Agrarian Structure, Rural Labour Markets and Trends in Rural Incomes in Latin America

Agriculture remains the main sector of employment in Latin America as a whole, and the major locus of poverty. A key question is whether the substantial gains in income per capita over recent decades have been shared by poorer rural families or, more specifically, whether the agricultural economy has evolved in such a way as to improve the lot of landless families, small sharecroppers, squatters and other low-income groups. A tendency towards proletarisation — i.e. a shift from self-employment to wage labour — has been reported by a number of commentators, often referring to specific regions of countries or to specific crops.1 Such a tendency is often viewed with concern. Others have commented on an apparent proliferation of small farms, and others on increasing concentration of land in large farms; these last two developments may or may not coexist. This paper, after briefly noting some aspects of the relationship between agrarian structure and the rural labour market, summarises some aggregate data relevant in judging the evolution of that structure and of the incomes of agrarian groups in major Latin American nations.