Smallholder income and land distribution in Africa: implications for poverty reduction strategies

Abstract

This paper provides a micro-level foundation for discussions of income and asset allocation within the smallholder sector in Eastern and Southern Africa, and explores the implications of these findings for rural growth and poverty alleviation strategies in the region. Results are drawn from nationally-representative household surveys between 1990 and 2000 in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Zambia. The paper shows that farm sizes in most of Africa are declining over time; that farm sizes appear to be declining at a faster rate for households at the low end of the land size distribution; that Gini coefficient measures indicate that farm sizes within the small-farm sectors are generally more inequitably distributed than in Asia and Latin America at the time of their green revolutions, not even considering the serious additional disparities in land allocation that would result if large-scale farming sectors were to be included in the several case countries having bi-modal land distribution patterns; and that the largest part of the variation in per capita farm sizes within the small-farm sectors is, in every country, predominantly within-village rather than between villages. Realistic discussions of poverty alleviation strategies in Africa need to be grounded in the context of these land distribution patterns and trends. The paper concludes by identifying the implications for poverty alleviation strategies.

Is rainfed agriculture really a pathway from poverty?

“…The implications of small farm size for strategies to reduce poverty have been addressed in two seminal papers by Jayne et al (2003Jayne et al ( , 2010. In this article, we extend their argument to explore the implications for agricultural research.…”

“…The analysis is based on the proposition that the contribution from crop production to the income (in $ per person per day) of each individual in a farming household depends on three factors: the total profitability of all cropping enterprises expressed as net returns in $ per hectare per year; the amount of cropped land (in hectares per household); and the number of household members. This can be expressed as the amount of land required to produce enough income for each household member to just reach the poverty line: The relationship between farm size and net returns from crop production was modelled using the values for farm size and crop income from six datasets from five countries in Table 1 (Jayne et al 2001, Table 6; Simtowe et al 2010). The data for crop income per ha was standardized to 2005 PPP values.…”

“…Second, poverty is concentrated in countries and regions where land is scarce. Using five of the datasets in Table 1, Jayne et al (2003) show that, for farms below the median size, per capita income rises sharply with access to land. In summary, we are not constructing a farm model, but using a parametric budget to illustrate the binding nature of access to land on poverty reduction.…”

“…c Mean net income from crop production excludes the cost of hired and family labour (Jayne et al 2001, Appendix A). …”

Feeding Dar es Salaam: a symbiotic food system perspective

“…The interests of these new powers are not different from other international investors, " [t]hey instead reflect the dominant trends in contemporary agricultural development that promote market penetration, capital accumulation and the integration of smallholders into existing forms of market accumulation" (Amanor and Chichava, 2016: 21). Local elites, urban and rural, are also acquiring land resulting in the growth of medium sized farms, potentially at the expense of the smaller farmer and threatening land availability (Jayne et al, 2014;Jayne et al, 2003).…”