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Globalized agriculture; Political choice
Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 12, No, 4, pp. 45t-456, 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain 0743-0167/96 $15.00 + 0.00
Pergamon
Book Reviews Globalized Agriculture; Political Choice, Richard Le Heron, 235 pp., 1993, Pergamon Press, Oxford, £12.99 pbk, ISBN 0-08-040803-6, hbk ISBN 0-08-040804-4 In 1987 Bowler and Ilberry in an article entitled 'Redefining Agricultural Geography' called for greater emphasis on agricultural restructuring and the prevailing political economy of agriculture within the corporate urban state. In this volume, in the Pergamon 'Policy, Planning and Critical Theory Series', Le Heron has taken up this challenge, has developed and seeks to exemplify an integrative model or 'globalization perspective' for agriculture as it has developed within the western developed economies. In doing so he demonstrates a strong grasp of the wide-ranging political economy literature and its relevance to the development and current circumstances of agriculture in developed countries. The 'perspective' allows an interesting interpretation of many aspects of western capitalist agriculture, including a range of economic, technological, institutional and regulatory changes that are taking place and which Le Heron identifies as very much part of the reality and, consequently, the policy context of his 'globalized agriculture'. The book has two broad sections; the first (Chapters 1-4) is largely theoretical, presenting the model framework for a 'globalized agriculture'; the second (Chapters 5-8) seeks to exemplify the manner in which the model operates in respect of selected regions (U.S.A., EU, Australasia) and through the GATT. The conclusion (Chapter 9) emphasizes the requirement that global policy must recognize both the model and the reality of 'globalization' as Le Heron has presented it. Herein lies the major problem, at least for this reviewer; namely the narrow and idiosyncratic view of globalization. This is not necessarily to criticize what is included, but to be constantly aware of what is not. It is arguable that the globalization of agriculture goes back to the major Arab and post-Columbian diffusions of agricultural elements and technology; that a major rationale for and ongoing result of colonialism (and neo-colonialism) was/is the globalization of agricultural production; and, not least, that increasing attention to and documentation of the world food and agriculture situation is a manifestation of the globalization of agriculture, including the overriding concern with the gross misallocation of the fruits of agricultural activity between parts of the 'global village'. In contrast, Le Heron offers a much narrower, albeit richly detailed interpretation. He does not attempt to describe nor incorporate a global perspective. 'Globalization' is described entirely within the context of capitalist, industrial agriculture and its regulatory frameworks, and while it is never made explicit, there are strong implications that the model does not apply outside this context; a somewhat disturbing paradox.
The primary purposes of Le Heron's model of 'globalized agriculture' are to describe the historical sequence of development and of policy responses by agro-industrial capitalist agriculture in North America, Western Europe and Australasia. Political economy analysis is employed to describe and explain recurrent restructuring crises, including the present one involving greater integration or 'globalization'. Major emphasis is placed on the policy frameworks which have characterized earlier stages of development and the changing nature of agricultural regulation, especially the roles of national and international agencies. The context of a changing set of circumstances is presented in Chapter 1, which outlines the increasing complexity of capitalist industrial agriculture, including the shifts in policy away from national regulation to trade liberalization, and the potential impacts of biotechnology. The model is initially presented in Chapter 2 ('A Globalization Perspective'). It presents a chronological sequence of 'regimes of accumulation' whereby capital accumulation by developed agriculture moved from a late 19th century extensive stage, through a 'restructuring crisis' in the 1920s and 1930s, to an 'intensive' stage (1940s-1970s). This was followed by another 'restructuring crisis' in the 1980s and 1990s, the resolution of which is integrated agri-food system or globalized agriculture'. A key resultant is the increased internationalization of capital which, in turn produces more complex relationships between the nation state and international elements, including MNCs and TNCs, and continues to alter the conditions of land and labour. The model is extended, albeit only in general terms, to identify a range of concerns, especially the changing nature of national and international regulation. The chapter also discusses what are identified as 'the internationalization of the environment' and a 'global consumption culture'. Despite the terminology, however, the 'global context' never extends beyond the developed, capitalist world. This narrow interpretation of 'global' continues throughout the rest of the book. In Chapters 3 and 4 which deal with 'Economic Processes and Agriculture' and 'Agriculture and Regulation', respectively, the agriculture referred to is solely that of the western world and the discussion of approaches to regulation centres almost entirely on the context of the western developed nation state. This is somewhat surprising, given the underlying historical model of recurrent crisis and adaptation. Especially during the most recent period, since 1945, capitalist agriculture has operated within a global context which has included widespread (and industrialized) socialist agriculture, a shift from overt colonial to neo-colonial control of key exports from the Third World, and the establishment of global agricultural organizations such as FAO (never mentioned in this text). The discussion of economic change in the 'First World', while it does
452
Book Reviews
identify the changing balance of elements within industrialized agricultural systems, it fails to emphasize sufficiently the increasing concentration of production among a minority of farmers, the marginalization of the majority, the decline of the rural fabric, and the oligopolarization of agribusiness in domestic as well as the international context. Likewise, there is no mention of the neo-colonial role of governments and/or MNCs or TNCs in the agricultural economies of developing countries (i.e. export vs domestic food sectors). Le Heron places particular emphasis on the regulation of agriculture both to define and to underline the relevance of the 'globalization perspective' to future policy making (Chapter 4). However, although he identifies the need for a revisionist interpretation, he retreats into jargon-loaded 'regulation theory', rather than actually describing the seachange to monetarization and 'liberalization' that have been the dominant themes over the last decade. The problem that this causes is that, in his subsequent discussion of regulation in key regions, there are no real points of reference with which to link theory and reality. This last theoretical chapter does introduce the useful concept of emerging 'food regimes' but despite stating that 'the food regime concept is a particularly powerful organizing idea (which) forces a complete reconceptualization of the dimensions of world food production and consumption' (p. 78), there is no attempt made to deal with the world situation. Rather, the rest of the book is confined to an examination of selected developed capitalist regimes and of the development of the GATT almost exclusively within that context. The second part of the book which seeks to illustrate the 'globalization perspective' comprises a set of individual reviews which, while they support the limited 'global model' of restructuring capitalist systems and the importance of the regulatory framework to their interprestion, are generally too summary in nature. The review of the 'U.S. Model of Agricultural Regulation' (Chapter 5), while illustrating the particularistic and hypocritical nature of U.S. policy dominated by special interest groups and partisan congressional politics, is surprisingly uninterested in the related set of international and global institutional relationships. PL 480 is given perfunctory treatment and USAID none; the chapter virtually ignores the increasingly dominant role of agribusiness (whether MNCs or TNCs) at both the domestic and global levels; and, perhaps most surprisingly, given the latter emphasis on the GATF, there is no discussion of the Canada-U.S. or North American Free Trade Agreements. Chapter 6 attempts to deal with 'The EC and the Common Agricultural Policy'. Here the topic is just too complex for Le Heron's summary review to do it justice. In contrast, in Chapter 7, the treatment of the sequence of events in New Zealand obviously benefits from the author's own detailed research. This may be the most valuable part of the book, although Le Heron himself admits that New Zealand remains an anomaly. Australia, however, also included in the chapter, receives negligible attention. The final 'case study' dealing with the GATT (now WTO - - the World Trade Organization) is also disappointing, not because of any lack of understanding of the GATT itself, but because at no time is there any mention of any parallel attempts at global agricultural regulation, namely the commodity agreements or attempts to advance the 'New International Economic Order' which, arguably, were as significant to the majority of
global agricultural exporters as is GATT to capitalist industrialized agriculture. Lastly, although the concluding statement (Chapter 9) seeks to re-integrate theory and case study and broaden the geographic context, without any explicit recognition or characterization of the majority of global agricultural activity, both the 'globalized agriculture perspective' and the policy prescription based on it, are unconvincing. Having indicated what seems, to this reviewer, to be missing, one must add that this is the response to a forceful, uncompromising statement. Le Heron argues his case strongly and the book could be read with profit by those seeking interpretation of western industrial agriculture and by those seeking guidance into the political economy of agriculture in the corporate urban state.
MICHAEL J. T R O U G H T O N
Department of Geography University of Western Ontario Reference Bowler, I. R. and Ilberry, B. W. (1987) Redefining agricultural Geography. Area 19, 327-333.
The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape, Michael Bunce, 232 pp., 1994, Routledge, London, £45 hbk, £13.99 pbk As a student of change in the countryside, I found Michael Bunce's The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape at once edifying and frustrating. A work in the vein of humanist geographers such as Tuan (1974), Meinig (1979) and Relph (1981), it presents a broad and rather over-general summary of current thought about the relationship between 'modern urban civilization' (p. 206) and the rural countryside. His purpose is 'to broaden the analysis of the countryside ideal by exploring the relationships between its cultural origins and its manifestation in contemporary landscapes (p. 2). To do so he welds the tools of historical analysis, symbolic interpretation and an examination of cultural landscapes (p. 2). And therein lie both the strengths and weaknesses of this book. The strengths are many, and not to be slighted. Bunce once and for all lays out the intertwined relationship of Western urban cultures and their symbolic and actual rural hinterlands. He makes it clear that one cannot think of rural landscapes without understanding their many roles in the geographic imaginary of urban civilizations. Individual chapters explore the idealized countryside from the perspectives of the 'Making Of An [cultural] Ideal', 'The Armchair Countryside', 'A Place In The Country', 'The People's Playground', 'The Country In The City', and 'The Countryside Movement'. This is, in many aspects, a work of Urban Geography transposed to the country. Of particular merit are the chapters exploring the growth of literary notions of the countryside ideal, the role of the various preservationist movements in capturing the public imagination and forging notions of the value of rural
Pergamon
Book Reviews Globalized Agriculture; Political Choice, Richard Le Heron, 235 pp., 1993, Pergamon Press, Oxford, £12.99 pbk, ISBN 0-08-040803-6, hbk ISBN 0-08-040804-4 In 1987 Bowler and Ilberry in an article entitled 'Redefining Agricultural Geography' called for greater emphasis on agricultural restructuring and the prevailing political economy of agriculture within the corporate urban state. In this volume, in the Pergamon 'Policy, Planning and Critical Theory Series', Le Heron has taken up this challenge, has developed and seeks to exemplify an integrative model or 'globalization perspective' for agriculture as it has developed within the western developed economies. In doing so he demonstrates a strong grasp of the wide-ranging political economy literature and its relevance to the development and current circumstances of agriculture in developed countries. The 'perspective' allows an interesting interpretation of many aspects of western capitalist agriculture, including a range of economic, technological, institutional and regulatory changes that are taking place and which Le Heron identifies as very much part of the reality and, consequently, the policy context of his 'globalized agriculture'. The book has two broad sections; the first (Chapters 1-4) is largely theoretical, presenting the model framework for a 'globalized agriculture'; the second (Chapters 5-8) seeks to exemplify the manner in which the model operates in respect of selected regions (U.S.A., EU, Australasia) and through the GATT. The conclusion (Chapter 9) emphasizes the requirement that global policy must recognize both the model and the reality of 'globalization' as Le Heron has presented it. Herein lies the major problem, at least for this reviewer; namely the narrow and idiosyncratic view of globalization. This is not necessarily to criticize what is included, but to be constantly aware of what is not. It is arguable that the globalization of agriculture goes back to the major Arab and post-Columbian diffusions of agricultural elements and technology; that a major rationale for and ongoing result of colonialism (and neo-colonialism) was/is the globalization of agricultural production; and, not least, that increasing attention to and documentation of the world food and agriculture situation is a manifestation of the globalization of agriculture, including the overriding concern with the gross misallocation of the fruits of agricultural activity between parts of the 'global village'. In contrast, Le Heron offers a much narrower, albeit richly detailed interpretation. He does not attempt to describe nor incorporate a global perspective. 'Globalization' is described entirely within the context of capitalist, industrial agriculture and its regulatory frameworks, and while it is never made explicit, there are strong implications that the model does not apply outside this context; a somewhat disturbing paradox.
The primary purposes of Le Heron's model of 'globalized agriculture' are to describe the historical sequence of development and of policy responses by agro-industrial capitalist agriculture in North America, Western Europe and Australasia. Political economy analysis is employed to describe and explain recurrent restructuring crises, including the present one involving greater integration or 'globalization'. Major emphasis is placed on the policy frameworks which have characterized earlier stages of development and the changing nature of agricultural regulation, especially the roles of national and international agencies. The context of a changing set of circumstances is presented in Chapter 1, which outlines the increasing complexity of capitalist industrial agriculture, including the shifts in policy away from national regulation to trade liberalization, and the potential impacts of biotechnology. The model is initially presented in Chapter 2 ('A Globalization Perspective'). It presents a chronological sequence of 'regimes of accumulation' whereby capital accumulation by developed agriculture moved from a late 19th century extensive stage, through a 'restructuring crisis' in the 1920s and 1930s, to an 'intensive' stage (1940s-1970s). This was followed by another 'restructuring crisis' in the 1980s and 1990s, the resolution of which is integrated agri-food system or globalized agriculture'. A key resultant is the increased internationalization of capital which, in turn produces more complex relationships between the nation state and international elements, including MNCs and TNCs, and continues to alter the conditions of land and labour. The model is extended, albeit only in general terms, to identify a range of concerns, especially the changing nature of national and international regulation. The chapter also discusses what are identified as 'the internationalization of the environment' and a 'global consumption culture'. Despite the terminology, however, the 'global context' never extends beyond the developed, capitalist world. This narrow interpretation of 'global' continues throughout the rest of the book. In Chapters 3 and 4 which deal with 'Economic Processes and Agriculture' and 'Agriculture and Regulation', respectively, the agriculture referred to is solely that of the western world and the discussion of approaches to regulation centres almost entirely on the context of the western developed nation state. This is somewhat surprising, given the underlying historical model of recurrent crisis and adaptation. Especially during the most recent period, since 1945, capitalist agriculture has operated within a global context which has included widespread (and industrialized) socialist agriculture, a shift from overt colonial to neo-colonial control of key exports from the Third World, and the establishment of global agricultural organizations such as FAO (never mentioned in this text). The discussion of economic change in the 'First World', while it does
452
Book Reviews
identify the changing balance of elements within industrialized agricultural systems, it fails to emphasize sufficiently the increasing concentration of production among a minority of farmers, the marginalization of the majority, the decline of the rural fabric, and the oligopolarization of agribusiness in domestic as well as the international context. Likewise, there is no mention of the neo-colonial role of governments and/or MNCs or TNCs in the agricultural economies of developing countries (i.e. export vs domestic food sectors). Le Heron places particular emphasis on the regulation of agriculture both to define and to underline the relevance of the 'globalization perspective' to future policy making (Chapter 4). However, although he identifies the need for a revisionist interpretation, he retreats into jargon-loaded 'regulation theory', rather than actually describing the seachange to monetarization and 'liberalization' that have been the dominant themes over the last decade. The problem that this causes is that, in his subsequent discussion of regulation in key regions, there are no real points of reference with which to link theory and reality. This last theoretical chapter does introduce the useful concept of emerging 'food regimes' but despite stating that 'the food regime concept is a particularly powerful organizing idea (which) forces a complete reconceptualization of the dimensions of world food production and consumption' (p. 78), there is no attempt made to deal with the world situation. Rather, the rest of the book is confined to an examination of selected developed capitalist regimes and of the development of the GATT almost exclusively within that context. The second part of the book which seeks to illustrate the 'globalization perspective' comprises a set of individual reviews which, while they support the limited 'global model' of restructuring capitalist systems and the importance of the regulatory framework to their interprestion, are generally too summary in nature. The review of the 'U.S. Model of Agricultural Regulation' (Chapter 5), while illustrating the particularistic and hypocritical nature of U.S. policy dominated by special interest groups and partisan congressional politics, is surprisingly uninterested in the related set of international and global institutional relationships. PL 480 is given perfunctory treatment and USAID none; the chapter virtually ignores the increasingly dominant role of agribusiness (whether MNCs or TNCs) at both the domestic and global levels; and, perhaps most surprisingly, given the latter emphasis on the GATF, there is no discussion of the Canada-U.S. or North American Free Trade Agreements. Chapter 6 attempts to deal with 'The EC and the Common Agricultural Policy'. Here the topic is just too complex for Le Heron's summary review to do it justice. In contrast, in Chapter 7, the treatment of the sequence of events in New Zealand obviously benefits from the author's own detailed research. This may be the most valuable part of the book, although Le Heron himself admits that New Zealand remains an anomaly. Australia, however, also included in the chapter, receives negligible attention. The final 'case study' dealing with the GATT (now WTO - - the World Trade Organization) is also disappointing, not because of any lack of understanding of the GATT itself, but because at no time is there any mention of any parallel attempts at global agricultural regulation, namely the commodity agreements or attempts to advance the 'New International Economic Order' which, arguably, were as significant to the majority of
global agricultural exporters as is GATT to capitalist industrialized agriculture. Lastly, although the concluding statement (Chapter 9) seeks to re-integrate theory and case study and broaden the geographic context, without any explicit recognition or characterization of the majority of global agricultural activity, both the 'globalized agriculture perspective' and the policy prescription based on it, are unconvincing. Having indicated what seems, to this reviewer, to be missing, one must add that this is the response to a forceful, uncompromising statement. Le Heron argues his case strongly and the book could be read with profit by those seeking interpretation of western industrial agriculture and by those seeking guidance into the political economy of agriculture in the corporate urban state.
MICHAEL J. T R O U G H T O N
Department of Geography University of Western Ontario Reference Bowler, I. R. and Ilberry, B. W. (1987) Redefining agricultural Geography. Area 19, 327-333.
The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape, Michael Bunce, 232 pp., 1994, Routledge, London, £45 hbk, £13.99 pbk As a student of change in the countryside, I found Michael Bunce's The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape at once edifying and frustrating. A work in the vein of humanist geographers such as Tuan (1974), Meinig (1979) and Relph (1981), it presents a broad and rather over-general summary of current thought about the relationship between 'modern urban civilization' (p. 206) and the rural countryside. His purpose is 'to broaden the analysis of the countryside ideal by exploring the relationships between its cultural origins and its manifestation in contemporary landscapes (p. 2). To do so he welds the tools of historical analysis, symbolic interpretation and an examination of cultural landscapes (p. 2). And therein lie both the strengths and weaknesses of this book. The strengths are many, and not to be slighted. Bunce once and for all lays out the intertwined relationship of Western urban cultures and their symbolic and actual rural hinterlands. He makes it clear that one cannot think of rural landscapes without understanding their many roles in the geographic imaginary of urban civilizations. Individual chapters explore the idealized countryside from the perspectives of the 'Making Of An [cultural] Ideal', 'The Armchair Countryside', 'A Place In The Country', 'The People's Playground', 'The Country In The City', and 'The Countryside Movement'. This is, in many aspects, a work of Urban Geography transposed to the country. Of particular merit are the chapters exploring the growth of literary notions of the countryside ideal, the role of the various preservationist movements in capturing the public imagination and forging notions of the value of rural