TRADICIONALES E IDENTIDAD CULTURAL
B.- La Identidad cultural como elemento educativo y social
Contract farming is a growing phenomenon on the African continent. Generally speaking, it is a way of organising agricultural production whereby smallholders are forced to supply produce to agro-industrial enterprises in accordance with the conditions specified in written or oral contracts. These enterprises, in turn, have to provide access to critical productive resources such as credit, inputs and technical assistance, as well as to processing facilities and an assured market outlet. Contract farming by large agro-industrial corporations has remained a controversial subject in the literature. It has been advanced by its advocates as a key strategy for rural transformation based on a dynamic partnership between smallholders and agro- industrial enterprises, and is said to offer opportunities for both parties. It provides agro-industrial enterprises with a regular supply of agricultural commodities at lower cost and risk than estate production does, and allows enterprises to present themselves as champions of regional development. At the same time, it enables participants to benefit from modern technology, marketing facilities and other services, and to boost their incomes. Significantly, it has found a prominent place in the IMF- and World Bank-inspired structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) for its potential to promote private-sector-oriented development and increase and diversify agricultural exports (Glover & Kusterer 1990; Little & Watts 1994; Grosh 1994).
Others are less convinced about the benefits of contract farming to smallholders. They reject the idea of equal partnership in these schemes, arguing that contract farming may subjugate the peasantry to increased control and exploitation by capital, leading to a peculiar form of proletarianisation (Feder 1977a, 1977b; Payer 1980). One of the most recent exponents of this theoretical tradition is Michael Watts. Drawing parallels between contract farming and the rise of flexible accumulation and subcontracting in advanced capitalist industrial organisation, Watts (1994: 64) concluded that contract
farming transforms peasants into de facto piece workers, ‘often
labouring more intensively (i.e. longer hours) and extensively (i.e. using children and other nonpaid household labour) to increase output and quality’. In a similar vein, Clapp (1994: 81) refers to contract farming as ‘a form of disguised proletarianisation: it secures the farmer’s land and labour, while leaving him with formal title to both’.
What these opposing views have in common is that they ignore the great diversity in types of contract farming relations. Their arguments are based mainly on schemes with more or less homogeneous peasant participation, while contract farming schemes often show a considerable measure of social differentiation, with the various strata of participants differing widely in their relationship with management, their recruitment of labour, their access to the company’s inputs and services, and their share in the incomes and benefits derived from these schemes. Moreover, contracts may vary from being exceedingly loose to very tight, resulting in different intensities of managerial control over participants’ production and exchange. As a consequence, participants could more realistically be placed on a continuum ranging from autonomous producers to de facto proletarians (Gibbon 1997: 62-63).
Given this huge diversity, Little (1994: 217-18) suggested that it would be more useful to focus on the actual content of contracting relations and the motives and power relationships of the contracting parties rather than seeking blanket conclusions about contract farming as a generic institution. In addition to general market instability, he perceived the highly unequal power relationships in most of the existing schemes as a major threat to their long-term
control gives rise to various forms of resistance by the contract farmers, including withdrawal from the scheme, a search for alternative markets, and even violent demonstrations and strikes, all of which jeopardise the scheme’s viability. He therefore urged the introduction of intermediary organisations, such as farmers’ cooperatives, which could represent the interests of producers. Such organisations have been generally weak or absent in contracting schemes in Africa and elsewhere and contract farmers have proved even more difficult to organise than plantation workers. Plantation workers work and live together and are thus more likely to discuss their common interests than contract farmers who work and live more in isolation (Paige 1975). Moreover, contract farmers are inclined to maintain good individual relationships with management and expect certain favours in return, rather than organising with other growers (Glover 1984). Little & Watts (1994) found that multinational agro-industrial enterprises, such as British American Tobacco (BAT), strongly opposed official grower representation and threatened to withdraw from local production if contract farmers attempted to organise into cooperatives. However, even when contract farmers are able to overcome obstacles to organisation, they usually lack the necessary power and autonomy to influence decision making (Clapp 1994: 82; Porter & Phillips-Howard 1997). Several contract farming schemes have been created in Cameroon over time and the CDC and Pamol played a pioneering role in the establishment of contract farming schemes in Anglophone Cameroon. The ‘old’ CDC scheme and the Pamol scheme were both characterised by weak management control and supervision over the labour process and a large measure of social differentiation. Becoming increasingly dissatisfied with managerial lack of control over the processes of production and exchange, the CDC management introduced a ‘new’ scheme in 1977 that was devised and sponsored by the World Bank and other foreign financiers. This aimed at establishing a more homogeneous farming group, focusing on low-income rural groups rather than the richer, more progressive smallholders, with strict managerial control over participants’ production and exchange.
The CDC and Pamol contract farmers demonstrated their ability to organise in defence of their interests against management and the state. Dissatisfied with the allegedly low producer price offered by
the CDC, the participants in the ‘old’ CDC contract farming scheme were the first to organise into a cooperative. In 1986, during the serious crisis in the agro-industrial sector, they were followed by the Pamol contract farmers, with both cooperatives being created and dominated by larger farmers. While the latter claimed that the newly created cooperatives would defend the interests of all contract farmers, they were primarily concerned with guarding their own interests. Strikingly, the participants in the newer CDC contract farming scheme were precluded by management from forming a cooperative.
As in most other African countries, the performance of the Anglophone Cameroonian contract farmers’ cooperatives has proved to be disappointing. The unprecedented crisis in the agro- industrial sector revealed the cooperatives’ weaknesses and unequal bargaining position. Contract farmers were highly dependent on the large agro-industrial enterprises for the delivery of inputs and transport, as well as for the purchase and marketing of their produce. When management was no longer able to render these services during the crisis, the cooperative executive lacked the power to force them to stick to the terms of the contract. Even petitioning the state for intervention on the behalf of contract farmers proved futile in a situation where agro-industrial enterprises faced serious marketing and liquidity problems.
Disillusioned with the performance of their leadership, cooperative members have, like unorganised contract farmers, been inclined to resort to collective and informal modes of resistance. Some refused to adhere strictly to the scheme’s regulations and to maintain their farms properly, while others even abandoned the scheme altogether. Most, however, tried to sell their produce on alternative markets where they were paid more promptly. Such informal actions by contract farmers were widespread in Africa and elsewhere (Konings 1993b; Little & Watts 1994). More conspicuous displays of displeasure included political strikes, demonstrations and other collective forms of resistance by contract farmers, such as the violent confrontations that took place in the Bakolori scheme in Nigeria (Beckman 1985).