A good year for agriculture, a bad year for farmers

Despite a deficient monsoon, 2014 was a year of record agricultural production. But the buoyancy in production failed to translate into a higher income for farmers. It was a year of disappointment for farmers.

During the agricultural year 2013-24, which ended in June 2014, farmers produced a record harvest of 264.4 million tonnes of foodgrains. Not only in foodgrains, quantum jumps were also witnessed in the production of oilseeds, maize , cotton and pulses. Production of oilseeds reached a record high of 34.5 million tonnes, a jump of 4.8 per cent. Maize production increased by 8.52 per cent to reach a level of 24.2 million tones. Pulses production reached an all-time high of 19.6 million tonnes, an increase of 7.10 per cent over the previous year. Cotton production too touched a record high.

In Kharif 2014 too, despite the shortfall in monsoon rains, farmers produced a bumper crop of rice, maize and cotton.

With such record production, and that too at a time when monsoon had acted as a damper, the nation remains indebted to the virile and hardworking farmers. Despite being at the bottom of the pyramid, Indian farmers have not failed the nation. Probably knowing this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, promised to provide more income in the hands of farmers by implementing the Swaminathan Committee report. BJP had time and again reiterated its promise of ensuring farmers a 50 per cent profit over the cost of production.

But in reality, farmers were given a paltry increase of Rs 50 per quintal in the minimum support price (MSP) for paddy and wheat, which translates into an increase of 3.6 per cent, not even enough to offset the additional burden from the prevailing inflation rate at that point of time. On top of it, basmati rice and cotton witnessed a crash in its prices. While basmati rice production had doubled in Punjab and Haryana, an alarming dip in prices was observed. Disappointed farmers sold basmati at prices ranging between Rs 1600-2400 per quintal, against a price of Rs 3,261 to Rs 6,085 they got last year.

In cotton too, prices slumped from an average of Rs 4,400 to Rs 5,200 per quintal last year to around Rs 3,000 this year, prompting the government to direct the Cotton Corporation of India to step in to buy at the procurement price of Rs 3,750 per quintal. Let us not forget that the jump in basmati and cotton production happened as farmers had incurred an additional cost on diesel to run tube wells for irrigation. Punjab and Haryana had recorded a 50 per cent shortfall in monsoon. 

As if this was not enough, Ministry of Food had issued a directive asking State Governments not to provide any bonus over the MSP. In case, the State Governments continue to provide bonus, the Ministry will withdraw from procurement operations. State Governments have also been advised to reduce procurement in view of the excessive stocks in storage. In other words, farmers are being increasingly left to face the vagaries of the markets.  

With the Food Corporation of India (FCI) being made to gradually withdraw from procurement operations, Chhatisgrah, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab are witnessing a deliberate delay in procurement operations. Chhatisgrah, which had promised to buy ever grain of rice produced by farmers, had limited rice procurement to a maximum of 10 quintals per farmers. After protests, it agreed to buy 15 quintals per farmer. In Punjab, an inordinate delay in making spot payments to farmers is being seen as a subtle message to farmers not to produce more rice.

Coming at a time when farming is already faced with declining incomes and rising indebtedness, the failure to prop-up agriculture will only add to the exodus from the farm. With land acquisition made easier, and also extending it to multiple cropped areas, agriculture has become a sacrificial goat in the road to economic growth. All talk of economic reforms has so far remained confined to the industry. Agriculture does not figure at all on the economic radar screen of the country. The implications it will have on the country’s food security in the years to come are being simply glossed over.   

The continuing apathy is clearly visible from the significantly low budgetary provisions for agriculture year after year. In 2013, agriculture received 19,307-crore from the annual budget kitty (exceeding Rs 16 lakh-crore), which is less than 1 per cent of the total budget outlay. This year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley provided only Rs 22,652-crore to agriculture and cooperation departments. 

Source: 2014 -- A good year for agriculture, a bad year for farmers. ABPLive.in 
http://www.abplive.in/incoming/2014/12/31/article465644.ece/2014-A-good-year-for-agriculture-a-bad-year-for-farmers

Where benign insects control harmful pests.

In the great Indian epic, Mahabharata, there is a telling story of the valiant Abhimanyu who died fighting while trying to force his way through a chakravyuah (seven rings). Mahabharata tells us that Abhimanyu had learnt the art of smashing through the seven layers of the human chain of the chakravyuah. In lot many ways, I find the Indian farmer is also like Abhimanyu. He has been forced to get into a chakravyuah but does not know how to emerge out of it. Like Abhimanyu, he too is fighting it out valiantly but eventually will meet Abhimanyu's fate who died on the battle field.   

In a country where 290,740 farmers have committed suicide between 1995 and 2011, I am always reminded of Abhimanyu. Pushed deeper and deeper into a chakravyuah by a profiteering agro-chemical industry and an insensitive scientific community, Indian farmer faces a Hobson choice. He knows that sooner or later he too will become a victim of the serial death dance being enacted on the farm or will be forced to quit agriculture. Intensive farming systems in the name of increasing crop productivity has devastated soil fertility, contaminated the environment, mined the groundwater and turned agriculture into a losing proposition. Farmer is left to die.     

Much of the destruction that we see on the farm is the result of unwanted and exorbitantly expensive chemical inputs. Take the case of chemical pesticides. It was in late 1970s that David Pimental of the Cornell University had said in his landmark paper that 99.9 per cent chemical pesticides go into environment and only 0.01 per cent of the pesticides sprayed reach the target pest. Despite this warning, agricultural scientists continued to advocate the use of chemical pesticides. While the industry gained immensely, farmers as well as the gullible consumers suffered. This makes me wonder whether there is a way out. Can the Indian farmer ever emerge out of the chakravyuah? 

In search of viable alternatives, I have spanned the globe. I have seen and worked with farmers who took up the challenge to produce crops without the use of chemicals. Across the country, and even outside Andhra Pradesh which has an impressive 35 lakh acres under no pesticides, I have seen numerous initiatives which provide hope. Last week, I visited Nidana and Lalit Khera, two tiny and nondescript villages in Jind ditrict of Haryana. Farmers and village women in these villages have gone a step ahead. Not only they don't spray chemical pesticides on cotton, they don't even use bio-pesticides. They have allowed the insect equilibrium to prevail to such an extent that the harmful insects are taken care of by the beneficial insects.   

The amazing story of Nidana has to be told. Ask any cotton farmer about mealy bug and he will shudder. Ask any pesticides manufacturer, and he will break into a big smile. This tiny insect, which has emerged as a major pest of the cotton belt, is a blessing for the pesticides industry. Over the past few years, this pest has paved the way for a multi-billion rupee business for the chemical pesticides industry.

For some illiterate and semi-literate women and some enterprising farmers around Nidana village, mealy bug poses no threat. Mealy bug is a sucking pest and is known to be devouring crops at will. The mere presence of the insect in the cotton fields sends a chill among the farmers. Not only in Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, the insect has been a major threat to cotton production in neighbouring Pakistan. Massive and timely chemical sprays are advised by worried farm officials. But here in Jind district, some farmers remain unconcerned and take it easy.

Meena Malik is a 23 year-old graduate, who along with some 30 women of the nearby villages, partakes in a mahila keet pathshala (women insect school) every week. Once in a week, they spread across cotton fields in small groups early in the morning, each carrying a magnifying glass and with a notebook in hand. They identify the beneficial insects, which are mostly non-vegetarian, and count its population on a few plants. Similarly, they look for the harmful insects, mostly vegetarian feeding on the plant foliage and fruits, and based on their observations make a note of the insect diversity that exists in the crop fields.

"We have been able to identify 109 non-vegetarian insects and 43 vegetarian insects in our cotton fields," Meena tells me. An elderly lady Santosh Malik adds: "Mealy bugs are controlled by 16 kinds of beetles, 6 kinds of bugs, 7 kinds of flies and insects like praying mantis and chrysopa." At her age, I was surprised when she brought some beetles and bugs for me to see. Explaining to me the how different insects adopt different mechanisms to kill, she told me how an insect called angira, black in colour, would lay eggs in the stomach of the mealy bug. One egg per mealy bug. This eats up the stomach of the mealy bug which turns red in colour and eventually dies. Besides angira, she named two other of the same kind -- fangira and jangira.        

Among the bugs that feed on seeds in the cotton bolls of are kala baniya, lal baniya. The third of the species -- matku baniya -- sucks the blood of lal baniya. The bugs, very small in size, literally are blood suckers. Among the lady beetles, both the adults as well as the larvae, feed on the crawlers (children) of the mealy bug on priority basis. In its life cycle of 30-35 days, each mealy bug lays on an average 400 eggs, which becomes a rich food source for the lady beetles and their offsprings. Such is the importance of lady beetle insects that the women have prepared a Haryanvi folk song highlighting the virtues of the insect. If I understood properly, the lyrics of the folk song do plead for the lady beetles to come and save the cotton crop which has been destroyed by pests.

The most dreaded pest on cotton is the American bollworm (locally called American sundi), which is polyphagus in nature surviving on some 90 plant species. Dr Surinder Dalal, an Agricultural Development Officer of the Haryana Agriculture Department, who is considered to be the moving spirit behind this remarkable initiative in preserving insect equilibrium so as to maintain ecological balance, says: "The moths of the bollworm lay on an average anything between 700 to 3000 eggs on different plant leaves". Adds Kuldeep Singh Dhanda, pradhan of village Brah Kalan Bahra in Jind district, "The beetles eat the eggs, and 9 different kinds of bugs -- two of which are locally called katil burga, didar burga -- suck the eggs, and the moths are eaten by robber fly and dragon fly." Together they control the American bollworm.

The Nidana experiment began in 2007. Certainly it wasn't easy to convince cotton farmers that they can do without chemical and biological pesticides. But with each passing year now, more and more farmers are becoming aware of the ecological pathway. And this makes me wonder whether the approach scientific institutes followed all these years -- from 'lab-to-land' -- is in reality the bane of Indian agriculture. If only agricultural scientists had learnt from the farmers, if only they had adopted the reverse pathway -- from 'land-to-lab' -- probably farmers would have not been thrown to the gallows.

To me, the Nidana experiment is the way out of chakravyuah. The sooner we spread the message far and wide, the better it would be for the future of Indian agriculture as well as for the very survival of the farmers.

Also see: 
A ray of farming hope, Deccan Herald, Bangalore/Delhi, Sept 11, 2012
bit.ly/SCLMnV