Landworkers Alliance - 6th Jan 2021 - What are the farmers demonstrations in India all about?
The wave of strike action by Indian farmers is the largest civil society action by the agricultural community for three decades. The images reaching our screens of mass rallies on hundreds of thousands of people in Delhi are inspiring, but the political background is complex, even confusing. For us as farmers in the UK to express support and solidarity we need to understand it a bit first. So what are the India farmers mobilising about?
The demonstrations have been sparked by the passing of a package of three bills affecting the agricultural sector. Farmers are resisting these new laws and also demanding a fair Minimum Support Price (MSP); which is a floor price across all crops. We’ll look at the details of these below, but the take-home message is that taken together the new legislation will loosen rules around sale, pricing and storage of farm produce. A farm sector long protected by government regulation is to be exposed to market forces on a new scale, taking India down the development route that the UK has already taken toward consolidation and industrialisation.
https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/farmers-demonstrations-india/
Landworkers Alliance - 14th Jan 2021 - Letter to support Indian farmers through UK development policy
On the 12th January, we sent a letter to the Rt Hon MP Dominic Raab, UK Foreign Secretary, asking him to support Indian Farmers through UK development policy. Below is a copy of the letter we sent, and you can also email your MP to ask for their support on these issues.
https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/dominic-raab-letter-indian-farmer-protests/
Landworkers Alliance - 14th Jan 2021 - The Indian farmer protests and the UK dairy industry
In this blog, LWA’s Mobilisation and Engagement Coordinator Humphrey Lloyd looks at Indian farmer protest through the lens of the market reform that hit the dairy industry in the UK. Is it time for UK dairy farmers to learn from Indian dairy farmers?
Indian farmers are on the streets in their hundreds of thousands resisting the imposition to a package of three laws that will deregulate the farm sector. The free-market minded government hopes reforms will open the country to investment and see the emergence of a more modern and efficient industry. Striking farmers on the other hand, fear falling prices and the marginalisation of small family farms by ‘behemoths.’ As this debate rages on the streets and in the halls of power in Dehli, it is interesting to reflect on how market reforms have impacted UK farming and farmers in recent times. And no farmers have been impacted by market orientated reform as much as those beleaguered women and men, who produce the perishable food that almost all of us consume everyday: milk.
In 1950 there were 196,000 dairy farmers in the UK, yet today there are a mere 12,000, representing a drop of more than 95% since the post-war era. This catastrophic collapse of a key land based sector is the result of a series of political decisions to liberalise the market, allowing for price fluctuation and market consolidation, similar to those that will be ushered in India by the three laws if the Modi’s government has its way.
https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/indian-farmer-protests-uk-dairy-industry/
Landworkers Alliance - 25th Jan 2021 - Reflections on the India farmers movement from a UK horticulture farmer
In this blog, LWA’s Mobilisation and Engagement Coordinator Humphrey Lloyd, a horticulture farmer running a market garden in Bristol, reflects on the India farmers movement and why their protests are so important.
Central to the concerns of the farmers who are camping in and around Delhi through the cold winter weather is the threat to farm gate prices, agricultural wages and ultimately a loss of rural livelihoods. For UK horticultural farmers it’s interesting to consider how our sector and our wages have been affected by similar market based reforms to those being contested on the streets of Delhi.
Here in Britain, supermarket shelves abound with fresh fruit and veg the year round, and food is cheaper by most estimates than all nations on earth bar the USA and Singapore. Whilst this might seem great for consumers, from the perspective of the farmer, the situation is less rosy. Jobs in horticulture, along with the market gardens and orchards, have been in a long term decline, with their productive area declining by 27% since the mid 1980s. This decline is associated with increased integration of UK fruit and veg farms with the world’s largest free trade area, the European Common Market. This is why heavily sprayed French apples are the norm on our supermarket shelves and why our apple growers struggle to make a living from this historic and quintessentially British crop. Currently, primarily rice (paddy) and wheat produce in India receive guaranteed prices in government controlled markets. If these are removed, and the government succeeds in creating a free market across the Indian states, prices will fluctuate and fall, as is common with other crops. Indian farmers will see their bottom line being hit, just as has been the case for UK apple farmers by tariff-free imports from Holland, Germany and northern France.
https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/reflections-india-farmers-movement-horticulture/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2020_Indian_farmers%27_protest_-_sitting_protest.jpg
Landworkers Alliance - 28th Jan 2021 - The Indian farmer protest through the lens of the UK supermarket system
In our third blog in the series, Bella Thompson and Humphrey Lloyd take a look at the UK supermarket system in light of the India farmer strikes.
Since November 2020, Indian farmers have been on strike in one of the biggest demonstrations in decades. Their opposition centres around three agricultural bills that will deregulate supply chains and allow corporations to enter a fragmented and liberalised market, where they can dictate prices and deals with farmers. The impact of these new laws will play out over generations, and those on strike fear the shift of power and control away from the field and farmers towards processors, buyers and retailers.
A move from a localised, peasant food web to a centralised distribution system is in the making. As we look at the momentous display of social resistance in India, we can reflect on our model of food distribution in the UK. Our food system is dominated by the powerful players that are central to most food supply chains in developed countries: the supermarkets.
https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/farmer-protests-uk-supermarket-system/
Wikipedia The 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest is an ongoing protest against three farm acts which were passed by the Parliament of India in September 2020.
Farmer unions and their representatives have demanded that the laws be repealed and will not accept anything short of it. Farmer leaders have rejected a Supreme Court of India stay order on the farm laws as well as the involvement of a Supreme Court appointed committee. Farmer leaders have also rejected a government proposal, dated 21 January 2021, of suspending the laws for 18 months. Eleven rounds of talks have taken place between the central government and farmers represented by the farm unions between 14 October 2020 and 22 January 2021; all were inconclusive. On 3 February, farmer leaders warned of escalating the protest to overthrowing the government if the farm laws were not repealed.
The acts, often called the Farm Bills, have been described as "anti-farmer laws" by many farmer unions, and politicians from the opposition also say it would leave farmers at the "mercy of corporates". The farmers have also demanded for a creation of an MSP bill, to ensure that corporates can not control prices. The government, however, maintains that they will make it effortless for farmers to sell their produce directly to big buyers, and stated that the protests are based on misinformation.
Soon after the acts were introduced, unions began holding local protests, mostly in Punjab. After two months of protests, farmer unions—notably from Punjab and Haryana—began a movement named Dilhi Chalo (transl. Let's go to Delhi), in which tens of thousands of farming union members marched towards the nation's capital. The Indian government ordered the police and law enforcement of various states to attack the farmer unions using water cannons, batons, and tear gas to prevent the farmer unions from entering into Haryana first and then Delhi. On 26 November a nationwide general strike that trade unions claim involved approximately 250 million people took place in support of the farmer unions. On 30 November, it was estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 farmers were converging at various border points on the way to Delhi.
A section of farmer unions have been protesting, whereas the Indian Government claims some unions have come out in support of the farm laws. Transport unions representing over 14 million trucker drivers have come out in support of the farmer unions, threatening to halt movement of supplies in certain states. After the government did not accept the farmer unions' demands during talks on 4 December, the farmer unions planned to escalate the action to another India-wide strike on 8 December 2020. The government offered some amendments in laws, but unions are asking to repeal the laws. From 12 December, farmer unions took over highway toll plazas in Haryana and allowed free movement of vehicles.
By mid December, the Supreme Court of India had received a batch of petitions related to removing blockades created by protesters around Delhi. The court also asked the government to put the laws on hold, which they refused. On 4 January 2021 the court registered the first plea filed in favour of the protesting farmers. Farmers have said they will not listen to the courts if told to back off. Their leaders have also said that staying the farm laws is not a solution.
On 30 December, the Indian Government agreed to two of the farmers' demands; excluding farmers from laws curbing stubble burning and dropping amendments to the new Electricity Ordinance.
On 26 January, tens of thousands of the farmers protesting against the agricultural reforms held a farmer's parade with a large convoy of tractors and drove into Delhi. The protesters deviated from the pre-sanctioned routes permitted by the Delhi Police. The tractor rally turned into a violent protest at certain as the protesting farmers drove through the barricades and clashed with the police. Later protesters reached Red Fort and installed farmer union flags and religious flags on the mast on the rampart of the Red Fort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farmers%27_protest
Wikipedia Farmer suicides in India refers to the national catastrophe of farmers committing suicide since the 1990s, often by drinking pesticides, due to their inability to repay loans mostly taken from landlords and banks.
The National Crime Records Bureau of India reported that a total 296,438 Indian farmers had committed suicide since 1995. Out of these, 60,750 farmer suicides were in the state of Maharashtra since 1995 and the remaining in Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, all states with loose financial and entry regulations.
Earlier, governments had reported varying figures, from 5,650 farmer suicides in 2014 to the highest number of farmer suicides in 2004 of 18,241. The farmer's suicide rate in India had ranged between 1.4 and 1.8 per 100,000 total population, over a 10-year period through 2005, however, the figures in 2017 and 2018 showed an average of more than 10 suicides daily. There are accusations of states manipulating the data on farmer suicides, hence the real figures could be even higher.
India is an agrarian country with around 70% of its people depending directly or indirectly upon agriculture. Agriculture had 15.4% share in economy of India in year 2017. Around 41.49% of total labor are associated with agriculture in year 2020. Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India. Activists and scholars have offered a number of conflicting reasons for farmer suicides, such as anti farmer laws, high debt burdens, poor government policies, corruption in subsidies, crop failure, public mental health, personal issues and family problems.
