Surviving cassava: smallholder farmer strategies for coping with market volatility in Cambodia

Cassava has become a ‘must have’ crop for many Cambodian smallholders; yet, the market is volatile and yields are uneven. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Kampong Thom Ratanakiri provinces, we analyse how farmers cope with volatility. We argue that multiple pathways have emerged: some ceased producing cassava; expanded production; while most engage ‘ambivalent repeasantisation’, striving to gain autonomy from fluctuations through survival work of everyday gendered labour, including investing family community labour into cassava, shifting back food crops, managing debt, creating relationships traders, also imagining life beyond cassava. Uneven fortunes cassava contribute land redistribution, deepening class, gender ethnic divides. The case smallholder Cambodia shows us agrarian transition neither linear nor unidimensional, dynamics ‘depeasantisation’, ‘repeasantisation’, ‘intensification’ booms cannot be assumed priori.