Farm mechanization in Pakistan: policy and practice
1981
Lockwood, B.
This report consists of two parts. The first contains brief reviews of the Government of Pakistan's farm mechanization policy from 1975 to the present, and of a World Bank study of 1975 which questions the suitability of this policy of rapid tractorization in the context of the typical farm size and production patterns of Pakistan agriculture. From 1966 to 1975 the average annual imports of tractors stood at only 4040 units, but from 1975 to the present about 15,000 tractors have been imported each year. Furthermore, the average size (horsepower) of the imported tractors has risen from 36-55 HP range to 47-66 HP. The second part presents some of the results of a study of farm mechanization in Punjab Province funded by A/D/C and carried out by graduate students at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad in 1978-79. Data on the behavioral pattern of tractor farms generally support the findings of the 1975 World Bank study and its conclusion that while tractor farmers earned good returns on their investments in tractors and attachments these private gains were at the expense of substantial social costs to rural society, particularly in terms of the transfer of farmland from tenants to tractor-farmers and the loss of jobs and earnings for the rural landless community. This part of the report also examines data on tractor use, by farm size, operation, combination of attachments, and between owners' farm work and off-farm and contract work on other farms. This analysis shows clearly the recent growth in tractor-based hire services supplied by medium and small tractor-farms to a ready market of largely medium sized farms.
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