But migration to where?

The rural economy in the modern world with the present development paradigm is not able to support people as it might have done in the past. There are market pressures and there are population pressures. But migration from a failing rural area to a typical urban area is essentially “out of the frying pan, into the fire”. The people who are having difficulty succeeding in the rural setting are also likely to be in trouble in the urban setting, and maybe worse.

Development initiatives have got to get to the root cause of rural economic failure. There are many elements to be addressed.

The first responsibility of rural communities in developing countries should be related to food security. Rural communities should be able to produce a good surplus of food over what they need for their own consumption and for seed requirements. Food is first. If they can also produce other crops to earn cash, then that is a bonus. But the first job is to produce food.

And rural communities should be able to get easy access to safe potable water. This is perhaps the top job for community leadership. If there is no water, there cannot be much community.

The next issue is probably fuel, and this is likely to be fuelwood. There is a global energy crisis, and it is fuelwood. Rural populations have grown and the fuelwood supplies have been depleted and the problem of deforestation is accelerating all the time. And rural productivity degradation continues in a vicious cycle. Because of deforestation there is more soil erosion and less productive agriculture, and then less food and more hunger.

This is a big problem. We will come back to it again.