ABSTRACT
As chaotic and disordered as it may appear at first sight, worldwide agriculture is today clearly characterized by three basic and mutually contrasting development trajectories: a strong tendency towards industrialization; a widespread, though often hidden, process of repeasantization; and, third, an emerging process of deactivation, especially in Africa. These three processes each affect, albeit in highly contrasting ways, the nature of agricultural production processes. By doing so, they place a specific imprint upon employment levels, the total amount of produced value, ecology, landscape and biodiversity, and the quantity and quality of food. They interact in many different ways and at several levels, thus contributing to the overwhelming impression of chaos and disorganization that currently seems to characterize world agriculture (Charvet, 1987; Uvin, 1994; Brun, 1996; Weis, 2007).
