The agricultural population of the world
has witnessed a steady but low rate of growth during the 1990s. While
the world agricultural population in the world in 1990 was approximately
2,438.283 million, by 2001 it had reached 2,575.340 million, growing at
a measly average of around 0.50 per cent a year. However, almost all countries
in the developed world, and countries in Latin America have experienced
a drop in the number of people in agriculture during the 1990s. The increase
in the size of the agricultural population of the world is because of
the increase in the same in developing countries in Africa and Asia.
The agricultural population in South Asia grew at 1.01 per cent a year
between 1990 and 2001. The Indian agricultural workforce grew annually
at 0.94 per cent, lower than the growth of the same in all South Asian
countries taken together, but higher than the 0.54 per cent at which the
agricultural workforce grew in all Asian developing countries taken together.
Even in countries where the growth of agricultural population has been
positive, it has mostly lagged way behind the rate of growth of the total
population of the concerned countries, or even when taking only the rural
population under consideration. For example, the population of India grew
at 1.95 per cent a year between 1991 and 2001, while the country's rural
population has been growing at around 1.67 per cent per annum during this
decade. The Latin American population grew at an annual average of 1.62
per cent during the 1990s, while the rural population of the region actually
fell at 0.01 per cent a year during the same period. The agricultural
population fell faster, at 0.79 per cent a year during this decade.
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Sub-Saharan Africa has been one region where the agricultural workforce,
while growing at a rate less than that at which the total population grew,
increased faster than the rate of growth of the region's rural population.
However many countries in different parts of the world witnessed increased
migration from rural areas to the cities as is evident from a fall in
the rural population while the total population continued to increase.
Brazil in Latin America has been a classic example. Brazil's total population
grew at 1.39 per cent a year between 1991 and 2001. But the country witnessed
increased migration from rural areas to the cities as is evident from
the decline in Brazil's rural population at 1.56 per cent per annum during
this decade. The decline in the country's agricultural population however
outpaced the decline in its rural population during the 1990s.
We will now try to look at what might have been the possible reasons behind
the way in which the agricultural population in the different regions
and countries under observation have grown (or shrunk) during the 1990s.
Agricultural policy worldwide has failed to distinguish between the different
type of farmers living under different agro-climatic zones and their specific
needs. Policymakers have always talked of a ‘farming community';
while in reality there is not one farming community but several of them.
As Pushpa Surendra has found out in India, the small farmer may only be
a tenant of another landowner or may have leased a plot for cultivation.
Most farmers' organizations are dominated by those growing irrigated crops
and using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These organizations are
preoccupied with wresting concessions from their governments, in the form
of free water and electricity, and subsidies of several kinds, all of
which serve the interests of large and surplus-generating farmers[1].
In the absence of organizations that represent the interests of the small
farmer government policies neglect the needs of those marginalized. The
number of jobs in the agricultural sector is falling steadily. This has
been an important and continuing trend. Many would see this as a sign
of development, one in which an increasing proportion of the population
is moving away from agriculture without affecting productivity in agriculture
because of the prevalence of disguised unemployment in agriculture. However,
available data indicate otherwise. In the European Union small farms are
being bought out and consolidated into larger farms. Throughout the EU,
the reduction in the number of farms has entailed lay-offs of paid workers.
A joint analysis of the proportion of part-time jobs and the proportion
of farmers engaged in a non-agricultural gainful activity highlights the
special situation in the southern European countries in particular. While
there is a high level of part-time employment, very few farmers are engaged
in a non-agricultural gainful activity[2].
In Slovakia while agricultural employment fell sharply, overall employment
also moved in the same direction, though the fall was less than that of
employment in agriculture. So the hope that declining agricultural employment
is necessarily a sign of progress (and the expectation that this will
rid the agricultural sector from disguised unemployment and those released
will be absorbed in the non-agricultural sector) cannot be sustained from
empirical evidence. The number of people employed in agriculture in Slovakia
dropped by more than 50% between 1989 and 2000, decreasing at an average
rate of 6.1% per year (compared to 1.8% per year between 1960-89). The
total number of people employed in Slovakia fell by about a quarter during
the same period.
Changes in Employment: Total Employed and Employed
in Agriculture in Slovakia
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The condition of the agricultural population in India isn't any better
either. As pointed out by Jayati Ghosh, there is evidence of very significant
falls in employment growth in agriculture by the usual status definition,
which refers to what a person usually does over the year in question,
both in terms of principal activity and principal plus subsidiary activities.
The decline in growth of agricultural employment in India has been even
drastic if one considers the weekly and daily status definitions. This
implies that even those who saw themselves as usually employed, had difficulties
in getting jobs on a weekly or daily basic [4]
[5].
However, even in India the fall in growth of agricultural employment has
not been accompanied by a rise in employment opportunities in the non-agricultural
sector. On the contrary withdrawal of the state and reduction in state
expenditure have made it difficult for the labour declared surplus in
agriculture to find alternative employment. In 1987-88, about 60% of the
regular non-agricultural employees in rural areas were employed by the
government, often in employment-generating programmes, which created almost
80% of the increments in such regular jobs during the 1980s. The economic
reforms package of the 1990s has seen declines in central government revenue
expenditure on rural development, substantial declines in public infrastructure
and energy investments which affect the rural areas, reduced transfers
to state governments which have been facing a major financial crunch and
have therefore been forced to cut back their own spending, particularly
on social expenditure, and financial liberalisation measures which have
effectively reduced the availability of rural credit and raised input
costs. These have been among several measures that have affected the rural
population, and the small and marginal farmers in particular, adversely
since liberalisation.
In regions where agricultural incomes have crossed a minimum threshold,
further increases in agricultural output are accompanied by labour displacement
rather than greater labour absorption. Increased concentration of land
holdings, an increase in large landowners leasing in plots owned by small
and marginal farmers, and rising landlessness have been salient features
of this process. And not all of this displaced labour can be considered
to be disguisedly unemployed since small/marginal cultivators also use
other non-land inputs more intensively suggests that they would use this
additional labour to increase per hectare productivity.
The falling rate of growth of agricultural employment in India cannot
be explained entirely by opportunities in the non-agricultural sector,
or by growing participation in education. The macroeconomic strategy needs
to be reoriented towards the basic goal of increasing productive employment
opportunities in the rural areas [6].
Even as China attempts to move people out of agriculture, it remains an
onerous task for the country's policymakers to meet the target as population
growth keeps adding more people to the rural labour force each year. The
creation of 57 million rural non-farm jobs during the 1990s decreased
farm employment by only 5 million from 1990 to 2000. The aging of the
rural labour force presents another obstacle to non-farm job growth because
older persons are less likely to enter off-farm employment than younger
persons[7].
D.G. Johnson has estimated that China would need to create 15 million
jobs per year over the next 30 years to reduce its farm employment from
the current 47 per cent to 10 percent of the labour force (about the level
of South Korea and Taiwan), nearly three times the annual average of 5.9
million workers per year that China has been transferring from agricultural
to non-agricultural activities from 1978 to 2000, according to the country's
National Bureau of Statistics. Even for a more realistic 20 per cent share
for the agricultural labour force (similar to that of Malaysia) China
would require to accelerate job growth over current rates[8].The
target has become even more difficult as the rural township and village
enterprises (TVEs) that had been absorbing much farm labour till the mid
1990s have now reduced hiring in an attempt to raise productivity and
workforce quality. TVE employment grew by 42 million during the first
half of the 1990s but fell by 7 million between 1996 and 2000.
As should be evident from the discussion so far, the growth rate of rural
labour force has been greater than the growth rate of agricultural employment
across the world during the 1990s. However this trend had been prevalent
even before 1990. However, state intervention often prevented any downward
tendency in agricultural wages which might have resulted from this growth-rate
gaps. In fact in countries like India real agricultural wages rose through
the 1970s and 1980s, and this was one of the main reasons for the reduction
of rural poverty, and much of this rise can be attributed to the expansion
of non-agricultural employment, courtesy government sponsored employment-generating
programmes[9].But now, with increasing agricultural prices,
falling wages in the unorganized sector, and a contraction in government-sponsored
non-agricultural employment in rural areas the agricultural population
is going to be greatly impoverished.
In India there was a very large increase in expenditure on the rural sector
by the State and Central governments during the 1980s. Nearly 60 per cent
of all new government jobs created accrued to rural areas during the decade
and accounted for 80 per cent of the new regular jobs created in the countryside.
More than one-fifth of all casual labour days spent on non-agricultural
activity in the late 1980s in rural India were on public works programmes
of the government. This was critical in increasing both access to lean-season
incomes and boosting the bargaining power of rural labour[10].However,
spending in rural areas as a share of gross domestic product has fallen
steadily during the 1990s, and is currently an extremely small figure,
about 2 per cent.
Financial liberalisation measures, which include a reduction in priority
sector lending by banks, have effectively reduced the availability of
rural credit, and thus reduced farm investment, especially by smaller
farmers. In the absence of credit availability many small and marginal
farmers are finding it impossible to pay for the necessary inputs and
are being forced to lease out their plots to rich farmers. This is happening
at a time when research is increasingly pointing towards the viability
of small farms as small farms have been found to use the inputs more intensively
and hence exhibit greater productivity. In fact, even an organization
like the World Bank has been lately talking about the need for redistributive
land reforms. However, the Bank's insistence on "willing buyers,
willing sellers" and sale at market price have ensured that the programme
becomes a non-starter[11].Non-availability of rural
credit and loans make such a proposal even more absurd.
Lack of rural credit has indeed played a spoilsport so far as the viability
of small farmers is concerned. Input costs have risen, fertilizer subsidies
have come down, and user charges on water and electricity have gone up.
In addition, introduction of new varieties of seed marketed by major multinational
companies, among other monetized inputs, have led to increased need for
cash among the farmers. However, in the face of dwindling credit available
from the formal sector, small cultivators are being forced to borrow from
informal credit sources at very high rates of interest in order to pay
for these cash inputs. These farmers run into great in difficulty if for
some reason there is crop failure or output prices remain low.
While the Green Revolution technology was expensive and compelled many
small farmers to lease out or sell their plots of land and offer them
as agricultural workers on the fields of the large farmers, the technology
nevertheless necessitated the use of more labour as the new seeds required
more irrigation, more pesticides, more fertilizers, etc. However, recent
advances in agricultural technology have been more labour-saving, thereby
making life more difficult for agricultural labourers looking for work.
Changes in cropping pattern have also affected agricultural employment
adversely. Not only has there been a shift away more sowing foodgrains
to those of commercial crops, and to horticulture and floriculture, which
require much less labour, many regions have simultaneously witnessed a
shift away from crops which provided employment all the year round to
crops which at best offered seasonal employment. SEWA reported in its
annual report for the year 2001 that in many places in India tobacco has
been replaced with banana and sugarcane, which are both cash crops. The
tobacco crop ensured 12 months employment whereas the newly introduced
crops did not[12].While reduced tobacco consumption
is always desirable, ensuring the livelihood of agricultural workers should
not remain a goal any less cherished.
With an increasing tendency to use labour-displacing technology in agriculture,
use of expensive and monetized inputs, and a near non-availability of
agricultural and other rural credit facilities for the small farmers the
situation looks bleak for the small cultivators all through the world.
More small farmers are now leasing out their land to large cultivators,
leading to an increasing land concentration ratio, which in turn is encouraging
more mechanization, and hence leading to more labour displacement. Only
a reversal of the process of agricultural and economic liberalization
is going to revive hopes of survival of the agricultural population.