Rivals or Complements? Deborah Fahy Bryceson ODI seminar - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Agriculture & the Rural Non-Farm Sector: Rivals or Complements? Deborah Fahy Bryceson ODI seminar presentation, 4 November 2005 The Debate: agriculture vs. rural non-farm sectors What is at issue? welfare vested interests

SLIDE 1

Agriculture & the Rural Non-Farm Sector: Rivals or Complements?

Deborah Fahy Bryceson

ODI seminar presentation, 4 November 2005

SLIDE 2

The Debate: agriculture vs. rural non-farm sectors

 What is at issue?

– welfare – vested interests

 Disciplinary perspective?

– Agricultural Economics – Rural Sociology – Human Geography

 Unit of analysis?

– sector – farm production unit – family household production/consumption/cultural unit

SLIDE 3

African Peasants in Transition

 Peasant household characteristics:

– FARM - subsistence & commodity production – FAMILY - unit of production – CLASS - position vis-à-vis state and global market – COMMUNITY - remote

 African smallholder peasant households

– FARM - producing subsistence food & cashcrops – FAMILY

Male heads of households produced the cashcrop
Women produced the foodcrops for HH consumption
Children increasingly attended school

– CLASS - Peasant-state/market relations worked

during the late 1960s & 1970s as evidenced in Tanzanian peasant export production

SLIDE 4

State/Market Reorientation, 1980s

 Mid & Late 1970s Oil Crisis challenged the

competitiveness of peasant export crops

– parastatal marketing doomed

 Introduction of SAP

– economic & political chain reaction leading to SAP – pricing seen as central incentive for raising export crop output – policies to replace state intervention with open markets – elimination of producer and social service subsidies

SLIDE 5

Peasant HH Restructuring, 1980s

 HH need for cash due to declining export

crop production & subsidy removal

 Diversification of HH production

– off-farm activities – non-agricultural activities – experimentation generating ‘winners’ & ‘losers’

 Labour force expansion

– entry of women and youth as cash earners

 Socio-political repercussions

– economic autonomy of women and youth – declining coherence of household production units – increased economic differentiation in countryside

SLIDE 6

Economic Liberalization, 1990s

 Effect on peasant HH production

– export crop production stagnant or declining per capita – geographical differentiation - location of HH vis-à-vis non-farm opportunities – growth of urban areas & non-agricultural activities as stimulus to agriculture (not classic industrialization model)

 Striking differences in country

trajectories: Tanzania vs. Malawi

SLIDE 7

Tanzanian Depeasantization Path

 Rural income diversification very

widespread

 Peasant income diversification has

been supported by national economic diversification

– mining – tourism – steady urbanization

SLIDE 8

Malawi Depeasantization Path

 Peasant income diversification thwarted by:

– decline of male labourers’ remittances – lack of rural purchasing power – agricultural involution - high population density, low crop yields & reliance on mono-cropping – relatively low level of urbanization (13.5%)

 Outcome: rampant rural poverty and resort to

casual wage labour market entwined in vicious cycle of famine and HIV infection

SLIDE 9

Current rural policies

 Economic liberalization/poverty alleviation

– ambiguous policies pulling in opposing directions – poverty alleviation redresses SAP’s impact

 Economic liberalization

– affirms households’ diversification process – arrests decline in peasant agricultural exports but not on a rural per capita basis

 Rural producers highly market responsive

– thriving urban market for food production – some non-farm activities have profound welfare and rural lifestyle implications in the 21st century

SLIDE 10

Agriculture vs. Non-Farm - whose dilemma?

 Tanzania can no longer be considered a

primarily agrarian country & Malawi is still agrarian but with dismal prospects

 Ag vs. Non-Farm - not an issue for rural

diversifiers who do both

– retention of a subsistence fallback – responsive to best economic returns on commercial production - ag or non-farm – seeking income on more individualized basis than before causing loss in rural peasant HH coherence – small-scale rural producers are now more flexible in Tanzania and more desperate in Malawi

SLIDE 11

Agriculture vs. Non-Farm - policy implications

 Defensiveness of agricultural specialists

re. deagrarianization/depeasantization

is misplaced

– re-evaluate existing assumptions and models – need to come to grips with the producers, their changing production units, activities & lifestyles