Where Sugar is King
Only a sprinkling of farm and other rural producers joined the quickening flow of Jamaicans to their "mother country" in the early 1950s. But in the following years, the exit from agriculture...
...Furthermore, the industry's traditional casual labor system denied a regular income to those working, even when employment was at its seasonal peak...
...And income becomes subject to considerable change with even minor variations 22JanlFeb 1981 THE TATE & LYLE GROUP: TURNOVER AND PROFIT, 1968 Activity Turnover (in 1968 pounds) Raw sugar production West Indies and British Honduras Refining and distribution United Kingdom Canada Africa Molasses trading, storage and distribution Shipping Engineering and miscellaneous 20,669 127,166 18,672 6,064 36,835 11,652 Profit 98 3,121 3,691 402 1,923 3,820 United Kingdom 9,708 313 Overseas 2,484 53 Total 233,250 13,421 Source: George Beckford, "Agricultural Resource Use in Plantation Economies," Social and Economic Studies, Vol...
...Mary in 1954 for the Vere Plain to cultivate cane on his own small plot remained a petty producer, but his movement was similarly capital's own...
...It measured its success by the increasing number of capitalist casualties...
...Despite continued objection by the union the government had finally caved in to WISCO's long-standing demand to mechanize operations after the company threatened to close up shop in 1969...
...Nor could it guarantee that wage labor would be forthcoming in the future since, when and where possible, wages would be used to purchase land, eliminating the rent relation altogether...
...But the rapid expansion of capitalist production and trade relations did create new conditions of poverty and social inequality that set the stage for Jamaica's democratic socialist experiment...
...But it was not the demands of the peasants that would shape the emerging land reform...
...EMPLOYMENT IN THE SUGAR INDUSTRY, SELECTED YEARS Average sugar estate employment Number of registered Sub- Employed by Year In crop out of crop cane farmers total cane farmers Total 1943 30,290 18,645 8,950 39,240 1,751 33,490 1945 na na 10,417 na na na 1950 44,474 25,934 14,079 58,553 na na 1955 48,000 25,000 22,130 70,130 na na 1960 42,700 21,970 22,495 65,195 na na 1964 32,442 20,223 27,555 59,997 na na 1970 23,085 14,091 19,992 43,077 13,700 56,777 na = not available...
...diss., Brown University, 1976), pp...
...II, no...
...At the beginning of the work week each worker employed is assigned a 'task' . .. which is paid on a piece basis...
...Census returns for 1943 and 1960 revealed a population gain of 50% or more in the 11 census divisions where cane acreage in 1960 accounted for at least 40% of total area...
...As the crisis deepened, many workers were forced out of cane altogether...
...0 20 MILES S 1500 2999 ft...
...7. N.W...
...109-10...
...They became quickly enmeshed in a web of commodity organizations, some of which- like the All Island Banana Growers Association and the Cane Growers Association-put them directly under export capital's thumb...
...First, it reduces the labor time required for cutting...
...But the persistence of peasant production impeded capital's extension into new spheres (like domestic foodstuffs) and the introduction of a specifically capitalist organization of the labor process even where capital was well entrenched...
...O That transformation both set the stage for and, to a very considerable extent, occurred through the massive migrations of the hill-dwelling rural population...
...Yet during the same period, the number of 14JanlFeb 1981 15 independent growers selling to the estates jumped 150% to nearly 23,000...
...WISCO could not, however, increase total sugar tonnage to the extent now technically feasible because its factories also processed cane from thousands of independent suppliers, most of whom had no incentive--in fact, had disincentives--to introduce burning...
...Eyre, "Land and Population," p. 9. 27...
...Elizabeth in 1952 and hunted down a housekeeping job in the American-owned hotels of Montego Bay, or the small farmer who sold out to a North American aluminum company in 1956 and set sail for London--geographic relocation meant a movement from petty production into wage labor as the principal means of livelihood...
...If not quite breaking, it seriously loosened the age-old constraints on labor supply imposed by petty production, a necessary condition for the expected take-off in sugar and other exports...
...But now it succeeded to a much greater extent than previously...
...Again, the migrant ranks swelled...
...And despite climbing prices, the market for these crops remained too limited to encourage large-scale commercial production...
...Cited in Don Rowbotham, "Agrarian Relations inJamaica," in Carl Stone & Aggrey Brown, eds., Essays in Power and Change in Jamaica (Kingston: Dep't...
...Smallholder output formed an important, though limited, component of this new export production, permitting some small farmers to accumulate cash income and expand their holdings...
...diss., Yale University, 1974),Chs...
...In one sample area in southern Clarendon, WISCO's territory, population increased by a striking 126...
...The uncertainty of the market also militated against additional capital investment in field operations...
...A study of tured goods, hung on through purchases by Lionel Town in 1965 indicated the magnitude casual cane laborers...
...embargo of Cuban sugar in 1960, and a continued rise in world market prices for the next few years, the industry in Jamaica rapidly expanded production, outputting a record 500,000 tons in 1965...
...Allan Eyre, Geographic Aspects, p. 140...
...The in-migrants were shunted into cleared areas on cane's periphery or into the industry's manufacturing/residential centers...
...The canefires unavoidably scorch the trees and can severely damage them, as they do the peripheral gardens cultivated to supplement family food purchases...
...Social and Economic Facts of Migrationfrom the West Indies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 25...
...Some of the larger, poorer and more overcrowded yards contained in 1965 the lowest number of resident tenants which they had accommodated for some years...
...CAPITAL AS CAUSE It is certainly apparent that the influx of transnational corporations and the boom in capitalist activity introduced myriad changes in social life that contributed to migration...
...Producers cut back their output of basic foods and diversified into banana, coffee and logwood, and to a lesser extent, cocoa, coconuts, ginger and tobacco...
...To compound the problem, access to unused bush land belonging to the sugar company was not allowed...
...Faced with a faltering world market and rising costs of production at the end of the 50s, WISCO pushed through plans in 1961 to increase labor productivity by creating a registered work force, ending the troublesome job rotation system...
...This was clearly aimed at reproducing a supply of wage labor for the specialized fields of capitalist farmers and middle peasants...
...So few of those displaced can be absorbed in wage employment in agriculture...
...A registered worker received a number indicating "permanent" employment-a guarantee not of work per se, but of work when it was available - on specifically one of the several farms comprising WISCO's various estates...
...In a 1946 survey, barely one-fourth of those sampled ic Aspects of Popula- engaged in any independent cultivation.L 8 n: Florida Atlantic Dominated by the huge landholdings of es9. tates and large growers, the sugar belt confined 0-4 acres 5-24 25-99 100-499 500 + 157,363 254,376 170,209 187,223 1,067,497 249,074 502,924 232,178 214,131 716,068 270,781 546,300 176,872 130,994 697,796 198,000 398,441 167,607 185,596 770,786 100.0 100.0 16JanlFeb 1981 its swelling population to strictly circumscribed settlements...
...Many others, perhaps from lack of alternatives, perhaps from orientation, supplemented cane income by hiring themselves out to their employers for short periods-to the shopowners in sugar's bustling manufacturing centers, to the dray owner unable to drive his cart while himself doing task work on the estate, to a senior official at WISCO who needed a gardener, a laundrywoman, a domestic, at his home in Lionel Town's "Compound...
...For those whose cultivations included export crops, the arbitrary rule of a world market only reinforced their reluctance to transfer time and resources from the urgent demands of the moment...
...Allan Eyre, Geographic Aspects, p. 57...
...in weather...
...The spread of underemployment and unemployment were obviously the underlying factors in the out-migration of the late 60s, pushing some among sugar's work force to abandon agriculture and to join the flow to the urban centers of Jamaica, Canada, the United States and Britain...
...In the 1960s, WISCO would move to change that...
...Allan Eyre, Geographic Aspects, p. 144...
...10JanlFeb 1981 ment, making access to land more problematic for those without...
...For those displaced by the breakdown of traditional production relations, the expansion of capitalist agriculture offers alternatives for only a handful...
...In the final article, we briefly trace the trials of this effort at capitalist reforms and the new waves of migration to which it gave rise...
...That is, the factory price for contracted cane supplies, although based on estate costs of production, still permitted the petty producer to earn a living in cane...
...See Table...
...In both cases, their ability to hustle a living stunted the development of an agricultural proletariat and denied to capital a "disciplined" workforce...
...17NACLA Report estate labor force (and presumably that of the large growers as well) was cut in half at season's end...
...The new recruits remained independent producers, controlling the production process on their own holdings...
...It did, however, preclude any alternative activity which conflicted with the demands of cane...
...Through a series of measures it asserted its unequivocal control over the production process, both on the estates and on independent farms...
...Its disappearance imperiled the supply of charcoal for fuel and access to pen grazing lands...
...7 But longDISTRIBUTION OF LANDHOLDINGS, 1938 Size 1/2-5 acres 5-10 acres 10-50 acres 50-100 acres 100-200 acres 200-500 acres 500-1,000 acres 1,000-2,000 acres above 2,000 acres Estimated Quantity Acreage 118,143 22,819 12,993 1,107 650 573 392 269 146 157,092 262,688 154,559 260,800 78,377 95,449 185,093 283,507 378,629 466,552 2,165,654 Source: Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvelings...
...Sugar's decline thus speeded the differentiation of the rural labor force, a process which quickly became self-propelling...
...The supply of this part-time labor clearly could not meet the need of the planters...
...But it is also clear that the occupants of the rural slums that still dot cane's countryside today were recruited, at least in part, from those so impoverished by capital's conditions of employment that they were unable to leave...
...In Lionel Town, the site of WISCO's Monymusk factory on the Vere Plain, potential lands for migrants' gardens were quickly devoured...
...It is With registration pending and Britain's likely that the adult population is less today Labor registration, harvesting innovations and the 1965 world sugar crisis left tens of thousands of amaicans without livelihoods...
...Independent suppliers are paid a fixed rate, not per ton of sugar, but per ton of cane delivered to the factory...
...But the fall of casual labor in cane collapsed the whole structure of social relations founded upon it, tearing apart the fragile weave of incomes that sustained the population of the sugar belt...
...Should market conditions deteriorate, requiring the estates to curtail production, they could not recoup their investment costs...
...This historically unprecedented increase in output was obtained primarily from the plains of Clarendon and Westmoreland where WISCO's Monymusk and Frome estates-the country's largest-turned out 35-40% of total output...
...In the 1940s and 50s, pressure to provide periodic employment for peasant producers, sideline cultivators and the increasing number of landless workers, prolonged the hold of casual labor in cane...
...The search extended to the urban centers in Jamaica and abroad and to the lowland regions where export agriculture--particularly sugar- was picking up steam...
...Moreover, expanded middlepeasant and capitalist export agriculture would provide wage-labor outlets to supplement smallholder income...
...Yet in the same moment that capital's expansion gave rise to an increased market demand for domestic foodstuffs, it drew peasant producers into production for the world market...
...In the absence of adequate settlement schemes, there had already developed by 1930 a minority in the countryside who could no longer depend on land as even their principal means of livelihood -families with little or no land at all and the older sons and daughters of smallholders whom the family cultivation could not support...
...But it also implied an obligation to work at capital's beck and call, on pain of forever forfeiting access to the estate...
...In the 40s and 50s, 197,500 acres were transferred to cane-more than a third from marginal and waste lands-permitting estate acreage to double and that of independent large and small growers to triple...
...18, no...
...For the small farmer who hires little or no labor, the drop in income is not significantly offset by a lower outlay on cutters...
...Although the trade union movement emerged bitterly divided from its post-rebellion process of consolidation, on one point there was unity: very few would work below union wages...
...Allan Eyre, "Land and Population in the Sugar Belt ofJamaica" (Dept...
...Between 1921 and 1943, population had increased 44%, from 858,000 to 1,237,000, due primarily to a sharp and continuing drop in infant mortality and a decline in death rates, as well as the forced return of nearly 26,000 Jamaican emigres during the Depression years...
...And thousands sup12,783 64,803 plemented their income through occasional 1,997 4,100 task work on estate fields and large farms...
...To meet rent payments and to purchase certain of their subsistence goods, the tenants earned wages through work on the estates...
...SMALL FARMING IN CANE Among capital's growing army of small cane cultivators were thousands of recent mountain migrants who acquired lands on the plains as well as those few with holdings in the hills' flat and fertile oases...
...Cited in Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvelings, p. 124...
...3. Shirley Smith, "Industrial Growth, Employment Opportunities and Migration Within and From Jamaica, 1943 to 1970," (Ph.D...
...ANOTHER BLOW TO THE WORKERS For those reduced numbers now "permanently" in capital's employ, registration held out the carrot of a short-term gain in steadier income...
...Under the pressure of immigration into the Town in the 1950s [population increased 350%], renting tenements became a far more remunerative use of the land in the 'yards' than cultivation of ackees, breadfruit and coconuts for subsistence or sale...
...of Government, UWI, 1976), p. 45...
...Manley et al., as cited in Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvelings, p. 119...
...Moreover, the large properties purchased by the government for subsequent division and resale were, more often than not, poor lands that former owners were anxious to unload...
...Inadequate land settlement was always a conscious and deliberate policy aimed at reproducing a supply of labor for export capital...
...This successful struggle for the coops was facilitated by the 1972 election victory of a party that had pledged its commitment to reform, that is to address the bitter legacy of nearly 30 years of modernization...
...The Jamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and its Aftermath (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978...
...RURAL DIFFERENTIATION The labor scarcity proved ruinous to Jamaican sugar, already weakened by severe competition in European markets...
...12JanlFob 1981 13 S Land 6000 ft...
...And indeed, smallholders seized upon the new opportunities...
...The result would be massive out-migration from the plains...
...A glimpse into this contradictory dynamic and its accompanying flows emerges from an examination of Jamaica's sugar industry...
...4 (Dec...
...Underemployment is usually thought of as a problem of peasant agriculture- insufficient land enforcing idle days...
...The direct loss of cane income was itself a fatal blow to some, for instance, making debt repayment impossible for a small farmer/wage laborer who now faced foreclosure...
...While a handful were companies operating farms as large as those of the estates, the overwhelming majority of growers were small and middle peasant producers...
...Because small a buyer sufficiently farmers rarely have carts (let alone trucks), they ble for all transport must hire both vehicle and driver...
...The basis of casual labor in the sugar industry in Jamaica is the fact that most unskilled operations are paid on a 'task' basis...
...To assure a supply of labor after slavery's end, planters tried to tie the newly-freed population to the flatland estates through a system of tenancy...
...8. Elsie Lefranc, "Peasant and Community," p. 211...
...The persistence of the casual labor system restricted capital's control over its workers, over their availability when and where necessary, and over the time spent on any given task...
...Almost all harvest and planting activities--cutting, loading, ratooning or reseeding, fertilizing, weeding and so on- continued to be done manually...
...Postwar expansion had failed to put Jamaica on the development path of its northern neighbors...
...Properties were made available in small lots at less than market prices, but more often than not, these lands were difficult to cultivate and prone to erosion.* So while land reform did retard the growth of landless population, its apparent beneficiaries were trapped in an agriculture on the run...
...241-46...
...Peasant output of traditional food like yam and cassava was substantially reduced, in some cases failing to meet even family consumption needs...
...Moreover, many were cut off from even subsistence gardens...
...And unlike non-agricultural industry, where expansion in one sphere, say apparel, will tend to generate expansion in other spheres, like the manufacture of dyes and sewing machines, expanded cultivation in sugar cane or banana has no such impact within agriculture itself...
...Middle peasant land purchases limited the scope for rental, especially of prime lands, and for squatter settle*Although strict categorization is problematic, small peasant (smallholder) generally refers to those farmers with holdings of up to 10 acres, while the middle peasant farms holdings of 10-50 acres...
...But it did not give rise to a so-called self-sufficient peasantry...
...In fact, small cane farmers were not merely tolerated by the industry, they were actively promoted by WISCO and other companies with offers of free technical assistance and seedlings...
...Ostensibly, small peasant cash needs would be met through government-subsidized production of export crops...
...A PROLETARIAT IN EMBRYO In the postwar period, however, most of 770 1,321 cane's hired laborers lacked access to land as a meaningful basis of income...
...On WISCO's early history, see Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvelings...
...Those for canes growing stale en route...
...although capital could not expropriate the smallholding population, the conditions of production imposed on them permitted capital a partial victory.' REBELLION In May andJune of 1938, the island was convulsed by a labor rebellion so profound that it provoked the start of decolonization...
...Denied access to nature's bounty, caneworkers were forced to purchase all basic necessities, above all food...
...bO r "a 0 z 71 20Jan/Feb 1981 than in 1961 and the inward trend seems certainly to have been reversed...
...Those who fled in the first wave from the plains were relatively longseparated from the land and were neither able nor, particularly among the young, anxious to recreate life as independent peasant producers...
...Now, the landless worker, unsure of a paycheck from week to week, was propelled into an array of other avenues to earn a livelihood, frequently in non-farm independent production...
...Most sugar workers now had to find odd jobs requiring no commitments...
...New opportunities for independent cultivation and occasional wage-labor had reproduced the peasant producer...
...For example, Wray & Nephew, Ltd., owner of Appleton Estates in St...
...only the worst soils had escaped incorporation into cane.21 The changing pattern of land use in the region closed off other avenues to nature's bounty as well...
...conditions created by cane n "fortunate" enough to have close at hand were "responsi costs from field to factory a LAND OCCUPA UTILIZATION, VI SOUTHERN CL 1 Sugarcane monoculture Improved pasture Coconuts Citrus Other agriculture (tree crops, unimproved pasture, productive gardens, tobacco, etc...
...7 and Elsie Lefranc, "Peasant and Community in Jamaica," (Ph.D...
...The prohibition on floating between farms not only assured each farm an adequate supply of labor, but it also heightened efficiency by precluding task work outside a laborer's specialty and by facilitating supervision...
...perhaps wage work on the expanding estates and large farms...
...For those without land, sugar's collapse compelled land capture...
...The paucity of resources barred any withdrawal of land from immediate productive use...
...6. Shirley Smith, "Industrial Growth," p. 28...
...Cumper, "Two Studies in Jamaican Productivity," SES, Vol...
...The enormous cane tonnage required for cost-efficient factory production could be met only partially by estate output despite the significant increase in estate acreage...
...3 o THE BLOW TO SMALL CANE In the early 60s, credit financing had permitted some influx of ex-sugar workers into small cane cultivation so that the number of cane farmers actually increased...
...Or those who carried to the plains their skills in carpentry, masonry and other crafts might set up shop in their one-room tenements...
...2 Swamp land, too, was made suitable for cane cultivation through extensive drainage operations, but at the expense of the abundant fish and wildlife that had once supplemented the diets of rural producers...
...Work in cane is seasonal activity...
...When a factory closes [as almost half did in 1943-60] the farmer must find another crop," a difficult alternative due to the problematic soil JanlFeb 1981 15NACLA Report DISTRIBUTION OF LAND BY FARM.SIZE AND ACREAGE IN USE, SELECTED YEARS Farm acreage 1942 1954 1958 1961 Number of farms in size group Total farms 146,173 198,883 199,489 158,577 190,582 0-4 acres 5-24 25-99 100-499 500+ 117,897 22,813 4,045 878 540 139,043 53,024 5,603 881 332 141,224 53,300 4,012 639 314 112,626 41,053 3,785 766 347 1968 1942 1954 1958 1961 Distribution of total farms 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 149,703 36,881 3,004 699 295 Total acreage in each size group Total farms 1,836,668 1,914,375 1,822,743 1,711,430 1,507,397 80.7 15.6 2.8 0.6 0.4 69.9 26.7 2.8 0.4 0.2 70.8 26.7 2.0 0.3 0.2 71.0 25.9 2.4 0.5 0.2 Distribution of farm acreage 100,0 100.0 100.0 1968 100.0 78.6 19.4 1.6 0.4 0.2 223,818 333,548 125,104 148,501 676,426 8.6 13.8 9.5 10.2 58.1 13.0 14.9 11.6 26.3 30.0 22.8 12.1 9.7 9.8 11.2 7.2 10.8 37.4 38.3 45.0 14.8 22.1 8.3 9.9 44.9 Source: Shirley Jeanne Smith, "Industrial Growth, Employment Opportunities, and Migration Within and From Jamaica, 1943 to 1970 " (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1975), p. 353...
...The postwar movements of the rural labor force were the outcome of capital's vast expansion spearheaded by transnational corporations...
...18z Registered canecutters must wield the razor-sharp machete quickly since a burnedfield has to be cut within three days CASUAL LABOR-THE FIRST CASUALTY Bouyed by the U.S...
...By the early 60s, cane was confronting a demographic aboutface as out-migration emptied its centers of population...
...By 1845, 20,000 had fled to the freehold settlements sponsored by the Native Baptist Church and an additional 10,000 squatted on abandoned lands or lands never occupied...
...who) will be able to supplement their other sources of income by working on those plots.'" Implied here is a remarkable reversal of the relation between wage labor and independent cultivation predominant since Emancipation: whereas part-time wage labor had always been a condition of reproduction of the independent smallholder, landholding would now become a condition of reproduction of the wage laborer who functions at the beck and call of capitall* Writing in 1957, an English traveler to Jamaica commented that ". . . a transformation to a cash economy which was only partial in 1938 is now complete...
...With the sudden collapse of world market prices in 1965, WISCO's small suppliers were paralyzed before the dreadnought's furious pursuit of cost-cutting measures...
...The effective dispossession of a portion of the peasantry prepared the ground for their migration from the hills in search of wage employment...
...By the early 1960s, well over half of total income on holdings up to 24 acres was accounted for by export crops...
...EXIT SLAVERY, ENTER WAGE LABOR It is said that when Columbus returned from the island ofJamaica in 1494, "he described it to the Spanish court by crumbling a piece of paper to indicate its rugged terrain...
...Government land sale expanded the freeholding population, although ironically, many of its beneficiaries were former tenants on the same properties...
...by 1960 the number of sugar factories had dropped to 15, a decline of 44% from 1943...
...Second, by evaporating the water content, thereby reducing the cane's weight, burning increases the relative sucrose content of each ton of cut cane...
...I (New York: International Publishers, 1967), p. 642...
...and Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvelikngs...
...Yet the conditions that confronted the industry's workers still precluded such dependence...
...The inclusion of landless laborers and squatters in the study would have put the total considerably higher...
...The imposition of a rent could not in itself grant the planter sufficient control over peasants' supply of labor, since the demands of their own cultivations conditioned the timing and extent of their wage work, regardless of estate labor requirements...
...Production slumps induced by worldwide depression compounded the existing job shortage...
...Given the low overhead and low labor costs of small-scale cultivation, smallholder output thus remained fully competitive...
...Similarly, as blacks were recruited into the formerly white and brown ranks of the "middle strata" (or middle class), upward mobility- an urban phenomenon - appeared possible to the island's overwhelmingly black rural dwellers...
...an cut from company payrolls by 1964--the outartisan who, despite the invasion of manufac- ward movement was unmistakable...
...By 1970, 9000 more were dropped by the estates, due in part to continued reduction in estate cane acreage...
...And women workers might make children's clothes to sell to other caneworkers or at the weekend market...
...They were back in the canefields of their slave ancestors...
...Yet the smallholder population continued to expand, in large part due to government land settlement schemes, first introduced in 1895...
...Built-up area Total Source: Allan Eyre, Geograpi tion Dynamics (Boca Rato University Press, 1972), p. 13 monoculture...
...And yet capital has prolonged the tenuous hold of a portion of the peasantry by drawing it into production for the world market...
...And in the following years thousands succumbed...
...and over 3000 5 ee ft...
...The vast expansion of agricultural capital in the early postwar period intensified the contradictions of capitalist development in Jamaica's countryside...
...Even small stock which inadvertently crossed over company lines--a frequent occurrence-were shot...
...Davison, West Indian Migrants...
...Most of those who left sought refuge in the island's virgin and often unclaimed mountainous interior, in the hills of St...
...Elizabeth, Manchester, Clarendon and St...
...But the extensive alluvial plains of the southern coast and other lowland areas surrendered completely to the invasion of European merchant capital, above all to sugar...
...Caught in the vise of declining prices and sharply rising costs of production--the result of union-negotiated wage hikes and falling sugar yields on marginal lands-WISCO moved to further rationalize its farming operations...
...It thus perpetuated the problem of labor supply that had plagued the industry for more than 100 years In the past, the system had held out one crucial advantage: it allowed capital to keep wages extremely low...
...Allan Eyre, "Land & Population," p. 9. 20...
...Why was this the case...
...Dur*The shift into export crops also takes place on hillside cultivations...
...11-14...
...A burnt canefield produces fewer tons of cane...
...Subject as it was to peasant control, it could not alleviate sugar's acute labor shortage...
...Workers were also made redundant by the "success" of reaping by burning and the introduction of mechanical loaders, nicknamed "the grab...
...It was the major rural region to experience both internal and external migrations...
...OwenJefferson, The Postwar Economic Development of Jamaica (Kingston: Institute for Social and Economic Research, 1972), p. 92...
...Mona MacMillan, The Land of Look Behind, (London: Faber & Faber, 1957), p. 167...
...Allen S. Ehrlich, "East Indian Cane Workers," p. 56...
...For those with adequate holdings, sugar's collapse catalyzed the move into production for the world market...
...By manipulating factory quotas for outside cane suppliers, the estates shifted the brunt of output adjustments onto the independent growers, particularly onto the small farmer...
...During the six to eight month harvesting cycle (the various estate fields are planted at different times) the same number of cutters may be retained as permanent employees since a burnt canefield must be cut within a three-day period, but cutting now occurs in much shorter stints...
...InJamaica's year of record output, 1965, the world market price of sugar took a dive from which it failed to recover in the following years...
...CAPITAL CASTS ITS NET When WISCO first staked its claim in Jamaica in 1937 by buying up seven of the island's 35 remaining sugar estates, the industry was already establishing itself on a modern capitalist footing...
...1), p. 4-5...
...The once ubiquitous "bush" was extensively cleared to accommodate the expanding population (and to create private grazing grounds...
...For most small farm operators, new sources of cash income became indispensable...
...But the 1838 emancipation of 140,000 plantation slaves signalled the industry's coming severe decline...
...Gisela Eisner, Jamaica 1830-1930 (Westport: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1961...
...To add insult to injury, it soon revised its land sale policy to oblige the capitalist craving for land-at subsidized rates--and financed the infrastructural requirements of export agriculture from the property taxes of peasant producers...
...21NACLA Report Jamaica's urban centers teem with people pushed off the land...
...Faced with unpalatable alternatives for independent cultivation- a movement into new crops in soil exhausted by cane and with little prospect of secure cash earnings, or a return to the hillside conditions of production they had fled--many producers looked to full-time wage-labor as their principal hope for a "reasonable" livelihood...
...The flight to the hills was a victorious struggle by ex-slaves to gain possession of land and to control their own labor...
...In an apparent contradiction, rapid capital accumulation in sugar was fostering the equally rapid growth of the non-capitalist peasant producer...
...Unlike sugar's factory operations, where massive investment in plant and equipment captured huge economies of scale, cane farming confronted severe limitations to capital substitution...
...frequently both...
...yet their continued reproduction impeded capital's control over their labor time and thereby obstructed the capital accumulation process...
...The result: underemployment is greatly intensified...
...Shirley Smith, "Industrial Growth," p. 42...
...In the decade following the war, the burgeoning mountain population poured into lowland and coastal agricultural regions, parish capitals and ri-rl annfa.rtr;na rPnthpr W;lth;n r-rta;n 8JanlFeb 1981 ed from hill to plain, emptied into the island's metropolitan centers...
...The smallholder's son who set out from the mountains of St...
...In any given year during that first decade of expansion, the In Mitchell Town, cattle try to survive on dry scrub...
...Capitalist farming begins with holdings above 50 acres, but there is a vast differentiation within this group: some individuals and companies control more than 2000 acres...
...ing the same period, population for the country as a whole only increased 36...
...Even JanlFeb 1981 19NACLA Report those who never worked in cane faced the pros- doors about to close, some population outflow pect of a shattered livelihood - a poor landlord occurred even before 1961...
...Although the hills were the primary source and urban centers the chief receptacle ofJamaica's rural migrant streams, the island's sugar belt assumed a unique place in the postwar flows...
...The now ubiquitous hill peasants were caught in an old but tighter bind: inadequate landholdings imposed a dire need for wage employment while declining labor demand imposed a desperate need for land...
...By the first decades of the 20th century, agricultural capital had come into its own...
...Between 1942 and 1958, the number of 0-4 acre and 5-24 acre farms increased by 23,000 and 30,000 respectively...
...Partnerships and family companies had made only limited inroads and the so-called public corporation, which centralizes scattered individual capitals, had as yet no role to play...
...considerable production also occurred in St...
...2 With cash earned in cane, a worker might buy a dray and contract to haul smallholder cane output to the factory...
...And the myriad, if marginal, opportunities for cash income in the sprouting rural towns, together with casual labor in cane, permitted landless workers to weave together a livelihood...
...Conversely, because of the system's survival, the country's cane regions re-, mained a magnet for those abandoning the hills...
...SLand below 1500 BM Blue Mountains PP Pedro Plarns CC Cockpit Country CI Central Inilr BG Black Grounds of' YV Yallahs Valley Although it did increase the freehold population, post-rebellion land settlement, like its predecessors, was inadequate to the needs of the peasantry as a whole...
...Land hunger" intensified around the turn of the century when urban merchants, who built their commercial houses on the export production of small and medium farmers, and American companies began investing heavily in export agriculture, especially in bananas...
...Farm operations in Jamaica became so unprofitable that WISCO eventually sold its Frome and Monymusk farmlands to the government...
...But the death of the system simultaneously threatened the casual laborer's other avenues of gain-through independent production and sale to fellow caneworkers or through periodic employment in shops and business that depended on sales to cane's now-shrunken labor force...
...Crop diseases in banana led United Fruit to abandon estate production in the early 30s, and estate amalgamation and technical innovation in sugar stunted labor demand on the remaining estates...
...Despite high growth rates, sustained "take-off' eluded its grasp...
...2 Thus, for most of the period's rural migrants- like the young woman who left her family's two-acre farm in the hills of St...
...What triggered this decision to once again pull up stakes and face an unknown future...
...As in other cane areas, the nearly 23,000 immigrants who flooded the plains of Clarendon originated in Jamaica's ubiquitous hills...
...In 1967 it introduced an innovation in reaping: setting the cane fields afire prior to cutting the crop...
...The drastic conversion to cane implied a tremendous increase in the number of cane cultivators...
...24 Thus, the 60% jump in estate employment mentioned previously meant only that in 1955 an additional 18,000 workers were rotated into a short-term job and therefore appeared on the companies' payrolls at some point in the year...
...Even more menacing are the problems posed by certain uncontrollable aspects of burning...
...Although freed of their intolerable rent burdens, a need for some cash income remained--for freeholder taxes, for land purchase or rental, and for purchase of certain subsistence goods, The need was met by part-time estate wage labor, where and when they chose...
...Further expansion would mean bringing into production increasingly marginal lands, resulting in canes with lower sucrose content and higher costs of production...
...9 and 11...
...4 (1969), p. 454...
...In a scenario familiar to capitalist development, this centralization of capital rapidly accelerated accumulation (given the improved postwar market conditions): it greatly extended the scale of production and revolutionized production techniques...
...But the legal and customary position of the task worker vis a vis his employer is that of the tradesman . . . in that when the task is finished the employer is under no obligation to provide further work or to give notice of dismissal...
...From their earliest origins then, wage work was necessary to the reproduction of the peasants as independent producers...
...Ibid., pp...
...And the increased smallholder dependence on cash income provoked a movement from the *At the time of the 1968/69 Agricultural Census, "as much as 56% of small farmers under one acre and 36.5% under 5 acres gained their principal means of livelihood from outside of farming, i.e., in some form of wage labor...
...Now, after a brief reprieve made possible by smallholder sugar, capital was completing the job it had started: by usurping control of their production process, it effectively separated many small cane producers from their means of production...
...Allen S. Ehrlich, "East Indian Cane Workers in Jamaica," (Ph.D...
...The West Indies Sugar Company (WISCO), a subsidiary of Tate & Lyle Refineries, Ltd., would preside over the second great growth period in sugar's history...
...A 1938 study found that 160,000 adult men in agriculture, two-thirds of all legal smallholders, needed wages to supplement income from their land...
...Since it draws its supply from several countries, Tate & Lyle could decrease acreage output in Jamaica and increase it in those countries where its costs of production were lower...
...2. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol...
...The essence of a casual labor system is that a worker's chances of securing employment with a given employer for some short time period, such as a week, are independent of his having been employed in a previous period...
...But the impact of these various elements depends fundamentally on the changes wrought by capital in the economic life of the classes that comprise the rural labor force...
...Three years later, farmworkers at Monymusk and Frome won from the government the right to set up sugar cooperatives, i.e., collective ownership and control of all farm operations...
...Part of the agricultural population is therefore constantly on the point of passing over into an urban or manufacturing proletariat, and on the lookout for circumstances favorable to this transformation," i.e., for their exit from agriculture...
...It is impossible to raise cane profitably unless within a 15-mile radius of a factory...
...This postwar movement of the rural labor force across international boundaries paralleled equally dramatic internal migrations...
...CASUAL LABOR IN CANE For the landless worker trapped in a maze of increasing cash demands, survival ostensibly impelled complete dependence on work in cane...
...Their very existence at stake, the estate owners acted to rein in the producer: high and capricious rents were imposed and frequently offset against wages...
...producers, unable to accommo*In addition, tens of thousands of acres were repossessed by the Crown and sold to their former squatter occupants for whom formal ownership meant only new fees and taxes, i.e., additional cash requirements...
...But the lure of the sugar belt had faded...
...Output trebled to more than 300,000 tons by 1954 and climbed to 500,000 tons in the peak year of 1965...
...11NACLA Report height of rebellion in the rural areas, rioting and striking producers-- smallholder and landless alike- demanded additional wage-employment opportunities, increased wages and access to land via new government land settlement schemes...
...Cumper, "Labor Demand and Supply in the Jamaican Sugar Industry, 1830-1950," Social and Economic Studies (SES), Vol...
...Subsequent land reform was introduced with the "new" solution in mind...
...But the dramatic shift out of subsistence crops into cane-- some small cane farmers no longer planted any provisions for family consumption--now made them fundamentally dependent upon, and vulnerable to, the changes in market relations presided over by capital...
...101-2...
...Elizabeth, is owned and controlled by three of the island's wealthiest families through a network of corporations...
...But as population rose dramatically in the 1930s and continued to do so in the following period, insufficient land reform ensured a rapid increase in the landless minority and in its wagelaboring component...
...In fact, the mountains were the chief source of this migration during the 1943-70 period...
...During the dry season which, as in parts of Vere, might extend through most of the in-crop period, he must rely on tree crops to protect his cane from the ground-drying sun...
...Jim Phillips, "Fe Wi Land a Come: Choice and Change on a Jamaican Sugar Plantation," (Ph.D...
...The resulting drop in labor demand heightened the peasants' reliance on independent landholding, but the cutoff of wage employment made further land purchase extremely difficult...
...By 1860, the squatter population had soared to 40,000, an increase of 400% in just 15 years...
...II, no...
...The government also provided extensive financial supports in the form of credits, subsidies and often free distribution of seedlings to draw small farmers into capital's export net...
...date the demands of conservation, would later bear the tragic cost in rampant soil erosion...
...of Government, UWI, 1976), p. 4 5 ). JanlFeb 1981 13NACLA Report hills into independent export production on the plains by those with sufficient access to land...
...1 2 Thousands of peasants poured into the canefields in search of work in cane-- perhaps ownaccount work on the small cane plots they hoped to acquire...
...Contrary to the Malthusian claims that hold sway in receiving countries, it was not population pressure on the land but capital's pressure on rural producers that propelled their migration...
...2 6 "[Tenement] owners complained that 'people are just not coming here again' and it was observed that not more than a third were occupied even though it was 'crop time.' ""7 Unlike the flow from hill to plain, the out-migration from the sugar belt was overwhelmingly a movement out of agriculture and in search of urban wage-employment...
...But in the following years, the exit from agriculture swelled this flow into a mass exodus: in 1961, the peak year ofJamaican migration to Great Britain, two thirds of the migrants sampled had been born in and were residents ofJamaica's countryside.' And in the following decade emigration was even more instrumental in the withdrawal from agriculture, accounting in large part for the absolute decline in the labor force of certain rural parishes...
...most had simply been abandoned...
...On the "occupational pluralism" of the Jamaican peasantry, see Elsie Lefranc, "Peasant and Community...
...1954...
...The requisite expansion of acreage was achieved by a dramatic shift into cane of acreage in other agricultural uses and the incorporation of barren lands...
...A 691 considerable number of small cane farmers 63 were added to company payrolls during the first decade of expansion when sugar's "in-crop" (seasonal peak) raised estate employment more than 60...
...Relative to smallholder demand for land, the supply made available was extremely limited...
...The cost per ton of sugar is lowered by the system of reaping by burning...
...For instance, the island-wide sweep of the transistor radio--introduced by foreign firms in the 1950s -brought the lure of "bright city lights" to the countryside, and thousands of young men and women opted for the "good life" in the KMA or London...
...In the following, we will explore the changing conditions of production in sugar that transformed these movements into a movement of wage labor out of agriculture and into the urban centers of world capitalism.* SUGAR RECLAIMS ITS THRONE When "King Sugar" recovered its throne, more than 100 years after its fall, its benefactor was still British capital, but now in the form peculiar to 20th century imperialism- the transnational industrial corporation...
...Sugar crowned itself king during the heyday of slavery when absentee landlords and their British agents made quick fortunes in sugar and 9NACLA Report rum...
...p. 176 and Lambros Comitas, "Occupational Multiplicity in Rural Jamaica," in Viola Garfield, ed., Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society: Symposium on Community Studies in Anthropology, (Seattle: University of Washington, 1963...
...5. For the early history of the Jamaican peasantry and of the sugar industry, see G.E...
...As in sugar, the changing conditions of production in the hills would lead to new migrations out of the countryside...
...But once estate emwho built, over his former vegetable garden, a ployment plummeted--10,000 workers were tenement for rent to an incoming migrant...
...Those who already had larger holdings or enjoyed favorable soils and climate were best able to participate in and to profit from production for export...
...At the Growing labor rebellion in 1937-38 ultimately brought island's operations to a standstill...
...Between 1848 and 1881 the number of estates plummeted from 513 to 211...
...Forced to pay high prices for domestic foods (as well as for imported items in their "subsistence bundle") and to pay rents and purchase fuel, caneworkers faced a sharply increasing cost of living...
...TheJamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and its Aftermath (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), p.11 5 . term structural changes in certain industries were constraining the growth of wage-employment in both the hills and plains...
...diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1975), p. 1. 4. On the small cultivator's attitudes to land use, see Allan Eyre, Geographic Aspects of Population Dynamics in Jamaica (Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1972), Ch...
...In the surge toward labor's organization that helped foment the 1938 rebellion, unionization had already gained a foothold in cane...
...Estate amalgamation, factory reorganization and the introduction of the tractor and of new cane varieties were indices of the transition in the previous half-century from planter to capitalist farmer.' But capital accumulation was constrained by limited resources--chiefly indigenous individual financing originating in earnings from local trades, professions and businesses...
...In all these examples, workers were compelled to split their energies between labor and own-account work, or among several wage jobs...
...7 Fluctuatnd [were] penalized ing incomes, a function of changing prices, quotas and costs as well as the vagaries of cliNCY AND mate and soils, and the desire to expand acreERE PLAINS, age propelled thousands of smallholders into ARENDON debtor relations with estates and large growers, Acres Acres introducing an additional cost factor in a con1942 1961 text of uncertain revenue...
...WHERE SUGAR IS KING 1. R.B...
...Sparked by new market guarantees and a surge in world market prices-between 1943 and 1953 the price jumped 170% - the war-induced revival of sugar in the 1940s rid the industry of its Great Depression woes and inaugurated a 25-year reign of prosperity...
...The resulting neglect of their own cultivations aggravated the producers' cash bind, increasing even further planter control over their labortime...
...The estate cost of producing a ton of the final sugar product depends on two critical variables: the cost of producing a ton of cane on its own fields and the tonnage of sugar extracted from the cane processed by its factories...
...In so doing, they have undermined the conditions of livelihood of the island's independent small farmers, and of the host of rural petty producers--market women, draymen, peddlers- whose livelihoods are intimately connected to that of the peasant...
...It placed the vast capital resources of Tate & Lyle at the disposal of Jamaican sugar, and provoked the subsequent reorganization of domestic capital into public and private corporations...
...Thirty years before, rural rebels rose against impending dispossession...
...In 1971, the Jamaican government bought out WISCO's farmlands...
...Allan Eyre, Geographic Aspects, Chs...
...6 The island's mountainous interior, where population densities reached striking proportions and soil erosion was uncontrolled, could not support additional population at the customary level of subsistence...
...The Crown responded to rebellion with the promise of a "New Deal," a major commitment of funds for land settlement...
...Rural discontent was rooted in the growing danger of dispossession: extraordinary population growth in existing conditions of production threatened to break the already fragile hold of peasant producers on their land...
...The infamous United Fruit Co...
...Although a significant number were oriented toward wage labor, most of the landless moved into petty service and trading activities...
...The migrants were those who, no longer permitted access to cane wages as one thread of a patchwork living, were nevertheless excluded from the agricultural proletariat taking shape...
...Allen Ehrlich, "East Indian Cane Workers," pp...
...9. Cited in Elsie Lefranc, "Peasant and Community," p. 215...
...The farmers' irrigation "systems" destroyed, their albeit limited production of subsistence crops completely excluded and their income subject to wide fluctuations, the pressure to fold was extreme...
...To force the change in technique of production where it lacked direct control over the fields, WISCO exploited its control over marketing: the company imposed a maximum water content on canes coming into its factories, a level that would be exceeded unless the canes were burnt...
...The reality is that underemployment assumes its most brutal form in "modern" plantation agriculture...
...Source: Shirley Jeanne Smith, "Industrial Growth, Employment Opportunities, and Migration Within and From Jamaica, 1943 to 1970 " (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1975), p. 355...
...With the introduction of this "permanent" labor force, capital finally won the age-old battle to break its workers' hold on their supply of labor...
...diss., University of Michigan, 1969), p. 89...
...Catherine where domestic capital predominated...
...2 9 By burning away the thick cane trash, this permits cutting to proceed far more quickly...
...of the population shift already occurring...
...The brutal conditions of tenancy-an attempt to thwart the development of an independent peasantry- precipitated the exodus of many former slaves from the estates...
...In the Jamaican countryside, foreign and domestic companies and private capitalist farmers have struggled to gain control over land, over a supply of labor and over the organization of work...
...It rationalizes the production process, decreasing the demand for labor...
...Historically, job rotation had permitted peasants to periodically supplement income from the land without neglecting their own holdings...
...For more than three centuries hence the mountainous spine that rises quickly from the coast and runs the length of the island remained largely uninhabited...
...acquired part of its vast landholdings in 1905-6 by foreclosing on loans to peasants after hurricanes destroyed their banana crops...
...This discussion is based chiefly on interviews with several former employees of Jamaican government agencies concerned with agricultural development...
...The smallholder has no resources to invest in the intensive irrigation necessary to cane growing...
...Stanley Reid, "An Introductory Approach to the Concentration of Power in the Jamaican Corporate Economy and Notes on its Origins," in Carl Stone and Aggrey Brown, eds., Essays in Power and Change in Jamaica (Kingston: Dept...
...1 (1954) p. 75...
...CUTTING THE TIES THAT BIND In the aftermath of rebellion, "influential opinion" hurriedly identified a solution to the crisis in a new variation on an old theme: statesupported expansion of export agriculture...
...WISCO's entry signalled the start of sugar's corporate metamorphosis...
...But it made sure to retain ownership and control of its factories for which the profit picture was always much brighter...
...To understand why this was so, we must look first at the early process through which "King Sugar" acquired and molded its labor supply...
...Should, for instance, the fields be fired at a time when there is little wind, burning would tend to proceed slowly so that more water is evaporated and cane tonnage and income further reduced...
...See also Elsie Lefranc, "Peasant and Community," pp...
...9 and 11...
...In recognition of capital's inability to absorb the landless in full-time wage labor, the 1945 Report of the Economic Policy Committee urged that the government acquire "suitable land near townships and villages to be leased in one-half and one acre plots as allotments to the small farmers and laborers...
...For a fuller discussion of these developments, see Allan Eyre, Geographic Aspects, Chs...
...In fact, after 30 years and more than a billion investment dollars, the proportion of the work force engaged in wage labor remained constant at 56 percent...
...Factory-mandated prices and quotas became pivotal to survival, as did proximity to the buyers...
...The ex-slaves were permitted to rent the former slave "provision grounds" for their own cultivations and their old quarters for housing...
...4 In pursuing this settlement program, the Crown enforced the insufficiency of smallholder resources...
...So the several hundred tiny plots of mixed subsistence cultivation of 1943 "had either become more miniscule or had been entirely built upon" by 1961.20 And in Mitchell Town, a rural settlement at the Plain's eastern end, even when cleared land was not built upon it often remained bare...
...they would form the core of a "middle peasantry...
...Given the small size of rented plots and the limited market for provisions, this could not but enforce additional wage work...
...And when crisis struck the industry in 1965, workers were completely at its mercy...
...Since work was still seasonal, and a worker was not even guaranteed of work during the entire season, permanent employment did not obviate the need for supplementary income...
...of Geology and Geography, University of the West Indies [UWI], Occasional Papers No...
...Petty producers, bolstered by casual estate labor, continued to hold their own...
Vol. 15 • January 1981 • No. 1
