Subsistence agriculture

About: Subsistence agriculture is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8069 publications have been published within this topic receiving 156876 citations. The topic is also known as: subsistence farming.

Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv

Abstract: TIV are a pagan people numbering over 800,000 who live in the middle Benue Valley of northern Nigeria. The basis of their economy is subsistence agriculture; supplemented by an effective network of markets particularly in the southern and central portions of their country. Tiv pride themselves on their farming abilities and their subsistence wealth. Today, however, their ideas of economic exchange and their traditional methods of investment and economic aggrandizement are being undermined by a new economic system which demands different actions, motives and ideas. This article deals with: (I) Tiv ideas of exchange as expressed in their language, (II) some traditional modes of investment and exchange, based on a ranked hierarchy of spheres or categories of exchangeable commodities, and (III) the impact of Western economy on such aspects of subsistence, exchange and investment which Tiv consider in terms of these spheres or categories.

The Divide between Subsistence and Transformational Entrepreneurship

Abstract: Executive Summary This paper argues that it is crucially important to differentiate between two very distinct sets of entrepreneurs: subsistence and transformational entrepreneurs. Recent evidence suggests that people engaging in these two types of entrepreneurship are not only very distinct in nature but that only a negligible fraction of them transition from subsistence to transformational entrepreneurship. These individuals vary in their economic objectives, their skills, and their role in the economy. Most important, they seem to respond very differently to policy changes and economic cycles. Yet most development policies aimed at fostering entrepreneurship focus on subsistence entrepreneurship in the hope of creating transformational entrepreneurs. I argue that unless we understand the differences between those two types of entrepreneurs more clearly, many policy interventions may have unintended consequences and may even have an adverse impact on the economy.

The impact of money on an African subsistence economy

Abstract: It has often been claimed that money was to be found in much of the African continent before the impact of the European world and the extension of trade made coinage general. When we examine these claims, however, they tend to evaporate or to emerge as tricks of definition. It is an astounding fact that economists have, for decades, been assigning three or four qualities to money when they discuss it with reference to our own society or to those of the medieval and modern world, yet the moment they have gone to ancient history or to the societies and economies studied by anthropologists they have sought the “real” nature of money by allowing only one of these defining characteristics to dominate their definitions.

The rational peasant

Abstract: I have made assumptions about individual behavior diverging from those of the moral economists. These assumptions have drawn attention to different features of villages and patron-client ties and have led to questions about the quality of welfare and insurance embedded in both villages and vertical patron-client ties. This, in turn, has demonstrated that there is more potential value to markets, relative to the actual performance level of these other institutions. Commercialization of agriculture and the development of strong central authorities are not wholly deleterious to peasant society. This is not because capitalism and/or colonialism are necessarily more benevolent than moral economists assume, but because traditional institutions are harsher and work less well than is often believed. Depending on the specific conditions, commercialization can be good or bad for peasants. In many cases the shift to narrow contractual ties with landlords increases both peasant security and his opportunity to benefit from markets. In Latin America, “the patron held life-or-death judicial authority over his dependent serfs, and the murder of peasants or the violation of their wives and daughters was not uncommon.” Paige, , p. 167. As long ago as the fifth century, a monk described the transformation that overcame freemen who became part of estates: “all these people who settled on the big estates underwent a strange transformation as if they had drunk of Circe's cup, for the rich began to treat as their own property these strangers.” Hilton, , quoting J. LeGeof, p. 58. Single-stranded relationships may be far more secure for the peasant because there may be less coercion, an absence of monopolies, competition among landlords, and less need for submission of self. The development of an independent trading class can give small peasants easy low-risk access to international markets and a way of escaping the domination of large lords who use coercion to control the economy despite inefficient practices. Independent small traders like the Chinese in Vietnam, for example, are opposed not by peasants, but by large landowners. In particular, erosion of the “traditional” terms of exchange between landlord and tenant is not the only way for peasants to turn against large lords. It is not the case that if the patron guarantees the traditional subsistence level, peasants will cede him continuous legitimacy; peasants can and do fight for autonomy when better alternatives exist in the market. There are often better opportunities for peasants in markets than under lords, and markets can reduce the bargaining power of the lords. See, for example, Blum, “The Rise of Serfdom in Eastern Europe,” p. 816; Breman, , p. 75; Hilton, , p. 214. Indeed, it was not uncommon in Europe for men to buy their way out of clientage for the security and freedom of markets. Rodney Hilton, “Peasant Society, Peasant Movements and Feudalism in Medieval Europe.” in Henry Landsberger, (Barnes and Noble, 1973), pp. 67-94, 81; Blum, et al., , p. 23. One need only note the land rush in the new areas of Cochinchina after the French made it habitable to see that markets can be an enormous opportunity for the poor. Throughout the world, peasants have fought for access to markets when they were secure enough to want to raise their economic level and “redefine” cultural standards! In medieval England, when peasant conditions were comparatively secure. The essential quarrel between the peasantry and the aristocracy was about access to the market. It was not that the peasants were worried about the impact of the market in a disintegrating sense upon their community; what they wanted was to be able to put their produce on the market and to have a freer market in land which would enable them to take advantage of the benefits of the market. Hilton. “Medieval Peasants - Any Lesson?,” p. 217. The rise of strong central states and the growth of a market economy, then, even in the guise of colonialism and capitalism cannot always be directly equated with a decline in peasant welfare due to the destruction of traditional villages and/or elite bonds. In the short-run, local village elites with the skills to ally with outside powers may reap the most benefits from new institutional arrangements, but, in the long-run, new elites emerge which ally with the peasantry against both feudalism and colonialism. As Weisser notes for Spain, “anarchism sought to sweep away the remnants of that old system by joining with those elements in the outside world that had begun a similar attack.” , p. 117. Indirectly, peasants clearly benefit from the growth of law and order and the resulting stability, as well as the vast improvements in communications. The numerous and onerous taxes of the colonial period - as applied by village elites - increased stratification in the majority of countries, but the colonial infrastructure also led to wider systems of trade, credit, and communications that helped keep peasants alive during local famines. As Day has noted of Java, local crop failures were so serious in precolonial times before there was a developed communications and trade network “because it was impossible to supply a deficit in one part of the country by drawing on the surplus which might exist in another.” Day. , p. 25. Colonialism is ugly, but the quality of the minimum subsistence floor improved in most countries. Geertz, , p. 80; Tom Kessinger, (University of California Press, 1974), p. 87; Charles Robequain, (Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 328. By stressing the common investment logic of intra-village patron-client and market relations I have attempted to show that given the actual performance levels of patrons and villages, neither decline nor decay of peasant institutions is necessary for peasants to enter markets. Further, peasant support for revolutions and protests may represent not decline and decay, but political competence.