IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v33y2016i4d10.1007_s10460-015-9666-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From sharecropping to crop-rent: women farmers changing agricultural production relations in rural South Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

    (The Australian National University)

  • Mohanraj Adhikari

    (The Australian National University)

Abstract

This paper explores changing production relations in agriculture in context of increasingly widespread and longer-duration male outmigration, as against previous, short-duration and seasonal migration. It investigates how de facto women-heads of households (WHHs) are changing a resilient crop-sharing system in absence of adequate access to productive assets, formal training or experience in farming, and while contributing labour to farming and coping with gendered demands on their time. Based on qualitative inquiry in one of the poorest parts of South Asia, the Eastern Gangetic Plains, the paper shows that a section of WHHs are replacing sharecropping arrangements with fixed-value rental arrangements that resemble commercial contracts. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of this emerging development.

Suggested Citation

  • Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Mohanraj Adhikari, 2016. "From sharecropping to crop-rent: women farmers changing agricultural production relations in rural South Asia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 33(4), pages 997-1010, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:33:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s10460-015-9666-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-015-9666-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10460-015-9666-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-015-9666-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nira Ramachandran, 2006. "Women and Food Security in South Asia: Current Issues and Emerging Concerns," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-131, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Michael Lokshin & Elena Glinskaya, 2009. "The Effect of Male Migration on Employment Patterns of Women in Nepal," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 23(3), pages 481-507, November.
    3. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing & Yadav, Vandana, 2012. "Does sharecropping affect productivity and long-term investment ? evidence from West Bengal's tenancy reforms," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6293, The World Bank.
    4. Amita Shah, 2012. "Priority Changes for Strengthening Women's Role as Producers, Processors and Providers of Food and Nutrition," IDS Bulletin, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 40-48, July.
    5. Nitya Rao, 2012. "Male ‘Providers’ and Female ‘Housewives’: A Gendered Co-performance in Rural North India," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 43(5), pages 1025-1048, September.
    6. Buvinic, Mayra & Gupta, Geeta Rao, 1997. "Female-Headed Households and Female-Maintained Families: Are They Worth Targeting to Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries?," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(2), pages 259-280, January.
    7. Carol Vlassoff, 2013. "Gender Equality and Inequality in Rural India," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-37392-2.
    8. Reddy, D. Narasimha & Mishra, Srijit (ed.), 2009. "Agrarian Crisis in India," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195695953.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ho, Peter, 2018. "Institutional function versus form: The evolutionary credibility of land, housing and natural resources," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 642-650.
    2. Aryal, Jeetendra Prakash & Rahut, Dil Bahadur & Gartaula, Hom Nath, 2022. "Gendered Analysis of Food Security Gaps in Rural Nepal," ADBI Working Papers 1279, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    3. Bhawana, KC & Race, Digby, 2020. "Women’s approach to farming in the context of feminization of agriculture: A case study from the middle hills of Nepal," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    4. Matthys, Marie-Luise & Acharya, Sushant & Khatri, Sanjaya, 2021. "“Before cardamom, we used to face hardship”: Analyzing agricultural commercialization effects in Nepal through a local concept of the Good Life," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    5. Kaitlyn Spangler & Maria Elisa Christie, 2020. "Renegotiating gender roles and cultivation practices in the Nepali mid-hills: unpacking the feminization of agriculture," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(2), pages 415-432, June.
    6. Li Zhang, 2020. "From left behind to leader: gender, agency, and food sovereignty in China," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(4), pages 1111-1123, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bishnu Raj Upreti & Yamuna Ghale & Sharmila Shivakoti & Sushant Acharya, 2018. "Feminization of Agriculture in the Eastern Hills of Nepal: A study of Women in Cardamom and Ginger Farming," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(4), pages 21582440188, December.
    2. Rao, Nitya, 2017. "Assets, Agency and Legitimacy: Towards a Relational Understanding of Gender Equality Policy and Practice," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 43-54.
    3. K. N. Harilal & K. K. Eswaran, 2016. "Agrarian Question and Democratic Decentralization in Kerala," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 5(2-3), pages 292-324, August.
    4. van de Walle, Dominique, 2011. "Lasting welfare effects of widowhood in a poor country," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5734, The World Bank.
    5. Alkire, Sabina & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & Peterman, Amber & Quisumbing, Agnes & Seymour, Greg & Vaz, Ana, 2013. "The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 71-91.
    6. Petr BLIZKOVSKY, 2015. "Is the development policy improving the gender situation in Asia?," Journal of Economics and Political Economy, KSP Journals, vol. 2(1s), pages 166-185, May.
    7. Astrid Sneyers, 2017. "Food, Drought and Conflict Evidence from a Case-Study on Somalia," HiCN Working Papers 252, Households in Conflict Network.
    8. Muricho, G. & Kulundu, D. & Sule, F., 2018. "Impact Assessment of Agricultural Commercialization on Food Security Among Smallholder Farmers in Kenya: An Application of Correlated Random Effects," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277325, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Rao, Nitya & Singh, Chandni & Solomon, Divya & Camfield, Laura & Sidiki, Rahina & Angula, Margaret & Poonacha, Prathigna & Sidibé, Amadou & Lawson, Elaine T., 2020. "Managing risk, changing aspirations and household dynamics: Implications for wellbeing and adaptation in semi-arid Africa and India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    10. Ajani, Olubunmi Idowu Yetunde, 2009. "Gender dimensions of agriculture, poverty, nutrition and food security in Nigeria:," NSSP working papers 5, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    11. Oginni, Ayodeji & Ahonsi, Babatunde & Ukwuije, Francis, 2013. "Are female-headed households typically poorer than male-headed households in Nigeria?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 132-137.
    12. Carmen Diana Deere & Rosa Luz Durán & Merrilee Mardon & Tom Masterson, 2004. "Female Land Rights and Rural Household Incomes in Brazil, Paraguay and Peru," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2004-08, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    13. Medeiros, Marcelo & Costa, Joana, 2008. "Is There a Feminization of Poverty in Latin America?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 115-127, January.
    14. Álvaro José Altamirano Montoya & Karla Maria Damiano Teixeira, 2017. "Multidimensional Poverty in Nicaragua: Are Female-Headed Households Better Off?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 1037-1063, July.
    15. Sylvie Démurger & Shi Li, 2013. "Migration, Remittances, and Rural Employment Patterns: Evidence from China," Research in Labor Economics, in: Labor Market Issues in China, pages 31-63, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    16. Dragana Radicic & Geoffrey Pugh & Hugo Hollanders & René Wintjes & Jon Fairburn, 2016. "The impact of innovation support programs on small and medium enterprises innovation in traditional manufacturing industries: An evaluation for seven European Union regions," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 34(8), pages 1425-1452, December.
    17. Nidhiya Menon & Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, 2010. "War and Women’s Work: Evidence from the Conflict in Nepal," Working Papers 19, Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School.
    18. Dhruba Bhandari, 2020. "Are Households Utilizing Remittance on Quality Education? An Empirical Study from Nepal," Journal of Development Innovations, KarmaQuest International, vol. 4(1), pages 179-195, July.
    19. J. Devika, 2019. "Women’s Labour, Patriarchy and Feminism in Twenty-first Century Kerala: Reflections on the Glocal Present," Review of Development and Change, , vol. 24(1), pages 79-99, June.
    20. Khed, Vijayalaxmi D. & Krishna, Vijesh V., 2023. "Agency and time poverty: Linking decision-making powers and leisure time of male and female farmers of Central India," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:33:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s10460-015-9666-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.