Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
changed so that farmers in India no longer produced traditional food for
local consumption but cash crops or monocrops for the world market in-
stead. Food became a commodity that people had to purchase. As such,
communities in India had to sell their agricultural outputs to earn money
to buy food and to pay taxes to the colonial government.
This new economic system exacerbated the problems caused by
changing weather paterns. Normally, India experiences two monsoons,
or tropical rainstorms, one from the southwest from June through Sep-
tember, and another from the northeast before the year ends, around Oc-
tober. During El Niño, a global climate phenomenon that occurs every
three to six years, the Indian monsoons deliver less rain, often produc-
ing drought. W hen the El Niños brought drought to India during British
rule, most Indians found themselves ill equipped to deal with the conse-
quences. If a wheat crop failed one season, a farmer would earn no income
and would therefore be unable to buy food.11 Millions found themselves
in this situation at the turn of the twentieth century.
The problem was not that there wasn't enough food to feed the hun-
gry. India as a whole could have fed itself during these droughts, as it was
producing millions of tons of wheat and grain throughout these historic
famines. Some argue that annual grain exports from India actually in-
creased in these years, from three to ten million tons, enough to feed
twenty-ive million people.12 Colonial officials may have deliberately
maintained exports to support the economy of Britain instead: Indian
farmers produced and supplied raw materials to sustain the industrial-
ization of Britain and its extensive global empire.13 For example, grains
grown in India fed the English working class, and Indian timber built the
ships of the British navy.
Similar processes happened throughout the world in other colonies:
they began producing primary commodities for export on the world mar-
ket and turned away from subsistence agriculture intended to feed local
people. Colonial powers justified these changes in agriculture by arguing
that their tropical and southern colonies had a “comparative advantage”
in growing monocrops and in cash crop production—that is, that these
countries could produce certain goods at a lower cost because of their
cheap labor and climatic conditions. Communities lost local control over
