A recent
Public Policy lecture at The Takshashila Institution made me think of my Economics
classes from back in college in 2004, where while doing marathon reading
sessions of Uma Kapila's book on the Indian economy, we students had once asked
each other in a debate, "Has the Green Revolution, which started in the
1960’s, directly responsible for India’s agriculture crisis of today?"
With almost
two decades more of insight, hindsight and I-told-you-so moments, let us dive a
bit into this question.
Back in the
1960's; frequent famines and low crop productivity with a potent mix of
geo-political factors gave us the Green Revolution in India, as we know it
today. At its core, the Agriculture Green Revolution of the past 55 years, from
1968 to 2023, has brought us to a state of flux today, where we are having to
ask ourselves the same questions that we had asked back in the 1960s.
If we take
a systems-thinking approach to evaluate this predicament, here is how the time
travel on the same would look like.
1.
In the 1960’s, low crop yield and overall crop
availability, leads India to desperately buying the PL480 wheat variety from
USA.
2.
India becomes one of the first country to adopt the
High Yielding Variety (HYV) of wheat seeds of the Green Revolution, the seeds
for which had been first sown in Mexico, by Norman Borlaug. India’s drive is
led by M.S.Swaminathan.
3.
These seed varieties have their own requirement of high
input materials application, including stronger versions of pesticides and
fertilizers.
4.
The success and subsequent profitability of the newly
launched seed varieties, leads to a system of mono-culture in parts of North
India – where vast swathes of land now grow only a single crop.
5.
The combination of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and
assured buyback on certain critical crops, further entrenches the wholesale
shift towards crops that are assured to be bought back by the government.
6.
Paddy also gets introduced in Punjab, to reduce our
dependence on imported seeds of wheat. Western UP takes the route of sugarcane
farming subsequently.
7.
The culture of mono-culture of water and
chemical-guzzling crops continues unabated. It continues to be a profitable
venture for the farmers.
8.
Just in a few years from the 1960s to 1970s, Punjab has
shifted from growing 200+ crops to 3 crops (wheat, rice and cotton).
9.
The increased use of chemical inputs, over a few
generations affected not just the soil health, but also human health. Remember,
that for long, the fertilizer have also been heavily subsidized by the
government.
10. An
assessment in late 1990’s and early 2000’s shows that same states which fed the
country for thirty years, are now suffering due to the same mono-culture having
destroyed its soil nutrients (not like Borlaug or Swaminathan didn't warn us
about this).
11. From
the 1990's; even more of flood irrigation, pesticides and fertilizer
application per hectare is needed to keep alive the same the level of
productivity.
12. The
input cost of crops has gone up exponentially over time, while the productivity
(yield) which went up by more than 10% y-o-y in the first two decades of the
Green Revolution, was only growing by a meagre 1%-2% from the 1990s
13. A
Swaminathan Commission from 2004, devises a formula for MSP for keeping farming
profitable and not a loss-making venture. This formula is yet to be implemented
even in 2023.
14. Parallel
to this, our Food Corporation India (FCI) storage warehouses fail to keep up
with the pace of crop output, and their edifice begins to crumble.
15. Village
Level Aggregators (VLA/VLC’s) and the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee
(APMC) gain more power; to make up for the lack of storage spaces as well as
financing opportunities for the farmers.
16. The
soil today, in 2023, is now devoid of basic Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium
(NPK) and other micro-nutrients.
17. To
recover from this nutrient-loss, the farmers are being suggested inter-cropping
and multi-cropping techniques, which they anyway used to do pre-Green
Revolution. A few have also started exploring more natural methods of farming.
18. The
water table has gone down to abysmal levels, wells are now being made
functional at 500 or even 1000 feet (remember, paddy, the water-guzzler?)
19. The
Bhatinda-Bikaner “Cancer Trains” gains folklore prominence, as the state
government launches its Mukhya Mantri Punjab Cancer Raahat Kosh Scheme
(MMPCRKS). Fertilizer used had gone up by 8 times, between 1970 to 2006
20. This
in then topped up with sugarcane starting to take the same route in a few
states of North and West India through the past two decades.
I will stop
here. Any points beyond this, would require me to make a Systems Diagram to
show the inter-connectedness of this mess we are in today (let's keep that for
a later visual write-up).
Essentially,
what we have today is a redux of the core agriculture problems of 1960s and
newly created ones which are borne out of the decisions taken in the 1960s. Our
problems of yesterday led to our progress of today, which has created the new
problems for our tomorrow (this write-up doesn't even cover the problem of
stubble burning, the controversy around the three farm laws and micro-finance
and crop insurance as few other pain areas of our ongoing challenges). It is an
almost infinite loop of ‘development’, that we are currently immersed in.
So, will we
be able break this chain? Will our agriculture solutions of today, not be the
albatross around the neck of those living a further fifty-five years down the
line, in 2078?
Norman
Borlaug had said that it is not enough to increase food production, and that we
have to increase the purchasing power of the “vast underprivileged masses” to
improve their access to the new agriculture bounty. Dr.Swaminathan himself had
detailed plans on an "evergreen revolution", which was to be
"productivity with perpetuity".
This has
given me the confidence, that it is indeed possible to break away from this
chain. Hence, moving forward in this newsletter series, I will be sharing more
policy solutions for sustainable agriculture growth.
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