In the context of neoliberal financialization, what is the role of debt in agrarian change? To
address this question, I combine insights about debt from rural political ecology and
development finance scholarship in order to analyze the relationship between changing
agroecological practices and household indebtedness in a Cambodian rice-farming village.
In the past two decades, Cambodians have borrowed from commercial microfinance
institutions at the highest rate per capita of any country in the world. With fewer Cambodians …