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“Food Security can be ensured only with Assured Income Security for Farmers”
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*Whoever makes two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind, and does more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together. Jonathan Swift, (1667-1745)
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When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. Daniel Webster
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*I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares. George Washington
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1* Farmers till the soil, toil in the scorching sun and produce food and fiber to feed and cloth the nation’s teeming millions and thus fulfill the basic needs of the population.
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They are the suppliers of life sustaining food. Others think that it is their duty to work the farms, toil under the merciless sun and move their harvest to their kitchen. Many think that farmers are merely unavoidable link between the soil and their dinner plates.
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Government unhesitatingly imposes ban on the export of rice and wheat etc, at will. Farmers will get what Government and bureaucrats think they should get, and no more.
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| Farmers cannot seek what they want. But the government can get what it wants. Others have the right to determine the prices of their products and services. But farmers’ freedom to sell what they produce at a price they choose to can be curtailed at will. |
Agriculture is seen as a passage to poverty, indebtedness and suicides.
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Lands can be and will be forcibly acquired by the government. The price paid for their lands will not have to reflect the future cash inflows to the new owners. Farmers do not have the freedom to offer their lands to the highest bidders. |
Farmers do not have the right to hold on to their lands.
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Farmers are the Orphans of the Mother Land! |
2* Farmers and agriculture are the source of all wealth multiplication.
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‘If a farmer sows one seed the crop is hundred- or even a thousand-fold’. How come the one industry where there is an actual physical multiplication suffers from the most serious deprivations?
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Everyone says that agriculture is the noblest of all professions; industry, trade and services come next in that order. But in reality a service job, particularly in government service, is the most prestigious and they get holidays& paid leave, annual increments, DA hike, periodical time scale promotions and pay revisions, medical benefits, pension& gratuity, including the ‘right to strike’.
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| But farmers are seldom given any of these rights. They are India’s second-class citizens. They are merely a component of the framework of essential commodities. They are here to serve others. |
| Farmers buy inputs at the highest possible prices. Farmers sell output at the lowest possible prices. |
The children of farmers who had the good fortune of getting higher education do not go back to cultivate the land. Daughters of non-farming families do not prefer to be married into agricultural families. The life of a farmer housewife is continuous misery, comparable to life imprisonment. Farmers’ daughters prefer grooms engaged in non-agricultural professions. |
| 3* How farmers became paupers? |
| *Until as late as the 1960s, the Government imposed a compulsory levy on foodgrains produced by farmers. All transport, storage, trade, processing and export of agricultural produce were severely restricted, if not totally banned. This was done by raising the bogey of consumers’ interest and the obligation on the part of the government to ensure food security (at farmers’ cost). |
| *The government fixes the MSPs of agri crops which do not even cover costs of cultivation, what to say of covering entrepreneurial risks. The government could depress the agricultural economy in general and keep the farmers permanently poor, by depressing artificially prices of agri commodities. |
| These anti-farmer policies were sought to be justified by various arguments: the need to promote industry by keeping prices of wage goods and raw materials low and the need for comprehensive consumer protection. |
| Public investment and expenditure for Agriculture and Bank credit to small farmers; all these are drastically reduced. The result is ever increasing Rural Urban inequalities in incomes. |
The Eleventh Plan candidly confesses: GDP per agricultural worker is only about 75% higher in real terms than in 1950 compared to 400% increase in overall real per capita GDP. IS THIS INCLUSIVE GROWTH? |
| Thus State policy on agriculture has essentially been one of exploiting the farmers to benefit others and making farmers paupers in the process. |
| FARMERS AGENDA : |
| THIS MUST CHANGE AND FARMERS CAN MAKE THE CHANGE HAPPEN BY: |
| * BECOMING AWARE OF THE CAUSES OF THEIR POVERTY AND DEPRIVATION, |
| * ORGANISE THEMSELVES AS FARMERS’ ASSOCOATIONS, |
| *VOICE THEIR GRIEVANCES RELENTLESSLY, |
| *PARTICIPATE IN ADVOCACY FOR REDRESSAL OF THEIR GRIEVANCES (through their associations), AND |
| * ACHIEVE ECONOMIC FREEDOM OF DETERMINING THE PRICES OF THEIR PRODUCE, |
| *INSIST ON INCREASED SHARE UPTO 18% IN PUBLIC INVESTMENT, AND PLAN ALLOTMENTS FOR AGRICULTURE, |
| *DEMAND AND GET 18% OF DIRECT BANK CREDIT AS MANDATED WITH 10% OF BANK CREDIT RESERVED FOR SMALL AND TENANT FARMERS, |
| *UNIVERSAL CROP INSURANCE FOR ALL FARMERS, AND |
| *REMOVAL OF ALL RESTRICTIONS ON AGRI EXPORTS |
| “When those who plough the fields stand idly with folded arms, Even completely desireless ascetics will not subsist.” Kural |
| QUTOTES ON AGRICULTURE : |
| *He who would look with contempt upon the farmer's pursuit is not worthy the name of a man. Henry Ward Beecher, ( 1813-1887) |
| *The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways. John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) Thirty-fifth President of the USA |
| Agriculturists are (as it were) the linch-pin of the world for they support all other workers who cannot till the soil. Kural |
| *“Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.” Dr. Carl Sagan |
| *Security for agriculture merits serious concern by not only the agricultural community but our nation as a whole. The risk to the U.S (read India) food supply and overall economy is real. Pat Roberts |
| *Trade increases the wealth and glory of a country; but its real strength and stamina are to be looked for among the cultivators of the land. William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, ( 1708 - 1778 |
| Krsr/281109 |
