First step in the way forward:
Uplifting agriculture industry
by Lloyd F Yapa
The subject, development of agriculture is much neglected in view of
the readiness on the part of the country to undertake a major economic
take off and achieve prosperity subsequent to the defeat of terrorism
and the unification of the nation.
Why agriculture?
Agriculture contributes about 12 percent to the GDP. Over 70 percent
of the population of around 20 million in the country still lives in
rural and estate areas. Approximately 41 percent of the people are poor
and lead a precarious livelihood on less US$ 2 a day (about Rs. 224).
The fact is that since most of these poor live in rural areas if the
incomes of the mass of such people can be raised substantially the
greater demand for goods and services that would result, without doubt,
could drive up rates of economic growth. In fact most of the high
performing economies of Asia such as those of Japan, Taiwan and South
Korea, started their march towards prosperity through manufactured
exports via land reform. (land consolidation and not distribution as
under land reform in Sri Lanka).
Surprisingly when enamoured with more glamorous goals like
industrialization, we tend to ignore this approach. It is therefore
time; we paid greater attention to the development of agriculture to
help in the realization of the economic growth rates of eight or more as
envisaged in the Mahinda Chintana- Idiri Dekma.
Land consolidation
Today in Sri Lanka over 80 percent of the land is government owned
and Governments have been parcelling out land to rural farmers under the
Land Development Ordinance (LDO) and providing irrigation facilities to
Dry Zone areas in the hope of raising the level of agricultural
production. (However, a system of giving ownership has commenced
recently.) The average extent of such parcels has been three acres,
which is too small for obtaining economies of scale (reducing average or
unit costs) and improving productivity/competitiveness.
The farmers do not own the land under this system. The farmers
therefore engage in subsistence farming and are not inclined to invest
in farming as a business. Even if they wish to do so, they will not be
able to borrow any capital, as banks usually do not accept the LDO
permits as collateral for loans. In the case of privately held land, the
situation is no better as in most instances; there is acute
fragmentation of holdings; the titles of the land they hold are not
clear with the owners energies on interminable litigation. This leaves
the State as the only source of capital for the development of arable
land. However, the State is in no position to spare funds for such
purposes.
What then is the way out?
The obvious solution is land reform and grant of freehold possession
of State land to the farmers and the clarification of the titles of the
privately held farming land. This may result in the amalgamation or
consolidation of small parcels of land into more viable farming units
due to the sale of land by those whose units are unviable and therefore
want to exit from agriculture to those, who want to invest in
agriculture for profit.
Exit they must, since agricultural productivity or value added per
worker is low ($ 823 as against e.g. Mauritius $ 5222-World Development
Report 2010) on account of the fact, too many people about 33 percent of
employed persons- are occupying the land. In other countries, where
agricultural productivity is high as in the USA, about 2 percent of the
labour force till the land and produce enough food not only to feed the
entire population but also for export. What is important here is the
scale of production to reduce unit costs and being able to afford the
acquisition of the necessary technical/managerial/ marketing expertise
and technologies including machinery and equipment, to improve returns
especially by adding value to products.
Those who sell their fragments of land with the implementation of
land reform have to be provided with other job avenues such as in agro
industries and services preferably in the rural areas itself. This
process has to be carefully stage-managed. If not it could go wrong with
undesirable consequences. Some of those who leave the land, may migrate
to already beleaguered urban areas, proliferating shanty settlements and
rank outsiders may enter rural areas upsetting the delicate social
fabric, that still exists in the villages.
The consolidation itself has to be planned to obtain the desired
outcomes, as in South Korea. This will include besides land reform,
spatial planning such as changing the shape of the holdings to help in
mechanization of farming operations, indicating roadways and urban
centres. After this stage, physical and social infrastructure
development has to take place with provision of extension and training
services, of credit and insurance, sorting, storage, processing,
packaging, marketing and transport facilities as well as supply of
technical/managerial expertise.
State or private sector?
The State alone cannot bring about this transformation. Perhaps it
could provide the planning, the (land reform) laws, appropriate
policies/ incentives and the basic physical and social infrastructure to
facilitate the process. The rest should be the responsibility of the
private sector as plenty of opportunities to make profits exist, if
(rural) agriculture were to be commercialized.
Company led model?
There are several models, that could be used to get the private
sector involved; in order to obtain the optimum results, this step
should be preceded by land reform to vest the ownership of holdings with
the farmers. The first can be described as the 'Company Led Model'
(CLM), where the parent companies could provide the inputs, extension
services and marketing. The Ceylon Tobacco Company type of model may be
suitable for products, where the only buyer is a parent company.
Out-grower model
However, there could be variations of the above model, where the
parent company may have a nucleus farm and the others are out-growers
adopted by the former.
Internet enabled model
With the development of information and communication technology,
electronically net worked versions of the model have been making their
appearance. For example, according to the article, 'Serving the World's
Poor Profitably?, Harvard Business Review, September, 2002, the agro
business division of ICT, one of the largest companies in India, had
been connected with some 600,000 farmers through 970 internet-enabled
kiosks. As reported there, the farmers of some 5000 villages in India,
had been supplying the company with farm produce such as soya-bean,
coffee, shrimp and wheat. The ICT, through this program had helped in
increasing farmers' productivity by facilitating the farmers by various
means such as supply of quality inputs. The kiosks also had served as an
e-procurement system, helping farmers earn higher prices by minimizing
transaction costs involved in marketing farm produce.
Joint stock company model
Joint Stock Companies (JSC) of farmers themselves is another model
which is more feasible in the Sri Lankan context due to the opposition
to the break up of the prevailing social fabric in rural areas and the
capitalist sounding consolidation of land through the sale of small
plots of land and evicting of poor farmers' as claimed by some. (The
writer is opposed to the formation of co-operative societies as it is a
misused and discredited instrument in Sri Lanka). The JSC, if adopted in
the country in (say, an irrigation system in extent of about 4000 acres
to obtain economies of scale), the small farmers could join it as
shareholders.
The existing structures on the land such as roads, irrigation
channels and warehouses could be vested with the company for them to be
viable. This will be the contribution of the State to the shareholding
of the companies. Being limited liability companies with substantial
shareholdings, they will be able to attract both equity (if converted to
public companies) and loan capital and enabled to recruit qualified
technical/managerial personnel and other professionals. In this model
high level management, technical expertise, inputs and marketing are
provided by the officials and experts employed by the farmers
themselves, unlike in the case of the CLM, perhaps with some guidance by
relevant government agencies at the outset.
Besides these models, there will be of course proprietorships and
partnerships of owners of medium to large holdings.
Each such large cropping area could accommodate a well located
township planned by the State to supplement the economies of scale of
holdings achieved after land reform. These townships should be
concentrations of providers of various services and facilities such as
housing, health and education (to motivate professionals to move into
rural areas), R&D, extension, machinery hiring, banking, transport,
communications, storage, processing, packaging, marketing and other
relevant activities as well as support industries. For such thriving
townships to come into being the area under each crop should be
sufficiently large as these firms also have to be large operations to be
viable. Development of peripheral regions of the country such as the
North and the East could be accelerated, if many such townships are
judiciously scattered in these areas and connected with each other and
the main city of Colombo with highways especially to facilitate
marketing.
Benefits
Such a process, if properly planned and co-ordinated could yield
enormous benefits. Farmer incomes would rise. With rising incomes, food,
clothing, shelter and other necessities of life would become available
to most people in rural areas relieving them of poverty. The rise in
purchasing power will create markets for industrial goods produced in
the urban areas of the country and other businesses including Small and
Medium Industries set up in the rural areas itself.
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