Global Capitalism, Deflation and Agrarian Crisis in Developing Countries

Periods of economic crisis for agriculture in developing countries have been marked in history by declining incomes and worsening employment possibilities, resulting in adverse outcomes of loss of land rights against debt and declining nutrition levels for the poorer majority of populations. This paper argues that a similar conjuncture of agrarian crisis has become visible in recent years, as had been seen in the prelude to the inter–War Depression, owing to the income–deflation inherent in current macroeconomic policies driven by the dominant global neo–liberal agenda. The argument is illustrated primarily with reference to the experience of India under economic reforms. The question of land rights and gender equity are strongly affected by the dominant policy regime; hence the paper, while not addressing these questions directly, seeks to contextualize them through its critique of the dominant neo–liberal policy regime.     

乡村振兴战略下生态农业产业化：理论阐释与实践探索

目的 通过系统论、分工深化等理论引导生态农业产业化,探索生产性服务在生态农业产业化过程中的作用机制,形成生态经济良性循环,实现农业生态效益最大化。方法 文章在梳理生态农业发展脉络的基础上,基于交叉学科视角理清生态农业与乡村振兴、生产性服务等概念内涵及相互关系,并以江西林下生态循环经济产业发展为例,探索生态农业产业化的生产模式、利益联结机制及三产融合实现方式。结果 （1）生态农业产业化需将传统农业和现代农业相结合,发挥农业多功能性,拓展林下经济、复合经营等多种生态模式;（2）加强农业生产性服务的提供,注重生产性组织培育和支持;（3）建立生态效益补偿机制,践行生态农业认证机制和生态农业绿色清单制度,为实现乡村振兴提供理论探索和江西现实依据。结论 生态农业产业化是乡村生态振兴的必然选择,而生产性服务则是实现生态农业产业化的重要路径之一。     

日本农业支持政策的最新趋势及启示

二战以来,日本农业分别经历了农业社会、工业化时代和全球化时代3个阶段的发展和变迁,其经验和教训对于中国农业发展具有一定的启示。研究对日本农业支持政策的演变及动向、特征与发展趋势以及目标机制和运作方式等方面进行了分析和探讨,结果显示:日本农业的变革涉及法律约束力、经营规模、农业贸易政策和国内支持等各个方面;日本农业的发展依赖于财政补贴,虽然其补贴强度呈下降趋势,但日本农业国内支持政策对保障农民收入、提高农产品竞争力仍具有重要作用。依据日本经验和教训提炼出的启示主要有:农户组织化经营要有计划地组织引导;农业经营规模的扩大要有序推动;农业剩余劳动力的就地消化要下大力气推动;国内支持政策应尽可能由纳税人负担。最后需要说明的是,降低农业支持水平与规模扩大的关系要根据实际情况合理辩证地处理。     

Neo‐Liberal Transformation of Turkish Agriculture

This paper analyses the relationship between the internationalization of agriculture under the hegemony of transnational corporations and the transformation of Turkish agriculture by specifically looking at the implementation of neo‐liberal policies in rural areas. It contends that neo‐liberalism in Turkish agriculture since the 1980s represents the abandonment of the nationalist project that underlined state policies in industry and agriculture between 1930 and the late 1970s. Neo‐liberal policies implemented since 1980 have consolidated the stronghold of transnational agribusiness companies in Turkish agriculture. In cooperation with the World Bank, the EU and the WTO, the Turkish state has been preparing the necessary conditions for transnational agribusiness firms to control Turkish agriculture. Since 1999, the Turkish state has introduced fundamental institutional changes to ensure the smooth internationalization of Turkish agriculture, which has inevitably led to the impoverishment of the rural masses and to the abandonment of agriculture by small‐ and medium‐sized households.     

AGRICULTURAL TRADE LIBERALISATION AND THE URUGUAY ROUND*

With the Punta del Este Declaration, agriculture was accorded prominence in the GATT negotiations and, for the first time, national support policies were on the agenda. In this paper, the progress of the negotiations on agriculture is reviewed in an attempt to understand the factors which shaped the final outcome and to assess the likely impact of the round on liberalising agricultural trade. Although the immediate impact is likely to be modest, the round will provide longer term benefits to agricultural trade through the extension of the GATT rules-based system to agriculture. The framework which has been laid should provide a sound basis for future negotiations. Within the multilateral framework, the pace of change is a function of the willingness of all parties to compromise and this is evident in the Uruguay Round's outcome which reflects the European Union's agricultural reform agenda.     

Agricultural policies and food systems: Priorities for indicator development

Existing indicators of agricultural protection and support were developed primarily to gauge the market and welfare effects of government policies. They have shed light on a wider range of impacts through their use in economic models and empirical analysis. The rising scale of support to agriculture globally, and continued reliance on market distorting policy instruments, make this work as important as ever. Deeper investments are nonetheless needed to address heightened concerns about the spill-over impacts of agricultural policies on the performance of food systems, in particular with respect to food security and nutrition, rural livelihoods, resource use and the environment, and global emissions. A first area for development is improved measures of policies to correct agriculture's externalities. A priority here is to develop a carbon tax equivalent of sectoral mitigation efforts. A second area is to provide a clearer delineation of government spending on private versus public goods. This would make a valuable contribution to a ‘repurposing’ agenda that seeks to identify how agricultural budgets can be spent more effectively, as well as the scope for transferring resources to wider social priorities, such as public health and climate action.     

农地流转的政策议程与媒体议程研究*——基于1978—2018年报道的实证分析

[目的]改革开放以来,农地流转作为中央农业农村改革的重要问题,受到政府当局和媒体的广泛关注,关于农地流转的政策议程和媒体议程是如何演进的?他们两者的关系又怎样?弄清这些问题有利于正确定位媒体作用,促进农地流转政策设置、实施的科学合理性。[方法]文章基于1978—2018年全国农地流转政策数量和《人民日报》报道数量,首先梳理了农地流转政策议程、媒体议程的演变,进一步通过格兰杰因果方法对两个议程间的互动关系做出实证检验。[结果]农地流转的政策议程和媒体议程互为影响,其中媒体议程无论是长期还是短期都能够对政策议程产生显著性影响,而政策议程仅在中长期显著影响媒体议程。[结论]政府应与媒体的合作积极引导媒体规范化以发挥宣传、监督作用,加强媒体对特定农地流转政策的跟进,并通过媒体的“中介”作用促进农地流转政策设置及实施的科学合理性。     

Options for African agriculture in an era of high food and energy prices

In a world of high food and energy prices, Africa has an imperative to do a better job feeding itself and ensuring that its people are food secure. At the same time, there is a new business opportunity to work with the private sector in developing the continent's potential to produce significantly more food, raw materials, and biofuels for regional and world markets. A challenge for African policy makers is to find the right balance between a food security and a business agenda, and to ensure that the business agenda engages with large numbers of small farms. Agricultural development requires many things, but the fundamentals for Africa are developing markets, increasing agricultural productivity, and managing volatility. This cannot happen at sufficient scale and speed without strong public sector leadership, enabling policies and investments, and well‐focused implementation strategies.     

The agricultural,environmental and socio-political repercussions of Brazil's land governance system

Although many contemporary studies of agriculture associate larger properties with higher relative productivity, this assumption has limited relevancy for the analysis of situations in which property owners profit more from large-scale property accumulation itself rather than any superiority in exploitation opportunities offered by increased size. In Brazil, the efficiency-of-scale paradigm has been used to criticize peasant agriculture as unproductive and hide contradictions deriving from land concentration. As this paper argues, however, small-scale agriculture is actually responsible for most of Brazil's food production, rural employment and agricultural income. The paper utilizes a land governance perspective to analyze the implementation of structural reforms aimed at turning back the land monopolization tide as well as efforts to weaken long-standing legal principles that socially condition individual property “rights” in Brazil.     

新疆特色农业产业化可持续发展的途径与机制

近几年,新疆特色农业产业化得到一定发展,但发展的规模、速度欠佳。如何借助有利的区域资源、社会经济发展优势,促进新疆特色农业产业化的发展,是一个十分紧迫的问题。该文在分析了新疆特色农业产业化发展中存在的主要问题的基础上,探讨了新疆特色农业产业化可持续发展的路径与计划、宏观调控、利益分配、约束、资金投入整合机制等。     

The Food Crisis,Industrialized Farming and the Imperial Regime

This paper argues that the food crisis cannot solely be equated with abrupt food price increases or seen as merely market induced. The unprecedented price increases of the first half of 2008, and the extremely low prices that followed, are expressions of a far wider and far more persistent underlying crisis, which has been germinating for more than a decade. It is the complex outcome of several combined processes, including the industrialization of agriculture, the liberalization of food and agricultural markets and the rise of food empires. The interaction of these processes has created a global agrarian crisis that has provoked the multifaceted food crisis. Both these crises are being accelerated through their interactions with the wider economic and financial crisis.     

Need for a cross-sector approach in protected area management

The need for various stakeholders to harmonize their policies and practices has emerged as a dominant paradigm for 21st century natural resource management. Cross-sector coordination is promising because it can enhance policy consistency, enable the realization of synergies and resolve conflicts among sectors regarding resource management. The extent to which ministries and their main stakeholders make efforts to achieve integrated policies for nature conservation requires further research. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the consultation reports of ministries from relevant fields (i.e., environmental protection, agriculture, spatial planning, and security) regarding the management plans for Romania’s protected areas. We analysed and visualized 152 consultation reports (2013–2016) covering 15% of Romania's protected areas using self-organizing maps (SOMs), an unsupervised machine-learning method. Our results showed that considerable attention was paid to formal issues in these reports. The cross-sector issues that emerged as the most important were those related to forest landowner consultation, and the harmonization of agricultural and forestry practices, as well as spatial plans for conservation. The resulting SOMs could be used as a tool to strengthen protected area management in the future because they can (i) guide managers of protected areas to develop plans that ensure that resources will be used in the best way according to the visions of multiple sectors and (ii) help the relevant ministries to improve future consultation reports.     

Urban crops and livestock: The experiences,challenges, and opportunities of planning for urban agriculture in two Canadian provinces

While many municipalities globally are currently undertaking initiatives to support urban agriculture, policies and zoning regulations can act as barriers, with the former usually not integrated with planning. Extensive research has been conducted on urban agriculture policies in the global South, but much less is known about associated practices and policies in the global North. This is especially true for the Canadian context and therefore the present study aims at improving our overall understanding of the urban agriculture situation in two Canadian provinces. Relevant policies, such as official plans or official community plans, alternate policy documents and guidelines, zoning by-laws, and animal-related by-laws were reviewed for 10 municipalities in Ontario and in British Columbia, all varying in socio-economic and climatological characteristics. Additional key informant interviews were conducted with municipal planners, community garden coordinators, and other municipal staff familiar with urban agriculture policies from six of the selected municipalities.In line with global trends, our results suggest that urban agriculture is becoming more widespread in the two provinces. However, even though all studied municipalities consistently support urban agriculture, they vary significantly in their approach, with some municipalities focusing much more narrowly on certain types of activities than others. Overall, community advocacy and municipal council support are the most important drivers in the policy process. Key informants expressed a need to bridge existing gaps between policy adoption and implementation of tools, emphasize public education and public awareness, create inventories of land available for urban agriculture, incorporate urban agriculture in the development review process, and focus on the commercial potential of the practice. Encouragingly, despite the many challenges that need to be addressed, we found that many opportunities exist that municipalities could consider when creating improved local urban agriculture policies and tools to enhance the urban food system.     

鲁南经济带现代农业可持续发展研究

鲁南经济带在区位、资源、交通、产业发展等方面具有发展现代农业的优势,面临着东亚经济一体化趋势加快、国家惠农政策的实施、全国主体功能区规划和区域发展战略的实施等发展的良机,也存在着经济发展水平较低、城市化水平不高、县域经济落后、产业结构不合理和现代农业发展落后等问题.因此,应在政府大力支持下,搞好规划,整合资源,增加投入...     

寻求我国农业产业化的新道路

建设社会主义新农村是构建和谐社会最为重要的内容。而解决"三农"问题的核心在于解决农业"怎样生产"的问题,即必须摆脱目前仍以家庭为作业单位、以土地的分散经营和农户自营的市场销售为主的农业生产方式,走农业产业化的道路。该文从国际经验的对比分析出发,论述了我国农业产业化发展的约束条件和积极因素,指出了当前我国农业产业化发展的重点和基本路径。     

The effects of agricultural policy on supply and productivity: Evidence from differential changes in distortions

Incentives in agriculture are highly distorted. It has long been argued that these distortions were a key explanation for differences in supply and productivity across countries, but the empirical evidence is limited. We revisit this issue using data on policy distortions across 63 countries for the period 1961–2011. We estimate the effects of differential changes in agricultural distortions across countries on supply and productivity. We highlight concerns in our analysis and previous work about endogeneity that biases the estimated effect downward—countries that lose comparative advantage are likely to increase support for agriculture. We address these concerns by including country and region-time fixed effects, along with a rich set of controls. Overall, we find evidence that enhanced incentives through policy changes can increase the rate of production growth, with about half of the increase due to productivity increases. This result is strongest in Sub-Saharan Africa where anti-agricultural policies on exports were reduced and in Europe where pro-agricultural policies on imports were reduced, driven largely by external pressure. Endogeneity appears to be strongest in Asia where countries have followed the typical pattern of raising support for agriculture during industrialization due to a rising farm-urban income gap.     

我国农业与农村经济发展的五大增长点

由于国际金融危机影响,国内一些长期积累的矛盾不断显现,我国农业与农村经济发展面临严峻挑战。当前应对挑战的根本措施是要抓住五个增长点:大力发展绿色农业、农业科技入户工程、农民专业合作社、农业产业化经营和农民工返乡创业。     

Land allocation to meet sectoral goals in Indonesia—An analysis of policy coherence

Land is a scarce resource affecting the implementation of many sectoral policies. In Indonesia, the expansion of palm oil plantations has led to non-sustainable land use practices in past years, particularly deforestation. More recently, the government has set ambitious targets for the adoption of biodiesel which will require expansion of oil palm plantations, thus putting further pressure on land. Meanwhile, the need to guarantee food supply, forest conservation and climate change mitigation also imply challenges when it comes to land allocation and use. This paper examines the role that land plays in the implementation of sectoral policies in Indonesia, exploring the availability of land to satisfy the multiple goals defined in national policies. We explore land competition resulting from allocations made in official policy documents starting with biofuel policy. The analysis of policy goals and coherence when it comes to land allocation is made in relation to agriculture, climate and forestry policies. We conclude that adjustments need to be made in the policies to avoid overlappings and misinterpretations when it comes to land allocation. The area made available for meeting each sectoral policy goal when taking into account cross sectoral interactions is: 14.2 Mha for agriculture, 43 Mha for climate mitigation measures, 9.2 Mha for forestry, and 20.9 Mha for biofuels. A more uniform land classification and development of a common reference database will increase transparency on land allocation and use, and help to monitor land use change, ultimately supporting the achievement of multiple national goals.     

Standing at the Crossroads – the Future of a Strong Common Agricultural Policy is at Stake A la croisée des chemins – l’avenir d’une politique agricole commune forte est en jeu Am Scheideweg – die Zukunft einer starken Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik steht auf dem Spiel

Standing at the Crossroads – the Future of a Strong Common Agricultural Policy is at Stake The issues and targets in the European Union’s agenda are largely in line with Hungarian objectives; job creation for example is one of the main targets of the Europe 2020 strategy and also of the Hungarian Government. Hungary’s development and competitiveness are linked to the internal development and global competitiveness of the European Union; and so our primary objective is to strengthen the integration process and to obtain a strong Common Agricultural Policy. The CAP has reached the highest level of integration among EU policies and its original objectives have been reinforced by the Lisbon Treaty. Europe needs a strong and common agricultural policy beyond 2013; the main task of agriculture will be to ensure the security of food supplies. The future success of the CAP requires appropriate financial support to secure future targets. Rural development has already become an integral part of the CAP structure; but rural areas will not be viable without an evolving agriculture. Without the provision of a proper level of income subsidies many farms would be forced to stop production. CAP adjustments should promote the catching up of new Member States and eliminate the current system of direct subsidies that disadvantage the new members.     

Rethinking Organic Farming in the Post‐Socialist Context: Lessons from Bulgaria

On the basis of an in‐depth qualitative study, this article discusses the case of Bulgaria as an example of a new EU Member State that implemented EU organic farming policies in a top‐down process during EU accession. We explore the difficulties in transposing a concept originating in Western Europe to post‐Socialist countries, and particularly ask what this transposing of an alien concept means for long‐term development of the organic sector. We found that the top‐down agenda‐setting for organic farming in Bulgaria resulted in inefficient policies that inhibited an orientation of producers towards the market's needs. Tacit assumptions underlying the concept of organic farming in Western Europe, such as the relevance of social capital could not be sustained in Bulgaria, which added to the challenges of policy implementation. To increase policy efficiency, we recommend a policy process that involves the expertise of all organic sector actors, including organic operators, but also policymakers, organic organisations, consumers and academic experts. Expertise and knowledge requirements are diverse, touching policy, market, collective action and practice‐oriented skills. Integrating these skills could maximise success in finding the best solution for implementing – and adjusting – a foreign concept meaningfully in a particular local context.