HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Tractor mechanization and rural development in Pakistan
Tractor mechanization in Pakistan is following a familiar pattern: the larger farmers, especially those located in areas where water is available and possibilities for increasing cropping intensity are favorable, are doing the innovating, often at the expense of displaced tenants.
Gotsch, Carl H. · 1970
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Abstract
The most feasible policy change to reduce the divergence between net social and net private benefits arising from mechanization could be to increase the direct costs of tractors and equipment by pricing capital at its opportunity cost. Such cost increases would be likely to slow the rate of mechanization to the point where the resulting social dislocations would be of manageable proportions. This policy change would do nothing to improve the distribution of incomes, or to increase employment, but it would allow for continued agricultural growth and a slow rise in farm wages sufficient to give the masses at least a nominal participation in the green revolution. The overall costs and benefits of importing technology require very careful analysis.
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