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Land tenure and the rural exodus in Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, and Peru
Book
Retdews
313
and income effects of the new techno!ogy ate not accurately or fully reflected in the changes experienced by farmers in favored environments. Kobert E. Evenson Yale University
I!. Paul Shaw, Land Tenure and the Rural Exodus in Chile, Colombia, Costa tptca, and Peru (University Presses of Florida, Gainesville, I976) pp. 180, $11.50. The monograph lays out a theoretical model of rural emigration, and goes on to test by regression analysis a series of implications drawn from it. Four Latin American countries serve as test cases. Policy questions dealing with population growth and land tenure conclude the work. Shaw hypothesizes that rural emigration will be highest from areas in which population pressure exists and in which land tenure arrangements lead to a relative scarcity of agricultural income-earning opportunities. He ably manipulates imperfect data in the choice of variables by which the hypotheses are tested. Population pressure and agricultural ‘inopportunity’ are measured jointly rather than separately. The procedure replaces a more primitive one used by other researchers that relies on simple population density or on number of workers per unit of arable land. Instead in Shaw’s work, an independent variable, on which emigration rates are regressed, considers not only labor force size, but also the numbers of owners and workers employed on large farms as well as the number of owner-operators of farms between 5 and 500 hectares in area. The remainder of the adult male population, composed of farmers who work under a variety of tenancy arrangements, together with owners of the smallest plots and landless laborers, form a labor supply whose absolute size and rate of growth may result in economic distress in any given province. The area1 denominator used to standardize these measurements considers the amount of arable land excluding that given over to latifundia. In ::ll, it is an original and ingenious approach, and one that could usefully be imitated elsewhere. Furthermore, in empirical tests that compare the effects of this independent variable with those of other, more conventional ORCS(urban-rural differentials in wages, educational attainment, amenities, transport availability), the land tenure variable performs in a statistically satisfying fashion. Yet the title of the book promyses more than these innovative measurements are readily capable of dehvering. If we take the concept of ‘land tenure’ in a complete sense, it might be conceived as the set of rights to an
Book Reuiews
314
income stream derived from agricultural operations on a given piece of land. At the very least, an informative characterization of this set of rights includes the following dimensions:
(1j Security
of tenure:
Thr.: length of the period during which the rights are guaranteed. Landless laborers are frequently employed on a day-to-day basis; tenants may have annual or longer leases; owners of freeholds cannot be t:lvoluntarily dispossessed under ordinary circumstances. (2) Alienability: The capability of the owner or cultivator to sell the land to others, and therefore to capitalize the improvements made on it. Owners in mos. advanced economies can sell their land; land in some low-income countr,es is held by tribes no individual member of which can sell the land to which he nevertheless holds usufruct rights. (3) Sirares: The proportion (or absolute amount) of the crop that is returned to the cultivator. Owners receive the whole crop; sharecroppers pay some fraction of the crop to owners as rent. (4) Rights to other bemfits: In some systems, cultivators have rights to the use of water, common pasture, small plots for individual cultivation, storage facilities, agricultural and consumer credit, housing and outbuildings, and other agriculturally related benefits. A complete characterization of land tenure includes an enumeration of these rights as well as a description of their security and alienability. It should be clear that empirical analysis of the effects of these multiple aspects of land tenure on rural emigration is complex. While some aspects might lead to formation of hypotheses like Shaw’s relating them to concentration of ownership, absentee control, labor force density, and then to emigration, the causal chain linking tenure, density, and emigration is not extensively expl.ored in Shaw’s book. The empiric,il research is supplemented by a chapter on policy considerations. In this case, it is valuable to be able to review a book four years after it was completed. (The preface is dated October 19’74). The useful halflives even of academic publications seem to have been ::hrinking. We can look at this work not only within the context in which iI was written, but also in the light of events that have subsequently occurred. Time has not treated kindly Shaw’s pessimism about the possibilities of altering fertility rates, and thus the natural rates of increase. Although discussion continues about the causes of the declins, the fact remains that fertility has fallen in Latin America at rates previously thought impossibly rapid. Furthermore, contrary to experience in some otler agricultural lowincome countries, the declines have occurred in the coumryside as well as in the cities. In fact, it may well be, contrary to the expectations expressed by Shaw,
Book
Rmiews
315
tha.t policy makers can more easily affect the rate of natural increase than thr.y can deal with the institutions comprising the land tenure system. It this were SC, choice theoretic concepts might be offered as explanation. Modifying a system of land tenure means changing the property rights of indivitiuals. Eieir reluctance to approve such changes is well known. If they have political power, ti static land tenure system follows naturally. The landless, whether tenants, sharecroppers, or laborers may be powerless to alter these arrangements. They are not powerless, however, to lower their fertility when the costs of effective contraception fall and the net benefits from having children do not rise. The results, as noted above, may be a fertility regime more amenable to policy manipulation than is the land tenure system. At the same time that we can be more optimistic than was Shaw in 1974 about the prospects for changes in fertility, we probably should be less convinced of the strength of the movement toward more egalitarian agricultural conditions. In Chile, the massive and in some cases illegal redistribution of land has been reversed since 1973, although the degree of concentration present, say, in 1965 seems unlikely to recur. In Peru, the military government has not emphasized agriculture in its campaign for worker participatioil in ‘social enterprises’. And in Colombia and Costa Rica, no notable steps toward further land reform have occurred. Taken as a whole, the value of the work’s empirical framework more than offsets its shortcomings. It will be easy for continuing research in these four countries and elsewhere to extend and refine the foundation it lays. In its sensitive and intelligent use of data rejected or misused by less imaginative economists, it will be imitated and citei for some time to come. Bruce Ilerrick University of California, Los Angeles
Doris J. Dodge, Agricultural Policy and Performance in Zambia: Prospects, and Proposals for Change (Institute of International University of California, Bert ,:ley, 1977) pp. xiii f 285, $4.95.
&story Studies,
‘The performance of the agricultural sector in Zambia m the twelve years since Independence (1964) has not been very satisfactory by almost any criterion one might choose to use’ (p. 1). On this premise, Dodge argues that the Zarnbian Government’s crop pricing and marketing policy has had an ‘adverse effect’ on: (p. 138) the rural--urban income gap; national self-. the growth of rural cash incomes; and sufficiemy in food production; reducing Zambia’s dependence on copper export earnings. She analyzes the
Retdews
313
and income effects of the new techno!ogy ate not accurately or fully reflected in the changes experienced by farmers in favored environments. Kobert E. Evenson Yale University
I!. Paul Shaw, Land Tenure and the Rural Exodus in Chile, Colombia, Costa tptca, and Peru (University Presses of Florida, Gainesville, I976) pp. 180, $11.50. The monograph lays out a theoretical model of rural emigration, and goes on to test by regression analysis a series of implications drawn from it. Four Latin American countries serve as test cases. Policy questions dealing with population growth and land tenure conclude the work. Shaw hypothesizes that rural emigration will be highest from areas in which population pressure exists and in which land tenure arrangements lead to a relative scarcity of agricultural income-earning opportunities. He ably manipulates imperfect data in the choice of variables by which the hypotheses are tested. Population pressure and agricultural ‘inopportunity’ are measured jointly rather than separately. The procedure replaces a more primitive one used by other researchers that relies on simple population density or on number of workers per unit of arable land. Instead in Shaw’s work, an independent variable, on which emigration rates are regressed, considers not only labor force size, but also the numbers of owners and workers employed on large farms as well as the number of owner-operators of farms between 5 and 500 hectares in area. The remainder of the adult male population, composed of farmers who work under a variety of tenancy arrangements, together with owners of the smallest plots and landless laborers, form a labor supply whose absolute size and rate of growth may result in economic distress in any given province. The area1 denominator used to standardize these measurements considers the amount of arable land excluding that given over to latifundia. In ::ll, it is an original and ingenious approach, and one that could usefully be imitated elsewhere. Furthermore, in empirical tests that compare the effects of this independent variable with those of other, more conventional ORCS(urban-rural differentials in wages, educational attainment, amenities, transport availability), the land tenure variable performs in a statistically satisfying fashion. Yet the title of the book promyses more than these innovative measurements are readily capable of dehvering. If we take the concept of ‘land tenure’ in a complete sense, it might be conceived as the set of rights to an
Book Reuiews
314
income stream derived from agricultural operations on a given piece of land. At the very least, an informative characterization of this set of rights includes the following dimensions:
(1j Security
of tenure:
Thr.: length of the period during which the rights are guaranteed. Landless laborers are frequently employed on a day-to-day basis; tenants may have annual or longer leases; owners of freeholds cannot be t:lvoluntarily dispossessed under ordinary circumstances. (2) Alienability: The capability of the owner or cultivator to sell the land to others, and therefore to capitalize the improvements made on it. Owners in mos. advanced economies can sell their land; land in some low-income countr,es is held by tribes no individual member of which can sell the land to which he nevertheless holds usufruct rights. (3) Sirares: The proportion (or absolute amount) of the crop that is returned to the cultivator. Owners receive the whole crop; sharecroppers pay some fraction of the crop to owners as rent. (4) Rights to other bemfits: In some systems, cultivators have rights to the use of water, common pasture, small plots for individual cultivation, storage facilities, agricultural and consumer credit, housing and outbuildings, and other agriculturally related benefits. A complete characterization of land tenure includes an enumeration of these rights as well as a description of their security and alienability. It should be clear that empirical analysis of the effects of these multiple aspects of land tenure on rural emigration is complex. While some aspects might lead to formation of hypotheses like Shaw’s relating them to concentration of ownership, absentee control, labor force density, and then to emigration, the causal chain linking tenure, density, and emigration is not extensively expl.ored in Shaw’s book. The empiric,il research is supplemented by a chapter on policy considerations. In this case, it is valuable to be able to review a book four years after it was completed. (The preface is dated October 19’74). The useful halflives even of academic publications seem to have been ::hrinking. We can look at this work not only within the context in which iI was written, but also in the light of events that have subsequently occurred. Time has not treated kindly Shaw’s pessimism about the possibilities of altering fertility rates, and thus the natural rates of increase. Although discussion continues about the causes of the declins, the fact remains that fertility has fallen in Latin America at rates previously thought impossibly rapid. Furthermore, contrary to experience in some otler agricultural lowincome countries, the declines have occurred in the coumryside as well as in the cities. In fact, it may well be, contrary to the expectations expressed by Shaw,
Book
Rmiews
315
tha.t policy makers can more easily affect the rate of natural increase than thr.y can deal with the institutions comprising the land tenure system. It this were SC, choice theoretic concepts might be offered as explanation. Modifying a system of land tenure means changing the property rights of indivitiuals. Eieir reluctance to approve such changes is well known. If they have political power, ti static land tenure system follows naturally. The landless, whether tenants, sharecroppers, or laborers may be powerless to alter these arrangements. They are not powerless, however, to lower their fertility when the costs of effective contraception fall and the net benefits from having children do not rise. The results, as noted above, may be a fertility regime more amenable to policy manipulation than is the land tenure system. At the same time that we can be more optimistic than was Shaw in 1974 about the prospects for changes in fertility, we probably should be less convinced of the strength of the movement toward more egalitarian agricultural conditions. In Chile, the massive and in some cases illegal redistribution of land has been reversed since 1973, although the degree of concentration present, say, in 1965 seems unlikely to recur. In Peru, the military government has not emphasized agriculture in its campaign for worker participatioil in ‘social enterprises’. And in Colombia and Costa Rica, no notable steps toward further land reform have occurred. Taken as a whole, the value of the work’s empirical framework more than offsets its shortcomings. It will be easy for continuing research in these four countries and elsewhere to extend and refine the foundation it lays. In its sensitive and intelligent use of data rejected or misused by less imaginative economists, it will be imitated and citei for some time to come. Bruce Ilerrick University of California, Los Angeles
Doris J. Dodge, Agricultural Policy and Performance in Zambia: Prospects, and Proposals for Change (Institute of International University of California, Bert ,:ley, 1977) pp. xiii f 285, $4.95.
&story Studies,
‘The performance of the agricultural sector in Zambia m the twelve years since Independence (1964) has not been very satisfactory by almost any criterion one might choose to use’ (p. 1). On this premise, Dodge argues that the Zarnbian Government’s crop pricing and marketing policy has had an ‘adverse effect’ on: (p. 138) the rural--urban income gap; national self-. the growth of rural cash incomes; and sufficiemy in food production; reducing Zambia’s dependence on copper export earnings. She analyzes the