Investing in the Rural: Regional Opportunities for More Equitable Development Through Restructured Agriculture Supply-Demand Chains
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Sood, Arshaya
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Sood, Arshaya. 2022. Investing in the Rural: Regional Opportunities for More Equitable Development Through Restructured Agriculture Supply-Demand Chains. Master's thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Design.Abstract
Today in India, small and marginal farmers (SMFs) in rural areas are exploited by skewed development which favors large corporate farmers which are directly linked to accelerating urban development. SMFs continue to be exploited due to a lack of market transparency, withholding of training and knowledge for more productive farming, and uneven distribution of resources and modernized tools. The current agriculture production chain is built on one-directional supply with both demand and organizational power resting in the hands of the urban consumer and it’s territoriality. This uneven power dynamic found in the linear supply chain reinforces the extraction of labor, produce, and resources from the farmer. The current market structure requires the use of various intermediaries, such as commission agents, transportation agents, and wholesale marketplaces, also known as Mandi's, which are institutions remnants of colonial power's persistence that date back to the British Raj’s rule. This thesis will use a case study of my grandfather’s plum farm in Himachal Pradesh to observe evidence of exploitation of the rural small landholding farmers and will propose a new approach that reimagines territorial supply chains that can generate equal income for all actors. This proposal will analyze existing systems of production and suggest new forms of government, specifically cooperative societies as an option for organization that connects local farmers through legal state entities which are formed by agriculture producers and share profits and benefits amongst the members.The aim of this thesis is to reveal the one-sided extraction of resources enabled by market supply chain for agricultural products. The thesis re-imagines alternatives to economic growth and suggests investments into infrastructural development that can improve transportation networks, processing factories, and storage facilities as a tool to recenter the rural and revitalize the region. The aim is to provide a means of empowering small farmers who support the urban food supply chain within India. Infrastructural development in the realm of agricultural production must move beyond the outdated idea of rural contexts being used purely for raw production and urban contexts for processing due to their industrialized nature. Furthermore, this thesis will challenge the contemporary preoccupation with the urban as the privileged site for urbanization which is a partial consequence of globalization and liberalization. It proposes that integrating rural producers with entities in city contexts will overcome to the existing urban-rural divide, based on the recognition that infrastructure development has been a significant gateway to development in previous historical moments. Rural communities can obtain help for developing organizations that manage and coordinate the infrastructure and linkages that were absent in earlier state-driven rural development plans by utilizing the benefits of state government, which normally prioritize the metropolis. Benefits stemming from this proposal will be reduction of food waste, more targeted food production, and reduction in food prices. This circularity will shift power and relieve farmers of the pressure to sell produce immediately for lower prices, allowing them to maintain decent livelihoods with more transparency of where and how much their products are sold. On a larger scale, rural industrialization will mobilize farmers to engage with urban centers more directly and encourage positive interaction between urban centers and rural hinterlands. This connection between the two has the potential to create means for future equitable development in India.
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