Abstract

Recent debates over the persistence of family farms have focused on the importance of “naturalistic” obstacles to the capitalist development of agriculture. According to these arguments, the existence of these barriers in some realms of agricultural production precludes the development of wage labor. I argue, however, that in many instances these obstacles are based primarily on political factors. To demonstrate this thesis I illustrate how the tobacco program until recently has proved to be an obstacle to consolidation and structural change in tobacco production. The tobacco program has conditioned the extent of technological development and structural change in tobacco production. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the tobacco program maintained a system of small-scale producers and discouraged technological change in the industry. Changes in the program in the 1970s and 1980s, however, have contributed to the rapid mechanization and structural change among tobacco producers. Many of the “obstacles” to consolidation were overcome not by technological change, but by weakened political support for the tobacco program. These results suggest that in addition to economic and technological considerations, we need to assess more carefully the political foundations of the capitalist development of agriculture