Cymraeg 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.
It’s worth bearing in mind at this stage that the Indian farmer sector, unlike the UK’s, is dominated by small holders and enjoys (or suffers from) a high level of state intervention. 68% of farmers own less than 1 hectare of land in India and most food is traded in government regulated markets, or ‘mandis’ where prices are fixed. Also, marketing of agricultural produce has been regulated since the 1960s by the Agricultural Produce Marketing Facility AMPC Acts. (snappey eh?) The history of APMC system is complex and contested but it at least attempts to protect and traders from an unfettered free market.
So what do the three bills do?
The first bill is designed to bypass the AMPC system of fixed prices with a view to a national de-regulated private market across all of the Indian states. The farmers fear the result will be a loss of guaranteed prices and regulated markets for their produce.
The second is about ‘stocking limits,’ which means volumes of food that can be stored in warehouses. This is considered to be less controversial, however the main beneficiaries of this deregulation will be the biggest food traders who deal with produce in massive volumes. It’s possible that large sellers would also begin to ‘hoard’ produce in the hope of getting a better price for it further down the line. This is likely to affect consumers more with the hoarding leading to artificial shortage and price rise.
The third is about ‘contract farming.’ Contract farming is where a buyer requests an amount of produce from a farmer and there is a contract to define the price and timescale. Contract farming has been taking place in India for decades, however this law provides new legal terms which make it less favourable to farmers. As such farmers in India largely expect the new law to give more power to buyers such as supermarkets and processors over prices and farming practices. Contract farming also has the effect of favouring the larger farms that are more able to meet the requirements of buyer’s contracts, thereby leading to consolidation.
Around 50% of Indian families are dependent on farming for a living. The development of the sector could and should be based on this existing network of small and medium scale enterprises. Rather, these three bills will take the sector down the route of liberalisation and market concentration. Our experience of this development model here in the UK is desultory; smaller farmers being squeezed off the land, intensification of farming practices and the growth of powerful market actors like supermarkets. As small scale producers in the UK, struggling to survive in this non-conducive political climate, we must show solidarity with farmers in India resisting the marketisation that we have already undergone. All power to the farmers, all power to the strikes!
Photo by im_rohitbhakar
