gricultural growth and the intensific-tion of production in Syria over the last generation has had an enormous impact on the social organization of agricultural labor.
      Many farmers have become commercial operators, managing farms and livestock according to market forces and relying on purchased inputs and hired workers to produce their crops. Another sector of the agricultural population has farms that are too small or unproductive to support them. People from this second group are increasingly turning to off-farm income sources--indeed, many rely on such income even for their daily bread. These developments have led to the emergence of a significant wage-labor force in agriculture.
       An ICARDA study undertaken in northwestern Syria has revealed an important feature of this labor force: its organization into work groups organized and led by contractors. The work groups are predominantly female; and--perhaps surprisingly in this Middle Eastern setting--the number of female labor contractors is also increasing.
      The research was carried out in 42 villages in Aleppo and Idlib governorates and included informal interviews with farmers, workers and contractors, as well as formal surveys using questionnaires. The surveys were carried out over the period 1994-1996. The villages are clustered north and south along a rainfall gradient from over 350 mm average annual rainfall to less than 250 mm. Wheat is the dominant crop in the wetter areas and barley predominates in the drier zones. Livestock, principally sheep and goats, are an important feature in the drier areas.
        Farmers have been under pressure. There is a 3.6% growth rate in the rural population. Arable land has declined by 22% since the 1960s. Syrian farmers have had to intensify production to keep their farms economically viable. Cropping intensities     

rocity during periods of peak demand. Although it existed, labor for wages was not common. When people needed income additional to that earned from their farms, they had to make a major effort by traveling as a family to Bab El-Hadid, one of the main gates of Aleppo's old city. There they would stand in the streets and seek employment from a wealthy farmer. Once hired, the entire family group would walk to the farm where they were to work and live there in tents or in houses in the adjacent village. There was usually no need for a specialized labor contractor or supervisor; the head of the family was responsible for the family's agreement to provide the employer with labor, while the employer undertook to house and feed the entire family during its period of employment.
     Times have changed. This labor, whether paid or unpaid, was  firmly rooted in the social relations of the family and household. Today's labor force, in contrast, consists of individuals who work for wages on a daily

have increased in rainfed areas, but the greatest change has been the growth in tube-well irrigation.
       Pumping ground water has enabled farmers with sufficient land and financial resources to produce a great diversity of crops that could not be supported by rainfall alone, and to produce more than one crop on the same piece of land each year. In addition to traditional cereals and food legumes, such labor-hungry crops as cotton, sugar beet,  potato and a range of vegetables are now commonplace. This means that labor is needed all year round in the fields, and the total demand for workers continues to rise.
        Historically, villagers relied on unpaid family labor to produce their crops, but they also worked on each other's farms without payment--'a free exchange' based on recip