The pursuit of farming remained for the longest time to the innocent contribution of feeding, by foraging and growing crops that filled the long hard days of nomads that knew nothing more than their stomachs. This was the way of life 12,000 years ago, where cities grew out of cropped lands. However, as civilization rose from five million people 10,000 years ago, to eight billion people today, farming and agriculture cultivated itself into a larger than life barter system.
By the virtue of residing climates changes in different regions after the last ice age, plant domestication began to take shape – from Near East being favored by annual plants like wild cereals, to figs being cultivated in Syria, suggested by the prehistoric seedless fruits that were discovered in the Jordan Valley, according to National Geographic’s article on The Development of Agriculture, 2024.
The act of growing crops and domesticating animals, also led to the growth of the first true economies, as it required people to stay in one place over long periods of time. The earliest agriculture is dated back to the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East around 11,000 – 10,000 years ago, which has now led to the flourishing of over a million food-related businesses that we see today. Once people began using early technologies such as pointed wood to break the soil up, and using animals to pull such tools, farming became more than just feeding one family. As crop harvesting grew, new jobs emerged for storing these crops, tending to them, trading them, and the list continued. Excess crops required space to store, cattle animals required being looked after. And so began the Midas touch of agriculture, that led to economies growing, villages outgrowing themselves to form towns, which then burst into cities. Non-farming related jobs began to emerge, for the welfare of the urban administration such as arbitrators, security officers, and public servants.
Kochi, a coastal town on the outlines of Malabar, India, is a primary example of how agricultural trade activities led to the economical development and prosperity of this town. Kochi played a vital role in maritime spice trade that complemented the Silk Route overland commerce. Due to the fertility of the region’s soil, there was an abundance of spices like pepper, cardamom, and cinnamon, making India a highly sought after stop-over for traders from various civilizations. As a side note, it was this very abundance of spice that got India colonized to begin with. As the demand for these spices fueled the growth of Kochi’s maritime trade, it connected it to the broader network of trade routes that linked East and West. These spices were transported pan Asia and Europe, fortifying trade routes, and directly helping the economy of the coastal lands of India.
The arrival of European powers in the 15th century further intensified trade activities in Kochi. The Portuguese, Dutch, and British established trading posts and fortified settlements. These colonial powers introduced new crops, agricultural techniques, and trading practices, transforming Kochi into a major commercial hub. Even now Kochi is the home to generations-old spice businesses such as ours.
As societies set themselves into the daily cohesiveness of an almost communist like mundane, where food production now allowed economies to trade as people had services to offer and goods to trade. Then came the idealistic invention of money, which solved the complex problem of people freezing their side of the barter, to be used when and how they’d want. So, to think of it money came from farming, one of the most underpaid economies in today’s times.
The relevance of farming and agriculture is pertinent even today, and if not – more so, particularly for lower-income countries. According to World Band data from 2019, an average of 59% of people worked in agriculture in low income countries, and 38% in lower-middle income countries. These nations cling to agribusiness as a beacon, fearing economic shipwreck as the world sails into the uncharted waters of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Although agriculture in the developing countries comes with its own set of challenges for the millions of small-scale farmers, comprising 500 million households in the world, who solely rely on the good graces of weather and climatic conditions in their region to produce food and yield crops. However, increasing international investments in agribusiness have opened up unprecedented opportunities for farmers, even in the most remote regions of Peru.
In the 1960’s Johnson and Mellor published a paper titled “The Role of Agriculture in Economic Development”, which dove deep into the contribution for agriculture in a nation’s growth. The paper seeked to establish that agriculture not only powers economic growth and supplies capital labor to other sectors of the industries, but also generates the necessity for unskilled laborers. Economists such as Bravo-Ortega and Lederman also reinstated the grounding fact of the positive ripples that agricultural development spread on to nation welfare, in the World Bank paper, published in 2005. The sector has a resounding and mushrooming effect on poverty reduction, if applied at an early stage of economic development.
A study conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, in collaboration with the National Planning Department of the Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs, with the support of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), reveals that Sri Lanka has experienced significant economic growth in recent decades. The nation has achieved upper middle-income status, with a per capita income of US$4,065 in 2017.
The agricultural sector to GDP of the country attributed to 7% in 2017, and continues to be the backbone of the Sri Lankan economy particularly for the rural community. It provides employment for approximately 26% of the workforce, serves as the foundation for numerous agro-based industries and services, and stimulates economic growth through integration with other sectors.
Sri Lanka is the world’s largest exporter of true cinnamon, supplying approximately 85% of the global market. Pepper and cardamom also contribute significantly to the country’s agricultural export volume.
While Sri Lanka’s high literacy rate of 90.56% undoubtedly contributed to its economic success, its focus on agriculture as a cornerstone of its economy offers a compelling model for other developing and underdeveloped nations. These countries, often burdened by high rates of unemployment and poverty, can leverage their abundant unskilled labor force through agricultural development. By providing employment opportunities and stimulating rural economies, agriculture can serve as a powerful tool for poverty reduction and economic growth. In essence, Sri Lanka’s experience suggests that a well-planned and executed agricultural strategy can be a catalyst for transformation, even in the face of significant challenges.
Drawing a similar parallel to a town that has a significantly higher literacy rate than the average literacy rate of Sri Lanka, is Morogoro in Tanzania scoring the literacy rate of 76.9%. However, their economy in recent years has also witnessed a dynamic shift, even being dubbed as the breadbasket of Tanzania, due to their agricultural activities. According to the World Bank, this sector accounts up to 17% of the country’s GDP and employs more than 50% of the country’s workforce, providing livelihood to more than 60% of the population. The region holds fourth position with a population of 3.1 million, from which 65% of them engage in agriculture activities. Given the government’s efforts to increase farming based profit in the region, they also invested around SH 15 billion ($5.6 Million) for the expansion of agricultural activities, along with giving back about 68 large farms for agriculture development, especially for their uneducated youth. The regional commissioner in collaboration with the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Hussein Bashe, believes in the potential that agriculture holds for the continued development of economic prowess and the engagement and employment it would garner for the youth population.
Large-scale farms in rural areas bear the weight of satisfying labor demand by directly employing former land users, and growing the local economy and creating non-farming related jobs through sectoral linkages. In the rural areas of low and middle income countries, agriculture is the main source of employment and income(Rosenzweig, 1988). In 2010, 24% of the workforce in these countries was employed in agriculture, while agriculture’s contribution to GDP was at 10% (World Bank, 2016). These countries are heavily supported by foreign investments, where the share of workers in the agricultural sector is even higher — for instance, 73% in Ethiopia and 72% in Uganda in 2013 (World Bank, 2016).
In the recent years of the phoenix like awakening of Bangalore – declared the new up and coming Silicon Valley of India, and the gear changer from agriculture being the beacon of the Indian economy to it becoming the $150-billion dollar outsourcing industry; there is a pause that India must consider after the election of President Donald Trump and the declaration of his protectionist regime in the United States. The United States is one of the largest consumer nations in the world, and a prominent topic for India – ‘outsourcing’, has surfaced again after Trump’s election and his announcement of restrictions on H-1B visas or penal taxes on US companies for outsourcing jobs. Before the avalanche of protectionist measures by Trump hits India, the country should re envision itself as the agrarian country that it is.
Even though the literacy rate in India is 74.4%, agriculture is the primary economy. The country generates USD 814 billion in revenue creating 152 million jobs in agriculture, making it one of the largest private sectors in the country. According to a report, ‘Investing for Impact: Food, Agri and Agritech’, by Aspire Impact, agriculture can flourish, by investment in agritech and allied segments, which can lead to far and wide implications for food security, sustainable farming, and reduction of poverty in India. At the moment over 20% of Indian farmers were living below the poverty line, however, evidence suggests that the snowballing speed in which the agriculture sector is reducing rural poverty is at least twice of what the rest of the economy is able to attain. Whereas in the $150 billion dollar industry of outsourcing, most who are employed come from middle class and lower-middle class families, who have at the very least completed their diploma degrees. Hence, for those who come from rural, underprivileged families, agriculture posits itself to be the answer to their worries, as it provides them with basics of food and money to rise above in the Maslow’s pyramid – so they can then vie for education; along with move above within class levels and status.
Even after our era is overridden by technology ridding the unskilled laborers of their jobs in multiple other sectors, agriculture seems to keep its promise of being labor intensive. In agricultural science it is common to use a labor input measure that is labor intensity, instead of an output measure that is the labor productivity. Labor intensity is thus defined by the amount of labor needed in a production process, which remains to be one of the highest in agriculture. Two main crop classes that are distinguished based on their cultivation patterns are annual crops and perennial crops. Annual crops such as wheat, corn, and soya beans can perform an entire life cycle in one season, and the entire process can be undertaken by the aid of machinery. On the contrary, perennial crops that persist for many seasons require higher labor input, from caring for and harvesting particular crop plants such as cardamom and vanilla. For instance, Deininger and Byerlee (2011) found that manual sugar cane farming generated 10-30 times as many jobs as compared to mechanized grain farming.
This brings us to the final component of the agricultural ecosystem – the end to end business of trading crops and pulses, and how it’s helping on a global scale. Companies like us that are part of the food chain ensure in building food security across borders. Just for a perspective, 20% of the calories that we ingest have largely crossed borders and found its way to our homes. This is just one aspect of the coin in terms of D2C. Now, the circular ripple effect that food trade causes towards the local distributors and farmers is being a driver to economic growth, and allowing these small-holders access to additional markets.
There’s a phenomenon that was coined by Edward Lorenz in 1960 – “The Butterfly Effect”.
The butterfly effect is the idea that an event that is seemingly inconsequential and trivial can ultimately add up to result in something with a much larger impact. Non-linear actions such as a mid-ranged company’s spice trading started in the 1950’s that found its way from the coastal town of Cochin, to the rambunctiously awake uber-city Dubai, can impact the livelihood of a poverty struck family working on the fields of Vanilla in small village near Sambava, Madagascar. Non-linear actions such as this can and do have an impact on the complex system of the agrifood business. So, the business of agriculture that continues to grow and remain imminent since biblical times, somehow ties the society in a more subtle evolutionary sense – sustenance of livelihoods, economies, discovery of lands, and the very last, that also was the very first reason why agriculture began – sharing the fruits of nature’s labour.
By Ananya,
Dubai, UAE
