we addicted him to green revolution.we weaned him away from mixed farm enterprise[farming,dairy,poultry] to mono cropping.We made him to feed his farm with poisonous fertilizers and pesticides.The farm yard manure elixer for soil fertlity has taken a back seat.We failled miserably to educate him on the rational use of agri inputs .We made him to sell his bullocks and go for tractor ploughing.
Mixed cropping and sustenance agriculture is frowned up on.Commercial crops took a precedence over food crops.
we do not find suicides in areas where cropping pattern
is still food orientd and mixed.Example is zahirabad area in medak district of A P where you find traditional farming systems.farmers still maintain draught cattle,keep poultry,grow jowar and red garm in mixed cropping.

We saw many reports and recommendations of various commitees and task forces .Are these recommendations are getting translated into action plans at field level?If so are they effective ?
We have examination and scoring systems even for a Kinder garden kid.Do we have a rating/scoring systems for these commitee/task forces postfacto.

Do any of these commitee/Task forces talked about negative capital flow from agriculture sector to other sectors.How goverment is screwing the farmers and stealing their money through price control mechanisms .

The administration,politicians,economists,scietists and policy makers are not sensitive to the plight of the farmer.We made a punch bag out of him .

Farmers are killing themselves because the government has denied them economic freedom
But if the crisis is an opportunity to reform agriculture, will Prime Minister Manmohan Singh take it up?

…

4. as long as small farmers ( less than 5 acres ) are in the fray these tragedies are bound to happen. one can only hope that the country moves decisively to a manufacturing economy, where a lot of these farmers can be employed as unskilled labor in mills and factories to give predictable secure incomes instead of gambling with high-risk practices like growing kapaas on 5 acres under uncertain market conditions.

5. yet another example of how destructive transitioning to a service economy without going thru the manufacturing economy phase can be. majority of the nation is unskilled labor practicising highrisk farming, they aren’t going to be able to participate in BPOs & call centers anytime soon. large-acre farming is the impending future & that will drive out majority of these smalltimers. what are they going to do in the absence of mills & factories to hire them ?

6. once again i’m reminded of RGV, who, speaking of his flop naach, said “i tried to teach ayn rand to municipal school” :)
phrasing every issue in terms of economic incentives works in places where economics is the major unknown variable as the sociocultural aspects are largely addressed primarily because they are homogenous. even here in the US, with 1 in 3 persons being obese, one thinks twice about phrasing the obesity problem as “what economic incentive can we offer the consumers to get them to stop eating steaks & burgers & feed off of salads ?” junta eats steaks & prime ribs even when it is priced at four times a salad…cultural baggage, food habits, taste…all these social factors invariably triumph the price factor. these vidarba farmers shouldn’t even be farming in the first place, and we seek economic prescriptions for their suicide….ayn rand for municipal school indeed.

2. ignoring the psychology & social aspects & focussing solely on the economics behind farmers commiting suicide is as simplistic as asking for economic incentives to prevent manjunath’s murder. when 30 year old kapaas ki kheti karne walas routinely come on TV & declare “main khudkushi kar loonga”, one has to look deeper instead of just asking for private players to enter the cotton market. what is it that provokes a 30 year old to even entertain the thought of killing himself for some trivial nonsense like kapaas ? why are such pro-suicidal guys given so much air time ?

3. first world giving farm subsidy is not going to go away for atleast a decade. usa subsidises its farmers simply because it can afford to do so. it is not obliged to care for arbit vidarba farmer. when china stops buying UST bonds, gwb will sit up & think about farm subsidy, but that is so far away…

4. as long as small farmers (

Crop rotation by definition is not an alternate for monoculture. Monoculture can still be practiced within the crop rotation system. But I take your point and I would argue that expecting Indian farmers to limit themselves to traditional agricultural practices is an injustice to them. In any case popularity of organic foods can push farmers to adopt more sustainable methods but that’s for the market to decide. For now farmers have every right to maximize their production and profit like any other enterprise.

Monsanto is not the problem at least in this case. Again to repeat what I said in my previous comment, biggest challenges the farmers face are lack of adequate energy, irrigation, education, technical information and quality plant material.

Harpartap,
Surely you joke that Monsanto is not a problem? Our whole modern agricultural system is based on unsustainable practises of wresting more from the land using a monocultural crop (crop rotation is slightly better). We forget our traditional agricultural practices. People in the US seem to have forgotten the excesses caused by fertilizers which resulted in the Dust Bowl decade. Why oh why do we all forget history’s bitter lessons?

Peace