TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURE

TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURE

As an example of traditional practice, there is no better showcase to
be found than to observe the work of the millions of people around
the world tied to subsistence agriculture. They are bound to a
system that – relative to other societies – has seen little change over
centuries.
Evidence suggests that farm workers in poor countries are not
themselves resistant to change – indeed they may respond rapidly
to genuine opportunities to improve their welfare – but that given
the circumstances in which they find themselves, their traditional
agricultural practices are in fact rational and efficient outcomes that
have evolved over generations of trial and error.
What goods does such a society choose to produce? Those that
experience shows to be the most reliable.
In farming some of the poorer lands on the planet, where
climatic conditions may vary, where ownership of land and one’s
place in society is traditionally determined and where government
is remote and as reliable as the wind, those who work the land tend
not to take undue risks. They produce therefore what they know
they can count on, using traditional technology that is home-grown
and suited to the terrain.
Traditional agriculture tends to be self-sufficient because it has
to be. To become dependent on a number of external suppliers in
poor countries is to risk losses when they fail you. And losses in
this context means not only losing crops or livestock but losing
your life as well.
Social custom therefore determines much of the economic
organisation that takes place in poor rural communities. What, how
and for whom production takes place is decided by traditional practices
that have evolved according to the particular institutions of the
society in question. Within these given parameters, such economic
organisation can often be highly efficient – much to the surprise of
outsiders who expect to find backward or irrational production
techniques.
© 2004 Tony Cleaver
The disadvantage of tradition, of course, is that no matter how
appropriate established procedures are in their specific context,
customary ways of life rarely prepare their followers to cope well
with unprecedented changes (see Box 1.1).
El Salvador became independent from Spain in 1839 and for
some years thereafter the country remained traditionally agricultural,
with high birth and death rates, a small and stable
population yet with sufficient fertile land to provide for all with
no great extremes of poverty or wealth.
Standards of health and education were low in the mid nineteenth
century but a British diplomat’s wife commented that, in
contrast with the major cities of England at that time, there was
nonetheless a striking lack of poverty in this Central American
republic. Land holdings were dispersed amongst the population
with all families having access to their own property or to
communal land, and a diverse range of agricultural goods was
produced to support domestic consumption. The economy was
basically one of self-sufficiency but with limited trade and
economic growth.
The latter half of the nineteenth century, however, brought
accelerating change. In a time of increasing world communications
and trade, a growing El Salvador elite found in common
with others around the globe that there was profit to be made in
promoting exports. Most importantly, they found coffee.
Suddenly, the ownership of coffee plantations became the key to
wealth.
Families that started plantations found ways to increase the
areas under cultivation. Indian village lands, worked communally
for centuries, were said to be preserving a ‘backward’ culture
and came under threat. With no property rights recognised in
law, coffee planters bought them up, displaced the inhabitants
but offered only limited plantation work at pitifully low wages.