English 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.
Stagnating agricultural wages is another factor. A 2018 report from the Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development found that agricultural wages in India were one third that of other household incomes, and protestors are concerned about them dropping still further with the implementation of the three laws. Here in the UK, since the 1940s the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) had negotiated wages between unions and employers and compensated farm labourers for the difficulty, unsociability and outright danger of their work. This was then abolished in 2013 under the coalition government’s ‘bonfire of the quangos.’ The spring following the abolition of the AWB, Unite conducted a survey of its rural members and found that only half of them had enjoyed a pay rise in line with inflation. Leading agricultural policy expert in India, Devinder Sharma, believes incomes for farm workers in real terms have remained stagnant or even declined in recent years. If the situation gets worse they could see the kind of rural-urban exodus that will put more pressure on urban jobs and infrastructure. 40% of the populous nation of India rely on farm labour for employment; a shock to their wages will be a social disaster.
The abolition of the AWB in Britain was actually supported by the National Farmers Union and barely noticed by wider civil society! The contrast presented by the India resistance is an inspiration. After two months of strikes and nine rounds of negotiations, the government has agreed to temporarily suspend implementation of the three laws and institute a four-person panel to resolve the dispute. Farmers are unconvinced and say the panel is complicit with the government. Today, tractors are streaming into Delhi in their thousands in preparation for a protest rally tomorrow on Indian Republic Day. This commemorates the day that India became a republic after its independence from British colonial rule. British farmers who oppose the neo-colonial food system that dominates the world today, should not only stand with them but take a leaf out of their book.
