Small Farming and Radical Imaginations in the Caribbean Today

Authors

Tony Weis, The University of Western Ontario

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2007

Volume

49

Issue

2

Journal

Race & Class

First Page

112

Last Page

117

URL with Digital Object Identifier

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/03063968070490020607

Abstract

Forged and still scarred by slavery, Caribbean agricultural landscapes are now being made redundant in an era of global market integration. The demise of preferential trade agreements is exposing the uncompetitiveness of the plantation sector while small farmers, still largely confined to marginal positions within highly inequitable landscapes, are being pushed into a new vulnerability by market integration, as rising food imports flood local markets. Unfortunately, political attention continues to revolve around the ailing plantation sector. In contrast, it is argued here that the current crisis of Caribbean agriculture contains a historic opportunity for restructuring in the interests of the region's small farmers and that, in the process, the sector could be helped to gain a new vitality.