How One Region Has Gone from Breadbasket to Food Crisis

[one...two...tree 2,762]

By Mira Kamdar, OneWorld.net.

At the heart of the story is pesticide poisoning, water shortages, soil salinity, fertilizer runoff, skyrocketing cancer rates and farmer suicides.

Poster-child of Indian agriculture, Punjab in throes of crisis Mira Kamdar

Ludhiana: Last month, the wheat fields in Punjab stretched in amber-tinged waves as far as the eye could see, promising bountiful harvests. Nothing hinted at the grave crisis that has gripped the state, driving farmers to suicide and unemployed youth to the comforts of heroin.

Dubbed "the breadbasket of India," Punjab is in the throes of a serious crisis, one that bodes ill for the future of agriculture at a time when the world faces an acute food crisis.

Punjab's grand narrative, a success story of bumper harvests, conceals dangerous sub-plots of pesticide poisoning, water shortages, soil salinity, fertilizer runoff, skyrocketing cancer rates, farmer indebtedness and drug addiction.

Viewed in the context of a report released on April 15 by the Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAAKSTD), an intergovernmental entity initiated by the World Bank and Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Punjab's saga is a case study in how industrial agriculture boosts yields in the short term, but leads to the long-term destruction of the land on which agriculture depends and of the social and environmental context with which it's intimately linked.

The result of three years of study undertaken by 400 experts, the IAAKSTD report comes to an urgent conclusion: "Business as usual is not an option." Robert Watson, IAAKSTD director, warns that if radical changes aren't made in how we produce and distribute our food, "the world's people cannot be fed over the next half-century," and we will be left with "a world nobody wants to inhabit."

The glorious green revolution

In the early decades of independence, a fledgling Indian democracy had trouble meeting its basic food needs. By the mid-1960s, facing mass famine, the proud young nation had to go begging for emergency food assistance.

The Green Revolution arrived in India shortly thereafter.

Yields skyrocketed. Attaining self-sufficiency in food was a proud achievement for a nation weaned on the Gandhian notion of Swadeshi, or national self-sufficiency.

In 1995, India catapulted into the ranks of the world's food exporters. Even those who lamented a starkly inefficient distribution system that left many hungry admitted that India did produce enough food.

Nowhere in India did the Green Revolution work its magic as it did in Punjab. Punjab became the poster-child for the power of agricultural science to extract from the Earth an unprecedented level of productive capacity.

New hybrid seeds, massive irrigation projects and synthetic fertilizers transformed ordinary crops into the equivalent of athletes on steroids. Mechanization arrived in the form of tractors, reducing man-hours required in the fields. With just 1.5 percent of the nation's land, Punjab produces 20 percent of India's wheat and 12 percent of its rice.

But Punjab's agricultural miracle can no longer keep pace with India's growing need for food.

Increasing appetite

Every year, India adds 18 million people to its population, the equivalent of an Australia. Nor can it compensate for the rest of the country's lower agricultural productivity. India's booming services and industrial sectors together drove overall economic growth last year to a record level of 9.7 percent.

However, agriculture, on which 70 percent of India's people still depend for survival, actually contracted from a lackluster 3.8 percent growth rate to a dismal 2.8 percent rate.

Meanwhile, India's emerging middle classes demand more food, especially more animal products such as milk, eggs, poultry and meat--all of which take more grain to produce. The booming global biofuels market has tempted some Indian farmers to divert production to biofuel crops, while galloping urban and industrial expansion eats away at India's agricultural land.

Deeply concerned about food shortages, and the unrest these could trigger, the government of India has urged Punjab to concentrate on two crops, wheat and rice, deemed vital to assuring national food security, even as the state's agriculture experts warn that diversifying crops are vital to protect the productive capacity of a hard-worked land.

Problems galore

Like a star of exceptional talent pushed too hard, Punjab's agricultural miracle is on the verge of collapse. The canals --"Punjab" means the land of five rivers -- that channel water to dry fields are going dry. Nitrites from synthetic fertilizers have polluted much of the groundwater. Over-irrigation increased salinity in the soil. Pesticides have permeated the soil, plant and animal life. Cancer rates have reached alarming proportions.

Punjab's farmers, like farmers across India, have borrowed money for inputs they must use to increase production on the industrial model. Price of these inputs--more expensive hybrid or genetically modified seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tube wells, tractors -- relentlessly increase.

Like more than 100,000 indebted farmers across India who have killed themselves in the past decade, some Punjab farmers see no way out other than suicide. The Punjab government estimates that an astonishing 40 percent of the state's youth and 48 percent of its farmers and labourers have become addicted to drugs.

India has been receptive to the argument of transnational corporations -- that opening up agriculture to more private investment and allowing corporations to establish cold chains and vertically integrated production and distribution systems could solve India's agricultural crisis.

The IAASTDT report notes the "considerable influence" of transnational corporations in encouraging more intensive industrial agriculture. Large transnationals, including Cargill, Monsanto, Syngenta, Wal-Mart and Carrefour as well as cash-rich Indian giants such as Reliance, Bharti and Tata are eager to reap the potential bonanza of bringing large-scale industrial agriculture to India.

Towards sustainable agriculture

However, this is precisely the wrong direction for Indian agriculture. India would do better to look toward successful ventures in community-based natural farming, such as those undertaken by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture in Hyderabad, which have dramatically boosted yields, allowed poor farmers to repay debts, and removed synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides from food production.

This type of radical overhaul is needed on global scale. The IAASTD report pleads for an end to thinking of agriculture solely in terms of production, with social and environmental costs born by individual farmers, consumers, governments and ecosystems.

It argues that the only hope for feeding a growing global population and for restoring our degraded land, polluted water and fractured societies lies in adopting an approach where agricultural practices promote equitable access to food and sustainable use of the environment on which humanity depends.

The dilemma for Punjab, India, and the rest of the world faced with hungry populations and a collapsing environment is how to reconcile the powerful forces of a global economic system driven by the relentless imperative to increase production -- and consumption -- with a holistic approach. This larger, more difficult question is, as the IAASTD report suggests, at the heart of the global food crisis.

http://www.alternet.org/water/85496/?page=entire

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Interesting, I have cousins in Punjab and they haven't said a word about any food crisis. I'm not buying this (yet).

[mawilson 2,133]

Increasing appetite

Every year, India adds 18 million people to its population, the equivalent of an Australia.

[HAL 9000 96]

[dalegg 143]

Increasing appetite

Every year, India adds 18 million people to its population, the equivalent of an Australia.

Does that make it easier or harder to find a taxi cab?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Interesting, I have cousins in Punjab and they haven't said a word about any food crisis. I'm not buying this (yet).

This is going to be a global issue. Local, sustainable farming is this planet's future...or we'll have no future.

[mawilson 2,133]

Interesting, I have cousins in Punjab and they haven't said a word about any food crisis. I'm not buying this (yet).

This is going to be a global issue. Local, sustainable farming is this planet's future...or we'll have no future.

If by "we"/"this planet" you mean "third world countries", I can tell you right now that "we" have no future.

"We" cannot sustain exponential population growth -- there's only so much energy and food to go around.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Interesting, I have cousins in Punjab and they haven't said a word about any food crisis. I'm not buying this (yet).

This is going to be a global issue. Local, sustainable farming is this planet's future...or we'll have no future.

India had true food shortages in my grandparents lifetimes. Back then, all agro was local, small farms, family owned. That era ended in big part due to big money, lots of consolidation.

I am not ready to buy into this "back to the past" argument when I know how many people died in the past.

[mawilson 2,133]

I am not ready to buy into this "back to the past" argument when I know how many people died in the past.

Millions of people will die, you can count on it.

Invest your money in the casket business and start offering two-for-ones and discount coupons.

[HAL 9000 96]

Interesting, I have cousins in Punjab and they haven't said a word about any food crisis. I'm not buying this (yet).

This is going to be a global issue. Local, sustainable farming is this planet's future...or we'll have no future.

If by "we"/"this planet" you mean "third world countries", I can tell you right now that "we" have no future.

"We" cannot sustain exponential population growth -- there's only so much energy and food to go around.

And we also can't sustain our present levels of overconsumption.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I am not ready to buy into this "back to the past" argument when I know how many people died in the past.

Millions of people will die, you can count on it.

Invest your money in the casket business and start offering two-for-ones and discount coupons.

If the past is any indication, I believe it.

Idon't understand this inclination on right and left to romanticize the past. The right likes to dream about a non-existent past when everyone worked hard and all immigrants spoke English and people took care of each other so there was no need for government handouts. The left about a non-existent past before evil people with money and everyone lived in happy little communes, ate good food, had lots of uninhibited sex and no one ever fought over anything.

The reality of the past is that it sucked. Big time.

[mawilson 2,133]

And we also can't sustain our present levels of overconsumption.

Perhaps. The imbalance will correct itself when billions of people in third world countries have died.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

And we also can't sustain our present levels of overconsumption.

Perhaps. The imbalance will correct itself when billions of people in third world countries have died.

Concurrent to that, third world migration into more prosperous parts of the world will accelerate. No wall will keep them out.

[mawilson 2,133]

And we also can't sustain our present levels of overconsumption.

Perhaps. The imbalance will correct itself when billions of people in third world countries have died.

Concurrent to that, third world migration into more prosperous parts of the world will accelerate. No wall will keep them out.

Most definitely! We will need a bigger wall:

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Idon't understand this inclination on right and left to romanticize the past. The right likes to dream about a non-existent past when everyone worked hard and all immigrants spoke English and people took care of each other so there was no need for government handouts. The left about a non-existent past before evil people with money and everyone lived in happy little communes, ate good food, had lots of uninhibited sex and no one ever fought over anything.

The reality of the past is that it sucked. Big time.

It's not about reverting to the past, but implementing what we know and understand about sustainable agriculture.

Six Fallacies of Modern Agriculture

Farm subsidies are over $20 billion a year, farmers go broke anyway, pesticides contaminate water and food, and topsoil washes down the river. Why is that year after year, under Republicans and Democrats, our agriculture system has persistent troubles?

Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer and a writer, says it's because we operate from assumptions about agriculture that are just plain wrong. In his new book Home Economics, he lists six fallacies of modern agriculture -- fallacies that most people believe deeply, especially in the High Places where farm bills are generated.

Here they are. Judge for yourself.

Fallacy 1. Agriculture may be understood and dealt with as an industry.

Industry deals with dead materials, mechanical processes, cold rationality, factories that wear out, workplaces that are distinct from places to live. Agriculture deals with living things, biological processes, nurture and care, farms that should last for generations, and workplaces that are also homes.

Treating a farm like a factory gives it the short life expectancy, the unlivability, the exploitive nature of the factory. The U.S. counties with the largest, most industrialized farms also have the highest rural levels of chemical contamination and of poverty. That's no surprise, says Wendell Berry.

Fallacy 2. A sound agricultural economy can be based on an export market.

The 1985 Farm Bill was based on one simple idea -- that our farmers have to compete on the international market. But Berry says a sound economy cannot be based on a market beyond its control. For stability, security, quality control, freshness, and low transport costs, every nation should produce food primarily for itself.

The farm should first supply the needs of the farm family, then the needs of the surrounding community. Distant trade should be in occasional surplus only. Surplus should be global insurance against emergency, not something for one nation to count on exporting and another on importing.

A subsistence-based farm economy, Berry says, would give us a healthier food supply, a more diverse local agriculture, more local employment, and less vulnerability to the perturbations of global trade.

Fallacy 3. The "free market" can preserve agriculture.

The market sets a price for a farm product, but not for the sources of that product -- the topsoil, the ecosystem, the farm family, the farm community. It treats those sources as free or expendable. Berry says, "If a squash on the table is worth more than a squash in the field, and a squash in the field is worth more than a bushel of soil, that does not mean that food is more valuable than soil. It means that we do not know how to value the soil."

To lean back and expect a mystical mechanism called the market to lead to proper decisions is, says Berry, either lazy or felonious. Economics should come from human values, those values that can be set by the market and those that transcend the market. If farmers can't "afford" to take soil conservation measures or cut use of dangerous chemicals or stop overdrafts of groundwater, if we can't "afford" to keep farmers in farming, then we need some larger definition of the word "afford" than the market can give.

Fallacy 4. Productivity is the measure of agricultural success.

Berry is not impressed that the American farmer feeds "57 or 75 or God knows how many people". What are the costs of that productivity, he asks, in soil, farms, and farmers, in pollution of water and food, in the vulnerability of the food supply?

To celebrate output without questioning input is like rejoicing in the water flowing out of the dam without wondering whether any water is flowing in to replace it. We should celebrate thrift, thriving, health, says Berry, not sheer output.

Fallacy 5. There are too many farmers.

Agricultural economists, not farmers, keep saying there are too many farmers. They never say that there are too many agricultural economists.

There is too much production in the United States, but that does not mean there are too many farmers. There are too few farmers to take proper care of the land. Farmers are being replaced by machines and chemicals not because there are too many farmers, but because we have chosen not to pay for food what it really costs, and not to pay farmers as much as agricultural economists or combine manufacturers. That is a social decision, not a law of nature.

Fallacy 6. Hand labor is bad.

The goodness of any labor depends on its scale, on its compensation, and on who is doing it for whom. Americans happily do hand labor in their gardens for no more compensation than fresh vegetables and praise from the family. Helping plants to grow is inherently good work, unless it's done acre upon acre, day after day, in someone else's field, at poverty wages.

Berry says, "any work is miserable, whether done by hand or by machine, if it is economically desperate."

To my knowledge no one in decades has stood up in Congress and talked about farming as something to be done by more people on smaller farms with less mechanization and more care, producing less output of higher quality at less cost for greater profit. Maybe that's a kind of farming that would work better than what we've got.

http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index...vn186sixmythsed