India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

[Rajiv]

India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

Farmers in the village of Chotia Khurd in northern India don't realize it, but they symbolize a growing problem that could become a global crisis.

They gathered on a recent morning in a stone-paved courtyard — a circle of Sikhs with brightly colored turbans and big, bushy beards — to explain why the famed "bread basket" of India is heading toward collapse.

Their comparatively small region, Punjab, grows far more wheat and rice for India than any other region. But now these farmers are running out of groundwater.

They have to buy three times as much fertilizer as they did 30 years ago to grow the same amount of crops. They blitz their crops with pesticides, but insects have become so resistant that they still often destroy large portions of crops.

The state's agriculture "has become unsustainable and nonprofitable," according to a recent report by the Punjab State Council for Science and Technology. Some experts say the decline could happen rapidly, over the next decade or so.

One of the best-known names in India's farming industry puts it in even starker terms. If farmers in Punjab don't dramatically change the way they grow India's food, says G.S. Kalkat, chairman of the Punjab State Farmers Commission, they could trigger a modern Dust Bowl.
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'Green Revolution' Trapping India's Farmers In Debt

As the world's population surges, the international community faces a pressing problem: How will it feed everybody?

Until recently, people thought India had an answer.

Farmers in the state of Punjab abandoned traditional farming methods in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the national program called the "Green Revolution," backed by advisers from the U.S. and other countries.

Indian farmers started growing crops the American way — with chemicals, high-yield seeds and irrigation.

Since then, India has gone from importing grain like a beggar, to often exporting it.

But studies show the Green Revolution is heading for collapse.

A Thirst For Water

On a recent morning, a drilling rig is pounding away in the middle of a wheat field near the village of Chotia Khurd. The sound, part jackhammer and part pile driver, is becoming increasingly common in the farm fields of northern India's Punjab region.

The farmer, Sandeep Singh, is supervising and looking unhappy as the rig hammers away, driving deeper and deeper under his field in search of water.

When India's government launched the Green Revolution more than 40 years ago, it pressured farmers to grow only high-yield wheat, rice and cotton instead of their traditional mix of crops.

The new miracle seeds could produce far bigger yields than farmers had ever seen, but they came with a catch: The thirsty crops needed much more water than natural rainfall could provide, so farmers had to dig wells and irrigate with groundwater.

The system worked well for years, but government studies show that farmers have pumped so much groundwater to irrigate their crops that the water table is dropping dramatically, as much as 3 feet every year.

So farmers like Sandeep keep hiring the drilling company to come back to their fields, to bore the wells ever deeper — on this day, to more than 200 feet.

Farmers In Debt

The groundwater problem has touched off an economic chain reaction. As the farmers dig deeper to find groundwater, they have to install ever more powerful and more expensive pumps to send it gushing up to their fields.

Sandeep says his new pump costs more than $4,000. He and most other farmers have to borrow that kind of cash, but they are already so deep in debt that conventional banks often turn them away.

So Sandeep and his neighbors have turned to "unofficial" lenders
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[vanvaley1]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

Be interesting to see some of these huge corporate agricultural conglomorates intent on controlling all the world's food supply by offering 'modern' seeds, technology, and farming practices become 'too big too fail' and fall flat on their face. When their 'system' can't adapt to a catastrophe they'll be 'forced' to ask for a 'bailout' from the government as their present subsidizies and tax breaks won't be enough to satisfy the stock and bond holders.

Sooner or later, one of these genetically modified products is gonna run up against a 'bug' it can't defeat or a systemic flaw in an implemented farming 'system' will take its toll and a disaster is going to occur. Didn't the Irish have more than one type of potato but select only one to be dependent upon? And in doing so, when that 'selected' one went under so did many Irish?

Time to start breaking up the 'too big to fail' companies in all aspects of the business community. This 'imperial' business model seems to have some serious 'systemic' shortcomings... especially when its 'bedding' the government at the same time.

[World Traveler]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

This is indeed cause for concern. Once the sub-surface water is gone, it takes a long, long time to recover. And India has 1 billion people to feed, 1/6 of the world's population. So it becomes a global issue.

The good news is that India is quick to adopt new and better technologies. Hopefully, one can be found to address this very serious issue. Perhaps ways to collect and pipe monsoon rain run-off and pipe it to drier regions.

[GRG55]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

Be interesting to see some of these huge corporate agricultural conglomorates intent on controlling all the world's food supply by offering 'modern' seeds, technology, and farming practices become 'too big too fail' and fall flat on their face...

Care to be a bit more specific as to which companies you are referring to? [Other than Monsanto, of course.]

I wasn't aware there was yet another global conspiracy, this time to control the food supply. The question that comes to mind is why would a company "intent on controlling all the world's food supply" provide any modern seeds, technology and farming practices that seem to have expanded said food supply in recent decades? Wouldn't it be a lot easier for them if there was a lot less food around that they needed to gather up in order to "control" it?

Just askin'

By the way, for all the criticism that is being levelled at India over unsustainable agricultural practices in this article I would make one observation: Unsustainable practices are by no means unique either to the agriculture sector of economies, nor to Indian agriculture alone. Government policies around the world directed mostly at subsidizing the internal production of food to achieve the political goal of "self sufficiency" in critical foodstuffs, have had a far greater effect distorting that economic sector, and promoting unsustainable behaviours, than anything any single seed or technology provider has ever been able to do. You would not know it by reading this article but some good has come from the so-called green revolution in India...to tap the deep aquifers for irrigation required the pursuit of rural electrification. And with electricity came standard-of-living benefits throughout Punjab that go well beyond agriculture.

Besides, when was the last time you can recall a famine in India?

[leegs]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

This is indeed cause for concern. Once the sub-surface water is gone, it takes a long, long time to recover. And India has 1 billion people to feed, 1/6 of the world's population. So it becomes a global issue.

The good news is that India is quick to adopt new and better technologies. Hopefully, one can be found to address this very serious issue. Perhaps ways to collect and pipe monsoon rain run-off and pipe it to drier regions.

The better technologies are not new - they are ancient and were well known until buried by big agribusiness, essentially summed up by the term 'organic gardening'. They involve growing a mix of locally adapted crops in soil full of natural organic (meaning full of living organisms) activity using techniques like crop rotation to minimize damage from pests and diseases.
One can't pretend that this old approach will allow the kind of yields that were temporarily obtainable from the 'green revolution'. Similarly one can't pretend that the economy of the 2010's will be as luxurious as was that prior, obtainable from debt. Its the same principle.

[GRG55]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

The better technologies are not new - they are ancient and were well known until buried by big agribusiness, essentially summed up by the term 'organic gardening'. They involve growing a mix of locally adapted crops in soil full of natural organic (meaning full of living organisms) activity using techniques like crop rotation to minimize damage from pests and diseases.
One can't pretend that this old approach will allow the kind of yields that were temporarily obtainable from the 'green revolution'. Similarly one can't pretend that the economy of the 2010's will be as luxurious as was that prior, obtainable from debt. Its the same principle.

You are describing a utopia that never existed. The reality was of largely subsistence living for much of the populations of North America and Europe, frequent crop failures pretty well anywhere food was grown [if it wasn't lack of rain, it was locusts or some other pest, or a plant disease that wiped out entire regions].

I don't disagree that there's some serious problems with the way we grow and distribute food today. But for all its faults the system does produce enough food to feed a record population of humans on this planet today. You acknowledge that the "old approach" won't allow the yields currently enjoyed by mankind. And perhaps the current yields are unsustainable as well. But short of a massive global de-population, some other solution than rolling back the clock is going to be needed.

[GRG55]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse




'Green Revolution' Trapping India's Farmers In Debt

I went back a re-read this article again. The author obviously did not do any homework, and knows virtually nothing about the history of agriculture [or apparently anything else] in Punjab. This is as good an example of "lazy journalism" as one will find.

Here's just one example. From the article:

...When farmers switched from growing a variety of traditional crops to high-yield wheat and rice, they also had to make other changes. There wasn't enough rainwater to grow thirsty "miracle" seeds, so farmers had to start irrigating with groundwater...

Anybody with a grade school education would know:

1. Growing rice requires a lot of water, and has nothing to do with whether the rice seed is some sort of "miracle" GM variant.
2. Wheat has been grown in the Punjab for eons. Whole wheat, steam leavened flat bread is a long standing staple in the diet, going back long before any of those dastardly American agricultural specialists arrived on scene to "screw up a good thing" with their funny seeds, fertilizers and metal tractors.
3. The use of ground water irrigation is a completely different issue from GM seeds, fertilizers and all the rest of the charges being levelled in the article, and in at least one of the subsequent posts on this thread. Irrigation in Punjab freed the farmers from the vagaries of the monsoon rain cycle and, further, in some parts of that state allow them to grow up to three crops a year instead of the traditional rain dependent single crop.

Just a wee bit of homework on the part of the author could have unearthed some basic facts. But then when one reads this sort of garbage which today passes for journalism...

...They plowed with tractors instead of bulls...They bought American tractors for a small fortune...

...being factual wasn't the intent of the article, was it...:rolleyes:

[India is one of the world's largest manufacturers of tractors and has been a net exporter of them since the mid-1970s. The tractors made by Bombay based Mahindra are a common site where I live in Canada; we have two of them on our equine ranch]

[leegs]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

You are describing a utopia that never existed. The reality was of largely subsistence living for much of the populations of North America and Europe, frequent crop failures pretty well anywhere food was grown [if it wasn't lack of rain, it was locusts or some other pest, or a plant disease that wiped out entire regions].

I don't disagree that there's some serious problems with the way we grow and distribute food today. But for all its faults the system does produce enough food to feed a record population of humans on this planet today. You acknowledge that the "old approach" won't allow the yields currently enjoyed by mankind. And perhaps the current yields are unsustainable as well. But short of a massive global de-population, some other solution than rolling back the clock is going to be needed.

It wasn't my intent to describe a utopia, past or future. Rather it was to highlight the fact that many of the new technologies applied to agriculture are over the medium term counterproductive and unsustainable. For example the extensive use of pesticides results in a spiral of ever-increasing quantity and variety of pests that require more pesticides.
Perhaps some of that old technology, coupled with an electrified landscape and some modern wells, represents a sustainable middle ground. I do not think that better chemicals and new GMO crops and intensive monoculture are part of the long term solution.

As to your last sentence, I don't disagree with it. But I fail to see how the need for a solution necessarily translates to the existence of one. Of course we humans have a pretty good track record so far of rising to the occasion in the face of great need. But I fear that past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

[flintlock]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

You are describing a utopia that never existed. The reality was of largely subsistence living for much of the populations of North America and Europe, frequent crop failures pretty well anywhere food was grown [if it wasn't lack of rain, it was locusts or some other pest, or a plant disease that wiped out entire regions].

I don't disagree that there's some serious problems with the way we grow and distribute food today. But for all its faults the system does produce enough food to feed a record population of humans on this planet today. You acknowledge that the "old approach" won't allow the yields currently enjoyed by mankind. And perhaps the current yields are unsustainable as well. But short of a massive global de-population, some other solution than rolling back the clock is going to be needed.

Agree. Most human endeavor before recent times was consumed with getting enough to eat. It was a constant problem for most people around the globe. Look at any civil war era photograph. You'll almost never see a fat person, and mostly see rail thin people. That's not because they were all on diets! I read a lot of historical personal narratives. The constant pursuit of food is a common theme, even in the best of areas. There are simply too many people on this planet for ancient technologies to sustain us. That's not to say there aren't some problems with modern agriculture either.

[Rajiv]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

Punjab is the wheat basket of India, and not the rice basket. Rice was grown in Punjab, and continues to be grown in the well watered valleys at the foot of the himalayas - still primarily the traditional high value "basmati" rice not the hybrid rice varieties grown elsewhere in the traditional rice growing areas of India. The acerage under rice in Punjab did not go up much, however fertilizer and pesticide use did.

However, the hybrid wheat required both a heavy dose of fertilizers, pesticides and much higher water use than the traditional varieties required. In both of these, heavy government subsidies played a big role. The main players were the Indian goverment, that set up giant fertizer plants. Smaller industrial players were also encouraged and licenced to produce fertilizer. However, since state owned industry was the big player, it could control the price at which the farmer accessed pesticides, fertilizers and water.

Dams and canal irrigation was always state owned (like the California water projects) -- however, groundwater irrigation was totally in private hands, and was first used by the farmers to supplement state provided water. However, the amount of rainfed water available by damming the rivers of the Punjab reached its upper limits by the 1980s. The growing Indian population required a need to increase acerage -- and this acerage came from marginal farm land that needed far more water, fertilizers and pesticides. The water now came primarily from mining ground water. That is what is now running out.

So as the marginal acerage production starts declining, and the inputs become more expensive, the "debt trap" comes into play -- this is what has led to the farmer suicides. Sooner or later, these marginal lands will go out of production, and that is where the collapse scenario comes in.

By the way, the hybrid seeds in India, came mainly from state owned seed farms (and were supplied to the farmers below cost) and not from any privately owned corporations.

[strittmatter]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

..When farmers switched from growing a variety of traditional crops to high-yield wheat and rice, they also had to make other changes. There wasn't enough rainwater to grow thirsty "miracle" seeds, so farmers had to start irrigating with groundwater...

Huh?


Check out some overall production data: http://www.fas.usda.gov/current.asp

Particular emphasis on pages 8 and 12 referring to India's ending stocks over the past six years for wheat and rice.

Despite rising stocks, India’s exports are falling. India has imposed restrictions on its rice
exports to ensure market supplies and dampen rising domestic prices. On one hand, that decision
ensures adequate domestic supplies, with the intention of dampening internal prices. But, on the
other hand, the export restrictions hurt exporters and low prices hurt producers because low
prices tend to be a disincentive to production. Hence, India’s policy is short-sighted and may
sacrifice the long term goal to be self sufficient. The irony is that despite these restrictions,
domestic prices are not coming down. Retail prices in New Delhi are still relatively high at
21.00 Rs/kg compared to 18.00Rs/kg this time last year.
Reportedly, procured supplies will not be released onto the domestic or global markets until after
the national elections. Since India is the third-largest exporter, the release of additional supplies

might dampen prices.

[GRG55]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

Huh?


Check out some overall production data: http://www.fas.usda.gov/current.asp

Particular emphasis on pages 8 and 12 referring to India's ending stocks over the past six years for wheat and rice.

As I said...

...Government policies around the world directed mostly at subsidizing the internal production of food to achieve the political goal of "self sufficiency" in critical foodstuffs, have had a far greater effect distorting that economic sector, and promoting unsustainable behaviours...

[don]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6sPg...layer_embedded

Headline : “All idiot farmers commit suicide”

Intro:

Shubhranshu Choudhary finds out why farmers’ suicide is such a touchy subject in Chhattisgarh

Nawagarh in Durg district of Chhattisgarh is a small place by all standards. As in all small places here too everyone knows everybody and it was not difficult to find a local journalist as soon as we reached Nawagarh. We were looking for help to investigate the story of a farmer’s suicide in Chhattisgarh. A simple enquiry at a local paan shop on the roadside got us the address and directions to the most famous journalist in town.

Here journalists wear many hats. Ashish Jain runs a grocery shop apart from being a correspondent for a daily from Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur. A big picture of him with a state Congress leader in his drawing room tells us that he is also active in local politics apart from journalism and his shop.

While waiting for tea I asked him if there have been many incidents of farmers’ suicide in Nawagarh lately?

“No, we have never heard of any farmer’s suicide here,” Ashish said very confidently. He was, in fact, quite surprised to hear my question. His brother, who is a correspondent for another daily from Raipur and was in the shop next door while we chatted in the drawing room, overheard our conversation and made a quick call to the police inspector of the town and confirmed that no farmers had committed suicide in the area.

I took out a list provided by the police headquarters in Raipur and started counting. It had names and addresses of 23 farmers who had committed suicide in the last 18 months under Nawagarh police station. So how far were the villages listed here? I wanted to know. Ashish had a close look at the list and said that all the villages in the list were within 4-5 km from Nawagarh.

But he still would not believe us and was shocked to hear that according to data of the National Crime Records Bureau, Chhattisgarh has highest rate of farmers’ suicide per one lakh population in the country. “I have never read about it anywhere in the newspapers,” he said.

“The figure is not just for this year. Chhattisgarh remains at the top of the list every year since its inception. 1,593 farmers committed suicide in the state last year according to the data provided by state police to the National Crime Records Bureau,” I said. It means four farmers die every day by committing suicide and in the tally, Durg is just behind Raipur, which tops the list amongst the districts of Chhattisgarh.

Two hundred and six farmers committed suicide in Durg last year alone. Ashish was bewildered. After taking directions from him, we set off to meet the families of some of the farmers from the police list who committed suicide last year. There was one farmer from Mohtara village, who as per the list had decided to put an end to his life because of a heavy loan. We thought of going to his family first.

“Pardesi, who died?” Yes. “Go along the pond and knock at the last house to your left. That is Pardesi Sahu’s house,” people told us at the village square in Mohtara.

Raju looks younger than the twenty years he claims his age to be. But he is the eldest in the house now. He needs to take care of sister Rajmati and younger brother Rajesh after father’s demise. His mother died a natural death six-seven years ago and his two elder sisters were married before that.

Raju has no answer to why his father may have consumed poison. “May be he was unhappy with my mother’s death” he said. But that was six-seven years ago. “Maybe he was drinking too much,” he answered reluctantly.

Sawat Sahu, an old friend of Pardesi joined us by this time and objected to this remark from Raju. “Yes, Pardesi used to drink when he met his friends of that type but he was definitely not a drunkard.”

“How much loan did he have?” I asked. “It was around Rs 1 lakh,” Raju replied. Who was the loan from? “We have a Rs 10,000 loan from the bank and the rest was from relatives and friends.”

Did they come to your house to ask for the money? “Yes, they used to come to our house asking for the money. But I have now returned most of the loans,” Raju said. “You have returned the loans, how?” I asked.

“I sold 55 decimal of land after my father’s death to repay the loans to relatives. I have repaid Rs 60,000. But there is another 30,000 still to be paid to Padum Guruji in Jhal and one more relative in Semarsal.”

“I have not paid the bank yet.” But I would have thought that being your relatives, you can return the money to them later, they would wait, and you would return the money to the bank first, I said.

“No. I did not want the relationships to go sour. My father died in shame that he could not return their loan so that is the first thing I did after my father’s death,” Raju said.

The story was becoming clearer now. Sawat Sahu sitting nearby pitched in: “Though Pardesi had 2 acres (0.8 hectares, ha) he used to take another 4-5 acres (about 2 ha) on lease every year. He thought he would repay the loans with income from the extra land but the crop failed.”

Pardesi’s elder sister also joined in by now. “Many years ago we used to go out to work to other states and had bought this land with the help of that earning. It would have been better had my brother continued to go out to do labour and not insisted on farming. This farming has killed him. Pardesi had sold 2 acres (0.8 ha) earlier as well, to repay loans in the past. By this time he had only 2 acres (0.8 ha) left and could not bear the thought of having to sell them too,” she said.

It was quite obvious that suicide is such a negative thing socially that people do not want to think about the reason a family member may have committed suicide. Or even if they think about it, they try to avoid discussing it with outsiders and it is difficult to get the story out as a journalist, unless one is prepared to be very persistent.

We now moved to nearby Ranbod village, where Beturam Sahu committed suicide. He also had 2 acres (0.8 ha). His wife is sick and weak, and it is obvious that she has not been able to manage to put together enough money even for food. She lives with a small baby in their mud hut next to the village pond.

Though the crop is yet to be harvested, this year the elder son Lakhnu has already left for Agra to earn some money by labour work. They have a loan of Rs 30,000 on them.

“The crop is so bad this year that we will not even be able to save any seeds. There were no rains at all,” said Santosh, Lakhnu’s friend. “That’s why Lakhnu left even before harvesting the crop. There is nothing left to harvest in his land this time. It is all gone. He is worried how will he repay these loans.”

Jeevan, a friend of Beturam, said “Beturam died due to loans. He had no fight with anyone. He was also not keeping well lately and burnt himself one day. Here every farmer is in debt. I have 15 acres (6 ha) but I too have around Rs 27,000 loan from the bank.”

Santosh sitting next to him said, “There is a case pending on my land so I can’t get loan from the bank. I have taken a loan of Rs 13,000 from the moneylender. Lakhnu also borrowed from the moneylender because the land is still in his father’s name. So the bank did not give any loan to him this time.”

The districts with highest rate of farmers’ suicide are the same which have the maximum usage of chemical fertilizer in Chhattisgarh

How is it that these obvious farmers’ suicide stories are not visible to journalists like Ashish Jain, who live so close? It is surprising.

To go to the third village Nandal, we needed to come back to Nawagarh as Nandal is on the other side of Nawagarh.

Shatrughan Sahu of nearby Dharampura village was on his motorbike. We stopped by to ask him the direction for Nandal. I also asked him, “Have you heard of farmer suicides in the area?” Shatrughan was the first person in the entire region to accept, “Yes, farmers are committing suicide here but they are all the idiot ones,” he said.

Shatrughan has two shops in Nawagarh town. On further enquiry he said, “The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet few years ago. Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well.”

Like everyone here, state chief minister Raman Singh also says, “Not a single farmer has committed suicide due to loan in the state ever.”

The police records for last few years for Durg district have 13 deaths listed as farmers’ suicide due to debt. Not only that, 31 farmers are listed as having committed suicide due to economic distress.

Now we moved on to Nandal with directions from Shatrughan. Teerathram Sahu in Nandal used to work alone on his farm. Both his sons went to work as masons in Pune. He sold half an acre (0.2 ha) to repay a loan few years ago but since his sons started sending money from Pune he did not have to borrow any money.

After the father’s death the younger son Arjun has stayed back and does farming. “My father had no loan but he wasted all the money we sent from Pune in farming. He used to take 8-9 acres (about 3.2-3.6 ha) on lease and thought he would earn handsome amount from that, but the crop failed,” Arjun said. His father was sick as well.

This year Arjun has taken only 3.5 acre (1.4 ha) on lease. “There is no profit in farming. All our income from Pune has gone waste. We have a very small unpaid loan of Rs 2,500. But my father died of the guilt of wasting all our earning. We tried for a borewell few years ago but that failed,” Arjun said.

It was getting dark now. But on the way back we decided to stop by at Netram Yadav’s house in village Bhainsa. Netram was educated till class 4 and had 3 acres (1.2 ha) and used to take more land for farming on lease every year.

His wife can’t think of any other reason why he committed suicide. “He was worried about the loan of Rs 15,000 he had taken from the moneylender. There is an interest of Rs 5 per month on every Rs 100 and he was worried how he would repay it. He was a good farmer. He had no fight in the family.”

His widow is left with three children to bring up. Two of them go to school and the youngest is a toddler.

My father wasted all the money that my brother and I sent after working as masons in Pune. All our income from Pune was wasted in farming -ARJUN SAHU, NANDAL

Netram had some problem in his eyes and that was giving him trouble. His brother Santram now goes to work as labourer for farmers from Haryana who have bought large tracts of land and grow sugarcane on them. Their land is not irrigated and they can grow only 10-12 bags (of 75 kg) of paddy per acre.

Suicide is a complex issue and needs deeper investigation. A journalistic enquiry can only provide pointers to this problem—to draw attention of the people who are in a position to study the matter in detail and take appropriate action.

But will anyone heed the pointers? Not only Chief Minister Raman Singh but the opposition Congress also does not see any farmers’ suicide in the state. Some members of the farmers’ wing of the Congress party tried unsuccessfully to include the subject in the Congress manifesto for the last assembly election.

A high-profile Congress leader told me righteously, “We also visit the villages. We do not see any farmer committing suicide. So how can we include the issue in the manifesto?”

Maybe the reason no one can see is because no rich farmer is committing suicide.

Who cares for the poor and idiot farmers anyway!



http://www.downtoearth.org.in/full6.asp?foldername=20090415&filename=news&sec_id=50&sid=29

[Rajiv]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

Post Green Revolution in Punjab: Suicides cast shadow on polls

Almost every village in Punjab has witnessed a suicide in their once-prosperous farming families and it is a major issue in the general election.


Mandip Kaur, a 29-year-old housewife from a farming family in southern Punjab, guards her husband round the clock. “I fear he may commit suicide,” she says in broken Hindi.

Almost every village in Punjab has witnessed a suicide in their once-prosperous farming families and it is a major issue in the general election.

Mandip’s 35-year-old husband, Lakhbir Singh, a small farmer with a two-acre land holding, is a strong and neatly dressed man.

He shows no sign of irritation or discomfort when we meet him in the village of Boparai Khurd in Barnala, about 500km north of Delhi.

Each year before the harvest, the small farmers of Punjab, who make up nearly 85 per cent of the state’s farming community, borrow from local rural moneylenders at exorbitant interest rates to meet production costs, including fertilisers and electricity for irrigation.

“Lakhbir has a loan of more than Rs 7 lakh, which he cannot repay,” says Mandip.

Defaulting on payment increases the rates of interest and a farmer is publicly humiliated in the local panchayat if he fails to pay up. “His elder brother, my father, committed suicide more than a year ago, as his loan had accumulated up to Rs 10 lakh,” says 15-year-old Jasbir, who discovered her father’s body.

“I do not think I can ever repay the whole amount,” Lakhbir confesses.

The Bhartiya Kisan Union-Ekta (BKU-United), one of the largest farmers’ unions in Punjab, is urging its members not to vote in the election if they feel that none of the parties is addressing their needs.

National Crime Records Bureau statistics say close to 2,00,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.

The Punjab government says the state produces nearly two-thirds of the grain in India. But the state has faced many economic crises since the mid-1990s.

No comprehensive official figures on farmer suicides in the area are available.

But a report commissioned by the government of Punjab this week estimated that there had been ‘close to 3,000 suicides’ among farmers and farm labourers in just two of Punjab’s 20 districts in recent years, agriculture ministry sources said.
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[petertribo]

Re: India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse

Absolutely tragic what Agribusiness and Western development policies have created in terms of Agriculture. All to make a lousy buck.

For a number of years I attended yearly conferences by NOFA in Western MA. More about NOFA:
http://www.nofa.org/index.php
Most states and regions have similar conferences and groups. This particular conference was excellent because all the workshops were given by people actually doing what they were talking about rather than the usual EXPERTS. The best speaker I ever heard there said SCALE (meaning size) was more important than how food was produced. That really hit home to me. And now, of course, with FIRE, AUTO and many other sectors of our economy we see TOO BIG TO FAIL as a huge problem. SCALE as that speaker said is the problem.

I have read many publications over the years on these problems and the best monthly I have seen is ACRES USA which will send out a free sample:
http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/magazine.htm
That publication was founded by Charles Walters, a very unique American who knew a lot of history and could make connections. He was a rare contrarian. I never saw one Mainstream advertisement in ACRES. Unfortunately, he recently passed away.

For those who think America is isolated from the ravages of AGRIBIZ, read up about the Ogallala Aquifer and Cadillac Desert. I posted a while back about those and it should turn up with the links in the search engine.