ABSTRACT
We move now from the sectoral/macro level of agriculture to the micro farm level, and address the question: where productive land is scarce and its holding is concentrated, would the break-up of large estates raise land and labour productivity, and increase employment in agriculture? Is the productiveness of small farms higher than that of larger ones? Are the textbook standardized criteria used so far in making resource use judgements adequate under different socio-economic systems? Or, to put it differently, can we judge resource use efficiency and social gains in capitalist and socialist agriculture solely in western economic terms? As I understand the current moody debate on pro-market liberalization and anti-government intervention in agrarian systems, these questions are central to the concerns of policy-makers, donors, development analysts and peasant organizations.
I raise these questions because I have been inspired by two prudent judgements on the subject. The first comes in the succinct words of the founder of economics, Adam Smith, who remarked in his Wealth of Nations (1776: Book III, Ch. 2, 364):
