The Development of Agriculture

a) European agriculture

Agriculture has also had its part in the technical progress of these last twenty years. The improvement of agricultural machinery, the application of fertilizers, the perfection of breeding and the rotation of crops, as well as the closer association between agriculture and industry, have increased the productivity of tillage and livestock.

In spite of this however the agriculture of Central and Western Europe has not been for a long while able to satisfy the demand for food products needed by these countries. Besides, in the industrial states there is an incessant shift of the farming population towards industry. In almost all these countries, the proportion of the population occupied in farming has sunk rapidly. For each 100 workers, there were employed in farming or forest service:

Percentage of workers employed in agriculture

Belgium

in 1890

in 1900

Germany

in 1895

in 1907

England

in 1891

in 1901

Holland

in 1889

in 1899

Norway

in 1891

in 1900

Austria

in 1890

in 1900

Sweden

in 1890

in 1900

Switzerland

in 1888

in 1900

Hungary

in 1890

in 1900

The figures of these different states cannot be compared with each other, because they have been obtained using different methods. However they show that in every country the farming population decreases while the industrial one increases. Only in Italy and in Denmark has the agricultural population increased in relation to the general population. In France, the census of 1906 shows a percentage of 42.7% for the land workers against 41.8% in 1901. But this is because of a more accurate interpretation of the figures, in which members of the family helping during the harvest have also been included.

The population of the cities and of industrial territories grows more quickly than that in the rural centres. The agricultural population, in spite of the increase of its work productivity, can no longer cover the needs of the industrial popular masses for tillage products and livestock. The industrial states of Western and Central Europe must therefore import from abroad an ever-increasing proportion of the necessities of life and raw materials, to satisfy their needs.

Countries which till a little while ago were exporting these necessities of life, have now themselves become dependent on foreign imports. Thus, for instance, Austria-Hungary. The following figures will show how these States evolve from exporting to importing grain.

Imports of grain

Exports of grain

Million crowns

In 1892

In 1902

In 1910

In 1911

In 1912

The agricultural states of Eastern Europe are first called upon to cover the needs for imports of the industrial states of Western and Central Europe. Nature has favoured these states with a fertile soil, the produce of which could feed the whole of Europe. But the strength of the social relations there prevent them taking advantage of the natural riches hidden in the earth. The cultivation of the soil is entrusted to poor and ignorant people, whose holdings are too small, their education too lacking, their way of thinking too conservative to be able to follow rational cultivation and pastoralism. To show how backward the agriculture of the East European countries is, it will suffice to give a comparison of their yield per hectare with the yield per hectare in West and Central European countries.

A hectare of wheat yielded in 1911-1912:

Western and Central Europe

Eastern Europe

Cwt.

Cwt.

Belgium

Bosnia

Bohemia

Bulgaria

Germany

Galicia

England

Rumania

Ireland

Russia

Holland

Serbia

Sweden

Hungary

The development of Russian agriculture has the greatest importance for the supply to Europe of the necessities of life. The surface of exploitable lands for agriculture in the European Russia is greater than that of all the rest of Europe combined.

The foundation of the Russian agriculture was obtained through a monstrous spoliation of the Russian peasants, the so-called tsarist ‘peasants’ emancipation’ of 1861. The ‘emancipated’ Russian peasants received, on average, no more than 3.2 dessiatines (1 dessiatine equals 1.09 hectare). It is true that the peasants’ lands during the next forty years, either through purchases, or through lease-holding, increased by 20%. But it is also true that the population grew from 45 to 85 millions. The restriction of peasants’ lands has caused an enormous waste of the forces of nature and of production.

Since the peasants received a small area of land, they were compelled, in order to supply the growing population with grain, to plough as much as possible of this land. Fallow land decreased. The nutritious substances which are thus taken away from the soil, are not given back to it, and the ground is soon exhausted. This exhaustion is increased through the insufficiency of fertilizers. At the time of their ‘emancipation’ the peasants received too little pasture ground. Since then cattle breeding has been declining. On a thousand dessiatines of land, there were in 1880: 655 heads of work animals; in 1890: 631; in 1900: 602. The diminution of fallow land, and of the use of fertilizers caused the irrational working of the farms. In the nineties, the produces of communal grounds (Mir) remained on average 17% behind the needs of the peasants’ food, if we accept to represent this need by 19 puds per head (a pud equals to 16.38 kilogram).

But not only were the resources of the soil squandered, the labour force was also wasted. In the countryside the increasing rural population has been unable to find employment. According to an official statement, a labour force of only 11 million was needed for the crop of 1900 but 44 million were available!

The intensity of agriculture was checked through the dependence of each peasant on the Mir, through the parcelling out of the soil into a quantity of small intermixed grounds, through the joint-security for the payment of heavy taxation on the communal ground, through the tsarist legislation of 1893 which forbids the farmer to mortgage his land and thus prevents him undertaking any improvement and throws him into the hands of usurers; but it was above all checked through the misery of the farmers and through the limited technical knowledge of these peasants kept in ignorance and far from civilization by the tsarist government.

Will this hurtful state of things be mitigated through the agrarian reform which the Russian government, under pressure of the revolution, has begun? One must wait and see. Until now the Russian agriculture has not been able, in any way, to cover the needs of the industry of Western and Central Europe. The system of tsarist government prevents it taking advantage of the natural riches of Eastern Europe. And that is why Europe is compelled to depend on the countries across the seas, especially on America, for the importation of the necessities of life.

b) American Agriculture

During these last years, the American population has increased by 16 millions. A small part of this increase is agricultural; the greater part however poured into industry, mines, commerce and transport. From 1900 to 1910 the population of the cities has had an increase of 11.8 millions whereas that of the rural districts only one of 4.1 millions. While the whole of the population has experienced a growth of 21%, the number of farms has only increased by 10.9%; the totality of farm lands by 4.8% and the improved surface within these farms by 15.4%. Until 1900 the number of farms and the expansion of farm lands grew more quickly than the population, but now the growth in the number of farms and the expansion of their area is less than the increase of population. The mighty and swelling American industry has overwhelmed agriculture in its struggle to capture the labour force.

According to a statement of the Department of Agriculture, the totality of land susceptible of being cultivated is already occupied: there is no longer a piece of land, susceptible of exploitation, which has not found its owner. Doubtless a great many of these lands, are still unimproved. But their cultivation demands ever higher expenditure. Even on the old, already cultivated grounds, cultivation becomes increasingly more expensive. Wages, owing to the scarcity of rural hands, increase. The rural proprietors owing to a greater intensity of capital (improved machines, greater use of fertilizers, etc.) must try to get a greater yield from the land. Moreover, the exhaustion of the lands in the Eastern States, forces a continuous improved rotation of crops. While, on one hand, the area of cultivable lands grows very slowly, on the other hand, the intensity of production on the old lands, causes an increasingly higher cost of production.

At the same time the relations between agriculture and livestock are shifting. Till now in the extensive prairies of the West pasture prevailed. The cattle were kept there till two or three years of age and then brought to the East where they were fattened. Now however agriculture is extending to the West. Irrigation and dry farming make cultivation possible on the arid ground of the prairie. Wherever the land is enclosed and the water sources are seized by settlers, extensive pastoralism must cease. The limitation of pasture grounds causes either the diminution of animal husbandry in general, or the substitution of the extensive exploitation of pasture through an intensive livestock rearing with barns and winter forage. This, of course, causes high costs.

The decline of the prairie cattle breeding has had for consequence that the cattle-fatteners who live in the territories where the maize is grown, have been unable to obtain the necessary quantity of cattle at cheap prices. And that is why the Eastern States themselves are compelled to breed the cattle which are to be fattened. In order to get pasture, they are compelled to limit cereal tillage.

The results of these agricultural changes are as follows:

1. The area of cereal cultivation does not increase very much. If it is true that agriculture is extending to the West, it is also true that on many lands cereal cultivation is limited in favour of forage. But, as at the same time, the demand for grain in the United States increases rapidly owing to the enormous increase of population, there is always less grain for export. This is shown by the following figures:

Wheat yield

Wheat exports

in 1,000 tons

While in 1901 41% of the crops could be exported and in 1902 31%; in 1909 it was only 17% and in 1910 it remained but 7% of the crop available. The United States, formerly the world’s grain granary has now become an industrial state, which needs an increasingly larger portion of is crops to feed its own people. If the great grain surplus of the United States of America was in the seventies a cause for the fall in world prices for the necessities of life, today, the gradual disappearance of this surplus is one of the causes of the high cost of living.

2. The United States can only deliver to the world market a proportion of their crops – the latter increasingly becomes smaller – and it is now provided at higher prices. The prices of the grain is determined by the cost of production on the worst lands under cultivation; the low cost of production on the best land does not lower prices, but simply guarantees to the proprietors of the land a differential rent. Now, the best kind of land is long since cultivated and the expansion of the American agriculture is above all directed to the arid Western areas. These need extensive irrigation works, the use of dry farming, that is to say a high cost of production as well as expensive transport prices, and that produces the rise of grain prices. The average price of a bushel of American wheat, which in 1895 was $0.58, reached $1.02 in 1909 and 1910, and in 1911 $1.93!

3. As agriculture has expanded into arid territories, the growth of livestock does not keep pace with the increase of population. To each 100 inhabitants there were in 1880: 79 oxen and 98 pigs; in 1912: 60 oxen and 60 pigs. As a consequence we see a constant decrease in livestock exports. In 1905, 567,000 oxen were exported, in 1910 but 139,000. The exportation of meat and milk produces reached:

In million marks

In 1901

In 1905

In 1910

If therefore, in general, there is a decrease in livestock, the breeding and fattening through the transformation of the prairie pasture breeding into intensive breeding comes much too high. Thence an increase of price on all breeding produces.

The period when the great surplus of North American tillage and pasture was available in the world market at low prices has vanished. Other countries are about to take the position formerly occupied by the United States. These are young colonies with immense areas of virgin soil at their disposal. Above all Canada and Argentina. But the development of these countries is not taking place quickly enough to compensate Europe for the decrease of the export of the necessities of life from America. Sure enough, a powerful stream of emigration from Eastern and Southern Europe empties itself into America, but only a portion of this stream discharges itself into the agriculture of Canada and Argentina to clear lands and extend cultivation. The mass of emigrants is attracted by the industry and mines of the United States. The process of industrialisation has also taken hold of the European emigrant. The ‘flight from the fields’ or the ‘lack of hands’ in European agriculture also find their counterpart here, since the agricultural colonies do not attract enough people for the rapid expansion of agriculture, the European emigrants being pulled towards North American industry. The expansion of agriculture becomes still more difficult if the attraction of emigrants to agriculture is hindered through property relations, as for instance in Argentina, where latifundia prevent agricultural development.

c) Industry and Agriculture

Industry has experienced in the last twenty years a very fast development. The demand for raw materials and for the necessities of life has considerably increased. Yet, the development of agriculture and livestock has been slower than this development. This disproportion is one of the causes of the high cost of living. Since agricultural production does not satisfy the demand of the industrial countries, the prices of grain, forage, cotton, livestock, skins, hides and wool have increased.

It is not nature’s parsimony that causes agriculture in the industrial states to be unable to deliver the quantity of raw material and necessities of life which their people could consume at unchanged prices. The world’s agricultural production could be considerably increased, even with the extent of production and transport reached today.

According to Ballod, one could, for instance, double the surface of the world’s lands capable of growing wheat. Moreover the production per hectare could be, as the comparison between different countries has shown us, greatly increased. The expansion of agricultural production is not prevented through unchangeable natural obstacles but through social obstacles, which can be removed.

The mode of capitalist production is based on the private property of land. Society lets man produce the necessities of life, without giving him the knowledge or the necessary means to draw everything possible from the soil. On the greater part of the inhabited earth the agricultural technique which is used is total contrast with possible agricultural technique, the result of modern science.

The private property of the means of production causes the anarchy of the capitalist mode of production.

Society abandons to the capitalists the task of investing their capitals into the branch of industry which they choose, and it lets the workers use their labour power in the branch of production which they desire. The anarchy of the mode of production brings always with it the disproportion in the production. For instance, the international trade of these last decades has collected capital and labour forces into the cities and industrial areas of Europe and America, without bothering whether, at the same time, the production of the necessities of life or of raw materials for the needs of these increasingly numerous masses, was increasing to the same extent.

Through the rise of the world’s prices, society sees that it cannot increase the number of cotton spindles with impunity, without increasing at the same time and in the same proportion the cultivation of cotton. It cannot either gather together proletarian masses into industrial centres with impunity without letting the cultivation of grain and stock grow to the same extent.

The high cost of living places international socialism therefore before its real task, that is to say supplying the populace with everything needed, freed from dependence on the economic power of private individuals as well as from their desire for profit, raising production and distribution to the rank of social functions, incorporating all workers into the service of organised society and then distributing them into all branches of production, in proportion in which society needs their labour power.