64 The Global Food System
involved no additional control practices and no loss of yield, a win–win result. A
more complex case involves in-row tillage in Honduras; it requires some extra ini-
tial labour investment but most farmers say that once established it makes weed
control easier. A number of farmers tried the system and then abandoned it, but
few of these mentioned labour requirements as a problem. Nevertheless, labour
remains a factor in the diffusion of many types of LEIT. More Kenyan farmers
established soil conservation measures with lower labour requirements (such as
unploughed strips) rather than labour-demanding techniques such as terracing,
and attempts to introduce FFS participants in Sri Lanka to green manures were
unsuccessful, partly because of the labour implications.
A factor that further complicates the analysis of so-called labour-intensive
technology is the fact that a considerable proportion of the labour used in even
very small farms is hired. Where labour is a purchased input, the definition of low
external input technologies becomes problematic. In Honduras, a sub-sample of
farmers estimated the labour implications of establishing in-row tillage, revealing
that half of the labour for this task was hired. In Sri Lanka, 70 per cent of the farm-
ers hired labour for spraying insecticide and 64 per cent hired labour for planting,
even though the average farm size is barely 1ha. Similarly, more than 60 per cent
of the farmers in the Kenya study hired labour for weeding. A common defence of
LEIT is that conventional technologies relying on purchased inputs favour those
with cash resources, but as small farms come to depend increasingly on hired
labour this distinction becomes less relevant. The notion that LEIT necessarily
favours family labour on small, self-sufficient farms needs to be re-examined.
Labour-generating LEIT can reduce seasonal or permanent migration by offer-
ing local employment, but we need to understand whether people are working on
their own, or others’, farms. In Niger, for instance, the introduction of planting pits
(a labour-intensive technique for building soil fertility and moisture conservation)
has helped rehabilitate degraded land and improve yields (Hassane et al, 2000). The
success has contributed to an emerging land market, but the purchasers are concen-
trated among a rural elite who are able to hire labour to establish the planting pits.
Thus various types of LEIT (like conventional technology) exhibit a wide
range of labour profiles and a simple characterization of labour intensity masks
more important considerations of flexibility, adaptation and incentives. Although
LEIT may substitute labour for purchased chemicals or fertilizers, the labour may
itself be an external input; differences in the ability to purchase that input may
have implications for rural equity that are as important as differential access to
other farm inputs.
Information
Technologies have different information characteristics (and hence make differ-
ent demands on farmers to acquire that information and take control of it as