In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Conclusion 159 159 CHAPTER 9 Conclusion: Gambling with the Land “There are multiple agrarian paths and, moreover, there is ‘continuous revolution’. … The experiences of other parts of the world may offer insights into the possible, they in no sense offer a model of the agrarian transition as it will emerge in Southeast Asia.” (Rigg 2001: 147) 160 Gambling with the Land Salient characteristics and processes This documented survey of the major trends in Southeast Asian agricultures since the 1960s allows us to identify a number of salient characteristics and processes which can be summarized as follows: 1) Throughout the colonial period, cropland expansion has been a dominant process in the region and has gone through various phases of acceleration (Chapter 2). More importantly, since the 1960s, the pace of expansion has increased . As a result, in comparison with the rest of the world, Southeast Asia’s ratio of cropland expansion over population growth does appear unusual, with perhaps only Brazil’s performance being comparable. This territorial expansion of agriculture has largely been occurring and continues to do so at the expense of the forest cover. The latter has been receding rapidly in all countries, which seem to be taking turns in an apparent deforestation cycle and in a context where tree crops, such as oil palm, rubber and coffee, represent the dominant spearhead in the conquest of the forest. 2) As should be expected of countries undergoing rapid urbanization and industrialization (Chapter 3), the share of agriculture in the gross domestic product and as a source of employment has been fast decreasing, although at very different rhythms among the countries concerned. But the overall picture is clear: the agrarian transition, whereby the city and industry are gradually overtaking the countryside and agriculture as the major locus of life, employment , and production, is well under way. This process is neither spatially nor structurally uniform among and within each of the respective countries. Even if the industrial and service sectors are employing a growing proportion of the labour force, it is not increasing nearly as rapidly as their share of the GDP. While that is to be expected or normal, so to speak, given the greater productivity of industrial labour, the employment retaining capacity of the agricultural sector in the region remains very significant. 3) This can be attributed to a number of negative factors, including the insufficient size and quality of the non-agricultural job market as well as the inadequate qualifications of the agricultural labour force for the market. But additional factors are involved. From an analysis of employment patterns (Chapter 4) — although,given the nature of our data,we can only make inferences — it is also obvious that farming activities alone are increasingly insuf- ficient to keep people on the land and pluriactivity is spreading. Yet agriculture has been showing a remarkable resilience throughout much of the region. Agricultural dependency ratios remain high and in some countries are hardly decreasing, notwithstanding the overall diversification of sources of employment, the more rapid increase of non-agricultural sources of employment and the growth of pluriactivity. In fact, in four of the eight countries examined, namely Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines and Burma, the tendency has been for the share of agricultural employment in the rural areas to actually increase, which would mean that deagrarianization of the countryside is not proceeding as rapidly as expected. Put differently, in rural areas, particularly those of Indonesia and Laos, agriculture more than holds its ground as a source of employment. This suggests that throughout much of the region, farming , whether full time or part time, remains an activity many people turn to when fearing for their subsistence security. Southeast Asians still bet largely on the land (Figures 4.5 and 4.6). By Southeast Asians, we refer not only to farm operating households but also to state authorities who throughout the years have adopted policies of agricultural intensification and territorial expansion, and have increasingly adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards the expansionist policies of multinationals involved in agricultural land development. 4) There are several additional illustrations of the region’s overall agricultural resilience through growth and diversification (Chapter 5). Between 1961 and 2007, Southeast Asian net agricultural and food production per capita indices clearly outpaced global trends. In addition , the total value of the region’s agricultural production increased almost twice as fast as the world’s, while also growing faster than did its share...

Share