A MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF FARM OUTPUT IN SELECTED LAND-REFORM AREAS OF JAMAICA

The claim of many that certain features of Jamaican land reform discourage optimum increases in farm output has been pointed out. To test the argument, seven land-reform features, which meet methodological, theoretical, and practical restrictions, have been examined. An hypothesis derived mainly from agricultural- economic theory about the linear relation between each of the seven features and farm output per acre has been devised. The hypotheses have been tested with a multiple regression analysis of data from six land settlements selected to represent a variety of geographic settings. The hypotheses have been partially upheld, but must be revised in the following form: (1) in many cases, particularly in the early years of production, farm acreage is negatively related to output per acre; (2) in subsistence areas, where great diversity in agriculture is common, greater diversification leads to greater output per acre; (3) in most cases where farmers live an appreciable distance from their holdings (at least 0.3 miles), output per acre is negatively related to the distance; (4) output per acre declines as the age of operator increases, but only if the operator is mainly dependent on his own labour, and only after a relatively advanced age (60 years, perhaps) has been attained; (5) the number of a farmer's dependents does not affect output (gross income per acre); (6) a farmer's non-farm income does not exhibit a negative relation to output per acre, and may be positively related if the outside income can be used to purchase productive farm inputs; (7) in some cases acreage of additional land used is positively related to output per acre on settlement properties. Hopefully, further research will lead to a more rational basis for the formulation of these hypotheses. Using the regression equations, estimates have been made of the changes in output per acre which could have been achieved with feasible changes in relevant factors. Estimates indicate that current farm output could have been greatly increased in some settlements, thus justifying some of the criticism of Jamaican land reform.     

The political economy of maize production and poverty reduction in Zambia: analysis of the last 50 years

Poverty and food security are endemic issues in much of sub-Saharan Africa. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger in the region remains a key Millennium Development Goal. Many African governments have pursued economic reforms and agricultural policy interventions in order to accelerate economic growth that reduces poverty faster. Agricultural policy regimes in Zambia in the last 50 years (1964–2008) are examined here to better understand their likely impact on food security and poverty, with an emphasis on the political economy of maize subsidy policies. The empirical work draws on secondary sources and an evaluation of farm household data from three villages in the Kasama District of Zambia from 1986/87 and 1992/93 to estimate a two-period econometric model to examine the impact on household welfare in a pre- and post-reform period. The analysis shows that past interventions had mixed effects on enhancing the production of food crops such as maize. While such reforms were politically popular, it did not necessarily translate into household-level productivity or welfare gains in the short term. The political economy of reforms needs to respond to the inherent diversity among the poor rural and urban households. The potential of agriculture to generate a more pro-poor growth process depends on the creation of new market opportunities that most benefit the rural poor. The state should encourage private sector investments for addressing infrastructure constraints to improve market access and accelerate more pro-poor growth through renewed investments in agriculture, rural infrastructure, gender inclusion, smarter subsidies and regional food trade. However, the financing of such investments poses significant challenges. There is a need to address impediments to the effective participation of public private investors to generate more effective poverty reduction and hunger eradication programmes. This article also explores the opportunities for new public–private investments through South–South cooperation and Asia-driven growth for reducing poverty in Zambia.     

Whose Wealth Is It Anyway? Mozambique's Outstanding Economic Growth with Worsening Rural Poverty

Despite rapid economic growth and massive inflows of aid, rural poverty in Mozambique is worsening. Agricultural production and productivity have not increased in the last decade. Use of chemical fertilizers and other modern technology is at a low level and decreasing. The present development model emphasizes that the role of government and donors is to provide human capital and infrastructure, while the private sector is responsible for economic development and ending poverty. The most recent national surveys confirm what is being seen elsewhere in Africa — that this non‐interventionist strategy does not raise agricultural productivity or reduce poverty. While 80 per cent of Mozambique's population is engaged in agriculture, this sector contributes only 20 per cent of GDP. This suggests that investments in agriculture are likely to generate pro‐poor growth, both to rural and urban dwellers. This policy failure is increasingly recognized, but donors and government have invested too much political capital in the current policy to change easily.     

Household Incomes in Cuban Agriculture: A Comparison of the State,Co-operative,and Peasant Sectors

This article presents the results of a 1991 household income survey of the three main groups in Cuban agriculture: wage workers on state farms, members of production co-operatives, and peasant producers. It is shown that since the 1959 revolution household income levels in the agricultural sector have improved dramatically, while regional differences have been ameliorated considerably. Households in the private sector of Cuban agriculture have fared the best. It is also demonstrated that agricultural households rely on multiple sources of income to generate their livelihood. Rather than being strictly proletarian, collective, or petty commodity producers, these households are best characterized by the multiple class relations in which they participate.     

乡村旅游对农户农林业生产和外出务工影响研究——基于陕西22个旅游扶贫村农户调查数据

利用课题组2017年6-8月在陕西安康、商洛、汉中、宝鸡4市9县22个旅游扶贫村收集的841个农户调查数据，采用双重选择模型（DSM）等分析了农户参与旅游对家庭农林业劳动时间、外出务工时间的影响。研究发现，参与旅游有助于增加调查地的农户收入，旅游兼营型农户收入更高。在全样本中，参与旅游对农户农林业生产时间具有显著负向作用，但在参与了旅游的农户样本中，农户参与旅游一些特征或形式，如土特产销售，对农林业生产则有显著正向作用；在多个模型中，农户从事旅游对家庭外出务工活动具有显著的负向作用。提出了延长农业产业链、发展“旅游+农业”、促进农村一二三产业融合，提高景区带村作用、完善旅游扶贫政策等对策建议。     

Diversity in Peasant Economic Behavior: Transmigrant Households in South Sumatra,Indonesia

An important facet of peasant economics is the diversification of household labor among farm and off-farm activities. Using a sample of South Sumatran transmigrant households the diversification of household labor among various remunerative activities was analyzed. Employment diversity was related to three sets of theoretically based factors: demographic, human capital, and agricultural. Results from a discriminant analysis model reveal that the demographic set of variables is most powerful in distinguishing households with different levels of employment diversity. The ratio of consumers to workers in a household is particularly important. However, measures of entrepreneurship and on-farm agricultural intensity are also useful in explaining diversity behavior. Throughout our analysis we find evidence that the role of the spouse as an income producer is especially critical in the household employment diversification process.     

PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL NONFARM PLACES IN THE USSR

According to the 1970 census, the Soviet Union had 37,800 rural nonfarm places with a combined population of 6.1 million, or 5.8 percent of the rural population. The census data are believed to understate the number and population of nonfarm places because they assigned rural places to the nonfarm category purely on the basis of their generic designation. Many multifunctional nonfarm places and rural places that serve as administrative centers and have little relation to agriculture were not categorized as nonfarm in the census. Although many of the smaller nonfarm places are likely to be eliminated over time, others will continue to perform clearly defined functions in industry, construction, transportation, and services. The situation is illustrated with particular reference to Novosibirsk Oblast.     

Agricultural Development and Household Incomes in Central Asia: A Survey of Tajikistan, 2003-2008

Two noted specialists on the agricultural economies of the former Soviet Union examine the effects of land reform on agricultural production and the income of rural house-holds in Tajikistan. The authors utilize official government statistics to discern trends of agricultural output at the national level, and the results of three extensive surveys conducted in 2007-2008 (N > 2,000) and one in 2003 (N = 4,000 respondents) by international organizations (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank) to identify household-level changes. They also review the legislative framework for agrarian reform in the country; examine national-level trends in farm structure and organization, livestock production, farm productivity, and cropping patterns; and analyze shifts in size of land holdings and rural family incomes at the household level. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: D130, O130, P320, Q150. 11 figures, 10 tables, 42 references.     

Cartographic Techniques of Agricultural Regionalization

The use of a series of correlated maps is proposed as an approach to agricultural regionalization. Because of the dynamic character of farm production, two stages in the regionalization process are distinguished: a delimitation of existing agricultural regions and a delimitation of future regions. The basic principle underlying the compilation of agricultural regionalization maps IS to combine the resource base of agriculture with the actual types of farming. Maps of existing regions would also show the volume and structure of farm production, population and farm employment. In the delimitation of long-term future agricultural regions, the emphasis is on determining the potential biological productivity (climate and soils) of regions and the expected volume of production, based on food needs, industrial processing of farm products and the prospects of interregional trade in farm products.     

Debating Belarus: An Economy in Comparative Perspective

A U.S.-based geographer and Belarusian political scientist assess the current economic crisis in Belarus. Although the country's financial situation is serious in the short term, they argue that analysis of basic social and economic indicators provides some evidence of underlying strength and stability, recently bolstered by a number of trade agreements concluded with Russia in late 2011. The authors argue that the most natural and meaningful basis for ascertaining the health of the country's economy is to compare it with those of its two Slavic neighbors, Russia and Ukraine. That comparison reveals that although Belarus ranks lower on most indices of economic reform, it has outperformed them during the post-Soviet period in several important categories (GDP growth, income equality, agricultural productivity, expenditures on education and health care, life expectancy, and per capita agricultural output) and occupied an intermediate position (below Russia but above Ukraine) in others (e.g., GDP per capita, wages and pensions, and labor productivity). The paper's final section discusses the nature of the relationship between Belarus and Russia (dependence vs. complementarity) and that between the Lukashenka regime and the Belarusian people.     

Smells like politics: planning and the inconvenient politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture

Intensive farming is an increasing part of Australian agriculture, including in the multi‐functional landscapes at the edges of Australian cities. The example of intensive “broiler” poultry production reveals the tensions that arise when sites of hyper‐productivity conflict with social change in rural areas. Planning processes for intensive farming in the Australian state of Victoria are predicated on stability and consensus: on assumed static and uncontroversial ideas of agriculture, its place, and the primacy of agricultural productivity. Yet concerns about the industrialisation of agriculture are live political issues at the local level, especially in dynamic peri‐urban locations. This paper explores the emergence of a politics of place outside the bounds of planning consensus through an analysis of planning appeals and associated media relating to planning permits for intensive poultry developments in Victoria over 2011–2016. We highlight tensions that exist in relation to technical planning assessments and categorisations used to assert farming as the orthodox use of rural land, especially when new forms of farming look and feel demonstrably different. Using Mouffe's problematising of the negation of antagonism and Rancière's notion of the risks of a false consensus democracy, we argue that planning processes for intensive farming illustrate critical issues in participatory planning. While ostensibly post‐political decision‐making narrows the politics of place and food systems to decisions about policing the boundaries and buffer distances placed around intensive poultry developments, alternative representations of rural life persist. The certainty offered by code‐based planning does not negate the ongoing (if inconvenient) politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture.     

Understanding Chinese Consumption: The Impact of Hukou

Since the onset of the economic reforms more than three decades ago, the Chinese growth miracle has been based on exports and investment. While strong output growth was maintained even during the financial crisis, imbalances within the country increased. To return to a more sustainable development path, recent government policies have aimed to improve the role of private consumption. This article argues that China's institutional framework is an impediment to this strategy, as it weakens the incentives of households to consume. As well as a low level of social security and highly regulated financial markets, the authors stress the relevance of the hukou system as the main driver for modest consumption, especially in recent years. After controlling for different income levels, the average propensity to consume is found to be significantly lower for migrants, as their access to public services is limited. If not accompanied by relevant reforms, the urbanization strategy of the government is likely to raise the number of migrants with limited hukou rights, further increasing the downward pressure on consumption. Therefore, in the absence of reforms in the household registration system, the shift towards consumption‐driven growth is at risk.     

Labour Control in the Tobacco Agro‐spaces: Migrant Agricultural Workers in South‐Western Ontario

International labour migration programs provide a vulnerable workforce that services various sectors in developed economies. The agriculture sector is one arena in which the employment of migrant workers has become more pervasive. Annually, approximately 30,000 workers are employed in the Canadian agriculture sector through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). In this paper, I focus on the SAWP workers in tobacco farming, and investigate the ways that labour control is achieved on two small‐scale farms. I draw upon original empirical evidence from interviews with three Mexican and nine Jamaican workers, two union representatives, and two farm owners in South‐Western Ontario, Canada. My findings show that various factors at multiple scales shape the labour control regime and significantly advantage farm owners over workers. Based on my findings, I argue that the labour control regime is conditioned exogenously by multi‐scalar factors and generated endogenously at the point of production.     

The peasantariat and politics: migration,wage labor,and agriculture in Botswana

This article examines Botswana's wage labor migration in terms of 2 reigning theories: 1) as a dichotomy between traditional and modern society, with workers viewing agriculture as an alternative to more desirable wage employment; or 2) as a subordination of colonial society to capitalist society, with workers drawn from the resulting underdeveloped and impoverished areas and divorced from their agricultural potential. Approximately 90% of Botswanan households have a wage worker; less than 1/4 of households rely on the agricultural economy alone. 80% of the population works in agriculture in some way, but agriculture contributes only 35% of total rural income. Over 50% of households are below the poverty level, and most must rely on a variety of income sources for subsistence. 68% of rural households (Botswana is 84% rural) have absent wage earners while 45% have 1 or more wage earners present. Absent wage earners work mainly in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in Botswanan towns (44%) and villages (22%), and lands and cattlepost locations (5%) in South African mines (19%), and other jobs in South Africa (8%). Individuals with low socioeconomic status tend to migrate to South Africa; those with higher status move to Botswanan towns. Working for wages has become customary for most Botswanans. This article undermines conventional development theories by showing the close interweaving of the modern and traditional societies, and arguing that traditional retention of communal land rights and cattle ownership served the capitalistic system by becoming the basis for wage earning; previous income source (agriculture) did not disappear, but their use was altered. South African mining returns to the Botswanan government since 1965 largely benefited a growing petty-bourgeois class and marginally improved the life styles of the peasant labor class. Botswana's development depends on the relationship between the peripherial laboring class and the dominating petty-bourgeois and its internal structure.     

Plan to support Tibet

The government in Shigatse prefecture has firmly carried forward scientific development view, and called for further innovation in thought and methods. The governments at all levels make their decisions in accordance with local condition. They have focused on increasing incomes of rural and nomadic households in this region. People in Shigatse have enjoyed continuous income increase, resulting from their transformation from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture.     

Accounting for Air Pollution Emissions in Measures of State Manufacturing Productivity Growth

A Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index is employed to account for both marketed output and the output of pollution abatement activities of U.S. state manufacturing sectors for –1986. The index allows us to decompose the change in productivity into measures of change in efficiency and technical change. By accounting for the change in emissions, average annual productivity growth is 3.6 percent, whereas it is 1.7 percent when emissions are ignored. We also find adjusted productivity growth improved after 1977, and "Frost Belt" states with rapidly growing manufacturing sectors have significantly higher rates of productivity growth than "Sun Belt" states with slow growing manufacturing sectors.     

延安市农民收入可持续增长机制探析

近年来,延安市农民人均纯收入一直低于全国平均水平,城乡居民收入差距也不断扩大。为改变这一局面,延安市政府实施了生态移民工程,进行了农业产业结构调整。这些措施在一定程度上改善了农民的生活水平,但是,制约农民收入增长的根本性障碍仍然存在。只有促进高附加值农业的可持续发展、鼓励农村剩余劳动力的外出就业和使农村非农产业实现较快发展,才能建立起农民收入的可持续增长机制。     

民国时期祁门红茶贷款案与银企关系的建立--关于上海金融资本对周边产业经济之控制

祁门红茶与上海交通银行贷款关系的成立 ,标志着农业产品的生产与销售活动受到金融资本的支配与控制。而在战前区域经济关系中 ,也说明中国内陆地区农业产品的生产者与贸易组织同沿海出口口岸的关系更为密切。本文重点考察作为中国出口大宗产品的祁门红茶与银行银企关系建立的过程、原因 ,及其金融支配与控制关系对于出口产品生产与销售的影响 ,以期说明农业产业组织的变迁与沿海及内陆区域经济关系形成问题。     

TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN MANUFACTURING FURTHER EVIDENCE FROM THE STATES*

In this paper, we first develop a measure of total factor productivity (TFP) growth and summarize a source-of-growth analysis for the manufacturing sector of 48 states. As have others, we find little association between TFP growth differentials and output growth differentials for census regions. At the staterather than the regional level, however, we find a positive association between TFP growth and output growth. We use cross-sectional data to estimate the determinants of the variation in TFP growth. Two results emerge that are important for regional policy and for understanding national productivity trends. First, state investments in education and in transportation infrastructure may affect TFP growth. Second, energy price increases in the early 1970s had no differential effects on productivity growth across states. We also explore the determinants of manufacturing output growth and find that TFP growth, demand growth, wage growth, wage levels, and state corporate income tax rates are significant.     

Some Methods for an Agricultural Typology of the South of Krasnoyarsk Kray

Cartographic techniques are used to define 12 types of farms in the Minusinsk Basin. The source maps used in the typology cover physical characteristics of agriculture (climate, soils, landforms, natural vegetation, drainage patterns), economic conditions (population, industry, transportation) and indicators of farm performance (specialization, intensity of farming, value of gross output). The predominant farm types in the wooded steppe and subtayga environment of the right bank of the Yenisey River include grain and cattle (beef and dairy) production. The principal types in the drier environment of the steppe and semi-steppe of the Khakas Autonomous Oblast, on the left bank, include sheep raising in addition to cattle and grains. The typology of farm types is a useful basis for future planning of agriculture in the study region, where major industrial projects are under way.