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Food supply and agricultural self-sufficiency in contemporary Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

K. S. McLachlan
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Extract

Iran was preeminently and agricultural country until recent times. Growth of oil production, exports and revenues during the course of the twentieth century led increasingly to it playing an expanded but rather geographically and economically restricted role in the structures of both employment and national income. As late as the 1960s, more than half of all Iranians in gainful employment were to be found in agriculture or related activities and most Iranians were essentially rural dwellers. Only with the advent of land reform and other upheavals in the countryside from 1961 was there a marked change in the situation. Whatever its other merits, land reform overthrew a form of equilibrium in rural areas that had previously fostered conservatism, isolation and immobility. Among the changes brought in the train of reforms enforced by the central authorities beginning in the early 1960s were displacement of population at an accelerating rate. Rural People left agricultural employment and, as soon as opportunity presented itself, moved from the villages to the towns.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 1986 , pp. 148 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1986

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References

1 Iranians themselves perceived their country to be based on agricultural output. So strong was their faith in the strength of agriculture, that Mohammad Musaddiq, prime minister during the oil crisi of 1951–53, declared that Iran could survive Without oil exports if necessary, since it could feed itself and be in most ways self-sufficient. Cf.Cottam, R. W., Nationalism in lran, Pittsburgh, 1964, 201–2.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Bharier, J.. The Iranian economy 1900–70, London, 1972Google Scholar. Bharier makes the point that Iran remained a slow-developing economy of an entiraly traditional kind until after the and of World War II (pp.52–9). Data from the world Bank suggest that agrieulture was the largest single contributor to national income until 1972. The position of agriculture as an employer was even more long-standing and it was only in the 1970s that the agricultural labour force dropped to less than half of the total (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, World Development Report, Washington/London, various years).

3 See Lambton, A. K. S., The persian land reform 1962–66, Oxford, 1969, 347–9.Google Scholar

4 See Lambton, A. S., Landlord and peasant in Persia, London, 1953, 393–401.Google Scholar

5 It is estimated that the rural population declined during inter-censal periods from 68.80% of the total in 1956, to 62.0% in 1966 and 53.0% in 1976. According to official figures Published in Iran Press Digest, November 6, 1984, 15, the proportion fell to 47.3% in 1982.

6 Iranian Government income from oil exports was valued at $922.8 million in 1969. By 1973, oil revenues amounted to $4,399.2 million, rising rapidly thereafter to peak at $21,210.2 million in 1978. The eontribution of the oil sector to national income (GDP) stood at 14% in 1969 but 31% in 1979, While agriculture declined form 23% to 10% over the same period.

7 Agricultural imports were valued at $1,031 million in 1978, accounting for 9.9% of non-oil imports. This contrasts with imports of $110 million (7.1% of the total) in 1969.

8 See Satvatmanesh, S.. Determinants of Iran's agricultural trade, 1960–65, Unpublished ph.D. Thesis, London University, 1980Google Scholar, and Brun, T. H. and Dumont, René, ‘Les risques de dépendance alimentaire du modele de déeloppement agricole en Iran’, Iranian Economic Review, No. 5–6, 1978, 81–109.Google Scholar

9 A principal element of the economic policy of the new regime was resuscitation of agriculture, yet the administration found difficulties in deciding on the preferred form of agrarian structure and on how to motivate improvements in output. Meanwhile, imports of foodstuffs continued at levels comparable with the period preceding the revolution.

10 Khorramshahr, Iran's main port, was effectively closed to traffic from late 1980 so that all sea-borne imports had to be handled by Bandar Khomeini, Bandar Abbas and other installations. The system was heavily overloaded by war requirements, which made tha additional burden of food imports doubly embarrassing for the authorities.

11 See Banani, A., The modernization of Iran, Stanford, 1961.Google Scholar

12 Overseas Consultants Inc., an American organization, was charged with preparing Iran's first plan. It produced a report (Report on Seven Year Development Plan, New York, 1949) in which it laid down the following aims: ‘To increase the production of foodstuffs for the population’. ‘To produce the necessary raw materials for domestic industries’ and ‘To increase agricultural exports’ (III, 9).

13 First and second development plans were rendered largely ineffective as a result of political or economic upheaval. The Anglo-Iranian oil crisis Precluded implementation of the first plan, while the second Plan was affected by a severe ecnomic stabilization programme brought on by shortage of foreign exchange and high rates of domestic inflation. The third plan, in contrast, although subject to constant changes arising from the reform programme introduced by Mohammad Reza Shah, was one of rapid economic improvement.

14 The third plan called for an ‘incerease in production to meet the food and agricultural raw materials demands of the nation’, to ‘increase rural levels of living ’ and ‘improve the equitability of income distribution’. (plan Organization, Outline of the Third Plan, Tehran, 1344, 74–5.)

15 A clear manifestation of the importance given to agriculture by the authorities in the fifth plan was allocation of only 6.6% of all financial resources to that sector, the lowest of all and comparing particularly badly with industry and mines with 18.0%, housing with 19.7% and petroleum with 16.8%.

16 Ayatollah Khomeini, speaking to workers of the (Jihad-e Sazandegi Jihad-e), is reported to have advised them, ‘Iran is a country where agrieculture must be the basis for all things; those who say it is not possible to become self-sufficient in this field do not have correct information’. Mohammad salamati, when Minister of Agriculture, quoted in Survey of World Broadcasts, Tehran, 27 April, 1984, ME/W1286/A1/6.

17 An interesting debate on the incongruity and inherent unlikelihood of national food selfsufficiency appeared in a short paper produced bt Hussein Mahdavi, reprinted in English as ‘Considerations on the agrarian question in Iran’, Iran press Digest, Aprill 18, April 24, and May 2, 1984 as a three-part series, respectively, pp. 6–, 9–12, and 4–. Mahdavi stopped short of denying the utility of the self-sufficieney programme but made clear that its achievement rested on premises for long expected to be outside the scope of the Government. By implication too, he predicted that agriculture would fail to recover to be a major sector within the economy by calling for more attention to grawth in industry, mines and urban services.

18 Salamati, op. cot., ‘It is of the utmost importance to know that Iran was self-sufficient in food until the Jate 1960s…’

19 cf. O., Aresvik ‘Basic questions of Iranian agricultural policy’, Iranian Economic Review, Tehran, 1978, 211–19. ‘Agriculturally, Iran a sleping giant’ (p.211). Aresvik took a similar stance in his study The agricultural development of Iran, New york, 1976.Google Scholar

20 Lambton (1953). op. cit., 391.

21 The author was engaged in field-work in the Gonabad area of Khorasan in 1963/64. At that time drought conditions had led to a shortage of meat throughour the region. Prices of meat rose and many families were managing on meatless diets.

22 Lambton (1953), op. cit., 391.

23 Razavian, M. T., Iranian communilies of the persian Gulf, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, LondonUniversity, 1976, ch. i.Google Scholar

24 W., Bartsch, Labour supply and employment-creation in urban areas of Iran, Unpublished Pd.D. thesis, LondonUniversity, 1969, p. 16.Google Scholar

25 A proportion aof wheat came to Iran under a variety of aid programmes sponsored by American official organizations.

26 Bank Markazi Iran, Annual Report, various years.

27 Mclachlan, K. S. ‘The Iranian economy 1960–76’ in H., Amirsadeght (ed.). Iran in the twenlieth century, London, 1977, 141.Google Scholar

28 Total Iranian imports of wheat ran at an annual average of less than $10 million during the 1950s abd 1960s (fig. 6).

29 The so-called ‘Green Revolution’, which was essentially concerned with introducing improved, high-yield varieties of cereal sced had little impactn in Iran. Availability of fertilizor, irrigation water and extension services was confined to too small an area for the green revolution to bring appreciable gains to Iranan farming.

30 This figure was quoted by British Agrieultural Exporters, A report on Iranian agriculture, London. 1984. 9.Google Scholar

31 In fact, rising standards of living, with particular effect from the late 1970s, meant that income elasticity for food remained at high levels. Total consumption of wheat per head rose. In cionsequence, the domestic proportion provided declined, the balance made good by imports. cf. Yousefi, M. and Abizadeh, S., ‘Food self-sufficiency: the case of Iran’, Iranian Economic Review, Tehran, 1978, 203–7.Google Scholar

32 Several senior members of the state organization responsible for importing sugar were tried in charges of corruptly entering into arrangementa for imports on a scale and at prices that were inflated above real Iranian needs.

33 Imports of red meat rose, for example, from 24,200 tons in 1974/75 to 53,800 tons in 1975/76.

34 It was estimated that the majority of Iranian farmers were engaged in subsistence rather than commercial farmin g until 1963. See Nahavandi, H. and Serecht, F., ‘Le développement de I' économie iranienne: situation et perspectives’, Iranian Economic Review, No. I, 1976, quoted by Brun and Dumont, op. cit., 108.Google Scholar

35 Ayatollah Montazeri made the point in July 1984 during a discourse on difficulties facing agriecultural production in Iran that ‘Why should the well-to-do urban population be able to purchase what it wants cheaply and easily’ but when it comes to purchases by farmers it is said that their purchasing power should not be incresed ⃛’. Tehran home serviee reported in Survey of world Broadcasts (ME/7695/A/6).

36 Bharier op. cit., 40.

37 F., Lander, Iran: oil money and the ambitions of a nalion, Hudson paper, Paris, 1975, Lander produced statistics which suggested that gains in dietary standards came very slowly during the early 1970s even in comparison with India and Mexico.Google Scholar

38 United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the pacific, Annual Report, Bangkok, 1983, 88.Google Scholar

39 Estimates of the unmber of foreiners in Iran vary considerably acording to source. Probably, not less than a quarter of a million higher-paid aliens, including many families, were resident in Iran by the mid-1970s.

40 The company manufactured a variety of tinned foods, often using Persian recipes and formulated from Iranian-grown crops, in an effort to capture a share of the new urban consumer market for Iranian agriculture.

41 Phase One of land reform, put into effect in 1962, was generally belived to have been intended to trim the provincial power of those large landowning families who had dominated the majlis in the years before its suspension in 1960. See Mclachlan, K. S. ‘The Iranian land reform’ in Fisher, W. B. (ed.), The Cambridge history of Iran, I, Cambridge, 1968, 685.Google Scholar

42 Tapper, R. ‘Introduction’ in Tapper, R. (ed.), The conflict of tribe and state in Iran and Afghanistan, London, 1983, 29.Google Scholar

43 T. A. Brun and René Dumont, op. eit., 98–9.

44 The reforms were ultimately unified within the so-called ‘White Revolution’ that began with six elements—land reform, literacy, enfranchisement of women, nationalization of forests, sale of state industries and share-participation by industrial workers. The most important points eoncerned agriculture and/or the rural community.

45 The third plan, 1962–67, devoted principal resources to construction of three large dam/reservoir schemes on the Dez, Sefid Rud and Karaj Rivers, respectively. While the fourth plan, 1968–73, was less clearly aligned towards agricultural development, it none the less included several new reservoir projects and a number of regional development schemes such as those at Jiruft and Dasht-e Moghan. Only in the fifth plan, which was abandoned in favour of ad hoe programmes after the oil crisis of 1973, was agriculture not given nominal pride of place.

46 Agriculture accounted for 49%, 17%, and 9% of total finacial allocations in the third, fourth and fith development plans, respectively.

47 In the case of the Dez dam, for example, wich began its construction phase in the early 1960s, electrical power was made available long before irrigation water was fed to the plain of Khuzestan. The Karaj dam, also conceived as a multi-purpose scheme, was ultimately given over almost entirely to electric power generation and provison of potable water to Tehran. Often, therefore, apparent generosity to areiculture was a form of disguised subsidy to the urban sector.

48 In particular, the Ministry of Economy (later Economy and Finance) under Mr. Hushang ansari was above all concerned with stimulating rapid national and regional economic development through industrialization rather than squandering scarce resources on agriculture, where gains would never be other than slow and expensive. Private communication, Tehran, 1971.

49 Private communication, under secretary of Ministry of Economy, Tehran, 1973.

50 Mohammad Reza Shah promised in his speech from the throne in the year following the oil price revolution that the state was dedicated to establishing ‘ a Great Civilization’ within the immediate future. His prime minister of the day. Mr. Amir Abbas Hoveyda, was moved to foresee that Iran would become among the five major world powers by the year 2000.

51 The principal executive ministries, orchestrated by the Plan and Budget Bureau, imposed a policy during the 1968–73 plan period for concentration of all state investment in rural areas into a limited number of designated ‘growth poles’. It was proposed that all other settlements—more than 40,000 in total—should receive no government funds other than for relief purposes. In many ways this policy was designed to force the rural population to regroup, abandoning the smaller villages and the agricultural lands that they had held. The Government also persisted in applying pricing policies to agricultural products that badly disadvantaged Iranian producers and could only result in elimination of all but the most efficient producers. Cf. S. Satvatmanesh, op. cit.

52 That is, in conditions where the urban sector was developing rapidly but without over-straining the real resources available to it and where new productive assets were in process of formation within a well conceived and balanced programme.

53 The author visited the Dezful and Veiz areas of Khuzestan in 1978, when many villages showd the combined effects of negative policies by the central authorities and the rise in the economic attraction of urban employment. In at least one village of the region, the only cultivation undertaken at that time was of small kitchen-garden plots. The greater area of village lands, normally given over to vegetables and grains, was altogether unused.

54 See Mclachlan, K. S., The deserted garden, London, 1986, ch. iii.Google Scholar

55 An interesting analysis of this feature of traditional agriculture in the semi-arid world is given in H., Bowen-Jones and Dewdney, J. C. (ed.), Malta, Durham, 1960.Google Scholar

56 cf. Salmanzadeh, C., Agricultural change and rural society in southern Iran, Wisbech, 1980.Google Scholar

57 A. K. S. Lambton (1953). op. cit., 307–29.

58 It is estimated that migration of rural pepoles to the towns came to dominate all internal migration by the early 1970s. Cf. Clark, B., ‘Iran: Changing population patterns’ in Clarke, J. I. and Fisher, W. B. (ed.), Populations of the Middle East and North Africa, London, 1972, 91.Google Scholar

59 Government revenues from oil rose from $1, 109.3 million in 1970 to $4,399.2 million in 1973 and $17, 821.8 million in 1974. Despite the problems the Iranian economy was experiencing while attempting to absorb the comparatively modest volumes of oil revenues during the period 1970–73, when stresses were manifested in the form of rising inflation, the fifth plan was entirely revised after the oil price increase of 1973. THe new fifth plan forecast a fivefold increase in state expenditures on development alone for the 1973–78 period. The majority of expenditures both under the plan and through the ordinary budgets were to be used for urban-based developments. Severe shortages of labour and other resources created an irresistible attraction to rural peoples to move from what appeared to be deprived conditions in the countryside to a real promise of afdfluence in the towns. See Stobbs, C. A., Agrarian change in western Iran: a case study of Olya Sub-district, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, London University, 1976, for an intersting example of the pressures in villages at that time.Google Scholar

60 cf. Plan Organization, The economic, social and cultural development plan, 1983/1984–1987/1988, Tehran, 1362sGoogle Scholar.

61 See Iran: Quarterly Economic Review, Economist Intelligence Unit, No. 4, 1983, 17–18.

62 Production yearbook, F.A.O., Rome. THe F.A.O. figures appear to have been based on offcial Iranian statistics of dubious origin and often disputed by the Iranian Statistical Centre publications.

63 Although official estimates put the forecast gain of urban areas through migration from the villages at only 1.59 million for the period 1981/82–1986/87 (‘ Population of Iran and its needs’, Iran Press Digest, April 24, 1984, 3), a more realistic view would suggest at least two or probably more than three times this figure. The city of Tehran, for example, grew from some 5.5 to II m. between 1979 and 1984 according to reliable Iranian sources (verbal communication, Plan Organization, Tehran, May, 1984). This growth was fuelled by migrants from the countryside.

64 Even discounting the change in status of a number of villages to urban areas, the urban populations is forecast to grow by 6.7 million to 24.3 million by 1986/87, while the rural population will remain relatively slow growing from 19.9 million to 21.9 million over the same period.

65 H., Katouzian, Political economy of modern Iran, London, 1981, 234–54.Google Scholar

66 H. Mahdavi, op. cit., 12.