Contribution to a renewed framework for analysing the interactions between family and capitalist agriculture

Abstract

We examine whether current assumptions concerning the declining resilience of family farming and the growing influence of capitalist forms of agricultural production are being confirmed in the cocoa sector of Cameroon and the coffee sector of Kenya. This study is based on surveys of 181 family and capitalist farmers. Our results indicate that the capitalist approach is being consolidated on former colonial coffee estates in Kenya and on the cocoa pioneer front in Cameroon. This study also shows that in areas with a long history of family farming, family forms are showing good resilience due to a diversification of activities and sources of income, especially nonagricultural ones, and the patrimonialization of the land. Finally, this study proposes a framework for analysing the interactions between family and capitalist agriculture and their respective multisectorial strategies. For family farming, these strategies are based on work force mobility, whereas for capitalist agriculture, they are based on financial capital mobility.

Socio-environmental success or failure of Extractive Reserves in the Amazon?

“…For example, did the economic situation cause cattle price increases by 120% the rubber fall 88% and the Brasil chestnut 32% (Wallace et al, 2018). This context is influenced by regional agents, challenges the family farming model (Pédelahore et al, 2020), and involves new local contractual relations (Cochet, 2008;Harff & Lamarche, 1998). This reaffirms the influence of the external environment, market forces, the social organization of agents (White, 1981;Liljenberg, 2005;Steiner, 2007;Capelari et al, 2020), the structure of network capitalism and socioeconomic relations (Boltanski & Chiapello, 1999;Granovetter, 2000;Bolčić, 2014), and the dynamics of the cultural, social and economic life of the agents of the RESEXs (Steiner, 2005;Allaire, 2010).…”