Landownership and Informality in Agriculture: An Analysis of Agricultural Producers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

In lower-income settings, agricultural producers (those engaged in production of crops, livestock, fishing, hunting and gathering) are largely engaged in small-scale activities, and classified as informal under the 21 st ICLS. Informal agricultural producers are not a homogenous group, however — although survey data is still lacking in individual-level information on key productive assets, such as individual landowning, that would help shed light on their varying constraints and opportunities. Using nationally representative multi-topic surveys across low- and middle-income countries, that follow international guidance on collecting self-reported, individual-level data on employment and assets, this paper highlights substantial differences in socioeconomic profiles of agricultural producers, as well as areas for improving survey data collection going forward. The findings show that agricultural producers indeed vary widely across the distribution of consumption and land wealth. Agricultural producers also have substantial income diversification over a longer (12-month) timeframe, both within and across households — and across the farm and nonfarm sectors. This indicates a greater need to address seasonality and an intrahousehold perspective in data collection. Importantly, compared with other individual and household socioeconomic variables, individual land wealth has among the most consistent links with improved welfare status for agricultural producers across countries. It also identifies profiles of income diversification among men and women over the year, even compared to landowning area or overall ownership. The findings underscore the importance of individual-disaggregated data collection, that also fills key gaps on land wealth, to better understand welfare outcomes of agricultural producers and ways forward for improving evidence-driven policymaking.