Mary Luz Menguita Feranil

Local-global Connections: Gender, Land and Labor: Changing Relations in a Commercial Banana Plantation Mary Luz Menguita Feranil

This book studies the linkages between export agriculture, land reform and gender relations at the local level. It focuses on agrarian reform beneficiaries that were former wage workers and office employees of multinational Dole Stanfilco in the Philippines. It examines how export-oriented agriculture influences redistributive land reform and gender relations at the local level. The impacts of global farming on the gender division of labor are studied - the old and new production regimes as a result of land reform. The study argues that while land reform in export-oriented plantations tend to provide male and female beneficiaries better access to land, previous arrangements and production relations are reproduced in reformed plantations. The reproduction of unequal relations in old production regimes are influenced by export agriculture that demand scale farm operations in order to respond to the demands of the global market. The emergence of a new "middle" class and "underclass" in reformed plantations surfaces to provide concrete evidence of this phenomenon.