Evolution of agriculture from the end of the Second World War to the
recent agricultural crisis ---- We cannot say that there exists, at
present, a "capitalist agriculture" which would be completely opposed to
a "non-capitalist" peasant agriculture, the different forms of
agriculture, even if peasant agriculture does not produce the same
social and ecological devastation as industrial agriculture, still
follow a dynamic specific to the general evolution of capitalism itself.
---- Before the CAP, capitalist integration already at work in the
agricultural sector
During the 1940s and at the end of the Second World War, there was truly
a massive increase in state spending financed on credit (through the
issuance of state bonds, therefore a form of financialization of the
State in reaction to the economic crisis of the 1930s) which will lead
to an increase in productive capacities, generating a new phase of
capital accumulation associated with a new need for labor, which will
lead to the departure of certain peasants from the countryside will
partly answer. During this period, the emergence of the Welfare State
was not a challenge to the capitalist mode of production, but rather a
condition for its new development. This growth will occur in particular
through the generalization of the Fordist mode of production to numerous
sectors of production (beyond just automobile production, to which this
mode of production was generally confined during the interwar period),
including agro-food production.
Capitalist agriculture?
As a structurally dynamic logic, it seems important to us not to confuse
capitalism with any of its particular historical stages. Indeed, the
neo-liberal period is not "more capitalist" than the previous period,
and certain agricultural union movements, including the Confédération
Paysanne, do not hesitate to want to rehabilitate certain
characteristics of the agricultural policies of capitalism of the 30
glorious years in the current period to respond to the multiple crises
facing the sector. This appears to be wishful thinking if the exit from
the crisis is not considered as an exit from capitalism strictly
speaking, to the extent that it is impossible to return to the
"previous" stages of capitalism, which is today structurally globalized
and financialized. In the same way, "firm" agriculture (where the
capital of the agricultural operation does not belong to agricultural
workers) is not necessarily "more capitalist" than so-called "family"
agriculture (where the one of the characteristics is the unity, around
the family, between work, capital and land). Indeed, in the trajectory
of French agriculture in the 20th century, family farming or
cooperatives may have been transitional stages and even presented
certain advantages in the integration of agriculture within capitalism.
Agriculture is even an interesting subject to focus on to avoid the
pitfall, common on the left, of glorifying certain socio-economic
characteristics of the glorious 30s in relation to the (admittedly more
violent) phase of current neo-liberal capitalism. Indeed, the widespread
chemicalization of agriculture and its industrial standardization are
not phenomena specific to the neo-liberal period alone and emerged
decades before. As such, agriculture (and its developments) is therefore
an object whose historical dynamics it is interesting to follow in order
to develop a critique of capitalism over a long period of time, aiming
to grasp the foundations of a dynamic that is particularly ecologically
and socio-economically worrying.
If historiography often places the agricultural policy of the 1960s
(with the agricultural orientation laws of 1960 and 1962) as the main
break marking the entry of French agriculture into productivism, the
changes experienced by credit in agriculture associated with the
implementation of vast investment programs in the 1950s already
contributed to a profound metamorphosis of the agricultural sector in
the immediate post-war period. The year 1950 marks, for example, the
establishment of the Agricultural Investment Program (PIA), whose
investments will be directed towards the purchase of machines, land
improvement (agricultural hydraulics, roads, etc.), certain industrial
investments , etc. At the same time, the increase in credit resources
generated by the issuance of government bonds increased the outstanding
credit for agriculture from 6.3 billion in 1944 to 999.3 billion in
1959. The share of credits to agriculture in the overall economy
increases, from 5.4% of all credits allocated in 1945 to 9.2% in 1959,
highlighting the centrality of agricultural development during this
period. Development which then plays the triple role of consumer of
inputs and tractors; as a supplier of raw materials at increasingly low
costs for the booming agro-industry; and producer of low-cost food
making it possible to ensure a reduction in the cost of food (and the
cost of reproducing the labor force) at a time when households must
absorb into their budget the sharp increase in goods from the
generalization of Fordist production methods within industry. In 1950,
there were still only 137,000 tractors in France, this figure rose to 1
million in 1960 (1), marking the entry into the race for motorized
mechanization that agriculture would then experience. At the same time,
fertilizer consumption increased fivefold between 1950 and 1973. The
active agricultural population fell from 31 to 17% of the total
population between 1954 and 1968.
The CAP intensifies the process of capitalist integration of the
agricultural sector
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was established in 1962, following
the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 (then
bringing together six States). The objectives of the CAP and its
national variations within Europe are to strengthen the increase in
labor productivity in agriculture (which will be multiplied on average
by 5 between 1960 and 2007) and to stabilize markets while ensuring low
prices among consumers. The various instruments put in place will be
customs barriers (across European borders) for most agricultural goods
and export subsidies for certain goods, associated with community
purchasing offers at guaranteed prices. Farmers will thus be "protected"
from the competition that imports could represent, with the notable
exception of American soya, but will at the same time have to face
internal competition between European countries, generating a necessary
catch-up for France in terms of productivity. farms, particularly
compared to farms in Germany or the Netherlands. Concerning animal feed,
the USA conditioned the fact that Europe protects the rest of its market
on the establishment of zero customs duties on oilseeds and protein
crops, on which the United States had export capacity. , notably through
soy production. So much so that in retrospect, we can say that the CAP
was in reality based on two central aspects: the regulation of markets
and prices for most European agricultural production and the importation
(which will become more widespread) of vegetable proteins, notably
through import of soya, at the heart of the development of intensive
livestock farming which will benefit from low-cost animal feed.
In France, the years 1960 and 1962 marked the beginning of a very
proactive agricultural policy on the side of the State, which provided
itself with both means and institutional structures to promote this new
stage towards the modernization of family farms. The agricultural
policies implemented in France aimed to ensure modernization of farms
within the framework of controlled land concentration (via SAFER and
control of structures), while continuing to promote the family as the
central social support of production. agricultural. During this period,
agriculture as a whole strengthened its transformation into a vast
complex combining agricultural production units (farms that became
"farms"), processing units and collection and distribution tools. The
beginning of the industrialization of slaughtering and meat processing
also began after the Second World War in France (2).
Overall, the interpenetration of agriculture and agro-industry makes
agriculture all the more sensitive to the economic difficulties that
industry and the economy in general may experience, and agriculture,
just like the rest of the economy, will not escape the difficulties
linked to the period of stagflation of the 1970s, a symptom of the
running out of steam of capitalism centered on the State of the 30
glorious years which, to renew itself, will switch towards a
financialized and less centered capitalism only in national consumption
spaces. On this last point, and as an example, the volumes of cereals
exported from France increased from one or two million tonnes during the
1950s to seventeen million in 1973 to reach more than 35 million tonnes
in 2015. (i.e. one ton out of two exported).
Economic crisis followed by liberalization of the CAP
The very high specialization of agricultural production associated with
the significant material production capacities in agriculture will thus
lead to the national and European markets becoming too restricted to
ensure the entire flow of French production, reinforcing the need to
confront more significantly to the world market from the end of the
1980s. The guaranteed price system of the 1960s and 1970s led to sharply
increasing expenditure for the community budget, particularly with the
strong price inflation during the period of stagflation from the end of
the 1970s. The operations consisting of buying with European funds when
prices were too low and putting part of the production back on the
market when prices were rising no longer found their balance (3). The
situation of overproduction associated with the difficulties of
maintaining the guaranteed price mechanism then leads, in a first phase,
to logics of production quotas, by putting in place both milk quotas (in
1984), and a freeze on production. 'part of the land cultivated with
cereals and oilseeds (in 1988) in order to limit expenses linked to
massive interventions and to continue to guarantee part of the prices
(but by limiting production rather than only using market intervention
mechanisms). These measures having not been enough to contain the
expenditure of the European budget devoted to agriculture, a more
profound reform took place in 1992, opening a new era in the functioning
of the CAP. As European farms are not competitive enough compared to
certain agro-exporting countries, they will see their agricultural goods
confronted with world market prices while benefiting from a system of
production aid, proportional to the cultivated areas and the number of
animals present on farms. Indeed, faced with world prices, the
accumulation potential is almost zero without subsidies for a large part
of the existing farms. A large part of them will find themselves in a
situation where the sales of their production cover their expenses, and
the subsidies thus make it possible to maintain an income(4) for
structures introduced into global competition, within which the
injunction competitiveness is strengthening. The 1992 reform aroused
strong fears within agricultural unions and led to a restructuring of
the political landscape in agriculture. Rural Coordination emerged
during this period (the union was created in 1992), in opposition to the
system of direct aid disconnected from production, with the slogan
"prices not bonuses".
Following the period of economic uncertainty in the 1970s and the crisis
of certain agricultural structures that were unable to continue the race
for productivity during the rise in interest rates in the 1980s, the
dichotomy of agriculture in one "two-speed" agriculture will strengthen.
The neo-liberal turn will effectively be followed by the strengthening
of cohabitation between large agricultural structures integrated into
productivism and small agricultural structures which will fit more
specifically into a logic of quality labels, local sales or more
generally of diversification of activities. The maintenance of certain
small structures over time, while medium-sized structures disappear more
quickly in favor of the concentration of larger ones, is partly the
result of a strengthening of income inequalities within households in
recent decades. of the period of financialized capitalism. Indeed, the
increase in income inequalities and the strengthening of irreducible
budgetary constraints (transport and rent in particular) on the most
modest budgets push the consumption of food products at very low costs
and therefore reinforce this two-speed diet which is materializes in
production in an agriculture itself at two speeds: one which continues
its movement of concentration, intensification and specialization and
the other which strengthens its position in quality production and/or
poly-activity .
Union positions in the current crisis
Faced with these dynamics of agriculture within capitalism, and although
we can have more sympathy for the Confédération Paysanne (left-wing
union, more internationalist and more concerned with ecological and
social issues) than for the Rural Coordination (union of right or even
extreme right), the two unions however share "certain criticisms" with
regard to the current regulation of the European agricultural sector on:
the overly export orientation of the French and European agricultural
model; bringing European agricultural goods into competition with
agricultural goods from non-European countries produced under social and
environmental conditions meeting standards lower than European
standards; the lack of support for the development of transversal
producer organizations in order to strengthen the negotiating power of
farmers vis-à-vis processors and distributors; or even exposure to
different forms of financialization. These relate to the arrival of
financial actors taking part in the capital of agricultural operations
when farmers' debt possibilities reach saturation or relating to
exposure to international markets and the volatility of their prices,
constraining indirectly producers to resort to financial products such
as futures markets and various insurance to protect themselves from
these structural price variations.
Conditions for the emergence of the Peasant Workers' union
The insertion of agriculture into a vast agro-industrial complex,
leaving very little room for maneuver for farmers, will serve as
breeding ground for the emergence of the "Peasant Workers" union (a of
the political roots of the current Peasant Confederation), launched in
the 1970s. One of the reasonings which will lead to the emergence of
Peasant Workers is the following: the level of integration of farms in
the industrial process is such that the The farmer, caught between the
constraints of his suppliers and the demands of buyers of his
production, ultimately has no room for maneuver in the organization of
his farm and finds himself, although possessing his production tool , in
a situation almost similar to that of the proletarian governed by the
tool of industrial production. The example put forward at the time,
vigorously denounced by the Peasant Workers, is the case of poultry
farmers in the West of France, to whom the industry provided chicks and
feed, only to buy back the chickens a few months later from the
producers. . Bernard Lambert, at the head of this union, then compares
these producers to workers in the factory production chain. This
demonstration aims in part at a certain form of identification with the
proletariat, with the aim of bringing peasant struggles closer to worker
struggles, the figure of the exploiter being here postponed a notch, to
the level of the cooperatives, of agro-industry and distribution.
In recent agricultural crises, hitting distinct sectors depending on the
year, exposure to fluctuations in world prices and difficulties in
reaching certain production standards lead certain producers to
experience difficulties in promoting their production and guaranteeing
their income, which translates into two main positions within farmers'
unions. While the majority of FNSEA members consider that the State and
Europe should stop regulating the use of inputs to help strengthen the
competitiveness of French producers on the world market, the
Confédération Paysanne, and in certain respects the Rural Coordination
(even if the latter continues to be part of the productivist paradigm),
consider the liberalization of markets as a strategy of financial elites
and agri-food companies to impose low agricultural prices and increase
their profits. They propose state regulation involving less exporting
(in particular the Confédération Paysanne) and converting part of the
French and European land dedicated to wheat into protein crops to avoid
imports of soya for animal feed and limit wheat exports. They believe
this would increase wheat prices by reducing exposure to global markets
and limiting marketing to European markets only. According to them,
stronger regulation of markets and this change in direction of land use
would allow "a return to fair prices" which would prevent the
financialization of the agricultural sector (because fair prices would
limit the need for recourse to instruments financial).
In reality, the modern State, having to structurally allow capitalism in
crisis to find new conditions for its reproduction, is not able to put
in place the regulations invoked by the Peasant Confederation (and, to a
lesser extent , Rural Coordination) in the current capitalist dynamic.
It therefore only proposes, in the face of the recent agricultural
crisis, to go back on the few weak pseudo-environmental improvements
that it had been able to bring to national/European agricultural
production through a few minimalist regulations in the face of
undifferentiated global production.
William Loveluck
Notes
1. Gervais, M., Jollivet, M. and Tavernier, Y., The end of peasant
France from 1914 to the present day, vol. IV de Duby, G. and Wallon, A.
(eds.), History of rural France, Paris, Seuil, 1976, p.158-159.
2. Note that slaughtering and meat processing became industrialized much
earlier in the United States, during the second half of the 19th
century. Slaughter lines and their organization of work will even be a
source of inspiration for Ford and its applications of assembly line
work in the automobile industry.
3. See the article by Maurice Desriers, "French agriculture for fifty
years: from small family farms to single payment rights", Cahiers
Agreste, 2007: "from 1975 to 1980, the market support expenditure of the
European Fund agricultural guarantee (EAGGF) have been multiplied by 2.5
in current currency at European level.»
4. In 2015, the current result before taxes (RCAI) was negative without
subsidies for 69% of cereal farms and for 89% of cattle farms intended
for meat production.
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4167
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
recent agricultural crisis ---- We cannot say that there exists, at
present, a "capitalist agriculture" which would be completely opposed to
a "non-capitalist" peasant agriculture, the different forms of
agriculture, even if peasant agriculture does not produce the same
social and ecological devastation as industrial agriculture, still
follow a dynamic specific to the general evolution of capitalism itself.
---- Before the CAP, capitalist integration already at work in the
agricultural sector
During the 1940s and at the end of the Second World War, there was truly
a massive increase in state spending financed on credit (through the
issuance of state bonds, therefore a form of financialization of the
State in reaction to the economic crisis of the 1930s) which will lead
to an increase in productive capacities, generating a new phase of
capital accumulation associated with a new need for labor, which will
lead to the departure of certain peasants from the countryside will
partly answer. During this period, the emergence of the Welfare State
was not a challenge to the capitalist mode of production, but rather a
condition for its new development. This growth will occur in particular
through the generalization of the Fordist mode of production to numerous
sectors of production (beyond just automobile production, to which this
mode of production was generally confined during the interwar period),
including agro-food production.
Capitalist agriculture?
As a structurally dynamic logic, it seems important to us not to confuse
capitalism with any of its particular historical stages. Indeed, the
neo-liberal period is not "more capitalist" than the previous period,
and certain agricultural union movements, including the Confédération
Paysanne, do not hesitate to want to rehabilitate certain
characteristics of the agricultural policies of capitalism of the 30
glorious years in the current period to respond to the multiple crises
facing the sector. This appears to be wishful thinking if the exit from
the crisis is not considered as an exit from capitalism strictly
speaking, to the extent that it is impossible to return to the
"previous" stages of capitalism, which is today structurally globalized
and financialized. In the same way, "firm" agriculture (where the
capital of the agricultural operation does not belong to agricultural
workers) is not necessarily "more capitalist" than so-called "family"
agriculture (where the one of the characteristics is the unity, around
the family, between work, capital and land). Indeed, in the trajectory
of French agriculture in the 20th century, family farming or
cooperatives may have been transitional stages and even presented
certain advantages in the integration of agriculture within capitalism.
Agriculture is even an interesting subject to focus on to avoid the
pitfall, common on the left, of glorifying certain socio-economic
characteristics of the glorious 30s in relation to the (admittedly more
violent) phase of current neo-liberal capitalism. Indeed, the widespread
chemicalization of agriculture and its industrial standardization are
not phenomena specific to the neo-liberal period alone and emerged
decades before. As such, agriculture (and its developments) is therefore
an object whose historical dynamics it is interesting to follow in order
to develop a critique of capitalism over a long period of time, aiming
to grasp the foundations of a dynamic that is particularly ecologically
and socio-economically worrying.
If historiography often places the agricultural policy of the 1960s
(with the agricultural orientation laws of 1960 and 1962) as the main
break marking the entry of French agriculture into productivism, the
changes experienced by credit in agriculture associated with the
implementation of vast investment programs in the 1950s already
contributed to a profound metamorphosis of the agricultural sector in
the immediate post-war period. The year 1950 marks, for example, the
establishment of the Agricultural Investment Program (PIA), whose
investments will be directed towards the purchase of machines, land
improvement (agricultural hydraulics, roads, etc.), certain industrial
investments , etc. At the same time, the increase in credit resources
generated by the issuance of government bonds increased the outstanding
credit for agriculture from 6.3 billion in 1944 to 999.3 billion in
1959. The share of credits to agriculture in the overall economy
increases, from 5.4% of all credits allocated in 1945 to 9.2% in 1959,
highlighting the centrality of agricultural development during this
period. Development which then plays the triple role of consumer of
inputs and tractors; as a supplier of raw materials at increasingly low
costs for the booming agro-industry; and producer of low-cost food
making it possible to ensure a reduction in the cost of food (and the
cost of reproducing the labor force) at a time when households must
absorb into their budget the sharp increase in goods from the
generalization of Fordist production methods within industry. In 1950,
there were still only 137,000 tractors in France, this figure rose to 1
million in 1960 (1), marking the entry into the race for motorized
mechanization that agriculture would then experience. At the same time,
fertilizer consumption increased fivefold between 1950 and 1973. The
active agricultural population fell from 31 to 17% of the total
population between 1954 and 1968.
The CAP intensifies the process of capitalist integration of the
agricultural sector
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was established in 1962, following
the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 (then
bringing together six States). The objectives of the CAP and its
national variations within Europe are to strengthen the increase in
labor productivity in agriculture (which will be multiplied on average
by 5 between 1960 and 2007) and to stabilize markets while ensuring low
prices among consumers. The various instruments put in place will be
customs barriers (across European borders) for most agricultural goods
and export subsidies for certain goods, associated with community
purchasing offers at guaranteed prices. Farmers will thus be "protected"
from the competition that imports could represent, with the notable
exception of American soya, but will at the same time have to face
internal competition between European countries, generating a necessary
catch-up for France in terms of productivity. farms, particularly
compared to farms in Germany or the Netherlands. Concerning animal feed,
the USA conditioned the fact that Europe protects the rest of its market
on the establishment of zero customs duties on oilseeds and protein
crops, on which the United States had export capacity. , notably through
soy production. So much so that in retrospect, we can say that the CAP
was in reality based on two central aspects: the regulation of markets
and prices for most European agricultural production and the importation
(which will become more widespread) of vegetable proteins, notably
through import of soya, at the heart of the development of intensive
livestock farming which will benefit from low-cost animal feed.
In France, the years 1960 and 1962 marked the beginning of a very
proactive agricultural policy on the side of the State, which provided
itself with both means and institutional structures to promote this new
stage towards the modernization of family farms. The agricultural
policies implemented in France aimed to ensure modernization of farms
within the framework of controlled land concentration (via SAFER and
control of structures), while continuing to promote the family as the
central social support of production. agricultural. During this period,
agriculture as a whole strengthened its transformation into a vast
complex combining agricultural production units (farms that became
"farms"), processing units and collection and distribution tools. The
beginning of the industrialization of slaughtering and meat processing
also began after the Second World War in France (2).
Overall, the interpenetration of agriculture and agro-industry makes
agriculture all the more sensitive to the economic difficulties that
industry and the economy in general may experience, and agriculture,
just like the rest of the economy, will not escape the difficulties
linked to the period of stagflation of the 1970s, a symptom of the
running out of steam of capitalism centered on the State of the 30
glorious years which, to renew itself, will switch towards a
financialized and less centered capitalism only in national consumption
spaces. On this last point, and as an example, the volumes of cereals
exported from France increased from one or two million tonnes during the
1950s to seventeen million in 1973 to reach more than 35 million tonnes
in 2015. (i.e. one ton out of two exported).
Economic crisis followed by liberalization of the CAP
The very high specialization of agricultural production associated with
the significant material production capacities in agriculture will thus
lead to the national and European markets becoming too restricted to
ensure the entire flow of French production, reinforcing the need to
confront more significantly to the world market from the end of the
1980s. The guaranteed price system of the 1960s and 1970s led to sharply
increasing expenditure for the community budget, particularly with the
strong price inflation during the period of stagflation from the end of
the 1970s. The operations consisting of buying with European funds when
prices were too low and putting part of the production back on the
market when prices were rising no longer found their balance (3). The
situation of overproduction associated with the difficulties of
maintaining the guaranteed price mechanism then leads, in a first phase,
to logics of production quotas, by putting in place both milk quotas (in
1984), and a freeze on production. 'part of the land cultivated with
cereals and oilseeds (in 1988) in order to limit expenses linked to
massive interventions and to continue to guarantee part of the prices
(but by limiting production rather than only using market intervention
mechanisms). These measures having not been enough to contain the
expenditure of the European budget devoted to agriculture, a more
profound reform took place in 1992, opening a new era in the functioning
of the CAP. As European farms are not competitive enough compared to
certain agro-exporting countries, they will see their agricultural goods
confronted with world market prices while benefiting from a system of
production aid, proportional to the cultivated areas and the number of
animals present on farms. Indeed, faced with world prices, the
accumulation potential is almost zero without subsidies for a large part
of the existing farms. A large part of them will find themselves in a
situation where the sales of their production cover their expenses, and
the subsidies thus make it possible to maintain an income(4) for
structures introduced into global competition, within which the
injunction competitiveness is strengthening. The 1992 reform aroused
strong fears within agricultural unions and led to a restructuring of
the political landscape in agriculture. Rural Coordination emerged
during this period (the union was created in 1992), in opposition to the
system of direct aid disconnected from production, with the slogan
"prices not bonuses".
Following the period of economic uncertainty in the 1970s and the crisis
of certain agricultural structures that were unable to continue the race
for productivity during the rise in interest rates in the 1980s, the
dichotomy of agriculture in one "two-speed" agriculture will strengthen.
The neo-liberal turn will effectively be followed by the strengthening
of cohabitation between large agricultural structures integrated into
productivism and small agricultural structures which will fit more
specifically into a logic of quality labels, local sales or more
generally of diversification of activities. The maintenance of certain
small structures over time, while medium-sized structures disappear more
quickly in favor of the concentration of larger ones, is partly the
result of a strengthening of income inequalities within households in
recent decades. of the period of financialized capitalism. Indeed, the
increase in income inequalities and the strengthening of irreducible
budgetary constraints (transport and rent in particular) on the most
modest budgets push the consumption of food products at very low costs
and therefore reinforce this two-speed diet which is materializes in
production in an agriculture itself at two speeds: one which continues
its movement of concentration, intensification and specialization and
the other which strengthens its position in quality production and/or
poly-activity .
Union positions in the current crisis
Faced with these dynamics of agriculture within capitalism, and although
we can have more sympathy for the Confédération Paysanne (left-wing
union, more internationalist and more concerned with ecological and
social issues) than for the Rural Coordination (union of right or even
extreme right), the two unions however share "certain criticisms" with
regard to the current regulation of the European agricultural sector on:
the overly export orientation of the French and European agricultural
model; bringing European agricultural goods into competition with
agricultural goods from non-European countries produced under social and
environmental conditions meeting standards lower than European
standards; the lack of support for the development of transversal
producer organizations in order to strengthen the negotiating power of
farmers vis-à-vis processors and distributors; or even exposure to
different forms of financialization. These relate to the arrival of
financial actors taking part in the capital of agricultural operations
when farmers' debt possibilities reach saturation or relating to
exposure to international markets and the volatility of their prices,
constraining indirectly producers to resort to financial products such
as futures markets and various insurance to protect themselves from
these structural price variations.
Conditions for the emergence of the Peasant Workers' union
The insertion of agriculture into a vast agro-industrial complex,
leaving very little room for maneuver for farmers, will serve as
breeding ground for the emergence of the "Peasant Workers" union (a of
the political roots of the current Peasant Confederation), launched in
the 1970s. One of the reasonings which will lead to the emergence of
Peasant Workers is the following: the level of integration of farms in
the industrial process is such that the The farmer, caught between the
constraints of his suppliers and the demands of buyers of his
production, ultimately has no room for maneuver in the organization of
his farm and finds himself, although possessing his production tool , in
a situation almost similar to that of the proletarian governed by the
tool of industrial production. The example put forward at the time,
vigorously denounced by the Peasant Workers, is the case of poultry
farmers in the West of France, to whom the industry provided chicks and
feed, only to buy back the chickens a few months later from the
producers. . Bernard Lambert, at the head of this union, then compares
these producers to workers in the factory production chain. This
demonstration aims in part at a certain form of identification with the
proletariat, with the aim of bringing peasant struggles closer to worker
struggles, the figure of the exploiter being here postponed a notch, to
the level of the cooperatives, of agro-industry and distribution.
In recent agricultural crises, hitting distinct sectors depending on the
year, exposure to fluctuations in world prices and difficulties in
reaching certain production standards lead certain producers to
experience difficulties in promoting their production and guaranteeing
their income, which translates into two main positions within farmers'
unions. While the majority of FNSEA members consider that the State and
Europe should stop regulating the use of inputs to help strengthen the
competitiveness of French producers on the world market, the
Confédération Paysanne, and in certain respects the Rural Coordination
(even if the latter continues to be part of the productivist paradigm),
consider the liberalization of markets as a strategy of financial elites
and agri-food companies to impose low agricultural prices and increase
their profits. They propose state regulation involving less exporting
(in particular the Confédération Paysanne) and converting part of the
French and European land dedicated to wheat into protein crops to avoid
imports of soya for animal feed and limit wheat exports. They believe
this would increase wheat prices by reducing exposure to global markets
and limiting marketing to European markets only. According to them,
stronger regulation of markets and this change in direction of land use
would allow "a return to fair prices" which would prevent the
financialization of the agricultural sector (because fair prices would
limit the need for recourse to instruments financial).
In reality, the modern State, having to structurally allow capitalism in
crisis to find new conditions for its reproduction, is not able to put
in place the regulations invoked by the Peasant Confederation (and, to a
lesser extent , Rural Coordination) in the current capitalist dynamic.
It therefore only proposes, in the face of the recent agricultural
crisis, to go back on the few weak pseudo-environmental improvements
that it had been able to bring to national/European agricultural
production through a few minimalist regulations in the face of
undifferentiated global production.
William Loveluck
Notes
1. Gervais, M., Jollivet, M. and Tavernier, Y., The end of peasant
France from 1914 to the present day, vol. IV de Duby, G. and Wallon, A.
(eds.), History of rural France, Paris, Seuil, 1976, p.158-159.
2. Note that slaughtering and meat processing became industrialized much
earlier in the United States, during the second half of the 19th
century. Slaughter lines and their organization of work will even be a
source of inspiration for Ford and its applications of assembly line
work in the automobile industry.
3. See the article by Maurice Desriers, "French agriculture for fifty
years: from small family farms to single payment rights", Cahiers
Agreste, 2007: "from 1975 to 1980, the market support expenditure of the
European Fund agricultural guarantee (EAGGF) have been multiplied by 2.5
in current currency at European level.»
4. In 2015, the current result before taxes (RCAI) was negative without
subsidies for 69% of cereal farms and for 89% of cattle farms intended
for meat production.
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4167
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten