Title Farm Size and Productivity part-1.pdf ✅

Controversy regarding Farm Size and Productivity prior to green revolution The genesis of the problem can be traced to the chronic food shortage which India has been facing ever since the separation of Burma. The situation, aggravated by the Second World War set in motion a thinking about the need for a policy for agricultural development. Though some programmes had been launched even earlier, serious discussions started in the post- independence era only. The discussion relation to the strategy for agricultural development brought into prominence two schools of thought- one based on technological approach and the other on institutional reforms. The latter school addressed itself, among other things, to the question of farm organization as an units of production (i.e., farms) to achieve high level of productivity and efficiency through appropriate land reforms. Productivity is measured as per unit of net area rather than that of gross cropped area. The former automatically takes care of the effect of intensity of cultivation of land associated with different size classes of farms. The main issues involved in the debate on farm size and productivity are nicely summed up in the following three observations made by Amartya K. Sen (1962): (1) “When family labour employed in agriculture is given an imputed value in terms of the ruling wage rate, much of Indian agriculture seems un- remunerative.” (2) “By and large, the profitability of agriculture increases with the size of holding, ‘profitability’ being measured by the surplus (or deficit) of output over costs including the imputed value of labour.”

He preferred to estimate rank correlation coefficients between farm size and productivity. Out of the 17 coefficients, 15 had a negative sign (indicating the existence of inverse relationship) and 9 of these were statistically significant too. Rudra’s analysis too, suffers from aggregation bias. His measure of productivity based on gross-cropped area also imposes serious limitation on accepting his results as relevant and valid in the present context. Saini (1969-1971) using disaggregated data for 9 States over a period of time ranging from two to three years provided firm evidence. Out of the 25 coefficients estimated by Saini, 22 had a negative sign and 18 of these were statistically significant also. In terms of confidence limits, the cases with positive signs also did not rule out the existence of inverse relationship between farm size and productivity. Thus, according to Saini, the inverse relationship turned out to be a confirmed phenomenon in the pre-green revolution in Indian agriculture. These conclusions were also confirmed by Deepak Mazumdar who points out “As the size of the farm decreases, output per acre increases.” C.H. Hanumantha Rao (1966) also supported this thesis. We may here point out that some other research workers, analyzing the same Farm Management data collected during the fifties arrived at yet another conclusion. According to these research; Krishna Bhardwaj (1974), A.P. Rao (1967) and Usha Rani (1971) there was no evidence of a significant change in production per acre as the size of the farm changed in any direction. Broadly speaking, all of them were of the view that yield per acre did not change as the size of the farm changed. Chattopadhyay and Rudra (1976) also expressed their reservation about the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity. Thus, what emerged from the debate concerning size of the farm and productivity in the pre-green revolution agriculture was quite confusing and conflicting. Analysis of the same data yield different conclusions. This
was mainly due to the different statistical techniques employed by these research workers. During the late 1960s and 1970s, efforts were made to improve the productivity of small farmers in developing countries through the introduction of new high-yielding crop varieties (HYVs). Compared to other modern technologies, this technology was promoted as scale-neutral – that is, it was just as efficient to apply it on small plots as on large plots. HYVs were widely introduced in the developing world including India, and although there were social and environmental costs associated with this innovation, it produced impressive increases in crop yield. These improvements were especially dramatic for wheat and rice, and regions in which these crops were produced. The new agriculture strategy has resulted into increased productivity and returns for farmers. This has resulted in decline in rural poverty to an extent. However, the revolution resulted into increased income for some regions, wide interpersonal and regional inequality and inequitable asset distribution. Thus the questions arose, on the impacts of the green revolution on income distribution and the welfare of the poor (both within and outside successful green revolution areas) and on the sustainability of the narrow genetic resource base and high external input and energy use it involved.