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Ecuadorian peasantries amidst the agri-food globalization: Social differentiation and diverse livelihoods strategies in a cut flower exporting territory

Abstract:

This article analyzes peasant livelihood strategies and the associated processes of social differentiation among peasants in Pedro Moncayo (Ecuador), a territory starkly influenced by the presence of the cut flower agribusiness. We argue that the cut flower agribusiness has shaped peasant internal social differentiation from which two types of semi-peasants’ livelihoods have emerged on the one side, and a numerous semi-proletariat livelihood strategy dependent on flower-based wage income have appeared on the other. The two semi-peasant livelihoods reveal that contemporary peasantries in this territory have found ways to partially reproduce themselves from within agri-food globalization and use the expanding agrarian capitalist circuits in combination with maintaining a peasant-like farming style. These hybrid forms of production and social reproduction reflect different strategies to negotiate the tensions between dependence and autonomy from capitalist circuits of agrarian accumulation as peasantries are confronted with the agri-food globalization.