Agrarian Structure

The Model of Agrarian Classes in India

Agrarian Structure: Network of relations among the various groups of persons who draw their livelihood from the soil

• In what form income from the soil is obtained: Rent/ Fruit of cultivation/ Payment for labour• What type of rights in the soil are enjoyed, and

how much land is held under these rights• To what extent the individual actually

performs the required fieldwork, or whether others are hired to do it for him.

Common pattern -There are three principal groups

• By malik we will refer to a family whose agricultural income is derived primarily from property right on soil

• Kisan are those villagers who live primarily by their own toil on their own lands

• Mazdur comprises those villagers who gain their livelihood primarily from working on other people’s land

1. Proprietors or Malik

2. Working peasants or Kisan

3. Labourers or Mazdur

The Model of Agrarian Classes in India

• a) Big landlords, hold rights over large tracts extending over several villages; they are absentee owners rentiers with absolutely no interest in land management or improvement

• b) Rich landowners, proprietors with considerable holdings but usually in the same village and although performing no fieldwork, supervising cultivation and taking personal interest in the management and also in the improvement of land if necessary.

1)MALIKS Common interests is to keep level of rents up while keeping the wage-level down. They collect rent from tenants, sub-tenants and share-croppers.

The Model of Agrarian Classes in India

• a) Small landowners , having holdings sufficient to support a family, who cultivate land with family labour and who do not either employ outsider labour (except in harvest) or receive rent.

• b) Substantial tenants, tenants holding leases under either 1 a) or 1 b); tenurial rights fairly secure; size of the holding usually above the sufficiency level. The rest is as 2 a).

2) KISANS, working peasants having property interest in the land but actual rights, whether legal or customary, inferior to those of maliks.

The Model of Agrarian Classes in India

• a) Poor tenants, having tenancy rights but less secure; holdings too small to suffice for a family’s maintenance and income derived from land often less than that earned by wage labour

• b) Sharecroppers, either tenets-at-will, leases without security; cultivating land for others on share-cropper basis, having at least agricultural implements

• c) Landless labourers .

3)MAZDOOR-S, those earning their livelihood primarily from working on others lands.

Agrarian Classes in India

• MALIKS Big landlords Rich landowners

• KISANS Small landowners Substantial tenants

• MAZDOORS Poor tenants Sharecroppers Landless labourers **

ContractFarming

• A system for the production and supply of agricultural produce under forward contracts

• A commitment to provide an agricultural commodity in a pre-agreed

• price, • quality, • quantity and • time.

What is contract farming?

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Three types :1. Procurement contracts – only sale and purchase

conditions are specified (Marketing)2. Partial contracts – only some of the inputs are

supplied by the contracting firm and produce is bought at pre-agreed price (Production)

3. Total contracts – all inputs are supplied by the contracting firm, farmer becomes just a supplier of land and labour (Production).

Types of contract farming

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• Failure of govt. to support agriculture• A part of internationalization process in

agriculture involving globalization of production, capital and trade

• Support for contract farming under Structural Adjustment Programme

• Its promotion by international development agencies

• To ensure quality, timely and cost effective availability of raw materials and captive farming not being a viable option.

Factors resulting emergence of agribusiness and contract farming

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It is essentially a process of industrialization of agriculture and rural production through:

Appropriationism : a process of exploitation of land and other biological sources of supply by the application of modern technology to get cheaper raw material

Substitutionism : a process tries to move agribusiness away from direct dependence on land and other direct source of raw materials applying technology to create new products

The application of bio-technology accelerate this process and leads to bio-industrialization.

Growth of Agribusiness :A perspective

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• Attracting to farmers seeking additional sources of capital and more certain price

• Access to new technology and inputs which may be outside the farmers reach.

Why contract farming is attractive to farmers?

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Why contract farming is attractive to agribusiness farms?

• Provides assured and stable quality raw material supplies

• Contract farming is similar to subcontracting in the industrial sector

• Contracts make smaller demands on capital resources, impose less of an additional burden of labour relations, ownership of land, and farm production activities compared with that under captive farming

• Allows to access unpaid family labour and state funds directed at farmers.

• One mode of capitalist exploitation of farming sector

• Farmers had little bargaining power compared with that of companies

• Resulted monopolistic concentration in the international food processing and food manufacturing industries.

Contract farming: critics’ viewpoint

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Farmers

Consumers

Agribusiness companies

• Causes environmental degradation• Shifts farm production in favor of export

oriented and cash crops at the cost of basic food crops for the poor

• Favouring large farmer, contracting may encourage a socially undesirable “dual” agricultural development

• Leads to gender inequalities

Critics’ viewpoint..

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• Govt. of India’s National Agriculture Policy envisages that “private sector participation will be promoted through contract farming”

• Several state govts. in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat and Punjab are actively promoting contract farming. Other state govts. are under active pressure to change their policy towards contract farming.

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Contract farming in India

Conclusion

• The case studies of contract farming reveal that though contracting has initially led to higher incomes for the farmers and more employment for labour, it is not smooth sailing for firms and is unlikely to be sustained due to lack of trust between firms and farmers and the tendencies toward agribusiness normalization by firms

• What is needed is not less of the state, but a better state for promotion and regulation of economic activities, and new organizations and institutions for sustainability of agricultural development.

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