Reswitching of Techniques in the Modern Agriculture: a Theoretical Background
Résumé
The industrialization of the agricultural sector has resolved, at least in
Europe, United States and Japan, the thousand year-old problem of the lack of food.
Unfortunately, during the last years the environmental limits of such an agriculture
clearly exploded. Through our contribution we define the concepts of traditional
and modernized styles of farming. We also hypothesize three future scenarios for
modernized agriculture. We shall study in particular the “return of techniques”
scenario that foresees the conversion to sustainability through the return of
traditional techniques. In order to analyze this scenario, we shall introduce the
Sraffian framework of the “reswitching of techniques” from the neo-ricardian
theory (Sraffa 1960). Sraffa, within the “reswitching” framework, pointed out that a
low-capital-intensive technique may be competitive both at a relatively low and
high rate of profit. Finally, we shall show that, at least theoretically, it is possible
that traditional agricultural techniques could be convenient in a context of both low
and high profit level.
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