Physicist,
environmentalist, feminist, writer and science policy advocate
Posted: April
In a land where reincarnation is a commonly held belief, where the balance sheet of life
is sorted out over lifetimes, where resilience and recovery has been the
characteristic of the "kisan," the peasant cultivation, why are
Indian farmers committing suicide on a mass scale?
faced by Indian peasants.
from a positive economy into a negative economy for peasants: the rising of
costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these
factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate
globalization.
corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were
replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot
be saved.
non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for
every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by
putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new
expense increases poverty and leads to indebtedness.
Monocultures and uniformity increase the risk of crop failure, as diverse seeds adapted to diverse to eco-systems are replaced by the rushed introduction of uniform and often untested seeds into the market. When Monsanto first introduced Bt Cotton in 2002, the farmers lost 1 billion rupees due to crop failure.
Instead of 1,500 kilos per acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as 200 kilos per acre. Instead of incomes of 10,000 rupees an acre, farmers ran into losses of 6,400 rupees an acre. In the state of
The second pressure Indian farmers are facing is the dramatic fall in prices of farm produce as a result of the WTO's free trade policies. The WTO rules for trade n agriculture are, in essence,rules for dumping. They have allowed wealthy countries to increase agribusiness subsidies while preventing other countries from protecting their farmers from artificially cheap imported produce. Four hundred billion dollars in subsidies combined with the forced removal of import restriction is a ready-made recipe for farmer suicide. Global wheat prices have dropped from $216 a ton in 1995 to $133 a ton in 2001; cotton prices from $98.2 a ton in 1995 to $49.1 a ton in 2001; Soya bean prices from $273 a ton in 1995 to $178 a ton. This reduction is due not to a change in productivity, but to an increase in subsidies and an increase in market monopolies controlled by a handful of agribusiness corporations.
While Monsanto pushes the costs of cultivation up, agribusiness subsidies drive down the price farmers get for their produce.
Cotton producers in the
The rigged prices of globally traded agriculture commodities steal from poor peasants of
the South. A study carried out by the Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) shows that due to falling farm prices, Indian
peasants are losing $26 billion annually. This is a burden their poverty does
not allow them t bear. As debts increase -- unpayable from farm proceeds --
farmers are compelled to sell a kidney or even commit suicide. Seed saving
gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.
Farmers suicides in the state of Chattisgarh have recently been before in the news.
1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before 2000 no farmers
suicides are reported in the state.
Chattisgarh is the Centre of Diversity of the indice varieties of rice. More than 200,000
rices used to grow in
scientists Dr. Richaria did his collections and showed that tribals had bred
many rices with higher yields than the green Revolution varieties.
Today the rice farming of Chattisgarh is under assault. When indigenous rice is replaced
with green Revolution varieties, irrigation becomes necessary. Under
globalization pressures, rice is anyway a lower priority than exotic
vegetables. The farmers are sold hybrid seeds, the seeds need heavy inputs of
fertilizers and pesticides, as well as intensive irrigation. And crop failure
is frequent. This pushes farmers into debt and suicide.
Chattisgarh is also a prime target for growing of Jatropha for biofuel. Tribals farms are
being forcefully appropriated for Jatropha plantations, aggravating the food
and livelihood crisis in Chattisgarh. The diesel demand of the automobile
industry is given a priority above the food needs of the poor.
The suicide economy of industrialized, globalised agriculture is suicidal at 3 levels - it
is suicidal for farmers, it is suicidal for the poor who are derived food, and
it is suicidal at the level of the human species as we destroy the natural
capital of seed, biodiversity, soil and water on which our biological survival
depends.
The suicide economy is not an inevitability. Navdanya has started a Seeds of Hope campaign
to stop farmers suicides. The transition from seeds of suicide to seeds of hope
includes ยท a shift from GMO and non renewable seeds to organic, open pollinated seed varieties
which farmers can save and share.
from unfair trade based on false prices to fair trade based on real and just
prices.
The farmers
who have made this shift are earning 10 times more than the farmers growing
Monsanto's Bt-cotton.