Paper 2: Food Systems

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From Farming to Agriculture: Agricultural Modernization

Week Eight

Today is the first day of our three-class unit on Agricultural Modernization.

Assignments

Country Assignment 1

Presentation

Test

Participation

Mid-term Grades

Response for next week

Country assignment 1: please read feedback, improvement

Test: plus 10

Participation: will be released today/tomorrow

Mid-term grades: will be released today/tomorrow

Module 2: Agricultural Modernization

From Farming To Agriculture: Intro to Agricultural Modernization

Agro-Industrialization Otherwise

Alternative Food Systems

Before I discuss this thought it would be fun to take a Poll!

Today’s Class

Understand the relationship between the global farm and the global factory

Key concepts: cheap food, farming, agriculture, green revolution, gender, social reproduction, in situ dispossession, ex situ dispossession

Consider how agriculture is reshaping gender relations and social reproduction

Presentations

Country Assignment #2 (1/3)

For this assignment, you will view a film about your research country. You will then write a short essay (about 500 words) in which you critically evaluate the film. In your essay, you must incorporate four course concepts from at least two different weeks (by first defining the concept and then applying it to your discussion).

These are the concepts you may choose from:

Week Eight: Cheap Food, Green Revolution, Gender, Social Reproduction, in situ dispossession, ex situ dispossession,

Week Nine: boom crop; adverse incorporation; exogenous agribusiness expansion; endogenous commodity market expansion; small-scale narrative; industrial narrative; agrarian developmental state

Week Ten: solidarity economy; peasant; food sovereignty; agroecology

*films for 2 countries up, for 2 countries still trying to acquire…

Country Assignment #2 (2/3)

In order to critically evaluate the message of the film, you must first describe the message. You should do this by answering the following two questions: (1) What social consequences have resulted from the transition from 'farming' to 'agriculture' as depicted in the film? (See the powerpoint from Week 8 for definitions of 'farming' and 'agriculture') (2) How have people in your research country resisted or sought alternatives to this transition?

Then critically evaluate the film. You may do this by arguing that the filmmaker accurately portrays the transition from 'farming' to 'agriculture' by describing the strength of the evidence that s/he marshals in support of their argument or by describing how this process has unfolded in similar ways in different parts of the world (citing evidence from the readings or from your own knowledge). Alternatively, you might suggest that the filmmaker's portrayal of the transition from 'farming' to 'agriculture' is inaccurate or one-sided. You could do this by pointing to inadequacies in their evidence or by introducing another perspective from which the transition could be viewed.

Country Assignment #2 (3/3)

General points about effective writing

A. Don't bury your thesis. Tell me right away what your paper is about. Start off with a clear statement of your topic. B. Write with clarity and concision 1. Avoid wordiness. Don't tell me a bunch of necessary stuff. 2. If you use any technical terms or jargon, explain them. (Especially pertinent advice for this assignment, as you'll be graded on the extent to which you explain and apply the course concepts). 3. Make the structure of your paper easy to follow. Don't jump around randomly. Help the reader see how you are moving from point to point. What ties this paragraph to the one before it? How is the point you are making now related to what you said above?

What is the relationship between the global factory and the global farm?

The global farm has been exploded over years and increase their production at a cheaper cost and that what favors the global factory. The example given in the text is that in order to avoid the civil war, the empires needed to become imperialist. Those empires needed to provide their workers with food and they got it at a cheaper price but at a high cost for others. Therefore the relationship between these two is dependent on one on the other. The global factory needs the global farm to provide at a cheap cost while the global farm needs the global factory to keep consuming these products because is their main source of income.

LABOR

FOOD (for factory workers)

Patel and Moore describe the Farm as the source of labor for the Factory and the source of food for factory workers. The basic idea here is that for society to support people who are not farmers, farmers need to produce enough food to feed themselves and the non-farming population. So the farm contributes to the factory in a couple ways. In the first image, we see family farmers plowing the fields. As farming becomes mechanized fewer people are required to produce the same amount of food. This releases labor to the factory who can be fed through a more efficient, higher surplus producing agriculture.

This basic idea of the interrelationship between the farm and the factory (and the farm as supplier of both labor and food for the industrial workforce) is not specific to Patel and Moore of course. This idea of a smaller (but modernized) agriculture sector supporting industrial growth is taken for granted by theorists of development of various political persuasions, including, for example, both Rostow and the dependency theorists in the first week.

However, Patel and Moore’s analysis does not stop here. What Patel and Moore’s chapter argues is that proletarianization (symbolized here by the factory) propels the transformation of farming through the imperative for cheap food.

Cheap Food

Food, like other commodities, is priced according to the average amount of labor-time required to produce the food according to prevailing production methods

Labor-time = time in which labor-power is exercised

“More calories produced with less average labor time in the commodity system”

When Patel and Moore describe cheap food they mean something very specific. According to Patel and Moore, a food is cheap when it contains “more calories produced with less average labor time in the commodity system”. What does this mean?

Patel and Moore, explain that food is priced according to the amount of labor-time that was required to produce it. And by labor-time they mean time in which labor-power was exercised, or time in which people work. And this an average across the commodity system.

And so here we have a picture of a harvester that harvests whatever plant that is…And we would suspect that this machine makes food cheaper according to Patel and Moore’s definition because it now takes significantly less labor to produce the same amount of calories because harvesting is much less labor intensive than previously.

And as Patel and Moore point out, this division of labor is not even unique to modern society. Pre-capitalist societies also had non-farmers. However, Patel and Moore note that there are two

“a system of agricultural productivity premised on land rather than labor, and a system of controlling food surplus through politics rather than the market”

Cheap food = rate of exploitation can rise

EMPIRE = colonialism…

Increase ag surplus/ expel labor from farm…

Poland/England collapsed b/c of soil exhaustion…

Rural / Urban []

Farming / Industrialization [Agriculture]

BUT agriculture also became its own commodity…

Land reforms / political change

Empire vs. metropole

Agriculture not for the rural is for the urban – keep wages low (for capital) and keep dissent low

NAFTA and chicken example (see 65, 66)

System designed for…

Wage work = people won’t be growing food themselves; so they either need to be supplied food or a wage with which to purchase food BY making food cheaper, can pay them less So cheap food is food that is produced with minimal labor-time

Ecology of cash agriculture – single-minded focus on profit/drive for cheap food to feed urban workers and families NOT just to prevent riots but to keep work cheap

Pre-capitalist ag: ag productivity premised on land rather than labor; controlling food surplus through politics rather than the market

Capitalism - Increase ag surplus and expel labor from the farm

Curing urban hunger

Cheap Food Illustrated

Ex. It take 1000 hours of labor-time to produce 100 kilograms of “hearty” variety rice (this could be one person working 1000 hours or 10 people working 100 hours each)

Then, a new variety of rice is developed (“quick yield” variety) which yields twice as much but requires the same amount of time to sow, harvest, etc.

Now it takes 1000 hours of labor-time to produce 200 kilograms of rice.

Rice is now cheaper!

Or consider a second sample, involving the development of a new rice seed that is high yielding.

What end does cheap food serve?

Value of labor-power = “the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of its owner”

Means of subsistence = socially determined needs (food, clothing, housing etc.) for worker and workers’ children

Well, we might think that one benefit of cheap food is that it will collectively save us a lot of time. We as a society would have to work less in order to eat and so we would have more time to devote to leisure.

But in a capitalist system, the end that cheap food is most likely to serve is to reduce the value of labor-power for the benefit of those that purchase labor-power.

Patel and Moore assume that labor-power, like other commodities, is priced according to its value, which is the amount required to produce or replenish it. The value of labor-power is determined by means of subsistence.

Cheap Food = Cheaper Means of Subsistence

MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE (“Hearty Variety”)

$10 per day

$4 – rice

$2 – vegetables and beans

$3 – housing

$.50 – medical care

$.50 – entertainment

MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE (“Fast Yield”)

$8 per day

$2 – rice

$2 – vegetables and beans

$3 – housing

$.50 – medical care

$.50 – entertainment

And this is just a simplified illustration of how reducing the value of food would make the means of subsistence cheaper.

Cheaper Means of Subsistence = More Profit

If food is cheaper and therefore the means of subsistence is cheaper then the rate of profit can be higher.

Moore and Patel assume that the working day is divided into two parts: necessary labor time and surplus labor time.

Take the case of a factory worker.

For part of the day, the worker works in order to cover his means of subsistence (and this is amount that he is compensated for with the wage).

Any work above and beyond that which goes toward covering the workers means of subsistence (and the other factors of production, such as food) becomes profit for the factory owner or the person that the laborer is working for. (This is called surplus labor time).

These two diagrams illustrate how when rice becomes cheaper a smaller part of the day is devoted to covering the worker’s means of subsistence and therefore the surplus labor time (in orange) which is the factory owner’s profit expands.

Working Day ("Hearty Rice") Necessary Labor Time75 Surplus Labor Time 75 25

Working Day (“ Quick yield Rice")

Working Day ("Hearty Rice")

Necessary Labor Time75 Surplus Labor Time 56.25 43.75

LABOR

FOOD (for factory workers)

Imperative for cheap food

Therefore, there is not a one-way relationship between the farm and the factory. Farms produce food for factory workers and create children that become factory workers. But at the same time, the factory (and here the factory is really a symbol for the wage relation under capitalism) creates an imperative, or a compulsion, for the transformation of farming.

Factory owners want their rate of profit to increase. One way to increase the rate of profit is to cheapen the cost of labor by reducing the cost of workers’ food. So the wage-labor system creates a compulsion to transform farming, to produce more food in less time.

It’s not that factory owners themselves are necessarily investing in agricultural research so as to reduce the cost of food for the workers that they hire. Patel and Moore write, “this system of cheap food didn’t emerge on purpose”. It was not planned or centrally orchestrated. But this is something that is happening on a systematic level.

What are some of the consequences of cheap food?

What are some of the consequences of cheap food according to Patel and Moore?

I’ll describe 4 consequences from the readings.

Consequences (1/4): From ‘Farming’ to ‘Agriculture’ Uniformity, Homogenization, and Industrialization of Crops

They note that “nowhere was rising labor productivity in agriculture sustained for large concentrated populations until the rise of capitalism”.

Cheaper food was created through the uniformity, homogenization and industrialization of crops.

They illustrate with a number of different cases, one of which is the chicken. As they recount, “the meat production system can turn a fertile egg and a nine pound bag of feed into a five pound chicken in just five weeks. This requires the invention of intensive breeding, hormonal supplementation, antibiotics, and concentrated animal feeding operations.”

The industrialization of agriculture has changed the nature of farming.

SOURCE: Bernstein, H. (2010). Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. VA: Fernwood Publishers.

FARMING

“what farmers do and have done through the millennia: cultivate the soil and raise livestock, or some combination of the two, typically within a system of established fields and pastures” (p. 62)

Typically local in scope

Embedded in simple divisions of labor

AGRICULTURE

“farming together with all those economic interests and their specialized institutions and activities, ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ of farming, that affect the activities and reproduction of farmers” (p. 65)

Global in scope

Embedded in complex divisions of labor

To understand this, it’s helpful to bring in an argument from the scholar Henry Bernstein who makes an analytical distinction between farming and agriculture.

And so what we see occurring with agriculture is a much more complex division of labor as you now have businesses downstream of farming (such as grocery stores, for example, that are requiring food to be produced to certain specifications) and upstream of farming (such as seed companies which are producing high yield varieties).

We’ll talk about this in later classes – but we can see that the process of farming itself is really changing from one on which the farmer is reliant upon this knowledge and practices that have been built through the millennia to a process guided by agribusiness and informed by scientific research.

Consequences (2/4): Imperialism

“I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread’, ‘bread’, ‘bread’ and…I became more convinced of the importance of imperialism…The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil, war you must become imperialists”.

Cecil Rhodes (1895)

Imperialism: “I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread’, ‘bread’, ‘bread’ and…I became more convinced of the importance of imperialism…The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil, war you must become imperalists”. Cecil Rhodes (1895)

From Global Factory to Global Farm

Cost of subsistence in a locality may rise

Land becomes depleted

Ex. Poland (1550 – 1700); England (1700 – 1750)

Labor becomes scarcer or more organized

Sourcing food globally allows cost of subsistence to remain cheap

Industrial Revolution fueled by Caribbean sugar

Consequence (3/4): Inequality between Rural/Global South and Urban/ Industrial North

Satiation of URBAN/Northern hunger at the expense of RURAL /Southern hunger

Irish potato famine (1845-48): 300,000 tons of grains to England

Mexico’s Green Revolution: Intensified production of wheat by commercial farmers for urban markets when most peasants ate corn

Look at Green Revolution in a new light…Not to produce food to feed the world but for urban/northern markets.

Wheat grown by commercial farmers; corn grown by peasant farmers

Private chat: what do you think about this mixed legacy of Green revolution? Does this trade off seem worth it to you?

The Green Revolution

Conventional definition: “use of new (hybrid) varieties of seeds, fertilizers, and modern management techniques to increase yields in rice, wheat, and corn beginning in the 1960s”

Patel and Moore: “use of agriculture, new crop varieties, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, landholding mechanisms, marketing approaches, and state power to maintain cheap labor”

Mixed impact of Green Revolution

Globally grain output and yields more than doubled between 1950 and 1980 AND food prices declined

But…Heavy use of fertilizers and increased yields did not necessarily feed rural hungry

Suppressed political dissent…esp. calls for land reform

“[Recent] developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution.”

*yields doubled…but unclear how much of this came from new var

Heavy use of fertilizers…cancer villages

India’s wheat production doubled over 70s…but amount of wheat consumed by Indians hardly improved

Consequence (4/4): Climate Change…And the end of cheap food?

Uniformity, homogenization, industrialization of crops has globally transformative effects on quality of food, soil, water, and air

Still debated, but potentially 3% reduction in yields since the 1980s

Cheap food system may break down in next century with 5 – 50% reduction in yields

As Patel and Moore observe, one way that yields have been increased is through the application of fertilizer. This produces nitrous oxide which is a strong greenhouse gas. Agriculture is also implicated in climate change in a number of other ways such as the global meat industry (a huge producer of methane) and deforestation for cropland for animal feed. (Also see here: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector)

Thoughts on Moore and Patel? Review - What is the relationship between the global factory and the global farm?

*farm produces labor and food for factory *but factory creates an imperative for cheap food which invites the transformation from farming to agriculture *search for cheap food leads to industrialization of food system, imperialism, and inequality *system of cheap food not sustainable…propose that climate change will bring about end of cheap food systems.

Important point about cheap food regimes: “they guarantee neither that people are fed or that they are well fed”

Patel and Moore, big picture overview…Historical sociologists of capitalism. But to understand consequences of agricultural modernization also helpful to see how the process is unfolding in particular places. That’s what we’ll turn to now with the readings, but first, just to give a sense of larger context let’s look at a couple maps.

Process of agricultural modernization is highly uneven.

US = 1/100 Madaagascar = 7.5/10

Processes of Agricultural Modernization in the Global South

Now we’ll turn to understanding how this process of agricultural modernization is unfolding in two places: Tanzania and Chili, and at two moments in time. Chung’s piece was published in 2017, while Barrientos et al published their book almost two decades earlier in 1999.

Authors are researching two different moments/processes in agricultural modernization.

Non-traditional Agro-Exports

Global Land Grab. 2007-8, dramatic rise in food prices (many competing explanations put forward for why including use of biofuels, financial speculation, fertilizer price increase, demand for resource intensive food) allegedly led to an increase of land acquisitions by countries in Global North acquiring land for food production in the Global South.

Non-Traditional Agro-Exports (~1970s & 1980s)

Global Land Grab (~ 2008, 2009)

Chile

Population: 18.73 million (2018)

Per capita income: $15,091 (2019)

Gini co-efficient: 50.5 (2013)

Life expectancy at birth: 79.91 (2017)

Back in Week 5, we talked about Chile. To review, here are the statistics.

Non-Traditional Agro-Exports in Chili

“Fruit Plan” (1960): Christian Democratic government aimed to develop Chili as fruit exporter; State provided technology and infrastructure

Pinochet (1973 - ): Agrarian Counter-Reform; Private Commercial Farming Sector

Return to Democracy (1990 - ): continuation of fruit exports…

Today: top exporter of non-traditional ag commodities (fruit, wine, salmon/trout)

Consequence – peasant-based agriculture eliminated in fruit growing regions of the country

-large numbers of rural households lost access to land

-generated a large rural labor force (los temporeros)

The piece that we read focuses on grape production in the Norte Chico region of Chile.

Grape plantations = large-scale estates owned by commercial farmers who have received support from international marketing companies

Tanzania

Population: 56.32 million (2018)

Per capita income: US$1,122 (2019)

Gini co-efficient: 40.5 (2017)

Life expectancy at birth: 64.48 (2017)

Land Grabs in Africa

2008 crisis of fuel, food and finance spiked an increase in large-scale land acquisitions for agriculture by foreign companies/governments in states in Global South

Chung’s Research in Tanzania: Tanzanian government gave rights of occupancy of 20,000 ha of land to a Swedish company in exchange for 25% ownership in invests

Chung – abandoned state cattle ranch; plan was to produce sugar, electricity, and ethanol for the Tanzanian domestic market

Guardian investigation 2011

Case where the land grab was actually carried out – In Chung’s case it was stalled, she argues because the state hadn’t figure out how to compensate the 1400 people on the land

How is the transition from agriculture to farming remaking gender relations and practices of social reproduction?

Gender

“The ways in which cultures imbue…biological difference [male and female] with meaning”

Source: Pessar, Patricia R., and Sarah J. Mahler. 2003. “Transnational Migration: Bringing Gender In.” International Migration Review 37 (3): 812–846.

Social Reproduction

“An assemblage of diverse labor processes…necessary for the sustenance and resilience of human life” (Chung 2017: 103)

What kinds of activities count as social reproduction?

What are some key similarities and/or differences in the way that agriculture is reshaping gender relations and/or social reproduction in the Tanzanian and Chilean cases?

In situ Displacement in Tanzania

“a situation in which people are displaced in place through the loss of entitlements, social exclusion and alienation of rights and identities” (Feldman and Geisler, 2012 cited in Chung 2017, p. 103) [contrast is ex situ displacement – where people are removed from the land]

Case of Tanzania…

NOT immediately strip of land and turn them into wage laborers BUT uproots them from socio-ecological knowledges, cultural practices, and historical memories

Chili: Uneven Incorporation of Peasants into Agriculture

Tome Alto

Communal land remains in tact

March – November: peasant agriculture (tomatoes, peppers, beans) on their family’s land

Nov – Feb: work the grape plantations

Identified as peasants

Chanaral Alto

Regularized land tenure in 1980s

Work the grape plantations sometimes longer than 3 months

Combine with other paid work/migrant labor

Identified as labor

March – November: peasant agriculture (tomatoes, peppers, beans) on their family’s land

Nov – Feb: work the grape plantations

Ambiguous Impacts of Transition from Farming to Agriculture

Positive

New opportunity for employment in region of scarce job opportunities

Presents women with new wage-earning opportunity

Negative

Work is of limited (seasonal) duration

“Arduous, repetitive, and poorly paid”

“burden of the double day”

Social production = could be better standard except poorly paid…issue of combining domestic work and paid work during grape season

“Women workers in the Chilean grape sector are not experiencing in situ displacement because although they are given different tasks from the male workers in the sector, their work is not downgraded. The tasks they perform, and the skills required to perform them, are rewarded with a high earning potential, sometimes higher than the men's. In situ displacement would mean that the women were experiencing loss of entitlement, deprivation of rights or social exclusion- all of which, in this case, I don't believe they are experiencing. ”

Female workers began working in the grape plants starting in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s and 1980s and were forced to take the job due to husbands being unemployed. Although the land reforms did help with the poverty, it caused disruption in their traditional lives and way of life as well as relationships. Since women were usually know to stay home while the men went to work, it caused Situ Displacement and shifted the cultural norms.

Chile (2019 – 2020 Protests): “Estallido Social” / Social Outbreak

Protesters, Santiago image: Hugo Morales, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Chilean_protests#/media/File:Marcha_Mas_Grande_De_Chile_2019_Plaza_Baquedano_Drone.jpg

“Chile se quema y él come pizza” / Chili burns and he eats pizza

Massive protests began in Chile in October 2019 – and you can see something of the scale of the protests on the figure of the left.. The proximate cause was a 4% raise in Metro fares – but more generally people were outraged by the rise in the costs of living and income inequality.

According to a UN agency, 1% of Chili’s population controls 26% of the wealth and the bottom 50% access just 2% of the wealth. (See https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-50115798] When the protests over the fare increase began, Chile’s President Piñera was seen eating at an upscale pizza restaurant in Santiago further inflaming the protests. As the protests have evolved with the pandemic, one of the demands was for food (see: https://fr.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idUKKBN22V00G). Many Chileans struggle to put food on the table because for those in the bottom strata of society the cost of living exceeds earnings/income. Almost 10% of credit cards in Chile are issued by Wal-Mart and it is not uncommon to purchase food on credit (see: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/latin-america-covid-19-food).

Export-Agriculture and Food Security

“Wheat and Maize Imports vis-à-vis Cultivated Surface for Wheat, 1990-2019” Orange = Wheat Imports; Blue = Corn Imports; Green = Cultivated Area Source: Martin Arboleda, “The Free Market Can’t Prevent Latin America’s Coming Food Crisis”

The Chilean sociologist, Martín Arboleda argues that part of Chileans’ struggle to put food on the table may be attributed to the dynamics of agro-industrialization. On the one hand, the growth of export crops had displaced production of basic food stuff such as grain, legumes, and tubers. The above chart shows how wheat and maize imports have increased as the land area devoted to wheat production has declined over a 20-year period (from 1990 to 2019). Export-oriented agriculture has risks that are not inherent in grain production for self-provision. The profitability of agro-exports is subject to volatile swings in world commodity prices. (In one case that I study, Thai shrimp farmers discovered this the hard way. Back in the 1980s, they sold shrimp almost exclusively to Japan, the country that was then the largest shrimp importer in the world. But when the Japanese emperor died in 1989 the nation went into a period of mourning for six months during which time it was not customary to consume shrimp. So the price of shrimp in Thailand fell dramatically. Of course, this is an extreme example – but, in times of economic downturn, consumers may purchase less shrimp, salmon, or fresh fruit). So Arboleda argues that Chile’s export-oriented agricultural sector makes it vulnerable.

Additionally, he points out that Chile’s both export-orientated agriculture sector and domestic food marketing is dominated by large-scale farmers. Only 5% of small and medium-scale farms supply to supermarkets.

He envisions a future in which food production in Chile is more internally oriented in which small and medium-scale farmers are incorporated into urban consumer markets and agro-food production guarantees more and better employment.

Next class:

Agriculture Otherwise? A return to farming?

Also present in US…