SOAS - UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
FACULTY OF LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
MSC DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Theory, Policy and Practice of Development
Term 2
Tutor: Ravi Raman
What are the implications of rural livelihood diversification and changing
rural-urban relations for poverty alleviation through agrarian reform?
13/03/2012
Word count: 2746
What are the implications of rural livelihood diversification and changing ruralurban relations for poverty alleviation through agrarian reform?
Introduction
In the light of globalisation, industrialisation, and urbanisation, lives and livelihoods in
the contemporary rural South are becoming increasingly diversified and delocalized.
Non-farm activities are gaining centrality in rural livelihoods and household incomes,
which also leads to new ramifications for the production and reproduction of poverty.
On the other hand, challenges such as the emergence of slums are appearing on the
agenda, with slum growth everywhere in the global South outpacing urbanization per
se (Davis 2006). These processes require a rethinking on how to best alleviate
poverty and on which role, if any, agrarian reforms can play in this.
This essay will argue that the significance of agrarian reforms for poverty alleviation
has to be reassessed, given that livelihoods are becoming increasingly diversified
and de-linked from land and agriculture, and rural-urban distinctions are blurred in
the contemporary global South. While they should not be shrugged off as outdated
per se, the relevance of agrarian reforms has to be analysed according to specific
contexts, taking into account for instance the respective employment market and
availability of idle land. Ultimately, depending on the context, agrarian reforms should
be seen as part of a broader approach, instead of a one-size-fits-all solution to
alleviate poverty. The essay will first discuss existing arguments for poverty
alleviation through agrarian reforms, predominantly the Marxist approach and the
neo-populist approach, as well as new ‘semi-proletarianized’ movements in the rural
South. It will concentrate mainly on the case of redistributive land reform. Afterwards,
the diversification of livelihoods and changing rural-urban relations in many
contemporary developing countries will be dealt with, followed by a discussion of
today’s relevance of agrarian reform strategies in the light of such developments.
Theoretical Approaches to Agrarian Reform
The original Marxist argument for redistributive agrarian reform is linked to the classic
‘agrarian question of capital’ (Bernstein 2007: 28), which is concerned with how to
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increase labour productivity in farming, and the role of land and agriculture in
industrialisation processes. In the early stages of capitalist development, debates on
the agrarian question were concerned with transitions from feudalism to capitalism, a
process that Marx regarded as both necessary and desirable for a country in order to
develop and industrialize. This process involved the formation of social classes, a
landed class of capitalists and one of labourers, that had to sell its labour force in
order to survive. The exploitation of this labouring class, combined with a new
dependence on the market and competitiveness between capitalists, was seen as
the precondition for industrialisation. Where this process did not happen naturally,
redistributive land reforms became a precondition for the transformation to agrarian
capitalism and the subsequent industrialisation (Bernstein 2007). However, Bernstein
argues that the agrarian question of capital is no longer relevant today, given that the
transition to capitalism has occurred on a global scale (Ntsebeza 2006).
Neo-populist theories, as represented by Keith Griffin, Azizur Rahman Khan and Amy
Ickowitz in their paper ‘Poverty and Distribution of Land’ (2002) argue in favour of
redistributive agrarian reforms as the best means of alleviating rural poverty and
securing rapid agricultural growth in the global South. Their principal assumption is
an inverse relationship between output per unit of land and size of the respective
holding, i.e. the productivity is higher on small farms compared to large ones. Small
farms, the neo-populist argument goes, have a lower proportion of uncultivated land
and a higher cropping ratio, as well as a cropping pattern that favours crops with
higher value added, and higher physical yields for individual crops (Griffin et al. 2002).
The highly unequal distribution of land in most (developing) countries is hence
regarded as inefficient and inequitable. However, this main assumption of neopopulist arguments is often criticized for its lack of historical perspective (Byres 2004).
Particularly, industrial transformations are not taken into account. While an inverse
relationship between productivity and size of a farm may have existed in precapitalist societies, when small farmers were able to apply labour very intensively
without facing a clear technical superiority of large farms, the spread of new
technologies caused the breakdown of this inverse relationship (Dyer 2004). As
Byres (2004: 8) puts it, ‘to maintain its continuing existence is to pursue a static
approach in a dynamic context.’
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Agrarian reforms have recently returned to mainstream policy agendas, amongst
others through neo-liberal concepts of market-led land redistribution promoted by the
IFIs, which involve providing incentives for large landowners to sell part of their
holding (Bernstein 2007). However, there is also pressure coming from below, for
example in Latin America, where rural movements such as the Brazilian Movimento
Sem Terra (MST) are trying to secure land redistribution through land invasions and
occupations (Bernstein 2004). These movements share a social basis in the semiproletarianized peasantry, consisting of both landless proletarians and urban
unemployed (Bryceson 2000). Their arguments in favour of redistributive land
reforms take into account contemporary realities such as the fragmentation of labour,
crises of unemployment, and the pressures coming with globalisation. This can be
related to Bernstein’s thesis that today’s agrarian question might be a question of
labour, ‘detached from that of capital, rooted in crises of employment, and manifested
in struggles over, and for, land to secure some part of its reproduction needs’
(Bernstein 2004: 221). He argues that land redistribution in such contexts might
acquire a new significance as a survival strategy for the poor in response to the
lacking reproduction of labour (Bernstein 2004).
Livelihood Diversification and Changing Rural-Urban Relations
Livelihood diversification can be defined as ‘the process by which rural families
construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in order to
survive and to improve their standards of living’ (Ellis 1998: 1), for example through
combining agricultural with non-agricultural work, often in the informal sector. It is a
highly heterogeneous and context-specific process, whose causes and effects differ
according to local and demographic contexts, as well as income and education levels
(Ellis 1998). For example, Gupta (2005) points out that in half of the Indian states,
more than 40 percent of the rural population is engaged in non-agricultural work. This
applies both for landless labourers as well as for peasant families that own land
themselves. Gupta explains this tendency as partly a result of the pressure of market
forces on small farms that are unable to increase productivity as land gets subdivided
further and further from one generation to another (Gupta 2005). Similar trends hold
true for the region of Southeast Asia, where the contribution of farming to household
income fell from around 90 percent to 36 percent, while the share of non-farm income
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increased from 13 percent to 64 percent within two decades since the 1980s (Rigg
2006).
A related process to the diversification of livelihoods in the global rural South is the
increased mobility of labour, between rural villages, towns, and cities. Nonagricultural work often requires rural people to migrate to urban areas, where they
predominantly find employment in the informal sector, often for a limited period of
time before being pushed back to their villages of origin (Breman 2000). The resulting
increased interconnectedness of rural and urban labour markets is, as Breman
(2000: 241) argues, a result of ‘the lack of economic and physical space which
prevents the army of newcomers fro establishing themselves as permanent
urbanites’.
The diversification of rural livelihoods and urbanisation waves in developing countries
are characterised by Rigg (2006) as a result of the erosion of the profitability and
returns to small-holder agricultural production, the emergence of new opportunities in
the non-farm sector, environmental degradation, increasing land shortages, and
cultural and social change. Bryceson (2000) explains these phenomena as results of
neoliberal ‘Washington Consensus’ policies pursued by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1980s and 1990s. Following the debt crisis
of the late 1970s, national governments of many developing countries became
subject to so-called Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). These committed
national governments to cut expenditures for agricultural subsidies and rural
infrastructure building in order to receive loans from the international financial
institutions (IFIs). Tariffs and other trade barriers were withdrawn to open domestic
economies to foreign trade, exposing peasant farmers to global commodity markets
where they could hardly compete with large Western agricultural companies,
themselves often subsidised by the governments of their countries of origin
(Bryceson 2000). With local safety nets disappearing, small farmers became highly
vulnerable to exogenous shocks such as illness, droughts, inflation, rising interest
rates or falling commodity prices, causing them to look for ways to diversify their
income sources and to move to urban areas in search for employment and social
services (Davis 2006).
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Rigg (2006) also stresses the fact that with the growing interconnectivity between
rural and urban areas, the assumption that a large proportion of rural populations
might want to engage in subsistence farming is being outdated. ‘It is when villages
are fragmented by modernity, when village production is undermined by
industrialization, and when villagers are extracted from their natal homes that things
are perceived to go wrong’ (Rigg 2006: 187). In reality, however, modern
communication technologies, infrastructural advances, the media, education, and the
increasing exposure to modern consumer goods have fundamentally changed the
way rural people perceive agricultural work and construct their and their children’s
futures. Farming, according to Rigg (2006), is increasingly seen as a low-status
occupation to be avoided, especially amongst younger people. This is shown by the
fact that the average age of farmers is rising. In Japan, for example, over one third of
the agricultural labour force is above 65 years old (Rigg 2006).
Ultimately, the diversification, or, as Bernstein refers to it, ‘fragmentation of labour’
(2004: 190), together with an increased labour mobility that follows technological and
infrastructural advances, has blurred dualistic pictures of a rural-urban distinction:
‘The growing global masses of labour pursue their means of reproduction across
different sites of the social division of labour: urban and rural, agricultural and nonagricultural, wage employment and self-employment’ (Bernstein 2007: 45). This
growing heterogeneity of the rural poor makes it harder to identify measures to
alleviate poverty. Certainly, agrarian reforms cannot be seen as the one-size-fits-all
remedy, particularly regarding the contemporary global context of urbanization and
livelihood diversification. Measures to resolve poverty have to be tailored according
to the respective local context.
Is Agricultural Reform still an Adequate Measure to Alleviate Poverty?
Rigg (2006) argues that agrarian reform measures such as an invigoration of
smallholder farming and land redistributions can no longer be seen as adequate
solutions to poverty, given the lower significance of farm income for rural livelihoods.
He largely agrees with Ellis (1998) that the best way to promote rural development
and to fight against poverty is to remove constraints to livelihood diversification and
to provide poor people with skills to help them escaping from farming and rural areas.
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This, so the argument goes, will endow individuals and households with more
capabilities to improve their livelihood security and to raise living standards (Ellis
1998; Rigg 2006).
However, Rigg also admits that alleviating poverty by facilitating a way for rural
populations to leave the agricultural sector is only possible if a dynamic industrial
sector is in place, with the ability to absorb rural labourers: ‘Without such a sector,
people displaced from the countryside will simply undergo a geographical shift from
rural to urban, while their standard of living will either remain the same or, possibly,
decline still further’ (Rigg 2006: 195). Hence, a migration to urban areas does not
necessarily offer a solution to rural poverty and can in some cases rather be seen as
a failed attempt of rural people to find a ‘spatial fix’ for their situation. Often, the
poorest people leave the agricultural sector on the least advantageous terms and
with false expectation of the absorptive capacity of urban employment sectors.
However, the size of a city’s population does not necessarily reflect its capacity to
provide employment, and what is found in many contemporary developing countries
can be termed as ‘urbanization without growth’ (Davis 2006: 13). Nevertheless,
falling urban incomes in many cases do not imply a decline in rural-urban migration.
For instance, African cities in Côte d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Gabon, Angola and other
countries continued to have an annual population growth of 4 to 8 percent, while their
economies were contracting by 2 to 5 percent yearly in the 1990s. This can be
explained with a higher probability to survive that rural populations expect to find in
urban areas, given their higher vulnerability in the context of neoliberal structural
adjustment policies and the pressure to compete with large, international agricultural
enterprises (Davis 2006).
Apart from poverty and unemployment, life in the urban context, unlike in rural areas,
is often accompanied by a lack of socialization within the family, and a difficulty to
identify cultural and role models, resulting in higher crime rates (Vanderschueren
2000). In short, as Murray Li puts it, ‘people ejected from the rural economy are
subject to all kinds of predation as they try to survive in the planet of slums’ (2009:
631). Investing in rural populations’ skills hence does not necessarily translate into a
successful migration into the urban sector in terms of employment, adequate housing
and an overall improvement of living standards, given that not enough off-farm jobs
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are generated in the urban economy (Murray Li 2009): ‘If unemployment already
exists, then to invest more in workers’ human capabilities (…) may create more
perturbed unemployed job-seekers, rather than more plentiful jobs’ (Amsden 2010: 6).
For example, in the case of Brazil, Schönleitner (1998) argues that agrarian reforms
today could be seen as a way of ‘picking up the pieces’ of failed development
strategies that led to the marginalisation and social exclusion of large parts of the
county’s rural and urban population. Agrarian reform in this context could serve as a
way to reduce migration, re-absorb labour and create employment, income and
citizenship for the rural poor. In Brazil, where despite technological change and the
emergence of a dynamic agro-industrial sector large amounts of land still remain idle
or under-utilised, there is still a viable argument for redistributive land reforms. The
dynamic modern sector would not have to be sacrificed for agrarian reform, as
redistribution could largely rely on idle land reserves of the traditional latifúndio sector
(Schönleitner 1998). Against this background, we can return to Bernstein’s thesis of a
new agrarian question of employment in the global South. In this sense, the access
to land and agricultural work for the poor could be seen as ‘a survival strategy
embarked upon in the absence of jobs’ (Ntsebeza 2006: 7).
Conclusion
While agrarian reforms, particularly redistributive land reforms, may have played an
important role for many countries’ transition to industrial capitalism, their
contemporary role in reducing poverty has to be reassessed, particularly in a context
of increasingly blurred forms of habitation and livelihood. Given that rural livelihoods
are becoming increasingly independent from land and agriculture, alternative
strategies to fight against poverty have to be considered. As Rigg states, ‘the best
means of promoting pro-poor growth in the countryside may have less to do with
supporting small-holder farming (…) and more to do with endowing poor people with
the skills so that they can escape from farming and, perhaps, escape from the
countryside’ (Rigg 2006: 196). However, it has to be kept in mind that the urban
economic sector is often unable to absorb such large amounts of labourers, which
results in the growth of slum dwelling and urban poverty, as well as an increasing
marginalisation of poor people. Therefore, it has carefully to be considered if agrarian
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reforms can be part of a strategy to ease these pressures of modern capitalist
economies. The relevance of agrarian reforms has to be analysed according to
specific local contexts, looking for example at the case of Brazil, were the urban
economy has failed to create enough off-farm jobs for the masses migrating in from
rural areas, but where large amounts of idle land are available. The challenge in
today’s context is to find an integrated approach to alleviate both rural and urban
poverty, with the two being increasingly interlinked. Agrarian reform, combined with
education and job creation, can be part of this approach. Moreover, those global
structures and institutions that lie at the heart of endemic poverty and inequality, such
as the unequal structure of international agricultural trade regimes, need to be
addresses and integrated when thinking about long-term poverty alleviation.
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