Pros and Cons of Corporate Farming

Asian economies like India and Pakistan have resorted to corporate farming in a bid to lure multinationals into investing in the agricultural sector to reform it through industrialization. This trend has especially been noted among textile industries. Cotton seems to have attracted many such agricultural companies that want to produce high-yield good quality fabrics to fulfill the demand for exports. Economies of UK and US have already witnessed this business phenomenon in their agricultural sector. They are proofs of a highly-developed food industry with a well-developed agricultural system. But, is corporate farming really a boon or a bane?

Pros and Cons of Corporate Farming

Merits of Corporate Farming

Reduced Agricultural Wastage: Timely harvesting of crops helps avoid wastage of food. This increases the yield produced from the same input. Did you know? About 2% of the total farmlands in the US, under corporate farming, produce as much as 14% of the overall crop production. Increase in output leads to decrease in food prices.

Better Quality Yield: Corporates are in a better position to protect crops through extensive use of pesticides. This helps ensure minimal damage to crops and a better quality yield. Corporate farming also encourages the employment of food cultivation techniques that increase the storage life of crops for exports.

Reduced Minimum Support Price: Corporate farming is definitely synonymous with large outputs that lead to economies of scale. Hence, it helps reduce the minimum support price. This means you pay lesser for the same food than you did 5 years back. This will help keep a check on food inflation and bring down the prices of crops. Corporate farming, thus, makes cheap food available to all and in large quantities.

New Technology: A concept that is predicted to soon popularize in capital intensive economies is the precision technology. Tractors will be run through the control of satellites to harvest crops in a much lesser time. This will inadvertently avoid wastage due to deterioration.

Boosting the Agricultural Sector: Industrialization of agriculture has helped in rapid production of crops to meet the needs of the economy and revived the importance of agriculture in the GDP. It will also contribute to the development of exports. Increase in agricultural production through the use of advanced technology has obviously boosted the agri-scenario in developed and developing economies