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本帖{zh1}由 lilywizardry 于 2010-3-16 15:10 编辑
Agriculture in India
印度的农业
Crop circles麦田怪圈
Indian policymakers should see agriculture as a source of growth, not votes印度的政治家们应该把农业看成经济增长点而非让他们当选的选票
Mar 11th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
INDIA’S industry is going from strength to strength. Manufacturing grew by 14.3% in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared with the same period in 2008. Politicians celebrate the achievements of “India Inc”, applauding its acquisitions abroad and welcoming the foreign investment it attracts.
印度工业发展状况愈发强劲， 2009年第四季度制造业增长幅度较2008年同比增长了14.3%。政客们为“印度公司”在海外所取得的并购以及海外对本国投资等所取得的一系列成绩而拍手称快。
They do not show anything like the same confidence in “Bharat Inc”, which is how India’s rural economy is sometimes described. Bharat, which means India in Hindi, is a different country. The rural heartland is courted for votes, smothered with regulations, and shielded from the global economy that corporate India is busy conquering. Yet the government cannot achieve the “inclusive” growth it aspires to without robust progress in agriculture, which still employs about half of India’s workforce. Agricultural growth cuts poverty twice as fast as other kinds, because the poor are mostly rural and they spend more than half of their household budgets on food.
而在’ Bharat Inc” 他就没有那么自信了Bharat Inc 它所呈现的是印度农业经济的现状，Bharat，在印地语中是印度的意思，却是一个迥然不同的国家 而政府却不能够取得全面的增长，它所谓的增长的概念中不包含着（农业生产技术）的进步，在印度农业生产中仍然使用着大约一半的印度劳动力。农业的增长是其他产业削减贫困速度的两倍，因为平困地区的人口一半都生活在乡村，在他们的日常开销中购买食品的比重占了就占了一大半。
Indian agriculture can comfortably feed the country, but that remains the sum of its achievement. The rapid increases in productivity achieved during the green revolution have levelled off, with soils responding only grudgingly to the heavy use of fertilisers. And farmers remain at the mercy of the monsoons. Thanks to the worst rains since 1972, agriculture shrank by 2.8% in the year to the fourth quarter. This year, for the first time in the country’s history, India’s factories may contribute more to GDP than its farms, forests and fisheries.
印度农业除了他们引以为傲的成就之外可以xx供养整个国家。绿色革命所取得产量的高速增长已随着土壤中大量施用肥料几近饱和。农民们面对季风也是束手无策。由于自1972年最为严重的大雨的袭击，本年第四季度农业产量已经缩减了2.8%。今年印度的工业对GDP的贡献量有史以来首次超过了农业，林业 和渔业。
Indian agriculture has performed so poorly largely because governments have treated it as a source of votes rather than as an engine of growth. The contrast with China is telling. China’s epochal reforms began on the farms. The growing efficiency of agriculture liberated labour and capital, spawning non-agricultural firms which eventually challenged state-owned enterprises. India freed industry first, and has barely reformed agriculture at all. Its policymakers remain stuck in the mindset of the 1960s, when India relied on food aid from America. They are more anxious to avoid such humiliation than to exploit fresh opportunities: they regard a state warehouse bursting with grain as a sign of success, and imports of wheat as a mark of defeat. Politicians’ outbursts against hoarders and speculators have stymied the development of storage facilities and commodity markets. And their concern to protect farmers from exploitative merchants has slowed the development of contract farming (see article).
印度农业表现的如此逊色的原因在很大程度上与政府有关，政府将其看成是政治选票的来源而非经济增长引擎，通过与中国比较你就能够明白。中国具有历史意义的改革始于农业改革。对劳动力和资本的解禁所带来的效率传递到了非农性质的公司，对国有性质的企业最终产生了很大的影响，而印度首先对工业采取的是宽松的政策，对农业几乎没有怎么改革。在20世纪六十年代中期印度要靠美国的援助艰难度日的时候，印度的领导人感到受到了牵制。这件丢面子的事情与去开拓新市场寻找新机会相比，显然后者更为重要的多了。政治家把国库中装满小麦看作是一种成功而从其他国家进口（粮食）则认为是一种失败。领导人对阻碍储存设备和商品市场发展的囤积者和投机商则恨之入骨。而他们对于农民免于受到商人剥削的过分保护也同时阻碍了农业市场经济化的发展。
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India’s government still fixes prices and subsidises inputs, when public money would be far better spent on infrastructure and research. It sets a floor under the prices of 25 commodities including rice, wheat, sugarcane and cotton, which discourages farmers from diversifying. Ashok Gulati of the International Food Policy Research Institute points out that an additional rupee spent on agricultural research yields 9.5 rupees of output. An extra rupee subsidising fertilisers, by contrast, returns just 0.85 rupees. Better storage and transport facilities would also allow farmers to profit from growing fruit, vegetables and flowers. These offer better prospects than staple cereals, like wheat and rice, which preoccupy policymakers. According to the World Bank, transporting grapes to the Netherlands from India costs more than twice as much as transporting them from Chile, even though Chile is twice as far.
印度政府仍然（对农产品）实行定价，补贴的政策，当这笔公共资金如果用到基础设施建设和研究领域的话会收到更好的效果。政府给包括大米，小麦，甘蔗和棉花等在内的25种农产品制定了基本价格，这一系列措施使得农民的积极性大受打击也使得耕种的农产品种类屈指可数。国际食品政策研究所的AshokGulati指出对于投入在农业研究上的额外开销能够产出9.5的印度卢比而通过对比显示投入在像化肥这一类的开销仅有0.85的印度卢比的回报。
（技术含量和功能）更加完善的存储和运输设备更加有助于农民种植像水果，蔬菜，鲜花这类的经济作物，进而更有利于他们获得良好的经济效益。种植像刚才提到的那些经济作物要比印度领导人死盯着不放手的小麦，大米等大宗生产的作物要有更加好的（经济）前景。
据世界银行透露的信息显示从印度向荷兰运送葡萄的运费是从智力运输到荷兰的两倍还多，尽管智力到荷兰的路程是印度的两倍。
Not so down on the farm 农业经济本非萎靡不振
The government is gingerly taking steps to improve things. On April 1st it will introduce a new fertiliser policy, which should add more nutrients to the soil while leaching fewer resources from the public coffers. In February’s budget the finance minister cut duties on cold-storage equipment and allowed Indian companies to borrow abroad to pay for it. The government acknowledges the money lost to middlemen and declares that we “need to take a firm view on opening up of retail trade”. But saying you need to take a view is not the same as taking one. And a “firm view” could be firmly in favour or firmly opposed.
政府正在小心谨慎的采取步骤进行改革。十月一日将要出台一项新的化肥（指标）政策，旨在增加化肥中营养物质的含量，而不是让公共资金打水漂。二月份政府财政部长出台了停止向进口冷藏设备征收关税的政策并且允许印度公司在海外借款偿付购买设备的费用。政府承认在此过程中资金流失到了中间商的口袋中与此同时，声称我们“我们需要采取一个审慎的眼光来开放零售业”但是需要采取和采取可是两码子事。同时一个“审慎的眼光”可以是xx支持，也可能是xx反对。
India needs to stop seeing agriculture as a problem to be nursed and start thinking of it as an opportunity to be grasped. The Doha Round of global trade talks has been repeatedly held hostage to India’s fears for its “subsistence” farmers. (In fact, few Indian farmers grow food purely for their own consumption, and if they did, they would, by definition, have nothing to fear from trade.) Despite all the talk of an agrarian crisis, India is already an agricultural force in some crops. It is the second-biggest exporter of cotton and was a net exporter of cereals for a decade after 1995, Mr Gulati points out.
印度（政府）是时候改变一下把农业看成是需要（政府财政资金）扶持的老眼光了，并且现在应该考虑下农业在发展的过程 中它自身能够抓住的机会了。多哈回合贸易谈判一直把印度自给自足的农民生计作为了“人质”（事实上，在印度很少有农民种植粮食单纯的为了自己消费如果是这样的话农民们在也不用担心贸易（所带来的价格降低）给他们带来的恐慌了。尽管谈论了不少有关于耕种危机的话题，其实印度在某些作物（产量）上仍然是农业（产量方面）主力军。
Mr Gulati指出印度在世界上是第二大的棉花出口国同时也是自1995年后谷物的主要出口渠道。
India will struggle to become an agricultural powerhouse like Brazil—its landholdings are too fragmented and its water sources too stressed for that. But its policymakers should treat farms as a potential source of growth, not just of votes. Then they might start to yield pride rather than pity.
印度将竭力成为成为巴西那样的农业巨鳄（尽管）在水资源和土壤条件方面并不占据什么优势。但是印度的当家人应把农业看成是一种潜在的（经济）增长点而不仅仅是选票，（如果真是那样的话）他们的自豪感就油然心生而不是一声又一声的叹息了吧。 |
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