Why Indian farmer protest should concern farmers all over the world.

Women on the front in farmers protest in New Delhi. 

Pic courtesy -- Indian Express

Amid the ongoing farmers’ protest, with tens of thousands of farmers entrenched at the gates of New Delhi for nearly three months now, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly defended the three contentious farm laws saying the reforms are necessary and that is why officials are having discussion with the farmers. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “We have tried to understand what the farmers concerns are with clause-by-clause discussions. We understand that there is no harm in amending the laws if they can harm the farmers business.” 

While the Prime Minister ruled out the possibility of withdrawing the three new central laws, agitating farmers fear that these laws will bring them under corporations, which will cut into their income, take away their lands and drive them out of agriculture. As the iconic farmers movement – perhaps the biggest farmers protest seen anywhere in the world – spreads across the country, with ‘mahapanchayats’ (large congregations) setting up a new template for show of strength, agitating farmers remain steadfast on their demand for repealing the ‘three black laws’.  

As the stalemate continues, farmers are getting ready for what appears to be a long-drawn battle ahead. After having weathered the cold winters in tractor-trollies and under tents, agitating farmers are now preparing to face the harsh summers with heat wave intensifying as temperatures rise in the next few months. Nevertheless, the determination and resolve to stay put till the laws are withdrawn sees no signs of waning. More when I see a large number of women at the centre stage, protesting along with their male counterparts. “These laws are nothing but a death warrant against farmers. Therefore it is a life and death question for us,” said a visibly agitated Sukhwinder Kaur, wife of a small farmer from Punjab, whom I met recently at the Singhu border on the outskirts of New Delhi, one of the protest sites. And then she added: “I don’t want to see my husband committing suicide. Enough is enough.”

In a battle of perceptions, the real issue is not what amendments are needed to make the laws acceptable to agitating farmers but to understand what prompted farmers to put everything at stake and emerge out of their farms to launch what is now seen as a historic and an unprecedented movement. In a polarised debate that is doing the rounds, what is being conveniently overlooked is the acknowledgement of a harsh reality. For several decades now, Indian farmers had been deprived of their rightful price, with the economic design aiming to keep food prices under control and to push small farmers out of agriculture so as to provide for cheap labour in the cities. Therefore, in reality, it is the compound anger built over the decades that is finding a vent through the opposition to the new laws.

In the epicentre of the protests – comprising the north-western states of Punjab and Haryana, the country’s food bowl – farmers fear the new laws will make the regulated mandis(markets) become redundant and this will result in phasing out the price assurance they have been traditionally getting (since the days of Green Revolution) through the mechanism of the Minimum Support Price (MSP). Every year, India announces MSP for 23 crops but predominantly procures only wheat and rice to be distributed at a subsidized price to meet the food and nutrition needs of two-third of the population – approximately 800 million people -- under the National Food Security Act.

For the rest of the crops, the MSP remains more or less on paper. Since only 6 per cent farmers across the country get the benefit of MSP the remaining 94 per cent have remained dependent on markets. Farm income for this 6 per cent of the farming community is relatively higher than those dependent on markets. In any case, if markets were benevolent, there is no reason why India should be faced with a terrible agrarian distress. And this is what actually worries farmers; they fear the new laws will bring them under corporate control depriving them of an assured income by denying them a guaranteed price.

The issue of denial of an assured price resonates strongly with farmers in America and for that matter in Europe. Left to face the brutality of the markets, farmers in the rich developed world too have borne the brunt. If the markets were so good, and despite receiving monumental subsidies, I see no reason why American farmers should be saddled with a bankruptcy of $ 425 billion in 2020.  With suicides in rural areas being 45 per cent higher than the urban areas, American farmers are increasingly faced with worrying levels of mental stress. Rural communities have been left devastated, and there is a kind of eerie silence that greets you.

Ever since Earl Butz, Agriculture Secretary at the time when Richard Nixon was the American President (in early 1970s) made that infamous statement asking farmers to “get big or get out”, small farmers have quit agriculture in large numbers. To illustrate, 93 per cent of the dairy farms have closed down since 1970s. As market dominance increased, farmer share of income in every food dollar the end consumer paid has come down to less than 8 per cent. Farm incomes, when adjusted for inflation, have been on a steady decline. To prop up farm incomes, a study by Centre for WTO Studies in New Delhi shows that American farmers receive an average of $ 62,000 subsidy support every year.

In Europe, it is no better. Unable to cover the cost of production, and faced with the vagaries of markets, small farmers have increasingly quit agriculture. European Commission acknowledges that despite the importance of the food sector, farm incomes are 40 per cent lower than the non-farm sector. That is why the basic intention of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been to support individual farmers, supplementing farm incomes. Nearly 57 per cent of the average farm income comes from subsidy support.

It is clear that free markets haven’t helped increase farm incomes. No wonder, farmers everywhere are asking for fair price for their produce. What the protesting Indian farmers are demanding – making guaranteed price a legal right for farmers – therefore will have global resonance. It’s an idea whose time has come. #

Source: Why the world should watch the Indian farmer protest very closely. Fairfood.nl Feb 17, 2021. https://fairfood.nl/en/resources/indian-farmer-protests/   

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Low farm incomes is killing agriculture

French farmers drove to Paris to protest low farm incomes -- Al Jazeera photo

A New York farmer, who also works as a lawyer, tweeted this the other day: “Headed home, I tried to work in the law office today, but my head is full of the disasters I am seeing on the dairy farms and in rural areas. Even long time farmers in my area are trying to sell land to save the rest of the farm. Where is this headed? I don't know.” Well, if such a deepening farm crisis should dominate one of the most productive agricultural systems in the world, it’s time to pause and rethink.

The question that needs to be asked is whether the US agricultural policy is deliberately aimed at decimating the farm sector? And in that sense whether Indian agriculture too is intentionally (or unintentionally) moving in that direction? To say that the landholdings in India are too small to be economically viable is understandable but why is that even in the United States, where the average farm size is 444 acres, small family farms should be on way out? Why is that in Australia, where the average farm size is 4,331 hectares, should agriculture become unviable? Going by the economy of scale there seems to be no plausible reason why farmers in America and for that matter in Australia should be quitting farming. If small holdings are unviable how come even large holdings are becoming uneconomical, unless of course policy makers refuse to admit that farmers everywhere in the world, not only in India, are being denied real time prices, depriving them of their rightful income.   

First of all, let’s be clear. The US has always been for pushing small farmers out of agriculture. Look at it, even at a time when US agriculture is passing through turbulent times, the American Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue unabashedly acknowledges: “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out.” This echoes what a former US Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz, who served under President Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, had famously said: “Get big or get out.” This was followed by a cleverly drafted narrative of “feeding the world”, pushing farmers to produce large surpluses that actually dipped prices. Such a deliberate policy has left US small farmers struggling. Many of them are going out of business and quitting agriculture in desperation.

The policy to get big serves as an invitation for an increasing corporate control over agriculture, which is also becoming an unwritten policy for the developing world to follow. In addition, whether it is the World Trade Organisation (WTO) or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) treaty, trade policies have been very conveniently tweaked to provide an enabling environment for big agribusiness giants to step in. As competitiveness became the market mantra, developing as well as least developing countries are being increasingly forced to open up for cheaper agricultural products, thereby displacing millions of small farmers in the bargain.

To illustrate, the biggest dairy farm in China is spread over 22,500,000 acres, an area equal to that of Portugal. According to worldatlas.com, this farm houses around 100,000 cows. The second biggest dairy farm, spread over 11,000,000 acres, is also in China. The remaining eight of the top ten big dairy farms are situated in Australia, which despite the size are under stress. No wonder, the push for seeking an unfettered access into India through the regional mega RCEP treaty, which India has for the time rightly decided to stay out. Considering that 10 million people are involved in dairying in India, imagine the destruction of livelihoods from cheaper dairy imports from Australia, New Zealand and China.     

Returning back to agriculture, rural America, like rural India, is faced with a severe agrarian crisis. Like in India, where the average income of farming families in 17 states, which is roughly half the country, stands at a paltry Rs 20,000 a year, the US agriculture is not doing good either. More than half of US farmers have a negative income. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, 91 percent farmers and farm workers face distress. Besides affecting their mental health, the severity of the crisis is such that 87 percent farmers fear they will have to abandon farming. Accordingly, farm debt in 2019 is expected to soar to $ 416 billion, the highest since 1980. For several decades, farm gate prices have remained frozen when adjusted for inflation. Prevailing onion prices for instance are no different from the prices farmers received 30 years back. Corn prices have remained static for almost five decades.

If such a worsening farm crisis is happening in a country which applies state-of-the-art technology in agriculture, and is often projected as an example to be followed by the rest of the world, isn’t it time to re-evaluate how inappropriate is the argument for pushing in more sophisticated technology (often unwanted) in Indian agriculture? No one is against technology but it has to be relevant depending on the needs, and not pushed to simply benefit commercial interests. If in a country which is completely high-tech in agriculture, the suicides rate in rural areas is 45 per cent higher than in urban areas isn’t it time to redesign Indian agriculture, focusing more on sustaining small farms thereby reducing the rural urban migration? Shouldn’t the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare therefore embark on a fresh strategy to bring in policies tuned in more to domestic needs that make farming environmentally sustainable and economically viable?

An OECD-ICRIER study has shown that Indian farmers have been suffering a loss of 14 per cent every year in farm incomes for almost two decades, between 2000-01 and 2016-17.  This has largely benefitted the consumers who paid 25 per cent less for all agricultural commodities every year. In other words, it is the farmers who have been subsidising the country all these years. An outcome of the global economic design which aims to deliberately keep farm prices low, farmers’ anger is brewing across the world. As farm protests spill on the streets in Germany, Holland, Canada, America and India, the reason for growing farm anger was best summed up by Ian McLachlan, President of the National Farmers Federation of Australia, who had sometimes back while addressing a farmers rally said: “We’re sick and tired of subsidising the rest of Australia.” #

Farm tech bring pushed to benefit Corporates. The Tribune. Nov 30, 2019.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/farm-tech-being-pushed-to-benefit-corporates/868064.html?fbclid=IwAR3e6Ls_oaq6g7yTEGt-IE743yundSpXjnVqPgJKeW56lZDboZz4krPlhxo

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