Published in 1998, this books is an examination of farm decision-making, incorporating the elements of risk in both production and off-farm or casual wage labour. Farm household decision-making is studied, and issues of wage determination, pricing, commodity price stabilization and producer income and output are also explored.

There is a striking scarcity of work conducted on rural labour markets in the developing world, particularly in Africa. This book aims to fill this gap by bringing together a group of contributors who boast substantial field experience researching rural wage employment in various developing countries. It provides critical perspectives on mainstream approaches to rural/agrarian development, and analysis of agrarian change and rural transformations from a long-term perspective. This book challenges the notion that rural areas in low- and middle-income countries are dominated by self-employment. It purports that this conventional view is largely due to the application of conceptual frameworks and statistical conventions that are ill-equipped to capture labour market participation. The contributions in this book offer a variety of methodological lessons for the study of rural labour markets, focusing in particular on the use of mixed methods in micro-level field research, and more emphasis on capturing occupation multiplicity. The emphasis on context, history, and specific configurations of power relations affecting rural labour market outcomes are key and reoccurring features of this book. This analysis will help readers think about policy options to improve the quantity and quality of rural wage employment, their impact on the poorest rural people, and their political feasibility in each context.

Focusing on an area in the vanguard of agricultural development in Southern India, this book questions how growth and technical change can take place in agriculture and yet leave the position of the labourers relatively unchanged.

This book addresses the question of how so much growth and technical change has occurred in Indian agriculture while the position of agricultural workers has remained relatively unchanged. Focusing on the employees, this study describes an area in Southern India which is known for agricultural development. The author discusses the increase in numbers and proportion of agricultural workers, the stagnation and marginal decline of wage rates and earnings, the property-less status of agricultural workers, consumption, and indebtedness. An original contribution to the study of markets and development studies, this work shows how limited the changes in agriculture are in India.

Agricultural employment, rural migration, trends, developing countries.

This study provides clear guidelines for measuring the contribution of women to agricultural production in developing societies, which should be of interest to those involved in research and development planning.