Agriculture/Land Tenure

Large-scale modern farming/ranching

Large crop or cattle-raising acreage that uses some hired labor, but where many activities are mechanized (US/Latin America)

Plantation Agriculture

A system in which a piece of land is used to raise a cash crop for export (tea, rubber, etc). Cultivation is by hired labor who are paid wages while the plantation is run by the owner or a professional manager

Latifundios

A large estate or ranch on which the hired labor still have a servile relationship to the owner (Latin America especially/even some parts of Europe)

Family Farms

Own plots of land (usually small) and operate them mainly or solely with their own family’s labor (Asia/Latin America)

Not much economies of scale reached with this

Tenancy

An individual family farms a piece of land owned by a landlord, where the farmer pays rent (Asian agriculture)

Sharecropping

A form of tenancy where the farmer shares crops with their landlord

Absentee Landlords

Live far away from their land. Usually just collect rents. Few may provide seeds or some type of capital for the tenants (Asia and Latin America)

Communal Farming

village inhabitants still own some land jointly. Individuals and families may farm plots on communal land, to which they gain access by custom or allocation from the community’s leaders (Incentive problems; Land is owned in common so not much incentive to improve the land)

(Practiced in parts of Africa)

Collectivized Agriculture

Practices in many former marxist states (Formerly in the Soviet states, China and Vietnam. Still in North Korea today)

(Again lacks incentives to improve land)

Reform of Rent Contracts

Ensures the tenure of a tenant farmer. Make long-term contracts available - tenant may maintain and invest more in the land in order to bring stability to family life

Rent Reduction Reform

Involves placing a ceiling on the share of the crop that a landlord can demand as rent

Land to the Tiller

Give land to the tenant with compensation to the landlord for their loss of land. Government to cap how much an individual can own

• Or possibly, only those who can till it can own it

• Land to the tiller without compensation: All land not cultivated by the owner is confiscated while the former landlord receives nothing in return

Slash and Burn Cultivation

• Trees and bushes are slashed and fire is used to clear the land

• Original usage in the soil as well as the nutrients from the burnt ash create rather good yields for a few years, before the soil is worn out

• Farmers will move on and tear more forests down and leaving worn out fields in their path

(Especially used in Laos, parts of Africa, and the Amazon)

“Packages” that increase agricultural production

Mechanical Package: Tractors, other forms of machinery which are used as a substitute for a rural labor force that has left the fields for the city

Biological Package: Yields are raised through the use of improved plant varieties - such as hybrid corn or the new varieties of rice (the Green Revolution)

Lean Season

The several months before the next harves, food prices seem to get more expensive

Shifting Cultivation

Grow in one location until soil fertility is exhausted, then the farmers move on, oftentimes slash and burn (represents about 15% of farming in LDCs, especially in South America)

Pastoral Nomadism

Farmers travel continuously. Often involves livestock with gravitation to new sources of grazing

Settled Agriculture

• Intensive annual crops (usually concentrated staple cereal crops)

• Mixed farming (crops and livestock)

• Perennial crops (tree crops… bananas, cane sugar, coffee, cocoa)

• Livestock Systems (dairy and/or meat products)

Latifundia/Minifundia

The gap between the great estate owners and small family farms has led to the creation of two terms to describe them:
Latifundia: Large estates

Minifundia: Small family farms on which peasant farmers struggle to feed themselves