Institution: Tel Hai Academic College, Israel
E-mail: Siegelpb@hotmail.com; Siegel@telhai.ac.il
Biosummary: pending
Title: "The challenge of identifying relative resource scarcity when small holders are faced with multiple and interlinked constraints: Some lessons from Malawi and Zambia." Co-author: Jeff Alwang.
Theme: 4D
The theory of induced innovation holds that the optimal path of technology generation and adoption depends on relative scarcity of resources. If labour (land) is relatively scarce, then agricultural policy and research and extension efforts might be geared toward promotion of labour (land)-saving innovations to increase labour (land) productivity. However, when poor smallholders are confronted with multiple and interlinked constraints it becomes difficult for the farmers and/or the policymakers to identify the scarce resources. Thus, smallholders’ behaviour can lead to confusing signals to research and extension institutions, and collective action on behalf of smallholders can lead to a path of agricultural development that is biased in the wrong direction.
The proposed paper will draw upon lessons learned in recent research carried out by the authors in Malawi and Zambia, in which data from rural poverty assessments and other sources were used to construct some simple linear programming models of representative poor rural households (Alwang, Siegel and Jorgensen, 1996; Alwang and Siegel; 1999). It was found that the existence of multiple and interlinked constraints – such as food security concerns, cash and credit needs, market access, household composition and headship, etc. had an important influence on labour and land use and led to some confusion about relative resource scarcity and the direction for agricultural research aimed at poverty alleviation.