What of the farmer?
India is an agricultural nation, this is our legacy. Even
today around 50% of the population relies directly on agricultural produce as a
source of living. In many ways India is still an agrarian nation and yet the
state of agriculture and more importantly the state of the farmers is in
shambles across the country. The farmers face a battle to put out a crop each
year as most of them rely on the heavens for water. The lack of any form of
infrastructure and real support from the government does not help matters too,
what will a farmer do with a subsidy if there is no water?
The water tables that have been constantly and quickly
depleted also do not help matters in this case and a day may soon come when
countries like India may also end up importing food on a large scale. The
reduction in the available arable land has also hit farmers in a bad way as
lands are cleared to make way for the increasing population. Besides that, a
large number of farmers in the country do not own and till their own lands
which adds to their woes.
So what of the farmer then? What of the farmer who puts his
blood and sweat and tears into the land but gets very little in return. Just the
other day I was in conversation with a gentleman on a bus, he was from an
agricultural family but was employed in an IT company, his words were, ‘my
father does not want me to be a farmer but me after working for a couple of
years in an MNC, I want to go back to my farming roots, it’s a much more peaceful
and fulfilling life for me.’
However as we continued our conversation, it dawned on us
that the state of the farmer in the nation was really bad. Tomatoes that are
grown on the farm of the gentleman in conversation are sold at one rupee per
kilo. I have never bought tomatoes that cheap, have you? Most of the products
that farmers wish to sell go to middlemen who pay less than dirt for the produce;
this is nothing new in the country. Even the government procured stuff is
usually bought at a much cheaper rate than the selling prices, why does the
farmer not get a large chunk of this money?
Storage and warehousing is also another important issue that
the entire country faces. Every year around 25% of the produce is wasted away
because of the lack of proper storage facilities. If you have ever been to some
of the more agricultural areas in the nation then you will know how they store
their crop. Such is the disarray that even with a bumper crop, there is a lot
wasted.
India has the largest number of hungry people in the world
but the irony is that we also produce some of the largest quantities of food in
the world. With the second largest population in the world, it is a tough task
for the country to be able to feed all of its hungry, but it’s not something
that is impossible. The so called food revolutions that have happened in the
country have also not led to any major successes as the hungry still remain hungry
and inflation has only worsened the situations of the poor Indian man.
So we really need to ask ourselves, what of the farmer who
toils on his lands day and night only to get but a few rupees for his produce
every year. What of the farmer who looks onto the heavens in despair as a so
called agricultural nation relies mostly on rains for its agriculture? What of
the farmer who has no option left but to wipe himself out of his own land, a
land that his ancestors also worked on and then move to a city in search of
work? What of the farmer who killed himself because there was no other way out?
Wherever the agents/middlemen/governments/corporations will come up for procuring the food items on a mass scale, there will be corruption of many sorts just to gain mere profits which they wanna share with less and lesser people.
ReplyDeleteObviously, we are the second largest population in the world & there are just too many people to feed. But the good news is that we are INDIA and it is entirely a different part of the world. We have been living and feeding ourselves locally, organic way, nature's way before the so called green revolution came up and fucked things with the list of fertilizers, pesticides and all sorts of chemical.
I think the answer lies in buying as much local & as much organic as one can like directly from the source. However, in metro cities like I live in delhi, the choice to buy locally is limited. Still some good nearby local farmer based shops / organic stores are good option. In my personal opinion anyways in that way one can also encourage farmers to grow stuff organic way & have healthy food at the same time. NO CHEMICALS.
So, the key here is to understand that we have been led to believe that what is important is to produce something but actually that's not the most important thing right now. The most important thing for survival and sustainability and for humanity is to understand that the place and not just the places but the entire planet is functional.
We think we want a lot of manufactured goods and more and more. We value productivity in agriculture and give it a monetary value. This is a wasteful, not a very effective and certainly not a sustainable way of life. Specially with 7 billion people, its not possible. So we need another model, another way.
We need to turn back to nature's way. Techniques like Permaculture and Food Forests has already been proven to produce in abundance (with abundance here I mean diverse variety of fruits and vegetables) & simultaneously restoring degraded land. And there is plenty of room for opportunities that way in the long run.
DograY,
DeleteExcellent points.
Please write one or two articles with us.
Our readers including myself will be looking forward to read 'em.