SCARP student's and professor's paper on landless farmers

Two women, one a student and one a professor
SCARP PhD Khadija Anjum and SCARP Professor Nora Angeles

SCARP PhD student Khadija Anjum and SCARP Professor Nora Angeles have co-authored a paper in Agriculture and Human Values:

Farm workers’ food security during food price hikes: 

a political economy of landless rice-wheat farm labourers in Pakistan’s Punjab

Anjum is excited to get the word out about this paper, as it has some crucial insights about the plight of landless farm workers.

About their findings

"In this publication, I explore how class structures, caste-based marginalization and poor redistributive measures undermine livelihoods for landless workers despite rising profitability of the commodities they help to produce. Through regression analysis and interviews, I underscore how informal credit systems embedded in “vertical” social network hierarchies both sustain farm workers’ short-term survival but perpetuate long-term indebtedness and wage squeezes, capturing the complexities of local growth and development efforts, especially as farm profits dwindle amid growing urban sprawl and declining yields." 

-Khadija Anjum

Until now, farm workers' wellbeing amid rising commodity prices is poorly studied, and much of the existing literature on this subject draws from simulations of historic data, relying on many simplifying assumptions, and does not specifically focus on farm labor.

Relying on unique survey and interview data gathered from the hard-to-reach population of farm workers, this research underscores challenges, but also opportunities for improving farm worker livelihoods as the prices of the commodities they help to produce rise. 

As main author Khadija Anjum describes:
Woman in classically sculpted stone doorway

Ensuring equitable redistributive impacts of rising commodity prices for farm workers, who have traditionally been at the bottom of the rural class and caste hierarchy, are essential for rural poverty eradication.


Woman in profile

About Khadija Anjum

Anjum's research inquires regard the gendered food security impact of food inflation and food security for low-income groups. Her professional career has included roles in the development and academic sectors.

Woman in profile

About Nora Angeles

Angeles' research regards community/international development studies and social policy, participatory planning/governance, participatory action research, and the politics of transnational feminist networks, women’s movements and agrarian issues, particularly in Southeast Asia.

The full article
 

  • Research and projects
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