Algeria Algeria Arab Watch Report - Right to Food - Food to Report - Right Watch Arab

Algeria Algeria Arab Watch Report - Right To Food - Food To Report - Right Watch Arab Land and Food Sovereignty in Algeria: The Algerian peasantry between colonial dispossession and the upheavals of Infitah Hamza Hamouchene Researcher on Agricultural Policies and Food Sovereignty 200 201 Introduction Maghreb is predominantly Bedouin. It lives under French colonization will radically change this state 1. The Algerian peasantry: the tent and moves around on camels or settles in of affairs, disrupting and introducing irreversible The question of food sovereignty and the right dislocations in the colonial mountains.” (Quoted in Bessaoud 367 ,2008) dislocations to the peasantry and to the physical to food cannot be dissociated from the political, period and the neoliberal era With the development of urbanism in the following environment, basically operating fundamental socio-economic, cultural, and ecological context of centuries, the Berber dynasties and the Andalusians ruptures. Colonization has shifted Algerian favored the constitution of peasant societies agriculture to the North with an over-development the entity where the issue is being analyzed, be it a One myth constructed about Algeria and more owning land under an ownership regime called of coastal agricultural activities leading to high community, a nation, or a region. The analysis will widely the countries of the Maghreb/North Africa Melk2 and mastering agricultural methods and demographic density. As a concrete consequence, necessarily dig into the current global structures of is their supposed huge agricultural potential, to the irrigation techniques. These societies, with a solid this gave rise to a mismatch and disequilibrium power, epitomized by the global political economy, point of being dubbed as the bountiful “granary attachment to and an intensive use of land and between social forms of organization and the rooted in the historical legacies of colonialism and of Rome”. The conventional environmental history strong social cohesion, developed and grew mainly natural environment (Bessaoud 2008). neo-colonialism, especially in the global South. of North Africa most widely accepted today was in peri-urban zones (around towns, gardens, groves, created during the French colonial period. Before etc.) and in the countryside (growing grains, animal Based on this logic, any discussion of food the conquest of Algeria, North Africa had been breeding, olive plantations…) as well as inside sovereignty in Algeria must grapple with questions depicted in French and European writings as a 2. French Colonialism (1962-1830): oases (Ibid). of political economy and the historical dispossession fertile land that had lapsed into decadence under So, just before the French conquest, private property dispossessions, proletarization, and and destabilization of the peasantry in the colonial the “primitive” techniques of the “lazy natives” was mainly located at the periphery of towns or sedentarization period and, to a certain extent, in the post-colonial (Davis 2007). This view changed under French cities of dynastic states. Apart from these and era. Having left deep scars on the social fabric, the rule of the Maghreb and a colonial environmental mountain zones where the Muslim Melk tradition Colonization involved the expropriation of colonial legacy is still permeating and influencing narrative emerged, blaming the indigenous all aspects of everyday life in Algeria. dominated, communal forms of appropriation of the basic factor of production, land, from the peoples, especially herders, for the deforestation indigenous peasantry and its redistribution to the resources (arch) were the norm for the rest of the Algeria and degradation of what was once an apparently agricultural territories organized around pastoral settlers, unleashing the deterioration of the peasant I will start at the outset by offering a historical highly fertile “granary of Rome”.1 perspective of the evolution of the Algerian and semi-pastoral activities, combining breeding subsistence economy (Lacheraf 1965). This seriously with extensive grain cultures in the Steppe zone.” reduced the scope of the application/expression peasantry since colonial times. Then, I will turn This declensionist narrative was fashioned as (Bendjaballah 2001, Berque 1939, Bessaoud 2013a of the peasant know-how and thwarted their to cover some aspects of the Algerian political a justification for French colonial projects. In and Milliot 1911). competencies and expertise. It was accompanied economy in the last fifty years. I will begin by offering fact, this deceptive representation of presumed ’ To sum up, two types of agriculture co-existed by the forced sedentarization of the nomads and an analysis and a critique of Algerias attempt to environmental degradation and ecological disaster in a complementary fashion prior to the French semi-nomads, which caused fundamental changes delink from the imperialist-capitalist system in the has been used by colonial authorities to justify all 1960s and 1970s, placing the agrarian question in conquest: leading to immiseration, poverty, and big losses of sorts of dispossessions, policies designed to control livelihoods. this context. More specifically, an assessment of the populations and their environments as well as • An intensive agriculture, localized in the the self-management experience and the “agrarian the transformation of subsistence production into humid plain and mountain zones, and taken When it comes to agriculture, the colonial period revolution” will be advanced in order to understand commodity production. - Food To Report - Right Watch Arab how those developments - with their achievements, care of by a peasant population grounded/ can be described as being dualistic: fixated to the land and mobilizing A colonial sector: commodity capitalist agriculture failures and shortcomings – have influenced 1. Pre-colonial Period agrarian policies in the following periods. Then I knowledge and principles originating from for cash crops, mechanized, “modernized” and will turn to the period of liberalization of the sector Arab (Andalusian) or antique agronomies. using technical knowledge of French agriculture, starting from the 80s and how it undermined Since antiquity till the 19th century, rural Algeria • A dominant extensive agriculture led by settlers and large companies that run huge and reversed the achievements of the previous has been fundamentally pastoral in character and (production of grains/cereals) which is agro- agricultural estates for export production. By two decades, furthering the destabilization of historical attempts to sedentarize the population pastoral in its orientation, using a know-how the end of the colonial period, most agricultural the peasantry and the rural world in the country. and create a peasant basis have been brought to inherited and transmitted from generation revenues were garnered by the export of Following this, I will analyze the “food security” an end by Roman colonization. Berbers had no to generation commercially produced wine, early vegetables, and paradigm of Algerian decision-makers, which is sedentary culture before the arrival of Arabs in citrus, almost all produced on such large holdings. synonymous with a double-dependence; in other the 7th century (Bessaoud 2008). Ibn Khaldoun In the centuries before French colonization, there A traditional sector based on subsistence and words, dependence on oil rent finances Algeria’s observed that, contrary to other foreign countries, has been a certain correspondence between the traditional agriculture that will see profound food imports and dependence. Last but not least, “where civilization is either rural or urban, like in social structures (communities and tribes), the disruptions of social structures initiated by I will attempt to offer a precise picture of Algeria’s Spain, Syria, Egypt, and Persian Iraq,” on the eve of demographic conditions (slow growth), as well expropriation of lands and resources, through agricultural potential in order to deconstruct the the Arabs’ arrival, “the population of Ifrikya and the as the productive base on one hand, and the privatization and de-collectivization of agricultural persisting myths around the Maghreb countries extensive systems of exploitation of resources in land. becoming agricultural exporters. I will finish this the other. Basically, there was no need to intensify With an arsenal of laws, institutions, techniques, 1 The idea that the Maghreb had supplied grain agriculture, as it was sustainable as it is, given the and scientific expertise, colonial agriculture saw study by providing some thoughts and reflections to the Roman Empire is well supported by the historical in the guise of recommendations, striving to be then demographics and social structures. its development at the expense of a traditional consistent with the principles of food sovereignty. record. The French colonial belief that the Maghreb had and subsistence agriculture. The aim was to produced significantly more grain during the Roman pe- fundamentally destroy collective ownership and riod than afterward, however, is not well supported by the 2 Melk corresponds more or less to private prop- the corresponding tribal organization and relations (Bessaoud 2013b and Davis 2007). However, the available evidence. erty under Islamic law. 202 203 peasantry was not passive and resisted in organized state and the communes owned a further 7,235,000 immiseration and various dispossessions that had

Load more