Corporate Agriculture; a brief outlook

India was the land of agriculture, in the pre independence era. Many of the British Officials, among those who ruled India before independence have beautifully described the outline of Indian agriculture in their works. During those days India was a land of villages, and the major part of these villages constituted fertile land made fit for cultivation. Hence major part of Indian population relayed on agriculture for their livelihood. In this situation the country was sufficiently rich in food grains, and there were no issues of food scarcity. The availability of nutritious food made the man fit and healthy, in other words the people were healthier and the country had a strong human resource. Due to the abundance of greenery in the country, the atmosphere was healthier with minimal pollution.

This was the main reason for the advent of foreigners on India. The cultural and agricultural heritage of India made the greedy invaders eyes yellow. The foreigners who invaded India exported the food grains, spices to their lands. This was the first blow on Indian agriculture. The Indian agriculture also had a strong outline of the regional cultural heritage. This can be witnessed even today at the rural part of India. When the British invaded India they broke down the regional cultural heritage of India, which resulted in the loss of integrity between the people. At the end of the British rule, India had become poor in the field of agriculture, and the major part of the cultivation land had become barren.

When India acquired independence, as you all know the new democratic administration was established. The written constitution was formed by Dr. B.R.Ambedkar. During this time preference was given to agriculture as well as development. Many steps were taken to sustain and develop agriculture, in which the major one was the five year plan, which granted a huge amount of finance to the development of agriculture. In spite of all these measures, since independence the field of agriculture is facing several problems and its declining day by day.

Root cause for the problems in the field of Agriculture

In the post independence period, India began to develop socially, economically, technologically in a rapid manner which diversified the interest of the people from agriculture. Thus the standard of living of the people increased, thus India started emerging out as a globally recognized country. This made the Indian government to look into industrial and technological sector in preference, thus on the other side it developed a negligence outlook on the field of agriculture. Thus the development policies lead to globalization, industrial revolution etc. Thus the government started acquiring the fertile agricultural lands to initialize the industrial developments. This in return led to the urbanization of the rural provinces of India. Thus the fertile lands were converted into gigantic industries, and villages into cities, which in coarse attracted farmers away from agriculture. The existing farmers started facing many problems such as scarcity of fertilizers, poor yield, monsoon failure, raising inflation etc. Several times due to draught both farmers and government had to face tough time.

Corporate Agriculture; a boon or curse?

The phrase ‘Corporate Agriculture’ might be unfamiliar to many at this point of time. Corporate Agriculture in simple words signifies the acquisition of the agricultural market by the corporate giants. Extreme corruption and negligence of the agricultural department of the government has made the agricultural markets fall down. Thus the crops grown by farmers cannot easily reach the needy (common man). Even the farmer doesn’t get proper reward for the crops grown/sold. Many a time failure of the inventory system causes a huge loss to the farmers also resulting in the scarcity of nutritious food. This has created sufficient favorable condition for the Corporate Agriculture to emerge out. You might’ve noticed some stores selling vegetables and food grains in the shopping malls, and many of you are happy with that in a notion that, the household groceries are easily accessible. But this is the initial sign of the advent of corporate agriculture on the society.

These markets are profit oriented and subject to market risk. In order to sustain their business and increase their profit, they even compromise with the quality of the agricultural products, which may have serious adverse effect on the health and hygiene of the people. Agricultural products are considered as one of the basic essential goods, hence in practice it doesn’t (strictly speaking shouldn’t) obey the law of demand in the context of economics. But the corporate society concentrates only on gains; hence the rising inflation will not have any control over the prices of agricultural goods. This will severely affect the life of people below poverty line.

The other major threat of corporate agriculture on the agricultural markets is the foreign investments and the competition by the gigantic corporate companies. India might lose its hold on the agricultural markets in case the foreign policy relaxes for the investors; in the name of development. The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is one of the results of the same. The private sector companies might take over the production of agricultural goods, inventory monitoring, distribution, supply and sales. But at present, the global economy is in a depreciating trend; which results in continuously rising inflation. To accomplish these adverse effect these companies will go for price hikes of basic necessity items, without taking into account the economically backward sections of the society. Thus life of people becomes miserable and standard of living decreases.

Conclusion

After discussing so much about the drawbacks and adverse effects of the Corporate Agriculture, we cannot deny the possible positive approach of the same. Corporate agriculture governed by the proper policies framed by the legislature, properly supervised by the judiciary will be effectively reliable for the common man.

Before I go, I remember a line from our national song; vande mataram, ‘ ಸಸ್ಯ ಶಾಮಲಾಂ ಮಾತರಂ’ which describes the greenery of our country. As the responsible citizens of India, let us make our country greener and healthier.

Jai Hind