Seasonality and Agriculture in the Developing World: A Problem of the Poor and the Powerless

Seasonality and Agriculture in the Developing World

Seasonality and Agriculture in the Developing World A Problem of the Poor and Powerless

GERARD J. GILL Program Leader Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development

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Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CBZ IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY IOOII, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1991 First published 1991 Printed in Great Britain by the University Press, Cambridge British Library cataloguing in publication data

Gill, G. J. Seasonality and agriculture in the developing world: a problem of the poor and powerless. 1. Tropical rural regions. Economic conditions. Seasonal variation 1. Title 330.91754 Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Gill, Gerard J. Seasonality and agriculture in the developing world: a problem of the poor and powerless / Gerard J. Gill. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN o 521 38257 2 hardback

1. Agriculture - Economic aspects - Developing countries. 2. Crops and climate Economic aspects - Developing countries. 3. Rural poor - Developing countries. 1. Title. .G;5 1991 '4 - dc2O 90-37853 CIP ISBN o 521 38257 2 hardback

'I say to the father of my child, "Father of Podi Sinho," I say, "There is no kurakkan in the house, there is no millet and no pumpkin, not even a pinch of salt. Three days now and I have eaten nothing but jungle leaves. There is no milk in my breasts for the child." Then I get foul words and blows. "Does the rain come in August?" He says. "Can I make the kurakkan flower in July? Hold your tongue, you fool. August is the month in which the children die. What can I do?"'

Contents

page x xii xiii xvi

hist of illustrations List of tables Preface A cknowledgements

i Introduction A model of the consumption effects of seasonality The challenge of seasonality z The sources of seasonality Climatic sources

i

8 18

*7 27

Seasonal temperature variation Seasonal rainfall variation Seasonal variation in day length Seasonality of demand

27

Non-climatic sources

40

Religious observances

4i

3° 38 39

3 Seasonality and the disadvantaged Impact on the ultra-poor Intra-family disparity

44 53

The sources of intra-family disparity

64

Economic minorities Qualitative aspects of nutrition 4 Seasonality and the environment Environmental variables Continentality Altitude Soil and soil moisture Aspect

56 69 73 80 82 82

83 86 91 Vll

Vlll

5

6

7

8

CONTENTS

Relief Atmospheric conditions Transition zones Environment, species and variety Crops Weeds and crop pests Livestock Nomadism and the macro-environment Environmental adaptation Animal husbandry in the meso-environment Coping with seasonality Storage and processing Production technology Varietal selection and development Complementarity between enterprises Investment Survival strategies Seasonal labour migration Circulation between seasonal and non-seasonal occupations Circulation between seasonal occupations Social consequences Special problems of developing countries: I: Market failure and market distortions Institutional factors Communication barriers Transportation costs and agricultural location Seasonality in availability and cost of transport Seasonal price fluctuations The credit market Distortions in the non-formal sector Distortions in the formal sector flows Credit and seasonal cash Barriers to international trade Grounds for optimism? Special problems of developing countries: II. Technological change in a changing environment Resource depletion Agricultural mechanization Selective mechanisation and 'labour bottlenecks'" Mechanisation as appropriate technology Sequential mechanisation

91 92 93 94 94 96 98 98 102 103 104 104 106 106 113 119 129 132 135 138 148 151 153 15 5 15 6 160 161 163 164 165 166 169 171 173 173 178 180 18 3 18 8

lx

CONTENTS

Irrigation and mechanisation

190

Biological technologies

196

High-yielding varieties New directions in agricultural research

J

9 Implications for policy and planning Bias in policy formulation Urban bias Resource base and gender bias The bias of education and status Bureaucratic bias Donor bias

97

202

214 220 220 221 222

223 224

The information-gathering exercise

226

Systems research Rapid rural appraisal

228

Agricultural research and extension

253 234 236

Participatory approaches Reward structures Seasonally and sustainability

230

237

Land reform Mechanization, migration and off-season employment Market failure and market distortion Integrating counter-seasonal planning

240 242

Internal consistency Consistency with traditional coping mechanisms Consistency within agricultural planning Integration with other sectors Appendix: Seasonal labour migration at the national level: An approach to rapid appraisal

250

Methodology Factors making for macro-environmental diversity The case study findings Type of employment The timing of seasonal migration The volume of migratory flows Direction of migratory flows Distances covered Wage rates and modes of payment

Conclusions Notes References and sources Index

245 250 251 251

255 256 257 257 267 268 270

274 278 284 285 289 295 301

316

Illustrations

i. i Mean-variance models of income in seasonal and nonseasonal industries in developed and developing countries page 9 1.2 Inter-seasonal and intra-seasonal variation in consumption 15 1.3 Seasonal variation in the marginal product of factors of production 18 2.1 T h e season-creating effect of the earth's tilt 29 2.2 Mean monthly rainfall at selected tropical and temperate locations 30 2.3 Annual march of the Sun's zenithal position and of the ITCZ 33 2.4 Seasonal rainfall distribution types in the humid tropics 36 2.5 Climates of sub-Saharan Africa based on rainfall seasonality 37 2.6 Length of day at the summer and winter solstices 40 (northern hemisphere) 3.1 Mean number of household food stocks by land 55 ownership and month of interview (Matlab, Bangladesh) 3.2 Seasonal distribution of w o r k a n d seasonal changes in mean b o d y weight a m o n g W o D a a B e w o m e n a n d m e n 58 3.3 Prevalence b y trimester of certain diseases in K e n e b a children, by age a n d season 61 3.4 Weight curve of two infants from birth to 24/17 months, illustrating the influence of infectious diseases 63 and of season 3.5 Average monthly consumption of wild vegetable foods by jaijai fy/odsi (1975) 71

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xi

72 3.6 Average weights of %u/oasi and Herero, 1975/76 4.1 Effect of continentality on annual temperature regime 83 4.2 Effect of altitude on seasonal temperature variation (Nepal) 84 4.3 Maturity of a crop of barley at different elevations 86 4.4 Average monthly rainfall and average rainfall retained in the soil under three rainfall regimes 90 4.5 Season, rainfall and crude protein intake from pastures in southern Africa 99 5.1 Demand for casual labour in rice-based cropping systems of Noakhali, Bangladesh (1978—79) m 5.2 Labour demands on a holding in Sinshu, Japan, 1823 114 5.3 Labour allocation and complementarity between Babassu and agricultural labour 117 6.1 Sri Lanka showing wet, dry and intermediate zones 141 6.2 Changes in dry season migration patterns from Sokoto Province Nigeria 147 7.1 Uruguay: Agricultural land-use classification 158/159 7.2 Seasonal fluctuation in retail wheat prices in two countries 162 8.1 Cumulative frequency distribution of land preparation time for sample co-operators' land; Subang and Indramayu districts, West Java, 1979—80 187 8.2 (a) Pakistan: total labour used in tubewell and nontubewell farms 191 (b) Pakistan: seasonal distribution of hired labour on tubewell and non-tubewell farms 191 9.1 The Philippines: seasonal calendar for the Lake Buhi project 232 A1 Regions of Bangladesh and number of respondents from each 258 A2 Bangladesh: rainfall, generalized cropping calendar and areas under major crops 261 A3 Annual rainfall distribution by regions 264 A4 Type of work performed by migrants 267 A 5 Crops on which migrants work 269 A6 Distribution of migrants' work among rice crops 271 A7 Estimated monthly distribution of in- and out-migration 275 A8 Regions of origin and destination of migrants 277

Tables

2.1 Walsh's provisional classification scheme of tropical climates on the basis of rainfall seasonality page 36 5.1 Ancient records of maturity character in plants 109 5.2 Irrigated areas, 1964-84 122 7.1 Coefficient of seasonality and trend in seasonality for grains and fodders in irrigated and non-irrigated areas of Pakistan 170 8.1 Estimated area planted to high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice in the major regions of the developing countries, 1982—83 198 8.2 Research centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research 200 A1 Areas under major crop categories by region 259 A2 Bangladesh: irrigated area by region (1984/5) 265 A3 Mean levels of seasonal in-migration by region and by month 273 A4 Regions of provenance and destination of seasonal migrants 279 A5 Distances between areas of inter-migration 283 A6 Migrants' travel arrangements 285 A7 Modes of payment of seasonal migrants 286 A8 Wage payments to migrants 288

Xll

Preface

I first became aware of the importance of seasonal variation in the agriculture of developing countries when working in Ethiopia more than fifteen years ago. During the course of field work in the central highlands, fellow workers and I found the symptoms normally associated with famine: fires unlit when the main meal of the day should have been cooking; empty food stores; naked, pot-bellied children shivering in the chill of the monsoon. In Western countries the name of Ethiopia has since become almost synonymous with famine, yet what we then saw was not famine. Local people assured us that such things happened at that time every year. After the harvest things would greatly improve. However, it was not until I made it the subject of a special study in another part of the central highlands (Gill 1977) that I became aware of the great complexity and far reaching importance of seasonality. Many years later I was to come across similar conditions of seasonal hardship in the very different setting of Bangladesh. There in the lean season it is not at all uncommon for farm labourers and their families to eat only once in two, even three, days. That circumstances like these are by no means exceptional is evinced by a growing volume of literature from all over the developing world on the relationship between seasonality and rural poverty there. Schofield's 1974 review of studies on seasonality of nutrition was pioneering, bringing as it did many sometimes obscure studies within a coherent framework and before a wide audience. However, it was publication of Seasonal Dimensions to Rural Poverty (Chambers et al.

1981), which first exposed the wide-ranging and multi-faceted nature of the seasonal problem and encouraged the development of seasonal analysis. The great influence of this work is demonstrated by a xiii

XIV

PREFACE

subsequent increase in writings on the seasonality /poverty nexus, almost all of which reference it. At time of writing, however, the overwhelming bulk of the literature on seasonality and poverty is single-discipline and micro-level, written as it is by researchers and practitioners with intensive and year-round field experience in developing countries. This provenance is a source of both strength and weakness. Its strength derives from its obvious basis in first-hand experience with the relevant issues and problems and the generally high quality of the resultant information and analysis. Its weakness is that it is difficult to extend the conclusions of a particular study to a geographical area that is large enough, or a conceptual area that is comprehensive enough, to be treated holistically for the purposes of planning and policy formulation. The seminal contribution Seasonal Dimensions made to the debate derived from the fact that, despite its being based on a conference, it was far from being a standard 'proceedings' volume. The editors played a vital role in placing the papers within a coherent analytical framework and drawing conclusions of wide applicability based on the evidence presented by individual contributors - not the least of which was to demonstrate the interactive nature of the various aspects of seasonal poverty, and, by inference, the degree of synergism that could be achieved from multidisciplinary research within the framework of seasonal analysis. I feel that the time is now ripe for a book on seasonality for a number of reasons. First, a conference-based volume — and a number have been produced since 1981 -however well edited, cannot extend its scope much beyond that of the papers presented. This inevitably leads to uneven coverage of the field. Seasonality of nutrition, for example, has received a good deal of attention, while the enormously important subject of seasonal labour migration is, in my view, seriously underresearched; we know much more about seasonal poverty from an anthropological perspective than we do from an economic viewpoint; the seasonality problems of minority groups have received significantly less research attention than those of other disadvantaged sections of the community. Second, a more complete appreciation of the importance of seasonality problems and the prospects for countering them requires that the debate be placed more firmly within the wider context of the debate on development. For example, what lessons, if any, can be learnt from the experience of the now developed countries in devising appropriate counter-seasonal measures for the Third World? What is the relationship between seasonality and such dynamic aspects of the 'poverty problem' as those arising from technology transfer, population pressure and resource depletion? Finally, the bulk of the

PREFACE

XV

empirical work on the seasonality/poverty relationship - including that published since 1981 — has concentrated on uncovering the nature and extent of the problem more than on attempting to devise appropriate solutions. This is, of course, the logical way to go about things, but the nature and extent of the problems uncovered by the research are so serious and far-reaching that the development of effective counter-seasonal strategies must now be regarded as an integral part of any more general programme for countering rural poverty. The quotation following the title page is from Leonard Woolfe's book The Village in the Jungle, based in Sri Lanka and originally published by Edward Arnold Ltd. in 1913. I chose it because it seems to me to encapsulate many of the actual effects of seasonal deprivation on poor people in poor countries. During the course of writing, however, a more familiar quotation from Alexander Pope has kept recurring in my thoughts: 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread'. In an age of sometimes extreme - and apparently ever-increasing specialization, perhaps only a fool would attempt to write a multidisciplinary work. Yet, as Chambers and Longhurst have pointed out, ' It is difficult to find an aspect of rural life in the tropical third world which is not touched by seasonally' (Chambers et al. 1981, p. xvi). Certainly the ' systems' framework I suggest for tackling the challenge of seasonality demands a multidisciplinary approach. Inevitably when one tries to cross disciplinary frontiers, depth of treatment, even in one's own subject (mine is economics), is sacrificed to breadth of coverage. The intended audience is wide: students, teachers, researchers and practitioners in all fields connected with Third World rural development, but above all policy makers in food and agriculture, agricultural extension agents and scientists of all disciplines in agricultural and related research in developing countries. All of these people will find inadequacies in the treatment of their own disciplines. These will have arisen partly from the need for broad coverage and partly from my own lack of knowledge. But outside of their own fields I hope they will also find the discussion sufficiently stimulating to enable them to identify novel aspects of the subject, to recognize (if they have not already done so) the importance and inter-connectedness of seasonality problems, to see these problems in a broad perspective and to perceive the advantages of collaboration with specialists in other fields in seeking appropriate solutions. I may be a fool, but I am not such a fool as to imagine that this small volume will provide answers to the seasonality challenge. If successful it will suggest lines of enquiry to be pursued by others better qualified than me.

Acknowledgements

The foolhardiness of attempting to write a multi-disciplinary book is mitigated by the advice and comments of friends and colleagues in the various specializations concerned. I am most especially grateful to Professor Lawrence Smith, Chairman of the Centre for Development Studies at Glasgow University, for his painstaking reading and most helpful comments on drafts of particular chapters. Other colleagues at the University who provided invaluable comments and advice were Dr Mark Lawrence of the Institute of Physiology, and John Briggs of the Department of Geography. I would also like to record my thanks to three colleagues at Winrock International for comments on various sections of the text: Dr Navin Rai (Anthropologist), Dr Michael Wallace (Public Policy Analyst) and Dr James Yazman (Animal Production Specialist). I owe sincere thanks to other friends and colleagues who made extremely useful comments on the Appendix: Dr Bruce Currey (Winrock International), Dr Edward Clay (Institute of Development Studies) and Steve Jones (freelance Socio-Economist), but most especially to Hugh Brammer (formerly FAO Agricultural Development Advisor, Bangladesh) whose lengthy, detailed and erudite comments were invaluable. The contribution to the Appendix of Dr M. A. Jabbar of Bangladesh Agricultural University was similarly crucial, and I must also record my thanks to John Lee and Duncan Robinson, former post-graduate students of the Department of Geography, Glasgow University, who produced the digitized maps in the Appendix under the kind direction of John Shearer of the same Department. The only Appendix map not produced by them was Figure A3, which was hand-drawn by my son Stephen. Thanks, Steve. All other figures in the book were professionally re-drawn by Sri xvi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xvii Ishwor Manandhar of Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. Many thanks also to my other son, Eric, for the laborious and accurate work he performed in hand-calculating the distances travelled between 470 pairs of upa^ilas. This formed the basis of Table A5. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers at Cambridge University Press for very helpful comments on some of the earlier chapters. Finally I must express my especial gratitude for the intellectual and professional support of my dear wife, Iris. The support provided by two institutions was no less valuable than the above professional assistance, and I wish to acknowledge most gratefully my debt to my employers, Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development, for the generous study leave they provided, and to the Centre for Development Studies, University of Glasgow, where I spent this period of study. I must also add a special word of thanks to Dr Ted Smith, formerly President of the Agricultural Development Council, for initiating the Study Leave process. Finally I must acknowledge my profound debt to my family for putting up with those long periods of absence and those other, hopefully short, periods of grumpy presence that were even worse! Needless to say none of the individuals or institutions mentioned above bears any responsibility for the views I have expressed, or for any errors of fact or interpretation that may appear in the text. These are my sole responsibility.

Introduction

SEASONAL VARIATION in agricultural production results in two sets of often interacting problems: unevenness in resource requirements and the flow of output. These problems are found in every type of agriculture - indeed in all seasonal industries - but their exact nature and extent, as well as the severity of their consequences, depends largely upon the farm setting. For the western farmer the first type of problem may imply an expensive piece of equipment like a combine harvester deteriorating as it lies idle for most of the year, while at other times it must work flat out, thus increasing the possibility of breakdown. At the other end of the spectrum a poor farmer or landless labourer in a developing country will be unemployed for much of the year while at other times he or she must work to the point of exhaustion. For the commercial farmer in the West, problems created by seasonality in the flow of farm produce translate into uneven cash flows or the additional costs of storage or processing. For the Third World subsistence farm family, the major problem is seasonal variation in food consumption. For the better-off family this may be qualitative only, provided a sufficiency of non-perishable foodstuffs can be stored to see them through from one harvest to the next. With poorer families, however, there is quantitative variation also, and a pre-harvest' hungry season' when there is simply not enough food to go round. The problem is not new, of course. Not only farmers, but pastoralists, fishermen and hunter-gatherers have always had to know how to cope with the seasonality problem. In unusually harsh environments like the Australian bush or the Kalahari Desert, entire cultures have long since evolved around the problem of how to adapt to seasonal-cum-geographical variation in the availability of foodstuffs

2

INTRODUCTION

from the wild (Thomson 1939, Wilmsen 1978). Nomadic pastoralism is organized along similar lines. The earliest known written evidence of such efforts in agriculture proper takes the form of a farmer's almanac inscribed on a clay tablet, which was found on the site of Nippur in Iraq, dating from around 1700 BC (Aitken 1974)- Later writings on farming reveal a deep concern with the problems of matching resources to the seasonal requirements of crop and livestock enterprises: examples can be found in the work of the Roman agronomists Palladius and Varro (White 1970, Frayn 1979). Bray (1986) cites Chinese agricultural treatises of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries which show how such concerns could be the driving force behind profound technological change: The expansion of agricultural output in medieval South China was brought about by the introduction of quick-ripening and drought-resistant rice varieties, permitting the development of multiple cropping and an increase in the rice-growing area; by the development of local irrigation and water control facilities; by an increase in the application of fertilisers, mainly industrial by-products such as beancake; and by the spread of improved rice cultivation techniques (ibid, p. 150). Several counter-seasonal strategies are implicit in this description. The most important are the introduction of new varieties which were of different and less-restrictive seasonality from traditional ones, and the spread of irrigation, which permitted dry-season cropping. Even fertilizers and improved husbandry can reduce seasonality by helping a crop to achieve and sustain rapid growth, thus increasing the probability that it can be fitted into a seasonal production niche. Efforts such as these have continued, through the Agricultural Revolution (when increased fodder production to carry livestock through the winter was a major goal) down to the present day. Farmers in developing countries especially have shown great ingenuity in adapting their agronomic practices so as to fit modern varieties into convenient points in their farming cycles and hence improve slack season resource utilization and/or increase lean season production (Biggs and Clay 1981, Byron 1985, Richards 1985, Biggs 1986). It is only recently however, that the problems of seasonality have begun to be viewed as an aspect of the poverty problem (Chambers et al. 1981, Jiggins 1982, Longhurst 1986, Sahn 1989). Longhurst sums up the seasonal dimension of rural poverty as follows: There is a simultaneous prevalence of sickness, malnutrition, indebtedness, hard work, discomfort and poor food availability at certain times of the year,

INTRODUCTION 3 usually during the rains. This period before harvest —'the hungry season' — is one of considerable stress for rural people, exacerbating their poverty. Poor people are less able to cope with this regular period of stress than rich people, who can usually exploit it to their benefit (1986, p. 1). Such a perspective evokes an entirely fresh view of the problem of agricultural seasonality. First, it is clearly a multifaceted problem, one whose proper appreciation therefore requires an interdisciplinary approach.1 Second, the fact that there are dynamic aspects of the problem is implicit in the observation that rich people can use the hungry season to maintain and even strengthen their control over those weaker than themselves. This last point is enlarged upon by Chambers, who notes that the poor, knowing that there are recurrent seasonal crises to be faced, are ' screwed down' into subordinate and dependent relationships with their patrons, with whom they must remain on good terms: The poor are subordinated to the less poor and the weak to the strong. Stress is passed down to the weakest - women, children, old people and the indigent. Sometimes the screw becomes a ratchet, an irreversible downward movement into deeper poverty as assets are mortgaged or sold without hope of recovery (Chambers et al. 1981, p. 3). The most radical departure from tradition implicit in the perception of seasonality as an aspect of the more general problem of rural poverty is that it does not regard seasonality solely, or even principally, as a problem for farmers. The very poor may be small or marginal farmers, but some of those most seriously affected are not farmers at all. They may be heavily involved in agriculture, as in the case of indigent agricultural labourers, both male and female, who lack the resources to farm for themselves. They may be members of farm households - as in the case of infants or perhaps old people - who lack sufficient status within the family to be able to avoid discrimination in the distribution of food or other essentials when these are in short supply. Or they may be both, as in the case of the women and older children of farm households, who work on the farm, but have insufficient status to avoid discrimination in the allocation of family income, family workloads, or both. Even within the context of a poor country, such people are disadvantaged. Not only do they lack resources, but they also lack the power to determine the course of their lives; they are to a significant extent at the mercy, not only of climatic and other sources of seasonality, but also of decisions made by others in such fields as

4 INTRODUCTION investment, resource allocation and production patterns. Even decisions which may be counter-seasonal from the viewpoint of a male farmer or 'patron', may not improve, or may even worsen, the seasonality problems faced by more disadvantaged individuals socially or economically inferior to him, such as his wife, clients or employees. Efforts to counter poverty are undermined from the outset by a simple lack of perception as to the true nature and scale of the problem on the part of professionals and policy makers whose task it is to help alleviate it. Chambers makes the point that not only is rural poverty itself' underperceived', but its seasonal dimensions are even more so. He describes a series of' biases' which must ring true to anyone familiar with the mechanics of field trips by ' development tourists' and other official visitors in developing countries. 'Urban', 'tarmac' and ' roadside' biases limit such travel to accessible areas which, because they are more accessible, are less impoverished than the hinterland. ' Project bias' directs field trips towards areas where there have been successful initiatives. 'Person bias' means that the individuals met are most likely to be male, prosperous and healthy. 'Professional bias' tends strongly to focus people's attention on issues of narrow professional concern and hence ' makes it difficult (for them) to see the holism of poverty'. The biases of'politeness and timidity' have the effect that 'courtesy and cowardice combine to discourage contact with the poorest people' (Chambers 1980). The wet season is the hungry season in most areas, but it is also the season when the scale of the poverty problem is most likely to be unperceived, because most field trips by professionals and policy makers are confined to the dry season, when travel is relatively easy ('dry-season bias'). Just as the wet season is the hungry season, the dry season is one of relative plenty: the harvest is just in and poverty is at its annual low. Such travel as is undertaken during the rains is constrained by problems of inaccessibility and therefore the information gathered is especially subject to 'tarmac' and related biases. Such information is also constrained by 'activity' bias: a great deal of agricultural activity can be seen at this time, and this attracts the attention of visitors who do not see conditions in the homestead, where the weakest are to be found and where food is especially short. Such impressionistic disinformation adds to the more formal 'statistical bias', of which Chambers identifies two sources. One arises from the loss of the seasonal dimension through aggregation of data. The other arises from the fact that much seasonal data derives from secondary sources like clinic records, which reflect ease of access to clinics and ability to pay for treatment, both of which are minimal in the rainy

INTRODUCTION 5 season. Finally, Chambers observes a tendency, at least in some areas, for social science research in agriculture to concentrate on irrigated areas where seasonality in production is, of course, minimized ('irrigation bias') (Chambers 1979, 1980, 1981). In his discussion of'professional bias', Chambers notes that among those whose work takes them into the rural areas, there are some whose values, interests and professional training 'focus attention directly on the poor'. He singles out those trained in nutrition and health in this regard (1980, p. 24). It is therefore not surprising that some of the most valuable insights into the seasonality-poverty nexus have come from rurally-oriented workers in these two fields (Chapter 3). At the other extreme Chambers mentions 'agricultural extension staff trained to advise on cash crops or to draw up farm plans' who are therefore 'drawn to the more progressive farmers' (ibid). This is a particularly damaging bias because of the contribution that extension agents, with their regular contact with farmers, could otherwise make towards improving their superiors' perceptions of the problems of poor and marginal farmers in general, and perception of the seasonal dimension of this problem in particular. Another group not singled out by Chambers, but at least equally important in terms of both understanding and addressing these issues, are agricultural scientists. Traditionally, scientific research in agriculture has concentrated on crops that are of interest only to relatively well-off or ' progressive' farmers. Most of the new varieties they have produced have been high input, high yield types - often with an inordinate degree of irrigation bias. Only recently have such attitudes begun to change (Chapter 8). Among social scientists, anthropologists, who are drawn by their training to conduct intensive longitudinal studies of small communities, have made some valuable contributions to our understanding of seasonality among poor people (Thomson 1939, Cain et al. 1977, Wilmsen 1978, Briscoe 1979, Huss-Ashmore 1982, Swift 1981 and White 1986 among many others). At the other extreme, and again with a few notable exceptions, economists have contributed little. Yet their discipline is closely concerned with such issues as scarcity, resource allocation, factor productivity, time preference, risk and uncertainty — all of which are extremely relevant to the poverty-seasonality relationship. Even at the micro level in agricultural economics, where contact with the rural poor could logically be expected to be greatest, economists have traditionally tended to be employed on projects, and are hence strongly subject to 'project bias'. (And rural development projects are themselves unusually subject to 'tarmac bias' 'irrigation

6

INTRODUCTION

bias' and similar sources of distortion.) However, the situation here has recently begun to improve with the adoption of a ' systems' approach to on-farm research (see below). Economists working at the macro level have been among those most guilty of failing to take seasonality in agriculture into account. As recently as the 1950s and 1960s, such writers as Lewis (1954), Rosenstein-Rodan (1957), and Fei and Ranis (1964) constructed elaborate models purporting to show, among other things, how an agricultural sector burdened with so many unemployed workers that the marginalproductivity of labour was zero, could release this surplus for employment in other sectors without loss of agricultural productivity. (The marginal product of a factor of production is the increase in total output that results from employing just one additional unit of this factor.) Although it was later pointed out (e.g. Higgins, 1968, Ch. 14) that there are seasons of full agricultural employment in even the most densely populated countries, the full economy-wide dimensions of the seasonality problem are still very far from being appreciated. This is extremely unfortunate, for economists working on macro-economic issues, by virtue of their positions in line ministries, planning commissions and banking institutions, are better placed than any other social scientist to influence policy making. Even today, economic planning and policy documents of all types, although they typically devote whole chapters to the problems of low income and the need for income- and employment generation, virtually ignore seasonal variation in these variables. If their travels in the rural hinterland do not bring home to top-level advisors and policy makers an awareness of the true horrors of the hungry season, part of the explanation is to be found in an educational process that never taught them to expect such problems in the first place. Development theory and practice are still, at root, based on the relatively recent experience of the now-developed economies. This results partly from the obvious fact that these countries have already trodden the path of economic success which others wish to follow. But it is also a consequence of the domination of developed country perspectives in the development debate. This has come about because the debaters are either themselves developed country nationals or Third World nationals educated in the developed countries or in Third World institutions in which developed country perspectives still predominate. Problems connected with seasonality certainly still exist in developed countries, but for a number of interrelated reasons they do not

INTRODUCTION 7 constitute a major set of issues. First, to quote Chambers yet again, in the developed countries ' food shortages are rare, and harvest, the main agricultural labour peak, comes at a healthy time of year' (1979, p. 13). Second, some of the most effective counter-seasonal measures have become available options in better-off countries almost as a by-product of the wider process of economic development. Prominent among these are the development of banking and insurance institutions, efficient processing, storage and transportation networks and other essential features of modern market economies, which have between them provided enormous scope for reducing seasonality in the food and agricultural sectors. This potential has been realized by the industries concerned virtually without outside intervention and without attracting a great deal of attention from those not immediately involved. Third, counter-seasonal technologies have, in developed countries, evolved in and for the local environment, and hence have byand-large been appropriate to local needs and resources. Thus major dislocations, such as those that now tend to be associated with ' turnkey technology' in developing countries, were largely avoided. A closely related factor is that the development of counter-seasonal technologies in developed countries has occurred contemporaneously with (and in part because of) a shift of resources out of seasonal industries into nonseasonal ones. This has helped minimize the impact of problems like labour displacement which are normally associated with rapid technological change.2 As a result of such developments, by the time the ' development debate' had begun in earnest, the economies of the developed countries were dominated by non-seasonal manufacturing and service sector industries, and the most serious seasonality problems of other industries had already been tackled. In taking care of those that remained, the resources of a wealthy and basically non-seasonal economy could effectively be mobilized (in such forms as short term credit and unemployment benefit) without undue strain, without requiring specific policy measures, and therefore without attracting a great deal of attention. The debate on technology transfer has clearly demonstrated that attempts to base Third World development strategies on approaches that have been successful elsewhere can be extremely misleading and damaging. The same is true of seasonality: it is still a crucially important problem in the rural Third World, one which, if ignored, will impede - perhaps even nullify - otherwise sound development strategies. Even the causes of seasonality in developed and developing countries differ sharply (Chapter 2). But the difference in effects is

8

INTRODUCTION

greater still, because of the very different social, economic and physical environment in which seasonality operates in the developing world. The present book seeks to achieve two consecutive aims. The first is to demonstrate the nature and importance of the seasonality - rural poverty nexus, paying special attention to the hitherto neglected economic aspects of the subject (but without becoming so technical as to lose non-economist readers). The second is to explore ways in which measures to confront this issue might usefully be incorporated into the processes of planning and policy formulation. The analytical framework within which these two aims will be pursued is set out in the next two sections of this chapter. The first concerns consumption issues, as it is here that any adverse effects of seasonality make themselves most keenly felt. The second is devoted to production and distribution aspects, as it is at this end of the production-consumption process that planning and policy efforts will mainly have to concentrate in order to counter the ill-effects of seasonal deprivation. • A model of the consumption effects of seasonality The relationship between poverty and seasonality is essentially that between the mean and variance of the same variable (or set of interconnected variables). Mean—variance models, which have been quite widely used in the analysis of risk-aversion by farmers in developing countries, therefore provide a useful starting point for the present discussion. Figure I.I depicts seasonal income variation within a small-scale 'system'. The system in question could be a family, or even an individual. Four situations are depicted, according to whether the system in question is located in a developed or developing country, and engaged in a seasonal or non-seasonal industry. Assume for the moment that there is no saving or borrowing, and that consumption must therefore be financed from current income. There is a critical level of consumption (and therefore a critical level of income) below which the entire system becomes unstable. This is represented by the line c in the diagram. In the case of an individual, c might represent the level of food intake below which the symptoms of nutritional deficiency disease begin to manifest themselves, thus impairing work capability and jeopardising future income. For a household it may represent the point at which family cohesion collapses and the more able-bodied strike out for themselves. This concept of a critical minimum will be considered more carefully later, but for the present it is important to note that this level is more likely to be reached:

C O N S U M P T I O N E F F E C T S OF S E A S O N A L I T Y

1 year 1 year Figure I . I . Mean-variance models of income in seasonal and non-seasonal industries in developed and developing countries, (a) High mean - high variance (developed country, seasonal industry), (b) High mean - low variance (developed country, nonseasonal industry), (c) Low mean - high variance (developing country, seasonal industry), (d) Low mean - low variance (developing country, non-seasonal industry).

(a) the lower the mean in relation to a given (absolute) degree of seasonal variation (compare Figure i.i(a) and i.i(c)),3 and (b) the greater the absolute degree of seasonal variance in relation to a given mean (compare Figure i.io,(f) and i.i(d)). Clearly the developing country-seasonal industry system most closely approaches c and is therefore the least stable of the four systems depicted. The assumption that there are no savings or borrowing can now be relaxed. Consumption is now assumed to be capable of being financed from current income, past income (savings) or future income (borrowing). Thus, for example, in the case depicted in Figure I.I (c), savings could be built up in the first six months of the year, when income is above its annual average level, to be drawn upon during the

IO

INTRODUCTION

remainder of the year. Both processes, however, entail extra cost. This is manifest in the case of borrowing if interest is charged. In the case of savings the cost element is inherent in the process of physical storage, particularly in developing country circumstances, as will be shown later. The concept of time preference - a person's preference between current and future consumption — is central to a proper understanding of this last point. Normally it is assumed that current consumption is preferred to future consumption — which is why banks pay interest to persuade people to save. The concept can be made more precise by defining a ' rate of time preference':

where: / = the rate of time preference over a given time period, p = a given amount of income, and / = the amount of future income that must be received in order to persuade the individual to save p for the period in question. Thus if it required an assured future income of 110 rupees to persuade an individual to save ioo rupees now, his or her rate of time preference would be o.i, or ten per cent. The same principle applies to savings in kind. The rate of time preference is not a constant, but is assumed to vary according to a number of factors. First, it is assumed that / will increase with the proportion of current income that is saved. Hence for a given individual, an interest rate of ten per cent may be sufficient to persuade him or her to save fifteen per cent of current income. However, a higher rate of interest would be required to persuade the same person to save, say thirty per cent from the same income level. Second, the ratio of present to anticipated future income will greatly affect the value of/, and hence /. If a rise in income is anticipated, the perceived value of present consumption vis-a-vis future consumption will increase, and the rate of time preference will increase accordingly. Similarly if income is expected to fall, / will also fall. It may even become negative if the anticipated fall in income is sufficiently large, thus implying a negative rate of time preference. This last point is of crucial importance for those in a seasonal industry, since regular rises and drops in income are clearly anticipated. Hence, during the slack season income is anticipated to rise in the future, so that/is greater than/) and the value of/is positive. The more seasonal a person's income is, the higher will be the slack season value

CONSUMPTION EFFECTS OF SEASONALITY

II

of/. Similarly, during the season when incomes are at their annual peak, / will be low, zero or negative, depending upon the level of the anticipated drop. Given the huge seasonal variation that can characterize agricultural incomes in developing countries, / is likely to be negative. Of course where there is a modern banking system people in seasonal industries will not actually have to accept a negative rate of interest on what they save out of peak season earnings. However, it is extremely unlikely that poor people in developing countries will be able to place their savings in interest-bearing bank accounts. They are unlikely to be able to do anything other than hoard them, possibly in the form of money, but more probably in the form of food. People who save in this way can expect, at best, to recover all that is stored, so that at best f = p. In fact for a number of practical reasons hoarding will usually imply that f < p- Even a foodstuff which is nominally nonperishable may deteriorate during storage through rotting or sprouting. If converted into money its value is almost certain to be eroded through seasonal inflation, for in developing countries food sold after the harvest when it is plentiful fetches a low price, while food purchased as needed before the next harvest is often scarce and therefore expensive (Chapter 7). Finally, stored food, money or other valuables can be stolen - and the relatively large level of savings needed to sustain those in seasonal industries makes them a particularly attractive proposition for human and other predators. Two very important points emerge from the above analysis. First, if we compare people in seasonal and non-seasonal industries receiving the same level of income in a year, the fact that the former group has a negative rate of time preference and a loss on savings implies that the amount of their income they can actually devote to consumption will be the lower of the two. Moreover, the more seasonal the income the greater is this difference liable to be. Hence seasonality in itself implies an increase in the degree of poverty, other things being equal. The second point is that the tendency for the rate of time preference to diminish as the difference in peak and slack season earnings grows, is countered by the earlier-noted tendency for / to increase as the proportion saved out of a given level of income increases. One can also reasonably assume that the poorer a person is the greater will be the natural preference for present, as opposed to future, income, so that every additional unit of food saved will represent an ever-increasing sacrifice: / will increase rapidly as income is saved, until the ' equilibrium' point is reached at which the expected loss on savings is equal to the rate of time preference. Beyond this point no further

12

INTRODUCTION

savings will be made. (Indeed for very poor people with highly seasonal incomes it must demand a level of restraint bordering on the heroic for them to save at all.) The upshot of all of this is that the peak season level of savings will never rise to a level high enough to smooth out consumption completely; it will inevitably fall in the season of low or zero income. The argument regarding savings rests, of course, on the assumption that there is something to save. However, it is not at all unlikely that any peak season surplus had already been committed to paying off previous debts - perhaps even inherited ones. A person or family in this situation is dependent upon continuing access to ' revolving' credit each slack season. Where borrowing, rather than savings, is being considered, the interpretation of the time preference formula is slightly different, since / is now the amount of future income that must be surrendered in order to persuade the lender to part v/ithpforthe period in question. A worker in a seasonal industry will have a positive time preference in the slack season, and will therefore be willing to borrow provided the rate of interest is less than /. The greater the seasonality of income, the greater will be the ratio of peak period to slack period earnings, and hence the higher will be the slack season value of /. This, together with the desperate need for food in the hungry season, explains why poor people in developing countries are prepared to pay usurious interest rates for short term consumption loans. The fact that their incomes are likely to rise in the peak season explains why they can borrow at all. The poor, of course, seldom if ever have access to cheap credit from the formal banking sector, even if this sector were prepared to grant consumption loans — which it usually is not. They are therefore forced to borrow on the informal market, where the lender may extract a rate close to the value of /. Interest payments, like physical loss on savings, obviously represent a charge against income, so that once again for a given level of gross annual income, net income is lower for someone in a seasonal, than for someone in a non-seasonal, industry. Moreover, among those in seasonal industries those with assets such as land or livestock to secure a loan could normally expect to obtain a lower rate than those without such collateral. There may also be more competition among lenders for secured loans, and the potential borrower usually has other options, such as selling, mortgaging or renting out the assets in question if the rate of interest asked is too high. Once again the costs of seasonality rise proportionately with the degree of poverty. There is a third reason why the degree of seriousness of the

CONSUMPTION EFFECTS OF SEASONALITY

13

seasonality problem grows with increasing poverty. In densely populated areas, the poorest group in rural society are landless agricultural labourers, people who generally obtain employment only on a casual basis. In such areas there is a natural tendency for farmers who employ such labour to do so only after household labour is fully employed, and to dispense with it as soon as the work load falls sufficiently for household labour to cope. Hence the income of labourers can be expected to be both lower and more seasonal than that of farmers. In semi-arid areas where population densities are lower, richer farmers are generally those with best access to water. This may mean their having the land with the most assured rainfall, or land with soils that can hold moisture well into the dry season (Chapter 4), or irrigated land, but in any case it will imply both increased mean output per acre and reduced seasonality of production compared with their less fortunate neighbours. This problem of seasonality interacting negatively with poverty aggravates the already serious difficulty that for a given degree of seasonal income variation, the lower the mean income is the closer will its annual 'trough' approach to the critical level. Seasonality in consumption, even of essentials, is not in itself a problem. Clothing, for example, may be purchased once a year and ' consumed' over the next twelve months. Of course the real problem arises with food and, to a lesser extent, water. In the dry season it may be necessary, particularly for women and girls, to trek long distances to fetch water, and this will tend to reduce the quantity consumed even for drinking purposes. In the rainy season there may be ample quantities of surface water, but it may also be contaminated with pollutants washed into it by the rain. In the case of food, the more nutritious foods tend to be both more perishable and more expensive than starchy staples, so that seasonality in consumption of the former is likely to be the greater of the two. Seasonality of consumption will obviously vary with social and economic status. At the top end of the spectrum are those whose consumption of all commodities can be kept at the desired level throughout the year, subject only to some seasonal variation in the type of supplies that are available. At a lower level will be those who can maintain levels of consumption at least of biological necessities. (Water supplies can be maintained quantitatively by hiring others to fetch it, and both quantitatively and qualitatively by installing a device such as a tubewell, which can tap an unpolluted aquifer.) At a lower level still will be those who can at least maintain the total volume of consumption, even if its quality falls off at particular times of year. At the bottom end

14 INTRODUCTION of the scale are those who have low and highly seasonal incomes. These are the people who suffer a hungry season, when even starchy staples are in short supply. As will be argued in Chapter 3, this last group approaches a critically low level of consumption for reasons connected with both quality and quantity. In the case of food, the shortage of starchy staple (energy foods) may well impair their ability to work, and hence earn. Insufficient water intake, particularly in a hot, dry season, will have similar effects. On the qualitative side, those at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale will face a season, even longer than the hungry season, during which they cannot afford more nutritious foods than starchy staples. This can leave them open to the debilitating effects of deficiency disease. In the case of water, drinking from polluted sources can lead to serious attacks of water-borne diseases. So far it has been assumed that the critical level of consumption is constant throughout the year. This is an over-simplifcation. First, for people in seasonal industries the critical level will itself vary seasonally, increasing with increased energy requirements in the busy season. This in fact often makes the situation worse than that illustrated earlier, for as the earlier quotation from Longhurst (see p. 2) implies, a period of unusually hard work (normally for land preparation) often coincides with the hungry season. Second, in reality deficiency problems arise, not when a critical minimum level is reached, but when consumption remains below this level for more than a certain length of time. For example, a previously well-nourished individual could reduce food consumption even to zero and still continue to work for a few days on stored reserves of energy in the body. At the other extreme other essential nutrients, such as fat-soluble vitamins, can be stored in the body for many months, so that they could be absent from the diet for a long period before deficiency symptoms appeared. Other nutrients occupy an intermediate position in this regard (Chapter 3). These refinements notwithstanding, the concept of a critical minimum level of consumption is not only valid, but is of central importance to an understanding of the poverty—seasonality nexus, as will now be shown. The analysis so far has concentrated on inter-seasonal variation. However, production potential, and hence employment opportunity and earnings, obviously vary from year to year within the same season — especially in a weather-dependent sector like agriculture. The full significance of a critical minimum level of consumption lies in the interaction between intra-seasonal and inter-seasonal variation in income around a low mean, since the critical level is clearly most likely

CONSUMPTION EFFECTS OF SEASONALITY

p.

I .

i

— i ! !j

o

c' 0 Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Figure .z. Inter-seasonal and intra-seasonal variation in consumption.

to be reached in the hungry season of a bad year. Figure 1.2 depicts consumption by a farm-dependent family or individual near the lower end of the income spectrum during three successive years. In the first year, had income generation followed its' normal' pattern, consumption would have recovered from its annual low and followed path P r , resulting in the 'normal' annual mean income of mv However, in this particular year - because of crop failure, illness or some other calamity - income does not pick up and consumption therefore declines until it reaches the critical level, c. (This is again represented as a straight line on the graph, since it is the concept rather than its refinements that are important to the argument.) By the time this level is reached, it may be assumed that all available savings and 'normal' revolving credit have been used up, and the family or individual has either to take emergency measures to maintain consumption or become unstable as a system, following path P n towards some lower critical level, c . In the case of a family this lower level could be migration of some or all of its members to the city slums; in the case of an individual it could be death. The emergency measures that can be taken to avoid this course of events are either disinvestment or the pledging of future income. Disinvestment may take the form of the sale, mortgaging or renting out of assets or default on normal ' revolving' credit, with a consequent forfeiting of the assets which secured them. If the goods in question were non-productive valuables like jewellery, an important safety net will have been lost. If instead they are productive assets like land or livestock, future income generating potential will have been lost.

l6

INTRODUCTION

Pledging of future income would occur as a result of new interest obligations if new loans were negotiated, perhaps by those who had previously been able to finance slack season consumption from peak season savings. Thus they enter the vicious circle of indebtedness. Worst of all is the position of those who previously relied on recurrent borrowing against future income to finance slack season consumption, for they will have to default on their loans and incur a further burden of (compound) interest without any corresponding receipt of income to relieve their present misery. Here it is quite likely that the fall to c cannot be avoided. One measure of desperation that is occasionally used is, in effect, to sell future peak season labour for present payment at slack season rates. This, however, merely postpones the evil, for reasons that will be painfully obvious. Most of the emergency measures just discussed have the effect of reducing future earning capacity, so that when a ' normal' year occurs once more, 'equilibrium' will be re-established, but around a new mean, mz, which is higher than that of the crisis year (m2), but lower than the previous 'equilibrium' level, mv Clearly, then, one could postulate a situation in which, over a more extended period of time in which several bad years occurred, the interaction of inter- and intraseasonal income variation could not only destroy a labourer family: it could also cause a farming family to drop successively from the status of small farmer to marginal farmer to landless labourer to city slum dwellers. Intra-seasonal variation can, of course, occur in two directions. Is it then reasonable to postulate another critical level, c", a high consumption level which could be surpassed in an unusually good year, permitting investments to be made and pledges redeemed, thus reversing the above process? Obviously if a 'bad year' is one caused by illness of one or more income earners, there is no corresponding concept of a 'good year' to set against it, but what of a good harvest? Unfortunately such an event is less likely to trip an upper critical level than a bad year is to trip a lower one. There are two reasons for this. The first lies in the nature of the market in question and the second in the dynamic nature of the rural environment in poor countries today. In a fairly localized area, especially where technology is at a similar level in all farms, the conditions making for a 'good' or 'bad' year (from a production viewpoint) often tend to be widespread. In a good year there will be a sharp increase in agricultural production across the entire locality and in a bad year there will be a sharp drop. In a largely subsistence agriculture, like that found in most of the developing

CONSUMPTION EFFECTS OF SEASONALITY

17

world, the proportion of farm produce available for sale or barter will fluctuate even more sharply than total production, because subsistence needs are fairly constant. In a bad year virtually no produce may be marketed, while in a good year the limited local market is likely to be swamped with surplus produce. This deepens distress in a bad year, by driving food prices (in money or barter terms) sharply upwards, while the corresponding drop in prices in a good year prevents the accumulation of enough savings to lift the system towards level c". As if this were not bad enough, the prices of the type of goods that are sold in an emergency will move in exactly the opposite direction to food prices. In a bad year many people will try to dispose of articles like land, livestock, trees and jewellery, swamping the market and driving prices sharply downwards. Thus the level of distress sales becomes exceptionally high, as the market value of assets falls and that of food rises. Similarly in a good production year the ratio of food prices to those of land and other assets (assuming any of these assets are put up for sale at all) will swing very sharply in the opposite direction and accumulation of assets will become correspondingly difficult. The situation as regards debt repayment depends largely upon the terms of the loan. If this is expressed in money terms, the drop in produce prices that accompanies a good harvest will adversely affect repayment ability. Only if repayment is expressed in commodity terms will the borrower's repayment prospects be improved. Against this, however, loans in kind almost never come from the formal banking sector, and the interest rates charged by moneylenders and others in the informal sector are so high that paying off a loan plus accumulated interest, even in a good year, is exceptional. The second set of issues concerns the changing environment in which production and consumption assume their seasonal patterns, an environment which seems to exercise relentless downward pressure on mean consumption levels, making it increasingly unlikely that c" can ever be reached. Population growth is a major concern, for it brings with it subdivision of landholdings and migration to new and less favourable environments. Continuing resource depletion and degradation cause similar problems. Technological change can also reduce incomes and worsen seasonality, particularly when it takes the form of labour-displacing mechanization (Chapter 8). The foregoing analysis indicates the nature of the seasonality problem. It is not a major problem in its own right, since in the absence of poverty it can be, and in the developed countries has become, no more than an additional cost of production, one which can usually be

i8

INTRODUCTION Rainy season

r\

1 c

1 So

I

A. Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug' Sep Oct Nov Dec

Figure 1.3. Seasonal variation in the marginal product of factors of production. : water; : labour; —• —: land.

passed on to the consumer. Even this causes few social problems, since food and other seasonal produce take up a relatively small proportion of most household budgets in developed countries. In the rural economies of poor countries, however, where incomes are generally very low, and the importance of food in the family budget correspondingly high, seasonality plays a catalytic role. In the short term it worsens poverty: the greater the degree of poverty, the greater its ill-effects. In the longer term it plays a pivotal role in locking disadvantaged individuals and families into a series of almost irreversibly downward steps at the end of which lies destitution or death. • The challenge of seasonality The recent literature on the effects of seasonality (reviewed in Chapter 3) has, like the above analysis, tended to concentrate on consumption issues. This largely reflects very real and valid equity concerns to which these issues give rise, and which are very clear from the perspective of field workers. In seeking a long term solution to the consumption problem, however, production and equity issues must be considered together. Seasonality of production implies not only an uneven flow of goods, but also unevenness in the utilization of resources. The poorer a country is the less it can afford this, yet paradoxically the poorer a country is the greater will this problem tend to be. Not only are the poorest economies generally characterized by a preponderance of seasonal industries like agriculture, but even their small manufacturing

THE CHALLENGE OF SEASONALITY

19

sectors tend to be more than usually seasonal. A high proportion are dependent on seasonal primary sectors for raw materials, while the remainder either supply seasonally required inputs and equipment to seasonal industries or provide consumer goods to consumers whose incomes are seasonal. To appreciate fully the seasonal capacity utilization problem in agriculture, it is necessary to return briefly to the 'zero marginal product' argument noted earlier (p. 6). There it was argued that, while at certain times of the year the employment of additional labour would contribute nothing to production (i.e. labour has zero marginal product (MP) at certain seasons), at other seasons labour has a high MP, and is therefore fully utilized. This is a general characteristic, not just of labour, but of all factors of production in seasonal industries. In agriculture's slack season land may lie fallow, dairy cattle are often dry, draught animals and equipment are kept idle and labour is unemployed. Such a situation cannot obtain for long, however, unless there is at least one other factor of production which is scarce at the time of year in question and which therefore has an unusually high marginal product. At other times of year the MP of this same factor may be zero - or even negative, as will be shown below. Seasonal variation in the marginal product of factors of production is shown theoretically in Figure 1.3. This shows the interaction of three factors: land, labour and water (rainfall) on a hypothetical non-irrigated farm in a region with a single wet season.4 Before the start of the rainy season the MP of water is very high, and because there is neither sufficient rainfall nor sufficient soil moisture to support a crop, the other two factors of production have zero MPs. With the onset of the rains, however, the marginal product of water falls rapidly, while that of labour increases equally fast as planting gets under way. The MP of land remains zero, because all available labour is fully committed. As the rains continue, the MP of water dips below zero because of such dangers as waterlogging and the washing out of seeds and seedlings if rainfall is excessive. Once the bulk of the available land is prepared and seeded, the MP of labour falls and that of land increases. The MP of land continues high for a short time after the rains because, were additional land available, at least a short duration catch crop could be grown on residual soil moisture. However, as the dry season advances this possibility fades and the MP of land falls as that of water increases (additional moisture in the growing stage would boost the crop very considerably). However, as the harvest approaches the MP of rainfall once again drops, this time falling far below zero - for rain at this stage

2O

INTRODUCTION

could severely damage the crop. With the onset of the harvest the MP of labour again increases sharply, although as soon as the harvest is in it again falls to zero while that of water once more increases very rapidly, reflecting the fact that land is once again fallow and labour once again idle, awaiting the onset of the rains. This simple model presents a very deterministic picture, but of course farming systems are, and always have been, the object of considerable modification by farmers. There are two basic ways of doing this. The first is through technological change. Radically new technologies are those like irrigation, which will supply a factor of production when its marginal product is high, thereby increasing the MPs of complementary factors - in the above case land and labour which would otherwise have been low or zero. Less radical technological change would extend the period during which the MP of a particular factor is positive, as when new crops and varieties are introduced which differ from traditional ones with respect to water requirements, maturity character, drought resistance, and so forth. The second form of modification, which requires considerable organizational skill, is to exploit local environmental differences in order to achieve greater diversity in the timing of operations. An example that may suit conditions on the farm depicted in Figure 1.3 might be to stagger the planting of plots according to their susceptibility to waterlogging. Since soils on susceptible plots usually retain moisture longer than those on well-drained ones, the former could be planted later than most, and, provided timing of the harvest was not too much of a constraint, yields could be maintained while both planting and harvesting were staggered. This would reduce the marginal product of labour at the two peak periods, making it less of a bottleneck and hence opening up opportunities for increasing the MP of land when this would otherwise have been zero. It would also increase the MP of labour at one or both ends of the two busy seasons, when it too would normally be low or zero. In order fully to appreciate the farmer's actions and the rationale behind them, it has become increasingly common to adopt a ' systems' approach to on-farm research. A 'system' can broadly be defined as any natural or artificial assemblage of objects or processes associated or organized in such a way as to form, within a specified boundary, a connected and interdependent whole. Linkages within the boundary are relatively strong, while those to elements outside, where they exist, are relatively weak. Farming systems research (FSR) has begun to reveal something of the extent to which farmers in developing

THE CHALLENGE OF SEASONALITY

21

countries have been successful in, among other things, ameliorating the effects of inter-seasonal variation in production potential (Chapter 8). In pursuit of these ends, such farmers not only pick and choose among technologies as they become available, but also take advantage of sometimes quite small inter-plot differences in such characteristics as soil type, fertility, flooding regime, aspect, slope and elevation in order to diversify their production enterprises and hence stagger seasonal requirements for labour, draught power and inputs (Chapter 5). Even where plots of land are physically similar - even within the same plot - farmers will deliberately create variation, by techniques like intercropping and the staggering of planting dates on either side of a biological optimum, sacrificing apparent yield advantages in order to serve a set of wider and more complex aims. This last point helps explain the alleged irrationality of farmers as seen through the eyes of those biological scientists and agricultural policy makers who have concentrated their efforts on increasing crop yields. Exclusive attention to a search for increased yields is in many circumstances naive. First, it implies an assumption that land is the only scarce factor of production (since yield is simply output per unit of land). As indicated above, however, this simplistic view ignores the fact that at different times of year different factors will be in short supply (in the sense of having the highest MP) and the rational farmer will allocate resources accordingly. The second point parallels the marginal product argument. Just as there is seasonal variation in marginal products of factors of production, there is also seasonal variation in the marginal utility of consumption (the contribution of one additional unit of consumption to overall utility, or well being). Where seasonality of consumption is a problem, and most especially where there is a hungry season, the timing of food production can be even more important to a family than its total volume, so that the marginal utility of food is highest during the hungry season and lowest during the main harvest period which generally follows it. Hence poor rural families can increase their overall welfare, even at the cost of sacrificing overall output, if they can shift some of their food production into the hungry season. One example will illustrate this principle in action. Farmers are well aware that for a given crop there is a generally positive relationship between biomass production and maturity period. Thus early maturing varieties of a given crop normally yield less well than late maturing ones. Farmers in developing countries often take advantage of this relationship and in the process demonstrate the importance to them of

22

INTRODUCTION

the timing of food production. They plant low-yielding, but fastmaturing varieties of their staples at the beginning of the cultivation season in order to provide a crop in what would otherwise be the hungriest time of year, before the main harvest comes off the land. Slower-maturing, higher yielding varieties are planted next and provide the bulk of the harvest. It is this type of rationale behind traditional farming systems that must be understood if the seasonality problem is to be first understood and then tackled. However complex the farming system, and however important it is to understand it, it must nevertheless be kept in mind that it is only one element in a wider system within which the elements that cause, and are capable of ameliorating, seasonality in agriculture take effect. These elements are complex and interdependent, interacting both mutually and with the other elements in the natural and agricultural environment, and affecting a wide range of important poverty-related variables, including nutrition, health, education, employment, income, savings, investment and social relationships. The ' systems' approach is still the best vehicle for understanding such complexity, as an essential first step towards meeting the challenge of seasonality. Particularly in developing countries, the farming system is only a subsystem of the household system that contains it. The household may also embrace many nonfarming activities, such as religious, social and family obligations (including reproduction and the care of children). Some household members are linked directly into the farming system in terms of the labour, management and other inputs they provide, and in terms of their nutritional dependence upon the food it produces. Others are linked to it less directly, as in the case of babies whose nutrition depends on that of their mothers, and whose nurturing at times depends upon the amount of time she can spare from essential farming activities. These particular relationships are especially important at times of nutritional stress and at times of peak labour requirements (Chapter 3). The various households that comprise a village may be interlinked to varying degrees.5 Several individual farming systems may be linked by mutual exchange of services like labour and draught power, a process which, to the extent that peak requirements are, or can be made, complementary, reduces such requirements for each participating household while simultaneously increasing the utilization of spare offpeak capacity. Other, non-farm, households (those of landless labourers) may be linked to neighbouring farming/household systems through the provision of either farm- or domestic labour and the

THE CHALLENGE OF SEASONALITY

23

consequent receipt of income — again especially at peak periods. Other households within the village may have no direct linkage with the group just described, but may together with them form part of a single 'patron-client' system. Such systems traditionally played an important role in reducing seasonality, through a flow of goods and services from patron to clients (in such forms as loans and presents) during the slack season, a process which not only secured the clients' socio-political allegiance, but also secured the patron a supply of labour in the busy season when it was traditionally scarce. Moreover, these patrons have traditionally tended, either dejure or de facto, to act as conduits through which much of their clients' contact with the outside world was maintained. Such a hierarchical structure bolstered the natural isolation of village society, where communications with the outside world were poor, and information systems underdeveloped. As a result, links between the village and the outside world tended traditionally to be much weaker than intra-village linkages, and village society had well-defined boundaries, difficult to penetrate from either direction. There has always, of course, been some interaction between at least some village systems and the outside world, but these required a strong and sustained economic pressure to overcome the above obstacles. For example, trade routes in seasonal produce have linked village systems to the national and international economy from time immemorial, but except for fairly localized transactions, high transportation costs could be overcome only in the case of commodities like spices, medicinal plants and drugs which were both non-perishable and of high value in relation to their weight. 'Horizontal' interactions, interlinking different village systems, especially through seasonal labour migration, are also of considerable antiquity. In this case it can be assumed that, given the difficulties in the way of travel and information flows, the more wide ranging systems took many years to develop and even then developed only if there was sufficient complementarity of labour requirements between the areas of out- and in-migration to generate a level of income sufficient to cover relatively high transaction costs (Chapter 7). Even without much outside contact, traditional agricultural and social systems were generally well adapted, within important limits, to meeting the challenge of seasonality. Those whose cumulative efforts produced these adaptations had had the benefit of generations in which both per capita resources and existing technologies were quite stable. Hence, efficient mechanisms could be developed for smoothing out

24 INTRODUCTION seasonal fluctuations in income and resource use, as far as this was possible within the limitations imposed by such factors as climate, technological choice and the structure of society. To say this is not to suggest the existence of any kind of golden age, but simply to argue that within a relatively static socio-economic and technological environment the process of continuing observation, experimentation and adaptation will eventually produce optimal solutions to the resource allocation problem - even in the presence of quite marked intra-seasonal variability in production conditions. The initial, and in many cases the greatest, shock to traditional counter-seasonal mechanisms in most of today's developing countries came as a direct result of colonialism. The internal integrity of village systems was weakened by such measures as land expropriation and by the erosion of traditional patron—client relationships. This last process occurred as a wider vista of opportunities opened up for patrons, making it less necessary for them to have to rely on the support of purely local clients. Other changes, such as the creation of an improved transportation infrastructure and the institution of cash taxes (and hence the need for cash cropping, livestock sales, etc), tended in the more accessible areas to make the boundaries of the village systems rather more permeable, opening them up to the influences of the wider economy. The pressures generated by many of these changes have continued into the post-colonial era, intensified by often rapid population growth and the continued introduction of technologies developed for a very different set of socio-economic conditions. These have heightened the disruptive effects of the other changes. For example, both population pressure and the introduction of labourdisplacing technology further erode the traditional patron's need for clients, since the former increase peak season labour supply and the latter reduce the need for it. The situation that presently obtains in numerous areas is that many important traditional intra-village counter-seasonal mechanisms have been weakened, while the links between village systems and those of the wider economy have not yet developed sufficiently to provide for a set of alternatives. Moreover, the degree of permeability of a village system's boundaries itself varies by season, since transport becomes more difficult and villages correspondingly more isolated, during the rainy season, when seasonal deprivation is generally at its highest level (Chapter 7). Because the process of integrating village systems into the wider economy is as yet very far from complete, the agricultural sectors of

THE CHALLENGE OF SEASONALITY

2J

developing countries - considered as systems - are correspondingly weak: their component parts lack interconnectedness and interdependence. It therefore follows that other macro level systems which connect with the agricultural sector - those for marketing, finance, inputs, research and extension, and through these the wider international economy - have little contact with village-level systems. What contact they have tends to be limited to the dry season, and even then they tend to connect only with the upper echelons of village society. This is a crucially important weakness as far as the ability to combat seasonality is concerned, for the impermeability of village system boundaries ensures that village-level poverty problems in general, and their seasonal dimensions in particular, remain 'unperceived'. And without perception any attempt at solution is tantamount to shooting wildly in the dark. The seasonality—poverty problem must be tackled at two levels. At the farm or village level what is required is the increasing application of modern scientific methods to identify seasonality problems and make appropriate solutions available for adoption. This is seriously impeded by the type of anti-perception biases identified by Chambers. At the macro level, meeting the challenge of seasonality depends to a large measure on the development of a policy-level capacity to identify existing or potential complementarities with respect to seasonal production possibilities and resource utilization. With increasing distance, variation in the physical, climatic — even economic and social — conditions that govern production tends to increase, and the potential for identifying seasonal complementarities increases with them. Factors which confine system linkages within a very limited geographical area will correspondingly limit the potential for exploiting macro level complementarities. The next two chapters look in turn at the causes and effects of seasonality. Chapter 2 considers the climatic and other (mainly social) origins of this phenomenon, essentially as a background for what follows. Chapter 3 looks at the effects of seasonality on those to whom it matters most, the disadvantaged. It does this by examining the recent literature on the subject within the framework of the seasonal consumption model presented earlier. The remainder of the book is devoted to what was described earlier as the challenge of seasonality: the difficulties in the way of countering these problems and the ways appropriate solutions might be sought. Chapter 4 provides a point of departure for this by examining the multifarious ways in which differences in the environment can interact with the basic sources of seasonality to create an array of, perhaps overlapping, but potentially

26

INTRODUCTION

complementary, ' economic seasons' within a given geographical area. This is crucially important, for it is in the diversity so created that we must seek the micro and macro level complementarities which provide the basis for effective counter-seasonal strategies. The fifth chapter examines existing counter-seasonal strategies which have come to be used in both the developed and the developing world. It identifies two basic features of such strategies that have been particularly effective in the former: the growth of a system of specialization and exchange through the market mechanism, and the development and application of science and technology to such seasonal problems as uneven capacity utilization and the need to match seasonal supply to seasonal or nonseasonal demand. However, access to new technology depends upon access to land, and the more disadvantaged a family or individual the less likely is it that such access will exist. Chapter 6 looks at a survival mechanism that is, or could become, particularly important to the disadvantaged, seasonal labour migration. The next two chapters then examine the difficulties that must be faced in applying these lessons in the developing world. Chapter 7 considers the various distortions in developing economies which hamper the free flow of goods and services both geographically and seasonally. Chapter 8 considers the dynamic aspects of seasonality and how its effects are changing over time. The book ends with a discussion of the lessons that have been learnt from existing studies of seasonality and the conclusions that can be drawn for purposes of planning and policy formulation.

The sources of seasonality

in nature derives from the annual cycle of change in the earth's climate, which in turn derives from the geometry of our planet's orbit around the sun. However, seasons exist in a social sense also, as in the season of fasting at Ramadan or Lent. There is little that can be done to reduce seasonality of these types. The earth's climate is a system over which, perhaps mercifully, humankind has little deliberate control as yet. Even when seasonality has its roots in the social and religious traditions of a people, there is often little that can be done to change this - even if it were deemed desirable to do so — except perhaps in the very long term. An understanding of these sources is nevertheless an essential starting point for a study of both the effects of seasonality and ways of tackling the problems it creates. T H E EXISTENCE OF SEASONS

+ Climatic sources SEASONAL TEMPERATURE VARIATION

Temperature is a fundamental element of climate and in many ways its most important: many of the others are directly or indirectly dependent upon it. The earth's temperature is a function of solar radiation (insolation). The amount of solar radiation reaching the upper atmosphere is more or less constant, but its effect on atmospheric temperature is altered by a number of factors. First, the earth's surface is more or less at right angles to the sun's rays in the Equatorial zone, but as latitude increases, the curvature of the earth has the effect of presenting an increasingly angled surface to these rays, so that the same amount of radiation is spread over an increasingly wide area, reducing 2

7

28

THE SOURCES OF SEASONALITY

the intensity of insolation reaching the ground. This simple relationship is, however, modified by a number of other factors. One of the most important is the presence of cloud or dust particles in the atmosphere, both of which filter out and reflect back a proportion of the insolation received by the atmosphere. Thus the heavy cloud cover associated with the Equatorial zone reduces that zone's average temperature below that of the mainly desert and largely cloud-free zones on either side. The temperature produced by insolation is also affected by a number of other factors, such as the reflectance of the surface on which it falls, and on winds and ocean currents, which play a major role in redistributing warmth from the warmer to the colder regions. The amount of solar radiation reaching a given point on the earth's surface is itself determined by season. This happens because the earth's axis is not at right angles to its plane of rotation around the sun, but inclined to it (at an angle of 66| degrees). Figure 2.1 shows the northern hemisphere tilted towards the sun in June/July, and away from it in December/January. With increasing distance from the Equator this produces increasingly large inter-seasonal differences in solar radiation and hence surface temperature, each hemisphere being the mirror image of the other in this respect. The world's developing countries lie in the lower latitudes, i.e. the tropics and subtropics. These do not simply merge into the temperate zones on either side, for there are climatic distinctions which are of vital importance to agriculture and to the influence of seasonality on agriculture. The most straightforward definition of the tropics derives from the angle of the earth's tilt, and places them in the zone between the latitudes 23I degrees North (Tropic of Cancer) and 235 degrees South (Tropic of Capricorn). These two latitudes represent the limits between which the sun is ever in zenith (i.e. directly overhead).1 It is in zenith at the Tropic of Capricorn at the point of maximum inclination of the southern hemisphere towards the sun (around 22nd December) and at the Tropic of Cancer six months later. These two dates are the solstices (the points of maximum difference in the length of night and day). For climatological and agricultural purposes, however, the tropics cannot be defined with such precision, since latitude is only one of a number of factors determining which crops can be grown at a given location (Chapter 4). The simplest agricultural definition of the tropics is that region which has no winter. A corresponding definition of the temperate zone is the area in which frost occurs, even if rarely. More complex definitions take airflow, and hence indirectly rainfall, characteristics into account as well as temperature. Thus, for example,

CLIMATIC SOURCES Spring hemisphere.--^ Mar 21/22

-7—$9™-Autumn '^ hemisphere r_-N,

~'

N Winter hemisphere

Summer ' hemisphere

Summer hemisphere

V ^ Winter hemisphere sf•>*. 21/22

Autumn hemisphere p ^ hemisphere

21/22

Incident solar radiation Plane of

Figure 2.1. The season-creating effect of the earth's tilt.

Riehl adopts the same approach as many climatologists when he describes the tropics as: That part of the world where atmospheric processes differ decidedly... from those of higher latitudes (so that) a dividing line between easterly and westerly winds in the middle troposphere (700 mb) may serve as a useful guide for the boundaries. This fluctuating line allows for seasonal variations and for differences between one part of the world and another in the same season (1979, p. 1). The boundaries of the temperate zones (or ' middle latitudes') are equally blurred. Their poleward limits verge on the areas of 'cold' climate, which border the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and are of little agricultural importance. Nearer to the Equator are the ' cool temperate'

THE SOURCES OF SEASONALITY No dry season 400 300

Entebbe (Uganda)

Colombo (Sri Lanka)

Belem (Brazil)

200

«!••'

J M M J S N

J M M J S N

J S N J M M

100

I

mm

o

2600

J NMJ SN Christchuich mm JQQ (New Zealand)

2400

^o'TTftTTfTTrrn

2200

J S N J M M

300 200

2 wet-2 dry Accra (Ghana)

Zanzibar (Tanzania)

Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea)

60 0

J M M J S N

J S N J M M

2000

Washington D.C. (U.S.A.)

1800

mm 100

100

J S N J M M

Cherrapunji (India)

1600

J M M J S N 1400

mm 700 600 500 400 300 200 100

1 wet-1 dry

Bombay (India)

1200

Singapore 1000

Harare (Zimbabwe)

800 J M M J S N

JSNJMM

JMMJSN

600

JMMJSN 400

Dry Tamanrasset

if-

J M M J S N

Alice Springs (Australia) J S N J M M

Lima (Peru) 200

J S N J M M

60

JMM JS N Figure 2.2. Mean monthly rainfall at selected tropical and temperate locations. (Source: drawn from data in Lamb 1972 (World Climatic Table).)

climates and the 'warm temperate' (or subtropical) climates. In the ' cool temperate' climates there is a cold season of one to five months below 6 °C during which there is a seasonal check to plant growth. The 'warm temperate' or subtropical climates, like the tropics, have no such cold season, except at high altitude (Chapter 4). SEASONAL RAINFALL VARIATION

If seasonal variation in temperature is more pronounced in the temperate zones than in the tropics, the opposite is true of the seasonal distribution of rainfall. Figure 2.2 depicts mean monthly rainfall data for twelve tropical locations. (The reasons for selecting these particular ones will be explained later.) For purposes of comparison three

CLIMATIC SOURCES

31

temperate locations are also included, as are two relatively unusual tropical stations, Cherrapunji and Singapore. The different bar patterns clearly illustrate the generally much greater seasonal variability in tropical rainfall than is found in the temperate zone. Even where mean annual rainfall is low, as in the dry regions, rainfall variability is still high. Hence, whereas the seasonal distribution of temperature is the basis for most systems of climatic classification in the temperate zones, in the tropics they are usually classified according to the seasonal distribution of rainfall. There are, of course, exceptions to all rules, and Singapore is included in the diagram to exemplify this. This station is located virtually on the Equator, yet although its rainfall is high it is also relatively evenly distributed with respect to season. In the case of Cherrapunji, it is the mean level of rainfall that is exceptionally (indeed uniquely) high, while absolute seasonality is enormous, with a range of over 2600 mm between the driest and wettest months. Rainfall is a very complex phenomenon, of which only the sketchiest of outlines can be provided here. Heated water evaporates, so that air over water bodies absorbs moisture. There is a strong relationship between the moisture content of the air (humidity) and ambient temperature. Increasing temperature not only causes increasing water evaporation: it also increases the capacity of the air to absorb this moisture before reaching saturation point, the point at which the moisture precipitates in such forms as rain. This relationship is one important reason why tropical rainfall levels can be so very much heavier than those found in the temperate zones. Water evaporation would, however, be of little importance were it not for air movement. This has its origins in variations in air temperature over the surface of the earth. These give rise to variations in air pressure, which in turn result in air movement - from areas of high, to areas of low, pressure. Wind is air movement parallel to the earth's surface, but not all air movement is of this type. A form that is particularly important as a cause of rainfall is convection: air which has been heated by contact with the surface of the earth rises, while higher, cooler air falls. When convection occurs over water, water vapour ascends to the upper air where it condenses into clouds. Winds carry clouds to areas of different atmospheric conditions, where their condensed water may precipitate. Precipitation can be caused by several factors, of which two are particularly important over land. One is the existence of impurities such as dust particles in the atmosphere, around which water can coalesce into drops. The other results from wind being deflected upwards by mountain barriers in their path (orographic lifting). (This is responsible

32

THE SOURCES OF SEASONALITY

for Cherrapunji's exceptional rainfall regime.) A similar lifting effect is achieved when two wind systems converge, as in the intertropical convergence zone, described below. As clouds rise, cooling occurs, reducing their water-retaining capacity and causing precipitation. Clouds may also be carried upwards by convection currents, again causing precipitation (over either land or sea). Because they both result from the geometry of the earth's orbit around the sun, wind and rainfall variation, like temperature variation, are seasonal phenomena. Wind systems are complicated by major non-uniformities in the earth's surface, the most important of which are the differences between land and water, whose thermal characteristics are quite distinct. At a given latitude, major land masses tend to grow warmer in summer and colder in winter than major water bodies, so that zones of low pressure build up over the continents in summer and over the oceans in winter, giving rise to seasonal shifts in wind direction. Topographical features also affect wind flow and rainfall distribution, as in the case of orographic lifting. The intertropical convergence %one

In the lower latitudes the main airflows are from the anticyclones (areas of high pressure situated over the subtropics in both hemispheres) towards the Equator, where the high rate of heating causes the air to rise and thus create a zone (or 'trough') of low pressure. Because winds from the northern and southern tropics (the ' trade winds') converge in this equatorial zone, it is called the intertropical convergence %one (ITCZ) or equatorial trough. The rotation of the earth causes the trade winds to blow, not from the north and south, but from the northeast in the northern hemisphere and the southeast in the southern hemisphere. Where these two wind systems converge both air streams are deflected upwards with immense force, rising to around 5 000 to 13 000 metres (15 000 to 40000 feet) above sea level. This is a much greater altitude gain than is achieved by convection alone, and the resultant rapid cooling effect on heavily moisture-laden air is to cause extremely heavy rainfall. As a result of seasonal temperature variation, the atmospheric pressure zones that create the ITCZ shift seasonally, causing the zone itself to 'migrate' in step. This migration lags behind that of the sun, reaching its northernmost limit in August and its southernmost extreme in February (Figure 2.3). Because the southern hemisphere contains much more water and much less land than its northern counterpart, their thermal characteristics are quite different, and this

CLIMATIC

SOURCES

33

Sep Nov Jan Mar May Jul Sep Figure 2.}. Annual march of the Sun's zenithal position (solid line) and of the ITCZ (dashed line). (Source: Riehl 1979, Figure 1.9.)

causes the ITCZ to migrate around the latitude of six degrees north, rather than around the Equator itself. The monsoon

The importance of seasonal winds has long been recognized and many have special names. Among the better known are the Mistral in the south of France, the Sirocco blowing from North Africa and the monsoon over much of the tropics and subtropics. Indeed the monsoon has given its name to a monsoonal category of climates, which are of such widespread importance that they deserve at least brief separate treatment. The areas of monsoonal circulation cover most of the developing world, except Latin America, northern and southern Africa and parts of the Middle East. However, not all of the areas experiencing monsoonal air flows also receive its characteristic rainfall. Climatologists distinguish three monsoonal systems: those of West and Central Africa, those affecting the South Asian subcontinent (the 'Indian' monsoon), and those of southeastern Asia and northern Australia. The name monsoon derives from the Arabic word for season, and its basic cause is the seasonal thermal contrast between the surfaces of the land and the sea. In the northern hemisphere the monsoon blows from the northeast in winter, bringing drought, and from the southwest in summer, bringing heavy rain. (South of the Equator the respective wind directions are southwest and northeast.) The monsoon is characterized by a steady advance of summer rain across the land over

34 THE SOURCES OF SEASONALITY a period that can be fairly protracted. For example, the South Asian monsoon begins in the first half of May and advances steadily across the subcontinent to reach its northern limit (the Hindu Kush-Himalayan mountain chain) by the beginning of July. Such is the suddenness and violence with which this monsoonal system arrives that it is usually said to have 'burst'. With the equinox the seasonal wind reversal occurs and the rain slowly retreats, finally reaching the Coromandel Coast again around the beginning of December. The above description suggests that latitude is the overwhelming factor determining the seasonal rainfall and temperature distribution patterns. However, this effect is subject to considerable modification by the physical characteristics of a region, a fact which is of enormous importance to the study of seasonality, and in particular the ways in which its effects can be ameliorated by natural forces and human intervention. One example already mentioned is orographic lifting, which creates relatively heavy rainfall on the windward side of mountains and mountain ranges and a 'rain shadow' effect on the leeward side. If prevailing wind direction changes seasonally this can create complementary growing seasons on the different sides of the range. Mountains can also deflect winds in a direction parallel to the earth's surface, as when the Himalayan barrier deflects the summer monsoon towards the northwest, thereby fundamentally affecting the distribution of monsoonal rain over the Gangetic Plain. The effect of altitude on temperature is well-known; perhaps not so well-known is the effect of continentality (distance from the sea) on seasonal temperature regime. The western sides of continents tend to be drier than the eastern sides due to a combination of high pressure zones and cold currents on that side. Deserts have a desiccation effect on surrounding areas — which is why East Africa has lower and less reliable rainfall than its location on the Equator would otherwise suggest. Such macro climatic differences are discussed in Chapter 4, as are more localized differences which can produce distinct microclimates in particular areas. These influences notwithstanding, the effect of latitude is the strongest overall determinant of climate and as such forms the basis of most attempts to identify climatic zones. Tropical Rainfall Zones

Among the major causes of seasonal change in rainfall patterns in the tropics the first is the seasonal 'migration' of the ITCZ, in whose vicinity there is always rain. Second there is the influence of the subtropical highs. These are elliptical zones of high pressure over the oceans, which vary seasonally in intensity and size. Models have been

CLIMATIC SOURCES 35 constructed which divide the tropics into three basic zones, one of considerable rainfall near the Equator, where the ITCZ is nearby throughout the year, one of very low rainfall at a latitude of about 15 to 25 degrees (i.e. near the subtropical highs) and an intermediate zone where the effects of these two influences alternate seasonally (Nieuwolt 1977, Ch. 8). At lower latitudes this alternation tends to produce one dry and one rainy season a year; nearer the Equator two dry and two rainy seasons alternate. In practice this relatively simple pattern is complicated by several other factors, some of which have already been mentioned and some of which are not yet fully understood, so that local patterns of rainfall vary considerably from those the models tend to predict. Seasonal distribution of rainfall in the tropics does, nevertheless, conform sufficiently well in practice to the theoretical pattern to make the above fourfold classification meaningful. Taking Nieuwolt's mean monthly rainfall of 60 mm as the dividing line below which a month is described as 'dry', 2 the four zones are as follows: 1. Areas with no dry season, i.e. no month with a mean rainfall of less than 60 mm; 2. Areas with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons; 3. Areas with only one rainy season and one dry season; 4. Dry areas. A generalized picture of the global distribution of these seasonal rainfall patterns is shown in Figure 2.4. This map confirms that the four zones do lie in recognizable, if highly modified, latitudinal bands. The areas with no dry season tend to occur in the Equatorial zones of Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America, where the ITCZ is nearby all year round. These areas are surrounded and flanked by regions with two rainy seasons (bimodal pattern), which are in turn flanked by zones of a single rainy season (unimodal pattern), with dry areas towards the limits of the tropics, near the subtropical highs. The tropical and subtropical locations of Figure 2.2 (other than Singapore and Cherrapunji) were selected so as to illustrate with data from three widely spaced locations in each, the typical seasonal rainfall patterns of the above four zones. These graphs illustrate the overall influence of the annual migration of the ITCZ. First, the three sites defined as having no dry season do nevertheless have the pattern of two relatively wet seasons alternating with two relatively dry ones. This conforms with the picture seen in the two-wet-two-dry zones on either side, resulting from the double overhead passage of the ITCZ during the year. Second, even in the three sites in the dry zone, which are on the verges of the tropics, what little rainfall they do receive is still

T H E SOURCES OF S E A S O N A L I T Y

No dry season

3 Two rainy and two dry seasons

I One rainy season only

i

1 Dry or extra-tropical

Figure 2.4. Seasonal rainfall distribution types in the humid tropics. (Source: Nieuwolt 1977, Figure 8.6.)

Table 2.1. Walsh's provisional classification scheme of tropical climates on the basis of rainfall seasonality Absolute: seasonality Length (jf dry season (DM) DM Symbol Type B

Perenially wet Wet with short dry season

C

A

(months retical work, in particular, has concentrated on labour flows from tue traditional/ rural to the modern/urban sector. Even where such studies are explicitly concerned with seasonal flows of labour into the agricultural economy of a particular area, they can overlook the importance of inmigration from other agricultural areas. Thus Bellas (1984) has developed a model of seasonal labour supply to agriculture in one area which takes no account of potential supply from other agricultural districts. It is assumed instead that only urban—rural migrants can supplement local agricultural labour: ' Turning to the peak period, one has to examine the role of suppliers who are not farmers themselves.

CIRCULATION BETWEEN SEASONAL OCCUPATIONS

139

These could be people who live on the brink of the urban sector of a predominantly rural region (part-time builders, semi-skilled or unskilled labourers, gypsies, etc.)' (p. 25). In the theoretical literature on labour circulation, the lack of attention to circulation within traditional agriculture reflects a more general lack of interest among many theorists in traditional modes (as distinct from relations) of production. In contrast, resource transfers, including labour, from the traditional to the modern sector tend, implicitly or explicitly, to be viewed as being of crucial importance to a long-term structural shift in the economy. In some cases they are seen as an integral aspect of' development', in others as a realignment of the world economic order which permits increasingly effective external exploitation of Third World resources. It would be difficult, however, to fit into either construct many of the traditional short term migratory flows that occur between rural areas in developing countries. Some of these forms of circulation have been in existence for centuries - often pre-dating European colonialism, let alone the 'development debate'. Indeed some forms of rural—rural seasonal migration, such as migratory hunting-gathering and nomadic pastoralism, date back thousands of years. Not all of the blame for the neglect of labour circulation within the rural sector can be laid at the door of the theorists, for there are practical problems of identification and measurement also, which prevent the adequate analysis of these flows by the more empirically minded. Goldstein (1978) has observed that circular migrants, because of the transitory nature of their residence, are often missed when urban census data are collected, with the result that the full extent of this type of migration is often seriously underestimated. If this is true of the cities, how much more must it be true of the rural areas, where the migrants' period of residence is apt to be briefer still and census data collection more difficult and less comprehensive? Even where primary data on labour circulation are collected, such surveys tend to concentrate on urban areas. This is, perhaps, understandable: the target population in urban areas is much easier to see and measure than is the case with the more diffuse flows that characterize labour circulation in the countryside. Moreover, not only are urban slums and shanty towns an obvious blot on the (citydweller's) landscape, but the high concentration of migrants in a few cities makes them relatively easy to survey. Primary data collection in the rural areas is, of course, far from uncommon in developing countries. (Indeed sometimes it seems almost impossible to walk through the countryside without tripping over

140

SEASONAL LABOUR MIGRATION

some enumerator or other!) However, seasonal migration is not usually a major focus of attention in such surveys. In more general agricultural surveys several factors militate against adequate consideration of migratory flows. First, for cultural reasons male enumerators are often unable to approach, let alone interview, the heads of female-headed households, so that households whose males are seasonally absent tend either to drop out of the sampling frame or be marked down as nonrespondents. Second, where on-farm interviews are conducted, household members who are currently working elsewhere are obviously unavailable for interview and their activities can therefore easily be overlooked. In any case, most questionnaires are concerned almost exclusively with on-farm activities and not, say, with what household members may do during periodic absences from home. Such factors constitute an effective barrier against the measurement of slack season out-migration in the source areas. But what of inmigration in the receiving areas? Here an equally effective barrier to measurement exists, namely the fact that in-migration, for obvious reasons, occurs in the busiest period(s) of the year. Anyone who has attempted to collect on-farm data during such a period very quickly realizes that this is an almost impossible task. People simply cannot spare the time. Thus the season in which migrants are present in significant numbers on the farm is the one which tends to get missed out of surveys. The opposite side of this coin is, of course, that in the supply areas interviews conducted in the slack season, when farmers have most time to devote to answering questions, are likely to coincide with the seasonal absence of a significant part of the workforce. All of the above adds up to yet another bias to append to Chambers' list discussed in Chapter 1: seasonal migration within the rural areas, like other aspects of seasonality, tends to remain un- or under-perceived. Certainly there are studies of rural—rural seasonal migration — some examples are discussed below. But these are very often micro-level, so that it is difficult to gauge their representativeness across the country, or to aggregate them so as to arrive at macro-economic estimates. As a contribution to the correction of this particular bias, a 'rapid appraisal' methodology for exploratory macro-level studies of seasonal migratory flows in agriculture is suggested in the Appendix. This includes a case study illustrating the use of the technique in practice. Seasonal migration within the agricultural sector has its roots in the type of natural and man-made complementarities discussed in the two previous chapters. An excellent illustration, worth looking at in some detail, is provided by migration between the wet and dry zones of Sri Lanka (Figure 6.1). This is rooted in macro-environmental differences

CIRCULATION BETWEEN SEASONAL OCCUPATIONS

141

Dry zone Intermediate zone Wet zone

Figure 6.1. Sri Lanka showing wet, dry and intermediate zones. (Source: adapted from Farrington et al. 1984, Map IV. 1.)

in the timing of cultivation under rainfed conditions and irrigation. Crooks and Ranbanda (1981) list both 'push' and 'pull' factors which cause migratory flows from the wet to the dry zone. The major 'push' factor, is the fact that farms are small and incomes low in the densely populated wet zone: more than fifty per cent of the sample had holdings of less than an acre (0.4 ha) of paddy land, which is too small to support a family for a year. The main ' pull' factor is the availability of remunerative employment on irrigated holdings in the dry zone during the wet zone's slack season. The land preparation/transplanting season in the wet zone extends from September to November, peaking

142

SEASONAL LABOUR MIGRATION

in October; the corresponding season in the dry zone is November to January with a December peak. Thus, as the wet zone's first busy season begins to tail off in November, the labour which becomes unor under-employed can begin migrating to the dry zone, a flow which will steadily build up to meet the December peak. The distances travelled by migrants range from about 5 o to 120 km and their usual length of stay varies from two to six weeks. A second unemployment peak occurs later in the year during the harvesting/threshing period. Again the peaks in the two zones are separated by around two months. Migrants therefore return home after transplanting is completed in the dry zone, so as to be available for the harvesting peak on their own holdings, returning once more to the dry zone for the harvest peak there. The example just described is far from unique. Chatterjee (1983) has indicated that a similar degree of complementarity exists between Burdwan (India) and neighbouring districts of West Bengal and Bihar, as has Upadhyaya (1988) for the Nepal terai and the neighbouring hills. Complementarities between agricultural regions can sometimes be exploited without the migrants' direct involvement in the agriculture of the receiving region, for such complementarities can sometimes also be exploited in the shape of trade in seasonal produce. Swindell (1984, 1985) provides a number of examples of West African farm families' traditional methods of' turning the dry season to profitable account' in this way. Sokoto was mentioned earlier as an area of extreme dryseason aridity (Figure 4.4). The Hausa farmers of that part of Nigeria long ago became adept at coping with this problem, by transforming themselves into dry-season traders. Their principal export was the rice they had just harvested, which they took to the coast for sale. There they used the proceeds to purchase the seasonal produce of other areas, principally kola nuts and cotton, which they brought home with them. The mark-up earned on these commodities was commonly as high as ioo per cent, and the profits were bolstered by the addition of nonseasonal produce like salt and even money (for they also capitalized on regional differences in the exchange rate between the native cowrie shell currency and the colonial shilling, differences which could be more than three-fold between Sokoto and the coast!). Agricultural labourers also migrated coast-wards from Sokoto in the dry season, where they found jobs could be obtained in porterage, droving, building, brick-making, well-repairing, carrying water, yam lifting and cutting firewood. Their earnings from these activities could be increased two- or three-fold by buying trade goods which they then

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143

sold at a profit on reaching home (Swindell, 1984). So bound up with the seasonal agricultural cycle were these transactions that the Hausa expression for them translates as 'eating the dry season', and so widespread was the practice that around 250000 men — between a quarter and a third of the male population of Sokoto Caliphate — was found to have left home during this season when a detailed survey was conducted in 1952-3 (ibid). Other writers have indicated a similar state (if not similar level) of income maximization in seasonal occupational shifts. Hence Meillassoux (1975) found considerable complementarity in seasonal shifts between subsistence agriculture at home and wage work during the slack season in Kenya. It would of course be foolish to assume that a neat degree of complementarity characterizes seasonal migration patterns within rural areas throughout the Third World. In many cases a household will be reduced to calculating trade-offs between loss of home production and loss of potential outside income, juggling resources between different geographical areas in order to maximize household income and/or minimize risk in the manner predicted by the Yiu-Kwan/Stretton and Roberts models cited earlier. Rempel (1981), after reviewing a fairly large number of studies of seasonal labour migration, listed several social and economic characteristics which rural migrants seemed to have in common. The first is that migrants usually have some land. This is an extremely important finding, for it suggests a severe limitation on the extent to which one of the most disadvantaged rural groups, the landless, has been able to use migration as a seasonal survival mechanism. Rempel explains this in terms of the landless having nothing to hold them to a particular place, and therefore being the most likely group to migrate permanently. This explanation is open to question, however, for it would be quite wrong to assume that the landless are also rootless. They will almost certainly have a village home of some sort, which they may wish to maintain, quite possibly together with a set of social relations (of, for example, a patron-client type) which are of sufficient economic value to make them wish to maintain their ties to a particular locality. In addition, as Lipton (1980) has pointed out, the evidence of a large number of studies is that migration imposes costs which the very poorest groups cannot easily afford. Moreover, they do not usually have the contacts necessary to assure them of employment in the non-seasonal sectors.2 Rempel's second observed characteristic of seasonal migrants is that they are most likely to be people whose ' exploitation of their land is held down either by the lack of a market for cash crops, or by a seasonal

144 SEASONAL LABOUR MIGRATION rainfall regime and a lack of irrigation which make year-round farming impossible' (ibid, p. 213). There are two separate points here. Obviously the lack of opportunity for year-round farming will create a powerful ' push' effect in the slack season - and the longer the slack season the harder the push. The second point is the need for cash. As noted earlier, such a need, created especially by the imposition of cash taxes, has long been recognized as a 'push' factor in labour migration. If it is to be successful there must be an area in which complementary seasonal employment opportunities exist in sufficient volume to create a corresponding ' pull' effect, as in the Sokoto and Sri Lanka cases cited earlier. Rempel's third conclusion concerns this 'pull' factor: 'No doubt there are regions that meet the conditions for seasonal outmigration but where people regard earning possibilities elsewhere as too low relative to the cost of moving' (ibid). These three points about migration and the characteristics of migrants can best be understood within the context of an informal 'cost-benefit' analysis which, it must be assumed, lies behind the decision-making process of the rural household.3 Of course none of this analysis will be put on paper, nor are the individual elements likely to be rigorously separated out, but the process need be no less real for being intuitive. The decisions that must be made include (a) whether or not to send migrants at all, and, if so, (b) which family members to send, (c) when they should go and (d) when they should return. The expected benefits of migration are a function of two variables, knowledge and connections. Not only must the family of potential migrants know of the existence of employment opportunities elsewhere, but there must also be a reasonable degree of assurance that any migrants they send will be able to secure such work. Many studies indicate that both variables are largely functions of kinship and community ties, and that these are often so strong that the degree of assurance of employment is virtually absolute (Crooks and Ranbanda 1981, Stretton 1985, Yiu-Kwan and Stretton 1985, among many). The cost of migration has three elements. The first is transaction costs, i.e. fares, food and lodgings on the road, and in some cases payments to facilitate the illegal crossing of an international border. The second is the opportunity-cost of any earnings foregone by (a) not leaving later, (b) not returning earlier, or (c) not staying at home altogether. The third set of costs are social. These include not only the pain of separation, but also other possibilities, such as potential damage to patron—client relations and the danger of having to default upon mutual labour exchange arrangements. Implicit in this assumed cost-

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benefit evaluation will be an allowance for an element of risk and uncertainty. Risk includes the danger of illness, injury or theft of earnings. Uncertainty about obtaining employment will depend largely on the state of the market and the strength of the family's connections. Where they exist in practice, such cost—benefit calculations would go a long way towards explaining Rempel's observation that those most affected by seasonal deprivation, members of landless families, are actually less likely to migrate than those who are slightly better-off. The level of uncertainty is likely to be greater than for families that are somewhat better-off, as the poorer a family is the less likely is it to have good connections with those able to provide jobs and job information. On the cost side, again compared with rather more fortunate rural families, the landless are (a) less able to afford the costs and uncertainties of migration and job-search, and (b) much more economically dependent on social relations, and hence less able to afford the cost of possible damage to these.4 These arguments can be illustrated by returning to the Sri Lankan study cited earlier. First, in the wet zone source villages it is wellknown that employment prospects exist in the dry zone that are complementary to local labour requirements (and at wage rates around a third to a half as much again as the going rate in the wet zone at that time of year). Second, the majority of those who migrate are assured of employment before they leave home, usually because they will work for relatives who have migrated permanently to set up farms in the dry zone. In contrast to these are the 'itinerant migrants' who are to be seen 'wandering around looking for possible employment', securing fewer work days than the others and being paid at lower rates (Crooks and Ranbanda 1981, pp. 44—47). Third, the opportunity-cost of slack season labour in the wet zone is low or zero, since little employment is available even at the (low) going rates of pay. Fourth, migration distances being relatively short, both transaction costs and physical risks are likely to be correspondingly low.5 The consequently large difference between (economic) costs and benefits is obviously sufficient to compensate migrants for the social costs of migration (which, given the relatively short duration of the stay away from home, may not be all that high in this particular case). The problems of the very poorest among potential migrants is well illustrated by experience of seasonal migration from Mexico to the USA. Here the difference in earning potential is unusually large (Rempel 1981), but so too are the transaction costs of migration, since most of it is illegal. These transaction costs are sufficiently high to

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SEASONAL LABOUR MIGRATION

exclude the poorest Mexicans from this form of labour circulation (Roberts, 1985). The existence of clearly delimited dry and wet zones in a country like Sri Lanka (especially when reinforced by differences caused by irrigation) makes for important differences in seasonality of production, and hence employment opportunity, within a relatively small geographical area. Where such clear divisions do not exist, however, the diversity needed to create the necessary complementarity in production conditions must be sought over a much wider area. Communications then become a vital factor in determining whether or not migration is profitable. As communications improve (through, for example, the provision of new infra-structure which reduces transaction costs, through improved information flows, improved security and better transmission of market information) migration is likely to increase, other things remaining equal. Swindell reported that in Nigeria the extension of the railway from Port Harcourt to Sokoto caused an increase in both the volume of migration and the distances travelled by migrants (1985, p. 133); Hugo makes a similar observation on the effect of the 'minibus revolution' in Java (1985, pp. 62—5). The gradual improvement in transportation links and other communications across West Africa over the first half of this century is reflected in Figure 6.2, which shows that labour circulation has been growing in terms of both distance covered and volume. It was earlier argued that one of the reasons the very poor migrate less successfully than others is their lack of connections which could guarantee them employment in the receiving areas, so that job-search is relatively expensive and risky. Paradoxically, those who wish to employ labour migrants are often similarly placed, as regards risks and expense. Not knowing where a labour surplus might exist, they cannot tap the cheapest source or obtain an assured labour supply. Moreover, as in the case of employers in Sri Lanka's dry zone, they are often understandably unwilling to trust any itinerant strangers who may present themselves for employment without the credentials of a known and accepted guarantor. Nature of course abhors a vacuum, and into the vacuum created by the simultaneous existence of seasonally surplus, and therefore cheap, labour in one area and heavy labour demand in another has come an important facilitator: the labour contractor. This entrepreneur makes the vital connection between the would-be employer and the would-be employee, at once providing a guaranteed labour supply for the employer and taking the risk and uncertainty out of the migration process for the poorest labourers. Market failure,

CIRCULATION BETWEEN SEASONAL OCCUPATIONS

147

Birni

Silame f' Argungu ^s

-NYelwa Auna Zungeru

i .4

Daily paid labour Farming, fishing Trading and herding Frequency of movements

0

Number of migrants

Medium High 100 km

French territories

'SOKOTO I'Zamfara^ • Kano Elsewhere .jn region 1 Jos

Takoradi,.;.; 0 ' 100' 200 300 km' • \

Figure 6.2. Changes in dry season migration patterns from Sokoto Province, Nigeria. (a) Early twentieth century; {b) mid twentieth century. (Source: Swindell 1985, Figures 5.2 and 5.3.)

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SEASONAL LABOUR MIGRATION

however (see Chapter 7), often ensures that the contractor can gain monopoly, or near-monopoly, profits from the transaction, so that the poor seasonal migrant may reap little of the benefits of spatial differences in labour demand and wage rates. Spindel (1985) illustrates this with his description of the working conditions of one particular group of seasonal migrants, the boia fria (a pejorative term meaning literally ' cold lunch') of Brazil. The boia fria are labourers who have migrated to towns and cities permanently with their families (often after eviction from sharecropped holdings). These unfortunates then hire themselves out to labour contractors who truck them to a succession of farms in the surrounding areas, whenever there is demand for labour during the various peak seasons. Thus, although they are urban residents, these labourers effectively migrate between a succession of seasonal (in this case agricultural) industries. The conditions under which the boia fria live and work, their nutritional status and that of their families, as described by Spindel, are among the worst to be found in the literature on economic deprivation anywhere in the Third World. Indeed the conditions under which they are, quite legally, trucked to and from work are actually regarded under Brazilian law as being too dangerous and inhumane for the shipment of livestock (ibid, pp. 328—33)! In circumstances like these, labour circulation is a survival strategy par excellence: it represents the outcome of the bleak choice between starvation and mere survival. • Social consequences Earlier references to the social costs of seasonal migration need amplification and supplementation. In particular it should be noted that most, but not all, of the social consequences are negative. Migration can have significant social consequences in both source and receiving areas. In the source areas the social burden is borne principally by those who are left behind, mainly old people, women and/or children. The burdens will be felt by children especially if it is their mothers who migrate, for then the ill-effects of a reduction in nutrition and nurturing earlier described in the case of nursing mothers having to work in the fields (Chapter 3) will be multiplied many times over. Seasonal migration and other forms of labour circulation by women is more common than is generally realized. In fact' in numerous countries women make up the majority of short-term and longer-term migrants' (Standing 1985a, p. 22).6 A more common pattern still, however, is that both women and

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES 149 children are left at home while the men migrate. Some incline to the view that, provided the men return for the periods of heavy labour such as ploughing and harvesting, this does not increase women's workloads - a s in the studies reviewed by Rempel (1981). This seems perfectly reasonable, especially in those parts of the world where many farming operations have traditionally been the responsibility of women. However, where the men do not return for operations that were traditionally a male responsibility, or where they do not return strictly on time, the social consequences are twofold. Not only is there an increase in women's workloads, but there is also a tendency for the gender distribution of labour to change, with women increasingly taking over tasks that were traditionally male (Buvinic et al. 1978, Mullane 1981, Colfer 1985, Lake 1985). This last area is one in which the social consequences of seasonal male migration on the position of women can become positive. True, a shift in the gender division of labour can work to the disadvantage of women, particularly (as is often likely to be true in this case) where it means that women have to assume even greater responsibility for food production, while cash earnings are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the men. Against this, however, must be set the greater role in decision-making which women acquire as a result of the men's absence. Colfer, after discussing the increase in Bornean women's agricultural responsibilities following the departure of their husbands, interprets this as having helped reinforce the traditionally high status of women which stems from their competence as farmers. She concludes: ' The portrayal of women's fate in the presence of considerable circular migration has been one-sidedly gloomy, at least in this instance — Development literature focuses on the hardships women undergo and thereby encourages a climate of opinion that de-emphasises women's competence' (1985, pp. 248-9). Stichter implicitly agrees, citing a number of instances from African history in which agricultural productivity actually increased as a result of women taking over farm management following male out-migration (1985, pp. 44 and 66-7). The effect of labour circulation on birth rates is another area in which there is some room for disagreement. Intuition suggests that the absence of men from the village would have a negative effect. Colfer reports this to have been the case in her study area in Borneo, where village women noted this fertility-regulating effect, 'always with appreciation' (ibid, p. 235). However, this is in a part of the world in which circulation typically lasts for longer than a season. Where the men return periodically — especially, as is so often the case, where they do so for the harvest — and where there is only one crop a year, the

I JO

SEASONAL LABOUR MIGRATION

almost inevitable result is an annual peak in conceptions which will produce a corresponding peak in births during the next (pre-harvest) hungry season. A number of other social (or socio-economic) effects of seasonal migration in the source areas have been mentioned by several writers, although it is not always very clear how widespread these might be. One consequence that is widespread is the part that migration plays in the proletarianization of the agricultural labour force. Another effect, found by Laite in the Andean region of Peru, was that labour migration has contributed to 'land turnover and alienation' and to 'the crystallisation of social classes' (1985, pp 108 and 116 respectively). On a slightly more positive note, Rempel concluded from his literature review that, although a number of studies have indicated that this form of labour circulation may act as a substitute for agricultural development in the source areas (in others it may even be detrimental to existing agriculture), against this several studies show that returning migrants sometimes bring back new ideas which improve local agriculture (1981, p. 213). The social effects of migration on the receiving areas have attracted some attention also (e.g. Clay 1976, Standing 1985 a), although much less than for the source areas. These latter studies have turned up at least one very disturbing, and apparently widespread, trend, namely the willingness of landlords and large farmers to substitute seasonal migrants for local labourers in order to permit the dissolution of traditional (and often counter-seasonal) patron—client linkages. Standing, in a review paper, observed that the availability of migrant labour often permits such individuals ' to dispense with reciprocal obligations impeding their efforts — or deterring them from making efforts — to transform pre-capitalist productive relations, obligations such as loans to tide over the slack season or the implicit guarantee of employment throughout the year' (1985a, p. 10). This last finding has very serious negative consequences for the rural disadvantaged in general and landless agricultural labourers in particular. It implies that, not only are such people less likely than their slightly better-off neighbours to benefit from seasonal migration: they are actually likely to suffer from it, for the poorest families tend to be more than usually dependent on the cultivation of patron-client linkages and other pre-capitalist production relationships as a survival strategy. The expansion of seasonal migration as a counter-seasonal strategy, therefore, far from benefiting the ultra-poor, may actually have made them worse off in both relative and absolute terms.

Special problems of developing countries: I. Market failure and market distortions

T H E R E ARE BASICALLY TWO WAYS in which macro-environmental diversity in agricultural production conditions can be exploited to counter the seasonality problem. One which has already been examined is for workers and the owners of other mobile resources to move them for sale or barter in response to seasonally changing economic opportunity, as happens in seasonal labour migration and nomadic pastoralism. The second, which is complementary to the first, is for owners of agricultural produce to move it around between areas that differ with respect to the timing of seasonal surpluses and deficits. Where such diversity exists, or where it can be created through technological change, the extent to which its counter-seasonal potential can be mobilized depends upon economic integration. It does not necessarily depend upon whether such integration is achieved through central planning or market orientation. The present chapter confines itself to the latter end of the spectrum because few developing economies are centrally planned, while even fewer seem content with the system. Two observations about the market economy should be made from the outset. First, the use of money, although helpful, is not essential to its development. Much of the seasonal migration/marketing of labour described in the previous chapter is, or was, barter-based: even labour is often in effect bartered, when it is exchanged for a share of the harvest. Although pure barter trade is generally less efficient than trade based on a single and widely acceptable unit of value, the principles as applied to the present discussion are similar. However, only the moneybased concept of price will be used here, since otherwise the discussion

15 !

I 5 2.

MARKET FAILURE AND MARKET DISTORTIONS

becomes unnecessarily verbose. And in any case the importance of money grows with increasing market orientation.1 The second point is that the help of market intermediaries (i.e. merchants, traders, bankers and other middlemen) is no more essential to market development than the invention of money. Returning again to the labour circulation example, many of the flows discussed in the previous chapter grew from personal contact between the labourer and the employer without the intervention of a middleman. However, as the labour migration case also shows, market intermediaries (in this case labour contractors) do, nevertheless, often find a role to play. As buying and selling expand at the expense of subsistence production and barter, as the economy becomes more integrated and complex, as trade links begin to cover ever-increasing distances, the specialist role of the market intermediary will tend to expand in step. Again for the sake of simplicity, the following discussion assumes that goods and services move around at the macro-environmental level as a result of arbitrage (buying cheap, selling dear) by specialist intermediaries, rather than by, say, farmers selling directly to consumers in far-off places. In principle, market forces will counter seasonality through the operation of the price mechanism. The theory is straightforward and seductive. Relatively low prices in one area encourage profit-hungry intermediaries to develop new markets. Similarly, high prices in other areas stimulate the search for low-cost sources of supply. Where interregional price differences exist in practice, and where these are greater than the transaction- and other costs of moving produce, the search for new markets and sources of supply will sooner or later result in the establishment of trade links and a consequent flow of goods from surplus to deficit areas. Increased demand in the former then allows farmers to obtain higher prices for their produce, while increased supply to the latter causes a fall in the prices paid by consumers. The first intermediary to establish the link between such areas may reap monopoly profits initially, but in the longer-term high profits encourage other traders to enter the market. Competition between them will then further reduce inter-regional price differences. Even short-term monopoly profits have an important role to play in this process, for they provide a reward for initiative and risk-taking, an incentive that maintains momentum in the continuing search for new markets and new market opportunities. This type of process can reduce not only inter-regional price differences: where an area which suffers from alternating seasons of surplus and deficit is connected through marketing channels with another area that complements it with respect

INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS

I5 3

to seasonality of surpluses and deficits, inter-seasonal price movements will also be dampened, in both areas. A parallel argument applies to the flow of resources and services. For example, if ample cash is available in one farming area after the harvest, an efficiently functioning credit market would use interest payments to attract deposits in these areas, transfer the funds to areas where there is demand for short-term (seasonal) production or consumption loans, and lend the money out there at higher rates of interest. Again competition for depositors in the supply areas and competition for borrowers in the deficit areas would minimize the difference between interest rates paid by borrowers and those paid to depositors. While few would claim that such theoretical advantages are fully realized in any economy, it should be obvious that the degree to which they are realized in practice will depend on the level of economic integration and market development. Transportation development is obviously a vital element of this, for good communications lower transaction costs and encourage competition. Both competition and the opening up of new markets are encouraged by the growth of fast, accessible, reliable and extensive information channels. The reduction of institutional and 'ad hoc' barriers to market entry and the unhampered movement of resources and produce are other essential components of market development. Where the opposite conditions prevail, where communications are poor, where trade barriers are significant and competition is lacking - i.e. where there is market failure — the theoretical benefits just outlined will fail to materialize in practice. That conditions of market failure prevail to a greater or lesser extent in most rural markets of developing countries is generally agreed, and this has a profound effect on the seasonality problem. + Institutional factors If a society is strongly feudalistic or hierarchical, as rural societies in developing countries tend so often to be, the forces of conservatism will be correspondingly strong and the penetration of new ideas equally difficult. Communities tend to be small and closely-knit, with only a few families or individuals in their upper echelons having sufficient knowledge, prestige or contacts with the outside world to play an entrepreneurial role. Whether they choose to play such a role or not, they are certainly in a strong position both to keep in check any potential entrepreneurial talents among the lower strata of their own communities, and to limit, perhaps even preclude, the intrusion of potential

IJ4 MARKET FAILURE AND MARKET DISTORTIONS competitors from outside. In its crudest form - one which is not uncommon in developing countries, yet often left out of consideration by proponents of the market economy in such a setting — market failure takes the form of a simple denial of the freedom of economic choice. If, for example, farmers are unable to resist pressures to buy from and sell through specific marketing channels, then one of the most fundamental conditions for a market-led economy is violated. Such pressures may range from simple brute force to the rather more subtle, but no less effective, economic leverage which results from the interlinked nature of many Third World rural markets. If, as is so often the case in developing countries, the small farmer's trader and supplier also happens to be (or be closely in league with) his or her landlord, moneylender or slack season employer, the former's freedom of choice with respect to crop disposal and other market transactions are likely to be severely circumscribed. In their efforts to limit competition, local elite groups are strongly assisted by the very factors which characterize economic underdevelopment. Many rural areas in the Third World have only recently begun to enter the market economy, so that existing norms and relationships are often more appropriate to a subsistence economy. Conversely, the attitudes and relations appropriate to a fully marketbased economy have not yet developed to a very marked degree. Even were such factors entirely favourable to the development of the entrepreneurial spirit, widespread poverty would severely limit the number of people with sufficient capital to purchase, store and transport a stock of goods and at the same time accept the risk of failure without this spelling disaster. In addition, poorly developed information systems together with widespread illiteracy inhibit the free interchange of information and ideas, while an inadequate transportation network hinders the flow of goods, services and information. In such a situation it is hardly surprising that governments have often tended to adopt an interventionist approach. Even without such a stance, the marginal impact of government investment — even investment in, say, education, road construction, or agricultural research — would tend to be high, and would have important implications for the development of the market economy. Many Third World governments have, however, gone much further than this, and, on the implicit or explicit assumption that such intervention can correct market failure, have deployed a wide range of' corrective' controls and instruments. Price support and intervention buying, subsidized credit, minimum wage legislation, rationing systems and price controls have

COMMUNICATION BARRIERS

I5 5

all been widely employed — and not only in countries with leftist governments. Whether such intervention actually improves the lot of the poor and the powerless is often open to considerable doubt. Small farmers may feel unable to approach 'the authorities' for institutional support. Even if geographical distance is not a problem, other barriers may effectively preclude them from the formal sector: they may be unable to meet minimum quantity requirements, illiteracy may prevent their completing the required formalities or from becoming aware of their rights, or they may simply be overawed, for whatever reason, by officialdom. In these circumstances traders, often in league with underpaid local officials, can act as a conduit between the two sectors and in the process earn a level of profit that free and open competition would never permit.2 Price controls in particular severely distort market signals, creating a black market in which the price is generally higher than the precontrol price (reflecting an increase in trader's risks and costs and a drop in competition). This may also necessitate imports or loss-making production on state farms and imposes often severe budget and/or balance of payment strains. Even when such intervention is undertaken from the purest of motives, far from benefiting the rural disadvantaged, it is likely to work to their detriment. Since they are the ones who have insufficient food to see them through the hungry season, they will be the ones to suffer most from increased hungry-season prices on the black market. Subsidized food, credit, inputs and other goodies, on the other hand, have an invidious habit of finding their way into the possession of the more influential members of society - particularly, of course, individuals and groups capable of bringing down governments. + Communication barriers The problems of market failure and the difficulties in the way of making government interventions operate as intended are compounded by the poor state of communications within developing economies. Both poorly developed transportation links and difficulties in the way of transmitting and receiving information are communications problems, and the two are linked. Where literacy levels are low, information is transmitted mainly by word of mouth — not, of course, by telephone, but by people travelling from place to place. This means that, especially where transportation is poor, as in the remote areas of developing countries, information travels only slowly, reaches relatively few people and is always in danger of getting distorted and out of date. A

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poor transportation network also makes it difficult and expensive to move goods between markets, while poorly developed market intelligence systems hamper the growth of competition among traders, thus further contributing to market failure. These two factors together help perpetuate low post-harvest farm gate prices for agricultural produce, high food prices in the hungry season, and high prices for inputs in the planting season. Even where communications are least developed, the problems presented are rarely insuperable. However, the poorer the communications infrastructure the more barriers to market entry will tend to remain, thus ensuring that the few traders who can bridge the gap between different regions and between the modern and traditional sectors of the economy will be able to reap the benefits of monopoly or near-monopoly. Of the physical problems of communication, transportation difficulties are undoubtedly the most expensive to overcome, and, as will be argued below, they are a prime determinant of the location of agricultural activities in developing countries today. TRANSPORTATION COSTS AND AGRICULTURAL LOCATION

The best-known theory of agricultural location was developed by Johann Heinrich von Thiinen, who lived in eastern Germany in the 1820s. The level of transportation development there at that time was not so very different from that found in much of the developing world today.3 Von Thiinen's model, as a first approximation, postulated an ' isolated state' in which a central city was situated on a plain of uniform fertility, surrounded by concentric rings of agricultural production. Perishables that would spoil during lengthy transport were produced in the innermost ring. The next ring supported the production of timber, which had to be located close to the market because of its high transportation costs. Similarly the type of agriculture practised in successive rings was determined by the relative cost of transport, the outermost ring being given over to ranching, whose transportation costs are unusually low. Beyond this last ring (the 'margin of cultivation') farm-to-market transport costs made production for the market uneconomic. Having established his basic model, von Thiinen began a successive relaxation of its simplifying assumptions. A river running through the area provided much cheaper transport than the horse-and-cart, so that the production zones bulged out into parallel bands for some distance along its bank. Differences in soil fertility caused other bulges, with fertile areas having zones that were unusually

COMMUNICATION BARRIERS 157 wide and extending relatively far from the city. Secondary cities would create their own production zones, and so forth. The crucial point about this model, as far as the present discussion is concerned, is that agricultural location is determined far less by agro-ecological suitability than by farm-to-market transport costs. In the developed world, the growth of fast and relatively cheap transportation links has greatly reduced transaction costs. It is widely agreed that this, together with such innovations as refrigerated transport, has robbed the von Thiinen model of much of its relevance in the developed world today. Modern transportation has made it possible for enormous areas of the globe, highly complementary with respect to seasonality of production conditions, to be linked together through trade, and for their full production potential thus to be realized. This in turn has been largely responsible for freeing the markets of the developed world from seasonality in the availability of agricultural produce of all types. In the developing countries, on the other hand, there may be a number of major road and rail routes leading from the hinterland to the capital or the main ports, and onwards to the international economy. But there are few ' feeder' roads and rail lines linking into the main arterial routes and few, if any, roads or railways that run across them. Thus there are great tracts of territory over which transportation is limited to traditional wind- or musclepowered technologies. In these areas, because transportation is slow, uncertain and expensive, agricultural production patterns tend to be dominated by subsistence needs, or, where production is for the market, distance and transportation costs may be the main factors determining location, as in the von Thiinen model. Griffin (1973) has identified a number of developing country areas in South America which ' possess the general conditions described by von Thiinen'. Among these he includes the sections of the Argentine pampa around Buenos Aires and Rosario, the part of the Brazilian highlands that surround Brasilia, and the hinterland of Montevideo, capital of Uruguay. Turning to a detailed examination of the last of these, he proceeded to develop and test the hypothesis that a modified version of von Thiinen's model could explain the pattern of land use in Uruguay. Griffin's main modifications were to adjust for regional differences in soil fertility and transportation availability and to regard Montevideo, as the 'central market', despite its location on the coast. He justified this last adjustment on the grounds that Montevideo is the country's largest city, its only sea port of any size, and its financial and commercial centre. The best roads and railways are to be found in the

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Horticulture and truck farming Dairying Cereals Stock raising 31'

BRAZIL

32°

uenosJ Aires ^^v 35° 58° Figure 7.1. Uruguay: agricultural land-use classification, (a) Von Thiinen model; (b) actual land-use classes. (Source: Griffin 1973, Figure 5.)

hinterland of the capital, and all of Uruguay's arterial roads and railways lead to it. The country is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the south and east, by some of the least developed and most isolated parts of Brazil to the north and northeast, and by the then-unbridged Uruguay River (which forms the border with some of the most remote and underdeveloped parts of Argentina) to the west. Hence ' overall Uruguay qualifies as an economically isolated state' (ibid, p. 503). The

[

COMMUNICATION BARRIERS

59

Limit of """— intensity class 0

\ Mode \ la Plata luenos Aires 35° 58

20

40

54°

60 mile

OCEAN 35°

two maps comprising Figure 7.1 show respectively the agricultural land use 'rings' predicted by the modified version of von Thunen's model and the actual land use classes. Given all of the other variables that affect agricultural location, and which could not be included in the model, the correspondence between the two is quite remarkably close. For purposes of the present discussion it should particularly be noted that land use patterns that have developed primarily in response to the cost of transport between production areas and urban markets are most unlikely to permit advantage to be taken of seasonal complementarities in production possibilities between different rural areas.

l6o

MARKET FAILURE AND MARKET DISTORTIONS

SEASONALITY IN AVAILABILITY AND COST OF TRANSPORT

Distance is only one factor. A further seasonality problem emerges when the quality of transportation links in developing countries is considered. Many traditional routes are open only seasonally. In some circumstances transportation in the rainy season may be easier than at other times of year, as in the case of rivers which are deep enough to be navigable only during the rains. For the most part, however, it is the rainy season which is the most difficult one for transport. Dirt roads and tracks often become impassable, especially to wheeled traffic, as they become deeply mired and waterlogged. A traditional head-loading or pack animal route may be very difficult to use, or even unusable, in the rainy season because rivers cannot be forded or landslides block the trails. Even modern road and rail links in developing countries can be seasonal. These are generally designated ' all-weather', but to live up to this description in practice requires a standard of construction and maintenance that is difficult and expensive to achieve, and cannot therefore readily be sustained in poor countries. In addition, the extremely heavy rainstorms that typify the tropical rainy season place severe burdens on roads and railways. They can wash out their foundations, or cause landslides which destroy or bury them. (This last problem is one which is particularly acute in mountainous or hilly regions which have suffered from soil erosion.) Heavy floods can wash out bridges and ferry stages. Thus it is that the hungry season is also the season of most difficult transportation in many Third World areas, when the combination of high transportation costs and market failure inhibit the movement of supplies and thus make the situation worse than it would otherwise have been. The converse of this situation is that the seasonally more favoured parts of the country — parts which by virtue of differences in latitude, continentality, altitude, rainfall distribution, and so forth can produce a marketable crop at this time of year — are deprived of a potential market. It is an ironic fact of nature that while mountainous areas present the greatest potential for seasonal complementarities in agricultural production, they also present the most difficult transport problems. Differences in altitude, the 'rain shadow' effect, variations in relief, aspect, topography and so forth, all make for great heterogeneity in seasonal production potential. Yet transportation difficulties between mountainous areas, or between the mountains and the plains or the coast, are often immense. Road and rail construction is exceptionally

SEASONAL PRICE FLUCTUATIONS

l6l

expensive, as it requires numerous cuttings, bridges and tunnels, and long, winding routes to avoid excessive gradients (which in turn necessitates yet more bridges and tunnels). Rockfalls and landslides make maintenance unusually expensive. Rivers are usually unnavigable because they are fast-flowing, turbulent and rocky, and often have waterfalls. Air transport, even when not ruled out on grounds of cost, is unusually hazardous, as thin mountain air and unpredictable air currents make flying difficult and dangerous. This is especially so during the rainy season, because of storms, increased turbulence and often poor visibility. At the other end of the scale, even transportation by porter and pack animal in mountainous regions is arduous, tortuous, and correspondingly expensive - again most especially in the rainy season. • Seasonal price fluctuations The twin problems of high pre-harvest food prices for the consumer and low post-harvest commodity prices for the farmer have been mentioned several times in the present discussion. The typical pattern is for price to drop steeply after the harvest and then only gradually to recover. The magnitude of the post-harvest slump, and the rate and smoothness of the subsequent recovery are influenced by many factors, including the type of produce (perishable, semi-perishable, nonperishable), length of growing period in relation to growing season, any seasonality there might be in demand, and the availability of acceptable substitutes. In a fully functioning market economy competition between traders would ensure that inter-seasonal price spread would reflect only seasonal variation in the costs and risks of production and transportation, the costs and risks of storage and those of geographical arbitrage. Conversely, if inter-seasonal price spreads significantly exceed these costs and risks, this is an important indicator of market failure. Figure 7.2 illustrates the difference between developed and developing countries in this respect, showing two sets of wheat prices averaged out over a number of years.4 In a developed market economy like the USA, such commodity prices change only slowly over the year and the spread between the annual minimum and maximum levels is only a few percentage points (seven per cent in this case). Compare this with the pattern for the same crop in a developing country, Nepal. Here, the wheat harvest, which takes place in March and April, is followed by a quite precipitous fall in prices: an average 18 percentage points in a

162

M A R K E T F A I L U R E AND M A R K E T

DISTORTIONS

110-

105 •Jan FebMar AprMayJun Jul Aug Sep OctNovDec

85 J Figure 7.2. Seasonal fluctuation in retail wheat prices in two countries (de-trended data). = Nepal; —— • • • • • = USA. (Sources: calculated and drawn from data in HMG/N (1985 and 1988) and adapted from Kohls and Downey 1972, Figure 10-7.)

single month. The build-up in prices towards the next harvest then varies about a steeply rising trend. Not all of the variation about this trend can readily be explained (there is considerable year-to-year and inter-district variation), but one peak that occurs every year is the one in October—November. This is the wheat sowing season in Nepal, and this produces a surge in demand for grain at a time of year when supply is in the process of drying up. Large seasonal fluctuations in the prices even of non-perishables like wheat, are very common in developing countries. Thus, for example, Chaudhury has shown a sixteen point inter-seasonal spread in the prices of coarse rice in Bangladesh (1981, Figure 3.6). Moreover, the national averages conceal even greater fluctuation in the rural areas, for urban prices, especially of staples, tend to be kept relatively stable. Returning to the case of Nepal, Shivakoti and Pokharel (1989) found that in one rural area of that country (not at all a remote one), the price spread for wheat across the year was not the 18 per cent national average shown in Figure 7.2, but 30 per cent. The equivalent figures for paddy and maize were higher still: 38 and 43 per cent respectively (ibid, Table 10). The reasons for this type of pattern are well-known. Small farmers, pressed by urgent cash needs, are obliged to sell off their produce

THE CREDIT MARKET

163

immediately after the harvest, when the sudden increase in supply, together with lack of competition in local markets and poor communications with markets at secondary and tertiary levels, helps to drive prices relentlessly downwards. A similar set of forces combine to produce high seed prices in the sowing season and high food prices in the pre-harvest season. An efficient rural credit market could play a crucial role in reducing the amplitude of this seasonal price cycle. In particular, the shortage of capital which precludes on-farm storage could be eased by such a system. Unfortunately, this is in many countries a prime example of an area in which both market failure and largely unsuccessful policy intervention have combined to prevent the realization of existing potential.

•

The credit market

Half a century ago, after serving on numerous government commissions investigating the problems of small farmers, the distinguished Indian lawyer, Sir M. Azizul Huque, wrote of the major cash crop of his native Bengal: Jute, being the only money-crop of importance in the jute-growing districts, every one regards its harvest time as the season for collections. The landlord, the mahajan, the credit banks, the local authorities, in short, creditors of all degrees and ranks - all at the same time put pressure on the grower for the collection of their dues; the grower is thus confronted all at once by his creditors and in the absence of adequate and regular credit facilities, he is compelled to meet his liabilities by bringing all his jute at one time to the market. 'Buy jute in Puja time' is now a tradition with the trade. . . . The mills have invariably a large surplus stock purchased from previous years' crop and the trade is, thus, in a position to bargain on its own terms (Huque 1939, pp. 63-4). This passage, give or take only a few details, could, with equal justification, be written again today of many crops in many developing areas. It contains three points of crucial relevance to the present discussion. The first is the concentration of repayment demands in the immediate post-harvest period when prices are at their annual low. The second is that the example given is a non-perishable commodity that can be stored for several years: even so, the grower has to forego the option of storing it even for a season, until the price rises. A combination of a cash squeeze and the large buffer stocks held by the

164

MARKET FAILURE AND MARKET DISTORTIONS

mills enables the buyers to maintain a much larger differential than is justified by the cost and risk of storage alone. Finally, the problem hinges on ' the absence of adequate and regular credit facilities'. The two adjectives are important. Obviously the jute growers had some access to credit (otherwise they would not be indebted), but not for the immediate post-harvest period. In this sense credit availability was not regular. Presumably the supply of credit from the ' credit banks' was insufficient to meet the demand, or the growers would not have had recourse to moneylenders. These entrepreneurs, even today in parts of what was then Bengal, typically charge interest at ten per cent per month. At such rates, even if post-harvest credit were available it is doubtful if the inter-seasonal price spread would have been sufficient to justify the cost of using it. Loans from moneylenders are taken only as a measure of desperation. In a properly functioning credit market such high interest rates would attract an increase in the supply of credit, thus causing interest rates to fall. In this sense credit availability, even from the informal sector, was not adequate. If these problems obtain in the case of a non-perishable commodity like jute, they obviously apply with even greater force to semi-perishables and perishables. Nor are they limited to cash crops. When loans are repayable in kind, interest can be levied in kind also. The credit market in developing countries is typically dualistic, with a modern formal credit sector coexisting with a traditional non-formal one. The latter is characterized by much high interest rates and harsher default penalties than the former. Both segments of the market are distorted, but for very different reasons. DISTORTIONS IN THE NON-FORMAL SECTOR

To operate as a successful moneylender requires a great deal of local knowledge through which to assess who is, and who is not, creditworthy. ' Credit-worthiness' in this context may mean the possession of adequate physical collateral, but it may also be judged by much less tangible criteria. An individual may be credit-worthy simply because he or she has a reputation for uprightness, honesty and diligence; or perhaps because of an expected inheritance or some other hope of future gain; or because in the event of default he or she will be available for bonded labour. How many banks could accept collateral of this sort? Even an outside moneylender would not have the necessary knowledge to make an informed judgement. The moneylender also occupies a special place in many traditional

THE CREDIT MARKET

165

societies, one which is usually an effective barrier to market entry. On the one hand, moneylending may be socially restricted to a particular caste, or the moneylender may be a locally influential person whose displeasure few would wish to incur by setting up in competition. (Even if there were competition, the inter-linked nature of many rural markets might well deter a potential borrower from seeking loans elsewhere.) At the other extreme the profession of moneylending is anathema in many societies, a fact which will also tend to keep the level of competition low. This is most obviously true of Islamic societies, where usury is regarded as a grievous sin, but in other societies too the moneylender is often something of a social outcast. DISTORTIONS IN THE FORMAL SECTOR

The formal rural credit market in developing countries is distorted, largely because it is subsidized. 5 Nominal interest rates are low, typically in the ten to fifteen per cent per annum range. Real rates are lower still, sometimes even negative, since most developing countries suffer from inflation rates of at least this magnitude. Moreover, in many cases provisions for seizure of collateral in the event of default are not rigorously enforced, and the level of bad debt is correspondingly high. The following conclusions, reached after a wide-ranging investigation of the rural financial markets of Jamaica, will not surprise those familiar with similar markets elsewhere in the developing world (except, perhaps, for the refreshing candour with which they are stated). Rural financial markets in Jamaica are not functioning effectively. This is evidenced by the meager rate of participation by farmers in the formal segment of the market. Despite the large array of formal institutions and alleged small farmer programmes operating in the market, very few farmers have loans and that credit which was extended appears to have been rationed by non-market means. These circumstances indicate the ineffectiveness of the supply leading credit policy adopted by the government for the Jamaican agricultural sector. One reason for the ' rationing' of borrowers is the imposition of a low and rigid interest rate ceiling in the face of mounting inflationary pressures, a common feature of financial markets in many low income countries. (Hence) lenders are unable to account for differing levels of risks and costs inherent in lending to different groups of borrowers. Similarly, they are unable to make interest rate adjustments to cover varying per unit costs of administering different size loans. The result of these limitations is the emergence of implicit or hidden charges on loans and lending criteria which leads to the rationing of some borrowers out of the market (Heffernan and Pollard 1983, pp 36-7).

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MARKET FAILURE AND MARKET DISTORTIONS

Naturally it will be the larger and more influential farmers who are able to benefit from credit rationing by 'non-market means', while those who are ' rationed out of the market' are left with recourse only to the non-formal sector. Such is the common experience of developing countries. The small farmer does not receive credit at the nominal interest rate simply because at such a rate the demand for credit so far outstrips supply that available funds are, in effect, siphoned off into a black market via such mechanisms as 'implicit or hidden charges on loans'. As far as the small farmer is concerned, the effect of these, together with bureaucratic delays that are inseparable from any institutionalized lending programme, is to drive the true cost of formal credit upwards towards the levels charged by moneylenders. This last point is well illustrated by the experience of Bolivia, as reported by Ladman (1984). The Bolivian Agricultural Bank (BAB) operated a lending programme in the Upper Valley of the Cochabamba in the late 1970s. A parallel non-formal scheme was operated by local moneylenders. The average size of loan was US$3695 and US$480 respectively - from which fact it would seem that once again it is the larger farmers who receive institutional loans and the smaller ones who have to rely on the non-formal sector. (In fact small farmers were effectively excluded by a high minimum loan threshold.) The nominal rates of interest were 13 and 48 per cent in the formal and non-formal sectors respectively. However, in the case of transaction costs - in this case the sum of various fees and the value of time lost by farmers attending to formalities — the relative positions were reversed. Transaction costs on a BAB loan totalled US$135.95 (3.7 per cent of the average loan), while those on a moneylender loan averaged US$4.35 (0.9 per cent). Moreover, these costs do not vary significantly with size of loan, so that while formal sector transaction costs would have added only 3.7 per cent to a loan of US$3695, they would add 28.3 per cent to one of US$480, bringing the total cost of such a loan to within a few percentage points of the total cost of a moneylender loan. In this case we have no information as to any hidden charges on formal sector loans. CREDIT AND SEASONAL CASH FLOWS

In order properly to analyze the role that credit can play in assisting to reduce seasonality, it would be necessary to have cash flow data from farm or labourer households over a period of at least one year. Such

THE CREDIT MARKET

167

data are seldom available, but an exception is provided by the farm household results of a detailed credit survey conducted in northeast Thailand (Meyer and Alicbusan 1984). The study produced monthly cash flow statements for 'borrower' and 'nonborrower' households respectively. A ' nonborrower' household was, for the purposes of this analysis, denned as one which borrowed less than 5 00 baht (approximately US$25) in the year in question. Farms in both groups were of less than eight acres (3.2 hectares), which is fairly small by Thai standards. Non-farm cash receipts were important income elements in both cases, deriving mainly from harvest work on neighbouring large farms. The borrower households used non-formal sources of credit, and the data for this group show ' the classic cash-flow pattern expected in typical agricultural credit projects' (ibid, p. 30). Borrowing was heavy in the planting seasons of October and December, when 60 per cent of operating expenses are incurred. Income generation was similarly concentrated, with 75 per cent of annual cash receipts being obtained in January and February, following the sale of the rice and kenaf crops. The differences between the 'borrower' and 'nonborrower' households are instructive: Total net cash farm income was higher and more evenly spread throughout the year for nonborrowers. Nonborrowers had a more complex combination of enterprises, including cassava and sugarcane, that generated income more frequently during the year. Nonborrowers also earned more nonfarm income. Surprisingly, in spite of their higher income, nonborrowers had lower total family living expenses than borrowers, and these expenses were somewhat less concentrated in the postharvest months. These households made payments on loans received in previous years during months other than postharvest (ibid, p. 31). Some very clear points emerge from Meyer and Alicbusan's analysis. The most basic conclusion is that the group that had to rely on credit (non-formal credit yet again) was the one with: (a) lower average income and (b) relatively high seasonal income fluctuation. The ' nonborrower' group followed a number of counter-seasonal strategies which were outlined in earlier chapters: they had complementary onfarm enterprises (thus spreading workloads and production peaks) and had more off-farm sources of income to complement income earned on the farm. The point about the lower total family living expenses of the 'nonborrower' group is an interesting one. The 'borrower' group incurred more than fifty per cent of its annual living expenses in the period January to April, which 'is the period when major religious

l68

MARKET FAILURE AND MARKET DISTORTIONS

festivals are held and is also the period just after rice harvest when households have the most cash' (ibid, p. 30). It is possible, therefore, that the 'nonborrower' households adopt a further counter-seasonal strategy, that of simply husbanding their resources more carefully throughout the year. What emerges clearly from this survey is that credit - even non-formal credit - can play a major role in permitting households in the low-mean—high-variance income category to cope with a seasonally varying cash flow. Although the above authors were unable to cite other case studies which had examined farmers' cash flows in similar detail, they did report on two studies in the Philippines which supplied evidence supporting the above conclusions. In one study, monthly cash receipts were found to range from the peso equivalent of US$48 to $176, while monthly expenditure was equivalent to $53 to $211. Even in an area that was relatively favoured with social services, only one-third of the loans came from institutional sources (Hayami 1979). The other study was one of the very few which include the households of agricultural labourers. These households were frequent borrowers of small amounts, entirely from non-formal sources. Loans were mainly repaid during the two weeks of the year in which they received wage goods (rice) in amounts which far exceeded their consumption. One landless household borrowed in a total of eighteen different weeks over six deficit periods of the year which together totalled twenty-six weeks. The deficit at other times was made up from non-farm work and sales of livestock produce (Ledesma 1980). Finally, it must be added that the other side of this particular coin is often forgotten. Not only do low interest rates in the formal sector fail to help poor farmers and labourers with their seasonal cash flow problems, but they also hinder credit mobilization by offering low or negative real rates of interest to would-be savers. If rural financial markets were functioning effectively they could help to smooth out seasonal income fluctuations as outlined earlier. It is sometimes argued that the non-formal credit market is in fact operating efficiently and the apparently high rates of interest it charges no more than reflect the high administrative costs and high risks of small scale rural lending. This argument is apparently bolstered by the manifest failures of the formal credit sector, which if it were delivering credit as promptly and as cheaply as intended, would long since have driven the moneylender out of business. Without becoming embroiled in this particular discussion, one serious disadvantage of the non-formal credit market should be clearly understood. The efficiency of the non-formal credit market,

BARRIERS TO INTERNATIONAL TRADE

169

depending as it does on highly localized knowledge and close borrower-lender contact, must decline rapidly as distance between the two parties increases. On the other hand, since the degree of seasonal complementarity between regions of a country is typically in direct proportion to their remoteness from each other, the formal credit sector has a crucial role to play if complementarities in seasonal cash flows are effectively to be exploited on a national scale. + Barriers to international trade The problems caused by market failure extend from the domestic to the international arena. In combination with the special problems of international trade, they prevent most developing countries from capitalizing to any significant extent on their comparative advantage in terms of complementary production timing and low labour costs. Transportation problems within the developing country can cause delays and increase cost, unless the producing area is either close to a major sea- or airport or has good communications links to one. Even then, distance to the potential importing country can make exporting uneconomic. Obviously there are developing countries which are close to the developed world, and by-and-large it is these countries which engage in whatever seasonal exports there are from the developing to the developed world. Egypt, for example, supplies winter vegetables to West European countries, while Mexico supplies seasonal fruit to the USA. With some high-value crops greater distances can be covered, although air freight must normally be used. Winter cut flowers fall into this category, with Thailand and Colombia supplying large quantities to the West European and US markets respectively. These examples apart, such trade is not as highly developed as it might be, given the potential that exists for seasonal complementarity in production. Moreover, only a small number of developing countries are involved and they are not, generally speaking, among the poorest. Transportation costs are not the only barriers to international trade. One of the market failures within the developing world is a poorlydeveloped system of market intelligence — certainly by international standards. This makes it difficult for the Third World trader to respond quickly and flexibly to favourable market opportunities. Health regulations in the importing countries and bureaucratic procedures in both developed and developing countries can result in delays that will turn fresh produce into unsaleable mush. Consumer resistance to a change in source of supply might require a lengthy and costly period

170

MARKET FAILURE AND MARKET DISTORTIONS

Table 7.1. Coefficient of seasonally and trend in seasonality for grains and fodders in irrigated and non-irrigated areas of Pakistan, 1973-84

Irrigated areas Wheat grain Maize grain Dry fodder Green fodder Rainfed areas

Coefficient of seasonalitya

Time trend in coefficient of seasonalityb

114

-1.73**

13^

-3-35*

142

-4.42**

160

-5.68*

118

— 1.16 n s

133 148

-3.39*

161

— 0.03 ns

c

Wheat grain Maize grain Dry fodder Green fodder

— 0.35 ns

Notes: ** Significant at 1 per cent level of probability, * Significant at 5 per cent level of probability, ns Not significant. " Coefficient of seasonality = the ratio of the grand seasonal index (GSI) for the three peak months divided by the GSI for the three slack months. The GSI is the per cent deviation of the average price (de-trended) for each month from the twelve-month moving average. "Based on linear time-trend regressions on the coefficient of seasonality calculated for each year. c Data available 1973-1981 only. Source: Byerlee and Iqbal (1986) Table 3.

of both advertising and artificially low prices until a reputation for good quality can be established in the market. And even were these barriers overcome, south—north exports might still be precluded by 'anti-dumping' regulations in the potential importing country. Finally, it must be observed that rich-country dealers in agricultural produce are not always content to leave it to Third World farmers to decide what, how much, and when, to produce. In their search for reliable, low-cost, out-of-season supplies, some sectors of the developed world's huge food industry have sought to integrate vertically, expanding from retail and wholesale distribution into production. A study by Feder of the Mexican strawberry industry - or, rather, what he calls 'the US strawberry industry located in Mexico' —reveals the surprising fact that just eight US brokers control practically all of

GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM?

171

Mexico's strawberry-growing industry, 98 to 99 per cent of whose output is exported to the United States. One broker alone in 1974-75 controlled no less than 39 per cent of production of fresh strawberries in Mexico. • Grounds for optimism? If the present chapter has made for gloomy reading, there is still no reason to suppose that the problems are insuperable. Communications can — and are — being improved; ' hinterlands' are being opened up6 and competition increased. Even government intervention can sometimes prove effective in reducing seasonality. Support for this view is contained in a study of price seasonality in Pakistan (Byerlee and Iqbal 1986). This is a country whose economic performance had been well above the Third World average in the years preceding the study, with a national income growth rate of around seven per cent and a per capita GNP equivalent to almost US$400 in the mid-1980s. Pakistan had by then, in official parlance, reached the transitional phase between a 'low income' and a 'middle income' country. The study in question is unusual in economics in that, not only did it focus specifically on seasonality as an issue in development, but it also looked at trends in seasonality over time. Price trends of four agricultural commodities, wheat grain, maize grain, dry fodder and green fodder, were examined in both irrigated and rainfed areas of the country. While seasonal price fluctuations were fairly pronounced, it was found that maize and wheat prices move in opposite directions. This is because the former is a summer, and the latter a winter, crop. The ability and willingness of consumers (for example, the poultry feed industry) to switch between these grains is probably at least partly responsible for the fact that seasonality in these two series was found to be relatively low. Second, seasonality of wheat prices was found to be substantially lower than that of maize, because the former 'is reduced by the government policy of maintaining a fixed procurement price throughout the year, which discourages private stock holdings of wheat' (ibid, p. 15). The share of wheat which was marketed under the procurement system was, moreover, found to be increasing. For each of the four commodities the authors calculated a coefficient of seasonality and a time trend of that coefficient for both irrigated and rainfed areas. The results are presented in Table 7.1. Note that for all four commodities in the irrigated areas, and for one commodity in the rainfed areas, there has been a statistically significant decline in

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MARKET FAILURE AND MARKET DISTORTIONS

seasonality of prices. In the case of fodder, particularly green fodder, the reduction is dramatic. The authors point to three factors which they think explain this. First, fodder markets have generally become more developed and more integrated, with improved roads and transport services permitting it to be transported over a wider area. It is now common, they explain, to see both green and dry fodder being transported from irrigated to rainfed areas. Second, improved supplies of irrigation water, especially from tubewells, have enabled planting and harvesting of fodder crops to be staggered over a longer period and have thus reduced seasonality in fodder supplies. Finally, the use of oilseed cake as a substitute for green fodder has undoubtedly grown, alongside increasing rural incomes. Since the price of oilseed cake shows little or no seasonal fluctuation, increased use of this feed should help smooth seasonal fluctuations in both green and dry fodder prices (ibid, pp. 15-16). Several of the points emerging from this study provide some grounds for optimism regarding the prospects for adoption of marketbased counter-seasonal measures in developing countries. It shows that price seasonality can be reduced by improving the climate in which the market operates — particularly through improved transportation links which bring areas with complementary production patterns into direct contact. Even government intervention can, in one area at least, reduce the degree of seasonal price movements. Moreover, the fact that increased rural incomes widen the range of choice with respect to seasonal produce again suggests that as development proceeds, more and more ways will be found of reducing seasonality. Finally, the study clearly illustrates the potential role that technological change can play in reducing seasonality. This is the subject to which we will now turn.

8 Special problems of developing countries: II. Technological change in a changing environment

I N MANY RURAL PARTS of the Third World, the counter-seasonal technologies, techniques and strategies which people have developed over the millennia, are coming increasingly under threat. The sources of this threat are many and varied, but they can usefully be grouped under two broad and interacting categories: resource depletion and technological change. At one time it would have seemed strange to describe the latter as a threat, when it was widely perceived as a solution - often as the solution - to the problems of poor countries. Indeed it would still be very difficult to envisage any sustained degree of economic development without such change. However, the problems of inappropriate technology in developing countries are now recognized as being very real. The arguments are also exceptionally well documented, and there is no need to repeat them here. Like poverty itself, however, the whole issue of technological choice in poor countries has a seasonal aspect that is not at all fully understood or appreciated. Before going on to consider this aspect, however, it is worth examining briefly the seasonality implications of the background of steady depletion of agricultural and other resources against which technological change must take place, for this is a context that makes the devising of appropriate counter-seasonal technologies at once more difficult and more pressingly urgent.

• Resource depletion The term ' resource depletion' is used here in a broad sense to cover a number of related problems. The depletion in question may be quantitative, as when non-renewable resources are extracted or land or

174 TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN ENVIRONMENT water are taken out of agriculture and put to other uses. Alternatively it may be qualitative (i.e. the resource base remains in existence but degenerates), as when cultivation exposes soils to erosion, a reduction in fallow periods or an increase in monoculture depletes the fertility of the land, forests are cut or grasslands grazed faster than they can regenerate. Resource depletion may also be relative to population, rather than absolute, as when population growth occurs on a static resource base. A more usual situation, however, is for population to continue to grow upon a declining resource base. On-farm research in developing countries has by now demonstrated quite clearly that, taking due account of the degree of risk and uncertainty associated with particular crop and livestock enterprises, the typical traditional system is quite finely-tuned to production possibilities in the local environment.1 This fine-tuning makes due allowance for seasonal variation in such factors as resource availability and requirements, production possibilities and the availability of foodstuffs or income from various farm and non-farm sources. Traditional systems may minimize, rather than eliminate, seasonal deprivation, but they are probably the best balance that could be achieved given the complex nature of traditional farmers' environments, the mutiplicity of their objectives and the limited scale and scope of the technological and economic resources available to them. However, these balances were achieved through experimentation and adaptation in a relatively stable environment over a great many generations. In more recent times the twin pressures of population growth and economic change have increasingly come to disturb this stability. In the long term, economic development — through such vehicles as improved communications, market integration and industrialization can be expected to reduce the problem of seasonality. However, in the shorter term such structural shifts in the economy create their own problems. As far as the present discussion is concerned, two are of particular importance. First, it generates rapidly growing demand for energy, industrial raw materials and foreign exchange, and corresponding pressures to extract natural resources without regard to sustainability. Second, it leads to the conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural purposes. The land area in question may not be particularly large, but it is often prime farm land, so that the effect of its alienation from agriculture is disproportionately large. 'Prime' in this context can mean one, or both, of two things. First, the land may be unusually fertile. For example, in hilly areas the most fertile land is

RESOURCE DEPLETION 175 on the valley bottoms, and when hydro-electric schemes are created these are precisely the areas that go under water. More generally speaking, fertile areas are typically areas of relatively high population density and high income concentration. Such places have often historically become the foci of urban development — the ' fertile crescent' in the Middle East being the classic case. Thus, paradoxically, the land that is most suitable for agriculture may well be the prime candidate for conversion to industrial, commercial, residential and other urban uses. Second, even relatively infertile land may be highly desirable for agriculture if communications are good, for this makes for cheap transport and good market connections, and hence relatively low input costs and relatively high farm gate prices. It can also reduce seasonality (for the reasons discussed in the previous chapter), for even an imperfectly functioning market is better than no market at all. Of course land that has good communications is also best suited to nonagricultural uses also, and is likely to come under steady and increasing pressure for conversion to such uses. None of the above, it should immediately be stated, is meant to serve as an argument against economic development — or even, necessarily, against the conversion of prime agricultural land to other uses. Not only is a movement away from heavy dependence upon agriculture and other primary industries a necessary part of an overall strategy of reducing poverty: it will also help reduce seasonality in the long run, as it has done in the developed world. However, in the shorter run, when the rate of land alienation is high and the benefits generated by the associated investment still a long way in the future, the net effect is to worsen the resource pressures brought about by population growth. Where agricultural land is scarce, as is increasingly becoming the case in the developing world, the precise and combined effects of population growth and economic development on natural resource depletion will depend to some extent on the system of inheritance. Where primogeniture is the norm, population growth will create increasingly unequal land distribution; where inheritance laws subdivide land equally among the children (or at least among the sons), it will produce increasingly small and fragmented holdings.2 Both systems produce landlessness, for even equal subdivision means that some holdings will eventually become sub-marginal, but primogeniture will obviously create it more quickly. Either way, population growth in the absence of expanding employment horizons will produce a growing number of marginal farmers and landless agricultural

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labourers whose mean income is most likely to be both lower and subject to greater seasonal variation than that of earlier generations. Even where there is unoccupied land available for settlement, it can reasonably be assumed that the best land will already have been occupied and that any new land brought under cultivation will tend to be increasingly marginal for this purpose. 'Marginal' is another concept that can mean one or more of several things. It can mean that the land is relatively infertile, and hence produces less per unit of labour. The area may be one which poses a security risk, or is subject to endemic diseases for which new settlers have no acquired immunity. In such cases both the quality of life and the productivity of labour are likely to be impaired. A further possibility is that climatic conditions are less predictable than in the more settled areas, so that risk and uncertainty are increased. Marginality in all of the above senses has at least indirect implications for seasonality also. However, it can also have a more direct effect on seasonal variation in production and employment. Seasonality will be increased if, for example, the soils in the newly settled areas have relatively poor moisture-retaining capability, if the irrigation potential is poor, if they are more than usually liable to seasonal inundation or storm damage, or if they have an unusually marked dry season. Even in the unlikely event that the new and the old settled areas are equal in all physical respects, or that there are mutually compensating advantages and disadvantages, the new lands will still be more marginal with respect to seasonality if, as is likely to be the case, they are more remote from the market. (If they suffer from none of the above disadvantages it is difficult to see why they should be uninhabited.) Complicating all of the above problems is the fact that newly settled areas by definition have little history of cultivation, so that the settlers will have no traditional body of wisdom concerning their production capabilities, the potential for reducing the seasonality of output and resource needs, and, perhaps most important of all, their conservation requirements. This can be serious enough when the land is relatively stable, but where ecologically fragile lands, particularly those in hilly or mountainous areas, are brought under cultivation for the first time the results can be catastrophic. The vegetation that covers a virgin hillside inhibits surface water run-off and encourages percolation, so that the undisturbed, humus-rich soil is able to absorb rainy season precipitation, storing the water and releasing it gradually over the subsequent dry season. Deforestation, overgrazing and the clearing of natural vegetation for agriculture exposes the bare soil to heavy tropical rainstorms, so that the run-off rate increases dramatically and with it

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soil erosion. Streams that were once clear and perennial are transformed into raging, muddy torrents in the wet season which dry up shortly after the rains stop. Thus seasonality of water supply increases significantly. In addition, as the topsoil is washed away, soil depth is reduced and the proportion of humus declines. This causes the soil's moisture retention capacity to fall, and with it the potential to support dry-season plant life is correspondingly reduced. There are traditional techniques for countering these problems, the most important being the construction of land terraces. This technology is both ancient and widespread throughout the upland areas of the entire developing world, but the techniques of proper terrace construction are neither simple nor widely-known. They are most unlikely to be familiar to in-migrants from flatter regions, and settlers from such regions are not likely to learn these techniques through trialand-error in time to prevent serious soil erosion. The adverse seasonality effects of ill-planned settlement on fragile lands can extend far beyond the settlers and their immediate families. The problems caused to economic minorities, such as hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists who are displaced by such settlement, were discussed in Chapter 3. The effects of soil erosion in hilly areas extend further still. Areas far downstream can suffer increased wet-season flooding (and the consequent destruction of crops, livestock, farm- and field structures), river erosion and the impairment of soil fertility through the deposition of salt or sand. The corresponding dry-season problem is loss of irrigation potential. A global economic atmosphere in which technological change has become the norm at once provides an opportunity and poses a serious danger to developing countries: to their economies in general and to their disadvantaged citizens in particular. In earlier chapters reference has been made to the means by which appropriate technology can be instrumental in easing the burden of seasonality in the agricultural sectors of both developed and developing countries. There is no reason to suppose that equally appropriate technology cannot continue to do as much for developing countries, but there are growing difficulties. Per capita resource depletion is continually altering, and in many cases marginalizing, the environment for which new technologies must be designed. Such a situation would severely test the research and development capabilities of a developed country, and, of course the R & D capacities of poor countries are embryonic. Worse still, the value of such capability as does exist is diminished by the fact that most of the skilled R & D professionals have been trained in developed countries, with a corresponding inculcation of norms and values

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that are of questionable relevance to their home environments. While some have succeeded in overcoming these biases, others have acquired, not only a set of skills, but also a set of attitudes towards technology, which can be quite out of keeping with both the resources and the problems of their own countries. The literature on technological transfer and' appropriate technology' in developing country agriculture has tended to concentrate on mechanization, for it is here that the main threat of labour displacement is seen to exist. Non-mechanical technologies, such as seeds and fertilizer, have tended to be regarded, at least by economists, as relatively benign. However, the situation is more complex than this simple bipolar view would suggest. + Agricultural mechanization Much of the agricultural machinery that is available from developed countries is 'lumpy'. That is, it performs a large number of separate operations as a single sequential process, is of a large minimum size, or both. From the viewpoint of peak season labour displacement in the Third World the most dangerous piece of equipment is probably the combine harvester, a machine which reaps, threshes and separates grain from chaff (some models also bundle the straw) in a single operation. These machines can pose a particularly serious threat because in most developing countries the harvest is traditionally the period of peak labour demand: not only is there a great deal of work to be done in a relatively short period of time, but farmers also have the means to pay for outside help. The extent of labour displacement by combines can be very great indeed. In a study of mechanization in Ethiopia, the present author found that a fairly modest combine like a Massey Fergusson 510 could harvest a hectare of wheat in one to one-and-a-half hours, whereas traditional methods (sickle reaping, ox-treading and winnowing) employed 36 to 54 person-days per hectare.3 Since the combine can be operated 24 hours a day, even allowing for travelling time between fields and for some 'down' time, each combine could displace up to a thousand labourers. A study (Laxminarayan et al. 1981) conducted in those parts of India in which combines are most widely used, that is Punjab, Harayana, western Uttar Pradesh and northern Rajasthan, looked specifically at the impact of these machines on the employment of seasonal labour migrants. It concluded that adoption of the combine led to a 95 per cent cut in harvest employment, mostly among hired labourers, and 'a practical elimination of migratory labour coming from labour surplus

AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION 179 areas, which means blocking of avenues of employment for them outside their states' {ibid p. 173). The authors went on to estimate that in Punjab alone if the wheat and paddy areas of big farmers (four hectares or more) were harvested by combine it would entail the displacement of no less than 42 million person-days of hired labour, of which 15 per cent would come from the permanent labour force, 3 3 per cent from local casual labourers and 5 2 per cent from seasonal migrants (ibid). Against this it was found that the introduction of combines contributed nothing to either farm productivity or cropping intensity. The technology was adopted only by the larger farmers and purely to ease the management burden of recruiting and supervising large gangs of casual labour. Despite this evidence of technological inappropriateness, the number of combines operating in India continued to grow, from an estimated 1 985 in the year the Laxminarayan et al. study was published, to 2960 in 1985 - an increase of almost fifty per cent in just four years (FAO 1985 a, 1987). Problems of labour displacement resulting from mechanization have prompted many to argue for 'selective mechanization', targeted only at operations in which there is a 'labour bottleneck'. The argument runs roughly as follows. Suppose, for example, that in a particular area the harvest was a time of full employment. Labour supply for the harvest could not therefore be increased. In such circumstances farmers would be unwilling to adopt yield-increasing technologies (or, where land is plentiful, increase cultivated area) because labour bottlenecks at the harvest would make it impossible to get the additional crop in on time. Here the introduction of machinery which displaced labour in a harvest operation such as threshing would make labour available for other harvest operations, thus easing the bottleneck. This would in turn permit farmers to increase yields or cultivate a larger area and thus increase production. This increase in production would also increase demand for labour during cultivation, weeding and other operations, where labour demand was previously below peak levels, so as to both compensate for any loss of employment in the harvest season and reduce seasonality of labour demand. The logic is seductive, and in certain circumstances it may also be perfectly valid. In other circumstances, however, the underlying assumptions are glib and shallow, carrying inherent dangers for the disadvantaged. In particular the argument too easily assumes that (a) peak season labour supply cannot be expanded, and (b) loss of peak season earnings will be compensated by increased earnings in the offseason. These assumptions deserve some scrutiny, for they are central to the entire 'selective mechanization' issue.

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TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN ENVIRONMENT

SELECTIVE MECHANIZATION AND 'LABOUR BOTTLENECKS'

The first assumption strongly implies that available labour is limited to that in the meso-environment. Even where this is so, any individual farmer could increase his own supply by paying above-average wage rates. However, market failures of the type discussed in Chapter 7 would normally prevent such competition, so that the question would be whether overall labour supply to agriculture in a particular mesoenvironment could be increased. This hinges on the elasticity (degree of responsiveness) of supply with respect to changes in the wage rate. If a given wage increase produces a less-than-proportionate increase in supply, the latter is said to be inelastic with respect to wage rate. Absolute inelasticity means that supply does not respond at all to increases in the wage rate. (Some once went as far as to argue that the elasticity of peak season labour supply is actually negative, but there is little empirical evidence to support this view, and the complexities will not therefore be pursued. For a discussion see Higgins (1968).) If the marginal product of labour is higher than that of other (existing) factors of production in a particular locality and season (see Figure 1.3), and if labour supply cannot be expanded, then labour availability places a ceiling on production and there is, unequivocally, a labour bottleneck. Even if labour supply is only relatively inelastic, it would still be legitimate to speak of a labour bottleneck if the required wage increases were so great as to make production expansion unprofitable for the farmer. Local labour supply may well be fully employed at the peak season, and hence inelastic with respect to wage rate, but this is not the only source of labour, for, as was shown in Chapter 6, seasonal labour migration within and between developing countries is a large-scale, and evidently increasing, phenomenon. It was also shown that the returns to such migration are often quite meagre, probably representing only a marginal premium over the opportunity- and transaction costs of migration. Far from supporting the inelastic labour supply hypothesis, the extensiveness, complexity and length of seasonal migration channels, together with the evolving nature of these flows, suggests that developing country labour supply is in fact highly flexible and responsive to economic opportunity. Labour supply to a particular district would, however, tend to be inelastic if either the opportunity costs of seasonal migration were high (because the peak labour period was the same over a large surrounding area), transaction costs were high, or — and this is very important — market failure meant that existing employment opportunities were not widely known. It is

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impossible to generalize, for the actual circumstances will obviously vary from country to country and between areas within countries, but before it is glibly assumed that labour supply is so inelastic as to justify mechanization the possibility of increasing the labour supply through seasonal migration ought to be investigated. (This is one of the reasons why macro-level studies of the type suggested in the Appendix are so necessary.) It is the present author's experience that when the term 'labour bottleneck' is used in practice - especially, it seems, by machinery manufacturers, agricultural engineers, some agricultural scientists, the owners of relatively large farms, and certain agricultural policy makers - there is often an implicit, and highly subjective view, not that agricultural labour supply is necessarily /welastic, but that it is simply not elastic enough. Indeed, in discussions with colleagues and policy makers one often gains the impression that if an unlimited supply of labour is not forthcoming at the going wage rate, then a 'labour bottleneck' is presumed to exist and with it an overwhelming case for - at best - selective mechanization. There are many reasons why certain individuals should prefer a mechanical, to a labour-intensive, solution to a work-related problem. One pervasive reason is attitudinal: machines are modern, whereas 'unskilled' labour is old-fashioned. Such attitudes are strongly reinforced by considerations of status. Suppose, for example, that the cultivated area in a given locality could be profitably expanded, but only at the cost of agricultural labourers attaining a better bargaining position vis-a-vis farmers (who are normally of a higher social class, or even caste). Social pressures might well be applied, particularly by the larger farmers (who would have least need of increased income and most to lose from changes in the social hierarchy), to ensure that others maintained the going wage rate. In such circumstances there would indeed be a labour bottleneck at the peak period, but it would be one which had its roots in market failure, rather than an inelastic labour supply. Mechanization, selective or otherwise, in these circumstances would at once eliminate this ' bottleneck', reinforce existing hierarchical relationships, and provide those who acquired the machinery with a brand-new status symbol. Another reason is managerial. The supervision of large gangs of labourers can be a highly management-intensive task, and the larger the farm the greater the required level of management inputs. This is not a 'labour bottleneck', however, but rather a diseconomy of scale. One solution for the large farmer is, as in the case of combine harvesters in India, to reduce the required level of management inputs by

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mechanization, even though this does not increase either land productivity or the area under cultivation. The management issue is particularly problematic for an absentee landlord, since absenteeism in itself means that the most highly-motivated manager is missing. Unfortunately for the agricultural labourer, the larger and more influential the landowner (and the absentee landowner is usually the most influential of all), the better is he or she placed to persuade policy makers that the production problem is one of peak season labour, as distinct from management, constraints, and that the solution is mechanization (selective or otherwise). Having said all of this, it must also be acknowledged that there may well be situations in which mechanization is a less expensive technology for the farmer than the labour-intensive alternative. This may be the case because the government has adopted a policy of favouring farm mechanization through various incentives and subsidies, such as relatively low import duties on agricultural machinery and spares, cheap credit for mechanization, free extension advice, and subsidies on fuel and lubricants. The arguments against this type of policy are as strong as they are well-known. However, even when interventions of this type are not there to load the economics in favour of mechanization, it is still possible that in a particular situation a relatively capital-intensive technology is, at market prices, less expensive than a more labour-intensive one, and that farmers would therefore be prepared to cultivate a larger area, and/or cultivate more intensively, if they were able to mechanize. In this case it would be very difficult to resist the argument that there is indeed a labour bottleneck, in the very real sense that reliance on labourintensive technology would constrain agricultural production. In these circumstances the issue becomes the very difficult one of equity versus productivity. In fact it is not even a straight contest between the two, for, were the cheaper technology to be adopted, some of the savings on production costs may well be passed on to the consumer, as increased food supply drives down prices. Such a development would certainly benefit the poor in general, although in the case of the agricultural labouring poor the loss of actual or potential peak season employment would probably more than offset the benefits of cheaper food. Other than the situation in which labour supply is very inelastic, the set of circumstances just described is the one in which selective mechanization is most likely to be justifiable in terms of easing a genuine labour bottleneck. Against this, to put the point crudely, the farmers' labour constraint is the labourers' golden opportunity, perhaps the only time when they can earn enough to see them through the next

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slack season. Whether any increase in slack season employment would be sufficient to compensate for this loss of earnings would depend on two factors: first, the extent to which the increase in production also generated increased demand for casual labour (the adjective is crucially important), and second, the effect of the inter-seasonal switch in employment on inter-seasonal wage rates. The extent to which production actually expanded following selective mechanization would depend upon several factors. Prominent among these are the extent to which unit costs of production actually fell, the degree to which this fall caused supply to expand, and the price elasticity of demand for the product. (If demand were very inelastic with respect to price, the drop in prices would be so great that farmers would probably be dissuaded from maintaining increased production levels.) The extent to which the demand for slack season labour actually increased would depend upon both the level of expansion in production and the technical relationship between level of output and slack season labour requirements.4 It is quite possible, however, that even if total annual labour requirements were to remain the same, or even increase, the demand for labour from the poorer sections of rural society, namely landless labourers and marginal farmers, would actually fall. Agricultural labour supply in Third World countries is of two very distinct types: permanent (typically family) and casual. Casual labour is normally only hired when the permanent farm labour force is fully employed, i.e. during the peak season. If peak season labour demands fall, the brunt - perhaps all - of this reduction is likely to be borne by casual labourers. On the other hand, if slack season labour requirements increase it is quite possible that most, if not all, of this could be supplied from within the farm family.5 Paradoxically then, one of the most disadvantaged classes in society, and one which suffers most from seasonality of employment, could actually be the net losers from a reduction in seasonality of labour requirements following even selective mechanization. MECHANIZATION AS APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY

It would be easy and misleading to proceed, on equity grounds, from the above type of analysis to a wholesale condemnation of agricultural mechanization in developing countries. The by-now familiar categorization of technologies as either 'labour displacing' or 'labour augmenting' can lead to this type of error, for it tends to identify whole categories of technologies with one or the other attribute. Technologies

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like fertilizer and improved seed are widely regarded as labour augmenting, since their direct effect is to generate additional employment as well as increased production. They are also highly divisible, so that they can be used economically on even the smallest farms. Hence few reservations have been expressed as to the direct effect of these technologies.6 Most of the critical attention has been concentrated on labour displacing technologies, a term which has come to be identified to a large extent with mechanization of field, and postharvest, operations. This is too simplistic, for the evidence shows that a mechanical technology which under one set of circumstances displaces labour without generating additional production, can, under different circumstances, not only increase land productivity, but also generate a net increase in income and employment for casual labourers. This point is illustrated from the developing countries' experience of a piece of pure 'turnkey' technology, the farm tractor, which is probably the most widely used piece of modern machinery in Third World agriculture. As the example of' water harvesting' in Kenya illustrated (Chapter 5), this piece of machinery, even when it takes the form of a large crawler tractor, can provide important counter-seasonal advantages, making it possible to extend the growing season through improved water management. Nor is this an isolated example. Where hoe cultivation is the norm and there is a single rainy season - as is the case in many parts of Africa - the onset of the rains signals the start of an often frantic struggle to get the land prepared and under crops so as to use as much as possible of the growing season. Hand cultivation is very labour intensive, and labour availability for hoeing is likely to be the major constraint on cultivated area. In this situation the inelasticity of labour supply may well produce a true labour bottleneck, and the introduction of plough culture would permit an increase in cultivated acreage and hence in production and slack season employment. In a case such as this, there is clearly zprima facie case for introducing a more efficient cultivation technology. The question then is whether animal cultivation could solve the problem or whether tractors are needed. ' Oxenization' programmes in such countries as Botswana and The Gambia have proven successful in reducing the labour bottleneck at land preparation, but in some cases animal powered cultivation is not feasible for technical reasons. One such reason is that parts of Africa are infested by tsetse fly. This insect is the vector for trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), which is widespread among both cattle and equines in tsetse-infected areas, and is extremely debilitating for both. Thus the introduction of cotton cultivation into the tsetse infested savanna of

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Sukumaland in northern Tanzania was dependent upon the availability of tractors to clear and cultivate the bush. The tractor's greater power is also sometimes needed in areas where soils are difficult to work, perhaps because they are very heavy, or very dry, or - as was the case in the Gezira Scheme in Sudan - infested with particularly tenacious weeds. The seasonal employment creation effect when plough cultivation is introduced - even with tractors - in conjunction with labour intensive methods in other operations can be very marked indeed. In the mid1970s tractors were introduced into the Setit-Humera area of northwestern Ethiopia to produce crops of sesame, sorghum and cotton on lands which had previously been used for semi-nomadic grazing. According to unofficial sources within the then Ethiopian government, this created employment for 100 000 labourers for up to eight months a year for weeding and harvesting these crops by traditional methods. Of course the ethics of driving nomads from their traditional rangelands are open to question, but there is little doubt that the net production and seasonal employment effects were positive. None of the above is meant to support the widespread belief that tractorization is essential to the development of Third World agriculture, for this technology is more often inappropriate than not. The evidence from surveys in a large number of different environments indicates that where plough culture is already the norm the replacement of draught animals by tractors (whether of the two- or four-wheel type) generates neither any increase in land productivity nor any slack season employment to set against the labour displacement they cause.7 This may at first seem surprising in view of the theoretical arguments regarding the improvement in both quality and timeliness of cultivation that should result from tractorization. When quality of cultivation is considered, the advantage claimed for tractors over animals is that they cultivate more deeply and more thoroughly, therefore doing a better job of weed eradication, soil aeration and incorporation of nutrients. The studies in question, however, failed to find that, when factors like variation in fertilizer use were controlled, these theoretical advantages were reflected in significantly improved yields. When advantages are claimed for tractor cultivation, it must be remembered that this machine was designed for conditions in which the source of seasonality in production is seasonality of temperature regime, not of rainfall, as in most of the Third World. When a crop is to be grown on residual moisture, deep ploughing can be a distinct disadvantage, as it increases the rate of evaporation. At the other end of the scale, when a crop is grown under wetland conditions, as is the case of paddy in

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much of Asia, tractorization can result in the destruction of the bunds and ploughpans on which this form of culture depends. In addition, the small fragmented plots that typify developing, as distinct from developed, country agriculture (particularly in Asia) will result, respectively, in lengthy travelling time between plots, and a relatively large uncultivated strip around the edge of the plot. The question of timeliness of operations is central to the seasonality debate, and one of the arguments frequently heard in favour of tractorization is that during the cultivation season, even though animal ploughing teams are working flat out, the sheer pressure of work means that not all of the land is cultivated as early as is desirable. The conclusion often reached, therefore, is that there is a 'draught power constraint' on productivity, and that the only way out is tractorization. This argument is strangely reminiscent of the 'labour bottleneck' theory, and although in certain circumstances it can be equally valid, it can also be equally fallacious. Draught power for cultivation is a highly seasonal input, and for most of the year the animals consume without producing. For example, in the semi-arid zone of Mali, farmers use their oxen for an average of only two weeks a year, during which they work an average of 4.5 hours per day (ILCA 1988, p. 37). If a farmer were to have so many draught animals that all of the land could be cultivated at the biological optimum time, the wastage represented by these draught resources lying idle for the rest of the year would be extremely large. However, a parallel argument applies to tractors and power tillers, although here the problem is not one of high running costs, but of high capital costs. For although machines do not consume fuel when not in use, the extent of their seasonal idleness represents a major problem of capacity underutilization.8 In both cases there is a trade-off between the potential production sacrificed by not having unlimited draught power and the cost of investment and maintenance of this resource. The point is to establish the optimum point on this trade-off curve. In doing so it should be borne in mind that even if there is a draught power constraint, it is only one of many constraints on agricultural productivity. Mechanization consumes many scarce resources, prominent among which is foreign exchange. The question is whether these resources are best spent on tractors, power tillers, diesel, lubricants, etc., when the opportunity-cost is the fertilizer, irrigation pumpsets, etc. that could otherwise have been imported. A related aspect of the timeliness question is the fact that, while it is undoubtedly true that the tractor cultivates faster than animals, in order to cover the machine's much higher capital costs (even when these are

AGRICULTURAL

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Week

MECHANIZATION 100

10 11

0 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Week

I87

10 11 12

Figure 8.1. Cumulative frequency distribution of land preparation time for sample co-operators' land. Subang and Indramayu Districts, West Java (Indonesia), 1979-80. Legend

Wet season area

Dry season area

O-

373 .67 ha 135 •87 ha .63 •72 ha 56 •34 ha

279 •13 114 .42 —

ha ha

218 .07

ha

Tractor owner Tractor hire A Animal 0 Manual

o •

(Source: Bernsten et al. (1984), Figure 6.2). (a) wet season, 1979/80; (b) dry season, 1980.

subsidized) it must also cultivate a much greater area in order to be an economic proposition. Hence the advantage with regard to timeliness may apply only on the first few plots that are cultivated. Later on in the cultivation season, the machine may actually cultivate later than the animals, for the simple reason that one tractor obviously has to cultivate the plots in succession, whereas the large number of animal teams it displaces can cultivate a large number of plots simultaneously. It may come as a surprise to learn that in areas where labour is unusually plentiful, even manual cultivation can compete in terms of timeliness with the tractor. Figure 8.1 illustrates the findings of empirical research on the timeliness/choice of technique relationship in densely-populated Java. The diagram shows that in the wet season the land under manual preparation is actually ready first, followed by animal-cultivated plots and then tractor-cultivated ones. However, in the dry season, where there was no animal-powered cultivation, manual cultivation does tend to lag about a week behind the tractors. This is not because manual methods are inherently slower (assuming that sufficient numbers of labourers are available), but because in this case the labourers, having been busy with the harvest of the previous crop,

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could not start cultivating until about a week after the tractors. A comparison of the three curves of Figure 8.1 (b) shows that the time difference for the two fastest approaches, tractor hire and manual cultivation, stays constant, and that each actually out-performs tractor owners. Overall, then, this evidence suggests that where ample labour is available tractor cultivation per se is not any speedier than manual cultivation, and can actually be slower. SEQUENTIAL MECHANIZATION

Mechanization is often not an act, but a process, and one that often seems to acquire a momentum of its own. Even where the first operation to be mechanized could justifiably be described as subject to ' labour bottlenecks' or ' draught power constraints', there is a very real danger that it will spark off a sequence of further mechanization, into operations and seasons in which such constraints do not exist. Ethiopia again provides an illuminating example, and one which contrasts strongly with the earlier one of labour-augmenting mechanization in that country. Farmers in the grain producing area of Chilalo during the late 1960s and early 1970s were encouraged to adopt tractors in order to speed up land preparation and hence, it was argued, facilitate the adoption of a yield increasing 'package' of improved seeds and fertilizer. Tractorization reduced labour requirements in the ploughing season, but the increase in crop yields which resulted from the adoption of the entire 'package' increased labour requirements for harvesting and threshing. This was, nevertheless, achieved at the expense of reducing the number of employment peaks from two to one, so that seasonality of employment increased. Worse still from the labourer's viewpoint, many of the farmers subsequently began to perceive a labour bottleneck in this new single peak period. This problem was naturally felt most seriously by the larger farmers, who were also the largest employers and those with the best sources of technological information and the best contacts in the government (a factor which ensured that their concerns met with sympathetic consideration on the part of the authorities). The early- to mid-1970s therefore saw a steadily increasing number of combine harvesters being introduced into the Chilalo region, and a corresponding outflow of agricultural labour.9 Sequential mechanization will receive a strong additional stimulus if a machine that is adopted to solve one ' labour bottleneck' or ' draught power constraint' can be used for several other operations as well. For

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I 89

example, tractors or power tillers may be introduced to ease a labour constraint in primary cultivation, but farmers will quickly discover that the same machine can also be used for other tillage operations, such as seedbed finishing and, for row-planted crops, inter-cultivation. If such operations are mechanized, the need to hire labour for seedbed preparation and weeding may well be eliminated. Two- and four-wheel tractors can also be used to pull trailers and can act as stationary power sources for threshers or irrigation pumps. Hence, once the initial investment has been made, further operations can be mechanized at such small additional cost that labour displacement becomes profitable even in non-peak seasons. In fact, it not only becomes profitable to mechanize further operations in this way: it actually becomes advisable, for a piece of engine-powered equipment will depreciate more rapidly if it is left unused between seasons than if it is kept in regular use. Further scale economies can be achieved in the machinery supply and maintenance business. Mechanization, even of a single operation, requires a fairly extensive support system. Fuel, lubricants, spares and other supplies have to be imported and stocked, workshops must be set up and mechanics and operators trained and kept employed.10 Hence, only if mechanization is fairly profitable — as it may be if there is a labour bottleneck (however defined) in a particular operation — will this infrastructure be established. However, once it is established, little additional investment is needed to permit the maintenance of a steadily increasing range of machinery. Indeed there is a strong incentive for owners to expand in this way, in order to reduce their own problem of seasonality in the use of skilled labour and capital equipment! Hence 'non-bottleneck' operations, which could not have been economically mechanized alone, can profitably be mechanized once the necessary overhead costs have been met. Unfortunately for the labourer it is the farmer who makes the investment decisions. The government may be in a position to help the former by selective bans and controls on the manufacture and importation of certain equipment, but there are practical difficulties in the way of implementing such a policy in an economy which is neither centrally planned nor centrally controlled. The first is the greater influence possessed by farmers, particularly large farmers, who can place their viewpoint forcefully before government officials. Second, even if the government wished to protect the interests of the labourer and passed laws to this effect, enforcement problems would remain. Suppose, for example, it were proved beyond all reasonable doubt that a particular form of selective mechanization in a particular agro-

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ecological zone would be labour-augmenting and that the necessary machinery imports were therefore authorized. What institutional measures could be taken to prevent farmers in that area from subsequently increasing the capacity utilization of their machines by mechanizing further operations? Moreover, given the weak internal administrative structure of developing countries, what policy measures could effectively counter any market forces which subsequently tended to 'pull' the machines into other areas, where they might be net displacers of labour? Finally, the familiar 'equity versus efficiency' question once again arises in the case of sequential mechanization. It may be, for example, that farmers who have successfully mechanized a peak operation can then cheaply use the same machine to mechanize non-peak operations and hence further increase food supply, thereby helping to further reduce prices because of the reduction in unit costs. Where such conflicts exist — or perhaps more accurately, where the government can be persuaded to believe that they exist — some difficult political decisions must be made. IRRIGATION AND MECHANIZATION

Irrigation is the labour-augmenting counter-seasonal technology par excellence. Like fertilizer it increases land productivity and hence generates additional labour requirements. Like tractors, it can increase the productivity of slack season labour by easing peak period labour constraints. Unlike either, it can also substitute slack season labour for peak season labour by shifting crop seasons. It is difficult to imagine conditions under which irrigation per se would not increase both agricultural production and requirements for labour - or a close substitute. The danger is that it will be the close substitute that is employed rather than labour, so that the potential for increased slack season employment is not realized. Labour substitution is possible in either the irrigation technology itself or in associated operations. In some cases labour-intensive irrigation is not technologically feasible, as for example when deep aquifers must be tapped or dams and other large structures built. In these cases the situation is similar to that of tractor-cultivation of tsetse infested areas: capital-intensive technology in one operation is required in order to realize a potential for increased production and employment elsewhere in the seasonal cycle. However, there are also cases in which a choice of technology does exist. Where capital-intensive irrigation replaces, or is adopted in

AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION 191 preference to, manual methods, labour requirements per unit of water delivered will, of course, fall. However, if they also deliver more water over a longer period, the net effect may well be labour-augmenting. Stone (1984) has argued that this is what happened in India when canal irrigation began to replace or supplement well irrigation from the 1830s onwards in what is now Uttar Pradesh. Canals, a relatively capital-intensive and labour-displacing technology, were preferred because they 'released for productive redeployment those "overhead" factors, (family) labour and bullocks, which - in combination with canal water - permitted the peasant family to realize more from its holding overall' (pp. 103—4). The canal did this by reducing the amount of labour required for irrigation and reducing dependence of the timing of farm operations on rainfall. The author continues: A feature of agriculture in well tracts was the limitation on the cultivator's capacity - with the summer crops to gather in and make ready for the market — to prepare, sow and sustain with well water during the season more than a certain proportion of his acreage... In canal villages, where copious water could be turned onto the bakedfieldsin May, and where the cattle would be comparatively fresh for ploughing, a substantial input of resources occurred before the rains (ibid, p. 116). The result of canal irrigation was therefore an extension of the irrigated area, intensification of cropping, increased yields, reduced possibility of crop failure and an increase in the proportion of the land that could be devoted to high value crops and varieties. The substitution of capital-intensive for labour-intensive irrigation technology does not, however, always have such an evidently happy outcome, and the more capital-intensive of a set of alternative techniques should not be adopted on the mere assumption that it will prove the most productive and/or the most labour-augmenting. As in the case of selective mechanization, no hard-and-fast answers can be given that will fit all situations. If irrigation can normally be expected to bring about increases in both production and total employment, it may also produce new labour bottlenecks or intensify existing ones in the process. A study of irrigated agriculture in Pakistan provides an example of how investigation of this issue might usefully be undertaken. Gotsch (1968) used a programming approach to (among other things) simulate the employment impact of the introduction of tubewell irrigation in the former Punjab. The results of his calculations on overall labour demand are summarized in Figure 8.2 (a). This illustrates in effect an upward

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T E C H N O L O G I C A L C H A N G E IN E N V I R O N M E N T

With tubewells

3000

3500 4000 Quantity of labour (hours)

4500

300 T

Jan

Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Months of the year

Figure 8.2(0): Pakistan: total labour used in tubewell and non-tubewell farms. (Source: Gotsch (1968), Figure 5.) (b) Pakistan: seasonal distribution of hired labour on tubewell ( ) and non-tubewell farms ( ). (Source: Gotsch (1968), Figure 6.)

AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION 193 shift in the labour demand schedule following the introduction of tubewells, and an increase in both the level of employment and the hourly wage rate. According to Gotsch's calculations, total employment would increase by over 40 per cent, of which nearly 28 per cent was the result of hiring additional casual labourers {idem, p. 212). The effects on seasonality of employment are summarized in Figure 8.2(b), which shows that the change is quite significant: the number of months in which there is no demand for hired labour drops from nine to four, and the peak demand periods shift by several months. The traditional April-May peak (for harvesting winter crops and planting summer ones) is intensified and lengthened, while labour requirements for preparing the land and sowing an irrigated winter crop create a secondary employment peak where previously hired labour requirements were nil. Referring to this particular diagram, Gotsch concludes: The result of incorporating tubewells into the model suggests that seasonal fluctuations may even be accentuated with additional water supplies as farmers tend to increase their specialization (p. 215). Whether or not seasonality has, in fact, increased in this particular case is, as Gotsch suggests, open to debate. What his data show, however, is that in relative terms seasonality has declined, since when the coefficients of variation in employment are calculated, they transpire to be 210 per cent on farms without tubewells and 124 per cent on farms that have them. However, in absolute terms seasonality may be said to have increased, particularly in view of the fact that the range between the peak employment month and the slackest one increases from 60 to almost 300 hours with the introduction of tubewells. As far as employment is concerned, the crucial question in cases such as this is how the farmers view such developments and how they will react. It is by no means inconceivable that they will follow the 'sequential mechanization' path outlined earlier. If irrigation is introduced as part of a ' scheme' - as is frequently the case when investment is made in large surface water irrigation works — mechanization of other operations is frequently built into the scheme design. A common form is the provision of tractor hire services from tractor pools in the public or co-operative sectors. In other cases tractorization is left to the private sector, either the farmers themselves or contractors. Mechanization on irrigated lands, whether public or private, carries the inherent danger that the employment-creation potential of irrigation will unnecessarily be squandered. Farrington and Abeyratne (1984) cite

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the example of the opening up of irrigated 'colonization' schemes in Sri Lanka's dry zone from the 1950s onwards. Here the tractorization option was ' pursued vigorously' through a number of fiscal, credit, foreign exchange and other concessions. Yet, they continue: It would scarcely be an exaggeration to suggest that the official promotion of seasonal migration in the development of colonization schemes would have provided a viable, and potentially much more socially profitable, partial alternative to tractorisation (p. 122). Part of the problem is the ' package' mentality, for whose popularity the 'green revolution' is largely responsible. Experiments with high yielding varieties in tropical and semi-tropical environments quickly demonstrated that a combination of modern seed, irrigation and agrochemicals could be synergistic: a combination of biological and chemical agencies with good management practices actually could produce a total effect that was greater than the sum of their individual effects. However, the assumption seems subsequently to have gained ground that all of the elements in capital-intensive agriculture can properly be regarded as synergistic, particularly where modern irrigation is used. There is no evidence to support this last viewpoint, yet the ' package' approach has in many areas been extended to include mechanization on many irrigation schemes in the Third World. There may well be a case for mechanization of particular operations in particular circumstances in order to derive the full benefit of irrigation, but cases are seldom judged on their individual merits. A study by Bell et al. (1982) demonstrates what can result from this type of confused thinking. The authors used an annual equilibrium model to investigate the direct and indirect effects of an irrigated settlement scheme on the regional economy of a poor district, Muda, in the northwest of peninsular Malaysia. Some of the findings of this study are of great interest for the present investigation, since it divided the year into weekly, fornightly and four-weekly periods, a specification which permitted exploration of the seasonal dimension of the project's impact. In the Muda area, the contemporaneous introduction of irrigation and a new variety of paddy which had a growing period of 135 to 140 days (traditional varieties had a 160 to 180 day growing period), permitted a switch from single to double cropping. The result, however, was much more complex than a simple duplication of the existing paddy economy within a year: Growing two crops a year makes for a more hurried rhythm of cultivation; as one crop is harvested, the land is quickly tilled again and then planted to

AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION 195 the next. Thus any tightness in the supply of labor will manifest itself in a rise in wage rates. This is exactly what happened. But if wage rates rise, it may become cheaper to prepare the land with tractors than with buffaloes, and with afixedsupply of land, rents will be affected too (ibid, p. 6). The model predicted that in the absence of the project the degree of mechanization of cultivation would have been small, with a predicted stock of just 185 four-wheel tractors (FWTs) compared with an estimated pre-project (1967) base of thirty nine. With the project, however, the growth in FWT numbers is extremely rapid: A comparison of the steady-state solutions for 1967 and 1974 reveals a wholesale switch from buffaloes to four-wheel tractors, which does not unduly exaggerate the actual course of events over that period (ibid, P- 92)The situation arising from this original formulation showed that the number of tractors was more than 1500. The authors then went on to simulate 'various steady-state solutions for 1974 in the presence of the project', in order to find out whether (a) the absence of FWTs would have been seriously detrimental to the project, and (b) how much better casual labourers might have fared ' if the demand for their labour had not been reduced through mechanization'. The results of these investigations may come as a surprise. In particular, aggregate net income and total paddy production are little affected by the absence of FWTs, declining by only around one per cent, ' which suggests that the unit costs of each technique are similar over the observed range of factor prices' (ibid). Comparison of the structure of seasonal wage rates is also instructive, the most interesting comparison being between the 'solution' that simulates the 'actual' situation and the one that excludes all mechanized cultivation. In the latter case the average wage was found to increase by 12 per cent, employment of casual labour by 60 per cent and total wage earnings by almost 80 per cent. The authors conclude that 'clearly, casual laborers were denied significant additional benefits from the project as a result of mechanization involving four-wheel tractors' (p. 93). Farmers, too, would have been better off without mechanization, for although aggregate income would be very slightly lower (by one per cent), rents would have been almost ten per cent lower. The only people who did benefit from mechanization were rentiers and the suppliers of agricultural machinery and ' the intermediate inputs necessary for their operation' (ibid, pp. 94-5). n Why should farmers mechanize if the labour-intensive alternative is actually cheaper? One answer is, of course, that results such as the above are derived with the benefit of hindsight. Others may, however,

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reflect a conscious choice. For example, the benefits of mechanization in terms of social status may be sufficient to outweigh the economic advantages of labour-intensive methods. A third possibility is that, as a result of the 'package project' way of thinking, mechanization is often officially encouraged by a range of incentives. In the Sri Lankan example quoted earlier, open and hidden subsidies included concessionary rates of duty on tractors and tractor spares, hire charges that did not cover costs, preferential foreign exchange allocations, concessionary rates of interest on loans, a lowering of commercial criteria for lending, restrictions on repossession of equipment in the event of loan default, tax concessions on depreciation allowances, and fuel subsidies (ibid, pp. 114—15). Even without such market distortions, imperfections in the traditional factor market may give a temporary edge to the more modern technology (with its modern marketing channels). Hence, as wage rates increase in the face of growing labour constraints in certain operations, the mechanization option may well begin to look increasingly attractive to farmers. What they are actually facing may, however, be just a temporary imbalance in labour supply and demand, aggravated perhaps by communications barriers. If there is surplus labour in the economy as a whole at the season in question, new seasonal labour migration routes could be expected to develop, hence increasing the supply of labour at the crucial time. Of course, once farmers have invested in tractors and other equipment instead, this option will have been foreclosed. The mechanization sequence need not necessarily begin or end with tractors. Other labour-intensive operations in irrigated agriculture that are susceptible to mechanization include transplanting, weeding, harvesting and post-harvest operations. As implied earlier, the mechanization process, once begun, seems to acquire a momentum of its own. + Biological technologies The historical process of purposive selection and informal experimentation by farmers has continued, and is still continuing today. However, there are important limitations to what can be achieved by such informal methods. Biggs and Clay (1981) have summarized these as follows. First, the potential for selecting for desirable characteristics is limited to ' what can be done with the local pool of genes and new material introduced by unsystematic transfer'. Second, this process 'can be highly vulnerable to environmental change or unforeseen

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Table 8.1 Estimated area planted to high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice in the major regions of the developing countries, 1982-8} Wheat

Region

Total

Rice

Area (million

Proportion

Area (million

Proportion

Area (million

Proportion

ha)

(%)

ha)

(%)

ha)

(%)

79.2 30.6 50.6 77.6

36.2

44.9

61.8

54.6

O.I

8.4

7-7

0.2

4-7 32.9

10.8

29.6 13-3 59.0

60.9 30.6

39.2

41.6 81.0

81.0

49.8

33-4

42-3

58.0

51.9

72.6

53.6

123.3

52.9

25.4 Asia" Near East" 7.6 Africa" °-5 8.3 Latin America Subtotal 41.8 Communist 8.9 Asia0 Total 5°-7

M

°-7

Notes: "Bangladesh, Burma, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand. b North Africa included in Near East. c China in the case of wheat (short semi-dwarfs only); China, Kampuchea, Laos and Vietnam in the case of rice. Excludes North Korea. Source: Dairymple (1985), Table 1. consequences of technology transfer'. Third, there are risks in the 'uncontrolled movement of plant material' as well as benefits of controlled movement, as in the case of technologies which require systematic plant breeding techniques. Finally, 'the informal system is not forward-looking, able to anticipate opportunities and the risks of changing factor endowments and environments, or to explore the capabilities where a lengthy and costly process of research is required' (ibid, p. 326). Informal research and development efforts will undoubtedly continue to play a crucial role in the development of counter-seasonal production technologies, but it should increasingly become part of an interactive process with a formal R & D system which can supply the modern scientific element. Formal R & D work in developing country agriculture is not particularly new. Wallace (1888), for example, commented on a range of experimental work under departments of agriculture throughout what was then British-ruled south Asia, work that was later integrated and strengthened with the establishment of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in 1905. Similar efforts were sponsored under a number of other colonial regimes, but the emphasis was firmly on cash

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crops for export, rather than on food crops for domestic consumption. In the post-colonial period this began to change, as national governments accepted that increasing emphasis would have to be placed on the development of food crops for domestic consumption, a set of concerns that eventually led to the establishment of publiclyfunded national agricultural research centres (the unfortunately named 'NARCs') in virtually all developing countries. These are supported by a growing number of international agricultural research centres (IARCs), also mainly located in developing countries. Most of the fundamental research (as well as a good deal of applied work) is done at the IARCs, while the NARCs' research tends towards the more applied and adaptive end of the spectrum. There is also a varying degree of collaborative research between the two. The present discussion will concentrate mainly on the IARCs, partly because of the leading role they play in technological change, but mainly because it would be impossible to deal, except in the broadest possible terms, with the vast and diverse array of NARCs that now exists in the developing world. HIGH-YIELDING VARIETIES

In their earlier days the IARCs saw their mission in terms of countering world hunger through the development of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) that would significantly increase production of staple crops in the Third World. A vital breakthrough was made in this area with the incorporation of a single dwarfing gene in wheat by a team led by Dr Norman E. Borlaug in Mexico. This innovation changed the whole architecture of the plant, producing ' semi-dwarf varieties which had a high grain-to-straw ratio and a short, stiff stem. The consequent advantages were that an increased proportion of nutrient uptake went into producing grain rather than straw, while the stiff stem was lodging-resistant. Semi-dwarf varieties of wheat and rice were at the heart of the ' green revolution' of the 1960s, and 'spread more widely, more quickly, than any other technological innovation in the history of agriculture in the developing countries' (Dalrymple 1985, p. 1067). Table 8.1 shows the extent of the spread of these varieties in Third World agriculture. Within just twenty years more than half of the wheat and rice areas in such countries were sown to HYVs. Although HYVs were never intended to address the seasonality problem, they have nevertheless had a considerable effect upon it. An

BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGIES I99 earlier example (Figure 5.1) showed how farmers in one developing area have learned to insert new rice varieties into their traditional ricebased farming systems with significant counter-seasonal effects by exploiting photoperiodic differences in the genetic makeup of modern and traditional varieties. However, this has not always — indeed not usually - been the case, for a major effect of varietal research has been to reduce the number of varieties of a crop that are grown, so that genetic diversity to be found in the fields has often been greatly reduced. In the early days of the ' green revolution' this type of development was deliberately fostered by the IARCs. For example IR8, the first semidwarf variety released by the International Rice Research Institute was officially proclaimed to be 'a rugged variety that could go almost anywhere in the tropics' and 'went round the world and showed its high yield to everyone'.12 The implication of this type of statement is that a few modern varieties could profitably be grown over a wide geographical area. The perfect science of hindsight has shown such a judgement to have been mistaken, and there has now developed instead a 'growing awareness among scientists that strong, locally specific R and D programmes, where even the plant breeding priorities are set with respect to local physical and socio-economic environments, are needed' (Biggs and Clay 1981, p. 331). Nevertheless, there is still a very strong association between HYV adoption and the erosion of varietal diversity in the farmers' fields (as distinct from germplasm banks and herbaria). Indeed this is now regarded as a matter of extreme concern by the IARCs and NARCs, although this tends to focus primarily on the problem of increased susceptibility to disease. For example: ' Slow varietal turnover and a lack of diversity increase the possibility that rust pathogens will build up or that races will mutate and an epidemic will occur' (CIMMYT 1988, p. 47). The disease problem is very real and very worrying, but lack of diversity also increases the seasonality problem, and this is an issue that will not be solved by increased varietal turnover. When the same variety comes to dominate a given mesoenvironment, seasonality of resource requirements will increase, as the timing of operations on all farms in the neighbourhood come increasingly to coincide. The need to ease the consequent 'labour bottlenecks' is one of the principle reasons that labour-displacing mechanization has accompanied 'green revolution' technology in countries like India and Pakistan (Binswanger 1978, Laxminarayan eta/. 1981)1

The stem characteristics of semi-dwarf varieties lead to seasonality

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TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN ENVIRONMENT

Table 8.2 Research centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Acronym/ initials Full name [host country]

Major research area(s)

CIAT

Beans, cassava, rice, beef.

Centro International de Agricultura Tropical (International Centre for Tropical Agriculture) [Colombia] CIMMYT Centro Internacional de Mejoramientio de Mai%j Trigo (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre) [Mexico] CIP Centro Internacional de la Papa (International Potato Centre) [Peru] IBPGR International Board for Plant Genetic Resources [Italy (at FAO)] ICARDA International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas [Syria]

Maize, wheat, barley, triticale.

Potato, sweet potato.

Preservation of plant germplasm.

Durum wheat, barley, faba (broad) bean, lentil, chickpea, pasture, forage crops. ICRISAT International Crops Research Sorghum, pearl millet, groundnut, chickpea, pigeon Institute for the Semi-Arid pea. Tropics [India] Food production, food IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute [USA] distribution, international food trade. Cassava, maize, cowpea; IITA International Institute of sustainable agriculture, Tropical Agriculture farming systems. [Nigeria] ILCA International Livestock Centre Livestock production and marketing in tropical Africa. for Africa [Ethiopia] Control of trypanosomiasis and ILRAD International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases theileriosis. [Kenya]

BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGIES

2OI

Table 8.2 {cont.) Acronym/ initials Full name [host country]

Major research area(s)

Tropical rice and rice-based International Rice Research cropping systems. Institute [Philippines] Strengthening national ISNAR International Service for agricultural research systems. National Agricultural Research [Netherlands] WARDA West Africa Rice Development Promotion of rice selfsufficiency in 15 African Association [Ivory Coast] countries. IRRI

Sources: Adapted from IDRC (1986) and the various Centres' annual reports.

problems of their own. One such difficulty was noted earlier - again in the example depicted in Figure 5 . 1 - namely the fact that in areas that are inundated in the rainy season semi-dwarf rices cannot be transplanted out as early, or on as low-lying land, as the longerstemmed traditional ones. This constitutes an important limitation on both the area that can be put under these varieties, and on the length or timing of their growing season. Another problem is that exclusive attention to yield ignores the fact that in developing countries many crops are multi-purpose. Wheat and rice straw are important components of livestock rations in many parts of the Third World. Unfortunately, the short stature of semi-dwarf varieties means that they produce less straw per plant than traditional varieties, so that there is also less fodder. Moreover the stems of semi-dwarf varieties tend to be high in lignin, a substance that in association with cellulose causes a plant's cell walls to thicken and become woody. This contributes to these varieties' lodging-resistance, but it also reduces the digestibility of the straw. Unless corrected by other means, the consequent reduction in both quantity and quality of livestock feed will produce the same problems for animals as seasonally poor nutrition does for humans: a longer hungry season and a still longer season of malnutrition. Table 8.1 showed that the distribution of the most successful HYVs, wheat and rice, had been extremely uneven between regions of the

2O2

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN ENVIRONMENT

developing world. In particular, sub-Saharan Africa, with its appalling record of famine, has reaped fairly insignificant benefits from these crops. Moreover, the adoption of HYVs is strongly associated with fertilizer use. This underlines an important genetic characteristic of these varieties. They are not innately high-yielding: instead, they are unusually responsive to high levels of management, particularly in the forms of fertilizer, irrigation and pest control. Without these inputs they normally yield less well than traditional varieties of the same crop. Even within areas where HYV rices and wheats have been most successful poorer farmers often cannot afford the inputs needed to grow them. Nor can farmers in remote areas easily grow them, for they find it difficult and expensive both to obtain inputs and to market the surplus crop that must ultimately payforthem. Yet, as noted earlier, these are the types of farmers who suffer most from seasonality of production and incomes. For them, modern varieties, at least when they take the shape of HYVs, neither reduce the seasonality problem nor lessen the poverty problem which makes it so serious. NEW DIRECTIONS IN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

Exclusive concern with HYVs was a feature of the early years of food crop research at the IARCs. As the system matured and the number of centres multiplied, it became gradually clear to all but a dwindling (but far from tiny) number of supply-side diehards that the multi-faceted problem of Third World hunger would not be solved simply by creating a few fertilizer-responsive crop varieties. New challenges began to be identified, priorities began to change and new approaches were tried out. This process has been further stimulated since the formation of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR, or more usually 'CG'). Table 8.2 lists the centres CG supports along with their major research interests. The CG system was formed in 1971 under the auspices of FAO, UNDP and the World Bank. The Bank provides the Group's secretariat and headquarters office and FAO its Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). Membership includes bilateral donor agencies, regional and international organizations and private foundations. Achievements have been considerable, not least on the financial front, where ' through an innovative approach based on commitment and consensus, the CG has managed to enlarge the financial base of the centers from an initial annual budget of US$ 9 million to nearly US$ 200 million in 1987' (CIMMYT 1988, p. 3). More substantively, the CG influences and co-

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203

ordinates the direction of international agricultural research. Its secretariat monitors management performance of the IARCs, while the TAC ' monitors the scientific performance of the centers and reviews center budgets in the light of denned research priorities' (IITA 1988, p. 6). Under the guidance of the TAC, research at the centres has since the early 1970s grown away from exclusive concern with increased yields, moving instead towards a greater emphasis on 'the generation of additional income by the poor through improved agricultural technology' (CIMMYT 1988, p. 3). The TAC's concerns have been broadened to embrace the sustaining of increases that have been achieved in crop production (and which are under attack by new strains of pests), maintaining the resource base upon which agriculture depends, and increasing the productivity of agriculture in rainfed and marginal areas. All of these concerns 'will be reflected increasingly in the research programs of the centers' (ibid). This new, broader group of concerns — particularly those relating to the incomes of the poor, the sustainability of the agricultural resource base and the agriculture of rainfed and marginal areas — if translated into new and appropriate biological technologies — should almost certainly make major contributions towards the devising of new counter-seasonal technologies for Third World farmers. Of particular importance to the seasonality issue is the widespread adoption of (although with varying degrees of commitment to) a 'systems' approach to agricultural research. Viewing a farm as a system, rather than, implicitly, as a series of disconnected crop- or animal enterprises, forces the scientist to take the time dimension of the production process much more closely into account. As a direct result of adopting this approach, the IARCs' research agendas have increasingly come to address the problem of seasonality in production conditions. Adoption of this approach has not, however, been made easy by the heavily commodity-oriented nature of most of the centres. A glance at Table 8.2 shows that the majority of those supported by CG take at most only a few species as their research areas, while few have responsibilities that explicitly extend across the whole range of the farmer's work. This means that when a ' systems' approach is ostensibly adopted in practice, it tends to be focused around a particular species (as in 'rice-based', or 'maizebased' systems). As often as not it is a cropping, rather than a farming, systems approach that is adopted, and this in turn means that often it is the timing of production (but not of resource use) that receives most attention. Nevertheless, some extremely useful work has been done in

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TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN ENVIRONMENT

recent years in addressing the seasonality issue - even when an essentially cropping systems approach has been adopted. Seasonality and cropping systems research

One very important way in which the newfound concern with the timing of crop production has manifested itself is in the development of short-duration crop varieties. For example, early-maturing varieties of rice have now been developed at IRRI and WARDA, of sweet potato and cowpea at IITA, and of pigeon pea at ICRISAT. By reducing the growing period within a given growing season, the effect is to increase the farmer's flexibility with respect to timing of successive crops. Depending on circumstances, this may ease a labour- or other bottleneck, permit the insertion of an additional crop into an existing cropping pattern, or help avoid unfavourable conditions at either end of the season. Other work at the IARCs has enabled the growing season itself to be extended. One mechanism is the development of varieties that are unusually tolerant of the adverse conditions to be found at either end of the growing season. For example, in recognition of the fact that ' there is a great need in many developing countries for improved earlymaturing tropical materials', CIMMYT stresses the selection and development of drought-tolerant varieties of maize (CIMMYT 1988, p. 16). Similarly, CIAT, IRRI and WARDA have worked to develop rice varieties which tolerate conditions such as drought or late transplanting, while ICARDA has developed disease-resistant, coldtolerant varieties of chickpea that in North Africa and West Asia can be planted in winter instead of spring, thereby shifting and lengthening the growing season, in the process making it possible to double yields. These and other IARCs continue to select and develop varieties that tolerate other stresses, such as those caused by flooding and adverse temperature. Another way to lengthen the growing season for a particular crop is to develop appropriate agronomic practices. New techniques of maize—potato intercropping developed by CIP in collaboration with NARCs in China, Egypt and Peru illustrate this. Potato is a cool season crop in the tropics, but it has been discovered that it can continue to grow into the early hot season if a tall tropical crop like maize is planted on the sunward side of each potato ridge. The timing should be such that the maize will have reached its full height by the time the temperature rises, when it will shade, and therefore cool, the potato crop. Alternatively, the season can be started unusually early if the potato is planted into a standing crop of maize late in the hot season,

BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGIES 2OJ so that the maize keeps its companion crop cool during its early growing period. In some cases crop research has gone further than just lengthening an existing growing season, effectively creating one where none previously existed. Examples in rice include the development at IRRI of cold-tolerant and high altitude varieties and at both IRRI and WARDA of varieties that can tolerate adverse soil conditions like acidity, alkalinity, iron toxicity and salinity. Other examples are the selection and development work on warm-tolerant varieties of wheat at CIMMYT and of potato at CIP, and of drought- and salinity- tolerant chickpea lines at ICRISAT. Work of this type makes it possible to extend the range of a crop outside its normal habitat and can thus give farmers a wider range of options for devising counter-seasonal strategies through crop diversification. Livestock-based systems

Toulmin (1984) has provided an account of post-war livestock research in Africa that with some variation could be applied throughout most of the developing world. She identifies three distinct phases, the first of which she calls the veterinary phase. This continued until about the end of the 1950s and was oriented towards the control of the major epizootic livestock diseases. This orientation she sees as 'a consequence of the memory of devastating disease outbreaks like the rinderpest epidemic at the end of the nineteenth century and the very real menace to stock from a number of other diseases' (ibid, p. 15). The second, or scientific and technological phase, came in the 1950s and 1960s, after considerable success had been achieved in disease control, and nutrition was increasingly coming to be regarded as at least as important a factor as disease in limiting livestock productivity. During this period 'the main emphasis was placed on genetic improvements through breeding and selection and the introduction of management systems and technology developed for commercial producers' {idem). Such an emphasis was typical of the period, and stressed largely imported technology without much regard for the socio-economic conditions in which it would have to be adopted. Hence there was, especially in countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe, which retained a large European settler population (and in Botswana, which tended to follow a similar path), very heavy emphasis on the development of crossbreeds which would, it was argued, combine the disease resistance of local breeds with the high yield potential of exotics.13 Recommendations on the nutritional side of crossbred livestock improvement programmes required a level of inputs and a standard of husbandry that

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the smallholder was unable to maintain for food crops, let alone fodder. Although Toulmin does not herself make the comparison, this approach had strong parallels in the contemporaneous development of HYVs on the crop side. And, like HYVs, crossbreeds perform less well than local varieties and species if they are not well nourished. The third, and present, phase of livestock research has been one of reassessment, farming systems and socio-economic research in which 'economic

constraints and social institutions became relevant subjects for study, not as parameters that must be changed tofita particular technology, but rather as features of the landscape that researchers may work within' (ibid, p. 16). This new approach was given a sense of urgency by the drought that was by then affecting much of Eastern Africa and the Sahel, because 'it was seen that little was known about traditional herding systems, actual levels of livestock and pasture productivity and their variability, the social institutions and objectives of traditional producers, and the economic environment and constraints under which they were operating' {idem). Within the framework of this new approach, IARCs concerned with livestock research have generally shown a more acute awareness than their counterparts in crop improvement programmes of seasonality as an issue in its own right. This is perhaps not so surprising in view of the geographical concentration of these centres in Africa, a continent which has probably suffered more than any other in recent years from the increased seasonal stresses that accompany a steadily diminishing ratio of agricultural resources to population. In particular, by the late 1980s ILCA's reports had begun to reveal a deep awareness of, and concern for, seasonality problems in the livestock sector. Much of its research programme had by then come to address the problem of critical dry-season feed shortages throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and even critical wet-season shortages in particular environments. In Latin America, CIAT has addressed a similar set of issues, leading, among other things, to the introduction of the wild legume Centrosema acutifolium from Colombia into the flat grassy savannas of other parts of Latin America (270 million hectares of which are found in adjoining parts of Brazil, Colombia, Guyana and Venezuela). This legume tolerates the acid, infertile soils of the region, and cattle pastured on an association of C. acutifolium and native grasses showed a dry-season liveweight gain instead of a loss which occurred on native grasses alone. This type of innovation, however, would be much easier to introduce in the ranching systems of Latin America than it would be in the open access systems that characterize many of the livestock

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production systems of Africa, particularly nomadic and semi-nomadic systems. Farming systems research

From the viewpoint of the seasonality problem,' systems' research is at its most useful when it takes a 'whole farm' or 'farming systems' approach. Because the systems are so complex, this approach is correspondingly difficult to adopt in practice (as distinct from principle), particularly for commodity based research institutes. Nevertheless, a commendable start has been made by several IARCs; and the more closely they have adopted it the greater has tended to be their success in addressing the seasonality problems of the farmer. Adoption of the farming systems research (FSR) approach has focused some attention on the resource use, as distinct from the purely production, aspects of seasonality. This is illustrated by work at IITA on rice-based farming systems in the 8 5 million hectares of inland valleys to be found in West and Central Africa. In these areas the adoption of the FSR approach has led to the identification of an opportunity for increasing the productivity of rice-based systems through ' alleviating labor bottlenecks during the peak periods of the rainy season, intensifying the cropping activities during the labour slack period of the dry season, and identifying high-yielding but short season rice and other crop varieties' (IITA 1988, p. 55). Similarly, ILCA's FSR work has led it to focus considerable attention on the role of draught animals in crop production, in the belief that an acute shortage of labour for land preparation 'is one of the main factors contributing to low agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa' (ILCA 1988, p. 36). This type of attention to the seasonal dimension of crop-animal interactions is an important outcome of the FSR approach at a number of IARCs, even those whose mandates do not specifically include the livestock sector. Thus in North Africa, ICARDA has developed crop rotations that will provide year-round feed for sheep, 'taking account of the seasonal fluctuations imposed by the lambing and fattening cycles' (ICARDA 1988, p. 16). The fact that many Third World crops are dual purpose is now also beginning, albeit belatedly, to be recognized. ICRISAT, for example, has discovered that in many areas of the semi-arid tropics fodder crops are in such chronically short supply, that a supposed by-product like cowpea hay actually fetches as high a price as cowpea grain. As a result, it has become one of the principle objectives of the Institute's cowpea programme to select short-duration cultivars for both grain and hay yield (ICRISAT 1988 a).

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A fascinating example from CIMMYT (Byerlee etal. 1987) reveals just how non-responsive to farmers' needs and perceptions some agricultural research centres were before the adoption of the FSR approach. Farmers in the irrigated Swat Valley, Pakistan's largest maize-growing district, had been following practices that differed sharply from recommended ones for fifteen years. They broadcast the seed instead of row-planting it, used seeding rates that greatly exceeded recommended levels, and thinned the plants continuously throughout the season. After the adoption of the FSR approach, three different sets of diagnostic surveys of their farming systems were conducted in the valley at various times throughout the cropping cycle. It was found that: (a) maize played a crucial role in feeding livestock, especially during the cold winter season when feed was in short supply, and (b) livestock played an important role in the farm's income generation. Approximately 100 000 plants per hectare were removed for green fodder, and this together with dry maize stover (residues) was stall-fed to animals at different times of the year. This feed accounted for almost half of the value of production from the maize fields and the joint feed and food produce was worth more than the recommended practices and variety would have yielded, for the recommended variety was not density-tolerant, and therefore not fully dual-purpose. As a result of this work, the recommended variety was switched from a full-season, to a mid-season/density-tolerant type, which still provided the green fodder, allowed the farmers greater flexibility in planting dates and, when phosphorus was applied, increased grain yields. CG or not CG ?

Table 8.2 shows a network of institutes that between them cover quite a wide research agenda. However, in terms of what needs to be covered, this agenda resembles a rather ill-made patchwork quilt. In some areas the patches overlap, while in others there are gaping holes. As far as research on the seasonality issue is concerned, these holes represent some very serious gaps indeed, for many of the commodities and environmental factors earlier identified as important sources of diversity and complementarity, and hence as potentially vital components of counter-seasonal strategies, are not included in the agendas of the CG-supported centres. In crop research the commodity focus of the CG centres is on roots and tubers, foodgrains, pulses and, to a much lesser extent, oilseeds. In livestock only three types of animal receive attention: cattle, sheep and goats. There is a limited amount of research on woody perennials, but mainly as possible sources of livestock feed (at ILCA) or as components

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of alley cropping patterns (at IITA). The excellent potential of trees and shrubs as providers of, for example, out-of-season food, fuel, or materials for handicrafts, does not figure in the CG centres' research agendas. The potential contribution of horticulture to the quality of diet during the season of malnutrition is similarly neglected. Small animal species, like poultry and rabbits, together with fish, have the advantage of being both fast growing and relatively cheap, and therefore have important counter-seasonal potential, but these are not the focus of CG-supported attention. Ironically these very commodities could be of especial importance to the disadvantaged. The landless, for example, may have no fields, but they often have at least a small piece of homestead land which could support a kitchen garden, perhaps a few multi-purpose trees (ideally in a 'stacked' system) and some small stock, used either for income generation or directly as food and fuel supplements for the off-season. Even among families with some farm land, such homestead activities are particularly important to women, old people and children. Ease of access to homestead areas is particularly important where female seclusion is practised. If there are gaps in the commodity areas, there are bigger gaps in the non-commodity sphere. Irrigation and water management are crucial factors in extending growing seasons. While the growing of crops under irrigation has been a bias of the CG centres, at least in the past, management standards for this often vital resource has not. Yet these standards have been steadily declining throughout the developing world. As more and more irrigation structures are erected, fewer and fewer resources are being put into water management to ensure timely, ecologically-sustainable and equitable distribution of supplies (IIMI 1988). Soils are another such area. It was argued earlier that local variation in the soil environment can be an important source of diversity, which in turn provides scope for staggering crop seasons within the meso-environment. There is no CG centre with a remit to focus on this type of research. Yet there are international agricultural research centres with remits to conduct research in such areas. There is, for example, an Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center, an International Board for Soil Research and Management, an International Center for Living Aquatic Resource Management, an International Council for Research in Agroforestry, an International Fertilizer Development Center, and an International Irrigation Management Institute, none of which is CGsupported. Like the CG centres, these IARCs have also shifted their research agendas so that they reflect the seasonality issue. To cite just a few examples, AVRDC has done substantial work on short-duration

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varieties of soyabean, mungbean, Chinese cabbage, tomato and sweet potato, while ICRAF zones its research networks according to seasonality of rainfall patterns. Hence in Africa the Council supports a research network for the selection of multi-purpose tree species for the bimodal rainfall highlands of East Africa, covering Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda and a Unimodal Upland Plateau research project in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. To identify such gaps in the CG system is not to condemn either the Group itself or the centres it supports. The reasons for concentrating on particular areas are clear and rational. Quite early on the IARCs decided to focus their limited resources on a restricted number of commodities, species, zones and target groups (especially the first) in order not to spread their research effort too thinly. It would be difficult to argue with such a decision. Moreover, in crop research the areas in which the CG centres have concentrated their resources are some of the most crucial in terms of the problems of Third World hunger and malnutrition, namely starchy staples and pulses ('the poor person's meat'). Some people regard livestock research as of low priority, because, in input—output terms, animals are inefficient producers of food (IDRC 1986). Others regard the end products as luxuries, and therefore argue against support on these grounds. In Third World terms such views can be highly misleading. Aside from a few commercial producers, livestock are fed mainly on crop residues or weeds, or else grazed on lands that are sub-marginal for crop production, so that they impose little opportunity-cost in terms of other foodstuffs. In counter-seasonal terms livestock provide crucial complementarities with crop production. The two very often provide products at different times of year and impose a different pattern of seasonal resource demands. They are often also mutually supporting in terms of inputs and output. Small quantities of animal produce may contribute very significantly to the nutrition of under- or malnourished people, either directly or through sale or barter to provide hungryseason staples. Livestock also form the economic base for pastoralists, an often disadvantaged group for whom animal produce is decidedly not a luxury. So long as the amount on offer from the aid donors is not substantially increased, spreading the resources available to CG over yet more centres while still maintaining support for existing ones would dilute its effort probably to the point of ineffectiveness. The total of about $2oom per year which the centres receive through the CG may sound like a lot of money, but - such is the scale of human values - it

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represents only about one-sixth of the cost of a single Trident nuclear submarine. Even in research terms it is not a particularly large sum, being less than the research budget of the average large US university and less than 0.5 per cent of global expenditure on military research (IDRC 1986). So long as more funding is not on offer, the central issue becomes one of allocating scarce resources between competing end uses in such a way as to maximize the extent to which agreed objectives are met. The fact that some of the patches on CGIAR's 'quilt' overlap is prima facie evidence that there is a need at least to ask whether overall coverage might not be improved by moving resources to cover some of the more gaping holes elsewhere. It is difficult to believe that the present system owes more to rational resource allocation than to historical accident. To take the obvious example of rice research, the question that must be answered is not whether the environment of West Africa is so different from the rest of the world that a separate rice institute for that area can be justified, but whether the incremental benefits of a second international rice research centre are so great that they justify the CG's supporting WARDA as well as IRRI at the cost of ignoring such other vital areas as horticulture, poultry and culture fisheries. In other areas the degree of overlap is not quite so marked, but, as Table 8.2 shows, there are several other centres of which similar questions could — and should — be asked. In fairness it must be added that some progress has been made towards rationalizing the system. For example, the CG has played an important role in fostering co-operation between the IARCs it supports. Joint research projects are now quite common, sometimes implemented by the stationing of a scientist from one IARC on the premises of another to work collaboratively on a common programme. (CG centres also sometimes collaborate with non-CG IARCs but to a much more limited extent.) There have even been instances of reallocation of parts of research portfolios, as when, despite a fair degree of early success in breeding stress-tolerant varieties, IITA turned over responsibility for research on sweet potato to CIP in 1988.14 IARC-NARC collaboration The effectiveness of the work of the international centres depends largely on the extent to which they are able to collaborate with their national counterparts in the developing countries. Today the international centres tend not to name or issue final varieties. Every year they make thousands of crosses from the banks of genetic material at

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their disposal and release the more promising lines to NARCs. The latter can then use them as parents for further crosses. Alternatively they may test them for local suitability and then, if they wish, issue them directly to farmers. The rate of progress in developing an efficient NARC network has been very uneven. In Asia and Latin America there have been some notable success stories, but in Africa the picture has been very different. One author (Lipton 1985), describing the results of investment in NARCs in Africa as 'dismal', places the blame largely on the inadequacy of the policy frameworks within which they operate. This point is echoed, in slightly more diplomatic language, by a source at the centre of the issues concerned: The national agricultural research systems have had less impact in Africa than in other developing regions. This is partly explained by the diversity of African environments, poorly developed infrastructure, government policies biased against agriculture, and the small size of many national systems; over half the countries of West and Central Africa spend under $3 million annually on agricultural research... our technology is of little value for countries lacking the capacity for effective collaboration (IITA 1988, p. 17) (emphasis added). Others, like Collinson (1986) and Idachaba (1986), point to fragmentation of responsibility for research and extension and to structural failings within the African NARCs themselves, although they do also emphasize the relative youth and inexperience of many of the research staff. In Africa, not only are resource constraints and policy failures especially acute, but the problems the continent faces, most particularly in countries south of the Sahara, are awesome. Africa is particularly susceptible to seasonal drought, and irrigation facilities are least developed of all the developing regions (see Table 5.2). Moreover, foreign exchange and income constraints, which are of course most severe in the poorest countries, make the adoption of fertilizer and other purchased inputs unusually problematic. It is hardly surprising, then, that Africa has the lowest rate of adoption of modern varieties (Table 8.1). Again this applies even more strongly to sub-Saharan Africa than to the continent as a whole, since available modern varieties are mostly unsuited to local conditions which can be unfavourable in the extreme. Sub-Saharan Africa has had little assistance from the IARCs in this respect, since 'The major impact of the international centers to date has been in what are sometimes referred to as favorable environments — where rainfall is adequate to grow wheat or rice or

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where irrigation is available . . . As yet, the IARCs have little claim to having produced improved technologies for less favorable environments' (Anderson et al. 1985, p. 1082). Asia and Latin America, with their generally more favourable conditions, their relatively advanced network of NARCs (and, in the Asian case, well-developed irrigation system) are correspondingly better placed in the league of adopters of new biological technologies.15 It is ironic that the countries whose NARCs are least developed, and therefore most in need of the assistance of the IARCs, are least able to make effective use of such assistance as is available. The authors of one wide-ranging review of the relationship between the two observed: 'Those (countries) with well-developed research systems are able effectively to use the centers' products and even make requests for materials, training, publications, and other services. Countries with embryonic research systems are less likely to test technologies effectively' (Anderson et al. 1985).16

Implications for policy and planning

it was argued that the association between seasonality and poverty could best be understood within the framework of a mean-variance matrix in which, for any one of a number of variables, a low mean value indicates poverty, and a high variance across the year reflects seasonality. It was also argued that over a number of years mean and variance are mutually interdependent, with high variance occasionally tripping a mechanism that pushes down the mean and a falling mean tending to increase intra-year variance. There are two basic linkages at work here. The first is direct. Seasonal variation in income itself imposes costs, which reduce the proportion of gross income available to meet consumption needs. The second linkage is less direct, resulting from the way in which those who are rather better off, in terms of either wealth or social status, are able to pass on seasonal stresses to those who are worse off, either temporarily (by appropriating consumption goods during the hungry season) or permanently (by acquiring investment goods). The policy implications of the evidence presented in previous chapters can best be understood within the above framework, and it will therefore be recapitulated briefly within such a construct as a starting point for the discussion that follows. Beginning at the happier end of the wealth—poverty spectrum in the Third World, that occupied by the more economically successful among the developing countries, these, like the developed countries, have reduced seasonality of national income by deriving an increasing proportion of it from non-seasonal industries, particularly manufacturing. In many of them there has also been a reduction in the seasonality problem of their rural inhabitants, who have obtained such benefits as increasing access to non-seasonal employment, improved I N CHAPTER I

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2IJ

communications and a better functioning market mechanism (which, among other things, dampens inter-seasonal price spreads for farm produce, inputs and consumption goods), labour-augmenting technologies like irrigation, and an improved credit market which moves financial resources between areas of simultaneous seasonal cash surplus and deficit. In such countries, then, the combined effect of industrialization, investment in infrastructure and market development has been to achieve an absolute reduction in seasonal variation in production, incomes and resource use. Lower down the wealth—poverty spectrum, such resolutions are less readily available. Here, solutions which achieve only a relative reduction in seasonal variation are more likely to be adopted, including those that pass on seasonal stresses from those who are better-placed to those lower down the socio-economic scale. Thus, for example, in countries still in the relatively early stages of industrialization, the relative seasonal stability of the urban areas is achieved at the expense of increased seasonal stress in the rural areas. One way in which this has been done historically is to siphon off agricultural labour into urban occupations that retain it even when it is needed for peak operations back home — not balking at the use of coercive measures when market forces fail to deliver these services. Another way, and one that is becoming increasingly common, is to over-exploit features of the landscape that could otherwise be used to counter seasonality in agriculture, for example through destructive ' mining' of soils, forests and aquifers and the conversion of prime agricultural land to other uses. This forces agriculturalists into more fragile areas, where marginalization and environmental degradation tend to cause increased seasonality of production and resource use. Moving further down the scale towards the poorest countries, the seasonality problem at the national level becomes steadily more pronounced, as an increasing proportion of national income is derived from biological, and therefore seasonal, industries, especially agriculture, and from a small manufacturing sector which is also seasonal because it depends for the supply of raw materials on biological industries, and for demand on customers whose incomes are highly seasonal. Within the rural areas themselves, the pattern of the relatively welloff being best able to protect themselves against seasonality, sometimes at the expense of the worse-off, is repeated. Some farmers are able to adopt technological-cum-managerial solutions by using variation in the physical environment to diversify production and thus smooth out seasonal peaks and troughs in production and resource requirements.

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In order to do this, however, they need access either to the resources of a relatively wide range of agro-environmental locations, or to landaugmenting investments like irrigation. The poorer a farmer the narrower becomes the range of environments that can be exploited and resources that can be tapped, down to the point at which the landless may have access only to homestead land and what open-access resources may remain from a generally and steadily-shrinking stock. An alternative to capturing a range of production conditions at the mesoenvironmental level is to exploit differences at the macro-environmental level, particularly through seasonal labour migration. However, even this is a less viable option for the poorest, for neither can they afford the transaction costs of migration nor do they have the connections to guarantee them remunerative employment at the other end. The poorest families, therefore, deprived of more dignified means of countering seasonal stress, are often forced to mobilize purely social survival strategies, such as the cultivation of dependency linkages with those that are better off. The approaches outlined in the previous paragraph imply only a differential impact of seasonal stress. The actual passing down of such stress from better-off, to worse-off, families is triggered by less predictable events like the occurrence of a bad year, or the introduction of labour-displacing technological change. In the former case the poor are forced to sell off income-generating assets, or pledge future income, so that in future seasonal income variation increases as mean income declines. The not-so-poor can acquire these goods and services at bargain prices, thereby increasing their own future counter-seasonal capabilities. Large farmers' investment in labour-saving technologies, especially agricultural machinery, as a counter to the problem of high peak season management workloads, usually means that their seasonality problems are eased, at the expense of reducing the peak season earnings upon which poor families depend. These two 'stress transmission' mechanisms are, moreover, often mutually reinforcing: investment decisions that remove or reduce peak season off-farm employment for marginal farmers may force them into distress sales of land and other assets, which can then be bought up by the larger farmer whose investment in machinery has already eased the peak season problem of managing a larger farm. Even relatively poor groups can sometimes pass on seasonal stress to those even worse off, as in the case of an influx of seasonal migrants from other areas (by those who can afford the cost of this) making it possible for ' patrons' in these areas to slacken the ties that bind them to local' clients' who are dependent on them for slack season income.

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Finally, at the intra-family level, the men are often able to pass on seasonal stresses to other family members by appropriating a largerthan-fair share of leisure, cash and consumption goods at times when these are in short supply, thereby increasing the busy-season workloads of the women and reducing the hungry season consumption shares of both women and children. This is not to say that intra-family discrimination affects only the poorer families, but in the less poor families there may be enough food for all even in the hungry season, so that differences in social status and corresponding discrimination in the distribution of assets and decision making power tend to affect rather less immediate needs. Both the theoretical arguments and the empirical evidence presented earlier indicate that the interacting and mutually-reinforcing effects of poverty and seasonality are neither self-limiting nor self-correcting. In particular, the mechanisms whereby the vicious circle of distress sales leading to falling asset prices and therefore further distress sales and further price falls, does not have a mirror image of a good year in which the earlier losses of the poor are recouped. In any case in poor countries the interaction of continued population growth, resource depletion and thoughtless technology transfer does not make for a stable world in which the rural disadvantaged can hope for income in good and bad years to oscillate about a constant mean. If a problem will not go away by itself, and more particularly, where a problem seems to be getting worse when no corrective measures are taken, there is a strong prima facie case for intervention. Of course some will argue against interventions on the grounds that these are at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive, and that the best approach is to leave the problem to the free interplay of market forces. This is nonsense. Market forces do not interplay freely in developing countries, particularly the poorest of these, for there the market is characterized by a hotchpotch of monopolies, cartels, restrictive practices, interlinked markets and other restraints on trade. The minimum role that interventions have to play in such a situation is to open up the market to competition and so permit market forces to operate in fact, rather than fantasy. But interventions go further than this. If government has a role to play in the building of economic and social infrastructure, if it must build publicly funded roads and railways, schools and health services and an agricultural research and extension network, levying taxes and seeking development assistance to pay for them; these measures in themselves constitute interventions. And the poorer the country the greater will the marginal impact of each intervention tend to be. The question of where to target such interventions so that they

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give the maximum return in terms of meeting policy and planning objectives must therefore also be addressed. Closer to the other end of the political spectrum it may be argued that the real problem is not seasonality, but poverty, and that the real priority is therefore to achieve targeted income growth, either through redistributive measures (especially land reform), or through economic development, or both. This process, it may be argued, will, by reducing poverty, render the seasonality problem increasingly irrelevant. The issue of land reform is a specific policy matter whose seasonal dimensions will be explored later. On the more general question of 'economic development', however, some observations may be appropriate at this point. First, it should be stressed that policies aimed at economic development and those targeted at tackling the seasonality problem do not have to be alternatives. Economic development is for most countries a long, slow process, and, while some rural inhabitants may benefit through translation to better paid, non-seasonal industries, or through having counter-seasonal, income-raising infrastructural investment (like roads and irrigation schemes) constructed in their neighbourhoods, the vast majority will not benefit for a very long time. It is sad but true to have to say that in the poorest countries, unless there is some dramatic and unforeseen change of circumstances, the probability is very strong that no-one alive today will see the type of fundamental economic transformation that has today been achieved by, say, the 'newly industrialized' countries of Asia. Indeed, as was pointed out above, partly as a direct result of what happens in the early phases of economic growth, seasonal stress in general, and the problem of such stresses being passed down from the stronger to the weaker in particular, are, for the majority, likely to get considerably worse. Moreover, as has been demonstrated in earlier chapters, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons for believing that the regular occurrence of bad seasons in itself is poverty-reinforcing and helps hold the victims of poverty entrapped. Far from distracting attention from efforts to achieve poverty reduction through economic development, a flanking attack on the seasonal aspect of poverty should complement more frontal approaches. It is certainly not being proposed here that the agricultural or rural development strategy of poor countries should be re-tooled in order to meet the challenge of seasonality. What is being advocated is that such strategies be made much more responsive to the immediate and perceived (as distinct from the long-term and assumed) needs and priorities of farmers and other inhabitants of the rural areas. If this is done, then where — and only where — seasonality is locally perceived as

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a serious problem will it become a serious candidate for inclusion in a general strategy aimed at alleviating hardship in the rural areas. To put the case this way is essentially to argue for more cost-effective development efforts in agriculture and rural development. 'Costeffectiveness ' here is defined at three levels. First, and most obviously, where the desired effect is an economic aim like increased food production, this is most likely to be achieved at a given cost if farmers are consulted when programmes are designed and policies formulated. This will help avoid some of the expensive mistakes that have been made in the past through ignorance of farmers' needs, resources and priorities. In most developing countries, however, stated policy concerns go beyond mere production goals, and embrace such aims as poverty reduction and equity considerations. Where this intention is serious, development efforts aimed at helping the most disadvantaged groups in the rural areas (women, children, landless labourers, and economic minorities, as well as poor and marginal farmers) will become cost-effective if they take the needs, resources and priorities of this section of the community into account. And the problems of this group, it must be stressed, are not usually the same as those of 'the farmer'. Since these members of the community are the most likely to suffer from seasonal stress, the more their needs and priorities are taken into consideration, the more likely is seasonality to emerge as a real policy issue. The third level at which cost-effectiveness must be considered takes the time element explicitly into account. As was shown in Chapter 1, where there is a hungry season the marginal utility of a given amount of food is greater in that season than at any other time of year. A similar argument applies to the provision of safe water supplies and fuel. It applies to other interventions also: employment generation measures targeted at the slack season will create income when it is most desperately needed; measures to control disease vectors like the mosquito will be more effective if concentrated at particular points in the pest's life cycle. Of course, targeting interventions for particular times of year may in some cases be more expensive than doing so at others, but, given the magnitude of the increase in welfare that can be expected from carefully timed interventions, in most cases the increase in effectiveness can usually be assumed to outweigh any increase in cost. Finally, taking the needs and priorities of the most disadvantaged into account will automatically address the 'powerlessness' problem they face, for enabling such people to influence the course of development is, by definition, part of an empowerment process. Powerlessness is an important aspect of the seasonality problem of the

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disadvantaged, yet one that is surprisingly often neglected even in definitions of economic development. In their seminal work on seasonality, Chambers et al. adopt a World Bank definition that stresses the improvement in the economic and social lives of the rural poor, including small farmers, tenants and the landless (1981, p. 218). Obviously poverty and powerlessness are strongly interlinked, but they are not identical. A poor man may, within his own family, wield almost absolute power, and it is this that enables him to pass down seasonal stress to his wife and children. Conversely, a woman from a relatively comfortable family may still be powerless to influence decisions which impart a markedly seasonal rhythm to her duties of work and childbearing. Even where the problems of poverty and powerlessness overlap in the same individual, the effects of these two conditions can have different, if mutually reinforcing, effects, so that rural development efforts in poor countries, as well as addressing the poverty issue, must also confront the much more difficult question of how to empower people to take an increasing degree of control over their own destinies. This has obvious implications in, for example, the political, social and educational spheres, which are largely beyond the scope of the present book. However, it also has important implications for policy formulation in agriculture and rural development, as will be argued later. It will be obvious that any policy implications that emerge from a wide-ranging review such as this must be conceptual rather than prescriptive in nature. This book is meant to influence policy making in a particular direction, rather than provide some kind of step-by-step guide to the incorporation of seasonal problems into development planning. The effects of seasonality differ so enormously depending upon agro-ecological and socio-economic setting, that it would be dangerous as well as foolish to attempt to suggest solutions purporting to be of general applicability. • Bias in policy formulation Chambers' catalogue of biases that prevent the perception of seasonal adversity has been quoted several times in the preceding chapters. Parallel to these, sometimes overlapping with them, there is another set of biases which would hamper the adoption of counter-seasonal policies, even were the problem itself fully recognized. Of course all policy making, everywhere, is subject to bias. However, in developing countries the ones that help govern policy formulation in agriculture are especially strong. It would be irresponsible to ignore this problem,

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to play down the constraints facing any attempt to correct it, or to mince words when discussing the difficulties. URBAN BIAS

So much has been written on this particular bias that little need be added here except a few points specifically concerning the seasonality issue. With few exceptions, policy in agriculture and related sectors in developing countries is formulated in order to serve urban needs, prominent among which are economic development (however defined) and regime maintenance. Regimes are, of course, city-based, as are the forces most likely to topple them. Economic development is usually viewed in terms of modernization, and new urban developments like manufacturing are more obviously modern than traditional rural activities like farming, a bias which is often, if not always, strengthened by the fact that agricultural policy is typically made by people who are either city-born or the urbanized sons of the rural elite. As a result of these factors, agricultural policy tends to be geared largely towards securing (a) cheap and plentiful supplies of food for the cities, (b) raw materials for domestic factories and (c) foreign exchange from agricultural exports. All of these will help fuel (largely urban-based) economic development. The effect of urban bias is usually to add to the rural problem of seasonal stress. The historical case of labour supply for urban areas illustrates this, but this is not an isolated case. Agricultural research provides a further illustration. As shown in the previous chapter, the classic approach, at both national and international levels, of seeing agricultural development purely in terms of production levels (primarily to secure grain supplies for the urban areas) led to the ' green revolution' that: (a) excluded poor farmers and those in difficult environments,1 (b) eroded varietal diversity, and hence led, inter alia, to a tightening of production bottlenecks, which in turn gave a powerful impetus to labour-displacing mechanization, and (c) neglected the fact that for the poor in the rural areas food often has a higher marginal utility in some seasons than in others. Another example of urbanskewed perceptions worsening the seasonality problem in the countryside is agricultural price controls and the low-price requisitioning of agricultural produce. These may (temporarily) serve to increase food supplies to the urban consumer, but, apart from being counter-productive in the long run, they also serve to erode counterseasonal buffers (in the shape of stored food or money) that are important to rural communities.

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RESOURCE BASE AND GENDER BIAS

To say that agricultural policy is biased towards serving the urban areas is not to say that it has not benefited any farmers. At least some benefits must be passed on if only as a means of inducing them to produce a marketable surplus. However, partly as a result of urban bias, agricultural policy on research, extension, settlement, credit, etc. tends to stress the development of commercialized, at the expense of subsistence, agriculture. Unfortunately, the poorer the farm family the less of a marketable surplus will it have, in both relative and absolute terms, so that the farmers with the greatest seasonal problems receive the least attention. This type of bias also harms subsistence-based economic minorities, such as pastoral nomads and hunter-gatherers, in favour of settled, commercialized agriculture. Not all people who earn their living from agriculture are farmers. Yet, while every government has a ministry of agriculture, whose stated responsibilities include a requirement to help ' the farmer', how many governments have a ministry specifically charged with helping other, poorer, rural groups, such as landless agricultural labourers? Yet, not only do the poorest groups suffer most from seasonal income fluctuations, but policy measures designed to help the farmer — such as subsidized farm mechanization — often pass down seasonal stresses to them. A similar set of biases increase the seasonal problems of rural women. For example, as was shown in the previous chapter, agricultural research has tended increasingly to adopt a 'systems' approach, and this has had quite some success in identifying farmers' problems. Unfortunately, however, what passes for farming systems research, could often more accurately be described as farmer systems research, where for 'farmer' one can read 'male head of household'.2 It seems to have become an implicit assumption of the approach that the problems of the farmer are the same as those of the household, but this ignores intra-household differences in the nature and seasonal incidence of stresses arising from such factors as gender typing and unequal social status, and from specifically female problems arising from the reproductive cycle. A similar set of biases exist in agricultural extension: there are few female extension workers, and male extensionists often tend, for cultural and other reasons, to talk only to other males. Similarly, agricultural development banks and projects normally follow a policy of lending to the male household head only.

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THE BIAS OF EDUCATION AND STATUS

Institutions concerned with agricultural development are, of course, staffed by people with an often high degree of formal education, a characteristic which throws them into sharp contrast with their clientele in the rural areas who seldom have any formal schooling. There are notable exceptions, but generally speaking the sharp contrast between the levels of formal schooling of the 'professional agriculturalist ' and the farmer - often reinforced by differences in socioeconomic status (which usually allowed the former to obtain schooling in the first place ) — tends to reinforce traditionally hierarchical social structures. These readily lend themselves to a 'top-down' approach whereby the illiteracy of the farmer is equated with ignorance and the development administrator, extensionist, agricultural scientist or policy maker sets policy, on the assumption that he or she knows best what is good for the farmer. In recent years the farming systems research approach has begun to dent these convictions, but there is often still a very long way to go before the illiterate (but far from uneducated) farmer is treated as a professional counterpart who may have ideas and technologies to contribute, as well as receive. BUREAUCRATIC BIAS

There is an often powerful bias within bureaucracies in favour of doing things through central government, or through state-owned corporations. This is adhered to despite a frequently long history of inefficiency and corruption on the part of, for example, public sector monopolies — and even in the face of declared policy moves by politicians in favour of, say decentralization or privatization. This particular set of prejudices impedes not only the development of a profit-oriented private sector, but also hinders the efforts of indigenous voluntary agencies (VAs). Such agencies were to the fore in first identifying the problem of seasonally, its nature, extent and differential impact. They have also taken the lead in pioneering new methods of countering seasonal stress, through, for example, cereal banks, off-season employment generation schemes, locally appropriate low-input agricultural research and extension, and health care targeted at particularly important seasonal diseases. These agencies are often uniquely placed to play such a role, by virtue of their small scale, their flexibility, their specifically-targeted objectives, and the exceptionally high degree of dedication and commitment often shown by their staff. They are, however, unpopular

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with bureaucrats. Finance ministries dislike them because they claim not-for-profit, and therefore tax-free, status. Sometimes line ministries in the relevant fields - usually agriculture, health and education - are also suspicious, particularly where the VAs have been more than usually successful so that, in the eyes of both beneficiaries and funding agencies, the ministry's efforts suffer by comparison. DONOR BIAS

Most bi- and some multi-lateral donor organizations are biased in favour of certain types of regime and economic philosophies, and donors' preferences constitute often powerful forces affecting the formulation of agricultural (and other) policy in developing countries. These influences are pervasive, and can, among other things, have profound implications for the seasonality problem. Aid agencies have traditionally found it easiest tofinancelarge, capital-intensive projects, and such undertakings, by their very nature, have helped reinforce urban bias. In more recent years, however, well-founded criticisms of such activities have induced major donors to diversify their efforts, and some have 'gone into' rural development 'in a big way'. Even so, such activities are often strongly influenced by what Chambers calls ' tarmac' and 'project' bias. They often also require a disproportionate share of the resources of the host country line ministry or other collaborating agency, so that less favoured parts of the country are starved of such resources. Donor agencies are also strongly biased in favour of short-term projects, typically of not more than five years duration, a factor which enables them to change their policies frequently. Sometimes this is done in response to changes in government in the home country. As often as not, however, such shifts apparently reflect no more than a desire for quick results, and a corresponding disappointment with approaches that fail to provide them. This propensity is reinforced by the evident need to keep up with the frequent changes in fashion in development thinking. Hence, for example, farming systems research was an approach favoured by many agencies for about a decade from the mid-1970s. Donors encouraged the adoption of the FSR approach by Third World NARCs and universities were induced to set up FSR training programmes. By the mid-1980s, however, FSR was clearly beginning to fall from favour, while there was a contemporaneous upsurge in interest in environmental themes, such as sustainable agriculture.

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The point about this particular set of biases is not that the concerns that donors and others articulate are irrelevant: in particular circumstances they are often highly pertinent. The problem is that donor bias induces investments by the developing countries themselves, some of which are long-term (particularly investment in people) which subsequently become obsolete (as far as the prospects for funding their activities are concerned), as a result of subsequent shifts in donor policy. Thus development initiatives are abandoned before they have had the opportunity to be properly tested and refined in order to adapt them to local needs, and the entire research—extension—rural development effort of both donors and recipients is distracted from tackling issues in a sustained and systematic way. To list the above biases is not to suggest that there is necessarily a deliberate and cynical effort on the part of the agricultural policy maker to frustrate the aspirations of rural people. More often bias is simply a reflection of a short-time horizon induced by very pressing, and very obvious, imperatives. However when bias, particularly urban bias, is reflected in policy formulation it frequently proves to have forged a double-edged weapon: certain policies may achieve relative stability or some slight degree of industrialization in the short-term, but often they do so at the expense of longer-term development. Even setting aside the serious equity aspects of undue concentration on urban problems and priorities, some fairly powerful economic reasons can be advanced in support of a more balanced approach. First, the more attention is paid to urban development at the expense of rural neglect, the greater is likely to be the flood of migrants leaving the countryside to seek a better life in the cities. Second, this problem will be aggravated by the policy of supporting large-scale, mechanized, surplus-producing farms to provide cheap food for the cities, for such agriculture is labour-displacing and therefore migration-inducing. Third, such agriculture is also import-, capital- and subsidy-intensive, so that it will compete for the very resources required for industrialization. Finally, the relatively high incomes that large farmers require to induce them to produce for the market will generate demand for sophisticated manufactures that cannot be produced in a poor country. This in turn means that consumer imports increase and there is no market-creation effect for local manufacturing industry — the opposite of what would happen if a given increase in rural incomes were more evenly spread. Assuming that a policy decision is reached to attempt a more

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balanced urban—rural, large farmer—small farmer, landholder—labourer approach, the first problem that will have to be confronted is the serious one of information gaps. Such gaps frustrate even the most well-meaning intentions and make interventions non-productive, or even counter-productive. In the specific case of seasonal stress, the preceding chapters have shown that the problem varies very significantly (a) between agro-ecological zones, (b) inside these zones between socio-economic groups, and (c) within such groups along age and gender lines. Thus the problem is pervasive and multi-faceted, and its full policy implications will not be appreciated without a great deal of research. The first requirement, therefore, is for an informationgathering exercise to (a) explore the nature, scope and extent of the problem in different parts of the country, (b) examine traditional coping mechanisms and any threats to these mechanisms in the current situation, (c) identify opportunities for lessening seasonal stress through examining opportunities and potentialities at both macro- and mesoenvironmental levels, and (d) suggest specific policy instruments that might be adopted or adapted for this purpose. • The information-gathering exercise Improved perception does not always require research aimed specifically at the seasonality problem. Often what is required is that an awareness of this dimension of rural deprivation be incorporated into existing research efforts. Naturally this is not a once-for-all exercise, but a continuing one in which techniques are increasingly modified, adapted and improved in the light of experience. In many developing countries the process of policy formulation is already informed by a sometimes considerable degree of empiricism. The problem is that this empirical evidence often ignores, and occasionally deliberately obliterates, the seasonal element (i.e. ' deseasonalizes' the data).3 One reason that seasonality is ignored is that most data collection exercises are cross-sectional, and it is difficult to capture seasonal variation in this way. Even longitudinal studies often miss out important seasons, either because travel is difficult during the rainy-hungry season, or because the busy season is the time when respondents have most to report, but least time available for reporting it. Capturing seasonal variation in rural deprivation without spending too much time or incurring too much expense requires often considerable ingenuity. Some longitudinal data are collected regularly for purposes that have little or nothing to do with the improvement of policy formulation, but could be put to this purpose. However, such data can be misleading if

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the context in which they are collected is not properly understood. Quite a number of researchers have analysed hospital records to try to identify the seasonal incidence of debilitating disease. The present author tried to do this once in southern Ethiopia and quickly learned that treatment of various diseases peaked during the local coffee harvest, simply because that was the only time when people had cash to pay for treatment. The problem with the data in this particular case became clear almost immediately, but in other cases the dangers of false deduction are perhaps less obvious. This is illustrated by the following quotation. As people gather together and communities have large celebrations during the Muslim holiday of Id in September, it might be anticipated that a more highly contagious disease such as measles would show a peak during September/ October, whereas less contagious droplet-spread diseases might not demonstrate a rise (Goetz 1981, p. 184). The first problem here is that there are not one but two Id festivals in the Muslim calendar. Second, as was explained in Chapter 2, the date of any festival in this calendar advances by 10-11 days each year, so that the researcher should have been looking for a moving, rather than a fixed, peak in infection. Sources like hospital records, then, have to be used with caution, but other records may not be quite so open to misinterpretation. If school attendance records show a pronounced peak in absences at particular times of year, this may well indicate the timing, and give some idea of the magnitude, of the problem of child labour use in the peak season. However, even here some caution is required, as it is normally only the relatively advantaged rural families which can afford either the cash or the opportunity-cost of sending their children to school, so that the problem may be much more widespread than school attendance records suggest. Other sources of longitudinal data often exist, for example market prices of essential foodstuffs are collected almost everywhere, and since the people who collect these data are themselves consumers, they should be in a strong position to ensure that the recorded information is reasonably accurate. Other data sources are more country-specific. For instance, in some countries daily data are collected in livestock markets, recording prices and volumes of sales for various purposes. The degree of confidence that can be placed in such information is obviously something that has to be decided on a case-bycase basis, but if they are found to be reasonably accurate, regular seasonal patterns in the level of either sales or prices in a given market, or marked seasonal variation in these patterns across different markets,

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may hold important clues to underlying seasonal factors which are of crucial relevance to policy formulation. The point is that there are often sources of data that can be tapped quickly and inexpensively to uncover and analyse important underlying seasonality problems - always provided that the limitations of the data are fully understood. Whatever secondary data are available, however, there is little doubt that at least some primary data will have to be collected for purposes of seasonal analysis. Chambers and Maxwell have suggested two approaches that would be especially useful in countering the 'seasonality-obscuring perceptions of urban based professionals'. The first is the 'top-down' approach of seasonal mapping — i.e. indicating 'at the very least' agricultural busy seasons, seasonal incidence of disease — matched and analysed to identify zones of adverse agricultural-health linkages. The second is the 'bottom-up' approach of having local-level staff carry out seasonal analysis: health, agricultural and other staff, identifying health, farming, nutritional, poverty and other relations in areas in which they work. The crux is implementation: ' The best way forward may be to develop methods of seasonal analysis and a repertoire of interventions which are simple, manageable, replicable and effective, and which involve rural people as partners' (1981, p. 235). Two relatively new research approaches - systems research and 'rapid rural appraisal', offer particularly encouraging prospects for exploring the seasonality problem, and are therefore worth looking at in at least a little detail.

SYSTEMS RESEARCH

Farming systems research (FSR) was introduced into the Third World principally to make agricultural research more relevant to the needs of the farmer. Although FSR is not primarily aimed at gathering seasonal data, if done properly it inevitably does so, and, as was shown in the previous chapter, it can contribute greatly to our understanding of seasonality. Some of the practical problems in the application of the FSR approach were discussed earlier, particularly its tendency to mask intra-household distinctions, but even when a 'whole farm' approach is truly adopted, there are important limits as to how far it can address the seasonality problems of the more disadvantaged sections of rural society. The concept of a system was defined in Chapter 1 in terms of a boundary within which linkages are strong, and across which they are

THE INFORMATION-GATHERING EXERCISE 229 weak. One could in fact postulate a hierarchy of systems, starting at the level of the biosphere, and descending through the agro-ecosystem, the watershed, the village society, the farming household and the cropping system down to the individual plant, each level of which constitutes effectively a subsystem of the one above it.4 In agriculture, scientific investigations and interventions have traditionally concentrated at the lower end of this scale, a focus which led to the ' green revolution' with its emphasis on single crops such as hybrid maize or semi-dwarf wheat and rice. Later it was accepted that, for most farmers, each crop is only a subsystem of a more important cropping system, and later still the view gained ground that cropping systems were themselves only subsystems of more cohesive farming systems. In other words the identification of the system boundary has been shifting steadily outwards, as it became clear that important functional relationships crossed ' boundaries' that had implicitly already been identified as fairly impermeable. As far as the seasonality problem is concerned, a major difficulty with selecting even the farm as the basic unit for systems analysis is that the poorest households, while they suffer most from seasonal deprivation, are often not farm households at all. Numerically the most important among these are landless agricultural labourers: FSR not only ignores the seasonal, and other, problems of this group, but may even worsen them, since it aims to solve the farmer's problems, neglecting the fact that the farmer's problem may be the labourer's boon - as in the case of high peak season wage rates. Even within farming households, the poorer the household the less likely is it that relationships with elements in other systems will be weak. Consider, for example, a farm family too poor to own draught animals and consequently obliged to wait until the main ploughing season is over before being able to borrow or hire animals from a neighbour who has finished this task. Can such a farm be described as a ' system' in the above sense ? Similarly, it is difficult to apply such a definition to a farm family which must work for others in the peak season before beginning to work on their own fields, in order to pay off hungry-season debts or other obligations. One systems approach that is particularly appropriate to the study of seasonal deprivation at the household level, regardless of size or economic base, is the 'new household economics' (NHE). The relevance of this approach has been well summarized by Jiggins (1982), who notes that it is 'distinguished by its recognition that households produce as well as consume and that many goods and services produced

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in the household are consumed in the household' (ibid, pp. 10-11). It takes as its primary concern: The allocation of household resources, especially time, to market work, home production and consumption of goods and services, and leisure. Its importance to seasonality studies is twofold: (i) the emphasis on the allocation of time by various household members to all the tasks necessary for the household's survival and reproduction; and (ii) its recognition of the differential distribution of costs and benefits between household members. By thus disaggregating the 'household' into its component actors, studies using the perspective of the NHE have revealed the variations in the intra-household distribution of seasonalities' costs and benefits to men, women, and children (ibid, p. 11). Often even the household is not the most appropriate level at which to conduct seasonal analysis. In some cases the relevant system may be a socio-economic one, such as the extended family and other kinship groupings, mutual aid groups, labour exchange networks, and patron-client relations. Often the strongest systems, those with the least permeable boundaries, are to be found at the ' whole village' level, for links with the wider economy are indeed often weak. This very weakness helps perpetuate the problem of seasonal deprivation, for the weaker the connections to the outside world, the less can be done to exploit complementarities with other agro-ecological zones in a way that dampens the amplitude of seasonal income and workload cycles. However, not all of the relevant systems are to be found at the village level. Where migration is an important counter-seasonal mechanism, systems must be identified and analysed at the spatial-cum-temporal level, as in the case of the pastoral cycle and other macro-environmental migration systems examined in earlier chapters. An example of how this type of analysis might be approached quickly and inexpensively is provided in the Appendix. Another level at which systems analysis might be conducted at a scale larger than the village is that of the ' agroecosystem' discussed by Conway (1986, 1989). Figure 9.1 below provides an illustration of seasonal analysis at this level. RAPID RURAL APPRAISAL

One of the greatest problems about conventional approaches to ' systems' research is that it is expensive and time-consuming, and one of the benefits of Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) is that it offers a promising way out of these twin difficulties. RRA uses sometimes conventional research techniques - borrowed from such fields as

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anthropology, geography, psychology and even journalism — in often unconventional ways: RRA is essentially a process of learning about rural conditions in an intensive, iterative and expeditious manner. It characteristically relies on small multidisciplinary teams that employ a range of methods, tools and techniques specifically selected to enhance understanding of rural conditions, with particular emphasis on tapping the knowledge of local inhabitants and combining that knowledge with modern scientific expertise (Grandstaff et al. '987» PP 5-6). The RRA approach has been under development since the late 1970s, originally emerging in response to the fact that conventional approaches to rural development research are often too time-consuming to be of practical value to the hard-pressed policy maker. There is also a growing body of opinion that at least survey-based techniques fail to elicit vital information — the lack of perception of the seasonality problem being a case in point. The RRA approach has three essential features (apart from speed) that distinguish it from more conventional approaches like the socioeconomic survey. First, it taps the vast reservoir of highly locationspecific knowledge that already exists in rural communities, exploring the rationale behind traditional practices and bringing modern scientific expertise to the process of separating out knowledge from misconception. The resulting information can then be placed in a wider context and analysed to bring out its policy implications. The second distinction, the use of multidisciplinary teams (of primary researchers, rather than enumerators), facilitates the first-hand interpretation of indigenous knowledge systems in a scientific light. The third difference builds on the first two: the iterative nature of RRA allows the researchers' first approximations subsequently to be presented to those who provided the information for scrutiny, inquiry, clarification and subsequent correction and reinterpretation. It is this combination of features that makes for both rapidity and accuracy in RRA. More importantly still, such an approach implies a fundamental shift from the attitudes often found in Third World rural research. To tap and rely on indigenous knowledge systems, to treat these with respect - and, of course, scientific scepticism - implies the recognition of the rural inhabitant as a fellow professional. This is incompatible with a 'top-down' approach to information gathering, and through the implicit process of empowerment, helps tackle the ' powerlessness' problems of poor people.

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Rapid appraisal approaches have been adopted successfully for the purposes of policy-relevant seasonal analysis in a number of settings, as the following example illustrates. Conway (1989) has described the use of such techniques by a group of researchers from the University of the Philippines to investigate, and ultimately help resolve, water disputes within the catchment area of a dam on the outlet of Lake Buhi in southern Luzon. First a rapid survey was carried out and the results of interviews with farmers and other water users combined with data from secondary sources to produce a series of working diagrams. A workshop was then convened which brought officials together with fishermen and farmers from the affected areas and intensive discussions were then initiated: It turned out that one of the key diagrams was a seasonal calendar [reproduced here as Figure 9.1] which helped resolve the central water scheduling issue. Fishermen above the dam were complaining of their fish cages drying out, and lakeside farmers of their rice fields suffering drought, in order to provide water for the downstream farmers. Construction of the seasonal calendar pinpointed the key constraints to the timing of agricultural and fishery operations, namely the occurrence of typhoons and sulphur upwellings, but also demonstrated that retaining the water in the lake above a critical level until the end of May could satisfy the upstream farmers and fishermen without severely affecting those downstream (ibid, p. 84).

4 Agricultural research and extension A good R&E network has been compared to a well-run restaurant: the food is agricultural technology, the customers the farmers, the kitchen staff the scientists, the waiters the extension staff, and the management the agricultural policy makers. Interaction between customer and cook in a restaurant is conducted mainly through the waiter, who: (a) shows the menu to the customer, finding out his or her requirements and pointing out which dishes might best meet these needs; (b) carries the customer's orders and instructions to the cooks; (c) carries the food to the table; (d) conveys any subsequent complaints or praise to the kitchen; (e) presents the bill, receives payment and, if the service was good, a gratuity. Several features of this analogy are illuminating for the present discussion. First, the process is iterative and interactive. Second, it must be responsive to customer needs, otherwise they will take their business elsewhere. Third, the waiter provides vital 'feedback' to the kitchen. If he or she is sufficiently diligent, this will go beyond mere complaints and praise concerning existing dishes:

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400

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/ Feb / / Mar

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Lake shore rice Drawn — down ~~_ rice Lower 1950 ha lalo rice Pili-Bula and Bris Rice 8700 ha Figure 9.1. The Philippines: seasonal calendar for the Lake Buhi project. (Source: Conway 1989, Figure 2.4.)

discussions with the customers can lead to suggestions as to how the menu itself might be improved. It is always easy to carry analogies too far, and the limitations of this one should be obvious. Its usefulness lies in the way it points to some of the most important difficulties facing the successful operation of public sector R&E networks in developing countries. A basic problem is that, unlike well-run restaurants, they are chronically under-funded. Although funding has increased in the past twenty years, it is still absolutely and relatively small. For example, ISNAR's analysis of the expenditure patterns of 52 developing countries indicates that their average expenditure on agricultural research in 1980-85 was just 0.9 per cent of national agricultural gross development product (having grown from 0.7 per cent in 1970-74). A group of 18 industrial market countries, analysed for purposes of comparison, were found to have

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increased such spending from 1.6 per cent of NAGDP to 2.2 per cent over the same period (ISNAR 1988, p 19). Africa, with its 'dismal' record in agricultural research (Chapter 8), spends least of all: over half the countries of West and Central Africa spend less than US$3 million annually on it (IITA 1988, p. 16). Given the vital role that agriculture plays in such countries, the question should not be whether developing countries can afford to invest in R&E, but whether they can afford not to. Having said this, however, the seasonality and other problems of Third World agriculture will not be solved simply by throwing money at them, for there are often serious organizational problems within R&E systems which prevent their allocating resources in ways that are responsive, and therefore cost-effective. Another basic problem of R&E in developing countries is that it is seldom customer-driven: the farmers may pay for the system through taxes and less direct impositions (like the over-valuation of the domestic currency), but they have no way of withholding these funds if the technology or service are unsatisfactory. The only finances over which farmers have any control are, in terms of the analogy, the gratuities, and only the wealthier ones can afford these. Moreover, the system is subject to. almost the entire range of biases mentioned earlier, all of which reinforce the lack offinancialinducement for management, cooks and waiters to design the menu with reference to the customer's wishes. 'Gender' and 'resource' bias make it likely that female customers and those that can afford only the cheaper dishes will tend to be ignored.5 PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES

The idea that farmers, at least, should participate as active partners in the research process has received growing, if still limited, recognition in recent years. Even then, as always, implementation lags a long way behind recognition. Various participatory approaches have been suggested. Farming systems research itself is, or can be, such an approach. Others, which place even stronger emphasis on the degree of farmer participation, include 'Farmer-back-to-farmer' (Rhoades and Booth 1982), 'On-farm client-oriented research' (ISNAR 1984), 'Farmer-first-and-last' (Chambers and Ghildyal 1985), and 'Regular research field hearings' (Knipscheer and Suradisastra 1986). These have been well summarized and critically reviewed in Farrington and Martin (1988), and there is no need to repeat the arguments, or describe the differences in detail here. The main features these approaches have in common are:

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Problem orientation, a respect for people's capability to produce and analyse knowledge, the researchers' commitment to and involvement with the community, the rejection of 'value neutrality', and the recognition that research is an educational process for researcher and community (ibid, p. 7). The implications of such a stance for confronting the seasonality problem should be clear. First, where seasonality of production and resource use do pose serious difficulties for the farmer, problemorientation will ensure identification of its nature and magnitude. Second, again where seasonality is a real problem, technologies and strategies for coping with it are almost certain to exist, and participatory research will uncover these. This in turn will help identify ways in which indigenous technology can be strengthened and built upon. Finally, the 'respect', 'commitment', 'involvement' and 'educational' aspects of the above definition are totally incompatible with maintenance of the bias of education and status mentioned earlier. One thing that farmer participation will not in itself ensure, however, is that the R&E system addresses the problems of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the countryside. Nevertheless, technological development in agriculture can assist these groups, at least to some extent, for even in the case of the landless, the household plot or kitchen garden provides, or could provide, some income or food for the hungry season. In the case of the women of a farm household, although they may not always be defined as ' farmers', they play a major part in agricultural production, and since their roles and problems are generally different from those of men, a targeted effort is needed to discover precisely what these roles and problems are, and, collaboratively, to design appropriate technologies. Such groups require a particularly strong and sustained effort to identify and address their problems, for many of the biases described earlier tend to worsen, or at best fail to help alleviate, the seasonal stress they face. Specifically in the area of agricultural research and extension, bias in favour of purchased inputs like fertilizer, and varieties that are responsive to them, has meant the neglect of traditional crops and varietal mixes grown by those who cannot afford such inputs, but which may contain important counter-seasonal elements like pronounced varietal diversity. In addition, research centre bias towards field crops and only a few domestic animals (Chapter 8), militates against research on trees, vegetables and small stock, all of which could make vital contributions to homestead production activities, such as kitchen gardening, poultry-rearing and off-season handicrafts. The counter-seasonal potential of tree crops suffers additional neglect because the relatively long gestation period of woody perennials makes

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them unattractive to research agendas constrained by the short time horizons of donor agencies and those dependent on their funding.

REWARD STRUCTURES

Typically in national R&E systems the linkages between programme success and financial and professional rewards are weak. In the case of research there is often a positive inducement not to indulge in applied research aimed at serving the needs of farmers, since activities like publication of basic research findings in scientific journals or presentation of papers along similar lines at prestigious international conferences are often the major determinant of professional advancement. Such an incentive structure conflicts with the need for interdisciplinary research that lies at the heart of the participatory approach. The older, and hence more prestigious, scientific journals almost all have a fairly narrow disciplinary focus. Conferences are more amenable to an inter-disciplinary format, but too often 'interdisciplinary' conferences become merely multi-disciplinary, with little attempt at genuine interaction across disciplinary frontiers. This particular bias is strengthened by the organizational structure of most agricultural research centres, which are typically configured into discipline-based departments, each of which has a great deal of freedom in setting its own research agenda without reference to what is happening in other departments. A precondition of the participatory approach, therefore, is a restructuring of both reward systems and institutional set-ups. The latter is probably the easier of the two and should therefore be tackled first. To do this it is not necessary - indeed it would probably be counter-productive - to dismantle traditional discipline-based departments. What is imperative is that research agendas be established at higher levels which permit research to be inter-disciplinary and hence more problem-oriented. The International Potato Center (CIP) already uses such an approach. Although it has the usual discipline-based research departments, CIP's agenda is organized around a series of problem-oriented 'research thrusts', such as 'integrated pest management' and 'potato and sweet potato in food systems'. Departmental scientists are assigned to particular 'thrusts' in which each will normally work with members of other departments. Setting such a structure in place, provided it is supported by a system that facilitates, recognizes and rewards inter-disciplinarity, field experience and

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problem orientation, will be a vital step towards the adoption of participatory approaches. At the level of the individual scientist or extensionist, a basic problem is one of inappropriate technical educational systems. With few exceptions these rely on, and therefore perpetuate, a pedantic teacher-student relationship and ' chalk-and-talk' teaching techniques, both of which run strongly counter to the idea that extension should be a two-way flow of information. If the medium is bad, the message is worse, for such education tends to emphasize strongly the value of all things modern, ridicules - or even fails to recognize the existence of - indigenous knowledge, and equates illiteracy with ignorance. Before significant progress can be made towards recognizing disadvantaged people engaged in agriculture as legitimate partners in R&E, these attitudes will have to be reversed. Yet any attempt to do so soon confronts one of the familiar ' vicious circles' of development: lack of truly participatory approaches impedes the empowerment of the disadvantaged, and the fact that the disadvantaged are powerless to make their views felt impedes the development of participatory approaches. What is needed, therefore, is something that will break the circle. One approach that seems to offer the potential to do so is the Chinese system which, at least in the 1970s, required even senior scientists to spend at least a year in a village, living with and learning from, the farmers 'to gain a firsthand familiarity with their circumstances and their common sense wisdom' (Harwood 1979, p 34). SEASONALITY AND S USTAIN ABILITY

Important as it is to make agricultural R&E responsive to the potential users' expressed needs, this approach should not take over the entire policy agenda, for there are other priorities which the responsible policy maker must also take into account. One of these is the need to adopt a long-term perspective on resource management. The poorer a family is, the greater will be its concern with immediate, rather than future, needs, and in this situation the State has a responsibility to ensure that the needs of future, as well as present, generations are served. Increasing worldwide concern about the over-exploitation and consequent degradation of natural resources has generated a great deal of interest in sustainable agriculture. While this is no place for reviewing the arguments in detail, the relationship between seasonality and sustainability is an important one that is worth exploring, since, it will be argued, an attack on one will help counter the other.

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Some traditional counter-seasonal strategies resulted in agricultural technologies that were quite highly sustainable. Reliance on varietal diversity as a means of extending harvesting seasons and spreading out workloads is an important example. This helped sustain the genetic diversity of many cultivars, whose erosion in modern times through excessive reliance on a few HYVs is now generating such well-founded concern. Again, the traditional subsistence mixed farming system, with its concern to spread production and workloads as much as possible across the year, produced a wide range of crops which were planted and harvested in different seasons, with different crops often grown in close proximity in alternate rows. Such a configuration forms a natural barrier to the spread of crop pests and diseases, but the steady advance of monoculture, encouraged by such factors as commercialization, agro-chemical means of pest control, varietal' development' and harvest mechanization (which usually means that crops must be grown in large blocks) nullifies this. It creates an environment ideally suited, not only to the spread of pests and disease, but to the evolution of strains that are becoming increasingly resistant to chemical methods of eradication, and hence increasingly difficult to control. Such forms of agriculture, literally, cannot be sustained. Obviously it would not be possible, or even desirable, to try to turn the clock back: the point is that technologies — and this includes modern technologies - that make for sustainable agriculture also tend to make for less seasonally-bound agriculture, and that policies that serve the one end will therefore also help serve the other. In no area is this more true than with soils. The steady shift of emphasis from organic to inorganic fertilizers and the corresponding decline in the humus content of cultivated soils has meant the moisture-retaining capacity of the land has been reduced in many areas, and where moisture availability is the main limit on the growing season (as in most of the tropics and sub-tropics) this clearly increases seasonality problems in agriculture. Soil moisture constraints can often be exacerbated by tillage, and in the tropics the most up-to-date methods tend, paradoxically, to be the worst. A modern mouldboard- or disc plough, by inverting the soil, exposes it to a much greater degree of desiccation than the type of traditional animal-drawn cultivator which only stirs up the surface. The latter, in turn, is worse from the point of view of dry season moisture retention than more primitive methods like the digging stick, which merely made a hole in the vegetative ground cover into which seed could be dropped. To say this is not to argue that traditional techniques and

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND EXTENSION 239 technologies are inherently superior to modern ones, for they are usually low in productivity and can be terribly destructive of natural resources - especially when put under pressure by population expansion, marginalization and the self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating effects of soil degradation itself. Given that these pressures exist, the pace of development of traditional coping mechanisms is far too slow to be capable of dealing with them, and modern scientific method has a correspondingly indispensable role to play. The problem in the past, as far as developing countries were concerned, has been that either scientific methods have been applied to what is now recognized as the wrong set of problems, or that solutions developed for one set of circumstances were mistakenly applied in others to which they were quite inappropriate, or that solutions were found for particular aspects of problems to the detriment of other, under-researched and therefore unrecognized, aspects. Science has not been slow to attack the sustainability problem once it was recognized as such. For example, methods involving minimumand zero tillage have produced encouraging results in the conservation of soil moisture and the protection of the soil against erosion. Other scientific approaches, such as organic farming, ecological agriculture and permaculture, aim not only to conserve soil and soil moisture, but by returning organic materials to the land, steadily to build up moisture retention capacity and soil fertility to a point at which high and sustainable yields can be achieved without high-energy, importintensive, chemical-intensive — and often essentially soil-mining — farming techniques.6 Such methods, however, are location-specific, and therefore represent a tremendous and exciting challenge to national and international agricultural research. Since sustainability is now quite widely recognized as a major aim of agricultural policy, resources for the necessary research are likely to become available to counter related problems. And since efforts to do so can also counter seasonality of production and resource use, the relevant policies should be mutually reinforcing. A major difficulty however, is that non-sustainable techniques (like the elimination of fallows and the cultivation of non-terraced hillsides) have been adopted because pressing food requirements forced farmers to concentrate on short-term solutions, often in the full knowledge that they did so at the expense of worsening the problems they would face in the longer term. Tackling this type of issue has policy implications that go far beyond the realm of agricultural research and extension, but the R&E network has an important role to play, at least in devising appropriate

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techniques and technologies. Possible policy options for promoting their adoption will be explored later. • Land reform Although agricultural research and extension can be made relevant to the problem of seasonal stress amongst even the most disadvantaged strata of rural communities, the lower the level of access an agriculturally-dependent family has to land and land-based resources, the more restricted will the scope for such intervention become. Land reform measures in Third World countries have not been undertaken with the seasonality problem specifically in mind, yet they do have considerable influence upon it. Most importantly, where such measures have resulted in a genuine and equitable redistribution of land, where they result in a reduction in poverty for the poorer farm families, the severity of the seasonality problem will be correspondingly relaxed. However, most developing countries have discovered that in this field, as in so many others, legislation is much easier than implementation, and poorly enforced land reform measures are often at best ineffective. On the other hand, where land reform measures are actually implemented, if they have been poorly thought-out (reflecting urban bias, perhaps), they can actually be counter-productive.7 The way in which land reform affects the seasonality problem depends primarily upon the extent to which it results in actual redistribution of control over land resources. Paradoxically, there will often be least disturbance to existing patterns where a 'Land to the Tiller' approach is adopted. This familiar slogan may sound like a neat summation of an equitable policy - and this is sometimes the case - but it is not necessarily so. Agricultural tenancy is probably most commonplace in densely-populated areas where land is correspondingly at a premium. Usually in such areas there is a considerable class of agricultural labourers with no access to land, owned or rented, so that the family of a tenant farmer is often far from being the poorest in the community. Where 'Land to the Tiller' means what it says, conferring ownership on tenants, or at least confirming existing tenant farmers in their occupancy rights, this improves the lot of such farmers, but does nothing for the agricultural labourer. In the specific case of seasonal stress, where the abolition of farm tenancy is not accompanied by measures to give labourers access to land, it may instead actually worsen their position, both relatively and absolutely, for the widening of income disparities between ex-tenant farmer and farm labourer could easily also widen the scope for passing on seasonal stress from the

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former to the latter. This could be done through, for example, labourdisplacing farm mechanization. After tenant farmers are confirmed in their occupancy, it may well become economically more attractive for them to mechanize, since there would then be assured access to land. Moreover, assured land occupancy (especially through ownership transfer, but even through the granting of guaranteed usufructuary rights) is likely to make it easier for a farmer to secure a bank loan with which to buy machinery. At the other end of the scale, where land reform actually achieves a significant measure of redistribution, seasonality problems of a different sort can emerge. In particular, when -labourers become farmers for the first time, or marginal farmers obtain access to more land, it will take time for them to establish the full potential of their new holdings with respect to the staggering of production, workloads, input requirements, etc., over the year. The extent to which this can be achieved will depend on the way in which holdings were distributed in the course of implementing the reforms. It would, of course, be quite unrealistic to expect those charged with this responsibility to ensure that each farmer was provided with a finely-tuned set of parcels of land, whose composition exactly balanced the competing requirements of, on the one hand minimizing the degree of scatter of plots (and hence problems of transport, crop protection, etc.) with,"on the other hand, the farmers' need for access to as wide as possible a range of different agroecological environments in order to minimize seasonal variation in overall production- and resource needs. However, what actually happens is often the opposite extreme, that of land consolidation, with farmers each being given a single block of land in one location. The reasons for such consolidation are generally a mixture of administrative ease and a mistaken belief (itself a reflection of urban bias and urban perceptions) that only the first of the above two criteria is important - or, indeed, a total lack of awareness that any other desiderata exist. It would be extremely foolish to attempt to play down the need for simplifying administrative procedures here, for, in terms of staff time and staff commitment, reform programmes which genuinely redistribute land are extremely expensive to administer. What must be avoided, however, is the type of situation in which the new ownership or access patterns are made rigid and inflexible by the prohibition of sales, leasing and similar arrangements. This type of provision is sometimes incorporated into land reforms in the interests of preventing future re-emergence of ownership concentration. While purchases, sales and exchanges of land or usufructuary rights have often facilitated ownership concentration, they are also important mechanisms in

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helping farmers ease the seasonality problem by permitting them to acquire a ' portfolio' of plots with different physical characteristics, and hence the potential for staggering production schedules. A land reform programme that is sensitive to the seasonality problem must permit this type of adjustment to continue to be made, as well as attempting to safeguard against future re-emergence of ownership concentration. • Mechanization, migration and off-season employment Land reform by itself is not going to solve the seasonality problems of the disadvantaged in rural areas of the Third World. Within families it does not even begin to address the issue of inequitable sharing of seasonal stress — even if, by increasing family income, it may reduce such stress in absolute terms. At the inter-family level, even if a reasonably equitable system of land holdings were to be established, it would almost inevitably degenerate over time, if not through land transfers, then through the combined effects of subdivision of holdings among children and differential reproduction rates between families. In densely populated areas there is a severe limit to the degree of subdivision that can be sustained before holdings become sub-marginal, so that the re-emergence of de facto landlessness is almost inevitable. Although the long-term solution to this must be steadily increasing employment in non-seasonal, largely urban, industries, in the shorter term a number of measures can be taken to create, or facilitate the creation of, slack-season rural employment, so as to minimize the degree of seasonal stress. The seasonal aspects of the problem of labour displacement through farm mechanization were discussed at length in the previous chapter. The conclusion must be that the introduction of engine-powered machinery from the temperate zones should always be regarded with suspicion in Third World countries, the more densely-populated the area, the deeper the suspicion. At one end of the spectrum it may be that engine-powered machinery creates production-, and hence employment, opportunities where none previously existed. This is most likely to be the case with irrigation, although even here labour-intensive options for at least some operations should be explored before a capitalintensive alternative is adopted. The same is true of farm tractors, even where they may appear as a labour-augmenting technology. In both cases mechanization of particular operations cannot be considered in isolation, for the danger of subsequent (' sequential') mechanization of other operations, and consequent labour displacement, is ever-present. At the other end of the scale from irrigation, it is difficult to conceive

OFF-SEASON EMPLOYMENT 243 of circumstances in which the introduction of combine harvesters, with their huge labour-displacement effect, could be justified in any but the most sparsely-populated Third World countries, if then. The most commonly-used justification for mechanization, the ' labour bottleneck' and ' draught power constraint' arguments, should, for reasons discussed earlier, also be treated with scepticism, as they often mask either vested interests or inadequate thinking. Even if it were proved beyond reasonable doubt that mechanization would lower the cost of production, thus encouraging farmers to produce more and hence reducing the prices of agricultural produce, such gains would have to be set against the increased suffering of large numbers of the poorest rural families, which would result from loss of peak-season earnings. There are often other, non-labour-displacing ways to encourage farmers to produce more, for example through guaranteed 'floor' prices for farm produce, subsidization of labour-augmenting inputs, and publicly-funded agricultural research. It is particularly difficult to see any justification for subsidizing labour-displacing mechanization when such alternatives may exist. All such possibilities should be investigated before any move is made to encourage mechanization. One particularly important alternative is seasonal labour migration. The problems and miseries of seasonal migrants were discussed in Chapter 6, yet not even the most radical writer on the subject has suggested that measures be taken to stop these flows - on the simple grounds that seasonal migration is the lesser of two evils. Here, however, a more positive approach is suggested whereby seasonal migration be deliberately fostered in order to both boost agricultural production and ensure that at least part of the rewards are reaped by labourers, rather than by the manufacturers, importers and owners of agricultural machinery. The customary patterns and timing of agricultural production that gave rise to traditional migratory flows are changing with technological change in agriculture, eroding the rationale behind some traditional flow patterns, while simultaneously creating new opportunities for profitable migration at other times in other places. Paralleling this, the development of transportation networks of Third World countries is further affecting the potential for such migration by reducing transaction costs. Identification of new opportunities for seasonal migration is the first step towards ensuring that the supply of labour, as distinct from that of labour substitutes, is matched as closely as possible to the changing pattern of demand. One approach to initiating this process rapidly and inexpensively is suggested in the Appendix.

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'Seasonal mapping' complements such an approach. This was mentioned earlier in the context of identifying 'zones of adverse agricultural-health linkages'; it could also be used at the macro level to combine data on rural population with those on cropping calendars, cropping patterns and cropped areas in different agro-ecological zones of the country in order to identify potential interzonal seasonal complementarities in labour supply and demand. The problem remains, however, that according to the evidence, the benefits of seasonal migration do not reach down to the most disadvantaged groups in the supplying areas, and can even serve as a mechanism for passing down seasonal stress in the areas of inmigration. Where patron—client relations continue to exist, it is doubtful if much can be done to prevent 'patrons' in the receiving areas from using seasonal in-migration to loosen their ties with local 'clients'. A more fruitful approach would be to try to provide the latter with alternative coping mechanisms. One of these might be slack season out-migration to other areas. The major problem here for the most disadvantaged groups is a combination of lack of information, lack of connections and lack of funds to cover transaction costs. However, interventions can be targeted with these difficulties in view. This is an area in which the voluntary agencies could play a crucial role, particularly if they pool their efforts in some kind of networking arrangement in order to obtain maximum geographical coverage. Such an initiative would maximize the prospects for identifying opportunities on both supply and demand sides. Having done so, such agencies could play a further vital role in acting as guarantors for those without other connections, as well as providing loans for those who could not otherwise cover the transaction costs of migration. Facilitating seasonal migration is not, of course, the only measure that could be taken to increase off-season employment. Others include the promotion of handicrafts, the post-harvest processing of agricultural- and other rural produce, and improvement to rural infrastructure through labour-intensive, off-season public works. These last can have a doubly counter-seasonal effect if they are used to construct facilities like flood control and drainage of malarial swamps. Careful timing of such interventions is important, and, as in so many other cases, requirements with regard to such timing may be different both within and between families.8 None of these ideas is particularly new, but the gender and age aspects are sometimes overlooked. HussAshmore (1982) provides an example from Lesotho which illustrates this. In that country it was at one time proposed that Food-For-Work

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(FFW) programmes be suspended during the period June to August, in the belief that food was then plentiful and people would be too busy with the harvest to require such schemes. In fact in the area in question women were finished with their harvest-related work by mid-July, after which they had little to do until September. This applied particularly to older women who were the main beneficiaries of the FFW programme. Finally, since there are certain age- and gender-specific periods of over-work, as well as similar periods of enforced idleness, employment policy should address these issues. Chambers and Maxwell (1981) discuss the possibility of introducing ' equity oriented technologies', that is, ones specifically aimed at easing problems of over-work for tasks traditionally done by disadvantaged groups, particularly women and children. They would include improved hoes, better water supplies, food processing technologies (for peeling, grinding, pounding), and fast-growing trees species. However, as these two authors acknowledge, and as was pointed out in Chapter 3, there is also the inherent danger of thereby transferring income-earning opportunities from women to men, so that care must be taken when designing such technologies to take this factor into account. + Market failure and market distortion The evidence presented in Chapter 7 demonstrated the general proposition that the poorer a country is, the less developed its transportation and communications infrastructure, the less likely is it that the market mechanism will be able to function as an efficient means of moving resources and produce between areas of the country that are complementary with respect to seasonality of agricultural production and resource use. It was also argued that insensitive and ill-directed state interventions, in such forms as price controls, subsidies, prohibitions and the concentration of buying and selling power in the hands of public sector monopolies, has generally achieved the opposite of the intended effect, benefiting the relatively well-off at the expense of the disadvantaged. What legitimate role can policy and planning play in correcting such a situation? First, one basic proposition must be accepted. Fair competition benefits the poor and the powerless. It gives them what they normally lack, namely genuine choice. Monopoly — whether state or private - is their enemy. Policy at all levels would contribute most to overcoming the problems of market failure by fostering competition.

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Probably the most effective way of doing this is by a mixture of promoting unrestricted market entry, or, where cartels and other anticompetitive forces are too powerful, providing public sector or other not-for-profit alternatives to (as distinct from mandatory substitutes for) the profit-oriented private sector. At the level of central government and the donor agencies, one of the more useful interventions would be to try to correct the basic communications problem by a thorough review of transportation policy. In no area is Third World urban bias more evident than in the typical pattern of road and rail links radiating outwards from the ports and cities into the countryside, serving to carry agricultural produce in one direction and urban goods and services in the other. Such a pattern makes it extremely unlikely that rural areas which are complementary with respect to the timing of production and resource use will be able to exchange goods and services seasonally. To say this is not, of course, to argue that the entire transportation policy of a country should be turned over to solving the seasonality problems of rural areas, but rather that this consideration should be factored into the decisionmaking process. This is yet another area in which seasonal mapping could play a crucial exploratory role, by identifying areas which are complementary in the above respects, and providing a basis for estimates of possible flows of both produce and services (including, of course, those provided by seasonal migrants). Where wet-season access cannot be guaranteed in this way, storage capacity can instead be built up and the stores stocked ahead of the normal time of seasonal shortages of food and agricultural inputs. Of course more than mere physical storage capacity is required: this must be linked to the related problems of extreme inter-seasonal price fluctuations and the lack of credit at affordable rates. One very promising initiative in this field that was, like so many others, pioneered by voluntary agencies, is the so-called 'cereal bank'. This consists of a village-level or other localized storage facility in which small farmers can deposit their produce (and labourers their wage goods) after the harvest, when cash needs are normally high and crop prices low. Depositors are then given loans against the security of the stored crop, the value of the loan being equal to the immediate postharvest value of the crop. These loans are made redeemable later in the year, when the owners can benefit from the higher crop prices then prevailing. Although this approach is not without its problems, it has a number of very attractive counter-seasonal features. The depositors benefit by getting (a) as much cash as they would get from selling the

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produce, (b) safe storage, (c) post-harvest credit and (d) a new source of off-season income (in the shape of the redeemed produce itself or the proceeds from selling this). The lending agency has physical security for its loans - in the shape of goods whose value appreciates from the time of purchase — thus avoiding one of the major obstacles in the way of lending to poor people. Poor consumers benefit from the fact that the outward drain of food in the immediate post-harvest season is reduced or halted, instead being stored and therefore able to become available for sale in the hungry season. One of the most attractive features of such schemes is that the cost will be lowest and the benefit greatest where the seasonal price spread is most extreme and postharvest cash needs most pressing, i.e. where market failure is most pronounced. The greatest problem with this approach is the familiar one of high administrative cost in relation to turnover and the danger that it might, like most institutional lending schemes, be 'hijacked' by locally influential people in league with low-paid local officials. The best way round this problem is to ensure that the ' cereal banks' are communitybased. This is not to say that officially sponsored, 'top-down' user groups or other ' co-operatives' should be formed: the rural areas of the Third World are littered with failed examples of these. What is required is a genuine grassroots movement where the poorer members of the community form the organization without external control or constraint, formulate their own rules, elect their own officials, take collective responsibility for actions and provide collective security for loans and other facilities obtained from outside agencies.9 This in turn would eliminate the problem of high administrative costs, which is such a major obstacle for commercial banks when attempting to lend to poor people. Perhaps more importantly, such group formation is an important 'empowerment' mechanism, enabling the disadvantaged to draw strength from their numbers and collectively withstand the pressures of powerful local vested interests against whom they could not stand individually. Here again is an area in which voluntary agencies could play a vital role, in such fields as education and awareness-building, the provision of ' seed capital' and by acting as a bridge between community organizations in different localities and between such local organizations and national level agencies that could assist them. These include governmental organizations, such as the agricultural research and extension network, the agricultural inputs supply corporations and the agricultural development banks that so many developing country governments seem to have.

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The 'cereal bank' concept relates only to food and other produce. The other main need for storage isforinputs. Seasonality is obviously an important consideration here because of the pronounced seasonal peaks that characterize demand. Ultimately, community groups could grow into fully-fledged agricultural co-operatives which could handle inputs as well as produce, but even then, as in the developed world, the private sector trader or trading firm could still have a considerable role to play. This would certainly be so in the early stages. Input supply is an area in which timeliness is of the utmost importance, yet where the necessary private sector institutions have not evolved, or not been allowed to evolve, this is usually the responsibility of a state-owned agricultural inputs corporation. A major problem with these is that they are typically bureaucratic and inflexible — attributes that are incompatible with the need for timeliness if inputs are to be of use to the farmer. A first priority is obviously to abolish the guaranteed monopoly position of such corporations, where one exists, so that they can provide just one of a range of alternatives for the farmer. However, if such corporations are genuinely to encourage the growth of competition they must be freed from bureaucratic controls and organized along lines similar to those suggested earlier for the research-extension system, i.e. lines that reward those employees who do most to serve the farmer. It is unlikely, however, that such organizations could ever achieve sufficient flexibility to be able to compete in a genuinely free market for agricultural inputs. They are useful either where there is no alternative supplier, or where there is market failure, so that even inefficient state-run outlets can provide a genuine alternative to private sector ones that are reaping monopoly profits. Breaking this mould should by itself encourage the growth of competition - including, ultimately, competition from farmers' cooperatives. To the extent that market failure is corrected, the stateowned corporation will find it increasingly difficult to compete, and, having achieved its objective, it should then be withdrawn from the area in question. One question that impinges closely on the above discussion is that of subsidies. Many developing countries subsidize inputs (some of which have themselves been obtained on concessionary terms), principally on the grounds that this is a relatively cheap way to subsidize food prices. This is obviously no place for a discussion of this difficult question, but in relation to the present argument one point should be made clear: if public sector corporations are to be used to

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stimulate the growth of competition, it would be difficult to make a case for subsidizing their operations alone, since the private sector would then find it difficult to compete. If subsidies are to be applied they must be applied across the board. In considering the question of input supply in relation to seasonality, special attention should be given to the case of seed. Timeliness is obviously of the most crucial importance here, but there is additional cause for concern in this case. It was earlier argued that where seasonality of production poses serious problems, agricultural research could often usefully be aimed at developing varieties that enable the growing season to be extended or the growing period to be shortened or both. However, there is little point in developing such varieties if the farmers cannot get good clean seed on time. There is also a need to safeguard new varieties against adulteration, particularly where demand for them is high and a premium is therefore being paid. In some cases fairly simple mechanisms may be developed to tackle this difficulty. A particularly useful one is to encourage certain farmers in each locality to specialize in seed production. This will not only facilitate timeliness in delivery: it will also severely limit the scope for adulteration, partly because local farmers can actually see which crop is growing in the seed-producer's fields, and partly because such producers would find it difficult to avoid suffering the consequences if they cheated. However, in other cases seed production may be subject to certain technical requirements which would make it difficult for ordinary farmers to do the job. Alternatively, there may be advantages in concentrating seed multiplication in particular agro-ecological zones, perhaps because of relatively risk-free production conditions, or a useful difference in harvest season from the main crop production zones. It is in these latter cases that the timeliness and adulteration problems are most likely to arise. In a country like India, with its relatively well-developed agricultural supply system, the role of producing and distributing seed for sale has largely been taken on by private companies, with public sector involvement being limited essentially to the testing and certification of commercially-grown seed. However, where such a system has not yet developed, alternative arrangements must be made. Given the overwhelming importance of seed among purchased inputs, a strong argument could be made for the state-owned agricultural inputs company assigning top priority to this aspect of supply and allocating resources accordingly.

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• Integrating counter-seasonal planning All of the measures and approaches suggested in this chapter, even those that could stand alone, would be most effective if incorporated within a cohesive counter-seasonal strategy. Such a strategy should not attempt to identify a set of policies to be adopted across the board, but rather the most suitable mix of policies to adapt with respect to the country's different socio-economic groups and regions (classified by both remoteness/accessibility and agro-ecological zone). It should also identify, implement and co-ordinate the programme in particular areas. Integration of counter-seasonal measures at the national level must aim to ensure that there is consistency at all four of the levels described below. INTERNAL

CONSISTENCY

The need to ensure that new counter-seasonal initiatives are internally consistent (i.e. consistent with each other) arises because of differences in the impact of seasonality on different agro-ecological regions of the country and within such regions on different socio-economic groups. At the former level, problems might arise, for example, because employment generation efforts in one area created new slack season employment opportunities, hence eliminating a reservoir of unemployed labour which may have been identified elsewhere in the planning process as a potential source of seasonal migrants. Another example would be where the development of irrigation potential in the upper reaches of a river basin decreased dry-season flows in the lower reaches and therefore undermined existing downstream irrigation facilities both quantitatively and, perhaps, qualitatively (through induced salt water intrusion). Figure 9.1 above showed how such inconsistencies might arise in practice, and how the ensuing conflicts of interests might usefully be tackled through RRA techniques at the macro level. At the level of the socio-economic group in the same agro-ecological zone, it has been a pivotal argument of this book - and of other writings on seasonality — that some traditional measures reduce seasonal problems for some such groups by passing on the associated stress to others, always in the process following and reinforcing existing hierarchical, male- and adult-dominated social structures. Given the ' non-perception' difficulties that keep the problems of the disadvantaged so consistently out of focus, the danger is that counter-

I N T E G R A T I N G COUNTER-SEASONAL P L A N N I N G

251

seasonal measures for specific areas will tend to focus on the needs of dominant groups (as in the case of farm mechanization). In order to counteract this bias, new counter-seasonal technologies and organizational approaches will often have to be deliberately skewed in the opposite direction. CONSISTENCY WITH TRADITIONAL COPING MECHANISMS

Many writers on the policy implications of the seasonality issue have argued that new counter-seasonal approaches should seek to identify and build on existing coping mechanisms, rather than try to replace them. This is in keeping with a more general principle in rural development, since it has been found that:' the relevance and prospects of success of innovations brought in from outside will be enhanced if they build upon indigenous knowledge. Where this is not done, the risk of failure is high' (Farrington and Martin 1988, p. 23). It would be difficult to disagree with the above views, except insofar as they relate to a point that has just been made: since some existing coping mechanisms have often been used to pass down seasonal stress from the relatively advantaged to those more disadvantaged, care should be taken to ensure that these are not the types of mechanisms that are reinforced. CONSISTENCY WITHIN AGRICULTURAL

PLANNING

Within the agricultural sector the seasonality problem should be tackled as part of the more general approach to agricultural development issues. Integration and co-ordination are extremely important here, for several traditional agricultural ' development' policies have sometimes had the effect of worsening seasonal stress for at least some sections of rural communities. Several examples have been mentioned already, such as the erosion of varietal diversity that accompanied the 'green revolution', the settling of agriculturalists on the lands of nomadic pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, and the intensification of agriculture (or the introduction of enclosed grazing) leading to the loss of common lands from which poor people, particularly women and children, have traditionally collected wild foods, fuel, fodder, materials for handicrafts, water and other necessities, all of which can play a crucial role in seeing them through the worst time of year. In some such cases difficult choices may have to be made, because a measure that benefits one group may hurt another. Sometimes the

252

IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PLANNING

choice is between equity and productivity, and again an appropriate point on the trade-off curve has to be decided upon. In one important case, however, the side on which policy must come down is clear-cut, namely where short-term production gains are being made at the expense of long-term destruction of land resources. There is no doubt that this must be stopped. However, it must not be stopped 'at all costs', as these costs would often have to be borne by the poorest members of the rural community, especially poor farmers forced by pressing consumption needs to adopt destructive methods of cultivation. Earlier in the chapter it was noted that many of the measures that make agriculture sustainable also help create the basis for counterseasonal strategies, so that adopting such measures would help attack both sets of problems. However in order to do so, it would be necessary to divert at least some resources temporarily from consumption to investment: land put under a green manure crop cannot grow much food in the same season; a crop ploughed in as green manure cannot be fed to livestock; dung used as a fertilizer and straw used as a mulch cannot also be burnt as fuel. Poor farmers facing urgent problems of insufficient food and fuel today cannot afford even to take a fraction of their land out of production temporarily so as to be able to enrich it, build up its fertility and increase its moisture retention capacity in order ultimately to promote a more secure, less seasonally variable, tomorrow. This is an extremely difficult problem to confront, yet something must be done about it. One possible solution, whose ramifications are far too complex to be pursued much further here, would be to find some mechanism to pay poor farmers to take successive parts of their land out of production temporarily so as to be able to improve it in such a way as to both extend the growing season and make production from it sustainable (which could be done by such measures as terracing, increasing the humus content and tree-planting). To make such payments would, after all, be merely to recognize that in making the necessary investment the farmer was rehabilitating and conserving an irreplaceable national resource, one whose value will extend far beyond his or her own lifetime. It seems reasonable to expect, not just the nation, but the entire human race, to help pay for such a sacrifice, since all of us and J our children would be the ultimate beneficiaries. If this last point runs counter to conventional wisdom, it should be remembered that the situation of steady resource depletion in much of the Third World today 'is not unlike the situation that existed, for

I N T E G R A T I N G COUNTER-SEASONAL P L A N N I N G

253

example, in North America in the 1930s and, as in that case, the State may well need to offer incentives to balance the farmer's present needs with the long-term interest of society as a whole' (ICARDA 1988, p. 20; emphasis added). Here, then, is an area in which donor agencies could play a crucial role, by responding generously in funding this process of transition. Such funding should take the form of grants — not just to the recipient nation, but to the farm also — rather than loans, for the poorest farmers cannot afford the risk of loans, nor do they often have the necessary collateral to offer as security. INTEGRATION WITH OTHER SECTORS

Since many seasonality problems cut across sectoral limits, incorporating the seasonal dimension into policy formulation on rural development should obviously do the same. Some of these crosssectoral areas have already been identified, such as the linkages between agriculture and transportation policy and seasonal employment generation through public works and rural industrialization. While identification of the whole range of counter-seasonal policy options would be beyond the already wide scope of the present book, some of the relevant areas should at least be identified - if only because ignorance of the connections can cause well-intentioned policy measures to either fail or create other problems. There are many examples in the relationship between seasonality in agriculture and seasonality in health problems. A simple instance is the introduction of wetland rice cultivation under irrigation. This may reduce seasonality problems in food production and consumption, but it will also provide the ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes and other biting insects which cause seasonal flare-ups in debilitating diseases. Such a relationship will be fairly obvious, but others are less so, as the following example will illustrate. Some years ago, the Indian government banned the production of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) on health grounds. This legume is high in neurotoxins and if eaten in sufficient quantity will cause lathyrism, a progressive paralysis of the lower limbs. However, the crop has important counter-seasonal advantages in northern India and neighbouring countries, where it is widely grown. Of all pulse crops it is the most tolerant of both drought and water-logging and it is exceptionally tolerant of cold, so that in northern areas it can be sown when it is too late in the year to start any other legume. It is also possible to undersow grass pea into a standing crop of rice, so that it requires little or no

254

IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PLANNING

tillage or weeding to produce a reasonable yield. As a consequence of these factors, grass pea is the cheapest of all legumes to produce. People in the production areas know that this crop can cause lathyrism, but such are its counter-seasonal advantages that farmers continue to grow it, poor farmers for home consumption and better-off farmers for sale to consumers too poor to be able to afford anything better. The Indian government finally recognized that banning this crop was not going to solve the problem. It therefore very sensibly, if belatedly, lifted the ban, instead sponsoring research on trying to produce varieties that are either non-toxic, or at least very low in toxins.10 The whole area of health care and nutrition, especially the problem of seasonal peaks in the incidence of disease, undernutrition and malnutrition, is one that has received a great deal of attention in the seasonality debate, and various policy measures have been suggested by a number of writers.11 These include supplemental feeding of vulnerable groups (in the dry season to build up bodily stores if logistical problems would be too great in the rains); dry-season immunization campaigns; the careful scheduling of insecticide spraying to coincide with the most effective eradication points in the life cycles of pests and parasites; measures to regulate the timing of births to the period that gives maximum likelihood of survival; stocking and staffing of clinics to ensure adequate supplies and services in the season of peak incidence of disease; and day care facilities for infants in villages with working mothers. Some of these measures seem somewhat impracticable, but many could usefully be implemented as part of an overall and integrated programme to reduce seasonal stress. In no other areas is the need for seasonal planning so pressing as in agriculture, nutrition, employment and health, but there are several other areas on which the issue impinges at least to some extent. For example, certain administrative measures, primarily the responsibility of the financial establishment, could be taken to alleviate the problem of seasonal stress. Chambers and Maxwell (1981) note that there is a need for the timing of the fiscal year to be such as to prevent the cash famines commonly found at particular points in the fiscal year from coinciding with the period of greatest need within agencies that have to cope with seasonal problems. Banks, too, may need to adjust lending and repayment schedules to the seasonal cycle. Another such area is education policy. It may often be advisable for the timing of school holidays to be made flexible with respect to area, so as to coincide with the busy season in a particular locality. In addition, the provision of free or subsidized school meals at particular times of year could play a vital

INTEGRATING

COUNTER-SEASONAL

PLANNING

255

role in reducing child malnutrition — provided, of course, that education were not restricted to the better-off. These two provisions might, in fact, usefully interact, for taken together they could well encourage poor families to send their children to school, if only as a means of reducing peak season demands on foods supplies. Finally, in some cases even certain aspects of foreign policy may have to be adjusted to take seasonality issues into account, as when seasonal labour migration or transhumance must cross international boundaries, or when irrigation development in upper riparian areas of one country causes reduced water flows and salt water intrusion in a country that lies further down the same watershed.

Appendix: Seasonal labour migration at the national level: An approach to rapid appraisal

It was argued in Chapter 6 that conventional methods of data collection are ill-adapted to capturing the nature, timing and extent of labour circulation, particularly seasonal migration within the rural areas. In most developing countries the only information available on such migration is localized and often purely descriptive, so that no reliable insights can be gained regarding the volume, timing, direction and duration of such flows or of their importance at the national level. To try to capture such information through a special purpose census would be extremely difficult, costly and time-consuming. An alternative, suggested here, is to use a 'rapid appraisal' approach quickly and inexpensively to sketch in the broad outlines of migration patterns across the country, and where they exist, across international boundaries. As with all RRA approaches, the process is necessarily iterative, and what will be reported here is merely the first step, serving to indicate key areas where subsequent more detailed research efforts should be concentrated. The method suggested here is a variant of the 'key informant' approach, common in micro-level studies. In a macro study what is required is a large number of such respondents, observers from all over the country who are both readily accessible and possessed of particular qualifications. First, they must be from rural areas and be both interested in, and informed about, rural life, particularly agriculture. Second, they must have some familiarity with the nature, methods and purposes of scientific enquiry. Third, they must be sufficiently well acquainted with, and have sufficient confidence in, the person collecting the data not to require the type of painstaking and time-consuming confidence-building procedures that are an essential (and often 256

SEASONAL LABOUR

MIGRATION

257

w Rangpur

n r 1

^^~—(JamalpurP

F

Bogra [ wj

S,

V 2 7 / ) r^\ Mymens / Rajshahi * V— ( 73 S V ^ 32 Tangail)^^ ^ / Pabna 3 8 32

\V

r'"Kushtia~/rN-—>

V ?

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/ Dhaka 50

Sylhet

s

10

??

\ Jessore I Faridpur^~( Comilla 33 26 ) IT 45 > /Tp-k

t\

Khulna 34

{

A

ft 0

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S

Kilometres 25 50 75 100

/ \ W

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Chittag

\

\ 6 j

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Figure Ai. Regions of Bangladesh and number of respondents from each. Chittag = Chittagong; Mymens = Mymensingh; Patuak = Patuakhali; Chittht = Chittagong Hill Tracts; all other names not abbreviated.

neglected) aspect of good primary data collection in rural areas of developing countries. Taken together these three characteristics will permit the generation of data that are both rapidly collectable and reasonably accurate.

Table A i . A.reas under major crop categories by region (areas in thousands of hectares)

Aus rice

Aman rice

Boro rice

Total rice

Other crops

Region

Area

Area

Area

Area

Area

Barisal Bogra

J

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

Total - cropped area

79

(26.5)

378

(55-8)

32

(4-7)

589

(87.0)

88

(13.0)

676

IOO

(19.2)

261

69

(i3-3)

429

(82.8)

89

(17-2)

518

2

(50.3) (27-5) (49-3) (42.6)

11

(12.0)

60

(34-6)

92

(24-4) (12.9)

411

(6 5 -4) (89.9)

32

46

(IO.I)

457

(22.6)

881

545

722

(,.8) (5-0)

542

(23-0

704

5°

(,,.0)

537 375

177 163 256

(24-5)

39

82

(32.3) (18.0)

(4-4) (3-7)

502

(77-4) (75-5) (76.9) (67-7) (82.0) (72.i)

199

(i5-i)

194

(27-9)

793 457 696

477

(86.5)

75

(13-5)

(1.0)

186

(53-5)

162

(46.5)

349

(86.0)

171

(14.0)

1 224

62

(i9-9) (1,.6)

1053 480

(10.5)

536

(8.6)

411

(89-5) (68.3)

56

52

190

(31-7)

601

CHT

24

Chittagong Comilla Dhaka Dinajpur Faridpur Jamalpur Jessore Khulna Kushtia Mymensingh Noakhali Pabna Patuakhali Rajshahi Rangpur Sylhet Tangail Bangladesh

74

(25-9) (16.3)

194

(22.0)

375

173

(24.0)

262

5

225

173

(M-5)

356

221

(27.8)

276

123

(26.9)

201

207

(29-7)

265

5°

(9-0

406

125 311 124

149 74 215 332 J

93 98

3139

(35-8)

(2 5-4) (^3-2) (24.8) (18.8)

(23.6) (26.6) (!9-4) (22.2) (23-7)

58 498 293 210

(36.4) (50.6) (34-9) (44-o) (38.o) (73-6) (16.7) (40.7) (54-7) (34-9)

i n 113 109 12

3i 20

3 244

682

55i

282

(7i-5)

10

(2-5)

366

(92.8)

28

(7-2)

432

61

(6-7)

708

(77-6)

204

(22.4)

395 9X3

561

(47-3) (44-9)

944

(75-5)

306

(24.5)

1 250

(47-i)

51 244

(4-i)

468

(24-5)

905

174

(39-5)

75

(17-0

346

(90.9) (78.8)

91 93

(9-i) (21.2)

995 439

6008

(45-3)

1 401

(,0.6)

10548

(79-6)

2702

(20.4)

13250

Note: ' Total cropped area' for any region is the total cultivated area multiplied by average cropping intensity; hence there is no double counting. CHT = Chittagong Hill Tracts. Source: Calculated from Bangladesh Government (1985), Tables 2.5, 2.11, 2.15 and 7.4. Totals may not sum exactly due to rounding

METHODOLOGY •

259

Methodology

The methodology was developed and tested in Bangladesh, which provides the material for the case study. The panel of key informants was composed of students of the Bangladesh Agricultural University. The data were collected by one of their teachers, an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Dr Md Abdul Jabbar. Dr Jabbar administered a Bengali language version of a simple four page questionnaire, designed by the present author, to all of his students who came from rural areas. There was a total 549 respondents, who represented — albeit unevenly — every administrative region of the country (Figure Ai). In terms of the desiderata outlined earlier, many of the reasons for choosing this particular panel will be obvious. By definition its members are (normally) rural residents, have an interest in and knowledge of agriculture, and are familiar with research requirements and techniques. The third condition is met because of the very high regard in which teachers are held in South Asia — as throughout the developing world. The questionnaire was deliberately kept short in order to minimize respondent fatigue. It fell into two parts, concerning respectively seasonal in-migration to, and out-migration from, the respondent's home village. Questions related to migrants' time(s) of arrival, length of stay, type of work, crop(s) on which they worked, type and level of wage payments, home and destination areas (of in-migrants and outmigrants respectively), approximate numbers involved and whether seasonal labour migration was a traditional or recent phenomenon.

• Factors making for macro-environmental diversity This is obviously no place for a detailed discussion of the complexities of Bangladesh agriculture, but at least some generalizations are necessary to provide a background against which seasonal labour migration can usefully be viewed. Even a cursory examination reveals a high degree of diversity with respect to macro-environmental conditions. This will perhaps come as a surprise to those accustomed to thinking of Bangladesh as a topographically homogeneous country. The most useful starting point is to examine the mix of crops and the cropping calendar: The country grows a wide variety of crops which are broadly classified, according to seasons in which they are grown, into two groups: (a) KhariJor

260

APPENDIX Jan

Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep Oct Nov Dec

r3.0

• 2.0 1.0 L

Vertical scale of crop blocks (areas in millions of hectares)

0.0

Figure A2. Bangladesh: rainfall, generalized cropping calendar and areas under major crops. (Source: Drawn from data in Bangladesh Government 1985.)

MACRO-ENVIRONMENTAL DIVERSITY

261

Bhadoi crops and (b) Rabi crops. Kharif crops are grown in the spring or summer and harvested in late summer or in early winter. Rabi crops are sown in winter and harvested in the spring or early summer (Bangladesh Government 1985, p. 5). The country does indeed grow a wide variety of crops, but its cropping patterns are absolutely dominated by just one of them, rice. Indeed the Bengali phrase for 'Have you eaten?' is 'Have you taken rice?'. This dominance is reflected in Table Ai, which shows the area and percentage under rice for the crop year immediately before the case study. In every region more than half the cropped area is under this crop, and overall it occupies four-fifths of the country's cropped area. This dominance by a single crop may at first sight suggest little scope for the type of macro-environmental diversity in production conditions that fuels seasonal labour migration, but this is not the case. Even within rice production there are several sources of variation which together create significant inter-regional diversity in the timing of agricultural operations. The table lists three rice crops: aus, grown in the early kharif season; aman, which is grown in the second half of kharif; and boro, a rabi crop. Although all three types of rice are grown in every region of the country, there is obviously large inter-regional variation in their relative importance. Hence, although in terms of the nation's (and most regions') total cropped area the order of importance of the three rice crops is first aman, then aus, then boro, there are important exceptions. In both Chittagong and Sylhet the area under boro is greater than that under aus, while Kushtia (a) grows more than twice as much aus as aman and (b) has a much higher proportion of nonrice crops than any other region. Even in regions where the relative importance of the three crops is the same as at the national level, differences in relative magnitudes can be quite large. Compare, for example, the relative importance of boro and aman in Patuakhali and Mymensingh, or the relative importance of aus in the neighbouring regions of Khulna and Jessore. Figure A2 depicts a generalized version of cropping calendars across the country. In the diagram, crops are arranged in descending order of importance, in terms of area, with the heights of each quadrilateral being proportional to the area under the crop in question. The fact that both ends of the crop blocks in this diagram are wedge-shaped indicates that operations for establishing and harvesting each crop are spread over a period of time — at least a month, and often as much as three months. This partly reflects inter-year differences, but it also reflects local differences in many of the natural and manmade environmental

262

APPENDIX

factors which were discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. The first difference arises from transplanting. Local varieties of transplanted aus generally go on to the land around a month after broadcast varieties.1 In aman the gap is even greater, because broadcast amans are usually deep-water varieties, which are sown in the pre-monsoon season before flooding starts, whereas transplanted ones are shallow-water varieties, planted near the end of the monsoon season. The second source of differentiation is crop variety. Figure A2 distinguishes only two categories, 'local' and ' H Y V , but there are in fact several modern, and tens of thousands of local, varieties, each differing with respect to maturity character, flood-tolerance, drought-tolerance, stem length and other characteristics that create diversity in growing season and growing period. Even so, there is often a significant difference between the timing of crop operations on 'local' varieties and 'HYVs'. This is reflected in Figure A2, (compare, for example, the two types of boro, where the divergence is due primarily to differences with respect to cold-tolerance). An example in an earlier chapter (see Figure 5.1 and discussion) showed similar differences in timing for modern and traditional varieties of transplanted aman. The third source of diversity is species: twenty per cent of the country's total cropped area is, after all, under crops other than rice. There are more than sixty of these, differing in importance from area to area, and only a very few of the major ones are shown in the figure. The most important non-rice crop, and the farmer's major cash crop, is jute. The importance of jute is magnified by the fact that it is a crop of the early kharif season and across much of the country provides one of the few alternatives to aus rice. The greater number and variety of non-rice crops are grown in the rabi season, when what has traditionally been the least important of the rice crops, boro, is also grown. Major crops of this season are foodgrains (particularly wheat), pulses, oilseeds, vegetables (especially potato), and a number of industrial crops, such as sugar-cane and tobacco. Most of these crops are not shown in Figure A2, because the area under each is relatively small. Collectively, however, they make a considerable impact on overall production of food and fibre. Diversification in rabi cropping further contributes to regional diversity, for the importance of these crops varies very greatly from region to region. A major reason for the third position of the boro crop in Bangladesh is that the rabi season is the dry season, and rice with its high moisture requirements can be grown only under irrigation or where the level of moisture retained in the soil is unusually high. This last point

MACRO-ENVIRONMENTAL DIVERSITY

; • . : : : : : : : Dhaka '•'•'•'. 'r^y.'.

Key: ^

^

More

^^ ^QQQ m m

2501-3500 mm 2001-2500 mm 1500-2000 mm Kilometres 0

25 50

75

Less than 1500 mm 100

Figure A3. Annual rainfall distribution by regions.

263

264

APPENDIX

introduces a further source of inter-regional diversity in agricultural production in Bangladesh: soil moisture. As indicated in Chapter 4, many factors help determine the amount of water that is available to a crop in relation to its needs at any particular time of year. Just two of these, rainfall and irrigation, will be considered here. Walsh (1981) has analysed a number of case studies of rainfall seasonality in countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America; one of them was Bangladesh. Of all the areas studied he found Bangladesh to have the least degree of rainfall seasonality, comprising only two classes: C3 and D3 (see Table 2.1). Nevertheless, as Figure A2 shows, rainfall patterns in Bangladesh are still very markedly seasonal, varying from almost nothing in November to January to around 400 mm in June, July and August. Variation in the total level of rainfall, as well as in its seasonal distribution, can have a profound effect upon agricultural seasons. Regional variation in total annual rainfall across Bangladesh is very high (much higher, indeed, than is suggested by Walsh's figures). Figure A3 shows total rainfall by region averaged over a ten year period. This indicates a very clear pattern to the rainfall regime, which ranges from very high levels in the east of the country to what are, by the standards of the humid tropics, fairly moderate levels in the west. The extent of variation is very great, ranging from 1350 mm in the driest region, Rajshahi in the far west, to more than three times that level (4200 mm) in the wettest region, Sylhet, on the opposite side of the country. Table A2 shows the extent of irrigation in the country. It is interesting to compare these figures with those in Table 5.2, for this shows that in terms of the proportion of cultivated area which is under irrigation, the Bangladeshi figure, while significantly less than the Asian average, is virtually the same as the average for the developing world as a whole. It would, of course, be fallacious to argue from this that results from Bangladeshi studies are applicable elsewhere, but it does show that 'irrigation bias' is likely to be neither unduly high nor unduly low — at least in terms of developing world averages. Across the country there is clearly very considerable variation in the importance of this factor of production: in proportionate terms Chittagong Region has almost ten times as much of its cultivated area under irrigation as has Patuakhali, while, in absolute terms, Mymensingh has 24 times as much irrigated land as the Chittagong Hill Tracts. There are, of course, many reasons for this variation, but the important point as far as the present discussion is concerned is that irrigation adds yet another factor to the mix that results in regional diversity, and

MACRO-ENVIRONMENTAL DIVERSITY

265

Table A2. Bangladesh: Irrigated area by region (1984Ij) (areas in thousands of hectares)

Region

Engine-powered

Other Methods

Total

Area

Area

(%)

Area

(%)

Chittagong 74 100 Bogra Kushtia 55 Mymensingh 189 80 Tangail Sylhet 75 Dhaka "3 Jamalpur 64 Comilla 99 Rangpur 94 no Rajshahi Jessore 7° Pabna 56 CHT 5 Noakhali 25 Barisal 23 Dinajpur 47 Khulna 17 Faridpur 23 Patuakhali 14 Bangladesh '334

(%)

96

(43-5) (40.9) (38.2)

265

(37-9)

(i-4) (17.6) (4-4)

83 '95

(33-3)

135

(26.6)

(i-9)

69

(25-9)

(25-5)

51

(17-7)

125

(33-8)

21

(7-0

121

(21.9)

4i

(27.0)

76 3

(16.4) (10.9)

(32.0) (10.9)

121

(22.2)

23

(24.0)

5

(28.$)

(19.1) (13.8)

28

(5-5) (8.6)

128

(24.6)

59

152

(22.4)

(M-9)

26

(3-8)

137

(19-7)

(13.8)

20

(3-9)

90

(17.8)

(1.6)

62

(16.6)

(8.6)

11

50

(15.0)

(6.6) (7-2)

6 6

(4-9) (9-3) (3-9) (4-7) (4-6)

37

(7-0) (7-9)

61

(15-*) (14.2) (12.8)

14

(2.8)

62

(12.,)

14

(3-3)

31

(7-2)

9

(i-9)

(6.6)

0

(0.1)

33 '4

(15-4)

$86

(6.8)

1920

25

(4-7) (22.2)

Notes: 1. 'Engine powered' irrigation refers to electric- or diesel-powered pumps and tubewells. 'Other methods' refer largely to traditional manual devices for lifting water from streams, canals and wells. 2. The percentage figures show irrigated area as a proportion of the region's cultivated area (i.e. net of multiple cropping). The regions are arranged in descending order according to the percentage of net cropped area under irrigation. Source: Calculated from figures in Bangladesh Government (1985). Tables 5.7 and 7.2.

266

APPENDIX

through it the 'push' and 'pull' factors that lead to seasonal labour migration. A small part of the complex linkage between moisture regime and cropping pattern - and one which, as will be shown later, is an important determinant of migrant labour flows — can be illustrated by returning to the figures in Table Ai. Here it was shown that two regions, Sylhet and Chittagong, have almost a quarter of their total rice area under boro. In Chittagong this results from two factors. First, as the most heavily irrigated region in the country, it can support a substantial area of this water-demanding crop in the dry season. Second, Chittagong contains the most southerly parts of Bangladesh, and many places are too warm even in winter for alternative temperate crops, especially wheat but also potato, which can be grown under winter irrigation in more northerly areas. In the case of Sylhet, the high proportion of boro results in large measure from the fact that much of the region is low-lying, so that large tracts of land are too deeply flooded for crops to be grown in other seasons. Even on relatively high land, the high rainfall levels and the fact that a great deal of surface water descends on Sylhet from the hills of Assam, means that there is an ever-present danger of flooding in the rainy season. On the other hand, the heavy flooding results in soil moisture levels during the winter months which are sufficiently high to support a crop of boro at a time of year when in most of the country such a crop can be grown only under irrigation. Sylhet has by far the largest area of non-irrigated boro in the country, an estimated 70000 hectares in the year before the migrant labour study. This is more than three times the corresponding figure for the next highest region (Comilla, which is immediately downstream of Sylhet), ten times the corresponding figure for Chittagong and more than a third of the total for the entire country. Another point that is worth noting about Sylhet is that it is one of the few regions in which engine-powered forms of irrigation are, in terms of irrigated area, less important than traditional methods (Table A2). This region also has the highest total area by far —121000 hectares or twenty per cent of the national total — under manual irrigation. This is a further reflection of the relative abundance of water in parts of Sylhet: abundant surface water in the dry season — especially in conjunction with unusually high levels of soil moisture - means that the amount of effort required to irrigate a crop will be unusually low, and any required irrigation can be delivered by manual methods. The existence of relatively low irrigation requirements for a normally

THE CASE STUDY FINDINGS

267

irrigated crop have in themselves important implications for labour demand. Lower-than-normal irrigation requirements reduce the production costs of rice, and thus, other things being equal, will increase its relative attractiveness for the farmer. To the extent that this potential is realized, labour demand for boro rice will tend to increase. The unusually high area under boro in Sylhet certainly suggests that this production potential is indeed being realized. The effect on the level and seasonal distribution of labour demand is discussed below.

+ The case study findings The discussion here falls into two parts. The first two sections, although they present the case study findings, are also closely concerned with checking their validity against what is known about regional differences in cropping patterns and the timing of crop operations as summarized above. The remainder of the analysis rests on the case study findings alone.

TYPE OF EMPLOYMENT

The type of work done by seasonal migrants, as reported by the case study respondents, is shown in Figure A4. Clearly the agricultural sector is the dominant employer of such labour: overall onlyfiveper cent reported migrants as working on non-agricultural tasks.2 (Such work is dominated by construction work, especially under government sponsored ' food-for-work' schemes.) Within the agricultural sector the harvest period is clearly the most important single source of employment for migrants. Obviously this is an operation in which speed is essential, but another important reason for this dominance is that this is the time of year when farmers are best able to pay for hired labour, either in cash or in kind. Local labourers can be employed at various times throughout the year on the understanding that they will be paid after the harvest, but such an arrangement would clearly be much more difficult to conclude with labourers from another part of the country. There is, nevertheless, a considerable volume of non-harvest work done by migrants, and again considerable inter-regional diversity. In many parts of the country harvesting and post-harvest operations provide only half (in Barisal less than half) of the seasonal employment. These are typically areas in which transplanted rice is relatively

268

APPENDIX

D • L !_• i /••••! \ Rajshani/ Eiiii-tLi

) 'pi^Jffl I 5 V *** '

Mymens '

Tangail

Non-agricultural w o r k ^ S o w i n g or transplanting^ Other agricultural work B P ^ S Weeding Kilometres 6 25 50 75 100

Harvest/crop processing

Figure A4. Type of work performed by migrants (percentages).

important, for seasonal migrants are often employed for transplanting, which, unlike sowing broadcast, is a labour-intensive task (see Figure A6). Weeding is generally third in importance, although here too there is marked inter-regional variation: in three regions it is more important than sowing/transplanting. Although weeding is a very labourintensive task, its timing is not so crucial as that of transplanting and harvesting. It is interesting that these findings as to the relative importance of these three tasks coincide exactly with those of an earlier

THE CASE STUDY FINDINGS

269

Sugar-cane

Jute jttg^igj Other winter crops ~'

crops

Kilometres

6 25 50 75 100 Figure A5. Crops on which migrants work.

farm-level study which covered the regions of Rangpur, Bogra, Dhaka, Comilla and Noakhali (Gill, 1981, 1983). In the case study there were very few reports (only one per cent) of migrant labour being used for land preparation. This too accords with the findings of the study just reported: almost all land preparation in Bangladesh is done by bullock plough, and farmers are extremely reluctant to entrust valuable animals to a stranger who might maltreat them. If labour is hired for ploughing it is as part of a complete

270

APPENDIX

ploughing team, comprising ploughman, animals, yoke and plough — a system that effectively rules out migration. When migrants are employed for land preparation it is either for ridging or for manual breaking of clods for crops that require an especially fine tilth. The dominance of rice in the agriculture of Bangladesh is reflected in Figure A 5. This is obviously true at the aggregate level, but in many cases the inter-regional differences in the relative importance of this crop are also reflected in this diagram. Hence the unusually high proportion of the total cropped area of Sylhet, Chittagong and Patuakhali Regions which is under rice (Table Ai) is echoed in the seasonality of employment for these regions, as shown in Figure A5.3 At the other end of the scale, Kushtia Region has the lowest proportion of total cropped area under rice and the lowest reported proportion of migrants working on this crop. Two major cash crops, jute and sugar-cane, emerge from the case study as important in the employment of seasonal migrants. Postharvest processing of jute is unusually labour intensive, as the fibre must be stripped from the stalk by hand after retting is completed. Sugar-cane production falls into two sectors, depending upon whether traditional or modern methods of processing are used. In both cases harvesting is labour intensive, while in the traditional sector the processing of the extracted juice into jaggery is a skilled job normally performed by itinerant specialists who may well be seasonal migrants. No other individual crop was mentioned by a sufficient number of respondents to merit special mention. It is clear, however, that 'other winter crops' (i.e. other than boro rice and sugar-cane, which is harvested in winter) provide a significant level of employment for migrants in some regions. THE TIMING OF SEASONAL MIGRATION

Examination of the distribution of employment between the three main tasks and between the three main rice seasons, as shown in Figure A6, highlights some important differences between these crops.4 One crucial point to emerge is a clear negative relationship between employment in transplanting and weeding. With only one important exception, rice which is grown under wetland conditions in Bangladesh is transplanted, while that which is grown as an ' upland' crop is sown broadcast. One important benefit of growing a crop infloodedfieldsis that this suppresses weeds, few of which can tolerate such conditions. Hence there is an important element of trade-off here: transplanted/

THE CASE STUDY FINDINGS

271

Transplanting/sowin Weeding Harvesting 0

Boro/Aus/Aman Kilometres 25 50 75 100

Figure A6. Distribution of migrants' work among rice crops.

wetland rice is labour-intensive for transplanting, but not for weeding, while in the case of broadcast/upland rice these conditions are reversed. This fact emerges very clearly from Figure A6, as does another important point, namely the fact that boro and aman (apart from deep-water aman) are usually grown as transplanted/wetland crops,

272

APPENDIX

while aus is usually, but not always, grown as a broadcast/upland one.5 The relative importance of transplanting and weeding for the three rice crops is clearly shown in the figure. The impact of these conditions on the employment of seasonal migrants is seen most clearly in the case of Rangpur Region in the north, but the overall pattern can be discerned in most of the histograms of this map. Generally speaking, the overall dominance of transplanted aman in the agriculture of Bangladesh is reflected in the picture of seasonal distribution of employment as depicted in Figure A6. So too are certain other facts, such as the relative importance of aus in Kushtia, Jessore and Faridpur. However, it would be quite wrong to assume that the level of employment provided by a particular operation on a particular crop is simply a function of the area it occupies. This is most clearly illustrated in the case of Sylhet, where Figure A6 shows that migrant labour is mainly employed for boro rice. This is despite the fact that the area under this crop is only around half as much as that under aman. This is most interesting, for it reflects what is known about production conditions for boro in that region. In areas of Sylhet that flood deeply time is of the essence in the production of boro, for the growing season is unusually short. The land must be prepared and the crop transplanted as early as possible after the floodwater has receded, for if it is not and the next season's flooding occurs even a little earlier than usual the crop may be wiped out before it can be harvested. Similarly there is a need to get the harvest in as swiftly as possible, so that those parts of Sylhet that are subject to early flooding require a large number of labourers within a relatively short period of time. As the diagram suggests, this creates considerable 'pull' conditions for seasonal migration twice a year. It also shows a relative lack of employment opportunities in other regions at this time of year, and this can be assumed to create reinforcing 'push' factors for migrants. It is interesting in this context once more to compare the situation in Sylhet with that in Chittagong, which also has around 2 5 per cent of its total cropped area under boro rice. Here the crop is mainly grown under the much more controlled and manageable conditions of irrigation, so that the seasonal distribution of employment of migrants more closely reflects the relative importance of the three rice crops in terms of area. What has been said so far indicates that where it has been possible to compare case study findings with what is already known about the spatial and temporal mix of agricultural activities in Bangladesh the former hold up very well indeed. We can now therefore proceed to draw conclusions based upon the case study results alone. If these

THE CASE STUDY FINDINGS

273

conclusions seem at times to push far beyond the limits warranted by the data, the twofold purpose of the approach should be recalled. First, using very broad brush strokes, it attempts quickly to give an overall picture, where otherwise the scene on the ground would be shrouded in fog (broken at best by the occasional small gaps which micro studies provide). Second, it serves to pinpoint areas where further and more rigorous research is required for purposes of clarification. THE VOLUME OF MIGRATORY

FLOWS

Table A3 shows the average reported levels of in-migration per village by month and by region. Although these figures may seem quite high, they probably understate the true situation, for, no matter how conscientious respondents are in reporting migratory flows of which they are aware, it can reasonably be assumed that there may be other such flows, perhaps even in their own villages, of which they are unaware. However, there is no particular reason to suppose that this factor produces any systematic bias in the results with respect to relative importance by month or by region. Examination of the numbers involved in seasonal flows adds another dimension to the purely proportionate picture presented in Figure A6. The figures on Sylhet are again interesting, since employment there peaks at such very different times of year from all other regions. Moreover this region employs around 50 per cent more migrant-days per village than the national average, which is obviously important in view of the timing difference. The degree of inter-regional variation is clearly very large. Khulna emerges as the most important region in terms of number of migrantdays per village, with more than twice the national average. As Figure A6 showed, this migration is very heavily concentrated on the transplanting and harvesting of aman rice: no other region has such a high concentration for either task. It is obviously no coincidence that Khulna also has a higher proportion of its total cropped area under aman than any other region in the country (Table Ai). Perhaps more important still is the difference in employment peaks between Khulna and its neighbouring regions of Jessore, Faridpur and Barisal. In each of these regions aman rice is much less important than in Khulna (occupying 38, 35 and 56 per cent respectively of these regions' rice areas compared with Khulna's 74 per cent). In the case of Faridpur, for example, the main crop is deep-water aman, which is harvested in October—November, whereas in Khulna it is mainly transplanted aman,

Table A3. Mean levels of seasonal in-migration by region and by month (person-days/village)

Region Barisal Bogra Chittagong Comilla Dhaka

Jan/

Feb/

Mar/

Apr/

May/

jun/

Jul/

Aug/

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

67 67 95

78

89

100

25 16

42

159

56 175

0

0

0

114

5 84

10

780

0

11

301

267

209

J4°

222

271

171

33 63 57 I2 3 590 2

209

127

346

0

0

144

0

75

224

127

224

118

52

26

2

0

0

75 32

472

32 563

190

495 445 467

381 16

260

182

113 209

329 627

68 132

Jessore Khulna Kushtia Mymensingh Noakhali Pabna Patuakhali Rajshahi Rangpur

'4!

123

404 163

Dinajpur Faridpur Jamalpur

168

16

2

0

96

84

52

355 5O5 jpo 641

t)'

306

3J4 i93 263 474 304 753 604

i75

1533

334

2923

187 872

4 2 79

37°

2

JJ*

380

2832

0

15

15

25

84

34

328

109

369 328

214

157

3i7

701

202

53 336

43

78 85 378 99

283 145

in

71

110

382

37O

34i

219

271

118

356 '343

"7

Bangladesh

328 720

289 428

0

»7 34 86

52

166

45

59

5 34

170

380

97

0

21

34i

870

2846 3696 2987 3852 6023

2

34

1226

794 347

1335

44

0

90

7'4

"i 167

42

Sylhet Tangail

33°

106

130

44

354 59

890 6oj

849 2656 1412 3421 2402

95

3°

0

290

75 159 2 43 334 433 173

402

0

175

33 777

494

15

0

45 526 48

Year

100

482

15

5°

261

63 5 87 3O7

Nov/ Dec/ Dec Jan

5i5

68

5

35

0

Oct/ Nov

797

230

5 74 8

Sep/ Oct

66

75

0

109

12

12

48

0

5

0

0

0

49 264

74

37

187

94

75 146 86 J

93

80

2846 2

310

493 870

92

1131

997 55i

Notes: i. Figures in italics are peak months for the Region in question. 2. Months were reported according to Bengali calendar; equivalent segment of western calendar (i.e. mid-month to mid-month) is indicated here.

THE CASE STUDY FINDINGS

275

which is harvested in December—January. In none of these regions does employment peak at the same time as in Khulna, a factor which would clearly provide both ' push' and ' pull' forces favouring migration into Khulna. This question is taken up again later. From a policy viewpoint, village level averages are less interesting than the overall level of seasonal migration and its spatial and temporal distribution. Estimates of the latter are presented in Figure A7. These figures were derived by multiplying the average number of reported migrants per village by the number of villages in the region in question (Bangladesh Government 1986). This is obviously a very rough-andready approach, but nevertheless, where the number of villages from which the estimates were drawn is reasonably large, and assuming that the villages from which the panel was drawn are reasonably representative with regard to region-wide migration patterns, the estimates should not be too wide of the mark for present purposes.6 Seasonal labour migration clearly emerges as a major feature of the agricultural economy, engaging, according to these (minimum) estimates — and exclusive of travel times — no less than 240 million person-days annually. When this macro-level picture is examined, the relative positions of Khulna and Sylhet, as shown in Table A3, are reversed. This is because Sylhet is a much more densely populated region than Khulna. Both have approximately the same geographical area, but large tracts of the south of Khulna lie within the Sundarbans Reserve Forest. Sylhet has 10000 villages against Khulna's 3500 (Bangladesh Government 1986). What is most noticeable about the Sylheti pattern, apart from the sheer size of the histogram bars, is their extreme seasonal variation and the difference in timing from most other regions. The relationship between in- and out-migration as depicted in this map is an interesting one, for it should immediately be apparent that the total reported level of the former exceeds that of the latter by a very large margin. Were this picture correct, it would imply a very substantial volume of net in-migration to the rural sector of Bangladesh from other areas. And since no respondent mentioned cross-frontier migration, these other areas could only be the towns and cities within the country. Urban—rural migration is known to be fairly common in Bangladesh. Migrants working in the urban informal sector (especially rickshaw pullers) typically spend most of the year in the towns and cities, but return to their home villages at peak seasons, particularly for the harvest. This conforms with the evidence provided by Mukherji (1985) for Varanasi and other Indian cities. Moreover, since these

276

APPENDIX

Kilometres

0

25 50 75 100

Figure A7. Estimated monthly distribution of in- and out-migration (thousands of person-months).

migrants tend to live in particular areas of the cities, often in shared 'bachelor quarters', the conditions exist for informal information exchange about seasonal employment opportunities in various parts of the country. Hence it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that the cities

THE CASE STUDY FINDINGS

2

77

Migrants coming from Migrants going to

Within district > ^ F=K Within district Neighbouring district y l | | | fen!;! Neighbouring district Other districts^™ P ^ Other districts Kilometres 0

(No shading indicates no data)

25 50 75 100

Figure A8. Regions of origin and destination of migrants (percentages).

may contain labour reservoirs which support a more complex pattern of labour circulation than just the occasional return to the home village. Nevertheless this hypothesized net urban-rural migration, even if correct, is most unlikely to explain more than a small fraction of the huge difference in the two sets offlowsdepicted in Figure A7. The bulk of difference can almost certainly be ascribed to a limitation of the methodology. University students are most likely to come from the upper strata of rural society, and hence from families that employ,

278 APPENDIX rather than supply, seasonal migrants. Such persons may be aware o/the departure of surplus labour from their villages during the slack season(s), but they are unlikely to have the same detailed level of information that they can supply about in-migrants working on the farms of family and friends. This does not, however, invalidate the findings as to the volume and timing of migratory flows, for, net urban-rural flows apart,figureson in- and out-migration are simply mirror images of each other, and either set, if correct, would by itself present the complete picture. (This is why Table A3 presented figures on in-migration only.) Nor, indeed, does it invalidate the findings of a study of the relative importance of in- and out-migration, for figures on out-migration from any given .region can be calculated from the reports on the provenance of inmigrants provided by respondents from all other regions taken together. This last approach has been used in the calculation of total and net inter-region flows in the next section. DIRECTION OF MIGRATORY FLOWS

Figure A8 shows in proportionate terms the regions of origin of inmigrants and destination of out-migrants as reported by the panel of case study respondents. In order to avoid unduly complicating the picture at this stage, these flows have been placed into only three categories: those within the region, those between neighbouring regions (i.e. those with a common border) and 'others'. Clearly for most regions the bulk of migration may be termed ' local', i.e. within the region or between neighbouring regions. Khulna is an extreme example of this, and this may well be connected to the fact, noted earlier, that this region's (area-weighted) rice seasons are somewhat out of phase with those of its neighbours, so that shortdistance migration is induced. At the other extreme is Sylhet, where major 'pull' factors discussed earlier reinforce the important 'push' factor that Sylhet's peak is the slack season elsewhere in the country. This combination is evidently sufficient to overcome the relatively high transaction costs and lengthy travelling times implicit in long distance migration. In other parts of the country, where agricultural seasons are more similar over a relatively large geographical area, small differences in the timing of labour peaks may justify labour circulation within a region, or into a neighbouring one, but there may be neither sufficient time nor sufficient financial incentive to justify venturing further afield. Khulna is evidently a case in point.

Table A4. Regions of provenance and destination of seasonal migrants

(a) Estimated total migration (in thousands of person-months) Regions in-migrants come from Barisal Bogra Chittagong Comilla Dhaka Dinajpur Faridpur Jamalpur Jessore Khulna Kushtia Mymensingh Noakhali Pabna Patuakhali Rajshahi Rangpur Sylhet Tangail Total* 'Long distance'

Total *

Long Disstance

92 _ 3

427

161

0

0

180

0

0

Regions out-migrants go to Bar

Bog

Com Dha

Ctg 16

20

0

0

93

0

0

3 7

4_

23

6

_l

0

0

28

172

0

0

0

0

7 3

11

0

3'

18 40

0

11

0

254

0

0

465

M4 45 " 26

0

13

0

8

114

10

.

95

10

*8

0

8_

0

0

0

0

.

356

0

167

•59

0

0

0

95

12

318

10 10

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

4_

0

0

0

0

0

234

0

0

26

3

36

0

0

7

0

0

0

0

20

0

63

0

0

0

204

7

0

0

0

_7

402

83

1 296

'4

0

80

'55

11

138

0

11

10

0

12

0

25

0

7°

0

0

12

0

8

0

0

369

0

0

0

0

32

12

29

40

0

59

26

21

0

23

0

0

53

0

0

0

0

3

25

0

0

13

.36

0

2_

10

0

0

0

0

4

j_

77

323

90

729

3

'9

4'

46

.

-42_ 0

3_

"5

0

0

0

0

0

4*

0

6

8

0

0

13

0

282

'4

0

0

0

0

0

4_

0

7

0

78

126

11

14

0

0

0

0

40

0

0

0

0

0

69

8

0

0

2

9

0

3

0

28

4

IO
Figure 3.1 impact of modern rice varieties, m - 1 3 , Figure ;.i irrigation, 262-3, 266, 272, Table A2 rainfall, Figures A2, A3 reverse discrimination, 65 seasonal labour migration, 257-92, Figures A4-A8, Tables A3-A8 seasonal peaking of births, 60 seasonal price spreads, 162 banks, 163, 164, 166, 241, 247, 254 see also credit, formal barley early varieties, 107, 108 effect of altitude, 85, 86, Figure 4.3 late varieties, 108 barriers to international trade, 169—70 market entry, 155 basal metabolic rate (BMR), 53 beans effect of altitude, 94 protein composition, 78 varietal diversity, 108 Belem (Brazil), Figure 2.2 beliefs, see customary beliefs Bengal, 163 bias, 4, 140, 178, 220-6, 236 see also 'tarmac bias', etc. bicarbonate loss, 77 bimodal rainfall pattern causes, 35 effect on nutritional stress, ; 1-2 effect on tree species, 210 seasonality differences from unimodal areas, 51 birth, see seasonality of births birth weight, 60 black market, see market blood circulation, 53 boia fria (labourers, Brazil), 148 Bolivia, 166 Bombay, Figure 2.2 Borlaug, Norman E., 198 Borneo, 135, 136, 149

borrowing, see credit Boston standards, 62, Figure 3.4 Botswana Herero, 71-2, 295 (n.13), Figure 3.6 Kalahari San, 70—3, Figures 3.5, 3.6 livestock sector, 205 'bottlenecks', 107, m - 1 3 passim, 120, 124, 179-83 see also labour bottlenecks/constraints brain damage, 79 Brazil babassu palm, 117 boia fria labourers, 148 colonization of Amazonia, 73 highlands, 157 pastures, 206 'breadwinner', 64 breast milk nutritional value, 59 passive immunity, 59, 62 seasonal drop in production, 52, 60 withdrawal, 77 see also women, lactating broadcasting, see sowing buckwheat, 85 Buddhism, 42 budget constraints, 15 5 buffalo, 102, 195 buffer stocks, 163 bullocks, see draught animals bunds, field, 186 bureaucracy, 166, 169, 223, 248 bureaucratic bias, 223—4 Burundi, 93, 210 busy season, 135, 226 see also peak season calcium, 76 calendars, 41 see also cropping calendar, 41 calories, 56, 74, 288, 296 (n.16) calving interval, 101 camels, 102 capacity utilization, 22, 186, 190 capital constraints, 154 costs, 186 -intensive technologies, 182, 190, 191, 224,225; see also technological change

318

INDEX carbohydrates, 52 see also starchy staples carbon dioxide, 37, 92 cash crops, 66, 143, 163, 197 earnings monopolized by men, 66—7, 149 flows, 1, 162, 166—9 cassava as farm enterprise, 167 as hungry season crop, 115 labour requirements, 115 livestock feed, 116 nutritional value, 74 on nutrient-depleted soils, 87 shade tolerance, 126 caste, 164, 181 casual labour, in—13, 179, 183, 195, Figure ;.i see also landless labourers catalytic role of seasonality, 18 cattle, 102-3, ! }6 see also livestock causes of seasonality, 7, 27—43 cellulose, 201 census, see data collection Centro lnternacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), 204, 206, Table 8.2 Centro lnternacional de la Papa (CIP), 204, 205, 211, 236, Table 8.2 Centro lnternacional de Mejoramientio de Mai^j Trigo (C1MMYT), 204, 205, 208, Table 8.2 Centrosema acutifolium, 206 cereal banks, 223, 246—8 cereals, see staples Chad, 122 charity, 45 Cherrapunji (India), 31, Figure 2.2 chickpea, 204, 205 childbearing, 68 children at risk, 60—1, 68, 79 discrimination against, 64—5, 67—8, 217

effects of seasonal migration, 59, 148 employment, 118, 227, 245 first six months, 45, 61, Figure 3.3 nutrition, 74, 2; 5

six months-to-two years, 4;, 59, 60-4, Figures 3.3, 3.4 under-fives, 45, 61, 68, 69, Figure 3.3 China agricultural research, 204, 237 historical counter-seasonal measures, 2

irrigated area, 123, Table 5.2 chlorophyll, 38 choice of technique, 187 see also technological change cholera, 50 Christchurch (New Zealand), Figure 2.2 circular causation, 48 see also ' vicious circle' climate interaction with environment, 80-91 source of seasonality, 27-40 climatic zones, 34 clouds, 31, 32, 39 clover, 110 coffee, 94 collateral, 164, 16;, 253 Colombia, 169, 206 Colombo (Sri Lanka), Figure 2.2 colonial/colonialism, 24, 73, 128, 137, 139, 142, 197 colonization schemes, 73, 128, 194 combine harvesters, i, 129, 178-9, 188, 243, 298 (n.3), 298 (n.9) commercialized agriculture, 222 common lands, 251, 293 (Ch.i, n.2) see also open access resources communications barriers, 169—70, 196 effect on seasonal problems, 52, 174 effect on transaction costs, 1; 3 role in land alienation, 17; role in seasonal migration, 146 role in spreading infectious disease, 5 2 community -based control, 247, 300 (O1.9, n.7, n. 9 ) ties, 143 comparative advantage, 169 compensatory growth, 101 competition, 153, 154, 161, 163, 180, 217, 246, 248 see also monopoly

319

INDEX complementarities, see seasonal complementarities conception, seasonality of, see seasonality of births conflict of interest, 13 5 conspicuous consumption, 42 constraints, see budget constraints, draught power constraint, etc. Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) formation, 202 non-supported institutes, 208-11, 299 (n.14) research foci, 210 Secretariat, 202 -supported institutes, 208-11, 299 (n.16), Table 8.2 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), 202 consumer resistance, 169 consumption, 252, Figure 1.2 see also food continental locations, see continentality continentality, 34, 82-3, 8j, 94, 160, Figure 4.1 convection, 31 co-operatives, 247, 248 cool season crops, 204 see also winter crops coping mechanisms, 104-31, 226, 244, see also counter-seasonal measures Coptic Christianity, 41 Coromandel coast (India), 34 corruption, 223 cost—benefit analysis, 144 cost-effectiveness, 219 cost of seasonality exacerbating poverty, 10—12, 21, 51, 214

opportunity cost (q.v.) production cost, 1, 17, 267 seasonal migration, 144 social, 143, 145, 148-50 storage, 51, 104—6, 164 transaction costs, 143, 145-6 transportation costs, 160-1, 284-6 passim cotton, 120, Figure 5.2

counter-seasonal measures access to resources, 129-30 cereal banks (q.v.) cassava, 115 crop diversification, 115, 205, 253 'economic' strategies, 130—1 developed countries, 6, 104, 120, 127-9, 2 I 4 effect of resource depletion, 173-8 historical evidence, 1-2, 107-8, Table 5-i

irrigation (q.v.) labour-augmenting technologies, 183-8 links with sustainability, 252 market orientation, 66, 151-72 passim mixed farming, 103 new developments, 125, 112—13 passim, 18 3-7 passim, 202-5 passim, 206-8 passim organizational, 129 patron-client relationships, 131 planning, 250—5 processing (q.v.) seasonal labour migration (q.v.) smoothing seasonal fluctuations, 24 socio-economic strategies, 130-1 storage (q.v.) survival strategies, 129-31 Thailand, 167 trading, 119 traditional, 104—50, 173, 226, 235, 238, 239. 2 5 ' varietal selection and development, 96, 106-13, 237 water management (q.v.) see also seasonal complementarities cowpea, 204, 207 credit default penalties, 164 formal, 11, 12, 165—6, 247 loan size, 166 market, 153, 163-9, 2I 5 mobilization, 168 non-formal, 17, 164-5, 167, 168 revolving, 12, 15 subsidies, 154, 165, 182, 194, 298 (Ch.7> n. 5) time preference, 9 320

INDEX -worthiness, 164 see also indebtedness; interest rates critical levels of income and consumption concept, 8-9, 293 (n.3) duration, 14 effect of expropriation, 73 inter-seasonal and intra-seasonal interaction 14—16 protein loss, 79 qualitative and quantitative aspects, 14 seasonal variation in, 14-16 critical temperatures, 93 crop development, see development, stages (of organisms) crop diversification as counter-seasonal strategy, 115, 119, 120

effect on marginal productivity, 20 crop failure, 191 crop residues, 89, 210 crop ripening, 129 crop variety characteristics, 96, 262 relation to species and environment, 94-6 passim crop yields effect of cultivation, 18; effect of irrigation, 123, 191 effect of marginal utility of consumption, 21 effect of maturity period, 22 modern varieties, 112 'package' approach, 188 undue research emphasis on, 21, i n , 198-203 passim cropped area, 122 cropping calendar, 243, 259, 261, 290, Figure A2 cropping intensity, effect of early varieties, 108 irrigation, 123, 191, 194 mechanization, 179 residual moisture, 114 cropping pattern, 2, 86, 204, 243, 290 cultivation, 2, 124, 176, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 238, 252 cultural factors, 140 see also social factors in seasonality

custom hiring, 129, 193 customary beliefs, 47, 64 safeguards, 73 taboos, 60 cycles agricultural, 137, 143 cropping, 208 life cycles of pests, 123, 219, 254 pastoral, see pastoral cycle prices, 163 production, 134 reproductive, in animals, 101, 102 reproductive, in humans, 38, 222 seasonal, 72, 190, 230, 290 dairying, 128 dams, 190, 232, Figure 9.1 see also irrigation Dasain sacrifice, 43 data collection census, 139, 291 iterative approaches, 231 'key informant', 259, 291 methodology, 259, 276, 291 on-farm, 140 primary, 139, 228-33, 25 7 questionnaires, 140, 259 rapid rural appraisal, 230-1, 256-92 requirements, 226-33 secondary, 139, 226-8 surveys, 139, 231 see also seasonal analysis day length, 38-9, Figure 2.6 see also photoperiod deficiency diseases, 77 deforestation, see resource depletion dehydration, 77 demand derived, 40 elasticity, 180, 183 for labour, see labour demand seasonality of, 39-40, 161, 294 (Ch.2, n.3), 296 (Ch.5, n.i) dependency relations, 129-31, 134, 216 depreciation, 1, 189, 196 'deseasonalizing' data, 226, 299 (n.3) deserts, 34, 297 (Ch.j, n.4) see also Kalahari

321

INDEX desirable characteristics, 107, 196 developed countries agricultural mechanization, 127-9 agricultural research and extension, n o , 235 counter-seasonal strategies (q.v.) perspectives on seasonality, 6-7 seasonal price spreads, 161-2, Figure 7-2 transportation links, 157 development assistance, see donor agencies 'debate', 6, 139, 224 impact on seasonality, 172 stages (of organisms), 38, 85, 9;, 119, 123, 296 (G1.4, n.2) structural shift in economy, 139 'tourism', 4 see also economic development diarrhoeal disease diarrhoea and vomiting (D & V), 62 in animals, 101 nutritional loss, 74, 77 seasonal incidence of, 47-74 passim diet restricted by cost, 75 vegan, 74—5 vegetarian, 74—5 see also nutrition dietary energy requirements, 44 digestibility of food, 99-100, 120 digging stick, 127, 238 disadvantaged, the definition, 44 effect of monopoly, 245 effect of technological change, I2 9 - 3 ! . 177 in agricultural research, 222, 228-37 passim, 299 (n.2) in policy statements, 218 powerlessness, 3, 129-31,189,219, 247 qualitative aspects of diet, 74 role of handicrafts, 118, 209, 235,

age, 13, 64 'calculated', 67-8 in allocation of food, 56 in allocation of workloads, 56 involuntary, 67 reverse, 65 disease crops, 199, 204, 238 endemic, 176 relationship with nutrition, 48 resistance/susceptibility, 199, 204 seasonal incidence, 44-6 passim, 227 see also diarrhoeal disease distance, in nomadic pastoralism, 98, 102, 134 non-formal credit, 169 seasonal migration, see seasonal labour migration distortions, see market distortions diurnal variation, 39 see also day length diversity in production conditions, 81, 98, 106, 1 2 9 , 2 0 8 , 215

varietal, 108, 199 division of labour, 65, 149 see also gender typing donkeys, 102 donor agencies, 202, 224, 236, 246 donor bias, 224—6 double cropping, see cropping intensity, effect of downstream effects, 177, 232-3, 250, 25 5, 266, Figure 9.1 drainage, 126, 244 draught animals, 112, 124, 186, 187, 191, 229 see also livestock 'draught power constraint', 186, 187, 2 43 drinking water (animal), 55, 70, 98,

101—2

drinking water (human) dugwells, 55 quality, 13, 48, 60, 219 role of women and children, 13, 66 dromedaries, 102 drought-resistance, see tolerance of drought

244, 251

role of homestead production, 208-9 survival strategies, 129-31 discrimination against women, see women against children, see children 322

INDEX dry areas, 3; dry season bias, 4 child survival, 62 effect on animal breeding cycles, 102 effect on animal nutrition, 70, 98-103 passim, 205-6 occupations, 142 marginal productivity, 19 moisture availability, see soil moisture monsoonal areas, 87, 262 prolonged, 176 trading, 25, 142-3 dualism, 164 dung, 55, 89, 252 see also fertilizer Dunn Nutrition Unit, 49 Durga Puj'a sacrifice, 43 duty, see taxes dynamic aspects of seasonality, 3, 16 early varieties, see maturity character earnings, see income Earth's tilt,. 28, 293 (Ch.2, n.i), Figure 2.1

East Africa, 34, 206 see also individual

countries

ecological agriculture, 239 ecology, 176 economic choice, freedom of, 136, 154, 245 development, 174, 175, 218, 220-1 integration, 151, 152, 153, 170, 172 leverage, 154 macro-economics, 140, 243 opportunity, 180, 243 economists, 5, 6 economy centrally planned, 151, 189 market based, 151, 161 structural shifts, 139, 174 Edinburgh (Scotland), 85, Figure 4.1 education, 133, 223, 235, 247 eggs, 47 see also oestrus Egypt ag-iruhural research, 204 Cop;;:. Christianity, 41 irrigation, 122

Nile Valley, 92 seasonal exports, 169 El Salvador, 50 elasticity, 180—i, 183 elevation, 21 see also altitude employment creation, 185, 250, 299 (n.io) formal sector, 138 opportunity, 143, 146, 175, 180, 243, 250, 272, 276 seasonal variation, 1, 13, 117, 120, 138, 146, 183, 188, 190, 179, 191 see also: labour; labour supply; landless labourers empowerment, 219, 231, 237, 247 energy bodily storage, 76 'crisis', 120 dietary requirements, 44, 289 food, 47, 115 needs, 174 negative energy balance, 73 -rich foods as cheap food, 77 seasonal deficits, 53, 54, 73, 295 (n.15) seasonal requirements, 53 Entebbe (Uganda), Figure 2.2 enterprise, see farming enterprise entrepreneurial spirit, 153, 154 environment effect on inter-plot differences, 20, 21 effect on movement, 81 interaction with climate, 80-2 macro level, see macro-environments meso level, see meso-environments micro-environment, 81 physical, 80 environmental adaptation, 84, 115, 120, 215 change, 196 concerns, 224, 298 (O1.7, n.6); see also resource depletion conditions, 134 ephemeral species, see species Equator, 29, 34 equatorial trough, 32-3, 77; see also intertropical convergence zone zone, 27, 28, 35

323

INDEX equinox, 34 equity issues, 18, 182, 183, 190, 218, 225, 242, 245, 252

erosion, see soil erosion essential elements of diet, 75,77, 295 (n.i 5) estate agriculture, 133 Ethiopia Coptic Christianity, 41 famine, xiii labour, 178, 185, 188 evaporation, 92, 124, 185 evapotranspiration, 92, 293 (Ch.2, n.2) evolution adaptability to poor nutrition, 76-8 by weeds, 97 exports, 169, 198 expropriation, 73 extrapolation, dangers of, 51, 72 Faidherbia albeda, 117

fallows, 110, 239 family dependency, 130 see also intra-family disparities famine, xiii, 115 'farmer-back-to-farmer', 234 'farmer first and last', 234 farmers' almanac, 2 farming enterprise complementarities, 113-19, 167 defined, 113 traditional systems, 174, 203 farming systems research, see 'systems' Fasciola hepatica, 101—2

fashions in development, 224 fasts, 41-2 fat deposits, 70, 78 energy supply, 52 essential fatty acids, 75 loss in animals, 101 reserves, 54 -soluble vitamins, 76 feasts/festivals, 42-3, 167-8 feeder roads, 15 7 female -headed households, 140 seclusion, 45, 65, 66, 209 see also women; girls, discrimination against

'fertile crescent', 175 fertilizer bias, 235 counter-seasonal effects, 119 effect on crop yields, 188 imports, 186 labour-augmenting, 184 organic, 55, 238 -responsive varieties, 196, 202 feudalism, 153 fever, 47 financial problems, 128 fisheries, 118, 209, 211, 299 (n.14) flooding, 21, 87, 160, 201, 244, 272, 292

flower initiation (FI), 95-6, 112, 120 flowering display, 95 flowers, 119-21, 169 fodder, 201, 207, 251 see also livestock folate, 77 folic acid, bodily storage, 76 food availability, 54-6 passim biological value, 78, 79 consumption, 1—18, 104 crops, 198 energy, 52 prices, see prices, seasonal variation role in bodily growth and maintenance, 52 seasonal variation in consumption, 1 8, 56 stocks, 54 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 202 food storage, bodily reserves, 54 financial costs, 51, 7;, 105 nutritional loss, 76 on-farm, 163, 221 perceived as 'women's work', 66 food-for-work, 244, 267 foodgrains, 208 see also staples foreign exchange, 186, 194, 196 forests, 89, 174, 275, 282, 299 (n.14), 300 (n.9) see also deforestation; trees

324

INDEX formal sector, 138 see also modern sector fragile lands, 176, 177, 299 (n.14) fragmentation, 186, 298 (n.2) frost in definition of tropics, 28 -tolerance/resistance, see tolerance fuel, 46, 53, 65, 182, 186, 189, 196, 209, 219, 251, 294 (Ch.3, n.2) futures market, IOJ Gambia, The baseline nutritional studies, 49 ' oxenization' schemes, 184 seasonal in-migration, 134 seasonal weight loss, 54, 57, 62 Gangetic Plain, 34, 108 garment industry, 39 gastro-intestinal disorders, 49, 50 gender typing changing patterns, 66, 149, 245 effects of seasonal migration, 136, 149 source of disparities, 65, 106, 222 genetic characteristics, 106, 107, 120, 196, 198, 199, 202 diversity, 199, 221, 238 geophytes, 115 Germany, no—11 germination, 88, 96 Gezira Scheme (Sudan), 185 Ghana, 54, 134 girls, discrimination against, 64—5, 106 glasshouses, see greenhouse production goats, 102 ' g o o d ' years, 16-17, 2 I 7 government intervention, 154-5, 16}, 171-2, 182, 189-90, 193, 217, 219 see also government policy government policy agricultural, 181, 182, 189, 212, 214—55 passim developmental, 251 educational, 254 financial, 223, 254 foreign, 25 5 health, 252 industrial, 252 transportation, 246, 253

grain-to-straw ratio, 198 grass pea (Lathyrus sativus), 253-4 grasslands/grazing, 99, 174 Great Lakes Highlands (East Africa), 93, 108 Great Rift Valley, see valley green manure, 126, 252 'green revolution', 194, 198, 199, 221, 229, 251, 297 (Ch.7, n.2), 298 (Ch.8, n.6) greenhouse production, 119-21 Greenwich (England), Figure 2.2 groundwater, 92 growing period defined, 95 length, 106, 119, 161, 205, 249, 262 specific, 113, 194, 262 growing season defined, 94 differences between species, 113, 262 effect of soil moisture, 124-6, 238 extension of, 123, 124-6, 209, 249, influence of weeds, 95 length, 92, 106, 125, 161, 184, 2oi, 204, 272 new, 204 photoperiodism (q.v.) trees, 125 growth, organic, 38, 119, 123, 296 (Ch.4, n.2) Guatemala, 52 guinea worm, 48 Gujarat (India), 124 Guyana, 206 43 'half life' of nutrients, 76 handicrafts, see disadvantaged Harare (Zimbabwe), Figure 2.2 harrowing, 129 harvest as busy season, 142, 178-9, 187, 238, 267, 272, 275 effect of fasting, 42 effect of seasonal migration, 136, 148, 150 effect of similium, 48 festival, 42

325

INDEX pre-harvest hungry season, i, 3, 64, 150

sacrifice, 42 women's roles, 65 harvesting, 129, 142, 167, 185, 188 see also harvest Havana (Cuba), Figure 4.1 Hawaii, 85 head loading, 160 health, 5, 44-79 passim see also disease hemispheres complementarities, 81 north-south differences, 29 seasonal, Figure z.i hidden charges, 165, 166 high yielding varieties, 194, 197-202, 206, 237, 262, Table 8.1 see also modern varieties Himalayas, 34, 84, 87 Hindu Kush, 34 Hinduism, 43, 294 (Ch.2, n.j), 298 (n.2) hoe cultivation, 127, 184 Honiara (Solomon Islands), 135 horses, 102 horticulture, 127, 209, 211 hospital records, 227 hot season stress, 60, 117 household as decision-making unit, 133, 144, 216, 219, 230, 297 (Ch.6, n.3) see also intra-family human capital development, 133 humid tropics, 263, Figure 2.4 humidity, 31 'hungry millet', 108 hungry season as busy season, 69 as season of malnutrition, 76-9 passim,

235

as season of undernutrition (cf. malnutrition), 76-9 passim child survival, 50, 64, Figure 3.4 crops, 108, 115; see also maturity character debts, 229 employment, 24, 111 food availability, 75, 130, 210, 217, 2 3 5> 247, 296 (n.17)

for livestock, see livestock pre-harvest, 1, 3, 161 prices, see prices, seasonal variation rainy season (q.v.) role of early varieties, 22, 108, 112, 203-4 role of irrigation, 123 transportation problems, v6o stress transmission, 214 hunter-gatherers Amazon rain forest, 73 effect of settled agriculture, 73, 177, 251

in the macro-environment, 132 Kalahari San, 70-2, 77 seasonal migration, 139 special problems, 69 hydro-electric schemes, 175 hygiene, 49, 59 HYVs, see high yielding varieties Id al-Adha, 43, 294 (n.7), 296 (n.17) illiteracy, 154, 155, 237 immunity, 59, 176 incentives, 182, 195 income current, 9 future, pledging of, 9, 15—16, 216 generation, 208, 209, 216 -maximization strategies, 143 non-farm, 167, 174, 216 off-season, 116, 179 peak season, 16, 167, 289 proportion spent on food, 44, 289 seasonal variation, 11, 39, 134, 167, 168 indebtedness, 17 see also credit

India farmer-pastoralist relations, 118 guinea worm, 48 irrigation, 123, 191 labour displacement, 178-9, 199 lathyrism, 253—4 seasonal labour migration, 138, 142 short season varieties, 108 Indian Agricultural Research Institute, 197

Indian subcontinent, see South Asia

326

INDEX indigenous knowledge, 231, 235, 251 see also traditional technologies Indonesia migrant workers, 13; see also Java

(ICARDA), 204, 207, 253, Table 8.2 International Center for Living Aquatic Resource Management (ICLARM),

industrialization, 118, 174, 214-15, 218,

International Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF), 210 International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICR1SAT), 204, 205, 207, Table 8.2 International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), 209 International Food Policy Research Institute (1FPRI), Table 8.2 International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (1ITA), 204, 207, 209, 211, 299 (n.i), Table 8.2 International Irrigation Management Institute (1IMI), 209 International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases (ILRAD), Table 8.2 International Livestock Research Centre for Africa (ILCA), 206, 207, 208, Table 8.2 International Rice Research Institute (1RR1), 204, 211, Table 8.2 International Service for National Agricultural Research (1SNAR), 233, Table 8.2 intervention, see government intervention intra-family dependency relationships, 130 disparities, 44, 56-69, 75, 217, 222, 228, 229-30

209

"5 infant survival, 50, 64, Figure 3.4 infants, see children inflation, 16; see also prices, seasonal variation information flows/gaps, 153, 154, 155. 226 infrastructure, 24, 146, 156, 215, 217, 244 inheritance, 17;, 298 (n.2) input supply, 248—9, 298 (Ch.8, n.6) see also agro-chemicals; fertilizer; seed, etc. insects, 48, 50, 118, 252, 254 isolation, 27, 82, 91 see also solar radiation inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ), 3 2 - } . 34, 35. Figure 2.3 intercropping, 115, 204 interdisciplinary approach, 3, 236 interest rates effect of collateral, 12 formal credit market, 11 levels, 153, 164, 165, 166, 196 negative rates, I I , 165 nominal rates, 16;, 166 on past loans, 12 post-harvest, 164 real, 165, 168 see also credit

interlinked markets, see market international agricultural research centres, see agricultural research; individual centres migration, 144, 145, 255, 275 trade, 169 International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (1BPGR), Table 8.2 International Board for Soil Research and Management, 209 International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas

see also kinship ties investment, 119-29, 186, 189, 252 Iraq, 2, 107, Table 5.1 iron, bodily storage, 76 irrigation, advantages, 123—4 as counter-seasonal technology, 121—4,

!

4 4 > 171—2, 2 1 6 , 2 5 3

Bangladesh, 262-3, 2(>6, 272 bias, 4, 124, 212—13, 2 ^3 canals, 191

effect on women's workloads, 150 2

37

INDEX in medieval South China, 2 in relation to mechanization, 190-6 India, 190-1 irrigated areas, 122-3, Table 5.2 on valley bottoms, 92 Pakistan, 123, 171-2, 191—3, Figure 8.2 potential, 176 pumps, 189 research, 209 schemes, 193, 194, 196, 218 Sri Lanka, 141 surface, 193 tubewells, 172, 193, Figure 8.2 wells, 191 see also water management Islam attitude to usury, 165 calendar, 41 duty towards poor, 130, 296 (n.17) fast, see Ramadan feasts, 43, 226 inheritance, 298 (n.2) pilgrimage season {Hajf), 43 itinerant labourers, 14;, 146 Ivory Coast, 134 Jainism, 42 Jamaica, 165-6 Japan, 12c, 300 (O1.9, n.6), Figure 5.2 Java (Indonesia) cultivation technique, 187, Figure 8.1 gender typing, 66 'minibus revolution', 146 'stacked' cropping, 126 jute, 163-4, 262, 294 (O1.3, n.2) Kalahari, 1, 70-3, Figures 3.5, 3.6 see also deserts Kali (Hindu goddess), 42 Kathmandu (Nepal), 85, Figure 4.2 kenaf, 167 Kenya employment complementarities, 143 Kikuyu people, 73 Land expropriation, 73 livestock sector, 205 Machakos project, 52-3 qualitative aspects of diets, 74

research on tree species, 210 water harvesting, 125 kinship ties, 144 kitchen gardens, 209, 235 kwashiorkor, 59, 295 (n.8) labour allocation, Figure 5.3 -augmenting technologies, 119, 12;, 1 8 3 - 8 , 190, 191, 215, 242

bonded, 164 bottlenecks/constraints, 107-13 passim, 120, 124, 127, 128, 179-83, 186—90 passim, 196, 199, 204, 207, . 242 circulation, 133-48 passim, 277 conscription, 137 contractors, 146-8, 152, 286, 287, 289-90 demand, 146, 179, 191, 193, 195, 196, 244, 267, 286, Figures 5.1, 5.2, 8.2 -displacing technologies, 119, 127, 130, 131, 178-83, 185, 190, 216, 221, 225, *4>, 242. M 3 . * 9 8 ( n -9). 299 (n.io) family /farm household, 13, 183, 191, 298 (Ch.8, n.5) forced, 137, 215 intensive technologies, 181, 182, 185, 191, 196, 242, 244 peak season (q.v.) productivity, 19-20, 176, Figure 1.3 -saving technologies, 127—9, 2 I ^ scarcity, 135, 137, 291 supply, 13, 23, 135, 137, 146, 180, 181, 196, 221, 244; see also landless labourers surplus, 146, 196, 291 lactation, see women Lagos (Nigeria), 9 0 - 1 , Figure 4.4 land alienation, 24, 150, 174, 175 fragmentation, consolidation, 241, 242 improvement, 119 levelling, 126 masses, 82 preparation, 141, 193, 269, Fig. 8.1; see also ploughing season 328

INDEX productivity, 19-20, 179, 182, 185, 2 '7, reform, 218, 240-2 unoccupied, 176 use, 156-9, Figure 7.1 'land to the tiller', 240 landless labourers access to resources, 129, 215 as the 'ultra poor', 44 credit needs, 167-9 effect of inheritance systems, 175 effect of land reform, 240-1 effect of mechanization, 180-2, 183 food stocks, 54, Figure 3.1 in farming systems research, 229, 235 in seasonal labour migration, 143—j,

livestock breeding, 205 classification of products, 100-1 crossbred, 205 diseases, 101, 205 effect of religious feasts, 42-3 environmental factors, 98-103 exotic, 20; markets, 227 on acid soils, 87 parasitic infestation, 101-2 ranching, 206 research, 205—6, 210 role of trees, 117 seasonal variation in feed availability, 2, 43, 69, 85, 98, 100, 102, n o , 118, 2 0 1 , 206, 207—8

150

scasonality of employment, 13, 183; see also employment landlords, 131, 150, 154, 163, 182 landowners, 54, 226, Figure 3.1 landslides, 160, 161 large farmers, 131, 150, 166, 167, 179, 181, 188, 189, 226, 254 see also 'surplus' farmers lathyrism, 253-4 Lathyrus sativus (grass pea), 253-4 Latin America agricultural research performance, 212, 299 (n.15)

irrigated area, Table 5.2 migrant labour flows, 134 savanna areas, 87, 206 see also South America; individual countries latitude, 39, 81, 82, 120, 129, 160 leaching of nutrients, 87 leaf-fall, 126 legal factors in seasonally, 39-40 Lenten fast, 27, 41 Lesotho, 50, 244 libido, 60, 103 lignin, 201 Lima (Peru), Figure 2.2 liver adaptation to protein loss, 79 cirrhosis, 79 flukes, 102 storage of vitamins, 76

see also pastoralists loans, see credit; interest local varieties, 262 see also counter-seasonal measures; crop variety lodging (stem collapse), 113, 201 logging, 135 London (England), 90—1, Figure 4.4 long-day crops, 96 see also photoperiodism longitudinal nutritional studies, 52, 53 'lumpiness', 178, 298 (Ch. 8, n.6) lysine, 78 macro-environments counter-seasonal strategies based on differences, 104, 129, 151, 216, 244 definition, 81 effect of altitude, 86 effect of latitude, 129 interaction of variables, 94 pastoralism, 98—102 seasonal complementarities within, 100, 132, 134, 140, 151, 169, 172, 226, 230, 246, 259, 278

seasonal migration within, 81, 86, 94, 98-102, 140, 259, 261 trade between, 105 maintenance, 128, 186, 189 maize -based cropping systems, 203, 208 drought-tolerant varieties, 204

329

INDEX early varieties, 108, 114 effect of altitude, 8j, 86, 94 effect of labour migration, 136 fertility requirements, 87 importance, 115 seasonal price spreads, 162 malaria, 47—j 3 passim Malawi, 53, 210 Malaysia, 135, 194 male domination, 64-7, 222, 250 Mali draught animals, 186 hungry season, 69 milk production, 103 'surplus' and 'deficit' households, 55 malnutrition, see nutrition management problems, 179, 216 manioc, 94 manufacturing industry, 6, 221, 225 see also industrialization manure, 103, 118, 126 see also dung; fertilizer Maranhao (Brazil), 116 marasmus, 59, 295 (n.8) marginal farmers, 3, 130, 175, 183, 216, 219, 241 impact, 217 lands, 176, 203 product/productivity, 19-20, 180, Figure 1.3 utility of consumption, 21, 219, 221 marginalization, 73, 78, 81, 177, 215, 2

39 maritime locations, 82-3, Figure 4.1 market accessibility, 176, 202 as counter-seasonal strategy, 66-7, 105, 151-72 passim 'black', 155, 166 channels, 196 development, 152, 153, 175 distortions, 151-72 passim, 196, 245-50 economy, 105, 151, 154 effect on gender typing, 66 entry, 153, 165, 246 failure, 146, 151-72 passim, 179, 181, 245-50

forces, 1; 1-72 passim, 190, 215, 217 free 248 intelligence, 144—5, '5 3~4> '56, 168, 169 interlinked, 154, 165, 217 intermediaries, 151—3 passim mechanism, 214 orientation, 151-2; see also subsistence agriculture secondary, 163 signals, 15 5 tertiary, 163 maturity character catch crops, 19 early-maturing varieties, 96, 107, 204 effect of altitude, 85, 86, Figure 4.3 historical records, 107-8, Table 5.1 influence on yield, 22 late-maturing, 96 period, 21 quick-ripening/short duration varieties, 2, 92 type, 96, 262 varietal differences, 107, 296 (n.3) see also short duration crops meals, see wages; school meals mean-variance relationships, 8-9, 168, 176, 214, Figure 1.1 see also poverty-seasonality relationships mechanization, see agricultural mechanization meso-environments animal husbandry, 103 counter-seasonal strategies, 104, 129, 216 definition, 81-2 diversity within, 94, 106, 129, 199 effect of altitude, 86 labour supply, 180 seasonal complementarities within, 103, 129, 226 metabolism, 52, 56 methionine, 78 Mexico City, Figure 2.2 seasonal exports, 169 seasonal labour migration, 145-6 strawberry production, 170—1

330

INDEX micro-environment, 81 microclimate, 34 Middle East, 85, 17; see also West Asia migration ITCZ, 32, 34, 35, Figure 2.3 labour, see seasonal labour migration permanent, 134, 137 rural-urban, 134, 225 theory, 132-;, 138-9 urban—rural, 134, 275—8 migratory species, 47 milk, 57, 103 see also breast milk millet, 85, 94, 108 minerals, essential, 77 minimum tillage, 124, 239 minimum wage legislation, 154 mining, 133 minorities cultural—religious, 45 discrimination against, 46 economic, 45, 69—73, 176, 219 modern sector, 134—7 passim, 156, 164 varieties (MVs), m , 298 (Ch.8, n.6), 300 (App., n.5); see also seed m o i s t u r e , 8 1 , 86, 9 1 , 92, 121, 125, 126, 266

see also soil moisture money, as unit of value, 151-2 moneylenders, 154, 164—5» J68 see also credit, non-formal monoculture, 174, 238 monopoly labour contractors, 148 profits, 1; 2, 156 public sector, 223, 245, 248 monsoon, see winds

monsoonal category of climates, 33 Montevideo (Uruguay), 157 Moscow (USSR), Figure 4.1 mountains orographic lifting, 31, 34 transhumance, 85, 100 mountainous areas, 81, 160, 176 Mozambique, 85 mulching, 118, 252 multidisciplinary approach, 231, 236

multiple cropping, see cropping intensity, effects of; cropping pattern multi-purpose crops, 201, 208, 209 muscle tissue, metabolization, 53, 56 mutual exchange, (of labour, etc.), 22, 118, 129, 131, 144, 230, 300 (O1.9, n.7) national agricultural research centres, see agricultural research natural selection, 94, 97 Nepal altitude effect on plant development, 85, 86 altitude-temperature relations, 84-5, Figure 4.2 aspect, 91 seasonal labour migration, 142 seasonal price spreads, 161—2, 297 (Q1.7, n.4). Figure 7.2 terai, 84, 142 'new household economies', 229—30 niacin, 76 niche, seasonal, 120 Niger pastoralists, 57, 72 seasonal weight loss of men and women, 57—9, Figure 3.2 seasonal workloads of men and women, 57-9, Figure 3.2 Nigeria commercial crop zone, 134 discrimination against children, 68 railway development, 146 rainfall and soil moisture, 90—1, Figure 4.4 seasonal food consumption, ;6 slack season trading, 142—3 Sokoto Caliphate, see Sokoto vitamin deficiencies, 77 Nile Valley, see valley 'nitrogen flush', 97 nomadic pastoralists, see pastoralists non-formal sector, 166, 196 non-perishable produce, see perishability non-seasonal industries, 7, 9-12 passim, 135-8, 143, 214, 218, 242

331

INDEX North Africa, 117, 204, 207 see also individual countries nutrients bodily storage, 76—9 plant, 86, 119, 185 requirements, 47, 115, 119 supply, 115 wastage, 47-5} nutrition adaptability to poor nutrition, 76 animal, 205 longitudinal studies, 52, 53 malnutrition, 59, 73-9 passim, 148,209 malnutrition cf. undernutrition, 59, 73-8 qualitative versus quantitative aspects, 73-9 relationship with disease, 48 special needs, 57, 68, 73 undernutrition, 6;, 73-9 passim workers, j see also protein; calorie nutritional status, 45, 49, 51, 60, 62, 65, 67, 148 stress, 22, 50 value, 74, 115 oats, 107 oestrus, 102 off-season, 209, 223, 244, 246 see also out-of-season crops; slack season oilseed cake, 172 oilseeds, 208, 262 old persons, see discrimination, age on-farm research, 174, 234; see also agricultural research; 'systems' open-access resources, 129, 206, 216 opportunity cost, 109, 145, 180, 186, 210, 227, 296 (Ch.j, n.2) optimum economic, 130 planting/sowing dates, 105, 106, 186 organic farming, 239 organic growth, see growth, organic organization, 129 orographic lifting, 31 out-of-season crops, 106, 170

overgrazing, see resource depletion ovulation, 60 oxen, 186 see also draught animals ' oxenization' schemes, 184 pack animals, 160 'package' approach, 194, 196, 298 (Ch.8, n.6) paddy, 162, 18;, 194 see also rice Pakistan coefficient of seasonality, Table 7.1 irrigation, 123, 171—2, 191—3 labour displacement, 199 maize in Swat Valley, 208 trends in seasonality, 171-2, Table 7.1 palatability, 60, 115 Papua New Guinea, 50, 29; (n.9) parasites, 47, 97-8, 101-2 participatory approaches, 234-j see also rapid rural appraisal passing down seasonal stress, see stress transmission; discrimination pastoral cycle, 98, 102, 134, 230 pastoralists as economic minorities, 69, 210 diet, 74 hungry season, 69 in the macro-environment, 98, 132 loss of land to agriculture, 72 nomadic, 69, 81, 98, 118, 139, I J I , 177. 2O7> 25> seasonal variation in feed availability, 2, 69, 85, 98, 100, 102, 118 seasonality contrasts with farmers, 69-70 semi-nomadic, 69, 18;, 207 transhumance, 69, 85, 100, 255 pasture, 98-100, 296 (n.4), Figure 4.5 patron-client relationships complementarities, 13 1 effect of agricultural mechanization, 24

effect effect effect effect

of colonialism, 24 of population pressure, 24 on disadvantaged, 4 on seasonal labour migration,

143, 144, 150, 216, 244

332

INDEX photoperiodism defined, 95 in animals, 102 in plants, 95-6 in rice, 96, 112, 199 varietal differences, 107, 112 see also short-day crops; long-day crops 226-7 photosynthesis, 38, 120 employment, 67, 131, 162, 182, 183, physiological features, 70 188, 193, 215, 227, 229, 243, 275, pig, 102 298 (Ch.8, n.j) energy requirements, 53; see also peak pigeon pea, 204 plains, 160 season, workloads plant breeding, 197, 199 in-migration, 13 8-48 passim plantains, 74 in same meso-environment, 131 planting season income, 16, 167, 289 dates, 208 labour, 20, 22, 48, 59-60 passim, effect of guinea worm, 48 1 2 9 - 3 1 , 135, 138, 178, 181, 207, effect of similium, 48 *75> 2 7 8 effect on credit needs, 167 mechanization, 178—9, 190 effect on seed prices, 162 nutritional problems, 47, 48, 50, 25; plough culture, 55, 65, 127, 129, 184, prices (q.v.) 185, 238 sowing, 162 ploughing season workloads, 20, 22, 48, 56-9, 60, 67, effect of fasts, 42 207, Figure 3.2 effect of feasts, 43 peas, 107 requirements, 188, 229 penetration of ideas, 15 3 seasonal migration, 136, 148, 269 perception of seasonality, 4-6, 25, 226, ploughpan, 186 231, 250 pneumonia, 50 perennials policy, see government policy herbaceous, 95 p o o r farmers, 202, 219, 222, 252, 254, weeds, 97 299 ( n . i ) woody, 95, 208, 23; see also marginal farmers; small see also species farmers perishability 'poor relations', 130 classification of produce, 105 population density, 175, 242, 298 (n.7) effect of time preference, 11 population growth, effect on effect on agricultural location, 156 critical levels of income, 17 effect on nutritional standards, 75 gender typing, 65 effect on prices, 161—4 passim economic minorities, 69, 72 permaculture, 239 patron-client relationships, 24, 131 Peru, 86, 150, 204 resource pressures, 175, 239, 291 pests, 97-8, 202, 204, 238 seasonal labour migration, 137, 291 pH value, see soil, acidity size of holding, 77 phanerophytes, 116 traditional counter-seasonal Philippines, 168, 232, Fig. 9.1 technologies, 174 photoperiod, 37, 39 population pressure, see population photoperiod sensitivity, see growth • photoperiodism

effect on village systems, 23, 230 mutualities, 131 peak season work, 20, 22, 48 peak season births, 59-60 conception, 60 disease, 44-8 passim, 59-63 passim,

333

INDEX Port Harcourt (Nigeria), 146 Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), Figure 2.2 post-harvest credit, 164, 247 expenses, 167 operations, 66, 106, 112, 185, 267; see also processing prices (q.v.) potassium salts, loss of, 77 potatoes early varieties, n o effect of altitude, 85, 86, 94 winter crop, 262, 266 potential evapotranspiration (PET), 293 (Ch.2, n.z) poultry, 171, 209, 211, 235 poverty-powerlessness (distinction), 220

poverty-seasonality relationships access to water, 13 agricultural economics, 5 attack at two levels, 25, 240 employment opportunities, 13 limits on market development, 154 mean-variance matrices, 8-18 mutual reinforcement, 2, 11, 217—18 national level, 18—19, 40, 215 nutritional aspects, 44—79 passim technological change, 173, 202 power tillers, 189 see also tractor powerlessness, 3, 129-31, 189, 219, 231 see also disadvantaged; empowerment precipitation, 31, 125, 176 pregnancy, see women prices controls, 154, 155, 221, 245 factor, 19; 'farm gate', 156, 175 food, 156, 182, 248; see also prices, seasonal variation inter-regional differences, 152 seasonal variation, n , 17, 106, 120, 123, 152, 155, 156, 161-3, 167, 2ij, 246, 247, 290, Figure 7.2 selling, IOJ support, 154 private sector, 245-50 passim

privatization, 223, 299 (n.5) problem orientation, 235, 236 processing, 104-6 passim, 119, 130, 244, 270

production, effect of seasonality on flows, 1, 8 'professional bias', 4 'project bias', 4, 224 proletarianization, 133, i;o protein animal, 74, 75, 78 as energy source, 52, 78 complete, 78 deficiency, 78 digestibility, 100 -energy malnutrition (PEM), 59, 73, 79, 295 (n.8) human, 78 levels in pastures, 99, Figure 4.5 vegetable, 74, 78 vegetable-animal conversion, 42 public works, 244, 300 (n.8) 'pull' effect, see seasonal labour migration pulses, 208, 210, 262

Punjab (India), 108, 178, 179 'push' effect, see seasonal labour migration pyrethrum, 94 qualitative aspects of nutrition, 73-9, 296 (n.16) questionnaires, 140, 259 rabbits, 209 railways, 146, 157, 160, 217, 246, 286 rain shadow effect, 34, 160 rainfall basis for classifying seasons, 31, 34-9, Figures 2.4, 2.5, Table 2.1 reliability, 34 research based on rainfall zones, 209 seasonal variation, 30-8, 143, 160, Figures 2.2, 2.4, 4.5, A2, A3 temperate zone, Figure 2.2 tropical, 88, 160, 185, Figures 2.2, 4.4 see also bimodal rainfall pattern; unimodal rainfall pattern rainfed agriculture, 123, 124, 141,

334

171-2,

203

INDEX rainstorms, 160, 161, 176 see also storms rainy season accessibility problems, 24, 75 as hungry season, 4, 49, 226 crop nutrient supply, 115 effect on soil fertility, 87 flooding, 112—13, 201 fuel problems, see fuel in pastoralism, 58, 98, 117 interaction with season of birth, 60—4 labour requirements, 48, J9-60 passim, 138, 207 livestock feed supply, 117 nutritional problems, 75 onset, 97 rotting of produce, 112 threshing problems, 112 transportation, 160-1 Ramadan, 27, 41, 42, 294 (Ch.2, n.4) rapid rural appraisal, 140, 230-3, 250 see also data collection; seasonal analysis rate of interest, see interest rates rationing, 154, 165, 166 reciprocal obligations, see mutual exchange refrigeration, 157 regime maintenance, 221 relay cropping, 124 relief, 91-2, 126, 160 religious factors in seasonality, 41-3, 130 see also individual

religions

remittances, see seasonal labour migration remote areas, 75, 202 rents, 195 reproductive cycle, see cycles research and development, 177-8, 197, 199 see also agricultural research resource conservation and management, ' 7 6 . 2 37, 2 5 2 resource degradation, see resource depletion resource depletion deforestation, 73, 125, 174, 176, 291 effect on critical levels of income, 17, 73

effect on disadvantaged, 129, 237 effect on gender typing, 65 effect on seasonal labour migration, 137, 29!> 2 9 2 effect on traditional counter-seasonal strategies, 173-8 environmental effects, 173-8, 237 overgrazing, 100-2, 174 short-term gain/long-term loss, 237-9 passim, 252 soil erosion, see soils respiratory disease, 50, 52, 62, Figure 3-4 rice as basis of dry-season trading, 142 -based cropping/farming systems, 203, 207, 261 -90 passim -cotton rotation, 120, Figure 5.2 deep-water varieties, 262, 273 drought-tolerance, see tolerance of drought early varieties, 204, 207 effect of altitude, 85 high-yielding varieties (q.v.) importance, 115 late transplanting, 204 on nutrient-depleted soils, 87 research overlaps, 211 sales,- 167 semi-dwarf varieties, m , 199 -stem borer, 97-8 water requirements, 114 rickshaw pullers, 138, 275 ridges, 126 Rift Valley, see valley rinderpest, 205 risk -aversion, 8, 154, 174 children at risk, see children concept in economics, 5 dietary, 44, 56 in seasonal migrai . 1 , see seasonal labour migration of borrowing, 253 of lending, 16j, 168 of trading, 1 j 5, 161 role of irrigation, 123 storage, 11, 104, 105, 163-4 -taking, rewards for, 1 j 2

335

INDEX rivers cultivation of floodplains, 92 dry season pastures, 100-2 erosion, 177 Ganges, 289 Meghna, 289 navigation, 81, i;6, 160, 161 Nile, 92 salinity, 88 Uruguay River, 158 see also downstream effects ritual slaughter, 42 roads, 157, 158, 160, 217, 218, 246 Roman agriculture, 2 root crops 74, 208 root systems, 88, 125 rootlessness, 143 row-planting, 189, 208 Rwanda, 93, 210 Sahel, 90, 122-3, 20 salinity (in rivers and soils), 87-8, 250, Saudi Arabia, 297 (Ch.j, n.4) savanna, 87, 206 savings, 9, 11 see also credit scale diseconomies, 181 schemes, 193, 194 school, attendance records, 227 holidays, 254 meals, 254 seasonal analysis diagnostic surveys, 208 input-output tables, 281, Table A4 'new household economies', 229-30 programming approach, 191-3 rapid rural appraisal, 140-1, 2)6-92 seasonal calendars, 232-3, Figure 9.1 seasonal mapping, 228, 243, 246 'systems' research, see 'systems' see also data collection; seasonality, measures of seasonal checks, 30 seasonal cycles, see cycles seasonal complementarities agriculture-wage employment, J 3 5 - 8 . M3

arable crop-tree crop, 116-17, I25> Figure 5.3 between hemispheres, 81 between species, 113-20, 208 crop—livestock, 103, 116—17, 2 1 ° effect on labour migration, 244, 245 influence of spatial effects, 25, 132, 140, 230

inter-varietal, 106-13 livestock-tree, 116 macro-environmental (q.v.) mountainous areas, 160 role of the market, 245 Sri Lankan wet—dry zones, 141—2 temperate-tropical zones, 121-2, 169 seasonal deprivation, 145 seasonal labour migration altitude differences as basis, 86; see also transhumance analysis of, 246, 256-92 as alternative to mechanization, 194, 242-5 case study (Bangladesh), 256—92 changing patterns, 146, 196, 243, 291, Figure 6.2 disadvantaged, 143-5, 148—50 passim, i ' 78, 298 (n-3) varieties, see local varieties transaction costs, 23, 143, 145-6, 152, 166, 180, 216, 244, 282, 286 Transamazonica region (Brazil), 48 transhumance, 69, 85, 100, 255 transition periods, 253 zones, 93-4 transplanting as peak season, 141, 268, 270, 272 mechanization, 196 purpose, 126 rice, 112, 113, 142, 201, 262, 267, 300 (App., n.j) women's role, 6; transportation air, 161 'all-weather', 160 costs, 23, 24, 156—9, 175 development, 153, 154, 155, 243

340

INDEX infrastructure, 24, 146, 156, 215 quality, 160 seasonal variation, 24, 75, 160-1 tractors, 129 wind-powered, 157 trees complementarity with annual crops, 116-18

creating micro-environments, 81 in moisture conservation, 12; in sustainable agriculture, 252 perennial species, 95, 116 potential for disadvantaged, 118, 209-10, 245 research, 209, 255 trends in prices, 162 seasonality, 171-2, Table 7.1 tropics Cancer, Capricorn, 28 definition, 28 rainfall zones, 34-7 solar radiation, 120 tropical crops, 95, 194, 204 trypanosomiasis, 184 tsetse fly, 184, 190 tubers, 208 Tull, Jethro, 109 turnaround (between crops), 112 turnip, n o ' turnkey' technology, see technological change Uganda, 52, 210 'ultra-poor', 44, 48, 53—6, 79, 130, 189, 289, 294 (Ch.3 n.i) uncertainty, 145 see also risk

underemployment, see unemployment undernutrition, see nutrition unemployment, 1, 67, 128, 142 see also agricultural mechanization, labour-displacing technologies unimodal rainfall pattern causes, 34 effect on labour peaks, 48, 60, 184 effect on nutritional stress, 49 effect on soil moisture, 90-1 effect on tree species, 210

seasonality differences from bimodal areas, j1 single harvest, 5 3 understorey, 117 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 202 United States, 129, 145, 161-2, 169-71 passim, 297 (G1.7, n.4), Figure 7.2 uplands, 177, 270 urban bias, 4, 2 2 0 - 1 , 224, 225, 240, 2 4 1 , 246

development, 175 prices, 162 slums, 139 Uruguay (agricultural land use), 1; 7-9, Figure 7.1 usury, 165 Uttar Pradesh (India), 191 valley bottom land, 175 bottoms, 92 Cochabamba (Bolivia), 166 Great Rift, 8j, 93-4 inland (west-central Africa), 207 Nile, 92 Swat (Pakistan), 207-8 value neutrality, 235 Varanasi (Benares) India, 138, 27; varietal characteristics, see crop variety; genetic diversity varietal selection and development as counter-seasonal strategy, 106-13, 196-7, 199 effect on marginal productivity, 20 ill-effect on diversity, 199, 238 varietal turnover, 199 variety, see crop variety vegan diet, 74—5 vegetables, 75, 262 see also horticulture vegetarian diet, 74-5 Venezuela, 206 vertical integration, 170 vested interests, 243, 247 'vicious circle' indebtedness, 16, 18, 217 non-participation-powerlessness, 231

341

INDEX nutrition and parasite infestation, IOI-2

nutrition and work capacity, 48, 56 vitamins A, C, D, 76 B, 77 bodily storage, 14 deficiency, 76 voluntary agencies (VAs), 223-4, 244, 246, 247, 297 (Ch.;, n.5) von Thiinen (theory of agricultural location), 156—8, 297 (Ch.7, n.3) vulnerable groups, 254

watershed, 229, 25; weaning, dangers of, 59, 60, 61 weeds, 96-7, 103, 185, 270 weeding, 6;, 129, 179, 185, 189, 196, 254, 268, 270

weight loss children, 57 men and women compared, 57-9, Figure 3.2 hunter-gatherers, 71, Figure 3.6 seasonal, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 295 (n.7, n.13), Figure 3.6 'well-nourished individual', 76-9 passim

West Africa wage employment, 135-8, 143 early varieties, 108 goods, 74, 168, 246, 288-9 migrant labour flows, 134, 146 legislation, 154 sudanic zone, 134 meals as part of, 67, 288-9, Table A8 see also individual countries rates, 179, 183, 193, 195-6 passim, West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA), 204, 211, 229, 286-9, 2 9" (n-4) Table 8.2 Washington DC, Figure 2.2 West Asia, 204 wasting, 79 see also Middle East water Western Europe, 169 absorption, 89 wet season, 187 adsorption, 89 see also rainy season evaporation, 124 wetland cultivation, 185 evapotranspiration, 92 wheat holes, 101 early varieties, 107 penetration, 125 effect of altitude, 94 percolation, 89, 176 heat tolerance, 205, 266 plants, 103 high-yielding varieties, Table 8.1 requirements (of crops), 114, 124, price fluctuation, 161-3, Figure 7.2 266 protein composition, 78 run-off, 89, 124, 176 supplies, 177; see also drinking semi-dwarf varieties, 198 water requirements, 114 water winter 110, 262 see also moisture; soil moisture 'whole farm' approach, see 'systems' water management wild produce, 47, 118, 251, Figure 3.; conservation, 124, 125, 126 wilt point, 93 counter-seasonal technology, 122—6 winds harvesting, 124-5, l 8 4 air movement, 31 induced precipitation, 125 mistral, 33 raised beds, 126 research, 209 monsoon, 33-4, 50, 87, 262 ridges, 126 seasonal reversal, 31, 33, 34, 93 role of trees, 125-6 sirocco, 33 waterlogging, see soil trade, 32 see also irrigation; rainfed agriculture winnowing, 66 342

INDEX workloads, 57-9. 60, 130, 133, 149, 217, Figure 3.2 see also female seclusion; gender crops, 1 TO—11, 169, 171, 204, 261, 262 typing feed, 110, 208 Woolfe, Leonard, xv in definition of tropics, 28 work capacity, 56 photoperiod, 120 workloads, seasonal variation, 56-9, 60, wheat (q.v.) 238, Figure 3.2 wives, see women World Bank, 202 women as seasonal migrants, 59, 136 yams, 74 bias against, 22 yields, see crop yields discrimination against, 45, ;6, 58, 64, winter effect of continentality, 82

130, 221-2

effects of seasonal migration, 59, 136, 148 employment, 118, 245 farmers, 54, 60, 107, 114 lactating, 47, 52, 295 (n.7) pregnancy, 47, 295 (n.7) self deprivation, 67 sexual harassment, 45 social burdens, 148, 149 social status, 45, 130, 149 special nutritional needs, 57, 295 (n.,,)

Zaire, 93 Zambia, 210 Zanzibar (Tanzania), Figure 2.2 zenithal sun, 28, 38, Figure 2.3 'zero marginal product of labour' theory, 6, 19, 132 zero tillage, 124, 239 Zimbabwe, 205 ^u/oasi peoples, 70-3, 74, Figures 3.5, 3.6

343