agriculture as sufficiently great that it argues for the right of Third World countries to protect food crops through tariffs as a way of ensuring for their farmers a decent living while increasing local production of food. In other words, the developed world ought to take steps to decrease its own production through a combination of market incentives and production quotas, but it should not insist on the same thing in the Third World.

Free marketers will of course not accept this logic, but European and US economists have thought for sever- al centuries that the best thing rural people could do is move off the land so farms can get bigger and produce more efficiently. Christian Aid sees - correctly, I believe - that even if this policy were to succeed in the long run it would do so only at the cost of impoverishing and starving hundreds of millions of rural people in the Third World. The alternative that appeals most to non-governmental agencies, in addition to changes in government policies, is the development of grass- roots programmes to provide stable incomes and food supplies to small producers. Chapter 9 describes 11 such projects supported by Christian Aid in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The final chapter summarizes the steps that ought to be taken by governments both in the North and in the Third World, including land re- form, to ensure that farmers will produce enough to feed themselves and their fellow citizens in all coun- tries of the world.

Human factors

The book ends with a quote from Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins on the human factors responsi- ble for hunger in the world, and readers familiar with the literature on world hunger will not find new argu- ments or previously unknown facts here. Still, it is important that we become more aware of how agricultu- ral policies affect the poor people of the world, and one can only hope that many people will read this attractive volume. The descriptions of grassroots activities suggest positive alternatives to readers, but the overall solutions

FOOD POLICY October 1990

proposed for the problem of world hunger would require decisions, at least some of which seem unlikely to be made any time soon. To this extent, Hungry Farmers shares a cer- tain utopian thrust with much of the persuasive literature on world hunger. The transformation of these utopian goals into real progress will probably

Book reviews

require thousands of small steps and partial victories before major policy changes are implemented in even a majority of the countries of the globe.

William Crossgrove Brown University

Providence, RI, USA

Timely and valuable report THE ‘GREENHOUSE EFFECT’ AND UK AGRICULTURE

edited by R.M. Bennett

CAS Paper 19, Centre for Agricultural Strategy, University of Reading, UK, December 1989, 144 pp

This report is the outcome of a one- day conference at the Ministry of Agriculture, London, in July 1989. It contains six principal papers, followed by ten much shorter appendices based on conference poster presentations, and a fairly short general summary.

Global warming is rapidly becoming a substantially better-researched sub- ject, bringing much greater computing power and model sophistication than those which have produced the seriously incomplete body of know- ledge on which the authors have had to draw. The report does not claim to be more than a provisional, general introduction. More could not be ex- pected.

The opening paper by John Bow- man, giving an account of the green- house mechanisms and a brief general review of the evidence on recent and projected effects on climate, provides an excellent starting point for anyone who is not familiar with the recent literature. As part of the strong gener- al warning which is present through- out the report, ‘the ocean of specula- tion surrounding the greenhouse effect’ as another contributor puts it (Woodhouse, p 47), Dr Bowman stresses the great uncertainty in our present understanding. One may re- gret that he did not elaborate some of the analytical problems more than he has, such as the possibly seriously misleading ‘average cloudiness’

assumption in existing models and the difficulties in measuring the scale and consequences of the oceans’ abilities to absorb heat, which might serve greatly to disguise the scale of any warming for several decades. Similar- ly, his statement that current models can come ‘only to within a factor of about two’ in predicting the effects on global temperature of a given greenhouse-gas scenario needs ela- boration, since it seems to imply a greater, albeit still weak, confidence in the present state of modelling than many might think is warranted.

Martin Parry follows with a review of the methods used in tracing through the possible effects on agriculture, with quite detailed illustrations almost equally divided between the UK and other parts of the world, plus a parti- cularly substantial bibliography. The next three papers are devoted entirely to the UK, on the production of crops (Harold Woodhouse) and livestock (Peter Wilson) and the use of fertiliz- ers and chemicals (the late Ken Tre- harne). They identify a substantial number of possible constraints and benefits of global warming, and as such are likely to be a valuable first reference for some considerable time.

In the final main paper, John Marsh analyses both global and UK econo- mic implications. This is inevitably a broad-brush review. Apart from stres- sing the precautionary policy steps (such as some energy conservation) which should be taken without waiting for refinement of our general under- standing, his paper leads to the con- clusion that ‘we know too little about the greenhouse effect to be able to make rational adjustments in terms of timing or scale of its impact’. Also particularly valuable is his reminder of

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Book reviews

the studies which suggest that warm- ing will not be unfavourable to world food production.

The bulk of the poster presentations consider aspects of crop production. The remainder include carbon storage by forests, which for the layman is particularly useful in its attention to sitka spruce, and two modelling pap- ers, each tantalizingly incomplete, the first separating natural and man-made climate change (but not quite saying how the trick is done) and the second suggesting alternative scenarios of warming according to the extent of future control on carbon gases (but

leaving this reviewer wondering how far the present state of modelling in- edequacies warrants such conclu- sions).

All this said, CAS 19 is a most timely and valuable report for those with either a general environmental interest or more specialist agricultural orientation. A repeat performance in, say, three or four years will still need to face seriously unresolved global and regional issues, but such an update is likely to be much desired.

George Allen Barnstaple, Devon, UK

Fordism and French food LES INDUSTRIES AGRO- ALIMENTAIRES

by Jacques Nefussi

Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, France, 1989, 127pp

Jacques Nefussi has written a book remarkable for both its variety and detail, distilled from his doctoral work on the food sector. He covers the complexity of what we know as agri- business. This is defined as the collec- tion of enterprises which transform agricultural raw materials into a wide range of food products.

This book is primarily concerned with food processing per se. Even so, precise categorization of this more re- stricted field is difficult. The French industrial classification of the food and drink industries excludes the signifi- cant wine sector, but animal products and tobacco are included. Neverthe- less, Chapter 2 delineates the well- known heterogeneity of the many food industries and offers alternative typologies with supporting data. The Unigrain classification into primary processing (eg slaughtering), the equivalents of heavy industry (eg sugar refining, malting, etc), the terti- ary processing of more elaborate pro- ducts (eg frozen foodstuffs, chocolate confectionery, etc) and consumption goods which may be regarded as accompanying food (eg coffee, tea, etc) is drawn upon as an alternative.

The remainder of this chapter car-

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ries economical explantations of the main food technologies from separa- tion to irradiation. A picture of the variety of food-based enterprises in France is drawn. These range from the important cooperatives, through small enterprises to big business. Supporting statistics of employment and turnover, etc, are used to illustrate the particular food industries which correspond to each typology. Brief profiles of par- ticular sectors - meat processing, dairy products, the range of conserves, and frozen foods - are presented. Both official and market research data are used and the shares of the dominant firms up to 1987 are collected

together.

Industrialization

Chapter 1 sets the scene of the book, arguing that the development of the agrifood sector is no different from that of any other economic activity. It is just part and parcel of the accumula- tion of capital which is a feature of industrialization and which extends the phenomena of paid work. These influences extend back to the sources

of supply and relate forward through processing and distribution to the con- sumer.

However, the kernel of the book is contained in the third and longest chapter, entitled ‘Le Fordisme dans I’agro-alimentaire’. Here Nefussi finds a theoretical base on which to hang much of the information he has col- lected. The development of high capit-

al intensity and production-line methods is related to the scientific management practices of F. W. Taylor and his most famous early disciple Henry Ford. For the French food in- dustry it all took off in the 1960s as the data on capital accumulation, growing output per head and the increases in value added through the 1970s show. Furthermore, the application of scien- ce and food technology led to both lower unit costs and pressures on sup- pliers to standardize agricultural raw materials in the annual contracts placed with them by the processors.

At the same time, mass production links forward with mass distribution. Nefussi portrays the rapid develop- ment of the massive hypermarkets as manifested at the Channel ports. Hypermarkets grew in number from none in 1981 to 687 in 1987. Super- markets increased in number from 89 to 5773 in the same period. Margins were reduced on the sales of processed foods as distinct from fresh foods. This proved to be a contributory factor to the complementary changes in the pat- tern of consumption. The causes of this are well known: not only the movement in relative prices but the need to save time in the preparation of food. This came later to France than the USA and the UK, but is much in evidence now. To Nefussi (p 67) the food industry in thus providing ready- to-eat products since the 1960s may be compared to the revolution in the textile industry in the 1950s which produced ready-to-wear clothes. This is all part of the picture of Fordist man involved in a production-line process in the provision of his nutrition as well as his clothing and his cars.

The development of large-scale food processing in France in the 196Os, much later than in the UK and USA, partially explains the French trade im- balance in processed food. The analy- sis in Chapter 4 shows that the overall trade surplus in the agrifood sector is due to the power of French agricul- ture. Substantial exports of raw and semi-manufactured agricultural goods more than pay for the propensity to import highly processed foods. The strength of foreign competition is shown by brief analyses of historical development in the USA and UK. FR

FOOD POLICY October 1990