Global–local tensions in contract farming of biofuel crops involving indigenous communities in the Philippines

• Main Authors: Montefrio, Marvin Joseph F., Sonnenfeld, David A.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2013
• Subjects: Energy crops; Energy crops industry; Indigenous peoples—Employment—Philippines; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Race and Ethnicity; Work, Economy and Organizations
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/8322
• Institution: De La Salle University

Farming of biofuel crops by local communities under contract with parastatal and private firms is being established in the Philippines and elsewhere. This study explores tensions in integrating indigenous peoples into the global biofuels network. Drawing from critical perspectives on contract farming and from the environmental sociology of networks and flows, we examine production relations associated with contract farming of Jatropha on indigenous lands in the Philippines. In on-site observations and interviews, we found that while some indigenous groups grow Jatropha in polyculture, shifting-cultivation systems as part of biofuel contracts, these smallholder production systems are being phased out or transformed by the global biofuels network. In contract farming relationships involving biofuel crops, there seems to be a greater tendency for indigenous peoples to adapt to, or be left outside of, global production networks than for the latter to include indigenous peoples in socially and ecologically sustainable ways.