Contemporary dynamics of agrarian change: Second revised edition

The contemporary dynamics of agrarian change is being shaped by the neoliberal corporate global food regime dominated by the agro-industrial capital. It has accelerated processes of concentration of land and capital as well as configuring a new political economy of agrarian change driven by the ‘golden age’ of neoliberal globalisation which may be at a turning point due to the global pandemic of the virus COVID-19. I focus on the following interlinked processes of agrarian change: land grabbing, agriculture’s financialisation, crisis of the peasant economy, and emergence of a precariat. This neoliberal resource seeking and extractivist food regime further marginalises peasant farming as well as furthering the process of precarianisation of rural labour. Hence, the key agrarian question of our times is the problematic of labour as it faces a crisis of reproduction. Although in crisis the peasant family farm household is still holding its own, particularly in the interstices of capitalism, generally marginal areas of poor-quality soils and with limited infrastructure make it unattractive for capital.