IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/2296.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An ecological and historical perspective on agricultural development in Southeast Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Hayami, Yujiro

Abstract

According to Mint's"vent for surplus"theory, development of the economies of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand from the nineteenth century on depended on the natural advantage of large tracts of unused"empty land"with low population density and abundant natural resources of the type typically found in Southeast Asia and Africa at the outset of Western colonization. When these economies were integrated into international trade, hitherto unused natural resources (primary commodities the indigenous people had not valued) became the source of economic development, commanding market value because of high import demand in Western economies. The major delta of Chao Phraya River was the resource base of vent-for-surplus development with rice in Thailand; tropical rain forests filled that role in Indonesia and the Philippines with respect to the production of tropical cash crops. This basic difference underlay differences in the distribution of farm size: the unimodal distribution of peasants or family farms in Thailand and the coexistence of peasants and large estate farms or plantations specializing in tropical export crops in Indonesia and the Philippines. Differences in agrarian development were also shaped by different policies toward the elite's preemption of unused land. Under Spanish colonialism, the elite preempted unused land in the Philippines wholesale, bifurcating land distribution between non-cultivating landlords and sharecroppers in lowland rice areas, and between plantation owners and wage laborers in upland areas. In Indonesia, the Dutch government granted long-term leases for uncultivated public land to foreign planters, but prevented alienation of cultivated land from native peasants, to avoid social instability. In Thailand, concessions were granted for private canal building, but the independent kingdom preserved the tradition of giving land to anyone who could open and cultivate it. Relatively homogenous land-owning peasants dominated Thailand's rural sector. As frontiers for new cultivation closed, the plantation system's initial advantage (large-scale development of land and infrastructure) began to be outweighed by its need to monitor hired labor. The peasant system, based on family labor needing no supervision, allowed Thailand's share of the world market in tropical cash crops to grow, as Indonesia and the Philippines lost their traditional comparative advantage. Moreover, land reform in the Philippines made land markets inactive, with resulting distortions in resource allocation and serious under-investment in agriculture.

Suggested Citation

  • Hayami, Yujiro, 2000. "An ecological and historical perspective on agricultural development in Southeast Asia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2296, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:2296
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2000/05/02/000094946_00041308371141/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wickizer, Vernon D., 1960. "The Smallholder in Tropical Export Crop Production," Food Research Institute Studies, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, vol. 1(1), pages 1-51.
    2. Takamasa Akiyama & Akihiko Nishio, 1996. "Indonesia's cocoa boom : hands-off policy encourages smallholder dynamism," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1580, The World Bank.
    3. Yujiro Hayami, 1994. "Peasant and Plantation in Asia," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Gerald M. Meier (ed.), From Classical Economics to Development Economics, chapter 8, pages 121-134, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Yujiro Hayami, 1996. "The Peasant in Economic Modernization," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 78(5), pages 1157-1167.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roumasset, James, 2004. "Rural Institutions, Agricultural Development, and Pro-Poor Economic Growth," Asian Journal of Agriculture and Development, Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-20, June.
    2. Prabhu Pingali & Terri Raney & Keith Wiebe, 2008. "Biofuels and Food Security: Missing the Point," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 30(3), pages 506-516.
    3. Butzer, Rita & Larson, Donald F. & Mundlak, Yair, 2002. "Determinants Of Agricultural Growth In Thailand, Indonesia And The Philippines," Discussion Papers 14979, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Agricultural Economics and Management.
    4. Frankema, Ewout & Papaioannou, Kostadis, 2017. "Withdrawn Paper," CEPR Discussion Papers 11795, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Mundlack, Yair & Larson, Donald F. & Butzer, Rita, 2002. "Determinants of agricultural growth in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2803, The World Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hayami, Y. & Kikuchi, M. & Marciano, E. B., 1999. "Middlemen and peasants in rice marketing in the Philippines," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 79-93, March.
    2. Yujiro Hayami, 2022. "Family farms and plantations in tropical development," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 24(1), pages 62-80, December.
    3. Herath, Deepananda P.B. & Weersink, Alfons, 2006. "Structural Changes in the Sri Lankan Tea Industry: Family Farms vs. Plantations," 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia 25406, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Azer G. Efendiev & Pavel S. Sorokin & Maria A. Kozlova, 2014. "Transformations In The Rural Life In Russian Belgorod Region In 2000-2013 Through “Modernization” Theoretical Perspective: Increasing Material Well-Being, Growing Individualism And Persisting Pessimis," HSE Working papers WP BRP 56/SOC/2014, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    5. von Braun, Joachim & Mirzabaev, Alisher, 2015. "Small Farms: Changing Structures and Roles in Economic Development," Discussion Papers 210464, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    6. Herath, Deepananda & Weersink, Alfons, 2009. "From Plantations to Smallholder Production: The Role of Policy in the Reorganization of the Sri Lankan Tea Sector," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 1759-1772, November.
    7. Nanae Yabuki & Takamasa Akiyama, 1996. "Is commodity-dependence pessimism justified? Critical factors and government policies that characterize dynamic commodity sectors," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1600, The World Bank.
    8. Allaire, Gilles, 2009. "Economics of Conventions and the New Economic Sociology and our Understanding of Food Quality and New Food Markets and Trade Institutions: What are markets that pure economics does not know?," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 53203, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Nandika S. Kumanayake & Jonna P. Estudillo & Keijiro Otsuka, 2014. "Changing Sources of Household Income, Poverty, and Sectoral Inequality in Sri Lanka, 1990–2006," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 52(1), pages 26-51, March.
    10. Derek Byerlee, 2014. "The Fall and Rise Again of Plantations in Tropical Asia: History Repeated?," Land, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-24, June.
    11. Herath, Deepananda P.B. & Weersink, Alfons, 2003. "Vertical Coordination Changes In The Sri Lankan Tea Industry:Transaction, Management, And Production Costs," 2003 Annual meeting, July 27-30, Montreal, Canada 21941, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    12. Michael Kopsidis & Katja Bruisch & Daniel W. Bromley, 2013. "Where is the Backward Peasant? Regional Crop Yields on Common and Private Land in Russia 1883-1913," Working Papers 0046, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    13. Courleux, Frederic & Dedieu, Marie-Sophie & Grandjean, Alexis & Wepierre, Anne-Sophie, 2017. "Agriculture familiale en France métropolitaine‪ Éléments de définition et de quantification," Économie rurale, French Society of Rural Economics (SFER Société Française d'Economie Rurale), vol. 357(January-M).
    14. Bathrick, David D., 1998. "Fostering global well-being: a new paradigm to revitalize agricultural and rural development," 2020 vision discussion papers 26, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    15. Michael Kopsidis, 2012. "Peasant Agriculture and Economic Growth: The Case of Southeast Europe c. 1870-1940 reinterpreted," Working Papers 0028, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    16. Wolff, Christiane, 1999. "The Economics of Oil Palm Production in Chiapas, Mexico," Working Papers 127687, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    17. Van Campenhout, Bjorn, 2012. "Market Integration in Mozambique:: A Non-Parametric Extension to the Threshold Model," MSSP working papers 4, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:2296. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.