Agricultural Labour

It was noted above that agriculture consists a major pillar for employment in the MPC. Nevertheless, the number of people employed in agriculture has been dropping steadily the last three decades in most countries, especially in Lebanon and Libya (Table 1.14). In Egypt, Morocco and Turkey the drop of agricultural labour is more modest, while in Jordan, Syria and especially Algeria there has been a significant increase of people employed in agriculture. The breakdown of economically active population in agriculture reveals some interesting points: Although the total number of agricultural labour has been falling in most MPC, this is largely due to the drop of male agricultural labour; in all countries but Lebanon and Libya the number of female workers in agriculture has been increasing the last thirty years.

In fact, agriculture represents the most important employment opportunity for women in the MPC. Although women’s access to jobs in the overall economy is very low in the MPC, as it does not exceed 30% (Algeria) and can be as low as 17% (Jordan), women are the majority in agricultural labour in Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Syria and Turkey. Only in Lebanon and Tunisia is women’s percentage below 40% of the total population employed in agriculture.

68% of the employed women in Turkey are working in agriculture and similar figures are noticed in Syria (57%), Morocco (50%) and Egypt (41%). As before, only in Lebanon and Libya does agriculture constitute a fraction of total female employment (2.7 and 9.7% respectively).

In essence, agriculture is very important to MPC’s economies because of the large number of rural population and the high levels of poverty. Taking also into consideration the high share of young population and the steady high population growth, along with the fact that most MPC are net food-importing countries and thus highly exposed to external shocks such as the 2007–2008 food crisis and the global recession, it becomes apparent that agricultural growth could contribute to improving employment levels, reducing poverty levels and ultimately achieving food security through incomes, domestic provision of food, and export earnings (Breisinger et al. 2010).

The total population of Egypt surpassed 82 million inhabitants in 2009 of which about 27 millions are economically active, i.e. around one third. While the agricultural male labour was round 10% of the labour force the non-agricultural male labour was 59% in 2009. In addition, the share of female agricultural labour was 10% of the total labour force. The non-agricultural female share in labour force was 15%. The major reasons behind such shrinkage in agricultural labour share in the economically active population are the decrease in the agricultural male labour by 0.4% a year over the period of Economic reform Era (1986-2009) while the non-agricultural male labour increased over the same period by 3.4%. Even though the female labour’s share increased at a positive annual rate of 0.6%, the non-agricultural female labour expanded fast at annual growth rate of 6%. The expansion in mechanization system in agricultural production of Egypt over the last three decades was a main reason. In addition, the market cannot afford a satisfactory opportunity income from agricultural labour to rural population. Finally, the deepness of the poverty gap between rural and urban has been enlarged over the last three decades as was shown under the previous section on socioeconomic aspects of the agro-food system.

In Jordan, although rural population represents around 22% of total population, the agricultural community is less than one-third of the rural population. Agricultural labour has not passed 7% of the total economically active population and around one-fourth of the Jordanian agricultural community. The labour force currently consists of an estimated 1.667 million workers. Of those, 77.4% are occupied in the services sector, 20% in the industrial sector, and 2% in agriculture. Unemployment currently stands at 13%, down from the 14.% figure in 2009 and the 14% - 15% that was common in the previous decade This figure is expected to improve slightly to the 12% - 11.%.

In Lebanon, the figures demonstrate that the percentage of the total workforce involved in agriculture has continually decreased since 1960. It is currently estimated that the percentage share has stabilized between 8 and 10%. Due to the high cost of domestic labour, labour from neighbouring countries is often rented.

In Syria, employment in agriculture is important for many categories of workers, such as investor owners, permanent labourers, and occasional farm workers, but also for landless agricultural workers. Agricultural labour in Syria consists of permanent, seasonal, and family labour. The contribution of each kind of labour differs according to agricultural activity; plant, or animal; the crop; and the availability of hired labour. Female and unskilled labour is in important component of seasonal labour. In fact, estimates of labour employed in agriculture are difficult in Syria due to lack of appropriate consistent data. However, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (SBS), the number of permanent agricultural workers in 2009 was 758,286 (83% male). The total work force was 4,999,229 which means that agricultural labour contributed to 15% of total workforce, declining from 31% in 2000 to 26% in 2003. Agricultural labour ranked fifth in its contribution to employment in 2009, while in 2002 it ranked the first. This can be attributed to the following

reasons: the consequent drought waves that swept the region that badly affected agricultural production and thus reduced the demand for agricultural labour, the law wages for agricultural activities compared to other activities, and the increasing job opportunities in other growing sectors. Syrian agricultural labour is characterized by the dominance of family labour and high contribution of female. Agricultural labour decreased in 2002-09 in its absolute values, as well in its contribution to total workforce. Furthermore, the contribution of female agricultural labour in total agricultural labour decreased from 35.28% in 2002, to 16.11% in 2009, which is due to the reasons mentioned above (draught waves, etc) and to the high dependence on family labour. The amount of hired labour increases with the size of holdings; however, the amount of both family and hired labour per ha of cultivated land decreases as farm size increases. This suggests that larger farms are more capital intensive than smaller ones, and that labour productivity is much higher on larger size farms. Availability of employment opportunities either for full-time workers or in terms of occasional labour varies throughout the country and is affected by seasonality factors. In many parts of Syria, in the Hama countryside for example, a situation of labour shortage during harvests co-exists with relative labour abundance throughout the year. The number of landless labourers in that Governorate is said not to exceed 10%, but is constantly increasing because of population growth, insufficient development of non agricultural employment opportunities, and continuing fragmentation of holdings through inheritance. However, in view of the active labour demand during the peak agricultural seasons, open unemployment of agricultural labour exists mainly for only about two months in the slack season.

While declining in contribution to the overall employment of the country, agriculture in Tunisia is still providing an important and significant share, from 16 to 18%, according to different estimations. The major portion of this employment is however of a family nature; i.e., farm operators and their family relatives. This situation, which was estimated at about 87%, four decades ago, increased even further to 93%, two decades ago, but declined a bit to 90%, as revealed by the 204/05 survey. While the sector is employing significantly, the relative demand it expresses on the labour market is not increasing, it is rather declining. The percentage of farm operators is clearly on the upward trend. This however is not an indication of economies of scale or size. It is rather a consequence of the legal and social inheritance process characterizing the country, implying gradual and continuous cutting down in land holdings. Other statistical indicators of the agricultural land tenure system in Tunisia reveal that full time operators do not exceed 39% of all farmers, only 11% of farmers have an age below 40 and about half (46%) are above 60 years of age.

With respect to the employment generated by the different agricultural activities, there is the livestock subsector which generates about 43% of labour demand. Tree crops are on the top of agricultural activities, as far as derived labour demand is concerned, followed by cash crops with about 17%. In terms of employment duration, livestock activities stand by far ahead of other agricultural activities with near 60% of permanent demand for family labour and even in the case of occasional wage earners, with near 38%. Seasonal demand for labour is typical of tree crop activities, particularly during olive harvests. Cash crops came next with about 49%.

It may be worth noting also that the cereals sector, which uses about a third of the arable land of the country, provides a limited amount of employment, in view of its increasingly mechanized nature. Food legumes provide less employment in total than cereals, obviously, but, on a hectare basis, they provide much more. The overall picture of the employment breakdown is shown below.

There has been a significant decrease in employment level in overall Turkey and this is mainly caused by the decrease in rural areas (%8) in urban areas the fall is only about %1,5 since year 2000. In general, while there is a fall in labour participation rate in Turkey, it is observed that there

has been almost no change in female labour participation whereas a %3 fall has been experienced in male participation rate. In urban areas, there has been a slight fall in male participation rate but an increase was observed during the decade in female participation rate of about %5. In rural areas labour participation rates for both male and female labour force falls about %5-6 since the beginning of the period. In general participation rate in rural areas seem to be higher than urban areas and this difference is bigger in female participation. The family workers in rural areas might explain this divergence. Unemployment rate is calculated for total economic sectors and for non- agricultural sectors. As expected, non-agricultural unemployment is higher in Turkey both in male and female labour force during the whole decade. In urban areas this gap closes both for males and females but in rural areas the gap is quite wide especially for females. In general non- agricultural unemployment for both genders in rural areas is higher compared to urban areas and unemployment figures are lower. This is expected as well due to lack of non-agricultural job opportunities in rural areas.

Although the number of employed in agriculture decreases for female population this sector is still the main economic activity. The highest agricultural employment is seen to be in Western Blacksea, Mediterranean and Aegean regions. However, in these regions services and manufacturing also provides relatively large alternative job opportunities. In Northeastern, Central and Central-eastern Anatolia and Eastern Blacksea regions agriculture is the main economic activity. In Istanbul, Eastern Marmara and Western Anatolia regions agriculture’s share in total employment is relatively small. In the agricultural sector self-employed and unpaid family labour constitutes the two main types of employment, each making up to approximately 45% in 2009. Hired labour in agriculture made up about only 9% of total agricultural employment. Unpaid family labour in agriculture is more dominant among female workers, with as much as 76% (1.9 million) working as unpaid labour in 2009. Illiteracy rates in the agricultural workforce are significantly higher than in the rest of the economy. Despite a significant improvement over the last two decades, illiteracy among agricultural workers remains as high as 15%, compared to less than 2% for those employed outside agriculture. The major contributors to this high rate of illiteracy is the female sector of the agricultural workforce (with an illiteracy rate of 25%), who represent 60% of the total agricultural workforce. In rural areas, where the agricultural population dominates, only 2% of the village (rural) population has university or other higher educational institution education.