Farmers India

My understanding about a fascinating plant

2012-01-15T19:12:00.001-05:00

When Columbus and his crew encountered the Native Americans inhaling the smoke of burning Tobacco, they introduced the same to Europe and the rest of the world. Tobacco was the first plant exported to a worldwide market from Americas from 1500s and it has been grown by Native Americans for more then 5000 years. Global tobacco Industry sells around 6 trillion cigarettes every year, China is the biggest consumer of cigarettes about 45% of the global total. After China, the ten countries that consume the largest number of cigarettes are Russia, the U.S., Japan, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Ukraine, Turkey, Korea and Italy. India is the second largest producer of tobacco in the world and ITC limited is the pioneer for India’s tobacco crop. India has different types of tobacco verities i.e. Virginia, Burly and native /oriental tobacco. Tobacco board of India is a government organization which involves in regulating the crop and developing the tobacco Industry.

Tobacco is the hungry man’s food, chilly man’s fire, sad man’s cordial, bachelor’s friend, lonely man’s companion, busy man’s repose: it’s a generic complimentary statement by tobacco lovers. Matter of fact, Tobacco is responsible for 1 in 10 adult deaths and it kills more than 5 million people per year. The World Health Organization warned that if the same consumption patterns continue, more than 8 million people will die per year by 2030. Smoking tobacco is a fatal addiction; it keeps the life at risk…. not only the one who is smoking but also every one around. Everybody has the same questions, why farmers are growing tobacco even that is harm for human health and why governments are allowing tobacco cultivation even lot of health organizations and social groups advocating a ban on tobacco smoking.

Smoking is a social problem; the problem should be dealt with public awareness. But tobacco cultivation is a part of farming system; it is legally cultivated agriculture crop and globally trading commodity. Tobacco is the best cash crop among all cash crops… in terms of high value returns and suitable to most environments, on top that it’s a labor intensive crop, so it definitely improves the socioeconomic conditions of rural areas and the quality of farmers’ life. Sale of the crop is also assured and it’s sold by negotiable price through government operated auction floors. As per economic surveys, the tobacco farmers monthly income is higher than the non – tobacco farmers. Almost 15 million people are involved in Indian tobacco industry, the tobacco contribution to India’s GNP is about 10%.

Indian tobacco farmers have not influenced by the anti smoking campaigns, neither threaten tobacco cultivation nor promote them to leave the crop. They simply grow the tobacco as a part of the cultivation and more over its high return cash crop.In spite of Indian government has been implementing ban on smoking in public places and a ban on underage sales, tobacco consumption and production has been increasing. The consumption pattern in India is: 85% share goes to tobacco products like Bidi, Snuff and chewing and rest of 15% is cigarettes consumption. Despite the just 15% cigarette consumption generates 75% of taxable tobacco revenue and 25% from the other forms of tobacco products which is 85% market share, since the taxes are more on cigarettes comparatively on traditional tobacco products. Major Indian tobacco market is occupied by traditional products which are unorganized sector and cottage industries, so the government authorities are difficult to enforce the taxes on them.

As per my understanding, young &urban population is consuming the cigarettes and adults & rural population is consuming non-cigarette form of tobacco products and worldwide the non – cigarette form of consumption has been increasing. Tobacco consumption is dangerous to health; no one is going to deny that but the government should educate the citizens about the risk factors and at the same time it should make the Indian tobacco farmers more competitive to garner the major share in world market. The government should protect the poor farmers’ interests and economic strength of the country; we need lot R&D in tobacco in the direction of low –nicotine and organic tobacco crops. The taxes on cigarettes should not be increased because the consumption pattern will be shifted to non- cigarette form which is more harmful to health. I hope they won’t increase in coming budget.

FDIs in Agriculture

2011-12-09T18:36:00.000-05:00

FDI (Foreign Direct investment) is one of the recent buzz words in India; the word has been in debate among the political circles, social classes and TV studios. I would like to present my views on Private Investments including FDI’s in Agriculture. When the FDI s are possible with retail Industry, why can’t the UPA Government think about the Agriculture, why the governments and Industry are unable to understand the farmer as entrepreneurs. I feel the Government is failed to identify the farmers’ entrepreneur skills and they are not developing the farmers’ core competence which are necessities to Indian agriculture. The government has to liberalize the policies and encourage the Industry to work closely with agriculture…… then only the Indian agriculture will flourish.

My belief is that the Indian agriculture growth will be possible through technologies only, as we know that the green revolution in late 1960s and the recent BT cotton revolution are the best examples for the same. So we need Private partnership model (either foreign or native) in Indian agriculture to build the capacity through innovative practices and methodologies. The agriculture need to be treated as an Industry, government should allow partnership in farming and make the farmers as entrepreneurs. As we know the Indian farmers are facing problems with essential requirements of agriculture like water, labor, Inputs, credit and markets.

Irrigation system plays a critical role in productivity of the land and land prices. As long as the sufficient water available, there is no complaint from the farmers for other things. I strongly believe there is no dearth for lands in India, we have lot of arid and semi arid lands are available but there is no irrigation facilities, that is the reason farmers are not interested cultivate. If the governments work in that direction like minor irrigation projects, lift irrigation projects with World Bank funds, there will be lot of growth in farm production. We know that the Israel’s agriculture… how they are efficient in water consumption in agriculture, they don’t spare even one drop of water. Why can’t our governments invite the Israel’s irrigation companies to invest and develop the drip irrigation systems for our agriculture? China did the same thing, their deserts are bloomy with the help of Israel companies.

Labor shortage is the biggest threat to Indian farmers, most of the unemployed rural youth are changing their occupations for better income and to avoid the laborious nature of farm work. Modern farm equipment is ideal solution to overcome the labor shortage and physical drudgery. The usage of farm equipment is very less in India though it has largest agriculture economy. Application of modern farm equipment/ machine tools in agriculture will reduce the labor cost and it will improve the productivity and income. In India, we have a harvesting tool called “SICKLE” which has been in use from 3000 BC (found in Indus valley civilization); when the developed nations are moving forward by mechanizing their agriculture….we are still using the 3000 years old tools. We need lot of modern equipments like planting and harvesting machines, fertilizing and pesticide sprayers, dairy equipment and poultry equipment and so on. Our government should emphasize the importance of modern farm machinery and they should invite private investors including foreign agriculture equipment companies to set up their manufacturing units to help our Indian agriculture.

After green revolution, intensity of Indian agriculture has changed to competitive environment. The usage of fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds has increased and simultaneously production also increased. The improved seeds, agro chemicals and modern farm technologies have shown positive impact on socio economic conditions of the Indian farmers. We need crops which are fortified with nutrients and Fertilizers which are added with micro nutrients to feed the soil. As we know the Indian cotton revolution has made by BT cotton only which was invented by Monsanto, we need more technologies and science in farming which are supposed to be create value-added crops, medicinal crops, and bio fuel crops. There is still great need of research on drought resistant, decease resistant and herbicide tolerance crops. Africa is the best example for such innovative crops and practices, our Government of India (GOI) should launch Free Trade Agreements with developed nations or multination research organization to set up their research stations for our agriculture growth.

As we know the Indian farmers are struggling for remunerative prices, suffering with too many restrictions and controls to market their produces. The Indian markets are traditionally operated by middle men, lot of mismanagement, exploitation and lacking with modern agriculture-infrastructure. Reforms in agriculture marketing are inevitable to upgrade our marketing systems and facilities to link with nationwide markets. The new agriculture marketing systems should connect the farmers with food processors and retailers which need to mitigate the mediators’ involvement. I welcome the UPA government decision on allowing FDIs in retail markets; it’s definitely favorable to farmers and it’s nothing but remodeling the Indian agriculture sector. Market efficiency depends on marketing strategies and market Infrastructure; that can be possible with massive investments which are going to fulfill by FDI’s.

India economy is growing and considered as third largest economy in terms of public private partnership. Indian economic policy reforms have given tremendous growth in employment opportunities and living standards of the people. India is the best destination for huge human resource, excellent agro climatic conditions and vast markets… but what we are lacking is modern technologies and infrastructure. GOI should renovate the policies to allow FDIs in Agriculture to overcome our drawbacks and to make the Indian agriculture as prestigious, profitable, successful and sustainable.

India needs reinforced Met Dept

2011-11-07T18:32:00.001-05:00

Monsoons are very important to Indian economy because 60% Indian population is depend on agriculture and agriculture share is around 15% in total GDP. Most of Indian farming is depending on monsoons only…. that’s why historically Indian economy used to be called as “Monsoon economy”. Generally Indian monsoon season starts from June to September, but this year southern part of India has heavy deficit in rainfall and Andhra Pradesh has experienced the drought condition. The Estimated yield loss in Andhra Pradesh was 40 lakhs of acres and some of the other regions information yet to be received. Andhra Pradesh government recently announced drought ridden mandals at about 450- 500 which were identified with 50- 60 percent crop losses.

As per official figures there was 60% deficit in North-East monsoon rains in Andhra Pradesh and the loss was 2000 crores of rupees to farmers. India’s 60% farming depends on rains and almost 40% food grains come from these areas only. If the monsoon fails, it’s going to be negative impact on national GDP through agriculture share, Inflation goes up and food prices will be volatile. We can’t blame the Mother Nature but we have Meteorological department to predict the rains, therefore the farmers may select the crops according to that. If the predictions go wrong the farmers will in trouble, that’s what happened in 2009. In 2009, The India Meteorological Department (IMD) was forecasted the monsoons as normal, few months later it revised the earlier predictions and announced that the rains would be a little lower than normal but actually there was terrible drought.

This year also same as 2009, IMD’s initial predictions were normal, second forecast was below normal but finally Andhra Pradesh has witnessed a drought and ultimately cost paid by the farmers is millions of rupees. Why the Met department is unable to give accurate predictions, what kind of technology they are using?....... I have no idea.

Seven years ago, when I first browse the weather website (http://www.weather.com/) to know the weather forecast in New Jersey… that’s so accurate. I admired and dreamt that one day our Indian Met department will give weather forecast as accurate as US Weather report. But still our Indian meteorological department is inefficient in accurate long term predictions.

Yes…. it’s too difficult to predict the weather in long range, but if the predictions are continuously wrong that means something wrong with the Met department technologies, It must update its technology to correct the failures. As India entered into a deal with USA on Nuclear technologies, why can’t the Ministry of Earth Science approach USA for weather related technologies for better predictions? I hope that the Met department will modernize the equipment to serve better since most of Indians are agriculture dependents. If they were informed accurately about the weather they can plan the crops and at lest they can mitigate their losses by cutting down the farm investments.

To encounter the drought, our agriculture scientists should focus on developing the climate resistant crops which are helpful to reduce the risk and food prices instability.

Our governments have been experimenting cloud seeding and artificial rains but those are all nonsuccess models and very expensive. If any drought conditions exist, the governments need to have contingency plans like special budget allocations, subsidies and maintaining buffer stock of food grains to encounter it. However, we hope that IMD will give accurate weather forecasts and such forecasts will give guidelines to farmers to select and plan the crops according to anticipated weather conditions.

Direct cash transfer for farmer’s family welfare

2011-10-03T18:21:00.000-04:00

We have been discussing various farmers’ issues from past few years i.e. remunerative price, simple interest loans and all kind of subsidies… no favorable progress in this direction. The conclusion what do farmers expect is a stable income to lead their quality life just the same as others in the society. Each and every profession has its own remuneration for their service and the same way all kind of products have their own market price, but farmers don’t have stable remuneration for their hard work or remunerative price for their produces. Government has been intervening in crop production and marketing issues but still no righteousness for farmers and still they are agitating for all kind of supports. Now the time is up… no more jokes (false promises), no more time killing committees, farmers need a constructive permanent policy with economical reforms which gives care to get out of the agriculture crisis.

I strongly feel that the direct cash payments to the farmers is the best alternative option to support them, government has been giving all kind of subsidies in the form of seeds, fertilizers and so on which are actually going to manufacturers not direct to the farmers. If the direct payment goes to the real farmers; they can use the money wisely creatively for not only on fertilizers or pesticides but also for other farming activities. The government should provide direct cash payments to the farmers to assist in labor wages for farm operations, every body knows that farm labor cost has increased due to expensive cost of living and they have got great bargain power with several social welfare schemes. It’s the best way to integrate the NREG schemes to agriculture. I am very glad about Mr. Nandan nilekani’s proposal on direct cash transfer model for fertilizer subsidies but the implementation methodologies shall be discussed.

Farmers need a fixed amount of crop based cash assistance when the crops don’t reap by natural calamities; direct cash is a security from drought, floods and rising diesel prices. As we know that small farmers and land less farmers can’t survive simply on agriculture, they used to do animal herding but still they are in low socio economic status. They need some fixed amount of cash for reasonable standard of living and away from the poverty. The government should examine the real incomes and living costs while recommending the direct cash assistance every year; the money should go to every agriculture family including share croppers. The direct cash payment program shall be designed to encourage women farmers, organic farming and sustainable agriculture.

In recent survey conducted by India's National Sample Survey Organization showed 40 percent of Indian farmers would like to quit agriculture. If it really happens, the government face huge burden to provide alternative livelihood for all of them and country unable to feed its own population. Nevertheless, what the farmers need is… a substantial income and economical security to restructure their farming activities. The practice of directly giving money to the poor is a popular one in developing countries which has given positive results; I hope the same will be implemented for our Indian poor farmers.

FDI in Retail industry

2011-09-05T18:10:00.002-04:00

As per Indian Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP)that FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) is inevitable in multi brand retailing. India has been implementing 100% FDI in single brand(Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Nike, Mcdonald , KFC etc) retailing from past couple of years and trying to get the approval in cabinet for FDI in multi brand retailing (Wal-Mart, Tesco, Carrefour, Metro) with 51% since we have accepted the economic reforms in G20 Canada summit. India is the fifth largest retail destination globally; it has been recognized as a lucrative market for foreign investors in the retail industry.

India is a great retail democratic country, we have plenty of neighborhood kirana stores, traditional, and unorganized retailers who are serving the nation from past several decades. The Indian retail market can be divided in to two categories i.e. Organized and Unorganized with market share of 5 % and 95% respectively, the total turnover is $395 billion and it is expected to grow up to $785 billion by 2015. India has been leaning towards organized retail system from past decade and it’s going to reach up to 20% by 2015. Large Indian companies are entering in to the retail business since there is lot of potential to grow i.e Birla More store, reliance fresh, Bharti Easy Day.

India is slowly emerging as a world class market with high value products; growing middle class incomes, urbanization and changes in consumer behavior which are ideal for super markets or hypermarkets. Our agriculture also need large investments to improve our infrastructure in terms of seed supply, agrichemicals, processing, machinery, storage facilities, rural transportation and value chain management. Experts and economists say that there is lot of prospective benefits to consumers and farmers by FDI in retail.

I believe that unrestricted FDI in multi brand retailing is going to affect badly on micro and small retailers. The multinational retailers are going to fill their aisles with international brands with competitive prices and the micro and small retailers are absolutely not in a position to compete with them. The biggest challenge is how to synchronize the harmony between organized and unorganized.

My recommendations on FDI- Retail

1. Indian retail sector contributes 15% to total GDP and providing 8% of total employment which is the biggest employer after agriculture, so the retail sector should be recognized as an Industry and need to be controlled by a separate ministry.

2. Any kind of corporate owned markets shouldn’t interfere in Public distribution system (PDS) because more than 50% of Indian households are depending on this welfare system and most of them are below poverty line.

3. Ministry of commerce and Industry should fix the limit on foreign Investing amount though they have 51% eligibility. If there is no cap on amount, it’s going be a huge threat to Indian retail companies.

4. The Ministry should initiate the kind of business model; i.e. FDI retailers should deal with all kind products like Fresh produces, dry foods and non food items uniformly in the startup itself. If they don’t consider fresh farm produces, I don’t thinks that they won’t set up the value chain for farm produces.

5. The FDI retail outlets should be allowed on socio economic and demographic factors. Geographical radius must be fixed to set up the stores to mitigate the competition among the local retailers and multinationals’.

6. Stringent policies are required for harmonious trade and to control the multinationals aggressive monopoly trade practices. The Government needs to promote the micro, small and medium local retailers and should take necessary steps to grow them.

7. The new jobs created by the multinational retail chains should be reserved for rural people and the FDI retailers should not destroy the existing unorganized retailers’ distribution setup.

Mass starvation in Somalia

2011-08-14T10:39:00.001-04:00

There is no food, no water, kids are dying and adults are tumbling, heart breaking pictures and heart wrenching incidents… this is the brief portrait of Somalia. I used to feel sad about Somalia where the place of pirates, private armies and poverty and now it’s experiencing severe famine. I will make known to you some pathetic famine incidents …

A mother walking, arrives at the clinic, takes her baby off her back and finds it has died without her knowing.

Her five children were with her, but the youngest ones - aged two years and five years - died on the way. She said she abandoned their bodies along the roadside because she was too weak to dig graves.

“We were hungry and couldn't get work. We traveled as a family but soon after we arrived my husband died, leaving me a widow and my children without a father. I just need help — anything."

The UN declared famine in Somalia and some other east African countries like Ethiopia and Kenya and it estimates that it’s going to effects millions of people. Nearly 400000 of people are leaving their homes, traveling to camps in search of food and water,some of them are crossing the borders to reach the survival camps which are located in Ethiopia and Kenya and still 80% of people are unable to access the humanitarian aid. The militant groups are blocking the aid organizations' food deliveries, so the survival aid camps are held at secured regions. thousands of people are being raped,killed by militant groups, bandits while journeying to refuge camps. The country is already lawless and now became chaotic due to famine, the aid food has been looted and sold in markets for profits. Humanitarian organizations are not willing to work directly in Somalia because some of their workers got killed by the clan war groups.

Basically Somalia is arid environment,year around severe hot conditions and irregular monsoons, agriculture is very limited and most of the lively hood is on nomadic herding.The problem with Somalia is the unstable government, militants groups which are keeping the country miserable, THE TRANSITIONAL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT(TFG) doesn't have total control over the country and some clan's militia groups like Al-Shabab are dominating in most of the region.

This drought is not the first time and it has been repeating for every few decades, I think 20 years ago Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya have experienced the same kind of famine but now they are not as bad as Somalia. Ethiopia and Kenya have some sufficient investment in agriculture and foreign food grants which were helped them from starvation, as we know that some Indian agriculture companies also invested in Ethiopia and Kenya. Adequate investment in agriculture is the long term solution for famine and better agriculture practices, capacity development, economic developments are path to peace and prosperity.

The United Nations has made an emergency appeal for $2.4 billion,United States has contributed $580 million so far and other African and gulf countries are helping. I have an Idea that India has been holding excess wheat/rice stocks above the Strategic reserves I.e around 70 million tons and upcoming crop season is going to add another 20 million tones. Especially in Wheat, India harvested bumper crop and the current stocks were two seasons old, the Government is not allowing exports since 2007 and wheat prices are not so attractive in international markets. So the best way is to give the old wheat stocks to UN aid for Somalia on humanitarian grounds instead of rotting in FCI warehouses. It's not only going to help to Somalia's starving but also for Indian farmers to get the support price for their upcoming harvest.

However....I wish all Somalians will have better living conditions, peace and democracy.

Pic courtesy: news.com.au

A nexus between land and food

2011-07-19T19:17:00.004-04:00

Prime minister Mr.Manmohan stated that we need second green revolution to feed our people despite the nation produced record level of 241 million tones of food grains in this year and he said that 2% of growth per annum is required to meet the food needs of growing population. Indeed, we should preserve our agriculture land for the same what prime minister said, ironically the Indian farm land has reduced by 0.43 percent i.e182.39 million hectares in last five years and we know that the government has been forcibly acquiring the farm lands in the name of development. If India loss its cultivable land for non agriculture purpose… imagine how the 1.20 billions of people grapple for food, we already importing the pulses and oil seeds for our needs. A typical Indian family is spending 30-60 percent of their income for food alone; if we don’t conserve the farm lands then the food expenditure will be more for Indian house hold.

Recently Mr. Rahul Gandhi protested against NOIDA, Agra Highway farm lands acquisition, he said that he is going to introduce the revised land acquisition act in parliament which is going to favor for farmers. Personally I welcome his substantial statement. He should visit more villages, meet more farmers to get more knowledge on farmers’ perils. The policy makers’ talks a lot about farmers’ issues in accordance to the situation and events… but we know the UPA 2 government’s economic model i.e. fast industrialization….the people income levels will be increased, eventually the living standards and purchase power will be more. Yes of course, being a progressive thinker, I too support industrialization but agriculture is important too. The thing is who is going to cultivate the land and where is the land to cultivate if the cultivable land is being transformed to industrial purpose?? A recent study says that a typical Indian family is spending 30-60 percent of their income for food alone, if we don’t conserve the fertile farm lands, definitely the food is going to be very expensive for Indian house hold.

As we know that governments are forcible acquiring thousands of acres of land for industries in the name of development i.e. in Noida & Agra in Utter Pradesh, Ambala in Haryana, Mansa in Punjab, Singur in West Bengal , Jaitapur in Maharashtra, Mangalore & Sullia in Karnataka, and Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. When the governments are trying to convert the fertile lands to non agriculture usage, they should have a responsibility to develop or conserve the fertile lands elsewhere as part of replacement which is not happening, where as in USA… being a largest agriculture land holder; it’s still spending millions of dollars to conserve the cultivable land. Being a developing a nation and having a large population, we need to develop and secure the farm lands.

The proposed land acquisition bill must be included with not only the resettlement and rehabilitation of the displaced public but also the developing and securing the agriculture lands and environmental resettlement. The existing National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy is not giving full fledged support the affected people, it’s failed to restore the lives of dislocated people and they are not receiving the decent, sufficient compensation for their lands, farmers voices have stifled and the governments are using police power to restrain their demands, for that’s the reason only the rural India become violent. The practical studies are not conducted in scientific manner, the government officials are corrupted and the reports are being prepared in favor of construction / power companies. When ever the superior courts intervened then only the feasibility studies are conducting in democratic and scientific manner. (Ex. Court intervention is Sompet -Andhra Pradesh wetlands issue).

I hope the future Land acquisition bill would be beneficial to displaced farmers, let us see how Mr. Rahul Gandhi stands on his promise.

AP farmers want to take a brake

2011-06-25T09:17:00.001-04:00

We used to see several ways of mass protests; the employees pen down, workers general strike, business men shutdowns, and factory lockouts so on... Sometimes farmers also organize protests on their issues like lack of farm inputs and better price for their produces, but this time Andhra Pradesh farmers want to protest by stopping the cultivation and they want to take crop holiday. This is not according to their wish or whim, the market conditions and the government impudence drag them to take such disgraceful decision.

Crop holiday is not new to Andhra Pradesh, in the year of 2000-2001 tobacco crop season, the Tobacco board also taken the same decision to clear the accumulated inventory. Indeed, the tobacco crop is commercial one and it doesn’t impact on farmers since they shifted to other commercial crops and a few farmers only depend on the tobacco crop. But paddy is a food crop and widely grown by large number of farmers; despite they want to go for crop holiday because of the distressed conditions by market price crash, heavy input and manpower costs and accumulated inventories at FCI warehouses. It seems to be no choice for farmers to overcome the crisis except the crop holiday

India has been lacking with agriculture infrastructure facilities, our food corporation storage houses are bulging with grain stocks of 65.6 million tonnes which the actual storage capacity is 62.8 million tonnes and there is no space for upcoming Khariff crops harvested by September and October. We have lots of grain going rot due to non availability of storage facilities and there is no progress in the issues even after Supreme Court intervened. UPA Government is still in dilemma to take decision on export of excess food grains since they want to support the prestigious National food security bill.

The government agencies are not procuring properly because they don’t have enough storage facilities and some millers are exploiting the farmers and take chance by not paying the prevailing prices since the farmers are in rush to pay their bills and they want to get rid of their debts. The farmers need to have a permanent solution on minimum support price, every time the government announces the price and the millers are not implementing the same. The Food Corporation of India and Civil supplies departments should introduce different kinds of procurement procedures instead of millers’ pride, i.e. promoting IKPs (Indira Kranthi patham) or any self help groups for grain procurements, Inviting private organization for grain collection, storage and necessary terms have to be initiated to control the millers.

Market efficiency depends on marketing infrastructure, there is a massive investment required in storage and processing of agriculture produces, the government has to encourage Public Private Partnership model in grain procuring and storage. We need to apply scientific applications in grain storage to reduce the rotting and wastage and we need to construct innovative storage facilities rather than conventional. I welcome the Andhra Pradesh farmers’ move for taking brake on paddy cultivation; technically it will balance the demand and supply position and it’s a kind of warning to government to fix the farmers’ demands. Let us see how the government respond and negotiate with farmers because the profound Food security bill is on the way.

Direct cash transfer is a safety net for poverty

2011-06-15T21:10:00.005-04:00

The media and politicians were lampooned on direct cash transfer scheme which was incorporated in Telugudesam party’s manifesto in 2009 assembly elections and political rivals make this scheme as controversial and named Mr. Chandra babu Naidu as ALL FREE BABU. Honestly speaking, I too failed to understand the scheme that direct cash transfer to the poor make the poor become lazy and refuse to work if they get cash for doing nothing. I realized my thoughts were short and the small amount make a lot of difference in their economic lives.

Indeed this is an innovative social policy, it has been in practice from past six years in South American and African countries and some international aid organizations also implementing the same. Providing welfare and social security is the state’s responsibility and the governments have to design the development paradigms to poor people. Economic reforms and liberalization policies are serving their part to eradicate poverty but the change takes lot of time, in the meanwhile welfare schemes are necessary to reduce the pressure on poor and the National rural employment guarantee scheme is the best example for such kind of schemes.

Direct cash transfer to poor households is not like a donation or aid or sanctity or the government is not going to throw the money at crossroads or money is not distributed as handbills. It’s a kind of social security program, identifying the social class and pick the responsible person in the family (mostly homemakers) and transferring the money through banks in certain intervals. It’s a kind of investment to the poor people to support themselves, end to poverty. They can buy good protein based food, can buy medicines, they can send their children to school, they may invest and generate income and small farmers can buy fertilizers or seeds and so on…

In developed countries most of the people are working class, employers or government will deduct the some portion of the amount in their earning and the same will be distributed as social grant. But in developing countries most of the people are working in unorganized sectors and agriculture, they are poor and middle class people, eventually they don’t have choice to get the social grants from their earnings. So governments have responsibility to allocate some money for the welfare of economically poor sections.

According the millennium development goals, reasonable standard of living is became a basic human right and the governments have been working on that direction through reforms or welfare schemes. In developing countries like India, it’s too burden to implement social security grants but eliminating the poverty is our priority. Spending on health, education, infrastructure is important but people need money to access those facilities, so there is a need of social grants for poor.

Poor people are also partial responsible for their own poverty, they should to come out from their dearth and need to improve their standard of living. Ofcourse the welfare schemes are inevitable to reduce the poverty and direct cash transfer is the best among them. I don’t think the little money don’t make the poor people lazy and reluctant to work, everybody has desire to well being and respected, they know how to manage this little money wisely and creatively. Thus, direct money transfer is better for poor, it will help the poor to keep away from their poverty and to lead a gentle life.

www.farmersindia.com

2011-06-05T11:21:00.003-04:00

I have a dream that one day our Indian farmer hook up the computer and directly market their products on internet. In pursuit of that objective, I developed a free agriculture classifieds portal (http://www.farmersindia.com/) for everyone who ever associated with agriculture. Please look into that and I appreciate your valuable suggestions.

RURAL INDIA_ FOR SALE @ INDIA.CO.IN

2011-05-22T09:43:00.000-04:00

Our economists are stating that India is vibrant and it’s going to be one of the super powers by 2025, I am confused… what kind of super power it’s going to be, is it in software, defense power, Industrial development or agriculture? Being an agriculture enthusiast, my hopes and horizons are diminishing due to violent economic reforms. While the governments are grabbing all the farm lands in the name of Economic reforms, how can we expect the India as super power in agriculture? When all the farm lands are diverting to non agriculture usages like Industrial corridors, Special economic zones, It industries, Airports, Power plants and sea ports, how can we ensure the India’s food security?

Now the rural India turned violent during the protests over the forcible acquisition of farm lands i.e. in Noida & Agra in Utter Pradesh, Ambala in Haryana, Mansa in Punjab, Singur in West Bengal , Jaitapur in Maharashtra, Mangalore & Sullia in Karnataka, and Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. Thousands of acres of land being forcibly transferred to industries in the name of development by devastating the fertile lands and the government is promising that it will provide the employment to the displaced farmers as resettlement. I have a big question that what kind of employment positions will be given to the farmers in SEZs, Industries and power plants? Most of our Indian farmers are qualified with mediocre education and they are not technocrats, so…. imagine that these refugee farmers should work as porters, gardeners, scavengers or peons. Nevertheless, why should farmers dispense their hard earned or ancestral profitable fertile lands and why should they work for some others in their own lands?

The governments are saying that massive industrialization will improve the quality of life, I strongly agree with the same, provided that shouldn’t be harmful to other occupations. But this is a forced migration from agriculture, farmers are already self sufficient, they are creating rural employment, feeding the country and they are contributing to GDP. Why should leave their lands and change the profession... I don’t know what kind of economics these are? There are some critics in compensations of resettlements which are not transparent not reasonable to the farmers and the policy makers are favoring to the Industrialists for their personal gains by allotting the thousands of acres of farm lands. Some state governments are forcible acquiring the lands by lesser rates and reselling the same lands to Industrialists for better price. Sometimes these lands are sold and resold for higher prices changing hands to real-estate companies. It seems to be that the Governments are operating like REAL ESTATE COMPANIES and the Chief Ministers are functioning as a PROPERTY DEALERS for Industrialist by SELLING the RURAL INDIA.

Before independence most of lands were acquired by few land lords (Zamindars), after that the Government initiated land reforms and lands were distributed among landless farmers. Now the history is repeating and the lands are going to few industrialists in the name of vicious economic development. Now the farmers are very vigilant, they don’t want to loose their fertile lands and don’t want to become beggars by filthy economic policies and politicians. They are strongly protesting against forcible acquisitions and the audacious governments are using police force to restrain them which eventually turned to violence and the farm fields are becoming battle fields in all over the places in India i.e. Noida or singur or Srikakulam.

As Indian population grows, crop production need to be increased to feed them, the World Bank estimates that 1 hectare of land will need to feed 5 people in 2025 and ironically the Indian farm land has reduced by 0.43 percent to 182.39 million hectares in last five years. Indian agriculture also provides opportunities for growth, jobs and significant contribution to GDP. I strongly support the industrial development which leads to progress but protecting agriculture is important too. Governments should restrict the usage of farm land for Industrial purpose and if necessary, the land owners must be allowed as partners in the upcoming projects by allotting share or some stable income. However, we need mutually beneficial economic policies which can ensure the agriculture and industrial growth then only the agriculture and Industrialization can flourish evenly.

Sci-Tech farming

2011-05-15T21:33:00.003-04:00

Being the highest agriculture dependent country, Indian agriculture needs to adopt automation, science and technologies for better yields, those would be hand tools, farm equipment, heavy earth equipment or modern scientific technologies which need to help the farming process more efficiently. In olden days, the generic farm equipments are including Diesel engine, electric motors, Power sprayers and tractors apart from traditional equipments. The agriculture has been transforming with modern science technologies from past two decades which are helping to increase the farm productivity and reducing the human drudgery, but still lot of technologies are in research and development stage, if those are available in the market then the agriculture practices will be flexible and robust. Now the modern trend in agriculture is Information technology Satellite technology, Nano technology and Robotics.

I have some imaginative technology concepts in agriculture those might be in research or in experiments stage. Our farm equipment companies and researchers have developed a lot of small and heavy farm equipment for traditional farming needs but some kind of robotic and pneumatic mechanism are required in precision farming. If the robots are being used for weed control, that will help to reduce the herbicides usage and the produces will turn into an organic, the same way robots can be used for transplanting the seedlings to avoid intensive labor. Pneumatic technology is useful for sowing the seeds that can plant the seeds very precisely in a calculated depth according to crop variant and the pneumatic technology should be a major technology in farm equipment as hydraulics, so it requires lot of research and development.

We used to read in newspapers on few impressive innovative technologies by rural inventors i.e. electric motors can be operated remotely by cell phones, it’s very helpful to farmers in summer time since the power supply is irregular. If we think advanced intelligent machines in farming, Sensors or readers and hand held PDAs are going to be great helpful in computation and accuracy in farming. The sensors or readers can be used for measuring the fertility in the soil, so that the fertilizer input can be regulated according to the level of need, same way the potency of the pesticides on the crop. Consequently these technologies will help farmer to minimize the chemical application which leads to help in environment and economic perspectives.

An Ariel remote sensing technology also plays a major role to identify the soil properties, I wish the farmers could have the GPS kind of hand held device which is connected to satellite and render the information on soil texture, soil moisture, water resources and so on. Nano technology contribution will be more in future agriculture and food production, the Nano sensors in the field are enable the application of pesticides, intake of nutrients and water by identifying the crop pathogens and soil ingredients. Nano technology application are being used in food storage and packaging to avoid spoilage and future food products will be enhanced with color, flavor and nutrients. In developed countries, many kinds of software packages are available to track the crop harvest, fertilizers usage, planting, tillage, Inventory, expenses and so on, I wish… One day our Indian farmers may have that software and manage their farms.

I hope all these technologies will promote sustainable agriculture, food security, health and safe environment, the government must encourage private partnership to identify the new technologies in agriculture and training should be provided to the farmers.we must have an open discussion that is informed by a clear understanding of how these products are being developed and how it will be healthy and safety to the people. However, we should appreciate all the efforts of agricultural scientists and researchers for sustainability of agriculture, food security and will see how they can, should, and will do for long-term solutions.

Pic courtesy: netafimusa.com

Women in Indian agriculture

2011-04-27T20:23:00.003-04:00

We know that most of the developing countries depend on agriculture for livelihood and food security. Agriculture needs manpower, if the manpower split into gender wise, amazing fact is that the women contribution is greater or equal to men. The rural women are very active in cultivation, dairy, fisheries, crop processing and other allied areas. Nearly 70% of Indian rural women are employed in agriculture and they are responsible for 60-80 percent of food production. They play major role in animal husbandry, horticulture and poultry which are their main source of income and it is noticed that they always involved in labor and tolerance intensive works like transplantations and weeding operations.

Among the rural women workforce, most of them are agriculture labor and some of cultivators. There are lot of variations in involvement of women in agriculture which is based on their culture, economic status, regions and crop selection. While the men are moving to cities for better occupations the women are taking care of cultivation and some times they used to work as farm labor to support their family needs. The weaker section of the women used to market their produces such as selling vegetables and other food crops in farmers market or door to door. Most of the women cultivators are involved in food crops rather than cash crops since cash crops need more marketing efforts which are traditionally taken care by men. The women in higher socio economic sections are not involved directly in cultivation or live stock and they used to help in labor administration, supporting activities and accounting.

Ironically, we often define the men as farmers, in fact the women also equally involved in agriculture in all phases. If we think beyond the conventional definition of “FARMER”, most of the rural women should be considered as farmers but they are ignored. Still Indian society has some gender boundaries, but the rural women involve in multiple productive roles and it is necessary to give equal opportunity in agriculture. Most of the women farmers are marginal or small farmers, landless tenant farmers and farm labor, they don’t have enough land to cultivate, less knowledge, limited access to innovative technologies, low capital and less credit facilities.

In order to empower and improve the women farmers’ productivity, they need to have proper farm training and capacity building programs to compete various challenges in their rural livelihood. Women land ownership plays a major role in their credit worthiness, if they have right on the agriculture land they will have access to financial resources and savings. New legislations have to be taken place in farm land reforms like allocating the wasteland to women self help groups (SHG). Rural women have been acknowledged as the core food producers and processors, banks should recognize them as entrepreneurs, loans and Kissan credit cards have to be approved for them. Special support and market connectivity has to establish for rural women artisans to sell their agro based handicrafts. The farm labor wages should be the same without gender differences and the equal employment benefits have to be given in all rural schemes like NREG. Sufficient political representation must be required by rural women in local level councils, it directs them as an equal partners in political, economical and legal decision making.

We must appreciate Government of India for implementing various rural women welfare schemes and also the NGOs who are working on women empowerment for poverty alleviation. I want to say kudos to Deccan Development Society because they are promoting the small scale women farmers in various aspects like cultivation, seed management, biodiversity conservation, marketing knowledge and media. Click for DDC Videos
Pic Courtesy: guardian.co.uk

Manpower trend in agriculture

2011-04-07T19:13:00.001-04:00

Agriculture is a labor intensive production process, it depends on huge manpower and draft animal power. Nearly 55% of Indian labor force is engaged in agriculture who are contributing to the development of rural economy. Over the past couple of decades the farm labor has been decreasing in agriculture which was caused by occupational change, people mindset, government policies and reforms. As the share of agriculture to GDP has been declining the agriculture work force is also moving to non agriculture sectors.

The Labor scarcity is the biggest threat to Indian agriculture due to urbanized life style, low farm wages, irregular employment in villages and laborious nature of work. Lot of unemployed rural youth moving to other well-paid occupations since farming is a physical drudgery, also the farm work has prejudiced as low profile profession. So the traditional farmers are forced to discard the food crops due to non availability and high wages of farm workers, farmers are switching to less labor intensive farming like short term commercial crops and social forestry plantations.

The intention of rural employment schemes are good, they have been creating employment to rural work force with prevailing wages. But the small and marginal farmers are incapable to pay such a bargain wages which are equal to government schemes, sometimes the availability of the farm labor is less in the crop season since all of the rural work force have engaged in the scheme works.

I am not going to blame the NREG and Food for work programs for diverting the rural labor to public works or non farm work, but the works schedules should be planned according to village priorities. The rural employment schemes should be halted whenever the work force is required for agriculture needs, especially in Kharif and Rabi seasons, Grama panchayath intervention must be required to synchronize the rural labor force.

Farm equipment is also necessary to overcome the labor shortage problem. Large scale farmers are able to adopt the new technologies and equipments since they have large crop area and strong financial power, but the small and marginal farmers are still depend on manpower. The farm equipment manufacturers should produce small scale farm machines, technology awareness has to be created among the farmers. The banks have to give the long term loans to farmers to buy farm equipment and the government should promote the innovative farm equipment, subsidies should be granted to the farmers on such equipments.

Some people often think that the farm labor is dirt cheap, now it’s very expensive. May be in near future the Indian farm labor is also going to be organized by companies like how the security professionals or industrial labor supplied on contract basis in cities. In Americas and Europe, lot of agencies are offering farm services like planting, chemical spraying, harvesting and haying with modern equipment. We never know... it could happen in India also.

Japan battles food crisis

2011-03-20T13:26:00.003-04:00

The Japan’s socio-economic structure was destroyed by the earthquake, tsunami and the nuke disaster. The thousands of people were died, millions of hearts were broken, dreams shattered, their lives distressed and still they are fighting with earthquakes and nuclear catastrophe. The terrible disaster brought horrific changes in people lives, they are moving miles together from their homes to shelters to defend from profound nuclear debacle. In the viewpoint of food, Japan is not self sufficient and 60% of its food requirements are fulfilled by the imports even though it has some domestic agriculture production. Now the country is in deep crisis in agriculture and food security by tsunami and ongoing nuclear catastrophe.

Rice is also an important food staple for Japanese and the most rice growing crop land (Miyagi prefecture) was destroyed by the tsunami. The Sendai region is suffering with extensive destruction of grain warehouses, fishing ports, food processing and livestock facilities. The second problem is ongoing nuclear radiation leakage in Fukushima nuclear plant (Fukushima prefecture), the nuclear plant radiation exposure may damage to humans, soil, land, agriculture, forests, fisheries and livestock. The government halted the sale of all foods from the farms near ruined nuclear plant since they found high level of radiation in milk and spinach. Some of the major ports were closed due to disaster that is also caused to disruption of food supplies and delays in shipments.

Japan’s food security is in critical point, Japan is one of the biggest food importers and it buys lot of wheat, corn and pork from USA, China and Australia. Japan may want to import more food to meet their demand since its own agriculture facilities are in turmoil and that could have a significant impact on worldwide grain prices. Indeed, the Japan shouldn’t face any food crisis, all nations should stand united and they need to take a global action on emerging food crisis in Japan. Some of the countries extended ban on grain exports to protect their population against the food shortages, but they should be generous and flexible towards crisis in Japan.

As per data 2009, 4 percent of the people in Japan are engaged in agriculture and the farm contribution is only 1 percent of their GDP. Japan should focus on self sufficient in food grains and huge investments must be required in agriculture and live stock production to prevent food vulnerability. I hope all developed nation and organizations will respond immediately with all kind of necessities and technical assistance to reinstate the Japan.We wish that Japan will be normal and emerge stronger than before.

Tobacco crop is injurious to AP farmers wealth

2011-03-10T18:13:00.004-05:00

Tobacco is one of the best cash crops in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, the Tobacco crop is less perishable and the yield and value is high per acre. The Tobacco auction system is one of the best among the agriculture produces markets in India. The sale is guaranteed, the price is negotiated and determined among the traders and farmers in supervision of Tobacco board. Every year the Tobacco board fixes the crop size to protect the interests of traders, growers and public health.

Normally Tobacco board arranges the convention with growers and traders to discuss the market related issues before the market opens. In this year meeting, the farmers demanded their remunerative price shouldn’t be less than Rs.150.00 per kg for higher variety. As per my understanding… this year tobacco crop quality is good, the yields also lesser than the fixed crop size and the traders have enough quantity of export orders, so the farmers have justified reason to ask for remunerative price of Rs.150.00. The markets were opened on Feb24th and the traders bid their price not more than Rs.120 per kg for higher grades. The farmers were stopped the auction and they have protested for better price since the plantation and processing expenses have gone up by 20% in this year.

Recently the Tobacco Board reopened the auction centers by the force of traders to continue the market with the same low price. Farmers are in misery and they are inescapable condition to sell their crop with the lower rate of Rs.120 per kg. The traders turn into a syndicate and they want to maximize their profits by convincing with fake reasons that the global tobacco yields are high and the buffer stock are still on hold (as usually... they are misguiding the farmers). Tobacco board is showing over enthusiasm to protect the traders by ignoring the farmers’ interests and also the Board has failed to negotiate the trader for getting better price to farmers.

Government of India needs to take necessary steps to help the tobacco farmers in this crisis situation since GOI is getting lot of revenue from local tobacco markets and foreign exchange from exports. The Government has to finance the State Trading Corporation of India or any Tobacco growers’ societies to help the farmers for better price. I strongly support the FDIs in tobacco trade because the farmers will get fair price in the competition of increased traders and manufacturers. If the Government doesn’t curb the traders’ deceitful practices, then the farming tobacco crop is injurious farmers’ wealth.

Andhra Pradesh Agriculture Markets go online

2011-03-02T19:23:00.004-05:00

Andhra Pradesh made a congressional acceptance for E-Trading on Agricultural and livestock produces by amending the Agriculture produce market committee act (APMC). This is a good trend, to integrate the farmers to electronic markets with transparency in prevailing prices. The E- Trading has been implementing in Delhi, Gujarat, Madhyapradesh, Utter Pradesh and Tamil nadu markets. Some of the big horticulture markets like Azadpur mandi in New Delhi and Apple markets in Himachal Pradesh also have been in online trading since several years. Most of the state governments have APMC act to regulate the agriculture produce markets in terms of transparency in transactions, coordinate the demand and supplies and encourage the farmers to produce more. In India, we have 7557 regulated markets consist of 2428 principal markets and 5129 sub yards.

Reforms in agriculture marketing are inevitable process for restructuring the agriculture sector, it’s necessary to upgrade our marketing systems and infrastructure to connect with nationwide markets in the liberalization of our trade policies. Setting up an electronic network among the physical markets is certainly improves the linkage between farmers, food processors and retailers and that can mitigate the mediators’ involvement. Some of the corporate companies have taken the initiative to create the market awareness in farmers i.e. ITC limited has been working with e-choupal Kiosks over 40,000 villages which give the information on weather, modern farm practices and market information. Multi Commodity of Exchange India ltd (MCX) has started the Gramin Suvidha Kendra (GSK) kiosks in 3 northern states which provide the information on warehousing, quality testing, expert advices and MCX spot and futures prices of agriculture produces.

The E-trading system shares the nationwide commodity exchange information to the farmers, so that they can sell their produces according to their choice of market/price and the buyers also can choose the products from different markets with specified quality /quantity. In the E-trading, the regulated markets are connected with National APMC and the trading operations are conducted by the APMC’s licensed traders. Ticker boards would be placed at APMCs which display the current prices of different commodities in different markets and the farmers can select their choices. Some of the markets are supported by the bankers’ online banking facility to manage the trading among the buyers and farmers. The National APMC has to take the trade approval from respective state government on selective commodities. So far, the trading in existing APMCs is on spot basis only and in future the markets may go on forwards trading.

Government needs to give importance to both the farmers and industry equally, when ever the market infrastructure improves then the market efficiency gets progress. If the trading system goes on pace….the storage, transport and processing facilities have to be in the supporting standards but our markets are lacking with modern agri-infrastructure. There is a massive investment expected in the post harvest facilities, the government has to encourage Public Private Partnership model in agriculture marketing and extension activities. Nevertheless, E- Trading is an impressive reform in agriculture markets in Andhra Pradesh but the main drawback of Indian farmers is that they are qualified with mediocre education. I hope, one day the Indian farmer hookup the computer and market his produces directly on internet.
FYI: Agricultural Marketing Information Network & National Agriculture Produce market Committee
Please do comment :YashwanthX@yahoo.com

A Profitable Proposition

2011-02-10T18:49:00.001-05:00

Yetiketham batti yei putlu pandinchi yennadu metukerugadanna- cherabanda raju
(He grapples to pull the bucketful of water from lake and harvested bountiful crop with immense strive but he never had even one grain) I used to memorize the above poetry when I think about the farmers’ income. National sample survey speaks about the farmers monthly income was an average of Rs.2115 in 2003 but positively it could be Rs.2700.00 in 2011. We have been in the regimes of lot of parties from past 60 years, too many budgets and many 5 years plans, no improvement in farmers’ income level except green revolution which was aimed for national self sufficient in food grains. Every government has been chanting that they want to make farmers as kings and the UPA government aimed the growth of 4% in agriculture and proclaiming that the policies and budgets are in the same direction. In fact, are these policies really going to help the 600 millions of Indian farmers from their agrarian crisis? However, the key point is how to maximize the farmers’ income and make the agriculture as a profitable proposition.

The increased cost of cultivation dragged the farmers into distress and the farmers are not getting remunerative price for their produces. The Swami nathan committee recommended the Minimum Support Price should be the cost of production plus 50% profit, but presently the cost of production perpetually increasing in terms of inputs, farm labor wages and land rent. If the farmer receives 60%-70% of the share which the price paid by the consumer, it really helps the farmers get out of their burdens. The government needs to try on some selected produces for remunerative prices which are a percentage on the prevailing market prices paid by the consumer.

The agriculture Insurance Scheme is still in experimental phase since 1985 and that has been connected with crop loans by banks since the banks want to be safe against their loans (Insurance companies are protecting bankers interest not farmers). The small and tenant farmers have limited access to the banks and most of the farmers don’t have awareness on crop insurance schemes. The Insurance company agents and agriculture extension officers have to make the farmers known about the insurance policies and have to form the units with group of farmers. The crop insurance schemes are covering the pre harvest crop only and we have been talking about the 40% loss of post harvest, does it make sense to insure the post harvest? Of course the modalities have to be defined….

According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the farmers’ suicides were reported 16196 and 17000 in 2008 and 2009 respectively despite the government waived off the crop loans. It clearly explains that most of the farmers were not beneficiaries of the loan right off scheme since they borrowed the money from private money lenders because they don’t have access to bank credit facility. The government or Reserve bank has to formulate the strict guidelines to the commercial banks on extending credit facilities to the small and marginal farmers with low interest rates. In fact some commercial banks are extending the low interest loans to agribusiness people in the veil of agriculture sector and these things should be curbed. Government and local bodies have to make the special provisions to the tenant farmers to avail the loans from the banks. Asper National Commission on Farmers recommendations, 4% of the interest rate on crop loans would be suggestible and helpful to small and marginal farmers.

According to National Sample Survey Organization, more than 45percent of farmers would like quit farming. There is a need of direct income support to farmers as fixed monthly income, at least to some small farmers based on their land holding. The subsidies whatever the government has been giving to farmers are very low which compared to the incentives for corporate houses. In the last budget the Government written off Rs.500, 000 crores of tax amounts for corporates and the government named the budget as Pro- Farmer budget. Government is spending lot of amount on fertilizers subsidies which the total amount goes to the industry not to the farmers. Giving direct subsidy to the farmers is best alternative since the farmers will get the real benefit, fair distribution of subsidies and it stops the illegal trading.

Agriculture is a life science, modern technologies are indispensable for better farming. Using mechanical engeenering, Information technology and Bio technology are required for agronomic and social growth. Biological solutions are necessary to replace the chemical applications in agriculture and safeguard the soil ecology. Organic farming is going to be vital in future agriculture and government has to promote the Organic farming among the small farmers. Public Private Partnership is required to promote agro-processing, agro-industries which can prevent the post harvest losses, Value addition to produces and farmers will get remunerative prices.

India has lot of young people who are looking for employment and if everybody prefers IT or White collar jobs then who are going to feed us. We need large number of people to choose the modern agriculture as their profession, the government has to promote the youth in farming and agriculture allied services to ensure that can provide a decent income. Farmers and farm laborers are working very hard to produce food for us and enriching our economy, it’s our responsibility to make sure their lives should be cherished with good quality. I have a dream that one day the agriculture will recapture its fortune as mainstream of the economy and I hope it would be a profitable proposition.

Not only Onions, serious food crises is on its way

2011-01-14T12:38:00.007-05:00

The soaring Onion prices have severely effected on monthly budget of Indian consumers. Onions and Potatoes are mainstays in Indian diet, the cost of Onions increased by more than 60% in the past year. Not only onions, the prices of Milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables are also gone up, Indian food staples prices have raised by 18% in December 2010.This is the highest level in recent years, it reflects that the Indian poor class people are spending 50% of their household income on food only. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization stated that global prices have exceeded the levels of during the 2007-08 crises. Sugar, Corn, Soya bean and edible oils prices have risen by 50% since 2009. This adversity is caused by crop failures, broken distribution system and so many reasons.

The demand for the food has been increasing by world’s growing population. Primarily the extreme weather conditions and climate changes have caused to crops failures. Some other factors also pushing the food prices high i.e. growing demand from developing countries, increasing the usage of food crops (sugarcane, Corn) for ethanol fuel, raise in fuel prices and some times the US dollar value fluctuations also impact on food grain prices since the most of the commodities are denominated in dollar currency only. The agriculture commodities future trading also drives the food prices up, the non traditional investors are pumping their money to making profits which leads to further food inflation. Increased fuel prices lead to higher cost in food transportation and high input cost in agriculture like fertilizers, pesticides. Agriculture lands are being lost due to severe degradation, urbanization and industrialization that effects less crop production and price hikes.

If we focus on world food grains, Russian wheat crop was devastated by drought and wild fire, Pakistan crops were failed due to heavy floods and India lost its paddy and other food crops by excessive rains. The price of wheat has reached highest in United Kingdom and Europe, drought in Argentina and Brazil caused less yields in corn and soya bean. Presently in Australia, the disastrous floods are affecting badly on wheat, Sugar and vegetable harvests. Food riots were witnessed in Mozambique, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Haiti and Egypt due to price hikes of basic food commodities. When the world is facing such a stressful food crisis and I wonder about our Indian food grains distribution system, more than 320 millions of Indians are going bed hungry everyday and ironically the food grains are rotting away in storages. Some parts of the world are wasting the food and some parts are starving, some people in developed countries are clinically obese and the people in under development countries are malnourished.

The global food turmoil may put pressure on Indian food market. Indian government has taken immediate steps to manage the onion crisis, such as banning the export, importing onions from abroad and the government announced Rs.10.00 subsidy to traders on each kg of onions. Temporarily, this might be good but the government has to take stable measures to control the food inflation. Most of the Indian food chain system is under control of small traders and middlemen, the government should take necessary steps to avoid the traders’ speculation for effective distribution with fair price. Food security is the fundamental welfare of the state, government has to provide the basic food at reasonable price. The proposed food security bill is still pending, I hope it will get approved soon and the poor will get the food grains cheap and easily.

A super farmer in Indian farmers

2010-12-27T12:25:00.002-05:00

Yes, you are reading it correctly and we used to visualize the Indian farmers are always distressed and debt- ridden. But this time I am stating about a big farmer Amitabh Bachchan, a Bollywood's premier action hero, and super star in Indian cinema. Superstar turned to farmer in real life after long journey of his reel life, I don’t want to dig deeper that what kind of circumstances dragged him to become a farmer. However we should appreciate him to be a part of the farmers’ community and farmers also have to be proud such a biggest celebrity chooses his profession as agriculture.

In so many media interviews, he himself insisted that he has right to be called as FARMER. The Superstar recently came in to news which symbolically plowing his agriculture land and trying to prove that he is a farmer. I don’t think that this twitter addicted super star is familiar with the farming practices, crops and agriculture related subjects. I never see his comments on agriculture or farmers’ issues in any social networking websites or his blog in spite he proclaimed as a farmer. In the movies, we used to see the hero eventually bash the bad guys and save the people in critical situations. I expected the same thing from this Super Farmer that he can do something for the farmers towards his social responsibility.

This super farmer is a brand ambassador for Gujarat state…Can’t he look at the perils of Gujarat farmers? This so-called farmer has been living in Mumbai…Can’t he think about Maharashtra cotton farmer’s suicides? The assessment of Bachchan brand was estimated at Rs 700 crores. He used to collect Rs.3-4 crores for each advertisement and Rs.1-2 crores for each episode of TV programs. I would like to state some of the generous persons who shared their earnings for public interest i.e. Azim premji, Shiv Nadar, Narayan murthy and so on. Of course…..this is not about the monitory contribution, it’s all about the mission. As per my knowledge if a celebrity really works towards the society that definitely make an incredible help to the people.

Being such an inspiring and an influence person, Mr. Amitabh can do a lot to the farmers. He can organize the fundraising events to help the farmers or he may work with any farmers’ welfare organization to uplift the farmers or he can adopt a village to implement good agriculture practices or not the least he can carry out a nationwide message campaign against suicides of distressed farmers which shall create courage and hope. I would like to appreciate Mr. Ameer khan since he produced the movie Peepli [Live] which depicted the farmers’ plights and also he joined in Narmada Bachao Andolan for poor farmers’ water rights and fair compensation for land loses.

December 23rd- KisanDivas

2010-12-23T12:46:00.004-05:00

Entire India celebrates Farmers day every December 23rd which was Chaudhary Charan Singh Birthday.Kisan Divas is recognition of his valuable services rendered to the farmers of India. Chaudhary Charan Singh is credited to formulate and implement the famous Zamindari Abolition Act. His passionate appeal and magnetic persona united all the farmers against the moneylenders and landlords. He was also a very effective writer and penned his thoughts on farmers and their problems and solutions. Charan Singh passed away on 29 May 1987.

Heavy rains whipped the Farmers

2010-12-12T18:56:00.004-05:00

The depression in Bay of Bengal turned into disaster for Andhra Pradesh farmers, their crops were badly affected with intensified thunderstorms. Heavy showers and thunderstorms all over the districts damaged the crops so much that nothing of the crop remains. The paddy heaps were completely submerged in the flood drowns fields, and the Cotton, Chilly, Corn, Sugarcane which were ready to harvest have gone waste and tobacco was severely damaged in the plantation stage. Total 25.06 lakhs of acers of agriculture crops affected in the rain-hit districts, paddy is 17.84 lakhs of acers and Cotton is 5.83 lakhs of acres among the total. The farmers were shocked to witness their hard grown grain was sinking in floods and the ready-to-be-harvested crops have been spoilt. All the farmers are in tears, frustration, misery with the floods havoc and some farmer’s suicides were reported.

In the 11th 5 years plan, our government set a target of 4% growth in agriculture but this year the agriculture is in retrograde motion. Andhra Pradesh farmers have been facing cyclones in recent months with “Khaimuk”, “Nisha”, “Laila”, “Jal” and most recent heavy rains have caused damage to their crops. Andhra Pradesh has recorded the highest number of floods in 2010 during the last 30years, it will take another 5 years to farmers to recover from all kinds of losses. The government estimates that paddy loss is approx to Rs.2000 crores and farmers have no hope that the mill owners will buy the wet and black colored paddy. Farmers have to spend again to clean the fields from the flood water.

Crop Insurance became a futile exercise, the Agriculture officials are failed to convince the farmers to get the insurance coverage for their crops. Lending Banks are used to endorse the crop insurance while giving the crop loans to the farmers but the most of the loans have given to the land owned farmers. 60% of the farming has been undertaken by the tenant farmers who are not able to get loans from banks since they are not land owners and eventually no insurance coverage. Government has to enumerate the tenant farmers while assessing the crop damages since most of the victims are tenant farmers.

Government has to help the farmers to recover from their perils by paying the compensation by each cropwise. Government should take the steps to buy the paddy which was discolored and soaked in rain water. Fresh loans have to be given for next crop season and the moratorium should be ordered on existing loans. Government has to provide the subsidized seeds, fertilizers and pesticides for upcoming crop season. Government has to come up with a paradigm for crop insurance plan to the tenant farmers since the majority of agriculture land is under lease of them. Government has to support small and marginal farmers otherwise they are unable to bare losses and they can’t keep doing agriculture.

Hopeless Telecom Minister - Hapless UPA Government

2010-12-01T17:11:00.007-05:00

Indian political and economical structures have been trembling with scams from past few years i.e. IPL, Commonwealth games, Adarsh housing and 2G Telecom. A bunch of corruption scams have been popping up in the country as a part of global economic reforms and development. The culprits for these organized corruptions are mostly politicians, bureaucrats and corporates. The biggest financial and economic crime in India till date is 2G spectrum (Rs.1.76-lakh crore scandal) which was reported by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The allegation on Ministry of Telecom is that the allotments of 2G spectrum licenses were not justifiable. The former telecom minister A. Raja misused his authority in issuing the 2G licenses to the telecom operators with very minor fee and without transparent method of auction which has caused huge revenue loss to the Indian exchequer.

India has huge telecom market in the world i.e. more than 650 millions of telephone connections. In 2008, the Telecom Ministry issued airwave licenses to some telecom companies for second generation (2G) mobile phone services at Rs1,658 crore for a pan-India (Presence Across Nation) operation in the controversial manner without calling for competitive bids. Later, the auction of airwaves for third generation (3G) services, which got nearly Rs. 63,000 crores and that for broadband access, which fetched over Rs. 35,700 crores. Finally, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India reported that the allocation of 2G spectrum was undertaken in an arbitrary manner and the estimated loss to the exchequer due to under pricing of 2G spectrum was Rs. 160,000 crores.

Everybody used to chant the honesty, nobility, credibility and good governance of Mr. Man Mohan sing, but his clean image got diminished when he was trying to give clean chit to A.Raja. Few months ago, Mr. Man Mohan sing was agonized on crony capitalism in the press meet. If Prime minister wants to act against crony capitalism, then why can’t he sack the scandalous minister whenever the scam confirmed? Why UPA chairperson Ms. Sonia has not taken quick action on Raja scam, as she took the fast decision on Maharashtra chief minister dismissal on Adarsh housing society corruption. The UPA government is reluctant to set off Joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe on 2G spectrum scam. All these tricks on 2g scam seem to be suspicious that Congress party also has its share in this dirty money conspiracy.

The worst thing is that the supreme court of India has doubted about the UPA government legitimacy and asked the government to produce an affidavit to explain why the Prime minister did not act on CAG report. Ironically, Mr. Raja got re-appointed as a Union telecom minister by the UPA-2 government despite the financial crime committed by him in 2008. Recently the CBI revealed the tapes of Nira radia (Corporate PR consultant- http://www.vccpl.com/ ), how she lobbied to reappoint the culprit Raja as a cabinet minister in UPA-2 government. These tapes clearly indicate that how the lobbyists and corporates (Sunil Mittal – Anil) are organize the governments.
Click for RAJA – RADIA Tapes: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268064

However, Mr. Man Mohan and Ms. Sonia are both together have to take the responsibility on this scam. The solution is not simply replacing or dismissal of the minister. The prim minister has to initiate the prosecution on Raja and the money has to be recovered from the culprits and the licenses should be void. Being a UPA Chairperson Ms. Sonia should not suppose to spare dishonest ministers and the coalition partners for simply to remain in power. She has to look for substitute alliance party to get the support for the stable alliance government. Of course, these are all coalition politics.

I used to read about the scams on natural resources like lands, Mines, forests and rivers and now the trend is AIR. I mean that Airwaves also part of the natural resources.

Please do comment :YashwanthX@yahoo.com

Barak - The bilateral salesman

2010-11-11T17:39:00.009-05:00

US President Mr. Obama completed his three-day visit in India with a bunch of US merchants. India honored the esteemed guest with great state banquets. Obama praised that India is not simply emerging…India has already emerged world power. He made magnificent statements on Indian heritage, culture, science, civilization, Father of nation and so on. Everything went well, everyone was happy. The big question of normal Indian is what was the purpose of his visit? As usually many of them are in the notion of Indo-US strategic partnership and better trade relationships for prosperity. But Mr. President successfully played a role of a salesman to close lucrative deals to USA.

He made splendid statement On India that has an emerged global power. Has India really emerged, Shall we need to believe the same since Obama praised? According to Human Development Index, India has ranked low of 119 among the 169 countries and India is lowly 67th among 84 vulnerable countries in the Global Hunger Index. If we still in the notion of emerged nation that’s absolutely foolishness, Obama is simply demonstrating his selling skills by praising the customer (India).He clearly revealed his strategy in Mumbai that his purpose of visit to India is to generate the 50,000 employment opportunities in USA. He closed $10 billion worth of commercial deals with job opportunities like
30 no’s of Boeing 737 aircraft to Spice Jet Airlines (12,970 Jobs),
10no’s of Boeing C-17s military transport planes to Indian air force (22,160 Jobs),
107no’s of GE F414 jet engines to the Indian military (4,440 Jobs),
$917 million worth of Mining equipment and services from Bucyrus International to Sasan Power in Madhya Pradesh (3,460 jobs),
6 no’s heavy duty gas turbines from GE to Reliance Energy (2,650 Jobs) and so on…

No doubt, he has a mission with an organized TODO LIST and strategies to market his products and services but our leaders don’t have the TASK LIST except MENU to arrange the banquets. Our political leaders are simply shaking hands, applauding the Obama’s speech because he praised that India is great and they don’t know what we need to obtain from USA. If the US corporations’ are making such profitable deals with India, why our politicians can’t propose the Dow Chemicals (Successor Company of Union Carbide) to arrange the compensation to Bhopal Gas disaster victims and cleaning the chemical wastage in Bhopal. No politician has pressurized the issue of Business Process Outsourcing from USA which has been providing lot of jobs to India and some of the Tech business men have asked inconsequential questions like H1 fees issue rather than unique Software solutions propositions. Our leaders didn’t mention to waive the US farm subsidies especially on cotton which is very badly effecting to our cotton farmers due to subsidized cotton dump from USA. When we open our markets for US agribusiness for the companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Cargill… why can’t we propose cotton textile, apparel exports to US since we have sufficient cotton stocks.

Mr. Obama has also failed to talk about Pakistan connection in 26/11 attacks and Kashmir issue to pursue the peace. He mentioned that Indo- US strategic partnership is going to be WIN-WIN relationship to both countries but he never committed on outsourcing which gives employment to Indian professionals. United States is pushing India to remove all trade barriers to export their products and India liberated most of the policies according to USA pressure. Some of them are…
Allowing American Food Giants (McDonalds, KFC, Pizzhut ….)
Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (Monsanto, Cargill, DUPONT...)
National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority bill (Genetically Modified produces)
India is going to accept foreign direct Investments (Welcome to Wal-Mart)
Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement
As usual defense deals of Fighting Jets, warships, Military Aircrafts
Automobiles (FORD, GM, Harley-Davidson)
No import tariffs on food grains, Pulses and edible oils

I don’t know... what further more Obama expects from India, Does he want to make India as a DUMPSTER for US products ? I can’t understand the logic in his WIN-WIN concept.
Please do comment : YashwanthX@yahoo.com

35 kilograms of Food Security

2010-10-28T16:47:00.004-04:00

India is ranked 67th among 84 vulnerable countries in the Global Hunger Index by the International Food Policy Research institute.Our National advisory council (NAC) recommended the food security act to 75% of Indians through public distribution systems (PDS) on 23rd Oct, 2010. The proposed food security bill has to be approved in the legislature which is going to be started in next financial year and completely covered by 2014 in all over India. NAC suggested the two broad categories of beneficiaries’ i.e. Priority and General instead of Below Poverty Line (BPL) norms and both these categories will have to be defined by the government.

The 75% of Indians will get the food grains on the subsidized prices who are 90% of rural and 50% of urban.
The Priority category is defined as 46% of rural poor and 28% of urban poor.
The General category is defined as 44% of rural below middle class and 22% of below middle class.
The Priority category household will get 35 kgs of food grains (Rice, wheat, millet) per month with subsidized prices of Rs.3, Rs.2 and Re.1 sequentially.
The General category household will get 20 kgs of food grains (Rice, wheat, millet) per month with the price which is not exceeding half the current minimum support price for the grains.
The scheme would cost the government an additional Rs 15,000 crores in the first phase and it’s going to be Rs 23,231 crore additional cost after the implementation of the final phase. The country would be requiring 58 million tones food grain annually to fulfill this legal commitment.

I believe that some amendments are required in the proposed Food security act. Food security means that not only providing of 35 kilograms of subsidized food grains but that should ensure the nutrition security and health also. Is 35 kgs are enough to feed the family? As per some research norms, the average consumption of food grains in India is 178 kgs/ year/ person (15 kgs /month/person) and the average Indian family size is 4.8 members. So each family must requires the minimum quantity of 65 kgs of food grains. Edible oil and pulses are the good sources for nutritional values and calories. The per capita consumption of edible oils is 13 kgs per year (1.08kgs per month) but it is still less than what nutritionists recommend and lower than world average of 16 kgs. Each household needs 5kgs of edible oil for the nutritional values. The per capita availability of pulses is around 15 kg a year (1.25kgs per month), far below the nutritionists' recommendation of 20 kg per capita. So each family requires 6 kgs of pulses.

The Government is implementing several food schemes to provide the supplementary nutrition values among the people i.e. Mid day meals in schools, anganwadi, Nutrition programme for adolescent girls. All these schemes are meant for children, adolescents, pregnant women and lactating women. But, the working class poor people are still in calorie deficient and they definitely need the nutrients to get strength, endurance and productivity at their workplace. As I fell, the comprehensive food security means nutritional security. The edible oil and pulses are essential for human beings to sustain proteins, vitamins and minerals. Inclusion of the both of them with food grains list under PDS is good for unconditional food security or else the hunger will be perennial.

The public distribution systems is not functioning efficiently, it’s all corrupted and controlled by the politicians. The PDS food ration is going to the black markets instead of welfare of poor. Ration cards are the main documents to avail the PDS ration, there is a lot of corruption in issuing ration cards. Take this serious example of Andhra Pradesh… as per Chief Minister’s statement, 2.04 crores of white ration cards were issued to the BPL families. The average family size in Andhra Pradesh is 3.9 per sons. So… the Andhra Pradesh has (2.04 crore families * 3.9 per sons) 7.96 crores of people who are in below poverty line out of 8.0 crores of total population. Is it Andhra Pradesh completely in below Poverty line??????? That’s how the corruption in issuing ration cards to ineligible people.

Simply distributing the food grains with subsidized prices is not going to be end of the hunger. The Government has to focus on production, procuring, preserving and proper distribution of food grains. As everybody knows that the Supreme Court intervention on millions of tonnes food grain wastage due to insufficient storage facilities, the judicial body recommended the government to distribute the starving people instead of letting rotten. The government has to concentrate on food grains storage facilities, infrastructure and supply chain. Food security act will not only serving the poor but also encourages the production of food grains which is direct benefit to the farmers since the consumption pattern is going to be more. India needs to be self sufficient in food grain production to meet this new demand by utilizing the science and technology.However, we welcome the food security bill and wish this legislation is going to fill the empty stomachs of starved poor.
Please do comment: YashwanthX@yahoo.com

Micro Credit – Macro crisis

2010-10-15T16:44:00.015-04:00

The Father of Microfinance and Nobel peace prize winner Mr. Muhammad Yunus would never expect that the social mission of microfinance is going to be bad in India. He is the founder of Grameen Bank and he developed the concept of Micro credit model In Bangladesh to eradicate the poverty in rural community. The fundamental of microfinance / Micro credit is to empower the poor people by giving the small loans with low interest rate. In the past few days, 24 number of rural Micro finance borrowers have committed suicides in Andhra Pradesh who are harassed by the Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs).

The Andhra Pradesh state government has been following the best model of Indira Kranthi Patham by Society for elimination of Rural Poverty (http://www.serp.ap.gov.in/) which arranges the loans from nationalized banks to the Self help groups with subsidized interest rate. In the early 1990s, the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) model was also very successful one in Andhra Pradesh. From the past few years, the micro finance sector is growing massively. Most of MFIs are forcing the poor women to enroll and majority of them are already members in self-help groups who are well nurtured by the Government schemes. They indulge in very unethical practices in collecting their loan money. The MFIs are humiliating and dampen the self respect of the borrowers, those deeds are pushing them to suicides. The MFIs are charging very high interest rates i.e more than 30% per annum from the poor borrowers and enjoying this money with high paid salaries and perks to their CEOs. They are just like private money lenders in corporate way by utilizing the Self Help groups.

On October14th, the AP state government came out with legislation to control the MFIs. That is a good sign to help the poor rural borrowers from the clutches of fraudulent MFIs. As per new ordinanace, the government is going to help the MFI’s victims by debt-swapping through commercial banks by providing new loans with low interest rates. We hope the new ordinance will control and regulate the Micro finance system and Reserve Bank of India intervention must be required to formulate the guidelines for MFIs. The ordinance is here:http://bit.ly/drkdQS

Solidarity to 490 Millions of Small farmers

2010-10-12T17:39:00.008-04:00

Agriculture in India has long history, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. India is a land of 490 million small farmers of total 600 million and having the average land size of 3.2 acres (1.3 hectares). They are cultivating their small farms with the support of their family members and local labor. Small Farms have always been the most efficient for sustainable and bio-diversified way of agriculture. Small farms have tremendous scope for increasing productivity because the natural capital - the soil, the water, and the ecology can be improved through conservation and rejuvenation.60% of the farm produces comes from the small farms only which are assuring food security, rural employment, generating the revenue in the form of taxes, cess and foreign currency through exports. But India lost her 200,000 of quality farmers from past 15 years who are committed suicides and around 100 million of farmers are living on less than a dollar per day. 40% of the small farmers are being forced to leave the agriculture and migrating to towns and cities.

Farmers are dragged in to such kind of plights due to various reasons like spurious seeds, poor quality pesticides, non availability of fertilizers, delayed monsoons, ineffective irrigation system, mounting debts, exploitation by private money-lenders and banks, lack of insurance, Government polices and so on… The main problems for the ill-fated farmers are their Indebtedness and credit crisis, because the income from their farms is not sufficient to their farm investment and their generic living expenditure. The farm incomes are connected with the farm produce prices which are not remunerative and farmers are getting very less share for their produces paid by the consumer. Commercial Banks are also responsible for farmers’ perils, they are not extending enough agriculture loans to farmers. Some small farmers are not qualified to avail the credit facilities due to bankers’ abusive norms which are forcing them to turn to private money lenders with exorbitant interest rates. The government improper models of industrialization are pushing the rural communities off the land. The small farmers are migrating to cities as construction labor, apartment watchmen and positively they don’t want their children as to become farmers. Very few young people are coming into farming … If this situation continues, India can’t expect food security and it’s going to be the REPUBLIC OF HUNGER.

In fact, India needs small farmers because her peace, her land sovereignty, her food sovereignty is in their hands. They are the pillars of the country’s development. There is a need to encourage the small farmers by providing easy access to credit facilities, Reserve Bank of India has to control the rural banks/commercial bank to extend the agri loans to small farmers and Tenant farmers. The government has to make sure the supply of quality seeds, prompt distribution of fertilizers, extension support, marketing, and insurance to small farmers. Public Private Partnership is required to promote organic farming among the small farmers. Government should provide subsidized for farm equipment, proper training and techniques to use innovative tools to avoid physical drudgery. Basic literacy and women farmers’ encouragement programmes should be evolved to their family and rural community development. The government should enact the collective farming / Contract farming with the modality of merging small farm land holdings under farmers cooperatives, make the farmers as independent share holder and collectively utilizing the supply chain/value chain with farmers operated marketing societies or private processors. (Just like dairy cooperatives). Government should reinforce the rural communities by providing basic welfare amenities like drinking water, electricity, transportation, primary health and sanitation.

We hope…all the small farmers avail the modern technologies and market opportunities to strengthen their economic status as well as nation’s prosperity. This is a part of campaign to get the United Nations to declare International Year of Family farming. Please Visit: http://www.familyfarmingcampaign.net/

Land – The Common Property Resource

2010-09-16T18:21:00.004-04:00

రాష్ట్రం అంటే మనుషులు మాత్రమే కాదు , రాష్ట్రం అంటే మట్టి కూడ.. గురజాడ గారు దేశమంటే మనుషులు అని ఉదాహరించినా, వాస్తవ పరిస్థితులలో మన రాష్ట్రం పరిస్థితి చూస్తే మట్టి కూడ అని అనిపిస్తుంది. నిజం చెప్పాలంటే రాష్ట్రం అనగా అడవులు,కొండలు, గనులు, పంట పొలాలు, ఇండ్లు, ఇండ్ల స్థలాలు, ఖరీదైన వ్యాపార భవన సముదాయాలు, రింగు రోడ్లు, SEZ లు , టెక్నాలజి పార్కులు .. ఇవే అనే అభిప్రాయం మన పాలక వర్గానికి వచ్చిన తర్వాత .. రాష్ట్రం అంటే మనుషులు అనే భావం ఎప్పుడో పోయింది. భూమికి , మనుషులకి మధ్య అభివృద్ధి పేరుతో కార్పోరేట్ కారిడార్లు తెరుచుకున్న తర్వాత మట్టికి మనిషికి మధ్య ఉన్న జీవాత్మక అనుభందంతో పాటు వ్యాపారత్మక అనుభందం బలపడింది. గ్యాసు పైపులైన్లు, పోర్టులతో, పవర్ ప్రాజక్టుల పేరుతో భూమి అంతా ప్రజలనుండి కొన్ని కుటుంబ సంస్థల చేతులలోకి మారిన తర్వాత... ఇంకెక్కడి అభివృద్ధి , ఇంకెక్కడి శాంతి సౌభాగ్యాలు ..నిత్యం ఉద్యమాలు, కాల్పులు ,మరణాలు తప్ప…

ప్రత్యేక ఆర్ధికమండళ్ళు ( SEZ) ,భారీ పరిశ్రమలు, అభివృది పనుల పేరుతో మన ప్రభుత్వం లక్షల ఎకరాల భూమి సేకరిస్తూ ఉంది. ఇందులో ఎక్కువ భాగం రైతుల నుండి సేకరించినవే.. అందులో కూడా భూములు పోగొట్టుకున్న రైతులు ఎక్కువమంది రెండు..మూడు ఎకరాలు సాగు చేసుకొని జీవించే పేద రైతులే. మన ప్రభుత్వం సెజ్ లు మరియు భారీ పరిశ్రమల పేరుతో భూములు తీసుకున్నపుడు, ఆ భూములు పోగొట్టుకున్న రైతులకు ప్రత్యామ్నాయంగా ప్రతి కుటుంబానికి ఉద్యోగాలు కల్పిస్తామని హామీ ఇచ్చింది. కాని కొన్నిచోట్ల అయిదు సంవస్తరాలు అయిన పరిశ్రమల ఏర్పాటు ఇంకా జరుగ లేదు. ఇప్పుడు ఆ రైతులకు ప్రయోజనం కన్నా నష్టమే ఎక్కువ జరింగిందని చెప్పవచ్చు. సాగుచేసుకునే అవకాశం లేక, ఇంకా ప్రారంభించని ఆ పరిశ్రమలలో ఉపాధి దొరకక, పట్టణాలకు వలసలు వెళుతున్నారు. రెక్కల కష్టం, వ్యవసాయం తప్ప మరే ఇతర వృత్తి నైపుణ్యం లేని, పెద్ద చదువులు చదవని ఈ రైతులు..వారి పొలాలలో స్థాపించబోయే పరిశ్రమలలో మరి టాయిలెట్లు కడగాలా? రోడ్లు ఊడ్చాలా? కార్లు తుడవాల? తరతరాలుగా జీవనోపాధి కల్పించి, బంగారం పండించిన తమ స్వంత భూములను పరాయి వ్యక్తులకు అప్పగించి, వేరొకరి కింద కూలీలుగా ఆత్మవంచనతో మౌనంగా రోదిస్తున్న ఆ రైతుల పరిస్థితిని స్వయం సంవృద్ది అందామా???

బారతదేశ ఆర్ధికాభివృద్ధికి భారీపరిశ్రమలుస్థాపించడం,మౌళిక సదుపాయాలు మెరుగు పరచుకోవడం ఎంత అవసరమో... బారతదేశ ప్రజల ఆహారభద్రతకు..వ్యవసాయభూములను, రైతుల ప్రయోజనాలను కాపాడటం కూడా అంతే అవసరం. ఇటీవల ప్రభుత్వ అంచనా ప్రకారం మన రాష్ట్రంలో అయిదు లక్షల హెక్టార్ల సస్యశ్యామలమైన భూములు పంటకు నోచుకోక బీళ్ళు అయిపోయాయి. పంటలు పండించకపోతే ప్రజలకు ఆహార ధాన్యాలు, నిత్యావసర వస్తువులు అందుబాటులో ఉండవన్న విషయం ఈ ప్రభుత్వాలకు తెలియదా? ప్రత్యేక ఆర్ధికమండళ్ళు ( SEZ ), భారీ పరిశ్రమల పేరుతో రైతులకు నోటీసులు ఇచ్చి,బెదిరించి,మాయ చేసి కాళ్ళ కింద ఉన్న నేలను లాగేసుకొని, పది మందికి అన్నం పెట్టె రైతుల పొట్ట కొట్టటమే ఈ ప్రభుత్వం లక్ష్యమా ? పరిశ్రమలు స్థాపిస్తామంటూ రైతుల నుండి భూములను వేల రూపాయలకు కొని దానినే తిరిగి కోట్లకు అమ్ముకుంటూ REAL ఎస్టేట్ వ్యాపారం చేయడం నిజం కాదా? ఈ నిజాన్ని(REAL) అభివృద్ధి అందామా???

Adam smith తన Wealth of Nations (1776) అనే గ్రంధము లో “The Government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.” అని చెప్పారు. అధికారం అండతో తమ స్వంత వ్యాపారాలను విస్తరించుకోనే Crony capitalism ఇప్పుడు ప్రమాదకరంగా ప్రబలుతోంది అని మన ప్రధానమంత్రి మన్మోహన్ గారు విలేకరుల సమావేశంలో (Sept 6^th , 2010) సెలవిచ్చారు. పంటపొలాలను పరిశ్రమలకు కేటాయించవద్దని చట్టాలు చెబుతున్నా తమ అధికారాన్ని ఉపయోగించుకుని సారవంతమైన భూములను పరిశ్రమల పేరుతో తమ కుటుంబ సంస్థలకు అప్పగించడం Crony capitalism కాదా? విదేశీకంపెనీల పెట్టుబడులను ఆకర్షిస్తున్నాము, వస్తుసేవల రంగాలలో, పారిశ్రామికంగా అభివృద్ధి చెందుతున్నాము, బుల్ కుమ్మేస్తుంది, సెన్సెక్స్ 19,000 దాటింది, GDP పెరిగింది అని గొప్పలు చెప్పుకుంటున్న మన పాలకులకు రోజూ వందల మంది రైతులు మరణిస్తున్న సంగతి తెలియదా? DIL , Sricity , Fabcity ,Emmar ల పేరుతో రైతులకు జీవనోపాధి కల్పించే పచ్చని పంటపొలాలను వదలకుండా కొల్లగొట్టి వారిని బిచ్చగాళ్ళుగా మారుస్తున్న ఈ పరిస్థితిని... India shining అందామా???

పౌర హక్కుగా ఉన్న ఆస్తి హక్కు ఎప్పుడైతే రాజ్యంగ హక్కుగా మారిందో... అప్పటినుండి ప్రభుత్వానికి, ప్రైవేటు ఆస్తులను ప్రజల ఉపయోగాల కోసం సేకరించే హక్కు (విధానాలతో కూడిన) కలిగింది. చట్టం నిర్దేశించిన విధివిధానాలు, షరతులు పాటించకుండా ప్రభుత్వంలో పెద్దలు దురుద్దేశంతో, ప్రజాప్రయోజనాలను పక్కదారి పట్టిస్తూ ..సమాజంలో అందరికి చెందవలసిన సహజ వనరులను తమ అధికారంతో కొందరే దక్కించుకోవటం మనం ప్రతిరోజు పత్రికలలో చదువుతున్నాము. ప్రస్తుతం కాల పరిస్థితుల ప్రకారం ప్రజలు ఆర్ధికంగా,సామాజికంగా అభివృద్ధి చెందాలంటే... తమ ఉమ్మడి ఆస్తి వనరు అయినటువంటి భూమిపై న్యాయపరమైన అధికారం కోరడం అనేది ఆమోదయోగ్యమైన హక్కు, కాబట్టి ఆస్తిహక్కును కొన్ని విధివిధానాలతో పౌర హక్కుగా మార్చాలని నా అభిప్రాయం. అలా కాకుండా ఇప్పుడున్న పరిస్థితి ఇలాగే కొనసాగితే భవిష్యతులో అభివృద్ధి చేస్తామంటూ నీరు, గాలి కూడా కొందరి సొత్తు అవుతాయేమో. కనుక దేశమంటే నరులు మాత్రమే కాదు ... ఏ ఒక్కరి ఆధిపత్యం లేని ఉమ్మడి వనరులు కూడా అయితే బాగుంటుంది కదా ...
మీ కామెంట్సు: YashwanthX@Yahoo.com

Future of Farming and Food

2010-08-27T17:38:00.024-04:00

Food is essential for life and food security is the basic welfare of the state. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, one sixth of world population or more than one billion of people go bed hungry everyday and one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet. According to the Global Hunger Index for 2009, India is ranked a poor 65th in fighting hunger, and close to 23%of Indians go without food everyday. The noiseless food crisis is the serious problem for growing population. As per US census bureau, by 2050 the world population will be 9.28 Billions. How will the world meet the food needs with existing arable land and natural resources? There are multiple challenges to sustain the food security for growing population.

Agriculture is the core sector for food and economic growth which is laborious profession. Presently, majority of farmers are poor, not well educated and they don’t have finance facilities to upgrade the farming with modern technologies. Irregular, adverse climate conditions and poor farm extension services are discouraging the farm productivity. The farmers’ income dropped down and debts are in raise due to non-remunerative prices and various reasons. Already they started thinking that farming is not much remunerative and 40 per cent of them want to give up farming. Most of the people are migrating to urban areas in search of better, trendy, high- paying white collar jobs. In those circumstances, who will do agriculture and who will produce food for us? The farmers have to be double or even triple to feed the next generation. So the social standing, appreciation and safeguard of farmers should be raised.

As everybody knows we controlled the hunger and famines by introducing high yield, disease resistant, virus modified and hybrid crops named as Green Revolution. So…major investments have to be made with public and private partnership in agriculture science and technologies to develop bumper yielding and draught resistant crops. Genetic engineering has to play vital role for future agriculture to protect the crops and produce the food products with high nutrition values. Organic agriculture is good but only that itself can’t feed the growing population. The agronomists must try to educate the people on taboos and realities of Genetically Modified crops.

Agriculture occupies the 33% of land on earth, it takes 70% of earth’s fresh water and spoils 60% of it. We need 3 liters water for our daily needs and 3000 liters of water required for our daily food needs. The management of water is the key for our food production and water is going to be more expensive in future. The agriculture scientist should use the Biological, DNA solutions to replace the chemical applications for protecting the soil, air and water. Global warming, Climatic change, water shortage is going to effect the crop yields eventually food shortage. We need to develop eco-friendly farming practices to enhance biodiversity and preserve the natural resources.

In India, 30- 40 percent of perishable food produces are rot at the production site or transit due to poor harvesting procedures, improper transportation and storage facilities. Lot of food grains are going waste after harvesting in different levels like farm and storage. Processing industries have to setup to process the fruits and vegetables for future consumption. A vigorous research and development has to be done on food packaging materials to protect from insects. We need large investments to improve the agriculture infrastructure in terms of processing, storage facilities, rural transportation and supply chain linkage to the consumers.

Livestock are important contributors to total food production and their part is equal to cereals. Around 55 billion chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, sheep and ducks are killed year for year, world wide. As per my perception, depend on animals for food is extremely strain and inefficient. Give up the meat and adopting vegetarian life style is best for human health and environment because eating meat makes the food chain longer from plants to humans. Moreover20 billions of ruminant animals are responsible for 18% of green house gas emissions. In future animal welfare, rights are going to be strong and may not be acceptable the hormone-laden feed used to make them grow faster and produce more.

The future agricultural revolution will be different from the earlier green revolution. I hope it’s the time for political policies, visionary leaders, biological, DNA solutions, software technologies, communication, renewable energies, heavy investments in infrastructure, credit facilities to farmers, education and training…..these are all collectively improve the way of farming in better fashion which leads to food security. We wish the Agriculture will reclaim its share in the economy by all these efforts.Food is prized, wasting food is not reasonable.

Please do comment: Yashwanthx@yahoo.com

In commemoration of freedom

2010-08-15T13:43:00.003-04:00

India's wealth in Switzerland

2010-08-06T18:13:00.005-04:00

If the money is earned and stashed by unfair, illegal, corruptive practices and kept in secret to avoid the taxes is called BLACK MONEY. Circulation of unaccounted money is big a threat to economy and loss of revenue to the government. The generation of black money is against to basic objectives of economic planning for India, those are eradicate of poverty, removal of disparities of poor and rich, generation of employment and building the nation.Money laundering is the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination of illegally gained money, but in actual scenario the definition has broadened by governments and international authorities.

The Prevention of Money-Laundering Act of India (PMLA) - enacted in 2002 and came into effect on 1 July 2005 which prevents money laundering and the parallel economy. According to this act, Reserve bank of India has given the guidelines on the cash transactions, deposit tracking, reporting, operation and maintenance of the records to the all financial institutions and non banking companies, I.e KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER (KYC).However the domestic black money is turning around in our economy and it is productive up to some extent. But we need to think about the money which was stashed in foreign banks are not useful to India. Some of the estimates are stating that a $1500 billions (about 70 lakhs Crores) of Indian unaccounted money is lying in Swiss and other foreign banks. This is the highest amount accumulated outside any country, from among the countries of the world. If that money brings back to India, every family in our country would get nearly Rs. 2.5 Lakhs, the national debt will be cleared and people would get a tax- free budget for 30 years.

Just for your information that Hinduja Brothers (Bofors guys) started a Swiss regulated bank (http://www.hindujabank.com/) in 1994 and this is the only Swiss bank which is owned by Indians. We can easily figure it out that all unauthorized money could be belongs to some of the leading politicians, top industrialists, celebrities, lobbyists and underworld mafia. Recently Swiss government has liberated their banking policies due to international demands and last year UBS bank revealed 4450 secret accounts details to US Government. Still the Indian government has not initiated the process to get the Indian Individuals accounts’ details though India is the member of Financial Action Task Force (FATA) which combats on money laundering and terrorist financing. Being a FATA member, Indian can get the real-time information on money laundering from member countries and pressurize the other countries on stashed Indian money by diplomatic approach. One important thing is that all the account holders’ information (Names and whereabouts) may not be genuine because they are not fools to hold such a huge amount on their real names which can be traced back to them. The government should probe into this unaccounted money and all deposits which are not claimed by any individual must be nationalized. More information on the same, please read Mr.LK Advani’s blog: blog.lkadvani.in

keep attention on this righteous cause and share your innovative ideas: Yashwanthx@yahoo.com

FDI in Retail industry- Farmers' perspective

2010-07-23T18:00:00.015-04:00

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion DIPP http://www.dipp.nic.in/ has come up with a discussion paper www.dipp.nic.in/DiscussionPapers/DP_FDI_Multi-BrandRetailTrading_06July2010.pdf which invites public opinion by July 31, 2010 and the subject is to allow FDI in multi-brand retail. This paper is favoring Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retailing (Multiple brands in multiple products) sector which would allow the global giants to directly set up outlets in the country. Multi-brand global retail giants like the Wal-Mart, Shop rite, Metro, Carrefour and Tesco may soon enter into Indian retail markets if this bill gets approved. However, the expansion of supermarkets in developing countries is expected.

In India, growing middle class with changing consumption patterns are ideal for supermarkets to prosper. The total size of Indian retail sector, including organized and unorganized sector is $300 billion, where currently the organized sector accounts for 4% only but near future the supermarket retail chains are going to play major role in agro-food sector in India. The supermarkets concerns are stable, year around supply with high quality and competitive prices. Supplying to large chain supermarkets gives both potential and large opportunities to our Indian farmers. The biggest challenge is to follow the strict guidelines by the retail groups in terms of quality and safety standards since most of our farmers usually deliver their goods to open markets or to local wholesalers. Mainly Indian farmers are marginal and small who are having average farm size of 3.3 acres, lack of infrastructure and poor post harvesting practices.

In India 40% of harvests are lost in storage and transportation. We are the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables but our country is loosing Rs.1 trillion per annum, (estimated 50% of produce) going waste due to lake of storage facilities and difficult to link to far-away markets. We need large investments to improve our agriculture infrastructure in terms of seed supply, agrichemicals, processing, machinery, storage facilities, rural transportation and supply chain linkage to support the current retail trends. This could be achieved through private investors preferably by organized retailers whether domestic or Global. If it truly improves the farmer’s income, agriculture growth and food security, there is no need to be concerned about FDI or domestic.

My recommendation on FDI- Retail in farmers’ perspective.

1. First and foremost... the multinational retailer’s trade practices should not dampen the spirit of Indian farmers and consumers. FDI – Retail should be a process of integrating Indian economy to the global economy as well as farmers can be integrated into the world class retail market not on the mercy or control of global retail giants.

2. Retailing sector needs to be and Industry status because retail sector is the second largest employer after agriculture and generating 10 percent of GDP and 8 percent of the employment. Lot of rural youth and mediocre educational qualified people are employed in this sector.

3. Governments make sure that farmers have to receive the remunerative price should be between 60% - 70% (based on product category) of the price paid by the consumer.

4. International retailers should be mandated to work with farmers to improve yields by enabling them provide quality inputs, best farm technologies, timely credit and remunerative prices for their produces.

5. Government needs to identify the trends and ways of supporting farmers to meet the needs of modern supply chains and marketing systems to enable with the supermarket sector.

6. Government should ensure that the agro produces should be procured from the local producers and local people must be given priority in employment opportunities in processing and supply chain.

I submited this information to Indian Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion and if you have any ideas please share with me . YashwanthX@yahoo.com

They robbed our nation not only Kohinoor

2010-06-11T18:30:00.007-04:00

The precious stone which was stolen by British is “Kohinoor” in Persian meaning - “Mountain of Light”. It is a 105 carat diamond that was once the largest known diamond in the world. It was found more than 500 years ago in Guntur District in Andhra Pradesh. It has traded hands by various Hindu, Mughal, Sikh, British rulers and finally in the crown of British Queen. As everybody knows that the Kohinoor diamond was taken away from India by the British rulers. Recently our Indian government (Archaeological Survey of India) requested the United Kingdom to return back. The UK government has denied as per their British Museum Act 1963. I have question … Is there any article of law which prevents to recover the “stolen” property?

Some people are chanting and praising the deeds of the British rule that contributed to India for modernization in the form of railways and transportation canals. I don’t believe in that. They build the internal infrastructure to make feasible for their trade and mercantile. They initiated the administration system for the revenue generation not for public governance. They introduced the Macaulay’s education system which was forcibly imposing English language in education since they wish to communicate in English not to encourage the Indians to get knowledge and wisdom. Finally they did nothing except robbing. There is no comparison of British rulers with our native Indian emperors like Akber, Aurungzib, ShahJehan, Sivaji and Ashoka. They were most progressive, magnificent and superior emperors in the world and their reign everything flourished. But the British came in to the power by taking the advantage of disputes among the Indian kings.

We lost so many things…. more than this precious diamond. The British rulers opened the fire in Jallianwala bagh on innocent, peaceful, unarmed 2000 Indian patriots who were martyred in non –violent struggle against British tyranny. We should demand the United Kingdom for the official confession against the Jallianwala bagh massacre on 13th April, 1919. Who will compensate that monstrous genocide? British rulers ignored the Indian industrial development when the western countries are growing with an abundant of industrial revolution. They were not setup the plants and simply trading the consumer goods by imports. How can we reimburse the dearth of the industrial growth gap? The British delivered us very bad feudal rules from Europe and they haven’t formed a good political structure for India. While leaving the country, they just transferred the power to an Indian elite family and their buddies who remain loyal to the British. The same family has been enjoying power from past decades and generation after generation.

The British rule on India has done more harm than good to India. They enslaved and robbed our human resources, natural resources and they ruined our culture and heritage. At this point of time, Archaeological Survey efforts have gone as a futile exercise. The Archaeological Survey of India is planning to launch an international campaign to get the Kohinoor back. Let us support that. I have curiosity….. Is she (Queen of British) doesn’t feel embarrassment to fully clad with crown which is embedded with Stolen Diamond?

Please do comment : YashwanthX@Yahoo.com

BELOW STARVATION LINE

2010-05-07T18:20:00.004-04:00

India is ranked 65th among 84 vulnerable countries in the Global Hunger Index by the International Food Policy Research institute. Recently, three months ago I read about famine conditions are existed in Eastern part of India and starvation deaths also have reported. We have highest rate (46%) of malnutrition and underweight children, high maternal mortality and high malnutrition women among the world. The Government of India initiated to implement National Food Security Act (NFSA). The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) was set up by the central government to outline the framework of this act. The National Food Security Act was formulated that each BPL (Below Poverty Line) family would get 25 kg of rice or wheat per month at Rs.3 a kg and the budget estimate will be Rs. 43,000 crores. But the Supreme Court Commissioner on Food Security ordered that the government should provide 35 kg of food grain to the poor families. UPA Chairperson Ms. Sonia Gandhi also suggested the government to work out on 35 kgs of food grain for BPL families.

Now the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) are exercising the Mechanism with planning commission to redefine THE POOR FAMILIES (BPL).Planning commission is taking the consideration of various estimates. Suresh Tendulkar committee 2009 (National Development Council), which projects the poverty at total 37.2 percent and the estimate of 41.8% rural and 27.5% urban families (32 crores people and 8.7 crores people).The Tendulkar committee has set the criteria based on per capita consumption expenditure for defining the poor in rural India at Rs. 446 per month and for the poor in urban India at Rs 580 per month. The Rural Development Ministry's committee chaired by N C Saxena has estimated that 50% of Indian families are below poverty line. Arjun Sengupta committee by National Commission on Enterprise in Unorganized Sector claimed that 77 per cent of the population (or 836 million people) were able to spend not more than Rs 20 a day (or roughly 48 US cents).

Our Indian media is prompting that Bull is rising in share market and sensex is crossing the screen limits…then why 50% Indian families are below poverty line. The Forbes magazine has listed the 52 richest Indian people among the world. Sure we are proud of that…then what about the embarrassment situation of 77% Indian population who are unable to meet the expenditure of Rs.20 per day. In India, two powerful brothers who have given the gifts (Corporate Jet – 300 crores, Super Luxury Yacht-400crores) to their lovely wives on their birthdays. That’s great …but in other outlook of India, we are pity and heart wrenching about the poor Indian farmers who sold their wives to pay their farm loans [click CNN.com]. In USA a cow meet the expenditure of $2 per day, our committees are stating that more than 50% of our citizens are unable to spend not even .45 cents per day.... I can't compare my beloved citizens. Conclusion is that we are not in below poverty line we are in BELOW STARVATION LINE .anyhow, Food security is the basic welfare of the state and we wish no one should die with hunger.
Please do comment and share with your friends and colleagues. YashwanthX@Yahoo.com

నా దేశ దారిద్ర్యం ఇలా ఉంటే, ఏమని పొగడను ఆ తల్లి భూమి భారతిని, అందుకే కొంచెం కలతతో, కొంచెం దిగులుతో అడుగుతున్నాను.. ఓ! భారతమాత నీ నిండు గౌరవము నీవే నిలుపుకో , ఓ! భారత విధాత.... నా దేశానికీ కొంత భాగ్యాన్ని ప్రసాదించు.

Agriculture Outsourcing

2010-04-09T18:54:00.011-04:00

India is eminent for Software Outsourcing, China is well-known for computer hardware and domestic products outsourcing. Mexico is the global leader in auto parts outsourcing. USA is a giant for high-tech goods like Aircrafts, Automobiles, Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals. Japan is famous for Electronics. So... what about outsourcing of agriculture? Lot of countries are importing food and agro products from other countries to satisfy their population needs. Governments and corporations are buying farmland in other countries to grow their own food to protect their food security. We can call it as outsourcing of agriculture. These countries are outsourcing the farming for various reasons: most of them are lack of natural resources and volatile climate conditions.
Take the instance of Middle East, they don’t have sufficient water resources to grow crops and taking care of the growing population. Saudi Arabia gives up the growing crops in the desert with exorbitant spending. They invested in Indonesia for 500,000 hectares of farmland and other animal production investments in abroad. United Arab Emirates has leased 375,000 hectares in northern Sudan, 325,000 hectares in Pakistan and 5,000 in Ethiopia. Kuwait arranged $546 million loan to Cambodia in exchange for a lease to a large area of rice lands. Qatar leased 100,000 hectares in the Philippines, Vietnam and Kenya. Some of the Asian countries also pursuing same deals, South Korean companies have arranged to lease 690,000 hectares in Sudan and Madagascar. China invested $800 millions in Mozambique agriculture. China bought a lot of farm land in Senegal for Sesame production. More than 300 Indian companies have invested around $4.0 billions in Ethiopia for Floriculture and agriculture. Lot of outsourcing investments in agriculture projects were made in Sub Saharan Africa and South East Asia.

Some of the Latin American countries are encouraging agriculture investments. Mercosul countries (Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil) are attracting the foreign investors with their land & investment policies and their abundance of natural resources. Many of US and Canadian Agribusiness corporations (Bunge Foods, Cargill, Unilever, and ADM) are cultivating and processing the food grains, soya, sugar and ethanol in South America.
We can assume that all these efforts are feeding the people, but one thing we can notice that the entire agriculture trade is going to the hands of the wealthy nations, retails giants and big food processing organizations. The developing and poor countries are unable to feed their people if the surplus food which will be produced will be shipped to abroad. So the investing countries or corporations shall take the consideration of local population food needs. Leasing and selling the land to foreign investors should be transparent and accountable, that revenue shall be used for the benefit of the local population. Please send your comments: YashwanthX@yahoo.com

Ultra Modern Zamindars

2010-03-26T20:41:00.005-04:00

We fought more than 200 years with British for freedom of our land. Indo-Pakistani war and Indo china war were happened for Jammu Kashmir land dispute and Himalayan land dispute. So many agitations in India for separate land i.e. Telangana, Vidarbha, Mithilanchal, Saurashtra, Harit Pradesh, and Bundelkhand. Funny thing is… SATYAM (No related to land except software), such a big tech company collapsed due to greedy investments on land through MAYTAS and others. Matter of fact everybody loves land…. land is life, basis of all wealth and a factor of production. Now everybody’s passion is land because…the land appreciation value is very high comparatively with other savings like gold, fixed deposits, bonds, shares and securities. The land value is cherished more than 5 times in past ten years.

Before independence most of land was acquired by few land lords (Zamindars). Since independence, there has been voluntary and government initiated land reforms for distribution of land among the landless farmers. Jawaharlal Nehru initiated ceiling on lands to abolish landlord system. Land to tiller is the slogan of peasant’s movement in 1970s became very intense. Now the history repeating… present economic reforms are creating Ultra Modern Zamindars in the form of Industrialists. The land ceiling systems is applicable to agriculture lands only not for industrial lands, those limitations are advantages to the industrialist to acquire the land as much as they want. The governments are allotting thousands of hectares of land to big industrialists in the name of SEZ, IT industries, Airports, Seaports and other Projects. Reliance, Tata and Adani Group have got 4,830 hectare land from Gujarat state. GMR group (Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao) got 5500 acres of land for free to construct the Shamshabad Airport, but the Government share is very nominal. The Government of Andhra Pradesh allotted the land to Vanpic (Vaderevu – Nizampatnam Port& Industrial Corridor- Nimmagadda Prasad) around 10,000 acres. I can mention so many like 1300 acres to Jindal group (Savitri Jindal) near Visakhapatnam, 1000 acres to Vedanta Resources (Anil Agarwal) in Orissa and Tata and Essar 6500 acres of land in Chattisgarh. I have a right to believe that Chief Ministers are functioning as Property dealers

In fact farmers need the land, because that is their livelihood, they care for the land. The recent economic reforms are intend to forcible acquisition of agriculture land in thousands of acres that belonged to small farmers in the name of industries, mining, dams and others projects. The economic liberalization programs are completely neglected the land distribution among the landless farmers. Indian farmers are very small and peasants who are holding an average farm land of lessthan 1 hectare (2.5 acres) and some of them do farming by taking lands on rent basis (Tenant farmers). Present economic reforms are promoting the privatization of natural resources, it cause to moving the farmers out of agriculture and some times may be lead to insurgency (Maoists in Chattisgarh, west Bengal, Orissa, and Jharkhand). We need mutually beneficial reforms which can restore the pride of agriculture and ensure the industrial growth. We must protect our 600 million farmers to make sure our food security and food self sufficiency which is our country’s priority

Same game, Same rules, Surrogate players

2010-03-11T18:30:00.019-05:00

We have celebrated (sponsored celebrations) the approval of women reservations bill in Upper house of the parliament which aims to reserve the 33% women seats in the legislature houses. I hope this will pass in the Lok sabha also. This bill will improve the participation of women in politics. Media and everybody is admiring the bill by using magnificent words like “Historic, momentous, Victory of feminism, and Great step for empowerment of women”.Let me state my views here...

I am not opposing women reservation bill, but I am questioning that the number of women increase in legislation houses is lead to empower the ordinary women? As you know, presently our India is lead by women only .They are... President: Pratibha Patil, UPA chairperson: Sonia Gandhi, Parliament Speaker: Meira Kumar, Lok sabha opposition leader: Sushma Swaraj, Country's Capital -Delhi Chief Minister: Sheila Dikshit. Why these leaders are failed to identify the solutions for Manipuri Lady -Irom Chanu Sharmila’s hunger strike which has been from past 10 years? Why can’t these leaders try to stop her ritual of release and re arrest? Shall we believe the downtrodden or middle class women group will get the chance in 33% of the leglisture houses? I don’t think so…. This could be for only elite class or existing member’s siblings like… wife, Daughter, Daughter in-law… so on. I can say this as“Same game, Same rules, surrogate players”. We have been implementing 1/3rd reservation of total seats for women in Panchayaths and local bodies from 1993, as everybody knows that some of the women are proxies to their male relatives.

We need to worry about the poor, middle class and illiterate women who are overworked in the farm fields and complete all domestic work. They are still powerless, mistreated, hapless and helpless. The weaker section and middle class women need to improve their economical, political, spiritual and social strengths which gives them confidence. We need create such a policies and reforms which are Right to participation, Right to decision making, Right to equal access for women. Let us dream the society for a woman which has No abuse, No dowry, No rapes and No Gender inequality. Indian distressed women shall be blessed.

Square shaped watermelon

2010-03-07T12:30:00.003-05:00

Japanese farmers invented this cubic watermelon by inserting the melons to square tempered cases while the fruit is growing. The reason behind this idea is to save the place since the watermelons are round and take a lot of space in storage areas and refrigerators. The cubic cases are designed as per Japanese refrigerators which the full grown watermelons are conveniently fit to the refrigerator shelves.
But the limitation is cost, the square shaped melon cost is triple than the normal one. The groceries retailers are marketing them as Gift fruits.
You tube video

Great Inventions for water

2010-02-21T18:10:00.013-05:00

In India, lot of villages are facing water scarcity. People are spending increasing amounts of time and energy for traveling miles together to get water.In some regions of Rajasthan, we can see the women with two pots one on another and holding a child, they spend average four hours a day and walk an average six km for drinking water. Imagine… women carrying heavy load how hard it is.
QDRUM:Hans Hendrikse, a South African architect invented the QDRUM, the drum made of low-density linear polyethylene to enable people transport of water in a safer, easier way. The Drum can be rolled rather than carrying water on their heads. This is an amazing invention to prevent drudgery and wasting of valuable working hours. It’s really helpful, if some NGO’s or any charitable organizations donate to our drought ridden states in India.See the QDRUM Video on You tube

Two-thirds of small farmers in India don’t have access to irrigation and depend on unpredictable monsoons. Their reliable source for water are only tube wells and bore wells. Tube wells and bore wells need electric motors or Diesel engines to fetch the water to surface. Irregular power cuts in electricity and diesel price hikes were adversely affected on farming crops.
International Development Enterprises (IDE) :developed the Treadle Pump, is an irrigation device by stepping up and down on treadles which drive pistons, creating cylinder suction that draws groundwater to the surface. In most of Indian states, the farmers are using this low-cost and easy to operate devise to boost their yields and their incomes.See the Treadle Pump Video on You tube

Blazing Brinjal

2010-02-07T12:00:00.025-05:00

Brinjal is very common vegetable fruit in India.India is the second largest Brinjal producing country in the world. Now the Brinjal is blazing topic in India caused by Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) Brinjal which was developed by Mahyco Monsanto Biotech. (Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company & Monsanto, USA). Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of India accepted for commercial use of BT Brinjal- the country’s first genetically modified (GM) food crop. The GEAC was set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to regulate research, testing and commercial release of GM crops, foods and organisms. However, the government could not taken decision without more consultation with stakeholders.
In the meantime lot of public groups, Environmental activists, scientists, and farmers are protesting against BT Brinjal. The Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh is touring seven cities—Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Nagpur and Chandigarh—and holding public discussions with farmers, activists and scientists on their comfort with Bt brinjal.

The protesters are claiming that: BT brinjal is a threat to plant biodiversity, flaws in the data on the gene inserted into the brinjal, no long-term toxicity and cancer-safety tests were done which leads to kidney and liver damage. Farm workers are suffering with allergies including rashes, itches, and irritations while working in GM crop fields. Cattle health may get harm and negative impact on its milk production.

Supporters are impressing that: BT Brinjal will help to tackle the pest in an environment-friendly manner and increase yields and farm income. BT Brinjal has been tested in full compliance with the guidelines and directives of the regulatory authorities to ensure its safety. It has the same nutritional value and is compositionally identical to non BT brinjal, except for the additional BT protein which is specific in its action against the Pest.

I am not against to the technology but we already have more than 200 varieties of brinjal, there is no dearth of brinjal in India. Indians have been eating so many conventional varities of Brinjal for centuries which contains rich health & nutrition values. We can develop new varities by hybridization and natural selection, what is the need of introduction of BT Brinjal. They are mentioning BT Brinjal contains same nutrional values as non BT, so there is no need of Sense of Urgency on BT Brinjal at this point of time.

The GM companies should focus their R&Ds on the crops like...

Ethanol based Transgenic Sugarcane and sugar beet crops have to be developed for support Biofules instead of fossil fuels. Genetically Engineered Tobacco plants are required for medical use. Modified Subabul, Bamboo plants are required more tonnage for paper production.
Please share your ideas on GM crops: farmersindia Email

Are farmers not eligible for Padma awards?

2010-01-31T12:14:00.023-05:00

Yes, 2010 Padma awards committee ignored the farmers. The committee considered the citizens from only Art, Literature, Education, Sports, Medicine, Science and Engineering, Trade and Industry…Click for 2010 awards with discipline They did not recognize the farming & rural community related fields though farming community comprises up to 70 % of Indian population living in rural. I am not under estimating the dignitaries who are nominated, but requesting to update the selection criteria by including agriculture and rural related disciplines also. Film actors, dancers, cricketers, businessmen and others are important but let us give importance to farmers also.

If the committee really want support the farmers, they can consider the scientist from agriculture universities,Journalists in rural and agriculture disciplines,rural business entrepreneurs, rural innovators, Model farmers, individuals who are working for farmers’ development and so on. These distinguished awards encourage them and influence others to strive for excellence. How ever... my beloved humble Indian farmers have abundance of self esteem, they won’t plead and lobby for awards.
General Info: Republic day has been the occasion for India to honor its citizens who contributed for nation. Padma Awards were instituted in the year 1954.The award is given in three categories, namely, Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan.Padma Shri is awarded for ‘distinguished service’Padma Bhushan for ‘distinguished service of a high order’; and Padma Vibhushan for ‘exceptional and distinguished service’. The Awards Committee submits the recommendations to the Prime Minister and the President for their approval.

Urban-Rural Disparities

2010-01-24T21:04:00.013-05:00

Mahatma Gandhi dreamt about GRAM SWARAJ that every village should be self reliance since he believed villages are backbone of India. He started the PANCHYATHRAJ as a manifestation which was reinstated to a political system and finally established as a Department in government. Still most of the villages are pathetic and unable to satisfy the basic amenities (Water, housing, Medical facilities, Education, Roads, unemployment…) when you compare with towns and cities (comfortable life, paved roads, stylish buildings, super specialty hospitals, hybrid cars, white collar jobs, revolutionary technologies, big malls, multiplex..). Our father of Nation want to fortify the India by reinforce the rural but we have started from other end (towns and cities).Shall we assume that the government and policy makers are failed to respect the fundamental right of equality for all citizens irrespective of rural or urban? Have the Economic reforms bypassed the rural India? I can say... YES, the following information which gives us evidence.

India has 640,000 villages approximately and 70% of the population lives in villages. According our recent census, per capita consumption expenditure in rural is RS.14.50 per day and urban Rs.21.60 per day. India poverty headcount ratio is 37.2 per cent of the population — with the rural area poverty at 41.8 per cent and urban area poverty at 25.7 per cent. Three-quarters of urban households living in well constructed houses, compared to only about a quarter in rural areas. Less than One-quarter of the rural population has access to tap water while the corresponding proportion in cities is about three-fourth. 80 percent of rural population doesn’t have sanitary & hygiene facilities where as 30 percent urban people don’t have such. The rural dwellers have to travel miles together for primary care physician and think how difficult to get emergency care and maternity troubles. I can explain a lot like electricity, telephone connections, transportation, less investment in rural areas, banking and credit facilities… and so on. Not only opportunities, rural areas are losing their manpower which is migrating to urban areas as labor due to heavy investments in urban and metros.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005
is helping the distressed poor lives in rural areas. According to this scheme the government will give 100 days wage employment in rural areas by carry out village development works. We need a common rural development policy irrespective of states which needs to improve the villages and the achieve the Mahatma’s SAMPURNA GRAMA SWARAJ.
Please send your suggestions to: farmersindia

Genetically Modified Crops

2010-01-08T20:57:00.009-05:00

In the controversy of BT Brinjal in India, I would like to share my opinion about GM Crops:
What is GM?
GM techniques are the direct manipulation of the genetic makeup of organisms for human or animal consumption using the latest molecular biology techniques. Combining genes from different organisms is known as recombinant DNA technology and the resulting organism is said to be "Genetically Modified," "Genetically engineered," or "Transgenic."
Importance of GM:
Today‘s world population is 6.8 billions and by 2050 it’s going to be 9.5 billions upward. In 40 years the population will be increased by 40%, our natural resources are shrinking and many regions of the world will be lack of food and nutritional security. The answer for the challenges is to increase the cultivation with more yields and nutritional values. Bio-technology brought revolutionary changes in crop production and management techniques by reduce the dependency on conventional insecticides, herbicides.GM Corps improve the quality of nutritional contents and of food products, bring higher net economic returns to the farmers and reduce the risk of environment pollution.
A number of developed and developing countries including USA, Argentina, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Spain, France, South Africa and China are growing genetically modified crops. The Indian first Transgenic crop BT cotton made rapid strides to Bio technology crops in India. Lot of farmers adopted the BT cotton, cultivated more than 700,000 acres and got a lot of gain in terms yields and cost wise. GM Maize illustrated great results in South Africa, and American Continent. Most of the scientific organizations like UK academies of sciences, US National academy of sciences, GRAS- FDA, International Food Policy research Institute- Asia, WHO and all are concluded thatGM Crops can be used to produce foods. The global transgenic crops market is going to be $25 billion by 2010.
Achieving Food and Nutritional security is not easy task, we need to try every option either GM or Conventional. The food grains which are cultivated today are not absolutely wholly natural, some of them are altered by selective breeding or chemicals or Viruses. Definitely, we need to depend on these modern technologies to get bumper yields, disease resistant and drought resistant crops for growing food need. The government and the progressive thinkers should focus on public understanding on AG-Bio technology.
We are against to hunger and poverty, not to the technology.

Climate Change... it’s in our hand

2009-12-11T20:38:00.007-05:00

The Global Language Monitor has announced the Top Word of the Decade is ‘Global Warming’ and ‘Climate Change’ was the top phrase. Of course both are caused by greenhouse gases (Water Vapor, carbon, Methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.) major caused by Carbon dioxide and Methane. The greenhouse gases emission is increasing the earth’s temperature. The consequences are raise in sea levels, more rainfall, extreme weather conditions, melting glaciers, and uneven seasons.
Affect to Indian agriculture:
Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change. The impacts of climate change on agriculture are expected to be negative, threatening Indian food security. Higher temperatures are eventually reducing yields of crops and encourage the weed and pest. Changes in precipitation patterns may increase of short-run crop failures and long-run production declines. Climate change will have varying effects irrigated yields for all crops like Rice, wheat, and soybeans which will cause food shortages and dramatic price increases. Increase in temperatures need more fertilizers which cause to higher emissions.Climate change is likely to aggravate the heat stress in dairy animals, adversely affecting their productive and reproductive performance. A preliminary estimate indicates that global warming is likely to lead to a loss of 1.6 million tones in milk production in India by 2020.Indian council for agriculture research (ICAR) studies on the effects of climate change found that a temperature increase of one degree Celsius would mean 3 to 7 per cent fall in wheat, soybean, mustard, groundnut and potato crops.
Climate change is reality and it’s in our hand. We need to take the necessary steps and adopt new technologies. Government has to teach the farmers by switching to crop varieties that could withstand heat, because climate change could improve the chickpea, maize, sorghum and millet crops in the West Coast and the potato and mustard crops in northwest India. Investment in agriculture research is needed to develop heat- resistant crop strains. We need to reduce carbon emissions sharply soon and encourage Bio fuels rather than fossil fuels.
For more details on UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen COP 15:United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Systematic exploitation of tribals

2009-11-16T19:42:00.006-05:00

Prime Minister Dr. Man Mohan Singh had announced that the empowerment of tribal is essential for equitable growth of the country. He agreed that “The systematic exploitation and social and economic abuse of our tribal communities can no longer be tolerated”. But actually Man Mohan sing government is trying to set up more projects which leads to destroying the natural resources and exploiting the tribal.
TATA and ESSAR are plans to invest Rs.20, 000 crores in a steel plants in Chhattisgarh in 6,500 acres of land, eventually ten villages and 350,000 tribal have to be evacuated and use a large quantity of water from the river Sabari and will pollute the Indravati.Tribal people make up only 9 per cent of the country’s population, but more than 40 per cent of the land used to build development projects has been theirs, according to government estimates.Most tribal don’t want to sell their ancestral land they feel it’s a crime in tribal culture, the State government is forcibly acquiring the land which was not totally voluntary. Some of the tribal are not satisfied with the compensation packages like Land for Land package, Land exchange for Money and Job offer for family.
Facts:
* Government is telling these projects are necessary for attracting investors and GDP growth.
* Tribals are demanding their first right on forest, forest resources and against to “Illegal diversion” of forest land for corporate projects.
* Iron Companies are in upset that all Iron ore bearing blocks in our country are covered with forests. The environment authorities will not give permission so easily to fell trees to clear the land for mining.

A short film on Dongria Kondh tribe is to live in the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa state, they are suffering due to a bauxite refinery, built and operated by a British mining company Vedanta Resources.

village for Sale

2009-10-29T20:13:00.006-04:00

In India lot of villages are being sold by the governments for setting up of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) claiming that’s for people well being and development. Government is acquiring the villages forcefully or villagers’ own accord by announcing attractive (in papers) rehabilitation packages. Of course... the compensation package is not adequate and not up the market rates.Sometimes these lands are sold and resold for higher prices changing hands to real-estate people.
My fear and emotion is that India’s food security could be weakened by commercialization of agriculture land and lot of villagers are going to loose their livelihood. Why don’t we dare to compare with China, how the agriculture and Industrialization can flourish evenly. China produce food grains almost double than India with less cultivate land and industrial sector also producing more than India. We must protect our agriculture, agriculture based occupations and villages. Humans cannot survive without food and nature.

Father of Green Revolution- Norman Borlaug

2009-09-13T19:02:00.007-04:00

The Father of Green revolution Norman Ernest Borlaug has died on September 12th 2009 (March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009). Dr.Borlaugh introduced high-yield crop innovations for bumper harvests across the fields of India in 1970s that was a turning point in India’s food production pattern. Borlaug is considered the brain behind India’s Green Revolution. He began working with wheat production in Mexico at the end of World War II. He developed varieties of wheat that were resistant to disease and yielded higher crops. He took these varieties to other continents, where in certain places grain yields more than quadrupled. He has collaborated with scientists from India and Pakistan, in adapting the new wheat to new lands and in gaining acceptance for their production.

The Government of India awarded PADMA VIBHUSHAN in 2006 in Science and Engineering for his role in spreading the Green Revolution to India. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for developing disease-resistant wheat that helped developing world in fighting famine and He was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by US Congress, in 2007.In addition to those Dr. Borlaug has received extensive recognition from universities and organizations in six countries: Canada, India, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, and the United States.
“Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world” -Norman Borlaug

Aug,15th 2009 Declared as “Drought India”

2009-08-16T21:06:00.006-04:00

India is facing the threat of drought with 60% of rain shortfall and the poorest in 83 years. Farmers are unable to sow crops in this kharif season, India declared 177 districts are in drought among 626 districts. Monsoon rains are critical to India's farm prospects and vital for paddy, sugarcane, oilseeds and other crops. Up to 70 percent of Indians are dependent on farm incomes, and about 60 percent of India's farms depend on rains. This state of calamity will negatively impact on food prices and economy.
The government should take measures to maintain the sufficient food stocks of food grains to distribute in drought affected areas. Necessary steps should be planned for next crop season “Rabi”. We wish the drought couldn’t become famine.

Support Farmers

2009-08-05T11:08:00.004-04:00

Farming First

Interim Budget 2009

2009-07-08T19:58:00.007-04:00

The India Budget places an importance on agriculture since most of the Indian population is dependent on agriculture. Budget continued the highest priority of rural development.
Highlights of Indian Interim Budget 2009 in agriculture and rural development are:
*Government has set the target for the agriculture credit flow for 2009-10 at Rs 3, 25,000 crore.
*Fertilizer subsidy to go to farmers directly which will be based on nutrients.
*Interest subvention scheme for short term crop loans up to Rs.3 lakh per farmer at the interest rate of 7 per cent per annum to be continued. Additional subvention of 1 per cent to be paid from this year, as incentive to those farmers who repay short term crop loans on schedule.
*Time given to the farmers having more than two hectares of land to pay 75 per cent of their over dues under Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme extended from 30th June, 2009 to 31st December, 2009.
*Taskforce to be set up to examine the issue of debt taken by a large number of farmers in some regions of Maharashtra from private money lenders who were not covered by the loan waiver scheme .
*Additional allocation of Rs 1,000 crore for Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Program (AIBP).
*Allocation under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) stepped up by 30 per cent in B.E. 2009-10 over B.E. 2008-09.
*Central assistance for storm-water drainage project increased to Rs 500 crore from Rs 200 crore provided by the interim Budget
*Allocation under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme increased by 144 per cent to Rs.39, 100 crore in B.E. 2009-10 over B.E. 2008-09.
*New scheme Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY) with an allocationof Rs.100 crore launched on pilot basis for integrated development of 1000 villages having population of scheduled castes above 50 per cent.
More Details:indiabudget.nic.in

Mayday Song for Farmers and Peasants

2009-05-01T07:32:00.001-04:00

Elect pro-farmer representatives

2009-04-02T18:31:00.004-04:00

2009 General elections need to bring relief measures to farmers. Farmers and Farmers organizations should come together to support candidates, who are work for agricultural and rural development. They should consider only candidature not the political parties. As everybody know that 60% of our population depends on agriculture and its subsidiaries. Now agriculture sector is facing crisis and decline phase. We need the support and growth in agriculture sector and protect the rural economy. The elected representatives must look in to the farmer’s issues like:
Minimum Support price, rural development, separate Budget allocation for agriculture, Marketing facilities, agriculture credit, irrigation, crop insurance, modernization of agriculture and implementation of Mr. Swami Nathan Committee recommendations.

I would like to request the Local farmer’s organizations to identify the MLAs, MPs based on their party’s manifestos and Candidatures and educate the farmers to elect them

Recession - Agriculture

2009-01-28T19:27:00.003-05:00

Now recession is the trend and Buzzword. India is dependent on USA and other developed nations for its trade. Eventually developing nation’s economy affected by recession due to globalization. The services sector in India is facing some liquidity problems, industrial sector and financial sectors are largely affected by world recession.

Recession- Agriculture:
Indian agriculture has not impacted by global economy crises, except some export oriented crops. About 60-65% of India’s population and workforce depend on agriculture. Country’s agriculture sector will save the India from the huge impact of the global economic recession. Right now agriculture is the key for Indian growth in this difficult time. Agriculture is an absolute necessary, producing the basic human needs of food and clothing and exciting reason is Bio fuels. An Investment in agriculture is considered as a conservative and tangible Investment with consistent returns.Agriculture is the best solutions to maintain economic growth this year. Even in down markets agriculture companies performed very well in 2008 and will do the same in 2009. I wish that the agriculture sector will continue to provide support to our economy.

Appreciate APEDA

2008-12-24T19:15:00.005-05:00

Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) is authorized to take measures for registration and protection of IPR (Intellectual Property rights) in respect of special products in India and outside. Lok Sabha passed the APEDA amendment bill 2008 on 12/23/08 aims to provide for the protection of IPR of a new category of” special" agricultural products, including Basmati rice. The new legislation would empower APEDA to safeguard IPR of our other special products and safeguard interests of farmers and traders. In this era of globalization and open market, it is imperative that India takes proactive measures to safeguard and protect IPR of its products.
APEDA has to focus on Geographical Indication (GI) to protect our special products like Basmati rice, Ponni rice, Darjeeling Tea, Nilagiri Tea, Alfonso Mangos and so on. APEDA has to work with Pakistan for protecting Basmati GI status for common interests of the two countries against Biopiracy. More Details:APEDA

Farmers to be blessed by Nanotechnology

2008-12-15T21:41:00.007-05:00

"Nanotechnology promises immense possibilities for agriculture," said Prof Dr Basavaraj Madhusudhan of Kuvempu University. Dr. Madhusudhan, while addressing the Bangalore Nano 2008 conference said “Nanotechnology has immense possibilities of growth for Indian agriculture.Nano sensors in plants can detect disease and can provide nano medication. Nanotechnology can reduce agricultural waste and thus pollution. Nano lamination can improve the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. These applications should reach farmers in India in five years.” More details:Bangalore Nano-2008-PIB News

Nano Technology: Nano is a Greek Word, It means one billionth of something. Nanotechnology is the manipulation or self-assembly of individual atoms, molecules, or molecular clusters into structures to create materials and products with new or vastly different properties.

Nano Technology for Agriculture: Agriculture is the backbone of most developing countries, with more than 60% of the population reliant on it for their livelihood. Nanotechnology can improve our understanding of the biology of different crops and thus potentially enhance yields or nutritional values. Nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize the agriculture with new tools for the molecular treatment of diseases, rapid disease detection, enhancing the ability of plants to absorb nutrients etc. Smart sensors and smart delivery systems will help the agricultural industry combat viruses and other crop pathogens. By using data to determine soil conditions and plant development, seeding, fertilizer, chemical and water use can be fine-tuned to lower production costs and potentially increase production- all benefiting the farmer.
We should pass the existing technologies to the farmers, afterwards we can think about creative technologies. There is lot of gap between Know-how and Do-how in the farm level.

IFPRI says "Don't Blame GM Crops"

2008-11-11T20:15:00.002-05:00

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) conducted scientific study with evidence that Indian farmer’s suicides have not increased by the introduction of GM Crops. The new analysis suggests that if anything, suicides among farmers have been decreasing since the introduction of GM cotton by Monsanto in 2002. It also found that the adoption of pest-resistant BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton varieties had led to massive increases in yield and a 40% decrease in pesticide use.
Although there were initially some catastrophic failures of BT cotton varieties for some farmers after their introduction the report said that conventional varieties did equally badly because of drought. By 2006, BT cotton covered 3.8m hectares or more than 39% of the total cotton area. Yields of the crop have nearly doubled since GM varieties were introduced and India is now the largest cotton producer in Asia and has overtaken the US to become the second largest in the world
The researchers analyzed the data from a variety of sources on suicide of the farmers and on the costs and yields from crops. The report identifies a lack of financial support for farmers as a key problem, absence of a safety net or any other insurance support, the ineffective irrigation systems, the presence of abusive banking systems, the wide availability of highly toxic pesticides, and the potential rewards for suicide likely all contributed to farmer suicides. This has nothing to do with the use of new technology.
Source:PTI NEWS
IFPRI Report:ifpri.org

Severe Fertilizers Shortage

2008-08-15T20:38:00.009-04:00

India is facing severe fertilizers shortage problem which leads to downfall in agriculture output. Now food price inflation is high and decline in farm output would result in a further spike in food prices. A protests in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Punjab were resulted the death of farmers and injuries to several others.

The main types of fertilizers are three—Nitrogen, Potash and Phosphate and some complex fertilizers. In India, the government fixes the price at which fertilizers are sold; it also pays manufacturers the difference between price and their cost of manufacture plus a fair return. The fertilizer prices are up because most are made by energy-intensive processes, that the increase in production costs of fertilizers on account of soaring crude prices had begun to squeeze margins of domestic fertilizer firms and this would see the government’s subsidy burden touch an estimated Rs95,000 crore in 2008-09, 1.9% of India’s gross domestic product. The major public sector fertilizer company “Fertilizers & Chemicals Travancore Ltd” is also facing problems with spiraling price of inputs and working capital requirements.
The government should review the supply and demand of fertilizers in the States and the distribution shall be made through cooperative societies as well as private traders being made to ensure the smooth availability for kharif crops at the door step of farmers.

corporate Farming

2008-06-11T21:35:00.006-04:00

Corporate farming is a modern agriculture issue, and encompasses not only the farm itself, but also the entire chain of agriculture-related business, including seed supply, agrichemicals, food processing, machinery, storage, transport, distribution, marketing, advertising, and retail sales.
There are corporate in the field like Ballarpur Industries, JK Papers and Wimco in eucalyptus and poplar trees, Green Agro Pack, VST Natural Products, Global Green, Intergarden India, Kempscity Agro Exports and Sterling Agro in gherkins, United Breweries in barley, Nijjer Agro in tomato, Tarai Foods in vegetables, M Todd in mint, and Namdhari Seeds in seeds. There are also various government and semi-government agencies involved. Financial institutions and banks assisting contract farming.
Several State governments, in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, are actively promoting corporate farming, changing laws to enable and support it, and providing companies interested in it with a variety of incentives, including lifting of land ceilings, subsidies and tax rebates.

In my view, the problem is that the Indian farmer is still illiterate to understand clearly that contract farming. The corporate farmer should not treat as Contracted Employee rather than implementation partner. The farm land should be controlled by the independent farmer and input costs like farm machinery, crop insurance,fertilizers,irrigation,pesticides, fuel, and seeds should be born by the corporates.If necessary the government should be flexible on land ceiling for Corporates.Farm Production management contracts between corporate companies and farmers should be transparent and mutual benefited, that should cover crop selection, provision of inputs, production methods, sales channels, buyers and minimum guarantee price. I am impressed of farmer’s partner model by CALYPSO FOODS PRIVATE LIMITED .

Rice shortage- Foord grain crisis

2008-04-26T10:06:00.001-04:00

The world's most basic commodity is Rice. Now the headlines are everywhere...Global Rice Shortage, the cost of rice has doubled in the past five weeks. This problem is due to rice shortages in Thailand Vietnam and other Southern Asian Countries. There were so many causes; previous calamity which damaged some of the rice fields, High prices on Insecticides, fertilizer, another cause is the inflation of US dollars and Bio-fuel crops.
The crisis has its roots in four interlinked trends. The first is the chronically low productivity of farmers in the poorest countries, caused by their inability to pay for seeds, fertilizers and irrigation. The second is the misguided policy in the U.S. and Europe of subsidizing the diversion of food crops to produce bio fuels like corn-based ethanol. The third is climate change; take the recent droughts in Australia and Europe, which cut the global production of grain. The fourth is the growing global demand for food and feed grains brought on by swelling populations and incomes.
Modern agriculture techniques are required to overcome rice crisis. Water is the key for rice production, the scientists shall try to create new breed of rice that require less water, and resist disease and insects, that have plentiful harvests. Farmers also think about new improved irrigation and storage methods.

Second largest cotton producing country

2008-02-18T22:20:00.008-05:00

India is likely to grow genetically modified (GM) cotton on nearly 70 percent of its total cultivated area in the next 2-3 years, a global research body said on Feb, 18, 2008."In 2007, (Bacillus thuringiensis )Bt cotton area went up to 6.2 million hectares from 3.2 million hectares in2006,"Clive James, chairman of theInternational Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, told a news conference. The country, the world's second-biggest cotton producer, hopes to produce a record output of 31million bales (1 bale = 170 kg) in the crop year to September as farmers plant more transgenic seeds.Indian farmers, who grow cotton on an average 9.06 million hectares, produced 28 million bales last year.The study said that 3.8 million Indian farmers opted for Bt cotton in 2007 compared to 2.3 million in 2006.
"Rapid strides that India has made in cotton production since the country embraced BT cotton and the fact that it has overtaken the U.S. speak volumes about the technology," he said.According to ISAAA, an international NGO working for promotion of genetically modified (GM) crops, the global area under GM crops rose by 12 per cent at 114.3 million hectares in 2007 compared to 102 million hectare in the previous year.
(TheHindu)

Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative

2007-12-24T11:43:00.001-05:00

The Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative (IFFCO) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of the West African country Senegal for the revival of a 6.6-lakh tonne capacity phosphoric acid plant in Senegal, Industries Chimiques de Senegal, (ICS).ICS is a joint venture with the government of India holding a 6.97 per cent stake, IFFCO 19.1 per cent and the government of Senegal a dominant 47 per cent.
IFFCO will invest $100 million in the next three years for increasing the production to approximately 600,000 tonne. IFFCO will also provide a loan of 10 million dollars to the company repayable on priority. Under the MoU, IFFCO will handle the existing debt of the company to ensure its repayment to the Senegalese banks and international financial organisations in 15 years and those to the trade creditors in two years.
Restructuring of ICS will improve the availability of phosphoric acid in the country as IFFCO will import bulk of it. It is also expected to have a sobering effect on the international price trend which has been rising for sometime.
(For more details:iffco.nic.in)
(Source: TheHindu)

Minimum support price for Paddy

2007-10-26T22:08:00.001-04:00

The minimum support prices are announced by the Govt. of India with a view to ensuring remunerative prices to the farmers on the basis of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) recommendations. The minimum support prices are perceived by the farmers as a guarantee price for their produce from the Government. These prices are announced by the Government at the commencement of the season,to enable them to pursue their efforts with the assurance that the prices would not be allowed to fall below the level fixed by the Govt. Such minimum support prices are fixed at incentive level, so as to induce the farmers to make capital investment for the improvement of their farm and to motivate them to adopt improved crop production technologies to step up their production and thereby their net income.

Now the paddy growing farmers are upset over the new minimum support price fixed by the governement.The MSP for common variety is Rs 645 a quintal and for Grade A variety Rs 675 a quintal compared to Rs 620 and Rs 650 during the previous season (2006-07). The increase is Rs 25, which is much below their expectation.On the other hand the Central Governement has increased the MSP for wheat Rs 150 a quintal compared to the last season.Increase in MSP for paddy in the last four years was just 17 per cent compared to 35 per cent in the case of wheat.The growing demand from paddy farmers for declaring Rs 1,000 per quintal as MSP, on a par with wheat. Farmers were incurring lot of expenditure to produce a quintal of paddy, due to rise in prices of inputs like power, fertilisers, labour and transport.
I strongly demand an MSP hike in paddy to do justice to millions of paddy farmers,and eliminate the “huge disparity” in the procurement prices of wheat and paddy by immediately enhancing the Minimum Support Price.There are more rice eaters in the country and the government should encourage rice farming by raising the procurement price, which will also contribute in reducing hunger.

SEZs VS Farming Lands

2007-10-18T21:28:00.001-04:00

An economically booming India has approved proposals for at least 180 Special Economic Zones but has been hit by protests in several states because many of the approved sites are on prime agricultural land. India is a land of farmers, the land provides livelihood security for 65 per cent of the people, and the farmers provide food security for 1 billion. Economic development has resulted in loss of agricultural land to industrial projects. Policies driven by corporate globalization are pushing farmers off the land, and peasants out of agriculture. This is not a natural evolutionary process, It is a imposed process. The farmers are being forced to leave their fertile lands promising jobs in the concrete SEZ jungle but what the government fails to realize is that these farmers are already self sufficient and are in a way also helping feed others in the country.

Lands under cultivation are shrinking, as a result, India's food grains harvest is far from rising to meet the demands of a growing population.Wheat production has come down from 76 million tonnes (MT) in 1999-2000 to 74 MT this year. Substantially below the 76 MT target, it has impelled the government to import 5 MT of the grain for the second consecutive year.Majority of farmers of India is looking of their land sovereignty and food sovereignty. A food secured India is in the hands of the farmers.

I am not against industry and progress but please, spare our agriculture fields. It is stupidity to take over fertile lands for Industrial development.I strongly agree that industrial development is important and that SEZs can help in this cause. However government should plan the SEZ, where acres of land available which are not fit for agricultural.

U.S.TV Network Presents "The Dying Fields"

2007-09-07T23:08:00.001-04:00

(source:PBS.org)Thanks to PBS.org
India has increasingly embraced free trade and, since 2002, has had one of the world's fastest growing economies. But only images of this new prosperity have reached the impoverished rural areas where two thirds of India's 1.1 billion people live. Left behind by India's soaring economic boom is Vidarbha, a region of hilly forests in the middle of India. It used to be known as India's cotton belt - but now captures headlines as its suicide belt. In 2006, 1,044 suicides were reported in Vidarbha alone - that's one suicide every eight hours.
Vidarbha farmers face a grim reality of crop failures, sinking global cotton prices and crushing debts. Farmers in default at the bank frequently resort to illegal moneylenders who charge up to 100 percent interest. And, the government safety net - that once kept cotton prices closer to the cost of production - has all but disappeared. Under India's new free trade policies, Vidarbha's 3.2 million cotton farmers - most of them small landholders - must compete in a global market that includes formidable, often subsidized rivals, including American cotton farmers.

Farmer's journalist wins Magsaysay award

2007-08-01T10:42:00.000-04:00

Palagummi Sainath has won the 2007 Raman Magsaysay award, widely regarded as Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in recognition of his passionate reporting about the condition of India's rural poors.While announcing the award, the Board of Trustee of the Raman Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) said that Sainath, who has been writing on social issues like farmer suicide in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra is among the seven individuals being awarded for their contribution in various fields.
"In electing Palagummi Sainath to receive the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the board of trustees recognizes his passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India's consciousness, moving the nation to action," the citation said.. adding the award will be presented in a ceremony here on August 31.
(source:Hindu.com)

Sorrowful video on farmer’s fate

2007-07-11T21:23:00.001-04:00

Farmers' widows

2007-07-05T22:14:00.001-04:00

Farmers in India have committed suicide because of drought and the mounting debts. Now their families are helpless and hapless. The farmer’s widows are in extreme distress and suffering with serious problems. They have been harassed by money lenders who charge exorbitant interest rates. They often demand the partial repayment. Some of the places the moneylenders are forcing the widows for sexual exploitation. Their children are in high rate of malnutrition, high incidence of farm labor lack of proper education.
I trust these sorts of troubles may lead to suicides of farmer’s widows and orphanage to their children. I would like to suggest remedies that the Government should provide subsidized food, health and social security for the ill-fated farmer’s widows and their children. We should reinforce their lives to self-reliance.

Wonderful World Bank

2007-06-27T23:14:00.000-04:00

The World Bank said on Wednesday(06.27.07)it had approved a $600 million loan for India to help it revamp thousands of ailing rural cooperative banks and fight village poverty through cheap loans.

"Better access to finance for India's rural poor is absolutely critical for higher rural growth, for reducing inequality and ultimately, alleviating poverty," Isabel Guerrero, the bank's country director for India, said in a statement.About 87 percent of marginal Indian farmers and 70 percent of small farmers have no access to credit from a formal financial institution, the World Bank said, adding they often have to rely on "extortionate" money lenders.
Thousands of farmers have committed suicide in recent years across India's sprawling western and southern plateau because they could not repay loans taken for their crops.The absence of cheaper credit prevents farmers from adopting the latest technology, or buying quality seeds and fertilizers.

A World Bank release said 12 states, which have signed the memoranda of understanding with the Government of India and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural development include, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar,Gujarat,Harayana,Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.
(source:worldbank.org)

After long Journey of mangoes....

2007-04-29T21:49:00.001-04:00

The first batch 600 kgs of the choicest Alphonso and Kesari mangoes grown in Gujarat and Maharashtra reached New York, touching the US shores after 18 years.The mangoes were dispatched from Mumbai in the presence of officials from US Consulate and APEDA and senior scientists of BARC.The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and Board of Radiation and Isotope Technology (BRIT) received a green signal from US quarantine regulators on April 25.
The US had stopped import of mangoes as it felt Indian farmers used too much pesticides, according to Agricultural Products Export Development Authority (APEDA).However, it has been revived after US President George W. Bush's visit to India last year.The US Department of Agriculture has finally decided to grant market access for Indian mangoes, thus paving the way for start of mango imports from India to the US.
Initially, India is likely to export Alphonso, Kesar and Banganapalli -- the early maturing mango varieties. Langra, Chausa, Mallika and Dussheri are proposed for exports in the latter part of the season.Demand for mangoes in the US is strong, with a market size estimated at about 25,000 tonnes, according to US officials.

(source:IBNlive.com)

Agriculture Insurance Company of India

2007-04-22T22:26:00.001-04:00

Agriculture Insurance Company of India (AIC) is an exclusive organisation set up for implementing National Agricultural Insurance Scheme(NAIS). The company will devise and implement other insurance schemes relating to Agriculture and allied subjects.

Now Agriculture Insurance Company of India (AIC) would come out with a scheme during the coming Kharif season in June in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Karnataka to provide better cover to farmers for crop failures. Thanks to AIC.
(Source: The Hindu)
(More about Agriculture Insurance Company of India (AIC))

Cold Chain Summit-2007

2007-03-24T20:56:00.000-04:00

Cold Chain Summit-2007, organized jointly by Ministries of Agriculture and Food Processing Industries in partnership with CII.Besides representatives of industries, participating Ministries and State governments, farmers also participated in the Summit

Union Agriculture Minister, Shri Sharad Pawar argued strongly in favour of cold chain infrastructure throughout the country, starting with pre-cooling facility in rural areas."The economic impact of cold chains will be felt in the villages in more than one way-farmers will get better realization for their produce since the quality and longevity will be higher and pre-cooling in rural areas will create direct and indirect employment leading to overall upliftment of the entire villages which are strong in horticultural production." Shri Pawar said.

Secretary, Agriculture and Cooperation, Dr. P.K. Mishra, who earlier chaired the policy session of the Summit, said that the cold chain infrastructure being envisaged should utilized the benefits of the terminal markets scheme of the government. The road-map suggested by the Summit should lead to a scenario in which up to 20% of the perishable form produce enters the cold chain. This will not only help farmers and the industry, it will contribute significantly to the economy, he said.

India’s cold chain infrastructure will require at least Rs 18,000-20,000 crore investment in the next five years. The industry expects the government to provide 40-50% of the total investment through viability gap funding. “India produces 140 million tonnes of fruits and vegetables and would cross the 300-million-tonne mark in the next five years. An investment of about Rs 18,000-20,000 crore in the next five years would be required to meet about 30% of that capacity,” says Daljit Mirchandani, president, Ingersoll-Rand (India) and chairman, CII Initiative on Cold Chain Infrastructure Development.

(Source: news.moneycontrol.com)

Joseph Curiale

2007-02-19T15:16:00.002-05:00

Joseph Curiale is a writer, poet,photographer and a music composer.Today,he is working to improve the lives of poor farmer widows in Andhra pradesh.Joseph Curiale, collected donations from his friends in the US and other countries for the family members of farmers who committed suicide due to increasing debts and failure of crops in Andhra Pradesh.Curiale promised further assistance to the poor farmers by collecting more donations from his friends in the US, Singapore, Malaysia, and other parts of the world.
I appreciate his efforts towards Indian farmer's families. May God bless his endeavours.
(josephcurialefoundation.com)
(josephcuriale.com)
(About Josephcuriale)

Brief note on Farmers Suicides

2007-02-11T20:50:00.001-05:00

The crisis small farmers in India face as a result of globalization and government apathy. For the past ten years farmers have been committing suicide in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, Andhrapradesh, and Karnataka as in many other parts of India. More than 1.5 lakh farmers have committed suicide across the country in the last decade due to financial distress, as per government’s report to the Parliament of India.
The main act of this tragedy started in mid 60's with the introduction of the Green Revolution. Earlier, farmers saved their own seeds and practiced organic farming. The money they invested on their farms was very little. But with Green Revolution farmers were asked to buy seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, forcing them to borrow, mostly from private money lenders at exorbitant interest rates. With every farming season their debt increased and over the course of years it led to a loan trap. The second phase of this tragic situation can be directly attributed to 'globalization'. Under the WTO (World Trade Organization) regime, which favors wealthy industrialized countries, the Indian government has eliminated or reduced its support to farmers, while Indian agriculture is invaded by multinationals.
As per National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), nearly half of the farming households in the country are reported to be indebted” The two most important reasons for taking a loan is for “capital expenditure in farm business” and “current expenditure in farm business”. This has a relation with the increasing costs of cultivation, increased need for expenditure in farming and also lack of ability to repay due to adverse market conditions.
Out of the total number of cultivator households in the country, only 27% receive credit from formal sources and 22% from informal sources, as per the Finance Minister of India, showcasing the “financial exclusion” of a vast majority of farming households.
Every farming household in the country on an average has a debt of Rs. 12,585/-.

RBI Helping distressed farmers

2007-01-15T21:13:00.001-05:00

I express my heartful thanks to the Reserve Bank Of India.
A recent directive issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to commercial banks should bring cheers to distressed farmers who have been affected by calamities. As per this directive, farmers will be offered a one-time settlement (OTS) of their dues and not only that, they will be offered fresh loans thereafter.The directive is in line with the recommendations mentioned in the mid-term review of RBI’s annual policy for 2006-07. These recommendations are made by a working group constituted by RBI to suggest measures for assisting distressed farmers.
So far it used to be the practice that banks would either reschedule or restructure dues of farmers but such consecutive rescheduling would not improve the lot of farmers. Therefore, for the first time, RBI has asked banks to devise OTS for such
farmers and make them eligible for taking fresh loans.
(Courtecy:expressindia.com)
(Please see the RBI notification)

Protect our Tobbaco Board

2006-11-29T12:16:00.001-05:00

Andhra Pradesh is the largest producer of Tobacco. Guntur (Andhra Pradesh) is the Head quarters of Tobacco Board. The board was incorporated in 1976 to support the farmers and traders in the view of market demand and production. It has been supporting farmers in all activities like supply inputs (seeds) with the help of CTRI and ITC, supply of Coal for curing tobacco, Pesticides and fertilizers at competitive prices, arranging farm credit to tobacco growers, facilitates Group personal accident policy and Barn insurance policies, moreover auction system to support the farmers with minimum support price and Correct weighment and prompt payment.
Thanks to Tobbacoboard http://www.indiantobacco.com.

Interestingly, the Centre has kept the Tobacco Board in limbo since last year by not appointing board members to manage its affairs. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reportedly directed that the board should be abolished, thereby dismantling the state's interest in the crop.
This is an anti farmer reform as I feel. I strongly protest these liberalisation policies. Is there any political linkage or any lobbying…?. I don’t accept such a bad fate to Tobacco Board. So my dear farmers… we should fight for protect our supportive Tobacco Board
(Courtecy :Times of India)

Heart wrenching

2006-11-27T18:18:00.001-05:00

Farmers turned to construcion labor

2006-11-23T16:42:00.001-05:00

Palamoor( Andhra Pradesh) farmers are migrating to urban areas as construction labor.It has been caused by Economic instability,severe drought condition, moreover Problems are complex and policy-driven.
The state Government is yet to take strides in irrigation sector, though it speaks of a policy on papers.The government has to start the rural credit system to support the farmers and building rural employment to keep away from migration.

In my openion " If a village loses its quality farmers to the cities as labor, it’s disastrous for us and the government. It’s like India losing all her quality professionals to the USA"
(Sorrowful documentary in Google Videos. Great job of ZeeTV)

Mr.Lucky Ali

2006-10-26T11:32:00.000-04:00

Indian farmers for once could have luck on their side with well known singer Lucky Ali singing for their cause. Ali sang at a concert in New Delhi on May10th ,2006 in Siri Fort Auditorium as a part of 'Oxfam Make Trade Fair ' campaign, urging people to sign a petition to save Indian farmers from exploitation. The Oxfam campaign is battling against what they term as unfair WTO agricultural trade rules that force developing South Asian countries to open their markets for foreign farmers to bring in their produce. The resultant cheap imports force Indian farmers to sell their produce at low rates leading to rise in poverty levels.

Ali's association with Oxfam has led him to field trips in various villages and one-to-one interaction with poverty-stricken farmers. Ali said, "Indian farmers don't get any representation from the agricultural sector, while America and EU go all the way to provide subsidies to their farmers which almost covers their cost of production.

Being a farmer himself, Ali believes it is his duty to stand for this humanitarian cause, speak up for the Indian farmers and spark motivation in them. "This is the only way to save our farmers from committing suicide, as agriculture is not a business in India but a way of life," he added.

Agrarian distress

2006-10-09T15:16:00.001-04:00

FOR WANT OF A PAIR OF BULLOCKS: Bheemrao Manigempure, a small farmer of Kadlabad village in Bidar district, Karnataka, with his son Shivasharanappa and daughter-in-law Saraswati. While the two men pull the plough, she helps them, sowing, de-weeding, or adding fertiliser and pesticides.
The family has a huge loan to repay. Bheemrao owns a small tract of land, which is anything but fertile. '`Any one else would have hanged himself by now,'' is how he explains his life. Reforms mean nothing to them.
The State Agriculture Minister and district in-charge says his ``Government understands that Bidar is one of the poorest districts in the country. We are trying to help the families that need immediate assistance.'' The question is when will this help come. Bidar district is part of the semi-arid and drought-prone belt of northern Karnataka and has been susceptible to periodic droughts. (Courtecy : The Hindubusinessline)

Who is Responsible for this

2006-10-08T21:34:00.005-04:00