Carlos A. Benito, “Peasants’ Response to Modernization Projects in “Minifundia” Economies,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 58, no. 2 (May 1976), 143-151.
The scientization of the peasant household economy.
The quantification of human capital services in the form of knowledge inputs, in abstract units, with ‘traditional’ practices quantified at low levels and ‘modern’ practices quantified at high levels of human capital.
Notes
- 143 – “the Puebla Project is a modernization project devised as a strategy for rapidly increasing yields of maize among the small holders. Operationally, it is a package of technological recommendations and organizational practices reducible to the following components: technical information about the optimal use of fertilizer to produce maize, a time schedule for fertilizer application, guidance concerning plant density, a suggested procedure for facilitating access to the fertilizer market, and a procedure for obtaining access to credit. The first three items comprise a technological package geared to increase corn yields, while the last two integrate the organizational element.”
- 143-4 – “After seven years of experience with the Puebla Project, one of the best-controlled experiments in modernization, the rates of adoption of recommended technologies still are relatively low. This is a puzzle for policymakers and social scientists who, assuming the existence of ‘surplus labor,’ investigate the diffusion of labor-intensive practices within subsistence economies. A solution to this puzzle is all the more necessary in the face of the high priority that various international agencies and national agencies are giving today to modernization projects as a frontal attack on the world food problem.”
- 144 – “A methodological proposition of this paper is that reduced-form models and one-mondal explanations of adoption are insufficient to investigate that puzzle. What is necessary is a structural form representation of the peasant household economy that could incorporate the various factors that explain adoption.”
- The scientization of the peasant household
- “One of the major results of this study is to show that modern technologies will be adopted by peasants at a low rate when the opportunity cost of their time in the labor market is relatively high. This will be true when the recommended technology is labor using and when access to modern input and credit markets is through a community organization process that is also time consuming. Although the model shows that peasants with larger holdings will adopt at a faster rate, an explanation is also provided for the paradox observed by several researchers that some groups of peasants with smaller holdings evidence the highest rates of adoption. The risky nature of agricultural production and labor earnings in a subsistence economy is also represented. When the behavior of peasants under uncertainty and imperfect information is introduced into the model, and additional explanation for different patterns of adoption among peasant is found.”
- “The remaineder of this paper presents a descirption of the model developed in this study and its application to the Puebla Project. First, the major components of the structural form of a model of the peasant household economy are developed. Next, the model is condensed into a linear programming version in which risk, uncertainty, and information are incorporated by means of a safety-first rule. Then, by means of plausible assumptions and simplifications, an otherwise dynamic and nonlinear model is transformed into a simpler linear model so that the linear programming algorithm may be used to obtain solutions. Finally, this model is applied to the case of the Puebla Project in Mexico with results that explain the relatively low diffusion rates observed in the Puebla area during the first seven years of the modernization project.”
- “The last two types of activities are open to peasants through modernization projects. Nonagricultural working activities include self-employed activities (crafts, trade, etc.) and working in the labor market. From here on, the paper will concentrate on labor market activities alone.”
- Convenient
- 145 – “The concave function expresses expected agricultural production as a positive function of labor time; agroinputs; services from physical capital; services from human capital; and a stochastic factor (e.g. weather). The introduction of services from human capital (i.e., knowledge and information of agricultural practices) transforms the technology into an endogenous variable. Low levels of human capital indicate knowledge (in some abstract units) of only ‘traditional’ practices, while high levels indicate knowledge of ‘modern’ practices.”
- “Modernization projects promote the adoption by peasants of new practices and modern inputs through new knowledge and information and organizational help. Acquisition of new knowledge and information for a peasant represents an investment in human capital.”
- 150 – “The structural condition of the peasant economy studied in this paper challenges the simplest view that labor-intensive technologies per se will rapidly increase agricultural production and improve the peasants’ welfare. If the aim of a rural development policy is to increase agricultural production in minifundista sector, the following steps are necessary. At the level of agronomic research, the generation of less risky technologies is required, e.g., adaptability of the new high yielding varieties to differences in environmental conditions, and development of improved varieties and practices for crop systems. At the level of design and implementation of modernization projects, the organizational component should have as much importance as the information (extension) component. The Puebla Project is a good example of the complementarity between organization and communication in diffusion processes. At the adoption level an adaptive strategy shall be offered. For example, one might begin with a package of land-saving and labor-using technologies, such as the green revolution, so as to generate an accumulation process within the household, and then introduce more capital-using technologies.”
- “Further theoretical and empirical research will require an expansion of the model to study the complexities of crop production systems (e.g., corn-bean combination) including the seasonal and intrafamilial allocation of human time (women-men and adults-children). The development of a multistage model to investigate the changes over time of peasants’ perception of risk, due to learning experiences as well as changes in the subjective probability of disaster, as resource constraints change will also be required.”
