Words and Ideas: Commitment, Continuity and Irreversibility 141example, for the expected patterns of settler and managerial behaviour, for depart-
mentalism, for staff discontinuities and for the inbuilt incompatibilities of scheme
systems. Moreover, comparisons with alternative approaches to agricultural devel-
opment should take into account the high opportunity costs of trained staff and
the expected ease or difficulty of abandoning a project or programme if it proves
uneconomic. When all this is done the case against high capital and complex set-
tlement schemes becomes stronger than when only conventional cost–benefit cri-
teria are used. While this does not mean that such schemes should be ruled out
altogether, it does mean that they should be approached with greater care and
understanding.
Where a settlement scheme is unavoidable, and where there is a choice of type
to be adopted, there is much to be said on organizational grounds for the simplest
type of scheme that is compatible with the circumstances of settlement. The sim-
pler approaches are relatively undemanding of scarce administrative and technical
capacity, and engage it for shorter periods. They involve relatively low risk and low
commitment. Moreover, schemes with individual holdings exploit the drives of
property ownership and individual incentive which can make productive the
labour which is the most abundant unused resource in much of the third world.
The simpler schemes also require intermediate levels of organization correspond-
ing with the intermediate technology which may also be appropriate. If the begin-
ning is ambitious, a complex organization may collapse and find equilibrium at a
lower level; but if the beginning is modest, a more complex technology and organ-
ization can grow up organically and gradually. For example, the tractors appearing
on Chesa in Rhodesia and on the Kenya Million-Acre Schemes as a result of settler
initiative represent a self-sustaining upward movement in which productivity may
increase without heavy government investment or commitment. If such develop-
ments are to be possible, it is important that advisory and technical services be
available when needed, and even more important that the system of land tenure
adopted should allow for future flexibility in farm size. Given such flexibility, it is
usually safer and sounder to develop piecemeal from an existing base, whether this
is farmers already on their land or settlers, already on a scheme, than to attempt
radical transformation in one long step.
Settlement schemes, particularly those which are complex in system, will
remain temptations. Because of their creative possibilities, they will continue to
find energetic and enthusiastic sponsors. Because of their visibility, clear bounda-
ries, organizational coherence and Utopian overtones, they will no doubt continue
to attract successive colonization – by administrators who negotiate their emer-
gence, constructors who build them, agriculturalists who manage them, settlers
who populate them, and in their wake foreign aid personnel and research students^9
in various capacities – all of whom will find satisfaction in occupying a bounded
and identifiable territory. What is vital is not that such schemes should be avoided
on principle, but that those who act in these situations should appreciate what is
happening. It is especially important that those who make development decisions
should understand themselves well enough to be able to compensate in their acts