Historically, the vulnerable rural sector has turned reservoirs of cheap labour and raw materials into an unequal relationship with the powerful elite-led urban economy and is subjected to systemic exploitation.
For nearly ten thousand years, the pastoral agricultural economy was self-sufficient and was the dominant cultural aspect of human society. However, in less than three hundred years after the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the rapid urbanization of society, the rural-urban divide has drastically transformed the population's equation to the detriment of rural communities. The following are the natural and imposed or man-made characteristics that render the rural sector vulnerable to exploitation.
The low-density populations of villages and habitations scattered across the geographical area deprive them of the economies of scale and capacity to project organized political power to protect their interests.
Ignoring the successive unsustainable agricultural production patterns leads to the deterioration of farming resources and productivity. We have evidence of fertile regions over a period turning into deserts due to over-exploitation of farming resources. For example, the Middle Eastern region was once a fertile bio-rich region; the over-exploitation of underground water over centuries desertified the area we see now.
Unlike Industrial activity, nature's cyclical seasons determine the rural agricultural activity imposing intermittent periods of under-employment and disguised unemployment among community members, impacting income opportunities.
The farmer is circumscribed in choice of production with uncertain climate conditions and hardly any control over the productive factors of the agricultural economy.
Industrial pollutants and unsustainable farming practices contribute to the adverse impact of climate change on agriculture, which is now assuming globally alarming levels of disruption.
The agrarian crises have been building up over the generations, with the fragmentation of land ownership increasing the number of uneconomic landholdings. Low investments lead to low productivity and low income. Low income leads to low investments and so on. The farmers are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty.
Redefining Farm Sector:
In the last hundred years, the Industrial Revolution has divested from the Farm sector, the pre-harvest (agrico) industries and post-harvest (agro) industries, which were integral to it for millennia, worldwide.
The self-sufficient farming community lost control over the pre-harvest production inputs (agrico) with the introduction of hybrid seeds, chemical pesticides, fertilizers and energy, post-harvest agro-processing industries, and marketing. As a result, pre and post-harvest operations of grain, oil, fibre, vegetables-fruits, cold-storage, packaging and marketing, and the Credit and Insurance have been divested from the Farm community to the greed-driven corporates.
Farmer's Squeezed Between Agric & Agro Giants:
While all the agrico (pre-harvest) and agro-processing (post-harvest) corporations and also the Insurance and bank Corporations make huge profits, year after year, sadly, farmers are trapped in an unfair system of distress-sell their produce at below value and lead a stressful life. Farmers' suicide rates keep increasing at an alarming rate.
Prout's Solution to the Farm Sector:
Agrico and agro-industries will be re-integrated, investing total control over them with the local farmers' community through stakeholder Cooperatives. Thus, the Farm sector community will reclaim its power by organizing large Farmer producer-consumer agric and agro Cooperatives. Furthermore, locating Agrico (pre-harvest) and Agro (post-harvest) Industries in villages will ensure full employment opportunities by redeploying and diverting the excessive dependence on farming alone.
Thus, Prout demands Industry status for agriculture to free itself from the distressed sale of farm produce, bringing it on par and integrating it with the agric and agro-industries.
Paradigm shifts in The Farm Sector:
This will involve a revolutionary shift in the political economy, which will be resisted by the capitalist classes promoting the political groups that artfully blend dogma-centred and matter-centred theories to capture power and deceptively serve their interests, all the while pretending to serve the vulnerable farming community.
The three farm Laws proposed were a brazen attempt to divest all the resources farming community and vest them with the chosen few capitalist elements. They were withdrawn, but they are biding their time to achieve their goals.
Balanced Economy:
Shri P.R. Sarkar opines that we must develop the agricultural potentiality of the country by reducing the percentage of the population working in agriculture. Secondly, we must reduce the excessively high percentage of the population dependent on agriculture by developing industries.
Prout suggests that for a perfectly balanced economic environment, following workforce distribution. Thirty to forty per cent of the people depend directly on agriculture; ten to twenty per cent on agric-industries (pre-harvest); ten to twenty per cent on agro-industries (post-harvest); twenty per cent on general industries; ten per cent on general trade and commerce, and ten per cent on intellectual or white-collar jobs.
Status of Agriculture In Prout:
Shri Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, the Propounder of a new socio-economic ideology 'Progressive Utilisation Theory (PROUT), opines that - "the structural locus standi of agriculture has not been appropriately developed; rather, all related aspects of the issues have been neglected."
According to PROUT, agriculture should be given the status of an industry. It means adopting the methods, standards and factors in deciding the price of an industrial product while deciding the price of agricultural produce.
Mode of Costing in Industry:
The manufacturer decides the price of any industrial product, whereas the middlemen or traders determine the price of agricultural produce. Thus, neither the growers nor the consumers can determine the cost of agricultural produce. Though the regulated markets and online trading are supposed to give better prices and opportunities for the growers, the system remains the same. That is, the middlemen or the traders decide the price of agricultural commodities. The grower, at best, can only refuse to sell the produce at the quoted price. Still, due to the limited keeping period and shelf-life of agricultural produce and pressing economic needs, he is forced to sell it on some other day for the price quoted by traders, even if it is uneconomical. At no point in time the farmer gets an opportunity to quote the price based on the cost of production.
The cost of the following items is considered while deciding the cost of production of an industrial product., Raw materials, Labour, Power, Depreciation, Maintenance, Insurance, Interest on loans, Minimum return on investment, Transport, Supervisory charges etc.
A reasonable profit percentage is added while arriving at the selling price to bolster savings and future investments in new technologies for efficient and economical production.
How should the prices of Agricultural produce be fixed? The following points need to be considered while fixing the price of Agricultural produce.- 1).Cost of inputs like seeds, manures, fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides, plant protection measures, labour and other direct cultivation costs. 2). Cost of harvesting, drying, processing, protection, transport etc. 3). Interest on loan, Insurance, depreciation on agriculture tools and machinery, cost of maintaining livestock etc. 4). Cost of family labour, including the cost of watch and ward. 5). Supervisory costs for the farmer. 6). Fixed sum as a nominal monthly salary for the farmer. 7). While adding the cost of family labour, the actual hours or days of work are considered. 8). Cost of Insurance, sinking fund etc. 9). The minimum percentage of return on investment is to consider the return on the value of land or the land rent, that is, the amount a farmer would have received by giving the land for cultivation to someone else.
All the above factors are considered while fixing the price of an industrial product.
Industry status to agriculture:
Industrial status to Agriculture does not mean tolerating inefficiency or giving doles to that sector. On the contrary, it means making the agriculture sector more solid and competitive and putting an end to the exploitation and suffering of the farming community, including agriculture labourers.
Industry status to agriculture also means improving efficiency, reducing the cost of production, addressing disguised unemployment, introducing scientific cultivation methods, healthy mechanisation competition, Cooperation, creating economic holdings, etc., in the agriculture sector.
Socio-economic Units or Samaj:
Decentralisation is the chief feature of the Prout economy. Production will be for consumption and not profit. Local production for local consumption will guide the design of the Peoples economy of Prout, of which Agriculture that guarantees food to all is the vital sector. The entire planning of agriculture, thus, will be based on a self-sufficient socio-economic unit or Samaj-centric.
Under each Samaj, block-level planning, organisation and execution would be designed to deliver the following objectives: -
Economic Landholdings:
According to PROUT, We must first reorganise economic holdings to facilitate increased production. An economic holding means a holding where output exceeds input. It is not possible to predetermine the size of this economic unit. While considering input, output, productivity, etc., to determine the optimum size of an economic unit, factors like the fertility of the soil, climatic conditions, etc., will have to be considered.
Economic holdings will generally comprise land of the same topography having adequate irrigation and other agricultural facilities. Economic landholdings must be progressively increased herein, keeping all these factors in mind. The farmers having economic landholdings would continue with their own cultivation. In the first stage, farmers with less than economic landholdings would be encouraged to pool their land together to make it economically viable and cultivate cooperative principles.
Distributing land to people will not solve their problems. The land ownership is inconsequential; what counts is the production from the land.
Land Use Planning:
There should be scientific land use planning for each agro-climatic zone which is the consolidated plan of each watershed area. A Watershed is a drainage basin or drainage area of a stream; it is also defined as the elevation or divide separating the catchment area or drainage basin of one river system or group of river systems. In each watershed area, the hilltop or elevated places are suitable for trees and tree crops and the low-lying area for crops needing more water and the lower spaces are for ponds and tanks to store water. That is to say, there should be land-use planning from Aqua Culture to Silviculture in every watershed area. It will enable the efficient use of land and reduce the cost of production. At present, because of individual holdings, every farmer wants to cultivate a crop of their choice, which may or may not fit into the land-use planning of the watershed area.
Hydro Planning:
Farming should be conducted primarily by the surface flows of water, and underground water, only to supplement when we encounter critical water-stress periods in agriculture to avoid water table depletion.
The local collection, storage and distribution of rain-fed surface water predicates community hydro-planning. Thus, for optimisation of Irrigation water for farming, it should be treated as a community asset and managed collectively.
Crop Planning:
Each farmer guesses the Demand for a particular crop and takes up cultivation in the present setup. Often, the supply exceeds Demand and the prices crash, making farmers suffer. To resolve this problem, it is necessary to assess the Demand at the micro and macro levels and plan the cropping pattern. Cooperative cultivation helps implement such a scheme. Many experts are also working in Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal husbandry, and various Government departments at Block / Taluka levels. However, their technical expertise is hardly utilized; instead, they work like glorified clerks to implement different unproductive popular schemes of the Govt. We should use their knowledge and local farmers' experience for crop planning and marketing.
Whenever suitable crops having Demand and production in equal measure are cultivated, the yield will naturally increase while reducing the cost of production. Both the producers and consumers get a fair deal.
Co-operation in cultivation:
Implementing a land-use plan requires cooperation among the farmers in that area. According to landholding and their contribution to the production process, income is shared among all the participants on a pro-rata basis. Therefore, though favourable supportive law is required to implement a land-use plan, law enforcement alone cannot achieve the goal unless the landholders join together with the spirit of cooperation.
Cooperative cultivation is the simple solution to the problem of uneconomic holdings. Moreover, when the holding size is small, the overhead costs go up and make it uneconomical.
In cooperative cultivation, there will be proper utilisation of land, labour, and other resources, along with the adoption of high-yielding techniques, tools and machinery to increase work efficiency. Grading, primary processing and initial value addition and storage of agricultural produce are made easy by co-operation in farming. Procurement Distribution and Marketing of Agri produce should be through producers and consumer cooperatives. Location of Agro (post-harvest) and Agric (pre-harvest) industries as cooperatives in rural areas is the solution to mitigate the problem of disguised unemployment and increase villagers' income.
Mitigating disguised unemployment:
In villages, the farmer and their family are entirely dependent on agriculture. At times, the farmer will have to work for a few hours only and remain idle for the rest of the day. They remain unemployed during intermittent periods and after the harvest of one crop till the sowing season of another crop. In the absence of alternate employment opportunities in villages and because of smallholdings and inevitable circumstances, the farming community faces disguised unemployment.
When cultivation is taken up with proper land use planning on a cooperative basis, it is possible to generate full employment potentiality for dependent landholders and landless labourers.
The location of Agro (post-harvest) and Agric (pre-harvest) industries in rural areas can mitigate the problem of disguised unemployment and increase villagers' income. Thus, the migration of labour to cities for employment will not arise.
Security for landless labourers:
Prout recognises landless agriculture labourers on par with landholders. They will also be members of cultivator's cooperatives, enabling their full employment and for dividends on their share.
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G Surender Reddy (Contribution at ProutNow and other digital magazine(s) and Prout Magazine published from New Delhi.
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