22-24 May, 1995
Wageningen, the Netherlands

AGRARIAN QUESTIONS: THE POLITICS OF FARMING ANNO 1995

CONGRESS THEME
The congress wants to discuss political and theoretical questions regarding
the changing position and organisation of agricultural production. What are
the major processes affecting agriculture towards the end of the twentieth
century?

Agriculture and the quality of rural life are characterized by uneven
development all over the world. Among the various forms of agriculture, one
extreme is low output farming combined with poverty, unemployment,
marginalisation and the degradation of natural resources; while the other
extreme is highly productive farming associated with environmental
pollution, farmers pushed out of agriculture and budgetary and trade
problems caused by overproduction. An important trend is that the location
of strategic decision making continues to shift from nominally independent
family farmers to agro-industrial corporations that organise the chains
that link agricultural production through processing and distribution to
consumption. The sources and effects of these processes are not socially
neutral, nor amenable to solution by ostensibly technical policy measures.
They are shaped (i) by social and spatial differences: unequal division of
resources, labour and income, structured by class, gender, ethnicity and
region, (ii) by variations in availability, access and use of technology,
and (iii) by an increasing global patterning of production and consumption.
These developments, even so briefly and incompletely sketched, suggest that
agriculture is an arena of pervasive struggles over livelihoods and
profits, over power and policy, over technical change and its social and
environmental consequences. Do transformations of technology and production
methods, of the social organisation of farming, of patterns of investment,
trade and consumption, amount to a crisis of agriculture, as some maintain?
If so, whose crisis is it? Is the current "crisis" a manifestation of new
forces and conditions? An outcome of long established dynamics? Or a
combination of both? What can be done about the contradictions of
contemporary agriculture? By whom, in whose interests, and how?
The congress addresses these questions; it aims to clarify current agrarian
struggles and the social processes generating them, how we understand these
processes, and how we might act on them. In short, the congress raises
"agrarian questions".

THE CONGRESS HAS THE FOLLOWING SUBTHEMES:
1. The social and technological regulation of agricultural production,
addressing questions about the regulation of farming to various mechanisms
of the state, (inter)national markets and agro-industrial technology.
2. Power and the agricultural labour process, concentrating on changes in
the agricultural labour process, their causes and their impact on class,
gender and generational relations within farming production units.
3. Agrarian transformation and environmental degradation. Sustainability
has become a major issue on the political agenda of agrarian change, but
the question how to combine issues of sustainability and environment with
issues of poverty, livelihoods and relations of production remains.
4. Patterns of consumption and agrarian developments, investigating the
contradictory trends of global food production, distribution and
consumption.

TARGET GROUP
The congress brings together social and technical scientists with an
interest in the agricultural labour process and agrarian change, and
activists and policymakers from various backgrounds, working in different
(non-)governmental organisations with an interest in theoretical and
political questions.

PROGRAMME
Monday May 22; Agrarian questions: old and new
Keynote addresses: Terry Byres, School of Oriental and African Studies,
London; Jab Douwe van der Ploeg, Wageningen Agricultural University; Bina
Agarwal, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi

Tuesday May 23; The politics of agricultural technology
Keynote addresses: Jack Kloppenburg, University of Wisconsin-Madison;
Victor Toledo, Centro de Ecologia, Mexico; Susanna Hecht, University of
California, Los Angeles

Wednesday 24; Strategy and struggle
Keynote addresses: James Scott, Yale University, New haven; Mahmood
Mamdani, Centre for Basic Research, Kampala; Jan Breman, Centre for Asian
Studies, Amsterdam/ISS, the Hague

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
The congress will be held at the Wageningen International Conference
Centre. The number of participants will be limited to 225. The registration
fee is Dfl. 400,-. For students and PhD researchers a reduction of the fee
is possible. For a limited number of participants from Asia, latin America,
Africa and eastern Europe grants are available to cover the expenses of
travel, boarding and lodging and congress fee. The congress language is
English. The closing date for submission of abstracts was July 15, 1994,
but registration for the congress is still possible, till December 31,
1994.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
The Congress Office, Wageningen Agricultural University
Agrarian Questions Conference, c/o Joost Meulenbroek
P.O.Box 9101
6700 HB Wageningen, The Netherlands
Tel: (+31) 8370 82029
Fax: (+31) 8370 84884
Telex NL 45015
E-mail MEULENBROEK@RCL.WAU.NL