Agriculture and Farm Systems in Wartime from a Social-Ecological Systems Perspective: Evidence from Colombia

• Applicant: Angela Navarrete Cruz, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Ecology of Land Use
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 558701195

This research project aims to understand the fluctuations in agricultural production during intrastate conflict, by focusing on the underlying factors of the performance of farm systems under varying wartime situations at the sub-national level. This is important because armed conflicts are rising worldwide, principally affecting the rural areas of developing countries. Agriculture can be severely affected by armed conflict, but it also can develop in certain war zones. Why? The literature has analyzed the nexuses between intrastate conflict and land distribution, food security, biodiversity, and deforestation, but there is no explanation for why agriculture may be resilient or contrarily collapse during wartime because the social and political characteristics of intrastate conflict are rarely connected to the analysis of wartime agriculture.To reduce this gap, this project focuses on farm systems to understand agricultural production in wartime by analyzing these systems as social-ecological systems (SES). SES perspective, largely used for understanding the sustainability of agricultural landscapes, allows the analysis of resilience and collapse of farm systems exposed to social and political shocks by addressing variables related to the properties and governance of these systems. Intrastate conflict is taken in this project as a complex shock in which different wartime situations at the local level develop. These situations have been categorized into three ideal types: 1. Rebel governance is a situation in which a non-state armed group (NSAG) imposes rules on civilians, regulating different civilian affairs. 2. Alliocracies are agreements between NSAGs and civilians for the NSAG to collect tax and oversee its security issues (e.g., non-collaboration of civilians with the military) and for the civilian authorities to retain control of the rest of civilian affairs. 3. Disorder is a situation in which an NSAG is confronted by other armed actors and thus cannot develop either governance or alliocracies. As in Colombia different outcomes of agricultural production in wartime exist, this research will address this case considering that the construction of hypotheses potentially generalizable to other intrastate conflicts is possible. The project is divided into four work packages. WP1 will characterize the different wartime situations in three study areas in Colombia that exhibit characteristics of rebel governance, alliocracy, and disorder. WP2 will analyze the properties of farm systems under each of the three types of wartime situations by focusing on the factors enhancing resilience at the landscape and individual farm levels. WP3 will analyze the governance systems influencing the resilience of farm systems under the three wartime situations and the interaction between farm and non-farm actors. Finally, under WP4 archetypes of farm systems in wartime will be constructed, by synthesizing the outcomes produced under objectives 1, 2, and 3.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position