Agrarian transformation and problems of food insecurity in liberia

This article is a shortened version of chapter five of the author’s ‘Processes of agrarian change and the food question in Liberia’ (1987). It investigates aspects of the process of capitalist penetration into Liberian agriculture that can shed light on the problem of food insecurity, in particular the alienation of land, the recruitment of peasant labour for multinational corporations and commercial farms, and the commercialization of peasant agriculture. It argues that the alienation of land and the dislocation of labour have combined to severely disrupt subsistence crop cultivation. The imposition, in the 1970s, of commercial crop production on peasant agriculture has exacerbated this disruption and aggravated the problem of food insecurity. Bibliogr., notes.