Further, the small peasants and the tenants with uneconomic-sized holdings have perforce to work on the big farmer's holdings and thus have to compete with the landless labourer for the limited employment opportunities. The medium-sized farmers have justifiably tried to take land on tenancy from other farmers in order to increase the size of their holdings to make them more viable; this has, however, meant competition between the (small) pure tenant and the medium-sized owner-cultivator.
[Developing countries] The substantial rise in the number of smallholders in many developing countries is a result of many diverse factors, such as growing population pressures, slowdown in the growth rate of industrialization, acquisition of land by the big owner-cultivators, acquisition of land by urban resident investors and subdivision and fragmentation of land due to the laws of inheritance.