Göran Djurfeldt

The African Food Crisis: Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution.

Why can Asia now feed its rapidly growing population, but Africa continues to experience famine? This book is the outcome of a three-year project coordinated by a group of Swedish researchers with ...

African Smallholders: Food Crops, Markets and Policy

1. Introduction Part I: Comparative Analysis 2. From Maputo Declaration to Global Financial Crisis 3. Macro trends Among the Afrint Countries 4. Production and Productivity of Food Crops, 2002 to 2008 5. Drivers of Staple Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa - Evidence for Maize from Eight Countries 2002 to 2008 6. Maize Remittances, Markets and Smallholder Livelihoods in Africa Part II: Country case studies 7. Ethiopia 8. Ghana 9. Kenya 10. Malawi 11. Nigeria 12. Tanzania 13. Uganda 14. Zambia 15. Mozambique 16. Conclusion.

What Happened to the Agrarian Bourgeoisie and Rural Proletariat under Monopoly Capitalism? Some Hypotheses Derived from the Classics of Marxism on the Agrarian Question

The classical conception of the development of capitalism in agriculture maintains that, as in industry, the agrarian class-structure will tend to polarize, the petty commodity producer will tend to disappear, and a capitalist relation of production will develop between an agrarian bourgeoisie and a rural proletanat. Farms will be big estates, managed by capitahst farmers, run with machinery and landless labourers. This con ception has proved to be unjustified. The classics of Marxism are discus sed in order to find out the assumptions underlying this conception of agricultural development. The findings are used in a discussion of the prospects of a development in accordance with the classical conception in contemporary peripheral agriculture.

Mobility Patterns of Swedish Farming Households

Abstract This paper deals with the mobility patterns of Swedish farming households sampled in the course of a survey of three areas in Southern Sweden, Mid- and North Sweden. Built around the concept of the notional family farm, the paper investigates three pairs of mobility strategies: (i) professionalisation–pluriactivity, (ii) specialisation–diversification, and (iii) intensification–extensification. The data stress the multi-directionality of movements over the life course of farming households. Although care should be taken in inferring macro-processes from micro-level data, there are grounds to conclude, among other things that pluriactivity is a stable reproduction strategy for a substantial part of the farming population. However, it has also been a generational phenomenon, with older farmers sometimes preferring pluriactivity to continued intensification. Although partly a means of tax-planning, diversification is to a large extent an alternative to intensification as a means of farm reproduction. It is further concluded that intensification is a structural process involving the vast majority of the farming population. Both young and old farmers tend to have intensified almost at the same rates, but tend to differ in their rates of extensification and stability, respectively. Overall, the conclusion is that this dynamic, far from being an endogenous development, is spurred by and implies an increased dependence on exogenous factors, especially on political regulation of reproduction conditions in agriculture.

Identification of agrarian classes: A methodological essay with empirical material from South India

This article is primarily methodological. It contains a discussion of the concept of agrarian class, and an attempt to develop a method for class analysis, that is, for identifying the class status of individual households, and thereby to develop a tool for assessing the numerical strength of various classes. The article is part of a wider study of production relations in parts of Tiruchy District in Tamil Nadu, and the impact of these relations on agrarian change. After the introductory sections on the concept of class, on the study area, and the relations of production prevailing there, two methods of classification are discussed and evaluated, Patnaiks exploitation index and our own surplus criterion.

The state and agricultural intensification in sub-Saharan Africa.

Why can Asia now feed its rapidly growing population, but Africa continues to experience famine? This book is the outcome of a three-year project coordinated by a group of Swedish researchers with collaborating scholars from Africa and Asia. It provides a comparative study between Asian agricultural development during the Green Revolution in food production and the current problematic agricultural situation in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on case studies of eight African and eight Asian countries (focusing on the early part of the Green Revolution), this book presents a causal and explanatory model of Asian green revolutions. It discusses why such progress has been made in Asia, but has not yet occurred in Africa. It also examines the implications of the case studies for future development in Africa.

Structural Transformation and African Smallholders: Drivers of Mobility within and between the Farm and Non-farm Sectors for Eight Countries

Using longitudinal data from 2354 smallholder households in 103 villages in eight African countries, three processes of agrarian transformation are analysed for the period 2002 to 2008: intensification of grain production, commercial diversification from staple crops and income diversification out of agriculture. Methodologically, three multi-level, binary logistic models are used. The trends observed provide grounds for some optimism: despite an overall picture of stagnation, intensification in grains (yield per hectare) seems to be increasing. Farmers have, however, raised productivity through the more intense use of labour resources rather than through technological change, while political commitments to agriculture have not improved the production environment. Rather, economic growth and commercialization emerge as strong drivers of intensification, both at country and household levels. Tendencies towards distress-driven income diversification out of agriculture appear to have abated somewhat in the face of more dynamism in the grain sector, with households moving between the farm and non-farm sectors in response to shifts in producer incentives and non-farm opportunities. Diversification processes within agriculture, meanwhile, point to both push- and pull-driven diversification occurring simultaneously. Grain markets, crop diversification and non-farm opportunities complement one another over time. There is little evidence of even incipient processes of structural transformation among the smallholders surveyed.

Towards a Theoretically Grounded Typology of Farms: a Swedish Case

A survey of farms and farm households in three different areas of Sweden makes it possible to study the position of family farms, as compared to other farm types. Based on patterns of labour use and sources of income, a theoretically grounded farm typology is suggested. Such a typology is offered as an alternative to arbitrary criteria in terms of acreage, turnover or total labour, which can never be generalized, nor used in longitudinal or comparative studies. The sample illustrates the striking similarities in social set-up between the intensive agriculture in the plains of southern Sweden and that in the northern parts of the country. The role of family and non-family labour, as well as the role of non-farm work and sources of income in the three study areas are analysed.

African Food Crisis - The Relevance of Asean Experiences.

Why can Asia now feed its rapidly growing population, but Africa continues to experience famine? This book is the outcome of a three-year project coordinated by a group of Swedish researchers with collaborating scholars from Africa and Asia. It provides a comparative study between Asian agricultural development during the Green Revolution in food production and the current problematic agricultural situation in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on case studies of eight African and eight Asian countries (focusing on the early part of the Green Revolution), this book presents a causal and explanatory model of Asian green revolutions. It discusses why such progress has been made in Asia, but has not yet occurred in Africa. It also examines the implications of the case studies for future development in Africa.

Farm crisis, mobility and structural change in Swedish agriculture, 1992-2000

This is a longitudinal study of structural change in Swedish agriculture during 1992 to 1999/ 2000, in which period the country entered the European Union and its agriculture went through a major economic crisis. The study is unique in drawing on a theoretically grounded typology to describe the agrarian structure and its dynamism. The results show that there has been a great deal of mobility of farming households in the agrarian structure during the period. As expected, the rate of closure has been high. It is remarkable, though, that despite the fluidity, the farm structure remains remarkably stable, but increasingly bimodal: it continues to be dominated economically by a relatively small stratum of family farms, while being numerically dominated by part-time farms and by pluriactive farmers.