Globalization and Agriculture (Globalization and Its Costs) by Antônio Márcio Buainain

Author:Antônio Márcio Buainain
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2017-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

Bidirectional Flows of Rural Labor Mobility

Endogenous changes in the Chinese economy associated with both the reforms and the gradual evolution of economic globalization had major impact on rural labor mobility. Every year, there are around 200 million migrant workers working or looking for jobs in various industries. According to official data,19 there were 277.47 million migrant workers by the end of 2015, roughly equivalent to 20 percent of the national population, 25 percent of the national working-age population and even 30 percent of the national total employment. Furthermore, the 2013 UNDP Report on China National Human Development estimates that within the next two decades nearly 310 million more people are expected to migrate from rural to urban in China (UNDP, 2013).

In addition, there is a deterioration of living conditions under the context of slummification of cities. The intensified collective conflicts and all degrees of discriminations have twisted the rural-urban migration in China and given rise to a “bird type” migration. Such migration means that migrants leave and come back without completing the migration process with the final settlement in cities. And, to some extent migrant workers are no more settled in the rural area. They mobilize from one another from time to time, in accordance with employment availability and short-term economic prosperity. Under the impact of the crisis, such a reversed “bird type” migration flow represents a compromised solution for migrant workers. It offers a safety net from both the impacts of global economic boom/crisis and the adverse conditions in agricultural production and rural areas.

However, in the long run, rural areas and/or agricultural activities cannot retain the current rural population, especially under the ongoing atrophy of agricultural activities under the HCR system. From the current institutional layouts of China, such two-way flow of labor mobility is clearly unsustainable and increasingly dysfunctional for both agricultural and urban-industrial development. Both require a more specialized and professional labor force, which is not compatible with a floating population. Temporary migration, land abandonment, low farm productivity and low levels of investment are not compatible with the new system envisaged by the second agrarian reform and the requirements arising from the deepening of globalization of Chinese economy. Whereas the social configurations and policy aims are quite different from those which oriented previous reforms, the challenge remains unchanged: how to balance equity with efficiency.

IMPACTS AND CONSEQUENCES

Changes and new phenomena mentioned above are seemingly simple, yet they are changing the most fundamental and critical fields of rural areas and agriculture. Further, they have led to huge impacts on the development directions of rural society, rural ways of life, rural organizations as well as the agricultural production model for future development. For this reason, the whole society is supposed to absorb a wide range of democratic participation, which includes comments and suggestions to jointly deal with the direct and indirect impacts of globalization and internationalization.

On Farmers

New policies of farmland circulation imply a radical change in the relations between humans and the land. The ideology is through it the managing

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