Imagining agriculture in exile: negotiating institutional visions and everyday farming in a Tibetan refugee settlement in South India

In many parts of the world, smallholder farming is undergoing profound transformations, shaped by shifting livelihoods, mobilities, and changing rural economies. These processes are shaped by and shaping different, at times competing, understandings of what agriculture is, does, and should be, also referred to as agrarian imaginaries. This article explores how agrarian realities and futures have been imagined in the context of prolonged displacement and exile, focusing on Tibetan refugee farmers in rural South India. Drawing on the case of Dhondenling, an agrarian refugee settlement in Karnataka, it traces three explicit agrarian imaginaries, or visions, promoted by dominant actors over the past six decades: (1) conventional hybrid maize-based farming for economic rehabilitation and self-reliance; (2) organic agriculture for environmental and socio-cultural sustainability; and (3) agribusiness- and market-oriented farming aimed at revitalising settlements and retaining Tibetan youth. Based on interviews, field observation, and document analysis, the article examines how these visions have been embedded through material, institutional and discursive channels, and how they have been negotiated, adapted, or resisted by farmers. The findings highlight the layered, sometimes contradictory ways in which these visions coexist, reflected in a patchwork of heterogeneous farming practices, and point to the evolving role of agriculture in Tibetan resettlement—not only as a livelihood, but as central to socio-cultural preservation and continuity in exile.