Alternative approaches in the political economy of food and agriculture in Iran
According to Webangah News quoted by Mehr’s reporter, Hossein Shirzad, an analyst and PhD in agricultural development, wrote in a special note for Mehr; Over the past 60 years, world agriculture has undergone a reconfiguration under the influence of the “innovation-investment discourse”, as economic globalization deepened with the reduction of agricultural trade barriers, investment in R&D and infrastructure increasingly favored Agriculture was export-oriented.
This primarily benefited the largest agri-food companies that controlled global supply chains, who gradually managed to consolidate their dominant position with network effects ay, to strengthen supply chains by setting standards and by their ability to control logistics; Of course, it is an inherent feature of the neoliberal capitalist food system that those who invest control the food and the forces involved in its production. Although there are more than 570 million farmers and 7 billion consumers worldwide, only a handful of companies control the global agri-industrial value chain—from farm to shop counter. Given the high profits and vast political power of these companies, changing the status quo is not in their favor because the more concentrated an agricultural sector becomes—whether in the areas of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, food processing, distribution, and retail—the more control by corporations. It applies to wages, prices, product availability and policy making. As during the last decade, (vertical-horizontal) mergers and acquisitions in the agriculture and food sector have increased both in number and in terms of value. . But there is still a respectable historical tradition of political economy approaches for agricultural development, especially experiences and lessons for our country.
Agricultural management in Iran
Iranian agriculture is facing many difficulties, contradictions, challenges and setbacks. This agriculture, to maintain its legitimacy in food security, increasingly relies on the tolerance of “cognitive dissonance” that sooner or later must be determined.
Global Value Chains (GVCs) – also known as Global Commodity Chains (GCC) and Global Production Networks (GPN) – act as both enablers and The consequences of globalization have become one of the defining characteristics of the political economy of agriculture in the world.
“Supply chain capitalism” through “subcontracting and other related forms” along with outsourcing, financialization, commoditization and risk management logic governance, Fig. It has changed the contemporary agricultural exploitation systems. Therefore, the political economy approach to food systems is based on both descriptions that focus on the biogeochemical flows involved in food production, trade, and consumption, and economic models that focus on It takes a distance from supply and demand changes that are related to prices.
The political economy approach to food systems emphasizes the need to address the “power element” in food chains. Therefore, the forms of “power sharing” between the government and the private sector and the place of civil society in food chains should be considered. Of course, such power is difficult to conceptualize, let alone measure. Iran’s agriculture should not ignore these paths either.
In Iran’s agriculture, power is not only in the hands of governments, but in the food-agriculture system with different approaches in the government, parliament, political factions, civil society and the private sector. We are facing multiple food industry systems. A final barrier to change in food systems is that such systems are often influenced by actions taken at different levels of governance. In modern food industry literature, food insecurity stems from the failure of agricultural productivity to keep up with population growth and increased demand from urbanization and related changes in diet. Therefore, such a framework of “engineering E” increases the level of production and the growth of agricultural productivity as Key challenges considered and focusing on mechanization, large-scale irrigation, use of new methods (so-called “breeding and high-yielding cultivars” or improvement or agronomics) of plant species, intensive use of external inputs (pesticides, fertilizers nitrogen potash and phosphate , herbicides) and technological determinism is emphasized.
Such an approach to food systems sees the challenge primarily in quantitative terms. Their main concern is to ensure that supply matches demand in order to keep prices in a certain margin. Ultimately, such an approach sees discussions of agricultural and food industry reforms as “apolitical”. But hunger and malnutrition and food insecurity in the Middle East are not exclusively or primarily about increased production, research and development of new plant species, technical problems of agricultural production, even the usual assumptions about the formation of prices and satisfying the physiological needs of people. The main question here is which of the players in the value chain will benefit the most from the policies adopted in the agricultural sector, including banking resources (mixed financial approaches), widespread price suppression in the agricultural sector, policy of distributing subsidies, granting import-export licenses, gaming With tariffs, changes in exchange rates and benefiting from preferential currency, communication and storage facilities, agricultural machinery or dissemination of agricultural knowledge by extension services? How much bargaining power does each actor have?
The political economy of food approach on the role of cooperatives
So far in Iran, the mainstream discourse about food systems and how to improve them has not been presented by any of the political factions. It is therefore necessary to shift the debate from the largely technical questions of how to pursue agricultural productivity growth to the political economy questions of who controls food systems, who benefits from the current organization of food systems, and what are the barriers to change. And what mechanisms encourage governments to adopt new institutional frameworks through legislation.
The approach of the political economy of food on the role of cooperatives, unions, food industry federations and agricultural organizations, the future of small and medium producers, empowerment, participation and accountability of the government in reforming food systems He insists against the agricultural union system. Two components of support that directly affect production decisions are production subsidies and market price support provided through trade measures. Determining the average support rate for agriculture is also important because high support rates attract resources to agriculture and increase production by stimulating agricultural production.
Agricultural subsidies help strengthen the food system, and subsidies are inevitably needed to provide cheap food. Producers in the developed countries of the world receive about 280 billion dollars of government support annually. In the European Union, farmers receive a third of their income from government subsidies. Beef and veal producers receive more than 70% of their income from subsidies. A typical cow in the European Union receives $2.2 per day in government subsidies.
In the field of institutional arrangements, the approach of political currents, regarding the transfer of many loss-making companies and even the transfer of natural resources of the country’s agricultural sector (especially land) to the private sector It is important.
Tasks or missions that can be assigned and changing the approach in monetary-financial policies of the agricultural sector, how to deal with start-ups And the strengthening of agricultural venture funds and the commercialization of thousands of research findings will be decisive. Also, considering the ineffectiveness of government education and extension services, how and with what program should a form of transformation be done for the benefit of the private sector in the face of agricultural ecological developments (AEE), digital economy (DE), low carbon technological innovation (LCI)? The government’s program to improve the regulatory framework for the development of digital technologies and information technology, monitoring and statistical monitoring, modernization of agricultural machinery, financial markets and insurance of products and structures, how to introduce and use innovative tools in the production of agricultural products, improving logistics (storage, processing and sales), the development of information infrastructure in rural areas and the provision of information security, training, retraining and advanced training of agricultural specialists and the employment of thousands of knowledgeable agricultural specialists will be decisive and streamlining.
The contribution of agriculture to the economy
In recent years, Iran’s agricultural sector provides nearly 70% of food (about 55% of the calories needed) of the people, 19% of employment and 17-25% of exports. has allocated non-oil. In terms of spatial distribution, there are obvious differences in agricultural environmental productivity among the main agricultural production areas in the country. The foreign trade balance of the agricultural sector has always been negative and the import of agricultural goods has always exceeded the export. However, the intensity and the negative level of the foreign trade balance were significantly different under the influence of different managements of the agricultural sector. For a long time, agribusiness in Iran has received high levels of government support, and this can be clearly seen in the form of direct government ownership and through the allocation of subsidies. The only sector that was able to bring positive growth of nearly 4% to over 8% to the country’s economy during the years 1393 to 1398 was the agricultural sector. Until 2013, the share of the agricultural sector in the GDP in a 17-year period, with the explanation that this number is only related to the raw products of horticulture, agriculture, livestock, fisheries, forestry and agricultural services and does not include agricultural products, averaged 7 percent.
Indirect impact of agricultural activities including previous and post agricultural products is 16% of gross product Internally estimated.
Challenges facing the agricultural sector
The population of Iran in 1300 was less than 10 million people, which today has increased to more than 80 million people and is considered the 17th most populous country in the world. It is expected to be among the 10 most populous countries in the world in 2050 according to population growth plans. This population wants drinking water, they need water for agriculture and food, and an ecosystem for wetlands. With the current population, about half of the country’s calories are supplied from abroad.
Obviously, to produce more food for the target population, more water and more fixed capital will be needed. The amount of renewable water per capita in 1300 was about 13,000 cubic meters, but currently the amount of water per capita in the country has decreased to about 900 cubic meters and has brought socio-ecological crises. Therefore, the government in Iran needs the maximum convergence of the two ministries of “Energy and Jihad Agriculture” to achieve minimum levels of food security and sufficient energy for resilience.
Iran is very vulnerable to food supply disruptions caused by climate change. This is evident in the dependence on imports of basic commodities for the livestock and poultry industry, even as yields may be periodically disrupted in many food-producing regions by climatic events, leading to increased food prices. Additionally, with the growth of the middle class, the consumption and eating habits of society members have changed, increasing the demand for processed foods. The country needs buffers and strategic reserves with detailed and engineered logistics, which there is no room to explain.
Concluding Remarks
Finally, it must be said that Iran’s agricultural response to the recent agricultural revolutions requires grounding Good governance comes with detailed plans. In this regard, social security of farmers, commercial laws, financial policies and infrastructure development are necessary to attract private actors and investors in any country.
Fiscal policies can encourage or discourage private investment by influencing costs, subsidies, and market distortions. While subsidies may support the domestic agricultural sector, they can ultimately lead to market inefficiencies and distortions that stifle investment dynamics. Transitioning from a closed agricultural sector to a more open market exposed to global trade without agricultural diplomacy can be challenging. But government plans to facilitate this transition could be critical to the long-term success of the country’s food system.
Agricultural policy should integrate domestic agriculture both domestically and globally with the rest of the world (cultivation to make it more competitive especially in terms of quality, the government should create a suitable environment for the growth of the digital service industry and the creation of “rural telecenters”. Policies should directly support companies that support small farmers and agricultural proletarians with digital technology services. For example, “Tokenization” is reshaping the future of agriculture, and the digitization of the agricultural value chain is an example of a technological revolution that is changing the way food is grown, collected, and distributed.
Digitalization is broadly defined as the transition to technologies based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). These include the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cyber-physical systems (CPS), virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR), as well as some of the technologies, devices, and mobile applications that can be used with these systems. to be In the agricultural sector, digitalization is considered to have great potential to revolutionize agricultural activities and organize production and value chains.
Using sensors, drones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to monitor crop growth, improve management Water and production optimization has become a common practice.
Another example is using artificial intelligence and data analysis to make more informed decisions.
Automation is another key trend that is changing agribusiness in the region. Robots and autonomous machines are deployed in fields to perform tasks such as planting, harvesting and sorting crops. These capital investments are profitable in the long run by improving efficiency and productivity.
Sustainability is another important factor that will shape the future of this sector. Consumers and international markets demand food produced in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way. This leads to more responsible farming practices and adoption of technologies that reduce pesticide use and carbon footprint. For example, blockchain technology enables the digital transfer of product information through the chain, ensuring the traceability of their attributes at each stage. On the other hand, biotechnology helps produce products with specific nutritional properties and gives the consumer healthier products.
All of the above shows how in recent years, government governance in the agricultural sector has sought to recreate its role. It is through digital solutions and partnership-oriented with the private sector and the rich civil society to help the stakeholders; Be more resilient and efficient, increase productivity and reduce negative environmental impacts for greater sustainability.
