Governing the Paddies: Emotions, Dispossession, and Gendered Struggles for Resource Access in Rice Farming in Tolima, Colombia

Colombia produces nearly one million tons of irrigated rice annually, almost exclusively for domestic consumption, with 72% of this production driven by smallholder farmers. In the department of Tolima, rice farming plays a significant role in both the local political economy and the agrarian landscape. This dissertation engages with feminist political ecology, critical agrarian studies, and debates on agrarian transformation to examine the everyday manifestations of dispossession that shape the lives of smallholder farmers and farmworkers in rural Tolima. I focus on how gender and class dynamics structure access to resources and opportunities, with special attention to the experiences and aspirations of women farmers and farmworkers. Through these lenses, I also explore the emotional dimensions—such as pride, happiness, and sense of community—that sustain farmers’ persistence in the face of challenges. Using a mixed-methods approach grounded in ethnography, I draw on participant observation, semi-structured individual and group interviews, structured interviews, workshops, field notes, and document analysis. Findings illuminate the layered obstacles smallholder farmers face, examine how marginalization is unevenly distributed across different segments of the farming population, and highlight the motivations that keep farmers going against all odds. By challenging dominant understandings of dispossession, this dissertation advances scholarship on critical agrarian studies, emphasizes the spatial, emotional, and gendered dimensions of agrarian dynamics, and contributes to geographic understandings of the everyday of rice farming.