Absolutely right, well run small farms have greater productivity per hectare than giant industrial farms. And they keep people in productive employment as opposed to drifting into slums without hope of a livelyhood.

http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Small-Farm-Benefits-Rosset.htm

An excellent book to read about this is ‘Deep Economy’ by Bill Mckibben: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-Economy-Wealth-Communities-Durable/dp/0805076263/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308144420&sr=8-1

“areas such as the low carbon transition”

Shurely some mistake….higher C02 levels are GOOD for crop yields….

I agree kicking farmers off their land in pursuit of large scale productivity very bad idea – that’s a process that has to happen slowly, as farmers find other forms of work.

however, it’s productivity per person, not per hectare you need to look at. If each person in the economy only produces whatever one person working on a small farm can produce, those people are never going to be richer than that, even if they are working their hectares like crazy. I don’t know how far above subsistence each worker on a small farm is, but if you ever want these people to be able to afford refrigerators and medical treatment, they have to produce enough to pay for such goods.

Maybe the impression is unfair, but Oxfam does come across as believing that there is something noble about other people hitting the ground with a stick in order to survive and this report kind of reinforces it.

I’d be curious to hear more about the Vietnam experience, but what you say doesn’t seem to fully answer Tim Worstall’s criticisms. The only points you make (and I apologise I haven’t had time to read the fuller version of your article) are:

1) Staying smallscale helped in Vietnam, in an unspecified way
2) Abandoning smallscale farming *could* harm smallscale farmers (cue World Bank quote) – but we’d need to understand why it *would*

One group who are even more destitute than smallholder farmers are farm labourers.

The key thing about Malthus was not that he was wrong but why he was proved wrong. His analysis was perfectly logical because population growth had always in the past swamped income growths. What he failed to understand or foresee are the huge strides forward in productivity that allowed larger populations to be supported without impoverishing all the population.

To a world bank economist the question about what alternative jobs agricultural workers should do would just seem a silly question. How could he be expected to know what they do as they moved out of agriculture. He knows that they are not all going to move en masse and would only move as the rest of the economy grows and pays higher wages. Therefore, they would be absorbed gradually. Higher wages in the non-agricultural sector means the population can be supported with agriculture consuming less of the labour force. That forces agriculture to be more efficient to compete for labour. The same dynamic applies whether it is hired labour or subsidence self-employment.

I don’t know whether it will always be the case. However, what we do know is that every country that has developed has seen their agricultural sector become more productive and the share of the population involved in agriculture decline.

I agree that the growth in crop yields has been declining for forty years. However, people often read that as yields are declining when it is the rate of growth that is declining. Although, it is difficult to believe that there is not scope for significant improvements in yields in the developing world.

Water scarcity will be one if not the most important factor affecting global food production. Again it is difficult to believe that small subsistence farming could use water more efficiently than larger scale food production. Moreover, water scarcity is really an energy problem because we have the technology to deal with water scarcity. However, it uses a lot of energy to produce fresh water. Cross-border politics with regards to water is going to be an increasingly important issue in the future.

“Absolutely right, well run small farms have greater productivity per hectare than giant industrial farms. And they keep people in productive employment as opposed to drifting into slums without hope of a livelyhood.”

Err, Graham, that was exactly my point. That the living standard of a farmer (just like the living standard of anyone else) is determined by the productivity of their labour, not the productivity of the other inputs into whatever it is that they’re doing.

A high land productivity, low labour productivity, system of agriculture ensures that those doing the farming will be poor.

Which was my point.

@3. Luis Enrique: “however, it’s productivity per person, not per hectare you need to look at.”

Isn’t it more subtle than that? Productivity = Yield / (Area x Human Input) assuming that there is no technological transformation? Land area is more or less constant, but the quality of human input is variable. Assume, for example, that a farmer invests in 20% more (quality) labour to pick and weed a field which results in 30% more crop; that is increased productivity for the farm, possibly more money for the labourer.

Is that necessarily good for the economy beyond the farm and the labourer? Perhaps it might be better to accept a lower farm yield whilst the labourer works in a factory. The labourer and farmer will have their own opinions about what is good for them: Oxfam and free marketeers likewise.

Smallscale agriculture can be a springboard to development, not a ball and chain. And as Vietnam’s experience showed compared to, say, China’s, investing in smallholders means you can grow without massively increasing inequality.

Sorry but that seems to be a leap to me. Why does it matter if you can grow without massively increasing inequality or not? What has inequality got to do with it? If we are talking about development, we are talking about development. Why change the subject?

The added bonus is that then people can choose to leave the grinding life on the land through choice, rather than migrate through desperation.

So …. you want them to migrate because they are poor, not because they are crushingly poor? Why is this a bonus? What does it matter? If the aim is merely to be more humane, well that is interesting but it is not a development issue is it?

I once had a truly jaw-dropping conversation with a World Bank economist in Sri Lanka, who explained that the country’s rice farmers, comprising 60% of the population, were low productivity dinosaurs who should give up farming and hand over to the big guys. What were those 10 million people to do, I asked, given that they couldn’t all work in garment factories? “Ah, at the World Bank, we don’t pick winners”, came the prompt reply. But happy enough to pick losers it seems…

Losers are often easy to identify. Winners are not. Why can’t they all work in garment factories? What precisely is stopping them? They will move to the cities with their vaster range of work options and will get jobs. As they have in every other country in the world. As they are in China and Vietnam for instance.

10. So Much For Subtlety: “Losers are often easy to identify. Winners are not. Why can’t they all work in garment factories? What precisely is stopping them? They will move to the cities with their vaster range of work options and will get jobs. As they have in every other country in the world. As they are in China and Vietnam for instance.”

How are “losers” identified?

The definition of loser? Some bloke making stuff up about ignorance.

11. Charlieman – “How are “losers” identified?”

With common sense.

“The definition of loser? Some bloke making stuff up about ignorance.”

That would be a good definition of loser. I think we can agree that people making buggy whips are probably going to be losers. It is not guaranteed, but it is a good way to bet. Peasants scratching a living from subsistence agriculture are also unlikely to do well in the modern economy. As are some potters I saw in Cambodia once who had not got a potter’s wheel and so were “spinning” their pots by walking around them rather quickly.

It is by no means guaranteed that any of those people will lose out in the modern world. There are certainly still buggy whip makers around today. But it is the sensible way to bet.

Oxfam’s desire to keep the poor poor, and starve them, is utterly repulsive.

here is a very good series of posts from the NYT Green blog on the future of food

@ 13 Chris

“Oxfam’s desire to keep the poor poor, and starve them, is utterly repulsive.”

Source/rationale?

@3

however, it’s productivity per person, not per hectare you need to look at. If each person in the economy only produces whatever one person working on a small farm can produce, those people are never going to be richer than that, even if they are working their hectares like crazy. I don’t know how far above subsistence each worker on a small farm is, but if you ever want these people to be able to afford refrigerators and medical treatment, they have to produce enough to pay for such goods.

Yes, but, is their position really improved by throwing them off the land into some slum, where they will be even less likely to be able to afford refrigerators and medical treatment? The argument is, that, industrialisation will occur and they will find other work. But this argument is problematic on a number of fronts, notably as it assumes that it is possible or even desirable for the entire world to follow a western style of industrial development.

There is enormous scope for improving the productivity of small farms by applying improved farming techniques, which would go some way towards raising living standards.

Furthermore, there are big questions hanging over the future of industrial agriculture. Especially as it is so dependent upon fossil fuel inputs which are likely to start dwindling in the near future. We might well need to back to a more labour intensive form of agriculture in the future as a matter of neccessity.

Here’s a link to a very informative BBC documentary on youtube. In several parts. Here’s part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

What I find odd is how little Oxfam listens to evidence and economics, and how much it listens to Western European leftist dogma.

Moreover, the response above doesn’t seem to tackle any of Tim Worstall’s substantive points.

16. Graham

Yes, but, is their position really improved by throwing them off the land into some slum, where they will be even less likely to be able to afford refrigerators and medical treatment? The argument is, that, industrialisation will occur and they will find other work. But this argument is problematic on a number of fronts, notably as it assumes that it is possible or even desirable for the entire world to follow a western style of industrial development.

Actually by any rational standard in the cities they are more likely to obtain medical treatment and refrigerators. Hospitals tend to be in urban areas, as is most spending by Third World governments. With all due politeness, desirable for whom? For you? Because it sure as hell is desirable for them. Possible? I see no reason why not. Either way I think they are going to want to try and won’t like rich Northerners telling them they have to remain in rural poverty, tied to the land, because they might not make it.