Economic Survey 2011 too suggests strengthening Green Revolution in eastern India as the probable route to increase food production. The other day I heard Ashok Gulati of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) saying on the TV that extending Green Revolution to eastern India would provide a sustained supply of surplus food for the next 30 years or so. Well, if you followed the work of IFPRI, this shouldn't come as a surprise.
IFPRI is essentially a PR agency for agribusiness industry masquerading as a research institute.
Green Revolution has already played havoc with the intensively farmed regions in India. The use and abuse of chemical inputs have already taken a heavy toll. Soils are poisoned, environment is contaminated, aquifers have gone dry, and the resulting the food chain has become unhealthy. The devastation wrought by the NPK model of agriculture, and the unwanted application of chemical pesticides, have in many ways caused a kind of a Holocaust that remains hidden from public glare.
The destruction that Green Revolution has inflicted has been deliberately kept under wraps.
In fact, the large number of farmer suicides that we witness in India -- more than 250,000 in the past 15 years -- are actually the outcome of the failure of Green Revolution. We are now hell bent on extending the great tragedy of Green Revolution to the hitherto verdant lands and people of eastern India.
I am aware the moment one talks about the devastation brought about by Green Revolution the entire scientific community rises in chorus to defend it. You will hear that if we are alive today it is because of Green Revolution, so we should be thankful to the chemical industry for bailing us out. I have often responded that we cannot continue to live in the past. The damage the Green Revolution has done to the environment and human health is a small sacrifice that the nation must pay for the larger good.
What a shocking apology. I thought a sensible society is the one that draws lessons from the past, and then forges on a more sustainable path. But we somehow continue to live in the past, not even slightly remorseful for the bloodbath that continues to be enacted on the farm across the country.
At a time when policy makers/agricultural scientists/economists are swayed to the virtues of Green Revolution, and this is because they have rarely stepped out of their cosy confines of their air-conditioned offices, it is heartening to find that a young Dutch researcher has been able to portray the 'evils of Green Revolution' and that too in the heart of the food bowl. Tom Deiters, who had come to India six years ago to carry out research on farmer suicides in Lehragaga area, as an academic exercise, was moved by the destruction that the pesticides were wreaking that he decided to stay-on for a longer time, says a report in The Times of India.
'Toxic Tears' is the name of his documentary. Here is the news report for you:
Toxic Tears: A tale of many Punjab villages
By Priya Yadav
CHANDIGARH: It is a juxtaposition of contraries that has now become ironic. Even though Punjab government has found a negligible number of farmers who merit Rs 2 lakh compensation, given to those who are driven to suicide because of debt, a Dutch researcher has been overwhelmed by the tragedy which has almost become an every house tale in the villages.
Tom Deiters, who had come to India six years ago to carry out research on farmer suicides in Lehragaga area, as an academic exercise, was moved by the destruction that the pesticides were wreaking that he decided to stay-on for a longer time.
His documentary "Toxic Tears" profiles the heart-broken men and women in Punjab's villages who had lost their sons to the faulty farming practices. An old woman, her face heavily creased with age, in Chottian village, broke down as she narrated how her eldest son had drunk the very pesticide, which had trapped him in a debt, to end his life four years ago.
A year later, her younger son, unable to tolerate a failed crop and more debt, followed suit. Tom, whose thesis was for doing Masters in International Relations, a part of political science, at the University of Amsterdam in Holland, is now using the Punjab model, to highlight how globalization is far removed from reality. "The evils of so called "green revolution" are so stark in Punjab," said Tom Deiters, while talking to TOI.
"I want to use Punjab's example to show how the policy makers are not connected to the reality. This is important because other states in India like Bihar want to follow Punjab's footsteps," he said. Frustrated by the pattern of the vicious trap that he had seen replicated across the villages, Toxic Tears, highlights how motivated people, especially commission agents, are taking pains to deny the very existence of farmers' suicides.
"Farmers are borrowing money at outrageous rates from agents, many of whom are doubling up as agents of pesticides and fertilizers. There is a strong bias at work, "said Tom, who is now more focused on solutions. Punjab government too had been in a state of denial regarding the suicides and had maintained that these were only isolated cases.
"Organic farming, free of chemicals, is a way out, though it has own set of problems. But, there are farmers who are waking up to this fact. I am trying to map organic farmers in Punjab and start a self help group. The organic farmers can get together, learn from each others' experience, market their produce together and watch the community's interests, " said Tom Deiters who has travelled extensively to Europe to study organic farming.
Here is the link: http://bit.ly/ef878t
Kerala's Bill to Penalise Coke
The CPI-led Kerala government's decision to bring in a bill: Plachimada Coca-Cola Victims — Relief and Compensation Claims Special Tribunal —2011 Bill in the State Assembly yesterday is certainly an epic decision. 'The Bill proposes to get compensation from the company and to form a tribunal to provide time-bound compensation. The tribunal is to have a chairman, a technical member and an administrative member.'
Piloting the bill, the water resources minister N K Premachandran said: "Plachimada factory caused serious damage to the agriculture sector and the area’s water resources, leading to serious shortage of drinking water, among other problems. Metals like cadmium, chromium and lead were also excluded from the factory and that caused health problems to several people in that area. This caused skin as well as respiratory problems to several people in that area."
The Kerala bill follows the recommendations of a high powered committee that suggested setting up a tribunal to realise Rs 216-crore compensation from Coca Cola.
The Plachimada bill is historic in many ways. Far away in Ecuador, a court held Chevron Corp. responsible for oil drilling contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador's northern jungle and ordered the oil giant to pay $9.5 billion in damages and cleanup costs.
The amount — $8.6 billion plus a legally mandated 10 percent reparations fee — was far below the $27.3 billion award recommended by a court-appointed expert but appeared to be the highest damage award ever issued in an environmental lawsuit.
But whether the plaintiffs — including indigenous groups who say their hunting and fishing grounds in Amazon River headwaters were decimated by toxic wastewater that also raised the cancer rate — can collect remains to be seen. (Read the full report at: http://bit.ly/eM5uxQ).
Nevertheless, Ecuador has shown courage to stand up to the might of the multinationals. The outgoing Kerala government too has to be applauded for its courageous stand against Coca Cola which has been faced with opposition in Plachimada for quite long now. Unlike India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who has always allowed big business to get away with murder, Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan has demonstrated political sagacity by following the principle of 'polluter pays'.
Although Coca Cola has denied any exploitation by saying: "we disagree with the recommendations of the high powered committee and subsequent follow-up", I think it is high time that big business are taken to task for the damage done to the environment and people's livelihoods. They cannot be allowed to escape liability by providing some alms through the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) window.
In the days to come, I am sure both the Ecuadorian case against Chevron Corp and Kerala's tribunal against Coke will be hotly debated. I am not sure whether the new government that comes up in Kerala will demonstrate the same zeal to pursue the case, but surely these are developments that will set the trend. More and more such cases (and tribunals) across the country will certainly help in minimising the resulting environmental damage.
Knowing the dubious role played by the Indian government (and some of India's top business houses) in protecting the commercial interests of Union Carbide in the infamous Bhopal gas tragedy case that killed an estimated 15,000 people, Coke will certainly put all efforts in 'educating' the policy makers. Union Carbide escaped by paying a paltry compensation of $ 470 million in 1989. Instead of making the Union Carbide pay for the clean-up, the government has now come forward to do the job. What a shame.
In Ecuador, the court decision 'specifies that Chevron pay $6 billion for cleanup of soil and water, $1.4 billion to put build health care systems, $800 million for creating health care plans and attending to cancer patients — the court-appointed expert had calculated 1,401 pollution-cased cancer deaths.
The balance is earmarked for recovering native plant species, water distribution systems and repairing cultural damage.'
I only hope the Indian judiciary too learns from the example set by the Ecuador judge. Even if the penalty is small, he has at least sought investment in areas which no longer receives priority in judicial (and economic) parlance.
Piloting the bill, the water resources minister N K Premachandran said: "Plachimada factory caused serious damage to the agriculture sector and the area’s water resources, leading to serious shortage of drinking water, among other problems. Metals like cadmium, chromium and lead were also excluded from the factory and that caused health problems to several people in that area. This caused skin as well as respiratory problems to several people in that area."
The Kerala bill follows the recommendations of a high powered committee that suggested setting up a tribunal to realise Rs 216-crore compensation from Coca Cola.
The Plachimada bill is historic in many ways. Far away in Ecuador, a court held Chevron Corp. responsible for oil drilling contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador's northern jungle and ordered the oil giant to pay $9.5 billion in damages and cleanup costs.
The amount — $8.6 billion plus a legally mandated 10 percent reparations fee — was far below the $27.3 billion award recommended by a court-appointed expert but appeared to be the highest damage award ever issued in an environmental lawsuit.
But whether the plaintiffs — including indigenous groups who say their hunting and fishing grounds in Amazon River headwaters were decimated by toxic wastewater that also raised the cancer rate — can collect remains to be seen. (Read the full report at: http://bit.ly/eM5uxQ).
Nevertheless, Ecuador has shown courage to stand up to the might of the multinationals. The outgoing Kerala government too has to be applauded for its courageous stand against Coca Cola which has been faced with opposition in Plachimada for quite long now. Unlike India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who has always allowed big business to get away with murder, Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan has demonstrated political sagacity by following the principle of 'polluter pays'.
Although Coca Cola has denied any exploitation by saying: "we disagree with the recommendations of the high powered committee and subsequent follow-up", I think it is high time that big business are taken to task for the damage done to the environment and people's livelihoods. They cannot be allowed to escape liability by providing some alms through the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) window.
In the days to come, I am sure both the Ecuadorian case against Chevron Corp and Kerala's tribunal against Coke will be hotly debated. I am not sure whether the new government that comes up in Kerala will demonstrate the same zeal to pursue the case, but surely these are developments that will set the trend. More and more such cases (and tribunals) across the country will certainly help in minimising the resulting environmental damage.
Knowing the dubious role played by the Indian government (and some of India's top business houses) in protecting the commercial interests of Union Carbide in the infamous Bhopal gas tragedy case that killed an estimated 15,000 people, Coke will certainly put all efforts in 'educating' the policy makers. Union Carbide escaped by paying a paltry compensation of $ 470 million in 1989. Instead of making the Union Carbide pay for the clean-up, the government has now come forward to do the job. What a shame.
In Ecuador, the court decision 'specifies that Chevron pay $6 billion for cleanup of soil and water, $1.4 billion to put build health care systems, $800 million for creating health care plans and attending to cancer patients — the court-appointed expert had calculated 1,401 pollution-cased cancer deaths.
The balance is earmarked for recovering native plant species, water distribution systems and repairing cultural damage.'
I only hope the Indian judiciary too learns from the example set by the Ecuador judge. Even if the penalty is small, he has at least sought investment in areas which no longer receives priority in judicial (and economic) parlance.
Boost to Farming: Agriculture Budget
Karnataka has announced a separate budget for agriculture. Considering that agriculture continues to be the largest employer, and with a terrible agrarian crisis sweeping the state, agriculture does merit special focus.
Agriculture growth in Karnataka has remained at a dismal 0.5 per cent in the past decade. The neglect of agriculture is evident from the abysmally low expenditure on agriculture. Despite popular perceptions of a highly pampered farming sector, the fact remains that expenditure on agriculture has marginally risen from a low of Rs 228 per acre in 1985-86 to Rs 928 in 2005-06.
The neglect and apathy is all apparent. Although bulk of the population remains engaged in farming, the share of agriculture in GDP is steadily coming down. This gives an impression as if agriculture is no longer important. The huge population in farming is seen as a national burden. Nothing could be further from truth.
The Tennessee University had sometimes back challenged this notion. The share of agriculture in America’s GDP was barely 4 per cent and with less than 1 per cent population remaining in farming, agriculture should have been abandoned. What is not so well known is that agriculture’s share in the US economy was as high as 65 per cent. It is primarily for this reason that US refuses to compromise its agriculture in the ongoing negotiations at the World Trade Organisation.
Prof T N Prakash of the GKVK, University for Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, has come out with a similar analysis that tells us how cleverly the contribution of farming in the economy is underplayed. In case of sugarcane, for instance, one tonne of cane produces about 100 kg of sugar, 150 units of electricity and about 35 litres of alcohol.
Market value of all these manufactured products exceeds Rs 20,500. What is not known is that Karnataka’s tax revenue from the various value additions comes to Rs 2,040 crore every year. And what do the farmers get? On an average, cane growers get a price of Rs 2,000 per tonne, of which 85 per cent is already incurred as the cost of production.
The nation therefore must acknowledge that farmers produce economic wealth for the country. But unfortunately, as the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) 2003-04 showed, the average income of a farm family in India is Rs 2,115. The minimum monthly salary of a chaprasi is Rs 15,000 and what the farmer gets is only a fraction. Isn’t this a national shame?
The proposed agriculture budget provides an opportunity for chief minister B S Yeddyurappa to make a historic correction. I suggest setting up a State Farm Income Guarantee Commission. Based on the agro-climatic conditions, the commission should work out a viable and assured monthly income for the farmers depending upon the topography and crop production. Let us not forget, the National Farmers Commission too has called for an assured monthly income for farmers.
Pension scheme
As an immediate succour to farmers, Karnataka should by way of gratitude to its ‘annadata,’ who have also served the country by producing food, provide a monthly pension to all farmers who attain the age of 60. The monthly pension should not be less than Rs 5,000 per farmer. It should rename millets as Nutri Cereals, and Rs 1,000/quintal should be the bonus for those farmers who cultivate millets.
Yeddyurappa has already announced Karnataka’s intent of providing cooperative credit to farmers at 1 per cent interest. This facility also needs to be extended to self-help groups (SHGs) linked to microfinance institutes. As is well known, MFIs are charging an exorbitant interest of 24 to 36 per cent which is leading to multiple borrowings and also has pushed a large number of small borrowers to commit suicide. MFIs have in reality become loan sharks.
Economically also it appears that the government is unfair to the poor and marginalised. On the one hand it is willing to provide cooperative loans for farmers at 1 per cent and on the other hand farmers’ wives (who may be part of the village SHGs) are made to pay 24 per cent interest, which effectively comes to 36 per cent on weekly recovery. Cooperative credit therefore needs to be extended to SHGs.
In addition to declining farm income, the other major problem Karnataka confronts is the destruction of the natural resource base — poisoned soils, drying aquifers, and pesticides contamination. It is because of the destruction of the farm lands that agriculture is increasingly becoming un-remunerative thereby forcing farmers to quit agriculture.
Instead of promoting GM crops, and precision farming technologies, which actually bring profits to the manufacturers, Karnataka needs to follow the Community-based Sustainable Agricultural system of Andhra Pradesh.
In 28 lakh acres spread over 21 AP districts, farmers have stopped the use of chemical pesticides, and are now phasing out the application of chemical fertilisers. The yields have not declined, and because no pesticides are used, health expenses of the rural population have drastically fallen by a minimum of 40 per cent. Karnataka should adopt this sustainable farming model. It does not lead to farmer suicides, and nor does it cultivate naxalism. #
Source: Deccan Herald, Feb 16, 2011
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/138091/agriculture-budget.html
Agriculture growth in Karnataka has remained at a dismal 0.5 per cent in the past decade. The neglect of agriculture is evident from the abysmally low expenditure on agriculture. Despite popular perceptions of a highly pampered farming sector, the fact remains that expenditure on agriculture has marginally risen from a low of Rs 228 per acre in 1985-86 to Rs 928 in 2005-06.
The neglect and apathy is all apparent. Although bulk of the population remains engaged in farming, the share of agriculture in GDP is steadily coming down. This gives an impression as if agriculture is no longer important. The huge population in farming is seen as a national burden. Nothing could be further from truth.
The Tennessee University had sometimes back challenged this notion. The share of agriculture in America’s GDP was barely 4 per cent and with less than 1 per cent population remaining in farming, agriculture should have been abandoned. What is not so well known is that agriculture’s share in the US economy was as high as 65 per cent. It is primarily for this reason that US refuses to compromise its agriculture in the ongoing negotiations at the World Trade Organisation.
Prof T N Prakash of the GKVK, University for Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, has come out with a similar analysis that tells us how cleverly the contribution of farming in the economy is underplayed. In case of sugarcane, for instance, one tonne of cane produces about 100 kg of sugar, 150 units of electricity and about 35 litres of alcohol.
Market value of all these manufactured products exceeds Rs 20,500. What is not known is that Karnataka’s tax revenue from the various value additions comes to Rs 2,040 crore every year. And what do the farmers get? On an average, cane growers get a price of Rs 2,000 per tonne, of which 85 per cent is already incurred as the cost of production.
The nation therefore must acknowledge that farmers produce economic wealth for the country. But unfortunately, as the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) 2003-04 showed, the average income of a farm family in India is Rs 2,115. The minimum monthly salary of a chaprasi is Rs 15,000 and what the farmer gets is only a fraction. Isn’t this a national shame?
The proposed agriculture budget provides an opportunity for chief minister B S Yeddyurappa to make a historic correction. I suggest setting up a State Farm Income Guarantee Commission. Based on the agro-climatic conditions, the commission should work out a viable and assured monthly income for the farmers depending upon the topography and crop production. Let us not forget, the National Farmers Commission too has called for an assured monthly income for farmers.
Pension scheme
As an immediate succour to farmers, Karnataka should by way of gratitude to its ‘annadata,’ who have also served the country by producing food, provide a monthly pension to all farmers who attain the age of 60. The monthly pension should not be less than Rs 5,000 per farmer. It should rename millets as Nutri Cereals, and Rs 1,000/quintal should be the bonus for those farmers who cultivate millets.
Yeddyurappa has already announced Karnataka’s intent of providing cooperative credit to farmers at 1 per cent interest. This facility also needs to be extended to self-help groups (SHGs) linked to microfinance institutes. As is well known, MFIs are charging an exorbitant interest of 24 to 36 per cent which is leading to multiple borrowings and also has pushed a large number of small borrowers to commit suicide. MFIs have in reality become loan sharks.
Economically also it appears that the government is unfair to the poor and marginalised. On the one hand it is willing to provide cooperative loans for farmers at 1 per cent and on the other hand farmers’ wives (who may be part of the village SHGs) are made to pay 24 per cent interest, which effectively comes to 36 per cent on weekly recovery. Cooperative credit therefore needs to be extended to SHGs.
In addition to declining farm income, the other major problem Karnataka confronts is the destruction of the natural resource base — poisoned soils, drying aquifers, and pesticides contamination. It is because of the destruction of the farm lands that agriculture is increasingly becoming un-remunerative thereby forcing farmers to quit agriculture.
Instead of promoting GM crops, and precision farming technologies, which actually bring profits to the manufacturers, Karnataka needs to follow the Community-based Sustainable Agricultural system of Andhra Pradesh.
In 28 lakh acres spread over 21 AP districts, farmers have stopped the use of chemical pesticides, and are now phasing out the application of chemical fertilisers. The yields have not declined, and because no pesticides are used, health expenses of the rural population have drastically fallen by a minimum of 40 per cent. Karnataka should adopt this sustainable farming model. It does not lead to farmer suicides, and nor does it cultivate naxalism. #
Source: Deccan Herald, Feb 16, 2011
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/138091/agriculture-budget.html
Learning to live with food crisis, not overcoming it.
I was woken up quite early by a long distance call from Argentina on Monday. The person on the other line was a journalist from a TV network, who first apologised for probably calling up at a wrong time, and then went on to explain the reason. News reports said that China was grappling with a severe drought and it might lead to a significant shortfall in wheat production. She wanted to seek my opinion on what the Chinese crisis would mean for the developing countries, more importantly for countries in the Middle east and in India.
No sooner I had put down my phone, an sms arrived from Al Jazeera. By the time I realised that it was early morning, I had been continuously on the phone for three hours answering journalist queries. Since I had to be at the airport in a couple of hours I did apologise for not being able to come to their studios. But by the time I checked-in I had already stopped thrice on the way to give sound bites. Suddenly it appeared that the world had woken up to an insurmountable food crisis.
A day later as I scan the newspapers sitting in Mohali, in the heart of Punjab, I find that the panic I witnessed yesterday has simply disappeared. It doesn't however mean that the food crisis has been resolved. The crisis continues to grow, and with each passing month it is in fact getting worse. Perhaps you will hear about it again when some major newspaper has a lead story of the food prices spiralling somewhere where it makes more political sense.
UN FAO has been warning us for quite some time. FAO chief has time and again blamed commodity trading and food speculation to be responsible for the global food price index breaking the 2008 barrier when 37 countries, including Egypt, had faced food riots. Weather-induced crisis in Russia, Australia and now China (the world didn't know of China's drought till China decided to let the world know) has definitely made the international community to tighten belts and make necessary arrangements to tide over the crisis. But no one dares to question future trading. With $ 10 trillion at stake in commodity trading, who can dare to stand up to the power of a corrupt financial system?
Even President Obama prefers to look the other way. He thinks the more the future trading the more it will provide business oportunities for the US corporates, and that in turn will keep him in power. Only the French President Sarkozy, who is in a minority, is asking the right questions.
The Times of India reports (Feb 14, 2011): "Nervous governments across the world are trying to stem the tide in different ways. Several countries in West Asia are stocking up on food grain. Iraq, where agricultural production has declined considerably, has placed orders for 300,000 tonne of wheat from the US, with options for another 100,000 tonne. Jordan and Lebanon submitted tenders for 100,000 tonne and 22,500 tonne respectively. Algeria, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia too placed large orders recently. Others, like Russia, have banned exports. Vietnam has devalued its currency, the dong, by 9% to curb inflation."
India is luckily in a comfortable position. Wheat stocks in the godowns is currently at a high of 20 million tonnes. This is double the required norms. The wheat harvest is expected to be bumper this year, roughly 81 million tonnes. Sugar production is anticipated to be in the range of 24.5 million tonnes against the requirement of 23 million tonnes. Plus we have a carryover stock of 4.5 million tonnes. Production of pulses, potato, maize is also expected to be higher than last year. So unless the Indian Agriculture Ministry creates an artificial problem there is nothing to be alarmed about.
In 2007-08 also, when the world was faced with a terrible food crisis India had escaped unscathed.
But for how long?
Yes, this is a question that is being very conveniently ducked. Successive governments have tried to destroy the strong foundations of food self-sufficiency. The negative impact of these policies is yet to surface in a manner that it raises people's anger. More worrisome is the pace at which the UPA-II has remained hell bent upon destroying the edifice of social security that had sustained food self-sufficiency. Land acquisitions, privatisation of water, research, and market yards and the efforts to shift population from rural to urban areas will go down in history as a historic blunder. Such is the indifference of the intelligentsia and the academia that the seeds of destruction now appear to be sown all around, and with their consent.
I fail to understand why India is not drawing any lessons when country after country is feeling the pain of ignoring agriculture. It is not only policy planners who are at fault. The economists, the agricultural scientists, the business community, the academia, the civil society and the media are also part of the crime. They know what is happening and yet are reluctant to voice their concern. They cannot say they are not responsible for the simmering crisis on the farm front. It is a collective effort that is leading to the destruction of food self-sufficiency and thereby threaten food security.
No sooner I had put down my phone, an sms arrived from Al Jazeera. By the time I realised that it was early morning, I had been continuously on the phone for three hours answering journalist queries. Since I had to be at the airport in a couple of hours I did apologise for not being able to come to their studios. But by the time I checked-in I had already stopped thrice on the way to give sound bites. Suddenly it appeared that the world had woken up to an insurmountable food crisis.
A day later as I scan the newspapers sitting in Mohali, in the heart of Punjab, I find that the panic I witnessed yesterday has simply disappeared. It doesn't however mean that the food crisis has been resolved. The crisis continues to grow, and with each passing month it is in fact getting worse. Perhaps you will hear about it again when some major newspaper has a lead story of the food prices spiralling somewhere where it makes more political sense.
UN FAO has been warning us for quite some time. FAO chief has time and again blamed commodity trading and food speculation to be responsible for the global food price index breaking the 2008 barrier when 37 countries, including Egypt, had faced food riots. Weather-induced crisis in Russia, Australia and now China (the world didn't know of China's drought till China decided to let the world know) has definitely made the international community to tighten belts and make necessary arrangements to tide over the crisis. But no one dares to question future trading. With $ 10 trillion at stake in commodity trading, who can dare to stand up to the power of a corrupt financial system?
Even President Obama prefers to look the other way. He thinks the more the future trading the more it will provide business oportunities for the US corporates, and that in turn will keep him in power. Only the French President Sarkozy, who is in a minority, is asking the right questions.
The Times of India reports (Feb 14, 2011): "Nervous governments across the world are trying to stem the tide in different ways. Several countries in West Asia are stocking up on food grain. Iraq, where agricultural production has declined considerably, has placed orders for 300,000 tonne of wheat from the US, with options for another 100,000 tonne. Jordan and Lebanon submitted tenders for 100,000 tonne and 22,500 tonne respectively. Algeria, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia too placed large orders recently. Others, like Russia, have banned exports. Vietnam has devalued its currency, the dong, by 9% to curb inflation."
India is luckily in a comfortable position. Wheat stocks in the godowns is currently at a high of 20 million tonnes. This is double the required norms. The wheat harvest is expected to be bumper this year, roughly 81 million tonnes. Sugar production is anticipated to be in the range of 24.5 million tonnes against the requirement of 23 million tonnes. Plus we have a carryover stock of 4.5 million tonnes. Production of pulses, potato, maize is also expected to be higher than last year. So unless the Indian Agriculture Ministry creates an artificial problem there is nothing to be alarmed about.
In 2007-08 also, when the world was faced with a terrible food crisis India had escaped unscathed.
But for how long?
Yes, this is a question that is being very conveniently ducked. Successive governments have tried to destroy the strong foundations of food self-sufficiency. The negative impact of these policies is yet to surface in a manner that it raises people's anger. More worrisome is the pace at which the UPA-II has remained hell bent upon destroying the edifice of social security that had sustained food self-sufficiency. Land acquisitions, privatisation of water, research, and market yards and the efforts to shift population from rural to urban areas will go down in history as a historic blunder. Such is the indifference of the intelligentsia and the academia that the seeds of destruction now appear to be sown all around, and with their consent.
I fail to understand why India is not drawing any lessons when country after country is feeling the pain of ignoring agriculture. It is not only policy planners who are at fault. The economists, the agricultural scientists, the business community, the academia, the civil society and the media are also part of the crime. They know what is happening and yet are reluctant to voice their concern. They cannot say they are not responsible for the simmering crisis on the farm front. It is a collective effort that is leading to the destruction of food self-sufficiency and thereby threaten food security.
Market gets ready for camel milk
So finally, European Union has approved the import of first major brand of camel milk from Dubai. With camel milk now being sold in health food shops and upmarket shopping malls, a huge untapped potential market opens up for India. It is expected that by 2012, ordinary popular retail supermarkets in Europe will start carrying camel milk on its shelves.
United States is also in the process of testing camel milk before giving final approval for commercialisation. Like in the case of buffalo milk, for which the commercial approval came some 5 years back, camel milk too is under active consideration. Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations expects the global market for camel milk to be around US $ 5.6 billion.
There are 200 million camel milk consumers in the Middle East and Africa alone. India too has a substantial domestic market.
“I have decided to process and export camel milk,” Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, told me recently, adding that he is hopeful that such an initiative will help those who need it the most. He knows that camel rearing is confined to the nomads, who form part of the backward and scheduled tribes, and have been relegated through centuries to the margins. “It will improve the socio-economic condition of these poorest of the poor, and that is what I am excited about.”
There is a lot of truth in this statement. Although camel is hailed as the ‘ship of the desert’, those who own these animals have been living in poverty. Camel herders are confined to the lowest strata of the economy and have survived because of their nomadic lifestyle. Distributed across the arid and semi-arid regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana, the poor economic status of the camel owners has come in the way of improving the domestic breeds.
Value-addition through commercialisation of milk production of the camels, which are at present treated no more than a beast of burden, will surely bring about the necessary turnaround. The ‘ship of the desert’ will then turn into a dual-purpose animal.
Modi has asked the milk cooperative Amul to look into the processing and export of camel milk. This may not be that difficult since the Bikaner-based National Research Centre on Camels has already developed products like ice-cream, flavoured milk, curd and kheer. A modern camel dairy has also been set up within the campus.
Not only ice-cream, some companies in the Middle East are also manufacturing chocolate exclusively from camel milk. Billed as a luxurious high quality chocolate, it states that camel milk contains vitamins, minerals and “healing powers”. The commercial potential therefore remains huge.
In India, although Gujarat is aiming at the export market, Rajasthan Dairy Cooperative Federation had sometimes back taken to production, processing and marketing of pasteurised camel milk. It was in 2008 that the former Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhra Raje, had launched pasteurised camel milk in New Delhi. Camel milk is available – both as plain and flavoured -- under the brand name of saras. Camel milk is available also in Jaipur and Bikaner.
However, the capital has still not developed a taste for it. This is primarily because camel milk has still to be marketed aggressively. Consumers largely remain ignorant about the benefits curative camel milk offers. Nor has the sale of camel milk made any significant dent on the income of those who rear the animals. This is because the government as well as the industry has still to wake up to the immense therapeutic advantages that camel milk offers over cow and buffalo milk. This has to be followed by a milk collection drive on the lines of Amul milk cooperatives, wherein small producers too get the benefit. Collection centres have to be established in the remote areas of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Since cow milk is low in fats, my suggestion is that camel owners should be provided with a fixed procurement price.
According to FAO, certain antibodies in camels' milk can help fight diseases like cancer, HIV/Aids, Alzheimer's and hepatitis C. It is also believed that regular intake of camel milk helps reduce the effects of diabetes and heart disease.Slightly saltier than traditional milk, camel milk is popular in the semi-arid regions of the country. Considered to be containing three times more Vitamin C and 10 times more iron than cow’s milk, it is a rich source of Vitamin B and also contains high levels of minerals. According to FAO, certain antibodies in camels' milk can help fight diseases like cancer, HIV/Aids, Alzheimer's and hepatitis C. It is also believed that regular intake of camel milk helps reduce the effects of diabetes and heart disease.
Camels' milk could be a useful addition to the diet as it contains less saturated fat (just 1.85% fat) than cow's milk containing (regular whole fat cow's milk contains 5%). Being low in saturated fat, it is naturally semi-skimmed, thereby reducing the need for added processing. Also, and more significantly for domestic consumers, camel milk can be safely stored for more than 48 hours without any deterioration in quality.
In Hindi: मरूधरा में दूध का जहाज
http://bit.ly/f1wr4K
United States is also in the process of testing camel milk before giving final approval for commercialisation. Like in the case of buffalo milk, for which the commercial approval came some 5 years back, camel milk too is under active consideration. Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations expects the global market for camel milk to be around US $ 5.6 billion.
There are 200 million camel milk consumers in the Middle East and Africa alone. India too has a substantial domestic market.
“I have decided to process and export camel milk,” Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, told me recently, adding that he is hopeful that such an initiative will help those who need it the most. He knows that camel rearing is confined to the nomads, who form part of the backward and scheduled tribes, and have been relegated through centuries to the margins. “It will improve the socio-economic condition of these poorest of the poor, and that is what I am excited about.”
There is a lot of truth in this statement. Although camel is hailed as the ‘ship of the desert’, those who own these animals have been living in poverty. Camel herders are confined to the lowest strata of the economy and have survived because of their nomadic lifestyle. Distributed across the arid and semi-arid regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana, the poor economic status of the camel owners has come in the way of improving the domestic breeds.
Value-addition through commercialisation of milk production of the camels, which are at present treated no more than a beast of burden, will surely bring about the necessary turnaround. The ‘ship of the desert’ will then turn into a dual-purpose animal.
Modi has asked the milk cooperative Amul to look into the processing and export of camel milk. This may not be that difficult since the Bikaner-based National Research Centre on Camels has already developed products like ice-cream, flavoured milk, curd and kheer. A modern camel dairy has also been set up within the campus.
Not only ice-cream, some companies in the Middle East are also manufacturing chocolate exclusively from camel milk. Billed as a luxurious high quality chocolate, it states that camel milk contains vitamins, minerals and “healing powers”. The commercial potential therefore remains huge.
In India, although Gujarat is aiming at the export market, Rajasthan Dairy Cooperative Federation had sometimes back taken to production, processing and marketing of pasteurised camel milk. It was in 2008 that the former Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhra Raje, had launched pasteurised camel milk in New Delhi. Camel milk is available – both as plain and flavoured -- under the brand name of saras. Camel milk is available also in Jaipur and Bikaner.
However, the capital has still not developed a taste for it. This is primarily because camel milk has still to be marketed aggressively. Consumers largely remain ignorant about the benefits curative camel milk offers. Nor has the sale of camel milk made any significant dent on the income of those who rear the animals. This is because the government as well as the industry has still to wake up to the immense therapeutic advantages that camel milk offers over cow and buffalo milk. This has to be followed by a milk collection drive on the lines of Amul milk cooperatives, wherein small producers too get the benefit. Collection centres have to be established in the remote areas of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Since cow milk is low in fats, my suggestion is that camel owners should be provided with a fixed procurement price.
According to FAO, certain antibodies in camels' milk can help fight diseases like cancer, HIV/Aids, Alzheimer's and hepatitis C. It is also believed that regular intake of camel milk helps reduce the effects of diabetes and heart disease.Slightly saltier than traditional milk, camel milk is popular in the semi-arid regions of the country. Considered to be containing three times more Vitamin C and 10 times more iron than cow’s milk, it is a rich source of Vitamin B and also contains high levels of minerals. According to FAO, certain antibodies in camels' milk can help fight diseases like cancer, HIV/Aids, Alzheimer's and hepatitis C. It is also believed that regular intake of camel milk helps reduce the effects of diabetes and heart disease.
Camels' milk could be a useful addition to the diet as it contains less saturated fat (just 1.85% fat) than cow's milk containing (regular whole fat cow's milk contains 5%). Being low in saturated fat, it is naturally semi-skimmed, thereby reducing the need for added processing. Also, and more significantly for domestic consumers, camel milk can be safely stored for more than 48 hours without any deterioration in quality.
In Hindi: मरूधरा में दूध का जहाज
http://bit.ly/f1wr4K
What's the truth behind Chhatisgarh's battle with hunger?
There is something that remains largely unexplained in Chhatisgarh in central India. And it pertains to hunger, food procurement and food security. There are some uncomfortable questions that have surfaced. We need to look at them dispassionately as it impacts the future food security programmes in the rest of the country. .
The Right to Food campaign eulogises it, and the Supreme Court appointed Food Commissioners swear by it. But if the revamped public distribution system which banks upon the underlying principle of local production, local procurement and local distribution is so successful then how come the rate of farm suicides has also progressed in the same proportion? Supriya Sharma of the Times Crest has raised this in a thought-provoking article entitled: "There is Truth and there are Statistics" (Times Crest Jan 22, 2011 available at: http://www.timescrest.com/society/theres-truth-and-there-are-statistics-4590).
Supriya asks: "From just half-a-million tonnes in 2000, the state government bought 4. 4 million tonnes of paddy last year, at a bonus of Rs 50, bringing the minimum price of paddy to Rs 1, 000 per quintal. During the same 10-year period, the number of suicides of those engaged in farming stayed consistently high, showing an upward graph since 2003, hitting an all-time high at 1, 802 suicides in 2009."
Well, ever since the government began providing rice at Rs 2 a kg, farmers to do not find any economic sense in producing it for themselves and their families. They now produce rice entirely for the market. After all, they can sell what they produce at Rs 10 a kg and in turn buy rice for their household requirement at Rs 2 a kilo. For all practical purpose this serves as a cash transfer scheme, providing some additional cash in the hands of farmers. It saves them Rs 8 on every kg of rice that they need for their family. Some belive that as much as 90 per cent of the rice produced in Chattisgarh therefore finds its way to the market.
She quotes Sanket Thakur, director of Agricon, a shareholder co-operative of farmers, who says: "The statistics that are misleading are those of paddy production, " he claims. Thakur offers this logic:
if 8. 2 million tonnes of paddy was produced in the state, as claimed by agricultural department officials, but just 4. 4 million tonnes were procured by the government, where did the rest go?"
Another news report in The Economic Times (Sept 2, 2010) by M Rajshekhar under the head: 'New Food Rules' had in a way addressed the question posed above: "Ten years ago, Chhattisgarh grew 4 million tonnes of paddy, of which the state government acquired 300,000 tonnes, or 7.5% of the produce. In 2009-10, it grew 7.6 million tonnes; of this, 4.4 million tonnes, or 58%, was procured by the state. Of the rest, says Jaiswal, the state government official: “Only about 500,000 tonnes went to the mandis, the rest being retained by farmers as seeds or for self-consumption.”
The reason for 58 per cent paddy procurement is probably because: "For four years now, Chhattisgarh has been giving 35 kg of grain — comprising rice and wheat — a month at heavily subsidised rates to 3.6 million of its 4.4 million households. The ultra-poor pay Re 1 per kg, while the poor pay 2 per kg, against the market price of 12-17 a kg. The ration card is the document that enables this subsidised transfer." In other words, you get only 35 kg per family at a subsidised rate, which does not last more than 15 days. The rest has still to be purchased from the market, and therefore farmers are keeping part of the grain they produce for their own consumption.
This makes sense. But let us not forget the shift in food habits from the late NTR's popular scheme of providing Rs 2 a kilo of rice in Andhra Pradesh several years ago had led to the demise of the nutritious millets. I think it will be interesting to see what kind of changes the Rs 2 a kg (and Rs 1 per kg for the ultra poor) of rice scheme in Chhatisgrah brings about.
Nevertheless, the question that Supriya Sharma raised in her article still remains valid. If the rice procurement is so effective why are the paddy farmers committing suicide? I would be glad if some people who have been closely involved and have been following the revamped PDS can enlighten us more.
The Right to Food campaign eulogises it, and the Supreme Court appointed Food Commissioners swear by it. But if the revamped public distribution system which banks upon the underlying principle of local production, local procurement and local distribution is so successful then how come the rate of farm suicides has also progressed in the same proportion? Supriya Sharma of the Times Crest has raised this in a thought-provoking article entitled: "There is Truth and there are Statistics" (Times Crest Jan 22, 2011 available at: http://www.timescrest.com/society/theres-truth-and-there-are-statistics-4590).
Supriya asks: "From just half-a-million tonnes in 2000, the state government bought 4. 4 million tonnes of paddy last year, at a bonus of Rs 50, bringing the minimum price of paddy to Rs 1, 000 per quintal. During the same 10-year period, the number of suicides of those engaged in farming stayed consistently high, showing an upward graph since 2003, hitting an all-time high at 1, 802 suicides in 2009."
Well, ever since the government began providing rice at Rs 2 a kg, farmers to do not find any economic sense in producing it for themselves and their families. They now produce rice entirely for the market. After all, they can sell what they produce at Rs 10 a kg and in turn buy rice for their household requirement at Rs 2 a kilo. For all practical purpose this serves as a cash transfer scheme, providing some additional cash in the hands of farmers. It saves them Rs 8 on every kg of rice that they need for their family. Some belive that as much as 90 per cent of the rice produced in Chattisgarh therefore finds its way to the market.
She quotes Sanket Thakur, director of Agricon, a shareholder co-operative of farmers, who says: "The statistics that are misleading are those of paddy production, " he claims. Thakur offers this logic:
if 8. 2 million tonnes of paddy was produced in the state, as claimed by agricultural department officials, but just 4. 4 million tonnes were procured by the government, where did the rest go?"
Another news report in The Economic Times (Sept 2, 2010) by M Rajshekhar under the head: 'New Food Rules' had in a way addressed the question posed above: "Ten years ago, Chhattisgarh grew 4 million tonnes of paddy, of which the state government acquired 300,000 tonnes, or 7.5% of the produce. In 2009-10, it grew 7.6 million tonnes; of this, 4.4 million tonnes, or 58%, was procured by the state. Of the rest, says Jaiswal, the state government official: “Only about 500,000 tonnes went to the mandis, the rest being retained by farmers as seeds or for self-consumption.”
The reason for 58 per cent paddy procurement is probably because: "For four years now, Chhattisgarh has been giving 35 kg of grain — comprising rice and wheat — a month at heavily subsidised rates to 3.6 million of its 4.4 million households. The ultra-poor pay Re 1 per kg, while the poor pay 2 per kg, against the market price of 12-17 a kg. The ration card is the document that enables this subsidised transfer." In other words, you get only 35 kg per family at a subsidised rate, which does not last more than 15 days. The rest has still to be purchased from the market, and therefore farmers are keeping part of the grain they produce for their own consumption.
This makes sense. But let us not forget the shift in food habits from the late NTR's popular scheme of providing Rs 2 a kilo of rice in Andhra Pradesh several years ago had led to the demise of the nutritious millets. I think it will be interesting to see what kind of changes the Rs 2 a kg (and Rs 1 per kg for the ultra poor) of rice scheme in Chhatisgrah brings about.
Nevertheless, the question that Supriya Sharma raised in her article still remains valid. If the rice procurement is so effective why are the paddy farmers committing suicide? I would be glad if some people who have been closely involved and have been following the revamped PDS can enlighten us more.
Budget 2011 will also bypass farmers
If we look at the Budgets presented in the past 5-7 years, it looks as if the government has been focusing on food and agriculture. We have seen successive finance ministers covering up their apathy towards agriculture by saying that their budget would bring in ‘Kisan Ke Azadi’ or terming their budget as the ‘life line for agriculture’ and so on.
However, in reality all annual Budgets in the recent past have bypassed agriculture when it comes to making the right investments, and this year too is not going to be any exception. The finance minister has been holding pre-budget parleys with industries and the industry sponsored farmer organizations. It is therefore quite obvious that the 2011 Budget (to be presented on Feb 28, 2011) is also going to be business as usual. I am not therefore much hopeful in the coming Budget for the farm sector as well as the farmers. They will have to live on hope. Like in the past, this Budget too will support the agribusiness industry in the name of farmers. This year, I am quite sure industry will manage a larger chunk of the state exchequer considering that the country is faced with rising food prices for quite some time. Don’t forget whenever a crisis takes place or a disaster happens, it becomes an opportunity for business.
2010 was a year of unmanageable spiral in food prices. The crisis that the government faced with respect food inflation comes as an opportunity for the business to exploit agriculture. Having said that, the following is likely to be the highlighted in one way or the other in the ensuing Budget:
a. There would be more emphasis on streamlining agricultural supply, which means there will be more money allocated for the back end operations like cold storages and transportation. Already the State bank of India has reduced the interest on warehousing by about 3 per cent so as to attract private sector investment. This is primarily to facilitate the entry of FDI in multi-brand retail like Wal-Mart and Tesco into the country which would need backend support for its India operations. In reality, the backend investment too should come from the industry but as it happens it is the industry which walks away with bulk of the subsidy in the name of agriculture.
b. The other area that is likely to receive more emphasis by way of budgetary allocations would be in the field of enhancing crop production – primarily for wheat and pulses. And then of course there is going to be duty exemptions on import of farm equipments, all in the name of increasing production and productivity. Unfortunately this is not what ailing farm sector needs.
In my understanding, what the finance minister needs to do is:
a) The government has to get over with the obsession with 4 per cent agricultural growth. Whether the farm growth is 2 per cent or four per cent, it is not going to rescue millions of farmers from the agrarian distress that stares at them. In any case, farm growth cannot be measured on the basis of production figures for two consecutive years. A realistic farm growth can only be ascertained when viewed over a minimum of a five year period.
The finance minister should instead focus on farmer’s income. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation (2003-04), the average monthly income of a farm family in India was barely Rs 2115. In 2011, we can at best think that the monthly income has risen to Rs 2400. This means that farmers in India are by and large living below the poverty line. To expect these poor farmers to be investing their meager resources and effort in boosting productivity is not fair. I think the fundamental question that remains unresolved so far is how to increase the farm incomes. I don’t see much of hope here, all that I am expecting this year is that the credit for agriculture would be enhanced from the existing Rs 3.7 lakh crore to Rs 4 lac crores or above. Even this is not going to be of much help to farmers since much of the credit in the name of agriculture goes to warehousing, cold storages, seed production etc etc.
b) Last year the government had allocated money for pulses production in 60,000 villages in the dryland regions. This became an opportunity for the industry, including farm equipment suppliers. They pooled the money allocated for 10 villages, forming a cluster, and were able to lease or sell farm equipments. It has therefore not made much difference to pulses production this year. The little increase we see is the result of the expectation of a higher price following the rise in dal prices in 2009-10.
Actually pulses are not suffering from technology gap. What it requires is the provision of an assured market for the produce. Although the government does announce procurement price for the pulse crops but there is no procurement system in place. If pulses were to be procured, like wheat and rice, we will see the production rising steadily and the dependence on imports reducing.
c) Considering the stupendous rise in prices of vegetables, the focus of the finance minister will remain on efforts to curtail the price rise. For several years now, we are told that 40 per cent of fruits and vegetables go waste in post-harvest losses. I am not sure of the basis for these loss estimates. These figures of food wastage have not changed for the past 30 years or so. Having said that, what we need in case of fruits & vegetable is a surveillance and market intelligence system. This has to be back up by crop insurance and weather insurance. Unfortunately, crop insurance still remains at a pilot project level, and it is because of the lack of emphasis that farmers in India still are not ensured against the vagaries of the weather. More financial allocations are required for market intelligence and crop insurance.
d) Food security, especially in the light of the NAC proposal on the proposed food security bill, will also attract finance minister’s attention. In the name of food security, and knowing that food prices had remained beyond the reach of the lowest strata, finance minister is likely to enhance the allocation. In other words, more money will be allocated for a defunct and corrupt PDS. What is needed urgently is to provide financial resources for setting up a network of village/taluka grain banks across the country. This has to be linked with regional grain banks in each of the states.
The ministry of rural development has already provided resources for setting up panchayt ghar in every panchayat. The more pressing need is to construct grain banks in each panchayat, if not every village. This will not only help minimize grain wastage but also ensure household food security at the local level. There are about 6 lakh villages in the country, of which 4 lakh villages produce food. The national Food Security Act should aim at making these 4 lakh villages food secure. This will help reduce the burden on the PDS, which can therefore by trimmed and made effective.
e) There has been a lot of talk for ushering in 2nd Green Revolution to meet the growing food requirements. In the last budget, the government had provided for Rs 400-crore for extending the Green Revolution to the northeast states. What has not been ascertained is that damage Green Revolution has done to the intensively farmed regions of Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh. Already Green Revolution has destroyed the natural resource base by poisoning the soils, mining the ground water and contaminating the food chain with chemical pesticides. More investments to extend the Green Revolution model to the northeast or to bring in the 2nd Green Revolution in the rest of the country imeans that we have not learnt from past mistakes.
What we need is allocation to bring about a kind of a model of sustainable agriculture which does not force farmers to commit suicide and also does not end up destroying the environment, natural resource base and does not add to global warming. Such a model is already available in Andhra Pradesh. In Andhra Pradesh, out of 23 districts, in 21 districts there is something called as non pesticide management of a agriculture. Farmers in 28 lakh acres are not using chemical pesticides, and have also phased out the application of chemical fertilizers. There is no drop in crop yields, and the insect population has greatly reduced. The soil health is rejuvenated, and expenses on health for farm families have fallen by an average of 40 per cent. Farm incomes have gone up, and food security is ensured. This is Government of Andhra Pradesh programme.
Mr Pranab Mukherjee should provide allocation for extending this programme to the rest of the country. Here lies a future model of food security and farm viability for the country. #
However, in reality all annual Budgets in the recent past have bypassed agriculture when it comes to making the right investments, and this year too is not going to be any exception. The finance minister has been holding pre-budget parleys with industries and the industry sponsored farmer organizations. It is therefore quite obvious that the 2011 Budget (to be presented on Feb 28, 2011) is also going to be business as usual. I am not therefore much hopeful in the coming Budget for the farm sector as well as the farmers. They will have to live on hope. Like in the past, this Budget too will support the agribusiness industry in the name of farmers. This year, I am quite sure industry will manage a larger chunk of the state exchequer considering that the country is faced with rising food prices for quite some time. Don’t forget whenever a crisis takes place or a disaster happens, it becomes an opportunity for business.
2010 was a year of unmanageable spiral in food prices. The crisis that the government faced with respect food inflation comes as an opportunity for the business to exploit agriculture. Having said that, the following is likely to be the highlighted in one way or the other in the ensuing Budget:
a. There would be more emphasis on streamlining agricultural supply, which means there will be more money allocated for the back end operations like cold storages and transportation. Already the State bank of India has reduced the interest on warehousing by about 3 per cent so as to attract private sector investment. This is primarily to facilitate the entry of FDI in multi-brand retail like Wal-Mart and Tesco into the country which would need backend support for its India operations. In reality, the backend investment too should come from the industry but as it happens it is the industry which walks away with bulk of the subsidy in the name of agriculture.
b. The other area that is likely to receive more emphasis by way of budgetary allocations would be in the field of enhancing crop production – primarily for wheat and pulses. And then of course there is going to be duty exemptions on import of farm equipments, all in the name of increasing production and productivity. Unfortunately this is not what ailing farm sector needs.
In my understanding, what the finance minister needs to do is:
a) The government has to get over with the obsession with 4 per cent agricultural growth. Whether the farm growth is 2 per cent or four per cent, it is not going to rescue millions of farmers from the agrarian distress that stares at them. In any case, farm growth cannot be measured on the basis of production figures for two consecutive years. A realistic farm growth can only be ascertained when viewed over a minimum of a five year period.
The finance minister should instead focus on farmer’s income. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation (2003-04), the average monthly income of a farm family in India was barely Rs 2115. In 2011, we can at best think that the monthly income has risen to Rs 2400. This means that farmers in India are by and large living below the poverty line. To expect these poor farmers to be investing their meager resources and effort in boosting productivity is not fair. I think the fundamental question that remains unresolved so far is how to increase the farm incomes. I don’t see much of hope here, all that I am expecting this year is that the credit for agriculture would be enhanced from the existing Rs 3.7 lakh crore to Rs 4 lac crores or above. Even this is not going to be of much help to farmers since much of the credit in the name of agriculture goes to warehousing, cold storages, seed production etc etc.
b) Last year the government had allocated money for pulses production in 60,000 villages in the dryland regions. This became an opportunity for the industry, including farm equipment suppliers. They pooled the money allocated for 10 villages, forming a cluster, and were able to lease or sell farm equipments. It has therefore not made much difference to pulses production this year. The little increase we see is the result of the expectation of a higher price following the rise in dal prices in 2009-10.
Actually pulses are not suffering from technology gap. What it requires is the provision of an assured market for the produce. Although the government does announce procurement price for the pulse crops but there is no procurement system in place. If pulses were to be procured, like wheat and rice, we will see the production rising steadily and the dependence on imports reducing.
c) Considering the stupendous rise in prices of vegetables, the focus of the finance minister will remain on efforts to curtail the price rise. For several years now, we are told that 40 per cent of fruits and vegetables go waste in post-harvest losses. I am not sure of the basis for these loss estimates. These figures of food wastage have not changed for the past 30 years or so. Having said that, what we need in case of fruits & vegetable is a surveillance and market intelligence system. This has to be back up by crop insurance and weather insurance. Unfortunately, crop insurance still remains at a pilot project level, and it is because of the lack of emphasis that farmers in India still are not ensured against the vagaries of the weather. More financial allocations are required for market intelligence and crop insurance.
d) Food security, especially in the light of the NAC proposal on the proposed food security bill, will also attract finance minister’s attention. In the name of food security, and knowing that food prices had remained beyond the reach of the lowest strata, finance minister is likely to enhance the allocation. In other words, more money will be allocated for a defunct and corrupt PDS. What is needed urgently is to provide financial resources for setting up a network of village/taluka grain banks across the country. This has to be linked with regional grain banks in each of the states.
The ministry of rural development has already provided resources for setting up panchayt ghar in every panchayat. The more pressing need is to construct grain banks in each panchayat, if not every village. This will not only help minimize grain wastage but also ensure household food security at the local level. There are about 6 lakh villages in the country, of which 4 lakh villages produce food. The national Food Security Act should aim at making these 4 lakh villages food secure. This will help reduce the burden on the PDS, which can therefore by trimmed and made effective.
e) There has been a lot of talk for ushering in 2nd Green Revolution to meet the growing food requirements. In the last budget, the government had provided for Rs 400-crore for extending the Green Revolution to the northeast states. What has not been ascertained is that damage Green Revolution has done to the intensively farmed regions of Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh. Already Green Revolution has destroyed the natural resource base by poisoning the soils, mining the ground water and contaminating the food chain with chemical pesticides. More investments to extend the Green Revolution model to the northeast or to bring in the 2nd Green Revolution in the rest of the country imeans that we have not learnt from past mistakes.
What we need is allocation to bring about a kind of a model of sustainable agriculture which does not force farmers to commit suicide and also does not end up destroying the environment, natural resource base and does not add to global warming. Such a model is already available in Andhra Pradesh. In Andhra Pradesh, out of 23 districts, in 21 districts there is something called as non pesticide management of a agriculture. Farmers in 28 lakh acres are not using chemical pesticides, and have also phased out the application of chemical fertilizers. There is no drop in crop yields, and the insect population has greatly reduced. The soil health is rejuvenated, and expenses on health for farm families have fallen by an average of 40 per cent. Farm incomes have gone up, and food security is ensured. This is Government of Andhra Pradesh programme.
Mr Pranab Mukherjee should provide allocation for extending this programme to the rest of the country. Here lies a future model of food security and farm viability for the country. #
With farmlands being grabbed, Africa too awaits march of the millions.
The other day I read an interesting blog post by Damian Carrington of The Guardian. It tried to examine the small print behind the massive farm land grab in Africa. His blog was based on a report "Land Deals in Africa: What is in the contracts?"prepared by Lorenzo Cotula of the International Institute of Environment & Development. From the response that the blog attracted, it is quite obvious that people are infuriated by the way land grab is taking place.
In another related development, an official press release issued by the Govt of India last week (Feb 1, 2011) said: "Ethiopia has invited Indian farmers for commercial farming in view of high skill and experience of Indian farmers in commercial crops. Calling on Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Prof. K.V.Thomas here today, Ethiopian Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Tafera Derbew said that Indian farmers can avail the opportunity of vast farming land set aside by his country for commercial farming and grow pulses and edible oil crops for export to India."
Don't forget, India is the largest foreign investor in Ethiopia with approved investment of US $ 4.4 billion, out of which 40 per cent investment is in the field of commercial agriculture. Already, more than 80 Indian companies have bought land in Ethiopia.
Anyway, one of the letters commenting on Damian's blog post quoting Friends of the Earth, listed some of the recent cases of farm land grab in Africa. Before I go to the salient conclusions of the IIED report, let us have a look at the extent of land grab that has already taken place. What the list below provides is only the land grabbed for energy plantations - jatropha and agro-fuels. Therefore this is only a tip of the iceberg.
Ethiopia 700,000 ha earmarked for sugar cane, 23 million ha suitable for jatropha. UK-based Sun Biofuels operates 5,000 ha, Acazis AG (German) leases 56,000 ha with concessions for another 200,000 ha.
Kenya Japanese, Belgian and Canadian companies plan to up to 500,000 ha.
Tanzania 1,000 rice farmers forced off their land to make way for sugarcane.
Mozambique Investors aim for 4.8 million ha. Over 183,000ha currently allocated to jatropha. Companies: UK, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Canada and Ukraine.
Swaziland UK based D1 Oils suspends expansion of jatropha despite promotion by rockstar Bob Geldof.
Congo Chinese company requests 1 million ha. Italian energy corporation ENI plans palm oil plantation of 70,000 ha.
Angola 500,000 ha of land designated for agrofuels. Angolian, Brazilian, Spanish and South African companies.
Cameroon Cameroon/French company expanding palm oil plantations including 60-year lease on 58,000 ha.
Sierra Leone Swiss based Addax Bioenergy obtains 26,000 ha for sugarcane.
Ghana Italian-based Agroils obtains 105,000 ha, UK company Jatropha
S Africa acquires 120,000 ha, ScanFuel (Norway) cultivates 10,000 hectares and has contracts for ca. 400,000 ha, Galten (Israel) acquires 100,000 ha.
Benin Proposed 300,000 - 400,000 ha of wetlands to be converted for oil palm.
Nigeria Land acquisitions by the state using foreign capital and expertise. Over 100,000 ha grabbed.
Another letter from someone whose id is cbarr, said: "The land grabs seem to be following a similar pattern to Peru where the world business council for sustainable development lobbied for a change in the rules on land ownership stating it would help local communities develop to have a concrete model for land ownership. It's led to indigenous groups having land seized from under them and massive strife in agricultural areas especially the highlands as mining companies and agricorp buy up all the land. As a result there is now a sustained resistance movement and growing social unrest in the nation."
So the malaise is not only confined to Africa, but is global.
Nevertheless, Damian writes in his blog: "He (Lorenzo Cotula) examines 12 contracts which have become public in which large areas of land have been leased, ranging from a timber deal in Sudan to a rice and corn deal in Madagascar. These are mere snapshot of the hundreds of deals that have been struck, from the finance tycoon that reportedly concluded a deal for 400,000 hectares with a local warlord in Southern Sudan to an agribusiness with established track record in tropical agriculture that negotiated a sophisticated contract for both production and processing in Mali.
The picture from the 12 contracts is not good. The leases are long, up to 100 years, and the rents are low - a dollar per hectare per year in one case. In another contract, the land is allocated explicitly for free. In some cases investors get priority access to water, the very stuff of life.
In theory at least, such land acquisition could be beneficial to the host countries. They could bring investment and expertise, improve irrigation and other infrastructure, and increase crop yields and create jobs. But most of the contracts fail to specify these benefits clearly or enforceably. There is little on the safeguards for local food security - raising the prospect of food being trucked out of a starving nation under armed guard - or for the local environment."
I don't know why the Africa leaders are so blind that they can't see the threat farmland grabs pose for their national sovereignty. Why has political leadership across Africa, and this is true for Asia too, has been so seduced by the magic of foreign direct investments (FDI) that they can't read the warning ahead? Such myopic thinking is certainly taking the world towards difficult times. History may not pardon these political leaders, but by the time the turn comes to penalise them they would be gone.
I also draw your attention to Lester Browns latest book World on the Edge. He says (in a review published in The Guardian) that in 2009 Saudi Arabia received its first shipment of rice produced on land it had acquired in Ethiopia while at the same time the World Food Programme was feeding 5 million Ethiopians. Similarly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China has acquired 7 million hectares for palm oil production and yet millions of people in the DRC are dependent on international aid for food.
Brown warns that 'land grabbing is an integral part of the global power struggle for food security'. He argues that geopolitics for several centuries have been dominated by the issue of access to markets, but increasingly in the future this will be replaced by the overriding importance of access to supplies. Food importing countries are anxiously securing their food supplies, all too aware that exporting countries can impose export bans to meet their needs. In 2007 both Russia and Argentina, major grain exporters, put in place export bans and it sent waves of panic around the world, which have probably played a big part in fuelling land acquisition deals.
Much of the attention so far has focused on Africa. Most of the biggest deals have been in countries such as Ethiopia, Mali and Sudan. The imminently independent south Sudan has seen investors queuing up to exploit one of the areas of greatest potential for as yet under developed agricultural land. In comparison with many other areas of the world, land in Africa is very cheap; in Ethiopia, land can be leased for as little as $1 an acre." [you can read the full article at: http://bit.ly/ihSDrl]
No wonder, may Indian companies are keen to invest in Ethiopia. Where in the world do you get land at $ 1 an acre? At this rate, I am sure the African growth bubble will also burst sooner than later. Just as one case of self-immolation in Tunis spread the fire across the Arab world, the day is not far off when Africa too will be engulfed with a raging political fire stoked by farm landgrabs.
In another related development, an official press release issued by the Govt of India last week (Feb 1, 2011) said: "Ethiopia has invited Indian farmers for commercial farming in view of high skill and experience of Indian farmers in commercial crops. Calling on Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Prof. K.V.Thomas here today, Ethiopian Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Tafera Derbew said that Indian farmers can avail the opportunity of vast farming land set aside by his country for commercial farming and grow pulses and edible oil crops for export to India."
Don't forget, India is the largest foreign investor in Ethiopia with approved investment of US $ 4.4 billion, out of which 40 per cent investment is in the field of commercial agriculture. Already, more than 80 Indian companies have bought land in Ethiopia.
Anyway, one of the letters commenting on Damian's blog post quoting Friends of the Earth, listed some of the recent cases of farm land grab in Africa. Before I go to the salient conclusions of the IIED report, let us have a look at the extent of land grab that has already taken place. What the list below provides is only the land grabbed for energy plantations - jatropha and agro-fuels. Therefore this is only a tip of the iceberg.
Ethiopia 700,000 ha earmarked for sugar cane, 23 million ha suitable for jatropha. UK-based Sun Biofuels operates 5,000 ha, Acazis AG (German) leases 56,000 ha with concessions for another 200,000 ha.
Kenya Japanese, Belgian and Canadian companies plan to up to 500,000 ha.
Tanzania 1,000 rice farmers forced off their land to make way for sugarcane.
Mozambique Investors aim for 4.8 million ha. Over 183,000ha currently allocated to jatropha. Companies: UK, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Canada and Ukraine.
Swaziland UK based D1 Oils suspends expansion of jatropha despite promotion by rockstar Bob Geldof.
Congo Chinese company requests 1 million ha. Italian energy corporation ENI plans palm oil plantation of 70,000 ha.
Angola 500,000 ha of land designated for agrofuels. Angolian, Brazilian, Spanish and South African companies.
Cameroon Cameroon/French company expanding palm oil plantations including 60-year lease on 58,000 ha.
Sierra Leone Swiss based Addax Bioenergy obtains 26,000 ha for sugarcane.
Ghana Italian-based Agroils obtains 105,000 ha, UK company Jatropha
S Africa acquires 120,000 ha, ScanFuel (Norway) cultivates 10,000 hectares and has contracts for ca. 400,000 ha, Galten (Israel) acquires 100,000 ha.
Benin Proposed 300,000 - 400,000 ha of wetlands to be converted for oil palm.
Nigeria Land acquisitions by the state using foreign capital and expertise. Over 100,000 ha grabbed.
Another letter from someone whose id is cbarr, said: "The land grabs seem to be following a similar pattern to Peru where the world business council for sustainable development lobbied for a change in the rules on land ownership stating it would help local communities develop to have a concrete model for land ownership. It's led to indigenous groups having land seized from under them and massive strife in agricultural areas especially the highlands as mining companies and agricorp buy up all the land. As a result there is now a sustained resistance movement and growing social unrest in the nation."
So the malaise is not only confined to Africa, but is global.
Nevertheless, Damian writes in his blog: "He (Lorenzo Cotula) examines 12 contracts which have become public in which large areas of land have been leased, ranging from a timber deal in Sudan to a rice and corn deal in Madagascar. These are mere snapshot of the hundreds of deals that have been struck, from the finance tycoon that reportedly concluded a deal for 400,000 hectares with a local warlord in Southern Sudan to an agribusiness with established track record in tropical agriculture that negotiated a sophisticated contract for both production and processing in Mali.
The picture from the 12 contracts is not good. The leases are long, up to 100 years, and the rents are low - a dollar per hectare per year in one case. In another contract, the land is allocated explicitly for free. In some cases investors get priority access to water, the very stuff of life.
In theory at least, such land acquisition could be beneficial to the host countries. They could bring investment and expertise, improve irrigation and other infrastructure, and increase crop yields and create jobs. But most of the contracts fail to specify these benefits clearly or enforceably. There is little on the safeguards for local food security - raising the prospect of food being trucked out of a starving nation under armed guard - or for the local environment."
I don't know why the Africa leaders are so blind that they can't see the threat farmland grabs pose for their national sovereignty. Why has political leadership across Africa, and this is true for Asia too, has been so seduced by the magic of foreign direct investments (FDI) that they can't read the warning ahead? Such myopic thinking is certainly taking the world towards difficult times. History may not pardon these political leaders, but by the time the turn comes to penalise them they would be gone.
I also draw your attention to Lester Browns latest book World on the Edge. He says (in a review published in The Guardian) that in 2009 Saudi Arabia received its first shipment of rice produced on land it had acquired in Ethiopia while at the same time the World Food Programme was feeding 5 million Ethiopians. Similarly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China has acquired 7 million hectares for palm oil production and yet millions of people in the DRC are dependent on international aid for food.
Brown warns that 'land grabbing is an integral part of the global power struggle for food security'. He argues that geopolitics for several centuries have been dominated by the issue of access to markets, but increasingly in the future this will be replaced by the overriding importance of access to supplies. Food importing countries are anxiously securing their food supplies, all too aware that exporting countries can impose export bans to meet their needs. In 2007 both Russia and Argentina, major grain exporters, put in place export bans and it sent waves of panic around the world, which have probably played a big part in fuelling land acquisition deals.
Much of the attention so far has focused on Africa. Most of the biggest deals have been in countries such as Ethiopia, Mali and Sudan. The imminently independent south Sudan has seen investors queuing up to exploit one of the areas of greatest potential for as yet under developed agricultural land. In comparison with many other areas of the world, land in Africa is very cheap; in Ethiopia, land can be leased for as little as $1 an acre." [you can read the full article at: http://bit.ly/ihSDrl]
No wonder, may Indian companies are keen to invest in Ethiopia. Where in the world do you get land at $ 1 an acre? At this rate, I am sure the African growth bubble will also burst sooner than later. Just as one case of self-immolation in Tunis spread the fire across the Arab world, the day is not far off when Africa too will be engulfed with a raging political fire stoked by farm landgrabs.
Punjab's agriculture is full of misery
Punjab's Agriculture is in crisis. Green Revolution has taken a heavy toll of the food bowl. The verdant lands have now turned poisonous, aquifers have run dry, food is rich in pesticides, cancer is growing in the rural areas, and so on. Over the years, farmers have slipped into heavy debts, and the farm incomes have dwindled. No wonder, farm suicide rate remains high.
The distress is all visible.
And yet, planners, policy makers and agricultural scientists have failed to resurrect agriculture. I think it will not be unfair to say that successive governments have given up on farming and agriculture. All efforts are now to shift the farming population to industry, and to other urban centric activities. My colleague Bhaskar Goswami has tried to paint the broader picture, which I am sure you will find useful.
In view of the crisis, we are also planning to hold a conference on "Future of Punjab Agriculture" sometimes in the first week of March in Chandigarh. Dr M S Swaminathan has very kindly consented to kick-off the two day deliberations. A number of Punjab watchers, scientists, economists, farmers, activists, and students will be participating in this conference. I would welcome any suggestions that you may have to make this conference more productive and useful.
Scars of the Green Revolution
http://www.indiatogether.org/2011/feb/agr-punjab.htm
Bhaskar Goswami
A severely eroded natural resource base is aggravating the already deep crisis in agriculture while farmers and farms are paying a heavy price in terms of stagnating yields and a loss of biodiversity. The agricultural growth rate in Punjab has also slowed down from 5 per cent in 1980s to 1.9 per cent in the 2000s, thereby impacting the incomes of farmers.
A swathe of negative trends
Against a national average of 40 per cent, almost 85 per cent of the State is under cultivation, of which 97 per cent is irrigated. A highly intensive form of agriculture in terms of land, capital, nutrients, water, energy and other inputs is practised in the State. The diminishing size of holdings has forced farmers to increase the cropping intensity, which has risen from 126 per cent in 1960 to 189 per cent in 2009, putting both soil and water under tremendous stress over the last five decades.
Farmers largely rotate crops of wheat and paddy over the year. The area under paddy has increased ten-fold during 1960-2009 while that under wheat two-and-a-half times, all of which are High Yielding Varieties (HYV). These intensive monocultures of wheat and paddy have displaced other crops like pulses, maize bajra, jowar, groundnut, barley, rapeseed, and mustard; crops that were once endemic to the State.
As per the 2007 State of Environment report, prior to the Green Revolution, 41 varieties of wheat, 37 varieties of rice, four varieties of maize, there varieties of bajra, 16 varieties of sugarcane, 19 varieties of pulses, nine varieties of oil seeds and 10 varieties of cotton were grown in Punjab. Present data indicates that out of 47 post green revolution varieties of wheat released by Punjab Agricultural University, only 5 are widely used. Similarly, out of 19 varieties of rice released, only eight are currently in use. The trend is more or less the same for the rest of the crops.
The picture is equally bleak on the livestock front, whose population has declined by 12.7 per cent between 1997 and 2003. The animal diversity is also dwindling and only three breeds each of cows, buffaloes and sheep and two breeds each of goats and poultry predominate. The Sahiwal breed of cattle, Lohi sheep, Nilli Ravi buffaloes and Beetal breed of goat are threatened species. This decline in diversity and numbers of livestock is also an indicator of the erosion of traditional integrated farming practices across the State.
The immediate impact of intensive monoculture cultivation practices is seen on the soils, which face severe degradation due to erosion and salt deposition. Also, the fertility in terms of both macro and micro-nutrients has declined steadily. This in turn has pushed farmers to apply larger doses of chemical fertilisers whose consumption has increased eight-fold in the last 50 years. After Andhra Pradesh, per hectare application of fertilisers is the highest in Punjab - almost double the country's average, and rising. Yet, yield levels are stagnant.
The fact is, sick soils have lost their ability to respond to inputs like fertilizers, a reason for stagnating productivity. This decrease in response indicates that the organic carbon content and microbial activities in the soil, which are critical for crop development, have declined. While dying soils should have evoked concern decades back, all that is on offer now are further interventions that aim to promote more of the external input-intensive farming that in the first place caused the problem.
The immediate impact of intensive monoculture cultivation practices is seen on the soils, which face severe degradation due to erosion and salt deposition.
The reckless application of chemical fertilisers has contaminated water bodies. A November 2009 study, Ground Water Quality for Irrigation in Punjab by government bodies reported that 42 per cent of the groundwater has saline and sodic elements. Forget drinking, these are unfit for irrigation. The Malwa belt is the worst affected with 60 per cent of contaminated water resources. Another study of farm wells by Greenpeace in 2009 reported nitrate contamination of drinking water way higher than permissible limits in the districts of Ludhiana, Muktsar and Bhatinda.
Another practice that is affecting soil fertility is burning of post-harvest straw on croplands that produced it. This is ostensibly done to ensure early readiness of the fields for the subsequent crop. The State produces around 230 lakh tonnes of paddy straw and 170 lakh tonnes of wheat straw each year. Of this, almost 80 per cent of the former and half of latter are burned in open fields. Apart from ruining soils, this is a major cause of air pollution and emission of greenhouse gases, which impact cultivation and yields.
Similar to the trend in fertiliser application, the consumption of pesticides has also increased in Punjab. Pesticide consumption in the State stood at 923 grams per hectare in 2006, which pegs a Punjabi farmer in the very-high-use bracket. Large scale application of pesticides is increasing pest resistance. Going by numerous peer-reviewed papers and news reports, pesticide residues have been recorded in human beings, water, milk, vegetables and several other food products that are way higher than permissible limits.
Incidence of cancer and other ailments have reached alarming levels and huge numbers of farmers and their families from the Malwa region regularly travel to Rajasthan for treatment of cancer. Newspaper reports also point to children as young as 10 looking old with peppery hair and suffering from arthritis.
Water-stressed
Planting HYVs has also increased the demand on water for irrigation. As per the State Department of Soil and Water Conservation, agriculture requires 43.7 lakh hectare meters of water. Surface canals provide 14.5 lakh ha-m and ground recharge supplies 16.6 lakh ha-m; the balance 12.4 lakh ha-m is met through overexploitation of ground water. As a result, groundwater levels are reducing by almost 30 cm each year. As per the Department's figures on its website, there are about 10 lakh shallow tube-wells and 3162 deep tube-wells in the State, mining water to irrigate a net area as high as 41 lakh hectares. All this notwithstanding the first "temple of modern India" - the Bhakra dam - meant to quench the thirst of Punjab's farmlands.
As per the figures of the Soil and Water Conservation Department, of the 17 districts in the State, groundwater in eight are overexploited, three are in the grey zone while the remainder fall are considered safe. If one were to look at the prevalence of crises in groundwater down from the district to the block level, almost 53 per cent of the blocks in the State are in the 'overexploited' category, eight per cent in the Dark Zone, and 16 more blocks fall in the Grey Zone, thereby leaving only 38 per cent of the blocks in the relatively safe White Zone. Clearly, this level of extraction is unsustainable.
Investing for debt
The Green Revolution also ushered in a rapid adoption of farm mechanisation technologies. To illustrate, on the one hand the average holding size is shrinking while on the other the sale of tractors is increasing. The State accounts for almost 14 per cent of tractors in the country, which is double the numbers that are actually required. This is nothing but overcapitalisation in farm mechanisation and its underutilisation which is adding to the debt burden of farmers. Increasing amounts of debt money is being spent on farm machinery, and this has increased from 15 per cent in 1997 to 53 per cent in 2008.
On indebtedness, a recent study by Dr. H S Shergill from the Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh, has tracked and analysed farm debt and come up with distressing figures: it has grown from Rs.5700 crores in 1997 to Rs.30,394 crores in 2008, a five-fold jump in a decade. The rate of growth of farm debt in the last 10 years for Punjab is faster than farm incomes, which in itself is an indicator of the gravity of distress in agriculture.
What is equally shocking is that the debt amount as a per cent of net income has increased - from 68 per cent in 1997 to 84 per cent in 2008. The Shergill study points out that 72 per cent of farm households are heavily indebted while 17 per cent are virtually in a debt trap, unable to even fork out interest payments from their current farm income.
With the affluence of the farmer in Punjab waning, the quantity and nutritional quality of the food being consumed by households are also downbeat. As per the International Food Policy Research Institute's India State Hunger Index, while Punjab is the best performing State in the country, it ranks below 33 other developing countries, including Gabon, Honduras, and Vietnam. The National Family Health Survey report of 2005-06 reveals an equally sad picture of the state of health: one in every five adults in the age group of 15 to 49 years suffers from malnutrition in Punjab. That this is the state of health of people living in the proverbial granary of the country suggests how rest of India is faring.
There still is time and opportunity to undo this industrial approach to farming and usher in an honest "Green" farming model in Punjab. This is all the more important as the "Punjab Model" is now being recommended for replication across States that the Green Revolution bypassed in its earlier avatar, by none other than the Working Group on Agriculture Production. If that is to be the future prescription, nothing could be more disastrous for Indian farms and farmers.
(Bhaskar Goswami is with the New Delhi based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security)
The distress is all visible.
And yet, planners, policy makers and agricultural scientists have failed to resurrect agriculture. I think it will not be unfair to say that successive governments have given up on farming and agriculture. All efforts are now to shift the farming population to industry, and to other urban centric activities. My colleague Bhaskar Goswami has tried to paint the broader picture, which I am sure you will find useful.
In view of the crisis, we are also planning to hold a conference on "Future of Punjab Agriculture" sometimes in the first week of March in Chandigarh. Dr M S Swaminathan has very kindly consented to kick-off the two day deliberations. A number of Punjab watchers, scientists, economists, farmers, activists, and students will be participating in this conference. I would welcome any suggestions that you may have to make this conference more productive and useful.
Scars of the Green Revolution
http://www.indiatogether.org/2011/feb/agr-punjab.htm
Bhaskar Goswami
A severely eroded natural resource base is aggravating the already deep crisis in agriculture while farmers and farms are paying a heavy price in terms of stagnating yields and a loss of biodiversity. The agricultural growth rate in Punjab has also slowed down from 5 per cent in 1980s to 1.9 per cent in the 2000s, thereby impacting the incomes of farmers.
A swathe of negative trends
Against a national average of 40 per cent, almost 85 per cent of the State is under cultivation, of which 97 per cent is irrigated. A highly intensive form of agriculture in terms of land, capital, nutrients, water, energy and other inputs is practised in the State. The diminishing size of holdings has forced farmers to increase the cropping intensity, which has risen from 126 per cent in 1960 to 189 per cent in 2009, putting both soil and water under tremendous stress over the last five decades.
Farmers largely rotate crops of wheat and paddy over the year. The area under paddy has increased ten-fold during 1960-2009 while that under wheat two-and-a-half times, all of which are High Yielding Varieties (HYV). These intensive monocultures of wheat and paddy have displaced other crops like pulses, maize bajra, jowar, groundnut, barley, rapeseed, and mustard; crops that were once endemic to the State.
As per the 2007 State of Environment report, prior to the Green Revolution, 41 varieties of wheat, 37 varieties of rice, four varieties of maize, there varieties of bajra, 16 varieties of sugarcane, 19 varieties of pulses, nine varieties of oil seeds and 10 varieties of cotton were grown in Punjab. Present data indicates that out of 47 post green revolution varieties of wheat released by Punjab Agricultural University, only 5 are widely used. Similarly, out of 19 varieties of rice released, only eight are currently in use. The trend is more or less the same for the rest of the crops.
The picture is equally bleak on the livestock front, whose population has declined by 12.7 per cent between 1997 and 2003. The animal diversity is also dwindling and only three breeds each of cows, buffaloes and sheep and two breeds each of goats and poultry predominate. The Sahiwal breed of cattle, Lohi sheep, Nilli Ravi buffaloes and Beetal breed of goat are threatened species. This decline in diversity and numbers of livestock is also an indicator of the erosion of traditional integrated farming practices across the State.
The immediate impact of intensive monoculture cultivation practices is seen on the soils, which face severe degradation due to erosion and salt deposition. Also, the fertility in terms of both macro and micro-nutrients has declined steadily. This in turn has pushed farmers to apply larger doses of chemical fertilisers whose consumption has increased eight-fold in the last 50 years. After Andhra Pradesh, per hectare application of fertilisers is the highest in Punjab - almost double the country's average, and rising. Yet, yield levels are stagnant.
The fact is, sick soils have lost their ability to respond to inputs like fertilizers, a reason for stagnating productivity. This decrease in response indicates that the organic carbon content and microbial activities in the soil, which are critical for crop development, have declined. While dying soils should have evoked concern decades back, all that is on offer now are further interventions that aim to promote more of the external input-intensive farming that in the first place caused the problem.
The immediate impact of intensive monoculture cultivation practices is seen on the soils, which face severe degradation due to erosion and salt deposition.
The reckless application of chemical fertilisers has contaminated water bodies. A November 2009 study, Ground Water Quality for Irrigation in Punjab by government bodies reported that 42 per cent of the groundwater has saline and sodic elements. Forget drinking, these are unfit for irrigation. The Malwa belt is the worst affected with 60 per cent of contaminated water resources. Another study of farm wells by Greenpeace in 2009 reported nitrate contamination of drinking water way higher than permissible limits in the districts of Ludhiana, Muktsar and Bhatinda.
Another practice that is affecting soil fertility is burning of post-harvest straw on croplands that produced it. This is ostensibly done to ensure early readiness of the fields for the subsequent crop. The State produces around 230 lakh tonnes of paddy straw and 170 lakh tonnes of wheat straw each year. Of this, almost 80 per cent of the former and half of latter are burned in open fields. Apart from ruining soils, this is a major cause of air pollution and emission of greenhouse gases, which impact cultivation and yields.
Similar to the trend in fertiliser application, the consumption of pesticides has also increased in Punjab. Pesticide consumption in the State stood at 923 grams per hectare in 2006, which pegs a Punjabi farmer in the very-high-use bracket. Large scale application of pesticides is increasing pest resistance. Going by numerous peer-reviewed papers and news reports, pesticide residues have been recorded in human beings, water, milk, vegetables and several other food products that are way higher than permissible limits.
Incidence of cancer and other ailments have reached alarming levels and huge numbers of farmers and their families from the Malwa region regularly travel to Rajasthan for treatment of cancer. Newspaper reports also point to children as young as 10 looking old with peppery hair and suffering from arthritis.
Water-stressed
Planting HYVs has also increased the demand on water for irrigation. As per the State Department of Soil and Water Conservation, agriculture requires 43.7 lakh hectare meters of water. Surface canals provide 14.5 lakh ha-m and ground recharge supplies 16.6 lakh ha-m; the balance 12.4 lakh ha-m is met through overexploitation of ground water. As a result, groundwater levels are reducing by almost 30 cm each year. As per the Department's figures on its website, there are about 10 lakh shallow tube-wells and 3162 deep tube-wells in the State, mining water to irrigate a net area as high as 41 lakh hectares. All this notwithstanding the first "temple of modern India" - the Bhakra dam - meant to quench the thirst of Punjab's farmlands.
As per the figures of the Soil and Water Conservation Department, of the 17 districts in the State, groundwater in eight are overexploited, three are in the grey zone while the remainder fall are considered safe. If one were to look at the prevalence of crises in groundwater down from the district to the block level, almost 53 per cent of the blocks in the State are in the 'overexploited' category, eight per cent in the Dark Zone, and 16 more blocks fall in the Grey Zone, thereby leaving only 38 per cent of the blocks in the relatively safe White Zone. Clearly, this level of extraction is unsustainable.
Investing for debt
The Green Revolution also ushered in a rapid adoption of farm mechanisation technologies. To illustrate, on the one hand the average holding size is shrinking while on the other the sale of tractors is increasing. The State accounts for almost 14 per cent of tractors in the country, which is double the numbers that are actually required. This is nothing but overcapitalisation in farm mechanisation and its underutilisation which is adding to the debt burden of farmers. Increasing amounts of debt money is being spent on farm machinery, and this has increased from 15 per cent in 1997 to 53 per cent in 2008.
On indebtedness, a recent study by Dr. H S Shergill from the Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh, has tracked and analysed farm debt and come up with distressing figures: it has grown from Rs.5700 crores in 1997 to Rs.30,394 crores in 2008, a five-fold jump in a decade. The rate of growth of farm debt in the last 10 years for Punjab is faster than farm incomes, which in itself is an indicator of the gravity of distress in agriculture.
What is equally shocking is that the debt amount as a per cent of net income has increased - from 68 per cent in 1997 to 84 per cent in 2008. The Shergill study points out that 72 per cent of farm households are heavily indebted while 17 per cent are virtually in a debt trap, unable to even fork out interest payments from their current farm income.
With the affluence of the farmer in Punjab waning, the quantity and nutritional quality of the food being consumed by households are also downbeat. As per the International Food Policy Research Institute's India State Hunger Index, while Punjab is the best performing State in the country, it ranks below 33 other developing countries, including Gabon, Honduras, and Vietnam. The National Family Health Survey report of 2005-06 reveals an equally sad picture of the state of health: one in every five adults in the age group of 15 to 49 years suffers from malnutrition in Punjab. That this is the state of health of people living in the proverbial granary of the country suggests how rest of India is faring.
There still is time and opportunity to undo this industrial approach to farming and usher in an honest "Green" farming model in Punjab. This is all the more important as the "Punjab Model" is now being recommended for replication across States that the Green Revolution bypassed in its earlier avatar, by none other than the Working Group on Agriculture Production. If that is to be the future prescription, nothing could be more disastrous for Indian farms and farmers.
(Bhaskar Goswami is with the New Delhi based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security)
India is deliberately destroying food self-sufficiency (in Hindi)
कृषि में आत्मनिर्भरता कैसे बचेगी?
http://www.naidunia.com/Details.aspx?id=215311&boxid=29820682
देवेंद्र शर्मा
21 सदी का पहला दशक इतिहास में थोड़ा धुंधला सा गया है। समय की सुई एक बार फिर वापस घुम रही है। अंतर्राष्ट्रीय खाद्य मूल्य एक बार फिर अपने चरम पर हैं और वैश्विक मूल्य सारे रिकार्ड तोड़ते हुए एक बार फिर उसी स्तर पर पहुँच गए हैं जो वर्ष 2008 में थे। अगला दशक भी संभवत: ऐसा ही होगा।
जनवरी के प्रथम साप्ताह में अल्जीरिया पहले ही खाद्य पदार्थों को लेकर फैले दंगे को भुगत चुका है। उधर संयुक्त राष्ट्र को डर सता रहा है कि 2011 में कहीं 2008 फिर न दोहरा जाए जब दुनिया के 37 देशों ने भूख के लिए दंगों का सामना किया था। मुझे डर है कि कहीं अगले दशक में भारत सहित विकासशील देशों के अन्य गुटों को खाद्य पदार्थ आयात न करना पड़े। भारत में कृषि के क्षेत्र में जी से बढ़ती कार्पोरेट संस्कृति और पानी, जंगल व कृषि भूमि का निजीकरण देश को एक बार फिर तेजी से पुराने गुलामी के दिनों में पहुँचा रही है। देश को अपने लाखों भूखे पेट भरने के लिए खाद्य पदार्थ का आयात करना पड़ रहा है। नीति निर्माता और योजना बनाने वाले इस दिशा में काफी काम कर रहे हैं कि किसान अपनी खेती की जमीन को छोड़कर शहरों की ओर पलायन कर जाएं।
उत्तरप्रदेश का उदाहरण लें। यह देश का सबसे ज्यादा जनसंख्या वाला प्रदेश है और साथ ही यह देश का सबसे ज्यादा आनाज उत्पादन करने वाला भी प्रदेश है। उत्तरप्रदेश का पश्चिमी भाग जिसमें गंगा से लगे मैदानी इलाकों की उपजाऊ जमीन भी शामिल है हरित क्रांति का बेल्ट कहलाता है। यहाँ से 410 लाख टन अनाज पैदा होता है हर साल। इसके अलावा यह प्रदेश 1.30 करोड़ टन गन्न्ा तथा 1.05 करोड़ टन आलू का भी उत्पादन करता है।
लेकिन यह सब जल्द ही बदलने की संभावना है। और इसी बात का मुझे डर सता रहा है। इस रूट पर आठ हाईवे और टाउनशिप प्रस्तावित है। साथ ही उद्योग, रियल एस्टेट व इन्वेस्टमेंट प्रोजेक्ट के लिए अधिकांश जमीनों पर कब्जा होने लगा है। इसके दायरे में 23 हजार गांव आ रहे हैं। एक मोटे आंकड़े के अनुसार 66 लाख हेक्टेयर कृषि की जमीन पर खतरा पर मंडरा रहा है। इसका सीधा असर 140 लाख टन अनाज के पैदावार पर पड़ेगा। दूसरे शब्दों में कहे हैं कि उत्तरप्रदेश आने वाले सालों में अनाज की भीषण कमी से जूझेगा। उत्तरप्रदेश की यह कहानी दरअसल पूरे देश की है।
भारत में हरित क्रांति के दौरान कृषि में जो विकास हुआ था उसका सबसे बड़ा नुकसान पर्यावरण को उठाना पड़ा क्योंकि इस दौरान रासायनिक खाद्य का बेतरतीब तरीके से उपयोग किया गया। वैज्ञानिक शब्दावली में इसे दूसरी पीढ़ी का पर्यावरणीय प्रभाव माना गया जिसके तहत कृषि वैज्ञानिकों की नजर में यह प्राकृतिक संसाधन के लिए नुकसानदेह थी।
टेक्नोलॉजी के विफल होने का संयुक्त प्रभाव कृषि उपज पर पड़ा और इसमें भारी गिरावट देखी गई। 1990 के बाद से भारत में कृषि की पैदावार में लगातार गिरावट बनी हुई है। हरित क्रांति के बाद पहली बार ऐसा हुआ कि कृषि की विकास दर जनसंख्या वृद्धि दर से प्रभावित हुई। उसके बाद इसमें कोई बड़ा बदलाव नहीं देखा गया। यह प्रक्रिया कई सारी सामाजिक-आर्थिक समस्याएं भी लेकर आई। हरित क्रांति टेक्नोलॉजी की विफलता भी किसानों द्वारा की जा रही आत्महत्या की एक बड़ी वजह बनी।
इससे भी भारत ने कुछ नहीं सीखा। भारत वैश्विक अर्थव्यवस्था के साथ कृषि के क्षेत्र में ज्यादा कुछ नहीं कर सका। भारत ने आयात दर कम कर दी या फिर हटा ही दी। यह विश्व व्यापार संगठन (डब्ल्यूटीओ) को खुश करने से ज्यादा कुछ नहीं था। सबसे ज्यादा चिंता की बात क्या है? कृषि में लगातार आ रही गिरावट से कुछ नहीं सीखना या फिर यूपीए सरकार द्वारा दूसरी हरित क्रांति को फास्ट ट्रेक पर लाने की तैयारी करना जो किसानों को खेती से दूर करने का काम कर रही है।
किसानों को कृषि से पूरी तरह अलग रखने की तैयारी की जा रही है। अर्थशास्त्रियों के अनुसार विकास के लिए इससे अलग को दूसरा रास्ता नहीं है। लेकिन कोई यह नहीं बता रहा कि आखिर यह किसान जाएंगे कहाँ? अमेरिका सहित ऐसा कौन सा देश है जो आज 10 मिलियन लोगों को रोजगार देने की स्थिति में है ? कौन सी कंपनी या उद्योग 1 मिलियन लोगों को आज रोजगार देना का वायदा करने की स्थिति में है?
भूमि किराया नीतियों जिन्होंने भूमि अधिग्रहण, विशेष आर्थिक क्षेत्रों आदि को बढ़ावा दिया है और साथ ही कृषि के बढ़ती कारपोरेट संस्कृति जिसकी वजह बढ़ती हुई कांटेक्ट फार्मिंग और कमोडिटी ट्रेडिंग है, की वजह से भारत दूसरी हरित क्रांति की स्थिति में प्रवेश कर रहा है जो कि अंतत: कृषि से किसानों को बाहर फेंक देगी। प्रधानमंत्री मनमोहन सिंह ने भी समय-समय पर ग्रामीण इलाकों से शहरों की ओर जनसंख्या के स्थानांतरण की जरूरत पर बल दिया है।
अगले दशक में हम देखेंगे की कृषि पूरी तरह से कारपोरेट के चंगुल में आ गई है। बीज तकनीक वाली कंपनियों के साथ ही कुछ प्रमुख बड़ी कंपनियाँ भारत में अपनी दुकानें खोलने जा रही है। यह एक तरह से रिटेल के क्षेत्र में मल्टी ब्रांड बन चुकी है। हाल ही में जो कीमतों में वृद्धि हुई है वो भारत में बड़े रिटेल बाजार के प्रवेश को साफ दर्शा रही है।
अब जबकि खाद्य पदार्थों का आयाज बढ़ता जा रहा है और कृषि क्षेत्र से किसान बाहर होते जा रहे हैं, भारत बहुत तेजी से उस स्थिति की ओर बढ़ रहा है जहाँ से उसने शुरूआत की थी। पिछले साठ वर्षों में देश ने उन नीतियों को उलट दिया है जो खाद्य के क्षेत्र में आत्मनिर्भरता की ओर ले गई थी। अगले दशक में आर्थिक वृद्धि के नाम पर खाद्य आत्मनिर्भरता की बलि दी जा सकती है।
कृषि की आधारभूत संरचना को जानबूझकर पहुँचाई गई क्षति के परिणाम स्वरूप सामने आई सामाजिक-आर्थिक और राजनैतिक स्थितियों को समझना अत्यंत ही मुश्किल है।
(लेखक कृषि मामलों के विशेषज्ञ हैं।)
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देवेंद्र शर्मा
21 सदी का पहला दशक इतिहास में थोड़ा धुंधला सा गया है। समय की सुई एक बार फिर वापस घुम रही है। अंतर्राष्ट्रीय खाद्य मूल्य एक बार फिर अपने चरम पर हैं और वैश्विक मूल्य सारे रिकार्ड तोड़ते हुए एक बार फिर उसी स्तर पर पहुँच गए हैं जो वर्ष 2008 में थे। अगला दशक भी संभवत: ऐसा ही होगा।
जनवरी के प्रथम साप्ताह में अल्जीरिया पहले ही खाद्य पदार्थों को लेकर फैले दंगे को भुगत चुका है। उधर संयुक्त राष्ट्र को डर सता रहा है कि 2011 में कहीं 2008 फिर न दोहरा जाए जब दुनिया के 37 देशों ने भूख के लिए दंगों का सामना किया था। मुझे डर है कि कहीं अगले दशक में भारत सहित विकासशील देशों के अन्य गुटों को खाद्य पदार्थ आयात न करना पड़े। भारत में कृषि के क्षेत्र में जी से बढ़ती कार्पोरेट संस्कृति और पानी, जंगल व कृषि भूमि का निजीकरण देश को एक बार फिर तेजी से पुराने गुलामी के दिनों में पहुँचा रही है। देश को अपने लाखों भूखे पेट भरने के लिए खाद्य पदार्थ का आयात करना पड़ रहा है। नीति निर्माता और योजना बनाने वाले इस दिशा में काफी काम कर रहे हैं कि किसान अपनी खेती की जमीन को छोड़कर शहरों की ओर पलायन कर जाएं।
उत्तरप्रदेश का उदाहरण लें। यह देश का सबसे ज्यादा जनसंख्या वाला प्रदेश है और साथ ही यह देश का सबसे ज्यादा आनाज उत्पादन करने वाला भी प्रदेश है। उत्तरप्रदेश का पश्चिमी भाग जिसमें गंगा से लगे मैदानी इलाकों की उपजाऊ जमीन भी शामिल है हरित क्रांति का बेल्ट कहलाता है। यहाँ से 410 लाख टन अनाज पैदा होता है हर साल। इसके अलावा यह प्रदेश 1.30 करोड़ टन गन्न्ा तथा 1.05 करोड़ टन आलू का भी उत्पादन करता है।
लेकिन यह सब जल्द ही बदलने की संभावना है। और इसी बात का मुझे डर सता रहा है। इस रूट पर आठ हाईवे और टाउनशिप प्रस्तावित है। साथ ही उद्योग, रियल एस्टेट व इन्वेस्टमेंट प्रोजेक्ट के लिए अधिकांश जमीनों पर कब्जा होने लगा है। इसके दायरे में 23 हजार गांव आ रहे हैं। एक मोटे आंकड़े के अनुसार 66 लाख हेक्टेयर कृषि की जमीन पर खतरा पर मंडरा रहा है। इसका सीधा असर 140 लाख टन अनाज के पैदावार पर पड़ेगा। दूसरे शब्दों में कहे हैं कि उत्तरप्रदेश आने वाले सालों में अनाज की भीषण कमी से जूझेगा। उत्तरप्रदेश की यह कहानी दरअसल पूरे देश की है।
भारत में हरित क्रांति के दौरान कृषि में जो विकास हुआ था उसका सबसे बड़ा नुकसान पर्यावरण को उठाना पड़ा क्योंकि इस दौरान रासायनिक खाद्य का बेतरतीब तरीके से उपयोग किया गया। वैज्ञानिक शब्दावली में इसे दूसरी पीढ़ी का पर्यावरणीय प्रभाव माना गया जिसके तहत कृषि वैज्ञानिकों की नजर में यह प्राकृतिक संसाधन के लिए नुकसानदेह थी।
टेक्नोलॉजी के विफल होने का संयुक्त प्रभाव कृषि उपज पर पड़ा और इसमें भारी गिरावट देखी गई। 1990 के बाद से भारत में कृषि की पैदावार में लगातार गिरावट बनी हुई है। हरित क्रांति के बाद पहली बार ऐसा हुआ कि कृषि की विकास दर जनसंख्या वृद्धि दर से प्रभावित हुई। उसके बाद इसमें कोई बड़ा बदलाव नहीं देखा गया। यह प्रक्रिया कई सारी सामाजिक-आर्थिक समस्याएं भी लेकर आई। हरित क्रांति टेक्नोलॉजी की विफलता भी किसानों द्वारा की जा रही आत्महत्या की एक बड़ी वजह बनी।
इससे भी भारत ने कुछ नहीं सीखा। भारत वैश्विक अर्थव्यवस्था के साथ कृषि के क्षेत्र में ज्यादा कुछ नहीं कर सका। भारत ने आयात दर कम कर दी या फिर हटा ही दी। यह विश्व व्यापार संगठन (डब्ल्यूटीओ) को खुश करने से ज्यादा कुछ नहीं था। सबसे ज्यादा चिंता की बात क्या है? कृषि में लगातार आ रही गिरावट से कुछ नहीं सीखना या फिर यूपीए सरकार द्वारा दूसरी हरित क्रांति को फास्ट ट्रेक पर लाने की तैयारी करना जो किसानों को खेती से दूर करने का काम कर रही है।
किसानों को कृषि से पूरी तरह अलग रखने की तैयारी की जा रही है। अर्थशास्त्रियों के अनुसार विकास के लिए इससे अलग को दूसरा रास्ता नहीं है। लेकिन कोई यह नहीं बता रहा कि आखिर यह किसान जाएंगे कहाँ? अमेरिका सहित ऐसा कौन सा देश है जो आज 10 मिलियन लोगों को रोजगार देने की स्थिति में है ? कौन सी कंपनी या उद्योग 1 मिलियन लोगों को आज रोजगार देना का वायदा करने की स्थिति में है?
भूमि किराया नीतियों जिन्होंने भूमि अधिग्रहण, विशेष आर्थिक क्षेत्रों आदि को बढ़ावा दिया है और साथ ही कृषि के बढ़ती कारपोरेट संस्कृति जिसकी वजह बढ़ती हुई कांटेक्ट फार्मिंग और कमोडिटी ट्रेडिंग है, की वजह से भारत दूसरी हरित क्रांति की स्थिति में प्रवेश कर रहा है जो कि अंतत: कृषि से किसानों को बाहर फेंक देगी। प्रधानमंत्री मनमोहन सिंह ने भी समय-समय पर ग्रामीण इलाकों से शहरों की ओर जनसंख्या के स्थानांतरण की जरूरत पर बल दिया है।
अगले दशक में हम देखेंगे की कृषि पूरी तरह से कारपोरेट के चंगुल में आ गई है। बीज तकनीक वाली कंपनियों के साथ ही कुछ प्रमुख बड़ी कंपनियाँ भारत में अपनी दुकानें खोलने जा रही है। यह एक तरह से रिटेल के क्षेत्र में मल्टी ब्रांड बन चुकी है। हाल ही में जो कीमतों में वृद्धि हुई है वो भारत में बड़े रिटेल बाजार के प्रवेश को साफ दर्शा रही है।
अब जबकि खाद्य पदार्थों का आयाज बढ़ता जा रहा है और कृषि क्षेत्र से किसान बाहर होते जा रहे हैं, भारत बहुत तेजी से उस स्थिति की ओर बढ़ रहा है जहाँ से उसने शुरूआत की थी। पिछले साठ वर्षों में देश ने उन नीतियों को उलट दिया है जो खाद्य के क्षेत्र में आत्मनिर्भरता की ओर ले गई थी। अगले दशक में आर्थिक वृद्धि के नाम पर खाद्य आत्मनिर्भरता की बलि दी जा सकती है।
कृषि की आधारभूत संरचना को जानबूझकर पहुँचाई गई क्षति के परिणाम स्वरूप सामने आई सामाजिक-आर्थिक और राजनैतिक स्थितियों को समझना अत्यंत ही मुश्किल है।
(लेखक कृषि मामलों के विशेषज्ञ हैं।)
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