SEMAINE D'ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L’ANALYSE ECONOMETRIQUE Etc. 1155
of extracting such savings from agriculture, through taxes,
cents, low prices or forced deliveries at nominal prices, is
clearly a factor in the incentives available to farm workers. In
my opinion, the relatively poor output performance of agri-
culture in the Soviet Union from 1928 through 1953 was due
lo ineffective and insufficient incentives imposed by a combina-
tion of the price structure, forced deliveries and institutional
arrangements. On the other hand, during the late nineteenth
century Japan apparently transferred significant amounts of
savings from agriculture to the rest of the economy and still
achieved rapid modernization of agriculture and output growth.
Thus it is probable that not only the total amount of savings
extracted from agriculture, but the method of extraction is im
portant in determining output responses.
A part of the support for land reform in underdeveloped
areas is the hope that reform will lead to an improvement in
the incentive structure and thus to increased investment in
agriculture and greater interest by the farm operator in in-
creasing output. Some land reforms seem to have achieved
this result (the short lived reform in the Soviet Union after
World War I and the post World War II reforms in Japan and
Taiwan), but many others appear to have failed to have any
significant effect.
The increase in the ratio of output to input, which is a
measure of the effect of the change in quality of inputs as well
as of technological change, makes it possible to transfer labor
from the farm to the nonfarm sector. Rapid economic growth
requires such a transfer. However, rapid economic growth
does not require an absolute decline in farm population or farm
employment. If farm employment is to be stable in an absolute
sense, the annual change in the ratio of output to input in
agriculture in low income countries must be a very large
change if population and income growth per capita are of the
order of 2% per annum. In this situation the increase in
16] Johnson - pag. 15
