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Tenant farmers, as a marginalised and often overlooked segment of rural economies, can face particular
disadvantages. In the Learning Network, Alberto Monterroso highlighted a pervasive pattern in Central America, in
which large landowners ‘rent’ tiny tracts — often one-ifth of a hectare, suficient only for subsistence farming — in
exchange for labour or a portion of the crop. In Guatemala, he writes, landowners who share the harvest but not the cost
or risks of farming are able to sell very cheaply, depressing market prices — and, in turn, tenants’ income.
In the wake of the 2007-2008 food crisis, the alarm has also been raised over ‘land grabs’. Foreign buy-ups of agricultural
land in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions may put unprecedented pressure on land resources and land tenure
systems. Those most vulnerable to losing their land are small- scale farmers who lack formal tenure Cotula and Vermeulen
2009.
But besides big commercial land deals, which are relatively easy to trace,
4
there are local land rental markets not always accounted for in national statistics. These are creating new
opportunities for many farmers to develop their agricultural activities. In rural China, Huang et al. 2012 describe farmers
scaling up their operations by renting and consolidating land left unused by migrants, combining very small holdings to
obtain a sustainable livelihood. Small producers in Indonesia are also increasingly renting and sharecropping to consolidate
land and scale up production, as Ronnie Natawidjaja noted in the Learning Network.
2.3.3 Beyond the farm: off-farm jobs,
migration and rural-urban links
Clearing the way for some of these land strategies are new and sometimes better opportunities for employment and
migration away from small farms. These opportunities also offer different outlets for some rural youth. In China, Huang
et al
. note, more farmers are taking off-farm jobs — and they do not always leave the countryside to do so, given that
the country’s rural economies are beginning to offer more diverse employment. A survey in 2008 found that over half
the rural labour force was either partially or fully employed off the farm, compared with 15 per cent in the early 1980s.
Those moving into rural or urban off-farm jobs are largely the young, say Huang et al., shifting the farming population
toward older and female farmers. They ind about half of rural labourers aged 16-24 have full-time jobs off the farm,
and these workers are more educated than farming youth. Among labourers who expect to do farm work in the next
ive years, only around 15 per cent of the youth cohort — compared with 87 per cent of older farmers — prefer to stay
on farms in the long run.
Outside China, other regions around the world have demographic bulges of rural youth entering markets Figure
2.5 with little land to inherit — and usually few formal jobs available in either rural or urban economies. Their livelihoods
may, as a necessity, become complex mixtures involving multiple informal arrangements.
In this context, migration and off-farm jobs are not necessarily movements out of farming. More often, farming
is combined with off-farm work through increasing urban- rural linkages. Learning Network studies by Ranaboldo and
colleagues in Argentina, Bolivia and Peru looked at how small-scale producers are capitalising on consumers’ growing
interest in local cultural heritage; many take the opportunity not only to market traditional products, but to own or work
in restaurants and tourism businesses. Nico Tassi’s separate research for the Learning Network in Bolivia considered
the interweaving of rural and urban economies among the indigenous Aymara. The group’s extensive kinship links allow
rural farmers, for example, to rely on working periodically at urban relatives’ shops and workshops in La Paz. In much of
the developing world, improvement of roads and a boom in transportation between rural and urban areas are facilitating
such circulation from farm to city, and many villages have become towns. As rural marketplaces are also growing
stronger and more connected to urban markets, Tassi points out that rural-urban economic relationships are becoming
more luid and the frontiers between these two spaces are blurring.
Small-farm livelihoods can beneit signiicantly from diversifying into off-farm and urban incomes. Farmers’
economic strategies have always included migration, but increasing environmental threats may make remittances
still more essential for those staying in farming. In a set of recent case studies in Bolivia, Senegal and Tanzania,
poor producers who are under stress from climate change
4 The Land Coalition monitors these lands deals regularly: www.landcoalition.orgcpl
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survive by moving seasonally, often to work as labourers on other farms. Farmers who do not receive remittances from
migrant relatives were seen as the most vulnerable in their communities Tacoli 2011. Migrant remittances may even
become important at the scale of the national economy: the Learning Network’s Monterroso notes that 1.5 million
Guatemalans have settled in the United States, and the funds they send back are equivalent to 40 per cent of the country’s
GDP. Most of these migrants are youth from poor, maize- producing small farms.
In line with this, participants in the Provocation Seminar on rural youth
5
suggested that the exodus of young farmers should not be considered a new crisis to be headed off.
Development initiatives commonly approach this situation by trying to ix problems and make village life more attractive.
From the agency perspective, an alternative — more aligned with the preferences and strategies of rural youth themselves
— is to think about supporting migration in such a way that young people can leave successfully and also are encouraged
to return, bringing new skills and knowledge back to the countryside.
2.3.4 Labour shortages and
