A case of “plus ça change”, a “missed opportunity”, or a “new land-grab”?

Abstract

This is an anthropological analysis of the White Paper on Agricultural Land Reform. It is not a legal analysis, and legal experts may well be dissatisfied with its lack of discernment with respect to land lease law in Malta. Its basic premise is that law cannot be seen in isolation to its social and economic effects, particularly one that deals with land and its exploitation. Certain interpretations of the law here may be wrong or tempered by other aspects. But popular views of what the law entails, as explored in this submission paper, still have a social reality that influences people’s perceptions, and actions, even if they may be erroneous. In that respect the law has a reality and social effects independent of the legislators’ intentions and the legal experts’ interpretations. One of the most surprising aspects of this White Paper (WP) is that it treats land tenancy primarily as a legal issue quite independently of its agricultural implications. And yet, on the other hand, it justifies itself by the need to provide a ‘secure food supply’. This necessitated enquiring not just whether Malta has ever been able to provide for itself, but also whether the actual land tenure regime that the WP attempts to shore up has ever been adequate for this purpose. The answer to both questions is negative. Malta has never been able to supply itself food wise, and I argue that the current land tenure regime is a significant contributory factor to Malta’s agricultural underdevelopment. Our current land tenure rental regime can never supply the country with an ample food supply; it also supplies us with the ‘wrong products’, shadowing and trying to compete with cheap food imports rather than concentrating on niche markets. This is not the fault of the tenants. It is the fault of the State that, in the name of ‘protection’, turned tenants not into commercially oriented farmers but into part-time cultivators who progressively considered the land they worked ultimately more significant for its transmissible (and divisible) capitalizable value as potential real estate, rather than in terms of its productive agricultural income through cumulative investment. Nor is there any evidence that the agricultural authorities ever previously explicitly oriented their policies, efforts, and announcements, towards the aim of a ‘secure food supply’. The conclusion is that the authorities were obliged to scrabble around to find a quick legitimating fix and alighted on ‘food supply’ as the widest, most populist, and most unassailable argument to fix what they considered a legal problem. The authorities claim that they desire to protect agricultural land. This may be disingenuous. Rather, they seem intentioned to shore up a monopolistic land tenure system through the White Paper. Ironically, it is this land tenure system itself that (in my opinion) is a major cause of Malta’s agricultural underperformance. This is an odd blind spot given that the White Paper is issued by the Ministry of Agriculture. It is also unfortunate because any legal tenancy regime has direct causative effects on the type of agriculture that emerges, e.g., whether it is dynamic, static, or even regressive, the level of investment, innovation, and the introduction of new ideas, crops, niche products or cabbages. This paper thus explores the structure of Maltese agriculture arguing that it evolved into two segments: (i) the private more professional sector innovating in new crops and products oriented towards the market such as wineries, olive oil producers, intense greenhouse horticulture, etc, and (ii) what I label a ‘simulated peasant mode of production’, where the ultimate capitalisable value of the land is more important to the protected part-time cultivating tenant than its agricultural output. The latter is largely the consequence of the protected private land tenure regime and explains why “farmers” (often employees deriving their main income elsewhere) try to hold on to it so tenaciously. The full-time farmer presents a different profile. This paper is both a political economic and an anthropological treatment of the motivations, effects and implications of the Private Land Rental Regime on agriculture It is political economic in that it looks at the State’s motivations in framing and sustaining it in the name of “protection”, as well as the rental regime’s effects on agricultural development; anthropological in that it explores some of the attitudes and dispositions of tenants and landlords emerging from this framework in which they have been enmeshed sometimes uncomfortably for generations. It is far from extensive. The literature quoted is strictly limited to the task: official papers, reports, comments etc. It does not compare the local scene to other examples of land tenure reform. That would have necessitated more than the 4 weeks available for comments and submission. Nevertheless, it is hoped that these observations will be useful for policy makers, legislators, and the interested public, and contribute to a positive resolution of what is more than a legal challenge despite what most participants seem to believe.