lecture four, development

the agrarian question

development attends to social formations with a large peasantry—so the 'agrarian question' is essential to the problems of this course, naturally.

one and a half debates on the peasantry that have really mattered

the first generation – from the first decade of the 20^th century to the middle of the 20^th century. trying to deal with the question of what would happen to the peasantry as capiatalism spread. one answer was given by England—by the time that this debate was happening, England was far and away an urban country.

so people trying to understand the fate of the peasantry, looking at England, would expect more or less steady extinction. yet what they found, looking at continental Europe and elsewhere, was different – much slower extinction, if any

(1) economic: what explains the ability of the peasantry to persist, in the face of competition?

(2) political: what should socialists do? Sdem parties rooted in the working-class were concerned about what to do, when the bulk of the population was not w-class. peasants demanding strengthening of individual property, while w-class wanted socialization.

one easy answer was that history will solve this for us. if we wait long enough, the peasantry will disappear. the difficulty, though, again was that this wasn't happening fast enough.

what will happen to the peasantry? if they're not disappearing, why?

this was Kautsky's question.

when Kautsky started this book, he had wanted to show that the peasantry was doomed to extinction. but what he found was that there are actually mechanisms in place that allow the peasantry to exist, however precariously.

the sources of persistence are of two basic kinds: (1) peasants, when faced with more competitive producers, have one advantage—they aren't motivated to produce at the going rate of profit. for peasants the object of production is survival. they'll accept returns on their labour that are far beneath average – peasants will exploit themselves as is necessary. capitalists, however, will only produce at an average or above-average rate of return; they will withdraw at profits lower than this; (2) insofar as peasants are able to hold on to their plots of land, they end up being quite functional – (a) for employers in rural areas, the persistence of the peasantry promises cheap labour (costs of reproduction lowered by tiny plots of land); (b) insofar as they're willing to exploit themselves, they lower the cost of food, benefiting urban employers.

Kautsky and Lenin both recognized that the entrance of capital doesn't result in them following the same path that England did. capitalism can hold in place and accentuate the non-transformation of social relations in agriculture: agribusiness living in harmony with smallholders/small peasants.

the net result of this is not an equilibrium, even-based economic development; but accentuated unevenness.

this then brings up the next question. what do you do about this?

the traditional answer has been land reform. takes care of underemployment, produces income for peasants, and perhaps produces more efficiency (compared to larger landholdings). this last point is dubious (and the others depend on the nature of the land reform, no doubt).

let's talk about the inverse relationship of farm size-productivity.

Lenin versus 'populists' is rehashed, here. Lenin's response was land vs. labour productivity. and the basic point is the same, here.

in other words, giving land to peasants is fine for urban elites, of course. but it's terrible for peasants, welfare-wise.

exceedingly difficult to make judgments of relative efficiency of investments. when you do measure them, the relationship is a tenuous one.

- - -

not that it's not capitalism, but that it's a very backward form of agrarian capitalism.

industrial transitions of late developers are very different, but agrarian transitions are even more different. these 'odd' forms generate endogenous obstacles, political and economic.

an end-run around the problem of the agrarian question through State-based cooperatives, etc.

GR allowed them to boost agricultural productivity without changing property structures.

Kautsky writing in the context of the influx of cheap grain, destroying peasantry; since the 1970s and liberalization, we're living in a parallel phase of rapid agricultural transition.

Patnaik's proposal that the internal market be treated as the 'export market,' which presupposes that you boost internal demand through boosting peasant incomes.

- - - -

in sum: Late developers find themselves in a situation where the market isn't helping: agrarian underdevelopment as capital comes in, and foreign endowments lock you into cumulative disadvantages. This is where the State is supposed to come in.

karl kautsky, the agrarian question

(95): in short (theme of the chapter)-- once you get capitalism, there are efficiency gains to size. large farms apply machinery, etc. much better than small farms.

(100): large farms take better advantage of division of labour, adaptation/specialization of tools, etc.

(101): the division between mental/manual labour

(104): small estates might not be better off than peasantry, since it might be burdened by costs of management, etc. -- but the large estate certainly is

(104): advantages of credit and commerce, too

(106, 108): indebtedness as a regular part of capitalist business (different from peasant, and pre-capitalist era)

(110): key--peasants have two weapons against large

1. overwork
2. underconsumption

(111): a medieval golden age?

(111): peasants and schooling--few benefits for rational peasant

(121, 125): imp--large farm have advantages in forming cooperatives (more so than small farmers)

(122): nice--cooperatives, anyway, are an advance towards capitalism, not socialism

(123): lack of uniformity of produce makes small farm cooperatives difficult to sustain

(126): R. Owen example

(130); peasants can't make the jump to cooperative production [but here the suggestion seems to be that they are systematically irrational -- 'peasant property fanatcism']

(131): the w-class much more disposed to cooperative production

(132): nice passage on peasants and socialism, and the necessity of a 'transitional stage' (ambivalent)

(134): barriers to expropriation of peasants

1. military needs
2. petty-bourgeois prejudices [hmm]
   

(139): imp--ambiguity re: whether small is being supplanted by large, in data (this will be shown to be product of tendencies and counter-tendencies)

(141): large vs. small in industry is very clear -- the small will not outcompete the large, even as the small might for a while find functional niches when the large emerges (so you can't conclude from its existence that it is more competitive, or that the matter is unclear. something similar applies to agriculture, he will argue)

(143): petty bourgeoisie functional for capitalist rule, particularly in period of intense class struggle

(145): in short--the demise of the small enterprise is a highly "involved" process, with many countervailing tendencies (more so in agriculture)

(145-146): (1) prime reason that agriculture is subject to greater countervailing tendencies is the finite limits to accumulation -- at a certain point landholders can only accumulate through concentration, which is untrue for industrialists (no fininte limits). this will demand naked expropriation, which becomes difficult in the mature age of capitalism.

(147): also (2) larger farm isn't necessarily better, unlike industry -- there are difficulties having to do with supervision, transport, etc.

(148-151): within this, intensive vs. extensive farming (latter is limited by soil; former is only more productive up to a certain acreage). this difference won't be revealed in acreage stats.

(151): (3) where landowners have wage-workers, you don't need to see larger farms. landowners will buy more farms

(159): (4) the necessity of a workforce in agriculture; without a labourforce, capitalist agriculture is impossible.

(160): this will involve the separation of the household and the enterprise --which is crucial to building w-calss power

(163): imp--for this reason, in fact, large farms will often need small farms in the surrounding area--these do a much better job providing labour-power (small farms as functional for labour-power needs of l. farms)

(166): in sum--again, none of this means that small farms are equally competitive. just that they will persist for a variety of reasons.

(169): population decisions by peasantry always rational -- can be both

(170,175): as peasants are semi-proletarinized, they neglect their housheholds (while clinging to them). this will lead to fragmentation.

(171): for the small farmer, the land will be more valuable (because law of value doesn't operate)--it is indispensable source of means of subsistence, in an uncertain environment

(172): inadequacy of very small farms

(173): again--vast majority of agricultural population becomes buyers of foodstuffs and sellers of labour-power, rather than sellers of foodstuffs

(175): fragmentation presupposes opportunities for sec. employment

(178): capitalists--from "more land," to "more capital!"

(179): general summary--trends towards centralization and fragmentation are not exclusive, but often work alongside each other.

(183-185): domestic industry on peasant plots -- lovely bonanza for capitalists

(185): agriculture directed at needs of household is not subject to competition (it becomes a 'conservative force')

(186): barriers to concentration of ind. in cities

1. raw materials in rural areas
2. low cost of maintaining labour power in rural areas
3. lack of demand for labour
4. development of transportation systems

(195): again, co-existence of large enterprise and small enterprise (both in town and country, industry and agriculture)

de janvry, peasants, capitalism and the State in latin american culture

(391-392): three near-universal features of peasant production

1. family-based nature of production motivated by rationality of ensuring unit's reproduction (safety-first, etc.)
2. subordinate position of peasants, which requires them to surrender a portion of the surplus
3. discontinous and often defensive collective action strategies

(393): three facts about LA

1. dependent development, growth that was inequalizing of income
2. failure of real wages to revive
3. most rapidly growing sectors of economy oriented to luxury consumption and capital goods

(393): characterized by extreme inequality in assets; surplus labour; unfavourable terms of trade

(394): two observations

1. systematic undervaluation of agricultural commodities, in order to produce cheap food (overvalued exchange rates, trade restrictions, price fixing) [this is a tax on agriculture, effectively, designed to serve industry]
2. permanence of a large peasantry (often growing)

(395): despite cheap food policies, institutional rents allow well-off peasants to do ok; meaning that poor peasants bear the brunt.

(395): hypothesis of 'functional dualism', for four reasons

1. peasants can provide particularly cheap food, thanks to their capacity to exploit themselves to a point where they're more productive than their capitalist counterparts.
2. they can also be a source of rent (why we see share-cropping, in his argument).
3. a source of cheap labour, since part of their costs of reproduction don't need to be paid
4. land acts as a social safety net that the State can't provide

(397): noting that off-farm sources of income are quite high for peasants (based mostly on figures collected in the 80s) [suggests that 'depeasantization' might need better theorization)

(398): despite their functional position, poverty makes their state very unstable

(399): anti-feudal land reforms forged a dualistic agrarian structure: -- an expansive capitalist sector and a growing semi-proletarian peasantry (absorbed labour, politically stable)

(402): peasantry finds itself in a contradictory class position

(403, FN): nice description of backward-linkages (the demand generated for input-suppliers), and forward-linkage (the supply generated for output-consumers)

de janvry, the role of land reform in economic development (1981)

(386, 388): land reforms create a reform sector, and a nonreform sector. most have sought their economic impact in the later, but the political payoff in the former.

(388): most common LRs have been (1) antifeudal reforms seeking to implant a capitalist elite, farmer class, or free peasantry, or (2) reforms seeking to dispossess a larger capitalist elite in favor of farmers or peasantry.

(388): they've typically required an economic incentive, aside from their political importance -- achieving thus both equity and efficiency gains

(389): the GR served as a surrogate to antifeudal reforms

(389): today (80s), a further set of LRs is clearly needed; but this is unlikely, for four reasons:

1. the political alliance is exceptional -- it is difficult to generate a coalition to oppose the landed elite, typically requires revolutionary pressures
2. the same alignment of equity and efficiency is not necessarily present (hmm); any drastic land reform implies short-term costs
3. countries have industrialized to serve foreign markets/luxury markets; not interested in building the domestic market
4. LRs are typically limited only to their political purpose--they will be as limited as possible while creating a supportive political minority

(390-392): four types of LRs

1. conservative: purely legitimizing purpose, the least that can be done to create a supportive minority
2. national bourgeois: LR seen as a way of expanding the domestic market for wage goods, disposessing feudals
3. populist: give the land to the peasants (premised on efficiency on sm. farms, which have zero social opp cost for labour)
4. radical: (not specified well, at all)
   

The trouble with a mandate for GM crops is this: it won't work. A recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists demonstrates that GM crops don't increase crop yields. USAID has already spent millions of taxpayer dollars developing GM crops over the past two decades, without a single success story to show for it, and plenty of failures. A recent, highly touted partnership between USAID and Monsanto to develop a virus-resistant sweet potato in Kenya failed to deliver anything useful for farmers. After 14 years and $6 million, local varieties vastly outperformed their genetically modified cousins in field trials. Another 10-year USAID project for GM eggplant in India recently met with such outcry -- from scientists and Indian farmers alike -- that the government put a moratorium on its release. Growing insect resistance to genetically modified cotton and corn shows that the technology is already failing farmers and will continue to fail over the long term. Sadly, today's GM obsession shows every indication of duplicating the first ill-fated "Green Revolution" that trapped millions of farmers on a pesticide treadmill while devastating the functioning of the ecosystems on which we depend.

jeffery paige, agrarian revolution (1976)

(6-7): summarizing stinchcome--"family-sized tenancy most likely to produce intense class conflict..."

(7-8): summarizing wolf--"middle peasant provides mass base"

(11): the infamous graph of rural class conflict

(16-17): small-holding as the most efficient form of organization (political factors prevent this form from proliferating, he's suggesting--this is obviously very important in the Angolan case)

(18-25): thus, for noncultivators

1. (18): draws income from land, is economically weak and needs coercion; draws income from capital, is economically strong
   
2. (21): draws income from land is dependent on servile labor; draws income from capital, can tolerate free labor
   
3. (23) zero-sum conflict over static agricultural product; reform possible in other situation
   

(21): graph of three noncultivator attitudes

(22): no labor unions possible here--where dependent on servile labor [?]

(26-34): thus, for cultivating classes

1. (26) land for cultivators important, they will avoid risk; income, they can afford risk
2. (30) importance of land as source of income, stronger incentive for economic competition and weaker incentive for organization (and vice-versa)
3. (34) the greater the importance of land, the more the structural isolation of noncultivators and thus the weaker the pressures for political solidarity
   

(28): quoting Mao on the middle peasants

(33): export agriculture, where there are wages, tends to be equalizing (he puts a lot of emphasis on this, like Marx with working-class, he's saying)

(29): graph of three cultivator attitudes

(40-45): LAND and LAND--agrarian revolt [he's giving the example of El Salvador--but it's difficult, as was noted, to discard this as simple 'agrarian revolt' because it was crushed. it certainly doesn't indicate that we have a quiescent, unorganized, structurally isolated peasantry!]

(42): German Peasant Wars and Bolivian revolution--here the introduction of organizational strength comes from without, he is suggesting. [hone in on this, seems dubious again]

(45): CAPITAL and LAND--the reform commodity movement (focusing on control of the commodity market, not asking for radical demands for redistribution of property)

(48-58): CAPITAL and WAGES---the reform labor movement (a radical class-conscious proletariat focused on limited political questions, because the costs of revolution are higher given the higher probability of reform)

(51-58): discussion the exception of the Malaya plantations [see graph on 57], where 'rubber' means that behavior of the elite is more and more like one who depends on land, due to

1. labor input much less onerous in rubber, thus very difficult for small-holder to cultivate; thus rubber plantations have competition, whereas the tea estates in Ceylon dont
2. rubber took indentured immigrant laborers, servile labor
3. fixed incomes in rubber; expanding in Ceylon

(58): LAND and WAGES--agrarian revolution (you have a well-organized peasantry and a landed elite that can't make concessions, basically)

(62): decentralized sharecropping and irrigated rice production, in particular, will give you revolutionary socialism

(65): graph comparing cotton sharecropping, though, to rice sharecropping (stability of tenure, centralized management, and dependence on landlord in the former). but see graph, since the latter is better on only two out of three.

(66): the migratory labor estate will give you revolutionary nationalism--Algeria and Kenya are the examples. [arguing, on 68, that workers are organized from without--this is the weakest part of the book, since it is impossible to make this distinction in the way that he does

(69): account of the Mau Mau, and the role of the Kikuyu

(70-71): summary of the four outcomes

(95): describing how he distinguishes revolutionary socialism from revolutionary nationalism. [problematize]

(104): quite robust statistical results, having done this

(120-123): summary of chapter 2, his empirical data and the support it lends to chapter 1

(212): Portugese kill 30,000 to 40,000 putting down the Angolan rebellion in 1961

(230): again, SH viable, but the estates were dominant; the graph is useful

(237): estate managers were dependent on colonial controls of (1) labor and controls of (2) land

(250): migratory patterns were prohibiting class-based organization [but here, again, we have to remember that, actually, the class-based organization won!]

(254): no flexibility --> zero-sum conflict

(278): sharp contrast between N. and S. Vietnam

(292): population in N. Vietnam, he's arguing, had a 'conservative interest' in their subsistence plots, and a 'consequent resistance' to political innovation [this is going to be difficult to sustain, my man!]

(300): the point about ecological disaster upsetting the North completely [this is how he makes sense of rebellion, presumably--but weak!]

(322): his highly selective graph of uprisings and 'revolutionary socialist events'

(324): important--here is the most odd aspect of his argument, where the claim is that there was a military dimension to the base in the North, but a political aspect to the insurgency in the South. [interrogate here]

- - - -

[1] 'political organization' from outside vs. from inside--particularly apparent in the case of Vietnam. on the one hand, they had mass support; on the other hand, they were a party 'imposed' in any normal sense of the word. his argument actually hinges on the very thin presentation of 'revolutionary socialist events'

[2] the notion of 'agrarian revolt', and how this squares with anticipated apathy in the 'LAND and LAND' case?

[3] market as enabling reformism. as skocpol rightly says, the market can put inordinate pressures and make upper-classes more stubborn than ever.

[4] wolf and skocpol talk of the importance of a lack of repression in allowing political organization to build--this is fundamentally why the middle peasant matters for wolf, he can avoid the incompetence that comes with being completely subjugated

[5] confusion of Marxism with Materialism--given that there isn't a one-to-one between crops and source of income, might we not have to talk of class struggle as itself determining 'income source'. why is land/income the first mover, always?

[6] in Angola, the importance of political structures in conditioning the character of rebellion, rather than income source. he notes the traditional structures, for example--income source ceases to matter in determining that this was a 'revolutionary nationalist' cast. [and let's not forget, also, that it was the MPLA, the class-conscious segment, that finally won.]

Taxing income earned through agricultural activities is the sole prerogative of provincial governments under the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan. All the four provinces have enacted laws to this effect, but total collection in 2009 was below Rs. 2 billion against the actual potential of Rs. 200 billion (share of agriculture in GDP was about 22 percent). This abysmally low collection proves beyond any doubt lack of political will to tax the rich absentee landlords. Presently, the provincial governments are not collecting tax on agriculture income but on fixed per acre basis. They charge Rs.150 per acre from the irrigated area and Rs100 per acre from non-irrigated land. This is gross violation of Constitution that requires tax on agricultural income.

Henry Berstein, "V.I. Lenin and A.V. Chayanov: looking back, looking forward"
Journal of Peasant Studies, January 2009

And politics? The political economy in this paper is not deployed in any ‘antipeasant’ spirit or prescriptive stance on petty commodity production. Nor do any of my observations suggest withdrawing political sympathy and support for progressive struggles because they fail to satisfy the demands of an idealised (class-purist or other) model of political action. Rather, I have suggested that part of the problem with the ‘new’ agrarian question sketched is how it posits a unitary and idealised, and ostensibly world-historical, ‘subject’: ‘farmers’ or ‘peasants’ or ‘people of the land’. The point, then, is first, to recognise and, second, to be able to analyse, the contradictory sources and impulses – and typically multi-class character – of contemporary struggles over land and ways of farming that can inform a realistic and politically responsible assessment of them. This means rising to the challenges posed by a re-energised and radical agrarian populism, to engage both seriously and critically with the agrarian movements of the present time, and thereby to recover the spirit of Lenin’s ‘fresh and creative impulses’ of the early 1920s, and of Chayanov’s contributions to ‘practical theory’.

notes on capital
chapter 25: the general law of capitalist accumulation

(763-764): a passage critically important to the question of marx's position on absolute immiseration. ceteris paribus, marx is suggesting that periods of buyoant capitalist growth will lead to increased wages, precisely because growth in capitalist demand for labor-power will outstrip the natural growth of its supply. KEY, again, to note that this explains the narrative of the apologists, without becoming it. for first, this eventuality is highly contingent, and can be combated by variegated tactics on the part of capital (in particular, agitating for artificial growth in labor supply through immigration). secondly, it is periodic--in other words, prone to the contradictions of capitalism, more generally. (note, it may make less sense to separate these two points theoretically, than it does in terms of the presentation. that question, perhaps, depends on how one wants to understand the relation of systemic ebbs and flows to class agency). perhaps most importantly, marx is also calling attention to the contradictions immanent in expansive capitalism--namely, that it cements more widely labor's "enslavement to capital... accumulation of capital is therefore multiplication of the proletariat" as oppressed soul.

(766): in passing, it needs to be made explicit that this discussion for the need of an ever-larger permanent "underclass" is a direct response to malthus' "principle of population." (see FN 6)

(769): on the golden chain in the golden age: "a rise in the price of labor, as a consequence of the accumulation of capital, only means in fact that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-laborer has already forged for himself [sic] is loosened somewhat."

(769): in essence, marx is demanding that we orient our analysis around "the absolute law" of capitalist production: the production of surplus-value. in this sense, the imperfections of the apologists' narrative can themselves be systematized and made coherent. the abiding question, of course, is how we retain this analysis in the face of the alleged success of Capital in the golden age. in other words, that question, again, of whether capitalism has proved more resilient than marx imagined. though i think 1968 often puts paid to those questions, no?

(770): constructing the rate of accumulation as always the independent variable--in this sense, while exploding malthus' principle, marx is, more generally, endeavoring to demonstrate the contingency of all dynamics putatively "natural."

(771): lambasting the currency school, but revealing, in the process, the contingency of his own analysis. for it is certain that monetary phenomenon have become more central to the dynamics of 21st century capitalism--how do we integrate that fact into his argument here? and still, i am tempted to suggest that his scorn here can show the way toward more holistic analyses of the monetary world.

(771-772): the critical passage: roughly, marx is suggesting that the process of capital accumulation, and the process of the growth of the working-class, cannot be theorized independently. rather, the latter follows the ebbs and flows of the former. in the sense that, if capital accumulation proceeds swimmingly, capital requires (by demanding) more laborers at factories (more hands needed to utilize additional capacity, to valorize the additional capital). if, however, profits are low and accumulation is stop-start or stagnant, capitalism corrects itself--a comparatively smaller amount of "paid" labor is needed as a consequence of the slow-down, and wages fall (because labor supply now exceeds demand). [reminder: this is all a "special case", in that marx has not introduced the notion of the decline in the composition of capital]

(772): "just as man is governed, in religion, by the products of his own brain, so, in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand."

(773): this commitment to complicate the relationship between the extent of the means of production and the increasing productivity of labor--this assertion that the decreasing organic composition of capital is both the cause of as well as the consequence of the increasing productivity of labor--affirms harvey's attempts to foreground marx' refusal to theorize these dynamics in strictly causal terms. the dynamism of a dialectical framework, if invigorated by history and science, refutes the tired positivism of the liberals.

(776): the endlessness, the limitlessness: "every accumulation becomes the means of new accumulation."

(776-777): here, an exposition of the contingent relationship between the proccesses of accumulation and concentration. concentration, marx is arguing, is not a necessary result of the process of accumulation; rather, it can be interrupted and repelled by the intervention of alternative dynamics. though he admits the tendency to concentration (in the sense that these increases in individual capitals are the very bases of the corresponding capitalist enterprises), they meet with limits. here he names two: (1) "the degree of increase of [presumambly others'] social wealth," which i interpret to refer to the competition of other capitalists as well as, perhaps, the increasing demands made by a progressively better-fed, clamoring under-class. and (2) "the part of the social capital domiciled in each particular sphere of production"--in other words, the impact of laws of inheritance and intra-familial competition on individual capitals. none of this, it must be said, contradicts the general readiness to associate accumulation with concentration (see the succeeding paragraph), but, again, it opens up the general theoretical framework to challenges by specific histories (and, in a sense, immunizes it from the entrepreneurial sorts who, while seizing on these various opportunities (or 'moments), inveigh against the "awful universalisms" of marx' analysis). NB: it would be important, i think, to assess all this with more recent theories of monopoly capitalism in mind.

(777): in fact, here marx seems to suggest an alternative term, centralization, in order to refer to the "transformation of many small into few large capitals." while i have always understood this as concentration, this passage defines concentration, instead, as something akin to the consolidation of capitalist relations--i.e., the concentration of the means of production, which begin as scattered in a medley of capitalist and pre-capitalist relations of production (the intermediate forms, let's say), in the hands of individual capitalists. centralization refers to "the next stage", in a very definite sense, where "capital grows to a huge mass in a single hand in one place, because it has been lost by many in another place." needless to say, this triplet of accumulation, concentration, and centralization is critical (but also confusing, given the tendency to use the second to signify the third). (see 779, where engels clarifies the definitions: centralization as concentration in fewer hands, concentration as "another name for reproduction on an extended scale")

(777): barriers to entry, economies of scale--it's all here.

(778-779): further discussion of the triplet. important to complicate my primitive observations above.

(780): centralization as pooling of capitals, not simply cannibalization: "the world would still be without railways if it had had to wait until accumulation had got a few individual capitals far enough to be adequate for the construction of a railway"

(781-782): the dynamics underlying the creation of a "relatively redundant working population"--have to better understand what is necessary and what is contingent in this process. but it is all here, of course.

(782-783): marx here highlights how the pejorative consequences of capitalism's dynamism--the "violent fluctuations"--conspire to produce, "temporarily", a surplus population. importantly, though each of these moments is individually fleeting, their systemic origins means that the assemblage of redundancies they represent is emphatically permanent. it is in the failure to substantively theorize the latter fact, i think, that lies the rub.

(783): the tragedy of simple reproduction: "the working population therefore produces both the accumulation of capital and the means by which it is itself made relatively superfluous; and it does this to an extent which is always increasing"

(784): repudiating, again, malthusian attempts to pinpoint a 'natural' law of population increase. this is, of course, monumentally obvious--one cannot understand the relationship of man to nature (or, rather, humans to their reproduction) without history. but critical to re-assert against the population planners.

(784): the latent question, i suppose, remains: how does one understand the fact of this necessity of an industrial reserve army while also appreciating the fervent honesty of these ideologues fixated on population control? as always, i suspect this is not really a question for the economists, but rather a topic to be tackled by the theorists of conscoiusness. why do well-meaning people hold--really hold--patently mistaken beliefs?

(785-786): here marx mentions the relationship between the formation of this reserve army and the industrial cycle, but not in much detail. there is some confusion, i think, over what he identifies as the independent variable--though perhaps we're moving past causal-talk, in general? (there is much to close-read here, i think--especially in conjunction with volume III)

(786): clearly, these pages lay the groundwork for theorizing emigration in capitalism: while a source of bolstering this reserve army, of course, it interacts in complicated ways with the sanctitiy of identities which sustain capitalist hegemony by feeding forms of false-consciousness. indeed, in the latter dynamic, contradictory forces are at play: on the one hand, the immigration of non-nationals threatens the stability of that national identity (through diffusion, assimilation, cross-national solidarity)--this may be a boon for workers, in a long-term sense, but in the short-term it surely appears as any number of individual injustices ("they're stealing our jobs!"). in this way, it helps divide and rule. on the other hand, the restriction of immigration, marx is pointing out, threatens the very fabric of capitalist production--the existence of a reserve army is foundational to the healthy functioning of the system. this bewildering skein of competing considerations (along with whatever i have ommitted), of course, implies a masterful agency, the likes of which it would impossible to track, i suspect (this, in a sense, is the abiding impression of this section--there is an overriding logic to the system's operation which is at once rational and efficient yet also decidedly destructive and violent (NB: even the former is not at all the neoclassical narrative)).

(788): under capitalism's watch, the 'natural' limits to population growth are malleable, moulded to its aims.

(789-790): overwork and enforced idleness as twin symptoms of the same systemic patterns.

(791-792): an explicit critique of bourgeois analysis, arguing that the ideologues extrapolate from a local rise in wages to claim the infallibility of capitalist production, whereas the pattern really needs to be theorized and understood in the context of its place in the overall assemblage (i.e., its definitively local origins and ramifications--which sphere of production, etc.). in other words, "local oscillations" are mistaken for universal, timeless trends.

(793-794): there are here some interesting (though fragmentary) observations on the process of working-class 'awakening'--not chronologically, exactly, but more systemically. marx speaks also of the role that the iron, objective laws of capital play in stifling this tendency to subjective organization. and where these alliances can't be stifled objectively (and this industrial reserve army formed naturally), he alludes, Capital calls summons the Iron Fist ("forcible means"). (see also 808)

(796): Marx deploys these concepts in order to theorize the migration of masses from rural to urban areas, as "capitalist agriculture takes possession of agriculture." Needless to say, this is immensely relevant to the present plight of the Third World--in fact, the whole dialectics of technology (as presented in this and earlier chapters) presage the approach most suited to tackling the corporatization of rural areas today. We simply must be directly concerned with labor absorption.

(797): "along with the surplus population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth"--it is important to note here that Marx's theory of modern poverty (pauperism under capitalism) is inextricably linked to this fact of the necessity of a relative surplus population. Can our classless neoclassicals even compete?!

(798): a summary of "the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation"

(798): underlying all this is the uneasy question of what an "actually-existing" socialist society might do with the question of population.

(799): an explicit normative appraisal of the situation of the worker in capitalist society: "it follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse." the objections to this claim seem obvious. yet, in marx's defense, one has to (a) situate this in the context of the importance of dialectics to his general argument, and (b) clarify that he is here employing a much more holistic normative measures than GDP/capita allows. Yet perhaps it is important to complicate his observation, not simply empirically but also theoretically?

(799, FN 23): this prefigures the implications of development-of-underdevelopment analyses, insofar as Marx is here emphasizing the 'modernity' of misery and poverty--it is not that these are symptoms of backwardness waiting to be swept away, but rather that they are emphatically 'modern' phenomenon which are indelible features of a modern capitalist economy.

(800): some words from an apologist, who celebrates the parasitism of his ilk: "'it seems to be a law of Nature that the poor should be to a certain degree improvident... that there may always be some to fulfil the most servile, the most sordid, and the most ignoble offices in the community. The stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, whilst the more delicate are not only relieved from drudgery... but are left at liberty without interruption to pursue those callings which are suited to their various dispositions" (Rev. J. Townsend, A Dissertation on the Poor Laws. By a Well-Wisher of Mankind).

(812): prefiguring, in fragmentary form, the relationship between capital accumulation and space--between development and slum-dwelling. the "developing" city has no place for its poor. (in the pages that follow, he explores this in depth--needless to say, on the "planet of slums," the underlying theoretical framework and consequent empirical investigation are both immensely relevant.)

(815): this continues, as Marx substantiates again the claim that the liberal doctrine of equal rights masks the deep asymmetries at the heart of capitalist society: while the rich displaced by railways and industry receive comfort and compensation, the poor working-classes are indicted for crowding in alternate locations as a result!

(822): lest anyone need be reminded, Marx is under no illusions that the industrial working-class is uniform; here he speaks explicitly of an "aristocracy" of the working-class. though this isn't exactly the michael albert objection, this observation suffices, i think, to show that albert battles a straw-man.

(827): whole working families live worse than sailors, soldiers, and even prisoners (this is Belgium, where the State has not yet interfered with the freedom of Capital).

(833): important section for exploring Marx and the agrarian question--other than the fact that he explicitly complicates the narrative of linear progress (not just by highlighting its non-linearity but also by demonstrating its space-less-ness), he here very directly excoriates the effects of 'labor-saving' technologies on the agricultural populations of 18th and 19th century England. (see particularly 848-849, where all this is tied directly to the concept of the relative surplus population--"there are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary needs of cultivation, and too few for exceptional and temporary requirements")

(840): reminder that the study of migration is not as simple as the study of the exodus from country to city, but also must theorize the changes occuring within rural areas (be it intra-rural migration or reconfiguration of rural areas)--again, this only re-emphasizes, against the lie of the modernists, the fact that everything is "modern" (backwardness, rurality, etc.).

(861-862): all this is applied specifically to Ireland and the mass emigrations of the mid-19th century--Marx is tracking the growth of the relative surplus population, and the consequences of this process for the average Irish laborer (much of this is the story of the transition, in Ireland, from arable to pasture land--to a less labor-intensive method of production. as Marx puts it, "the revolution in agriculture has kept pace with emigration").

(866): the comparative argument here (between the distinct roles of the surplus agricultural populations in industrial England and agricultural Ireland) begets a further comparison, for the contemporary third world. in Ireland, Marx argues, though the relative surplus population accumulates in the towns, it is constantly needed in the fields (at harvest time or boom time). crudely put, the story of the contemporary third world is not too distinct, with one exception--the agricultural revolution having proceeded farther (the corporatization of farming, etc.) in this day and age, we see instead a burgeoning informal sector (and mass under and un-employment). the similarities are striking, of course: as in 19th century ireland, the relative surplus population in towns across the third world plays a dual role, depresing urban wages while also filling shortages at harvest time (having said that, one needs to think about where, specifically, this labor comes from at harvest time--this can further complicate the schema, requiring a distinct appraisal of emigration to larger and smaller cities). in sum, i suppose, one again needs--as Marx has demonstrated throughout this chapter--a concrete assessment of hard data pertaining to a particular place and time.

"I agree with the farmers, they need more support. The government needs to at least limit these kind of imports ... in order to make them (farmers) competitive in the international market," said Aqa. "It's not a good time to introduce a free market in Afghanistan at the moment."

weisbrot on bolivia:
Morales had promised to regain control over the country's hydrocarbon - mostly natural gas - resources. This was accomplished and has brought in an extra $1.5 billion of revenue to the public treasury. (For comparison, imagine an extra $1.6 trillion, or four times the current U.S. federal budget deficit, in the United States.)
(...) These provinces produce about 82 percent of Bolivia's natural gas, and get nearly three times the gas revenue per person as do the other five provinces. The Media Luna states have a per capita income that is about 40 percent higher than the other five states. Their population is also much less indigenous: ranging from 16 percent (Pando) to 38 percent in Santa Cruz, as compared to 66-84 percent in the other states.
(...) The Media Luna states also have the big landholdings that give Bolivia one of the most concentrated land distributions in the entire world. Well under one percent of landowners have two-thirds of the country's farm land. These include the big soybean producers of Santa Cruz, Bolivia's largest province and bulwark of the Media Luna alliance. Some of the big landowners are leaders of the political opposition.
(...) With forty percent of the labor force in agriculture and more than three-quarters of rural Bolivians in poverty, a redistribution of arable land is not only a central demand of the voters, but an important part of an economic development strategy that can boost employment and income in the countryside.

The irony of our global economy is that food flows through trade from areas were people are hungry toward areas where there is money.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.
(...) It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

the principles of food sovereignty:

So, how do we traverse this jungle? Like all forest dwellers, it is important to equip ourselves with a set of simple guidelines before setting on the journey. In our view, there are five basic guidelines, or principles, that must form the basis of any food policy. These are:

1. The Principle of food sovereignty. This is not the same as “food security”. A country can have food security through food imports. Dependence on food imports is precarious and prone to multiple risks -- from price risks, to supply risks, to conditionality risks (policy conditions that come with food imports). Food sovereignty, on the other hand, implies ensuring domestic production and supply of food. It means that the nationals of the country (or at the very least nationals within the region) must primarily be responsible for ensuring that the nation and the region are first and foremost dependent on their own efforts and resources to grow their basic foods.

2. The Principle of priority of food over export crops produced by small farms sustained by state provision of the necessary infrastructure of financial credit, water, energy, extension service, transport, storage, marketing, and insurance against crop failures due to climate changes or other unforeseen circumstances.

3. The Principle of self-reliance and national ownership and control over the main resources for food production. These are land, seeds, water, energy, essential fertilizers and technology and equipment (for production, harvesting, storage and transport).

4. The Principle of food safety reserves. Each nation must maintain, through primarily domestic production and storage systems (including village storage as well as national silos) sufficient stocks of “reserve foods” to provide for emergencies.

5. The Principle of a fair and equitable distribution of “reserve foods” among the population during emergencies.

Sadly, and with dire consequences, the above quite commonsensical and, we believe, reasonable principles have not been followed by many governments in the South. They have been grossly violated through five main reasons, among other minor ones:

1. Distorted state policies on production and trade (e.g. removal of tariffs that made local producers vulnerable to imported food from rich countries that subsidized their own food production and exports).

2. Land grab by the rich commercial farmers, thus disempowering small producers and rendering them vulnerable to “market attacks.”

3. Effective loss of control over resources of food production, including land (even where nationals “owned” land) because of imported seeds, imported fertilizers, imported machinery, imported technical assistance, and imported banks, and also loss of control over water and energy through surrendering these to foreign corporations attracted by the lure of so-called FDIs (foreign direct investments).

4. Donor aid dependence, and bad advice that came with it from donors including the World Bank and the IMF during the heyday of the “Washington Consensus” (1975-2005).

5. Disruption of the infrastructure of food production (as described above) that came as a consequence of the above four factors.

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(...) It is estimated that up to 15 million Mexican farmers and their families (in particular indigenous peoples) may have been displaced from their livelihoods as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and competition with subsidized American maize.
(...) Just 10 corporations, including Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, control one third of the $23 billion commercial seed market and 80% of the $28 billion global pesticide market. Another 10 corporations, including Cargill, control 57% of the total sales of the world's leading 30 retailers and account for 37% of the revenues earned by the world's top 100 food and beverage companies.
(...) In an increasingly liberalizing (globalizing) world, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) have increased their control over the supply of water, especially in the South. In many cases, private sector participation in water services has been one of the “aid conditionalities” of the so-called “donor assistance” (ODAs) from donor countries and the IMF and the World Bank. Just three companies, Veolia Environnement (formerly Vivendi Environnement), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Bechtel (USA), control a majority of private water concessions globally.
(...) The biofuels industry is inherently predatory on land and resources, especially if it is generated out of food such as maize and Soya beans. It is estimated that to produce 50 litres of biofuels to run a car for one day’s long trip or three days city-run, it would consume about 200 kg of maize -- enough to feed one person for one year. This does not even take into account the cost of energy, water and other resources that go into biofuels production.
(...) The heavy production and export subsidies that OECD countries grant their farmers - more than $349 billion in 2006 or almost $1 billion per day - mean that subsidized European fruit, vegetables lower grade meat, and chicken wings can be found in markets all over West Africa at lower prices than local produce.

Those other “Singapore” issues (named after the site of a 1996 WTO summit) include investment protection (so future policies don’t hamper corporate profits), competition policy (to break local large firms up) and government procurement (to end programmes like South Africa’s affirmative action). These were removed from the WTO by African negotiators during the Cancun summit in 2003, but have re-emerged through EPA bilaterals.
According to Gyekye Tanoh of Third World Network in Accra, “The key thing for Mandelson is to gain exclusive preferential market access. Europe is gaining 80% of our markets in exchange for what is effectively just 2% of theirs.”
(...) Already, says Tanoh, “The effect of trade liberalisation on African agriculture is a disaster, with only one sector anticipated to grow: agro-processing. That’s the one that most easily invites European capital to scale up investments in joint ventures. Agricultural output would only increase by 1%, our studies show. But the big contradiction is in the export of cash crops, at a time of severe pressure on food products.”
(...) African farmers’ ability to sell on the local market will be undercut by rapid trade liberalisation that opens the way to surges of cheap, often subsidised imports. Women are most adversely affected.
(...) [delinking] As Walter Rodney observed, “It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they do not -- or are not allowed to -- concentrate on those sectors of the economy which in turn will generate growth and raise production to a new level altogether, and there are very few ties between one sector and another so that, say, agriculture and industry could react beneficially on each other.”
(...) Added Senegalese scholar Cherif Salif Sy, “Most of Africa has an electricity crisis, and yet to get economies of scale for European agro-processing companies if they locate in Dakar, they require vast amounts of electricity. And they come with the power to demand a lower price, which puts much more stress on our grid and causes the price to go up for local buyers, and the supply to be redirected.”
(...) African firms cannot compete in this sector, as they lack the brand names, skills and marketing structures that European companies enjoy. The same firms have also no access to EU support in the forms of straight subsidies, tax incentives, research and development funding or concessional credit.
(...) Rodney might agree, as he criticised “the minority in Africa which serves as the transmission line between the metropolitan capitalists and the dependencies in Africa ... The presence of a group of African sell-outs is part of the definition of underdevelopment. Any diagnosis of underdevelopment in Africa will reveal not just low per capita income and protein deficiencies, but also the gentlemen who dance in Abidjan, Accra and Kinshasa when music is played in Paris, London and New York.” (And now, with EPAs and the WTO, add Brussels and Geneva.)

africa's unnatural disaster:
The World Bank's continued market fundamentalism is difficult to understand, especially in light of the fact that after more than 25 years of imposing these policies in Africa and Latin America, success stories are few and far between. Those countries that do have productive agricultural sectors (almost none of which are in Africa) either rely on huge landholders to be productive (Brazil, Argentina, Chile) or on massive subsidies (India) or both (U.S., EU). The countries that have eliminated their subsidies and privatized their grain boards, including many in Africa, are those that are doing the poorest.
(...) If one is willing to look at the events of the last 30 years without the quasi-religious belief that free markets lead to development and growth, one would undoubtedly find that the opposite is true. In his groundbreaking work Kicking Away the Ladder (2003), Ha Joon Chang documents the development of every industrialized country, showing that protectionist policies were a fundamental part of development strategy in almost every case. The process of development that emerges from this story is not maximizing comparative advantage (for if so, the U.S. would be a sparsely populated country of fur traders and fisher people) but rather shifting comparative advantage to high value goods through calculated market distortions. In the case of the U.K. and the United States, those market distortions originally came in the form of colonialism and slavery. But market distortions continue in the U.S. today in the form of agriculture and steel subsidies, not to mention the tremendous government spending on biotechnology and defense, which largely serves as a subsidy for those sectors.
(...) The report does point out that a few countries (Brazil and Chile are the examples given) have successfully used agriculture to increase growth, but in Brazil and (to a lesser extent) Chile, small farmers are all but extinct, and agriculture is big business. Given the preoccupation with small farmers and poverty alleviation in other parts of the document, the examples are odd.
(...) Since about 1970, the World Bank, other international financial institutions and the private sector have succeeded in completely transforming agriculture from a primarily local affair to a complex industrialized process. Monocropping, over-reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers and trans-genetic manipulation have in some cases increased yields; but these practices have not led to a significant reduction in the number of hungry people in the world. The recommendations of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and the World Bank amount to insanity - recommending more of the same and expecting better results.
(...) In the United States, Europe and elsewhere, many are beginning to understand that industrialized agriculture benefits neither those who produce nor those who consume food. In the current food crisis, more than 25 countries and the European Union have imposed tariffs, subsidies, price controls or other measures to protect consumers from the global free market. So why the double standard when it comes to Africa?
(...) For those interested in solutions, the organic and local movements aren't far off the mark. What producers and consumers in many parts of the world are beginning to understand is that the way that farmers have been growing food for millennia is more or less a good system. While there may be room for technology, (drip irrigation systems, for example) that innovation should not alter the food product nor add layers of cost. Many parts of Africa have an advantage in that they have never really lost their traditional relationships with the land. The problem has been that cheaper food from Europe and the United States is often dumped on African countries, undercutting the possibility for farmers to earn a living from their production. In the case of Africa, all that may be needed is a sensible trade policy to protect those who already grow enough food for all Africans.

survival of the fattest:
"The United States had doled out $27 billion in federal subsidies to its `farmers' in the last fiscal year. That's Rs. 135,000 crores." Just the top 10 per cent of America's farm owners collared close to two-thirds of this largesse. That includes "multi-million dollar corporations".
(...) The needy farmers thus rescued include media baron Ted Turner, a Rockefeller and other assorted struggling billionaires. Turner is "one of the largest landowners" in the U.S.. He owns ranches in Montana, South Dakota and Florida. And his companies raked in $1,90,000. That's Rs. 95 lakhs. David Rockefeller, who owns a 3,000-acre farm, got $146,000. A modest Rs. 73 lakhs. He is a former Chase Manhattan Bank chairman and grandson of John D.
(...) There were at least 20 "Fortune 500" companies among yet other poor farmers pulled back from the brink. Including Chevron, Caterpillar, IBP and Archer Daniels Midland.
(...) These included, as the AP report written by John Kelly put it: "more than 1,200 universities and government farms, including state prisons". They got cash from programmes "touted by politicians as a way to prop up needy farmers. Subsidies also went to real estate developers and absentee landowners in big cities from Chicago to New York".
(...) Well, "63 per cent of the money went to the top 10 per cent of recipients". Many of whom "don't fit the image of the struggling family farm". In Iowa in 1998, I saw small holdings go bust that did fit the image of the struggling family farm. How did those families read their misfortune? Many felt they were victims of wasteful spending on welfare, affirmative action and immigrants. In truth, they were just squeezed out by big corporate farmers. Farm corporations who also held great control over input prices. And government subsidies. In fact, it all sounds a bit like home — only on a scale unthinkable in India. Top Indian business houses have plundered fertiliser subsidies worth thousands of crores of rupees for years. Of course, their amounts, crushing by Indian standards, look trifling next to the largesse doled out in the citadel of neo-liberal market economics.
(...) At the bottom end of this food chain, the average "real" farmer got about $16,000 each. These are perhaps the "needy" ones in the U.S.. And that's still Rs. 8 lakh per farmer. Compare that with the Indian small holder, relieved to have seen off another year when he's earned $80 from an acre.
(...) What happens if Africa, Latin America and Asia increase their share of world markets by just one percent? An Oxfam report says that 120 million people could beat the poverty trap. But that won't happen in the field of agriculture. Not while corporations — with billions of dollars of subsidies behind them — rule theworld.
(...) Lawmakers want to restrict "information about who receives federal farm subsidies". Why? Beats me.

they've got the world by the belly:
As the Wall Street Journal (April 30, 2008) notes: “At a time when parts of the world are facing food riots, Big Agriculture is dealing with a different sort of challenge: huge profits.” The WSJ points to the grain-processing giant Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., which saw a 42 per cent leap in its fiscal third quarter profits. “Including a sevenfold increase in net income in its unit that stores, transports and trades grains such as wheat and corn, as well as soybeans.”
(...) “Some observers think financial speculation has helped push up prices as wealthy investors in the past year have flooded the agriculture commodity markets in search of better returns.” So much so that “The Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week held a hearing in Washington to examine the role index funds and other speculators are playing in driving up grain prices.” The WSJ cites research showing that total index fund investment in corn, soybean, wheat, cattle and hogs has risen by 37 billion dollars (which is well over double India’s farm loan waiver for millions of farmers) since 2006.
(...) But you cannot live without food and water. The latter “commodity” is the focus of the biggest thrust of some huge multinational companies. And we are well into the process of privatising water in India (for them) in a process that promises chaos, misery and conflict on a scale we cannot begin to grasp at this point.
(...) Across the globe, the entire chain of resources and inputs is now getting cornered by corporations. Farm land, water, fertilizer, seed, pesticide and many more. Grab these together and you’ve got the world by its belly. The giant companies are now putting out papers on how they will solve the world’s food problem. Never mind they are at the heart of it.
(...) Meanwhile, making chemical fertilizer requires large use of fossil fuels. So rising oil prices further spur the fertilizer crisis. The rip-off by the top corporations in that sector has been so great that even the United States Senate saw moves to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies. (In India, the government responded to such calls by transferring the burden to the people and asking for “patience on the inflationary trend.”) Of course, it was scotched in the Senate, too.
(...) For well over a decade now, we have invested less and less in agriculture. Following the World Bank-IMF menu, we discouraged food crop and focused on cash crop and sang the hymns of export-led growth. Mindless de-regulation saw corporate control grip more sectors of agriculture. Seed, fertilizer, markets, you name it. We reduced our agricultural universities to labs for private corporations. We stepped up our use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Millions of farmers were shifted to a much higher-cost economy where input costs are crippling. A (non-organic) farmer in 1991 could cultivate an acre of cotton in Vidharbha for Rs. 2,500. [Just over $60.] Today that would cost him or her Rs. 13,000 or more, given the “miracles” of chemicals, pesticides and Bt.
(...) And then we withdrew credit. Even if the fertilizer comes through this season, countless farmers in the post-loan waiver world find themselves without fresh credit. “We’re not mad,” say bank managers in crisis regions. “The farmer has no new income. Nor better prices. How will someone who could not repay Rs. 10,000 repay thrice that sum?” So who do farmers seeking credit turn to? The very input dealers who are emerging the major source of informal credit in the countryside. And who are implicated in the black marketing of vital inputs in every crisis.

On Wednesday, nestled in a white satin coffin, the 17-year-old girl became to farm labor advocates more a symbol of what they say are secretive and abusive conditions in some of the state’s orchards and vineyards.

the world food crisis:
Of the more than 6 billion people living in the world today, the United Nations estimates that close to 1 billion suffer from chronic hunger. But this number, which is only a crude estimate, leaves out those suffering from vitamin and nutrient deficiencies and other forms of malnutrition. The total number of food insecure people who are malnourished or lacking critical nutrients is probably closer to 3 billion—about half of humanity. The severity of this situation is made clear by the United Nations estimate of over a year ago that approximately 18,000 children die daily as a direct or indirect consequence of malnutrition
(...) At this moment in history there are, in addition to the "routine" hunger discussed above, two separate global food crises occurring simultaneously. The severe and acute crisis, about two years old, is becoming worse day by day and it is this one that we'll discuss first.
(...) The prices of the sixty agricultural commodities traded on the world market increased 37 percent last year and 14 percent in 2006 (New York Times, January 19, 2008). Corn prices began their rise in the early fall of 2006 and within months had soared by some 70 percent. Wheat and soybean prices also skyrocketed during this time and are now at record levels. The prices for cooking oils (mainly made from soybeans and oil palm)—an essential foodstuff in many poor countries—have rocketed up as well. Rice prices have also risen over 100 percent in the last year ("High Rice Cost Creating Fears of Asia Unrest," New York Times, March 29, 2008).
(...) The reasons for these soaring food prices are fairly clear. First, there are a number of issues related directly or indirectly to the increase in petroleum prices. In the United States, Europe, and many other countries this has brought a new emphasis on growing crops that can be used for fuel—called biofuels (or agrofuels). Thus, producing corn to make ethanol or soybean and palm oil to make diesel fuel is in direct competition with the use of these crops for food. Last year over 20 percent of the entire corn crop in the United States was used to produce ethanol—a process that does not yield much additional energy over that which goes into producing it. (It is estimated that over the next decade about one-third of the U.S. corn crop will be devoted to ethanol production [Bloomberg, February 21, 2008].) Additionally, many of the inputs for large-scale commercial agricultural production are based on petroleum and natural gas—from building and running tractors and harvesting equipment to producing fertilizers and pesticides and drying crops for storage. The price of nitrogen fertilizer, the most commonly used fertilizer worldwide, is directly tied to the price of energy because it takes so much energy to produce.
(...) A second cause of the increase in prices of corn and soybeans and soy cooking oil is that the increasing demand for meat among the middle class in Latin America and Asia, especially China. The use of maize and soy to feed cattle, pigs, and poultry has risen sharply to satisfy this demand. The world's total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last twenty years alone. (New York Times, January 27, 2008.) Feeding grain to more and more animals is putting growing pressure on grain stores. Feeding grain to produce meat is a very inefficient way of providing people with either calories or protein. It is especially wasteful for animals such as cows—with digestive systems that can derive energy from cellulose—because they can obtain all of their nutrition from pastures and will grow well without grain, although more slowly. Cows are not efficient converters of corn or soy to meat—to yield a pound of meat, cows require eight pounds of corn; pigs, five; and chickens, three (Baron's, March 4, 2008).
(...) A third reason for the big jump in world food prices is that a few key countries that were self-sufficient—that is, did not import foods, although plenty of people suffered from hunger—are now importing large quantities of food. As a farm analyst in New Delhi says "When countries like India start importing food, then the world prices zoom....If India and China are both turning into bigger importers, shifting from food self-sufficiency as recently we have seen in India, then the global prices are definitely going to rise still further, which will mean the era of cheaper food has now definitely gone away" (VOA News, February 21, 2008). Part of the reason for the pressure on rice prices is the loss of farmland to other uses such as various development projects—some 7 million acres in China and 700,000 acres in Vietnam. In addition, rice yields per acre in Asia have reached a plateau. There has been no per acre increase for ten years and yield increases are not expected in the near future (Rice Today, January-March 2008).
(...) Speculation in the futures market and hoarding at the local level are certainly playing a part in this crisis situation to make food more expensive. As the U.S. financial crisis deepened and spread in the winter of 2008, speculators started putting more money into food and metals to take advantage of what is being called the "commodities super cycle." (The dollar's decline relative to other currencies stimulates "investment" in tangible commodities.) While it would be a mistake to see these aspects, however despicable and inhumane, as the cause of the crisis, they certainly add to the misery by taking advantage of tight markets. It is certainly possible that the commodity bubble will burst, bringing down food prices a bit. However, speculation and local hoarding will continue to put an upward pressure on food prices.
(...) As critical as the short-term food crisis is—demanding immediate world notice as well as attention within every country—the long-term, structural crisis is even more important. The latter has existed for decades and contributes to, and is reinforced by, today's acute food crisis. Indeed, it is this underlying structural crisis of agriculture and food in third world societies which constitutes the real reason that the immediate food crisis is so severe and so difficult to surmount within the system.
(...) It seems logical that with higher food prices, farmers should be better off and produce more to satisfy the "demand" indicated by the market. To a certain extent that is true—especially for farmers that can take advantage of all the physical and monetary advantages of large-scale production. Yet, the input costs for just about everything used in agricultural production have also increased, thus profit gains for farmers are not as large as might be expected. This is a particularly difficult problem for farmers raising animals fed on increasingly expensive grains.
(...) Rising crop prices cause the price of farmland to increase—especially of large fields that can be worked by large-scale machinery. This is happening in the United States and in certain countries of the periphery. For example, Global Ag Investments, a company based in Texas, owns and operates 34,000 acres of Brazilian farmland. At one of its farms, a single field of soybeans covers 1,600 acres—that's two and a half square miles! A New Zealand company has purchased approximately 100,000 acres in Uruguay and has hired managers to operate dairy farms established on their land.
Private equity firms are purchasing farmland in the United States (Associated Press, May 7, 2007) as well as abroad. A U.S. company is cooperating with Brazilian and Japanese partners to purchase 385 square miles in Brazil, approximately a quarter of a million acres! This is also happening with South American capital taking the lead—a Brazilian investment fund, Investimento em Participacoe, is buying a minority stake in a an Argentine soybean producer that owns close to 400,000 acres in Uruguay and Argentina. Rising crop prices have also led to an acceleration of deforestation in the Amazon basin—1,250 square miles (about the size of Rhode Island) in the last five months of 2007—as capitalist farmers hunger for more land (BBC, January 24, 2008). In addition, huge areas of farmland have been taken for development—some of dubious use, such as building suburban style housing and golf courses for the wealthy.
(...) In China during 2000 to 2005, there was an average annual loss of 2.6 million acres as farmland is used for development. The country is fast approaching the self-defined minimum amount of arable farmland that it should have—approximately 290 million acres (120 million hectares)—and the amount of farmland will most likely continue to fall. As part of an effort to gain access to foreign agricultural production, a Chinese company has made an agreement to lease close to 2.5 million acres of land in the Philippines to grow rice, corn, and sugar—setting off a huge protest in the Philippines that has temporarily stalled the project (Bloomberg, February 21, 2008). As one farmer put it: "The [Philippine] government and the Chinese call it a partnership, but it only means the Chinese will be our landlords and we will be the slaves.''
(...) Although enhanced agricultural production is essential, much of the emphasis in the past has been on production of export crops. While this may help a country's balance of payments, export oriented agriculture does not ensure sufficient food for everyone nor does it promote a healthy rural environment. In addition to basic commodities such as soybeans, export-oriented agriculture also leads naturally to the production of high-value luxury crops demanded by export markets (luxuries from the standpoint of the basic food needs of a poor third world country), rather than the low-value subsistence crops needed to meet the needs of the domestic population. Production of sufficient amounts of the right kinds of food within each country's borders—by small farmers working in cooperatives or on their own and using sustainable techniques—is the best way to achieve the goal of "food security." In this way the population may be insulated, at least partially, from the price fluctuations on the world market. This, of course, also means not taking land out of food production to produce crops for the biofuel markets.