ABSTRACT

The Practice of Food Sovereignty and Buen Vivir in Ecuador’s Sierra Region

by

Clayton Frederick

Ecuadorian member organizations of the transnational social movement La Vía Campesina won legal recognition of the state’s responsibility to guarantee one of their central demands, food sovereignty, or the people’s right to determine their agri-food systems and the extent to which this right can be exercised, in that country’s 2008 constitution and 2009 food sovereignty law. These victories came after decades of uprisings by rural and indigenous social movements resulted in the election in 2006 of Ecuador’s populist president, Rafael Correa, who denounced neoliberalism and made the alternative development paradigm of buen vivir (or “living well,” from the Kichwa sumak kawsay) a central part of his Citizen’s Revolution. Academic literature in the wake of these developments has focused on the ideas of plurinationality and ecologically sustainable development embodied in the concept of buen vivir (Davalos 2009, Escobar 2010, Cobey 2012, Oviedo 2014), analysis of state-social movement interaction in institutionalizing the food sovereignty policy regime (Peña 2013), and participation in this process by urban consumer movements (Van Ongeval 2012).

Nevertheless, research into the praxis of food sovereignty and buen vivir by rural communities themselves remains limited. In order to address the dearth in academic literature on these topics and investigate the gap between food sovereignty in principle and in practice, this project takes an action research approach to investigate practices of food sovereignty in three communities of the Sierra region of Ecuador. Specifically, the questions of 1) how practices of food sovereignty mesh with or contradict state policy and social movement rhetoric, 2) how such practices inform the notion of buen vivir as an alternative development strategy, and 3) the extent to which an action researcher can contribute to the food sovereignty of the communities being studied are addressed. These are addressed via the researcher’s participant observation at the invitation of each community as a participant on a multicultural exchange program sponsored by the Quito-based NGO Huayra Causay, for whom the researcher interned for a period of six months.

The study finds positive outcomes such as mobilization for grassroots land reform, collaboration with multinational NGOs for targeted investment in irrigation infrastructure and the creation of community governance for its oversight, and partnership with municipal governments to promote rural producer’s associations with direct marketing opportunities such as farmer’s markets. However, significant obstacles still remain, such as contradictory policy, high rate of return conditionality for state investment, and intransigence of the national assembly in the participatory legislative process for food sovereignty, making the notion of buen vivir a still-distant ideal for the communities studied.

There exists only a handful of empirical studies on B Corps, and even fewer on benefit corporations, yet understanding how social entrepreneurs wield these forms is an important area to continue investigating considering their rapid adoption. Though often used interchangeably, the two terms refer to different things: the benefit corporation is a legal entity (akin to a C Corp, LLC, etc.) designed to institutionalize a multi-stakeholder approach to business and more rigid transparency requirements, and B Corps are companies that have been certified by B Lab—the nonprofit behind the whole movement—as meeting certain social and environmental standards. Benefit corporations only explicitly exist in the U.S. and Italy, however there have been significant efforts to pass legislation in Australia, Argentina, Canada, Chile, and Colombia. B Corps, on the other hand, have spread all around the world, and B Lab now has an Asian headquarters in Taiwan, an East African headquarters in Kenya, and a European headquarters in Amsterdam.

Both of these forms have arisen in response to the dominance of shareholder-value-driven capitalism, which was born in the U.S. but has since spread to many areas of the world by way of Washington Consensus-style economic reforms. Despite its prevalence, there is growing dissatisfaction with the model’s inability to address non-commercial objectives. Previous efforts to reconstitute corporate models in order to serve multiple functions (e.g. CSR, ethical certifications, triple bottom line approaches) have tended to run afoul of market pressures whereby competition in product, capital, and labor markets—coupled with the primacy of shareholder value—relegate the non-commercial functions to a secondary status. The benefit corporation and the B Corp were conceived as a direct response to these problems. This study asks whether and how they help provide committed social entrepreneurs the space they require to pursue their social goals (the wider problem of preventing strictly commercial companies masquerading as socially conscious businesses is beyond the scope of this project).

This research set out to explore the experiences of early adopters of the benefit corporation in order to understand how the legal form might impact a company “on the ground.” However, since many of this study’s participants were also B Corps, the findings that resulted have a great deal to do with B Corps, as well. The study consists of 12 semi-structured interviews with founders, CEOs, general counsels, and executives of benefit corporations over the course of 3 months. Interviews focused primarily on how being a benefit corporation impacts funding and how, if at all, it impacts a company’s day-to-day operations. Two primary hypotheses resulted, which both can be better understood by applying the economic notions of signaling and screening: (1) being a benefit corporation acts as a screening mechanism to help founders find better alignment with “traditional” investors and (2) being a benefit corporation does not significantly change behavior or encourage internal and horizontal accountability, but being a B Corp does. The latter hypothesis is strengthened by explaining how being a B Corp acts as a signal during the hiring process, and how combining it with a screen may make the development of a strong internal accountability mechanism more likely.

These findings have significant relevance for social entrepreneurs who are considering becoming either a benefit corporation or a B Corp (or both), as well as for legislators and investors.

This paper provides an empirical and theoretical analysis of theft from opaque food subsidy schemes in developing economies. Some 48% of the subsidized rice distributed in the Philippines in 2006 does not show up in household surveys. Pilferage is suspected, and we introduce several new robustness tests that rule out alternative interpretations of this …nding. We argue that …finding pilferage in an opaque system does not simply imply that redistribution is costly, as the literature has recognized. It also implies that reducing the amount of product pushed into the distribution system should reduce pilferage one-for-one, and that such reductions and transparency improvements should unambiguously improve consumer and taxpayer welfare. In contrast, reductions in the price subsidy may not be welfare enhancing.

The literature on wage inequality in liberalizing developing economies has largely attributed rising skill premiums to trade-induced increases in the demand for skilled labor within "sectors" (industries, occupations, or industry-occupation pairs). Although there is strong evidence from many countries of trade-induced increases in skill demand within manufacturing, we show that in Mexico, the most studied country in this literature, economy-wide increases in college premium can be explained without reference to these demand shifts. Evidence that skill premiums have increased because of within-sector increases in skill demand mostly comes from decompositions that suppress di¤erences in wages across occupations. We show that this is unduly restrictive, for example if incomes change and Engel curves for services are non-linear. Mexico’s college premiums were lifted by increased demand for professional services, many of which are not directly tradeable. This explanation also reconciles gender di¤erences in the changes in skill premium with changes in employment composition. Job opportunities in non-traded sectors may matter more for wage inequality than trade policy. [JEL: F16, O15, J21]

We argue that parastatal food-distribution organizations are less effective when their agents vary the quality of subsidized food and retail service (henceforth "quality") in response to local market conditions. These actions make assessing need from market signals difficult, hindering the effective allocation of subsidized food. In theory, policies and market conditions can affect outcomes (quality, demand, rationing and pilferage) differently, depending upon how markets for subsidized rice clear. We provide tests to reveal which market clearing mechanism is relevant. Using administrative and household survey data, we …nd evidence of quality variations, pilferage and market clearing through ad-hoc rationing of subsidized rice in the Philippines. Poorer markets and those facing higher rice prices do not receive more subsidized rice, but do appear to receive lower quality service and smaller rations. This may explain why the nationwide incidence of hunger rose with rice prices in poorer areas during 2003-2007 despite costly subsidies. We recommend explicit rationing rules, increased transparency regarding rice allotments and measured reductions in the amount of subsidized rice distributed.

Globalization and neoliberal policy shifts have increased market volatility and eroded farmers’ safety nets in India, leading to the world’s largest farmer protests in 2020-2021. Two interrelated trends accompany these shifts: a rapid exit of men from agriculture and intensifying climate change effects. As a result, India, like several other parts of the world, has been experiencing a feminization of farm operation. In the context of an increasingly hostile agricultural landscape, this dissertation explores the implications of an expanded control over agrarian land for female farmers, especially in climate vulnerable districts of India.This research employs a mixed-methods approach. For the qualitative segment of my research, I conducted 45 focus groups with 583 women farmers as well as 18 semi-structured interviews with journalists, NGO representatives, government officials, and farmers in five climate vulnerable districts (Chitrakoot, Parbhani, Beed, Dharashiv, and Latur). These districts have three types of male exit from agriculture: outmigration, farmer suicides, and a greater focus on nonagricultural activities in the village. I supplement my qualitative fieldwork insights with my own survey administered to 300 farm households in Chitrakoot and an econometric analysis of 9698 rural cultivator households using the nationally representative India Human Development Survey 2 (IHDS 2) for external validity. This dissertation has three key findings. First, female headed farmer households tend to be negatively selected: they are less wealthy and own smaller areas of land than male headed farmer households. Second, land (both quantity and quality) is an extremely important determinant of women’s farming experiences and significantly mediates women’s access to and use of other complementary agricultural inputs such as water, labor, and capital. Third, patriarchal norms exacerbate negative selection issues and further reduce female farmers’ access to vital agricultural inputs such as labor and water. Therefore, while a vast literature outlines the benefits of land rights for female empowerment, I argue that the circumstances under which land rights are received matter (type of male exit, land characteristics, patriarchal norms, and climate change). Feminization of farm operation grants women farmers operating or ownership rights to agrarian land but because of the above factors, the women I study are not necessarily better-off as a result of these land rights. My research also advocates for a more gender sensitive agricultural policy approach that takes into account restrictive socio-cultural norms that women farmers face as well as the need to design policies tailored to the socio-economic background of the woman farmer instead of treating women farmers as a homogeneous group.

Networks as a distinctive organizational logic have been widely studied at several analytical levels and from a variety of theoretical perspectives since the 1990s. While previous research has highlighted network structural characteristics that benefit or constrain individual organizations, there has been less attention to the influence of different network processes. This thesis aims to better understand what process patterns of an interorganizational network generate most added value for individual organizations. Through an exploratory case study of the TechSoup Global Network, a technology-oriented civil society partnership, the research combines network structural characteristics with network processes to explain where the network value is located, what the types of network value are, and how these different types of network value are delivered. The research consists of 23 semi-structured interviews with the TechSoup Global Network partner NGOs over the course of three months. Interviews were broadly structured in accordance with three initially hypothesized value-addition processes: coordination of joint actions, access to organizational resources, exchanges of information and knowledge. Data collected from the interviews were coded and subsequently mapped to a list of pertinent conceptual frameworks regarding network value and value-addition mechanisms including social capital, structural holes, network closure, and transaction costs economics. Results indicated that network value in the TechSoup Global Network case mostly stemmed from coordination of joint actions on a global scale, as opposed to access to organizational resources or exchanges of information and knowledge. The processes of efficient joint actions, which required transaction costs to be reduced, in turn activated the structural advantages of the network. Specifically, joint actions enabled network actors to bridge across structural holes between nonredundant groups of organizations across borders and sectors; these collaborations also created value by providing a certain level of network closure in the forms of trust and interconnectedness and serving as a signal of organizational credibility and capability. Furthermore, this case study demonstrated network value added not only from weaving ties within the boundaries of the network but also from establishing connections with third parties and beyond. Conceptually, this research enhances our understanding of the interplay among network processes, structural features, and network outcomes while providing further evidence for Burt’s 2000 assumption that brokerage across structural holes is the source of added value whereas network closure contributes to realizing the value buried in these structural holes. From a practical standpoint, these findings have significant relevance for professionals working with global interorganizational networks in the civic sector: jointly implementing projects at the network level can activate certain structural advantages that are critical to the success of a network partnership.

In May of 1990, the Marxist state of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) and the tribal-military polity of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) unified to form the Republic of Yemen. However, this unification of physical borders also engendered the clash of legal and ideological borderlands of the two states. Soon, questions over the proper allocation of resources and distribution of power throughout the former regions emerged as well as questions over the role of non-government actors in the decision-making processes and the role of women in the newly unified Yemeni state. The unification period of Yemen (1989-1995) thus became a period of great change, struggle, and compromise. This study focuses on the story of Yemeni women before, during, and after this period.

It attempts to do this by focusing on two dimensions of Yemeni women’s experience during this period: (1) the evolution of their legal rights and their consequential de jure marginalization and (2) women’s de facto (dis)empowerment as experience on the ground throughout the country’s twenty governorates and capital city Sana’a. In order to explore these dimensions thoroughly, this study uses a multi-methodological approach. It is rooted in both qualitative (legal analysis) and quantitative (regression analysis) methodologies.

This thesis explores the first of these dimensions by analyzing the constitutions and family laws of the former YAR, the former PDRY, the unified Republic of Yemen, and the amended legal codes of the unified Republic of Yemen post the 1994 Civil War. I argue that after the victory of the former YAR in the 1994 Civil War, the YAR’s patriarchal legal vision of family law prevailed. This ultimately contributed to the deterioration of the legal rights of Yemeni women, particularly those women coming from the poorer and lower class of Yemeni society.

The study investigates the second dimension by using the 2013 Yemen’s National Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) to (1) measure the well-being of women in the country’s twenty governorates and capital city and (2) understand the effects the varying levels of state presence in each of these governorates has on the welfare of the women living there. Through a regression analysis, this approach allows us to better understand the relationship between state presence and women’s well-being. This, as well as the rich dataset and sample size of the DHS, gives us a glimpse of the de facto (dis)empowerment of Yemeni women throughout the country. The study finds that in almost all dimensions of ‘well-being,’ those women living in regions with greater state presence enjoy greater levels of well-being than those living in regions with less state presence.

Today, Yemen continues to be the poorest country in the Middle East, and the ongoing war has pushed the country to the brink of famine. We know through many studies on gender and development that women and children make up the poorest segment of societies and that women and children often bear the greatest casualties in conflicts and humanitarian crises. Yet, the current literature on Yemen often focuses on issues of counter-terrorism, security, or tribal conflict with little focus on gender. Thus, it is imperative that we expand the literature further to include the stories and experiences of banat al Yaman. This thesis serves as an invitation to further explore the stories of these women

We analyze large nationally representative surveys of the labor force from three developing Asian economies (India, the Philippines and Thailand) at two points in time separated by a decade or more. Secondary and tertiary education attainment rose in the interim while the Mincerian education-wage profile became more convex. We document these shifts, allowing for inter-cohort dynamics. Returns to secondary education fell. Returns to college rose for older workers everywhere and for young workers in India, but fell for young Thais and Filipinos. We develop a new decomposition that permits us to attribute the shifting returns to education to the evolving structure of employment and inter- and intra-industry wage patterns. Secondary returns fell sharply in every sector as secondary-educated workers rapidly became available, while employment structures shifted slowly to absorb them. Conversely, rising returns within modern services were instrumental in lifting the returns to tertiary education. More manufacturing jobs will enable the Philippines to leverage higher growth from its human capital stock. Returns to secondary education in India have come to depend less on the manufacturing sector as manufacturing employment growth has been concentrated in low-skill sub-sectors. The intercohort divergence in returns to college arises in the Philippines and Thailand because excess young college-educated workers are pushed into low-wage or low-return jobs, while older college graduates are more likely to work in modern services. As modern service employment grows slowly, the largest and growing share of services employment has been in low-wage traditional services. From an employment perspective, “services-led development” therefore appears to be a red herring.