Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy?

Article taken from: http://www.voltairenet.org/article159305.html

This article presents a situation thats crying for change, yet due to structure of the world today, I do not see this change comming anytime soon.

In essence, the article opens with a dramatic statement about how 200,000 peasents/ farmers in India have ended their lives due to international trade liberalization and corporate globalization.

Globalization and WTO seem to be merciless for the countries which may just not be ready for it quite yet. "Remove all trade barriers, and enjoy the benefits of free trade" seems their slogan, yet they simply fail to realize how disastreous the consequences of such policies can be for f.e farmers in developing nations.

As India opened their borders to foreigners, many agribusiness companies have approached farmers in India, buying their farms, changing their seeds, lying to them, and giving orders without having the faintiest idea what they are doing, and not realizing the consequences of moves, that were just not thought through.

They decided to replace farm saved seeds with corporate seeds. That does three things, and all of them are really bad.

• It takes away an efficient farming method, whereby the costs of farming are significantly reduced over time, as farmers were able to save some of their seeds, in order to farm again next year. This has been taken away, in favor of corporate seeds which cost 2428 times more than the old seeds (Rs 7/kg for old seeds vs. Rs 17000/kg)
• With such a dramatic increase in the cost of producion every year (the new seeds cannot be saved, hence new supply is needed every year) farmers need to spend very large amounts of money on the seeds, and they fall in debt, which is a slippery slope for them, with little chance of returning to the "+" side.
• The new crops promised increased revenue for farmers, which was a complete fraud, as the revenues gained were not nearly as good, as the agribusinessess promised. This is due to the fact that companies eliminated biodiversity from agriculture, and replaced it with monoculture, which does seem just plain stupid, considering how different for example is the farming soil in India as compared to f.e United States. They got rid of adapted, anti- pesticide seeds, and replaced it with monopolistic, non adapted and somewhat pesticide friendly seeds, which kills the crops and farmers revenue.

This however is not all. A nail in the coffin, is the hipocracy from countries like United States, or monetary unions such as EU, which promote and suggest opening to trade to everyone they can, yet they dont do it themselves. Example is the US, where cotton farmers recieve $4bn a year worth of subsidies, which drives the price of cotton artificially much lower, than it should be, and the producers can not only supply the cotton in the US at the cheapest price, but can also engage in dumping- like activities in f.e India, killing of local competition, unfortunetly not only in the metaphorical sense.

There are a few more problems pointed out in the article, however I dont think much more evidence is needed to show that corporate ways of dealing with such situations are just plain wrong. According to the article, it can be prevented, if farmers do basically everything oposite to what the world is "advising" them, which on a second thought is not only ironic, its just silly. Some farmers have done these things (switch back to saveable seeds, shift to organic farming rather than chemical) and they are earning 10 times more than before, which I think speaks for itself better than I could.