Most farmers who committed suicide were Bt cotton growers: VJAS
Yavatmal Maharashtra | January 02, 2006 12:32:05 AM IST
The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) has alleged that 170 cotton growers from Western Vidarbha, who had opted to sow Bt cotton of a US-based seeds company, had committed suicide during the period from June to December last year.
As many as 212 farmers in Vidarbha had committed suicide during the period of whom 182 were from Western Vidarbha, VJAS president Kishore Tiwari said in a statement here today. Among the 182 suicides in Western Vidarbha, 170 were by Bt cotton growers, the statement alleged.
Over six lakh farmers from Vidarbha had sown Bt cotton on the assurance that the minimum yeild would be 20 quintals per acre, the statement said. However, the average yield per acre was only two to three quintals per acre, the statement alleged.
The VJAS proposes to initiate legal action against the US-based seeds company demanding compensation for farmers who had been “misled by false assurances”, the statement said.
via GM WATCH daily
Vandana Shiva in The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation [ 19 February 2004, ZNet ], warned that farmers had begun taking their own lives in great numbers in 1997 as “the rising costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities” led to “a rapid increase in indebtedness.” Then in 1998, the World Bank forced India to open its markets to corporate seeds protected by patents and non-renewable traits. Farmers who once saved seeds freely could not afford to buy each year from the “free trade” Bt seed manufacturers.
Shiva goes on to explain how the gov’t was desperate to delink the suicides from globalisation policies. As the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (People’s Movement in Vidarbha) continues to fight on behalf of these cotton farmers it begs the question, which Indian officials are profitting personally whilst the epidemic rages on?
Vidarbha 2004: a suicides diary
The “simple man” silently walked out of his hut that fateful day, went to the backyard and consumed pesticide in the veil of darkness. Rising family debt had forced his children out of school, and that proved the last straw. Jaideep Hardikar recounts the stories of this and two other farmer suicides.
Update: Lifeonline describes itself as a “multimedia initiative about the impact of globalisation” that is sponsored by many governmental bodies and agencies including the World Bank. It reports that one of the most serious obstacles faced by Indian farmers is the inability to prove ownership of land thereby making it impossible to borrow money against it. Lifeonline examines a huge effort undertaken by civil servant Rajeev Chawla in the state of Karnataka to computerise records so farmers would no longer have to deal with village accountants “who exercised an effective monopoly on all land transactions.” Now a farmer can go to their local land registry office and for 15 rupees get a receipt and a land record.
If comments like this made by senior agricultural economist Abhijeet Sen are indicative of official mindset, “If you want to have larger farms you have to throw people out,” then Indian farmers would be wise to take a cue from their Brazilian counterparts before signing away the family farm for a small loan difficult or impossible to repay.
Great post, Diane. As it happens, I’m in the middle of reading Frances Moore Lappe’s *Food First*, which I can’t recommend highly enough.
She does a great job critiquing myths like “ADM/Monsanto/Cargill feeds the world,” and that the Green Revolution is the only alternative to starvation.
In fact, “High Response Variety” seeds are geared toward high outputs only under conditions prevailing on land owned by landed elites and engaged in plantation agriculture. For subsistence farmers without government-subsidized irrigation, older locally improved varieties were much more viable. The Green Revolution was a government-funded channeling of research priorities into directions that favored agribusiness, and further increased the advantages already accruing to those who’d stolen the peasants’ land in the past.
“The path not taken” would have been based on soil improvement rather than chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and on locally improved varieties resistant to drought rather than HRVs that thrive only under optimal conditions.
I’ve been meaning to read that book. They are really piling up.
I think the market will eventually be the undoing of the pesticide/chemical hawks. At least the signs are starting to show-up in my local grocery chains, more room made for organic foods and small farmers turning towards it in greater numbers.
Unfortunately the majority are addicted to those gov’t cheques enticing them into buying the Bt seeds and the chemicals that go with them even as their goods are outsourced of the market by contriving regulations favouring the industrial farms.
Update: I touched bases today with the person whose experiences I sourced when writing the last paragraph. No cash incentives for using Bt seed this year other than the seed guy offering them a free bag of it. Her husband refuses to plant it now since noticing the deer won’t touch it.