Agriculture Economics

Co-operation: Co-operation is considered to be a movement. -A volunteer cooperation of the people to attain common objectives -- principle of “individual for all, all for individual”

Mr. Citric Land, registerar cooperative societies Pujab, defined cooperative as, ”there are three basic principle of cooperative cosiety, as: 1)members join it voluntarily, 2)it is formulated on deomcratic rprinciple of one vote, 3)the ethhical aspect in it is as important as its economic aspect

Areas of cooperation in agri sectort: a)Credit/financing purposes b)Cooperative farming c)Cooperative marketing

Cooperative credit societies: The history goes back to pre-partition era. Cooperative Societies Act was passed in Another Act was passed in 1912 to strengthen and expand the previous Act. Majority (98%) of the societies that were established were credit societies.

Structure of the Credit Cooperative Societies: i)Primary Societies ii)Central Cooperative Societies iii)Provincial Cooperative Societies

History and Failure of Credit Cooperative Societies: i)Social, Political and edministrative environment ii)Poverty, illetracy, social traidtions, individualistic attitude of the people iii)Vested interests of the admisinstration iv)Low ethical standards

Cooperative Farming: Volunteer organisation formed by combining the physical and financial resources to mutually benefit each other

Need for Cooperative Farming: o Small holdings and mechanized farming o Lower purchasing power of the farmers o Economies of scale approach to reduce cost and increase output o Reduced exploitation by arthiyas and middlemen o Cooperatives are prefered by govt and donors for funding and consultancy services o Optimal use of resources e.g; land, labor etc.

Objectives of Cooperative Farming: o Save farmers from exploitation o Replacing orthodox, low technology farming by mechanized farming o Optimal use of land and labor resources o Socio-economic change

Histroy of Cooperative Farming in Pakistan: o First time practiced in 1948, forced cooperation under govt supervision. It failed due to i) forced participation (12.5 acres of land) and ii) less involvement option for the people o In 2nd Five Year plan, ‘‘Cooperative Land management’’ system was introduced. It failed due to absence of modern agri practices by the farmers

o National Scheme of Cooperatives was introduced. Members of the cooperatives will collect their resources at one place and their property rights were retained. Govt provided subsidies to these cooperatives over seeds, fertilizers, tractors, etc.

Hurdles to cooperative farming: o Farmers never agree to share their property rights o No awareness about the importance of the cooperatives o Caste system division of the people o Dishnoest and biased administration

Successful cases of cooperative farming: Russia, China, Israel, Egypt and Italy they practice group-farming Russia was centrally planned economy but now moving towards individualistic farming

Cooperative Marketing: Aim ofteh cooperative marketing is to purchase the output from the farmers, at fair prices

Objectives of Cooperative Marketing: o Give fair prices to farmers, especially small farmers o Arthiiyas and commission agensts expoit rural and urban cnsumers alike so to reduce their role o Offer transportation, storage and otehr facilities to farmers

Structure of Cooperative Marketing: o ’Commission 3% commission o Farmers bring the output to the shops o Motive of these shops is to give fair prices to the farmers

Problems of Cooperative Marketing: o Limited and timely role o Limited resources with societies o Inability to provide transportation and other facilities to farmers o Arthiyas and commission agents are strongly rooted o Departmental and administrative formalities of these societies

Concluding remarks on Cooperative Movement: o Hybrid form of socialism thats why much criticized o Corporate farming, globalization are more dominant features of the world than cooperative farming o In Pakistan, corporate farming is favored more by the govts and IMF, alike