Part-time farming in the developing world: A case of Hobson's choice or the privilege of half a loaf

Existing international literature on part-time farming derives mainly from developed country situtations. The vast and heterogeneous developing world awaits documentation, analysis and interpretation. New approaches will also be required due to different conditions, such as overwhelming dependence on agricultural employment, skewed patterns of access to land and high levels of landlessness. Heritage is also different as are future prospects.Colonial economic management introduced constrained part-time farming. For the native population, poll taxes induced migration to plantations. The Hacienda system in Latin America provides a built-in system of dependent part-time farming. Capitalist farming has been spreading rapidly, sometimes fueled by land reforms, and has boosted the use of the vast class of small farmers, usually part-timers, as a pool of low-cost and docile labour.Trends are not re-assuring. Entrepreneurial agriculture tends to displace small holders from the land and to throw them on to the labour market while at the same time it generally lowers the employment capacity of agriculture through modernization of production. Parttime farming seems as unstable as ever and operates against a secular threat to the employment and income of the vast rural labour force. Part-time farming in the developing world merits deep probing and imaginative assessment.