Realizing Rational and Competitive Land Use in Asia, Africa, South and North America, and Europe: A Critique to the Theories of Nobel Laureate Schultz and Nominee Hirschman
Creators: name: Zhou, Jian-Ming
name: Zhou, Jian-Ming
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2008
Subjects: subject: Agricultural and Food Policy
subject: Community/Rural/Urban Development
subject: Environmental Economics and Policy
subject: Farm Management
subject: Food Security and Poverty
subject: Institutional and Behavioral Economics
subject: International Development
subject: International Relations/Trade
subject: Labor and Human Capital
subject: Land Economics/Use
subject: Political Economy
subject: Production Economics
subject: Productivity Analysis
subject: Resource /Energy Economics and Policy
subject: Irrational and Polyopolistic Land Use
subject: Under- and Over-Production
subject: Agricultural Protectionism
subject: WTO Doha Round
subject: Dual Land System

description: 'This powerful work written with competence and passion by Dr Jian-Ming Zhou deserves the utmost attention of the policy makers who take decisions on agriculture throughout the world' Ex-Italian Premier Prof Giuliano Amato. The book challenges Schultz’s assertions: (1) small farmers are rational; (2) low income countries saddled with traditional agriculture do not have the problem of many farmers leaving agriculture for nonfarm jobs; (3) part-time farming can be efficient; (4) economies of scale do not exist in agriculture; and (5) investment in human capital counts much more than institutional changes and is the key to agricultural growth. It reveals that after the first land reform of distributing land to small farmers, the irrational and polyopolistic land use by able-bodied part-time and absent farmers earning higher offfarm income but unwilling to lease the under-producing land beyond their family consumption need to full-time farmers, has been a global obstacle with both public and private land ownership, traditional and modern agriculture, fragmented small and consolidatorily enlarged land, low and high income economies, food under-self-sufficiency and overproduction, and developing and developed countries, even if land property rights have been well defined and sale/lease allowed. [Polyopoly is invented by the author to denote the control of a resource by many sellers in contrast to monopoly (by one seller) and oligopoly (by a few sellers)]. It has harmed agriculture, rural development, income distribution, government expenditure, competition, trade, environment, etc. It has become the most fundamental microeconomic root of the three persisting global macroeconomic problems: food under-selfsufficiency, overproduction and agricultural protectionism. Hirschman has ignored that this obstacle has hampered the linkage effects. Evidences in Asia; Africa; Latin America; Central-Eastern Europe and Central Asia; Western Europe; North America and Oceania are presented. Revising relevant US and Western European legislations, it provides effective and appropriate Proposals to, without affecting private land ownership, simultaneously reach eight aims: (1) minimize/abolish/prevent protectionism, while (2) avoiding overproduction and (3) irrational production abandonment; (4) boost competitive full-time large farmers, whereas (5) not crowding part-time and absent small farmers out of agriculture; (6) reach/maintain basic self-sufficiency in cereals, meanwhile (7) promoting multi-functionality of other agricultural and rural sectors and (8) improving the environment. They would be useful also for public land ownership. Hence launching a second land reform - land use reform.
description: Previously posted in ( http://www.iao.florence.it/documentation/publications/publipage.php?id=74 )