Structural changes in U.S. agriculture: Implications for African American farmers

Structural changes in U.S. agriculture, influenced by technological and institutional forces, have altered the economic and social characteristics of rural America, especially that segment of rural America populated by farmers and their families. Changes in the structure of agriculture have greater implications for small scale farmers, many of whom are African American, in that strategic options for their farm-firms are constrained to: increasing their farm size, exiting farming, and obtaining off-farm employment to survive. This article presents a rationale for public support of limited resource farmers, identifies structural trends in U.S. agriculture and their impacts on African American farmers, discusses economic problems unique to these farmers, and recommends needs for specific public policies and development programs.     

Invisible capital: The contribution of communal rangelands to rural livelihoods in South Africa

Communal rangelands (including their woodland component) contribute significantly to rural livelihoods in that a variety of natural resources are utilised for direct use and for exchange in local and more distant markets. Natural resources are also valued for purposes which are not ‘economic’ (eg for ceremonial and aesthetic reasons) and because of their ecological functions. The fact that many of these uses are not monetised means that their true social and economic value is often underestimated and not taken adequately into account when assessing, for example, the viability of land redistribution projects. The ecological dimension is as crucial as the socio‐economic: how sustainable is this multifold use of communal rangeland resources? More positively, can the productivity of ‘natural capital’ be increased, and how can the benefits of multifold utilisation activities be more widely distributed to help address rural poverty? This article discusses conceptual models drawn from the general literature which may be of relevance; reviews some of the southern African evidence on rural livelihoods and natural resource use; and attempts to draw out the lessons for poverty assessments and land reform policy.     

西部地区农业资金障碍及对策

党的十五届四中全会和1999年11月召开的中央经济工作会议,都把西部大开发提上了重要的议事日程,明确指出国家要实施西部大开发战略.这些都表明,我国实施西部大开发的宏大工程正式启动.经过几年的运作,国家对西部的投资和转移支付力度加大,优先安排了一些政策性贷款,提供优惠政策鼓励国内外的企业和投资家到西部投资开发,掀起了一股西部开发的热潮.在各方投资的带动下,西部的基础设施正得到加强,特别是一些标志性的重大工程的开工为西部经济的腾飞打下了坚实的基础.然而,西部农业的发展现状与它在西部经济社会现代化进程中的重要作用极不适应,这成了西部大开发中一个急待解决的重大问题.     

Non-monetary capital formation and rural development

It is generally assumed that production in the Third World grows slowly because savings are low. This thesis presupposes full employment, so that a decrease in the production of consumption goods is the precondition for an increase in investment. As approximately 50 per cent of the labour time in rural areas in poor countries is not utilized, non-monetary capital formation is possible on a huge scale. A development strategy aiming at the improvement of the material conditions of the poorest 40 per cent of the population should give a high priority to non-monetary capital formation.     

人力资本投资对农业经济发展的贡献研究

发展经济学原理指出,农业是关系到国计民生的重要产业,其发展与人力资本投资密切相关。近年来,我国政府对农村地区进行了大力的扶持,尤其是对农村人力资本进行了投资。为了解析这些投资的实际效果,本文对1981～2002年国家在教育方面的投资与农业产出效益之间关系进行了实证分析,结果发现,人力资本投资中的教育投资对农业经济发展具有一定的拉动作用。据此进一步指出国家解决"三农"问题的关键之一是要加大对教育的投资,并且要持续不断。     

论新农村建设中的资本要素缺失

我国政府已明确提出建设社会主义新农村的发展战略,而农村金融作为当代农村经济发展中至关重要的资本要素配置的相关制度安排,其作用日益凸显.当前,我国农村金融市场存在不均衡状态,为此应做到:尽快明确中国农业银行商业化改革的目标定位;拓展农业发展银行业务范围;加快农村信用社改革;民间融资合法化;建立农业保险体系;开辟农村资本市场,拓宽农业企业融资渠道.     

资本的权力与资本收入的性质

经典作家们关于资本收入性质的分析无疑是正确的。但在今天讨论资本收入是不是剥削收入时,应结合新的历史条件和新的实际来做科学的回答。我们认为,不能把我国现实中存在的私人资本收入一概认定为剥削收入,应该具体情况具体分析。     

对“三农”问题的理性解读

当代"三农"问题是市场经济展开的必然结果,在鸦片战争后就开始出现,本质上是小农经济与市场经济的矛盾冲突。解决"三农"问题,应坚定不移地推进市场化改革,完善家庭承包制,引导小农经济向现代农业转变。     

Channels of international risk-sharing: capital gains versus income flows

Global financial integration unlocks a huge potential for international risk sharing. We examine the degree to which international equity holdings act as a risk sharing device in industrial and emerging economies. We split equity returns into investment income (dividend distribution) and capital gains to investigate which of the two channels delivers the largest potential for risk sharing. Our evidence suggests that net capital gains are a more potent channel of risk sharing. They behave in a countercyclical way, that is they tend to be positive (negative) when the domestic economy is growing more slowly (rapidly) than the rest of the world. Countries with more countercyclical net capital gains experience improved consumption risk sharing. The empirical analysis furthermore suggests that these risk sharing properties of net capital gains have increased through time, in particular in the 1990s and early-2000s, on the back of a declining equity home bias and financial market deepening.     

资本农业:海南热带高效农业发展之新路

海南是全国最大的经济特区,是我国的第二大宝岛,同我国深圳、厦门等城市经济相比,有一个很大的不同就是：海南是城乡结构型经济,它有广阔的农村,农村人口占全省人口约80%,少数民族人口达100多万农业产值直到1992年一直占全岛国民生产总值之首,成为海南整个经济发展的“瓶颈”,因此,农业、农村、农民的“三农”问题,是海南整个经济发展不得不特别重视的问题。     

Tourism and rural development in Maputaland: A case‐study of the Kosi Bay area

There is often a vast difference between the needs of the tourism industry and tourists on the one hand and of the local inhabitants of developing tourist destination areas — especially in Third World, rural settings — on the other hand. This article describes some of the problems associated with tourism development in general and discusses tourism development in terms of the psychological saturation effects it can have on local inhabitants. The authors state that tourism could enhance the development of rural areas on an ecologically and economically viable basis, and improve the quality of life of the rural black. They further state that it is possible to reconcile the needs and demands of locals and those of tourism through adequate planning and the development of effec‐tive intra‐ and intercultural communication systems. Using the Kosi Bay area of the Maputaland region in northern Natal as a case‐study, specific suggestions are offered about ways in which this process of need reconciliation can be built into tourism plan‐ning and into the development of a meaningful infrastructure for tourism.     

International capital market integration: Implications for convergence, growth, and welfare

This paper studies the effects of international capital market integration on welfare and the speed of adjustment in a two-region endogenous growth model. Monopolistic firms undertake research and development (R&D) to improve their productivity level. National and international knowledge spillovers affect the returns to R&D. The two countries differ with respect to the initial productivity level and R&D capability (which is a proxy for human capital and structural policies). Long-run productivity gaps are determined by the difference in R&D capability. Over time, there is conditional convergence in productivity levels. The speed of convergence is larger with integrated international capital markets than without. Long-run gaps in consumption levels are larger in the former situation than in the latter. Capital market integration harms (benefits) the leading (lagging) region if domestic spillovers are more important than international spillovers and differences in R&D capabilities are small.The authors research is supported by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He thanks Lucas Bretschger, Theo van de Klundert, and Richard Nahuis, Thomas Steger, and Helmut Wagner for comments on an earlier version.     

Migration from rural areas of poor countries: The impact on rural productivity and income distribution

Evidence is presented elsewhere²⁶ that intra-rural inequality is a major cause of rural-urban migration: that better-off villagers tend to be ‘pulled’, and worse-off villagers ‘pushed’, from the same subset of relatively ‘unequal’ villages. This paper argues that townward emigration, and its after-effects (remittances, return migration), in turn increases interpersonal and inter-household inequality within and between villages. As for rural labour productivity, the neoclassical expectation (that townward migration increases it) rests on special definitions and doubtful assumptions. Fortunately, in most of the poorer developing countries, rural-urban migration is much smaller, less permanent and more likely to set up countervailing economic-demographic pressures restoring the rural population share, than received opinion about ‘the urban crisis’ suggests. Migration does not equilibriate between urban and rural sectors, largely because of externalities and compositional factors; but it does smoothe itself, largely because individuals behave rationally and learn quickly. As so often, the lesson for development studies is not that ‘markets fail’. It is that, under conditions of both poverty and structural inequality, they function — but with generally unacceptable, misery-preserving consequences.     

Expenditure patterns and elasticities of rural households sampled in two communal areas of KwaZulu-Natal

Expenditure patterns among a sample of 99 rural households in two communal districts in KwaZulu-Natal were investigated to determine the potential impact of a widespread income shock on household expenditure. The results showed expenditure elasticities of close to unity for food. Low elasticities were found for staple foods. Elasticities for meat, meat products and poultry were close to unity, while horticultural products showed the greatest potential for demand growth within the food category. Of the statistically significant commodity categories, expenditure elasticities for durables, housing and transport were more than double those estimated for the aggregate food category. For consumer items, the district expenditure elasticities were estimated to be 0,76 and 0,71, while expenditure on social obligations would not increase with rural incomes. Wealthier households (the top expenditure decile) have a greater propensity for increased expenditure on transport, while poorer households show a greater propensity for increased expenditure on housing and durables. Although agriculture has the potential to generate widespread growth in rural incomes, the preference for manufactured goods casts some doubt on the strength of consumption multipliers for locally produced farm and non-farm goods in rural KwaZulu-Natal.     

Implications of rural settlement patterns for development: A historical case study in Qaukeni,Eastern Cape,South Africa

Successive administrative policies, overlaid on the traditional communal land tenure system in the Qaukeni area of the Eastern Cape, have had the effect of tying people to the land and creating an environment that severely constrains opportunities for development. This article traces the influence of administrative changes on land allocation over the last century. It assesses the impact of the settlement pattern in the early 1980s on accessibility to basic facilities, services and development opportunities. In view of the severe conditions in the study area (internal push factors), coupled with reduced restrictions on movement to South African cities and a general urbanisation trend (external pull factors), population movements could have been expected both out of the region and to more accessible places within it. Primary research, using districts and administrative areas as the units of analysis, revealed that few of the expected changes had occurred in the period between 1982 and 1993. However, recent evidence shows that several of the anticipated changes are taking place. The article concludes that, notwithstanding recent trends, a combination of the land tenure system (in both rural and urban areas), a variety of place-related factors in rural areas, together with risk-spreading strategies on the part of households, continue to exert a strong influence in keeping people on the land, even though their existence is not subsistence based, but linked to the urban economy.