World Food Policy WFP Volume 4, No. 2, Spring 2018 | Page 38

World Food Policy
This paper aims to provide an
overview of path and inclusiveness
of rural transformations and the ma-
jor factors to facilitate inclusive rural
transformation in Asia. Rural trans-
formation is “a process that involves ris-
ing agricultural productivity, increasing
commercialization and marketable, sur-
pluses, and diversification of production
patterns and livelihoods. It also involves
expanded decent off-farm employment
and entrepreneurial opportunities, better
rural coverage and access to services and
infrastructure, and greater access to, and
capacity to influence, relevant policy pro-
cesses.” (IFAD, 2016). Based on this defi-
nition, this paper addresses the follow-
ing three questions: (1) What are path
and speed of rural transformation (RT)
in Asian developing countries? 2) What
have been major driving forces of rural
transformation? And 3) How inclusive-
ness of RT in the countries selected in
this study? Because the inclusiveness is
a very broad concept and cover many
development issues (e.g., poverty, gen-
der, youth, tribal, and left behind re-
gions), to limit the scope of this study,
we focus the analysis on rural poverty.
In addition, RT is often linked with the
structural transformation (ST), so we
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also analyse the inclusiveness of RT un-
der the overall ST in Asian developing
countries. The analysis is based on liter-
ature review and graphical analysis us-
ing the secondary data at national level
for the countries selected in this study. 5
The paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 introduces the overall trends
of ST and RT in Asian developing coun-
tries. Section 3 examines inclusiveness
of rural transformations with focus on
rural poverty reduction and typology
of inclusive rural transformation. Use
China, Vietnam, India and the Philip-
pines as examples, section 4 discusses
major driving forces of RT and their
implications to inclusiveness of RT. The
last section concludes with policy im-
plications.
2. Structural and rural
transformations
S
tructural transformation and rural
transformation are interconnect-
ed. Successful RT can stimulate
economic growth and ST, and ST can
enhance rural transformation through
labor-intensive industrialization (Tim-
mer, 2014; IFAD 2016).
For analysis on inclusiveness of rural transformation, because RT is a long process, we use the
following two criteria to select the study countries: 1) any developing country that has rural pov-
erty data span more than 10 years in WDI database; and 2) any developing country that had not
reached the stage of nearly completed structural transformation (e.g., the difference between share
of agricultural employment and share of agricultural GDP in the economy is very small) by the
early 2000s. Based on WDI database, we have the following 9 countries that meet the above criteria:
Bangladesh (BGD), China (CHN), India (IND), Indonesia (IDN), Cambodia (KHM), Philippines
(PHL), Vietnam (VNM), Laos (LAO) and Pakistan (PAK). Note: for the extremely rural poverty
population in Vietnam, we use the data from the national source. For analysis on structural trans-
formation in Section 2.1, despite Malaysia (MYS), Nepal (NPL), Sri Lanka (LKA) and Thailand
(THA) do not meet the above two selection criteria, they are included because this section does not
deal with rural poverty issues and focuses mainly on overall trends of structural transformation in
the developing countries in Asia.
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