Visiting Scholar
kn207435[at]nodai.ac.jp
Assistant Professor
Department of Food Environment Economics, Faculty of International Agriculture and Food Studies, Tokyo University of Agriculture
Research Keywords:
Food, agricultural and rural geographies; area studies in the Philippines and Okinawa; agri-food systems and supply chains; alternative food networks; extractivism; agroecology; mango and tropical fruit food system
Research Region(s):
Japan, Philippines
Keisuke Nakakubo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Food Environment Economics, Faculty of International Agriculture and Food Studies, Tokyo University of Agriculture. He is a human geographer specializing in food, agricultural and rural geographies, with regional interests in Japan and the Philippines. His research examines how agricultural regions and agri-food systems are formed and restructured under globalization, and how these processes affect producers, livelihoods and environments.
His earlier work examined high-value crop production and distribution, particularly the development and restructuring of mango-producing regions in Okinawa, Miyazaki and the Philippines, as well as the introduction and industrialization of tropical fruit in postwar Okinawa. It addressed production and supply systems, branding, trading relationships and the uneven distribution of risk and value along agri-food supply chains.
More recently, he has developed a human-geographical approach to extractivism in agri-food systems in the Global South, informed by political ecology. Using an expanded concept of extractivism, he examines not only mining and the appropriation of land and natural resources, but also how capital appropriates value from smallholder production, unpaid work, social cooperation and ecological processes through supply chains structured by unequal power relations. Building on his research on Philippine mango supply chains and his theoretical work on extraction through supply chains and the co-production of capital and nature, he studies the spatial and historical organization of extractive processes and their connections with financialization, logistics and the articulation of capitalist and non-capitalist forms of production.
Grounded in human geography and the broader humanities and social sciences, his approach treats agroecology not only as an ecological approach to farming, but also as situated knowledge and practice and as a social and political project for transforming agri-food systems. His fieldwork in Metro Manila and Baguio–Benguet examines how agroecological knowledge and practices are translated, institutionalized, and contested through community-supported agriculture (CSA), participatory guarantee systems (PGS), church organizations, government agencies, international aid, civil society, and markets, and how these connections reshape producer–consumer relations. At YCAR, he brings these strands together to investigate how extractive dynamics and agroecological alternatives intersect in the Philippines, rather than assuming a simple opposition between them, and how these intersections shape livelihoods, power relations, and the possibilities for solidarity and food sovereignty.