Land Grabbing, Large- and Small-scale Farming: What can evidence and policy from 20th century Africa contribute to the debate?

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 34, Issue 9, 2013, Pages 1558-1581

  Baglioni, Elena ^a   Gibbon, Peter ^b  

^a QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b DANISH INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES   (Denmark)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FARMING SYSTEM; PLANTATION; RURAL POLICY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 84889076666     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2013.843838     Document Type: Article

References (145)

1. P McMichael, 'The land grab and corporate food regime restructuring', Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, pp 681-701.
2. SM Borras & JC Franco, 'Global land grabbing and trajectories of agrarian change: a preliminary analysis', Journal of Agrarian Change, 12(2), 2012, pp 34-59.
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4. O De Schutter, 'Forum on global land grabbing: how not to think land grabbing-three critiques of large-scale investments in farmland', Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(2), 2011, pp 249-279
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6. B White, SM Borras, R Hall, I Scoones & W Wolford, 'The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals', Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, pp 619-647.
7. K Amanor, 'Global resource grabs, agribusiness concentration, and the smallholder: two West African case studies', Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, pp 731-750.
8. Borras & Franco, 'Global land grabbing and trajectories of agrarian change', pp 34-59.
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10. P Peters, 'Inequality and social conflict over land in Africa', Journal of Agrarian Change, 4(3), 2004, pp 269-314.
11. P Woodhouse, 'New investment, old challenges: land deals and the water constraint in African agriculture', Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, pp 777-794.
12. SM Borras, JC Franco, S Gomez, C Kay & M Spoor, 'Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean', Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, pp 845-872.
13. World Bank, Awakening Africa's Sleeping Giant: Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009.
14. World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can it Yield Sustainable Benefits?, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010, p xiv.
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19. See the latest revision of data by Land Matrix, at http://www.landmatrix.org. A special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), 2013, questions some of the methodologies of data collection that have hitherto fuelled the debate on land grabbing. See also L Cotula, The Great African Land Grab? Agricultural Investment and the Global Food System, London: Zed Books, 2013, and Oya (this issue).
20. S Ekman, 'Myth and reality: Chinese investment in the Mozambican agricultural sector', paper presented at the siani Expert Group meeting on Chinese global land investment, Stockholm Environment Institute, January 2012, at www.slideshow.net/SIANIAgri/sigrid-ekmand-Chinamoz.
21. J Hanlon, Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa: Mozambique, A Country Study, San Francisco, CA: Oakland Institute, 2011.
22. This has applied especially to non-sugar biofuel projects, for which profitability was dependent upon oil prices at $120 or above (not to mention over-optimistic estimates of yields from feedstock, particularly Jatropha).
23. As of May 2013, according to the Land Matrix, 'intended' and 'failed' land deals represent, respectively, 17% and 7% of recorded global land deals. See http://www.landmatrix.org.
24. K Borras & K Franco, 'Global land grabbing and trajectories of agrarian change', pp 34-59.
25. It has been argued that the notion of 'control grabbing' captures the wider spectrum of resources at stake, including 'green grabs' and 'water grabs'. Borras et al, 'Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean'. A focus on control rather than ownership also enables recognition that African states remain de jure landowners and consideration of land deals not entailing dispossession or expulsion of local occupiers.
26. H Bernstein, 'Agrarian questions of capital and labour: some theory about land reform (and a periodiza-tion)', in L Ntsebeza & R Hall (eds), The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenge of Transformation and Redistribution, Cape Town: hsrc Press, 2006.
27. White et al, 'The new enclosures', pp 619-647;
28. C Oya, 'Contract farming in sub-Saharan Africa: a survey of approaches, debates and issues', Journal of Agrarian Change, 12(1), 2012, pp 1-38.
29. W Wolford, SM Borras, R Hall, I Scoones & B White, 'Governing global land deals: the role of the state in the rush for land', Development and Change, 44(2), 2013, pp 189-210;
30. L Alden Wily, 'The law is to blame": the vulnerable status of common property rights in sub-Saharan Africa', Development and Change, 42(3), 2011, pp 733-757.
31. Unlike in the 1960s there are today only a few examples of African states dispossessing occupiers to initiate publicly owned lsf/pf. The special issue of Development and Change, 44(2), 2013, explores the complexities of states' role in land grabbing.
32. P Hill, Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa, London: Cambridge University Press, 1970; and N Swainson, The Development of Corporate Capitalism in Kenya, 1918-1977, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980; J Iliffe, The Emergence of African Capitalism, London: Macmillan, 1983; P Kennedy, African Capitalism: The Struggle for Ascendancy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; BJ Berman & C Leys, African Capitalists in African Development, London: Lynne Rienner, 1994, and S Ellis & YA Fauré (eds), Entreprises et entrepreneurs africains, Paris: Karthala, 1995.
33. R Hall, 'The next Great Trek? South African commercial farmers move north', Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2011, pp 823-843.
34. W Anseeuw, L Alden Wily, L Cotula & M Taylor, Land Rights and the Rush for Land: Findings of the Global Commercial Pressures on Land Research Project, Rome: International land Coalition, 2012.
35. T Hilhorst, J Nelen & N Traoré, 'Agrarian change below the radar screen: rising farmland acquisitions by domestic investors in West Africa-results from a survey in Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger', ldpi Paper, 2011.
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38. World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland.
39. D Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
40. H Bernstein, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change, Black Point/Sterling, VA: Fernwood/Kumarian Press, 2010.
41. T Li, 'Centering labor in the land grab debate', Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(2), 2011, pp 281-298.
42. While some emphasise the poverty reduction potential of large-scale investment in Southern 'unexploited' land, others expose its labour-displacing outcomes, whether involving the formation of a reserve army of labour or simply its elimination of a surplus population ultimately irrelevant to 'capital needs'. See, respectively, World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland; F Araghi, 'The invisible hand and the visible foot: peasants, dispossession and globalisation', in AH Akram-Lodhi & C Kay, Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question, London, Routledge, 2009;.
43. T Li, 'To make live or let die? Rural dispossession and the protection of surplus populations', Antipode, 41(1), 2009, pp 66-93.
44. Others more cautiously emphasise the current lack of hard evidence on this question
45. C Oya, 'Methodological reflections on land "grab" databases and the land "grab" literature "rush', Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), 2013, pp 503-520.
46. J Franco & S Borras, 'From threat to opportunity? Problems with the idea of a "Code of Conduct" for land-grabbing', Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, 13(2), 2010, pp 507-523.
47. F Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
48. P Peters, 'Land appropriation, surplus people and a battle over visions of agrarian futures in Africa', Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), 2013, pp 537-562.
49. TJ Byres, 'Neo-classical neo-populism 25 years on: déjà vu and déjà passé-towards a critique', Journal of Agrarian Change, 4(1), 2004, pp 17-44; and Bernstein, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change.
50. While narratives favouring lsf are equally generic and sketchy, historically these have not enjoyed comparable influence.
51. In Malawi, for example, some holdings as small as 10 ha are officially classified as 'estates'. By the same token this problem applies also to ssf.
52. The authors have used figures for 'permanent' labour where these are available (usually the period since 1990 only). Where they are not, they have used those for 'regular' labour. Where these are also not available, they have used those for male labour. And (only) where these also are unavailable, have they used those for registered labourers.
53. D Fieldhouse, Unilever Overseas: The Anatomy of a Multinational, 1895-1965, London: Croom Helm, 1978
54. A Pim, Colonial Agricultural Production: The Contribution made by Native Peasants and by Foreign Enterprise, London: Oxford University Press, 1946;
55. B Dinham & C Hines, Agribusiness in Africa, London: Earth Resources, 1983.
56. So too do those on area for South Africa in 1900-20 and the 1960s.
57. A classic pf crop that has seen a downward trend has been sisal, although this relates primarily to demand and prices rather than to a shift to ssf production.
58. For greater detail, see P Gibbon, Experiences of Plantation and Large-scale Agriculture in Twentieth Century Africa, Working Paper 20, Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2011.
59. S Jaffee, How Private Enterprise Organised Agricultural Markets in Kenya', Policy Research Paper, 823, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1992.
60. Other, minor strands include confiscation of enemy (German and Italian) property in several countries following World War II.
61. In Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, Madagascar and Congo-Brazzaville. See P Hugon, 'Multi-channel food supply systems to francophone African cities: fao Inter-regional Programme on Food Supply and Distribution to Cities', mimeo, Rome, nd. Rice was also the focus in Ghana and Tanzania.
62. Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Benin, Togo, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali and Ethiopia among others.
63. In Ghana, for example, publicly owned palm oil, coconut, kola nut, rubber and cotton plantations were established on around 15 000 ha. A Asamoa, Socio-economic Development Strategies of Independent African Countries: The Ghana Experience, Accra: Ghana University Press, 1997.
64. By 1980 there were 240 000 ha of state farms under grains. H Abera, 'Adoption of improved tef and wheat production technologies in crop-livestock mixed systems in northern and western Shewa zones, Ethiopia', PhD dissertation, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Pretoria, 2008. There were 38 000 under cotton. M Demeke, T Negash, S Damte, A Bersufehad & T Aklilu, Decent Work Deficits in the Ethiopian Cotton Sector, Geneva: ILO, 2004. A similar area was under sugar and smaller ones under oil seeds and pulses.
65. L Cotula, 'The international political economy of global land rush: a critical appraisal of trends, scale, geography and drivers', Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, pp 649-680.
66. Hall, 'The next Great Trek?'.
67. The condensed account offered here overlaps with the important contribution of M Cowen & R Shenton, Doctrines of Development, London: Routledge, 1996, especially in highlighting the influence of Mill and of the Indian experience. However, it also departs from this by downplaying the role of the doctrine of 'trusteeship' and relatedly of Fabian socialist thinking.
68. C Dewey, 'The rehabilitation of peasant proprietorship in nineteenth century economic thought', History of Political Economy, 6(1), 1974, pp 17-47.
69. JC Willis, Agriculture in the Tropics: An Elementary Treatise, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909, pp 179-90, 200-216.
70. JC Willis was Director of the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew, the institutional reference for agricultural extension services in British Africa until World War II. His book was reprinted twice. It should be noted that, while endoring lsf/pf' s overall superiority, he did not entirely reject ssf for the cultivation of some export crops.
71. ADA de Kat Angelino, Colonial Policy, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931.
72. The premier association of British scientists, founded in opposition to the more conservative Royal Society.
73. W Hailey, An African Survey: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938.
74. Pim, Colonial Agricultural Production.
75. M Tiffen & M Mortimore, Theory and Practice in Plantation Agriculture: An Economic Review, London: Overseas Development Institute, 1990, p 27.
76. World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland.
77. P Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What can be Done about it, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
78. Ricardo's theory states that rent for agricultural land is mainly determined by the natural fertility of the soil. Ricardo himself accepted that Ireland was an exception to his theory, which he explained as a result of normal tenurial relations being confounded by the 'racial' behaviour of landlords.
79. R Collison Black, 'Economic policy in Ireland and India in the time of JS Mill', Economic History Review, 21(2), 1968, pp 321-336.
80. Thornton cited several European examples and also introduced the idea that 'labour-based', in addition to capital-based, improvements be counted as investments. He further postulated a link between recognition of peasant property rights, spontaneous land consolidation, improved productivity and stabilisation of population growth. For a summary, see C Dewey, 'The rehabilitation of peasant proprietorship in nineteenth century economic thought'.
81. Collison Black, 'Economic policy in Ireland and India in the time of JS Mill'.
82. A Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa, London: Longman, 1973;
83. A Phillips, The Enigma of Colonialism: British Policy in West Africa, Oxford: James Currey, 1989, pp 72-76, 97-100
84. Hired migrant labour was held to lead to a series of 'problems of population' including 'promiscuity and prostitution, instability of native marriage, venereal disease and probable decline in native population'.
85. E Ardener, S Ardener & W Warmington, Plantation and Village in the Cameroons, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960, p 219
86. B Daviron, 'Mobilising labour in African agriculture: the role of the International Colonial Institute in the elaboration of a standard of colonial administration, 1895-1930', Journal of Global History, 5, 2010, pp 479-501.
87. In The Enigma of Colonialism, Phillips quotes George Cadbury observing after a visit that 'self-employed Africans were willing to work longer and for lower returns than day labourers'. Cadbury Bros's reservations about pf were reinforced by popular boycotts of chocolate and cocoa from plantations on São Tomé, following exposure of labour conditions there in 1908. Clarence-Smith, Slaves, Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola.
88. K Phillips, The Enigma of Colonialism, p 70.
89. Daviron, 'Mobilising labour in African agriculture'. pf/lsf' s low priority in French Africa was reaffirmed in 1944 at the Free French Brazzaville conference, held to determine postwar colonial policy. pf/lsf 'received virtually no support The colons [settlers] were reviled for their inefficiency and greed and for putting officials in the position of slave traders'. Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society.
90. Fieldhouse, Unilever Overseas; Phillips, The Enigma of Colonialism, pp 72-76, 97-100;
91. Clarence Smith, Slaves, Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola.
92. A Gaitskell, Gezira: A Story of the Development in the Sudan, London: Faber & Faber, 1959, ch 25
93. W Rendell, A History of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, London: Heinemann, 1976, pp 275-278;
94. T Phillips, 'Nucleus plantations and processing factories: their place in the development of organized smallholder production', Tropical Science, 1965, pp 99-108.
95. J Hodge, 'British colonial expertise, post-colonial careering and the early history of international development', Journal of Modern European History, 8(1), 2010, pp 24-46.
96. W Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, Vol II, Problems of Economic Policy, 1918-39, Part 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941.
97. F Wilson, 'Farming, 1866-1966', in M Wilson & L Thompson (eds), The Oxford History of South Africa, Vol II, 1870-1966, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, pp 104-171.
98. R van Zwanenberg & A King, An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda for Kenya
99. K Phimister, An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe for Southern Rhodesia;
100. E Francis & G Williams, 'The land question', Canadian Journal of African Studies, 27(3), 1993, pp 380-403
101. M Cowen, 'Before and after Mau Mau in Kenya', Journal of Peasant Studies, 16(2), 1989, pp 260-275
102. Kenya; R Loewenson, Modern Plantation Agriculture: Corporate Wealth and Labour Squalor, London: Zed Books, 1992 for Southern Rhodesia; Note
103. M Morris, 'The development of capitalism in South African agriculture: class struggle in the countryside', Economy and Society, 5(3), 1976, pp 292-343
104. On output market interventions, see P Mosley, The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1900-63, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 for Kenya and Southern Rhodesia; and Wilson, 'Farming, 1866-1966' for South Africa. On credit market interventions see references to output markets.
105. Phimister, An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, pp 127-129
106. R Hodder-Williams, White Farmers in Rhodesia, 1890-1965: A History of the Marandellas District, London: Macmillan, 1983, pp 129,
107. R Palmer, 'White farmers in Malawi: before and after the depression', African Affairs, 84 (335), 1985, pp 211-245.
108. M Lipton, Land Reform in Developing Countries: Property Rights and Property Wrongs, London: Routledge, 2009.
109. AK Sen, 'Peasants and dualism with or without surplus labour', Journal of Political Economy, 74, 1996, pp 425-450;
110. R Mabro, 'Employment and wages in dual agriculture', Oxford Economic Papers, 23, 1971, pp 401-417.
111. R Berry & W Cline, Agrarian Structure and Productivity in Developing Countries, Baltimore, MD: ilo and Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979;
112. G Cornia, 'Farm size, land yields and the agricultural production function: an analysis for fifteen developing countries', World Development, 13(4), 1985, pp 513-534.
113. Since lsfs enjoyed cheaper access to capital they over-substituted capital for labour, thus reducing their productivity further.
114. G Feder, 'The relation between farm size and farm productivity', Journal of Development Economics, 18, 1985, pp 297-313.
115. Lipton, Land Reform in Developing Countries, deploys additional arguments to the effect that ssfs have superior capacity to select productive labourers and that they have lower costs of disposing of over-output (since this will be shared between family members).
116. R Netting, Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993
117. F Ellis, Peasant Economies: Farm Households and Agrarian Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993
118. K Deininger & G Feder, Land Institutions and Land Markets, Policy Research Paper 16, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1998;
119. K Griffen, A Khan & A Ickowitz, 'Poverty and the distribution of land', Journal of Agrarian Change, 2(3), 2002, pp 279-330.
120. J Sender & D Johnston, 'Searching for a weapon of mass production in rural Africa: unconvincing arguments for land reform', Journal of Agrarian Change, 4(1-2), 2004, pp 142-165
121. The main references are D Hunt, The Impending Crisis in Kenya, Farnham: Gower, 1984; and I Livingston, Rural Development, Employment and Incomes in Kenya, Farnham: Gower, 1986, using Kenyan data from the late 1960s and early 1970s.
122. S Pearson, J Stryker & C Humphreys, Rice in West Africa, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1981, using Nigerian data from the 1970s
123. C Barrett, On Price Risk and the Inverse Farm Size-Productivity Relationship, Department of Agricultural Economics Staff Paper No 369, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993,
124. D Sahn & J Arulpragsam, "Land tenure, dualism and poverty in Malawi', in J van der Gaag & M Lipton (eds), Including the Poor, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1993, pp 306-334,
125. A Adesina & K Djato, "Farm size, relative efficiency and agrarian policy in Côte d' Ivoire: a profit function analysis of rice firms', Agricultural Economics, 14, 1996, pp 93-102,
126. A Dorward, "Farm size and productivity in Malawian smallholder agriculture', Journal of Development Studies, 35(5), 1999, pp 141-161,
127. E Nkonya, P Jagger, D Sserunkuuma & H Ssali, "Strategies to increase agricultural productivity and reduce land degradation: evidence from Uganda', Agricultural Economics, 31(2-3), 2004, pp 181-195,
128. Of these, only Hunt, Livingston and Pender et al provide clear support for the IR, while Dorward supports its rejection.
129. H Dunlop, The Development of European Agriculture in Rhodesia, 1945-65, Department of Economics Occasional Paper No 5, Salisbsury: University of Rhodesia, 1971;
130. H Dunlop, The Settler Economies, pp 176-78
131. Mosley showed a high level of internal differentiation in lsf yields in the settler economies, with a minority of high volume, high yield producers and a majority of low volume, low yield ones.
132. The mechanisms included allocating loans in sizes too low to interest larger lsfs, distributing sales quotas whose size related inversely to output, and calculating production costs for subsidy purposes from surveys biased toward smaller lsfs.
133. N Vink & J Kirsten, Deregulation of Agricultural Marketing in South Africa: Lessons Learned, Monograph 25, Sandton: Free Market Foundation, 2000
134. Mosley, The Settler Economies, pp 179-181; and Dunlop, The Development of European Agriculture in Rhodesia, p 34.
135. These include lack of control for crop mix or-more importantly-for differences in agro-ecological conditions and failure to consider methods by which lsfs might reduce supervision costs.
136. G Dyer, "Redistributive land reform-no April rose: the poverty of Berry and Cline and gki on the Inverse Relation', Journal of Agrarian Change, 4(1-2), 2004, pp 45-72;
137. K Sender & K Johnston, "Searching for a weapon of mass production in rural Africa'. A further criticism is the artificiality of the exclusive identification of ssf labour with family labour.
138. H Binswanger & M Rosenzweig, 'Behavioral and material determinants of production relations in agriculture', Journal of Development Studies, 22(3), 1985, pp 503-539.
139. World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland.
140. M de Klerk, 'The financial crisis in South African agriculture and post-apartheid agricultural transformation', Canadian Journal of African Studies, 27(3), 1993, pp 361-380
141. H Bernstein, 'The political economy of the maize filière', Journal of Peasant Studies, 22 (2-3), 1996, pp 120-145
142. J Van Zyl, N Vink, J Kirsten & D Poonyth, 'South African agriculture in transition: the 1990s', Journal of International Development, 13(6), 2001, pp 725-739;
143. Vink & Kirsten, Deregulation of Agricultural Marketing in South Africa.
144. De Schutter, "Forum on global land grabbing'; and White et al, The New Enclosures.
145. World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland.