Experiences of Plantation and Large-Scale Farming in 20th Century Africa

DIIS WODIIS WORKING PAPER 2011:20 PER Experiences of Plantation and Large-Scale Farming in 20th Century Africa Peter Gibbon DIIS Working Paper 2011:20 1 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2011:20 PETER GIBBON Senior researcher , DIIS pgi@diis.dk ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to thank Nynne Warring and Raza Qureshi for assistance in preparing the sub-section on the Inverse Relation (IR) and Sam Jones for running the regression referred to in footnote 19. He also wishes to thank Henry Bernstein, Blair Rutherford and Sam Jones for written comments, as well as Stefano Ponte, Lone Riisgaard, Ole Therkildsen, Marianne Nylandsted Larsen and Esbern Friis-Hansen for verbal ones on an earlier draft of this paper. The usual caveats apply. DIIS Working Papers make available DIIS researchers’ and DIIS project partners’ work in progress towards proper publishing. They may include important documentation which is not necessarily published elsewhere. DIIS Working Papers are published under the responsibility of the author alone. DIIS Working Papers should not be quoted without the express permission of the author. DIIS WORKING PAPER 2011:20 © The author and DIIS, Copenhagen 2011 Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS Strandgade 56, DK-1401 Copenhagen, Denmark Ph: +45 32 69 87 87 Fax: +45 32 69 87 00 E-mail: diis@diis.dk Web: www.diis.dk Cover Design: Carsten Schiøler Layout: Allan Lind Jørgensen Printed in Denmark by Vesterkopi AS ISBN: 978-87-7605-465-6 Price: DKK 25.00 (VAT included) DIIS publications can be downloaded free of charge from www.diis.dk 2 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2011:20 CONTENTS Abstract 4 Introduction 5 An overview of the sector’s development in the 20th century 6 Economic perspectives and policy narratives on PF/LSF in Africa 11 Economies of scale and technical superiority (1780 – the present) 11 Economic inefficiency and political instability (1830-70) 12 Racial rents (1940 – present) 13 An inverse scale-productivity relation (1960 – present) 14 Policy narratives 16 The (evolving) ICS doctrine 16 Eliminating PF/LSF through land reform 18 ‘Structural adjustment’ of LSF 19 Farming systems 20 Capital and labour intensity in the settler economies 20 The Sudan sorghum system 26 Sugar and sisal 28 Labour systems 29 Recruitment and stabilization 29 The division of labour and work organization 33 Control of labour 38 Forced labour 39 Recruited labour 40 Stabilised labour 42 Conclusion 44 Works cited 47 3 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2011:20 ABSTRACT The paper’s background is a revival of the historically dominant narrative on the large-scale and plantation farming (LSF and PF) in Africa, in reaction to the contemporary phenomenon of ‘land grabbing’. The historical antecedents of this narrative are examined and its central contentions – that features including low productivity and limited employment generation normally, if not intrinsic-ally characterize LSF and PF – are problematized. This is undertaken on the basis of comprehensive reviews of the historical and contemporary literatures on African LSF and PF farming and labour control systems. 4 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2011:20 INTRODUCTION In the wake of commodity price rises from 2004, and against the local background of sectors remained more or less the same in terms of share of cultivated land area occu-pied from 1914 through to 2000. But there was a continuous reduction over time in the governments’ increasingly welcoming atti- number of crops cultivated as well as, in gen- tude to investors, the last few years have seen a rising interest in acquisition of land in Sub-Saharan Africa for plantation farming (PF) and large-scale farming (LSF). To date only small numbers of new ventures have taken off, but many more are likely to do so and as a result there will be a significant expansion in the area of Sub-Saharan African land under PF and LSF. In this context there has been eral, an increase in the share of higher value crops. The second section traces the origin of current narratives about PF and LSF to certain economic arguments concerning PF and LSF originally dating from the 19th cen-tury and subject to reconstruction/renewal from the1960s. Theseprovided a shifting in-tellectual foundation for the policy perspec-tive on agricultural scale in colonial and later a revival of policy debates that have been ‘developing’ countries dominant throughout largely dormant for many years. Most con-tributions to this debate are broadly negative in their assessments of what a large expan-sion of PF and LSF will entail (cf. e.g., World Bank 2010). In line with the dominant view in earlier discussions, PF and LSF are seen as basically entailing land under-utilization, – namely a presumption in favour of small-scale farming (SSF). The third section exam-inesthedevelopmentof PFandLSFfarming systems, mainly in terms of issues of capital and labour intensity. Although recognizing the low share of LSF land under cultivation, this draws attention to a minor revolution in low productivity crop production, limited capital intensity of grain production in the employment generation and low quality jobs – not to mention dispossession of pastoral-ists and smallholders. This paper does not deal at all with the is- three decades following World War II, and to a later – although also more geographi-cally circumscribed – phase of simultaneous capital and labour intensification, associated sue of dispossession (‘land grabbing’). It does with the dissemination of fruit, vegetable however trace the intellectual and political and cut flower production. The fourth sec-background of the other components of the tion examines the development of labour dominant view referred to above, and asks systems, in terms of labour stabilization, whether what is known as PF and LSF in 20th century Africa supports the prognosis that it offers. It does so on the basis of examining the extent to which it is valid to make gener-alizations about trends in the 20th century PF and LSF farming and labour systems, and to the extent it is, what these tell us. The paper proceeds in five main sections. The first provides a quantitative overview of the development of PF and LSF crop pro-duction in 20th century Sub-Saharan Africa. Taken together, crop production in these work organization and labour control ques-tions. Here there appears to have been a common cycle across most PF and LSF in Africa, whereby labour stabilization and la-bour market integration for large-scale agri-culture became established facts across the continent between 1950 and 1980. Up to the 1990s this was associated with considerable change in how labour was supervised, and with somewhat less change in how it was deployed and incentivized. The fifth section concludes. 5 ... - tailieumienphi.vn