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Abstract
Ground nuts, colza and soya beans are comparable p-oducts as foodstuffs. They all contain oil and proteins in varying quantities. Their use and the regions where they are produced depend at any given time on the relations and exchanges between nations and on the protectionist or free-trade policies of states. Thus the colonial policy of European countired situated table-oil production (ground nuts, colza and soya) in Asia (India, China) and in Africa (Senegal, Nigeria). Under an appearance of free-trade this poHcy fixed the trade flow in zones of influence where the old industrial countries controlled the supply of raw materials. The protectionist policy of the « Young Countries » are an answer to these policies. In 1930 already the USA developped the production of soya beans with tariff-protection and idirect aid for production. The break up of the colonial system after the war benefited American soya which dominated oil-protein exchanges while new forms of protection in Europe were an attempt to aid national production (colza in France and Germany). But the struggle is unequal. Soya in the US is one of the bases of multinational firms whose strategy depends partly on European protectionism. European colza cannot win because the national economic agents (French firms) are not able to make it the basis of an alternative food pattern (oil and proteins). The competition (after 1967) between ground nuts and soya concerns totally different production conditions. Ground nuts are not (unlike colza) the xesult of a form of agriculture integrated in the industrial production process.