Oil and Water: Agricultural Development in Libya

Résumé En

Libya faces not only physical constraints in its efforts to expand agricultural production, but social structural, organizational, and ideological hinderances as well. After independence in 1951, the absence of a substantial peasantry and the weakness of the technocratic bureaucracy conspired with growing oil revenues to encourage poorly planned and uncoordinated spending on agricultural mechanization which often upset the delicate ecological balance of Libya’s coastal and mountainous agricultural regions. Far from being prepared to learn from its predecessor’s mistakes, the revolutionary government of Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi which came to power in 1969 repeated many of them by overspending on high technology approaches to agriculture which neither the physical nor the human environments could support. Moreover, the revolution exhibited an anti-market ideology which reflected what has been called the “moral economy” view of subsistence and market participation and effectively undermined planning and implementation of agricultural policies which might conserve the country’s natural resources and enhance productivity. Thus Libya’s future in agriculture appeared to be growing increasingly bleak.