• Northern industrial models of agrarian development ignore the people most affected  

Across the Global South, colonial and post-colonial development applies industrial organisational models used in advanced capitalist countries to agriculture. This results in the dominance of corporate capitalism and the financial monopoly of agriculture, involving the massive loss of arable land, disintegration of labour and violation of nature, threatening food sovereignty and agro-economic sustainability. But this neoliberal model of agrarian development that doesn’t take into account who’s affected and how they make a living. To address these questions, we need to see development from the perspective of the “agrarian South”, not simply the “Global South”, because that’s the perspective that affects the majority of people. Subsistence farming remains central to survival in the Global South, and society depends on it.  

• Gendered labour is a crucial but overlooked aspect of agricultural and social sustainability 

Models of capitalist development depend on gendered inequality. Where the state doesn’t offer social support and capitalism doesn’t guarantee workers a minimal wage, people’s survival depends on how much of the burden can be borne by households and gendered labour – the condition of reliance on unwaged family labour. Feminist economists have been highlighting this for over 40 years, yet states and markets are not responding, despite an increasingly challenging context. Land enclosure remains ongoing, populations living in poverty are growing rapidly in the Global South, and shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic cause large-scale migrations of labour that has become surplus to capitalism’s requirements. What happens to these people is an urgent question in the Global South. This context leaves households as the institution for social reproduction and social care – with women’s labour at their core.  

• Persistent patterns of identity set by colonial capitalism need dismantling 

Gender inequality emerged during the growth of capitalism under colonialism. Colonists sought to minimise or eliminate natural similarities among the colonised, so they could not identify as a race. This led to the emergence of ethnicity, caste and gender identities. These differences are now internal to people formerly colonised, persisting beyond the heavy hand of the colonising state – a problem that must be addressed. The unequal terms on which colonies were incorporated into the global political economy endure today, leading agrarian scholars from the developing world to argue that industrial development in the Global South can’t take place without addressing the liberation of people’s land and resources. People in the Global South lack sufficient control over their resources to make decisions. Instead, monopoly capitalism prevents progress in terms of gender relations, environmental sustainability and post-colonial autonomy. 

• Development models mask deep inequalities, but we need to adapt them to address people’s struggle for survival 

Contemporary models of capitalist development mask deep inequalities, including those based on gender. Gendered labour is inherent to questions of both land and society, yet contemporary development models mask this deep inequality. In capitalist developing countries, non-capitalist institutions such as kinship support agrarian livelihoods, but are harmed because capitalism still relies on expropriation of land and labour, and sees as irrelevant any “surplus population” that is not productive. Yet the question of how to support everyone remains. For many people, every productive activity is now a mere act of survival. Development models must address this political question of survival, rather than just being concerned with capitalist accumulation. Society must take care of those unable to take care of themselves, even in the most neo-liberal of states – as shown by the political responses demanded by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

• Agrarian reforms are urgently needed in the Global South, because land is vital to people’s survival – with significant gender impacts  

Worldwide, the contribution of agriculture to GDP has decreased, and governments and global institutions view agricultural issues as solved. But this is more than a macro-economic question: it’s a social question. Most households in the Global South depend on a combination of wages, state subsidies and subsistence farming. In Kenya, for example, during the Covid lockdown, the government knew it needed to allow rural families to send sacks of food to their urban kin. The subsistence economy kicked in when the market shut down and the state was unable to respond. Under neo-liberalism, the state isn’t a factor in welfare and doesn’t take care of people surplus to capitalism’s requirements. Development theories must evolve to address the resulting deep inequality and reliance on gendered labour. Agrarian reforms are urgently needed in the Global South, where land is vital to the survival of millions of households, so that society sustains not just the population needed for capitalist production, but supports everyone.