At the Juncture of Land, Labor, and Capital: The Case of Aralam Cashew Farms, Kerala

This article examines the crisis faced by tribal peasants in Kerala through a case study of Aralam Farming Corporation (Kerala) Limited, a state-owned farm covering 1,500 hectares. The study inquires into the reasons that led the tribal peasants in Kerala to begin cultivating cashew nuts and then to cease cashew cultivation. The genesis of the crisis affecting the peasants stems from the historical expropriation of forest lands, resulting in a social division of labor in the cashew economy of Kerala, where landless tribal peasants live in the periphery of plantation farms and work as agricultural labor on the lands of erstwhile landed elites. These elites today work as intermediaries in the cashew trade under neoliberal capitalism and form alliances with transnational companies. This nexus de-incentivizes the agriculture of cashew in Kerala as part of a global fragmentation of the cashew economy toward decentering production and centralizing capital. This accumulation regime engenders an immanent crisis of social reproduction by denying a fair price for raw cashew nuts, resulting in augmenting semi-proletarianization, with tribal peasants having to depend on multiple forms of casual work and debt to sustain their households.