‘Everyone Now is Concentrating on the Mining’: Drivers and Implications of Rural Economic Transition in the Eastern Region of Ghana

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is replacing smallholder farming as the principal income source in parts of rural Ghana. Structural adjustment policies have removed support for the country's smallholders, devalued their produce substantially and stiffened competition with large-scale counterparts. Over one million people nationwide are now engaged in ASM. Findings from qualitative research in Ghana's Eastern Region are drawn upon to improve understanding of the factors driving this pattern of rural livelihood diversification. The ASM sector and farming are shown to be complementary, contrary to common depictions in policy and academic literature.     

Exploring Seasonal Poverty Traps: The ‘Six-Week Window’ in Southern Malawi

Conventional wisdom in Malawi holds that seasonal food deficits force smallholders to hire out their labour to buy food during the critical first six weeks after planting, thereby reducing maize yields on their own fields and reinforcing poverty. This model was tested empirically for the Blantyre Shire Highlands using evidence from a panel survey and household case studies. Results showed no significant relationship between the supply of hired labour (ganyu) and the timeliness of weeding for maize, and that timely weeding was not a significant determinant of household maize deficits. This puzzle is explained by the diversification of the rural economy that has allowed households to develop alternative livelihood strategies to cope with maize deficits. Livelihood diversity helped poor households avoid the seasonal poverty trap and also helps explain the paradox of why the poorest region in Malawi escaped the 2001–2002 famine.     

Diversification Under Climate Variability as Part of a CSA Strategy in Rural Zambia

Climate change is posing an increasingly severe challenge to agricultural livelihoods due to increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Livelihood diversification can play an important role in decreasing food insecurity and vulnerability under these challenges. This paper contributes to the literature on livelihood diversification and vulnerability under climate change to assess the role of diversification as part of a Climate-Smart Agriculture strategy by analysing the determinants of diversification, income and poverty in Zambia using panel data. We specifically focus on the roles of climate shocks and institutions in shaping these linkages to highlight policy insights to improve resilience.     

Smallholder Livelihood Adaptation in the Context of Neoliberal Policy Reforms: A Case of Maize Farmers in Southern Veracruz,Mexico

Governments around the world have embraced trade liberalisation as a means of enhancing efficiency to realise economic growth and alleviate poverty. Likewise, the Mexican government implemented neoliberal policy reforms, the NAFTA in particular, to stimulate sustainable development. Using the Mexican maize sector as illustration, this article describes the adaptation process of smallholders to market changes shaped by these reforms. Going beyond the aggregated level, we have investigated smallholders' livelihood strategies. Contrary to what economic models estimated, our data suggests that farmers intensified the cultivation of maize rather than switch to sectors in which Mexico has a comparative advantage.     

The Texture of Livelihoods: Migration and Making a Living in Hanoi

Abstract

Through the experience of 30 rural migrants to Hanoi, this paper reconstructs their livelihood histories, linking the experience of our migrant subjects with wider transformations in Vietnam’s economy and society. We argue for an ‘everyday’ political economy that recognises the fluid connections between the state, society and economy, and the individual. While highlighting the indeterminacy and contingency of life, we recognise the wider context that contributes to the production of the livelihood textures we discern. The characteristic livelihood pathways of the migrant households are shown to echo research undertaken in rural, often less economically vibrant, contexts.     

Income and Asset Poverty among Pastoralists in Northern Kenya

In this study we use household panel data collected in Marsabit district of Northern Kenya, to analyse the patterns of livelihood sources and poverty among pastoralists in that area. We estimate income poverty using imputed household income relative to the adjusted poverty line and asset poverty using a regression-based asset index and tropical livestock units (TLU) per capita. Our results indicate that keeping livestock is still the pastoralists’ main source of livelihood, although there is a notable trend of increasing livelihood diversification, especially among livestock-poor households. The majority of households (over 70%) are both income and livestock-poor with few having escaped poverty within the five-year study period. Disaggregating income and asset poverty also reveals an increasing trend of both structurally poor and stochastically nonpoor households. The findings show that the TLU-based asset poverty is a more appropriate measure of asset poverty in a pastoral setting.     

Incidence of agricultural export taxation in Papua New Guinea

The present fixed‐rate levy on major rural exports exerts a highly regressive and burdensome impact on marginal estates and smallholders at low external prices. In an export boom, however, it fails significantly to compress substantial plantation windfall profits and abnormally high village incomes. Thus the duty tends to destabilise producers' earnings over the export cycle. These undesirable effects can be considerably reduced under the proposed export tax schedules, with a cut‐off point to eliminate fiscal absorption at lower prices. However, the built‐in graduated rate structures will enable the government to mobilise greater excess agricultural resources during a price upswing. This serves not only to compensate for the tax losses through Marketing Boards' accumulations, but also to provide government revenue for rural improvement and development purposes.     

Uninsured Health Shocks and Agricultural Productivity among Rural Households: The Mitigating Role of Micro-credit

This article investigates how health shocks affect farm productivity in the presence of microcredit. It is expected that microcredit increases agricultural productivity by enhancing allocative and technical efficiency and by overcoming financial constraints that reduce purchase of inputs. However, microcredit will have competing uses in the event of uninsured health shocks to the household. Using an endogenous switching regression model and after accounting for self-selection, the results reveal that microcredit has a significant mitigating effect on farm productivity losses. Thus, microcredit generates a double dividend among smallholders serving as insurance against health shocks in rural areas and improving agricultural productivity.     

Non-farm Income and Employment in Rural Honduras: Assessing the Role of Locational Factors

This article emphasises the role of locational factors in the determination of rural non-farm (RNF) employment possibilities in rural Honduras. It finds that while RNF wage jobs are predominantly located close to urban areas, RNF self-employment jobs are geographically dispersed around the country, depending on local motors such as a profitable agricultural activity, an important road, or a tourist attraction. In all, the importance of RNF income for rural households (31.3 per cent of total income) suggests that the RNF sector should be considered when designing policies to improve the capabilities and livelihood of the rural Honduran.     

Combining Household Income and Asset Data to Identify Livelihood Strategies and Their Dynamics

Current approaches to identifying and describing rural livelihood strategies, and household movements between strategies over time, in developing countries are imprecise. Here we: (i) present a new statistical quantitative approach combining income and asset data to identify household activity choice variables, characterise livelihood strategy clusters, and analyse movements between strategies, and (ii) apply the approach using an environmentally-augmented three-wave household (n = 427) level panel dataset from Nepal. Combining income and asset data provides a better understanding of livelihood strategies and household movements between strategies over time than using only income or asset data. Most households changed livelihood strategy at least once over the two three-year periods. A common pathway out of poverty included an intermediate step during which households accumulate assets through farming, petty trading, and migratory work.     

The impact of revenue diversification on municipal debts: comparing short-term and long-term debt levels

The extant literature has offered two competitive implications of revenue diversification: revenue stabilisation and fiscal illusion. Stabilisation helps governments have less revenue volatility, while fiscal illusion expands tax burdens through the increase in expenditure. The competitive views on revenue diversification leave a niche to explore the association between revenue diversification and debt levels in local governments. We estimate the static and dynamic effects of revenue diversification on both short-term and long-term debt levels in 150 fiscally standardised cities. Our findings show that local governments with greater revenue diversification are more likely to reduce short-term debts while expanding long-term debts. The findings imply that a stabilised revenue structure helps local governments better manage operational budgets but also invest in capital projects with greater debt capacity.     

Safety in small numbers: Local strategies for survival and growth in Romania and the Kyrgyz Republic

Using a comparative study of farm households from poor rural communities in Kyrgyzstan and north-east Romania this paper explores the intricacies of a variety of forms of cooperation in agriculture. The findings highlight the safety net, labour specialisation, asset-pooling and service delivery functions of different groups that enable rural livelihoods to, at times, cope and at times improve in situations of imperfect information, sluggish labour and land markets, and constrained capital markets. The research presented here indicates that small to medium forms of cooperation provide the rural poor with predictable livelihood strategies under conditions of uncertainty. Specifically, cooperative action, in the form of groups, substitutes for imperfect markets. Despite the push for decollectivisation and privatisation across transition countries there remains a place for encouraging group initiatives, at least for the medium term, on the grounds of both poverty alleviation and agricultural growth.     

Fulani on the Move: Seasonal Economic Migration in the Sahel as a Social Process

Most research on short-term rural to urban migration and its impacts takes an economic approach and often emphasises negative aspects of migration, linking it synergistically with rural poverty in sending areas. Data from Fulani migrants in Northern Burkina Faso challenge this pessimistic view of short-term labour migration. Rather than a response to destitution, migration seems to be a useful way in which reasonably prosperous households can further enhance livelihood security. Moreover, factors not easily incorporated into a standard economic analysis, identity and village networks, emerge as being essential to the understanding of migration in this population. Finally, migration emerges as a highly dynamic process, which an ahistorical, static framework of analysis fails to capture.     

Contract Farming and Vulnerability to Poverty among Oil Palm Smallholders in Indonesia

This article addresses smallholder oil palm farming in Indonesia and the risk of falling into poverty by comparing contract and non-contract smallholders. We use an asset-based approach to define vulnerability and apply propensity score matching analysis to assess the impact of contract farming. Data were collected from a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2010 of 245 oil palm smallholder households, 126 of which were contract smallholders. The study finds that approximately 40 per cent of oil palm smallholders can be classified as stochastic-transient poor. We also show that while contract participation reduces the negative impact of oil palm price shocks, this is not the case for production shocks. The study concludes that despite positive income effects, contract smallholders also remain vulnerable to poverty.     

Flourishing retail in the post-soviet sphere? Potentials and constraints of small-scale retail activities in rural Kyrgyzstan

The demise of the USSR led to the collapse of its centrally organised retail system. With this collapse the supply of consumer goods dried up, especially in the remote parts of the former USSR. At the same time the advent of capitalism offered a new institutional framework for independent retail activities. In the Kyrgyz Republic, where the economic liberalisation followed strictly the Washington Consensus, a large number of small shops emerged in both urban and rural areas. This study analyses the reasons for this boom in retail start-ups as well as the constraints the mainly inexperienced merchants encounter. As will be shown, any success in retail activities depends greatly on the performance of other economic sectors. The main goal of starting a retail business is to minimize risks within the overall livelihood strategies of households in rural Kyrgyzstan.     

‘Subsistence’ Readings: World Bank and State Approaches to Commercialising Agriculture in Post-Communist Eurasia

This article explores the World Bank’s project of ‘returning agriculture to the market’ through land titling reforms. It describes how World Bank and national government strategy papers distinguish between a ‘commercial’ or ‘entrepreneurial’ sector of farming and a ‘subsistence’ agricultural sector in post-communist Eurasia. The extension and growth of the former represents the desired goal of policies since the 1990s, while the latter’s numerical prominence in many countries constitutes a source of concern for authorities. The article argues that ‘subsistence’ represents a misreading of the rural population that confounds self-sufficiency with the size of farms, and casts millions of smallholders as non-economic and alien to markets. It focuses on two post-communist countries (Romania and Ukraine, extremes in terms of the introduction of property rights over agricultural land) to argue that efforts to reduce ‘subsistence’ translate into measures that increase the households’ monetary needs and are therefore going to be resisted. The article relies on analyses of World Bank and national government’s strategy papers as well as ethnographic data collected in 2013–2017 in the Ukrainian-Romanian border region.     

Jobs Off the Farm: Wealth,Human Capital,and Social Group in Rural Eastern India

This study examines the effects of wealth, human capital, and social group on the occupational choice and income of farm households, to gain an understanding of the mechanism underlying the recently increasing income diversification in rural eastern India. The results show that wealth and human capital have a positive impact on the choice of high-return jobs, and low caste workers are more likely to work in casual, low-paying jobs, partly due to their dependence on personal networks in finding jobs. Notably, no clear evidence of association between social group and income is found.     

A Retrospective Impact Evaluation of the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Alleviation (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project

Community based livelihood interventions, which focus directly on increasing income and employment, have become an increasingly important component of large-scale poverty reduction programmes. We evaluate the impact of a participatory livelihoods intervention – the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project (PVP) using propensity score matching methods. The paper explores the impact of PVP on its core goals of empowering women and the rural poor, improving their economic welfare, and facilitating public action. We find significant effects of PVP on reducing the incidence of high cost debt and diversifying livelihoods. We also find evidence of women’s empowerment, and increased political participation.     

Evaluation of a Hybrid Seed Contract between Smallholders and a Multinational Company in East Java,Indonesia

This article evaluates a hybrid seed contract between Indonesian smallholders and Pioneer Hybrid International. A transaction cost approach was used to analyse contract participation, total farm gross margins and labour and chemical use. The empirical results suggest: (a) the contract favours farmers with more irrigated land; (b) the contract improved returns to farm capital and was welfare improving; (c) the contract increased the demand for non-family labour, particularly female labour; and (d) the contract increased the intensity of chemical use. The success of the contract was attributed to the nature of the contracting process, which was between Pioneer and grower groups and not individual smallholders.     

Patterns of Ethnic Homogenisation,Fragmentation and Polarisation and the Vote Shares for Nationalist Parties in Latvia

Abstract

The focus of this article is on ethnic diversity and polarisation in Latvia after 1989. Our fundamental question is that if we interpret diversification as a dynamic process, and include polarisation as a potential direction of diversification, how much will the results differ, compared to the explanations usually proposed in the literature? The recognition that apparent homogenisation results, in particular cases, in polarisation (in this case in 35% of Latvia’s entire population) is the major contribution of our empirical analysis. Taking into account the broad scale of the potential impact of polarisation, our findings raise significant questions for the classification mechanisms that may be employed in further investigations.