Browsing by Author "Dubb, Alex"

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    45% of black South Africans want land
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2013) Hall, Ruth; Dubb, Alex
    A comprehensive study of the demand for land carried out in 2005/6 reveals that one third of black South Africans want access to land for food production, and another 12% want land for a variety of other reasons (Aliber et al, 2006). Nearly half (48%) of those wanting access to land, want only 1 ha or less.
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    Commodity Study: Small-Scale Sugar Production
    (GTAC, 2020-03-31) Dubb, Alex
    The South African sugar industry has long been one of South Africa’s most substantial agro-industries. The South African Sugar Association (SASA) estimates that around R16bn in value is annually created by 85,000 directly employed and 350,000 indirectly employed persons, and ultimately with approximately one million rural lives dependant on these jobs. Every 1,000 hectares (ha) in sugarcane land, the industry estimates, carries an average of 133 permanent and 210 seasonal jobs (SASA 2019; SASA 2019 pers. comm.).1 2 In addition to its sheer magnitude, the sugar industry is distinct from other agro-industries by the inclusion in the 1970s of substantial numbers of black small-scale sugarcane growers (SSGs), farming predominately under ‘communal’ or ‘customary’ tenure. The inclusion of small-scale black growers in a ‘formal’ value chain has been variously attributed to systems of rotating credit (SASYB 1974/5), the command of land resources by traditional authorities and of production processes by miller sugar producers (Vaughan 1992a, Vaughan 1991), and opportunities to accumulate by ‘contractors’ providing planting, harvest and haulage services (Vaughan 1992b, Munro 1996).
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    The distribution of land in South Africa: An overview
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2013) Walker, Cherryl; Dubb, Alex
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    Dynamics of decline in small-scale sugarcane production in South Africa: Evidence from two ‘rural’ wards in the Umfolozi region
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2014-05) Dubb, Alex
    Using evidence from two rural wards in the Umfolozi region, this paper critically investigates the dynamics and constraints of small-scale sugarcane production under conditions of decline. The rapid decline in small-scale sugarcane production was historically underwritten by regulatory reforms that paired processes of enhanced representational inclusion with measures of rationalisation, resulting in deteriorating terms of exchange and the retraction of intensive interventions in production by sugar millers (Dubb 2013). Together with drought, these changes severely undermined the efficiency of capital services offered by local tractor-owning contractors and the productivity of small growers as a whole, while social grants have acted as a barrier to intensifying the exploitation of neighbours. The resultant cost-price squeeze has rendered cane an increasingly unattractive site of investment of labour and wages, and witnessed the severe decline or exit of most growers. For some, social grants have nonetheless provided a consumptive base from which to commit homestead labour without drawing down on cane proceeds, and hence enabled them to ‘hang in’ or marginally ‘creep-back’ into production. Only contractor-growers have managed to increase production, but this in turn is premised on the precarious cross-subsidization of their dual enterprises.
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    Interrogating the logic of accumulation in the sugar sector in Southern Africa
    (2016) Dubb, Alex
    Introduction to regional patterns of sugar production accumulation by way of data analysis for key (formerly ‘South African’) firm Illovo across 6 countries  ‘Centrifugal’ logic throws-up a diversity of routes of accumulation, and different broad political compacts, despite focusing on a single company, (monolithic?) commodity and region  Detailed case studies to provided by SSRN in special issue of Journal of Southern African Studies
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    Interrogating the logic of accumulation in the sugar sector in Southern Africa
    (Taylor & Francis, 2017) Dubb, Alex
    Over the last 20 years sugar production in southern Africa has been characterised by both the geographic dispersal and the heightened concentration of (formerly) South African sugar capital. This paper argues that key variations in the contours of corporate accumulation in the region can be explained through dynamics generated by two sets of interacting variables: (i) the changing productivity of sugar manufacturing and sugar cane cultivation, and the interaction between them, and (ii) shifting terms of pricing and exchange, as governed by mercantile politics. An arithmetic model for the analysis of data is applied in the case of Illovo Sugar. It shows that high profits in Malawi are due to both favourable mercantile and productivity features; that Mozambican profits come exclusively from mercantilism; that Tanzania, Swaziland and especially Zambia owe their relative profitability to particularly high levels of productivity, and that South Africa, Illovo’s country of origin, receives low profits in both mercantile and productivity terms. These differences are rooted in value relations, which are core to understanding accumulation in sugar. The paper argues that, although the logic of sugar is somewhat unique, the approach to the analysis of accumulation adopted here has wider application.
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    Many land reform projects improve beneficiary livelihoods
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2013) Cousins, Ben; Dubb, Alex
    Many land reform projects have improved the incomes and livelihoods of those who received land – despite inadequate government support for planning and production, and in the face of severe resource constraints.
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    Not enough state land to meet land reform targets
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2013) Kleinbooi, Karin; Dubb, Alex
    Arguments that state land should be used to meet land redistribution targets are misleading. Very little state land is suitable for this purpose. Official data from 2002 show that only 2% of the total of 12.6 million ha of state-owned land is suitable for land reform.
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    Patterns of accumulation in South Africa’s grain-livestock complex: raising questions of agrarian structure
    (2017) Dubb, Alex
    • What is the grain-livestock ‘complex’ (GLC)?: – ‘Complex’ rests on the key linkage between maize and soya key inputs and central cost ingredients in production of feed for intensive livestock production (pigs, chickens beef). – Central to ‘Food Regime’ analyses, linking agro-food capitals in different countries/regions by trade, such as US and Europe (Friedman and McMichael), China and Argentina. – Also increasingly important to theorizations hidden environmental cost of agriculture and its centrality to agro-industrial accumulation (Weis; Moore) – Of growing centrality to the wider social reproduction of labour and capitalist development, e.g. ‘meatification’ of diets; ‘nutrition transition’
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    The political economy of sugar in Southern Africa – introduction
    (Taylor & Francis, 2017) Dubb, Alex; Scoones, Ian; Woodhouse, Philip
    In this introductory paper we review historic and contemporary development of sugar cane production across the southern Africa. We argue that the region’s sugar industry provides a useful lens through which to understand current dynamics of corporate capital and agricultural production in Africa. We identify three distinct elements of political-economic analysis: first, the operation of logics of capital investment in different settings; second, the nature of state policies and politics in different national contexts; and third, local processes of production, accumulation and livelihoods, including effects on labour and social differentiation. The paper draws on the empirical cases from seven southern African countries presented in this collection. It highlights the rapid concentration of corporate control by three South African companies over the past decade, but also a diverse set of outcomes contingent on local context. This is particularly evident in the nature of ‘outgrower’ sugar cane production which is found in all cases but constituted in different places by quite different social categories in terms of wealth and scale of production. We argue that common stereotypes of corporate investment as either ‘win–win’ or as a ‘land grab’ rarely apply. Rather, the nature and outcomes of ‘outgrower’ systems needs to be understood as a manifestation of context-specific political-economic relationships between corporate capital, national governments and a variety of local holders of capital, land and labour.
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    The rise and decline of smallscale sugarcane production in South Africa: A historical perspective
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2013-12) Dubb, Alex
    South Africa’s sugar industry has long been distinguished by its large number of small-scale sugarcane growers (SSGs) farming on ‘communal’ land and its peculiar, privately administered regulatory structure. In recent years, however, the number of small-scale growers has declined precipitously from a peak of around 50 000 in the early 2000s to fewer than 14 000 in 2011, a trend attributed by many to the impacts of drought. Over the same period, South Africa’s sugar milling companies have been investing heavily in countries to the north, heralding substantial shifts in patterns of national and corporate production. As Brazilian sugar imports begin to penetrate the domestic market, the industry’s organizing regulatory framework is also set to change, after more than 10 years of confidential negotiation. A re-appraisal of the structure of the industry, and in particular of the role of SSGs within it, is thus overdue. This paper argues that the relationship between the rise and fall of small scale sugarcane production and the industry’s governing regulatory structure is closer than usually appreciated. Critically, the emergence of SSG production in the late 1970s to the early 1980s can be traced to industry-subsidised initiatives, disguised as micro-credit, which brought commercially inalienable Bantustan land into cane production under strong miller oversight. From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, however, the elimination of these subsidies encouraged millers to withdraw from direct oversight and to subcontract farmer support, while simultaneously instigating an increase in SSG numbers by removing restrictions on grower registration. Enduring drought must certainly be understood as an important proximal factor in the rapid decline of SSGs in the 2000s, but their rapid increase in the first place was structurally fragile. In particular, these processes reflected SSGs shifting structural relationships to South African sugar milling and planting capital. Understanding these changes thus requires locating them within a longer-term historical drama characterised by crisis and competition, and driven by key contradictions of South African capitalism during and after ‘late’ apartheid.
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    Social reproduction of ‘classes of labour’ in the rural areas of South Africa: contradictions and contestations
    (Taylor & Francis, 2018) Cousins, Ben; Dubb, Alex; Hornby, Donna; Mtero, Farai
    Marxist agrarian political economy has focused largely on the problematic of accumulation and its politics, but the dynamics of social reproduction in rural contexts remain somewhat undertheorised. These are explored through consideration of empirical evidence from communal areas and land reform farms in South Africa. Key arguments advanced are that social reproduction in such contexts include the reproduction of distinctive forms of marriage, systems of kinship and community membership, as well as of property relations that are not characterised by private ownership. Much social reproduction occurs outside of (direct) market relations, but it is nevertheless deeply conditioned and shaped by the dynamics of the wider capitalist economy, including in relation to wage labour and small-scale agricultural production. As a result, social reproduction in rural areas involves contradictions, tensions and contestations, and these are often at the centre of local forms of politics. The wider significance of these findings is discussed, and it is suggested that similar dynamics may be at work across the Global South.
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    Social reproduction, accumulation and class differentiation: Small-scale sugarcane growers in Mtubatuba, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2012-12) Dubb, Alex
    This paper argues that the rise and decline of small-scale sugarcane grower (SSG) production in KwaZulu-Natal must be historically located within a changing structural relationship with miller-processors, in turn conditioned by shifts in regulatory frameworks. Critically, the emergence of SSG production in the late-1970s–1980s can be traced to industry-subsidised initiatives disguised as micro-credit which brought commercially inalienable Bantustan land into cane production with strong miller oversight. From the late 1980–1990s, however, the elimination of these subsidies encouraged millers to withdraw from direct oversight and to subcontract support to farmers, while simultaneously instigating an increase in SSG numbers by removing restrictions on grower registration. Enduring drought must certainly be understood as a central proximal factor in the rapid decline of SSGs, but their rapid increase in the first place was structurally fragile. This paper further strives to provide insight into the shifting class dynamics of SSGs under constrained conditions of production, utilising survey data from seventy SSG homesteads and life-history interviews in two rural wards of the Umfolozi region. Although proceeds from sugarcane have represented an important source of cash-income for homesteads, deteriorating terms of exchange and barriers to expansion in land and capital have placed a greater emphasis on sparse off-farm income opportunities for stabilising consumption and enabling limited re-investment in production. The centrality of income-diversification for simple reproduction and limited accumulation has rendered the dynamics of social differentiation both unstable and reversible. The paper concludes by exploring the implications for agrarian reform policy.
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    Social reproduction, accumulation and class differentiation: small-scale sugarcane growers in Mtubatuba, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
    (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2012) Dubb, Alex
    This paper argues that the rise and decline of small-scale sugarcane grower (SSG) production in KwaZulu-Natal must be historically located within a changing structural relationship with miller-processors, in turn conditioned by shifts in regulatory frameworks. Critically, the emergence of SSG production in the late-1970s–1980s can be traced to industry-subsidised initiatives disguised as micro-credit which brought commercially inalienable Bantustan land into cane production with strong miller oversight. From the late 1980–1990s, however, the elimination of these subsidies encouraged millers to withdraw from direct oversight and to subcontract support to farmers, while simultaneously instigating an increase in SSG numbers by removing restrictions on grower registration. Enduring drought must certainly be understood as a central proximal factor in the rapid decline of SSGs, but their rapid increase in the first place was structurally fragile. This paper further strives to provide insight into the shifting class dynamics of SSGs under constrained conditions of production, utilising survey data from seventy SSG homesteads and life-history interviews in two rural wards of the Umfolozi region. Although proceeds from sugarcane have represented an important source of cash-income for homesteads, deteriorating terms of exchange and barriers to expansion in land and capital have placed a greater emphasis on sparse off-farm income opportunities for stabilising consumption and enabling limited re-investment in production. The centrality of income-diversification for simple reproduction and limited accumulation has rendered the dynamics of social differentiation both unstable and reversible. The paper concludes by exploring the implications for agrarian reform policy.
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    The value components of contract farming in contemporary capitalism
    (Wiley, 2018) Dubb, Alex
    Contract farming (CF) has generally been understood as, essentially, a market institution—by both (approving) “mainstream” and (critical) “radical” perspectives. Analyses of relations of production have, meanwhile, tended towards a problematic “peasantist” frame, where contracts undermine farmer “autonomy” in processes of “flexible” corporate agro‐industrial restructuring. This paper argues that a materialist analysis of CF from within capital–labour relations offers a stronger conceptual foundation for re‐synthesizing questions of market‐power. It first argues that radical notions of “peasant subsumation” conceptually mirror Marx's “formal subsumption of capital” but underplay dynamics of “real subsumption” accompanying capitalism's wider development. Drawing on the “petty commodity production” concept, it then argues that CF's “flexibility” rests in its differential content. CF's fungibility to contradictory movements of “integration” and “dispersion” enables it to emphasize different methods of surplus appropriation under shifting conditions; each corresponding to a different dominant social tendency. On the one hand, conditions of market expansion inspire integration for relative surplus appropriation through raised productivity, and CF tends to act as a “tool of proletarianization” in the wider centralization of capital. On the other, conditions of contraction motivate the dispersal of unvalorized capital, prompting efforts to raise absolute surplus appropriation, and CF tends to act as a “tool of differentiation” to concentrate agricultural capital.
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    What are the real implications of reopening land claims?
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2014) Cousins, Ben; Hall, Ruth; Dubb, Alex
    The Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act of 2014 has reopened the land claims process for another five years, extending the deadline to 2019. An impact assessment commissioned by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) anticipates that an estimated 397 000 new claims will be lodged, at a potential outlay of R130–179 billion (DRDLR, 2013) – possibly three times the cost of the arms deal. These are expensive and controversial measures. Some see them as appropriate and necessary for pro-poor land reform while others view them as highly problematic – especially members of rural communities whose claims have not been settled in the sixteen years since 1998, when the deadline for lodging land claims expired. A slow and administratively cumbersome process of land restitution has done little to support the wider objective of transforming racially-skewed patterns of land ownership. Many of the new claims will be settled with cash compensation, and thus be even less likely to achieve these objectives. The Act is likely to pit claimants against one another in overlapping and competing claims, and allow unscrupulous traditional leaders opportunities to manipulate land claims for their own benefit. This policy brief assesses arguments against the Act and recommends measures to safeguard the land rights of ordinary South Africans, including those who have already been waiting for so long for their claims to be addressed, in a context where new restitution claims open many opportunities for abuse by elites.