World agriculture has to feed the approximate 6 billion inhabitants of our planet and, more particularly, meet the needs of a total agricultural population of some 3 billion people - a function that is not performed very successfully. Yet, this agricultural sector, which still occupies an active population of 1.3 billion people, i.e. about half the world's active population, only has 28 million tractors at its disposal, a figure representing under 2 percent of the world's agricultural population. This means that the extensive motorization, complex mechanization, selection of crop varieties and animal breeds, fertilizers, concentrated feeds and plant and animal protection products that spearhead the contemporary agricultural revolution have only benefited a tiny minority of the world's farmers (in this paper, ‘farmers’, ‘growers’, ‘cereal farmers’, ‘small farmers’, ‘the rural poor’ mean both men and women). Some of these are well equipped and can cultivate more than 100 hectares of cereals and obtain yields close to 10 tonnes per hectare, which gives a gross productivity of some 1 000 tonnes per worker (100 hectares/worker × 10 tonnes/hectare).
At the same time, some two-thirds of the world's farmers have been affected by the green revolution: they also use selected varieties and breeds, fertilizers, and crop and livestock protection products, and they can also obtain yields close to 10 tonnes of grain per hectare. Half have animal traction which enables the better equipped to cultivate up to 5 hectares per worker and obtain a productivity of some 50 tonnes of grain per worker (5 hectares/worker × 10 tonnes/hectare or 2.5 hectares/worker × 10 tonnes/hectare × two harvests per year). But the other half only has manual tools that are barely enough to cultivate one hectare per worker, which gives a gross productivity of little more than 10 tonnes of grain per worker (1 hectare/worker × 10 tonnes/hectare or 0.5 hectare/worker × 10 tonnes/hectare × two harvests per year).
We can see therefore that about one-third of the world's farmers have not benefited from the agricultural revolution, green revolution, or animal traction - they only have manual farming implements, use no fertilizer or plant or livestock protection products, and grow varieties or raise breeds that have not been subject to conventional selection. This small farmer sector, which has been neglected by all research and projects, comprises some 450 million active persons, representing a total of 1 250 million people existing or scratching a living off agriculture. Their gross productivity can barely exceed 1 tonne of grain per worker per year (1 hectare/worker/year × 1 tonne/hectare under rainfed cultivation, or 0.5 hectare/worker × 2 tonnes/hectare under irrigated cultivation).
Moreover, most under-equipped small farmers, in many former colonial or communist countries without significant land reform, are deprived of land by the vast estates of several thousands or tens of thousands of hectares that relegate them to micro-holdings of only a few hundred square metres - far less than they could cultivate and well below the area needed to cover household food requirements. These poorly-equipped and landless or quasi-landless rural inhabitants therefore have to resort to casual labour on the large estates for wages of US$1 to 2 a day, which enables the more efficient and better equipped estates to produce 1 000 tonnes of grain per unit of labour per year and to produce 100 kg of grain at almost no labour cost (US$500/worker/year: 1 000 tonnes/worker/year = US$0.5 per tonne, equivalent to 0.5 thousandth of a dollar per kilogram).
The world agricultural situation is therefore one of stark contrast: a few million farmers benefiting from the agricultural revolution in developed countries and certain developing country regions, able to produce 1 000 tonnes of grain per worker per year; a few hundred million farmers benefiting from the green revolution in the more favourable regions of the developing world, able to produce between 10 and 50 tonnes of grain per worker, depending on the availability or not of animal traction; some hundreds of millions of small farmers with only basic hand tools and no selected seeds or fertilizer and little land, producing at the most 1 tonne of grain per worker per year.
The situation is therefore one of huge inequalities of equipment and productivity, and one of extreme poverty for hundreds of millions of under-equipped, poorly located and sometimes landless rural small farmers and inhabitants.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than one-third of the world's population is still affected by serious nutritional inadequacy. Some 2 billion people suffer debilitating nutritional deficiencies in proteins, iron, iodine, vitamin A and other vitamins, and some 800 million people suffer undernutrition or chronic food insecurity, which means that they do not have an assured intake of food sufficient to cover their basic energy needs (2 150 to 2 400 kcal per person per day, depending on age structure, level of fertility, activity, average size and weight of the population concerned).
FAO estimated in 1996–1998 that there were still 826 million people suffering from undernutrition (792 million in developing countries, 30 million in countries in transition and 8 million in developed countries). This compares to a roughly estimated 920 million in 1969–1971, a reduction of some 100 million in 27 years. The fact that the population not affected by undernutrition or food deficiencies has become a majority, and that world food supplies have slightly outpaced population growth suggests that the level of nutrition of this majority has significantly improved - a very positive result.
However, we can also see that over the course of 27 years the number of people suffering undernutrition has only fallen by an average of 3.7 million per year, and that at such a pace it will take more than two centuries to eliminate undernutrition. The Rome Declaration on World Food Security (1996) called for an acceleration of this pace and set the objective of reducing the number of undernourished by half by the year 2015 at the latest. This Declaration and its accompanying Plan of Action aimed to reduce the number of undernourished people in the world by 20 million per year. But the commitments of governments and international organizations to this effect have not been fully realized or as tangible as expected, and the results of the Plan of Action, though positive, have nevertheless been disappointing. The population suffering undernutrition has only fallen by about 8 million per year, which extends to 2035 the hope of halving their number and to 2095 the hope of eliminating undernutrition completely.
At the very least, this means that national policies and projects and bilateral and multilateral aid have been insufficient to eliminate chronic undernutrition in the short-term, let alone resolve the debilitating nutritional deficiencies that affect a population two to three times greater. We therefore (in my opinion) need to find other forms of analysis and other strategies, if we are to eliminate undernutrition and nutritional deficiencies in a morally acceptable and politically sustainable time frame.
Again, according to FAO, three-quarters of the approximately 800 million people living with chronic undernutrition are in the rural sector (i.e. 560 million people). They are extremely poor rural inhabitants, mainly comprising under-equipped, more or less landless small farmers living in difficult regions, underemployed and poorly paid agricultural labourers, and artisans and traders who rely on these two population groups for a living and are therefore scarcely better off themselves. As regards the 25 percent non-rural undernourished population (about 140 million people), most are members of small farming households who have recently had to migrate to urban slums where they have not yet found a proper means of survival. Thus a majority of the undernourished population are small farmers, and the extreme poverty and undernutrition of most of the others essentially results from the poverty and undernutrition of the small farming sector.
However, as this reservoir of rural poverty and undernutrition remains more or less constant when it is forever emptying in one direction through outmigration, there must be a compensating influx of new poor and undernourished in the other direction. We therefore have to conclude (and this has been confirmed by legions of field studies) that the world's stock of poor and undernourished is not simply a legacy from the past that is diminishing too slowly, but rather the result of an ongoing process of extreme impoverishment, and even undernutrition, of ever-renewed strata of under-equipped, poorly located, land-deprived and relatively unproductive rural inhabitants and small farmers.
We now need to briefly determine the economic mechanism that fuels this process of impoverishment and to identify the economic and political conditions under which it can function.
The increases in productivity and production from the agricultural and green revolutions that benefited the developed countries and favourable regions of the developing countries were so great that they triggered a sharp decline in real agricultural prices in these countries, and in some cases even produced significant surpluses for export. These low-cost surpluses stimulate international trade which has been greatly facilitated by lower transport and communication costs and the growing liberalization of trade. As a result, the prices paid to agricultural producers in most importing countries are closely aligned to the prices prevailing in the surplus producing countries.
While significant in terms of absolute value, the international trade of agricultural commodities often only accounts for a small proportion of world production and consumption: in the case of cereals, for example, only 10 percent. The international markets for agricultural commodities are therefore not global markets in the full sense of the term, but rather residual markets glutted with surpluses that are often difficult to sell; markets where even the producer-exporters assisted by the agricultural or green revolution can only gain an entry or maintain a presence if equipped with specific additional competitive advantages. Such is precisely the case with the well-equipped exporters of the large estates of South America, South Africa, Zimbabwe and perhaps tomorrow Russia, who have vast acreages of inexpensive land and access to some of the cheapest labour in the world. Such is also the case with producers in certain very high-income developed countries, such as the United States or the countries of the European Union, that have the budgetary resources to generously subsidize their farmers. In both cases, producers who already enjoy undeniable natural and technical advantages also benefit from a significant transfer of wealth (land and low wages, or subsidies) which reduces their de facto production costs and therefore raises their international competitiveness well beyond that of their intrinsic productivity.
Under such condition, international agricultural commodity prices are only advantageous to the minority of farmers who can continue to invest, progress and gain market share. They are insufficient and disadvantageous for the majority of the world's farmers: generally insufficient for them to invest and progress; often insufficient for them to live from their work in dignity, renew their means of production and maintain their market share; and insufficient for the less equipped, land-deprived and poorly situated half of the small farming sector to feed itself properly.
This mechanism of extreme impoverishment, even undernutrition, affecting hundreds of millions of under-equipped small farmers, can best be illustrated by considering the case of a cereal farmer in the Sudan, Andes or Himalayas, who with only basic hand tools (machete, hoe, spade, etc.) worth some US$20 to 30 produces 1 tonne of grain per year (after subtracting seeds), without fertilizer and without phytosanitary products. Some 50 years ago, that cereal farmer received the equivalent of US$30 (at 2001 value) for 100 kg of grain; he therefore had to sell 200 kg to renew his hand tools, clothing, etc., leaving him 800 kg to cover the basic nutritional needs of four persons; depriving himself a little, he could even sell an extra 100 kg to buy a new and more effective farm implement. Some 20 years ago, he still received US$20 (2001 equivalent) for 100 kg, which meant selling 400 kg to renew his hand tools, leaving 600 kg to feed four persons, but this time inadequately and certainly with no possibility of buying new, more efficient farm implements. Today, he only receives US$10 for 100 kg of grain, which means that he has to sell 600 kg to renew his equipment, leaving only 400 kg to feed four persons, which is of course impossible. In short, he can no longer fully renew his work tools, modest though these are, or satisfy his hunger and restore his working energy, a situation that in effect condemns him to debt and migration to the under-equipped and under-industrialized urban slums notable for their unemployment and low wages.
Under such conditions, the current strategy to combat undernutrition and nutritional deficiencies which consists in lowering agricultural prices to facilitate access to food by poor consumers and purchasers appears to be singly misguided; firstly, because the majority of those suffering undernutrition are not purchasers and consumers of food, but rather producers and sellers of agricultural goods who have been reduced to extreme poverty through falling agricultural prices; secondly, because the poverty and undernutrition of non-farmers are indirectly but largely due to the impoverishment of under-equipped small farming communities.
We now need to try to understand how such an unacceptable state of food and agriculture in the world has come about and why it persists. We begin by looking at the two-stranded mechanism of unequal development of privileged agricultural holdings, on the one hand, and the non-renewal of disadvantaged holdings, on the other, during the contemporary agricultural revolution in the developed countries. We then examine how this dual mechanism severely restricts the impact of the agricultural and green revolutions in developing countries, and how it leads to the massive impoverishment and exclusion of the under-equipped small farming sector in these countries.
