This temporal petition is said innumerable times by billions of believers through the length and breath of the planet over the centuries. Back home, the most tragic face of the agrarian crisis the country is facing are the suicides of over 200,000 farmers over the past decade. If our food producers do not survive, where is the nation's food security?
The Knanaya Community has its roots in the traditional agrarian society of Kerala. Our fore-fathers as recent as 3 decades ago have tilled the land to enhance the food security of our families and the State, before cash-crops like rubber completely took over our lands and our lives.
Globally too, half of the hungry people of the world today are food producers. This is directly related to the capital intensive, chemical intensive, high external input systems of food production introduced as the Green Revolution, and the second Green Revolution. Farmers must get into debt to buy costly inputs, and indebted farmers must sell what they produce to pay back the debt. Hence the paradox and irony of food producers being the highest number of hungry people in India and in the world.
The Government of India is lately committed to enacting a National Food Security Act, because the Right to Food is viewed as the basis for the Right to life guaranteed in the Indian Constitution to all its citizens. However, the government appears to be only focussed on the food grain distribution, and is silent on issues such as grain production, security to farmers, and preventing the diversion of agricultural land, forest and water for corporations. In the near future, food grains are expected to be imported thus benefiting the multinational companies. Efforts are also being made to employ a policy of food stamp or food voucher in place of food grains to the beneficiaries, so the government does not have to procure grains and thus save on the subsidy money.
Environmental activist Vandana Shiva has severely criticized this proposed policy of the Indian Government for its inherent bias in favor of the corporate sector. The assumption is that corporations will control the food supply, and the government will enable the poor to buy from corporations on the basis of food stamps and vouchers. Thus the poor will then be condemned to the least nutritious unhealthy food as has happened in countries like the United States. The wheat imported by India a few years ago, were unfit for human consumption due to contamination by pesticides.
Activists like Vandana Shiva advocate for a Food security system that assures the right to safe, healthy, culturally appropriate and economically affordable food, which Food stamps cannot guarantee. Further, the Public Distribution System is both a food procurement and food distribution system, which the Indian Government appears as keen to dismantle and let go.
The Small Farmers’ Convergence (SFC) at the World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 in Johannesburg, with farmers from across Africa had rejected genetically modified seeds (GMOs), and chemicals and had committed themselves to organic farming, and defense of farmers’ rights. They are freely choosing seeds they can save and technologies that are sustainable. Farmer’s organizations in India and in Africa are saying “no” to GMOs on the basis of their freedom to choose to be organic, which means being free of genetic contamination that result from genetically modified (GM) crops. Patents and intellectual property rights on seeds rob farmers of their freedom to save and exchange and thus develop their own seeds. Farmers are treated as “thieves” and “criminals” for exercising their rights as farmers. That is why those who farm organically and want to maintain their freedom to farm and uphold farmers’ rights are resisting the irresponsible corporations which are trying to own life on earth, including seed, contaminate crops and food and have total control over farming and farmers. Ironically, the leftist Government in Kerala has very recently decided to shift its stance towards GM crops on grounds that it will be unscientific to oppose the introduction of such seeds into the country, and that they would not harm the environment.
Farmers in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh are committing suicides because the costly seeds and chemicals from corporations like Monsanto/Mahyco have pushed them into deep debts. Bill and Melinda Gates are criticized for launching the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Nairobi, Kenya, which is aggressively pushing genetically modified seeds and the involvement of agribusiness giants such as Monsanto.
Another vital factor for India's food security is water. The monsoons recharge the groundwater and surface-water systems. Since 1966, as a consequence of the introduction of the Green Revolution model of water-intensive chemical farming, India has over-exploited her groundwater, creating a water famine. The chemical monocultures of the Green Revolution use ten times more water than the bio-diverse ecological farming systems. Rubber Plantations as an example of monoculture farming and its adverse impact on the water table is very close to home for the Knanaya Community.
The proverbial last straw is about how speculations by the Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more, have also contributed to the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world. This story appeared in The Independent/UK on July 2, 2010:
At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people - mostly children - couldn't afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions."
Corporations are creating poverty by diverting the hard earned income of peasants and farmers to the seed/pesticide industry. The new seeds besides being costly are also ecologically vulnerable to pests and diseases leading to more crop failures and higher use of chemicals. These are killer technologies which are undesirable and unnecessary.
Though most Kananaits today have moved away from land to other means of livelihood and to the far corners of the globe, we cannot simply turn a blind eye to the plight of food producers back home and globally. Enhancing critical awareness on this grave issue is indeed vital to exercising a positive global citizenship.
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