India-Agriculture
Madhusree Chatterjee
New Delhi
Gene Campaign, a
non-profit mission to improve the lot of the Indian farmers in the country’s
hinterland, is connecting to the youth of urban India— the country’s biggest
food consumer segment — to open a dialogue and discussion about the ways to
encourage farmers to nurture better yields, preserve traditional agricultural knowledge
systems and become sustainable to meet the global standards of food so that
India can become food sufficient.
The chairperson of the
organization, Suman Sahai, who was conferred one of the highest civilian awards
in India Padma Shri in 2011 for her contribution to agricultural research and
advocacy, says she is trying to steer the movement to a new target audience by involving
the youth to raise awareness about the country’s farms, agriculture and quality
of food grown by preserving the traditional agricultural wealth, gene banks and
helping the poor farmers overcome the constraints posed by resources.
The campaign is
extremely relevant among the youth today, says Sahai since “it deals with
issues of food, nutrition and livelihoods, it works to get farmers a better deal than they have today so that India can be a food secure country, its people having access to adequate and nutritious food,".Sahai says.
The relevance is in the backdrop of the fact that India is home to the largest number of hungry people in the world and its malnutrition statistics are worse than the poorest of
African states. The young people must engage with these issues since they must determine the country they want to inherit and lead. As tomorrow’s leaders, they must want a country that is food secure, proud and self reliant. They should remember that a country that is not food secure, is not secure in any way. It cannot
be secured by guns,”
Sahai says.
The movement that began in 1993 as an awareness campaign against
the “negative” import of the Dunkel Draft for India after the Uruguay Round of
GATT negotiation on the protection of plant varieties and patenting. The Gene
Campaign sent out cards and letters to likeminded “food and farm campaigners”
to move the government against patenting. Genetic resources belong to humanity
and “their rights could not be transferred to individuals”.
The inspiration for the movement was Jayaprakash Narayan’s
student agitation that begun in Bihar (that eventually overthrew the government
at the Centre). Many of the initial contacts of the historic students’
movements with a socialist tilt became the core support group of Gene Campaign.
Preserving the country’s agro-diversity and traditional knowledge systems are
the focus of the campaign. It collects seeds from farmers in the hinterland and
stores them in special gene banks across the country, Sahai says.
The campaign has been largely responsible for raising a national
debate about the dangers of seed patents and its threat to food security. Its sustained
struggle for farmers’ rights culminated into a legislation, “Protection of
Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights” that granted legal rights to farmers. The
campaign has been fighting the patent against basmati rice.
“We advocate proper regulation for stringent bio-diversity testing
for GM Products. A writ petition filed in 2004 in the Supreme Court appealed
for a national bio-technology policy and a change in the regulatory structure for
GM crops to make it more technologically competent,” Sahai says.
The campaign requested a moratorium on GM crops till the regulatory
structures were improved. “GM technology in the country is being implemented in
a careless and biased manner… It is dangerous,” Sahai says. It is dedicated to
preserving the rights of farmers, traditional agriculture practices, knowledge
and indigenous seed pools.
The agricultural sector in India for the past 10 years has been
in a throes of a complex crisis — brought about by disparate forces. While the
government has increased subsidies on farms to protect the country’s economic
lifeline, it has failed to streamline the distribution of largesse to
beneficiaries at the grassroots, leaving millions of marginal farmers in the
heartland states (like UP, Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh) out of the
purview of the benefits. This has created an imbalance in the agricultural
sector with the emergence of two distinct groups — one who have access to
better farming methods and sops and one that is still languishing on the
sidelines with small acreage and poor yields.
Coupled with this is a sustained attempt by large -multinational
corporations to push genetically modified gene banks (engineered seeds and
saplings) for enhanced output and better nutrition value — a claim that
has rung hollow in quality checks worldwide.
Scientists say while
genetically modified seeds increases yield, it runs the risk of serious health
hazards. Moreover, an inflationary market with spiraling price indices
across sectors have pushed the poor Indian farmer — especially in the
hinterland where the sizes of holdings are small and resources scarce — to the
brink in regions and states like Vidarbha (Maharashtra), Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and rural West Bengal.
In the last two
decades, the cotton growers of Vidarbha have been plagued by “debt and
drought-related distress deaths” while thousands of farmers elsewhere have
switched to alternative livelihoods. The quality of produce has taken a
drubbing in the process together with the loss of traditional farming
practices, seed varieties, ancient living cultures and cuisines.
Chemicals fertilizers and pesticides have replaced organic manure and
traditional detoxification methods on the farms — taking the soil’s output
capacity far below the optimal. The situation has been compounded by a changing
climate, global warming, erratic rain cycles and socio-political uncertainties
in states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh where Maoist insurgency has destroyed
farmlands and agriculture.
The market networks
have collapsed and a vicious exploitation and debt nexus perpetuated by middlemen
has deprived farmers of fair prices for their produce in the markets for
decades. As a result, the food on our platter has failed to live up to
international standards .
The National Food
Security Bill 2013 (Right to Food Bill) signed September 12, 2013 that aims to
provide subsidized food to two-third of India’s 1.2 billion people do not
factor in the plight of the small and marginal farmers. It neither comes clear
on “deserving” remuneration to farmers. The status of genetically-modified food
remains ambiguous — without any specific curbs on its introduction and
proliferation.
Interventions must
come from within in crises-riven societies, development economists contend. In
a country where nearly 40 per cent of the 1.2 billion people is below the age
of 35, the youth has to be the mobilising force to spread the word about the
“deplorable condition” of Indian farmers, farming and the “alarm bells” ringing
in the food sector.
If the rising prices
of onions are a yardstick, the crisis only sets to deepen instead of mitigating
unless a proactive citizenry deliberates on the nation’s farm anatomy. The
urban youth can engage and offer effective solutions to bring the issues to the
centre-stage — acting as intervention and advocacy tools to create new linkages
between the urban consumers and the farmers in the villages.
“The Gene Campaign is of the view that the
new food law is not going to bring food security. The new law
is just a rehashed version of the public distribution system and the old ration shop system with all their
shortcomings and corruption. Instead of fostering self
reliance, the food law tries to make beggars ofalmost 70 percent Indians by giving them highly subsidized food., No food security program can succeed if farmers are not strengthened and enabled to produce food. There
is no mention of farmers in the new Food Security Act,”
Sahai says.
Sahai puts the onus of
the advocacy to bring about a tangible change in the agricultural sector on consumers
in the city who form the largest consumers’ base. “Consumers in city should
keep five simple points in mind about Indian agriculture and its significance,”
Sahai says.
Farmers grow the food we eat. If they did not produce food we would have nothing to eat.
Farmers are among the poorest and hungriest people in our country,”
the food campaigner points out. That is perverse and unjust
that those who feed us are themselves hungry.
“If young people would make visits to farmers fields, they
would understand the enormous mental and physical work that goes into growing our food. Agriculture is a science
and farmers are scientists.
There are no rice and wheat plants found in the forest. These are not gifts of nature but the gifts that farmers have given us. They selected wild plants and developed thousands of food crops from them…rice, wheat, maize, beans,
vegetables Shepherd women mastered the art of milking cattle. They found ways to convert milk into curd,
paneed and ghee…in a way, shepherd women started the dairy industry”,
Sahai says.
Some Gene
Campaign advocacies
Rice of India: Agro-biodiveristy has
been Gene Campaign’s main focus area. The decade-long work by the campaign to
collect, characterize and conserve the agro-biodiversity of rice, Sahai claims
to have a collection of more 2,300 varieties of indigenous rice gene displays
in her collection. The campaign has been honoured with the Genome Saviour Award
in 2009 for the agro-biodiversity project.
Zero Energy Gene Seed Bank: Conserving traditional
varieties of seeds for future use became necessary with climate change disrupting
patterns of agriculture. Gene Campaign established a network of zero energy
gene seed banks that run without electronic energy. The banks are simple well-aired
rooms that are moisture and light proof. Extensive manual labour keeps these
rooms in storage conditions all round the year.
The seeds of traditional varieties of rice and other crops like legumes,
oilseeds and vegetables are collected from the farmers in remote villages and
conversed in the zero energy banks for future use. The information about the
seeds and the characteristics of the genetic crop varieties are documented for
resource guidance. The farmers access the seeds three times a year.
Genetically Modified Crops: The Gene Campaign
Advocates proper regulation and stringent bio-safety testing for GM products. A
writ petition filed in 2004 in the Supreme Court appealed for a national
bio-technology policy and to change the regulatory structure for GM crops to make
it more technologically competent. At the same time, it requested for a
moratorium on GM crops till the regulatory structures were improved. The
campaign holds that the GM technology in the country is being implemented careless
and biased manner. It is dangerous.
Indigenous knowledge: In the last two
decades, Gene Campaign has tapped into the knowledge pools guarded by the
Indian farming communities about their seeds, crops, methods of farming and
useful qualities of the crops they grow. The campaign has since been working for
the recognition of indigenous knowledge as an important technology and its
potential for increasing incomes for rural and Adivasi community. The campaign
has successfully lobbied to keep medicines and products derived indigenous
knowledge out of the purview of patents so that they can be exempted from
patent law. The work is with the Indian
government as classified material.
Household
Nutrition: Gene Campaign has helped farmers set up homestead gardens with
green vegetables and fruit bearing trees to provide supplementary food to the
families all the year round. The campaign runs a programme to revive the use of
underutilized and valid foods such as locally found tubers and leafy greens for
diet diversity
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