Skip to main content

The plight of farmers and farming in India...and elsewhere

This piece, "Save our annadatas" from The Asian Age, deals with the ever-growing plight of farmers in India, but also goes on to make the point of how global behemoths, like Monsanto and Pepsi are creating problems for farmers in America, and in many cases leading to their suicide.

"The peasants and farmers of India are the most resilient and independent community I have ever known. They have defended their rights and fought injustice and bounced back after every flood, drought and crop failure.

Why then are they giving up on life today? Why are they committing suicide in such large numbers? Addressing these questions has become a critical survival imperative not only for farmers, but also for all of us who rely on the food they put on our tables.

The epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India started after 1995, when agriculture policies were changed under the pressure of the World Trade Organisation agreements that ushered in the era of corporate globalisation. When Lee Kyung-hae, a South Korean farmer, killed himself at a WTO protest in Cancun, Mexico, in 2003. He wore a sign that read, “WTO kills farmers”.

Corporate globalisation has brought four tectonic shifts to Indian agriculture as well, setting it on the path that’s leading to devastation."

 ****

"The epidemic of farmers’ suicides began in the cotton belt where Monsanto, American biotechnology corporation, has monopolised the cottonseed supply with its genetically modified organism Bt cotton. Over the past year, suicides have spread to potato farmers in West Bengal who are growing potatoes for Pepsi Co."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pentagon's eye-popping spending....and waste!

Only a gigantic bureaucracy could get away with spending of such dimensions - and the amazing waste involved in part of that ginormous spend.   Think US Pentagon..... "From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades.  Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...
Post a Comment
Read more

What does a no-fly zone actually mean?

As some countries consider imposing a no-fly zone in relation to Libya, the pertinent question must be what does that mean and entail? FP provides the answers: "It depends on the circumstances. There are two primary types of no-fly zones imposed by air forces. The first is imposed by one military over another, while the two sides are at war. In practice, this type of no-fly zone amounts to a warning from one side that it will engage the other's aircraft if they are spotted in a given territory. The second type, more applicable to the situation in Libya, is when an outside power possessing overwhelming air superiority restricts flights over a given country in order to discourage an internal conflict or humanitarian crisis. This is a relatively recent tactic, which was used most famously in Bosnia and Iraq during the 1990s. No-fly zones are often a compromise in situations where the international community is demanding a response to ongoing violence, but full military interven...
6 comments
Read more