5억에 이르는 소농에 관한 중대한 다섯 가지 질문

1. 왜 소농에 관심을 가져야 하는가?

소농은 그 수가 엄청 많기에 개발 문제의 모든 영역에 그 그림자가 드리워져 있다. 폴 콜리어Paul Collier(2009)가 지지하는 대농이란 처방에도 불구하고 오늘날 약 5억의 소농이 6000평 이하의 땅에서 농사를 짓고 있으며(Eastwood, Lipton and Newell, 2010), 그들은 더 많아지고 작아지고 있다. 소농은 주로 아시아와 아프리카에 집중되어 있는데, 그들은 전체 농업 지역과 생산물의 많은 부분을 차지하고 있다. 소농은 세계의 영양부족인 사람의 절반과 절대빈곤의 삶을 사는 대부분을 포함하여 20억 명이 살고 있다(IFPRI, 2005).

빈민과 토지가 부족한 국가에서는 소농이 대농보다 어떤 점에서는 이득이다. 경제적으로 더 효율적이고, 더 많은 고용을 창출하고, 빈곤을 줄이고 식량안보를 개선하며, 소농의 소비양식이 농촌의 비농업 경제를 활기차게 만드는 데 도움이 된다. 소농의 효율성은 농장의 크기와 토지 생산성 사이의 반비례 관계를 보여주는 실증적인 연구를 통해 입증되었다(e.g. see Eastwood, Lipton and Newell, 2010). 또한 소농은 일반적으로 대농보다 더 낮은 자본으로 더 높은 생산성을 올린다. 이러한 점들은 노동력보다 토지와 자본이 상대적으로 부족한 가난한 국가에서는 효율성이란 측면에서 중요하다.

소농의 효율성은 대부분의 농업 영역에서 규모의 경제가 부재하고, 헥타르당 가족노동력이 풍부하다는 점에서 기인한다. 가족노동은 일반적으로 더 많은 고용노동보다 의욕적이고 양질의 노동을 제공하며 자기관리에 철저하다. 또한 그들은 노동시간보다는 전체 작업이나 생계의 관점에서 농업을 바라본다. 그리고 그들은 고용노동보다 추가수당의 임금율에 영향을 덜 받는다. 소농은 수확량을 늘리는(토지생산성) 기술을 쓰는 노동을 개발하고, 자본 집약적인 기계보다 오히려 노동 집약적인 방법을 쓴다. 결과적으로 그들의 노동생산성은 일반적으로 대농보다는 낮다. 이는 노동력이 풍부한 경제에서는 강점이 되지만, 국가가 부유해지고 노동력이 비싸지면서부터는 소농의 장기적인 생존력에 약점이 된다.

가난하고 노동력이 풍부한 경제에서, 소농의 효율성은 농촌 빈곤의 많은 부분을 처리할 뿐만 아니라 소농의 개발이 성장과 빈곤을 감소시키는 윈윈 전략이 될 수 있다. 아시아의 녹색혁명은 어떻게 농촌의 성장이 수많은 소농이 농촌경제를 변형시키고 엄청난 수의 사람을 빈곤에서 탈출하도록 하는지 입증했다(Rosegrant and Hazell, 2000). 또한 최근의 연구는 토지의 평등한 분배가 더 높은 경제성장으로 이끌 뿐만 아니라, 성장의 달성이 가난한 사람들에게 더 많은 이익을 보장하는 데 도움이 된다고 보여주었다(World Bank, 2007).

소농은 또한 식량안보에도 기여한다. 특히 기반시설이 빈약한 곳의 비싼 운송비보다는 지역에서 생산된 식량이 덜 비싸고, 많은 구입한 식량보다 덜 위험하다.

소농 농가는 또한 지역에서 생산된 물품과 서비스에 늘어난 수입의 더 많은 몫을 소비하고, 이는 농촌마을을 포함한 지역의 비농업 경제에서 가난한 사람들에게 이로운 고용 집약적인 성장을 자극할 수 있다(Mellor, 1976; Hazell and Roell, 1983). 소농은 또한 그들의 생계를 다각화하여 이농 현상을 둔화시키는 기반도 제공한다. 

그러나 국가의 개발로 이러한 많은 장점이 사라진다. 1인당 소득이 상승함에 따라 경제가 다각화되고, 노동자가 농업을 떠나서 농촌의 임금이 오른다. 그러면서 더 크고 많은 기게를 가진 농장이 효율적이게 된다. 소농은 만약 변화하는 경제 환경에 적응할 수 있다면, 그 변화 과정에서 더 오래 살아남을 것이다. 주요한 적응책은 더 높은 가치를 생산하는 활동으로 다각화하는 추가의 토지를 사거나 빌리는 것이다(예를 들어 과일, 채소 및 집약적 축산과 유기농 같은 틈ㅅ시장). 그리고 소득이나 고용의 비농업 자원으로 진출하는 것이다. 다행히도 기회는 농업의 범위에서 폭넓게 다각화되고, 비농업 활동은 또한 국가가 부유해지면서 성장한다. 이것은 1인당 소득과 도시화와 함께 증가하는 더 다양하고 높은 가치의 식량에 대한 요구, 그리고 비농업 경제가 농업보다 빨리 성장하기 때문이다. 

2. 얼마나 빨리 대농으로 전환해야 하는가?

소수의 소농은 결국에는 살아남을 것이다. 역사적이고  cross country한 양식은 유용한 기준점을 제공한다(그림 1). 그러나 이러한 동향 주위에는 많은 변화가 있다.

그림1. 1인당 소득 증가와 농업의 고용율 사이의 반비례 관계

예를 들어 아시아에서는 시간제 농업으로 더 확연히 전환되는 것을 반영하는, 다른 지역보다 더 느리게 퇴장하는 경향이 있다(그림 2). 

그림 2. 농업의 퇴장과 1960~2000년의 경제 성장

아프리카에서는 그 양식이 더 빠르게 퇴장하는 듯하다. 아마 너무 빠르고, 농업의 방치보다는 생산적인 비농업의 직업으로 끌려가는 걸 반영하는 듯하다(Headey, Hazell and Bezemer, 2010). 일반적인 실수는 소농의 퇴장은 경제성장의 결과보다는 동인이며, 그리고 큰 변환은 기계화 농업이 더 빠른 경제성장을 유도한다고 생각하는 점이다. 경제가 성장할 때, 많은 소농(또는 그 아이들)은 농업을 떠난다. 왜냐하면 그들은 더 돈을 많이 버는 직업을 어디서든 찾을 수 있기 때문이다. 그러나 토지를 통합하고 소농을 토지에서 밀치기 전에 재무 악화되는 빈곤과 원치 않는 이농을 간단히 이끄는 더 좋은 직업은 없다. 소수의 나라가 그들의 농장 크기를 잘 이행시킨다.

많은 국가는 성공적으로 그들의 경제를 발전시켰지만, 농업 통합과 이농은 경제성장 뒤편으로 쳐지고, 수입이 전국 평균 이하로 떨어진 너무나 많은 소농이 떠난 상태다. 이는 많은 OECD 국가에서 농업 정책의 종류가  정부에서 수입을 지원해야 하는 압박으로 이끌게 되었다. 대부분의 동남아시아에서는 여전히 1인당 GDP의 빠른 성장에도 불구하고 많은 소농이 늘어나고 있다. 이러한 농가는 성공적으로 다각화하지 않는 한 수입의 비농업 자원으로 갈 수 없다. 그들은 보호무역 정책으로 나아갈 가능성이 높다(사실 이는 이미 한국과 중국에서 일어난 일이다).

Other countries attempt the transition too soon. A naive belief that large-scale mechanized farming necessarily means greater efficiency and productivity has led some policy makers to seek to consolidate holdings, often through compulsory means or land seizures. These interventions have ranged from large state farms in some post–Independence African countries, large settler farms in colonies or new territories, to cooperatives and state collectives in communist regimes. Many of these interventions have been costly failures, and have led to lost opportunities for more efficient growth and employment creation in agriculture (Eastwood, Lipton and Newell, 2010). This has contributed to dualistic patterns of development with high levels of rural poverty, such as found in South Africa and many Latin American countries.

Today there are new forces at work that may accelerate the farm size transition in developing countries. Among the more powerful forces working against the small farmer is the shift toward consumer-driven markets as part of market liberalization and globalization. The small farmer is increasingly being asked to compete in markets that demand much more in terms of quality and food safety; that increasingly come under the sway of supermarkets, processors and large export traders; and that reflect far more international competition (Hazell et al., 2007). As small farms struggle to diversify into higher-value products, they must increasingly meet the requirements of these demanding markets, both at home and overseas. These changes offer new opportunities and pose serious threats to small farmers.

Globalization has also exposed farmers to greater competition from international trade and to lower prices, even for their traditional crops. In Africa, for example, small farms are being squeezed out of their traditional food crop markets in urban and coastal areas by cheaper imports, while being undercut in their traditional tree crop export markets by new competitors from Asia.

Although there are few economies of scale in farm production, recent trends in the privatization of markets and seed and input supply systems have created economic advantages for larger farms because they can trade at scale and more easily access credit and market information. Recent trends in the privatization of agricultural research have also led to the neglect of many small farm problems. Unless small farms can organize to capture similar benefits through collective action, they face agrowing disadvantage. The problem is especially challenging for women small farmers who were already disadvantaged in accessing credit, key inputs and markets.

Climate change is adding to the risks that small farms must manage, yet unlike large farms they typically have fewer assets to fall back on and are less able to procure credit or insurance to buffer their losses in bad years.

3. What is a viable small farm?

There is a continuum of small farms ranging from commercially oriented small farm businesses that are market driven and provide the major if not sole source of livelihood for the family, through part time farmers who combine farming with other sources of employment, to poor people who are trying to subsist on a farm base and who are net buyers of food.

The motives and contributions of each differ. Commercially viable small farms are market driven, and in Asia and Africa they generate significant marketed surpluses, and are a powerful engine of rural economic growth, creating jobs for others in both the farm and rural nonfarm economy. Investing in them is also an indirect way of helping many of the poor, much as happened during Asia’s green revolution.

Small farms do not need to be full time to provide a viable farm business opportunity, but they do need access to markets and an entrepreneurial spirit. Judgments about w ho are viable farmers based on existing patterns of farming can be misleading because they are circumscribed by existing opportunities. There are countless examples of subsistence oriented small farms seizing new commercial opportunities when given the chance. The best small farm business opportunities are likely to be found in areas with good access to markets and low transport and marketing costs. Agro-climatic conditions can be less important, particularly for small farms that can diversify out of cereals.

The required size of a commercially viable farm depends on expected living standards, and the type of farming that is possible. A “viable” small cereal farm, for example, might vary from one or two hectares of irrigated land in parts of Asia to 10 or 100 times as large in dryland areas or in parts of Latin America. To prosper over time, small farms need to get bigger, switch to high value production, or go part time by diversifying into nonfarm sources of income. They soon find they cannot make much of a living from a couple hectares of land with cereals, even at today’s prices.

Subsistence oriented farming plays important social roles in feeding and employing many poor people and providing them with a home base form which they can diversify their livelihoods. If neglected, small scale subsistence farming can become a poverty trap for many and a cause of considerable environmental damage. Smallness in combination with poverty can, over time, cause downward spirals of worsening degradation and poverty (Cleaver and Schreiber, 1994). Yet investing in this type of farming is not much of a growth strategy and is often little more than a productive safety net approach, particularly in remote regions, or regions afflicted with HIVAIDS or conflict. In effect, investments are a holding strategy until such time as fundamental constraints can be overcome to create more viable business opportunities

in or outside farming.

4. What help do small farmers need?

Small farms typically face a tilted playing field compared to large farms in terms of accessing land, inputs, credit, technology, and markets. These problems have become more pronounced with the removal or scaling back of the many state agencies that served agriculture prior to the market liberalization programmes of recent decades. Left to themselves, liberalized markets and private agents tend to serve larger farms that are favourably located near roads, while smaller farms are neglected because they are more costly or difficult to serve. The problems are especially challenging for women farmers.

If more small farmers are to have a viable future, then there is need for a concerted effort by governments, NGOs and the private sector to create a more equitable and enabling economic environment for their development. This conference will address this agenda. Key issues to address include the following:

How can small farms be linked to modern market chains? Small farms may be the more efficient producers, but they face major disadvantages in accessing modern market chains. These include low volumes of produce to sell, variable quality, seasonality and limited storage, high transactions costs, poor market information and contacts, and limited ability to meet the high credence requirements of many high value outlets. Although many local market outlets still exist, the best business opportunities often lie with farmers who can organize for urban and export markets.

Promising alternatives include contract farming arrangements with large farms or marketing/processing agents, voluntary producer groups, marketing cooperatives, and fair trade . Another key issue is how to make food staples markets work better for small farms, particularly in countries where the private sector has not adequately filled the gap left by the demise of state marketing organizations How can the productivity and sustainability of small farms be improved? Shifting to higher value products can add significantly to land and labour productivity, but small farms also need access to improved technologies and knowledge to remain competitive, raise productivity and improve environmental stewardship. Since small farms typically put food security first, improving the productivity of their food staples is also an important step in freeing up resources for other higher value activities. A key issue is how to make agricultural research and knowledge systems work for small farms, particularly in an age of privatization and financial retrenchment. Another is how to improve the sustainable management of natural resources on small farms. Higher cash incomes from farming may help relieve the pressure on land and provide capital for investing in resource improvements, but a market led approach also presents its own challenges if it requires greater specialization and more intensive production practices.

How to improve small farm access to modern inputs and financial services? Since the demise of heavily subsidized public input delivery systems and agricultural development banks, many smallholder farmers have been left with inadequate and costly access to these basic services. The private sector has taken up part of the slack, but has a bias towards servicing larger commercial farms and those located in regions favoured by good agro-climatic conditions and market access. Recent years have seen new innovations in developing public-private partnerships (e.g. loan guarantees toprivate banks that lend to smallholder farmers), farmer cooperatives, NGO involvement in social enterprise (e.g. franchised suppliers of veterinary services), credit and training programs for small seed and fertilizer distributors (e.g. AGRA), and use of smart subsidies (e.g. fertilizer-seed packs in the Millennium Development Villages). What can be learned from these and similar experiences, and can successful approaches be scaled up to achieve the levels of support needed for large number of smallholder farmers without incurring substantial financial costs for the state?

How to improve access to land and water? Many smallholder farmers do not have secure access to land and water, making it difficult for them to pursue new business opportunities or to farm on a sustainable basis. Conditions vary widely across cultural, economic and social contexts, but seem particularly challenging in many contexts for women farmers and other disadvantaged groups. Recent years have seen new innovations and experiences in reformulating national land laws to reconcile overlapping and competing rights between the formal and informal systems, and of ways of strengthening the access and rights of women and other disempowered groups. What can be learnt from these experiences and which ones are worth scaling up and how?

How to create more entrepreneur farmers? Many small farmers respond spontaneously to new market opportunities, but improved education and training and organization into producer groups can be important as they struggle to adjust to a more commercial and competitive business environment. Another concern is the ageing and feminization of farming because relatively few young men find farming an attractive alternative. How can more young people be mobilized to take up farming? Providing attractive new business opportunities would help, but what kinds of schooling, specialized training and support (e.g. young farmers’ clubs) are also needed?

Empowering women and vulnerable groups to become successful farmers. In many societies, poor people and especially poor women farmers are disempowered and have limited options for developing new business opportunities. They are often excluded from access to land, water, credit and other financial services, extension advice, and markets (Quisumbing and Pandolfelli, 2009). Some NGOs (including with IFADsupport) have developed successful and innovative programs for organizing such groups and helping them to develop market opportunities. What can be learnt from these experiences and which ones are worth scaling up and how?

What can be done to help small farmers prosper despite climate change? Many small farmers will need to be nimble in adjusting their choice of farm enterprises and technologies to remain competitive and sustainable as climates change, and this in turn will require that markets and agricultural R&D systems also adapt and serve their needs. Can new forms of weather insurance play a useful role? Are there new opportunities for small farmers through mitigation? For example, might carbon markets provide opportunities for some small farmers to receive compensation for farming practices and reforestation that sequester large amounts of carbon? Might bioenergy offer new business opportunities for small farmers?

What can be done to create more rural nonfarm opportunities? Given that many small farms will not be able to provide full time livelihoods in the future and farmers will either need to sell up or diversify their incomes, how can more business and employment opportunities be created in the rural nonfarm economy? Well functioning labour markets play an important role, but only where the rural nonfarm economy is growing, and if there are not significant supply side constraints. Skill levels are an important constraint, as are barriers to the employment of women and minority groups, and the cost of commuting to local towns. In many countries, growth in the rural non-farm economy is constrained by local demand and either needs to be driven by agricultural growth or stronger backward linkages from urban areas. The business environment for small rural firms is also important, and as with smallholder farms, many may need to be nurtured through the supporting activities of large private firms and NGOs, or organized into producer groups of their own. What types of education and training best prepare small farm families for successful nonagricultural jobs?

What can be dome to support growth of the rural nonfarm economy, to create more small firm business opportunities, and to help establish and support small businesses? What can be done to help families find new opportunities in towns or regions where they may have no connections, and how to help them resettle?

5. Does it pay to invest in small farms?

As the issues listed above suggest, assisting small farms is a challenging task that requires that governments play key facilitating roles. Critics of small-farm development are doubtful whether many governments have the capability to effectively implement these kinds of agendas, and whether the returns are worthwhile.

A key question for any intervention is whether the net economic and social benefits of intervening are sufficient to justify the costs. In some cases small-farm development might be more costly and challenging than alternative development strategies based, for example, on delivery of health and education services. They must therefore be justified on the basis of significant win-win benefits or poverty reduction (Maxwell, Urey, and Ashley 2001).

Public investments in small scale subsistence farming may be a more cost-effective alternative to other forms of income transfers and social safety nets. For example, food aid typically costs more than US$250 for each metric ton of cereals delivered in rural areas, compared with typical smallholder production costs of US$100 or less. But this will not always be the case. Moreover, it is important that support policies for nonviable small farms do not encourage too many workers and poor people to stay in agriculture or for too long.

The best evidence on returns to public investments in small-scale business oriented farming comes from the green revolution era in Asia. Fan, Gulati and Thorat (2008) have estimated the returns to different types of public investment in agriculture in India over a four decade period, beginning in the 1960s (Table 2). India invested heavily in a small farm led green revolution strategy and the marginal returns to these investments in terms of growth and poverty alleviation were very favourable in the early stages of the green revolution. Many, especially additional investments in rural roads and agricultural R&D, continued to give high returns through the 1990s.

Although the returns to most input subsidies were initially high, they declined sharply over time to the point where their benefit/cost ratios fell below one. This suggests that while input subsidies played a useful role during the early stages of the green revolution in promoting small farm led growth, the government should have had a more effective exit strategy once the subsidies had fulfilled their original purposes. Similar analyses for China and Thailand also show high marginal returns to public investments in agricultural R&D, infrastructure and education, and very favourable poverty impacts (Fan, Zhang and Zhang, 2002; Fan and Rao, 2008).

Conclusions

The case for smallholder development as one of the main ways to reduce poverty remains compelling. The policy agenda, however, has changed. The challenge is to improve the workings of markets for outputs, inputs, land and financial services to overcome market failures that discriminate against small farms. Meeting this challenge calls for innovations in institutions, for joint work between farmers, private companies, and NGOs, and for a new, more facilitating role for ministries of agriculture and other public agencies. New thinking on the role of the state in agricultural development, wider changes in democratization, decentralization, and participatory policy processes, and a renewed interest in agriculture among major international donors do present opportunities for greater support to small-farm development. But unless key policymakers adopt a more assertive agenda toward small-farm agriculture, there is a growing risk that rural poverty could increase dramatically and waves of migrants to urban areas could overwhelm available job opportunities, urban infrastructure, and support services.