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Corporate Farming
Corporate farming; Spelling disaster for Farming community
?
 It is difficult to agree with the federal government's plan to
introduce corporate agriculture farming as its negative
aspects far outweigh its finer points. Apart from spelling
disaster for the farming community and causing widespread
unemployment, it will strengthen the hands of the existing
dormant forces of feudalism and create a new breed of
exploiters in the nature of agro-industrial cartels. It is
surprising that the present regime has thought it fit to
introduce a scheme that totally contradicts its own agenda of
alleviating poverty.
According to our correspondent's report (The News, June 20) Dr
Shahid Amjad Chowdhury, deputy chairman planning, and Mr Shafi
Niaz, advisor on agriculture to President Musharraf, strongly
opposed the plan with a sheaf of cogent points at a cabinet
meeting deliberating the summary of the idea. Among other
reasons they warned that the policy would be exploited by the
feudal families who will be able to evade the rigours of land
reforms by joining hands in the name of corporate farming. The
main proponents of the idea were ministers of finance,
commerce and agriculture whose prime argument was that it
would ensure food security.
But, if the corporate farming concept by itself is not bad
enough, what is worse is that the government is also against
declaring it an industry which will ensure that the labour in
such farms will be outside the purview of the labour laws, and
per se at the mercy of the employers. Moreover there is every
reason to fear that in order to encourage investment in this
new scheme, the investors will be provided more than the usual
concessions in the shape of large chunks of state land which
would give them a head start over the middle and poor farmers.
Given such a possibility it would be interesting to find out
how does the government intend to make its efforts to reduce
poverty in the country succeed, when its plans will be
contributing towards increasing it. A point that needs to be
noted is that corporate agriculture means large-scale
introduction of mechanisation which translates into still
greater unemployment as the farm labour loses jobs. Any
expectation that modern farming methods introduced by
investors would benefit the rural poor is, therefore,
hopelessly ill founded. The big mechanised farms will easily
outrival the poor farmers leading to distress land sales and
still more destitution.
The military regime would do well to leave this scheme for
consideration by a civilian elected government which will be
better placed to carefully go through its various aspects.
Approving an idea which appears to be the output of experts
who have little knowledge of the distressing rural conditions
and more of corporate economics, marketing and mechanisation
will lead to gravely destabilising the largest community in
the country -- the poor farmers and the still poorer landless
farm labour.
Cost of inputs
While introduction of new incentives and removal of irritants
being faced by the business community in the recently
announced budget might take some time to accelerate investment
and growth, the need for reducing the energy input costs for
all kinds of consumers -- industrial, commercial and domestic
-- remains pressing. In fact, such a policy measure should
have been announced with the budget which will encourage and
support the revival of investment as this has been claimed to
be the focal point of the new fiscal strategy. The
newly-created fiscal space could have provided such an option.
At a time when the country's economy should acquire the
much-needed competitiveness, the rise in energy costs ought to
be avoided.
Addressing a high-powered meeting last Tuesday, the President
is said to have called for reducing the electricity tariff by
increasing hydel power generation and making the maximum
possible use of coal resources for power production. There
have also been proposals to convert fuel-based power
generation to gas-based generation but the results on the
ground are still awaited. The claim by the power generating
and distributing utilities like Wapda that they have been able
to bring down their online losses and improve their recoveries
are sufficient reasons to provide relief in their tariff rates
to the consumers. A balanced power development programme makes
a highly practical proposition.
The case for reducing the cost of petroleum products and
natural gas is equally convincing. As the prices of POL
products are subject to free market mechanism, these are
adjusted according to world oil prices. But, at the same time,
the petroleum levy is supposed to remain unchanged so that the
consumer is not burdened. However, from the original estimates
of Rs32 billion petroleum levy went up to Rs39 billion in the
revised estimates for this year and it has been estimated at
Rs45 billion for the next financial year. The gas surcharge
has remained unchanged at Rs15 billon. In the next financial
year, the government hopes to collect Rs60 billion in
surcharges and levies which is quite substantial. This will
need review.
Though inflation is said to have remained low at 2.7 percent
this year, but the adverse impact of successive increases of
utilities on the consumers was inevitable. The cost of POL
products has a direct bearing on transportation costs and thus
leaves some impact on all kinds of goods, including the
essential items. Same is the case with electricity and gas.
The worst hit remain the productive sectors of the economy.
Energy costs should be brought down to boost the economy and
provide the much-deserved relief to the consumers.
Courtesy Dawn
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Pakissan.com;
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