World Food Policy WFP Volume 4, No. 2, Spring 2018 | Page 41

Facilitating Inclusive Rural Transformation in the Asian Developing Countries
labor had off-farm employment in ei-
ther rural or urban areas (NSBC, 2015).
Rapid growth of off-farm employment
has also been occurred in many South-
east Asian countries. There has been a
shift of labor shares out of agriculture
into both industry and services by 10
percentage points each of five years
in Vietnam since early 2000s (OECD,
2015). Although not as rapid as those
in China and Vietnam, rural transfor-
mation through off-farm employment
expansion has also been experiencing
in India, Bangladesh, and other coun-
tries in South Asia (Haggblade et al.,
2010; Misra, 2013). For example, Mis-
ra (2013) estimated that the share of
non-farm sector in total rural employ-
ment in India has increased from 19%
in 1983 to 22% in 1993-94 and reached
32% in 2009/2010.
mation from cereal-based agriculture
to a diversified one presented in several
countries such as China and Indonesia
in the past three decades, and in Viet-
nam in the recent two decades. Cambo-
dia and the Philippines are exceptions,
as they have tended to move towards
a more cereal-based or less diversified
agriculture (the last two countries in
Figure 2).
Rural transformation has also
been occurring in shifting from farm
to off-farm employment in Asia. ADB
(2000) reports that the rural non-farm
economy accounts for some 20 – 40%
of total rural employment and 25 – 50%
of total rural income in Asia in the late
1990s. Recent studies show the evi-
dence of a continuing increase of ru-
ral nonfarm employment in the region
(Heady et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2011;
Based on the trends of rural
Hoang et al., 2014; Imai et al., 2015). In
China, nearly all village labors worked transformation within agriculture and
in farming in the late 1970s. By the between farm and off-farm employ-
early 2010s, more than 70% of rural ment, we summarize a general pathway
Table 1. Pathway and stages of rural transformation in Asia.
Stage Descriptions
1 Primary on staple food production (mainly cereal)
2 Agri. diversification (labor intensive + high value products)
3 Rising non-farm employment:
3.1 Farming + part time non-farm employment
3.2 Increasing specialization on farming or non-farm employment
3.3 Agri. mechanization and more off-farm employment
4
Integrated urban-rural and sustainable development
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