Cooperative farming
Topic: Land Reforms, the Green Revolution and Farm Subsidies · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
In cooperative farming, farmers pool their land and resources and cultivate them jointly. Each farmer keeps ownership of their own land. The produce is shared in proportion to what each farmer contributed. The idea was that small farmers could get the benefits of scale together while still owning their land.
Example
The Nagpur Congress resolution of 1959 backed cooperative farming as the way forward for Indian agriculture. Peasants strongly opposed it, fearing they would lose control of their land. It was never taken up widely and became "the road not taken" in India's agrarian policy.
Don't confuse with
- Consolidation of land holdings: this merges one farmer's own scattered plots into a compact block, and the farmer still farms alone. Cooperative farming joins different farmers' land for joint cultivation.
- Collective farming (Soviet-style): there, farmers owned no land at all. In cooperative farming, members keep ownership.
Related concepts
- Land ceiling
- Operational land holding
- Marginal holding
- Small holding
- Semi-medium holding
- Medium holding
- Large holding
- Fragmentation of land holdings
- Consolidation of land holdings