“Subsistence Agriculture”: Analytical Problems and Alternative Concepts

Abstract

This article argues that the concept of “subsistence agriculture”—widely encountered and long used in the literature—is not meaningful enough to be analytically useful as usually employed and should be abandoned. Particularly important for policy is the fact that use of the term “subsistence agriculture” leads to implicitly treating all small‐scale agriculture as a homogeneous residual made up of producers who vary little in their potential contribution to economic development. Data are presented which strongly suggest that small‐scale agriculture in less‐developed countries is not homogeneous so far as decision‐making situations are concerned. The second half of the article considers development of an alternative set of criteria for classifying small‐scale farmers that would reflect meaningful differences in decision‐making experience and decision‐making situations. A tentative set of such criteria for which data are now available, or could be developed with relative ease, are presented to illustrate the relevance of such a classification for development planning and policy.

Economic Development and Anthropology

“…He concludes that no matter what criteria are used-ratio of sale offarm products, hired labor or purchased factor input ratios, level of technology , income and levels ofliving, decision-making and freedom, sociocultural criteria, degree of outside contact, nature of interpersonal relations, psychosociological differences, or develop ment measure-subsistence and peasant farmers are indistinguishable, and subsistence fa rming itself is not clearly distinguishable from nonsubsistence. This conclusion is endorsed by Hill (58), Miracle (79), and Uphoff & Hchman (l08).…”

A Quantile Regression Analysis of the Effect of Farmers’ Attitudes and Perceptions on Market Participation

“…Based on the survey data, the dependent variable for the empirical analysis was constructed, that is, the share of output sold in the total agricultural output per household, measuring the degree of output market participation. In the literature, this is the measure used most often in defining subsistence, although it has sometimes been criticised as reflecting farmers’ behaviour in output markets only (Miracle, 1968). The subsistence–commercial continuum could also be defined with regard to the participation in input markets.…”

“…Although this is a common feature, semi-subsistence farmers are heterogeneous in terms of their objectives in farming, farm assets, human capital, income sources, and strategies. Miracle (1968) criticised the concept of subsistence farming because it obscures the heterogeneity in farmers' situations and the diversity of their decision-making process. Davidova et al (2009), Fritzsch et al (2011, and Davidova et al (2012) acknowledged this heterogeneity and employed cluster analysis to produce a typology of semi-subsistence farmers.…”

Social Organization, Population, and Land Use

“…In a settled area characterized by subsistence agricultural production there is an existing pattern of consuming land, usually preserving a good deal of ecological diversity relative to areas characterized by market oriented production (Boserup 1965, 1981; Foster and Rosenzweig 2004; Mortimore 1993). This is because subsistence-oriented households produce fruits and vegetables in addition to cereal crops, and also maintain common pasture or forest to provide fodder for animals, whereas market-oriented producers generally specialize in a small number of agricultural products (Axinn and Axinn 1983; Geertz 1968; Gurung 1998; McCalla 1997; Miracle 1968; Pingali 1997; Pingali and Rosegrant 1995). The model we design for predicting land use begins with this settled, subsistence-oriented land use pattern as the starting state.…”