The agrarian question in Tanzania: using new evidence to reconcile an old debate

Abstract

Rural poverty continues to be one of the most trenchant development problems in Tanzania, and yet no comprehensive solution has been found. In this paper it is argued that without a fundamental understanding of the agrarian question, any attempt to derive meaningful conclusions on rural development is doomed to be incomprehensive and incomplete. The paper traces back the roots of this important scholarly exchange of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as well as summarising the resulting debate mainly between the neo-populist school and Marxian political economy. It then goes on to outline how this original understanding of the agrarian question extended to and influenced the contemporary rural development discourse, which however widely misrepresented the original contributions and created an illustrious array of antagonistic and inconclusive approaches that culminated in the recent World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for development. This theoretical discussion is framed and exemplified by the case of rural development, labour market participation and poverty in the West Usambara Mountains, Tanzania. Primary survey data collected by the author in 2008 is employed to analyse the current state of the farmers, their engagement in labour markets as well as ongoing processes of class differentiation. Returning to the initial debate, an attempt to link these current realities with the overall outlook for Tanzanian development is provided.

Keywords:

• Tanzania
• rural poverty
• rural development
• agriculture
• rural labour markets
• livelihood diversification

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Henry Bernstein and Deborah Johnston for their invaluable comments and general support. All original data used in this article was personally collected by the author during fieldwork in 2008 which was facilitated with the kind financial support of the British Institute of Eastern Africa, the University of London, and the School of Oriental and African Studies. The research is formally acknowledged and supported by the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology.

Notes

In this article, I exclusively refer to sub-Saharan Africa and, following common practice, I will use the term ‘Africa’ synonymously.

This figure arose suspicion among many observers, as it manifests a very sudden slump from well above 45% in 2006, raising doubts about the methodology and findings of the country's economic surveys.

In this section, I partly rely on the highly influential and clarifying works on the agrarian question by Terence Byres (1977, 1986) and Henry Bernstein (1996, 2004).

English title: ‘The peasant question in France and Germany’.

In the context of developing countries, the inverse relationship was first mentioned by Amartya Sen (1962), followed by an active subsequent debate (for a summary with particular reference to Asia see Fan and Chan-Kang [2005]), however, the first notions of this kind came indeed from Chayanov.

Linking in to the overall argument provided here, we have discussed the problematic aspects of neoliberal economic policy when applied to issues of rural development and poverty reduction elsewhere (Mueller 2009).

The survey was undertaken in five distinct villages with a sample size of around 30 in each village. The villages were carefully selected based on government data, in-depth consultation of stakeholders, and officials on district and local level, as well as an extensive period of personal excursions throughout the region including test interviews. This method was chosen in order to account for the great variety of the region and to avoid producing a biased and unrepresentative record on the region's dynamics. The goal in mind when selecting the villages was to cover the complete spectrum of geographic and economic conditions as well as their socio-economic outcomes. In this regard, the sample villages can be roughly categorised into a very prosperous village with a high level of horticultural production (Lukozi), three ‘middle-income’ villages with varying levels of horticultural production and greatly varying transport connections (Dule, Kwekitui and Ubiri), as well as one very remote and poor village in harsh overall conditions (Ngughui).

Even this can be disputed, as all three ‘subsistence farmers’ are in receipt of transfer payments in some way, often in the form of in-kind donations. For instance, it is quite common that these more unfortunate members of the community are given a cow from their richer neighbours ‘on loan’, and once that cow gives birth to a healthy calf, the cow will be returned to its owner and the poorer household will keep the calf. Therefore, even these ‘subsistence farmers’ are involved in the communities' relations of exchange – for example, as receivers of a communal form of social benefit.

Formal jobs do of course exist in the local/agricultural realm in Tanzania (and in Africa in general), however, typically they are limited to foreign investment or the large-scale export production sector, both of which there is very little left in the West Usambaras.

This is not to say, that there are no kibarua jobs in the urban sphere, of which there are of course plenty.

The production of tea is an exception to this, however, none of our respondents was able to gain formal employment on any of the tea estates or the Mponde factory, and all other recorded employment on tea clearly took a very casual (kibarua) form. Furthermore, the production of coffee as the second export crop has experienced a sharp decline and likewise does not create any ‘formal’ jobs at the moment.

The early colonialists were in constant need of labour power, for example on plantations and in the shipyards. Given the little availability of free wage labourers and a perpetual scarcity of slaves, they would often ‘hire’ slaves from other slave owners. Those ‘hired’ slaves would carry notes (Swahili: barua) to identify themselves and their owner. The Swahili prefix ki- denotes both a diminutive, but also a factual relation, therefore making the ki-barua ‘subject to the letter’ (Eastman 1994). Apart from its etymological value, this little anecdote does indeed provide interesting support for Bill Warren's thesis that it was imperialism in the first place that brought capitalist relations to the ‘Third World’ (Warren 1980).

This must raise the suspicion that, if anything, despite the already high level of recorded labour market participation there is likely to be an element of under-reporting.

Households with formal employment in the sample had an average income nearly seven times higher than that of kibarua households. In addition, the land holdings of the former were about 2.5 times larger than those of the latter.