A Perspective of Agricultural and Rural Studies under the Era of SDGs: Necessity of Shifting Notion of Peasants as Project Target to as Actors for Development of Their Own Initiative

Abstract

This special issue aims at criticizing conventional development studies, focusing agriculture and rural communities. The United Nations adopted the resolution of ‘the UN Decade of Family Farming (2019-2018)’ in 2017, which was followed by ‘UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas’ in 2018. International communities are changing their notion on peasants or family farms. SDGs also highlight the role of them. Conventional development studies should be reviewed on the context of such change of international communities. This special issue includes four papers by Ikegami, Hiraga & Hisano, Yamane & Ito, and Nishikawa.

This paper summarizes major trends in development studies and development aids in agriculture and rural areas. In particular, it explains how peasants and family farms have been placed until now, taking the Eastern and the Southern parts of Africa into consideration, which are facing poverty and food insecurity. Mainstream of agricultural and rural development studies have regarded peasants or family farms are out of date and are to overcome because of low productivity. On the contrary, this paper proposes that it is necessary for development studies to change conventional notion and to recognize them as actors for development of their own initiative.