Pan-African Postcard
Is the agrarian revolution round the corner?
Issa G Shivji
2005-10-27, Issue 227
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/30073
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Is the concept of agrarian revolution a serious proposition or a vote-catching gimmick? Issa Shivji examines what a real agrarian revolution would look like and lays down some of the fundamental transformations that would have to take place. Central would be a shift away from export crops to primary food crops.
In the current political campaigns, unlike during the last ten years of the third phase government, there is some talk about the transformation of agriculture. Even catching phrases like ‘agrarian revolution’ are being thrown around. What does this really imply? Let us see.
Tanzania is a text-book case of what is described in political economy as an extraverted economy, dependent on export of primary agricultural commodities. Agriculture contributes around 50 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. Tanzania is a large country with a massive petty (largely middle and poor) peasantry which is firmly integrated in the world commodity market. Export agriculture is our mainstay. Our food production for domestic consumption is inversely related to that of export crop production and directly dependent on the vagaries of weather. This means that when export production is promoted, food production falls. Historically, the classical case is that of cotton growing in Mwanza region in the 1950s. As peasants concentrated their labour on producing cotton they spent less time on food. Not only that but the variety of food crops which provided balanced and adequate nutrition was also reduced as they concentrated on growing starchy cassava which requires less labour.
One recent study shows that in 1993/94, there were 3.7 million agricultural households on mainland Tanzania, amounting to a population of 20 million. The number of agricultural households had increased to 4.4 million in 1997/98, with a population of 23 million, an increase of 19 per cent in households and almost 16 per cent in population. The proportion of female-headed households is almost one-fifth. 90 per cent of farmers cultivated less than 2.0 hectares while large scale farmers cultivated only 14 per cent of arable land. Tanzania is thus a country of smallholders par excellence, the population directly dependent on smallholder agriculture being over 75 per cent.
In spite of the peasant production being small-scale and backward, it is the peasant who is most exploited. Exploitation means that the peasant does not get a return commensurate with his/her labour. The excess, that is the surplus, is drained away from rural areas to towns and international metropolis through unequal terms of trade to support non-producing classes and their luxury consumption. It would be different if the majority of this surplus was ploughed back into agriculture. It is not. The caricature of a bourgeoisie that we have is not capable of long-term investment in agriculture to spearhead a real agrarian revolution.
Our bourgeoisie looks to make quick profits. At best, it indulges in building and buses and guest houses. Its greatest aspiration is to become absentee landlords, or own land and offer it to so-called foreign investors in dubious deals euphemistically called joint ventures or just become commission agents for foreign firms. This is the bourgeoisie which in political economy is called a comprador, as opposed to a national, bourgeoisie.
So what does an agrarian revolution in these circumstances mean? First and foremost, it means that the agriculture sector must undergo a fundamental structural transformation which can only be done in the context of transforming the extraverted colonial-type economy to a nationally integrated economy. This implies a number of very important shifts in policy.
First, it means to shift away from concentrating on a few export crops to primarily food crops and other agricultural inputs for the domestic market.
Secondly, it means shifting from the hoe-based, rain-fed agriculture to the mechanized and chemicalized, irrigation-based agriculture. Agrarian transformation requires that other sectors of the economy – industrial, financial, energy, and transport and communication – should be integrated with and support the agriculture sector. For example, local industries must provide machines and other inputs, including fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides etc. to agriculture. The manufacturing industry must provide incentive goods - textiles, radios, bicycles, etc. – to peasants. The agrarian revolution cannot be sustained if the necessary industrial inputs are all imported. They have to be manufactured locally.
Thirdly, it means that the energy sector should shift to provide, for example, electricity to rural areas at affordable tariffs. This in turn means that we have to move away from oil-based generation of electricity to hydro-electricity on the one hand, and from large-scale hydro-electricity plants, to small-scale generation which can be maintained by local rural based technicians.
Fourthly, it means that our transport system must facilitate movement of agriculture commodities primarily within the country. This means building a network of transport routes and networks joining villages and towns and regions, joining agricultural farmlands with industrial areas. This cannot easily be done if we rely on building tarmac highways in a large country like Tanzania. It is expensive to build and very expensive to maintain. The emphasis has to be on rail and sea transport joining main centres across the country to which villages can be joined by a network of feeder roads. (The boast about building highways joining cities and towns while letting the railway system go to the dogs is clearly misplaced!)
The financial sector too has to be reoriented to give necessary cheap credit to agriculture. Clearly, no commercial bank would consider giving credit to a farmer cultivating maize, tomatoes, onions or citrus fruit on a 20-acre farm, let alone the majority who hardly own more than 3-4 acres. It is simply not viable. And this has nothing to do with the peasants in Tanzania not having land titles to use it as collateral. This business of collateral, which is the backbone of the multimillion programme on formalizing property and business, is a red herring. Which commercial Bank would give a loan to a farmer simply because he holds a land title on a 2 or 20-acre farm? Everywhere in the world, a serious credit system for the smallholder is always organised by the state, not by the private sector.
These are only broad sketches to highlight what an agrarian revolution means and implies, if it is meant to be a serious proposition and not simply a vote-catching gimmick? There are many issues that need to be discussed and debated if one sincerely has a vision of an agrarian revolution. There are such issues as the source of initial capital: Such a transformation would of course require initial capital. Where would it come from? From donors – no way; from the World Bank – hardly! It will have to come from domestic sources. Do we have such sources?
What will be the appropriate institution to provide an enabling environment for such a transformation, the state or the market? Thirdly, what will be the social agency to effect such a revolution? Foreign capital, settler farmers, ex-Zimbabwe, ex-South Africa, or our own peasants? Thirdly, what kind of political force and configuration will have the will and capacity to oversee such a revolution?
© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
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