📘 Q.5 IAS Prelims 2023 — Economics (Agriculture & Institutions)
🧷 Authentic Classroom Explanation by IAS Monk
📌 The Question:
Which one of the following best describes the concept of ‘Small Farmer Large Field’?
(a) Resettlement of a large number of people, uprooted from their homes, into a large cultivable land which they cultivate collectively and share the produce
(b) Many marginal farmers in an area organize themselves into groups and synchronize and harmonize selected agricultural operations
(c) Many marginal farmers in an area together make a contract with a corporate body and surrender their land to the corporate body for a fixed term for which the corporate body makes a payment of agreed amount to the farmers
(d) A company extends loans, technical knowledge and material inputs to a number of small farmers in an area so that they produce the agricultural commodity required by the company for its manufacturing process and commercial production
✅ Correct Answer: (b)
🧠 Curiosity Raiser
If landholding size cannot increase in India due to fragmentation,
can operational size increase without changing ownership?
👉 Small Farmer Large Field is the answer UPSC wants you to remember.
📘 Enrichment Notes (Conceptual Deepening)
🔹 What is Small Farmer Large Field (SFLF)?
SFLF is NOT land pooling, NOT corporate farming, and NOT contract farming.
It is a collective action model where:
- Land ownership remains individual
- Cultivation remains with farmers
- Operations are synchronized and harmonized
The goal is to simulate economies of scale without altering land rights.
🔹 Core Features of SFLF
✔️ Small & marginal farmers form groups
✔️ No surrender of land ownership
✔️ Synchronization of:
- Nursery preparation
- Transplanting
- Input purchase
- Harvesting
- Marketing
✔️ Collective bargaining → better prices & lower costs
🔹 What SFLF is NOT (Exam Traps)
❌ Option (a) → Collective resettlement (Land redistribution model)
❌ Option (c) → Corporate land leasing / land surrender
❌ Option (d) → Contract farming model
Only Option (b) matches SFLF.
🔹 Real-world Context (UPSC-friendly)
- Piloted in Odisha villages
- Around 112 farmers
- Nearly doubling of profits
- Additional gains:
- Time savings
- Social harmony
- Sustainable practices
🧩 Concept Lock (One-line Recall)
SFLF = Individual land, collective operations, shared efficiency
🧘♂️ IAS Monk Whisper
When land cannot grow, cooperation must.
Scale is not always about size — sometimes it’s about synchronization.