The arrows show the movement for each country between 1961 and 2005. For nearly all developing countries, the arrow points to the north-west, indicating an increasing rate of protection as labour leaves the sector, whereas the pattern for high income OECD countries is mixed.14 The arrows are also much longer for developing countries, as more dramatic structural changes have taken place, and the associated change in protection has been larger. In few cases, however, have policy makers openly acknowledged that long-term competitiveness is not a realistic goal for the majority of smallholders and decided to focus their programmes on potentially viable operations. At the same time, there is no documented case of a smallholder programme in which the majority of farmers enrolling have succeeded in progressing through the programme to successfully join the ranks of efficient commercial producers. In other words, no programme has reversed the structural tendency for smallholders to leave the sector. This suggests that these policies constitute social policies at least as much as developmental ones.