Corporate farming or family farming?

Agricultural policies implemented globally are attempting to destroy family farming, which is carried out by small and medium-sized enterprises based on family labor. 

In their place, monopolistic food and agricultural companies are seeking to promote industrial agriculture—in other words, corporate farming conducted by large, giant enterprises—and contract farming models. 

Through this model, they are constantly creating markets for inputs such as industrial seeds, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers, while simultaneously processing and marketing the products of the large agricultural enterprises that are tied to them. At the same time, this allows multinational corporations to easily control developing countries from a social and political perspective.

A question that must be asked here is this: Is there work in the cities for the approximately three billion people who will be left destitute by the liquidation of the peasantry, or in other words, the small and medium-sized enterprises based on family labor? 

Some thinkers answer this question as follows:

“…Even if a visionary hypothesis such as a continuous 7 percent annual growth rate were to be realized (globally) within a fifty-year timeframe, it would not be able to absorb even one-third of this reserve (i.e., the three billion people coming to the cities). In other words, by the very nature of capitalism, it cannot solve the peasant question, and the only perspective it offers is a world of shantytowns and five billion surplus people.”

In a general approach, the model that the West is trying to impose, especially on third-world countries, is corporate farming and the liquidation of small and medium-sized enterprises based on family labor. 

Countries like Turkey are experiencing similar social problems. Because this aspect of the issue is neglected, rural areas are emptying out, and unemployment and poverty are increasing because sufficient jobs are not being created in the industrial and service sectors for the people coming to the cities.

Those who say, “Let there be no small enterprises in agriculture,” must consider all of this.

SMALL ENTERPRISES IN AGRICULTURE ARE NOT A WEAKNESS OF AGRICULTURE!

Similar perceptions are being created in Turkey as well. On some channels, owners of agricultural companies, and especially large dairy cattle operations, are stating that greater production and efficiency will be achieved through large enterprises.

Well-intentioned people who are directly unrelated to agriculture, and even some educated individuals, share this approach. They attribute the cause of agricultural problems in Turkey to "small and medium-sized enterprises based on family labor." 

This approach needs to be questioned.

In fact, Turkey's greatest weakness in agriculture stems from the lack of a national agricultural policy. Its second weakness is the weakness of farmer organizations. In this context, the weakness of agriculture does not stem from its small scale, but from the almost total lack of economic organization.

In this context, there are those who highlight the efficiency coefficient in comparisons made between giant agricultural enterprises and family farming. 

However, experts state that when comparing enterprises in terms of efficiency, total factor productivity should be considered instead of an efficiency coefficient that only takes labor into account.

Total factor productivity is found by dividing the value added or net income by the sum of production factors evaluated with their social opportunity costs. In developing countries, labor is more abundant, and therefore its opportunity cost is lower; in addition, land and capital are also lower-cost. For this reason, small enterprises have a higher total productivity.

On the other hand, it should be known that the scale problem of small enterprises can be overcome through the provision of public investments and services and through cooperativization. For example, state irrigation facilities, subsidies on all inputs, cooperativization in the evaluation of inputs and outputs, and shared machinery pools.

DO WE KNOW THE SCALE OF ENTERPRISES IN EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE?

I will end my article by making two reminders regarding enterprise scale and dairy farming. 

The first of these is the distortion of information regarding enterprise size in the EU. 

There appears to be an ulterior motive in this regard. Giant enterprises are not common in the EU. 

For example, in terms of dairy farming, the share of enterprises with 100 head or more, which are accepted as large enterprises, is 1 percent in France, 4 percent in Italy, 3.8 percent in Germany, and 0.1 percent in Poland. Family enterprises are dominant in these countries as well. They have solved their problems through cooperativization. 

As for Turkey.

The vast majority of agricultural enterprises in Turkey, including cattle breeding in this context, are carried out by small and medium-sized peasant enterprises. 

According to TUIK data, 83.7 percent of enterprises operating in the livestock sector have fewer than 20 animals.

As a result, Turkey cannot ensure its food sufficiency through corporate farming.

In this context, misleading the masses is also not right.

The direction to be given to Turkish agriculture is solutions for small and medium-sized peasant enterprises based on family labor, which make up the vast majority of our agricultural enterprises.

Let us make one more observation.

When there is a crisis in dairy farming in Turkey, it is the large enterprises that close down first. Peasant enterprises, although their animal numbers may decrease, try to maintain their existence.