It's time for India to abandon industrial agriculture now

 It's time for India to abandon industrial agriculture now

It's time for India to abandon industrial agriculture now

India need to be self-sufficient in grains at the time, and the Green Revolution was a significant intervention. However, India's farmers are suffering greatly as a result of the industrial agriculture it gave birth to. Decreases in agricultural revenue, debt traps, and farmer suicides are being caused by factors such as high input prices, surplus supply, unpredictable weather, etc.

The industrial agricultural system needs more costly inputs every year.

The ultimate judge of every civilized society is its dead farmers. On December 4, NCRB statistics revealed a sobering secret of our progress: 11,290 farmers and agricultural laborers took their own lives in 2022. It was as if the figures were a mirror for all of India. In other words, before anybody even comes home from work or finishes watching a Netflix movie. Two agricultural laborers/farmers have committed suicide. Not only did they strangle themselves and their families, but they also strangled our civilization's conscience.

The situation has become even worse: suicides connected to agriculture have risen by 3.7% from 2021 and about 5.7% from 2020. Approximately 6,083 or 53% of the 11,290 suicides were committed by agricultural laborers.

Why are our farmers dying?

Unexpectedly, "progressive agricultural" states with well-established industrial agriculture and "modern" genetically modified crops had the highest suicide rates. The top three states are Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have also recorded a high incidence of farmer suicides. There have been no recorded suicides in several states where agriculture is still more traditional and small-scale, including as West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura.

The number of suicides in Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh was another startling statistic. Suicide rates increased by 42.13 percent in Uttar Pradesh and 31.65 percent in Chhattisgarh. Positively, there was a 30% decrease in farmer/farm worker suicides in Kerala.

The Green Revolution, or industrial agriculture, began in the 1960s. Mechanization, agrochemicals, and new input-dependent seeds requiring agrochemicals changed India's food systems from being self-sufficient to being reliant on the market and industry. To its credit, these innovations enabled India to become self-sufficient in grains and, over time, to export both wheat and rice.

However, there was an unintended consequence as well: food-borne illnesses, rural debt, and ecological devastation. Punjab is a classic illustration of what industrial agriculture can do to a community; it has the most rural debt, over-exploitation of groundwater, dead soil, cancer trains, and social discontent ranging from drug addiction to extremism.

Kishore Tiwari, the head of the Vasantrao Naik Shetty Swavalamban Mission (VNSSM), which was established by the Maharashtra government, has provided the finest explanation of the hidden expenditures. He referred to sugarcane and Bt cotton as "killer crops" as they drove farmers to commit suicide and kept them mired in debt. He suggested that the Vidarba and Marathwada regions should be free of both of these crops.

debt ensnaring

It should be noted that locations where Bt cotton is produced account for 84% of farmer suicides. Particularly in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, there is an erratic correlation between the area planted to cotton and the suicide incidence among cotton farmers. Sugarcane farming has raised some people's incomes in the arid regions of Maharashtra and Karnataka, but it has severely damaged the rural community.

Farmers must take out additional loans to plant both crops since they are both highly costly. This is because they need costly seeds, agrochemicals, agro-industrial processing, etc. Due to the high risks and interest rates, a farming family may go deeply in debt after only one poor year. As a result, loan rates rise annually, making it difficult for farmers to escape. Not only are these two crops affected, but the industrial agricultural industry as a whole needs more costly inputs each year. In the meanwhile, the annual decline in the value of crops or other agricultural goods lowers farmers' revenues even further.

The price of gasoline, fertilizers, and other necessities has been unstable, and the unfavorable weather over the last several years has made farmers' wounds worse. They are heavily indebted as a result of these causes. The incapacity of significant government programs, such as crop insurance, to lessen the impact of erratic weather was another significant gap.

Steer clear of industrial "medicine"

India has made significant progress and gone full circle since the 1960s in terms of food security. We are now at the Green Revolution's collapse phase after making money. The drawbacks of this approach include dead farmers, deteriorated soils, tainted and exploited water, and rural debt.

Not to be overlooked is the surge in foodborne illnesses in India, which is closely linked to our agricultural output. Maybe this explains why, in the latter stages of his life, MS Swaminathan, the man credited with starting the Indian Green Revolution, also promoted eco-technology and a farming method centered on biodiversity.

Our farmers must be trained in sustainable, biodiverse agriculture and adjusted to the agroclimatic conditions of their respective regions.

will need to be inspired to adopt a paradigm based on nature. This is among the safest methods to guarantee farmer families' sustenance and financial stability while lowering reliance on industrial systems, fertilizers, and subsidies.