THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Food Sovereignty and the Agrarian Question: Constructing Convergence of Struggles within Diversity

Samir Amin

This first chapter provides a series of analytical elements to answer some of the major questions of our times on agriculture: (1) What kind of agriculture – capitalist, socialist, peasant – can guarantee food sovereignty without which the construction of a multi-polar society is impossible? (2) Which food productions should benefit from top priority in the decision-making process for development? (3) How does one conciliate the growth needed for food production with the preservation of the viability of the earth for the generations to come? The present contribution – in defence of the peasant solution – will put the emphasis on building convergences of the struggles operating in diverse conditions in the North and in the South of our planet.

Family Agriculture in the Present World: Convergences and Differences between the North and the South

In the North: An efficient family agriculture perfectly integrated into dominant capitalism

Modern family agriculture, dominant in Western Europe and in the United States, has clearly shown its superiority over other forms of agricultural production. Annual production per worker (the equivalent of 1,000 to 2,000 tonnes of cereal) has no equal and it has enabled a tiny section of the active population (about 5 per cent) to supply the whole country abundantly and even produce exportable surpluses (Berthelot, 2001). Modern family agriculture has also shown an exceptional capacity for absorbing innovations and much flexibility in adapting to the demand.

This agriculture does not share a specific characteristic of capitalism, that is, its main mode of labour organisation. In the factory, the number of workers enables an advanced division of labour, which is at the origin of the leap in productivity. In the agricultural family business, labour supply is reduced to one or two individuals (the farming couple), sometimes helped by one, two or three associates or permanent labourers, but also, in certain cases, a larger number of seasonal workers, particularly for the harvesting of fruit and vegetables (FAO, 2006). Generally speaking, there is not a definitively fixed division of labour, the tasks being polyvalent and variable. In this sense, family agriculture is not capitalist. However, this modern family agriculture constitutes an inseparable part of the capitalist economy into which it is fully integrated.

In this family agricultural business, self-consumption no longer counts. It depends entirely for its economic legitimacy on its production for the market. Thus the logic that commands the production options is no longer the same as that of the agricultural peasants of yesterday – analysed by Chayanov (1986) or of today in Third World countries.

The efficiency of the agricultural family business is due to its modern equipment. These businesses possess 90 per cent of the tractors and other agricultural equipment in use in the world (Mazoyer and Roudart, 1997). The machines are 'bought' (often on credit) by the farmers and are therefore their 'property'. In the logic of capitalism, the farmer is both a worker and a capitalist and his income should correspond to the sum of the wages for his work and the profit from his ownership of the capital being used. But it is not so. The net income of farmers in each country is comparable to the average wage earned in industry in that country (UNDP, various years). The state intervention and regulation policies in Europe and the United States, where this form of agriculture dominates, have as their declared objective the aim of ensuring (through subsidies) the equality of 'peasant' and 'worker' incomes (CETIM and GRAIN, 2012). The profits from the capital used by farmers are therefore collected by segments of industrial and financial capital further up the food chain. Control over agricultural production also operates down the food chain by modern commerce (particularly the supermarkets).

In the family agriculture of Europe and the United States, the component of the land rent, which is meant to constitute, in conventional economics, the remuneration of land productivity, does not figure in the remuneration of the farmer-owner, or the owner (when he is not the farmer). The French model of 'anaesthetising the owner' is very telling: in law, the rights of the farmer are given priority over those of the owner. In the United States, where 'respect for property' always has the absolute priority, the same result is obtained by forcing de facto almost all the family businesses to be owners of the land that they farm. The rent of ownership thus disappears from the remuneration of the farmers (Amin, 2005).

The efficiency of this family agriculture is also due to the fact that each unit farms (as owner or not) enough good land: neither too small nor pointlessly large. The area farmed, corresponding, for each stage of the development of mechanised equipment, to what a farmer alone (or a small family unit) can work, has gradually been extended in the interest of efficiency, as Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart's (1997) analysis of the facts has convincingly demonstrated.

In actual fact, therefore, the agricultural family unit, efficient as it certainly is, is only a subcontractor, caught in the pincers between upstream agribusiness (which imposes selected seeds today, GMOs tomorrow), industry (which supplies the equipment and chemical products), finance (which provides the necessary credits), and downstream in the commercialisation of the supermarkets. The status of the farmer is more like that of the artisan (individual producer) who used to work in the...