Peasants and the Art of Farming

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg

• Publisher: Practical Action Publishing
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781780448770
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Peasants and the Art of Farming: A Chayanovian Manifesto focuses on the structure and dynamics of peasant farms and the historically highly variable relations that govern the processes of labour and production within peasant farms. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg argues that peasant agriculture can play an important, if not central, role in augmenting food production and creating sustainability. However, peasants today, as in the past, are materially neglected. By building on the pioneering work of Chayanov, this book seeks to address this neglect and to show how important peasants are in the ongoing struggles for food, food sustainability and food sovereignty.

1

Peasants and Social Transformations

A Divisive Issue

When it comes to the peasant question, the radical left has been deeply divided. In several ways it still is — although there definitely are indications in political and scientific debates, in new social movements and in socio-material reality itself, that the great divide is increasingly being bridged. And if this sounds too optimistic, then we may probably argue that the divide is not so much being bridged but increasingly becoming less relevant (which may also represent a way to resolve controversies, especially political ones). The earlier controversies are fading away because we are witnessing, in many places around the world, new developmental tendencies that definitely go beyond the limits of previous debates.

Historically, the main controversies have been strongly associated with two leading spokesmen, Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Chayanov who, in the first decades of the twentieth century engaged in sharp polemics that reflected different interests and prospects that already had lain dormant in Russian society for a long time and that drastically came to the fore in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution. At that time Russia was basically an agrarian nation. Industry made up just a small part of the national economy. Peasants hugely outnumbered industrial workers and, although capitalist farm enterprises were emerging (and their significance was hotly debated), peasants made up the large majority of rural dwellers. Peasant communities provided the framework that regulated everyday life for the majority of Russians. Lenin (and more generally, the bolshevists) and Chayanov (representing, in a way, the narodniki¹) interpreted this reality in different ways, taking different positions about the role of different social groups (particularly the peasantry), which created fierce controversies about the future of Russian society.

Originally, the great divide centred on several, strongly interrelated issues. The most important ones concerned, in the first place, the definition of the class position of the peasantry — a question that clearly related to practical issues, such as the nature of coalitions and the role different parts of the population might play in revolutionary processes. Second, there was much debate on the stability of peasant-like forms (or “modes”) of production (see also Bernstein 2009). Would they inevitably disintegrate, or would it be possible for them to be reproduced over time? Or would there be unequal but combined processes of disappearance and reconstitution? Third, should those engaged in the transition toward socialism regard peasant agriculture as something to be continued or transformed? Are peasant modes of production a promising way to produce food and make significant and substantial contributions to the development of society as a whole? Or are other forms of production, such as large state-controlled cooperatives (be it kolkhozes, peoples’ communes or whatever) far superior? Is the peasantry a hindrance to change, insofar as it will struggle to block the transition to such supposedly superior forms? Or might it become a main driver of the transformations needed in the countryside?

Today, that is, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, many of these questions might seem terribly outdated, especially when they are exclusively linked to the Russian situation of the post 1917 period. Yet, we have to take into account that

(a) The controversy was in no way limited to Russia. The main spokesmen of that time also referred to, and tried to integrate into their analyses, different experiences from other places: America, Germany (notably Prussia), Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Italy and the Low Countries. Equally, the debate quickly extended to a global one that ranged from East to West and from North to South. Wherever power was seized or major regime shifts occurred, the question was asked whether socialism (or more generally, a better society) could be constructed by giving peasants a prominent role in the overall process of rural development. This question arose with insistence, especially in those places where peasants had been in the forefront of revolutionary struggles, from Mexico, to China, Cuba and Vietnam (Wolf 1969). In these countries the debates often came down to another important question: how should land reform be organized? These were far from just theoretical questions. They were of immediate concern in Mexico in the 1930s and then in Italy in the immediate postwar years when a land reform was designed and partly implemented. In 1974 it was a central concern in Portugal and soon after in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, in Cuba after Castro’s revolution and then again in the early 2010s and in China in the second half of the 1940s and then again from 1978 onwards. The same debate emerged in Vietnam in 1954 and 1986, the year of Doi Moi. In Japan the debate started after World War II and never disappeared from the agenda. In the Philippines it was a major issue in the 1950s, was triggered again by the 1986 elections and intensified during and after the Aquino reform of 1988. Latin America witnessed similar debates and, although there were specific foci time and again (such as the period of the Legas Camponesas in Brazil and the radical Reforma Agraria in Peru), in the end the debate covered the whole of the continent and helped to shape its agricultural sectors of today. The many land reforms that swept the continent can be seen as a struggle between the campesinistas (who took Chayanovian stances) and the descampesinistas (who took Leninist positions) and vice versa. Thus, the controversy that arose first in Russia in 1917 was repeated time and again. In the words of Kerblay (1966: xxxvi): “While Lenin … demanded prompt confiscation of the large estates … and nationalization of the land, including that of the peasants, the League for Agrarian Reform [Chayanov was a member of its executive committee] was content to propose the transfer of all land to peasant farms.”

The same debate reappeared, albeit in slightly different terms, when it came to the (potential) role of peasant communities. The mir, the Russian peasant communities, had been an important point of reference for radical political movements in Russia. Elsewhere, the potential role of such communities in processes of transition was also acknowledged. For instance Mariátegui, a leading Latin American radical thinker, argued: “The peasant community embodies an effective capacity for development and transformation” (1928: 87).

(b) The controversies did not remain limited solely to agrarian issues but also extended to many new questions. For example, in Peru this was “el problema del indio,” the question of the indigenous Quecha and Aymara speaking population that keep livestock in the Andean mountains and who are badly discriminated against, exploited and oppressed. Mariátegui skilfully related this “question of the Indians” to the agrarian question, arguing that the multidimensional neglect and subordination of the indigenous population could only be resolved through a radical change in the social relations of production in the countryside. The same occurred, for example, in Italy, where Gramsci tied the “southern question” (in the south of Italy, large landholdings exerted a stranglehold effect that increasingly became a burden for the whole of Italy) to the “agrarian question.” The more so since the 1920 Turin uprising had made clear that as long as “the workers stood alone, they were indeed automatically defeated unless they could link their forces with those of the surrounding countryside, to which they were connected in any case by multiple family ties” (Lawner 1975: 28).² Far later a similar extension of the peasant question was formulated in China: the san nong (three rural issues) policy linked the peasant issue to total agricultural production and the attractiveness of village life (Ye et al. 2010).

The debate on the peasantry also extended toward debates on the contribution of agriculture to the development of society as a whole.³ Agriculture could be heavily squeezed in order to feed capital accumulation in urban industry and to provide the required cheap labour. But some outlined other alternatives. A prosperous countryside (as opposed to a squeezed agriculture) could very well become an attractive internal market and thus offer strong support to industrialization (Kay 2009). Another debate, that emerged far later, was on sustainability. It is interesting that the first ones who initiated this debate were clearly located in the Chayanovian tradition, such as Vries (1948), for example. Today any discussion on the path to sustainability necessarily has to debate the role of the peasantries. Yet another debate that constantly reappears is the one on poverty (see, for example, IFAD 2010). Tragically, the number of poor people in the world continues to increase steadily, reaching an estimated 1.4 billion in 2010. Typically, 70 percent of the poor of the world are rural; they live in the countryside and depend, more or less, on agricultural activities. Food scarcities are a frequent and recurrent phenomenon, and it is expected that world food production needs to be doubled by 2050 when world population is assumed to peak. However, neither the short term food shortages nor the long term need for agricultural growth are translated into opportunities for these rural poor. Instead, they trigger new corporate investments (land grabbing being the most visible expression) that further damage and undermine the livelihoods of many rural people.

(c) Last but not least, it became increasingly clear that the initial questions and the extended fields of debate that were later added were not only relevant for the radical left. Other political currents, including institutionalized science, had to face and deal with the same issues. All these domains have become divided over exactly the same issues, and none has been capable of resolving the associated controversies. Badly equipped insofar as the main concepts and fields of interests are concerned and ignoring the potentially powerful contributions from Chayanov, scientific disciplines as diverse as agrarian economics, development economics, rural sociology and peasant studies as well as institutions such as the World Bank and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) have not been able to contribute much to resolving these issues (Shanin 1986, 2009). The specific solution arrived at by some, i.e., declaring the death of the peasantry, also did not turn out to be very helpful.

This book does not aim to be an extensive reconstruction of the historical polemics, nor does it pretend to resolve them in an ex post way. My aim is to synthesize the core of the Chayanovian approach and link it to current issues that are central to many new, rural movements.

Central to the Chayanovian approach is the observation that although the peasant unit of production is conditioned and affected by the capitalist context in which it is operating, it is not directly governed by it. Instead, it is governed through a set of balances. These balances link the peasant unit, its operation and its development to the wider capitalist context but in complex and definitively distinctive ways. These balances are ordering principles. They shape and reshape the way fields are worked, cattle are bred, irrigation works are constructed and how identities and mutual relations unfold and materialize. The range and complexity of balances involved, which are continuously reassessed, gives rise to the impressive heterogeneity of peasant agriculture and creates a permanent ambiguity. On one hand the peasant is downtrodden and misunderstood, on the other he or she is indispensable and proud. The peasantry both suffers and resists: sometimes at different moments, sometimes simultaneously. Similar confusion and apparent contradictions apply to agriculture as a whole; it sometimes witnesses processes and periods of depeasantization and sometimes of repeasantization. All this can be traced back to the complex interactions between different balances and how each balance is cast and recast by different actors (peasants, their families, communities, interest groups, traders, banks, state apparatuses, agro-industries, etc.)

Chayanov focused on two balances (one of labour and consumption, the other of drudgery and utility) that are to be equilibrated within each peasant farm in a way that is singular to that farm and to the needs and prospects of the peasant family living and working there. These balances combine incommensurable entities (e.g., labour and consumption) that are necessarily related to each other. Consequently, the balances constitute “mutual relationships” (Chayanov 1966: 102, italics added). Building on this approach I will discuss a far wider array of balances — some internal to today’s peasant farms, others more general insofar as they link peasant agriculture with the dynamics taking place in the wider surroundings. In doing so I am extending Chayanov’s approach. That is to say, I seek to go beyond the many time and space bounded limitations that are inherent to Chayanov’s work (and of which he was well aware)⁴ and identify the balances that operate as the main ordering principles in today’s peasant agriculture. I will also try to indicate how peasant agriculture can contribute to responding to some of the big challenges humankind is facing; such responses depend very much on an adequate coordination of different balances — at least, if sufficient “space” (Halamska 2004) is granted to, or conquered by, the different peasantries of this world.

In the rich tradition of peasant studies that evolved worldwide during the twentieth century, many balances have been identified. I will show that the art of farming,⁵ an expression literally used by Chayanov in his Social Agronomy (1924: 6), comes down to the skilful coordination and intertwinement of the interacting balances (see, for example, Chayanov 1966: 80, 81, 198, 203). Through this coordination peasant farms are turned into a “well working whole” as Dirk Roep (2000) argued in relation to Dutch peasant farms operating at the turning of the millennium.⁶ I will also try to demonstrate that the assessed equilibria are far from static. They are dynamic: they translate the emancipation aspirations of the peasantry into ongoing agrarian and rural development — unless such development is blocked by other relations and circumstances. And finally I will demonstrate that the coordination and intertwinement of the different balances does not separate the peasant farm from its politico-economic environment. Instead, it links them to, and simultaneously distantiates them from, this environment. Every balance is a unity of initially incommensurable entities that nonetheless need to be combined and aligned. Thus, there is the need to find the best possible equilibrium. This implies trade-offs and often generates frictions. Operating a balance and trying to reassess it (if needed) often translates into, or can fuel, social struggle. This is true especially when we take into account the different forms of social struggle.

Together the different balances constitute a complex system of thought that

relies on two basic principles: dualism and relativism. Dualism is a way of perceiving opposites that can be divided but, at the same time, remain complementary. For example, all the territories in the Andes are divided in high and low, with soils that are principally cold and warm. But if one applies the principle of relativism these opposites lose their absolute delimitation. For example, high terrain becomes low when the point of reference and perception of the peasant is on the former — for an external observer a clear sign of logical inconsistence, but for the peasant a smooth passage to blend opposite values. The point of reference is the middle. (Salas and Tilmann 1990: 9–10)

The art of farming greatly depends on using good judgement to assess the different balances. “We can affirm that the art of farming is rooted in the most appropriate use of the many particularities that are entailed in his farm” (Chayanov 1924: 6). These particularities are understood and managed as part of a balance; together they flow into an equilibrium that links particularities, for example the available land, the number of cattle, the number of people able to help in the labour process, the savings and investments, etc., into one well working whole. A balance is a regulatory device (a bit like a thermostat). It continuously registers relevant information (e.g., the temperature of the room) and translates this into appropriate responses and reactions (e.g., increase, decrease, postpone or completely stop the heating). Significantly, in his discussion of these balances Chayanov first and foremost takes into account the features (and more generally the interests, prospects and experiences) of the peasant family. When we talk about the balance of labour and consumption, we are not talking about abstract consumption, but about the specific (or concrete) consumption needs of a particular family. The same applies to labour: it is the amount and quality of labour that a particular peasant family (located in a particular situation) is able and willing to deliver. And finally the family is a specific constellation, characterized by specific features, such as the consumer/worker ratio (which will be explained further on). But it is the peasant him or herself who adjusts and readjusts the different balances.

Thus we can further extend the analogy of the thermostat to illustrate the specificity of the Chayanovian balances. First, whilst a thermostat is fed with and reacts to objective data (e.g., the temperature of the room in degrees Celsius) — that are non-negotiable and not open to any subjective evaluation whatsoever — Chayanovian balances critically take into account the way particular features are perceived by the involved actors themselves (i.e., how...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• ICAS Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies Series
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Peasants and Social Transformations
• 2 The Two Main Balances Identified by Chayanov
• 3 A Wider Array of Interacting Balances
• 4 The Position of Peasant Agriculture in the Wider Context
• 5 Yields
• 6 Repeasantization
• Glossary
• References
• Index