Why should our villages be any different?
Collaborative farming (c-farming)
The factory approach to farming
Travel from an Indian city to a village and you will see a stark difference. There is severe lack of basic amenities like roads or other such infrastructure. Farmers struggle to make both ends meet. Whereas the cities have some quality of life, the villages, in several cases offer a choice between life and death, forget about the quality part, with many people choosing death over life - The reason why you hear of so many poor farmers committing suicide.
Agriculture is one of the 3 pillars of any economy, beside services and manufacturing. If you look back at history, the reason why manufacturing grew so much is because of organization and the fact manufacturing institutionalized a lot of core processes. Due to this, they could manufacture more with less. With services, it is similar - organization and institutionalization. These are noticeably absent from agriculture, in general. Any country or region that has sought to imbibe these attributes in their agricultural landscape has prospered.
We need to do the same thing at the smallest village in order to make farming a profitable sector. Organization adds discipline, robustness and guarantees success compared to chaotic farming. Run farming like factories should be the motto.
In this model, a village must organize itself as a partnership firm. The landowners come together, forge a partnership and investments and revenue are distributed in the same proportion as the landownership. The owners also appoint an agriculture expert to help with the right selection of crops. The expert need not be attached to a single village but can work at a district level or several districts together.
How would lease work?
Typically, their is an agreement between the landowner and lessee on the monetized value of the produce, say 50%. In such cases, the lessee would make full investments and income would be shared with the original landowner after adjusting for the investments, essentially, the in one and investments are shared between the lessee and landowner.
An example of the cFarming model
Imagine a village with 100 acres of land with 50 families, for sake of simplicity, each family occupies 2 acres. A farming specialist and an accountant is appointed by the village to advise on what to produce and to manage overall accounts.
Each family makes an investment based on the ratio of their ownership. In this case, equal for all the families.
The revenue accrued is divided amongst all the families- in this case, equally.
Economic Benefits of the c-farming model
There are several benefits with the c-farming model. I will list down only three: gain economies of scale, increases profitable farm produce and enriches quality of life of rural farmers.
Social benefits of cFarming
Almost all villages have a very degree of social tension, enmity, family feuds, etc. CFarming will gradually inculcate the culture of social collaboration and make the villages an extended family. The social fabric would get enriched with this model.
Also, such a model is expected to generate better income for the families. What this means, is that families could send their children to schools and make their kids better farmers.
Making Change Stick with cFarming
Collaboration in any arena is always easier said than done. Collaboration in farming and agriculture is even more difficult. The mindset from an individualistic approach to collaboration and sharing is not an easy shift. Besides, in villages, their are lot more factors involved - personal relationships, enmity, local politics, casteism, religion, to name a few. But once people start seeing the rewards coming in, the new mindset will gradually start sticking.
The future village
If the villages progressed, urban migration would reduce, since their would be no genuine need. Villages would offer almost the same experience as any city in terms of basic and luxury infrastructure. A village with a shopping mall would become a reality and not a dream anymore.
Collaborative farming is currently leveraged at Australia and few countries and have met with success. There is no reason to believe why they could not be implemented successfully in any country.
Collaborative farming (c-farming)
The factory approach to farming
Travel from an Indian city to a village and you will see a stark difference. There is severe lack of basic amenities like roads or other such infrastructure. Farmers struggle to make both ends meet. Whereas the cities have some quality of life, the villages, in several cases offer a choice between life and death, forget about the quality part, with many people choosing death over life - The reason why you hear of so many poor farmers committing suicide.
Agriculture is one of the 3 pillars of any economy, beside services and manufacturing. If you look back at history, the reason why manufacturing grew so much is because of organization and the fact manufacturing institutionalized a lot of core processes. Due to this, they could manufacture more with less. With services, it is similar - organization and institutionalization. These are noticeably absent from agriculture, in general. Any country or region that has sought to imbibe these attributes in their agricultural landscape has prospered.
We need to do the same thing at the smallest village in order to make farming a profitable sector. Organization adds discipline, robustness and guarantees success compared to chaotic farming. Run farming like factories should be the motto.
In this model, a village must organize itself as a partnership firm. The landowners come together, forge a partnership and investments and revenue are distributed in the same proportion as the landownership. The owners also appoint an agriculture expert to help with the right selection of crops. The expert need not be attached to a single village but can work at a district level or several districts together.
How would lease work?
Typically, their is an agreement between the landowner and lessee on the monetized value of the produce, say 50%. In such cases, the lessee would make full investments and income would be shared with the original landowner after adjusting for the investments, essentially, the in one and investments are shared between the lessee and landowner.
An example of the cFarming model
Imagine a village with 100 acres of land with 50 families, for sake of simplicity, each family occupies 2 acres. A farming specialist and an accountant is appointed by the village to advise on what to produce and to manage overall accounts.
Each family makes an investment based on the ratio of their ownership. In this case, equal for all the families.
The revenue accrued is divided amongst all the families- in this case, equally.
Economic Benefits of the c-farming model
There are several benefits with the c-farming model. I will list down only three: gain economies of scale, increases profitable farm produce and enriches quality of life of rural farmers.
Social benefits of cFarming
Almost all villages have a very degree of social tension, enmity, family feuds, etc. CFarming will gradually inculcate the culture of social collaboration and make the villages an extended family. The social fabric would get enriched with this model.
Also, such a model is expected to generate better income for the families. What this means, is that families could send their children to schools and make their kids better farmers.
Making Change Stick with cFarming
Collaboration in any arena is always easier said than done. Collaboration in farming and agriculture is even more difficult. The mindset from an individualistic approach to collaboration and sharing is not an easy shift. Besides, in villages, their are lot more factors involved - personal relationships, enmity, local politics, casteism, religion, to name a few. But once people start seeing the rewards coming in, the new mindset will gradually start sticking.
The future village
If the villages progressed, urban migration would reduce, since their would be no genuine need. Villages would offer almost the same experience as any city in terms of basic and luxury infrastructure. A village with a shopping mall would become a reality and not a dream anymore.
Collaborative farming is currently leveraged at Australia and few countries and have met with success. There is no reason to believe why they could not be implemented successfully in any country.
2 comments:
isn't it impossible in indian condition? although countries like china might be following the conditions. but in case of india there will be several questions..
very first why a owner of 60 % of land in a village will give it just to share for equality and and if there is a profit in the proportion then why this system?
Thanks for visiting and posting your comment. You will notice that in this model, the sharing is proportional, not equal for everyone. That is a very important differentiator. The cidea of this approach is collective leverage. In your example, the farmer who owns 60% of the famring land, does get 60% of the net revenue. His investment is also 60%. Hope this clarifies.
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