Globalization, Agriculture and Food in the Caribbean: Climate Change, Gender and Geography PDF
Preview Globalization, Agriculture and Food in the Caribbean: Climate Change, Gender and Geography
Globalization, Agriculture and Food in the Caribbean Climate Change, Gender and Geography Edited by Clinton L. Beckford and Kevon Rhiney Globalization, Agriculture and Food in the Caribbean Clinton L. Beckford • Kevon Rhiney Editors Globalization, Agriculture and Food in the Caribbean Climate Change, Gender and Geography Editors Clinton L. Beckford Kevon Rhiney Faculty of Education Department of Geography and Geology University of Windsor University of the West Indies Windsor , ON , Canada Kingston , Jamaica ISBN 978-1-137-53836-9 ISBN 978-1-137-53837-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53837-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935827 © Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature Th e registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London We would like to pause here to recognize the contribution to geography education, research, and scholarship in the Caribbean of outstanding geographer Professor David Barker. Professor Barker has put in nearly 40 years of dedicated service to the development of geography in the Caribbean through his teaching, research and scholarship, and, perhaps most importantly, guidance and mentorship of numerous graduate students. Professor Barker has infl uenced all of the contributors to this volume in some way with most of them benefi tting from his mentorship in their graduate studies. As an agricultural geographer, Professor Barker has infl uenced the careers of hundreds of students at the undergraduate and graduate levels and today his students are making signifi cant contributions around the world in the fi eld of geography and beyond. Th rough his involvement with the Jamaica Geographical Society, the journal Caribbean Geography , which he edits, and the British Caribbean Seminar Series, Professor Barker has been at the forefront of the dissemination of Caribbean geographical research. His work in the fi eld of agricultural geography is well known. Th is volume showcases the work of some of Professor Barker’s many graduate students and pays homage to him as a master teacher, mentor, researcher, and scholar on the eve of his retirement from the University of the West Indies. Foreword I t was my great pleasure to accept the invitation to write the Foreword for this important collection of contributions on Globalization, Agriculture, and Food in the Caribbean. Dr Clinton L. Beckford was my fi rst doc- toral student at the University of the West Indies (UWI), and together we have published extensively on Caribbean small-scale farming, indig- enous knowledge, and the yam stick problem in Jamaica, the third being the theme of his doctoral dissertation and a postdoctoral fellowship. Dr Kevon Rhiney, another of my doctoral students, was the fi rst of an impressive line of human geography PhDs who, over the last decade, have honed their skills at the Department of Geography and Geology, UWI, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica. Th e research of this group of young scholars, on Caribbean food security and small-scale farming and global change, has been well received at high-profi le international confer- ences and in the published literature. Th is latest volume includes some of the research output of this group of talented researchers. Th e timely relevance of the volume is worthy of a brief commentary. Since the onset of economic globalization in the 1980s, the Caribbean region of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) has entered a new era of economic and environmental vulnerability quite diff erent in scope from that of the colonial period. It has impacted all territories, large and small, all sectors of the economy—industry, tourism, and agriculture— and both urban and rural areas. Th ough the impacts can have positive vii viii Foreword outcomes, most are negative and probably no sector has felt these eff ects more severely than the agricultural sector. T rade liberalization has posed the most signifi cant of the challenges of economic globalization to the agricultural sector. Its impacts have complex implications for food security and rural livelihoods. For most Caribbean countries, agricultural exports are a major source of foreign exchange and employment-based income-earning opportunities. Moreover, for any given territory, they often comprise only one or two commodities, such as sugar, bananas, or coff ee. Such dependency on a single commodity deep- ens economic vulnerability. Th e negative impacts of trade liberalization are exemplifi ed by the ‘banana wars’ of the 1990s, and the subsequent retreat from export bananas which aff ected the Windward Islands and Jamaica in particular. Caribbean sugar also fared badly through increased competition on the world market, with Trinidad and Tobago and St Kitts closing their sugar industries since the turn of the century, the latter after a turbulent 350-year history. Th ere are a number of contributions in the volume, which focus on the ramifi cations of economic globalization on traditional export crops. Th e general decrease in agricultural tariff s as a result of trade liberal- ization not only aff ected traditional exports like bananas and sugar, but also opened up domestic markets to a fl ood of food imports. Historically, Caribbean territories were always dependent on imported food, and food imports are necessary and critical to nutritional and food supply stabil- ity. But trade liberalization ushered in a regime of imports that included fresh produce from North America such as potatoes, carrots, red peas, and onions which hitherto were produced in the islands by small-scale producers. Th ese imports were often cheaper than local produce and not surprisingly had disastrous consequences for local farmers and their families with limited income-earning opportunities outside their rural communities. Th e vicissitudes of economic globalization have been stalked by the looming spectre of climate change, and the region’s vulnerable open economies have found themselves on the front line of this battlefront too. Th e region has experienced increasingly unpredictable weather pat- terns and extreme meteorological hazards; the series of severe hurricanes of the fi rst decade of the new century were often preceded by an e xtensive Foreword ix drought, and occasionally followed by another prolonged drought. Seasonal precipitation patterns appear to be shifting in the western half of the Caribbean Basin, aff ecting the timing and duration of the short early rainy season, a critical period in the farming cycle for many small- scale producers. Th e present drought aff ecting the Caribbean Basin and attributed to El Niño is one of the worst on record. Robin Leichenko and Karen O’Brien have characterized economic globalization and climate change as a process of double exposure in its impacts on people and places. Th ey argue it triggers a range of exter- nal economic and environmental factors which interact in complex ways and have diff erential impacts on locations at diff erent scales, and on par- ticular groups, institutions, and individuals. When considered together rather than separately, the impacts of globalization and climate change have the potential to amplify benefi ts and losses to the winners and l osers respectively. It is noteworthy that these two scholars are geographers; at geography’s epistemological core is an interdisciplinary approach which synthesizes ideas from the social sciences and environmental sciences. Teasing out the reciprocal consequences of economic globalization and climate change on food security and the agricultural sector is a good example of how to engage a creative synthesis of concepts and research methods that cut across the natural sciences and the social sciences. Th e Caribbean region of SIDS has felt the full force of double expo- sure over the last 25 years, and so is an ideal arena for empirical research on the impacts of global change. It is equally noteworthy that much of the Caribbean-based research which uses the lens of double exposure was pioneered by geographers based at the Department of Geography and Geology at the UWI, Mona Campus. Several contributions in this vol- ume are representative of this new wave of geographical research and its focus on sustainable livelihoods, livelihood coping strategies, adaptive capacity, and livelihood resilience, among other things. Th ey are based on rigorous ethnographic research methodologies that generated rich primary data and involved long hours of painstaking fi eld work and resi- dence in a local community. Mixed-methods approaches allow for the tri- angulation of results from quantitative and qualitative data. All the above are the hallmark of some excellent doctoral research included in the vol- ume and which I have had the pleasure and privilege of supervising.
Description:The list of books you might like
