Agricultural Commercialization, Gender Equality and the Right to Food

Abstract

The authors' fascinating comparisons between Ghana and Cambodia tease out the complex and complicated relationship between agriculture commercialization, gender, and food security. Many of the chapters provide new insights and specific policy recommendations about the links between agricultural commercialization, food security, gender, and the right to food that could be applied across multiple countries."

‘Land for my children’: Gendered moral economies, social reproduction and resistance against land grabs in rural Cambodia

“…The transformation of Cambodia's agrarian landscapes in the context of ELCs has had a marked impact on the social reproduction activities in rural households. To begin with, the transfer of previously communally accessed lands to the government has created a flux in bilateral inheritance norms, where families no longer have enough resources to transfer to their children (Bourke Martignoni & Beban, 2022). Additionally, as a number of studies show, social reproductive work involving gathering food and fuel in forests and subsistence farming have been profoundly shifted, with shrinking access to farmlands and forests that have accompanied the boom in land grabbing and land commercialisation in Cambodia (Gironde et al, 2021;Joshi, 2020).…”

The lucky and unlucky daughter: Gender, land inheritance and agrarian change in Ratanakiri, Cambodia

“…The social norms guiding inheritance shape both gendered and generational relations of power in rural areas. A small but growing body of work on the gendered implications of commercialisation shows how gender relations influence and are influenced by land commercialisation (Evans, 2016; Bourke Martignoni et al, 2022), and a growing literature on generation in critical agrarian studies recognises the importance of young people's access to land (Kumeh & Omulo, 2019; White, 2012; White & Park, 2015). While this interest in youth has led to insights into the mechanisms through which younger farmers access land, there has been less attention paid to how agricultural and land commercialisation are affecting older people in agrarian communities.…”