“Progressive Farmers” and the Moral Economy of Standardization in Indian Agri-commodity Markets

This article employs a historical and ethnographic approach to assess how the term “progressive farmer” is a socializing tool in the moral economy of agriculture in India. The term perpetuates social selectivity by favoring affluent farmers in India’s agri-commodity markets. An ethnography of “progressive farmers” in the Flue-Cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco sector in Andhra Pradesh shows that such socialization is only partially successful. Ambiguous terms like “scientific temperament” and “the will to improvise,” associated with “progressive” and “good” farmers, obscure the fallout of modernization efforts aimed at integrating farmers into global markets. Within the FCV tobacco sector, domestic companies’ persistent use of “progressive farmer” masks how market restructuring and state actions have increasingly burdened farmers with the demand for “high-quality” standardized tobacco. For now, progressive farming is a performance that state and corporate sector authorities engage in to maintain authority and build cordial relations with powerful actors in the countryside. Affluent farmers perform progressiveness to hedge risks in erratic markets, bypass traditional clientelist networks, and garner favor. As the state withdraws from market regulation, “progressive farming” empowers affluent farmers to navigate erratic markets while sidelining smaller farmers, who are left to make high-risk investments without sufficient support.