非洲农业:全球化语境下的困境与前景

Agriculture in Africa:Dilemma and Prospects in the Context of Globalization

非洲农业问题是不同阶段全球化影响下的政治经济现象,是不同阶段外部强烈干预导致非洲传统农业文明中断的结果。农业既是以植物和动物生产为主要内容的生产部门,又与经济社会紧密相连。发达的农业往往都是农事系统知识和技术在长期的演化中不断积累和升华的结果,并与经济社会融为一个体系。外部作物不断进入非洲意味着非洲以往积累的农事系统知识和技术的中断,也意味着与之对应的社会经济系统的紊乱。非洲是被纳入全球农业资本主义体系最早的地区之一。传统的商业资本主义和工业资本主义的全球化对非洲农业的发展产生了深远的影响。进入后殖民主义时代以后,非洲农业再次陷入了现代发展教义的逻辑中。非洲国家独立后的很长一段时间,农业成为了工业化的牺牲品,其自主发展的空间被大大压缩。在外部的强力干预下,非洲农业发展不断与其农业起源和与之相适应的食物和营养传统脱钩,特别是非洲的食物安全与粮食生产能力相联系弱化了非洲的农业基础。21世纪以来,在其他发展中国家成功经验的影响下,非洲大陆开始重新布局农业发展,以摆脱非洲农业悲观主义的阴影,走上农业自主发展的道路。

The dilemma of African agriculture nowadays lies in the form of discontinuation and interruption of traditional agriculture that has been intensively intervened by external forces across different stages of globalization.As a producing sector growing crops and raising livestock,agriculture is a sophisticated politico-economic system intricately connected to society in a broad sense.A developed agricultural sector takes shape when mature agro-technique and skills are accumulated through evolving practices–a system-building process deeply integrated into economic and societal development.External interventions may interrupt the inherent properties of conventional agriculture and its corresponding socioeconomic systems.Agricultural development in Africa,one of the earliest regions engaged in the global agricultural capitalist system,was being remarkably affected by traditional merchant capitalism and globalized industrial capitalism.In the post-colonial era,modern development doctrines further bogged down African agriculture,substantially compressing its independent development.The direct consequences under such intense external interventions encompass broken links between Africa’s present agricultural development and its traditions,food insecurity,and more seriously,weakened agriculture basis.The issue of whether Africa can feed itself,in this sense,becomes a false proposition.Inspired by the successes of newly-emerged developing economies in the new century,Africa has started to remake agricultural development strategies,seeking for a pathway out of the shadows of agricultural pessimism and onto the track of independent development.