Smallholder decision-making and its misalignment with sustainable development goal 2 (Zero Hunger)

Abstract

The success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends on alignment between global aims and local decisionmaking. Presently missing are analyses that explain how local decision-making determines efforts to prompt transformational change. Specific to SDG2 (i.e., Zero Hunger), disregard for local decision-making manifests an endemic misrepresentation of agricultural extension as a means for achieving increased ‘production and/or productivity’. Engagements were undertaken with 390 cassava farming households in Northwest Cambodia, enabling analysis of how smallholders determine the success of global efforts to intensify production. The findings uncover the adoption of ‘ngeay sruol’ farming (translation: convenience), defined as low-input and low-cost decision-making guided by risk-aversion. Both individually and collectively, smallholders lower their risk-taking and thereby refuse extension seeking to increase production and productivity. The smallholders remain open to production and productivity, but not when required to assume significant risk to their lives and livelihoods. Going beyond generic calls for improved global-local alignment or value chain access, ngeay sruol demonstrates the deterministic, past-future prefiguration of smallholder agency, which is likely to be encountered by top-down efforts to feed the world by 2030.