I watched the movie called Bitter Seeds in my environmental class. The movie talked about the problems in India about farming. The movie also talked about the suicide rate, how high it is compared to our country. It said that every 30 minutes, a farmer commits suicide. In India, the economy is not that great so they went with the seeds that were more expensive. The culture is completely different from ours, they celebrate Pola, which is the bull festival, they do rituals when something bad is happening. Most of the seeds were rotting and they were not getting enough water, which resulted in the seeds not germinating, eventually the plants died out and the farmers killed themselves. The people who were selling the seeds wanted more money than what it really should have cost. Banks rarely loan people any money, they had to go to a Loan shark. Loan sharks were basically thugs because they would charge the people 7% to 10% interest per month to grow seven acres. I think Indian farmers should be able to get loans from the bank at a higher percentage rate so they won't have to go to loan sharks and get ripped off. The Economy is really bad in parts of India, people are usually not using technology, the way they cook is unsanitary, and houses are not modern. Indian farmers used to use seeds that required only cow poop for fertilizer. The Jai BT seeds that Monsanto created requires two different fertilizers, Jai BT seeds are more expensive than the old seeds, so farmers have to pay extra for the fertilizer and seeds. The Jai BT seeds did not germinate in the soil and rotted, causing the farmer much stress. The farmers pay a high amount of money for the land. If their farm does not grow, the farmer doesn't get any money and will eventuall... ... middle of paper ... ...earch Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology sued Monsanto in the Supreme Court of India and Monsanto could not start the commercial sales of its Bt cotton seeds until 2002. And, after the damning report of India’s parliamentary committee on Bt crops in August 2012, the panel of technical experts appointed by the Supreme Court recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all GM food and termination of all ongoing trials of transgenic crops. But it had changed Indian agriculture already. Monsanto’s seed, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of super profits in the form of royalties, and the increasing vulnerability of cultures has created a context for debt, suicides and distress which is driving the farmers’ suicide epidemic in India. This systemic control has been intensified with Bt cotton. That is why most suicides are in the cotton belt.
Our nation was founded on agriculture, and for hundreds of years we were able to migrate across the nation bringing our farming tools and techniques with us. Technology has driven populations away from rural areas towards industrialized cities. With money now being pumped into cities, rural farmers are suffering the most. Farmers are taking out large loans in order to sustain their farms, leading to debt and in some cases suicide. Patel spoke about a farmer in India whose husband took his life because he was unable to live with the amount of debt from his struggling farm. This man left his wife and chi...
This is necessary as the vast majority of individuals migrating from rural to urban centers has been steadily increasing with the level of economic growth seen within the past twenty years as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this situation has further shown the structural issues and inequalities of cities, as most migrants end up having a poor quality of life living in informal settlements as highlight substantially by Boo. As a means of tackling this, however, the Indian government has turned its focus on investing rural regions, developing the agricultural sector. Specifically, Boo mentions that “the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had come down from Delhi to express his concern for the farmers’ hardships, and the central government’s determination to relieve it” (p. 138). While this is definitely important funds are not being divided justly. For starters, between rural and urban areas almost all investments are being targeting towards rural regions, which is only addressing issues of inequality in one section of the country. Furthermore, across rural areas inequalities of investment are quite often overlooked. Although, “one of the governments hopes was to stop villagers from abandoning their farms and further inundating cities like Mumbai, but Asha’s relatives knew nothing of these celebrated relief programs” (p. 138). Therefore, even though
brought forth the large-scale injustices which occurred as a result of Monsanto patenting the soybean seed. Currently, Monsanto owns over 90% of the global soybean industry and therefore has a personal responsibility to remove any perceived threats to their multi-billion-dollar monopoly. If it’s soybean; it’s theirs! Monsanto is essentially the Big brother of the industry; carefully watching and listening to every soybean farmer to ensure nothing gets in the way of them and their fat wads of cash. The patents that Monsanto own, legally give them the “right” to sue farmers who refuse to purchase their seeds seasonally, or use a private seed bank. Essentially, Big Brother has moved on from watching people through Telescreens, and has now opted for a far more pleasurable method of manipulation: bank statements and receipts. Their aim is to “peacefully”, through manipulation and threats, force all soybean farmers to cease the practice of saving and replanting the seeds of successful crops- a once millennia old practice. But hey, it’s the twenty-first century, who hasn’t been forced to do something unsavoury by a totalitarian company corrupted by capitalism? Furthermore, you can be assured that the modified seeds have a terminating gene which renders their daughter seeds sterile and hence completely useless. Thus forcing the farmers to re-purchase seeds every season, so that Monsanto can continue growing their monopoly. I don’t know about you, but I think that this
Farmers are essentially the back-bone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production, (CSS statistics). Without farmers, there would be no food for us to consume. Big business picked up on this right away and began to control the farmers profits and products. When farmers buy their land, they take out a loan in order to pay for their land and farm house and for the livestock, crops, and machinery that are involved in the farming process. Today, the loans are paid off through contracts with big business corporations. Since big business has such a hold over the farmers, they take advantage of this and capitalize on their crops, commodities, and profits. Farmers are life-long slaves to these b...
In this paper I will argue that what Monsanto is doing to argructiler is acceptable. Monsanto is the world's largest seed company speazealzing in biotechnology. Some of the modifications they do is, plant seeds to increase the harvest yield of crops, lessen the amount of pesticides used, also modify the plant to become drought resistant. Monsanto also have developed a code of ethics due to past mistakes. With the rise of Monsanto they has been several critiques about what the company is doing to our food we consume.
Monsanto is one of the first chemical companies to apply the biotechnology industry business model to agriculture, it is also well known for their controversy in producing genetically modified seeds for crops. This kind of system concerns some stakeholders about the negative effect on the environment and ecosystem while growing GMO seeds and the possibility that it will affect health. On the other hand, the system helps some farmers in preventing loss crop yield and increasing revenue, especially farmers in developing countries, even though this is yet to be proven. (https://stakeholderdoce.wordpress.com/)
Recently, MIT Technology Review’s editor published an article about the future of GMO. To provide some context, GMOs are genetically modified organisms that are artificially altered using a process known as recombinant DNA technology. GMOs have faced a lot of controversy, mainly regarding the health implications of GMOs. Currently, plant scientists and startups have avoided creating new genetically modified crops, due to the large costs and long approval times for new crop modifications. As a result, large agricultural and chemical producers, such as Monsanto control basically the entire GMO market and turn it into a very lucrative business. The outcome of this situation is a scary amount of dependency on a handful of profit-oriented companies that genetically modify seeds to maximize profits, rather than to improve the well-being of the consumer.
Historically, Monsanto was a drug and chemical company, most commonly recognized as the producer of NutraSweet and Equal (Monsanto, 2015). However, it is not as commonly known, but they are also the producer of “Agent Orange”, which was used during the Vietnam War and wrecked havoc on our soldiers nervous systems (Baird, 2015). Unfortunately, many are still dealing with the effects of this drug. Moreover, Monsanto was responsible for the highly toxic pesticide DDT, which was banned in the US in 1972; polychlorinated biphenyl industrial lubricants, banned in the US in 1979; and rBST, the controversial bovine growth hormone to boost milk-production in cows, all of which resulted in legal claims relating to health and environmental damage caused by its products or practices and has had to make substantial payouts (Baird, 2015). Now, they are genetically modifying (GM) seeds, which produce the world’s food (Monsanto, 2015).
This is why GM crops are so good! They can make farming more efficient, allow them to pump out more food, and can make food on badlands. And also, GM crops can save a crop! An example can be the eggplant in Bangladesh Eggplant is very important there, but often whole harvests are destroyed by pests, meaning that farmers had to use pesticides often. Not only was this expensive, but also got farmers sick a lot. A GM eggplant in 2013 stopped this(according to the video(5:31-6:05)). Another example is Hawaii in the 1990’s. The papaya industry was under attack by the ringspot virus, which would have killed the papaya crop of the face of the earth if it weren't for this new GM crop that was engineered to be vaccinated against the virus(6:11-6:25).
...om cultivation for at the end of the day they don’t have a place to market their goods, the areas which don’t experience rainfall end up dying from hunger for they can’t access farm product in case they do, the commodities becomes un affordable due to increase in price. Suppliers are forced to raise the price due to cost incurred during transportation of farm products conditions, at end only the rich can be able to afford.
As agriculture has become more intensive, farmers have become capable of producing higher yields using less labour and less land. Growth of the agriculture has not, however, been an unmixed blessing. It, like every other thing, has its pros and cons. Topsoil depletion, groundwater contamination, the decline of family farms, continued neglect of the living and working conditions for farm labourers, increasing costs of production, and the disintegration of economic and social conditions in rural communities. These are the cons of the new improved agriculture.
This section covers the significant government policies that aimed at the promotion of agricultural development. There were many principle changes that have been introduced since the Independence of India.
The agriculture sector contributed more than half the output of the Indian economy when the country embarked on its First Five-Year Plan in 1950-51. Over a period of six decades, the share of agriculture has gradually declined to less than 15 percent. Even in the rural economy, the share of the agricultural sector has declined to 38 percent of the total income generated in rural areas (2004-05). Despite its shrinking share in national income and losing its dominance in rural income, the performance of the agricultural sector remains a matter of central concern to policy makers and the public at large (Chand et. al., 2012). As a concomitant of growth, the share of agriculture and allied sector in gross domestic product
Agripreneurship is greatly influenced mainly by the economic situation, education and culture. Singh and Amarendra Pratap (2013) in their study on factors influencing entrepreneurship among farming community in Uttar Pradesh clearly indicated that if the right environment is created and farmers are provided with good infrastructure, technological support, and timely availability of credit it can enhance food production and ensure food security as well as increase in income of the farmers and quality of
Large population of India's poorest people live in the country's semi-arid tropical region. In these semi-arid tropical region area short of water and recurrent droughts impede the transformation of agriculture that the Green Revolution has achieved elsewhere. Also there is a higher risk of poverty in flood-prone areas for instance those extending from eastern Uttar Pradesh to the Assam plains, and in northern