Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
tended at the M. S. Swaminathan Foundation Centre in Wayanad, farm-
ers revealed that they themselves either used or knew of others in the area
who indiscriminately used endosulfan to prevent crop losses to pest out-
breaks. As Neela, the coffee farmer I interviewed, put it pessimistically:
“If you want to know my opinion, farmers need pesticides to survive.” She
acknowledged that pesticides were harmful, but then she said, “This en-
dosulfan, if Kasaragod [District] doesn't get it, there won't be cashews. If
a disease comes
. . . we absolutely need chemicals . . . we need it. . . . We're
farming to live, after all.”
As Neela opined, farmers in India now depended on chemical inputs
like endosulfan to produce food, especially because crops were becoming
more and more vulnerable to pests. This frame of mind and the situation
that causes it have been likened to being on a treadmill that keeps speed-
ing up but remains stationary: As the natural fertility and pesticide resis-
tance of soils and soil-dwelling organisms progressively weaken because
of constant chemical applications, farmers need more and more artificial
inputs to augment soil fertility and prevent pestilence. Meanwhile, their
incomes remain stagnant or decline. This patern repeats and even accel-
erates. In the past, if and how farmers could ever step off the treadmill has
not been clear, but obviously a break from chemical-dependent farming
is necessary.
Kerala's agrarian crisis exemplifies hardships that farmers throughout
India have encountered in the past twenty years. The problems are the
result of the marketization and industrialization of agriculture—a pro-
cess rooted in British colonialism, intensified by the Green Revolution,
and influenced by more recent trade policies. As farmers have come to
rely on markets to buy and sell food, their livelihoods have become more
tenuous. Environmental degradation, from pesticide runoff into water-
ways to a loss in biodiversity, has also increased as agricultural processes
have intensified and as food production has come to prioritize expanding
yields over other outcomes. Pesticide use, from furadan to endosulfan,
has also taken its toll on the health of many people in India. As George
noted during his training session for organic farmers, farming with chem-
icals is a toxic, poisonous business. Yet, despite the intensive use of chemi-
