Ploughing Up the Farm

Neoliberalism, Modern Technology and the State of the World’s Farmers

Jerry Buckland

Ploughing Up the Farm brings together an impressive array of evidence to show that neoliberalism and modern technology underlie recent trends: rural depopulation in the North, rising rural poverty in the South and environmental problems all around the farming world. Market-driven growth and trade liberalization have encouraged production for agricultural export, and the growing use of chemical inputs are often biased against Third World farmers and small farmers everywhere. Jerry Buckland calls for farm policies founded on farmer-led food security and a democratization of the global institutions that have had detrimental effects on the world’s farmers.

Jerry Buckland’s book is a tour de force. It presents a comprehensive analysis of problems facing global agriculture, of the perverse workings of the market and corporatization in this sector and suggests possible solutions for sustainable agriculture with a human face. —John Loxley, author of Alternative Budgets and former Chair of the North-South Institute

A thorough and illuminating examination of the farming crisis is long overdue. Jerry Buckland … tackles complex economic and political questions with a wealth of evidence and convincing logic. His argument for a re-visioning of food policies in the context of healthy societies and environments is compelling and should be compulsory reading for policy makers.—Barbara Dinham, Director, Pesticide Action Network UK

Contents

• Foreword (Pat Mooney, ETC Group)
• The Declining State of the World’s Farmers 
• Farm Erosion: Population, Poverty and Environment 
• The Farm Market Squeeze 
• Farm Trade and Trade Liberalization 
• The Technology Treadmill 
• A Farmer-Led Approach to Food Security 
• Bibliography 
• Glossary 
• Appendices

About the Author

Jerry Buckland is Associate Professor of International Development Studies at Menno Simons College, University of Winnipeg. Buckland’s academic background is in Economics and International Development Studies. His interests and teaching areas include micro-financial services and poverty, rural development and food security, non-governmental organizations and community development, Bangladesh development.

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