Maryam Aslani Peasant paranoia

Holland has 160,000 full time jobs in agriculture. In peak planting or harvesting seasons, about a quarter of a million are employed. Its gross value added output is worth about 20 billion dollars. Thus, each Dutch worker in agriculture is producing about 50,000 dollars worth of output in gross terms.

Indian agriculture produces 530 billion dollars while employing about 300 million. This gives less than 2000 dollars per worker per year in gross terms. Per capita income is closer to 3000 dollars. 

There's a good reason why Indians would rather move to a country like Holland whereas few Dutch workers would want to move to India. On the other hand, room for dramatic increases in productivity- and hence profits and incomes- is much greater in India precisely because there can be so much 'catch-up' growth. 

Writing for Aeon, Maryam Aslani, who has done field work in India, writes- 

The world needs peasants

It really doesn't. That's why no country is encouraging immigration of peasant households. All over the world, there has been a dramatic movement of workers from the agricultural to the manufacturing and service sector. 

Far from being a relic of the past, peasants are vital to feeding the world. 

Holland did have a Peasant's party after the Great War. But Europe's peasantry was disappearing. There were farmers and there were wage earners employed by farmers. Thus, since peasants did not exist, the 'Peasants party' changed its name to something less boorish. 

In India, 78 percent of farm families consume more agricultural produce than they grow. This means that half the country's crop-land is owned by less than subsistence farmers. These are people who need to stop being peasants because, if the country goes off a fiscal cliff, the Government won't be able to help them make ends meet. 

They need to be supported, not marginalised

No. They need to get the fuck out of farming. It's no fun being as poor as shit. 

Peasants are defined by family farms, usually 10 acres or less, whose output is optimised both for subsistence and for cash income.

Nonsense! Some smart farmers do 'optimize'. They need to be able to buy the land of their neighbours so as to gain economies of scope and scale.  

The work is carried out primarily by (unpaid) family labour.

Which creates an incentive to have a lot of kids. Demographic transition is what you get when girls move out of rural shitholes into big factory dormitories. If India did not have Socialistic land and labour laws, this is what would have happened. The country would be comfortably 'middle income'.  

Far more than farmers in rich countries – many of whom are effectively state employees –

This simply isn't true. Under Communism, when Land was collectivized, one could say that the State was the ultimate employer of those in the agricultural sector. But Communist countries didn't get rich.  

peasants are entirely exposed to the fluctuations of climate and markets; their fortunes can vary greatly from one year to the next.

Which is why they should stop being peasants. It is all very well saying, 'non-peasants should pay a lot in welfare benefits to peasants because they are so sweet and nice'. But, non-peasants don't want to do any such thing. They want to keep the money they earned. 

Peasants are fully integrated with the 21st-century economy, which could not operate without their production of sugar, cotton, cocoa and other essential commodities.

Nonsense! This stupid woman must have heard of sugar and cotton and rubber and cocoa plantations in the Nineteenth century. Why is she telling such stupid lies?  

Although they control less than one-quarter of the world’s agricultural land,

They control that much because shithole countries like India have left too much land in the hands of below subsistence farmers. 

peasant farming is highly efficient,

No. It is very inefficient. You may say 'but human labour is free for peasants'. But this is not the case. Calories cost money. Being a below subsistence farmer means you are very inefficient. The tax-payer is keeping you in business. 

and estimates suggest 70 per cent of the world’s population depends on them for some or all of their food.

This is baloney. What is true is that 70 per cent of all bullshit is produced by the NGO sector.  If you take a PhD in useless shit- the way Maryam has done- you too can join this useless industry.  

In many crucial sectors, peasant production is also more favoured by industry,

No. That's why 'industry' is not clamouring for the immigration of peasant families. It is a different matter that you have to work with what you have.  

and more suited to social conditions.

 The Taliban may be more suited to social conditions. That doesn't mean it is desirable from any point of view- save the eschatological. 

Peasant agriculture is better than industrial alternatives, also, at managing soil health,

Nope. India's soil was exhausted. A.O Hume noticed this 150 years ago. Amartya Sen's dad was a soil scientist. He and his colleagues did much to prepare the ground, intellectually speaking, for the Green Revolution.  

water resources

they should be priced properly. Good mechanism design for relevant markets promotes this. Paranoid NGO's screaming their tits off add noise to signal.  

and biodiversity,

we need more plague carrying rats- right?  

so it is widely seen as a shield against climate change.

By paranoid cretins. Indira Gandhi, five decades ago, recognized that it was peasants who were responsible for most of the environmental degradation India was experiencing.  

Without peasants, in short, the global economy could not function, and our natural systems would collapse.

Utter nonsense! Why not say 'without handloom weavers, we would all be naked' ?  

Life still depends on the peasantry.

Some NGOs depend on making this absurd claim to get a little money.  

We are all affected, therefore, by the fact that the peasantry is today in an acute crisis.

No. We are not affected at all. As for the peasant, all he wants is to stop being a peasant. He should be provided with a nice job by an NGO. He can repeat stupid lies just as well as a lady who studied at Oxford & London University.