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Geography & Environment Publications
Small Farming and Radical Imaginations in the Caribbean Today
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.