"Agriculture' and 'industry' are complementary to each other." Explain with five examples
Solution
The following are the five significant ways in which agricultural and industrial sector complements each other:
1. Raw material - Agriculture provides basic raw material to the industrial sector, e.g., cotton to a cloth industry and sugarcane to a sugar industry. Industrial sector, in turn, provides the basic inputs to the agricultural sector. Industrial goods such as tractor, harvesting machines, fertilisers are a few basic inputs that are used by the agricultural sector.
2. Market - Agricultural sector provides market to the industrial sector. This implies that the people engaged in agriculture consume the products produced by the industries. These products, to name a few, include soaps, fridges, televisions and so on.
3. Labour - Agricultural sector provides labour to the industrial sector. In other words, the industrial sector provides employment to the excess labour (disguised unemployeds engaged) in the agricultural sector.
4. Wage goods - The most important support that agriculture provides to the industries is the wage goods (or simply food grains). In simple words, agricultural sector feeds the industrial labourers, which keeps them healthy, and thereby makes them more productive.
5. Mutual dependence - Both the agricultural and industrial sector are mutually dependent on each other. In case of good harvest, the farmers have high incomes, which they use to demand more industrial goods. For example, during good harvests, many farmers buy new televisions, mobiles, clothes, etc. Similarly, when the people engaged in the industrial sector experience good income, they demand higher quantities of food grains, eat more fish, meat and drink milk.
