Chapter 9 Flashcards
(22 cards)
The pattern of land distribution, ownership, and management, also the social and institutional structure of the agrarian economy. Many Latin American and Asian agrarian systems are characterized by concentrations of large tracts of land owned by a few powerful landlords. Rural development in many LDCs may require extensive reforms of the existing agrarian system.
Agrarian Systems
Crops produced entirely for the market (e. g. , coffee, tea, cacao, cotton, rubber, pyrethrum, jute, wheat).
Cash Crops
A farming practice that involves growing a variety of crops, livestock, or both, on a single farm, as opposed to specializing in a single commodity.
Diversified Farming
Mostly small farm plots owned and operated by a single household.
Family Farms
The boost in grain production associated with the scientific discovery of new hybrid seed varieties of wheat, rice, and corn that have resulted in high farm yields in many LDCs.
Green Revolution
The broad spectrum of rural development activities, including small-farmer agricultural progress; the provision of physical and social infrastructure-i the development of rural non-farm industries; and the capacity of the rural sector to sustain and accelerate the pace of these improvements over time.
Integrated rural development
Factor markets whose supply functions are interdependent, frequently because different inputs are provided by the same suppliers who exercise monopolistic or oligopolistic control over resources.
Interlocking factor markets
The proprietor of a freehold interest in land with rights to lease out to tenants in return for some form of payment for the use of the land.
Landlord
A deliberate attempt to reorganize and transform existing agrarian systems with the intention of improving the distribution of agricultural incomes and thus fostering rural development. Among its many forms, land reform may entail provision of secured tenure rights to the individual farmer, transfer of land ownership away from small classes of powerful landowners to tenants who actually till the land, appropriation of land estates for establishing small new settlement farms, or instituting land improvements and irrigation schemes.
Land reform
A very large landholding in the Latin American agrarian system, capable of providing employment for over 12 people, owned by a small number of landlords, and comprising a large proportion of total agricultural land
Latifundio
Multifamily farms in Latin America
employing 4 to 12 workers.
Medium-sized farms
A landholding in the Latin American agrarian system considered too small to provide adequate employment for a single family. A minifundio is too small to provide the workers with levels of living much above the bare survival minimum. Holders of minifundios are often required to provide unpaid seasonal labor to latifundios and to seek outside low-paid
employment to supplement their meager incomes.
Minifundio
The first step in the transition from subsistence to specialized farming. This evolutionary stage is characterized by the production of both staple crops and cash crops and, in addition, simple animal husbandry.
Mixed farming
In Asia, a person who lends money at higher than market rates of interest to peasant farmers to meet their needs for seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs. Activities of moneylenders are often unscrupulous and can accentuate landless-ness among the rural poor.
Moneylender
Unaffected by size; applied to technological progress that can lead to the achievement of higher output levels irrespective of the size (scale) of a firm or farm, making it equally applicable to small- and large-scale production processes. An often-cited example is the hybrid seeds of the green revolution, which can theoretically increase yields on both small and large farms (if complementary resources such as fertilizer, irriga-tion, and pesticides are available).
Scale-neutral
In the agrarian systems of LDCs, the tenant peasant farmer whose crop has to be shared with the landlord, who usually appropriates a large portion of total crop production.
Sharecropper
A peasant agricultural practice in Africa in which land is tilled by a family or community for cropping until such time as it has been exhausted of fertility. Thereafter, the family or community moves to a new parcel of land, leaving the former one to regain fertility until eventually it can be cultivated again
Shifting cultivation
The final and most advanced stage of the evolution of agricultural production in which farm output is produced wholly for the market. It is most prevalent in advanced industrial countries. High farm yields are ensured by a high degree of capital formation, technological progress, and scientific research and development
Specialized farming
A leading or main food consumed by a large (e.g., maize meal in Kenya, Zambia, and Tanzania; rice in Southeast Asian countries; yams in West Africa; mamoc in Brazil).
Staple foods
Farming in which crop production, stock rearing, and other activities are conducted mainly for personal consumption, characterized by low productivity, risk, and uncertainty.
Subsistence Farming
One who farms on land held by a landlord and therefore lacks secure ownership rights and has to pay for the use of that land, for example, by surrendering part of his output to the owner. Examples are found in the Latin American and Asian agrarian systems.
Tenant Farmer
Costs of doing business related to gathering information, establishing reliable suppliers, formulating contracts, obtaining credit, etc.
Transaction costs
