– that’s all you need to know
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News India Times
May 1, 2015
Special Report
By Beenish Ahmed
A
bout every 30 minutes, a
farmer in India commits
suicide. The unseasonably
heavy rains and unexpected
hailstorms that have pounded
down across the country threat-
en to up that already alarming
figure.
According to one expert, a
sudden downpour of hail in the
Indian state of Maharashtra laid
waste to more than $150 million
worth of crops.
One farmer there didn’t even
wait for the March storm to
abate. After seeing his crops col-
lapse into the mud, 27-year-old
Sandeep Shinde hung himself
from a tree in his field, leaving
behind his wife and two young
children.
“I cannot even afford milk for
the children,” his widow, Shoba,
told the Times of India.
Farmer suicides are doubly
devastating because they mark
the death of a bread winner, and
often mean the loss of a season
of crops as well.While Prime
Minister Narendra Modi
increased compensation to
farming families who have lost a
loved one to suicide, the vast
majority of those promised gov-
ernment aid claim they haven’t
received it, even 20 years on.
According to state govern-
ment records, there have been
40 percent more suicides in
Maharashtra in the last seven
months than during the same
period last year. Similarly har-
rowing reports have come from
other parts of India.
So far this year, 12 farmers in
the state of Bengal and more
than 36 farmers in Uttar Pradesh
have killed themselves.
In the 20 years since the
Indian government first started
keeping track of farmer suicides,
about 300,000 farmers have
ended their own lives. According
to the 2011 census, the suicide
rate for farmers is 47 percent
higher than the national average.
That rate is even higher in the
United States where male farm-
ers are twice as likely to commit
suicide than the general popula-
tion.
While the phenomenon is oft-
discussed in India, it’s not limit-
ed to the South Asian state.
Farmers around the world have
turned to the suicide amid crops
failures and livestock diseases. A
recent Newsweek article called
the phenomenon an “interna-
tional crises.” Its author, Max
Kutner, pointed to several coun-
tries where farms have been
devastated by suicide:
In France, a farmer dies by
suicide every two days. In China,
farmers are killing themselves to
protest the government’s seizing
of their land for urbanization. In
Ireland, the number of suicides
jumped following an unusually
wet winter in 2012 that resulted
in trouble growing hay for ani-
mal feed.
In the U.K., the farmer suicide
rate went up by 10 times during
the outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease in 2001, when the gov-
ernment required farmers to
slaughter their animals. And in
Australia, the rate is at an all-
time high following two years of
drought.
While the increased rates
Kutner cited for farmer suicide
are often tied to exceptionally
difficult years for farming,
experts, advocates, and industry
leaders have all put forth their
own reasons to attribute India’s
“epidemic” of farmer suicides to
one issue or another. But in real-
ity, the driving force behind the
bleak phenomenon is a complex
array of intertwining issues
make farming an increasingly
precarious vocation in India.
Vandana Shiva, India’s most
prominent environmental
activist, believes genetically-
modified seeds – specifically,
those sold by the agricultural
behemoth Monsanto – are driv-
ing farmers to lose control of
their own farming practices.
She’s claimed that the frustra-
tions over Monsanto’s propri-
etary policies which forbid farm-
ers from planting, selling, or
even accidentally growing seeds
fromMonsanto’s patented crops
push farmers to the brink. Shiva
and other environmental
activists have come to refer to
Monsanto seeds as “suicide
seeds.”
In 2013, she explained her
argument, citing one of
Monsanto’s genetically-modified
cotton seeds as an example.
“Monsanto’s seed monopo-
lies, the destruction of alterna-
tives, the collection of superprof-
its in the form of royalties, and
the increasing vulnerability of
monocultures has created a con-
text for debt, suicides and agrari-
an distress which is driving the
farmers’ suicide epidemic in
India,” Shiva wrote. “This sys-
temic control has been intensi-
fied with Bt cotton. That is why
most suicides are in the cotton
belt.”
But many researchers have
started to take issue with the
notion that genetically-modified
crops like Monsanto’s Bt cotton
are to blame for India’s epidemic
of farmer suicides. Some have
pointed out that Indian farmers
continued to purchase
Monsanto seeds even as activists
railed against them – and for
good reason: because it proved
profitable to do so.
For its part, Monsanto has
argued that its crops require less
pesticide purchase and less loss
of yield —meaning that farmers
who opted for its genetically-
modified seeds would be more
successful than those who use
traditional seeds.
But Shiva has countered,
claiming that Monsanto drove
up the price of seeds 8,000 per-
cent – and that “the high costs of
purchased seed and chemicals
have created a debt trap.”
Since debt is a major cause to
farmers’ despair, however, it’s
not just agricultural companies
like Monsanto who are responsi-
ble. For those seeking loans to
pay higher up-front costs for
Monsanto seeds, unfair lending
practices increase their financial
woes.
Anoop Sadanadan, a profes-
sor of political science based at
Syracuse University, has argued
that farmer suicides should be
attributed not to agricultural
practices but rather financial
ones. In a paper published last
year, he noted that farmer sui-
cides were concentrated in five
of India’s 28 states – and that
those five offered the least insti-
tutional credit to farmers, forc-
ing them to take out private
loans at interest rates as high as
45 percent.
Government policies towards
agriculture may also bear a part
of the blame for imposing addi-
tional hardship on farmers – or
rather, for suddenly stopping to
insulate them from it. The rate at
which farmers committed sui-
cide saw a spike in 1997 – the
same year that the government
removed subsidies for cotton.
Climate change has increas-
ingly been cited as a major cul-
prit to farmer suicides in India.
Although it’s a difficult trend to
measure, farmer suicides tend to
increase along with extreme
weather phenomenons. And
extreme weather is becoming
more and more common in
India.
In 2013, Germanwatch’s
Global Climate Risk Index
ranked India as one of the three
countries affected by the most
extreme weather events in 2013.
The sort of sudden downpours
that has wrought havoc on the
country’s cotton belt, are on the
rise. Scientists have found that
they’ve increased by 50 percent
over the last 50 years. Scientists
believe that such devastating
events will only increase. India’s
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change has predicted
that “rainfall patterns in penin-
sular India will become more
and more erratic, with a possible
decrease in overall rainfall, but
an increase in extreme weather
events.”
Often, years with the most
calamitous weather mean hikes
in farmer suicide. In 2009, for
example, more than 17,000
farmers killed themselves – a six
year high, according to the
National Crime Records Bureau.
That year India saw the worst
drought it had seen since 1972.
Its affects may still be felt by
farmers. Devinder Sharma, of
the New Delhi-based Forum for
Biotechnology and Food
Security told theWall Street
Journal in 2009, “The severe
drought has pushed back the
household economy of farmers
in the rural areas by 10 years.”
Six years later its effects may
still be being felt in unbearable
ways.
– Think Progress
Behind India’s ‘Epidemic’ Of Farmer Suicides
Above, an activist of the youth wing of
India’s opposition Congress party burns a
banner of Arvind Kejriwal,
chief of Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party
(AAP) and chief minister of Delhi, during
a protest over the April 22 suicide
by a farmer at a rally April 23, in New
Delhi. Left, protesters gather around a
farmer who hung himself from a tree dur-
ing a rally organized by AAP, in New Delhi
April 22.
Reuters
