Governing the Commons

The agricultural crisis in China in 1959-61, after the initial success of the collectivization movement, resulted in 30 million extra deaths. In this paper, a game theory hypothesis proposes the main cause of this catastrophe. I argue that, because of the difficulty in supervising agricultural work, the success of an agricultural collective depends on a self-enforcing contract, however, can be sustained only in a repeated game. In the fall of 1958, the right to withdraw from a collective was deprived. The nature of the collectivization was thus changed from a repeated game to a one-time game. As a result, the self-enforcing contract could not be sustained and agricultural productivity collapsed. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Collectivization and China's Agricultural Crisis in 1959-1961

Livelihoods in COVID times: Gendered perils and new pathways in India

The global debate on food security and the kinds of farming systems that could prove economically and ecologically sustainable has focused overwhelmingly on small family farms versus large commercial farms, with little attention being given to alternative models based on farmer cooperation. France offers a significant but under-researched and internationally little-recognized model of group farming – the GAEC (Groupement Agricole d'Exploitation en Commun) – based on farmers pooling land, labour and capital. This model is of considerable contemporary interest for both France and other countries. Catalysed by a 1962 law, GAECs accounted for 7.6% of farms and 15% of agricultural adult work units in 2010, but their incidence varied greatly across regions. Using data from the French agricultural census and other sources, this paper identifies the factors – economic, ecological, social and demographic – underlying this regionally uneven development of GAECs (and comparatively of EARLs – Exploitations Agricoles a Responsabilite Limitee – another type of group farm introduced in 1985). Regions with a higher incidence of group farms are found to be those that were historically dominated by middle-sized farms, had a local ecology favouring labour-intensive animal breeding, especially pastures, a higher proportion of agricultural graduates, greater economic equality and social institutions that promote community cohesion, among other factors. These results illuminate not only the conditions favourable to the emergence of group farming in France, but also the conditions under which such farmer cooperation could take root in other (including developing) countries, subject to context-specific modifications of the French model.

Group farming in France: Why do some regions have more cooperative ventures than others? [L'agriculture de groupe en France: pourquoi coopère-t-on plus dans certaines régions que d'autres?]

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09064710.2021.1976266

Automatic recognition of tomato leaf disease using fast enhanced learning with image processing

Do farmers' collectives, which pool land, labour, capital, and skills to create medium-sized production units, offer a more viable model of farming for resource-constrained smallholders than individual family farms? A participatory action research project in Eastern India and Nepal provides notable answers. Groups of marginal and tenant farmers, catalysed by the project, evolved into four different collective models with varying levels of cooperation, gender composition, and land ownership/tenancy status. Based on 3 years of action research, this paper examines how the models evolved and their differential outcomes. All groups have gained from cultivating contiguous plots in their efficiency of labour and machine use for land preparation and irrigation, and from economies in input purchase. Several collectives of tenant farmers have also enhanced their bargaining power vis-a-vis an entrenched landlord class and thus been able to negotiate lower rents and refuse long-standing feudal obligations. However, the models differ in their extent of economic gain and their ability to handle gender inequalities and conflicts over labour sharing. The paper explores the historical, regional, and cultural factors that could explain such differences across the models. It thus offers unique insights into the processes, benefits, and challenges of farmers' collectives and provides pointers for replication and further research.

/pdf/experiments-in-farmers-collectives-in-eastern-india-and-2ots0ihqgy.pdf

Anoj Kumar

Papers

Experiments in farmers' collectives in Eastern India and Nepal: Process, benefits, and challenges