At the heart of peasant agriculture there is a range of complex and interdependent cycles of observation, interpretation, readjustment, evaluation and learning. Peasants continuously observe the germination of seeds, the development of crops, and the performance of animals, amongst others. Changes they observe inevitably trigger peasants to ask how and why, which in turn prompts analysis of previous decisions as well as internal and external factors.

Is the calve that looks so promising to be explained by previous decisions regarding the selection, mating and more generally, the genealogy of the animal? Or is it due to the feeding she got so far? Or maybe the absence of diseases? Or the effect of a new, more healthy stable? Peasant farmers ’read’ the dynamics and impact of their own encounter with living nature, or farming, in a twofold way. One way is immediate, short term and applies at the micro level. But farmers also look at the long term, which involves considering the interaction between farms, markets and wider society as well as the role of cooperation. Farmers weigh the possibilities to improve the availability and quality of on-farm natural and social resources and assess what is needed to do so. Both resource use and resource development are taken into account.

Continuous learning

Diversity is central to peasant farming. From observing and analysing this diversity, peasants improve and innovate. This logic governs the selection of seeds and animal breeds, for example. Selection and breeding might lead to practical improvements such as higher yields, fewer losses, and stronger animals. Such improvements provide feedback for analysis, but even futile readjustments render new insights. This process is continuous and results in learning and in new knowledge.

There is always curiosity and the unbeatable drive to do things better

Routine is a mighty tool when farming in a sea of uncertainty. What proved to be useful and reliable in the past will be the compass for today’s activities. But even so, alongside routine there is always curiosity and the unbeatable drive to do things better. Curiosity and drive trigger cycles of observation, interpretation, readjustment, evaluation and learning. This makes peasant farming a permanent search for improvements, novelties, knowledge and progress. Historically, the many small improvements on peasant farms added up to a steady and sustained growth of production. It wasn’t untill peasant agriculture started to get heavily squeezed and its development potential appropriated by others that growth rates diminished until misery abounded.

The art of farming

The learning cycles of observation, interpretation and readjustment are not individual activities. They are socialised through exchange and communication between peasants and often involve comparisons that go beyond the individual farm. In this process, peasants use criteria in order to assess what is better and what is worse. These criteria are never one dimensional, they are rather multifaceted. When it comes to potatoes, for instance, peasants assess taste, storability, performance in the given ecological conditions, appearance, yield, and resistance to pests and diseases. Interestingly, aesthetics are among some of the most important criteria. ‘Healthy looking’ plants, ‘beautiful’ crops, ‘generous’ fields, and ‘noble’ cattle are unambiguous concepts amongst peasants.These criteria are used at multiple levels. Some regard the fields and the animals, others regard the farm as a whole, and yet others regard the community and sometimes even the equilibrium between the agricultural sector and society as a whole. The different balances within the family, between family and farm, between land and animals, between past, present and future also contribute to the aesthetics of the farm.

A well-balanced farm functions as an assurance. It is a promise for the future and a source of feedback. The different levels and the associated balances are clearly interdependent. Together the different criteria compose the ‘moral economy of the peasantry’: determining, in their view, how things should be. These criteria are especially activated if and when things strongly differ from how they should be. The many cycles and the capacity to bring them into balance with each other are the ‘art of farming’ (see book review of ‘The Art of Farming’).

Together they explain why peasant agriculture has historically resulted in ongoing growth and development that is ‘born from within’ or in other words endogenous development. It also explains why peasant farming is often attractive: it is a journey of discovery, a search for new possibilities and it often allows those involved to emancipate, to move forward, to develop themselves as active and knowledgeable actors.

Modernised farming

If the ‘clean part’ is acceptable to peasants then the agricultural sector is likely to be sound. Photo: Jan Douwe van der Ploeg
Although in industrial agriculture such cycles are not completely absent, they have been moved to the margins of the labour process. To begin with, farms have been reduced from diverse wholes to highly specialised units of production that basically convert external inputs into specified output for the food and retail industries. Unlike in peasant agriculture, land is no longer the main resource but has been reduced to the venue where agriculture takes place. Second, the labour process now follows a script written by outsiders. Third, specialisation and standardisation have strongly reduced, if not nearly eliminated, heterogeneity in and between farms, rendering comparisons rather useless.As a result, in this type of farming there is hardly any interest anymore in careful observation, interpretation and readjustment. Growth is now paramount. Development is now exogenous (originating from outside). Modernised agriculture critically depends on the application of resources obtained on the capital market, on the use of external technologies, on knowledge developed elsewhere, on external organisational schemes and logistics and even on the use of external labour. Yield increase of a single crop has become the main indicator of success. The many problems that have resulted from this type of farming are well known.

Contrary to what those making profit from industrial agriculture have us believe, in industrial agriculture the issue of evaluation of the farm is relatively simple. Yields, input use and incomes are assumed to run in parallel. High input use is a prerequisite for high yields, and high yields will lead to good incomes provided the farm size is adequate. This fits well with how the wider global economy is currently organised as high yields ensure that enough raw materials are made available for the food industry, large retail and export, and high input use creates a market for upstream agribusiness such as the seed and chemical industries.

Repeasantisation and agroecology

Alongside industrial agriculture there remain, both in the global north and the global south, large and growing segments of peasant agriculture. This is in part thanks to the agroecological movement.

Agroecology explicitly socialises the processes of observation, interpretation and readjustment

Agroecology reorients farming towards less use of external inputs and improved efficiency of internal resources. Agroecology is, in many respects, about returning to and strengthening peasant farming. It explicitly socialises the processes of observation, interpretation and readjustment through farmer field schools, farmer-to-farmer learning, field visits, experimentation, etc. These types of learning methods are also applied to new issues such as health, animal welfare, climate change, gender equality, product quality, nutrition, and marketing.

What is valid for peasant farming in terms of evaluating the farm is particularly relevant when peasants work with agroecology. Agroecology implies a transition; it is a self-propelling process of change, learning from changes and their effects, continuously translating the enlarged body of knowledge and new experiences into complementary changes.

A beautiful production and a well-balanced farm result in an adequate livelihood, in well-being and in prospects for the future. While incomes are an integral part of all this, peasant farmers perceive income in a very specific way. They are not interested in profits or in the ‘net farm results’ as calculated in standard farm accountancy. As very clearly argued by the Russian scholar Chayanov, incomes are perceived by peasant farmers as the result of their labour (as ‘labour income’). They typically do not calculate their own labour and other internal resources as costs.

The clean part

Strategic for peasant producers is the difference between sold produce and bought inputs; this is often referred to as ‘the clean part’. This income is regarded as ‘clean’ because it is for the peasants and their families themselves. Together with the food produced for the household, it cannot be touched or claimed by others. The concept of the ‘clean part’ was developed by peasants in order to be able to evaluate and control the relation between their farms and the markets. It connects the dynamics in the fields and stables with the well-being of the family.

Peasant farmers perceive income in a very specific way

Assessing the ‘clean part’ is a powerful tool for agroecology, precisely because it highlights the result of a particular double movement that is central to agroecology: reducing external input use and the associated costs, while obtaining better prices for their products. The latter takes place through organising peasant agroecological markets, augmenting quality and adding value, and creating cooperatives. Peasant producers and their families will always ask: how does this income or ‘clean part’ relate to the time, effort and energy we have invested in the labour process?

A farm level comparison
The clean part allows to document the progress through time of agroecological farming. It clearly assesses the differences between ‘traditional’ and agroecological farming. The organisation AS-PTA in Brazil, in collaboration with a team of peasant farmers, has been conducting important and innovative work by comparing an agroecological and a conventional farm.

On the agroecological farm of Luiz, there is considerable production for the market (venda) alongside production for consumption in the family (auto consumo). Production is mainly reliant on internal resources that are produced and reproduced within the farm system (insumos prod.) and external inputs (insumo comp.) only play a minor role. Thus the ‘clean part’ is considerable (11,326 Reais or US$ 3611). This allows for a good level of expenditure for the family (insumos p/ famil.) and for savings, as the clean part is larger than family expenditure. In contrast, Aldo’s specialised farm strongly depends on external inputs. In this respect Aldo’s is indeed a conventional farm where the reliance on external inputs is much higher than in the agroecological farm. The clean part, however, is much smaller and so are self-consumption and family expenditure. Consequently, in the agroecological farm people are better off than in the more entrepreneurial farm that heavily depends on industrial inputs.

The ‘clean part’ may also translate to agriculture as a whole: If the ‘clean part’ is acceptable to peasants, then the agricultural sector is likely to be sound and not in need of perverse subsidies. It means that agriculture will be able to finance its own further development. The agroecological transition has shown the potential to generate a clean part that is both acceptable for individual farmers and able to generate benefits to society as a whole.

If citizens, social organisations, researchers and policy makers are able to apply a similar view when assessing the dynamics and impacts of different types of farming, they will be able to strongly contribute to making clear, to society as a whole, that peasant-led agroecology is not only a promise but equally a necessity for today and for the future.

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg (jandouwe.vanderploeg@wur.nl) is Adjunct Professor in the sociology of agriculture at the College of Humanities and Development Studies at China Agricultural University in Beijing.

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What is family farming?

For many reasons, family farming is one of those phenomena that Western societies find increasingly difficult to understand. One of these reasons is that family farming is at odds with the bureaucratic logic, formalised protocols and industrial rationale that increasingly dominate our societies. This makes family farming into something that is seen, on the one hand, as archaic and anarchic, whilst at the same time it emerges as something attractive and seductive.

Family farming is also difficult to grasp because it is a complex, multi-layered and multi-dimensional phenomenon. Below, I identify ten qualities of family farming. These qualities are not always present at the same time in every situation. The most important thing to remember is that the reality of family farms is far richer than the two single aspects that are most commonly used to describe them: that the farm is owned by the family and that the work is done by the family members.

Family farming is not just about the size of the farm, as when we talk about small scale farming; it is more about the way people farm and live. This is why family farming is a way of life.

A balance of farm and family

Let’s take a look at these ten qualities. First, the farming family has control over the main resources (1) that are used in the farm. This includes the land, but also the animals, the crops, the genetic material, the house, buildings, machinery and, in a more general sense, the know-how that specifies how these resources need to be utilised and combined. Access to networks and markets, as well as co-ownership of co-operatives, are also important resources.

Family farmers use these resources not to make a profit, but to make a living; to acquire an income that provides them with a decent life and, if possible, allows them to make investments that will further develop the farm.

In addition the family farm is a place where the family provides the main part of the labour force (2). This makes the farm into a place of self-employment and of progress for the family. It is through their dedication, passion and hard work that the farm is further developed and that the livelihood of the family is improved.

The farm is there to meet the many needs of the family, whilst the family provides the possibilities, the means and also the limitations for the farm. This nexus between the family and the farm (3) is at the core of many decisions about the development of the farm. Each particular farm has its own specific balances, for instance between the mouths to be fed and the hands to do the work. These balances tie family and farm together and make each family farm into a unique constellation.

Linking past, present and future

But there is more than ownership and labour. Family farms provide the farming family with a part (or all) of its income and food (4). Having control over the quality of self-produced food (and being confident that it is not contaminated) is becoming increasingly important for farmers around the world. However, the family farm is not only a place of production (5). It is also home to the farming family. It is the place they belong to, as much as the place that gives them shelter. It is the place where the family lives and where children grow up.

The farming family is part of a flow that links past, present and future (6). This means that every farm has a history and is full of memories. It also means that the parents are working for their children. They want to give the next generation a solid starting point whether within, or outside, agriculture. And since the farm is the outcome of the work and dedication of this and previous generations, there is often pride. And there can also be anger if others try to damage or even destroy the jointly constructed farm.

The family farm is the place where experience accumulates (7), learning takes place and knowledge is passed on, in a subtle but strong way, to the next generation. The family farm often is a node in wider networks in which new insights, practices, seeds, etc., circulate.

Tied to its environment

The family farm links past, present and future. Photo: Badstue / LEISA ArchiveThe family farm is not just an economic enterprise that focuses mainly, or only, on profits, but a place where continuity and culture are important. The farming family is part of a wider rural community, and sometimes part of networks that extend into cities. As such, the family farm is a place where culture is applied and preserved (8), just as the farm can be a place of cultural heritage.

The family and the farm are also part of the wider rural economy (9), they are tied to the locality, carrying the cultural codes of the local community. Thus, family farms can strengthen the local rural economy: it is where people buy, spend and engage in other activities.

Similarly, the family farm is part of a wider rural landscape (10). It may work with, rather than against nature, using ecological processes and balances instead of disrupting them, thus preserving the beauty and integrity of landscapes.

When family farmers works with nature, they also contribute to conserving biodiversity as we see in Andhra Pradesh and to fighting global warming. The work implies an ongoing interaction with living nature – a feature that is highly valued by the actors themselves.

Freedom and autonomy

The family farm is an institution that is attractive as it allows the farm family a relative degree of autonomy. It embodies a “double freedom”: there is freedom from direct external exploitation and there is freedom to do things in your own way.

In short, family farming represents a direct unity of manual and mental labour, of work and life, and of production and development. It is an institution that can continue to produce in an adverse capitalist environment,just as anaerobic bacteria are able to survive in an environment without oxygen (I am grateful to Raúl Paz from Argentina who coined this nice metaphor).

Why is it important?

Family farming carries the promise of creating agricultural practices that are highly productive, sustainable, receptive, responsive, innovative and dynamic.

Given all these features, family farming can make a strong contribution to food security and food sovereignty. It can strengthen economic development in a variety of ways, creating employment and generating income. It strengthens the economic, ecological and social resilience of rural communities. It offers attractive jobs to large parts of society and can contribute considerably to the emancipation of downtrodden groups in society.

Family farming can also consistently contribute to the maintenance of beautiful landscapes and biodiversity.

External threats

However, it may turn out to be impossible to effectively realise all these promises. This is particularly the case these days, when family farming is being squeezed to the bones and becoming impoverished.

When prices are low, costs are high and volatility makes medium or long term planning impossible, and when access to markets is increasingly blocked and agricultural policies neglect family farmers, and when land and water are increasingly grabbed by large capital groups – in such circumstances it becomes impossible for family farmers to provide positive contributions to society at large.

This is why we have now ended up in the dramatic situation that the land of many family farmers is laying idle. Or, to use a macro indicator, that 70% of the poor in this world today, are rural people.

Internal threats

There are internal threats as well. Nowadays it is en vogue to talk about the “need to make family farming more business-like”, in other words that it should be oriented towards making profits. Some even argue that this is the only way to keep young people in agriculture. According to this view, family farming should become less “peasant-like” and more “entrepreneurial”, and family farming in the global South should be subject to a similar process of modernisation that has occurred in the North.

A part of European agriculture has indeed changed towards entrepreneurial farming. This has effectively turned the family farm into a mere supplier of labour, at the expense of all the other features mentioned above. Formally, these entrepreneurial farms are still family farms, but in substance they are quite different. One major difference is that “real” family farms grow and develop through clever management of natural, economic and human resources, and through (inter-generational) learning. Entrepreneurial farms mostly grow through taking over other family farms. This tendency to enter into entrepreneurial trajectories is a major internal threat to the continuity and dominance of family farms. And we see it nearly everywhere.

Re-peasantisation

“Family farming represents a direct unity of manual and mental labour, of work and life, and of production and development.”

However, there are important counter-tendencies. Many family farms are strengthening their position and their income by following agro-ecological principles, by engaging in new activities, or by producing new products and new services – often distributed through new, nested markets.

Analytically these new strategies are defined as forms of re-peasantisation. They make farming more peasant-like again, but at the same time they strengthen the family farm, as can be seen in the example of re-peasantisation in Spain. Re-peasantisation is way of defending and strengthening family farming.

What is to be done?

The policy environment is extremely important for the fate of family farming. Although family farming can survive in highly adverse conditions, positive conditions can help family farming reach its full potential. This is precisely the reason that the policies of state apparatuses, multinational forums (such as the FAO, IFAD and other UN organisations), but also of political parties, social movements and civil society as a whole, are so important.

Policy can ensure that family farmers’ rights are secured and that sufficient investments are made in infrastructure, research and extension, education, market channels, social security, health and other areas. This provides farmers with the security to invest in their own futures, as recently reconfirmed by the prestigious High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition.

Strengthening rural organisations and movements is also of great importance. We have to keep in mind that, all around the world, family farmers are trying to find and unfold new responses to difficult situations. Thus, identifying successful responses, building on novel practices, communicating them to other places and other family farmers and linking them into dynamic processes of change must be central items on our agenda. In short: much needs to be done. The good news though, is that every step, no matter how small, is helpful.

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg is professor of Rural Sociology at Wageningen University and at China Agricultural University in Beijing.
E-mail: JanDouwe.Vanderploeg@wur.nl or visit www.jandouwevanderploeg.com

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Farming Matters | 26.2 | June 2010

Credit is often seen as an indispensable vehicle for the poor to get out of poverty, or as the tool that allows farmers to get access to new technologies, to increase productivity and their incomes. But many existing credit programmes often undermine farmers’ independence, tie them into dependency relationships, and oblige them to take all the risk. There are better ways to help farmers build their own resource base and independence.

The need for credit plays a key role in many sad realities. Take for example Peru, where many smallholder households are never far from hunger despite having fields laying idle which could well be worked, providing food and additional income to the family. What is lacking is the money to provide seeds and fertiliser, hire a donkey or tractor to prepare the land and pay for the irrigation water. No hay medios, as they say in Peru. “We don’t have the means.” Credit really does seem to be part of the way out of such a situation, even though the combination of credit, highly volatile markets and a risky climate has ruined many farmers before.

Many farmers have had to sell their resources to pay back previous loans and have outstanding debts that they cannot repay. For them credit is unobtainable as the banks consider them to be delinquents. Here we have one of the rural development dramas in a nutshell: credit got people into trouble, yet it is what they need to get out of trouble and they cannot obtain it anymore.

Autonomy and freedom

Farming always requires a multi-facetted resource base. Alongside land, water, animals, seed, fertiliser, labour, knowledge, buildings, instruments and networks, farmers need working capital. Often, this working capital comes from the savings created during previous cycles of production. In fact, farming is not only about using these resources in order to produce. It is as much about the reproduction and development of this resource base. During the process of production, the resources are reproduced. Heifers are bred to be at least as productive as the cows they are replacing. The fertility of the soil needs to be maintained – and preferably improved.

When harvesting potatoes, the seeds for next year need to be selected and put aside. All these resources carry the promise for good and hopefully better harvests in the future. This process of reproduction not only applies to the material resources, but also to social resources, the labour force within the family (and/or the wider community), to networks and knowledge. It also applies to working capital.

The resource base available to farmers is the result of previous cycles. It has been created through the sturdy work and the dedication of the farming family. As the outcome of their own labour it represents autonomy (or independence, as farmers themselves often say). It avoids the need to enter into dependency relations with others. The means needed to produce are at hand. Slicher van Bath, the great agrarian historian, referred to this as “farmer’s freedom”. He argued that this was a double freedom. First, it is freedom from dependency and associated exploitation. There is no need to rent land from a big landowner and no need to get a loan from a local lender requiring high interest payment. But there is also freedom to farm in a way that corresponds with the interests and prospects of the farming family. Others cannot prescribe how the farmer should operate. Farmers themselves design the way they want to farm and to develop their farms. “Freedom from” and “freedom to” are indispensable ingredients of a prosperous farming sector.

The history of farming can be seen as a struggle for autonomy, a struggle that occurs within single farms, but also takes place at the level of farming communities and farmers’ movements. Many co-operatives have grown out of such movements, including credit and savings co-operatives set up to address the credit issue.

Dependency and survival

The historically created and autonomous resource base is being threatened in many parts of the world. The squeeze on agriculture (increasing costs together with stagnating or even decreasing output prices), the urban bias in state policies and technological models that imply many external inputs, have all contributed to eroding the self-governed resource base.

Where once autonomy was central, there is now a wide and dense network of dependency relations on the input-side of the farm. These add to the dependency relations on the output-side of the farming. Very often, the former are considerably tightening the latter. Dependency on the capital market is a typical example.

Credit obtained from banks often links farms closely to agro-industrial groups. Agricultural co-operatives and individual smallholders in Peru, for instance, received loans from the Banco Agrario in the form of “permissions for withdrawal” which they could only use at the large agro-commercial companies to access prescribed seeds and agrochemicals. There was no possibility to use the credit in an alternative way for, say, cattle or fruit trees. These loans came with strings that specified which crops had to be grown, in what way and, especially, to whom they had to be sold. Thus, the credit mechanism closely tied farmers to the logic and needs of agro-industry. Through such tied credit the “freedom to” is nearly completely lost.

There are considerable differences between farms, regions and countries in the balance between autonomy and dependency. In some countries farmers and their institutions have far more autonomy over their resources. In many other countries, poor market conditions and adverse rural and agrarian policies have impoverished farmers and eroded their resource base. Despite this, some farms have been able to maintain – or to reconstruct – a strong resource base, often by minimising the use of external inputs and avoiding high financial burdens. The relevance of this strategy of “farming economically” becomes more evident in times of crisis, as these relatively autonomous farms are better placed to survive the difficult times.

Alternative mechanisms

But what is to be done when, for whatever reason, farm households get into trouble? Let us first scrutinise the different mechanisms that might be employed. At the level of the single farm there is a wide array of potential solutions. Informal credit (often between different farmers, where one of them contributes land and labour and the other the required capital), saving groups (such as tontines in several African countries) and social networks (for mutual help) are the first category.

Co-operation and an equal distribution of risks are important features of these strategies. This is in stark contrast with the unequal risk distribution entailed in formal credit. Secondly, there are mechanisms like multiple job holding (very important in Chinese agriculture), and temporary transnational migration (very important in considerable parts of Latin America and Eastern Europe, but also, not that long ago, in countries like Portugal). These mechanisms allow farmers to earn an income that they subsequently invest in their agricultural activities. In this way farmers construct their own working capital. Thirdly, there are new mechanisms based upon creating new economic activities within the farm (such as on-farm processing, direct marketing, agro-tourism, energy production, etc.) that can generate a considerable cash-flow and reduce the need for credit. The problem, though, is that considerable working capital is often needed to start up such new activities. But sometimes a step-bystep development is possible.

At the regional level, social movements may help considerably. The agro-ecological movement in Latin America for example, helps farmers to change to farm practices that require far less external inputs, and this may help to reduce dependency on capital markets. The same movements may also help to change rural and agrarian policies. The delivery of microcredit is another example – it is especially relevant for rural women and the very poor.

National policies that favour agriculture can also considerably help to strengthen the autonomous resource base of farms. Often these policies are far more effective. Brazil’s recent experiences are exemplary. The programmes for public procurement (that includes the distribution of school meals) are now increasingly linked to local small-scale farmers. At least 30 percent of the food purchased for these schemes has to be acquired locally from small-scale producers. This provides an enormous stimulus for farmers. Access to this newly created “market” means that they can considerably improve their livelihoods and build savings that subsequently help to improve their farming. The supply of school meals, rather than relying on supermarkets and/or large corporate farms, has been linked into an attractive and highly effective programme to strengthen the resource base of smallscale farmers.

The agenda

An autonomous base of selfcontrolled resources is essential for agricultural growth and the emancipation of the peasantry. However, the creation (or recovery) of such an autonomous resource base is hardly possible through existing formal credit mechanisms. Of course, credit can be helpful, but only under some conditions. First, it needs to be part of a wider programme that aims at strengthening the resource base of farms. Second, it needs to be untied so as to allow farmers to use it in the way they deem appropriate. Thirdly, the implied risk needs to be equally shared. Reviews of successful experiments may well reveal additional criteria. Just as farmers design ways of farming that carry the promise of progress, new credit mechanisms that can help them are crucial.

Text and photos: Jan Douwe van der Ploeg

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg is professor of rural sociology at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. His latest book, “New peasantries: Struggles for autonomy and sustainability in an era of empire and globalization” (Earthscan, London, 2009), has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Chinese. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg can be contacted at jandouwe.vanderploeg@wur.nl. He also has his own website: www.jandouwevanderploeg.com.

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