Transcript Rural Production and Livelihoods Systems

Rural Production and Livelihoods Systems
The course is organised so that you will learn about the
different but related aspects of rural livelihoods and
production systems. For example: small-scale
‘peasant’ farm households are the main basis of the
livelihoods of most of the Cambodian population.
However a majority also depend on wage labour, on
job migration and on the use of the commons as a
source of livelihoods. In the Tonle Sap Basin and
along the Mekong and other major rivers and on the
coast many people are fishers rather than farmers, and
fishing combines with farming and with off-farm
employment in much of the countryside.
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Social and Economic Stratification
• There are wide differences in all rural societies in the same area and
village, between very poor, landless households, poor but viable
households with land, and a minority of wealthy people with above
average farm sizes. Often the latter have businesses as merchants
or rice millers, and provide credit and farm inputs to poorer villagers.
• Sociologists talk about this difference of status and economic wealth
within communities as social stratification. We refer to movement
from one status to another as social or economic mobility.
Movement out of poverty, the subject of a current CDRI and World
Bank study in Cambodia, is an important aspect of social and
economic mobility. The CDRI study is one dimension of
Cambodia’s strategy for poverty reduction.
A concern with a crisis in
Cambodian rural society
• We are concerned, in research and teaching at RUPP, with rapid
changes taking place in the Cambodian rural economy, in the
availability and allocations of land as rural populations increase in
numbers, beyond the capacity of the land to support them, and thus
become increasingly dependent on getting their livelihoods outside
agriculture.
• We are concerned with the growth of rural poverty and widening
gaps between rich and poor which have arisen as a result of these
changes, and as a result of natural disasters such as the floods of
2000 to 2002.
• We are also witnessing changes in the nature of poverty: that is,
between the poor who manage well enough to sustain the lives as
part of the system, and those who are destitute or exposed to
destitution – who are living ‘on the edge’. We discuss below how
movement out of poverty is most often a matter of diversifying
livelihoods and we examine to what extent this livelihoods
diversification is brought about as a rural household strategy.
Course Design and Examination
• The course is designed to lead to an exam in which
there will be three optional questions about these subject
areas and to a final assignment.
• You will be asked to sit two exams in each of which you
will answer three essay questions; so you will answer
six questions in total: one about each of six areas of
rural livelihoods and production systems.
• The final assignment will be in a seventh area of rural
livelihoods and production systems, to do with
government, commercial or civil measures to create
sustainable livelihoods and reduce rural poverty. It may
involve a field study for those able to take part.
Rural livelihoods in the Cambodian
economy
•
59% of Cambodia’s population get their livelihoods directly from rural
production systems, including farming, fisheries and forestry (World Bank,
Nov. 2008 Report).
• Agricultural production systems are mainly based on family land ownership
on small farms, but also include tenant farming, agricultural wage labour,
off-farm employment.
Most farm households also fish and gather forest products, and fishing is the
primary source of livelihood for many households living around the Tonle
Sap, in riverside villages and on the coast.
• A majority of rural households also depend on wage labour and migrant
labour of some members of the household.
• So the rural population also depends for its livelihoods on industrial and
service sectors of the economy, especially in the garments industry, in
construction and in tourism.
• About 20% of the population live in urban areas, and depends for their
livelihoods directly on service and industrial employment, but most also
maintain social and economic connections with their villages and
households of origin. (RUPP IDRC Working Paper No. 1, 2008).
Meaning of livelihoods
• By livelihoods we mean the material
means, production, consumption and
welfare systems and resources by which
people live, survive and maintain their
wellbeing. To do so they draw on human,
physical, natural, financial and social
capital.
How are livelihoods socially
organised
• The rural household is the social unit which is
mainly responsible for the management of the
livelihoods of its members.
• In everyday life we use the terms ‘household’
and ‘family’ to mean almost the same thing. As
professional sociologists, economists or
demographers we have to draw a distinction
between household and family.
Household and Family
• The household is the unit in which people organise their
lives, usually in the same house and with one household
head.
• The family is a wider unit or network of people related to
one another by kinship or marriage.
• Researchers and planners, for example, the National
Census and National Socio-Economic Survey, use the
household as the basis of studying demographic, social
and economic development.
• In this course we will mainly talk about the household as
the basis of rural livelihoods and production systems.
The household
• We use the concept of the household in studying
both rural and urban society and livelihoods
• A household is a domestic group living under
one roof or in one compound and sharing the
same source of wealth or livelihood
• The members of one household eat and in other
ways consume their resources together e.g. they
have common access to money for health,
education and clothes
• They produce and consume and make decisions
about the household under the authority of one
household head
Livelihoods and Rural Poverty
Poverty can be defined as the absence of adequate livelihoods
• Poverty is most acute:
– in remote rural communities and households and
– in those which have recently migrated to try to improve their lives to other rural
areas or by moving to Phnom Penh.
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In rural areas the poorest are those who are ‘late comers’. They often do
not have any land or have inadequate land and are remote from markets
and services.
Often poverty means that they do not have enough water, and physical
resources.
Lack of access to financial, health services and schools, markets,
transportation and employment opportunities.may mean that they are
trapped in poverty.
People settling in the past decade in Battambang, Banteay Meanchey and
Otdar Meanchey, for example, are often dependent on illicit and risky crossborder agricultural labour migration to Thailand (RUPP IDRC Working Paper
No. 4).
Differential wealth and poverty
• In all rural communities we find a gap
between the poor and the rich, often
marked out by those who have large areas
of land and those who have little or none.
• Those who have large areas of land are
often also those who have local
businesses.
• They are often also leaders in the rural
community.
Land Shortage and Landlessness
• Because of population increase and diminishing
resources, a majority of the community have
inadequate land to maintain their livelihoods only
by farming. Most farms in the main rice
producing areas are of between 0.5 and 1.0 ha.
• Land shortage and landlessness is the main
factor in extreme poverty.
• Many rural households are landless and are
tenants or share-croppers on the land of others
in the community
Land Transfers
• A big problem in rural development is the
transfer of land to large commercial land owners
and forestry companies.
• About a fifth of people living in the rural areas
are landless and live by agricultural or other
labouring and by trading and providing various
services to others in the community
• Some work in the wider national economy, in the
construction, garments, transportation or tourist
industries locally or as migrant workers;
Access to the means of
improvement
• Poverty may also mean not having access to decision
making about maintaining or improving livelihoods
• Leaders in the community are most often the wealthier
household heads and are male. The rural poor and
women household heads are often disempowered: they
do not have means to participate in decisions affecting
their livelihoods
• Lack of access to schooling and health facilities,
affordable credit, employment, land and other natural
resources further disempowers the rural poor
• We sometimes say that they are marginalised: they are
living ‘on the edge’ of society and the economy
• They may, lacking education or land or capital, be unable
to move out of poverty
Livelihood resources and capital
We can measure the quality of people’s livelihoods by
their access to resources and capital:
– human capital includes labour, education, practical
and social skills
– physical capital includes houses, land, water, trees,
cattle, ploughs, ponds, wells and water pumps
– financial capital includes money and credit
– social capital includes household and community
structures, family, friends, neighbours and associates,
market structures, health and educational services,
religious and political structures, support groups and
networks and management systems
Poverty Reduction
• Poverty equals a lack of adequate livelihoods
Support for rural livelihoods and for their
development and sustainability is a key strategy
in attempts to reduce or eradicate rural poverty
• So to reduce rural poverty we need to
understand how rural livelihoods are created,
organized and sustained
• Key factors are the role of the rural household
and of the community
Studying Rural Livelihoods:
Government and NGOs employ social and development
scientists to study rural communities in order to be able
to understand rural livelihoods and so to reduce poverty.
The academic disciplines employed in studying rural
production and livelihood systems are to do with the
characteristics of livelihood resources and capital;
secondly with how they are structured and organised in
rural society, primarily in communities and households
and in the agrarian system. The concerned disciplines
are mainly:
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agricultural and environmental science
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sociology and anthropology
•
economics
Studying rural households
• In studying rural livelihoods we begin by
studying households. In any research
which you may do as a student or as a
researcher the household is the basic unit
in which people obtain their livelihoods.
• The household is the unit which is
surveyed in the national census and
national socio-economic, demographic
and health surveys.
Household, family and social
network
• For purpose of managing their affairs and livelihoods, households
may include some people from different families.
• Families on the other hand may be scattered among the community
or far away, in cities or other rural areas, and may include cousins or
aunts, uncles and grandparents living in different households.
• In the rural community a household may rely on or cooperate with
other households, especially with households of family members, in
social or economic activity, e.g. in ceremonies and festivals and in
rice farming.
• They may also combine with other non-family households of
neighbours or friends in these activities.
• We say that these working and social relationships are part of their
social capital, and part of their social network.
Sustainable livelihoods
development
• The idea or concept of sustainable livelihoods
development has become central to strategies for rural
poverty reduction. By sustainable we mean that the
livelihoods of the individuals, households and
communities concerned and the measures introduced for
their improvement will be sustained; livelihoods will be
improved on a lasting or permanent basis by the
measures and strategies which are adopted and the
measures and strategies themselves will be sustained.
We also mean that the resources on which they base
their livelihoods are kept safe and are available for future
generations; in other words, sustainable livelihoods do
not damage or diminish the environment.
Livelihoods Diversification
• Perhaps the most important and effective way in which people
maintain their livelihoods is that of diversifying their use of labour
and sources of income and means of production. We talk about this
as livelihoods diversification.
• One example is when they change from crop to livestock production,
or to fishing;
• Another is when they develop irrigation to permit dry season
irrigation;
• Another is when they collect natural products from the lake, river or
forest;
• Another is when they use their labour to work on the farms of others
in the community;
• Another is when members of the household migrate to work in nonagricultural employment
• And another is when they migrate to seek land and agricultural
employment in a different region of Cambodia.
Rural Livelihoods Diversification
and Poverty Reduction
• Frank Ellis (Journal of Agricultural Economics – Vol.51,
Number 2, May 2000) argues that “under the precarious
conditions that characterise rural survival in many
developing countries” (e.g. population increase and
diminishing farm sizes and natural resources in
Cambodia) diversification is an important means of
livelihood security.
He argues that:
• Policy (both of government and of NGOs and
international agencies) should facilitate rather than inhibit
livelihoods diversity in rural households; and says that:
• Diverse rural livelihoods are less vulnerable than
undiversified ones.
Determinants of Livelihood
Diversification
• Ellis has identified six main determinants of livelihood
diversification or of multiple livelihood strategies:
– seasonality
– risk
– labour markets
– credit markets
– asset strategies
– coping strategies
In RUPP research and in this course we will examine these factors
and also a seventh:
– demographic structure of the household, and thus labour
availability and type
Four case studies of rural
livelihoods diversification
• In this and my next two lectures I will discuss Frank
Ellis’s article, and describe livelihood systems and
livelihood diversification in three different rural
communities in Cambodia.
• They are communities which have been studied in a
research programme being conducted by RUPP:
– Villages in Baray and Santuk Districts of Kampong Thom
Province affected by the construction of the Stung Chinit
Irrigation Project (RUPP IDRC Working Paper No. 3)
– Chong Kneas, a fishing commune on the Tonle Sap in Siem
Reap Province (RUPP IDRC Working Paper No. 6)
– Takhream, a main rice growing commune in Battambang
Province (RUPP IDRC Working Paper No. 4)
Job Migration
• I will also, in later lectures, discuss the factors
involved in job or wage migration, to Phnom
Penh and other city locations, and to areas of
agricultural wage labour (RUPP IDRC Working
Papers No. 1 and No. 4).
• Questions of importance in respect of wage
migration is that of the role of migration in the
economics of the household – i.e. its function as
a form of livelihood diversification of the
household – and the management of wage
migration: who organises it and with what
purposes?
Agricultural and Fishing Livelihoods
• The Cambodian population which gains its livelihoods
from agriculture does so either directly as farmers or
indirectly by working in the agricultural economy as
traders, processors or transportation workers.
• Similarly most people gaining their livelihoods in fishing
do so directly as fishermen and women, but many also
work in fish processing, marketing and transportation.
• By contrast with America or Europe, however,
comparatively few Cambodian people work in packaging
and retail marketing. The Cambodian economy is more
energy efficient than these industrial economies, where,
for every unit of energy used in agricultural production,
six units are used in packaging, transportation and
marketing.
Rural Production Systems
• Farmers are good agricultural economists, and
know their micro-climates, soils, water
availability, crops and animals very well.
Government or NGOs may be able to add to this
knowledge, e.g. by improving animal health and
husbandry, by providing high yielding seeds, or
by improving the market, but they need first to
understand the farmer’s farming system and the
strategies which farmers adopt for livelihood
diversification.
Diversification
• Although the majority of a rural community are
likely to be farmers or fishermen, there are
always people with other occupations: traders,
teachers, mechanics, motodop drivers, truck
drivers, administrators, health workers,
hairdressers and tailors, and so on. In rural
development programmes diversifying
livelihoods by creating jobs outside agriculture is
an important way of increasing incomes and
reducing poverty. This can be either in the rural
community itself or in cities.
Factors in Livelihood Diversification
• Ellis describes six factors in livelihoods
diversification:
– seasonality
– risk management
– labour market
– credit market
– asset strategies
– labour strategies
To these we can add a seventh:
– demography: the demographic structure of the rural
household.
Seasonality
• The creation of wealth for purposes of the
livelihood of the rural household is determined
by an agricultural production cycle determined
the seasons. This dictates the need for labour at
critical times in the agricultural cycle: especially
those of ploughing, planting and harvesting.
• A parallel natural resource cycle determines
accessibility of forest products and of fish
• At some times of the year, when these activities
are dormant, there is a labour surplus in the
household.
Risk Management
• An important factor in the farmer’s production
decisions, including deciding about taking on a
new crop or production technology, is that of risk
management. The farmer has to be sure that, in
the face of possible disasters such as drought or
flood, he will have enough yield, or keep crops in
store.
• A basic need for the Khmer rice farmer is that of
having sufficient rice or the funds or credit to
feed the household and meet their essential
needs.
Labour Markets
• The use of the household labour for farm production is
an important part of the labour market. However labour
demand for farming is determined both by the season
and by farm size: if the household farm is small they are
likely to have surplus labour. They then have to choose
between strategies of working on the farms of others as
wage labour, renting or share cropping the land of
others, or sending members of the household as migrant
workers.
• The possibility and returns from migrant labour are
determined by the wider economy, and include the
availaibility of migrant agricultural labour on crop
plantations, and work in cities, including the garment,
construction and other industries.
Credit Markets
Asset Strategies
Coping Strategies
Potential Increases in farm
incomes
• Agricultural researchers believe that farm
incomes can be increased in Cambodia by two
main possibilities:
A. Intensifying production systems, especially of rice,
in two main ways:
• yield increases by means of improved rice varieties, planting
systems, fertilizers and composting, and water control;
• cropping intensities, meaning using the land for two or three
crops instead of one, usually by means of irrigation in the dry
season.
However, dry season irrigation has only a limited
potential in Cambodia because of its topography,
which does not permit many large scale reservoirs.
Market value added improvements
B. By market chain, value added,
improvements:
– Improved mechanised threshing and milling
of rice;
– Improved storage;
– Improved market structures and market
information
– Improved seeds and chemicals supply
systems
– Improved farmer and trader knowledge
Livelihoods Diversification
Livelihoods Diversification in Baray
District, Kampong Thom
• A study was undertaken of farm households
affected by the creation of the Stung Chinit
irrigation and reservoir system as the basis of a
resettlement plan
• By resettlement we mean all actions to restore
livelihoods, including compensation, land
restoration, training and credit to permit
agricultural or business diversification,
allowances for vulnerable households etc. Only
a few households had to be physically resettled
in the Stung Chinit project.
Location and history in livelihoods
diversification
• The socio-economic survey of households affected by
the spillway, canal and reservoir systems showed that
there were wide differences between types of
communities and households related to their location
and history. They were as follows:
• A. Many households belonged to villages, for example
Palaeng, along the highway, National Road No.6, but
had farm land along the main canal, and would lose land
when the canal was widened
• We found that a high proportion of these households had
livihoods based on salaried jobs and commerce and that
about 20% of households at Palaeng had daughters
working in garment factories in Phnom Penh
Rice farmers farming in the
reservoir
• Farm households in Taphoek village (and also Snao
village to the north in Santuk District) are mainly rice
farmers. Their villages were relocated from the reservoir
area by the Khmer Rouge thirty years ago.
• They continued farming in the valley close to the river
and main canal where the Khmer Rouge made a dam
and where the project would now make a spillway.
• They had few other sources of livelihood but, some
farmers grow water melon in the dry season by pumping
water in low-lying areas. Some women kept pigs and
chickens and wanted to increase their livestock
• Most of these farmers would lose from 30% to 100% of
their land when the reservoir was flooded.
Farmers in villages to the south
and north of the reservoir
• Farmers at Sampov Loen about 8 kilometres to the east
of the spillway are close to the upland secondary forest
which runs along the course of the rive to north and
south.
• Families were resettled there from Takeo by King
Sihanouk in 1967 when they were displaced from their
homes and farms by the railway. They grow rain and
flood fed rice on land above the level of the reservoir.
They also practice slash and burn (swidden) rain fed rice
agriculture in the nearby secondary forest upland, and
some have chamcar tree orchards.
• The women of Sampov Loen obtain an income by
making carrying baskets used in farming and
construction.
Bamboo collectors
• About 20 households living along the north
bank of the main canal are landless and
collect and market bamboo from the forest
as their only source of livelihood
• Their houses would be destroyed by the
widening of the canal, and they needed to
be relocated at a position where they
could continue bamboo collection
32 Households at Kampong Sdach
• Households at Km.16 on the south bank of the
Stung Chinit have their houses sited on a terrace
of land running along the river bank. They get
their livelihoods from three sources:
– floating rice production in low basins (tropaeng)
flooded by the river during the rainy season;
– timber extraction and sawing of trees from the
upstream forest
– cashew nut production on chamcar orchards
Sons and Daughters
• Possibly 50% of sons and daughters of all farm
households expected to continue farming and
would inherit the farms of their parents or would
marry into other farm families
• 50% were already working or wished to work in
occupations outside agriculture, as construction
workers, garment factory workers, mechanics,
hairdressers, tailors etc
Livelihoods and Roads and
Highways Construction
• When villagers living on the edge of the irrigation
area in the Stung Chinit Irrigation Project were
offered the option of a road along the first feeder
canal, they asked for it to be a straight road to
connect with the road to Santuk, even though it
would mean losing some of their rice land. The
reason is that access roads benefits and
provides a sustainable basis of rural livelihoods
more than any other development.
Livelihoods Diversification at
Chong Kneas
• When the local economy becomes more
complex and more closely linked to a
commercial market livelihoods become more
diverse and complex.
• At Chong Kneas, a fishing, passenger and cargo
harbour has developed close to Siem Reap in
the north of the Tonle Sap. About a third of
households have big boats with engines and
large fishing nets. Others provide boats for
tourists visiting the lake.
Service trades in the fishing sector
• To service the fishing and tourist industry
there are engine repair and supply shops,
generator shops, gasoline and diesel
depots. There are fish marketing traders
and fish processing areas as well as
hairdressers, karaoke bars, schools and a
health clinic, all operating on boats or
floating platforms on the lake. There are
more than fifty different occupations.
Port workers
• About one hundred households in one
village of Chong Kneas Commune have
their houses on land and are mainly port
labourers and petty traders.
• They are young recent immigrants, are
among the poorest households and have
small temporary houses
Tourist Workers
• About a hundred households have household
heads or sons working as boat workers to take
tourists on the lake to look at the floating villages
and to go to Prek Toal.
• Many women work as food sellers or petty
traders selling food mainly to Khmer day tourists
from Siem Reap.
• There are several floating tourist restaurants and
fish museums and an environmental centre run
by an NGO Osmose.
Ethnicity at Chong Kneas
• The commune population is made up of three
ethnic communities:
– about 350 Khmer households;
– about 350 Vietnamese households
– about 35 Cham households
The Vietnamese are mainly commercial fishermen
using big boats with engines
The poorest among the fishing community are Khmer
households depending on family subsistence
fishingand on collecting products from the flooded
forest
Access to schooling and health
• Access to schooling for all the community
is about half that of the rest of Siem Reap
District.
• School teachers will not go there because
of the poor conditions on the lake and lack
of housing
• The Vietnamese have the poorest school
attendance, with very few of their children
able to go to secondary school
Health
• Diseases such as chest and skin diseases
and dysentery are twice as common as on
the mainland.
• Child health and maternity health are very
poor.
• One in ten child deaths is from drowning.
Migration
• Migration consists of two main types:
– force migration of households losing their land
and seeking new livelihoods in town or in
another rural area;
– labour migration of individuals or households
seeking a livelihood either as agricultural
labourers or as construction or transportation
or factory workers;
Migration and sustainable
livelihoods
– Many households in rural areas benefit from
the remittances of migrant workers, including
those who have daughters working in garment
factories in Phnom Penh
– As farm sizes get smaller rural populations
depend increasingly on getting part of their
livelihoods from migrant labour
Speculative migration
• Households falling into poverty may
migrate away to follow the household head
or another member of the household to a
town or other rural area where he or she
has work
• They may migrate to a city, especially to
Phnom Penh, intending to seek work and
shelter and to benefit from better health
and schools
Migration, migrant labour and
remittances
• Migration, for example of agricultural labourers
going to work in Thailand and construction,
servie or factory workers going from the rural
areas to work in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap,
has become an important way for individuals
and households to obtain their livelihoods.
• In many communities, especially those close to
the major highways, sons and daughters travel
away from home but make an important
contribution to the livelihoods of their parental
household by sending money home as
remittances
Land transfers impoverishment
and conflict resolution
• A major problem has arisen in Cambodia over
communities which have lost their land through
acquisition by speculators or commercial
companies
• Government gives economic land concessions
to some companies to grow rubber, sugar cane
or other industrial crops.
• It does so in order to assist the national
economy and to get taxes but in doing so the
land and forest for the future use of the
population is lost.
Losses of secondary forest upland
in rice farming areas
• In rice farming areas many communities
are losing their access to neighbouring
upland forest areas for the grazing of
cattle, for fuel wood and as areas where
they can clear land for rice or tree crops
because the land and forest is being
bought up by speculators from the rural
community itself or from the cities
Migration, Livelihoods and Rural
Poverty
• One way out of poverty for people unable to continue
getting a livelihood in the rural areas is to migrate to
obtain employment
• Many in the North West have migrated to work in
Thailand as agricultural labourers
• It is now increasingly common for rural communities to
benefit from the migration of young people to work in the
cities and to send back remittances to their families
• Rural poverty, especially when it is caused by land loss
and health problems, leads whole households to migrate
to the cities, especially to Phnom Penh, to seek work
and better health and educational services