Agricultural commercialization in the Mekong region: A meta-narrative review and policy implications

ABSTRACT

Agricultural commercialization has been a development focus in the Mekong region for several decades, resulting in varying outcomes. In response to competing claims and policy advice, this meta-narrative review not only examines the literature on the impacts of agricultural commercialization in the Mekong on local livelihoods, but also investigates the research traditions that shape the conceptualization of the research topics, study design, and recommended solutions. We explore narratives from three research traditions, namely the neoclassical, Marxian political economy, and neopopulist approaches. On the whole, the neoclassical literature finds positive impacts on household incomes and thus contributes to reducing poverty; the Marxian political economy tradition finds that capitalist development in agriculture creates and deepens social differentiation through which certain groups may benefit while others are negatively impacted; lastly, the neopopulist perspective finds negative impacts compared to previous, traditional livelihoods. The ideological premises informing these studies and implications for policy are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Agricultural commercialization
• Mekong
• meta-narrative review
• neoclassical
• Marxian political economy
• neopopulist

Acknowledgments

This was supported by the Mekong Region Land Governance project (http://mrlg.org). MRLG is a project of the Government of Switzerland, through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), with co-financing from the Government of Germany and the Government of Luxembourg. MRLG is jointly implemented by Land Equity International (LEI) and GRET - Professionals for Fair Development. The views, opinions and claims in this publication are those of the authors. They should not be interpreted as representing the official or unofficial views or positions of SDC, Germany or Luxembourg.

We thank two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the quality of this paper. This work was supported by the Mekong Region Land Governance project (MRLG). MRLG is a project of the Government of Switzerland, through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), with co-financing from the Government of Germany and the Government of Luxembourg.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. RAMSES: Realist And MEta-narrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards.

2. See acknowledgements for funding details.

3. For a comprehensive and authoritative discussion of ‘critical agrarian studies,’ see Borras (2023).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Mekong Region Land Governance project Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Government of Germany Government of Luxembourg.