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Structural Retardation and the Modernization of French Agriculture: A Skeptical View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Vernon W. Ruttan
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The structural retardation hypothesis locates the source of stagnation in French agriculture primarily within agriculture — inthe economic, political, and sociological consequences of a peasant system of agricultural production. It is argued in this paper that the poor performance of French agriculture from the 1870s to the 1940s is to be found in the limited opportunities for agricultural growth provided by the French economy. Evidence suggests that the slow growth in demand for agricultural output, the slow growth in demand for labor by the non-agricultural sector, and the limited investment in the institutional infrastructure to support agricultural development were the primary sources of stagnation.

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Articles
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 714 - 728
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1978

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References

1 Kindleberger, Charles P., “Group Behavior and International Trade, journal of Political Economy, 50 (02. 1951), 30–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 37.

3 The annual rate of increase of 0.76 between 1880 and 1930 apparently represented a substantial decline from an annual rate of growth of approximately 1.1 percent per year during the period 1820–1880. See Newell, William H., “The Agricultural Revolution in Nineteenth Century France,” this Journal, 33 (12. 1973), 697–731. For a more cautious interpretation of French agricultural growth in thefirsthalf of the nineteenth century, seeGoogle ScholarGrantham, George W., “Scale and Organization in French Farming, 1840–1880,” in European Peasants and Their Markets, Parker, William N. and Jones, Eric L., eds. (Princeton, 1977), pp. 292–236Google Scholar; and Grantham, George W., “The Diffusion of the New Husbandry in Northern France, 1815–1840,” this Journal, 38 (06 1978)Google Scholar.

4 The structural retardation hypothesis in the English-language literature on French agricultural development dates at least to the first edition of Clapham, J.H., The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815–1914 (Cambridge, 1921). Clapham insisted that “Nothing has happened since the sixties of the nineteenth century to alter materially the framework of French rural society” (p. 160). He summarized his review of the progress in French agriculture with the comment“…when all has been said, and however thefiguresare handled, it remains true that largely no doubt, owing to the extent and character of her peasant agriculture, she is behind her neighbors in arable fanning. And it might be added that, excellent as her dairy farming is, it is inferior to that of Denmark” (pp. 177–78). Clapham is, however, somewhat ambiguous in his view of technical progress in French agriculture between 1815 and 1914: “The most important reservation to be appended to the story of ruralprogress is that, in view of the possibilities of modern scientific agriculture, this progress was not so great as it might have been” (p. 177). Grantham has presented a more recent interpretation of the structural retardation hypothesis: “The survival of peasant farming was until recently a distinguishing characteristic of French agricultural organization. The persistence of a large number of small and poorly equipped farms retarded the technical transformation of French agriculture in this century, and has imposed substantial costs on French and Common Market consumers by way of inefficient schemes of income maintenance, mainly through subsidies and price supports. The most widely accepted explanation of the hardiness of peasant farming in France stresses the wide distribution of property that had emerged by the end of the eighteenth. century and the reluctance of French farmers to leave farming for other occupations” (“Scale and Organization,” p. 293)Google Scholar.

5 Cameron, Rondo, France and the Economic Development of Europe, 1800–1914 (Princeton, 1961), p. 27Google Scholar; Hohenberg, Paul, “Change in Rural France in the Period of Industrialization, 1830–1914,” this Journal, 32 (03 1972), 219–40; andGoogle ScholarRoehl, Richard, “French Industrialization: A Reconsideration,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (07 1976), pp. 233–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 This section draws very heavily on Wade, William W., Institutional Determinants of Technical Change and Agricultural Productivity Growth: Denmark, France, and Great Britain, 1870–1965 (doctoral diss., Univ. of Minnesota, 1973). See alsoGoogle ScholarRuttan, Vernon W., Binswanger, Hans P., Hayami, Yujiro, Wade, William W., and Weber, Adolf, “Factor Productivity and Growth: A Historical Interpretation,” in Induced Innovation: Technology, Institutions and Development, Binswanger, Hans P. and Ruttan, Vernon W., eds. (Baltimore, 1978), chap. 3Google Scholar.

7 Estimates of the income elasticity of demand for food at the farm level (supplier food) are lower than at the retail level since the demand for marketing services tends to be higher than the demand for supplier food. Most national level estimates of income elasticity of demand for all food are based on food expenditure estimates which include varying amounts of supplier food and retail food. In the United States the income elasticity ofdemand for food during the 1929–56 period has been estimated to fall in the 0;4–0.6 range at the retail level and in the neighborhood of 0.15 at the farm level. See Daly, Rex F., “Demand for Farm Products at the Retail and the Farm Level,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 53 (09. 1958), 656–68Google Scholar. In Japan the income elasticity ofdemand for food at theformlevel during the interwar period (1922–1937) has been estimated in the 0.3–0.4 range. Kaneda, Hiromitsu, “Long Term Changes in Food Consumption Patterns in Japan,” in Agriculture and Economic Growth: Japan's Experience, Ohkawa, Kazushi, Johnston, Bruce F., and Kaneda, Hiromitsu, eds. (Tokyo, 1969), pp. 398–433. Estimates for several European countries of demand elasticities at the retail level, summarized by Stevens, typically fall in the 0.5–0.75 range and suggest farm level elasticities in the 0.3–0.4 range during the 1880–1930 period. SeeGoogle ScholarStevens, Robert D., Elasticity of Food Consumption Associated with Changes in Income in Developing Countries, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Economic Report No. 23 (Washington, 1965)Google Scholar.

8 Between 1880 and 1900 agricultural prices declined in both current and real terms. Between 1900 and 1920 real pricesfluctuatedat near the levels of 1900. Between 1920 and 1930 real prices of agricultural products again declined. See Tracy, Michael, Agriculture in Western Europe: Crisis and Adaptation since 1880 (London, 1964) andGoogle ScholarFarnsworth, Helen C., “Determinants of French Grain Production, Past and Prospective,” Food Research Institute Studies 4 (1964), pp. 225–72Google Scholar.

9 I am not, however, completely able to share Hohenberg's enthusiasm: “French agriculture fed France… better than any country has been fed before or since. The quality and quantity of French produce … were directly related to the character of French agriculture: small scale, marked regional diversity, heavy use of labor …, reluctance to abandon the land, and continued reliance on informal, pre-industrial technology” (“Change in Rural France,” p. 238). It is fairly recent, however, that large numbers of French peasants were able to participate in the high quality of food consumption that their labor made available to urban consumers. They tended to sell what could be marketed and consume what the market would not take. See Weber, Eugene, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, 1976), pp. 130–45Google Scholar.

10 The Ministry of Agriculture was not established until 1881. In the 33 years between 1881 and 1914 there were 42 different governments and 19 different Ministers of Agriculture. Most Ministers of Agriculture were doctors or lawyers with little interest or commitment to agriculture. It was not until after World War II that effective agricultural research and extension programs were instituted in France. Government efforts after the first World War to establish an agricultural research service were abolished in 1935 as an economy measure. An effort in the late 1920s by the Ministry of Agriculture to establish an extension service was eliminated from the budget by the Assembly. See Wright, Gordon, Rural Revolution in France (Palo Alto, Cal., 1964), pp. 18, 34. See alsoGoogle ScholarTracy, Michael, Agriculture in Western Europe (London, 1964), p. 81. Imperfections in the rural credit market, primarily the failure to develop an effective institutional credit market in rural areas, meant that land transfers and the acquisition of capital equipment depended primarily on the ability of the peasant or farm family to generate internal savings. This implied a shadow price for capital substantially in excess of the market rate of interest (Google Scholar, Grantham, “French Farming,” p. 323)Google Scholar.

11 While thefocusof this note is on the period since 1880, evidence presented by William H.Newell suggests that demand also represented a serious constraint on agricultural production during the earlier period of relatively rapid growth between 1820 and 1880. During this period the high rates ofgrowth in agricultural output and productivity occurred near the growing urban industrial centers where there was a strong demand for the products of labor intensive mixed farming. Newell, William H., “the Agricultural Revolution,” pp. 725–29Google Scholar.

12 , Clapham, Economic Development, pp. 173, 174.Google Scholar

13 Carre, J.J., Dubois, P., and Malinvaud, E., French Economic Growth (pStanford, 1975), pp. 1–16, 431–37. Malinvaud and his colleagues indicate considerable uncertainty about the sourcesGoogle Scholar of the poor performance of the French economy during the last part of the nineteenth century. “Although the French slowdown in the last third of the nineteenth century was partly provoked by the slump in agriculture—and without doubt aggravated by economic policy—did it also stem from earlier weaknesses in our institutions? We cannot ofcourse make any pronouncement on this point, but our feeling is that this period, more than any other, deserves the attention of economic historians ” (p. 15).

14 Dovring, Folke, “Les Recensements agricoles francais,” Bulletin mensuel de statistique (Institute National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques pour la Metropole et la France D'Outre-Mer), Supplement (Avril-Juin, 1955).Google Scholar