ECONOMIC VIABILITY OF TREE CROPS
The opportunity to utilize land for tree crops presents an economic benefit only when certain conditions are met:
The landowner decides that growing a tree crop is preferable to:
– Keeping the land barren
– Partially utilizing the land
– Using the land for annual crops in terms of returns on effort.
Consequently, the social psychology necessary for this decision involves the farmer’s need to earn for himself before considering producing for exchange.
Tree crops do not yield immediate returns, unlike conventional crops such as cereals, millets, groundnuts, soybeans and equivalent, and fibres like cotton and jute, which have well-established cultural practices and definite cycles governed by agro-climatic conditions, including weather and water.
Growing tree crops requires a sacrifice. For example, if a person switches from paddy to arecanuts, the minimum time required for a return is four years. Therefore, a person with land resources who can command and pay for labour to cultivate it is essential.
Modern agricultural practices and knowledge are now well-documented in textbooks and specific to the area, meaning there is valuable local experience.
A farmer benefits from observing phenomena and changes and uses modern, continuous knowledge to apply to their practices.
Hybrid development has advanced as opposed to natural cultivation. The competition is not between nature and science but rather how successfully science is applied to achieve desired input-output ratios.
In monetary terms, the input-output ratio should ideally be at least ₹1 to ₹1.5. This ratio depends on the amount invested at a particular time and the scale of operations. The demand for produce and its forecast is now a methodology, but the farmer relies on traditional methods of selling due to proximity.
Any trader in the world would pick up material from any part of the world if there is a profit on time and place. The traders role comes in place because each individual farmer cannot traverse the distance over long terms of hundreds of kilometres within a nation to thousands of kilometres across the seas.
Consumers cannot store all the required material, and even if they could, their individual choices – whether they prefer product X or Y – play a significant role.
Three centuries of political economy, economics, sociology, and political activity have evolved to protect contracts and prevent excessive exploitation of one person to another who has a disadvantage, is the rule of political economy today.
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