Contenu du sommaire

Two roads to capitalist agriculture are distinguished: the landlord and the peasant. It is argued that the landlord path is predominant in Latin America although the transition to capitalist agriculture is not yet complete. Landlords traditionally owned most of the land but the production process within the hacienda system was mainly undertaken by tenants ( Grundherrschaft). Generally after the crisis of the 1930s the technical and social relations of production began to change as a result of the expansion of the market, the availability of new technologies and the emergence of a growing labour surplus. Landlords mechanized their estates and substituted wage labour for tenant labour centralizing the hacienda's production process by expanding the demesne (Gutswirtschaft). However, the capitalist transformation of the hacienda has not always been uniform, unilinear and successful. Factors such as ecological conditions, types of agricultural product, and the resistance of peasants have introduced variations, limited or even prevented the landlord path. In some cases the State through the implementation of an agrarian reform has attempted to develop a peasant path. Although these attempts have largely been unsuccessful they have introduced further complexities. The cases of Bolivia, Peru and Chile are examined so as to illustrate the variations and limitations in the landlord path.

Economic Liberalism and Rural Space in Chile since 1973. The article discusses the agricultural counter-reform which has been taking place in Chile since 1973 and which aims to develop a capitalist agriculture orientated towards export. The introduction of liberal economic ideas into the domain of agriculture has substantially transformed its characteristics, as it has put an end to the method of development induced by the two previous agricultural reforms. The measures that have been taken are the selling of public land and infrastructure to private owners, and the concentration of capital in the hands of a new rural bourgeoisie able to perform a vertical and horizontal agricultural/industrial integration. Beside this new bourgeoisie, a peasant population still exists but is being pauperised or turned into a proletariat. The author shows the rationality of economic liberalism and his conclusion is that solving the agricultural problem in Chile does not depend on the transformation of the agricultural structure, but on a total questioning of society.

Agricultural Crisis in a Mining State : Gaboon. A cycle of mining industry began in Gaboon twenty years ago roughly. But the spectacular growth of the extracting activity did not go with an expansion of agriculture; on the contrary, an increasing food dépendance and a deep decay of the rural world, worsened by the lack of population on the Gabooneese soil, have been recorded. Three facts paralyzed the rural development which is in other respects running short of human and financial means and for which a true political will is lacking: little affinity of people for tillage, archaism of cultural methods, inorganized commercialization. So as to remedy the agricultural crisis, the developers have decided in favor of the introduction of industrial cultivations, highly capitalistic and mechanized; this results in the introduction of wage-earning classes in agriculture, but could not vivify an agonizing rural society.

Integration and Evolution of Trading Methods in Mountains : the Dômes (Massif central) as an Example. During the last two centuries, the agricultural and food market has established itself on a national scale, and areas with differenciated types of production are now in competition. The ancient agricultural systems, whose role was chiefly to meet local needs (although exchanges between different regions certainly existed), have gradually disintegrated and been replaced by regional specializations which indeed are part of a national or even international pattern of agricultural/food supply. Mountain agriculture, being like a poor relation in this spatial division of labour, is rapidly regressing. The agricultural history of the Dômes illustrates in a distinctive way this process of trading integration of mountainous areas. Its originality lies in the development of a farm cheese production (saint-nectaire), which provides an important profit and allows numerous farmers to stay on their farms. But the saint-nectaire production has been increasing for fifteen years, which alters the profits on the milk market and brings forth a selective process of intensification of milk production. The loss of the "rente de situation" which occurs as a consequence may then accelerate the disappearance of the least competitive farms as they will then be integrated into the national milk market.

Introduction of Cultural Changes in the Villages of the Little Triangle (Israel). The development of agriculture in the Arab villages of the Little Triangle, along the Sharon plain, was marked during the sixties and seventies by the adoption of innovations — among others, crops under plastic and glass cover — and the introduction of many new species and varieties of vegetables. The article shows that Arab farmers are very open to innovations: having got free technical assistance, they followed the patterns of innovations of Jewish agriculture. The expansion of new cultures followed, both chronologically and spatialy, the usual patterns of diffusion, but only in a limited area. Human factors such as distribution of water, préexistant cultures, but also physical factors, such as pedology, caused this restriction.