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Re-examining pathways to smallholder food security and the transformative potential of agroecology: A case study from Malawi

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dc.contributor.authorMadsen, Sidney
dc.contributor.chairBezner Kerr, Rachel
dc.contributor.committeeMemberGomez, Miguel I.
dc.date.accessioned2020-06-23T17:58:32Z
dc.date.available2021-01-17T07:00:58Z
dc.date.issued2019-12
dc.description139 pages
dc.description.abstractBased on interviews with small farmers in Malawi, I find that the current framing of food security in scientific literature reproduces discursive assumptions, presupposing farmers’ problems and aspirations in a way that privileges production outputs for income generation as the solution to hunger. These assumptions limited the analytic power of theorized pathways to explain the mechanisms behind the way that farmers interviewed were moving towards food security. I argue instead that altering social and ecological relations of production, by which I mean control over land, labor, and farming inputs, are at least as important for smallholders’ access to stable, adequate food as improvements in production outputs. Agroecology does much more to transform these relations than other agricultural paradigms, yet because of the analytical limitations of food security as a discourse, these “social and ecological pathways” to food security are overlooked. This exclusion matters because when core pathways remain invisible, the potential of paradigms like sustainable intensification to jeopardize food security by actively undermining these pathways goes unrecognized. I propose that food sovereignty provides a better narrative for understanding what matters for Malawian smallholders’ food security, and the factors at play behind agricultural transitions to food security in many smallholders’ contexts.
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.7298/z268-qm15
dc.identifier.otherMadsen_cornell_0058O_10735
dc.identifier.otherhttp://dissertations.umi.com/cornell:10735
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/69990
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 International
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectagroecology
dc.subjectfarm-level pathways
dc.subjectfood security
dc.subjectfood sovereignty
dc.subjectproduction relations
dc.titleRe-examining pathways to smallholder food security and the transformative potential of agroecology: A case study from Malawi
dc.typedissertation or thesis
dcterms.licensehttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/59810
thesis.degree.disciplineDevelopment Sociology
thesis.degree.grantorCornell University
thesis.degree.levelMaster of Science
thesis.degree.nameM.S., Development Sociology

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