<span>Hellenistic Macedonia, Hellenistic Syria, and Hellenistic Egypt
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Legislative , executive , judical
Colonialism had a devastating effect on Indian agriculture. This when Indian agriculture, like in any other pre-industrial society, accounted for the preponderant share of the country’s total output.
Colonialism shattered the basis of traditional Indian agriculture without bringing in any dynamic new forces. Commercialization of agriculture and differentiation within the peasantry occurred on an unprecedented scale. However, unlike independent societies undergoing transition from pre-industrial and pre-capitalist to capitalist mode of production, in India commercialization and differentiation did not mark the shift towards capitalist commodity production and the rise of the rich peasant/capitalist farmer.
Commercialization of agriculture in colonial India facilitated the extraction of surplus from the peasantry (through land revenue demand in cash) and the transfer of this surplus from India to Britain by bringing agricultural produce to the export market. The ‘unrequited’ export surplus being the size of the surplus extraction or ‘drain’ from India.
Similarly, differentiation of the peasantry in India by and large did not lead to the rise of the rich peasant/capitalist farmer but to the creation of a rentier landlord class. Thus, while Indian agriculture was transformed, it was done in a ‘colonial’ manner which had a long-term enervating effect on it.
The typical features that emerged in Indian agriculture under colonialism put an unbearable burden on the bulk of the Indian peasantry. First, the colonial state made a very high tax demand on agriculture. In the early colonial period the state made permanent settlements with zamindars (the zamindari or Permanent Settlement) fixing the land revenue rates at a very high level. The zamindar was the intermediary between the state and the direct cultivator. He committed to pay fixed land revenue to the state while he collected rent from the actual producers. However, since land revenue was fixed, the colonial state discovered that it was not able to mop up the rise in agricultural income caused by the rise in agricultural prices that occurred over time. The surplus or the increase in income was being largely appropriated by the intermediaries.
Consequently, all subsequent land tax or revenue settlements made by the colonial rulers were temporary settlements made directly with the peasant, or ‘ryot’ (e.g., the ryotwari settlements). In ryotwari areas and other areas under very similar tenurial system comprising over 40 per cent of British territories, the land revenue rates were periodically enhanced pushing them up to the maximum limit the economy or polity could bear. Contrary to British claims the actual land revenue collections under the British were generally much higher than those under the traditional indigenous rulers. Being rigid and inflexible in crisis years of low production or low income due to crash in prices, such as during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the land revenue collections could equal 75 per cent of the whole of the net produce of the peasant! Till the turn of the twentieth century land revenue constituted more than half of the total revenue raised by the colonial state.
Second, under colonialism Indian agriculture experienced the growth of landlordism and rack renting on a very wide scale. In the zamindari areas absentee landlordism and subinfeudation was rampant. So high were the rents and other exactions from the peasant that the gap between what was collected from the peasant and the land revenue paid to the state was in some areas able to sustain scores of layers of intermediaries between the state and the direct cultivator!
In the ryotwari areas, too, despite the direct settlements between the state and the peasant producer, landlordism and tenancy became widespread over time. By one estimate the landlord holdings in ryotwari areas covered 40 to 50 per cent of the total land. On the eve of independence roughly 60 to 70 per cent of the total cultivable land in British India (including zamindari areas) was owned by landlords.
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The agricultural (agrarian) revolution began in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Prior to that, most farmers lived in villages and walked out to common fields to tend crops mainly for their own consumption, using the same techniques that were employed for millennia. However, some new inventions, such as themoldboard plow; new ideas, such as rotating crops rather than letting fields lie fallow; and new laws, such as the Enclosure Act, which led to the consolidation and private ownership of land, led to a revolution in agricultural production.
In the American colonies, there were large regional differences in agriculture. The colonies were an agrarian society in which more than ninety percent of the population were farmers. In therocky soil of New England, most people had small family farms, and they often had common grazing land for their livestock on their village greens. In the fertile Southern There are a number of social factors causing food shortages. The rate of population increase is higher than increase in food production. The world is consuming more than it is producing, leading to decline in food stock and storage level and increased food prices due to soaring demand a midst low supply (ACC, 2008). Increased population has led to clearing of agricultural land for human settlement reducing agricultural production (Kamdor, 2007). Overcrowding of population in a given place results in urbanization of previously rich agricultural fields. Destruction of forests for human settlement, particularly tropical rain forest has led to climatic changes, such as prolonged droughts and desertification. Population increase means more pollution as people use more fuel in cars, industry, domestic cooking. The resultant effect is increased air and water pollution which affect the climate and food production.
Environmental factors have greatly contributed to food shortage. Climatic change has reduced agricultural production. The change in climate is majorly caused by human activities and to some small extent natural activities. Increased combustion of fossil fuels due to increasing population through power plant, motor transport and mining of coal and oil emits green house gases which have continued to affect world climate. Deforestation of tropical forest due to human pressure has changed climatic patterns and rainfall seasons, and led to desertification which cannot support acrop production. Pollution comes in various forms; these forms include air pollution, water pollution and soil pollution. Population pressure has led to overgrazing and deforestation of agricultural lands reducing the size and fertility of agricultural land due to soil erosion. Increased deposits of industrial affluent, farming and soil particles into water bodies have led to water pollution. Land degradation due to increased human activities has impacted negatively on agricultural production (Kamdor, 2007). Natural disasters such as floods, tropical storms and prolonged droughts are on the increase and have devastating impacts on food security particularly in developing countries. Drought is the leading cause of food scarcity in the world, as consecutive years of droughts have led to massive crop failures and loss of livestock in the horn of Africa and Central America. Recent floods have rendered many people homeless, destroying crops and animals in parts of India and other several third world nations (Bourke, Allen, and Salisbury, 2000).