788 



tilizer plants in the LDCs. Both the United States and the World Bank 

 have exerted pressure in this direction, with a favorable effect on India, 

 for one example. However, other countries are less able to strike an 

 effective balance between imports and domestic production. Lacking 

 the ability either to produce or buy essential fertilizers, an LDC can 

 only look on while other more fortunate countries advance by rapid 

 strides to exploit the Green Kevolution. Potentially, at least, the situa- 

 tion threatens to divide the LDCs into two new categories of have and 

 have-not nations. 



THE PROBLEM OF FARM MECHANIZATION 



One of the consequences of the Green Revolution is that heightened 

 agricultural productivity provides a margin of return that enables 

 successful farmers to replace manpower with machines to increase 

 still further their manpower productivity and incomes. There is much 

 scope for this in the LDCs where more than 90 percent of the labor is 

 agricultural (compared with approximately five percent in the United 

 States). But if agricultural workers are replaced by machines and 

 throng to the cities to join the already massive numbers of unemployed, 

 a new problem will have been created. 



The advance of agriculture in the developing world is also held 

 back by deficiencies in machinery to work the land. There are times 

 when adequate mechanization might make a critical difference, as in 

 seedbed preparation, sowing, and harvesting. Additional inputs of 

 human labor and animal draft equipment will not do the job as fast 

 at these crucial times. But at the same time, as already suggested, 

 extreme care must be exercised as to the manner in which additional 

 mechanization is introduced, to avoid substantial displacement of 

 agricultural labor. 



Among the tasks for which the FAO experts suggest that mech- 

 anization is appropriate are land clearing, including leveling ; plough- 

 ing and seedbed preparation to allow earlj planting for increased 

 yields ; other cultivation work such as subsoiling, chisel ploughing or 

 stubble mulching ; threshing ; transport ; and pumping water for irri- 

 gation. The FAO suggests that such measures could actually increase 

 overall labor requirements since manpower released from one opera- 

 tion could be utilized in some other work for which it was better 

 suited in the farming system as a whole. Among these would be better 

 weeding, more frequent crop protection operations, pruning, more 

 careful irrigation, and improved marketing of produce.^^ 



How selective mechanization might actually create jobs is illustrated 

 in the case of irrigation. Traditional methods of irrigation do not 

 supply enough water for the new seeds to yield their maximum crops, 

 and are quite expensive. The introduction of a diesel-powered pump 

 not only cuts costs tremendously but also makes more water available 

 for production. Increased supplies of water mean increased production. 

 In turn, new land has to be prepared, planted, fertilized, weeded,, 

 harvested, and threshed, and each of these operations requires more 



='2 Food and Agrknlture Orga nidation of the UnltPd Nations. "Provisional Indicative 

 Worlci Plan for Agricultural Development. Vol. 1," op. cit.. page 177. 



