XAVIER FLORES AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATIONS AND ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN RURAL AREAS INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE GENEVA 1971 Studies and Reports New Series, No. 77 The designations of countries employed, which are in conformity with United Nations practice, and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the International Labour Office concerning the legal status of any country or territory or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. The responsibility for opinions expressed in signed studies rests solely with their authors, and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the International Labour Office of the opinions expressed therein. ILO publications can be obtained through major booksellers or ILO local offices in many countries, or direct from the International Labour Office (Sales Section), 1211 Geneva 22, Switzerland. The catalogue and list of booksellers and local offices will be sent free of charge from the above address. Printed by Presses Centrales Lausanne S.A. FOREWORD The fact that the ILO is tripartite in structure has meant that from its earliest days the Organisation has taken an interest in employers' and workers' associations and similar bodies. Over the last few years it has been devoting particular attention to them, since they constitute a means of enlisting broader popular support for the process of development. These organisations have, it is true, been the subject of an abundant literature, but there have been few serious studies of the part they play in agriculture. Hence the ILO Permanent Agricultural Committee urged in 1965 that a general study of this subject should be undertaken. This proposal was approved by the Governing Body of the International Labour Office in 1966. The object of the present survey is to present a general picture of the experience acquired (especially in the more developed countries) as to the part which agricultural organisations of various kinds can take. We shall endeavour to ascertain the extent to which an organisation of this sort can play (or plays) an effective part in the developing countries, where the rural sector is traditionally characterised by the weakness of organisations representing the working population (where such organisations exist at all). Our aim, accordingly, will be to make a contribution to the existing literature, as regards both popular participation and rural development in the strict sense of the term. Our inquiry was launched in 1966, aseries of questionnaires (see appendix) being sent off to all the organisations known to the ILO. Generally speaking (although some countries or organisations failed to reply), the response was exceedingly satisfactory. The information thus elicited was supplemented from the literature assembled over the years. Most unhappily, a fair proportion of this literature, together with some of the answers received from organisations, were destroyed by fire which broke out in an ILO annex. Hence the literature in question had to be patiently re-assembled, with the result that the completion of this study was delayed. in Agricultural organisations and development We shall consider the development of agricultural organisations in the historical context of rural development. Thus, the first part starts off by an introductory section explaining the reasons for rural development in the developing countries, and expatiating on the part agricultural and other organisations might play in this connexion. There follow five sections, dealing with Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and North America and Australia. Because the European countries are so rich in experience, two chapters are devoted to them; the first briefly describes developments from the time of the Industrial Revolution up to 1945, while the second deals with the position as it is today. Each of these regional sections embodies its own conclusions. At the end of the book, there appear the author's general conclusions. A fairly extensive bibliography is attached. This volume has been written by Mr. Xavier-André Flores, consultant attached to the Co-operative, Rural and Related Institutions Branch of the Social Institutions Development Department. The International Labour Office is profoundly grateful to all the organisations which provided the basic data for this international survey. IV CONTENTS Foreword Ill Part I : The awakening of the under-developed world An ancient problem still unsolved Growth of population and the production of food A false dilemma: industry or agriculture? The urgent need for reorganisation of agriculture in the developing countries 1 3 10 21 30 Part n : The evolution of agricultural organisations in Europe A. Historical background The situation of agriculture and the peasantry between 1750 and 1848 Evolution between 1848 and the end of serfdom in Russia in 1861 . . . The awakening and organisation of the peasantry in the nineteenth century The situation between 1900 and 1945 B. Contemporary Europe Western Europe Austria Employers' organisations Agricultural workers' unions Chambers of agriculture Agricultural workers' chambers Belgium General and employers'organisations Workers' unions Denmark General organisations Employers' and workers' organisations France General organisations Employers' organisations Agricultural workers' unions Chambers of agriculture 35 37 37 55 62 74 87 100 100 100 102 105 108 Ill Ill 120 123 127 129 131 131 136 138 146 v Agricultural organisations and development Federal Republic of Germany General organisations Employers' organisations Agricultural workers' unions Chambers of agriculture Italy General organisations Employers' organisations Agricultural workers' unions Chambers of agriculture Netherlands Employers' organisations Workers' unions Sweden General organisations Employers' organisations Workers' unions Chambers of agriculture Switzerland United Kingdom General organisations Employers' organisations Agricultural workers' unions Eastern Europe Bulgaria German Democratic Republic General organisations Hungary General organisations Agricultural workers' unions Poland USSR Conclusions Part EQ : Latin America Introduction Obstacles to development Structural obstacles and their repercussions The technological time lag Legislative obstacles The progress and limits of land reform Agricultural organisations: the present situation Agricultural and rural associations Chambers of agriculture Workers' unions and peasant leagues VI 149 149 152 153 156 161 161 165 168 181 181 182 183 185 186 190 192 195 195 201 201 202 206 210 210 217 218 220 220 225 229 244 255 267 269 271 271 278 284 295 299 300 304 306 Contents The background Chile Uruguay Bolivia Brazil Venezuela Colombia Nicaragua Honduras Guatemala Conclusions Part IV : Africa Introduction Customary law and the development of farming systems Subsistence agriculture and its effects on food supplies The modernisation of traditional agriculture Agricultural organisations: the present situation General and employers' organisations North Africa Tunisia Libya United Arab Republic Sudan Somalia South of the Sahara Cameroon Central African Republic Nigeria Malawi Mauritius Zambia Kenya, Liberia, Tanganyika Senegal Malagasy Republic Workers' unions Tunisia United Arab Republic Sudan Malawi Mauritius Cameroon, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, Zambia Malagasy Republic Chambers of agriculture Central African Republic 306 311 316 318 319 322 327 328 328 329 331 337 339 343 354 361 374 375 375 375 379 380 382 387 388 388 389 389 390 391 392 392 393 395 400 400 402 403 404 405 407 408 411 412 VII Agricultural organisations and development Mauritius Malagasy Republic Conclusions Part V : Asia and the Middle East Introduction The modernisation of the rural sector Agricultural organisations: the present situation General organisations Near and Middle East Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia Iran Lebanon Syria Turkey Cyprus Israel South Asia and the Far East India Ceylon Thailand China (Taiwan) Japan Philippines Malaysia Employers' and workers' organisations Near and Middle East Turkey Israel Cyprus South Asia and the Far East India Ceylon Malaysia Japan Viet-Nam Chambers of agriculture Near and Middle East Lebanon Syria Turkey South Asia and the Far East Philippines Japan Conclusions VIII 412 413 415 421 423 428 455 455 455 455 456 457 458 460 461 462 462 462 463 463 464 468 471 474 475 476 476 476 478 479 479 481 482 484 484 487 487 487 487 488 489 489 490 492 Contents Part VI : North America and Australia Introduction United States Canada Australia Conclusions 501 503 503 525 531 541 Part VII : General conclusions Agricultural organisations in the developed countries Agricultural organisations in the developing countries 543 545 553 Part VU! : Appendices 1. Text of the questionnaires 2. Bibliographical references Publications of the ILO Publications of the United Nations Publications of FAO Publications of UNESCO Publications of WHO Other publications 563 565 568 568 570 572 574 574 574 LIST OF TABLES 1. Latin America (Cuba excepted): Probable increases in rural and urban population and of actively employed population, 1960-75 2. Active agricultural population: time required, from the beginning of industrialisation, for the percentage of the active agricultural population in the total active population to fall by about half 3. Europe: Principal agricultural workers' trade union organisations between 1925 and 1928 4. Europe: Agricultural co-operatives (including rural credit unions and agricultural and rural mutual insurance co-operatives), 1937 5. Europe: Changes in the active agricultural population and the size of holdings 6. Europe: The development of agricultural mechanisation 7. Europe: Increase in fertiliser consumption 8. Socio-economic data for European countries (with special reference to their agrarian situation) 9. Europe: Reduction of the working day and increase in paid holidays 10. Socio-economic data for Latin American countries (with special reference to their agrarian situation) 11. Latin America: Distribution of agronomists, 1957-61 12. Latin America: Evolution of agricultural co-operatives, 1948-60/61-63 17 29 82 85 93 95 96 98 261 276 282 283 IX Agricultural organisations and development 13. Ratification by Latin American countries of Conventions on freedom of association and collective bargaining (year of registration) 14. Socio-economic data for African countries 15. Africa south of the Sahara: Active population and agricultural wage earners, 1955 16. Africa: Estimated percentage of subsistence production in the total value of agricultural output 17. West Africa: Head of cattle, 1961 estimates 18. Socio-economic data for countries in Asia and the Middle East (with special reference to their agrarian situation) 19. Socio-economic data for Australia, Canada and the United States (with special reference to their agrarian situation) x 285 342 345 356 359 424 506 PARTI THE AWAKENING OF THE UNDER-DEVELOPED WORLD THE AWAKENING OF THE UNDER-DEVELOPED WORLD D AN ANCIENT [PROBLEM STILL UNSOLVED The major event since the end of the Second World War, and the one that in time will change traditional values the most, has undoubtedly been the accession to independence of the majority of the developing countries and their emergence on the international scene. Before the 1950s, political and economic decisions of moment were taken by the colonial Powers alone. Today, a wide variety of problems, formerly regarded with fatalism or depending for their solution on decisions taken by the colonial Powers, are the subject of international attention. We are witnessing, in fact, an irreversible transition from a state of affairs in which countries were guided by the maxim "every man for himself" to one in which a nation should, ideally, act according to the maxim "each for all". This second, highly desirable state of affairs is, needless to say, still very far from being achieved. The way has already been marked by a number of milestones and by significant changes in attitude. Direct government has yielded to technical assistance; the quantitative and qualitative assessment of economic and social factors, considered too frequently in former times as the prerogative of the colonial Powers, is now undertaken with an eye to the needs and possibilities of the peoples concerned; the concepts of "progress" and "backwardness" have been replaced by the more dynamic terms "development" and "underdevelopment". And although, all too often, the action taken to solve these problems is taken with an eye to the traditional interests of the richer countries, the latters' assistance and collaboration, whether technical or financial, in bilateral and multi-lateral schemes represents a first step towards a world-wide economic system. Finally, a new international consciousness has emerged, albeit slowly and painfully, with the result that attitudes and ways of thought 3 Agricultural organisations and development which had endured for centuries in people's minds are undergoing a thorough overhaul.1 The nations of the developing world, which were until recently the colonies of European Powers or, like the countries of Latin America, became independent early in the nineteenth century, today have to cope with problems of quite extraordinary seriousness, the more serious in that they have been in existence a long time. Invasion by the Western way of life had its good and bad effects; but what it did above all was to upset the balance precariously maintained by many economically primitive societies, which henceforth were obliged to play second fiddle to the economic interests of the colonial Powers. The effect was twofold: in the first place, these under-developed countries were obliged to concentrate on a few crops for export, and a deep split opened up between traditional and modern agriculture, with all the advantages going to the latter. Secondly, embryonic industries and traditional handicrafts were paralysed by reason of the fact that colonies had to absorb the mother country's manufactured goods. The economies of the colonial territories were in no position to match up to the modern industrial giants, and in the long run became excessively dependent on all the vagaries of international trade. Thus it is that India, "an empire which in the eighteenth century was politically weak but economically prosperous",2 saw its industry and handicrafts gradually dwindle and decline, following the British occupation. Some writers have gone so far as to coin a word in this connexion: "de-industrialisation". Colin Clark has estimated that between 1881 and 1911, the working population employed in manufacturing, mining and transport fell from 35 to 17 per cent of the total labour force, while agricultural manpower increased from 50.7 to 68.2 per cent.8 The introduction of one-way preferential tariffs 1 To measure how much ground has been covered, one need only compare current ways of thinking, such as those put forward by Raúl Prebisch in the report he submitted in 1964 to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development {Towards a New Trade Policy for Development; Sales No.: 64. II. B.4), with those obtaining in the 1950s. It will be remembered, for example, that K. Mandelbaum was apprehensive of the industrialisation of the underdeveloped countries and wanted to see the developed countries accelerate the pace of technical progress, so as to keep a good distance between themselves and the developing world. The same holds good of F. Notestein, who felt that by championing modernisation the present Powers might well be helping to bring about a world in which their peoples might constitute a dwindling minority, with an ever smaller share in world wealth and power. In this connexion, see Georges Balandier: "La mise en rapport des sociétés 'différentes' et le problème du sousdéveloppement", in Institut national d'études démographiques: Le «tiers monde», sousdéveloppement et développement, Travaux et documents, No. 39 (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1961), p. 123. a Jacques Pirenne: Les grands courants de l'histoire universelle (Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 1953), Vol. V, p. 36. 8 Colin Clark: The Conditions of Economie Progress (London, Macmillan; New York, St. Martin's Press, 1957), pp. 499 and 515. This figure is discussed by Daniel Thorner: 4 The awakening of the under-developed world for Manchester-made goods, at a time when high import duties were imposed on silk and cotton goods made in India, explains why this industry, which gave work to a high proportion of the Indian labour force, went into a decline. India, which had traditionally exported such goods, began to import them during the nineteenth century. A vast host of craftsmen were thus forced to go back to the land, helping to aggravate a problem of over-population already made more serious by the encouragement given to the growing of flax and jute (required by industry in England), to the disadvantage of traditional crops. Besides which, the growth of the railway network from 1880 onwards, facilitating as it did the dumping of cheap foreign manufactured goods in Indian villages, gradually ruined the local craftsmen, who were unable to dispose of their wares locally, and even less able to sell them in the towns, which were flooded with European goods (entry of which was rendered easier by abolition of the 10 per cent import duty in 1882 x). Economic ruin in the countryside, accompanied by rural over-population and a relative reduction in the growing of food crops, definitely has something to do with the increasing frequency of famine, that traditional spectre in the Indian countryside. Between 1800 and 1950, 38.7 million people died of hunger; of these, 26 million perished in the course of eighteen famines between 1875 and 1900.2 There are other examples, less complex and controversial than that of India, which illustrate even more clearly how the colonies languished so that the mother country might grow fat. Possibly the most striking example of technical regression (not merely of stagnation) is afforded by Ceylon, where the introduction of vast coffee plantations from 1825 onwards, followed by plantations of tea and rubber, led to a rapid dwindling in the land available for food crops. Under the traditional system, the Ceylonese peasant grew rice in the valleys himself; a communal system applied in the highlands. However, vast areas were expropriated for the benefit of European planters, thanks to the introduction of English legislation by virtue of which all land and forests abandoned, unoccupied or uncultivated were assumed to be Crown property unless proof to the contrary could be adduced (this in a country where the De-Industrialisation in India, 1881-1931 (First Economic History Congress, Stockholm, 1960) Paris, 1960), pp. 217-226. See also Manilal B. Nanavati and J. J. Anjaria: The Indian Rural Problem (Bombay, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, 1965), Ch. VII. 1 True, in 1894 a 5 per cent duty was re-imposed, but "the pressure of English commercial interests (especially those of Lancashire) prevailed on the Cabinet, which decreed that English cotton goods should pay no more than 3.5 per cent. At the same time, it decided that a compensating export charge of 3.5 per cent should be levied on cloth which, produced by Indian mills, might compete with Lancashire." See François Léger: Les influences occidentales dans la révolution de l'Orient, 1850-1950 0?aris, Pion, 1955), p. 31. * Nanavati and Anjaria, op. cit., p. 31. 5 Agricultural organisations and development peasant was unable to produce proper legal evidence of ownership). Hence the local peasantry were obliged to abandon the traditional system of crop rotation in favour of another, so that everybody might receive a plot. But, as George Thambyahpillai remarks: As the plots became smaller, the plough (primitive as it was) had to be replaced by a still more primitive implement—the hoe. Production became less efficient. No aid was provided to the peasant in the form of credit facilities and the like. The peasant sector was condemned to complete neglect for over 125 years! Food came to be imported, especially from Burma. The peasant at best managed to produce for his own subsistence, with no surplus for sale.1 The dispossessed peasant could not even find employment in the plantations, in view of his "irregularity of attendance", such absenteeism being unavoidable in the context of his social obligations. The peasant, as an integral unit of the socio-economic set-up, had to help out his fellow-villagers during times of communal activity such as sowing, harvesting, threshing and the like. The plantations solved this problem by the importation of cheap labour from India. The plantations thus, in effect, absorbed the land but not the labour.2 No continent penetrated by Western man escaped the process whereby land was occupied and the traditional economy transformed (where not deliberately held back), the native peoples frequently being simply driven off or dispossessed. In East Africa, Albert Meister, in his study of Kenya in colonial times, reached conclusions very similar to Thambyahpillai's: The natives came into contact with a conception of work unknown to them and incomprehensible. In their societies, work was a social obligation. Everybody took a hand in the harvest or in the storage of food for ceremonial purposes. Everybody, young and old, had a part to play. Work was not something which bestowed individual economic advantages, but helped in strengthening the bonds of society. Quite the contrary on a plantation, where men only, and amongst them only the young and vigorous, were employed In a very short time indeed the tribal societies in contact with the first colonists were suffering from profound imbalances. Recruitment was no easy matter, since when the White man's harvest was ready on the plantation, the harvest on the traditional plot often had to be brought in at the same time. Although in certain cases the colonists recruited whole families, so as to be sure of labour, the traditional organisation of society had been profoundly upset; the old, the infirm, and even the womenfolk, were excluded from this new kind of work. The only winners were the young, and the prestige conferred by money and novelty ruined the standing and authority formerly enjoyed by the aged.8 To this it must be added that, as happened elsewhere in Black Africa, the policy of settling native tribes in reserves in which, because of increasing population pressure and poor farming practices, the land quickly became 1 George Thambyahpillai : "The Right to Private Property and Problems of Land Reform", International Social Science Journal (Paris, UNESCO), Vol. XVIII, No. 1, 1966, p. 76. 2 ibid., p. 75. 8 Albert Meister: L'Afrique peut-elle partir ? (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1966), pp. 47-48. 6 The awakening of the under-developed world exhausted, radically and even dramatically heightened the contrast and widened the gulf between traditional society and the way of life of the White man.1 If, now, we go from East to North Africa, we shall witness a remarkable continuity in the process whereby native economies were upset (there were differences, of course, from one area to another, and much depended on how heavy was the domination of the colonial Power). Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco afford eloquent examples of our thesis. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Mehmet Ali's efforts to encourage the growing of a greater variety of crops in Egypt and to introduce permanent irrigation came to nothing when cotton became the principal export crop. In Algeria, on the occasion of the colonisation of 1830, and especially from 1832 onwards, the most fertile land in the plains along the coast was rapidly overrun by colonists. Most of it was turned over to the vine—an export crop once again. Confiscation of the land belonging to the Beylik, and, in 1843, the declaration that the inalienable habous property belonged to the State—together with large-scale expropriation of private property (melk) or communal lands (arsh), on the pretext of native revolts or because such land had ostensibly been left uncultivated—enabled the occupying Power to take over, almost from the outset, some 500,000 acres, of which roughly 420,000 were around Algiers.2 Besides which, the view was accepted that, as F. Godin stresses, "the State was the only owner of land, and that tenants, be they individuals or tribes, merely enjoyed a right of usufruct".3 This bizarre view facilitated the acquisition of the best land, in exchange for a consolidation of the rights of the natives. Out of 875,500 acres subjected to this system, 165,000—the best—were set aside for European settlement. Later on, after the fall of Napoleon III, the amount of State-owned land increased thanks to the expropriation of a further 1.25 million acres in Kabylia. According to the calculations of Leroy-Beaulieu in 1887, 3.25 million acres were occupied by 180,000 European settlers.4 During the twentieth century, this surface was to grow to 6.8 million acres, i.e. 25,000 farms with an average area per farm of 270 acres (155 of them actually productive), against 532,000 native plots with an average size of 35 acres (12.5 of them productive).5 1 We shall readily understand why one of the first claims made by the Young Kikuyu Association, founded in 1920, was that the lands occupied early in the century should be handed back to the tribes—especially since, in 1953, population density in these reserves had reached the figure of 367 per square mile, as against 23 in the European highlands. Meister, op. cit., pp. 133 and 156. * Charles-André Julien: Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord (Paris, Payot, 1931), p. 658. 0 Quoted by Julien, op. cit., p. 665. * P. Leroy-Beaulieu: L'Algérie et la Tunisie (Paris, Guillaumin & Gle., 1887), p. 110. 6 Francis Jeanson: L'Algérie hors la loi (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1956), p. 141. 7 Agricultural organisations and development Tunisia had a similar fate. Here, however, things were even worse, because that country, which was already short of agricultural land, was invaded by large-scale farming companies. This helped to reduce the natives to the status of a landless proletariat, subject to a tiny handful of European settlers. In 1930, at a time when such companies held one-third of the land colonised, there were in Tunisia no more than 160,000 Europeans (71,000 of them French) for a population of more than 2 million, most of them peasants. On certain estates, such as that of Montarnaud (11,250 acres), belonging to the Omnium company, there were barely fifty European settlers, a state of affairs which would seem to justify Jean Jaurès's celebrated exclamation: "Many, many acres and very few men—that's characteristic of settlement by companies." 1 The same holds good of Morocco, where expropriation and land purchase led to a very similar state of affairs (in 1928, 2,800 settlers owned 1.85 million acres), although it did not last so long. To generalise, it may be said that colonialist domination led to most, if not all, of the following effects : an intense concentration of landed property in the hands of a handful of foreign settlers; traditional agriculture driven back to the less productive land, and a reduction in the growing of food crops relative to total agricultural output; a state of affairs in which agricultural revenue redounded to the benefit of companies based in the mother country, either directly (thanks to exports) or indirectly (import of manufactured goods produced from colonial raw materials); reduction of the local peasantry to the status of seasonal labourers and concentration on the growing of crops for export, with the result that the economy of the territory in question becomes subject to all the whims and vagaries of the international trade cycle. In view of the above, it will be readily understood why the policy adopted by the West with regard to the then under-developed countries has been described as one of "imposed under-development".2 The same thing may be said of policy with regard to Latin America. When the Latin American countries became independent, early in the nineteenth century, the protective legislation previously imposed by the Spanish Crown was abrogated, and concentration of land in the form of huge estates, already begun by the settlers, grew more pronounced. In the twentieth century the policy of protecting the ejidos and communal lands was once more reverted to, and this improved the position in certain respects. But on the whole the continued existence 1 Julien, op. cit., p. 717. Y. Goussault, A. Meister and P. Marthelot: "Recherches sur les associationnismes ruraux et sur la participation des masses aux programmes de développement dans les pays méditerranéens", Bulletin de liaison (Paris, Ecole pratique des hautes études), No. 1, January 1966, p. 11. 2 8 The awakening of the under-developed world of these very large estates, plus increased pressure on the land attributable to growth of population, made the agrarian problem in these countries very acute indeed. Jacques Chonchol, a distinguished expert on Latin American affairs, has this to say about the pernicious results of this trend: There are two distinct sectors of agricultural production in Latin America: production for export and production for the domestic market. The former has always tended to enjoy priority in the eyes of governments and landowners, and to attract the major share of investment funds; its growth has been restricted only by market conditions essentially outside the control of the Latin American countries. Despite the increasing needs of a fast-growing population, production for the domestic market has expanded much more slowly than for export. This is mainly because the uneven distribution of income restricts demand, because the traditional agriculturists do not respond to the existing stimuli of the domestic market, and because there is but little incentive to employ new and more efficient techniques. All these reasons are closely connected with the concentration of land in the hands of a few. The lack of dynamism in agriculture is an obstacle to the general development of the economy through its negative effects on the balance of payments and its inflationary pressures, and because it leads to a reduced state of physical well-being of the labour force.1 Thus, by preventing the production of food crops from keeping pace with the growth of population, plantation agriculture, designed essentially for the export market, dealt a grievous blow to the social and economic balance of native societies. This was almost everywhere the case. By paralysing such developments, export-oriented plantation agriculture delayed the integration of food-growing agriculture into the economies of the countries and territories concerned. It helped to maintain vast hosts of people at subsistence level, while giving a powerful impetus to the drift to the towns (a movement which is today turning into a flood). Into traditional communities, foreign colonisation introduced a monetary economy, for the purposes of which labour became a commodity like any other. Integration into the new society, however, remained something to which the native could not aspire. Thus he all too often became, as it were, a stranger in his own house. Hence, from the outset, and right up to the Second World War, the industrialised countries were above all concerned with what they could get out of their colonies in an economic sense. Their relations with the colonies were not unlike those which prevailed between one class and another in Europe itself. Furthermore, although it is undoubtedly true that in many cases the Jacques Chonchol: "Land Tenure and Development in Latin America", in Claudio Veliz (ed.): Obstacles to Change in Latin America (London, Oxford University Press, 1965). p. 89. 9 Agricultural organisations and development European genuinely believed he had a civilising mission, his ignorance of economics and of sociology (at this time Durkheim was still unknown) was such that he could not grasp the web of subtle ties and bonds which over the centuries had grown up within the peasant societies he had dealings with. Today, it seems to us almost self-evidently true that any society devises a form of organisation which will ensure balance and survival, and rejects a potentially dangerous foreign graft. Butfiftyyears of sociological investigation were needed for people to understand this, and in the meantime, all too often, the graft had proved too vigorous; the tail, in fact, had finished by wagging the dog. Historians, economists and sociologists are familiar with all this, and we would not presume to recall these facts, were they not the source and fount of the problems with which the developing countries are today confronted. However, enough has been said to show that under-development is nothing new. It was a chronic evil in the nineteenth century; since then, it has got worse because of a fearful growth in population, accompanied by a falling-off, in relative terms, of agricultural production. The peoples concerned are by now aware of this. Hence we are witnessing an acceleration of political change. Running counter to this process, there is a tragic slowing-up in the pace of economic development. GROWTH OF POPULATION AND THE PRODUCTION OF FOOD Before the Second World War, governments were more concerned with internal problems than with the fate of their colonies, and were disinclined to worry overmuch about the under-developed countries in general. In extenuation it must, however, be remembered that these governments were much less wealthy than they are today. Instability in the trade cycle, slump following boom in seemingly inexorable sequence, all too often put them in a difficult position. The 1929 depression, for example, which threw millions of people out of work, was to reach such a pitch that the whole social, political and economic edifice of Western society was threatened with destruction. This does not mean, of course, that nothing was done to develop the colonies. But the action taken overseas, as indeed in the mother countries themselves, was all too often sporadic. Over-all plans were conspicuously absent; roads, schools and hospitals were built, but only on the initiative of the ministries responsible. Such a state of affairs is by no means surprising, if it be remembered that the need for over-all planning was recognised only after the Second World War (in the Western countries first of all, and then in the overseas countries when they became independent, or shortly before). 10 The awakening of the under-developed world Moreover, the situation was not then as grave as it has since become. At that time, the growth of population had not yet completely outstripped food production, since the death rate was still very high. This state of affairs remained more or less unchanged during thefirstfew years after the war. Thus, between 1938 and 1950, the annual compound rate of increase for the population of the under-developed countries remained steady at 1.3 per cent, and the population of these countries increased from 1,478 million to 1,733 million. But, in the 1950s, the campaigns launched to combat the traditional endemic illnesses began to make their effects felt. Between 1950 and 1960, there was a startling spurt in the rate of increase of population, which rose to 2.2 per cent, while the population itself increased to 2,161 million. This rate was to increase still further between 1960 and 1963; while the average annual rate of increase in Europe remained at 0.9 per cent, the rate in Africa rose to 2.5 per cent, in tropical South America to 3 per cent, in continental Central America to 3.2 per cent and in southern and south-east Asia to 2.4 and 2.5 per cent respectively.1 The not inapposite remark has been made that according to these figures the developing countries are at present characterised by the kind of death rate to be found in industrialised societies and by a birth rate of the kind found in agricultural communities. Now, apart from Asia, the areas affected were originally somewhat underpopulated, and this upswing would not in itself have justified anxiety. But food production has not kept pace with the rapidly increasing numbers. Preliminary data published by FAO show that in 1965-66 the production of food per head stood at 92 per cent of the pre-war level in Latin America, at 97.2 per cent in the Far East (excluding mainland China), and at 96 per cent in Africa. In the Near East, although harvests these last few yeats have been disappointing, food production, exceptionally, has gone up: 10.8 per cent per head over the pre-war level. If we remember that the peoples concerned were under-nourished before the war, that an increase of 3 per cent per annum is very difficult to achieve, even in a highly developed country, and, finally, that the food stocks thanks to which India and several African countries barely managed to escape disaster in 1965-66 (as emphasised by FAO), have fallen to their lowest level in more than ten years,2 we shall readily understand that the position may 1 United Nations: Demographic Yearbook, J964, p. 11. In 1962, it was estimated that the annual increase for Latin America as a whole was a mere 2.7 per cent. But later estimates by ECLA showed that as early as 1960 the rate already exceeded 3 percent. SeeECLA: Geographic Distribution of the Population of Latin America and Regional Development Priorities (mimeographed doc. E/CN. 12/643), February 1963. 2 FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture, 1966 (Rome, 1966), p. 16. 11 Agricultural organisations and development well become even more serious—bearing in mind that requirements cannot be still further reduced, and despite the fact that the United States is to increase the area under the plough. This, at least, remains the prospect for the immediate future. Unless there be a profound change—indeed, an "agonising re-appraisal"—in present agricultural policy, it is hard to see how the aims proclaimed in the Third World Food Survey1 (i.e. that world food stocks should be increased by 51 per cent between 1963 and 1975, and by 174 per cent by the end of the century) can possibly be attained. It is true that in the meantime we have witnessed the beginnings of what has been called the "green revolution", following the introduction of highyield cereals. The long-term effects of this are still uncertain, and the shortterm ones are already visible. Some are good, some bad. Hence they will require very close and careful scrutiny and assessment if the bad are not to outweigh the good. According to the International Agricultural Development Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, the area which in Asia alone is devoted to the new varieties of cereals increased from some 250 acres in 1964-65 to nearly 25 million acres in 1967-68. Countries which traditionally have to import food, such as Pakistan and the Philippines, are, it seems, about to become self-sufficient. However, the introduction of these new strains is not without its problems. Certainly, Mexican semi-dwarf wheat varieties have proved a success in India and Pakistan, while the so-called "miracle rice" devised by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines (IR-288-3) has, according to FAO2, given record yields in India. But other strains of rice have proved a failure, and the United States varieties of hybrid maize have been found to be very poorly suited to conditions in Latin America and Asia.3 In India, for example, while wheat production increased from 12.3 million tons in 1964-65 to 16.6 million tons in 1967-68, rice production fell during the same period from 39.4 million to 37.9 million tons, despite the experience acquired under the programme for areas of intensive culture.4 The eventual outcome of the "green revolution" will depend on a number of factors. Firstly, many of the new strains are more sensitive to local diseases ; they need systematic irrigation and the water supplied has to be carefully checked throughout the cycle of growth, whereas in many countries, and ^ A O : Third World Food Survey (Rome, 1963), p. 73. 2 See FAO: Conference, Fourteenth Session: Study on Food Production Resources in Agricultural Development (Rome, 1967; doc. C67/41), p. 24. 3 See H. Laxminarayan: "The Small Farmers should be the Strategy Base", Yojana (New Delhi), Vol. XII, No. 24, December 1968, p. 6. 4 ibid., p. 6. 12 The awakening of the under-developed world especially in Asia, half or more of the land cultivated depends on seasonal rain. There are other things, too, which might conceivably slow up the introduction of improved seed: lack of transport and adequate storage facilities; the reluctance of the peasant farmer, growing just enough to meet his own needs, to undertake experiments which, if unsuccessful, might leave him and his dependants to starve; the consumer's opposition when offered new varieties of unaccustomed taste (whence problems in estimating how much should be produced and how production should be marketed) ; the fact that new varieties make special demands as regards the date of sowing, the use of fertilisers, insecticides, pesticides, and so on; lastly, the cost of production (ten times as high with IR-8 rice, for example), for although the new strain has increased profits fourfold in the Philippines, for example, its use implies credit facilities not always available to the peasantry.1 We may thus expect (and this has already happened) that the most advanced farmers, possessing the best land and with the most highly developed nose for money, will take the lion's share of any profits accruing. But reliance cannot, of course, be put on this class alone in the race for development. As Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., very appositely remarks: As a result of different rates in the diffusion of the new techniques, the richer farmers will become richer. In fact, it may be possible that the more progressive farmers will capture food markets previously served by the smaller semi-subsistence producer. In India, only 20 per cent of the total area planted to wheat in 1967-68 consisted of the new dwarf wheats, but they contributed 34 per cent of the total production. Such a development could well lead to a net reduction in the income of the smaller, poorer, and less venturesome fanners. This raises massive problems of welfare and equity. If only a small fraction of the rural population moves into the modern century while the bulk remains behind, or perhaps even goes backwards, the situation will be highly explosive.2 Clearly, if the "green revolution" is to succeed, parallel efforts must be made in all sorts of fields: in vocational training, improvement of roads and communications, irrigation, provision of credit, and so on. Moreover (and this concerns the new strains and varieties themselves), countries must realise 1 Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.: "The Green Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora's Box?", Foreign Affairs (New York), Vol. 47, No. 3, April 1969, pp. 464-476. 2 ibid., pp. 467-468. See also the reservations made by Wolf Ladejinsky, who says that in the Punjab, where the new techniques have been successful, the gap between rich and poor has been growing wider. "Most important and meaningful though agricultural progress in the Punjab has been, the real sharing in it is restricted to relatively few—perhaps only 10 and surely not more than 20 per cent of the farm households. The new agricultural policy which has generated growth and prosperity is also the indirect cause of the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. Precisely because the new strategy has found its widest application in the Punjab, the probability is that, relatively speaking, the gap is greater there than in any other part of rural India." See "The Green Revolution in Punjab, a Field Trip", Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay), Vol. IV, No. 26, June 1969. 13 Agricultural organisations and development that discoveries, when exported, often go attended by difficulties and risks; it may well be that pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps is a surer way of becoming wealthy than reliance on technical assistance from abroad. Thus, to come back for a moment to India—a test case if there ever was one— improvement in local strains of rice and maize has led to yields superior to that of imported varieties. In the light of these results, H. Laxminarayan, assistant director of the Agricultural Economics Research Centre at Delhi University, understandably wrote as follows: This poses a question whether we should continue to depend completely on high-yielding varieties of seeds which have been successfully used in other countries, or should try to develop our own high-yielding variety. It is not out of place to mention that in agriculture also, as in the case of industry, we are trying to import technologies from other countries, without taking into consideration the major fact that the socio-economic problems of these countries are different from those of ours. If we want to develop our agriculture quickly, it is necessary to develop our own technologies keeping in mind the local circumstances and adapt them according to variations in local conditions.1 These are very timely words of warning, to be carefully heeded by all the countries concerned. For only if national efforts and international aid go hand-in-hand will the "green revolution" surmount the obstacles with which it is confronted. The difficulties now being encountered have not yet been overcome, despite the successes already achieved. To grasp how this state of affairs came about, it must be remembered that in many instances it is attributable to the imbalance induced by excessive concentration on exports. Curiously enough, the developing countries are great exporters of agricultural produce, whilst importing foodstuffs which their own farmers could, and should, produce. As exporters of unfinished primary products and raw materials, they suffer all the fluctuations of the world market (between 1901 and 1950, the prices of twenty-five selected articles varied annually by, on the average, ±14 per cent).2 At the same time, there is a steady deterioration in the terms of trade (how long this deterioration has been going on is still a matter of controversy, but the process itself seems to have been speeding up these last few years, especially between 1954 and 19623). As importers of foodstuffs, such countries have to buy 3 Laxminarayan, op. cit., p. 16. United Nations: Instability in Export Markets of Under-Developed Countries (New York), 1952), p. 5. 3 This is a highly controversial matter which deserves thorough investigation. See the following three papers, appearing in the collection "The Terms of Trade" (Washington, D.C., Economic Development Institute): Gottfried Haberler: "Terms of Trade and Economic Development"; Charles P. Kindleberger: "Terms of Trade and Economic Development"; Theodore Morgan: "Long-run Terms of Trade between Agriculture and Manufac2 14 The awakening of the under-developed world food with the currency they need to purchase equipment. A perusal of the balance of payments of developing countries shows that their food imports, although representing an excessive strain on their holdings in currency, are not sufficient to meet the requirements of their peoples. In all these countries, of course, there are masses of people living at subsistence level; it follows that foodstuffs imported for sale on the domestic market are largely bought by townsmen, whose needs are steadily increasing.1 Since food production is so stagnant in these countries, it might be thought that there would be a general increase in prices. Not so, however. Except at certain points, foodstuff prices remain astonishingly stable. This is because, while supply remains stable, demand tends to remain unchanged too, since most of the people in the countries concerned have so low a standard of living. Between 1958 and 1964, prices in Central America oscillated between 96 (1958 = 100) in Guatemala City and 113 in San José (Costa Rica), remaining at 100 (absolute stability) in Managua (Nicaragua). On the other hand, in South America, in the big cities where price increases depend on that host of variables which characterise a monetary economy, world records for inflation were easily beaten: Buenos Aires (Argentina), 627; Säo Paolo (Brazil), 1,445; Santiago (Chile), 461, in relation to 100 in 1958. But inquiries in the countryside would show that supply and demand remain very much in balance and that price movements are restricted in the extreme, whereas, in a developed country, the differences between rural and town prices are usually insignificant. The same phenomenon is observable in Asia too. Except in Djakarta (Indonesia) (1,276 in 1963 in relation to 100 in 1958), Vientiane (Laos) (595 in 1964) and Seoul (Republic of Korea) (243 in 1964), prices in Asia have remained remarkably stable, even in India, where, despite the extreme rigidity of supply, the cost of foodstuffs has increased by a mere 31 per cent since 1958. Africa obeys the same law. If we except the Democratic Republic of the Congo (372 in relation to 100 in 1961), there have nowhere been increases which could reasonably be described as abnormal. In fact, if we compare the figures for Sweden (31 per cent increase since 1958), a country usually considered to be extremely progressive, with those for the United Arab Republic, a country battling against formidable problems of food supply (11 per cent) 2, we shall turing. See also PaulBairoch: Diagnostic de l'évolution économique du tiers monde, 1900-1966 (Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1967), Ch. VI. 1 Except, of course, for imports of cereals undertaken in accordance with United States Act No. 480 to cope with a crisis. 2 FAO: Production Yearbook, 1965 (Rome, 1966). 16 Agricultural organisations and development see that prices increases in the former country have been almost three times as great as those in the latter. Since, in a normal economy, rigidity in supply or a reduction therein in the face of unsatisfied demand at once leads to price increases, we shall be quite justified in saying that price stability in the developing countries is typical of the stability obtaining in economies where vast masses of peasants are living at subsistence level while the national wealth is distributed in a manner which reduces the purchasing power of the working class to a strict minimum; such stability, then, is the stability of underconsumption. A perusal of the figures for 1964-68 shows that these trends remain quite remarkably stable.1 Two things help to make the position even worse : over-population in the countryside, and the breakneck speed of urban development. In all the developing countries, the working population in rural areas is increasing in absolute numbers, even though it may carry less weight, relatively speaking, within the economy as a whole. In the absence of effective agrarian reform, this means increased pressure on the land and reduced productivity among the poorest members of society, even though, taking the nation as a whole, productivity may have increased in certain advanced branches of agriculture, thanks to the introduction of new techniques. In this connexion, Latin America provides an instructive example; between 1925 and 1960 the rural population increased from 65.4 million to 111 million; in relative terms it dropped from 70.5 to 53.9 per cent of the total population, which increased from 92.9 to no less than 205.9 million. In the countryside, the population actively employed (19.9 million in 1925) had increased by 1960 to 32.3 million; in relation to total population, it had dropped from 61.3 to 47.3 per cent.2 Since landed property in the countryside is concentrated in the hands of a very few (a mere 1.5 per cent own 64.9 per cent of the area under cultivation) 3, and since agricultural techniques are backward, this growth of population is fraught with the gravest consequences, as will be apparent from a glance at table 1. A very similar situation, although a more serious one, exists in the developing countries of Asia within the area for which ECAFE is responsible; density of population is higher than in Latin America and there is less agricul- 1 See ILO: Year Book of Labour Statistics, 1968 (Geneva, 1969), pp. 653-657. See United Nations, ECLA: Economic Bulletin for Latin America, Vol. X, No. 2, October 1965, p. 164. 3 Thomas F. Carroll : "Estructura agraria y distribución de los recursos", in Oscar Delgado (ed.) : Reformas agrarias en la América latina (Mexico City, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965), p. 56. 2 16 The awakening of the under-developed world Table 1. Latin America (Cuba excepted) : Probable increases in rural and urban population and of actively employed population, 1960-75 (in thousands) 1960 199 144 107 954 54.2 91190 45.8 (%) B. Actively employed population: 65 951 i. In agriculture 31480 47.7 (%) 2. Not in agriculture 34 471 52.3 (%) A. Total population 1. Rural population (%) 2. Urban population 1965 1970 1975 228 756 117 085 51.2 111671 48.8 75 490 33 850 44.8 41640 55.2 264 756 132 140 50.1 132 616 49.6 87 370 37 660 43.1 49 710 56.9 305 838 149 393 48.8 156 445 51.2 100 930 41830 41.4 59100 58.6 Source: United Nations, ECLA: Economic Bulletin for Latin America, Vol. X, No. 2, October 1965, p. 185. turai land available per head (1.05 acres, as against 1.45 for Latin America).1 In most of these countries, the agricultural population actively employed varies between 60 and 80 per cent of the total labour force ; it is increasing in absolute terms and slowly—very slowly—decreasing relatively. It is exceedingly difficult to say how the rural manpower in these countries will evolve, for everything depends on how fast population and employment expand. However, if we consider India, where the problem assumes its greatest dimensions (although it may not be as acute as elsewhere), we shall not be inclined to over-optimism. The population of India increased very nearly twofold between 1901 and 1961 (from 236.3 million to 439.2 million); between 1901 and 1911, the rate of increase was 5.7 per cent, and between 1951 and 1961, 21.5 per cent.2 And yet, in relative terms, rural manpower as a proportion of the total labour force displays an unexampled stability: 72 per cent in 1911, and 70 per cent in 1961.3 In 1961, rural manpower accounted for 120.8 million persons. It is expected to reach 140.2 million in 1975-76, by which time it will represent no more than 57 per cent of the total labour force.4 Unless there is a speedy increase in agricultural productivity, the position is likely to become highly dangerous; there is very little room for expansion of 1 For Asia, see United Nations, ECAFE: Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1965 (New York, 1966; Sales No.: 66.II.F.1), p. 48. For South America, estimates based on arable area are reproduced in the FAO Yearbook for 1965. It must be remembered that in South America there is far more land available than in Asia. 2 Nanavati and Anjaria, op. cit., p. 55. 3 "The Population and Labour Force of Asia, 1950-80", International Labour Review (Geneva, ILO), Vol. LXXXVI, No. 4, October 1962, p. 366. 4 Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1965, op. cit., pp. 146 and 148. 17 Agricultural organisations and development the areas under cultivation. And even as it is, the people of this country are exceedingly ill-fed. There are several such examples in this area. Here, as the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East observes, the increase in agricultural production has these last few years been obtained more by bringing fresh land under cultivation than by technical improvement. But such expansion has its limits, and it is a fact that although imports of cereals increased by 41 per cent between 1951 and 1963, the consumption of calories and proteins per head has actually fallen below pre-war levels1 : production had failed to keep pace with the increase in the number of mouths to be fed. While production fell sharply in 1965-66, it increased again in 1967 following the introduction of new high-yield cereals (and above all because the weather was better). But rejoicing would be premature. We shall have to wait at least five years before we can tell whether existing trends have been permanently reversed. Africa is less populous than Asia, and should be able (with considerable outside assistance) to solve the main problems of production and rural manpower. Ninety per cent of all Africans are peasants, and the population actively employed in the countryside is increasing absolutely if not relatively. Not enough historical data are available for us to assess in any detail the situation in individual countries, but for some of them, censuses taken before the Second World War show that the trend has been much the same as in other developing countries. In Morocco, for example, 1.27 million persons were employed in agriculture in 1936 (74 per cent of the total manpower). In 1960, 1,834,000 persons were so employed (56 per cent of the total, i.e. relatively less than in 1936). Similarly, in the United Arab Republic, between 1937 and 1960, agricultural manpower increased from 4.3 to 4.4 million—71 and 57 per cent respectively of the total active population. This over-all increase in population (total or agricultural, active or not) in the three continents we have mentioned has led to the growth of towns at a dizzy speed. We shall not examine in detail the phenomenon represented by the increasing congestion of towns and cities in the developing world, but it may be worth while to summarise its salient features. The first thought that comes to mind is that the growth of towns ought to be a good thing for the countries in question : by taking some of the pressure off the land, the rush to the towns ought to increase productivity; the growth of industry and services would seem to make for a better apportionment of manpower and for the production of more wealth; and social mobility ought to be facilitated, and the standard of living of the newly arrived townspeople improved. 1 18 Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1965, op. cit., p. 71. The awakening of the under-developed world In fact, matters are much more complicated than this. Nineteenth-century Europe is not a valid model for the developing countries of today. Throughout these countries, the growth of towns is encountering a problem for which, as yet, no solution has been found : the fact that the demand for labour does not keep pace with the increasing supply. In the big towns and cities, the influx of people from the countryside has pushed up urbanisation to a point which far exceeds the growth of population in the countryside, but without (as we have seen) solving the problem of rural over-population. And although governments have created employment (sometimes jeopardising the balance of the budget in so doing) and set up fresh industries, the rush to the towns has produced an urban population far in excess of what cities can absorb. Thus, in Asia, where towns have grown at twice the rate of increase of national populations, with high points reached in Ceylon (5.5 per cent for 194663) and China (Taiwan) (10.6 per cent for 1958-62), the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, in its report for 1965, observed that: "In most countries, labourers have moved into urban areas at a rate much in excess of the efficient absorptive capacity of the expanding urban activities." * Africa, too, is in much the same position. In 1900, there were not more than 1.4 million people living in towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants. In 1950, the figure was more than 10 million.2 At the beginning of the century, Abidjan was a village of less than 1,000 souls; in 1936, it had 16,000 inhabitants, some 200,000 in 1961, and is growing faster and faster all the time. The population of Cotonou increased from 19,000 inhabitants in 1945 to 58,000 in 1956. In the same period, that of Dakar increased from 184,000 to 235,000. By 1961, it had exceeded 300,000. Similarly in Latin America, where Jacques Chonchol observes that: "In Latin America the flow of rural labour to the urban areas has been much greater than the number required for industrial expansion."8 Here, in 1960, there were sixty-two cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants each, accounting for roughly 40 per cent of the population of Latin America. A paper by John D. Durand and César A. Peláez4 shows that urbanisation in the countries with which we are here concerned is going ahead much faster 1 Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1965, op. cit., p. 39. See "Population and Labour Force in Africa", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXXIV, No. 6, December 1961. 8 Conchol, op. cit., p. 80. 4 "Patterns of Urbanisation in Latin America", The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly (New York), Vol. XLIII, No. 4, October 1965 ("Components of Population Change in Latin America"), Part II, pp. 166-196. a 19 Agricultural organisations and development than was ever the case in the United States. For example, in Venezuela in 1936 the towns accounted for 16 per cent of the total population, a figure reached in the United States in 1871. But since then the trickle to the towns has turned into a flood and in 1960 the figure in Venezuela was 47.2 per cent, thus exceeding the rate achieved in the United States (46.9 per cent) at that date. Hence, in twenty-four years, Venezuela had made as much progress along this road as the United States in eighty-nine. Similarly, in Peru the urban population increased from 14 to 29 per cent of the total between 1940 and 1961 ; if the rate had been the same as that in the United States, this result would not have been reached before 1979. Lastly, the major capitals of the continent have been growing at a fearful speed. Buenos Aires had 4.7 million inhabitants in 1947 and 6.7 million in 1960; Santiago, 952,000 in 1940 and 1.9 million in 1960; Rio de Janeiro, 1.5 million in 1940 and 3.2 million in 1960. In the absence of industries and services on a scale sufficient to cope with the influx (over and above the natural increase in population), it is easy to imagine what this implies in terms of slums and shanty-towns, juvenile delinquency and prostitution. In 1962, United Nations experts saw the matter in the following light 1 : The magnitude of the resources required for dealing with the problem of urbanisation is very large. In India alone, for example, approximately US 81,000 million a year will be required to house the new inhabitants of cities with over 100,000 people. The provision of city-wide services, utilities and transportation would at least double the needed investment. In Latin America it was estimated by the Organisation of American States in 1954 that an annual investment of US $1,400 million was required over a period of thirty years to wipe out the housing backlog, to replace obsolescent dwellings and to provide homes for new households. According to rough estimates by the United Nations Bureau of Social Affairs, as many as 150 million families in the less developed countries are in need of adequate homes. These immense requirements are contributing in many under-developed countries to the maintenance of a level of spending on housing and urban development such that the pressing claims of directly productive sectors have to be curtailed. To this should be added that despite such expenses, these countries are very far from being able to find work for a labour force growing bigger with every day that passes. Quite apart from industrial activities, all sorts of occupations flourish. These are sometimes included under "services", but they are so precarious, and bring in so little money to those obliged to resort to them, that it would be more appropriate to include them under a new heading: "marginal activities". 1 United Nations: Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament (New York, 1962; Sales No.: 62.IX.1), pp. 11-12. 20 The awakening of the under-developed world A FALSE DILEMMA: INDUSTRY OR AGRICULTURE ? To sum up, we may say that the developing countries have passed through three phases of a continuing process: (a) the traditional, pre-colonial phase of economic development, by virtue of which they were able to maintain much the same sort of balance as that which obtained in Europe early in the eighteenth century; (b) a phase in which colonial and traditional economy went hand-inhand, with the result that the countries concerned were brought up to date, but at the cost of economic and social imbalance; (c) the present phase, during which they are no longer bound by colonial ties, but are subject to the vagaries of world trade and suffer from the dichotomy (modern economy/traditional way of life) dating from colonial times. If these countries are to embark on the fourth phase, that of a balanced modern economy, they will have to overcome a number of hurdles. The most formidable of these are,first,the growth of population, and second, inadequate food supply. Since the end of the Second World War, various ways have been tried (by bilateral or multi-lateral assistance schemes) to increase food supplies and to cope, one way or another, with the population explosion. Besides which, development schemes have been devised to speed up the modernisation of the developing countries; in the process, it may well be that a little too much confidence has been shown in the ability of the developed countries to supply agricultural surpluses (in 1953 there was still talk of "embarrassing surpluses"; today, the position is very different)1, in the ability of agriculture in the countries concerned to cope (except in the very long run) with bursting demographic pressures, and in the belief that faster industrialisation would reduce the pressure of surplus labour in the countryside. The present position in the developing countries can perhaps be summed up in a single question : is there a policy which would enable these countries to catch up and achieve a self-supporting, balanced growth, without having to plod along the path already followed by the industrialised countries ? During the 1950s, debate on this matter was fierce and sometimes acrimonious.2 In some countries, a victory had been won by those who thought that accelerated industrialisation would offer that economic independence without which 1 FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture, 1953 (Rome, 1953). Among the major works, see Raúl Prebisch: The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems (New York, United Nations, ECLA, 1950; Sales No.: 50.II.G.2); H. W. Singer: "The Distribution of Gains between Investing and Borrowing Countries", American Economic Review, May 1950, pp. 473-485; Gunnar Myrdal: An International Economy: Problems and Prospects (New York, Harper; London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956). 2 21 Agricultural organisations and development political independence may prove a snare and a delusion. This was so in Argentina, where, during a period of full employment, the rush from the countryside to the cities, at a time when the high prices of agricultural produce rendered it uncompetitive in international markets, gave rise to a terrible imbalance, from the effects of which the country has not yet recovered.1 In this connexion, Schultz observes that: It is not surprising—so great has been the prestige attached to industrialisation as a symbol of progress—that agriculture has been felt as a hindrance to growth. In Argentina, agriculture was a potent source of wealth, and the country has paid a high price for industrialisation undertaken at its expense. Brazil, too, has starved agriculture in an endeavour to speed up the pace of industrialisation. There are many countries which would have been well advised to 2devote to agriculture a part of the money and energy they have devoted to industry. Some countries have, indeed, tried to encourage agriculture without neglecting industry, but always with an eye to the export trade; traditional foodproducing agriculture has invariably suffered. Thus, with very few exceptions, the food problem has, almost throughout the developing world, got worse. This problem, and that of exuberant demographic growth, has become a stumbling block for very many countries. Should they, in their plans, concentrate on agriculture, or should they give preference to industry (importing the requisite foodstuffs for the time being and giving encouragement to agriculture later)? The answer to this question depends very largely on how fast these countries can industrialise. In this connexion, the once-current optimistic forecast that these countries, by taking over modern techniques, would industrialise in less time than it took Europe to do so, is giving way to an excessively pessimistic view, namely that these countries are starting off more handicapped than the "West" ever was. Let us, however, try to see the problem in perspective. The Western countries have by no means enjoyed industrial development at a constant rate. Industrial development was everywhere preceded and accompanied by an upswing in agricultural output and productivity. Let us consider the case of England, which, while too exceptional to serve as a model for any country today, offers some instructive conclusions as regards the process of industrialisation. In that country, agricultural production doubled between 1700 and 1800, whereas the Industrial Revolution only got going in 1760. Contrary 1 See La planification et l'industrialisation de l'Argentine, 1947-1957, Notes et études documentaires, No. 1787 (Paris, 1953). 2 T. Schultz: "The Economie Test in Latin America" (Ithaca, New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University), Bulletin, No. 35, August 1956, p. 28. 22 The awakening of the under-developed world to the common conception of England as a country importing food and exporting manufactured goods, she did not in fact draw on outside sources during the first twenty or thirty years of the Industrial Revolution.1 Only during the second half of the nineteenth century did she begin to import foodstuffs on a really large scale; up to 1830, imported wheat represented a mere 3 per cent of the total wheat consumed, whereas for 1831-50 the figure was 13 per cent, and for 1891-95, no less than 79 per cent.2 Thus, the country first on the industrial scene did not become heavily dependent on the outside world until a century after the process began. Other cases analysed by Paul Bairoch (concerning Belgium, France, Germany, and even Japan) confirm this tendency, which begins to change only with the advent of cheaper transport, between 1870 and 1880.3 The conclusion to be drawn is that the agricultural upswing freed the manpower needed by industry, while providing the domestic markets which industry needed in the initial stages. The developed countries enjoyed other advantages too. The increase in population during the initial stages of industrialisation did not exceed 1 per cent, and indeed there was at certain times a fairly heavy loss due to emigration, which corrected the imbalance between the demand and the supply of labour. Emigration quickened its pace during the last half of the nineteenth century and the first twenty years of the twentieth, to reach a scale which appears barely credible today. Even overlooking the Irish who emigrated to the United States as a result of the terrible famines of the 1840s, we find that the United States alone welcomed 22.7 million foreigners between 1871 and 1910. Although, to begin with, the immigrants came almost exclusively from the northern countries (from Scandinavia between 1870 and 1880, from England and Germany between 1880 and 1890, with an average annual intake during the first period of 200,000 to 300,000, and during the second, of 130,000)4, the southern and central European countries then began to shed their manpower surpluses. Between 1882 and 1887, some 23,000 Italians left every year for the United States; but this figure reached 225,000 in 1902 to 1906 and 285,000 in 1907.6 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary (300,000 a year from 1905), together with the Poles and the Jews from Russia (100,000 a year), helped to swell the tide and contributed to the growth of America (very largely that of the United States). When, in 1924, the United States imposed a quota 1 Paul Bairoch : Révolution industrielle et sous-développement 0?aris, SEDES, 1963), p. 225. ibid., p. 227. 8 ibid., pp. 79-80. * Pirenne, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 530. 5 See: Rural Social Development : Report of a United Nations European Study Group on Rural Social Development within the Framework of Development in Southern Italy (Rome, Amministrazione per le Attività Assistenziali Italiane e Internazionale, July 1965), p. 29. 2 23 Agricultural organisations and development on immigration, the great influx from Europe, which had reached its peak in the years 1906 to 19151, had already begun to dry up as a result of the First World War, and was never again to reach the levels attained at the beginning of the century. Thus, if the outlet and safety-valve afforded by emigration had not existed, it is probable that European towns would have had to cope with a much greater influx of peasants, and that urbanisation would have proved correspondingly more difficult. These two advantages (a low rate of population growth, except in England, and large-scale emigration) are not enjoyed by today's developing countries. Besides which, it is likely that their populations will continue to grow with undiminished vigour for a fairly long time to come, anxious though certain governments may be to reduce the birth rate. Hitherto, the experts have usually under-estimated the rate of population growth. In India, for example, the first and second plans for the period 1951-61 assumed an annual rate of increase of 1.25 per cent.2 In fact, however, the rate during this period proved to be 2 per cent, rising to 2.3 per cent between 1958 and 1964.3 Overlooking what modern science may manage to achieve over a lengthy period, it would seem that rising prosperity has so far been the most potent of all brakes on fertility. The very poorest classes are invariably the most prolific, as is well known.4 Pending a miracle, we cannot but subscribe to the following comments by Léon Tabah: In every country, except perhaps in France, a considerable rise in income per head, accompanied by a rise in health standards, has preceded—sometimes by a good few years—a drop in the birth rate. In Germany, for example, annual output per head, exceedingly low at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had increased fivefold by 1870, when the birth rate began to drop. In Japan, the income per head 1 This process can be followed, for the period 1881 to 1939, in Ingvar Svennilson: Growth and Stagnation in the European Economy (Geneva, United Nations, 1954; Sales No.: 54. II.E.3), p. 65. 2 Figure for the period 1941-51. See United Nations: Demographic Yearbook, 1952 (New York, 1953), p. 110. See also Planning Commission (India): First Five-Year Plan (New Delhi, 1952), p. 20; Second Five-Year Plan (New Delhi, 1956), p. 8. Estimates were changed in the Third Five-Year Plan (New Delhi, 1962), p. 27, which already provides for an annual increase of 2 per cent a year between 1961 and 1976. While the second plan estimated the population at 465 million in 1970-71, and at some 500 million in 1975-76, the third plan increased these figures to 555 and 625 million respectively, or an extra 125 million over and above the estimates, at the end of the period. It estimated that the active population would increase by no less than 70 million between 1961 and 1976 (see Third Five-Year Plan, pp. 22 and 27). 3 United Nations: Demographic Yearbook, 1962, p. 272, and Demographic Yearbook, 1965, p. 113. 1 This fact, observed in Europe, is confirmed in India too. Here, according to the National Sample Survey, births vary between 2.6 among women with a secondary or higher education, 4.2 among those who have completed the first part of their secondary education, 4.5 among those with a primary-school education, and 6 among the illiterate. See Planning Commission (India): Annual Plan, 1966-67 (New Delhi, 1966), p. 87. 24 The awakening of the under-developed world among the working population was in 1885 at about the level reached in Germany in 1880; it increased more than threefold until 1925, when the birth rate began to falter. It is certain, too, that income per head increased very considerably in England between the beginning of the nineteenth century and round about 1885, when fertility began to fall off. ... Thus, it would seem that the birth rate never starts to sink unless there has been a substantial rise in consumption per head and in standards of health Hence it would seem fair to conclude that, as far as we can see at present, a doubling of income per head is essential if there is to be some slackening in the population growth of the poorer countries. These1 latter—we should do well to remember—constitute two-thirds of the human race. We cannot here embark on a discussion of the pros and cons of the methods suggested as brakes on population growth. A point which might well be made, however, is that even if the developing countries were as successful as Japan has been with the legislation enacted in 1948, they would still needfifteenyears or so to bring their birth rate to round about half what they are at present. If they could do so, the position by 1980 may prove rather less gloomy than it appears likely to be today. The problem would be easier to solve if the developing countries could ship their surplus millions overseas. This particularly applies to Asia, where there is no more than one and a quarter acres of arable ground per rural inhabitant, i.e. between a quarter and a half of the amount available in nineteenth-century Europe. But mass emigration of this magnitude would be quite impossible nowadays, because the developed countries simply do not have the capacity to absorb so many immigrants. On the other hand, we are already witnessing a brain-drain (of doctors, engineers and technicians of all kinds) from those countries where such persons are already in short supply— countries which already have to call for technical assistance to fill the gaps.2 Hence we may reasonably conclude that as far as density and rate of population growth are concerned, today's developing countries are far worse off than nineteenth-century Europe ever was. In the process of industrialisation, too, the Western countries enjoyed a number of geographical advantages. Some, like the United States and Canada, 1 Léon Tabah: "Le problème population-investissement-niveau de vie dans les pays sous-développés", in Institut national d'études démographiques: Le «tiers monde», sous-développement et développement. Travaux et documents, No. 39 (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1961), pp. 250-251. See also Léon Tabah: "Espoirs et illusions des politiques de population dans le tiers monde", Le Monde (Paris), 20-21 January 1967. 2 See Angus Maddison: The Use of Foreign Training and Skills in Developing Economies (Paris, OECD, 1964). According to the 1965 Report on the World Social Situation (New York, United Nations, 1966), a high proportion of doctors in these countries—up to 50 per cent, it is thought—emigrate to countries where they earn more money and where facilities are better. The same applies to scientists, engineers, and others who can find an international outlet for their talents. On the whole, the most brilliant and ambitious young people, who could make the biggest contribution to the development of a backward rural area, are the first to quit. 25 Agricultural organisations and development were very big, others (the great colonial Powers) controlled a foreign market, and some profited from intercontinental trade. The developing countries which today depend on the whims and vagaries of international trade, could in theory profit from two of these factors: size, and intercontinental trade. But here again, because the vast bulk of their populations are peasants hard put to it to keep body and soul together, they will be able to make the most of their natural advantages only if they radically overhaul their agriculture. Moreover, the Western countries witnessed a progressive changeover from rural handicrafts to industrial techniques, and the cost involved was very slight.1 Paul Bairoch finds that : By investing a sum for each person actively employed, equivalent to less than four months' wages in England (at the end of the eighteenth century) and to six to eight months' wages in France (early in the nineteenth century), quite a number of former farmers and craftsmen were able to embark on industrial production.2 The same method of calculation shows that in 1950, in the United States, industrial investment per person actively employed represented (on the average) twenty-nine months' wages, and in the under-developed countries some 350 months' wages (assuming the technical level of the undertakings concerned was about the same). True, this is not invariably the case, since handicrafts, which are so very important in the developing countries, do not require investments on anything like the same scale. But, considered as a whole, industrialisation gives rise to two major problems, whose importance cannot be under-estimated: firstly, how to adapt manpower to an increasingly complex technology, and secondly, how to ensure that investments are commensurate with available manpower. In fact, there is a link between the two. The developing countries frequently have to choose between an industry demanding heavy capital investment per man employed and one in which large numbers are given work for relatively little capital investment. It is by no means always easy to decide between the two, especially when the industry in question will be concerned with the competitive export market, or is to produce power, in which case poor productivity will adversely affect the price of local manufactured goods. Since the manpower available is steadily growing, and since a modern refinery, for example, may cost more than US $60 million and yet employ no more than three hundred people 3 , it would seem that the developing 1 On the difficulties encountered by peasants on becoming an urban proletariat, see Witold Kula: Recherches comparatives sur la formation de la classe ouvrière (First Economic History Congress, Stockholm, 1960) (Paris, Mouton, 1960). * Bairoch, op. cit., p. 197. 'United Nations: The United Nations Development Decade at Mid-Point : An Appraisal by the Secretary-General (New York, 1965; Sales No.: 65.1.26), p. 18. 26 The awakening of the under-developed world countries should in every case try to strike a happy mean, so as to ensure maximum employment in relation to (a) the imperatives of foreign trade, and (b) the capacity of the domestic market. This happy balance, which the European countries have often found by purely pragmatic means (true, inter-European competition was far less severe than competition between the developing and the developed countries today), combined with a relatively low rate of growth in the labour force, enabled the European countries to avoid a swollen services sector. To the extent that it absorbs proportionally more of the national product than it provides employment, this helps (as Bairoch has shown) to push up prices and to put the developing countries in an even more difficult position.1 In Europe during the last twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century, between 10 and 25 per cent of the total labour force was employed in services (between 29 and 32 per cent between 1920 and 1930 2)—a lower percentage than that of workers in industry. However, in most of the developing countries, in 1954-60, the services sector represented a higher percentage than industry3, and frequently absorbed a disproportionately high percentage of the domestic product4 (a phenomenon observable in nineteenth-century Europe, too, but in Europe this sector occupied a much smaller percentage of the active labour force). In Asia (if we exclude mainland China), for example, 67 per cent of the available manpower was employed in agriculture in 1950-60, as against 21 per cent in services and 12 per cent in industry.5 This being so, should the above-mentioned problems be tackled by giving top priority to the accelerated industrial development ? It is in fact simply not true that the developing countries have to choose between industrial and agricultural development, and we cannot overstress this point. There are certain countries which, having staked everything on accelerated industrial development, have found themselves in a very difficult 1 Bairoch, op.Jcit., pp. 161-163. These percentages (29 and 32 per cent) hold good of an ensemble composed of eleven countries in central and southern Europe. Men only are concerned. See Svennilson : Growth and Stagnation in the European Economy, op. cit., p. 75. As regards that proportion of the national product represented by services, see Simon Kuznets: "Quantitative Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations. II. Industrial Distribution of National Product and Labour Force", Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago, University of Chicago), Vol. V, No. 4 (Supplement), July 1957, passim. The number of women now in paid employment, the multiplication of social services, and indeed the needs of industrial development led to an increase in these figures after the Second World War. But this increase occurred at the end of a lengthy period of development, not comparable to the inflation of services in the developing countries. A comparative examination of productivity clearly brings this out. 3 ILO: Year Book of Labour Statistics, 1965 (Geneva, 1966), Ch. I, passim. 1 Bairoch, op. cit., p. 163. 6 "The Population and Labour Force of Asia, 1950-80", op. cit., p. 362. 2 27 Agricultural organisations and development position indeed, sometimes on the verge of famine. In all such cases, they have had to revise their ideas and arrive at a more wholesome balance between industry and agriculture. At a time such as today, what with soaring population figures and inadequate food production in the developing countries, and bearing in mind the increased requirements of town-dwellers (and of industrial workers in particular)1, it is easy to see the dangers inherent in a policy of industrial development which under-estimates the importance of the countryside as a source of food for the towns and as an outlet and a market for manufactured goods. It is just as obvious that any embryonic industry requires satisfactory internal markets and effective protection by import duties until such time as it is ready to face international competition. Only close ties between agriculture, handicrafts and industry (and respect for the necessary balance between production for export and production for the home market) will offer a way out of the vicious circle of agricultural under-development and a proper link between town and countryside. The experience acquired in the West is instructive for all those who believe that industrialisation is the remedy for every ill, either because their economic calculations have gone astray, or because they think that industrialisation is a pre-requisite of political independence. A glance at the figures for a fairly lengthy period reveals two salient facts. In the first place, agriculture's contribution to the national product tends to fall off progressively, but slowly, in the course of industrialisation. England is an exception ; in that country, agriculture accounted for no more than 27 per cent of the national income in 1812, 10 per cent in 1895, and barely 6 per cent in 1950; everywhere else, it has remained relatively important, and dwindled only very slowly. The data published by S. Kuznets show that at current prices agriculture's contribution to the national product in France was 51 per cent in 1835 and 23 per cent in 1949; in Denmark, 45.1 per cent in 1870-79, and 19.2 per cent in 1947-52; in Italy, 55.7 per cent in 1876-80 and 26.4 per cent in 1950-54; in Japan, 64.6 per cent in 1878-82 and 24.4 per cent in 1947-54; in the United States, 20.5 per cent in 1869-79 and 7.2 per cent in 1947-54.2 It is clear, then, that between seventy and a hundred years have been required for agriculture's share in national incomes to fall by half. Things being what they are, it is therefore reasonable to assume that for a very long time to come, agriculture will contribute a very large share to the income of the developing countries. 1 In a great many countries, the changeover from agriculture to industry has meant a substantial extension of the working day and working week, and hence a greater demand for food, proportionate to output. See FAO: Nutrition and Working Efficiency (Rome, 1962), passim, and p. 23 especially. 2 Kuznets, op. cit., pp. 68-73. 28 The awakening of the under-developed world Secondly, at least fifty years have as a rule to elapse before agricultural manpower, as a proportion of the total active population, is reduced by half. This has been so in the developed countries (some examples are given in table 2). It seems that the maximum rate at which the percentage represented by the agricultural population falls off usually varies between 0.5 and 1 per cent per annum, assuming the population to be increasing at the normal rate. Besides which, it will be noticed that only quite a long time after industrialisation begins does the agricultural labour force—in absolute terms—begin to diminish. If we make an exception for the United Kingdom, where this labour force was already dwindling in the nineteenth century, the phenomenon is observable in the other Western countries only from about 1920 onwards. Thus, if we optimistically assume that the developing countries will be able to industrialise at something like the rate which characterised the developed ones, between fifty and eighty years will nevertheless be required before their agricultural labour force is reduced by half. For the time being, we can but observe that industrialisation has lagged behind the increase in manpower, and that the imbalance is largely due to an influx from the countryside which in certain areas could have been to some extent dammed had thorough-going agricultural reform and promotion been undertaken in good time. In some instances, this phenomenon has been rendered worse by the preference shown Table 2. Active agricultural population: time required, from the beginning of industrialisation, for the percentage of the active agricultural population in the total active population to fall by about half Country Date of beginning of industrialisation Agricultural labour force at that time Agricultural labour force later % % United Kingdom 1783-1802 35 in 1811 France 1830-1860 64.4 in 1851 1833-1860 1843-1860 1850-1873 1868-1890 1878-1900 40.8 in 1866 53 in 1870 43 in 1882 48 in 1910 82 in 1880 1 Belgium United States Germany Sweden Japan 1 35 in 1861 and 13 in 1881 36.4 in 1931 and 28 in 1954 19.4 in 1910 28 in 1920 26 in 1939 21 in 1950 41 in 1955 Men only. Sources: United Kingdom: P. Bairoch: Revolution industrielle et sous-développement (Paris, SEDES, 1963), p. 269; "The World's Working Population", International Labour Review (Geneva, ILO), Vol. LXXm, No. 5, May 1956, p. 507. France : Evolution de la population active en France depuis cent ans d'après les dénombrements quinquennaux, Etudes et conjoncture (Economie française) (Paris), May-June 1953, No. 3, p. 249; "La population active de la France de 1954 à 1957", Etudes statistiques (Paris, INSEE), No. 3, July-September 1957, p. 5. Belgium : UNESCO : World Illiteracy at Mid-Century (Paris, 1957), p. 194. Germany, United States and Sweden: "The World's Working Population", op. cit., p. 507. Japan: "The Population and Labour Force of Asia, 1950-80", International Labour Review. Vol. LXXXVI, No. 4, October 1962, p. 363. For the dates of the beginning of industrialisation, see W. W. Rostow: The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge University Press, 1966). 29 Agricultural organisations and development for industries with big outputs and a small labour force, at the expense of small-scale industry of the traditional type which, in 1964, nevertheless accounted for 46 per cent of manufacturing employment in Latin America and even higher percentages (as much as 70 per cent in India)1 in Asia. This is not a root-and-branch denunciation of modern industry in the developing countries : modern industries are essential, and help to develop a useful services sector; they are thus instrumental, if only indirectly, in creating more employment. Hence a proper balance must in each particular instance be struck. We must not be deluded into thinking that industrial and agricultural development are somehow incompatible. THE URGENT NEED FOR REORGANISATION OF AGRICULTURE IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Be this as it may, it seems unlikely that the developing countries will manage to ensure absorption of future manpower increases, and ensure that the process of industrialisation successfully runs its course, without a profound upheaval in agriculture. Hitherto, development has been excessively one-sided, either because undue importance has been attached to production for export at the expense of the domestic market, or because too high a priority has been given to industrialisation. A society can develop harmoniously only if it can secure its food. Otherwise, its plans and projects for the future will be built on sand. These are self-evident truths, and it should not be necessary to repeat them. But repeat them we must, for they are all too frequently forgotten. As the Chairman of the OECD Development Assistance Committee has shrewdly remarked, "Perhaps the greatest recent shift in emphasis has been the rapidly increasing recognition of the necessity of making more progress in the agricultural field".2 Certainly, the road to development is liberally strewn with obstacles, but it should not be impossible to surmount or otherwise obviate them. We have already reviewed the advantages enjoyed at the time of the Industrial Revolution by the countries now developed, and considered the difficulties with which the countries newly arrived on the industrial scene are at present 1 A point emphasised by the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East in its annual report: "In most countries (of ECAFE) modern industry has grown at a much faster rate than traditional industry" (Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1965, op. cit., p. 47). a Willard L. Thorp, "New Developments in Foreign Assistance", OECD Observer, Special Issue on Development (September 1966). 30 The awakening of the under-developed world confronted. These difficulties are compounded by survivals of the old colonial era, in so far as the industrial Powers try to keep outfinishedor semifinished goods from the developing world. An extreme, and highly revealing, example is afforded by cocoa powder and butter, taxed at no less than 136 per cent of their value when imported by the countries of the European Economic Community, whereas cocoa beans pay a mere 5 per cent.1 A solution to these problems would certainly speed up industrialisation in the developing countries, but would not necessarily provide thefilliprequired to get traditional food-crop farming out of the rut in which it has for centuries vegetated. The problem here is how to transform and improve farming methods; how to change men's outlook and the way in which they organise their labours. The problem, in short, is first and foremost a human one, and cannot be tackled by the methods of economics, agronomics or sociology alone. The introduction of new techniques inevitably proceeds in ups and downs. New agricultural methods change traditional cycles and working hours; the wandering shepherd becomes a stable-boy; many a farm labourer becomes redundant and is not found work elsewhere. The part played by the community is subtly changed, and work which commanded great prestige ceases to have it. If innovation, in fact, is to prove successful, then a coherent, co-ordinated attack must be launched on the past. Such an approach has been accepted by all the United Nations agencies—happily so, for in the past the need for it was sometimes overlooked and technical assistance activities carried on without any over-all rhyme or reason. To sum up, then, we may say that to exchange the hoe for the tractor is often by no means as simple a process as it might appear. Europe, too, had these problems at one time. Its history is extraordinarily rich in lessons for the developing countries of today (hence we shall review it in outline later on). The triumph of European agriculture is due to three things: (a) the improvement of farming methods and abandonment of the fallow system; (b) the introduction of fertilisers; (c) organisation of manpower, taking the form, firstly, of co-operatives, and later, of trade unions. The agricultural revolution, which lasted almost two hundred years (from 1750 to the end of the First World War) was carried through almost without machinery in the modern sense of the word. True, the basic implements (harrow, seeder and plough) were greatly improved during this period. But only after the Second World War did agricultural mechanisation really get under way. In 1938, Denmark, the Netherlands and France (to take but three examples) 1 See K. S. Sundara Rajan: "Tariff Preferences and Developing Countries", Finance and Development (Washington, International Monetary Fund; Paris, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), Vol. Ill, No. 4, December 1966, p. 265. 31 Agricultural organisations and development had 3,500, 4,000, and 36,000 tractors respectively; early in 1960, they had 96,000, 64,000 and 700,00o.1 Even in the United States a mere 23 percent of all farms were mechanised in 1940. It might not be amiss to keep thesefiguresin mind. For there is a tendency to compare agriculture in the developing countries with agriculture as it is in the developed world today. This is, of course, absurd, and tends sometimes to make difficulties appear worse than they really are. The same holds good of illiteracy, frequently alluded to in reports on the world social situation. Certainly, illiteracy is a severe handicap in a country thirsting for industrialisation; but it is an inescapable fact that the extraordinary surge of European agriculture in the nineteenth century occurred at a time when a very high proportion of the population were able neither to read nor to write. In 1840, 42 per cent of the population of England were illiterate; in France, the figure was 47 per cent. And these figures cover town and countryside alike; in the countryside alone, they must have been greater. We do, in fact, have data for Germany; these show that as late as 1882, 41.6 per cent of the peasantry were still illiterate.2 Thus, while we must not underestimate this problem, it must not be considered an insurmountable obstacle. There are no less than 700 million illiterates in the world today; agricultural progress in the developing countries cannot be expected to wait until they all know how to read and write. Clearly, these countries cannot afford to wait a hundred years before their food problems are solved. The way ahead may seem rough, the difficulties formidable, yet these countries must make even greater speed than Europe. International technical co-operation, a stabilisation of the prices paid for primary produce, and a clean sweep of the barriers represented by existing institutions would, in the not too distant future, produce a better balance between that part of agriculture in the developing countries which produces for export and that part still organised on traditional lines. But if traditional farming is to develop at a reasonable speed, much more will have to be done in the way of training, and a densely woven network of agricultural organisations, local, provincial and national, will have to be created. Unless the peasant knows how to make proper use of fertilisers and of the water provided by irrigation schemes, unless there are men able to introduce and popularise new methods of farming, then money, technical assistance and supplies will be, if not entirely useless, at least inadequate. Clearly, technical 'See Henri Noilhan: Histoire de l'agriculture à l'ère industrielle (Paris, de Boccard, 1965), Vol. V, p. 125. 2 UNESCO: World Illiteracy at Mid-Century, op. cit., Ch. X; E. Levasseur: La population française (Paris, Rousseau, 1889-92), Vol. II, p. 478. 32 The awakening of the under-developed world assistance experts cannot make good all the shortcomings of the developing world. The most they can do is to train those who will train others. But to this end it is vitally important that every developing country should realise how capital is the human element in development. They must be made aware of the part which agricultural organisations can play in arousing the countryside from its slumbers. It is in the hope of promoting this awareness that we shall now look at the development of European agriculture from the agricultural revolution of the eighteenth century to the present day, and then describe the position in the developing countries today, taking care in so doing to eschew false and pernicious analogies. For our aim is to make these countries fully aware of the possibilities, both hidden and apparent, of a reorganisation of their agriculture. 33 PART II THE EVOLUTION OF AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATIONS IN EUROPE A. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND G THE SITUATION OF AGRICULTURE AND THE PEASANTRY BETWEEN 1750 AND 1848 European thinking on the subject of agriculture may be said to have received its impetus around 1750.1 This does not mean that the subject had been absent from the minds of the writers and politicians of previous centuries. In one way or another, it crops up throughout the whole of classical literature since Greek and Roman times, whether in the Eclogues of Theocritus, the Georgics of Virgil, Pliny's lamentation over the Roman latifundia, or—nearer to our own time—in the sixteenth century, in the famous Utopia of Sir Thomas More. But in the second half of the century that saw the birth of the Encyclopaedia, in a climate of effervescent physiocracy, a more scientific awareness of agriculture led to the creation of societies and academies many of which are still in existence. It would be no exaggeration to call this a true awakening of the mind. For, whereas as far back as the seventeenth century arts and letters already had their own institutions, agriculture still had none. In France, for instance, the Académie Française was founded in 1635, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1663 and the Académie des Sciences in 1666, though the only agricultural subject it covered was botany. Not until a century later, in 1761, was the Société Royale d'Agriculture founded, to become in 1915 the Académie d'Agriculture of our time. Similarly, in England, while the Royal Society was set up in 1662, it was only in 1773 that the Board of Agriculture came into being, its members studying inter alia the experience of farmers in various parts of the world. And it was only in 1838, when the Royal Agricultural Society was founded, that England finally acquired a real agricultural academy. In Denmark, on the other hand, the Royal Danish Agricultural Society came into being eight years after the French. 1 Suffice it to recall that the famous Traité sur la nature du commerce en général, in which Cantillon states that land is the source of all wealth, appeared in 1755. Quesnay's Tableau économique appeared in 1758 and Turgot's Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses in 1766. 37 Agricultural organisations and development In other countries, however, while no agricultural academies or societies were set up at the national level, numerous small local societies were founded, paying increasing attention to the problems of the land (the "Societies of the Friends of the Country" in Spain are a typical example). This was followed in the nineteenth century by a tremendous proliferation of agricultural organisations of every kind, including higher agricultural colleges and new scientific institutes dealing with the problems of the land. Parallel to this increase in the scientific interest shown in agriculture, Europe witnessed a real revolution in agricultural methods which, to a certain extent, began in England. In that traditional land of communal agriculture, partly of the open-field variety and based on cereal crops and common pasture land, there was a sudden spurt, from 1760 onwards, by the enclosure movement which throughout Tudor and Stuart times had been making quiet headway, to the advantage of the large landowners.1 This movement had begun to spread as far back as 1720, but its acceleration in 1750 (when enclosure by decree began playing an important part), and the application in 1801 of the General Enclosure Decree contributed not only to the development of mediumsized and large holdings and the adoption of new farming methods (the raising of fat stock, replacement of rye and oats by wheat, introduction of new plants and artificial fodder), but also to the release of excess rural population for the benefit of urban industry. In just over a century—1720 to 1840—this concentration of holdings affected 6.25 million acres and thus laid the foundation of modern British agriculture. In this connexion it should be stressed, as pointed out by J. Pirenne2, that in this country where agriculture had been free for so long, the system of enclosures was evolved not for the benefit of any seigneur and serf system, but for the benefit of capitalist landowners; and this, from the point of view of the evolution of social structures, is of paramount importance. It is true that this reform of land tenure and the drift towards urban industry had their good and bad sides. They opened new prospects for the working class of England; but these benefits were not felt until a century later. More harsh was the fate of nearby Ireland, gradually conquered by England between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries and despoiled of her lands by English overlords, who then had these lands cultivated under a system of tenancy at will. As there were no industries to absorb the excess population, the agrarian problem of Ireland was not "solved", so to speak, until the mass emigrations to America in the following century. 1 See T. S. Ashton: The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 (London, Oxford University Press, 1948), passim; Noilhan: Histoire de l'agriculture à l'ère industrielle, op. cit., Vol. V, Ch. II; Gilbert Slater: The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields (London, London School of Economics, 1896 and 1907). 2 Pirenne, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 29. 38 Europe: historical background Turning now to agriculture in France at the end of the eighteenth century, we find that although in theory serfdom had long been abolished, in practice it still survived in an attenuated form, as mortmain, in the eastern part of the country. Mortmain, either personal or real, determined the peasants' succession rights. In the first case, if a peasant's direct heirs did not live with him, they had no right to his property, not even to his goods and chattels. In the second case, the mortmain affected only mortmainable property occupied by the deceased, leaving him free to dispose of the rest. This still applied to about a million persons.1 In general, French agriculture was dominated by small landowners as well as by farmers and tenants cultivating the land of the privileged class. But, in that country where the nobility, clergy and bourgeoisie of the time owned scarcely half the land2, the movement of prices from 1740 onwards helped to enrich those who cultivated the land at the expense of those who owned it and who had signed long-term leases3; and in spite of the rise in prices which affected the new farmers, France experienced neither the drift from the land to the towns, as in England, nor emigration, as in Ireland. As a result, when the time came for industrialisation after the end of the Ancien Régime, France had at her disposal a relatively small proportion of former agricultural workers, especially as the peasants (the vast majority of whom were already free before the Revolution) took advantage of the sale of national property at the time of the Revolution to round off their plots or open up new holdings. In the nineteenth century the number of small rural landowners rose from 6 to 7.5 million between 1830 and 1850. Thus, for a long time—in fact, until the Second World War—France retained a considerable active agricultural population. And when the co-operatives and trade unions began to make their appearance, they did so later and more slowly than in England, and in a profoundly individualistic rural environment. This, very briefly, is the fairly exceptional situation in these two countries at the end of the eighteenth century. If we extend our survey to the east, north and south, the picture changes considerably. East of France, where the land was generally held by the nobility, the German peasantry was subjected to a variety of legal systems ranging from freedom to serfdom. 1 In spite of the abolition of mortmain in the royal domain, ordered by Necker in 1779, this form of exploitation disappeared completely only at the time of the Revolution. Other forms of exploitation of feudal origin persisted in certain regions of France in the first half of the nineteenth century; see in this respect Albert Soboul: "Survivances 'féodales' dans la société rurale française au XIX me siècle", Les Annales (Paris), No. 5, September-October 1968, pp. 965-986. 2 See Jean Loutchisky: L'état des classes agricoles en France à la veille de la Révolution (Paris, Champion, 1911), pp. 42-43, 45 et seq. 8 See in this connexion C. E. Labrousse: Esquisse du mouvement des prix et des revenus en France au XVUI™ siècle (Paris, Dalloz, 1932). 39 Agricultural organisations and development In south-west Germany (Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria), as a result of successive measures the majority of peasants were free, and although serfs were still to be found—particularly in Bavaria—they were mostly peasants subject to taxation and certain corvées, but not to the arbitrary obligation typical of the Middle Ages, such as tallage, mortmain and "formariage" (which required the serf to obtain the seigneur's permission to marry outside the domain). Unlike the eastern regions, there were no large estates, the land being parcelled and granted by the landowners to the peasants in tenure for life or on a hereditary basis. In general, a serf was no longer bound to the soil as in the Middle Ages, except in Baden where his departure entailed the confiscation of his goods and of the land he held. He was allowed to sell or exchange his tenure or bequeath it to his children even if they belonged to a different domain, for serfdom was personal by virtue of birth and it was frequent for a serf to till the tenure of one seigneur while belonging to another. A similar system prevailed in north-west Germany (Westphalia, Hanover, Lüneburg) where serfdom had also disappeared from practically every region, although traces of the system could still be found in Hanover and the counties of Haya and Diepholz. Those who were born serfs or who became serfs by acquiring land subject to serfdom had certain obligations to the seigneur: without the seigneur's permission they could not sell, mortgage, sue or marry, and they had to pay a due to leave the domain. On the other hand, the dues they were required to pay were equal to or lower than those of free tenants, and in general it may be said that from the economic point of view their position was no worse under one form of tenancy than under the other. Moreover, towards the end of the eighteenth century the gradual emancipation of the serfs began to spread throughout the whole of north-west Germany. As in the south-west of the country, there were no large domains in this region: peasant holdings of medium size were subject to the property rights of the seigneurs and leased by them to farmers on a tenancy (usually six, nine or twelve years) in exchange for certain dues payable in money or kind, sometimes even for a share of the crops equivalent to a quarter or a third of the harvest. This was known as the Meiergut, a rather special system which gradually became transformed into hereditary tenancy. It may be noted that the Meier (tenant) was compensated at the end of his lease for any building he may have erected and any improvements made by him—a remarkable aspect for the times, if we remember that in some countries the question is still being debated of whether tenancy and share-cropping leases should provide for final compensation for improvements made by the tenant. Of course, not all aspects of the Meiergut were positive: the tenant was required to grow certain crops and not others and could not make a change without the permission of his seigneur; he could not share out his holding, which had to go to his eldest 40 Europe: historical background son, and he could be evicted if he failed to work his land adequately. The freedom of the Meier thus differed considerably from that of the farmer of more recent times. Alongside this institution, there were in Lower Saxony systems of hereditary quit-rent tenure under which peasants could cultivate the land with greater freedom and for which the dues payable were lower than was the case for the Meiergut. As Henri See rightly points out, whereas the purpose of the Meiergut was to maintain not only the Meier, but also the landlord, who received a considerable share of the revenue, in the case of quit-rent tenure the seigneur was entitled only to the ordinary revenues of the seigneurial system.1 It should be pointed out that from the point of view of communal organisation the north-west of Germany, like the south-west, was endowed with a solid structure going back to the Middle Ages in all matters concerning justice (the seigneur who rendered justice was not necessarily the same seigneur who owned the land, as was the case east of the Elbe), the upkeep of roads and bridges, customary rights, administration of communal property, the fire service and tax collection. In the south-west it was the Schultheiss (mayor), appointed by the seigneur and paid by the community, who presided over the organisation of the village and sometimes even of its tribunal, which consisted of twelve members. In the north-west it was the Bauermeister (president of the peasant council) who administered the village under the supervision of the prince's officials. But the village community here enjoyed a great degree of independence. Its members all enjoyed the same democratic right to vote. As an organisation, the community was free from the authority of the landowner in all matters concerning private law, since his authority extended only to individual members; for public law, the community was placed under the supervision of the princely state.2 East of the Elbe, where large estates were exploited directly by their owners, the situation was entirely different. Just as the origin of the latifundia in Spain may be situated at the time of the Reconquest (i.e. of territories occupied by the Arabs), in eastern Germany the Thirty Years War, with its devastations and the departure of the peasants from their land, contributed to the formation of large estates by the simple annexation of abandoned tenures. The same phenomenon may be found elsewhere; in Bohemia the Hussite Wars, in the fifteenth century, were its cause; in the Baltic region it was the result of successive wars which set those territories aflame during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. 1 Henri Sée: Esquisse d'une histoire du régime agraire en Europe aux XVIII™' et XlXm* siècles (Paris, Bibliothèque internationale d'économie politique, 1921), p. 73. 2 ibid., p. 80. 41 Agricultural organisations and development The existence of large estates in eastern Europe is connected with the fact that the peasant is bound to the soil. In certain regions (Holstein, Pomerania, Mecklemburg, Livonia, eastern Austria and Poland), the seigneur held the power of life and death over his subjects and could sell them simply as slaves. Elsewhere his subject was legally free and could dispose of his goods and chattels ; but he was in fact reduced to a state of serfdom through numerous ties with the seigneur. The landed aristocrats of German origin who reigned over the Slav populations dominated the State by their political power; it was as if they were ruling a conquered people. After the Thirty Years War Electoral Saxony witnessed the development of the notion of compulsory service by peasants (Gesindezwangsdienst) against payment of a meagre wage.1 This service, which initially was restricted to one year's work for the seigneur, was extended to four years in 1766. Moreover, the subjects were compelled to perform a multitude of corvées which the landed aristocracy attempted to increase, at the same time reducing the development of home industries in order to have more manpower at its disposal. Between 1764 and 1766 the government introduced a whole series of new measures, in spite of the opposition of the universities and the city dwellers: industry and commerce could be carried on only in the cities, hawking was forbidden, there was to be only one haberdasher in each village, special permission was required to establish workshops or factories in rural areas, and finally no child over the age of 14 was allowed to leave the country or become apprenticed to a factory without having worked for four years in agriculture. In this way the nobility, which held discretionary powers of justice and police and issued economic regulations, established a system which may be termed a system of forced labour on a time basis. In countries under the Prussian monarchy2 where the situation had been deteriorating since the end of the fifteenth century, following the Hussite Wars, German seigneurs practised a policy of gradual aggrandisement of their domains either through expropriation pure and simple, or by transforming hereditary possessions into tenancy at will, or else by increasing the corvées imposed upon the peasants. In any case, the latter were frequently too poor to buy a tenure and were content to farm the land for life, such tenure being termed Lassgut, from which they derive their name of "lassite" peasants. 1 For further details see Fr.-Joh. Haun: Bauer und Gutsherr in Kursachsen (Strasbourg, Social Science Seminar, 1891). 8 See Georg Friedrich Knapp: Die Bauernbefreiung und der Ursprung der Landarbeiter in den älteren Theilen Preussens (Leipzig, 1887), 2 vols. ; Grundherrschaft und Rittergut, Vorträge, nebst biographischen Beilagen (Leipzig, 1897). See also Philipp August Meitzen: Der Boden und die landwirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse des preussischen Staates (Berlin, 1868-1908), 8 vols. 42 Europe: historical background The farmer thus held the land on a tenure at will and at his death it reverted automatically to the seigneur. In practice the latter transferred the land to one of the children of the "lassite". Contrary to the situation prevailing in north-west Germany the "lassite" did not receive any compensation for the improvements made to his tenancy, and naturally enough this did little to encourage the development of agriculture. Moreover, in the eighteenth century the tendency was to render tenure even more precarious by fixing a term to the leases (from three to nine years) which served to decrease yet further the farmers' interest in any long-term improvement of crops or rural dwellings.1 Here the peasant was deprived of any possibility of claiming his rights ; magistfates' courts or the agents who in western Germany represented at one and the same time the inhabitants and the seigneur, did not exist on the territories of the Prussian monarchy. There the power of the seigneur was absolute. The same considerations apply to Lower Silesia, which was integrated into the Prussian monarchy in 1763. However, the Thirty Years War, which in other regions was the source of the Lassgut system, hardly affected this province, and here the peasants, although obliged to perform certain corvées for the seigneur, could dispose of their tenure and pass it on to their heirs provided they made no attempt to divide it.2 This brief survey would not give a faithful picture of the situation if it omitted to take into account the Crown domains, which covered one-quarter of the land and where the sovereigns (moved by considerations which without doubt sprang from an economic rather than a humanitarian source) attempted to raise the technical level of agriculture, realising that this would likewise require a change in the social condition of the peasants. Under Frederick William I (1688-1740) government policy, guided by the king, tended towards the suppression of serfdom. The "Sergeant-King" rightly believed that in the hands of free men hereditary tenure would promote agriculture progress. However, this freedom was still of a limited nature, for the peasant remained 1 The problem of precarious tenure is stressed in this study, because it is still present in many countries even in our days. One of the arguments most frequently invoked by specialists of agrarian law against restricted tenancies (fermage à temps) is precisely the fact that by discouraging the farmer the whole economic development of rural areas is impeded. 2 This policy of parcenary of land was not devoid of meaning. The authorities were doubtless aware of the fact that below a certain size the tenancy became too small to be viable. The problem of an endless sharing-out of land is still very acute in several regions of Western Europe where the trend is towards a policy based on the creation of self-supporting family units. On the subject of the drawbacks arising out of the conception of property in the French civil code it may be useful to refer to A. Poulain: "L'évolution du droit rural", (in Noilhan: op. cit., Vol. V, pp. 624-652), which also contains comments on other European countries. Concerning Spain, for instance, a country which French influence makes a typical example, see Alberto Bailarín: Derecho agrario (Madrid, 1965), Ch. VI and VII. 43 Agricultural organisations and development bound to the domain and subject to compulsory service. This policy, which at the time had no practical effect in view of the considerable resistance it encountered from officials and from the peasants themselves, was finally developed under Frederick II; servitude was abolished on Crown lands in 1763, compulsory labour under constraint was forbidden in 1767, and in 1804 the Ordinance of Schön finally established the personal liberty of the peasants on the royal domains. Unfortunately, on private domains all these measures remained practically without effect in spite of the personal efforts of Frederick II. Only in the course of the nineteenth century did the emancipation of the peasants begin to acquire its full meaning. A situation similar to that of eastern Germany prevailed in law or in fact in the northern countries, with the exception of Norway, a nation of landowning peasants without a traditional aristocracy and where in 1814 the people compelled Bernadotte to accept a liberal constitution and a Storting elected by landowners and city burghers. True, Sweden and Finland too had traditional representative institutions in which peasants and burghers participated ; but in Sweden, although there was no serfdom (except in Pomerania1), the Diet was in fact only a delegation of landed nobility from the south and confined itself to registering the laws dictated by the latter (it was only in 1862 that Sweden acquired the modern parliamentary system); and in Finland, which showed similar characteristics, the situation was aggravated by the fact that in culture and language the aristocracy was alien to the peasant classes of the country. In the two duchies of Schleswig-Holstein serfdom predominated, with all its obligations : marriage, choice of trade, departure from the domain possible only with the consent of the seigneur. This situation was remedied only at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by the Ordinances of 1803-1805 which abolished serfdom. The same problems, with slight variations, were to be found in Denmark where the peasants, who were free in the Middle Ages, became gradually bound to the soil in the course of the sixteenth century. It is true that Christian IV had already emancipated his serfs in 1620 on part of his domains but the almost unanimous opposition of the Diet prevented him from extending this measure in 1634 to Zeeland and Laaland. When in 1702 Frederick IV decreed the abolition of serfdom in these provinces the edict remained a dead letter. Indeed, until the end of the eighteenth century the situation continued to deteriorate as far as the peasantry was concerned. In spite of the abolition 1 See C.-Joh. Fuchs: Der Untergang des Bauernstandes und das Aufkommen der Gutsherrschaften in Neu-Vorpommern und Rügen (Strasbourg, Social Science Seminar, 1888), fase. 6. 44 Europe: historical background of serfdom by an Ordinance of 20 June 1788 effective emancipation did not take place until the following century.1 In the motley assembly of countries under the Austrian monarchy2 there were, as in Germany, some differences between the eastern and western parts of the region. In the west, the seigneurial system was predominant; in the east, the Gutsherrschaft held sway—a similar system, but based on the latifundian principle. Here too, the Hussite Wars and the Thirty Years War contributed to an increase in the seigneurial holdings, for the benefit of a class which in many places was completely foreign to the local peasantry from not only the linguistic but also the religious and the ethnic points of view. It may be noted that while in Austria itself—particularly in Upper Austria—the bondage of the peasants was less harsh than in eastern Germany, in Bohemia, a country of latifundia, the situation was very different. As in the case of Moravia and Silesia, authority was vested entirely in the seigneur who was not only competent in matters of civil and criminal justice, police and taxation, but also had the monopoly of productive activities (brewing, distillation and sale of alcoholic beverages, commerce in general) and compelled his subjects to buy all their implements, cattle, seeds, etc., from him. Here the virtually landless peasantry may be divided in three classes: the Bauern (cultivators) who held their land under hereditary tenure or at will and were thus able to subsist; the Häusler (small farmers) who had a house but very little land and were consequently forced to hire themselves out to the seigneur; andfinallythe Meute (journeymen) who had neither house nor land and were merely wage earners. The whole of this peasantry depended on the large domains of the seigneur and was subject to the obligations and corvées, whether ordinary or extraordinary, already described with regard to eastern Germany. However, the reforms carried out by Maria Theresa and Joseph II should not be overlooked. Both the empress and her son helped to improve the lot 1 The emancipation of the Danish peasant in fact goes back to 1861, when the corvée disappeared completely. It was also in the 1860s that agriculture, which until then had been stagnant, began to react. The loss of Schleswig-Holstein to Bismarck's Germany in 1864 gave it its impetus. This was marked particularly by the establishment of the Hedeselskabet (a society for the reclamation of heath lands) which, adopting the motto "What was lost without shall be regained within", reclaimed some 2 million acres in a few years and, with the tenacity characteristic of northerners, established 25,000 new farms. It is paradoxical to think that this country, now in the vanguard of agricultural progress, was one of the last Western countries to make a start during the last century. For more details see Noilhan, op. cit., Ch. IV, pp. 388-395; also C. Christensen: Agrarhistoriske Studier (Copenhagen, 18861891), 2 vols. a See Karl Grünberg: Die Bauernbefreiung und die Auflösung des gutsherrlich-bäuerlichen Verhältnisses in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien (Leipzig, 1894), 2 vol.; Georg Grüll: Bauer, Herr und Landesfürst, Sozialrevolutionäre Bestrebungen der oberösterreichischen Bauern von 1650 bis 1848 (Cologne, 1963), particularly Ch. IV, pp. 363-419, and Ch. V, pp. 421-439. 45 Agricultural organisations and development of agriculture in the second half of the eighteenth century. A legislative evolution begun in 1750 led to the gradual emancipation of the peasants from the hold of the seigneurs. A first stage carried out under Maria Theresa dealt mainly with the regulation of charges. In Silesia, where peasant revolts had taken place, the duration of the corvées was determined by statute in 1771. In 1772 this was done in Lower Austria, and in 1775 in Moravia and Bohemia. On the other hand the efforts undertaken in Hungary between 1766 and 1768 failed due to the opposition of the Diet; it was only in 1790 that the regulations were provisionally recognised. The second stage under Joseph II, the friend of the physiocrats, saw a rapid acceleration in this evolution. Serfdom was abolished in quick succession in Austria (1781), Transylvania (1783) and Hungary (1785). Henceforth peasants were no longer compelled to pay dues to the seigneur before they could get married, nor to solicit his permission in order to take up a trade. They were even allowed to leave the domain without paying anything, on condition that they asked the seigneur's permission—for the abolition of serfdom did not mean the abolition of all obedience. Joseph went still further; he did away with the Zwangsdienst (compulsory service for young men) and restricted the powers of the seigneurs in matters of criminal justice. He also tried to apply some other measures relating to the transformation of precarious tenure into hereditary tenure, the introduction of a single land tax, the creation of a general land register (which was completed in 1789) and finally the transformation of all seigneurial services connected with tenure into monetary dues freely agreed between the seigneurs and their subjects. Although this last measure did not affect the landless peasants, who were directly bound to the domains, it was too much for the patience of the seigneurs, and the reaction of the Estates was such that in 1790 Joseph was forced to repeal it in Hungary and give up the idea of applying it elsewhere. At the end of the eighteenth century the limit had for the moment been reached : the time was not yet ripe for the total emancipation of the peasantry, which occurred only half a century later under the pressure of events. The situation was much worse in Russia \ where the peasants, who had been free during the Middle Ages, had been under bondage to the nobility since the sixteenth century, and particularly so since the promulgation of the 1649 Code under Alexei Mikhailovitch. From that time onward the inscription of the peasant on the tax roll marked his perpetual bondage to the domain as a serf and became a rule of public law. The peasant was part of the goods 1 In addition to the numerous untranslated Russian sources, it may be useful to consult Peter I. Lyashchenko: History of the National Economy of Russia (New York, Macmillan, 1949), particularly Ch. XV, XVII, XX and XXI. 46 Europe: historical background sold with the domain. Later, in the eighteenth century, he could even be separated from the land and sold or exchanged as a simple personal chattel. The census of 1741 merely aggravated the situation, for the authorities took advantage of it to assign to nobles men who until then had been free but who had the misfortune of not belonging to the established classes: i.e. nobles, government officials, clergy or traders. As Henri See points out: The peasant no longer has any real guarantee: he is handed over body and soul to his seigneur. In 1762 it is declared that there is no law under which a seigneur may be punished for murdering a serf. Seigneurial justice is expressly recognised and extended. A ukase of 13 December 1760 gives landowners the right to deliver their serfs to the authorities and have them sent to Siberia if they have committed a serious offence. In the case of revolt it is recommended that military chiefs should punish or reprieve serfs only according to the wish of their owner.1 For a long time this situation remained unchanged, in spite of the current of reform which crossed the Russian frontiers. Jacques-Jean Sievers, a favourite of Catherine II, proposed a whole string of reforms relating to the cultivation of lands and the criminal justice meted out by seigneurs, but failed to set up a purely academic agricultural society. Alexander Nicolaievitch Radichev was sent to Siberia on his return from Europe in 1790 for having dared to describe the lot of Russian peasants. In the second half of the eighteenth century serfdom, which until then had been predominant in Great Russia, extended to other regions of the empire : White Russia, following its annexation in 1772; Little Russia in 1783, after the revolt of the Zaporozhian Cossacks ; Crimea, Caucasus and South Russia in 1796, under Paul I. It was abolished only in March 1861, by Alexander II, following a long series of events to which reference will be made later. To conclude this survey, we should take a look at the countries of the south where in spite of a few tremors of a purely transient nature, time seems virtually to have stood still in the rural areas. It is true that serfdom was unknown in these regions. But that did not prevent the peasants from being oppressed by taxes, insufficient wages and lack of land. There is almost everywhere a sharp division which has caused much ink toflow,right up to the present day : on the one hand, the north and its minifundia system where the peasant struggled under a subsistence economy; and on the other, the south with its latifundia 1 Henri Sée, op. cit., p. 178. The Moscow Gazette of 1801 still carried advertisements such as the following, which is a striking illustration of the situation of the serfs: "For sale, three coachmen, well-trained and of good build, and two girls, one eighteen and the other fifteen years old, both of good appearance and skilful in various handiworks. In the same house, for sale, two hairdressers: one aged twenty-one, able to read, write, play musical instruments and act as a studgroom; the other is able to dress the hair of ladies and gentlemen. In the same house, for sale, pianos and organs." Quoted by D. McKenzie-Wallace: Russia (London, 1879), 2 vols. 47 Agricultural organisations and development where, deprived of ownership, he was merely a wage earner on a large estate. Sometimes wefindthe two systems existing side by side, as well as mixed forms of farming. In Italy, in northern Lombardy and Venetia, the peasant was a small landowner on the mountain slopes or a tenant farmer or share-cropper working the lands of the nobility in the plains. In Tuscany, he was usually a share-cropper; in Parma and the Romagna, he was the owner of smallholdings. But as soon as we go south, whether to the Roman countryside, Naples or Sicily, we find only day-labourers working on the large domains. Here evolution was much slower than in the north, so much so that it was only after the Second World War, at the time of the Vanoni Plan, that the problem of the Mezzogiorno began to receive serious attention. A similar and perhaps more pronounced duality characterised the Iberian peninsula where the peasantry, free but for the greater part destitute, was crushed beneath the burden of the social and economic structures handed down from the sixteenth century practically unaltered. Portugal experienced hardly any change throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Spain quite simply failed to pass into the modern era. In the eighteenth century under Charles III, the whole "Enlightenment" movement took an interest in the peasantry, and Jovellanos, particularly, came to grips with the substance of the problem in his report on agrarian law (Informe sobre la Ley Agraria) submitted to the Council of Castilla in 1795. In his opinion, the peasantry was then faced with three types of obstacles: (1) political obstacles, resulting from legislation; (2) moral obstacles, resulting from opinion; (3) physical obstacles, resulting from nature. In the first group of obstacles were the following: the baldíos (waste land), given over since the sixteenth century to cattle-breeders who, moreover, had the right to graze their herds on private pasture lands; mainmortable lands, which placed a large part of the agricultural acreage outside the economic circuit ; obstacles to the free circulation of agricultural produce ;finally,excessive taxation levied on small-holders. In the second category Jovellanos included the ignorance of labourers, the absence of centres teaching agronomy, and the insufficient protection given by the government to agriculture which it crushed under all sorts of burdens from which other sectors of the nation's economy were exempt. Finally, in the third series he included the absence of irrigation canals, the absence of land and river communications and the insufficient number of commercial ports. Jovellanos suggested several solutions to these problems, including: the sale of the baldíos and municipal lands; the transfer of ownership over redeemed lands belonging to the nobility, the clergy, the military orders and municipalities, in order to put them back into the economic circuit and thus create a middle 48 Europe: historical background class of labourers; freedom of trade; revision of the taxation system; the creation of agricultural institutes for the education of landowners; the elimination of illiteracy in rural areas and the provision of agricultural handbooks for peasants relating to their work. In short, he sketched out a whole programme which, sadly, his contemporaries did not follow up.1 A few years later the revolt of the Spanish people against the French invasion put an end to liberal ideas, at the same time destroying the Francophile movement (that of the afrancesados) to which most of the reformers of the time belonged. Even the reform of Mendizabal, which came into effect in 1835, failed to reach to the roots of the problem, although by selling the property of the clergy and finally cancelling the legal bonds of the mortmains he helped to break down the ancient structures and promoted the ascension of a landowning bourgeoisie. But the poor peasants could not afford to buy the lands put up for sale, and as a result these frequently served to increase the size of existing latifundia or to create new estates. Thus between the minifundian north and the latifundian south a tragic dichotomy was created which persists even in our times. Such, in its broad lines, was the situation of the agricultural world at the time of the French Revolution : full of hope in some countries of the west, where the peasantry was rapidly moving towards modern production methods ; apparently without hope in the north and east, where the old régime was due to crumble in the next decades; stagnant in the south for a long time yet. But the year 1789 was also the prelude to the great Napoleonic adventure which, with or without the consent of the countries concerned, was to spread liberal ideas throughout Europe either purely and simply by applying the decrees of the Convention in regions invaded or temporarily annexed by France, or by the introduction of liberal constitutions following the anti-Bonaparte wars. The decrees of the Convention relating to the rights of the seigneurs were applied in Belgium on 5 November 1795. In Holland the constitutions of 1801 and 1804 abolished these rights and freed the land from any feudal servitudes (certain rights, reintroduced in 1814, werefinallyabolished in 1848). The whole of the left bank of the Rhine was subject to French legislation, and this also applied in the Hanseatic countries where the rights of the seigneurs were suppressed by decrees of 1811. Similarly in Westphalia, which was a Napoleonic kingdom, the constitution of 1807 abolished without compensation the remaining vestiges of serfdom 1 For more details see: Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos: Informe sobre la Ley Agraria (Madrid, Rivadeneyra, 1859); Jean Sarrailh: L'Espagne éclairée de la second moitié du XVIII™ siècle (Paris, Klincksieck, 1954), Ch. I, pp. 7-24. 49 Agricultural organisations and development and arbitrary corvées. In Württemberg in 1808 King Frederick allowed peasants to redeem their charges; in 1817 a new law abolished serfdom, but this was not applied until 1846 and then only in certain of the nobility's domains. In the meantime the laws of 27 and 28 October 1836 allowed peasants to redeem themselves from having to pay dues in money or in kind. In Bavaria the process of emancipation also began in 1808, with the edict of 31 August abolishing serfdom and servitudes and the remaining traces of Zwangsdienst without, however, affecting the system of seigneurial property. In Baden, where serfdom had already been eliminated in 1781 by the Margrave Charles Frederick, a follower of the physiocrats, the first law enabling peasants to buy their freedom from the services due to the landlord and the corvées due to the judiciary seigneur was enacted in 1820. In Electoral Hesse the code of 1811 abolished serfdom, services due and corvées. However, after the fall of Napoleon all the ancient rights were restored in this country, which had been annexed to the kingdom of Westphalia. Naturally enough, the peasants reacted against this, but as stressed by Friedrich Lütge : in spite of all the suggestions and complaints presented to the Elector the latter could not make up his mind to take the measures which would ensure radical reform. Thefirstlaws authorising peasants to redeem all services, tithes and other obligations due to the seigneur were passed only on 5 January 1831 and 23 June 1832. It was up to the peasants to ask to be allowed to redeem themselves. However, in Hesse the peasants were almost all destitute and it would have been impossible for them to bear the cost of this redemption (which amounted to twenty times the annual income). Thus a second law was passed creating a Rural Credit Fund guaranteed by the state, which granted loans to the peasants at favourable conditions.1 In Hanover at about the same time, the emancipation of the peasants was proclaimed by a law of 10 November 1831, a consequence of the 1830 revolution, entailing the abolition of personal charges and the redemption of seigneurial rights. The revolution of 1848 completed the elimination of the old régime both here and in the whole of western Germany.2 The whole of this great movement, for the time being confined to one part of western Europe, favoured not only the emancipation of the peasants but also the application of the flood of remarkable scientific achievements in 'Friedrich Lütge: Geschichte der deutschen Agrarverfassung vom frühen Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 219. It should be noted that the Rural Credit Fund of Hesse was the second of the kind instituted in Germany at the time. The first was that of Saxony, established a few months earlier under the law of 17 March 1832. ibid., p. 220. a For further details see Ph. Sagnac: Le Rhin français pendant la Révolution et l'Empire (Paris, Alean, 1917), passim; Sée, op. cit., Part II, Ch. III; Lütge, op. cit., Ch. V; Wilhelm Abel: Die drei Epochen der deutschen Agrargeschichte (Hanover, 1964), p. 93 in particular. 50 Europe: historical background agriculture. For between 1750 and 1800 it had already been realised almost everywhere that a change in the economic and social structures of agriculture was essential, otherwise production could be neither increased nor diversified. And everywhere where reforms occurred, it must be said that they corresponded to objective needs. If, for instance, we were to take England, we would see that the retention of the open-field system would have been incompatible with agricultural progress, and would have caused a grave problem for the new industrial society. Since in each parish the open-field system was based on common cultivation of the fields, in which the plots of individual holders were intermingled, any change or improvement had to be decided by the community; and agreement was by no means always reached. Enclosure encouraged the progress of crops and helped tp delimit cattle pastures; it increased soil productivity and aided the transition from a type of agiculture based on triennial crop rotation and sheep-breeding to a system in which the raising of fat stock and crop rotation over four years (with the introduction of new crops, particularly for fodder) acquired primary importance. In France, notwithstanding a regression between 1770 and 1789, it may be said that agricultural methods which had remained unchanged from the Middle Ages until 1750 suddenly underwent a remarkable transformation. In the words of O. Festy : From about 1750 onwards, various factors contributed to the elaboration of an agricultural programme in France which, being an ideal replacement for the old accepted practices, was adopted by all the agronomists, scientists, economists and enlightened landowners in France at that time.1 The gradual elimination of fallow land, first to grow fodder and then to grow root and tuber crops, was one of the great achievements of agriculture for it made it possible to recover a third, or even half, of the agricultural surface otherwise left fallow. To these factors of a purely technical nature should be added the remarkable dissemination of agricultural literature in rural areas, both in France and in England. In the latter country, the first issue of the Farmer's Magazine appeared as early as 1776.2 All this went hand-in-hand with the rapid development of scientific research: the empirical cross-breeding methods of Robert Bakeweld in Leicestershire increased the yield of horned cattle; the use of marl, clover and artificial fodder by Coke of Holkham carried the fame of Norfolk agriculture far and wide. It is easy to 1 O. Festy: "L'agriculture pendant la Révolution française: les journaux d'agriculture et le progrès agricole", Revue d'histoire économique et sociale CParis), Vol. XXVIII, 1950, No. 1, p. 35. 2 Ashton, op. cit., p. 83. 51 Agricultural organisations and development understand why Marc Bloch stressed the influence of the English innovators (who were in turn influenced by their Flemish counterparts) in French agricultural circles.1 One may well agree with P. Mantoux that, in both England and France, and bearing in mind a certain time lag, the foundation of modern agriculture had been firmly established when large-scale industry made its appearance. It only remained to oust the last of the old routine habits.2 After the year 1800 scientific progress began to make great strides throughout the whole of Europe. It is sufficient to recall here the work of Liebig, Chevreul and Dumas, who revealed the agricultural value of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potassium and lime, and thus contributed to the progress achieved in fertilisers and the increased yield of land. Mention should also be made of the improvement in farming equipment as a result of the application by Fowler, in 1851, of steam to ploughing. It was at this time that the plough was perfected by the improvement of the mould-board, of the shape of its sole, and of its regulating lever, due in part to the work of Mathieu de Dombasle, Fondeur and Bella. At the same time new forms of harrows made their appearance: coupled harrows in England, rolling harrows in Norway and France, making it easier to use the seed drills invented at the beginning of the century by James Smith and Robert Salomon of Woburn. From then onwards the number of inventions increased tremendously: as an example, at the 1853 Universal Exhibition in Paris no fewer than thirty-two types of seed drill were on show. That same year Europe imported from the United States the mowing machine invented by Wood, preceded in 1852 by MacCormick's mechanical harvester. These discoveries spread throughout agricultural circles, all the more so since the coming of the railways provided greater facilities for the exchange of information to develop the economy of rural areas which had been cut off until then, thus fostering the transition from a subsistence economy to a market economy. This scientific and technical progress also had its effect in eastern Europe where the old triennial crop rotation system was gradually abandoned, first in favour of alternate crops, then in favour of intensified cultivation helped by chemical fertilisers. But here the old patterns persisted, opposing a true development of the rural sector, and although voices were raised calling for the necessary reforms, they remained unheeded. Thus, when the universities of Electoral Saxony demanded freedom for peasants and their children to enable them to take up manufacturing employment and thus to contribute 1 Marc Bloch: Les caractères originaux de l'histoire rurale française (Oslo, Instituttet for sammenlignende Kulturforskning, 1931), p. 220. 2 P. Mantoux: La révolution industrielle au XVIll™ siècle (Paris, Génin, 1959), p. 155. 52 Europe: historical background to the development of industry, the government ignored them. The same fate befell the protest of the Economic Society of Leipzig, founded in 1764, when it criticised serfdom, Gesindedienst and the corvées. The government sided systematically with the large landowners who wished to keep their labour on the spot. Even the protests of the economist Kleefeld in 1783 against fallow land and vain pasture fell on deaf ears. Not until 1832 did the government, prompted by the imperative needs of industry, introduce thefirstreforms. Of course this was an extreme case, where agriculture was curbed in all its aspects. The situation was not the same in all countries and if, in other lands, it left much to be desired on the social plane, on the technical plane mention should be made of the efforts undertaken since the eighteenth century by certain leaders and a minority of far-sighted men in order to improve and modernise agriculture. Taking Austria as an example, we find that the first royal agricultural society, which was a forerunner of the present-day agricultural society and the Landeskulturrat, goes back to January 1766. Between 1770 and 1780, as G. Grüll points out, a number of measures were taken to further technical development, such as the fight against harmful insects, the importation of merino sheep to improve wool quality and the introduction of bonuses to encourage bee-keeping.1 In Styria, Archduke John gave active encouragement to cultivation in the mountainous areas in 1819 and established a local agricultural society, followed in 1844 by the Agricultural Society for Upper Austria—which two years later already had over 2,000 members in twenty-six local groups; he also published a number of first-class papers on the subject. However, it should be said that "with three or four exceptions these local groups were made up not of peasants but of property administrators, rich brewers, millers and priests".2 That is the nub of the problem. In spite of the abolition of serfdom in 1781 the peasant was still a man who was more or less bound to the soil and crushed by taxation and corvées. Crushed, but not resigned. As early as 1754 there were already cases of revolt against the corvées (particularly during the period 1754-78); in 1784-87 there was a succession of complaints against the landed seigneurs; and during the wars against France between 1794 and 1809, the countryside was in turmoil. From 1800, leaders appeared up and down the country, particularly in Upper Austria, and revolts occurred in rapid succession: the uprisings organised by Andreas Resch between 1816 and 1833, the struggles of the Seitlschlag peasants against the convent of Schlägl between 1820 and 1834 over forestry rights, the uprisings of the Schwertberg peasants against the new corvées imposed on them between 1822 and 1829, and finally 1 Grüll, op. cit., p. 418. • ibid., p. 419. 53 Agricultural organisations and development the revolts organised between 1819 and 1849 by the famous Kalchgruber, whose real name was Michel Huemer.1 With certain differences the same situation could be found in other parts of Europe. The kings of Prussia carried out a considerable amount of colonisation in the course of the eighteenth century and abolished serfdom on Crown lands. On 27 July 1808 they went so far as to turn the peasants of the domain into landowners, and while the acquisition of land was optional in the Kurmark and in Pomerania, it was compulsory in Prussia; 30,000 private estates thus arose on the State domain. In the meantime private domains were also affected by government decisions. On 9 October 1807 the first Prussian edict on the subject appeared, "an edict to facilitate the possession and free use of immovable property and bring under regulation the personal relationship between the inhabitants of the countryside". This instrument, which accurately reflected the policy of Stein and which was supplemented by the publicandum of 8 April 1809, resulted in the suppression of such servile charges as the payment for authorisation to leave the domain, the Gesindedienst and the authorisation to marry or to learn a trade. Moieover, on the pretext of abolishing all legal distinction between the various types of property, the restrictions protecting peasant tenures were abolished and it was stipulated that both the peasants and the nobles could henceforth buy and sell land. In fact, these measures simply helped to increase the domains of the nobility, who were the only ones capable of buying land; and although certain legal aspects of the problem were settled, from the structural point of view it became even more acute. Hardenberg, Stein's successor, attempted to go still further and to impose on the assembly of nobles of the country a project under which tenants would be given ownership of the land they held on life, hereditary or temporary tenure, without any compensation for the seigneur. In addition, Hardenberg^ project provided for the abolition of the last charges and rights of the seigneurs which burdened the land. The nobility's opposition ensured the project's failure, and in its place an edict was adopted on 14 September 1811 under which tenants could become owners provided they abandoned to the seigneurs a third of the hereditary tenure or half the life or temporary tenure. This was tantamount to encouraging the creation of minifundia beside the large estates while ensuring the existence of a docile labour force anxious to supplement its gains by undertaking paid work for the seigneur {mutatis mutandis, the same situation may be found in many places in the present-day world). However, the emancipatory legislation gradually continued to gain 1 64 Grüll, op. cit., p. 609. Europe: historical background ground, particularly with the prorogation of the ordinance of 7 June 1821, and most of the remaining rights and charges were abolished one after the other. In 1845, three years before the events of 1848, the reforms were practically complete. But here, as elsewhere, it was the revolution which did away with the last vestiges of the feudal system, if not of the domanial economy. EVOLUTION BETWEEN 1848 AND THE END OF SERFDOM IN RUSSIA IN 1861 It cannot be said that the revolution of 1848 burst upon Europe like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky. The events of that year, which were of such significance for the history of the peasantry, were everywhere preceded by a long and painful crisis in agricultural production. This began in Ireland in 1845 with the potato disease which destroyed the crop, causing, according to conservative estimates, half a million deaths1, and then spread to Europe through Flanders, the Netherlands and Germany. This disaster was followed by the bad cereal harvest of 1846 which doubled and even trebled the price of wheat in western and central Europe. The social consequences of this were all the more profound and violent in that potatoes and cereals were the very basis of the workers' diet.2 In England, where there was widespread unemployment, workers organised strikes and demonstrations and looted shops in the towns during the winter of 1847-48. In western and central France, peasants and workers hampered the transport of grain, looting the convoys. In Wallonia, organised, bands reached Brussels, where a revolt broke out in March 1847, and subsequently invaded the north of France. This profound crisis in western European agriculture was the background to the revolution of 1848. The movement began in Italy, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies where with the support of Austria Ferdinand II attempted in vain to set his absolutism against the constitutional current which carried along the other Italian sovereigns. Popular uprisings in Naples and Palermo 1 See in this connexion Cecil Woodham-Smith: The Great Hunger (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1962; New York, Harper, 1963). Mrs. Woodham-Smith puts the number of deaths resulting from the famine at over a million. a This may be seen from the following gripping description by Engels which refers to 1844-45: "The usual food of an industrial worker obviously varies according to his salary. The better paid, particularly those factory workers each member of whose family is able to earn something, have, as long as it lasts, good food, meat every day and in the evening bacon and cheese. But in families earning less, meat is eaten only on Sundays or two or three times a week, but there are more potatoes and bread; if we go further down the scale we find that food of animal origin is reduced to a few bits of bacon, mixed with potatoes; lower still bacon, too, disappears and there only remain cheese, bread, porridge and potatoes, until we reach the lowest degree of all with the Irish, for whom potatoes are the only food." Friedrich Engels: The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford, Blackwell, 1958). 55 Agricultural organisations and development forced him to grant his people a constitution similar to that which had been adopted in France in 1830. A month later, revolution broke out in Paris. Louis-Philippe did not accept the electoral reforms proposed by the opposition and was forced by the people to abdicate in favour of his grandson, the Comte de Paris. From capital to capital the revolutionary movement spread across several countries of Europe. In France it was above all the workers of Paris, who were then beset by unemployment, who rallied to the cause. As the peasantry had already been freed by the 1789 revolution, they did not as yet participate in the movement, even though crippling mortgage rates and oppressive taxation had brought them to a critical phase. 1 In central Europe, however, the revolutionary impetus helped, if not to crack the very structure of domanial property, at least to break down some of the feudal bonds which still subsisted in rural areas. In February 1848 revolts broke out in the Land of Baden, in Electoral Hesse, in Württemberg, in Saxony; and one after another the governments yielded up their power to the men of the left who embodied opposition to absolutism. In March the revolt spread to Silesia, where the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg had failed to break completely the bonds of vassalage. It may be said that in Germany the situation was even more complex than elsewhere because of the existence of a mediatised nobility which did not directly depend upon the Empire. As Lautenschlager rightly points out: The struggle was not confined to a class struggle between nobility and peasantry but also reflected a political and legal conflict between the sovereign and the mediatised nobility. But it was not possible to satisfy the demands of the peasants unless this conflict were settled in favour of the sovereign. In order to achieve this, the governments of the various states had to have the strength to make the state laws prevail against the laws of the other parties concerned. The events of 1848 forced them to take measures and it was for this reason that the "anti-feudal laws" were among the first results of the revolution of 1848.2 At the time of these events in Germany, riots were beginning to erupt in Vienna too. Under pressure from the emperor, Metternich (that henchman of all absolutist régimes) resigned from office. The news spread like wildfire throughout the Austrian Empire, where the oppressed classes and nationalities "In February 1848 the provinces did not respond to the Paris uprising. The people from the countryside entered the political arena only after the election of Louis-Napoleon as president in December, and particularly after the rural population had voted massively in favour of the "Montagne" at the elections for the Legislative Assembly. See the thesis of Philippe Vigier: La Seconde République dans la région alpine (étude portant sur cinq départements) (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), 2 vols., and by the same author: La Monarchie de Juillet (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1962). 8 Friedrich Lautenschlager: Die Agrarunruhen in den badischen Standes- und Grundherrschaften im Jahre 1848 (Heidelberg, 1915), p. 3. 56 Europe: historical background were waiting only for a favourable occasion to press their claims. On 3 March Kossuth had already protested in the Lower Hungarian Chamber against Austrian absolutism, and had demanded a national government for Hungary. The petition voted by the Chamber, which took advantage of popular unrest in order to vote equality in taxation and redemption of feudal charges at the same time, was accepted in Vienna on 16 March, and on 30 March Hungary became an independent State within the Empire. Meanwhile, in Bohemia, the Assembly, meeting in Prague, had sent to Vienna a petition which concerned only the right of assembly, the abolition of feudal rights and a closer union with Moravia and Silesia. But the delegation which was to transmit the petition was overtaken by events; the Czech democrats and nationalists had in the meantime prepared a new petition to the effect that Bohemia should have a special minister who would be responsible to a Diet enjoying administrative autonomy. The government in Vienna, faced with a serious insurrection in Italy, where Venice and Milan had rebelled upon receiving the news of the Viennese insurrection, gave in on every count, and a de facto Czech government was formed in Prague under the presidency of the Governor of Bohemia. Moreover, at Press burg on 15 April the Emperor Ferdinand I confirmed all the Hungarian petitions, accepting in the Diet a series of constitutional laws relating to universal suffrage, freedom of the press and (for the peasants) the repeal of feudal laws. Ten days later in Vienna, Pillersdorf, the Minister of the Interior, proclaimed a constitution modelled on that of Belgium, by virtue of which a parliament was appointed, which on 26 July abolished all the ancient feudal rights. As a result of these concessions Austria was able to concentrate her efforts on the Italian front and to hold on for a little longer to her positions in Lombardy and Venetia. The reactions of the ruling classes to this brief awakening of the peoples are well known. In France the 1848 revolution led straight to the dictatorship of Louis-Napoleon. In Italy, in spite of a return to absolutism throughout the peninsula—with the exception of the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia— it triggered off an inexorable movement which later led to the independence and unification of the country under the aegis of the House of Savoy. Everywhere in central Europe liberal promises were extracted from the authorities in power and in certain cases these promises were temporarily kept (for instance the independence and constitutional laws of Hungary granted by the Emperor Ferdinand at Pressburg). But a few months later innumerable political complications marked a sharp turning-point in the situation; these included in particular the Serbo-Hungarian conflict of September, which ended some time later in the exile of Kossuth, and the siege of Vienna in October following a popular uprising against the despatch of Austria troops to support 57 Agricultural organisations and development the Serbs. Moreover, the abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand and the succession of his nephew Francis Joseph opened the way to military dictatorship in Bohemia, Hungary and Lombardy. In March 1849 the new emperor signed an imperial constitution which created two Chambers: a Lower Chamber elected by voters who qualified for suffrage according to an assessment, and an Upper Chamber where three-quarters of the seats were reserved for the landed nobility. In Prussia Frederick William IV acted in a similar fashion in 1849 when he gave his kingdom a liberal constitution under which all remaining traces of the feudal system were to be abolished but which instead turned out to be a mere caricature of the parliamentary system.1 In spite of the defects of the new constitution and of the reactions of the nobility there was no return to the old régime as such. Of course the restoration of the German Federal Diet in Frankfurt in August 1851 entailed the loss of the freedom gained two years earlier, and the same thing happened to the Austrian Empire under the unitarian reform of Francis Joseph. Most of the rights acquired by the peasantry were respected, not through generosity, but because it was necessary to neutralise the excessive powers of the nobility, whose privileges were henceforth incompatible with the objective needs of unitarian absolutism. Thus, under the Austrian monarchy, Francis Joseph maintained the emancipation of the peasants and the redemption of feudal rights. The redemption payments had a threefold effect: on the one hand the high nobility found itself in receipt of considerable capital which it used to a great extent to buy back available domains and to modernise operational methods. On the other hand, the petty and middle nobility which had previously enjoyed lesser rights suffered a hard blow due to the scantiness of the redemptions received, and in part came to swell the ranks of the urban middle class. As for the peasants, while many abandoned the countryside in search of employment elsewhere, those who remained on the land no longer feared for their freedom. Henceforth, the problem of the peasant class became one of structure and latifundia: the struggle between "the 600 families" which owned most of the land (in Bohemia, for instance, at the end of the century 73 per cent of the land belonged to the nobles and 7.69 per cent to the bourgeoisie) was not settled until much later, in the course of the twentieth century. 1 It will be remembered that the electoral law proclaimed by Frederick William—the famous "three classes law"—remained in force until 1914. This law divided the electors into three groups—each representing the same amount of taxation and the same number of electors—and thus gave much greater weight to the rich classes which, though a minority, represented the same amount of taxation and had the same number of secondary electors as the classes representing the majority. There is no need to stress the nature of the obstacle this law represented for the development for the peasant classes. 68 Europe: historical background In Germany, too, the situation was consolidated. A whole string of laws had been adopted, on which there was no going back. Generally speaking, the process which had now begun was continued long after the revolution right to the end of the century and even through to the First World War. In western Germany the reform went through the following decisive stages : In the Land of Baden the policy introduced in 1781 by the Margrave Charles Frederick led to the adoption on 10 April 1848 of a law under which all feudal rights, as well as all hunting andfishingrights, werefinallyredeemed. The state took upon itself a large proportion of the payments involved. In Württemberg, where the reform went ahead very slowly in spite of government policy, the compulsory redemption of dues, fixed at sixteen times the income, was enacted in 1848, and in the following year the government decreed the final abolition, without compensation, of vassalage bonds and seigneurial justice, as well as the redemption of tithes. The redemption operation lasted until 1873. In Bavaria, too, reform dragged its feet in spite of the edict of 1808 mentioned earlier. However, the Act of 4 June 1848 was decisive in this respect : it abolished the jurisdiction of the seigneur, the monopoly of the hunt, corvées in kind, tithes on catties and several other dues, and it instituted the redemption of land dues. Peasants had to pay a sum equal to eighteen times the annual income. The difference between the total amount of the compensation (twenty times the income) and the sumfixedfor the peasants was borne by the state. The state also set up a redemption fund, paid the compensation to the seigneur and fixed the annuities of the peasants. Finally, the Act of 1872 (in force until 1906) accelerated the process by setting up an amortisation fund and decreasing the amounts payable. But it was not until 1918 that many peasants managed to pay off their remaining debts.1 In Electoral Hesse, thanks to the legislation of 1831-32 and the creation of the Rural Credit Fund, the redemption of dues was already under way when the Act of 26 August 1828 abolished all dues still in force, with or without compensation as the case might be. Finally, in Hanover, the reform had already been completed in 1833. In eastern Germany the revolution also speeded up the adoption of several legislative measures aimed at completing the work undertaken by Hardenberg. By virtue of the legislation of 2 March 1850, twenty-four rights relating to services due for hunting and for the repair of the seigneur's buildings were abolished without compensation. But the most important aspect of the 1 See Lütge, op. cit., p. 215; Sée, op. cit., pp. 218-219. 59 Agricultural organisations and development reform was the abolition, again without compensation, of the superior ownership right of the seigneurs; the peasants thus became outright owners. There only remained redeemable rent, in respect of which a sum wasfixedcorresponding to twenty-five times the income. This matter was carried through thanks to a number of banks which, in the same way as credit funds elsewhere, played the role of intermediaries between the seigneurs and their former tenants. In the north, Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein completed the emancipation of the peasants through the democratic constitution of 1849, which was common to both countries, and through Danish legislation in 1851 and 1854-61 which authorised the sale to the peasants of land belonging to the State and to the nobility. Even Sweden, a country where the old régime still persisted, went over to the parliamentary system in 1862. Here, as in Denmark, political reform favoured the development of the peasant middle class which was responsible for the remarkable development, both economic and social, of present-day agriculture. Finally, in Russia the emancipation of the peasants was inevitable from the moment when the feudal economy became a real obstacle to the development of capitalism, and they were freed in 1861.1 This emancipation was triggered off by the rescript of 1857 which set up commissions to study the problem in the various provinces of the country; but it was also the result of a long series of revolts which the economic and political circumstances merely aggravated and increased. Some idea of the extent of these revolts is gained from the estimate of I. Ignatovich, based on the official report of the Imperial Chancellery and the Ministry of the Interior: the number of uprisings had increased from 138 in the period 1830-39 to 348 for the period 1845-54. Benkendorff, the head of police at the time, said not without reason: "The system of serfdom is a powder keg placed under the edifice of the State." The fact that it was impossible to develop a modern industry based partly on serfdom, the Russian defeat in the Crimea in 1855, and the economic crisis of 1857 doubtless acted as catalysts in the process which led to the ukase of 5 March 1861 and consequently to the emancipation of 20 million serfs. It is true that on the State domains emancipation had already taken place in 1858; the peasants had become life tenants of the land they occupied, with the possibility of buying it against payment of one-fifth of its value, with the remainder being paid off over twenty years at 5 per cent. But in freeing 1 For more details see P. A. Zaisichkovski: Otmena Krepostnogo Prava v Rossii [The abolition of serfdom in Russia] ( Moscow, 1960), pp. 46-52; also by the same author: Provedenie v Zhizn Krestianskoi Reformy 1861 goda [The implementation of the peasant reform of 1861] (Moscow, 1958), pp. 64-78. Also See, op. cit., Part II, Ch. VII; Lyashchenko, op. cit., Ch. XXI. 60 Europe: historical background the serfs from the nobility Alexander II did not automatically give them ownership of the means of production, and it appears that, far from stopping altogether, insurrections actually increased. There were at least 2,000 such uprisings between 1861 and 1863. The government had, of course, provided for the purchase of a definite quantity of land by the peasants and for the granting to them of advances by the State, repayable over forty-nine years at 6 per cent. In fact, in the so-called "black earth" region the plots granted to the peasants were actually smaller than those they had cultivated before the reform.1 Lositstkii estimated that the area which the peasants had lost in this way amounted to 26 per cent in twenty-one of the imperial provinces.2 To this were added the conditions of payment; the first "deciatina" (slightly less than three acres) cost half the dues, and thus the smaller the plot, the greater in proportion was its price.3 Many peasants preferred to wait, and in 1875 2.5 million serfs had still not bought their plot and were thus "temporarily bound"—in other words not emancipated from the obligations entailed by serfdom. Faced with this situation, the government made purchase of the land compulsory in 1881. The emancipation of 1861, which has been described as the greatest social movement since the French Revolution, was thus partly a mere hoax since in many cases, particularly in the north where the poor peasants were not able to bear the cost of emancipation, the lot of former serfs became even harder. Many migrated to the towns where they swelled the ranks of the nascent industrial proletariat. Some, endowed with better financial means, improved their situation and became future kulaks. Finally, others took part in a succession of revolts which broke out practically everywhere in the country between 1861 and 1918, particularly after 1905 when the peasant risings spread to the whole of Russia. It may be said that through being unwilling to allow the movement of reform to attain its full flowering, the Russian Government and nobility sounded the inexorable knell of the old régime in all its aspects.4 1 Lyashchenko, op. cit., p. 382. ibid., p. 384. 3 Under this system, according to Lyashchenko (op. cit., p. 385), "if a plot of 4 deciatinas in a region not situated within the 'black-earth' belt brought dues of 12 roubles, the dues for a smaller plot were calculated in the following manner: for the first deciatina, half the abovementioned payment, i.e. 6 roubles, and for the second deciatina, one quarter; i.e. 2 deciatinas brought in 9 roubles and the remaining quarter of the payment corresponded to the last 2 deciatinas. Thus, if the landowners in regions outside the 'black-earth' belt thought it profitable, they could grant their peasants a fairly large plot and, if not, they could grant them a smaller plot the value of which was proportionately higher. This progressive assessment also included, in a concealed fashion, the redemption of the peasant's own person". •The Marquis of Custine, travelling in Russia in 1839 (thus long before the reform) was wrong only as far as the date was concerned when he gave the following verdict on the 8 61 Agricultural organisations and development With the emancipation of the Russian serfs (followed three years later by the emancipation of the serfs in Poland), the whole of Europe entered a new era as far as the legal status of the peasantry is concerned. But at this point two quite separate Europes emerged : western Europe, where the abolition of the old régime and its persistent social and economic remnants marked the awakening, in every sense, of a peasantry which acquired ownership of the means of production and was thus enabled to set up large associations to defend its interests ; and eastern Europe, where limited reform on the one hand and the immense sums required to compensate the nobility on the other x helped to consolidate the existence of a latifundian economy. In these regions, although the peasants were free they held too little property except for the very limited number who were well off; and although they were wage-earning they were threatened with expulsion at the slightest hint of a claim on their part. Only much later were they able to organise. From the legal viewpoint everything, or almost everything, was neat and tidy; but from the structural viewpoint nothing had changed. Much later, well into the twentieth century, technical development could be seen existing alongside a high degree of social underdevelopment; such was the fruit of the purely nominal freedom granted to the peasants of those countries. THE AWAKENING AND ORGANISATION OF THE PEASANTRY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY It is against this background that, slowly and painfully, European peasantry began to awake. So far mention has only been made of revolts, whether or not they were favoured by political events or wars ; but a revolt is not necessarily or everywhere synonymous with a final awakening. In many cases it is merely the expression of unbearable stress channelled into the most readily available outlet. Destitute, illiterate, oppressed for centuries past, European peasantry could do no more. Happily, even in their poverty they were not entirely abandoned. We have already mentioned the mounting interest of European thinking in agriculture towards 1750. This awakening was first marked by concern for old régime: "Either the civilised world will once more come under the barbarian yoke in the next fifty years, or Russia will suffer a revolution still more terrible than the one the effects of which are still felt by western Europe." La Russie en 1839 (Paris, 1843), letter of 12 July 1839. 1 In Austria the Schwarzenberg family alone, whom we quote merely as an example, received over 2 million florins of the time in redemption of their feudal rights. 62 Europe: historical background things scientific, and to the extent that such thinking led to practical improvements which did not run counter to the interests of the governing classes, technical development was faced with far fewer obstacles than social development; agreed, it had to overcome traditional practices, but the support of far-sighted men who could persuade the peasants was assured.1 Social development met other much more serious difficulties, for it was closely linked with trends which questioned the old régime in all its aspects : political, economic, social and legal. The aim was nothing less than a radical change in the whole concept of existence—a change which eventually did take place. It is, in fact, not possible to understand this awakening of the peasantry in the nineteenth century—from the creation of the first co-operatives to the setting-up of trade unions—except in the light of such currents of thought of which it is a part and, indeed, the final result. Mention should be made, if only briefly, of certain aspects of the evolution in European thinking which preceded this awakening of the peasantry. The eighteenth century was deeply affected by the fact that the social pact and the laws enacted by men were being questioned; this was the era of the return to natural law and also of the heyday of reason, widely regarded as a cure for all ills. It may well be that at no other time has so much confidence been placed in man and his ability to reorganise society according to the laws of nature, which were preferred to the laws of the State, the latter being as numerous as they were contradictory. In this setting the prevailing vogue was not the lucid pessimism of Hume, but the optimism of the Rousseau of the Contrat social, whose influence extended across the Channel to the Whigs whom the politics of George III did not please.2 In the field of economics this confidence in the natural order of things was shared by the physiocrats, for whom the production and distribution of wealth (of which land was the principle source) must follow a course similar to that determined by the laws of nature and free from the restrictions and interference of governments. Adam Smith was more practical and utilitarian 1 Since the present study concentrates on the social and economic aspects of the development of the peasantry, we cannot dwell at length on purely technical problems which would deserve a study of their own. The evolution of new techniques raises problems which vary with time and place. This was the case in Europe. In the south, the region of latifundia and absentee landowners, the fact that even a scant return per acre would be sufficient to provide an ample living, on account of the vast areas which they owned, did not prompt the landowners to make technical improvements which, moreover, would require direct supervision of their domains. This situation continued until the twentieth century. On the other hand, in England, which again was a pioneer in the matter, technical innovations were welcomed with great interest. We may recall the experiments that George Sinclair carried out at Woburn, on the instructions of the Duke of Bedford, into the production and nutritive qualities of grain crops for fodder. Details of these remarkable experiments may be found in Sir Humphry Davy's work, Elements of Agricultural Chemistry (1813). a See Joseph Priestley: Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768). 63 Agricultural organisations and development than the physiocrats in that unlike them he considered work to be the main instrument of wealth. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), the great theoretician of laissez-faire defended the belief in the harmony of the natural order, which is distorted by the artificial restrictions invented by man. With the gradual development of the British trend towards utilitarianism and of French individualistic thinking1, many of the abstract ideas relating to the perfections of the natural order were abandoned in favour of a more precise analysis of the social conditions which determine human relations. But something has remained of the natural order, and for good: the idea of the equality and freedom of men within the political community, as opposed to the traditional concept of an order established by a minority and decreed by Providence. And although Jeremy Bentham commented ironically on the rhetorical void of the natural laws compared with the "principle of utility" as a measure for human actions (which are good or bad according to whether or not they favour the general welfare), he nevertheless supported universal suffrage and considered law to be an expression of the sovereign will of the political community, expressed through mandate.2 This philosophy was maintained by his disciple, James Mill, and was further developed and transformed by John Stuart Mill who at the end of his life came very near to socialism.3 Thus a permanent stamp was imprinted on the whole of nineteenth-century Britain; and there was a very definite influence on the chartist movement and in the gradual extension of universal suffrage to the various social strata. In the midst of this ideological effervescence of paeans to industry and free trade, when machines—those "rivals of man" and "creators of unemployment"—are occasionally destroyed, appear the first reformers. These men will have a certain responsibility, albeit indirect, for the evolution of the agrarian problem. In such an ideological climate there is nothing surprising in the fact that the first experiments were frequently of a Utopian nature and, at the beginning, restricted to the co-operative movement—for trade unionism was still a long way away. At that time mutual aid was primarily of a local nature and was centred much more on the urban working class than on the peasantry as such. In England the first period, which covered the years from 1817 to 1840, was dominated by an outstanding personality: Robert Owen. That country, 1 Expressed by Tocqueville, Taine, Laboulaye and Michel in particular. The clearest concept of these ideas will be found in Fragment on Government, published anonymously in 1776 and subsequently by Montague in London in 1891. * In his Autobiography (London, 1873, pp. 230-234) John Stuart Mill defends common ownership of the raw materials of the world and identical participation of each individual in the funds of labour. 2 64 Europe: historical background which was the first to have felt the effects of the Industrial Revolution, was going through a difficult phase after the victory of Waterloo; the drop in industrial production following the war had led to the dismissal of thousands of workers for whom no work could be found. It was in this environment that Owen, the son of a craftsman, and now an industrialist, attempted to establish relations between employers and workers on a co-operative basis. In keeping with the ideological trend of his time he took as his premise the innate goodness of man, and considered that it would be sufficient to place him in a social environment corresponding to the harmony of nature in order to develop a new system of relations which would make it possible to overcome the ills of a society based on free competition. The solution advocated by Owen in his famous Report on the Poor Law, presented to the Select Committee established by the House of Commons for the study of the Poor Law, consisted in establishing "co-operative villages" of 500 to 1,500 persons, who would be given land and tools to enable them to devote themselves freely to agriculture and manufacture. This mixture of activity was characteristic of the global concept of the times ; not until much later did the agricultural co-operative movement confine itself to its own sphere of interest. To Robert Owen's experiments at New Lanark in Scotland, which are too well known to need restatement here, were added those he carried out in 1824 in the co-operative community established at New Harmony, in the state of Indiana (United States). But numerous quarrels amongst the members of New Harmony ruined the experiment in a short time, and within three years it had failed completely—and Owen had lost two-thirds of his personal fortune.1 Nevertheless, the influence of his ideas, and those of his disciple William Thompson, on the subsequent development of the co-operative movement cannot be denied; and these same ideas had their part to play too in the creation of the International Labour Organisation. At the same time as Owen, Dr. William King was carrying out his own experiments. Like Owen, King was rich, but he lacked his philanthropic sentiments (King believed in self-help rather than in assistance). He was the originator of the "Union Shops", the forerunners of modern co-operatives. In his journal The Co-operator of May 1828 King set out the aims of his project; they were in fact confined to the building-up of an initial fund through individual weekly payments in order to constitute a consumers' co-operative. As funds increased the intention was to purchase new articles. Of course, Dr. King saw further: 1 For more details see Arthur Eugene Bestor, Jr. : Backwoods Utopias (Philadelphia, 1950); Frank Podmore: Robert Owen (London, Hutchinson, 1906; New York, 1924). 65 Agricultural organisations and development When sufficient capital is accumulated the society will be able to acquire land, live on that land, cultivate it and produce all the articles necessary to satisfy all needs in housing, clothing and food. The society will then be called a community.1 Four years later, in 1832, there were between 400 and 500 Union Shops. But after another two years this great experiment suffered a complete and general failure. This has been attributed both to its imperfect regulations and to its paradoxically too great success; it would appear that the Brighton Society, the first to be created, was dispersed when, having acquired considerable capital, the majority of its members decided to move on to the next stage and split into two groups : one of these declared itself to be a community and the other, consisting of an individualistic minority, withdrew its funds to build a fishing vessel. By 1840 Dr. King's movement had been practically wiped out; a few survivors held on, but not for long. Similarly in France, excessive industrialisation led to the appearance of a Utopian socialist school which likewise dreamt of a world closer to the harmony of nature. Utopian thinking was successively influenced by the theories of Saint-Simon, who aimed at a technocratic society governed by a representative industrial parliament,2 and by the experiments of Fourier, who founded the phalansterian movement. Fourier wanted men to be able to organise society in a just and orderly manner after the image of the universal harmony created by God. For him, association was the principle of irresistible attraction which governs men just as the law of gravity governs nature. On these principles he founded his system of phalansteries—a kind of agro-industrial community of about 400 families settled on 2% square miles of land, living under a system of equitable distribution of profits. His experiment at Condé-sur-Vesgre was a total failure and lasted less than a year. The experiments carried out in the United States by his disciples (the Americans Channing and Brisbane and the Frenchman Victor Considérant) were also doomed to failure in spite of their short-lived initial success.8 Much has been written about the history of these first attempts. Why did they fail ? It would appear that the belief that it was enough to change his environment in order to be able to change man himself was one of the most glaring errors of the times. It had not yet been understood that it is wrong to 1 Quoted by T. W. Mercer: Dr. William King and the Co-operator, 1828-30 (Manchester, Co-operative Union, 1922), p. 3. a See, for instance, his Système industriel (1821), in which he maintains that the true leaders of the people are the leaders of industrial undertakings "since it is they who command them in their daily work". In England too Utopian socialism had its followers, such as William Morris and Samuel Butler, whose important work Erewhon became extremely popular. 8 See Charles Gide: Fourier, précurseur de la coopération (Paris, Association pour l'enseignement de la coopération, 1924), pp. 150-157. 66 Europe: historical background consider man on the one hand and his environment on the other, but that what does exist is man in his environment with all the inter-relationships that this implies. Indeed, the attempt to integrate man in a prefabricated environment could never be successful. But it must be said that what seems obvious now was much less so at a time when modern sociology had not yet been born. Moreover, the co-operative movement was then considered as a sort of panacea which, it was claimed, could change the government of mankind and even introduce a world order (Fourier had in mind a great federation of phalansterian nations, the capital of which would be Constantinople !). None of this could last for long. When we examine today the Utopian or ungainly nature of these undertakings we find it difficult to imagine the great attraction they held for the labouring world of the times. And yet, this dream of refashioning society, which inspired the second half of the eighteenth century, has persisted in one form or another to the present day, though its Utopian aspects have been ousted by scientific socialism and, with the exception of anarchism which played a political role among the industrial working class and peasantry of the south (particularly in Spain), have been confined to literature. However, this collection of theories did much to further the passage of philosophers, economists and politicians from an accepted world to a world which was perpetually questioned. In the following era it also led to a more practical and efficient examination of the problem, and only then did the co-operative movement, having become "sensible", make a real contribution towards the development of the peasantry. This second phase, which throughout Europe was to be marked by a concentration on the reasonable and the concrete, opened in 1844, when twentyeight English weavers, to be known thereafter as the Rochdale Pioneers, founded a consumer's co-operative; the initial capital was £28. It did £100 worth of business in the first year, and its success was thereby assured. This experiment was based on seven fundamental principles: a democratic supervision of activities, a fixed return on capital, rebates for goods bought or services used, cash purchases, distribution of good-quality articles, funds for education, and political and religious neutrality.1 Ten years later, the movement, which was to give birth to the International Co-operative Alliance in 1895, had 1,400 members; membership, and with it turnover, increased steadily. In 1914, the Rochdale Pioneers had 12,000 associates and a turnover of £2 million.2 With the memory of Dr. King's failure still fresh in their 1 See G. D. H. Cole: A Century of Co-operation (Manchester, Co-operative Union, 1947), p. 74. 2 Pirenne, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 28. 67 Agricultural organisations and development minds, they avoided the mistakes he had made, and the Rochdale experiment was to prove a real and lasting success. The co-operative movement was now established on healthily pragmatic lines. Henceforward it was to increase and multiply, in one form or another, until the end of the century. In 1854, Friedrich-Wilhelm Raiffeisen, who was the promoter of agricultural credit banks in Germany and the brains behind the agricultural mutual benefit system, launched his celebrated cooperatives. Whereas the Rochdale movement had observed strict confessional neutrality, Raiffeisen's own type of co-operative had a strong religious spirit fostering cohesion, and was encouraged by the government and by clergy of all denominations. It was intended to do more than simply overcome the power of local money-lenders. Its operations were limited to a parish or village, and entry to membership was based on personal character as well as on the need for credit. No shares were subscribed, so that, apart from character qualifications, entry to membership was easy. Liability for bad debts was not limited. Special stress was put on the building-up of the society's capital through careful management and saving. No dividends were paid; nor were members paid for their work for the society.1 From Germany the Raiffeisen co-operatives soon spread to Czechoslovakia (1868), Italy (1883), Austria-Hungary (1886), Switzerland (1887), Belgium (1892), France (1893), Ireland (1894), and Russia (1894, but especially after the ukase of June 1895 which ordered the creation of Raiffeisen banks with initial financial support from the Imperial Bank).2 The example thus set was speedily followed all over the world; the first people's banks in North America (in Quebec) were inspired by Raiffeisen's principles, and although they were not initially set up with an eye to the interests of agricultural workers, the latter set up societies for themselves at a later date. In Latin America, European immigrants arriving towards the end of the century were the apostles of the new cult. In India, at about the same time, we find co-operative credit societies springing up; after the promulgation of the Act of 1904, these were to spread rapidly throughout the country.* In Japan, mujin and ko associations were reorganised, to some extent with an eye to the Raiffeisen type of association, after promulgation of co-operative law in 1899.4 Lastly, we 1 United Nations: Rural Progress through Co-operatives (New York, 1954; Sales No.: 54.II.B.2),p.41. a These dates are those mentioned in Horace Plunkett et al. : Report of the Recess Committee on the Establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Industries for Ireland (Dublin, 1906), passim, and especially pp. 331-332. 8 United Nations: Rural Progress through Co-operatives, op. cit., p. 43. * When the Second World War broke out, there were more than 4 million members. ibid., p. 43. 68 Europe: historical background cannot decently overlook the part played in Germany by Schulze (people's limited liability banks) and Haas, who founded banks with unlimited liability like those of Raiffeisen, but with share capital. At the end of the century, there were no less than 4,000 Raiffeisen, Schulze and Haas associations in Germany; a figure which by 1950 had swollen to 20,000. The best description of the technical developments taking place in European agriculture at about this time, and of the growth of the co-operative movement, is to be found in the report, published in 1896, of a committee of inquiry presided over by Horace Plunkett and despatched to Europe by the Irish Parliament. In its exceedingly careful and thorough report, the committee gives a bird's-eye view of the position at that time. Here we can do no more than summarise it1: — In France, 5,300 agricultural associations, of which 500 were co-operative banks and credit unions, and 1,200 cornices agricoles (i.e. agricultural associations organising competitions and awarding prizes) ; — In Holland, 45 dairy co-operatives, and 21 agricultural associations with 170 branches and 50,000 members; — In Belgium, 417 co-operatives of which 37 were of the Raiffeisen kind, and 150 farmers' unions with 3,000 members; — In Denmark, some 1,200 dairy co-operatives and 101 agricultural associations, some of them going back to 1823, with, on an average, 500 members each; — In Switzerland, 6 Raiffeisen banks (a meagre figure, this, but explicable by the existence of numerous savings funds), with agricultural associations in each canton (the investigator was unable to calculate exactly how many there were) ; — In Austria, 994 Raiffeisen banks with 60,000 members (excluding Schulze associations, probably twice as numerous) and 3,480 local agricultural societies with 269,200 members; — In Prussia, 7,200 co-operatives, of which 1,920 were Raiffeisen associations and 407 dairies2 ; — In Württemberg, 1,223 Raiffeisen and Schulze-Delitzsch co-operatives, of which 649 were Raiffeisen-style, with 55,700 members, and 64 rural associations with 47,000 members, i.e. a quarter of the country's peasantry ; — In Bavaria, 1,038 Schulze-Delitzsch and 713 Raiffeisen co-operatives in 1893 (62,000 and 157,200 members respectively), plus a powerful agricul1 Plunkett, op. cit., passim. Plunkett sent no investigator to Prussia. The figures quoted are from a statement made in the Vienna Reichsrath, in March 1896, by Councillor Scheimplug and reproduced in the committee's report; as well as from the conclusions reached by Plunkett and his colleagues (pp. 50 and 331). 2 69 Agricultural organisations and development turai association with 226 local branches and 66,100 members, i.e. one in eight of the Bavarian peasantry; — In Hungary, 1,200 co-operatives, of which 320 were of the Raiffeisen type (no detailed figures concerning membership); — Lastly, in Ireland itself, from the shores of which the mission had sailed, the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (founded in 1894, largely thanks to Plunkett's efforts) had just set up, within a year, 54 dairy co-operatives and one Raiffeisen bank. There is clearly no need to emphasise the degree to which the extraordinary boom in European agriculture which took place in the nineteenth century is indebted to these various associations. In every country, too, we find the authorities taking a keener interest in agriculture, and setting up ministries of agriculture and technical colleges. Besides which, the co-operative movement, which reached its climax in 1895 with the foundation of the International Co-operative Alliance, everywhere helped to bring down the cost of credit and hence to do away with usury, that age-old scourge of the countryside. By thus reducing the cost of goods and services, it did much to improve the peasant's lot while increasing both output and productivity, and hence made a powerful contribution to the slow but steady improvement observable in the supply of food to the towns. While the co-operative movement in agriculture was thus growing, agricultural trade unionism was taking its first few halting steps. The movement began in England. The Combination Act of 1825 had authorised the formation of unions, whereupon the more advanced representatives of the working classes organised their first associations, in London and the industrial north-west. In 1830, there were already a number of wofkmen's associations and clubs (the term "trade union" dates from the years 1830-34). By 1833 the movement was rapidly gaining ground in the agricultural counties of the south and among the workers in the countryside. In that same year, thanks to the efforts of Robert Owen, it culminated in the creation of a "Grand National Consolidated Trades Union". For a very brief period this body had a membership of no less than 250,000 workers from town and countryside. But Robert Owen, and with him the cause of trade unionism, was heading for another calamitous setback. The mistake—if such it can be called—was once more a failure to observe a balance between ends and means. In 1834, the Grand Union decided to launch a general strike to obtain the expropriation of the "masters of production". To this end, it supported a number of partial strikes (which were obviously inadequate to secure anybody's expropriation). Having done so, it was obviously condemned out of hand by every manufacturer and landowner in the country. Everywhere the workers were enjoined to abandon the Grand Union under pain of instant dismissal. 70 Europe: historical background The owners went so far as to declare lock-outs (as in Derby) to overcome the last vestiges of resistance. In the southern counties, they acted with relentless vigour: in 1832, the owners had agreed to an increase in wages but in 1833, they decided to reduce them again, whereupon the workers' association of these counties decided to join the Grand Union. On 21 February 1834, things reached a climax. Under pressure from the farmers, the local magistrates warned the farm labourers, by poster, that membership of the Grand Union would entail deportation. On 18 March, six day-labourers from Dorchester were condemned to seven years' deportation, the sentence being ratified by William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, then Home Secretary, who in so doing invoked a law passed in 1797 condemning illegal associations. This sentence created quite a stir, and thefivemajor unions * not members of the Grand Union organised a series of mass meetings, following which a petition signed by 250,000 people was sent to the Home Office. Despite the failure of these moves—Melbourne refused to reconsider his decision—they helped to prevent the tabling of certain Bills designed to outlaw the occupational unions (a prohibition ardently desired by the Whigs), and thus helped to save the limited freedom of association granted in 1825. Unfortunately for the Grand Union, the costs incurred during all these strikes were to prove too much for it. Its failure to prevent a lock-out organised against the building workers, and the owners' success in forcing the Leeds drapers to abandon their union, led to its final dissolution at the end of 1834. Its life had been very short. However, the English workman was by no means ready to bend the knee. In 1832, the passage of the Reform Bill, extending voting rights to the middle classes, was to open the door to the chartist movement. The Grand Union had disappeared ; but the National Union of the Working Classes and Others, founded by William Lovett and his friends, still existed. At that time, it had a mere 1,500 members. Vigorously opposed to the Reform Bill, it demanded universal suffrage and political democracy, as a stepping-stone to economic democracy. Then we have the Working Men's Association, also created by Lovett and his friends (on 18 June 1836).2 To it we are indebted for the celebrated "People's Charter", reflecting the aspirations of the bourgeois radicals 1 The Builder's Union, the Leeds Union, the Drapers' Union, the Cotton Spinners' Union, and the Potters' Union. See Edouard Dolléans: Histoire du mouvement ouvrier (Paris, Armand Colin, 1957), Vol. I, p. 121. 2 As Dolléans recalls, "in November 1836, i.e. the very year of its foundation, the Working Men's Association despatched a manifesto to the Belgian working class, and Lovett claimed that his association had been the first to send an international message to the workers of another country." The fact deserves to be recorded. For further information about this period, see Dolléans, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 111-168, and especially p. 129. 71 Agricultural organisations and development and working-class democrats; up to 1848, this text was to be the banner of the chartist movement. The charter contained six points, all drawn up by Lovett, and was despatched to the workers' associations and guilds on 8 May 1838. These points clearly set forth what the English working class would have to achieve to ensure its political and trade union development : annual parliaments ; universal suffrage ; equal electoral districts ; secret ballots; parliamentary allowances; and the abolition of the voter's property qualification. The working class was to achieve all these objectives little by little, despite the disappearance of the chartist movement in 1849, after numerous violent episodes, such as the attempted general strike of 1839 and the Ashton strikes in 1842. The social legislation enacted in 1844 and 1847, concerning women and children employed in factories, marked a step forward. With income tax, introduced in 1841, and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, we come to a period during which the country's fiscal and economic systems were to be completely overhauled. In 1859, the London building workers had successfully struck for a nine-hour day; in 1860, the creation of a Trade Union Council meant that the English working class was now free to organise. With Disraeli's reform of the franchise in 1867, the vote was given to the whole of the middle class and to most of the workers (the number of persons entitled to vote leapt from 1,366,000 to 2,490,000). England was at last taking the shape she possesses today. Then, and only then, did the peasantry, which had more or less faded from the scene since the Dorchester drama, begin to organise its trade unions. Certainly, all sorts of bodies were already in existence—scientific institutes, farmers' clubs, and so on—but only in 1872 do we find the first National Agricultural Workers' Union, founded thanks to the efforts of a Methodist preacher, Joseph Arch. In 1875, this union already had some 60,000 members (it should be remembered that at this time there were something like 1.5 million agricultural workers, all in all). Reorganised in 1906, it was to become the present-day National Union of Agricultural Workers (England and Wales). It is at about this time, too, that after a century of struggle for three basic rights—the right to vote, the right to associate, and the right to strike—the trade union movement first takes root among the French peasantry. We cannot here describe in detail all that happened in the course of those many years of constant social discontent; suffice it to recall that universal suffrage was proclaimed in 1848 and consolidated in 1851-52, after a brief setback when the system of property qualifications for the franchise had come back into favour in 1850. Then we have the accession of the workers to the conciliation boards (conseils de prud'hommes) by a system of elections in two phases (Decree of 27 May 1848); the Act of 25 May 1864, authorising workers' organisations; and the recognition, step-by-step, of the right to strike, despite 72 Europe: historical background certain legal restrictions. Finally, by virtue of the Act of 21 March 1884, we have freedom of association without prior permission from the authorities.1 The French peasant, like his English companion, had stood aside from working-class struggles (he had remained impassive in 1848 and had voted overwhelmingly for Napoleon III on the occasion of the plebiscite of 8 May 1870). He now took advantage of the 1884 Act to organise his unions. However, mention ought to be made of the fact that in 1883 the peasants of Loir-et-Cher, who had come together in 1880 to combat fraud in the supply of industrial fertilisers, had already succeeded in setting up eighty little communal unions with a total of 313 members. Nevertheless, authentic trade unions of agricultural workers began only in 1889, when the lumberjacks of the Cher formed a union which took its final form on 27 December 1891.a At the end of the century their example was followed by the Languedoc vineyard workers, and later by others, especially between 1907 and 1911. The Central Union of Agricultural Trade Unions (which after 1918 was to become the National Union of Agricultural Trade Unions) dates from 1886. Working closely with this organisation, numerous occupational organisations sprang up to defend the interests of the peasantry: the Wheat Growers' Union, the Beet Planters' General Confederation, the Meat Producers' General Association, the Milk Confederation and the General Confederation of Fruit and Vegetable Producers. Moreover, the Central Union, which had been set up under the auspices of the French Agricultural Society (itself created in 1861), witnessed with mixed feelings the creation of a new body: the National Federation of Agricultural Unions, founded in 1909 under the auspices of the National Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, created in 1880. Its merger, in 1910, with the Federation of Regional Agricultural Credit Funds, to constitute the National Confederation of Friendly Societies and Agricultural Co-operation, was to make a powerful contribution to the progress already being made by French mutual benefit societies and agricultural co-operatives. As for the French working class itself, it was to be nationally organised only in 1920, in the General Confederation of Labour. Thus, real agricultural trade unionism sprang up first in England, then in France. True, there were other countries in which certain associations performed similar functions. In Denmark, for example, the provincial unions of agricultural associations submitted claims to the government on behalf of 1 For further information, see Dolléans, op. cit., Vol. I, Part Five, Ch. 1 and 2; Part Six, Ch. 2; Vol. II, Part One, Ch. 1. Dolléans deals chiefly with the urban working class and only incidentally with the peasantry. * See Gérard Walter: Histoire des paysans de France (Paris, 1963), pp. 421^124. 73 Agricultural organisations and development the peasants. But, on the whole, save in the above two countries, it can be affirmed that peasant trade unionism was a phenomenon of the twentieth rather than of the nineteenth century. THE SITUATION BETWEEN 1900 AND 1945 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the peasants and agricultural workers in most of the western European countries had been granted the basic right to organise ; all they still had to do was to improve their organisation. Of course, there were many difficulties still to be overcome, and topics such as conditions of employment, the system of land ownership, agricultural credit, technical development, marketing, and the maintenance of agricultural prices have remained in the forefront right down to our own day. In some countries, however, agricultural workers had to wait until the First World War to obtain, on top of their right to organise, the right to strike. This was so in Germany, where the Prussian Industrial Code of 1845, which forbade any agreement such as might lead to a cessation of work, was extended in 1854 to agriculture at the request of the German farmers. Fifteen years later, in 1869, a new industrial code promulgated for north Germany granted industrial workers the right to organise and the right to strike. But as far as agricultural workers were concerned, the position remained the same right up to 1918; not until then could the German peasant and agricultural worker really organise and use the strike as a weapon. In Sweden, too, the agricultural workers to whom the 1833 legislation governing relations between masters and servants (abrogated only in 1926) applied, had to serve for one whole year (which always began on 24 October) before they could go on strike. Since by that date the northern winter was drawing nigh, their chances of obtaining whatever they were striking for were always seriously compromised. These, however, are exceptions. In the western European countries as a whole, agricultural employers' and workers' unions were at this time developing normally. For the workers, an ILO inquiry undertaken in 1928 shows the position between 1925 and 1928. Table 3 "• below summarises the data 1 Unhappily, no figures were given for Belgian and French trade unionists. As regards France, there were in 1925 9,000 agricultural organisations belonging to 176 federations, with a total membership of 1.5 million. Of these 9,000 organisations, more than 8,000 were co-operatives, and to this figure we must add 3,000-4,000 other agricultural co-operatives, with some 500,000 members. See ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture), No. 8 (Geneva, 1928), p. 122. 74 Europe: historical background assembled. It will be seen that trade unionists were still few in number in relation to the total; the peasant and agricultural worker has always been much less keen on enrolment and regimentation than his brother on the factory floor. Broadly speaking, between 10 and 15 per cent of all agricultural workers were trade unionists. True, they wielded an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. In Germany, for example, "those who, thanks to trade union action, enjoyed a rise in wages numbered 2.35 million in 1924 and 1.6 million in 1925".1 Hence we must assess agricultural trade unionism of this period more by results than by membership. Whatever approach we adopt, however, the time taken by the trade union movement to take root in the countryside (long after the peasants had thrown off the bonds imposed on them in former ages) should surely teach us patience when we preach the gospel of trade unionism to the peasant masses of the developing world. We may note, finally, that at this time two big international federations dominated agricultural trade unionism: (a) The International Landworkers' Federation (social-democrat, affiliated to the International Federation of Trade Unions), created at an international congress of agricultural workers' unions held in Amsterdam on 17-19 August 1920, on the initiative of the Dutch union.2 This federation, which had 2,104,000 members in 1920 (780,000 of them belonging to the German unions and 846,000 to the Italian ones) had no more than 336,000 members in 1926, because the Italian federation was falling apart, while German membership had shrunk during the Great Inflation.3 (b) The International Federation of Christian Land Workers' Unions, founded in Coblenz on 27-28 April 1921. This body had 224,000 members in 1921; later on, by about 1926, it had 1.06 million.4 Besides the above, mention must be made of the powerful body known as the International Confederation of Agriculture, founded in 1889 as a result of thefirstinternational agricultural congress organised on the occasion of the Paris World Exhibition. This confederation, recognised in 1939 by the League of Nations, the ILO, and the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome (the predecessor of the FAO), was exceedingly active up to the beginning of 1 ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., p. 91. ILO: First International Congress of Landworkers' Unions affiliated to the International Federation of Trade Unions (Amsterdam, 17-19 August 1920), Studies and Reports, Series K, No. 1 (Geneva, 1920). * The German agricultural unions had a membership of 680,000 in 1920; in 1923, this figure had dwindled to a mere 123,000. The slump in membership—the latter was to climb to 185,000 in 1925—was above all due to inflation, which led the unionists to despair of ever improving their lot by trade union action. 4 ILO: First International Congress of Christian Land Workers' Unions (Coblenz, 27-28 April 1921), Studies and Reports, Series K, No. 7 (Geneva, 1921). 2 75 Agricultural organisations and development the Second World War in organising international conferences and defending the occupational interests of those who earned a living from the land. 1 The development of the co-operative movement in Europe, going hand-inhand with that of the occupational organisations, is of great interest too. A study published by the ILO in 1939 (see table 4) shows that even in those countries where the trade union movement had never really got off the ground (Hungary, Spain, Portugal, etc.), co-operatives had been proliferating since the turn of the century.2 In this respect, we can but applaud Henri Noilhan's assessment of the present-day situation: it holds good of the position before the war, especially in the western European countries: There has been a prodigious growth of agricultural co-operatives throughout the world. In this respect, the position is not at all the same as for the trade union movement. The peasants and agricultural workers have set up many powerful organisations which have come together to form unions and play an important— an increasingly important—part in agriculture in the world today. The co-operative movement has found champions among the supporters of collectivism and capitalism alike. The former find in the movement a confirmation of the doctrines they hold; it seems to them a step on the road leading to collectivism as illustrated by the Soviet kolkhoz. The latter seek a consolidation of agricultural capitalism in a movement which enables the small and medium-scale producers to band together, the better to defend their interests against the giant food-marketing trusts. Thus the movement, strangely enough, derives strength and vigour from two opposing camps. It may also be that some supporters of the movement have at the back of their minds a feeling that to organise co-operatives is one way of harnessing (for their own, perhaps divergent ends) the energies of the peasant masses, which, if left to themselves, would find expression in an uncontrollable multitude of tiny holdings.8 It must nevertheless not be forgotten that the co-operative boom of the 1920s and 1930s was not equally characteristic of all European countries. At the end of the First World War—a starting-point for so many socioeconomic upheavals—there were two agricultural Europes, not one: western Europe, developed and dynamic; and eastern and south-eastern Europe, underdeveloped, indeed stagnant in so many ways, despite the co-operative movement we have been describing. 1 After the Second World War, its successors were to be, in Europe, the European Confederation of Agriculture, founded in October 1948 at Brugg (Switzerland). In 1965, this body had a membership of more than 480 occupational organisations from twenty European countries. Internationally, it was replaced by the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, founded in The Hague in 1946. In 1965, this body had a membership of forty-eight agricultural organisations from thirty-two countries. 8 ILO: Co-operative Societies throughout the World—Numerical Data (Geneva, 1939) (an off-print of an article appearing in the International Labour Review, Vol. XL, Nos. 2-3, August-September 1939). 8 Noilhan, op. cit., p. 691. 76 Europe: historical background We now know, of course, that southern Europe was to wake up only after the Second World War. This applies more especially to Italy and Yugoslavia. The other southern countries—Portugal, Spain and Greece— are still lagging behind for one reason or another, since these countries have not yet overcome the considerable social, economic and organisational obstacles which prevent the peasantry from making progress. Turkey is in the same position. In eastern Europe, on the other hand, the process which was to culminate in the great reforms of the present day got under way just after the First World War. Although the peasants had been progressively freed, and although so much work had been done in the fields of co-operative development and technical innovation (it had not gone unattended by drawbacks, however; we shall revert to them in a moment), agricultural development was still up against a number of serious obstacles, of which the following were the principal ones: — Huge estates still existed, that is to say, millions of peasants were virtually landless, while landed wealth was concentrated in the hands of an insignificantly small minority. — There were differences of nationality v/ithin one and the same country, over and above social differences. As Max Sering once pointed out1, the land belonged to the descendants of a conquering race. This was true of the Germans in Latvia, Estonia and Bohemia; of the Poles in Lithuania, eastern Galicia, White Russia; of the Hungarians in Slovakia, the Carpathian parts of Russia, and Croatia. — The intermediate class of small landowners were too weak and too few in number to make themselves heard. — Rural credit arrangements were inadequate; rates of interest were exorbitantly high, and the peasants, generally speaking, were heavily in debt. — There were no powerful trade union organisations, and any attempt to create them was ruthlessly suppressed. Political upheavals resulting from the First World War—the advent of parliamentary régimes in central Europe and of the Bolshevik revolution in Tsarist Russia 2—were the signal for a whole series of land reforms. In Russia, the old régime was completely swept away; in other eastern countries, although foreign-held property was speedily dealt with (it was expropriated 1 Quoted by Josef Wiehen in Die Bodenreform der Tschechoslowakischen Republik (Berlin, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft, 1924), p. 11. 8 In the USSR, nationalisation of the land allowed more than 400 million acres to be distributed free of charge to the peasants and swept away overnight an archaic situation in which some 30,000 big landowners could own (before the revolution) 200 million acres, i.e. 77 Agricultural organisations and development immediately after the war), it was decided that nationals could retain up to a certain amount of land, the rest being expropriated by the State, with compensation. These reforms were not everywhere applied, and where they were, their implementation was often sporadic and lacking in continuity. In Czechoslovakia, for example, the land reform voted on in 1919 called for the breaking-up of estates of more than 625 acres in total area (or with more than 375 acres of arable land), but the only landowners to suffer were foreigners—German and Hungarian. In 1930, when 4.25 million acres (12 per cent of all land) had been expropriated, 13 per cent of the country still consisted of estates with more than 250 acres each. In answer to a United Nations questionnaire, the Government of Czechoslovakia, referring to the state of affairs which had prevailed before the Second World War, said that: Large farms of over 125 acres owned 43 per cent of cultivated and forest land, while 44 per cent of the farmers owned less than 5 acres and had only 4.5 per cent of the total area. Nearly half (47 per cent) of the agricultural population worked as paid labourers for large estate owners and large farmers. Several very large estates remained;referenceis made to the1 largest of these, with an area of 145,000 acres, and to another with 105,000 acres. In Hungary, after the failure of Bela Kún's attempt to seize power, Admiral Horthy's government took a resolutely conservative stance. The land reform of the early 1920s was interpreted in an exceedingly liberal fashion for the landed aristocracy, who owned 14,000 estates, or 46 per cent of all the land in the country (1,560 big landowners alone possessed 25 per cent). On the other hand, 1,143,000 farms (75 per cent of the total) of less than 12.5 acres covered no more than 11 per cent of the surface under the plough. In the light of these facts, we can easily understand the peasant uprisings of 1891 in Orosháza, of 1894 at Hódmezovásáfhely, and of 1897 in central and southern Hungary2, and the stream of claims made by occupational organisations from the beginning of the century. Admiral Horthy's government put a stop to such claims by stamping out all signs of trade union life; in 1919-20, the 1,700 local sections of the Union of Agricultural Workers, founded in 1905, were wound up by official order, with but four exceptions. Eight years later, the union had been able to re-establish not more than sixty-eight sections, with an average of 6,250 acres each (in fact, 700 persons alone owned some 61.5 million acres). See V. R. Boev: "Agricultural Production and the Rural Standard of Living in the USSR since 1917", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXXVII, No. 6, June 1963, pp. 520-550. 1 United Nations: Progress in Land Reform (New York, 1954; Sales No.: 54.II.B. 3), p. 67. For further information about the 1919 reforms, see Wiehen, op. cit., passim. 2 See liona Reinert-Tárnoky: "Die ungarische Innenpolitik und das Agrarproblem in der Zeit des Dualismus", Südost-Forschungen, Vol. XXIII, 1964, pp. 215-283. 78 Europe: historical background 10,000 members, whereas it had had 500,000 before the change of régime.1 As early as 1923 the union had been forbidden to publish its bulletin. Consequently, it was unable to do very much. This state of affairs was to last, almost unchanged, until 1945. In Poland, the approach of Russian troops in July 1920 induced the Polish Government to adopt a law of land reform so as to ensure that the peasantry would be on its side. No estate was to be larger than 450 acres in Poland proper, or larger than 750 acres in the eastern provinces. But, after the defeat of the Soviet forces, the reform was first put on one side, and then amended in 1925. Henceforward, the breaking-up of estates was to depend on agreements freely arrived at by the parties concerned. As a result, in 1939, although 6,637,000 acres had been apportioned among 734,000 purchasers, large estates covering a total of some 12.5 million acres still remained in the hands of some 15,000 persons (0.6 per cent of all who earned a living from the land). Certainly, the transfer of land in the course of this period had enlarged the class of medium-scale farmers (farms of more than 125 acres covered an area of some 11.5 million acres), but reform was proceeding at a pace such that another thirty years would have been needed to see its completion. But in 1939, 64 per cent of the population of 21 million depended on agriculture, directly or indirectly, for a living, and since there were not more than some 3.3 million small farms, the vast majority of the rural population were the landless victims of chronic unemployment. Summing up, President Gomulka has pointed out that just before the Second World War, there were, among the peasantry: more than 3 million persons of working age in excess of requirements. Similarly, in the towns, one worker in every three or four was constantly out of work. In the countryside, one man in three, or at least one man in four, although capable of work, was unable to find any. The one and only reason these men stayed on their plots was that nowhere else would they find a job.2 Such was the state of affairs in 1940, despite the fact that the co-operative movement (as will be seen from table 4) had made quite remarkable progress. In Rumania, land reform was of a much more radical kind. Eight thousand landowners owned half the land. After the First World War, the Government 1 See ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., p. 155. "From a speech made in Cracow on 17 August 1957, reproduced in Documents sur l'économie polonaise en 1956 et 1957, fase. 2: La nouvelle politique agricole en Pologne, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2365 (Paris, 23 December 1957), pp. 12-17. For further details about land distribution at this time, see Francis Bauer Czanowski (ed.): The Polish Handbook, 1925 : A Guide to the Country and Resources of the Republic of Poland (London, 1925); Polish Central Statistical Agency: Statistics for Poland, Vol. V: Big Landed Estates (Warsaw, 1925). 79 Agricultural organisations and development expropriated the large estates owned by Rumanians and Greeks in Wallacbia, and by Hungarians in Transylvania, recently annexed.1 It was decided that no property might exceed 1,250 acres in extent. An area of 14.5 million acres was then split up among 1.4 million peasants. By this one stroke, the percentage of land held by the landed aristocracy was reduced from 42.4 to 13.3. But, as Pirenne has very pertinently observed: The splitting-up of the big estates led to formidable difficulties. The agricultural labourer, suddenly turned into a landed proprietor, had neither the education nor the capital required to run his new holding. The situation was the more strained in that Rumania, exhausted by German requisitioning, had lost a third of its head of cattle. Agricultural output fell off, and many peasants sold out to wealthy peasants or capitalists. Others again fell prey to the money-lender. Thus a fresh agrarian problem arose. The big landed estate had disappeared, and with it the tenant in a state of semi-serfdom. But an agricultural proletariat2 was springing up while landed property was being reconstituted in a capitalist form. This was a typical failing of the land reform schemes put into effect before the Second World War, in that the land was simply distributed. In our day and age, such schemes are much more far-reaching. In Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, the position was somewhat unusual. After the 1878 uprising, the Turkish owners of large estates had taken to their heels, whereupon there had been a vast redistribution of land among the Bulgars and Serbs. In Croatia and Slovenia, large estates existed down to 1919, when a land reform movement divided them among some 500,000 families. Thus, just after the First World War, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia (as it had then become) were countries of small-holders. But the countryside was already overcrowded, and as industry was still too little advanced to be able to absorb the surplus manpower, much that had been achieved by land reforms was simply undone. In Bulgaria, Population pressure on the land intensified during the inter-war years, with consequent fragmentation of holdings so that each holding was, on average, composed of ten separated strips; and Bulgaria had the highest density in Europe of agricultural workers per acre of farm land, excluding the rough mountain pastures. Disguised unemployment in 3the countryside has been estimated at the equivalent of over 1 million workers. 1 These expropriations gave rise to lengthy legal actions. See René Brunet: "La réforme agraire et les intérêts privés hongrois en Transylvanie", Journal de droit international Q?aris, Editions Godde), 1927, second issue, pp. 319-345. 8 Pirenne, op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 406. 'United Nations, Economie Commission for Europe: Economie Survey of Europe in 1960 (Geneva, 1961), Ch. VI, p. 16; Jacques Natan: Stopanska Istori/a na Bulgaria (Sofia, 1957), p. 492. According to W. E. Moore (Economie Demography of Eastern and Southern Europe) (Geneva, League of Nations, 1945), between 35 and 53 per cent of the rural population was redundant. 80 Europe: historical background In Yugoslavia, just before the war, three-quarters of the population gained a living from the land. No more than 7 per cent were employed in industry: Rapid growth of population, the absence of employment outside agriculture, had led to the splitting-up of large estates. The result was rural over-population. Of the national income, 54.6 per cent was derived from agriculture (including forestry), and 19.8 per cent from industry and mining.1 All this illustrates very clearly the kind of problem with which, just before the Second World War, eastern Europe was faced. Simply to distribute land was not enough. Between 1930 and 1940, the agricultural population everywhere, except in Czechoslovakia (38 per cent), represented an excessive proportion of the total actively employed: Bulgaria, 83 per cent; Yugoslavia, 76 per cent; Rumania, 80 per cent; Poland, 65 per cent; Hungary, 50 per cent. Hence nothing could be done for the peasant masses unless wide-ranging series of reforms were undertaken, including putting in hand a redistribution of land, creating co-operatives and credit unions (especially to enable the small farmer to get going), and at the same time giving an impetus to industrialisation so as little by little to absorb the redundant manpower from the countryside. In other words, reforms limited to land distribution alone, as practised in the 1930s, could not lead to positive results. But even a wider reform, guided from above and complete with all the requisite operations, would not have been really successful in countries where the pressure of people per farmable acre was just too great.2 Really effective land reform had to await the advent of over-all economic planning and co-ordination, covering all branches of the national economy. Now until quite recently, land reform was either of the purely distributive type (as during the 1930s), or involved the many operations which go by the name of "land settlement"; it did not, however, go hand-in-hand with the development of other branches of the economy, because national planning was absent. The experience acquired by the eastern European countries before the Second World War shows that unilateral development—purely technical, or 1 Milutin Bogosavljevié: L'économie yougoslave (Belgrade, 1961), p. 6. * Whatever the system chosen, the ratio between agricultural income and agricultural population actively employed may remain very low, if the surplus rural population is too great. A typical example is afforded by Spain, where, for an active population of 4.8 million (1940), there were only 51.25 million acres of farmable land, i.e. little more than 10 acres per head. Since 85 per cent of the country is arid, plots of this size would have been quite inadequate, and land distribution would have led to a catastrophe. In such a situation, there is but one way out: general reform, accompanied by industrialisation as part of a general development plan. As yet nothing on these lines has been achieved. See XavierAndré Flores: Estructura socioeconómica de la agricultura española (Barcelona, Ediciones Península, 1969), Ch. IH and V. 81 co Table 3. Europe : Principal agricultural workers' trade union organisations between 1925 and 1 Country and organisations Austria : Österreichischer Land- und Forstarbeiterverband (Austrian Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers) Verband der Güterbeamten Deutschösterreichs (Austrian Union of Estate Employees) Zentralverband der Landarbeiter Österreichs (Central Union of Agricultural Workers in Austria) Verband aktiver und provisionierter christlicher Forstund Salinenarbeiter der Bundesbetriebe Österreichs (Union of Active and Pensioned Christian Forestry and Salt Workers in Austrian State Undertakings) Year of foundation Membership in 1925-28 or on the date shown 1907 37 133 1919 6000 1919 6000 1924 2000 1918 30 000 1919 5 500 1920 23 000 Belgium : Centrale des travailleurs des industries alimentaires et de l'agriculture de Belgique (Central Union of Workers in the Food Industry and in Agriculture of Belgium) Centrale de l'alimentation, des ouvriers agriculteurs, jardiniers et forestiers (Central Union of Food and Drink Workers, Agricultural Workers, Horticultural and Forestry Workers) Czechoslovakia : Svaz zemedelskych a lesnich delniku (Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers) Verband der land- und forstwirtschaftlichen Arbeiter (Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers) Vzeodborovy svaz zemedelského a lesniho delnictva Ceskoslovenské strany sozialistické (organ of the trade union movement of the National Socialist Party) W ag ac ce Svaz Csl. Zemedelskych a Lesnich Zamestnancu (Union of Czechoslovak Christian-social Agricultural and Forestry Workers) Denmark : Landarbejderforbundet i Danmark (Union of Danish Land Workers) Finland : Maatyöväen Liitto (Union of Agricultural Workers) France : Fédération nationale des travailleurs agricoles (National Federation of Agricultural Workers) Germany : Deutscher Landarbeiterverband (German Agricultural Workers' Union) Allgemeiner Schweizerbund (General Union of Employees in Dairy Farms) Zentralverband der Landarbeiter (Central Union of Agricultural Workers) Italy : Federazione nazionale dei lavoratori della terra (National Federation of Land Workers) (socialist) (wound up in 1926) Federazione italiana dei lavoratori agricoli (Italian Federation of Agricultural Workers) (catholic) (wound up in 1926) Federazione nazionale dei sindicati fascisti dell'agricoltura (National Federation of Fascist Trade Unions in Agriculture) 1925 12093 1915 15 000 1917 1 132 1920 1909 ? 28 85 000 38 1909 20 000 1921 79 000 1901 850 000 (1920) ? 27 OOO (1923) W2& 700 000 42 Table 3. S (Continued) Country and organisations Netherlands : Nederlandsche Bond van Arbeiders in het Landbouw-, Tuinbouw-, en Zuivelbedrijf (Netherlands Union of Workers in Agriculture, Horticulture and Dairying) Roomsch-Katholiek Bond van Bloemist-, Tuin-, Veen-, en Landarbeiders (Roman Catholic Union of Floricultural, Horticultural, Peat Digging and Agricultural Workers) Nederlandsche Christelijke Landarbeidsbond (Netherlands Christian Union of Agricultural Workers) Poland: Zwiazek Zawodowy Robotnikow Rolnych (Union of Agricultural Workers of the Polish Republic) Zwiazek Robotnikow Rolnych i Lesnych (Agricultural and Forestry Workers' Union) Chrzescijanski Zwiazek Zawodowy Robotnikow Rolnych (Christian Union of Agricultural Workers) Sweden : Svenska Lantarbetareförbundet (Swedish Agricultural Workers' Union) Upplands Lantarbetareförbundet (Uppland Agricultural Workers' Union) Svenska Skogs- och Flottningsarbetarefdrbundet (Union of Forestry Workers and Timber Floaters) United Kingdom : England and Wales: National Union of Agricultural Workers Scotland: Scottish Farm Servants'Union Year of foundation Membership in 1925-28 or on the date shown 1909 5 988 ? 6 845 Wa agr acc cen 399 1914 5 646 1 72 000 ? 86 000 ? 21000 1918 6 205 1918 4000 1918 20 000 1906 30 000 61 1912 10 000 10 62 25 Source: ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture Europe: historical background Table 4. Europe : Agricultural co-operatives (including rural credit unions and agricultural and rural mutual insurance co-operatives), 1937 Country or territory Austria Belgium Bulgaria Czechoslovakia Danzig Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Great Britain Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland (Eire) Ireland (Northern) Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Rumania Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Yugoslavia Total for Europe (less the USSR) USSR Number of primary societies Federated NonTotals federated 3 804 2 349 1665 11531 86 5 408 2117 2 386 64 656 40 300 5 948 3 292 40 434 94 7 765 990 659 951 3 896 2 616 8 710 6 751 3 056 2 690 7 070 694 7 900 20 1 100 3172 — — 2116 524 2 305 23 395 700 — 153 14 73 — 421 327 79 383 — 7 768 4 836 16 — 197858 47402 — — Membership Federated 320 441 3 824 3 449 203 346 4 837 253 020 2 227 348 11531 86 3 357 7 524 650 950 2 641 224 286 4 691 242 474 88 051 3 956 710 41000 4 370 502 1 175 5 948 250 890 1 156 847 3 445 54 10 428 507 101 340 94 15 054 7 765 1 621 742 1411 231 187 986 1 129 443 1030 46 701 3 896 » 648 054 2 616 232 368 9 093 1 893 831 6 751 s 1 149 689 3 056 400 688 10 458 551 111 11906 336 509 122 712 710 7 900 804 045 246 435 22155 606 246 905 * — Nonfederated Totals 106 520 199 750 — — 35 106 20 272 61799 1 752 861 . — 11 122 , 9 982 — 47 392 1026 29 304 — 77 205 190 744 3 708 — 2 546 796 — 320 441 309 866 452 770 2 227 348 3 357 686 056 244 558 304 273 5 709 571 4 370 502 293 662 250 890 1 167 969 10 428 111 322 15 054 1 621 742 278 579 130 469 » 46 701 648 054» 232 368 1 923 135 1 149 689 a 400 688 628 316 527 253 126 420 804 045 24 995 522 19156 921 1 A few urban consumers* co-operatives are included in these figures. * The Dutch Statistical Yearbook indicates no more than 2,807 agricultural co-operatives, because of the counting methods used. ' A few fishermen's co-operatives are included. ' Of which 243,000 are kolkhozes, with 18,786,300 members. Source: ILO: Co-operative Societies throughout the World—Numerical Data (Geneva, 1939); also appearing in International Labour Review, Vol. XL, Nos. 2-3, August-September 1939. N.B. The sign (.) indicates that no particulars were obtained. The sign (—) appears whenever no particulars should appear. Furthermore, the co-operatives affiliated to the federative organs appearing in the International List of Co-operative Organisations have been counted as federated. The figures for non-federated co-operatives represent the difference between the figures in the List and the figures provided by sources which indicate the total number of co-operative societies and their membership. In some instances, it has been impossible to separate the figures for federated co-operatives from those for non-federated ones, and the data available appear under "Totals". But the absence of figures in the columns reserved for non-federated co-operatives does not necessarily imply that no such co-operatives exist; sometimes the sources available provide data for federated co-operatives only. 85 Agricultural organisations and development economic, or social—is not enough to ensure the balance of a branch of the economy as complex as agriculture. Neither the remarkable expansion of co-operative farming, nor technical developments in methods of cultivation, nor the promising beginnings of trade unionism could on its own effect that structural transformation so necessary before agriculture can attain a viable balance. The land itself is a basic factor in agricultural production, and without it (and the bulk of the peasantry had none, or too little to live off) the peasants cannot take advantage of the means theoretically made available to them by technical progress. Indeed, the peasantry often suffers from technical innovations, when (as has often happened) under-employment is replaced by chronic unemployment, or when the provision of credit merely drives the peasant further into debt. The same holds good even of the co-operative movement, for a careful scrutiny of the way co-operatives were organised and run at this time reveals that in many cases it was the well-to-do who derived the most profit therefrom. The future of the peasantry (so many of whom were landless), appeared—bearing in mind the dictatorships which at that time were appearing everywhere in central Europe except Czechoslovakia —very dim indeed. In the following section we shall study the development of agricultural organisations, and the social and economic effects of that development, in these countries and in western Europe after the Second World War. Before doing so, however, it might be well to say yet again that many developing countries are today faced with problems very similar to those which Europe had to solve, one way or another, between the eighteenth century and the present day. Such countries could learn much from a study of the slow and often painful evolution of the European peasantry. 86 B. CONTEMPORARY EUROPE D Lamentable though it was, the Second World War nevertheless helped to accelerate progress in European agriculture. Immediately after the events of 1939-45, only the most optimistic could have foreseen that the Europe which was so soon to rise again from its ashes would reach its present level of prosperity or that, nearly everywhere, it would catch up with its pre-war levels of production in a merefiveyears. It must be remembered, however, that after every war European governments have always looked to agriculture to redress the balance of their economy. Each time this has resulted in a more active rural development policy. Taking the case of France, as just one example, the years following the defeat of 1871 saw the creation of the National School of Horticulture (1873); the reopening (in 1876) of the Agricultural College, which had been closed for twenty-four years ; and the establishment of the Departmental and Municipal Organisation for Agricultural Training (1879). The 1918 victory had the same effect; the need to raise the country once more from its ruins motivated the Act of 2 August 1918—a new charter for agricultural education which was to enable basic education to be provided for the majority of future agricultural workers, only 1 per cent of whom (3,000 out of 300,000 on the eve of the war) had hitherto received any agricultural or domestic training in State establishments.1 The same was inevitably true in 1945, this time on a continental scale. If anything, the need for progress was more acute, in that European agriculture, despite its advances in farming techniques and in co-operation, had not yet succeeded in emerging from the pre-industrial period. As a United Nations report emphasised in 1961 : 1 For further details, see L'enseignement agricole en France, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3152 (Paris, January 1965), passim. 87 Agricultural organisations and development Until recently, even in the industrialised countries of north-western Europe, tradition continued to prevail in agriculture. The productivity of land and animals had slowly developed with the application of new techniques, but the division of labour which was the basic element in the development of industry and the corresponding emphasis on investment in more productive and labour-saving plant had scarcely yet begun. Moreover, industry itself was not always sufficiently developed to furnish the means of production which could basically alter the kind of production methods inherited from the past. Agricultural production was as yet scarcely market-oriented, or at least not in any way comparable to that of industry, although income and the standard of living had become increasingly dependent on the market. Only in Denmark and the Netherlands did the striking changes begin relatively early, for the agricultures of these two countries turned towards the conversion of imported feedstuffs into livestock products for export with its accompanying dependence on foreign outlets.1 Such relatively slow progress as there was in pre-war agriculture was brought to a sudden halt by the devastation that followed in the wake of the Second World War, particularly in Eastern Europe. Apart from its 500,000 war dead, Hungary lost 40 per cent of its national income. Like many other Eastern European countries, Hungary relied mainly on draught animals to supplement human labour; but by the end of the war only 40 per cent of its horses and 50 per cent of its cattle remained.2 Poland lost approximately 60 per cent of its productive strength. More than 350,000 farms were partly or completely destroyed (including about 250,000 farmhouses lost through fire or other causes). Two million horses, 4 million cattle and 2 million pigs perished. In 1945 the total losses of all kinds suffered by Poland amounted to $US 5,000 million.3 In Yugoslavia the havoc of war resulted in the destruction of approximately 290,000 holdings (representing 15 per cent of the total), 18 million fruit trees, 62 per cent of the horses, 56 per cent of the cattle, 63 per cent of the sheep and goats, and 59 per cent of the pigs. Losses of farm equipment and machinery amounted to 70 per cent of the total value of these items.4 The USSR, which suffered the most during the war, lost 9,800 collective farms, 2,980 machine and tractor stations, 1,876 State farms, 7 million horses, 17 million cattle, 20 million pigs, 27 million sheep, 137,000 tractors, 49,000 combine-harvesters, 46,000 seeders, 285,000 buildings for animals, 1 United Nations-FAO: European Agriculture in 1965 (Geneva, 1961; doc. ST/ECE/ AGRI/4) pp. 8-9. 8 Roger Kérinec: "La Hongrie adhérente à TACI", Revue des études coopératives, No. 144 (Paris, 1966), p. 155; La Hongrie de 1945 à 1956, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2245 (Paris, 1965), p. 7. * L'agriculture polonaise (Warsaw, Editions Polonia, 1963), p. 8, and Pologne, chiffres et faits (Warsaw, Editions Polonia, 1962), p. 19. 4 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Agrarian Reform and Economic Development, report presented by Yugoslavia (doc. RU: WLR-C/66/18), p. 4; 1,000 datos sobre la Yugoeslavia (Belgrade, Publicistiéko Izdavaöki Zavod Jugoslavie, 1961), p. 21. 88 Contemporary Europe 1.26 million acres of orchards and 337,500 acres of vineyards.1 Although actual destruction was less in the Western European countries, these lands nevertheless suffered heavy losses. In the Netherlands, for example, approximately 575,000 acres were flooded by fresh or salt water between 1944 and 1945, and 8,000 farmhouses, 8,500 cowsheds and 7,800 other farm or horticultural buildings were completely devastated.2 But despite the lower incidence of destruction in the west, the upheavals of the war had nevertheless reduced production to such a level that it could not satisfy the demand of populations patently underfed as a result of the exactions made under the occupation. The urgent nature of the situation, in both east and the west, led the authorities to intervene directly in agricultural matters, either to control food distribution (ration books continued in use for some years after the war) and to raise the level of production, or to correct the serious structural defects which in some countries—southern Italy, Eastern Europe, for instance—prevented the balance from being redressed. As a result of the joint efforts of the authorities, agricultural organisations and private individuals, pre-war productionfigureshad already been overtaken (by approximately 2 per cent) in Western Europe by 1949-50. By that time the USSR had reached its 1940 level. The other Eastern European countries were involved in sweeping agrarian reforms, and had not yet succeeded in reaching former levels; they were nevertheless laying the foundations of their present development. Since the main obstacle was of a structural nature, private property was restricted at the end of the war to 50 acres in Bulgaria, 25 in Yugoslavia (1953), 125 in Rumania and Czechoslovakia and between 125 and 250 in Hungary and Poland. Quite apart from the new restrictions imposed in the last twenty years (the private sector still represents 86 per cent in Poland and 88 per cent in Yugoslavia, whereas in Czechslovakia it does not exceed 12 per cent, and in Rumania 10 per cent3), from a strictly technical point of view it may be said that these reforms did much to standardise the size of private holdings, bringing them nearer to the average sizes in Western Europe. Moreover, the creation of collective undertakings and State farms enabled the adoption of modern methods of production, hitherto practically unknown throughout the region. Can as much be said of the southern countries (Greece, Turkey, southern Italy, Spain and Portugal) which were affected to varying degrees by the war 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Reform and Organisation of the Peasants into Co-operatives in the USSR (doc. RU: WLR-C/66/49), p. 6. 2 Ph. C. M. Van Campen: Le système du crédit agricole dans les Pays-Bas (Eindhoven, April 1950; mimeographed), p. 2. s United Nations-FAO-ILO: Progress in Land Reform, Third Report (New York, 1963), Ch. II and III. 89 Agricultural organisations and development and then either returned to their former systems (in some cases re-establishing the same institutions) or kept the system they had in 1940 ? Except in Spain and Portugal, the need for more or less extensive reform was felt throughout this region immediately after the war. Whilst it is true that the measures taken aimed far more at splitting up large holdings and State-owned land than at a general improvement of farming structures at the national level, they nevertheless helped to reduce the chronic unemployment and under-employment and to increase the production and productivity of both land and men. Admittedly, in Turkey the Law on Land Reform of 1945 failed to achieve genuine agrarian reform since, in 1963, 80 per cent of the land was still in the hands of 22 per cent of the rural population; and when a census of the 7,000 agas was carried out, it was found that half owned more than 250 acres of land.1 The partial failure of the reform may be attributed to the repeal in 1950 of the legislative measures providing for the expropriation of holdings of over 1,250 acres. Nevertheless, between 1947 and 1964, some 4.5 million acres of land owned by the State, and sometimes by religious foundations and municipalities, were distributed to 360,000 families in 5,157 villages 2, which somewhat improved the lot of the poorest classes. In Italy the land reform carried out under the Sila Law and Stralcio Law— of 12 May and 21 October 1950 respectively—involved the distribution of approximately 1.75 million acres to 110,000 families. Although the reform concentrated mainly on the southern regions, its effects, together with those of the country's industrialisation, enabled agricultural underemployment to be cut by 25 per cent during the period 1949-60.3 As a result of this reform, which is still under way, the situation has been restored to such an extent that, according to Mr. Nino Novacco, President of the Southern Development Assistance Institute: Nowadays southern Italy is the region with the highest growth rate in the country; between 1953 and 1964, private consumption in this area went up by 78.8 per cent in real terms. Average annual investment in industry rose from S5US484 million during the period 1959-61 to SUS 846 million during the period 1962-64, i.e. an increase in real terms of 74.7 per cent. The increase recorded in the centre and north of the country over the same period was only 17.6 per cent. Unemployment figures in the south of Italy dropped from 1 million to 600,000 in ten years. The days when this region 4used to drop further and further behind the rest of the country belong to the past. 1 Amber Busoglu: "Turquie, an quarante", Le Monde (Paris), 24 May 1963. OECD: Low Incomes in Agriculture (Paris, 1964), p. 446. 8 ibid. pp. 269-270 and p. 273. See also Progress in Land Reform, Third Report, op. cit., Ch. Ill ; G. Barbero : Land Reform in Italy : Achievements and Perspectives (Rome, FAO, 1961 ). * Statement made to the press. See Le Monde, 22 November 1966. a 90 Contemporary Europe In Greece, under the measures taken in 1952, uncultivated holdings of 62.5 acres, and all land in excess of 125 acres on cultivated holdings, were expropriated; in this way, 1 million acres were distributed to 167,000 farming families. As a result of this policy and of other measures such as land consolidation, irrigation and drainage, and local road improvement schemes, a 75 per cent increase in agricultural production was noted during the period 1950-62, with an accompanying rise of 87 per cent (1951-61) in farmers' per capita incomes which was above the average in the OECD countries.1 This reorganisation, whether of a general nature or restricted to certain categories of holdings, was not confined to the countries of eastern and southern Europe. Western countries took similar reform action. Here, however, the movement was towards consolidation rather than division, the characteristic Western European farm being the small or medium-sized holding farmed directly by its owners. The limited size of a large number of these holdings, as well as their undue fragmentation, led governments to adopt a policy of land improvement which aimed both to regroup holdings and to form viable family units, so as to bring agricultural incomes as nearly as possible into line with those in industry and public services. Without this land improvement policy (accompanied by effective measures as regards credit facilities and price protection), farmers would have been unable to make the transition from their traditional self-sufficiency to the increasing specialisation required by modern production; in many cases rational and profitable mechanisation would have been impossible. Legislation on various matters such as inheritance and transfer of property, credit facilities for the consolidation or enlarging of holdings, installation expenses, terminal allowances for old farmers or those prepared to sell their farms, and public or private land improvement companies, all helped to a certain extent to channel and control the effects of the spontaneous drift from agriculture caused by the demand for labour in other expanding sectors. In France, for example, beginning with the Interministerial Order of 12 October 1949, measures were taken to grant subsidies and special loans to would-be farmers who had no possibility of setting themselves up in their home areas and who therefore wish to farm elsewhere in the country. The Agricultural Guidance Act of 5 August 1960, under which the SAFER were set up2, the 1 Progress in Land Reform, Third Report, op. cit., Ch. II; OECD: Low Incomes in Agriculture, op. cit., pp. 219-230. a According to the Act, the SAFER (sociétés d'aménagement fonder et d'établissement rural) are "land improvement and rural settlement companies" that "may be formed to purchase land or farms freely offered for sale by their owners, together with wasteland, for resale after possible improvement. Inter alia, they shall aim to improve agrarian structures, enlarge certain farms and facilitate cultivation of the soil and the settlement of farmers on 91 Agricultural organisations and development Acts of 3 March and 8 August 1962 respecting the special assistance scheme for agricultural workers and the creation of the Agricultural Modernisation Social Fund (FASASA), together with other legislative provisions, in particular the Decrees of 15 July 1965 (making provision for loans of up to 75 per cent for the purchase or extension of farms1, provided a framework for the reorganisation of French agriculture in which the agricultural organisations played an active part. From 1955 to 1963 the number of farms fell from 2,286,000 to 1,900,000, i.e. an average drop of 50,000 per year. This decline, which mainly affected small farms of less than 25 acres to the advantage of those of over 50 acres, is not yet at an end since, in 1966, 29 per cent of farms still had less than 12 acres whilst 20 per cent had an effective farming area of between 12 and 25 acres. The process may well be completed within ten years, however, through the measures begun in 1960. Fairly similar policies were adopted by the other Western countries, and in all cases a cut in the number of holdings to allow for the setting-up of more economic units has become one of the most striking characteristics of the increasing rationalisation of European agriculture (see table 5). Between 1949 and 1964 the number of holdings in the Federal Republic of Germany dropped from 1,947,600 to 1,497,000, that is to say, a decrease of 450,600 within fifteen years. In Austria, during the period 1950-60, the number of farms was reduced from 433,000 to approximately 402,000 (a drop of 31,000) and in the Netherlands, between 1956 and 1962, from 179,473 to 158,572 (a drop of 20,901). Throughout the region this decrease has been to the advantage of the intermediate groups of farmers, and it is probable that it will continue into the next decade as successive reappraisals of their economic potential bring new areas into consideration. The desire of governments and particularly the land." As private companies they must be approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs. The State accords them a working capital for land purchase and subsidies of between 50 and 80 per cent for improvement work. The SAFER are required to resell the land they buy in the form of viable units to farmers, who receive a loan of approximately 60 per cent repayable over 30 years at 3 per cent interest for land, and a subsidy of 50 per cent for building. The activities of the SAFER are co-ordinated by a semi-public central body, the Central Company for Land and Rural Development {Société centrale d'aménagement fonder et rural—SCAFR). See OECD: Obstacles to Shifts in the Use of Land (Paris, 1965), pp. 80-89; L'amélioration et la conservation des exploitations agricoles dans les pays de l'Europe des Six, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3178 (Paris, 1965), pp. 23-30. See also Les structures agraires en France et les sociétés d'aménagement foncier et d'établissement rural (SAFER), ibid., No. 3422, 1967. It is worth noting that in the seven years following their creation in 1960, the twenty-seven SAFER in France purchased only 418,660 acres, of which they resold 221,460 to farmers, according to the report submitted by their federation to the general assembly held in June 1967 (see Le Monde, 14 June 1967). 1 See Journal officiel de la République française, Nos. 65-69, Decrees Nos. 65-576 to 65-582 and Orders of 15 July 1965. See also Pierre Legendre: L'exode professionnel des agriculteurs et le fonds d'action sociale pour l'aménagement des structures agricoles (Paris, Institut des ha utes études de droit rural et d'économie agricole, 15 January 1965; mimeographed). 92 Contemporary Europe Table 5. Europe : Changes in the active agricultural population and the size of holdings Country Active agricultural population Period Variation Farm holdings Variation Period in numbers (%) Austria Belgium Bulgaria Denmark Finland France Germany (Fed. Rep.) Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Rumania Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey USSR United Kingdom Yugoslavia 1951-61 1950-62 1950-56 1950-61 1950-60 1954-62 1950-60 1950-60 1950-60 1950-60 1951-61 1947-62 1947-60 1950-61 1950-60 1950-60 1950-56 1950-60 1952-62 1950-60 1950-60 1950-59 1950-60 1956-61 -30 1 -39 2 -17.7 s -25 -24 -25* -35 , -27.3 3 -25« -24' -28 -36* -27» -25 -12.8 s -9 + 1.7s -91 -37l -18 » +20» -24.8 3 -16' -10 s (%) 1951-60 1950-59 n.a. 1946-61 1950-59 1954-63 1949-62 n.a. 1951-60 1951-60 1930-61 1950-62 1950-59 1949-59 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 1951-61 1939-55 n.a. n.a. 1950-60 n.a. -7 -21 n.a. -6 +9 -17 -19 n.a. -6 -8 +2 -26 -12 -8 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. -17 -14 n.a. n.a. -11 n.a. Variation in average size CO + 10 +21 n.a. +4 0 n.a. + 19 n.a. +81 n.a. +1 +31 +11 +6 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. +12 +10 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. : not available 1 Including employment in agriculture, hunting and fishing. ' Expressed in full-time labour units. * Male population only. * Including employment in forestry. 6 Full-time workers only. • Active population of 15 years and over. 'Including, employment in forestry and fishing. ' Full-time male workers only. • Covers rural population and share of this population group in the total population. Sources: For the countries of southern and western Europe including Yugoslavia: OECD: Interrelationship between Income and Supply Problems in Agriculture (Paris, 1965), pp. 117 and 153. For Eastern European countries: percentages calculated on the basis of data published for 1950 by Folke Dovring in Land and Labour in Europe, 1900-SO (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1956), p. 66 and, for 1960 or the most recent year, by the FAO in its Production Yearbook, 1965 (Rome, 1966). of farmers to raise agricultural incomes to the same level as those in other industries can only encourage this trend. This progress towards structural balance, although never fully achieved, is giving rise to increasing satisfaction; and other accompanying factors, of which it is both cause and effect, have contributed to the recovery of European agriculture as a whole. These are the outflow of labour from agriculture, with consequent agricultural mechanisation, and the extension of agricultural advisory work and vocational training. These two factors have had a 93 Agricultural organisations and development decisive influence on the increasing integration of agriculture within the industrial economy. In 1945, despite the considerable progress achieved before the war, European agriculture suffered from over-population which, in view of the large number of non-viable holdings in the West1 and the predominance of latifundia in the East, had hitherto prevented it from modernising its equipment and farming methods. Neither the structure of the holdings nor the surplus active population were likely to encourage farmers to invest their income in modern capital goods. Immediately after the war the reforms undertaken in the East (in the West land improvement policies came later), and above all the emphasis being placed everywhere on the necessity to boost industry, were to be decisive in reducing the importance of these negative factors. During the decade 1950-60, the expansion of industry and services, together with the policies of support for agriculture, enabled the latter to get rid of some of its surplus active population and proportionally to increase its productivity. This decrease in manpower, shown in table 5, has become still more marked since 1960. In recent years it has even exceeded the expectations of the national development plans: in 1962 a further 160,000 departures per year were recorded in France, i.e. twice the number anticipated in the Fourth Plan. In Germany the outflow continues at a rate of 120,000 persons per year; in Italy 300,000 workers left the land in 1966; in Spain the figure is approximately 150,000 per year since 1959. These statistics tally with the forecasts made in March 1961 by Mr. Sicco Mansholt, at the Seminar on European Integration organised by the International Press Institute of Zürich. He estimated that in the European Economic Community, 8 million workers would have left the land by 1975 (4 million in Italy, 2.5 million in France and 1.5 million in Germany). In view of the outflow of labour from agriculture that has already taken place in recent years, the Mansholt Plan, submitted in December 1968 to the Governments of States Members of the European Community, provides for the departure of only 5 million agricultural workers out of 10 million, between 1970 and 1980, in the Common Market. On the wider scale of the OECD, Professor Folke Dovring anticipated that over the period 1960-70 the agricultural population would decline by a further 25 to 30 per cent.2 If the agricultural labour force remained stationary, and in view of the growth target of the OECD for this period (i.e. a 50 per cent rise in the national income of the Western 1 There were still 900,000 non-viable units in France in 1956-57, i.e. 40 per cent of the total, and 201,000 in the United Kingdom in 1959, i.e. 50 per cent. During the same period thefigureswere 26 per cent in Austria, 53 per cent in Greece, 50 per cent in Ireland and 64 per cent in Italy. See United Nations-FAO: European Agriculture in 1965, op. cit., annex II, p. 8. 2 Folke Dovring: Problems of Manpower in Agriculture (Paris, OECD, 1965), p. 61. 94 Contemporary Europe Table 6. Europe : The development of agricultural mechanisation Country Austria Belgium Bulgaria Denmark France Germany (Fed. Rep.) Greece Hungary Italy Netherlands Poland Portugal Rumania Spain Sweden USSR United Kingdom Yugoslavia 1 Number of tractors in 1938 in 1964 1 800 (1939) 1 200 3 500 (1940) 6 600 (1935-39) 36 000 38 000 ? 7 000 (1935) 36 000 4 000 1000 600 4 049 5 300 (1940) 22 600 680 000 50000 2 500(1939) 178 492 61377 61723 161 700 (1965) 952 718 1 106 899 33 500 60 555 377 107 111 701 106 789 14 086 75 386 130 132 168 000 (1963) 1 539 000 389 250 (1963) 45 394 Arable land per tractor in 1964 (in hectares ') 9.0 15.3 74.0 16.8 21.9 7.6 114.9 93.1 40.8 8.8 149.0 293.2 139.2 160.1 19.6 (1963) 149.6 19.1 (1963) 183.8 1 hectare = 2.471 acres. Sources: Tractors in 1938: Henri Noilhan: Histoire de l'agriculture à l'ère industrielle (Paris, 1965), Vol. V, p. 125; Svetolik Popovic : La politica agraria en Yugoeslava (Belgrade, 1964), p. 59 ; Evolution économique de la Hongrie, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2883 (Paris, 1962), p. 29; L'économie roumaine, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3151 (Paris, 1965), p. 31; K. Kiriakov et al.: La réorganisation socialiste de l'économie rurale en République populaire de Bulgarie (Sofia, 1965), p. 6; Aperçu du Danemark (Copenhagen, 1967), p. 53; Austria, Hechos y cifras (Vienna, 1965), p. 72. For Poland, estimate of the Central Office of Statistics, Warsaw. United Nations-FAO : European Agriculture in 1965 (Geneva, 1961), annex I, p. 6. Tractors in 1964: FAO: Production Yearbook, 1965 (Rome, 1966), p. 308. Hectares of arable land per tractor in 1964: figures calculated on the basis of the arable area indicated in ibid., p. 3. countries) the farmers' per capita income "would grow only half as fast as that of the community at large, unless its terms of trade were improving correspondingly".1 This seems unlikely to occur, however, in view of the fact that technical progress, particularly mechanisation, has swept European agriculture into an irreversible process, that of its own "industrial revolution". The figures in table 6, referring to tractors, reveal the extent to which European agriculture was "under-capitalised" in 1940. Statistics in respect of other factors of production show a similar trend, particularly during the period 1950-60, which was so decisive. An example in this respect is the increase in fertiliser consumption since thefive-yearperiod 1948-49 to 1952-53 (table 7). A further important factor is the joint use of agricultural equipment. Whether instigated or organised by the authorities, or resulting from a spontaneous decision by the farmers themselves, in either case such co-operation 1 D o v r i n g , Problems of Manpower in Agriculture, o p . cit., p. 29. 95 Agricultural organisations and development Table 7. Europe : Increase in fertiliser consumption (thousands of metric tons) Region and country Eastern Europe (including Yugoslavia): Nitrogenous fertilisers Phosphate fertilisers Potash fertilisers Western and southern Europe: Nitrogenous fertilisers Phosphate fertilisers Potash fertilisers 1948-49/ 1952-53 1960-61 1964-65 679.2 729.8 1 071.5 1 727.6 1640.0 1 888.9 2725.5* 2 164.5 • 2267.6* 1 547.8 2 350.2 1860.5 3 446.9 3 540.8 3 316.4 5 413.9 5 241.2 5 243.1 * 1963-64, more recent data not being available for all the countries in this region. Note: For lack of data, Albania is not included among the Eastern countries. For further details see FAO: Production Yearbook, ¡963 and ibid., 1965 (Rome, 1964 and 1966). between farmers involved a gradual departure from the individualism that had characterised pre-war agriculture. According to a survey carried out in 1965 \ the number of tractors worked on a pool basis, by co-operatives or other types of associations, represented 6.2 per cent of the total in Finland, 4 per cent in the Netherlands, 3 per cent (?) in France, under 2 per cent in the Federal Republic of Germany, 8 per cent in Norway and 5 per cent in Turkey. For reaper and binder machines, the percentages are more significant : 23 per cent in Finland, 11 per cent in the Netherlands, 27.5 per cent in France, 60 per cent in Germany, 20 per cent in Norway, 13 per cent in Turkey. The gap between the two series of percentages shows the link between the pooling of machinery and the amount of investment involved. This collective use of equipment has also been applied to the land in the case of group farming. The latter is too recent a development for its results to be assessed with any certitude (in France, a pioneer country in thisfield,the Act respecting joint farming groups dates from August 1962) but it would seem to be the answer to the new needs resulting from constantly changing economic conditions, with which the traditional institutions such as co-operatives no longer appear able to cope satisfactorily in their present form. Here we have been able to follow these developments in outline only, but a glance at the production indices (see table 8) and at the output of agricultural produce will show the extent of the progress made. For example, a comparison of the European (excluding the USSR) average output in quintals per hectare of the main cereal crops reveals that between the periods 1934-38 and 1961-65 output went up from 13.9 to 19.6 for wheat, from 13.6 to 17.5 for ' F A O : Existing Forms of Mutual Assistance among Farmers in Europe (Rome, 1966), passim. 96 Contemporary Europa rye, from 14.4 to 25.4 for barley, from 15.1 to 19.5 for oats and from 14.3 to 22.5 for maize.1 It should further be observed that these are aggregate averages for the whole of Europe and that the low output of the dry southern regions pulls down the general average. A comparison limited to countries in the forefront of agricultural progress would reveal far greater increases. The technical progress of European agriculture is also reflected in other fields —closer participation of agricultural organisations in economic and social planning, higher wages and standards of living, etc.—that will be considered below, country by country. Lastly, and although statistics similar to those in table 4 of the previous chapter are not available, the remarkable advances made by the co-operative movement in all European countries must not be forgotten. Although the inevitable trend towards concentration, which is a general phenomenon, has involved a drop in the number of co-operatives in many countries, this does not mean that their activities have likewise diminished. On the contrary, there has been an unprecedented increase in the volume and diversity of their operations, whilst the impact made by co-operatives throughout Europe is stronger than ever. It would have been impossible to achieve all these results had similar progress not been made in vocational training and agricultural advisory work (the latter was reorganised in nearly all countries during the decade 1950-602), nor could they have been obtained without the active co-operation of agricultural organisations in every field. This study was designed to give precise information on the part currently being played by these organisations in the economic and social development of rural areas. To this end, questionnaires were submitted to the general farmers' organisations and to employers' and workers' organisations, as well as to the chambers of agriculture, wherever these existed, in Europe.* No country was intentionally left out of the survey, but only those which replied to the questionnaires appear therein. The information received and the documentation available have provided a general picture of the situation in the following countries, and enabled the relevant conclusions to be drawn: — Western Europe : Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, 1 For the 1934-38 figures, see FAO: Yearbook of Food and Agricultural Statistics, 1947 (Washington, 1947), passim. The averages for 1961-65 are based on annual averages published in the latest FAO yearbooks. 3 As regards the progress and methods of European advisory services, see the periodical reports published by OECD under the heading Agricultural Advisory Services in Europe and North America. 3 For the text of these questionnaires, see Appendix 1 to this volume. 97 Agricultural organisations and development Table 8. Socio-economic data for European countries (with special reference to thçir Country National per capita income in 1965 (USS) Austria Belgium Bulgaria Czechoslovakia Denmark Finland France Germany (Fed.Rep.) Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Rumania Spain Sweden Switzerland USSR United Kingdom Yugoslavia 970 1406 650 (1964) 1 1200 (1964) 1 1652 1399 1436 1 447 566 890 (1964) 1 783 883 1498 429 1265 1453 930 (1964) 1 351 710 (1964) * 594 2 201 1 1928 890 (1964) x 1451 390 (1964) 1 Share of agriculture Active agricultural in gross domestic population product in 1963 (% of total active (%) population) 11(1962) 7 — 14 12 19 92 6 (1962) 29 21 22 16 8 (1961) 8 9 9 26(1960) 23 30 24 (1962) 6 (1964) 5 22 (1962) 4 28 22.7 (1961) 7.4 (1961) 48.6 (1963) 22.6 (1963) 17.7 (1960) 35.1 (1960) 20.7 (1962) 11.0(1961) 53.7 (1961) 35.0 (1963) 35.7 (1961) 24.6 (1964) 15.0(1960) 10.3 (1957) 10.8 (1960) 19.4 (1960) 47.8 (1963) 42.0 (1960) 48.0 (1963) 34.4 (1964) 13.4 (1960) 11.4(1960) 32.0 (1965) 4.0 (1962) 56.7 (1961) Index of per capita food production in 1964-65 (1952-53 to 1956-57 = 100) 134 120 — — 114 120 116 112 144 — 126 113 120 — 120 92 — 106 — 122 100 90 — 129 147 *GNP estimated by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development; for Sweden, United Nations figures. " Excluding fishing. s Provisional data. ' 1 gram = 0.035 oz. Sources: ILO: Year Book of Labour Statistics, 1965 (Geneva, 1966); FAO: Production Yearbook, 1965 (Rome, 1966) and The State of Food and Agriculture, 1966 (Rome, 1966); IBRD: World Bank Atlas of Per Capita Product and Population (Washington, 1966); United Nations: Statistical Yearbook, 1964 (New York, 1965); — Eastern Europe : Bulgaria, Eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland, USSR. Of the fifty-nine central organisations in these fifteen countries which replied to the questionnaires, there were twenty general organisations, twelve employers' associations or unions, twenty-three workers' trade unions, and four chambers of agriculture. The rarity of the latter, which were so numerous before the war, is due to the fact that many of them failed to survive the political upheavels of the period 1933-45. In Germany and Austria they were abolished by the national-socialist régime, but reorganised at the end of the war. In the Eastern countries—Poland, Hungary, Rumania—they were not 98 Contemporary Europe agrarian situation) Available calories, 1964-65 (number of calories per capita per day) 2 980 3 150 (1963-64) — — 3 330 3 070 (1963-64) 3 070 (1963-64) 2 920 2 960 (1963-64) 3 020 (1962) 3 480 (1963-64) 2 810 3 150 (1963-64) — 3 080 2 920 3 350 (1961-63) 2 670 3 040 2 850 (1963-64) 2950 3 150 (1963-64) — 3 300 3 110(1963-64) Available fats, 4 1964-65 (grams per capita per day) 118.8 140.9 (1963-64) — — 157.8 116.5(1963-64) 129.7 (1963-64) 131.0 93.5 (1963-64) 99.6 (1962) 133.3 (1963-64) 86.8 140.9 (1963-64) — 143.1 132.3 97.2 (1961-63) 70.3 60.8 (1961-63) 98.5 (1963-64) 132.9 134.7 (1963-64) — 147.4 78.8 (1963-64) Available proteins, 1964-65 (grams * per capita per day) Total Animal 86.7 91.1 49.0 51.0 (1963-64) — — 93.1 95.1 100.3 80.4 98.0 90.9 91.6 81.5 91.1 — 84.6 81.6 92.9 76.6 92.2 78.6 83.1 89.3 — 89.8 97.2 — — 58.5 58.0 (1963-64) 58.0 (1963-64) 51.1 35.9 (1963-64) 37.1 (1962) 55.5 (1963-64) 32.3 51.0 (1963-64) — 51.7 50.4 40.4 (1961-63) 28.7 27.7 (1961-63) 28.0 (1963-64) 55.6 52.3 (1963-64) — 54.0 24.2 (1963-64) Percentage of illiterates (total) Infant mortality in 1963 (deaths per 1,000 births) 1-2 (1950) 3.3 (1947) 14.7 (1956) 2-3 (1950) 1-2 (1950) 1-2 (1950) 3.6 (1946) 1-2 (1950) 19.6 (1961) 3.2 (1960) 1-2 (1950) 8.4 (1961) 3-4 (1950) 40-45 (1950) 1-2 (1950) 1-2 (1950) 4.7 (1960) 38.1 (1960) 11.4 (1956) 17.6 (1950) 1-2 (1950) 1-2 (1950) 1.5 (1959) 1-2 (1950) 23.5 (1961) 31.3 27.2 35.7 22.0 19.1 3 18.2 25.4 26.9 39.3 42.9 26.6 39.5 s 28.6 34.2 15.8 17.7(1962) 49.1 s 73.1 55.2 40.5 15.4 20.5 30.9 21.8 ' 77.5 s Demographic Yearbook. 1964 (New York, 1965) ; Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, 1966 (New York, 1967) ; UNESCO: Statistical Yearbook, 1964 (Paris, 1966) and World Illiteracy at Mid-Century (Paris, 1957). See also, for income per head of population: A. Lasso de la Vega: Classification Internationale des pays d'après leur niveau de développement. Essai de systématisation des différentes méthodes proposées jusqu 'à présent. UNCTAD, Research Memorandum, No. 3 (Geneva, 17 June 1966); (UNCTAD/RD/MISC.4). For the active agricultural population in the Eastern European countries, statistics have been taken from United Nations: 1967 Report on the World Social Situation (New York, 1969). re-established. Some remained in Sweden until recently but it was decided to transfer their activities to government bodies—the agricultural councils of the counties—as from 1 July 1967. Other countries such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Switzerland have never had chambers of agriculture. Lastly, Spain and Italy have joint chambers, whose activities, of varying scope, differ from those of the traditional chambers. This is why only those of France, Germany and Austria are mentioned in this survey. It will further be noted that the organisations consulted do not cover the entire range of possible or existing types of association in the rural world. 99 Agricultural organisations and development For obvious reasons of time and space, many types of association that are of great interest have deliberately been left outside the scope of the survey. This applies to co-operatives, which are worth analysing afresh in order to sum up their present situation, despite all that has already been written on them. The same is true of other types of association that have been less often studied, such as the marketing boards encountered in many countries. In the descriptions of the Western countries given below, it will be seen that where such types of association are mentioned, it is only in so far as they come under the occupational organisations studied or have close links with such organisations. In the case of the Eastern countries, the co-operative organisations are analysed because they not only carry out their own role but also fulfil a number of functions that elsewhere come within the province of farm or farmworkers' organisations. Nevertheless, despite these limitations necessarily imposed on a survey that cannot be exhaustive in view of its wide geographical scope, it may be considered that, altogether, thefifteencountries covered in this chapter provide a sufficiently wide and complete sample of the manner in which European organisations are run and that, where necessary, models might be put together from this sample for the guidance of the developing countries. WESTERN EUROPE Austria The end of the Second World War brought many changes to Austria— division of the country into occupation zones, general reorganisation of the economy, adoption of a democratic political structure and renaissance of the former political parties and industrial associations—which had salutary and far-reaching effects in every sphere, particularly that of agriculture. Today, rural life is centred on a wide range of agricultural organisations, similar to those in other Western countries, the most important of which have been good enough to reply to our questionnaire. Employers' organisations • Conference of Agricultural and Forestry Employers' Organisations The Conference of Agricultural and Forestry Employers' Organisations (Obermännerkonferenz der Arbeitgeberverbände der Land- und Forstwirtschaft) is the central organisation for the employers' associations in the different regions, with the exception of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg. These associations 100 Austria were founded in the years immediately following the war, and banded together in 1948 into the present central organisation with a view to the co-ordination and collective representation of their interests. The primary concern of the employers' associations is the negotiation with the trade unions of collective agreements on wages and general conditions of work. These agreements cover wage-earning and salaried employees of both private and State-managed agricultural undertakings. But it should be pointed out that in some provinces the power to negotiate agreements is held by the chambers of agriculture. In all cases, the agreements must observe the provisions of the federal Agricultural Labour Act of 1948, which was adopted to give workers in agriculture and forestry equal status with industrial workers, with due regard, however, to the special conditions prevailing in agriculture.1 As in other countries, the employers' associations offer advice to their members on all questions arising in connexion with the labour laws, social insurance or tax problems, and support them in bringing grievances to the attention of the official authorities. In addition they collaborate closely in the framing of social laws or new labour regulations by stating their views jointly with the chambers of agriculture. On the other hand, as far as economic policy—i.e. price fixing, production targets, etc.—is concerned the employers' associations (while showing their interest through the positions they adopt and the recommendations and resolutions passed at their congresses) leave action in this field mainly to the chambers of agriculture and the Farm and Forest Owners' Association. Production targets are influenced by the Government's policy of subsidies and aid to the rural sector as defined in the Agricultural Act of 1960. Under this Act the Government submits to Parliament each year a "Green Report" on comparative trends in the agricultural sector and the measures applied in 1 This Act is a model of its kind in its provisions for the protection of young workers, which are all too often inadequate in other countries. Mention may be made, by way of illustration, of some of its provisions, quoted in a 1955 publication: "The employer must devote particular attention to the vocational training and moral welfare of juvenile employees ; special attention must be paid to their health and physical development, and they must be given an opportunity to attend agricultural or forestry continuation schools or courses; they must not work overtime or at night (the term 'night' is defined, as a rule, for young workers and for adults, at any time of the year (including the busy season), as being an uninterrupted period of 10 consecutive hours in every 24, including, as a rule, the time between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m.) The weekly working hours of young persons must not exceed an average of 48 over the year or 54 during the cultivation and harvest period, and they must be allowed a continuous holiday period of 24 working days during each year of service. . . . The employer is bound to draw the attention of apprentices to the dangers arising out of the work (in particular, to the rules for the prevention of accidents) and to ensure that equipment and machinery are safe before they are used by the apprentice." It should be added that conditions have improved even further over the past ten years, particularly as regards hours of work. For further details see "The Protection of Young Agricultural Workers in Austria", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXI, No. 2, February 1955, pp. 195-206. 101 Agricultural organisations and development accordance with the provisions of the plan. Of course, arrangements exist for agricultural interests to be represented on the Ministry of Agriculture commission responsible for drawing up the report. The machinery for price fixing varies according to the product, and it is worth recalling here the distinction made in the last OECD report on agricultural policies: For some agricultural products (bread-grains, milling products, milk, butter, cheese) prices are determined through decisions by public authorities. Any price changes of goods which fall under this jurisdiction are discussed by representatives of the responsible ministers and the three chambers (commerce, labour, agriculture). The result of this consultation is submitted to the Price Commission, seated in the Ministry of Agriculture. The Commission forwards its decision to the Minister who confirms it definitely. Price changes not falling under the jurisdiction of the above-mentioned law on price regulations, as for instance packed cheese, curd, melted cheese, whipped cream, condensed milk, insecticides, etc., are discussed by the "Parity Commission on Prices and Wages Questions" which is composed of representatives of the interested groups (chambers of commerce, labour and agriculture, as well as trade unions) and of the Government, the latter however with no right to vote. Thus changes in prices of agricultural products also can come before this Commission. In practice the Commission has served as an instrument of delaying or moderating price increases and clearing opposed interests.1 In so far as they belong to agricultural organisations—membership of which may be voluntary or (as in the case of the chambers of agriculture) compulsory—employers therefore have the opportunity of exerting direct influence upon general agricultural policy. But as far as their own employers' associations are concerned, their role seems to be voluntarily limited to the legal and social aspects of their profession. The Conference of Employers' Organisations does not belong to any national federation or confederation, nor is it affiliated to any international organisation. Agricultural workers' unions • Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers The trade union for agricultural workers in Austria is the Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers (Gewerkschaft der Arbeiter in der Land- und Forstwirtschaft). This union, founded in 1906, is intended for employees only.2 Its paid-up membership at 31 December 1965 was nearly 50,000, a figure higher than that of 1926 (just over 37,000) but not as high as that reached in the years 1921-23, which fluctuated between 60,000 and 70,000. 1 OECD: Agricultural Policies in 1966 (Paris, 1967), p. 145. On the origins of this union see ILO : The Representation and Organisation ofAgricultural Workers, op. cit., pp. 87-88. 2 102 Austria This decline does not, however, reflect a falling-off of influence—far from it: in 1921-23 about 14 per cent of the employed agricultural population belonged to the union, whereas today about 50 per cent are members. Hence, as in many other countries, the decline is in the number of agricultural employees, estimated at 500,000 in the 1920s and at barely 100,000 today.1 The union's influence is wielded first and foremost for the benefit of its own members, but the rise in the standard of living as a result of union action (conclusion of collective agreements, improvements in labour legislation, etc.) has also been to the advantage of non-members. Most of the union's members are employed full-time throughout the year. But great importance is also attached to seasonal work, and one of the union's main tasks is to strive to halt the extension of this system and to combat growing winter unemployment among agricultural and forestry workers. Tenant farmers and peasants have their own associations to defend their interests, membership of which is voluntary. They are not allowed to join the employees' union. The union is represented, directly or indirectly, on a number of public bodies, including the following: — the bodies responsible for legally representing the interests of agricultural and forestry workers: agricultural workers' chambers, chambers of labour; — the Ministry of Agriculture commission responsible for drawing up the "Green Report"2 which, by law, has to give an assessment each year of the situation in agriculture; — all the autonomous bodies for the administration of the social insurance schemes; — the Parity Commission on Prices and Wages Questions, an unofficial body but one recognised by the Government (indirect participation); — the commissions established by law to handle vocational training in agriculture and forestry; — the labour courts and social insurance arbitration tribunals (nomination of assistant judges) ; — a large number of other bodies of lesser importance. The influence exerted within these public bodies ranges from consultation to direct participation through the exercise of the right to vote. ' I L O : The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., p. 87; OECD: Manpower Statistics, 1950-1962 (Paris, 1963), p. 23. 2 The decision to draw up a "Green Plan" was taken on 13 July 1960, the date of the promulgation of the Agricultural Act, whereby the Ministry of Agriculture is required each year to draw up a report on the country's agricultural situation on the basis of data furnished by a commission whose terms of reference are fixed by law and on which various groups of interests are represented. For further details see L'économie agricole de l'Autriche, Notes et études documentaires. No. 2987 (Paris, 3 May 1963). 103 Agricultural organisations and development The main tasks of this organisation are as follows: — taking part in collective bargaining with a view to improving wages and conditions of work through the conclusion of agreements ; collaborating— mainly by wielding its influence—in the framing of economic and social legislation so as to ensure that employees' interests are effectively safeguarded (legislation on employment in agriculture, social insurance, vocational training, etc.); — participating in attempts to create employment opportunities and ensure job security (full employment policy) ; furthering the development of the agricultural milieu in general through the improvement of the financial position of agricultural and forestry workers; — providing information, instruction and further training for agricultural and forestry workers by issuing publications and organising weekend schools, meetings, etc. As regards obstacles which might stand in the way of the development of trade union activities, the union states that there are none of a legislative character and that, generally speaking, the employers and their organisations recognise the trade unions as economic partners and respect them. Nevertheless, in one specific respect—the access to trade unionism of farm domestic servants—there do still appear to be stumbling-blocks due to the scattered nature of peasant farms and the small number (one or two on average) of workers employed on these farms, some of whom are still treated by their employers in a patriarchal manner. Many of these workers are in fact relatives of the farmer employing them, and hence opposed to the union. The union considers that its main successes have been in : — maintaining a steady improvement in the standard of living of agricultural and forestry workers thanks to a dynamic wage policy; — securing, after agricultural and forestry workers had remained in an underprivileged position for decades, the promulgation in 1948 of up-to-date legislation dealing with all matters pertaining to contracts of employment and the protection of workers; — securing the placing of agricultural and forestry workers on the same footing as workers in industry, commerce and handicrafts as concerns social insurance, by bringing them within the scope of the General Social Insurance Act promulgated in 1955; — securing the adoption in 1959 of the 45-hour week for agricultural and forestry workers; — bringing about the adoption in 1952 of up-to-date legislative provisions on vocational training, which were adapted in 1965—thanks to a new law fought for by the trade unions—covering the changes which had taken place in the meantime in agriculture and forestry as a result of technological progress ; 104 Austria — providing on a continuous basis (and not without success) training for union members to groom them for membership of works councils or for union office; — participating in the framing of housing regulations by virtue of which federal subsidies are granted to workers wishing to build a home. The union belongs to the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions, the central organisation to which the sixteen existing Austrian trade unions are affiliated. It should be pointed out in this connexion that Austria follows the principle of a single trade union organisation for all workers, regardless of their ideological beliefs. This explains why the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions is affiliated both to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and to the World Confederation of Labour. The same principle is valid in the case of the Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers, which belongs, like the great majority of its members, to the European Land Workers' Federation, the regional organisation of the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers, which in its turn is affiliated to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Along with the rest of its members, the union belongs to the International Federation of Christian Land Workers' Unions, which is itself affiliated to the World Confederation of Labour. Chambers of agriculture • Conference of Chairmen of Austrian Chambers of Agriculture The representation of agricultural interests at the national level in dealings with the public authorities dates from 1898, when a central body was set up to safeguard the interests of agriculture and forestry during the negotiation of trade agreements. This body may be looked upon as the pilot body in the field. Central representation of organisations has existed since 1908, the year of the founding of the Conference of Chairmen of Länder Agricultural Councils and Farming Societies. Fifteen years later, on 10 January 1923, the representative bodies finally combined into the present Conference of Chairmen of Austrian Chambers of Agriculture (Präsidentenkonferenz der Landwirtschaftskammern Österreichs), consisting of the chairmen of the country's nine provincial chambers. The Conference also embraces the Raiffeisen associations— those pioneers in the field of agricultural co-operation. The conference was abolished during the period of Nazi rule, and re-formed in January 1946; it assumed its present form only on 27 February 1953. 105 Agricultural organisations and development Austrian chambers of agriculture take action at three levels: cantonal, provincial and national. At the cantonal and provincial levels (every provincial chamber has cantonal branches) they keep in direct touch with farmers and advise them on all matters relating to markets and prices, on the legal and fiscal aspects of farming, and on improvements of all kinds in matters concerning output and productivity. The provincial chambers also collaborate closely with the Ministry of Agriculture and the provincial authorities, and with the agricultural workers' chambers, in the implementation of agricultural development projects under the "Green Plan". These projects fall under four major headings : — improvement of output (research and experimentation, extension and educational work, cultivation of quality crops, drainage, irrigation and hydraulic installations, soil improvement, forestry); — improvement of transport and communications (roads, electrification, sharing of transport costs); — improvement of the structure and management of farms (consolidation and exchanging of holdings, land settlement, reorganisation of farms, plant protection, agricultural mechanisation, cattle-breeding, dairy production, etc.); — improvement of distribution and marketing (exhibitions, eradication of brucellosis and tuberculosis, marketing of cattle, marketing and processing of agricultural produce, advertising and sales promotion, agricultural credit, etc.). In addition to these projects, which also cover all kinds of welfare measures for the benefit of agricultural and forestry workers, the Conference of Chairmen of Austrian Chambers of Agriculture intervenes at the national level in respect of prices. Besides the ministerial commissions to which reference is made above in the section on employers' organisations, there exist in Austria three marketing boards responsible for stabilising the prices of cereals, milk and dairy products, and livestock and meat respectively. These boards operate under the authority of the General Marketing Law of 1958, which replaced the three marketing laws in existence since 1950. The Ministry of Agriculture supervises the administration of the boards, whose activities cover more than two-thirds of total agricultural production. The chambers are represented on a proportional basis. For instance, the Dairy Products Board, which was founded in 1950, is directed by a commission of twenty-seven members representing the three sectors interested: the producers' side (chambers of agriculture), the consumers' interests (chambers of labour) and private enterprise (chambers of trade and commerce). Each sector has nine representatives. Similarly, the Cattle Marketing Board is run by a smaller commission consisting of nine people nominated in the same proportion. These boards act as 106 Austria veritable regulators of production, imports and prices. Thanks to a system for the pooling of prices in the case of milk and bread-grains—highly complex in the former case—producers all over the country receive the same price. Since consumer prices may not exceed a maximum fixed by the authorities, a system of State subsidies ensures the maintenance of profit margins at a normal level; otherwise they would be inadequate. 1 The chambers of agriculture have also played a major role from a legislative standpoint since the right was conferred upon them, by the federal Act of 18 July 1924, to state their views on all Bills and decrees of major importance drafted by the ministrial authorities. Not only in the economic and technical fields do the chambers exercise supervision and wield influence. They also concern themselves with social matters, and with vocational training in particular. Although little information is available on the subject, it is worth recalling that the chambers are primarily concerned, as regards young persons, with the conclusion and supervision of contracts of apprenticeship, and collaborate closely with the agricultural labour inspectorates in this field. In Lower Austria, for instance, "the chamber of agriculture has introduced compulsory free medical examination for young persons wishing to be apprenticed in agriculture".2 In some provinces the chambers also assume responsibility for concluding collective agreements in respect of adult workers. The Austrian chambers of agriculture are financed partly by farmers and partly out of the federal State and provincial budgets. Their method of financing is similar to that of the German chambers 3 and differs from that of the French chambers, which have to make do with the revenue from a supplementary tax added to the rural tax or the tax on undeveloped land. Hence they are much better off financially : if we take the case of the Lower Austria Chamber of Agriculture, it may be seen from data published by L. Prault that in 1958 it could count on a budget equivalent to 15 million French francs (62 per cent derived from federal or provincial government subsidies), or 13.16 francs per hectare, as compared with the French average of 1.25 franc in 1964.4 As the Conference of Chairmen of Austrian Chambers of Agriculture is itself the central body representing the interests of agriculture and forestry, 1 For further details of the operation of these marketing boards, see OECD: Agricultural Policies in 1966, op. cit., pp. 145-149. * See "The Protection of Young Agricultural Workers in Austria", op. cit., p. 205. 8 See below, pp. 156 et seq. * See L. Prault: "La politique des organisations professionnelles agricoles: les chambres d'agriculture", in Henri Noilhan: Histoire de l'agriculture à l'ère industrielle (Paris, de Boccard, 1965), Vol. V, Part Six, Ch. VIII, p. 724. 107 Agricultural organisations and development it does not belong to any other national organisation; but internationally it is a member of the European Confederation of Agriculture. • Agricultural workers' chambers Under the federal Constitution, legislation in respect of the formation of occupational associations in agriculture is a matter for the provinces. As we have seen above, the chambers of agriculture in the nine Austrian provinces were reorganised in 1946 so as to equip them to defend the professional interests of independent farmers. After the Second World War, between 1948 and 1954, a number of occupational chambers for employees (both wage-earning and salaried) in agriculture and forestry, were established, and these are the only specimens of their kind in Western Europe. Today such chambers exist in seven provinces: Upper Austria (founded in 1948), Salzburg (1949), Styria (1949), Lower Austria (1950), Carinthia (1954). The Tyrol and Vorarlberg do not have a separate chamber as such, the defence of the interests of agricultural employees being entrusted to a special section of the provincial chamber of agriculture, so that the latter is divided into two independent sections. However, their independence is guaranteed by the fact that not only are their finances kept on a separate footing but also the employees' section has its own committee and its own staff. In both these provinces the employees' sections were established in 1949. So the only provinces where agricultural workers still have no chambers to represent their interests are Vienna and Burgenland.1 All salaried employees in agriculture and forestry are entitled to join these workers' chambers (Landarbeiterkammern). So are the staff of agricultural and forestry occupational associations and of agricultural co-operatives. Employers and their families, on the other hand, and managerial staff of large undertakings who are performing the functions of an employer are not allowed to belong to these chambers. The range of action of the agricultural workers' chambers is defined in more or less the same terms in all the provincial Acts. In principle their task is to represent and safeguard the occupational, economic, social and cultural interests of wage-earning and salaried employees. To illustrate this more specifically and in more detail, we shall quote section 6 of the Act for the estab1 For more details see the texts of the relevant legislative enactments as published in the Landesgesetzblatt [Compilation of Z-anrflaws]: Acts Nos. 12/48 of 7 July 1948 (Upper Austria), 53/49 of 10 March 1949 (Salzburg), 45/49 of 8 June 1949 (Styria), 49/50 of 30 June 1950 (Lower Austria), 40/54 of 16 November 1954 (Carinthia), 36/49 of 23 March 1949 (Tyrol) and 38/49 of 1949 (Vorarlberg). All these Acts have already been amended several times, but as regards the essential points they remain unchanged. 108 Austria lishment of an Agricultural and Forestry Wage-Earning and Salaried Employees' Chamber in Lower Austria, under the terms of which the chamber is called upon, inter alia: (1) to make known to the legislature and to the authorities its proposals and views on all matters of concern to workers in agriculture and forestry, particularly the most important Bills and draft ordinances; (2) to take measures and set up institutions with a view to improving the economic and social position of agricultural and forestry workers; (3) to participate in the intellectual, physical and vocational training of agricultural and forestry workers, while at the same time encouraging such training; (4) to participate in the regulation of the conditions of employment of agricultural and forestry workers and to conclude collective agreements in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 41 (1) of the Agricultural Employment Regulations; (5) to take steps to provide supplementary assistance to agricultural and forestry workers in the event of sickness, invalidity and old age by the setting up of assistance funds and the opening of convalescent or retirement homes; (6) to take or support measures to encourage the building of houses or settlements for agricultural and forestry workers, with a view in particular to improving housing conditions, promoting the building of job-tied accommodation and family dwellings and making it easier for workers to set up house; (7) to co-operate with institutions for the encouragement of apprenticeship within the framework of the legislative provisions, while at the same time helping to supervise the conditions in which young workers are receiving instruction or being trained; (8) to assist the agricultural and forestry inspectorate in the performance of its functions of supervising conditions of employment having regard to the provisions in force; (9) to assist shop stewards to perform their functions; (10) to appoint representatives to other public corporations or bodies, or make nominations for the appointment of staff to these corporations or bodies where this is provided for by law or by special provisions; (11) to provide free of charge, within the limits prescribed by law, legal advice to wage-earning or salaried employees in the branch and to represent them free of charge in dealings with the authorities and the administrative services; (12) to carry out or collaborate in carrying out, in accordance with the provisions in force, statistical surveys on the economic and social circumstances of agricultural and forestry workers. The agricultural workers' chambers are autonomous bodies. The supreme organ is the general assembly, which consists of a certain number of councillors fixed by law (forty, for instance, in Lower Austria). These councillors are directly and democratically elected by the members of the chamber aged 18 years and over. The lists of candidates are drawn up by the trade unions and by voluntary occupational associations, with the result that very often leading trade union officials also hold senior office in the chambers. This strengthens even more the representation of the wage-earning and salaried employees' unions, or of other occupational associations of employees in agriculture and forestry. 109 Agricultural organisations and development Relations between the chambers and the federal authorities are also regulated by law. Once again we shall quote, by way of an example, the Act respecting the Agricultural Workers' Chamber of Lower Austria, which lays down in section 7 that : (1) the Agricultural Workers' Chamber shall be required, as concerns matters within its terms of reference, to supply upon request to all authorities and other public bodies information and statements of views, as well as supporting them in the action they take; (2) all authorities and associations called upon under the terms of legislative provisions to defend economic interests, or established for such a pupose in pursuance of a freely concluded agreement, shall be required to supply to the Agricultural Workers' Chamber, upon request, all the information it needs to perform its functions, and to support it in its activities; (3) the authorities shall be required to submit to the Agricultural Workers' Chamber for opinion all Bills of concern to wage-earning and salaried employees in agriculture and forestry before tabling them in the legislature, as well as the texts of such particularly important ordinances as are also of interest to the wage-earning and salaried employees in question before they are promulgated. We should take particular note of clause (3) above; such a clause entitles a chamber to make known its views on draft legislation before it is submitted to the legislature by the federal Government or by a provincial government. This right, coupled with that of submitting proposals and statements of views to the legislature and to the authorities, affords to the Austrian workers' chambers a means of participating directly in the framing of agricultural policy whereas as a general rule in other countries the representatives of the workers' organisations have to content themselves with indirect participation, which often consists merely in such pressure as they are able to bring to bear upon Parliament. Within their own area and within the terms of reference laid down for them by law, the chambers also concern themselves with acquainting employers and workers with the legislation in force; they conduct surveys and keep the labour inspection services informed of all facts brought to their attention which appear to involve an infringement of the statutory provisions. Continuous assistance is given to the agricultural workers' chambers by the public authorities. Federal subsidies are granted to help workers build their own homes, undergo vocational training or meet the expenses of setting up house. The work involved is carried out by the chambers. In addition provincial governments grant financial assistance to agricultural workers' chambers, to a varying degree, to facilitate their performance of these tasks. To cover their administrative expenses and finance other related activities the chambers receive contributions from their members in proportion to their earnings (the average rate of contribution is 0.5 per cent of the monthly wage). As stated above, under the federal Constitution responsibility for dealing with matters pertaining to the representation of occupational interests in 110 Belgium agriculture and forestry lies with the provinces. But major decisions must of necessity be taken at the national level by the federal legislature. The chambers have therefore considered it necessary to form a united body, and have founded for this purpose the Congress of Austrian Agricultural Workers' Chambers (österreichischer Landarbeiterkammertag). Within this organisation the chambers join forces to examine matters of concern to more than one province, particularly topics such as the attitude to be adopted towards federal legislation, or the appointment of representatives to associations and bodies whose range of action covers more than one province. At the international level, the Congress of Austrian Agricultural Workers' Chambers maintains relations with associations and organisations with identical or similar aims to its own. But there are no arrangements for collaboration with salaried agricultural workers' organisations, since, as the congress points out in its reply to the present questionnaire, the organisations responsible in other countries for defending the interests of wage-earning and salaried employees in this branch of activity are not comparable to the Austrian chambers. Belgium General and employers' organisations In Belgium, farmers' organisations date back to the last century. In order to understand why they came into being, we must place them in the context of the crisis that was then affecting the countries of western Europe. In Belgium this crisis broke out in 1878 with the collapse of cereal prices (the price of a quintal of wheat plummeted from 31 francs in 1870 to 14 francs in 1894) and went on to affect livestock products; as a result, many mixed farms were ruined, particularly in the Flemish part of the country. The crisis was largely due to improved communications and the policy of free trade—two factors which encouraged the importing of cereals from North America, Australia and Russia. Nevertheless, it had one beneficial effect in that it obliged the farmers to organise, first of all in the Boerenbond and subsequently, in the twentieth century, in farmers' associations and the Belgian Agricultural Alliance. As will be seen below, these three organisations play the part both of employers' and of general organisations; it is for this reason that they are included here under a double heading. • The Boerenbond The creation of the Boerenbond in 1890 is indissolubly linked with this crisis in agriculture. When the Catholics came to power following the 1884 111 Agricultural organisations and development elections, they tried in vain to find suitable means of solving the Belgian agricultural problem and to this end set up a Ministry of Agriculture. But in spite of the efforts of the latter in the field of agricultural advisory work and despite also the formation of independent associations of farmers (most of which were purely local), no one succeeded in straightening out the situation, and three years passed with little or no progress. Then, in January 1887, there arose the figure of the Abbé J. S. Mellaerts, founder of the Boerenbond. In the presence of a mere handful of farmers, he outlined his idea of a Christian union of agricultural guilds; and four weeks later, on 26 February, he organised the constituent assembly of the first guild, with thirty-five founder members, at the Heist-Goor church. This first guild, which was formed along the lines of the local groups of the Rhineland Farmers' Association (Rheinischer Bauernverein) which had been studied by the Abbé Mellaerts, was really only a co-operative for the joint purchase of fertilisers and animal fodder. Things might have remained at this point had it not been for a meeting between the Abbé Mellaerts and J. Hellepute, a professor and Member of Parliament, who had created the Louvain Trade and Business Guild. The outcome of this meeting, and of the subsequent co-operation of F. Schollaert, Professor Hellepute's brother-in-law, was the Boerenbond, which came into being on 20 July 1890 and which, according to the Abbé Mellaerts, was to take an interest in : — everything connected with the material interests of a farm: purchase on a pool basis, savings and loans funds, agricultural training (co-operation and advisory work); — national legislation in so far as it might affect agriculture and land tenure: equality of treatment, protection of domestic production, laws against usury, land banks (defence of farmers' interests) ; — raising the status of farmers as a social class, by organising them in guilds based on Christian principles (Christian class organisation).1 Five years after its foundation, and as a result of the active participation of parish priests, the Boerenbond had 200 guilds with more than 10,000 members and 39 loans guilds set up along the Unes of the Raiffeisen banks. Three-quarters of a century have gone by since then, and although the aims of the Boerenbond have remained basically unchanged, they have become more varied and wider in scope. The organisation now groups more than 90,000 agricultural employers, that is to say the majority of farmers in the Flemish- and German-speaking provinces, together with the French-speaking district of Nivelles. 1 112 Le Boerenbond belge (Louvain, 1965), p. 7. Belgium To become guild members, applicants must under clause 6 of their charter "be farmers or market gardeners, have a producer's interest in agriculture and market gardening or exercise a related liberal profession, uphold the Catholic religion, the family, the institution of property and the social doctrine of the church; they must live according to these principles, and be accepted by the guild committee".1 Once they have been accepted, farmers and market gardeners pay an annual contribution, the amount of which varies in relation to the size of their holding and the type of farm. This system is reminiscent of that adopted by the French chambers of agriculture. The Boerenbond, whose general council and management committee run a highly centralised organisation, exerts its influence on the Catholic farming circles through its four branches : — the agricultural guilds, set up on a parish basis and composed of the farm employers and heads of families in the agricultural and horticultural sectors; — the parish farmers' wives' institutes, together forming the Farmers' Wives' League (Boerinnenbond), and made up not only of farmers' wives but also of other women in the rural parishes, with the exception of the French- speaking part of the province of Brabant; — the parish youth clubs for boys and girls which together form the two branches of the Catholic Rural Youth Movement (Katholieke Landetijke Jeugd). At the local level these four branches have, jointly or separately, created a whole range of organisations, from purchasing associations to rural funds, which constitute the main axes of local development. At the regional level, as is emphasised by the Boerenbond itself, "there are no cross-structural links in the general sense". There are, however, specialised federations at this level, pursuing limited aims such as inter-regional representation, defence of farming interests, and dissemination of information —for example, the district federations of agricultural guilds and the regional horticultural federations, which in turn form national bodies with limited objectives; among these are the Central Committee for the Defence of Agricultural and Horticultural Interests (political action) and the national horticultural federations. At the provincial level also, there are a few federations with limited aims, such as livestock improvement. Structural unity is seen most clearly in the central management bodies which together run the four branches of the movement. On the basis of the idea that the entire family belongs to the agricultural guild by virtue of the membership of the head of the family, the management bodies (the general council and the management 1 Le Boerenbond belge, op. cit., p. 13. 113 Agricultural organisations and development committee) are almost entirely made up of representatives of the agricultural guilds. The special structure of the Boerenbond is clearly reflected in its present-day activities. The local village guilds, in accordance with clause 3 of their statutes, undertake a large number of economic activities for the sole benefit of their members. These activities include the joint purchase of animal fodder, fertilisers, coal, lime, plants and seeds, agricultural machinery, etc.; the sale or joint processing of agricultural and horticultural produce; cooperative dairies; joint action for the improvement of livestock farming; co-operation in the field of agricultural credit (Raiffeisen rural funds) and mutual insurance companies. In principle these activities ought to be carried out directly by the guilds but since under Belgian law all organisations engaged in commercial activities must assume the legal form of a commercial company, the Boerenbond leaders, after trying in vain at the end of the last century to have the law modified to meet the guilds' requirements, finally decided to create separate corporate bodies in order to observe the prescriptions of the law. Thus, for example, the purchasing sections (which have taken the place of the former consumer societies), whilst still supervised by a committee elected within the guild, are entrusted to an independent retailer who manages them and passes on their orders to his immediate wholesaler, that is to say to the purchasing and sales agency of the Boerenbond or its intermediary. The latter take over the marketing of their members' agricultural and horticultural produce. Whereas the purchasing sections are reserved for members of the guilds, the Raiffeisen rural funds (which replaced the savings and loans guilds of the Abbé Mellaerts) accept members without any restriction. The purpose of these funds is the well-known one of acting as local savings and credit cooperatives. All belong to the Central Rural Credit Fund (Caisse centrale de crédit rural—CCCR), which will be examined below. Apart from these funds, there are other local co-operatives which are not centralised at the national level but which usually belong to a federation and are constituted in the form of occupational societies or de facto associations ; these provide farmers with all kinds of services. Examples are the beet growers' and cattle farmers' association, the mutual aid associations of agricultural machinery enterprises and co-operatives, and mutual livestock insurance associations. In addition to these economic activities, the local guilds fulfil a definite social function through two bodies: the farmers' wives' institutes and the youth clubs. In the charters of the old guilds, the farmers' wives' institute was considered merely as a section of the guild; fairly soon, however, the women formed their own association with its own committee and members. The central administration followed suit. At the beginning, the women's 114 Belgium activities programme formed part of the general services of the occupational organisation; subsequently they were hived off to a separate central organisation, whilst at the same time continuing to form an integral part of the organisation's activity and to be run by the central management bodies of the Boerenbond. By paying an annual contribution, any country woman can join the parish farmers' wives' institute, and as it happens, the majority of members of the institute are not farmers' wives. Attention continues to be paid, however, to the training of the farmer's wife as a "comanager" of the farm. In the local institute, members elect a committee and a president. Activities generally follow a programme proposed by the central management at Louvain. The Farmers' Wives' League concentrates its activities on training women as the mainstay of the family. This training is designed to help women in their various tasks: as wives from the point of view of marital relations, as mothers from that of the education and care to be given to their children, as farmers' wives as concerns their entire work, as housewives in the fields of food, clothing, hygiene and house arrangement. The activities of the Farmers' Wives' League are based on Catholic morals, and considerable importance is attached to religious instruction.1 The boys' and girls' youth clubs (which are off-shoots of the guilds and the farmers' wives' institutes respectively) concentrate on preparing young people for their adult life and, in addition to providing a wide programme of recreative activities, deal with training future agricultural employers and their wives in farm management and in the social and religious fields. All the local activities described above are co-ordinated by the district federations, which in turn come under the central general services of the Boerenbond whose task is to follow the activities of the agricultural guilds and of the clubs set up by them, in accordance with the instructions and advice of the general council and the management committee. For this purpose the central services are divided into several branches covering the whole network of local guilds : the farm services, the study and advisory services, the organisation services, the agricultural co-operation service and the secretariat and public relations services. The farm services deal with the economic and technical aspects of improving farm management, machinery, farming methods and production materials. Apart from the research work and studies they undertake, and the written and oral information they give to the members of the guild through their agricultural and horticultural advisory offices, they are also responsible for the training of future farmers. The study and advisory services, whose job is to advise the top management, the other sections and departments of the organisation and individual members, include the following branches: legal studies, economic and sociological studies, cultural activities and documentation. They are also responsible for preparing the Boerenbond publications and for the editorial and film services. The organisation services back up the entire occupational 1 Le Boerenbond belge, op. cit., pp. 16-17. 115 Agricultural organisations and development organisation in its local and regional branches and, in their capacity as advisers to the guilds and federations, train leaders and new members. The agricultural co-operation service plays a similar role in respect of the non-centralised co-operatives to that performed by the other services in respect of the guilds and individual members, by assisting in managing the agricultural co-operatives. Lastly the secretariat and public relations services cover the central office of the Farmers' Wives' League and the central office of the Catholic Rural Youth Movement. Apart from its activities in the field of training and advisory work, the Boerenbond maintains a strong commercial organisation through its central co-operatives: the Purchasing and Sales Agency, the Central Rural Credit Fund and the insurance company of the Belgian Boerenbond. In January 1901 the Purchasing and Sales Agency (Comptoir d'achat et de vente—CAV) replaced the consumers' society created in 1891 as the central body of the local purchasing section. Since its creation, the CAV has dealt with the joint purchase of raw materials for agriculture and horticulture, as well as with the joint sale of the produce of these two branches. It has its own factories for making flour and animal fodder and, in the industrial zone at Merksem, it has installed research laboratories and exprimental centres. The CAV is a wholesaler and, in some cases, a retailer in cattle fodder, bread and fodder crops, chemical fertilisers, coal, lime and peat, cereal seeds, horticultural seeds, various supplies and raw materials for agriculture, vegetables, eggs, butter and powdered milk In order to promote the sale, on a pool basis, of butter, eggs, vegetables and fruit, the CAV has set up branch establishments and auctions. In the poultry sector, it has developed a comprehensive battery. In collaboration with the Dutch poultry co-operative, it has built a poultry selection centre in Poppel, where new types of table and laying hens are bred. In connexion with this selection activity, the CAV has set up a marketing organisation for table poultry at Hulshout. The CAV attaches particular importance to the information it provides for members of of co-operatives, teaching them to buy raw materials with discernment and to use them carefully. These information activities are far more than the normal "aftersales service" of a commercial undertaking; they are carried out in co-operation with the services of the agricultural organisation in order to ensure that members are systematically informed. The activities of the CAV are confined to the members of the Boerenbond. Outside the field of action of the association, the CAV works mainly through the regional agencies.1 The role of the Central Rural Credit Fund (CCCR), to which all the local funds are affiliated, consists in collecting and redistributing money. It collects surpluses from the richer funds and advances money to those whose savings deposits are insufficient to meet the demand for credit. The resources of 1 116 Le Boerenbond belge, op. cit., p. 22. Belgium the CCCR are also derived from the issue of savings certificates and bonds as well as from fixed maturity savings accounts. As a specialised company, it finances agricultural co-operatives and agricultural and horticultural associations. It should nevertheless be emphasised that the CCCR does not work solely for members of the occupational organisation, but receives savings deposits from anyone and grants credit to the members of, and persons who have savings accounts with, the rural funds. Within the sphere of action of the occupational organisation, these members are practically all members of the Boerenbond and the funds work solely within the agricultural guilds. Beyond this sphere, the funds work in collaboration with the Belgian Agricultural Alliance at the regional level.1 Lastly, just as the rural funds have their origins in the former loans guilds of the Abbé Mellaerts, the insurance scheme of the Belgian Boerenbond is also the outcome of development within its Insurance Committee. This committee originally advised both the guilds and the members on the accident and fire insurance necessary in farming, initially as an agent for established insurance companies and subsequently as an independent insurer. This trend was eventually to result in the creation of the Belgian Boerenbond Insurance Company (SA Assurances du Boerenbond beige—ABB). Today the ABB extends far outside the original framework conceived by the Abbé Mellaerts, since, although it specialises in insuring against agricultural risks, its activities extend to the entire insurance industry, and the ABB has in fact become one of the largest Belgian insurance companies. Its activities cover the urban and rural sectors, including industry and commerce as well as agriculture. In its organisational capacity, the Boerenbond thus covers all possible spheres of activity. Moreover, representing as it does the interests of the Belgian small-holder, it is also concerned with all the activities dealt with in this survey. With particular regard to bargaining on wages and conditions of work it is represented, in its capacity as employer, on the official joint committees set up for this purpose. In Belgium these committees have a sectoral character, that is to say each one covers an important branch of production: the main crops, horticulture, tobacco, flax, etc. As regards the maintenance of prices for agricultural produce and agricultural policy in general, there exists a liaison committee of the three big Belgian groups—the Boerenbond, the Agricultural Alliance and the farmers' associations—which has regular meetings with the Minister of Agriculture to discuss current issues. The three groups are also represented on the Central Economic Council in an advisory capacity, as well as on the Supreme Council for Agriculture and on the Supreme Council for Horticulture, official bodies on which the 1 Le Boerenbond belge, op. cit., p. 23. 117 Agricultural organisations and development occupational agricultural organisations are represented according to the size of their membership. In general the Belgian agricultural organisations have an advisory role and the representations they make to the authorities take place unofficially and indirectly. This being said, in the opinion of the Boerenbond there is no particular obstacle to the development of these organisations. The Boerenbond does not belong to a national federation since none exists in Belgium. At the international level, however, it is affiliated to the Committee of Agricultural Organisations (COPA) in the European Economic Community and to the European Confederation of Agriculture. It is also a member of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). • The Belgian Agricultural Alliance and the farmers' associations Two other organisations on which, unfortunately, few details are available complete the picture of general organisations. These are the Belgian Agricultural Alliance and the farmers' associations. The Belgian Agricultural Alliance (Alliance agricole belge—AAB) was created in January 1930 through the amalgamation of the organisations then existing in the French-speaking, or Walloon, provinces of the country. It is a national federation, and as such it groups regional areas formed by local agricultural associations. The aim of the AAB is to defend farmers' interests and to secure their individual and family advancement both economically and in the social, moral and cultural fields. It has approximately 25,000 members and exercises its activity more particularly in the Walloon part of the country. In the spheres just mentioned, its activities cover numerous aspects, from its members' association with co-operatives and production and sales groups to agricultural education and vocational training. In its work to bring about the advancement of the rural population, it has created specialised services, publications, a young farmers' service (for both boys and girls), young farmers' and farmers' wives' groups, correspondence courses in farming (three years), extra-mural classes, farming exhibitions and competitions, etc. The AAB considers that it has achieved striking results in allfieldsincluding agricultural price maintenance, the improvement of rural structures and infrastructures, and the marketing of agricultural produce, as well as by securing, for the farmers' benefit, advantages equivalent to those provided under social legislation for other categories of workers. As a representative organisation, it carries out its work by making frequent approaches to the authorities and by having delegates on the semi-State bodies and official committees set up in the various ministerial departments directly 118 Belgium or indirectly connected with agriculture. Examples of semi-State bodies are the National Agricultural and Horticultural Marketing Boards, the National Agricultural Credit Institute and the National Milk Office. As regards wages and conditions of work, its delegates sit on the joint national agricultural and horticultural committees. In an advisory capacity, it also forms part of various official committees such as the Agricultural Investment Fund, the Central Economic Council, the National Labour Council, the Family Allowances Board, the Committee on Pensions for Selfemployed Workers, the National Sickness Insurance Institute, the Prices Board, the National Accounts Committee, the Employment and Labour Board and various working parties set up by the Ministry of Agriculture. It is also represented on various advisory committees set up by the Economic Commission for Europe. At the international level, the AAB is a member of the European Confederation of Agriculture (whose present chairman holds the same office in the ABB) as well as of the Committee of Agricultural Organisations (COPA) in the European Economic Community. The National Federation of Farmers' Associations was created in 1919 by the farmers themselves as a reaction against public opinion of the time which was decidedly unfavourable towards the agricultural class. The main activities of the farmers' associations lie in the followingfields: — furtherance of farmers' interests and demands in all branches of farming activity; — representation of farmers on bodies at all levels where they appear as employers (Prices Board, Central Economic Council, etc.) ; — organisation of the services which farmers need in their capacity as businessmen (economic, tax, social and legal services, etc.); — organisation of further education for farmers through courses, seminars, lectures, etc. The farmers' associations have achieved much since their creation, including taxation on a lump-sum basis, the legislation on farming leases (1929, 1951, 1966), the establishment of the Agricultural Fund (Fonds agricole) in 1955 and of the Agricultural Investment Fund (Fonds d'investissement agricole) in 1961 \ the voting of the Parity Act (1963) and the raising of the level of •The Agricultural Fund was created to regulate the market for agricultural produce and capital equipment by grants of recoverable or non-recoverable funds. Its finance is derived from various sources (special fees for issuing import and export licences for agricultural produce, levies on intra-Benelux trade, budgetary credits, etc.), it is mainly concerned with cereals, meat and dairy produce and acts through the offices dealing with these goods. The Investment Fund helps to meet the difficulties confronting farmers and agricultural co-operatives in obtaining medium- and long-term credit. It grants subsidies on the interest 119 Agricultural organisations and development selling prices for agricultural produce as from 1962, following demonstrations organised with this end in view. The farmers' associations have no official standing, but by virtue of the large area of farming land they represent, their right to be heard by the authorities is recognised. They represent farming on certain official bodies where other employers are also represented. Moreover, in its capacity as employers' representative, the National Federation of Farmers' Associations takes part in the work of the joint committees set up to determine the wages of both fulltime and seasonal agricultural workers. The role of the farmers' associations on all these committees is to explain and defend the farmers' point of view. No major obstacle prevents the development of farmers' associations, beyond the individualist bent of the farmers themselves and the difficulty, in view of the limited financial means available, of providing all the necessary services (the National Federation of Farmers' Associations is financed solely by its members' contributions). The farmers' associations constitute a national federation by grouping the provincial federations which, in turn, are made up of cantonal federations. They represent farming throughout the Walloon region. The National Federation of Farmers' Associations has joined the Committee of Agricultural Organisations (COPA) in the Common Market and is also represented on the European Confederation of Agriculture as well as on other international bodies concerned with specific products. Workers' unions Belgium has only a very small number of agricultural wage earners, estimated at approximately 16.000,1 and moreover the métayage or share-cropping system, which in other countries swells trade union ranks, is unknown. Wage earners are now divided between two organisations: the Belgian General Federation of Labour and the Christian Association of Workers in the Food Industries, which will be examined in detail. charged by commercial credit establishments, thus enabling the latter to offer low interest loans, which the Fund guarantees up to 75 per cent. For further details on the operation of these funds, see OECD: Agricultural Policies in 1966, op. cit., pp. 165 and 172. 1 This figure reflects the drop in the wage-earning population over the last century. In 1856 the active agricultural wage-earning population represented 59 per cent; in 1910 this figure had already dropped to 34 per cent. In 1947 there remained only 50,475 agricultural wage earners, i.e. 12 per cent of the active rural population. See L'agriculture belge, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3142 (Paris, 1964), p. 7. 120 Belgium • The Christian Association of Workers in the Food Industry (Agricultural Workers' Section) and the Organisation of Agricultural Workers of the Belgian General Federation of Labour (FGTB) What is now the Agricultural Workers' Section of the Christian Association of Workers in the Food Industry was created in 1932 as a separate trade union affiliated to the Belgian Confederation of Christian Trade Unions. Its amalgamation with the Christian Association of Workers in the Food Industry was decided on at the end of the Second World War and it now has 6,296 paid-up members, all full-time workers except for a few hundred who are seasonally employed. The main activities of this association are as follows : — negotiation on wages and hours of work; — demands concerning employment stability and social security; — improvement of housing and health conditions. The organisation of social activities does not come within itsfieldof action ; this is taken care of by the Christian Workers' Movement, the association's counterpart in cultural matters. The union considers, too, that the creation of primary and vocational schools is the responsibility of the local and national public services (communes, provinces, State) and of the independent teaching institutions. As regards demands concerning agrarian reform of land ownership legislation, the trade union is in favour of land redistribution but points out that Belgian agriculture has no very large holdings and is mainly based on family farms. Since land ownership legislation is very liberal, no demands are made in this respect. In the union's opinion the law raises no barriers to its activities. Nor does the socio-economic structure present any major obstacle. Nevertheless the fact that workers are dispersed over a large number of small and mediumsized farms, employing only one or two wage earners, naturally makes trade union action somewhat difficult. The drop in the active agricultural population due to increased mechanisation and a certain degree of concentration of holdings reduces the possibilities of increasing trade union activity. The drop in the number of members has however been slower than that of the agricultural population. Much of the union's activity is carried on in the joint committees set up by the Order of the Regent dated 9 July 1945, which provides for the constitution of such committees for the various sectors of the economy. These joint committees are bodies made up of an equal number of delegates from the employers' and workers' organisations recognised as representative. On each side, the quota of votes is allocated according to the importance of the organisations represented. Officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, who 121 Agricultural organisations and development are not entitled to speak or vote, fill the secretariat posts and the chairmanship. All decisions of the joint committees must be reached unanimously by all members present. If a quorum is required, half of each group must be present. At the request of either of the parties, the Minister of Agriculture may, by Royal Order, make the application of the decisions legally binding. The agricultural sector as a whole maintains the following joint committees: one for the farming sector (crops, livestock); one for the horticultural sector with seven subcommittees dealing with market gardening and floriculture, ornamental plants, nurseries, viticulture, fruit-growing, mushroomgrowing and landscape gardening; one for the sector covering agricultural and horticultural machineryfirms(threshing machines, combine-harvesters, sprays) ; and one for the forestry sector. The union fully supports the working methods of the joint committees, considering them of great value in defending the workers' interests. Much has been achieved by these committees. They brought about the fixing of minimum wages and standards on working conditions throughout the country, particularly by means of the Royal Orders whereby the regulations are made binding. Apart from these joint committees, the union is represented on the Central Economic Council, where it takes part in discussions on agricultural planning. It is also consulted, when the need arises, by the National Labour Council and by the Supreme Council for Industrial Safety and Health. All these bodies have consultative status. Since the time of its foundation, the union has achieved notable successes in various fields, including the following: Wages—The application of national minimum wage rates which have gradually come closer to wage rates for workers of equal skills in other sectors of the economy. Moreover, since the beginning of 1965 the working week has been reduced to forty-five hours, following the introduction of stricter regulations on this subject. Housing—A detailed agreement concerning the accommodation that employers should offer to seasonal workers who do not return home each day. Social security—As a result of union demands, agricultural wage earners, whether seasonal or full-time, are now covered by social security. Entitlement to social security dates from 1947 for full-time workers and from 1949 for seasonal workers and was originally agreed on the basis of a system of lumpsum contribution. Since 1 January 1964 this system has been replaced by the general scheme applicable to workers in other sectors of the economy. Since then there has consequently been no discrimination in the field of social security. 122 Denmark Workers ' education—The union, like the confederation to which it belongs, undertook from the beginning to provide its agricultural members with training in practical and social matters in general and in trade union matters in particular. For this purpose it organises both specialised and general training courses for its members every year. In other fields, such as literacy campaigns or rural health, the union considers it has no part to play since education is compulsory in Belgium up to the age of 15 and the standard of living is generally satisfactory. On the international plane, the organisation is affiliated to the World Confederation of Labour, by virtue of its membership of the Belgian Confederation of Christian Trade Unions. We have very little information about the Organisation of Agricultural Workers of the Belgian General Federation of Labour beyond the fact that it was founded in 1895 and that its members number some 3,000 full-time and 2,000 seasonal workers. Like the organisation discussed above, its main activities are concerned with the negotiation of wages, hours of work, social security and other conditions of employment. There is no opposition to its activities from the law. It expresses its satisfaction with the joint committees, through which it has achieved many successes in matters pertaining to salaries and hours of work. Since 1945 this organisation has been a member of the Belgian General Federation of Labour, which is itself a member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Denmark As Einar Jensen said during the 1930s, the development of agriculture in Denmark is the sort of thing which cannot be produced ready-made by any five- or ten-year plan.1 We have already seen that Danish agriculture began to develop rather late (from 1864 onwards, after the loss of Schleswig-Holstein). Thereafter, the co-operative movement and legislative enactment, proceeding side-by-side, were to produce the present state of agricultural equilibrium and a farming system which is one of the most eflBcient in Western Europe. But such developments were preceded by a vast effort of popular enlightenment, beginning in 1814 (when universal compulsory education was introduced, a full thirty years before the same took place in England). Then, in 1844, 1 Einar Jensen: Danish Agriculture : Its Economic Development (Copenhagen, J. H. Schultz Forlag, 1937), quoted in Josephine Goldmark and A. H. Hollman: Democracy in Denmark (Washington, National Home Library Foundation, 1936), p. 3. See also F. Skrubbeltrang: Agricultural Development and Rural Reform in Denmark (Rome, FAO, 1953). 123 Agricultural organisations and development Bishop Grundvig founded a group of popular secondary schools, designed not so much to provide a complete education on classical lines, as to give the Danish country-dweller a taste for Danish national culture by a short course given largely in oral form. This dissemination of culture, and the changeover to a constitutional monarchy in 1849—whereby peasant interests could be represented in the first Folketing (Chamber of Representatives)—prepared the way for the boom in co-operative activities and legislative enactment which was to mark the second half of the century. In 1882, a group of simple peasant folk from the little village of Hjedding, in western Jutland, founded the first Danish co-operative dairy on principles well known today: equal voting rights for the large and small shareholder, membership open to any peasant in the area, and apportionment of profits in proportion to the turnover of each member. The founding of this first co-operative dairy was of especial importance, since it was not brought about by an organised movement in accordance with a preconceived programme, but was something undertaken by the peasants themselves in an environment traditionally none too well disposed towards ventures of this kind. Similar dairies were created later. And from 1887 onwards, co-operative slaughterhouses began to spring up. In 1896, the first co-operative specialising in the collecting and export of eggs and butter came into being. Shortly before 1900, co-operatives for the sale and export of cattle started to emerge. Thus, at the beginning of the century, Danish foreign trade was already organised to a great extent on co-operative lines. A mere fifty years later, co-operatives would account for 55 per cent of butter exports, 30 per cent of the export of eggs, and 35 per cent of beef-cattle exports. Domestically, co-operatives were already handling 91 per cent of the milk delivered by Danish farmers, 54 per cent of the fodder, and 38 per cent of the manure utilised. Furthermore, the co-operative movement was to become ever more diverse in response to the requirements of an agriculture exposed to international competition. Thus, from 1930 onwards, we see the emergence of fruit-selling cooperatives and of co-operative slaughterhouses handling fowl (mostly for export purposes). In 1948, an agency was set up to handle the sale and export of Danish cheeses, with responsibility for maintaining standards of quality. The importance accorded to exports is the fruit of the radical changes Denmark was obliged to make after the crisis of 1870-80. As happened in Belgium, the dumping of overseas cereals, rendered possible by cheaper transport, led to a slump in Danish exports, which were just not competitive. Happily, the prices of animal products remained fairly high. Hence the Danish producer began to use Danish or foreign cereals as fodder for the intensive production of such products. Thus it was that the crisis of the 1870s turned 124 Denmark the country away from the export of cereals towards the import of cheap fodder and the export of high-quality animal products, subject to inspection by the State. When, in 1896, the Egg Collection and Export Co-operative came into being, Denmark was certainly the first country in the world to introduce the system of guaranteeing eggs by putting a stamp on them ; to begin with, the stamp bore the name of the producer and his association, and later, the date on which the egg was laid. Other products were later subject to a similar system. Thanks to this progressive policy, Denmark secured a firm footing in the international market. Denmark played a pioneering role, too, in the reform of agricultural structures. Two major Acts were adopted, one in 1899 and the other in 1919. The Act of 1899 created a fund for long-term loans to make it easier for the peasants to buy land. Loans were offered on exceedingly easy terms. Funds were decentralised; a candidate for land ownership first had his application approved by a local board, whereafter he was granted a loan equivalent to nine-tenths of the cost of the land and buildings, up to a maximum fixed every year. Only after five years had elapsed would the person concerned have to make a start with reimbursement, with interest at 4 ^ per cent. In this fashion, the Danish Government encouraged the emergence of small family farms. To begin with, the area covered by the loan amounted to no more than 15 acres; later on (depending on the fertility of the soil) this figure was extended to 30. The Act of 1919 was the fruit of the efforts made by the Danish social democrats, and completed the process of land redistribution. This time, the aim was to provide land on lease to those who wished to work it; the State took the owner's role. This applied, not only to State lands, but also to the big estates, the owners of the latter having to choose between cession of a part of their lands and payment of a heavy fee to the Central Land Agency. The advantages were in fact the same as with property traditionally owned, since the tenant could cede the land thus leased among his heirs or make it over to some third party (with a right of pre-emption reserved for the State), against payment for the improvements introduced. Further, as in 1899, the new Act provided for loans at 4% per cent interest, reimbursable from the sixth year onwards and covering nine-tenths of the costs of the farmer's housing and other buildings. According to a recent study1, 26,300 new estates have been created as a resultofthe 1919Act(7,500)orthatof 1899(18,800). Sincethe 1930s the process seems to have slackened, as 20,000 new properties had already been created 1 See Jean-Daniel Gardère: L'économie du Danemark, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3265 (Paris, 1966), p. 16. 125 Agricultural organisations and development by 1933, three-quarters of them by virtue of the Act of 1899.1 The index of land concentration (roughly 40) is at present one of the lowest in Western Europe, which seems to show that distribution of agricultural property is very close to the optimum (in 1965, the average area was 43.5 acres, one of the highest in Europe). What has happened in Denmark proves (if proof were needed) how close is the link between the development of agricultural organisations and the evolution of structures. It is a mistake—frequently committed—to take factors out of context and to give them an importance which they possess only when working in conjunction with others. Co-operation affords a capital example of what is meant. What, we may wonder, would Danish agricultural co-operatives have been like, how effective would they have been from 1880 onwards, if Denmark, a country of small-holders, had not abandoned cereals for the intensive production of animal products, making use of imported fodder for the purpose ? 2 Clearly, the slump in the international market for cereals, coupled with Danish inability to compete, would in time have spelt ruin for the Danish farmer. The co-operative movement, among peasants growing cereals, could only have spread poverty rather more thinly, or have served as an instrument in promoting the exclusive interests of the big landowners (a tiny class). The development of intensive cattle-raising and the diversification of crops provided a means whereby traditional difficulties could be circumvented. So much so, that during the 1950s (according to figures provided by the Agricultural Economy Office in Copenhagen) the annual yield per acre in little farms of less than 25 acres was higher than in big farms of more than 250 acres (average gross yield per acre in a small farm was 1,050 crowns ; in a big one, it was 600).3 These results, largely due to the co-operative movement, have marked the transition to a position in which the family farm is of average size. In 1964, farms of this kind (between 25 and 150 acres) occupied 72 per cent of all agricultural land. This percentage will in all likelihood increase considerably with the amalgamation of very small plots (70,600 with less than 25 acres each accounted for no more than 13.2 per cent of all agricultural land in 1964) which can no longer be profitably worked (by modern standards) because of technical developments and because farmers now want to earn as much as the man in industry.4 1 See Goldmark and Hollman, op. cit., p. 13. In 1866-70, cereals accounted for 60 per cent of Danish exports. In 1965, animal products accounted for 93 per cent. See Gardère, op. cit., p. 19. 8 See "La coopération danoise et son influence sur les petites fermes", Le coopérateur suisse, 11 August 1954, p. 431. 4 According to Professor Skovgaard, parity with industrial wages would entail an average size of farm of 50 to 75 acres. See OECD : Low Incomes in Agriculture, op. cit., pp. 137-153, and especially pp. 143-144. 2 126 Denmark General organisations • Federation of Danish Farmers' Associations Apart from the co-operative network which dominates Danish agriculture, there is a Federation of Danish Farmers' Associations (De Samvirkende Danske Landboforeninger), which plays a decisive part in Danish agricultural policies. The federation itself was created in 1893, but the first association had been founded as far back as 1805. The federation now has 120,000 members and represents the interests of the medium farmer. The bigger landowners (some 1,500 of them) belong to what is called the Committee of the Twelve. The remainder (80,000 or thereabouts) belong to associations of small-holders. The farmers' associations are active locally, regionally and nationally, and there are links between the top and the bottom of the pyramid. At the local level, 139 associations provide a multitude of services for the farmer. Each is headed by an executive committee controlling six subcommittees, dealing with stock-farming, agriculture, mechanisation and equipment, agricultural economy, domestic science, and youth. In technical matters, the associations employ agricultural advisers whose services are available to farmers and peasants. Apart from organising local fairs and meetings, some associations run cattle auctions, buy, or finance the purchase of, agricultural machinery, organise campaigns against plant disease and weeds, and encourage the production of selected seeds. The farmers' associations and their federations devote especial attention to the vocational training of their future members and to this end take a part in planning a whole range of educational programmes, from the instruction given to youngsters in primary schools to the curricula prepared for agricultural colleges (85 per cent of the younger generation of farming families take agricultural courses in private colleges subsidised by the State). In 1965, the federation and the small-holders' associations together launched a new vocational training plan for young peasants, starting at the age of 15. Stress is laid on practical activities, and the course provides for at least three years' training on two separate farms, of which one may belong to the trainee's own family. Within this period, the student devotes six to twelve months to the study of stock-farming. In addition to this, the trainee has to attend courses given at young peasants' schools—288 hours, spread over two years. Throughout this time, the trainee is expected to take part in the activities organised by the young peasants' clubs. The period of agricultural training is completed by six months in an agricultural boarding school recognised by the State. Hence the total period of instruction amounts to no less than three-and-a-half years. The Federation 127 Agricultural organisations and development of Danish Farmers' Associations and the Small-Holders' Federation deliver end-of-training certificates. The federation observes that although social welfare activities are given no particular emphasis in its programme, the local associations do display very considerable energy in organising domestic science courses and demonstrations. At the regional level, five federations co-ordinate occupational activities from the regional and inter-regional points of view. The regional federations are presided over by an executive board assisted by committees comparable in type and number to those which assist the local associations. They too employ agricultural specialists and advisers and organise fairs and exhibitions. They also have to manage the assistance which the State provides for agricultural extension services. At the higher levels, the national federation has a chairman and vicechairman, an executive board of ten people, a council of directors (thirty persons) and a variety of subcommittees. The national federation co-ordinates occupational work and represents its members' interests vis-à-vis the Government, Parliament, and other sectors of the economy. Representing as it does the majority of Danish farmers and peasants, it exerts a great deal of influence on agricultural policy and is regularly consulted by the Ministry of Agriculture. With the other agricultural organisations, it successfully bargained for the drawing-up of a plan for the sale of agricultural produce within the country and for the award of cash subsidies designed to maintain the peasants' standard of living. In this connexion it will doubtless be remembered that since 1958 there has been a prodigious increase in State intervention in agriculture, and hence in negotiations between the occupational organisations and the authorities; it was in 1958 that a series of Acts were enacted whereby consumers and Treasury together would make considerable transfers of funds for the benefit of agriculture.1 With the employers' organisation, the federation is represented on a joint committee, within which general rules governing wages and employment conditions are negotiated with the workers. It is represented, too, on the agricultural committee appointed by the Government in 1960 to study the effect of modern technical and economic trends on Danish agriculture. The political parties, government organs and the other agricultural organisations are represented thereon, and the federation occupies three of the thirty-two seats available. This committee is the source and fount of the structural reforms undertaken by the Government, and the Acts of 1962 and 1963 were very largely drawn up by it. We have already seen that Danish policy was 1 128 For further details, see OECD: Agricultural Policies in 1966, op. cit., pp. 199 et seq. Denmark to protect the medium-sized family plot. But economic developments since the Second World War, and the progress made by other branches of the economy, have upset traditional habits and ideas. The Small Farms Act (1948) assumed that the normal family plot would measure 20 acres; later legislation is much less rigid. According to the 1962 Act, farms of less than 17% acres in extent may amalgamate with neighbouring ones to form new farms of up to 53 acres in area. In 1965 the committee made proposals for fresh legislation, providing for new systems of joint management and amalgamation. Under this scheme, the maximum allowable is 112 acres, and may be as much as 187, provided that the additional land needed is not required for the enlargement of individual small plots.1 Thus, after for a century trying to decentralise land ownership, in accordance with the circumstances existing before the war, Denmark is now endeavouring, with support from the agricultural organisations, to ensure that farms are big enough to cope with the demands made on them by mechanised agriculture. The Federation of Danish Farmers' Associations is a member of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) and of the Joint Council of Nordic Farmers' Organisations. Employers' and workers' organisations Two organisations only answered our appeal for information: the Federation of Agricultural Employers' Organisations and the Danish Gardeners' Union. In describing their activities, we shall assume that those of the other organisations are very much the same. • Federation of Agricultural Employers' Organisations Created in 1947, this federation (Sammenslutningen af Landbrugets Arbejdsgiverforeninger) embraces the various associations of agricultural employers, ranging from the simple farmer to the specialist in stock-farming or horticulture. Since this body provides the upper level for a whole group of organisations, it sometimes limits its activities to the consideration of questions of principle, which it examines, within a joint committee, with the representatives of the workers' unions; the actual application of the decisions taken is left to those concerned. This is the case, for instance, with regard to collective wage bargaining, which each employers' association settles by direct negotiation. As regards agricultural policy and production targets, the federation merely 1 OECD: Agricultural Policies in 1966, op. cit., p. 211. 129 Agricultural organisations and development advises the authorities. In the more specific field of prices, it has, with the Federation of Danish Farmers' Associations, organised a joint committee which discusses the price of agricultural produce. Proposed changes, however, have to be ratified by the authorities. All the employers' organisations belonging to the federation deal to some extent with health, social security, and workers' vocational training. In its answer to our appeal for information, the federation quotes, as an example, the Bacon Factory Employers' Association, which has set up the following insurance funds for the workers' benefit: — a fund against tuberculosis, by virtue of which a sick worker can be sure of drawing his wages for a certain period; — a sickness insurance fund, offering the sick worker a daily allowance until such time as the official sickness insurance scheme takes effect; — a collective life-insurance fund which makes a payment to a deceased worker's family. The federation observes in this connexion that all the employers' associations belonging to it have a fund which assists the families of deceased workers. Lastly, the federation observes that a number of unions provide for vocational training, sometimes working hand-in-hand with schools or colleges. There are training programmes for managers and foremen, skilled and unskilled workers, and apprentices. Between 30,000 and 40,000 workers are employed in the undertakings of members of the Federation. The Federation of Agricultural Employers' Organisations does not belong to any national confederation. It is a member of the International Organisation of Employers. • Danish Gardeners' Union This union (the Dansk Gartnerforbund) was created in 1894. Its members are gardeners and horticulturalists; at present they number some 6,000. Between 1,000 and 1,500 are jobbing gardeners, the others being permanently employed. Its chief activities are as follows : — to conclude collective agreements in connexion with wages, working conditions and social security; — to improve workers' professional qualifications by organising special courses and by dissemination of the appropriate information; — in conjunction with the employers' organisations, to extend and improve the training of apprentices; — to give systematic training to the representatives of the union and to develop workers' education (every year, courses organised by the union are attended by hundreds of workers). 130 France There are no trammels of a legislative kind to hamper the work of the union, but it does encounter difficulties. Firstly, there are many tiny plots, and gardening is an activity carried on throughout the length and breadth of the land; hence to make contacts with all gardeners is not by any means an easy business. Secondly, a number of workers in this field have political objections to the trade union movement, whence recruitment difficulties. Thirdly, the employers, it would seem, are not too happy about the influence of the trade union movement and oppose claims for profit-sharing. The union belongs to the Joint Horticultural Committee, responsible for the vocational training of gardeners and nurserymen, and to the Landscape Gardeners' Vocational Training Board, which deals with the specialised courses mentioned above. These bodies were set up by virtue of an amendment to the Apprenticeship Act (1937), designed to facilitate the creation of joint committees (with at least four members; two for the employers and two for the workers). These bodies have to advise the Ministries of Labour and Commerce, the Department of Labour and the Apprenticeship Council on all questions concerning the training and protection of apprentices. The union appears satisfied with the way these bodies work, and through them, it has managed to secure an improvement in the training of apprentices and adult workers, and recognition of the gardener as a skilled worker. The Danish Gardeners' Union is also represented, in the Ministry of Labour, on a council made up of employers' and workers' representatives and responsible for devising and proposing action in connexion with occupational health and safety. Among the union's achievements appear collective agreements on wages and working conditions for all branches of gardening and horticulture (private or public). By virtue of these agreements, the gardener enjoys wages and conditions of work which in general are closely similar to those obtaining in industry. The Danish Gardeners' Union belongs to the National Confederation of Danish Trade Unions and has done so from the beginning. This confederation, in its turn, is a member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). France General organisations There has been a continuing trend in France since the beginning of the century towards the creation and development of multi-purpose organisations in thefieldsof co-operation, mutual benefits and agricultural credits. Amongst 131 Agricultural organisations and development the numerous organisations founded to date are the French Agricultural Co-operation Confederation, the National Agricultural Mutual Benefit Federation, the National Agricultural Credit Federation, and the Central Agricultural Mutual Credit Federation. They form two enormous confederations: the General Confederation of Agriculture and the National Mutual Benefit, Co-operation and Agricultural Credit Confederation. Each of these expresses the desires and preoccupations of its member associations, and we shall now consider the part they play. We shall likewise consider the part played by the National Young Farmers' Centre, itself an offshoot of the General Confederation of Agriculture. • National Mutual Benefit, Co-operation and Agricultural Credit Confederation This was the product, in 1910, of a merger between the National Federation of Agricultural Unions and the Federation of Regional Agricultural Credit Funds. Its statutes lay down that it shall "serve as a link between member organisations, co-ordinating the individual efforts of each of them. It shall promote mutual insurance, co-operation and agricultural credits, defending such institutions and pursuing any matter of common interest to its member organisations and their members." Like the other French multi-purpose national bodies, this confederation, representing the agricultural mutual benefit and co-operative movements, helps to devise and implement French national agricultural policy. It advises the high-level bodies created within the Ministry of Agriculture (and is sometimes directly represented therein), as well as being represented at meetings of the executive board of the Fund for the Regulation of the Market for Agricultural Produce {Fonds d'orientation et de réglementation des marchés agricoles—FORMA). Besides which, it belongs to the recently created French Agricultural Council.1 The confederation embraces, firstly, the agricultural mutual benefit, cooperative and credit federations (within which employers and labourers are represented), and secondly, the National Federation of Unions of Agricultural Engineers, Technicians, Managers, Agricultural Association Employees and Agricultural Workers. This latter body has a considerable number of wage earners among its members. 1 The French Agricultural Council was set up in June 1966. It is made up of the National Mutual Benefit, Co-operation and Agricultural Credit Confederation, the National Federation of Farmers' Unions, the National Young Farmers' Centre, the French Agricultural Cooperation Confederation, the National Agricultural Mutual Benefit Federation and the National Agricultural Credit Federation. 132 France The confederation does not itself deal with such things as agricultural vocational training, social problems in the countryside, or housing; these are dealt with by the member federations or their member organisations. Internationally, the confederation is a member of the Committee of Agricultural Organisations (COPA) within the Common Market. It should be added, however, that the French mutual benefit and co-operative movement is also represented within the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP), through various federations belonging to the General Confederation of Agriculture. • General Confederation of Agriculture This body (Confédération générale de l'agriculture—CGA) was set up in 1945 in the form of an association governed by the 1901 Act. Its first statutes were provisionally adopted by a congress which met in March 1945, and confirmed by the national council in February 1950; but they were considerably amended in January 1954, and since that date the CGA has been above all concerned with co-ordination. According to its statutes, the CGA is designed to "unite, within a body known as the confederal office of the General Confederation of Agriculture, the representatives of member agricultural organisations, so that there may be an exchange of views on agricultural matters of concern to farmers and farming, with a view to co-ordinating, to the greatest possible extent, the views and the activities of the various member organisations". By virtue of an amendment to the statutes, adopted on 11 January 1967, the "confederal office" meets whenever necessary (and in any case at least once a quarter) to examine the means of liaison between the agricultural occupational organisations which are members of the Agricultural Council, and the other CGA member organisations. It may also be convened at any time by the chairman or at the request of one or more member organisations. The General Confederation of Agriculture is a member of IFAP on behalf of all its member organisations. • National Young Farmers' Centre This body (Centre national des jeunes agriculteurs—CNJA) was set up in 1947, as a section of the General Confederation of Agriculture, so that at that time it did not legally exist as a separate entity. Its activities were limited to organising study travel and undertaking a certain amount of vocational training. Not until 1954 does the "National Young Farmers' Circle" emerge, as an independent body subject to the 1901 Act. Three years later this entity officially became subject to the trade union system defined by the 133 Agricultural organisations and development Act of 1884. Finally, in 1961, it amended its statutes and became a "Centre" instead of a "Circle". The CNJA is an exceedingly dynamic body, and its activities are numerous. Thanks to its contacts with occupational organisations and with the authorities, it has played a most important part in devising and implementing French agricultural policy over the last ten years. It played an exceedingly important part, too, in the adoption of the Agricultural Guidance Act of 5 August 1960, and in that of the Supplementary Act dated 8 August 1962, which lays down the following as aims to be pursued: integration of the French farmer and peasant into the national economy, levelling-up of the peasant's standard of living to that of other occupations of similar socio-professional standing, and to ensure that certain predominantly agricultural areas catch up in the race for economic expansion. The CNJA collaborates in many ways with official organs. Many are the ways, too, in which it helps in drawing up French agricultural policy: 1. The CNJA has two seats in the Economic and Social Council (merely an advisory body). 2. As regards planning, it has several seats in the General Agricultural Committee of the Fifth Plan, and in the various working parties set up under the Plan. At the regional level, the CNJA is represented by one or two delegates, as the case may be, on the committees for regional economic development (CODER). 3. The CNJA has a seat on the executive council of FORMA, which has powers of decision with regard to the market for agricultural produce. Furthermore, the National Committee for Agricultural Extension and Progress, which manages the budgetary resources of the funds and apportions credits, includes two representatives of the CNJA. This committee has voting powers and its decisions admit of no appeal. 4. The CNJA is represented on the General Technical Committee which decides how producers' associations and agricultural economic boards shall be set up, and what shall be done to encourage them; it also has seats on the National Regional Economic Council and the Social Advancement Co-ordination Committee, of which the prime minister is the chairman. The task of this latter body is to give its views on the action required to secure social promotion in France. 5. Within the Ministry of Agriculture itself, the CNJA has one seat on each of the high-level councils 1 set up to assist the minister in devising and implementing the agricultural policy of the Government. 1 These are seven in number: the Supreme Educational Vocational Training, Agricultural Social Promotion and Rural Youth Council; the Supreme Agricultural Social Benefits 134 France 6. In educational circles, the CNJA is represented at the national level by persons who sit on the Supreme Council for National Education. Locally, in each département, the directors of the "departmental" Young Farmers' Centres sit on the Educational Committee presided over by the prefect. This latter, an advisory body, helps the prefect to organise education, especially in the countryside (setting-up of schools, children's bus services, and so on). 7. In addition, as regards health and housing, the CNJA enjoys a seat in the "departmental" rural housing boards, where both farmers and the authorities are represented. Furthermore, many young farmers act as administrators in co-operatives, known as SICAs (Sociétés d'intérêt collectif agricole), concerned with rural housing. These bodies make a substantial technical contribution to the erection and improvement of farmers' and farm labourers' homes, and of farm buildings in general. As the CNJA itself emphasises, it does far more than simply take part in the work of official bodies, where its role is essentially advisory. The National Centre has its own training programme, in fact: in 1965, no fewer than 5,265 young farmers (most of them holding positions in the local, "departmental", regional and national bodies of the CNJA, but also in agricultural co-operatives and agricultural credit funds) enjoyed at least six days' training. Moreover, some 35,000 young people took part in short seminars concerning technical progress or agricultural mechanisation, or on the organisation of farmers in order to ensure the more effective marketing of their produce. Further, the National Centre has helped create the Training Institute for Farm Managers; it assists this body in recruitment and in the organisation of courses. With the authorities, and with other agricultural occupational organisations, it also helps in setting up "social promotion" centres, for the vocational training and advanced vocational training of the farm workers. Lastly, the CNJA manages the Technical Institute for Agricultural Promotion. As regards relationships between employers and workers, the National Centre has one seat on the Employers' Committee of the National Federation of Farmers' Unions {Fédération nationale des syndicats d'exploitants agricoles— FNSEA: see below). This committee has to consider the employment and wages problems confronting the farm worker, and to this end has to maintain contacts with farm workers' unions. As regards rural leases, too, there is a tripartite national committee under FNSEA including owners, tenants, and those who actually work the land. Council; the Supreme Hydraulics and Waterworks Council; the Supreme Stock-Farming Council; the Supreme Council for Forestry and Forestry Products; the Supreme Council on Structures; and the Supreme Council for Improvement of the Countryside. 135 Agricultural organisations and development The CNJA is not directly represented therein, but is consulted whenever the committee sees fit. The CNJA has belonged to FNSEA since 1957, but maintainsfinancialand legal independence ; it manages its own training activities and decides on what is to be done to publicise technical progress. It also belongs to the Comité d'entente des jeunes agriculteurs of the European Economic Community and to the Committee of Agricultural Organisations (COPA) of the EEC. Through the General Confederation of Agriculture, it belongs to the International Federation of Agricultural Producers. Employers' organisations • National Federation of Farmers' Unions In view of the part that this body (FNSEA) plays in bargaining with the workers, it might be considered as an employers' organisation, although it is more by way of being a general-purpose occupational organisation which, through local unions and "departmental" federations, embraces all those who work the land, whether or not they are employers of labour. The federation has set up a number of sections or specialised committees to study and defend the special interests of the various branches of agriculture (dairy farming, fruit-growing, cereal production, and so on) and of the various kinds of farmer (tenants, owner-operators, employers, and so forth). It closely follows the problems of agricultural wages, their development over the years, and the position of agricultural wages in relation to wages for other occupations. To this end it has a say in the Agricultural Accounts Committee, in which it has on several occasions effectively contested the Government's view of developments. As a private occupational organisation, FNSEA has no vote in the adoption of decisions by the authorities. It intervenes more especially in Parliament, where it indirectly provokes agricultural debates in the National Assembly, and in official bodies such as the Plan Commissariat, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance, etc., where it puts forwards the farmers' claims. It defends their interests, too, by organising public demonstrations and strikes (such as the milk and meat strikes in 1964); it conducts campaigns among the peasants and parliamentary deputies, and appeals to public opinion at large. FNSEA represents the agricultural employers vis-à-vis official bodies and workers' trade unions. In this capacity, it has a seat on the Supreme Committee for Collective Agreements, which is responsible for advising on plans for extending collective agreements. In its work for the benefit of adult farmers and wage earners, it co-operates with the advisory bodies set up by the Ministries 136 France of Agriculture, National Education and Social Affairs. It takes part in the activities of the General Secretariat for Social Promotion. As regards the medium-term prospects for French agriculture, as outlined in the Fifth Plan (1965-70), FNSEA feels that trade union pressure is certainly responsible for the scheme whereby agricultural wages are to catch up with those in industry, and for the choice of 4.8 per cent per year as the rate at which agricultural income per farm is to increase. As regards manpower, FNSEA at the national level, and the FDSEAs ("departmental" federations) at the level of the département, are the only organisations representative of labour-employing farmers in the fields of stock-farming and general farming. Certain highly specialised branches, such as horticulture, fish-breeding, etc., have their independent unions which directly negotiate collective agreements, but remain attached to the general movement through a co-ordination committee for specialised associations. The Act dated 11 February 1950 limited the effect of agricultural collective agreements to the département or region, and the FDSEAs therefore negotiate such agreements with the workers' unions in "departmental" joint committees. They also take part, in the joint committees, in drafting prefectorial Orders, which in the absence of a collective agreement (or supplementary to such an agreement) regulate agricultural working conditions. FNSEA trains, and keeps informed, the "departmental" officers who take part in such negotiations, and tries, within its National Manpower Committee, to ensure the requisite co-operation and co-ordination, while respecting the independence of the FDSEAs and making allowance for regional diversity. It considers that despite a particularly unfavourable economic situation, great improvements have been made these last few years, in the country as a whole, in the lot of the agricultural wage earner, especially as regards wages, paid leave, social security and supplementary retirement pensions, which are now virtually general. On several occasions, the farmers have officially announced that they agree to wages parity, as defined by the agricultural workers, but have emphasised that only if the farmer's income increases can the workers expect a higher standard of living. As regards action to improve the standing of the country-dweller, FNSEA itself provides training for union officials at every level. In 1963, it had organised 3,000 man-days for trainees; in 1965, this figure stood at 11,000, and in 1966, at no less than 19,00o.1 FNSEA is active, too, in extension work and in disseminating information on technical, economic and social progress among the farmers. These 1 See H. de Farcy: "Lentes transformations des organisations agricoles", Projet (Paris), No. 15,1967, p. 623. 137 Agricultural organisations and development two activities—promotion and extension—are to some extent subsidised. Furthermore, in conjunction with the workers' trade union federations, it set up in 1966 a standing joint committee for the vocational training of agricultural wage earners. The role of this body is to encourage and co-ordinate private initiative in this sphere and to put the occupational organisations' points of view to the authorities. Agricultural workers' unions We have already described the birth and growth of agricultural trade unionism in the historical part of this volume. After the Second World War, there was much reorganisation in this important branch of the French trade union movement, and finally the following three major organisations emerged : — the Federation of Agricultural, Forestry and Similar Workers, attached to the General Confederation of Labour (CGT); — the General Federation of Agriculture (FGA), attached to the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT); — the National Agricultural Federation, attached to the General Confederation of Labour-Force Ouvrière (CGT-FO). It is impossible to say exactly how much weight these different organisations carry, since there is a tradition, going back to before the war, that membership figures are not revealed ; table 3 (pp. 82-84) bears out this statement. • Federation of Agricultural, Forestry and Similar Workers This body, created in 1920 as the National Federation of Agricultural Workers*, is the oldest of the three and embraces all the occupations subject to agricultural legislation: lumberjack, vine-grower, farm labourer, employees working for agricultural co-operatives, credit organisations, mutual benefit societies, etc. In rural circles its influence would appear to be powerful indeed, to judge from the figures for elections to chambers of agriculture in February 1964; the lists put forward by the federation usually obtained more than half the votes cast, and in many départements received as many as 60 to 65 per cent. The federation is represented on official committees and councils created within the Ministry of Agriculture. It is also represented on planning bodies, and on the Economic and Social Council, where it has one seat. In the départements, its representatives have seats in the chambers of agriculture. 1 On the origins of this federation, see ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., p. 124. 138 France Except in the Economic and Social Council and in the chambers of agriculture, where they have a vote, the representatives of the federation have a purely advisory role. In the main, the federation's members are full-time agricultural workers, although there are quite a few seasonal ones too. Tenants and share-croppers, who are organised in a "social section" within FNSEA, in theory are not members of the federation. However, it seems that since 1959, when the Movement to Defend the Farmer (MODEF) was launched, a number have belonged to the federation. The federation says that the following are the activities to which it attaches the greatest importance : — negotiation for the conclusion of national, "departmental" or local agreements, usually in the form of collective agreements, the contents of which will be specified later; — application and constant improvement of these agreements; — claims for better social security benefits, family allowances, compensation for occupational injury, etc. ; — claims for more and better vocational training, with help from, and subject to the supervision of, the workers' trade union organisations. The federation also wants agricultural wage earners to be covered by the general social security scheme (this is something which it says the other federations do not claim), while constantly striving to improve the lot of the agricultural wage earner within what is known in France as the Mutualité sociale, in which latter scheme he is—so the federation declares—kept against his wishes.1 The federation has for several years now been making considerable efforts in connexion with the training of trade unionists, in view of the increasingly complex problems with which the unions are at present faced. The federation's activists have been playing an increasing part in a growing number of economic and social institutions and bodies, such as joint boards, agricultural social security and mutual benefit funds, supplementary retirement benefit funds, chambers of agriculture, agricultural extension bodies, works councils, philanthropic movements, and the like. 1 The agricultural Mutualité sociale goes back to the mutual benefit societies set up in the nineteenth century. These were recognised by the Act of 4 July 1900, and subjected to the Act of 21 March 1884, on occupational unions. But, as is stressed in a study undertaken under the direction of P. Moreau, "it was the Act of 15 December 1922, which extended the Act of 9 April 1898 to agriculture, which for the first time introduced the idea of social protection into agriculture, by rendering an employer responsible for occupational injuries suffered by his employees". Since then, the process has been supplemented by various enactments which have extended the mutual benefit society principle to old-age pensions, to maternity, sickness and disability insurance, and to family allowances. For further details, consult Le régime de protection sociale agricole, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3293 (Paris, 24 May 1966). 139 Agricultural organisations and development Clearly, such participation demands both theoretical instruction and practical training. To this end, the federation has set up a workers' education institute which enjoys a ministerial subsidy, as part of the "collective promotion" scheme. This institute, which is exceedingly busy, organises national, regional and "departmental" courses lasting fifty hours (one week). Among the obstacles it has encountered, the federation mentions that agricultural mechanisation and the use of new techniques, coupled with the fact that agricultural wage earners are paid less than others, have led to a sharp drop in agricultural manpower. The result is a growing dispersion of wage" earners, balanced to some extent by a counter-trend now becoming apparent: a constant increase in the staff of agricultural organisations such as co-operatives, mutual benefit societies, agricultural credit funds, and the like. These people enjoy stable employment; they are, on the average, younger than in other branches of agriculture, and are relatively concentrated in their places of work. Hence the federation is making considerable efforts to win them over and to make suitable changes in its internal structure with this in view. Relations with employers' associations are mostly maintained within bodies of three different kinds: — "departmental" joint labour committees, consulted by the prefect with a view to enacting labour regulations (in the absence of collective agreements); — the national committee or the regional or "departmental" committees for settlement of collective disputes (these act like joint tribunals); — the joint boards, convened at the request of the parties concerned to discuss collective agreements. Their role is defined by the Act of 11 February 1950. They meet at the "departmental" or "interdepartmental" level when discussing matters of concern to farms, and nationally, regionally or "departmentally" when such matters concern agricultural organisations. Among the results achieved by bargaining, the federation mentions the signature of nation-wide collective agreements for workers in dairy, storage and supply co-operatives and regional and "departmental" agreements dealing with multi-crop and stock-raising farms, and with special crops. According to the federation, these agreements contain clauses not provided for by the legislation in force when our inquiry was launched, for example: — supplementary retirement benefits; — a fourth week of paid holiday; — contributions to social security schemes based on the wage as provided for in the agreement, and not on the contractual figure; — payment for public holidays on which no work is done; — travel allowances; — bonuses for unhealthy work; — trade union delegates ; 140 France — staff delegates proportional to the size of the staff in undertakings where the staff does not reach the statutory minimum; — setting-up of social welfare boards; — preventive medical attention and the definition of certain occupational health rules; — pay for apprentices. Furthermore, in all the collective agreements signed by the federation, it has succeeded in obtaining a classification of posts such that women generally appear in the same categories as men. An index is assigned to each category. For the same occupational skills, this index changes with the départements, as in fact does the value of the "wage-point", usually set at one-hundredth of the minimum guaranteed agricultural wage. By this means a skilled wage earner gets a higher wage than an unskilled one. In the poorer départements, where collective agreements do not exist, the wage, no matter what the worker's qualifications may be, is the minimum guaranteed agricultural wage. As regards security of employment, the federation stresses that in almost every case the agreements entered into embody the provisions of prefectorial Orders enacted by virtue of the Order dated 7 July 1945 \ and this despite the reticence displayed by the employers' organisations. As regards social security, the workers' organisations have repeatedly joined forces. The result has been profound changes tending to bring social security arrangements into line with the general social security system applied in industry and commerce. According to the federation, the agricultural workers have profited from substantial improvements introduced by the Ministry of Agriculture. However, to achieve parity, they still have to ensure that contributions are based on actual wages, and that entitlement to benefits begins from 60 hours of work during the quarter preceding the issue of a medical certificate (the general system), instead of from 100 eight-hour days of work during the two preceding quarters (as in the agricultural system). Illiteracy is virtually non-existent in the French countryside, and the federation reports no activity in connexion therewith. On the other hand, in the 1 By virtue of this Order "any wage earner who enjoys security of employment and is guaranteed by his employer an indeterminate period of employment, lasting at least one year (200 hours of work per month at least) shall be considered as permanent. This guarantee of employment as defined above shall apply to the first year of employment and persists until the worker leaves (no matter for what reason). It shall be renewed, either by written agreement between the parties, or by tacit consent on each anniversary of the date of recruitment. However, a break in the employment contract, caused by the worker's voluntary departure or by his dismissal for serious misconduct, shall not cause him to be considered as nonpermanent." The Order likewise lays down that "the wage of a non-permanent worker shall be 10 per cent higher than that of a permanent worker". 141 Agricultural organisations and development field of rural hygiene, which in France leaves a good deal to be desired, it has never—it states—been asked to take part in the work of the committees set up to tackle this problem in the communes and départements. Nationally, the federation has from the outset belonged to the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). Internationally, it belongs to the Trades Union International of Agricultural, Forestry arid Plantation Workers, the agricultural branch of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). • General Federation of Agriculture The General Federation of Agriculture (FGA) is made up of two organisations: the Federation of Land Workers (founded in 1936) and the Federation of Agricultural Organisation Technicians and Employees (founded in 1945). These two bodies, which had maintained a connexion for many years, merged their activities in February 1962. Like the preceding federation, the FGA seems to be exceedingly influential in the French countryside. Its membership has been growing at a rate of more than 20 per cent per annum since 1962. Members of the FGA sit on all bodies where provision is made for agricultural wage earners to be represented, notably: (a) in the high-level councils existing within the Ministry of Agriculture ; (è) in the Economic and Social Council, where it holds two seats, one on behalf of farm labourers, the other on behalf of agricultural employees, technicians and managers; (c) in the chambers of agriculture, where its elected members represent something like 40 per cent of elected wage earners; (d) in the Agricultural Committee of the Plan Commissariat and in the working parties of this committee; and (e) in the Agricultural Accounts Committee, where it occupies the only seat allotted to agricultural wage earners. Nationally, it also takes part in the activities of the General Confederation of Agriculture, in which all the various agricultural organisations—covering co-operatives, mutual benefit societies and occupational organisations—are represented. At the European level, the FGA is represented on all the social and economic advisory bodies of the Common Market, except the Economic and Social Committee, since the French agricultural delegation no longer includes a representative of the agricultural wage earners. The FGA farm-workers' unions are largely made up of workers permanently employed, but also embrace a steadily growing number of seasonal workers. The federation undertakes negotiations on all problems of concern to agricultural wage earners, either with employers and general agricultural 142 France organisations, or with the authorities. But its particular interests and aims are the following: — bargaining in all matters concerning employment: wages, working hours and working week, conditions of employment, and so on ; — a constant improvement in social guarantees: insurances, retirement pensions, supplementary retirement pensions, unemployment insurance, and insurance against occupational injury. Here again, the purpose of the FGA is to obtain equality with wage earners in industry and commerce; — an increase in the resources available for vocational training; in this field needs are steadily increasing and projects are numerous, but it is no easy matter to get anything specific done; — the economic development of agriculture by economic and social reform, so as to make farming profitable and to improve the lot of all who make their living off the land, be they wage earners or small farmers. The FGA says that it has always opposed all forms of capitalist development and their consequences. In working for the above ends, it endeavours to secure recognition of wage earners' trade unions at all levels, together with their participation in decisions of economic or social importance. It promotes the co-operative movement in all its forms as a means of economic development and as a means of improving the standard of living of the agricultural worker. It lists the difficulties it encounters in the following order of importance : — Employers and authorities alike are reluctant to give full recognition to wage earners' trade unions. These latter are, indeed, consulted in connexion with matters of social importance, but experience great difficulty in undertaking discussions with employers on conditions of work and wages, at the "departmental" and national levels. Besides which, these unions do not seem to carry as much weight with the authorities as other agricultural organisations and, generally speaking, employers turn a deaf ear to grievances expressed at the place of work. — The agricultural wage earner, and especially the farm labourer, lives an isolated life. Inadequately trained, he is often overworked on farms too small to afford a proper labour force. He is inclined to feel helplessly dependent on his traditional surroundings. — The authorities frequently consider that agricultural work is somehow less intense than work in industry and trade, whence the disparities which still exist in social welfare legislation. The FGA unions discuss these matters with employers in joint or mixed committees, mentioned above in connexion with the CGT. In this respect the FGA observes that despite the existence of organs of this kind, there is no legislation governing representation on joint bodies in the stricter sense of the word. Certainly, the legislation enacted in 1950 does provide a number 143 Agricultural organisations and development of provisions subsequently reviewed or extended, to ensure free discussion of pay and conditions of work. But such clauses are exhortatory only; they lay much weight on conciliation, and provide for procedures which may prove wearisomely long. The FGA feels that joint or mixed bodies would be of greater use if there were some means of forcing employers to negotiate on all problems of pay and working conditions. The federation is of the opinion that the reason why there are no collective agreements in all branches of agriculture and in all parts on France is that the legislation in force provides for so many exceptions and is over-tolerant of delay. As its achievements, the federation quotes the following, in order of importance: — an increase in the number of collective agreements concerning conditions of work and supplementary retirement benefits; — a considerable increase in the average wage; — parity for retirement pensions; — signature of a national agreement for the general payment of supplementary retirement benefits in agriculture and arrangements for compensation between the funds paying such benefits; — the waging of a campaign by all the trade union organisations in favour of more vocational training. In addition, thanks to its National Agricultural Wage Earners' Training and Study Centre, the FGA has for the last six years been providing more than 5,000 man-days of training every year, for the benefit of the officers and activists of its organisations. Nationally, the FGA and its organisations have belonged to the French Democratic Confederation of Labour since its creation. This confederation belongs to the World Confederation of Labour (WCL), while the FGA itself, internationally, is a member of the International Federation of Agricultural Wage Earners' Unions (itself attached to the WCL). • The National Force Ouvrière Federation for Agriculture and Related Branches This organisation, created in 1947 after breaking away from the CGT, is, like the two organisations just discussed, represented in an advisory capacity in the official bodies mentioned above. Its membership, with few exceptions, consists of wage earners permanently employed, and is multiplying at the rate of 8 to 10 per cent per annum. The federation claims to enjoy the support of the majority of wage earners, but the exact weight it carries cannot be precisely assessed in the absence of definite figures for membership. 144 France The federation declares that it is chiefly concerned with the following matters: — collective agreements; — security of employment; — working hours and the working week; — health and hygiene, and housing; — reduction of unemployment; — reduction in retirement age; — abolition of the minimum agricultural wage and parity with the "interoccupational guaranteed minimum wage" or SMIG, as it is referred to in France; — parity with industry as regards social benefits. Furthermore, the federation is active in organising national, regional, and "departmental" study sessions. In 1965, it organised five national sessions, attended by 214 persons, four regional sessions with 900 participants, and 20 "departmental" sessions attended by 526 people. The Ministry of Agriculture supports these activities by means of subsidies granted to all organisations (workers' or employers') by virtue of clause 3 of the Act dated 31 July 1959. Thus, in 1963, and on the basis of a contribution of 4 million francs, the Government approved the training of 35,000 trainees (for all organisations) as against 15,000 in 1962.1 The federation likewise ensures the vocational training of agricultural wage earners, and to this end has since 1961 run a National Vocational Training Centre in the west of France, where training is given to tractor drivers and agricultural machinery repair specialists. A second centre is now being organised in the Mediterranean area. The chief difficulties mentioned by the federation are as follows. Employers are intolerant of, and indeed are inclined to dismiss, organised wage earners. Secondly, the workers themselves are very scattered. Thirdly, there is little security of employment. Nevertheless, the federation claims to have secured, through negotiation, various improvements, including: — reduction in working hours; — higher pay and better housing; — improvements in the agricultural mutual benefits system (which is still inferior to the social security benefits system, as has been pointed out by the other two federations as well); — improvements in the field of workers' education, by means of special leave for the training of trade union officials; 1 See L'enseignement agricole en France, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3152 (Paris, January 1965), p. 32. 145 Agricultural organisations and development — collective social security agreements providing for supplementary retirement benefits; — improvements in paid holidays. The federation belongs to the Force Ouvrière Labour Confederation, itself a member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). It is also a member of the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers (IFPAAW). Chambers of agriculture In each département in France there is a chamber of agriculture which advises the authorities and represents the occupational interests of the local farmers and peasants. Although they were originally founded a fair number of years ago, the chambers of agriculture have played an active part in French agriculture for a comparatively short time. They go back, in fact, to 20 March 1851, when an Act was promulgated to reorganise agricultural shows (cornices agricoles). These latter were empowered to elect the members of "departmental" chambers of agriculture which, as local advisory bodies, were supposed to advise the authorities in connexion with legislative, economic and statistical questions involving agricultural interests. But the coup d'état of 2 December 1851 postponed the elections and set up district chambers appointed by the authorities ; and then the vacillating Third Republic, which resurrected the chambers of agriculture by virtue of the Act of 25 October 1919, was unable to overcome the opposition of the Ministry of Agriculture and of the National Confederation of Agricultural Associations. This explains why the chambers of agriculture appear on the scene so late. After all, chambers of commerce, as an institution, were already centuries old.1 Only with the Act dated 3 January 1924 was a charter enacted for the chambers of agriculture. However, money for elections was lacking, and it was not until 1927 that the charter could take effect. The chambers then worked normally for fourteen years or so, until 2 December 1940, when the Corporative Organisation of Agriculture Act did away with them. After the war, the 1924 Act was put into effect again by the provisional government2, but since the prefect's authorisation was required before public or private agricultural associations could begin work again8, the chambers had to wait until 17 November 1949, when the Ministry of Agriculture wrote 1 Chambers of commerce were officially recognised in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but had existed ever since the Renaissance. " Ordinance dated 12 October 1944, Journal officiel, 13 October 1944, No. 97, p. 923. 8 ibid., clause 2. 146 France to the prefects to say that there was no reason why the chambers of agriculture should not start up once more. At present, there are 90 such chambers in France, and their chairmen together make up a body known as the Permanent Assembly of the Chairmen of Chambers of Agriculture. Under clause 504 of the Rural Code, embodied in the 1924 Act, "chambers of agriculture shall be recognised as public establishments and may in this capacity acquire, receive, possess, dispose, borrow, and take legal procedings".1 Their members are elected, roughly in the proportion of four out of five, by three electoral colleges numbering, all in all, 3.9 million men and women, who represent: (a) farmers and the adult members of their families; (b) agricultural wage earners; and (c) owners who do not themselves farm. The total membership of 3.9 million may be broken down thus: 34 per cent, owner-farmers; 18 per cent, tenants and share-croppers; 30 per cent, adult family-members of these first two classes; 10 per cent, agricultural wage earners; and 7.6 per cent, owners who do not themselves farm. Furthermore, one-fifth of the members are the delegates of "departmental" agricultural bodies. In 1963) 59,000 such bodies (syndicates, co-operatives and mutual benefit societies, were entered on the electoral lists. In general, the chambers are elected by some 45 per cent of the registered electors; this percentage exceeds the highest known percentages on the occasion of occupational elections. The chambers are limited to one per département, and are frequently grouped at the regional level. They play a double part. Firstly, they provide advice. Secondly, they take the initiative in economic and social matters. As advisory bodies able to speak for the French peasantry, they "provide the prefect and the Government with such information and advice as may be requested in connexion with matters agricultural".2 In practice, their representatives are regularly consulted by the "departmental" prefects, and they meet in plenary session twice a year in Paris to give their views on the Government's agricultural policy. In social and economic matters, "the chambers of agriculture can create or subsidise any establishment, institution or service of use to agriculture, and any collective undertaking of interest for agricultural purposes, within their area." s They can, too, participate in the creation of limited liability companies or subscribe to the capital thereof, and they can belong to agricultural associations, co-operatives or unions, or to any association pursuing agricultural ends. 1 See Les chambres d'agriculture dans le Code rural (Paris, Permanent Assembly of the Chairmen of Chambers of Agriculture, 1965), p. 9. 2 Rural Code, clause 506. * ibid., clause 507. 147 Agricultural organisations and development In this capacity, and thanks to their financial resources (the average budget per chamber has increased from 150,000 francs a year in 1939 to some 720,000 francs in 1964) \ they are active in all sorts of ways. Here we shall merely mention some of their more outstanding activities : — the foundation of so-called "houses of agriculture", in which administrators, technicians and experts work under the same roof. In this manner, there is a saving in time and money for the peasant called upon to visit the local town to seek advice or to get something done. — the building of silos, laboratories and vocational training schools financed by long-term loans from the Agricultural Credit Fund (Crédit agricole) : for example, the harbour silos at Rouen, Saint-Malo and Colmar, the Meuse and Upper Rhine Training Colleges, and the Espiguette Estate Laboratory on the Mediterranean coast, run by the Chamber of Agriculture of the Gard, with technical help from the National Institute of Agronomic Research. — the creation of technical and economic extension services throughout the land. As a recent publication puts it: Action on these lines has developed at a dizzy speed. At present, most chambers of agriculture have their extension services. An employee of the chamber is available to cantonal groups of farmers and peasants. The cost of this activity amounts to some 3,000 million old French francs. The chambers employ some 2,000 extension workers. Generally speaking, these people are more often liaison officers than technical specialists, but at the peasants' request they now deal with economic as well as with technical problems. Whence a second aspect of these activities—the Rural Management and Farm Economics Centres. Some of these are run by the chambers themselves, while others merely enjoy the assistance of engineers paid for by the chambers. The chambers themselves shoulder some 30 per cent of the cost of such activities2. Since 1954, moreover, certain advisers have been doing their best to facilitate the regrouping of isolated plots through friendly exchanges before a final consolidation of holdings. In this connexion, the chambers have set up estate services, with qualified officials to help the peasants to deal with problems arising from the amalgamation of plots,consolidation of holdings, or land expropriation. It will thus be clearly seen that since the chambers were resurrected from oblivion after the Second World War, their influence has grown considerably. Indeed, it is likely to grow still further; certain responsibilities hitherto shouldered by the authorities (particularly extension work) will, it seems, shortly be made over to them. 1 The chambers are financed by an addition to the contribution or land tax payable on estates not built on. Hence it is the owners of agricultural estates who pay the contributions. These amount, on the average, to 50 centimes per acre (1964). 2 Les chambres d'agriculture, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3195 (Paris, 28 May 1965), p. 27. 148 Federal Republic of Germany Federal Republic of Germany Reorganised from top to bottom since the end of the Second World War, agriculture in the Federal Republic of Germany has succeeded (thanks partly to the efforts of Dr. Andreas Hermes) in building up powerful organisations once again without lapsing into the dispersion and the political and religious dissension which marked the period prior to the advent of Nazism. The strong cohesion achieved today within these new organisations and the practical way in which they have shared out their tasks have placed German agriculture on a more business-like footing than ever before, as borne out by all the economic and social trends. A central agricultural committee, composed of the Federation of Chambers of Agriculture, the German Peasants' Association, the German Agricultural Society and the Federation of Raiffeisen Co-operatives, does the co-ordinating work rendered necessary by the federal structure of the country. General organisations • German Agricultural Society The German Agricultural Society (Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft), with about 20,000 members, was founded in 1885 by Max Eyth, who modelled it upon the British Royal Agricultural Society. This society, which is a member of the German Central Agricultural Committee, has made a remarkable contribution towards the country's agricultural prosperity; for more than 80 years it has expanded continually through its 15 specialised sections, which cover all kinds of activities from organising agricultural competitions to verifying the quality of inputs and awarding quality labels. Here is a list of the activities of some of the chief sections, by way of example : — the agricultural methods and work section handles questions relating to conditions of work and the interdependence between methods and productivity; — the rural population section deals with matters pertaining to workers' health and the demands made upon it by modern farming; it strives to improve rural education and vocational training, and the health and social position of farmers; — the marketing section and the management section study the various influences and factors that come into play in determining the prices of agricultural produce. The results of their studies, based on accountancy data, are evaluated at conferences and meetings organised by the society and subsequently circulated to farmers; 149 Agricultural organisations and development — the task of the trade section is to explain to the farmer the interplay of forces on the market and help him to improve his circumstances by facilitating the marketing of his produce through advertising and through the quality testing of dairy produce, pork-meat and bakery products, and agricultural produce in general, particularly where destined for export. The trade section collaborates closely with the society in the development of the market for German agricultural produce ; — the peasant women's section gives advice to women and helps them to work more efficiently. It carries out tests of household implements and appliances as part of the series of tests organised by the society, and helps to plan cultural, social and educational activities. Some of the tasks carried out by the society are officially entrusted to it by the Government, such as the checking of farm machinery and tractors, for which the sum of DM 890,000 was earmarked in the federal budget for 1962. The society is also responsible for the enforcement of the Stock-breeding Act as concerns the verification of stud books and supervision of the testing of dairy produce.1 The German Agricultural Society is independent both politically and financially. From the legal standpoint it is a registered public utility association with its headquarters at Frankfurt-am-Main. Internationally, it is a member of the European Confederation of Agriculture. • German Peasants' Association The German Peasants' Association (Deutscher Bauernverband) is the only body in the Federal Republic representing farmers from the economic policy standpoint. It groups together the peasants' associations in the different Länder to which the farmers belong directly or which, in their turn, group together the agricultural district associations of which the farmers are members. A work-sharing arrangement has been reached with the other major farmers' associations, including in particular the Federation of Chambers of Agriculture, Federation of Raiffeisen Co-operatives, and German Agricultural Society. The German Peasants' Association has the task ofrepresenting the interests of German agriculture in the economic policy sphere (agrarian policy, markets, taxes, the law, communications, social issues, structure, culture and health). The German Peasants' Association was founded in the autumn of 1946, initially in the form of a working community of regional peasants' associations, as the occupation authorities had banned the forming of central organisations. 'Pierre Belin and Maurice Hasson: L'agriculture en République fédérale d'Allemagne, Notes et études documentaires, No 3226 (Paris, October 1965), p. 24. 150 Federal Republic of Germany It was the first body to bring together, for the representation of their interests, all the agricultural and economic organisations which until 1933 had been split up into many small groups. In the economic field, the association strives to keep farm produce prices stable by making known its demands to the political and administrative authorities. The German Peasants' Association has proposed or had a hand in the drafting of a whole series of laws which are now on the statute book. Mention may be made, inter alia, of the Marketing Act, the Agricultural Act of 1955, the Act of 30 June 1965 respecting adjustment to the European Economic Community \ the Act respecting aid to old persons in agriculture, and the Act respecting the taxing of farms. The same thing happens at the level of the Länder, where the regional organisations help to further the development of agriculture by making similar proposals for laws or drawing up codes of practice. The German Peasants' Association's role here is purely advisory; unlike the chambers of agriculture, which have certain official functions to perform, it has no responsibility for enforcing the measures approved by the governmental authorities. As regards relations with the trade unions, the association does not appear to deal with them directly; collective bargaining is in fact conducted by the member organisations of the Central Confederation of Agricultural and Forestry Employers' Associations; it is to be noted, however, that the latter confederation is affiliated as such to the German Peasants' Association. In the field of vocational training and welfare activities, on the other hand, the association does intervene directly, and often; it and its regional associations in the Länder run people's high schools which as a rule offer continuation courses to young people aged 20 and over or provide adult education facilities. In addition, the German Peasants' Association and its regional associations frequently take the initiative in order to stimulate governmental action in particular areas by founding schools, hospitals, and so on. The regional associations also undertake the training of village welfare workers and the engagement of works welfare officers. The German Peasant Women's Association (Deutsche Landfrauenverband) concerns itself more particularly with the improvement of housing conditions. Special encouragement is given to the training of countrywomen at the regional level through courses and information visits. The German Peasants' Association is represented on the many committees of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry to which various tasks are assigned in relation to the agrarian economy. In addition, 1 For more details on the Acts of 1955 and 1965 see OECD: Agricultural Policies in 1966, op. cit., pp. 262-264. 151 Agricultural organisations and development its regional associations are represented, along with the employers and the workers, on the rural improvement councils which concern themselves with the regional development of the Länder. These councils are statutory bodies which collaborate in the drawing-up of local and often also regional development plans, especially where these are declared compulsory. According to the association, there is at present no legislative or other obstacle to hinder the development of its many activities. The German Peasants' Association is affiliated, at the international level, to the European Confederation of Agriculture, the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP), and the Committee of Agricultural Organisations (COPA) in the European Economic Community. Employers' organisations • Central Confederation of Agricultural and Forestry Employers' Associations As pointed out above, the German Peasants' Association does not intervene in collective bargaining with the trade unions, which is the preserve of the members of one of its affiliated organisations: the Central Confederation of Agricultural and Forestry Employers' Associations (Gesamtverband der landund forstwirtschaftlichen Arbeitgeberverbände). The confederation, founded in 1948, concerns itself with promoting and defending the common interests of its members and collaborates on their behalf with their social partners in agriculture in the social insurance institutions where it is represented. There is close co-operation between its representatives and those of the Horticultural, Agricultural and Forestry Union on the Joint Advisory Committee to the Commission of the European Economic Community on the Social Problems of Agricultural Workers. Nevertheless, this organisation, which in a sense may be said to be the industrial relations section of the German Peasants' Association, does not itself engage in wage negotiations \ but leaves this to its thirteen regional employers' associations. These are the only authorities in the Federal Republic competent to negotiate on such matters with the representatives of the workers' organisations. The confederation confines its role to co-ordinating these negotiations which take place at the regional level. As for the other spheres (vocational training, agricultural price policy, etc.) in which employers' associations are generally active in other countries, the confederation leaves them to the German Peasants' Association and other 1 152 Under the terms of clause 2 of its regulations. Federal Republic of Germany competent bodies such as the chambers of agriculture and the German Agricultural Society. At the national level, the Central Confederation of Agricultural and Forestry Employers' Associations has been a member of the National Confederation of Employers' Associations (Cologne) since 1949. At the international level it is affiliated to the International Organisation of Employers. Agricultural workers' unions • Horticultural, Agricultural and Forestry Union The only representative organisation of agricultural workers in the Federal Republic of Germany which concludes collective agreements in all the Länder and represents their interests vis-à-yis the Government and the legislature is the Horticultural, Agricultural and Forestry Union (Gewerkschaft Gartenbau, Land- und Forstwirtschaft). The union was re-formed in 1949 as a federal organisation. Its predecessors, including the German Agricultural Workers' Union, founded in 1909, had been disbanded by the national socialist régime on 2 May 1933. As it is the only union of its kind, its membership now includes workers who until 1933 belonged to a variety of different unions depending on their trade, political views or religious faith. The union has 77,000 paid-up members, but its influence extends much further, since its claims are also backed by non-member workers. Membership of the union is open to permanent full-time workers, but not to seasonal workers, tenants or share-croppers. There used to be in north-west Germany a small peasants' and tenant farmers' association whose membership consisted largely of Heuerlinge1, but today it has practically ceased to exist. The main tasks of the union are as follows: — the conclusion of collective agreements governing wages, hours of work and other conditions of employment; — lobbying Parliament with respect to the social security regulations; — bringing pressure to bear upon the employers, the Federal Government and the governments of the Länder with respect to job security and the creation of employment opportunities for workers who lose their jobs in agriculture or forestry as a result of rationalisation measures; 1 A special category of tenant farmers found mainly in Westphalia. The union points out that there is virtually no share-cropping in the Federal Republic of Germany today. 153 Agricultural organisations and development — participation in regional projects for the industrialisation of rural areas; — active participation in schemes to encourage farmers, forestry workers and gardeners to build their own homes ; — bringing pressure to bear upon the employers to improve inadequate job-tied accommodation ; — encouraging the activities of an association founded in co-operation with the employers and the authorities whose main task is to organise weekly courses offering horticultural, agricultural and forestry workers training and advanced training in civics; — participation in the agencies run by the German Confederation of Trade Unions through which horticultural, agricultural and forestry workers, like other workers, can enjoy cut-price holiday travel facilities; — safeguarding and promoting all the economic, occupational, social and spiritual interests of its members, with the exception of those pertaining to party politics and religion. In addition it is incumbent upon it: — to promote democracy and co-management in the economy and in administration, and equality of rights for all workers in the economy, the State and society; — to protect workers (particularly women and children) ; — to promote vocational training and cultural activities for members; — to help to select shop stewards and staff representatives, and to support them in their activities; — to provide legal assistance in the event of labour disputes and the filing of claims in respect of social insurance or welfare matters ; — to offer help to individuals. There is no legislative obstacle to prevent the union from developing further. Among the difficulties arising out of the social and economic structure, mention may be made of the fact that its members are scattered over a wide area. As concerns relations with the employers, the union states that there are no nation-wide official bodies in the agricultural sector on which representatives of the employers and the trade unions can come together, with the exception of the autonomous bodies responsible for administering the social insurance schemes and the chambers of agriculture. In all branches of social insurance, which was restored to administrative autonomy by law about 1950, the employers and the workers do in fact co-operate on an equal footing on the bodies set up for the purpose. In the case of the occupational accident insurance funds, however, the proportion of seats allocated to the workers is limited to one-third. The union considers that, thanks to the workers' collaboration in the work of the autonomous 154 Federal Republic of Germany bodies for the administration of the social insurance schemes, the interests of insured persons are adequately safeguarded. In the chambers of agriculture the collaboration afforded by the workers likewise guarantees, in the view of the union, that their interests will be taken into account in all spheres falling within the competence of these chambers, particularly that of vocational training. The chambers of agriculture were reorganised after the last war under laws passed in the different Länder. Where they exist (some Länder have none), one-third of the seats on their joint bodies are reserved for the workers. In addition, at the level of the European Economic Community, there is a joint advisory committee on the social problems of agricultural workers, with seventeen representatives of the employers' organisations and an equal number of representatives of the trade unions. This committee was set up in 1963 in pursuance of a decision by the Commission of the EEC, and is attached to the Community's General Directorate for Social Affairs. The union considers that the committee is doing a good job in the present circumstances. Since its appointment the committee has in fact taken a stand on social policy issues of importance to agricultural workers. This has afforded it an opportunity to lay down progressive principles in respect of wages, hours of work and vocational training upon which the policy of the Commission of the EEC is very largely based. The union also has a seat on the Advisory Committee to the Federal Government, which reviews the agricultural situation in a "Green Report" submitted yearly to Parliament. Representatives of the union also sit on the managing or supervisory boards of various internal settlement schemes in so far as they are concerned with the building of housing for agricultural workers. In this field the union has procured the earmarking of a yearly sum of DM 25 million for the "Green Plan". This makes it possible to grant subsidies averaging DM 7,500 to agricultural workers with homes under construction. In all the institutions and on all the bodies we have mentioned, the union's representatives play an active part in the taking of decisions and exercise their right to vote. Referring to the successes achieved thanks to its intervention, the union states that it succeeded in quintupling agricultural workers' wages between 1949 and 1966. Increases of the same order have also been secured for other categories of workers not within its area of competence. The union considers that job security in agriculture today is largely assured due to the state of the employment market. Prior to the economic boom and the shortage of manpower which it brought about, the union had played an active part in assuring agricultural workers of security in their employment by securing the introduction of an employment scheme operated by the labour 155 Agricultural organisations and development administrative authorities. Resettlement courses were arranged where necessary. As regards social security, it has been possible, thanks to the pressure brought to bear by the union upon Parliament, to do away with much of the discrimination to which agricultural and forestry workers were formerly subjected as far as social legislation was concerned. Finally, the union claims to have contributed in three ways towards the improvement of health in rural areas. First of all it has been possible, thanks to its influence, to effect marked improvements in the regulations concerning accident prevention, and the statutory accident insurance benefits have likewise been substantially improved following its intervention. Secondly, after strong and persistent lobbying, the union has managed to persuade the agricultural sickness funds to carry out special surveys on health in the countryside, which have furnished them with valuable information on which to base the measures that need to be taken. Lastly, it is thanks to the union that the employment of children in agriculture is now almost entirely prohibited, this being an important prerequisite for the improvement of health. The union has been affiliated to the German Confederation of Trade Unions since the latter was founded in 1949. The German Confederation of Trade Unions is in its turn affiliated to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The union also belongs to the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers (IFPAAW). Chambers of agriculture • Federation of Chambers of Agriculture On account of the country's federal structure the German chambers of agriculture have a special role to play vis-à-vis the ministries of agriculture of the Länder and the peasants themselves. The federal Ministry of Agriculture does not in fact have any field services of its own ; contacts at the local level are the responsibility of the regional ministries, whose task it is to enforce —to a certain extent at their own discretion—the laws passed by the federal Parliament. However, since apart from certain routine functions such as the redistribution of land, the maintenance of a water supply and the administration of forests that are national property, the regional ministries are primarily concerned with administrative supervision and with ensuring that the law is observed, the bulk of the technical side of the functions normally incumbent upon the public authorities is delegated to the chambers of agriculture, which thus form the veritable link between them and the farmers. 156 Federal Republic of Germany The first chamber of agriculture was founded by the Hanseatic town of Bremen in 1849. But the boom period for the founding of such occupational bodies was initiated in 1894, with the promulgation of the Prussian Chambers of Agriculture Act, and came to an end in 1927 in all the states of the Reich with the promulgation of an Act respecting the chambers of agriculture of the Hanseatic town of Hamburg. The largest number of chambers registered was 38, including those in the Saar and Danzig (14 in Prussia, affiliated to the Prussian Central Chamber of Agriculture, 8 district peasant chambers in Bavaria, grouped into peasant chambers of the state of Bavaria, and one chamber of agriculture in each of the other 16 states). These chambers of agriculture were dissolved in 1933 by the national socialist régime when it founded the Reichsnährstand. After the Nazi collapse in 1945 they began to reappear in the Länder of the Federal Republic. Today there are 13 chambers of agriculture spread over 8 of the 11 Länder of the Republic1 ; there are none in West Berlin nor in the Länder of BadenWürttemberg and Bavaria, where their functions are performed by the competent ministries. With only a few exceptions, the functions of the chambers of agriculture are confined to general surveillance of the activities of the public administrative bodies and encouragement to agriculture; generally speaking, administrative competence has been transferred to the ministries of agriculture of the Länder, which are also officially responsible for law enforcement. As a rule it is not the task of the chambers of agriculture to defend the interests of agriculture in regard to economic and social policy, though this does not by any means preclude their being consulted on such matters. Their specific task consists—within the framework of the law, and on their own responsibility—in encouraging, in their own special field, agriculture and connected occupational activities, bearing in mind the interests of the community. Within the context of these general terms of reference, the German chambers of agriculture have the following tasks to perform: — stimulating agricultural production by appropriate ways and means and improving it in quantity and quality to meet the requirements of the market; — regulating and organising practical vocational training and further training; — furthering the development of farming methods and the construction of farm buildings and seeking ways to make the work less arduous; 1 The Länder of Bremen, Hamburg, Hessen (two chambers), Lower Saxony (two chambers), North Rhine-Westphalia (two chambers), Rhineland Palatinate (three chambers), Saar and Schleswig-Holstein. 157 Agricultural organisations and development — concerning themselves with the provision of decent accommodation for agricultural labourers and with the building of apartments, houses and hostels for workers in this category; — helping exiles and refugees with an agricultural background in their attempts to acquire further training and resume work in agriculture; — collaborating, in an advisory capacity, in the planning of measures for the improvement in quality and standardisation of products and the enforcement of the laws on marketing and on the classification of market produce; — as concerns agricultural produce, supplying information on the market and on prices and participating in the activities of price registration committees at trade fairs and markets, particularly cattle markets ; — encouraging the activities of agricultural occupational associations and of the co-operative movement in agriculture; — issuing guidelines on farm book-keeping and auditing and authorising the opening of agricultural accountancy offices; — appointing and swearing in agricultural experts; — drawing up attestations with respect to seeds and granting and verifying certificates of quality and origin; — assisting the authorities and the courts by the furnishing of expert valuations and by the appointment of experts, and nominating honorary judges to sit in agricultural courts, which are competent to deal, inter alia, with matters relating to succession, farm leases and the sale of real estate; — establishing and operating specialised schools of agriculture, stockbreeding advisory services, veterinary services, research centres, experimental and farming instruction centres and vine-growing, forestry and plant protection centres; — publishing periodicals (weekly farming magazines) and series of publications. It should be added that in principle chambers of agriculture are not allowed to have a financial stake in any commercial undertaking nor to engage in competition with private undertakings. Their role is therefore at the same time wider as regards the number of activities they carry on and more restricted as concerns its financial implications than that of the chambers of agriculture in France, for example. From a legal standpoint the chambers of agriculture of the Federal Republic are autonomous public corporations, membership of which is compulsory for all persons whose occupation is connected with agriculture. They have what is known as "the power to issue regulations", i.e. the statutory power to issue binding regulations on organisation and management, contributions, tax collection and other tasks within their own sphere of activity (tasks which have to be carried out by law and tasks voluntarily undertaken for the encouragement of agriculture). 158 Federal Republic of Germany In addition, the chambers of agriculture are authorised, on the one hand, to draw up their own rules for their internal functioning and, on the other hand, to play the role of employers and appoint officials or retire them when they reach pensionable age.1 The chambers of agriculture have an official seal and should be looked upon as authorities directly responsible for public administration. Elections to chambers of agriculture are by direct and secret ballot and by a simple majority (only the chambers of agriculture in Rhineland Palatinate and the Saar have instituted a system of proportional representation), with equal voting rights for all those engaged in agriculture. The right to vote is held not only by German nationals but also by the nationals of member States of the European Economic Community. These latter have been entitled to vote for some time now, on condition that they are not less than 21 years of age (20 in the Saar), have resided for a prescribed length of time within the area of jurisdiction of the chamber of agriculture, and own a farm or are in continuous employment as agricultural workers as their main activity. Persons entitled to vote who are 25 years of age or over are eligible for election. Sometimes would-be candidates are required to have lived for a year within the area of jurisdiction of the chamber. As a rule there are no special electoral boards or committees or nomination boards. Those with an agricultural occupation and entitled to vote elect the members of their chamber, separate electoral rolls being established for the owner-farmers' group (which also includes members of their families working full time) and the employees' group. The body competent to take decisions in respect of all important matters, particularly the adoption or amendment of the statutes and rules and the election of the committee, is the general assembly. The allocation of seats takes place after the elections. As a general rule, one-third of the seats are assigned to the workers. There are no governmental supervisory officials or superintendents, but the governmental supervisory authority is entitled to be represented at all general assemblies and at all committee meetings, to make observations, to ask to consult the books and other documents and to request information. It should be added that in principle the supervisory authority reviews the decisions and measures taken by the chambers of agriculture solely to verify whether they are lawful and does not concern itself with their economic or political implications. Some Länder, however, consider that it is also in order for them to examine the economic and social import of these decisions. 1 Some chambers do in fact have a very large staff; the chamber of agriculture in North Rhine-Westphalia, for instance, had 1,000 employees in 1965, including 260 agronomists. See Belin and Hasson, op. cit., p. 22. 1S9 Agricultural organisations and development As far as co-operation between the chambers of agriculture and the public authorities is concerned, it should be pointed out that under the terms of administrative law they are "auxiliary agencies" of the State. As a general rule, the laws governing the chambers contain provisions whereby they are required to assist the authorities and the competent courts of law in regard to matters pertaining to agriculture, mainly by furnishing expert valuations, appointing experts and nominating honorary judges for these courts. In addition, by virtue of the same provisions, the chambers of agriculture are entitled to be granted a hearing and to make proposals in respect of all matters within their competence while the preparatory work is being done with a view to legislation or administrative action. They are entitled to aid from the authorities, to whom they must offer assistance in their turn, and they are information bureaux within the meaning of the law. The official status of auxiliary agencies of the State conferred upon the chambers of agriculture is made clear by these provisions. But we have also seen that there exists a clear line of demarcation between the peasants' associations, which are concerned with economic policy, on the one hand and the employers' associations, whose sphere is social policy, and the trade unions on the other. This division of functions among the various agricultural organisations does not however prevent chambers of agriculture from being called upon to give advice, for instance on economic policy issues. The chambers of agriculture are entitled to subsidies from the Federal Government, the Länder, the districts and the communes for the performance of their functions. Official subsidies account for from 15 to 60 per cent of their total income. The disparities in the size of the official subsidies are due partly to differences in the way in which functions are assigned and partly to agreements as to the nature and amount of these subsidies reached between the ministries of agriculture of the various Länder of the Federal Republic and their chambers of agriculture. In addition to these subsidies, the chambers receive income in respect of various kinds of services rendered and revenue from land tax paid by farmers. For example, the 1963 budget of the Chamber of Agriculture of the Rhineland —about DM 24 million—was made up of DM 14 million in State subsidies, DM 4.1 million by way of income for services rendered, DM 5.1 million derived from land tax paid by farmers at the rate of 3.5 per cent per DM 1,000 of cadastral value (lower than the market value), the remainder being derived, inter alia, from federal government subsidies.1 The chambers of agriculture of the Federal Republic all belong to a free federation (Verband der Landwirtschqftskammern) with the following organs: 1 160 Belin and Hasson, op. cit., p. 22. Italy an assembly of members known as the Chairmen's Conference and a committee of six members, one of whom acts as chief administrator. According to its regulations the aim of the federation is to co-ordinate the activities of the chambers and assume responsibility for carrying out tasks of concern to several regions in the interests of agricultural self-management. The Federation of Chambers of Agriculture is affiliated at the national level to the German Central Agricultural Committee. At the international level it is a member of the Co-ordinating Committee for European Chambers of Agriculture and the European Confederation of Agriculture. Italy General organisations • National Confederation of Direct Farmers and Peasants We may mention first, among the general Italian agricultural organisations the National Confederation of Direct Farmers and Peasants (Confederazione Nationale dei Coltivatori Diretti—Conacoltivatori). This was founded in the years 1944-45, and its statutes were revised on 13 April 1956. The organisation works in close co-operation with the Italian Christian Democrat Party, and its members are persons who themselves work the land, whether they be owner-operators, tenants, share-croppers, settlers, or those to whom the agrarian reform organisations have allotted land. The organisation has 91 provincial federations with more than 14,000 sections in the communes. Through its organs both national and provincial, it takes part in bipartite and tripartite consultations concerning the conclusion of collective agreements, working conditions, the protection of agricultural prices, economic planning, etc., and thus takes an active interest in everything likely to promote the economic and social well-being of Italian agriculture. The confederation has nearly 3.5 million members, who between them work an area of some 33 million acres. In its statutes, the confederation, besides undertaking to defend the rights and improve the well-being of all persons actually engaged in agriculture, especially those who work the land themselves, states that it will: — promote the creation and development of direct working of the land by those who own it, improve their lot in life and increase production, and to this end push for the enactment of suitable legislation; — help long-term and life tenants, and similar persons, in defending their interests and in becoming full owners of their land; 161 Agricultural organisations and development — assist the peasant directly working the land in obtaining a contract offering maximum security of tenure and an income commensurate with the labour and capital he has invested; — assist the small owner who has profited from the land reform (assegnatori) in his relations with the land distribution agencies, and defend the interests of the independent agricultural worker; — protect the interests of tenants and share-croppers, if appropriate by regulation of the contractual relationships which, based on the rights of labour and respect for the person, will provide such persons with social security and a higher standard of living; — offer courses in agriculture and domestic science to the female countrydweller, to help her to make her contribution to the cause of increased production and to make her more effective in working the family plot; to this end the confederation has set up a nation-wide network embracing 8,600 peasant women's associations; — provide young people with a suitable technical, vocational, economic and union training, so as to turn them into responsible farmers and champions of the confederation among the peasantry; — promote and co-ordinate any action tending to improve the technical and economic levels of agriculture and stock-raising, by recourse to improved agricultural techniques, the proper marketing of produce, agricultural credits, and so on; — encourage the creation and foster the development of co-operatives for the use, processing and sale of produce (collective dairies, collective wine-cellars, fruit shops, and the like) for the common purchase of tools and implements for domestic and agricultural use, for the joint use of cattle and machinery, for the acquisition and common management of land, for the offer of credits, etc. ; — encourage all forms of social protection for its members. As stated in a booklet published in 1964 \ "the persons who run Conacoltivatori, the general secretary of which is chairman of the National Sickness Mutual Benefit Funds Federation created by them (there are at present 7,719 communal mutual benefit societies, together with intercommunal and local ones, and 92 provincial societies which are together responsible for 1,722,500 families) are particularly concerned with social questions." — encourage an extension and improvement of vocational training. With financial help from the authorities (the Ministries of Agriculture and Labour, and sundry government agencies), the confederation in 1962 organised 1 p. 41. 162 See L 'agriculture italienne, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3111 (Paris, July 1964), Italy 10,800 training courses for 393,000 trainees. In addition, it has its own National Institute of Agricultural Vocational Training (INIPA) and a network of 2,300 "P" youth clubs (Provare, Produrre, Progredire : test, produce, advance). These clubs have, all in all, some 42,500 members. Lastly, the confederation publishes several journals to disseminate its teachings and push its claims: // Coltivatore (a weekly with regional editions), Coltivatori Diretti—Bolletino mensile per ì dirigenti (a monthly for agricultural leaders), Gioventù dei Campi (a weekly for the young peasant), and Donne Rurale (a fortnightly journal for peasant women). The confederation does not say whether it belongs to any international body, but since it represents the Christian Democrat movement in the Italian countryside, we may reasonably conclude that it has links, direct or indirect, with the European movements of similar persuasion. • Italian Federation of Agrarian Consortia Among the Italian agricultural organisations of a general kind we may also include the big co-operative body known as the Federazione Italiana dei Consorzi Agrari. Founded in 1892, its statutes were revised in 1948, in accordance with Legislative Decree No. 1235 (7 May 1948). At the provincial level, it had 92 agrarian consortia, i.e. one per province, which are exclusively responsible for the collective supply of the means of production and for organising the collection of certain agricultural produce. These consortia are intended to help "in increasing and improving agricultural production and to associate themselves with social and cultural action taken on behalf of the peasantry". They have a vast network of local agencies, and pursue the following aims, as defined in the decree creating them: — to produce, acquire and sell fertilisers and manure, pesticides, tools, produce, machinery, livestock, implements, and, in general, everything which might be useful to the peasant or to agriculture in general; — to undertake, encourage and facilitate the harvesting, transport, preparation for. sale, and sale of agricultural produce and all agricultural ancillary products, acting to this end either as intermediaries or as agents ; — to undertake the voluntary collection, use, preparation for sale and collective marketing of agricultural produce; — to lease machinery and tools to the peasantry; — to undertake themselves, or on behalf of others, agrarian credit operations against the mortgage of existing crops, and to offer loans to such peasants as join the voluntary system for collection, use, preparation for sale and collective marketing of produce; 163 Agricultural organisations and development — to undertake study and research and to set up agricultural research stations, and in general to do anything which might improve agricultural production and the skills of the farmer; — to work hand-in-hand with bodies pursuing similar aims, and to promote the creation of such bodies. ; — on behalf of, and in the interest of the State, to make arrangements for the stockage, maintenance and distribution of articles and produce of all kinds. To cope with all these multifarious tasks, the federation runs a whole series of companies responsible for the industrial transformation and marketing of produce. Through its subsidiary, Fedexport, it exports the fruit and vegetables produced by its members. Thefiguresquoted by its director-general in a report submitted in July 1961 to the Conference on Agriculture and the Rural World (held in Rome) will give some idea of the wide range of this organisation's activities. — annual value "of produce subject to special administration, operations entrusted by the State to Feder consorzi" : some 250,000 million lire in 1960; — value of property and technical equipment supplied to peasants during the same period: 250,000 million lire; — credits in kind: 175,000 million lire; — estimated value of property and equipment belonging to the federation and consortia: 300,000 million lire.1 It should be mentioned that all these activities, which involve agricultural co-operation and credit of the classical kind, are over and above those undertaken by traditional bodies (co-operatives and credit banks) and by the new organs set up by agrarian reform legislation, such as the co-operatives of the National Federation of Agricultural Co-operatives2 and the Cassa del Mezzogiorno set up in 1950 to study and finance development schemes in southern Italy. 1 See L'agriculture italienne, op. cit., p. 30. * The land reform co-operatives, some 800 strong, were specially set up by the land reform agencies to meet the needs of the areas in which reform was to proceed. Throughout the country, according to the Department of Co-operation of the Ministry of Labour, there were, on 31 December 1962, 5,602 agricultural co-operatives, of which 3,548 were in the north, 513 in the centre, 660 in the south, and 881 in the islands. L'agriculture italienne, op. cit., p. 31. 164 Italy Employers' organisations • General Confederation of Italian Agriculture Founded on 14 January 1945, but based on already existing organisations, this body (Confederazione Generale dell'Agricoltura Italiana) primarily represents the Italian agricultural producer (owners, tenants, share-croppers, etc.) although under the statutes the man who owns and works his own land is not necessarily excluded. The confederation is made up of a host of national federations, embracing owners and farmers cultivating their land; owners who lease land to tenants; and small-holders, owners, share-croppers, long-term tenants, etc., who normally work their plots themselves. But the bulk of its battalions comes from the medium-sized and big estates; the farmer or peasant who works his own land without employing labour is usually a member of a national confederation such as those described above. The General Confederation of Italian Agriculture represents some 810,000 farms and plots which together cover an area of roughly 33 million acres. It is represented on the national, provincial and communal organs responsible for employment and vocational training, on those national and provincial bodies which manage social security and associated schemes, and in the organisations which have to devise economic and social development plans. The confederation negotiates collective labour agreements governing tenancy (including tenancies with rent payable in kind) and share-cropping, and to this end is prominently represented in bipartite and tripartite consultations. In addition, it has a say in devising policies designed to improve conditions of life for the agricultural labourer and to increase farm yields. It takes the view that much of the improvement recently observed in the standard of life of agricultural wage earners, including tenants and share-croppers (an improvement the pace of which is likely to quicken) is attributable to close and constant bargaining between employers' and workers' organisations. As regards relations with agricultural workers' unions, the confederation negotiates standard nation-wide agreements laying down general rules for working hours, the weekly rest period, holidays, social security, work permits, care for the sick and infirm, validity of individual employment contracts, interruption of employment, allowances payable to workers should employment relations cease, and so on. These nation-wide provisions are embodied, mutatis mutandis, in collective labour agreements negotiated by the provincial peasants' unions which are members of the confederation. The collective agreements, too, specify rates of pay for the work done by labourers, skilled workers and specialists (the three classes existing today), whether such persons 165 Agricultural organisations and development be permanently or temporarily employed. The same kind of agreement holds good for the managers and employees of agricultural undertakings. Other collective agreements, most of them of a regional kind, deal with specific kinds of agricultural work. This is more particularly the case with agreements affecting workers employed for harvesting and winnowing, the upkeep of paddy-fields, the rice harvest, the harvesting of jasmine, oranges or lemons, olives, and the like. It has been estimated that there are six national standard agreements (including that relating to the sliding wage scale and the agreement on equal pay for male and female labour), together with some 300 provincial collective agreements dealing with the contractual employment and wages of permanent or temporary farm labourers, managers and employees of agricultural undertakings, and of workers employed on sundry agricultural tasks, most of them of a seasonal kind. It may not be amiss to quote what the confederation thinks of this policy: The employer can hardly be said to derive much advantage from bargaining on wages and working conditions; whenever a collective agreement is signed—the facts are so clear as to be hardly worth mentioning—the agricultural employer loses more than he wins. This is the price he pays (conscious as he is of the need to ensure that in wages and social security the agricultural worker shall be more or less the equal of his brother in factory or office) for the progress made by the working class. Only thus can agriculture maintain the labour force it requires. As regards the price of agricultural produce, the confederation tries to influence the appropriate organs and circles with a view to ensuring that the farmer or peasant gets a satisfactory reward for the work done and the capital invested. To this end it makes official approaches, either to Parliament and its legislative commissions, or through the National Economics and Labour Council, or through other bodies. Prices are maintained by stock-piling produce, whereby the supply can be satisfactorily controlled. To this end, the confederation carries on a campaign to persuade the peasant to build up his stocks rather than to dispose of his produce for a song in an attempt to meet his commitments. The confederation is consulted by the Ministry of Agriculture whenever action is being envisaged to keep prices up. Such consultations are held when circumstances demand, or when the confederation is being represented on advisory bodies set up for some special purpose. The confederation is itself represented in the National Economics and Labour Council, a body which advises the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate; it can initiate legislation and has a say in the enactment of economic and social laws, according to legal principles and within legal limits. A standing agricultural committee has been set up within this council. Like the Social Affairs Committee, it plays an effective part in forwarding 166 Italy pleas and applications from peasants and farmers in defending the prices of their produce. Official bodies and the representatives of Italian agriculture work together in yet another field, that of planning. The Economic and Social Development Plan, 1966-70, provides that peasants and farmers may sit on committees which are responsible at the regional level for ensuring that effective collaboration exists between public bodies, the regional organs of Government, and the organisations concerned with economic and union affairs, on matters connected with economic development and action to be taken regionally by the authorities. As to the joint settlement of disputes, the confederation declares that since Italy has not yet instituted a legal system for occupational organisations—as called for in the Constitution 1—there are no joint bodies for collective bargaining. In fact, however, for the last twenty years or so, such bargaining has taken place with a frequency worthy of mention, thanks to meetings between employers' and workers' representatives, and their results have proved highly satisfactory. The collective agreements negotiated in this way are usually accepted and applied. In a strictly legal sense, they are binding on the farmers, peasants and associated workers who belong to the bodies involved in the negotiations. As regards conditions of work, the confederation co-operates with the authorities and specialised bodies in ensuring that occupational health and » safety rules are fully observed; in fact, it was represented in the organs which drew up the rules in question. Similarly as regards the improvement of rural housing, the confederation carries on a propaganda campaign to stir the peasant into taking full advantage of the facilities available under Italian law for the construction or improvement of peasants' homes and farm buildings. The confederation takes an interest, too, in vocational training. It is represented in ministerial committees and plays an active part through the centres and institutes specially created by it. For instance, the National Institute for Agricultural Vocational Training (ENAPRA) was set up in 1959 to provide both initial and advanced training for those responsible for farm management. Another centre—the National Institute for the Vocational Training of the Young Farmer—was also set up in 1959. Lastly, the National Institute for Technical and Economic Assistance to Farmers was set up in 1962 to accelerate agricultural progress by technical and economic assistance to individual or collective agricultural undertakings, and by programmes for modernisation of cropping systems and farm organisation. 1 Article 39 of the Constitution enacted on 27 December 1947 recognises freedom of association. But no legislation has been enacted to give effect to this. So the unions invoke articles 36 to 39 of the Civil Code, concerning associations not officially recognised by decree. 167 Agricultural organisations and development The Italian farmers' and peasants' wishes regarding vocational training are referred to the authorities, either directly or on the occasion of national meetings attended by representatives of the teaching profession. The latest such meetings to be organised by the confederation or by ENAPRA took place in Bologna in May 1960 and Latina in January 1966; the first discussed "Education and Agriculture" and the second "Agriculture and the Vocational Training Institute", namely, the institute which runs two- or three-year courses in farming. For similar purposes, the confederation organises group travel, particularly for the younger farmers and peasants, so that they can have first-hand knowledge of agricultural methods and development in other countries (France, Federal Republic of Germany, Israel, Netherlands, United States, etc.). The General Confederation of Italian Agriculture is a member of the European Confederation of Agriculture and the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP), and participates in the work of the Committee of Agricultural Organisations (COPA) of the European Economic Community. Agricultural workers' unions These were reorganised throughout at the end of the Second World War, and became part of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL). But the Catholic members, followed by the republicans and social democrats, dropped out, the former to set up the Italian Confederation of Workers' Unions (CISL), and the other to found the Italian Labour Union (UIL). These three workers' organisations are spread throughout the country and maintain separate "federations" for agriculture, industry, trade, tertiary activities, and public and semi-public activities. The agricultural unions are the following: — National Federation of Agricultural Day-Labourers, Wage Earners, Technicians and Employees, affiliated to the Italian General Confederation of Labour (communist and socialist); — Italian Federation of Agricultural Wage Earners and Day-Labourers, affiliated to the Italian Confederation of Workers' Unions (Christian democrat); — Italian Union of Agricultural Wage Earners and Day-Labourers and the Italian Union of Farmers and Direct Cultivators, affiliated to the Italian Labour Union (social democrat). 168 Italy • National Federation of Agricultural Day-Labourers, Wage Earners, Technicians and Employees This body (Federazione Nazionale Braccianti, Salariati, Technici, Impiegati Agricoli, or Federbraccianti for short) was created on 26 July 1948. It derives from the Federtena Nazionale, set up in 1901 and essentially an organisation for agricultural day-labourers and wage earners. The federation consists of seasonal workers, wage earners, settlers in the south, share-croppers, agricultural technicians and employees, nurserymen, workers in forestry and horticulture, and workers in land clearance and irrigation consortia. Settlers, workers in forestry, horticulture and nurseries, wage earners employed by the land clearance and irrigation consortia, and agricultural technicians and employees have their occupational unions which are affiliated to the Federbraccianti. The Federbraccianti, through the Italian General Confederation of Labour, is represented on the National Economics and Labour Council, in the agricultural development organisations, on the regional economic planning boards, and in institutions responsible for employment and social welfare. It does, however, take the view that the workers are very much underrepresented in all these bodies, and says that in the event their presence there tends to be mainly for purposes of consultation. In 1966, there were 553,170 paid-up members, divided as follows: wage earners permanently employed, 98,500; day-labourers, 408,940 (of whom 180,408 were females); horticulturists and nurserymen, 8,100; workers employed by land clearance consortia, 1,200; technicians and employees, 7,130; small share-croppers, 29,300. In 1966, there were already some 1.5 million workers waiting to be organised (according to the Statistics Institute). Other official sources put the figure at about 1.75 million. The Federbraccianti maintains that it exercises influence over most of the agricultural workers in the classes mentioned above, and that between 75 and 80 per cent take part in its activities. Besides its national unions, the federation has 77 provincial federations, 3,300 communal associations, as well as trade union committees in undertakings, and regional boards. The federation is chiefly concerned with negotiating regional and provincial collective agreements. These last few years, it has done its best to extend the system of supplementary contracts. Its major demands are that wages should be raised, that vocational training should be provided, that working hours should be cut down, and that social insurance should be more adequate; it calls, too, for security in employment and the free exercise of trade union rights. 16» Agricultural organisations and development In this connexion we should mention provincial and local initiatives designed to create employment while offering greater stability, through improved agricultural methods and properly planned development programmes. Attempts are being made, as well, to increase employment by programmes of public works, irrigation and land clearance. As regards social security, the federation campaigns for equality of treatment for the agricultural worker, an overhaul of the social insurance system, improved vocational training, and bigger employers' contributions. It is striving to ensure that the agricultural worker has a standard of living compatible with the world in which we live. In 1960, it succeeded in getting Parliament to approve legislation whereby, between 1961-62 and 1970-71, 200,000 million lire would be allotted to the building of comfortable houses for day-labourers. In this fashion, the federation is trying, day by day, to improve the conditions of Ufe and work in the agricultural undertaking and in the village. An agreement for the creation of a national agricultural vocational training centre, which should do much to improve the agricultural workers' skills, is about to be concluded. In the meanwhile, vocational centres have been set up during the last few years in several provinces in northern Italy. As regards agrarian reform, the federation is calling for legislation whereby there would be a gradual change in the pattern of land holding, based on the joint management of large farms, and it is trying to promote the creation of free associations of undertakings which would get together for some particular production task. Such an aim, it feels, could be achieved by expropriation of landed property, abolition of the small farm tenancy and share-cropping, as well as the employment of seasonal and wage labour; in these views, it takes as its point of departure the principle that the land should belong to those who till it. These are the basic aims the Federbraccianti is pursuing whenever it proposes legislative enactments or amendments. Apart from this, the federation considers that any policy of land reform must also aim at the expansion of the big undertakings which process and distribute agricultural produce. There should also, it feels, be a new investment policy providing for irrigation and soil conservation; towns and cities must be so organised as to ensure the development of the productive forces in society and to provide a solution for the problems with which the worker is confronted; houses, hospitals, schools, roads, and so on, must be built. Although, in relation to the industrial worker, the agricultural worker is highly organised, there are many obstacles in the way of any further development of the trade union movement. The Federbraccianti is less active in the south of Italy. It explains this by the lack of security in employment (average number of days of employment per annum: about 90) and by the fact that the 170 Italy employers are guilty of constant breaches of agreements and rules relating to employment. Workers in this area, it maintains, are still underpaid, and a woman receives no more than 30 to 40 per cent of the wage stipulated by agreement. Labourers are still recruited, it seems, in public squares or by team bosses—quite contrary to the Act of 1949 which obliges employers to go through a State employment agency. Employers—the federation claims—take advantage of poverty and unemployment. As regards bargaining with the employers' representatives, the federation observes that there do exist the joint bodies provided for in provincial agreements to settle problems arising in the application of contracts. But these bodies, it says, are not very effective, since they are provincial only. Hence it calls for the creation of communal joint bodies to ensure application of of agreements in undertakings, to determine skills and to seek employment possibilities so as to guarantee greater stability. These bodies are not recognised by law, but exist by virtue of mutual agreement between the parties. The federation is of the opinion that, in agriculture, the legislation governing appeals against dismissal is not very effective. All in all, it considers that the legislation designed t o protect the rights of the agricultural worker is not merely inadequate: it is inoperative. It adds that the official agencies concerned (employment agencies, labour inspection authorities) never do anything to punish a person guilty of breaches of labour legislation. Some success has, for all that, been achieved. The federation emphasises how exceedingly complicated agricultural collective bargaining can be; nevertheless, trade union pressure has been responsible for a rise in wages, recognition of skill differentials, reduction of the working week to 45 hours (in some provinces, 42), equal pay for females doing equal work, the application of social security legislation thanks to the setting-up of provincial funds, and reaffirmation of trade union rights (grant of permits to trade union officials). Employment problems are settled by local bargaining (in individual undertakings or in the commune). Little, however, has been achieved so far, either in private or in public undertakings (such as the Azienda forestale, the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, etc.). As to housing, we have already mentioned the 1960 legislation regarding the provision of dwellings for day-labourers, under which some thousands of houses have already been erected. Nevertheless, costs have gone up so much that the original scheme (to build 80,000 dwellings in ten years) has had to be drastically cut. What is needed now is money. Various Bills have been tabled with a view to the allotment of funds. As regards social security, the Federbraccianti says that these last few years there have been improvements in family allowances, pensions, and insurance against illness and injury. But despite these improvements, the lot of 171 Agricultural organisations and development the agricultural worker is still not a very happy one ; whence the present trade union campaign for a radical overhaul of the whole social security system. As regards agricultural contracts (governing such activities as tenant farming, share-renting, share-cropping, etc.), something has been achieved under Act No. 756, dated 15 September 1964, as a result of which these workers are economically better off, their rights being in certain respects augmented. Besides which, Act No. 707 (22 July 1966) lays down that the sums payable by long-lease tenants and workers on land improvement schemes shall be reduced, and specifies the circumstances in which exemption may be granted. The federation feels that these limited successes, together with what has been achieved by dint of trade union bargaining, have not yet really cleared the ground for proper agrarian reform, which demands an unambiguous affirmation of the workers' rights and presupposes that a state of affairs which has had its day will be finally done away with. Hence, by negotiation, by pressing for legislative action, the workers' struggle goes on. Since its inception, the Federbraccianti has been a member of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL). In addition, it belongs to the Trades Union International of Agricultural, Forestry and Plantation Workers, itself a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions. The CGIL, too, belongs to the WFTU. The Federbraccianti also belongs to the Mediterranean Basin Agricultural Trade Unions' Association. • Italian Federation of Agricultural Wage Earners and Day-Labourers This particular organisation {Federazione Italiana Salariati Braccianti Agricoli e Maestranze Specializzate—FISBA) was set up on 1 May 1950.1 Its members are seasonal workers as well as workers permanently employed. In 1966, total membership stood at some 400,000. About half the members are wage earners who buy a member's ticket and pay a contribution for a year at a time. The cost of this ticket is decided on by the executive organs of the CISL and is the same for all Italian agricultural wage earners. But the Italian agricultural worker (especially in the south 1 FISBA comprises: the Peasant League (Lega contadina), representing the workers' interest at the level of the commune, the hamlet, and the individual farm; a provincial federation defending these interests in the province (it works by agreement with the various leagues in the provinces); a national federation which, through its national secretariat, runs FISBA and represents it against any third party, implementing to this end the decisions taken by the deliberative organs. 172 Italy and in the islands) is very poorly paid. Because of this, so the federation states, FISBA decides on how much the annual contribution shall be, with an eye to the position in each part of the country. This state of affairs also affects the total of contributions paid by the organisation to the European and international confederations. When FISBA makes a claim, it always does so with an eye to the interests of the workers as a whole, whether they be trade union members or not. It is at the same time mindful of the country's interests and of the interests of agriculture. The federation is by statute affiliated to its own confederal central office. Either through its delegates within this latter, or directly, it is represented in all bodies (national, regional, provincial or local) which by virtue of the law defend the interests of farming. It is represented, too, in the organisations responsible for the agricultural workers' social security. The federation has as members, and directly represents, the agricultural wage earner alone, namely: — agricultural wage earners, whether they be permanently or semipermanently employed; obbligati, i.e. wage earners compulsorily engaged; and day-labourers paid a monthly, daily or hourly wage (their payment may be to some extent in kind); — workers specialising in gardening, market gardening and fruit-growing (nurserymen, gardeners, persons engaged in the packing of fruit); in the tending of livestock; in wine-making; in activities associated with agriculture (craftsmen, cellarmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, tractor drivers); in forestry; in the supervision of game reserves (gamekeepers); in the upkeep of paddy-fields and in the rice harvest; in tenant farming with the payment of rent in kind; and so on. By virtue of an agreement for membership of affiliation, the federation also represents: — persons employed in the handling of tobacco leaves; — technical and administrative staff employed on farms and in forestry undertakings, and persons employed by tobacco producers enjoying a special concession; — wage earners employed by undertakings engaged in land clearance, irrigation, or land improvement; — persons employed by tobacco factories (these are considered as agricultural workers) ; — technical and administrative staff employed by the Stock-Breeders' Association, by livestock technical institutes, by stations raising bulls as sires, by artificial insemination centres, by fowl-breeding centres and by studbook associations and offices. 173 Agricultural organisations and development The chief purposes of the federation can be set forth as follows : — in the spirit of the Italian Constitution, to work out agreements, contracts and collective agreements governing wages, working hours, employment conditions, and the like, by negotiation between employers and workers; — to promote and accelerate reforms likely to enhance the part played by labour in the productive life of the nation (labour being considered more important than capital), by supporting, and helping to secure the application of, legislation and trade union action designed to ease the worker's lot; to encourage the fullest development of social security and to facilitate the transition from the existing social insurance system (based on the mutual benefit society*) to full social insurance ; — to strive for improvements in the life of the agricultural wage earners, with especial reference to housing, bearing in mind that in accordance with custom and tradition : (a) in certain parts of the country, and especially in the stock-breeding areas, the worker enjoys, over and above a cash wage, the right to housing accommodation on the farm for his family and himself; (b) in other areas, and especially where conditions are propitious to the growing of rice and olives, and in certain fruit farms and market gardens, housing is provided at harvest time ; and (c) in other areas there is no provision for workers' housing on the farm itself. Hence the federation strives to ensure that housing for the agricultural wage earner and his family shall be more comfortable and more hygienic. To this end, it exerts pressure to ensure that under the first and second "Green Plans" farmers who build or improve workers' housing should be eligible for a grant. As regards the housing of seasonal labour, the federation sets great store by the provision of decent accommodation, with separate provision for females, so that there may be no promiscuity; moreover, such accommodation must conform to the rules of hygiene set forth in the current Code. There is virtually no longer a problem with regard to the housing of workers engaged on the upkeep of paddy-fields and the planting and harvesting of rice. But this is not so with respect to other seasonal workers, such as those engaged in picking olives, nuts and jasmine. The federation gave support to Act No. 1676 (30 December 1960), enacted for the benefit of the workers in areas, and on farms, where the owners provide no accommodation. This piece of legislation provides for the building of houses reserved exclusively for the agricultural wage earner who may rent or buy them. The State pays the building costs, and each may be bought for a 1 See Relazione al 6° Congresso Nazionale della FISBA (Ferrara, 19-21 marzio 1965), (Rome, CISL, 1965), p. 56. 174 Italy fixed price, equivalent to 50 per cent of building costs, payment being without interest and spaced over a period of 25 years. Should the worker so desire, he may rent his house at 60 per cent of the annual rate for purchase. To ensure implementation of this Act, Parliament has set aside 200,000 million lire (20,000 million a year for ten years). The federation emphasises that in this day and age the worker increasingly expects to own a little house in town or village, even if the town or village be far from his place of work. Distance, incidentally, counts for less and less, partly because lanes and by-roads are being improved, partly because individual ownership of motor cars, motor cycles and scooters is becoming ever more widespread. In those areas where the land reform laws have taken effect (Act No. 230, dated 12 May 1950, and Act No. 841, dated 21 October 1950), not only has land been redistributed but better economic and social balance has been achieved in the areas concerned by sweeping away the barriers to an effective use of the abundant natural and human resources available. Thus it is that action of a technical and economic kind has produced effects of profound social importance. The federation observes that an intensive complex and co-ordinated campaign has, within a very short space of time, done away with the causes of stagnation. It has done so by promoting: — the transformation of the land acquired (to meet the new provisions calling for an increase in production); — the emergence of the conditions conducive to efficient modern agriculture ; — technical progress, the more necessary in that in the backward areas agrarian reform affects persons of a new kind, unprepared for an agricultural profession; — the supply and marketing of agricultural tools and produce. Incidentally, such legislation does no more than give effect to article 44 of the Constitution, which sets forth the farmer's obligations and lays down limits for the private ownership of land (which vary according to the agricultural areas and zones into which the country is divided), to ensure a proper use of the soil and harmony between employers and workers, all in the interests of productivity, justice, and social progress. Land has been allotted to "the manual workers in agriculture" who are not themselves landowners or long-lease tenants, or who work plots too small to give work to their families. Such allocations have been made individually, and not to associations. Whenever it seemed better, or even necessary, to provide for communal ownership because of the nature of the land or the crops grown (as with woods, pastures, paddy-fields, etc.), apportionment of land has been individual and collective at one and the same time : that is 175 Agricultural organisations and development to say, each individual receives an optimum amount of land, while the property as a whole still remains an organic whole. Anybody wishing to buy land has to pay two-thirds of the expropriation allowance and the cost of any improvements made by the bodies responsible for land reform, in 30 annual instalments with interest at 2 per cent. During these 30 years, the land can neither be leased nor sold; should the purchaser die, the law provides for his succession. The reform has cost, all in all, 637,750 million lire. The land reform bodies have acquired some 1,895,360 acres. This area, broken down, is as follows: landed estates (44,533 cases), 1,047,500 acres; additional land allotted to supplement plots already owned (68,531 cases), 504,360 acres; plots to be jointly held, 129,090 acres; plots reserved for the use of the competent institutions, 7,470 acres; making 1,688,420 acres all in all. The remainder—some 210,000 acres—has been used for the building of villages and roads, and for the digging of drains and irrigation canals, but this land has not yet been apportioned, since the work now under way will necessarily take many years to complete. The following have profited under the scheme: small owners, themselves working inadequate plots, 7.4 per cent; small share-croppers, tenants, etc., 42.8 per cent; agricultural wage earners, 49.8 per cent. Costs have worked out as follows : land improvement, planting of trees, irrigation, construction or restoration of houses, construction of roads on farmsteads or between them, 61.4 per cent; land settlement (construction of farm-houses, villages and roads, building of aqueducts, laying of electric mains, and so on), 14.1 per cent; technical assistance, supply of livestock, vocational instruction, 19.4 per cent; marketing of produce, 3.2 per cent. The Act in question, promulgated in 1950, had been preceded by serious unrest, with sit-ins, strikes, and so on—all fostered by the unions. However, the reforms undertaken, so the federation considers, have had little effect outside the areas directly concerned. They have not given rise to any fresh initiatives in the field of production (even in sectors other than agricultural). Nor have they raised the general standard of living. This, the federation says, is especially true of inland Sicily, southern Italy (Calabria), and certain areas in the province of Nuoro, in Sardinia. The federation considers, too, that these reforms were conceived and launched at an inauspicious time. In 1950, Italian agriculture was of a selfsufficient, inward-looking kind. The free movement of labour did not exist, even between one province and another, let alone among the various European countries. The European Common Market created the free movement of labour and led to a steady reduction in customs barriers, thereby reducing the peasant's appetite for land, which had been so characteristic of Italy between 176 Italy the end of the war and the years 1957-58. The demand for land, in fact, no longer cuts much ice politically. People no longer think in terms of the self-sufficient family plot, but of a farm big enough to cope with a market economy. A plot considered amply big enough a few years ago is just not big enough any longer. Hence, when an estate becomes vacant today, its owner having joined the drift to the town, it no longer passes to those who might be entitled to it, but is used to extend the system of landed estates. As regards its demands in respect of agrarian legislation, the federation mentions the stages through which the tenant's contract has passed. Originally, a contract (which had undergone some slight change due to regional custom and tradition) was based on the following terms : the owner granted the land (complete with farm buildings and other fixtures), plus half the "operating fund" (livestock and farm implements); should the need arise, he advanced half the "operating fund" for which the tenant was liable for the agricultural year and without interest, should the tenant be unable to afford it. The tenant, as a head of a family, would himself provide the labour required to run the farm. By agreement with the tenant, the owner would manage the farm, and the income therefrom would be equally shared between them. The Act of 24 June 1947, known as the Lodo De Gasperi, laid down that income from the farm would no longer be equally divided between the two parties; instead, the tenant would get 54 per cent, 3 per cent would be reinvested in the farm, and the owner would therefore receive 43 per cent. As we shall shortly see, UIL-Terra states that the tenant now receives 58 per cent. In addition, this Act laid down that the contract could be denounced only for valid reasons, i.e. if continuation of the contract was likely to render the management of the farm impossible, and if the tenant's bad faith and unwillingness to co-operate had been proved to the satisfaction of the courts. Act No. 756, dated 30 January 1967, declared that the new contracts of tenancy were null and void, and that the tenant had a pre-emptive right to the "fund" granted to him in his capacity as tenant paying rent in kind. In this respect, another body is competent. Within CISL, the point will most certainly be closely scrutinised by the Federation of Tenants and Direct Cultivators, the activities of which will be based on the political considerations outlined above.1 Finally, FISBA is trying to speed up the process of improving the general education and vocational skills of the agricultural worker by organising 1 As this federation failed to answer the questionnaires sent to it, it has been omitted from the present survey. 177 Agricultural organisations and development suitable courses. It is also trying to ensure that the compulsory schooling given in the countryside is of better quality.1 FISBA is also busy training trade union officials. To this end, it runs basic training courses (60 of them in 1964), followed by provincial, interprovincial or inter-regional advanced courses (corsi residenziali). Of these latter, there were 12 in 1964.2 The federation, by agreement with the other workers' and employers' organisations, intends to set up a body to handle the question of vocational training in agriculture. It will be responsible for activities throughout Italy, and will be known as the National Agricultural Vocational Training Organisation (Ente Nazionale Addestramento Lavorati Agricoli). Moreover, FISBA has a hand in all technical, economic, trade union and administrative matters of concern to the agricultural wage earner. Hence it remains in touch with ministerial bodies, technical and economic organs, and the public assistance authorities, and endeavours to ensure that the agricultural wage earner is adequately represented. The principal barriers to a further development of FISBA are to be found (in part, if not entirely) in the economic and social structure of Italian agriculture. These difficulties may be summarised as follows: — predominance of small and medium-sized farms, frequently divided into sub-plots; — custom and tradition, especially in Apulia, Calabria and the islands, where people do not live in the countryside, but in fairly large towns; — the high proportion of peasants who are virtually, if not entirely, illiterate ; shortage of specialised workers. Because of industrial development, the agricultural population of the country has been shrinking fast (45 per cent in 1960; 25.5 per cent in 1966). For this reason, as well as for the reasons given above, agricultural labour has become extremely fluid and unstable. Furthermore, many agricultural wage earners eke out their income by carrying on some non-agricultural activity on the side. The resultant picture of the agricultural labour scene is thus rather asymmetric. Lastly, FISBA takes the view that the work of development and organisation is rendered more difficult by the workers' tendency to drift from one part of the country to another, according to the season or the crop. Nevertheless, despite all difficulties encountered by trade unionism, the federation feels that these last few years quite a few successes can be ascribed 1 See / problemi dell'istruzione dell'obligo nell'ambiente rurale (Rome, FISBA-CISL, 1964). 2 Relazione al 6° Congresso Nazionale della FISBA, op. cit., p. 89. 178 Italy to the trade union movement as a whole (not wishing to take all the credit for itself), namely: — the national contract defining conditions of employment for workers in nurseries; — the regional contract for Calabria and the provincial contracts for persons employed in forestry; — the inter-regional contract for rice-workers; — the contracts for workers employed in picking olives, oranges, limes and lemons, jasmine, almonds, and so on; — the national contract for persons employed in tobacco factories; — the "national pact" for permanent wage earners.1 Before the Second World War, the Italian agricultural labourer hardly ever knew what the future had in store for him. It is hardly necessary to emphasise how great a contribution all these contracts have made to stabilising and improving agricultural working conditions. FISBA belongs to the Italian Confederation of Workers' Unions (CISL) and to the European Landworkers' Federation, itself a member of the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers. The CISL itself belongs to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). • UIL-Terra This organisation is made up of two federations—the Italian Union of Agricultural Wage Earners and Day-Labourers (UISBA) and the Italian Union of Tenants and Direct Farmers (UIMEC), and was created on 5 March 1950. According to official figures, the total membership of UIL memberunions developed as follows between 1963 and 1965: — 1963: 1,508,373, of whom 502,048 were agricultural workers; — 1964: 1,511,425, of whom 488,697 were agricultural workers; — 1965: 1,508,170, of whom 476,905 were agricultural workers. The UIL affirms that this drop in organised agricultural workers is attributable to the fact that so many have moved into industry. The drop in over-all membership observable in 1965 was due to the state of the national economy at that time. The UIL member-federations do a good deal more than protect the interests of their card-carrying members. They look after the agricultural labour force as a whole. There are various indications, such as the elections of trade union 1 Relazione al 6° Congresso Nazionale della FISBA, op. cit., p. 47. 179 Agricultural organisations and development representatives, which seem to suggest that those who sympathise with the aims of the UIL without actually being members are actually far more numerous than the members themselves. This is attributable to the fact that the workers are scattered over a host of small family farms. Absenteeism, too, is traditional, and the Italian agricultural worker being so much of an individualist, it is difficult to do very much about it. As is shown by the existence of separate unions for wage earners and selfemployed workers, UISBA comprises wage earners permanently employed and day-labourers (seasonal workers), while UIMEC comprises tenants and share-croppers. These two unions deal with everything to do with labour: working hours, wages, holidays, and so on. Bargaining with regard to such matters is carried on nationally and provincially, and within individual undertakings. UlL-Terra and, where appropriate, UISBA and UIMEC are represented in all official bodies, nationally, provincially and regionally. Their representatives may have a vote or just attend in an advisory capacity, depending on the body concerned. Employment stability, for which the UIL campaigned for many years, has now been achieved. The UIL has played a decisive part also in securing an improvement in the contracts of agricultural workers, with the result, firstly, that the part retained under share-cropping arrangements has risen to 58 per cent, and secondly, that bond-service in any shape or form is now a thing of the past. The UIL considers that the law constitutes no obstacle to an extension of trade union activities in Italy. The only problems are that the unions are short of money and that the workers, as already mentioned, are scattered. No hostile pressure is exerted on the unions, and the employers' opposition is limited to a few sporadic outbursts. Apart from the success achieved in improving agricultural labour contracts, UlL-Terra can point with justifiable pride to its creation of a busy network of so-called Young Country-Dwellers' Circles, which undertake the vocational training and civic education of young people living in the countryside. Such a circle exists in most agricultural towns and villages. The circles are attached to a provincial or regional centre which is administratively autonomous but adheres to the Italian Union of Young Country-Dwellers' Circles. This latter body has its seat in the UlL-Terra offices in Rome, and its chairman is the secretary of UIL-Terra. UlL-Terra has belonged to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) since its foundation. 180 Netherlands Chambers of agriculture In Italy, there are no chambers of agriculture of the kind encountered, for example, in France. The existing chambers of commerce, chambers of industry and chambers of agriculture do not represent occupational interests. They restrict themselves to representing, in a general way, the interests of the provincial economic organs ; they promote the development of these organs and co-ordinate their activities, in accordance with the general interests of the nation. Since they are not specifically concerned with farming, they have been excluded from this survey. Netherlands Dutch agriculture, in many respects more efficient than the agriculture of any other country, has always had the benefit of difficulties as a spur to efficiency. Handicapped by a lack of mineral resources, the Netherlands emerged only very late as an industrial power. Traditionally, it had always depended on trade and agriculture, and ever since the Middle Ages, the Dutch have had to wage a continuous struggle to maintain and extend a land of which a high proportion lies below sea level. Dutch history is one long dogged battle, marked by ups and downs, victory and temporary reverse, against an endlessly encroaching sea. Dutch tenacity, both individual and collective, is too well-known a quality for there to be any need to expatiate on it here. But it may not be amiss to recall that it is responsible for the extraordinary progress made by the Dutch co-operative movement. In this study, we have deliberately eschewed any detailed consideration of the co-operative movement per se ; we may, however, mention in passing that agricultural co-operation in the Netherlands began fairly suddenly, in the last twenty years or so of the nineteenth century, and that during the twentieth it has developed at such a pace that by 1960, 4,000 co-operatives were selling 70 per cent of the milk, 85 per cent of the cheese, 50 per cent of the bacon, and 40 per cent of the eggs produced in this country, while providing Dutch farmers with more than half the fertilisers and fodder they utilised. On the average, every Dutch farmer belonged to three co-operatives. No more than one in ten belonged to none at all. Four out of ten belonged to three or more.1 1 See E. Abma: "Management Boards and Supervisory Committees in Dutch Farmers' Co-operatives", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1963 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1963), pp. 119-130. 181 Agricultural organisations and development As occurred everywhere else, co-operation preceded unionism in agriculture. It was only towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries that Dutch farmers began to band themselves together in occupational organisations; the movement began only in 1900 or thereabouts among agricultural labourers. Today, there are six major occupational organisations in Dutch agriculture—three employers' and three workers' —and in view of their similarity and the common nature of their aims they can conveniently be treated as two groups. Employers' organisations Dutch agricultural employers are banded together in three major organisations: the Royal Committee on Dutch Agriculture (Koninklijk Nederlands Landbouw Comité), the Dutch Catholic Farmers' and Peasants' Union (Katholieke Nederlandse Boeren en Tuindersbond), and the Dutch Christian Farmers' and Peasants' Union (Nederlandse Christelijke Boeren en Tuindersbond). The first of these bodies was set up in 1884, the second in 1896, and the third in 1918. They are federations of provincial unions and their regional groupings. It is these latter which are empowered to conclude collective agreements concerning wages and working conditions. But, at the higher level, the three federations have co-ordinatory duties with the three workers' federations within a mixed committee set up inside the Social Affairs Department of the Agricultural Council (Landbouwschap), created in 1955. This joint committee, in which the six federations are represented, draws up "opinions" which the provincial unions and regional groupings use as a basis for collective bargaining. As regards the prices of agricultural produce, the three employers' federations advise the Ministry of Agriculture and the Agricultural Council, who, in accordance with custom, regularly consult them. The same holds good of production targets and of Dutch agricultural policy in general. The three federations, with their provincial and regional organs, are actively engaged in promoting the interests of the Dutch peasantry. To this end, they have set up, and they run, elementary, secondary and higher schools of agriculture and horticulture. They are also concerned with social integration and cultural progress—matters which intimately affect the family life of the country-dweller as well as the rural way of life as a whole. Amongst other things, they issue weekly newspapers and "agricultural social guidebooks". Furthermore, so as to co-ordinate action undertaken for the welfare of the peasantry, a Rural Welfare Board was set up in 1954. In it are represented all the agricultural trade unions, rural housewives' organisations, and the Ministries of Agriculture and Labour. 182 Netherlands Like the other Dutch employers' organisations, the three federations are members of the Management Board for Social Affairs, created in 1945. They are also members of the Employers' Federation for International Social Affairs ( Werkgevers Federatie voor internationale arbeidszaken), which in its turn is a member of the International Organisation of Employers. Lastly, in matters strictly agricultural, they are active in the Committee of Agricultural Organisations (COPA) set up in 1958 within the Common Market, in the European Confederation of Agriculture and the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). Workers' unions Like the employers, Dutch agricultural workers are banded together in three organisations: the General Union of Dutch Agricultural Workers (Algemene Nederlandse Agrarische Bedrijfsbond), with socialist leanings, the Dutch Catholic Union of Agricultural Employees (Nederlandse Katholieke Bond van Werknemers in de Agrarische Bedrijven), and the Dutch Christian Agricultural Union (Nederlandse Christelijke Agrarische Bedrijfsbond) (Protestant). They were created in 1900, 1904 and 1914 respectively. In 1966, the socialist union had 30,400 members, the Catholic union 20,000, and the Protestant union 22,000. According to the Protestant union, some 75 per cent of Dutch farm labourers belong to one or the other of the three. These are usually persons permanently employed, but the unions have a few seasonal workers among their members (10 per cent in the socialist union; unspecified percentage in the other two). The three unions bargain collectively in connexion with wages, hours of work, working conditions, insurance, and so on, within the official or unofficial joint bodies set up for the purpose. The statutes of all these organisations provide for equal representation of employers and workers, and they enjoy some degree of autonomy, subject to the general rules laid down by the authorities, or specified by law, for economic activities as a whole. These organisations are exceedingly influential. Their decisions are usually taken by vote. But the Agricultural Council, although an official body, is not a governmental one in the strict sense; and although it can decide on rules governing conditions of work, within the framework of general legislation, its decisions require final approval by the authorities. The Government can always declare that a decision taken by the Agricultural Council runs counter to the general interest and that hence it is null and void. This restriction in no way prevents the authorities (i.e. the Ministry of Agriculture) from consulting the council regularly and the agricultural policy pursued by Government and council is frequently identical. 183 Agricultural organisations and development The Catholic and Protestant unions are—generally speaking—satisfied with the way the joint bodies work. However, the socialist union has certain reservations to make. In its view, the joint bodies dealing with social insurance and social problems in general work, on the whole, quite well, and their decisions go far to make life easier for the worker. But the joint bodies dealing with technical and economic matters, although by no means useless, are—it claims—much less satisfactory and effective. They are too slow-moving and conservative, at a time when there is a crying need for urgent structural changes in agriculture. Besides being active in the joint bodies, the three unions undertake the sort of activities which are common to all workers' organisations. They encourage vocational training (working hand-in-hand with agricultural colleges), train trade union officials, offer legal advice in labour disputes, and so on. Unhappily, they have provided no very detailed picture of what they do and what they have achieved, and our description of their activities must necessarily be incomplete. All three organisations agree that they are unhampered by the law. But each of them emphasises a separate difficulty. The socialist union considers that agricultural expansion is hampered by the fact that there are far too many small farms, with the result that farmers do not earn enough and farm labourers are underpaid.1 The Protestant union feels that although agricultural workers are much better off today than they were before the war, the chief problem is still that of the disparity which exists between wages in agriculture and in industry; despite all progress over the last 20 years, a farm labourer gets 20 per cent less than the man on the shop floor. The employers' organisations agree that this is a problem which will have to be solved, but point out how precarious are the finances of most farmers. Lastly, the Catholic union finds the chief problem in the tendency of the agricultural labour force to dwindle (because of mechanisation and rationalisation); this leads, of course, to a drop in trade union membership. Among the improvements brought about by dint of trade union insistence, these organisations point to working hours (now similar to those worked in industry), social security (agricultural workers are now on the same footing as those in industry), and improvements in housing (from which the whole of the rural population has benefited). The socialist union also says that in 1 Recent estimates reveal that if the farm labourer is to enjoy an income comparable to that of a factory worker, no farm should be less than 25 to 37 acres in extent; in fact, more than half the farms have fewer than 25 acres. An attempt is being made to encourage the creation of bigger units in a programme which in the long run is to deal with some 3.75 million acres, or 65 per cent of the total arable land (so far 335,000 acres have been consolidated and another 600,000 are currently being processed). See United Nations: Planning for Balanced Social and Economic Development (New York, 1964), p. 64. 184 Sweden the field of vocational training, school programmes have been adapted to the requirements of workers' children, and that access to such training has been made easier for agricultural workers. Generally speaking, the three organisations agree that since the end of the Second World War, great progress—technical, economic, cultural and social—has been made in the Dutch countryside. This is borne out, incidentally, by all other available socio-economic indices.1 The Dutch Catholic Union of Agricultural Employees is a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU); the Dutch Christian Agricultural Union is a member of the National Christian Confederation (Chrislelijk National Vakverbond), as well as of the International Christian Organisation of Agricultural Wage Earners. The General Union of Dutch Agricultural Workers is a member of the Netherlands Federation of Trade Unions (Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen—NW) and of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Sweden Swedish agriculture, which we may rate as "highly advanced" despite its comparatively minor role in the country's economy (6 per cent of the gross national product in 1964), provides a characteristic example of the manner in which socialism is organised in the Nordic countries. Although already well developed before ihe Second World War, the present agricultural policy dates from 1947, when its main objectives were defined in an Act of Parliament: first of all, to improve the economic efficiency of farms by means of a price policy enabling the average farmer to reach the same standard of income as industrial workers; subsequently, to promote agricultural rationalisation, not only from the point of view of management but also as concerns the size and structure of farms.2 This rationalisation has led to a 35 per cent increase 1 In 1964-65, the Netherlands had the highest yield per acre of wheat, barley and oats of any country in the world; for rye and maize Dutch production per acre was very slightly exceeded by the United States and Switzerland. Such high yields are not attributable wholly to the climate (other European countries with similar soil and similar weather have yields only half those of the Netherlands) but rather to agricultural planning and to the vast efforts made since the war in agricultural advisory services; the Dutch had 100 advisers in 1930, and 1,650 in 1962. This (in relation to their agricultural population) is the highest figure in Western Europe. See FAO: Production Yearbook, 1965 (Rome, 1966); OECD: Agricultural Advisory Services in Europe and North America, 1963 (Paris, 1964), pp. 66-69 and Annexes IV and V. * At the time, the size of the average or "norm" farm was estimated at between 25 and 50 acres of arable land. These figures were revised in 1965 and the average size is now considered to be between 50 and 75 acres. 185 Agricultural organisations and development in productivity in the last ten years. Furthermore, co-operation has developed to such an extent since the last war that by 1961 agricultural co-operatives were marketing 80 per cent of the country's production. With these objectives in view, the general agricultural organisations reach periodic agreements on price policy with the governmental authorities. These agreements are established in such a way that any variation in industrial costs or wages, or in world prices for agricultural products, lead to changes in the degree of protection established. Agriculture can then adjust to the new situation. Nevertheless, the Government cannot guarantee that the price targets will actually be reached by the market. Negotiations are undertaken on behalf of the Government by the Statens Jordbruksnämnd, an official body responsible for applying and controlling price policy, and, on behalf of the farmers, by a delegation of the two big general organisations whose role will be described below: the Confederation of Farmers' Associations and the Swedish Farmers' Federation. Agreements reached between the two parties are transmitted to the Government which, in turn, submits them to Parliament for approval. Thus, by means of the 1959-65 plan to achieve parity between agriculture and industry, under which provision was made for increased protectionism and the rationalisation of farms with State aid, Swedish agriculture has succeeded, if not in actually catching up with industry, at least in maintaining one of the highest agricultural standards of living in Western Europe. General organisations • Confederation of Farmers' Associations This body was founded in 1917 as the National Association of Swedish Farmers, and reorganised as a federation in 1940. In 1946, as the Sveriges Lantbruksförbund, it was finally established in the form of a limited liability corporation. According to its statutes, the objectives of the confederation consist in protecting its members' economic interests and the social and economic interests of Swedish farmers in general. In this respect the confederation is required to: (a) represent farmers in matters of general interest; (b) collaborate in the work of farmers' co-operative organisations ; (c) maintain permanent co-operation between farmers' co-operative organisations, and between the latter and the Farmers' Federation; (d) on behalf of its members, direct work of a financial nature that is important both for the associations and for agriculture in general. 186 Sweden Affiliation to the confederation is confined to national farmers' associations (of a co-operative or social nature), and to members of the country's cooperative organisations (including the Swedish Dairy Association, the Swedish Farmers' Meat Marketing Association, the Swedish Farmers' Purchasing and Sales Organisation, the Swedish Egg and Poultry Marketing Association, the Swedish Forest-Owners' Association, the Association of Swedish Rural Credit Societies, the General Mortgage Bank of Sweden, and the StockBreeding Association). Through these associations, the confederation covers the majority of local agricultural organisations and societies of the country. In 1962 it had over 110,000 members, including the 310,000 farmers and forest-growers of the country. Apart from negotiating with the Government in conjunction with the Swedish Farmers' Federation, the confederation undertakes a number of socioeconomic activities through a network of organisations which it has created or directs or which function under its aegis. In the field of vocational training, mention should be made of the cooperative school of Sanga-Säby, which organises winter courses (OctoberApril) for young farmers to enable them to complete their agricultural, forestry or economic training as well as to improve their knowledge of co-operative organisation, management, etc. The courses are also followed by persons wishing to occupy administrative posts in the co-operative movement. Apart from these regular courses, the school organises seminars and lectures throughout the year. In the field of scientific research, the confederation and the Swedish Farmers' Federation have jointly set up the Institute for Research on Agricultural Economy, an independent body subsidised by the two organisations on a two-thirds and one-third basis respectively. The institute, which began its activities in 1950, studies social and economic problems of particular importance to agriculture and farmers. The results of this research are published periodically in the institute's brochures and bulletins. Alongside these scientific and educational activities, the confederation runs many others of an economic, social and cultural nature. For this purpose it has set up a large limited company: the Läntbruksförbundets Ekonomi AB, which carries out technical and economic work for the co-operative movement and for individual farmers, directs financial affairs, is its own publisher, markets the produce of the farmers and co-operatives, purchases goods needed by farmers, and carries out a variety of functions through a series of bodies : — the foreign affairs secretariat of the financial department deals with matters concerning foreign trade and international co-operation, and exports breeding stock; 187 Agricultural organisations and development — the market department follows market prices and carries out surveys and studies, the results of which are communicated to the trade press and daily newspapers of the country; — the legal department deals with legal problems on behalf of the confederation and, upon request, looks after the individual affairs of societies and farmers; — the tax department advises farmers and co-operative societies and helps them to solve tax problems and answer the legal questions arising from them ; — the marketing department, which includes a demonstration stand, carries out research and provides advice on the marketing of agricultural products, as well as organising publicity campaigns and exhibitions; — the purchasing department, on behalf of the co-operative organisations, buys all necessary office material; — the productivity division helps co-operative societies to carry out research on the rationalisation of business methods and administrative organisation; — the accounting office, which has 41 local offices, keeps the farmers' accounts, draws up their balance sheets and prepares their tax returns; — the editorial centre publishes textbooks for the agricultural colleges, as well as reference books and various other publications; — the studies department organises courses and lectures on the co-operative movement; — the correspondence school organises courses on the following subjects: economics, co-operation, farming and stock-breeding, forestry and pisciculture, domestic science, gardening, etc. It also provides teaching material for agricultural vocational training schools; — the press secretariat and film department disseminate information to the press and produce films, film-strips and slides as teaching aids or for publicity purposes. These various activities are backed up by a series of weekly publications, the most important of which, the Jordbrukamas Föreningsblad (Agricultural Co-operators' Review), has a circulation of 330,000 copies. The confederation also runs two other technical bodies, which form the last link in this remarkable chain of activities : the Lantbruksförbundets Revisions-byra AB, an accountancy office founded in 1946, which gives assistance in accounting matters, supervises accounts and undertakes economic research on behalf of co-operative societies; and the Landsbygdens Byggnadsförening LBF, a society of architects and advisory engineers, founded in 1941, which provides farmers, rural communities and co-operative societies with advice and plans for the construction of farm installations and buildings. At the local level the confederation is in close touch with the Swedish Farmers' Federation through its network of provincial offices. Through the 188 Sweden confederation, the farmers form part of the Joint Council of Nordic Farmers' Organisations, and of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). • Swedish Farmers' Federation The Swedish Farmers' Federation (Riksförbundet Landsbygdens Folk) was founded in 1929 as an occupational organisation of Swedish farmers, originally modelled on the industrial workers' unions which had proved their worth in defending the interests of their members. As a politically independent occupational organisation, the union is required, under its statutes: — to militate for the constitution of a united front of the country's farmers; — to represent agriculture and the farming population vis-à-vis the Government and other sectors of society; — to promote the development of the agricultural co-operative movement and protect its freedom; — to study questions of general importance for agriculture; — t o disseminate information on the agricultural situation through radio, television and the press ; — to encourage the cultural aspirations of the farming population; — to promote international co-operation among farmers. In 1960, the 2,356 local branches of the federation, grouped into 27 provincial unions, had approximately 192,000 members, i.e. 80 per cent of those whose income was mainly derived from agriculture and its related industries. A system of elections at all levels ensures that the federation is run along strictly democratic lines. Permanent contact between its members is further provided by the RLF-Tidningen, a weekly publication with a circulation of 190,000 copies. The federation acts either independently or in conjunction with the Confederation of Farmers' Associations (as in the case of the periodic agreements on price policy negotiated with the Government). Apart from the tasks listed above, the federation deals with adult vocational training and undertakes very important work in providing legal assistance to farmers affected by expropriation resulting from the construction of roads, airports, etc. It is equally efficient in making sure that farms and farming families are adequately insured against the hazards arising out of their occupation. Lastly, mention should be made of the somewhat special method by which the federation's activities are financed, reminiscent of the French chambers of agriculture : in addition to the basic contribution, members pay a tax in proportion to the size of their farm. Surpluses obtained through this system 189 Agricultural organisations and development are transferred to the federation's reserve fund for use in occupational activities. The full value of this financial policy is seen if one considers the problems encountered by unions in other countries due to the inadequacy of their resources, which is why this system deserves mentioning as an example. The Swedish Farmers' Federation is a member, through the Confederation of Agricultural Associations, of the Joint Council of Nordic Farmers' Organisations and of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). Employers' organisations • Federation of Swedish Employers in Agriculture and Forestry The Federation of Swedish Employers in Agriculture and Forestry was founded in 1907 and is the only organisation of agricultural employers in the country; but, as many agricultural undertakings also have interests in forestry, it was decided in 1938 that farmers engaged in both agriculture and forestry could also become members. Even so, it is in the centre and south of Sweden, where the large agricultural undertakings are mainly concentrated, that the federation is most active. (In the northern counties, where forests predominate, private forestry undertakings belong, to a large extent, to a small number of societies which have set up an employers' organisation devoted solely to these activities.) Members also include the Federation of Horticultural Employers and a certain number of organisations carrying out activities in the field of agriculture and forestry. The activities of the federation are at present shared between four sections: The agricultural section has 6,500 members, i.e. approximately 3 per cent of the 200,000 Swedish farmers, which shows the small number of farms with employed labour (between 20,000 and 30,000 wage earners). Undertakings in this category nevertheless cover 1.5 million acres, i.e. 17 per cent of the country's agricultural area. The forestry section has 1,300 members who farm approximately 3 million acres of woodland in the central and southern regions of Sweden, where the federation is the only employers' organisation. It thus includes among its members not only the large forestry companies but also ordinary timber growers. The number of workers in this branch is estimated between 10,000 and 12,000. The horticultural section (Federation of Horticultural Employers) has 600 members employing approximately 3,500 wage earners. This section covers market gardens, nurseries and orchards and is concerned with promoting the development of these undertakings and with marketing their produce throughout the country. 190 Sweden The general section includes small sawmills, brickworks and carpentry shops,providing materials for agriculture and forestry, as well as other small machinery firms, artificial insemination centres, fur farms and some poultry farms. The federation maintains special sections for the study of agricultural mechanisation as well as for research and rationalisation in forestry matters. Altogether it has 8,600 members employing between 40,000 and 45,000 workers. According to the federation, these workers have received considerable wage increases since 1959, amounting to approximately 85-90 per cent. At the present time the wages of agricultural workers are, on average, equal to 80-85 per cent of industrial wages. The main task of the federation is to negotiate collective agreements with the workers' organisations, including the agricultural and forestry workers' trade unions and those of the supervisory staff and salaried employees in this sector. The federation also helps to settle labour disputes, looks after its members' interests from the legal point of view and provides them with all necessary information concerning their position as employers. The federation also attaches considerable importance to attempts to rationalise agricultural and forestry undertakings. On the other hand, the federation leaves agricultural price policy discussions to the two general organisations described above, considering that the present level of prices is reasonably satisfactory. In other fields such as occupational health and the welfare of workers, social insurance, vocational training and labour problems, the federation works in close co-operation with the governmental authorities. With particular regard to rural housing, it points out that approximately 70 per cent of agricultural workers are provided with housing by their employers. This generally takes the form of houses for one or two families, each having an average of two to three rooms and a kitchen. Approximately 90 per cent of the houses have running water and drainage systems; most have central heating and many are provided with toilets and bathrooms. The federation is thus actively engaged in improving the housing conditions of rural workers, for the situation still leaves much to be desired, even though from the point of view of comfort the Swedish rural sector has one of the highest standards in Western Europe. In the federation's opinion, the ease with which employers can engage labour depends on a satisfactory standard of housing being provided, particularly in the case of skilled workers such as tractor drivers, mechanics and foremen. Outside official spheres, the federation collaborates with several organisations engaged in research into labour costs and methods. It is naturally in close contact with other employers' associations and particularly with the Swedish Employers' Confederation. 191 Agricultural organisations and development The Federation of Swedish Employers does not belong to any national confederation. It is a member of the International Organisation of Employers. Workers' unions • Swedish Agricultural Workers' Union The Swedish agricultural trade union movement is one of the oldest in Western Europe. As far back as 1898 workers in Scania created a trade union in order to obtain higher wages. When this objective was achieved, the union was dissolved, and not until 1904 did the workers of Scania set up a new trade union with the help of organised workers in Malmö. The new union made rapid progress during the next four years and after several strikes, which in some cases lasted a long time, succeeded in securing collective agreements on wages and working conditions in some districts. Meanwhile, in 1906, another trade union had been created by the agricultural workers of central Sweden, and two years later the two organisations decided to amalgamate and to request admission to the Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions. The new union, which at that time had approximately 10,000 members, nevertheless gradually declined in influence, since the workers showed less interest in maintaining the organisation once their conditions of employment had improved. As was noted in the report of a survey carried out by the ILO in 1928, Owing to the influence of a strike of municipal workers in Malmö in 1908, and especially as an effect of a general strike in 1909, [the agricultural workers] left the union in such numbers that its finance was undermined and further progress made impossible. The union had to withdraw from the confederation and it was not until ten years later, in October 1918, that, through the initiative of the confederation, a reconstruction took place, or rather that a new union of Swedish farm-workers was created by amalgamation of local unions.1 In its present form, therefore, the Swedish Agricultural Workers' Union (Svenska Lantarbetareförbundet) dates back to this period. Today the union has 18,000 paid-up members, i.e. in round figures, 80 per cent of organised workers. It should be specified that members of the union are recruited not only from among agricultural and horticultural workers but also from among those in engaged in related activities: agricultural machinery stations, artificial insemination centres, poultry farms, fur farms. Seasonal workers, who are mainly employed in cultivating sugar-beet and, to a certain extent, in horticulture, generally belong to this union. Forestry 1 192 ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., p. 199. Sweden workers have their own organisation: the Swedish Forest Workers' Union.1 The Swedish Union of Agricultural Salaried Employees, for its part, brings together supervisory staff and salaried employees. Share-cropping does not exist in Sweden. Tenant farmers do not have an organisation of their own; they join the small-holders' organisations without, however, belonging to the union. The union's main task consists in negotiating and reaching, on behalf of its members, collective agreements on wages, hours of work, and other conditions of employment. Agreements signed by the union ensure a certain degree of employment security by establishing rules on dismissal and providing workers with the possibility of receiving severance benefits should their undertaking have to restrict its activities or close down. Agricultural workers enjoy the same rights as other categories of citizens in the field of social insurance. In the event of sickness or accident, they receive medical care and a daily allowance. The union has set up an unemployment insurance fund, half the money for which is provided out of public funds. At 67, agricultural workers receive an old-age pension which is the same for everyone and, in addition, a supplementary pension related to the number of years' service and annual earnings. The union has taken part in an official survey on the future of agriculture. One of the important aims of the survey was to study ways of improving the agrarian structure, which, in Sweden, means creating larger and more rational holdings. Although the union today is not directly concerned with laws on tenant farming—tenant farmers not being among its members—one of its representatives has participated in an official survey on tenant legislation. In the opinion of the union, Swedish legislation in no way impedes the activities of occupational associations. Employers have generally accepted occupational organisations as representating employees' interests. Admittedly the increasing rationalisation of agriculture and the consequent decline in the number of agricultural workers has made it difficult in some regions for trade union activity to be maintained. The local branches of the union may encounter considerable difficulty in carrying out their activities as a result of this shrinkage in the agricultural labour force and in their own membership. As regards joint bodies, mention should be made of the occupational committees for agriculture and horticulture, comprising representatives of 1 Since no reply to our questionnaire was received from this union, it has been left out of this survey. 193 Agricultural organisations and development undertakings, of employers' organisations and of trade unions, which cooperate to facilitate vocational training and recruitment in these branches. As regards the prevention of accidents and occupational disease in agriculture and horticulture, a joint body, which deals with the dissemination of information on safety in agriculture, brings together representatives of employers, workers and undertakings in these branches. No legislation governs this joint body. It was set up by the persons directly concerned, who are responsible for its financing and who decide its activities. The union considers that the Horticultural Committee has greatly assisted the training of workers in this sector. As for the Agricultural Committee, it was set up too recently for the value of its work to be assessed. In any case the union does valuable work on the body responsible for information on safety in agriculture. As a direct result of its activity, legislation has been adopted whereby all tractors must henceforth be provided with a device that prevents them from turning over and, in particular, with power take-off guards. Seats to prevent back injuries are being designed for tractor drivers. A survey on the health of agricultural workers is also to be undertaken in order to determine what measures can be adopted in this field. The union is represented on official bodies dealing with safety measures, immigration and employment questions, information and publicity on agriculture, problems of agricultural techniques, etc. It took part in an official survey, now completed, on agricultural policy. Furthermore it is represented on the State Committee on Entailed Property, which aims to eliminate the system of entailed property, as well as on the State Office for Machine Testing. Its representatives have the same rights of co-decision as the other members, which generally implies the right to vote. As regards achievements in the field of wages, the union points out that although the wages of agricultural workers have followed the same pattern as those of other comparable categories, they are still on average approximately 15 per cent lower than those of industrial workers. Job security is provided partly through collective agreements, which lay down a period of notice and protect workers against dismissals not based on objective considerations. The right to work and the possibility of finding employment are largely ensured by full employment. In addition there is a redeployment programme for workers who wish to leave agriculture. Under this programme, such workers receive a subsistence allowance ranging from 40 per cent to 80 per cent of an industrial worker's wage throughout the period of training, which may vary from two weeks to two years according to the occupation chosen.1 1 194 For further details, see OECD: Agricultural Policies in 1966, op. cit., p. 480. Switzerland Agricultural workers have similar housing to that of other comparable categories as regards size and standard. The union has done much to persuade employers to improve the standard of housing of agricultural workers. The results may be considered satisfactory. Social security is the same for all wage earners, including agricultural workers. Educational opportunities at all levels are the same for agricultural workers as for other groups. The Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions has two schools where agricultural workers can study, and the union also organises courses. These vocational schools lay particular stress on studies of an occupational and economic nature. The Swedish trade union movement has furthermore instituted a joint training organisation which is very active in the field of teaching and training. Illiteracy is practically non-existent in Sweden. Lastly, following measures taken by the union, rural health has made considerable progress. As a result of a policy of supervision and encouragement, measures have been taken to improve supplies of drinking-water and sanitary installations. The health survey mentioned above also comes within the framework of this activity. Since 1930 the union has been affiliated to the Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions, which is a member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Chambers of agriculture Until 1 July 1967, Sweden had 25 chambers of agriculture, some of which were founded about 150 years ago. It was decided on this date to abolish them and to transfer their activities to the County Agricultural Boards, which are governmental bodies. The chambers of agriculture have consequently been left out of the present survey. Switzerland Swiss agriculture, in which small and medium-sized holdings predominate, presents an unusual characteristic in that, its agricultural working class being very small, it plays only a minor role in the country's socio-economic structure. As was pointed out in a study published in 1967, An examination of the agricultural land holding system in Switzerland reveals that small-holders farm their own land in almost half the total number of farming enterprises, that furthennore 14 per cent rent less than 20 per cent of their land to other 195 Agricultural organisations and development persons, that 12 per cent rent out from 20 to 50 per cent, and 18 percent more than 50 per cent. Farms worked on a co-ownership basis represent 5 per cent of the total number, those on a usufruct basis 1 per cent, and those run by farm managers 1 per cent. The dominant element in Switzerland's agriculture is definitely the small-holding.1 The small-holdings have followed the consolidation process seen in neighbouring countries; whereas in 1905 only 10 per cent of farms had 37 or more acres, this figure now represents the area of the average farm. This process has been particularly marked during the last ten years. In 1965, there were 162,244 farms, as against 205,997 in 1955, i.e. a drop of 43,753 or 21.24 per cent. The drift to the towns, encouraged by the period of full employment that followed the Second World War, contributed to this trend by reducing the active agricultural population. A census taken in 1960 revealed that 280,000 persons were employed in the primary sector, as against 355,000 ten years previously.2 As regards the proportion of farmers to employees, in 1964 there were only 23,619 Swiss agricultural wage earners to 170,000 farmers (male farmers and male family workers). It is true that Switzerland uses foreign workers to fill the seasonal labour gap, but only to a small extent; in 1964 the average number of foreign workers was only 6,204.3 Perhaps because they were so few, Swiss agricultural wage earners took a long time to organise. In 1920 there were more than 96,000 farm servants and day-labourers but, according to the reply of the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions to a survey carried out by the ILO a few years later, no attempt had been made to form an organisation.4 In 1966, when there remained only between 19,000 and 20,000, a certain number of them joined a small recently created union, the Central Union of Farm Servants and Agricultural Workers; but the activities of this union are on too small a scale for us to consider them in this survey. As we shall see below, it is the powerful Swiss Peasants' Union that in all respects constitutes the backbone of Swiss agriculture, since it covers the entire 1 La situation économique de la Suisse, Part Two: L'agriculture en Suisse, Notes et études documentaires No. 2313 (Paris, 27 July 1957), p. 6. 2 OECD: Manpower Statistics, 1950-62 (Paris, 1963), p. 106. By 1969 the active agricultural population had dropped to 170,000 (7 per cent of the total active population). The number of farms had fallen to 150,000, less than two-thirds of which provided the farmer's main source of income. 8 The vast majority of foreign workers merely supplement the labour force in seasonal work. According to the latest figures of the Federal Office for Industry and Labour, in Berne, there were 15,688 foreign workers in August 1966 whereas in February of the same year there had been only 7,660. 4 196 ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., p. 202. Switzerland range of activities which in other countries are usually divided between general, employers' and workers' organisations. • Swiss Peasants' Union In conformity with the federal structure of the country, the organisations representing the various sectors of the agricultural economy (stock-breeding, co-operatives, viticulture, agricultural credit, etc.) are grouped in what may be called employers' associations (that is to say, organisations subject to private law, legally andfinanciallyindependent of the authorities and responsible for defending the material interests of their members) at two different levels: (a) at the national level: the Swiss Peasants' Union (USP); (b) at the cantonal level: the Cantonal Peasants' Unions (also known as chambers of agriculture or agricultural societies). The term "employers' association" in Switzerland must therefore be interpreted in a very wide sense since there are no agricultural associations dealing exclusively with problems concerning employment relations. These feature, together with many other problems that are often more important, on the programme of activities of the Swiss Peasants' Union and of the Cantonal Peasants' Unions. Founded on 7 June 1897, the Swiss Peasants' Union had 66 branches and 594,000 members in 1960. It operates on such a vast scale that it may be considered both as a general organisation and as an employers' association proper. Its branches fall into five main categories, the scope of which we shall briefly describe here.1 1. The principal agricultural societies. These are largely devoted to the study of agricultural problems and to agricultural advisory work and represent the general interests of farmers, vis-à-vis the competent authorities. Apart from the Genevese Chamber of Agriculture, which was founded in 1921 and groups the cantonal organisations for production, marketing, credit and insurance, etc., seven "principal societies" 2 are members of the Swiss Peasants' Union : — Swiss Agricultural Society of Zürich, founded in 1863 (approximately 125,000 members in 1963) which groups the German-speaking cantonal societies and a certain number of specialised associations; x For further details, see Jean Meynaud: Les organisations professionnelles en Suisse (Lausanne, 1963), pp. 69-97. 2 According to Jean Meynaud (op. cit., p. 74) "the term 'principal society' originated in federal legislation (Federal Order of 27 June 1884 and the Act of 22 December 1893) which provided that annual subsidies could be granted to the principal agricultural societies and empowered the executive authorities to draw up a list of these associations according to 197 Agricultural organisations and development — Federation of Agricultural Societies of French-Speaking Switzerland, in Lausanne, founded in 1881 (approximately 30,000 members); in addition to the cantonal societies, the federation was joined in 1959 by the Vaud Chamber of Agriculture which, as a result of this membership, also belongs to the Swiss Peasants' Union ; — Union of Ticino Peasants, at Bellinzona; — Swiss Society for Alpine Economy, in Berne; — Federation of Swiss-German Horticultural Societies, in Berne ; — Federation of Horticultural Societies of French-Speaking Switzerland, at Marcelin-sur-Morges ; — Union of Swiss Farmers' Wives, at Brugg. 2. The federations of co-operative purchasing and marketing societies. In Switzerland there are more than 1,000 co-operatives or agricultural associations, with a membership of approximately 100,000 in 1960. These originated in the nineteenth century, between 1860 and 1870, but their real development took place during the twentieth century. They started off as purchasing co-operatives, concentrating on buying chemical fertiliser and fodder concentrates but subsequently turned towards the joint sale of their members' produce1, a trend also observed in France, where the first unions were organised on the lines of purchasing co-operatives.2 Most of the Swiss organisations are grouped in six regional federations (Winterthur, Berne, Lucerne, Solothurn, St. Gallen, Lausanne), which act as central purchasing bodies for their members and process their products. These six federations are members of the Swiss Peasants' Union. 3. The federations of stock-breeders' associations. In Switzerland stockbreeding control goes back to 1806, when the Berne Government instituted the first herd-book of Simmental cattle and organised a cattle show at which it awarded prizes. It was, however, not until the end of the century that the present federations controlling the various breeds of cattle were founded: that for cattle with red markings, in 1891; for cattle with red markings in eastern Switzerland, in 1898; for cattle with black markings, in 1889; for Brown Swiss cattle, in 1897; and for Herens cattle, in 1916. These federations are mainly concerned with keeping herd-books, keeping check of dairy productivity, epizootic control and preventive vaccination, the purchase of breedseveral criteria (difference of language, purpose and sphere of activity). The Swiss Peasants' Union had not yet been founded and the Confederation, which wished to avoid scattering its resources too widely, decided to concentrate on the most representative associations." 1 For the origins of the first agricultural consumer co-operatives, see Marcel Boson: COOP en Suisse (Basle, 1965), pp. 167-171 and passim. 2 Sir John Clapham: The Economic Development of France and Germany 1815-1914, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1921), p. 186. 198 Switzerland ing bulls and, in general, the co-ordination of technical, sanitary and economic measures in respect of Swiss stock-breeding. According to the census carried out in 1953-54, there were at that time 1,893 local associations grouping 70,500 members and belonging to the above-mentioned federations, the first four of which are all members of the Swiss Peasants' Union.1 Apart from these big federations, the Swiss Peasants' Union also includes among its members the Swiss Draught-Horse Breeders' Federation, set up in 1909, and the Swiss Federation of Poultry Farmers. 4. The federations of milk producers. Early in the nineteenth century the milk producers felt the need for a certain degree of independence from those who actually sold the milk or turned it into cheese. They therefore formed a number of local societies to protect their produce. The number of these societies rose from a few hundred prior to 1850 to approximately 5,000 at the beginning of the Second World War. In recent years, more than 4,500 local societies, grouped in 15 federations, were members both of the Swiss Peasants' Union and of the Central Milk Producers' Union, representing more than 95 per cent of the milk sold on the market. As Jean Meynaud points out, although the central union is not strictly speaking a member of the SPU, the two organisations are on common ground as concerns their claims on behalf of the milk producers to such an extent that, until recently, when milk prices were being discussed, the head of the Federal Department of Public Economy used to receive a delegation of representatives of the Swiss Peasants' Union and of the Central Milk Producers' Union.2 5. Apart from the federations mentioned above, the Swiss Peasants' Union includes a large number of federations at national or cantonal level which represent the most varied interests of Swiss agriculture; for example the Swiss Federation of Tobacco Planters' Associations, the Swiss Union of Market Gardeners and the Vine-Growers' Federation of French-Speaking Switzerland. As a result of this diversified structure, the SPU has become the focal point of the social and economic aspirations of the entire farming community of the country. Its role as the representative of the Swiss farmers vis-à-vis the authorities is consequently of great importance. As a body defending farmers' interests, the activities it carries out in co-operation with the authorities have a double objective: 1 For further details, see L'agriculture en Suisse, op. cit., pp. 11-13. Meynaud, op. cit., pp. 79-80. Professor Meynaud nevertheless points out that the practice was discontinued in 1962 since the head of the federal department considered that as the Central Milk Producers' Union was for all practical purposes a member of the Swiss Peasants' Union, the discussions should take place only with the leaders of the latter organisation. s 199 Agricultural organisations and development (a) Price maintenance for agricultural products. Since agricultural legislation embodies the principle of parity of income between farming and comparable occupations, it goes without saying that the price maintenance policy (as well as technical measures designed to make farms more profitable) plays an important part in giving this principle the necessary support. During recent years the Swiss Peasants' Union has concentrated much effort on securing price increases. Its action in thisfield(direct action at the level of the administration, or indirect action through Parliament) is always based on objective criteria (agricultural accounts). In general, price increases, combined with measures designed to cut production costs, have enabled a number of farmers to improve their income to a considerable extent. (b) The fixing of production targets and of general agricultural policy, in collaboration with official bodies. There is close co-operation in this field, for the Swiss Peasants' Union is represented on a number of advisory committees and in particular on the Standing Advisory Committee for the Application of the Agriculture Act, which gives its opinion beforehand on agricultural questions connected with the national economy and on measures likely to facilitate the marketing of the country's produce and to adapt production to needs. In its capacity as employers' representative, the Swiss Peasants' Union deals with problems concerning national and foreign labour. With regard to the Swiss labour force, it does not intervene in negotiations on wages and conditions of work, since conditions of employment are laid down in standard cantonal contracts of employment and it is the cantonal chambers of agriculture, acting on behalf of the employers, which are responsible for their negotiation. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that in a large number of cantons agricultural wages are established according to the law of supply and demand, failing specific conditions in the standard contracts. In this case, the conditions fixed by agreement for foreign workers, from Spain in particular, tend to apply also to Swiss labour. In any case, because of the manpower shortage, and particularly in the industrialised regions, the actual wages paid frequently exceed contractual rates. Although the Swiss Peasants' Union no longer deals with this aspect of relations between employers and workers, it helped to set up the federal family allowances scheme for small farmers and agricultural wage earners (including foreigners). Following action by the SPU, this scheme has been reviewed several times with a view to an increase in benefits. Furthermore, the SPU has set up an institution to provide material assistance to agricultural workers who wish to get married but do not have the means to buy a wedding trousseau or furniture. 200 United Kingdom As regards the recruiting of foreign labour, conditions of employment— particularly for Spanish and Portuguese workers—are negotiated by the SPU with the official emigration agencies of the countries in question. At the national level, the Swiss Peasants' Union and the Central Union of Farm Servants and Agricultural Workers have set up a joint committee dealing mainly with problems such as the social insurance scheme and legislation on employment contracts, which come under federal law. The policy of the Swiss Peasants' Union aims at adapting the legislation on social insurance in such a way as to provide the rural population (particularly in mountain areas) with benefits that take account of their difficult economic situation. With regard to the social advancement of the agricultural community, the Swiss Peasants' Union and its branches, such as the Swiss Association of Mountain Farmers, have helped to secure the adoption, by the Federal Chambers, of legislation enabling the Swiss Confederation to grant interest-free subsidies and loans to farmers wishing to improve their housing conditions. Lastly, and with the same aim in view, the Swiss Peasants' Union insists that consideration be paid to the situation of the agricultural population, particularly in mountain areas, in the fixing of railway fares (subsidies to enable private railways to lower their fares, season tickets for school children, special rates for the transport of agricultural produce, etc.). As regards other activities such as vocational training and recreational activities, the Swiss Peasants' Union points out that the former is the sole responsibility of the authorities. The agricultural organisations are nevertheless consulted on the content of training programmes. As regards recreational activities, the SPU includes among its branches the Association of Swiss Rural Youth Clubs, which is responsible for the activities of the rural youth clubs and organises various events. Since the Swiss Peasants' Union is the only central agricultural organisation in Switzerland it is not a member of any national federation or confederation. At the international level it is a member of the European Confederation of Agriculture (ECA) and of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). United Kingdom General organisations Apart from the National Farmers' Union, which is considered below among the employers' organisations, two societies deserve mention in view of their past or present activities in promoting farming interests. 201 Agricultural organisations and development The oldest, if not the most important, society is the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, founded in 1784, which played an active part in improving the social aspect of Scottish agriculture during the first fifty years of its existence. Since then it has concentrated mainly on agricultural education and on agriculture proper. The second organisation of this kind, the Royal Agricultural Society of England, was founded in 1839 as a non-political independent institution in order to encourage scientists to improve agricultural implements and to find the best way of farming the land and of raising livestock. The motto of the RAS is "Practice with Science" and since 1839 it has organised the annual Royal Show of agricultural machinery and implements and selected cattle in various parts of the country, including demonstrations of the latest technical innovations in farming. Since 1963 the Royal Show has become a permanent institution at Stoneleigh Abbey, Kenilworth (Warwickshire), where it is known as the National Agricultural Centre. In addition to maintaining a system of grants, whereby it encourages agricultural and veterinary research and new inventions, the Royal Agricultural Society deals actively with the vocational training of farmers. For this purpose, in co-operation with the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, it directs studies leading to the National Diploma in Agriculture ; similarly, in co-operation with the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers, it organises courses in dairy farming and awards the National Diploma in Dairying. The RAS ensures that farmers keep abreast of developments by publishing an annual review devoted to agricultural projects and a highly reputed work, Elements of Agriculture, which was initially written in the nineteenth century by Dr. William Fream and has subsequently run through 14 editions in the last 70 years. Like many British institutions, these societies have a role of their own, half-academic, half-practical, for which there is no exact equivalent on the continent. They are a mixture of agricultural shows, teaching establishments and traditional scientific institutions, reflecting the empirical approach for which the English are famous. Although inimitable in some ways, they might well serve as a model for similar organisations in the English-speaking developing countries. Employers' organisations There are three large employers' organisations in the United Kingdom: the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales (NFU); the National Farmers' Union of Scotland (NFUS); and the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU). 202 United Kingdom • National Farmers' Union of England and Wales This body, which is the most important of the three employers' organisations, was created in 1908. It is made up solely of active farm owners and tenant farmers, share-cropping being unknown in the United Kingdom. Its main activities include the negotiation of wages, hours of work and general conditions of employment with the unions of agricultural workers. These negotiations take place on the Statutory Agricultural Wages Board which also includes a certain number of members appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture.1 The NFU is consulted by the Government each year on all matters pertaining to agriculture, including production policy and price fixing. Together with the other employers' organisations, it thus plays a very important role in the field of agricultural policy; the union itself considers that it is sufficiently important for its demands and opinions to constitute one of the main factors taken into account by the Government in establishing its policy. The NFU expresses its satisfaction as regards direct relations with the agricultural workers' unions, and specifies that the negotiations cover a whole series or problems concerning policy and conditions of work which are outside the sphere of the Agricultural Wages Board. With regard to some of these questions—such as piece rates—bargaining tends to take place locally rather than at the national level. Normally, questions concerning rural social development are not dealt with by the NFU. Since schooling and health are taken care of by the State, and housing is a matter settled by private firms or local authorities, the union has no cause to deal with them (any more than it deals with leisure activities, which in the United Kingdom are as varied as they are numerous, at all levels of society). On the other hand, the NFU plays an active part in agricultural vocational training. It launched the National Agricultural Apprenticeship Scheme in which, in some parts of the country, 20 to 25 per cent of young people going into farming take part. The union was also instrumental in creating the Statutory Agricultural Training Board. Its advisory role also enables it to have a say in the planning of the technical training courses of a network of agricultural institutions. 1 In England and Wales, wage fixing by joint committees goes back to 1924, when the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act was promulgated, setting up wage committees in each county and a central board to co-ordinate the activities. These bodies, whose role was either to fix a flat minimum rate or different rates for the various categories of workers, were already made up of an equal number of employers and workers, together with a certain number of outside members appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture. They achieved the same purpose as collective agreements elsewhere. See ILO: Social Problems in Agriculture, Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture), No. 14 (Geneva, 1938), p. 80. 203 Agricultural organisations and development The National Farmers' Union is a member of the Confederation of British Industry and, through the latter, of the International Organisation of Employers. Furthermore it is a founder-member of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). • National Farmers' Union of Scotland Trade unionism in Scottish agriculture goes back to 1886, when the Ploughmen's Federal Union of Scotland was founded. This union had branches in most counties but lasted only a decade, until 1896. Not until 1913 was the National Farmers' Union of Scotland created, one year after the organisation of farm and domestic workers in the Scottish Farm Union. At the regional level, the National Farmers' Union of Scotland plays a similar part to that of the National Farmers' Union as regards wages, prices and vocational training. Wage bargaining takes place on the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board, made up of six members of the NFUS, six workers' representatives, four outside members and a chairman appointed by the Government. Unlike the attitude adopted in England and Wales by the agricultural organisations when the 1924 Act respecting wage committees was promulgated, Scottish workers were for a long time against this type of institution because they considered that direct bargaining with the employers' association would secure them better wages. Nevertheless, when experience failed to substantiate this expectation, they finally sought government intervention and in July 1937 the Agricultural Wages (Regulations) (Scotland) Act was passed, modelled largely on the provisions of the English system. The present board fixes minimum wage rates which largely represent what the poorest farmer pays to the least efficient worker. In fact, the level of real wages is considerably higher than the minimum fixed by the board. In the field of prices, the union represents Scottish agriculture when, in February each year, the Government makes its Annual Review in order to fix the guaranteed prices of products and to establish measures of agricultural support. Since the union has an advisory role, it is impossible to determine— any more than it was for the NFU—the extent to which it influences the Government's attitude. Nevertheless the union itself states that since these consultations began, its opinions have carried considerable weight with the Government. Moreover, apart from the Annual Review, carried out according to legislation drafted under union influence, the union is always consulted by the Government on matters of both long-term policy and less important legislative provisions concerning agriculture and horticulture. Thus, throughout the year and at all levels, the union is in close and constant contact with the authorities. 204 United Kingdom The NFUS also represents farmers' interests in the field of vocational training; through the union, representatives of agricultural employers have been appointed to the new Industrial Training Board for Agriculture. The National Farmers' Union of Scotland does not belong to a national confederation but carries out all its activities in agreement with the other two large employers' organisations of the United Kingdom. At the international level it is a member of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). • Ulster Farmers' Union The Ulster Farmers' Union is the most recent of the three United Kingdom organisations. Set up in 1918, it is the only organisation of agricultural employers in Northern Ireland. Like the other two employers' organisations, the UFU plays an active part in maintaining the income of its members and consequently keeps a close watch on the prices of agricultural products. In the United Kingdom these prices are established on the basis of two factors: (a) the price received by the farmer when selling the product; (b) a State subsidy representing the difference between the price received and the cost of production, plus the farmer's profit margin. In this connexion the union maintains a critical attitude, considering that the working of the present system is debatable in view of the considerable variations in production costs and market prices. In order to remedy the situation as far as possible, it intervenes with its partners in the Annual Review of agricultural problems undertaken by the Government in respect of the supply, demand and prices of the main products, such as milk, eggs, meat and certain crops. The union considers, however, that it has not yet succeeded in convincing the Government that a "cheap food" policy may not be in the best interests of the country as a whole. The result is that the United Kingdom tends to be used as a market for world surplus food stocks at prices which have a detrimental effect on the farmers' incomes. Nevertheless, the union considers that, together with its partners, it succeeded in influencing the Government as regards the best way of achieving the objectives which were laid down for the United Kingdom National Plan. In these exchanges of views with the authorities, the UFU, like its two partners, plays a purely advisory role and, like them, tries to win acceptance for its opinions through Members of Parliament. As regards negotiations with representatives of agricultural workers, Northern Ireland, like England and Wales and Scotland, has an Agricultural Wages Board, set up in 1939, whichfixesminimum rates for the various regions. The attitude taken by the union at meetings of this board is that workers should 205 Agricultural organisations and development receive fair pay for reasonable work since it will be increasingly difficult to find labour in rural areas as a result of the level of wages now offered in industry. The UFU is not directly concerned with improving schooling, health or housing in rural areas; since these matters are covered by public institutions and the private sector, it confines itself to making recommendations to the local authorities. On the other hand it is concerned with the education of future farmers, and provides prizes at agricultural colleges. Finally, in the field of leisure activities, the union emphasises that initially the meetings it organised for its members encouraged social contacts in the agricultural community, particularly in winter, but that this type of activity has become outdated due to television and the spread of private transport. This seems to apply generally in all the highly developed countries. The Ulster Farmers' Union does not belong to any confederation or national federation. At the international level, it is a member of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). Agricultural workers' unions As with the employers' organisations, there are three large trade unions for the whole of the United Kingdom: the National Union of Agricultural Workers of England and Wales, the Scottish Agricultural and Forestry Section of the Transport and General Workers' Union; and the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union of Northern Ireland. • National Union of Agricultural Workers of England and Wales The National Union of Agricultural Workers was created in 1906 as the Eastern Counties' Agricultural Labourers' and Rural Workers' Union. In 1912 it became the National Agricultural Labourers' and Rural Workers' Union and finally, in 1920, it took the name by which it is now known. It now has 135,000 members (in 1925 it had approximately 30,000) but its influence is greater than might be imagined from this figure since the advantages it secures on the Wages Board cover all workers whether or not they are members of the union. The vast majority of its members are permanent workers; there are a few seasonal workers but, as the union emphasises, seasonal employment and unemployment are not a problem in the United Kingdom. The NUAW is represented on the national and local committees concerned with agricultural problems as well as on a certain number of tribunals and advisory committees. Furthermore, at the time this survey was carried out, 206 United Kingdom it expected to be represented on the proposed Economic Development Committee for Agriculture. The union considers that its representation carries more weight than its membership would imply; moreover it is not confined to a mere advisory role since, when decisions are put to the vote, the union representative also has the right to vote. The union plays an active part in the negotiation of collective agreements on wages and conditions of work in all branches of agricultural activity. It also deals with unemployment and social security but the latter activities take place within the framework of claims made by the trade union movement as a whole rather than at the level of the organisation itself. In thefieldof social security the agricultural worker has thus acquired parity with the other sectors of the economy: he pays the same contributions and enjoys the same benefits as the rest of the working class. Health, safety and vocational training are three fields in which the union is particularly active, to such an extent that, although it claims that present legislation on the matter is the outcome of NU AW action, it is still not satisfied but on the contrary is seeking to widen the scope of this legislation and ensure its strict application. As regards vocational training in particular, the union forms part of the Social Council and, at the time of the survey, was expecting to be represented on the new Industrial Training Board for Agriculture. Furthermore, in agreement with the other organisations, the union is seeking to bring about improvements of every kind in respect of housing and social activities for the workers. In 1965, for example, it secured the Government's amendment of the Act respecting housing for agricultural workers. The union considers that these workers now enjoy much better housing conditions than in the past. Although the NUAW does not intervene directly in the area of land reform (an area mainly confined to the improvement of uneconomic farms1), it has long been in favour of public ownership of private holdings, which it considers the only effective solution to the problem of small uneconomic units. In this respect it appears that certain measures proposed by the Government reflect the stand taken by the union; but the latter nevertheless emphasises that its aims lie rather in changing the whole structure of agriculture than merely in the redistribution of land ownership. There is no major obstacle to the union's activities, since all agricultural workers are covered by the Agricultural Wages Act of 1948 whereby the present Statutory Agricultural Wages Board was set up. The Board, which is composed of eight employers' representatives, eight workers' representatives x See FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Reform, including Land Settlement, in the United Kingdom, (doc. RU: WLR-C/66/12). 207 Agricultural organisations and development and five members appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture, deals in particular with wages, hours of work (including overtime) and public holidays. The rates it fixes are adopted by a simple majority vote, the role of the Ministry being confined to appointing its representatives and applying the measures adopted. It should be noted that there has been legislation on agricultural wages since 1917 and that, except during the period 1921-23, it has been constantly applied and improved, largely as a result of trade union efforts. In all other spheres where the union negotiates wages and conditions of work, the board or committee appointed is a joint voluntary body not bound by legislative measures, which means that union representatives use the traditional method of individual pressure to ensure application of the agreements reached. As regards the results obtained through negotiations, the NUAW stresses that except during the 1920s it has secured constant improvements in wages, working hours and conditions of work. Nevertheless the gap between the agricultural sector and other sectors of the economy is still fairly wide : the average weekly wage of agricultural workers (£10 10s.) is approximately 70 per cent of the industrial wage, whereas the 44-hour working week in agriculture is longer than that in industry by an average of four hours. Furthermore, although agricultural workers now have four weeks' paid leave and six days' paid public holidays per year, at the time of this survey they had not yet secured payment of wages during sick leave and were waiting for Parliament to approve certain proposals to amend the Agricultural Wages Act and to commission the Wages Board to introduce the necessary changes. Lastly, as regards literacy campaigns and workers' education, it is obviously mainly the second activity which concerns the union since there is very little illiteracy in Great Britain. The union is an active member of the Workers' Educational Association; it organises week-end courses and has its own special schools where agricultural workers can complete the training begun during their compulsory schooling. In addition it maintains a bursary award at Ruskin College, Oxford. The National Union of Agricultural Workers is a member of the Trades Union Congress and is affiliated to the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers. • Scottish Agricultural and Forestry Section, Transport and General Workers' Union The Scottish Agricultural and Forestry Section of the Transport and General Workers' Union, which now numbers 6,000 full-time workers, succeeded the Scottish Farm Servants' Union, set up in 1912, two years before the First 208 United Kingdom World War. After an initial period of decline due to the war, its membership increased from 6,000 in 1916 to 23,000 in 1919, subsequently dropping to 10,000 around 1928, i.e. approximately 15 per cent of agricultural wage earners at that time. In 1942 it joined the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union, of which it has become a section. The fact that its membership has returned to the 1916 level in no way implies a loss of influence or effectiveness but rather reflects the decrease in the agricultural labour force set in motion by the increasing mechanisation on farms. The Scottish union plays a similar role to that of the National Union of Agricultural Workers, described above. Its main activities consist in negotiating (on the basis of a national scale of minimum rates) wages, hours of work, overtime and conditions of work in general. These negotiations take place on the Statutory Agricultural Wages Board, the composition of which has already been described in the section on employers. Outside this official body, the union maintains that it plays a more or less advisory role on a certain number of joint committees. Furthermore, it is empowered to inspect its members' accommodation and to report to the Ministry of Housing when standards do not comply with those laid down by law. The union also looks after workers' education and organises courses for its members. Through its negotiations, the union has succeeded in vastly improving the lot of Scottish agricultural workers. Whereas, in reply to a survey carried out in 1928, the union stated that the principal disadvantages of the life of the Scottish agricultural worker were long hours and the absence of leisure rather than low wages (the union was then fighting for Saturday afternoons off)1, today it reports no obstacle of this kind but states, on the contrary, that it has secured appUcation of minimum wage rates as well as improvements in working hours and general conditions of employment. The Scottish Agricultural and Forestry Section is not affiliated to any other body apart from the Transport and General Workers' Union. • The Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union of Northern Ireland The Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union of Northern Ireland, which dates from 1922 and on which we have Utile information, has approximately 2,000 agricultural workers, most of whom are permanent. It plays a similar part to that of the other two organisations considered above, its main activities being collective bargaining on wages, hours of work and 1 See ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., pp. 146- 151. 209 Agricultural organisations and development general conditions of work on the Agricultural Wages Board mentioned above. The union considers that this board works quite well in so far as it guarantees minimum wages to all agricultural workers. The union is moreover satisfied at having brought about the application in Ulster of all wage increases granted in Great Britain, whilst nevertheless pointing out that there is still a longstanding gap which it has not yet been able to bridge completely. Apart from the apathy of the workers which the union considers the biggest obstacle to its development, no other factor impedes its activities. The Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union of Northern Ireland has been a member of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions since 1922 but is not affiliated to any other national or international body. EASTERN EUROPE Bulgaria Unlike other countries in Eastern Europe where one of the main reasons for collectivisation along socialist lines was the concentration of landed property in the hands of a few owners, Bulgaria—a country of small and mediumsized landowners prior to the Second World War—threw itself wholeheartedly into collectivisation as being the answer to the excessive fragmentation of agriculture, which was to boot overcrowded, short of capital, heavily in debt* and, above all, a prey to generalised underemployment. This situation was due, inter alia, to the fact that the area of arable land had increased by only 10 per cent in the 70 years following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1878, whereas the population had more than doubled. This was so notwithstanding the redistribution of the land from the former domains of the Turks, who had occupied Bulgaria for five centuries. As a result, in 1946, 44.2 per cent of holdings did not exceed 7.5 acres, and the fragmentation had been carried to such lengths that the number of holdings of all categories (i.e. from under 7.5 acres up to 125 acres and over) had risen from 7,982,000 in 1897 to 11,936,000 in 1946, the average size of a holding being between 1.25 and 0.8 acres.2 This was then the situation on the morrow of the Second World War, when the ratio of agricultural production to industrial production was 3 to 1. 1 Around 1935 the peasant population of Bulgaria was in debt to the tune of 6,000 million leva at the then prevailing rate of exchange. The average amount owed by each farming family was 8,500 leva, and the interest rate on loans varied from 50 to 200 per cent. See K. Kiriakov et al. : La réorganisation socialiste de l'économie rurale en République populaire de Bulgarie (Sofia, 1965), p. 6. * ibid., pp. 8-9. 210 Bulgaria The new régime which came to power in September 1944 was accordingly faced with the urgent necessity of reorganising the country's agriculture from top to bottom, and theoretically there were two ways in which it could do so. One was to collectivise a minimum amount of land, as was being done in Poland, for example, leaving the majority of farms to carry on individually, with or without State aid; the other—which the country adopted—consisted in introducing collective cultivation along lines very similar to those of the Soviet kolkhoz, supplementing this system by the establishment of State farms and pools of machinery and tractors. The choice of the first alternative would have been difficult for several obvious reasons, and above all because, under a system of private ownership, the microscopic size of the majority of the holdings and the disintegration of the land into a plethora of uneconomic plots made it impossible to industrialise agriculture without wastage on a scale which in any case the country was not in a position to stand. In 1934 some 550,000 wooden swing-ploughs were still in use on Bulgarian farm holdings, as against only 53,000 iron ploughs 1 and 3,500 tractors. Moreover, by the end of the Second World War the agricultural population had been practically ruined on account of the deliveries made to the Germans; to mention just one figure, the number of sheep had dropped by 3 million, or by one-third as compared with 1939. Finally, it was necessary at all costs to help the rural sector to emerge from a state of economic and social backwardness of which a fairly accurate idea can be gained from the conclusions of a survey carried out in 1935-36 upon a sample group of 1,420 families: The conditions in which a farmer's family has to live are hardly to be envied. An average family of six has to make do with one or two bedrooms, but there are families of nine all living in one room. . . . There are not enough beds or bedclothes: 11.22 per cent of these families sleep on the floor. Only 43.58 per cent have a kitchen, woefully ill-equipped and more often than not with no sink or running water... .a All this explains why, as early as September 1944, the Bulgarian Government decided to proceed by stages towards a drastic reform of agriculture. During the first stage, under the Agrarian Reform Act of 9 April 1946, it 1 See Bernard Kayser: La population et l'économie de la République populaire bulgare, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2787 (Paris, 12 June 1961), p. 24; Kiriakov, op. cit., p. 9. a Kiriakov, op. cit., p. 12. The conclusions of this survey may be compared with those of another carried out before the war in Hungary by Zoltan Ronai, during which an agricultural labourer told him that his main aspiration was to have three meals a day. See M. Cepede and M. Lengellé: Economie alimentaire du globe (Paris, Librairie de Médicis, 1953), p. 53. Anybody who fails to take into account this situation—all too frequent, alas, in the Eastern European countries—can never hope to understand fully the social and economic evolution of these countries from 1945 onwards. 211 Agricultural organisations and development carried out a reform of ownership, limiting it to 50 acres (75 in the cerealgrowing region of South Dobroja) and confiscating the surplus land owned by the few large landowners the country had; in fact only 150,000 acres were involved, which were added to the landed property owned by the State. The State thus had at its disposal 750,000 acres, 300,000 of which were distributed to poor peasants while 400,000 were allotted to the new State farms. In addition 1.5 million acres of grazing land and meadows were distributed by the Government to co-operative farms. The development of these institutions, which differ from the Soviet kolkhoz in that the land remains the private property of the co-operators, has been made much easier in Bulgaria by the ancient community traditions of the peasantry. An example is the zadruga (patriarchal commune), which involved either the farming of land jointly and indivisibly owned by the community under the direction of a domakin (chief, elected as a rule from a family with many branches) ; or the joint raising of flocks of sheep by shepherds.1 Furthermore, attempts were made by peasants as early as the end of the nineteenth century—without any aid or encouragement from the State—to organise co-operative farms; their first attempts, at Kochevo in 1899 and later in various villages in 1921-25, failed for lack of outside help. Nevertheless, in 1940 there existed ten co-operative farms, and despite the difficulties due to the war their number had risen to 28 by 9 September 1944. Their development since that date—this time along socialist lines—reflects the various phases of the Government's policy. In January 1945 George Dimitrov proclaimed that co-operative tilling of the land had to be organised in such a way as to provide all the conditions indispensable for the development of such a form of co-operation.2 These conditions may be summarised as follows: voluntary membership of the co-operative for peasants; voluntary collective ownership of production inputs and collective management of the land, anything contributed by the peasants themselves remaining their own private property; continuous building-up of the farms' reserves and floating capital; annual distribution of income in proportion to the labour furnished and the results achieved by each co-operator; possibility for each co-operator to have a plot of land and a few head of livestock of his own. The development of co-operative farms has progressed through the following four stages, as summarised by K. Kiriakov: The first stage lasted from 9 September 1944 to 1950. Most of the co-operative farms established were small ones and they attracted the small landowners. The 1 Concerning the organisation of the Bulgarian zadruga. see I. E. Geshov: "Zadrugata v Zapadna Balgarya rrhe zadruga in western Bulgaria]", Periodichesko Spisanie (Sofia), Vol. XXI-XXII, 1887, pp. 426-449. 2 Quoted by Kayser, op. cit., p. 25. 212 Bulgaria larger farmers hesitated, mulling it over, weighing up the pros and cons of collective farming. The pace of collectivisation during this stage went as follows: 110 cooperative farms were founded before the end of 1944; by the beginning of 1947 their number had risen to 438, covering 44,188 families and 465,000 acres of collectively owned land; by the beginning of 1950 the number of co-operative farms had reached 1,633, with 175,000 families of peasant co-operators and more than 1.5 million acres of collectively owned land. The second stage covered the years 1950-56. At the outset it was marked by collectivisation on a vast scale. The farmers with medium-size holdings in the plains flocked to join the farms. In 1953 or thereabouts the number of farms was 2,747; their membership accounted for 569,000 families and their land was estimated at 6.25 million acres, representing 52.3 per cent of the country's farmers and 60.5 per cent of the land under cultivation. The third stage began in 1956 and was marked by a fresh upsurge. Attempts to offer material incentives to co-operative farms and their members to increase their output were largely instrumental in this: the purchase prices of the main items of agricultural produce were raised, compulsory deliveries of agricultural produce and payments in kind to the machinery and tractor pools were replaced by purchases on the basis of a signed contract; retirement pensions were granted to farm cooperative members, etc. All this enabled collectivisation to be completed in 1958. The fourth stage in the development of the co-operative system began in 1959 with a reshaping of the co-operative farms. Large co-operative estates were created which occupied an average of 10,000 acres. This redistribution of co-operative land enabled the farms to add to and improve upon their material and technical equipment, to specialise, and to concentrate their production. This led to an increase in the output and the income of co-operators.1 At the end of 1961, according to data published by Bocho Iliev, there were 945 co-operative farms in Bulgaria farming 11,913,700 acres, or an average of roughly 12,600 acres per farm, and employing 1,255,000 peasant families (4,677,000 persons).2 Thus, by making land available to the people, rationalising the work and organisating a collective effort, Bulgarian agriculture was able to derive the maximum benefit from its human and technical resources and raise its output to double the pre-war figure. Lastly, it should be noted that the management of the co-operative farms and the short- and long-term planning of their production are handled by the co-operators themselves, whose general meeting constitutes the supreme authority "in sole and full charge of the co-operative farming operations". The general meeting appoints the chairman and the managing council of the farm, fixes the number of administrative employees and their remuneration, decides upon the admission of new members and assesses the initial contributions they should make and the rent to be paid them for the land they place at the disposal of the farm, and approves the production plans drawn up by 1 Kiriakov, op. cit., pp. 29-30. * See Bocho Iliev: Management Organisation and Labour Payment in Co-operative Farms (Sofia, 1963), p. 7. 213 Agricultural organisations and development the managing council. The State intervenes only in an advisory capacity by supplying the farms with information on the marketing of their produce. Apart from the co-operative farms, the agricultural structure provides for machinery and tractor pools arid State farms. The machinery and tractor pools are responsible for the care and maintenance of the mechanical inputs placed at the disposal of the co-operative farms, to which they detach brigades of tractor drivers with all the equipment necessary for farming operations. In addition, since they are run by the State, they act as intermediaries between the State and the co-operative farms in all matters connected with any financial, technical or administrative assistance they might need. The State farms, for their part, play a pilot role in Bulgarian agriculture, their task consisting not only in producing top-quality seed and seedlings and pure-bred livestock but also in trying out new farming techniques. In 1963 there were 85 State farms in Bulgaria covering a total of 8,745,000 acres and employing 106,000 agricultural labourers and technicians. • Union of Workers in the Rural Economy The employees of all three types of organisations belong to a single trade union of which all wage earners, salaried employees, specialists and managerial staff in agriculture are members. This union was founded in 1919 under the name of the Federation of Wine-Growing, Horticultural and Forestry Workers. In 1944 the federation became the Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers, which in its turn became the Union of Workers in the Rural Economy in 1964. In 1966 the union had a membership of more than 350,000, more than 327,000 of whom were paid-up members. Nevertheless, its influence extends far beyond its paid-up members, since bodies appointed by the union are responsible for occupational safety and health on co-operative farms and for the education of the co-operators. While the bulk of the union's membership consists of permanent employees, its members also include a substantial number of casual and seasonal workers employed mainly on work performed with animal traction equipment in the fields. There are no tenant farmers or share-croppers in Bulgaria. The union's main activity consists in playing an active part in the country's political and social life as well as in its economic and cultural development. It helps to draft standard-setting provisions concerning occupational safety, living conditions and rest periods for workers, co-operators and salaried employees, and ensures that they are enforced. It participates in the planning of projects relating to the rural economy and takes measures with a view to their implementation. It also assists the planners of the rural economy with 214 Bulgaria the development and introduction of technological innovations designed to place Bulgarian agriculture on a par with that of the rest of the world. In this way it contributes towards the steady rise in the incomes of the farms and of the workers themselves, keeps a check on occupational safety and social insurance and helps to simplify the administrative work of agricultural enterprises in general. Each year the union committees and the rural economic planners conclude collective labour agreements setting forth the obligations of both parties in regard to increasing output, occupational safety, social and cultural progress, physical training, etc. The union also helps to improve the workers' housing conditions, assists with the education of their children by running kindergartens and study rooms, and organises cultural recreational activities for a great many of its members and their children. In the union's view no obstacle hinders its development. Nevertheless, there are a few outstanding problems that have not yet been resolved, such as that of unemployed seasonal workers, which the union proposes to tackle by comparing Bulgaria's experiences with those of other countries. Apart from this problem of the seasonal unemployment of part of the agricultural labour force, which is not yet settled, Bulgaria has succeeded in vanquishing the social and economic evils of the past—illiteracy, residual unemployment among small farmers—and today the average standard of living in rural areas ensures a normal existence for all workers. Furthermore, plots of land are granted to employees of State farms and co-operative farms for their own use. These plots, which may be said to constitute a form of auxiliary farming within a system of collective farming, accounted in 1962 for 8.8 per cent of the arable land and 20 per cent of the family income of co-operators. Their owners use them not only to grow extra vegetables and fruit (partly for consumption by their families and partly for sale) but also to breed stock, which, in 1963, still constituted a sizeable proportion of the country's total livestock: 28.8 per cent of the cows, 19.5 per cent of the pigs and 30 per cent of the sheep. Overall, the animal production from these supplementary plots amounted to 31 per cent of the country's total production in 1963.1 Under the system of socialist democracy and under the Labour Code in force in Bulgaria, all matters pertaining to wage earners and salaried employees are discussed and settled by agreement between the unions and the Government-appointed managerial staff, who are the "employers". There are also other organisations which operate among rural workers, such as the Patriotic Front, the Communist Youth Federation, the Scientific 1 Kiriakov, op. cit., p. 60. 215 Agricultural organisations and development Technical Federation, the Readers' Federation, and physical training and sports societies, with which the union often works to implement measures of a social nature. Such activities are undertaken mainly on the initiative of the union. The Union of Workers in the Rural Economy is officially represented at the Ministry of Agriculture, its president and the secretary of its central committee being members respectively of the Collective Directorate (Collegium) of the Ministry and the State Farms Council, the most important body in the country. The union's representatives have a real say in the decisions of these bodies, since unanimity is required for decisions on all issues. The union considers that it has achieved results in the following respects: — The average wages of agricultural workers are at present higher than those of workers in light industry and other branches of the national economy. Furthermore, a daily minimum is guaranteed to labourers and technicians on farms. — In certain areas of the country, thanks to the development of tobacco, vegetable and perennial crop growing, and thanks to the establishment of peripheral undertakings, it has been found possible to provide employment throughout the year for a large proportion of the seasonal workers. — For the construction of housing for agricultural workers, the State makes land available free of charge and extends long-term loans, as well as paying a cash subsidy for the construction of private dwellings. The face of the Bulgarian countryside has been drastically changed, and today the peasants live in decently furnished modern homes. Nearly 600,000 new houses have been built in the space of twenty years. — Union members are insured against sickness, accidents and old age, like all wage earners and salaried employees; they draw pensions (which increased ninefold between 1956 and 1962) and family allowances, and are granted assistance in the event of a birth or an illness in the family. The age of entitlement to an old-age pension is 60 years for men and 55 for women. — All wage earners and salaried employees receive free education and may attend advanced vocational training courses. — Illiteracy has been eradicated. — Rural hygiene has improved considerably thanks to the creation of the State farms. In the place of the old farmyards crowded with livestock and equipment there stand today modern buildings with gardens, fruit trees and flowers. In addition, all the villages have at their disposal today the hygiene and medical care facilities they need. As concerns women and children in particular, in 1962 Bulgarian villages could boast of 969 maternity hospitals with 2,585 beds, 625 crèches with 15,470 beds and 5,300 kindergartens catering for 230,000 children. 216 Germán Democratic Republic — There have also been considerable developments in the field of leisure activities and culture. Whereas before the war there were only 22 cinemas in rural areas, the figure had risen to 1,631 by 1963, while the number of spectators had been multiplied by 130. As of the same date there were 4,199 cultural centres, many of them equipped with all kinds of modern facilities. The conclusion may therefore be drawn that, thanks to its multiple social, economic and cultural activities, the union has played a very large part in the advancement of a peasant population which was formerly very backward, and in integrating it into the national community as a whole. Since 1946 the Union of Workers in the Rural Economy has belonged to the Trade Unions International of Agricultural, Forestry and Plantation Workers, which is itself affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and participates actively in its conferences. German Democratic Republic In 1946 the German Democratic Republic carried out a drastic reorganisation of its peasant organisations simultaneously with a no less far-reaching reform of land tenure. As a recent study so aptly describes it: On the eve of the Second World War, what now constitutes the territory of Eastern Germany consisted mainly, particularly in the plains to the north, of large estates belonging to members of the Junker aristocracy around which were crowded a multitude of small-holdings. The pattern of land ownership at that time was as follows: Size of holding (In hectares1) Percentage of total number of holdings Percentage of total area under cultivation Under 5 From 5 to 20 From 20 to 50 From 50 to 100 Over 100 57.7 31.7 8.2 1.4 1.0 9.2 31.8 22.4 8.4 28.2 * 1 hectare = 2.471 acres. Thus more than one-third of the area under cultivation was in the hands of 2.4 per cent of the landowners, or about 10,000 persons, while more than half the landowners owned fewer than 5 hectares.1 1 Henri Bogdan: La situation économique de l'Allemagne orientale. Notes et études documentaires, No. 3397 (Paris, June 1967), p. 10. 217 Agricultural organisations and development Unlike its neighbour, Poland, where individual ownership is still the predominant feature, Eastern Germany has gradually been progressing towards a general collectivisation of agriculture, making especially rapid strides in 1960, which was a decisive year in this respect. Agricultural production co-operatives, first established in 1952 and accounting initially for only 3.3 per cent of the area under cultivation, had already appropriated 43.2 per cent by 1959; a year later their holdings had almost doubled to reach 84.2 per cent, though since then their progress has been almost imperceptible. In 1965 the 15,139 co-operatives then in existence controlled 85.7 per cent of the area under cultivation, or 1.7 per cent more than in 1960. The number of workers belonging to these co-operatives has risen in a similar manner, from 190,185 in 1955 to 878,851 in 1965, or 70 per cent of the country's working agricultural population. There are three basic types of agricultural production co-operatives in Eastern Germany, organised in such a way as to bring about the gradual absorption of the peasantry into collective farming along lines which resemble closely those followed in Poland, as we shall see later. In co-operatives of type I, the peasants farm arable land on a collective basis but keep their own meadows and grazing land as well as their own house and garden. In the case of type II, the peasants hand over their meadows and grazing land to the co-operative and keep only their house and garden. With type III co-operatives, each peasant keeps only his house and a tiny plot of 1.25 acres. At the end of 1965 there were 8,973 co-operatives of types I and II accounting for 4,253,298 acres, and 6,166 type III co-operatives covering 9,226,684 acres. Apart from the production co-operatives, mention should be made of the development of State farms, first created at the beginning of the reform using some of the land confiscated from war criminals and notorious Nazis. By the end of 1965 these State farms covered a total of 1,054,237 acres, or slightly more than the total under private ownership (963,621 acres), representing only 6.7 per cent of the total area under cultivation, as against 85.7 per cent for the production co-operative sector. General organisations • Farmers' Mutual Aid Association In order to encompass, first, the activities of reorganisation and, subsequently, those of the co-operative movement, farmers' mutual aid committees were set up from 1945 onwards. These offered agricultural workers endless opportunities to co-operate in the solution of the economic and social problems posed by the transformation of an agricultural system that events had left in 218 German Democratic Republic a chaotic state. The following year, on 10 May 1946, these committees (set up first at the village level, then the district level, then the provincial level and finally the national level) formed the present organisation, known as the Farmers' Mutual Aid Association (Vereinigung der gegenseitigen Bauernhilfe), which was itself to amalgamate in 1950 with the Rural Purchasing and Sales Co-operatives Association to form a single unified body covering the whole country. The association had started out with 52,000 members in 1946; by the end of 1947 the number had already grown to 480,000, and though it has not announced its present membership it may be presumed to amount to more or less the same figure as that for the production co-operatives and the State farms. In its reply to our questionnaire the Farmers' Mutual Aid Association states that since its foundation it has concerned itself particularly with bringing the agrarian reform to a successful conclusion and promoting on a national scale the development of co-operation, from the simplest forms of work in groups to the banding together of peasants into agricultural producers' cooperatives. In addition to the work it does on the spot, the association intervenes at every stage, locally and nationally, in the framing of the country's agricultural policy. At the national level its representatives help to draw up the Government's agricultural plans, and sit on the National Agricultural Council. At the provincial and local level they belong to the relevant agricultural councils and social insurance councils.1 It should be stressed that the association does not confine itself to a purely advisory role ; it also plays a part in the taking and implementation of decisions. Its attitude towards the authorities is shaped by the farmers' congresses held every two years to discuss and approve all the basic political and economic decisions called for in regard to general agricultural policy and to the fixing of prices and production targets within the context of the national economy. On the other hand, it is the Free Trade Unions Confederation of Eastern Germany—with which the association collaborates closely at all times—which is responsible for settling any problems arising in connexion with the wages or conditions of work of the employees of nationalised farming enterprises. In the social and cultural field, the association concerns itself, in collaboration with the government authorities, with improving the conditions of life in rural areas by opening welfare and cultural centres in the villages. In addition, especially in winter, it organises courses and lectures on political and technical subjects for the villagers as well as television programmes and 1 Concerning social insurance, see the Ordinance of 26 April 1951, ILO: Legislative Series, 1951—Ger.D.R. 1. 219 Agricultural organisations and development study trips. Lastly, as concerns the female rural population, the association has played a large part, it seems, in securing the enforcement of the laws respecting the equality of women in employment and vocational training1 as well as in their private and public'life. The Farmers' Mutual Aid Association makes no mention of affiliation to any international federation. Within the country it is a member, like all the parties and all the other organisations for the masses, of the National Front of the German Democratic Republic. Hungary General organisations After the land reform of 1945, Hungary committed itself whole-heartedly to the co-operative movement, extending it to such an extent that, quite apart from its traditional functions, it now covers a whole range of activities which in Western Europe are often dealt with by general agricultural organisations. It is for this reason that the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives has been classified under this heading in this survey. • Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives In addition to the craft co-operatives, which are outside the scope of this study, the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives brings together at the national level the two main categories of co-operatives which today dominate practically the whole of Hungarian agriculture : the rural consumer co-operatives (general consumer, purchasing and marketing co-operatives), and the ordinary agricultural co-operatives (farmers' associations or co-operatives specialising in a specific branch of production). As regards retailing and marketing, the present Hungarian co-operative movement has a long tradition, for as far back as the end of the nineteenth century, in 1898, a central co-operative known as the Hangya ("ant") was founded by Count Alexander Karolyi. Branching off from this central co-operative, and under its control, innumerable small local societies, both consumer co-operatives and co-operatives for the collection of agricultural products, sprang up all over the country. Two other important organisations 1 In addition to the provisions in the Constitution, many legislative enactments have been published dealing with the protection of women in employment, outstanding among which are the Acts of 19 April 1950, 27 September 1950 and 25 October 1951. See ILO: Legislative Series, 1950—Ger.D.R. 1 and 4; ibid., 1951—Ger.D.R. 5. 220 Hungary were subsequently formed : the Co-operative Association of Hungarian Farmers which, before the Second World War, marketed a large part of the country's agricultural produce1, and the National Central Dairy Co-operative Society, founded in 1922, which within ten years controlled nearly two-thirds of the country's dairies. Immediately after the Second World War, and in the interests of those benefiting under the 1945 land reform, the Hungarian Government encouraged the forming of new co-operatives which atfirstco-existed alongside such of the old ones as still remained. As was emphasised in a report submitted to the International Seminar on Co-operation at Budapest in 1963, during the first years after their foundation (1945-48) the co-operatives of the numerous farmers served their members in many ways. They took over the joint management of the flour-mills, distilleries, irrigation equipment, warehouses and silos, threshing machines and tractors of the large estates that had been divided up among the peasants; they managed large areas of vineyards, orchards and pasture lands; they supplied their members with seeds and other means of production; they assisted their members' productive activities by setting up workshops t o repair agricultural machinery, by creating poultry farms and nurseries and by placing farming contracts. They allocated State economic aid to the new small-holders in the form of cut-price chemical fertiliser, for example; they also opened shops where their members could buy consumer goods and sell their agricultural produce.2 It was not until 1949 that it was decided to amalgamate the new agricultural co-operatives with the old consumer, purchasing and marketing co-operatives (dairy co-operatives or organisations of the Hangya centre). This amalgamation gave rise to the new type of general agricultural co-operative which was to replace the different types of pre-war co-operatives. During the same year the old co-operative centres joined the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives. Since then, all the farmers' co-operatives, with the exception of the agricultural production co-operatives and the fishermen's co-operatives, have been managed and supervised by the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives. It should be emphasised that co-operative membership is open to anyone over the age of 16, provided he is in full possession of his mental faculties. At the local level, co-operative members hold a general meeting at which they elect members to the various bodies of the co-operative: the management 1 In 1920, in co-operation with several societies, including the Hangya and the Central Mutual Credit Society of Hungary, the Co-operative Association of Hungarian Farmers created a limited company, the Futura, for the marketing and export of agricultural produce. a Jénë Szirmai: Les activités des coopératives hongroises de consommation et d'écoulement pour satisfaire les besoins de la population rurale et accroître la production agricole (paper submitted to the International Seminar on Co-operation, Budapest, 1963). 221 Agricultural organisations and development board, the supervisory board and the specialised committees. The management board appoints the chairman and officers. Local co-operatives come under the management boards of the district federations, which they elect, and these federations in turn appoint the members of the management boards of the "departmental" federations. At the highest level, the National Federation is administered by a council of 60 to 70 members, elected by the Co-operators' Congress which meets every four years. Each delegate to the congress represents an average of 3,000 to 4,000 members. The council meets up to twice a year between congresses to consider the report of the activities of the federation.1 In 1966 the number of consumer co-operatives throughout the country amounted to 593, with a total membership of over 2 million. In most cases these are regional co-operatives whose activities cover several communes (generally five or six). The present ordinary agricultural co-operatives (farmers' associations, specialised groups or co-operatives for a specific branch of production, winegrowers' co-operatives, etc.) were set up at different times. For example, the bee-keepers' groups (or co-operatives) were formed in the early 1950s; the wine-growers' and horticultural co-operatives were established around 1960, when Hungarian agriculture was being collectivised, whilst the traditional wine-growers' communities go back more than 100 years. There are still cases today of ordinary agricultural co-operatives being set up when this form of co-operation appears to offer members the best means of achieving their economic targets. A certain number of horticultural co-operatives, for example, has recently been set up in some Hungarian towns. There is expected to be an increase in the number of ordinary agricultural co-operatives, the purpose of which is to group people engaged in a specific branch of farming. In 1966 there were approximately 2,000 of these co-operatives, with a membership of 120,000. Agricultural co-operatives affiliated to the Federation of Hungarian Cooperatives are mainly involved in the following activities: (a) Consumer co-operatives. These deal mainly with the retailing of consumer goods, the hotel industry, and the wholesale purchase of agricultural produce and by-products. They are engaged in a number of industrial activities and provide various services. All these activities are directly or indirectly related to agricultural production and are designed to satisfy the needs of the rural population. The following points are of particular interest : — Apart from the food and industrial goods that are generally sold, the 1 For further details, see Roger Kérinec: "La Hongrie adhérente à TACI", Revue des études coopératives (Paris), 1966, No. 144, pp. 153-163; and André Hirschfeld: "Quelques aspects du mouvement coopératif en Hongrie", ibid., 1964, No. 137, pp. 245-271. 222 Hungary consumer co-operative shops also stock all the tools and equipment needed for horticultural purposes, such as insecticides, seeds, small machines, equipment of all kinds, etc. — The wholesale purchase of fruit and vegetables, animal fodder, honey, medicinal plants, millet, poppies and beans is entrusted to the consumer co-operatives and their agencies. The co-operative bodies also purchase considerable quantities of poultry, eggs, smoked meat and other products which are first bought wholesale by the State. — Apart from organising the purchasing side, consumer co-operatives have other means of influencing production. It is they who sell to the owners of orchards and family holdings the plants, vines, etc., needed to set up new orchards and vineyards; they also sell chicks (the co-operatives have their own sitting hens); furthermore they run rabbit-raising centres to promote the breeding of better strains; they have their own sauerkraut factories, kilns, etc. In the services they provide, the consumer co-operatives also take account of farming needs. For example, they hire out agricultural tools, prepare spraying mixtures for plant protection and, upon payment of the cost, undertake meat-smoking, spirit-distilling, etc. The consumer co-operatives are also interested in raising cultural standards in rural areas. They not only run musical and theatrical groups made up of musicians, singers, dancers and amateur actors from the region but also organise vocational training courses, try to arouse interest in books, run rural clubs and organise exhibitions of furniture, fashion shows, etc., to develop the taste of the rural population. (b) Ordinary agricultural co-operatives. The main task of the ordinary agricultural co-operatives is to assist their members in agricultural matters. Most of them bring together persons engaged in a specific branch of cropgrowing or stock-breeding, and their activities are therefore usually confined to the needs of this branch. Some of these co-operatives are corporate bodies (independent co-operatives), whilst others constitute a specialised group within a consumer co-operative. As a rule they undertake the following activities: — the joint purchase of materials used by their members in their particular branch (selected seeds, young plants, grafts, insecticides, organic and inorganic fertiliser, breeding stock, various items of equipment, etc) ; — advisory services and vocational teaching; — the joint sale of produce; — the maintenance of the equipment used on a pool basis, and the provision of the necessary services (generators and machines, vine-harvesting equipment, reservoirs of spraying mixtures, paths, wells, etc.); — veterinary services in the co-operatives of small livestock breeders. 223 Agricultural organisations and development Ordinary co-operatives have been set up in the following branches of agriculture: wine-making and arboriculture; the cultivation of asparagus and mushrooms; the growing of flowers and ornamental plants; bee-keeping; poultry-breeding and fattening; rabbit and fur farms; the breeding of pigeons. The ordinary agricultural co-operatives organise vocational training courses, practical exercises and meetings at which experience acquired is exchanged. The courses on mushroom-growing have reached a nation-wide scale. Beekeepers also organise courses in secondary schools. Certain co-operatives and groups have the specific aim of spreading knowledge in a particular branch of agriculture. The young farmers' cooperatives organise elementary courses in secondary schools. Generally they specialise in a sector of intensive farming (cultivation of vegetables and fruit, small livestock farming, etc.). Agricultural clubs are organised at schools under a biology teacher. The Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives and the "departmental" co-operative federations provide the ordinary agricultural groups with substantial financial aid. Price maintenance for agricultural products is ensured by means of production and sales contracts. The consumer co-operatives and the ordinary agricultural co-operatives make contracts with their members concerning the production and purchase of their produce. These agreements enable them to maintain contractual relations with the consumers, in particular with the wholesale trade, industrial undertakings, etc. In the producers' interests, the contracts generally lay down minimum prices. The prices vary according to the state of the market, the quality and particularly the uniformity of the products, the method of packing, etc. The Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives represents the interests of the consumer co-operatives and of the ordinary agricultural co-operatives vis-à-vis the economic ministries (Ministries of Agriculture, the Food Industry, etc.). The ministries and other State authorities are required to consult the federation before taking any measure affecting co-operatives. In fact, this concerns only measures within the jurisdiction of the authorities, for in all other respects the activities of the co-operatives are governed by the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives. Co-operatives are represented on the basic trade union organisations, on the "departmental" trade union bodies (through the "departmental" federations) and on the Central Council of Trade Unions through the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives. Decisions affecting employees are taken at all levels by mutual agreement; the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives and the "departmental" co-operative federations seek the advice of the trade unions before regulating working hours, wages and other conditions of work. 224 Hungary In Hungary, the authorities respect the autonomy of the co-operatives and ensure that the latter carry out their activities under the best conditions, so that if a co-operative affiliated to the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives does not develop to the desired extent this is solely because of practical difficulties or lack of technical facilities. All the consumer co-operatives and ordinary agricultural co-operatives belong to a "departmental" federation and, through the latter, to the Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives. As a rule, they belong to this federation from the time of their foundation; in most cases, though, the "departmental" federation actually helps to set up its future member, providing it with all necessary assistance. At the present time there is no consumer co-operative or ordinary agricultural co-operative in Hungary that is not a member of a "departmental" federation. The Federation of Hungarian Co-operatives has been a member of the International Co-operative Alliance since 1966. Agricultural workers' unions • Agricultural and Forestry Workers' Trade Union After expanding rapidly at the beginning of the century1 Hungarian agricultural trade unionism, which was persecuted and practically wiped out by the Horthy Government, had been reduced to semi-clandestine activity when the Second World War broke out. Not until the end of the war could it be re-established. The Agricultural and Forestry Workers' Trade Union (MEDOSZ) now enlists workers in agricultural and forestry undertakings, water supply, machinery pools and other agricultural institutions and undertakings in the State sector. It has 270,000 members, which means that 89 per cent of workers employed in the State sector are members of the union. In 1945 the agricultural trade union movement was closely linked to the agrarian reform undertaken in the country. It was at this time that it became possible to change the land holding system in Hungary, which was dominated by large estates. In a very short time the land distribution committees formed at the liberation distributed nearly 5 million acres of arable land to 650,000 needy agricultural workers. Within a few years the first agricultural producers' co-operatives had been formed and these later played a decisive role during the collectivisation period. •In 1919 the Hungarian Union of Agricultural Workers (Magyarországi fòldmunkasok Országos Szovetsége) had 500,000 members and 1,700 local branches. In 1928 only 10,000 members and 68 branches remained. See ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., p. 155. 225 Agricultural organisations and development Throughout this eventful time the successors to the former National Union of Land Workers were faced with the considerable task of organising and educating hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers—particularly from 1948 onwards, when the first State farms were created as an integral part of the nationalised agricultural sector, along with farm machinery pools and the State forestry and water-supply undertakings. The present union, which was formed in 1952, has continued its predecessors' work and achieved outstanding results in all fields concerning the improvement of the material, cultural and social condition of agricultural workers. As regards wage policy, the Government, at the union's request, has increased agricultural wages several times; during the period 1961-66, wages went up by an annual average of 3 per cent on State farms, 2.8 per cent in machinery repair stations and 6 per cent in forestry undertakings. The average monthly wage of workers in the State agricultural sector in 1966 was 1,600 forints, approximately the same as that of industrial workers. Likewise, union activities led to a considerable improvement in farmers' housing conditions during the Second Five-Year Plan (1961-65). During this period 1,256 million forints were spent on the construction of houses and welfare amenities in the State sector. In addition to these investments, undertakings also have access to a total budget of approximately 1,000 million forints, in the shape of renovation, maintenance and development funds, half of which may be spent on building or installing welfare amenities. These large sums have made it possible to provide workers in State agricultural undertakings with 56,000 beds in comfortably equipped hostels (with libraries, radios, etc.). As regards forestry, the investment funds have enabled 500-600 enterprise-owned housing units to be built each year, and the workers themselves build an average of 1,400 units a year from their own resources or with State aid. Moreover, in view of working conditions in forestry undertakings, which involve workers in spending long periods away from home, in 1966 the union secured the provision of 51 caravans and 400 heated huts, whilst the WaterSupply Service provided 63 caravans and 100 heated huts. On the State farms the union runs 740 permanent canteens catering for 45,000 workers. The latter pay between 9 and 12 forints for the three daily meals, i.e. approximately 20 per cent of their wages. The union also has to its credit the creation of a standard social insurance system which came into force on 1 July 1966, abolishing the differences that had hitherto existed between industrial and agricultural workers from the point of view of social security. It should nevertheless be pointed out that measures taken before the adoption of the Legislative Decree in question had already considerably improved social security benefits; for example, whereas in 1949 226 Hungary the annual value of benefits per worker was 1,156 forints, this figure had risen to 3,865 forints by 1964. To keep pace with this increase in services provided under the social security system, the number of doctors and of hospital beds in Hungary is constantly increasing; between 1961 and 1964 alone, the number of doctors per 10,000 inhabitants rose from 16.4 to 18.5 and that of hospital beds from 72,074 to 76,278. Mention must also be made of a similar development in trade union activities as regards pension schemes for agricultural workers. The retirement age in Hungary is 55 for women and 60 for men. Over the last 12 years, pension rates have changed several times to the workers' advantage. In 1959 there was a 25 per cent increase in pensions under 800 forints and in widows' pensions under 400 forints, the amount of which had been fixed in 1954; in 1963 widows' pensions were increased by a further 20 per cent and then pensions under 1,000 forints were increased to the same extent as from 1 July 1965. At the same time the ceiling was raised from 700 to 800 forints for widows' pensions and from 850 to 1,000 forints for married couples' retirement pensions. These pension increases represent 264 million forints per year. Hungarian workers are also covered by a system of graduated family allowances. On the national scale there are 600,000 families receiving family allowances, including those employed in agriculture; child allowances are paid for 1.5 million children. During the period 1959-66 the family benefit rates (in forints) rose as follows : for 2 children for 3 children for 4 children for 5 children foi- each additional child 19S9 1966 75 180 260 350 120 300 510 680 850 170 The union is extremely active in the leisure field in organising holidays for the workers. Between 1961 and 1965 it organised holidays for 57,000 persons. In addition it helped between 2,000 and 2,500 workers to go abroad in order to become acquainted with the living and working conditions of agricultural workers in other socialist countries. The union also organises various seminars with a view to training the skilled workers required on large agricultural undertakings using modern production methods. By this means approximately 12,000 tractor drivers and 25,000-30,000 skilled workers are trained each year. Apart from meeting the workers' economic and cultural needs, the union is also concerned with stepping up production and developing methods likely to increase the workers' material well-being. In the factories which it covers, it promotes "socialist work emulation" which, particularly in recent years, has become a widespread mass movement. In 1966 3,100 teams made up of 227 Agricultural organisations and development 42,545 workers vied for the honorary title of "Socialist Brigade" which in 1965 had been awarded to 2,282 teams made up of 29,495 workers. A whole range of laws and regulations provides workers with the opportunity of developing their talents in all fields and of contributing towards national economic development by their ideas and suggestions. In this respect the innovators' movement, largely organised and run by the unions, is of special significance. The economic importance of the innovators' movement is revealed by the fact that in the second half of 1965 the workers submitted 2,826 suggestions, 1,100 of which were used, and the State paid 1,129.5 million forints for innovations suggested by the workers on State farms. The right of unions to defend the workers' interests is guaranteed in Hungary by laws and regulations and it is the workers themselves who ensure their observance. Moreover there is close co-operation between the top levels of the public administration and the union ; the latter discusses in advance all important measures concerning the workers, putting their case to the administration. As regards joint bargaining within undertakings, the workers elect trade union committees which keep in contact with the leaders of the economy. These trade union bodies are direct representatives of the workers' interests and, when necessary, adopt measures on the spot in matters affecting them. Nevertheless, the union considers that it still has a number of problems to solve since the rapid development of the economy is constantly presenting it with new tasks. Both quantitatively and qualitatively it has to do more and more to meet the increasing needs of the population and to keep the industry, which is developing at a fast rate, supplied with raw materials. The union also considers that it must develop relations between workers and management according to the requirements of modern times, improve still further the management of agricultural undertakings and, by all possible means, raise the standard of administration of large-scale agricultural undertakings. Likewise it is trying to develop the system of material incentives, to increase harvest averages and the output of animal products and to reduce production costs. In its opinion, the spirit of initiative in the country should receive even more encouragement, vocational training be further promoted, and mechanisation intensified in order to accumulate adequate reserves to enable agricultural efficiency to be improved. The Hungarian Union of Agricultural Workers is a member of the Trade Unions International of Agricultural, Forestry and Plantation Workers, which is affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), and represents the common interests of Hungarian agricultural workers at international conferences. It is a member of the Executive Committee of the WFTU and takes part in drawing up its working programme; furthermore, it helps the 228 Poland work of trade unions in developing countries both by providing material assistance and by passing on its experience and methods. Poland The position in Poland—as in all the people's democracies—has changed entirely since before the war. At that time, Polish agriculture was organised on quite different lines, and although agricultural trade unionism was fairly highly developed (there were some 179,000 trade unionists out of 620,000 wage earners), it was not markedly effective. Here, as in other Eastern European countries, a trade union wasfirstand foremost designed for challenge and combat. Agriculture was organised in such a way that a union could have no voice in farm management. Although a champion of the socialist line, Poland, like Yugoslavia, has not nationalised all land. In 1965, out of some 49,721,700 acres devoted to agriculture, State land accounted for 13 per cent of the area farmed; agricultural co-operatives accounted for 1 per cent, and private owners for 86 per cent. This explains the apparent weakness of the Polish agricultural trade union movement, which is concentrated above all in the State farms, for 7 per cent of the manpower is engaged in socialist farming while 93 per cent are farming for themselves. In the private sector, the "agricultural circle" in fact does the jobs which elsewhere are performed by unions and general organisations. Besides these circles, there are two other organisations which help to meet the needs of the country-dweller, namely, the Central Union of Agricultural Production Co-operatives and the Agricultural Federation of Peasants' Mutual Aid Co-operatives. We shall see below the part they play and what they have accomplished. • The Polish Agricultural Workers' Union and the State farms Since agricultural wage earners are concentrated in the State farms, we shall not understand the part the unions play unless we grasp what these farms stand for in the context of the nation's economy. The Polish State farms were set up in 1945-46, chiefly in the territories recovered from the Germans (in the north and west), where they represented some 27 per cent of all land. In 1964, their production accounted for 12 per cent of total agricultural output.1 But, quite apart from the part they play 1 Witold Lipski: Collective Forms of Farming in Poland, paper submitted at the Seminar on Land Structure and Co-operatives, Rome, 1966 (Rome, FAO, 1966; mimeographed doc. RU:TAS/66/l),p.2. 229 Agricultural organisations and development in national production, these farms, technically speaking, are the vanguard of that industrialised socialist agriculture to which the country aspires. Thus it is that some of them, working with various scientific institutions, simultaneously carry on production and research (the research being subsidised by the State), while others are given over entirely to teaching and extension work, and are associated with secondary colleges of agriculture. They thus improve agricultural techniques in the short run while training future managers and officials in the long run. One of Poland's finest specialists puts the matter thus 1 : In order to raise the present level of agricultural production and assure its future growth it is necessary to have a network of State farms devoted exclusively to scientific and educational purposes. In Poland, these are seed production and stock-breeding farms. The State farms account for almost the whole production of improved seeds in this country. Owing to the high level of such production in the period of 1961-65 it was possible to exchange grain seeds in the whole country every four years and to provide improved seeds for the whole area under sugar-beet and rape seed. In 1965-70, seeds are to be exchanged every three years. . . . In animal production a similar role is played by the stock-breeding farms, which possess livestock of the highest quality This way of organising stock-breeding and seed production enables the farms to pursue a uniform breeding policy based on scientific principles and properly to distribute different varieties of plant and animal breeds in various regions of the country. The farms obtain financial support from the State and thus the means of production increase are available to the farmers at a low cost. In 1964, there were in Poland 6,229 State farms, which employed, all in all, some 326,800 agricultural workers.2 These farms, created between 1946 and 1955, together make 20 "units", under the General Inspectorate of State Farms of the Ministry of Agriculture. On behalf of these units, the inspectorate: — from time to time undertakes bargaining with the Agricultural Workers' Union, with regard to wages and conditions of employment; — gives its views on the price of agricultural produce sold by State farms and makes suggestions to the Ministry of Agriculture about sales prices and other things to do with sales; — prepares proposals for the Ministry of Agriculture as regards the economic circumstances in which State farms can be expected to develop, and collaborates with its various departments ; 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: The Experiences of State Farms in Poland, by T. Rychlik (doc.RU:WLR-C/66/26, Part III, pp. 6-7). This is borne out by production statistics: wheat production went up from 11.9 quintals per hectare in 1934-38 to 20.1 in 1961; rye production from 11.2 to 17.1; barley production from 11.8 to 19.9, while the production of oats rose from 11.4 to 18.5. Similarly, sugar production increased from 32.3 lb. per inhabitant in 1937 to 102.3 in 1960. See Pologne, chiffres et faits (Warsaw, Editions Polonia, 1962), p. 58. (N.B. 1 quintal = approx. 1 cwt.; 1 hectare = 2.471 acres). 8 Concise Statistical Yearbook of Poland, 1965 (Warsaw, Polish Central Statistical Agency, 1965), p. 124. 230 Poland — works hand-in-hand with the Agricultural Workers' Union and with various State administrative bodies to improve the general standard of living of workers on State farms. Having said this, we must add that there is, in Poland, no general organisation representing the State farms. The inspectorate mentioned above is merely a ministerial organ which keeps an eye on the activities of the "units" and when circumstances warrant intervenes on behalf of some or all of them. Hence it acts as a mediator between the State and the Agricultural Workers' Union. The latter intervenes in varying degrees and in collaboration with the competent authorities in activities of all sorts and descriptions. As regards production, it helps to draw up plans and to improve the way in which State farms are run. These tasks cover everything to do with the running of a State farm, from the preparation of budget estimates in connexion with investments to the introduction of technical innovations or the organisation of educational and training courses. As regards wages, the union approaches the authorities (i.e. the Ministry of Agriculture) and helps to work out a wages policy. It bargains for the financial incentives offered in exchange for output by undertakings. Collective agreements, renewable at intervals, define wages, working hours, holidays, health protection and similar matters. Moreover, the union takes a hand in supervising the Wages Fund and protects the worker against any breach of the rules agreed upon. With regard to occupational health, the union is authorised under existing legislation to inspect undertakings. To this end it has its own corps of inspectors who are called upon to seek out all possible sources of industrial injury and to ensure that the health regulations are duly observed. The Agricultural Workers' Union deals, too, with housing and collective equipment. It brings to the notice of the authorities any buildings which might need restoration or improvement ; it helps to draw up investment plans for the construction of new houses or collective equipment, and supervises their putting into eifect. Thanks to these activities, the Polish countryside is full of things of interest to the community, such as clinics, hospitals, kindergartens, clubs, cultural centres, and the like. Furthermore, by agreement with the medical authorities, the union organises the periodical medical examination of workers, preventive health campaigns, lectures on birth control, and all sorts of activities which affect the welfare of the country-dweller. In fact, most of the union budgets go on health problems. As part of its social welfare activities, the union deals with workers' holidays too, organising travel (within Poland or abroad) or stays in rest homes. It does the same for the children; these enjoy kindergartens, playgrounds, 231 Agricultural organisations and development nurseries, and so on in undertakings, and huge numbers are despatched annually to specially equipped holiday camps. Within the undertakings, the union creates libraries, workers' clubs, cinemas and halls where people of note from public life and from the world behind the footlights can come to offer entertainment, or edification, as the case may be. Lastly, a proportion of the union's budget is earmarked for financial assistance, when members require it. A member is entitled to a special allowance whenever a child is born to him, or whenever a member of his family dies. Should the need arise, he can apply to the union, which will help him by offering a loan or by making an outright gift of money.1 Thus the Agricultural Workers' Union is a powerful mass organisation, the manifold activities of which go far beyond those of most similar organisations. We shall have occasion to revert to this subject, but it will not be amiss to say here and now that we shall find it difficult to grasp the scope of Polish agricultural trade unionism unless we know something about the development of labour law in the people's democracies. This is a subject covered in masterly fashion in an analysis by Dr. Maria Matey, of the Warsaw Institute of Law; we shall merely summarise her conclusions. Having made the point that the share taken by trade unions in drawing up and applying labour law, and the constantly increasing trade union share in the country's political and social life, constitute one of the most remarkable phenomena of the last twenty years, Dr. Matey says that : (a) In Poland, the unions form a single organisation, covering almost the entire actively employed population (although membership is neither automatic nor compulsory). They constitute an exceedingly powerful force, which, associated with the workers' party, assumes responsibility for the running of the State and for the well-being of the economy. To this end, over and above their traditional role as protectors of the workers' rights in a narrower sense, the unions are anxious to obtain formal authorisation to exert influence in various fields, including that of law.... The Central Council of the Polish Trade Unions has for years been issuing orders and instructions which, as far as labour law is concerned, carry as much authority as legal enactments and represent a considerable part of current labour legislation. The Central Council enjoys the right to initiate legislation in the Diet. It itself draws up (or approves, and frequently rejects) the Bills and draft regulations put forward by the governmental bodies. After bargaining with the ministries responsible, it is the unions which prepare and conclude the agreements which constitute so important a part of labour legislation. (b) Apart from the authority they enjoy in legal matters, the unions play a decisive part in supervising the application of labour legislation. A special branch of the unions concerns itself with labour inspection. Similarly, labour disputes are referred to the unions, which have arbitration boards within the undertaking. Within the undertaking the unions, and their organ the works council, enjoy most extensive rights in 1 For further information, see D. V. Ter-Avanesyan: Some Social and Economic Problems in Agriculture in USSR, the Polish People's Republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Part I (Geneva, ILO; mimeographed doc. D.9.1966) pp. 62-68. 232 Poland everything to do with the running of the concern. We would merely recall the "workers' self-government" system (which is directed by the unions), and the rights enjoyed by the works council as regards the dismissal of workers. These rights are constantly being extended. With every new legal enactment, there is an increase in the powers wielded by the unions within the undertaking.1 These general considerations clearly remain valid, mutatis mutandis, with regard to agricultural trade unionism properly so called. Hence it can be said that as regards the movement of the peasantry and peasant trade unionism from an attitude of outright opposition to full participation, the history of Poland is rich in lessons, even for the highly advanced countries. It shows, in fact, that the unions can be given a say in governmental decisions, and hence can go beyond the advisory role they are ordinarily expected to play. • Central Union of Agricultural Production Co-operatives Agricultural production co-operatives have at their disposal only 1 per cent or so of Polish agricultural land. In 1964, they numbered 1,246, mainly concentrated in the wojewodztwa (provinces) where farming practices have reached a high level (Bydgoszcz and Poznan). Their 29,200 members then occupied some 541,880 acres. On the average, each co-operative had 16.5 families, living on some 435 acres.2 According to the scope and thoroughness of the co-operative work done, these co-operatives fall into one of three classes. In type I co-operatives, the members merely work the land in common and to this end possess machinery and tractors, collectively purchased. On the other hand, each member breeds his own beasts on his individual plot (which may not exceed 2% acres in extent); his fodder production is supplemented by that of the co-operative. Output, and the profits derived therefrom, are distributed among the members in proportion to the land they contribute to the co-operative and the work they do. Co-operatives of this type frequently develop into co-operatives of type II, where crops are grown and animals bred in common, although the members still keep their plots (not more than 1 % acres each), plus a few breeding animals, the maximum for which is laid down in the rules of the co-operative. In co-operatives of this kind, profits are shared primarily in proportion to the amount of work supplied; only between 20 and 40 per cent of the profits are apportioned (in the form of ground rent) according to the area of land contributed. 1 Maria Matey: "Les tendances générales du développement du droit du travail en Pologne", Droit social (Paris), No. 11, November 1966, p. 563. (Our italics). 2 See Lipski, op. cit., p. 4. 233 Agricultural organisations and development Lastly, in type III co-operatives (which resemble type II), members can (unless they otherwise decide) keep a plot for themselves and a number of animals. But the socialist principle that profits shall be apportioned in proportion to the labour done is strictly applied.1 Above all these co-operatives is the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, set up in 1961a to replace the old National Council of Agricultural Production Co-operatives. The union collaborates directly in the field of agricultural policy with the Ministry of Agriculture and the other competent central organisations, although its role is really more of an advisory one. The union, as the chief co-operative policy-making body, concerns itself first and foremost with laying down labour standards and general rules to be observed in distributing profits on the basis of the financial returns of the cooperatives and the labour contributed by their members. The union also engages in numerous other activities in a variety of fields; in that of vocational training it collaborates closely with the Central Cooperative Council3, which establishes and subsidises training schools for future co-operative leaders: chairmen, instructors, book-keepers and group leaders for co-operatives. In the field of rural hygiene, the union sees to it that co-operatives improve the individual and collective living conditions of their members by digging wells and providing a water supply and all necessary road facilities. All work of this type receives an 80 per cent subsidy from the State. In addition, co-operatives have at their disposal dispensaries run and paid for either by the State or by a special co-operative, the Health Protection Co-operative, which is a member of the Peasant Mutual Aid Federation, whose functions will be described below. Lastly, in the field of housing and cultural activities, the union encourages its members to build individual private dwellings with the aid of State loans, to organise workers' clubs and recreational activities (excursions, etc.), and to build cultural centres. The number of such centres has doubled over the past three years. Today there is an average, for every 100 co-operatives, of 3 cultural centres, 24 café-clubs, 51 clubrooms and 38 libraries.4 The union refers to two kinds of obstacles encountered by agricultural production co-operatives in the course of their development. On the one hand, 1 For further information, see Josef Okuniewski: "Collective Forms of the Organisation of Agricultural Production and Social Changes in Polish Rural Areas", Report of the Study Group on the Social Aspects of Land Reform and Co-operatives (Jablonna, Warsaw, 10-21 May 1965) (Geneva, United Nations, 1965), pp. 30-31. 2 By virtue of the Co-operatives Act of 17 February 1961. 8 The Central Co-operative Council represents all the co-operative unions in the country, i.e. nine large organisations with a total membership of some 7 million. 4 See Ter-Avanesyan, op. cit., p. 53. 234 Poland there was excessive interference by local authorities during the years when co-operatives were being formed (however, the situation has changed drastically in this respect since 1956, and it would appear that today co-operatives are left completely free to run their own affairs), and on the other hand, the co-operatives, which began to organise themselves and band together in 1949, found themselves in severe financial straits due to a shortage of funds of their own, tools and other production inputs. Aid from the Government, in the form of long-term loans, and the encouragement it has given to vocational training for co-operators have enabled these difficulties to be progressively overcome. Today agricultural production co-operatives benefit from all kinds of facilities accorded to them by the State, such as the payment of managers' wages out of public funds, the partialfinancing(up to a specified limit) of their investments, adequate loans at low rates of interest, the payment of social insurance contributions for co-operators and exemption from supplementary taxation (the tax per acre paid by co-operatives is equal to that paid by medium-sized private farms). In 1965, in view of the fact that the value of farm premises per acre on co-operative farms was only half as much as on individual farms, and the number of livestock on co-operative farms was less than the general average for farms, the Government took a series of measures to accelerate capital investment in co-operatives, in the following forms : — building grants to cover half the expenditure up to 2,000 zlotys per acre, plus one-third of any expenditure in excess of this figure, up to a limit of 3,300 zlotys per acre ; — grants for irrigation of cultivated fields amounting to 80 per cent of expenditure. Another important decision taken in 1965 was that to amend the Co-operators' Pension Act, under which only members of type II and III co-operatives were entitled to old-age, invalidity and survivors' pensions, members of type I co-operatives being eligible only for invalidity pensions. Today, as a result of the 1965 amendment, the latter are entitled to pensions of the same type as the former, although at a 30 per cent lower rate.1 This measure, along with the credit concessions referred to above, will undoubtedly help to bring about in the near future an increase in the number of Polish agricultural production co-operatives, especially those in the more advanced categories. 1 Ter-Avanesyan, op. cit., p. 52. 235 Agricultural organisations and development • Agricultural Federation of Peasants' Mutual Aid Co-operatives The Agricultural Federation of Peasants' Mutual Aid Co-operatives, founded in 1948, is an association of the supply and marketing co-operatives formed in all parts of Poland during the years immediately following the liberation. In 1966 there were more than 2,200 of these societies with a membership of over 4 million. Membership of these co-operatives—democratically run on the principle of "one man, one vote", irrespective of the number of shares owned by a member—is entirely free and voluntary. Internal democracy from the base to the summit is ensured by the watch kept by each level on the activities of the next highest level, starting from the local co-operative, which belongs to a district union, which in its turn belongs to a provincial union, which itself belongs to the central federation in Warsaw. The federation, for its part, exercises vertical supervision from top to bottom, thanks to a corps of inspectors whose task it is to audit the books and check on the administration of the societies and unions at the various local and provincial levels. Peasants' mutual aid co-operatives provide the following services for the rural population : — they supply farmers with production inputs and investment goods; — they conclude contracts with farmers for the delivery of farm produce and the purchase of produce (more than 50,000 buying and selling agencies); — they supply the rural population with consumer goods through the intermediary of 55,000 local stores; — they process farm produce; — they manufacture ready-mixed fodder and building materials; — they provide all kinds of services in connexion with agricultural production and household tasks in rural areas; — they provide many services in connexion with foreign trade. The federation, a major buyer of farm produce (it purchases some 65 per cent of market produce), observes price fluctuations closely and makes proposals thereon to the State or provincial authorities, which are responsible, under the system in force, for fixing the prices of the principal agricultural products purchased by the co-operatives. The prices of "free" products—i.e. those whose sale is a matter to be arranged directly between the seller and the buyer (e.g. certain vegetables)—are fixed by mutual agreement between the parties in the light of the market situation. Thus the federation and its member co-operatives play an essential role in the development of agricultural production. This is due not only to the many varied activities in which the co-operatives engage but also to the functions performed by the federation within the context of the national economy 236 Poland as a whole. Under the co-operative legislation in force, the Peasants' Mutual Aid Federation is in fact entitled to express its views on all Bills relating to matters affecting its activities. It is also entitled to submit draft Bills of its own, which, like the observations or motions it addresses directly to central official bodies, are discussed with the authorities before being submitted to the Diet through the Domestic Trade Commission and the Agricultural Commission. It may not be inopportune to mention here that the members of the Diet include a large number of active co-operators who exert a strong influence upon the decisions adopted. Within the country, all matters relating to the wages and working conditions of employees of the federation's member co-operatives are settled by means of agreements concluded with the Trade Union of Commercial and Co-operative Employees, which has to be consulted before any change is made in the wage rates. But this union does not confine itself to watching over employees' interests as concerns wages and remuneration; it also takes a close interest in occupational safety and health, and plays a leading part in a whole host of welfare activities. Outside the strictly economic sphere, peasants' mutual aid co-operatives likewise engage in a variety of activities of a cultural and social nature, including the following: (a) Educational work. Secondary vocational training schools of various types, which enjoy the same rights as the State schools and prepare their students for entrance to institutions at a higher level, take care of the education of the young people in the villages—the children of co-operative members.1 These activities are also of benefit to workers, who are afforded an opportunity of attending the various vocational training courses organised by the federation. The extent of the federation's educational activities may be seen clearly from the following figures, which relate to 1965: 85 schools run by the federation 39 higher-level correspondence courses 14,481 students during the school year 1965-66 7,943 students taking correspondence courses 8 management development centres 344 courses organised at vocational training centres and on the shop floor 12,442 workers trained through attending courses. 1 As Roger Kérinec points out: "A co-operative is open to al), but only its members benefit from its welfare and educational activities, which are numerous and important (in fact, there are more than 700,000 Polish peasants out of a total of 3.25 million who are neither members of a co-operative nor employees of a State undertaking." Roger Kérinec, "La coopération en Pologne", Revue des études coopératives (Paris), 1964, No. 138, p. 350. 237 Agricultural organisations and development (b) Collaboration with the female rural population. Thirty per cent of co-operative members and 37 per cent of co-operative employees are women. Women participate actively in the work of the bodies responsible for the selfmanagement of co-operatives; they account for more than 20 per cent of the membership of management committees and 10 per cent ofthat of supervisory committees. It is the women who attach the greatest importance to the efficient running of co-operatives both from the commercial standpoint and from that of the services they render to the population. All the activities of co-operatives on behalf of peasant women are carried on at centres known as "modern housewife" centres attached to rural cooperatives. These centres have organised, inter alia : — repair and hiring facilities, hairdressing salons and sewing workshops; — services to provide legal advice and advice on diet and even beauty treatment ; — training courses and lectures on the following subjects : rational nutrition, education, hygiene, needlework and dress-making, stock-breeding and farming: — publicity and information services in respect of the latest household appliances, stock-breeding equipment, gardening, seed production and concentrated fodder-mixing methods. The federation's member co-operatives also collaborate with the rural housewives' clubs, especially in the field of child care. In this connexion they help the clubs to organise and run kindergartens and even contribute towards their financing. (c) Collaboration with young peasants. Work with young people is mainly concerned with giving a cultural slant to their leisure activities and developing the aptitudes required for farming. To meet these needs the co-operatives organise café-clubs, also known as farmers' clubs. Like the rural co-operatives, the Ruch State undertaking organises clubs of this type in country areas. They offer young people pleasant surroundings in which to spend their leisure time and organise cultural entertainments. They listen to the radio, watch television, organise concerts of recorded music, dances and meetings. Some of these clubs also have photographic darkrooms, philatelic sections, and the like. In addition, lectures and demonstrations are arranged on seed varieties, weed-killers and insecticides. In some clubs, vocational training courses organised by the so-called "agricultural circles" (farmers' clubs) are held in the autumn and the winter. The clubs are organised and run jointly by the rural co-operatives and the Rural Youth Federation in conjunction with the cultural services of the local national councils, which help in the provision of cultural activities. In addition the co-operative movement and the Rural Youth Federation jointly organise 238 Poland what are known as "co-operative apprenticeship groups", which offer people in country areas a chance to learn about the role and tasks of the co-operative movement and carry out a programme of co-operative education for apprentice farmers. The rural co-operatives also sponsor school co-operatives in educational establishments, protect them, offer them financial help with the purchase of equipment, and assist them with their book-keeping. It is considered that having thus gained direct experience of a school co-operative and the way it is run, the young people concerned are more likely later to swell the ranks of co-operative members. As far as sport is concerned, the co-operatives have many contacts with the sports teams run by peasants and help with their training. By arrangement with these teams, they organise sporting and tourist activities. The teams also receive financial help from the co-operatives. Among the other forms of cultural activity organised not just for young people but for the benefit of the rural population as a whole, mention may be made of cultural circles and centres and the organisation of group outings to theatres in the towns. An important role is played by the libraries found in all rural co-operatives; these contain books, pamphlets and manuals on co-operation, farming and general subjects. Both members and employees of co-operatives make extensive use of these libraries. (d) Activities in the field of rural medical assistance. Since 1955, the supply and marketing co-operatives have organised health protection cooperatives in rural areas out of reach of the health centres set up by the State. In 1965 there were already 246 of these co-operatives, which set out to raise the standard of health of members and their families, provide medical care, arrange for consultations and engage in many activities in connexion with hygiene and disease prevention. They build and run health centres and dispensaries, and pay the salaries of their doctors and nursing staff. The medical care provided is not restricted to the co-operatives' members, but is also available to other people living in the area, although they pay more for it. The co-operatives also arrange for free medical care for schoolchildren. Their financial resources derive from the proportional contributions paid by members, treatment fees, aid furnished by the federation—mainly for investment purposes—and, lastly, the funds allocated by the State, which meet the cost of treatment provided free for patients who are covered by the social insurance scheme. Obviously, such a complete network of activities could not be set up without difficulties being encountered. In its reply to the questionnaire the federation stresses that the obstacles have been mainly of a technical nature, and can be attributed to the dynamic progress made by a body which began 239 Agricultural organisations and development its activities under difficult conditions resulting from the terrible destruction wreaked by the war and the generally very low level of economic development reached in the countryside. These difficulties are being resolved through a steady rise in investment, which has been particularly heavy in recent years, and which, according to the plans established for the years 1966-70, at present involves a sum of 13,000 million zlotys, i.e. about as much as was invested during the whole of the period 1945-65. In view of the policy followed by the Peasants' Mutual Aid Federation and the fact that its membership is growing at the rate of 100,000 per year, which attests to its success, there is every reason to expect that this type of co-operation will become increasingly popular in the next few years. Since 1964 the Agricultural Federation of Peasants' Mutual Aid Co-operatives has been a member of the International Co-operative Alliance. • Central Union of Agricultural Circles The "agricultural circles" occupy a prominent place in the Polish cooperative movement on account of the importance of the private sector, which still farms 86 per cent of the land and supplies about 83 per cent of the produce marketed. These circles form part of a voluntary peasant organisation the idea of which was brought to Poland from Western Europe in the 1860s and developed towards the end of the century, between 1880 and 1890. As pointed out in a paper published by the FAO, the circles which came into being during the second half of the nineteenth century initiated and developed their activities, first of all, in the field which, at that time, was of a basic importance, i.e. in the field of agricultural education for peasants. Most often, the post of the circle chairman was held then either by the owner, or holder, of a nearby landed estate, or else by the parson, who also was an administrator of a rather large landed estate. Very often, they were the only authorities in the matters of technical progress and, because of the lack of other instructors, they were fulfilling the role of the peasants' advisers in farming.1 Between the wars their number rose to around 10,000, and their activities did not change very much. Only after 1957 did the boom in organisations of this type really begin, as is testified by a remarkable widening of their range 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966 : Agricultural Circles and the Process of Structural Changes in Private Farms, by Andrzej Romanow (doc. RU: WLR-C/66/26, Part II, p. 14). See also in this connexion Helena Zembrzuska: Les cercles agricoles, organisation sociale et économique des paysans en Pologne (Warsaw, Institut d'éditions de la Centrale agricole des coopératives, 1967). 240 Poland of activities. The fact was that until 1956 the policy of collectivisation of rural property had caused people to lose interest in the agricultural circles, with the result that at the end of 1956 they numbered barely 1,700. Within the space of a year, however, as a result of the new policy initiated by Mr. Gomulka, nearly 10,000 new circles made their appearance. By 1966 there were some 33,000, with a membership of 1.7 million peasants1, which meant that 80 per cent of the villages were involved in this peasant movement and more than 30 per cent of peasants with farms of more than about an acre and a quarter were members of agricultural circles.2 Agricultural circles are bodies corporate whose aim is to improve working and farming conditions through mechanisation of the heavier jobs and through the introduction of all the implements and methods which are the fruits of modern agricultural technology. Unlike the old circles, which were primarily concerned with vocational training, the present-day circles take a keen interest in production, particularly since 1959. Before then a gap of about 50 per cent between the price paid to the producer for his "compulsory deliveries" and the free-market price was maintained primarily with the intention of financing the country's industrialisation. As a result the peasants had little money available to improve their methods; in 1957-58 agricultural circles were only able to purchase, with money scraped together by the peasants, some 1,500 tractors, 2,500 ploughs and 1,800 threshing machines for collective use. Between 1960 and 1965, however, purchases soared to 35,000 tractors, 50,000 ploughs, 18,000 grain drillers, 7,000 fertiliser distributors, 15,000 reaper-mowers, 20,000 binders, 30,000 threshers and many other agricultural machines.* This tremendous upsurge in purchases was the result of a decision by the Government to establish in 1959 an Agricultural Development Fund, which derives its resources from the difference between the compulsory delivery price and the free-market price.4 Until 1965 the money collected in this way was refunded, 70 per cent going to the agricultural circles and 20 per cent to 1 See Lipski, op. cit., p. 8. * Figures taken from the report of the Central Union of Agricultural Circles (Warsaw, 1965) and from material based on research carried out by the Institute of Agricultural Economics. See Romanow, op. cit., p. 4. * Romanow, op. cit., pp. 6 and 7. * Until 1955 compulsory deliveries accounted for 20 per cent of total cereal production, about 10 per cent of potato production, about 25 per cent of meat production and nearly 10 per cent of milk production. The latter product was exempted from the compulsory delivery scheme at the end of 1955, and in the following year the percentages required of the other products were considerably reduced. See Joseph Okuniewski : Transformations ofPolish Agriculture in Conditions of Industrialisation and Demographic Growth, paper submitted at the Seminar on Land Structure and Co-operatives, Rome, 1966 (Rome, FAO, 1966) (mimeographed doc. RU:TAS/66/2), p. 6. 241 Agricultural organisations and development their district unions to finance the bulk of their investments, the remaining 10 per cent being invested in the farm machinery industry. Since then a further step forward was taken under the most recent Five-Year Plan (1966-70), which provided for the money to be refunded in full to the agricultural circles.1 These funds, proportionate to the volume of compulsory deliveries, constitute a form of compulsory savings for the benefit of the community; they are paid into bank accounts opened for each village and placed at the disposal of the circle to which they are due. Today they amount to some 4,000 million zlotys per year. To this are added the contributions paid by members and the payments they make for the hire of machinery and for other services rendered by the circles. The funds in question are the collective property of the village and in consequence cannot be used by individuals nor transferred to the account of another village. These funds can be used for a whole series of purposes, including: (a) The purchase of machinery for collective use. Such purchases afford an answer to the problem of lack of capital which besets the smaller farms and prevent wasteful use of machinery; for instance, the average number of hours a tractor must work in order to recoup the money invested in it within a reasonable time is 1,000 per year, and in 1964 the circles managed to get an average of 967 hours' work out of each tractor 8 , thus approaching the theoretical optimum. Machines are hired out not only to circle members but also to other farmers in the village, but, so as to encourage the latter to join the circles, the circles allow those of their members who have contributed financially towards the purchase of machinery a 20 per cent rebate on the cost of its hire. Moreover, since the circles are not all equally prosperous—their income being in direct proportion to their compulsory deliveries—the weaker can lend their machines to the stronger and arrange for the latter to do the work for them. The villages where there is no agricultural circle can transfer their funds to the local branch of the State machinery centres, which will organise a machinery pool for the benefit of private farmers (each branch caters for farms within a radius of about 5 kilometres; in 1966 it was planned to establish 700 such branches). (b) Agronomic improvements. Agricultural circles play a major role in improving the quality of farm produce. They investigate different crop varieties, experiment with new seed qualities and breeds of livestock and supply them to peasants, advise them on the use of fertilisers and help them to modernise and mechanise their stock-breeding methods. The circles also have plots of land for their own use which they utilise for experimental and instructional 1 2 242 See Lipski, op. cit., p. 6. Ter-Avanesyan, op. cit., p. 57. Poland purposes. These plots are farmed jointly by the circle members, who receive grants from the State for the initial work of bringing them into operation. (c) Vocational training. Vocational training, which before the war was handled almost entirely by the agricultural circles, has now acquired a much broader basis in Poland, and today many institutions—primary and secondary schools, agricultural colleges, scientific institutes, experiment stations, not to mention the winter vocational training courses given by 5,000 agronomists, each of whom takes in hand two or three villages—play their part in ensuring that the country's needs are met. Even though their own role has become relatively less important, the agricultural circles still play a part in the training of Polish peasants as co-organisers of programmes and courses. (d) Work on behalf of the female rural population. Many villages have rural housewives' clubs (with a membership of around 500,000 in 1965), which do a remarkable job in raising the cultural level and improving the social status of the female population. Among the numerous activities of these clubs mention must be made of the organisation of dress-making and cookery classes and courses in home economics and health protection for mothers and children. They also organise collective farming ventures in fields such as poultry farming. At the local level they are managed by committees whose members sit on the managing committees of the agricultural circles; at the district and regional levels their activities as a whole are administered respectively by the district council of rural housewives' clubs and the regional council of agricultural circles.1 The Polish agricultural circles are allowed a fairly free hand in carrying on all these activities. The purchase of machinery and tractors, the organisation of the work and the conclusion of contracts for the engagement of the necessary staff—mainly tractor drivers—are dealt with internally by each circle : Only the general principles governing the efficient economic andfinancialoperation of the farmers' clubs [i.e. agricultural circles] are embodied in guidelines prepared by the Central Union of Agricultural Circles. These guidelines deal with the amortisation of machines, the cost of services, the system of accounting and financial management, and the supervision of the various farmers' clubs by the higher echelons of the union organisation. The village agronomist, who is employed by the district Union of Farmers' Clubs, is the principal adviser to the managements of the farmers' clubs.2 In addition, co-ordination between the work of the various agricultural circles and their unions on the one hand and the Government's agricultural 1 Ter-Avanesyan, op. cit., p. 58. Okuniewski : "Collective Forms of the Organisation of Agricultural Production and Social Changes in Polish Rural Areas", op. cit., pp. 37-38. 2 243 Agricultural organisations and development policy on the other is ensured by participation of representatives of the Central Union of Agricultural Circles on the Ministry of Agriculture commission and by the direct co-operation of the provincial and district unions of agricultural circles with the agricultural sections of the people's councils. Despite the difficulties encountered by the agricultural circles, due to the fact that the farmers who help to run them without payment are sometimes too busy with work on their own farms to devote as much time as is needed to the activities of the circles, the circles are improving their services as the years go by and are attracting members in increasing numbers. Not only do they help to broaden the outlook of the peasants and bind up their personal interests more closely with those of the community, but it is to them that the credit must largely go for the technological advances recorded in every aspect of Polish rural life. Even though their example cannot, any more than any other, be purely and simply transposed to the newly developing countries, it merits careful attention whenever the problem arises of boosting agricultural development without loss of time and without wastage, with the aim not only of bringing about technological progress but of integrating the peasantry in the national economy. USSR • Trade Union of Agricultural Wage Earners and Salaried Employees In the USSR there is only one agricultural employees' organisation—the Trade Union of Agricultural Wage Earners and Salaried Employees (Profsoyuz rabochikh i sluzhashchikh sel'skogo khozyaistva S SR), founded in Moscow in June 1919.1 This is the largest trade union in the Soviet Union; at 1 January 1966 it had nearly 14 million members, or about 50 per cent of all agricultural wage earners and salaried employees.2 The union's members comprise permanent wage-earning and salaried employees of sovkhozes (State farms), undertakings for the repair and maintenance of farm equipment and the construction and operation of irrigation systems, flour mills and plants for the manufacture of synthetic fodder, silos and storehouses for the wheat delivered to the State, as well as students and professors from senior and intermediate-level agricultural colleges, scientists from scientific research institutes and employees of agricultural administrative 1 For further details as to the origin and functioning of trade unions in the USSR, see, inter alia, ILO: The Trade Union Situation in the USSR (Geneva, 1960); Patrice Gélard: Les syndicats soviétiques, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3185 (Paris, 27 April 1965). 2 See M. Sonin and E. Zhiltsov: "Economie Development and Employment in the Soviet Union", International Labour Review, Vol. 96, No. 1, July 1967, pp. 67-91. 244 USSR bodies; 91 per cent of the workers employed by and students attending the estabUshments or organisations covered by the union are members of the union. In addition to these wage-earning and salaried employees of State undertakings and bodies, union membership is open to farmers from the kolkhozes (collective farms), tractor and combine-harvester drivers, vehicle drivers, mechanics and other skilled workers responsible for the repair and maintenance of farm equipment, as well as experts working in the kolkhozes. It should be added that, the farming economy of the Soviet Union being socialised, tenant farming and share-cropping do not exist in that country and land is never bought, sold or leased. This explains why there are no tenants or share-croppers among the union's members. We should also note that in the Soviet Union every agricultural undertaking, body or training establishment has its own staff association. Today some 76,000 organisations of this type are affiliated to the union. It is obvious that, with such a large following and in view of the extensive rights it enjoys, the union is in a position to exercise a considerable influence upon the development of agricultural production, take an active part in the administration of this branch of the economy and secure improvements in the living conditions of agricultural wage earners and salaried employees, from the standpoint both of material and cultural amenities and of comfort, health and hygiene. In each undertaking the staff association encourages all wage earners and salaried employees to become members, enhances their cultural level, their political knowledge and their general standard of education and familiarises them with the economic problems and development prospects of their branch of activity; it trains them to be uncompromisingly ruthless in dealing with any shortcomings in the way their undertaking is run and in the way their own association operates. It also induces wage earners and salaried employees to take an active part in the management of their undertaking by giving them a say in planning and in the utilisation of the resources available ; it regularly calls meetings at the undertaking level to discuss problems arising in connexion with the organisation of the work and of production, and sees that the decisions taken are implemented. In collaboration with the managers of sovkhozes, silos, forestry undertakings, factories and so on, the staff associations inculcate and develop a spirit of socialist rivalry among wage earners and salaried employees and encourage them to fulfil and over-fulfil the State plan, while at the same time striving to provide them with the working conditions necessary to maintain a steady increase in productivity and to enable output targets to be met. They also work for the introduction of new technological processes and of the 245 Agricultural organisations and development improved methods of operation suggested by innovators; to this end courses are organised which teach the methods used by the undertaking's star workers. Again, they support the adoption of suggestions which aim to bring about more rational working. In addition, the staff association combats bad management and wastage of manpower, resources and materials and assists whenever the occasion arises with the introduction of adequate accounting systems and with the strengthening of discipline in all sectors, in the interests of the State. The management of each agricultural undertaking signs a collective agreement with the staff association committee, acting on behalf of the wageearning and salaried employees, and ensures that the commitments entered into therein are carried out within the given time-limits. The collective agreement sets out the mutual obligations of management and staff as concerns the fulfilment and over-fulfilment of production plans, the maintenance of a steady rise in output, and the improvement of the working and living conditions of the workers. It is accordingly the task of the staff association committee, helped by the rank-and-file members, to check daily that the clauses of the agreement are being complied with, to take note of the pronouncements made by the head of the undertaking, to discuss these at general meetings and to take the necessary steps to ensure the observance of the commitments entered into in the collective agreement. Furthermore, if there is a breach of the agreement, the staff association must propose to the next highest union body in its branch of activity that proceedings be initiated against the management of the undertaking, either through administrative channels or, if the infringement is deliberate, in the courts. The terms of reference of a staff association committee are indeed manifold, and include: checking that output targets and the different levels of pay rates are properlyfixedand respected,findingout why certain workers fail to achieve the output targets and taking steps to put matters right, ensuring that the correct wages are paid on the right date and that wages legislation is observed by the management, endeavouring every day to improve working conditions and standards of health and hygiene, making sure that the management instructs workers promptly in methods of work which conform to the safety regulations and takes all necessary steps to prevent occupational diseases or employment injuries, and seeing to it that protective clothing is distributed to the staff as required. Among the other tasks which fall to the association we must not overlook participation in the settlement of labour disputes, the conclusion of agreements with the management on the protection of workers and occupational safety, the enforcement of legislation on hours of work, the provision of rest periods for wage earners and salaried employees, the conditions of employment of women and young persons, the 246 USSR granting of temporary invalidity, pregnancy and maternity allowances, the initiation of legal proceedings against undertakings with a view to securing damages, the sending of wage earners and salaried employees to sanatoria and rest homes, and the improvement of medical care facilities. The staff association committee is also responsible for the political and cultural education of the rank-and-file members; it supervises the activities of the undertaking's clubs, libraries and cinemas, encourages physical culture and sport, and organises rest cures and extra-curricular activities for children. The staff association committee wages a constant campaign to improve the living conditions of wage earners and salaried employees: it sets up the system whereby the working masses keep watch on the implementation of plans for the construction of housing and buildings for social use (culture, hygiene, etc.), and ensures the maintenance of order at the community centres. It must also press for the better management of canteens, snack bars, stores or shops, and mobile canteens for tractor drivers and other workers during farming operations or repair work. It must also help to further the activities of consumer co-operatives and improve their efficiency. It also takes part in the allocation of space available for rent, gives as much aid as possible to workers building their own homes, lays out collective vegetable plots and gardens and encourages workers to have gardens of their own. Lastly, the staff association committee participates in the sharing-out of the undertaking fund. This fund is defined in the following terms by section 14 of the regulations governing socialist State production undertakings, approved by Order of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on 4 October 1965: Section 14 The profits of the undertaking (or, in the case of undertakings for which the plan does not provide for profits, the savings resulting from the lowering of the cost price) shall be shared out in accordance with the balance sheet of income and expenditure (financial plan) and in conformity with the rules drawn up by the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Sums shall be set aside from the profits of the undertaking (or the savings resulting from the lowering of the cost price) and placed at the disposal of the undertaking so as to give its staff a greater material interest in the fulfilment of the plan and ensure that production is profitable. These sums shall constitute a fund (to be known as the undertaking fund) for the improvement of the conditions of life of the workers (from a cultural standpoint as well as from that of comfort and hygiene) and the perfecting of production methods. The percentage of the profits (or of the savings resulting from the lowering of the cost price) to be set aside, and the procedure to be followed in setting up and drawing money from this fund, shall be determined for undertakings in the different branches of the economy by Orders respecting the undertaking fund to be approved by the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The money from the undertaking fund shall be used for the introduction of new technological processes, the modernisation of equipment, the extension of production, the construction of housing and buildings to be used for social purposes (hygiene, 247 Agricultural organisations and development cultural activities, etc.), the maintenance of dwellings, individual bonuses, improvements in medical and welfare facilities (comfort, hygiene, etc.), the purchase of medical supplies, the issuance of travel passes to sanatoria and rest homes and the payment of exceptional allowances to workers. It shall be prohibited for higher administrative bodies to make any withdrawals from the undertaking fund or to effect any change in the manner in which the money it contains is distributed. Profits from the manufacture of consumer commodities for everyday use and by-products shall be placed in their entirety at the undertaking's disposal (consumer commodities fund), and shall be used in such manner as shall be determined by the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Housing constructed with money from the undertaking fund and from the consumer commodity fund shall be entirely inhabited by persons whose names are on a list approved jointly by the management of the undertaking and the factory or works union committee and communicated to the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' Representatives. The union believes that the need for agrarian reform, or, more specifically, for a redistribution of land, does not arise, since as a result of the October Revolution the land has been nationalised and now belongs to the people as a whole; moreover, the pattern of farming has been transformed through the replacement of small low-yield peasant farms by large socialised enterprises with the most modern equipment at their disposal. Hence, according to the union, no obstacle, and particularly no obstacle of a social or economic nature, blocks the development of the Trade Union of Agricultural Wage Earners. As concerns collective bargaining at the national level, it should be pointed out that in the USSR there are no central joint bodies, due, in the union's view, to the fact that there are no paradoxical situations likely to give rise to disputes ; any problems which do arise over the improvemen tof the material situation of wage earners and salaried employees in general, and of those in agriculture in particular, are dealt with constructively by the union in conjunction with the undertakings and the State agricultural bodies. As regards the individual labour disputes which do sometimes arise in undertakings, there exists a powerful means of bringing union pressure to bear upon the management of an undertaking in order that the legitimate claims of the workers may be met : joint labour disputes committees operate in nearly all undertakings by virtue of provisions approved by the highest authority of the State: the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. These bodies are joint committees of management representatives and of staff association committee members in equal numbers. If agreement is reached between the parties, the management is required by law to put the committee's decision into effect without delay. If the management refuses to do so of its own accord the staff association committee may issue a special order, which has the force of a court order, and with which the management is bound to comply. 248 USSR If a worker is dissatisfied with the ruling given by his staff association committee, he may take the matter to a people's court, which must examine it within ten days and pronounce judgment in accordance with the laws in force. Soviet agricultural workers' unions also engage in many activities outside the undertaking, thanks to their being represented on various bodies such as the Ministry of Agriculture of the USSR, the Ministry of Land Improvement and Irrigation Works, the Agricultural Equipment Association, the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the State Stockpiling Committee and all agricultural undertakings and organisations whose range covers the whole of the Soviet Union, a federated republic, a province, a region or a district: all these are required, on the instructions of the Government, to invite the Central Committee of Trade Unions of Agricultural and Stockpiling Wage Earners and Salaried Employees (or its committee at the level of the federated republic, province, region, district or locality concerned) to attend their meetings so that decisions may be discussed and adopted jointly; they must take the opinions of the workers' organisations into account and supply them with full documentation. In addition, a new range of legislative enactments taking into account the increasing part played by the trade unions in the development of the State and of the economy were adopted in 1958 with a view to strengthening even further their role in production planning and the improvement of the living and working conditions of wage earners and salaried employees ; these measures strengthen the unions' hand and confer more extensive rights upon them. In July 1958, for instance, the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR published a decree proclaiming the rights of factory, works and local trade union committees. Furthermore, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions have adopted regulations providing for regular production conferences to be held in industrial undertakings, on building sites and in sovkhozes. The decree setting forth the rights of trade union committees provides that the management may not discharge a wage earner or a salaried employee without the staff association's agreement. Moreover, extensive powers are vested in the staff association committee to enable it to supervise the activities of the undertaking; it may take cognisance of reports by the manager and demand better management. No housing may be allocated, no worker may be categorised, no scales of pay for work performed may be drawn up, no production targets may be set nor bonus systems applied without consultation of the staff association committee. In addition the staff associations are empowered to supervise marketing activities and the activities of the establishments providing food and catering facilities. 249 Agricultural organisations and development The staff association committee may take the initiative of proposing the removal from office or disciplining of managerial staff who show a penchant for bureaucratic routine or who infringe the labour laws. In addition, when appointments are made to senior posts in undertakings, the views of the staff association committee must be taken into consideration. Members of the staff association committee may not be dismissed, nor may disciplinary measures be taken against them, without the agreement of the committee. In order to encourage wage earners and salaried employees to play a part themselves in finding solutions to production problems, "production conferences" have been organised in undertakings, large workshops, services and farms. These conferences must conform to their own set of regulations, approved by the Council of Ministers and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions of the USSR. The managements of undertakings co-operate fully in ensuring that these conferences are properly organised and in implementing their decisions, while the staff association committee directs the proceedings and ensures that the decisions are in fact implemented. The conferences discuss basic problems connected with the activities of the undertaking, improvements in working conditions, and the means whereby wage earners and salaried employees may enjoy the comforts of modern civilisation. Workers' suggestions adopted at these conferences must to be acted upon by the management. Hence the conferences serve as an excellent management training school for the workers taking part in them. As concerns the successes it has achieved the Trade Union of Agricultural Wage Earners and Salaried Employees emphasises that the most important side of its activities is the work it does to bring about improvements in the material circumstances of wage earners and salaried employees, although it points out that, while much has already been done in this field, a great deal more still remains to be done. First and foremost, the wages of agricultural workers have risen substantially over the past few years; since 1961 they have gone up by an average of 30 per cent. A scale of guaranteed wages, based on the rates of pay prevailing in the sovkhozes, has been in operation in all the kolkhozes in the country since July 1966 ; and according to the plan approved for the years 1966-70 the earnings of both wage earners and salaried employees should increase by at least 20 per cent, and those of collective farmers by from 35 to 40 per cent. In another field, that of housing, the past two years alone have seen the provision of some 11 million square yards of living space for workers. Staff association committees and heads of undertakings offer those wage earners, salaried employees and collective farmers who are building their own homes tangible support through the purchase and conveyance to the site of materials 250 USSR and through help with the actual building work, in accordance with plans incorporating modern ideas. Furthermore, each agricultural worker is given for his own use, in addition to his wages, a plot of land on which he can grow the vegetables and fruit he needs, and he can also have a few farm animals for his own use—cows, pigs, sheep, rabbits and poultry—whose feed is supplied to him. We may say that to a large extent a worker's family is able to feed itself on the produce from his individual plot. The plots thus made available to collective farmers and employees in the Soviet Union represent a total area of 20.5 million acresx ; on these plots 25 million head of cattle (including 6.5 million cows) and 16 million sheep and goats, not to mention the many millions of farmyard animals, are raised. A substantial percentage of the area involved is farmed by agricultural workers, who own an equally substantial share of the livestock. It should also be borne in mind that a worker who lives in his own home pays no rent, while a worker who lives in a State-owned dwelling does not spend more than 4 per cent of his wages on his accommodation.2 In the USSR there are 98 senior agricultural colleges and 680 secondary technical agricultural training colleges; in addition 1,274 mechanised farming schools have been opened to train specialists in this type of farming and other senior skilled agricultural staff. As a result, in 1966, the collective farms alone could avail themselves of the services of 47,000 agronomists, 38,000 stockbreeding experts, 46,000 veterinarians and 44,000 engineers and technicians.3 'This total may be broken down as follows: 12.5 million acres belong to collective farmers, 11.75 million of which are actually cultivated; 7.25 million acres are held by employees of the sovkhozes and other State undertakings, 6.5 million of which are actually cultivated; and 750,000 acres are in the hands of wage-earning and salaried employees in other sectors. Thus, of the 20.5 million acres, 19 million are actually cultivated. See Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR 1965 [The national economy of the USSR in 1965] (Moscow, 1966), p. 277. According to information published in connexion with the Third Collective Farmers' Congress, held in Moscow in November 1969, this area of 20.5 million acres will need to be increased to cater for the growing number of individual plots required, since henceforth every collective farmer will be allowed to farm for his own use up to 1.25 acres of land, or about 3,000 square yards more than hitherto. Today it appears that individual plots account for more than half the egg and vegetable production and more than one-third of the meat sold on the home market. See Le Monde (Paris), 29 November 1969. 2 To this must be added the fact that electricity, gas and fuel prices are extremely low in the Soviet Union; in the sovkhozes, for instance, 1 kW of electricity costs 4 kopecks, gas 16 kopecks per person per month, and it costs 1 rouble 48 kopecks per month to heat an area of 30 square yards. Collective farms with central heating and gas pay for it out of the common social fund. Furthermore, Soviet wage earners and salaried employees only have to pay one type of income tax, from which earnings below 60 roubles per month are exempt, while for those earning between 60 and 100 roubles the rate of taxation is extremely low: 4.50 roubles for 70 roubles, 5.80 roubles for 80 roubles, 7 roubles for 90 roubles and 8.20 roubles for 100 roubles. 3 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Reform and Organisation of the Peasants into Co-operatives in the USSR (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/49), p. 7. 251 Agricultural organisations and development Not only is the training provided free of charge, but in addition scholarships are oifered to pupils and students. Moreover, the children of those attending vocational training schools or works schools are fed and clothed free of charge. All wage earners and salaried employees in industry and agriculture benefit from social security on equal terms. Until 1964 pensions and allowances were payable to collective farmers out of the kolkhozes' own funds, and there was no standard system for determining the amount of a pension and the procedure for its payment. In July 1964 the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted an Act introducing pensions and other benefits for members of collective farms, thus providing them with a State social security scheme.1 The social insurance budget of the union for 1965 amounted to 521 million roubles, of which 200 million roubles were paid out in temporary incapacity benefit; wage earners are entitled to an allowance equal to 90 per cent of their average earnings when they are ill. Every wage earner or salaried employee is entitled either to material aid in the form of sickness benefit or to a pension (if a medical board certifies that he is disabled). A pregnancy and confinement allowance is paid by the Social Insurance Fund to women workers for a period of 112 days2, and a nursing allowance is also payable ; it is this fund too which pays pensions to retired and disabled workers, the amount of which varies between 30 and 120 roubles per month. Similarly, the Social Insurance Fund finances the system of passes for travel to spas and rest homes; wage earners and salaried employees pay only 30 per cent of the cost of a concessionary travel pass themselves, the rest being borne by their unions out of their social insurance budget. Moreover, a substantial proportion of wage earners and salaried employees are offered free passes. In the years 1964 and 1965 alone, for instance, the union spenta total of some 46 million roubles on thermal and other treatment and sent nearly 700,000 people to spas and rest homes. Out of the same funds it also pays for children's summer holidays in outer suburban homes (850,000 children enjoyed such holidays in the space of two years, at a cost of more than 18 million roubles). Furthermore, a whole series of technical measures have been introduced in the USSR in the field of health and hygiene, and also in the field of law 1 See in this respect: "USSR: Compulsory Pension Insurance for Members of Collective Farms", International Labour Review, Vol. XC, No. 6, December 1964, pp. 581-583. "The number of days, fixed at 77 until March 1956, was increased to 112 working days (56 prior to confinement and 56 afterwards) by the Decree of 26 March 1956. Under the terms of this decree, if the confinement is abnormal or if two or more children are born the post-confinement leave must be increased to 70 working days. See L'organisation kolkhozienne en URSS, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2298 (Paris, 4 June 1957), p. 16. 252 USSR enforcement, to ensure healthy and danger-free working conditions in agriculture. The creation of such conditions, and the dogged, persistent efforts to make work less arduous through the introduction of advanced machinery and the automation of production, are two of the most fundamental principles of the organisation of agricultural work, as well as being an important pre-requisite for a continuing rise in labour productivity. Accordingly, in view of the constant concern shown by the Soviet Union in the improvement of the working conditions of agricultural workers, more and more funds are being made available for this purpose every year, while the arrangements for supervision, both by the authorities and by the people themselves, to ensure observance of the rules and standards for labour protection and safety are becoming increasingly effective. The task of the trade unions, according to a resolution adopted by the Thirteenth Congress of Trade Unions of the USSR, is to campaign relentlessly against violation of labour legislation, to strengthen supervision in respect of occupational safety and protection against employment injuries and occupational diseases, to assist in bringing about the mechanisation of labourintensive operations and in doing away with the need for laborious physical effort, as well as in securing the introduction of modern safety methods, and to devote greater attention to the problems of raising the cultural level. Trade unions, being the most important organisations for the working masses, have the right to exercise supervision, on behalf of the State and on behalf of the people, with a view to the enforcement of labour legislation and of the internal rules and health standards of undertakings as they relate to safety. The unions exercise this right through the intermediary of technical inspectors, together with people's labour protection committees and inspectors appointed by the staff association committees of agricultural undertakings. In addition to the help it gives to the organisation of educational facilities for children of pre-school and school age, the union carries out a great deal of cultural and educational work among its members and their families, earmarking a substantial proportion of its funds for this purpose. In 1965, for instance, nearly half the budget was allocated to cultural and sports activities (including physical culture). It maintains a vast network of cultural and sports organisations in undertakings, complementing the State-operated theatres, cinemas, libraries, stadia and conference halls in the towns and villages. For example, it possesses more than 43,000 buildings where educational facilities are provided for the masses and where those working in the central State farms, in undertakings and in subsidiary and other State farms can spend their leisure time. It also owns more than 13,000 film projectors. Lectures and talks are regularly organised on these premises, as well as debates on scientific, technical and political subjects. Professional artists 253 Agricultural organisations and development frequently appear there, but at the same time there has been an upsurge in a wide variety of amateur theatrical activities. Today there are about 40,000 amateur dramatics, choral, dance and stage management groups, in whose activities nearly 580,000 union members regularly participate. In 1965, amateur and professional theatrical performers gave tens of thousands of performances on the club stages, watched by most of the wage-earning and salaried employees and their families. Many of the union amateur theatrical groups do not fall far short of the professional troupes as regards their mastery of their art, which is universally recognised throughout the country. In addition more than 130,000 children belong to children's musical and other theatrical groups attached to the clubs. By developing cultural and educational activities, particularly in the field of amateur theatricals, and by showingfilmsregularly at meetings of cultural groups, the union provides its members, especially the younger ones, with wholesome ways of spending their leisure time. It should be added that nearly all undertakings and inhabited localities have their own broadcasting equipment, while many of the union members possess television sets and radios, subscribe to newspapers and magazines and have built up their own libraries, thus providing themselves with plenty of opportunities to acquire knowledge. Thanks to this range of activities and to the extension of education, the Soviet Union, which lately suffered from the festering sore of rural illiteracy, has now succeeded in eliminating it almost completely; whereas in 1939 only 86.3 per cent of those members of the rural population who were old enough to read and write could in fact do so, by 1959 the figure had already risen to 98.2 per cent.1 Sport and physical culture have likewise made great headway in a good number of agricultural undertakings, which provide the necessary equipment. The workers' organisations have founded in the villages nearly 33,000 physical culture and sports clubs to which 4.3 million wage earners and salaried employees belong; the union possesses several thousand stadia and playing fields and a huge quantity of sports equipment, as well as spending more than 8.5 million roubles a year on developing sport. The Trade Union of Agricultural Wage Earners and Salaried Employees, as one of the component parts of the country's trade union movement, belongs to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions of the USSR, and carries out its task in accordance with by-laws approved by its congress, which is its supreme authority. 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Reform and Organisation of the Peasants into Co-operatives in the USSR, op. cit., p. 7. 254 Europe: Conclusions In the interim period between two congresses, the management of the union is handled by the central committee, elected by the congress, while for the dayto-day work the plenum of the central committee appoints from among its members a president, two secretaries and the members of the praesidium of the central committee. Locally, the workers' organisations are managed by 14 federated republic committees, 130 regional and provincial committees and 2,600 district committees appointed by the conferences of their respective local unions ; these committees remain in office for a period of two years. The Trade Union of Agricultural Wage Earners and Salaried Employees belongs to the Trade Unions International of Agricultural, Forestry and Plantation Workers, itself affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). CONCLUSIONS Replies to our questionnaire were received from some sixty organisations in European countries, and although the resulting picture is incomplete, it does give a reasonable idea of the development of these organisations since the end of the Second World War. A scrutiny of the data thus provided reveals a highly positive trend, inasmuch as these agricultural organisations are extending the range of their activities and their influence alike. One feature is especially striking, namely, the increase in the proportion of organised workers in relation to the number of agricultural workers as a whole. Compared with the position before the war, and especially to the position between 1925 and 1928 (see table 3, pp. 82-84), there has been a big expansion of the trade union movement among agricultural workers; at the same time, there has been a marked fall in the total number of people employed on the land. Let us take a look at the figures. In Germany, there were 3.9 million agricultural wage earners in the 1920s. In 1925, 284,000 of these were organised, i.e. roughly 7 per cent of the whole. In 1966, there were 77,000 organised workers in the Federal Republic of Germany out of a total of some 250,000, i.e. roughly 30 per cent. In the 1920s in the United Kingdom, there were some 720,000 agricultural wage earners and salaried employees, of whom 5.5 per cent (40,000 persons) belonged to trade unions; in 1966, there were 500,000 workers, of whom 143,000 (28.6 per cent) were trade unionists. In the 1920s, 12,833 (3.2 per cent) of the 400,000 Dutch agricultural workers belonged to trade unions; at present, there are 100,000 workers, of whom 72,400 (72 per cent) are organised. In 1926, out of some 4 million Italian agricultural workers, 255 Agricultural organisations and development 700,000 were trade unionists (17.5 per cent); there are now 1.43 million out of a total of 1.5 million (no less than 95 per cent, perhaps one of the highest rates in Europe). In Austria, there were no more than 49,000 trade unionists out of some 500,000 workers (less than 10 per cent); today, there are fewer than 100,000 workers, but half belong to trade unions. Of course, the dates on which censuses were taken do not always tally with the dates on which trade union returns were made, and union membershipfiguresfluctuated considerably before the war; nevertheless, the over-all pattern of development is perfectly clear. In the countries of Eastern Europe (the Soviet Union excepted), the Second World War provided a complete break with the past, with the result that the trade union movement as it exists today is in no sense comparable with what existed before the war. The organisations set up immediately after the war embrace the great majority of the peasantry, and the percentages are thus very high—between 50 and 90 per cent. If we take European countries as a whole, we find there are no legislative obstacles to the extension of trade union activities. Most organisations say that the greatest obstacle they encounter lies in the fact that agricultural workers are so scattered; this is the case in Austria, Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy. The answers received from the last of these countries also mention illiteracy, the system of land tenure, and the intractability of the employers towards trade unionists (the latter point is made by the French organisations as well). In the Eastern European countries the traditional obstacles (the existence of huge estates, illiteracy, and so on) have largely disappeared since the war, and today the trade unions and other agricultural organisations keep a closer watch than ever on the development of the countryside. We cannot but deplore the fact that no replies were received from the Mediterranean countries (France and Italy excepted). This developing region is one in which numerous obstacles of the traditional kind still exist; hence, had these obstacles been indicated, we should have had a picture quite different from that offered by the highly developed countries to the north. We unfortunately have no figures to show how the membership of general and employers' organisations compares with the position obtaining before the war. However, there is every reason to believe that here too progress has been remarkable. One important conclusion emerges from our inquiry, and holds good for both employers' and workers' organisations, especially the latter: namely, the change in the nature of the trade union movement from one concerned above all with challenge and opposition, but with limited social and economic activities, to a movement which although still militant is becoming increasingly associated with the management of national economies. To an ever increasing 256 Europe: Conclusions degree, governments are ready to accept these organisations as partners in round-table discussions. This is a development of some importance. The fact that an organisation exists does not necessarily mean that it is effective. It must also be accepted as the mouthpiece of those it represents. If an organisation owes its genesis to negative, hostile ways of thinking rather than to positive ideas of co-operation, it will never advance from opposition to participation, and in this case, we have a state of affairs in which the parties concerned are all talking at once without communicating—there is no real discussion. Since the war, there have been various stages in the development of agricultural organisations in Europe. With the introduction of planning, or even guidelines for planning, in the Western European countries, there has been a change in the relations traditionally obtaining between the State and the various branches of the economy. Discussions at the national level are much more intensive than they used to be. Whereas in former times many problems were considered locally and with an eye to the immediate future only, nowadays planning demands that a longer view be taken, and that the problem in question be considered nationally. Before the war, governments in the Eastern European countries were frequently hostile to agricultural organisations (unless the latter happened to represent the landed interest) ; here, there has emerged a type of organisation of a rather different kind, in comparison with those of Western Europe. However, in the light of the socio-economic data available, there can be no doubt that it has proved effective. In addition, the proliferation since the war of joint committees (local ones, in which the unions are represented, and national ones within official bodies, in which both unions and authorities are represented) has meant that, as a result, the views advanced by governments, employers and workers diverge less than used to be the case. As the answers elicited by this inquiry have shown, almost everybody agrees that joint bodies are both timely and effective. Lastly, there has been an increase in the number of collective agreements and, in certain instances, of nation-wide model conventions. These have markedly reduced the incidence of labour disputes and brought about an over-all improvement in conditions of life in the countryside.1 1 Except in Italy, where collective agreements began to multiply from the beginning of the century, such agreements really became common only during the First World War. In Germany, the first dated from 1913 (in the Rhineland); but the November 1918 revolution led to the abrogation of the old regulations applicable to farm workers and opened the door to a spate of collective agreements from 1919 onwards. In Austria, the first such agreement was signed in July 1919 (in Lower Austria); others followed in Styria (1921) and the Burgenland (1922). In Denmark, the first convention was signed in 1915, but only in 1918, when the Union of Danish Land Workers really became important, did collective agreements begin to emerge all over the country. In the Netherlands, there were a few such agreements as far back as 1908, but the movement really began only during the last years of the First 257 Agricultural organisations and development In general, the agricultural organisations in the Western European countries are represented in an advisory capacity only, although they do sometimes have a vote (as in the French Economic and Social Council and chambers of agriculture, or as in the Federal German Agricultural Advisory Committee, an organ of the Federal Government). In Eastern Europe, agricultural organisations are usually able to vote in official bodies. This represents a remarkable step forward; the agricultural worker is now entitled to have a say in both the preparation and the application of plans and policies likely to affect him. As the links between the agricultural organisations and the authorities are thus stronger than they used to be, the organisations are now much more closely involved in the drafting and promulgation of legislation affecting agriculture and the rural sector. There are numerous examples of this. Thus, in the Federal Republic of Germany, legislation relating to the process of adaptation to the European Economic Community's requirements, aid for the elderly farmer, and the taxation of agricultural undertakings was in each case proposed or prepared by the German Peasants' Association. In Austria, legislation was enacted in 1948 concerning employment contracts and the protection of workers ; much of the credit for this goes to the workers' trade unions. In Belgium, the agricultural occupational organisations' efforts have led, among other things, to the creation of the Agricultural Fund and the Agricultural Investment Fund, and to the establishment of the system whereby farmers and peasants are taxed according to a contractual system. In Italy, the Federbraccianti and FISBA are responsible for the 1960 legislation dealing with the building of houses for agricultural wage earners, and for various other enactments of rural interest. Lastly, in the Eastern European countries, a whole corpus of legislation has been enacted over the last twenty years— legislation which would have been inconceivable without the participation of rejuvenated agricultural organisations. World War. In Poland, trade unionism had been forbidden up to 1918; only when the Republic of Poland came into being were agricultural workers free to join unions and conclude collective agreements (1919). In Sweden, collective agreements began to emerge from 1904 onwards, but the trade union movement withered after the general strike of 1909, and such agreements disappeared until 1919. As was emphasised by the ILO in 1933, "the first pre-requisite for collective settlement of conditions of employment in agriculture is the existence of agricultural trade unions of a certain size; the spread of collective bargaining in agriculture is therefore limited to those countries in which the land workers have combined in associations for the protection of their occupational interests". The employers were then more or less obliged to follow suit ; in the words of the ILO volume, "it was not until collective bargaining was introduced into agriculture in the form of contracts between individual employers and organised workers that the former found it necessary to protect their interests in this direction by founding real agricultural employers' organisations". ILO: Collective Agreements in Agriculture, Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture), No. 11 (Geneva, 1933), pp. 9, 12, 25-57, and passim. 258 Europe: Conclusions Clearly, despite all the progress made, disparities, both national and international, still exist. Thus, as regards social security, the agricultural organisations want all-round protection, if possible within the national security system (the reason for this being that agricultural workers are not always on the same footing as other workers, and hence feel discriminated against). Whereas in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden, for example, no distinction is made between the agricultural and any other worker, in France the agricultural organisations are clamouring for an extension to agricultural wage earners of the general social security system, believing that the agricultural mutual benefit system is less advantageous than the general scheme. The same holds good of the Italian organisations, which are demanding that the provident schemes run by mutual benefit societies be thoroughly overhauled. In Eastern Europe, a similar problem apparently arises here and there: although in the USSR wage and salary earners in agriculture and industry are members of the same social security scheme, in Hungary, on the other hand, a unified system was introduced only in July 1966, to do away with the discrepancies existing between agricultural and industrial employment in social security matters. Disparities, too, exist in three other respects: equality of pay as between farm and factory worker, working hours, and paid holidays. The trade unions have long made the official regulation of working hours one of their main objectives. Before the Second World War, no more than a dozen countries had enacted regulations in any serious sense; today, the matter is covered by national legislation in every country.1 In other instances, the practice frequently was simply to abide by local usage. In the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, Act No. XLV (1907)2, regulating the relationship between farmers and farm labourers, laid down that the latter must be allowed sufficient time for night rest, account being taken of local practice and the time of year. Another piece of legislation (Act No. II, 1898), in force, it seems, as late as 1932, merely laid down that an agricultural worker's day should last from sunrise to sunset with a midday rest of one hour; from 15 April to 30 September, there was an additional half-hour break morning and afternoon.3 1 Working hours were not covered by the same legal instruments everywhere. In some countries, legislation and collective agreements complemented each other. In 1938, general legislation governed working hours in Czechoslovakia, Italy and Spain; special agricultural legislation covered the matter in Austria, Germany and Sweden; in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden, there were collective rules and agreements; in England and Ireland minimum wage fixing boards laid down working hours. See ILO: Social Problems in Agriculture, Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture), No. 14 (Geneva, 1938), p. 34. a Bulletin de l'Office international du Travail (Basle), Vol. VI, 1907, p. 294. 8 See "The Present Regulation of Working Hours in Agriculture", International Labour Review, Vol. XXV, No. 1, January 1932, pp. 90-91. 259 Agricultural organisations and development In other countries where there was legislation directly applicable to the farm labourer, a maximum working day was sometimes laid down for certain times of year (a ten-hour day, for instance, for four months), and it sometimes happened that thefigurethus given was interpreted as an average for the whole year. Hence the gap between law and practice was vastly wider than it is today. As regards paid holidays, the first legislative enactments were promulgated in Finland and the Soviet Union (Labour Code, 1922), then in Czechoslovakia (1925), Spain (1931) and France (1936). Such holidays usually depended on custom and collective agreement, sometimes on general or special legislation, and were exceedingly short.1 In this respect, as with working hours, the progress made has been remarkable. This will be readily seen from table 9. True, in some countries the agricultural worker is better off than in others, but everywhere the position is incomparably better than before the war. As regards equality of pay as between the field and the factory floor, the figures, scanty as they are, are significant. In Eastern Europe, there are variations. Thus, in Hungary, agricultural wages are roughly equal to those in industry; they are slightly higher in Bulgaria. In Czechoslovakia, in 1964, they varied between 68 and 81 per cent of industrial wages. In some countries, the two are equal, but in the absence of detailed information as to how the figures are arrived at (whether they take account of prices, productivity, subsidies, and so on) we cannot say why this is so. In Western Europe, the data gleaned by the author, plus those assembled by the ILO in 1958 2, show that between 1958 and 1966 agricultural wages, in relation to those in industry, increased from 66.3 to 80-85 per cent in Sweden, from 70-80 to 80 per cent in the Netherlands, and from 58.8 to 70 per cent in the United Kingdom. Interestingly enough, in none of these three countries, highly developed in agricultural matters though they be, have the unions managed to achieve that parity to which they all aspire and which, for Western economies, may well prove to be Utopian rather than realistic; for parity depends on the speed with which a particular branch of activity increases productivity in relation to all the others, and, bearing in mind both the way in which agriculture is at present organised and the natural limitations on increases in agricultural productivity, we shall realise that parity is unlikely to be attained (and if attained, maintained) in 1 Holidays depended on custom in Hungary, Latvia, Switzerland and Yugoslavia; on collective agreements in Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden; on speeial legislatien in Austria, Denmark and Estonia; and on general legislation in Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Spain, and the USSR. As was the case with the working day, legislation in some countries was supplemented by agreements. See ILO: Social Problems in Agriculture, op. cit., p. 43. s ILO: Why Labour Leaves the Land, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 59 (Geneva, 1960), p. 206. 260 Europe: Conclusions Table 9. Europe : Reduction of the working day and increase in paid holidays Average working week in hours before 1940 Average working week in hours today Annual paid holidays in working days for adult workers before 1940 Annual paid holidays in working days today Workers over 18 Workers under 18 Austria Belgium Bulgaria Czechoslovakia 56.5-58 ? 45 45 46 46 3-8 ? 7 6 Denmark Finland France Germany (Fed. Rep.) Eastern Germany Hungary Italy Netherlands Norway Poland Rumania Spain Sweden United Kingdom USSR Yugoslavia 56 60» 56 54.5-58 54.5-58 60 s 48 54-60 48 48 48 46 48 48-60* 45 52-60 48 42-48 6 48 48 42.5 45 41 42 6 7 15 2-6 2-6 7 2-6 1-7 6 10-12 ? 7 7 7 12 ? 12-24 12 14-18 2-4 calendar weeks 18 18-30 18 15-18 12 12-24 10 12 24 12-30 12-17 7 24 12 2 weeks 14-30 24 1 18 26 a 3-4 calendar weeks 18 18-30 24 24 18 18-24 10 18 24 12-30 24 ? 24 12 2 weeks 21 Country 54 ? 58 ? 48-50 55-56 48-50 48 ? 1 When a wage earner has not worked on a compulsory or optional day of rest, these days are deducted from the regular entitlement, the rufe being 8 working days for adolescents and not more than one-third of the total leave for adults. "Under 16. ' Roughly. 4 48 hours, between the beginning of November and the end of March, and 60 between April and October, ' State farms only. Sources: Up to 1940, see ILO: Social Problems In Agricuhnre, op. cit., passim; "The Present Regulation of Working Hours in Agriculture", International Labour Review (Geneva), Vol. XXV, No. 1, January 1932, pp. 79-101. For the position today: Peter von Blanckenburg: The Position of the Agricultural Hired Worker (Paris, OECD, 1962), passim; ILO: Legislative Series, labour codes, relevant Acts and decrees published between Ì945 and 1967. the near future. Be that as it may, there has been some reduction in the previous very pronounced disparities between agricultural and industrial wages, and for this the workers' unions may rightly claim the credit. The same applies to the incomes earned by the small and medium farmer, which are discussed by the general and employers' organisations in talks with the authorities, under the policies governing prices and agricultural subsidies. Without going so far as to maintain that all the measures taken in this connexion are attributable to lobbying by the agricultural organisations, we can certainly say that in every instance, the authorities have based their decisions on the claims made, and the information offered, by these organisations. Generally speaking, all the organisations consulted deal directly or indirectly according to their importance, with those questions on which the well-being of the country-dweller and the progress of the countryside depend: health, housing, vocational training, farm management, cultural and leisure activities, and so on. Since the end of the war people have come to realise that only if conditions of work in the countryside can be improved will there be any hope 261 Agricultural organisations and development of countering the headlong rush to the towns prejudicial to any healthy balance of population. Of course, the emphasis is not everywhere the same. In Western Europe, the agricultural organisations are very much concerned with health, hygiene and housing, and (with the assistance of the authorities) with vocational training. On the other hand, the use made of leisure time tends to be left very much to the individual's discretion; this is because of the prodigious increase in the use of private motor vehicles (and also because so very many households now have their television set). In Eastern Europe, the influence of the modern way of life has not yet assumed the same importance; here, the agricultural organisations do a vast amount of work in the realm of culture and education and pursue a full range of technical and occupational activities. The agricultural organisations have always shown great concern over the training of their activists and officials, and there have been considerable changes in this sphere during the last twenty years. Before the Second World War, the training provided by the federations was of a rather academic kind, designed primarily to make good the shortcomings of the average country-dweller's education. Primary education has now been considerably expanded and extended, and facilities for technical training are far more widespread than they used to be. Collective agreements, joint bodies, discussions at all levels are now, as we have seen, much more common; hence the need for a new kind of trade union activist and official, able to meet government and employer representatives on an equal footing in discussion of political, economic and social issues. These issues in themselves have become far more complex than they used to be, for agriculture has emerged from its traditional isolation; the process of modernisation has meant the reinforcement of links with other branches of the economy, with the result that the fortunes of agriculture now depend far more than hitherto on over-all economic development. Accordingly, the organisations have diversified and stepped up their training programmes; and the improved quality of these programmes implies that the agricultural organisations are now much better equipped for negotiation than was the case before the war. This is a development to be welcomed, for a wind of change is blowing through European agriculture. Current economic reforms in the Eastern countries, the repercussions on agriculture of the European Economic Community and the increases in the incomes of workers outside agriculture are throwing up numerous problems of adjustment, of reorganisation, and of vertical and horizontal integration among producers.1 All these problems will have to be solved by the agricultural organisations, with assistance from 1 On integration, see John Higgs: "Vertical Integration in Western Europe", Monthly BulletinofAgricultural Economics and Statistics (Rome, FAO), Vol. 15, No. 12, December 1966, pp. 1-7. 262 Europe: Conclusions the authorities : the Mansholt Plan already makes some provision for a movement of this kind. A frequent obstacle to national development plans lies in the vast host of little farms which no longer provide those who work them with a livelihood comparable with that obtainable from a non-agricultural occupation; this is especially true of those countries in which, for centuries, the subdivision of holdings has continued uninterrupted.1 To these difficulties must be added disparities between regions, which exist even within highly developed countries. In Brittany, for example, agriculture (which is quite intensive) has to support an active agricultural population amounting to 42 per cent of the total active population of the region (the French national average is 20 per cent). So high afigureis a sure index of under-development.2 The process of vertical and horizontal integration has made a beginning. In the Common Market countries, it characterises the change-over from the individual, small-scale peasant farm to the factory farm, a change-over rendered all the more necessary in that, with the progressive abolition of customs barriers, the small, the poor, the weak and the inefficient risk being swamped by the large, the rich, the powerful and the well organised. Accordingly, the agricultural organisations, together with the co-operative movement and national authorities, will have to continue research into ways and means of bringing the countryside up to date as painlessly as possible, while trying to avoid widening the gap which already exists between the highly mechanised factory farm (the most suitable kind for integration) and farming of the traditional kind. This means, too, that the countryside will have to be made a better place to live in. To this end, rural planning programmes, similar to those for town planning, will have to be launched in an endeavour to keep the young people on the land. Otherwise the drift to the towns will gather momentum and rural development will be jeopardised by lack of manpower. In all these fields, and in many others too, the agricultural organisations have shown what they can do. Although there are, of course, other reasons for the development of agriculture in Europe, there can be no doubt that the progress made would never have been achieved without these organisations. They are successful largely because their activities range so far and wide, covering both producers' and wage earners' interests, whereas in former times, in countries where trade union activities were little developed or even actively persecuted, they merely defended the farmers' interests against encroachment 1 See OECD: Low Incomes in Agriculture, op. cit., passim. See L. Malassis: "Agriculture et économie bretonnes", Projet (Paris), No. 11, January 1967, pp. 65-82. 2 263 Agricultural organisations and development by the authorities.1 Employers and workers are today much more evenly balanced, and this is highly conducive to agricultural development, since the employer has to step up production if he is at one and the same time to cope with his workers' wage claims and maintain his standard of living. From this point of view—contrary to what employers in developing countries are inclined to believe—the trade union movement is beneficial to a nation's economy. The same holds good of the employers' organisations, since in a general sense the aims pursued by agricultural organisations (be they concerned with subsidies or price maintenance) help to bring about a more equitable apportionment of a nation's wealth. In this fashion, and by dint of the technical efforts they have made, the agricultural organisations have turned a potential market into a real one, and incorporated a class of people frequently living on a subsistence level (as they are today in the under-developed regions of the world) into an integral part of an economy based on money. Without such an extension of the market, industry in Europe would have been hard put to it to attain present standards of output and productivity. In the highly developed Europe of today, it is impossible to imagine industry flourishing in the midst of a wretched, ignorant peasantry. Lastly, through their continuous discussions with the authorities by virtue of the fact that they are represented in so many official bodies, and through their links with the public via the mass media, the agricultural organisations maintain the nation's interest in the cause of rural development and ensure that the countryside is not just forgotten, or relegated to the position of a Cinderella in relation to industry, as occurred all too often at the time of the Industrial Revolution. As we have seen in our historical sketch, the results achieved are the fruit of centuries of dour and bitter struggle. The lengthy history of European agriculture seems to bear out the belief that where the will exists, there, in time, an appropriate organ will emerge. Wherever the aspirations of the peasantry were thwarted by the existence of big landed estates or by legal prohibitions, for instance, no body developed, or if it did, it emerged only after some revolutionary upheaval. The fact of the matter is that pressure from below was at all times there; the peasants did what they could in the circumstances prevailing. If we observe the struggles of the peasantry and its responses to the "challenge" (in A. Toynbee's sense of the word), of nature and other men, we shall come to a conclusion which is more profound than it 1 Proof of this is that most employers' organisations were set up after the agricultural trade unions had come into being, and especially after the latter had become strong enough to impose collective agreements. Until then, employers had been content to defend theninterests through general farm organisations. See ILO: Collective Agreements in Agriculture, op. cit., p. 9,12, and passim. 264 Europe: Conclusions might at first sight appear: that development proceeds when possibilities and needs to some extent coincide. But even when this occurs, development demands hard work and heavy sacrifice. Today, the well-to-do peoples in the developed countries are inclined to forget all that their forefathers sacrificed for the sake of posterity. They tend to look upon those who are now making sacrifices in other parts of the world as in some way out-of-line. The fact of the matter is that there is no easy road to development, and that unless austerity—indeed sacrifice—be accepted, progress will remain a dream of distant and uncertain fulfilment. What has been achieved—as described above in the light of the answers received to the author's inquiries—at one and the same time evokes both admiration and criticism. Admiration, because these achievements are the fruit of long years of fumblings, of trial and error, and because they show us how many are the ways in which men can come together with a common end in view. Criticism, because nothing so far achieved, admirable though it may be, can be considered perfect. In the pursuit of progress, the agricultural organisations will undoubtedly embark on new courses of action and attain higher degrees of solidarity and efficacity. And progress itself must be harnessed to the cause of man, to bring him to an ever fuller state of liberty and awareness. The celebrated eighteenth-century French writer Montesquieu wrote: "Freedom is that good which enables us to enjoy all others.".1 But how can others exist if work and bread are lacking ? We are now sufficiently far advanced to perceive that freedom can no longer be conceived of as Pure Will expressing itself independently of all contingencies. A hungry, ignorant man cannot be fully free. Hence we may affirm that if freedom consists in being able to take a decision in full knowledge of the facts, then the agricultural organisations have made a powerful contribution. It is they, very largely, which have overcome the neglect of centuries from which the European peasant had suffered. It is they which have made the farming community a part of the nation and given it the wherewithal to forge its own destiny. It is they,finally,which, while showing the peasant how best to cope with nature's obstacles, have provided him with an instrument with which to face, and triumph over, those events which are the fruit of human will. 1 Montesquieu: Cahiers (1716-1755) (Paris, Grasset, 1941), p. 112. 265 PART III LATIN AMERICA LATIN AMERICA D INTRODUCTION "There is basic agreement among professionals that something is wrong in Latin America." Despite its facile nature, this statement by two experts on agrarian matters1 neatly sums up the present situation. Latin America has reached a turning-point in her history, and her future must depend upon her ability to free herself from the heavy shackles of her colonial heritage. Until just after the Second World War, the majority of the countries of this continent remained unaffected by the pace-quickening trend sparked off in the western world by the French Revolution and its immediate offspring, the Industrial Revolution. It is of course true that the majority of the countries of Latin America became independent between 1810 and 1824, and that a great many of the constitutions promulgated at that time embodied the fundamental principles laid down in the French Declaration of Human Rights. In principle, this ideological influence should have set off social and economic developments similar to those which, sooner or later, most European countries experienced. But independence, in Latin America, stood first and foremost for the breaking of the legal ties which bound the continent to Spain, and in some cases resulted in the entrenchment of a feudalistic internal structure which left little room for the normal development to which the masses of these countries aspired. This negative trend, albeit accompanied by expansion in certain sectors, gave rise to a chronic imbalance which has been studied too often for us to need to dwell on it here. Nevertheless, an outline in broad terms of its significance for the agricultural sector may not come amiss. In this sphere, the development of Latin America since independence has been constantly marked by contrasts and paradoxes. The agricultural economy has been geared far more to foreign outlets (exports) than to home 1 Peter Dorner and Richard W. Patch: Social Science Issues in Agrarian Change and National Development of Latin America (Madison, University of Wisconsin, The Land Tenure Center, February 1966; mimeographed doc. LTC/9), p. 3. 269 Agricultural organisations and development consumption (development of rural markets). The concentration of ownership and income has increased rather than diminished, while demographic growth has intensified the pressure upon the land—a phenomenon which is easily understood if we recall that in the nineteenth century much of the land belonging to the indigenous population, which could not be taken away from them under Spanish rule, was bought from its occupants as soon as the constitutions promulgated upon independence declared them to have equal rights. In fact, with a few rare exceptions, the superseding of traditional customary law by Roman law was always to the detriment of the former. Moreover, labour relations, already far from perfect under Spanish rule, went from bad to worse during this period as a result of the repeal of the laws for the protection of the Indians and the emergence of new forms of open or concealed serfdom— the "debtors' peonage" is a classic example. Notwithstanding the "Indian policies" pursued today (which, if they have not succeeded in resolving the problem entirely, have at least helped to keep the situation from getting out of hand), there are times when it is startling to see how wide the gulf still is which separates the Indian population from that of European stock, the small peasant from the large landowner, the countryman from the town-dweller. From the standpoint of culture and way of life, too, the contrast is striking: on the one hand we have the homespun culture of the peasants, demeaned and debased by the admixture of a multitude of alien features, yet often sealed off from progress behind the insurmountable barriers of language, and reduced, like its economic context, to a state of mere "subsistence"; on the other hand, in the towns of European origin, there is a boom in culture of a kind which reflects the major trends from abroad. Thus the ebullience of the towns has for a long time been offset by the apathetic inertia of the country-dweller, apparently reconciled to his fate. However, during the past decade a whole host of new factors, which we have already noted at the beginning of this book (demographic growth, insufficient agricultural production, urban development, etc.), have emerged to transform the situation. The rural population is being jolted out of its traditional apathy to such a point that there are grounds for wondering whether the reforms now being carried out can hold events in check and channel progress along the lines intended. In this respect, nothing sums up the situation better than the diagnosis made as long ago as 1963 by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs : The contradiction between the present situation of the rural population and national ideals of democracy and social justice has become more obvious as the isolation of this population has decreased. The rising rate of natural increase of the rural populations indicates that the traditional tenure systems and methods of production cannot be continued without a deterioration in their already intolerable 270 Latin America levels of living; their accelerating movement into the big cities makes their poverty more conspicuous and alarming to the better-off groups. The rural population is beginning to organise and show capabilities for effective political action. This is true even among the Indians. The nearly spontaneous movement of the Bolivian Indian peasants following the 1952 revolution, which dictated the sweeping character of the Bolivian land reform, is the most striking example. More recently the Cuban peasants have been effectively mobilised in support of a revolutionary programme. Venezuela has had an important organised peasant movement since 1959. In Brazil and Chile, peasant organisations held their first national congresses in 1961 ; the congress in Brazil was attended by 1,500 delegates and 3,000 observers from local peasant leagues and rural workers' unions. Such movements have not yet been objectively studied, some of them are torn by leadership struggles linked with national party politics, and the extent to which the rural population is actively involved in them cannot be determined, but most observers agree that there is an explosive unrest in large parts of the countryside. Forcible seizures of land, rural terrorism directed against landowners and against peasant leaders reported from many areas, suggest that if present opportunities for planned and peaceful agrarian reforms are not seized, the land will be redistributed under pressure of violence in the countryside. While the objective of raising agricultural productivity and the objective of redistributing land in a manner acceptable to the rural population are logically quite compatible, it appears that under the conditions prevailing in much of Latin America land reform can be expected to cause a short-term decrease in agricultural productivity. Even if this is true, the reforms cannot be postponed or evaded; they are an essential step in the incorporation of the rural population into national life as full citizens.1 This verdict is upheld by the majority of the experts on Latin America 2 , the more so since the present situation results from a century of stagnation in rural areas, the effects of which have to be assessed in order to understand not only the deep-seated reasons for the present social unrest but also the role that might be played by agricultural organisations in improving conditions, thus bringing modern production methods and ways of life within the reach of the peasants of Latin America. OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT Structural obstacles and their repercussions It is generally accepted that in the developing countries as a whole, "per capita food production... is in all probability no greater now than it was »United Nations: 1963 Report on the World Social Situation (New York, 1963), pp. 128-129. 2 See, for example, Thomas F. Carroll: "Land Reform as an Explosive Force in Latin America", in John T. TePaske and Sydney Nettleton Fisher (eds.): Explosive Forces in Latin America (Ohio State University Press, 1964), pp. 81-125; Gerrit Huizer: "Desarrollo de la comunidad y grupos de intereses en áreas rurales", América Latina (Rio de Janeiro, Centro Latino Americano de Pesquisas em Ciencias Sociais), 9th Year, No. 2, April-June 1966, pp. 41-46. 271 Agricultural organisations and development 30 years ago in 1934-38".1 This is particularly true of Latin America, where in 1965-66 the per capita food production index fell to 92 per cent of the prewar figure. It explains why, notwithstanding the fairly generalised underconsumption which may be easily seen from the figures given in table 10, imports of agricultural produce rose by 29 per cent between 1957-59 and 19652, requiring the diversion for this purpose of funds needed for development, and resulting in some cases (Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela) in a deficit in the agricultural trade balance.3 By the end of 1966 the target of a 5 per cent yearly increase in agricultural output set in the Charter of the Alliance for Progress had been reached in only a few countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela), while the remainder progressed at a slower pace, or at a rate which was outdistanced by that of the growth in their population. In the case of Chile, for instance, with an area under cultivation which, if properly farmed, could have fed a population of 50 million (as against an actual population of less than 9 million), it was found necessary in 1964 to import agricultural produce to the tune of US$159 million, the bulk of which, representing a cost of US$120 million, could have been produced in the country.4 Despite these imports, there was still not nearly enough food to go round: annual meat consumption dropped from 121 lb. per head in 1954 to 64 in 1965, while the average daily per capita calorie intake has remained steady at around 1,700.B Another case—that of Peru, whose agricultural trade balance shows a surplus—reveals the same trend, which leads to the assumption that if the needs of the population were really met in full there would be a deficit instead of the present surplus: while imports of foodstuffs rose from US$40 to US$134 million between 1950 and 1964, the available supply per capita per year declined, between 1948-52 and 1962-63, from 211 to 202 lb. for cereals, from 256.5 to 185.5 lb. for potatoes and from 44 to 37 lb. for meat.6 A similar situation prevails in most of the other Latin American countries, apart from the more highly developed ones; and it should not be forgotten that thefiguresgiven are national averages which fall short of actual consumption 1 FAO, Committee on Commodity Problems, 41st Session, Rome, 1967: Inter-Agency Study of Multilateral Food Aid : Director-General's Progress Report to CCP (mimeographed doc. CCP 67/13/Rev.l), p. 4. 2 ibid., p. 5. 3 For further details, see FAO: Trade Yearbook 1965 (Rome, 1966), pp. 382-385. 4 Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agrícolas de la OEA, Centro Interamericano de Reforma Agraria: Informe de la reunión internacional de ejecutivos de la reforma agraria y de la reunión de evaluación y planeamiento del proyecto 206 (Bogotá, 1966), p. 58. 6 ibid., p. 59. The figure of 1,700 calories seems abnormally low compared with the estimates of the FAO (see table 10), though these may perhaps be too high. 8 "Proyecto de ley de promoción agropecuaria; exposición de motivos", El Peruano (Lima), 17 October 1966. 272 Latín America levels for the upper classes but are often far in excess of those for the less privileged. The latifundian system of ownership—and its complement, the minifundian system—are the long-standing causes of a situation that the population explosion of the past twenty years has rendered critical and, indeed, untenable. The effects of the minifundio-latifundio pattern are obvious: on the one hand, an excessively large number of people farming plots of land too small to provide them with a decent standard of living; and on the other, a failure on the part of the large estates to absorb all the manpower they could, due to their system of extensive cultivation and in some cases to the very high percentage of land left lying fallow. A study carried out by the Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development (CIDA) in seven Latin American countries reveals that in six of them (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Guatemala) only 700,000 of the 4.4 million people at present working on the minifundios would be needed, if a normal ratio existed between the size of these farms and the size of their labour force. The same study points out that if the land/man ratio of the minifundios were applied to the large estates, the latter would be able to absorb 25 million more workers.1 Between these two extremes there certainly lies a happy medium which it should be possible to attain if crop-growing were intensified and if fallow land were brought under cultivation, since in the seven countries studied (the six mentioned above plus Peru) the large estates have under cultivation, on average, only one-sixth of their land.2 The indices of concentration3 given in table 10 show how serious the problem had become by 1960 or thereabouts. It will be seen from these figures that the situation had not changed much since 1950, when it was estimated that, in Latin America as a whole, latifundios (estates of more than 2,500 acres), although representing in terms of numbers only 1.5 per cent of all farms, covered 64.9 per cent of the total area under cultivation, while very small 1 Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development (CIDA): Land Tenure Conditions and Socio-Economie Development of the Agricultural Sector in Seven Latin American Countries (Washington, 1966), pp. 29-30. See also, as concerns the possibilities for the absorption of human resources within the context of agrarian reform, the analysis by Marvin J. Sternberg in FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Gearing Agrarian Reform to Employment Objectives, with Particular Reference to Latin America (doc. WLR/66/8). See also, by the same author: "Agrarian Reform and Employment, with Special Reference to Latin America", International Labour Review, Vol. 95, Nos. 1-2, JanuaryFebruary 1967, pp. 1-26. 2 Land Tenure Conditions ..., op. cit., pp. 20-23. 8 The index of concentration of rural ownership measures the degree of inequality in land ownership. The nearer the figure is to 1, the higher the degree of concentration of ownership in the hands of a few landowners. For the way in which this index is calculated (by means of the Lorenz Curve), see, for example, A. Piatier: Statistique (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), pp. 281-283. 273 Agricultural organisations and development holdings (under 50 acres), although accounting for 72.6 per cent of the total in terms of numbers, occupied only 3.7 per cent of the land.1 The significance of thesefigureswill be even more readily grasped if we compare concentration of ownership with the distribution of manpower; in Colombia, for instance, to mention just one case, small family holdings occupy only 5 per cent of the land, but employ—or rather, under-employ—60 per cent of the working agricultural population, whereas the latifundios cover 50 per cent of the land but provide employment for only 4.2 per cent of the agricultural labour force. Now let us briefly examine the social and economic repercussions of this state of affairs. The latifundio and the minifundio are not two isolated, independent systems; on the contrary, they are bound together by ties of reciprocal interdependence and one would be inconceivable without the other. Outside the community-owned lands {ejidos, indigenous villages), the minifundio is often a small enclave surrounded by a large estate, and as such is governed by clearly defined rules of dependence. Its occupant is akin not to the European tenant or share-cropper of today, but to those of former times who were obliged to render all sorts of personal services, as we have seen in Section A of Part II of the present study. Whether he is an Ecuadorian huasipunguero, a Chilean inquilino or a Peruvian yanacona, the services he is called upon to render are more or less the same everywhere and may be expressed in terms of a specific number of days of work, often unpaid, or virtually unpaid, in exchange for the right to farm a little patch of ground. The ties which bind the agricultural worker to the latifundio are thus very different and far more stringent than those which link an industrial worker to his factory. The latifundio is an enclosed world which is completely selfsupporting. The agricultural worker finds himself involved in a tight circle of relationships upon which everything depends—his home, his work, benefits in kind, food—to such an extent that a mutation in one part of the structure is likely to bring the whole edifice tumbling down. Whereas a worker in a town can change his job without having to move house as a result, or decide to do his shopping elsewhere without this affecting his relationship with his employer, a worker on a latifundio cannot leave his employer without giving him back the plot of land and the house that have been provided for him, or, in some instances, without having paid off his debt to the plantation store. Likewise, while certain prospects for social advancement, limited though these may be, are offered to the town-dwelling worker, the agricultural labourer on a latifundio has practically no chance of changing or improving his situation. Lastly, unlike the city dweller, who as a rule does not need to look very far 1 Oscar Delgado : Reformas agrarias en la America latina (Mexico City, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965), p. 42. 274 Latin America for another factory or workshop, the agricultural worker in the latifundio areas would sometimes have to travel long distances to find another job, and this would involve travel expenses which would almost certainly be far beyond his means. Notwithstanding the great migratory flow towards the towns set in motion in the nineteenth century by the development of communications, the rural population—and in consequence the demographic pressure upon the land—has never ceased to grow. Accordingly, compared with that of industry, the world of the latifundios is acutely lacking in social and geographical mobility. It is characterised by the stagnation of every kind of human relationship, and faced with this situation the non-organised worker has for a long time had only two alternatives to choose from: passive acceptance, or revolt. It is logical that this concentration of land ownership in the hands of a few should go hand in hand with a similar concentration of income. Raúl Prebisch estimated in 1963 that at that time about half the population of Latin America was earning, on average, the equivalent of only US$120 per year, and was absorbing only one-fifth of total personal consumption in the continent.1 It is clear from this estimate that the average per capita earnings shown in table 10 have to be properly interpreted, particularly since they represent averages for all sectors of the economy. We must therefore bear in mind that, broadly speaking, the lower the national per capita income, the more uneven domestic distribution is likely to be, and the further removed from normal distribution (the Gauss Curve) ; the higher it is, the more normal will be the distribution; and this criterion itself needs to be modified where one single sector, absorbing only a tiny proportion of the economically active population, furnishes the bulk of the national income (as with petroleum in Venezuela). Obviously, the effects of poor distribution of the national income are felt most severely in the sphere of agriculture. A few examples will suffice by way of confirmation. In Nicaragua, annual family incomes in 1961 ranged from the equivalent of US$357 for tenant farmers (arrendatarios) to US$31,430 for large agricultural estates (fincas multifamiliares) employing twelve or more men per year.2 In Mexico around 1964, the indigenous communities, which represented 10.4 per cent of the country's population, were earning less than 1 per cent of the national income. The per capita income of the indigel Raùl Prebisch: Towards a Dynamic Development Policy for Latin America (New York, United Nations, 1964), p. 3. See also United Nations, ECLA: The Economic Development of Latin America in the Post-War Period (New York, 1964), Ch. 2. ' See, in this respect, United Nations, ECLA: Las relaciones entre la tenencia de la tierra y la eficiencia del uso de los recursos agrícolas en Centroamérica, by Sergio Maturana (Mexico City, 1963; mimeographed). 275 Agricultural organisations and development Table 10. Socio-economic data for Latin American countries (with special reference Country National per capita income in 1965 (USS) Share of agriculture in gross domestic product (1965 or year stated) Active agricultural population (% of total active population) Index of per capita food production in 1963-64 (1952-53 to 1956-57 = 100) 19 (1960) 70 (1964) 54 (1960) 28 (1960) 49.6 (1964) 55 (1950) 42 (1953) 70 (1964) 56 (1962) 60 (1961) 69 (1964) 87 (1960) 66 (1961) 54 (1960) 59 (1964) 48 (1964) 52 (1962) 50 (1961) 18.3 (1963) 34.4 (1964) 103 — 107 lOlf 93 — 68 — — — 101 — 96 130 — 104 — 93 80 115 (%) 740 17 Argentina Bolivia 144 23 Brazil 217 29 (1964) Chile 10 515 32 237 Colombia Costa Rica 353 31 (1964) 361 (1956-62) — Cuba Dominican Republic 212 24 (1964) Ecuador 183 34 El Salvador 236 32 (1964) 28 281 Guatemala 49 (1962) Haiti 80 44 Honduras 194 17 Mexico 412 Nicaragua 298 35 24 Panama 425 38 Paraguay 186 Peru 218 20 (1964) Uruguay 537 16 (1964) 745 8 (1963) Venezuela Available calories, 1963-64 (number of calories per capita per day) Consumption of fats and oils, 1963-64 (grams 1 per capita per day) 2 660 109.8 2 000 — 2 860 63.9 2 360 56.4 2 070 (1961) — 2 550 — — — 2114(1959) — 1 970 (1960-63) — 2 050 45.5 2 210 35.7 — — 2190 — 2 630 72.4 2 325 — 2 240 — 2 580 50.9 2 250 45.8 2 960 — 2 340 60.5 Sources: FAO: Production Yearbook, 1964 (Rome, 1965); The State of Food and Agriculture. 1965 (Rome, 1965); United Nations: Statistical Yearbook, 1962 (New York, 1963); Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, 1966 (New York, 1967); Compendium of Social Statistics, 1963 (New York, 1963); Inter-American Development Bank: Social Progress Trust Fund, Fifth Annual Report, 1965 (Washington, 1966); Centro Latino Americano de Pesquisas em Ciencias Sociais: Situacäo social da America Latina (Rio de Janeiro, 1965). nous population amounted to only 8.5 per cent of the national average.1 In Brazil, a comparison between rural incomes and urban incomes in the northern and eastern regions reveals that the annual per capita income varies between the equivalent of US$23 (rural population) and US$96 (urban population) in the Piaui region, and between US$75 and US$146 (country and town) in Minas Gérais. 2 The rural income thus ranges from 7 to 28 per cent of the national income shown in table 10. These figures, which deserve careful 1 Luis Torres Ordófiez: Realidades y proyectos, 16 años de trabajo (Mexico City, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1964), pp. 67-69. Quoted by Gerrit Huizer in "Desarrollo de la comunidad y grupos de intereses en áreas rurales", op. cit., p. 57. 2 Figures compiled by José Pastore and published by Andrew Pearse: "Agrarian Change Trends in Latin America", Latin America Research Review (Austin, University of Texas), Vol. 1, No. 3, 1966, p. 61. 276 Latín America to their agrarian situation) Consumption of proteins, 1963-64 (grams » per capita per day) Illiteracy (1960-64) Total Animal proteins °/oOf On edu-On %of rural cation health national population population 77.2 56 66.5 79.4 46.1 (1961) 52.9 15 17.6 29.0 20 (1961) — — — — 8.6 63 39.5 16.4 37.7 16 49.8(1957-59) 49.8 (1961) 58.5 58 19.8(1957-59) 16.4 (1961) 15.2 8.6 — — — 58 73 68 47 66 58 94.5 (1961) 61.2 24 — 15 23.7 14.1 61.9 (1961) 25.3 — 40 30.4 56 72 (1950) 80 52.6 29 50 21.7 22 39 9.7 21.7 Percentage of total government expenditure in 1964-65: 17 12.8 25.2 66 (1950) 7.4 33 13.8 50 16.1 22 28.7 4.2 2.7 2.5 8.0 4.6 7.8 — — — — — 11.5 41.8 11.6 64 22.1 82 (1950;) 14 10.8 — 21.2 — 23.4 — 80.4 15.6 35.4 22.4 16.3 — 59.5 24* 16.4 — 10.5 — 6.4 2.3 10.9 8.2 11.4 6.2 5.1 8.4 12.9 5.4 6.6 9.5 7.8 Life expectancy at birth (based on recent data) Men Infant mortality (deaths per 1,000 births) (1964 or Women year stated) 62.5 68.5 49.7 49.7 39.3 2 45.5 2 55 60 -50.5 8 — 54.6 4 57.0 4 -59 s — — -50 s 50.6 -45 3 -423 -50 s 57.6 — — — 60.4 — — — 60.3 — 53 55 — — 53 55 67.9 73.1 -60 s — Index of concentration of rural ownership 60.7 110-140 90 (1960) 111(1961) 84.1 69.8(1963) 0.88 (1960) 0.97(1950) 0.85(1960) 0.94 (1955) 0.89 (1960) 0.89(1955) 0.83 (1945) — 79.5(1962) 0.90(1950) 0.91 (1954) 94.1 65.7(1965) 0.92(1961) 92.8(1963) 0.96 (1950) 171.6 — 47 (1963) 0.82 (1952) 0.97(1950) 66.3 50.0 0.77(1952) 0.78 (1950) 42.4 100.0 0.97 (1956) 94.8 0.97(1961) 0.84(1961) 47.4 0.96(1956) 51.7 Concentration indices calculated on basis of available cadastral data. 1 1 gram = 0.035 oz. * Figures relating to period 1940-50, * Average for both sexes. ' Figures relating to period 1949-51. * Percentage of budgetary expenditure only. study, explain the weakness or, in some cases, the non-existence of a monetary economy in rural areas and the preponderance of a subsistence economy, with all that this implies in terms of toil and hardship. In Guatemala it is estimated that only one-third of the population is able to participate in the monetary economy.1 In Peru, according to a paper submitted to an Inter-American Conference for Peasant Leaders organised by the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers (IFPAAW), which is affiliated to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), half the population gets 80 per cent of the goods it needs exclusively by bartering, 1 See, in this respect, the work by Humberto Flores Alvarado: Las migraciones indígenas internas (Guatemala City, Instituto Indigenista Nacional, 1961). 277 Agricultural organisations and development while the other half earns the equivalent of US$53 per year.1 We should not therefore be astonished by the low consumption indices or even by the short life expectancy figures revealed by table 10, bearing in mind once again that these are over-all averages and that a breakdown into social groups would show even lower figures for the most underprivileged classes. All these factors—dependent relationships, lack of social and geographical mobility, malnutrition, bartering in order to subsist, etc.—have an obvious impact upon the capacity of peasants to organise themselves and upon the nature of their demands. There can be no doubt that an individual earning less than the minimum he needs to live on and living in a paternalistic environment ceases to react, or does so only in a sporadic and violent manner when some unexpected event or a worsening of the situation shakes him out of his apathy. Gerrit Huizer rightly notes how difficult it is to band peasants together into organisations with any chance of success under a system of marginal agriculture, and stresses that, generally speaking, it is easier to form organisations among independent farmers whose standard of living is above subsistence level.2 The history of the developed countries abounds in similar examples to prove—if further proof were necessary—that the elimination of structural and socio-economic obstacles is an essential pre-requisite for the development of genuine, effective agricultural organisations. The technological time lag The difficulties described above have gradually brought about a huge time lag in technological progress which Latin America will be able to make up only at the cost of tremendous financial sacrifices, by carrying out sufficiently far-reaching reforms, and above all by organising its peasantry properly. A comparison of certain basic data, rarely attempted hitherto, reveals clearly the gigantic gap (and there is nothing exaggerated about the word "gigantic") which separates under-development from development. In four basicfields3 (the use of fertilisers, mechanisation, technical personnel and rural co-operatives) which have a direct bearing upon productivity, nutrition, the general standard of living and the degree of organisation, an 1 Conferencia Interamericana de la FITPASC [IFPAAW] para Dirigentes Campesinos, Caracas, 14-15 February 1967, doc. No. 1 : Et movimiento sindical campesino y el desarrollo nacional en América latina, p. 1. 8 Gerrit Huizer: Some Preliminary Generalizations on the Role of Peasant Organizations in the Process of Agrarian Reform (Mexico City, November 1967; mimeographed), p. 1. 'Other very important problems such as marketing, credit, market organisation, etc., should be examined here too, but their scope is so vast that they would require a special study all to themselves. 278 Latin America examination of the figures reveals an over-all time lag of about a century as compared with the developed countries. With regard to fertilisers, the total consumption for the whole of Latin America is no higher than that for almost any one of the larger European countries. In 1962-63 the Latin American continent consumed 481,660 tons of nitrogenous fertilisers (270,600 of them in Central America), whereas England alone used 532,500 tons. Consumption of phosphate fertilisers reached 321,000 tons (106,000 of them in Central America), as against the 369,800 tons consumed in Italy. Lastly, 177,850 tons of potash fertilisers were consumed (115,850 of them in Central America), this figure being exceeded even by a small country like Belgium, with 189,250 tons.1 Behind these figures lies evidence of the effects of extensive farming and its inability to cope with an alarming food shortage. While it is true that in the case of certain crops over-all yields have increased in volume, the fact remains that in some countries the rise in output since before the war has, as already stated, been too dilatory to keep pace with the rise in the population. If we take wheat, for instance, except in Mexico and Argentina, yields are still somewhere between 800 and 1150 lb. per acre, when the use of fertilisers and more extensive irrigation of the land would make it possible at least to double these figures. It hardly seems necessary to mention the educative role that agricultural organisations could play in this field, as they have been and still are doing in the developed countries. Mechanisation is another of the outstandingly weak points of Latin American agriculture. At the beginning of the 1960s there were barely 310,000 tractors in the whole continent, as compared with the 338,000 possessed by Italy alone in 1963. In 1960 Brazil was only just able to muster 63,000 tractors—a figure reached in Switzerland three years later.2 In Colombia there was even a process of "decapitalisation" : from 20,000 tractors in 1962, the figure dropped to fewer than 18,200 in 1966, working only 10 per cent of the land suitable for mechanised farming.3 Hence Latin America is a continent which is crying out for mechanisation. In this sphere it is lagging only some thirty years or so behind Europe, and while it is true that Europe became mechanised as an answer to the exodus from the land (whereas Latin America has an abundant labour force to draw on), it nevertheless does not appear possible to increase the productivity of these workers and enable the working agricultural population to earn a decent income without promoting mechanisation along suitable lines. Admittedly the problem gives no cause for concern 1 For further details see FAO: Production Yearbook, 1965 (Rome, 1966), pp. 299-305. ibid., pp. 308-309. 3 Jaime Lopera: "El sector agropecuario en cifras", Revista Nacional de Agricultura (Bogotá), No. 749, October 1967, pp. 24-25. 2 279 Agricultural organisations and development to the large landowners, who either have already partly mechanised their farming or have at their disposal sufficient funds or credit facilities to do so if workers were to become in short supply. It is rather for the family farms, whose numbers are likely to increase, that the situation might become difficult if mechanisation were left to chance. The development of group farming and the setting-up of machinery pools operated by local peasants' organisations would enable a maximum return to be procured for a minimum of outlay, and this is no negligible factor bearing in mind the extent to which imports of machinery weigh heavily upon the trade balances of Latin American countries. That there is a need to multiply the number of agricultural organisations at all levels is also made clear by the small number of technical personnel in the countries of this continent. The data available on the subject are not very recent (they refer to the period 1957-61), but as the situation has apparently not changed a great deal since then, and as thefiguresfor that period have been taken as a basis for more recent reports1, we shall quote them briefly here to stress the importance of this problem. In 1957-61 Latin America had about 17,000 agronomists, scattered very unevenly over the various countries. As will be seen from table 11, the ratio between agronomists and the total number of those engaged in agricultural occupations varied greatly, from 1: 355 in Costa Rica to 1:73,333 in Guatemala. But if Latin America wishes to improve its crop-growing methods, switch over from extensive farming to intensive farming and increase yields it will have to increase the number of its technical personnel tenfold. There is no shortage of institutions for the purpose: forty-four agricultural colleges, twenty of which were founded between 1945 and 1956, award about 1,300 diplomas every year, and it is estimated that they could double the number of their students. The obstacles are rather of a social and economic nature. Alvaro Chaparro and Ralph H. Allee have studied the problem from this angle and noted the lack of attractiveness—or of prestige, if one prefers—of this profession. Their analysis leads them to a diagnosis of which the essential points are as follows: The factors of rural-urban background, occupations, land tenure, and social status... make possible the characterisation of an agricultural student in Latin America as a middle-class boy from a town or city, landless or middle-to-small owner of land, but generally associated with non-agricultural occupations. This picture permits understanding of a number of problems or issues associated with scientific x See, for example: Agricultural Development in Latin America: Current Status and Prospects (Washington, Inter-American Development Bank, October 1966), p. 50. 280 Latín America and technical occupations generally, or with agricultural professions in particular, in Latin America. The first issue refers to the role of the middle classes in scientific and technical development. Neither the higher nor the lower classes provide the human material for such development. The upper-class youth, who has the educational opportunities of his choice, is interested in a university career, as it fulfils the educational requirements for his social prestige and class membership. The rejection of other careers is evidenced by the fact that, among the sons of landowners, the smallest proportions belong to large owners of land, traditionally associated in Latin America with high social status. A similar and corroborating situation was found in a study on the diffusion of farm practices among large coffee growers in Costa Rica, in which it appears that, although half of them went to universities and a few to agricultural colleges, higher education was not associated with higher acceptance of new farm practices. It was also found in this study that the innovators were generally dynamic men of enterprise who came from the middle class of the group of large landowners. If middle classes contribute most of the technicians available, the number of technicians should increase with the growth of urban and rural middle classes. Some evidence is supplied by the fact that Costa Rica and Uruguay, with the highest relative numbers of agricultural technicians, are also countries which have more highly developed educational systems, but also a relatively more developed rural middle class and broader distribution of agricultural land. The role of middle classes in the scientific and technical development of Latin America deserves careful study. A second issue refers to the influence of the landed classes on the supply and demand of agricultural technicians and scientists. Few sons of hacendados study agriculture, because they choose professions which give them higher social prestige and because their needs—as far as management is concerned—are satisfied with a mayordomo, or overseer, who usually has a low education. Technology is not needed as the methods of production are of the extensive type of agriculture, with low productivity but abundant and cheap labour. It can be safely said that demand for agricultural technicians is stronger at present, and increasing faster in countries and areas where technology is replacing the traditional methods.l The same conclusions have been reached by many other experts, including in particular Baldovinos de la Peña, who compares, for instance, the number of lawyers in Mexico (60,000) with the small number of students and graduates in agriculture (4,600 in 1961).2 Lowry Nelson quotes the same figures and refers in his turn to one consequence of this state of affairs—the "brain drain". According to the data he gives, about 100 technicians have emigrated from Bolivia alone in the past few years because of the low level of salaries, whereas to meet the targets set in its ten-year economic and social development plan the country would need 800, as against the 138 available.3 1 Alvaro Chaparro and Ralph H. Allee: "Higher Agricultural Education and Social Change in Latin America", Rural Sociology (Madison, University of Wisconsin), Vol. 25, March 1960, pp. 20-21. 2 Gabriel Baldovinos de la Peña: "El progreso agrícola de México y los agrónomos profesionales", Estudios Agrarios (Mexico City), No. 2, January-April 1961, pp. 93-125. 8 Lowry Nelson: Some Social Aspects of Agrarian Reform in Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela (Washington, Pan-American Union, 1964; mimeographed doc. UP/Ser.H/VII.17/Rev.2), p. 60. 281 Agricultural organisations and development Table 11. Latin America : Distribution of agronomists, 1957-61 Country Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Haiti Honduras Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela Number of agronomists 2 500 138 4 500 1 700 900 550 104 28 9 222 15 3 600 35 24 5 1500 500 500 Estimated number of persons engaged in agricultural occupations per agronomist 584 4 870 2 727 389 2 248 355 7 712 17 321 73 333 6 550 25 267 1707 8 086 6 500 64 400 1037 364 1548 Sources: First column: Agricultural Development in Latin America : Current Status and Prospects (Washington, Inter-American Development Bank, 1966), p. 50. Second column : figures calculated on the basis of census data published by the F A O in its Production Yearbook, 1965, table 6 A . T h e figures comprise persons o f both sexes engaged in agricultural occupations. They should be regarded as approximations, since the population census year of each country does not coincide exactly with the year in which the number of agronomists was counted. Having said this, we must stress that, even if the numbers were multiplied by ten, and supposing that the brain drain could be halted completely, Latin America's needs as regards agricultural extension work would be far from being met. Further development in this field cannot be left entirely to the technicians and advisers on the staff of the extension services, who are in too much demand to be able to provide instruction at the local level over a long period. The local and provincial agricultural organisations also have a part to play, whether they be leagues or trade unions or organisations of a new type along the lines, for example, of the Polish agricultural circles. Only through a close-knit network of organisations of this kind will it be possible to provide facilities for the dissemination of knowledge at the local level, without which the transformation of Latin American agriculture will for a long time yet remain an unattainable dream. Another imperative pre-requisite for development is an increase in the number of co-operatives. All of the previously mentioned negative factors 282 Latin America Table 12. Latin America : Evolution of agricultural co-operatives, 1948-60/61-63 Country 194S Number of Number of co-operative » members 489 Argentina Bolivia — 1041 Brazil 48 Chile Colombia — 6 Costa Rica Cuba — Dominican Republic 1 Ecuador 167 El Salvador — 4 Guatemala Haiti — Honduras — 325 Mexico Nicaragua 3 Panama Paraguay 35 Peru Puerto Rico — Uruguay Venezuela — Total 84104 — 101 092 4000 — 1655 — 10 390 — 581 — — 30 097 — 2 535 — • 2119 234 454 1960-61 Number of Number of co-operatives members 1963 Number of Number of co-operatives members 1394 95 1833 163 62 12 431 822 4 661 624 214 11511 27159 4124 1407 127 1739 172 90 15 443 242 6 371 406 486 20 800 32 641 4 459 — — — — 7 216 13 10 5 4 838 2 4 72 22 31 75 4 858 476 7 887 1009 682 — 281 60 219 80 9 038 2184 41967 19 500 1 246 814 2 234 18 29 26 16 885 6 8 82 27 29 83 14 61 9 381 5 415 1545 1635 1001 61320 2 400 552 9 274 2 649 42 000 21 150 223 5 009 1 072 605 Sources: 1948: Mario Yuri: "The Progress of Agricultural Co-operation in Latin America", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, I960 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1960), p. 205; 1960-61 : "Problems of Latin American Co-operative Development", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1963 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1963), p. 206; 1963: SocloEconomtc Development of Co-operatives In Latin America, The Co-operative League of USA (San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1963), p. 309. N.B. : It will be noted that the total number of members in 1963 was lower than in 1960-61. This was due to the decline in numbers in Brazil and the Dominican Republic; there was an increase everywhere else. In view of the wide variety of sources from which the data in this table were drawn, and in the absence of detailed explanations, this apparent drop in numbers should be viewed with circumspection. have a direct impact in this respect and explain the lowness of the figures reached. This does not imply that progress to date has been negligible: since 1948 the number of agricultural co-operatives in Latin America has more than doubled, and their membership has increased more than fivefold. The rise from 234,000 members in 1948 to 1.2 million in 1960-61 signifies, having regard to the circumstances, a tremendous effort which must be given its due. Nevertheless, if we compare the figures in table 12 with those in table 4 (p. 85), we can see the extent to which there is still room for improvement. Thefigureof 1.2 million is in fact slightly higher than that for Hungary or Rumania before the war, and is below that for Italy. If we compare it with that for the rural population of the continent (approximately 108 million 283 Agricultural organisations and development persons in 1960), it represents an index of penetration of 1.15 per cent. This slow development, attributable to the peculiar pattern of Latin American agriculture, is highly regrettable, since co-operatives are just as indispensable as other agricultural organisations as aids in carrying through agrarian reforms. As will be seen later, these reforms are already under way in some countries, and it is to be feared that they will meet with resistance or undermining influences at the local level, due to the lack of organisation of the peasantry. Foreseeing these difficulties, the Third Report on Progress in Land Reform stressed as early as 1962 that: to be effective, land legislation must be supported at the base of strong social opinion organised in community institutions of one kind or another in rural areas After laws have been passed, many illiterate peasants have been ignorant of their new rights. Even where fairly adequate means of public education have been available, a lack of strong peasant organisations in rural areas has helped landowners to disregard legislation, or to get around it. The presence of such strong community organisations, at the local level, on the other hand, has turned the tide in favour of enforcement.1 Legislative obstacles In Latin America there are still many obstacles to the exercise of freedom of association. As will be seen from table 13, in 1969 thirteen Latin American countries out of nineteen had ratified the Right of Association (Agriculture) Convention, 1921 (No. 11). Fourteen countries had ratified the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87), and fourteen also had ratified the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98). Most countries have ratified only one or two of these three vital instruments on freedom of association; only eight have ratified all three of them; at the other end of the scale, El Salvador has not ratified a single one. Granted that enacting legislation is a long, complicated business in most countries, it is regrettable that the time which has elapsed since the adoption by the ILO Conference of Conventions Nos. 11, 89 and 98 has not yet proved sufficient for some countries to follow in their legislation the spirit and the letter of these international instruments. Discrepancies still subsist between their legislation and the provisions of the international Conventions. The right to organise is guaranteed by the constitutions of all Latin American countries, and in principle its exercise should not be subject to any restrictions 1 p. 77. 284 United Nations-FAO-ILO: Progress in Land Reform, Third Report (New York, 1962), Latín America Table 13. Ratification by Latin American countries of Conventions on freedom of association and collective bargaining (year of registration) Country Right of Association (Agriculture) Convention, 1921 (No. 11) Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention,, 1948 (No. 87) Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98) Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela 1936 n.r. 1957 1925 1933 1963 1935 n.r. 1969 n.r. n.r. n.r. 1937 1934 n.r. 1968 1945 1933 1944 1960 1965 n.r. n.r. n.r. 1960 1952 1956 1967 n.r. 1952 1956 1950 1967 1958 1962 1960 1954 n.r. 1956 n.r. 1952 n.r. n.r. 1960 1952 1953 1959 n.r. 1952 1956 n.r. 1967 1966 1966 1964 1954 1968 Total ratifications 13 14 14 n.r. = not ratified other than those that are deemed to be normal in modern countries. But in practice, in certain countries, provisions not apparently intended to restrict freedom of association are sometimes used to keep it within certain bounds or to abolish it altogether as dictated by circumstances. Cases have come before the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations and the Committee on Freedom of Association which illustrate this situation, showing how it is possible to interpret in a very broad sense a provision drafted with a specific and legitimate aim in view, in order to hamper the application of other provisions which are in no way inconsistent with it, or how the incorporation of vague and imprecise concepts in a body of laws can result in the temporary qualification of certain acts as offences in a manner which varies according to the time and place, and may lead to a departure from the traditional principle—nulla poena sine lege—of the non-retroactivity of the law. 285 Agricultural organisations and development The case of the banana workers of Costa Rica, submitted to the ILO's Committee on Freedom of Association, is a concrete example of the interpretation that can be given to a principle such as that of the right of ownership, which is embodied in the legislation of every country in the world. In a communication transmitted to the ILO on 19 June 1964, the Costa Rican Workers' Confederation "Rerum Novarum" declared that, during that year and the year before, the authorities had broken up a number of meetings organised by trade union leaders on the plantations of the Banana Company, which operates vast estates in the Pacific banana zone. According to the Costa Rican Government: The manager of the Banana Company had decided to prohibit workers from meeting trade union leaders on company property because persons with extremist ideas were sowing hatred, confusion and discontent with the intention of disturbing social peace in the plantations. An appeal having finally been made to the President of the Republic invoking the constitutional right of ownership which protects the company, the chief magistrate sent instructions to the local authorities prohibiting meetings on company property without prior authorisation from the company.1 This decision was apparently based on articles 23 and 44 of the Constitution, which lay down the principle that private property is inviolable, but which, if interpreted in the extreme sense of constituting a ban on the right of assembly on plantations, could invalidate article 26, by virtue of which "meetings held in private premises shall not require previous authorisation", and article 60, which lays down that "both employers and workers shall have power to form unions freely, for the sole purpose of obtaining and preserving economic, social or occupational advantages". 2 Thus three constitutional provisions conflicted with one another, not as regards the principles they embodied but in their application, because no limits had been set to them. The principle of the inviolability of private property should in no case be taken as a pretext for banning meetings of workers, especially in their own homes, as was the case with the Banana Company, since the workers were obliged by the force of circumstances to live on the estate. The need to seek the prior authorisation of the company for meetings at once placed the union at the mercy of the estate managers and forced them to make an agonising choice between asking permission and holding the meetings in secret. Moreover, the reason given by the employer, namely "extremist ideas . . . sowing hatred, confusion and discontent", could be applied, if stretched to the utmost, to trade union demands 1 Reports of the Committee on Freedom of Association set up by the Governing Body (81st Report): Official Bulletin (Geneva, ILO), Vol. XLVIII, No. 2, April 1965, Supplement, p. 60. Political Constitution of the Republic of Costa Rica, dated 7 November 1949, Title IV, ILO: Legislative Series, 1949—C.R. 3. 286 Latin America all over the world, since what the worker looks upon as a justified claim is often regarded by his employer as unlawful presumption. The history of trade unionism abounds with illustrations of this. It is worth recalling that when it examined the situation in Costa Rica the Committee on Freedom of Association expressed the opinion that it would be extremely useful for the high judicial authorities of the country to have the opportunity to state their views on the scope of the right of assembly granted by the National Constitution in situations such as those which had arisen in the case in question. The Committee went on to recall that on various occasions it had itself drawn the Government's attention to the principles laid down in the resolution adopted by the ILO Committee on Work on Plantations (Bandung, 1950) concerning the facilities that should be granted to plantation workers in trade union matters; the Committee further drew the Government's attention to the importance attached by the ILO Governing Body to the right of plantation workers to hold trade union meetings, suggesting in this connexion that it might be appropriate to adopt clear provisions as to the meaning to be attached to the terms " public meeting" and "private meeting", and adding that the right of trade unions to meet freely on their own premises, without need for prior authorisation and without control by the public authorities, constituted a fundamental element of freedom of association. Lastly, the Committee recommended the Governing Body to reiterate to the Government the principle that facilities should be granted to plantation workers, particularly having regard to the right to hold trade union meetings, and to point out the need to take such steps as are necessary to bring about the effective application of this principle.1 Another case was submitted to the Committee on Freedom of Association by the employees of the Standard Fruit Company of Honduras. In its complaint the employees' union alleged that during its eighth congress, in May 1963, the President of the Republic had sent a telegram to the departmental political governor alerting him to the existence of "marked anti-democratic tendencies" seeking to obtain the inclusion in the executive of the union of elements "of noted Marxist affiliation". The Head of State had declared in the communication in question that "since the Constitution of the Republic prohibits all activity contrary to the democratic spirit of the Honduran 1 See reports of the Committee on Freedom of Association set up by the Governing Body (81st Report, op. cit., pp. 60-61). More recently, in answer to a direct request by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, the Government announced that, by means of Administrative Order No. 1772 of 5 September 1967, it had given expression to the Committee's views as regards the access of trade union officials to the Banana Company's plantations and the holding of union meetings on these plantations. See International Labour Conference, 53rd Session, Geneva, 1969, Report III(l): Summary of Reports on Ratified Conventions, p. 121. 287 Agricultural organisations and development Republic . . . any infiltration of Marxist elements in the ranks of the executive members will be considered as a practice harmful to the trade union movement, to worker-employer relations and to relationships between the Government and the workers' trade union organisations".1 After the telegram was received a split occurred at the congress and the election was subsequently declared null and void by the authorities. In its examination of the complaint presented by the union, the Committee on Freedom of Association expressed the opinion that "the fact that the authorities should intervene during the election proceedings of a union, expressing their opinion of the candidates and the consequences of the election, seriously challenges the principle whereby the trade union organisations are entitled to elect their representatives in full freedom".2 An examination of the legislation of Honduras reveals that the constitutional ban on the pursuance of or connivance at activities contrary to the democratic way of life is not only reproduced in Chapter IX of Legislative Decree No. 101 of 6 June 1955, for the promulgation of an Act respecting employers' and workers' associations, but is further reinforced, so to speak, in Chapter I of the same decree by a provision which stipulates that occupational associations must "abstain from any activities of a political or religious nature".3 In addition a number of provisions of the Labour Code (such as section 472, whereby, if more than one trade union exists, only the union having the largest number of members shall be retained, or sections 510 (c) and 541 which require officials of trade unions, and of federations and confederations of trade unions, to have been employed, at the time of their election, for more than six months, in the case of the former, or for more than a year, in the case of the latter, in an activity, occupation or trade covered by the union 4) impose restrictions incompatible with a number of Articles of Convention No. 87, ratified by the Government. It will be noted that the restrictions mentioned can be divided into two categories: on the one hand, specific limitations which leave no room for subjective appreciation, such as the sections of the Labour Code to which reference has been made, and on the other hand vaguely worded limitations which lend themselves to subjective interpretation as circumstances dictate, as is the case with the constitutional provision and with those of the legislative decree cited above. In the absence of any specific and detailed definition of activities "contrary to the democratic way of life", it is obvious that any ^ L O : Official Bulletin, Vol. XLVn, No. 3, July 1964, Supplement II, pp. 20-21. » ibid., p. 22. »ILO: Legislative Series, 1955—Hon. 2. 4 International Labour Conference, 51st Session, Geneva, 1967, Report III (4); Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, pp. 88-89. 288 Latín America union claim which calls, for example, for structural reforms may be interpreted as an attempt to undermine the foundations of society, and hence of the democratic way of life itself. As for the ban on the entry of occupational associations into the political arena, it makes no allowance for the inevitable overlapping between economics and politics. A trade union may be prompted to call for the same reform as a political party, and it may so happen that its leaders are also members of the party in question. In its turn, a political party may support a trade union claim because it is influenced by those of its members who belong to the union. In both cases it would be difficult to make a distinction, as regards the action taken by the union, between what is strictly within its purview and what goes beyond it to enter the forbidden area of politics.1 There is always a danger in attempting to qualify the actions and demands of trade unions along doctrinal lines: that of branding them with political labels which do not correspond entirely with the aims they have in mind. Experience has shown that in Latin America it is all too common for social and economic claims to be over-hastily associated with a particular political viewpoint, especially where the propagation and expression of this viewpoint by a party are banned by law, whereas in fact claims of the same nature form part of a whole series of programmes ranging from reformist socialism to the most orthodox form of Marxism, passing through the various shades of Christian democracy. That is why, in the developed countries, the practice has long been abandoned of banning all political or even religious activity on the part of occupational associations, whether they be of employers or of workers. The ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions 1 At its 35th Session (Geneva, June 1952), the International Labour Conference adopted a resolution concerning the independence of the trade union movement, in which, after emphasising in paragraphs 1 and 2 the important role of trade unions in economic and social development, it declared: "(3) To these ends it is essential for the trade union movement in each country to preserve its freedom and independence so as to be in a position to carry forward its economic and social mission irrespective of political changes; (4) A condition for such freedom and independence is that trade unions be constituted as to membership without regard to race, national origin or political affiliations and pursue their trade union objectives on the basis of the solidarity and economic and social interests of all workers; (5) When trade unions in accordance with national law and practice of their respective countries and at the decision of their members decide to establish relations with a political party or to undertake constitutional political action as a means towards the advancement of their economic and social objectives, such political relations or actions should not be of such a nature as to compromise the continuance of the trade union movement or its social and economic functions irrespective of political changes in the country; (6) Governments in seeking the co-operation of trade unions to carry out their economic and social policies should recognise that the value of this co-operation rests to a large extent on the freedom and independence of the trade union movement as an essential factor in promoting social advancement and should not attempt to transform the trade union movement into an instrument for the pursuance of political aims, nor should they attempt to interfere with the normal functions of a trade union movement because of its freely established relationship with a political party." 289 Agricultural organisations and development and Recommendations has observed that provisions of general scope, prohibiting occupational organisations from engaging in any political activities, might raise difficulties by reason of the fact that the interpretation given to them in practice might change at any moment and restrict considerably the possibility of action of the organisations.1 In so doing the Committee thought it useful to make reference to the resolution adopted by the International Labour Conference at its 35th Session. In the Committee's view it would seem that States should be able, without going so far as to prohibit in general terms all political activities by occupational organisations, to entrust to the judicial authorities the task of repressing abuses which might be committed by organisations which had lost sight of the fact that their fundamental objective should be "the economic and social advancement" of their members. Similar provisions to those in force in Honduras are to be found in Guatemala. Under the terms of section 211 (c) of the Labour Code2, the Executive "may refuse to authorise, register, or grant the status of body corporate to any industrial association which makes an application for the purpose, if another association comprising more than three-fourths of the total number of employees in the undertaking has already been legally recognised therein".3 Furthermore, the labour and social welfare tribunals may order the winding-up of an industrial association if it is established by the legal proceedings "that the association intervenes in electoral affairs or party politics, . . . that it carries on activities antagonistic to the democratic system established by the Constitution, . . . or that it violates in any other manner the provision laid down in section 206, in pursuance of which an industrial association is bound to limit its activities to the furthering and defence of the economic and social interests common to its members" (section 226 (a)). According to a report sent by the Guatemalan authorities to the ILO Committee of Experts3, use has at no time been made of the provisions of section 226 (a) of the Labour Code, but since it is impossible to state with certainty that a law on the statute book will not be enforced some day or another, so long as this section of the Labour Code remains unrepealed it should be looked upon as a virtual obstacle to the exercise of freedom of association, and an infringement of the principle laid down in Article 3 of Convention No. 87. 'International Labour Conference, 43rd Session, Geneva, 1959, Report III (4): Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, p. 115, para. 69. 2 Decree No. 1441 of 5 May 1961, to promulgate the Labour Code, as amended. ILO: Legislative Series, 1961—Gua.l. 8 See International Labour Conference, 51st Session, Geneva, 1967, Report III (4), op. cit., p. 87. 290 Latin America Another problem posed by the legislation of Guatemala is that of the powers it confers upon landowners by assimilating them to public officials. Under the terms of section 154 of the Penal Code, "every owner of a landed estate and his administrators or legal representatives shall have the same status as officials of the authorities and shall be bound to pursue, where necessary, and capture offenders of all kinds and hand them over to the nearest authority. This provision shall apply to estates for the growing of cereals, coffee, sugarcane and cocoa as well as those for the raising and fattening of livestock." One can see the temptation offered by this provision to the large landowners, with the best will in the world, to bring about the initiation of criminal proceedings in respect of labour disputes which would normally be dealt with in the civil courts. Other obstacles arise out of the fact that the general provisions relating to workers' organisations do not necessarily apply to all branches of the economy —in the present case, to agriculture—or else they confine the range of action of a trade union within territorial bounds, or stipulate that an agricultural undertaking must have a minimum number of employees for them to be allowed t o form a union. In Nicaragua's Trade Union Regulations, for instance, section 6 (repealed on 4 October 1966) provided for different treatment for agricultural workers; whereas industrial workers could choose between four types of union, in agricultural undertakings where over 60 per cent of the workers were unable to read and write only one works union could be formed. Moreover, the minimum number of members being stipulated as twenty-five, comprising at least 60 per cent of the workers in the undertaking, it followed that a union could not be formed in an undertaking with fewer than forty-two employees.1 In Brazil, one obstacle has been the limitation of the territorial range of rural trade unions. Under the terms of section 3 of Ministerial Order No. 355-A of 20 November 1962 (maintained as section 5 of Order No. 71 of 2 February 1965), the scope of a rural trade union was restricted to a single municipality, an extension being authorised only in exceptional cases, whereas industrial workers were allowed, by virtue of section 517 of the Consolidated Labour Laws, to establish trade unions at district, municipal, state, inter-state and, exceptionally, national level.2 1 International Labour Conference, 49th Session, Geneva, 1965, Report III (4): Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, p. 43. a International Labour Conference, 51st Session, Geneva, 1967, Report III (4), op. cit., p. 41. Since then the Government has decided to amend its legislation, publishing for this purpose Ministerial Order No. 862 of 6 September 1967, which abolishes the restriction limiting the scope of a rural trade union to a single municipality. See idem, 53rd Session, Geneva, 1969, Report III (4): Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, p. 40. 291 Agricultural organisations and development Generally speaking, agricultural trade unions in Latin America are confined to the plantations in the form of works unions affiliated to a trade union federation covering the whole of an industry or region. But apart from these unions there exist a variety of forms of association such as the Brazilian peasant leagues or the peasant communities and leagues of Guatemala, which are at times allowed to function openly, although upon occasion the public authorities may refuse to grant them legal personality. It is also common for official recognition of trade unions, which by law should be granted within a specified time limit, to be delayed for a fairly long period; according to a memorandum from the Latin American Federation of Farmworkers (Federación Campesina Latinoamericana) dated 8 September 1966, this appears to have been a frequent occurrence in certain countries, such as Venezuela, where some organisations have had to wait from six months to a year for official recognition, although the statutory time limit is thirty days. In contrast to these examples of restrictive legislation, the case of Chile presents a picture which is all the more promising in that it is to be hoped that its example will be emulated by other countries, as they become aware of the need to associate in carrying out the current agrarian reforms organisations freed from the shackles and apprehensions at present hampering their development. Until April 1967 Chilean agricultural trade unionism was governed by the provisions of Act No. 8811, promulgated twenty years earlier while President González Videla was in office.1 According to section 2 of this Act, agricultural unions had to be "institutions for mutual collaboration between capital and labour" whose primary concern was to be "to work for the improvement of housing in country districts". In consequence, "organisations whose methods of action are detrimental to discipline and order in employment" were deemed to be "contrary to the spirit and rules of the law". Unions formed for these sole purposes were allowed to operate only within the estate, and were in no circumstances permitted to amalgamate or federate (sections 9 and 14). Furthermore, even though only about 1,000 of the 14,000 fundos (larges estates) in Chile employed more than twenty agricultural workers, the Act insisted upon this number before a union could be formed, added to which these twenty had to be over 18 years of age, have moie than one year's continuous service and represent at least 40 per cent of the workers on the estate, and at least ten of them had to be able to read and write (section 16). If all these conditions were fulfilled, a lengthy and cumbersome procedure had to be gone through before the union was finally recognised by the President of the Republic. 1 Act No. 8811 of 8 July 1947 to insert in the Labour Code certain provisions relating to the formation of unions by agricultural workers. ILO: Legislative Series, 1947—Chile 1. 292 Latin America Not only was no provision made in the Act for the right to strike, but it stipulated that a union must be dissolved if its work was paralysed through deliberate non-attendance by more than 55 per cent of its member workers (section 46 (2)), while deeming to be an offence punishable by imprisonment "any act whereby an attempt is made to prevent workers from attending for work" (section 70). Moreover, unions could submit statements of demands only once a year, and then not during the sowing and harvesting periods (section 53), so that in the majority of cases the rotation of crops reduced to nil this limited right accorded by law. We can understand on reading these provisions why Chile had only fourteen officially recognised agricultural unions as at 30 November 1964, out of the twenty-four formed during the seventeen years the Act had been in force. Act No. 16625, promulgated on 26 April 19671, has drastically changed the situation. Its main features, enumerated later in the part dealing with Chile, show that all the obstacles stemming from the earlier law have been removed. As a result a large number of unions which until then had been denied a legal existence have been able automatically to regularise their situation. Thanks to this Act, and to the agrarian reform approved on 16 July 1967 by the National Congress, Chile is now among the most advanced countries in Latin America from a legislative standpoint; it is obvious that in many cases the adoption of similar measures elsewhere would regularise the situation of peasant organisations which are at present at variance with the law, and thereby contribute towards relieving the social tension which fills the rural sector in most of the countries of that continent. Normalisation of the status of agricultural organisations—whether they are trade unions, peasant leagues or one of the many kinds of tenants' and share-croppers' associations—would also enable them, at least in countries which have already embarked upon agrarian reform, to progress beyond the stage of pure and simple contestation and become participants. The isolation of a substantial proportion of Latin American peasants, the pressures to which they are subjected at the local level and their lack of representation and participation at the higher levels where the decisions are taken are facts which are well known to all rural sociologists. Even if not excluded from exercise of the vote because of illiteracy, political representation of peasant interests has been rare. The peasant's relation to the party system and to the local administration is likely to show the following characteristics: the acceptance of self-imposed leaders from among the estate owners or commercial classes of the small towns, whose influence may be used to secure communal or individual benefits; the location of power and of decision-making outside 1 Diario Oficial de la República de Chile, No. 26730, 29 April 1967, pp. 1-4. ILO: Legislative Series, 1967—Chile 1. 293 Agricultural organisations and development the peasant locality-group, and the consequent inhibition of the growth of a peasant leadership with some validity in the larger society; and the absence of concern by decision-makers at municipal, departmental, and national levels for the peasants' social and economic interests.1 At the national level, although in the past ten years or so most countries have opted for methods of economic and social planning, the lack of agricultural organisations is likely to jeopardise the success of these plans, which depends to a large extent upon genuine participation by the people. As a rule there is a lack of contact between the planners and the private sector. In framing a plan it is rare for there to be consultation of the bodies representing national opinion (parliament, political parties, trade unions, employers' associations, universities, etc.) or the sectors directly concerned (employers, importers, exporters, consumers' associations, etc.).2 This state of affairs was criticised by representatives of the trade unions during the Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour held in Colombia in May 1963. According to them, when they visited the major countries of the continent they could see no signs of any real effort on the part of governments to encourage participation by trade unions in the framing of national plans, and it appeared that in some cases attempts were made, on the contrary, to prevent them from having their say.3 There has admittedly been a slight improvement in the situation since 1963 thanks to growing pressure from the trade union movement in general and an awakening of governments to the facts. But it can by no means be said that all the obstacles have been done away with. Their elimination, and the granting to agricultural organisations of consultative status—similar to that which such organisations enjoy in Europe—are two essential prerequisites for the speeding-up of the agrarian reforms now under way. Without genuine participation at all levels, Latin America is likely to have difficulty during the coming decade in maintaining the balance between her various rates of growth while at the same time overcoming the century-old handicaps which have hampered her development up to now. 1 Andrew Pearse: Agrarian Change Trends in Latin America, op. cit., p. 66. United Nations, ECLA, 12th Session, Caracas, 2-13 May 1967: Planning in Latin America (mimeographed doc. E/CN.12/772), p. 20. For a general review of planning see also United Nations, ECOSOC: Committee for Development Planning, Report on the Second Session, Official Records, 43rd Session, Supplement No. 7 (New York, 1967), pp. 5-32. •See "Conferencia Interamericana de Ministros de Trabajo sobre la Alianza para el Progreso", Revista Interamericana de Ciencias Sociales (Washington, Pan-American Union), Vol. 2, No. 2, 1963, pp. 172-173. 2 294 Latin America THE PROGRESS AND LIMITS OF LAND REFORM Notwithstanding the gloomy picture we have been painting, a certain amount of progress in land reform has nevertheless been made. Until 1961, only four countries had achieved anything of moment in the field of land reform—Mexico (1917), Bolivia (1953), Cuba (1959) and Venezuela (1960). A brief experiment (which lasted a bare two years and was virtually abandoned after the revolution of 1954) was tried in Guatemala. In fact, land reform on a continental scale did not really begin until the signing in 1961 of the Charter of Punta del Este, which pointed to the need for such reform. Thus, Colombia (1962), Nicaragua (1963), Peru and Ecuador (1964) and Chile (1967) successively promulgated legislation for the structural and socio-economic transformation of their rural areas. Incidentally, all the amendments made to the constitutions of Latin American countries (or the new constitutional instruments adopted) today make provision either for the expropriation of land in the public interest, or (on occasion) for a maximum size of holding to be possessed by any one person. Under Chilean law, for example, nobody may own more than 200 acres, although up to 800 acres may be tolerated when the land in question is being farmed to the limit of its capacity. The social function of property is generally recognised, as is the fact that the latifundian system constitutes an obstacle to agricultural development. We may confidently say that the reason why no land reforms have been attempted in certain countries is not because there is any loophole in their respective constitutions, but because of obstacles, both social and political, which have hitherto prevented the promulgation of the requisite legislation.1 In each particular country, the progress made obviously depends on how much time has elapsed since the relevant legislation was enacted, and on the procedures adopted with regard to expropriation of, and compensation for, land. In Mexico, 91.2 million acres were expropriated between 1916 and 1956, for the benefit of some 1.9 million persons, without financial compensation, except for 170 landowners whose land totalled 551,000 acres.2 In Bolivia, between 1953 and 1965, a similar procedure resulted in the apportionment of 15.3 million acres among 170,000 peasant families.3 In Cuba, a maximum limit on property of 993 acres (30 caballerías) in 1959 led to the apportionment of some 11.1 million acres within eighteen months. A new 1 See Pedro Moral López: Limites legales e institucionales de la reforma agraria (Bogotá, ICIRA; doc. No. 59). 2 For further details, see Oscar Delgado: Reformas agrarias en la América latina, op. cit., pp. 373-402. More recent data show that by 1965,115.8 million acres had been apportioned among 2.3 million families. s Informe de la reunión internacional de ejecutivos de la reforma agraria..., op. cit., pp. 49-56. 295 Agricultural organisations and development law was enacted in 1963, limiting ownership of property to 5 caballerías; with this, land reform in Cuba may be considered virtually complete. But the process is still under way in Bolivia and Mexico. In this latter country, despite the land already turned over to the peasantry, the position is still such as to justify grave misgivings. The 1960 census revealed that out of 1.4 million estates occupying 420 million acres, 5,564 alone accounted for 228.8 million acres. Thus it was that in 1966, in a paper submitted to the World Land Reform Conference in Rome, the Mexican Government declared that in the existing social and economic circumstances obtaining in Mexico, agriculture was the most acute of all problems facing the country; on its solution depended the growing welfare of all Mexicans.1 In the three countries we have been discussing, land reform was the direct result of a revolutionary upheaval. But in the other countries (Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela), it springs from a continuous evolution in their social and economic life which has been comparatively little affected by changes in government.2 Although land reform is comparatively recent, encouraging results have already been achieved in certain instances. Thus, in Venezuela, between 1959 and 1965, 6.9 million acres were distributed among 114,000 families.3 In Ecuador, 18,500 families received documents entitling them to ownership of 725,000 acres during the fourteen months following the launching of the land reform movement in July 1964, while 12,500 persons, precariously holding 120,000 acres, became confirmed owners.4 In Colombia, after four years of reform (1962-65), 3.33 million acres were apportioned among more than 32,500 families.5 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: The Mexican Land Reform Programme (paper by Mexico) (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/23), p. 2. 8 After this study had been prepared, the Revolutionary Government of Peru enacted Legislative Decree No. 17716 (24 June 1969), thus launching a fresh movement of land reform. Henceforward nobody may own more than 375 acres of irrigated land in a coastal area; this figure may, however, be as much as 500 acres in certain circumstances, when, for example, an undertaking pays its workers wages more than 10 per cent above the legal minimum and grants its permanent staff a share in profits of not less than 10 per cent of gross annual profits (section 28). Stock-breeding farms are limited to 3,750 acres of natural pasture-land, but this figure may be four times as great if certain conditions are fulfilled (notably as regards staff; sections 29-34; see above). Expropriated estates will be bought out with an eye to the value thereof declared by the owner when acquitting himself of rural property tax (1968 figures), allowance being made for additions or reductions made since 1968 (section 63). Expropriated land will be distributed among the landless peasants, among agricultural communities, cooperatives, and agricultural associations acknowledged to be working in the public interest (section 67). 8 Informe de la reunión internacional de ejecutivos de la reforma agraria..., op. cit., pp. 77-78. * ibid., pp. 82-83. 6 Noticias sobre la reforma agraria (Bogotá, Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agrícolas de la OEA, Centro Interamericano de Reforma Agraria (IICA-CIRA)), Voi. Ili, No. 1, February 1966, pp. 2-3. 296 Latin America In relation to the stagnation in previous decades, such figures mark a real step forward. But what is uncertain is whether the reforms in question are sufficiently fast and comprehensive to solve the problems with reasonable speed. Estimates made in 1966 show that, every year, between 600,000 and 700,000 rural families would have to benefit from these reform schemes over the next ten years.1 In fact, thisfigureis far from being attained, and because of the accumulated lag, the deficit is likely to get bigger year by year. The reasons for this shortfall are many and various, the most important of them being that payment for the land expropriated involves each country in a heavy budgetary commitment, to which must be added the cost of settlement, agricultural credit, the registration of titles to property, and so on. In relation to the money set aside for land reform in Latin America (some US$177 million per annum—$150 million contributed by the countries concerned, and $27 million coming from outside), Thomas F. Carroll estimated in 1966 that every year, something like US$1,350 million to $1,550 million ($400 million to $600 million from outside) would have to be devoted to land reform.2 If we contemplate the over-all development plans evolved by the countries concerned, we may well wonder how their budgets can be sound enough for them to undertake such commitments, and also whether the international monetary situation, especially with regard to the United States, will stand such an increase in international assistance. However, some solution will have to be found, either by cutting down the cost of expropriations, or by doing away with compensation. Otherwise the countries concerned will find themselves in insoluble difficulties. Victor Giménez Landinez has observed that only when matters become really critical can the authorities be expected to take a serious interest in land reform.3 And yet, at the present level of expenditure, land reform is likely to drag on into the next century. In Colombia, according to Charles W. Anderson, the Land Reform Institute (INCORA), with a budget "of US$10 million a year, will need a century to assist the country's army of landless peasants.4 In Peru, although Act No. 15037 (May 1964) provides that for twenty years 3 per cent of the national budget shall be devoted to land reform (i.e. a sum of some 900 million soles), this "FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Issues of Financing Agrarian Reform: the Latin American Experience, by Thomas F. Carroll (doc. WLR/66/5), p. 38. 2 ibid., p. 40. As regards money for reform, see also United Nations-FAO-ILO: Progress in Land Reform, Fourth Report (New York, 1966), Ch. II. "Víctor Giménez Landinez: Capacitación para la reforma agraria integral (Bogotá, IICA-CIRA, 1966), p. 35. 4 Charles W. Anderson: Land Reform and Social Change in Colombia (University of Wisconsin, Land Tenure Center, Discussion Paper No. 4, November 1963), quoted by Gerrit Huizer, "Desarrollo de la comunidad y grupos de intereses en áreas rurales", op. cit., p. 46. 297 Agricultural organisations and development 3 per cent was not reached in 1964-65; the budget of ONRA (the body responsible for the reform) has been limited every year to 167 million soles, and in 1965 the total available for expropriation was a mere 99 million soles.1 These two examples show how extraordinarily difficult it is proving to finance land reform. Another problem lies in the fact that the procedures for the apportionment of land are so slow and complicated. A limit on private property would speed up reform, but this is not, in most of the countries concerned, the crucial point. Expropriation of the big estates sometimes comes last on the list, after expropriation of State lands, lands belonging to the ejidos, and acceptance of the land voluntarily offered to the authorities carrying out the reform.2 But State lands (tierras nacionales) often lie in tropical areas unsuitable for agriculture, or in trackless bush or jungle (which severely complicates the work of land settlement). Besides which, reform is often held up by the introduction of concepts such as "lands ill-farmed or not in use" ; these the land reform authorities themselves have difficulty in interpreting, and there is boundless room for litigation.3 Furthermore, when there is some uncertainty as to which lands will in the last resort be taken over, owners tend to go slow in investing in their estates, fearful lest in the long run they will be dispossessed. The lawyers have taken a step forward in introducing the concept of the "social function" of property; but this notion, unless supplemented by definite rules and standards, is likely to remain purely abstract and inapplicable. Lastly, the third and certainly not the least of the difficulties encountered lies in the fact that popular support is so often lukewarm. Decided on at government level, reforms have to be put into practice on the spot, and without the active assistance of vigorous agricultural organisations they are likely to grind to a stop. We have, in fact, something of a vicious circle. Without reform, agricultural organisations are hardly likely to develop as they ought. Such organisations do not exist in the abstract, and their development is heavily dependent on whether the society in which they have their beingflourishesor wilts. And 1 Enrique Torres Llosa: Avances de la reforma agraria en el Perú (Lima, Oficina Nacional de Reforma Agraria, 1966), p. 24. On the limitations inherent in the Peruvian land reform, see CIDA: Tenencia de la tierra y desarrollo socioeconómico del sector agrícola, Perú (Washington, Pan-American Union, 1966), pp. 454-464. 2 This holds good, for example, in the case of Nicaragua. See "Ley de Reforma Agraria", Diario Oficial, No. 85, 19 April 1963, especially section 18. 8 See Ernst Feder: "Algunos obstáculos a la realización de una reforma agraria racional", Estudios Agrarios (Mexico City), December 1964; Edmundo Flores: "The Economics of Land Reform", International Labour Review, Vol. 92, No. 1, July 1965, pp. 21-34. For the detailed study of a particular case, see Joseph R. Thome: Limitaciones de la legislación colombiana para expropriar o comprar fincas con destino a parcelación (University of Wisconsin, Land Tenure Center; doc. LTC/14, November 1965). 298 Latin America the other way round: to be effective, changes in the structure of agriculture call for the support of the organisations, which will have to help put through reforms at ground level, as it were. Otherwise, and in view of the shortage of technicians and experts, these reforms may well founder; they will, at least, run into trouble. As a result, development will be unequal; there will be blockages, drops in production, and so on. These things have often been known to happen, and are frequently invoked as an argument against land reform. In almost every instance, they are attributable to inadequate organisation on the part of the peasantry. For the time being, land reform programmes are fairly limited in scope, and hence can to some extent do without these peasants' organisations. But should such programmes become more ambitious and involve the figures predicted by Carroll (to what extent could capital amounts of this order be absorbed ? the problem would arise at once), then their outcome might well be jeopardised. And in view of the importance of agriculture in Latin America and the intersectorial relationships resulting therefrom, the whole economic development of the Latin American countries could well be at risk. AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATIONS : THE PRESENT SITUATION The emergence of agricultural organisations in Latin America (employers' associations, unions, and co-operatives) is a fairly recent phenomenon, which began to become significant only after the First World War, and then only rather slowly. This does not, however, apply to national agricultural associations, some of which go back to the nineteenth century. The rural landowners have never felt the need to set up employers' associations to cope with workers' claims. Such claims were either non-existent, or were put forward in a haphazard, sporadic way, so that landowners were never induced to set up any kind of permanent organisation. (This holds true of industry as well, as a general rule.) If a violent revolt did break out, usually the landowners simply appealed to the authorities. Even today, there are no real agricultural employers' associations as understood in Europe. However, this did not mean that employers did not come together in other ways for the defence of their common interests. Indeed, there are numerous societies, frequently specialising in one particular branch of production, such as stock-breeding, cocoa- or coffee-growing, etc. They are highly influential in shaping their country's agricultural policy. This applies, for example, to the societies existing in Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. In the light of the information elicited by the author's inquiries, we shall now consider the range of their activities. 299 Agricultural organisations and development Agricultural and rural associations Usually—as we shall see below—the agricultural and rural associations confine themselves to certain well-defined activities in defence of their members, whom they represent vis-à-vis the authorities. Thus they are chiefly active in price maintenance, export policy, and the search for new marketing procedures, in promoting agriculture and stock-breeding, in organising fairs for livestock and agricultural produce, and in providing their members with legal assistance in case of need. In Argentina, for example, there are many agricultural organisations of long experience. Since they failed to supply the information requested of them, however, we shall be unable to consider their activities in any detail. We may mention in passing, however, the Argentine Rural Association (Sociedad Rural Argentina), set up in 1886 by the great landowners. The association promotes stock-breeding, maintains records of pedigrees, and supervises dairy production. It can claim credit for having considerably improved the efficiency of stock-breeding in Argentina. In 1964, it created a foundation of the same name, on the principle that employers can and should work hand-in-hand with the State in a big campaign to improve the education and training of young people so as to raise their social and cultural level.1 The association is also interested in agricultural labour problems ; since such labour is becoming more and more technical, while agricultural machinery is becoming increasingly complicated, people have to be trained in how to use machines and keep them in repair. The association tries to familiarise country-dwellers with technical and semi-technical questions of immediate concern to them. It also encourages research into agricultural production problems by a system of monetary gifts, scholarships, and grants. As regards wages and collective agreements, it would seem that until the last few years most of the associations were content to leave such matters to individual agricultural undertakings. In Colombia, the Farmers' Association (Sociedad de Agricultores), created in 1871, says that it has not hitherto had to tackle negotiations of this kind. Since there are no Colombian employers' associations, it seems to follow that in each undertaking wage questions are taken up with the workers themselves, or with the local workers' union, where one exists. In Peru, the National Agrarian Association (Sociedad Nacional Agraria), officially recognised since 1926 2, expresses similar views, but says that it is 1 Jorge Newton (with Lily Sosa de Newton) : Historia de la Sociedad Rural Argentina, second edition (Buenos Aires, Editorial y Librería Goncourt, 1966), p. 266. * In fact, the National Agrarian Association is a continuation of the National Agricultural Association, founded in 1896. The latter in turn carried on from where the old National Association of Agriculture and Mining (created about a century ago) left off. 300 Latin America represented on, and is entitled to vote in, the National Minimum Wage Committee, which from time to time lays down minimum wages for each district of the country. Besides which, the fact that collective agreements are arrived at by bargaining between agricultural undertakings and their workers (or workers' unions) does not prevent this association from being represented centrally in various bodies responsible for seeing that social welfare legislation is complied with, such as the Supreme Social Security Council, the Workers' Retirement Fund Economic Council, and others. In Chile, the employers' had not yet founded any associations when the author was engaged in his inquiries. The National Agricultural Association (Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura), founded in 1838, declares that before 1965 it had never had to conduct negotiations in connexion with wages or employment conditions. But in that year the workers had begun to put forward collective claims. Since then, the association has advised its regional and provincial organs, which themselves engage in such negotiations. The situation seems to be very much the same in Mexico, where there are 127 regional agricultural unions and fourteen national associations and federations of agricultural producers. Their activities are governed by the Agricultural Associations Act of 19 August 1932. These associations do not deal with wages questions or collective agreements and have no hand in joint bargaining between employers and workers. In Bolivia, on the other hand, there are two associations, the Bolivian Cotton Association (Sociedad Algodonera Boliviana) and the Sugar-Cane Planters' Federation (Federación de Cañeros) of Santa Cruz. These take an interest in wages questions and organise committees representing undertakings to negotiate collective agreements with the workers' unions within the Legal Affairs Commission of the Ministry of Peasant Affairs. In Uruguay there is a whole range of national associations, representing the interests of the stock-breeders, the growers of rice, beet, vines, etc. The part they play is essentially technical (as in the case with the Asociación Rural, founded in 1871 for the promotion of stock-breeding), and occasionally political, economic or social (as with the Federación Rural, created in 1915, and made up of regional and departmental bodies). The Uruguayan national associations usually take a hand in bargaining about wages and conditions of employment, either directly (by talks with the workers' representatives), or indirectly (by giving advice to the authorities in connexion with wage fixing for each branch of agriculture). With regard to agricultural pricefixingand price maintenance, the position varies, too, from one country to another. Generally speaking, however, the agricultural organisations and governmental bodies responsible for such matters work together fairly closely. The authorities are usually anxious to prevent 301 Agricultural organisations and development prices for the main agricultural products from falling below a certain level and from being excessively increased; to this end they subject such prices to a periodical review. This holds good of rice, sugar, milk and meat in Peru; wheat in Chile; potatoes, eggs, milk, wheat and flax in Uruguay; and coffee and cocoa in Colombia and Ecuador. In thisfield,the agricultural associations play a part of capital importance, if only by giving advice to the competent authorities. Sometimes, indeed, they have a right of vote, as in Colombia, where the National Agrarian Association, in its answer to the author's inquiries, declares that it can vote in the bodies known as Juntas Nacionales Consultivas de Alimentos (official organs responsible for regulating supply and prices for each branch of agriculture). It nevertheless stresses that sometimes prices are laid down by decree, with no consultation of the relevant junta beforehand. In Chile, where permanent price maintenance exists for wheat only, the National Agricultural Association rests content with discussing the sums which the official purchasing organ has to pay to producers. In Uruguay, associations are divided in their views of the part the Government should play in price maintenance. Some of them, like the Rural Association, are against any State intervention, which, they feel, is contrary to freedom of the market. Others again demand State support in laying down minimum prices, or for the cancellation of purchases which have been followed, suddenly and unforeseeably, by a rise in prices (with a consequent loss of potential profit by the producers). The agricultural associations play an important part, too, in general agricultural policy and in the procedure whereby production targets are set. As a rule, they seem to maintain very close contacts with government departments and financial organisations (banks, credit agencies, etc.), both public and private. In Peru, the National Agrarian Association, which represents, very largely, the interests of the big landowner1, has a say in shaping general agricultural policy in conjunction with the official bodies, or by giving its views to the authorities directly. When called upon to shape general policy in conjunction with official bodies, its delegates take their seats in the official 1 Besides the National Agrarian Association, there is a Sugar-Producers' Board on which the fourteen largest sugar-planters are represented, and two associations of stock-breeders from the coastal areas and the Sierra, representing the interests of the big estate-owners. These associations are very much closed circles, and the small farmer has no access to them. Even if he had, he would carry no weight in matters of policy. In the National Agrarian Association, for example, only the rich have any chance of election to the board of directors, each associate commanding a number of votes proportional to the acreage of his estates. As a recent CEDA study emphasises, the system prevents the small and medium farmer from securing the representation to which he is entitled. Be that as it may, the association enjoys State backing, plus subsidies paid by the State (and by all farmers, great and small), since the subsidies are financed by means of a special levy on the sale of island guano to Peruvian farmers. See Tenencia de la tierra y desarrollo socioeconómico del sector agrícola, Perú, op. cit., p. 261. Note that this state of affairs has been changing since the enactment of Legislative Decree No. 17716 (24 June 1969), by virtue of which fresh land reforms will be undertaken throughout the country. 302 Latin America boards called upon to study agricultural problems (land reform, agricultural planning, rural legislation and promotion, and so on). It is represented, too, in the National Land Council, the Land Reform Technical Board, the Planning Advisory Board, the Tax Legislation Review Committee and the National Committee of the Latin American Free Trade Association (ALALC). The society's delegates can usually speak and vote in all these bodies (executive as well as advisory). It is similarly represented in the boards of directors of various bodies such as the Central Reserve Bank and the Bank for the Promotion of Agriculture and Stock-Breeding, and has a say in shaping the financial aspects of agricultural policy. In other countries, these associations, although less powerful, have a similar influence on political decisions. They may be consulted, as is the case with the Colombian Farmers' Association, or they may have a vote, as with the Chilean National Agricultural Association, which is represented in various State organs, such as the Production Promotion Society (Corporación de Fomento de la Producción), the State Bank, the Technical Co-operation Department, etc. In Uruguay, the Rural Association and Rural Federation play a similar part on the Development Plan Board and in various other bodies such as the Meat Agency, the Wool Agency, and the National Cold Storage Establishment, which dominate stock-breeding. Many of these associations have long traditions to look back on and are just as influential as similar associations in Europe. Hence the Latin American producer's interests seem to be satisfactorily defended. The agricultural associations only rarely bother about welfare in the countryside (the creation of schools and dispensaries, housing improvement, and so on), these being matters which are usually left to the authorities or to private enterprise. In Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay in particular, they do, it is true, co-operate with official bodies or contribute funds to bring about improvements officially decided on; they may even urge their member undertakings to do something for their workers. The associations in other countries, however, either omitted to answer the relevant questions in the author's questionnaire, or said quite bluntly that they were not interested in such matters. Vocational training is anotherfieldin which the Latin American agricultural associations, with few exceptions, are not markedly active. Most of the answers received by the author either reported no activities, or left a blank. In Mexico, however, the Coffee-Growers' Confederation has induced its members to grant scholarships for students at the two vocational training colleges created by the Mexican Coffee Institute. In Uruguay, the Rural Association and Rural Federation each have a seat on the executive board of the Labour University, a body which deals with technical training. This university maintains very close links with the Alliance for Progress and the 303 Agricultural organisations and development Organisation of American States, which have assisted in the creation of three training schools dealing with fowl and poultry, vine-growing, and agricultural machinery. The Chilean National Agricultural Association is a member of the International Organisation of Employers, but with this exception no association indicated membership of any international body. Possibly some associations which failed to answer our questionnaire have such international links. It does seem, though, that the associations with international ties must be few in number. This is regrettable, for profit would certainly be derived from an exchange of views between these associations and those in other continents. Generally speaking, then, we may say that in the years to come there will be plenty of room for contributions from the Latin American agricultural associations in the task of improving agricultural performances in their respective countries. Chambers of agriculture As might have been expected, answers from chambers of agriculture were even fewer. These exist in very few countries, and do not always have the same responsibilities and interests as those in Europe. The answers from Chile, Mexico and Colombia were negative. Peru did not answer the relevant question, and we may perhaps conclude that the National Agrarian Association has certain attributes of a chamber of agriculture. In Costa Rica, a chamber does exist, but for want of detailed information we cannot examine its functions here. However, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay do provide adequate information on the subject of their own chambers. In Bolivia, the chambers of agriculture are in fact local agricultural associations founded between 1930 and 1950; since 1940 they have belonged to the Bolivian Rural Association. According to the reply received, they were, until 1952, extremely active in representing the interests of their members in production and marketing matters. Since then, they have been little more than social clubs, and all other activities seem to have been virtually abandoned. They include no representatives of agricultural trade unions. They do not co-operate with the authorities, nor do they receive any official assistance. Thus cut off from their grass-roots, ignored by the seat of power, they seem likely to wither away in the fairly near future, unless it be decided to rejuvenate them. To date, the Bolivian Rural Association has joined no other organisation, either regional or international. Ecuador has two chambers of agriculture; one in Zone I (the Sierra and the eastern part of the country) and one in Zone II (the coastal strip, where 304 Latin America the plantations are). They were set up on 10 February 1937, under Decree No. 24 of that year. A study published by the ILO a few years ago describes their activities as follows : They consist of representatives elected by the agricultural centres in the various provinces. Membership is open to all landowners, tenant farmers, estate managers or administrators and holders of diplomas in the field of agriculture (subject to certain conditions) as well as co-operatives, associations, trade unions and other bodies for agricultural purposes. Among their objectives mention may be made of the organisation of rural communities and the defence of their interests, particularly those of peasants and Indians; the forming of agricultural undertakings and the establishment of agricultural societies, co-operatives, etc., the award of agricultural study grants; the import of seeds, agricultural machinery and other equipment, and collaboration in agricultural development in general.1 The trade unions are not represented in the Ecuadorian chambers. As regards their relations with the authorities, they expect to be asked for their advice, and to receive encouragement and protection in return. The answer received does not seem to indicate that they are anxious to play a more active part in defining national agricultural policy. The two chambers are financed as follows: that in Zone I receives 5 per cent of the land taxes paid by landowners, while that in Zone II obtains, over and above this percentage, a share in the tax levied on the export of agricultural produce. Although they work together, the two chambers remain independent and have hitherto set up no federation. They belong to no international organisation. In Uruguay, there are no chambers of agriculture as ordinarily understood. The duties normally undertaken by such bodies are performed by the Commercial Chamber for National Produce, founded in 1891. It is chiefly engaged in encouraging, facilitating and supervising trade in wool, leather, wheat, oil seeds, etc.—the country's principal agricultural products. To this end, it is active on two fronts. It disseminates price bulletins throughout the country, so that producers may decide on sales in full knowledge of market conditions. In addition, it supervises production and trade by issuing certificates which guarantee the origin, the humidity, the weight and the quality of goods for export (bearing in mind the requirements of the countries ordering them). Furthermore, it has its own laboratories in which cereals and oil seeds are subjected to examination. The chamber has seven committees representing the producers of cereals, the producers of flour, the cereal exporters, the wool consignees, the manufacturers of farinaceous foods, the wool exporters and the leather exporters. In each branch there are two representatives, making a total of fourteen for the 1 ILO: Plantation Workers, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 69 (Geneva, 1966), p.162. 305 Agricultural organisations and development seven branches. These fourteen meet to select a president and vice-president for the chamber. As an advisory body, the chamber works in close conjunction with the authorities and exerts an influence on agricultural policy with regard to prices, marketing, and the export of produce. It also occupies seats on the principal bodies concerned with economics and agriculture, whether they be official or semi-official, such as the Economic Development Co-ordination Committee, the national agencies for wool, potatoes and cereals, the Foreign Trade Commission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Exporters' Union, and so forth. Through its seven committees, the chamber is in touch with the representatives of the workers' federations, especially that for wool. In this field, it acts as an employers' association by concluding collective agreements and being represented on the joint committees organised by employers and workers. Its effectiveness is substantiated by the chamber's answer to our questionnaire, which states, in effect, that in 1965-66 (a period of considerable social tension and economic crisis), there were neither strikes nor stoppages in any of the branches of agriculture within which the chamber is active. The chamber gave no reply to our question as to whether it belonged to any regional or international federation. This silence, and that of the other Latin American chambers of agriculture, would seem to show that there is no Latin American body to co-ordinate their activities. This is much to be regretted, for chambers of agriculture seem to be very unequally developed in Latin America (in Bolivia, as we have seen, they appear to be withering away). Some system for the exchange of views would undoubtedly have a tonic effect. Workers' unions and peasant leagues The background Agricultural trade unionism in Latin America is a twentieth-century phenomenon which first became apparent during the 1914-18 war and assumed serious proportions only after the war of 1939-45, whereas urban trade unionism goes back to the nineteenth century. Today, we know a good deal about the influence of European ideas among Latin American industrial workers. Thus, the French emigrants who fled their country after the Commune in 1871, and the Germans who left Germany in protest at Bismarck's anti-socialist legislation, were especially influential. A considerable literature already exists, whereby we can follow the progress made by the ideas of the "Utopian" and "scientific" socialists from one country to another, the settingup of "resistance societies" (nuclei for the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions of 306 Latín America the future), and the first strikes to be launched by bodies which were recognisably trade unions.1 On the other hand, until a few years ago nobody had attempted any serious research into the history of the peasant movements in Latin America. This was still virtually virgin ground. The historians, like the economists and the sociologists, have been taken unawares by the sudden, striking upsurge of a movement which we should understand better if there existed detailed studies of the origins and present position of peasant organisations throughout the continent. We cannot describe here, even in abbreviated form, the birth and development of the peasant movements in the nineteen countries of Latin America. (Our reason for doing so in the case of Europe was that in our opinion that continent could serve both as an example and as a warning to the developing countries.) Firstly, the literature available is notoriously inadequate ; secondly, at the time this report was drafted, the investigations under way (especially those undertaken by the ILO and CIDA) had not yet reached a point at which a summary—however tentative—could safely be attempted. The most we can do is to recall one or two events which may help the reader to comprehend why the Latin American agricultural workers' organisations have lagged behind and why they are in their present state. We should first of all note the wide differences between the dates of the first attempts at agricultural organisation in the various countries of Latin America. In that continent there has never been anything comparable to the 1848 revolutions in Europe (for example) which shook several countries simultaneously. From time to time, here and there, the peasants would shake off their torpor; then sink back into despond. This, at any rate, was so until the period of the Second World War, and we shall observe during that period the beginnings of a peasant movement in three great countries: Argentina and Brazil in the south, and Mexico in the north. The movement began in the southernmost country, Argentina. In that country, urban trade unionism seems to have begun in 1853, with the foundation of the Printing Workers' Union in Buenos Aires. But not until 1912 did the movement extend to the small tenant fanners, who founded 1 The reader may consult with profit the following works on urban trade unionism: Boris Goldenberg: Los sindicatos en América latina (Hanover, Verlag für Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, 1967); Victor Alba: Le mouvement ouvrier en Amérique latine (Paris, Les Éditions ouvrières, 1953); Robert J. Alexander: Organised Labor in Latin America (New York, Free Press, 1965). The first trade unionists were recruited very largely from foreign immigrants in towns and cities. In Argentina, for example (according to A. Belloni), between 1880 and 1890, it was rare to find a native in a trade union organisation. As late as 1914, 59 per cent of all trade unionists had been born outside Argentina (i.e. in Europe). This almost certainly holds good for many other Latin American countries too. See A. Belloni : Del anarquismo al peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1960), pp. 8 and 29; and Goldenberg, op. cit., p. 34. 307 Agricultural organisations and development the Argentine Land Federation (Federación Agraria Argentina) after an immense strike which paralysed the south of the province of Santa Fe and the north of the province of Buenos Aires. Thefirstagricultural workers' employment exchanges date from this period. The federation could not, however, have been very effective, for in 1928 it had no more than 19,000 members.1 In 1937, according to Boris Goldenberg, the agricultural wage earner in the countryside had been virtually unaffected by trade unionism.2 Since October 1947, workers in agricultural and stock-breeding undertakings have been represented by the Argentine Rural Workers' and Stevedores' Federation, which body, in 1965, had some 50,000 members. Its aim is to defend workers' rights vis-à-vis the employers, especially within the joint bodies set up for purposes of collective bargaining. The federation derives its funds from members' contributions, each member paying in 2 per cent of his monthly wage. With the money thus accumulated, the federation finances the activities of local unions, runs a clinic for its members, offers legal advice, and has an office to deal with matters relating to pensions and occupational injury. The federation is especially proud of the fact that at its insistence, Act No. 13020 was passed obliging employers to recruit their harvest workers through the unions. In Brazil, the trade union movement began between 1903 and 1905, with the creation of the first mutual benefit societies among transport workers and coal-miners. Only in 1914 did it extend to the agricultural workers, who in that year founded a small union, the activities of which were planned on a scale far from ambitious. Later on, two big organisations tried in vain to absorb it: the General Confederation of Brazilian Workers, set up under the wing of Luis Carlos Prestes in 1929, and the National Confederation of Labour, founded in the same year. Shortly thereafter, Prestes' organisation was outlawed by the Brazilian Government under the Anti-Communism Act of 1927. Figures relating to the membership of the major workers' federations between 1903 and 1950 (in 1937, under Getulio Vargas, the General Union of Brazilian Workers had no more than 42,000 persons affiliated to its 82 unions, while the General Union of Federal District Employees had 150,000 in 36 unions) show that very few agricultural workers indeed belonged to any union. Pioneer work in this field was done by a small union founded at Campos in 1935. Four other local unions followed—the only ones to be tolerated by the law until 1960. True, in the meantime, ever since the fall of President Vargas in 1945, peasant leagues had begun to emerge. Later on, 1 a 388 See ILO: The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, op. cit., p. 79. Goldenberg, op. cit., p. 49. Latin America we shall consider their activities in some detail down to 1964, when they were outlawed. In Mexico, the first agricultural unions appear in 1920, as the outcome of the peasants' long and bitter struggle against usurpation of communal land (ejidos) by landowners and private companies ; the process had begun during the nineteenth century, the 1857 Constitution and the Act of 1876 (which allowed the occupation of unregistered land) being invoked for the purpose.1 In 1878, the representatives offivestates and of the Federal District protested, in vain, to the Chamber of Deputies, which had declared itself unable to intervene. A year later, the Congress of Native Villages of the Republic, convened to consider how the peasant's interests might best be defended, met for the first time, and was condemned by the entire liberal press.2 This blindness on the part of the ruling classes, coupled with economic distress (from 1900 onwards, agricultural wages dropped while prices rose as a result of industrial development), led straight to revolution: having nothing to lose, the people rebelled in 1910. In 1915 and 1916, i.e. at the height of the revolution, were founded the first agricultural credit unions, organised on the Raiffeisen system and managed by the Rural State Loans Fund of Morelos.3 Nevertheless, it was only from 1920 onwards, under President Obregón, that the Mexican peasantry began to organise, under the protection of the National Land Party, which was created in that year, and under that of the Mexican Workers' National Confederation (CROM), founded in 1918; later, the peasants were to found the rural community leagues which in 1926 would set up the powerful body known as the National Peasant League (Liga Nacional Campesino). In January 1930, the National Revolutionary Party was created (to become, in 1945, the present Institutional Revolutionary Party). This event helped to speed up enrolment in the leagues, but also, by absorbing these in part, associated them more closely with official land policy. The process is far from easy to follow, but we might, perhaps, summarise it as follows. In February 1936, the Mexican Confederation of Labour (CTM) was formed, to some extent as the result of a division within the ranks of the CROM. This event played a capital part in inducing the leagues to join together in 1938 in forming a National Confederation of Peasants 1 For an analysis of this aspect of the situation in the Mexican countryside, see ILO : Indigenous Peoples. Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 35 (Geneva, 1953), pp. 298-299. a See, on this matter, Roberto MacLean y Estenos: "La revolución de 1910 y el problema agrario de México", Estudios Sociológicos, Vol. II, IX Congreso Nacional de Sociología, Mexico City, 1958, p. 10. See also a detailed study by Gerrit Huizer: On Peasant Unrest in Latin America (Washington, Pan-American Union, 1967). 8 For further details, see Carleton Beals: Mexico, an Interpretation (New York, 1923), p. 110. 309 Agricultural organisations and development {Confederación Nacional Campesina—CNC).1 That same year, the National Revolutionary Party decided to turn itself into a kind of Popular Front, and, calling itself the "Party of the Mexican Revolution", it gathered under its wing the four groups which supported its policies: the workers, represented more especially by the Mexican Confederation of Labour; the National Confederation of Peasants; craftsmen, small businessmen and other members of the lower middle class ; andfinally,the army. In 1942, it was decided that the latter should no longer be independently represented, but should be represented, instead, by the small businessmen and other members of the middle classes, who in their turn would form a National Confederation of Popular Organisations, embracing the small farmer. The party itself was to change its name yet again, to become, in 1945, the Institutional Revolutionary Party. It is still in power. To these peasant organisations we must add the General Union of Mexican Workers and Peasants, created in 1949. It emerged from a peasants' and workers' movement founded by Lombardo Toledano after his break with the CTM. Today, it appears to have some 300,000 members, of whom 70 per cent are peasants. But the bulk of the peasantry remains enrolled, in some form or another, in the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Within the CTM, the party has some 100,000 agricultural workers, 40,000 of whom belong to the Sugar Industry Workers' Union. The "popular sector" of the party comprises the National Confederation of Small Owner-Farmers, of which 750,000 peasants are members. However, thisfigureincludes 250,000 peasants who are ejidatorios at the same time and who also belong to the National Confederation of Peasants. This latter, in theory, has as members all the ejidatorios (some 2 million people, according to certain estimates), whom it controls thanks to machinery comprising 32 peasants' leagues, 512 peasants' regional committees, and 17,500 local commissariats. The Institutional Revolutionary Party dominates political life in Mexico. With its three "sectors" ("popular sector", workers and peasants) represented in Congress it runs what has often been called a "one-party democracy" and in theory guarantees the peasants' share in the working-out of the nation's agricultural policy. Many authors, however, are critical, and question how far the rank and file really influence their leaders.2 However, if we compare 1 According to some authorities the peasant leagues, in founding the CNC, had as one of their aims the creation of a counterweight to the increasing political influence of the CTM. See Gerrit Huizer: Los movimientos campesinos en México (Mexico City, Centro de Investigaciones Agrarias, 1968), pp. 64-66. 2 For instance, Frank R. Brandenburg: The Making of Modern Mexico (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1964); Oscar Lewis: "Mexico since Cárdenas", Social Change in Latin America Today (New York, Harper Brothers, 1960); Peter P. Lord: The Peasantry as an Emerging Political Factor in Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela (University of Wisconsin, Land Tenure Center, May 1965). 310 Latin America the position in Mexico with that obtaining in some other Latin American countries, we shall have to acknowledge that the experiences of this country since the 1920s are something quite unique in the history of Latin American agriculture. There are, then, three dates to be remembered: 1912 (Argentina), 1914 (Brazil), and 1920 (Mexico). Although in two instances out of the three, the peasant movements which emerged were short-lived, these dates nevertheless mark a milestone in the history of the three countries concerned. In other countries, trade union organisations appeared far later, some of them during the last war, or indeed during these last few years. This does not, of course, mean that the peasants concerned were less anxious to organise or had fewer claims to make. It simply means that they could not surmount the obstacles placed in their way. Chile Chile offers a striking example. Many mutual benefit societies had been set up since 1850, but the first major urban trade union organisation—the Chilean Workers' Federation—dates from 1908. In 1921, the agricultural workers demanded for the first time to be allowed to set up unions. They were opposed by the National Agricultural Association (SNA), a body run by the big landed proprietors. Describing this period, Gonzalo Arroyo has recently recalled* that two schemes were at that time up for discussion. One called for the foundation of a union in every undertaking, the other for occupational unions in which workers would be represented by trades. This latter system found favour with President Alessandri. However, in a letter to the SNA, he said that agricultural workers would nevertheless have to form trade unions along lines different from those governing unions formed by urban workers. Three years later, Congress approved Act No. 4057—a compromise between the two schools of thought—which favoured the works union rather than the occupational one. Nevertheless, this would have marked a step forward if it had been applied to agricultural undertakings. At least, a union on every farm would have enabled the rural worker to speak out in defence of his rights. But once again, the influence of the SNA prevailed and agricultural workers were not covered by trade union legislation until 1947, the year of the promulgation of Act No. 8811, whose shortcomings we have examined above. 1 Father Gonzalo Arroyo, S.J.: "Sindicalismo y promoción campesina", Mensaje (Santiago), Vol. 15, No. 149, June 1966, pp. 244-249. For a general study of the upsurge in Chilean trade unionism at about this time, see James O. Morris: Elites, Intellectuals and Consensus : A Study of the Social Question and the Industrial Relations System in Chile (New York, W. F. Humphrey Press, 1966). 311 Agricultural organisations and development As we have seen, until 1964 there were no more than fourteen active works unions officially recognised; all in all, they had 1,174 members. From 1964 onwards, however, the movement gained momentum in the countryside, backed by various organisations, all of them set up after 1950: the Chilean Trade Union Association (1953); the Christian Peasants' Union (1960), which is actually the agricultural branch of the Chilean Trade Union Association; the National Association of Peasant Organisations, and the Chilean Federation of Peasants and Natives (1961); the Independent Peasant Movement (1964). All these organisations pursue similar aims: to promote the setting-up of trade unions, or embryo pre-trade unions, where such do not exist; to train trade union officials; to advise the unions in the event of collective disputes or of claims concerning wages and conditions of employment; to promote the enactment of legislation on housing, rural health and hygiene, etc., and to see that existing legislation is duly put into effect; to undertake communal activities, such as the construction of sports grounds, social centres, and so on. During recent years the Chilean Federation of Peasants and Natives has become the rallying-point for Marxists, while the National Peasants' Confederation performs the same office for Christians. This latter body, founded in 1965, is made up of three of the organisations listed above: the Christian Peasants' Union, the National Association of Peasants' Organisations, and the Independent Peasant Movement. Since the legislation in force (Act No. 8811) forbad the creation of federations or confederations and authorised works unions only, these movements, all organised after 1960, have taken the form of private companies or associations, subject to the Chilean Civil Code. Nevertheless, it is by no means easy to say just how matters stand today, for apart from the trade unions set up, or being set up, in accordance with the law, there were many organisations more or less outside the law at the time the author was conducting his inquiries.1 The following seems to have been the position on 30 July 1966:- 95 unions were officially recognised, and 205, in process of organisation, had applied for recognition. It may not be amiss to add that although they did not exist in the eyes of the law. they were recognised by the Government as trade unions for the purpose of collective bargaining. This figure of 205, however, is much less than the total declared by the federations, comprising the trade union and pre-trade union committees not recognised by the law, some of them being in process of applying for recognition. In June 1966, there were thus some 530 trade union organisations (or the rudimentary nuclei of trade union organisations), apportioned in the following fashion: within the 1 These organisations have certainly been brought within the law since the promulgation of Act No. 16625, the effects of which we shall shortly consider. 312 Latin America National Peasants' Confederation, the Christian Peasants' Union comprised 142 trade union organisations (figures for December 1965); the National Association of Peasants' Organisations, 25 unions and 69 pre-trade union committees, making 94 organisations in all (figures for June 1966); and the Independent Peasant Movement, 70 trade unions and 124 pre-trade union committees, or 194 organisations in all (June 1966). The Chilean Federation of Peasants and Natives comprised about 100 trade union organisations in October 1965. These are organisations set up, as it were, by private initiative. But there are others, recently founded by the Agricultural Development Institute (Instituto de Desarrollo Agropecuario). With assistance from a team of officials called "promoters", the institute helps the Chilean peasants to organise unions or pre-trade union committees. In April 1966, an investigation made in 18 provinces showed that there were 87 trade unions set up in this way, and 146 pre-trade union committees, making a total of 233 organisations founded by the institute. We do not, unfortunately, have any figures for membership (fee-paying and others), except for the Independent Peasant Movement, which in 1966 had 12,640 organised peasant members, some 2,000 of them being fee-paying. The Christian Peasants' Union and the Federation of Peasants and Natives seem to enjoy the support of some 200,000 workers, but we have no exact figures.1 The Chilean trade unions recruit their members among agricultural workers of all kinds, including tenants and share-croppers.2 The small owners and 1 After his investigations were completed, the author learnt that the National Peasants' Confederation had become a services federation. The Chilean peasants now belong to three major confederations: the "Triumph of the Chilean Peasant", "Freedom", and "Ranquil". The first was created thanks to the committees of small farmers promoted by the Agricultural Development Institute. The second was built up from unions belonging to the National Association of Peasants' Organisations and to the Christian Peasants' Union. The third is based on unions belonging to the Federation of Peasants and Natives. In August 1968, the "Triumph of the Peasants" Confederation had 158 communal unions, 20 provincial federations, and 39,288 members all told; the "Freedom" Confederation had 62 communal unions, 12 provincial federations, and 17,421 members all in all; the "Ranquil" Confederation had 83 communal unions, 14 provincial federations, and 18,253 members. The total therefore was: 303 unions, 46 federations, and 74,962 members. Moreover, we have to add the figures appertaining to the "Sergeant Candelaria" Federation in Santiago Province, with five unions originating in the Independent Peasant Movement. It is estimated that there are some 330,000 agricultural wage earners, and that, on the date indicated, there were a little more than 83,000 trade union members. The employers, too, have formed a national confederation which now has some 53,000 members. See ILO, Regional Meeting on the Role of Agricultural Organisations in Economic and Social Development, Santiago (Chile), 20-28 October 1969: Evolución de las organizaciones agrícolas y su participación en el desarrollo económico-social de Chile, by Luis Maraimbo, pp. 32-34. 2 These terms are not used in the same sense as in Europe, the persons concerned have rather different rights and obligations. See Act No. 8811, section 15. ILO: Legislative Series, 1947—Chile 1. 313 Agricultural organisations and development peasants covered by the land reforms have their own organisations : the small farmers' boards and land settlement committees (Comités de Asentamiento), which we shall look at more closely later. Although these two branches—Marxist and Christian—of Chilean agricultural trade unionism are so young, they have already achieved much. Firstly, they have provided channels for peasant discontent with regard to conditions of employment. Thus, the Christian Peasants' Union negotiated a collective agreement for all workers on forty-five big latifundia in central Chile1, and the Federation of Peasants and Natives organised a fortnight-long strike at Colchaga, an area of vast estates :fiftyfarms were affected. Secondly, despite the disadvantages under which they labour, the union organisations have displayed much skill in deriving advantage from the special arbitration and conciliation boards provided for under Act No. 8811. Action by these boards has on many an occasion helped to bring about an improvement in working conditions. Lastly, the trade union organisations were highly influential in the promulgation of two pieces of legislation of enormous importance in the defence of the workers' interests: the Prohibition of Expulsion Act (5 April 1966)2, whereby an employer is forbidden to denounce a contract of employment without good and sufficient reason; and the Farm Division Act (1966), under which no farm or plot more than 37.5 acres in extent may be subdivided without authority from the Land Reform Organisation (Corporación de la Reforma Agraria). These two Acts were promulgated to counteract the "reactionary" activities of certain landowners, who cancelled labour contracts or divided their farms, thus effectively breaking the unions, since under Act No. 8811 any union has to fulfil certain minimum qualifications to obtain recognition (represent a certain number of workers of a certain minimum age and seniority, with a certain percentage of members able to read and write). Apart from these trade union activities, we ought to mention two organisations recently set up by the authorities themselves : the small farmers' boards and the land settlement boards. The small farmers' boards were launched by the Agricultural Development Institute (1NDAP) to break the isolation from which the small farmer was suffering and to provide him with a body to defend his interests. Through these boards, INDAP channels technical assistance and the credits granted to farmers, and tries to bring the latter together in activities directed to a common end. In 1965, INDAP had 1 For the activities of the Christian Peasants' Union, see James F. Petras : "Chile's Christian Peasants' Union: Notes and Comments on an Interview with Héctor Alarcón", Newsletter (Madison, University of Wisconsin), No. 23, March-July 1966, pp. 21-29. 2 Act No. 16455 (5 April 1966) "to issue rules for the termination of contracts of employment". ILO: Legislative Series, 1966—Chile 1. 314 Latin America already founded 1,657 boards, with nearly 55,000 members, infifteenprovinces.1 Activities of this kind receive support from other organisations, which in their turn have set up small farmers' associations and similar bodies within native communities (reducciones). Thus, in 1966, the Independent Peasant Movement had 166 boards with 8,930 members, while the National Association of Peasants' Organisations had set up 51 boards and 69 similar bodies in native communities, with 6,000 members in all. The land settlement boards, which are answerable to the Land Reform Organisation, are intended to help the peasant in settling down on expropriated land. The process lasts for two years or so, until the land in question has been finally allotted. These boards are made up of five permanent and two deputy members, elected by secret ballot at an assembly of heads of families living on the expropriated estate. Once elected, the board enters into a contract with the Land Reform Organisation in connexion with the farming of the land assigned to the peasantry. With regard to the new community thus formed, the board has to concentrate on: (a) the technical organisation of farming, especially by the creation of supply and marketing boards; and (¿>) organisation of the community's social activities, by promoting communal organisations, handicrafts, culture, and the like. In November 1965, one year after the first of these boards had been set up, thirty-four such operations had been undertaken for the benefit of nearly 2,000 peasant families. Certainly, promulgation of the new trade union law (Act No, 16625, dated 26 April 1967), by sweeping away all the obstacles with which these organisations had to contend under preceding legislation, will foster activities of the kind described above. No prior authorisation is now required to found a union ; a union is no longer limited to the workers in a particular undertaking. Workers in a number of concerns can now come together to set up a single trade union body. Federations and confederations, previously forbidden, are now legal; the right to strike is recognised (subject to certain restrictions). Moreover, the new Act no longer demands, like the former Act, that workers' claims be submitted only once a year, and never during the sowing season or at harvest time. Workers may no longer be dismissed because they belong to a union, nor may employers interfere in trade union affairs. The old Act had laid down that unions were to concentrate on housing improvements for the peasantry (Act No. 8811, section 1, paragraph 2); the new one allows them to pursue the same ends as similar organisations in developed countries : improvement in working conditions and human relations; the signature of collective agreements; workers' representation vis-à-vis the employers and 1 According to information received in Santiago in October 1969, there were at that time 2,130 boards with 71,000 members. In the country as a whole, it is estimated that there are nearly 300,000 small owner-farmers. 315 Agricultural organisations and development arbitration tribunals; promotion of general education, occupational training, and trade union instruction among their members ; organisation of co-operatives, stores, libraries, etc., and activities of all kinds relative to education and the use of leisure; creation or improvement of systems designed to protect the worker against occupational injury and disease; organisation of technical assistance centres and offices for the provision of legal advice; participation in the activities of public or private bodies interested in agricultural matters. In addition to which, the new Act encourages the setting-up of employers' associations, thus promoting a healthier balance between employers and those who work for them. A detailed perusal of Act No. 16625 would prove—if proof were needed— that this legislation is in close conformity with the Right of Association (Agriculture) Convention, 1921 (No. 11), ratified by Chile as long ago as 1925. Chile furnishes a capital example of how vigorous government action can open up entirely new vistas for trade unions. But official initiatives can never ensure a co-ordinated upsurge of trade unionism as a whole. This depends on the workers themselves, on their capacity for organisation, and also, in the last resort, on the help they can obtain from outside in learning how to organise themselves. In the trade union movement, as in everything else, there is much to learn. The aid and advice of organisations in the developed countries can help to make the period of apprenticeship shorter and less arduous. We shall have something to say about this later. Uruguay Uruguay provides us with a striking example of disparity between what is feasible and what has actually been accomplished. There is no legislation which might prove a stumbling-block for the unions, protected as they are by the principle—enshrined in the Constitution—of freedom of association. But, as we shall see, although the present state of affairs is by no means bad, it is not as good as it might be. The answers received by the author seem to show that Uruguayan agricultural workers' unions are very few in number, and tenants' and share-croppers' unions seem to be non-existent. The only two large workers' unions have been formed by the dairy workers: one in the province of Florida and the other at San José, in the south. There are, too, a number of general associations, sometimes of a transient kind, among workers in the rice, sugar-cane, sugar-beet and other industries. In these branches, no real unions have ever, it would seem, been created. Trade union organisations and associations have been set up in the course of the last twenty years. We do not know how many members they have, this being a jealously guarded secret. 316 Latin America The unions and associations, as everywhere else, are chiefly occupied in bargaining about conditions of employment: hours of work, wages, job stability, social security, rural health and housing, and so on. In this field, the authorities and workers' organisations seem to have the same ends in view, although the two sides do not, in practice, always pull together. The unions themselves seem to lack co-ordination. The information acquired by the author leads him to believe that some few years ago, the dairy workers submitted wage claims and backed them up by strikes, as a result of which their working conditions improved. But this had no effect on other agricultural workers. Other organisations (those of workers in the wool industry, for example) have in their turn acted in the same fashion, with similar results. Besides which, there have been spectacular protest movements by the sugar-cane plantation workers in the north-west of the country; they have, for example, come on foot, with wives and offspring, all the way to Montevideo (a distance of over 450 miles), to make their claims and give a jolt to public opinion. On the other hand, in the sugar-beet industry of the south-east, plantations are large, wealthy and well organised, and it is rare for the workers to parade their grievances. It follows that there is no co-ordination at national level, the workers taking action as they see fit, according to circumstances. Within individual branches of agriculture, this may produce results, at least as far as wages are concerned, but where land reform and general improvement of the countryside are the issues at stake, there can obviously be no substitute for an over-all, co-ordinated policy, applied by major national federations or confederations. The Uruguayan authorities are doing their best to improve the lot of the agricultural worker by enacting suitable legislation and through the organisations created with this in view: on the one hand, the National Labour Institute, responsible for keeping an eye on employment conditions, and, on the other, the Children's Council (Consejo del Niño) and the departmental boards, which keep an eye on the employment of youngsters under 18. According to the Rural Code of 1946, amended by the Act of 22 December 1965, the Government lays down minimum wages and by decree, at the beginning of every year, orders such wage increases to be made as may correspond to increases in the official cost-of-living index. Hence it is by no means surprising that one of the answers received should emphasise that "the successes achieved with regard to wages and job security are chiefly due to legislation, and only to a very minor degree to the few conventions concluded between employers and workers ; the same holds good of housing and social security." Thus it is that, thanks to legislation as modern as any enacted in Latin America, authorities and occupational associations alike pursue closely similar aims. What is astonishing is the absence of liaison between the two. 317 Agricultural organisations and development There seems no obvious reason for this absence. If we except the National Wool Agency (in which government, employers and workers are represented), the workers are represented in no official body. Bargaining between employers and workers through joint bodies is an infrequent phenomenon in Uruguay, apart from the negotiations we have already mentioned in our comments on the Commercial Chamber for National Produce. As regards the other matters we have investigated in this survey (workers' education, the campaign against illiteracy, legislation to govern tenants' contracts, and the like), the workers' organisations usually stake their claims through the political parties of their allegiance. In this respect, it would seem that the Communist Party is the most influential, for it controls the Wool Industry Workers' Federation and the Uruguayan Confederation of Labour, of which the dairy workers' unions are members. Bolivia The position in Bolivia is markedly different from that in Uruguay. Since the revolution of April 1952, which installed Victor Paz Estenssoro as President of the Republic and ushered in a movement of far-reaching land reforms, the authorities and the unions have worked hand-in-hand.1 The National Confederation of Agricultural Workers, created at about that time, has some 400,000 fee-paying members, and is a pilot body for land reform. Through its departmental federations and local unions, it controls, in practice, the whole of the Bolivian peasantry. Generally speaking, it is true to say that the communities formed out of the estates subjected to agrarian reform constitute basic trade unions elected by all the workers. These unions were organised by the peasantry to carry on negotiations with the authorities concerning the expropriation of land, and the land reforms undertaken in 1952 leant heavily on them. Thus, between 1952 and 1962, 175,000 new titles to property were issued by the Government. The confederation is endeavouring, within the limits of the resources available, to make the peasant's lot in every respect an easier one (by building schools, dispensaries, etc.), with assistance from the local unions. Its reply to the author's inquiries was succinct: there were, it said, no legal obstacles to the confederation's activities. In fact, the confederation seems to work very closely with the authorities, since it joins with them in action to obtain the grant of fresh titles to property and submits the workers' claims 1 On land reform in Bolivia, see Luis Antezana : Resultados de la reforma agraria en Bolivia (Cochabamba, 1955); Antonio García: "La reforma agraria y el desarrollo social de Bolivia", El Trimestre Económico (Mexico City), Voi. XXXI (3), No. 123, July-September 1964. 318 Latín America concerning wages and conditions of employment for consideration and arbitration by the Ministry of Peasant Affairs (there are no joint organs to settle labour disputes). There is therefore plenty of room for legislation here. For the time being, it is the Ministry of Peasant Affairs (in fact, its Legal Affairs Committee) which weighs up the arguments advanced by the employers and the confederation, and then gives a ruling. The low level of the peasants' education and their lack of knowledge of trade union matters (cited by the federation as the major obstacle facing it) perhaps goes part of the way towards explaining the somewhat protective attitude of the authorities towards the peasants. The confederation has a direct hand infixingcoffee, fruit and wool prices, which are examined from time to time by the authorities. In otherfields,however, such as housing and the campaign against illiteracy, it says that it is not very active, since these are matters coming within the terms of reference of the Ministry of Peasant Affairs. The time is certainly not yet ripe to assess the effects of the land reforms which have been under way in Bolivia since 1952. All observers, however, agree that they have profoundly affected the attitude of the Indian peoples towards a national community of which, formerly, they did not feel they formed part. True, a vast amount remains to be done before the Indian is a Bolivian like any other. Nevertheless, we now have, instead of stagnation, a situation in which signs of movement can be detected. A cautious optimism is not unjustified. Brazil Before the advent of the new régime in March 1964, the peasant organisations had experienced an extraordinary surge forward. All the information available to the author indicates that since that date they have slid back. At that time there existed (in fact, there still exists) a basic instrument governing the development of trade unionism in the Brazilian countryside: the Rural Workers' Statute (March 1963) supplemented by Decrees Nos. 346 (January 1963) and 347 (June 1963).1 Admittedly, other legislation had already been enacted in 1944, by virtue of which the workers were free to set up unions, provided that they first obtained authorisation from the Ministry of Labour. In fact, however, authorisation was very rarely given. In 1960 there were but four active trade unions. This was the position until 1963, when the Minister of Labour of Joäo Goulart's government made a radical 1 These texts, together with the Rural Workers' Statute, appear in a work by Adriano Campanhole: Legislaçao do traballio rural e estatuto da terra (Säo Paulo, Editora Atlas, 1965). 319 Agricultural organisations and development change by authorising the workers to set up unions without let or hindrance. In June 1963, there were already 120 agricultural unions, which figure had risen to 1,300 by March 1964. Together, they formed the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG). 1 This, in so brief a period, was quite an achievement. It is not to be explained away by a reference to the vigour displayed at that time by the Goulart government. The fact of the matter is that the rural masses had been roused from their torpor by the peasant leagues, some time before, and were but awaiting the signal to set up their unions officially. Thus it was that the encouragement so generously given by the Minister of Labour, Almino Affonso, encountered fruitful ground. Much has already been written on the history of the Brazilian peasants' leagues, and there is no call to go into any detail here.2 The movement was born in the north-eastern part of the country, admirably studied by Correia da Andrade, who describes as follows the emergence of the first peasants' leagues when, after the Second World War, a crisis broke out in the traditional sugar-growing industry 3 : The difficult situation in which the agricultural workers in the north-east find themselves, and which has became more serious since 1950, resulted in these workers attempting to find a solution for themselves and makes the possibility of a solution of the agrarian regional problem through colonisation more remote. Colonisation, as conceived by SUDENE and by the Companhia de Revenda e Colonizaçâo, in the light of the resources available to these agencies, would (if it succeeded) be a long-term solution and benefit only a few people, while the great majority of the workers would continue to vegetate, as is the case today, under inhuman living conditions. The continuous aggravation of the crisis and the ever-increasing difficulties in the lives of the rural workers led them to revolt, to despair, as in the already famous case of the Galiléia sugar-refinery. Like others located in marginal areas, far from the sugar factories, this plant did not operate in the decade 1931-40, when sugar prices were low and the owners rented their land to people who planted fruits and cereals to supply the city of Recife and other north-eastern urban communities. This particular owner went to live in the city on the proceeds of the rentals, without working on the property, and visited it only sporadically. An administrator who was in his confidence collected the annual rentals, supervised the rendering of the cambäo and of the condiçao and was the intermediary between the absentee owner and those who worked the land. 1 The confederation still exists, but we have no recent data about its activities. Hence it is impossible to say whether it has managed to keep all its members. 2 See Francisco Juliäo: ¿Que son la ligas campesinas? (Montevideo, Arca, 1963). 8 See A Terra e o Hörnern no Nordeste (Säo Paulo, Editoria Brasiliense, 1963), pp. 241-245. The extracts reproduced here also appear in a paper by the CIDA : Land Tenure Conditions and Socio-Economie Development of the Agricultural Sector, Brazil (Washington, Pan-American Union, 1966), pp. 321-323. On problems in the north-east, see, too, the classic study by Josué de Castro: Une zone explosive, le Nordeste du Brésil (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1965), translated by Christiane Privat. 320 Latín America After the war of 1939-45, the high prices of sugar and the construction of highways resulted in an increase of the potential output of the sugar factories, which were newly equipped and appropriated the marginal areas. This was at the expense of the old sugar plantations, which disappeared—the owners became simple suppliers of cane—and of the tenants, who were evicted from their land so that the sugar-cane plantations of the factories could expand on to the areas which the workers had at times worked for decades. We were personally present at the eradication of old orchards and coffee-fields under the impulse of the merciless thirst for land for cane, in the municipios of Vicènda and Amaraji (Pernambuco). Pursued by the owners, the tenants took to the courts, but the suits were lengthy and they could only with difficulty pay lawyers for long periods of time; and, if they remained on the land, they were constantly threatened by the guards and the agents of the owner. Only a few resisted to the end. It was this difficult situation which caused the tenants of Galiléia to set up, under the direction of the administrator of the enterprise himself—Zezé of Galiléia—a mutual assistance organisation under the pompous name of Agricultural and Livestock Society of Pernambuco. The creation of this organisation irritated the son of the owner, who saw in it a threat to his patrimony, and he attempted to evict the workers. Led by Zezé of Galiléia and by Manuel Severino de Oliveira, the workers refused to obey and forced the owner to bring a suit for eviction against them in Vitoria de Santo Antäo. When they tried to find a lawyer for their defence, they ended up in the office of Francisco Juliäo who by only a bare 400 votes succeeded in being elected to the Joaquim Nabuco Palace (the Parliament of the state of Pernambuco in Recife). He was the only socialist deputy in the House. He resolved then to defend the workers free of charge since they could not pay and since as a deputy he earned a fair income from the state. Taken by surprise, Juliäo did not have a plan to solve the north-eastern rural problem; but he knew rural life since he was the son of the owner of a sugar refinery and the brother of farmers in Bom Jardim. As he continued to defend the Galiléians, Francisco Juliäo observed similar cases throughout the state and saw that the problem was not legal, but in reality social Therefore he used his mandate to fight, in the House and in the press, against the cambäo and the conditions of rent. He believed that his major mission was to awaken the rural masses to fight, to take conscience of its force and its needs and to prevent the attempts to solve the rural problem elaborated at the top by intellectuals and politicians ignorant of the reality of rural life. In order to give a better structure to the fighting organisations of the rural workers, he legalised, on 1 January 1955, the society founded by the Galiléians and which existed until then only defacto. Though it continued under the same name, it is today known in all Brazil by its much shorter fighting name ligas camponesas. This name has become so well known that in Paraiba the word compones identifies the members of the ligas. In order to avoid the eviction of the tenants from Galiléia, Juliäo presented to the House a bill for the expropriation of the sugar plant and had it approved and signed by the state governor. The example of Galiléia acted as a fuse and in 1960 the ligas had already members in twenty-six municipios in Pernambuco, in the litoral area, the transitional Agreste and the dry Sertäo and expanded rapidly to Paraiba where large centres were organised in Santa Rita, in Sapé, Mamanguape, Guarabira, Pirpirituba, Espirito Santo and other towns of lesser importance. The centre of Sapé is the largest one, since it has 7,000 members. Today the ligas have an influence throughout the north-east region since there are numerous centres in Piaui and Ceará, where the various municipal associations have formed a federation under the leadership of José Leandro, and in the Säo Francisco valley in Bahia. In Alagoas, the first centres are being organised in Vicosa and Atalaia. In some states, the ligas have been able to count on the support of the governors, as in Piaui and Paraiba—Chagas Rodrigues and Pedro Gondim— but have encountered serious opposition on the part of the landowners. 321 Agricultural organisations and development The political changes of March 1964 have completely altered the picture. Brazil, it seems, has embarked on a period of expectancy, at the end of which organisations of another kind may emerge, unless the leagues (at present outlawed) and the unions (decimated) manage to revive. Whatever happens, it seems certain that sooner or later the Brazilian Government will be obliged to organise its peasantry on more rational lines, to cope with a degree of underdevelopment which impartial observers say has assumed dramatic proportions * and in the not too distant future may well give rise to unbearable economic and social stresses. Venezuela In this country, agricultural trade unionism is beginning to reap the rewards of twenty years of effort under the aegis of the Venezuelan Peasants' Federation (Federación Campesina de Venezuela), founded in 1947. The Venezuelan trade union movement goes back to 1935, the year in which Juan Vicente Gómez, dictator of Venezuela since 1908, died. Until then the Venezuelan movement, which had received little sympathy from the dictator and been reduced to a small federation of some 25,000 members, had lived under the threat of what was euphemistically called "administrative dissolution". In 1936, an Act dated 16 July was promulgated and this, by at last offering the trade unions official recognition, marked a complete break with the past. No fewer than 113 unions applied for recognition, and in December 1936 most of these attended a congress in Caracas to create the Venezuelan Confederation of Labour (CTV). It was to have a stormy existence. In 1944, it was dissolved by the authorities (General Medina Angarila being President of the Republic), and again in 1949, on the occasion of a coup d'état by the Army under General Delgado Chabaud, Minister for War, which latter event opened the door to the dictatorship of Colonel Pérez Jiménez. In these years of trial and tempest, the three years of "democratic action" government (1945-48) represent a sort of oasis, which the agricultural unions made use of to create the Peasant Federation in June 1947. 1 If we consider such parameters as income per head, food reserves, mortality, etc., indicated in international year books, this expression will seem in no way exaggerated. In Brazil, as in the other Latin American countries, increases in food production are occurring with too narrow a margin over population increases for there to be any significant nutritional improvements in the short run. The result, in certain areas, is acute malnutrition, which according to Dr. Isaltino Costa, causes the premature death of some 300,000 children under 1 year of age, per year (Le Monde (Paris), 19 September 1967). For further information about this aspect of the land problem, see J. Waterlow and A. Vergara: Protein Malnutrition in Brazil (Rome, FAO, 1957). 322 Latin America The coup d'état led to the exile of President Rómulo Gallegos in November 1948, and trade unionism among the peasantry retreated once more into the shadows. All the conquests of the previous few years were lost; 226 agricultural unions and 14 sections of the federation were dissolved by governmental order. Their leaders, thrown into prison or condemned to clandestinity, were able to emerge only after the dictator's fall in January 1958. The Confederation of Labour was at once reorganised, and a year later (in June 1959) the first peasant congress, convened by the agricultural unions, decided to resurrect the Peasant Federation. In ten years of uninterrupted activity, this federation has become one of the principal motors of the land reform movement launched in 1960. It now has 24 sections (one for each federal "department"), called upon to co-ordinate and guide the activities of local trade unions, leagues and associations, while working in co-operation with the bodies officially responsible for land reform. The presidentx of the federation has explained that the latter is chiefly active in three separate fields. First of all, it approaches the employers, to secure higher wages and better conditions of employment. Secondly, it puts forward claims in connexion with land reform to the authorities responsible, especially as regards financial matters. Thirdly, it promotes commercial undertakings and works with them in the purchasing, stock-piling, processing and sale of agricultural produce, and in acquiring the goods and equipment needed by its members' farms and holdings. In the first of these three fields, the federation has managed to secure contracts of employment for wage earners superior to those laid down in the official regulations governing employment on the land. This success is due in part, it feels, to the fact that under the land reform scheme land has been allotted to 140,000 peasant families, whence a scarcity of agricultural manpower, whence, in turn, a rise in wages. The federation is also of the opinion that thanks to its labours there has been a substantial improvement in the housing erected for agricultural workers. With regard now to the land reform, the federation has from the outset played a most important part in planning and carrying out the schemes evolved by the Government. It has participated in the land reform movement both directly and indirectly. It has taken part directly thanks to the fact that it holds seats on the various official bodies responsible for reform: the National Land Institute, the Executive Board of the Agriculture and Stock-Breeding Bank, the National Institute for Vocational Training, the National Land Reform 1 Armando González: Función de la Federación Campesina de Venezuela en la reforma agraria (Caracas, Federación Campesina, 1966). 323 Agricultural organisations and development Co-ordination and Planning Committee, the National Land Irrigation Commission, ADAGRO (the undertaking responsible for the stock-piling of agricultural produce), the national production agencies, and, lastly, all the special committees responsible for drawing up bills and draft regulations concerning land reform. In their turn, these official land reform bodies are invited to send representatives to the federation's assemblies, to show how far their programmes have progressed and to take note of any criticisms or suggestions offered. Regionally and locally, the federation is similarly represented in the delegations or branches of all the above-mentioned bodies. Locally, the federation is in fact completely integrated into the day-to-day workings of land reform, since officials from the appropriate trade union are enrolled as helpers in the teams despatched to assist the new agricultural settlements in planning their activities. This system, the federation feels, has worked very well indeed. In certain instances, the peasants had displayed a certain hostility towards the technicians and their methods; thanks to the system, this had been overcome. It takes part indirectly in land reform by virtue of the activities undertaken by its National Executive Committee and local and regional organs in everything to do with making the countryside a better place to live in. Thus, the federation may request the official organs to concede land, to construct roads, drains, houses, schools, clinics, dispensaries, and so on, and to offer individual or collective credit. The federation likewise encourages the setting-up of producers' co-operatives (and servicing and consumers' co-operatives), which are then supervised to some extent by local trade unions. The latter also keep an eye on the new land settlements to see that everything is running smoothly, trying to avoid the resale of plots assigned or their indirect cultivation, abuse of credit facilities, the destruction or abnormal use of buildings or equipment, the exhaustion of the soil, and, in a general way, dispersal of energies. With regard to our thirdfield—tradeand commerce—the federation claims that its activities constitute a counterweight to the vices and shortcomings ©f the Venezuelan economy, under which foodstuffs are traditionally imported. Despite the success of the land reforms (as a result of which Venezuela is now almost entirely self-sufficient in foodstuffs), the Venezuelan businessman and merchant seems to have gone in for speculation (encouraged in so doing by the monopolies or vested interests which have established networks throughout the country). In this fashion, while the producer gets very little for his produce, the Venezuelan housewife pays dearly for her foodstuffs. This is damaging to the national economy. Accordingly, the federation has set up a special committee "for the promotion and management of undertakings". Its aim is to foster the creation of 324 Latín America new undertakings for the benefit of producers and consumers alike. As part of this policy, launched three years ago, the federation has already founded two large concerns, known as SUCAM and INDUCAM. One of them deals with the purchase of agricultural machinery and equipment, the other with the industrial production of rice and the marketing of certain crops. SUCAM set to work in December 1964, with a capital of 1.1 million bolivars, together with credits and guarantees from the Agricultural Bank amounting to 14.5 million bolivars, thanks to which it was able to import 780 agricultural machines. These machines were made over to farmers at their request, by a committee in which the Agricultural Bank, the National Land Institute, and the federation were represented. Purchasers were granted 90 per cent credit by the Agricultural Bank, and 10 per cent credit by the National Land Institute. The contracts of sale stipulate that the purchaser shall devote 25 per cent of the benefit he derives from the difference between the purchase price of the machine bought from the company and the purchase price on the open market, to the purchase of SUCAM shares. The aim of this clause was to compel the peasant to invest a proportion of his financial benefit. At the end of the first year, the SUCAM balance-sheet showed that all concerned had done extremely well. A total of some 5 million bolivars had been saved in relation to current market prices. Indeed, SUCAM had helped to stabilise the latter, despite a devaluation of the bolivar (the United States dollar, formerly worth 3.35 bolivars, was now worth 4.50). INDUCAM has built a factory, with a capacity of some 1,200 tons a month, for the processing of rice. This was possible thanks to a credit of 1.9 million bolivars from the Agricultural Bank. The factory is linked to a marketing centre created by INDUCAM in Caracas, which markets the wheat, oil-plants and fruit produced by the new land settlements, as well as the rice turned out by the factory. By means of such concerns, and others it intends to found (the relevant plans are already far advanced), the federation is obviously trying to co-ordinate the multiple operations involved in any well-organised land reform programme—apportionment of land, credit, production, and marketing. Although the road ahead will be long and difficult, the federation will probably succeed in doing what it set out to do, backed up as it is by the authorities and the 3,600 trade unions, leagues and associations on which it rests. It has been estimated that some 800,000 people belong to the Venezuelan agricultural trade union organisations, i.e. about 52 per cent of all rural inhabitants over the age of 10.1 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966:- The Role of Peasant Organisations in Land Reform and Related Community Development Programmes with Special Reference to Latin American Countries (doc. WLR/66/4), p. 7. 325 Agricultural organisations and development More recently, in 1967, the federation launched enterprises of a new kind— "peasant markets" (mercados campesinos), the declared aim of which is to introduce the land reform into the towns. Two such concerns are already operating (one in Caracas and the other in Valencia). They enable the fanner to sell directly to the consumer, thus by-passing the middle-men. After surmounting certain initial difficulties, the two concerns are now proving highly satisfactory to producer and consumer alike. Producers' profits have gone up, and consumers pay less for their foodstuffs. Besides which, these concerns act as "control" markets against monopolies and vested interests, speculation by which they do something to check. As regards the peasant himself, his income rises and he can more easily plan production with an eye to market requirements.1 In addition to which, the Peasants' Federation has shown great perspicacity in tackling the problem of the part which trade unions ought to play. Fully realising that in a developing agriculture the unions must be active on many fronts at the same time (since technical services and trained personnel are in short supply), it has set up six vocational training schools for trade union officials, so that the latter may acquire the requisite technical knowledge, administrative training, and familiarity with trade union principles. In 1966, eight more training schools of this kind were planned, together with a high-level college at which the brightest pupils from the training schools could be given specialised tuition in such disciplines as planning, agricultural economics, rural management and trade union administration. Thus, in a relatively brief period, the Venezuelan Peasants' Federation has grown in remarkable fashion, and become an indispensable cog in Venezuelan land reform schemes. It would be gratifying to be able to say the same about other South American countries with which our inquiries were concerned. Unhappily, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have not provided the information which would have enabled us to describe the current situation of peasant trade unionism in those countries. This silence is regrettable, for land reform movements have recently been launched in each of these three countries. Hearsay evidence leads the author to believe that they have been less successful than Venezuela in enrolling the peasant organisations in this cause. In Peru, for example, the National Federation of Peasants, created in 1960, is chiefly representative of the small farmer; at the time of our inquiries, this was the only organisation officially 1 See ILO, Regional Meeting on the Role of Agricultural Organisations in Economic and Social Development, Santiago (Chile), 20-28 October 1969: Esquema histórico de la Federación Campesina de Venezuela y sus funciones, by Armando González, p. 19. 326 Latin America recognised as representative by the land reform authorities \ despite the existence of two other organisations of equal importance: the Peruvian Peasants' Confederation and the Federation of Sugar Industry Workers. Colombia Here, the National Land Federation (FANAL), created in 1945, had by 1967 351 rural trade unions and 296 communal councils (juntas de acción communal), representing, in all, more than 65,000 peasants and farm workers. It had taken a prominent part in drafting the land reform legislation. This latter provides that the President of the Republic shall appoint a rural workers' representative to sit on the management committee of the Colombian Land Reform Institute (INCORA)2, the name of the person concerned being chosen from a list submitted by the Confederation of Colombian Workers and the Union of Colombian Workers. In this fashion, FANAL is represented within the management committee of INCORA and thus helps to guide land reform operations. Thanks to its insistence, some 250,000 acres of formerly nonproductive land have been brought within the scope of the reform and apportioned among more than 13,000 families. In some instances, indeed, FANAL has stepped in to stop the expulsion of hundreds of families from land they were farming, by using all its influence to ensure that the land in question was bought out and offered to those living off it. FANAL is also exceedingly active in the co-operative movement and in the training of trade union officials. Its co-operative activities began with the creation of thefirstrural credit unions. FANAL then took part in founding the National Co-operative Union (UCONAL), and in 1964, in co-operation with this latter body, it founded the National Agrarian Co-operative Union (UCOPAN), which today runs twenty co-operatives, either general or specialist, covering every branch of agriculture. As regards the training of co-operative members and trade union leaders, it has already organised over 100 regional or national courses, with assistance from bodies both public and private (sixteen of them in 1966), and with 300 pupils. At its last congress (1967), attended by 3,000 local delegates, a whole series of proposals were adopted to speed up land reform. FANAL has also called for amendments to existing legislation. One of them presses for a reduction in the period at the end of which unfarmed or badly farmed land automatically comes within the purview of the land reform scheme. Another 1 Tenencia de la tierra y el desarrollo socioeconómico del sector agricola, Perú, op. cit., p. 262. a Decree No. 3177 (lóDecember 1961). See ¿a nueva legislación agraria (Bogotá, Ministerio de Agricultura, 1962), p. 107. By Act No. 1 (26 January 1968) agricultural workers are now entitled to two representatives instead of one. 327 Agricultural organisations and development demands that payment for land expropriated should be in State bonds and not in cash, so that the nation's budget may not be ruined by the cost of land reform. The congress was also in favour of a strengthening of the ties binding FANAL and INCORA, and for better co-ordination between official organs (especially at the local level). It may well be that as a result of these recommendations, FANALand its agricultural organisations will shortly be given a more important part to play in putting Colombian land reform schemes into practice.1 Nicaragua The position is unfortunately more confused in the little countries of Central America, where agricultural trade unionism, too often and too sorely tried by constant changes of régime, has barely begun to move forward. In Nicaragua, where a land reform movement was launched in 1963, the law calls for agricultural workers to be represented in the executive board of the Land Institute. But since this country failed to reply to the author's questionnaire, we cannot say exactly how much progress agricultural trade unionism has made. We do know, however, thanks to observations made by an expert on the spot, that trade unionism began to spread throughout the countryside from 1963 onwards, and that a peasants' national confederation was founded after a conference held in Managua, in September 1965, by 534 representatives of organisations, from 12 different districts. Honduras The available data seem to show that since 1965 there has been a trend for the small peasantry to enrol in the National Peasants' Association. Since June 1965, peasants' associations have increased in number from twelve to forty-four, while their membership has risen from 8,000 to 22,000. The National Land Institute is well aware that land reforms would go through 1 For further information about the FANAL congress, see Conclusiones del IV Congreso Nacional Campesino (Bogotá, Editorial Visión, 1967). According to information obtained in October 1969, FANAL works closely with the authorities in the National Peasant Organisation Campaign, launched by the government in 1967 (Degree No. 755 dated 2 May 1967). The aim of the campaign is to organise the peasantry into users' associations (asociaciones de usuarios) to make use of the facilities provided by the State: credit, technical assistance, marketing, etc., in connexion with the land reform. These associations will be responsible for management of these facilities, and the authorities, in co-operation with FANAL and UCONAL, run training courses for future association officials. In October 1969, 700,000 peasants had joined the campaign, while FANAL and UCONAL had already organised sixteen courses for 650 peasants. See ILO, Regional Meeting on the Role of Agricultural Organisations in Economic and Social Development, Santiago (Chile), 20-28 October 1969: Campana nacional de organización campesina, by Mario Suárez M. 328 Latin America much more quickly if the agricultural organisations and unions were to cooperate closely. However, in 1966, according to the workers' union of the Tela Railroad Company (one of the biggest unions, founded in 1954; it has some 9,000 members) the law still made no provision for their representation in the executive organs of the institute. Incidentally, it would seem that the Honduran peasant is suspicious of any kind of organisation. The same union emphasises this, indicating that the difficulties encountered are attributable to the peasant's lack of confidence. "He has", it writes, "been so frequently been taken in that he no longer believes in anything." Guatemala This indifference is mainly due to the numerous bitter disappointments suffered by the workers' movements in the Central American countries. All too often a youthful workers' movement has gone under, following a change in the régime. The Guatemalan workers' movement has a history as stormy as, or perhaps stormier than, any other in Central America. In 1931, the agricultural workers h a d barely begun to organise when all they had achieved, in town and countryside, was totally destroyed by the advent of Jorge Ubico at the seat of power; his dictatorship was to last for fourteen long years. When he fell in 1944, the town workers at once reorganised the Confederation of Guatemalan Workers. The law remaining severe with regard to the agricultural workers, the latter were no better off than they had been before. Certainly, compared with the years which had gone before, the period 1944 to 1952 can be considered a liberal one, for, despite a Presidential Decree dated 27 August 1945, forbidding agricultural trade unionism, two organisations were tolerated on plantations belonging to the United Fruit Company. Moreover, things started to improve. Thus, the Labour Code, enacted on 8 February 1947, recognised the existence of agricultural trade unions, but demanded that no union should have less than fifty members (this restriction was lifted sixteen months later by Decree No. 526, dated 5 July 1948). The unions then began to multiply very fast; no more than eleven had been recognised in January 1948 (three of them on fincas nacionales1), while there were no less than forty-six in August 1949, with between 10,000 and 12,000 members. In May 1950, the National Confederation of Guatemalan Peasants was created. Between 1952 and 1954, the peasant movement received powerful 1 The fincas nacionales, national domains, are made up of the 115 big coffee plantations created by German immigrants between 1860 and 1870. In 1935-36, they produced about 64 per cent of all the coffee produced in the country. They were expropriated during the war. Under Decree No. 1653 (January 1967), the National Land Transformation Institute is to take them over and eventually transfer them to the workers. 329 Agricultural organisations and development encouragement from the government of Colonel Arbenz. In 1954, there were 1,541 trade union organisations, and the National Confederation of Guatemalan Peasants represented some 256,000 agricultural workers and small peasants. There were, in addition, a host of "peasant communities", in the form of private companies, set up on behalf of the small farmer (tenants and share-croppers). These "peasant communities" helped the peasant to grow a greater variety of crops, to found co-operatives, and to stand up for his rights. The land reforms undertaken by President Arbenz in 1952 involved the creation of numerous local land committees (some 1,500 or so were working in 1953). These helped in the apportionment of land, and nearly 100,000 families profited therefrom. But, once again, when the Arbenz government was overthrown, all that had been achieved was undone: land was restored to its previous owners, and the trade unions were wound up. Only in 1958, with the rise to power of Idígoras Fuentes, were the unions to re-appear. Little by little, the movement re-emerged, and in 1961, the Autonomous Trade Union Federation of Guatemala (FASGUA), the Federation of Workers of Guatemala (FTG),.and the Trade Union Council of Guatemala (CSG)—all of them created about this time—supported the convening of a conference of peasants and agricultural workers. This conference submitted a number of claims to Congress, dealing with such things as freedom of association, the grant of land to the peasants, and the increase of agricultural wages. During these years, agricultural organisations proliferated (the present Guatemalan Peasants' Federation dates from 1961), and in addition associations of new kinds sprang up among the peasantry. We refer, of course, to the peasant leagues and "native communities". These latter differ from the old "peasant communities" in that they are concerned with the problems peculiar to the native peoples. It is the leagues, in which the native peasantry and the ladinos are represented, which have really taken over from the communities. According to the information assembled, these organisations have not yet been officially recognised; they exist defacto, but not de jure, and we cannot yet say whether or not they are called upon to play a part of any importance in national land reform schemes. The Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, in May 1967, announced that there were 71 officially recognised trade unions, and estimated that each had a membership of some 100 people. The federations, on the other hand, reckon that membership is twice thisfigure,and by adding unrecognised organisations, co-operatives, leagues, communities and a few pre-trade union committees, they reach a grand total of 164 organisations for May 1967. If this be so, and if each organisation has an average of 200 members, then we may assume that the peasants and agricultural workers at present enrolled in trade unions, 330 Latin America co-operatives and communities number some 32,000 persons, i.e. roughly 5 per cent of the actively employed agricultural population. The organisations set up by the Guatemalan peasants and agricultural workers (and this is the case, too, in a good many other Latin American countries) are still far too young for us to be able to decide how effective they are. A lot will depend on how far they can consolidate the positions they have acquired (and frankly, they rest for the time being on precarious foundations), and on what official attitudes are towards them. It is more important than ever that the peasantry be enlisted in schemes of reform if agriculture is to be made competitive. This is true of most of the countries considered in the foregoing pages. CONCLUSIONS From our review, certain conclusions can be drawn. First and foremost, the landowners, and especially the great planters and ranchers, have powerful associations to defend their interests, and have had ever since the nineteenth century. But they have not always made use of them to speed up the technical, social and economic development of their agricultural workers. Despite technical progress in agricultural methods and marketing, the workers have consistently lagged behind, to such a degree that there is no point on dwelling on the matter here. Suffice it to say that the whole of Latin America will have to change over from extensive to intensive agriculture, while balancing and diversifying production. Techniques will have to be improved, and the latifundian system (the source of all rural ills) will have to yield to more up-to-date methods of land tenure (family holdings, co-operatives, or new forms of communal management, already envisaged in some of the land reform schemes now under way). The employers' associations could well benefit from European experience by organising joint technical meetings with the European employers' associations. Indeed, some intercontinental pairing system might even be devised: a number of European associations would form a liaison committee, which, having considered the Latin American problems in conjunction with leaders of the Latin American employers' associations, would then consider what could be done to accelerate development in Latin America, in the light of the experience acquired in Europe. Something on these lines could perhaps form a part of technical co-operation schemes. Various experiments could be launched, with an eye to the needs of the Latin American countries. Such a practice would, in addition, offer continuity in the exchange of information in a way which ordinary meetings cannot rival. The same reasoning holds 331 Agricultural organisations and development good of chambers of agriculture ; they, too, could certainly derive much profit from studying the development of the chambers in Austria, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany. It might be thought that such co-operation is unnecessary, if the Latin American organisations feel that they provide adequate protection for their members' interests. This is true, if we assume that these interests will always remain the same and that organisations will remain content with doing what they traditionally do. But if, on the contrary, we assume that the current land reform schemes will shortly impose a multiplication of activities in every direction, while making radical changes in the interests of organisations as traditionally understood, we shall be compelled to admit that the employers' associations will undergo far-reaching changes as and when they come up against the problems arising from modernisation of the countryside. Hitherto, they have been chiefly concerned to get support from the authorities and to facilitate the sale of their members' produce. But clearly it will be very much in their own interests to multiply their activities in all directions, in view of the need to develop a rural world in which modernisation will have to start virtually from zero. Of course, the fact that the existing organisations are represented, in an advisory capacity or with the right to vote, in various official bodies represents a step in the right direction. But this cannot in itself replace all that such organisations could be doing on the spot to buttress agrarian reform understood in its very widest sense. The surge forward of the organisations of agricultural workers and small farmers shows how keenly the Latin American peasant aspires to progress. The Latin American peasant is often thought of as being essentially passive and apathetic. But this is hard to reconcile with the vigorous efforts now being made by so many peasants' organisations to obtain that status in society which they rightly consider is their due. The future of the peasant movement (as embodied in trade unions, leagues, or communities of small farmers) appears at the present time to be closely bound up with the fate of the land reform movements launched since the Second World War, and more especially since 1960. Most of the obstacles now being encountered are attributable to the way agriculture in Latin America is organised. Hence the development of the movement very largely depends on the success of land reform. The converse is also true: reform can be successful only if there is an increase in the vigour and extension of the agricultural organisations.1 Certainly, this close relationship between reform and the mass organisations which must support it does not seem to have been always 'See United Nations-FAO-ILO: Progress in Land Reform, Fifth Report (New York, 1970), and especially Ch. IV, drafted by the ILO. 332 Latin America understood. All too often, a glance at the legislation enacted these last few years shows that while the idea of workers' representation at some higher level is accepted, there is still marked reluctance to enrol the mass organisations in the task of putting reform schemes into effect. Stress is too often laid on co-operatives alone. These, certainly, play an essential part in the economic development of the countryside; they are, however, but one movement among many others, the place of which they cannot hope to take. But certain countries have not hesitated to show their confidence in the trade unions, and the evidence is there to prove how important is the part the latter can play in land reform. We have seen in Venezuela, for example, that the unions have been associated with land reform schemes and that the peasants' natural suspicion has consequently been overcome. Once this suspicion has been dispelled, a trade union can undertake all sorts of tasks in the interests of the community. It can, for example, help the authorities decide to whom land should go; it can supervise the proper use and repayment of credits; it can promote technical development by popularising new farming procedures and the use of fertilisers ; it can set up, and supervise the workings of, centres holding agricultural machinery and heavy equipment; it can lend a hand in campaigns waged to teach the peasants to read and write, by helping to build schools and vocational training institutes ; it can give its members legal aid; it can help them to set up producers' and marketing co-operatives; and it can acquaint the peasantry with the simple rules of hygiene, nutrition, and so on. In short, a trade union can, and indeed must, be a centre for the dissemination of progress in all its meanings. Nevertheless, we may well wonder whether the Latin American trade union organisations and the small farmers' movements will be able to tackle tasks of this kind. Everything depends on the status granted them by the authorities, on the help they are likely to receive, and on the elimination of the structural and socio-economic obstacles which until now have put a brake on their development. As regards legal status, we have already seen the barriers which in certain countries hinder the growth of trade unionism. Unless these countries bring law and practice up to date by bringing them into harmony with the international conventions and recommendations evolved by the ILO, it is not easy to see how these barriers can be surmounted. The question, however, is exceedingly complicated. Hence it might not be unhelpful if a comparative study were made of existing national legislation (with, possibly, support from the ILO). Moreover, those in charge of the bodies responsible for agrarian reform ought to meet and exchange impressions. They might be well advised as a result to review their ideas on the part to be played by agricultural organisations in the economic and social development of the countryside. 333 Agricultural organisations and development Lastly, if they are to tackle their tasks effectively, all the workers' organisations, whatever their nature, should enjoy effective continental aid. It is obvious that the leaders of such associations are better at submitting grievances than at doing something about them. To want a co-operative is all very well, but one has to know how to manage it, and the same applies to all operations which the Latin American organisations will be invited to undertake. Their tasks will be many and arduous, the technical personnel available few and far between. Hence it will be necessary to set up regional centres for the training of trade union agricultural instructors, perhaps with some assistance from those international organisations (the United Nations, ILO, FAO, WHO and UNESCO) which have an interest in the over-all development of the countryside. Perhaps such a project might be undertaken as part of the activities of the United Nations Development Programme. The great trade union federations (regional or national) of the developed countries could lend a hand as well. When making this proposal, the author has in mind an experiment successfully undertaken in Venezuela in 1962, and then cut short for reasons which remain obscure. The idea was to spread technical enlightenment among those who had profited from the land reform. Instruction was given in three or four training centres for peasant leaders, under the auspices of the Venezuelan Peasants' Federation, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Land Institute, and the Agricultural Bank. Technical training was given to 412 peasants, hand-picked from the new land settlements set up under the reform movement; they had to undertake in exchange to pass on the knowledge thus acquired to the heads of 30 families in the settlement from which they came. All in all, 260 persons took these courses. Their knowledge was passed on to the heads of 8,657 families in 142 land settlements. The outcome needs no comment: productivity per acre increased by 78.7 per cent, while many a farmer who had been unable to repay his debts to the Agricultural Bank was able to get out of the red.1 This experiment was, of course, a technical one only. It does, however, show what can be done if sufficient energy is displayed. It also shows how the agricultural trade union movement might go beyond the stage at which it merely serves to put forwards claims and grievances, and take an active part in agricultural development. But if such a movement is to become continentwide, then people's outlooks and attitudes will have to change throughout society. A vigorous spirit of initiative will have to spread from top to bottom. Absentee landlordism and peasant suspicion (legitimate though this latter may be) will have to disappear. In every country, therefore, reform will 1 For further information, see Victor Giménez Landinez: Capacitación para la reforma agraria integral, op. cit., pp. 39 et seq. 334 Latin America have to be considered, not as a concession grudgingly offered to the poor, but as a far-reaching operation designed to bring about a radical change in ways of life and methods of production throughout society. Only if this change in attitude takes place will the Latin American continent be able to make one nation of its peoples, to be sure that its economic progress has passed the point of no return, and to embark finally on the path leading to a balanced economic and social development. 335 PART IV AFRICA AFRICA D INTRODUCTION The geographical discoveries made by Europeans in Africa during the nineteenth century have not yet been paralleled by comparable discoveries concerning the peoples and economies of that continent; indeed, in some respects it would be accurate to say that not even a start has been made. Africa, in fact, must be discovered anew by Africans and Europeans alike : by Africans, because they are anxious to reconcile twentieth-century development and African tradition, and by Europeans, because more than a century of European domination has left its mark. During the colonial period, the problems of Africa were considered essentially in relation to the interests and needs of the colonial Powers, while academic investigators assumed that the civilisation of Europe was equally suitable for all other continents throughout the world. This is not to imply that the role and usefulness of the comparative analysis of different civilisations should be under-rated (on the contrary, to examine them in the same light of inquiry shows up their affinities and contrasts), but simply that any kind of comparative analysis must be based on a profound knowledge of the subject in question if it is to be of any value and lead to fruitful results. Historically speaking, the European has only rarely been able to see African culture for what it really is. In the nineteenth century, sociology, anthropology and ethnology were still embryonic disciplines. Furthermore, the societies south of the Sahara had left no written records through which their culture might have been revealed. This being the position, it is not surprising that, despite the vast amount of work carried out by students of Africa, the man in the street has often taken a highly simplified view of the continent. Jacques Maquet put the matter neatly when he said : In Africa, the colonists thought that the European way of life—"civilisation" without any qualifying adjective—existed in a cultural desert. European law was confronted not with another legal system but simply with savage customs; monogamy 339 Agricultural organisations and development replaced not another form of marriage but immoral concubinage; and Christianity was faced, not with other religions, but with ridiculous superstitions.1 Not everybody shared these beliefs, of course. Nevertheless, the judgment on the whole is true. Whence the juxtaposition, in Africa, of colonial governments and native administrations, of commercial plantation agriculture and subsistence agriculture in the native villages, of European-style towns and native towns and villages. For several generations, two worlds, two ways of life existed side-by-side, one claiming to be a model for the other, although in fact interpénétration was never very deep. Thus, when the epoch of colonialism was succeeded by the technical assistance era, for the first few years of the new period the only models offered for imitation by Africans were European ones ; some of them had been tried and found to work, others were frankly quite unsuitable for local conditions and needs. Perhaps the most striking case concerns educational systems, which were simply transposed in toto, textbooks and curricula, from Europe to Africa. Less striking, but no less important, is the example afforded by the co-operative movement. This, too, was based on European models, and proved quite unsuitable; it was incompatible with local customs and traditions, and indeed demanded more than Africans could give. In all fields—rural and industrial development, health and education—mistakes often fraught with the direst consequences were made, simply because the people concerned were, perhaps inevitably, insufficiently familiar with the environment into which "development" was to be introduced. Much has been done during the last few years in theoretical and applied research. But numerous problems still remain, and there is a wide gulf between what is known and what must be known if the development of Africa is to be facilitated. In rural development, for example, the more one reflects on the problems involved, the clearer it becomes that much remains to be done, and perhaps undone, from the search for methods whereby customs and traditions which constitute an obstacle to progress might be changed, to the adaptation of agricultural techniques to African soils and climates. In this connexion, René Dumont has shrewdly observed that, whereas agricultural research (empirical first of all, and then scientific) into the problems characteristic of the temperate countries is centuries old, research into the problems of the African countries (especially the tropical countries) goes back no more than forty or fifty years; indeed, such research is hardly more than a superficial literary description of African agricultural systems. A tropical environment, too, is 1 p. 11. 340 Jacques Maquet : Africanité traditionnelle et moderne (Paris, Présence africaine, 1967), Africa very easy to ruin; it poses difficult problems quite unlike these facing a temperate environment. Hence, although progress has undeniably been made in recent years, there are many problems which cannot be considered as having been correctly solved.1 The same holds good for the sociological aspects. Despite an already abundant literature, based on research undertaken with fresh ideas in mind, there are many sociological problems which demand close and careful investigation, especially in connexion with questions such as the use that might be made of traditional patterns to promote economic and social development, the resistance encountered by development, the points where a development campaign might conceivably take root—in fact, the whole short- and longterm strategy required to transform the African countryside. It will be readily understood, therefore, that we cannot, in a volume like the present, offer simple formulae to cover the many problems of a continent in which several kinds of rural civilisation—each of which deserves a volume to itself—coexist. The division frequently made between North Africa (the land of the Arab, the land of Islam) and Africa south of the Sahara (the home of the Negro peoples) is undoubtedly useful from some points of view, but is quite inadequate when we start to think of developmental problems. There are, for instance, numerous subdivisions within each of these two cultural groups. If we assume with Denise Paulme that south of the Sahara there are ten civilisations, wefindthat the first three—those of the Bushmen, Hottentots and Pygmies, based on itinerant stock-raising, hunting, and the gathering of fruit, berries, and so on—raise problems quite different from those encountered when we are dealing with the Bantu farmers and cattle-breeders of southern Africa or with the Congolese peasants and hunters of the equatorial regions.2 We shall not attempt therefore to give separate consideration to the problems peculiar to pastoral or agricultural societies, to savannah or forest, to tropical or subtropical areas; not of course because we under-estimate their importance and gravity, but simply because, in a restricted survey such as ours, we must limit ourselves to problems common to all regions, leaving to other investigators the task of undertaking those specialised inquiries which the individual ways of life concerned so richly merit. 1 Dumont, René: African Agricultural Development: Reflexions on the Major Lines of Advance and the Barriers to Progress (United Nations, Economic Commission for Africa, 1965), p. 5. 2 Denise Paulme: Civilisations africaines (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1953), passim. 341 Agricultural organisations and development Table 14. Socio-economic data for African countries National per capita income (1965 or year shown) USS Country (a) Algeria Cameroon Central African Republic Chad Congo (Brazzaville) Congo (Kinshasa) Dahomey Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea Ivory Coast Kenya Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Morocco Niger Nigeria Rwanda Senegal Somalia Sudan Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda United Arab Republic Upper Volta Zambia Share of agriculture in gross domestic product (%) (W Active agricultural population (% of total active population) (c) Illiteracy (%) Males Females Total W) Infant mortality (number of deaths of children under 1 year old per 1,000 births) Life expectancy at birth (fi) (/) 195 (1964) 21 (1958) 82.1 (1954) 104 (1963) — — 87.7 96.9 92.3 (1954) — — — 101* 180 49* 33 123 60 (1963) — — — 200 165* 35* 30* 180* 37* — — 141 (1958) 66 (1964) 55 (1958) 42 333 (1963) 69 (1958) 245 83 (1958) 188(1964) 77 148 (1964) 636 83 (1958) 38 57 (1958) 106 215 174 78 63 38 (1958) 149 48 (1958) 90 64 82 179 77 28 (1959) 86.4 (55-57) — — 65 (1963) — 84.1 (1963) — — — 58 (1960) — — — 86.4 (1964) — 38 (1965) — 28 (1964) 80.9 (1962) 25 (1959) 35.7 (1964) — 47 (1963) — — — — — — 25 (1965) 37.9 (1962) 32 (1965) 56.3 (1960) 96.9 (1960) — 59 (1963) — — — — — — — 54 55 49 22 59 (1964) 85.8 (1956) (1965) — (1964) — (1965) 68.1 (1956) (1965) — 96 (1958) 25 (1961) 56.6 (1960) 35 (1958) — — 10 (1965) — 174 — — — — — — 144.3* 110.5* 38.8* 37.3* — — 90.7 98.1 94.8 (60-61) 229* 32* — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 178* 220* 138* 37.5* 35.8* 35* 40-45 86.1 77 59.2 95.8 98.6 73 — — — — — — 91.1 87.1 66.5 93.5 27.5 78.1 98.5 49.4 94 99.7 — — — — (1962) (1954) (1953) (1945) — — 38.4 86.2 99.1 88.5 (1962) (1960) (1960) (52-53) — — — — 71 — — — — — 250* 26* — — 69.5 149* 200* 162.9 60.2 49.6* — 37.5 — 89.6 98.9 94.4 (1961) — — — — — 93.6* 190* 127* 110* 160* 40* 37.5* 35* 49* 35* 79 97.3 88 (1956) _ — — — — — — — — — 84.3 (1956) — 92.9* — 37* — 68.1 91.4 80.5 (1960) — — — 174.3* 31.6* 46.8 70.3 58.6 (1963) — — Sources: Column (a) United Nations: Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, 1966, p. 730; (6) ibid., pp. 693-694; (e) ILO: Year Book of Labour Statistics. 1967. pp. 42-58; W) UNESCO: Statistical Yearbook, 1964, pp. 36-37; (e) and (J) data supplied by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. * Estimated. 342 Africa CUSTOMARY LAW AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FARMING SYSTEMS Communal farming, governed by customary law, is still carried on extensively in Africa, especially south of the Sahara. Although it exists on a fairly considerable scale in North Africa too, it is not so important there since Moslem jurisprudence has introduced the principle of private property, with all the refinements so familiar to Europeans: owner-operatorship, tenancy and sharecropping. Roman law, too, has left its imprint, and although the native customary law of the pre-Islamic period is still prevalent here and there (an example is the Berber jmâa, governing the communal use of pasture land and routes covered by migrant herds), its influence is much less felt than is the case in southern Africa.1 Customary law, infinitely variable in its local applications, nevertheless presents one easily recognisable feature common to most of the countries south of the Sahara, especially western Africa. Whereas under Roman law, individualism is the rule, here the land is communally owned; it constitutes an indivisible entity, belonging to the extended family, tribe or clan which cleared it, and its use is administered by the village authorities according to the needs of the members. As a rule, the "master of the land" re-apportions the plots every year among the families concerned, bearing in mind the needs of each of them and also how much land must be brought under the plough, set aside for common pasture land, or left lying fallow. Land cannot, in principle, be either bought or sold, since not only does it constitute the common possession of the society concerned but it also provides a pillar for the social and religious organisation of the community. We must, clearly, beware of generalisations. But we may confidently apply to all societies ruled by customary law the following definition by G. Dalton, which excellently characterises the way in which life in the African countryside is organised: Specifically, these primitive social economies are so organised that the allocation of labour and land, work organisation within production processes, and the disposition of goods and services—in short, production and distribution—are expressions underlying kinship organisation, tribal affiliation, and religious and moral duty. There is no separate economic system to be analysed independently of social organisation. Labour, land, services and goods produced are allotted, exchanged, or appropriated through transactional modes of reciprocity and distribution.2 1 For an examination of land tenure in North Africa, see Jacques Berque: Etude d'histoire rurale maghrébine (Tangier and Fez, Editions internationales, 1938), and Contribution à l'étude des contrats nord-africains (Beni-Meskine) (Algiers, Typo-litho et J. Carbonel, 1936). 1 George Dalton: "The Development of Subsistence and Peasant Economies in Africa", International Social Science Journal (Paris, UNESCO), Vol. XVI, No. 3, 1964. For land 343 Agricultural organisations and development This very general picture does show us how subsistence agriculture (the fruit of such customs and procedures) has provided a remarkable degree of continuity for African societies—a continuity which has lasted down to the present day. Despite erosion deriving from contacts with European society, and despite constant reforms introduced by governments or resulting from changes in custom, this system has managed to preserve all the strong points of African society, notably family and tribal solidarity and social cohesion. Moreover, despite all its drawbacks (which we shall look into later) this continuity has proved an excellent defence against a phenomenon which has made its appearance in all other continents subjected to colonial domination: the reduction of the peasantry to a landless proletariat. Except in North Africa, where the European penetration was followed by extensive confiscation of land in densely populated areas (in Tunisia, for instance, European companies held no less than one-third of the land settled) with the result that towards the end of the nineteenth century the North African peasantry was rapidly becoming a proletariat, elsewhere the land held by Europeans or reserved for them (the best land, of course) represented a smallish percentage only of the total available: in French West and Equatorial Africa a mere 0.5 per cent, the same in Uganda, in Rwanda-Urundi 2 per cent, in Tanganyika 0.9 per cent, in Kenya 7 per cent, in the Belgian Congo 9 per cent, in Northern Rhodesia 3 per cent, in Nyasaland 5 per cent, in South-West Africa 5 per cent, and in Bechuanaland 6 per cent. Only in Southern Rhodesia (49 per cent) and the Union of South Africa (89 per cent) were high percentages registered.1 Thus, except in the last two countries, the application of the "vacant lands" theory, under which all land apparently unoccupied or unused belonged by rights to the occupying Power, had in practice a somewhat limited application. The White settlers were influenced by factors such as climate and the nature of the soil, and thus left traditional African societies largely untouched, which is why native customs and traditions were maintained intact at a time when contact with the White man was bad for the African rather than good for him. True, in the plantation areas a proletariat did spring up which varied in numbers from one country to another. This phenomenon can be seen from the data, relating to 1955, which appear in table 15. Unhappily no more recent statistics are available. usage in common law systems, see also Guy-Adjété Kouassignan: L'homme et la terre — droits fonciers coutumiers et droits de propriété en Afrique occidentale (Paris, Office de la recherche scientifique et technique d'outre-mer, 1966). 1 For further information, see Lord Hailey: An African Survey (London, Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 687. It may perhaps not be irrelevant to mention in passing the close connexion between the high proportion of land occupied by White settlers in the Union of South Africa and Rhodesia and the problems thrown up today by the policies these two countries are pursuing vis-à-vis the native African. 344 Africa Table 15. Africa south of the Sahara: Active popul ation and agricultural wage earners, 1955 Country Belgian Congo French Equatorial Africa French West Africa Madagascar Mozambique Population actively employed (males and females) Total wage earners Agricultural wage earners (a) (*) («) 3140 500 1 166 250 4 666 000 1 194 000 1 507 500 1206 043 154 754 372 500 247 562 542 746 300 791 39 945 73 600 96 693 117 912 Percentage of agricultural wage earners in relation to Total Total number of population wage actively earners employed W) (<0 24.9 25.8 19.8 39.1 21.7 9.6 3.4 1.6 8.1 7.8 Sources: Columns (a), (i) and (e): ILO: African Labour Survey, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 48 (Geneva, 1958), pp. 666-667. The figures given for agricultural wage earners in French Equatorial and West Africa, and Madagascar (column (c)) probably include a few foreign workers. Thefiguresfor the Belgian Congo and Mozambique are, however, strictly limited to native labour. Examination of these figures shows that the rural African population has been little affected by modern agriculture and that the plantations, which account for the bulk of wage earning labour, cannot be compared with the vast latifundia of Latin America, which have pushed their tentacles into every nook and cranny of the countryside, to such a point that they embrace the bulk of the peasantry, including the small independent farmers. The latifundiominifundio complex, with all its implications, is quite unknown in the independent African countries south of the Sahara. And this means that the African countryside, being less affected and tainted by connexions with the outside world, has to a large degree kept its cultural integrity. Mutatis mutandis, the African village can be compared only with the Mexican ejido or the Inca ayllu, which maintain elaborate internal relationships and are virtually closed to the outside world. This is the strength of the African village, but also its weakness : the enduring traditions make adaptation to the requirements of "development" that much more difficult. Customary law, where it survives in an unadulterated form, tends to preserve a social pattern rigidly barred against progress. The resultant agricultural system is characterised by the inalienability of land, its annual re-allotment and its under-utilisation, together with itinerant grazing in certain areas. The result is a definite absence of dynamism which throws up many difficult problems. The pyramid structure of the village, with everybody's place being allotted according to age and sex, and with the young people being subordinate to the old, is a formidable obstacle. True, these traditional social patterns have 345 Agricultural organisations and development undergone sizable modifications here and there, either because of population pressure, or because contacts with a monetary economy have given rise to newly felt requirements and upset the traditional social stability. In some areas, land is no longer returned to the family pool on the death of the person farming it, to be distributed afresh; it is taken over by another individual or i ndividuals. This, of course, is nearer to the European conception of property ; but it can lead to repeated subdivision, and when that happens we find a multitude of tiny, uneconomic plots, a situation the more serious in that the subdivision has not been accompanied by any improvement in ways of tilling the soil. The mortgaging of land is another phenomenon characteristic of areas in which traditional patterns are being eroded by the power of money. By temporarily ceding a piece of land in exchange for a cash payment, the peasant can cope with taxes, dowries, marriage ceremonies, unforeseen contingencies, and so on. But the land thus mortgaged will have to be redeemed sooner or later, and since land is usually inalienable, temporary occupation gives the new occupant no incentive to make any improvements thereon, since the cost will not be made good to him. Although this state of affairs may last for years, as long as the borrower is unable to buy his land back, such a system offers more drawbacks than advantages. The new occupier does not know how long he will keep the land, and, unlike the European tenant, he has no guarantee that any improvements he may make will be duly paid for. The original owner is in debt, and often enough has too little land remaining to meet the needs of his family. True, pending such time as a real market for land develops, the system does make for some mobility in land—a mobility of which the more dynamic savers take advantage. The system must, however, be considered rather as a transition towards other systems, such as tenant farming and share-cropping, better adapted to the demands of progress. In some African countries south of the Sahara, we find developed communities, as in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and the Sudan, which practise the purest kind of share-cropping.1 In Gambia, the custom during colonial times (and in all likelihood there has been little change since then) was to have a system whereby "strange" farmers who came every year from the Casamance valley in Senegal to grow groundnuts were accommodated, and given a plot of land, in exchange for a number of days of work (usually four a week) done on the owners' lands.2 1 As regards, for instance, the abusa system in Ghana, see P. Hill: The Gold Coast Cocoa Farmer (London, Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 8-24; as regards the isha kole system in Nigeria, see R. Galleti, K. D. S. Baldwin and I. O. Dina: Nigerian Cocoa Farmers (London, Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 117-118. a See J. H. Palmer: Notes on Strange Farmers (Bathurst, Government Printer, 1946), passim; Government of the United Kingdom, Colonial Office: Report on the Gambia for the Years 1952 and 1953 (London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1954), p. 21. 346 Africa There is yet another complication, namely, the means whereby land is transmitted. For instance, in the Sine area of Senegal, inhabited by the Serer, the lamanats—individual fiefs traditionally granted by the Boor (king) of Sine to wealthy (and usually free) peasants—are transmitted through the mother's line; the oldest nephew on the mother's side becomes lamane in his turn. On the other hand, inalienable rights of usufruct, conceded by the lamane to the heads of families inhabiting his fief, against the payment of a due, are transmitted through the father's line, to the younger or older brother, or through the mother's line, to the eldest nephew. Here again, the land so handed down is inalienable. We thus have a rigid structure allowing of no individual or arbitrary modification, the occupier being merely the possessor of a right. At the most, he can lend, loan or mortgage the land in accordance with traditional rules. But he cannot finally dispose of it nor may he alter the rules whereby the land is inherited.1 The position can be even more complicated, and the following example should suffice to show how formidable are the difficulties likely to be encountered when modernisation of the land system is contemplated. Among the Bamileke of Cameroon, the inalienable patrimony of land, managed by the head of the family, is divided up on his death between his chief heir on the one hand, and his younger brothers and other children on the other, in accordance with principles which guarantee a right of occupation. But in the long run this right becomes increasingly difficult to administer, since the system also makes allowance for the rights of usufruct inherited by the womenfolk. The implications of the resulting complexities and obstacles for agricultural development are vividly brought out in Gabriel Gosselin's description of how land is used and inherited among the Bamileke: Although handed down patrilineally, land is not used only by the menfolk. At the time of her marriage, a wife receives from her husband a plot of land for her food crops. The husband retains an overriding right on that plot—namely, a right of tenure without usufruct. Under this right, he may plant trees and keep the produce of any tree cultivation (including, consequently, the coffee or cocoa harvest). The wife receives only a right to make use of the plot but this is a permanent right and may be bequeathed matrilineally: the wife passes on her right to cultivate to one of her daughters or to one of the daughters of her sisters. Thus it can happen that a part or sometimes even the whole of the land of a head of a family may come into the hands of persons who are vaguely related to him matrilineally but who have become socially and economically strangers to him. At each marriage and in each generation the landed property may remain intact but the rights of a growing number of women to cultivate it reduce bit by bit its productive potential. The head of the family may only plant trees or grow tree crops, 1 For further information about the Serer, see Jean-Claude Reverdy's exhaustive monograph Une société rurale au Sénégal — les structures foncières familiales et villageoises des Serer (Aix-en-Provence, Centre africain des sciences humaines appliquées, 1968). 347 Agricultural organisations and development and these plantations are at the mercy of the crops grown on the same soil by women who are strangers to his own immediate family. These women, whose rights may go back over many generations, sometimes live far away from the land which they till. On their side, the wives of the existing head of the family may go out to cultivate elsewhere the plots of land constituting their own inheritance. As a result, there is a wide scattering of plots cultivated by the same woman, as well as a considerable breaking-up of a family's land. This highly complex system of land rights is the source of many disputes which are all the more acrimonious because land is scarce.1 But in other areas, such as southern Dahomey, women may inherit movable property only, rights over land being reserved for males (none the less, the womenfolk play an important part, in Dahomey as elsewhere, in growing foodstuffs and marketing produce). It will be seen, then, that the position is not everywhere the same. If we may venture a generalisation, we might say that the more complicated customary law is, the harder it will be, from every point of view, to "modernise" the countryside. Now we come up against the one basic question : what should replace the traditional patterns ? Should it be private ownership as understood in the Western world ? Or collective farming as practised in Eastern Europe ? Or a compromise between the two, taking account of the peculiarities of Africa ? These questions are by no means easy to answer. Similarly the reference to compromise patterns (although it effectively precludes the exportation of ready-made models from either East or West) does not solve the problem, for what would such intermediate systems actually consist of? For the time being, the countries themselves are apparently tending to adopt co-operative systems as part of a series of reforms launched or directed by the authorities, with the latter trying not only to improve agricultural methods but also to introduce the principles and procedures of a market economy. Whether such attempts succeed or not depends very largely on the resistance encountered from local society, on society's ability to assimilate progress and to ensure that everybody has a share therein—for where the village elders have kept their power and prestige intact they tend, very naturally, to demand the lion's share of any benefits attributable to economic development. Should we, therefore, bank on them, and risk their abusing their authority to strengthen their own position and paralyse the social evolution which must proceed hand-in-hand with technical change; or should we, on the contrary, back the young people, and risk a state of affairs in which their opposition to their seniors (already latent or indeed manifest in many places) would speed up the disintegration of traditional society ? For there can be no certainty that the socio-economic 1 Gabriel Gosselin: Développement et tradition dans les sociétés rurales africaines, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 76 (Geneva, ILO, 1970), Ch. 2: "Le crédit mutuel en pays bamiléké", pp. 64-65. 348 Africa pattern which will take the place of traditional society will represent a change for the better. To all these questions there can be no common answer. If we take the two extremes, and imagine the change-over from traditional communal farming to individual ownership on European lines, we shall have to remember that sooner or later this will involve abandonment of polygamy for monogamy, of the tribe or clan for the small family unit, of dependency for economic independence. Each such change will break old links and habits and demand new ones which must bring about new attitudes and a new solidarity. And, as Gabriel Gosselin remarks, and rightly so, there is a qualitative hiatus between traditional solidarity and the solidarity which exists in the modern world1; the one by no means necessarily leads to the other. Generally speaking, it seems likely that a tendency will develop almost everywhere for the adoption of a simple form of peasant co-operative, linked in some way or other to the traditional system of land holding. This is especially so in the countries where the principle of private ownership is least developed; here, any redistribution of land, with its accompanying granting of individual rights of occupancy, would give rise to numerous problems, and would take far longer to effect than a land survey in a country where property is already consolidated. We should do well to take heed of D. Christodoulou's words of warning if we are going to encourage individual land tenure : African farmers operating under customary tenures imbued with different values cannot be abruptly detached from their social milieu and plunged unprepared into individual farm operation divorced from the give and take and communal help to which they have been accustomed, on the basis of a minute holding, primitive technology, unequipped and with no capital resources, with no understanding of modern agriculture, with the expectation that "the eye of the owner will change sand into gold" quite unaided. The most likely result will be poor performance, loss of his land to speculators, and indebtedness.2 This may well remind us of a warning issued by FAO some nine years ago : the surest way of depriving a peasant of his land is to give him a title to the land while making the latter freely negotiable.3 This, in fact, is exactly what has happened whenever a monetary economy, with all the new demands it brings in its train, has led traditional societies to lease, sell or otherwise divest themselves of their land. Latin America is a case in point. The Government of Spain had ruled that the resguardos—land farmed by the Indians—was to be inalienable, the aim being specifically to prevent the Spanish settlers from 1 Gosselin, op. cit., p. 84. FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Basic Agrarian Structural Issues in the Adjustment of African Customary Tenures to the Needs of Agricultural Development, by D. Christodoulou (doc. RU: WLR/66/Q, p. 8. 8 See the report by the FAO working party on land tenure systems in Africa, in FAO Africa Survey (Rome, 1961), Part I, Ch. 5. 2 349 Agricultural organisations and development buying out or otherwise appropriating the land. The system, which worked well in some areas and less well in others, was abolished when the Latin American countries broke away from Spain, the pretext being that the Indians were just as much entitled as the Creoles to do what they liked with their property. The result was that the Indian, having sold his land and spent the proceeds, was forced to return and work for the new owner. Thus, instead of improving the Indian's lot, the new legislation merely made matters worse. The indivisibility of land is a safeguard against the power of the minority; wherever it has been abolished, the Latin American experience has been repeated: the poor peasant who enjoyed a secure right of usufruct has become a much poorer member of the proletariat. Although less affected than other continents by this phenomenon, Africa has not escaped unscathed. In North Africa, for instance, the French legislation enacted on 26 July 1873 and 23 April 1897 allowed the buying and selling of titles to land hitherto indivisibly held. The results were catastrophic. In Algeria: Many almost destitute small owners who now held an authentic title-deed which they could easily sell were tempted by the prospect of easy money, and sold their land. Strangers to the use of money (previously rare in north-west Africa), they usually lost no time in running through their capital, after which they were compelled either to work as hired labourers on the farms or tofleeto the towns.1 During the 1950s exactly the same problem arose in Tunisia. According to R. G. A. Kool: In certain parts, once the fellah had secured his official title-deed, he at once took the opportunity to sell this property to a wealthy fellah from some other area. Until then, not having had a title-deed, he had not been free to sell.2 African governments are aware of this problem. They realise that a hasty modernisation of the traditional agricultural pattern is fraught with danger, and they are trying, in their legislation and development programmes, to harmonise tradition and progress. In many parts of the continent, attempts are being made to bring about a more efficient exploitation of the land through land reforms and land settlement schemes (usually co-operative in character), as counter-measures to the inefficient use, and occasionally unwarranted abandonment, of the land. Thus, while introducing no abrupt changes in land tenure systems governed by customary law, recent legislative enactments provide for some expropriation measures in the public interest, within schemes for land reform and land settlement. 1 Pierre Bourdieu: "La société traditionnelle — attitude à l'égard du temps et conduite économique", Sociologie du travail (Paris, Editions du Seuil), No. 1, January-March 1963, p. 34. 2 R . G. A. Kool: L'agriculture tunisienne — analyse d'une économie en voie de modernisation (Wageningen, H. Veenman & Zonen NV, 1963), p. 150. 350 Africa A few examples should suffice to show the present trend among the African countries. In Cameroon, under Decree No. 64-8/COR (30 January 1964), certain lands traditionally held on customary tenure (with the exception of land with regard to which rights have been duly established) can be taken over by the State under land reform schemes.1 Furthermore, by virtue of the Act dated 3 July 1963, the Government can expropriate surplus communally held land and distribute it to communities which are short of land, so as to ensure a better balance between manpower and resources.2 In Upper Volta, current legislation empowers the Government "to reserve to the State a part of the lands forming the object of special planning, and to declare as State property lands which are under-populated or which are distant from centres of population".8 In Senegal, under the Agrarian Reform Act dated 17 June 1964, the State becomes the "holder" of all non-registered land. Such land, which forms part of the "national domain", represents a sizable proportion of the cultivated area of the country. Marguerite Camboulives says that the reform has a threefold effect. Firstly, since the State takes over from the landowner, the notables can no longer act as custodians, as it were, of the peasantry, and the traditional peasant dues are done away with. Secondly, provided the people occupying the land cultivate it themselves, their right to use the land is confirmed. Lastly, the reform creates "areas which are allotted to particular rural communities. This should conduce to the proper running of agricultural co-operatives. These areas are managed by rural councils, made up of electors from the areas concerned (active chiefly in agriculture), of representatives of the State, and of representatives of the co-operatives."4 A similar process is under way in Tanzania, which has "declared all former freehold land to be State land and treats former freehold owners as long-term leaseholders who should conform to certain land use stipulations that the State may think fit to make." 6 In Madagascar, the State may take possession of unexploited or derelict land irrespective of the principle that private property is inviolable.6 This is equivalent to emphasising that the ownership of land carries with it certain social and economic responsibilities. This notion is being reflected 1 Frank M. Mifsud: Customary Land Law in Africa, Legislative Series, No. 7 (Rome, FAO, 1967), p. 50. * Adopted on the advice of FAO. See A. C. Bessis: Rapport au gouvernement du Cameroun sur les problèmes de la réforme foncière au Cameroun oriental, Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance, Report 1872 (Rome, FAO, 1964). ' Mifsud, op. cit., p. 51. •Marguerite Camboulives: L'organisation coopérative au Sénégal (Paris, Editions A. Pedone, 1967), p. 161. ' FAO, World Land Reform Conference: Basic Agrarian Structural Issues . .. (D. Christodoulou), op. cit., p 8. • Mifsud, op. cit., pp. 49-50. 351 Agricultural organisations and development to an ever increasing degree in legislative enactments. The tendency to subject the ownership of land to modern ways of thinking is even more apparent in North Africa, where major agrarian reform schemes have been launched during recent years. In the countries where the private ownership of land predominated, this has been respected, but structural changes have been imposed (as in Tunisia and Morocco) or a form of workers' management has been introduced (as in Algeria). In Tunisia, irrigation plans (as in the Medjerdah valley in particular) are accompanied by legislation to limit the size of individual holdings and to expropriate the excess, and to consolidate holdings excessively fragmented under succession rights over the years. In addition, Act No. 64-28 (4 June 1964) provides for the transition from communal to co-operative tenure. 1 The occupants of such land—most of them are cattle-grazing nomads or seminomads—have lived through an experience which has proved, unfortunately, somewhat unhappy. When the Government first took up the problem of communally held land, it decided, by virtue of the Act dated 23 September 1957, to give official recognition to existing rights of ownership, whilst at the same time setting up joint regional councils (consisting of tribal representatives and government officials) to define the areas appertaining to the various tribes. Although this was inalienable land, it was decided that persons undertaking to farm it should be granted individual rights of ownership. But, as has been very pertinently observed: The system did not work well. The procedures for individualisation were complicated and expensive. Powerful chiefs could use them to control large areas of land at the expense of their subordinates. Others received too little land to subsist on and soon sold their titles and moved on to find casual labour on some development project. Credit and technical services were insufficient to ensure the kind of development which the individualisation provisions were intended to promote.2 The 1964 Act introduced the idea of co-operative development, while reserving the possibility of allotting leased land to tenants. It is thus an attempt to cope with the difficulties inherent in any change-over from a traditional to a modern system of land tenure and to overcome the problems outlined above, which arise whenever systems of individual tenure are introduced into societies which hardly know the use of money. In Morocco, in accordance with the aims pursued under the Three-Year Plan covering 1965-67, the authorities are trying to recuperate the collective 1 Mifsud, op. cit., pp. 55 and 60. United Nations-FAO-ILO: Progress in Land Reform, Fourth Report (New York, 1966), p. 58, para. 269. 8 352 Africa lands known as habous or guish for the purposes of land reform. These lands, plus those belonging to the State, will constitute a pool of land such that it should be possible to organise a system of family plots within a general system whereby direct access to ownership would be bound up with an undertaking to develop the land in question.1 The reform is bound to have a profound effect on customary law, since anybody who wants a plot of land will not only have to yield his agricultural land, and his rights thereto, to the State, but also to renounce all rights to the land of the community of which he is a member. This renunciation will hold good of his descendants not yet qualifying as heirs.2 To forestall any further break-up of the plots so awarded, it has been decided that they shall be indivisible; they may be neither seized nor yielded, except by or to the State, and will be transmissible to a single heir whose responsibility it will be to compensate all others for any rights they may have forfeited. In Algeria and the United Arab Republic, the problems arising from the breaking-up of holdings under a land reform programme have been very differently settled. Both these countries have set about the matter in an original way. Since October 1962, Algeria has been setting up self-managed undertakings, after eight years of strife which had dire consequences for the country-dweller. Immediately after independence, the country took over 7.5 million acres of land traditionally reserved for foreign settlers (the longestablished native sector took up some 10 million acres), while refraining from launching an operation of land redistribution; in any case, because specialists and administrators were in short supply such an operation would have been impossible, and had it been carried out would sooner or later have affected agricultural exports—the country's economic mainstay. In the United Arab Republic, on the other hand, after the change of régime in 1952 (and especially from 1954 onwards) a land reform programme on classical lines was launched. It was designed to produce small family holdings without the drawbacks inherent in excessive subdivision. Those who gain under the reform have to abide by certain rules: they must belong to the local co-operative, and the same crop must be grown on each of the individual plots, the crop chosen being dependent on the region. In this fashion, operations are rationalised and a form of joint farming practised, without anything being done to affect the private ownership of land.3 1 See FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966:1: La réforme des structures agraires et l'investissement régional; II: Structure foncière et réforme agraire (doc. RU : WLR-C/66/48), p. 7. a ibid., p. 9. 8 For further details, see FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Agrarian Reform in the United Arab Republic, by A. H. E. Nasharty (doc. RU : WLRC/66/17). 353 Agricultural organisations and development When Libya became independent, an additional problem arose: namely, what to do with the land of former settlers. The following are the principal ends pursued by the land settlement schemes embodied in Act No. 4 (1963): — to cultivate the farms formerly belonging to the Entex so as to make them going concerns; — to promote individual land holding instead of communal ownership, on the tribal lands not within the purview of the Ente, by putting small-holders on all land suitable for individual farming; — to plough, improve and apportion State lands; — to give the small-holder the help he requires; — to organise agricultural co-operatives for those benefiting from the preceding four operations.2 Clearly, then, each North African country has tried to settle its agrarian problems in its own way. In fact, reform has been made much easier by the predominance of Moslem law over customary law, and hence of private ownership over traditional communal ownership. The big problem remains that of Africa south of the Sahara, where, as we have seen, customary law is so complicated and so all-embracing that any attempt to combine tradition and the way of life of the twentieth century, whilst at the same time improving the standard of living of all concerned, will necessarily have to be both bold and original. SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE AND ITS EFFECTS ON FOOD SUPPLIES These various attempts at agricultural development result for the most part from Africa's need to modernise her traditional agriculture, which still accounts for the greater part of the continent's output and provides work for the majority of the employed population. Perhaps more than any other continent of the developing world, Africa is still profoundly dependent on subsistence agriculture. We might expect subsistence agriculture to play its due role with a fair amount of efficiency, that is to say, to provide food for the rural population while producing ever greater marketable surpluses for the 1 A public body responsible for land settlement during the Italian occupation. United Nations-FAO-ILO: Progress in Land Reform, Fourth Report, op. cit. For the present position with regard to land settlement programmes, see FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Settlement Programme in Libya, by Hamid AlJawhary (doc. RU : WLR-C/66/28). 8 354 Africa towns and cities.1 Yet, although famine is not now a scourge in Africa, African agriculture is not managing to cope with the increased demands of development. In comparison with export agriculture, which brings in the foreign currency required to buy equipment for economic development, subsistence agriculture (which ought to play a complementary role) has still not awoken from the torpor of centuries. Clearly, if it were brought up to date, the advantages for the economy of the African countries would be enormous; instead of having to spend valuable foreign currency on imported foodstuffs, they would be able to purchase more of the goods which Africa needs and does not yet produce. At the same time, if agricultural output were greater and more varied, the food shortages and the malnutrition so pitifully in evidence in many African countries could be avoided. Nor is space wanting. A United Nations survey 2 shows that subsistence farming in tropical Africa, towards 1950, occupied on the average between 65 and 75 per cent of all cultivated land; and K. C. Abercrombie examined a group of countries in which subsistence agriculture represented between 41 and 92 per cent of the total value of agricultural output (see table 16). Although the statistical validity of these figures is uncertain, they do graphically show the magnitude of the problem. Despite the importance of subsistence agriculture, or perhaps because of its characteristics, the situation is far from satisfactory, the more so in that, since 1945, the speedy growth of population and the expansion of towns and cities have thoroughly upset the balance—already precarious—which existed before the war. From year to year the gulf between what the towns require and what the peasantry can supply is steadily widening: The modern African town has grown beyond the capacity of its hinterland to support it without radical reform. One result of this trend has been that much of the food required to feed the city is being imported, although agriculture is Africa's chief economic activity.8 According to preliminary figures prepared by FAO in 1967, in relation to an average of 100 for the five years 1952-56 the food production index per 1 The expression "subsistence agriculture" is used here to describe a state of affairs in which three-quarters or more of agricultural produce is eaten by those who produce it. The lower this proportion, the more closely does subsistence agriculture approach market agriculture. Clearly, in subsistence agriculture of the purest kind, the whole output would be eaten by the peasants. But this occurs only when people live completely isolated lives—a situation which is becoming rarer and rarer, even in tropical Africa. 8 United Nations: Enlargement of the Exchange Economy in Tropical Africa (New York, 1954), pp. 8-13. » United Nations: 1967 Report on the World Social Situation (New York, 1969), p. 154. 355 Agricultural organisations and development Table 16. Africa : Estimated percentage of subsistence production in the total value of agricultural output Country Period Percentage Cameroon Ethiopia Former French Equatorial Africa Former French West Africa Guinea Kenya Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Nyasaland Northern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia Tanganyika Uganda Union of South Africa 1956 1954 1956 1956 1956 1955-59 1954-58 1954-58 1954-58 1954-58 1956-59 1955-59 — 69 1 82 s 77 o.« 55 a 75 3 60* 86« 89' 92 s 79 o 59 s 4 1 ">8 75» 1 Stock-breeding not included. * Including forests. * Including forests and fishing. * Traditional undertakings only. * Including forests, fishing and hunting. ' African undertakings only. 7 African Trust Land only. • Including fishing. • African reserves only. N.B. Besides the differences pointed out in the notes above, there are variations in the concepts on which the estimates are based, according to the country concerned. Hence these figures merely provide a rough idea of the value of produce produced by subsistence agriculture. They should not be used for the purpose of international comparisons. Source: K. C. Abercrombie: "The Transition from Subsistence to Market Agriculture in Africa South of the Sahara", Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Economics and Statistics (Rome, FAO), Vol. 10, No. 2, February 1961. capita had fallen to 97 in 19661, whereas agricultural imports had gone up by nearly 50 per cent since 1955. Africa, which before the war had been a net exporter of cereals, has gradually become a net importer. In 1966, all records were broken when 2.58 million tons of wheat and flour were imported for a mere 150,000 tons exported. If to African imports we add those of the Near East (including the United Arab Republic), which amounted to 4.52 million tons of wheat, we get the figure of 7.1 million tons of imports, as against a mere 560,000 tons before the war (280,000 tons for Africa and about as much again for the Near East). These figures show how exceedingly serious the problem is. What is more, even if Africa could contemplate a steady increase in her cereal imports (which is by no means sure, as it may well be that one day or other Western Europe and the United States will be unable to cope with the developing countries' requirements), the continent's food problems would not thereby be overcome. The African lacks protein; he suffers from vitamin deficiencies and in general is badly undernourished. Urgent action is needed 1 356 FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture, 1967 (Rome, 1967), p. 12. Africa to ensure a greater variety of food crops, a proper use of available resources and the conquest of the numerous taboos which dictate (especially with regard to children1) what people shall eat. Nor is agriculture, in the strict sense of cultivation of the soil, alone in being so backward; the same holds good of stock-breeding, from both the theoretical and the practical aspects. Not that cattle are in short supply. The trouble is that they are a source of prestige rather than of meat; the words "negative wealth" are often used in relation to African cattle, and not without justification. In forested areas, and especially in tropical parts where sleeping sickness, carried by the tsetse fly, is rampant (this applies to some 5 million square miles), the surroundings are of course unpropitious. But in the savannah zoneflocksand herds abound, so much so that there is often more meat on the hoof per head of population than in Western Europe. Thus, as will be readily seen from table 17, Niger in 1961 had more than one ox and more than two sheep or goats per head, whereas in France (for example) there was but one ox or cow for every two people, one sheep for five, and one goat for forty. Yet, while the Frenchman consumes an average of 176 lb. of meat a year, the Nigerian eats no more than 11 lb. A pedigree French milch cow gives perhaps as much as 50 to 55 pints of milk a day, whereas an African cow offers no more than two to three, and then only during a period of lactation limited to five or six months. Nor is prestige the only reason why so little meat is eaten. H. Dupin and his colleagues, for example, suggest that in many areas lack of purchasing power may play an important part. To slaughter an ox means that on that particular day there must be several dozen families willing to pay for meat, and this rarely occurs 1 See WHO: Malnutrition and Disease, Freedom from Hunger Campaign Basic Study, No. 12 (Geneva, 1963). This study very appositely points out that "Failure to use the available resources may be due to a lack of adequate knowledge of what children should and can eat, and especially of the fact that the growing child has a relatively greater need for the scarce protein items in the family diet than the wage earner or the respected elder for whom they are usually reserved. The distribution of food within the family is a potent factor in the nutritional deprivation of children; the belief that only adults should eat meat or other 'rich' or 'heavy' foods is not restricted to the poverty-stricken or illiterate peasant family, but is also found in many educated communities anxious to do their best for the child, and with the means to do so. In many regions the idea of buying or preparing food specially for the child is totally unfamiliar. Traditional aversions to, prohibitions on, or beliefs about the use of some foods (either separately or in combination with others) all limit the range of choice of foods which might be used to provide some protein for the child." Moreover—and here we come up against the problem of urbanisation in Africa, "Where the traditional way of life is breaking down, new dangers threaten the child's nutritional health. Old practices which guaranteed the infant a prolonged period of breast-feeding are being abandoned, but with no compensatory improvement in the methods of feeding the weanling. The belief that certain protein foods such as fish and eggs are harmful to young children probably did not matter much as long as the child was breast-fed for two years, but when the mother begins to wean the child early so that she can go out to work these beliefs can become dangerous. In many regions the drift towards the towns of rural families deprives the family of the familiar selection of home-grown foods, while ignorance and poverty prevent the purchase of possible replacements." (op. cit., p. 26.) 357 Agricultural organisations and development in regions where the people are few and far between and themselves produce almost all they eat.1 In 1961 or thereabouts, the average annual consumption of meat in western Africa stood at roughly 12 lb. per head; the figures varied from country to country (in Niger, consumption was a mere 2.2 lb. ; in Liberia and Senegal, 28.6 lb.). In eastern and central Africa, the general average was some 25.5 lb., the lower limit being 6.6 lb. in Mozambique and the upper limit 61 lb. in Southern Rhodesia.2 In North Africa, the position is more satisfactory; here people consume, on the average, twice as much meat as in Black Africa (28.6 lb. per person per year in the United Arab Republic, for example, in 1963-64). However, we may safely estimate that on average the African eats only between one-tenth and one-fifth of the meat a European consumes. The grave protein deficiency which results could be made good if people ate more fish. Unhappily, however, the level of fish consumption is the same as, or even lower than, that of meat, and as one moves inland from the coast, so fish consumption falls off rapidly. In Togo, for example, we find the Watchi eating 39 lb. offish a year; the Ewe eats 22.6; the Kabre eats a little over 10 oz. and the Moba a mere 7 oz.s The phenomenon is easily explained if we remember how hard it is in these parts to keep fish fresh. Accordingly, the interpretation of national averages must be approached with care, and this holds good of table 14; it must never be forgotten that an average for any under-developed area conceals extremes much further apart than is the case in a developed region. Nevertheless, taking the wider view, a comparative study of national averages for European and African countries is a useful way to gam an over-all impression of the problem. The few figures assembled by FAO in Africa show that, generally speaking, the African's diet contains at least as much in the way of cereals as the European's—and sometimes more—but far less in the way of starches, vegetables, meat and fats.4 Moreover, the African food supplies are subject to considerable fluctuation in the course of a year (because of seasonal shortages due to bad harvests and poor arrangements for the storage of perishable goods). If rain is slow in coming, or if there should be a drought, the peasant of western Africa may find himself in real difficulties owing to pre-harvest shortages. This especially applies in the savannah zone of western Africa (northern Ghana, northern Nigeria, 1 H. Dupin, J. Toury, R. Giorgi, and J. Gros: Etude des aliments de l'Ouest africain envisagée sous l'angle de l'apport en protides (Dakar, Orana, 1962; mimeographed), p. 3. s See FAO Africa Survey, op. cit., p. 28. Since offal, fowl and game are excluded from these figures, the amounts actually available may be slightly underestimated. 8 Dupin et al., op. cit., p. 8. For the problems involved in the improvement of stockbreeding, see René Dumont: African Agricultural Development: Reflexions en the Major Lines of Advance and the Barriers to Progress, op. cit., Part IV. 1 FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture, 1966 (Rome, 1966), Annex 8A. 358 Africa Table 17. West Africa: Head of cattle, 1961 estimates (in thousands) Country Dahomey Guinea Ivory Coast Mali Mauritania Niger Senegal Togo Upper Volta 1 Oxen and cows Sheep and goats 300 600 1 1500 300 750 950 3100 1350 3 500 1600 12000 5000 7000 1000 130 650 1800 3000 Population 2 050 3000 3 300 4300 1000 3000 3100 1600 4000 Plus another 400,000 pigs. Source: H. Dupin, J. Toury, R. Giorgi, and J. Gros: Etude des aliments de l'Ouest africain..., op. cit., p. 2. Upper Togo). East Africa suffers rather from severe famines, as in Nyasaland (1959), Somalia (1955-60) and Kenya (I960).1 Short supply and limited variety result in all kinds of vitamin deficiencies, quite apart from the protein/calory deficiency which affects the health of so many Africans. Kwashiorkor and athrepsia—which affect the weaned infant —and vitamin deficiencies which strike at people of any age (xerophthalmia and keratomalacia due to lack of vitamin A, beriberi due to lack of thiamine) are scourges which will one day be overcome thanks to the production of more and better food crops. For the time being, the position does not seem to have changed greatly since 1962, when FAO estimated that calory requirements were met to within 70 and 140 per cent, according to the area, while pointing out that children's calory rations usually did not exceed 60 to 70 per cent of actual requirements. In certain parts, children were also suffering from the protein deficiency which causes kwashiorkor; in Uganda, 6 to 11 per cent of all small children, and in Nigeria, 2 to 9 per cent, were suffering from this terrible sickness early in the 1960s.2 Over and above sickness due to malnutrition we find sickness attributable to inhospitable and unhealthy surroundings. The tropical African climate, so much harder to stand than that of the temperate regions of the world, is a 1 FAO Africa Survey, op. cit., p. 33. ibid., pp. 29 and 34. Diseases due to protein deficiency, plus diseases due to infection, give rise to extremely high infant mortality rates. United Nations data show that in most African countries the rate for infants under 5 stands at roughly 50 per cent. See United Nations: 1967 Report on the World Social Situation, op. cit., p. 157. 2 359 Agricultural organisations and development real and powerful obstacle to development. If we compare the position in the African countryside today with the position obtaining in Europe in the nineteenth century, before Pasteur's discoveries, it will be clear that, from the purely economic angle, Europe then was far better off than is Africa today. The diseases rife in town and countryside were either curable, or fatal in the not too distant future (tetanus, rabies, intestinal infections, typhus, typhoid fever, tuberculosis), apart from certain specific areas in southern Europe where undulant fever and malaria were endemic. The economic consequences of these diseases were limited both in time and in space. The position in Africa today is totally different. Here we find endemic diseases which weaken, mutilate and drag on for years ; such diseases affect vast numbers of persons and constitute a formidable obstacle to economic progress. In some cases, whole populations suffer from diseases such as onchocerciasis, bilharziasis and trypanosomiasis. In places, onchocerciasis (a disease of the eyes which often causes blindness) reaches terrifying proportions. Thus, a survey carried out in 230 villages in the Niger Basin has shown that over 80 per cent of the people are suffering from this disease, as many as 16 per cent, in some villages, being blind.1 Bilharziasis, which of course is a most debilitating disease, affects some 14 million people, most of them children under 15, in the United Arab Republic. The reason why we have laid such stress on these two diseases is that they are intimately bound up with local natural conditions; more precisely, with the local water supply and irrigation methods. As WHO very pertinently observes, the numerous schemes now under way for the development of water resources, and especially those undertaken in Africa, make the onchocerciasis problem even worse. As regards the areas where bilharziasis is endemic, irrigation may make people richer but it also helps the disease to spread.2 This phenomenon is similar to what happened in western Africa early this century, when new roads and railway lines helped to spread sleeping sickness, carried by the tsetse fly.3 1 WHO: The Work of WHO, 1966 (Geneva, 1967), p. 18. •ibid., pp. 18-19, 138. "Hailey, op. cit., pp. 1124-1125. Interdisciplinary research, if applied in the projects quoted by WHO, would certainly have averted a disaster of this kind, which, incidentally, also occurs in the agronomic field. In a recent work, John C. de Wilde quotes several cases of plans which failed because projects were inadequately prepared, and, while acknowledging that things have improved in recent years, he adds (and with some justice), "Yet there are still too many cases where attempts to modernise agriculture, involving rather heavy expenditures on machinery, fertilisers and insecticides, are being started with little or no prior study of important variations in soils and micro-climate which may significantly affect the outcome." John C. de Wilde et al. : Experiences with Agricultural Development in Tropical Africa (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), Vol. I, p. 29. 360 Africa These few remarks on the persistence of diseases linked with the surroundings and on the way in which irrigation helps to spread them show that any development in African agriculture will demand closely co-ordinated action in threefields—thoseof food, hygiene and technical progress. By producing more and better foodstuffs, people will be better equipped to resist disease due to shortcomings in their diet; but unless action is taken to purify water supplies, irrigation schemes are likely to increase the incidence of infectious disease. In all thesefields,it is clear that the African agricultural organisations can and must play a part of capital importance. In the general conclusions which bring this report to a close, the points made above are duly summarised. It can be said, however, here and now, that an interdisciplinary approach to the study of rural problems may be needed even more urgently in Africa than in other parts of the developing world. Such an approach will call for an "agonising re-appraisal" of the methods adopted, by governments and technical assistance agencies alike. But without it, any balanced agricultural development will be difficult to attain. THE MODERNISATION OF TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURE Since independence, the African countries have been making strenuous efforts to modernise their land system. Land reform schemes are under way everywhere in North Africa. South of the Sahara, governments are in process of launching new land settlement schemes and co-operative projects of all kinds, all of which will entail changes in hallowed traditions and ways of life. For many years now, the co-operative movement has been considered the best means of making improvements in the countryside. We shall concentrate on this aspect in the following pages, since other kinds of reform have already been amply documented.1 Although in our inquiry we have been chiefly dealing with organisations other than co-operatives, we cannot ignore the cooperative movement when discussing the problems of African development. The present position with regard to the co-operative movement is in fact the outcome of a train of events set in motion, towards the end of the nineteenth century, by the colonial Powers—a train of events based on certain assumptions, and one which has manifested itself in a wide variety of ways. 1 The reader may with advantage consult (besides the classical works on the matter) the papers submitted by the African countries at the World Land Reform Conference (Rome, June-July 1966). Some of these have already been quoted above. As regards plans for land settlement, land registration and the industrialisation of the rural sector, see also John C. de Wilde, op. cit. 361 Agricultural organisations and development The assumption was that Africa was by tradition a continent given over to a communal way of life. Hence it was readily assumed that it would have no great difficulty in taking over co-operative systems evolved in Europe. There was a great deal of similarity, it was felt, between the solidarity displayed by the members of European co-operatives and mutual benefit societies and the solidarity characteristic of the traditional African way of life, the latter being in fact no more than a simplified version of the former. This assumption was not only over-optimistic but also quite unfounded, as we shall shortly see; but it led the colonial Powers to introduce all kinds of co-operative systems and mutual benefit societies into Africa, from the simplest to the most complex. Let us take France, as just one example. As early as 1893, French legislation gave recognition to native provident societies jis "private companies of recognised public usefulness". Their primary aim was to store grain when the harvest was good, so that the seed might be sown and the people fed during lean years. The system was improved in 1910 with the creation of provident societies. At first, people were free to join or not as they pleased; later (1915) membership became compulsory. The aim of these bodies was to meet people's needs with regard to credit, the collection, processing and sale of produce, the creation of schools and health services, communications, and so on. These bodies were subject to official administrative trusteeship, their executive organs being presided over by the local representatives of the governors. They were supported by a whole series of official, semi-official and private bodies set up with the aim of inciting the peasantry, freely or under supervision, to improve their farming methods and to raise their standard of living from every point of view. Among the bodies which were subject to a fair degree of supervision, mention should be made of the Service of Peasant Economy (Service du paysannat) set up in Algeria in 1936, and the Council of Peasant Economy (Conseil du paysannat), created in Morocco in 1944. The first of these worked through the Secteurs d'amélioration rurale (SAR), the second through the Secteurs de modernisation du paysannat (SMP). In both, the peasant was initiated into modern farming techniques and also had to honour a number of obligations. The SAR farmers, for example, had to follow a pre-arranged crop programme, employ only family labour, and sell their harvests to the native providejit society, less that part of it required for domestic consumption.1 1 For further information about SARs and SMPs, see Margaret Digby: Co-operatives and Land Use, Agricultural Development Paper, No. 61 (Rome, FAO, 1957), pp. 82-86. 362 Africa The Rural Development Mutual Benefit Societies (Sociétés mutuelles de développement rural—SMDR) created in French West Africa in 1955 formed a kind of transition stage between administrative trusteeship and co-operative self-management; they were in fact designed to evolve little by little into cooperatives. At least two-thirds of the members of their councils were elected administrators, and the aim was that, in time, management responsibility should pass to the peasants' representatives. However, it seems (according to Yves Goussault) that certain clauses (appointment of a director by the Government, ex-officio right of technicians, general counsellors and certain tribal chiefs to participate in the councils' work) proved fatal to the SMDRs, which thanks to their financial independence speedily became instruments of political pressure, with or without the agreement of the administrative authority. 1 The development of bodies in which membership was optional varied considerably. The co-operative movement, for example, made hardly any impact on the rural native. In North Africa, according to Jacques Marsan, "the co-operative movement grew exclusively among the European farming community. Traditional agriculture remained untouched. Jn fact, the authorities never tried to encourage co-operation among the indigenous peasantry, which remained subject without restriction to the system of provident associations." 2 As regards Black Africa, the same author observes that attempts have frequently been made to translate to Africa the techniques of free organisation as devised and successfully used by European peasants and workers. "But no matter who promoted or took part in such schemes—Europeans or Africans—most of these attempts proved a failure." 2 Something, however, will remain of the work done by the national credit associations created from ] 949 onwards in Black Africa and Madagascar in an attempt to discover a form of organisation more consonant with African rural needs and potentialities. The mutual benefit societies set up as part of this movement proved quite successful wherever commercial agriculture had already taken firm roots. This was the case in the coffee and cocoa plantation areas in Cameroon, Togo and the Ivory Coast, and also in those parts of Dahomey where cotton, tobacco, and castor-oil plants are grown. In other countries, the mutual benefit credit movement has encountered numerous difficulties which may be attributed to the low standard of living and lack of technical skills of the local people. Admittedly, these experiments have been begun too recently for us yet to expect any notable results. 1 Yves Goussault: L'animation rurale dans les pays de l'Afrique francophone (Geneva, ILO, 1970), p. 3. * Jacques Marsan: Le crédit mutualiste dans l'agriculture africaine, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3073 (Paris, 16 March 1964), p. 4. 363 Agricultural organisations and development Since independence, and despite the difficulties caused by the departure of European administrators, the African countries have pursued very similar policies, often bound up with plans for "integrated" agricultural development (settlement combined with credit and marketing operations, etc.). It is likely that such schemes will prove reasonably successful in areas where a monetary economy is already established or being introduced.1 There can be no doubt that on the modern plantation, the administration of credit and the collection and marketing of produce are facilitated by the fact that the plantation is already organised with the market in view. This accounts for the immediate success of the first mutual benefit credit co-operatives set up in 1955 in the coffee- and cocoa-growing areas of Cameroon. The unions of co-operatives for the processing and marketing of produce, created from 1947 onwards (COBAFRUIT in the Ivory Coast, UNIBACAM and UCCAO in Cameroon for bananas and Arabica coffee) have been equally successful. Albert Meister has shown that the position in eastern Africa is much the same; collection and marketing co-operatives have been set up in all the areas where produce is grown on a large scale for export.2 Meister's observations bear out what Paul Trappe said at the same time: "It is remarkable how in the Englishspeaking countries the co-operatives deal almost exclusively with the marketing of produce." 3 John C. de Wilde expresses a similar view, emphasising the dangers of an excessive proliferation of activities within co-operatives: The functions that co-operatives have generally shown a capacity to handle are the buying, bulking, grading, storage and simple processing of farm products. Once they handle such operations with some success there is always a strong temptation to take on functions which involve excessively complicated management or which can be discharged with equal or greater efficiency by others. In Tanzania, for example, it seems to us that the Victoria Federation of Co-operative Unions, which undoubtedly has a record of impressive accomplishments in some respects, had rapidly assumed a crushing responsibility for a wide variety of tasks including the management of ginneries, rice mills, sisal factories, the purchase and sale of fertilisers, the administration of credit, the operation of a largefleetof tractors, etc. Such rapid expansion can easily produce inefficiency. Moreover, it can produce a bureaucracy with a quasiindependent management which is no longer responsive to the rank-and-file members and from which the latter feel alienated. This danger may become particularly 1 For the development of co-operative policies after independence, see especially Lucien Schmandt: "Panorama de l'action coopérative dans les pays d'expression française d'Afrique et de Madagascar", Revue des études coopératives (Paris), No. 124, 1961, pp. 23-36; "Cooperation in French-Speaking African Countries", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1963, op. cit., pp. 207-215. 2 See Albert Meister: Le développement économique de l'Afrique orientale (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1966), Ch. III. 3 Paul Trappe: Les coopératives en Afrique au sud du Sahara (Berne, 1965), p. 6. See also Paul Trappe: Die Entwicklungsfunktion des Genossenschaftswesens am Beispiel ostafrikanischer Stämme, Soziologische Texte, No. 31 (Neuwied-am-Rhein, Verlag Hermann Luchterhand, 1966). 364 Africa acute with the development of a pyramidal organisational structure of several layers including not only primary societies and unions, but also regional and national federations of unions.1 In fact, in both eastern and western Africa, the development of the cooperative movement concerns only a tiny proportion of the total population. In Cameroon, thefigureis 1 per cent; in Guinea, 2.4 per cent; in Kenya, 3 per cent; in Uganda, 4 per cent; in Tanganyika and Senegal, 5 per cent; in Mali, 8 per cent. In the other countries thefigurestands at 1 per cent or thereabouts.2 Thesefiguresshow the extent to which the modern co-operative movement has so far affected the African countryside. In fact, the movement remains limited to commercial agriculture, which has made little or no impact on subsistence agriculture of the traditional kind. What, then, are the obstacles to modernisation in this branch of agriculture, to which the great majority of Africans belong ? These obstacles fall into two main categories. Some are inherent in the nature of African society; others arise because attempts are made to introduce into African society systems which do not fit. We have already briefly described the main features of the traditional system of land usage in Africa, and the social, economic and religious implications of this system must now be our point of departure if we wish to understand how the African reacts to Western forms of co-operation. The co-operative movement as it exists today presupposes three things in particular: freedom to choose whether one wishes to join or not, the sharing of risks and profits, and internal democracy. None of these three fundamental principles is characteristic of traditional African society, and this fact constitutes the basic obstacle to the introduction of the co-operative system. In Europe, a young person reaching the age of 21 becomes legally and morally responsible for his decisions; in Africa, he remains for ever subject to a complicated hierarchy of age and rank, and in so far as this is true he may not join a cooperative of his own free will. Because a father decides for his son, and an old man for a younger one, it is difficult to introduce the principle "one man, one vote". Lastly, the system of land and crop apportionment often runs counter to an equal distribution of risks and profits. During recent years many authors (amongst them Jean-Claude Reverdy, M. M. Cusenier, Gabriel Gosselin, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Marie Texier, L. V. Thomas and Marguerite Camboulives) have investigated the problems arising from attempts to introduce modified co-operative systems which would 1 de Wilde, op. cit., pp. 216-217. See Henri Desroches: "Coopératismes africains — jalons inductifs d'une recherche comparée", Archives internationales de sociologie de la coopération (Paris), No. 16, 1964, p. 141. 2 365 Agricultural organisations and development encounter less resistance than systems of the classical European kind. The approach differs somewhat from author to author, but all agree as to where the principal obstacles lie because they crop up time and again in every analysis. A major difficulty, which all thesTauthors vigorously stress, is the way in which, in African society, a man's role in life and the obligations he assumes vary with his age. Jean-Claude Reverdy investigated these matters among the Serer people of Senegal early in the 1960s. He writes: Be he young or old, the son must always respect and obey his father. He can do nothing of any moment—join a co-operative, buy seed, fertilisers, equipment— without first formally approaching his father for permission In the society under investigation, there seems to be no place for relationships of the co-operative type It seems impossible at the present time to apply the principle "one man, one vote". It would not only be quite unacceptable; it would not even be understood. A member of a co-operative, unless very old and highly respected, could cast a vote only if allowed to do so by his father or elder brother. He could certainly never vote against the person who had invited him to express his views.1 In a more recent publication, the same author considers what has been achieved by a co-operative set up in Serer country: In the native village, any attempt to set up an organisation of a co-operative kind (with all it implies in the way of novel social relations) encounters formidable difficulties. The two basic principles of the co-operative movement, "one for all and all for one" and "one man, one vote", have hardly any meaning for the villager. Certainly, he knows what solidarity means, but he interprets it in a different way. Solidarity exists only within certain well-defined social patterns, and only between people who are related, or are of the same age, for example. The idea that all are born equal runs counter to all traditional teachings. Indeed, it is the direct negation of a stable situation deriving from the fact that the living are responsible to the spirits of their ancestors. Thus, far from having completely upset the established order in the village, the model of social relationships offered by the co-operative has been understood in a different sense by the villagers, and modified until it resembles the things with which they are familiar. It has, in fact, been divested of its original content. Apart from the fact that sales to the co-operative have increased, almost nothing has really happened in the village since the co-operative was founded—at any rate nothing which could be interpreted as the first fruits of development.2 In a thesis on the Serer peasants, M. M. Cusenier comes to similar conclusions : Joining a co-operative implies a personal decision. It bears no resemblance to the process whereby a man enters traditional society. A man is a member of a certain age-group, of a certain clan; he does not himself elect to become a member. 'Jean-Claude Reverdy: Approche sociologique du milieu serer (Aix-en-Provence, Centre africain des sciences humaines appliquées, 1963), p. 10. * Jean-Claude Reverdy: Une société rurale au Sénégal — les structures foncières familiales et villageoises des Serer, op. cit., p. 94. 366 Africa Nor does he decide when such momentous events in his life as circumcision, or marriage, will take place. The group takes all the requisite decisions for him. Membership of the group is a source of strength, and this he deeply appreciates. But that he himself could somehow contribute to that strength passes his comprehension. The co-operator, however, is aware that his own group's strength derives from collective action.1 L. V. Thomas offers similar observations on the concept of the vote, as understood in the West: "Such a thing is inconceivable in an assembly in which not everybody is entitled to speak, in which not all voices are equal, and in which, traditionally, all decisions are jointly and unanimously taken in the shade of the palaver tree."2 As the young men depends on his elders, so does the family bow to its head. This has its effects on membership of a co-operative. Sometimes it is the head of the clan or extended family, and he alone, who joins a co-operative. The way in which the land is worked and the harvest apportioned within the community means that any benefits accruing from the obligations undertaken by the head on behalf of the clan largely accrue to him. Gabriel Gosselin, in his study of the Bisa country in Upper Volta3, observes that in the village "concession"*, the head of the concession alone joins the co-operative founded by SATEC 6, and that neither his younger brothers (if belonging to the same concession), nor the women, nor the young people are themselves individual members of the co-operative. Because the traditions governing work in the fields and the apportionment of harvests within the group remain unchanged when the head joins the co-operative, the head keeps his privileged position within the extended family, and uses it to decide how profits from the sale of produce shall be shared. There is something to be said for these practices, but they have their drawbacks too. As regards the advantages, Gabriel Gosselin refers to technical improvements introduced by co-operatives, increased crop yields and higher incomes, with the result that the head of the family or clan is more easily able to meet the needs of those who are dependent on him (for the payment of taxes, dowries, and so on). On the other hand, the cooperative by no means upsets the old economic and social order; on the contrary, it consolidates it by reinforcing the position of the head of the concession in so far as he becomes as it were the fulcrum of two socio-economic systems : 1 M. M. Cusenier: Les paysans serer et l'option coopérative (Ph.D. thesis) (Dakar, 1964), p. 18. 1 L . V. Thomas: Le socialisme en Afrique (Paris, Le Livre africain, 1966), Vol. I, p. 140. * Gosselin, op. cit., Ch. I, pp. 19-44. 4 The "concession" is a fanning unit within the village, employing the members of a fraction of a clan or persons in a certain line of descent, and embracing sometimes one, but more often several, extended families. Gosselin, op. cit., Ch. I, Part 2. 6 Technical Assistance and Co-operation Company Responsible for Rural Development. 367 Agricultural organisations and development not only is he the privileged head of the traditional social system within the concession, but also, at the same time, he wields even more authority by reason of the fact that he is the only one to play any part at all in the modern monetary system which the co-operative represents. The juxtaposition of the two systems, far from introducing a democratic ferment into the community, makes its members feel even less secure and even more dependent on the head. Gabriel Gosselin makes the point very clearly: By the very fact of coming into a developing commercial circuit, the head of a concession is no longer automatically, as he formerly was, the manager of the collective interests. In a subsistence economy, he could not but be at the pinnacle of a pyramid in a circuit starting from and returning to the basic workers. Neither the work nor the produce could be fundamentally diverted from its social purpose. In a monetary economy, on the other hand, protection of the collective interests is no longer entrusted to a system but to a person, with all the risks that such a situation entails. The satisfaction of the various needs of the dependants now becomes subject to the goodwill of the head of the concession or even of the head of the extended family unit. Some heads may go on accomplishing their traditional task with the new means at their disposal. There are, however, others who may be tempted to use them for personal ends, and the temptation to do so is a strong o n e . . . . The sense of being dependent grows among the young people with the growing personal economic role of the heads of concessions. Perceiving—albeit imperfectly and indeed unconsciously—how much their situation is becoming increasingly dependent on the goodwill of a single person, they suffer from an increased sense of insecurity. Nothing better explains their desire to emigrate to the Ivory Coast or to Ghana to earn money and to marry upon their return. This is also the essential reason for a growing reluctance to take part in collective forms of work. As has already been shown, it is to all interest and purposes only the elders who benefit from this kind of work.1 It might be thought that this state of affairs exists in Black Africa only, and that in North Africa, where Moslem law predominates, it would be easier to take advantage of a tradition of solidarity to develop a co-operative movement. However, in a study of traditional ways of life in North Africa, with especial reference to Algeria, Pierre Bourdieu observes a difference in kind between : mutual assistance, as a duty incumbent on persons linked by ties of blood (real or imaginary)—a duty encouraged by tradition—and co-operation, as collective labour with some abstract aim in view. As regards mutual assistance, the community exists already before undertaking any particular task (although in the performance of that task it may experience a heightening of its sense of solidarity). In co-operation, the group is brought together by the common hope of gain, and its solidarity may exist merely by virtue of a contract; it may, therefore, cease to exist once the task has been performed and the contract ceases to be binding. Hence it is entirely wrong to consider that their traditions of solidarity render the Algerian peasantry particularly receptive to systems of a co-operative or collectivist kind.2 1 2 368 Gosselin, op. cit., pp. 39 and 40. Bourdieu, op. cit., p. 31. Africa The examples given seem to show, in short, that misapprehensions concerning a supposed^imilarity between traditional and co-operative solidarity. are attributable to. the Jact that__tb? word co-operation is interpreted in top wide a sense. It may be thought that man, as a social being, is committed by his very nature to practise some form of co-operation, and that any kind of mutual aid—whether obligatory or voluntary—constitutes co-operation. In this sense, certain kinds of mutual assistance practised in Africa may be interpreted as being equivalent to "co-operatives by age-groups", to "district co-operatives", or to "co-operative ways of ensuring that essential but disagreeable tasks are carried out", to quote B. Guttmann. 1 But if we take this line, we shall ipso facto have given up the attempt to understand why co-opera- ; tives on modern Westernlines encounter such resistance in traditional societies, [ for this attitude presupposes that Western "co-operation" is merely a prolongation, an advanced form, of something already existing in African society. If, on the other hand, we realise that co-operation, in the modern meaning of the word, is a recent Western concept which, while taking advantage of certain co-operative instincts inherent in human nature, demands the acceptance of certain rules (acceptance of a majority vote, a sharing of risks, etc.)— rules which are not necessarily grounded in human nature and which may often j run counter to it—then we shall understand that there is a qualitative difference / between mutual aid of the traditional sort and modern co-operation. There is a certain element of risk inherent in any attempt to associate these two concepts, especially in stable, highly cohesive societies. In such circumstances, the mixture of new and old may in fact consolidate, rather than change, traditional social and economic relationships. After a lengthy inquiry into traditional community institutions, Jean-Marie Texier emphasises the dangers of utilising traditional and modern machinery simultaneously: It has been maintained that the best way of tackling the problem is to combine the two ways of organising labour—the collective and the individual, the communal and the co-operative—until such time as, by a kind of internal sabotage, the growth of education and the development of a wage-earning class have undermined the traditional binding links within the community. This process, it might be thought, going hand-in-hand with the emergence of distinctive social classes, would inevitably lead to the emancipation of those who, in the traditional community, have no voice—the young men, the young couples, the women—thus creating conditions more conducive to the introduction of modern ways of organising society founded on social relationships of an entirely different order. There is clearly little room for manoeuvre, but even so these tactics do entail a danger, namely, that the expected development may proceed more slowly than the strengthening of the traditional way of life. If this happens, there is a risk that the younger generations, forced to wait for the benefits ' B . Guttmann: Das Recht der Dschgga (Munich, 1926), pp. 341, 347 and 348. 369 Agricultural organisations and development of modernisation, may want to seize for themselves the advantages kept by the generations which have preceded them, thus perpetuating (until a violent change occurs) the very state of affairs we were so anxious to abolish.1 The reason why these obstacles have sometimes been overlooked in experiments undertaken in Africa is that one of two things had to be done. Either co-operatives had to be set up within a market agriculture (a relatively easy task), or else an attempt had to be made to break into traditional society. When this proves unsuccessful (because there has been no interdisciplinary approach to the problems involved), there is a tendency to blame a lack of staff, or the ignorance of those concerned. But as we have just seen, although such factors are not unimportant, they do not in themselves suffice to explain the failure of the co-operative movement. The basic causes of such setbacks would rather seem to lie in a system of social and economic relations in which traditional duties do not coincide with those new duties which it is desired to introduce. Those who preach the co-operative gospel are anxious to create an appetite for material gain. But it is little use doing this if the person concerned can do nothing to assuage the appetite. Hence we must produce a change of attitudes while at the same time promoting skills. The peasant must learn to live, not for the day only, but with an eye to the future. He must acquire a nose for money, the ability to look ahead, to manage his own affairs; little by little, he must learn to act in ways other than those commanded by tradition. The problem is therefore not simply due to a shortage of staff, as might be too quickly assumed in Europe, where the whole of a man's upbringing is designed to fit him for the society in which he will later have to work. What is required is a far-reaching change in attitudes. The gospel of co-operation, if assimilated too quickly and easily, will remain but a superficial veneer; underneath, traditional attitudes will subsist, and break out from time to time in disconcerting ways. Such phenomena are well known in the science of applied psychology. Theoretical instruction, hastily given, is not enough; it must be followed by long and patient practice, possibly during a lengthy period of tutelage. Must the traditional way of life therefore be resolutely condemned, indeed destroyed root and branch ? Or can it be somehow adapted to the requirements of the present day ? But how should we proceed ? Gabriel Gosselin believes that there are several ways whereby the change-over can be effected: 1 Jean-Marie Texier: Les formes d'action collective traditionnelles (working paper submitted to the Seminar held by the International Research Centre on Rural Co-operative Communities (CIRCOM)) (Geneva, September 1967), pp. 10-11. 370 Africa We may wish to keep the traditional structures but to reinterpret their functions. We may also find new structures for traditional functions. Finally, we may simultaneously change both traditions and functions. Whatever be the action taken, traditional values will almost always have to yield to new ones, even if certain practices are retained.1 Too little thought seems to have been jiven to these possibilities when cooperatives have been set up in Africa. Too often, it would seem, the European has been content to introduce co-operatives on classical lines without first wondering whether traditional circles were capable of spontaneous change, or whether, on the contrary, some persuasion, indeed a measure of constraint, was needed. Clearly^^Jhe^lassica^model needs some adaptation. This being so, we shall readily understand (even if we do not approve them all) the criticisms offered by J. W. Maina at an FAO seminar in 1966: One major difficulty in the promotion of the co-operative movement is the rigidityli of its institutional framework and the imported principles upon which the African ]| co-operative societies have been established. The Danish co-operative movement, which is so often quoted as an example in Europe and upon which our co-operative experts base their advice, came into being almost spontaneously on the initiative of agriculturalists and often without any government support. This took place in a highly developed and prosperous rural environment in which primary education had been compulsory for almost a century. The so-called "folk high schools" had been established for more than a generation before the co-operatives came into being in 1880. In general, the mentality of the average farmer was clearly motivated by a strong desire to develop and a keen awareness of his responsibility to his community. Parallel to this, the co-operative movement in Kenya has found deep and firm traditional roots in the form of ngwatiosin the Kikuya, mwethias in the Ukambani àxuTlabegenges in the Kalenjin systems of life. These and other forms of communal life could play an important economic role in rural African society but the colonial administration, obsessed by the universal superiority of European civilisation, in promoting the establishment of co-operatives made a tragic error in basing our co-operative movement on European legislation and practice, totally rejecting the traditional community infrastructure. No attempt has yet been made to study the tribal tradition as an important framework to our co-operative movement and yet I think this is essential for a truly progressive co-operative system. It is no wonder that the history of co-operatives is, with certain happy exceptions, one of a long series of_ failures. It would be an interesting study to analyse the factors contributing to the few successful societies, but in the absence of such a study I would like to suggest, as a hypothesis, that the nearer the society is to the traditional mode of life the more successful it is likely to be. In other words, I am suggesting that the powers of the chairman in a successful co-operative society must be comparable to those of a clan \ leader in a modern setting. The undiluted democratic nature of the European cooperative concept is simply unworkable.2 1 8 Gosselin, op. cit., p. 4. J. W. Maina: The Co-operative Society as an Operational Unit in Kenya's Settlement Schemes (paper submitted at the Inter-Regional Seminar on Co-operatives and Land Structures, organised by FAO in Warsaw from 23 September to 6 October 1966, and in Copenhagen from 7 to 14 October 1966), pp. 6-7. 371 Agricultural organisations and development This plea for an adaptation of the modern co-operative to traditional functions is of more than usual interest, showing as it does that the disappointment with co-operative machinery conceived under other skies and rigidly applied in Africa may lead to a regression in economic and social relations rather than to their hoped-for development. It is evident that if the chairman of a co-operative is given authority of a kind normally bestowed on a clan leader, his management of the co-operative is liable to be of a very authoritarian kind; nor is it at all certain that the outcome would be successful. It must never be forgotten that in African society as it is developing today, the authority of the elders is being more and more challenged by the young. As to the hypothesis that the nearer a co-operative is to the traditional mode of life, the more likely it is to succeed, its validity depends on one's ideas on the role of co-operation and on the value of traditional ways of life. If what is important is to preserve traditional ways of life intact, then a co-operative will be successful in so far as it acts merely as a complement to, without in any way altering, tradition. A co-operative for the collection of produce might conceivably succeed in such a role. But if the purpose is to change the traditional way of life, then the success of the co-operative will be measured by the extent to which it gives a new slant to traditional duties and responsibilities and brings tradition, little by little, into line with the ideas of the present era. In fact, any attempt to achieve a compromise between old and new, between tradition and innovation, requires a very clear idea of what customs should be rejected and what customs should be kept, and of the points at which novelty should be introduced by stages. Between ruthless innovation and rigid adherence to custom, there is a half-way house which the African countries, in their rural development programmes, are now trying to find. Deep-rooted tradition cannot be frontally attacked, and in any event a sudden upheaval almost always has undesirable side-effects. Hence most of the schemes so far launched have attempted to encourage co-operation among the peasants, rather than to impose it, by means of simplified forms of co-operatives. That is to say, the independence and egalitarian democracy which the workings of a fully-developed modern co-operative require are temporarily put aside, and the authorities reserve the right to supervise operations. In fact, such cooperatives are serving an apprenticeship.1 A good example of what this means is given by the so-called Rural Interests Associations (Associations d'intérêt rural—AIR) of Senegal. These associations have been set up by the Government; their members are "peasants living 1 For further information about co-operation on non-conventional lines, see ILO, Meeting of Experts on Co-operation, Geneva, 28 October-1 November 1968, Item 1 : NonConventional Forms of Co-operation, II. "Traditional Forms of Non-Conventional Co-operation" (Geneva, ILO, 1968; doc. MEC/1968/II/1). 372 Africa in the same village or in neighbouring villages and earning their living chiefly in agriculture, stock-breeding or fishing, or in associated rural trades".1 As Marguerite Camboulives has pointed out in a recent study of Senegal, the AIRs are in a sense the predecessors of fully-fledged co-operatives, since "no co-operative may apply for official recognition unless it has worked satisfactorily for two years as an AIR".2 And they point the way for future cooperatives in that "members shall be initiated into the principles of the cooperative movement, and shall endeavour to create, within the administration, the machinery required to run a co-operative"8, in particular by electing an executive board similar to the executive organ of a co-operative.4 The life of an AIR is limited to two years. First of all, co-operatives officers and rural administration officials explain to the villagers what an AIR is designed to do and how it works. When the village has given its agreement, the co-operatives officer convenes an inaugural meeting of the members, who adopt the specimen regulations submitted by the authorities. The latter provide the money needed for the AIR to make a start, in the form of loans for the reimbursement of which the members are jointly responsible. Throughout the life of the AIR, an official from the Regional Development Assistance Centre looks after administration and management, while a co-operatives officer trains the members and prepares the ground for its transformation into a straightforward co-operative. Before this can take place, a team of members must have been set up to act as the administrative nucleus of the co-operative; in addition, the AIR will have to have built up its share capital from the contributions paid in by each member. Once the two years have expired, the AIR applies for official permission to turn itself into a proper co-operative. Such permission is usually given, unless the AIR in question has functioned really badly during the period of tutelage. The general meeting of the members of the AIR then becomes the general assembly of the new co-operative, and the executive council becomes its executive board.5 In practice, however, since two years is hardly long enough to turn generally illiterate peasants into co-operators, it seems that the authorities continue, in some way or another, to watch over the new cooperative's operations. These reforms, launched and guided from above, are not unique. Many other experiments are now under way in Africa, and those in the following four countries will give a good idea of their scope. In the Central African 1 Decree dated 20 May 1960, article 2. ibid., article 18. * ibid., article 8. 4 ibid., article 10. * For further information about AIRs, see Camboulives, op. cit., Ch. II, pp. 83-102. a 373 Agricultural organisations and development Republic, there are villages inspired by the Israeli example, where teams of young pioneers receive civic instruction and vocational training before being settled in renovated villages. Then there are the agricultural co-operatives of Dahomey, founded either by the National Association for Rural Development (SONADER) set up on 3 February 1962, or run under the auspices of the Swiss Co-operative Union; sometimes membership is optional, sometimes compulsory. There are the collective farms in Uganda, based on the Israeli moshav shitoufi and moshav ovdim; here group agriculture is practised, with private ownership being nevertheless respected. As a final example, we have the land settlement villages in Kenya, built on the estates formerly owned by Europeans, the aim being to develop family farms. These schemes differ in many ways, but have one common denominator: the initiative was originally taken by the government, which reserves the right to supervise operations to a greater or lesser degree, and to subject the organisations founded under the schemes to a fairly lengthy period of tutelage. For the time being, no other policy seems at all feasible. It is just not possible to wait for the peasants themselves to bring their way of life up to date. In view of the increasing population and the lagging rate of production, a policy of wait-and-see would be a sure recipe for disaster. Hence goyern\ ments.havejto act at once, and they do so by trying to adapt European systems ' to an African environment. We have just seen what difficulties the cooperative movement encounters when it comes face-to-face with the traditional African way of life, and we may wonder whether the movement would find its problems considerably easier to solve if encouragement were given to other kinds of organisation which at present tend to be relegated to the background. In other words, are we sure that co-operatives, in their African guise, are the only kind of organisation that rural development schemes should take into consideration ? Do the other organisations (employers' and workers' unions, general associations, chambers of agriculture, the extent of the development of which varies from country to country) have any effective part to play in their present form, or should they too be reorganised in some way with an eye to traditional rural society ? In reviewing the present state of affairs, we shall try to answer this question. AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATIONS: THE PRESENT SITUATION We have dwelt at some length on the problems confronting the co-operative movement in Africa. This is not merely because co-operation is so important for agricultural development in Africa, but also because organisations of other kinds must expect to run into difficulties of the same nature. This is amply 374 Africa borne out by the present inquiry. Twenty African countries answered the questionnaires sent to them. The author thus obtained information from a total of 46 organisations, made up of 7 general organisations, 21 employers' organisations, 15 workers' unions, and 3 chambers of agriculture, the function of which we shall consider below. General and employers' organisations General organisations, as understood in Europe, are still embryonic in Africa. They will probably come into their own one day, when in each country a vigorous class of independent farmers has come together to put their collective views to governments and to defend their interests. If we were to include under the heading "General organisations" merely those independent occupational organisations which defend their members' interests, the African organisations could hardly be included, either because, very often, they are State-supervised and hence not fully independent, or because they perform duties which elsewhere are incumbent on the trade unions. In our survey of Europe, we were able to consider general organisations and employers' associations separately; here, for the above reasons, we deal with them under one heading. North Africa In North Africa, the last ten years have been a difficult period for general and employers' organisations. The thoroughness of the reforms undertaken and the degree of government intervention, varying from country to country, have in some cases meant that these organisations have entirely disappeared, being replaced by new State-created bodies. Tunisia Whereas in Algeria the system of self-management as applied to agriculture has meant a clean break with the past (we cannot assess the results here because the country in question failed to answer our questionnaire), in Tunisia, on the other hand, the break has been less absolute, and bodies created during the French protectorate still play their part in defending the interests of the Tunisian farmer. It should be mentioned, however, that although the existing Tunisian co-operative organisations go back to the beginning of the present century, the farmers themselves did not unite to form one national organisation until just before the country became independent. 375 Agricultural organisations and development The National Union of Tunisian Farmers (Union nationale des agriculteurs de Tunisie—UNAT) was set up at a national congress held in Kairouan on 2 December 1955. In the way it is organised and run, it is an employers' organisation very similar to those of Western Europe. At the national level, UNAT is represented in the Tunisian Economic and Social Council and in various official bodies dealing with agricultural matters. Working with the various government departments concerned, notably the Departments of Agriculture and Social Affairs and the State Secretariat for Planning and National Economy, UNAT representatives take an active part in all discussions of the Government's three-year, four-year and ten-year plans, whatever the topic: land development, increasing agricultural output, the processing and marketing of produce, etc. Similarly, they attend all local, regional and national meetings to examine the progress made towards attainment of the aims set forth in the economic and social development plan. UNAT is very much interested in two other basic matters: prices and wages. As regards prices, the UNAT representatives have seats on the executive boards of the various organs, associations or agencies which fix and maintain the prices of agricultural produce. With regard to wages and conditions of work, UNAT representatives are permanent members of the tripartite committees set up to deal with such matters locally, regionally and nationally. UNAT is active, too, in raising standards generally in the countryside. To this end, it organises regional and national seminars to disseminate knowledge of new agricultural techniques and to give the farmer both theoretical and practical training. Apart from organising these seminars, it convenes local public meetings of farmers, with the support of the press and radio. It also publishes pamphlets of all kinds for the benefit of its members. As regards international relations, UNAT is a member of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (TFAP). The work of UNAT is complemented by a thriving co-operative movement, which goes back to 1912 and hence has a long tradition behind it. But, as we have mentioned above, the North African^ co-operatives^ existed firsthand foremost fo£_the_Europeans. The proof of this is that in 1954 the central co-operative of Tunisian farmers—which at that time marketed some 50,000 tons of wheat—had no more than 300 Tunisians among its 2,700 members. In the vine-growing industry, the figures are even more eloquent: the Union of Tunisian Vine-Growing Co-operatives had no more than 50 Tunisian members out of a total membership of over 2,000. That was in 1957—a year after independence.1 1 See André Hirschfeld: "La coopération en Tunisie: bilan et perspectives", Revue des études coopératives 0?aris), No. 133,1963, pp. 281 et seq. 376 Africa Since then there have been considerable changes. Today, alongside the old co-operatives dealing with the production of cereals and oil and with vinegrowing, there are all kinds of new organisations dealing with stock-breeding, fowl-raising, the joint use of agricultural machinery, and so on ; before independence these had not existed. In July 1963 there were 104, and thanks to them progress began to seep into the countryside. These are, perhaps, not very spectacular figures, but we must remember that at that time there were in Tunisia no more than 249 co-operatives of all kinds, concentrated especially along the coast, and that these bodies had some 27,000 members out of a total population of 4 million, i.e. 0.6 per cent of the total.1 Such organisations are known as "agricultural services co-operatives". In addition there exist what are known as "co-operative farming units", which, as André Hirschfeld remarks, constitute "a most original aspect of the development of the co-operative movement in Tunisia".2 These co-operatives were founded by the Tunisian Government on land bought back from foreign settlers by the State, and were initially turned over to the State Lands Onice. Since the area expropriated represents some 1.5 million acres, the Tunisian Government has drawn up a programme for progressive settlement, with the result than 15 co-operative units, covering 22,000 acres, were operating as long ago as 1962. For 1963-64, the plans were that some 437,000 acres should be distributed among 11,600 peasant families. These are three kinds of "cooperative farming unit" : — those set up on land bought back by the Government, to which are added the small and medium-sized plots in the neighbourhood ; — those made up exclusively of lands formerly belonging to European settlers and run by those who used to work thereon, plus, if there is room, landless peasants or persons from overcrowded farming areas; — those set up by small and medium-sized farmers, without any contribution of land by the State. These co-operative units are especially numerous in the north of the country. In the centre and south, a mixed system has been devised, whereby individual and collective farming can exist side by side. These are what are called "multi-farming units", which the Land Development Centres of central and southern Tunisia are setting up on areas of 5,000 to 7,500 acres. Each of these units is "collectively developed and then divided up, part being set aside for the growing of trees. Pasture land and irrigated land continue to be managed collectively."3 1 André Hirschfeld: "La coopération en Tunisie...", op. cit., p. 285. » ibid., p. 286. » ibid., p. 287. 377 Agricultural organisations and development The co-operative farming units and the multi-farming units, as well as the other co-operative organisations, are part of Regional Co-operative Unions (Union régionale des coopératives—URC). These too were created by the Tunisian Government. They are thirteen in number, one per governorate. They embrace handicrafts, consumption and agriculture, and were created on 27 September 1962 and 25 March 1964. Each has an agricultural section with special aptitude for setting up and consolidating agricultural co-operatives. Their aim is to improve and promote the co-operative movement in the various parts of the country, so that it may become a factor for more rapid development. Their statutes demand that they look after the interests of the member co-operative bodies and co-ordinate their activities; that they supply their members and help them market their produce (trying to secure the best possible bargains and the highest possible quality); and that they promote the education of the individual co-operative member while training co-operative officials (there are two training centres in Sousse). Besides which, to attain their aims, each URC: — supplies its member co-operatives with the goods they need, priority being given to goods made in Tunisia and to goods manufactured by co-operatives. It helps co-operative managers to draw up estimates and to submit requirements in such a way that they can be properly centralised and quickly met; — markets co-operative produce (either in its natural state or after processing), and to this end sets up suitable industrial or commercial establishments or joins forces with other co-operative organisations (examples are the URC citrus-fruit processing station at Nabeul, and the oil refineries at Gafsa and Jendouba). These are essentially economic activities. In addition the URCs play an important part in improving the lot of the peasantry through education and extension work; seminars and study meetings are organised, and qualified technical staff are provided to run the basic co-operative organisations and enable them to play their expected role as stimulators of development. Moreover, the URCs, working hand-in-hand with the technical services of the Under-Secretariat of State for Agriculture and by agreement with the executive committee of each unit, help in drawing up crop-rotation plans and requests for medium and long-term production credits. But so many agricultural co-operatives have been springing up, especially in the most fertile areas of the country, that it has now been decided to create specialised central unions, each dealing with a particular crop: the Central Cereals Union (to deal with stock-breeding also), Central Vine-Growing Union, Central Market Garden and Fruit-Growing Union, and Central Fishing Union. 378 Africa The aim of the reorganisation is to secure the nation-wide co-operation (more especially with regard to cereal crops) of bodies which have been renovated and can cope with the demands of agricultural development. These new central unions will concentrate on assistance to member cooperatives, with an eye to improvement in managerial efficiency ; on assessment of needs, centralisation of orders, and supply (care being taken to ensure that the goods supplied are reasonably priced, of good quality and quickly delivered); on the proper use of such services and equipment as already exists; on marketing the produce of all their members (so as to standardise agricultural produce for the benefit of all); finally, on scientific research, extension work, and modernisation of techniques. This vertical and horizontal reorganisation should help to bring about a rapid recovery in Tunisian agriculture (in 1965-67 production fell by 27 per cent) and to attain the objectives provided for in the 1966-72 Plan. 1 Libya We should like to be able to report similar developments in Libya, one of Tunisia's neighbours, where agriculture has centuries of neglect to compensate for. To date, however, according to the data gathered during the present inquiry, not a single employers' or workers' organisation has been created. Nor is there a single chamber of agriculture. As regards agricultural institutions, the country has inherited practically nothing from its colonial past. Certainly, during the Italian occupation there were a few co-operatives founded by Europeans, but no native ever took part in them. The present co-operative movement, on which agricultural policy is based, derives from Act No. 42 (October 1956), which defines in general terms the principles of the co-operative movement and the procedure to be followed in setting up a co-operative. Since then, the movement has, little by little, spread in the countryside. In December 1965 there were 116 co-operatives of all kinds, with more than 12,000 members; of these 85 (with 10,732 members) were agricultural cooperatives, but many of them, it seems, are not working too well. Since the rural population is estimated to be about 850,000, the membership of agricultural co-operatives represents 1.3 per cent of the agricultural population. This figure is still extremely low, but we may hope that, thanks to the land settlement programme launched by the National Land Settlement Agency, 1 R . G. A. Kool: L'agriculture tunisienne..., op. cit., pp. 143-151. The ILO is at present undertaking a project, financed by the United Nations Special Fund, to assist in the development and reorganisation of the co-operative movement in Tunisia. To this end, a co-operative enterprise development centre was set up in January 1969; its aims are to draw up a plan for co-operative development, an integrated training programme, and suggestions for increased efficiency in co-operative management. 379 Agricultural organisations and development created in 1963, co-operation will spread and the existing organisations will become more efficient. All depends on the success of the Five-Year Plan (1963-68). As soon as information becomes available as to what has been achieved, we shall be able to assess the progress made.1 United Arab Republic In the United Arab Republic, the position is quite different. Four years after the 1952 reforms, the Government enacted Act No. 367 (14 October 1956, amended by Order No. 616, dated 10 July 1957) setting up the Egyptian Agricultural Organisation, which acts as a general organisation working in close collaboration with the authorities. It is directed by an executive committee appointed by the President of the Republic. In fact, since the disappearance of the great absentee landlords, the present organisation, which has absorbed the former Egyptian Agricultural Association, concentrates above all on purely technical work. Such work, according to Section 4 of Act No. 367, must comprise : research and other activities relative to the improvement of agricultural and animal produce, land reform and land improvement, selection of seed, stock-breeding, creation of model farms, poultry-raising, improvement of cattle and poultry strains, campaigns against parasites, establishment, extension and development of agricultural industries, organisation of agricultural and industrial exhibitions and propaganda in connexion therewith, purchase, sale and production of fertilisers, machinery, tools, seed, crops, fodder and insecticides, as part of the general State policy for agriculture. In the light of existing legislation, it does not seem as though the Egyptian Agricultural Organisation can act as an employers' association. In any case, the fact that no plot may now exceed 120 feddans2 (1 feddan = approximately 1 acre) and the enrolment of the peasantry in the co-operatives created by the land reform render such an organisation unnecessary—the more so in that wages and conditions of work are now governed by detailed legal enactments. Nevertheless, the agricultural workers have their own unions, as we shall shortly see. As regards the actual organisation of work, the numerous tasks to be undertaken in this regard fall to the co-operatives themselves. The Egyptian agricultural co-operatives are the oldest in the Middle East.3 They were founded in 1907, without any support from the law (thefirstenactment dates from 1923), 1 For further information about the Libyan Development Plan and the land settlement programmes, see FAO, World Land Reform Conference: Land Settlement Programme in Libya (Hamid Al-Jawhary), op. cit. s Since 1969, 50 feddans. 8 For the historical background, see Jürgen von Muralt: Entwicklung und Struktur des Genossenschaftswesens in Ägypten (Marburg/Lahn, Institut für Genossenschaftswesen, 1964). 380 Africa and in 1945 they already had more than 500,000 members. However, they were inspired by European models and in their existing form were not suitable for achieving the aim of the 1952 revolution to bring the whole of the agricultural community into their orbit. The Government of Egypt, by making membership compulsory and extending the co-operative movement to all new landed proprietors, turned it into a basic tool in its land reform programme. At present, the Egyptian co-operatives work under the supervision of the General Agricultural Co-operatives Organisation, set up in 1960 with the following main tasks: — to devise a policy for agricultural co-operatives (implementation of the plan, export targets, and so on); to provide co-operatives with the necessary technical and financial assistance and supervise the way they are run; — to maintain the prices of agricultural produce by associating the cooperatives with the general re-orientation of agricultural methods in order to improve productivity. A reorganisation of sales and marketing cooperatives has led to the stabilisation of wholesale prices, especially those of foodstuffs; — to provide loans and equipment for co-operatives, set up produce collection centres, organise the transport of produce in co-operation with the companies purchasing, and settle any differences; — to organise community development activities, and encourage co-operatives to devote part of their profits to social activities and the improvement of workers' housing; — to organise vocational training programmes for future co-operative officials, and encourage the creation of clubs and rural libraries, together with other cultural activities. At village level, the agricultural co-operatives, which have been reorganised to ensure that in principle there is one per village (up to 1,500 acres in extent), undertake the following duties as part of the land reform programme : Advancing agricultural loans of all kinds to their members according to the needs of their lands. Providing production requisites such as seeds, fertilisers, farm machinery, insecticides, and means of storage and transport of crops. Organising land use including crop rotation, pest control, maintenance of canals and drains, and supervising cultivation of different crops. Rendering all agricultural services required by members. Marketing the main crops and deducting from the price instalments in respect of the purchase price of land, taxes, agricultural and other loans.1 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Agrarian Reform in the United Arab Republie (A. H. E. Nasharty), op. cit., pp. 5-6. 381 Agricultural organisations and development As the Egyptian co-operatives have multifarious technical tasks to perform and as the Egyptian peasant is in some instances too ill educated to carry them out successfully, the Egyptian Government has done away with the old system whereby co-operative officials were freely elected. Today such officials are appointed by the General Land Reform Agency. Each co-operative thus has a manager, a supervisor (agricultural expert), two assistants (each of whom supervise the work on 750 acres), a clerk and a storeman. Unhappily, no information was supplied as to how many members the cooperatives now have. In 1959, there were more than 3,000 agricultural co-operatives in Egypt, with over 1 million members, i.e. more than 40 per cent of all farmers.1 Today thesefiguresare probably much higher. European co-operatives are based on free membership and self-government. Egyptian co-operatives, with their compulsory membership and officially appointed administrators, are not at all like this. But for the time being it seems that any alternative system is impossible, in view of the far-reaching changes which the Government is anxious to bring about in the countryside, and in view of the exceedingly low level at which the movement began. (In some co-operatives, between 65 and 80 per cent of the members are illiterate.) Considerable progress has however been made during recent years. This applies to the turnover of co-operatives as well as to the way in which they are organised. In 1953, a timid beginning was made with the co-operative marketing of cotton. In 1965, such marketing was made compulsory. In 196.3, the amount marketed in this fashion was 855,474 kintars (1 kintar == 346.5 lb.); in 1965, it was 1,103,357 kintars. Persons receiving agricultural loans multiplied from 365,858 in 1956 to 650,043 in 1961 (the credit in question is mostly of the supervised kind). All in all, the credit offered, in cash and kind, increased from £E13,822,025 in 1952 to £E58,544,707 in 1964-65, which shows that real efforts have been made to finance agriculture. Lastly, the Government has since 1961 tried to neutralise the influence exerted within the cooperatives by the big landed proprietors and village administrative officials, by demanding that at least four-fifths of the seats on the executive committees of co-operatives shall henceforward be reserved for peasants possessing less than 5 acres each.2 Sudan South of the United Arab Republic, the Sudan offers a very special kind of organisation, well adapted to the specific requirements of Sudanese agri1 ILO: Labour Survey of North Africa, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 60 (Geneva, 1960), p. 318. In 1961, there were 4,038 co-operatives with 1,250,166 members according to Adel Ahmed Hashish: Le rôle de la coopération dans la socialisation de l'agriculture égyptienne (Paris, 1969; mimeographed PhJ). thesis), p. 264. 8 Hashish, op. cit., pp. 264, 267, 285-286, 299, 305. 382 Africa culture. There are no registered agricultural employers' associations in the Sudan; they are replaced by farmers' unions. And the way these unions work can be understood only if we grasp the peculiar nature of the irrigation and tenant farming systems in use in this country. The systems of irrigation which replaced the primitive methods employed until late in the 1930s constitute one of the characteristic features of Sudanese agriculture. Under a system of licences delivered by the Government, mechanical pumps were installed to draw water from the Nile for the irrigation of land away from the immediate vicinity of the river (land which had hitherto been watered by the most primitive of methods). These irrigation undertakings are at present owned by private persons, companies, groups, official councils or co-operatives. When a person obtains a licence to set up a pumping system, he also receives a lease from the Government to cultivate the area that he will be able to irrigate, which will obviously vary with the capacity of the pump. According to the size of the initial investment, the lease may run for between ten and fifteen years, while the lessee has to pay an annual rent of 10 piastres per feddan of land. He may farm part of the land himself, but he usually apportions most of it to tenants. Even peasants who own their land are considered as tenants if they depend for their water supply on an irrigation concern. Thus a relationship of a special kind springs up between the tenant and the person holding the licence. The latter invests money in installing a pump and digging irrigation channels. He ensures the upkeep of these channels and provides the water the tenant requires. Each tenant signs a written undertaking to hand over half his crop to the licensee as payment for the water received. He can do what he likes with the other half, but custom decrees that cotton must be sold through the irrigation concern. Unless the tenants are bound by a definite agreement with the undertaking, they can set up a sales co-operative for this purpose, while maintaining their leases. These conditions remain the same whether one person or a company holds the concession, but they may vary when the Government itself creates an official board (for example, that of Gezira) x or when pumping stations are installed by co-operatives. In Gezira, for instance, the board meets the cost of fertilisers and seed, such costs being deducted from the proceeds of the sale of harvests. The remainder is apportioned as follows: 42 per cent for the tenant, 42 per cent for the Sudanese Government, 10 per cent for the board itself, 2 per cent for the tenants' reserve fund, 2 per cent for the local official councils, and 2 per cent for social development. 1 As regards the origins of the Gezira council, see Arthur GaitskelTs classic work: Gezira: A Story of Development in the Sudan (London, Faber & Faber, 1959). 383 Agricultural organisations and development In the co-operatives, the cost of upkeep of the pump and irrigation canals is met from the share accruing to the licence-holder (i.e. the co-operative itself), the remainder being apportioned among the tenants (the co-operative's members) in proportion to the size of the crop delivered by them. Some tenants are virtually landowners themselves, for they do not work the land themselves, but engage agricultural labourers for the purpose. This state of affairs is subject to variation in that some tenants cultivate their holdings with the help of others, whereas some merely provide seed and fertilisers, keep an eye on operations, and pay the wages. Thus a tenant is either a cultivator or a kind of employee who stands half-way between the workers (if he employs any) and the owner of the irrigation concern (who receives part of the harvest). Hence the tenants' union has not only to defend the tenants' interests against those of the owner of the concern (whether this be a person, a company, or an official council) but also to defend their interests as employers against the labourers. For this reason we felt it better to include the tenants' unions under the heading of general organisations, rather than under that of employers' or workers' organisations. When a co-operative owns an irrigation concern, there is no call to set up a tenants' union, since the members of the co-operative in question are tenants and co-proprietors alike. Thirteen tenants' unions are registered with the Department of Labour. They have some 2,700 members. If we accept the figure of 27,000 tenants estimated by Margaret Digby in 19571 and assume that this has not greatly increased since, union membership embraces some 10 per cent of all tenants. It is not unlikely that there will be an increase in membership, since, apart from the tenants' union of the Blue Nile concern, created in 1958, all the other unions date from 1966 only, and so are in their early stages. The tenants' unions have been created with the following aims (as defined in their statutes): — to encourage the development and the maintenance of good relations between tenants and owners; — to provide cultivators with a responsible, legally constituted organisation capable of putting forward their claims with success; — to provide financial, cultural and moral support for cultivators, and for the persons under their responsibility, in the event of illness, invalidity and death; — to represent and defend the unions' views and methods vis-à-vis the authorities ; 1 384 Digby, op. cit., p. 89. Africa — to facilitate and promote exchanges of views between members of the unions with regard to matters involving, or liable to involve, their interests. Unfortunately we are unable to offer any information as to the precise activities of these unions, or as to the results obtained by them, because by the date on which our inquiry closed no answer had been received from them. Apart from these tenants' unions connected with the agricultural irrigation schemes, there are in the Sudan four kinds of co-operative organisation created by producers, which we may also include under the heading of general organisations. According to the annual report for 1964-65 of the Registrar of Co-operatives, there are 282 agricultural co-operatives in the Sudan, classified as follows, according to their activities, their number and their membership: Type of co-operative Number Membership Irrigation Mechanised agricultural production Marketing and credit General purpose Total 120 80 24 58 282 28 712 3 858 2129 10 954 45 653 Irrigation co-operatives have existed since the end of the 1930s. They replace the licensed irrigation concern. They own the pump and in the interests of their members see that both the pump and the irrigation canals are kept in good condition. Their members are either owner-farmers or tenants. The requisite capital is provided in part by the members and in part by the Agricultural Bank, the co-operative being held responsible. The co-operative supplies its members with water, and in return the members deliver 50 per cent of their crop to the co-operative; this is identical to the system utilised by the private irrigation concern. The co-operative sells the crop, and after meeting the expenses of the pump and canals pays part of the balance (if any) into a reserve fund, the remainder being returned to the members (tenants) in proportion to their share in defraying the expenses of the cooperative (i.e. in proportion to the produce delivered). The members keep the other half of their crop for consumption or sale; should the crop be cotton, however, the co-operative assumes responsibility for marketing the entire harvest. With regard to crops other than cotton, the members themselves market their share of the harvest, but it is thought that in the future the cooperatives could take responsibility for this, so as to get a better price on behalf of their members. 385 Agricultural organisations and development Such co-operatives have proved exceedingly useful. Thanks to them, the area farmed has been increased, whilst at the same time the peasants have enjoyed a greater return on their labour since they get that share of the profits which, with a private irrigation concern, would have been made over to the owner. In addition, these are democratic associations based on self-help and mutual assistance and so constituting a practical introduction to democratic procedures. Fifty or so of these co-operatives in the Northern Province have founded a secondary organisation known as the Union of Khangak Irrigation Societies. This provides oil and fuel for the irrigation concerns. It is now considering whether or not to provide spare parts as well, and to market the crops produced by the co-operatives. These agricultural co-operatives have, generally speaking, achieved their immediate ends and helped to lay the foundation for further economic and social advances by the small agricultural producer. Secondly, there are 80 co-operatives for mechanised agricultural production with more than 3,800 members, chiefly middle-class persons who are not themselves owners of land but who have founded co-operatives with about 25 members each and managed to get themselves allotted land in areas with an adequate rainfall. This land usually takes the form of a block of 1,000 acres or so. The people concerned do not themselves live in the areas thus cultivated, nor are there in fact any people living there, because there is no drinking-water nor any other facilities required to sustain human life except for brief periods during the year. The initial capital is provided by the members of the cooperative and all farming is mechanised. Labour is provided as required by the nomads who wander from one place to another looking for work. They do not belong to the co-operatives and are considered as wage earners employed by the latter. The crops belong jointly to the co-operative, which looks after marketing arrangements. Profits are divided among the members, a payment having first been paid to the reserve fund. Usually each co-operative employs a manager who organises and supervises farming and marketing operations. The co-operatives play a worth-while part in economic development, for they enable virgin land to be cultivated. Their members thus get an income over and above the emoluments they earn in their particular trade or occupation. However, the members do take considerable risks ; their crops are highly dependent on rainfall and are grown in areas where there is no irrigation. Although, in fact, they are joint employers of agricultural manpower, they are considered as agricultural producers and not as employers of agricultural labourers, and their societies are registered as such in accordance with the Co-operative Societies Ordinance of 1948. 386 Africa To make things easier for these co-operatives, consideration is being given to the creation of one or more unions which might be responsible, for example, for the supply of spare parts for the agricultural machinery used. Thirdly, there are at present 24 marketing and credit co-operatives, with a total of 2,129 members. All lie in the area for which the Gezira Board is responsible, and their members are tenants of this board. The purpose of these co-operatives is to advise their members on the growing of crops other than cotton—groundnuts, wheat and dura (a kind of millet), for example. Whilst the Gezira Boardfinancesthe production and marketing of the cotton harvest, the marketing co-operatives finance the production of and help in marketing the other crops. For the time being, they are chiefly concerned with groundnuts. The marketing and credit co-operatives thus help their members to increase production and income and also give them a chance to practise self-help and mutual aid, while providing a practical initiation into democracy. They are closely linked to the Gezira Board and the Gezira Tenants' Association, which facilitate their activities. The GTA is at present considering ways and means of installing a mill which would enable the members of the co-operatives to get an advantageous price for their wheat. Lastly, there are 58 general purpose co-operatives, with nearly 11,000 members. These are co-operatives of agricultural producers which offer one or more of the following services : (a) the granting of loans for production purposes ; (b) the marketing of agricultural produce; (c) the provision of supplies for farmers; (d) the supply of consumer goods; and (e) all other activities likely to benefit members. These co-operatives undertake one or two of these activities at first and then gradually extend their scope. The economic and social aims they pursue are similar to those of the other co-operatives. It should however be mentioned that this remarkable agricultural development has not yet affected the areas inhabited by the non-Moslem nomadic peoples of the Sudan, partly Christian and partly animist. Here traditional agricultural techniques have survived for centuries without modification, and the whole field is wide open to development. The same applies to a neighbouring country, Ethiopia, which has sent in almost no replies to the questions asked of it by the author of this study. Apart from a few small marketing co-operatives, there are no agricultural organisations of any kind, neither employers' nor workers'. Somalia In this country, according to information received, there are two large planters' companies : the Società Agricoltore Giuba (SAG) in the Giuba area, and the Società Azionaria Concessionari Agricoli (SACA) in the Agfoi-Genale 387 Agricultural organisations and development area. They were founded in 1947 and their members are chiefly bananagrowers; they act as general organisations and employers' associations at one and the same time. However, their range of activities appears to be very narrow: the SACA says that in 1962 it bargained with the Ministry of Labour and the Plantation and Agricultural Workers' Trade Union over questions of wages, and that it has appealed to its members to erect adequate housing for their workers and to organise small mobile hospitals for the sick and injured. A few years ago, in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture, it did a certain amount of work in the equipment of the areas where its members have their banana plantations. It declares that it takes no part in the promotion of its members' welfare (vocational training, schools, leisure, and so on). The SAG's replies to every question put to it by the author were negative. Neither of these two bodies belongs to any national or international federation or confederation. South of the Sahara South of the Sahara there are many varieties of agricultural organisation, but generally speaking it can be affirmed that where such organisations exist they continue tasks begun long before the countries in question became independent. The co-operative techniques bequeathed by English or French settlers have been revised and brought up to date in the kind of directed development programmes to which allusion has already been made. These general organisations were mostly created long before independence by the big plantation companies, and they are usually of the kind one might expect. Before independence, they were active in the mother countries as well as locally, according to whether they wanted to put price and production claims to the authorities or wished to organise and improve working conditions on the plantations. Since the employers have never felt it necessary to set up a separate body to bargain with the workers about wages or working hours, these general organisations have also tended to act as employers' associations. In these regions, as elsewhere, the absence of workers' unions in many areas made things much easier for the big companies. Cameroon In eastern Cameroon, for example, the growers of bananas, coffee beans, rubber plants, oil plants and tobacco, together with those engaged in forestry and the timber trade, remain members of a body called the Union of Agricultural, Forestry and Allied Associations in Cameroon (USPAC), which was set up in 1953 and is an active member of the International Union of Overseas Farmers (UIAOM), whose headquarters are in Paris. USPAC defends the occupational interests of its members within a variety of official bodies 388 Africa in which it holds seats, notably the Supreme Occupational Disease and Injury Council, the Family Allowances Compensation Fund, the Cameroon Chamber of Agriculture and the various Five-Year Plan committees. It also belongs to the Inter-Occupational Group for Study and Co-ordination of Cameroon Economic Interests (GICAM). In most of these bodies, USPAC participates in the adoption of decisions through its right to vote. Since 1953 it has been represented at all meetings of the Labour Advisory Committee, where the social welfare legislation governing wages and conditions of employment in the country was drafted. However, USPAC does not intervene directly in collective bargaining. Its member unions themselves discuss the contents of collective agreements with the workers' trade union representatives. As regards the maintenance of agricultural prices, for the most part the co-operative organisations deal with this matter by recourse to price stabilisation funds, on the boards of which they are represented. Finally, it does not seem, according to the information received, that USPAC is itself directly concerned with activities to raise the standard of life in the countryside. Central African Republic This country, a neighbour of Cameroon, is in much the same position. It has a Coffee-Planters' Association, created in 1958, which belongs to the International Coffee-Planters' Association in Paris. The aim of the association (it reports no other activities) is to defend the planters' interests and to ensure liaison between them and the Government. It also investigates problems of common concern to planters, and either refers them to the competent official bodies or tries (especially when the difficulty is a technical one) to solve them itself. There are no workers' unions; hence this organisation, by agreement with the Ministry of Labour, fixes the minimum guaranteed wage and lays down conditions of employment. Nigeria The Nigerian Plantation Employers' Association, created in 1962, exists in an altogether more complex setting, since there already exists a strongly organised trade union movement with which the association bargains about wages and employment conditions; this it does within joint committees set up in accordance with current legislation. The association is represented on the National Labour Advisory Council, which deals with manpower questions. It seems that only in this body does the association really have any direct contact with the authorities, for, in its own words, "Apart from representation on the National Labour Advisory Council, there is no effective liaison between the Government and the association in any matter connected with agricultural 389 Agricultural organisations and development policy. The association is not consulted on policy, but, when the occasion demands, has to make representations on behalf of its members and the plantation industry." Since 1962, the association has, it seems, been actively working to improve the lot of the Nigerian plantation worker. It affirms that employers who are members of the association now offer their workers the following advantages: (a) free housing, in accordance with standards laid down by the Ministry of Labour; (b) guaranteed medical and maternity care for the workers and their immediate dependants in hospitals and dispensaries erected and maintained by the employers; (c) social and recreation centres in the villages; (d) free schools; (c) sports fields. The association also runs vocational training programmes to assist its members in acquiring the skilled labour they require. Malawi As typical examples of agricultural organisations as they exist south of the Sahara, we can take the three Malawi associations, two of which at least were created before the Second World War: the Tobacco Association, founded in 1934; the Tea Association (Central Africa) Ltd., founded in 1936; and the Tung Association, which did not specify the exact date of its creation. None of them undertakes collective bargaining; this is left to the Agricultural Employers' Association, which they set up in 1960. They are chiefly concerned to defend their members' economic interests; to this end, they are represented in an advisory capacity on the official or semi-official bodies dealing with agricultural matters, where they present their views on such subjects as agricultural prices, customs policy, taxation, and agricultural policy in general. The planters' associations of Malawi are active in social affairs too : they advise their members about the creation of dispensaries, schools, and so on, and in particular maintain close contacts with the authorities responsible for schemes such as that for the eradication of leprosy in the south of the country. In addition, they provide vocational training for agricultural workers and in some cases have launched programmes of adult education and schemes to help the worker make good use of his leisure time (construction of sports grounds, for example). They also pursue agronomic research, and, so it would seem from the answers received, they work in close collaboration with the scientific research authorities of Malawi. None of these associations indicates that it encounters any difficulty at all in maintaining its activities. The Agricultural Employers' Association, founded by the three abovementioned associations in 1960 to centralise all questions relating to wages and conditions of employment, says that it has managed to establish standards of employment in all the industries it covers and adds that the disappearance of many obsolete practices can be credited to it. Until now it has concentrated 390 Africa its activities in two areas: (a) advising its members with regard to the matters for which it is competent; and (b) providing advice for the official bodies which have to fix wages and lay down conditions of employment. On the other hand, as far as negotiations with the Malawi Plantation and Agricultural Workers' Union are concerned, it declares in its answer to the author's inquiries that it has as yet achieved no outstanding success. This fact it attributes to the weakness of the trade union movement in Malawi, saying that although the latter apparently goes back to 1900, it has not really established a firm foundation in the country. Mauritius In Mauritius too we find three big planters' associations constituting an employers' federation. We have, first, the Cane-Planters' Association, founded in 1952 (it had 44 members in 1961), the Sugar-Producers' Association, founded in 1946 (with 21 members in 1961), and lastly the Hemp-Planters' Association, which dates from 1925, but does not say how many members it has. The Mauritius Employers' Federation defends its members' interests on various official bodies and occupies a seat in the Labour Advisory Board alongside representatives of the Government and the workers, where it puts forward its members' views on wages and conditions of employment. It also belongs to the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund,financedby all the planters in Mauritius. It is certainly here that it carries out its most important work, for sugar-growing occupies the key position in the national economy. Created in 1948, the fund has already achieved a great deal. It has, for example, erected 2,400 houses for sugar plantation workers, plus 29 social centres (ten more are to be built in the next few years) in the countryside. In these centres, provision is made for libraries, television, lecture halls, medical care, prenatal and child welfare clinics, and so forth. Furthermore, the fund grants eighteen scholarships a year to workers' children anxious to obtain a secondary education. On the other hand, in fields such as prices policy or collective bargaining, the federation merely gives advice. Prices are maintained largely through the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, which covers roughly half the island's annual sugar production (380,000 tons out of 680,000), the remainder being subject to international price fluctuations. Other crops of some importance, such as potatoes and onions, are the responsibility of the Agricultural Marketing Board, created in the mid-1960s. Until 1953, collective agreements were negotiated by the federation with representatives of the Agricultural and Other Workers' Union. But in that year wages boards were set up to deal with conditions of employment, and since then these have been laid down by decree. 391 Agricultural organisations and development In its answer to the author's inquiries, the federation says that the foundation of the wages boards did not constitute a step forward, for such boards "destroy collective bargaining, which is now so important a factor in the conclusion of agreements and the settlement of industrial disputes". Zambia This remark calls for further comment. If collective bargaining is to be undertaken at all, if it is to be fruitful, then both parties—employers and workers—must believe that their counterparts are capable of entering into a relationship of this kind. In Mauritius, it seems that they do. In Zambia, however, the employers take a very different view. In the opinion of their organisation (the Commercial Farmers' Bureau), the Zambian National Union of Plantation and Agricultural Workers "is the least well organised of any trade union in the country, and is virtually incapable of conducting its affairs with even modest efficiency". The employers' organisation, therefore, has as yet embarked on no collective negotiations with the workers, and conditions of employment continue to be governed by the Employment Board. Naturally enough, the workers' union by no means accepts the strictures of the Commercial Farmers' Bureau, which in other matters performs duties very similar to those undertaken by the organisations already mentioned. Kenya, Liberia, Tanganyika The situation is not very different in other countries where plantation farming predominates. Whether we take the Kenyan National Farmers' Union (set up in 1950), or the Liberian Rubber-Planters' Association (founded in 1965), or the Tanganyikan Sisal- and Tea-Planters' Associations (which go back to the period before the war), aims and activities are everywhere the same. Besides defending their members' interests vis-à-vis the authorities and bargaining with the workers' representatives (when the workers are organised), all the associations perform much the same functions. In fact, the scope of the improvements they introduce into the countryside depends on a variety of favourable and unfavourable factors. The bigger the plantation, the more money (in theory at least) it should have available to improve the lot of its workers. On the other hand, the small planter will not be able to afford many facilities for the workers. Further, an improvement in the workers' lot will depend on how stable employment is on the plantation, and on whether the workers live close to the plantation or some distance away. In this connexion, an ILO study written in 1958 points out: The great majority of workers employed on farms and plantations are, however, not linked by any durable contractual ties to the employer. They live sometimes in villages near the estate, where they have themselves rights to lands, sometimes in 392 Africa housing provided by the employer and sometimes in housing which they themselves have built. They work regularly or irregularly, as work offers or they themselves wish, by the day or by the piece or task. In some cases they may remain associated in this way with a farm or plantation for years as a stretch, in others their links with the employer may be strictly seasonal in character. At the end of the season they may return to their homes, which may be elsewhere in the territory or even in another territory. Finally, their employment may be even casual in character; they may merely work for a few days or weeks in order to get cash for a specific purpose.1 In brief, it can be said that a plantation lives in symbiosis with the traditional environment. Each derives some advantage from the other. But as long as this mixed kind of economy continues, the workers being partly wage earners and partly traditional peasant farmers, some being locally recruited and some being migrants, it will be difficult to improve the social and economic status of the peasantry in these countries in any durable manner. Senegal Plantation agriculture is not the only form of commercial agriculture for which employers' organisations exist. A number of small and medium independent farmers have also set up organisations to protect their interests. This is so in Senegal, where there exists a body known as the Synjarmar (Union of Peasants, Horticulturalists, Gardeners and Market Gardeners of the CapVert Region). In Senegal it is the only body of its kind, but as we shall shortly see, it ought by rights to be considered more as an intermediate organisation, as a form of occupational association with co-operative leanings. Apart from the Synjarmar, there is no Senegalese agricultural employers' association, and, according to the Ministry of the Civil Service and of Labour, "because employers' organisations are so signally lacking, it has been necessary to lay down conditions of employment for agricultural wage earners by administrative decree, instead of by collective agreement, as would normally have been the case." 2 The Synjarmar, created in 1955 and concentrated in the Cap-Vert area, has some 2,500 members in 25 trade union sections. Marguerite Camboulives considers that although it is normally a union, this body is nearer in conception to a co-operative, being a self-managing organisation with manifold activities which make it a real instrument in development.3 There is a good deal of truth in this, although the statutes of the Synjarmar are based on the Labour Code, and not on the regulations for rural co-operatives. 1 a ILO : African Labour Survey, op. cit., p. 79. Communication from the Ministry of the Civil Service and of Labour, dated 5 September 1966. 3 See Camboulives, çp. cit., p. 228. 393 Agricultural organisations and development The Synjarmar itself defines its duties as follows : — to co-ordinate the production of its members and to offer ideas and lay down general instructions, for adoption by the various organisations which depend directly or indirectly on it; — to direct and define the general lines of the marketing of members' produce, nevertheless leaving full freedom of action to its members; — to organise the collection and bulking of produce from its various membersections; — to conclude contracts or agreements with associations, companies, undertakings or individuals to facilitate the sale of produce at the most advantageous prices possible. To this end, by agreement with a Dakar export company known as CODAPAG, the Synjarmar has for some years drawn up a production plan with an eye to export possibilities; this plan is followed by the majority of its members. CODAPAG looks after the marketing. The Synjarmar's agricultural policy has led to a constant increase and diversification of market garden produce. New kinds of produce, such as garden peas, cauliflowers and melons, have appeared on the market, thus helping local people to eat better. Over-all production has risen from 15,000 tons in 1955 to 19,400 in 1962 and 21,939 in 1964, and seems to have gone on increasing ever since. Yet despite a continuous rise in exports, in 1964-65 no more than 125 tons were sent to France, the chief client, which would seem to show that the bulk of this produce is locally consumed. Besides being active in production and marketing, the Synjarmar plays an important part in Senegalese agricultural policy. It is a member of the Labour Advisory Committee of Senegal and of the Market Gardening Advisory Committee which plans market gardening activities every year. Besides which, it occupies three seats as adviser or deputy member on the Dakar Labour Tribunal. Since there are no collective agreements in Senegal (conditions of employment are laid down by decree, in particular by Decree No. 6137, dated 6 September 1961), the Synjarmar, as an employers' association, is not called upon to bargain with the workers. Its influence in this field is exerted in the Labour Advisory Committee, which body has to submit the relevant texts for government approval. Finally, the Synjarmar is very active in two other spheres: agronomic research and agricultural exhibitions. In 1957, it participated in the Paris Agricultural Exhibition (winning the Gold Medal), and in 1963 and 1964 it took part in exhibitions at Bathurst, in the Gambia. With regard to agronomic research, it has set up a technical research and experiment study group which is trying to develop new varieties, new techniques and new crops, testing 394 Africa them on family plots to see to what extent they could suitably replace those already in existence. Malagasy Republic To conclude this survey of general and employers' organisations in Africa, let us now examine the situation in Madagascar. Here there is a wide variety of unions and associations looking after the interests of agricultural producers and traders. Since 1946, Madagascan employers have had their own Federation of Madagascan Economic Interests Unions (USIEM), which belongs in turn to the International Union of Overseas Farmers (UIAOM), the seat of which is in Paris. The unions belonging to USIEM were created at various times between 1945 and 1964. Some of them specifically cater for tradesmen and businessmen, and others are above all farmers' unions. Many of them, however, cover a variety of activities and occupations involved in the growing of crops, their processing and marketing, and all the intermediate stages. Thus, as members of USIEM, we find planters of cotton, rice, sisal, tobacco and sugar-cane, together with the producers of palm-oii, oil plants and soap, plus stock-breeders, vine-growers, foresters, distillers and sugar manufacturers. Many of the groups involved are very small but nevertheless they represent almost all employers of agricultural labour and cover almost the whole of marketable agricultural production, especially that part of it which is designed for export. They are chiefly concerned to safeguard the economic interests of their members, by defending a prices policy and by trying to find some outlet for Madagascan produce. In this respect, the directors of USIEM and its member unions maintain close links with the Ministry of Agriculture. In addition, they defend their interests in the joint chambers of commerce, industry and agriculture, where they are heavily represented. When the present inquiry was first launched (in June 1966), the directors of USIEM were anxious to evolve a general agricultural policy in conjunction with the authorities. They were especially anxious to ensure that production targets were set. A few months before (in January 1966), the Government had called a major meeting of ministers, heads of department, and representatives of the main concerns of members of USIEM. The Government wanted to secure the active co-operation of private enterprise in studying the bottlenecks with which the national economy was confronted, together with the chances of attaining the targets set forth in the Five-Year Plan and ways and means of solving the various problems which had arisen. It had been decided to establish a committee of ten people (five ministers or their representatives, plus five duly qualified representatives of private enterprise), with two chairmen—the Minister of State for Agriculture and a private individual. This 395 Agricultural organisations and development body was to set up specialised joint subcommittees, the first of them to deal with rice, because rice is so exceedingly important in the national economy. The subcommittee on rice was created shortly thereafter and met several times to draft a report for the parent committee. When our inquiry began, the report in question, although ready, had not yet been submitted to the parent committee, as for a variety of reasons this had been unable to meet (the chief reason being that the private enterprise members of the committee were not considered sufficiently representative). Fresh elections were held, and changes were made at chairman level. Thereafter, the talks between USIEM and the Government were resumed and the "committee often" seems to have become once more a link between private enterprise and the authorities. However, it should be mentioned that both the parent committee and its subcommittees are purely advisory bodies ; they do no more than draft decisions and refer them to the Government for approval. The unions represented in USIEM use the latter purely in defence of their economic interests, or at least have done so hitherto. According to the information assembled by the author, the USIEM member unions deal neither with wage negotiations, nor with conditions of employment, nor with rural welfare ; these are problems handled at the level of the undertaking. Nor is there any collective agreement applicable to agricultural labourers or to workers in agricultural industries. Nevertheless, there are in Madagascar what are known as Rural Interests Associations (AIR) and "communal unions", both of which concern themselves with aspects of social welfare in the countryside. The AIRs derive from a traditional organisation which in days gone by was to be found throughout the length and breadth of the country, and especially on the high plateaux, namely the fokonolona. This was a village community, directed by a council of elders, which promoted: (a) social welfare assistance—help for families in caring for the sick, in building schools, in burying their dead, and so on ; (b) mutual economic assistance—work in common (valitanana) in cropgrowing and planting, harvesting, upkeep of irrigation canals, ploughing of virgin land, construction of tracks, and so on. 1 The fokonolonas still exist, but have yielded pride of place to organs of a new kind, some of them imposed by the authorities (the Indigenous Rural Collectivities in 1950, and then the Rural Communes in 1956), as part of the reform of local bodies. Other new organisations have been set up among the peasants (this is in fact true of the AIRs themselves, which were set up in 1962-63 and legalised in 1964). 1 For further information about the origin, functions and present position of this institution, see J. Dez : "Le fokonolona malgache : institution désuète ou cellule de développement ?", Cahiers de VISEA (Paris), No. 160, April 1965, pp. 189-252. 396 Africa The AIRs, which deal with economic matters alone, are simply voluntary associations set up by the small peasant farmer, stock-breeder or rural craftsman. An AIR is in theory limited to a single village, although some of them may cover two or three villages. In principle, too, an AIR does not include share-croppers or tenant farmers. The minimum membership is seven, and the theoretical maximum is 100 (so that cohesion may not be lost). In 1966, there were 36 AIRs, with an average membership of 50 persons each. A general assembly isfirstconstituted, and the members then elect a chairman, a secretary, a treasurer and several persons to form the officers of the AIR. Although an AIR is a voluntary body, it must, to be recognised as such, accept the supervision of a technical adviser who is an official of the Ministry of Agriculture. Hence, while remaining independent, it enjoys official technical assistance in performing the following tasks: — ensuring economic expansion by improving, extending and diversifying production, by the use of modern farming techniques, high-quality seeds, manure and fertilisers, and by the common use of up-to-date agricultural equipment, in accordance with the suggestions of the technical adviser; — educating the peasant masses, so that they may enjoy a better diet and a higher standard of living by making better use of their own improved and increased output; — organising the marketing of surpluses by seeking outlets, guiding production, staggering planting times, and organising the collection of produce; — seeking, and providing security for, the credits which AIR members need to extend and improve their farming operations ; and — educating the members of the AIR, which is designed as a pre-co-operative, so that it may become a full co-operative able to undertake marketing operations. Hence the AIRs plan to make far-reaching changes in traditional rural society by initiating it, little by little, into up-to-date co-operative techniques. Such alterations can obviously not be made overnight, for here as elsewhere the peasant offers a natural resistance to radical change. One difficulty the AIRs have to face is that the peasants find it hard to grasp how it can be that an organisation set up with government assistance is not designed to distribute profits, but on the contrary will levy contributions and make withdrawals from the proceeds of sales to help pay operating expenses. Such difficulties considerably delay the development and expansion of organisations which offer two signal advantages,firstly,that they arefinanciallysound, and secondly, that with them there is no awakening to harsh reality after the euphoria involved in getting them under way has died down. 397 Agricultural organisations and development Another difficulty came to light in the course of the author's inquiries. It has nothing to do, this time, with the rural environment. The problem is one of a lack of administrative co-ordination. Thus, certain official services are alarmed at the fact that the AIRs, supported as they are by the Extension Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, may compete with other bodies for which these services are responsible. It would seem that the latter fear that the authority they enjoy will somehow be reduced, and hence they do not always make things easier for the AIRs. The AIRs are of recent foundation, and it is accordingly still difficult to say how much success they will have in penetrating traditional rural society, or how long they will take to transform it. Certainly, however, they represent a form of pre-co-operation which, corrected in the light of experience, will play an important part in the Madagascan countryside, especially when their integration into a federation at some future date will enable them to coordinate activities throughout the country. The first of the communal unions were founded at about the same time as the AIRs, and they pursue complementary objectives. They have gone through two stages : they were conceived originally to undertake public works of concern to several communes, such as laying water mains or making roads, but it was later decided to set up communal unions which would have economic interests. These unions are formed by free decision of the communal councils, each council appointing two representatives to constitute the board of the union. This board in turn elects a chairman and other officers from among its own members. The union isfinancedby contributions from the communes and can borrow money for investment purposes. These syndicats à vocation économique depend on the local prefecture. The first union of this kind was formed in 1962 at Morondava, and began work in 1963. In 1964, two others were created (at Tuléar and Fort-Dauphin). Seven others were formed in 1966 and were beginning work at the time of the present survey. Madagascar has eighteen prefectures; this means therefore that unions had already been set up in ten of them. The communal unions do not deal with wages and conditions of employment, nor with the social aspects of rural development (schools, dispensaries, housing)—these latter are matters with which the communes themselves deal. They are concerned only with the production, marketing and processing of agricultural produce. Within these limits they intend to help in the implementation of the national Five-Year Development Plan. It should be mentioned, however, that to begin with the unions were interested in marketing alone, with especial reference to the groundnuts and Cape peas produced by their members. Similar operations have been undertaken for the mohair produced within the Fort-Dauphin prefecture. Paddy storage has been under398 Africa taken here and there. Finally, the three unions of the areas where Cape peas are grown created a single marketing agency in 1964. The peasants are free to sell their produce either to the union or to a private firm. However, the union leaves plenty of scope for the co-operatives (where they exist), at any rate as far as collection is concerned. With regard to Cape peas, however, the Government provisionally decided in 1964 that because of the very special circumstances the unions should enjoy a marketing monopoly. At present, the communal unions are essentially concerned with production. The Morondava union, which founded the movement, moved in this direction after acquiring three tractors to plough up virgin land (for distribution among the peasants), and possibly to plough land already being worked by other peasants. The people who would derive benefits from such operations were expected to pay a fee in kind when the harvest had been brought in, to cover costs. At the same time, the union supplied the peasants with seed and fertiliser. Hence we may legitimately say that these activities were fully integrated. This is the kind of system which is being extended today, the more so in that the State has decided to make 68 tractors available to the unions, being of the opinion that this is an effective way of boosting production (especially as far as groundnuts are concerned). For the time being, the third initial objective, i.e. processing, is not receiving any attention. It is the union committees or boards which decide what operations should be undertaken, but to their meetings they invite all the officials and other persons who might give them technical or administrative advice (persons from the Ministries of Agriculture, the Interior, and Co-operation, and from the Madagascan National Development Bank). The boards work hand-in-hand with officials from the Ministry of the Interior, since the heads of cantons (administrative officials who act as tax-collectors) help in managing funds and recovering amounts owed. Furthermore, each board enjoys the services of a managerial staff, including a director. A modus vivendi has been reached whereby the communal unions and cooperatives can collaborate without competing. Areas of competence have been defined and it has been decided that the unions shall assist the co-operatives with regard to transport. At present, the unions market the produce assembled by the co-operatives, and in future, the co-operative industries will process the produce collected by the unions. As regards vocational training, the unions are above all concerned with the training of the persons who will be responsible for their fleet of lorries and tractors (such persons are given a course in Tananarive). They are then expected to train drivers and mechanics. As was the case with the AIRs, the rapid development of the communal unions is hindered by certain obstacles. They have no little difficulty, for 399 Agricultural organisations and development example, in finding competent directors able to manage their affairs efficiently. Hence some unions, as a temporary measure, have recruited persons acting as economic advisers to the prefects. Moreover, the unions find it hard to borrow the necessary money, for the Madagascan National Development Bank demands trustworthy guarantees, especially before offering marketing credits. Private industry, too, has reservations about them. All these factors combined help to make life more difficult for the unions. At the time of the present survey the Madagascan communal unions had not yet formed a federation, but they may well do so soon, once they have struck lasting roots in the countryside. Workers' unions African agricultural workers' unions are lagging behind the general and employers' organisations and, as we shall now see, they are concentrated in the plantation areas, except in North Africa.1 Some of them go back to colonial times; others are were created recently, when the countries in question became independent. Tunisia In this country, there is but one trade union organisation: the Federation of Land Workers, which belongs to the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT). The federation was created in 1954, but the trade union movement really goes back to 1946, at which time the agricultural workers were beginning to set up unions on every farm and managed to secure representation in the UGTT regional unions. In 1966, the Federation of Land Workers had 19,500 fee-paying members, of whom 16,500 were in permanent employment and 3,000 were casual labourers. These numbers are not large, but it seems that trade union claims receive the backing of workers far more numerous than the fee-paying unionists. The federation is chiefly concerned with bargaining on wages and conditions of employment, but it also makes claims in other fields, for example : — social welfare : improvements in housing and hygiene, creation of elementary and vocational schools, catering for leisure time by setting up rest homes for agricultural workers; — redistribution of land: the federation is against the system whereby big colonial estates are leased by traders or Tunisian landed proprietors; — abolition of the share-cropper's traditional status : this is in fact much lower than that of the permanently employed worker. 1 In North Africa, every country has its workers' unions, except Libya. In the absence of answers from Morocco and Algeria, we shall unfortunately have to limit ourselves to the position in Tunisia and the United Arab Republic. 400 Africa There are in Tunisia three joint organisations in which the federation's representatives can bargain about wages and conditions of employment with representatives of the Government and employers. The first was founded by decree in April 1937; it is the Conciliation Committee, the task of which is to settle disputes between employers and workers. The second is the Agricultural Labour Committee, established by decree on 13 April 1956 to lay down standards for agricultural labour in each administrative district or governorate. This committee, presided over by the governor of the district, comprises three workers' representatives, three employers' representatives, an agricultural engineer and a labour inspector. The third joint organisation is the Conseil de prud'hommes (a kind of arbitration board). As the federation sees it, these joint organs did not begin to work properly until 1961. Since then, however, the joint organs have not only brought about a great improvement in farm management (farmers are now obliged to keep at least rudimentary books), but have also contributed to the establishment of more cordial social relations between employers and workers, both parties having acquired more civic sense. The federation is accordingly satisfied with these organs, as it is with current general legislation, which puts no obstacles in its path. On the other hand, there are still social and economic hurdles to be overcome. Workers are scattered, seasonal manpower is unstable, and illiteracy and malnutrition are widespread. All these things hamper trade unionism. Another problem seems to be that social welfare legislation is not applied by certain owners of large estates. In addition to participating in the work of these joint bodies, the federation is represented, at the national level, on the Economic and Social Council. Locally and regionally, it occupies seats on the regional planning bodies and on the Co-ordination Committee (the regional organisation of the Destour Socialist Party). In all these organs, the federation's representative enjoys exactly the same rights as the other members. The following examples may be given of improvements which are attributable, at least in part, to the federation : — wages and employment security: in 1956, a law was enacted whereby the agricultural labourers were granted a wage increase, plus bonuses for seniority and technical qualifications. Workers in permanent employment were given greater security by regulations governing the employer's right of dismissal; — housing and clothes: the federation has succeeded in inducing the employers to make a contribution towards the improvement of workers' housing, and to supply the permanent worker (since 1963) with one set of work clothes a year; — social security: on the large estates managed by the State, the agricultural 401 Agricultural organisations and development workers have won certain advantages (the federation does not specify what they are); — occupation of land: the contracts governing the traditional system of sharecropping have in part been done away with and replaced by a system of wage-earning employment; — workers' education: periodical trade union meetings and meetings of joint committees are held to provide members with instruction in civics and in trade union affairs; — the campaign against illiteracy: the federation has secured the creation of several centres at which the combat against illiteracy in the countryside is carried on; — rural hygiene: thanks to the federation's persistence, there has been an increase in the number of dispensaries, social welfare assistants and female rural community leaders. The Federation of Land Workers, since its creation in 1954, has belonged to the Tunisian General Labour Union, which in its turn belongs to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). United Arab Republic We have very little information about agricultural trade unions in this country. Agricultural trade unionism is a recent phenomenon resulting from the agrarian reform programme. It was Legislative Decree No. 178 (1952) on land reform which for the first time in the history of Egypt authorised the Egyptian agricultural labourer to form unions to defend his interests (article 39). However, workers' unions did not begin to spring up in any numbers until after the enactment of Law No. 91 (1959), promulgating the Labour Code.1 This was amended by Presidential Decree No. 62 (21 March 1964).2 This decree gives specific details on the part which the unions are expected to play. Among the amendments made therein to Act No. 91 (membership and duties of the executive committee of the union, percentage of takings which the union can use to cover administrative expenses, and so on), there is one of some importance: article 174, paragraph 3, of Book IV of the 1959 Labour Code had expressly forbidden the unions to concern themselves with religious or political matters. In article 175 of the new decree (replacing the old article 174) there is no mention of this prohibition. In the United Arab Republic there is a General Federation of Workers and 27 general trade unions, one of these being for agricultural workers and representing all the trade union committees in undertakings. Under current 1 ILO: Legislative Series, 1959—U.A.R. 1. »ibid., 1964—U.A.R.1. 402 Africa legislation, the workers cannot set up more than one general union per trade or occupation, nor create more than one trade union committee per undertaking, town or village. The delegates of the trade union committees constitute the assembly of the general union, which appoints its executive committee. Section 169 of Presidential Decree No. 62, on the operation of this pyramidal structure, reads as follows: (a) A trade union committee shall be set up for the workers in a given establishment if at least fifty workers in that establishment ask to join such committee. Workers engaged in the same trade or craft, or trades or crafts that are similar or related, who are engaged in the same branch of production anywhere other than in an establishment where permission has been given for a trade union committee to be set up, may form a trade union committee if at least fifty workers ask to join such committee. Agricultural workers and persons treated as such under an order to be made by the Minister of Labour may form village trade union committees if at least thirty workers in any one village ask to join such committee. A trade union committee as described in the preceding paragraph may be set up for workers in more than one village, within the competence of one village council, if at least fifty persons ask to join such committee. (¿>) The general meeting of the general trade union shall be composed of delegates of the trade union committees referred to in clause (a), in a manner to be prescribed by order of the Minister of Labour. Where necessary a general union may set up regional trade unions in governorates where there are at least ten of its constituent trade union committees. The trade union rules shall specify the rules and competence of the regional trade unions, the conditions applying to them and their administrative organisation. The Ministry of Labour's annual report for 1964-65 shows that there were at that time 4,089 agricultural trade union committees, with, all in all, 367,155 members. Unhappily, the absence of detailed information about the way these unions work makes it impossible to say to what extent they are playing a decisive part in the economic and social development of the Egyptian countryside. According to Adel Ahmed Hashish: These unions have hitherto existed chiefly on paper. Their members represent no more than a small minority of all wage earners (368,037 out of more than 3 million agricultural workers in 1966). Indifference towards these unions is universal. The absence of trade union leaders . . . and of suitable administrative buildings, together with the attitude towards trade unionism of those operating medium-sized and large farms, means that the unions are still a long way from being able to play their part in any tangible fashion.1 Sudan As far as agricultural trade unions are concerned, this country offers some surprising features. According to information supplied by the Department of Labour, members of the Sudanese unions are not, in fact, directly 1 Hashish, op. cit., p. 361. 403 Agricultural organisations and development engaged in agriculture. Their job is rather to maintain the irrigation canals and other services supplied by the owners of the irrigation undertakings (whether these latter be official councils or the private holders of concessions). When this inquiry was launched, there were no more than six unions, all of them created in 1966 and hence all of them newcomers: Trade union Union of the Managil and Gezira Consortium Union of the White Nile Works Council Union of Workers and Employees of the Private Consortium of the Blue Nile Union of Cotton Ginners of the National Agricultural Consortium (Private) of the White Nile Union of Workers of the Shashina Agricultural Undertaking Union of Workers of the Elgadab Agricultural Undertaking Total membership When registered Membership 16 February 1966 4 June 1966 138 52 25 February 1966 87 15 May 1966 9 June 1966 21 June 1966 104 39 161 581 The first two unions comprise the personnel of official undertakings, while the others have as members the staff of private concerns; in all likelihood these unions act in the usual way. Since they are of such very recent creation, no information could be supplied about their claims or the obstacles lying in their path. However, a glance at recent legislation seems to show that at any rate the law does adequately safeguard their activities. Act No. 16 (1966)1 forbids an employer to "dismiss or to alter in any manner the position of a worker as a prejudice for trade union activities; . . . intervene directly or indirectly in the activity or administration of any trade union with the purpose of undermining the solidarity of the trade union". Moreover, the Act provides for arbitration machinery in the event of labour disputes.2 This should enable to unions to play their normal part. Malawi Except in the case of the Malagasy Republic, which we shall examine last of all, the other workers' organisations which answered the author's inquiries all exist in countries where plantation agriculture predominates— countries as yet little affected by agrarian reform programmes. Often enough the age of an organisation has nothing to do with its size. This is so in Malawi, where the Plantation and Agricultural Workers' Union, although founded as 1 Act No. 16 (1966) concerning the regulation of labour disputes; see ILO: Legislative Series, 1966—Sud. 1. 2 ibid., Part II, articles 11-29. 404 Africa long ago as 1900, had only 205 fee-paying members in 1966. AH of them, except for a handful of seasonal labourers, were workers permanently employed. This particular union is chiefly concerned with bargaining about wages, working hours, and general conditions of employment. Should a dispute with the employers arise, the union can take its case to a joint body, the Tea Industry Wages Advisory Council, and with this it appears to be satisfied. The chief obstacles it encounters are, it would seem, the instability of seasonal labour, illiteracy, and pressure from the big landed proprietors. So far its successes have been limited: apart from stating that it has obtained some improvement in wages and conditions of employment, it answered all the author's other questions—about housing, social security, share-cropping, tenant farming, workers' education and rural hygiene—in the negative. In the other countries where plantation agriculture is of considerable importance, trade unionism began much later than in Malawi. Yet, although it encounters similar obstacles, it seems to have made much greater inroads into the labour force of the various undertakings and for that reason to carry a good deal more weight. Mauritius In Mauritius, for example, where agriculture is almost wholly dominated by the sugar-growing industry, the chief unions are the Plantation Workers' Union, founded in 1940, and the Agricultural and Other Workers' Union, founded in 1950. The first of these had 17,500 members in 1966, a figure well in excess of the 12,000 declared in 1961 (at that time roughly 20 per cent of all the manpower employed in the sugar industry). The second has 14,000 members, of whom 12,200 are fee-paying. In both organisations the members are nearly all workers permanently employed, but while there are very few casual workers in the Agricultural and Other Workers' Union, they constitute 20 per cent of the membership of the Plantation Workers' Union. Although some tenant farmers and share-croppers belong to the Agricultural and Other Workers' Union, they are not usually organised; however, both organisations claim to support them. Both organisations are chiefly concerned with improvements in wages and conditions of employment and housing, with ensuring greater employment stability, and with improving current social welfare legislation. When the author's inquiry was made, both unions were calling for land reform and for appropriate legislation concerning tenant farmers and share-croppers (who hardly ever work under a contract); this was just before the island became independent. No doubt these claims have more chance today of being met. Despite certain difficulties, due to political pressure from the big landowners, to insecurity of employment and to illiteracy, and despite the legisla405 Agricultural organisations and development tion in force (which these unions consider unjust), some progress has been made, notably as regards the workers' housing on plantations, which has been considerably improved. The same holds good of hospitals and hygiene in general. On the other hand, hygiene in the countryside still leaves a good deal to be desired, and in this respect the Plantation Workers' Union feels, and perhaps rightly so, that the development of agricultural trade unionism will lead to considerable improvements. The unions have managed to obtain a guaranteed minimum wage for workers, male and female, and an end-of-year bonus equivalent to 20.8 per cent of the annual wage of a permanent worker, and to 5.2 per cent of the wage of a day-labourer. Besides which, women enjoy a maternity allowance together with free milk supplies during the three months following a birth. Lastly, the Plantation Workers' Union says that thanks to its persistence, workers present during 80 per cent of the harvest period are now engaged full-time. The settlement of labour disputes is in principle entrusted to a standing committee which is supposed to consider such matters "on a joint basis". But the Plantation Workers' Union feels that the employers frequently proceed in a high-handed way, changing working standards without any reference to the unions, with the result that healthy employer-worker relations within the undertaking are impossible. The two unions are represented on various bodies, such as the Labour Advisory Board, the Sugar Industry Workers' Fund (which grants scholarships to workers' children), the Employment Committee and the Economic Development Council. But here again, the unions are none too happy. According to the Plantation Workers' Union, the trade union representatives are considered inferior to those of the Government and employers, and often faced with a fait accompli. The two unions cope, to the best of their ability, with workers' education, but their lack of funds has prevented them from achieving a great deal. Incidentally, lack of money is commonly encountered among African trade unions, and is due to the difficulty often encountered in getting members to pay their union dues. The Agricultural and Other Workers' Union confirms this, emphasising that it is very hard to organise a powerful trade union among the rural workers, chiefly because of malnutrition, illiteracy, and the fact that the workers are quite unable to pay their dues. The Plantation Workers' Union is a member of the Mauritius Labour Congress, which was founded in 1960 by 26 major unions, representing some 83 per cent of organised workers. It belongs to the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers. The Agricultural and Other Workers' Union has been a member of the Mauritius Labour Federation since 1960. It belongs to the World Federation of Trade Unions. 406 Africa Cameroon, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, Zambia Five other trade unions for plantation workers answered the author's inquiries: the Union of Believing Trade Unions (Cameroon), founded in 1960, the Workers' Union (Nigeria), founded in 1953 but not registered until 1955, the Agricultural and Plantation Workers' Trade Union (Somalia), established in 1959, the National Union of Plantation and Agricultural Workers (Uganda), also created in 1959, and the National Union of Plantation and Agricultural Workers (Zambia), founded in 1962. Their membership (feepaying members) varies between 5,800 in Cameroon, 14,000 in Nigeria and Zambia, and 40,000 in Uganda. These figures, however, do not of course reflect the actual influence they wield. Thus, the Somali union says that its members include 65,000 workers and 33,500 tenant farmers, but adds that very few indeed pay their dues. The same holds good of the Zambian union, where the 14,000 fee-paying members are a low proportion indeed of the 70,000 nominal members. In none of the unions, except that of Somalia, are tenant farmers included among the members. All these unions negotiate, and make claims concerning, the same matters : wages and conditions of employment, security of employment, social security, paid holidays, promotion of elementary education, rural welfare, and so on. All except the Somali uoiun have joint bodies in which to put forward their claims; here, they and the employers are duly represented. These joint bodies have usually been set up by law; in Cameroon, for example, the Union of Believing Trade Unions occupies seats in the Supreme Labour Council, in the joint committees for discussion of collective agreements, and in the Supreme Occupational Injury Board. Sometimes, however, the joint bodies are voluntary and are not provided for by law, as in the case of Uganda. Furthermore, the workers' unions (except those of Somalia and Zambia) are represented, permanently or from time to time, and generally in an advisory capacity, in a number of official institutions. Thus, the Union of Believing Trade Unions of Cameroon was invited to sit on governmental planning committees during preparations for the second Five-Year Plan. The Nigerian Workers' Union is permanently represented in the National Provident Board and the Manpower Advisory Council, in which it enjoys advisory status. On the other hand, the National Union of Plantation and Agricultural Workers of Uganda says that it has rarely received an invitation to be represented in government organs, except in connexion with the current Five-Year Plan, on which occasion it was able to air its views on conditions of employment and the planning of manpower requirements on plantations. All five unions encounter much the same kind of problem, which are very typical of the social and economic difficulties confronting plantation workers. All the answers received speak constantly of the instability of seasonal employ407 Agricultural organisations and development ment, general insecurity of employment, illiteracy, malnutrition, and the absence of union leaders. These grave problems seem to be common to all plantations ; in addition to these, each union has to contend with problems peculiar to its country. Thus, in Somalia, there is no full corpus of agricultural labour legislation; in Nigeria, there is no legislation governing guaranteed minimum wages ; in Uganda, people come from neighbouring countries for seasonal work and drift away again when their contracts expire, which makes trade union activities very difficult. Generally, however, all five unions claim certain successes, despite these obstacles—successes usually obtained within joint bodies. All answers quote wage increases, and the Uganda union claims that the increase in that country has been of the order of 95.7 per cent, in comparison with the level of wages before the union existed. This same union has managed to secure for the workers an annual paid holiday of between 14 and 21 days—something previously unheard of in certain plantations. Somalia, Zambia and Cameroon report improvements in job security. Cameroon does, however, say that these have occurred in all branches of activity (except in the civil service). These unions are also concerned with workers' education and improvements in housing and hygiene, but when these matters occur in their replies, there is usually a reference to the fact that the unions cannot afford to be very busy in such fields. They have little or nothing to say about social security. The Cameroonian union is a member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and the Nigerian, Ugandan and Zambian ones belong to the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers. The Somali union does not say whether it belongs to any regional or international organisation. Malagasy Republic Lastly, we shall take up the case of Madagascar, where the trade union situation is a somewhat peculiar and complicated one. There are in fact a number of workers' trade union federations in this country, but they comprise local unions the members of which have widely varying occupations (for example, they may be civil servants, employees or peasants), unions within undertakings (their membership may comprise both factory and agricultural workers) and, finally, unions of farmers. This is because, since 1800, all land in Madagascar has been considered to belong to the State, the peasants enjoying usufructuary rights over the plots they farm. However, during the period of French administration certain concessions were offered; these, as a rule, covered virgin land which was to be brought under the plough. But such concessions were few in number. Furthermore, since Madagascar became independent, some of them have been 408 Africa acquired by the State and the land apportioned among the peasantry. The result is that there are in fact very few agricultural wage earners. Labour statistics provide the following figures for "agriculture, forestry and fishing": 1,237 employers, 42,000 male and 8,000 female employees, as against 2.8 million independent peasants. Employers and employees are concentrated in the agricultural industries and in forestry. The agricultural wage earners are almost all employed by four sugar concerns, two sisal plantations, a few tobacco plantations and a few starch works which process manioc from their concessions. As to the self-employed, they include no tenant farmers, although there are a few share-croppers on concessions (the Marovoay paddy-fields) and on land belonging to, but no longer cultivated by, persons who have abandoned them and moved to the towns (this is true of certain civil servants, especially in Tananarive). These share-croppers are not organised in unions; no Madagascan landowner has more than one or two, and he usually enjoys a fair amount of prestige. On rice concessions they usually tend to create rural tenants' co-operatives, with a view to buying the land on which they are working. The two main federations are the Christian Federation of Trade Unions of Madagascar (CCSM), which is a member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and the Madagascan Workers' Confederation (Fikambanana Mpiasa Malagasy—FMM), also a member of the ICFTU. A reference might also be made to FISEMA, a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions. But it has no farmers' or peasants' unions—merely mixed unions embracing a few rural workers. Hence we shall confine our examination to the first two organisations mentioned above. As far as agricultural workers are concerned, the CCSM has but one union: the SOSUMAV union, whose members are workers employed in sugar refineries and agricultural labourers employed on sugar-cane plantations. The same is true, on a larger scale, of the FMM. Most of the members of the CCSM are independent peasants and farmers. Within the CCSM, they created (in 1936) a National Christian Federation of Madagascan Farmers and Stock-Breeders. By 1946 membership of this federation had grown to 39,000, but the national rebellion broke out in 1947, and was put down in the countryside with a vigour which dissuaded the peasantry from trade union action. In 1963, the federation had to some extent made good the ground lost; at that time, it had more than 26,000 members in 60 local unions. But when the author's inquiries were being made, and for some unknown reason, there were no more than 19 unions at all active, and fee-paying members were very few. The federation does its best to improve the lot of the country-dweller, to improve production, to ensure economic development, to combat illiteracy, 409 Agricultural organisations and development and to train agricultural leaders. It tries to have State lands allotted to the peasantry and to ensure that the social security system (occupational injury and family allowances) is extended to the farmer. It is also anxious that there should be independent chambers of agriculture, for existing chambers deal at one and the same time with trade, industry and agriculture. There is no serious legislative barrier to trade union activities. The chief obstacles to social and economic change are illiteracy and lack of training for trade union officials. The federation is represented in no official organ, which is somewhat rare in an African country. It does, however, feel that thanks to the pressure it has exerted some little progress has been made in agricultural training and elementary education. At the international level, as a member of CCSM it belongs in turn to the ICFTU. At the time of the author's inquiries, it was considering whether to join the International Federation of Agricultural Producers as well. The Madagascan Workers' Confederation (FMM) is the old CTMC (Confederation of Workers of Madagascar and the Comores) in a new guise. Three kinds of agricultural association are represented therein : — works unions, in which factory workers and permanent agricultural workers are represented. In 1966, there were three unions in three big sugar companies, all three being founded in the last thirty years, plus two unions which were being built up in the sisal plantations ; — local unions with a very mixed membership (civil servants, domestic servants, clerks, farmers—one in Ambatondrazaka and one in Mananjary), plus a few share-croppers ; — farmers' societies, by far the most important from the country-dweller's point of view. The farmers' societies were set up in 1958 in eight Madagascan towns (Tananarive, Antsirabe, Antalaha, Farafangana, Nossi-Be, Ambaja, Ambatondrazaka, and Tamatave). There were then 300 of them, with a membership of some 80,000 peasants, 10,000 of whom paid fees. In each of the country's five main areas, the societies had formed unions, the five unions and the independent societies forming a National Federation of Planters, Agricultural and Allied Workers. Despite this title, members were in fact only farm operators. These unions then set up co-operatives (one per union) for the marketing of produce. But they were very badly run and collapsed in ruin, leaving huge debts unpaid. Further to this experience, unions and societies were put, as it were, into suspended animation in 1962-63, and the co-operatives were wound up. The only survivors—and then in truncated form—were the 410 Africa Antalaha societies. At the time of the author's inquiries, they were attempting to start up again, and had between 5,000 and 6,000 members. However, the movement as a whole has re-emerged, for at the end of 1965 and early in 1966, five new organisations had just been set up, and others were being created. These three kinds of association represented within the FMM are active in various ways on behalf of their members. The works or undertaking unions deal with conditions of employment (wages, hours, security, etc.) and try to induce employers to provide individual allotments for the growing of food crops by workers. The local unions submit claims concerning economic development, rural welfare, the defence of peasants' interests, the distribution of State lands and the campaign against illiteracy. Lastly, the farmers' societies are active in the same way as the local unions, and go in for produce collection and marketing as well. The FMM associations encounter no legal obstacles. Indeed, they enjoy governmental backing and assistance. They are chiefly hindered, as are the CCSM unions, by rural illiteracy and the absence of trained trade union officers. Other obstacles are the absence of joint bodies and the fact that there is no representation in official organs (although, exceptionally, the farmers' societies are represented in the "rice committees" set up by the Ministry of Agriculture). For the time being, however, it does not seem as though any major problems arise; the farmers' societies have no claims to make against the employers, since they themselves have a membership restricted to the self-employed peasantfarmer, and as regards representation, they do seem to have access to the authorities. Nevertheless, the fact remains that they want the chambers of agriculture to be quite distinct from the chambers of commerce, and they want to be represented therein. The works unions do not seem to suffer a great deal from the absence of joint bodies. They settle their problems by direct bargaining with the employers. The information available seems to show that they have fairly considerable successes to their credit, especially as regards conditions of employment and the provision of individual allotments for food crops. It should be mentioned that the National Federation of Planters, Agricultural and Allied Workers, set up by these associations (see above), ceased to operate in 1962. Pending the creation of some new body, all the associations are members of the FMM, which represents them in the ICFTU. Chambers of agriculture Some African countries have chambers of agriculture or mixed chambers in which trade and industry are represented also. But the author was quite 411 Agricultural organisations and development unable to obtain information about all existing chambers. Nineteen countries failed to answer the questionnaires sent out; it may well be that chambers of agriculture exist in some of them. Others, such as Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the United Arab Republic answered the questions put to them in the negative. Cameroon and Senegal answered positively, but their chambers supplied no information about how they work. Lastly, three other countries— Central African Republic, Mauritius and Madagascar—answered the questionnaires sent to them. Central African Republic The chamber of agriculture in this country was set up in 1965 to defend the interests of peasants, farmers, hunters, fishermen and stock-breeders. Within the chamber, there is one representative per sector and per prefecture (i.e. thirty in all), five persons being elected in the assembly to constitute the officers of the chamber. In fact, this youthful organisation is still subject to close supervision by the Ministry of Development, which lends it offices and makes one of its officials available to direct the chamber's general secretariat. Besides which, its financial problems are solved by subsidies from the national budget (20 million CFA francs a year). On 13 December 1966, when the chamber answered this inquiry, it was considering whether to build stores, over and above its office buildings, together with a plant for grading and processing coffee beans at Bangui. It seems, then, as though the chamber was still at an early stage of development. Created by the authorities, there is no doubt that the chamber is bound to play an increasingly important part, for, apart from the Coffee-Planters' Association mentioned above (p. 389), there is no other general or syndical organisation to defend the small farmer or agricultural worker. Hence for its members it offers a convenient channel through which to submit their claims to the authorities, pending the creation of other bodies to meet more specific needs. Mauritius The Mauritius Chamber of Agriculture is perhaps the most ancient in all Africa, going back as it does to 1853. Its aim is to protect and promote the interests of the agricultural and allied industries. It helps in drawing up agricultural policy by collaborating closely with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Economic Planning Bureau, and the advisory committees responsible for economic and social matters. In some of these organs, it has the vote and hence can influence the decisions taken. In general, however, it is merely called upon to offer advice. 412 Africa The chamber is a strictly representative association of agricultural producers, and hence only the following can become members: owners of plantations and agricultural industries, associations of planters or farmers, and co-operative federations. Workers' and employers' associations are not represented therein. Scrutiny of the chamber's annual reports 1 shows that it is chiefly concerned with production, prices, and modernisation of cropping methods—with particular reference to the sugar industry—leaving rural welfare activities to other bodies. But it receives no official subsidy, and can operate only in so far as its members' contributions allow it to do so. It is, accordingly, not so much a chamber of agriculture in the European sense of the term, as a technical body which restricts itself to the commercial and occupational interests of its members. The Mauritius Chamber of Agriculture belongs to no organisation of a regional or international kind. Malagasy Republic The position in Madagascar is quite different, for here there are twelve chambers of commerce, industry and agriculture, dating back to 1928. They were first reorganised in 1938, then in 1958, by virtue of Order No. 14-CG (8 January 1958), article 1 of which describes their duties thus: Chambers of commerce, industry and agriculture are public bodies and legal entities in their own right. Their duties shall be as follows: 1. Officially to represent commercial, industrial, agricultural and mining interests vis-à-vis the local authorities; 2. To provide the authorities with advice and information on commercial, industrial, agricultural and mining questions, when asked to do so; 3. To submit their views and comments on the state of commerce, industry, and agriculture, and on ways and means whereby their prosperity might be increased; 4. To take part in economic investigations, to study possible outlets for Madagascan exports, and to prepare for participation in local and metropolitan exhibitions. These chambers may be asked for advice when changes in fiscal legislation are envisaged, and requested to give their views on matters concerning the monetary system. Article 3 of this same Order runs thus: The chambers mentioned in article 1 above may found and run establishments for use in commerce, mdustry or agriculture, such as general stores, depots, insurance companies, friendly societies, laboratories, experimental stations, and so on. They may be empowered to run similar establishments created by the Territory, the communes, or other authorities. 1 See, for example, Mauritius Chamber of Agriculture: President's Report for the Year 1959-60 (Port Louis, n.d.). 413 Agricultural organisations and development In fact, these chambers are active in many ways as far as agriculture and rural welfare are concerned. Their activities fall under the following headings: — improvement of agricultural production by distribution of seed and insecticides; award of prizes and diplomas at fairs and exhibitions; extension work and propaganda (anti-rat campaigns, campaigns against bush fires, etc.); lease of agricultural tractors; — improvement in stock-breeding by delivery of selected pullets and piglets (either by sale, or by straight exchange for animals reared in the traditional manner); creation of centres for the stocking of pools, lakes, streams, and so on, with young fish; free distribution of equipment for castrating and vaccinating cattle); — participation in the International Rice Year; — participation in the Freedom from Hunger Campaign; — co-operation in forming teams of female nutritional advisers; — participation in the work of the Central Dairy Agency; — contacts with the authorities in connexion with matters such as the distribution of agricultural produce and animals, waterworks for agricultural purposes, and so on. Each chamber has afixednumber of persons representing agriculture, commerce and industry. Thus, the Tananarive chamber has 20 agricultural members out of a total membership of 50. In other chambers, farmers' representatives are heavily predominant. The agricultural members are elected every six years by an electoral college made up of: — owners or concessionnaires of landed property, tenants or managers of estates subject to estate tax, and directors of agricultural associations, stock-breeders or proprietors of stud animals, provided the persons concerned have a farm or estate of a size determined by a very complicated points system (ten points are required; an acre under rice or coffee is equivalent to one point; possession of one milch cow, five pigs, etc., entitles a man to one point); — members of the executive organs of rural development mutual benefit societies and agricultural production co-operatives. Any elector is eligible, provided he is at least 30 years of age. Agricultural associations and unions are not specifically represented in the chambers. Moreover, a chamber holds plenary meetings only; there are no meetings devoted specially to agricultural, commercial or industrial problems. However, the work of the plenary meetings is prepared in advance by specialised committees, one of which deals with agricultural problems. 414 Africa Chambers and authorities work closely together. Provincial governors and prefects can—and often do—attend any meeting. The chambers can likewise summon and give a hearing to any official in their particular area, provided the provincial governor agrees (Order No. 14-CG, article 47). They draw up motions which are referred to the provincial governor or to the Government. Frequently, too, they approach the local departments of agriculture, public works, and so on to defend the farming interest and to secure application of regulations (regarding health and other matters) affecting agriculture and stock-breeding. Furthermore, the chambers work closely with the government departments responsible for agriculture and stock-breeding with an eye to improving production and boosting agricultural propaganda and extension work. For example, the competent authorities supply the selected stock and give advice on the purchase of seed or insecticide, on the campaign against natural pests such as rats, and on what quantities of equipment should be distributed to particular areas. This close co-operation has proved most profitable to all concerned. The authorities help, first of all, by facilitating the acquisition of funds. Apart from the income they derive from the management of certain undertakings or establishments (such as storage plants for agricultural produce, coffee-bean de-husking plants, concessions for public services, and the like), the chambers draw most of their money from the system whereby additional centimes are added to the patente (an old French tax, whereby a merchant or tradesman pays a fee for a licence to do business). Incidentally, this tax affects only businessmen and tradespeople. The chambers may in certain circumstances receive subsidies or (with the Government's approval) contract loans for the purpose of erecting farm or other buildings or carrying out other improvements. There exists a National Federation of Chambers, the council of which is made up of two delegates from each of the twelve chambers. This federation drafts motions of a general kind which it submits to the Government. It belongs to no regional or international organisation. On the other hand, some chambers, notably that in Tananarive, do belong to the International Chamber of Commerce. CONCLUSIONS Our survey of African peasant society and of African agricultural problems has already to some extent answered the main questions which led the author to embark on this inquiry. What part do modern institutions play in the economic and social development of the countryside ? What difficulties bar the road to further growth by these institutions and their activities ? 415 Agricultural organisations and development Throughout the preceding pages, we have seen how enormously these problems vary from north to south of the Sahara. We have seen that within each region a distinction has to be made between traditional subsistence agriculture and the modern market-economy type of farming. The answers received from the African organisations show that whilst agriculture in some countries is making a general advance on all fronts, in others commercial agriculture is alone in having achieved any kind of progress. The North African countries (Libya excepted) which responded to our inquiries, plus Madagascar, fall into the first category. With some variations, naturally, from country to country, the reforms undertaken affect commercial farming and traditional agriculture alike, and generally speaking, in view of the fact that in most cases these countries have so recently become independent, the position may be described as reasonably satisfactory. Trade unionism is spreading little by little in the countryside and effective action has been taken to ensure that it is adequately represented within those national bodies which decide on agricultural policy. Apart from trade unionism, the co-operative movement, hitherto reserved almost exclusively for Europeans, is gradually spreading among the peasantry. Certainly, the reforms undertaken have sometimes caused a fall in production but this phenomenon, which is well known to every country which has opted for radical change, should not long persist. It should not, in any event, be attributed to the kind of organisation introduced, but rather ascribed to inadequate co-ordination due to various causes (lack of trained officials, overlapping or poor distribution of duties, etc.). With practice, these difficulties should be overcome in the not too distant future. This having been said, case studies should be undertaken in the field in an effort to assess the difficulties being encountered by the new organisations (with especial reference to co-operatives), and with a view to devising systems which might be even better adapted to rural conditions in the countries concerned. In the countries south of the Sahara, the situation is much more complex. Generally speaking, agricultural organisations have emerged only in the plantations. Besides the effects of illiteracy and the lack of trained leaders (difficulties which, as we have seen, exist everywhere in Africa), the obstacles these organisations are meeting may be ascribed to the idiosyncrasies of plantation labour. Plantation agriculture, as is well known, relies on a labour force which is in part permanent and in part seasonal. Hence labour is exceedingly unstable and the workers themselves tend not to stay long in any one place; this, obviously, renders the expansion of trade unionism very difficult. To these obstacles many others may be added, such as the fact that workers may belong to a great variety of tribes, from one or from several countries (and sometimes rent by ancestral rivalries). Then these workers have one foot, as it were, 416 Africa in a market economy and the other in the tribal village, and are quite unused to trade union discipline ; and there are constant changes in attitude which render trade unionism extraordinarily difficult. Lastly, unions are all too often paralysed because the workers cannot pay their union dues. Lacking money, the unions are unable to tackle in any serious fashion the manifold problems of rural development. Nevertheless, despite all these handicaps, the answers received to the author's inquiries show that some measure of success has been achieved with regard to wages and general conditions of employment. Bearing in mind that most of the organisations in question sprang up just after the Second World War or were founded only in very recent years, after the countries concerned had achieved independence, their achievements are indeed praiseworthy. Whether the change of attitude has come about naturally, or as a result of pressure from governments or workers, the fact remains that the employers of today tackle rural problems in a manner very different from their approach before the war, and within their occupational organisations they frequently display an interest in social problems which would formerly have been quite inconceivable. This does not of course prevent them from looking after their own economic interests as well. It is true also that the employers' organisations are usually better organised, more powerful and better represented visà-vis the authorities than the workers' unions; African trade unionism being at a very early stage of development, this state of affairs is by no means surprising. As we saw early in this chapter, wage-earning labour (which is concentrated on the plantations) represents, south of the Sahara, a low percentage of the total agricultural population. The plantations themselves usually cover a small proportion only of the available land; hence, although economically important, they account for an inconsiderable proportion of the agricultural area and manpower, except in cases like that of Mauritius. Commercial agriculture, however, goes beyond the large and medium-sized plantation. There exists also a class of small farmers which is becoming ever more independent. It varies in size from one country to the other. Thus, while in the Ivory Coast and Liberia the big plantations play a decisive part in commercial agriculture, in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal the small farmer produces almost the entire export crop of palm-oil, groundnuts, cocoa and rubber. These small farmers are still very much part of the traditional tribal world, of which they maintain the outlook, and amongst them modernisation is a recent phenomenon. It is being backed by the governments concerned and directed by the appropriate organisations (SATEC in the Upper Volta, the Office of the Niger in Mali, SONADER in Dahomey, and so on); these bodies 417 Agricultural organisations and development fall outside the scope of the present inquiry.1 These farmers include a number of tenants and share-croppers who, with no organisation of their own, belong to a workers' union (as in Mauritius and Somalia), whenever the union is prepared to be their champion. Their interests are not necessarily the same as those of the wage earner—although they may in fact coincide at certain times of year. Hence it would be well to encourage the creation of simple pre-syndical and para-syndical organisations to cater for their special needs, especially in areas where these people do not come under any modernisation programme launched by the authorities. It is impossible at this stage to say how far the activities undertaken so far will induce all these people—independent farmers, share-croppers, tenants —to organise their own associations with some measure of independence, that is to say, more in accordance with the practice of the developed countries. For the time being, it would seem as though a measure of control from above is inevitable for a good few years to come, or at least until such time as a new generation of peasants, who will have abandoned traditional ways of thinking and be more accustomed to contemporary social and economic relationships, has struck roots in the African countryside. It will be useless to try to accelerate the process by introducing systems not adapted to local circumstances. This approach has been tried too often already. If we coerce the peasant into setting up occupational organisations based on the European model—organisations endowed with a degree of autonomy unrealistic in present circumstances—then the risk of disapointment will be high; in fact any such associations are likely to be even more resounding failures than were the orthodox co-operatives set up here and there without any adequate prior study of local tradition and local aptitudes. Experience counsels development in stages, from the simple to the more complex. An example of a simple semi-autonomous form of peasant organisation is afforded by the AIRs of Madagascar and Senegal, which seem to be very well adapted to their surroundings. The jobs they do (which are chiefly of an economic nature) could be supplemented by agricultural circles or farmers' clubs supervised by instructors who would be skilled in many disciplines and trained in community development techniques. There remains the traditional tribal milieu, that of subsistence agriculture. The numbers of people involved are very great, and so are the difficulties. Early in this chapter, we said that purely subsistence agriculture is becoming rarer and rarer, and we can in fact adopt for this sector the four stages outlined in 1961 by the International Economic Association, meeting in Addis 1 For a detailed analysis of such organisations, see Goussault, op. cit., and Gosselin, op. cit. 418 Africa Ababa 1 : (a) purely subsistence activities; (b) mainly subsistence but with some sales for cash; (c) largely or mainly commercial agriculture; (d) entirely commercial agriculture. Subsistence agriculture exists during the first two stages only; the third stage represents the phase of transition to a monetary economy. A good many countries, especially in western Africa, are in the transitional phase. As the move towards commercial agriculture proceeds, the contact with the monetary economy leads to far-reaching changes in the traditional forms of land tenure in favour of modern systems. But even in these countries, and especially far from the big centres of commerce, there remains a class of peasant for whom subsistence agriculture is the main activity; surpluses are sold only to meet supplementary needs. Many people are involved, and it is no easy matter to extend the benefits of progress to them. Traditional land-holding systems are still well entrenched, and any change in farming method demands a far-reaching change of attitude. Such changes of attitude cannot be imposed, and it is difficult to induce them from outside. This is the sector which—without any pejorative overtones—we may term "primitive". Here the future is a projection of the present, for the concept of growth and development is unknown. To aim at a different future, to modify the course of events, to overcome taboos, to reject ancestral fatalism, to want life to be different from what it has been in the past—all these seemingly "normal", indeed fundamentally human, attitudes result in fact from a conception of life intimately linked to the industrial civilisation. But rapid development of this sector is vital, since a buoyant growth of population is putting the relationship between mouths to feed and resources available to an ever increasing strain. Furthermore, whenever there is any contact at all between old and new, the young people nearly always prefer the new to the old and join the swelling ranks of those who drift towards town and city. Granted, there is no lack of programmes. Many are the schemes at present under way. In most cases, however, we venture to say that their character is quantitative rather than qualitative. The emphasis is on economic development alone, rather than on economic and social development combined. Now the number of trade unions and trade unionists, co-operatives and cooperative members is quite irrelevant if the local people fail to grasp—and accept—the functions of these new bodies. We have already seen something of the obstacles to change represented by customary systems of land tenure and by the African peasant's habits and superstitions. All the authorities we have quoted are united on one point: 1 United Nations, ECAFE: Economic Survey of Africa (Addis Ababa, 1966; Sales No.: 66.II.K.3), Vol. I, p. 9. 419 Agricultural organisations and development that it is no use simply transposing European ideas and European systems in toto into the traditional environment. Whence the need to re-think these ideas and systems bearing in mind the potentialities of the local people. The criticisms made of co-operatives hold good of other organisations too, and hence it is of little use urging their creation in areas where they will achieve nothing. The future would seem to lie rather with rudimentary co-operatives and associations, to varying degrees independent or subject to supervision. But in every instance it is most important that account be taken not only of economic aspects, but also of social, psychological, cultural and religious factors. There is considerable interplay between all these elements, which can exert great influence (negative or positive) on the economic success of the operations undertaken. We must therefore think of rural development in a comprehensive way. We may if we wish allow certain institutions, after suitable adaptation, to maintain their distinguishing characteristics, or we may give them greater scope. A co-operative may restrict itself to its specific duties or take on others. But it must in any event be flanked by able men and multi-purpose organisations to support it and enable it, little by little, to effect a change in local habits and attitudes. What sort of organisations should be set up ? What sort of training should be given to those who will have to direct them? To what extent should we enlist the help or interest of the local chieftains and headsmen ? Who are the people anxious for change, and hence likely to join the new organisations, and who are those likely to resist development? These are questions of the greatest importance, and the answers to them are extremely uncertain.1 All this by no means signifies, of course, that we must start afresh; many experiments are under way, some of them for some years past, and a systematic investigation of their failures and successes would supply some useful lessons of which advantage could be taken in evolving integrated programmes of development. At present, we are still finding our way; such a procedure would save both time and money. The task, no matter how arduous it may be, is by no means impossible. If we can complete it successfully, we shall rediscover Africa. And, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter, such a rediscovery is absolutely essential if all aspects of the continent's development are to be accelerated. 1 As regards such questions, see Herbert H. Hyman, Gene N. Levine, and Charles R. Wright: Inducing Social Change in Developing Communities: An International Survey of Expert Advice (Geneva, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1967). 420 PART V ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST D INTRODUCTION Of the five parts of the world considered in the present inquiry, Asia and the Middle East is the most complex and the most heterogeneous region and the one in which the problems of under-development exist in perhaps their most acute form. All the economic and social data show that in some of these countries people are living at a level so abysmally low that it can scarcely qualify as "subsistence". The all-round economic development of these countries —let alone the development of specific sectors of the economy—is thereby considerably hampered. In 1950, the population of Asia stood at some 1,370 million; by 1965, the figure was 1,895 million. It is in Asia that population per acre of cultivable land is at its most dense: in the area covered by the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) (i.e. excluding the Soviet Union and the countries to the west of Iran), there are some 1,040 persons per square mile of arable land, as against less than 780 in Europe. In the continent as a whole, as will be seen from table 18 below, the amount of farmland per rural inhabitant varies between 0.14 and 2.26 hectares (1 hectare == 2.471 acres). This would matter less if agricultural yields generally reached an acceptable level. Unhappily, however, a paradoxical situation has arisen in that whereas Japan, with only five-eighths of an acre per head, has no cause to fear food shortages, India, with nearly twice as much per head, is frequently ravaged by serious famines. This state of affairs reveals, albeit in a summary fashion, how broad is the gap separating development from underdevelopment. The population of the continent is expanding at a steady 2 per cent per annum. Unfortunately, however, agricultural output and agricultural employment, which should be expanding even faster if there is to be a rise in standards of living, are not keeping pace with this demographic explosion, with the result that the masses of young people coming on the labour market every year are 423 Agricultural organisations and development Table 18. Country Socio-economic data for countries in Asia and the Middle East (with special Share National per capita of agriculture income in 1965 in gross (US$) domestic product (%) Afghanistan 47 (1958) _ Burma 56 (1964) 33 (1964) Cambodia 112 41 (1963) Ceylon 130 43 (1965) China (Taiwan) 185 26 (1965) Cyprus 623 — 86 India 51 (1964) Indonesia 85 56 (1959) Iran 211 31 (1965) Iraq 193 (1964) 16 (1963) Israel 1067 9 (1965) Japan 696 12 (1965) Jordan 179 (1964) 25 (1964) 88 41 (1965) Korea (Rep. of) Lebanon 204 (1964) 18 (1964) 250 30 (1964) Malaysia 89 (1964) 48 (1964) Pakistan 219 34 (1965) Philippines 156 37 (1964) Syria 105 (1963) 33 (1965) Thailand 244 36 (1965) Turkey 113 32 (1964) Viet-Nam (Rep. of) Active agricultural population in 1965 (% of total active population) Estimated farmland per rural inhabitant in 1965 (in hectares *) 87 62 80 54 47 39 70 66 57 50 12 27 33 56 55 55 74 59 50 78 72 85 0.69 1.04 0.62 0.30 0.15 1.88 0.48 0.25 0.85 1.89 1.33 0.25 1.75 0.14 0.26 s 0.31 0.42 2.26 0.47 1.12 0.21 Index of per capita food production in 1965 (1952-53 to 1956-57 = 100) _ 109 — 100 114 152 97 89 108 90 168 119 — 147 — 119 103 96 94 108 99 — 1 1 hectare = 2.471 acres; 1 gram = 0.035 oz. "Data for infant mortality have been provided by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, except those for Indonesia, Iraq and Korea (United Nations: Demographic Yearbook, 1964) and those for Lebanon (supplied by IRFED, Paris). ' Malaya: 0.62 (1957), Sabah: 0.41 (1961), Sarawak: 4.71 (1961). * Estimates. not being absorbed. It has been estimated that between 1960 and 1980 the active population of the Asian countries as a whole will have increased by well over 300 million.1 Therefore the same number of new jobs will have to be provided—not to speak of the additional jobs required to absorb those now unemployed or under-employed.2 Now it is not very likely that industrialisation will be able to face up to this demand, especially as the development of industry inevitably calls for an expansion of national markets, in which the rural population plays a dominant part. Hence agriculture remains Asia's gravest problem. 1 ILO, Fifth Asian Regional Conference, Melbourne, 1962, Report I: Report of the Director-General : Some Labour and Social Aspects of Economic Development (Geneva, 1962), pp. 42-43. 2 An assessment of unemployment in seven Asian countries early in the 1960s gave rates of between 5 and 12 per cent. For under-employment (often, in fact, unemployment) the rates varied between 7.5 and 37 per cent. See United Nations: 1967 Report on the World Social Situation, op. cit., p. 116. 424 Asia and the Middle East reference to their agrarian situation) Available calories, Available fats, Available proteins, 1964-65 1964-65 (grams * per capita per day) 1964-65 (grams * per capita (number of calories per capita per day) per day) Animal Total 2 050(1961-62) — — 29.7 (1961-62) 68.4 — — 2 080(1965) 2 380 (1965) — 2110 1 980 (1961-63) 2 050(1960) 2 100 (1960-62) 2 820 2 350 (1965) 2 390 (1964) — — — 43.9 (1965) 46.8 (1965) — — 26.8 31.2 37.2 32.7 95.5 45.1 69.7 53.9 (1961-63) 38.2 (1960) 59.6 (1960-62) 60.7 85.8 (1965) 77.6 (1964) 59.0 — 2 730 (1965) — 65.5 (1965) — 2 260 2 070(1965) 2 360 (1963) — 32.2 26.6 (1965) 64.3 (1963) — 3 110(1960-61) 44.5 61.0 — 74.2 — 50.7 49.7 71.7 — 53.9 (1960-61) 97.5 15.8 (1961-62) — — 7.9 (1965) 17.5 (1965) — 5.7 4.5 (1961-63) 13.4(1960) 16.8 (1960-62) 39.7 24.6 (1965) 9.6 — 25.1 (1965) — 9.5 15.9 (1965) 16.4 (1963) — 15.9 (1960-61) Percentage of illiterates around 1960 Infant mortality B around 1960 (deatbs per 1,000 births) _ 42.3 69.2 32.3 46.1 — 72.2 57.1 87.2 85.5 12.1 2.2 67.6 17.8 50.0 67.7 81.2 28.1 64.6 32.3 61.9 — 127.0* 56.8 30.5 29.9 145.9* 125.0 110.0* 21.2 36.0 30.7 110.0* 58.2 45.0 75.0 130.0 121.0 26.3 116.0 97.7 Sources: United Nations: Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, 1966 (New York, 1967); ILO: Year Book of Labour Statistics, 1967 (Geneva, 1968); FAO: Production Yearbook, 1966 (Rome, 1967); UNESCO: Statistical Yearbook, 1964 (Paris, 1966). During recent years over-all production has barely surpassed the increase in population. If we take 1952-56 as 1001, the average index of 106 which was reached in 1966 masks considerable differences from one country to another; and if we subtract the production of the Middle East, Japan and a few countries which have enjoyed good harvests recently, we shall see that the position in the critical areas—especially in India and Pakistan—is far from showing any improvement. In fact, in 1966 the per capita food production did not exceed the already quite inadequate level reached on the eve of the Second World War. The reasons for this state of affairs are numerous and vary a great deal from one country to another. Hence the following remarks can at best be generalisations. But what is striking is the very unequal nature of Asian agricultural production, in comparison with population densities. It might be 1 FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture, 1967, op. cit., p. 12. 425 Agricultural organisations and development imagined that where population is very dense agriculture would necessarily be intensive. This is not necessarily so, however; if we look at the position in the Indian state of West Bengal and in the neighbouring state, Madras (a Tamilspeaking area), where population densities are much the same (780 and 668 per square mile respectively), we shall observe that rice-growing, which is highly developed among the Tamils, gives mediocre yields in Bengal although Bengal has a higher rainfall. Professor Delvert attributes this disparity to unequal technical development, and to the fact that the Tamil-speaking area is a region of ancient civilisation and has been densely populated for many centuries, whereas Bengal was scantily inhabited before the English came, so that there was no need to use intensive farming methods. Thus the root causes of the present position in Bengal are the lack of modern farming techniques and the tremendous growth in population.1 Elsewhere, population density is not necessarily high where the soil is good, and vice versa. This is probably to be explained by historical events (invasions, followed by the flight of populations, for example), rather than by any lack of agricultural knowledge. Thus, in Cambodia, while the Battambang paddy-fields are extremely fertile, the population is a mere 130 per square mile, while the poor soil at Kandal-Takeo, where the rainfall is exceedingly unfavourable, nourishes some 520.2 Everywhere the climate plays an important part by pushing man and his civilisation towards the plains, and as a result intensive farming is the rule in the over-populated plains (as in the delta of Tonkin3), while in the under-populated hills and mountains wefindprimitive peoples practising a simple kind of agriculture, using fire to clear the land. The introduction of commercial export agriculture, together with the traditional systems of land tenure, have also played an important part in maintaining the under-development of certain countries. The planters often took the best land available, thereby frequently paralysing the growing of food crops, if not agriculture as a whole; we have already commented on this in connexion with Ceylon.4 As regards land tenure, the imposition by the great landowners (often absent and entirely out of touch with local conditions) of tenant farming and share-cropping meant that agriculture in Asia, more than anywhere else, is characterised by a peasantry ridden by debt and the victims of local money-lenders. These difficulties, together with others deriving from social organisation, tradition and superstition, must be considered in any over-all approach to the •Jean Delvert: "Paysage agraire et densités humaines en Asie tropicale", Atomes (Paris) No. 236, October 1966, p. 528. 2 ibid., p. 529. 8 See in this connexion Pierre Gourou: Les paysans du delta tonkinois (Paris, 1939). * See above, p. 6 (quotation from the article by George Thambyahpillai). 426 Asia and the Middle East problem of agriculture in Asia. They vary in acuity from country to country, but it is in Pakistan and in India (which comes second only to China in the size of its population) that they are at their gravest. In India the continued existence of the caste system and the influence wielded by the great landowners within the panchayats (reorganised since independence) stultify the efforts made by the authorities to ensure a balanced development in the countryside. Opposition from the wealthier classes seems to be the difficulty which is most often encountered. The United Nations publication, 1967 Report on the World Social Situation, brings this out clearly enough: With certain exceptions—mainly the countries which have carried out effective and comprehensive programmes of land reform—there is little conclusive evidence of substantial change in the structures of Asian rural society, in which traditional élites appear to have preserved a near-monopoly of politico-economic power over a mass of impoverished labourers, tenants and small landowners. The dismal failure of many Asian countries in the field of land reform testifies to the tenacity of their traditional forms of social organisation, notwithstanding the changes wrought by industrialisation.1 Hence the gaps between rich and poor, between town- and country-dweller, grow wider with every day that passes. In Pakistan, for example, K. B. Griffin has revealed that the average income in the countryside, after shrinking absolutely and relatively during the 1950s, was by 1965 back again at the point reached in 1950 (207 rupees), whereas the per capita gross national income had steadily increased.2 In India, the average rural income, which was exceedingly low, increased from 232 to 261 rupees during the 1950s, whereas in the towns the average income rose from 424 to 608 rupees, i.e. by six times as much.3 The differences between these figures in relation to the averages given in table 18 show once again the intrinsic unreliability of over-all data for the underdeveloped countries. The position of the small countries in this part of the world is, relatively speaking, rather better, but, with a few exceptions, they all demonstrate similar features: poor productivity, technical backwardness, general malnutrition. If to this be added the fact that communication, transport and distribution systems are frequently defective (with the result that surplus stocks may be accumulating in one region whilst another is stricken by famine), it will be readily understood that without over-all planning of all the factors which affect agricultural development it will be impossible to cope with the crises almost certain to arise in the near future. The fact of the matter is that, to cater for the increase in population alone, food production will have to be almost doubled between now 1 op. cit., p. 111. K. B. Griffin: "Financing Development Plans in Pakistan", The Pakistan Development Review (Karachi), Winter 1965. The official exchange rate for the rupee is 4.8 to the US dollar. 3 V. K. R. V. Rao: "Economic Growth and Rural-Urban Income Distribution", The Economic Weekly (Bombay), 20 February 1965. 2 427 Agricultural organisations and development and the end of the century; to eliminate malnutrition, it will have to be quadrupled.1 True, there was some improvement in 1967, as is shown by the report for that year issued by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. But until we know how far this improvement was due to the use of fertilisers, new varieties of plant, and so on, and not just to favourable weather conditions, we cannot say how likely it is to continue or how far it will counterbalance the growth in population. THE MODERNISATION OF THE RURAL SECTOR The task therefore is immense; but it does not seem to have been always properly tackled in plans for development. Apart from the fact that stress has sometimes been laid on industrialisation rather than on agriculture, the plans evolved have numerous shortcomings. These must be put right if we want to avoid a wastage of human and financial resources and achieve positive results. In general, the studies made of national or regional development programmes in Asia all reach a similar conclusion. They draw attention to mistakes and failings strongly reminiscent of those which occurred in Europe during the period of land reforms after the First World War—a lack of co-ordination at every level, and the weakness of the auxiliary services whose task it is to carry through the dynamic process of social and economic advance, once the requisite infrastructure has been set up.2 Incidentally, in Asia as well as in the other developing continents, one is struck by the paucity of the attention given in development programmes to food production and to the nutritional aspects of agricultural development. As regards the way in which land reform is put into effect, the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East has the following revealing passage3: Although many ECAFE countries have legislated quite comprehensively in this field, and have thus recognised the need for wide and basic reform of land tenure sys1 United Nations, ECAFE: Report of the Asian Population Conference, 1963 (New York, 1964), p. 8. 2 "One major problem of regional development planning up to the present time", the United Nations says, "is that it tends to be conceived primarily in economic and physical terms—just as national plans are—with only marginal attention to social development aspects. It has been widely noted, for instance, that while many river development schemes make rapid progress up to the point where dams have been constructed, major irrigation channels excavated, roads and railways laid out and facilities for the generation and distribution of power installed, they often begin to bog down badly when the time comes to resettle populations, re-allocate agricultural land, and ensure end-use of power and water by the farmers." United Nations, 1967 Report on the World Social Situation, op. cit., p. 114. »ECAFE, 21st Session, Wellington, 16-29 March 1965: Review of the Social Situation in the ECAFE Region (doc. E/CN.11/L.133, pp. 19-20). It should be noted, however, that the above was written in 1965 and that the position has in some respects improved since then. 428 Asia and the Middle East tems, only two of them—China (Taiwan) and Japan—have moved quickly and decisively to make the laws a practical reality. Some of the outstanding obstacles to land reform in many ECAFE countries have been the resistance of landlords—particularly the larger owners, who are often closely identified with the political structure at the local level, and sometimes at regional and national levels also—and lack of adequate organisational and administrative infrastructure. In some cases, basic land reforms have been executed but have failed owing to inadequate co-ordination with necessary supporting services such as community development and specific programmes of education, farm credit, agricultural extension and cooperatives; in such instances, the new owners have frequently fallen back into dependence on the former landlords and money-lenders. In some other cases, however, community development and rural services seem to have been regarded as substitutes for land reform and have accordingly failed to ignite sufficient developmental motivation. The remarkable experiences of China (Taiwan) and Japan, where land reforms were reinforced by the vigorous activities of local land committees and farmers' associations incorporating many features of community development, indicate that planned institutional change and rural community development services are not alternatives, but mutually supporting and essential pre-requisites of progress on the land. In fact, of all the countries in Asia and the Middle East, eight only (mainland China, China (Taiwan), North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Syria and North Viet-Nam) have tackled the land reform problem with any vigour. Obviously, the action taken has varied from one country to another, depending on the way in which the country organises its economy. The more socialistically inclined the country, the more radical, as a general rule, such reforms have been. In the Middle East, Iraq and Syria were the first two countries to launch land reform programmes (in 1958). Their aims in so doing were ambitious, and complete success has so far eluded them: formidable obstacles were encountered, including the opposition of the larger landowners and the lack of planning of the various phases of the reform. In Iraq, the Agrarian Reform Act of 1958 was intended to introduce farreaching changes into land tenure practices and to increase agricultural output. Land holding was fixed at a maximum of 1,000 dunums 1 for irrigated land and 2,000 dunums for rain-fed land. Land in excess of this ceiling was expropriated and redistributed to landless farmers in allotments of 30-60 dunums of irrigated land or 60-120 dunums of land dependent on rainfall. The beneficiaries were required to join one of the agricultural co-operatives set up under the reform. The total area to which the reform applies will probably amount to 10 million dunums, of which no less than 6.3 million, belonging to rather more than 2,000 owners, were already being expropriated in March 1966.2 At that date, 339 agricultural co-operatives had been set up as part of the reform since 1962, when the first one was inaugurated. 1 1 dunum = 0.62 acre. If State lands, also subject to the reform, are included, the operations undertaken will cover some 15 million dunums. 2 429 Agricultural organisations and development The figures relating to the Iraqi land reform are undoubtedly impressive. But observers are unanimous in feeling that in relation to the size of the operation the results achieved have been, relatively speaking, meagre, and this is something which should concern us here, for it shows the trouble that land reforms encounter when launched among an unorganised peasantry. Certainly, the feudal power wielded by the sheikhs seems to have been irreparably broken, and in this sense the action taken has opened up perspectives for the Iraqi peasant which hitherto would have been unimaginable. Before the reform, 2 per cent of the landowners possessed 68 per cent of all cultivable land. This is no longer true, and in this lies the value and interest of the reform undertaken. It is not that the Iraqi authorities have lacked drive and determination; the trouble is that the degree of peasant organisation was not adequate for the scope of the reform. We shall come back to this point later. In addition, the operations themselves were carried out at great speed with insufficient preparation. Those responsible for the reform have explained the situation very clearly, as is shown by a report submitted by the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture to the United Nations-FAO-ILO World Land Reform Conference: For political and other reasons requisition committees were hard pressed to expedite formalities of expropriation of land, especially during the first few months after the enactment of the Agrarian Reform Law. Requisition was proceeding at a much quicker pace than the material and technical capabilities available at the disposal of the Ministry of Agrarian Reform, which capabilities are required for the organisation of the requisition operations and the appropriate land use during the period of transition and temporary management which precede distribution operations. Detailed studies of large holdings should have preceded the actual process of expropriation in order to determine the holdings most suitable for requisition and to proceed accordingly with the preparations of all requisite elements for redistribution in order to safeguard normal production levels. This acceleration of requisition formalities resulted in declined production because farmers to whom land was leased before redistribution were unable to get credit and other production facilities, nor were they able to supervise their cultivation in the same way as former landowners did. On top of this, agricultural production in the landowners' ceiling areas also suffered. Landowners whose property was expropriated, for various reasons, could not resume their cultivation practices; they were awaiting the approval of the deed by the Higher Body of Agrarian Reform, which in most cases was unduly delayed.1 The above will be easier to grasp if we consider the relationship between the areas subject to reform and the skilled staff available. The Iraqi scheme comprised a period of temporary administration between expropriation and the moment when the land was finally ceded to the beneficiaries. During this period, the authorities had to undertake an over-all settlement programme, covering such widely different aspects as drainage, irrigation, the setting-up of co-opera"FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Evaluation of Land Reform in Iraq (doc. RU: WLR-C/66/46), p. 8. 430 Asia and the Middle East tives, the construction of roads, etc. Now in March 1966, for an area of 7.4 million dunums under temporary administration (of which 2.8 million had been expropriated and 4.5 million belonged to the State), there were no more than 241 qualified persons available. These people were responsible for the whole programme of land development and for giving guidance to the 254,000 families living in the areas concerned. Further, the 2,091 expropriated owners had already abandoned their land (the 6.3 million dunums mentioned above), taking with them all their staff (assistants, foremen, and so on), some 6,000 of them in all, whose work now had in theory to be taken over by the little team of experts from the ministry. The reform, in short, had been hastily launched at a time when no detailed cadastral maps existed (thus boundaries between the allotments could not be accurately drawn), and with no preliminary consideration of the difficulties which the new occupants would have to face. The ministry is endeavouring to cope, as far as its means will allow, with the numerous difficulties encountered as a result. The report referred to above goes on to say that: By the end of March 1966, beneficiaries whether in irrigated or rain-fed zones received almost the same size of allotment in each case without due consideration to 1 number of dependants of each family, or their standard of living. Moreover, it seems as though the distribution of land outpaced the settingup of the co-operatives provided for in the Agrarian Reform Act of 1958. In March 1966 there were no more than 339, with rather more than 35,000 members. Despite this, those responsible for the reform had already managed to distribute 2.3 million dunums among more than 46,000 beneficiaries. But titles to property have not yet been registered, nor have the boundaries of the allotments been officially confirmed. Hence there is a feeling of insecurity among the persons concerned, and this may discourage them from taking part in the community activities which the authorities are anxious to promote. The 1965-69 Five-Year Plan called for operations to be yet further speeded up (including the creation of 500 new co-operatives by 1969), while providing for a substantial increase in the personnel responsible for managing the co-operatives and for carrying on extension work, with a view to the intensification of farming methods and the diversification of crops—both hitherto unknown in Iraq. Some 1,100 persons were to have been trained during this period (750 co-operative supervisors and 350 extension workers) to offer help to a peasantry hitherto devoid of agricultural organisations of any shape or kind, and barely emerging from the fetters of their ancestral system. 'FAO, World Land Reform Conference: Evaluation of Land Reform in Iraq, op. cit., p. 14. 431 Agricultural organisations and development The Syrian reform also dates from 1958, but did not really start, albeit slowly, until 1963, after the enactment of Legislative Decree No. 88; this put a stop to the resistance of the great landowners who owned half the farmland in the country. The reform extends here to more than one-quarter of the cultivable lands (3.75 million acres out of 13.25 million). The land subject to expropriation formerly belonged to some 4,000 persons, Syrians and foreigners (mainly Lebanese, Kuwaitis, Turks, Italians and French). As in Iraq, in its initial stages the reform was carried out rather hastily. Land was shared out in accordance with the number of claimants, no account being taken of soil productivity. Early in 1965, 578,860 acres (16 per cent of the total subject to expropriation) had been thus apportioned. It would seem that: This low proportion is due to amendments made during 1961 and 1962 to the Land Reform Act, and to the fact that only at the beginning of 1965 was Legislative Decree No. 88 really put into effect. At that time the Land Reform Administration drew up a complete programme for implementation of the Act (expropriation and distribution) to take place within eighteen months to two years from 1965. After expropriation had been completed (by the end of 1965), the Administration embarked on the apportionment of land, and prepared plans and programmes for the rapid completion of the process.1 By June 1966 a million acres (30 per cent of the total expropriated) had been redistributed. Henceforward, the procedure applicable in the distribution of land will be more rationalised; land is classified according to the productivity of its soil, and it is likely that within the not too far distant future beneficiaries' rights under the reform will have been officially confirmed and the boundaries of their allotments defined. For the time being, according to the information received during the present inquiry a good many peasants suffer from a feeling of insecurity and decline to improve their plots on the grounds that they are frequently shifted from one plot to another. As in Iraq, so in Syria the peasant receiving land through this scheme has to join one of the co-operatives created under the reform. He can leave it only by paying, to the State, twenty annual instalments equivalent to the cost of the land he has received.2 Other peasants, too, may join these co-operatives, but it should be noted that those possessing plots exceeding the maximum permis1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: La coopération agrìcole sur le domaine de la réforme agraire, by Ahmed El Zoobi (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/39), p. 3. a Under article 10, paragraph 1, of Legislative Decree No. 88 (1963), "the value of the land distributed shall be one-quarter of the expropriation allowance assessed by the State, this sum to be paid in equal annual instalments, over twenty years, to the Cooperative Associations Fund ; the co-operatives shall use the money to carry out agricultural, and subsequently social, schemes of interest to their members." In this fashion, the State does something to relieve the burden of debt under which the peasant labours. Also, by paying back into the countryside the sums collected by the co-operatives, it institutes a kind of compulsory thrift scheme in the interests of the agricultural community. This is an original idea well worthy of detailed attention. 432 Asia and the Middle East sible size do not enjoy this possibility. This state of affairs, it seems, is not designed to last. Certainly, its abrogation could only do good, for the peasants affected may well be people of vigour and ambition, thoroughly familiar with the art of farm management; their experience might be put to good use within the co-operatives, in the interests of all those who have benefited from the reforms. In 1966, the Syrian authorities had already created 289 co-operatives for 388 villages; they had more than 14,000 members. The ensuing programme required these 289 co-operatives to be increased to 500 by the end of 1967. Furthermore, their executive committees were to be given greater independence and their technical staff was to be reinforced. The fact is that the early precipitation displayed had led to a state of affairs in which the co-operatives were entirely run by the authorities, and as nobody had taken the trouble to explain to the peasants how they worked and what they were supposed to achieve, the result was that the action taken left the peasantry totally disinterested. As the present director of the land reform programme puts it: The haste displayed in founding co-operatives before the peasants had been taught to accept them and given a hand in their management meant that the authorities were themselves compelled to run the co-operatives; neither the co-operatives nor their executive boards had any say in the activities undertaken. The authorities drew up the plan of work, did the ploughing, harvesting and marketing, debited the cost to the members of the co-operative and supervised their accounting procedures, with the result that the peasants no longer relied on themselves. In the long run, and with the increase and multiplication of these co-operatives, the authorities found themselves quite unable to run all of them, and cases arose in which there was some confusion between official documents and entries and those of the co-operatives. The result was that the peasants lost confidence in the co-operative movement and indeed in the land reform itself. They considered themselves an injured party; great was their disappointment at being transferred from the feudal lordship of a landowner to what they felt was the feudalism of the land reform authorities. The result of the experiment was that by the end of 1963 the peasants, and the co-operatives set up under the land reform scheme, were more than 5.5 million Syrian pounds in debt.1 The action taken since then should bring about a solution of these problems in the not too distant future. The co-operatives now have heavy new responsibilities to shoulder; the Government has in fact decided to make over to them the agricultural machinery, permanent installations and irrigation stations in the zones subject to the reform, against payment in instalments of their value (from five to ten years for the machinery and from ten to twenty for the installations and irrigation stations). In this fashion the co-operatives will possess all the production facilities required and will manage them in the interests of their members. 1 El Zoobi, op. cit., p. 9. 433 Agricultural organisations and development Furthermore, there is a tendency at this stage to set up co-operative farms in the villages affected by the reform, the principal means of production (machinery and installations) being held in common, but the land remaining in private hands. In this manner, by regrouping the land already distributed (up to 2,000-2,500 acres of irrigated and 3,000-12,500 acres of non-irrigated land), it is hoped to create farm units along rational Unes. Under the programme, 150 to 160 co-operative farms of this kind are to be founded during the next few years. Moreover, some expropriated farms, the allotment of which appears to be difficult, will be turned into State farms specialising in the production of one or more crops. They will also play the role of pilot farms as regards management and agricultural research, and will give a hand in agricultural guidance activities. The Government's intention is to create such farms throughout the country. In Iran, the third Middle Eastern country to have embarked on land reform during the last ten years, the process of land redistribution began in February 1951 when the Shah decided to sell Crown lands to the peasantry. Some 387,500 acres were thus apportioned between 1951 and 1961 among more than 30,000 peasants, who were to reimburse 80 per cent of the value of the land so received over 25 years. The remaining 20 per cent was considered as a subsidy. The Development Bank, founded in 1952, is responsible for collecting the annual payments. The money so collected is then used for all kinds of agricultural schemes : to create co-operative farms, to irrigate land, to improve stock, and so on. To complete the reform, the Government of Iran decided in 1958 to apply similar measures to the lands held by the State, and in April 1960 to redistribute private estates exceeding 1,000 acres of irrigated or 2,000 acres of non-irrigated land. But when the Bill was submitted to Parhament, the larger landowners (who then held as much as 55 per cent of all cultivated land) succeeded in obtaining so many exceptions to the rule that the scheme was virtually unenforceable. Finally, Parliament having been dissolved, a law was passed on 9 January 1962 under which, instead of setting an upper limit on the amount of land a man might hold, it was decreed that one owner could keep at most one village, or the equivalent thereof distributed over several villages, and would have to sell the rest of his land to the State. The latter undertook to reimburse the value of such land in fifteen annual instalments (the price beingfixedin the light of the landowner's average tax payments over the previous few years, multiplied by a coefficient varying between 102 and 180), and to resell it to the peasantry under similar conditions but with a 10 per cent addition, so as to constitute funds to undertake local development schemes. This action was to be supplemented by the creation of local co-operatives which, in the interests of their members, would take over the responsibilities of the former owners, that is to say, water 434 Asia and the Middle East management and the annual redistribution of plots. This latter process was still going on in certain places, pending a final apportionment of land. Application of the 1962 Land Reform Law has given very unequal results. Firstly, because cadastral surveys of landed property did not exist, it proved exceedingly difficult to ascertain whether the different plots maintained in various villages by an owner were equivalent to more than one village. Secondly, a single village frequently housed several hundred families, and when the owner opted in favour of keeping it as a unit none of these families would be affected by the reform. In view of the feudal nature of the bonds between owners and their tenants or workers (who were often called upon to offer their labour to the owner and in most instances had to make do with no more than a fifth of the harvest1), the current reforms, if no changes had been made therein, would in the long run have led to a grave imbalance among the peasants. The result would have been to create "free" villages alongside villages still bound by feudal links, and in places where the owners kept a part only of the land a class of peasants freed by the reforms would have sprung up alongside another class of peasants obliged to put up with their lot. This state of affairs, had it continued, would have been aggravated by the fact that the holders of plots on what were once estates earned more than they were doing before. This would have widened still further the gap between the beneficiaries of the reform and those unaffected by it.2 Aware of these problems, the Government of Iran decided in July 1963 to embark on the second stage, and to amend the Land Reform Law by laying down a maximum of 150 acres for landed property, while granting the owners, as before, the right to hold these 150 acres in a single village or to keep an equivalent area apportioned among a number of villages.3 However, surplus land is not expropriated but subjected to certain rules, by virtue of which the owner can either lease it for a cash rent and on a thirty-year lease (with provision for rent revision everyfiveyears); or sell it to the tenants by mutual agreement; or divide it up, ceding to the tenant a plot equivalent to the fractional share of 1 The harvest was usually divided into five parts, in accordance with the land, water, seed, oxen and human labour contributed. Custom demanded that the owner supply everything required for production; he therefore retained four-fifths of the harvest. In certain areas, however, he leased his land, against a share in the harvest, to an entrepreneurial tenant called a gavband who sublet the land and provided oxen (sometimes seed too). In such circumstances the division of the harvest would vary according to the agreement reached with the owner. 2 The proof of this is that on the Crown lands apportioned by the Shah among the peasants the income per head increased, within one year, from the equivalent of US$150 to US$180 and more at Veramin (a place some 25 miles south of Teheran), and in other villages from US$80 to more than US$170. See the official pamphlet Land Reform in Iran (London, Williams Lea & Co., n.d.), pp. 8-9. 8 ibid., p. 14. 435 Agricultural organisations and development the crop granted to him every year, and farming the rest himself with his own wage-earning workers. The reforms in Iran have produced the following results. In May 1966, in accordance with the decisions taken during the first stage (1951-62), 13,303 villages belonging to the Crown, the State, and private individuals had been bought out and distributed among 512,975 peasants, so that, if we assume that there werefivepersons per family, more than 2.5 million country-dwellers had derived benefit. In the meantime, 6,425 agricultural co-operatives had been set up by the Central Organisation of Rural Co-operatives (OCCR) to ensure that the new farms would run smoothly. At this same date, and by virtue of the action taken in 1963, the second phase of the reform had produced the following results: 45,753 villages and 14,166 farms leased, sold or broken up for the benefit of 1,698,823 peasants, representing, with their families, 8,494,115 persons. Thus rather more than 11,000,000 people, or 80 per cent of the rural population of the country, had been released from the old land tenure system. The co-operative movement has been equally buoyant. Although it goes back to 1934, when two co-operatives were founded, one at Garmsar (Teheran) and the other at Shiraz (neither lasted more than a few years), there were in 1958 no more than 35 credit co-operatives and 77 "rural fund societies", created by the Agricultural Bank and usually dominated by the landowners (contrary to what happens in an ordinary co-operative, the vote in such associations was bound up with the quantity of shares held by members). Now, in 1965, the 6,425 co-operatives mentioned above had 574,000 members, and in the light of the latest available data (for March 1968) it seems that the movement then had 8,241 organisations and 1,073,349 members. At that date, 76 unions already embraced 5,300 district co-operatives. It is worth mentioning that this was a movement due entirely to the Agricultural Bank, since it was the bank which created the OCCR in the form of a limited liability company and provided it with the funds required for credit operations. A number of co-operatives deal with the sale of current goods and products (either directly or through shops and depots run by them) but they usually restrict themselves to extending credit. It is even rarer tofindthem marketing the produce of their members (the latter, incidentally, are under no obligation to hand over their produce to the co-operatives). Thus the range of co-operative activities remains, even today, fairly limited. This may be due to lack of staff or to the reluctance of the peasants to participate in a movement created and run from above, despite the existence of locally elected executive boards. Furthermore, this absence of warmth on the part of the peasantry may also be explained, according to an expert's recent report, by the fact that: Since most of these co-operatives deal with credit only, the major rules they have to apply are set forth in agreements concluded with the OCCR, which has drawn up 436 Asia and the Middle East numerous regulations concerning the conditions governing the offer of loans, their repayment, annual accounting, and so on; but these rules, by their nature and origin, have nothing to do with the traditional life of the village and are not such as to lead the peasants to take any real share in a co-operative venture. Every person joining has to sign a credit agreement which in fact binds him to the OCCR, and not to the co-operative. The executive board has to collect the repayments but is not responsible. In the event of failure to pay, legal proceedings are taken with a view to recovering the goods or property offered as guarantee by the borrower himself. The guarantee system links two or three peasants among themselves, but among themselves only; there is no real co-operative form of guarantee. The system is therefore pre-co-operative rather than fully co-operative in the Western sense. In Iran as elsewhere in Asia, full co-operation will develop little by little, as members gain a greater understanding of what co-operation means. The creation, by the villagers themselves, of other agricultural bodies, such as farmers' associations, occupational organisations and the like, might help to make the peasants more conscious of the potentialities of a co-operative. We shall revert to this in our conclusions. Many comments have been made on the land reform in Iran, notably in the fourth United Nations-FAO-ILO inquiry into progress in land reform.1 One of the questions raised was this : would the movement under way finally break down the traditional relationships between landowners and tenants ? It might well be thought that a thirty-year lease would help to perpetuate the old relationships. It seems, too, that land has sometimes fallen into the hands of entrepreneurial tenants and not into those of the workers themselves, that the sums laid down for the purchase of land from the owners are sometimes equivalent to the market value (and hence are too high), and finally, that it is not always easy to replace the former owners and their agents, since persons qualified to run the new co-operatives are in such short supply. Hence the lack of agricultural organisations is keenly felt. The authorities have tried to put things right by creating village councils 2 of five members, responsible for community and agricultural development. While acknowledging that such councils open up vistas for the future, the authors of Progress in Land Reform, Fourth Report declare that : In those villages where the land reform has left a stratified population with a few of the large landholders being the only obvious candidates for office, there are equally clear dangers—the possibility of an oligarchic system of exploitation of the poor by the rich, for instance, or, alternatively, of debilitating factional struggles between rival leaders and their dependent followers of the kind which has plagued the Indian panchayat.s 1 United Nations-FAO-ILO: Progress in Land Reform, Fourth Report (New York, 1966; Sales No.: 66. IV.l), p. 24. a See Legislative Decree No. 8034 (29 August 1963). * op. cit., p. 25. 437 Agricultural organisations and development Hence all depends on the pace of the reforms and on the action taken to obviate such risks. In any case, there can be no doubt that these reforms have created a new awareness among the Iranian peasantry, and that this is something which can never be undone. One can but hope that within the near future there will arise new forms of organisation designed not only to fill the gaps left by the disintegration of the old structures but, where the latter still exist, to make their continued existence incompatible with the development of a modern agriculture. Land reform has not yet reached the other Middle Eastern countries. The ancient way of life continues unchanged in Saudi Arabia. The same problem arises in the Federation of South Arabia, where several schemes for land development and irrigation are under way; it is to be hoped that some agricultural organisation will emerge which will take them over and expand them.1 But in these two countries, as in Jordan, the existence of a vast nomadic or semi-nomadic population renders land reform of any kind difficult. Change is not easy to conceive of until such a time as these people have been given roots. In Lebanon the problem is couched in different terms : here agriculture is very largely intensive, but its development is held up by the absence of land reform. In this country, moreover, social conditions, and especially land tenure systems, call for a thorough overhaul. Finally, Israel's experience has no relevance in the context of an inquiry into land reform. Since the arrival of the first immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century IsraeU agriculture has made steady progress, thanks to massive capital investment and the arrival of highly skilled labour, and is today as advanced as any in the world. We shall examine below the role of the Israeli agricultural organisations. As regards Turkey, we have already considered her efforts towards land reform in our examination of the situation in southern Europe; we shall consider Turkish agricultural organisations later in this section of our inquiry. Only two countries in southern Asia and the Far East—China (Taiwan) and Japan—have carried out ambitious land reforms in the context of a free economy. Another reform has been under way in the Philippines since 1963, the primary objective being to turn share-croppers into peasant owners, but the results obtained so far cannot be considered here for lack of data. The other land reform movements are being carried out in socialist countries: mainland China, North Viet-Nam, and North Korea. The Japanese land reform is too well known for us to need to dwell on it here. Over and above a land reform in the usual sense of the term, it has taken the form of a large-scale transfer of registered title to the small-holdings farmed 1 See FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: The Agricultural Land Situation in South Arabia (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/38). 438 Asia and the Middle East by tenants. It has been said, and not unreasonably, that the economic and social advance of Japan goes back to the beginning of the Meiji era, when, in 1868, feudalism was abolished and the country launched on the path towards industrialisation. But although the emperor had done away with the bonds and obligations characteristic of Japanese serfdom, he did not turn the land over to those who worked it. In the place of serfdom there arose a class of absentee landlords who leased their land against delivery of about half the harvest. Before the Second World War this class was made up of some 700,000 families, which held an average of 7 % acres each, and owned rather more than half the cultivated land in Japan. Accordingly, 70 per cent of the Japanese peasantry (3.9 million families out of 5.6 million)—the tenant farmers—were quite unable to become owners themselves. Thus it was that whilst Japanese industry went brilliantly forward, agriculture marked time. This assertion is substantiated by the fact that in 1931 the peasants' debts represented something like 40 per cent of the national income. The reforms launched in 1946 were radically to change this state of affairs. Under the Act promulgated on 21 October and put into effect on 29 December of that year, land was divided into three main categories : tenanted land owned by absentees; tenanted land owned by residents; and owner-cultivated land. The State then embarked on a vast repurchasing operation, explained as follows by the Japanese Government in its answer to the first United Nations inquiry into land reform in various parts of the world : The agricultural lands subject to government purchase under this law are: (1) tenant land owned by a landowner outside the city, town or village where his permanent residence is situated; (2) tenant land in excess of 10 acres per landowner in Hokkaido and about 2 y2 acres in each prefecture in Honshu, in case of tenant land existing within the city, town or village he lives in; (3) tenant land in excess of 30 acres of the total acreage of tenant land and owned land per landowner in Hokkaido and about 7 Vi acres in each prefecture in Honshu, in case of land existing within the city, town or village he lives in. Other agricultural lands are subject to government purchase, if a prefectural agricultural land commission or a municipal agricultural land commission deems it proper to purchase for establishment of owner-farmers in the case of: (1) Owned land in excess of 30 acres per landowner in Hokkaido and 7 V2 acres in Honshu, in case of owned land possessed by a landowner who is deemed improper to engage in farming; (2) Owned land possessed by a juridical person or any other organisation which is deemed improper to engage in farming; (3) Owned land possessed by a landowner who is deemed improper to engage in farming, if his land is operated by another person upon a contract; (4) Tenant lands owned by a juridical person or any other organisation. Pasture lands were also made subject to government purchase in cases where they were leased to tenants at exorbitant rents, and in certain other conditions.1 1 United Nations: Progress in Land Reform (New York, 1954), pp. 62-63. 439 Agricultural organisations and development To this end, municipal agricultural land commissions were set up and asked to draw up land purchasing programmes, to submit them to prefectural commissions for approval, and then to sell the land thus purchased to the tenant farmers on conditions laid down by the Act, i.e. payment over 30 years, at an annual interest rate of 3.2 per cent, the price being fixed at 40 times the 1938 rental value for paddy-fields and at 48 times the rental value for upland farms. Thus, in 1951, some 80 per cent of all tenant land had been transferred to tenant farmers, and 92 per cent of the land was held by owner-farmers.1 More than 4 million Japanese had benefited from the reform. Moreover, post-war inflation not only made the payments less onerous but also annulled the peasants' chronic state of indebtedness. As an observer of the reform noted: "In 1947, the peasants had been virtually freed from debt, and had even managed to invest 50,000 million yen in property. This, certainly, suffered much from devaluation but nevertheless facilitated land reform."2 The land reform, indeed, was the source of many advantages. Thus there was an extraordinary boom in agricultural co-operatives, and above all the co-operative movement itself was reformed along democratic fines; during the Second World War it had ceased to be independent.3 This process, sanctioned by the Act dated 19 November 1947 on agricultural co-operatives, has been completed by a thorough overhaul of rural institutions of all kinds. The land reform in China (Taiwan), which dates from 1949, took place in a rural environment where conditions were very much the same as in prewar Japan. When the war was over, the position was basically as follows: the island had 7.3 million inhabitants, of whom 52 per cent lived on the land, while the area under cultivation measured some 2,162,000 acres, 56.3 per cent of which was held by tenants. The average family plot at that time covered about 3 y2 acres. Had really intensive techniques been used, and had the occupants been owners rather than tenants, these people could nevertheless have lived reasonably well until such time as industrialisation would take some of the demographic pressure off the land. Although, technically speaking, development was proceeding satisfactorily, the traditional systems of land tenure kept more than half the rural families at a very low socio-economic level. As a rule a tenant was expected to pay more than half the theoretical 1 This percentage has varied but little since; in 1965, 95 per cent of all land was worked by its owners, as against 5 per cent worked by tenants. See FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Reform in Japan (doc. RU :WLR-C/66/29), p. 3. 1 See the article by Albrecht Magnus on Japanese agriculture in Aussenpolitik (Fribourg), March 1967, available in French as "L'agriculture japonaise: un modèle pour toute l'Asie", Articles et documents (Paris, La Documentation française), Nos. 0.1862-0.1863, 28 July4 August 1967, pp. 21-26. ' For further details, see Institute for the Development of Agricultural Co-operation in Asia: The Agricultural Co-operative Movement in Japan (Tokyo, 1964). 440 Asia and the Middle East value of the harvest in the form of rent (indeed, as much as 70 per cent on occasion) and he had to abide by his obligations even in the event of some natural catastrophe. Moreover, in order to lease land, he was compelled to lodge with the owner a sum equivalent to two years' rent. The lease was usually assigned under a verbal agreement, so that the owner could always denounce it whenever he wished. At that time, out of 100 peasants, 36 were ownerfarmers, 39 were tenants, and 25 were part owners and part tenants. This was the position, still obtaining in some Asian countries, that the 1949 land reform was to change in three successive stages. In the first stage, rents were reduced to 37.5 per cent of the annual value of the main crop, the aim being to enable the tenants to put money aside for the purchase of land. Further, the traditional leases were replaced by written leases, duly registered and with a Ufe of at least six years, and automatically prolonged unless the tenant had been at fault. All in all, 370,000 leases were concluded on behalf of 300,000 families, representing almost half the rural population. As a result, investments and improvements of all kinds were encouraged—improvements the peasants would never have thought of before, owing to the precarious nature of the old contracts. As among the Japanese, municipal commissions were set up throughout the country to supervise operations, i.e. to settle disputes between owners and tenants and to fix the amount of the revised annual dues. During the second phase, which began in 1951, the Government sold the State lands it had been leasing against 25 per cent of the value of the harvest. They represented a little over 20 per cent of the cultivated land in the island, i.e. some 450,000 acres. By 1964 a total of some 275,000 acres of State land had been sold and more than 200,000 families had profited therefrom. Since the purchase price had been set at 2.5 times the value of the harvest (payable over ten years), the tenant was in fact being asked to make an annual payment equivalent to the old rent. To facilitate transactions, the annuities were recoverable in two half-yearly payments. Local commissions had a hand, too, in supervising operations. The third phase was introduced by the Act of January 1953, which specified that no property might exceed 7 y2 acres of paddy-field (or its equivalent) in extent. Excess land held by the farmers was expropriated by the Government and made over to the persons concerned on the same conditions as the State lands, i.e. against reimbursement in ten annual instalments (or twenty half-yearly payments), equivalent in amount to 37.5 per cent of value of the crop which the tenant had been obliged to pay in the form of rent. Thus 350,000 acres were purchased for the benefit of 195,000 families of former tenants. These figures date from 1964, and it is probable that they have increased since then, for while the percentage of direct farmers (owners or 441 Agricultural organisations and development part owners) had gone up from 61 to 86 per cent, the remaining 14 per cent of the tenants were still unaffected by the reform. One remarkable feature of this Chinese land reform scheme was the briskness with which operations went ahead. Six months only were required to overhaul rural leases, while private property had all been made over to its occupants within one year of the promulgation of the Act of January 1953. The sale of State lands took somewhat longer: this operation was divided into six stages between the years 1951 and 1964, but each of the six lots of property involved had been sold within six months.1 Such action was supplemented by a series of credit schemes and programmes for production, land improvement, and organisation of the peasantry. In the short and medium run, the results obtained show how effective the reform was: in 1955, agricultural investments were twice what they had been in 1950 and the peasants' net income was, on the average, four times higher. In the meantime, over-all agricultural output had increased by 21 per cent.2 Lastly, in China (Taiwan) as in Japan the reform meant not only an astonishing leap forward in yield and incomes, but also a remarkable boom in agricultural organisations of every kind (co-operatives, farmers' associations, etc.) and by the introduction of a truly democratic spirit into village life. Whereas in pre-war Japan, only certain social groups (landowners, tax-payers) could vote and be represented in local and national organisations, the whole population can now share in the democratic elections to the municipal commissions created by the land reform scheme and to other rural institutions. Similarly, in China (Taiwan), where before the war the peasant had virtually no say in the process of decision-making, hundreds of local commissions made up of peasants sprang up to supervise operations during the first phase of the reform and to submit their conclusions to the provincial authorities. Such bodies have given the peasants a most valuable opportunity to practise local democracy. This kind of experience is worth infinitely more than a vote cast only once in a while and the Chinese peasant has thereby enjoyed unexampled opportunities of practising co-operative activities of all kinds.3 x See FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Reform in the Republic of China (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/45). See also Chen Cheng: Land Reform in Taiwan (Taiwan, China Publishing Company, 1961). 2 T. H. Sen: Land Reform and its Impact on Agricultural Development in Taiwan, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967 (mimeographed), p. 17. 8 The local reform boards, responsible for reducing the proportion of tenant farming, were made up of eleven members, as follows: two full members, including the head of the agricultural affairs division of the local government and the chairman of the local farmers' association; nine elected members, five of them representing the tenants, two the owners and two direct farmers. For further information about these bodies and other local reform organs, see Shih-Ko Shen: Administration of the Land Reform Program in Taiwan (official publication of the Government of Taiwan, n.d.). 442 Asia and the Middle East In South Korea, land reform seems to have achieved a much more limited success. Beginning in 1949, a large-scale transfer of registered titles began under the auspices of the American Military Government, for the benefit of the former tenant farmer. At the end of the Second World War, farms worked by their owners accounted for a mere 13.8 per cent of the total, as against 48.9 per cent held on lease, the remainder belonging to part owners, part tenants. As regards area, the farms and plots directly worked accounted for 36.7 per cent, the farms worked by tenants 63.3 per cent, of the total cultivated. The action taken under the land reform scheme has changed this state of affairs by generalising the small farm, owned and worked by its occupants, throughout the country. However, the scheme was carried out during the Korean War (1950-53) at a time of spiralling inflation made worse by the droughts of 1952, and some of its objectives were thwarted as a result. Thus it was that some of the peasants sold their land before having reimbursed the amount specified by the Government. This in itself is readily understandable; the peasants were already in debt because of the reform, and were forced to buy on the black market (fertilisers especially). They had no capital in reserve and the banks, worried about the risks involved, declined to offer credit. In addition, the maximum limit set on rural property proved too little and many a family preferred to abandon agriculture in favour of some other occupation. Others had to give up their land because their manpower was being called up for military service. For all these reasons, many peasants reverted to tenant farming. In 1965, a sample check of 1,136 peasant families revealed that 488 of them, i.e. 43 per cent, were forced to rent land to keep body and soul together. The position has improved since then, but is still marked by the fact that the reform was initially limited to a simple transfer of registered title. Ki-HyukPak, a Korean economist, has in a recent study thrown a sharp light on the problems which arise from the lack of coherent over-all ideas as to the form agricultural development should take. He writes : The original purpose of the land reform was to establish social justice and to remove such social wrongs as the tenant system, and in this context the reform can be judged as quite successful. However, there are some doubts about its economic success. In other words, excessive emphasis was placed on the equitable distribution of farmland, but little consideration was given to the policy measures needed to increase productivity in agriculture. In the Land Reform Law, emphasis was mainly placed on the transference of titles from landlords to tenant farmers. The measures aiming at the stable growth of the newly emerged owner-operated farm households through institutional and financial support were not well devised. The Land Reform Law restricted the liquidity of land by restricting land ownership to farmers. No legal provision is provided for facilitating credits through farmland mortgage at appropriate interest rates to make long-term loans possible. Many farmers look forward to mortgage legislation and to a simplification of the land registration system. Although tenant farming is prohibited under both the constitution and the land reform, it appears 443 Agricultural organisations and development that tenancy has been revived and is increasing in rural areas. Therefore, measures should be examined with a view to readjusting such conflicts between legal provisions and actual practice. It will also be necessary to devise measures for the provision of long-term low interest loans to expedite the formation of new farmland and to encourage the growth of farms to the maximum size allowed. The abolition of die upper ceiling regarding the size of holdings, asfixedfifteenyears ago, is much discussed today since the ceiling is believed to hinder the commercialisation of agriculture and the introduction of co-operative farming in Korea. Problems relating to mitigation or abolition of the upper ceiling pose important issues in formulating agricultural policy. The upper ceiling problem must be reconsidered in the light of achieving effectiveness of agricultural management and of promoting commercial farms.1 Thus, having to some extent dispelled the concentration of titles to property, Korea is now compelled to render its reforms less rigid and to supplement them with administrative and financial machinery on an adequate scale, so that profitable undertakings may increase and multiply and a more dynamic, more commercially minded class of peasant may emerge in the countryside. But the above developments will certainly never come about unless a good proportion of the peasants can be absorbed in other occupations, for the peasantry still represents some 54.5 per cent of the total active population (figures for 1965), i.e. one person actively employed per acre of available farm land. None the less, it should not be thought that land reform in Korea has given rise only to difficulties. It has in fact provided a welcome sense of security for many tenants who previously had been dependent on the goodwill of the owner. Moreover, an examination of the relevant statistics shows that there has been a far from negligible general improvement—higher yields, increased mechanisation, and so forth. In the absence of precise recent data, we cannot examine the large-scale reforms introduced in the socialist countries: mainland China, North Korea and North Viet-Nam. The other Asian countries, as we have already said, have not yet tackled land reform in any systematic way. Generally speaking, land settlement programmes take the place of reforms, but these are limited in scope and do not meet the needs of the peasantry, whose insecurity grows in proportion to their numbers: their steady demographic growth makes the shortage of land even more acute from year to year. In all these countries, absenteeism, insecurity of tenure and chronic indebtedness call for action more rigorous than land settlement schemes alone. Thus, a recent inquiry has shown that 56 per cent of the peasants in the rich central plain of Thailand are either pure tenants or small landowners who rent additional plots (the average plot for the whole of the country measures 10 acres). The same inquiry 1 Ki-Hyuk-Pak: Economic Effects of Farmland Reform in the Republic of Korea, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967 (mimeographed), pp. 29-30. 444 Asia and the Middle East elicited the fact that "81 per cent of landless tenants have never owned any parcel of land while the remaining 19 per cent were landowners once but became tenants later."x In Thailand leases are concluded by word of mouth from one year to the next, so that security of tenure is very limited. The process whereby so many people, having once been owners, become merely tenants may well be due to the peasants' chronic indebtedness and to the extortionate rates of interest practised in the countryside. In the central plain, 51 of owner-farmers and 95 per cent of the non-owners are in debt. The average annual rate of interest levied by the usurer, according to Chuchart and Resanond, varies between 32 and 100 per cent, with the tenants paying the higher rates.2 If present trends continue, it seems unlikely that agriculture in Thailand can show much improvement in the immediate future. Population is multiplying at 3.2 per cent per annum, which means that even if the agricultural population were to represent in relative terms a smaller proportion of the total than it does today (the Development Plan for 1967-71 expects the proportion to be reduced from 75 per cent in 1960 to 60 per cent in 1970), the absolute increase will still have amounted to some 2.2 million persons.3 The various programmes launched to solve this problem have given results which have been, although by no means negligible, yet somewhat meagre. The programme of marginal settlement—the most ambitious of all—has since 1955 been concerned with the redistribution of State lands, and by 1965 3,166,863 raïs (2.5 raïs = 1 acre) of such land had been apportioned among nearly 200,000 peasants, at the rate of some 20,000 a year. But in 1960 the rate of growth of the rural population was some 640,000 per year. To cope with unemployment, the Government of Thailand launched another scheme, for self-help land settlement, under which if they wish the unemployed can become owners of small plots. Such operations usually cover 5,000 raïs, 1,000 of which are reserved for experimental crops. Once the necessary preliminary work has been done and the land is ready for occupation, each new settler receives a plot of between 25 and 50 rais. In 1966, 1,433,064 raïs had been so distributed among nearly 200,000 families. Thirdly, a kind of co-operative land settlement scheme has been in force since 1932. This is a hire-purchase system launched by the Co-operatives Department which enables the landless peasant to purchase land with credits from the State, repayable over 15 to 20 years. The operations undertaken under this scheme are on a 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Reform Evaluation for Thailand, by Chaiyong Chuchart (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/9), p. 1. 8 Chaiyong Chuchart and Praiwan Resanond: The Prospects of Land Reform in Thailand, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967 (mimeographed), p. 4. 3 ibid., p. 2. 445 Agricultural organisations and development very limited scale since by October 1965 there were only 54 hire-purchase co-operatives representing, all in all, no more than 823 families installed on 42,610 raïs. Apart from them, there are a score of farmers' co-operatives on land bought from the Red Cross; these had a membership of 372 families by October 1965. There were, too, a few land settlement co-operatives created, with State help, on virgin land. The reclamation of virgin land, a movement which goes back to 1937, was designed with the same end in view, i.e. to provide land for the landless labourer. Each co-operative is itself a collective candidate for the award of land. The State finances the preliminary work and provides the members with plots varying in size according to the size of the families concerned. Repayment of the sums advanced by the State extends over 15 years, at the end of which period the members are expected to have reimbursed the cost of equipping the land in question. By the end of 1965, there were 273 co-operatives, with nearly 5,000 families farming 145,462 raïs under this scheme. These programmes have all done a Utile to relieve the demographic pressure on the land; but they do nothing to solve the fundamental problem facing almost every Thai peasant, that is to say, how to accede to ownership of land. Until this problem has been solved, by a far-reaching plan of reform, the peasants will find it hard to escape from their debts and to move towards economic betterment. Three-quarters of the population of Thailand are peasants, and no other branch of the economy can possibly hope to make progress unless agricultural policy succeeds. Here, as elsewhere in southeast Asia, agriculture has to give the initial impetus to industry and trade, which in their turn, by offering more employment, will do something to relieve the pressure on the land. Mutatis mutandis, the other countries in the region have problems similar to those obtaining in Thailand. In Ceylon, land settlement schemes have been launched to meet the demands of the peasantry, whose living space has been severely reduced because of the encroachments of the big plantations. During the last 30 years, such schemes have installed more than 500,000 peasant families (one-fifth of the population of the island).1 As in Thailand, the tenant farmers' lot is a precarious one. An inquiry undertaken in the 1950s showed that land is sometimes occupied for no more than a year, indeed sometimes for even less than this. Every year the owner can replace his tenant. Because of the power he wields, he can demand various services of the tenant, over and above any obligations entailed by occupation of the paddy-fields, by hinting that only by accepting such duties will the tenant 1 For further details, see FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Agrarian Problems and Reform Measures (paper by Ceylon) (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/7), especially pp. 5-6. 446 Asia and the Middle East stand a chance of having his lease renewed.1 This having been said, it has been estimated that about 40 per cent of the peasantry are landless. Hence in 1958 the Government promulgated a Paddy Lands Act which, after various amendments in 1961 and 1964, in theory ensures that leases are perpetual and can be inherited2, with retroactive effect to April 1956. This of course means that many tenants expelled by their owners should be able to recover the land they were occupying at that time. However, large and small landowners alike seem to be opposed to the Act, and the tenants themselves seem to be indifferent, or not well enough organised to press the Government to act.3 All this goes to prove how difficult it is to put through any reform among the peasantry unless the latter are well organised. In Ceylon, out of 10,000 cases in which tenants have been expelled, 4,000 only have been settled. As regards a tenant's obligations in kind (one of the main points dealt with in the Act), it is usually estimated that they still represent half the harvest (although, theoretically, they should never exceed one-quarter). In western Malaysia, the Paddy Cultivators Act adopted in 1967 was designed merely to supervise the rents paid by rice-farmers, and to offer the latter some security of tenure. Despite the fact that it applies to rice-growing only (whereas rice accounts for no more than 14 per cent of the land farmed) and that the individual states of Malaysia are empowered to limit its application (so that its implementation is by no means automatic), the Act represents a real step forward. It replaces an ordinance enacted in 1955 and regulates the relations between owners and tenants; in principle, contracts for the lease of paddyfields must henceforward always be in writing and be registered within fourteen days. In a country where the frequently illiterate tenant has traditionally been under the large landowner's thumb, the importance of such a reform will be readily understood, for a written lease will set forth his rights as well as his obligations. Moreover, by stipulating that a lease shall run for at least three years, the Act greatly improves on previous legislation, which forbade contracts for more than a year. In addition, a tenant can ask for his lease to be renewed ; in the event of refusal (except when the owner wants to recover his land to work it himself, or in the event of a breach of the rules set forth in the lease) he can refer the matter to a committee specially set up by the Act for such purposes.4 It would be desirable to apply similar provisions to other crops and to launch a real programme of access to ownership within the near future, care being 1 For further details, see FAO, World Land Reform Conference: Agarian Problems and Reform Measures, p. 6. 2 For the main clauses of the Act, see ibid., p. 13. 8 ibid., p. 7. *For further details, see Agoes Salim: Padi Cultivators Act of Malaysia, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967 (mimeographed). 447 Agricultural organisations and development taken to reverse the present trend towards the splitting-up of property.1 This, combined with the active promotion of agricultural organisations (still extremely weak in their modern form, as we shall see), would go far towards solving the rural problems of western Malaysia. The absence of peasants' organisations and the weakness of those which do exist are the more painfully felt in that the governments in this part of the world (and this applies to Malaysia and Ceylon as well as to the other countries in south and south-east Asia) do not always have the requisite technical personnel to carry out and supervise the land reform and land settlement schemes launched. The task becomes even more complicated when, as occurs in India and Pakistan, resistance to reform comes from a society divided by centuries of tradition into castes. Some of the systems introduced by the British in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (the zamindari, the ryotwari, and the mahalwari)2 have, it is true, either been done away with altogether (as in the case of the zamindari), or subjected to far-reaching reforms undertaken in order to eliminate the group of innumerable middle-men which had grown up to provide liaison between the State, the owners and the peasants. But none of the action taken so far has eliminated the big landowner and the influence which he, as a village elder, can exert on the conduct of affairs : in Pakistan, because the upper limit of 500 acres of irrigated or 1,000 acres of non-irrigated land is far too high for a country where there is no more than three-quarters of an acre of farmland per head; and in India, because despite the buying-out of 175 million acres over which the zamindars had held sway, property is still far too unequally distributed, while excessive variations in the standards of living of the small farmer and agricultural labourer still subsist. In 1960-61, so the National Sample Survey (Sixteenth Round) reveals, 50 per cent of the people living on the land held a bare 3 per cent of the cultivable area, while 10 per cent held 56.2 per cent of the land. In connexion with this country, the United Nations publication Progress in Land Reform, Third Report puts the point thus : 1 This phenomenon persists among the Moslems, who continue to respect ancestral custom. When an owner dies, his land is divided thus: one-sixth for his mother, one-eighth for his widow, 17/84 for each son, and 17/168 every daughter. (These figures may be modified according to the size of the family.) Here the splitting-up of property has gone far indeed. See W. L. Payne: Report of the Land Administration Commission (Kuala Lumpur, 1958). 2 The zamindari system was one whereby the responsibility of collecting taxes from a group of villages was entrusted to a government agent—the zamindar—who pocketed, on the average, one-eleventh of the sums thus levied. The British, in addition, granted him owner's rights over the lands he supervised. The ryotwari and mahalwari systems involved direct ties between the administration and the village (mahal) or peasant (ryot), the village or the peasant being given collective or individual rights of land occupation in exchange for payment of a periodically revised fee. See in this connexion Manilal B. Nanavati and J. J. Anjaria : The Indian Rural Problem, op. cit., Ch. VIII. In the course of the last eighteen years, more than 10 million acres of ryotwari property have been distributed to the landless. See FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Land Reform in India (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/37), p. 12. 448 Asia and the Middle East The principle of a ceiling on individual land holdings has been accepted by all the states, although the necessary legislation has yet to be passed in some of them. Both the basis for, and the measure of, ceilings on holdings and on personal cultivation vary from state to state. The reform of tenancy law to provide the necessary protection in regard tofixityof tenure and fairness of rents is now broadly complete, although even in this respect there is a noticeable diversity among states, for standards of fair rents vary as much as from one-sixth to one-half of the produce. * In fact, breaches of these rules are very common, and there is much evidence to prove that the owners exert all possible pressure—especially by invoking their right to recovery of the land—to compel their tenants to go on paying half, and even more than half, of the harvest. In fact it can be affirmed that, as a general rule, in all the countries where the reforms introduced have merely reinforced the rights of tenants and sharecroppers and done something to relieve the burden represented by traditional dues, the results achieved (although often quite substantial), are far less than what is required for over-all, significant agricultural development. The small farmer possesses too little land to live on, bearing in mind his limited technical resources, and when as a tenant or share-cropper he has to deliver half the crop to the owner of the land what remains is far too little for him to think of making the investments required to improve his yields. One year's bad harvest, and he is hopelessly in debt. This being so, we shall readily grasp that action taken to render tenant farming less precarious or to provide the tenant with some assurance of perpetual usufruct, so as to encourage him to invest, will always be inadequate. Observation seems to show that debts disappear only if the tenant accedes to ownership; after he has done this, the way is open for investment. This, for example, is the lesson to be learnt from the Japanese land reforms, which we have examined above. The same holds good of the co-operative movement. There has been an astonishing boom in the movement wherever the authorities have launched far-reaching reforms concerned not only with land redistribution but also with all the ancillary matters which make for a reform's success. Co-operative 1 United Nations-FAO-ILO: Progress in Land Reform, Third Report (New York, 1963), p. 20. In India, pure tenants hold 7.7 per cent of all holdings and 4.2 per cent of the total area under cultivation, and owner-farmers, 15.5 per cent of the plots and 18.2 per cent of the area under cultivation. See Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, No. 4, OctoberDecember 1965; and Gilbert Etienne: Studies in Indian Agriculture (Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968), p. 311. Although when compared with those for other countries these figures are by no means excessive, the fact remains that almost one-quarter of those who live off the land are either quite unable to become owners themselves, or suffer from insecurity of tenure such that there is little chance of real agricultural progress. Because the plots farmed by tenants are so tiny, and despite the fact that the owners themselves are often people of a very humble station in life, it may well be that tenant farming and sharecropping will disappear sooner or later. As we shall see in the conclusions to this part of our inquiry, this outcome has already been envisaged by the Indian authorities. But it seems unlikely that this will come about before yields have been raised. 449 Agricultural organisations and development development has on the contrary remained inadequate wherever governments have been content merely to improve tenant farming and to set up land settlement schemes. It has remained inadequate, too, wherever the numerous plots directly farmed are too small for the owners to be able to accumulate the sums required to reimburse in the normal way the credits received. Despite all efforts by governments, the small peasant remains virtually unaffected by a movement which all too often redounds only to the advantage of the large or medium landowner and the village elder. Even when co-operatives are created by the authorities and supervised by government officials, the statutory requirements frequently exceed the resources of the poorer peasant, who then reverts to the traditional machinery, despite the crushing burden he must support as a result. In such circumstances it is the village money-lender who takes control. Daniel Thorner, after an inquiry undertaken in India, reached the following conclusions in this connexion: Of the factors which keep the cultivators so dependent upon the money-lenders the most basic is that small peasant agriculture in India is economically unsound. Half of the cultivating families, possibly more, have so little land and get such low yields that they cannot make a living from the land. Even in terms of their current low standard of living the peasants' production and income are such that the families cannot make ends meet. They must borrow. But it is often very difficult for them to repay. The money-lender takes so high a rate of interest that the recovery of the principal becomes a secondary matter. Rather than trying to get back the principal at all, the money-lender may find it more remunerative to go on taking high interest year after year. The co-operatives of course cannot function in this way. Since they charge moderate rates of interest, they must depend on recoveries to keep going. If a peasant becomes delinquent in repaying the principal, the co-operative must refuse him further credit. The general history of co-operative credit in India has been that the number of members who do not repay increases, the standing of the societies falls, and eventually the societies become defunct. By contrast, the money-lenders manage to thrive on the insolvency of their clients.1 In circumstances such as these, when the peasantry are chronically in debt, any financial policy pursued by the State will frequently come to nothing either because the peasants have no share in the schemes evolved or because, although they may be prevailed upon to join co-operatives, they are quite unable to honour the obligations of membership. Thus, in India, the Philippines and Thailand (to take but three examples) the relationship between contributions in arrears and the number of virtually insolvent co-operatives is significant. J. C. Ryan, Director of the Extension Service of the Indian Social Institute in Bangalore, noted in 1965 that in the Philippines the policy whereby loans were granted against the guarantee afforded by the sale of produce raised with the 1 Daniel Thorner: Agricultural co-operatives in India: A Field Report (London, Asia Publishing House, 1964), pp. 27-28. 450 Asia and the Middle East help of the loans had fallen through, in the absence of any proper assessment of the marketable surplus the individual borrower was likely to produce. Hence the financial year 1959-60 had ended with a heavy deficit for the Agricultural Credit and Co-operative Financing Administration (ACCFA), loans having been reimbursed only to the following extent: production loans, 59.45 per cent; farm improvement loans, 39.71 per cent; commodity loans, 88.43 per cent; merchandising loans, 62.32 per cent; facility loans, 23.58 per cent.1 In India, according to the same author: State participation in the share-capital of co-operative institutions has led the co-operative movement into dubious ways. Membership in credit societies had to be increased according to targets, the size of individual loans had to be enlarged, and the total volume of loans disbursed in a year had to be stepped up so as to reach the targets fixed in the five-year plans of the Government. The submarginal cultivator had to be provided with loans for agricultural production whether or not he was able to produce a surplus that could be marketed to pay off his loans. Cases are known in which the loans were recovered out of the produce the borrowers needed for their own sustenance and they had to seek the traders to purchase grains needed for their own consumption. The State's need for growing more food has shifted attention from the well-being of the farmer to the increase of agricultural output, and this policy has driven some officers of government to run after targets as though the agriculturists were made for them and not the targets for the agriculturists. Instances of overfinancing of farmers and their credit societies have become common. In many parts of India the result has been that arrears in the repayment of loans have mounted. In Assam overdues rose to such high levels that fresh lending by the co-operative credit structure has come almost to a standstill. At the end of 1962-63 overdues in Assam stood at 76 per cent of the loans outstanding. In Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mysore and Rajasthan overdues ranged from 30 to 50 per cent. The ratio ranged from 20 to 30 per cent in West Bengal, Punjab, Orissa and Gujarat. According to the classification made in the audit for the year 1961-62, out of 182,774 societies audited and classified, only 4,996 were assigned to the A class (very good) and 27,849 were classified as B (good). As many as 18,540 societies were ranked in the D class (bad), and 1,843 were treated as E class (to be liquidated). A total of 129,546 societies were put down as class C (mediocre societies). Against these data it is no comfort to say that there are 211,132 multi-purpose societies in the country and that 3,027 million rupees were outstanding to them at the end of 1962-63. In fact, 39,129 societies were dormant at the end of 1962-63, constituting 19.5 per cent of the total number of societies.2 1 J. C. Ryan: "Co-operatives in Asia: Recent Developments and Trends", International Labour Review, Vol. 92, No. 6, December 1965, p. 468. 2 ibid., pp. 467-468. These comments have been confirmed by Christian Ladonne in an analysis of the results of the Intensive Agricultural Development Programme (known as the Package Programme), which has since 1960 been under way in seven Indian districts. Ladonne shows that: firstly, in 1964-65, the percentage of outstanding debts varied between 9 and 83 per cent ; secondly, that credit had been sought first and foremost by the medium and large landowners. Thus, in 1963 and 1964 respectively, 66 and 50 per cent of the large landowners in Aligarh and Shahabad had demanded credit facilities; but no more than 13 and 12 per cent of the very smallest farmers had done so. Once more, below a certain threshold (estimated as 5 acres in India—in fact, half of all families farm little patches of ground of less than 2 V£ acres) it becomes exceedingly difficult to operate co-operative credit schemes. See Christian Ladonne: "L'économie indienne", Notes et études documentaires, No. 3370 451 Agricultural organisations and development Such a state of affairs explains why there is at present a welcome trend towards the merger of organisations which cannot survive by themselves.1 In Thailand, the agricultural credit co-operatives, which account for 92.3 per cent of the total, manage to secure the refund of only half the credits (on the average) they offer.2 Therefore to have a really objective picture we should inquire into thefinancialposition of co-operatives, rather than seek to ascertain how many of them there are or how many members they have. And certain figures are often misleading. Thus, when we learn, for example, that the Iranian co-operatives in 1967-68 recovered 90 per cent of the money they advanced, we may think that this is due to the efficiency of the system. But the question we ought to ask also is to what extent these sums are reimbursed with money borrowed elsewhere (at a higher rate of interest). Unless we know this, we cannot pass judgment on a co-operative movement or on the state of rural thrift and savings. Skilful accountancy may mask an ailing economy dominated by the traditional money-lenders. Accession to full rights of ownership or to co-operative ownership, accompanied by a policy to promote the creation of economically viable units (implying an increase in yield per acre in almost every country) would seem to be the first step in the process whereby, little by little, peasant poverty and indebtedness might be overcome and the peasant might begin to envisage a purchasing programme designed to increase his output and his productivity. But production and marketing must be much more closely integrated in order to eliminate middle-men as far as possible and to ensure good and stable prices for the producer. Whenever such a policy has been followed, complementary industries have been stimulated, jobs created, and the pressure on the land relieved to some extent. Unhappily, such a policy has so far been applied in only a few countries. A glance at what is happening in Asia and the Middle East shows how much, in every field of agricultural development, remains to be done. And the most urgent problem for most of the countries in this part of the world is to raise the national standard of living; first and foremost this means raising nutritional standards. This being so, tremendous efforts must, without any doubt whatsoever, be made to facilitate the access to land and all that goes (Paris, March 1967), pp. 15, 20-21 and passim. For further information about the Package Programme, see Report on Intensive Agriculture District Programme, 1961-63 (New Delhi, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, 1963). 1 According to Ladonne, in the Aligarh district quoted in the preceding note, "out of 490 agricultural co-operatives, two only were considered as worth preserving, while twelve might become so. The remaining co-operatives would have to amalgamate to form 152." (Ladonne, op. cit., p. 21). In all likelihood the same action has spread to all the districts in which the Package Programme operates, and will eventually extend to all Indian co-operatives. a P. Thisyamondol: Agricultural Credit in rAaiYora/(Bangkok, Kasetsart University, 1965), p. 45. 452 Asia and the Middle East with it—credit facilities, the use of fertilisers, the organisation of markets. In other words, the approach to the whole problem must be fully comprehensive, due account being taken in each instance of the importance to be attached to each of these factors. As regards access to land and credit facilities, the information gathered during the present inquiry and very briefly summarised above seems to show that there is a close link between the level at which a small owner-farmer or small tenant can set aside surplus for sale and his ability to pay back co-operative credits. The continued existence of tenant farming with rentals at their present level, together with the absence of security, would seem to run directly counter to the developments we should like to see in the field of co-operation. True, even if these problems were eliminated the difficulty would still remain, for we should still have to improve the lot of the small independent owner-farmer living off what he grows, with very little extra available for the market. Nevertheless, their elimination would enable a whole class of farmers to obtain co-operative credits with the payments they now make in cash or in kind to the owners. If such a policy is not adopted, then the co-operatives will have to restrict their credit grants to those who can live up to their obligations. Otherwise the co-operative movement, which is already heavily in debt, is likely to prove a continual drain on national budgetary resources before eventually collapsing in financial ruin. Nevertheless, even when land is properly distributed and credit facilities assured, it will often be necessary to educate members of the co-operative movement into devoting a larger proportion of their incomes to productive investment. Grouping them together in co-operative farms would probably help them to become more aware of this pressing need. As things are, a tenant will frequently buy non-essential goods with the credits he obtains, simply because he has little inducement to improve land which does not belong to him. The small independent farmer will often do the same, partly because he is in any case an individualist, and partly because he commonly lives at a pure subsistence level and looks upon any surplus produce as above all a means to purchase consumer goods. He does not have the foresight, nor the long-term economicflair,to postpone an immediate purchase in favour of an investment which will help him to acquire bigger surpluses and so enable him, at some later date, to buy more and better consumer goods. However, if the decision were transferred from the individual to the group under a collective farming system, this tendency towards the immediate satisfaction of consumer needs would doubtless be halted. But even when the farmer is aware of the need for productive investment, he frequently does not know how to set about it or what order of priorities should be followed; hence proper technical guidance will be more than ever necessary. Whence the need to concentrate, at all levels, 453 Agricultural organisations and development on education in co-operative principles so that investment may be rationalised to the greatest possible degree.1 We have mentioned the use of fertilisers as one of the vital factors involved in raising nutritional standards. This factor is closely linked with those we have already discussed, and here too progress has been inadequate. In 1965-66, according to FAO figures, the continent of Asia (excluding the socialist countries) utilised 2,262,500 metric tons of nitrogenous compounds, i.e. 3.5 times as much as in 1948-49/1952-53 but roughly 25 per cent of thefigurefor Europe (USSR excluded), for a cultivable area of some 125 million acres. In the consumption of phosphate and potassium fertilisers the disparity is even more marked: 1,140,700 tons of P 2 0 5 in 1965-66 (3.5 times more than in 1948-49/ 1952-53), whereas Europe consumed 6.4 times this amount; and 940,100 tons of K 2 0 (6.5 times more than in 1948-49/1952-53), with Europe utilising 7.9 times this quantity. If the population were not so dense, these figures would be less significant. But in Asia, where almost every patch of arable ground is cultivated, it will prove very difficult to improve yields and overcome malnutrition unless there is a vast effort of propaganda in favour of fertilisers and new seeds, and unless people are trained in modern techniques and diversified agriculture. The fate of agriculture in Asia depends on whether or not this is done, in conjunction with the improvement and expansion of irrigation methods. It is on this point, therefore, that attention should first and foremost be focused, rather than on mechanisation, the further development of which, in the present situation, would cause more problems than it would solve. At this stage, the fact that in the whole of the region there are no more than 200,000 tractors, and almost no small motor-cultivators2 (except in Japan, which has more than 2 million) is in no way alarming. Unlike the beast, a machine does not reproduce its kind, gives no manure, and lives on petrol—a product too dear for the small self-sufficient farmer who has enough manpower available to do without machinery. Until such time as the proliferation of co-operative villages warrants their employment, attention should be concentrated not so much on machines as on the improvement of the traditional agricultural implements. In all these fields, and in the marketing of foodstuffs (a point we shall not dwell on here, beyond pointing out that a high proportion of crops is frequently 1 For the use of credit and the problems arising in this respect, see FAO : Agricultural Credit through Co-operatives and Other Institutions, FAO Agricultural Studies, No. 68 (Rome, 1965); and Horace Belshaw: Agricultural Credit in Economically Under-Developed Countries, FAO Agricultural Studies, No. 46 (Rome, FAO, 1959). 2 Countries other than Japan either have none or a few hundred at the most. However, we have no data for China (Taiwan), which probably possesses considerable numbers of tractors and motor-cultivators. 454 Asia and the Middle East lost for want of adequate processing and transport facilities), the tasks which remain to be carried out or brought to a successful conclusion are of truly daunting proportions. But nothing of lasting value will be accomplished unless the peasantry is given adequate guidance. Even if we make due allowance for what has been done in the way of community development, the fact remains that it is for the agricultural organisations with which we are concerned in this inquiry, and for them above all, to provide the guidance required. Let us now examine the present state of these organisations. AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATIONS: THE PRESENT SITUATION To what extent are agricultural organisations involved in all these rural development schemes ? The information provided by the 18 countries (out of 35) which answered our inquiries will help us to answer this question. Their replies offer more or less complete information about 46 organisations, of which 29 are general organisations, 3 employers' associations, 9 workers' trade unions, and 5 chambers of agriculture. General organisations General organisations, as understood in the present inquiry, are exceedingly rare in Asia except in the most highly developed countries, such as Japan and China (Taiwan). Elsewhere, and depending on the importance of the reforms in progress, their part tends to be played by co-operatives. This is especially true of the Near and Middle East where there existed no modern agricultural organisation before the Second World War. Even today, as we shall see, the co-operatives set up under land reform schemes are frequently the only institutions available to the peasants, outside their traditional mutual aid svstems. Near and Middle East Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia Perusal of the replies received clearly shows that the more developed a country is, the more numerous and varied will be the agricultural organisations therein. Thus it appears from the data assembled that in Saudi Arabia there are no organisations at all of the kind with which we are here concerned. This, then, is "absolute zero"; from here, we may advance to a second stage, marked by the existence of co-operatives only. This is the state of affairs existing in Iraq and Jordan, where there are neither employers' associations 455 Agricultural organisations and development nor trade unions nor chambers of agriculture; on the other hand, the development of the co-operative movement is now under way. We have already mentioned the Iraqi co-operatives created by the land reform scheme. In Jordan, rural co-operatives have sprung up since 1952 to provide the peasantry with credit and seed, to encourage thrift, and to help in marketing of produce. In 1959, according to data published by W. J. W. Cheesman, there were 194 of them, with several thousand members.1 The answer to the author's inquiries seems to show that the co-operatives play a very limited part in shaping the Government's agricultural policies. In the Jordanian Seven-Year Development Plan, there is a chapter on the promotion of co-operatives; for the time being, the latter are being run on a tight rein, but there is every reason to suppose that with the passage of time they will become more independent. To accelerate this process, co-operative institutes have been set up to train personnel and give members a grounding in co-operative principles. As the co-operative formula is for the time being the only one available for modernising the countryside, it is very much to be hoped that this policy succeeds. Iran The situation is almost identical in Iran where, apart from the co-operatives mentioned early in this chapter, no other kind of organisation2 exists beyond a few scattered groups of breeders of poultry and livestock. We received information about three of these groups; in all likelihood, there are no others, at least none of the same size and importance. The stock-breeders belong to two distinct associations. The first was officially created in 1954, but in fact was working as long ago as 1941. Its members are some 600 cattle-breeders in the countryside round Teheran, who help each other in improving the management of their ranches. The association maintains contacts with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Agricultural Bank and other official institutions, and does extension work of a technical kind by regularly organising visits to farms, and film shows of an instructive nature. The second association was set up in 1961. In fact, it is no more than an offshoot of the first, and pursues the same aims. In 1966, it had as members 35 "progressive" stock-breeders who, in order to belong to the association, must have imported livestock certified as free from brucellosis and TB. The Poultry-Breeders' Union was created in 1960 and six years later had 164 members living in the countryside 1 For further details, see W. J. W. Cheesman: "The Jordanian Co-operative Movement", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1960 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1960), pp. 218-224. 2 Since this report was drafted, a number of "farm corporations" have been set up in land reform areas performing a variety of services for beneficiaries of the reform. 456 Asia and the Middle East round Teheran. This association is supplemented by a co-operative and is chiefly concerned with helping its members to run their farms by providing advice and supplying selected strains of fowl. In theory, the Poultry-Breeders' Union keeps in close touch with the Ministry of Agriculture, but according to information received in 1966 such contacts seem to have been infrequent as the union had been convened no more than two or three times in the six years since its creation. It plays a purely advisory part and its efforts do not seem to have been outstandingly successful. Other contacts have been made with the Agricultural Bank, more especially in connexion with the grant of credit to members. As we shall shortly see, the weakness of the links between ministries and private organisations is by no means confined to Iran. Lebanon With Lebanon we reach what might be called the third stage, i.e. that at which, despite the absence of employers' associations and workers' unions, there exist, besides the co-operatives, some fairly highly developed farmers' occupational organisations. We shall take the co-operatives first. Recently the authorities have closely scrutinised the way in which these are run; as a result some defunct co-operatives have been wound up, and at the time when this inquiry was launched there remained no more than 32 agricultural cooperatives; and ten of these were destined to be disbanded later. At that time the idea was that 21 of the 22 remaining co-operatives would deal more or less exclusively with marketing outlets (15 dealing with fruit and vegetables, 3 with olives and olive oil, 1 with poultry and 2 with eggs) and that a single supplies and services co-operative (CUMA) should survive the reorganisation. A dozen or so of these co-operatives were then considering whether to create a national union for retail and small-scale wholesale distribution, especially at Beirut for fruit, vegetables, and farmyard products. The beet-planters hoped to set up a co-operative which would produce vast changes in the beetgrowing industry. Other schemes were under way at that time, notably a scheme for opening a co-operative training and management centre (the studies of which would help in bargaining with the authorities and with private interests) and ultimately the creation of a national co-operative bank which, if the authorities accepted the idea, would act as a channel for the provision of all agricultural credit. Lastly, a scheme was in hand to provide for cooperative representation either in chambers of commerce, industry and agriculture (following the projected reform of these chambers) or in a new chamber of agriculture, separate from the others and on the subject of which discussions were then proceeding. It is highly probable that all these schemes have been carried to a more or less successful conclusion. 457 Agricultural organisations and development Farmers' and peasants' organisations are both numerous and varied. Above all they represent their members' commercial interests vis-à-vis the authorities. The National Farmers' Union is the only one which does not limit itself to one specific branch of agriculture, but although it was created as long ago as 1950 it has never managed to represent a majority of the peasantry. Despite some State subsidies it is very short of finance, and in general it limits itself to submitting proposals to the Government in defence of its members' commercial interests. It remains completely outside any bargaining on workers' wages and conditions of employment, nor does it have anything to do with vocational training. Besides this general organisation, there are five occupational associations, one for each major branch of agriculture: the VineGrowers' Association, created in 1934; the Northern Association of CitrusFruit Orchard Owners, organised in 1949; the Farmers' Society, established in 1941; and two associations created in 1961, one aiming at improvements in cattle-breeding, and the other at improved poultry production. All these associations are as a general rule subsidised by the Ministry of Agriculture. Apart from certain activities designed to effect technical improvements, they are chiefly engaged in obtaining financial advantages for their members; they may, for example, seek from the authorities a reduction in the import tax on fodder or an increase in the import duties on products likely to compete with Lebanese produce. Syria Agricultural co-operatives in Syria, which were set up as part of the land reform movement, were supplemented in 1964 by creation of the General Federation of Peasants. This body takes the form of a pyramid, the base of which is formed by village associations, with their regional leagues midway between base and summit. In theory, there should be one association for every village with more than 400 inhabitants plus such farms as may exist in the vicinity, or for a group of hamlets equivalent in aggregate. Any peasant may apply for membership (which is free), provided he is a bona fide "agricultural worker, share farmer, tenant or proprietor of arable land which he cultivates himself or with members of his family, without employing any third party, the acreage of such land not exceeding the maximum limit of land distributed to peasants under the Agrarian Reform Act, as amended."1 These local associations have the following aims, as denned in the relevant legislative decree2: 1 ILO: Legislative Series, 1964—Syr. 3: Legislative Decree No. 127, to promulgate the Act respecting the General Federation of Peasants, dated 14 December 1964, Part I, 1 (g). " ibid., Part II, Ch. I, 2 (1) to (6). 458 Asia and the Middle East (1) to protect peasants' rights and defend their interests; (2) to guide and develop national and socialist sentiments in country areas; (3) to afford advice to peasants, together with guidance on agricultural matters for the purpose of protecting and encouraging production, increasing agricultural output and augmenting the national income; (4) to examine peasants' problems concerning farming methods, social and labour problems, and recommend adequate solutions; (5) to give guidance to peasants and promote their sense of national awareness in order to facilitate the administration of the legislation respecting the promotion of country life; (6) to raise the level of peasants' lives from the economic, social and cultural points of view. This movement is too recent for us to assess its outcome here, especially in view of the fact that it is not yet nation-wide in scope. Local estimates are that not before 1970 will every village have its local association. However, the general lines of the policy adopted by the federation emerge clearly from what was said at its congress held in Damascus from 26 to 29 July 1967, when 206 delegates from the basic organisations attended. At this congress, several general recommendations concerning agriculture were adopted. The more important of them related to the speedy promulgation of the relevant legislation, the creation of a body specialising in soil salinity problems, and acceleration of developmental work in connexion with the big agricultural projects under way in the Ghab and Rouje regions. On the subject of land reform, the congress asked the competent authorities to draw up a plan whereby expropriation and redistribution of land might be completed in 1967. As regards the co-operative movement, the congress urged that the movement should be extended to the whole agricultural area of the country. It recommended that other action should be taken at the same time to: (a) encourage thrift; (6) develop the land collectively owned by co-operatives; (c) ensure that there should be no clash between production, as organised by the Co-operatives Federation, and union action, as undertaken by the General Federation of Peasants; (d) improve the uses to which animal resources are put and protect pastures and cattle on the move outside the natural rainfall zones; (e) set up a co-operative institute; ( / ) introduce courses on agricultural co-operation into practical and theoretical study programmes; (g) encourage co-operative marketing and the creation of joint marketing associations in every muhafazat (province); (A) increase agricultural investment by granting both medium- and long-term credit to agricultural co-operatives; (i) keep the peasantry informed about national developments in agricultural matters and on new production techniques. 459 Agricultural organisations and development Turning next to social matters, the congress adopted a number of recommendations, the more important of which called for : (a) a campaign against rural unemployment by planning for an increase in agricultural productivity in co-ordination with the National Economic Development Plan and especially with plans for the projected Euphrates Dam; (b) freedom for the peasant woman from the fetters of tradition, investigations to be undertaken into her status, and the provision of protection for her, so that she may take her rightful place in agricultural work; (c) improvement in health and hygiene through the creation of special health committees and mobile health units with a view to campaigning against rural, and especially desert, diseases. The proposals mentioned above, if taken together, constitute in fact a medium- and long-term agricultural development programme, and it will be interesting to see what its outcome is.1 The ideas contained therein are simple enough; the scheme is based on co-operatives and local associations, and it seems that no other kind of workers' organisation is contemplated. On the other hand, many competing interests are represented within the associations (the farmers may not always agree with the workers or owners, for instance), and difficulties seem likely for this very reason. If some balance can nevertheless be struck within a single organisation of this kind, the experiment will have proved highly instructive; for it will have shown that in the initial stages of rural development, although co-operatives by themselves may not suffice, neither is it essential to copy all the multifarious organisations characteristic of very highly developed countries. Turkey At the present time Turkey is at the same stage as Syria, although it arrived there by a very different route. There are employers' associations and chambers of agriculture (which we shall shortly examine), but at the time this inquiry was under way there were still no agricultural trade unions; and general organisations were simply non-existent.2 However, we ought not to overlook the KÖy Ihtiyar Heyetleri, or councils of village elders, set up by Act No. 4081 (1941). These bodies are chiefly concerned to settle disputes arising within the village and to protect the use of property. The councils consist of two village elders, elected annually, and are said to be very popular and to have 1 Under the United Nations Development Programme (Special Fund), the ILO is at present helping the Syrian Government to establish an institute which in particular will train staff for co-operatives and rural organisations, with an eye to reinforcing the official rural development programme and the movement for land reform. 2 In 1966, a Bill was being prepared for submission to Parliament, to authorise the creation of trade unions among agricultural workers. The Bill has in fact been submitted, but has not yet been ratified. 460 Asia and the Middle East achieved remarkable success. However, they do not do the jobs which elsewhere are incumbent on a general organisation and hence cannot be considered as such for our present purpose. On the other hand, the co-operative movement, which has its roots in the nineteenth century, has made very considerable progress since the 1930s. Early in 1967, it had a membership of some 2.4 million spread over 7,146 co-operatives, 60 per cent of which were in the Turkish countryside. There were 1,823 credit co-operatives, with 1,212,000 members; 263 marketing co-operatives, with 148,000 members; 348 irrigation co-operatives, with 8,000 members; and 18 beet-planters' co-operatives, with 331,000 members. During the ten years between 1957 and 1967, the co-operative movement experienced an extraordinary boom. In 1957, there were 1,529 co-operatives with 1,574,000 members; ten years later, there were 7,146 co-operatives with 2,405,000 members. Moreover—and this is important if the over-all position can truly be assessed in the light of what is happening to credit co-operatives— the progress made has been accompanied by a steady decline in the proportion of failures. According to the data published by T. Güngör Uras, there was constant deterioration between 1937 and 1945 (when, out of 596 credit cooperatives, 351 were showing a deficit); 1946, however, marked a dividing line, and since then the number of co-operatives making a profit has regularly exceeded those in debt. By the end of 1965, out of 1,734 credit co-operatives, no more than 365 (21 per cent in all) were showing a loss.1 True, this is a not inconsiderable proportion, but in all probability it reflects the shortcomings of an incomplete land reform programme (it has been estimated that one-third of the peasantry are still living on plots too small to provide a living). A searching scrutiny, with an eye to determining what the critical threshold of indebtedness is, i.e. what the circumstances are in which a peasant cannot meet his obligations, would be well worth while. Cyprus Cyprus (and Israel) are unlike Turkey in that they possess both general organisations and workers' trade unions, but no employers' associations. This is unusual, and deserves a mention. The two general organisations in Cyprus reflect the political divisions of the island. The Pan-Cypriot Farmers' Union is a right-wing body (nofiguresfor membership are available), while the Union of Cypriot Peasants, with a membership of 11,000, is left-wing. The first was created in 1942, the second in 1946. Between 1955 and 1959, when the war of independence was raging, the left-wing organisation was outlawed. Both 1 For further details, see T. Güngör Uras: The Agricultural Credit and Marketing Cooperatives in Turkey (October 1967; mimeographed). See also, by the same author: The Co-operative Movement in Turkey (Ankara, 1965). 461 Agricultural organisations and development organisations are chiefly concerned to ensure that prices for their members' produce are kept up, and to this end are members of a semi-official body called the Potato Marketing Board (the potato is of very great importance in the island's agriculture). Within the board, their status is purely advisory. When the author's inquiries were proceeding, the possibility of setting up a similar body for the sale of carrots was being investigated. In other respects neither of these two organisations seems to be very active. Neither takes any part in vocational training or the advancement of the rural sector. However, as far as national agricultural policy is concerned, the Pan-Cypriot Farmers' Union says that it belongs to several bodies, such as the Agricultural Research Institute and the Social Insurance Council, where it helps indirectly in shaping the Government's agricultural policy. There are at present no legal or other obstacles to hamper the activities of the two organisations. The Pan-Cypriot Farmers' Union states that it belongs to no international organisation. The Union of Cypriot Peasants belongs to the Trade Unions International of Agricultural, Forestry and Plantation Workers. Israel The Farmers' Federation of Israel is at one and the same time a general organisation and an employers' association. It was created by the early settlers in 1913, as an experiment, and since then has branched out into many other fields. As a general organisation, it provides guidance and advice for its members in everything to do with the management and the economics of farms. Furthermore, it maintains close contacts with the public sector—the Ministry of Agriculture as regards agricultural policy, the Ministry of Finance as regards governmental and municipal taxation, and the marketing agencies in an endeavour to improve the marketing of members' produce. As regards vocational training, the federation has organised a college of secondary agricultural education and a training school for rural mechanics. As an employers' association, it is the only negotiator recognised by the Ministry of Labour for the purpose of concluding collective agreements with the Agricultural Workers' Union. The contracts drawn up in this fashion by the two organisations have force of law for the whole of Israeli agriculture. The federation mentions no obstacle to its freedom of manoeuvre. South Asia and the Far East India General organisations are very unevenly developed in south and south-east Asia. In India the decision to create one was taken at a meeting of ministers of agriculture at Srinagar, in 1954. Hence the Bharat Krishak Samaj, or Indian 462 Asia and the Middle East Farmers' Forum, was founded in February 1955. It pursues aims very similar to those of all other organisations of this kind and its membership has grown to about a million. Unhappily, its failure to reply to the author's inquiries prevents us from providing any account of its achievements. Ceylon In Ceylon general organisations chiefly exist for the plantations. The most important is the Planters' Association of Ceylon, founded as long ago as 1854.1 This body is chiefly concerned with the defence of the occupational and financial interests of its members, and to this end is represented on all the ofiicial and semi-ofBcial bodies dealing with agriculture and agricultural manpower problems, notably the Board of Indian Immigrant Labour, the Medical Wants Committee, the Central Board of Agriculture, the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, the Wages Boards for the Tea-, Rubber- and Coconut-Growing Industries, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, and the research institutes dealing with tea, coconuts and rubber. One of the association's chief aims is to maintain price levels, and to this end it has among its organs several committees whose task it is to review agricultural produce prices from time to time; their conclusions are then referred to the competent authorities. In this field, and in everything to do with the ofiicial targets set for agricultural development, the association works hand-in-hand with the Government. The association leaves occupational promotion in the rural sector to its member undertakings, which individually look after the vocational training of their workers. On the other hand, the association does take an interest in the health and housing of plantation labourers. It claims that the Ceylon Estates Health Scheme, which it devised, is in general being applied by its members. The association does not say whether it belongs to any other organisations, national or international. Thailand In this country, farmers' clubs and the so-called "4H" rural youth clubs look after welfare in the countryside and undertake certain technical work. The farmers' clubs, founded in February 1955, formed a national federation in May 1963. They act as seed storage centres and as centres for the dissemination of modern farming techniques. In addition, they help the peasants to 1 There are two other organisations (the Low Country Products Association and the Ceylon Agricultural Producers' Association), neither of which provided any answers to the author's questions. 463 Agricultural organisations and development solve their credit and marketing problems; but since the peasants are so heavily in debt (as we have already said) it would seem unlikely that the activities of such clubs can help very much in the economic promotion of rural areas unless it is decided to accelerate the reforms now under way. The "4H" rural youth clubs go back to 1953, in which year they set up a national federation. They provide practical farming and domestic science classes, teach the principles of hygiene, and so on. But the author's information leads him to suspect that they suffer from a lack of advisers and extension workers, while the inadequacy of the credits and agricultural equipment made available to them prevents them from playing their expected role in the countryside. In the absence of definite figures for the membership of the farmers' clubs and rural youth clubs, it is not possible to assess their current importance. China (Taiwan) In China (Taiwan), as in Japan, the position is very different. Here land reform movements have received valuable assistance from farmers' organisations which are comparable, in power and technical development, to those in Europe. In Taiwan, the farmers' associations already existed at the beginning of the century; however, in 1953 they were reorganised and adapted to the requirements of land reform, and since that time they have multiplied and diversified their activities in village, district capital and province. Before the Second World War, the Taiwanese rural associations could be divided into two main classes: those which tried to improve and modernise rural activities (associations of farmers, forestry workers andfishermen,and small "agricultural units" organised for the co-operative management of crops), and those which dealt with marketing, purchase and credit, that is to say, co-operatives of the classical kind. In the beginning, the farmers' associations (the first of which was founded in 1900) represented a spontaneous movement of self-defence on the part of the small farmers, who hoped through their unity to improve their status as tenants. But they grew so fast that in 1908 the Government decided to recognise the movement officially and to reduce the associations from sixteen to eight, i.e. one for each district capital. In 1938, the associations merged into the very big Farmers' Association of Taiwan. To compensate for Government intervention, the associations were granted publicfinancialassistance, this being in addition to any sums collected from their members (in fact, every Taiwanese peasant was ipso facto a member, since membership, which at first had been voluntary, was later made compulsory). There were 16 co-operatives in 1913, 500 in 1940. Originally, they had dealt with credit only; later, they undertook all sorts of activities, from the 464 Asia and the Middle East purchase and consumption of produce to the distribution of fertiliser and the most widely used consumer products. The multiplication of co-operatives and various farmers' associations in the Taiwanese countryside nevertheless gave rise to "demarcation disputes". Hence the Government amalgamated these movements under a single administration during the Second World War. As part of the reorganisation urban associations were introduced also, and shortly afterwards people not directly engaged in agriculture had acquired so much influence that the aims of the farmers' associations had been seriously affected. The associations finally lost all administrative autonomy, the Government having decided that it would be easier to supervise them if its own officials were put in charge. Such a state of affairs was entirely contrary to the spirit of the movement as it had existed in 1900. At the end of the war, however, there was again to be a change of direction. In 1946, for a few years, the movement was once more divided into two branches: associations and co-operatives. Then, in 1949, the two again amalgamated, the single organisation resulting from the merger being put under the direction of the Provincial Department of Agriculture and Forests and of the Provincial Department of Social Affairs. This state of affairs lasted another four years, until a further, final reorganisation in 1953. On the eve of this reorganisation, there were in Taiwan more than 750,000 peasants belonging to 22 urban associations, 318 communal associations and 5,000 small "agricultural units". In 1962 membership still stood at about the same figure; it should be mentioned, however, that the reorganisation itself had initially led to a reduction in the numbers to rather less than 600,000. It nevertheless succeeded in putting an end to the confusion between farmers and non-farmers, and although the two branches were not re-established, the movement was nevertheless given some internal autonomy. Since that time, associations have had two categories of member : full members, i.e. persons deriving more than half their income from the land, and associate members, that is to say, those deriving less than half their income from agriculture. In the hamlet, district capital and province, the associations are run by two councils—a board of directors and a board of auditors—elected from the full members, who alone are entitled to vote. The associate members however may belong to a board of auditors, occupying up to one-third of the seats. Within each association, the board of directors (varying in number between 11 and 33 persons, according to whether the association belongs to a hamlet, district capital or province) appoints a manager by majority vote. The manager, who receives a salary, runs the various activities of the association. There is an automatic link among the various associations, since at every level they are obliged to belong to the association immediately above them. 465 Agricultural organisations and development Nationally, they form a federation subject to the supervision of the Department of Agriculture and Forests. The department, through its local branches, supervises and guides some of the activities undertaken (for example, the distribution of fertiliser and the apportionment of government credits). The farmers' associations are active in every sphere of interest to the countrydweller, from agricultural extension work, marketing and credit to the implementation of land reform programmes, the settlement of disputes and the promotion of hygiene. A fewfigureswill suffice to show the scale and success of the operations embarked on. In terms of money, the value of the processing, marketing, purchasing and storage services offered by the associations increased sevenfold between 1952 and 1962. As regards credit, during the same period the sums lodged had increased by a factor of 13.4 and the loans made by a factor of 12. Finally, there was a sixfold increase in the amounts disbursed on extension work. Because of this constant increase in expenditure (part of the money coming from members' dues, part from subsidies from the Government and from the Joint Sino-American Committee for Rural Reconstruction) the farmers' associations have managed to complete successfully an ambitious programme of rural expansion, which has led to substantial technical, economic and social progress. Within ten brief years, the equipment available to the rice farmer has been almost completely renewed. As a result, in 1962, after 900 warehouses and 65rice-millshad been built or repaired, thefiguresfor production and storage capacity were the following: 332 of the 347 associations existing had 2,553 warehouses, with a total capacity of 761,000 tons of rice. Besides which, 286 associations had 330 rice-mills, with a total processing capacity of 7,981 metric tons a day. Every association had, on the average, 7.7 warehouses with a capacity of 2,300 tons of rice, and 1.15 rice-mills with a capacity of 28 tons a day. In all likelihood, thesefigureshave now been exceeded, for the rice thus marketed by the associations still represented no more than about one-third of the harvest. These associations have also been remarkably successful in another field, namely in the marketing of pigs (pig-raising is the most important of Taiwan's stock-breeding activities). Every year 170,000 pigs are sold by the associations, 70,000 of them in Taiwan (20 per cent of the total slaughtered), the remaining 100,000 being exported to Hong Kong (90 per cent of exports). Finally, as regards more intensive farming, the associations annually distribute some 60,000 metric tons of fertiliser for the paddy-fields, i.e. 85 per cent of the total used in the island. The remaining 15 per cent is taken by the tea, sugar-cane and grapefruit plantations and is distributed by the three companies which deal with these three crops. 466 Asia and the Middle East Obviously, such remarkable technical progress would have been quite inconceivable without the land reform, and without an immense amount of extension work. Here the associations have played a truly decisive part. Between 1953 and 1962, they assumed responsibility for the collection of the annual payments from those who had profited from the reform, and for the payment of the indemnities allotted to the former owners. Thus there was no need to constitute a special corps of bureaucrats who would have had to have been paid out of the national budget. At the same time, in the knowledge that reforms would have to be accompanied by a general improvement in knowledge and skills, the associations took up extension work. Three only had done so before 1955; in 1962, they numbered 289. From 1957 onwards, courses in domestic science were included in the extension programme and 30 associations began to run such courses. In 1962, 178 associations were active in this field, and in the areas for which they were responsible they had created 1,516 domestic science clubs with 26,454 members. The programme is supplemented by the activities of the "4H" clubs created by the associations. In 1962, there were 4,978 such clubs, with a membership of some 63,000 young people of both sexes. The clubs are particularly keen to improve the technical skills of their members, and it is a fact that amongst them are to be found some of the island's most skilful farmers and stockbreeders. But that is by no means all; the clubs make an impressive contribution to the task of providing the country with communications and public services. In 1962, according to data published by Min-hsieh Kwoh, these "4H" clubs had planted 58,922 trees along roadsides, improved 1,665 miles of secondary roads, repaired 385 miles of irrigation canals, cleaned 35 miles of drainage ditches and restored some 7 Y2 miles of dikes.1 What, then, are the results of the work done by the Taiwanese farmers' associations ? It cannot of course be claimed that they are responsible for all the agricultural progress made in Taiwan; after all, the authorities and other semi-official or private organisations have made their own contribution. Nevertheless, they have done a very great deal in increasing production and consumption and in improving the general standard of living, as shown by the following figures: between 1953 and 1962, total agricultural production increased by 44.3 per cent, whereas the active agricultural population declined from 61.3 to 55.3 per cent of the total active population. In 1962, in relation to pre-war averages (1935-39), the daily per capita intake of calories rose from 1,865 to 2,430. At the same time, because incomes were larger and better distributed, in 1961 the average household was devoting no more than 54.4 of 1 Min-hsieh Kwoh: Farmers' Associations and their Contributions towards Agricultural and Rural Development in Taiwan (Bangkok, FAO, 1963), p. 47. 467 Agricultural organisations and development its resources to food, as compared with 66 per cent before the war. This reduction in percentage—a characteristic of the very developed countries—is the most striking witness to the general improvement in the standard of living in China (Taiwan). Japan Paradoxically, the position in Japan is the reverse of that in China (Taiwan). In Taiwan, the farmers' associations have absorbed the co-operative movement; in Japan, the co-operative movement has practically ousted the associations. Certainly, the latter still exist and have a considerable membership. There are four big organisations, created after the war: the General Confederation of Farmers' Unions (Zenkoku Nomin Soremmei), set up in 1958, with some 800,000 members; the National Federation of Farmers' Unions (Zenkoku Nomin Domei), set up in 1960, with 100,000 large farmers as members; the Pan-Japanese Federation of Farmers' Unions (Zen-Nihon Nomin Kumiai Rengokai), founded in March 1958, with 300,000 members; and the Japanese Federation of Settlers' Unions (Zen-Nihon Kailakusha Remmei), founded in 1948, which has 184,000 members. Apart from the last of these movements, the others derive from already existing organisations, some of which were set up before the Second World War. This, for example, is true of the Union of Japanese Peasants, founded as long ago as 1928 following the merger of several farmers' organisations; this union is the common ancestor of the Zenkoku Nomin Soremmei and the Zen-Nihon Nomin Kumiai Rengokai. These organisations try to persuade the Japanese Diet to support their representations. They endeavour to maintain prices and submit claims in connexion with social security, tax reductions and government assistance in modernisation campaigns; and they do their best to secure commercially profitable conditions from the monopolies which have dealings with the Japanese peasantry. In theory, at least, these activities should ensure their success; yet all the information collected during the present inquiry tends to show that, both before and after the creation of the above-mentioned organisations, the influence wielded by the farmers' associations has steadily declined ever since 1949, i.e. three years after the land reforms were launched. Why should this be so ? To answer this question, we must briefly examine the history of the movement in Japan. Before the war, it consisted only of tenant farmers' associations campaigning for a reduction in, or exemption from, rent. The movement's aim, in fact, was to secure an overhaul of the system of land tenure maintained by the owners of big estates. At that time, therefore, the members of the unions could clearly see what the movement was 468 Asia and the Middle East trying to achieve, and the latter continued to seek justice for the peasants despite pressure from the big landowners, the opposition of the Government, and the hostility of an extremely harsh police force. Nevertheless the movement did succeed in securing a partial reform of the system of land tenure. In 1924, a Bill was enacted imposing arbitration in the event of conflicting claims to land. In 1926, ministerial orders were issued concerning the establishment and protection of owner-farmers. In 1938, an Act was promulgated concerning readjustments in landed property. All this legislation made for an improvement in the status of tenants whilst nevertheless reinforcing the system of land tenure maintained by the big landowners. Thus no fundamental charges took place in the land tenure system until the land reform programme carried out in the years following the Second World War. In June 1947 there were some 7,000 agricultural unions with a total membership of nearly 2 million. Their aim at that time was not merely to abolish the existing system of land tenure and to promote land reform, but also to combat the system whereby the peasants were subject to forced rice deliveries (thanks t o which the Government, with backing from the United States authorities, was able to buy rice from the peasantry cheaply and thus to alleviate the food shortage prevailing at that time). In October 1946, however, the land reform scheme had reached the stage at which leased land was being taken over and resold, and it is from this moment that the farmers' unions, traditionally concerned with eliminating the old system of land tenure, began to go into decline, despite the fact that they still maintained their opposition to the forced deliveries of rice and to the heavy taxes which farmers and peasants had to pay. However, about the year 1950 these two remaining causes of peasant unrest were eliminated by official action, and since then the influence of the farmers' associations, the bulk of whose complaints had thus been taken care of, has steadily continued to wane. Furthermore, the host of new owners of land began to press their claims not through the associations but through the co-operatives which, as political pressure groups, offered a realistic means to achieve their ends. From 1951 onwards, the co-operatives began to undertake a wide range of activities whilst still maintaining their major preoccupation, i.e. the price of rice, still controlled by the Government.1 Thus it was that the agricultural co-operatives, representing a movement at once agricultural and political, virtually took over the work which had been performed by the farmers' associations. 1 The price of rice, and the outlets for it, have been officially supervised ever since 1942, but the compulsory delivery system was done away with in 1955 and replaced by another, whereby the peasants, at seed time, undertake beforehand to deliver a specified quantity to the Government when the harvest is brought in. 469 Agricultural organisations and development A few figures will suffice to show how immense is the influence acquired during recent years by the Japanese co-operatives. In 1961, the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives (Zenkoku Nogyo Kyodokumiai Chuokai) already had a membership of some 5.5 million peasant families (93 per cent of the total), who were affiliated to two main kinds of organisation: {a) general agricultural co-operatives responsible in particular for credit, marketing, purchases, insurance, education and guidance; and (b) specialised agricultural co-operatives dealing above all with the marketing of one or more products. These co-operatives are all linked through various federations to the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives; there is one federation to each of the 46 Japanese prefectures. We have no precise figures for local co-operatives, but information supplied by Dr. Naraomi Imamura in response to an inquiry conducted in 1965 seems to show that on the average 536 peasant families belonged to each general co-operative. We may therefore conclude that there were, all in all, some 11,000 local co-operatives. This is perhaps a somewhat low figure but it does show the web-like kind of structure adopted by the Government. In a communication sent to the ILO on 1 December 1966 and summarised below, Dr. Imamura describes the present situation and reveals the nation-wide political influence wielded by the movement: The fact that general unit agricultural co-operatives are usually on such a small scale is attributable to the fact that they are established on the basis of the principle "one general unit agricultural co-operative for one municipality". This implies that the agricultural co-operative system may function in close relationship with the agricultural administration of the Government. In fact, since its inauguration this system has served the Government as a subsidiary administrative organ executing the latter's agricultural measures. In this connexion, it is worthy of note that in 1953 the Municipality Merger Promotion Law was put into effect and that mergers between municipalities have since been enthusiastically promoted. Later, in 1962, the Agricultural Co-operative Merger Aid Law was promulgated with a view to promoting mergers between unit agricultural co-operatives to make them enlarge to the boundaries of the new cities, villages and towns formed by mergers between former municipalities. The second marked characteristic of the agricultural co-operative system in Japan is that it has an orderly pyramidal structure with three levels (municipal, prefectural and national). Such a structure has perhaps been adopted for the following reasons: (1) it reinforces the operation of the small general unit agricultural co-operative; (2) general unit agricultural co-operatives can enjoy the advantages of specialisation through their affiliation with specialised prefectural federations, and also the advantages of both generalisation and specialisation through the three-level structure; and (3) the agricultural co-operative system may easily co-operate with, and exert political pressure on, administrative organisations on various levels: unit agricultural cooperatives on municipal governments, prefectural federations on prefectural governments, and national federations and the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives on the central Government. 470 Asia and the Middle East We shall grasp the consequences of this remarkable co-operative expansion even better if we consider the way in which the movement is represented in various national bodies, and the degree to which it absorbs the country's agricultural production. In 1966, according to information gathered during the present inquiry, the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives was represented in municipalities and prefectures as well as in various governmental advisory bodies. It was estimated that perhaps half of those elected to assemblies of various kinds belonged to, and acted as the representatives of, the co-operative movement. With respect to the co-operatives' absorption of agricultural produce, the Ministry of Agriculture estimates that about 72.7 per cent of all the rice sold by the peasantry in 1960-61 had been marketed by general co-operatives. The proportion for wheat during the same period was 58.9 per cent; for potatoes, 22.7 per cent; for vegetables, 12.9 per cent; for fruit, 30.6 per cent; for stock-breeding products, 32.1 per cent; and for silk thread, 45.7 per cent. As regards purchases by the farms, the following figures show the proportion of total consumption represented by sales by co-operatives to their members: fertilisers, 68.4 per cent; fodder, 50.7 per cent; agricultural implements and machinery, 19.1 per cent; insecticides, 72.2 per cent. Lastly, as regards credit, 42.8 per cent of the credits received by peasants came from general co-operatives, which for their part received 53.8 per cent of the total sum saved by peasant families and lodged in savings accounts. It has frequently been said that the Japanese co-operative movement defends the peasants' interests to the extent that those interests coincide with its own. True, it is mainly concerned with rice (purchase, marketing, price maintenance), to the detriment of other agricultural produce. This is because rice is the chief commodity the co-operatives deal in. Moreover, the co-operatives act as purchasers for the State, and derive substantial profits from doing so. Be that as it may, the fact remains that 75 per cent of the peasants questioned in the course of an inquiry undertaken in December 1962 considered that they had an absolute need of the co-operatives; 64 per cent felt that without the cooperatives they would find it difficult to purchase fertilisers and equipment, and 43 per cent thought that thanks to the co-operatives they gained higher profits on the sale of their produce. Thesefiguresseem to show that while not everybody may be satisfied, the co-operative movement does nevertheless embody the aspirations of the majority of the Japanese peasantry. Philippines In the Philippines, where the co-operative movement has long been established, the agricultural co-operatives decided in January 1955 to set up a federation, the Central Co-operative Exchange Inc., which: (a) markets the 471 Agricultural organisations and development surpluses delivered by agricultural co-operatives, after local or regional needs have been met; (b) supplies members of co-operatives with equipment; (c) manages stocks of rice, tobacco, fertiliser, and so on; (d) manufactures fodder, particularly for pigs and fowl; (e) organises co-operative training within the local co-operatives; and (J) advises local co-operatives on the management of their affairs. Besides looking after co-operative affairs, the federation is endeavouring to exert an influence in other fields. It tries, for example, to maintain prices, to have a say in the establishment of production targets, and to influence agricultural policy as a whole. But the information to hand seems to show that the influence it does exert is much less than that of the Japanese co-operatives. The reason may be that its turnover is not yet great enough for it to be able to exert a decisive influence on price maintenance. The federation itself says that it works hand-in-hand with the Government as regards the production and distribution of rice, but that it does not play a part of any importance in official decisions concerning national agricultural policy. As we shall see below, this role devolves rather on the Chamber of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Sugar plays an exceedingly important part in the national economy, and this sector is controlled by two big organisations : the Philippine Sugar Association, set up in 1923, and the National Federation of Sugar-Cane Planters, founded in 1948. This latter succeeded the Confederación de Asociaciones y Plantadores de Cañadulce, which had been established in 1930. The Philippine Sugar Association is above all concerned with research and with the protection of the interests of the sugar industry, which (it says) is hampered by current legislation both in the Philippines and in the United States (its survival depends on access to the United States market). Hence the association's activities are very much export-oriented. Through its Washington office, it organises campaigns in favour of Philippine sugar, and when amendments to the Sugar Act were being considered in 1956, and at the time the Laurel-Langley Agreement was being negotiated, the association managed to arrange for an additional quota of 70,000 tons, plus exemption from import duties. On the other hand, the National Federation of Sugar-Cane Planters is active within the Philippines, in the fields of technical assistance, marketing and labour relations. It acts as an employers' association in matters affecting this last topic. With regard to technical assistance, the federation has become known through its investigations into soil, erosion and the use of fertilisers—inquiries which it has conducted among its members ever since it came into existence. Thus the fertiliser currently being imported usually has to conform to the 472 Asia and the Middle East federation's specifications. Similarly, it advises its members on the choice and use of agricultural machinery, the growing of new varieties of plants, irrigation, and how to tap underground water supplies. To help them to obtain bigger profits, it set up (in 1948) a marketing co-operative, the Sugar Producers' Co-operative Marketing Agency, in which sugar-cane growers and sugar manufacturers are represented. In this fashion, the two parties concerned obtain the highest possible prices and market their produce in a systematic and orderly manner. Besides which, the agency provides its members with all sorts of agricultural requirements, such as fertilisers, machinery, pesticides, insecticides, and so on. As regards labour relations, the federation has been concerned since 1935 with problems of minimum wages for agricultural workers (no relevant legislation existed at that time) and even at that early stage it managed to convince its members to grant a 20 per cent wage increase. In 1960, at a meeting held in Manila, members undertook to pay their workers wages which would be 20 per cent higher than the legal minimum, and thereafter to raise them as and when export taxes were abolished. Every member of the federation has to abide by these decisions. To facilitate the settlement of labour disputes, the federation has been instrumental in obtaining the creation of a wages board in which employers and workers are represented. This board, set up by the Department of Labour, is empowered to visit plantations so that the workers may themselves express their opinions on how conditions of work and life might be improved. Lastly, among the general organisations, we must not overlook the Federation of Farmers' Associations of the Philippines Inc., membership of which is confined to those who devote all their time to agricultural pursuits. These associations, which are to be found throughout the length and breadth of the country, were initially set up by government extension workers who organised in various localities a kind of study club in which they gave practical instruction to the farmers. These courses became in course of time the backbone of the extension programmes, and, since they were proving so successful, the authorities decided to turn them into farmers' clubs. From that time on the movement spread rapidly throughout the country, and by 1956 there were 1,289 clubs with 39,350 members. In 1959, these clubs, having formed provincial and national federations, were officially recognised as the Philippine Federation of Farmers' Extension Clubs. By a recent amendment to their statutes, the clubs became associations—whence the federation's change of name. The federation at present has nearly 1,700 associations, with 92,000 farmers as members. These associations play a most important part in Philippine agricultural development. It has been observed that wherever an association has been created, the demand for fertilisers, pesticides, selected seed, machinery, irrigation 473 Agricultural organisations and development pumps, sprayers and so on is much higher than elsewhere, while local farming techniques improve. Practical lessons and demonstrations of new techniques are given by members to their fellow-members, and this ensures an exchange of knowledge and information which needs very little outside help. Whenever the opportunity arises, excursions are organised to places where agricultural development schemes are being successfully put into effect, with the result that those who take part can see for themselves what is being done to ensure rural progress. Lastly, by increasing people's knowledge and skills and by developing a social sense, these associations are, as it were, forcing-houses for future co-operative managers. In this fashion, they contribute to the spread of rural co-operatives. Besides these practical activities, the associations provide the peasantry with a forum in which to air their local or national grievances. Although as yet they represent no more than a small minority of the rural population, they do, it seems, exert some influence. Certainly, the fact that, by virtue of the Agrarian Reform Code promulgated in 1963, the Agricultural Productivity Commission has been instructed to promote the creation of associations throughout the country shows that this kind of organisation will play a key part in the agricultural development of the Philippines. Malaysia The lack of replies or detailed data for the other countries in southern and eastern Asia means that we cannot at present describe the position with regard to general organisations in these countries. However, the author has managed to collect certain information which seems to show that during recent years co-operatives and farmers' associations have sprung up almost everywhere to fill a gap which the traditional systems of mutual aid can no longer bridge. This holds good of Malaysia where, at the time the present inquiry was in hand, the farmers' associations created in 1958 under the authority and with the financial support of the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives were gradually spreading all over the country. These associations, freely set up within the village, are represented at state level by state associations, and at national level by the Federal Farmers' Association. At every level there are four separate sections, one dealing with extension work, one with credit, one with economic matters, and one with administration. In 1967 an Act was expected which would define their status in the eyes of the law. The original inspiration for these associations came from Taiwan. They are chiefly concerned to defend producers' interests, to ensure technical improvement in Malaysian agriculture, to increase productivity and incomes, and thereby to raise the standard of living of the Malaysian country-dweller. Besides running a considerable 474 Asia and the Middle East programme of extension work, they encourage thrift and offer their members credit at normal rates of interest; this helps to combat rural usury. They also market their members' produce for the best possible price and supply agricultural machinery and equipment at advantageous rates. In 1968, there were 798 such associations, with 38,355 members in all. Certainly, this is no very impressive figure, if we bear in mind that at the same time the simple traditional organisations of a co-operative kind had some 570,000 members. But it must be remembered that in Malaysia, as in other Asian countries, co-operative and associationist movements on modern lines are a recent innovation. Hence a pessimistic appreciation would be quite unjustified. Even in the currently most advanced Asian countries, these movements got off to an equally laborious— perhaps even more laborious—start. As our inquiry is no more than one of a number now being undertaken in various parts of the world into the position of agricultural organisations, it is highly probable that in the near future we shall, from the data thus elicited, be in a position to devise a policy which will accelerate the development of such organisations. Employers' and workers' organisations Generally speaking, we may say that employers' and workers' organisations exist in Asia only where plantation agriculture is practised, that is to say, in relatively few countries. Hence we shall consider both kinds of organisation under one heading. We have already seen that many of the countries concerned are categorical in declaring that organisations of neither kind exist. The countries which have supplied information in response to the author's inquiries may be classified as follows : Afghanistan, Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, Israel1, Japan, Jordan and Lebanon report that no employers' organisations exist. Ceylon, India, Malaysia, Turkey and South Viet-Nam say that employers' organisations do exist but have not always provided specific information. Cyprus, India, Israel, Japan, Malaysia and Viet-Nam report that workers' organisations exist. The other countries report that they do not exist (Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey), or remain silent, or indicate that the peasants have been enrolled in the new organisations set up under land reform schemes to replace the traditional systems of mutual aid, which previously were the only organisations of any kind available to them. Finally, although the author received no answer from the workers of Ceylon, he has nevertheless been able to gather certain information about their organisations. 1 In Israel, as we have seen, the Farmers' Federation, a general organisation, is an employers' organisation at the same time. 475 Agricultural organisations and development Near and Middle East Turkey In this region, therefore, Turkey is the only country for which information about the employers' associations is to hand. Turkish agricultural employers belong to 32 associations, 27 of which in December 1962 set up a federation called the Türkiye Çiftçi Tesekkülleri Federasyonu. These associations are chiefly concerned to maintain agricultural prices and to make claims concerning taxation, land reform, and the Government's agricultural policy. To this end, they work with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Department of Planning and the chambers of agriculture, whenever production targets and general agricultural policy come up for discussion. One member of the federation attends meetings held by these bodies, but in an advisory capacity only. Since there are no agricultural workers' unions, there cannot exist any of those joint bodies in which, in other countries, employers and workers are so active. Nor, in the light of the information received, does it seem that the employers' associations pay much attention to social welfare in the Turkish countryside. This kind of work is more a matter for the chambers of agriculture, as we shall see below. Israel We have already seen that the Farmers' Federation of Israel plays the part of an employers' association in bargaining with the workers. In 1911, the workers set up the Agricultural Workers' Union of Israel, to which 95 per cent of all agricultural workers in the country belong, whether they be Jews, Arabs, Druzes or of any other origin. Except in a few Arab villages, share-croppers and tenant farmers hardly exist, so that these are not included as trade union members. The union itself is part of the Organisation of Agricultural Workers, which embraces wage earners and the self-employed workers of the moshav and kibbutzim (co-operatives and agricultural settlements). In December 1965 there were, all in all, 260,000 fee-paying members, nearly 100,000 of whom belonged to more than 550 moshav and kibbutzim. The remainder were wage earners in farms and forestry undertakings of the ordinary kind. The Agricultural Workers' Union is chiefly concerned with wages bargaining, the settlement of disputes between different kinds of undertaking, the submission of claims concerning conditions of work, keeping a check on the observance of labour and social security legislation, and study of general employment problems in rural areas. As regards its social, economic and cultural activities, the union writes that since the Organisation of Agricultural Workers is a member of Histadruth (the Israeli General Federation of Labour), its members enjoy the use of the network 476 Asia and the Middle East of institutions which Histadruth has created throughout the land. These institutions comprise numerous dispensaries, hospitals, youth and sports centres, children's nurseries and vocational training institutes. With regard to social security, the union has created its own insurance fund, the benefits from which are in addition to those deriving from the national social insurance legislation enacted in 1954 (relating to old-age pensions, maternity allowances and accident insurance). This supplementary fund is managed by the union itself, subject to supervision by the Rural Wage Earners' Department of the Organisation of Agricultural Workers. The contributions paid in to the insurance fund represent approximately 24 per cent of a seasonal worker's gross earnings and 27 per cent of the gross earnings of a worker permanently employed; the greater part of the sums involved—20 and 23 per cent of the earnings respectively—is defrayed by the employer, so that the worker concerned pays no more than 4 per cent. Every time a contribution is paid by a worker, the fact is duly registered and the sums in question are entered to his credit, so that a seasonal worker does not lose the rights he has acquired should he change his undertaking or job. The fund is responsible for paying the cost of annual holidays, old-age pensions, vocational re-adaptation allowances and supplements to sickness insurance benefits, together with separation allowances for workers permanently employed. It has also devised a life insurance system and a programme of loans and grants designed to promote various activities, such as housebuilding, land settlement, and the establishment of agricultural co-operatives. According to the union, Israeli labour legislation is very progressive, and makes no invidious discriminations. It extends to every aspect of man's working life, and indeed goes beyond this by ensuring that the seasonal worker may be sure of getting a minimum number of days of work a year. Collective agreements are freely arrived at between the Agricultural Workers' Union and Farmers' Federation. Should these agreements be differently interpreted, the matter is settled through tripartite discussions between the authorities, the employers and the workers. The union feels that such tripartite negotiations have proved extremely satisfactory and have a beneficial effect on relationships between employers and wage earners. The Organisation of Agricultural Workers is represented in the various organs of the Ministries of Agriculture and Labour. Since membership embraces self-employed workers, the co-operatives and the agricultural settlements, as well as agricultural wage earners, the organisation maintains relations with government bodies through two departments it has created for this purpose : the Settlement Department and the Agricultural Wage Earners Department. The first of these is represented in official bodies responsible for planning, agricultural marketing, prices policy, and so on. All such bodies are called 477 Agricultural organisations and development upon to advise the Ministry of Agriculture, but the members thereof are entitled to vote at meetings. The Settlement Department is also represented in consultative committees of the Ministry of Education whenever agricultural vocational training comes up for discussion. The Agricultural Wage Earners Department is represented at meetings of the Ministry of Labour advisory bodies called upon to consider employment policy, industrial relations, labour legislation, the organisation of employment exchanges, etc. In these organs, the workers' representatives are entitled to vote. Generally speaking, the Agricultural Workers' Union feels that in its bargaining with the employers and the authorities it has secured very substantial gains for its members. The working week is at present one of 43 y2 hours (42 in summer)—one of the shortest in any developed country. The union considers that wages also are satisfactory. In this connexion it points out that the unskilled Israeli agricultural worker starts out at 14 Israeli pounds a day, which is at present more than an unskilled wage earner would be earning in any other occupation except the building trade. Wage earners and other workers also enjoy the housing facilities offered by the building concerns set up by Histadruth or the Organisation of Agricultural Workers. The Shikun-Neve-Oved Company, as part of this scheme, has erected more than 20,000 homes for agricultural workers. Notwithstanding this fact, most new houses constructed during recent years have been put up by the Ministry of Housing as part of the policy for absorption of immigrants. The men and women coming to make their lives in Israel arrive from all points of the compass, and naturally their educational backgrounds and vocational training are often extremely varied. Accordingly, the Organisation of Agricultural Workers, through its labour welfare councils (run by the Agricultural Wage Earners Department), organises literacy courses as well as intensive courses of higher education and in vocational skills. Furthermore, it set up the Agricultural Workers' Institute in 1964, the idea being to train farm managers as well as to pursue its literacy and vocational training courses. The Organisation of Agricultural Workers of Israel belongs, through Histadruth, to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Cyprus In Cyprus, the emergence of agricultural workers' trade unions is an extremely recent phenomenon, and one which may induce the employers also to found an association in the near future. Two organisations cater for the agricultural worker: the Federation of Agricultural and Transport Workers and the Union of Workers in Agriculture and Forestry. Thefirstof these is a right-wing organisation created in October 1962; it has 2,500 fee-paying members, only 478 Asia and the Middle East 1,000 of whom are full-time agricultural workers. The second has left-wing sympathies and dates from October 1959; it has 5,000 fee-paying members (full-time, part-time, and seasonal workers). Both organisations are active in very much the same way in connexion with collective bargaining, employment stability, and social security. In all these fields, they claim to have achieved results, the scope of which it is, however, impossible to determine, as no specific details were provided in answer to the author's questionnaire. In various other fields (land reform, property legislation, housing, education, rural welfare), neither organisation says that it has been at all active or had any successes. Since there are no joint organs in Cyprus, both organisations submit their claims directly to the agricultural employers themselves and so far this procedure has apparently worked satisfactorily. Neither organisation, however, is represented at all in any official body. The Federation of Agricultural and Transport Workers definitely says that it is not represented, while the Union of Workers in Agriculture and Forestry merely reports that it exerts an indirect influence on governmental bodies through the Pan-Cyprian Federation of Labour, to which it belongs. Trade union activities encounter no legal obstacles. On the other hand, both organisations encounter a number of difficulties caused by the particular socio-economic structure of rural Cyprus. The union mentions above all the dispersion of agricultural workers and their mobility; the federation holds similar views, adding that illiteracy, especially among female agricultural workers, is a sizeable obstacle. The Federation of Agricultural and Transport Workers belongs to the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers; the Union of Workers in Agriculture and Forestry is a member of the International Union of Agricultural Workers. South Asia and the Far East India The absence of detailed information about the Indian employers' associations makes it difficult to pass any comment thereon. What information we have seems to indicate that they exist chiefly in areas given over to plantation agriculture, such as West Bengal, the state of Madras, and Uttar Pradesh. Most of these organisations were founded after India had become independent, and there is no reason to suppose that their activities differ in any important respect from the activities of planters' associations elsewhere. On the workers' side there is a host of small unions, many of which exist on paper only. A union with a membership approaching 1,000, representing 479 Agricultural organisations and development agricultural workers at Darbhanga (Bihar) and created in 1955, was good enough to answer our questions. The following extracts from its reply show the difficulties being encountered and the extent to which the Government assists it in coping with local problems. The main aims of our organisation are to secure better wages, better living conditions and reasonable working hours, and to secure better service conditions through collective bargaining or through legal means. Night schools, drinking-water arrangements, housing facilities, panchayat amongst workmen for settling social differences and several other social, religious and political affairs are being organised and looked after carefully by our organisation. There is no other organisation of farmers and tenants. Frequently wage disputes arise between labourers and farmers (kisans) which the union solves. If the union fails, the Government, through the Conciliation Officer in the Labour Department, settles the matter. In some cases when the Conciliation Officer also fails, there are labour courts to settle these disputes. The president and the general secretary of the union are full-time unpaid workers. Due to shortage of funds, the main constructive and solid work for the welfare of the labourers cannot be carried out 25 per cent of the workers are full-time, that is, permanently employed, and the rest are seasonal. Our members are from both categories of workers. The general level of unemployment and the poverty amongst agricultural labourers are the main obstacles in the way of improvement of their conditions. There is no system of organising a joint body of workers and employers. Agricultural workers are scattered, and it is very difficult to bring them together for collective action. There is no representation on any of the government bodies by our union. The following successes have been achieved by our union through government help: (a) minimum wages so far fixed by the Government have been implemented and workers are getting increased wages; (£>) the Government has constructed houses for scheduled caste workers who have at present no proper house in which to reside (this was partly due to our initiative; members of scheduled castes who were not previously treated equally by society are now being equally treated, and untouchability is prohibited by law); (c) night schools with government subsidies have helped illiterate workers to become literate; (d) the Government is taking all protective measures for safeguarding the health of workers. Our organisation is affiliated neither to a central organisation nor to an international organisation. It is affiliated to the North Bihar Labour Unions Congress, which is directly linked to "Congress", i.e. the All-India Congress Committee at New Delhi. Such indirect information as has come to hand about agricultural trade unions in India tends to bear out the above. Although hasty judgments must be avoided, it nevertheless seems likely that the absence of proper central organisations and the unions' dependence on the great political parties will impede the harmonisation and expansion of trade union activities, both within individual states and nationally. At the stage now reached, of course, it may well be that this is inevitable. But Indian agriculture must face up to a wide range of problems, and there is a very serious risk that the agricultural workers' claims, unless they are backed by an independent federation, will sink without trace among the welter of problems facing the large organisations on which they at present depend. 480 Asia and the Middle East Ceylon Here, in 1944, the plantation owners set up a body known as the Ceylon Estates Employers' Federation; its principal aims, as expressed in its reply to the present inquiry, are as follows: — to maintain and promote good feeling and good relations between members and employees; — to secure mutual support and co-operation in dealing with demands made or action taken by employees or any class or classes of employees or by any trade union on all matters or questions affecting the general or common interests of members; — to encourage the payment of equitable rates of wages and salaries; — to obtain the removal of employees' grievances; — to fix points of custom and adopt forms of contract between members and employees; — to undertake by arbitration, conference or similar procedure, the settlement of disputes either between members or between members and employees; — to represent the members or any one or more of them in any trade dispute in which they or he may be directly or indirectly interested, including representation on any wages, conciliation or other board authorised by any law for the time being in force in Ceylon; — to finance any member or members who shall directly or indirectly be involved in or be a party to any litigation, arbitration or other legal proceedings arising out of any dispute with a trade union or with any employee or employees, subject however, to the provisions of Section 46 of the Trade Union Ordinance; — to indemnify wholly or partially any member or members who shall suffer financial loss sustained as a direct result of carrying out any decision of the council or of the federation as provided for in Rule 27; — to promote, organise and finance any scheme for the provision of pay or other benefits (including the supply of food) for any employee or employees; — to communicate with public authorities and with kindred bodies on all matters affecting the interests of members and other employers of labour and of employees and to promote or oppose legislative or other measures affecting the same and to co-operate with other organisations of employers, and in particular with the Planters' Association in all such matters; — to arrange for and finance the representation of the federation, either directly or through some organisation of employers, at international, regional or other labour conferences wheresoever held ; — generally to promote and protect the mutual interests of members and other employers of labour and of employees and to do all such other lawful things as are incidental and conducive to the attainment of the above objects or any of them. The federation represents its members in all collective bargaining involving wages and conditions of employment, and has concluded agreements (satis^ factory, so it seems) with the relevant workers' organisations to settle disputes arising within individual plantations. But as a rule questions involving wages, payments for overtime and plantation workers' holidays are settled by the official wages boards on which the federation holds a number of seats. The other activities dealt with in this inquiry are a matter for the Planters' Association, as we have seen above. 481 Agricultural organisations and development The Ceylon Estates Employers' Federation is a member of the International Organisation of Employers and of the Organisation of Employers' Federations and Employers in Developing Countries. As the Ceylonese workers' organisations failed to reply to the inquiry, our picture of agricultural organisations in that country is necessarily incomplete. This is unfortunate in that Ceylon has a sizeable number of plantation workers. According to an investigation undertaken by the ILO1, there existed in 1961, apart from the Ceylon Workers' Congress (the great majority of whose 323,000 members worked on plantations), two major organisations; the Lanka Estate Workers' Union, with 81,000 members, and the Ceylon Plantation Workers' Union, with 31,000. In 1964, according to the ILO team of investigators, it seemed that relations between employers and union representatives were not always cordial; indeed, in some instances mistrust was so strong that the employers forbade union officials to enter their plantations.2 Trying to find out why this should be so, the investigators recorded that: In Ceylon, where the unions are too numerous, poorly run and of rival political hues, strikes are continually breaking out, mainly for political reasons rather than with a view to improving the working or living conditions of plantation workers. The lack of internal discipline is evidenced by the fact that in 1961-62, of a total of 72 strikes, 69 took place without advance notice to the employers, the majority of them even without a decision by the union. It is rare for a strike to last more than one or two days, and the majority of them end for no apparent reason and as a rule without having achieved anything at all.3 It may be that things have improved since then, but the silence of the employers on this subject and the lack of reply by the workers make confirmation impossible. Malaysia We come up against a complementary problem in Malaysia: here, as the Malayan Agricultural Producers' Association has given no reply, we are forced to limit our examination to the situation of the plantation workers. Since November 1954 these workers have been organised in the National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW), a body which in March 1966 had more than 107,000 members, all of them permanently employed. The NUPW negotiates with the employers over wages and general conditions of employment, but hours of work are governed by the standards set in the ILO Plantations Con1 a 3 482 ILO: Plantation Workers, op. cit., p. 158. ibid., p. 166. ibid., p. 169. Asia and the Middle East vention, 1958 (No. 110), which has been ratified by the Government. Nor does the NUPW negotiate over housing and hygiene within plantations, in respect of which official regulations exist. Apart from local direct negotiations, the representatives of the NUPW and of the employers belong to a joint board with advisory status, the chief duty of which is to interpret the agreements reached by the two parties. However, there are no rules or regulations defining the official functions of this board; hence it cannot negotiate and is limited to drafting recommendations. The NUPW considers it to be an unsatisfactory body because it can take no decisions. The NUPW suffers from no legislative restrictions; indeed, in its reply to the author's questionnaire, it goes so far as to complain of the ease with which, in Malaysia, a union may be founded: "The trade unions must be registered in this country. The provision lays down that any seven persons in an industry may form a union and apply for registration. This provision directly encourages splinter unions." 1 It is not easy, from outside, to assess the significance of this difficulty. The NUPW goes on to mention other problems deriving from the social, cultural and linguistic differences inherent in a multi-racial country like Malaysia. Nationally, the NUPW is represented in various bodies: the Employees' Provident Fund, the Industrial Arbitration Tribunal, the Malaria Advisory Board, the Employment Exchange Board and the South Indian Labour Fund Board. It holds seats, too, in the National Joint Labour Advisory Council, an advisory body made up of employers' and workers' representatives under the chairmanship of the Minister of Labour. The role of this council is limited to offering its views to the minister on general matters of concern to employers and their staffs. Whereas there can be no doubt that the NUPW plays a purely advisory part in the council, it is impossible to say (in the absence of information) whether it exerts any influence on the decisions taken in the other organisations mentioned above, for example by a right of vote. The NUPW claims that it is above all in the field of wages that its negotiations have led to success; these were increased, between 1954 and 1965, by 70 per cent for the toddy tappers and by 50 per cent for weeders. Moreover, the social services provided by employers (sports grounds, meeting halls, libraries, and so on) have been considerably expanded. With regard to housing, on the other hand, it seems that a good deal remains to be done: plantation workers are in fact housed on the plantation itself by the employers, and the 'The 1959 trade union order in fact lays down that a minimum of seven people are required to found a union; they must all be employed in the same industry. Outside the NUPW, the bulk of whose members are Indians, there are a few small unions with something like 5,000 members, such as the United Malayan Estate Workers' Union, the North Malaya Toddy Tappers' Union, the Fung Keong Union and the Chong Min Union, i.e. bodies catering either for Malaysians or for Chinese. 483 Agricultural organisations and development NUPW is carrying on a campaign to have them reinstalled on land close to their place of work, so that they can build their own homes. In its current claims programme, the NUPW has four other points: job security, social security, rural hygiene, and action against the unemployment caused by reduced activity in the rubber industry or by the fragmentation of rubber plantations (because of the difficulties that rubber is at present facing on the world market). The NUPW is a member of the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers. Japan We have already mentioned that, according to the information received, no employers' organisations exist in Japan. Moreover, the Japanese agricultural workers are, generally speaking, organised only to a very limited extent. Nevertheless, there has been in existence since March 1965 a body known as the National Federation of Agricultural Workers' Unions (Noson Rodokumiai Zenkoku Rengokai), with a membership of some 10,000 agricultural workers. These workers began as long ago as 1950 to set up small unions in order to initiate collective bargaining over conditions of employment. Most of the workers concerned are day-labourers or poor peasants who, to supplement their incomes, spend part of their time in wage-earning employment. The aim of this federation, which apparently has links with the Japanese Communist Party, is to secure a wage level which will provide its members with a decent standard of living, and in this respect it claims to have been fairly successful. However, its activities must certainly be carried out in difficult circumstances since there are no joint organs nor is it represented in any national official body. In its answer t o the author's inquiries, it lists other difficulties too: its members are scattered, they often carry on several trades at the same time, and in many cases feudal relations still survive between an employer and his employees. The federation asserts also that current labour legislation creates additional difficulties: for example, the workers employed by certain employers are not eligible for social security benefits. The federation says that it belongs to no other organisation, national or international. Viet-Nam As regards this country, an answer received on 18 July 1966 mentioned the existence of several employers' and workers' organisations, but it is almost inevitable that in view of the current situation in Viet-Nam their activities have been seriously affected. The employers maintain two organisations: the Viet-Nam Planters' Association and the Rubber Planters' Association of Viet484 Asia and the Middle East Nam. Both were created long before the Second World War and carry on activities akin to those of similar employers' associations in this part of the world. Of the two, the Rubber Planters' Association alone has provided detailed answers to the author's questionnaire. Created in 1917 as the Union of Rubber Planters of Indochina (it adopted its present name only in July 1959), this organisation says that wages and conditions of employment are laid down by a collective agreement between employers and workers; this agreement is reviewed from time to time at the request of either party. To date it has never been necessary to have recourse to government arbitration in this respect. As regards rural welfare, the planters have organised children's nurseries with recreation grounds in every plantation village; here a mother can safely leave her children while she is at work. For the older children the planters have built schools which enjoy government recognition. Children are expected to attend these from the age of 5-6 onwards. Curricula are drawn up by the Ministry of National Education, and the planters pay for the entire cost of the children's studies and books and the school's equipment. Health on the plantation is looked after in the following way: there is a specially equipped emergency first-aid post in each village, run by a nursing assistant; on each plantation there is a secondary hospital, run by a qualified male nurse with one or two assistants; and in the biggest plantation of the group there is a central hospital with as many as 500 or 600 beds. All these establishments have running water and electric light. The central hospitals are equipped with the latest medical and surgical installations and are run by duly qualified practitioners. On the plantations the staff and labourers are housed free of charge, the workers living in "plantation villages", each made up of 200 to 300 little houses. These villages have a market, extensive sports grounds, a church and a pagoda. Buildings are made of brick and concrete. The plantations themselves usually look after the vocational training of their staffs. As regards workers' leisure, each plantation—and frequently each village—has a theatre for use by workers' troupes. The theatre is used for film shows too, although there are mobile cinemas which circulate from village to village. Foremen and skilled staff enjoy the use of premises equipped with a reading room, radio and record-player where they can spend a very pleasant evening. Sometimes there is a swimming-pool and tennis court as well. The Rubber Planters' Association works closely with the Union of Natural Rubber Producers in Paris. With regard to technical matters, it is also in touch with the International Rubber Research and Development Board (IRRDB) in London. 485 Agricultural organisations and development The agricultural labourer and small independent peasant are organised in two big associations attached to the Vietnamese Confederation of Labour: the Federation of Peasants of Viet-Nam (which had nearly 80,000 fee-paying members in 1966) and the Vietnamese Plantation Workers' Federation, which in that year claimed to have 40,000 members, of whom 19,000 were fee-paying. The first of these bodies is represented in various official bodies, such as the Agrarian Reform Council (where it votes and gives advice), the Agricultural Land Price-Fixing Board and the Regional Production Rate Board (in which it can vote). The Plantation Workers' Federation is represented by seven of its members in the Labour Disputes Arbitration Board, and by two members in the Labour Tribunal of Viet-Nam. Since 1962, the Vietnamese Confederation of Labour has maintained a Rural Service responsible for agricultural development work and for giving assistance to the above-mentioned two federations in the implementation of their general policy. This service claims to work hand-in-hand with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Viet-Nam Planters' Association to ensure the social and economic development of the rural sector and to cope with ravages of the war. Thus in 1962 it set up two agricultural development centres for peasants ruined by the war. Both are about 130 miles from Saigon. Early in 1963, the two centres were feeding some 400 peasant families clearing the forest to reclaim farmland. At the same time the Rural Service, with help from the Planters' Association, set up five other agricultural development centres specially reserved for plantation labourers. The Rural Service is also doing its best to promote workers' education, and to this end it organises twice a year, with help from the research unit of the Vietnamese Confederation of Labour, courses in trade unionism for the benefit of staff delegates or the leaders of basic sections. As regards vocational training, the Plantation Workers' Federation runs short regional study meetings in the plantations themselves. Sometimes, it seems, the managers of plantations make their contributions to these meetings as well. We cannot of course tell how the Rural Service has developed since 1966. But even in that year it was encountering some difficulties, due to lack of staff as much as to the war. This was clear in its response to the author's inquiries; it emphasised how greatly it needed international technical assistance, and also stated that it had been unable to launch its consumer co-operatives programme or any large-scale vocational training scheme because it lacked technicians and experts in the relevant fields; it also lacked the necessary funds to put these programmes into effect. The Rural Service is linked, through the Vietnamese Confederation of Labour, with the World Confederation of Labour (WCL). The Federation of Peasants of Viet-Nam is a member of the Landworkers' Federation (WCL), 486 Asia and the Middle East while the Vietnamese Plantation Workers' Federation belongs to the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers. Chambers of agriculture There are few chambers of agriculture in Asia. Of the countries investigated, five only (Japan, Lebanon, Philippines, Syria, Turkey) said they had any. Six others (Afghanistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan) said they had none. The lack of replies from the other countries prevents us from establishing their situation in this respect. Near and Middle East Lebanon In this part of the world, the older the chamber is, the less active it seems to be. Thus, in Lebanon, the four chambers of agriculture, commerce and industry which have existed in Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon and Zahlah for the past 70 years are in fact public services which deliver certificates of origin and provide the foreigner with information about the prospects offered by trade with, and investments in, the country. Hence the documents they publish deal almost exclusively with commercial and industrial matters. Members of these chambers are appointed by decree, not by election, and virtually no general meetings are held any longer. When terms of office expire, they are automatically extended (this occurred in Sidon and Zahlah in 1966). Although farmers enjoy a greater representation in these chambers than do industrialists and businessmen, the latter, it seems, derive most benefit from the chambers' activities. It should be mentioned, however, that in June 1966, when our inquiries were proceeding, the reform of these chambers was being mooted. Consideration was being given to special representation for agricultural co-operatives, either within new chambers of agriculture entirely separate from the old ones, or in the existing mixed chambers, which would be duly brought up to date. Be that as it may, representation for agricultural co-operatives within these chambers would certainly redress the balance and give an impetus to their agricultural activities. Syria We have already observed that there are no employers' or workers' organisations in this country. Hence the chambers of agriculture, set up in 1936, are the only existing organisations of a general kind, if we except the General Federation of Peasants mentioned above. Each province (muhafazat) 487 Agricultural organisations and development possesses a chamber of agriculture whose task it is to develop the province's agricultural wealth, to improve social, economic and health conditions, to give assistance to the farmer and peasant, and to represent them in public bodies. The Syrian chambers of agriculture carry out a wide variety of activities ranging from theoretical extension work to practical work in the field. In extension work, they disseminate information through a review and through films which they have sponsored; they also set up and run agricultural training and advice centres, experimental stations and model farms. They organise fairs and agricultural exhibitions and produce statistics relating to the agricultural resources of their particular province. As regards technical improvement, they set up agricultural chemistry laboratories and distribute selected seeds to the farmers. Working in conjunction with the authorities, they take part in campaigns against insects and plant diseases. Every ministry, and especially the Ministry of Agriculture, co-operates closely with these chambers. The information to hand would seem to show that the more effective and enterprising these chambers are, the closer is the co-operation they receive from the authorities; and that they are, in fact, becoming more active. The chambers enjoy Statefinancialassistance. For example, they receive a percentage of the tax levied on agricultural production. Nationally, they belong to the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. This body in its turn is represented in the Damascus Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the Federation of Arab Chambers, which has its headquarters in Beirut. Turkey In Turkey, chambers of agriculture were set up in each province by Act No. 6964 (1957), but it was not until 1963 that they really began to function. They are chiefly active in the following spheres : (a) rural development, through their technical, statistical, information and planning sections; (è) promotion of the co-operative movement; (c) legal assistance for their members; (d) market research and dissemination of economic andfinancialinformation ; (e) co-operation with the Ministry of Agriculture to decide on production targets and on agricultural policy as a whole. In this respect, the chambers maintain the closest contacts with the authorities through the general secretary of the Union of Agricultural Chambers (Ziraat Odalari Birligi), who takes an active part in meetings convened by the Ministry of Agriculture to define Turkish agricultural policy. The officers of these chambers are democratically elected in the following way: every village sends one or two delegates to the annual general assembly of the chamber, held in the provincial capital. Once this assembly is over, mem488 Asia and the Middle East bers choose 25 representatives who in their turn elect the seven persons who, during the following year, will act as officials for the chamber. A representative from each department of the Ministry of Agriculture also votes. As a counterpart to this close co-operation between public and private interests (visible, as we have seen, during the elections), the chambers receive a large subsidy from the Government. In fact, the Government defrays 60 per cent of their budgetary expenditure and of the budget of their national union; the remaining 40 per cent is met by contributions paid in by members, i.e. 23,000 peasant families. The Union of Agricultural Chambers is a strictly national organisation and does not belong to any international body. South Asia and the Far East Philippines Here in 1964 a Chamber of Agriculture and National Resources was created which now has eighteen local associations; its aims, as set forth by its executive secretary in his answers to our questionnaire, are as follows: — to organise all producers in agriculture or in the development, exploitation and utilisation of natural recources in the Philippines into an integral and compact organisation, co-ordinating all the activities in the various phases of agriculture and in the development, exploitation, and utilisation of natural recources to obtain common objectives, and in general to work as a group in the interest of better production; — to act as an agency in the marketing of the products of its members, by securing the maximum prices therefor and collecting fees or charges for the operation, representation, and other necessary expenses incidental to its existence, reverting any excess therefrom to an organisation or organisations dedicated for the research and dissemination of information which may be of help to the producers of this country; — to facilitate and aid its members in the purchase, procurement or acquisition of fertilisers, farming equipment, implements, machinery, transportation facilities and other materials required by the members and their associates, so as to help to decrease costs of production, increase their productive capacity and efficiency, improve the grade of their products, and in general improve the conditions and increase the opportunities of those engaged in agriculture and in the development, exploitation, and utilisation of natural resources; — to promote, negotiate, arrange and facilitate the acquisition of group insurance among the members and their families, as well as among their labourers and employees in order to prevent discontent among them, to ameliorate the lot of the workers and to help to maintain a stabilised socio-political organisation in the various productive pursuits; — to secure the maximum effective international and governmental aid and assistance to producers through a co-ordinated presentation of its present and immediate needs and problems, as well as problems within a foreseeable future; — to help and facilitate its members in securing credit facilities for the financing of their operations, and for this purpose to promote, negotiate, arrange and facilitate 489 Agricultural organisations and development the establishment of suchfinancinginstitutions whether controlled by the Government or by private enterprises, so as to reduce to the minimum the load presently borne by the producers in credit facilities infinancingtheir operations; — to promote, negotiate, and facilitate and maintain such agricultural and other pursuits as may be usefully promoted towards the enhancement of the interest and welfare of its members. The Chamber of Agriculture and Natural Resources works in close collaboration with the authorities in all these fields. It occupies seats in various official committees and submits claims to committees of Congress. It defends its position too when the barrio government agencies are examining customs and taxation questions, economic and commercial policy, or credit priorities. Furthermore, the chamber is empowered to submit Bills to Congress, and at the request of the Government it helps in specific schemes of interest to the Government and to private enterprise alike. In return, the Government offers the chamber certain privileges, such as tax exemptions and agricultural credits at low rates of interest. The Chamber of Agriculture and Natural Resources is a member of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers. Japan Japanese chambers of agriculture are organised on a three-tier system. In every village, town or local capital there is a "municipal agricultural commission"; in every prefecture there is a prefectural chamber of agriculture; and at national level the National Chamber of Agriculture brings together the various municipal commissions and prefectural chambers. The municipal commissions were created in 1951 by the Agricultural Commissions Act of the same year, which was designed to unify the work done by the three administrative bodies set up just after the Second World War to reorganise Japanese agriculture.1 The prefectural chambers and the national chamber were set up in 1954 by virtue of an amendment to this Act. The municipal agricultural commissions have administrative and representational responsibilities. According to the Act, they: (a) regulate the use of cultivated land, meadows, pastures and forests (for the production of charcoal and firewood) and help independent farmers to establish themselves; (b) exchange and re-assemble plots of land as part of the general land redistribution policy ; (c) carry out any other tasks which the law may assign to them. Further, 1 The Agricultural Land Commission, dealing with land reform ; the Agricultural Adjustment Commission, to promote food production and to fix quotas of controlled agricultural produce for delivery to the Government; and the Agricultural Improvement Commission, set up to develop the work done by agricultural advisers and extension workers. 490 Asia and the Middle East by virtue of the Act the municipal commissions serve as conciliation boards when a quarrel arises concerning the use of land. They are empowered to make recommendations, give advice, and draft reports on agriculture and the peasantry for perusal by other administrative bodies. The 46 prefectural chambers also have administrative and representational duties. Under the legislation now in force, prefects must ask their advice before taking any decision with regard to : (a) authorisation of a change in the use to which a major area of agricultural land is being put; (¿>) ordering a municipal agricultural commission to draw up a plan for redistribution of farms; (c) any other special action involving agriculture or the peasantry. The prefectural chamber can: (a) express its views, offer its expert advice, and draft reports for other administrative bodies on the price of rice, agricultural taxes, action to prevent natural disasters, agricultural subsidies, agricultural manpower, or the use of agricultural land; (6) organise publicity and run courses for the farmer and peasant; (c) undertake research on agriculture and the peasantry (d) co-operate with the municipal agricultural commissions and render them assistance in carrying out their tasks. At the higher level, the National Chamber of Agriculture, as a representative body; (a) on its own initiative or at their request, supplies the administrative organs with its views and the results of its expert research; (b) organises publicity and training for farmers; (c) undertakes research; (d) acts as a liaison organ and guides the activities which, according to the law, the prefectural chambers undertake; and (e) carries out any activity which might bring about the attainment of its objectives. The Act lays down that the municipal commissions shall be composed of both elected and appointed members. The elected members vary in number between 10 and 40, and are chosen by the farmers and peasants of the village, town or provincial capital concerned. By "farmer or peasant" is meant any person over 20 years of age who directs a farm of 1,000 square yards or more in the main island (3,000 square yards or more in Hokkaido), together with such members of his family who are engaged in agricultural labour for more than 60 days in the year. There may not be more than seven appointed members. These are persons chosen by the mayor or village headman for their skill and experience, bearing in mind the recommendations made by local organs. Five people are thus presented by the municipal council, one by the agricultural co-operatives, and one by the associations of agricultural mutual aid societies. The prefectural chambers also have members of two kinds: first, those appointed by the municipal commissions (one per committee), and second, a few competent people chosen by the chairman of the chamber or recommended by the agricultural organisations (co-operatives, associations of mutual aid societies, and bodies responsible for agricultural development). 491 Agricultural organisations and development Of course, the National Chamber of Agriculture, together with the prefectural chambers and municipal commissions, works very closely with the authorities since they have, after all, been created by the State to perform certain administrative or advisory duties best determined by the Act. The State defrays part of their expenditure, the remainder being paid for out of the income they derive from their activities. Thus the national chamber, apart from the government subsidies it enjoys, levies contributions from its members (the Act fixes the total income from this source at not more than 2 million yen a year for each prefectural chamber, or more than 10 million yen for other member organisations, such as the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives, etc.).1 No information was forthcoming about the size of the national chamber's annual budget, but the figures quoted seem to show that this body has at its disposal, for the conduct of its activities,financialresources which are among the largest of any chamber of agriculture not only in Asia but throughout the world. The Japanese National Chamber of Agriculture is a member of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers. CONCLUSIONS Asia is so full of contrasts that on virtually any subject it is difficult to arrive at an over-all judgment. Perhaps more than for any other continent, an investigator is obliged to qualify his opinions on the stage of development of a particular country and on its possibilities for further advance. So it is with the degree of development achieved by agricultural organisations and the progress made in land reform, which vary from one country to another to an extraordinary degree. In some countries, a merefifteenyears ago, traditional ways of life seemed to be built on rock; however, vigorous intervention by the authorities has changed this state of affairs out of all recognition and has made the peasantry lastingly aware of its interests as a class. Sometimes those responsible for carrying out the reforms have been unable to cope with the speed and scope of the operations undertaken, because qualified staff and financial resources were in short supply and because the peasants themselves experienced difficulty in settling down into the new organisations created as part of the reforms. This state of affairs, as we saw in Iran, Iraq and Syria, is not untypical of the Near and Middle East as a whole. These three countries have already made some progress in land reform, and now they must continue their advance on three 1 Articles 6 and 33 of the Act of 11 November 1954, amended on 28 February 1962. See National Chamber of Agriculture: Current Status of the Agricultural Commission System (Tokyo, March 1965), pp. 10 and 15. 492 Asia and the Middle East fronts: the reinforcement of the organisations created and of their staffs; improved efficiency; and better representation at every level. Only if a solution is found to all these problems will the Asian rural sector be ready, within the next ten years, for a genuine surge forward in agricultural development. Outside this area, and leaving aside exceptional cases such as China (Taiwan) and Japan where the weakness of certain organisations is counterbalanced by the remarkable vigour of the co-operative movement, there can be no doubt that although some progress has been made the situation as a whole leaves a great deal to be desired. Pakistan, for example, is one of the countries which are in a critical position; here, sooner or later, land tenure legislation will have to be revised to effect a more equitable distribution of land ownership. Thailand provides an example of a nation where, despite what the Government has done under its land settlement schemes, land reform has still to be put into effect. In Ceylon too, the pace at which peasant families are being resettled will have to be increased; at the same time, action must be taken to stabilise rural leases. Lastly, in India, the legislation enacted in recent years has all too often worked to the disadvantage of those who were supposed to benefit from it, either because owners have been given a right of redemption, with the result that the former tenant has become a landless labourer or a share-cropper in disguise or a supposedly independent direct farmer, or because the rules governing rural leases have too often been enacted without due account being taken of the socio-economic obstacles they were to encounter at local level. It seems that in all these countries better and more rigorous legislation, accompanied by a policy designed to reinforce local associations of tenant farmers and share-croppers, would bolster the position of these disinherited groups vis-à-vis the landowners, pending such time as tenant farming and share-cropping disappear altogether. Such a course has already been envisaged in India by a committee set up in 1963 by the National Development Council to consider ways and means of speeding up land reform. According to this body: Experience shows that it is difficult to ensure security of tenure and effective regulation of rent so long as the landlord-tenant bond remains unbroken. Besides, ownership provides the psychological stimulus for maximising agricultural production. The objective should therefore be to put a complete end to the landlord-tenant nexus and convert the tenants into full owners. To this end, the State might step in, acquire ownership of leased land, and transfer it to the tenants. Where legislation for converting tenants into owners has not been enacted, as a first minimum step there should be legislation to break the direct landlord-tenant relationship, the State interposing between landlords and tenants to collect fair rents from tenants and pay them to landlords after deducting land revenue and a collection charge. As the State is already equipped to collect land tax from millions of small-holders, such a step is not likely to create any excessive additional burden.1 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference: Land Reform in India, op. cit., p. 10. 493 Agricultural organisations and development However, nothing really effective has so far been done, either in India or in neighbouring countries, to solve a problem which affects, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the region, a sizeable proportion of the agricultural community. We have seen that except in China (Taiwan) and Japan (two very highly developed countries) and possibly in Turkey (which might be described as being at an intermediate stage in this respect), the position of the co-operative movement is such as to justify considerable anxiety. Qualified co-operative staff are everywhere in short supply; but this does not fully explain why many co-operatives should be working so inefficiently, and even less why many of them should be in debt. What is at fault, in fact, is the way in which they operate, especially as far as credit is concerned. Serious consideration must also be given to ways of changing the attitude of the peasantry. We have already said that the Asian peasant all too often uses part of the credit he has obtained in order to purchase consumer goods rather than to make a worthwhile investment. This is especially so in India, in which country (as credit is offered partly in cash, partly in kind) the Agricultural Economic Research Centre has ascertained in the light of investigations undertaken in the district of Aligarh that 62 per cent of the beneficiaries interrogated intended to use 42 per cent of the sums they had received for non-productive purposes. 1 However, we must try to understand this state of mind before we criticise it. We cannot say that because the Asian peasant shows a lack of foresight he thereby lacks intelligence and understanding. There is a psychological problem involved here. We might be closer to the truth in concluding that (without bringing in any pejorative allusions, of course) foresight is a bourgeois virtue, the fruit of education, but a fruit too which is inseparable from a certain degree of material well-being. History seems to show that only when men have reached this level are they ready to sacrifice the present to the future, simply because they realise that a better future is a feasible possibility. Below this level, a man will hasten to enjoy the fruits of his labours today, because he does not know what tomorrow will bring. Those who have studied the history of the European working class during the nineteenth century are familiar with the fact that it was criticised by the bourgeoisie for its lack of thrift and foresight—as if terms such as these could hold any meaning for the inhabitants of some nineteenthcentury slum. The poor man dreams of gadgets, or alcohol; the rich man thinks of the morrow. In short, a man dreams of what is unattainable. This being so, to seek a solution based on traditional systems of mutual aid seems not to be the right approach, for such systems are usually designed to help people to cope with imperious present necessities rather than to bring about a 1 494 Ladonne, op. cit., p. 20. Asia and the Middle East better future. In this sense, for example, they may encourage the peasants to pool their labour at harvest time, or to build collective granaries as a bulwark against possible famine. To build a better future, we mustfirstbelieve that such a future is possible. Let it not be forgotten that it is only in very recent times that the masses have absorbed the idea that the future is something man may shape for himself. When traditional ways of life, with their static cultural, social and economic corpus, have existed from time immemorial, the future is envisaged merely as a prolongation of the present. This we have already had occasion to emphasise in our examination of traditional societies in Africa. Clearly, the problems of the co-operative movement cannot be exhaustively analysed through an exclusively psychological or exclusively economic approach. They have numerous other aspects. In the first place, if we make the optimistic assumption that thanks to the co-operative movement all production factors are correctly used, we still do not know how far the peasant can accumulate marketable surpluses to meet his obligations, nor whether (instead of requiring everybody to repay a loan within the same time-limit) it would be better to allow each individual a little leeway, according to his possibilities. Rules in this respect are often excessively rigid, and all too often lead the peasant to refuse flatly to pay his debt, with the result that his co-operative is ruined. In some instances, as we have seen, loans have been offered without any serious effort being made to assess the individual's capacity to repay. The small farmer might be helped (although the problem would not thereby be entirely solved) if longterm credits linked to a bank discount system1 were offered, bearing in mind the farmer's capacity for repayment and not only the nature of the operations for which the loan is granted. When dealing with the very small farmer, as with the tenant and share-cropper who is quite unable to repay the credits he receives, we should devise a coherent regional policy before embarking on co-operative operations at a heavy loss. This regional policy would promote policies such as: (a) the accession of tenant farmers to land ownership; (b) the expansion of small plots by recourse to land reforms of the classical kind (purchase, redistribution, limits imposed on land ownership, and so on) ; (c) the creation of small rural industries to take some of the pressure off the land and to find work for people who lose their jobs because of the land reform. We might even contemplate cutting down the areas now devoted to plantations; these would have to be rendered more productive to compensate for the amputations thus suffered, while the land freed as a result would be 1 There might, for instance, be a system whereby a one-year short-term loan, turned into a medium-term loan, would be reimbursed as follows: at the end of the first year, the co-operative would levy one-fifth thereof from the peasant and four-fifths from the bank, minus a suitable discount. During the following four years, the co-operative would pay the bank the annual payments made by the peasant. 495 Agricultural organisations and development devoted to family or collective food-producing plots. In fact, no country has yet ventured to undertake such an operation, implying as it does a serious overhaul of the land policy established in colonial times. Next we have to consider how credit can best be offered to the farmer, whether his holding be small, medium-sized or large. Should credit be wholly or partially in cash or in kind ? Ought it to be adapted to the real needs of the farmer, after these have been verified, or left entirely to the farmer's judgment ? Ought it to be linked to the marketing of produce? In certain instances, should we demand of the farmer that he change his crops, or make use of collectively held tools and machinery? These multitudinous problems have not always been properly analysed, let alone correctly solved. Reverting now to India, that country which in so many respects is one gigantic experimental laboratory for agricultural problems, we may observe that under the Package Programme the amount of credit granted varies in accordance with the area being farmed; it is partly in cash and partly in kind, and is linked to the marketing of produce. The Village-Level Worker estimates requirements in accordance with the farmer's individual production plan. Now, according to Christian Ladonne: In areas where it was specified that part of the credits would be given in kind, certain peasants who for one reason or another did not want to use fertilisers have avoided utilising the services of the co-operative. In addition, the link between credit and marketing has induced some peasants to refrain from requesting a loan; others again have refused to pay thefinesimposed on them for not having sold their produce to the co-operative. To demand that a production plan be established before any credit can be granted (when the Village-Level Worker has simply not had time to prepare such a plan) has meant that many peasants have had to go away empty-handed.1 And yet the alternative solution whereby credit would be granted without check or limit seems highly inadvisable in existing circumstances, in India as elsewhere. Of course, every generalisation carries with it the risk of error. But it might perhaps be said that except in those few developed countries where no great problems now exist, the Asian co-operative movement suffers from a number of growing pains. As we have seen in this chapter, co-operatives have been set up on a prodigal scale, even though in many cases there could be no hope of their being economically successful, and seemingly without any consideration being given to such decisive factors as turnover, ability of the local peasants to pay their debts, availability of administrative staff, and so on. Thus, in many places where a single co-operative would have sufficed for a dozen neighbouring population centres, two or three have been created which all too soon have become virtually bankrupt. 1 496 Ladonne, op. cit., p. 21. Asia and the Middle East In a number of countries there has been a tendency in recent years for a concentration of co-operatives, the weaker units being merged with the stronger. This, in the not too distant future, should help to redress the present situation, at least from the strictlyfinancialpoint of view. But it should not be forgotten that the internal weakness of the co-operatives in this part of the world stems also from the lack of staff; hence staff training should everywhere be intensified. In this connexion, we might wish for a new "brain drain", this time from town to countryside, to accelerate the process. Lastly, the co-operative often has to carry far too great a burden in the task of rural development. The peasant sees it as a kind of umbilical cord linking him to the authorities, whose intentions are obscure and with whose decisions he is unfamiliar. In its turn, the authorities tend to lean far too heavily on the co-operative as though, despite its poverty in staff, it can undertake anything and everything. And this is why the co-operative so often limits itself to credit operation alone, although so much remains to be done in other fields. The Village-Level Worker in India, and similar persons in other countries, may well do most useful work; they cannot, however, by themselves solve all the problems posed by rural development. True, the authorities may obtain obedience through a certain amount of coercion, but this is far from the voluntary membership implied by an organisation which the peasants have themselves created. Furthermore, an organisation can exert a powerful group influence on a man who really feels that he belongs to it. These two factors combine to develop his spirit of initiative and his sense of collective responsibility. This, precisely, is the spirit and the sense of responsibility which those concerned with development have to generate—the spirit which is still found in the old systems of mutual aid, now mummified in their immutable structures. To this end, we shall have to create, reinforce or multiply modern agricultural organisations (occupational associations, rural clubs, trade unions, peasants' unions, and the like) so as to instil the need for solidarity in a different form and to provide the co-operatives with the local support they need if they are to flourish. Thus conceived, i.e. as half-way houses between the world of today (represented by the authorities and the co-operatives) and the world of yesterday (incarnate in the traditional systems of mutual aid), the agricultural organisations could serve as veritable nurseries for new co-operative members and play a part of capital importance in the social and economic development of the rural sector. In considering general agricultural organisations in Asia, we have seen that in some countries such organisations are practically non-existent and that in others they are highly developed, indeed to such an extent that they are as refined as in any of the most highly developed countries. But this is true of 497 Agricultural organisations and development three countries only (China (Taiwan), Israel and Japan) out of eighteen. Elsewhere, the peasants are being enrolled at rates which vary enormously. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Jordan it is the agricultural co-operatives which meet the peasants' needs, as far as they can; in Afghanistan and Jordan, the position is changing only slowly, whereas Iraq, at the risk of going too fast, is attempting to make up for centuries of backwardness. A neighbouring country, Iran, is a little farther advanced; here, besides the co-operatives set up under the land reform scheme, there are a number of stock-breeders' associations which might provide a point of departure for powerful general organisations. For the time being, however, they are not very representative and the part they play is limited in the extreme. In Lebanon occupational associations already exist; however, they still concern themselves with little more than technical improvement and with obtaining financial advantages for their members, although so very much remains to be done in other fields. Turkey seems to have reached roughly the same stage as Lebanon ; its co-operatives and village councils might in time develop into real levers for setting rural development in motion. Since 1964, there has been, in Syria, a general peasants' federation of a comprehensive kind, though it is still too soon to assess the results obtained; however, the local associations do appear to be doing useful work in a variety of fields, as a kind of counterweight to the co-operative movement. It is greatly to be hoped that they will prove successful; if so, they will certainly set an example for the other countries of the region. Elsewhere, i.e. in southern Asia and the Far East, always excepting Japan and China (Taiwan), general organisations are still embryonic. Although the plantations are well organised (all the more so in that they were dominated by Europeans before the countries concerned became independent), the small and medium-sized food crop growers are still looking for the right path to follow. However, we should not overlook the efforts made after the war, especially in 1955, the year of the foundation of the Bharat Krishak Samaj in India, of farmers' clubs in Thailand and of the Central Co-operative Exchange Inc. in the Philippines. But the shortage of trained staff and technical advisers and the apathy of the peasantry in areas still unaffected by land reform means that the initial buoyant enthusiasm soon gives way to a period of stagnation. Fresh efforts then have to be undertaken to increase membership and to make the organisations themselves larger and more effective. Nor is the situation a great deal better as regards the employers' and workers' organisations. In the Middle East (apart from the Farmers' Federation of Israel, which also acts as an employers' organisation) only Turkey has an employers' federation, and even this is of recent creation and might well be classified as a general organisation in view of the eminently commercial interests of the Turkish employer. Workers' organisations, extremely well 498 Asia and the Middle East organised in Israel, are elsewhere conspicuous by their absence. Certainly, there are still relatively few agricultural wage earners in most of these countries, but in some—such as Lebanon and Turkey—they exist in fair numbers (in Lebanon, they are largely seasonal and of Syrian, Palestinian or other nonLebanese origin; they enjoy no protection in social security matters). Hence it is highly desirable that legislation should be enacted in the near future to facilitate the creation of rural trade unions for labourers and small tenants and share-croppers who, as things are, are often employed and paid in accordance with traditions established by the larger landowners. In countries such as Iraq and Syria, where former tenants have been enrolled in co-operatives and local associations set up under the land reform scheme, and where the latter have broken the power of the feudal landowners, the trade union seems for the time being to serve no very useful purpose. Until such time as a real working class emerges, rural development must rely on the organisations created by the land reform movement. In southern Asia and the Far East, employers' and workers' associations are above all to be found on the plantations. No particularly noteworthy results seem to have been achieved in this respect elsewhere; as we have seen, India supports a swarm of tiny unions, many of which exist on paper only. As might be expected, the employers are better organised and represented. Except in Malaysia and Viet-Nam, where they occupy seats in all the major official bodies, they are content to put forward their claims through the political parties to which they are tied. Such is the case in Japan and in India. Data concerning workers' associations in Ceylon are too scanty for us to be able to say what their situation is in this respect. Generally speaking, and except in the already developed countries, the agricultural workers' organisations everywhere in Asia encounter the obstacles typical of a traditional rural sector: illiteracy, dispersion of the workers, shortage of trained staff, disunity, lack of financial resources, and so on. One also has a very definite impression that communications between base and summit are difficult to establish in the absence of any intermediary stages; this, however, is a feature of any developing country with a still faulty economic structure. If the organisation of workers and of employers contributes to the economic and social advance of a nation, then, without a doubt, the over-all development of the economy will help to make the peasants and agricultural workers aware of their common interests. In every instance, we shall be compelled to make due allowance for this interaction if we wish to bring about a truly balanced development of all the forces—social, economic and technical— on which agricultural expansion ultimately depends. Lastly, as far as chambers of agriculture are concerned, it will be observed that in Lebanon and Syria such institutions existed before the war; elsewhere, 499 Agricultural organisations and development they are of fairly recent creation (this holds good of those countries which, in reply to the author's inquiries, indicated the existence of chambers of agriculture). By reason of the multiplicity of the tasks they carry out, the resources available to them, and the fact that they have access to the authorities, they play a vital part in rural and agricultural development which no other organisation could undertake. In the Middle East they do much the same job as similar chambers in Europe; elsewhere they go a good deal further, acting as marketing and servicing centres for their members (as in the Philippines) or as organs supervising and implementing land policies (as in Japan). Their dissemination in the other Asian countries, due consideration being given to national characteristics, would certainly make a powerful contribution to the cause of rural development, for besides carrying out the tasks which are their particular responsibility, they act as intermediaries between the authorities and the peasantry, and as such are well placed to ensure that the decisions taken by the planners are actually put into effect at the local level. 500 PART VI NORTH AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA NORTH AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA D INTRODUCTION The reason why we are dealing with North America and Australia together in this chapter is that in the three countries considered therein (Australia, Canada and the United States) agricultural development has one common feature : namely, that all three, with some variations from country to country, were at the time of European settlement thinly inhabited by nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes (a fact which was to be of profound importance for their future). These peoples were considerably more primitive than the indigenous inhabitants of South America, Asia or even tropical Africa when the first Europeans arrived. In North America and Australia, the Europeans encountered no permanent towns or villages as they pressed onwards. The native peoples, sometimes resisting, sometimes not, retreated in the face of the European advance, refusing to adopt the White man's way of life. Thus it was that after the conquest White man and native did not, contrary to what had happened elsewhere, live side by side ; they inhabited different regions. In none of these countries, then, was there any fusion of heterogeneous ways of life. Contacts were limited at the most to an exchange of goods at the "frontier" or to sporadic outbreaks of fighting between the natives and the White man. The European thus found himself alone in vast areas the resources of which were virtually unUmited. The lives and agricultural techniques of the White settlers were to be deeply marked by this unique state of affairs, as we shall now see. UNITED STATES The development of what was to become the United States of America began in the seventeenth century with the arrival of the first settlers on board the Mayflower; later this development was to be dominated by the colonial 503 Agricultural organisations and development companies to which the English Crown had conceded immediate sovereignty in the new territories; all in all, it was to pass through three stages extending over 200 years. During the first stage, the European emigrants settled down along the Atlantic seaboard and founded three separate groups of colonies : New England and Massachusetts, where trade and industry flourished as well as agriculture, and where the Puritan-dominated governments were theocratic and authoritarian; the central colonies (Pennsylvania and Delaware, together with New Holland, founded by the Dutch in 1624), slightly more liberal in temper than their neighbours to the north, and where cereal-growing was to be the dominant form of agriculture; finally, the predominantly rural southern settlements in Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina and Georgia, where vast areas were given over to huge tobacco and cotton plantations which were to form the infrastructure of a social and economic system closely linked to the mass importation of African slaves. This first stage extends to the end of the eighteenth century, when land settlement stopped at the Mississippi. On the western bank of the river lay French Louisiana, and the sale of this territory by Napoleon in 1803 marks the opening of the second stage, during which the potential agricultural area was doubled and the rich Mississippi valley was developed. This immense region was not finally settled until the end of the century. In 1865, the frontier of White civilisation still followed, roughly speaking, the western boundaries of the states lying along the Mississippi. In 1848 the Mexican territories of Texas, California and New Mexico were annexed, followed by Oregon in 1859 (this Mexican land had already been occupied by American settlers by virtue of treaties concluded in 1818 and 1827 with the English). These events marked the third and final stage. From that time on, the great drift of population towards the west continued unchecked. The major problem facing American agriculture during this period was lack of settlers; the authorities tried to overcome it by encouraging both European immigration and the settlement of virgin land. From 1860 onwards, the policy was to gather speed. By the Homestead Act of 1862, any American was eligible for the grant of 160 acres of land, and in 1880 nearly 57.5 million acres had been so distributed west of the Mississippi. In addition to which, the stock-breeders had moved into the vast prairies stretching from Texas to the upper Missouri, thus helping to fill the no-man's-land which still separated the east from the far west. In 1910, the "frontier" had been extinct for some twenty years, and in relation to the position in 1860 the area under cultivation had increased from 405 million to 890 million acres and the number of farms from 2 to 6 million. Harvests too reveal how gigantic the expansion had been. Thus the wheat harvest increased during this period from 4.7 million to 504 North America and Australia 17.3 million tons, the maize harvest went up from 21.3 million to 73.3 million tons, while the production of cotton rose from 3.8 million to 11.6 million bales. These figures are not to be explained merely by the settlement of virgin land, for despite the arrival of millions of immigrants from Europe the country was for long to remain (and indeed it still is) relatively thinly populated. American agriculture soon came to know the benefits of mechanisation, since in order to cope with the vast stretches of empty land which surrounded them, the tiny handfuls of settlers found they needed more than the hoe and the spade. Already, by the end of the nineteenth century, United States agriculture was remarkably well equipped (far more so than was the case in the other highly developed nations), and as a result, despite a low yield per acre, the output per man was very high indeed. This is equally as characteristic of American agriculture as the features we have just mentioned. A French writer has this to say about Indiana in the pioneering days : The American farmer had for long exercised his ingenuity in the invention of agricultural machinery and the improvement of farm implements. First-class steel ploughs (of the Peacock model) were tried out in Indiana as early as 1835. Numerous patents were taken out for seeders which represented an improvement on the old barrow type of sowing machine, and for dibbers. In 1833, Obed Hussey invented the first harvester. Cyrus McCormick, in 1834, patented another model. The first reaper was built in 1844, and the first tedder had been constructed as long ago as 1820. The Morrison hay-baling machine was in existence before 1830. Between 1820 and 1830, a range of threshing machines, hand- or horse-operated, had been designed. But apart from the hay-baling machine, the others took some little time to come into general use in Indiana, and to begin with they were few in number. In 1839, the first threshing machines, operated by contractors, appeared along the national highway. These machines were drawn by a team of four horses each and operated by eight or nine men. They threshed 200 bushels of wheat a day; three men then spent two days in cleaning and sacking this amount. Metal ploughs came into general use only after 1840 or thereabouts. Harvesters, reapers and tedders began to spread at about the same time. By 1860 they were in use everywhere, together with sowers, harrows and light modern ploughs.1 It should nevertheless be mentioned that the use of machinery was mainly limited to the cereal-growing prairie areas. In the cotton-growing south there was an ample supply of Negro labour; moreover, certain operations could not be mechanised because the appropriate machines were not then available. Thus it was that mechanisation in this region had to await the Second World War. Since then the discovery of ways by which machinery can replace manual work and the progress made in chemistry have reversed the position: whereas in 1950, over the whole of the United States, 92 per cent of all cotton 1 Geneviève d'Haucourt: La vie agricole et rurale dans l'Etat d'Indiana à l'époque pionnière (Paris, Mouton, 1961). 505 Agricultural organisations and development Table 19. Socio-economic data for Australia, Canada and the United States (with special Country National per capita income in 1965 (US$) Share of agriculture in gross domestic product (%) Active agricultural population (% of total active population) Index of per capita food production in 1965 (1952-56 = 100) Australia Canada United States 1620 1825 2 893 12(1964) 6(1965) 4(1965) 10 9 6 109 101 101 1 1 gram = 0.035 oz. * Data for illiteracy and infantile mortality have been provided by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. was being picked by hand as against 8 per cent by machine, by 1962 the figures were 30 and 70 per cent respectively. In the south, except for Texas and Oklahoma, the figures are even more eloquent: 99 and 1 per cent respectively in 1950, as against 45 and 55 per cent in 1962.1 The introduction of machinery also meant that heavy cuts could be made in agricultural manpower whilst labour productivity was at the same time increased. As in Western Europe, so in the United States the first attempts at agricultural organisation go back to the end of the eighteenth century, when various associations for the promotion of agriculture and extension work were founded. The first, it seems, was set up in South Carolina in 1784. The fact merits attention, since for many decades the south was to lag far behind the north and centre. Others were then founded in Philadelphia (1785), Kennebec (1787), New York (1791), and Massachusetts (1792). They are in fact the ancestors of the present Department of Agriculture, which was created in 1862 and which, by carrying out the activities of these associations on a larger scale, rendered their further expansion unnecessary. In 1867, at a time when the terms of trade for agricultural produce were deteriorating year by year, a small group of farmers came together in Washington in order to set up the first American general farm organisation. This was the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry which was organised as a kind of masonic lodge, that is to say as a brotherhood with religious, civic and occupational overtones. From the outset, it comprised four "stages" and seven "degrees". After a difficult start and a subsequent period of failure and decline between 1875 and 1880, it grew in importance and put down solid roots in New England, the state of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio. These were the main areas in which it was to prove influential. 1 See Calvin L. Beale: "The Negro in American Agriculture", in John P. Davis (ed.): The American Negro Reference Book (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall Inc., 1966), Ch. Ill, p. 166. 506 North America and Australia reference to their agrarian situation) Available calories (number of calories per capita per day) 3 160(1964-65) 3 130(1965-66) 3140 (1965) Available fats (grams 1 per capita per day) 130.5(1964-65) 141.6(1965-66) 146.1 (1965) Available proteins (grams 1 per capita per day) Total Animal Percentage of illiterates in 1960 90.2 94.8 92.0 60.0(1964-65) 63.0(1965-66) 65.1 (1965) 1 2 2 Infant mortality * around 1960 (deaths per 1,000 births) 20.2 27.3 26.0 Sources: United Nations: Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, 1966 (New York, 1967); FAO: Production Yearbook, 1966 (Rome, 1967). The National Grange is not an organisation easy to describe with any accuracy. Its attitude has changed a good deal since its inception, swinging from a nationalistic protectionism to an advocacy of liberalism in trade. However, it has never lost an aptitude for maintaining its balance, and today acts as a kind of third force between the American Farm Bureau and the National Farmers' Union. This is because its membership is so heterogeneous, comprising as it does both large and medium-sized farmers. Since its inception the National Grange has done its best to inject health and vigour into the marketing system and to cut down the number of middlemen between farmer and consumer. It has helped to promote the cooperative movement and even, more recently, undertaken agricultural insurance. It is responsible, without any doubt at all, for the tremendous boom in grain co-operatives at the end of the nineteenth century, and its political influence certainly played a decisive part in 1914, when the Clayton Act was adopted. This piece of legislation gave federal authorisation for the establishment of co-operatives, despite dour opposition from private interests which, as early as 1890, had been instrumental in the enactment of the Sherman AntiTrust Act, their pretext being that the co-operative movement had monopolistic overtones.1 There has been no change over the years in the functions or internal structure of the National Grange. This is clearly seen from the following description of the four "stages" taken from a recent French work: A "Subordinate Grange" is a local unit, built around a community or some natural centre of activity. It brings together men, women and young people over 14 years of 1 The Clayton Act applied only to associations without capital and did not specify how they should be run. In 1922, it was supplemented by the Capper-Volstead Act, which provided the co-operatives with a real legal status. Other enactments followed, notably the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929 (dealing with producers' and servicing co-operatives), and the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, whereby co-operatives are partially absolved from the payment of income tax. 507 Agricultural organisations and development age, and elects its own officers. There are a number of "degrees" similar to those existing in freemasonry; members of a Subordinate Grange can climb the first four of these degrees. A "Pomona Grange" is usually made up of the various Subordinate Granges in a county or district, membership being reserved for individual members of the latter who have been initiated into the fifth degree. It is at this level that decisions concerning county affairs are taken. A "State Grange" exists at state level. It is made up of delegates from the Pomona and Subordinate Granges. It is responsible for questions of indoctrination and ritual at state level, and also defends farmers' interests as regards taxation, marketing and legislation, by putting pressure on the state executive and legislative authorities. The State Grange holds an annual meeting at which a line of policy is laid down and the sixth degree conferred on certain members. Lastly, the "National Grange" is comparable to a state organisation except that it is active at the federal level. It is made up of State Grange delegates and is managed by a Master.1 It is difficult to estimate how many members the National Grange has. According to the American Encyclopedia, it had at least 1 million members in 1948, spread over 37 states. Robert de Wilde gives the figure early in the 1960s as slightly less than 800,000. It is remarkable that it should have extended its influence to as many as 37 states; it appears, however, that it is mainly in the east of the country that it plays a leading role. The next organisation in order of seniority is the National Farmers' Union (NFU), founded in 1902 to defend the small farmer and the family-size farm. The NFU is strongest in the great plains. In 1952 it had something like 450,000 members (550,000 today). In the 1930s it attracted attention by its support for the "New Deal", which its great rival, the Farm Bureau, accepted only through force of circumstances. Liberal as far as international trade is concerned, but authoritarian in internal policy, the NFU is still trying to save the small family farm at a time when agriculture is becoming ever more industrialised and the drift from the land is becoming more and more a matter for concern.2 Like the National Grange and the Farm Bureau, the NFU actively promotes co-operation at all levels. It can take the credit for founding a number of big production and distribution co-operatives which have done much to raise the cereal farmers' standard of living. Its structure (local sections and state organisations, with a national federation at the head) enables it to intervene at every level as regards agricultural policy matters. But it should not be forgotten that in this respect the NFU (and her sister organisations too) act in a fashion very different from that typical 1 Robert de Wilde: L'agriculture américaine, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3156 (Paris, January 1965), p. 87. 2 In a single year (October 1965 to October 1966), no less than 650,000 people in the United States left the land. In 1965, the country had an agricultural population of 11.7 million, as against 32 million in 1910. 508 North America and Australia of other developed countries. In the United States, there is in effect no direct link between the authorities and the agricultural organisations, whereas in Europe the latter have seats and enjoy advisory or executive status in a variety of joint bodies. In the United States, the organisations exert influence by intervening, directly or indirectly, in the process which every legal enactment has to go through, from the time when the initial text is being drafted to the moment when the final Bill is being examined by Congress. When the Bill is submitted for consideration by the agricultural committees of both Houses, public hearings are held, in the course of which any person or organisation interested can put forward his or its views. There is indirect intervention in Congress, when the Bill is being voted on, by lobbies or pressure groups. Clearly, despite the power wielded by an influential lobby, these organisations have in fact a very small say in the process as a whole. But we must realise that these organisations in the United States are more like large employers' associations than farmers' unions in the European sense of the term. We shall understand all this the better after considering the activities of the American Farm Bureau Federation, founded in 1919. In July 1966 this federation had 1,677,820 members in 2,770 County Farm Bureaux. In other words, in terms of numbers the Farm Bureau is the most important general organisation in the United States with the exception of the National Council of Farmers' Co-operatives. It is especially strong in the centre and southwest, where its members are recruited from amongst the owners of the large industrial-type farms. Its influence seems to be less powerful in the other states, but it has local bureaux in most of the major counties. At the intermediate level, there is a State Farm Bureau in every state except Alaska, and in Puerto Rico. Nationally, all the State Farm Bureaux are members of the American Farm Bureau Federation. The whole organisation from base to summit is democratically organised through successive elections. At county level, an executive board elected by the members manages the affairs of the bureau; by contract, the bureau defines the kind of relationship it wishes to have with the State Farm Bureau and the other local bureaux in the state. That such relationships should be laid down by contract is an interesting and original feature. At the state level, a chamber made up of delegates from the County Farm Bureaux, the number of delegates for each bureau being proportional to the latter's total membership, meets once a year to define policy and programmes, the implementation of which is entrusted to an elected management committee. Lastly, the American Farm Bureau Federation has an executive council elected by the state representatives, each state enjoying a number of votes proportional to the membership of its State Farm Bureau. The story of the Farm Bureau is one of gradual development, beginning in 1915. At that time, numerous County Farm Bureaux were springing up, 509 Agricultural organisations and development originally with the aim of carrying on the work of the local agricultural extension services. But this aim was soon discarded, for the county bureaux decided to adopt independent statutes and agreed to break off all organic links with the extension services. Some time later, they were considering the creation of state bureaux; finally, in 1919, the representatives of 32 State Farm Bureaux set up the American Farm Bureau Federation. The Farm Bureau describes its aims as follows: The Farm Bureau is a free, independent, non-governmental, voluntary organisation of farm and ranch families united for the purpose of analysing their problems and formulating action to achieve educational improvement, economic opportunity and social advancement, and thereby to promote the national welfare. The Farm Bureau is local, state-wide, national and international in its scope and influence and is nonpartisan, non-sectarian and non-secret in character. Like the other organisations, the Farm Bureau is active in the states or at the federal level, partly as a political lobby group bringing pressure to bear on the legislative authorities, and partly as an occupational organisation at the service of its members. Besides helping to set up purchasing and sales cooperatives, it plays the part of a large insurance company, offering its members every conceivable kind of insurance policy, with life,fire,motor vehicle, general agricultural and other departments. It publishes numerous newspapers at state level, together with the weekly Farm Bureau News and an illustrated monthly, Nation's Agriculture (both the latter being on sale throughout the country), so that its activities are very well publicised. Furthermore, the Farm Bureau takes a very close interest in price policies and in programmes aiming at changes in agricultural activities. Generally speaking, its endeavour is to make the farmer less dependent on official price maintenance and production control schemes. In its answer to the author's inquiries, it emphasised that in its view the farmers' interests are best protected by a free market, since the latter determines, in the last resort, how resources shall be used and profits apportioned within the economy. In fact, although there are several official schemes covering a number of agricultural products, the freedom of the market is still the most striking feature about United States agriculture. Naturally, like all the other organisations, the Farm Bureau does not itself collaborate directly with the authorities infixingproduction targets and devising agricultural policy. It has its own aims and policies, thrashed out by its members, and it is with these in mind that it tries to influence the authorities, notably Congress itself. Nor does the Farm Bureau have any direct links with the agricultural workers' trade unions. It is true that these unions, for reasons we shall shortly consider, are not very highly developed in the United States, and their weak510 North America and Australia ness makes it highly unlikely that the farmers and their organisations will of their own accord sit down and begin collective bargaining with them. But there is more in it than that, if we consider the terms of the Farm Bureau's answer. The Farm Bureau feels that the problem of the relationship between workers and employers does not exist : in the first place, because it believes that employment conditions are a matter for settlement between the individual farmer and the individual wage earner; and secondly, because it is convinced that wage-earning manpower will be made redundant by technical progress and therefore that the 1.5 million or so remaining agricultural wage earners are too few in number to warrant setting up machinery for collective bargaining. The Farm Bureau's answer on this point is very clear indeed, and probably reflects the views of the other major farming organisations: The American Farm Bureau, the State Farm Bureaux and the County Farm Bureaux do not undertake to perform a collective bargaining function with respect to the workers employed by farmers. This is a function universally performed by individual farmers, who negotiate with the workers they employ, almost always on an individual basis, rarely on a collective basis.... Most United States farmers employ no, or one or two, farm workers. To illustrate this, in 1965 the average annual employment of hired farm workers in the United States was 1,482,000, whereas the number of farmers was 3.1 million. There are, of course, a few exceptions to this pattern, where an individual farmer may employ several hundred workers, mostly in the fruit and vegetable industry, and mostly in the harvest of such crops, but this is the exceptional situation, not the predominant or typical pattern. The number of farm workers is declining rapidly as mechanisation of harvest of fruits, vegetables, cotton, sugar-beet, sugar-cane and other commodities is rapidly replacing hand labour by machine operations. It would, however, be unjust to imply that the Farm Bureau is interested in business only. Its county and state bureaux are very active in social and educational matters, and also do their best to improve hygiene and general conditions in the countryside. But because, as we have said, each association is independent, these activities vary in scope from one place to another. Hence in the absence of full and accurate data it is impossible to assess the over-all contribution made by the Farm Bureau to the development of the United States rural sector. Apart from these three big general organisations, there are numerous associations specialising in a particular crop or produce, whether in agriculture or in stock-breeding. They are, it seems, some 60 in number, the biggest being the associations of wheat, maize, cotton and milk producers.1 Among regional associations, reference might be made to the Missouri Farmers' Union, 1 i.e. the National Association of Wheat Growers, National Corn Growers' Association, National Cotton Council and National Milk Producers' Federation. It seems as though these associations are almost exclusively concerned with the defence of the economic interests of their members. 511 Agricultural organisations and development which despite its name is influential throughout the central United States, and the National Farmers' Organisation (NFO), set up in 1955, mostly by farmers in Iowa and Missouri. This latter body deserves special mention. It is the fruit of the discontent aroused among the medium-sized farmers by a slump in the prices paid for livestock products. From the very beginning, and more recently in 1962, 1964 and 1967, the members of the National Farmers' Organisation have organised delivery strikes whenever there was a slump in market prices, so as to force through collective bargaining and to get a fairer price for their produce. They are particularly hostile to the existing marketing arrangements and the army of middle-men with a finger in this particular pie. It would thus seem to be an organisation interested exclusively in monetary matters; but from the socio-economic point of view it is particularly interesting in that its members are highly energetic and able people, and in a few years' time it may well have become one of the most influential pressure groups in United States agriculture. In a sociological investigation undertaken in 1967 by Denton E. Morrison and Allan D. Steeves1, of the University of Michigan, the authors point to several salient features confirming that the NFO is very much in the vanguard of the agricultural organisations. They investigated nearly 8,700 farmers, of whom about 1,200 were members of the NFO; these latter, they found, were younger, better educated, more open to technical innovation, more in debt (probably because they hesitate less about renewing equipment), and less satisfied with prices and with the mediocre income they derive from farming. Morrison and Steeves also observe that in relation to the farmers who are members of the Farm Bureau, NFO members had a lower rate of growth in their family income between 1960 and 1965; whereas the average income of a member of the Farm Bureau increased from $3,930 to $5,735, that of a member of the NFO increased from $3,935 to a mere $5,138. Their estimates of their income for the following five-year period emphasise how pessimistic NFO members are; the level they hope to reach is $7,633, as against $8,370 expected by members of the Farm Bureau. On the other hand (and this is exceedingly important), when NFO members were asked what family income they would consider satisfactory, they mentioned $9,010. The figure suggested by Farm Bureau members was $8,813. The differences between these sets of figures goes far to explain the discontent reigning among members of the NFO. If to this we add the characteristics mentioned above, we shall readily grasp the fact that at some future date a 1 See Denton E. Morrison and Allan D. Steeves: "Deprivation, Discontent and Social Movement Participation: Evidence on a Contemporary Farmers' Movement, the NFO", Rural Sociology (Madison, University of Wisconsin), Vol. 32, No. 4, December 1967, pp. 414434. 512 North America and Australia movement as dynamic as this, made up of modern-minded farmers (probably not so well off as the big farmers of the Farm Bureau, yet not content to remain indefinitely in a position which in their eyes is less favourable than that of industrial workers), may well prove highly influential. Between the big factory farm and the small traditional farmer there has hitherto been no third force able to tackle the problems of structural change posed by the mechanisation of medium-scale agriculture in the United States. This is the part, it seems, which the NFO will be called upon to play; and no matter what the outcome, the NFO has already been the subject of numerous investigations and publications1 and has aroused no little alarm in various quarters. All this goes to show that the NFO is a new type of body, one which offers a challenge to vested interests and which is unlikely to be snuffed out as a result of protectionist action relating to prices and production. Lastly, in dealing with general organisations we cannot ignore the cooperative movement. This was born in Connecticut in 1810, when a dairy co-operative was founded. Despite all the difficulties the movement had to overcome (we have already mentioned the legislative obstacles), it has steadily gathered momentum ever since the end of the American Civil War. 2 In agriculture, the supreme co-operative organ is the National Council of Farmers' Co-operatives, set up in 1929. In 1964, its 124 members represented more than 5,700 co-operatives and some 3 million farmers' families. This is the body which lays down the general policy of the agricultural co-operative movement and acts as the latter's spokesman in dealings with the federal authorities. Apart from the National Council, there are specialised organs at the federal level, such as the federations of dairy, cereal, and cattle-raising co-operatives, and so on. Their influence on the Government's agricultural policy is, it seems, extremely powerful. Besides these occupational activities, co-operatives in the United States play a part in agricultural instruction and extension work. They usually have their own technical advisers, whose services are available to members. But, as we have already observed, activities such as these, which in the early stages had been undertaken by the pioneer associations, have long since been assumed by the Department of Agriculture, and today it is this department which does most of this kind of work. 1 See the lengthy bibliography given by Morrison and Steeves, op. cit., pp. 414-415 and 433-434. 2 The number of co-operatives increased from 400 in 1867 to 1,000 in 1890 and to 12,000 in 1920 (thanks to the Clayton Act). In 1925, there were 74 specialised associations with 900,000 members. After some uncertainty due to the 1929 slump and the Second World War, there was a certain concentration between 1950 and 1960, with a turnover which increased from $8.1 million to $12.4 million. 513 Agricultural organisations and development Hitherto we have stressed the American farmers' defence of their economic interests rather than the part they play as employers. In fact, with the agricultural trade union movement being so weak, they have until recently had little inducement to set up employers' associations and it was not until September 1964 that the National Council of Agricultural Employers was established, with the following aims : (a) To unite in common organisation those engaged in the production, handling or processing of United States agricultural (including horticultural) commodities or products and of others whose business welfare depends upon the economic efficiency and well-being of United States agriculture; (6) To promote the common business interest of its members to improve the position and image of United States agriculture as an employer of labour and to facilitate and encourage the establishment and maintenance of conditions whereby an adequate force of agricultural employees will be available for agricultural employment in the United States, but not to engage in the recruitment, housing, supplying or employment of agricultural employees, or in the representation of its members or of any employer of labour in negotiating with labour unions or any other organisation, public or private, or in agreeing to, any contract relating to hours, wages or working conditions. Individual farmers and also associations of farmers or foodstuff manufacturers are members of this association, which itself is a member of no other organisation, national or international, and whose activities, as we have just seen, are singularly limited in that it maintains no contacts with the agricultural workers. The situation of the agricultural wage earner in the United States, in fact, leaves a good deal to be desired. Even today, they number some 1.5 million, of whom about one-third are migrants. This is a very considerable figure; nevertheless, the majority of federal social welfare enactments (according to a report submitted by the United States to FAO) do not at the time of writing apply to the farm worker, except for legislation relating to old age and disability insurance.1 What is more, the agricultural worker does not come within the purview of the National Labor Relations Act, which is the very corner-stone of all United States trade union legislation.2 This state of affairs derives from a long and complex business closely connected with the successive waves of migrants s (Chinese, Japanese, Philippine and Mexican) employed by mine-owners and farmers in western California in the second half of the nineteenth and the first twenty years of the present centuries. The first wave was made up of Chinese. There were some 45,000 of them in 1860, of whom 20,000 or so were employed in the gold mines. But, 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966: Recent American Experience in Agrarian Reform (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/14), p. 7. 2 See below, pp. 524-525. 8 See Carey McWilliams: Factories in the Field (Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1939). 514 North America and Australia being a source of passive, inexpensive labour, the Chinese in effect took jobs away from American workers. Signs of xenophobia were not slow in appearing, especially in the towns and mining areas. The situation became so bad that in 1882, after years of repeated racial incidents, the Federal Government promulgated the Chinese Exclusion Act, restricting the employment of Chinese labour. This Act followed a series of similar restrictions enacted by the Californian authorities. Moreover, rights of residence had already suffered restriction, and Californian towns were empowered either to expel their Chinese or segregate them. At the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese colony accounted for some 130,000 people. Besides working in the mines, the Chinese provided roughly three-quarters of the labour force employed on farms (especially on fruit farms, which since 1870 had grown tremendously, at the expense of cereal-farming). Thus discouraged, the Chinese tended less and less to seek work in the countryside. In addition, the arrival from 1885 onwards of White settlers from the east in search of work made the situation of the Chinese even worse. Nevertheless, despite this new source of manpower, something like half a million acres had to be left fallow for years on end. In 1890 the big ranchers, who had resisted the legislation in force in so far as it ran counter to their interests, had recourse to another source of cheap labour, i.e. Japan. In 1882, there had been less than 100 Japanese in all California. By 1900, there were already more than 24,000 of them; by 1910, they numbered 72,000. Excellent farmers, well adapted to the Californian soil and climate, the Japanese would have proved ideal had they been ready to play the part demanded of the casual labourer, i.e. to turn up at harvest time and to disappear thereafter, without causing trouble. During the first few years of the century, in fact, they represented everything the planters required. In addition, remarkable organisations were set up in their midst which directed them from one harvest to another, thus ensuring that they had a maximum number of days of work a year. Carey McWilliams* tells us that at least 300 Japanese employment organisations of this kind were operating in California during these years. Matters started to deteriorate when these Japanese began to buy land and set up as farmers themselves. As independent farmers, they would give employment only to other Japanese. Thus they were inevitably disliked by big rancher and small farmer alike. Those who continued as casual labourers organised themselves to such effect that after onlyfifteenyears they obtained a 50 per cent increase in wages (in 1915). And the time was now past when the Californian farmer could count on the long-suffering Chinese to help him out.2 1 McWilliams, op. cit., p. 108. The declaration made in 1907 to the California Fruit Growers' Convention shows how the tide was beginning to turn: "The Chinese when they were here were ideal. They were a 515 Agricultural organisations and development If we note, moreover, that in 1917 the produce from land occupied or owned by Japanese was 3 Yi times as valuable as that from the average Californian farm we shall readily understand the reasons underlying the Alien Land Act of 1913 (confirmed in 1919) and the federal limitation on Japanese immigrants imposed in 1924 as part of a series of general restrictions on immigration. Still searching for less costly and unorganised labour, the planters then turned to Mexico. From 1920 onwards, they began to bring in Mexicans in large numbers ; ten years later there were some 250,000 of them. In 1923, 2,500 Philippine workers arrived on the Californian scene, engaged by planters who were fearful lest Mexican immigration also might be restricted. As United States citizens, the Filipinos were free to enter without let or hindrance. However, although there were 35,000 of them in 1935, their numbers never became very considerable. During the early 1920s the planters experienced no great problems arising from the employment of Mexicans and Filipinos. It was after March 1927 that the position began to deteriorate, following the creation in Los Angeles of the Confederation of Mexican Labor Unions. In April 1928 a local union was founded in Imperial Valley; its first act was to try to organise a strike among the melon-pickers. The planters reacted with vigour, a hundred or so workers being arrested and deported, and this marked the beginnings of a cycle of workers' insurrections in the west. Thus in 1930 two big strikes, supported by Mexicans, Filipinos and Americans alike, broke out in Imperial Valley over reductions in wages. The Filipinos, around the year 1934, set up their own organisation, the Filipino Labor Union, and organised a strike of lettuce-pickers near Salinas (California), which resulted in the expulsion from the district of 700 of the workers involved. Thus the Filipinos in their turn discovered that they encountered strong resistance when they began to organise unions and to demand higher wages through strike action. 1 It should be mentioned here that the American agricultural workers themselves had been trying to set up unions ever since the turn of the century; their one advantage over these immigrants was that they could not be expelled. patient, plodding, and uncomplaining in the performance of the most menial service. They submitted to anything, never violating a contract. The Japanese now coming in are a tricky and cunning lot, who break contracts and become quite independent. They are not organised in trade unions, but their clannishness seems to operate as a union would. One trick is to contract work at a certain price and then in the rush of the harvest to strike unless wages are raised." See McWilliams, op. cit., p. 114. 1 This particular problem was virtually solved when, in March 1934, the Philippines were proclaimed independent, so that the United States was no longer obliged to admit Philippine immigrants. On 11 July 1935 Congress provided for the free repatriation of Filipinos who requested it. Persons so repatriated were not entitled to return. 516 North America and Australia In March 1903 a first attempt was made by a trade union pioneer named H. Ryan, who had founded a little agricultural trade union at San José and now managed to create various local branches in the area. This union, amongst its other activities, set up its own employment exchange to ensure, as far as possible, regularity of employment and to assess individual requests for labour. It operated for several years but never managed to put down solid roots. Other attempts were made between 1900 and 1913, but these infant unions usually survived for a few months only since the workers involved were for the most part migrants who left the area as soon as the harvest was in and who, in any event, could hardly ever afford to pay their union dues. In fact, the one really important attempt to found a union at this time was made by a trade union organisation known as Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). This body was set up in 1905 at a convention held in Chicago, following the merger of the Western Federation of Miners with the American Labor Union (made up of industrial workers who had left the American Federation of Labor). The IWW made vigorous efforts to attract recruits in California and the middle west, and soon had a large membership, especially from 1913 onwards. This was the year of the workers' riot at Wheatland (2,800 persons, including women and children, who had come for the harvest had been accommodated in a camp under horrible conditions), as a result of which four men were killed and two local IWW leaders were arrested and imprisoned for life.1 At the outbreak of the First World War, the movement already had 50,000 agricultural workers on its rolls. But in 1917, when membership had increased to 70,000, a number of serious strikes and workers' uprisings broke out at Fresno, San José, Stockton, and various other places in California. Thus at Fresno, at the beginning of September 1917, haystacks were set on fire and cases of raisins broken into and destroyed by angry workers demanding better conditions of employment. In each instance, the local authorities stepped in, arrested the organisers, and charged them with infringements of wartime enactments by the Federal Government. In December 1918,42 members of the IWW were sentenced in Sacramento, without saying a word in their own defence. They have gone down in history as the "Silent Defenders", and their trial really marked the end of the IWW. In 1929, at the start of the financial crisis which was to rock the United States, the IWW, as McWilliams reminds us, "was merely a tradition in the labour movement; it had no influence and, for all practical purposes, was defunct".2 However, despite this setback, other bodies were to spring up and carry on the battle. 1 See Stuart Jamieson: Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 836 (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1945), pp. 61-62; and McWilliams, op. cit., pp. 158-162. 2 McWilliams, op. cit., p. 212. 517 Agricultural organisations and development Another experiment was launched in 1930, this time by the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), an industrial workers' union solidly based in California at that time. Two strikes, provoked by wage reductions, had broken out among Mexican and Philippine workers employed on Imperial Valley vegetable and fruit farms and these provided the TUUL with the opportunity to infiltrate into the agricultural world. It organised a trade union, the Agricultural Workers' Industrial League (AWIL), comprising both American and immigrant members. The strikes were unsuccessful, but although a few of the organisers were arrested on suspicion no prosecutions resulted at the time. It was not until two months later that the planters really reacted, when they learnt that the AWIL was to convene a big trade union assembly on 20 April 1930 with representatives from each farm and ranch. In Carey McWilliams' words, "On 14 April, residences and public meeting places were raided throughout the valley. Over 100 workers were arrested . . . later a large group were placed on trial, charged with violation of the Criminal Syndicalism Act. Eight defendants were convicted."1 After the trial the AWIL disappeared from the Californian scene. The following year another organisation, the Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union (CAWIU) tried its luck. This had been launched by the American Communist Party and was composed of a small group of organisers. The depression had not yet reached its nadir, and in these early days CAWIU activity was limited to "a sprinkling of small, sporadic strikes, . . . culminating in a strike of fruit workers at Vacaville, California. This strike was the first organised effort of the CAWIU. Some 400 workers, under the leadership of communist organisers, held out for a period of about 60 days."2 The strike wasfinallybroken by a group of "vigilantes". The heyday of the CAWIU was to come in 1933, when the depression was at its worst. In 1929 agricultural wages had dropped in certain states from an average of 50 cents an hour to 15 or 16. Certainly, the farmers too were in a worse situation than before, especially in California, where the total value of the crops harvested had fallen from $646,000 million to $372,000 million between 1928 and 1932.3 But in the meantime the Federal Government had launched the New Deal legislation, in particular the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 to assist the farmer and the National Industrial Recovery Act for the benefit of the industrial worker; the latter laid down that the minimum wage was to be $16 a week, and offered legal protection to the industrial trade unions. 1 McWilliams, op. cit., pp. 213-214. ibid., pp. 214-215. 8 ibid., p. 266. 2 518 North America and Australia Unfortunately, none of these measures affected the farm worker. From the early summer of 1933 onwards, 61 strikes supported by 57,000 farm workers and usually directed by the CAWIU broke out in 17 different states. In October the position grew even worse when 5,000 cotton pickers went on strike at Corcoran, in California; they had been earning only 40 cents per 100 lb. of cotton picked and demanded an increase of 50 cents. The growers, however, had offered only a 20-cent rise. The strike spread like wildfire throughout the valley and some 18,000 workers rallied to it. However, "on 12 October a group of workers were assembled in the Union Hall at Pixley, California. As they were leaving the hall, . . . two workers were killed and several more wounded; . . . seventeen strikers and eleven ranchers were arrested."1 The workers nevertheless pursued the strike for another 24 days until a compromise agreement with the ranchers was signed whereby they were to be paid 75 cents per 100 lb. of cotton. This modest success was not the only one obtained by the CAWIU. It has been estimated2 that of the 24 strikes launched by 37,500 workers in California in 1933 under instructions from the CAWIU, in 21 cases the strikers succeeded in securing an average wage increase of 10 cents from the employers, i.e. a wage of 25 cents an hour instead of the former prevailing rate of 15 cents. When these strikes had ended, the cotton season was over and the seasonal workers, following the cycle of the crops, moved off towards Imperial Valley for the winter harvest of lettuce and, later, peas. Once more, strikes broke out, but this time they were to mark the beginning of the end for the CAWIU. On 8 January 1934 a meeting of workers at El Centro had led to the arrest of 87 workers. The National Labor Board sent a commission of inquiry to look into the situation, and it was found that at El Centro the ranchers were still paying an average wage of 56 cents a day—a sum which was quite insufficient to meet even the most elementary needs of the workers.3 Nevertheless, it seems that the strikers gained nothing from their action. The same problems arose again in the course of the summer. But this time things were more serious: after the seasonal workers hadfinishedtheir work in Imperial Valley, they set off north to begin the cycle afresh. On 19 July the San Francisco unions decided to call a general strike in connexion with a pending maritime strike. The National Guard broke the strike in a few days, but in the meantime, in the small towns of the neighbourhood, the vigilantes and local authorities had already decided to face up to the situation by arresting all the CAWIU leaders in Sacramento, the day after the general strike had been proclaimed. Eighteen people were brought to trial, accused of violating the 1 McWilliams, op. cit., p. 221. ibid., p. 229. 3 ibid., p. 225. 2 519 Agricultural organisations and development Criminal Syndicalism Act, and on 1 April 1935 eight were sent to prison. Two years later, they were released, an appeal lodged by them having been successful. But in the meantime the CAWIU, which had been officially wound up on 17 March 1935, had forfeited all its influence among the agricultural workers. In the years leading up to the war, further attempts were made, this time under the aegis of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).1 In 1937, following the refusal of the AFL to organise a single union for agricultural and cannery workers, the Californian workers finally moved over to the CIO, at the first farm workers' convention to be held in the United States (Denver, 9-12 July 1937). A new nation-wide organisation was set up a few days later under the name of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA). This body, as its name indicates, brought together workers engaged in every activity in the field of agriculture, from harvesters to canners, and just before the war it seems to have been extremely influential in other states as well as in California. The CIO was later to expel UCAPAWA for its communist leanings. In fact, the appearance of UCAPAWA is closely bound up with the efforts of another body: the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU), an association of small tenant farmers with roots in the south-east since 1934. It was because all these bodies were pulling in the same direction that the workers' movement was to acquire the volume it later obtained. The STFU deserves a word to itself. Up to the early 1930s the small tenant farmers in the south, descendants of African Negro slaves and of small White farmers who had lost their land at the end of the nineteenth century when there was a slump in cotton prices, had been hardly heard of. In 1933, the position in this part of the country was as bad as anywhere else. The latest harvest had been very good indeed, and cotton prices, of course, had slumped disastrously. By virtue of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, adopted on 12 May 1933, the southern cotton planters had been invited by the Federal Government to reduce their output and hence the areas under cultivation.2 1 The CIO was set up in 1937 by an AFL break-away group headed by John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America. The rebels wanted a vertical trade unionism, by branch of industry, whereas the AFL was predominantly in favour of a horizontal structure, by trade. Later, the two parties were to make their peace; whence the merger of December 1955 and the emergence of the AFL-CIO. 2 The Agricultural Adjustment Act chiefly concerned seven basic products—wheat, cotton, tobacco, pork, maize, rice, milk and dairy products. Farmers who voluntarily agreed to reduce their output signed a contract with the Government whereby the latter granted them compensatory subsidies derived from special indirect taxes levied on intermediaries and consumers. This policy led to an increase in agricultural prices (then abnormally low), with the result that gross agricultural income rose from $4,700 million in 1932 520 North America and Australia In exchange for these reductions, they were promised financial compensation (some 10.5 million acres were in fact involved). Since cotton-growing was largely run on the tenant farming system, the planters ought to have apportioned the sums involved among their tenants, in accordance with the individual contracts of tenancy (usually 50 per cent of the value of the crop). In fact, however, it seems that many planters took the opportunity to rewrite these contracts, so that their tenants would get one-ninth, not one-half, of the compensation offered for land left fallow. Stuart Jamieson mentions one planter whose gross income rose from $51,554 in 1932 to $102,202 in 1934, while the average gross income of his tenants declined from $379 to $355. Other planters took advantage of the situation not to renew contracts which were about to expire. It was at this time that the STFU was founded in Tyronza, Arkansas. Two small tradesmen of that township, whose names are now famous in the history of United States trade unionism (Henry Clay East, a local constable and the owner of a filling station, and Henry Leland Mitchell, the owner of a laundry) promoted the movement. Early in July 1934, having investigated what the prospects for trade unionism were in the countryside, East and Mitchell called the first meeting in an abandoned school on a neighbouring cotton plantation. A score of tenant farmers, White and Negro, attended. This little group decided to go ahead and what was to be the STFU was registered on 26 July 1934, in Arkansas. Its declared aims included assistance for workers who had been displaced as a result of events, the conclusion of collective agreements between planters and tenants, and revision of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The STFU soon made converts in the countryside and quickly undertook a whole range of activities from organising courses for adults to setting up consumers' co-operatives. The planters reacted quickly to this new danger. Tenants belonging to the STFU were expelled and the latter's activities were discouraged.1 Major strikes broke out in 1935 and 1936, which were bitter years for the STFU. In the belief that it would be more successful if backed by some national organisation, the STFU in 1937 helped to set up UCAPAWA under the aegis of the CIO. However, its affiliation to UCAPAWA was short-lived. It had joined in the hope of securing support, but expected to retain its independence. However, the president of UCAPAWA was anxious to set up a centralised to $8,700 million in 1936. This saved American agriculture from the economic depression. For further details, see La politique agricole aux Etats-Unis du New Deal à 1956, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2225 (Paris, October 1956), pp. 7-10 and passim. 1 There exists an unpublished doctor's thesis on this period of the history of the STFU: Donald H. Grubbs: The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the New Deal (University of Florida, 1963). Unfortunately, this work is difficult to obtain. 521 Agricultural organisations and development federation with its own treasury, an idea which ran counter to the wishes of the STFU activists. Hence, after a year or so, a majority of the STFU local branches voted to break away, and as a result the union left UCAPAWA. Independent once more, the STFU pursued its activities for several years until the end of the war. In 1946, it changed its name to become the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), an nation-wide organisation set up under the wing of the AFL. For the first time, it tackled the problems facing the American agricultural worker on a national scale. The AFL empowered the new body to set up branches in every state, including the neighbouring islands. Four years later the NFLU, now open to farm workers as well as to tenants and small farmers, had already set up 26 local unions, from California to Florida via Arkansas. Thus the range of states covered was very broad.1 Since then, the United States trade union movement has continued to make progress, despite the obstacles put in its way. The reconcihation of the CIO and the AFL in December 1955 was no doubt helpful in this respect. Reunited and enormously powerful, the new AFL-CIO has in recent years always spoken up for this most neglected branch of American labour. Since the war, the effective help and support it has given to agricultural strikes has forced the entire nation to give some thought to problems which until then had always been considered as of minor importance and local concern. Furthermore, within the AFL-CIO agricultural trade unionism has endeavoured to achieve greater unity by bringing in, little by little, all branches of the food industry. Thus in 1960 the NFLU (which in 1952 had changed its name to National Agricultural Workers' Union) joined hands with slaughterhouse workers and butchers by merging with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, also part of the AFL-CIO. But perhaps the most important event of the last dozen years took place in 1959, when the AFL-CIO set up a committee to promote trade union organisation and militancy amongst agricultural workers throughout the country. This body is known as the Agricultural Workers' Organising Committee (AWOC). During the last few years, AWOC's influence has been a most important factor in agricultural trade union activities and successes. Thus, it has been estimated that, thanks to AWOC, wages in California in 1961 had already risen by 25 per cent in relation to their 1958 level.2 AWOC has a footing in every state, and it gives its backing to youthful organisations everywhere they spring up, either directly (as in Wisconsin, where Obreros Unidos, a union of Spanish-speaking workers created by Jesús Salas, 1 National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor: Farm Labor Organizing, 1905-1967: A Brief History (New York, 1967), pp. 36 et seq. * National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor: Information Letter 16, August 1961. 522 North America and Australia acts in co-operation with AWOC without being a member of it) or by proposing a merger, as has been done in California, where the National Farm Workers' Association founded by Cesar Chavez became the United Farm Workers' Organising Committee-AFL-CIO in 1966. All these events, of course, are still quite recent, and we cannot yet assess their importance. But as from the social and economic viewpoint matters are much better in the United States today than they were in the 1930s, there is every reason to assume that barring unforeseen setbacks the United States agricultural workers will in a few years' time have found appropriate national means for the defence of their interests. The proportion of organised agricultural workers nevertheless remains exceedingly low (some 35,000 are estimated to be organised out of 4 million persons employed in agriculture). Even if this latter figure comprises self-employed persons, the fact remains that a vast amount will have to be done if agricultural wage earners are to be enrolled in trade unions in any significant numbers. Since the end of the war the federal authorities too have been responsible for a whole series of enactments designed to improve the agricultural workers' lot. Thus, for example, the Social Security Act of 1935, which instituted an old-age pension and death insurance system, was in 1950 extended to permanent agricultural workers and in 1955 to seasonal workers. Furthermore, under federal schemes for agricultural labour, there has been an increase in the number of employment exchanges, vocational training services, even housing and migrants' transport facilities. Since 1954 there has been an annual plan for casual labour, to co-ordinate the movement of these workers between crop areas. Under this plan they can be found continuous employment; a scheme is prepared, before the start of their annual journey, whereby a series of jobs are scheduled for them.1 Another very important milestone was the entry into force in 1964 of the Civil Rights Act, which opened the door to the full exercise of civil rights by the Negroes—who even today provide a large proportion of the farm workers and small tenant farmers in the southern states.8 Lastly, an amendment was adopted in 1966 to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. This increased the minimum wages of some 400,000 workers, most of them employed in agricultural enterprises of an industrial type. This is important, for the practice is still for the employers to negotiate with their workers individually on the latter's conditions of employment. 1 FAO, World Land Reform Conference: Recent American Experience in Land Reform, op. cit., p. 7. 2 In the southern states studied by Calvin L. Beale, there were, in 1960, 311,000 wageearning Negroes in agriculture for 308,000 Whites, whereas in 1950 there had been 392,000 Whites and 298,000 Negroes. On the other hand, the Negro small farmers (owners, farmers, tenants and similar persons) had dwindled in numbers from 559,090 in 1950 to 265,621 in 1959, largely because of increasing mechanisation. See Beale, op. cit., pp. 175176 and 194. 523 Agricultural organisations and development Various agreements and legislative enactments have gone some way towards settling the problem of foreign immigrant workers. Thus the United States and Mexico reached an agreement in 1951, with a view to keeping a check on the immigration of Mexican braceros (labourers). This agreement was later amended by Public Law 78, under which the temporary admission of foreign workers was to cease in December 1964.1 Another piece of legislation, Public Law 414, has been enacted to lay down how many foreign labourers from other countries will be allowed to enter the United States. The figures published for 1965 enable us to gain some idea of how successful such action has been. The employment of foreign labour, in relation to 1964, had dwindled by the following amounts (calculated in man-months) : 95 per cent (Mexicans), 24 per cent (citizens of the British West Indies), 44 per cent (Canadians), and 63 per cent (Japanese and Filipinos).2 But with regard to Mexican labour, no final solution has been reached; the United States-Mexican border is some 2,500 miles long, and is fairly easy for clandestine migrants to cross. Moreover the Mexican is prepared to undertake all kinds of menial jobs in the United States which native labour refuses to touch. UFWOC-AFL-CIO, which as we have said is trying to organise those foreign workers who have entered the country by legitimate means, is against the employment of clandestine migrant labour because employers often use it to break strikes. In 1968, according to the latest figures available, something like 13,000 people a month were still arriving, by clandestine means, in California. But there is another very important problem, at national level in this case, arising out of the fact that agricultural workers were excluded from the protection afforded in 1935 by the National Labor Relations Act. Under this Act, employers are obliged to negotiate with workers' representatives in connexion with all matters relating to the workers' conditions of employment. The National Labor Relations Board, consisting of five members appointed by the President of the United States, was established to administer this law. If necessary, the board can order an employer to hold elections to ascertain whether a majority of the staff wish to set up a union. It has in addition to investigate any allegations of illegal activities on the part of employers or unions. For example, the law lays down that employers must not interfere in union affairs; still less must they discriminate against union members. The unions are called upon to abide by certain rules : they cannot refuse bona fide collective bargaining or force a worker to support trade union activities against his will. 1 For further information, see Bureau of Employment Security, Farm Labor Service: Information concerning Entry of Mexican Agricultural Workers into the United States (Washington, D.C., United States Department of Labor, February 1962). 2 Tod Potter: "1965 Points the Way for Farm Labor", Employment Service Review (Washington, D.C., United States Department of Labor, Manpower Administration), January 1966, p. 2. 524 North America and Australia The National Labor Relations Act is, as we have seen, a corner-stone of trade union legislation in the United States. It seems as though the person responsible for the Act, Senator Wagner, had in 1935 planned to include agricultural workers and had drafted the Act accordingly. For evident reasons (which were never, however, made explicit), when the Senate and Chamber of Representatives came to examine it they decided to exclude agricultural workers from the purview of the Act. When the present inquiry was under way (in June and July 1966), no amendment had yet been passed whereby the Act would have been extended to agricultural labour, despite a number of approaches made to the Senate and other authorities.1 Quite clearly, however, such an amendment is necessary: As things stand now, growers can literally deny the existence of a farm labour union. It is common practice for them to return letters from union leaders unopened. Because a farm employer is not required by law to enter into this relationship, in order to bring him to the bargaining table farm workers are forced to strike, picket, and boycott. In essence, the struggle has been to try to establish grower recognition of a union representing the workers. Wages, hours, and working and living conditions are usually the issues which touch off a strike, but the real question has been whether the employer will sit down and negotiate with his workers. Can a union continue to exist if it is not acknowledged by the employer involved ? The nearhundred-year history of farm labour unions attests to the fact that they cannot survive in a dynamic way unless some foothold is secured in the traditional collective bargaining process.2 We see therefore that agriculture in the United States is distinguished by the nature of its trade union legislation as well as by the features described at the beginning of this chapter. It is to be hoped that greater recognition will be given to trade union rights so that agricultural workers' associations, instead of trying to challenge the system, may play a more effective part in working for the prosperity of agriculture and hence for that of the nation as a whole. CANADA The characteristics of Canadian agriculture, from the point of view of this inquiry, are as atypical as those of the United States, and we cannot grasp them unless we bear constantly in mind the comparatively recent development of agriculture in that country. Canada was of course first colonised by the French in the seventeenth century: the territory was subsequently ceded to 1 See in this connexion : Amending Migratory Labor Laws. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Eighty-Ninth Congress, First and Second Sessions, on S.1864, S.1865,S.1866,S.1867andS.1868 (Washington, D.C., United States Government Printing Office, 1966). 'National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor: Farm Labor Organizing, 1905-1967: A Brief History, op. cit., p. 10. 525 Agricultural organisations and development England by France under the Treaty of Paris (1763). But it was not until 1885, when the first transcontinental railway was completed, that the country really became agriculturalised. This event made it possible for the prairies to the west of the Great Lakes to be colonised—and it is in the prairie provinces that three-quarters of all Canadian farmland lies. In 1901, 63 million acres were given over to farming, as against 174 million today, a startling advance even if we remember that farmland still accounts for only 7.5 per cent of the total area of the country (2,213 million acres). The figures for the actively employed agricultural population have, on the contrary, been steadily declining. In 1900, 46 per cent of Canadian manpower was engaged in farming; the figure for 1951 was 19 per cent, and for 1965 a mere 9 per cent. During the last 30 years, moreover, this decline and fall has been both absolute and relative: 1,379,000 people in 1939,1,007,000 in 1951, and only 635,000 in 1965.1 These persons are in almost every case independent farm operators employing very few wage earners; thus at the end of the 1950s there were barely 138,000 farm labourers working on the 575,000 Canadian farms. Because mechanisation is proceeding steadily while the number of farms is dwindling (480,903 in 1961)2, this figure must by now have declined even further. For many long years, the Canadian farmer was perfectly content that the only association to which he belonged should be a co-operative and even in this respect development was very slow, since the country was still fully taken up with the process of colonisation. In the pioneering days of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Canadian farmer was predominantly concerned with catering for increasing local needs, and hence he tried above all to improve his agricultural techniques. Agricultural associations similar to those in the United States were therefore set up; but this was not yet cooperation as we now understand it. True co-operative activities in Canada appeared only during the second half of the nineteenth century, to cope with the problems created by increasing technical specialisation. It was then that the agricultural associations began to take an interest in the co-operative production and marketing of produce, especially dairy produce. On the consumers' side, the first successful attempt was made by the coal-miners at Stellarton (Nova Scotia), who founded a local shop in 1861 and managed to keep it going until 1916.3 1 See: Les progrès et les perspectives de l'agriculture canadienne, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2571 (Paris, September 1959), p. 5; "The World's Working Population—Its Industrial Distribution", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXIII, No. 5, May 1956, p. 505; and FAO: Production Yearbook, 1966 (Rome, 1967), p. 18. a ibid., p. 11. 3 R. Craig Mei vor: The Post-War Taxation of Canadian Co-operatives (Toronto, Canadian Tax Foundation, 1959), p. 1. 526 North America and Australia The first few attempts did not bear much resemblance to modern cooperatives, it is true: every pioneer in this field did as he thought fit, the more so in that no federal or provincial legislation yet existed as regards these matters. In fact, the real development of co-operatives in Canada dates from the beginning of the twentieth century, especially the years before the First World War when the Rochdale principles were being progressively applied. The process was brought to completion by the enactment of very comprehensive legislation1, and today the Canadian co-operative movement is one of the best organised in the world. By 1940, it had become specialised to a degree truly remarkable for the time; this holds good of the production and marketing of produce as well as of credit operation. As regards credit, in 1937 the province of Quebec was foremost on the American continent with 500 rural credit co-operatives having 55,000 members.2 To quote another case—wheat production—the ILO reported in 1943 that: The outstanding example of wheat marketing co-operative organisations is provided by Canada, where in 1937 the three wheat pools of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba had over 150,000 members and a combined trade amounting to 25 million Canadian dollars. Of the three organisations, the most important was Saskatchewan Co-operative Wheat Producers Ltd., with 107,000 members and a trade of 17 million Canadian dollars. At that time the wheat pools already possessed a large number of country, as well as a certain number of terminal, elevators.3 In 1940-41, for the whole of Canada and for all cereals, the co-operatives absorbed nearly 44 per cent of national trade. 4 In other sectors the proportions were usually lower but none the less impressive: 20 per cent (sales of cattle, hogs, sheep and lambs), 12 per cent (dairy produce), 20 per cent (fruit and vegetables), 29.8 per cent (maple sugar and syrup, 1937-38), 89.8 per cent (tobacco, 1937-38) and 23.4 per cent (wool, 1937-38). All in all, in 1940-41 31 per cent of the total commercial production of Canadian farms was handled by the co-operatives.5 Since then these percentages have grown steadily, until 1958 at least, for which year the following figures are available: 30 per cent (cattle, etc.), 27 per cent (dairy produce), 25 per cent (fruit and vegetables), 45 per cent (maple products), 11 per cent (eggs and fowl), 63 per cent (wool), and 60 per cent (cereals). Taken as a whole, however, the volume of marketed 1 As regards this legislation, see H. K. Ingersoll: Abstract of Canadian Provincial Legislation on Co-operatives (Ottawa, Department of Agriculture, 1958), and, by the same author: L'analyse de la législation provinciale canadienne (Ottawa, Ministry of Agriculture, 1962), the latter being a more up-to-date version of the former publication. It shows the position obtaining in 1961. 2 ILO: Co-operative Organisations and Post-War Relief, Studies and Reports, Series H (Co-operation), No. 4 (Montreal, 1943), p. 63. 3 ibid., p. 67. •ibid., p. 117. »ibid., pp. 119, 123, 125, 129, 132, 133, 134. 527 Agricultural organisations and development produce passing through the co-operatives accounted for no more than 33 per cent of the total marketed agricultural produce1; in absolute value, nevertheless, this percentage represented (1958) some 895 million Canadian dollars as against 214.4 million Canadian dollars in 1940-41. In addition to the co-operatives, there are two large national organisations in Canada: the National Farmers' Union (NFU) and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA). The National Farmers' Union was founded in 1946, as an interprovincial council of farmers' associations. It is a federation set up on the basis of the voluntary membership of the provincial associations in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Colombia, and 65,000 farmers' families are thus represented. At the provincial level each association remains entirely independent; nevertheless, three representatives from each provincial association sit on the Central Council of the National Farmers' Union, a body which is responsible for defining agricultural policy at the federal level. The NFU is thus chiefly concerned with submitting the views of the organised farming community, with regard to such matters as agricultural policy (and of course social development in the countryside) to the Government and to official organs (royal commissions, boards, and so on). Neither the NFU nor its associations undertake bargaining about wages or conditions of employment, however; nor do they directly intervene in agricultural price maintenance. Their approach is more indirect, thanks to the seats reserved for the NFU in various advisory bodies, such as the advisory committee of the Canadian Wheat Board and the Economic Council of Canada (in which it is represented by its president), and the Agricultural Economics Research Board, in which it is represented by one of its members. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture is a general organisation created in 1936. The part it plays is unique. In 1966 it had some 735,000 members in all kinds of agricultural organisations—farmers' federations, agricultural co-operatives, marketing associations and agencies, etc.—among which were three NFU provincial associations, although in all other respects the NFU is an entirely independent body.2 The CFA is in fact a sort of "federation of 1 V. A. Heighton: "Co-operative Movement in Canada, 1958", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1960 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1960), p. 195. 2 Under article 5 of the CFA's statutes, the following persons and associations may join: (a) one representative agricultural organisation from each province or group of provinces in the dominion, now known as provincial or regional federations of agriculture; (¿>) where no provincial federation of agriculture exists, any organised group of producers that is representative of any major agricultural interest of the province in which it is located, subject to the decision of the board of directors on this point; (c) any inter-provincial or national body, representing producers in a specific branch of agriculture, in the dominion, which may establish its claim, in the opinion of the board of directors of the federation, to be representative of primary producers engaged in that 528 North America and Australia federations" organised in a very complex way; it takes as its model, so to speak, the federal organisation of the country itself. The CFA is active in a wide variety of fields—chiefly economic although in some instances it also deals with social welfare questions. Its aims, as set forth in article 2 of its statutes, are as follows : (a) To co-ordinate the efforts of agricultural producers' organisations throughout the dominion, for the purpose of promoting their common interest through collective action; (6) To promote and advance the social and economic conditions of, and to render such services to, those engaged in agricultural pursuits as conditions may justify; (c) to assist in formulating and promoting national agricultural policies to meet changing national and international economic conditions; and to collaborate and (or) co-operate with other organised groups of producers, within or without the British Empire, for the furtherance of the said objective. The CFA tries to attain these ends by various means. It may submit official requests to the Government, to Parliament, or to the committees responsible for considering agricultural matters, or make recommendations within the advisory bodies in which it is represented. Its influence extends into other spheres too: although as an organisation it has no executive authority, amongst its members are some of the marketing boards organised by agricultural producers, and these enjoy certain rights, clearly defined by legislation, as regards price negotiation and the buying and selling of produce. The powers bestowed on such bodies are limited to the individual province, since only the wheat-growers are federally organised within the Canadian Wheat Board. Here again, however, this is a government body which is independent of the producers, although they have rather proprietary feelings about it since it was set up at their request and is called upon by the regulations which govern it to sell wheat "in the best interests of producers". When this inquiry was under way, the Canadian Dairy Produce Commission—a federal body—had just been set up, but was waiting for its terms of reference to be defined before beginning work. The Canadian organisations seem anxious to improve their relations with the Government. The CFA says that one of their chief concerns is to bring about an improvement in their advisory function, and considers that action should above all be taken to ensure a better dissemination of news and information and to establish procedures for much closer consultation, whilst at the same time preserving the parts played by the organisations and the Government. branch of agriculture. Provided, however that such inter-provincial or national bodies shall be confined to one each of the following major branches of the industry, namely: grain, livestock, dairying, fruit and vegetables. 529 Agricultural organisations and development As for research and extension work, the reason why the organisations have made no reply to the relevant sections in our questionnaire is, as the CFA has emphasised, because such work is traditionally a matter for the Government. Lastly, it will be observed that neither the Canadian farmers nor their workers have ever organised employers' associations or workers' unions to negotiate wages or employment conditions, or to settle disputes between employers and workers. One reason for this is that the workers are so few in number. Secondly, although there is hardly any recognised proeedure for bargaining about wages nor any agreement concerning wage levels, Canadian agriculture can offer its workers (immigrants as well as Canadians) conditions of employment which, on the whole, may be considered satisfactory. Some producers' associations, notably those dealing with sugar-beet, fruit and vegetables, the producers of which frequently have occasion to employ seasonal labour, may from time to time play the part of employers' organisations. The CFA itself and its member organisations also take an interest in matters such as the supply of seasonal labour, unemployment insurance and occupational injuries. But such questions do not, it seems, take up much of their time. As matters stand, we cannot affirm that the lot of the Canadian farmer and farm worker would be easier if there existed a broader range of agricultural organisations. It must always be remembered that the great majority of Canadian farms are small or of medium size, and that only one-third or so offer full-time employment. Hence many a farmer carries on another trade or profession simultaneously, to increase his income. In 1958, in comparison with an average wage in industry of 3,400 Canadian dollars, 20 per cent of all farmers were making something like 3,000 Canadian dollars a year, a figure which we may consider to be the lower limit for profitable farming. Sixty per cent of all farmers' families fell below this figure, and hence had to divide their time between farming and working for somebody else. If we take farmers' families as a whole, we observe that in 1958, 57.8 per cent of their net income from all sources was obtained from agricultural activities either on their own or on somebody else's farm, the remainder being derived from non-agricultural activities. The 1961 Census of Agriculture revealed that 25.6 per cent of all farmers worked on agricultural or forestry jobs outside their own farms.1 It will be seen, then, that no hard-and-fast dividing line can be drawn between employer and worker, since an employer may himself become a worker from time to time. Naturally enough, such persons are not particularly interested in setting up a workers' trade union. The wage earners themselves were estimated to number some 110,000 in I960,2 but only a detailed investigation 'OECD: Low Incomes in Agriculture, op. cit., p. 119 and passim. * ibid., p. 125. 530 North America and Australia comparing their situation with that of other categories of agricultural worker, such as farmers or family workers, would show whether in present circumstances the establishment of a trade union would be justified. The information available would seem to show in fact that the current trend is towards an extension of activities by the organisations already in existence. AUSTRALIA The multiplicity of agricultural organisations in Australia derives from the land laws enacted in the early days of colonisation and subsequently to meet the need for a rapid specialisation in rural activities. The period in question may be considered to run from 1840 to 1920, as far as legislative enactments are concerned. Although it is now over, we should do well to dwell on it for a few moments if we wish to understand the existing state of affairs. It will be remembered that the history of this country in modern times opened with the establishment of a prison at Botany Bay (Port Jackson, now Sydney) in 1788. The history of the colony was to pass through three successive stages. Between 1788 and 1823 the colony was ruled by a governor, himself appointed by the British authorities. Besides managing the convict settlement, he was called upon to undertake land distribution to individual settlers. Between 1823 and 1855 the governor's autocratic rule was tempered by a small body of local residents—the legislative council. All members of this body were originally nominated, but later two-thirds of them were elected by the local people. The third phase began in 1855, when after a lengthy period of unrest the colony was granted representative government, in the form of an assembly and a council. Members of the former were elected, members of the latter were appointed. In 1900, the six Australian states came together to form the Commonwealth of Australia as we now know it, based on a sharing of authority between the Commonwealth Government and the states. Both the Government and the states kept certain rights as regards the enactment of agricultural legislation. Until 1840 settlement was undertaken by the governor himself (in so far as he granted coastal concessions to new settlers, army officers and released convicts) and by "squatters" who invaded the fat prairies of the interior, choosing the likeliest places for stock-breeding. As Martin F. Hardie has observed, this was the time when the seeds of future conflict, hatreds and divisions between squatters, settlers and Government were sown.1 1 Justice Martin F. Hardie: Some Aspects of Land Reform in Australia, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967, p. 4. 531 Agricultural organisations and development Between 1840 and 1850, laws were enacted by Parliament in London and backed up by local regulations to keep some control over invasion of the Australian outback. But there were too few people in government service to see they were fully applied and hence this legislation was largely ineffective. Tension was aggravated too by the fantastic growth in the population from 1850 onwards (stimulated by the discovery of gold and by a policy favourable to immigration), since the new arrivals immediately discovered that the land they coveted was in fact occupied, albeit illegally, by the first squatters. This state of affairs continued for several years until the dissolution of the first Parliament, which had refused to adopt two land Bills presented by the Prime Minister, Sir John Robertson. But in 1861, with electoral support, the Bills became law. They were known as the Robertson Land Acts. From then on, precise regulations governed the occupation or alienation of Crown lands. They defined the rights of the settlers to whom such lands had been granted, together with the rights enjoyed by squatters and stock-breeders on land leased by them or held under licence. Under the new legislation, applications for further land would be accepted by the authorities without prior investigation. The settlers themselves were to examine the sites and occupy the land, on the following condition : that if during the following twelve months the Crown authorities had still not confirmed occupation, the person concerned might assume that his application had been accepted. It was expected that this legislation would greatly simplify the procedures required for the acquisition of land; in fact, however, nothing very much was achieved. In 1884, a further law had to be promulgated, whereby pasture land occupied by squatters would be divided into two parts, one for their own use (and with regard to this their rights would be to some extent confirmed) and the other for new settlers, who would apply for it to the local "land boards" set up by the Act to share out land. A land tribunal was set up in 1889 to settle disputes arising from the Act of 1884, but once again this Act did not produce very substantial results, partly because several regions were ravaged by fire, flood or drought at the end of the 1880s, and partly because of a national economic crisis early in the 1890s when many agricultural enterprises went bankrupt and were made over to their creditors. In 1895 various changes were made to the existing legislation (in particular, "homestead farms" were created, whereby a man could take a perpetual lease which would exclude the seizures of his property). Some good was done by this, but neither this legislation nor the numerous Acts promulgated later 1 were to make any fundamental change in the actual structure of Australian agriculture. Right down to the present day there has been a division into two major 1 532 Hardie, op. cit., pp. 8 et seq. North America and Australia classes: stock-breeding, and agriculture in the literal meaning of the word, with an ever-increasing tendency towards specialisation. The creation of occupational organisations too was marked by the original settlement pattern. As indicated by the Australian Council of Employers' Federations in its answer to the author's inquiries: During the period of the early settlement of Australia, the competition between agricultural settlers (crop-growers) and the pastoral settlers (sheep) led to the formation of specialist organisations whose sole purpose was the protection of their members and the securing of protection by amendments to the then existing land laws. Because of this initial fragmentation, many general organisations exist in Australia today. The chief ones are the Australian Wool Growers' and Graziers' Council, the Australian Wool and Meat Producers' Federation, the Poultrymen's Association, the Australian Dairy Farmers' Federation, and the Australian Wheat Growers' Federation. There are also specialised federal organisations for individual crops such as sugar-cane, cotton and tobacco. Since in every instance the movement in a particular branch of farming came from the producers at the bottom, the federal bodies at the highest level are made up of state or regional unions, associations or federations, in variable numbers. Thus the Australian Dairy Farmers' Federation is made up of seven associations of this kind.1 The Wool Growers' and Graziers' Council is made up of ten, and the Wool and Meat Producers' Federation and the Wheat Growers' Federation, of five organisations each. These organisations are chiefly concerned to protect their members' interests as regards prices and the marketing of produce, production targets, and agricultural manpower policy. Nationally, therefore, they act as intermediaries between the Government and the particular branch of agriculture they represent. The Government's principle is always to consult the relevant organisation before taking any decision likely to affect it. We may give as an example the Australian Dairy Industry Council, which acts as a spokesman for the dairy industry in negotiations with the Commonwealth Government with regard to future policy. The council comprises representatives of the Australian Dairy Produce Board, of the Commonwealth Dairy Produce Equalisation Committee Ltd. and of the Australian Dairy Farmers' Federation mentioned above. Wheat-growing is another very important branch. Here the Australian Wheat Growers' Federation is the body consulted by the Government when decisions involving wheat are to be taken. The same holds good of the wool 1 For New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia (plus one organisation for the south-eastern part of South Australia), Western Australia and Tasmania. For further details, see Australian Primary Industry Organisations (Canberra, Department of Primary Industry, Marketing Division, December 1965). 533 Agricultural organisations and development producers, who are represented in the Wool Industry Conference, made up of representatives of the Australian Sheep Farmers' Council, of the Wool and Meat Producers' Federation, and of the Australian Primary Producers' Union. The so-called "statutory boards", which are special organs set up by law, are usually responsible for price maintenance. In branches of agriculture for which no such boards exist, produce is sold on the free market or (in the case of wool) auctioned. As regards wheat, dairy produce and rice, prices arefixedby the central authorities, while wool and meat prices are left to find their own levels. With respect to wheat, the Australian Wheat Growers' Federation embarks on negotiations with the Government every five years to establish the costs of production and decide the measures to be adopted under the Wheat Stabilisation Scheme. But no production targets arefixedfor either meat, wool or wheat. The statutory boards for special crops usually include among their members a majority of producers appointed by their parent associations. Similar organs exist for wool and meat (the Australian Wool Board and the Australian Meat Board) ; here too the producers' representatives are in a majority, but their activities are chiefly directed towards research, sales promotion, standards of quality, and so on. Some attempts have been made to lay down production targets for various crops through limitations on the areas farmed, the establishment of quotas, and the like. Indirect means also have been employed to encourage the production of certain products (tax reductions, subsidies for the purchase of fertilisers, the fixing of internal market prices, research, and the supply of services by the state ministries of agriculture). The agricultural organisations exert an influence on general agricultural policy by invoking their right to give advice and by maintaining close contacts with the responsible authorities, either directly or through the boards and committees on which they are represented. In recent years the Commonwealth Government has been in the habit of consulting the chief representative organisations in all sectors of the national economy to give them an opportunity of expressing their views on the state of the national economy. Such consultations take place, for example, before the national budget is adopted. The agricultural organisations usually invited by the Government to state their opinions in this way are the National Farmers' Union, the Australian Primary Producers' Union, the Australian Wool Growers' and Graziers' Council, and the Australian Wool and Meat Producers' Federation. The agricultural organisations are also represented on various research bodies. Half the income of these bodies is derived from producers' contributions and the other half is contributed by the Commonwealth Government in the form of credits (with wool, the government's subsidy is twice that 534 North America and Australia of the producers' contributions). The bodies in question are almost exclusively concerned with research and have no say in economic or social matters. The local branches of these agricultural organisations play a very active part in local affairs, and hence are interested in everything to do with the countrydwellers' welfare. The local authorities are usually responsible for the building of roads, for example, or the creation of libraries and public meeting halls. The local farmers have a say in all such decisions, either individually or through their associations. There are some associations which take an interest in the vocational training of agricultural workers (thus the graziers train sheep-shearers and woolsorters). Nevertheless such activities, together with those to do with workers' leisure, are outside the usual range of their operations. On the other hand, the associations take a very keen interest in matters such as the prevention of fires, the control of pasture land, the campaign against plant diseases and pests, transport and communications and, generally speaking, in everything to do with land settlement. Because their members are so often scattered over immense distances, the Australian organisations frequently experience considerable difficulty in trying to maintain contact with them. Hence most organisations publish journals and reviews which are distributed free to their members with the purpose of keeping them in touch with events. To this end too, many organisations make use of the radio or convene public meetings; but the data acquired during the present inquiry does seem to show that in general no satisfactory solution to this problem has yet been found, and that farmers are not always fully informed about the aims and achievements of the associations to which they belong. It nevertheless remains true that all the organisations are fundamentally based on their local branches and that the high-level influence of the organisations depends ultimately on the efforts made by the local members. These local sections, since they come together to constitute district or regional councils to act as intermediaries between themselves and the state organisation, ensure the vitality of the whole organisation, from base to summit. This is the more remarkable in that the activities in question are carried out by unpaid volunteers. A communication received during the present inquiry points out that "a great deal of effort and loyalty, and sometimes sacrifice, has gone into the making of flourishing branches of the various organisations. It might be said with some justification that there has been too much reliance on honorary efforts, and this applies through to the higher levels. A major weakness has been at the salaried executive level, while there is also a great need for better economic intelligence services in many organisations." 535 Agricultural organisations and development Despite these shortcomings (from which the Australian movement is by no means the only one to suifer) progress has continued unabated. Indeed, since the later years of the Second Word War there has been a tendency on the part of the representative organisations in each branch of agriculture to join together at the top. In 1943, for instance, the farmers decided to create an association which became known as the National Farmers' Union (NFU), the aim being to unite the primary producers' organisations throughout the country whilst at the same time maintaining their special interests and their right to act independently in their particular branch of agriculture. The NFU is anxious to become the only spokesman for the Australian farmer in connexion with all general questions affecting the farmer and his land, such as taxation, transport, banking and credit facilities, postal and telegraph services, plant and animal diseases, economic and scientific research, and so on. It also deals with matters such as general customs tariffs, although the interests of the various branches of agriculture may diverge quite considerably over the practical aspects of this question. In extending its influence and consolidating its position the NFU has had considerable difficulties to surmount. Some of these are due to the fact that its member organisations have their own attitudes and interests and reveal a natural tendency to act for themselves when these interests are at stake. In 1965 the Wool Growers' and Graziers' Council withdrew from the NFU, a development which shows how fragile still are the links uniting the primary producers' associations. The NFU may be described as an association of producers' federations. Among its members are the Australian Wool and Meat Producers' Federation, the Australian Dairy Farmers' Federation, the Australian Wheat Growers' Federation, the Australian Canning Fruit Growers' Association, the Australian Cane Growers' Federation, the Australian Vegetable Growers' Federation, the Australian Banana Growers' Council, and the Rice Growers' Association of Australia. In addition the NFU numbers amongst its members state organisations in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, and Papua and New Guinea.1 Internationally, the NFU represents the Australian agricultural producers in the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). In the year of the NFU's foundation (1943) another general organisation was set up as a nation-wide body by farmers in western Victoria. This is the Australian Primary Producers' Union (APPU). Its aim is to provide a 1 As regards Papua and New Guinea, two organisations (the Planters' Association of Papua and the Planters' Association of New Guinea) failed to reply to the inquiry. Accordingly it is impossible to describe their activities. 536 North America and Australia national organisation for all farmers and stock-breeders within the various "primary produce sections" it has created. The APPU has its main office in Canberra and branch offices in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. It is built up on a very simple pattern; there is a series of sections responsible for wool, wheat, processed fruits and vegetables, vine products, dairy products, hay and oats, potatoes, and fowl. Within each section, there is an advisory committee to guide the federal council of the APPU as regards agricultural policy. The APPU has also set up a federal advisory committee to deal with questions of land usage. The APPU has some 45,000 members, many of whom also belong to other agricultural producers' associations. Besides the individual members from the mainland of Australia itself, it also includes the Tasmanian Farmers' Federation. This latter body is however also a member of the Dairy Farmers' Federation and consequently of the National Farmers' Union, and the way in which an organisation can thus belong simultaneously to several others is one of the most characteristic aspects of the Australian organisations. The APPU is not represented in Western Australia, where most of the farmers belong to the Farmers' Union of Western Australia Inc. Although the structure of this body is very similar to that of the APPU it is not affiliated to it. We may confidently say that the APPU was conceived on the lines of the National Farmers' Union in England. It has two very specific interests : (a) general affairs of concern to its members as a whole; and (b) the internal affairs peculiar to each individual branch of agriculture. The information assembled seems to show that this very active organisation has at its disposal sophisticated administrative machinery which enables it to intervene smoothly and effectively in both itsfieldsof interest. Nevertheless, the great mass of Australian farmers still seem reluctant to accept it, possibly because its individual outlook and way of tackling problems (attributable to its centralisation) run counter to the interests of the older organisations which represent individual sectors of agricultural production. This attitude towards the APPU even influences the governments of the various states. Whilst being sympathetic towards the aims pursued by the organisation, these governments are usually hesitant about inviting it to take part in agricultural discussions and negotiations. Victoria constitutes an exception in this respect. In that state the APPU is so important that the Government recognises it as an agricultural spokesman—the part it would like to play elsewhere. Typical of the difficulties encountered by the APPU is the position adopted by the Wool Growers' and Graziers' Council and the Wool and Meat Producers' Federation with regard to APPU representation at the Australian Wool Industry Conference. Each of these organisations appoints 25 members to attend the 537 Agricultural organisations and development conference and elects a chairman. But until 1965 APPU never managed to secure representation; only in that year did it succeed in playing a limited part in the work of this assembly. For some time now the APPU and the NFU have been discussing the possibility of a merger, with a view to constituting a single organisation for all branches of agriculture. The Australian farmers' interests would thus be defended by a single spokesman. The Commonwealth Government is in favour of such a step since the existence of a single body would go some way towards reducing the chronic tendency on the part of the agricultural organisations to limit themselves to a narrow defence of their particular branch. At the same time the organisations would be in a position to reach agreement with regard to national agricultural policy. At the time of the present inquiry (June-July 1966) these negotiations were still proceeding and nothing definite had been decided.1 Having described the general organisations, one would now wish to offer a detailed picture of the achievements of the Australian co-operative movement, which has played a most important part in Australian agriculture. Unhappily, although co-operation in Australia is now over 100 years old, having been introduced in Brisbane in 1859, it has not yet found an historian. An expert on co-operative matters recently commented on the absence of a general history of the Australian co-operative movement in the following words : Because the history of the co-operative movement is the history of average people, and because the formation and early development of a co-operative rarely makes headlines outside its immediate locality, little attempt has been made to set the record down although a few Australian co-operatives have published comprehensive histories of their own development to mark milestones such as their fiftieth birthday. Moreover, many of our present-day co-operatives commenced before the close of the last century and present-day shareholders are second or third generation co-operators. The original members and directors in most cases have passed on. Even the management and staff have changed. In those areas where original members or original records are still available, it is often difficult to find someone with the time and ability to write the history.2 1 But according to Radio Australia News (London) for 21 April 1969: "The merger of two of Australia's largest farmers' organisations is now in sight after ten years of negotiation. In Canberra today the secretary of the National Farmers' Union announced that the union had accepted a draft constitution for a new body to be known the Australian Farmers' Federation, to take the place of the present NFU and the remaining section of the Australian Primary Producers' Union. The federal industry groups within the NFU and the APPU have already been merged on a state level over the last two years. The NFU is made up of 19 member organisations with voting rights on the central council. The new Australian Farmer's Federation is expected to be launched with 32 member organisations." 2 "Co-operation in Australia", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1964 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1964), p. 123. Although this text is unsigned, it was in fact written by William Kidston, President of the Co-operative Federation of Queensland. See The Co-operative Movement in Australia, by the same author (Brisbane, Co-operative Federation of Queensland, n.d.; mimeographed). 538 North America and Australia Thus the few figures to be gleaned here and there are hardly enough to enable us to reach any over-all assessment of the progress made since the turn of the century, and we shall limit ourselves to providing data concerning absorption rates and turnover in recent years. In fact, the co-operative movement is exceedingly powerful, and, like the general organisations, it is concentrated into branches. In the state we know best, namely Western Australia, the following were the 1966-67 figures for the principal co-operative organisations: Co-operative Bulk Handling took 100 per cent of the wheat and 66 per cent of the coarse grain produced in the state; the Westralian Farmers' Co-operative marketed 20 per cent of the wool and animal products; and the Sunny West Co-operative Dairies processed and marketed nearly 40 per cent of all dairy products. It was estimated that 60 per cent of all fruit and vegetables produced were handled by the co-operatives, mainly the two biggest co-operatives.1 In 1964, for Australia as a whole, there were 793 producers' and consumers' co-operatives, with 639,600 members and an annual turnover of some £A297.3 million.2 Finally, let us examine the relationship between employers and agricultural workers in Australia. The first thing to note is that there exists a system of industrial tribunals to decide on wages and conditions of employment. It might be imagined at first sight that the agricultural organisations have no very great say in such matters. But this is not quite true. Kenneth F. Walker points out that "the right to bargain collectively was guaranteed by the State in the legislation estabhshing industrial tribunals" 3 , and he adds that once the right of collective bargaining has been clearly established by arbitration, some of the opposition by the farmers (the graziers in particular) to workers' trade unionism has been shifted towards the arbitration system.4 Thus the employers' associations and the trade unions have been encouraged to consider no more than the legal aspects of any disputes which may arise between them, and in fact the two parties look upon direct bargaining as merely a stage in a case submitted to the tribunals. In practice, even before appearing before a tribunal, the organisations concerned undertake direct negotiations which are very close to collective bargaining. To this end, the relevant files have to be lodged with the tribunal beforehand. Hence arbitration and collective bargaining are intermingled while the case is being heard. Negotiation begins when the files are lodged and continues by conferences and discussions which are not independent of the 'The Co-operative Federation of Western Australia: "Agricultural Co-operation in Western Australia", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1968 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1968), pp. 209-215. 2 "Co-operation in Australia", op. cit., p. 125. "Kenneth F. Walker: Industrial Relations in Australia (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 322. 4 ibid., p. 262. 539 Agricultural organisations and development system as laid down by law but which on the contrary are part of it. Accordingly, it is very largely the organisations themselves which take the initiative from beginning to end. It is in sheep-raising that the employers' associations and workers' unions are most active in this respect. The first sheep-shearers' unions were created in Victoria and Queensland in 1886. A few years later they amalgamated with the unions founded by other agricultural workers to form, in 1891, the Australian Workers' Union (AWU). From the outset, this was the biggest organisation in the country. In 1951, it had some 150,000 members, and the latest available figures indicate an increase of 20,000 in 1966. However, many AWU members are not employed in sheep-farming and in fact the general secretary of the organisation has estimated that no more than 60,000 or so are thus employed. For their part, the graziers are organised in various district associations, although in practice it may happen that an association will be active beyond the confines of the state in which it has its seat. These associations constitute the Graziers' Federal Council, which represents all employers in arbitration procedures, except employers in Queensland. The aims pursued by the employers' associations are fairly limited, since apart from defending their members' interests they are above all interested in securing government assistance in marketing, together with export bonuses. We have made no reference to organisations conceived specially for the small independent farmer, the tenant or the share-cropper. This is simply because Australian agriculture is essentially made up of large farms; small farmers, tenants and share-croppers are very few in number, and there are virtually no organisations set up to defend their interests. The workers' unions are concerned, firstly, to provide services for their members and, secondly, to secure better conditions of employment. Among the services mentioned, we may include educational and cultural activities organised by the unions, and help for the worker in distresss. Such activities have in fact been carried on from the very beginning of the Australian trade union movement, when the trade union was both an organisation for mutual aid and a means of defending purely economic interests. Naturally, the scope of such activities will depend on how large and wealthy a union is, and in many places, even today, they are greatly limited by reason of the low number of members. Of course, the unions have always been concerned above all else with securing better conditions of employment. They make claims concerning wages, working hours, holidays, sick leave, job security, and the workers' participation in running their particular branch of activity. With regard to such matters, they negotiate with employers' associations direct, but—as the AWU pointed out in its answer to the author's inquiries—any agreements reached as a result of such negotiations are usually ratified or confirmed by the appropriate tri540 North America and Australia bunals. Besides which, the AWU has about 100 full-time paid employees who advise AWU members and assist them in solving any employment problems they may have. These employees are also responsible for ascertaining whether the members are actually receiving wages at least equal to those specified in arbitration awards and enjoy conditions of employment laid down in such awards. Mention ought to be made here of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and of the State Industrial Commissions, whose task it is to lay down standards for wages and employment conditions. The AWU is not represented in these government bodies but can, if need be, submit requests for arbitration to them. Security of employment has not been the source of many problems for the farm worker, at least during the last ten years. The AWU appears satisfied in this respect, as it is with workers' social security. Federal legislation allows of no exceptions in this connexion, and every Australian is entitled to the pensions and allowances provided for by law, subject to a means test. In its answer, the AWU states that, generally speaking "in regard to wages and security of employment, we have been successful in ensuring that the wages paid and security of employment for employees in agricultural and rural industries are at least comparable to, and in some cases better than, those applying to employees in industry generally". The AWU is not primarily concerned with housing, rural health, primary education, vocational training, land reforms or land distribution, since these are matters for the state governments, with financial assistance from the Commonwealth Government where necessary. The AWU encounters no obstacles of a legislative or any other kind. What difficulties it does encounter are basically geographical in that workers are inevitably scattered throughout immense areas; this is a problem which has been of concern to the AWU from the outset and which has still not been satisfactorily solved. As in Canada and the United States, it will disappear only as the rural population multiplies and land settlement proceeds. The Australian Workers' Union, which since 1967 has belonged to the Australian Council of Trade Unions, does not say that it is affiliated to any international organisation. CONCLUSIONS In this chapter we have discovered that the special peculiarities which characterise agriculture in the three countries considered make them unsuitable for use as models by the developing countries. Of course, there are always some S41 Agricultural organisations and development lessons to be learnt on one or another technical point (as from the Australian arbitration system, for example); but on the whole the agricultural systems in Australia, Canada and the United States are the fruit of exceptional historical circumstances which are most unlikely to occur again. Thus, while much valuable socio-economic information may be gathered from a contemplation of the past and present situation of the European countries, it seems to us that Australia, Canada and the United States should be considered more as reservoirs of modern technical methods. Rural population densities in all three countries are very low, while agriculture is technically speaking extremely efficient. Output is high, although the yield per acre is sometimes quite low (this applies to most cereals—wheat, barley, oats and rye—but not to maize in Canada and the United States or to rice in the United States and Australia). The combination of these factors gives to the agriculture of the three countries a highly individual aspect which is found nowhere else. With regard to general agricultural organisations, the systems evolved by the farmers in these three countries are once again too idiosyncratic to be taken over without risk by other countries. The highly specialised nature of the organisations in question arises logically from the farmers' initial concentration on a particular crop and from their rapid acceptance of modern technical and scientific innovations. Similarly, in their relations with the authorities they have recourse to methods of an unusual kind, for instance the lobbies and pressure groups found in the United States. Only Australia and Canada offer interesting models with regard to the advisory status of agricultural organisations. The employers' associations are in an even more unusual position. In Canada, as we have seen, the employers are not organised at all, and in the United States they did not decide to set up a national council until September 1964. Only in Australia is there a major employers' association, which represents the employers in this country's particular arbitration procedures. And even here only the graziers are involved. Lastly, with regard to trade unions, the reader will have taken note of their position in the United States. They are absent from Canada (because so many Canadian farmers combine farming with wage-earning employment in another sector). In Australia, they are concentrated in the sheep-rearing branch of agriculture. Trade unions in these three countries should therefore be looked upon more as highly individual organisations with their own peculiar characteristics (which in the case of the United States may still undergo further modification) than as finished patterns for use in the organisation of wage-earning labour. 542 PART VII GENERAL CONCLUSIONS GENERAL CONCLUSIONS D AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATIONS IN THE DEVELOPED COUNTRIES To close this extensive survey, in which 180 organisations from 68 countries took part, it would have been satisfying to have been able to offer some definite conclusions, together with proposals and suggestions likely to bring about a universal acceleration in the process of rural development; for although we have not examined in very great detail the problems peculiar to the areas concerned, we may perhaps have succeeded in clarifying some matters which were hitherto obscure. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, for everything depends on future developments), the world as we know it today is in constant mutation; no sooner is a conclusion reached than it is out of date. Hence, instead of summarising the conclusions already reached in our chapters on the developed countries, we shall at this juncture endeavour to place the problems involved in their future setting, bearing in mind the latest data available. Our inquiries have once again revealed a well-known fact: that the rural population in the developed Western countries has taken enormous strides forward since the Second World War, as a climax to a century and a half of incessant effort which had already resulted in the achievement of a remarkably high level of progress, although at the same time no essential change has been made in the traditional structures and production methods of the rural sector. In the course of this lengthy pilgrimage in search of progress, the Western peasant has managed to create organisations of extraordinary efficacity which have enabled him finally to emerge from the isolation to which he had for centuries been condemned, and he can at last take the place which is his due in the context of the national economy. Another point to be made is that, especially since the Second Word War, the Western rural sector has enjoyed increased assistance from governments, conscious as these latter now are of the fact that agriculture, which had given the original impetus to the Industrial Revolution, has for too long been treated as a poor relation. 545 Agricultural organisations and development In the space of a quarter of a century we have witnessed four phenomena of capital importance for the future of Western agriculture: (a) land reforms in most of those countries which, for the historical and political reasons explained earlier in this volume1, had been bypassed by the forces of progress; (b) the progressive amalgamation of farms (a matter to which we shall return later) ; (c) the general mechanisation of agricultural activities, as a result of which farm productivity has been increased and the links binding agriculture to the rest of the economy have at the same time been reinforced; and (d) the drift to the towns, at one and the same time the cause and effect of the phenomena already mentioned, for redundant manpower has been removed from the countryside and the development of industry and services has been boosted. When this inquiry was initiated in June and July 1966, agricultural policy within the European Common Market, together with the economic reforms under way in Eastern Europe, constituted reasons for believing that Europe was on the eve of a lengthy period of stability, which would not of course exclude those periodical adjustments required to maintain the farmer's purchasing power and to bring it closer to the goal, so long aspired after, of parity with the purchasing power of the industrial worker. In fact, such stability does to some extent exist in Eastern Europe where, because national economies are centrally planned, discrepancies between sectors of production can more easily be eliminated, if necessary, by the transfer of resources. On the other hand, the last few years have witnessed a paradoxical crisis in the agriculture of certain Western countries, due to an increase in the production of certain crops which would surely have led to a collapse of prices had not the governments concerned stepped in and offered compensation. These difficulties highlight the shortcomings of an agricultural system which, despite its proven and remarkable powers of adaptation, constitutes an ever heavier burden for an industrial society in which it has not yet been able completely to integrate itself. During the coming years governments and agricultural organisations in all the developed countries with a free market economy (and not only those in Western Europe) will find themselves facing this formidable problem, which we shall now briefly summarise. There are three variables to the problem: the level of production or output, the size of farms, and the size of the active population. As time goes by, these variables should in theory evolve whilst maintaining a balanced inter-relationship. In fact, the opposite has happened. If we take output, for example, it will be immediately apparent that after having rapidly overtaken pre-war levels, agriculture in certain Western countries has made use of the momentum acquired to achieve production indices 1 546 See Part II, Section A. General conclusions out of all proportion to their needs. Thus, in the OECD countries as a whole, the experts predict that between now and 1985 the 21 member countries will move from a situation in which net imports were worth US$1,500 milüon in 1961-63 to one in which net exports will be worth some US$2,200 million in 1975 and about US$3,300 million in 1985.1 Such a state of affairs will in their opinion be due in particular to an excess production of wheat and dairy produce. In stock-breeding, on the contrary, the chronic deficit of the developed countries is likely to increase, rising from 5 per cent in 1961-63 to 12 per cent in 1985 (i.e. 3 million tons, excluding the possibility of help from Australia and New Zealand, in which case the deficit would drop to 1.9 million tons). The OECD experts predict that these surpluses will be several times greater than total world requirements. This is a questionable assumption, but should it prove true, then the position will be far more critical than it is today. Let us for the moment limit ourselves to the situation in the European Common Market.2 Here we can see that the action taken to assist agriculture in coping with the state of affairs outlined above will, if prolonged, have grave effects on thefinancesof member countries and of the Community as a whole. Vigorous reform will be needed to find a way out of the impasse. F o r obvious reasons of internal politics, the governments of the six Common Market countries have stepped in to support agricultural prices, thus protecting the farmer from a possible collapse of the market. A special fund known as the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) has been created to finance the sale, the storage and even, if the worst comes to the worst, the destruction of agricultural surpluses. What in fact has happened is that the protective action thus taken has brought about over-production and a resultant glut of certain products. In France, for example, where the reaction to price maintenance has been more vigorous than anywhere else, milk production, which amounted to 5,346 million gallons in 1964, had shot up to 6,622 million gallons by 1968. Butter production had increased from 335,000 to 502,000 tons, and the production of powdered milk from 236,000 to 686,000 tons. Stocks, too, have shown a tremendous increase. Between 1 January 1965 and 1 October 1968 reserves of butter increased from 38,800 to 193,000 tons; those of powdered milk from 36,900 to 170,000 tons. The result has been a prodigious increase in the expenditure required to support agricultural prices; the figure stood at 2,840 million French francs in 1968, as against a mere 917 million in 1964.3 The same problems arise with 1 The figures in this paragraph were published in Le Monde 0?aris), 26 November 1968. The following paragraphs were written early in 1969 and do not therefore take account of developments since that time. ' Figures provided by the French Ministry of Agriculture. See Le Monde, 27-28 October 1968. 2 547 Agricultural organisations and development regard to fruit: for instance, the production of eating apples is eight times the pre-war figure.1 In the case of other crops too, domestic consumption and exports combined are insufficient to prevent the accumulation of surpluses, which either have to be destroyed or dumped on the world market. A systematic regulation of agricultural production in the Common Market would certainly have led to a reduction in surpluses and the absorption of the remainder within the Community. But the policy of price maintenance has led to feverish expansion on the part of farmers throughout the Common Market, to the detriment of the "community preference" principle, based in its turn on the idea that each member country is particularly well equipped to concentrate on a specific branch of production. The phenomenon is easier to understand if we remember that the joint price levels decided on by the six countries in June 1966 for the principal agricultural products other than cereals (i.e. beef, dairy produce, olive oil, rice, sugar and cole-seed) were such as to induce the farmer to devote all his energy to the production of these supplies, whereas it was in fact far more necessary to concentrate on the production of meat. The following statement by Mr. Robert Boulin, the French Minister of Agriculture at the time, to the Economic Chamber at Libourne (Bordeaux) clearly describes the present situation : Community preference is the essence of the Common Market. The reason why we agreed to European industrial unification and the abolition of tariff barriers was that we had been assured that French agriculture would be offered something in exchange, since France alone possesses half of all the farmland existing in the Common Market countries, and hence can supply the whole Community. But what, in reality, has happened ? Our partners have merely paid lip-service to the principle of community preference; the price system instituted in Brussels has led to a boom in production in countries which are not really agricultural by vocation. When the Treaty of Rome was signed, German agriculture could supply no more than 42 per cent of German wheat requirements. It now supplies 85 per cent. And Belgium and Luxembourg, which used to produce 28 per cent of their sugar requirements, now produce 158 per cent.2 The cost of this over-production in the Common Market has reached staggering proportions. In 1966-67, seven-tenths of the costs incurred by European agriculture were borne by the EAGGF. The sum involved was US$482 million—US$316.6 million for price maintenance (US$215.7 million to subsidise the international sale of surpluses, US$141.9 million chiefly for storage and destruction, and US$4 million as compensation for Belgian sugar), plus US$ 120.5 million to assist structural reforms. By 1968-69 the agricultural Common 1 Figures also provided by the French Ministry of Agriculture. See Le Monde, 2526 August 1968. » Le Monde, 15 October 1968. 548 General conclusions Market was intended to have been almost fully established, with all support operations being borne by the EAGGF; estimates were that expenditure would reach US$1,796 million, i.e. 3.7 times the figure for 1966-67. It should be noted, moreover, that expenditure on structural adjustment was not to exceed US$285 million (the remainder being allocated to price maintenance and compensation), although in fact the problem arises above all from structural shortcomings.1 Some alleviation might be found if the Community were to be enlarged. The United Kingdom, for example, meets only two-thirds of her own food requirements, so that her entry might help to make some inroads on French surpluses. But account must be taken of the United Kingdom's balance of payments situation and of its trade commitments towards countries outside the Common Market. The same might apply to other countries. Hence the position is by no means easy. Today's troubles are due to the fact that the rural sector is still lagging behind industrialised society as a whole, and in our view the cause of this derives from the original mistaken conception of an economic policy which would simultaneously pursue social welfare aims, with the result that neither the social nor the economic objectives have been fully attained. The reasoning behind price maintenance was that farmers would thereby be protected; in fact, however, it has been the competitive large and medium-sized farms which have profited. The small farmer, although increasing his output to the maximum (and thereby adding to the glut), has not really found salvation. Even today, 250,000 small farmers in France have to be satisfied with incomes which are below the minimum guaranteed income for all occupations, and in the Federal Republic of Germany 300,000 farmers, although working full-time, are forced to seek additional sources of income, in order to survive. Outside the Common Market, Spain is experiencing similar difficulties. Here guaranteed prices for wheat have meant increasing prosperity for the big wheat concerns without thereby rescuing the small farmer. In short, it is only by offering assistance to individual farmers and not by attempting to support all agricultural prices that the negative effects of such a policy could, to some extent, be alleviated, for in the long run even a policy of selective assistance will not suffice to save the small farmer. Incidentally, Western Europe is not alone in having to cope with the dual problem of price maintenance and the perpetuation of an excessive number of unprofitable farms. The problem also confronts such a developed country as Japan, where the small rice farmer, although approaching production levels as high as any in the world, survives only thanks 1 For further information on the operation of the EAGGF, see the report on an investigation carried out by the Belgian review Agenor (Brussels), 1967, No. 4, pp. 26-44. 549 Agricultural organisations and development to government protection. The Japanese Government is as a result obliged to maintain stocks of rice equivalent to four orfivemonths' national consumption and to guarantee a price double that which rice would fetch on the international market. Finally, we need not mention again the position obtaining in the United States, where land has to be withdrawn from cultivation to maintain a balanced stockpile. Here too there are quite considerable numbers of small and medium-scale farmers struggling in vain to achieve parity of earnings with the factory worker. In most of the OECD countries an attempt has been made to remedy the situation through progressive structural reorganisation, the basis, however, still - being the family farm. We have seen that since the end of the war and especially between 1950 and 1960, the average farm increased in size by between 4 and 81 per cent, whereas during the same period the active agricultural population declined by a proportion varying between 9 and 39 per cent.1 During these years, the countries concerned overhauled their legislation governing the size of farms and took all kinds of decisions to promote the social and economic development of the countryside. The Swiss legislation of 1951, the Federal German legislation of 1955, the Austrian and French legislation of 1960 and the Danish legislation of 1962, for instance, will be recalled in this connexion. In France, the present intention is to repeal the laws governing the ownership of more than one farm; these were designed during the years 1958-62 to maintain as many jobs as possible in agriculture. Other countries too are considering a relaxation of the rules relating to the ownership of more than one farm, the transfer of farms, and their average size. Nevertheless, the shortcomings of the policies hitherto pursued are perfectly clear.2 Despite increases in productivity, the gap between incomes in agriculture and in industry still remains. In addition, under present circumstances production cannot be satisfactorily adjusted to actual market requirements, and the cost of supporting the farmer represents an increasingly heavy burden for national budgets. Hence it is obvious that some of the objectives (apparently complementary but in reality contradictory, given the present state of agriculture) which are set forth in Article 39 of the Treaty of Rome have not in fact been attained. These objectives, which any developed country could have approved, were: (a) to increase productivity; (b) to provide the farmer with a fair income; (c) to stabilise markets; (d) to ensure supplies; and (e) to ensure that the foodstuffs available to the customer are reasonably priced. Productivity has indeed been 1 See table 5, p. 93. For a description of developments since the war and up to 1963, see OECD: Low Incomes in Agriculture, op. cit. See also OECD: Agricultural Policies in 1966. op. cit. a 550 General conclusions increased and supplies assured; but nothing else has been satisfactorily settled. As regards "reasonable" prices for foodstuffs, it must be said that one result of price maintenance has been to restrict consumption by the poorer classes, who exist in by no means insignificant numbers, without the farmers' own situation being notably improved. We might summarise the position by saying that whilst extraordinary technical progress has been made, little has been done in the way of structural reform. The pace of change imposed by man on nature is in fact much faster than any change in man himself. Inevitably, however, the developed countries will have to take urgent action to ensure that small farms are amalgamated into units of reasonable size, as regards both production and area, and are closely linked to industry. There is no future for the isolated small farmer; he will necessarily have to shed the individualism traditional among the peasantry and find a place for himself in the agro-industrial economy of tomorrow. The development of collective farms (which are too often unthinkingly classified as kolkhozes) should make it possible to regroup and rationalise agricultural production and expenditure. In addition co-operative machinery, the resources of which have by no means been fully explored, could be developed. This, however, implies a change in the outlook of the peasant which will be difficult to bring about. Proof of this is the fact that in France, after 20 years of effort, there were in September 1968 no more than 1,000 communally operated plots (GAEC) out of 1.7 million farms. The proposals made in December 1968 by Mr. Sicco Mansholt (which, if accepted, will assuredly also have an effect on countries not members of the Common Market) were designed with precisely this in view. Three major objectives are simultaneously aimed at: firstly, the creation of large farms run by several families, each farm being seven or eight times larger than the average today and each being set up voluntarily by the farmers concerned; secondly, the abandoning of 12.5 million acres of farmland which would be given over to other purposes so as to counteract the increased production resulting from better techniques and farm amalgamation; thirdly, the training of one farmer in every two for other occupations, which would mean that some 5 million people would have to leave the land. The plan, if adopted, would be completed in 1980. From 1973 onwards it would involve a progressive reduction in market support costs, the money thus saved being used to find employment for former peasants. However, no sooner was it announced than it encountered vigorous resistance. The German Peasants' Association and, in France, the Farmers' Defence Movement (MODEF) and the Permanent Assembly of the Chairmen of Chambers of Agriculture have expressed misgivings or outright rejection. The French National Young Farmers' Centre (CNJA) has been alone in acknowledging that the Mansholt 551 Agricultural organisations and development Plan "has the enormous merit of reopening the debate on the present situation and the evolution of agriculture."1 European agriculture is still run on too small a scale; it still has to undertake its own Industrial Revolution, and whatever the fate of the Mansholt Plan, there can be no doubt but that the authorities and the agricultural organisations alike will have to take a long-term view. The plan has the merit of tackling, within the context of the Common Market, a problem of concern to all developed countries. It is for this reason that we have devoted some space to examining it. Wherever we look, we find two kinds of farming: one modern in conception, the other traditional. The latter hinders the expansion of the former, which in its turn enjoys, sometimes abusively, the same subsidies as are granted to the latter. The economic and social consequences of this state of affairs are well known, but we might usefully mention here one of its effects: namely, the growing imbalance of the rural demographic structure, for there is so little future on the small family farm that the young people are increasingly abandoning the land. Hence the smaller the farm and the lower the income derived from it, the older its owner tends to be. In France, for example, where the peasants are relatively older than the rest of the population, the 1955 agricultural census revealed that in ten départements, between 26 and 39 per cent of all farmers were 66 years of age and over (the national average, already high, being 20 per cent).2 Nor is this phenomenon restricted to France. In Sweden in 1959, for example, 42 per cent of all small farmers were 51 years old or more and were considered as receiving low incomes, a category into which no more than 9 per cent of those under 50 fell.3 Similarly in the United States in 1959, the low-income farms (20 per cent of the total) accounted for 54 per cent of the farmers aged 65 or more, compared with a national average of 17 per cent.4 This leads us to recall, if indeed there is need to do so, that "development" is a very relative notion. In the course of this survey, we have not come across a single country, no matter how highly developed, where agriculture as a whole has reached the level of the industrial sector. In these circumstances, what are the agricultural organisations to do ? We have seen that, thanks to their efforts, many improvements have already been made in the rural sectors of developed countries. But the activities of these organisations in this respect have merely reflected the desires and aspirations of the peasantry. They have themselves done nothing to change the peasant's traditional outlook. The task today is to go further. A real mutation is required. 1 Le Monde (Paris) 13 December 1968. *OECD: Low Incomes in Agriculture, op. cit., p. 174. »ibid., p. 391. « ibid., pp. 485 and 491. 552 General conclusions With redoubled vigour, the agricultural organisations must set about the task of discussing and improving the proposals made by governments and supranational bodies and of persuading the peasant, if he is not to be left behind, to accept changes which are the inevitable consequence of economic development. There is thus a sense in which the conclusions reached in this inquiry will barely see the light of day before they are out of date. True, most of the problems we have considered will continue to occupy the agricultural organisations for some time to come. These organisations, however, will henceforward have to approach their problems with one over-riding consideration in mind, namely, to ensure a transformation of traditional farming. In fact, as agriculture and industry become increasingly interlocked, most of the questions asked of agricultural employers' associations and workers' unions in this inquiry are bound to undergo both qualitative and quantitative changes. The developments outlined above will, inevitably, also affect the agricultural co-operatives, which we have touched on only lightly in this volume. They too are passing through a difficult period of adaptation. And in all likelihood, relations between these co-operatives and other agricultural organisations (which are obscure at present because they have been little studied) will in the next few years undergo profound changes, as the result of which their activities will be better co-ordinated than they are today. These problems urgently require attention, for answers have to be found which will enable the agriculture of today to make the change-over, as painlessly as possible, to the agriculture of tomorrow. The agricultural organisations in the developed countries, now accepted everywhere and enjoying an advisory status which enables them to influence official decisions, are thus better placed than ever before to play a double part in modern society: to challenge the status quo, and to participate in society's activities. They are called upon to make an active contribution to the task of shaping the future. Whether farming as it is today successfully makes the change-over to the agro-industrial system of the future will therefore very largely depend on their activities and powers of imagination. The process will not, of course, be painless. But it will not be the first call to arms for the agricultural organisations. Let us hope that they will find the reserves of energy required for the task. AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATIONS IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES In this section we shall consider the role played by agricultural organisations and by agricultural development itself in the over-all planning programme of the rural sector. In the process of development the rural organisations must 5S3 Agricultural organisations and development play their due part, not in isolation but within the totality of factors controlling the growth process. We must first ask how much progress planning has made in the developing countries. In general terms we may say that the plans hitherto evolved have two main characteristics. In the first place, planners have all too often accorded an excessively high priority to industrial and urban development at the expense of the agricultural sector and the traditional ways of life. Secondly, purely economic criteria have been adopted in the majority of instances without sufficient consideration being given to social factors. As regards the first of these points, we shall revert to some of the considerations we examined at the start of this inquiry. In view of the data available, and bearing in mind the means of action which governments have at their disposal, it would be wise to assume that over the next ten years the annual rate of demographic growth in the developing countries will be of the order of 2 to 3 per cent. Similarly we may expect that the population in rural areas will show a steep increase, that there will be a very slow fall in the ratio between the total employed in agriculture and the total employed in industry, and that there will be an equally slow decline in the ratio between the share of agriculture and of industry in the gross domestic product of the countries concerned. Unless there is some change of policy, most of these countries will in the not too distant future find themselves in a state of serious disequilibrium. Industrial and urban development will depend more and more on agricultural production; agriculture, in fact, will have to produce food for the urban population and at the same time obviate the need for costly imports of primary produce which restrict the purchase of technical equipment from abroad. Turning now to our second point, regarding the application of purely economic criteria, we should mention that the phenomenon is not, of course, new since the concern of the developed countries themselves in the social welfare aspects of development was long delayed. But the problem is more serious in the under-developed regions in that the gap between what is expected today of economic growth and what traditional ways of life can offer is much wider than it ever was in the now-developed countries. Albert L. Godart has made some very pertinent remarks about this phenomenon in Africa, and his thoughts might well apply to other developing regions also: The author has had an opportunity to study a large number of development plans and check their efficacy. No one in this position can fail to acknowledge that only occasionally do those plans take account of the customs and social structures of the various populations of the regions to be developed. They only consider purely economic data, such as raw material resources, geographical conditions and, far more seldom, the manpower potential. On this basis they erect structures that are perfect in theory but in practice nearly always come up against difficulties due to ignorance of the 554 General conclusions attitudes and behaviour of the people in the face of changes imposed upon them by the unilateral decision of a central government that for many of them has no meaning whatsoever. Consequently, when this happens, the projects are executed either without the participation of the population or against their opposition. So they are doomed to almost certain failure.1 But how do we obtain the participation of the local population ? Instead of hoping that they will quickly and easily find their place in the development of a general plan (planning must in any case be decentralised; we shall return to this point later), we must above all look into the real and latent possibilities of traditional circles for carrying out the new tasks laid at their door. But often the opposite situation arises: In general, however, development programmes would appear to have proceeded on the assumption that traditional values and practices constitute obstacles to growth. In any case, little effort has been made to provide within these programmes mechanisms to identify and utilise the potentially positive traditional factors, although public reference is often made to the importance of traditional cultural v a l u e s . . . . Attitudes and values commonly considered to hinder social change and economic development are: . . . abstinence, non-acquisitiveness, other-worldliness, renunciation, fatalism, humility, non-aggressiveness and other such non-economic values.2 It is true that there have been some successes (the Comilla scheme in East Pakistan, for example, which uses the traditional village councils, but with revised legal authority, and other modified traditional structures). But these have been operations in which all efforts were concentrated in a fairly small area. In this respect, therefore, they constitute exceptions to the rules normally followed in planning matters. 1 Albert L. Godart: "Social and Cultural Aspects of Integrated Rural Development in Some West African Countries", International Labour Review, Vol. 94, No. 3, September 1966, p. 265. Similar views have been put forward by F. M. McLoughlin: "Most striking in East Africa is the difference between the civil servants' and politicians' views of the problems of the farmer, on the one hand, and the farmers' interpretations of their own problems, on the other. For a range of reasons . . . many if not most of the efforts and projects, schemes and programmes to develop African farming have been tilting at the wrong windmills. Most efforts have in fact experienced highly limited or very slow success, or failed, because the farmer could not relate the effort to his own view on what was needed, his aspirations, his sense of economic viability, and his own farm's resources. A high priority research item, therefore, is the examination and documentation of actual farmer problems over the range of farm systems and, within a given system, over different types, sizes and capabilities of farms. These must in turn become the facts of life with which extension agents, and technical and economic research officers, must work.... Methodologies must also be developed to survey, quickly, the 'ripeness' of communities for development—which villages or areas are, in fact, most prepared to innovate and change; which groups would make the most effective use of the scarce development resources expended on them. Once again this is the combined task of the economist, sociologist, psychologist and agriculturist; historically, only the latter has been involved, and there is a wealth of failure to show that what might be technically possible is not necessarily 'humanly' possible." F. M. McLoughlin, Research on Agricultural Development in East Ajrica (New York, The Agricultural Development Council Inc., 1967), pp. 22-23. 2 United Nations: 1965 Report on the World Social Situation, op. cit., p. 26. 555 Agricultural organisations and development Such concentration, in our view, is a pre-requisite of success and will be possible only if development planning is properly decentralised. We shall not examine planning operations in detail here, beyond pointing out that in many cases there is an absence of liaison between the summit (where tasks are decided on) and the base (where such tasks have to be undertaken). And this weakness is already clearly visible at the planning stage, in that the credits available are often sweepingly assigned to one sector—"farming", "stockbreeding", "forestry", "co-operatives" or "vocational training centres"—but not to any particular geographical region, and without what one might call a perfected geographical strategy. Furthermore, and this follows from the above, the lack of local and provincial plans prevents any proper programme of operations from being devised, whereas, on the contrary, attention ought to have been paid to every aspect, ranging from local social organisation to the geographical surroundings, which might have had an influence on their success. Thus credits are strewn thinly over an entire area (instead of being used to create poles of agricultural development), or are swallowed up in attempts to foster growth in places which are either unsuitable or inadequately studied in advance. Hence national plans must everywhere be reinforced by local plans. This would make the better co-ordination of technical assistance operations possible, in relation to the potentialities of each zone (not only from its own point of view but also as a possible "demonstration zone" serving as an example for neighbouring regions). It would seem that technical co-operation projects in rural matters launched by the United Nations and its specialised agencies are now concentrating on this approach, for instance in the "multi-sectorial" integrated rural development projects, and for these too it is necessary to devise the geographical strategy to which we have just alluded in order to bring about the required horizontal development. There are still many things we do not know about the shape such a strategy should take. But it seems clear that it will be needed, especially since the shortage of staff and money, both nationally and internationally, will make it impossible to launch rural development efforts everywhere at the same time. When a local development scheme is drawn up, it provides a micro-model for growth, from which the maximum effect is to be derived. But what are the minimal and maximal geographical limits within which the scheme will produce its effects? Let us illustrate the difficulty by a very simple example. Would it be better to set up an individual co-operative or agricultural organisation (similar to those considered in this volume) in a village inhabited by a dozen families, or would it be preferable to make these families members of a co-operative or organisation common to several villages? The choice we make will lead to entirely different problems both qualitatively and quanti556 General conclusions tatively. Then again, how far is the scheme expected to go? What is the radius within which it will make itself felt ? What are the boundaries beyond which some other organisation will have to take over, if there is to be no break in the process of development between one area and another ? Each particular case, therefore, should first be empirically analysed in order to settle the level below which the scheme would not be viable and above which it needs to be linked by appropriate means to a vaster network. Such an analysis would be the first step in the elaboration of a policy designed to place the projects in their geographical setting. The absence of such a policy has been cruelly felt in the past, and as a result planners have been obliged to find their way by trial and error. It will nevertheless be clear that with the means at present available the same development operations cannot possibly be launched everywhere at the same time. Hence some priorities are required; work in some areas can start at once, while work in others must wait until later. This solution, which is forced upon us for all kinds of reasons, especially financial reasons, is not a bad one provided that the regions in which development operations are postponed are not just forgotten. The gap between the areas granted priority and those kept waiting must not widen to the point at which it causes (as too often happens) serious demographic imbalance. There exist development areas on which all available resources have been concentrated, with the result that they have drained the forgotten districts of manpower. A more equitable allocation of credits, with priority still being given to one area, would enable a start to be made on the development of other areas and the exodus of their population to be thereby restricted. One of the most important aspects of the geographical strategy we are here suggesting is that obstacles must be accurately identified with a view to their gradual elimination. We have already alluded to the real and latent possibilities of the traditional sector, which have not always been adequately studied or fully exploited. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the whole concept of technical co-operation needs radical revision. At present, the idea behind technical assistance is that new techniques should sweep all before them. This rationalist attitude may be theoretically sound but in practice it comes up against unexpected obstacles—traditions, customs, even superstitions—which are not purely negative, in that they do not signify a blunt refusal to contemplate progress as we conceive it, but are, on the contrary, highly significant, positive cultural attitudes, to change which is a difficult and hazardous undertaking. Because this positive aspect has been overlooked, many organisations have foundered almost as soon as they have been launched. The following remark by Pierre de Briey about co-operatives in Africa is equally valid for other continents and other kinds of organisation: "Co-operatives are literally absorbed by the traditional way of life and are reinterpreted in terms of native 557 Agricultural organisations and development culture. If they are to develop as they do elsewhere, traditional societies and traditional outlooks have to be changed."1 But, as we have written elsewhere2, up-to-date systems of production, marketing and human relations can in fact be organised when the people concerned have already attained a certain level of social and economic development. When this happens, local societies tend spontaneously to create new forms of organisation, or at least show themselves ready to accept them. The problem then is to introduce the local people to these new forms of organisation or, when the latter already exist, to assist in their improvement. On the other hand, when the new form is too advanced for the local community, the latter will either automatically reject it or assimilate it into the traditional structure and thus render it unsuitable for development purposes. When this happens, we have to seek a system which will cause the community to develop to a point at which it can adopt systems of a more ambitious kind. It often happens too that all obstacles are thought to be equally formidable, no attempt being made to distinguish between the phenomena which are the cause of and those which are the effect of under-development. Thus, institutional, legislative and organisational problems (the latifundian system of Latin America provides the most typical example) are the cause of low living standards, illiteracy and malnutrition in the countryside. Of course, an attack can be launched on the effects of under-development (this, in fact, is frequently done); co-operatives and other organisations may be created to assist the peasant in becoming aware of these problems as a first step to solving them. But the road is long and dangerous, and if we rest content with a diagnosis of "co-operative inadequacy" when the real trouble is the existence of huge estates, it is useless to expect spectacular or lasting results. Those countries which are faced by obstacles of this kind would be well advised to tackle the causes of under-development first (without of course overlooking the effects), if they wish to avoid the social conflicts which are bound to accompany the first stirrings of awareness among a poverty-stricken peasantry. Furthermore, if we ignore the relative urgency and true nature (negative or positive) of the various obstacles, we shall inevitably apply the same unmodified formula to solve a wide variety of different problems. This is exactly what happened when the European co-operative, with its regulations and its special characteristics, was simply exported unchanged to other continents, as though such an institution were not in itself the fruit of a particular set of social and economic circumstances, and would operate in exactly the same way in an 1 Pierre de Briey : "Le point de départ du développement agricole", Civilisations (Brussels), Vol. XVin, 1968, No. 1, p. 13. 2 X. A. Flores: Problèmes de la modernisation de l'agriculture africaine (Geneva, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1968 ; mimeographed), p. 2. 558 General conclusions entirely different setting. Fortunately such an attitude is now less common, and it is to be hoped that the lessons of history will suffice to prevent similar errors from being committed in connexion with the other organisations with which we have been concerned in this inquiry. In perusing these pages, the reader may well have had a feeling that, in the developing countries, numerous agricultural organisations are essentially imitations. We cannot say whether this is a temporary feature (because it reflects a stage in socio-economic development half-way between a traditional and a modern economy), or whether such organisations are bound to fail (because they do not meet the needs, or represent the potentialities, of the people for whom they are supposed to stand). The fact is that, at present, one often has the feeling that organisations in developing countries are but distorted and shaky reflections of their originals. Be this as it may, it remains true that the operation and the role of the co-operative organisations, unions or general organisations created in the developing countries must in many cases be carefully re-examined in order to make such bodies more effective, to reinforce their relations with their own members and with the authorities, to complete their responsibilities (while simplifying the relevant machinery) and to define their legal status (too often unsatisfactory or too readily veering with every change in the political wind), so that they may be confidently granted the assistance they need to consolidate their position. It would indeed be well if (independently of technical assistance or, if necessary, making use of it the countries concerned were to undertake a thorough inquiry into the methods followed until now. Traditional ways of life are at present a stumbling block for the planner, even though they offer hope for the future ; in this respect something new might be learnt from a study of the experience already acquired. Failure, in fact, can be just as instructive as success. It will often happen (and we have recorded some characteristic examples in the preceding pages) that an organisation fails because of its isolation, because it is altogether too exotic in a setting in which an entirely new system of human relations is called for. Without a suitable system of human relations, development may remain restricted to isolated nuclei of progress. In many countries something could be done in this respect if peasants' associations were created at the bottom of the ladder (as counterweights to the co-operatives) with, at the top, well organised federations maintaining close, intimate links with the public authorities. Otherwise, we shall create inward-looking pockets of development which, lacking the tonic of contacts with the outside world, will be quickly absorbed by the traditional way of life. In this connexion, the creation of regional centres for research and the training of rural leaders would be highly desirable. By this means we could, 559 Agricultural organisations and development by dint of case studies, ascertain in greater detail the particular problems of an area; development could then adapted to take account of local geographical and human characteristics and potentialities. Much has already been achieved in this field, in particular a number of technical assistance projects initiated with ILO support; but there still remains much to do. Furthermore, the research undertaken should make it possible to devise agricultural organisations of a new, less "Western" kind, in some cases perhaps less specialised but better adapted to local custom and tradition and better able to cope with the numerous tasks facing such organisations in a developing society before agriculture can really begin to move forward. In this transitional phase, it might be preferable to set up simple preliminary organisations which could give way later to full-scale co-operatives or other organisations; exactly what form they should take, however, is still a matter for debate. The one condition is that such organisations, together with any activities promoted in connexion therewith, should be conceived with a view to the gradual emergence of a society still very much attached to traditional ways—a society which, even when clearly disintegrating, experiences much difficulty in distinguishing its real from its traditional needs. The process would be completed with the organisation of crash training courses for multi-purpose agents whose task it would be to help in all aspects of the launching of these new bodies. This would be so more especially in those countries where the lack of technical personnel is felt most severely, in view of the plethora of requirements which need to be met. Here there is tremendous scope for technical co-operation, possibly using methods not so far practised. Surprises are nevertheless always possible, and there will be a permanent threat of discouragement. Numerous obstacles and failures will continue to hamper the advance of the developing countries. Traditional society, ranging from the poor man at the bottom to the privileged caste at the top, will not be changed overnight. During the intermediate stage, until such time as people's outlooks really change, it will not be surprising if a co-operative or union is taken over by some new pressure group, or if carefully rationalised economic or social objectives should later suffer alteration to meet more urgent requirements. Nor should we be astonished if land reform, under attack from landed interests, fails to achieve what was expected of it. Such setbacks are to some extent inevitable. While doing the best we can about it, we will have to remember that the path of true development has never yet proved entirely smooth. We shall not enter here into the discussion as to whether economic or social development should have priority, for in each case the one is the fruit of the other. But we must repeat that technical decisions imposed from above, like an exclusively economic approach, will not prove the salvation of agriculture and of the rural sector as a whole in the developing countries. The best560 General conclusions laid plans will go agley if we overlook the social aspects of the problems before us and that, above all, development is primarily brought about by men and women. It is in essence (to paraphrase Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated definition of Art) a cosa mentale. And it is a "mental phenomenon" because the most formidable barriers to progress, as well as the inspiration which makes it possible, arise in the mind of men. It is through man, or rather through man as a social being, that a balanced and equitable development, from which the community as a whole will profit, will one day be achieved. And at the same time this is the only approach whereby economic and technical development can be safeguarded. It does not matter much if, under pressure from circumstances, we put the stress on economic, or technical, or social factors, provided we remember that development exists only by virtue of, and for, mankind as a whole. A fashionable cliché today is "integrated development", by which is meant a process in which due allowance is made for all economic and social considerations. There can be no objection to this, provided always that in our scheme of values, if not in our operations in thefield,we include social welfare not only as an end of, but as a means to development. Seen in this light, the part to be played by the organisations we have been considering in this volume will be more readily understood. Instruments of social progress, preaching the gospel of technical innovation, they will make a contribution, however humble, to the creation of new societies, less ridden by fear and dominated by need. In so saying, we are but giving voice, on behalf of the developing countries, to an old aspiration now in part achieved in the West. Albert Thomas, the first Director of the International Labour Office, put the matter thus: "Social considerations must, in the long run, take priority over economic ones. They must, in the interests of justice, provide the criterion by which economic affairs are regulated and governed." 561 PART Vili APPENDICES APPENDICES D 1. Text of the questionnaires circulated in connexion with the inquiry into the part played by agricultural organisations in the economic and social development of rural areas • Questionnaire no. 1. General agricultural organisations 1. We wish to know what general agricultural organisations (other than governmental services or associations of employers or workers), that is to say what farmers' federations, associations or unions, exist in the country. As regards your own organisation, we should like to know: 2. When was it established ? 3. What are its principal activities, and what success has been achieved, with respect to 1 : — collective bargaining in relation to wages and working conditions ? — price maintenance of agricultural products ? — establishment of production targets and agricultural policy generally, in collaboration with governmental authorities (e.g. Ministry of Agriculture, economic and social advisory bodies, chambers of agriculture, economic planning authorities, etc.) ? If so, to what extent is your organisation's representation effective ? Does your organisation have a purely consultative role, or does it have executive powers (e.g. through having voting rights) in relation to the decisions of the authorities concerned ? — social welfare activities for the agricultural population (establishment of schools, of dispensaries, improvement of housing conditions, etc.) ? — vocational training and organisation of leisure activities ? — other matters ? 4. Does your organisation participate in joint boards or committees with representatives of employers or workers ? What role does it play in such cases ? 5. What difficulties has your organisation met, or does it meet, in the course of its development ? 6. Does your organisation belong to a national federation ? If so, since what date ? 7. Does that federation belong to a larger group (regional or international) ? 1 It is possible that some of the activities listed above are carried out by employers' and workers' organisations. If so, please say so. 565 Agricultural organisations and development • Questionnaire no. 2. Agricultural employers' organisations 1. We wish to know what associations (unions) of agricultural employers exist in the country. As regards your own organisation, we should like to know: 2. When was it established ? 3. What are its principal activities, and what success has been achieved, with respect to 1 : — collective bargaining in relation to wages and working conditions ? — price maintenance of agricultural products ? — establishment of production targets and agricultural policy generally, in collaboration with governmental authorities (e.g. Ministry of Agriculture, economic and social advisory bodies, chambers of agriculture, economic planning authorities, etc.) ? If so, to what extent is your organisation's representation effective ? Does your organisation have a purely consultative role, or does it have an influence upon the adoption of decisions, by exercising, for example, the right to vote? — various negotiations (collective bargaining, improvement of working conditions, etc.) on joint boards or committees with representatives of agricultural workers' unions ? — social welfare activities for the agricultural population: establishment of schools, dispensaries, improvement of housing conditions, or any other activities towards this end ? — other questions, such as vocational training and the organisation of leisure activities ? 4. Does your central organisation belong to a national confederation or federation ? If so, since what year ? 5. Does such a confederation or national federation belong to a larger (regional or international) group ? • Questionnaire no. 3. Agricultural workers' unions 1. We wish to know what unions (or associations, or leagues) of agricultural workers exist in the country, covering wage earners, share-croppers or tenants. As regards your own organisation, we should like to know: 2. When was it established ? 3. Can the size of its membership be indicated ? (Please state the number of feepaying members and state whether the organisation's influence extends beyond that deriving from its fee-paying membership, that is to say, if its action is sometimes supported by workers who are not members of your organisation.) 4. Are your members mostly full-time workers ? Do they also comprise seasonal workers ? Do tenants and share-croppers belong to your organisation, or do they have their own organisations ? 5. What are your organisation's principal activities: — collective bargaining in relation to wages, hours of work and other working conditions ? — action in relation to the establishment of employment and social security ? — social welfare activities for the agricultural population (improvement of housing and health conditions, establishment of primary schools and training institutions, organisation of leisure activities, etc.) ? 1 It is possible that some of the activities listed above are carried out by general agricultural organisations. If so, please say so. 566 Appendices — action in relation to agrarian reform in general, and especially the problem of land redistribution ? — action concerning tenancy legislation (share-cropping, tenancy, etc., in their various forms) ? — other matters ? 6. What are the principal obstacles hampering the development of your organisation? — legislative difficulties? — difficulties arising from the socio-economic structure (pressures exercised by large landowners, geographical dispersion of workers, mobility and instability of seasonal manpower, insecurity of employment or tenure in the case of tenancy, sharecropping or other forms of cultivation, indebtedness of workers, disguised serfdom, illiteracy, under-nourishment, etc.)? 7. Do joint bodies exist where the representatives of your organisation meet with those of employers' associations ? 8. What is the legislation (please indicate only the general provisions) concerning these joint boards or committees, and the date of their formation ? 9. How do these joint boards or committees work from the point of view of your own organisation? 10. What are the main successes so far achieved by your organisation in its dealings with these joint boards or committees ? 11. Is your organisation represented on governmental bodies (Ministry of Agriculture, economic and social advisory bodies, chambers of agriculture, economic planning authorities, etc.) ? If so, to what extent is your organisation's representation effective ? Does it have a purely consultative role, or does it have a say in the application of the decisions of these authorities, by exercising, for example, the right to vote? 12. What success has been achieved by your organisation in relation to: — wages and security of employment ? — housing? — social security? — contracts of tenancy and share-cropping (or other forms of tenure, such as communal tenure) ? — workers' education ? — literacy campaigns ? — rural health ? 13. Does your central organisation belong to a national confederation or federation ? If so, since what year ? 14. Does such a confederation or national federation belong to a larger regional or international group ? • Questionnaire no. 4. Chambers of agriculture 1. We wish to know whether chambers of agriculture exist in the country and, if so : 2. What was the date of their creation ? 3. What are their principal activities ? 4. What measures are taken to ensure the representation of farmers' associations or employers' and workers' unions on them ? 5. Is there close collaboration between the chambers of agriculture and the public authorities ? What form does such collaboration take ? 567 Agricultural organisations and development 6. To what extent and in what form do such Chambers receive support and assistance from the public authorities ? 7. Are the chambers federated on a national scale? 8. Does such a national federation belong to a larger regional or international group? 2. Bibliographical references Publications of the International Labour Office African Labour Survey, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 48 (Geneva, 1958). Ahmad, Z. M., and Sternberg, M. J.: "Agrarian Reform and Employment, with Special Reference to Asia", International Labour Review, Vol. 99, No. 2, February 1969. Boev, V. R.: "Agricultural Production and the Rural Standard of Living in the USSR since 1917", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXXVII, No. 6, June 1963. Collective Agreements in Agriculture, Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture), No. 11 (Geneva, 1933). The Co-operative Movement and Present-Day Problems, Studies and Reports, Series H (Co-operation), No. 5 (Montreal, 1945). Co-operative Organisations and Post-War Relief, Studies and Reports, Series H (Co-operation), No. 4 (Montreal, 1944). "Co-operative Societies throughout the World—Numerical Data", International Labour Review, Vol. XL, Nos. 2-3, August-September 1939. Fifth Asian Regional Conference, Melbourne, 1962, Report I: Report of the DirectorGeneral : Some Labour and Social Aspects of Economic Development (Geneva, 1962). First International Congress of Christian Land Workers' Unions (Coblenz, 27-28 April 1921), Studies and Reports, Series K, No. 7 (Geneva, 1921). First International Congress of Landworkers' Unions affiliated to the International Federation of Trade Unions (Amsterdam, 17-19 August 1920), Studies and Reports, Series K, No. 1 (Geneva, 1920) Flores, Edmundo: "The Economics of Land Reform", International Labour Review, Vol. 92, No. 1, July 1965. Godart, Albert L. : "Social and Cultural Aspects of Integrated Rural Development in Some West African Countries", International Labour Review, Vol. 94, No. 3, September 1966. Gosselin, Gabriel: Développement et tradition dans les sociétés rurales africaines, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 76 (Geneva, 1970). Goussault, Yves: L'animation rurale dans les pays de l'Afrique francophone (Geneva, 1970). Indigenous Peoples, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 35 (Geneva, 1953). 568 Appendices Inter-American Advisory Committee, Second Session, San Salvador, January 1969, Report III: Participation of Employers' and Workers' Organisations and of Other Social Institutions in Economic and Social Development (doc. AM.A.C./II/3). — Report (doc. AM.A.C./II/D.10). International Labour Conference, 44th Session, Geneva, 1960, Report VI: Contribution of the ILO to the Raising of Incomes and Living Conditions in Rural Communities, with Particular Reference to Countries in Process of Development. — 49th Session, Geneva, 1965, Report VI: Agrarian Reform, with Particular Reference to Employment and Social Aspects. — 49th Session, Geneva, 1965, Reports VII (1) and VII (2), and 50th Session, Geneva, 1966, Reports IV (1) and IV (2): The Role of Co-operatives in the Economic and Social Development of Developing Countries. — 51st Session, Geneva, 1967, Report III (Part 1): Summary of Reports on Ratified Conventions. — 51st Session, Geneva, 1967, Report III (Part 4): Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations. — 51st Session, Geneva, 1967, Reports VII (1) and VII (2), and 52nd Session, Geneva, 1968, Reports IV (1) and IV (2): Improvement of Conditions of Life and Work of Tenants, Share-Croppers and Similar Categories of Agricultural Workers. — 53rd Session, Geneva, 1969, Report III (Part 1): Summary of Reports on Ratified Conventions. — 53rd Session, Geneva, 1969, Report III (Part 4): Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations. Labour Survey of North Africa, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 60 (Geneva, 1960). Meeting of Experts on Co-operation, Geneva, 28 October-1 November 1968, item 1 : Non-Conventional Forms of Co-operation (doc. MEC/1968/II/1). Ninth Conference of American States Members of the ILO (Caracas, April 1970), Report III: Participation of Employers' and Workers' Organisations in Economic and Social Development ; Role of Other Social Institutions (Geneva, 1970). Permanent Agricultural Committee, Seventh Session, Geneva, 1965, Report II: The Role of Agricultural Organisations in Promoting Economic and Social Development in Rural Areas (doc. PAC/VII/2.1965). Plantation Workers, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 69 (Geneva, 1966). "Population and Labour Force in Africa", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXXIV, No. 6, December 1961. "The Population and Labour Force of Asia, 1950-80", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXXVI, No. 4, October 1962. "The Present Regulation of Working Hours in Agriculture", International Labour Review, Vol. XXV, No. 1, January 1932. "The Protection of Young Agricultural Workers in Austria", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXI, No. 2, February 1955. Regional Meeting in Latin America on the Role of Agricultural Organisations in Economic and Social Development, Santiago (Chile), 20-28 October 1969: Campana nacional de organización campesina, by Mario Suárez M. (doc. RTOA/ D.3a). — Esquema histórico de la Federación Campesina de Venezuela y sus funciones, by Armando González (doc. RTOA/D.2). 669 Agricultural organisations and development — Evolución de las organizaciones agrícolas y su participación en el desarrollo económico-social de Chile, by Luis Maraimbo (doc. RTOA/D.6). — Final Repon (doc. RTOA/IF. Rev. 1). Reports of the Committee on Freedom of Association set up by the Governing Body (81st Report), Official Bulletin, Vol. XLVIII, No. 2, April 1965, supplement. The Representation and Organisation of Agricultural Workers, Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture), No. 8 (Geneva, 1928). Ryan, J. C. : "Co-operatives in Asia: Recent Developments and Trends", International Labour Review, Vol. 92, No. 6, December 1965. Social Problems in Agriculture, Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture), No. 14 (Geneva, 1938). Sonin, M., and Zhiltsov, E. : "Economic Development and Employment in the Soviet Union", International Labour Review, Vol. 96, No. 1, July 1967. Sternberg, Marvin J.: "Agrarian Reform and Employment, with Special Reference to Latin America", International Labour Review, Vol. 95, Nos. 1-2, JanuaryFebruary 1967. Ter-Avanesyan, D. V. : Some Social and Economic Problems in Agriculture in USSR, the Polish People's Republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (doc. D.9.1966). The Trade Union Situation in the USSR (Geneva, 1960). "USSR: Compulsory Pension Insurance for Members of Collective Farms", International Labour Review, Vol. XC, No. 6, December 1964. Why Labour Leaves the Land, Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 59 (Geneva, 1960). "The World's Working Population: Its Industrial Distribution", International Labour Review, Vol. LXXIII, No. 5, May 1956. Year Book of Labour Statistics (1965-69). Publications of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning : Report on the Second Session, Economic and Social Council, Official Records, Forty-Third Session, Supplement No. 7 (doc. E/4362). Compendium of Social Statistics, 1963 (Sales No.: 63.XVII.3). Demographic Yearbook, 1964 (Sales No.: 65.XIII.1). Dumont, René: African Agricultural Development : Reflexions on the Major Lines of Advance and the Barriers to Progress (Sales No.: 66.II.K.6). Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament (Sales No.: 62.IX.1). Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) : Economic Survey of Africa (Sales No. : 66.II.K.3). Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE): Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1965 (Sales No. 66.II.F.1). — Review of the Social Situation in the ECAFE Region (doc. E/CN.11/L.133). Economic Commission for Europe (ECE): Economic Survey of Europe in 1960 (Sales No.: 61.II.E.1). Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA): Economic Bulletin for Latin America, Vol. X, No. 2, October 1965 (Sales No.: 66.11.G.3). •r— The Economic Development of Latin America in the Post-War Period (Sales No.:64.II.G.6). 670 Appendices — Geographic Distribution of the Population of Latin America and Regional Development Priorities (doc. E/CN. 12/643). — Las relaciones entre la tenencia de la tierra y la eficiencia del uso de los recursos agrícolas en Centroamérica, by Sergio Maturana (Mexico City, 1963; mimeographed). — Twelfth Session, Caracas, 2-13 May 1967 : Planning in Latin America (doc. E/CN.12/ 772). Enlargement of the Exchange Economy in Tropical Africa (Sales No.: 54.II.C.4). European Agriculture in 1965 (in conjunction with FAO) (Geneva, 1961 ; doc. ST/ECE/ AGRI/4, Sales No.: 61.II.E/Mim.4). Instability in Export Markets of Under-Developed Countries (Sales No.: 52.11.A. 1). Okuniewski, Josef: "Collective Forms of the Organisation of Agricultural Production and Social Changes in Polish Rural Areas", Report of the Study Group on the Social Aspects of Land Reform and Co-operatives (Sablonna, Warsaw, 10-21 May 1965) (doc. SOA/ESWP/1965/1). Planning for Balanced Social and Economic Development (Sales No. : 64.IV.8). Prebisch, Raúl : The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems (Sales No.: 50.II.G.2). — Towards a Dynamic Development Policy for Latin America (Sales No.: 64.II.G.4). — Towards a New Trade Policy for Development (Sales No.: 64.II.B.4). Progress in Land Reform (Sales No. : 54.II.B.3). Progress in Land Reform, Third Report (in conjunction with FAO and ILO) (Sales No.:63.IV.2). Progress in Land Reform, Fourth Report (in conjunction with FAO and ILO) (Sales No.: 66.IV.1). Progress in Land Reform, Fifth Report (in conjunction with FAO and ILO), especially Ch. IV, "Popular Participation in Land Reform (with Special Reference to Latin America)", prepared by the ILO (Sales No.: E.70.IV.5). Report of the Asian Population Conference, 1963 (Sales No.: 65.II.F.11). 1963 Report on the World Social Situation (Sales No. : 63.IV.4). 1965 Report on the World Social Situation (Sales No.: 66.IV.7). 1967 Report on the World Social Situation (Sales No. : 68.IV.9). Rural Progress through Co-operatives (Sales No. : 54.II.B.2). Statistical Yearbook, 1964 (Sales No.: 65.XVII.1). Svennilson, Ingvar: Growth and Stagnation in the European Economy (Sales No.: 54.II.E.3). United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD): Classification internationale des pays d'après leur niveau de développement. Essai de systématisation des différentes méthodes proposées jusqu' à présent, by A. Lasso de la Vega, Research Memorandum, No. 3 (Geneva, 17 June 1966; doc. UNCTAD/RD/MISC.4). The United Nations Development Decade at Mid-Point : An Appraisal by the SecretaryGeneral (Sales No. : 65.1.26). United Nations Research Institute for Social Development: Inducing Social Change in Developing Communities : An International Survey of Expert Advice, by Herbert H. Hyman, Gene N. Levine and Charles R. Wright (Geneva, 1967). Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, 1966 (Sales No.: 67.XVII.14). 571 Agricultural organisations and development Publications of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Abercrombie, K. C : "The Transition from Subsistence to Market Agriculture in Africa South of the Sahara", Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Economics and Statistics, Vol. 10, No. 2, February 1961. Agricultural Credit through Co-operatives and Other Institutions, FAO Agricultural Studies, No. 68 (Rome, 1965). Barbero, G. : Land Reform in Italy : Achievements and Perspectives (Rome, 1961). Belshaw, Horace: Agricultural Credit in Economically Under-Developed Countries, FAO Agricultural Studies, No. 46 (Rome, 1959). Bessis, A. C. : Rapport au gouvernement du Cameroun sur les problèmes de la réforme foncière au Cameroun oriental, Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance, Report 1872 (Rome, 1964). Digby, Margaret: Co-operatives and Land Use, Agricultural Development Paper, No. 61 (Rome, 1957). Etudes sur le rôle des biens de production alimentaire dans le développement agricole (doc. C.67/41). Existing Forms of Mutual Assistance among Farmers in Europe (Róme, 1966). FAO Africa Survey (Rome, 1961). Higgs, John: "Vertical Integration in Western Europe", Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Economics and Statistics, Vol. 15, No. 12, December 1966. Inter-Agency Study of Multilateral Food Aid : Director-General's Progress Report to the Committee on Commodity Problems (CCP) (Rome, 1967) (doc. CCP/67/ 13/Rev.l). Inter-Regional Seminar on Co-operatives and Land Structure, Warsaw, 23 September6 October 1966, and Copenhagen, 7-14 October 1966: The Co-operative Society as an Operational Unit in Kenya's Settlement Schemes, by J. W. Maina. Kwoh Min-Hsieh: Farmers' Associations and their Contributions toward Agricultural and Rural Development in Taiwan (Bangkok, 1963). Mifsud, Frank M. : Customary Land Law in Africa, Legislative Series, No. 7 (Rome, 1967). Nutrition and Working Efficiency, Freedom from Hunger Campaign Basic Studies, No. 5 (Rome, 1962). Production Yearbook, 1965 (Rome, 1966). Production Yearbook, 1966 (Rome, 1967). Seminar on Land Structure and Co-operatives, Rome, 1966: Collective Forms of Farming in Poland, by Witold Lipski (doc. RU:TAS/66/l). — Transformations of Polish Agriculture in Conditions of Industrialisation and Demographic Growth, by Joseph Okuniewski (doc. RU/TAS/66/2). Skrubbeltrang, F.: Agricultural Development and Rural Reform in Denmark (Rome, 1953). The State of Food and Agriculture, 1953 (Rome, 1953). The State of Food and Agriculture, 1966 (Rome, 1966). The State of Food and Agriculture, 1967 (Rome, 1967). Yearbook of Food and Agricultural Statistics, 1947 (Washington, 1947). Third World Food Survey (Rome, 1963). 572 Appendices Trade Yearbook, 1965 (Rome, 1966). Waterlow, J., and Vergara, A.: Protein Malnutrition in Brazil (Rome, 1957). World Land Reform Conference, Rome, June-July 1966 (convened jointly by the United Nations and FAO, in association with the ILO): Agrarian Problems and Reform Measures, report by Ceylon (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/7). — Agrarian Reform and Economic Development, report by Yugoslavia (doc. R U : WLRC/66/18). — Agrarian Reform in the United Arab Republic, by A. H. E. Nasharty (doc. R U : WLRC/66/17). — Agricultural Circles and the Process of Structural Changes in Private Farms, by Andrzej Romanov (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/26, Part II). — The Agricultural Land Situation in South Arabia (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/38). — Basic Agrarian Structural Issues in the Adjustment of African Customary Tenures to the Needs of Agricultural Development, by D. Christodoulou (doc. RU:WLR/ 66/C). — La coopération agricole sur le domaine de la réforme agraire, report on Syria by Ahmed El Zoobi (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/39). — Customary Land Law in Africa, by F. M. Mifsud (doc. RU:WLR/66/J). — Evaluation of Land Reform in Iraq (doc. RU:WXR-C/66/46). — The Experiences of State Farms in Poland, by T. Rychlik (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/26, Part III). — Gearing Agrarian Reform to Employment Objectives, with Particular Reference to Latin America, by Marvin J. Sternberg (doc. WLR/66/8). — Issues of Financing Agrarian Reform : the Latin American Experience, by Thomas F. Carroll (doc. WLR/66/5). — Land Reform and Organisation of the Peasants into Co-operatives in the USSR (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/49). — Land Reform Evaluation for Thailand, by Chaiyong Chuchart (doc. RU:WLRC/66/9, Part I). — Land Reform, including Land Settlement, in the United Kingdom (doc. RU:WLRC/66/12). — Land Reform in India (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/37). — Land Reform in Japan (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/29). — I : La réforme des structures agraires et l'investissement régional ; II: Structure foncière et réforme agraire, report by Morocco (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/48). — Land Reform in the Republic of China (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/45). — Land Settlement Programme in Libya, by Hamid Al-Jawhary (doc. RU:WLRC/66/28). — The Mexican Land Reform Programme (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/23). — Recent American Experience in Agrarian Reform (doc. RU:WLR-C/66/14). — The Role of Peasant Organisations in Land Reform and Related Community Development Programmes with Special Reference to Latin American Countries (doc. WLR/66/4). 573 Agricultural organisations and development Publications of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Dalton, George: "The Development of Subsistence and Peasant Economies in Africa", International Social Science Journal, Vol. XVI, No. 3, 1964. Social Research and Rural Life in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean Region (Paris, 1966). Statistical Yearbook (1964 to 1970). Thambyahpillai, George: "The Right to Private Property and Problems of Land Reform", International Social Science Journal, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, 1966. World Illiteracy at Mid-Century (Paris, 1957). Publications of the World Health Organization (WHO) Malnutrition and Disease, Freedom from Hunger Campaign Basic Study, No. 12 (Geneva, 1963). The Work of WHO, 1966 (Geneva, 1967). Other publications Abel, Wilhelm: Die drei Epochen der deutschen Agrargeschichte (Hanover, 1964). Abma, E.: "Management Boards and Supervisory Committees in Dutch Farmers' Co-operatives", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1963 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1963). L'agriculture belge. Notes et études documentaires, No. 3142 (Paris, 1964). L'agriculture italienne, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3111 (Paris, July 1964). L'agriculture polonaise (Warsaw, Editions Polonia, 1963). Alba, Víctor: Le mouvement ouvrier en Amérique latine (Paris, Les Editions ouvrières, 1953). Alexander, Robert J. : Organized Labor in Latin America (New York, The Free Press, 1965). Alliance for Progress: Weekly Newsletter (Washington), Vol. IV, No. 51,19 December 1966. L'amélioration et la conservation des exploitations agricoles dans les pays de l'Europe des Six, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3178 (Paris, 1965). Anderson, Charles W.: Land Reform and Social Change in Colombia, (Madison, University of Wisconsin, The Land Tenure Center, November 1963; discussion paper 4). Antezana, Luis: Resultados de la reforma agraria en Bolivia (Cochabamba, 1955). Arroyo, Gonzalo, SJ. : "Sindicalismo y promoción campesina", Mensaje (Santiago de Chile), Vol. 15, No. 149, June 1966. Ashton, T. S.: The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 (London, Oxford University Press, 1948). Bairoch, Paul: Diagnostic de l'évolution économique du tiers monde, 1900-1966 (Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1967). — Révolution industrielle et sous-développement (Paris, SEDES, 1963). 574 Appendices Balandier, Georges: "La mise en rapport des sociétés 'diflFérentes' et le problème du sous-développement", in Institut national d'études démographiques: Le «tiers monde», sous-développement et développement, Travaux et documents, No. 39 (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1961). Baldovinos de la Peña, Gabriel: "El progreso agrícola de México y los agrónomos profesionales", Estudios Agrarios (Mexico City), No. 2, January-April 1961. Bailarín, Alberto: Derecho agrario (Madrid, 1965). Bauer Czanowski, Francis (ed.): The Polish Handbook, 1925 : A Guide to the Country and Resources of the Republic of Poland (London, 1925). Beale, Calvin L.: "The Negro in American Agriculture", in John P. Davis (ed.): The American Negro Reference Book (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall Inc., 1966). Beals, Carleton: Mexico, an Interpretation (New York, 1923). Belin, Pierre, and Hasson, Maurice: L'agriculture en République fédérale d'Allemagne, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3226 (Paris, October 1965). Berque, Jacques: Contribution à l'étude des contrats nord-africains (Beni-Meskine) (Algiers, Typo-litho et J. Carbonel, 1936). — Etude d'histoire rurale maghrébine (Tangier and Fez, Editions internationales, 1938). Bestor, Jr., Arthur Eugene: Backwoods Utopias (Philadelphia, 1950). Blanckenburg, Peter von: The Position of the Agricultural Hired Worker (Paris, OECD, 1962). Bloch, Marc: Les caractères originaux de l'histoire rurale française (Oslo, Instituttet for sammenlignende Kulturforskning, 1931). Le Boerenbond belge (Louvain, 1965). Bogdan, Henri: La situation économique de l'Allemagne orientale, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3397 (Paris, June 1967). Bogosavljevió, Milutin: L'économie yougoslave (Belgrade, 1961). Boson, Marcel: COOP en Suisse (Basle, 1965). Bourdieu, Pierre: "La société traditionnelle — attitude à l'égard du temps et conduite économique", Sociologie du travail (Paris, Editions du Seuil), No. 1, JanuaryMarch 1963. Brandenburg, Frank R.: The Making of Modem Mexico (Englewood Cliffs, PrenticeHall Inc., 1964). Briey, Pierre de: "Le point de départ du développement agricole", Civilisations (Brussels), Vol. XVIII, No. 1, 1968. Brunei, René: "La réforme agraire et les intérêts privés hongrois en Transylvanie", Journal de droit international (Paris, Editions Godde), 1927, second issue. Camboulives, Marguerite: L'organisation coopérative au Sénégal (Paris, Editions A. Pedone, 1967). Campanhole, Adriano: Legislaçao do trabalho rural e estatuto da terra (Säo Paulo, Editora Atlas, 1965). Carroll, Thomas F.: "Estructura agraria y distribución de los recursos", in Oscar Delgado (ed.): Reformas agrarias en la América latina (Mexico City, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965). — "Land Reform as an Explosive Force in Latin America", in John T. TePaske and Sydney Nettleton Fisher (eds.): Explosive Forces in Latin America (Ohio State University Press, 1964). 575 Agricultural organisations and development Castro, Josué de: Sete Palmas de Terra e um Caixäo—emaio sobre o Nordeste, zona explosiva (Sao Paulo, Editora Brasileira); translated into French by Christiane Privat as: Une zone explosive — le Nordeste du Brésil (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1965). Centro Latino Americano de Pesquisas em Ciencias Sociais: Situaçào social da America Latina (Rio de Janeiro, 1965). Cépède, M., and Lengellé, M.: Economie alimentaire du globe (Paris, Librairie de Médicis, 1953). Les chambres d'agriculture, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3195 (Paris, 28 May 1965). Chaparro, Alvaro, and Allee, Ralph H. : "Higher Agricultural Education and Social Change in Latin America", Rural Sociology (Madison, University of Wisconsin), Vol. 25, March 1960. Cheesman, W. J. W.: "The Jordanian Co-operative Movement", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1960 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1960). Chen Cheng: Land Reform in Taiwan (Taiwan, China Publishing Company, 1961). Chonchol, Jacques: "Land Tenure and Development in Latin America", in Claudio Veliz (ed.): Obstacles to Change in Latin America (London, Oxford University Press, 1965). Christensen, C : Agrarhistoriske Studier (Copenhagen, 1886-91), 2 vols. Chuchart, Chaiyong, and Resanond, Praiwan: The Prospects of Land Reform in Thailand, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967 (mimeographed). CISL: Relazione al 6° Congresso Nazionale della FISBA (Ferrara, 19-21 marzo 1965) (Rome, 1965). Clapham, Sir John: The Economie Development of France and Germany, 1815-1914 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1921). Clark, Colin: The Conditions of Economic Progress (London, Macmillan; New York, St. Martin's Press, 1957). Cole, G. D. H.: A Century of Co-operation (Manchester, Co-operative Union, 1947). Colombia: Ministerio de Agricultura: La nueva legislación agraria (Bogotá, 1962). "Co-operation in French-Speaking African Countries", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1963 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1963). The Co-operative Federation of Western Australia: "Agricultural Co-operation in Western Australia", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1968 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1968). The Co-operative League of USA: Socio-Economic Development of Co-operatives in Latin America (San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1963). Correia da Andrade, Manoel: A Terra e o Homen no Nordeste (Sao Paulo, Editoria Brasiliense, 1963). Craig Mclvor, R.: The Post-War Taxation of Canadian Co-operatives (Toronto, Canadian Tax Foundation, 1959). Cusenier, M. M. : Les paysans serer et l'option coopérative (Dakar, 1964; mimeographed Ph.D. thesis). Custine, Adolphe de: La Russie en 1839 (Paris, 1843). Davy, Sir Humphry: Elements of Agricultural Chemistry (London, 1813). 576 Appendices Delgado, Oscar: Reformas agrarias en la América latina (Mexico City, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965). Delvert, Jean: "Paysage agraire et densités humaines en Asie tropicale", Atomes (Paris), No. 236, October 1966. Desroches, Henri: "Coopératismes africains — jalons inductifs d'une recherche comparée", Archives internationales de sociologie de la coopération (Paris), No. 16, 1964. Dez, J. : "Lefokonolona malgache: institution désuète ou cellule de développement ?", Cahiers de VISEA (Paris), No. 160, April 1965. Documents sur l'économie polonaise en 1956 et 1957, fase. 2: La nouvelle politique agricole en Pologne, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2365 (Paris, 23 December 1957). Dolléans, Edouard: Histoire du mouvement ouvrier (Paris, Armand Colin, 1957). Dorner, Peter, and Patch, Richard W. : Social Science Issues in Agrarian Change and National Development of Latin America (Madison, University of Wisconsin, The Land Tenure Center, February 1966; doc. LTC/9). Dovring, Folke: Land and Labour in Europe, 1900-50 (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1956). — Problems of Manpower in Agriculture (Paris, OECD, 1965). Dupin, H., Toury, J., Giorgi, R., and Gros, J.: Etude des aliments de l'Ouest africain envisagée sous l'angle de l'apport en protides (Dakar, Orana, 1962; mimeographed). Durand, John D., and Peláez, César A. : "Patterns of Urbanisation in Latin America", The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly (New York), Vol. XLIII, No. 4, October 1965 ("Components of Population Change in Latin America"), Part II. L'économie agricole de l'Autriche, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2987 (Paris, May 1963). L'économie roumaine, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3151 (Paris, January 1965). Engels, Friedrich: The Condition of the Working Class in England (trans. W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner) (Oxford, Blackwell, 1958). L'enseignement agricole en France, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3152 (Paris, January 1965). Etienne, Gilbert: Studies in Indian Agriculture (Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968). Evolution économique de la Hongrie, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2883 (Paris, 1962). FANAL (Federación Agraria Nacional de Colombia): Conclusiones del IV Congreso Nacional Campesino (Bogotá, Editorial Visión, 1967). Farcy de, H.: "Lentes transformations des organisations agricoles", Projet (Paris), No. 15, 1957. Feder, Ernst : "Algunos obstáculos a la realización de una reforma agraria racional", Estudios Agrarios (Mexico City), December 1964. Festy, O.: "L'agriculture pendant la Révolution française: les journaux d'agriculture et le progrès agricole", Revue d'histoire économique et sociale (Paris), Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, 1950. FISBA-CISL: / problemi dell'istruzione dell'obbligo nell'ambiente rurale (Rome, 1964). 577 Agricultural organisations and development Flores Alvarado, Humberto: Las migraciones indígenas internas (Guatemala City, Instituto Indigenista Nacional, 1961). Flores, Xavier-André: Problèmes de la modernisation de l'agriculture africaine (Geneva, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1968; mimeographed). — Estructura socioeconómica de la agricultura española (Barcelona, Ediciones Península, 1969). France: Permanent Assembly of the Chairmen of Chambers of Agriculture (Paris): Les chambres d'agriculture dans le Code rural (1965). Fuchs, C.-Joh. : Der Untergang des Bauernstandes und das Aufkommen der Gutsherrschaften in Neu-Vorpommem und Rügen (Strasbourg, Social Science Seminar, 1888), fase. 6. Gaitskell, Arthur: Gezira : A Story of Development in the Sudan (London, Faber & Faber, 1959). Galleti, R., Baldwin, K. D. S., and Dina, I. O. : Nigerian Cocoa Farmers (London, Oxford University Press, 1956). Garcia, Antonio: "La reforma agraria y el desarrollo social de Bolivia", El Trimestre Económico (Mexico City), Vol. XXXI, No. 123, July-September 1964. Gardère, Jean-Daniel: L'économie du Danemark, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3265, (Paris, 1966). Gélard, Patrice: Les syndicats soviétiques, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3185 (Paris, 27 April 1965). Geshov, I. E. : "Zadrugata y Zapadna Balgarya" [The zadruga in western Bulgaria], Periodichesko Spisanie (Sofia), Vol. XXI-XXII, 1887. Gide, Charles: Fourier, précurseur de la coopération (Paris, Association pour l'enseignement de la coopération, 1924). Giménez Landínez, Víctor: Capacitación para la reforma agraria integral (Bogotá, Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agrícolas (IICA), 1966). Goldenberg, Boris: Los sindicatos en América latina (Hanover, Verlag für Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, 1967). Goldmark, Josephine, and Hollman, A. H.: Democracy in Denmark (Washington, National Home Library Foundation, 1936). González, Armando: Función de la Federación Campesina de Venezuela en la reforma agraria (Caracas, Federación Campesina, 1966; mimeographed). Gourou, Pierre: Les paysans du delta tonkinois (Paris, 1939). Goussault, Y., Meister, A., and Marthelot, P. : "Recherches sur les associationnismes ruraux et sur la participation des masses aux programmes de développement dans les pays méditerranéens", Bulletin de liaison (Paris, Ecole pratique des hautes études), No. 1, January 1966. Griffin, K. B. : "Financing Development Plans in Pakistan", The Pakistan Development Review (Karachi), Winter 1965. Grubbs, Donald H.: The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the New Deal (University of Florida, 1963; unpublished Ph.D. thesis). GrüU, Georg: Bauer, Herr und Landesfürst, Sozialrevolutionäre Bestrebungen der oberösterreichischen Bauern von 1650 bis 1848 (Cologne, 1963). Grünberg, Karl: Die Bauernbefreiung und die Auflösung des gutsherrlich-bäuerlichen Verhältnisses in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien (Leipzig, 1894), 2 vols. 578 Appendices Güngör Uras, T.: The Agricultural Credit and Marketing Co-operatives in Turkey (October 1967; mimeographed). — The Co-operative Movement in Turkey (Ankara, 1965). Guttman, B. : Das Recht der Dschgga (Munich, 1926). Haberler, Gottfried: "Terms of Trade and Economic Development", in International Economic Association: Economic Development for Latin America (London, Macmillan; New York, St. Martin's Press, 1961). (Included in the collection "The Terms of Trade" at the Economic Development Institute, Washington, D.C.) Hailey, Lord: An African Survey (London, Oxford University Press, 1957). Hardie, Martin F.: Some Aspects of Land Reform in Australia, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967. Hashish, Adel Ahmed: Le rôle de la coopération dans la socialisation de l'agriculture égyptienne (Paris, 1969; mimeographed Ph.D. thesis). Haucourt, Geneviève d': La vie agricole et rurale dans l'Etat d'Indiana à l'époque pionnière (Paris, Mouton, 1961). Haun, Fr.-Joh. : Bauer und Gutsherr in Kursachsen (Strasbourg, Social Science Seminar, 1891). Heighton, V. A. : "Co-operative Movement in Canada, 1958", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1960 (Oxford, Blackwell, I960). Hill, P.: The Gold Coast Cocoa Farmer (London, Oxford University Press, 1956). Hirschfeld, André: "La coopération en Tunisie: bilan et perspectives", Revue des études coopératives (Paris,) No. 133, 1963. — "Quelques aspects du mouvement coopératif en Hongrie", Revue des études coopératives (Paris), No. 137, 1964. La Hongrie de 1945 à 1956, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2245 (Paris, 1965), p. 7. Huizer, Gerrit : "Desarrollo de la comunidad y grupos de intereses en áreas rurales", America Latina (Rio de Janeiro, Centro Latino Americano de Pesquisas em Ciencias Sociais), 9th Year, No. 2, April-June 1966. — Los movimientos campesinos en México (Mexico City, Centro de Investigaciones Agrarias, 1968; mineographed). — On Peasant Unrest in Latin America (Washington, Pan-American Union, InterAmerican Agricultural Development Committee, 1967). — Some Preliminary Generalizations on the Role of Peasant Organizations in the Process of Agrarian Reform (Mexico City, November 1967; mimeographed). IFPAAW: Conferencia Interamericana de la FITPASC [IFPAAW] para Dirigentes Campesinos, Caracas, 14-15 February 1957: Reforma agraria y empleo rural, doc. No. 2. — El movimiento sindical campesino y el desarrollo nacional en América latina, doc. No. 1. Iliev, Bocho: Management Organisation and Labour Payment in Co-operative Farms (Sofia, 1963). India: Ministry of Food and Agriculture: Report on Intensive Agriculture District Programme, 1961-63 (New Delhi, 1963). Ingersoll, H. K.: Abstract of Canadian Provincial Legislation on Co-operatives (Ottawa, Department of Agriculture, 1958). — Analysis of Canadian Provincial Legislation (Ottawa, Ministry of Agriculture, 1962; mimeographed). 579 Agricultural organisations and development Institute for the Development of Agricultural Co-operation in Asia: The Agricultural Co-operative Movement in Japan (Tokyo, 1964). Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agrícolas, Centro Interamericano de Reforma Agraria: Informe de la reunión internacional de ejecutivos de la reforma agraria y de la reunión de evaluación y planeamiento del proyecto 206 (Bogotá, 1966). — Noticias sobre la reforma agraria (Bogotá), Vol. Ill, February 1966. Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development (CIDA): Land Tenure Conditions and Socio-Economie Development of the Agricultural Sector : Brazil (Washington, Pan-American Union, 1966). — Tenencia de la tierra y desarrollo socioeconómico del sector agrícola : Perú (Washington, Pan-American Union, 1966). — Land Tenure Conditions and Socio-Economie Development of the Agricultural Sector in Seven Latin American Countries (Washington, Pan-American Union, 1966). Inter-American Development Bank: Agricultural Development in Latin America : Current Status and Prospects (Washington, October 1966). — Social Progress Trust Fund, Fifth Annual Report, 1965 (Washington, 1966). International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD): World Bank Atlas of Per Capita Product and Population (Washington, September 1966). Jamieson, Stuart : Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 836 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1945). Japan: National Chamber of Agriculture: Current Status of the Agricultural Commission System (Tokyo, March 1965). Jeanson, Francis: L'Algérie hors la loi (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1956). Jensen, Einar: Danish Agriculture : Its Economie Development (Copenhagen, J. H. Schultz Forlag, 1937). Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de: Informe sobre la Ley Agraria (Madrid, Rivadeneyra, 1859). Juliäo, Francisco: ¿ Que son las ligas campesinas ? (Montevideo, Arca, 1963). Julien, Charles-André: Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord (Paris, Payot, 1931). Kayser, Bernard: La population et l'économie de la République populaire bulgare, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2787 (Paris, 12 June 1961). Kérinec, Roger: "La coopération en Pologne", Revue des études coopératives (Paris), No. 138, 1964. — "La Hongrie adhérente à PAO", Revue des études coopératives (Paris), No. 144, 1966. Kidston, William: "Co-operation in Australia", Year Book of Agricultural Cooperation, 1964 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1964). — The Co-operative Movement in Australia (Brisbane, Co-operative Federation of Queensland, n.d. ; mimeographed). Ki-Hyuk-Pak: Economic Effects of Farmland Reform in the Republic of Korea, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967 (mimeographed). 580 Appendices Kindleberger, Charles P. : "Terms of Trade and Economic Development", Review of Economics and Statistics (Cambridge), Vol. 40, No. 1, Part 2, supplement, February 1958. (Included in the collection "The Terms of Trade" at the Economic Development Institute, Washington, D.C.) Kiriakov, K., et al. : La réorganisation socialiste de l'économie rurale en République populaire de Bulgarie (Sofia, 1965). Knapp, Georg Friedrich: Die Bauernbefreiung und der Ursprung der Landarbeiter in den älteren Theilen Preussens (Leipzig, 1887), 2 vols. — Grundherrschaft und Rittergut (Leipzig, 1897). Kool, R. G. A. : L'agriculture tunisienne — analyse d'une économie en voie de modernisation (Wageningen, H. Veenman & Zonen NV, 1963). Kouassignan, Guy-Adjété: L'homme et la terre — droits fonciers coutumiers et droits de propriété en Afrique occidentale (Paris, Office de la recherche scientifique et technique d'outre-mer, 1966). Kula, Witold: Recherches comparatives sur la formation de la classe ouvrière (First Economie History Congress, Stockholm, 1960) (Paris, Mouton, 1960). Kuznets, Simon: "Quantitative Aspects of the Economie Growth of Nations. II. Industrial Distribution of National Product and Labour Force", Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago, University of Chicago), Vol. V, No. 4 (supplement), July 1957. Labrousse, C. E. : Esquisse du mouvement des prix et des revenus en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, Dalloz, 1932). Ladejinsky, Wolf: "The Green Revolution in Punjab, a Field Trip", Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay), Vol. IV, No. 26, June 1969. Ladonne, Christian: L'économie indienne, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3370 (Paris, March 1967). Land Reform in Iran (official pamphlet published in London by the Iranian Government). Lautenschlager, Friedrich: Die Agrarunruhen in den badischen Standes- und Grundherrschaften im Jahre 1848 (Heidelberg, 1915). Laxminarayan, H.: "The Small Farmers should be the Strategy Base", Yojana (New Delhi), Vol. XII, No. 24, December 1968. Legendre, Pierre: L'exode professionnel des agriculteurs et le fonds d'action sociale pour l'aménagement des structures agricoles (Paris, Institut des hautes études de droit rural et d'économie agricole, 15 January 1965; mimeographed). Léger, François: Les influences occidentales dans la révolution de l'Orient, 1850-1950 (Paris, Pion, 1955). Leroy-Beaulieu, P.: L'Algérie et la Tunisie (Paris, Guillaumin & Cie, 1887). Levasseur, E.: La population française (Paris, Rousseau, 1889-92). Lewis, Oscar: "Mexico since Cárdenas", Social Change in Latin America Today (New York, Council of Foreign Relations, Harper Brothers, 1960). Lopera, Jaime: "El sector agropecuario en cifras", Revista Nacional de Agricultura (Bogotá), No. 749, October 1967. Lord, Peter P. : The Peasantry as an Emerging Political Factor in Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela (Madison, University of Wisconsin, The Land Tenure Center, May 1965). 581 Agricultural organisations and development Loutchisky, Jean: L'état des classes agricoles en France à la veille de la Révolution (Paris, Champion, 1911). Lütge, Friedrich: Geschichte der deutschen Agrarverfassung vom frühen Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1963). Lyashchenko, Peter I. : History of the National Economy of Russia (New York, Macmillan, 1949). MacLean y Estenos, Roberto: "La revolución de 1910 y el problema agrario de México", Estudios Sociológicos (Mexico City), Vol. II (IX Congreso Nacional de Sociología, 1958). Maddison, Angus: The Use of Foreign Training and Skills in Developing Economies (Paris, OECD, 1964). Magnus, Albrecht: "L'agriculture japonaise: un modèle pour toute l'Asie", Articles et documents (Paris, La Documentation française), Nos. 0.1862-0.1863, 28 July4 August 1967. Malassis, L.: "Agriculture et économie bretonnes", Projet (Paris), No. 11, January 1967. Mantoux, P. : La révolution industrielle au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, Génin, 1959). Maquet, Jacques: Africanité traditionnelle et moderne (Paris, Présence africaine, 1967). Marsan, Jacques: Le crédit mutualiste dans l'agriculture africaine, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3073 (Paris, 16 March 1964). Matey, Maria: "Les tendances générales du développement du droit du travail en Pologne", Droit social (Paris), No. 11, November 1966. Mauritius Chamber of Agriculture: The President's Report for the Year 1959-60 (Port Louis, n.d.). McKenzie-Wallace, D.: Russia (London, 1879), 2 vols. McLoughlin, F. M. : Research on Agricultural Development in East Africa (New York, The Agricultural Development Council Inc., 1967). McWilliams, Carey: Factories in the Field (Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1939). Meister, Albert: L'Afrique peut-elle partir ? (Pans, Editions du Seuil, 1966). — Le développement économique de l'Afrique orientale (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1966). Meitzen, Philipp August: Der Boden und die landwirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse des preussischen Staates (Berlin, 1868-1908), 8 vols. Mercer, T. W.: Dr. William King and the Co-operator, 1828-30 (Manchester, Cooperative Union, 1922). Meynaud, Jean: Les organisations professionnelles en Suisse (Lausanne, 1963). Mill, John Stuart: Autobiography (ed. Helen Taylor) (London, 1873). Montesquieu: Cahiers (1716-1755) (Paris, Grasset, 1941). Moore, W. E.: Economic Demography of Eastern and Southern Europe (Geneva, League of Nations, 1945). Moral López, Pedro: Límites legales e institucionales de la reforma agraria (Bogotá, Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación en Reforma Agraria (ICIRA), doc. No. 59, n.d.). Morgan, Theodore: "Long-run Terms of Trade between Agriculture and Manufacturing", Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago), Vol. 8, No. 1, October 1959. (Included in the collection "The Terms of Trade" at the Economic Development Institute, Washington, D.C.) 582 Appendices Morris, James O. : Elites, Intellectuals and Consensus : A Study of the Social Question and the Industrial Relations System in Chile (New York, W. F. Humphrey Press, 1966). Morrison, Denton E., and Steeves, Allan D.: "Deprivation, Discontent and Social Movement Participation: Evidence on a Contemporary Farmers' Movement, the NFO", Rural Sociology (Madison, University of Wisconsin), Vol. 32, No. 4, December 1967. Muralt, Jürgen von: Entwicklung und Struktur des Genossenschaftswesens in Ägypten (Marburg/Lahn, Institut für Genossenschaftswesen, 1964). Myrdal, Gunnar: An International Economy: Problems and Prospects (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York, Harper, 1956). Nanavati, Manual B., and Anjaria, J. J. : The Indian Rural Problem (Bombay, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, 1965). Natan, Jacques: Stopanska Istorija na Bulgaria (Sofia, 1957). Nelson, Lowry: Some Social Aspects of Agrarian Reform in Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela (Washington, Pan-American Union, 1964; mimeographed doc. UP/Ser.H/VII.17/Rev. 2). Noilhan, Henri: Histoire de l'agriculture à l'ère industrielle (Paris, de Boccard, 1965). L'organisation kolkhozienne en URSS, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2298 (Paris, 4 June 1957). Organisation for Economie Co-operation and Development (OECD): Agricultural Advisory Services in Europe and North America, 1963 (Paris, 1964). — Agricultural Policies in 1966 (Paris, 1967). — Interrelationship between Income and Supply Problems in Agriculture (Paris, 1965). — Low Incomes in Agriculture (Paris, 1964). — Manpower Statistics, 1950-1962 (Paris, 1963). — Obstacles to Shifts in the Use of Land (Paris, 1965). Palmer, J. H.: Notes on Strange Farmers (Bathurst, Government Printer, 1946). Paulme, Denise: Civilisations africaines (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1953). Payne, W. L.: Report of the Land Administration Commission (Kuala Lumpur, 1958). Pearse, Andrew: "Agrarian Change Trends in Latin America", Latin America Research Review (Austin, University of Texas), Vol. 1, No. 3, 1966. Petras, James F.: "Chile's Christian Peasant Union: Notes and Comments on an Interview with Hector Alarcón", Newsletter (Madison, University of Wisconsin, The Land Tenure Center), No. 23, March-July 1966. Pirenne, Jacques: Les grands courants de l'histoire universelle (Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 1953). La planification et l'industrialisation de l'Argentine, 1947-1957, Notes et études documentaires, No. 1787 (Paris, 1953). Plunkett, Horace, et al. : Report of the Recess Committee on the Establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Industries for Ireland (Dublin, 1906). Podmore, Frank: Robert Owen (London, Hutchinson, 1906; New York, 1924). Polish Central Statistical Agency: Statistics for Poland, Vol. V: Big Landed Estates (Warsaw, 1925). 583 Agricultural organisations and development — Concise Statistical Yearbook of Poland, 1965 (Warsaw, 1965). La politique agricole aux Etats-Unis du New Deal à 1956, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2225 (Paris, October 1956). Pologne, chiffres et faits (Warsaw, Editions Polonia, 1962). Popovió, Svetolik: La política agraria en Yugoslavia (Belgrade, 1964). Potter, Tod: "1965 Points the Way for Farm Labor", Employment Service Review (Washington, United States Department of Labor, Manpower Administration), January 1966. Poulain, A.: "L'évolution du droit rural", in Henri Noilhan: Histoire de l'agriculture à l'ère industrielle (Paris, de Boccard, 1965), Vol. V, Part Six, Ch. I. Prault, L.: "La politique des organisations professionnelles agricoles: les chambres d'agriculture", in Henri Noilhan: Histoire de l'agriculture à l'ère industrielle (Paris, de Boccard, 1965), Vol. V, Part Six, Ch. VIII. "Problems of Latin American Co-operative Development", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, 1963 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1963). Les progrès et les perspectives de l'agriculture canadienne, Notes et études documentaires, No. 2751 (Paris, September 1959). Rao, V. K. R. V.: "Economie Growth and Rural-Urban Income Distribution", The Economie Weekly (Bombay), 20 February 1965. Reinert-Tárnoky, Ilona: "Die ungarische Innenpolitik und das Agrarproblem in der Zeit des Dualismus", Südost-Forschungen, Vol. XXIII, 1964. Le régime de protection sociale agricole, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3293 (Paris, May 1966). Reverdy, Jean-Claude: Approche sociologique du milieu serer (Aix-en-Provence, Centre africain des sciences humaines appliquées, 1963). — Une société rurale au Sénégal — les structures foncières familiales et villageoises des Serer (Aix-en-Provence, Centre africain des sciences humaines appliquées, 1968). Sagnac, Ph.: Le Rhin français pendant la Révolution et l'Empire (Paris, Alean, 1917). Salim, Agoes: Padi Cultivators Act of Malaysia, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967 (mimeographed). Sarrailh, Jean: L'Espagne éclairée de la seconde moitié du XVIII« siècle (Paris, Klincksieck, 1954). Schmandt, Lucien: "Panorama de l'action coopérative dans les pays d'expression française d'Afrique et de Madagascar", Revue des études coopératives (Paris) No. 124, 1961. Schultz, T.: "The Economie Test in Latin America", Bulletin (New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University) No. 35, August 1956. See, Henri: Esquisse d'une histoire du régime agraire en Europe aux XVlIte et XIXe siècles (Paris, Bibliothèque internationale d'économie politique, 1921). "Segunda Conferencia Interamericana de Ministros de Trabajo sobre la Alianza para el Progreso", Revista Interamericana de Ciencias Sociales (Washington, Pan-American Union), Vol. 4, No. 1,1966. 584 Appendices Sen, T. H.: Land Reform and its Impact on Agricultural Development in Taiwan, International Seminar on Land Taxation, Land Tenure and Land Reform in Developing Countries, sponsored by the Lincoln Foundation, Phoenix (Arizona), 1967 (mimeographed). Shih-Ko Shen: Administration of the Land Reform Program in Taiwan (official publication of the Government of Taiwan, n.d.). Singer, H. W. : "The Distribution of Gains between Investing and Borrowing Countries", American Economic Review, May 1950. La situation économique de la Suisse, Part Two: "L'agriculture en Suisse", Notes et études documentaires, No. 2313 (Paris, July 1957). Slater, Gilbert: The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields (London, London School of Economics, 1896 and 1907). Soboul, Albert : "Survivances 'féodales' dans la société rurale française au XIXe siècle", Les Annales (Paris), No. 5, September-October 1968. Les structures agraires en France et les sociétés d'aménagement foncier et d'établissement rural (SAFER), Notes et études documentaires, No. 3422 (Paris, September 1967). Sundara Rajan, K. S. : "Tariff Préférences and Developing Countries", Finance and Development (Washington, International Monetary Fund; Paris, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), Vol. III, No. 4, December 1966. Szirmai, Jénë : Les activités des coopératives hongroises de consommation et d'écoulement pour satisfaire les besoins de la population rurale et accroître la production agricole (paper submitted to the International Seminar on Co-operation, Budapest, 1963; mimeographed). Tabah, Léon: "Le problème population-investissement-niveau de vie dans les pays sous-développés", in Institut national d'études démographiques: Le « tiers monde», sous-développement et développement, Travaux et documents, No. 39 (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1961). — "Espoirs et illusions des politiques de population dans le tiers monde", Le Monde (Paris), 20-21 January 1967. Texier, Jean-Marie: Les formes d'action collective traditionnelles (working paper submitted to the CIRCOM Seminar, Geneva, September 1967). Thisyamondol, P. : Agricultural Credit in Thailand (Bangkok, Kasetsart University, 1965). Thomas, L. V. : Le socialisme en Afrique (Paris, Le Livre africain, 1966). Thome, Joseph R. : Limitaciones de la legislación colombiana para expropriar o comprar fincas con destino a parcelación (Madison, University of Wisconsin, The Land Tenure Centre, November 1965; doc. LTC/14). Thorner, Daniel: De-Industrialisation in India, 1881-1931 (First Economic History Congress, Stockholm, 1960) (Paris, Mouton, 1960). — Agricultural Co-operatives in India : A Field Study (London, Asia Publishing House, 1964). Thorp, Willard L.: "New Developments in Foreign Assistance", OECD Observer (Paris), special issue on development, September 1966. Torres Llosa, Enrique: Avances de la reforma agraria en el Perú (Lima, Oficina Nacional de Reforma Agraria, 1966). Torres Ordóñez, Luis: Realidades y proyectos, 16 años de trabajo (Mexico City, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1964). 585 Agricultural organisations and development Trappe, Paul: Les coopératives en Afrique au sud du Sahara (Berne, 1965; mimeographed). — Die Entwicklungsfunktion des Genossenschaftswesens am Beispiel ostafrikanischer Stämme, Soziologische Texte, No. 31 (Neuwied-am-Rhein, Verlag Hermann Luchterhand, 1966). Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR 1965 [The national economy of the USSR in 1965] (Moscow, 1966). United Kingdom: Colonial Office: Report on the Gambia for the Years 1952 and 1953 (London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1954). United States: Department of Labor: Information Concerning Entry of Mexican Agricultural Workers into the United States (Washington, Farm Labor Service, Bureau of Employment Security, February 1962). United States: National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor: Farm Labor Organizing, 1905-1967 : A Brief History (New York, 1967). Van Campen, Ph. C. M. : Le système du crédit agricole dans les Pays-Bas (Eindhoven, April 1950). Vigier, Philippe: La Monarchie de Juillet (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1962). — La Seconde République dans la région alpine (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), 2 vols. Walker, Kenneth F. : Industrial Relations in Australia (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1956). Walter, Gérard: Histoire des paysans de France (Paris, 1963). Wharton, Jr., Clifton R.: "The Green Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora's Box?", Foreign Affairs (New York), Vol. 47, No. 3, April 1969. Wiehen, Josef: Die Bodenreform der Tschechoslowakischen Republik (Berlin, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft, 1924). Wilde, John C. de, et al.: Experiences with Agricultural Development in Tropical Africa (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), 2 vols. Wilde, Robert de: L'agriculture américaine, Notes et études documentaires, No. 3156 (Paris, January 1965). Woodham-Smith, Cecil: The Great Hunger (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1962; New York, Harper, 1963). Yugoslavia: 1.000 datos sobre la Yugoslavia (Belgrade, Publicisticko Izdavacki Zavod Jugoslavie, 1961). Yuri, Mario : "The Progress of Agricultural Co-operation in Latin America", Year Book of Agricultural Co-operation, I960 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1960). Zaisichkovski, P. A. : Otmena Krepostnogo Prava v Rossii [The abolition of serfdom in Russia] (Moscow, 1960). — Provedenie v Zhizn Krestianskoi Reformy 1861 goda [The implementation of the peasant reform of 1861] (Moscow, 1958). Zembrzuska, Helena: Les cercles agricoles, organisation sociale et économique des paysans en Pologne (Warsaw, Institut d'éditions de la Centrale agricole des coopératives, 1967). 586