Comments on: Helping Indian Farmers

By: Gaurav Malik

Gaurav Malik — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:54:46 +0000

The number of farmers who have committed suicide in India between 1997 and
2007 now stands at a staggering 182,936. Close to two-thirds of these
suicides have occurred in five states (India has 28 states and seven union
territories). The Big 5 – Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya
Pradesh and Chattisgarh– account for just about a third of the country’s
population but two-thirds of farmers’ suicides. The rate at which farmers
are killing themselves in these states is far higher than suicide rates
among non-farmers. Farm suicides have also been rising in some other
states of the country.
It is significant that the count of farmers taking their lives is rising
even as the numbers of farmers diminishes, that is, on a shrinking farmer
base. As many as 8 million people quit farming between the two censuses of
1991 and 2001. The rate of people leaving farming has only risen since
then, but we’ll only have the updated figure of farmers in the census of
2011.
These suicide data are official and tend to be huge underestimates, but
they’re bad enough. Suicide data in India are collated by the National
Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a wing of the Ministry of Home Affairs,
government of India. The NCRB itself seems to do little harm to the data.
But the states where these are gathered leave out thousands from the
definition of “farmer” and, thus, massage the numbers downward. For
instance, women farmers are not normally accepted as farmers (by custom,
land is almost never in their names). They do the bulk of work in
agriculture – but are just “farmers’ wives.” This classification enables
governments to exclude countless women farmer suicides. They will be
recorded as suicide deaths – but not as “farmers’ suicides.” Likewise,
many other groups, too, have been excluded from that list.
The spate of farm suicides – the largest sustained wave of such deaths
recorded in history – accompanies India’s embrace of the brave new world
of neoliberalism. Many reports on that process and how it has affected
agriculture have been featured right here, on the Counterpunch site. The
rate of farmers’ suicides has worsened particularly after 2001, by which
time India was well down the WTO garden path in agriculture. The number of
farmers’ suicides in the five years – 1997-2001 – was 78,737 (or 15,747 a
year on average). The same figure for the five years 2002-06 was 87,567
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(or 17,513 a year on average). That is, in the next five years after
2001, one farmer took his or her life every 30 minutes on average.
The 2007 figures (detailed below) place that year, too, in the higher trend.
What do the farm suicides have in common? Those who have taken their lives
were deep in debt – peasant households in debt doubled in the first decade
of the neoliberal “economic reforms,” from 26 per cent of farm households
to 48.6 per cent. We know that from National Sample Survey data. But in
the worst states, the percentage of such households is far higher.
For instance, 82 per cent of all farm households in Andhra Pradesh were in
debt by 2001-02. Those who killed themselves were overwhelmingly cash crop
farmers – growers of cotton, coffee, sugarcane, groundnut, pepper,
vanilla. (Suicides are fewer among food crop farmers – that is, growers of
rice, wheat, maize, pulses.) The brave new world philosophy mandated
countless millions of Third World farmers forced to move from food crop
cultivation to cash crop (the mantra of “export-led growth”).
For millions of subsistence farmers in India, this meant much higher cultivation costs,
far greater loans, much higher debt, and being locked into the volatility
of global commodity prices. That’s a sector dominated by a handful of
multinational corporations. The extent to which the switch to cash crops
impacts on the farmer can be seen in this: it used to cost Rs.8,000 ?($165
today) roughly to grow an acre of paddy in Kerala. When many switched to
vanilla, the cost per acre was (in 2003-04) almost Rs.150,000 ($3,000) an
acre. (The dollar equals about 50 rupees.)
With giant seed companies displacing cheap hybrids and far cheaper and
hardier traditional varieties with their own products, a cotton farmer in
Monsanto’s net would be paying far more for seed than he or she ever
dreamed they would. Local varieties and hybrids were squeezed out with
enthusiastic state support. In 1991, you could buy a kilogram of local
seed for as little as Rs.7 or Rs.9 in today’s worst affected region of
Vidarbha. By 2003, you would pay Rs.350 — ($7) — for a bag with 450
grams of hybrid seed. By 2004, Monsanto’s partners in India were marketing
a bag of 450 grams of Bt cotton seed for between Rs.1,650 and Rs.1,800
($33 to $36). This price was brought down dramatically overnight due to
strong governmental intervention in Andhra Pradesh, where the government
changed after the 2004 elections. The price fell to around Rs.900 ($18) –
still many times higher than 1991 or even 2003.
Meanwhile, inequality was the great man-eater among?the “Emerging Tiger”
nations of the developing world. The predatory commercialization of the
countryside devastated all other aspects of life for peasant farmer and
landless workers. Health costs, for instance, skyrocketed. Many thousands
of youngsters dropped out of both school and college to work on their
parents’ farms (including many on scholarships). The average monthly per
capita expenditure of the Indian farm household was just Rs.503 (ten
dollars) by early this decade. Of that, 60 per cent roughly was spent on
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food and another 18 per cent on fuel, clothing and footwear.
Farmers, spending so much on food? To begin with, millions of small and
marginal Indian farmers are net purchasers of food grain. They cannot
produce enough to feed their families and have to work on the fields of
others and elsewhere to meet the gap. Having to buy some of the grain they
need on the market, they are profoundly affected by hikes in food prices,
as has happened since 1991, and particularly sharply earlier this year.
Hunger among those who produce food is a very real thing. Add to this the
fact that the “per capita net availability” of food grain has fallen
dramatically among Indians since the “reforms” began: from 510 grams per
Indian in 1991, to 422 grams by 2005. (That’s not a drop of 88 grams. It’s
a fall of 88 multiplied by 365 and then by one billion Indians.) As prof.
Utsa Patnaik, India’s top economist on agriculture, has been constantly
pointing out, the average poor family has about 100 kg less today than it
did just ten years ago – while the elite eat like it’s going out of style.
For many, the shift from food crop to cash crop makes it worse. At the
end of the day, you can still eat your paddy. It’s tough, digesting
cotton. Meanwhile, even the food crop sector is coming steadily under
corporate price-rigging control. Speculation in the futures markets pushed
up grain prices across the globe earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the neoliberal model that pushed growth through one kind of
consumption also meant re-directing huge amounts of money away from rural
credit to fuel the lifestyles of the aspiring elites of the cities (and
countryside, too). Thousands of rural bank branches shut down during the
15 years from 1993-2007.
Even as incomes of the farmers crashed, so did the price they got for
their cash crops, thanks to obscene subsidies to corporate and rich
farmers in the West, from the U.S. and EU. Their battle over cotton
subsidies alone (worth billions of dollars) destroyed cotton farmers not
merely in India but in African nations such as Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali,
and Chad. Meanwhile, all along, India kept reducing investment in
agriculture (standard neoliberal procedure). Life was being made more and
more impossible for small farmers.
As costs rose, credit dried up. Debt went out of control. Subsidies
destroyed their prices. Starving agriculture of investment (worth billions
of dollars each year) smashed the countryside. India even cut most of the
few, pathetic life supports she had for her farmers. The mess was
complete. From the late-’90s, the suicides began to occur at what then
seemed a brisk rate.
In fact, India’s agrarian crisis can be summed up in five words (call it
Ag Crisis 101): the drive toward corporate farming. The route (in five
words): predatory commercialization of the countryside. The result: The
biggest displacement in our history.
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Corporations do not as yet have direct control of Indian farming land and
do not carry out day-to-day operations directly. But they have sewn up
every other sector, inputs, outlets, marketing, prices, and are heading
for control of water as well (which states in India are busy privatizing
in one guise or another).
The largest number of farm suicides is in the state of Maharashtra, home
to the Mumbai Stock Exchange and with its capital Mumbai being home to 21
of India’s 51 dollar billionaires and over a fourth of the country’s
100,000 dollar millionaires. Mumbai shot to global attention when
terrorists massacred 180 people in the city in a grisly strike in
November. In the state of which Mumbai is capital, there have been 40,666
farmers’ suicides since 1995, with very little media attention.
Farmers’ suicides in Maharashtra crossed the 4,000-mark again in 2007, for
the third time in four years, according to the National Crime Records
Bureau. As many as 4,238 farmers took their lives in the state that year,
the latest for which data are available,?accounting?for a fourth of all
the 16,632 farmers’ suicides in the country. That national total
represents a slight fall from the 17,060 farm suicides of 2006. But the
broad trends of the past decade seem unshaken. Farm suicides in the
country since 1997 now total 182,936.
To repeat, the five worst affected states?– Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh?– account for two-thirds of all
farmers’ suicides in India. Together, they saw 11,026 in 2007. Of these,
Maharashtra alone accounted for?over 38 per cent. Of the Big 5, Andhra
Pradesh saw a decline of 810 suicides against its 2006 total. Karnataka
saw a rise of 415 over the same period. Madhya Pradesh (1,375) posted a
decline of 112. But Chattisgarh’s 1,593 farm suicides mean an increase of
110 over 2006. Specific factors in these states nourish the problem. These
are zones of highly diversified, commercialized agriculture where cash
crops dominate. Water stress has been a common feature, and gets worse
with the use of technologies such as Bt seed that demand huge amounts of
water. High external inputs and input costs are also common, as also the
use of chemicals and pesticides. Mindless deregulation dug a lot of
graves, lit a lot of pyres.
Maharashtra registered a fall of 215 farm suicides in 2007. However, no
other state even touches the 3,000 mark. And AP (with 1,797) and Karnataka
(2,135) – the next two worst hit states – together do not cross
Maharashtra’s 4,000-plus mark. A one-year dip of 221 occurred in 2005 too,
in Maharashtra, only to be followed by an all-time high of 4,453 suicides
in 2006. The state’s trend shows no turnaround and remains dismal.
Maharashtra’s 2007 figure of 4,238 follows one and a half years of farm
“relief packages” worth around Rs.5,000 crore ($1 billion) and a prime
ministerial visit in mid-2006 to the distressed Vidharbha region. The
state has also seen a plethora of official reports, studies and
commissions of inquiry over 2005-07, aimed at tackling the problem.
However, the 12,617 farm suicides in the same years is its worst ever
total for any three-year period since the state began recording such data
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in 1995. Indeed, farm suicides in Maharashtra since that year have crossed
the 40,000 mark. The structural causes of that crisis seem untouched.
Nationally, farmers’ suicides between 2002-07 were worse than for the
years 1997-2001. NCRB data for the whole country now exists from
1997-2007. In the five years till 2001, there were 15,747 farmers’
suicides a year on average. For the six years from 2002, that average is
17,366 farmers’ suicides each year. The increase is distressingly higher
in the main crisis states.

By: JuniorEconomist

JuniorEconomist — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:29:25 +0000

Some of my suggestions to to help Indian farmers:

1. We MUST bring cold-storage facility for Indian farmers so that they can store the extra produce that they cultivated each year and sell it in the next year.

2. The transaporation costs should be reduced – to do this the STATE Govts must improve the basic road infrastructure.

3. The buying power (pruchasing power) of the farmers have to be increased. This could be done by buying the farm products at the higher price (the Govt has to do this). This might result in inflation but one need not worry about inflation since this inflation in the long run will be offset by more subsequent urban growth. I talk about urban growth here because if the purchasing power of the farmers are incresed, then most of the farmers who dont own a TV, fan, AC, motor-bike and other basic ameneties will start spending the money that they have earned which will in-turn cause more manufacturing jobs and other showroom kind of jobs (just to give you an example) in the cities thereby directly helping urban-poor. So again, the cycle of consumer spending and thereby GDP growth (along with FDI) will kick-in thereby resulting in an overall increase in the National economy.

4. Adiitionally, the Govt has to create more free, easy and direct access to markets for farmers.

5. The Govt has to increase the increase irrigational facilties (this should be high priority thing for the Govt).

6. Simply to stress the importance of this point, i would like to say – WITHOUT AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND INNOVATION THERE WILL BE NO PROSPEROUS INDIA.

7. I read one of the cooments above which said more urban jobs for farmers – this kind of action is a great danger to India – becuase with a population of more than a BILLION population – this will create a food scarcity in the future (and if there is a global economic turmoil then there will be tremendous food scarcity and inflation which will be followed by stagflation)

8. So, as i undertand that industrialization is the first step towards economic prosperity, i also understand that industrialization without Agrricultral growth (with innovation) will not yield a self-sufficient sustainable economic prosperity in India.

Hope our leaders and people undertand it.

By: Raghavan

Raghavan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:37:45 +0000

The banes of Indian Agriculture can be summerised as follows:

1. Sub-division of land with every child born in the farmer’s family will make land smaller than before.

2. He is in perpetual indebtedness and the present day’s farmer is paying interest on the loan his grand-father took.

3. He lacks resources to buy farm inputs, cannot use tractor, has to depend on local labor which is depleting with migration of able bodied men to urban area. Available labor is unaffordable.

4. He has poor storage and lacks ability to market his produce and often the farmer sells his produce in distress. If some farmer can sell to the Government procurement agencies, he will need to pay bribe to babus.

5. Water, the most important ingredient to farming is scarce and disputed in use with fellow farmers. Does not know the efficient use of water or switch to crops that need less water for fear of doomed by the risk.

Governmental polices however good for the farmer’s benefit does not peculate to the actual farmer due to several middlemen non-performance of bureaucracy. Farmers produce whatever they feel comfortable with and aggregate of their produce forms the pattern of production in India. There is no concerted plan of producing the most suited crop and looking at balancing demand and supply. The management of the affairs of agriculturists is at fault for many reasons.

The answer to the above:

Investors can partner with groups of farmers and create an entity that will undertake farming activity on the lands of farmers. Farmer’s equity will be land and Investor’s equity will be cash. Farmer’s land will not be taken away and remain. The Organisation so formed will get in the best technology; reap the economies of large tracks land produce the best crop that can grow on the lands. The entity will market directly eliminating middlemen. This will evidently reduce cost and make the corporate venture profitable. Dividends will get farmers money. In addition the Organisation can engage farmers as workers on land and pay them a wage. The farmers will also feel that they are not taken away from the lands.

I feel this will work and can become a behemoth eventually and begin to address social issues like education jelling with the new policy enunciated by the new minister in the Indian Polity.

Raghavan

By: suresh raje

suresh raje — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:18:22 +0000

The story on agriculture reads same after 50 years of planning and investments. The economic text books 50 years ago cited same reasons for poor state of agriculture in India. Has nothing really changed ? I feel so sad. I felt people like sharad pawar could make some difference. My hope was perhaps misplaced. My point is that we are at such a low level of performance in farm productivity that any improvement should look really dramatic and we really cannot go down further. But I do see this happening. And we continue to blame population growth as we did in the past. Am I too pessimistic ?

By: Chetan N

Chetan N — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 13:38:58 +0000

One question that is difficult to answer is how much justifiable is the presence of private sector in our agricultural sector? My family has an agricultural background. Farming is no more considered to be a dignified job in the villages. Youth are running towards the nearest city. The villagers usually want themselves in secondary or tertiary occupation with fixed incomes. For them, a teacher is equivalent to a manager and B.Ed to MBA.

Considering the agricultural crisis, this comes as a no surprise to any of us. With the increse risk in the agriculture due to various reason, farmers have lost their intrest and hopes. And that is quite reasonable- taking risk is not farmers’ but an entrepreneurs’ business. Therefore to a great extent private participation is necessary in this field even if they are exploitative in nature.

By: John

John — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:07:06 +0000

I think there are many factors that devide farmers in a western culture to that of ones in India. One cannot compare farming in one country to another. The structures are totally different, the cultures are different, the peoples expectations are different, the currency is different and God knows what else is different. A farmer in one country can be earning $1000 in a week in once country and another farmer doing the same ammount of work can be earning $100 in a week or even less.

Even though we all live in the 21st century we are really not in the same century in the sense. We are not in the same economic standards and the same working structures and the same human rights and working rights and all the other standards that are imposed in a western society. So in short one cannot compare how farms are yeilding one country to that of others. The climate also plays a big part in determining what crops will grow this year.

India should not compete with any country but only with itself. They should aim to better themselves against figures from previous years but at the same time making sure the structures that are put forward don’t jeopardise future generation crop yields.
Some farming practices can destroy the land for many years to come through the usage of western fertilisers and that is only one factor that needs to be sighted for future generations.

Western society and to an extend lot of developing countries are waking up to the fact of keeping the land fertile for future generations.

By: Olive

Olive — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 05:02:58 +0000

Hi gsee,

I’m really curious about Indian farmer demographics. If an average farmer is very poor how does a company like eChopal http://www.echoupal.com/ grow? I was looking at their website and it looks like it takes $5K US to setup an operation in a single village and at this point they span 11,000 villages.

Cheers,

By: gsee

gsee — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 03:58:10 +0000

Whatever way farmers are helped, as long as they are not educated it is difficult to improve agriculture standard. Moreover, we need a land reformation: the average land owned by a poor farmer can not afford for modern technologies in his day to day farming activity.

By: lakshmi

lakshmi — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:07:54 +0000

I think aricultural sector is greatly negelected in india . When we speak about agriculture , the main advantage of our coutry is that whether there is up and downs in the market and industries , we are safe at aricultural side .The reseaon is that
India is mainly an agricultural country . We get main resourses from agriculture and also raw materails.
Today , there is an improvement in the agriculture example :Introduction of the multi exchange technology in commodity market .
On the other hand cost and prices are very high ,especially the susidies . In India the subsidies are high but in ohter countries their is low subsidies .
I also agree with the point mention by guhan about infrastructure . Ivestment are made in infrastructure but they are delayed because of political pressure.

By: lakshmi

lakshmi — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:19:07 +0000

Last 60 years we are talking about agricultural growth. Government has made many efforts for updradion of agricultural land and growth ,irrigation facilities and green revolution which was brought about for the improvment of seeds . When we talk about the manufacturing sectors it taken a sharp growth . Again talking about the service sector , it has boomed in the economy . We are always recongised
as financial boom and bpo boom , stock market boom in all over the country . But what about the agricultural sector . Is industrialist looking at our condition of agriculture .
somebody has rightly said that
1 . businessman – profit
2 . enterpreneure – innovator his own product
3 economist – good suggestions but lots of critism -critism .