Indo-American Knowledge Initiative ON AGRICULTURE - WHITHER INDIAN FARMER

8/8/2019 Indo-American Knowledge Initiative ON AGRICULTURE - WHITHER INDIAN FARMER

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INDO-US KNOWLEDGE INITIATIVEON AGRICULTURE

WHITHER INDIAN FARMER?

Organised by:

Centre for Susta inable Agriculture &Centre for World Solidarity

National Workshop onDecember 8th & 9th, 2006

Hyderabad


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FOREWORD

A lot of debate is raging on in India regarding a bilateral deal between the United Statesof America and India related to nuclear energy for civilian purposes. Stakes are so highthat political parties are talking about and preparing themselves for mid-term elections.This deal had been announced in July 2005 when the Indian Prime Minister was visitingthe USA.

What is interesting to note is that another deal that the two countries got into during thesame visit by the Indian PM, called the US-India Knowledge Initiative on AgriculturalEducation, Research, Service and Commercial Linkages and popularly known as the

KIA or AKI (Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture or Agricultural Knowledge Initiative) hardly gets a mention in any debates. This deal seems to have bypassed the attention ofpolitical leaders and media analysts even though it seems to have the potential to impactmillions of poor producers in India more directly than the nuclear deal.

This booklet contains (1) an open letter written to the Prime Minister of India, highlightingthe various concerns related to the KIA, endorsed by prominent farmers leaders,environmental and social activists and agriculture scientists, amongst others; and (2) theproceedings of a national workshop organized in Hyderabad in December 2006 by Centrefor World Solidarity, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and Knowledge in Civil Societyforum called Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture Whither IndianFarmer?.

While the first Green Revolution in India, supported by American aid agencies andcommercial interests went largely unquestioned by civil society groups, the same storycannot be repeated with the second green revolution that the agriculture establishment istalking about. The ecological, economic and socio-political implications are fairly predictableand tilted against Indian farmers and their interests.

This booklet is a small attempt by Centre for Sustainable Agriculture to present the concernsof well-thinking individuals and institutions who wish to protect the interests of Indian

farmers and their resources, in the form of the proceedings of the national workshop andthe subsequent Open Letter to the Prime Minister. Presentations made by the speakers inthe workshop and the papers submitted by them can be obtained by contacting CSA.More official information on the KIA can be obtained from the website of DARE (Departmentof Agricultural Research & Education, Government of India at www.dare.nic.in).

Hyderabad, September 2007


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CONTENTS

Open letter to Prime Minister, September 2007

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL WORKSHOP

Introductory Session

Overview of the KIA

Need for and Implications of the KIA, drawing lessons from Green RevolutionSimilarities & Differences between Indian and American Agriculture: Need for the KIA.

The Green Revolution & its aftermath: Indian agriculture at cross-roads

Green Revolution [GR]: Lessons for any future GR from a Science Studies perspective

HRD & Institutional Capacity Building (Agricultural Research & Education)

Agricultural Research & Education in India Need for a revamp

Agriculture Research in India Farmers Needs & Knowledge

Innovative Indo-US Collaborations: Missed Opportunities

Emerging Technologies, Including Transgenic Agriculture

Transgenic Agriculture experience so far in India & implications on Indian farmers

Emerging Technologies and IPR Implications

Food Processing, Byproduct Utilisation & Biofuels

Biofuels Vs Food: KIA Proposals and Implications for Indian farmers

Implications of KIA proposals on farmers in the sphere of Marketing

Water Management

The proposals on Water Management in KIA, need & implications and progress so far

Drought Proofing & Indian Agriculture Relevance and Implications of the KIA

Way Forward

ANNEXURES: Workshop Programme, Participants & Introduction to Chairs & Speakers

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ToSeptember 20, 2007

Dr Manmohan Singh,Honble Prime Minister,

Government of India.

Dear Sir,

Sub: Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Research, Services andCommercial Linkages Demand for an immediate hold on implementation

Respected Sir, this letter is being written to you after looking at the Indo-US Knowledge Initiativeon Agricultural Education, Research, Services & Commercial Linkages (being referred to as theKIA or AKI) in close detail, after extensive discussions held amongst agriculture scientists, farmersleaders, civil society representatives, science policy experts and others on the implications of KIA

on Indian farmers, especially small and marginal farmers. Through this letter, we would like toconvey our deep concerns related to this bilateral deal that you had signed with the US President.

The current agrarian crisis and farmers livelihoods:

The KIA hardly makes a mention of the deep agrarian crisis present all over rural India today. Infact, there is very little mention of farmers in the KIA proposals. Where the current problems inIndian agriculture are mentioned, they are described as exciting challenges and opportunitieswe wonder for whom? How can a high-profile bilateral agreement coming at a juncture of sucha crisis ignore the crisis and fundamental ways of addressing it?

The agrarian crisis in India is to be seen as a livelihoods crisis the government has to answerwhy agri-business corporations are not in a crisis while farmers are attempting to commit suicidesin thousands, if it is truly a farming crisis? The agri-industry is in fact posting growth figures thatare impressive.

Increased production and productivity from farmers will not come if the State takes away theirvery dignity, their resources, their interest in their occupation, erodes all support systems andleaves them only with heavy debt burdens. Productivity cannot just be a factor of a miracletechnology that someone introduces but a factor that is closely related to farmers self-worth,

dignity and morale.

The Indian economy (which is seen as the only domain of development) is appearing to declareits independence from Indian farming and the distress of farmers because the contribution ofagriculture to the GDP is going down and your government measures development only in economicgrowth and GDP terms. We need to get out of this framework to understand farming better andthe sustenance it provides to millions of lives.

What farmers need is income security, especially given that the liberalized trade policies thatsubsequent governments have pursued have pushed them into unfair disadvantage from allsides, even as technologies promoted by the NARS and agri-corporations are unsustainable.


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Our analysis also shows that the KIA proposals are certainly not in tandem with other dominantpolicy discourse related to agriculture in India now, be it the Planning Commissions approachpaper to the 11th Plan or the draft Kisan Policy drafted by the National Commission on Farmers[NCF]. The Planning Commission and the NCF have at least run a semblance of consultativeprocesses while drawing up their recommendations and while adopting a particular discourse.The KIA, however, is at contrast to these other policy articulations.

It is apparent that the National Agricultural Research System [NARS] had never done any deep-thinking workshops institutionally about its role in the entire crisis being experienced by farmerstoday and about unsustainable and unsuitable technologies foisted upon farmers. Since no suchanalysis exists, the crisis does not inform decisions on any front, including the Indo-US KnowledgeInitiative.

Indias Green Revolution & the Second Green Revolution:

Numerous studies and papers have brought out the ecological, socio-cultural and other fall-outsfrom the Green Revolution. The Planning Commission chose to portray the repercussions in

terms of technology fatigue and the ecological disaster. While the Green Revolution at leasthad a stated thrust on improving national food security (that concept of food security is questionedby numerous experts now) and ran on a principle of social contract, it seems that the SecondGreen Revolution is meant only for agri-corporations.

Before making plans for a Second Green Revolution, the country should have first drawn up acomprehensive balance sheet on the first Green Revolution. Learnings should have been pickedup from such an analysis and critique of the earlier Green Revolution. Such learnings should havebeen internalized and incorporated into all your pronouncements on the second Green Revolutionand into the KIA.

Our analysis says that while the country might have obtained self reliance on the food front (thattoo based on two grains which dont assure nutrition security and are known to have causedother adverse impacts), Green Revolution has completely eroded farmers self-reliance. Farmersnatural resource base has been degraded almost irrevocably. Our bio-diversity has been erodedirreversibly along with farmers knowledge about management, creation and conservation ofsuch resources. While food security is touted to have been achieved, quality of food in terms ofsafety and nutrition has been badly affected. A diverse variety of foods that used to be accessibleand affordable have been lost to the millions of poor in the country. Bio-mass has disappeared ona large scale and organic cycles of crop-livestock-tree-living soil resources have been broken

through reductionist science. Local economies have only pumped out their wealth with very littlecoming back into the villages. In recent decades, any public support system that used to exist foreven that kind of intensive agriculture that GR ushered in, is being systematically dismantled,leaving farmers to the mercy of greedy markets of agri-corporations.

We find that the agri-research establishment has been indoctrinated into thinking that There IsNo Alternative (TINA) to intensive farming using ever-increasing quantities and varieties ofexternal inputs. This TINA syndrome runs deep in the entire NARS to the extent that they cannoteven start looking at ecological alternatives with any amount of objectivity or scientificity. TheGreen Revolution did not happen overnight on the strength of the science behind it but becauseof massive public investments in creating huge support systems to address pre-production,

production and post-production issues. Ecological agriculture however has received no suchsupport in the country and without such public investments going into this paradigm, will not start


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appealing to our scientists either. When the GR began, no one wondered about where we will getthe tonnes of chemical fertilizers/pesticides and HYV seeds that were to drive the GR thecountry just set about arranging these through a variety of policy and public investment measures.However, whenever there is a discussion on alternative paradigms, the first question that isasked preposterously is, where will we find so much of organic inputs?

Now, with the Second Green Revolution that you are shaping, there is a formal institutionalizationof American corporate interests driving our research agendas and public policy frameworks. Thiswill further indoctrinate the NARS and other systems into the industrial/intensive model ofagriculture. You have chosen to give the Monsantos of the US, documented earlier for their anti-farmer policies and known for their lawlessness, a formal place to guide the future of Indianagriculture as suits them, through the KIA. Why did your government not think of placing somekey farmers organizations and other civil society representatives in the country on the Board onthis side?

The Second Green Revolution in the form of the KIA has no mention of farmers, leave alonefarming livelihoods or national food security. Who then is this Second Green Revolution for, at the

expense of public funds, we wonder.

Finally, why do your government and the NARS shy away from understanding, supporting andpromoting an ecological agriculture paradigm can your scientists compete with some of thebest natural and organic farmers in this country on a variety of parameters related to production,productivity, economic viability, sustainability, social benefits and so on, before promoting anyother paradigms [given that we have already seen the results of your paradigms]?

India & the USA:

The socio-economic and agro-ecological situations with regard to Indian and American farmingare vastly different. In their model of agriculture, less than 2% of the American populationdepends on farming whereas in India, around 65% of our population continue to depend onfarming and allied activities for their very survival.

In India, agriculture is a way of life connected closely with knowledge evolved over centuries ofexperiential learning from Nature, connected deeply with the culture of our peoples and theirlivelihoods. On the other hand, in the USA, agriculture is an industry, driven mostly by big agri-business corporations. Even though they claim that it is an efficient model of agriculture to beemulated here in India to attain higher productivity levels and so on, it is a farming model that is

constantly propped up by ever-increasing amounts of subsidies. The true efficiency of that modelwill be clear only when the subsidies are removed. On the other hand, Indian farmers, with verylittle support from the government and in the face of highly adverse conditions created by thegovernment, have proven that theirs is a more efficient system of farming by feeding millions ofIndians and also showing steady increases in production and productivity.

Also important is the fact that the USA has not signed the Convention on BiologicalDiversity [CBD] or the Kyoto Protocol or the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Whatis interesting to note is that the main themes of these protocols to which Indiasubscribes to through ratification and which USA discounts or fights in the internationalarena biological resources including biodiversity, climate change and safety with

regard to living modified organisms - are also key parts of the KIA.


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These protocols enshrine some principles for instance, biological resources aresovereign resources of nation-states (CBD), climate change is a big threat to the

planet and immediate interventions are needed to reverse it and stop it (Kyoto) andliving modified organisms need careful impact assessment and handling and priorinformed consent for transboundary movement (Cartagena) which are not respectedat all in the KIA or by the USA. Why is India partnering the USA in such an agreement

then?

The USA, to this day, has not allocated any resources for the KIA whereas India is paying the USAfor unneeded and hazardous technologies from the taxpayers money. Ironically, the deal is allset to ultimately benefit American corporations than Indian farmers. Is this kind of unequalpartnership what one could call as a bilateral agreement?

Why did you not think of having such a bilateral agreement with Cuba, which has shown theworld how to produce more through organic methods even with economic sanctions imposedupon it is there any reason why India should not learn from such a model of agriculture, to driveits next Revolution in agriculture?

On many of the themes included in the KIA where Indians are supposed to learn from the USA,there is no dearth of knowledge, skills and capabilities within the country. It is not clear why weneed to learn from the USA on water management, drought proofing, food processing etc., whensome of the best models on these themes are right here in the country within the peoplesknowledge domain. While the agriculture research model pursued by the country constantlyerodes such rich knowledge right here, you would like to learn from distant USA at a charge, thattoo technologies that do not suit our needs nor address the present agrarian crisis!

The Americans are clearly proposing through the KIA, and in Board Meetings after Board Meetings,

that they would like to use the bilateral deal to make changes in our regulatory regimes relatedto IPRs or particular technologies like Genetic Engineering. These changes are to suit their interestsand not to ensure the basic rights of Indian farmers and consumers. In return, what are youplanning to suggest as changes at their end through this bilateral deal? Can you bring down thehuge subsidies that American farming is propped up with, to protect Indian farmers interestsfrom your side?

Coming to the comparative picture between India and USA again, the Indian IPR regime relatedto agriculture is very different from the American regime. Whose regime will be applied in thiscollaborative research? Who will have patents and what will be the implications for Indian farmers

and their apriorirights on many resources and technologies?

In the USA, patents are possible on everything from a plant to a gene. As you know, all thenotorious cases of bio-piracy from this country involved American scientists and corporations.What guarantees are you providing to the citizens of this country that the collective heritage ofthis country in the form of its biological resources and knowledge will be protected and givenlegitimately back to the communities without American bio-piracy now acquiring a legitimatepassage you gave them?

The Biological Diversity Act of India, flowing out of the CBD, requires that permission be obtainedfrom the National Biodiversity Authority before any biological resource is accessed by any foreigner.

The KIA is not fulfilling any such obligations (Annexure 1). From all accounts, not even MaterialTransfer Agreements are in place while valuable genetic resources are already being taken to


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the US laboratories by Indian public sector scientists visiting the USA under exchange programmesor fellowships and so on under the KIA.

Indias Science & Technology and Development framework:

Our development framework focuses only on national economic growth rates and forgets the

livelihoods of millions of Indians eking out a living through farming. As a polity, we seem to befeeding the endless lifestyle aspirations of millions of urban, middle class Indians who only wantto emulate the Americans and others. This is obviously extremely destructive in an ecologicalsense the ecological foot print that we would be leaving as a country would be far higher thanthe developed countries, if this development model is pursued mindlessly.

At another level, the S & T framework adopted in the case of agriculture was always one thatsought to gain control over nature, rather than working in cooperation with/tandem with nature.The latter, as thousands of years of Indian farming has shown, is the one that ensures sustainableresource use it took only 4 to 5 decades of intensive farming to erode and degrade our resourcesto the present situation whereas our forefathers did farming for thousands of years without

leaving the future generations gasping for life.

The S & T framework governing Indian agriculture has been one that requires intensive use ofexternal inputs which has its own ecological, economic and political ramifications. Commodificationof all inputs has only meant that local economies got drained to fill the coffers of agri-businesscompanies whose sole aim is to seek more and more markets for their products.

Our S & T frameworks should have been reviewed as a response to the farming crisis all around.This did not happen; through the KIA we want to further accelerate adoption of the same S & Tapproaches in agriculture as in the case of Green Revolution. Those approaches have already

been proven as unsustainable and destructive of our natural resources.

This is in fact a destruction of democracy itself. Electoral democracy, as you are aware, is only anarrow understanding of democracy. Participation, public debate, accountability, referendum &recall systems are glaringly absent in our democracy in the context of agriculture. We actuallyneed a Constitution that respects plurality of knowledges, not just what passes off officially asScience & Technology. We need a Constitution that is ecologically embedded. We need aDirective Principle of State policy that orders protection of Indian agriculture and the diversitythat exists there.

S & T policy makers sitting in the Ministry of Science & Technology or Department of AgricultureResearch & Education or in the Planning Commission have not learnt anything from other countriesabout incorporating alternative paradigms and knowledge systems into the making of an S & Tpolicy. There is ample positive experience to learn from, elsewhere.

National Agricultural Research System [NARS] in India and its orientation:

The NARS is supposed to have been designed along the Land Grant College system in the USA.However, the accountability mechanisms that are apparent in the Land Grant system there arecompletely missing here. It is a top-down model of institution building that has gone into ourNARS, with no accountability at all towards the clientele the predominantly poor, small and

marginal farmers of this country.


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The scientific orientation of the NARS is reductionist, piece-meal and fragmented agriculturebeing a complex process of synergies and interactions amongst various factors, such a reductionistapproach will not solve the real life problems of the farmers. This has been proven again andagain the scientific experiments and their results in a controlled setting in the agricultureresearch stations are not replicable in real life conditions of farmers.

There should be an inter-disciplinary, dialectical and holistic scientific approach that should beadopted by agriculture scientists. Such an inter-disciplinary approach should encompass otherscientific spheres like anthropology, sociology, political science etc. in addition to differentspecializations within agriculture science. Synergies between crop-livestock and crop-treehusbandry have been completely ignored by the agri-research system, for instance. The sociologicalramifications of a particular technology on different kinds of farmers in different locations are notworked out before large scale promotion of a technology. Another example of the narroworientation of the agri-research establishment is the neglect that dryland farming suffers in thecountry today.

Even the research agenda of the NARS is not driven by the real life conditions of the farmers. It

is a top-down, linear, lab-to-land model that is adopted in almost all research projects. There isno participation apparent from the side of the farmers in individual research projects, leavealone whole institutions and their overall directions of work.

The NARS do not recognize any other knowledge domain other than what gets classified officiallyas scientific. It is this blind approach that had resulted in the erosion of precious knowledge andnatural resources amongst farming communities in India. The largest knowledge bank is with thesmallholding farmers of India which consists of knowledge of centuries of experiential learning.This technological arrogance is also ignoring larger experiences evolving across the country tosustain farming concurrently with initiatives of farmers, individuals and organizations. Such

ready knowledge is constantly being discounted and actively eroded by the NARS in a variety ofways. Today NARS suffers more from Innovation fatigue than Technology fatigue.

There is nothing in the KIA that promises any changes in the existing deep-rooted maladies ofthe NARS. In fact, the technologies chosen by the KIA will push agriculture scientists farther awayfrom the fields of farmers, deeper into their laboratories (and laboratories in the USA). Agricultureresearch orientation is now going to be shifted from applied and adaptive research to basic andstrategic research, as per the KIA. When it is clear that applied research itself had failed in theIndian agriculture research establishment, what is the rationale behind moving to basic research?How will they then translate it to farmers real needs and conditions on the ground?

Worse, the agriculture education and extension models are also being re-cast to shift theseservices away from farmers.

Historically, there has been an excessive orientation of these NARS institutions to gear theirresearch towards only production and productivity questions rather than looking at farmerslivelihoods. There are many others, however, in the UN system and elsewhere, who are changingtheir S & T institutions, curricula, research design and frameworks and so on to meet the MilleniumDevelopment Goals. Does the Indian NARS have nothing to learn from them, other than learningfrom the USA about orienting agriculture research for improving the commercial potential ofagri-corporations?


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As mentioned before, the so-called modern technologies in agriculture have only proven to be adrain on the local economies of farmers rather than improving their livelihoods in a sustainablemanner. It is imperative that any research and extension intervention from the NARS should onlybe defined and achieved in a livelihoods context and no other context.

The NARS should realize that in todays complex world, reductionist techno-centricity will not

solve any problems. The new mandate of the NARS has to be evolved out of the failure of theearlier mandate and it does not help to continue in the same technological determinism framework.That is the key cornerstone of post-modern agriculture.

It is also important to re-cast completely the reward and incentive system that drives the agriculturescientists today. It is not publication of papers or number of patents that should be the drivingparameters of assessing the fulfillment of the mandate of NARS. It is possible for knowledgeflows to occur in a manner that farmers derive benefits, without going through the formal,expensive, discriminatory and exclusive intellectual property regime this has been the experienceof civil society work time and again. Agriculture scientists reward system should be linked to thequality and effective time spent with farming communities in drawing the research agenda from

the farmers, by developing technologies in a participatory manner and by using an interdisciplinaryand expert & non-expert co-inquiry approach.

At present, the NARS is only turning itself into an outsourcing agency for private corporations.Private corporations want to use the public sector institutions for their own research needs andprofit-seeking mandates with the lure of some money put into PPP research collaborations andthe agriculture research establishment is ready to forget the needs of their primary clientele.The foundations for this are already laid out in the form a parallel initiative National AgricultureInnovation Project supported by the World Bank.

Specific KIA proposals:

Re-orienting Indian agriculture research to basic and strategic research will mean furthercutting off of farmers from these institutions, when the current farming crisis calls for thereverse of all public sector institutions related to agriculture having to move closer tofarmers and work along with them.

Transgenic agriculture has been given a prominent place in the whole deal, under the themeof Emerging Technologies. It is not clear how this decision has been taken since the debateis unresolved about the very need for such technologies and the various implications fromthe deployment of such technologies in farming. What is the basis for decisions related to

transgenics by the government, given the ever-emerging evidence on the lack of predictabilityand scientificity in this technology and the hazards that the technology poses? There is noevidence that GM crops increase productivity of crops or can withstand climate change vagaries(In fact, there is USDA data that shows that GM crops might actually mean lowered yieldscompared to their non-GM counterparts if the USA is teaching us through the KIA, it ishoped that they are teaching us such facts too). There is clear evidence that such crops arestress-intolerant which means that our national food security itself could be jeopardized byadopting such technologies in the era of climate change.

Transgenics by the public sector, without MNC presence, is being projected as being farmer-friendly reducing the whole discussion to pricing and IPRs. The reality however is that thereare very few farmers who actually demand for and are able to access such public-sector

bred seeds in crops like cotton. Further, experience in collaborative research from the Universityof Agricultural Sciences, Dharwar and CICR, Nagpur shows that our IPR literacy is very poor


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and we more or less get cheated during the R & D process in these collaborative projectsinvolving proprietary technologies. Patents and royalties are brought into the picture preventingthe institution from actually releasing seeds to farmers. What lessons are we learning fromsuch experiences?

When it comes to proposals related to food processing technologies, they all seem to favourAmerican capital investments more than the needs of Indian farmers or consumers. Such

technologies have to be assessed for their employment potential to begin with, since thefood processing sector is being projected as the one that will absorb rural population displacedfrom agriculture.

There is also clear evidence of using the KIA for the entry of big (food) retail chains intoIndia, at the front-end too. It is very unclear what share of the retail price will actually reachthe farmers of the country.

The government has to decide whether we as a country should focus on food security andsovereignty of the nation or food processing and value addition meant for export markets.The KIA certainly gives importance to the latter but is that what the country needs?

On themes like bio-fuels too, there is an urgent need for careful thinking regarding alternateuse scenarios for precious resources like land and biomass. The KIA proposals seem to be in

contradiction to the dominant discourse with regard to bio-fuels in this country so far, wehave talked about bio-diesels on wastelands in this country. The KIA talks about ethanol-based bio-fuels. The KIA has no mention about such technologies which will assist in backyardproduction of bio-diesels for community level energy needs by integrating native, hardy bio-diesel crop species into farming, through cooperative institutional structures. The KIA proposalsare meant to create technologies that will essentially result in a competition between urban(fuel) and rural (food) needs.

The KIA has water management as one of its themes of collaboration. India, which is famousfor being a hydrological society and for the organic socio-cultural links between communitiesand water resources, would have nothing to learn from a country like the USA on water

management and drought-proofing. There is ample experience within this country for theNARS to learn from. No amount of techno-centric solutions will take care of water resources their conservation or preserving the quality. No remediation of contaminated waters cantake place through the NARS especially given the impunity with which contamination fromindustrial effluents takes place. Only a radically different view and value system associatedwith water as a basic resource of life will change things.

As mentioned earlier, the IPR regimes in India and the USA are vastly different and this is anarea of great concern with relation to the KIA. Precious germplasm is already moving out ofthe country in the name of collaborative research and it is not clear what IPR arrangementsare in place. There do not seem to be any material transfer agreements in place either. We

seem to be legitimizing bio-piracy as never before. On the other hand, communities who areoriginal contributors to our germplasm collections in various NARS centres are being deniedaccess to what is legitimately theirs!

The process of formulating the KIA:

This deal has been projected by you as the harbinger of the Second Green Revolution, whichmeans that it has great significance attached to it. Yet, you chose not to debate it with our electedrepresentatives or with state governments. From all accounts, it did not even get discussedproperly within the NARS. This is completely unacceptable.


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Further, it is not clear what accountability mechanisms exist in the case of KIA what reviews,what monitoring, who will be accountable and how. What needs to be done in case an Americanparty needs to be made liable for a particular project, for instance?

OUR DEMANDS:

We invite you to reverse the possibilities with the KIA by rescuing America from itself, its farmingand its agri-corporations. Please get into a bilateral deal that teaches Americans alternativeparadigms in agriculture and rescues America from the monoculture of mind that has evolvedthere. We want you to understand and make the Americans understand that democracy is notjust liberty, equality and fraternity but also sustainability, plurality and generosity.

Given that Indian agriculture does not have anything in common with American farming, giventhat we have vast amounts of experience, knowledge and capabilities on a variety of subjectswithin the country, given that the KIA does not seem to have any benefits for farmers but onlynegative implications, given that the Second Green Revolution if any has to be launched in thecountry only after due deliberative and democratic processes, given that the IPR implications

from the deal are stacked against Indian interests and given that the current agrarian crisisfacing Indian farmers needs other fundamentally different solutions, we demand that yourgovernment :

Put the implementation of the KIA on hold immediately. Review the whole deal with credibleagricultural, political and social scientists along with farmers union and civil societyrepresentatives, like you are ready to do with the 123 Nuclear Deal, after pressure fromother political parties. Further, debate the agreement within the Parliament and stateAssemblies and discuss it with state governments.

Draw up a fresh research agenda for the Indian NARS and its different local institutions after

a broad based consultative process with farmers all over the country. Provide income security to all farmers in the country by providing them an assured monthly

salary from any special financial mechanism that you evolve for the purpose. Allocate all the funds meant for agriculture extension in the hands of the targeted clientele

after organizing the farmers for better accountability. Allow immediate access to indigenous germplasm collections to communities who wish to

access such resources for conservation and use, through legislative and administrative means.

Requesting you to intervene in this matter immediately and take all our concerns on board,

Signed & endorsed by:


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Annexure 1

A perusal of the KIA proposal shows that, prima facie, there are violations of the Guidelines for International Collaboration Research Projects involving Transfer or

Exchange of Biological Resources or Information notified on 8th November 2006 bythe Ministry of Environment & Forests under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 [Guidelinesnotified under Section 5 (3) (a)].

Specifically,

The project violates 1 (a) of the notified Guidelines, which specifies that in theproposal, the collaborative research project should clearly state the KeyInvestigator in each of the collaborating institutions who shall be responsible

for all compliances. As pages 20 and 21 of the KIA proposal attached to thisletter illustrate, only tentative list of partners is part of the proposal whereasthe project has been underway from December 2005. Section C.BIOTECHNOLOGY, of the proposal is of particular relevance and concern[pp.28-53]. Here, some Indian and American partners are mentioned for thecollaborative research including Mahyco (which under Section 3 (2) of the BDAct has non-Indian participation) are listed but no mention is made of KeyInvestigators of each collaborating institution.

The project also violates 1 (b) of the notified Guidelines which requires theproposal to state the details of biological resources occurring in India andknowledge associated thereto, intended to be transferred and exchangedunder the project, namely the biological name, quantity, purpose, source,place of collection and such other activities. No such details are provided inthe attached proposal.

Guideline 1 (d) also provides for biological resources which have any specialstatus under any law in force in India or any international agreement andrequires necessary clearances from competent authorities.


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It is not clear whether the voucher specimens of the Indian biological resourcesexchanged or transferred under the project are being sent to the designatedrepository under Section 39 of the Act. It is not even clear whether theCentral Government and the NBA have designated all the repositories forresources being exchanged/transferred under the KIA.

Point (8) of the Guidelines requires collaborators not to communicate or transferresearch results of collaborative project to any third party in any mannerwithout entering into an agreement with the National Biodiversity Authority.However, this is not being done while the communication/ transfer to a thirdparty is a certainty given that most US institutions listed in the project proposalof KIA are in collaboration in turn with private corporations in the USA for suchresearch.

It is not clear whether a copy of the approval along with all relevant details

has been sent to the National Biodiversity Authority as required by (14) of thenotified Guidelines.


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Proceedings Report of the

National Workshop on

Indo-US KIA: Whither Indian

Farmer?


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INDO-US KNOWLEDGE INITIATIVE ON AGRICULTURE WHITHER INDIAN FARMER?

A two-day national workshop was organized by Centre for Sustainable Agriculture & Centre forWorld Solidarity on Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture Whither Indian Farmer? onDecember 8th and 9th, 2006 in Hyderabad. This workshop was attended by participants fromaround twelve states of the country representing a variety of institutions and areas of specializations/work.

Introductory Session

Dr Uma Shankari,noted sociologist and water resources expert,welcomed all the participants and introduced them to the workshop. Thefollowing were the main points that she made:

This workshop is important not just for farmers who constitute65-70% of Indias population, but all consumers too is thereanyone who does not consume food? The implications of KIAwith relation to food are going to touch all of us and therefore,it is important to discuss them and understand them.

KIA, which appears to be an important collaboration that couldgive a different direction to agriculture and agricultural educationin India, has hardly received any attention in public debates. While the Indo-US nuclear

deal at least resulted in some public debate, on KIA, there have hardly been anydiscussions. This workshop hopes to kick off some public debate on this important issue.

More than the money involved in the KIA, other issues about how and why it was broughtin, its implementation, its potential impacts etc., are of serious concern. Is this going tobe one more Enron where despite civil society warnings, governments rush in blindlyonly to learn expensive mistakes at great cost?

Even if we accept for a moment that a joint collaboration between India and US isneeded on the agriculture front, we need to look at what are the critical areas forcollaboration and how it is going to work out to our advantage.

Civil society has a right to ask questions about this deal while industry leaders wereconsulted by the Planning Commission on this collaboration, not even for politenesssake were farmers and their leaders consulted. The workshop also hopes to ensuresome transparency in the agricultural research establishment in the country.

The whole workshop is expected to pose questions to the government and to the agriculturalestablishment about what the real challenges in agricultural sector in India today areand how they would be addressed through this initiative. How will core issues like themismatch between rising costs of cultivation and market prices for farmers produce be

addressed, for instance?


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Overview of the KIA

Ms Kavitha Kurugantiof Centre for Sustainable Agriculturethen presented an overview of the KIA. Some of the important pointsthat she made were:

The KIAs official name is US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Research, Service & CommercialLinkages. Though it is supposed to bring in the second greenrevolution, there is an explicit focus on commercial linkageswhich has to be noted.

The bilateral deal has to be understood in all details to look at all the potential implicationsflowing out of it. It is important to do so since it is explicitly talking about a second greenrevolution, unlike many other bilateral and multilateral projects that are working on specificagriculture (research)-related aspects. This is also an agreement penned at the highest

level, with the Indian Prime Minister and the American President pledging their support to it.This itself has implications in terms of commitment and political will. So far, Green Revolutionwas only discussed and analyzed in apost-factomanner. Many of us in the civil society wereeither not active on agriculture while Green revolution was itself was unfolding, or the civilsociety was not focusing on the possible negative impacts green revolution. After understandingthe implications of the first Green Revolution, we cannot let the second Green Revolutioncome in without a critical analysis of its need and implications.

This is also an opportunity to open up the agricultural research establishment in the countryto democratic scrutiny. Civil society has mostly left this establishment untouched while

there is recognition that the agricultural research establishment was causing some damageto the farming communities and their livelihoods in direct and indirect ways, there has neverbeen an active confrontation or an effort to democratize the establishment. We have doneour work related to sustainable agriculture more or less bypassing the agricultural researchestablishment and ignoring them. However, we need to see critically what the role of theresearch establishment is in the current crisis facing Indian agriculture, about democratizationetc.

The KIA needs to be analysed at four different levels one, the content of the agreement what it is promising to do, the message between the lines, the institutional mechanisms

being put into place including large MNCs on the Board etc.; two, the link between the KIAand other larger processes unleashed on Indian agriculture (with the KIA describing thecurrent crisis as an exciting challenge and opportunity); three, the process that is beingadopted to formulate and implement important changes through the KIA and four, whatcould be done about the KIA. The KIA makes very little mention of Indian farmers in itsproposal but civil society needs to analyse mostly from the perspective of farmers what arethe implications for them?

While the crisis in Indian farming is more or less described in a similar manner by variouspolicy-makers the Planning Commission approach paper to the 11th Plan, the NCFs Kisanpolicy draft, the World Banks Development Review paper, the KIA proposal etc., the

recommendations are at variance with each other. Ecological damage and technologyfatigue are acknowledged as much as climate change and irrelevance of current agricultural


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research in the country. While the Kisan policy draft says that ecology, equity and economicsshould be foundation of farming here, advocating pro-nature, pro-poor, pro-women and pro-small farmer technologies, the KIA is saying contrasting things the KIA in fact forgets tomention farmers, leave alone pro-poor and pro-women things! Both the draft Kisan policydraft and the eleventh plan draft approach paper talk about exploiting fully the potential ofexisting technologies to improve productivity of Indian agriculture the KIA however is not

about bridging this knowledge deficit! While the planning commission paper talks aboutstrengthening adaptive and applied research, the KIA is about re-orienting Indian agricultureresearch to basic and strategic research. What is also interesting to note is that eminentpeople like Dr M S Swaminathan, who was responsible for coming up with the draft Kisanpolicy and its recommendations is also on the Board of the KIA as an honorary advisor fromthe Indian side, with contrasting recommendations and approaches to the problem.

There are some important decisions that need to be taken given that Indian farming is atcross-roads the choices are almost vertically split. Techno-centric Vs. Holistic approaches,for instance. Export markets Vs. Domestic markets. Centralised, top-down models of agricultureresearch and extension Vs. Community upwards agriculture development processes. Control

over nature Vs. cooperation with nature. The crucial question seems to be whether we wantIndian farmers to do the agriculture or are policy makers talking about Indian agriculturedevoid of farmers (a lathe USA)?

The KIAs influence may not be directly on improving farming in India but would be mostly tobring about a reform in our policies and legislations. This is a lever that the US and theAmerican industry in particular, can use, to bring about changes in our regulatory regimes,the institutional mechanisms of research etc. In May 2006, for instance, the US had used thisbilateral agreement as a lever with which to push its agenda when it approached the WTOcommittee on Technical Barriers to Trade [TBT] where it raised objections and questions

regarding Indias GM regulatory regime it was interesting to note that the questions wererelated not just to regulation of imports but about domestic issues too.

60% of the total budget of the 350-crore rupees of the KIA is meant for emerging technologieswhich includes transgenic technology in our agriculture. Compared with the current agri-research budgets in the country over the past few years, the KIA budget is about 9% of theplan outlay for agri-research in the country.

There are four themes broadly covered by the KIA Agri-research and education (which isabout recasting curriculum, methodologies, tools, research orientation etc.); Agri-Processing

and Marketing (including Food Processing, by-product utilization, bio-fuels etc.); EmergingTechnologies (genomic mapping, molecular breeding, transgenic crops etc., for various cropsincluding staple crops like rice and wheat); and, Water management (recycling of wastewater, better groundwater utilization, precise forecasting of droughts and better droughtproofing etc.).

Several issues of serious concern and contention are thrown up by the KIA which need to bediscussed at length and for which the Indian government has to be made accountable - whatsimilarities exist between India and US that we have to learn from the USA? Have we learntany lessons from the Green Revolution? If yes, what are the lessons and how have they beenincorporated into the designing of a second green revolution as the KIA proposes? Will

techno-centric approaches to Indian farming (crisis) have real solutions for farmers, giventhe larger reality of liberalized trade, cheaper imports and so on? Will the second green


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revolution really provide livelihoods for farmers, help them hold back their lands and continuefarming with dignity? KIA clearly forgets about food security after the preamble, while thereis much said about food processing, value addition, urban consumers, export markets and soon. By leaving bio-fuel promotion to free market forces, will it become a case of fuel prices(for the booming middle classes, whose consumption patterns are left unquestioned anddemands only catered to) Vs. food prices (for the poor starving millions in the country)?

IPRs are a major concern flowing from this bilateral deal. The past experience of Indianpublic sector bodies collaborating with private entities and others in the US should teach usvaluable lessons about the implications of such IPRs on our research as well as possiblecommercial release of products. UAS-Dharwar for instance faced such a problem with IPRsearlier. They had tried to develop Bt Cotton varieties from the University, claiming that farmersneed not depend on the expensive Bt Cotton hybrids that were being sold in the brand nameof Bollgard, back in 2002. They started developing such Bt Cotton hybrids by borrowing agene from Rockefeller Foundation. Four five years down the line they still have not releasedthese Bt cotton varieties (whether they should work on and release Bt Cotton varieties is apertinent but different question of course). UAS-Dharwad was told that they could not release

their Bt Cotton varieties because Rockefeller Foundation had in turn obtained the gene fromMonsanto and it was proprietary! The agreement happened at Pusa and the gene was givento UAS Dharwad, the University had not even worked out what the actual IPR implications inthe agreement are and just plunged into their research work. This is what is happening withBt Brinjal again. UAS Dharwad under ABSP-II project got involved in developing Bt Brinjalvariety and the ex-Vice Chancellor is heard to tell in public meetings that the University isnow being asked to pay fifty lakhs of rupees though they thought it was for free.

About the process adopted for debating the need for and designing the KIA, much has gonewrong. There was no Parliamentary debate for something as momentous as launching the

second green revolution in the country. State governments were not involved and NARSpeople themselves were not consulted. There was no bottom up approach within the institutionleave alone asking farmers and civil society how a second green revolution should be. Forfarmers, it will not longer be just erosion of their knowledge (as has happened during theGreen Revolution) but active confusion created through the market place (technologiesmarketed through money power and advertising strategies, ultimately).

Many other unanswered questions remain too - Is this about India being a testing ground forseveral technologies? Is this only about US agribusinesss opportunities in India? How andwho will this whole deal be accountable to?

While KIA by itself may not bring about the much hyped Second Green Revolution, it willcertain alter the policy environment in a radical way to suit American business interests. Itwill also re-cast the agriculture research establishment in irreversible ways and push it intoa lot of public-private partnerships which may not benefit farmers. This is about favouringprivate players, proprietary technologies, big private retail sector etc.

A few scientists and bureaucrats of ICAR were met and informally interviewed by CSArepresentatives on this bilateral deal. These representatives point out that the KIA has beena very top-down process, without really incorporating lessons from the Green Revolution.There has not been any consultative process worth its name within the establishment and it

is mostly political expediency that is driving this deal, the interviewees felt.


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Therefore, the KIA should be critically analysed and debated for its own potential implications butalso as a step towards democratizing the agricultural research establishment in the country.

SESSION 1: Panel Discussion on

Need for and Implications of the KIA, drawing lessons

from Green Revolution

This session was chaired by Sri M V Sastri, Convenor, Centre for World Solidarity. There werethree speakers on the panel Sri Devinder Sharma (noted agriculture trade policy analyst), SriBhaskar Save (well known organic and natural farmer from Gujarat) and Dr Shiv Viswanathan

(eminent sociologist and Science, Technology& Society Studies expert).

Sri M V Sastrimade a few opening remarksfrom the Chair. He felt that there is a necessaryshift needed to include non-agriculturescientists into discourses about agriculturalpolicies. It cannot be left entirely to scientists.There is a growing realization world over thatinter-disciplinary approaches are needed fordemocratizing agriculture research. Further,there is also a need to include farmers as the

primary stakeholders into such discourses and policy-making processes. For that reason, a debateon KIA has to draw in a variety of experts and stakeholders.

He further added that even though the farming community in the US is minuscule in terms ofnumbers, it has a great say in policy-making. They can still change the complexion of the AmericanCongress if their interests are adversely affected. In 1890s and early part of last century, Americanpolitics centered around American agriculture. This small sector gets billions of dollars as subsidy.The American Government is seen to be with farming community. In contrast, here in India, ahundred thousand farmers have committed suicides despite announcements of package afterpackage.

Similarities & Differences between Indian and American

Agriculture and need for the KIA?.

Sri Devinder Sharmathen made his presentation onSimilarities & Differences between Indian andAmerican Agriculture and need for the KIA?.

Congratulating CSA and CWS for taking this initiative to hold anational workshop on the KIA, Mr Sharma pointed out that thefact that there has been no debate on this important issue isalso a reflection on the agricultural scientists in the country(compared to the Indo-US nuclear deal which brought together


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many nuclear scientists of the country to write to the Prime Minister). The following is a transcriptionof most of his talk:

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me present two scenarios to you. India is seen as the Land of the HolyCow. We have all been made to believe that all the 400 species of livestock in India areunproductive, they hardly give any milk. So what do you do? We have to improve the productivity

of the Indian milk production, were told. There are 27 breeds in India many of them fitremarkably well in the areas that they belong to. Then an impression was given that thesebreeds are good for nothing. So what you must do is to bring the improved germplasm of Jersyor Holstein Frisian, then cross breed your cows, then they start giving the milk. Why is it that wenever realize our own potential and everybody thinks that our cattle is unproductive? Is theresomething wrong here? If you read the Agricultural History written by MS Randhawa, he saysthat these breeds are well endowed and respected for their high yielding capacity. We had aWhite Revolution in the country but eventually, it is a recent FAO report that finally opened oureyes. The report says that Brazil has emerged as an important exporter of Indian cattle breedsand is also into embryo transfer and is selling embryos at a particular price to Asia and Africa.The report tells us that in the 1960s, Brazil imported four cattle breeds from India. When these

breeds landed in Brazil, they found that these breeds could also yield a lot of milk. They hadactually imported them for their beef potential. Today, Brazil is benefiting from the breeds thatwe had badly neglected and discounted. It speaks volumes about the way we did agriculture.

Twenty years later, Pepsi Cola entered India through the back door by promising a secondhorticultural revolution in trouble-torn Punjab. When they entered India, they talked about thosekinds of varieties that would suit the food processing industry. They said that Indian potato andtomato varieties were not good for food processing. Well bring our own germplasm from Americaand Venezuela, they said. Subsequently they brought in 6 varieties of Potato into India and it wasfound out by the Central Potato Research Institute that the varieties brought by Pepsi were as

good and as bad as existing Indian varieties. No wonder that Pepsi Cola still uses Indian varietiesof potato for their potato chips. Then came the KFC. When KFC came in, they said that Indianchicken is not of good quality, so you must bring in improved variety. When Pepsi Cola brought inpotatoes and KFC brought in improved chicken, they must have revolutionized the entire foodprocessing industry in India. However, they still use Indian breeds of poultry for their foods. Whenthe companies want to push in something, they always brand our products as inefficient orsubstandard or poor in quality. They always say that they would bring superior quality.

Around 1985, there was an amendment in the American Congress called the Bumpers amendment.Senator Bumper introduced an amendment which said that the US will no longer support or

provide aid to anything that is in opposition to their trade interests, and that would mean essentiallyin case of agriculture. So US in 1980s started withdrawing from all those areas where it wascompeting. Let us say when it wants work on rice in Asia, it said we want to withdraw theinvestments that we made in India because it competes with American interests. On other productslike Soybean and so on and so forth. This amendment still holds good and changes the course ofthe scientific collaborations in the days to come.

Lets look at the similarities or dissimilarities that exist between these two countries. In America,in the previous century, the country actually moved 27 million people out of agriculture. This wasbefore the War. This was because they had to make way for industry to come in. At the time thatIndia attained independence, the total population of America involved in agriculture was roughly

around 10%. The average landholding size at that particular point of time was 50 ha. In 2000,the last time they had their census, they did not even count the number of farmers for the first


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time in their history. The number of farmers had come down to such a low level that they didnthave to count them. They do have some farmers left. There are fewer people on the Americanfarms today than the number of people in their jails. What a remarkable development model!The same model is now being pushed all over the world.

I think when we talk of this Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture we must look beyond the agreement

at the larger onslaught on agriculture that has been pushed all over the world. Why is it thatAmerica which has less than 2% of farmers and 4% of GDP from agriculture is so interested inagriculture? I think that is the question that is bothering many of us. Why is 4% in GDP makingthem so interested in agriculture, what is happening in the WTO and so on and so forth? Universityof Tennessee at Knoxville came out with a study which said that GDP is not the right way to seethe role of agriculture in the economy. With only a 4% share in the GDP, agriculture still accountsfor a 60% share in the Americas economy. That was a quite a revelation. When I shared this bitof information with agricultural policy makers in India, they were just baffled because even here,they only talk about share of agriculture to GDP in India is falling and therefore we need notbother much about agriculture. What we are not understanding is that the share of agriculture inIndias entire economy is roughly 80-90% and that we dont want to count.

Ladies and gentlemen, in America, they forcefully removed people out of agriculture after thewar however, Americas agricultural exports were increasing, food exports were increasing,subsidies went on increasing. It was agribusiness corporations that have taken control over theagriculture there. Here, when we talk about agriculture, we are talking about farmers everyfourth farmer in the world is an Indian. About 600 million people directly dependent on agriculture.Average land holding has come down from 4ha in 1947 to 1.3ha now. If you are maintaining acow in America, you require 8-10 hectares of land for the kind of feed that goes to the cowwhereas in India, a family of 5 members plus one or two cows would survive on 1.3 hectares ofland.

The crisis in Indian agriculture today is actually due to the collapse of the GreenRevolution. Scientists call it as (technology) fatigue but I call it the collapse. The Green Revolutionmodel has completely collapsed and lets accept that. Unless we accept that, we cannot planwhat we need to do to reorient our agriculture on economically viable and sustainable lines. Weneed to look back to understand how our understanding of agriculture was changed and how weshifted our policies towards American agriculture. USAID did a remarkable job when they set upagricultural universities in India under the Land Grant system. Pantnagar was the first agriculturalUniversity and now we have 47 agricultural universities, all based on the Land Grant system ofeducation. They knew that if you have to change the agricultural system of a country like India,

you must change the educational system. You must change the mindset of entire generations ofpeople, the scientific community, and they did it remarkably well. I still remember that when Iwas a student of agriculture, the soil science that I used to read was Buck man and Brady. Theydid not know about tropical soils but we still read what Buckman and Brady had to tell about oursoils! For everything that they wanted to teach or promote, they made us believe that our agricultureis substandard, backward and inefficient. In the education system through which we all came outin agricultural universities, we were made to believe that this is the only way forward. We haveto bring in the so-called improved varieties, add more fertilizers, spray pesticides, pump outmore water and so on if food production and productivity had to be improved. Yes, the Greenrevolution came and scientists go on patting themselves for the increase in the food production.

That is history. Whether we did a remarkably good job or not is debatable. We went on increasingour production and productivity - NPK was the basic mantra. I always call the agricultural scientists


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as the NPK breed a majority of the agronomic research in India in the last 40 years is based onNPK. Interestingly, you have all these various avenues to research on agronomic research, qualitiesof soil, so on and so forth; but every time a PhD student came out it was only on the NPK model.This tells you a bit about the kind of mindset they had put in. NPK, NPK and NPK the negativeimpact of this is visible now. Some of us see the need for correction. However, the scientificcommunity, instead of suggesting corrections is coming out with more green revolution as the

answer. If your soil fertility is falling low, you are asked to add more fertilizers, rather than sayingthat you need to shift now, that we learnt a lesson that this is not suitable for our sustainablefarming system. We went on doing this kind of mistake for the last 20 years and the result todayis the complete destruction of the natural resource base.

Some of the agricultural technologists did another job - they pushed in a technology which is noteven suitable for irrigated areas into the un-irrigated areas. I still remember that National Academyon Agricultural Research Management (NAARM) did a report which said that dry sands arehungry for chemical fertilizers - what a remarkable report! A faulty model of agriculture waspromoted into all systems of farming in India, not realizing or acknowledging that there could bean alternative approach. Scientists got disconnected from the realities of farming and that has

been the biggest casuality in our entire understanding of agriculture. We went on promoting allthese faulty technologies even in dryland agriculture even though we knew that these high yieldingvarieties require more water, more fertilizers and so on. Similarly, hybrid varieties require roughly1.2 times more water that high yielding varieties. In the rainfed areas common sense should tellus that we require varieties which require less water. In the rainfed areas of India we haveactually ended up growing varieties which require double the amount of water. What a remarkablesystem! The scientific community has turned a blind eye - you have hybrid rice, hybrid sorghum,hybrid corn, hybrid cotton, hybrid vegetablesall of them are grown in rainfed areas.

At a time when Mrs. Gandhi was our Prime Minister in 1983, Ronald Reagan was the President

of America. Ronald Regan made a statement then and I quote If America cannot find an exportmarket for its produce, the American economy will collapse with the weight of artificial agriculturalsubsidies. So the world began to think about how to bail out the US and Europe from this crisis this was justified in the name of the poor and the underprivileged. We were also ready to bowour heads in front of such plans. Look at the WTO now. The role of KIA is to be seen in thecontext of the WTO also. This is part of the trinity which began with the World Bank and the IMF.They started telling us that it is no longer good to grow staple foods like wheat and rice and thatwee need to diversify. That happened first in Latin America and in Africa and now of course Indiais under great pressure to diversify its agriculture. Indian agricultural scientists are also ready tosay that it is a dire need now. We somehow refuse to see the politics that exist beyond these

policies.

Lets take an example of rice - all these years we were told that pesticides are inevitable if youwant to increase food productivity. So weve used pesticides on all crops including rice, as thoughthere was no other alternative. The IRRI has now gone on record saying it was a waste of timeand effort to use pesticides on rice in Asia. The farmers in Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Indiaand Bangladesh are getting higher yields of rice without using pesticides. It took four decades forthe scientists to understand that pesticides were not at all required on rice. Here in AndhraPradesh, Non Pesticidal Management is being adopted now in a large scale promoted by CWSand CSA. It is not just rice but all other crops that do not require pesticides yet, we went onpromoting and promoting pesticides blindly. Now, the damage is evident with these toxic chemicals.

The scientific community has to acknowledge that they were party to the entire episode.


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This is a paradigm where we go on giving farmers technologies that they do not need. It is thesame with genetically modified seeds we are told that if we dont give this technology tofarmers, they would suffer. In reality, farmers given this technology are committing suicides.Growing indebtedness of farmers is not because the farmer drinks or is spending too muchmoney on marriages and so on.the reality is that we actually brought in technologies that werenot required and were expensive. They upset the entire economy of the farmers. The cost of

production had gone up enormously. People blame money lenders but they forget to mention therole of nationalized banks in this entire process of actually exacerbating the crisis.

As a parallel process, while we were destroying our land and other natural resources along withour farmers, we were shifting agriculture into agricultural business. When the WTO was broughtin, we were told that farmers of developing countries can benefit now by exporting and that wecould import food at low prices. The Punjab Agricultural University, the seat of the GR, actuallydid a report on this. The Vice-Chancellor was asked by the Government of India how wonderfulthe WTO would be for the farmers in the state, in a report demanded overnight. So he asked theeconomics department by the morning, I want a report from you on what the WTO would do toPunjab, he said. The report said that it will be wonderful for Punjab.Punjab will export planeloads

of foods, fruits and cut flowers and we will have dollars coming back into Punjab, it was predicted.That was 1995. Now in 2006, where are all those promised dollars? We ignored the realities ofWTO and tried to bring in a system that actually benefited the corporations. The WTO was amodel which was actually designed to promote the interests of agribusiness corporations. In1995, the WTO promised that the world will gain $829 billion a year, if the entire trade obstaclesare removed. Out of which, the gain to the developing countries was projected to be $537 billion.Latest figures would shock you the total gain from WTO now is estimated to be $34 billion.From $829 billion, it has come down to $34 billion. The share of the developing countries hascome down from $537 to $6.7 billion and translated into Indian rupees, 35,000 crores is what thedeveloping countries will gain every year. This is the gain for 110 developing countries of the

world. The rural development ministrys budget in India is Rs 60,000 crores and we are onlytalking about Rs 35,000 crores as the gain from WTO. Of course Indias share is negative inWTO. What has happened in the entire bargain? Developing counties had to remove all the tradebarriers and country after country became a food importing country. When you import food, youactually import unemployment. Thats what happened in the developing part of the world. Farmersof one country have been pitted against small and marginal farmers of another developing country.The only gainers are America and the European Union. The American gain from the export offood and agricultural commodities is $10 billion a year. The European Union has increased theirexport by 26% which equals to $3 billion a year. We now know who are the gainers and who arethe losers.

World over, emergence of agribusiness companies and consolidation is getting stronger. Therewill be three kinds of players now in the food chain. In America, the technology is produced byone set of companies Monsanto, Syngenta and so on. Then another set of players the foodtrading companies like Cargill come in. Monsanto produces the seed and the Cargill will buy thegrain. The third player is the big retailer. With the retail chain super markets, from the seed inthe field to the food on your plate, the entire food chain is very well determined and in the handsof a few powerful players. In India also, Monsanto will give us food through Reliance. In America,the home for contract farming and commodity trading, if these systems were so good for farmerswith the elimination of middlemen, why are farmers continuously quitting agriculture? Can someoneanswer that soundly before advocating it for other countries like India?


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We have been told again and again that for Indian farmers to be competitive in the globalmarkets, we have to promote technologies like Genetic Engineering to improve productivity. Thepaddy productivity in America is 7 t/ha and in India it is 3 t/ha. So if Indian farmers have tocompete globally, they must raise their productivity levels from 3 tons to 7 tons, were told.Incidentally, the people who grow 7 tons per hectare are the not the leading exporters. Thecountry which is the biggest exporter of rice is Thailand, whose productivity is lower than that of

India at around 2.8 tons per hectare, which means productivity has got nothing to do with globaldominance. With increased productivity, farming would become viable, they argue. Scientists aremisleading farmers on that count too. In America, total output of rice is $1.2 billion. Thosefarmers however cannot survive till they get a corresponding subsidy. The total subsidy thatAmerican rice growers get is $1.4 billion. If you remove their subsidy their entire rice productionfalls. This is not only true for rice but also for other crops. In India if a farmer gets to raise hisproductivity from 3 tons to 7 tons, please tell me who will provide the farmer a correspondingsubsidy? There, it is corporations which are getting subsidy in the name of farmers. It is notefficiency that makes agriculture viable there but subsidies. The question today in the globalarena is that of subsidy versus subsistence. Unless we realize this, we are not going to addressthe real issue of the farming crisis here.

World over, Bt Cotton has been promoted in the name of productivity and frontier technology, asin the case of USA and India. In the US, the total output of cotton is $3 billion. The subsidy that25,000 cotton farmers get is around $4.7 billion. 20,000 cotton farmers in America, get a subsidyof $15 million a day. These subsidies depress the global prices by about 40%. That means thatthe Vidarbha farmer is priced out. The American cotton growers survive not because of theirefficient way of farming but because of the huge subsidies provided to them. Add to this thecomplication of IPRs - India is a mega diversity centre as far as the biodiversity is concerned. Weare home to 45,000 species and are home to 81,000 animal species including lower forms of life.Out of this, 7,000 plant species are endemic and originate from India. On the other hand, only 5

plant species and 3 animal species have originated in America. You cannot build a superpowerwith 5 plant species and 3 animal species. So what do you do? You try to appropriate ormisappropriate genetic resources from all over the world. We have been told that genetic resourcesare humankinds heritage. They must be conserved and put in one place, we were told. We didthat. We collected our rice germplasm, we collected our wheat germplasm and we collected ourdryland germplasm and put them in gene banks at different places. Then we were told that thisis mankinds heritage, so if you keep rice germplasm in Cuttack or in Hyderabad it is not going tohelpful, lets put them in one genebank in international agricultural research centres. So we putour rice germplasm in International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, wheat germplasm inCYMMIT, Mexico, and so on. Then they said, to keep your rice germplasm or wheat germplasm

in a city like Mexico City or Manila city, there is always a chance that some terrorist will comealong and blow it up. So what do you do? You must keep a duplicate copy under safe custody. Sowhere is that safe custody? It is in mountain rocks of Fort Collins in America. So they they put agene bank there and the worlds germplasm was collected and kept there. The world was assuredthat the worlds resources are now taken care of! In 1992, in the Earth Summit, the Conventionon Biological Diversity was signed. The CBD for the first time said that plant genetic resources areno longer the heritage of mankind but a national sovereign resource. However, the collectionswhich were already with USDA are outside that purview. Which means that America has controlover the vast germplasm collections from all over the world. They have the raw material, theyhave the biotechnology, they have the money but the problem is that they dont know what to dowith these plants. After all you cant go on deciphering and analyzing the composition of each

plant for what is commercially useful there. So what do you do? You go to those communitieswho actually live with these species. Those communities have the traditional knowledge that


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goes with these traditional resources, asyou all know. No wonder that traditionalknowledge has become the buzz wordnow that it is mankinds heritage andthat we must document it before it getslost and so on. Every scientist, policy

makers, CSIR, ICAR and others becamevery kind and started documenting thetraditional knowledge. And the argumentwas that only if you have thisdocumentation can you challenge bio-piracy. The reality is that we do not evenknow what patents are being obtainedwhere, based on what resources and knowledge stolen from where. However, ready documentationin a digitized form, in the name of conserving traditional knowledge is being prepared. It is ofcourse readily available for corporations that so desire. Some how, civil society also fell for it.We have joined hands and ensured that they not only the plant genetic resources but also the

traditional knowledge. Thats what agri-corporations are looking for and if there are still somemissing links, the Indo-US knowledge initiative will fill that gap.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the farmers are being completely and continuously squeezed and theagribusiness corporations are continuously increasing their profits. In spite of the so-calledsuccessful implementation of the GR, the WTO and various other things, the average monthlyincome of an Indian farming family is Rs. 2115/- as per the NSS estimates. This includes incomefrom dairying also. The implications of this model of agriculture are clear we are following amodel that began in Europe and America where farmers were forcibly removed from their farming.Despite all the subsidies that they get, European farmers are constantly quitting agriculture. It is

now said, no problem if farmers are dying by suicides or quitting agriculture and migrating.Governments want to facilitate big business to come in whether it is Reliance or Bharti. This isactually the Exit Policy for farmers in India. We can expect 400 million farmers to leave ruralareas and migrate to urban centres in India by the year 2015. This will be the biggest disasterthat this country has ever witnessed. This displacement will surpass all displacement we haveseen so far from big dams and so on. This KIA is just a part of the bigger design. We should beclear about where this is all leading, who it will benefit and so on. Agricultural scientists who aresupporting such initiatives should remember that their very livelihoods are at stake too, here.This initiative might give them some space to travel abroad and may pay some salaries for awhile. They are looking at this as a wonderful opportunity thrown at them when they seem to

have nothing else to do. However, they should understand the larger scheme of things, wheremore and more universities are unable to pay and keep their agricultural scientists and educators.

For us in the civil society, ensuring that the farmer does not disappear from the economic radarscreen of the country is a great challenge. We should see how we can join hands and get supportto ensure that the future of farmers is not as dismal as it appears. Thank you.


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The Green Revolution & its aftermath:

Indian agriculture at cross-roads.

This presentation was followed by Sri Bhaskar Save

aboutThe Green Revolution & its aftermath: Indianagriculture at cross-roads. He spoke in hindi, which waslater translated into English by Sri Bharat Mansata, a writerand publisher.

About farming, Vinobha Bhave had once said that if there is agood mix of science and spirituality, there could be prosperityand development for everyone. But today, we seem to haveleft spirituality and non-violence behind us and we are onlyhankering after science in this path, there can only be disaster.Unfortunately, science and violence are going hand and in handand this could end all of us. Knowledge can be of two kinds

spiritual and scientific. If we have scientific knowledge without values, then are problems. In theknowledge of the first kind, we assumed that human beings, animals, plants, birds and othersmaller living organisms are all one family. The purpose of science should be to serve all theseliving organisms otherwise, such science is not safe nor is it scientific. Science should becombined with values of affection, of unity, of cooperation etc. Devoid of such values, sciencecould only be destruction.

There is spirituality embedded within farming. Natural farming is made of such values combinedwith science. The main purpose is to make very little investments but get higher and healthier

produce. Farming is a cultural creation. From one grain, there are thousands of grains createdand that too, thrice a year! It is a way of life and it is a path that teaches you how to live. It is wayof life that brings happiness and it is not a business, it is a philosophy. By no account should it beseen as a business enterprise.

Gandhiji pointed out to four main pillars or principles of such farming. After 1947, after obtainingindependence, our production in the country went down. There was much emphasis being givenon increasing production at any cost. It was Gandhiji who said that the poverty of this country willnot be removed by increasing production. There would be many problems emerging out of thisquest for increasing production, he had pointed out. Nature itself has such ways of increasing

one grain thousand-fold, that too over several seasons each year if that was the case, whereis the question of us increasing production? If you really want to increase production, you needmore and more people in this country to do farming. In fact, everyone in this country should getinto farming, he said. For more people to do farming, there should be very little capital requirementin agriculture; very little machinery and equipment for the purpose; very little modern technology.Our decline in production was mostly due to the Second World War that had ended just beforeindependence. It will not be chemicals and other technologies that will increase production itwill be more and more farmers getting into agriculture that would result in increased production.

We have however adopted such Green Revolution technologies that the farmer needs more and

more capital, more equipment and machinery like tractors, threshers, pumpsets etc. and moremodern scientists (more BSc-Agriculture and MSc Agriculture people around). With all of this,the cost of cultivation only went up. The margins left for the farmer are only 5-10% of the cost.


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3 9

The farmer has been reduced to the state of a beggar. The countrys sovereignty depends on itsfarming and the agriculture is in turn dependent on farmer. If a countrys farmer has beenreduced to a beggar, the country has been reduced to being a beggar too. In a country wherefarmers commit suicide, the country itself would have to commit suicide soon unless it mends itsways urgently.

Soil is a living thing there are millions of organisms in every teaspoonful of soil. Therefore, aprinciple of minimum interference is what is needed here including no tilling farming. Weshould not do the cruel thing of applying chemicals on soils. Secondly, it took millions of years forour earth to cool down, for rains to start and for the soils to form. This should not be undone byus so easily with such destruction. Thirdly, the right to life of various living forms is the same asthe right of human beings to live on this planet. Thats the reason why farming should not use anyharmful chemicals. Lastly, weeds are a boon for farmers. These should not be destroyed. Instead,they should only be controlled. It is like letting your hair grow on your head. The moment you gobald, it will not come back again. We should not allow Mother Earth to go bald either.

There are also four principles that need to be adopted in farming. One, in this world, there is no

organism that is an enemy to the other. All organisms are friends of others. God is not so foolishand cruel that he would created enemies for you. Second, nothing that grows on this MotherEarth is a waste that could be pulled out, killed through weedicides and so on. That would onlyamount to struggle against Nature. Third, we have r

Indo-American Knowledge Initiative ON AGRICULTURE - WHITHER INDIAN FARMER

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