43

 Even in egalitarian situations, decentralized farmer control

cannot automatically assure-equity. It is -likely that extension

services will be used by a few aggressive farmers, will enable them

to expand, and will contribute to an inegalitarian situation. Exactly

how this happens depends on the details of technology involved; but if

there are economies of scale in profitable technology and if invest-

ments are lumpy (e.g. tube well, tractorization), tenant eviction is

likely. It is wrong to expect a decentralized extension system to

prevent this, unless special programs are undertaken. Another problem

with local control is that it does not solve the overall economic prob-

lem of advanced agriculture, namely excessive production leading to low

prices, unless it can organize farmers to limit production

voluntarily.

 Of course, the ideal system would be to combine, somehow, the

strengths of a carefully managed, centralized system with the flexi-

bility and responsiveness of a decentralized system. This is com-

plicated and difficult, but it is precisely this combination which

some observers believe has been achieved in the modern American cor-

porate structure, which allows decentralized structures to make their

own operating decisions within the context of centralized strategic

and financial control.

 One structural device recommended by an organization special-

ist is to have some individuals (e.g. farmer group leaders or second

level administrators) function simultaneously in two levels of


 Alfred Chandler, Jr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in
the History of American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge: M.I.T.
Press, 1972). Cited in Hans Binswinger and Vernon Ruttan, Induced
Innovation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 333.