DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Images of thousands of farmers pouring into India’s capital on tractors and carrying banners denouncing potentially devastating changes to agricultural policy may seem like a world away, but the New Delhi protests are throwing up problems that have resonated in the United States and have led to dramatic changes in rural America.
Indian farmers have left their homes to march through New Delhi in a desperate attempt to force the repeal of laws they believe would end guaranteed prices and force them to sell to powerful corporations rather than government markets. Despite decades of economic growth, up to half of the Indian population depends on growing crops on small parcels of land, usually less than 3 hectares, and farmers fear that without guaranteed prices they will be forced to sell their land and their income. to lose.
The dispute raises questions not only about agriculture, but also about the declining population in rural India, where small communities are already struggling to survive – a problem reflected in parts of the US.
“These protests have gone well beyond the bills as this has become a bigger conversation about the soul of rural India, something very familiar to those of us in the Midwest,” said Andrew Flachs, an anthropology professor at the University of California. Purdue University which has extensively studied the experiences of cotton farmers in India. “We are always talking about the spirit of American agrarianism and the soul of rural America, and this has shifted to a conversation about those same dynamics in India.”
The images of farmers marching through New Delhi recall similar scenes in Washington, DC, during the agricultural crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when hundreds of trucks and tractors flooded the National Mall. Thousands of farmers lost their land, in part as a result of government policies that led to rising interest rates as demand for their products fell, leading to declining land values.
In Iowa – one of the hardest hit states – there were about 500 farm auctions a month in 1983, when families had no choice but to sell.
Decades later, those memories remain fresh for Rick Juchems, whose parents had to sell their 640-acre farm in Iowa. Just as feared by those protesting in India, American farmers lost their livelihood and sense of identity.
“We just tried to stay alive,” said Juchems, who was later able to continue farming thanks to his in-laws. “You work for that all your life and then it’s gone.”
The midwestern rural economies that had been in decline for decades were devastated by the agricultural crisis. But while many of the farmers who survived became more prosperous, communities around them continued to struggle. Researchers fear the same could happen in India if New Delhi refuses to repeal the law favoring corporate agriculture.
After the crisis, many rural Americans were able to adapt, move to cities and find jobs, but Bengaluru, India-based social anthropologist Aninhalli Vasavi, said farmers in India have few options. Even when economic reality forces them to leave their rural homes, they often struggle in urban areas.
“India has not had a substantial industrial base to accommodate its large population in paid industrial or urban employment,” Vasavi said via email. “Instead, a large number of rural migrants have been ‘negatively integrated’ into the low-end urban and construction economy.”
The challenges facing India are common to many developing countries in Asia, where agricultural land has been swallowed up, often for factories and real estate development, leaving legions of farmers without adequate compensation and deprived of their livelihoods.
In countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia and China, many find themselves on the margins of rapidly industrializing cities, finding low-paid employment in service jobs such as massage parlors and delivery services that do not provide social benefits or security.
Vasavi and others are also concerned about the environmental consequences of the shift from labor-intensive farming in India to the large-scale farming that is well known in the US. Such farming is not new to India, which implemented aspects of industrial farming – known as the Green Revolution – in the 1960s and succeeded in increasing production and reducing widespread hunger.
Even if the many small plots make India less productive than in the US, researchers say Indian farmers are good stewards of their land and avoid some of the environmental consequences of US agriculture, such as fertilizer runoff. and soil depletion.
Peggy Barlett, a professor of anthropology at Emory University and a student of agriculture and rural life, said that while a push for industrial farming is obvious for Americans accustomed to large-scale farming, this makes less sense in India, where there are many but fewer labor force. . money for expensive agricultural machines.
As more attention is paid to the role of agriculture in climate change, U.S. farmers will also face the environmental costs of petroleum-based fertilizers in the coming years, rather than relying on organic methods commonly used on small farms , Barlett said.
Ohio State University researcher Andrea Rissing said there is a wave of young Americans growing vegetables on a few acres, more like India in some ways than the Midwestern United States. Those small businesses supply a growing demand for fresh, locally grown products.
Rissing said many of her students have no choice but to think small because farmland is so expensive, but they are also attracted to non-mechanized farming that improves soil and limits runoff to waterways. Others build food hubs to market their vegetables locally, rather than sending it to markets at home and abroad, as is typical of large-scale farming in the US.
It’s the kind of farming that Rissing prefers, but she acknowledges, “Farming is difficult. It’s tough for small farmers, and it’s tough for big corn and soy farmers too. “
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Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press business writer in Bangkok, contributed to this report.