Archive for the ‘regional’ Category
Before Water Disappears
An Australian TV journalist asked me the other day: “Rice farmers in India are drilling millions of tube wells in a desperate search for water. Isn’t such over-exploitation of groundwater going to lead to a catastrophic situation in the years to come?”
The question was loaded, and coming from an Australian journalist whose own country was reeling under a serious drought for the sixth year in a row, it clearly showed that water had already turned into a major global problem. The magnitude of the emerging water crisis is such that it transcends national borders, and even continents.
It isn’t that only rice farmers are to blame. While rice farmers in India are consuming about 5000 litres of water to produce one kilo of rice, Australian farmers cannot shrug-off their role in over-exploiting the groundwater by saying that they do not produce much rice. Australia is a major beef-producing nation, and studies show that a kilo of beef requires 70,000 litres of water.
If you are rearing cattle only for milk, you are using more than 900 litres of water to produce a litre of milk. Wheat requires about 3,168 litres of water to produce one kilo of golden grain. Globally, a thousand tonnes of water is required to produce one tonne of grain.
Take the case of wheat and rice, the most common cropping pattern that is followed in the irrigated regions of the country. Both the crops require a little more than 8000 litres of water in a year to produce one kilo each of wheat and rice. This is a huge waste of water resources you will say. Now you know why the groundwater table has been steadily on the decline. There is an urgent need to change the cropping pattern goes the common refrain. Policy makers and business houses ask farmers to shift from wheat and rice to cash crops.
Shift to cotton or sugarcane or cut flowers. Somehow it is presumed that shifting the cropping pattern to these crops will ease the water crisis. The industry steps in, propagates a change in cropping pattern, without telling the nation that the alternative being suggested are going to suck the ground water supplies dry in a terribly short time. Irrigated cotton alone consumes as much water as is required by wheat and rice. Water requirement for sugarcane is four times more. And cut flower cultivation requires 20 times more water than cotton.
Over the years, first the induction of green revolution technology, including the high-yielding crop varieties, resulted in more and more mining of the underground water. Small farmers have drilled more than 22 million tube wells hundreds of meters below the surface. Water is being mined ruthlessly. As a result water table has plummeted to alarming levels. Despite the alarm bells ringing for quite sometime now, the fact remains that no one has cared to set the water balance right.
We all know that high-chemical input based technology has already exhausted the soils and ultimately led to the lands gasping for breath. With water-guzzling crops (hybrids and Bt cotton) sucking the groundwater aquifer dry, agriculture has collapsed. Indian farmers are drawing out 200 cubic kilolitres of water from the underground strata every year. Not even a fraction of this is being added back to the groundwater resource.
Instead, the Ministry of Agriculture has been unabashedly advocating crop diversification, mostly cut flowers. Tamil Nadu is the latest among the States beckoning farmers to have a share in the US $ 40 billion global floriculture trade. Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat have already done the damage. Sops are being announced to attract farmers to cultivate roses, carnations, gerbera and other cut flowers. State governments are providing attractive and handsome financial packages including subsidies, technical backstopping, extension and post-harvest management support.
What the Ministry is not telling is that the cut flower cultivation will hasten the process of water depletion leading to desertification. Rose cultivation requires on an average about 212 acre inch or 212 inches of water in an acre of land.
Let us now look at the damage already done. In Punjab, the food bowl of the country, of the 138 development blocks, 108 have already been declared dark zones. The level of groundwater exploitation in these blocks has been in excess of 98 per cent against the critical limit of 80 per cent. In Uttar Pradesh, the Central Ground Water board has identified 22 overexploited and critical blocks in the state, of which 19 blocks are located in western UP (comprising the sugarcane belt). Similarly, out of the 53 semi-critical blocks identified, 28 are located in western UP. Water table has already plummeted to a level that agriculture is becoming an unviable proposition.
Faulty cropping pattern is amongst the main reasons for the resulting water crisis. All these years, the dryland regions of the country, which comprise nearly 75 per cent of the total cultivable area, have increasingly come under the hybrid crop varieties. While the crop yields from the hybrid varieties was surely high, the flip side of these varieties – these varieties are water guzzlers – was very conveniently ignored. For the sake of comparison, let us take the example of rice.
The high-yielding varieties of rice normally require about 5000 litres of water under drylands to produce one kg of rice. Common sense tells us that the rice varieties cultivated in the dryland regions of the country should be those that require less amount of water. What is in reality happening is just the opposite. Large proportion of the cultivable lands in drylands are now sown with hybrid rice varieties which require still more water for growing, its requirement of water touches 7000 litres for one kilo of rice grain.
Strange that in Punjab, which has assured irrigation, only high-yielding rice varieties are cultivated which require relatively less water. In the rainfed parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, hybrid rice varieties, which require roughly twice the quantity of irrigation water (than Punjab), are grown abundantly.
Not only rice hybrids, all kind of hybrid varieties that require higher doses of water – whether it is of sorghum, maize, cotton, bajra, and vegetables are promoted in the dryland regions. In addition, agricultural scientists have misled the farmers by saying that the dryland regions were hungry for chemical fertilisers. Add to this the thrust on contract farming, which requires more chemical inputs and water will turn the dryland regions barren in the years to come. Water table will plummet beyond reachable limits, as a result of which the impact of deficient rainfall will become more pronounced forcing farmers to abandon agriculture and migrate. This is what normally leads to famines.
We want to encourage cash crops farming because we want the farmers to earn more from international trade. This makes sense only if crops (including food crops) were being hydroponically cultivated in the Indian Ocean. To produce crops for export therefore defies any sensible logic. A former Vice-Chancellor of the Punjabi University, Patiala, Dr S S Johl, puts it more succinctly. He says that when Punjab exported 18 million tonnes of surplus wheat and rice in 2003-04, it actually exported 55.5 trillion litres of water. Feeding this surplus grain to the domestic population obviously makes sense, but exporting such huge quantities of scarce water to the foreign countries comes with a huge social and environmental cost.
Commerce Minister Kamal Nath will surely like to turn a deaf ear to these words of wisdom from Dr Johl. He is happy reiterating in Parliament that the speedier completion of the Doha Development Round of the World Trade Organisation will give a boost to agriculture exports. Unfortunately, the gains in trade are not at all being measured in terms of the water crisis ahead. The cost of production of wheat and rice (and other crops as well) does not include the cost of water. Imagine if 5000 litres of water that is required to produce one kilo of rice were to be measured as an input cost, rice would go beyond the reach of even Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal.
The urgent need therefore is to draw a cropping pattern based on the availability of groundwater and the surface water irrigation. Instead of looking up to grandiose schemes like US $ 200 billion Interlinking of Rivers to distribute water, the thrust should be to draw a balance sheet for agriculture linked to water availability. Britain had also considered inter-linking of rivers as a solution to water crisis but dropped the idea when it became know that it wouldn’t serve the purpose.
Interlinking of rivers is being pushed in the name of ushering in a second Green Revolution. A similar grandiose irrigation scheme, called the Sharada Sahayak Irrigation network was launched at the time of Mrs Indira Gandhi to bring about a green revolution in eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh. While eastern UP still is looking for that elusive green revolution, the same will be the outcome of the flawed plan to inter-link India’s rivers. The latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) for the State of Gujarat is a pointer to the shape of things to come.
The CAG report for the period ending March 31, 2006 shown that bulk of the water from the Sardar Sarovar Project meant for the drought-prone villages of Kachchh have been diverted to non-drought prone areas of the region and to the industries of Gandhinagar. The most glaring diversion was of 255 million litres per day to Gandhinagar, which was not covered under the master plan.
It is no use stressing on popular water conservation schemes without first taming the industry. Few know that to produce a tonne of steel, we require about 1 lakh litres of water. Each golf course (and there are nearly two dozen in the National Capital Region of Delhi) consumes an equivalent quantity of water daily that would have sufficed the need of 18,000 middle-class households. What is the use of saving water in the parched and arid lands of Rajasthan if we allow the marble industry, producing almost 91 per cent of total marble in India, to guzzle every hour around 2.75 million litres of water. No wonder the majestic lakes of Rajasthan have all gone dry.
But who cares ?
It is easy to blame the politicians and policy makers. What we forget is that you and me too are responsible for the water crisis. As long as we don’t look beyond the statistics and analysis that appears in the newspapers, we too are part of the conspiracy of silence.
India US Wheat Row – Wheat and Weeds
It is a queer case of double standards. Claiming highest quality standards in the world when it comes to agricultural imports, the United States has no qualms in exporting sub-standard wheat to India. In fact, diplomatic pressure is being built upon India to import weed infested wheat.
Failing to reach an agreement after recent bilateral discussions on plant health, a statement from the US Embassy in New Delhi said “… Substantial hurdles still remain, as the US cannot agree to import standards that are impossible to certify and are not in line with international norms.” At the heart of the row are the quarantine norms that do not allow wheat consignments with dangerous weeds beyond the permissible limit.
The American wheat comes laced with 21 obnoxious and alien weeds, which are not known to exist in India. As per the weed risk analysis done by the Ministry of Agriculture, all these weeds are of quarantine importance and carry high risk. More worrying is the presence of two weeds Bromus rigidus and Bromus scealinus — better known as foxtail wheat, which is similar in appearance to wheat and therefore difficult to identify.
Already, surreptitiously imported along with wheat, several weeds and pests have turned into a national menace. India is spending crores of rupees every year in fighting these alien invasive species.
Earlier too, India had in 1996 rejected wheat imports from America on reasons of inferior quality, and had instead imported one million tonne from Australia. In 2006, when India imported 5.5 million tones of wheat from Australia and some other countries, the US was unable to find a foothold into India’s burgeoning wheat market. Aware that India is likely to turn into a major wheat importer in the years to come, the US has stepped up diplomatic and political efforts to exert pressure.
Not that the Australian wheat is much superior. In 2006, bending backwards to allow the highly contaminated wheat shipments from Australia, Indian Food and Agriculture ministry had turned a blind eye to the presence of 14 weeds, two fungal diseases and one insect pest that the import consignments contained. Of the 14 weeds, 11 species are not found in India.
Interestingly, while the US accepts that its wheat contains 21 weeds, it has expressed its helplessness in cleaning wheat shipments to bring it in tune with the Indian threshold limits. At the Portland port from where much of its wheat is exported, the US grain merchants were unable to clean wheat of the menacing weeds. The US is seeking import norms of 0.3 per cent weed infestation, India is insisting on not more than 100 weeds in a consignment of 200 kg of wheat.
At 0.3 per cent weed infestation, the total number of weed seeds per 200 kg of wheat comes to a massive 12,000.
Although the US is publicly claiming that its “wheat is among the highest quality in the world and is safely shipped to over 110 nations including every importer of significance except India”, the fact remains that much of the American wheat imported by rich and developed countries like Japan is actually for milling purposes. In India, wheat imports are used as grain by farmers and therefore the worry that the weeds will take roots.
Several of the minor weeds that came along with PL-480 wheat shipments into India in past have turned into biological nuisances, often the weed becoming a national menace. Lantana camera was among such weeds, which entered India three decades ago. Today, it has spread wide and wild, and has withstood all control measures. Being poisonous, not even the cattle feed on it. Phalaris minor too came with the wheat consignments from the United States. This weed, already resistant to chemicals in the US and Australia, has established itself as a strong competitor of wheat in India. The weed has also become resistant to chemicals in India and is responsible for reducing wheat yields by an estimated 25 per cent.
It is not the first time that the US is trying to export sub-standard agricultural products. In September 2000, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent a delegation to press for opening up the Indian market for what would have turned into the first major import consignment of genetically modified soybeans. If allowed, the soybean imports would have brought along five exotic weeds and at least 11 viral diseases, of which two are economically dangerous. The US did insist that the accompanying pests would not pose any problem for Indian agriculture.
Earlier too, during 1998-99, the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) had received 359 samples of transgenic soybean from the USA for quarantine. Nearly 143 of these were rejected because of the presence of downy mildew fungus (Peronospora manshurica), which is known to cause serious losses and is not known to occur in India. Bulk imports, however, fail to eliminate the threat of import of nematodes, viruses and several fungi.
For reasons unexplained, the Food and Agriculture ministry appears more eager to allow for sub-standard imports. In 2006, it relaxed most quality norms for Australian wheat by asking the exporting country to provide a certificate saying that the imports are “essentially free from weeds”. At the time of tender, the requirement was “free from weeds”. Over-ruling all objections raised by the plant quarantine directorate to import of exotic weed species, the Food and Agriculture Ministry has relaxed the provisions of Plant Quarantine Order 2003.
After the din dies down, India might relax quality norms for American wheat. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has already been quoted as saying: “It is true that talks have been held with the US government. We want that the US should also participate in our wheat import process.” What is however not being perceived is that the US participation cannot be at the cost of softening the quarantine standards.
At a time when international quality parameters are being tightened the world over to ensure that invasive alien species do not use the vehicle of commodity trade to enter into a country, India should not relax the quality norms thereby opening the floodgates to noxious weeds, deadly insect pests and dreaded plant diseases.
What Sharad Pawar needs to understand is that the same wheat that we imported from Australia (or we plan to import from America) if exported back would not be accepted for reasons of the same quality standards that we are being asked to do away with.
NDC and Agriculture – Right Language, Wrong Direction
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had time and again promised to launch a major initiative for the revival of the ailing farm sector. Addressing recently the 53rd meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) in New Delhi, he used the right vocabulary to highlight the enormity of the prevailing agrarian crisis.
If words alone could deliver, Congress-led UPA Coalition would have done it long ago. But like the story of the four blind men and the elephant, the Prime Minister, his Cabinet colleagues and the 29 chief ministers who were present continued to shoot in the dark. Three years into power, it is quite apparent the government has no clue as to what needs to be done to resurrect agriculture.
It was almost a year back when Mr Manmohan Singh had visited the suicide-prone belt of Vidharbha and announced a relief package of Rs 3,750-crores. Embarrassed at no let-up in the number of farmer suicides, he had subsequently said that the relief measures would begin to show results after six months. It sure did. Six months after the Prime Minister’s visit, the suicide rate doubled. From one farmer suicide every eight hours, it is now one every four hours.
The Rs 25,000-crore booster for new farm initiatives to be launched by states in the next four years, and the 14-point resolution adopted by the NDC which aims at achieving four per cent growth in agriculture by the end of the 11th five-year plan, falls in the same category. With the entire focus on integrating domestic agriculture with global economy, and bringing in agribusiness, corporate agriculture and food retail as the saviour, the roadmap being chalked out is likely to lead to further despair.
Ploughing Rs 25,000-crore into agriculture may seem like a mammoth effort to double the growth rate in agriculture. Fnothinor each of the 29 states, the average support will not exceed Rs 1000-crore, which is nothing more than a drop in the ocean.
Moreover, what is not being visualised is that the farm crisis has nothing to do in terms of growth rate. It essentially revolves around declining sustainability in agriculture and the economic viability of farming. Whatever be the new location-specific schemes the states may launch, nothing significant can be expected unless the real farm income goes up.
Take Punjab, the food bowl of the country. Farm indebtedness, both in the formal and informal sector, is around Rs 26,000-crore, more than the Centre’s total pledged allocation for the entire country. No amount of renewed thrust on increasing crop productivity, and that too without restoring the highly devastated natural resource base, as well as raising farm incomes, will revive agriculture. However, the 14-point resolution dividing responsibilities between the Central and the State governments makes little mention of sustainability and boosting farm incomes.
To expect the agricultural universities and the state extension machinery to draw up research plans considering region specific priorities taking agro-climatic conditions, natural resource issues and technology into account is a tall order given that the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has already moved away from subsistence to commercial agriculture. The Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture Research, Development and Marketing, launched in early 2006, provides for a diametrically opposite research direction.
The crucial issue of technology fatigue cannot be addressed without first ascertaining what and where has the 1st Green Revolution gone wrong. Instead of pushing 2nd Green Revolution (read agribusiness), the effort should have been to draw a balance sheet and then prepare a cropping pattern plan based on the availability of natural resources. For instance, it does not make any sense to cultivate sugarcane and cotton in the arid and parched lands of Rajasthan.
The action plan only focuses on improved seed supply, fertiliser availability and revamping of state agriculture extension system to reduce yield gaps. It also makes it mandatory for states to make amendments in Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act by March 2008, which will allow a variety of marketing trappings including contract farming and corporate agriculture. In essence, the entire focus of the farm strategy is to allow the private sector to take control of agriculture.
Although till date, 16 states have amended the APMC Act, some wholly and others partially, the fact remains that the entire effort of the government is to dismantle the food procurement and public distribution system in the days to come. By amending the APMC Act, the government is actually encouraging development of linkages to markets through a variety of instruments including contract farming and corporate agriculture. Such a system has already played havoc with wheat procurement forcing the country to turn into the world’s biggest importer of the golden grain.
Setting up a time-bound Food Security Mission by enhancing production of wheat, rice, pulses and edible oils comes at a time when the UPA government itself is lowering the custom tariff thereby allowing cheaper imports. Integrating Indian agriculture with global economy defeats the very purpose of ensuring food security. Take the case of edible oils. India was almost self-sufficient in edible oils in 1993-94. Ever since the government began lowering the tariffs, edible oil imports have multiplied turning the country into the biggest importer. Small farmers growing oilseeds and that too in the rainfed areas of the country had to abandon production in the light of cheaper imports.
Autonomous liberalisation of the farm sector has already seen import surges. Agriculture commodity imports have gone up by 300 per cent between 2000-2004. Coconut oil imports for instance increased from 7291 metric tonnes in 2004-05 to 22,307 metric tonnes in 2005-06. The import of pepper similarly increased from 2186.3 tonnes in 1995-96 to 17,725.3 tonnes in 2004-05. These are not isolated cases. Imports of spices and plantation crops including tea and coffee have been on an upswing. Importing food commodities is like importing unemployment.
Not even remotely concerned, the government is planning to further open up farm imports under the Free Trade Agreement with the ASEAN countries. In the years to come, import tariffs on wheat, rice, pulses and edible oils – the crops that are considered crucial for food security – are to be further lowered. Cheaper imports will negatively impact food security. Unless of course the government thinks food security can be assured by buying food off-the-shelf.
For a country like India, with 60-crore farmers, such a policy imperative will spell doom. Indian farmers are not only producers but also consumers. What is needed is a farming system that allows production by the masses in a sustainable and viable way.
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Sridhar on Migrating Rural India –… bharti patel on Water Crisis Deepak on American Wheat and India…
Devinder Sharma 
Migrating Rural India – Indian Refugees
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Displacing Indian farmers : UPA Coalition Government Prepares Blueprint
India will have 400 million agricultural refugees :
It was on the cards. With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announcing the formation of a new rehabilitation policy for farmers displaced from land acquisitions, it is now official — farmers have to quit agriculture.
Ever since the Congress led UPA Coalition assumed power after an angry rural protest vote threw out the erstwhile BJP-led NDA combination in May 2004, the Prime Minister had initiated a plethora of new policies for the spread of industrialization. After having laid the policy framework that allows private control over community resources – water, biodiversity, forests, seeds, agriculture markets, and mineral resources — the UPA government finally looked at the possibility of divesting the poor people of their only economic security – a meagre piece of land holding.
“Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is an idea whose time has come,” the Prime Minister had said at an award ceremony in Mumbai sometimes back. Supported by all political parties, including the Left Front, he has actually officiated a nationwide campaign to displace farmers. Almost 500 special economic zones are being carved out (see The New Maharajas of India http://www.stwr.net/content/view/1392/37/). What is however less known is that successive government’s are actually following a policy prescription that had been laid out by the World Bank as early as in 1995.
A former vice-president of the World Bank and a former chairman of Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a body that governs the 16 international agricultural research centers, Dr Ismail Serageldin, had forewarned a number of years ago. At a conference organised by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai a few years back, he quoted the World Bank to say that the number of people estimated to migrate from rural to urban India by the year 2015 is expected to be equal to twice the combined population of UK, France and Germany.
The combined population of UK, France and Germany is 200 million. The World Bank had therefore estimated that some 400 million people would be willingly or unwillingly moving from the rural to urban centres by 2015. Subsequent studies have shown that massive distress migration will result in the years to come. For instance, 70 per cent of Tamil Nadu, 65 per cent of Punjab, and nearly 55 per cent of Uttar Pradesh is expected to migrate to urban centres by the year 2020.
These 400 million displaced will constitute the new class of migrants – agricultural refugees.
Acerbating the crisis are the policy initiatives that promotes privatization of natural resources, take over of farm land, integrating Indian agriculture with the global economy, and moving farmers out of agriculture – in essence the hallmark of the neo-liberal economic growth model.
Agricultural reforms that are being introduced in the name of increasing food production and minimising the price risks that the farmers continue to be faced with, are actually aimed at destroying the production capacity of the farm lands and would lead to further marginalisation of the farming communities. Encouraging contract farming, future trading in agriculture commodities, land leasing, forming land-sharing companies, direct procurement of farm commodities by amending the APMC Act will only drive out a majority of farmers out of subsistence agriculture.
Although the land holding size is diminishing, the answer does not lie in allowing the private companies to replace farmers. Somehow the entire effort of the policy makers is to establish that Indian agriculture has become a burden on the nation and the sooner the country offloads the farming class the better it will be for economic growth.
Contract farming therefore has become the new agricultural mantra. Not realising that private companies enter agriculture with the specific objective of garnering more profits from the same piece of land. These companies, if the global experience is any indication, bank upon still more intensive farming practices, drain the soil of nutrients and suck ground water in a couple of years, and render the fertile lands almost barren after four to five years. It has been estimated that the crops that are contracted by the private companies require on an average 20 times more chemical inputs and water than the staple foods.
Sugarcane farmers, for instance, who follow a system of cane bonding with the mills, actually were drawing 240 cm of water every year, which is three times more than what wheat and rice requires on an average. Rose cultivation, introduced a few years back, requires 212 inches of groundwater consumption in every acre. Contract farming will therefore further exploit whatever remains of the ground water resources. These companies would then hand over the barren and unproductive land to the farmers who leased them, and would move to another fertile piece of land. This has been the global experience so far.
Allowing direct procurement of farm commodities, setting up special markets for the private companies to mop up the produce, and to set up land share companies, are all directed at the uncontrolled entry of the multinational corporations in the farm sector. Coupled with the introduction of the genetically modified crops, and the unlimited credit support for the agribusiness companies, the focus is to strengthen the ability of the companies to take over the food chain.
I have always warned that agribusiness companies in reality hate farmers. Nowhere in the world have they worked in tandem with farmers. Even in North America and Europe, agribusiness companies have pushed farmers out of agriculture. As a result, only 7,00,000 farming families are left on the farm in the United States. Despite massive subsidies in European Union, one farmer quits agriculture every minute. Knowing well that the markets will displace farmers, the same agriculture prescription is being applied in India.
A Planning Commission study has shown that 73 per cent of the cultivable land in the country is owned by 23.6 per cent of the population. With more and more farmers being displaced through land acquisitions, either for SEZ or for food processing and technology parks or for real estate purposes, land is further getting accumulated in the hands of the elite and resourceful. With chief ministers acting as property dealers, farmers are being lured to divest control over cultivable land. Food security and food self-sufficiency is no longer the country’s political priority.
The government has very conveniently taken refuge behind an NSSO study that says some 40 per cent of the farmers have expressed the desire to quit farming. After all, what the government is facilitating is to make it easier for the farmers to abandon their land. It believes that a rehabilitation policy for the farmers therefore is the need of the hour. What is however not being seen through is that an agrarian economy like India cannot afford large-scale displacement of farmers. It will lead to social unrest the kind of which has not been witnessed. What India needs desperately is a policy paradigm that restores pride in agriculture, stops take-over of agricultural lands, and ensures sustainable livelihoods for 600 million farmers.