Part Three
Factors and Imputs for Agricultural
Production: Structures and Institutions in Syria

CHAPTER 11
The Syrian Agricultural Producers:
Structural and Distributional Features
by Alexander Sarris and Alessandro Corsi

11.1 Introduction: Types of farmers in Syria

The main production units in Syrian agriculture are small- and medium-sized farmers, as the agrarian reform caused the practical disappearance of traditional large-scale landowners. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the various structural and distributional characteristics of these farmers. The main source of structural information on Syrian agriculture, the agricultural censuses, report farmers in terms of “holders” who, according to the census definition, are the persons responsible for technical and administrative investment of the agricultural holding, and who have the ultimate economic responsibility on their own or with partners.

During the period between the agricultural censuses of 1981 and 1994, there has been a considerable 26 percent increase in the total number of holders, from 485 691 in 1981 to 613 657 in 1994 (Table 11.1).

Table 11.1 Farm holders in Syria and proportion with main job farming

Source: Computed from 1981 and 1994 census of agriculture.

Given that the total cultivable land has not changed by much during this period, the inevitable conclusion is that there has been considerable fragmentation and subdivision of farms, despite laws and regulations that explicitly forbid it. This must have been the consequence of population growth coupled with long standing social norms in Syria that dictate the roughly even subdivision of land among a family’s children.

Holders are divided into those having and those not having land, further classified according to farming being or not being their main occupation. Holders whose main occupation is not farming, a category including absentee owners as well as part-time farmers with a prevalent non-farming occupation, have a considerable importance in Syria. Nevertheless, their number and share have declined: census figures indicate that they were 213 000 (43.9 percent of total holders) in 1981, and 182 000 (29.6 percent) in 1994, while in the same period the number of holders with main job farming had increased from 273 000 to 432 000 (Table 11.1).

The category of holders whose main occupation is not farming can be considered to be composed mostly of absentee owners, included in the category “holders with land with main job not in farming”. Several waves of out-migration have actually increased their number. In fact, the category includes members of the urban middle classes with some agricultural property, but also relatively poor farmers unable to make a living out of agriculture and attracted by better opportunities in neighboring countries or in the cities. In the 1980s, electrification and improved road links in rural areas permitted a gradual return to the villages of many holders as part-time farmers who regularly commute to cities, even at substantial distances in all peri-urban areas in the country. Part-time farmers enjoy all the benefits of full-time farmers in terms of Government services and subsidized inputs. The return to their home base of many part-time farmers may also be a partial explanation for the phenomenon of increasing conflicts between owners and operating farmers, where the former want to recover possession of their property and the latter are not willing to terminate the existing sharecropping or labour agreements. Hence, the phenomenon of return to the land may have side effects on an already saturated land and labour market.

The proportion of holders with main jobs in agriculture varies considerably by region, as table 11.2 illustrates. The proportions are generally higher among those holders that have land, and also higher in regions that are mostly rural like Al-Rakka, Deir-ez-Zor, and Al-Hassakeh. This supports the thesis that proximity to urban areas leads to more part-time farming. The educational status of holders is very low. More than 83 percent of all holders have education less than or equal to elementary, and a large share of those (44 percent) are illiterate.

While the total number of farm holders with and without land is known, there are many categories within these broad groups. It is possible to group households partaking in farm operations, and agricultural production in general, into many overlapping functional categories. These are:

(a) landed holders whose main occupation is not farming (mainly absentees);

(b) landed holders with farming as a main occupation, i.e. owner-operators;

(c) landless holders whose main occupation is not farming (mainly absentees);

(d) landless holders with farming as a main occupation, i.e. owner-operators without land;

(e) sharecroppers and tenants on private land having a written or oral agreement with the owner of the land;

(f) land reform beneficiaries and state land distribution beneficiaries that do not yet fully own their land. These are owner-like possessors of holdings assigned to them, for which they pay a yearly fee up to concurrence of one-fourth of the value of the assigned land;

(g) tenants on public land, renting on lands belonging to the old state land establishment or to the expropriated land reform areas not distributed to beneficiaries;

(h) squatters on public land - a category of workers aiming at becoming legal tenants and for which regularization is on-going;

(i) squatters on private land, who are mainly sharecroppers whose contract has expired and whose rights are awaiting arbitration;

(j) labourers on state farms, joint ventures or larger private farms with a permanent contract, which is a very small category as most contracts are for short-term casual labour;

(k) landless and near landless labourers, mainly descending from small owner or sharecropping households with inadequate land base to redistribute to children;

(l) agricultural entrepreneurs, these operators rent or own large areas of land, especially in the northeast part of the country.

Table 11.2 Regional distribution of holders (landed, landless, by main job and education)

*Includes Damascus city.

Source: Computed from 1994 census of agriculture.

However, these groups can be overlapping. For instance one household’s members may be owner operators in one holding and sharecroppers in another, or farm labourers. That is, the groups are not discrete and also their interests often overlap. From the management point of view, apart from absentee owners in categories (a) and (c), and categories (j) and (k), who are permanent and casual labour working under instructions, all other categories function as farm operating households with different degrees of independence from the ultimate owner of the land.

The importance of different types of tenure is exhibited in Table 11.3.

Table 11.3 Landed holders and average holding land size by types of tenure (1994)

Source: Computed from 1994 census of agriculture.

It can be seen that among holders that have land, the overwhelming proportion (90 percent) consists of holders that own all their land. However, the average size of land operated by landed holders differs according to types of tenure. The largest average land holdings are operated by holders who either rent all land, or operate under a multitude of tenure arrangements. Nevertheless, the conclusion seems to be that the dominant type of holder in Syria is the landed owner operator. These owner operators include those that have received land under the land reform, but have not as yet fully paid for it. In Al-Sweida, Lattakia and Tartous the share of holders that own all their land is the largest: Lattakia and Tartous are areas of traditionally small and intensive farms, while the average farm size in Al-Sweida is around the national average. By contrast, in Al-Rakka and Hassakeh an appreciable part of holders either rent all of their land or have a mixed type of tenure: in both Mohafazat the average farm size is much larger than the national average.

11.2 Size distribution of holdings

The actual size levels can diverge when measured in terms of total area, cultivable area, or actually cultivated area. In addition, the total number of holdings may or may not include holdings without land. The notion of holding stretches across private and public land, it includes a large number of small farms but also large-scale state farms as well as commercial type joint ventures. Seven joint ventures with mixed private and public financing existed in year 2000 with a total of 7 242 ha and an average of 1 035 ha. The average size of holdings in 1994 was 7.6 ha, and this has been decreasing over time, from 11.8 ha in 1970 and 9.6 in 1981. This decrease is a result of the increase in the number of holdings over time, without increase in the total cultivable land.

The evolution of farm size has been different over the national territory. Against a decrease between 1970 and 1981 and then a further decrease in 1994 of average farm size, there are examples of dramatic decreases as in Damascus rural, Homs, Hama, Deir-ez-Zor, Al-Hassakeh, Sweida, Dara’a and Quneitra where average holding size decreased substantially between 1970 and 1994. On the other hand, very small holdings were and continue to prevail in the coastal region. In Tartous, for instance, the already small average holding of 2.7 ha in 1970 only decreased to 1.8 ha in 1994, meaning that some sort of minimum threshold of operation had been reached. There are, however, also cases such as Al-Rakka, where an above national average of holding of 22.1 ha in 1970 increased to 23.6 in 1994, probably indicating some land consolidation (table 11.4).

Table 11.4 Average area (ha) of all holdings in 1970, 1981 and 1994

Source: Forni (2001), Sarris (1995), and elaboration from1994 census of agriculture.

The size distribution of holdings that have land in each Mohafazat (the administrative divisions of the country), and the percentage of land operated in each class, are shown in Table 11.5.

Table 11.5 Size distribution of landed holdings in each class, and total land operated

Source: Computed from 1994 census of agriculture.

It can be seen that the size distribution of holdings is quite skewed. In 1994, 35.7 percent of landed holdings operated less than 2 ha, but they accounted for only 4 percent of total land operated. By contrast the 2 percent of the largest holdings, namely those with land larger than 50 ha, operated 23 percent of total land of all holdings. The next largest class, namely those operating between 10 and 50 ha, while constituting 20.7 of all holders, operated on almost half the total land. The geographical size distribution of holdings is quite marked, with Tartous and Lattakia being characterized by distributions concentrated in small holdings, while Aleppo, Al-Rakka and Al-Hassakeh are characterized by distributions markedly skewed toward larger size classes.^[82]

Table 11.6 presents the distribution of size classes across the geographical regions in 1994. It can be verified, as in the former table, that the bulk of small farms are in rural Damascus, Tartous and Lattakia, while the bulk of the largest holdings are in Aleppo, Al-Rakka, and Al-Hassakeh.

Table 11.6 Size distribution (%) of holdings across Mohafazat in 1994

Source: Computed from 1994 census of agriculture.

Table 11.7 exhibits the size distribution of landed holdings by type of tenure. It can be seen that the size distribution of holdings with not fully owned land is much more skewed towards the larger classes. This must reflect the importance of the farming entrepreneurs and other joint stock farming companies.

Table 11.7 Size distribution of landed holdings by types of tenure

Source: Computed from 1994 census of agriculture.

11.3 Agricultural labour

Estimates of labour employed in agriculture are difficult in Syria for lack of appropriate consistent data. As reported officially in the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) 2001 Statistical Abstract, employment in agriculture and forestry was estimated at 1 430 000 in 2000 (of which 961 000 male, and 469 000 female), a 33 percent increase from 1994, representing 32 percent of total employment. However, the analysis in chapter one of this volume suggested that the total labour force employed in agriculture in 1999 was equal to only 828 000 people (704 000 male and 114 000 female). This amounts to only 17.6 percent of the estimated active labour force (Sarris, 2003), and compares with official figures of 1 081 000 in 1998 and 918 000 people in 1991, or 28.2 percent of the total employment then. The IMF in turn (IMF 2000b) estimated the employment in agriculture in 1998 at 1 233 000 (1 200 000 private and 33 000 public), which is about 14 percent higher than what is estimated above, and accounts for 29 percent of the total employment.

The share of total employed females working in agriculture is high relative to other sectors, and constitutes the bulk (58.8 percent) of female employment. By contrast, the share for males is only 26.2 percent. Women in Syria account for 33 percent of agricultural labour, and in particular represent a large share of seasonal agricultural workers, who in turn largely come from low-income households. The significant decline of agricultural employment in 1999 by 23.5 percent, which was mostly accounted for by declines in female agricultural employment, is interesting. As women in Syria account for a large share of seasonal agricultural workers, and largely come from low-income households, the large decline in that type of employment in 1999 suggests that the drought must have affected considerably those poor households that depend of agricultural wages for part of their income.

Out of the total number of people employed in agriculture in 1991, official estimates report that 361 000 were unpaid family workers (148 000 male, and 213 000 female), 145 000 were paid workers (84 000 male and 61 000 female), 280 000 were self employed (266 000 male and 14 000 female), and 132 000 were employers (126 000 male and 6 000 female). It is quite clear that the bulk of females working in agriculture in 1991 were unpaid family workers, and of the rest, the overwhelming share was paid workers. It is not clear or derivable from existing statistics, what the corresponding picture is now.

Another source of information on agricultural labour is the 1994 agricultural census, according to which (Table 11.8) the total number of family members employed in private agricultural holdings was 1.94 million. This number does not consider the fact that many family members are only partly employed in the family holding. The table indicates that the average number of family members per holding is relatively stable over different land size classes, at about 3.7.

Table 11.8 Labour utilized by farm holdings by size categories

Source: Computed from the 1994 Agricultural census.

Hired workers (permanent workers, plus the full time equivalent of temporary workers, computed by dividing the number of days worked by all temporary workers by 250), account for only about 88 500 full time equivalent person-years, of which permanent workers constitute 58 percent. The reason is that, while there are 1.6 million temporary workers employed by all holders, the average number of days each temporary worker works is only 5.9. The amount of hired labour increases with the size of holding, as expected, but the amount of both family, as well as 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.

Employment opportunities for full-time or occasional workers vary throughout the country and are affected by seasonality. In many parts of Syria, in the Hama countryside, as an example, a situation of labour shortage during harvesting co-exists with relative labour abundance throughout the year. The number of totally landless labourers in the Hama governorate is said not to exceed 10 percent but is constantly on the increase 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 about two months in the slack season only. A similar situation is true for Hassakeh, where in some cases a large part of seasonal labour for harvesting comes from other areas, and where farmers can have problems in finding hired labour during the peak season (Shahaideh et al., 2001). According to the same source, seasonal job opportunities are available for men both within and outside the relevant areas, but for women it would be often difficult to find seasonal work in other areas. A different picture is presented for Lattakia, an area of intensive small family farms, where family labour prevails, and off-farm job opportunities are scarce.

Landless labourer households, i.e. those households not operating land under any form and not having a non-agricultural employment, were recorded in Forni’s (2001) field survey as accounting for between 6 and 36 percent of total households in the eight surveyed villages. This means that this category has a varying significance across the territory. Furthermore, because they resort to pluriactivity, i.e. their participation to several sectors and not agriculture only, the landless as a category do not necessarily coincide with the poor households.

The landlessness situation in some parts of central Syria, e.g. Idleb, is serious as it is characterized by limited numbers of totally landless labourers, but an overwhelming presence of near-landless households. Eighty percent of the households cultivate less than one hectare of land and another 15 cultivate between one and three ha. This means that the minimum subsistence security provided by the land base is such that the social balance may be toppled with another round of subdivisions through inheritance. Furthermore, in a situation of this type, the prospective employers of agricultural labour force, namely those having a land base big enough to require labour in addition to household resources, are limited. This explains the presence of many organized labour groups in this Mohafaza, which bring to other areas the surplus labour of Idleb. There is fortunately some complementarity between the different labour peaks, i.e. Idleb’s labour migrates after the local peak demand and moves to work with other crops in other areas.

More generally, in Syria, agricultural labour organization and mobilization functions in accordance with local and non-local demand. Traditional labour contractors, the chawesh, perform these functions. They pool mainly female labour and make it available in different governorates according to market demand.

Another phenomenon relevant to labour use and its coordination is inter-household cooperation between farmers producing different crops and hence having different labour requirement peaks. For instance cotton-producing farmers get into cooperation with onion-producing farmers and exchange their family labour, as needed. However, a broader information system on labour supply and demand is missing.

The scarcity of land, coupled with insecurity of income creates a tendency among workers to occupy land permanently whenever possible. Labourers are said to want to become sharecroppers, who are more difficult to evict, while all employers would like to continue using casual unprotected labour. Currently, however, labourers with no own production base are unlikely to be able to become squatters, and hence slowly acquire rights to stay on the land. This is because labourers are employed for short periods only and for specific tasks only for the very purpose of preventing any possibility for them to settle on the land and claim any right to it.

In general, the increasing supply of labour is not matched by similar increase in demand and results in stagnation of daily wage rates. For instance, wage rates had actually slightly decreased in Al-Hassakeh in 2000 over 1999 for cotton picking, a relatively well-paid activity for female seasonal migrant labour.

It should, however, be noted that Syrian agricultural labour moves in a larger than national context. Findings from a field survey conducted in the Idleb and Hama Mohafazat in early 2001 indicate that workers compare the local daily rates with those prevailing in Lebanon or in the Gulf. In the case of Lebanon the rates would be about five times higher for comparable work, and the proximity allows labourers to move out easily. It is mainly women, more constrained by social custom, who are continuing to operate in the national market only, but by no means in the purely local one. Women constitute the bulk of the migrant labour force which the Chawesh mobilize to provide the needed number of labourers at the right place and time for all the major agricultural operations, and particularly harvest.