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Cultivating Compliance: Governance of North Indian Organic Basmati Smallholders in a Global Value Chain

Author

Listed:
  • Saurabh Arora
  • Naomi Baan Hofman
  • Vinod Koshti

    (Department of Social Work, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007, India)

  • Tommaso Ciarli

    (Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SL, England)

Abstract

Focusing on a global value chain (GVC) for organic basmati rice, we study how farmers' practices are governed through product and process standards, organic certification protocols, and contracts with buyer firms. We analyze how farmers' entry into the GVC reconfigures their agencements (defined as heterogeneous arrangements of human and nonhuman agencies which are associated with each other). These reconfigurations entail the severance of some associations among procedural and material elements of the agencements and the formation of new associations, in order to produce cultivation practices that are accurately described by the GVC's standards and protocols. Based on ethnography of two farmers in Uttarakhand, North India, we find that the same standards were enacted differently on the two farmers' fields, producing variable degrees of (selective) compliance with the ‘official’ GVC standards. We argue that the disjuncture between the ‘official’ scripts of the standards and actual cultivation practices must be nurtured to allow farmers' agencements to align their practices with local sociotechnical relations and farm ecology. Furthermore, we find that compliance and disjuncture were facilitated by many practices and associations that were officially ungoverned by the GVC.

Suggested Citation

  • Saurabh Arora & Naomi Baan Hofman & Vinod Koshti & Tommaso Ciarli, 2013. "Cultivating Compliance: Governance of North Indian Organic Basmati Smallholders in a Global Value Chain," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(8), pages 1912-1928, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:8:p:1912-1928
    DOI: 10.1068/a45421
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Fredrick Ajwang & Saurabh Arora & Joanes Atela & Joel Onyango & Mohammad Kyari, 2023. "Enabling modernisation, marginalising alternatives? Kenya's agricultural policy and smallholders," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(1), pages 3-20, January.
    4. Susanne Freidberg, 2023. "Metrics and Mētis: work and practical knowledge in Agri-food sustainability governance," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(1), pages 245-257, March.
    5. Helene Ahlborg & Ilse Ruiz-Mercado & Sverker Molander & Omar Masera, 2019. "Bringing Technology into Social-Ecological Systems Research—Motivations for a Socio-Technical-Ecological Systems Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-23, April.

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