Appendix 1-Kurdestan's Agriculture

Appendix 1-Kurdestan's Agriculture

KURDESTAN'S AGRICULTURE 10 YEARS AFTER ENGHELAB-E SEFID

Let's focus on one area of Iran, namely the Kurdestan's country side, more than ten years after Shah's Enghelab-e Sefid and see how the agriculture was moving at that time in comparison to the rest of Iran:

The data is from the "Natayej-e Amargiri Keshavarzi Marhal-e Dovom Sar-Shomari 1353" published by Sazmaneh Barnameh Iran in 1355.

I) THE GROWTH OF WAGE-LABOR:

# of agricultural families 112,129. 85% of these families lived off the land.of the above


57% did all the work by themselves
40% most work was done by themselves.
3% most work done by wage-laborers

For the whole of Iran, the same figures were 66%, 29%, and 5%. In other words the whole Iran was not much different from Kurdestan and the wage-labor had hardly existed even more than ten years after Enghelab-e Sefid.? This shows how stagnant has been the development of agriculture in Iran.

II) THE SALE OF WHEAT AND BARLEY

In KURDESTAN:

66.1% of products were not sold.
22.3% less than half was sold.
11.6% half or more is sold.

For the WHOLE country:

The same figures are 51.o%, 26.7%, and 22.3%.

Again the regions such as Gonbad are compensating pulling up the national average a bit higher than a region like Kurdestan but the figures are not much different. It shows that the agriculture was still not producing for sale which shows again the amazing stagnancy in the development of Iran's agriculture at the time.

III) THE SALE OF BEEF AND LAMB:

In KURDESTAN (Beef):

90.3% not sold.
8.8% less than half sold.
0.9% half or more sold.

For the WHOLE country:

The same figures are 80.3%, 16.0%, and 3.7%

In KURDESTAN (Lamb):

56.8% not sold
39.0% less than half sold.
4.2% half or more sold.

For the WHOLE country:

The same figures were 53.9%, 36.9%, and 10.2%.

Again the figures are not that different between Kurdestan and the rest of the country and the figures show that animal husbandry is essentially not for sale.

IV) WATERING:

In KURDESTAN:

17.5% use watering system.(Abi)
82.5% rain (Deim-i)

For the WHOLE country:

The figures are :37% and 63%.

Again this shows how backward the agriculture was that about 70% was deim-i.

V) FERTILIZERS:

Only 4% in Kurdestan and 39% in the whole country used fertilizers. This shows that Kurdestan in this area was at a real disadvantage but still the figures for the whole country are way below any industrial agriculture.

VI) TECHNOLOGY:

Only 5% of Iran's tractors and 12% of Iran's combines were in Kurdestan, which is even less than the number used in the city of Esfahan (the number was 1859 tractors and 295 combines). There could also be another reason. Kurdestan is more rocky in many areas and the dasht-e obato is deim-i and also around Sanadaj, the well-to-do farmers mostly bought tractors rather than rent. So this discrepancy is not by itself indicative of anything. But the numbers are so low that it shows the stagnancy of agriculture again.

VII) THE RETURN OF THE LAND:

The return of land in Kurdestan for wheat was 223 Kilo/Hectare which was lower than everywhere else in Iran except for Zanjan. The Iran's average was 483. The number for Yazd was 1913 and for Mazandaran was 1538. These discrepancies show how undeveloped the agriculture is that because of deim, there is such a drastic difference between different areas.

It is interesting that the numbers for bigger lands were much smaller. For example, for a 10 Hectare land the number was 1103K/Hectare whereas for a 100 Hectare land, it was 147K/Hectare . If the agriculture had developed, the reverse should have been the case. This shows that the bigger lands were not big in the sense of modern agricultural lands, but were the remainders of arbab-va-raiiti relations in the forms of bagh-e arbabi, etc.

Only in Mazandaran, because of the modern areas around Gonbad-e Ghaboos, the numbers show a reverse order. The 10 Hectar land has 1402 K/Hectare, whereas the 100 Hectare land shows 1999K/Hectare. In Kurdestan the return of a big land was even 750% lower than the small land, and this means a very strong remainder of arbab-va-raiiti relations (and molukultavaiif and Ashirati relations).

VIII) SUMMARY OF STATE OF AGRICULTURE IN 1977:

Even ten years after the Enghelab-e Sefid, Iran's agriculture had very low percentage of wage-labor, very small production for market (less than 40%), daimi watering, little growth of technology in the countryside, absence of modern techniques and finally the extremely low return of the land. So the residents had no place to go back to if the city could not provide them with a living. This is why the hashi-e neshins stayed in halabi-abads of Tehran and other major cities, but did not go back to the countryside. There was no place for them in the countryside.