IMPACT OF NEW TECHNOLOGY ON RURAL EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION, FINAL RESEARCH REPORT

First, the research has demonstrated the close interaction between increased employment, increased agricultural production, reduced capital intensity of industrial investment and increased foreign trade. Change in policy in any one of these areas without change in the others is likely and perhaps certain to fail to achieve its objective. These conclusions have far reaching implications to choice of development strategy and to the role and means of agricultural development within that strategy. They explain much of the past failure to achieve broad participation in growth processes as well as why many of the current nostrums will fail as well. The nature of the relationships has been demonstrated with a mathematical growth model, an empirically based simulation model and a set of micro studies defined to back the simulation model and to provide independent corraboration of individual points. Second, the research provides the basis for specific policy recommendations, within the context of an employment oriented strategy of growth, for setting priorities and sequences of agricultural production increase, for encouraging small farmers, for choosing appropriate forms of mechanization, for the setting of agricultural price policy and for fostering small-scale, labor-intensive industry. Each of these individual policy recommendations is, in itself, complex, the positions are spelled out in detail and empirical support provided in the various publications from the research. These are summarized in the main body of this report.