Читать книгу Innovation Economics, Engineering and Management Handbook 1 - Группа авторов - Страница 34

In the context of the famines between the 18th and 19th centuries, agriculture was called upon to respond to food demands, as well as to an industrialization that reduced the relative number of farmers and necessitated an increase in productivity. Technical changes (cultivation practices, tools) triggered a slow agricultural revolution, differentiated according to territories and sectors, closely linked to the development of industry and trade. All these changes benefited from the progress of knowledge on plant functioning and soil fertility. They were also linked to the institutionalization of agronomic research, carried out by the experiments of agricultural notables and then by public action (Jas 2005). These two centuries of agricultural transformation were observed by the first economists and sometimes inspired their vision of technical progress. This was the case, in the 18th century, of physiocrats (such as Quesnay) who argued that the investment of rich farmers, enlightened by new methods, would improve the efficiency of agriculture. Classical economists (Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Say, etc.) then turned their attention to technical change, based, above all, on observations of the infant industry. For Smith, the introduction of new machines and the division of labor were the result of initiatives by economic actors (in particular, craftsmen), and also implied profound institutional and contractual changes, to which technical innovations were therefore subordinate (Labini 2007). In agriculture, for example, he suggested the introduction of long-term rental contracts to encourage investment. For his part, Ricardo (1817) identified two forms of improvement in agriculture, namely “[...] those that increase the productive capacity of the land [...]” (new rotations, fertilizers, etc.) and “[...] those that, through improved machinery, make it possible to obtain the same product with less work [...]”. Say associated the image of the farmer, already dear to physiocrats, with an entrepreneur in the agricultural industry and insisted on the links between technical changes in agriculture and those in industry. Marx, whose work in agriculture put technical progress into a historical perspective that would lead to an appropriation of living labor by capital, a kind of a violation for workers and peasants, also saw that it was necessary for the progress of humanity.

While the question of technical change in agriculture was largely ignored by the academic economists of the 19th century, it was, on the other hand, very present among the first chemists, agronomists, rural economists and agricultural historians. The analysis of technical change was also the subject of work in rural sociology at the beginning of the 20th century, which analyzed the social and political conditions that governed the technical transformations in European agriculture.