Beyond Coping: Smallholder Intensification in Southern Ukraine

Abstract

This article empirically investigates rural, small‐scale household farming in post‐Soviet southern Ukraine, focusing on a particular group of households that have managed to intensify their production beyond subsistence without help from large farms. Large‐farm support for small‐scale household agricultural production in the former Soviet Union is generally considered necessary for small‐scale household farming, so the absence of this support is noteworthy. The conditions of this intensification are explored and mapped out. Further, this intensification is related to discussions in the peasant study literature on the general viability of intensive smallholder production. While the investigated farms do present some sustainability concerns, this paper concludes that this production is not less viable than large‐scale agricultural production. The main future challenge is how upcoming agrarian reforms will affect smallholders, particularly with respect to formalising informal resource use.

Post-socialist smallholders: silence, resistance and alternatives

“…Policy makers and some research reports repeatedly characterise smallholders as backward, a relic of the past (see Kwiencinski 1998), bound to disappear unless they are integrated into corporate-led commercial value chains (see Varga, in this issue, for a critique). In reality, smallholders often thrive within informal exchange networks and markets 8 (Jehlička, Daněk, and Vávra 2019;Varga 2019; Şerban 2019a, all this issue), and provide major contributions to food production (Visser, Kurakin, and Nikulin 2019;Thiemann and Spoor 2019, both this issue), sustainability (Jehlička, Daněk, and Vávra 2019, this issue) and social coherence (Jehlička, Daněk, and Vávra 2019;Varga 2019, both this issue)which remains under the radar (Kuns 2017). Household food production and sharing in CEE societies is an example of sustainability-compliant practices 9 that are important in terms of the number of people involved and volumes of food produced, but they are not necessarily a result of environmental awareness or of economic necessity.…”

“…On the contrary, in CEE countries like Czechia and Poland these are pleasurable activities, born of a desire for personal fulfilment and achievement, or to cement social relations through food production and exchange (Jehlička and Daněk 2017). Economic motivations play a more important role in Russia (Visser, Kurakin, and Nikulin 2019, this issue), Ukraine (Kuns 2017) or the Caucasus and Central Asia.…”

“…At the same time, post-socialist smallholders display a wide array of other responses (including adaptive responses, Mamonova [2015]) to land grabbing, such as increased involvement in non-farm jobs (Dorondel 2016) or various forms ofsometimes subtle negotiation with the directors of the corporate farms where they work or live (Visser, Kurakin, and Nikulin 2019, this issue). Villagers from southern Ukraine were able to intensify the agricultural production and to show significant autonomy and sustainability by using their own well to water the field or reciprocating and cooperating when using a tractor (Kuns 2017). Among villagers' adaptive strategies is production for niche markets to avoid clashing with larger competitors (Kuns 2017;Varga 2019, this issue;Visser, Kurakin, and Nikulin 2019, this issue).…”

“…Villagers from southern Ukraine were able to intensify the agricultural production and to show significant autonomy and sustainability by using their own well to water the field or reciprocating and cooperating when using a tractor (Kuns 2017). Among villagers' adaptive strategies is production for niche markets to avoid clashing with larger competitors (Kuns 2017;Varga 2019, this issue;Visser, Kurakin, and Nikulin 2019, this issue). A widespread response of smallholders to politico-economic infringements is outmigration (in Central Asia and the Caucasus to Russia, in CEE to Western Europe).…”

Patriotism and Food Sovereignty: Changes in the Social Imaginary of Small‐Scale Farming in Post‐Euromaidan Ukraine

“…The newly established large farm enterprises took over the former collective farmland and, with it, some of their predecessors’ social functions, such as a productive symbiosis with rural households. This productive symbiosis implies that rural dwellers may receive farm inputs and output from large farms at lower prices, or may even take some ‘for free’, as was commonly practiced in the Soviet era (Kuns ). The continuity of socialist legacies largely influenced the societal acceptance of large‐scale agricultural development in Ukraine.…”