Issues in Policy Analysis of Agricultural Development and Internal Migration

This paper investigates the interdependence between internal migration and technological change in the agricultural sector, stressing the impact of alternative agricultural technologies on migration and human settlement patterns. An immediate objective is to supplement representative computable general equilibrium models by focusing on issues in policy analysis related to the choice of technology within agriculture and to the pattern of migration and urbanization. The nature of technological change interacts not only with the share of incomes accruing to a majority of farmers but also with the intersectoral and spatial reallocation of population, and ultimately with demographic changes in the countryside. It is argued that there are important advantages in a dispersed, rurally-oriented pattern of population reallocation and in avoiding excessive concentration of the growth of industrial output and employment in a few established large cities