Rural Agriculture and the Cities

Loss and Resilience in Rural-Urban Transformations

What do recipes have to do with the transformation of rural agriculture? Many small farmers in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America face formidable economic and health challenges as they move closer to cities and sometimes find their small holdings gobbled up by agribusiness. Yet smallholder farmers in Huánuco, Peru, have developed other ways for their agricultural production to supply food to Lima that is more environmentally sustainable, nutritious and socially accessible. We have been collaborating with nutrition investigators from Peru’s Instituto de Investigación Nutricional (IIN) in a pilot study of the everyday food recipes among the many Huánuco farmers that have migrated to periurban Lima.

This work with in-migrants in periurban Lima is building on our analysis of their quotidian recipes in their rural home communities that we are undertaking in a project with network-biodiversity colleague Christian Leclerc at the French Center for International Agriculture and Development (CIRAD). By constructing comparisons, we are determining how immigrant recipes and food diversity fare in comparison to their counterparts in rural Huánuco—and we’ve also examining what happens to this food biodiversity when farmers migrate internationally. And, in another project to bridge these gaps, we’re taking a look at the type of seeds farmers use. But first, a bit of background on the trends that are affecting these local farmers.

Powerful national and global forces that run through cities are transforming rural agriculture in Latin America . For large-scale industrial farming, cities are the hubs for national and global commodity and capital markets, agribusiness and food-system organizations, investors, policymakers, input vendors and supply chains, food processors and technology developers that include increasing digital and AI components. These influences channel both the ongoing globalization of Latin America’s industrial agriculture and the decline of smallholder agriculture and farm employment. Indeed, farming now makes up only half of rural employment. Marginalization and poverty are intensely concentrated, with extreme poverty now approximately three times higher among rural residents.

At the same time, the struggles of Latin America’s small farmers—more formally known as smallholder agriculturalists—are set in the matrix of ongoing rural-urban transformations. As individuals, families and communities, these campesinos, minifundistas, pequeños agricultores, and piqueros seek to survive and better their livelihoods amid accelerated rural-urban interactions. Unable to make a living, many—usually former smallholders—migrate to the cities. This propels the rapidly expanding territories of periurban spaces, also known as urban peripheries, which have proliferated throughout Latin America. Compared to a few decades ago, the population of cities and extensive periurban spaces in Latin America is estimated to increase by more than one-third, reaching more than 600 million people by 2030.

The proliferating influence of cities on rural agricultural areas in Latin America is suggested in academic ideas such as “planetary urbanism” and “globalized countryside.”  Indeed, “Globalization and the Rural Environment” was already the title of a Harvard-DRCLAS conference (and a subsequent book) more than twenty years ago. Though still influential, the catch terms omit reference to the agency and influence of struggling smallholders in the rapidly evolving rural-urban matrix. In Latin America, these often-overlooked groups encompass both the smallholders active in rural agriculture and the recent out-migrants. While the latter now mostly survive as periurban inhabitants, they remain tightly connected to rural agriculture through family and social networks. This spectrum of smallholder groups is increasingly engaged in such issues as food sovereignty, food and nutrition security, and utilizing agroecology and the biodiversity of food and farming systems (agrobiodiversity).

I want to take a close look at the predominant trends of hardship and loss among the rural, smallholder agriculturalists near urban areas in Latin America. I’ll focus on key examples of emerging survival and livelihood strategies among near-urban rural agriculturalists. The examples are drawn from ongoing research on the agroecology and agrobiodiversity of rural-urban interactions of smallholder households, families and social networks in Huánuco and Lima, Peru, as well as Cochabamba, Bolivia. The usefulness of agroecology and agrobiodiversity to rural smallholder farming and foods in the expansive rural-urban matrix illustrates a series of evolving elements of resilient smallholder farming and food systems.

 Predominant Trends in PeriUrban Spaces 

The emergent trends of Latin America’s rural agriculture reflect the global influence of rapidly expanding cities and especially their periurban areas. The latter’s spatial growth— by about 39,000 square miles in recent decades—results in the continued widespread reduction of near-urban farmland. Brazil and Argentina rank among the five or so highest countries worldwide with the largest expansion of periurban spaces. Other Latin American countries, including Peru and Bolivia, show a similar trend of farmland loss due to periurban expansion. This loss has concentrated among small-scale agriculturalists who engage in cash-cropping such as vegetable, fruit, dairy and other market specializations. Often as much as one-quarter or one-third of this smallholder production supplies home food consumption. Other predominant trends are the multi-faceted deterioration of soil, water and biotic quality as near-urban rural areas increasingly become the scenes of real estate development, speculation and sprawling settlements. This increased urbanization and loss of farmlands means that animals and plants lose their homes; they can thrive amidst small-scale agriculture but are threatened by its spatial contraction.

Paired aerial images of Huánuco, Peru, between 1994 (left ) and 2024 (right) (Google Earth). The periurban area has expanded in all directions.

Trajectories of Near-Urban Rural Agriculture

Located beyond periurban perimeters, near-urban rural agriculture is the site of ongoing struggles that offer representative examples of recent and new trajectories of change. The smallholder farmers in rural areas around the city of Huánuco in central Peru are among the more than thirty peasant communities (Comunidades Campesinas) with whom my collaborators and I have worked. Through projects before and after the Covid-19 pandemic, these Peruvian smallholders shared with us their strategies to survive as marginalized communities. 

Peru’s pandemic mortality and government lockdown policies were among the highest and most severe in Latin America. Main survival strategies of rural smallholder farmers in near-urban spaces during the pandemic’s peak period depended on the pronounced increase of local barter to improve food diversity, engaging in smallholder farmer-based home food delivery, and the increased prevalence of cooking in groups extending beyond individual households (ollas comunes). In the contexts of Covid-19 health impacts and Peruvian government pandemic policies, these survival strategies relied heavily on local agrobiodiversity. Such “survival agrobiodiversity” in the rural areas near cities was distinctly vital and clearly distinguishable from the distant rural areas and the urban centers where different strategies prevailed.

Karl Zimmerer interviews a smallholder farmer in January 2023 about her experiences and survival strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic (Huánuco, Peru).

Through their livelihoods and landscapes, the rural agriculturalists in near-urban Huánuco (urban population circa 200,000) are contrasting yet also intricately connected to the megacity of Lima (urban population  more than10 million) on the Pacific coast of Peru. Huánuco smallholders have engaged in a gamut of intensified interactions to and from Lima. At the pandemic’s onset, for example, an unprecedent wave of return migrants (retornantes) from Lima to rural Huánuco communities distinguished these flows. More generally, the flows from Huánuco have featured extensive cash-cropping of potatoes for the Lima market during both the pre- and post-pandemic periods. Smallholder producers to the east of Huánuco city specialize in growing papa amarilla (“yellow potatoes”), a classic ingredient in Lima’s renowned ceviche dishes. Unfortunately, this production of papa amarilla incurs the double disadvantage of high dosages of expensive, health-jeopordizing agrochemicals and regularly low selling prices.

Our initial results illustrate multiple food-procurement strategies of the huánuqueño/a immigrants in periurban Lima. Many manage to increase the diversity of their food recipes through their new periurban-based socioeconomic networks that combine diverse open-air markets, stores and rural-urban sharing though food shipments referred to as encomiendas that are frequently sent from Huánuco. We are trying to understand and support their healthy everyday recipes through community initiatives as an alternative to food programs potentially promoting poorly suited foods lacking in quality and diversity.

Recounting everyday recipes and food-nutrition security in an interview with a rural immigrant in periurban Lima who engages in reciprocal relations and food=sharing with rural family members and others in her rural community (January 2023)

In another project, we want to strengthen rural agricultural and food resilience that is associated with the use of farmer’s seed systems (FSS)—also known as informal seed systems or local seed systems—that yield multiple benefits and show surprising trends. FSS are essential to rural agriculture in Latin America since they provide quality seeds at a significantly lower cost than the certified or formal seed sold in the United States, Canada, and Europe. In addition, FSS furnish the planting material for a vastly larger array of diverse food varieties and species than certified seeds. Widespread FSS thus underpin food agrobiodiversity. Our results show that the rate of FSS utilization is extremely high—typically greater than 80% of rural agriculturalists—in the countries of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia.

In addition, our results reveal that FSS is highest in the rural areas located near urban areas, declining by two percent of FSS utilization with each 62 miles of distance from the nearest major city. This result is surprising and important since urbanization’s impact on rural agriculture is regularly assumed to be negative. Higher near-urban FSS utilization relies on concentrated small-town market centers with FSS vendors and surrounding rural FSS-generating farm communities.

Bulk amounts of potato seed tubers being loaded in a near-urban rural town in Cochabamba, Bolivia. These represent the extensive utilization of Farmer Seed Systems (FSS) for reason of their offering quality seed that is dependably available at low cost compared to certified or formal seed.

A final pair of examples is associated with smallholder agriculturalists of Latin America for whom international migration has become integral to livelihood strategies. Here, the first project underway is focused on the potential impacts of international migration on the quality and diversity of rural food in ways that can contribute to food and nutrition security. We have been working with rural agriculturalists in the Valle Alto (Valle Alto) near the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, where the members of most smallholder families have long migrated internationally. Prior to 1990, when initiating research there with Cochabamba collaborators Luis Rojas and Teresa Hosse (recently deceased), these smallholders migrated mostly to Buenos Aires.

Subsequently, this smallholder migration has shifted to the United States, Spain and elsewhere. In a long-term project, we have examined how the food and beverage biodiversity produced in near-urban rural agriculture has persisted partially albeit to a significant degree. This persistence has occurred amid the cascading rural changes of widespread migration, common cash cropping and new irrigation technology. Modern technology such as a dam and concrete-lined canals recently replaced an ancient and highly sustainable system known as spate irrigation that had existed for at least 1200 years. It had channeled floodwater flows from the upper water watershed into an intricate web of  canals that were regularly adjusted to water and sediment conditions. Contrary to initial expectations, the production and consumption of all 10 local maize varieties—a sizeable proportion of renowned Andean maize biodiversity critical to local food and nutrition security—has been resilient amid these major development-related changes.

The rural-based farm families and communities of international migrants spur the vitality of this maize biodiversity and its conservation in Bolivia. They have continued to value, cultivate and consume the full suite of diverse maize varieties in a remarkable array of foods and beverages. The latter include, but are not limited to, the locally prized chicha—made from sprouted and fermented maize of certain varieties combined with flavorings and colorants of other maize varieties. Most recently, our work is turning to the crucial role of community resource management (“commoning”) that enables the production and consumption of food biodiversity in these near-urban rural communities. Here we are paying special attention to how the commoning and reciprocity of specific rural resources (land, water, seed) have historically evolved and persisted, with the goal of strengthening the capacities of commoning to support food and nutrition security for small- and medium-scale farmers.

Smallholders’ continued cultivation of unique varieties of Andean maize in a near-urban rural area outside Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Finally, changes in small- and medium-scale agriculture of rural agriculture of Latin America are also being etched in extra-regional landscapes. With colleagues in Spain, I was able to include a science-and-policy research focus on groups of immigrant farmworker in a three-year project on current, near-urban rural and periurban agriculture. Immigrant farmworkers from Bolivia have become essential to Spain’s agriculture. Bolivian men and women immigrants from rural agricultural communities—including several places in Cochabamba referred to above—have revitalized Granada’s asparagus- and garlic-growing through their Andean and Latin American local knowledges ranging from soil-management, such as wachu soil-mounding techniques, to labor organization, such as farmworker groups (cuadrillos). The survival struggles of these immigrant Latin American farmworkers in Spain, as elsewhere, are also displayed in near-invisible cultivation spaces, even a few rows in farm owners’ field. These provide home-grown food, valued ingredients and a small but important contributions to food and nutrition security.

Smallholder Agriculture in Rural-Urban Sustainability 

Rural-urban flows of many diverse products, people, technology and investment propel major trends in Latin America’s rural agriculture. Subject to intensifying rural poverty, displacement, and dispossession, smallholder agriculturalists confront cascading survival challenges that are vivid in the near-urban rural areas. Recent smallholder survival strategies hinge on food production and consumption in near-urban rural areas. These examples offer potential seeds for strengthening awareness, social movements, policies and much-needed transformations toward justice-based sustainable development in the rural smallholder agriculture of Latin America.

Karl Zimmerer, the 2016 DRCLAS Custer Visiting Scholar, is a professor of environment-society geography (https://www.geog.psu.edu/directory/karl-zimmerer) and director of the GEOSyntheSES collaboratory (https://zimmerergeosyntheses.psu.edu/) at Pennsylvania State University.

Recipe research analysis was supported by the 2022-2023 Visiting Scientist Fellowship of the MAK’IT Program (Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions) at the University of Montpellier, France. Special thanks to Christian Leclerc at DDSE-AGAP-CIRAD and Krysty Meza and Hilary Creed-Kanashiro at IIN-Lima for recipe research collaborations and to Patrick Caron, MAK’IT director, for encouragement and interest in its policy value.

Full versions of other research in this article are published as open-access in the journals Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene (2023), Geoforum (2022), One Earth (2021), Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems – Agroecology (2022), Journal of Latin American Geography (2020), Ecology and Society (2014), Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (2013), and Global Environmental Change (2011).