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ABSTRACT
While family agriculture is above all characterised by the non-separation of capital and labour, the recent developments in various forms of production – the land grabbing process in particular – can be analysed from the viewpoint of capital/labour separation. In-depth research conducted in several regions of the world shows that this process is accompanied by a distribution of value added which is particularly favourable to capital holders but to the detriment of workers, an imbalance which is partly due to the disconnection between salaries and productivity, which is behind the profitability of these projects (the capacity to remunerate invested capitals).
Notes
1 The governments of certain countries depending very much on the global market for their supply in food and/or agrofuel have decided to take care of it directly (or via private companies), without going through the global market.
2 According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (Citation2011) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), 80 percent of them are in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America (Fischer et al. Citation2002).
3 Twenty-four million hectares of forest were converted into grazing land in the Amazonian Basin between 1990 and 2006, with cattle heads increasing twofold on the continent during the same period (Deininger Citation2011); the surface area planted with oil palm went from 2.9 million to 6.3 million hectares between 1997 and 2007 in Indonesia (Deininger Citation2011; see also Li Citation2011).
4 For example in Mexico in 1992, in Ethiopia in 1995 and 2002, in Mozambique in 1997, etc.
5 For example through the Land Matrix Database project (Anseeuw et al. Citation2012).
6 In the 1970s, this debate also created much stimulation among the French-speaking scientific community, as shown for example by the works of C. Servolin (Citation1972) on French agriculture or those of the French school of economic anthropology (Meillassoux Citation1975) in the case of developing countries.
7 This concerns an already ancient form of formalisation by contract, in which the ‘contract’ links many a small producer to a company guaranteeing product marketing (under certain conditions, quantity, quality, regularity, etc.), some of these companies being the direct heirs – after privatisation – to public or parapublic companies that formerly ‘supervised’ certain sectors of production. For a more complete review of the different forms of land-use change in relation to land-grabbing processes, see Borras and Franco (Citation2012).
8 These reverse tenancy situations can also concern breeding activities as on the cattle breeding frontiers of Mexico (Cochet, Léonard, and Tallet Citation2010).
9 The former Soviet Bloc situation, as evoked earlier, can also be assimilated to this situation, insofar as the former workers and pensioners of the sovkhozes and kolkhozes, the beneficiaries of land redistribution during the 1990s and who, today, own their plot, cannot cultivate it for lack of capital, and rent it out to a large farm (where sometimes they actually work for a salary).
10 Many examples of this type of situation are found around the world. For a general idea of these different forms of possible formalisations by contract, see for example Burnod and Colin (Citation2012).
11 The Act of 1946 in particular, on the status of tenant farming and sharecropping, and the blueprint laws of 1960–1962 restricting the possible growth of farm sizes to the work capacity of a farmer and his/her spouse.
12 The CER is responsible for keeping farmers’ books on their behalf and for offering management advice.
13 The agricultural blueprint law of 2005 introduced the possibility of derestricting rent (through ‘transferable’ lease): a financial investment logic based on farmland then becomes once more possible.
14 Excluding income tax.
15 This share includes the remuneration of managerial work in case the owner/investor himself oversees operations (conducts managerial tasks).
16 For a detailed examination of this methodology, see Cochet (Citation2015a).
17 Case study conducted within the framework of a PhD carried out by Dario Cepeda between 2004 and 2008 under the supervision of the author (see also Cepeda Citation2009; Cepeda and Cochet Citation2012).
18 Key factors underlying productivity differences are as follows: the bargaining power to have a guaranteed contract with export companies and therefore higher prices; the investment in an efficient packing station operating five days out of seven with much lower unit costs (per banana crate); and investment in adequate transportation (trucks) to ensure the independent delivery of product to port (Cepeda and Cochet Citation2012).
19 Case study conducted within the framework of a PhD carried out by Samir El Ouaamari between 2008 and 2012 under the supervision of the author.
20 Research was conducted in 2009 and 2010 in three Oblasts (regions) of the Ukrainian Republic: Jytomyr, Mykolaïv and Kirovograd.
21 As mentioned previously, the control of the entire value chain (upstream and downstream) has led to vertical integration, resulting in significant economies of scale, e.g. for purchasing farm inputs with negotiated prices due to significant volumes.
22 A tendency which has also been observed in the industrial sector of the countries of the North where, despite significant productivity gains, the share of value added intended for shareholders is maximised to the detriment of that dedicated to labour remuneration (OECD Citation2012).
23 This does not prevent them in any way from often being characterised by high value added production per unit area.
24 The capacity of the business to remunerate invested capitals is measured via the capital enrichment rate (or profit rate) and the internal rate of return (IRR; Bridier and Michailof Citation1980).
25 Of course other factors influence the success of these companies, such as benefiting in particular from high agricultural prices, as was the case in 2007, 2008 and 2011. Their success also depends on the local political conditions and the capacity of investors and their managers to reduce transaction costs as far as possible.
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Notes on contributors
Hubert Cochet
Hubert Cochet is an agricultural economist and geographer who studies the evolution of agrarian systems, with a particular focus on the ways in which they are influenced by development policies and projects. He worked in Mexico from 1984 until 1989, and then shifted the geographic focus of his research to sub-Saharan Africa (Burundi from 1990 to 1993, then Ethiopia, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, South Africa, etc.), to the Andean Countries and then to Ukraine. He currently works as a professor and researcher at AgroParis Tech (The Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food, and Environmental Sciences), where he is the coordinator of the Comparative Agriculture and Agricultural Development Research Unit.