This article explores the last half-century of food policy in India, and the strenuous agricultural relationship between India and the US. It explores the environmental and social issues currently plaguing the country’s agroeconomy.
WWII saw a massive restructuring of US agriculture. Not only did the country need to feed its own citizens, it also needed to ship supplies out to its allies overseas, creating an overwhelming demand for production. A new, ‘advanced’ agriculture was born, one where machines replaced traditional animal and human labour and where technological developments meant that pesticides and fertilisers flowed freely and cheaply. Yields were high, the farmers and farm-hands at war were replaced by inexpensive Mexican immigrants; US agriculture was booming.
Elsewhere in the world, people were starving, ravaged by pestilence and famine or too poor to afford the food which was available. This was a golden opportunity for the US interests which were desperate to suppress communism.
The Mexican government had nationalised the assets of the Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil Company in the late 1930s. The Rockefellers were not happy about this, and channelled funding into food aid as a means of suppressing left-wing movements in Mexico. Plant biologist Norman Borlaug, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, cracked it and created newly-improved crops with far higher yields - the start of what is now known as the Green Revolution.
These new super-crops were hungrier and thirstier than the ones grown by peasant farmers: they needed fertilisers, mass irrigation and also pesticides, and so although more food was being produced to feed the starving, both the environment and the peasant farmers - who could not afford all the brand new agricultural technology - paid the ultimate price.
Was it worth it, as the US claimed it was, to feed the planet? Well, according to experts like the World Food Program and acclaimed academic Raj Patel, the concept of global food shortage is in actual fact, largely a myth. ⅓ of food produced globally is wasted. Malnourishment around the world is mostly caused by lack of resources. In Africa, where 278 million people face chronic hunger, it is not lack of food, but rather, lack of purchasing power, and in many places, the effects of armed conflict, that keeps people from eating. This is the real cause of famine.
At the time of the Green Revolution, Indians were no stranger to famine, which had become widespread under British rule with no action taken against drought, killing millions of Indians between 1769 and 1943. After India achieved independence in 1947, it struggled to sustain its population. Peasant communities demanded redistribution of land from the Indian National Congress, but the Congress relied heavily on rural landowners for electoral support and refused to acquiesce.
In 1954, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 480, also known as the US Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, which in 1956 led to an agreement with the Indian government to supply grains to help feed malnourished Indian citizens.
This may seem altruistic, but in reality it came with political expectations. The US eyed India as a key battleground in the Cold War, and so the subsequent decades of food aid had policy conditions such as reduced criticism of the Vietnam War. The US gained political control at very little cost - after all, they were overproducing grain anyway. The relative proportion of financial aid to India - which would have helped establish a more autonomous Indian economy - was extremely small, engendering a dependence on US imports.
In the 1960s, the Green Revolution came to India, in part, as US Agency for International Development administrator William Gaud stated at the time, to suppress a “Red Revolution.” High-yielding crop varieties were introduced, alongside the technology and chemicals needed to maintain them. The environmental toll was massive. Indigenous seeds could not withstand the chemical fertilisers, and so genetic diversity of crops plummeted. This is epitomised by Indian rice varieties: before the 1970s, 110,000 different landraces of rice were grown, by 2006, this number was estimated at 6000. The fertilisers also degraded the quality of Indian soil, and the excessive use of groundwater for irrigation depleted India’s water reserves.
Even one of the initiators of the Green Revolution in India, M.S Swaminathan, eventually conceded that its ecological effects on the country had been devastating, leading him to eventually push for an “Evergreen Revolution” of “climate-resilient farming.”
Beyond the environmental effects of this agricultural history, it has also fomented anger and misery amongst Indian farmers.
58% of Indians depend on agriculture for their livelihood, but it only brings in 18% of the country’s GDP, as the vast majority of Indian farmers (82%) are small family farmers, and many live in poverty. The average farmer’s income was found in 2018-19 to be 10,218 rupees or £94 a month, whilst the average salary across professions was 10,534 rupees, or £97 a month.
This poverty has consequences 1995 and 2020, more than 400000 Indian farmers committed suicide. Meanwhile, the poorest 25% of urban Indians consume only 1700 KCals a day against the recommended 2100, and 40.4% of children nationally are at least moderately underweight. Out of a global assessment of 125 countries in 2023, India ranked 111th in terms of access to food, indicating a “serious” hunger issue.
These are the economic consequences of the Green Revolution, initially hailed as the remedy to worldwide starvation. The increased demand for water needed for the high-yielding crops has turned water into a scarce commodity, and made irrigation all the more expensive. Increased pesticide usage led to the evolution of resistant pests, whilst killing off the insects which preyed on the pests. This in turn made farmers more dependent on pesticides - and now, India is one of the biggest producers of pesticides worldwide. Often, PPE is lacking, meaning that farmers are at risk of bioaccumulation of the toxic chemicals found in the pesticides they apply.
In order to fix the pest problem, chemical giant Monsanto began to introduce genetically modified seeds into the Indian market, in particular, a new type of cotton: Bt Cotton (the Bt standing for Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium poisonous to common cotton pest bollworm, a type of moth), first trialled in India in the late 90s. They quickly monopolised the seed market, making it difficult to purchase alternatives, and often farmers were unable to access loans without Monsanto seeds. But Bt cotton has reportedly faced the same problems: high water demand, pest resistance, toxicity. There have also been reported mass deaths of sheep which grazed on Bt cotton fields.
Indian farmers gambled their money on the GM seeds and many lost out. According to economics professor Vikas Rawal, who specialises in agrarian distress: “it’s a loss-making enterprise, but these farmers don’t have anything else to do, so they just keep doing it.” Rawal claims that up to 90% of Indian farmers simply cannot afford fertilisers, seeds, pesticides and other equipment. Monsanto’s Bt Cotton seeds themselves are patented, meaning Monsanto collects royalties whenever they are used.
What has the government response been? Since 1997, India has consistently liberalised its agricultural markets due to pressure from the World Trade Organisation, importing more and more food where previously there were quotas and restrictions in place. Cheaper imports spell trouble for small farmers, especially those which are “dumped.” Dumping is the act of getting rid of surplus products by selling them below the cost of production.
In 2020, Indian farmers took to the streets in protest after Indian PM Narendra Modi introduced agricultural reforms liberalising trade and making it easier for large transnational companies to dominate Indian markets. After a year of opposition which saw hundreds of farmers die of cold, heat and COVID-19 in anti-Modi campouts, the laws were finally repealed. But this is only one small consolation to the farmers embittered to years of losing out to the interest of politicians and large agribusinesses.
It is no wonder, then, that resistance groups have emerged from the agricultural scene in India. The next half of this article will discuss in particular the farmer’s union Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) and how it bridges the fight for farmers and the fight for the planet.