Waiting for accelerations. Speculating on guar seeds in the Indian desert
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Waiting for accelerations. Speculating on guar seeds in the Indian desert. / Puri, Stine Simonsen.
In: History and Anthropology, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2021, p. 18-31.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Waiting for accelerations. Speculating on guar seeds in the Indian desert
AU - Puri, Stine Simonsen
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This article unfolds how an extreme acceleration in the price of a seed in 2012 changed farming in a rural area of India by reorienting the imagined sources of wealth in farming. The seed in question is guar which have been grown for centuries for cow fodder, but which is also used in fracking, and because of a growing international demand combined with a limited supply and wild speculation, the prices in 2012 grew exponentially with 1500% in a period of 3 months, after which it crashed at a similar rate. The article argues that this acceleration of prices caused an escalation that changed the perspective of change for farmers. it shifted the main focus from farming as a repetitive event tied to the seasonal weather changes, to one of future potentiality tied to sudden market movements. This shift in the scale of measuring change in farming moved farmers from producing seeds to also speculating in seeds, through methods of trading and stocking. The guar price acceleration opened up to imaginaries of new avenues of future income from farming that was not flowing in with the rain, but with the market.
AB - This article unfolds how an extreme acceleration in the price of a seed in 2012 changed farming in a rural area of India by reorienting the imagined sources of wealth in farming. The seed in question is guar which have been grown for centuries for cow fodder, but which is also used in fracking, and because of a growing international demand combined with a limited supply and wild speculation, the prices in 2012 grew exponentially with 1500% in a period of 3 months, after which it crashed at a similar rate. The article argues that this acceleration of prices caused an escalation that changed the perspective of change for farmers. it shifted the main focus from farming as a repetitive event tied to the seasonal weather changes, to one of future potentiality tied to sudden market movements. This shift in the scale of measuring change in farming moved farmers from producing seeds to also speculating in seeds, through methods of trading and stocking. The guar price acceleration opened up to imaginaries of new avenues of future income from farming that was not flowing in with the rain, but with the market.
KW - escalation
KW - farming
KW - guar
KW - India
KW - speculation
KW - trade
U2 - 10.1080/02757206.2020.1817001
DO - 10.1080/02757206.2020.1817001
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85091040512
VL - 32
SP - 18
EP - 31
JO - History and Anthropology
JF - History and Anthropology
SN - 0275-7206
IS - 1
ER -
ID: 269599617