The supply and demand for agricultural products, the effect of technological advancement on output and prices, the interaction of domestic agriculture with global trade, and farm incomes must all be taken into account when analysing the competition for resources that developed country agriculture faces.
The effect of the UK's common agricultural policy on farm incomes and supplies will have a direct bearing on potential future developments. These in turn will affect the resources used in agriculture, including land, capital, labour (manual and managerial), intellectual investment on behalf of agriculture, and governmental spending.Policies created to take into account social and political issues, particularly in the six founding nations of the E.E.G., hinder the attainment of economically optimal results for agriculture.
Policies for domestic agriculture and promises to less developed nations, for example, can conflict with policy aims.
The latter can result in high-cost production, encourage resource retention in agriculture despite potential low returns, and obstruct market access for exports from emerging nations. Agriculture is controlled by several small units on the supply side.
As a result, consumers must pay high costs for goods in order to maintain their incomes. Given that the market's demand for food is quite inelastic, high prices frequently stimulate production that is in excess of what the market actually needs. The true return on the resources will be minimal because surpluses must be sold at salvage prices. Improved administration and structure, as well as new technology, can bothOnce more, resource yields will be lower than they would be if farm structure were more advantageous.
Two significant conclusions are drawn: first, in order for affluent countries to fulfil their obligations to less developed nations, market access in the former must be loosened in order to promote development in the latter. In order to develop a more favourable supply/demand balance for agricultural products, it is also important to isolate price strategies from the solutions to low income, social problems in agriculture.
Finally, if advancements in the modernization of the sector are not made, the full benefits from the potential contribution of science to agriculture will not be realised. In the end, if policies result in both surpluses and consistently high food costs, then customers will both politically protest against them and turn away from them.
Policy objectives can also be at odds with one another, as in the case of promises to less developed nations and domestic agricultural policies. The latter can result in high-cost production, encourage resource retention in agriculture despite potential low returns, and obstruct market access for exports from emerging nations.
Agriculture is controlled by several small units on the supply side. As a result, consumers must pay high costs for goods in order to maintain their incomes. Given that the market's demand for food is quite inelastic, high prices frequently stimulate production that is in excess of what the market actually needs. The true return on the resources will be minimal because surpluses must be sold at salvage prices. Both new technologies and better management and organisation.
British Farming Organisation:
Long-term economic reasons will ultimately determine farming structure, but social factors are becoming more important. However, political factors are more significant in the medium run. We'll talk about the importance of these factors for the 1980s. Although no significant expansion of the large farming industry is predicted, the size of the typical British holding is likely to increase. Small-scale factory farming will advance, perhaps in collaboration with big vertically integrated companies.
Less intense and less specialised production will be hampered by the ongoing demand for affordable food. Reversing the post-war trend toward owner-occupancy, more institutions acquiring agricultural property as part of a sizable portfolio will serve as the new landlords. New agreements between tenants and private landlordsTenant money will be accessible from new sources such institutional landlords, cooperative credit arrangements, and the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation, signalling a shift toward collaboration.
Agricultural cooperation will increase in both buying and selling as well as the usage of machinery, where private contractors will also play a bigger role. And last, with villages no longer populated mostly by farmers and farm workers, significantly more interaction between urban and rural employees must be anticipated. Farmers would be expected to do more to protect the environment for everyone's enjoyment and to provide easy access to the countryside.
Manpower and Machinery Provide Power on the Farm:
With fewer and fewer farm employees, western agriculture has become increasingly industrialised. As a result, farming is evolving into a capital-intensive sector with larger farming units, mechanisation, crop specialisation, and high labour productivity. Corporate farming is encouraged by capital constraints, which integrate production, processing, and marketing tasks.
The technological foundation is in place for larger, nearly automatic machines, where the operator would just oversee machine operations as opposed to providing traditional supervision. As long as there is a sustained overall economic benefit, power applied per unit of land will continue to rise. We can anticipate advancements in tillage, planting, and harvesting, as well as machine modifications to accommodate new crop strains. Services will includemerged to minimise field travel.
A general awareness of environmental issues will lead to restrictions on agricultural methods that cause soil erosion and water and air pollution. Agricultural waste reclamation and/or disposal is a rising issue without a really cost-effective solution, increasing corporate expenses. The workforce must adjust to these social constraints, as must the machinery.
Power issues: modifying versus innovating:
The amount of energy provided by mechanical means is minimal in compared to the energy given by solar radiation for crop production. The mechanical energy provided by tractors and other equipment is significant because it helps to regulate the growing process. The primary tendency in mechanisation is toward larger, more powerful tractors and machines, which in the farm structure of Western Europe results in an imbalance between the machine capacity and the size of the farms. It is believed that modification is more likely than innovation.
The discussion includes changes to farm organisation, management, and design. Scale in the utilisation of new technologies is considered to be the main obstacle to innovation.power. For the bulk of holdings in the E.E.C.'s 15 to 100 ha farms, a small tractor with some automatic control is suggested. On such farms, automatic feeding and recording systems for livestock units are also suggested.
In the production of animals and the cultivation and harvesting of crops, versatility is preferable to specialisation:
Agriculture poses challenging difficulties for engineers because, although being a significant business in many nations, it is typically built up in very small production units. In addition, a lot of the farm work requires quick bursts of labour. Therefore, cheap capital cost engineering items are frequently required by farming economics.
Future developments are considered in connection to these elements. Many farm machines typically get their power from the tractor. Contrary to other farm equipment, tractors are produced in huge quantities in facilities with high capital expenditures and prohibitively expensive radical design revisions. In the Tractors have steadily improved in power and sophistication over the past 30 years, allowing for more productive use.
They are the best illustration of agricultural equipment's adaptability, but if current research on harnessing a tractor's power in non-traditional ways for soil cultivation is successful, their value could rise in the future.
The effects of this crucial part of husbandry practise are taken into account. Early combine harvesters for cereal crops were drawn by tractors; however, this soon changed. Research efforts to develop an alternate method of separating grain from straw and chaff have showed promise and may result in simpler and lighter machines. Over time, they have grown increasingly powerful and complicated around the 1980s.
On the other hand, there are numerous valued crops that are grown in relatively modest amounts but yet play a significant role in the rising standard of living. Such crops can provide extremely challenging harvesting challenges, necessitating a high degree of operating and consequently design specialist.
Farmers will likely need more and more specialised machinery for different crops as attempts over many years to make some harvesting machines suited for a wide variety of crops through clever and inventive engineering design and development have, at best, experienced limited success. However, employing similar components and sub-assemblies may make it possible to reduce manufacturing and production costs.
Future farms with cattlewill need to employ considerably more specialist technical machinery to keep up production with much less labour. Equipment for data processing will be needed in the dairy parlour so that men can milk and feed huge herds of cows. Improved methods for moving and weighing food, better animal habitat management, and quicker, less unpleasant methods of handling farm wastes will all be required.
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