Population, territory and sustainable development

51
These figures illustrate the shifts occurring in the production structure in rural areas, which entail
the shrinkage of the agricultural sector —and, along with it, employment in agriculture— as countries
become more developed. Dirven (2011) points out, however, that there are major stumbling blocks that
have to be overcome when transitioning from agricultural employment to employment in non-agricultural
activities in rural areas and vice versa. These stumbling blocks are primarily related to the types of assets
that are reflected in average educational levels, age, income, sex, geographic location, etc. She also
maintains that the highly seasonal nature of the agricultural labour market influences non-agricultural
employment in rural areas, since it has an impact both on household consumption and on production
inputs and services. The high and low seasons in tourism are just one example. There are, however, other
types of non-agricultural employment that are fairly stable throughout the year. Consequently, taken as a
whole, non-agricultural employment in rural areas tends to help to smooth out seasonal swings in rural
employment and incomes. Another factor to take into account is that the type and distribution of growth
in non-agricultural employment will be quite different in areas where agricultural productivity is rising
sharply than it will be in more depressed rural areas.
Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have begun to have an impact on various
aspects of rural life and economic activity and are opening up countless non-agricultural rural
employment opportunities that had not even been thought of before. As will be seen later on, mobile
telephony has quickly come into widespread use in rural areas of the countries of the region, and although
Internet coverage is still quite limited, a number of the countries are making the expansion of Internet
coverage and use an explicit policy objective (Dirven, 2011).
Dirven (2011) draws attention to the increase in the number of people employed in agriculture
who reside in what are classified as urban areas, as well as to the increase in rural residents engaged in
non-agricultural work. She notes that this latter trend can be attributed in part to the existence of second
homes, weekend tourism and the location of primary residences in peri-urban areas, along with the
associated linkages. These “reurbanization” processes are continuing to take place in the vicinity of
middle-sized or small cities as well. The impacts that these urban enclaves are having include the creation
of new jobs for the rural population in the vicinity, although this has resulted in “long-time” inhabitants of
these areas leaving their old jobs behind in order to work as gardeners, housekeepers and the like; for the
most part, however, the people residing in these closed communities tend to obtain goods and services
from nearby cities. Be that as it may, there are opportunities for creating a stronger interrelationship
between the two population groups, and this would be likely to create more non-agricultural jobs in those
areas as well. Meanwhile, the increase in the number of wage earners in the agricultural sector who live in
urban areas can be accounted for by a number of different factors, including inheritance (i.e. people may,
for example, not yet have inherited their parents’ land or house or another family member may have done
so); strategies for lowering transaction costs and car-pooling as a means of transport to temporary jobs;
increased access to services, including transport infrastructure; urban housing subsidies; or simply
personal preferences (Dirven, 2002 and 2011). The reasons why there are a significant and apparently
growing number of own-account agricultural producers who live in urban areas are less evident, although
some of the above-mentioned factors may certainly be part of the explanation. It has also been seen that
young and middle-aged people (and especially women) tend to live near transport routes to the more
economically dynamic towns or cities in the vicinity, whereas the distribution of the older population in
rural areas tends to be more disperse (Dirven, 2011).