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Small Farmers' Plight

By Moin Qazi. Dated: 5/26/2017 12:16:05 AM

Agriculture on reverse

His speech if of mortgaged bedding,
On his kine he borrows yet.
At his heart is his daughter's wedding.
In his eye foreknowledge of debt he eats and hath indigestion
He toils and he may not stop.
His life Is a long-drawn question Between a crop and a crop
—Rudyard Kipling, The Masque of Plenty

As the world transitions from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - which aim to end poverty and hunger and promote sustainable development - small farmers hold an important key.
In India, small and marginal farmers - those who work on less than two hectares (five acres) of land - constitute 80% of total farm households, 50% of rural households and 36% of total households. Sadly, the plight of these farmers is very distressing. Agricultural productivity levels have been stagnant for the past ten to 15 years. An estimated 70% of the country's arable land is prone to drought, 12% to floods, and 8% to cyclones. NITI Aayog recently highlighted that the agricultural sector is 28 years behind its time.
Despite the fact that agriculture is their primary source of livelihood, small farmers have little access to technology and irrigation techniques. This makes them one of the most vulnerable groups to climate change. Farming for them is grinding physical work, largely supported by their family, with each new generation being pushed into increasingly smaller plots of land. From threshing and bundling to separating grains by hand, crops have to be planted, picked, harvested and hauled by hand.
Years of market-oriented reforms have unleashed a wave of capital and entrepreneurialism across India. High-end sectors such as information technology have made impressive strides leading to adulatory portrayals of India at home and abroad as an economic juggernaut. Despite this success, the benefits of reform have yet to extend to the hundreds of millions who toil on the land. The government has slashed or phased out subsidies for some crops, shredding a key safety net.
The result is a growing social crisis. Fueled by crushing debt for buying transgenic seeds, failing crops on account of soil abuse by fertilisers, squeezing of prices by big multinational and government, indifferent farmers are trekking to cities. Here an equally cruel fate awaits them, but they are saved the shame of humiliation in the eyes of their own fellow villagers. A sense of deep despair runs through the lives of farmers. They have lost all hopes -and also the will to fight. Many of them are taking a permanent escape from this physical and emotional pain by ingesting deadly pesticides.
The Green Revolution was a success, but it came at a heavy price. It relied on high-yielding seeds, fossil fuels for fertilisers, modern methods of plant breeding and massive use of pesticides and equipment. A heavy dependence on irrigation led to massive water mining. This did increase agricultural productivity but depleted the soil and consumed far too much water. The States that were the front-runners during the Green Revolution now suffer from soil degradation, ground water depletion and contamination along with declining yields.
Two decades back, the government embraced the global marketplace and began cutting farm subsidies as it liberalised the managed socialist economy. The farmers' costs rose as the tariffs that had protected their products were lowered. Many farmers switched to new genetically engineered cotton seeds which are resistant to a deadly pest called 'bollworm' and produced far higher yields and healthier crops with less use of pesticides. The seeds can be more productive and became standardised in many regions of Maharashtra. However, they can be three times more expensive to maintain than traditional seeds.
Peasants borrow loans from moneylenders at exorbitant rates of interest for all their needs - from buying expensive transgenic seeds and high-cost fertilisers to food for themselves and their cattle. They hope for a better yield in the times to come but this never happens. Eventually, they find themselves in a debt trap as they keep pursuing a vain mirage of a golden crop bonanza. As borrowings mount, many farmers are driven to suicide. Owing more than they earn, the steadiest of these workers have become gamblers of the highest stakes, betting their land and their lives on a better crop.
According to the 70th Situation of Agricultural Households in India conducted by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), 90 per cent of India's farmers have less than two hectares of land. The survey says the average farm household makes less than Rs. 6,500 a month from all sources of income. They are only kept afloat by government schemes that funnel money to them and by periodic waivers of farm loans.
To improve their lives, farmers need a way out of agriculture and into the manufacturing or services sector. In fact most small-scale farmers would happily sell their land, if only they could be provided employment in lieu of it. India's developmental failure since 1947 has been its inability to move the huge mass of people involved in agriculture to industry and services. As the share of agriculture in the national output pie falls, any crisis hurts those dependent on it disproportionately.
Despite the fact that agriculture is typically their primary source of livelihood, smallholder farmers have little access to technology and insecure access to irrigation, making them one of the most vulnerable groups to future climate change. Farming for them is grinding physical work, largely parceled by family-- threshing and bundling and separating grains by hand--with each new generation into increasingly smaller plots of land, and planted, picked, harvested, and hauled by hand.
India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said in 1947: "Everything can wait, but not agriculture." What India is witnessing today is exactly the reverse. All the other sectors in the Indian economy are surging ahead. Agriculture is the only one which is moving in the opposite direction. Within this self-perpetuating cycle of misery, wrapping a noose around the neck are all-too-friendly exits for farmers. While their deaths might bring personal escape, they leave behind crippling emotional, financial and physical burdens, inherited by those left to farm the dust: the women who did not die.
—INFA