Post by franklin on Jul 13, 2010 17:11:22 GMT -5
Haiti had a lot of problems but its not a coincidence that massive hunger problems occurred after they were forced to cut tariffs when Bill Clinton was president of the United States
Of course increasing yield is a great thing but why is there a situation where all these governments find it necessary to buy up all this food for the sole purpose of keeping these farmers in business? But then when the government doesn't buy the food things get even worse!
This article also talks about how the farmers in India had a hard time getting loans. One would think an ideal situation would be that the farmer could get a loan for whatever he/she needed and then take the produce to market.
I tell you when the Chinese rural areas are empty with the whole population living in cities, when the last Indian farmer commits suicide, when the island of Haiti is no longer inhabited, Brazil's tariffs are cut and Brazil is flooded with cheap produce, and the United States invades Russia we will be in the New World Order
"Suicides on increase in India, blame put on debt and stress"
Electronic page 6:
www.zcommunications.org/farmers-suicides-by-devinder-sharma.pdf
[Food procurement operations, linked to the announcement of assured prices for agricultural commodities, were the two planks of the 'famine-avoidance' strategy that India had adopted in the wake of the green revolution. Whether the economists like it or not, the fact remains that a combination of these policies helped India to emerge from the dark days of 'ship-to-mouth' existence. And why does the IMF, the World Bank and WTO oppose it? The answer is simple. India's massive food procurement operations are coming in the way of the expansion of the food trade that the United States and the European Union are looking for. And if the US doesn't find an assured food market in a country as huge as India, with one sixth of the world's population, the chances are that its own agriculture will collapse under the artificial weight of its own federal subsidies.
Produce and perish: At the height of the paddy harvesting season in September 2000, hundreds of thousands of farmers in the frontline agricultural states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, in northwest India, had waited for over three weeks before the government agencies were forced to purchase the excess stocks. For three weeks, farmers sat patiently over heaps of paddy in the grain markets. At least a hundred farmers, unable to bear the economic burden that comes with crop cultivation, preferred to commit suicide bydrinking pesticides. In Andhra Pradesh, in south India, there were no buyers for the five million tonnes paddy surplus. Even in the poverty-stricken belt of Bihar and Orissa, in north-central India, farmers waited endlessly for the buyers.
Farmer's suicides are perhaps a reflection on the breakdown of institutional safety nets, which in the past have cushioned the impact of agrarian crisis. The state government of Andhra Pradesh has publicly asked farmers not to produce more paddy. In Punjab, the citadel of the green revolution, farmers are being asked to shift from staple foods like wheat and paddy to cash crops. And yet, agriculture scientists want farmers to go on producing more foodgrains keeping the deficit projections for the year 2015 in mind. There appears to be something terribly wrong with the way the scientists, industry and the planners blindly support biotechnological breakthroughs in the name of feeding the world, whereas political masters in the developing world are actually asking farmers not to produce more.
What lies ahead is frightening. Committed to the WTO, the government has in reality begun to remove trade barriers much in advance. Take the case of edible oils, the government has reduced the custom duties further thereby opening up the country for massive imports. From a position of strength, India has in the past decade turned into a major importer of edible oils regardless of the impact such cheap imports have had on the livelihood security of millions of oilseed farmers. With the blue revolution already sucked dry by the aquaculture industry, the yellow revolution in oilseeds turning colourless, and the white revolution under attack from the private dairy industry and cheap imports, all eyes are now set on dismantling the gains of the much-acclaimed green revolution.
Consider the following situation: At the time of Independence in 1947, India had about five million farms. By the early 1980s, the number had risen to about 90 million, and the estimate is that there are now some 110 million farms in the country. Every fourth farmer in the world today is an Indian, and nearly half the country's land is being utilised for crop production. Already the population has crossed the one billion mark. At the same time, India also has 20 per cent of the world's animal population. Given the dismal nutrition standards, more than 320 million people, mostly women and children suffer from chronic hunger. And that too at a time when the grain silos are bursting at the seams]
Of course increasing yield is a great thing but why is there a situation where all these governments find it necessary to buy up all this food for the sole purpose of keeping these farmers in business? But then when the government doesn't buy the food things get even worse!
This article also talks about how the farmers in India had a hard time getting loans. One would think an ideal situation would be that the farmer could get a loan for whatever he/she needed and then take the produce to market.
I tell you when the Chinese rural areas are empty with the whole population living in cities, when the last Indian farmer commits suicide, when the island of Haiti is no longer inhabited, Brazil's tariffs are cut and Brazil is flooded with cheap produce, and the United States invades Russia we will be in the New World Order
"Suicides on increase in India, blame put on debt and stress"
Electronic page 6:
www.zcommunications.org/farmers-suicides-by-devinder-sharma.pdf
[Food procurement operations, linked to the announcement of assured prices for agricultural commodities, were the two planks of the 'famine-avoidance' strategy that India had adopted in the wake of the green revolution. Whether the economists like it or not, the fact remains that a combination of these policies helped India to emerge from the dark days of 'ship-to-mouth' existence. And why does the IMF, the World Bank and WTO oppose it? The answer is simple. India's massive food procurement operations are coming in the way of the expansion of the food trade that the United States and the European Union are looking for. And if the US doesn't find an assured food market in a country as huge as India, with one sixth of the world's population, the chances are that its own agriculture will collapse under the artificial weight of its own federal subsidies.
Produce and perish: At the height of the paddy harvesting season in September 2000, hundreds of thousands of farmers in the frontline agricultural states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, in northwest India, had waited for over three weeks before the government agencies were forced to purchase the excess stocks. For three weeks, farmers sat patiently over heaps of paddy in the grain markets. At least a hundred farmers, unable to bear the economic burden that comes with crop cultivation, preferred to commit suicide bydrinking pesticides. In Andhra Pradesh, in south India, there were no buyers for the five million tonnes paddy surplus. Even in the poverty-stricken belt of Bihar and Orissa, in north-central India, farmers waited endlessly for the buyers.
Farmer's suicides are perhaps a reflection on the breakdown of institutional safety nets, which in the past have cushioned the impact of agrarian crisis. The state government of Andhra Pradesh has publicly asked farmers not to produce more paddy. In Punjab, the citadel of the green revolution, farmers are being asked to shift from staple foods like wheat and paddy to cash crops. And yet, agriculture scientists want farmers to go on producing more foodgrains keeping the deficit projections for the year 2015 in mind. There appears to be something terribly wrong with the way the scientists, industry and the planners blindly support biotechnological breakthroughs in the name of feeding the world, whereas political masters in the developing world are actually asking farmers not to produce more.
What lies ahead is frightening. Committed to the WTO, the government has in reality begun to remove trade barriers much in advance. Take the case of edible oils, the government has reduced the custom duties further thereby opening up the country for massive imports. From a position of strength, India has in the past decade turned into a major importer of edible oils regardless of the impact such cheap imports have had on the livelihood security of millions of oilseed farmers. With the blue revolution already sucked dry by the aquaculture industry, the yellow revolution in oilseeds turning colourless, and the white revolution under attack from the private dairy industry and cheap imports, all eyes are now set on dismantling the gains of the much-acclaimed green revolution.
Consider the following situation: At the time of Independence in 1947, India had about five million farms. By the early 1980s, the number had risen to about 90 million, and the estimate is that there are now some 110 million farms in the country. Every fourth farmer in the world today is an Indian, and nearly half the country's land is being utilised for crop production. Already the population has crossed the one billion mark. At the same time, India also has 20 per cent of the world's animal population. Given the dismal nutrition standards, more than 320 million people, mostly women and children suffer from chronic hunger. And that too at a time when the grain silos are bursting at the seams]