'Revamp agriculture sector' in The New Indian Express/ 01 Dec, 2011.
(http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/revamp-agriculture-sector/338741.html).
As is the norm, the professor concentrates on the requirements of consumers and rarely touches the needs of the hapless producers. The nation now produces 240million tons of food grains annually. It works out to 550gms of food grains per capita per day. Then where is the shortage? Production of pulses, milk, fruits and vegetables stagnates because of the non-remunerative prices. If only a part of the benefits passed on to the foreign producers is given to native farmers, they will deliver them. A litre of milk fetches a lesser price than a bottle of drinking water!
"States like Punjab and Haryana, which have used 'modern' agricultural inputs to a large extent, currently have a crop yield of over 3,000 kg per hectare," observes the pundit. It would have been better if he had portrayed the current situation prevailing in Punjab. The state has 2% of the landscape and uses 18% of the nation's chemical fertilizer and pesticide use. Villages in many districts are up for sale due to the waterlessness. Punjabis are haunted by increasing health problems related to reproductive health, declining immune capacity, early ageing and cancer. Animals are unable to conceive and if they conceive they abort frequently or deliver prematurely. A few more gifts from the modern agriculture: Falling agriculture productivity, increase in external inputs and rising debts, growing disconnect between farmer and his land and farmers selling their farms. Manifold increase in usage of chemical fertilizers is making agriculture more expensive now. Not a single acre of land is free from loan. Punjab is going to be a state of sick people highly dependent on medicines.
The writer never touches the basic necessities like adequate MSP, bank credit at low interest, insurance cover, health & education to farm families etc. No professor is worried about a farmer losing his crop due to natural calamities or the price crash after a bumper harvest. He is critical of the subsidies given to the farmers. But these pundits welcome the gigantic state subsidies given to the organized sectors year after year. Agriculture in America is sustained only with state subsidies. In OECD countries, a group comprising 30 richest countries, the situation is no different. In just one year in 2009, these industrialised countries provided a subsidy of Rs 12.60 lakh crore to agriculture. Despite this, every minute one farmer quits agriculture in Europe. But pundits are envious of the farm subsidies in India even while an Indian farmer enjoys a negative subsidy and already a quarter million farmers killed themselves feeding you and me.
Sankara Narayanan
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