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Were our crops to be tied, cyclically and in uneasy dependence, to the trickles of credit, India’s food stocks would be in a desperately poor state and food insecurity would stalk every district. To hear it from the Government of India and its multitude of agencies and allies, all of which in one way or another are connected with agriculture and food, the needs of the kisan (farmer) can be well met, and it takes only the kisan, toiling soul that she is, to “avail” of such plenitude.

Easier stated than done. We may not doubt the intentions that have made these provisions, but we prefer to see proof on the ground, in the fields of our marginal and small farmers, rather than as optimistic indicators that adorn the pages of reports read by no farmer. Where is this disconnection taking place? To borrow from the world of film, Yojana Bhavan and Krishi Bhavan, we have a problem! And it is this: the basis of every school of conventional economic thinking is scarcity – the idea that there is “not enough for everyone” – and the dramatic effects this reality has on human behaviour, and the measurement of behaviours is after all the DNA of economics. This allegation of scarcity is the foundation on which all of the economic systems of past and present are built.

Hence the problem is, are conventional economics approaches (from which flow these heavily-referenced reports and surveys that inform us about the state of India’s agriculture and food) any use for analysing a post-scarcity economy? Such as the ones our 640 districts will face over the next 25 years, and indeed which they face every time there is a flood or a drought? I think not. We should rather break free from analysing these matters and issues in the binary terms of ‘price’ and ‘cost’ – these are economics ‘tags’ that we intuitively know have no significance in an agro-ecological system. For social scientists and multi-disciplinarians, this is simple enough, not so for the organs and apparatus of governance. Yet for the sake of reaching an understanding that is more in tune with the kisan, it is unavoidable. When will one culture of understanding displace the other? This may not be foretold, but can be encouraged.

Let us make a rapid and selective review of what is being said about credit, the provision of money, to our farmers and agriculturists. The following paragraphs are from the Reserve Bank of India’s ‘Report of the Committee on Priority Sector Lending (2012 February), whose executive summary has said: “The need for directed lending in India would continue considering that there is lack of access to credit for a vast segment of the society. Credit remains a scarce commodity for certain sections/sectors and they continue to remain outside purview of the formal financial system. Therefore, those sectors where sufficient credit does not flow, those people who do not get adequate credit may get the benefit of directed lending.” [Get this document here (pdf).]

There are a few important insights that this paragraph provides. One, perhaps the most important, is that credit is presented as simultaneously a need for the small farmer and as a commodity (a scarce one, do you notice?). Two, there is a formal and an informal, and it is the products of the formal that are presented as possessing the ability to solve the small and marginal farmer’s problems. Three, there is a class stratification within the recipients of credit, those who are “financially included” and those who are not – and we have seen enough evidence over the last decade to show that the overlap of the marginal farmers and the financially excluded is very high, high enough to have been surprising two Plan periods ago, and for the measures this RBI report is discussing now, to have been not a preface, but an epilogue. Read the full comment on Agropedia.

Update – The real nature of the neoliberal economy of India has become clearer with the decision – against the run of public opinion and against the evidence from the agricultural and food sectors – to permit opening up the retail sector.

Since the decision was taken, the central government has spared no effort in a cynical and devious campaign to claim that permitting foreign direct investment in retail will benefit farmers and consumers. On Sunday, 27 November 2011, large advertisements were released in newspapers proclaiming the benefits of this decision. Nothing is further from the truth. India’s urban households, those eking out livelihoods from informal work and precarious manufacturing sector jobs, recognise the untruth and see the evidence in the 10%-15% annual food inflation. Our trade unions know this and our left parties know this.

Ranged against this population, rural and urban, are the ministries and industries who see in the permission a new means to control access to food and the provisioning of food. That is why I support the opposition represented by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whose concerns reflect those of this broad majority.

The CPI(M) has said correctly that this decision “will destroy the livelihoods of crores of small retailers and lead to monopolisation of the retail sector by the MNCs”. The party’s statement said: “Coming in the backdrop of persistent high inflation, growing joblessness and agrarian distress, this decision shows the utterly callous and anti-people character of the UPA Government. The Government seems to be more eager to meet the demands of the US and other Western governments and serve the interests of the MNCs like Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour, rather than protect those of its own people.”

India’s central ministries – now even further disrobed to reveal their predatory nature as instruments of the country’s business satraps – have held up the flimsy excuse that conditions imposed will safeguard the farmer, consumer and small retailer. This is lies.

The restriction that foreign retail outlets are limited to operating in cities of over 1 million population is meaningless because those are precisely the places where the MNCs want to go, to tap the lucrative segment of the market. It is in these cities – there are 53 cities with populations of over a million – that small retailers are mostly concentrated. India has the highest shopping density in the world, with 11 shops per 1,000 persons – these have evolved as neighbourhood suppliers and represent a cultural integration of small supplier and household familiarity.

The result is a rich density of trusted small retail – India has over 12 million such shops and these employ directly over 40 million persons. Well over 95% of these shops are run by self-employed persons in floor areas of under 500 square feet (about 48 square metres). It is these small shopkeepers in urban areas who fear for their future with the now-sanctioned entry of the MNC retailers. International experience shows that supermarkets everywhere invariably displace small retailers. Small retail has been virtually wiped out in the developed countries like the US and Europe. South East Asian countries had to also impose stringent zoning and licensing regulations in order to restrict the growth of supermarkets, after small retailers were getting displaced.

Then there is the cunning untruth that the condition for making at least 50% of the investment in ‘backend’ infrastructure will benefit rural populations, as this is said to lead to more cold chains and other logistics, benefiting the farmers. International experience has, however, shown that procurement by MNC retailers do not benefit the small farmers – we have seen this in India despite the specious and manufactured ‘case studies’ produced by India’s management schools (the several worthless and compradorist Indian Institutes of Management and their similarly worthless competitors). Over time, smallholder farmers receive depressed prices and find it difficult to meet the arbitrary quality standards. Allowing procurement by MNCs will also allow the central government to reduce its own procurement responsibilities, and this will directly affect the food security of those millions of rural and urban households which depend India’s public food distribution system.

2011/11/25 – This is a turning point for India’s economy. The central government has allowed foreign investment up to 51% in the retail sector for ‘multi-brand’ ventures, and has allowed 100% foreign investment for single brand retailers.

With this permission, the ruling United Progressive Alliance has ignored utterly the concerns of hundreds of representations made over the last year by small traders and wholesalers, and by grocery shops’ assocations all over India, against the entre of foreign direct invetment in the retail sector. The ruling United Progressive Alliance has also ignored the needs and conditions of hundreds of thousands of smallholder farming families, who will from now on be steadily exposed to increasing levels of coercion to submit to corporate and industrial farming pressures, or to quit cultivation and join the masses of informal labour in urbanising towns and cities.

India’s powerful business and indutries associations – the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) – have vigorously for the last two years been manoeuvring the ruling political alliance towards this position. They have been aided substantially by representations from the countries and regions who have the most to gain from this permission being given – the USA and the European Union.

The so-called economists and analysts who are regularly polled by the business media and whose pronouncements are used to justify the progression of policy towards such permission, are making a variety of claims about the effects the expected foreign investment will have on India. They are saying that this “much delayed reform” will help unclog supply bottlenecks and help ease food inflation, that it will benefit farmers who can get better prices for their produce and will bring in international expertise to streamline supply chains in India.

This is rubbish meant to distract. The big retail corporations have for years been demanding entry into a country which is estimated to have a retail sector whose annual sales are said to be around US$450 billion. But this is a sector populated by tens of thousands of tiny family-run shops that account for 90% of this enormous volume of sales. This is a turning point for India’s economy, for it signals the start of yet another struggle to first block, and then throw out the retail conglomerates.

Here are some of the many news stories on this important matter:

Moneycontrol.com – ‘Don’t expect investments to flow instantly: Bharti Walmart’ – After a long wait, the government has finally allowed 51% foreign direct investment (FDI) in the multi-brand retail. It has also decided to raise the cap on foreign investment in single-brand retailing to 100% from the current 51%. …

The Hindu – ‘Cabinet approves 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail’ – In a bid to remove the impression that UPA II was suffering from “decision making paralysis” and kicking off the second generation reforms, the Union Cabinet on Thursday gave its approval to allowing 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in …

Shanghai Daily (subscription) – ‘India to allow global chains to open multi-brand retail stores’ - MUMBAI, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) — India’s cabinet has given the green light to foreign investors to take up to 51 percent stakes in multi-brand retail stores later Thursday after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said a report by the …

MarketWatch (press release) – ‘Government of India Unleashes Potent Phase II Reforms’ – WASHINGTON, Nov 24, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The US-India Business Council (USIBC) today hailed India’s steady progress in advancing major economic reforms with the Cabinet’s approval of opening India’s vast multi-brand retail sector to foreign direct …

Reuters India – ‘India opens supermarket sector to foreign players’ - India threw open its $450 billion retail market to global supermarket giants on Thursday, approving its biggest reform in years that may boost sorely needed investment in Asia’s third-largest economy …

Wall Street Journal – ‘Carrefour Welcomes India’s Decision To Open Multi-Brand Retail Market‘ – PARIS (Dow Jones)–French retail giant Carrefour SA (CA.FR) said Thursday it welcomed the Indian government’s decision to open the country’s multi-brand retail market to foreign investment. “Carrefour will follow with attention the finalization of the …

Voice of America – ‘India Opens Retail Sector to Foreign Supermarkets’ - November 24, 2011 India Opens Retail Sector to Foreign Supermarkets VOA News India’s Cabinet has approved a plan to open up the country’s $450 billion retail sector to foreign supermarkets, a reform that could unclog supply bottlenecks that have kept …

Wall Street Journal – ‘India Unlocks Door for Global Retailers’ - MUMBAI—India paved the way for international supermarkets and department stores to establish joint ventures, a major step in opening one of the last great consumer markets that has been off-limits to many of the world’s biggest …

Hindustan Times – ‘Left and Right sharpen knives for FDI battle’ - The Cabinet’s approval of 51% FDI in multi-brand retail is likely to flare up into a major political controversy with the main opposition parties gearing up to oppose it. While BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley jointly condemned any such move …

Namnews – ‘Government Opens Up Country’s Retail Market’ - It’s official – the Indian retail market is now open to international chains, setting the stage for a major change of the local industry. Earlier today, the Indian government approved Foreign Direct Investment of up to 51% in multi-brand retail, …

Bloomberg – ‘India Allows Foreign Investment in Retail, Paving Wal-Mart Entry’ – India approved allowing overseas companies to own as much as 51 percent of retail chains that sell more than one brand, paving the way for global retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores …

indiablooms – ‘India opens retail to foreign players’ – New Delhi, Nov 24 (IBNS): India on Thursday decided to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in its closely-guarded multi brand retail market, paving the way for global supermarket giants to step into the $450 billion sector that was widely seen as one …

Tehelka – ‘Cabinet approves 51% FDI in multi-brand retail’ - The Cabinet cleared 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail on Thursday paving the way for global retail giants like Wal-Mart and Carrefour to enter India. The Cabinet also cleared 100 per cent FDI in single-brand retail. …

Newser – ‘India to allow more foreign retail investment, likely paving way for Wal-Mart’ – India’s Cabinet decided Thursday to allow more direct foreign investment in the nation’s huge retail industry, a move that could strengthen the country’s food supply chain and open India to giant global …

NetIndian – ‘Cabinet clears 51% FDI in multi-brand retail’ - After dithering for a long time, the Union Cabinet today cleared a proposal to allow 51 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail and raised the cap to 100 per cent in single brand retail. This will allow global retail giants like …

Boston.com – ‘India opens more to foreign multibrand retailers’ - AP / November 24, 2011 NEW DELHI—India’s Cabinet decided Thursday to allow more direct foreign investment in the nation’s huge retail industry, a move that could strengthen the country’s food supply chain and open India to giant global …

Retail Week – ‘Indian cabinet approves foreign investment in retail‘ – The Indian government has cleared the way to allow multinational retailers including Tesco, Carrefour and Walmart to enter its retail market. We provide a range of advertising opportunities. By advertising with us, you are guaranteed to reach the …

Atlanta Journal Constitution – ‘India opens more to foreign multibrand retailers’ – AP NEW DELHI — India’s Cabinet decided Thursday to allow more direct foreign investment in the nation’s huge retail industry, a move that could strengthen the country’s food supply chain and open India to giant global retailers such as …

Houston Chronicle – ‘India opens more to foreign multibrand retailers’ – NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s Cabinet decided Thursday to allow more direct foreign investment in the nation’s huge retail industry, a move that could strengthen the country’s food supply chain and open India to giant global retailers such …

IBNLive – ‘FDI in retail cleared; multi brand 50 pc, single brand 100 pc’ – The Union Cabinet FDI in multi-brand retail and single brand retail despite division within the UPA on the issue.

Moneycontrol.com – ‘Cabinet approves 51% FDI in multi-brand retail’ – Indian retailers finally get a chance to rejoice as the Cabinet today cleared the bill to increase foreign direct investment to 51% in multi-brand retail and 100% in single brand. Commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma said that he would give a …

Business Standard – ‘Too early to celebrate for Pantaloon retail’ – Valuations may prove to be a hurdle, while real gains will take time to yield. Stocks of organised retail companies like Pantaloon Retail and Shoppers Stop have been in action in the recent past on hopes that foreign direct investment (FDI) in the …

BusinessWeek – ‘India Allows Foreign Investment in Retail, Paving Wal-Mart Entry’ – Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — India approved allowing overseas companies to own as much as 51 percent of retail chains that sell more than one brand, paving the way for global retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. …

Washington Post – ‘India to allow more foreign retail investment, likely paving way for Wal-Mart’ – NEW DELHI — India’s Cabinet decided Thursday to allow more direct foreign investment in the nation’s huge retail industry, a move that could strengthen the country’s food supply chain and open India to giant global retailers such as Wal-Mart. …

STLtoday.com – ‘India opens more to foreign multibrand retailers’ - AP | Posted: Thursday, November 24, 2011 10:36 am | Loading… India’s Cabinet decided Thursday to allow more direct foreign investment in the nation’s huge retail industry, a move that could strengthen the country’s food supply chain and open India to …

Newser – ‘India to allow more foreign retail investment, likely paving way for Wal-Mart’ – India’s Cabinet decided Thursday to allow more direct foreign investment in the nation’s huge retail industry, a move that could strengthen the country’s food supply chain and open India to giant global …

Wall Street Journal (blog) – ‘FDI in Retail: If Wal-Mart Builds It, Will Indians Come?’ - The Indian government deserves credit for doing what , for at least five years, it has been contemplating: setting the stage for the creation if a modern retail industry. It is unlikely that the Cabinet was seized by Adam Smith-like …

Houston Chronicle – ‘India opens more to foreign multibrand retailers’ – NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s Cabinet decided Thursday to allow more direct foreign investment in the nation’s huge retail industry, a move that could strengthen the country’s food supply chain and open India to giant global retailers such …

Zee News – ‘Cabinet clears FDI in multi-brand retail’ – New Delhi: In a major decision, the government Thursday approved 51 percent FDI in multi-brand retail paving the way for global giants like WalMart to open mega stores in cities with population of over one million. The nod from the Union Cabinet came …

This permission, given by a ruling political coalition that has allowed food inflation to rage on unchecked for the last three years, which has regularly pushed up the prices of petrol (gasoline) and diesel, and whose record on tackling corruption and graft is shamefully weak, will not go unchallenged.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have released ‘The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011′ (SOFI).

This year’s report focuses on high and volatile food prices, identified as major contributing factors in food insecurity at global level and a source of grave concern to the international community. “Demand from consumers in rapidly growing economies will increase, the population continues to grow, and further growth in biofuels will place additional demands on the food system,” the report said.

Moreover, food price volatility may increase over the next decade due to stronger linkages between agricultural and energy markets and more frequent extreme weather events.

Price volatility makes both smallholder farmers and poor consumers increasingly vulnerable to poverty while short-term price changes can have long-term impacts on development, the report found. Changes in income due to price swings that lead to decreased food consumption can reduce children’s intake of key nutrients during the first 1000 days of life from conception, leading to a permanent reduction of their future earning capacity and an increased likelihood of future poverty, with negative impacts on entire economies.

Key Messages

Small import-dependent countries, especially in Africa, were deeply affected by the food and economic crises. Some large countries were able to insulate themselves from the crisis through restrictive trade policies and functioning safety nets, but trade restrictions increased prices and volatility on international markets.

High and volatile food prices are likely to continue. Demand from consumers in rapidly growing economies will increase, population will continue to grow, and further growth in biofuels will place additional demands on the food system. On the supply side, there are challenges due to increasingly scarce natural resources in some regions, as well as declining rates of yield growth for some commodities. Food price volatility may increase due to stronger linkages between agricultural and energy markets, as well as an increased frequency of weather shocks.

Price volatility makes both smallholder farmers and poor consumers increasingly vulnerable to poverty. Because food represents a large share of farmer income and the budget of poor consumers, large price changes have large effects on real incomes. Thus, even short episodes of high prices for consumers or low prices for farmers can cause productive assets – land and livestock, for example – to be sold at low prices, leading to potential poverty traps. In addition, smallholder farmers are less likely to invest in measures to raise productivity when price changes are unpredictable.

Large short-term price changes can have long-term impacts on development. Changes in income due to price swings can reduce children’s consumption of key nutrients during the first 1,000 days of life from conception, leading to a permanent reduction of their future earning capacity, increasing the likelihood of future poverty and thus slowing the economic development process.

High food prices worsen food insecurity in the short term. The benefits go primarily to farmers with access to sufficient land and other resources, while the poorest of the poor buy more food than they produce. In addition to harming the urban poor, high food prices also hurt many of the rural poor, who are typically net food buyers. The diversity of impacts within countries also points to a need for improved data and policy analysis.

High food prices present incentives for increased long-term investment in the agriculture sector, which can contribute to improved food security in the longer term. Domestic food prices increased substantially in most countries during the 2006–08 world food crisis at both retail and farmgate levels. Despite higher fertilizer prices, this led to a strong supply response in many countries. It is essential to build upon this short-term supply response with increased investment in agriculture, including initiatives that target smallholder farmers and help them to access markets, such as Purchase for Progress (P4P).

Safety nets are crucial for alleviating food insecurity in the short term, as well as for providing a foundation for long-term development. In order to be effective at reducing the negative consequences of price volatility, targeted safety-net mechanisms must be designed in advance and in consultation with the most vulnerable people.

A food-security strategy that relies on a combination of increased productivity in agriculture, greater policy predictability and general openness to trade will be more effective than other strategies. Restrictive trade policies can protect domestic prices from world market volatility, but these policies can also result in increased domestic price volatility as a result of domestic supply shocks, especially if government policies are unpredictable and erratic. Government policies that are more predictable and that promote participation by the private sector in trade will generally decrease price volatility.

Investment in agriculture remains critical to sustainable long-term food security. For example, cost-effective irrigation and improved practices and seeds developed through agricultural research can reduce the production risks facing farmers, especially smallholders, and reduce price volatility. Private investment will form the bulk of the needed investment, but public investment has a catalytic role to play in supplying public goods that the private sector will not provide. These investments should consider the rights of existing users of land and related natural resources.

On 9 August 2011, a date marked every year as ‘Quit India Day’ for its association with a landmark in India’s freedom movement, thousands of Indians marched to support food and seed sovereignty. From remote tribal hamlets in Orissa to cities like Mumbai and New Delhi, more than a hundred events were organised by civil society groups and concerned individuals to highlight the issues of food, farmers and agricultural freedom.

[See earlier post, 'Monsanto, get out of India!']

The ‘Monsanto, Quit India!’ day call was given by the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), a national network of more than 400 organisations working to promote sustainable farm livelihoods, seed and food sovereignty, food safety, farmers’ and consumers’ rights etc.

Across the country, the demands made to central and state governments were four-fold: no collaborative research partnerships with companies like Monsanto in the state agriculture universities and other institutions in the NARS; no commissioned projects especially for GM crop trials, by these institutions and no GM crop trials in general; no public-private-partnerships (PPP) in the name of improving productivity especially of crops like maize and rice which in effect pose serious questions on food/nutrition security as well as seed sovereignty; setting up grassroots systems of seed-self reliance, recognising farmers’ skills and knowledge related to seed and supporting institution-building and infrastructure around such self-reliant systems, so that timely availability of appropriate, diverse, affordable seed for all farmers is possible.

The Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture, India (ASHA) has summarised the Quit India day events and actions ahead:

In Mumbai, farmers from the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra state joined hands with Mumbai citizens to narrate stories about GM seeds like Bt cotton and how suicides by farmers continue to take place because of debt related to high inputs and crop failures. In Mumbai, youth joined freedom fighters in a silent march from the Lokmanya Tilak Statue in Chowpatty to the historic August Kranti Maidan.

In Orissa, padayatras and palli sabhas marked the day with dialogues with farmers in the tribal regions where the government is promoting hybrid maize along with chosen corporations, activists and farmers leaders urged farmers not to fall prey to the false promises and short-term yield claims of these corporations.

In Andhra Pradesh, all major farmers’ unions along with dozens of civil society groups came together to urge the state government not to allow any GM crop trials in the state. They reminded the state government that corporations like Monsanto (and its associates) have not hesitated to defy the government on various issues including redressal for loss-incurring farmers and price reduction on cotton seeds. A delegation met with senior bureaucrats in the Department of Agriculture after a protest sit-in at the Agri-Commissioner’s office.

Bangalore in the state of Karnataka witnessed a gathering of 300 farmers and consumers under the leadership of Kodihalli Chandrasekhar, President, Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) who held a demonstration at the Directorate of Agriculture. One of the main points raised here was related to state agencies like the University of Agricultural Sciences-Dharwad facilitating biopiracy in the name of collaborative research. Protesters demanded the scrapping of the ABSP II project through which Bt brinjal varieties were created posing serious questions on the IPRs over farmers’ seed resources; they also demanded that agencies which have violated the legal provisions of the Biological Diversity Act be penalised for such violations. The protestors dispersed only after receiving an assurance from top bureaucrats sent by the Agriculture Minister, that all partnerships and collaborative projects with Monsanto and other such companies will be reviewed.

In Patna, in the state of Bihar, freedom fighters and social activists along with farmers’ leaders joined hands to take up a one day symbolic fast against the government’s partnerships with Monsanto and research on GM crops like Golden Rice. The activists were met by the Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Food and Civil Supplies and an assurance provided that Bihar government would look into all the issues raised with regard to hybrid rice, hybrid maize, Golden Rice etc.

More than 15 events marked the day in Tamil Nadu state. In Coimbatore farmers and acitivists urged the state government not to allow the State Agriculture University to take up GM crop trials. They reminded the ruling party in Tamil Nadu about its election manifesto in 2009, where AIADMK had expressly recognised the threat from GM seeds and their unsuitability for Indian conditions, wherein the party had promised ‘no more promotion of GM seeds’. Memoranda submitted to the Chief Minister from various locations across the state urged her to follow the footsteps of other progressive states, which have taken a firm stand in favor of farmers and environmental sustainability and have said NO to GM crops. Data was shared from official records on the occasion to show that Bt cotton had not made any dent to the insecticides use in cotton in the state and that yields have been fluctuating greatly over the years that Bt cotton expanded in the state.

In Madhya Pradesh, hundreds of protesters gathered in Neelam Park in Bhopal from all over the state and took out a funeral procession of Monsanto and cremated Monsanto symbolically. They pointed out that the promotion of hybrid maize seed would nullify the efforts of the state government in promoting organic farming in the state, with an organic farming policy being officially adopted recently here. Protesters said that hybrid maize PPPs with corporations like Monsanto will take away diversity from our farms, will jeopardize food and nutrition security of poor tribals, will bring in agri-chemicals and indebtedness and will push the farmers of the state towards more suicides.

Punjab saw the launch of a week-long unique ‘Kheti Khuraak Azaadi Jatha’ from Jallianwala Bagh on the occasion. This Jatha will travel through the villages and towns of Punjab in the coming days and highlight the dangers of the recent secret deal that the Punjab government entered into with Monsanto. Farmers unions and activists here cautioned the government against giving a No Objection Certificate to GM crop trials in the state and said that all political parties have to take cognizance of the opposition amongst citizens against GMOs in our food and farming, as Punjab moves towards Assembly elections next year.

In Gujarat, a Beej [seed] Yatra in the tribal pockets of the state preceded the August 9th events; in Baroda, many Gandhians, along with housewives, youth and activists, took out a rally across the city today, despite heavy rains. In Uttar Pradesh, led by Bhartiya Kisan Union’s Rakesh Tikait, a fiveday long mobilization effort began with a farmers’ meeting held in Muzaffarnagar. The UP government was urged not to allow any GM crop trials in the state and to revise its plans for hybrid maize and hybrid rice promotion.

20110727 – The National Drought Mitigation Centre at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln has catalogued the consequences, using media reports, government analyses and contributions from the public, said The Economist in its report on the US drought and heatwave. In ‘Drought in the South: Bone-dry – Drought has blanketed nearly a third of the lower 48‘ the weekly said: “There are wildfires in the south-west and water restrictions in the south-east. Fields are scrubby and fallow, and in some counties the ground is riddled with deep cracks. Farmers are struggling to produce crops, and ranchers are worried about watering their cattle. As their losses mount, crop prices have risen.”

Drought-wracked landscape in the southern USA. Photo: The Sydney Morning Herald/Jason South

According to a report from the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, wheat was selling at more than $8 a bushel at the beginning of the summer, compared with an average annual price of $5.25 last year. Still, Texas farmers will bring in only an estimated $274m this year; the average for the past five years was more than twice as high.

Meteorologists say it is impossible to explain fully how these things happen. In 2010 the westward slopping of cooler water across the tropical Pacific, a phenomenon called La Niña, made itself felt on weather around the world. That La Niña is now over, according to scientists, but the patterns of atmospheric circulation that were associated with it are persisting, which could account for some of the drought. There is also the problem of man-made climate change, which is expected to intensify both droughts and floods.

In recent years, the Colorado River has become less reliable, said the Scientific American. Since 1999, abnormally low precipitation totals and hot and dry conditions have brought reservoir water levels close to record lows. The multiyear drought, the most severe since documentation began more than 100 years ago, has put the water supply in the thirsty Southwest in jeopardy.

Graphic: The Economist

This year, heavy snowpack and spring precipitation have brought the region some relief by partially refilling the reservoirs. But while National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research shows that snowmelt runoff into the upper basin hasn’t been this high since 1986, the southern end of the Colorado River continues to stop shy of the Sea of Cortez, where it used to run until the late 1990s.

The paradox is that this season stands in such stark contrast to the past 11 years of drought, highlighting the types of variability that climate change can wreak on the hydrological cycle. The Bureau of Reclamation released the first of three interim reports last month as part of its broader Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study. The report is designed to provide an outlook on the next “highly uncertain” 50 years (until 2060) of the river’s life. Authors wrote that in the nearly quarter-million-square-mile Colorado River Basin, “climate change, record drought, population increases and environmental needs” are likely to make water supplies ever scarcer.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has said that by July 2011, Texas and New Mexico had completed the driest six-month period on record. Average rain between January and June was more than eight inches (203 millimeters) below average in Texas and 3.5 inches (89 millimeters) below average in New Mexico. Record warm temperatures also persisted in Texas between April and June. The lack of rain and the warm temperatures added up to exceptional drought.

This image shows the impact of drought on plants throughout Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Made with data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite, the image compares plant growth between June 26 and July 11, 2011, with average conditions for the period. The image [left] is dominated by brown, showing that plants were growing less than average throughout Texas and New Mexico. The image supports an assessment by the U.S. Drought Monitor, which states that 94 percent of the range and pastureland in Texas was in poor or very poor condition in June 2011. In Oklahoma, 78 percent of range and pastureland was in poor condition.

Though drought is not a disaster that strikes all at once, it is nonetheless a devastating event that can cause death, disease, and loss of money and property. For these reasons, drought is termed the creeping disaster. So far farmers in Texas have lost 30 percent or more of their crops and pasture in 2011. The loss led the U.S. Department of Agriculture to declare a natural disaster in 213 Texas counties and additional counties in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The declaration qualifies farmers in these regions for low-interest loans to cover their losses.

20110724 – This temperature chart by state explains the heat gripping southern and eastern USA. The heat wave enveloping the Eastern Seaboard brought punishing record temperatures to the Washington region Friday, sending scores of people to emergency rooms with heat-related illnesses and closing down outdoor events. The combination of heat and humidity produced a heat index in Washington of 121 degrees, the highest since July 1980.

Unhealthy levels of heat and humidity are encompassing much of the eastern half of the US, according to NOAA’s National Weather Service, as a persistent heat wave continues its grip on the central US while expanding into the East. According to NOAA’s National Weather Service, approximately 132 million people in the United States are under a heat alert (Excessive Heat Warning or Watch or Heat Advisory) as of Friday morning.

Temperatures in the 90s to near 100 degrees will feel as hot as 115 degrees or higher when factoring in the high humidity. Record high temperatures are likely to be set in some locations — adding to the more than 1000 records that have been set or tied so far this month.

More than 4000 daily high temperature records were tied or broken in June, mostly east of the Rockies, and there were 159 reports of the record hottest temperature for June and 42 reports of all-time record hottest temperature ever. Drought intensified across parts of the Southwest to Southeast. While the southern Plains’ 1950s drought of record is unsurpassed in terms of duration, the current drought in parts of Texas is more intense than the 1950s drought when measured by the Palmer Hydrological Drought Index. While blanketing the southern U.S. with hot and dry weather, a upper level high pressure system effectively blocked any Gulf of Mexico moisture from feeding into the area. Meanwhile, the upper-level low pressure trough in the Northwest attributed to the cool, wet anomalies in the region.

Right now, the Examiner has said, approximately 29 percent of the country is experiencing some level of drought. About 12 percent of the US is experiencing “exceptional drought”, which is the highest level of drought. The combination of very little rain and scorching heat over much of the nation has been absolutely devastating. Many areas have been dealing with high temperatures in the 90s and the low triple digits for weeks.

The US Drought Monitor has said that the drought conditions across the Southern Great Plains persisted, and worsened across most areas, with localized improvements due to isolated rain events. AHPS precipitation estimates in excess of 5 inches prompted the improvement across southeastern Texas while sparse rainfall just east of El Paso also allowed for minor improvement. The rest of the southern Great Plains experienced continued hot (2 – 8 degrees F above normal) and dry weather.

Exception drought (D4) coverage was expanded in coverage across portions of Texas, including Erath, Hood, Somervell, Comanche, Jim Wells, and Duval counties. Additional expansion and intensification of the less severe drought conditions was included in the latest analysis across central Texas. Range and pastureland across Texas and Oklahoma continued to deteriorate. Across Texas, 94% of the range and pastureland was described as being in poor or very poor condition. This is a record weekly value, although measurement sof this kind only extend back to 1995. Across Oklahoma, 78% of the range and pastureland described as poor or very poor, tied for the fifth highest percentage (August 6, 2006). The rest of August 2006 saw statewide poor and very poor conditions expand to over 80% of all range and pasturelands.

Under the presidency of France, the G20 called a meeting of its member countries’ agriculture ministers to consider the food production and food price problems. They have releaed a “ministerial declaration”. This declaration is being called a “renewed commitment” to tackling hunger by part of the financial media, or is being called “weak” and a mere restating of positions by the more critical, or is being called an empty document full of vague promises and no reform by some activists.

Sandatu Kalug, 58, a lifetime rice farmer in Maguindanao Province lost his entire paddy crop to heavy flooding in June 2011. Photo: David Swanson/IRIN

In fact, it is a strong statement alright. It supports the current model of agri-business, of international investment in arable land, it supports the operations of the global agriculture commodity markets and trading systems, and it ensures that the flows of finance and capital between the world’s financial markets and the commodity markets will continue with less restrictions rather than more control.

All this is done in the name of small farmers and poor consumers. They have talked about a new global agriculture market information system (Amis) so that governments can share better data about the state of food stocks and global production. This is nonsense – it is the bankers, food traders, commodity funds, retail food industry and foodgrain exporters who will use this new knowledge and data. They imply that the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will run the Amis and they will exploit the new data. Private sector players, such as the large grain traders for whom knowledge of stocks and harvests represent a key competitive advantage, are simply ‘urged’ to participate – they will, at a profit which further loots the urban and rural poor.

There are five main objectives the G20 ministers made commitments to. However, like earlier inter-governmental statements over the last few years concerning agricultural production and access to food, it’s always safer I find to consider what is being meant here.

If we look at the five objectives and take the first:
“i. improve agricultural production and productivity both in the short and long term in order to respond to a growing demand for agricultural commodities”

There is a growing demand for “agricultural commodities”. So investment and research and trade arrangements and enabling policy are to be deployed to help fulfil this kind of demand?

“ii. increase market information and transparency in order to better anchor expectations from governments and economic operators”

Do governments and “economic operators” (what are these? food traders? commodity funds? integrated retailers?) have the same kinds of expectations? Is better “market information and transparency” to benefit only government and “operators” or do food producers and consumers also require them?

To make best use of the land, the Jumma tribes of Bangladesh's CHT practise a form of ‘shifting cultivation’, growing food in small parts of their territory, before moving on to another area and allowing the land to recover. Photo: IRIN/Courtesy of Christian Erni/IWGIA

“iii. strengthen international policy coordination in order to enhance confidence in international markets and to prevent and respond to food market crises more efficiently”

Confidence in international markets may be a concern for governments and economic operators, but in what way are they essential for food producers and consumers, who have since late 2007 suffered through price spikes amplified by these same international markets? The implication here is that responses to “food market crises” can be provided by – among other measures such as policy direction – these markets, which I find troublesome especially given the evidence since 2007.

“iv. improve and develop risk management tools for governments, firms and farmers in order to build capacity to manage and mitigate the risks associated with food price volatility, in particular in the poorest countries”

What are these risk management tools? Are they commodity hedge funds? Are they trading agreement? Are they bilateral agreements and FTAs? Are they commodities exchanges? Who will wield these tools? In poor and the poorest countries farmers have little or no capacity to manage and mitigate existing risk – they surely cannot bear the additional risks brought about by price volatility, but in what way will these tools help and function?

“v. improve the functioning of agricultural commodities’ derivatives markets.”

To what end? Agricultural commodities derivatives markets tie up crop production and food-in-stock, but for whom do they do this? If the functioning of these markets is to be “improved”, who will benefit from this improvement? Will it be the smallholder farmer and if so in what way? How many farmers of the South are directly connected to the agricultural commodities derivatives markets as beneficiaries? Are consumer coops connected?

These are some questions that come to mind when reading these five objectives. I see that Sarkozy has stated, “”We all know that agricultural production is insufficient to meet demand”. This may be so, for certain crops in certain regions, but against the background of these five objectives, I have to question: demand from whom or what and to what end?

[See 'The priorities of the agriculture G20', Nicolas Sarkozy's address at the G20 and you can get the G20 ministerial declaration here]

A vegetable seller waits for customers at the Wakulima market in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo: Siegfried Modola/IRIN

Here are a few sentences from paras 18 and 19 of the ‘ministerial declaration’:

“18. We commit to creating an enabling environment to encourage and increase public and private investment in agriculture. In particular, we stress the need to support public-private partnership on investments, based on a value-chain approach, for services (such as access to financial services, agricultural education and extension services), and for infrastructure and equipment for production (such as irrigation), for agroprocessing, for access to markets (such as transport, storage, communication) and for reducing pre and post-harvest losses.”

“19. We encourage countries, international organizations and the private sector to increase investment in developing countries agriculture, and in activities strongly linked to agricultural productivity growth, food security and generation of income in rural areas, such as agricultural institutions, extension services, cooperatives, research, roads, ports, cold chain, power, storage, irrigation systems, information and communication technology, climate change mitigation and adaptation. We also encourage them to enhance public-private partnerships in this field, in particular to improve market and value-chain operators’ cooperation and procurement from smallholders.”

This is a direct and unambiguous call for greater industrialisation of agriculture, for the strengthening of the tools of globalisation that have given rise to the agri commodity markets and products like derivatives, for the intensification of corporate R&D in agbiotech and with the support of national agricultural reseach systems in various countries – and at the likely cost of traditional knowledge and ecological approaches to cultivation. This sounds to me like an unambiguous statement of support for the food trading and food retail industries and their vast ‘verticals’ (as they call the integrative links these days), and finally for the systems of finance and banking that undergird the globalisation of food.

India’s meteorological department has issued its second long range forecast for the 2011 monsoon and has lowered its estimate. Rainfall will be 95% of the 50-year average in the June-September season, which are the monsoon months. In April, the Indian Meteorological Department predicted a monsoon that would be 98% of the long-term average. Normal precipitation is considered to be 96%-104% percent of the long-term average.

India’s agriculture-dependent population has been hoping for adequate rainfall to harvest good quantities of foodgrain and lentils for a second year and bring down inflation, which has led the Reserve Bank of India – the central bank – to raise rates for a 10th time in 15 months. Agriculture accounts for 14% of the economy and a reduced harvest can further lower rural incomes and send food inflation higher than it already is. Inflation in India is the highest among Asia’s major economies.

Bloomberg reported that the wholesale price index in India accelerated 9.06% in May after having increased 8.66% a month earlier, according to official data released on June 14. An index measuring wholesale prices of farm products including milk and lentils rose 8.96% in the week ended June 4 from a year earlier, according to the commerce ministry. India imported record quantities of sugar, lentils and oilseeds in 2009 following the weakest monsoon that year since 1972.

The IMD’s ‘long period’ is 1951-2000 and the department considers probabilities for the country (all-India) and four major regions: north-west India, central India, north-east India and south peninsula. “Over the four broad geographical regions of the country, rainfall for the 2011 Southwest Monsoon Season is likely to be 97% of its LPA over North-West India, 95% of its LPA over North-East India, 95% of its LPA over Central India and 94% of its LPA over South Peninsula, all with a model error of ± 8 %.”

The IMD also employs a six-parameter statistical forecasting system to prepare probability forecasts for five pre-defined rainfall categories. These are deficient (less than 90% of LPA), below normal (90-96% of LPA), normal (96-104% of LPA), above normal (104-110% of LPA) and excess (above 110% of LPA). The forecasted probabilities for the 2011 southwest monsoon season based on this system in percentage for the above 5 categories are 19%, 37%, 37%, 6% and 1%
respectively.

The department’s ‘Summary of the Update Forecasts for 2011 Southwest Monsoon Rainfall’ has said:

(1) Rainfall over the country as a whole for the 2011 southwest monsoon season (June to September) is most likely to be below normal (90-96% of LPA). Quantitatively, monsoon season rainfall for the country as a whole is likely to be 95% of the long period average with a model error of ±4%. The Long period average rainfall over the country as a whole for the period 1951-2000 is 89 cm.

(2) Rainfall over the country as a whole in the month of July 2011 is likely to be 93% of its LPA and that in the month of August is likely to be 94% of LPA both with a model error of ± 9 %.

(3) Over the four broad geographical regions of the country, rainfall for the 2011 Southwest Monsoon Season is likely to be 97% of its LPA over North-West India, 95% of its LPA over North-East India, 95% of its LPA over Central India and 94% of its LPA over South Peninsula, all with a model error of ± 8 %.

According to Reuters, government officials played down concerns that lower rainfall could fan inflation and dampen growth. “There is no need to press the panic button, as June rains are still above normal,” said Shailesh Nayak, the top civil servant in the ministry of earth sciences which controls the country’s weather office.

While rains could be slightly lower than normal in July, India’s chief forecaster said distribution was key. “There are chances the monsoon will pick up after July 15 once it covers the entire country,” said D. Sivananda Pai, director at the state-run National Climate Center. “Don’t go by the numbers, it is the distribution (of the rains) which we are still hoping to be good.” The weather office predicted 27 centimetres of rain in July compared with long-term average rainfall of 29 centimetres, and rains at 24 centimetres in August, when seeds start maturing, compared with long-term averages of 26 centimetres.

Weather office chief Ajit Tyagi remained optimistic. “Ninety five percent is a good forecast,” Tyagi said. “Had it been 90% of the long-term average then it would have been a cause for concern,” he said, adding that in the past slightly below normal monsoon rains had also seen adequate farm output because they were well distributed in the major crop growing regions.

Explaining climatic conditions over the equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans, the department’s second long range said moderate to strong La Nina conditions that prevailed in the equatorial Pacific during mid-August 2010 to early February 2011 weakened during subsequent months and dissipated to neutral conditions around mid-May 2011. The latest forecasts from a majority of the dynamical and statistical models indicate strong probability for the present ENSO-neutral conditions to continue during the current monsoon season and the remaining part of 2011.

It is important to note that in addition to El Niño and La Niña events, other factors such as the Indian Ocean Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have also significant influence on India monsoon. However, the latest forecasts do not suggest development of either a positive or a negative Indian Ocean Dipole event during the 2011 monsoon season. In the absence of strong monsoon forcing from both Pacific and Indian Oceans, intraseasonal variation may become more crucial during this southwest monsoon season and lead to increased uncertainty in the monsoon forecasts.

“Resource-conserving, low-external-input techniques have a proven potential to significantly improve yields,” Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has told the UN Human Rights Council at its Sixteenth session.

“In what may be the most systematic study of the potential of such techniques to date, Jules Pretty et al. compared the impacts of 286 recent sustainable agriculture projects in 57 poor countries covering 37 million hectares (3 per cent of the cultivated area in developing countries). They found that such interventions increased productivity on 12.6 millions farms, with an average crop increase of 79 per cent, while improving the supply of critical environmental services.”

“Disaggregated data from this research showed that average food production per household rose by 1.7 tonnes per year (up by 73 per cent) for 4.42 million small farmers growing cereals and roots on 3.6 million hectares, and that increase in food production was 17 tonnes per year (up 150 per cent) for 146,000 farmers on 542,000 hectares cultivating roots (potato, sweet potato, cassava). After UNCTAD and UNEP reanalyzed the database to produce a summary of the impacts in Africa, it was found that the average crop yield increase was even higher for these projects than the global average of 79 per cent at 116 per cent increase for all African projects and 128 per cent increase for projects in East Africa.”

Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

The most recent large-scale study points to the same conclusions, De Schutter has said. Research commissioned by the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project of the UK Government reviewed 40 projects in 20 African countries where sustainable intensification was developed during the 2000s. The projects included crop improvements (particularly improvements through participatory plant breeding on hitherto neglected orphan crops), integrated pest management, soil conservation and agro-forestry. By early 2010, these projects had documented benefits for 10.39 million farmers and their families and improvements on approximately 12.75 million hectares. Crop yields more than doubled on average (increasing 2.13-fold) over a period of 3-10 years, resulting in an increase in aggregate food production of 5.79 million tonnes per year, equivalent to 557 kg per farming household.

The Special Rapporteur’s recommendations:
As part of their obligation to devote the maximum of their available resources to the progressive realization of the right to food, States should implement public policies supporting the adoption of agroecological practices by:
• making reference to agroecology and sustainable agriculture in national strategies for the realisation of the right to food and by including measures adopted in the agricultural sector in national adaptation plans of action (NAPAs) and in the list of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) adopted by countries in their efforts to mitigate climate change;
• reorienting public spending in agriculture by prioritizing the provision of public goods, such as extension services, rural infrastructures and agricultural research, and by building on the complementary strengths of seeds-and-breeds and agroecological methods, allocating resources to both, and exploring the synergies, such as linking fertilizer subsidies directly to agroecological investments on the farm (“subsidy to sustainability”);
• supporting decentralized participatory research and the dissemination of knowledge about the best sustainable agricultural practices by relying on existing farmers’ organisations and networks, and including schemes designed specifically for women;
• improving the ability of producers practicing sustainable agriculture to access markets, using instruments such as public procurement, credit, farmers’ markets, and creating a supportive trade and macroeconomic framework.

The research community, including centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, should:
• increase the budget for agroecological research at the field level (design of sustainable and resilient agroecological systems), farm and community levels (impacts of various practices on incomes and livelihoods), and national and sub-national levels (impact on socio-economic development, participatory scaling-up strategies, and impacts of public policies), and develop research with the intended beneficiaries according to the principles of participation and coconstruction;
• train scientists in the design of agroecological approaches, participatory research methods, and processes of co-inquiry with farmers, and ensure that their organizational culture is supportive of agroecological innovations and participatory research;
• assess projects on the basis of a comprehensive set of performance criteria (impacts on incomes, resource efficiency, impacts on hunger and malnutrition, empowerment of beneficiaries, etc.) with indicators appropriately disaggregated by population to allow monitoring improvements in the status of vulnerable populations, taking into account the requirements of the right to food, in addition to classical agronomical measures.

A Syrian family receives food aid at a WFP distribution point. Photo: WFP/John Wreford

Here’s the latest punditry from the European Commission.

“Despite remaining uncertainties, based on the outlook for agricultural commodities established by several organisations, including the latest Commission medium term projections, three conclusions are clear for agricultural commodities:

• Agricultural commodity prices  are expected to stay higher than their historical averages, reversing their long-term downward trend, at least for the foreseeable future.
• Price volatility is also expected to remain high, although uncertainties with respect to its causes and duration persist.
• The level of input prices used in agriculture is also likely to remain higher than its historical trends.”

These three conclusions are contained in the document, ‘Tackling the Challenges in Commodity Markets and on Raw Materials’, issued as a Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. (These Eurocrats need urgent lessons in how to be brief and clear.)

The ‘Communication’ has also said:

“While higher global prices could stimulate  agricultural production, price transmission mechanisms are often imperfect. In many developing countries, commodity markets are often disconnected from world markets or, at best, world price signals are transmitted to domestic markets with considerable lags so that a domestic supply response is often delayed. Several analyses by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, OECD, Commission and others have focused on supply and demand developments, exacerbated by short-term economic and policy factors (including restrictions on exports) that explain part of the observed extreme price volatility, including factors specific to financial markets that may have amplified price changes.”

A food crisis in northern Burundi’s Kirundo province – the result of failed rains – has prompted many women to make a long daily commute to neighbouring Rwanda, where a day’s work in a field earns them just enough money to feed their family for a day. Photo: IRIN/Judith Basutama

There are several errors in this statement. One, in many developing countries, commodity markets are extremely closely tied to world markets quite simply because they are buying staple foodgrain from world markets. Two, domestic supply responses are not delayed – the structural adjustment in agriculture is preventing them from taking place. Three, the “restrictions on exports” mantra is being repeated as often as possible by all multilateral development banks (World Bank, IMF, ADB, IADB, AfDB) and by financial markets and commodities analysts who collaborate to spread this misinformation. Four, why are the “factors specific to financial markets” not spelt out?

“The combination of the above factors implies that higher prices for agricultural commodities will not necessarily result in higher incomes for farmers, especially if their margins are squeezed by increased costs. In addition, potential problems for net food importing countries and more generally for the most vulnerable  consumers are evident, stemming from price impacts on food inflation. While a certain degree  of variability is an intrinsic part of agricultural markets, excessive volatility does not benefit producers neither users.”

The contradictions between what the EU thinks it ought to say to the finance + markets constituency and what it thinks it ought to say to critics of neo-lineral economics at home is clear from this paragraph. The EU is admitting there is a profiterring taking place between the higher prices for agri commodities and the “not necessarily” higher incomes for farmers. Higher costs are mentioned too. Food importing countries have “potential problems’! (Seriously, are the people who wrote this completely unaware of the events in North Africa and the reasons behind them?)

Rally against Bt cotton in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, India

The adoption of Bt cotton in India has led to agricultural deskilling, and there is evidence of over-reliance on social learning rather than careful trial and study of new seeds and practices. This is the central message of a startling new study carried out in the state of Andhra Pradesh, in the Warangal district. The study was done by Glenn Davis Stone, an anthropologist at Washington University in St Louis, USA, and published by the journal World Development.

Field-level studies of Bt cotton in India now number in the dozens. The clear majority of studies by economists do reveal advantages in cotton yield, and often in pesticide usage, for Bt cotton, but there are several reasons for agreeing that the results to date are inconclusive. One issue is that measures of central tendency obscure the enormous variability across time and space. Consider the major cotton-producing states: yields in Gujarat have surged from below the national average before Bt cotton to leading the country by 2005, while yields in Madhya Pradesh have decreased since Bt arrived.

Within sub-state units such as the district or mandal, villages vary greatly in prosperity, access to information, and other factors affecting use of new technologies, which may help explain cases like Maharashtra where studies show a “complex, confusing picture of farmers’ spraying behaviour and a startling degree of variability in their cotton output”, according to one earlier study. It is doubtful that there is any such thing as a typical cotton growing village in India, said another. [SciDev.net has a report on the study and its findings.]

Stone has said that another persistent problem has been selection bias. Early adopters are known to be a sample biased towards successful farmers. Bt-adopters have been found on average to own 58% more land and 75% more non-land assets; to own up to 36% more land; to be not only richer in land, but better educated and more diversified. Bt-adopters have also been found to be more effective farmers by comparing the non-Bt yields of adopters (i.e. farmers who planted both types) with the yields of non-adopters; the adopters’ conventional yields were found to have produced 29–43% more than the other conventional yields.

Research to date has very rarely controlled for this bias, and many studies fail to even specify how their samples were drawn. The problem is key because almost all studies have focused on the years immediately following the introduction of Bt cotton, when yield differences mainly reject the agricultural prowess of a biased group of early adopters (and also reject how this group happened to fare their first time trying a new technology).

A related problem is bias in cultivation practices: prior to the institution of price caps in some states in 2006, Bt seeds cost four times as much as conventional seeds, and would have been planted in the yields with best irrigation and then benefited from unusual care and expense. This accords with the fact that adopters spent more on bollworm sprays for their Bt plots than for their conventional plots. “In Warangal I have seen many cases of farmers lavishing extra resources and attention on their Bt yields,” wrote Stone in his paper.

“The 2007 season marked the first time virtually all farms in the sample planted exclusively Bt cotton. In 2007, most input shops stocked little if any non-Bt cotton seed, and no farmers in the sample reported with confidence that they had planted any non-Bt seed in 2007. In some cases farmers said they were not sure if they had bought Bt seed or not; farmers often buy seeds that others are buying without knowing much about them. Therefore it is impossible to specify how many packs of non-Bt seed were bought, but we can be certain that the number is vanishingly small. By 2008, I believe the number to be zero: all of the eight input shops I interviewed in Warangal City and four villages had only Bt cotton, and no vendors or farmers knew where one could find a box of non-Bt seed. Most people had stopped even identifying Bt cotton as such.”

[The formal citation: Stone, G. D. Field versus Farm in Warangal: Bt Cotton, Higher Yields, and Larger Questions, World Development (2010). Paper available here.]

From a farm-level perspective there appears to have been a general management failure of which the bollworm damage was merely a symptom. Such management failure has been theorised as “agricultural deskilling” which may be synopsised as follows:

* Farm management skill (in non-industrial contexts) is based not on static “indigenous technical knowledge” but on the ability to “perform”. It is not static, but rather an ability that must be continually updated and refined, especially when there are changes in market conditions, input technologies, pests and diseases, government policies, and even new ideas. This ongoing process of learning to perform with given technologies under changing conditions is agricultural skilling.
* How skilling actually occurs is complex. Drawing on work by behavioral ecologists, it is helpful to distinguish between environmental learning, which is based on evaluations of payoffs from various practices, and social learning, in which adoption decisions are based on imitation.
* Social learning is an indispensable part of human adaptation but it has intrinsic biases. One is prestige bias, in which a farmer chooses which farmer to emulate on the basis of prestige, regardless of the other farmer’s actual success with the trait being copied. Another is conformist bias, in which a farmer adopts a practice when (and because) it has been adopted by many others. Reliance on “pure social learning” should be high when environmental learning is costly and/or inaccurate. Social learning may lead to the spread of maladaptive beliefs, especially when the environment changes very rapidly.
* Failure of the ongoing process of learning to perform under changing conditions is agricultural deskilling, a condition differing in some key respects from the better-known industrial deskilling.

Varieties of cotton seeds at a local outlet

Specific causes of deskilling in Warangal cotton farming were identified as inconsistency, unrecognisability, and an excessively rapid rate of change in cotton seed. Patterns of seed choice gave conspicuous evidence for deskilling. Although choice of seed is one of the most serious decisions the farmer makes each year, farmers in all study villages relied heavily on “pure social learning,” producing a surprising pattern of highly localised seed fads, driven not by local agroecology but by marketing and happenstance. In counterpoint to the classic model of farmers adopting new seed only after careful evaluation of test plots, Warangal farmers showed a keen desire for new and untested seeds, which encouraged the churning of the seed market with new releases (including releasing seeds under multiple names).

In his discussion, Stone has said: “We have, on one hand, a global constituency that contests the spread of agricultural biotechnology on mostly political-economic grounds including effects on intellectual property regimes, funding priorities, and other articulations between the industrialised and developing worlds. On the other hand, we can recognise nexuses of corporate biotechnology, academic science, and state trade interests with a keen interest in developing-world success stories. There is much at stake, and the claim that transgenic technologies are ‘just another tool for the farmer’ is true only in the studiously myopic sense that the textile mills in England’s Industrial Revolution were ‘just another tool’ for making cloth. But the debate has followed a trajectory with enormous emphasis on empirical field-level measurements, and given the pervasive vested interests and strong antipathies, claims of resounding field-level ‘success’ or ‘failure’ have found ready audiences.”