Economies of scope: context of agriculture, small family farmers and sustainability

Abstract

What does this article offers? It raises questions on the assumptions of efficiency in agriculture, traces the history of the logic of scale replacing logic of scope, analyses its impact on sustainability and offers a framework to discern technical contradictions of efficiency across different sectors and find a balance for sustainability. It delves with a few basic questions: First, what is the assumption for efficiency in agriculture and food production? Second, how efficiency criterion of dominant players in one leading sector decimates the efficiency wisdom of another sector?

Tracing the evolution of theory and practice of ‘economies of scale’ during the last three centuries of industrial revolution, the article shows the irony of adopting economies of scale time and again only to face greater economic recession, market failures, climate changes, food crisis and growing un-sustainability of our ecosystem. Through empirical evidences from small family farmers and farmer producer organizations from across India and based on the findings of eight years of action research on designing sustainable producer organization, the article highlights that ‘economies of scope’ in agriculture is not only more efficient for nutritious food production and climate resilience but also for sustainability of agricultural ecosystems and of overall socio-economic-environment.