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 IV. Conclusion

 The six dominant characteristics of subsistence farmers with which this

essay began delineate a class of farmers who are influenced by special factors

or factors whose weights are different. These factors in turn lead to different

types of economic behavior and correspondingly different patterns of development,

 One factor of importance in the context of subsistence agriculture is risk

because of its close inter-relationship with survival. The inter-relationship

is especially evident with technological innovation. Although new technology

constitutes a major dynamic force for the modernization of peasant agriculture,

its introduction among subsistence farmers often encounters resistance. Profit

maximization may not be as important in a subsistence or barter economy as the

maximization of security and survival.

 Previous measures of risk which rely upon such variables as the cost of

the new input or its net returns and the year to year variability in these and

similar measures such as yield, production costs and product price are poor

surrogates when applied to subsistence agriculture. A better approach would be

to observe the interaction between two sets of variables: (a) the absolute

levels of farm family living as they relate to societal standards for the minimal

levels of subsistence, and the average levels of farm productivity and income;

and (b) the farmer's subjective expected variance in output associated with the

proposed new technological introduction compared with the historically determined

variance in output utilizing traditional practices. What must be taken into

consideration is the variability in the expected results with the new technology

not merely measured against costs as usually defined but against the minimum

subsistence standard and the variability of current technology. What is needed

is a risk aversion or security preference measure which takes this inter-

relationship into account.