PMA, overall sesame production in Uganda has almost doubled in the ten years since 1998 (FAOSTAT 2009). To obtain pure organically grown sesame, export companies set up buying centres in remote areas to buy sesame from local producers. Because of the price premium given by the export company, sesame production has been transformed from being a crop for self-subsistence to an important cash crop (Grolink and Agro Eco 2007).
The transition of sesame from subsistence crop to export crop can also been seen in the type of seeds used in sesame production. The sesame variety traditionally grown in Uganda is the brown or so-called Sesame I variety. This type of sesame is consumed locally and also has international markets in East Asia and the Middle East (Ali et al. 2009, 14). Some export companies, however, provided the local farmers with seeds of another variety, white sesame or Sesame II (Grolink & Agro Eco, 2007). The Sesame II variety produces higher yields and sesame seeds with a higher oil content. Sesame II is also more popular in Europe and the United States. Introduction of the Sesame II seeds has been, according to the export company itself, “a big success for all participating farmers” (Outspan 2011). However, the conversion to Sesame II does severely restrain the autonomy of the smallholders. This is illustrated by a commercial sesame growing project, not specifically organic, in the West Nile region in Uganda where farmers were provided with Sesame II seeds by an NGO highlights this dependency. The peasants in this project had become dependent on the sesame seeds that the NGO provided them with each year. When the project stopped, it turned out that the farmers did not have the means to keep buying the Sesame II variety. A few farmers, who had saved seeds provided by the NGO during previous seasons, were still unable to continue growing, because the Sesame II seeds degenerate within two generations. The smallholders had to make an effort to revert to the ‘old’ Sesame I variety. At the end of the project, overall sesame production in the area had declined (Ali et al. 2009 38).
Furthermore, the proposed profits of the farmers harvesting sesame are all but guaranteed. A market study for the EPOPA-programme concludes that, although organic sesame brings in twenty to thirty percent more than conventional marketed sesame, the organic market is prone to sudden drops in prices due to oversupply. The market study also shows that the organic sesame market is even more volatile than the conventional market. Sometimes prices dropped as much as fifty percent in a short period of time (Koekoek 2002).
37 farmers. In general, as a consequence of the broader agricultural policies in Uganda sesame has evolved from a crop used for self-subsistence into a cash crop. The search for pristine, chemical-free, sesame production by organic export companies has only accelerated this process to more remote areas. In addition, the adoption of the Sesame II seed variety has reduced peasant autonomy because it has made the peasants reliant on seeds provided through the export company. Local seed saving is impossible, because the seed degenerates within two years. This, coupled to the volatility of the prices on the organic sesame market, shows that the adoption of organic sesame production has worsened the autonomy of the peasants and led to dependency on the export company.
3.1.4 Fruit: a Fresh Impulse?
Just like sesame, fresh fruits and vegetables are also seen as non-traditional exports and supported by the diversification schemes of the government. The increase in fresh fruit and vegetable production is mirrored by the increased activity on the organic market. In 2006 there were three certified exporters for ‘Asian vegetables’ (aubergine, okra, apple bananas) and five certified for fresh fruit and five certified for dried fruit (Gibbon 2006). This highlights the pace of the recent developments, as in 2001 there was only one export company dealing in fruit (Tumushabe, et al. 2007, 43).
