{"id":36056,"date":"2018-11-01T13:21:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T07:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=36056"},"modified":"2018-11-01T13:21:06","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T07:51:06","slug":"a-new-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-new-agriculture\/","title":{"rendered":"A new (agri)culture:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/farmers-suicide-agitations-loan-waivers-agriculture-green-revolution-droughts-floods-4760169\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A new (agri)culture<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The situation of the farmers was never very good to begin with, but has been steadily declining and has reached its nadir right now<\/span> <b>Introduction:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In any food crisis, it is the top of the food chain that suffers the most.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<li>In the case of farmer\u2019s distress, the top of food chain is the end consumer.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In India, 50 per cent of the people are still dependent, directly or indirectly, on farming. We cannot ignore their plight anymore.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Key point:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the last 20 years, according to the government\u2019s statistics, more than three lakh farmers have committed suicide in India.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The roots of this crisis lie in the Green Revolution and the policies adopted therein.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The situation has also been exacerbated by the government\u2019s apathy towards the poor in general and towards farmers and rural folk in particular.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Green Revolution led agriculture towards chemical fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation through large dams and massive irrigation projects.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This did lead to higher yields initially and, therefore, that period became known as the Green Revolution with most of the gains coming from the introduction of hybrid variety seeds.\\<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The chemical fertilisers and hybrid seeds came the problems of resistance in pests and that led to the wider use of pesticides and also of higher potency.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This infused poison in the food \u2014 especially for farmers, who also inhale the pesticides and, therefore, the higher incidence of cancer and other diseases \u2014 it also led to higher input costs and thereafter a gradual decline in productivity because of soil depletion.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The chemical fertilisers added only a few chemicals like nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus to the soil without replenishing it with micro-nutrients and the pesticides kill even the soil bacteria.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canals and canal irrigation also led to water-logging and a substantial part of the land became wasteland. In areas which were not irrigated by canals, there was a rise in the unregulated and unsustainable usage of tubewells to mine groundwater, leading its levels to fall rapidly.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bhakra Dam was famously called one of the \u201ctemples of modern India\u201d by Jawaharlal Nehru and has often been regarded as a boon to agriculture.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many large irrigation projects were thereafter taken up on similar lines, the most famous being the Sardar Sarovar project in Gujarat, which has been called the lifeline of the state by successive chief ministers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That project has taken up more than 90 per cent of Gujarat\u2019s irrigation budget for the last 50 years and today irrigates less than 2 lakh hectares of agricultural land which is roughly 10 per cent of what was promised.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Problems:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Droughts and floods \u2014 problems that are compounded by climate change.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The government has fixed minimum support prices (MSP) for just wheat and rice, not for other crops and the MSP so fixed is just about adequate for farmers to meet their costs without giving even minimum wages for their own labour.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Swaminathan Commission had gone into this issue of MSP and had recommended that it should be extended to all crops and should be at least 50 per cent above the average cost price of farmers in each state.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Payments for the loss of crops during droughts and floods have not been made despite loan waivers and the ever-greening of loans to big industrialists, who have defaulted on payments to the tune of thousands of crores, by banks.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Solutions:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Need to change the whole agriculture policy and move it towards organic farming, irrigation by rain-water harvesting and micro-water irrigation, shifting from chemical to organic fertilisers, which will also use less pesticide.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It may be noted that contrary to popular belief, the government\u2019s data shows that the productivity from organically farmed lands is no less than those farmed with chemicals and pesticides.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Swaminathan Committee\u2019s recommendations must be implemented which will require a considerable amount of money.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new (agri)culture: Context: The situation of the farmers was never very good to begin with, but has been steadily declining and has reached its nadir right now Introduction: In any food crisis, it is the top of the food chain that suffers the most. In the case of farmer\u2019s distress, the top of food&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-new-agriculture\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A new (agri)culture:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704880759},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}