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Course Description

DEVS 492-003

There can be little doubt that the current era is witnessing dramatic changes in the global production and consumption of food. In some respects, this represents the continuation of previous trends. However, in a several significant ways, agricultural restructuring in the late twentieth century and early twenty first century appears completely new. The concentration and centralisation of capital within agricultural sphere is now being reinforced through intensified global competition, inn innovations in biotechnology, transportation, and the social organization of labour. The effect is the subsumption by industry of the once autonomous agricultural sphere, along with the continued destruction of the peasantry in ‘third world’ societies. As a result, we see evidence daily of the rapid transformation of agriculture, including: (1) the decline of subsistence agriculture in favour of luxury crops produced for export to affluent niche markets; (2) the proletarianisation of independent farmers; (3) rising food insecurity and hunger amidst growing food stocks; (4) an increase in the pace of agro-ecological degradation; and, (5) even greater levels of corporate appropriation in the areas of indigenous knowledge, farming practices and genetic plant and animal resources. In response to these developments, new grassroots movements both in the countries of the North and South are emerging in order to promote sustainable agriculture, to fight hunger and to protect food from genetic manipulation.

The purpose of this course is to examine the micro- and macro-level forces that are both driving and resisting agro-restructuring within the world food system. The course will begin with a brief overview of events that constitute the recent economic, political, social and geographic changes mentioned above. We will then establish a theoretical background to agrarian transitions. A diverse disciplinary perspective is then employed to analyze selected aspects of contemporary changes in agrarian sectors. Topics covered will range from industrialization and corporate control of food and farming, the geography of more ‘flexible’ forms of manufacturing and service provisions, feminization of agricultural labour, localized and place-based agriculture, non-agricultural uses of agro-food resources, food democracy and sovereignty to changing forms of political organization and protests and the relationship between food and culture, specially how communities and societies identify and express themselves through food.