INTRODUCTION

Most studies of the Green Revolution conceive of it as the vehicle with which a pre-capitalist peasantry is brought into the fold of a market economy. The following comment is typical:

The nature of this traditional peasantry as evocated in statements like “padi planting is therefore never a business proposition. It is a way of life”, is widespread as conventional wisdom not merely in political discourse but also in the academic literature. A geographer's description of the North Kedah Plain in 1951 made repeated reference to the “self-contained subsistence farmers who plant a few coconuts around their huts to supplement their rice and set traps in the glam swamp for edible fish.” Further in the text, he adds: “Throughout this period (between 1911-47) a close approximation to self-contained subsistence farming based on padi has been the mode of life on the Plain…”

Furthermore,

The system is thus seen to comprise a large mass of small producers with an intact subsistence cycle, surplus for trade being extracted via rents in kind. Alternatively, the marketed surplus is seen to issue from larger farms which produce sufficient quantities to engage in “commercial production”. Thus, in the calculations of the CPR study: