* Book: Reprendre La Terre aux Machines. Manifeste pour une autonomie paysanne et alimentaire. L'Atelier Paysan. Seuil, 2021

URL = https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/reprendre-la-terre-aux-machines-l-atelier-paysan/9782021478174

   - Un panorama historique de l’industrialisation de l’agriculture
   - Identifier les facteurs qui assurent le maintien d’un modèle agricole intensif
   - Les technologies agricoles
   - Pourquoi le bouillonnement d’alternatives n’est pas en mesure d'ébranler le complexe agro-industriel
   - Nous appelons à une repolitisation en profondeur du mouvement pour l’agriculture paysanne.” (p. 20)

Summary

Reading Notes

From the reading notes from Michel Bauwens, 2021:

- The main thesis of the book is that changes in consumptive practices and patterns will never be successful for achieving structural change in our agri-food system.

Introduction

The intro starts with an atmospheric description of a machine-making workshop, organized by the AP movement itself:

- “Ca discute de .. reprendre la terre aux machines. Les machines comme engins de guerre agricole, mais aussi comme machine économique, industrielle, bureaucratique.” (p. 8)

- Cette industrie .. profite de chaque choc pour se propager, éliminant les savoirs faire, la communauté paysanne, la biodiversité . Les plus pauvres d’entre nous .. souffrent de pathologies chroniques (diabète, hypertension, obésité, cancer), liées à l’alimentation industrielle.” (p. 8)

- “Le bilan d’un siècle d’industrialisation de l’agriculture … est catastrophique.” (p. 9)

But why is there no efficient counter-movement ? The old model is not challenged by the new consumption and organic production.

The quantity of used pesticides has not diminished in the last 10 years, but actually augmented! (+ 22% sales from 2009 to 2018, see note 5, p. 10). A football field of arable land is lost every 5 minutes, i.e. a french department every decade (see note 6). The number of farm workers is reduced by 2% every year. (note 7)

So AP no longer believes in the consumptive alternatives, as they act merely as a complement to agro-industry, never endangering it. Technological accumulation and dispossession continues. But advising govt is equally fruitless: without a social movement, there will be no radical change.

- (Le changement) “n’aura jamais lieu sans un rapport de force assumé, un conflit compliqué, dont nous allons dans ce livre tenter de définir les terrains prioritaires.” (p. 11)

- “Ce manifeste se veut une contribution à l'émergence d’un large mouvement populaire pour l’autonomie paysanne et alimentaire.” (p 11)

What does that mean ?

Food and agriculture must always be thought together, we must refuse capitalistic dualism of separating consumption from production. The de-pauperisation of urbanites and the generalisation of peasant agriculture must go together. This means a rejection of the post-World-War-II consensus, to produce the cheapest food possible. Modern agriculture is the result of specific choices we must now reject.

(The part of food in the family budget was 23.6% in 1960, and 12.4% in 2013, p. 8) -

70% of farming income consists of national and EU public funding, while half of the farmers have negative revenues. The system is no working as we need a more socialized agriculture, more isolated from the world market. (p. 13)

Because in France, as elsewhere:

- “L’agriculture a été la ‘fonction support’ du développement industriel!”

It's modernisation was the precondition for other 'modernized' sectors, but cheap food was also necessary to liberate budgets for more consumption. Industrialized agriculture is therefore intricately interwoven in both the production and consumption side of the capitalist economy.

Why does AP talk about food autonomy rather than sovereignty ? This is because the latter concept still carries a competitive undertone:

- “ ‘Souverain’ vient étymologiquement de l’adjectif latin ‘superus’, c.a.d. 'Supérieur', ‘qui surpasse tout’. Le souverain est celui qui est au-dessus de tous les autres.”

So the very notion of popular sovereignty has somewhat of a contradictory meaning. It combines the idea of popular self-government, with the idea of a state which decides for its subjects. It also refers to the right of certain people to dominate other people's (“Elle évoque l'idée qu’un peuple particulier qui a trouvé le moyen de dominer les autres, de se maintenir au-dessus d’eux dans la course à la puissance.”, p. 5)

By contrast,

- “L’autonomie est étymologiquement le fait de se donner à soi-même sa loi. Parler d’autonomie paysanne et alimentaire, c’est affirmer l’exigence de la délibération politique et populaire dans la production de l’alimentation.”

These discussions must also invite to collective reflections about self-limitation! (regarding the accumulation of land, use of technology, growth, etc ..). Do we always need bigger and better ?

In their workshops, they invite participants to examine all their 'dependencies', and to analyse which of them enslave them, and which emancipate them.

A machine that we cannot repair and is controlled by a monopoly, definitely enslaves us. A machine that I can repair with other, creating a social relationship in the process, can be in fact emancipatory.

The approach is not individualist, it relies on others, and while not striving for autarky, it does aim for more autonomy, and for freedom of a division of labor that enslaves us or is dependent on others. Very concretely, AP wants to install one million of such farmers in ten years in France.

But why talk about farmers (paysan) and not agriculturists (fr: agriculteurs) ?

- "Pourquoi parlons-nous d’autonomie paysanne, plutôt qu’agricole ?"

- “ ‘Paysan’ désigne une condition, dont l’inscription dans une communauté villageoise .. et la production de ses moyens de subsistance étaient des traits essentiels.” (p. 18)

So AP rejects agricultural 'entrepreneurship', and wants to recreate connected farmers, adapted to the epoch.

The politisation we will propose is centered around 3 policy demands:

   - “La fixation de prix minimum d'entrée pour les produits importés
   - La socialisation de l’alimentation (avec le projet d’une Sécurité Sociale de l’Alimentation)
   - Un mouvement de lutte contre la robotique agricole et pour une désescalade technologique.”

Chapitre 1: L’agriculture industrielle: un monstre mécanique qui a confisqué les terres aux humains (p. 23)

- “En 1789, … la France … était une nation de paysans .. Deux cents trente ans plus tard, l'écrasante majorité vit en milieu urbain. Moins de 10% en dehors de l’aire d’attraction d’une ville” (p. 25)

- "L'activité agricole est devenu absolument minoritaire: en 2016: 2.8% de la population active (754,000, donc 400,000 à leur compte.)” (p. 24)

So a question emerges: why have the peasants be sacrificed ?

There has always been, to a certain degree, a disdain for work by the urban elite:

- “La culture et la liberté sont du côté de la ville, à l'écart des champs, de la boue, et des étables. Le ‘vilain’, etait l’antonyme du ‘noble’.”

Once capitalism emerges and industrialization sets in, it seems clear there is a deliberate attempt to 'free' societies, from the work on the land. This is part of our civilization's imaginary of a liberation from hard work and hardship, as well as for a comfortable abundance.

- “L’espoir de voir disparaître une grande partie du travail agricole, est un élément central de ce fantasme.” (p. 28)

Authors in this vein always insist on abolishing the servitude towards work, the animals, and nature, but never to the banks, to loans, etc ... Progress is what delivers us from natural 'necessity'! This party of modernity is found left and right, Lenin and the Bolcheviks were as intent on destroying the peasantry.

- “Les tenants de régime et d'idéologies .. divers, ont le plus souvent convergé vers ces partis pris fondamentaux.” (p. 32)

The authors then cite many intellectuals with their disparaging remarks on the peasantry, which they see as a break to wished for processes of modernisation. This progressive intelligentsia was the handmaiden of economic rationality.

Petite Histoire du Machinisme Agricole

Mechanisation, though not the only factor, has played a substantial role in reducing the numbers and the culture of the peasantry. The first period of mechanization was a slow one, due to the lack of interest of the farmers, but also because of social and cultural resistance, as the new tech often entailed new dependencies.

AP mentions the opposition of Corsican farmers to a new type of mill in the 18th cy.

- “L’innovation .. qui suscite .. le plus de conflits (au 19ème siècle), 'c'est la batteuse mécanique" (p. 36)

This led to the revolt of Captain Swing around 1830. As with the Luddites, it was severely repressed.

The big breakthrough for industrial machinism was the introduction in the Midwest of the USA, of the tractor, an ideal way not only to compensate for the lack of labor during WWI, but to eliminate horses and mules, which needed 28% of acreage for their own food! Farmers buying one could double their acreage in just 2 years.

Eventually, these machinic developments would lead to the advent of the technocracy, such as the New Deal. In France, the policy to have machine coops purchase bigger tractors failed, leading to smaller ones in the context of family farms.

This cultural evolution accelerated in France, after WWII, under the impulse of social-christian 'personalistic' movements, led by Dominicans, such as Economie et Humanisme; and by Jesuits, such as the Action Populaire and its Projet magazine. The Centre d'Etudes Techniques Agricoles, brought neighbours together, to discuss technological adaptation (CETA) (p. 42)

- “C’est le début d’une identification de l’exploitant a son engin de base .. “

Unfortunately, it is less understood that it brings indebtedness and the integration of agriculture with industry. Young farmers saw this positively as a sign of inclusion and recognition, an end to the isolation of the farm world.

The role of agriculture in the new Keynesian and Fordist regulatory regime, was entirely subordinate: its own rationalisation and productivity gains had as primary objective to lower the price of food, so that consumers could spend the surplus in other sectors.

This new cycle may have been 'virtuous' for workers and consumers, but served to liquidate many farmers. This system was deployed between 1945 and 1962, with the tractor as its vehicle for change, due to an alliance between the government and farmer's unions, such as ENSEA and CNJA. Its immediate effect is the need and possibility to acreage. This requires money and investment, and therefore, debt, which in turn becomes a structural feature of agriculture life.

Regarding the effects of this on the previous diversity of polycultures ('modele classique de polyculture-elevage', p. 46): investing in all the machines necessary for this model is too costly. Hence: mono-culturalization became unavoidable:

- “Et l’engrais chimique remplace le fumier dans les régions de grande culture, au détriment de la vie des sols.” (p. 47)

This new type of agriculture, overturning millenia and centuries of practice, needed inputs from various industries, for seeds, pesticides, etc ... The commercial contracts often locked-in the farmers to the power of their suppliers. In many cases, they dictated the details of production to their clients, initiating new forms of servitude.

A first countermovement emerged against these trends in the 1970s: les "Paysans Travailleurs".

- “Ce nouveau syndicat .. dénoncent l'asymétrie absolue entre les firmes intégratrices et les exploitants intégrés." (p. 48)

This history, and actuality, is recounted in the book, "Le Paysan Impossible", by Yannick Ogor, in 2014.

Publisher's Summary (in French):

"Le temps joue pour nous : les AMAP, la Bio et les circuits courts apparaissent de plus en plus dans les médias comme dans nos assiettes – l’opinion publique est acquise. Si chaque consommateur change ses habitudes alimentaires, si chaque agriculteur se forme à l’agroécologie, alors la victoire est au bout de la fourchette. Ceci est une fable.

L’appel à la responsabilité individuelle, ce « chacun doit faire sa part », ne mettra jamais fin au modèle alimentaire industriel et marchand. Celui-ci est une machine à produire artificiellement au moindre coût, une machine à confisquer les savoirs et savoir-faire, à enrichir les industries technologiques, à déshumaniser.

Il est temps d’échapper à notre enfermement dans les niches d’un marché alimentaire réservé aux classes aisées et de reprendre entièrement la terre aux machines. Ce manifeste propose de sérieuses pistes de rupture.

L’Atelier Paysan accompagne la conception et le colportage des technologies paysannes. Les auteurs, paysans, syndicalistes et militants, sociétaires de la coopérative, font le constat que les alternatives paysannes, aussi incroyablement riches soient-elles, s’avèrent totalement inoffensives face au complexe agro-industriel, plus prédateur que jamais."

(https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/reprendre-la-terre-aux-machines-l-atelier-paysan/9782021478174 ) -

Taking Back the Land from the Machines

Contents