Agrarian transformations in the frontiers

One current of agrarian transformations in many countries in the global South is agricultural expansion into frontier areas. Economist Edward Barbier (2005: 288-289) argues that economic growth in many countries in the global South, and especially in newly

43 opened economies, is significantly contributed to by resources in the frontiers. Market forces are seen as a significant condition stimulating the transformations taking place in the frontiers (Cramb et al. 2009; Fox et al. 2009). However, market expansion is not a single process. Rather, it is always associated with a process of spatial integration. Infrastructure development, especially the expansion of road networks, is a fundamental condition for market penetration in the frontiers. These dual processes of market and spatial integration have resulted in the increasing and intensifying integration of the frontiers into the national and global economies.

The increasing global demand for particular crops has led to a remarkable increase in their planted area in the frontiers, such as cocoa (Li 2002a), oil palm (McCarthy and Cramb 2009), coffee (Tan 2000; Agergaard et al. 2009), and recently rubber (Fox 2009; Mann 2009;

Sturgeon 2010). Agricultural expansion is thus another side of market and economic integration in the frontiers. This process has, of course, re-shaped the frontier space. The transformations of the frontiers’ agricultural production system from semi-subsistence to market-led are well-recorded. Another process taking place in the frontiers is agricultural intensification. Increasing demand for agricultural commodities is a key driver for agricultural intensification in the frontiers (Cramb 2009; Hirsch 2009). Commercial crops require not only land for growing crops but also capital inputs - such as modern seeds, fertilisers, and machinery. However, this process may take place even though the production is mainly for household consumption; this occurs when people encounter limits to land access (Raintree and Warner 1986; Potter 2001).

While agricultural expansion and intensification are a response to global market demand, the ways that this process operates in specific places are not always the same. These transformations may result from large-scale investment by outside investors such as a replacement of swidden agriculture by oil palm estates in Malaysia’s Sarawak (Cramb 2009;

McCarthy and Cramb 2009), fast–growing tree plantations in Sarawak (Barney 2004), or Vietnamese rubber plantations in the Lao PDR (Baird 2010). Studies also show that peasants and small farmers take a significant part in this process (this will be reviewed in section 2.5).

Agricultural expansion and intensification is not always done by local populations; migrants also play a crucial role in this process. Derek Hall (2011b: 508) notes that millions of people migrated to the frontiers of Southeast Asia during the 1990s and 2000s to become involved

44 in commercial crops, mainly the boom crops. He characterises three patterns of migration.

Studies carried out in Thailand (Pinthong 1991; Phongpaichit and Baker 2002) report that large areas of forest in Thailand’s frontiers were cleared by new migrants from the central plain to expand commercial crops from the 1970s onwards. Ruf and colleagues (1996 cited in Li 2002a: 419-420) record the arrival of migrants in Central Sulawesi’s forest frontiers.

Would-be migrants who used their kin and networks to gain access to information even hired buses to tour the frontiers seeking land and cocoa plantations set up by in situ farmers. Gaveau and colleagues (Gaveau et al. 2009: 598) record “unplanned mass migration to the mountainous areas of southwest Sumatra” in response to the rising price of coffee. It is estimated that around 100,000 migrants, largely from Java, moved to this area of previously low population density. In Vietnam, coffee best reflects how fast a commercial crop and migrants have arrived and transformed the frontier spaces. Coffee planted areas increased over 6.5 times between 1993 and 2000 (D. Hall 2011b: 512).

Around 200,000 migrants settled down in the Central Highlands, Vietnam’s major coffee production area, in only five years of the coffee boom (Winkels 2004: 4).

Agricultural expansion has never been only an economic process; it is rather very much about political issues too. De Koninck and De Déry (1997: 2) view agricultural expansion into the frontier in Southeast Asia as part of the state’s geopolitical strategy, allowing the state to control and consolidate both frontier spaces and the frontier’s populations. White (1999: 237) documents the rehabilitation of large-scale plantations in a southern region of West Java in the 1980s; the promotion of commercial crops to peasants was strongly made in those areas that had experienced uprisings against the government. A similar phenomenon has also been found in Thailand where the clearing of new forestland for commercial crops in mountainous areas was largely driven by security concerns and a desire to prevent people from joining the communist movement (Uhlig 1988: 15). Road networks which were developed in remote areas performed a two-fold function: to facilitate the penetration of the market in the frontiers and also to maintain national security (Thomas et al 2008 cited in Fox et al. 2009).

Some scholars also point to the ‘soft’ control of the frontiers through agricultural expansion and intensification. Though ‘soft’ control may take different forms in each frontier, there is a common interest in ‘civilising the margins’ (Duncan 2004b). In the case of Southeast Asia’s frontiers, namely the uplands, there is a widely perceived attitude among the state and

45 lowlanders about upland areas as spaces where levels of ‘civilisation’ and ‘development’

are still low. The agricultural practices of upland people, namely various forms of shifting cultivation, are usually used as one of the criteria to justify the labelling of such people and places as ‘backward’ or ‘primitive’ (see, for example, McElwee 2004; Duncan 2004a; Cramb et al. 2009). There is a need to bring ‘civilisation’ from the core to these ‘backward’ spaces.

The uplands and their populations have been identified as a primary target for

‘development’, ‘modernisation’ and ‘civilisation’ either via the state or development projects (Duncan 2004a; Li 2007). Modern agricultural expansion into the frontiers is considered as one of the mechanisms to eliminate the ‘backwardness’ of the frontier.

Hirsch (2009: 125) argues that agricultural expansion into the frontiers is associated with a process of “clearing of wilderness in response to global market demand” and “the state’s civilising mission on the outer boundaries of modernity”.

Overall, a number of studies provide a picture of the links between the frontier’s transformations and the market and spatial integration, and the state’s civilising mission.

Literature highlights agricultural expansion and intensification as two key different processes, but very much linked, that shape and re-shape the frontiers. Transforming the frontier spaces to a market-oriented production space, as some studies argue, pushes the risks to the frontier’s populations. (The issue of relations between the market and small farmers is explored in section 2.5).