> > that small
> > scale agriculture is not inherently inefficient,
>
> Efficient or inefficient at what or by what measure? Efficient at
> producing food, or efficient at providing surplus value? Or efficient
> in competing with other capitalist firms?
>
> Carrol
>
The context out of which that remark came was that small-scale
farming was not as inefficient as it had been portrayed by those
who accept - like Brenner and other neoclassical economists -
the economies of scale argument. But this is not a rejection of the
neoclassical notion of efficiency, since the claim is that small-
scale farms have been as efficient. It would be a different matter if
one were to use other criteria of evaluation such as ecological
diversity, family ownership, treatment of animals, waste disposal
and so on. (Surplus is important but let's not make a fetish of it.)
Reading Pomeranz gives one the impression that land productivity
is as important a measure of efficiency as labor productivity; and to
that extent he challenges the western model of development. Not
that Eurocentric scholars have ignored land productivity, but have
tended to argue that, if land productivity was increased at the cost
of higher inputs of labor, then the overall efficiency of agricultural
production may have been reduced - and they have a strong point,
if it can be shown that, without increase in labor productivity,
increases in land productivity will not be sustained in the long run.
But I wonder, if one could argue, that without increases in land
productivity you cannot have sustained increases in labor
productivity.
