Conditions of Production Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The conditions of production in agriculture are the environmental factors that affect plant or animal growth. The conditions of production in industry are a form of socioeconomic organization that can lead to the real or apparent exploitation of local labor.

The conditions of production in agriculture are variables that affect yield and are often impossible to control, unlike conditions in industry that can be controlled. In many poor countries of the world, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, weather patterns or disease greatly affect the growing of crops. These and other conditions of production often lead to the loss of crops and independence when farmers have to mortgage their land or farm animals to local money lenders at usurious interest rates.

Historically, scholars have viewed small scale production units in third world countries as inherently efficient because they are the product of many years of hard work by many generations of a single family. It has been widely accepted that these small operations are at their peak of efficiency because all possible opportunities for production efficiency have already been attempted in generations gone by. However, recent studies indicate something more complex, if not the opposite.

Moreover, the growth of global agricultural corporations that can increase production efficiency through economies of scale, access to higher yielding seeds, and cheaper fertilizer are presenting small operations with external challenges to production efficiency and economic survival. Along with that economic challenge is the fact that studies have shown that small plot holders in third world countries do not exercise cooperative actions among themselves to control the spread of weeds and insects, which large scale operations can do with their access to insecticides and herbicides.

The conditions of production in agriculture have been the subject of intense study in the industrially advanced countries. This has led to studies of the growth rates for chickens, hogs, and beef cattle raised for consumption of meat. The feeding of the growing billions of people on the earth is pushing farmers to be ever more productive. For example, studies of dairy cattle have shown that there are optimum ages for productive activity for delivering calves and for producing milk, after which productivity goes into decline. To optimize the production of a dairy operation requires the removal of members of the herd on a regular basis once they reach the declining level of productiveness.

The conditions of production in industry are those natural conditions that affect production such as the weather. However, the organization of production can also greatly affect productivity. Adam Smith, in the beginning of The Wealth of Nations, the seminal economic work of capitalism, described the increased productivity of a pin factory that was gained through the division of labor in the manufacturing process. Near the same time that Smith wrote about the enclosure movement, the growing Industrial Revolution in England led to the development of the factory system. This way of organizing production virtually replaced the home cottage industry system. It forced large numbers of people into cities and into working for low wages in factories where the factors of production were rigorously controlled.

Today, with slavery virtually abolished globally, the use of exploitative labor occurs most often agriculturally on plantations and industrially in what are called “sweat shops.” In these instances, conditions of production are controlled externally and workers produce goods for lower wages than they would be paid in industrially advanced countries. In some cases the laborers are children.

In the growing agroindustries of the world, the production of living organisms includes not only traditional livestock or traditional food crops, but also the growth of traditionally cultivated insects such as silk worms or worms for fish feed. The production of living organisms includes the industrial production of microscopic organisms such as viruses for the manufacture of medicines and the production of bacteria for use in eating sludge and cleaning up oil spills.

Bibliography:

Takatoshi Ito and Andrew K. Rose, , Growth and Productivity in East Asia (University of Chicago, 2004);
Andrew K. Rose, E.G. Gregorich, and Martin Carter, Soil Quality for Crop Production and Ecosystem Health (Elsevier Science & Technology Books, 1997);
David Sadler, The Global Region: Production, State Policies and Uneven Development (Elsevier Science & Technology Books, 1992).