Growth and Poverty Mailing List Archive

["Dick Tinsley" <<address removed>>]

MessageAllow me to join the discussion. First I would like all participants to 
careful consider the possibility that we made a major misdiagnosis of the 
plight of the smallholder very early and have not fully rectified the situation.

Rockefeller Hypothesis I

I think we are still operating under what I will call the Rockefeller 
Hypothesis. I say that because it appears to come from some of the early work 
of the Rockefeller Foundation when they were establishing IRRI and converting 
their Mexico program into CYMMYT. 

The hypothesis actual provide a reasonable starting point, and it is important 
to have a starting point based in previous experience which was farming in the 
US particularly Upstate New York where Cornell is located.

The basic hypothesis was a correct observation that farmers were not 
effectively utilizing their physical environment.  This was then attributed 
farmers being risk aversive and thus delaying crop establishment for a month or 
more waiting for more favorable and assured rain. This concept continues today 
as noted by the reference to risk in the preliminary documents provided to this 
group.

What is overlooked here is the time required for basic crop establishment.  For 
most smallholders this takes up to 8 weeks starting with the very first 
opportunity.  Thus they are and have always been maximizing the risk they are 
taking.  However, this is essential if there is any hope of completing crop 
establishment in any reasonable time and there survival is dependent on it.

Underlying Approaches

Underlying this is way agronomist and economist look at agriculture. The 
agronomist develops and promotes technology based on small plot development and 
assumes the farmers have the mean to extend this to most if not all their 
holdings.

The economist looks at the commodity as the economic unit and then in order to 
keep the number reasonable, averages over different parcels even when grown to 
the same crop.  Thus averaging parcels that range over 8 weeks gives the 
stereotypical delay of 4 weeks.  If the economists accepted the parcel of land 
as the economic unit they might appreciate the substantial spread in activities 
with substantially different management applied to different parcels of the 
same crop depending on the delay in establishing them.

Real Constraint

If this is the case the real constraint, that remains mostly unaddressed, is 
the limited resources, mostly labor, smallholders have to manage their land in 
a timely enough manner to take full advantage of their physical environment 
potential.  This fairly quickly translates into mechanization and the need to 
make mechanization available to smallholders.  This in no way implies 
smallholder should become tractor owners, but the need for village based 
micro-enterprises to provide smallholders tractors on custom contract.  
However, the tractors are a mobile resource rather than an internal one and 
have to be evaluated on a community basis rather then individual farm base.

Rockefeller Hypothesis II

This bring up the second Rockefeller Hypothesis.  That has been the focus on 
the family farm as the economic unit and decision making entity.  While this is 
true for all discretionary decision often the farmer does not have 
discretionary decision but highly compromised decisions and goes with a flow of 
events largely beyond their control.  This is no more apparent than when 
dependent on contract tillage as they have lost control of the most fundamental 
of all crop management activities, the planting date.

I would like to leave it at this for the time being and get some reaction 
before I continue.

 Respectively submitted.

Dick Tinsley