As Jawaharlal Nehru said in 1948, “Everything else can wait, but not agriculture“. And indeed in India, it didn’t wait.
In fact it couldn’t. India was facing a population boom since the 20s that threatened the future of the country, since the agriculture back then wasn’t able to nourish the overgrowing population. As everybody was predicting that a great famine would make society impose soon, the government had the perspicacity t take radical measures to prevent it. Those measures were called the “green revolution”, due to the extraordinary results they produced: the extensive use of pesticides, insecticides and hybrid seeds allowed rice production to be multiplied by three, and wheat production by six! Soon India stopped having problems from its agricultural production, and became auto sufficient and even an exporter of cereals. But hold on a minute, what are hybrid seeds exactly? And what may be the environmental impact of years of pouring pesticides on the cultures?
Hybrid seeds are produced by companies such as Monsanto, and grow into more vigorous, stronger and bigger plants than the regular ones. The fact that everyone uses them makes it impossible for anyone to grow normal plants, as they have a disadvantage over the genetically modified ones and find no buyer. This process reduces biodiversity, as the buyer cannot chose the variety he wants (in other words, there is only one or two variety of wheat in stock, and the farmer can only choose from those). In addition, it makes all farmers dependent from the companies, witch can lead to disaster if the prices go up and they have no choice but to borrow money from the banks or private investors, at interest rates that can be extremely high.
As for the environmental impact of such aggression on the earth, it is of course huge. Many soils have become completely sterile so that the only way to grow plants on them is to pour yet more aggressive pesticides, that of course are more expensive and lead farmers, especially poor ones, to be in debt. Since 1997, 5000 farmers in the state of Andhra Padesh committed suicide because of their going bankrupt.
So, in addition to trashing the environment, in a country with exceptional biodiversity, the “green revolution” have made local farmers more vulnerable, especially the small owners. The acquisition of expensive machinery, costly and always more sophisticated products have made it almost impossible not to go in debt. It has not significantly reduced poverty either, as almost half of the children under 5 are malnourished.
The green revolution may have saved millions of lives, but it was a short term solution that cannot go on very long. Some say the GMOs are the solution, in order to reduce the use of pesticides. This is a fake solution: often, GMOs are just an excuse to throw more pesticides (to destroy every plant and animal but the genetically modified plants) and don’t help to reduce the consumption. Moreover, small farmers would still depend on big companies to give them the seeds. As Vandanda Shiva, the Indian environmental activist says, the solution is to move toward an organic way of farming, changing altogether the techniques of agriculture: for example, mixed farming (growing different kind of plants on the same land) might be a solution to enrich the soils. Although India has to deal with a lot of problems, mostly having to do with its situation of developing country, its government has to realize the problem before the situation of its farmers worsens, as they still represent 60% of the Indian workforce, and before the soils become completely hopeless.
NewsfromAsia 