Agricolonialism

The editorial in 'The Hindu' news paper on 27/08/2009 with the heading 'The spectre of agricolonialism' rings an alarm bell, actually a loud siren, to the policy makers and to the traditional farmers.

The traditional farm lands in this part of south Tamilnadu are slowly but steadily purchased out by the so called farmers from the neighboring states. There is neither a hue and cry about this 'land grabbings' nor an expression of sorrow by the selling farmer. There is only happiness since farming is wrongly considered as un remunerative.

This sorry state of affair is at a time, when there is talk about '2nd Green Revolution in India' and the prevailing bright possibilities to achieve a quantum jump in agriculture production.

The main problem in India is small landholdings coupled with the lack of scientific agriculture management practices result in productivity levels that are 1/5th - 1/10th of farms in US and Israel.

We can overcome this problem, since we are blessed with agro-climatic conditions that permit farming around the year, by bringing managerial and engineering talents together for overall agricultural producvity improvement in India. These include adressing issues like better crop selection, regional agro-climatic conditions, land preparation, fertilization, irrigation, pest control etc.

Now, the poor third world countries are facing a problem of 'agricolonialism' a new term coined by 'The Hindu' wherein some nations lest alone multinational companies are buying up millions of hectares of vast tracts of farmland in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Read this link to understand the kind of catostropic condition we the farmers are in.

Regards,
Vishnu Sankar