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New Delhi, July 14: The Prime Minister’s Rs 3,750-crore package for Vidarbha farmers does not address the core causes of peasants’ suicides, an NGO working on this issue for over two decades stated.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Vandana Shiva managing trustee of Delhi-based organisation, Navdanya’s said that the agrarian crisis leading to farmers’ suicides was a result of debts.
The debts were a result of convergence of “rising costs on non-sustainable and inappropriate production systems, and falling prices of agricultural products due to unjust and unfair trade practices.”
She said under the current practices, farmers depend upon purchase of hight cost hybrid seeds every season as they cannot save the same for re-use in the next season because of the very nature of the seeds. This added to their financial burden.
The extensive use of costly chemical pesticides and fertilisers degraded the fragile ecosystems, increasing the vulnerability of farming. Besides, the monocultures of cash crops further aggravate the risks in event of frequent crop failures, she said.
“Debt against debt is no solution. Farmer should be more self-reliant and less dependent of debt,” she said.
Shiva suggested the need for encouraging cost-effective traditional organic farming to ensure better returns to farmers. She criticised the Rs 180 crore quality seeds replacement programme as “a bonanza for seed multinationals like Monsanto, bringing no relief to the distressed farmers.
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