Shift From Industrial To Small-Scale Farming

Context: Failure of modernisation of agriculture in providing adequate incomes to the farmers demonstrates that the benefits of modernisation are actually reaped by the agribusiness companies, and of course, the supermarkets.

Arguments against the Industrial farming model

• Rising suicides due to indebtedness: E.g. in France, due to sliding market prices, three farmers on average commit suicide every two days and growing indebtedness are resulting in the closure of at least 1,500 farms every year.
  • France, with high-tech farming practices and innovations, has 44 % of the farmers saddled with the bankruptcy of 400,000 euros each.
• Fails to reap in the benefits of economy of scale: E.g. the average farm size in France has grown to 135 acres, and farm incomes have still declined.
• The idea of free markets has failed miserably: Free markets bring in devastation and deprivation.
  • Nowhere in the developed world have markets succeeded in turning farming into a profitable venture; thus, farm incomes still depends on subsidies.
  • E.g. subsidies still form 40 % of the farm income in America and 57 % in the European Union.
  • Thus, it is based on an outdated old theory that believes that markets help in getting the right farm prices.
• It is based on ‘efficient market hypotheses’: but ‘efficient markets’ in agriculture have failed to translate into higher farm incomes.
• Consolidation of farms doesn’t equate to higher incomes: In Australia, where the average farm size is 4,331 hectares (or roughly 10,827 acres), farmers stills face economic hardships.

Way forward: To make agriculture profitable.

• Policy shift to an environmentally safe and productive small-scale farming: from environmentally damaging industrial agriculture.
  • The new approach for revitalised agriculture cannot be economically viable till it provides for an assured income by way of an assured price as a fundamental right for farmers. 
  • An analysis published in Nature demolishes the general perception about the efficiency of modern agriculture, concluding that small farms have higher yields and are ecologically sustainable.