Real but limited initial agricultural inequalities
In the mid-nineteenth century, most of the world's small farmers were engaged in strictly manual agriculture (hoe, spade, axe, machete, etc.). Each worker could tend to an area of about 1 hectare and produce grain-equivalent yields below 1 tonne per hectare, which meant labour productivity of less than 1 tonne per worker. However, heavy animal-drawn cultivation systems without fallow had been developed and perfected in Europe since the Middle Ages and were widespread: with a plough and cart, one worker could already cultivate 5 hectares which, with a yield of 1 tonne/hectare, gave a gross work productivity of 5 tonnes/person- a level only matched at the time by animal-drawn irrigated rice production systems with two harvests per year in certain deltas of Asia. At the time, all the world's farming systems (swing plough cultivation with fallow in the Mediterranean regions, hydro-agricultural systems with one or two harvests per year using manual or animal-drawn cultivation, etc.) were therefore placed within a productivity ratio of one to five (fig. 1).
Explosion of agricultural inequalities in the twentieth century
However, from the end of the nineteenth century, industry began to manufacture new animal-drawn machinery (one-way plough, tine cultivator, seed drill, hoeing machine, bedders, mowers, hay tedders, rakers, binders, steam-driven threshers, etc.) which were adopted by large agricultural holdings in European settlements in the temperate regions of North America, the Southern Cone of Latin America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc., and also, at a somewhat slower pace, in Europe. The better equipped farms could therefore have one worker to cover 10 hectares, but as the use of mineral fertilizer was still very limited, yields were still in the order of 1 tonne/hectare, meaning a maximum gross labour productivity of about 10 tonnes/worker (fig. 1).
In the twentieth century, the contemporary agricultural revolution stricto sensu (motorization, heavy mechanization, selection, chemical application, specialization) triumphed in the developed countries. During the course of a few decades, a limited number of farmers made huge progress; for example, large cereal farms with heavy motorization and mechanization (four-wheel drive tractors of over 120 horse power with cutter bars of 6 metres and more, etc.) can now apportion 200 hectares to each worker, while the massive use of fertilizer, phytosanitary products and selected varieties produces yields of more than 10 tonnes per hectare, meaning gross labour productivity of as much as 2 000 tonnes/worker and net productivity of nearly 1 000 tonnes/worker.
The difference in labour productivity between manual agriculture without chemical application and heavily motorized and chemical-assisted agriculture in the world is now at a ratio of 1 to 2 000 for gross productivity (fig. 2), and 1 to more than 500 for net productivity (fig. 3).
Figure 1
Comparative productivity of the world's major agricultural systems in the middle and at the end
of the nineteenth century
Figure 2
Stages of development of agricultural equipment and motorized mechanization in cereal
cultivation
Figure 3
Productivity differences between cereal systems using motorized mechanization and chemicals,
on the one hand, and manual or animal-drawn cultivation in developing countries, on the other
The mechanisms of unequal development of privileged holdings
Of course, such a leap was not immediate but occurred in stages, and was not accomplished by all agricultural holdings. Rather, it involved an ever-smaller minority, while the vast majority of farms existing at the beginning of the century disappeared in succession.
At each stage of this contradictory process, the only farms able to progress to the next stage were those located in favourable regions and endowed with sufficient equipment and land to reach a level of productivity that would provide an income higher than family needs, and thus sufficient self-investment and borrowing capacity to acquire further equipment and expand. And as the farms making the most progress each time were those with the highest investment capacity, those with an advantage at the start found themselves with an even greater advantage later.
Mechanisms of impoverishment and exclusion of disadvantaged holdings
On the other hand, small farms with less equipment and land, often poorly situated and less productive, and with household income below the renewal threshold, i.e. the socially acceptable income threshold close to the minimum wage, could neither invest, nor expand, nor even fully renew their means of production. Such farms generally tended to decapitalize and deteriorate, and were generally not taken over when the farmer retired: they were in fact in crisis and headed for elimination.
Lower real agricultural prices, higher wages and their consequences
But this mechanism producing cumulative unequal development for some and blocked development, crisis and exclusion for others was significantly amplified by the decline in real agricultural prices, on the one hand, and the increase in real minimum wages, on the other.
Indeed, productivity gains from the agricultural revolution in recent decades have been so high that they have easily outrun those of other sectors (industry and services), with the result that current agricultural commodity prices have increased less rapidly than prices of other products and real agricultural prices (allowing for inflation) have sharply fallen. Thus, in less than 50 years, the real price of wheat in the United States is down almost two-thirds, while the real price of maize and sugar has more than halved (fig. 4 and 5).
This fall in prices led firstly to a disproportionate fall in revenue for small farms, which exacerbated their impoverishment and accelerated their elimination; it also resulted in lower incomes for medium-size holdings that had not developed sufficiently to make up for their impact. And, as productivity gains in industry and the services had been sufficiently high to raise the real minimum wage and therefore the socially acceptable agricultural income, many medium-size farms also found themselves below the renewal threshold, and therefore in crisis and on the road to elimination.
Except in periods of crisis, industrial growth and expansion of the services sector have been able to absorb the workforce made redundant by agricultural productivity gains in the developed countries. However, the agricultural revolution has also encountered limits and drawbacks in these countries. It is difficult to exceed grain yields of 12 000 kg per hectare or milk yields of 12 000 litres per cow. There is also an increasing risk of environmental deterioration and endangered food quality and safety caused by excessive use of fertilizers and plant or animal protection products, and the recycling of dangerous waste products in fields or in animal feed.
Figure 4
Downward trend and fluctuations of real prices of selected major agricultural commodities in
the United States
Figure 5 (Continued)
Downward trend and fluctuations of real prices of selected major agricultural commodities in
the United States
At the same time, the huge scale of mechanization, excessive specialization, extensive monocropping and the abandonment of entire agricultural regions, because of some minor comparative disadvantage, are now posing increasingly acute problems of employment and land maintenance. These excesses have prompted the adoption of ecologically sound agriculture, able to improve quality of product and environment, and in tune with the aspirations of the public and most farmers. However, this is more costly than traditional agriculture and cannot be widely adopted under a regime of excessively low agricultural prices, unless subsidies are provided.
The shallow penetration of the agricultural revolution stricto sensu
The contemporary agricultural revolution with all its attributes, in particular its heavy and complex motorized mechanization, has only penetrated certain parts of the developing world in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, North Africa and Southern Africa, and is virtually absent from intertropical Africa, the Andes and Central Asia. Even where it is present, this extremely expensive motorized mechanization has only been affordable to a minority of public or private, national or foreign agricultural estates that have the necessary capital or access to credit, while the vast majority of small and medium holdings continue to farm manually or using animal traction.
The green revolution and its limits
However, a relatively important section of non-motorized small farmers and the rural poor in the developing world has been able to benefit from a variant of the agricultural revolution that excludes the heavy motorized mechanization component. This variant, the green revolution (selection of potential high-yield varieties of maize, rice, wheat, soybean and other tropical export crops, use of fertilizer, protection products and irrigation) has produced impressive increases in yield, especially on large irrigated plains where good water control has permitted two or three harvests a year. Although well below the levels of extensive cultivation with heavy motorized mechanization, these production and productivity gains coupled with low local wages have enabled some countries to become rice exporters (Thailand and Viet Nam).
Orphan crops
Agricultural changes over the past half-century are not of course restricted to the agricultural and green revolutions. On closer inspection, we can see that agriculture does not stand still and even the smallest farmers of the African savannahs, the Andes and the high valleys of Asia routinely adopt new plants and new animals originating from other continents, which they then breed for adjustment to their new surroundings and, when they can afford it, adopt new hand tools or animal-drawn equipment. They continuously combine and recombine crops and livestock systems and new and old farm implements to adjust to ever changing economic, ecological and demographic conditions, creating production systems in which the less favourable the conditions, the greater the ingenuity.
But the fact remains that even in the regions of green revolution, and however determined their efforts and ingenuity to survive, many small farmers have not had the means to invest and develop. Above all, huge areas of rainfed or poorly irrigated agriculture have been largely bypassed, with little or no selection of prevalent species (millet, sorghum, taro, sweet potato, yam, plantain, cassava, etc.) or of local varieties of wheat, maize and rice adapted to difficult conditions (altitude, drought, salinization, aridity, waterlogging). For example, the average yield of millet in the world today is barely 0.8 tonne/hectare. These species and varieties, known as “orphans” because overlooked in the breeding process, often make the use of fertilizer and phytosanitary inputs unprofitable, which only adds to the problems of the regions where they are grown. Thus, more than one-third of the world's small farmer population, i.e. nearly half a billion agricultural workers (or more than 1 billion people living off agriculture) are without any means of making significant progress.
The widespread fall in agricultural prices
The downward trend in real prices of exportable surpluses of wheat, maize, rice, soybean and animal products, resulting from the agricultural revolution and from facilitated transportation and the liberalization of international trade, has had an impact in virtually all countries. However, the fall in agricultural prices has affected not only these surplus products but also tropical export commodities faced with competition from the motorized and mechanized crops of developed countries (beet against sugar cane, soybean against groundnut and other tropical oilcrops, cotton from the south of the United States), or from substitute industrial products (synthetic rubber and textiles). For example, the real price of sugar has fallen by more than two-thirds in a century, while the price of rubber has plummeted almost tenfold (fig. 4 and 5).
Finally, the agricultural revolution has also been applied to other tropical crops (banana, pineapple, etc.) so the downward trend in real prices has gradually extended to virtually all agricultural commodities.
The blocking of development
The downward trend in real agricultural prices in the past 50 years has impacted primarily on the purchasing power of the mass of small farmers in developing countries engaged in manual cultivation. Most of these have eventually found themselves in a position where they are unable to invest in more effective farm implements and sometimes even to purchase selected seeds, mineral fertilizers and protection products. In other words, the first impact of falling agricultural prices was to block the development of the mass of the most poorly equipped and located small farmers.
Decapitalization and undernutrition
Then, with the continuing decline in prices, small farmers unable to invest and achieve significant productivity gains fall below the economic renewal threshold: their cash income is no longer sufficient to renew farm tools and inputs, to buy the few vital consumer goods they cannot produce themselves and, when necessary, to pay taxes.
Under such conditions, they then have to make all sorts of sacrifices to purchase the minimum equipment they need to continue working (e.g. selling their livestock, cutting purchases of consumer goods, etc.). They also have to extend their cash crop cultivation as much as possible, which means reducing the area given over to food crops for on-farm consumption because their rudimentary farm implements only allow them to work a limited fixed surface area.
In other words, the small farmer whose income has fallen below the renewal threshold can only survive at the price of decapitalization (sale of livestock, fewer and poorly maintained farm implements), under-consumption (farmers in rags and barefoot), undernutrition and soon outmigration. Unless they resort to illegal crops: coca, poppy, hemp, etc.
The ecological and health crisis
Because of their deteriorating equipment, diet and health, these farmers have less capacity for work and so have to concentrate on short-term returns and neglect maintenance of the cultivated ecosystem: the poorly maintained irrigation systems deteriorate; ever younger and closer-to-hand fallow is cleared under slash-and-burn cultivation to facilitate the land clearing work, but this only accelerates deforestation and depletion of soil fertility; in mixed crop and livestock systems, the reduction in animal numbers lowers the transfer of fertility to cropland. In general, insufficient weeding degrades the land under cultivation and the poorly maintained crops, lacking mineral nutrients, become increasingly prone to disease.
The degradation of the cultivated ecosystem, undernutrition and a reduced working capacity also lead small farmers to simplify their cropping systems. Preference is given to “poor” crops that require less mineral fertilizer, water and labour. This in turn leads to reduced diversity and quality of plant products consumed on the farm which, with the virtual disappearance of animal products, results in serious protein, mineral and vitamin deficiencies.
In this way the agricultural crisis extends to all elements of the production system: less equipment, degradation and loss of fertility of the ecosystem, plant, livestock and human malnutrition and general deterioration of health. The economic unsustainability of the production system leads to the ecological unsustainability of the cultivated ecosystem, undernutrition and poor health.
Indebtedness, outmigration and hunger
Impoverished, undernourished and working degraded land, these enfeebled small farmers come dangerously close to the survival threshold (below which they will no longer have the means to continue their activity). One poor harvest is then enough to drag them into debt, if only to eat during the lean months before the next harvest. So the indebted small farmer is at the mercy of a poor harvest and, if he has not already done so, is obliged to send the able-bodied members of his family in search of temporary or permanent work elsewhere, which only further weakens his production capacity. Finally, if external remittances are not enough to ensure the survival of the family, the only option is to migrate. But, in most developing countries, the industry and services sectors have few employment opportunities worthy of the term and rural poverty can only lead to unemployment and to a more or less comparable urban or peri-urban poverty.
While a small farm in surplus can get through one or even several poor harvests, a small farm chronically reduced to the limits of survival finds itself at the mercy of the slightest adversity reducing its harvest or earnings. Whether this be climatic (flooding, drought, etc.), biological (plant, animal or human disease, pest infestation, etc.), economic (products sold at a loss, falling prices, etc.) or political (civil war, passage of troops, etc.), such small farmers are thus condemned to famine or to refugee camps if these exist nearby.
This process of exclusion has, of course, not affected all small farmers who farm manually, but it has affected the most deprived who are especially numerous in the least privileged regions.
Circumstances aggravating impoverishment and undernutrition
Some regions, and some developing countries have also been saddled with particularly disadvantageous natural conditions (aridity, flooding, salinization, poor soils, etc.), infrastructure (lack of irrigation) and land distribution (micro-holdings resulting from large estates or agricultural overpopulation). Some countries have also pursued policies that have harmed agriculture and small farming communities (excessive expenditure on modernization and urbanization, subsidies for food imports, taxation on agricultural exports, lack of protection against fluctuating agricultural prices, overvalued currency, etc.). These unfavourable circumstances have only aggravated the impoverishment and under-consumption of small farmers, and the conjugation of several such circumstances has created genuine concentrations of hunger: Northeast Brazil with its combination of arid climate, vast estates alongside micro-holdings and predominance of one highly unstable crop, sugar cane; Bangladesh with its inadequate water control and micro-holdings resulting from unequal land distribution and overpopulation; and many countries of Sahel, Central and Eastern Africa.
Finally, in countries where no moderating action is taken, the very high fluctuations of agricultural prices that occur on unregulated international markets (fig. 4 and 5) strongly exacerbate the negative consequences of the long-term fall in real agricultural prices: periods of low prices lead to crisis, undernutrition and outmigration; periods of high prices mean that resource-poor importing countries, consumers and purchasers have difficulty procuring supplies, while food aid becomes scarce.
Unfavourable though these aggravating circumstances may be, and dramatic their consequences, the fact remains that the root cause of the massive crisis of small farming communities, of rural and urban poverty, and of hunger in poor agricultural countries lies basically elsewhere. Crisis and poverty were preordained the moment poorly equipped and unproductive small farming communities of these countries were exposed to competition from other far more productive agricultural systems, that had benefited from the agricultural or green revolutions and enjoyed other advantages of abundant land and low wages or subsidies, and the resulting fall in real agricultural prices. And there is no doubt that if the downward trend in real cereal prices (and therefore all agricultural commodity prices) continues, so will extreme poverty, undernutrition, hunger, massive rural outmigration and the escalation of urban slum dwellers.
