Farm Wages Research Articles

Managerial Ability of the Members of Agnigarh Producer Company Limited in Sonitpur District of Assam with Reference to Commercial Litchi Production

Farmer Producer Company is a company formed by a group of farmers who are producers come together to form a company. The present investigation was conducted out with the objective to measure the managerial ability of the members of Agnigarh Producer Company Limited in Sonitpur district of Assam with reference to commercial litchi production. Agnigarh Producer Company Limited was selected purposively, as the Farmer Producer Company dealing with commercial litchi production was operating in this district. A sample of 80 respondents was chosen from 13 selected villages in Sonitpur district using a proportionate random sampling method. To assess the managerial ability of the FPC members, the Managerial Ability Scale created by Jadav (2005) was used. The findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents (43.75%) belonged to middle aged category with higher secondary level of formal education (41.25%). Majority of respondents (41.25%) belonged to small size of operational land holdings category and (60.00%) had medium level of litchi yield index with medium level of farm mechanization (70.00%) and medium level of irrigated area under litchi cultivation (77.50%). Majority of them (80.00%) had medium level of farm wage payment related to litchi cultivation with (53.75%) of respondents had medium level of experience in litchi cultivation. Whereas (63.75%) of respondents had medium level of attitude towards modern agriculture with high level of training exposure (50.00%). The findings revealed that the majority of the respondents (61.25%) had medium level of managerial ability index.

The persistence and expansion of sharecropping in a Javanese village

AbstractIn the Javanese village of Kaliloro, share tenancy in rice cultivation, which was widely predicted to disappear with the Green Revolution, has not declined but expanded since the early 1970s. In this article, building on previous debates on share tenancy, we show how sharecropping has survived and expanded in Kaliloro's generally commoditized agrarian economy. Many share tenancy relationships in Kaliloro link wealthier landowners and landless or near‐landless tenants. But many also occur between households of relatively equal status and between parents and their own children. For both landowners and share tenants, their reasons for reliance on sharecropping over hired labour are complex, going beyond simple comparisons of relative labour costs (to landowners) or labour earnings (to share tenants). The landless and near‐landless are well aware of the exploitative nature of share tenancy, but it remains an important component of their pluriactive livelihoods, even in times of rising farm wage rates, mainly to ensure a supply of rice for domestic consumption. For landowners who are too busy, or unable, to manage cultivation themselves, share tenancy remains the most convenient, effective, and risk‐free labour regime, and mechanism of surplus transfer from direct producer to landowner.

Dynamics of class and labour: Evidence from a longitudinal study in Rajasthan (India)

AbstractIn the Gang Canal region of Rajasthan, the cropping pattern changed from a labour intensive crop, cotton, to a mechanized crop, cluster beans. The shift in cropping pattern not only displaced workers from farm wage work but also brought changes in labour hiring contracts with large scale conversion of daily wage rate contracts to piece‐rate contracts. Drawing on a primary survey in a village from Gang Canal region, the paper examines the change in the agrarian relations in rural Rajasthan by analysing the emerging development in the rural labour relations. For piece‐rate work in farm wage work in some parts of Rajasthan, the wage rate is unilaterally decided by the landlords and large capitalist farmers and is denoted as the ‘village rate’. The manual workers have negligible bargaining power vis‐à‐vis the village rate. The conversion of daily wage rate contracts to piece‐rate contracts has enhanced the duration of working day that involves a rise in the rate of surplus value. Access and availability of low wage labour facilitates the accumulation of capital. With the limited availability of employment in the non‐farm sector (in both public and private sectors), workers are compelled to sell their labour power at wages that do not exceed the level of subsistence. The paper concludes with a brief examination of continuum of coercion and varied degree of unfreedom among worker in the village.

Livelihood Diversity of Rural Communities Without Legal Access to Forest Resources: The Case of Kerinci Seblat National Park in Bengkulu Province

Kerinci Seblat National Park in Bengkulu, Indonesia, was gazetted by the Indonesian government, and its overlaps with forests occupied by most indigenous communities made their farming activities in the area illegal. People were prohibited from accessing and expanding their farming areas in the national park, threatening their livelihoods. The livelihood diversity index (LDI) and livelihood asset index (LAI) were used to explore the livelihood systems of these communities. This study also examines the effect of livelihood assets on livelihood diversity and analyzes livelihood strategy choices using Giddens’ structuration theory. A quantitative survey combined with in-depth interviews was conducted in two villages with different land types: wetlands (rice fields) and drylands (farmlands). This study found that the communities diversified their livelihoods into eight types of livelihood strategies. Almost all livelihood indicators were different, and the differences in livelihood asset indicators affected the LDI. As a process of structuration, communities have diversified their livelihoods into farm (e.g., annual and perennial crops), off-farm (e.g., farm wages), and non-farm (e.g., services and government transfer) activities. Rural households have modified their social and physical structures to secure their livelihoods by optimizing agricultural intensification technologies or by seeking non-agricultural income. Households decide whether to specialize or diversify their livelihoods based on factors such as the area of cultivated land, number of crops cultivated, distance of the farming location from the house, total household income, non-farm income, and reciprocal relationships.

H-2A Adverse Effect Wage Rates and U.S. Farm Wages

H-2A Adverse Effect Wage Rates and U.S. Farm Wages

Does Gender Wage Gap Exist among Farm Workers in Nigeria? Evidence from Decomposition-Matching Analysis

AbstractUsing a cross-sectional survey data of agricultural farms, we investigate gender-based differences in farm wages among farm workers by randomly allocating farm workers into treatment (female) and control (male) groups with a simple random sampling technique. We used the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method to establish the gender wage gap and Propensity Score Matching to address assumptions and heterogeneity difficulties that plague the decomposition technique. Results show that female farm workers earn ₦ 9,170.83 less compared to their male counterparts, which indicates an unadjusted gender gap. This gender gap in farm wages is explained by the specific factors included in our model, so upgrading these variables could reduce gender inequalities in farm wages. Matching results indicate that the gender gaps estimated with nearest neighbour matching and kernel-based matching are 9.8% and 21.6% higher, respectively, than the gaps measured by the decomposition technique. Thus, the matching procedure was successful in identifying a sizeable proportion of gender gaps that are unexplained due to discrimination between male and female farm workers.

Sectoral wage gaps and gender in rural India†

AbstractUsing detailed monthly household panel data from rural India, I analyze sectoral wage gaps for men and women. I show that the wage gap across the non‐farm and farm sectors is much higher for women than for men. Relative to men, women also work less time in non‐farm wage employment than in farm wage employment. Taken together, these findings suggest that constraints are preventing women from reallocating their time to more remunerative wage employment opportunities. Women are less likely to work outside of their own village in the non‐farm sector, yet the wage gap is driven by higher caste and married women. These results are consistent with a lack of local non‐farm employment opportunities interacting with barriers to labor mobility for women but not men.

Housing booms and H‐2A agricultural guest worker employment

AbstractThis paper examines the effects of changes in housing demand on H‐2A employment within commuting zones from 2001 to 2017. Agricultural employers who demonstrate that no workers in the domestic labor market are willing or able to perform a seasonal or temporary farm job can apply for certification to hire guest workers through the H‐2A visa program. H‐2A employment grew more than 450% between 2001 and 2019 from 45,000 to 258,000. This is one of the first papers to econometrically examine causal factors that contributed to the growth of H‐2A employment. We find that a 1% increase in housing demand leads to a 0.40%–0.97% increase in H‐2A employment. We also show suggestive evidence that changes in housing demand affect H‐2A employment through shifts in the demand for workers in nonfarm industries that pull workers from the agricultural sector. Consistent with previous literature, we show that positive housing demand shocks lead to increased employment in construction and other nontradable sectors that traditionally hire immigrant workers. We also find positive effects of housing demand on local farm wages, consistent with an inward shift in the local farm labor supply during housing booms.

The Labor-Intensive Path: Wages, Incomes, and the Work Year in Japan, 1610–1890

I use new evidence from servant contracts, 1610–1890, to estimate male farm wages and the length of the work year in Japan. I show Japanese laborers were surprisingly poor and could only sustain 2–3 adults relative to 7 adults for the English. Japanese wages were the lowest among pre-industrial societies and this was driven by Malthusian population pressures. I also estimate the work year and find peasants worked 325 days a year by 1700, predating the “industrious” revolution in Europe. The findings imply Japan had a distinct labor-intensive path to industrialization, utilizing cheap labor over a long work year.

Stringent immigration enforcement and the farm sector: Evidence from E‐Verify adoption across states

AbstractThis study examines the impact of E‐Verify adoption on the total number of farm workers, total acres of operated farmland, and farm wages. This article finds that states with a high E‐Verify enforcement level experiences a decrease in the total number of farm workers and the total acres of operated farmland, suggesting that farms reduced their production scales after E‐Verify. However, this study finds no E‐Verify impact on farm weekly wages. This result could be a result of crop mix shift. States that adopt more stringent immigration policies should prepare the farm sector for a variety of negative shocks.

Stringent immigration enforcement and responses of the immigrant‐intensive sector: Evidence from E‐Verify adoption in Arizona

AbstractThis article examines the impact of the 2008 Legal Arizona Workers Act on farm wage, production mix, farm capital use, and agricultural innovation using the synthetic control method. The findings indicate that the law significantly reduced farm worker population in Arizona. Farm wage is not affected by the decreased supply of farm labor because farms in Arizona reduced labor‐intensive crop production. The agricultural sector does not increase the use of farm capital and experiences a decrease in profits. Moreover, this study finds no impact on agricultural patents and research funding in Arizona.

Farm wage and Rice Price dynamics in Bangladesh

Empirical findings explaining the wage-price nexus in Bangladesh are diverse and conflicting. A proper understanding of the relationship between food prices and farm wages is essential for planning policies in support of the wellbeing and food security of the rural poor. In exploring the link between food prices and rising agricultural wages, this study analyzes the dynamic relations between those two by using monthly data from 1994 to 2014. A standard vector error correction model (VECM) is implemented to determine the short-run and long-run relationships between wages and food prices in eight divisions in Bangladesh. In addition, we use autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models to estimate the pass-through coefficients and to compare the short-run effects of rice price and urban wage shocks on agricultural wages. We find statistical evidence for a structural break between January 2007 and January 2009 in the relationships of the variables in all divisions. Different to the period until 2007/2009, after the structural break, in six out of eight divisions, rice price shocks do not transmit to the farm wages in the short-run. Moreover, our findings show that in the long-run food prices have become less influential in explaining the changes in farm wages while the influence of urban wages has become stronger in some divisions.

MGNREGS Impact on Agriculture: A Study of Undivided Andhra Pradesh

In India, the well-debated argument is a trade-off between agricultural profitability and employment generation through MGNREGS. Antagonists always argue that MGNREGS accentuates the agrarian crisis by creating labour shortage on one hand, and hiking agricultural wages on the other. Several studies confirmed that agricultural wages have gone up after the implementation of MGNREGS. Against this backdrop, this article attempts to examine the impact of MGNREGS on the farm economy in the undivided Andhra Pradesh. If MGNREGS implementation leads to a hike in farm wages, what is its reflection on the costs of cultivation? As per the operational guidelines of MGNREGS, land development, provision of irrigation facilities and horticulture works have to be undertaken in private lands. If it happens, what would be the contribution of MGNREGS to the farming community in terms of developing their private lands? This article explores these questions by studying the impact of MGNREGS in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

Agricultural wages in India: trends and determinants.

Structural change in employment has been slow, particularly in agriculture, and its share in income has declined faster than employment has transitioned. This shift requires us to focus on the trends in agricultural wages. Our analysis shows that non-farm wages, the MGNREGS, irrigation facility, and rural literacy have a significant and positive effect on agricultural wages, and farm mechanization helps reduce the wage rate significantly. Creating more non-farm employment opportunities and supporting literacy programmes and irrigation will help improve farm wages, and incentivizing farm mechanization will reduce the cost of cultivation for farmers and the rural poor.

Indian Farm Wages: Trends, Growth Drivers and Linkages with Food Prices

This study looks at trends in Indian farm wages, analyses their linkage with food prices, and identifies factors which drove their growth in real terms. We employ quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques for this purpose. A vector-error correction model (VECM) is used to determine the linkage between farm wage inflation and food inflation, and a pooled mean group (PMG) estimation method, used for dynamic heterogeneous panels, is used to identify the drivers of growth in real farm wages. In last 20 years (1998-99 to 2017-18), wages of India’s farm labourers increased at an average annual rate of 9.3 per cent in nominal and 3.2 per cent in real terms. For an average agricultural labourer, the daily wage rates increased from less than INR 45 in 1998-99 to about INR 229 in 2017-18. In real terms (2004-05 prices), this increase was from INR 50 to about INR 90 per day. The empirical analysis of the monthly wage time series identified a structural break in January 2007. Specifically, the curve is near-flat before this break-point subsequent which it rises sharply. On the relation between food inflation and wage growth, evidence was found of a food-wage spiral where changes in food prices and farm wages were estimated to impact each other. However, the impact of food inflation emerged to be stronger on wages than vice-versa and this impact was observed to strengthen post 2007-08. The panel study (1987-88 to 2015-16) on the drivers of real wage growth was conducted around the January 2007 structural break. Before this break, growth in real wages was estimated to be mostly driven by growth in the agriculture sector. Any influence of non-agricultural sectors (manufacturing and construction) did not emerge significant during this period. However, post the break, the growth witnessed in both- non-agricultural (manufacturing and construction sectors) and agricultural sectors explained the sharp increases in real farm wages. The large public rural employment program, MGNREGA (introduced in 2005) was identified as a third potential force of influence on rural wages; however, among other significant factors, its contribution to farm wage growth was estimated to be low and with a lag. Policy implications based on these findings are that for faster growth in real farm wages, focus needs to be on augmenting labour productivity in agriculture. In order to pursue that, one needs to lead reforms in agriculture that can accelerate agri-GDP growth and ensure that the rest of the economy, especially the manufacturing and construction sector, grow much faster pulling labour out from the agricultural sector to higher productivity jobs in manufacturing, construction, and possibly also services.

Post–World War II Tejano Farm Labor: A Remembrance

Post–World War II Tejano Farm Labor:A Remembrance Arnoldo De León (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution A map of South Texas showing notable locations for this article. [End Page 136] Recent historical monographs about post–World War II South Texas posit that due to Cold War-era modernization and industrialization, large and mechanized corporate entities able to buy the needed farm machinery and devices, pay irrigation costs, and invest in insect eradication products displaced small independent farmers who could not afford the investments required for healthy profits.1 Newer research detects in this era the rise of a powerful and politically influential conglomerate of agribusiness companies with a free hand to exploit a mass of transient Mexican farm workers.2 The corporate farming system that took root in the trans-Nueces River area, some of these latest tomes find, was as brutal in its oppression as other systems adopted by capitalist powers in the exploitation of their territorial dependents. Indeed, historian Tim Bowman likens South Texas [End Page 137] corporate bosses to European oppressors who established colonial societies in underdeveloped countries. He argues that this colonialism, first implanted in the Lower Rio Grande Valley by Anglo growers in the early twentieth century, remains in a modified form. Texas Mexicans faced a cold-hearted, merciless, and detached syndicate of growers in the 1950s and after who manipulated the sizable pool of braceros and mojados (the former legal workers from Mexico temporarily in the United States under contract and the latter in the country illegally, derisively called "wetbacks") to depress farm wages. John Weber, another scholar of Mexican American labor, writes that "South Texas growers devised a thoroughly modern set of practices that relied on forced mobility, enforced immobility, and an activist state not present in earlier times."3 Corporate farming, the literature indicates, consisted of a structured world undergirded by an army of mobile families. Migrant farm workers after World War II suffered grim poverty and grappled with precarious road travel. They agonized first over what means of transportation (many relied on troqueros, or truckers) would carry them through the harvest season. Then they faced uncertainties about work availability at the next destination. Distress beset male heads of families who concerned themselves with properly provisioning their wives and children and obtaining safe shelter for them; some of the labor camps along the migrant route offered barely livable conditions. There appeared no refuge for migrants upon returning to their home region. Most came back to struggle through the winter in substandard quarters until the seasonal cycle resumed. Children enrolled at run down and unkempt "Mexican schools" until the spring.4 Weber writes: The condition of Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers in South Texas changed little from the beginning of the farm boom in the 1910s until the post-Bracero era. From the beginning of large-scale migration from Mexico during the Revolution, Mexican and Mexican Americans were viewed by potential employers as a never-ending supply of labor power, more beasts of burden than citizens. This system was merely amplified over the next several decades, even as massive economic and political changes occurred in both nations.5 My remembrances of growing up on small farms in South Texas run counter to the conventional characterization given of labor structures in the history books. Certainly, corporate farming gained power and influence over labor in Texas after World War II, but to not to the extent of [End Page 138] being the sole system of agricultural order in the state. I contend as much based on memories of my youth in Nueces County,6 first at the Chap-man Ranch (1945–56) and then at the Jesse T. Parr farm in Robstown (1956–63), where an alternate labor structure prevailed. The Parr farm in particular stands out as a salient exception to what the scholarship says about the world of organized cropping after World War II, and so I draw attention to it as a viable agricultural model that persisted concomitantly with and complementary to commercial farming in that era. Small farming operations, commonly found in Nueces County and neighboring counties, consisted of a white property owner...

CONFLICTS, CALAMITIES AND NUTRITIONAL POVERTY TRAPS IN A PEASANT ECONOMY: EVIDENCE FROM RURAL CHINA 1929–1933

This paper uses data compiled by John Lossing Buck from his rural China survey conducted between 1929 and 1933 to analyze the impact of weather calamities and conflict on agricultural productivity, farm wages and nutrition intake. Our results support the conditions required for a Nutritional Poverty Trap (NPT) to be present, while anecdotal evidence points to the potential presence of a nutritional poverty trap for large segments of China’s agricultural economy. We find a lagged effect of climate shock on nutrition, but find no evidence that the many conflicts of the day affected nutrition. This is more likely due to the avoidance of conflict zones by surveyors, but may also support the notion that the effects from conflicts were local and short-lived due to the resilience of farmers.

Rural labour employment and livelihoods in tribal villages of eastern India

This study examines the changing employment and livelihood patterns of rural labour households in tribal villages of eastern India. The study is based on the high frequency panel data collected under the ICAR-ICRISAT project on Village Dynamics Studies in eastern India from 2010 to 2014. The findings revealed that the work participation rate of landless labour households had a declining trend whereas that of land owning labour households had a mixed trend in tribal villages of Jharkhand. The employment in the farm sector declined for males but increased for women. Employment in non-farm sectors registered an increase in both the genders and the magnitude of the increase was higher in the non-farm sector as compared to the farm sector. Similar trend was observed for wage rate which showed faster growth in the non-farm wage compared to the farm wage. Both the sectors witnessed an increase in the labourer’s wages during the past four years, however, the increase was much higher in the non-farm sector than the farm sector. The study also indicated that male labourers were employed at higher wages than their female counterparts in both sectors but the difference was narrowed down during last four years. A wage determinant analysis revealed that a healthy, educated, landowning adult male labour is likely to get higher wages than others. Non-farm wage employment is emerging as the most important source of income on labour households contributing 63 to 74% to their total income. The survey further revealed that income from farming constituted only 6 to 13% of the total income of labour households, but it showed increasing trend due to implementation of various mega agricultural development projects in the state.

Disparity in the wages of agricultural labourers in India: An interval-valued data analysis

This study explores the interval-valued data analysis techniques to witness the spatial disparity in the wage rates of farm labourers in India. Farm labourers constitute more than half of the total workforce engaged in Indian agriculture. Also, farmers' expenses towards labour charges account for more than 50 per cent of the total variable cost of production for most crops.Using the time series data on the nominal farm wage rates paid at different agriculturally important states, the interval-valued series are built. The inflation-adjusted real wage rates are found and both nominal and real wage rate data are used to find the average range of the farm wage rates over the agricultural years for a decade. Using the time series analysis techniques, viz. autoregressive integrated moving average-artificial neural network (ARIMA-ANN) hybrid model and vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) model, the interval-valued data on nominal wage rates are modelled and the best model for forecasting is identified using forecast evaluation methods. The results established the presence of spatial disparity and the forecasts indicated that this disparity is not going to narrow down in future unless some policy intervention takes place.

Mechanize or exit farming? Multiple‐treatment‐effects model and external validity of adoption impacts of mechanization among Nepalese smallholders

AbstractThe future of smallholders in developing countries is becoming increasingly uncertain in the face of rising farm wages. The custom‐hiring of tractors, in which tractor owners provide non‐owner farmers with land preparation and transport services for fees, has spread among smallholders in Asia, including Nepal. However, estimating the adoption impacts of agricultural mechanization by smallholders is complex as we must also take into account smallholders’ options to exit farming. We investigate this issue by applying multinomial logit inverse‐probability weighting and sample selection panel data methods to data on smallholders in lowland Nepal. Our results are generally consistent with the hypothesis that smallholders who are likely to benefit more from adopting tractors are also more likely to exit farming. Where smallholders are less likely to exit farming, the use of tractors through custom‐hiring may help smallholders on average to earn greater total and agricultural incomes. However, where they are more likely to exit farming, the ability of custom‐hired tractors to sustain smallholder farming systems may become weaker. The results also offer insights into how the external validity of technology adoption impact evaluation may be affected in some settings.