Among models of development, the two-sectors model of structural transformation developed by Arthur Lewis (Lewis, 1954) was the most widely adopted in developing countries because it demonstrated not only the possibility of transforming their stagnant agriculture-based economy to a rapidly growing industry-based economy, but also this process could be carried out with self-funding, primarily through expropriation of surpluses of cheap labor from their agricultural-rural sector. Observation of the economic performance of many countries in the Asian region, before the onset of the recent Asian financial crisis in 1997, indicated remarkable results in terms of high economic and food production growth, but disappointing results in terms of poverty alleviation whereby until towards the end of the 1990s; about 824 million poor people living on farming marginal land with secondary crops like cassava, maize and legumes (Rosegrant and Hazell, 2000). This fact of economic growth without poverty alleviation is really unacceptable. Poor people's inability to obtain sufficient basic means to support their life has clearly nothing to do with what Malthus might have argued as a consequence of shortages in the supply of basic means for human life support. Indeed, food self-sufficiency programs have made food become surplus in many developing countries and food is more than abundant worldwide. However, hundreds of millions of poor people still face great difficulty in accessing this basic means of life support. This tragedy of food surplus has led Sen (1986) to argue that food entitlement is a much more important issue for developing countries, than food self-sufficiency.

Sen has correctly touched the most fundamental drawback of the development process in developing countries. The Lewis development strategy does not tackle the distribution of access to benefits of development. It does, however, promote inequality of access by the fact that its implementation is accompanied with bias public policies that give favoritism to politically powerful classes in both the urban sector (Lipton, 1985) and the rural sector (Griffin, 1971). This favoritism is for the purpose of ensuring a flow of rural-agricultural surpluses for industrialization as the Lewis model has commanded.

Clearly, any development strategy guided by the Lewis model cannot achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the population of poor people by 50 per cent in 2015. However, such a rapid rate of poverty reduction is desirable not only from the perspective of protecting the right of life for everyone, but also from the perspective of protecting the environment as the basis for sustainable development in these countries. Exploitation of marginal land for living has caused serious environmental problems.

Experiences from the implementation of industrialization development strategies guided by the Lewis model discussed above suggest that poverty alleviation can only be effective if its strategy directly touches the living conditions of the poor people. In particular, any attempt to halve rural poverty in developing countries should focus on the development of secondary crop agriculture on marginal lands. This requires a comprehensive program that includes the development of rural infrastructures such as road networks, and market places, the promotion of industries based on secondary crops, provision of scheme credits suitable for poor secondary crop farmers, provision of an extension services network for poor secondary crop farmers, and the establishment of organizations suitable for poor secondary farmers. This will, of course, require a significant quantity of resources. But, such a substantial expenditure is really worthwhile. Poverty is a burden for the economy. Overcoming it not only will save the cost of this burden for future generations, but it will open the way for sustainable economic growth.

Written by Parulian Hutagaol, Associate Project Leader, AGRIDIV Project, UNESCAP-CAPSA, Bogor, Indonesia.

(References available upon request)