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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | The political economy of capitalist agriculture in the central rainlands of Sudan |
| Author: | O'Brien, Jay |
| Year: | 1983 |
| Periodical: | Labour, Capital and Society |
| Volume: | 16 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 8-32 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Sudan |
| Subjects: | political economy large farms |
| Abstract: | Mechanised farming projects in the rainlands of Sudan are the planned sites of rapid expansion in food production. Knowledge of their development has so far been dominated by misconceptions regarding the supposed vast extent of empty arable land into which they can expand and the progressive nature of the production process involved. The present paper clarifies these misconceptions through an examination of the dynamics of capitalist expansion and the conditions of profitability in rainfed agriculture in the central clay plain of Sudan through the 1970s. Since its inception in the 1950s, this type of private, large-scale capitalist farming has been characterised by an extremely deleterious ecological impact and by even more damaging social consequences. Local populations, particularly pastoralists, have been uprooted and pushed into increasingly marginal rainfall zones. Income distribution has become steeply skewed, and the rapid accumulation of capital by investing merchants, as well as by government and military pensioners participating in the mechanised schemes, has led not to the formation of a dynamic productive investment fund but to increased investment in monopolistic trade and transport businesses and speculation in urban real estate. Notes, tab. French sum. |