The agricultural population of the world has witnessed a steady but low rate of growth during the 1990s. While the world agricultural population in 1990 was approximately 2,438.283 million, by 2001 it reached 2,575.340 million, growing at an average of around 0.50 per cent a year. However though countries in the developed world and in Latin America witnessed a drop in the number of agricultural workers during 1990s, overall agricultural population in the world registered an increase primarily owing to more people joining this sector 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 behind the rate of growth of its total population, or even lagged behind the rate of growth of its rural populace. For example, the population of India grew at 1.95 per cent a year between 1991 and 2001, while the country’s rural population grew at around 1.67 per cent per annum during this decade. Population in Latin America grew at an annual average of 1.62 per cent during the 1990s, while the growth rate of the rural population of the region actually fell at 0.01 per cent a year and that of agricultural population fell at 0.79 per cent a year during the same period.

Sub-Saharan Africa is 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 rise. Brazil in Latin America is an ideal example. The total population of Brazil grew at 1.39 per cent a year between 1991 and 2001. But the country witnessed increased migration from rural areas to the cities and this 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.

Let us now look as to how the agricultural population in the different countries have grown (or shrunk) during the 1990s. Agricultural policy worldwide has failed to function keeping in mind the different needs of farmers living under different agro-climatic zones. Though policymakers have always talked of one single ‘farming community’, in reality however, not one but several of them exist. 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-generatin farmers[1].

In the absence of organizations that represent the interests of small farmers, government policies neglect the needs of those marginalized. The number of jobs in the agricultural sector is falling steadily. 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 (EU), small farms are being bought and consolidated into larger farms. Throughout the EU, the reduction in the number of farms has entailed lay-offs for paid workers. An analysis of the proportion of part-time jobs and the number 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. The number of people employed in agriculture in Slovakia dropped by more than 50 per cent between 1989 and 2000, decreasing at an average rate of 6.1 per cent per year (compared to 1.8 per cent per year between 1960–89). The total number of people employed in Slovakia fell by about a quarter during the same period. So the assumption 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 corroborated from the available empirical evidence.

Changes in Employment: Total Employed and Employed in Agriculture in Slovakia

Source: See Footnote [3]

The condition of the agricultural population in India isn’t any better. As pointed out by Jayati Ghosh, there is evidence of significant fall 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 basis [4] [5].

In India too, 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 state support 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 per ecnt of the regular non-agricultural employees in rural areas were employed by the government, often in employment generating programmes that created almost 80 per cent 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 that affect the rural areas, reduced transfers to state governments that have been facing a major financial crunch and have therefore been forced to cut back their own spending, particularly on social expenditure, and financial liberalization measures that have effectively reduced the availability of rural credit and raised input costs. These have been among several measures that have adversely affected the rural population-the small and marginal farmers in particular-since liberalization.

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 small and marginal farmers leasing out their land to large landowners, 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 use other non-land inputs more intensively and this suggests that they would also 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 thirty 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 Province of China)-nearly three times the annual average of 5.9 million workers per year that China has transferred 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 absorbed 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 is 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. This trend was prevalent even before 1990. However, state intervention often prevented any downward tendency in agricultural wages that 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 being adversely affected.

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 newly created government jobs 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 a very small figure–about 2 per cent.

Financial liberalization measures, that include a reduction in priority sector lending by banks, have effectively reduced the availability of rural credit, and have thus reduced farm investment, especially by smaller farmers. In the absence of availability of credit, many small and marginal farmers find it impossible to pay for the necessary inputs and are being forced to lease out their plots to rich farmers. This happens at a time when research increasingly points towards the viability of small farms as these 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 to the interests of small farmers. 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, has increased the 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 difficulty if for some reason there is crop failure or if 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 work as agricultural labourers 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 even more difficult for agricultural labourers, in search of employment.

Changes in cropping pattern have also affected agricultural employment adversely. Not only has there been a shift in cultivation from foodgrains to commercial crops, horticulture and floriculture requiring less labour, many regions have simultaneously also witnessed a shift from crops providing year-round employment to crops that at best offer seasonal employment. SEWA, in its annual report for the year 2001 stated that in many places in India tobacco has been replaced with banana and sugarcane-both cash crops. The tobacco crop ensured 12 months employment whereas banana and sugarcane did not [12].While reduced tobacco consumption is always desirable, ensuring the livelihood of agricultural workers is also equally important.

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 throughout the world. More small farmers are now leasing out their lands to large cultivators, leading to an increasing land concentration ratio, which in turn is encouraging more mechanization, and leading to more displacement of labour. Only a reversal of the process of agricultural and economic liberalization can help revive hopes of survival of the agricultural population.

[1] http://www.india-seminar.com/2003/521/521%20pushpa%20surendra.htm
[2] http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/envir/report/en/emplo_en/report_en.htm#fig9
[3] http://216.239.41.100/search?q=cache:FgOo5dtYH7sJ:www.worldbank.sk/
Data/agricstudy/02%2520-%2520New%2520Chapter%25201%2520-%2520Ag%
2520in%2520the%2520Economy%2520%2520091102.doc+Slovakia+Czechoslovakia
+was+one+of+the+most+industrialized+countries+in+central+Europe+prior+to+the
+Second+World+War&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 (Table 1.1)
[4] http://www.macroscan.com/fet/apr03/fet220403Agricultural_Employment_2.htm
[5] For a detailed discussion on definitions of usual, weekly and daily status bases see http://www.macroscan.com/fet/feb00/fet080200Rural_Emp_1.htm
[6] http://www.macroscan.com/fet/jul01/fet240701Rural_Employment_1.htm
[7] http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib775/aib775p.pdf
[8] Johnson, D.G."Agricultural Adjustment in China: Problems and Prospects," Population and DevelopmentReview, Vol. 26, 2000, pp. 319-334.
[9] Bernard D'Mello: Globalization and the Problem of India in http://frontierindia.scriptmania.com/page15.htm
[10] http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1705/17051090.htm
[11] http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year%202003/May2003/LandReform.htm
[12] http://www.sewa.org/annualreport/ar-eng-2.pdf

July 11, 2003.