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The Creation of the Food Administration in Iran
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
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Agricultural production considered from an economic point of view has two important functions: first, to provide prime necessities for those inside and outside the agricultural sector, and second, to enable the financing of imports. In preindustrial countries like Qajar Iran, where more than 85 percent of the population was earning its living in the agricultural sector, the economic basis of the country was land and agriculture.
Agricultural production in Qajar Iran was characterized by a low level of technical specialization and labor division. The landlords showed no great interest in furthering agricultural production as indicated by a low level of investment in this sector, while the farmers were not encouraged by their masters to work for greater productivity.
The landlords were interested only in extracting the agricultural surplus, i.e., the agricultural production minus the consumption of the agricultural sector or, in other words, that part of the production that would end up outside the agricultural sector.
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- Iranian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3-4: Studies on the Economic and Social History of Iran in the Nineteenth Century , Summer-Autumn 1983 , pp. 199 - 227
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- Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1983
References
Notes
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46. FO 60/598, letters August 15, August 29, September 12, September 19, September 20, 1898.
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58. Ibid., pp. 402-408.
59. Ibid., pp. 430-32.
60. Ibid., pp. 495, 96.
61. Ibid., pp. 498-500.
62. Ibid., pp. 504-06.
63. Ibid., pp. 512-14.
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