Explaining Agricultural And Agrarian Policies In Developing Countries

May 1997 What explains differences in agricultural and agrarian policies across countries and over time? Why do countries adopt, and maintain, policy regimes that reduce efficiency and increase rural poverty? What are the conditions for countries to initiate equity- and efficiency-enhancing policy reforms and for these reforms to be maintained? These are the questions pursued in this literature review. Political outcomes - such as agricultural taxation, subsidization, and the provision of public goods - result from political bargaining among interest groups. Such bargaining is likely to be efficiency-enhancing and growth-enhancing when equally powerful interest groups - aware of the economywide budget constraint and know the economic implications of different policy options - participate, and when impartial institutions are available to enforce decisions. The greater the deviation from these conditions, the greater the potential for efficiency-reducing outcomes, the costs of which will generally fall disproportionately on politically underrepresented or powerless groups. Material conditions of agricultural production - such as spatial dispersion, seasonal work cycles, covariance of risk, and the associated market imperfections - exacerbate the difficulties faced by small producers to engage in collective action. So, despite being generally the economically most efficient form of production, family farmers' ability to counteract the political influence of rural elites and urban dwellers is extremely limited. Lack of independent institutions and clearly defined property rights - and the presence of organizational residues - not only reduce peasants' bargaining power but may also make it more profitable for powerful groups to prefer rent seeking to productive activities. How can these undesirable outcomes be avoided, and how can sustainable policy changes be initiated? Experience indicates that fiscal crises of the state, often triggered or aggravated by an external shock, can cause lasting changes of policies and institutions. By forcing the state to devolve some of its power in exchange for financial assistance to meet its immediate needs, such a crisis can give rise to the emergence of independent legal, political, and economic institutions that are maintained even once the crisis has subsided. External actors that provide resources in terms of crisis and at the same time enhance the scope for the politically least vocal parts of civil society to participate in political discourse can have a significant impact in changing policy. The paper discusses in detail the implications for research as well as for policy advice. This paper - a joint product of the Office of the Director, Agriculture and Natural Resources Department and the Office of the Director, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to develop an empirically testable model for the determination of agricultural and agrarian policies. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].

A dozen papers from an August 1989 international conference near Zurich explore the role of governments in improving the agriculture of developing countries, and how that affects overall industrial development. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This study is an attempt to contribute to our understanding of one of the most important reforms currently advocated by development economists to reduce rural poverty in developing countries: land reform. Dr. Cohen has based his study on models in which three social groups are acting: these, for brevity's sake, are called land lords, peasants and the groups who comprise the non-agricultural sector. Peasants include the so-called landless peasants which western countries generally term agrarian workers. The method can be extended to larger numbers of groups. The actors are involved in various activities, including production, consumption and saving, the latter being available either for physical or for financial invest ment. This implies that various wealth components appear in the model alongside flows of goods and services. Use is made of determinate models with linear and non-linear equations of a dynamic character. The models are employed to estimate socio-economic development under alternative regimes. Regimes differ, on the one hand, according to which group is in power and, on the other hand, according to the instruments of economic policy they use. It is an attractive feature of Dr. Cohen's study that the models are applied to two countries for which all the necessary statistical material has been estimated: India and Chile. For both countries a brief socio-political sketch precedes the numerical application of the models. For India five instruments of socio-economic policy are considered: land transfers, measures to stimulate productivity, credit policies, taxes and tenure and wage regulations.

ILO pub-WEP pub. Comparison of the impact of agrarian structure on agricultural production and agricultural employment in developing countries - comprises case studies of relationships between farm size, labour intensiveness, land utilization, agrarian reform and technological change in Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, West Pakistan, India and Malaysia, concludes that small farms are more productive than larger farms, and falls within the framework of the WEP. Graphs, references and statistical tables.

The transformation of rural societies, which form the majority of the population in the third world in the era of globalization is one of the most significant processes of social change in the contemporary world. The introduction of policies of stabilization and structural adjustment in the 1980s and 90s have had wide-ranging and profound implications for the third world countryside for agrarian relations and the development of capitalism, for programmes of local government and, ultimately, for the conditions of life and work of millions of people in less-developed countries.The Development and Planning Department of the West Bengal government organized a three-day international conference in Kolkata, in January 2002, in order to provide a forum for debate and discussion on new theoretical and empirical research in the field of agrarian relations in less-developed countries, and to advance our understanding of what is happening in rural societies as a result of the most recent phase of global capitalism. The papers brought together in this volume were first presented at this conference.The papers cover a wide range of theoretical issues and empirical experiences. Some address the question of the effectiveness and reliability of different types of land reform; others focus on the macroeconomic context of liberalized trade and mobile financial flows. Of the country case studies, some (on Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, China and Bangladesh) are concerned with changes in agrarian relations in the context of globalization; others (on South Africa, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa) identify the nature of and constraints on land reforms in the contemporary period. The discussion on the Indian experience ranges from macroeconomic trends and statewise patterns to a study of a particular village over two decades. While the specific concerns and historical processes of each country and region are indeed different, the papers also reflect common concerns and worries, especially with regard to the impact on the rural working people of new policies of globalization and liberalization.V.K. Ramachandran and Madhura Swaminathan are economists and Professors at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.. . . the articles . . . represent a diversity of perspectives, and the contributions by, for example, Chinese, Mexican and Chilean experts, deal pragmatically with problems of agrarian reform experiences in their countries. The Statesman