Agroecology: the science of natural resource management for poor farmers in marginal environments

This study was well-received and widely discussed when it appeared in hardback in 1990. It is devoted to analysis of the enduring problem of hunger in the modern world, and of the role that public action can play in countering it. The book is divided into four parts. The first attempts to provide a coherent perspective on the complex nutritional, economic, social and political issues involved in the causation of hunger and deprivation. The second deals with famine prevention, paying special attention to Africa and India. The third focuses on chronic undernourishment and related deprivations. Parts two and three include a number of case studies of successful public action for the prevention of hunger and famines in various parts of the world. The fourth part of the book draws together the main themes and concerns of the earlier chapters, and provides an integrated view of the role of public action in eliminating hunger.

Hunger and Public Action

The contributions to this collection use the tools of agrarian political economy to explore the rapid growth and complex dynamics of large-scale land deals in recent years, with a special focus on the implications of big land deals for property and labour regimes, labour processes and structures of accumulation. The first part of this introductory essay examines the implications of this agrarian political economy perspective. First we explore the continuities and contrasts between historical and contemporary land grabs, before examining the core underlying debate around large- versus small-scale farming futures. Next, we unpack the diverse contexts and causes of land grabbing today, highlighting six overlapping mechanisms. The following section turns to assessing the crisis narratives that frame the justifications for land deals, and the flaws in the argument around there being excess, empty or idle land available. Next the paper turns to an examination of the impacts of land deals, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion at play, before looking at patterns of resistance and constructions of alternatives. The final section introduces the papers in the collection.

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The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals

Land, farming, livelihoods, and poverty: Rethinking the links in the Rural South

This article addresses the potential for food movements to bring about substantive changes to the current global food system. After describing the current corporate food regime, we apply Karl Polanyi's 'double-movement' thesis on capitalism to explain the regime's trends of neoliberalism and reform. Using the global food crisis as a point of departure, we introduce a comparative analytical framework for different political and social trends within the corporate food regime and global food movements, characterizing them as 'Neoliberal', 'Reformist', 'Progressive', and 'Radical', respectively, and describe each trend based on its discourse, model, and key actors, approach to the food crisis, and key documents. After a discussion of class, political permeability, and tensions within the food movements, we suggest that the current food crisis offers opportunities for strategic alliances between Progressive and Radical trends within the food movement. We conclude that while the food crisis has brought a retrenchment of neoliberalization and weak calls for reform, the worldwide growth of food movements directly and indirectly challenge the legitimacy and hegemony of the corporate food regime. Regime change will require sustained pressure from a strong global food movement, built on durable alliances between Progressive and Radical trends.

Food crises, food regimes and food movements: rumblings of reform or tides of transformation?

Rural development: putting the last first

The central aim of this article is to try and assess, on the basis of the existing evidence, what influence, if any, the technological innovations that have been introduced into Indian agriculture since the mid‐1960s have hadupon class formation and class action in the Indian countryside. An attempt is made, further, to suggest, if only briefly, the significance of this for urban class formation and class action. The nature of the new technology and some of its implications for the labour process in agriculture are identified and it is held that the distinction between biochemical innovations and mechanical innovations, to the extent that those who make it argue that technological innovation can be limited to the former, is a false one. It is stressed that partly because of the intensified time constraint brought about by the application of biochemical innovations the pressure to mechanise is likely to be strong, as mechanisation becomes increasingly profitable. The evidence reveals that the new technolog...

The new technology, class formation and class action in the Indian countryside

Why Poor People Stay Poor. A Study of Urban Bias in World Development, by Michael Lipton. London: Temple Smith, 1977. Pp. 467; index; tables; £9.50

Of neo‐populist pipe‐dreams: Daedalus in the Third World and the myth of urban bias

The three examples considered – England, France and Prussia – are all very important instances of capitalist agrarian transformation. They illustrate, moreover, strikingly different paths of agrarian transition. These are termed, respectively, landlord-mediated capitalism from below, capitalism delayed, and capitalism from above, and an explanation is offered of how these different outcomes came to pass and of why there was such a marked divergence in the nature of agrarian transition. It is argued that the character of the landlord class and of class struggle have determined both the timing of each transition and the nature of the transition. Both the quality of the landlord class and the manner and outcome of the class struggle have sometimes delayed, perhaps for prolonged periods, and sometimes hastened transition; and have had profound implications for the nature and quality of the transformation and how reactionary or progressive it has been. In this the state has always played a prominent part. It i...

The landlord class, peasant differentiation, class struggle and the transition to capitalism: England, France and Prussia compared

The Griffin, Khan and Ickowitz argument in favour of redistributive land reform, as a means of eradicating rural poverty, is an updated version of a case made by Griffin 30 years ago, and is here seen as a variant of neo-classical neo-populism. The essential logic presented by GKI is considered and it is argued that the approach is defective in its lack of historical perspective and its deployment of a static approach in a dynamic context: these defects manifested in its ignoring of the processes associated with capitalist transformation. It is further argued that its logical foundation is the neo-classical construct of perfect competition, which is without historical basis; its empirical justification is a postulated inverse relationship between land productivity and size of holding, supposedly true of all places and all times, but which is swept away by the development of capitalism in agriculture; and its social specification, in failing to capture the existence of differentiated peasantries, ignores the actual class structure of the countryside.

Terence J. Byres

Papers

Rural development: putting the last first

The new technology, class formation and class action in the Indian countryside

Of neo‐populist pipe‐dreams: Daedalus in the Third World and the myth of urban bias

The landlord class, peasant differentiation, class struggle and the transition to capitalism: England, France and Prussia compared

Neo‐Classical Neo‐Populism 25 Years On: Déjà Vu and Déjà Passé. Towards a Critique