<p>This dissertation challenges dominant food security discourses and practices that seek to address food insecurity through technoscientific approaches to agricultural production. Situated in Vietnam’s An Giang province in the Mekong River Delta, this work ethnographically explores and historically grounds global, national, and household scalar implications of these same discourses and practices on rice farmers’ livelihoods. The central research question that guided this project asks: if farmers are producing security for the nation, then why do they remain food insecure? Through a 16-month ethnographic study utilizing a mixed-methods approach I combined participant observation, household surveys, semi-structured interviews, and participatory mapping with rice farmers, farm laborers, and local and national government officials in order to address this question from a historically and ethnographically ground perspective. I show how Vietnam’s history of hunger and famine, experienced most recently in the late 1970’s, colors the nation’s current and future agricultural development. Focused on a future of rural development, economic growth, and values of modernity, new models of agricultural production are implemented across the Mekong River Delta to ensure the nation’s self-sufficiency in producing “enough” rice and food. Amongst these strategies, intensive triple cropping rice practices, food safety certifications and practices, and an increased reliance on agro-chemicals has resulted in differing farming practices and mixed impacts on farming livelihoods. I leverage a feminist political ecology and science and technology studies framework to foreground the rice farmers’ perspectives and differed experiences, while tracking the rooted inequalities within government policies, market logics, and social relationships. In three articles, I (1) examine differential experiences of state-based agricultural models and their impact on farmers’ livelihood security (2) trace how dominant discourses raise questions about individual and state responsibility; and (3) explore emergent farming livelihood opportunities and challenges within late socialist agricultural development. Drawing on ethnographic accounts and experiences, particularly from farmers, results showed that these dominant discourses that narrows food security to only be governable through techno-scientific approaches and agricultural practices are insufficient to address farmers’ insecurity.</p>

<p>Since time immemorial, agricultural changes in the Philippines have been inspired by the notion of self-sufficiency projected by developed and industrial countries. Through ethnographic writing and historical analysis, I visit the outcomes of the Green Revolution and how the development of new agricultural technology escalated violence embedded in communities that experienced multiple colonialism. These acknowledged and disclaimed forms of violence are perpetuated by occurring negotiations between community actors, primarily the landed and landless farmers, living in the context of precarity.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-five farmers (aged 20 – 85), who mostly cultivated on borrowed land. I argue that in a post-colonial town like Nabua, the socio-cultural and socio-economic factors involved in farming do not coincide with the Philippine government’s plans for agricultural development and progress. These ethnographic essays investigate how colonial legacies manifest and perpetuate violence locally by examining Nabua’s historical experience with multiple colonialism, the outcomes of persisting precarity, and agricultural developments. In the first chapter, I contextualize precarity by analyzing the history of change from the Spanish colonial period to the peak of the Green Revolution, cruising through how national policies manifest in agricultural developments at the local level. For the second chapter, I dive into the present-day farming situation in Nabua and how violence and precarity are perpetuated by the national government’s agricultural development master plan. I conclude with a call to localize agricultural development and address local challenges to attain sustainable and progressive agricultural development.</p>