When M. S. Swaminathan gives a clarion call for reforming our farm system, India needs to sit up and take notice. I would love to have members of Indian Environment NEtwork debate on what ails the Indian farm system and what measures need to be taken to create change?? Give your opinion....
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: MS Swaminathan, top farm scientist and one of the architects of India’s green revolution, has warned that the country would
face a food crisis if agriculture and farmers were ignored.
“We are on the verge of a disaster. We will be in serious difficulty if food productivity is not increased and farming is neglected,” Mr Swaminathan said on the sidelines of the 97th Indian Science Congress being held here. “The future belongs to nations with grains and not guns. The current food inflation is frightening. If pulses, potatoes and onions are beyond the purchasing capacity of the majority, malnourishment will be a painful result,” he said. He urged the government to implement the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers that were made under his chairmanship and tabled in Parliament in November 2007.http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/commodities/India-on-verge-of-farm-disaster-Swaminathan/articleshow/5418669.cms
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The disaster is farmer suicide, farmer migration, farmer conversion. India was predominantly agricultural, living a simple life in the villages. The average farmer was content with his lot, and contributed to social development, but Monsanto, and the corrupt, snivelling government, have plundered the farmers, pushed them to the verge of death, and forced them to migrate to cities. The world's largest slumhouse stand in Mumbai, right next to the Ambani's MegaMansion, proof of the poignant injustice of India, proof that the food crisis is an ethical crisis, not a scientific one. If we really want to feed India, we should bring back the farmer, bring back his farm, his village. Bring back Bharat, which has been trampled, and trod upon by the sickening apathy of modern India, which is lost in the illusion of wealth - Western economics, and fast forgetting the real wealth - cultural heritage and collateral sciences.
I totally agree with the speculations of Dr Swaminathan who has devoted many years of his life working on the food security issues of India. My family belongs to a farming community and I know how much problem farmers face to encash their produce at the right price. The effects of climate change on the agricultural produce are mostly discounted in the case of farmers and the middlemen reap the harvest of benefit. Their needs to be a green supply chain which fulfills the market demand in a sustainable way, taking cues from the forward trading on the Commodity exchanges. The benefit should be redirected to the farmers to encourage the farming activity and for this we need a regulator, a body which supports the farmers in getting the right produce and guiding them to produce the right quantity for which he/she has the future price in hand. Farming is a long term investment and needs to be supported by the government in marketing them.
I belong to UP and about 20 years back there was a lot of sugarcane farming but due to closure of many sugar factories people stopped cultivating sugarcane. The current prices of sugar were unimaginable a year ago...
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I belong to UP and about 20 years back there was a lot of sugarcane farming but due to closure of many sugar factories people stopped cultivating sugarcane. The current prices of sugar were unimaginable a year ago...