Pollution Problem in Delhi NCR

[dextermorgan]

Death by breath: Why farmers say cheaper to pay fine for crop burning | The Indian Express

i think cops have started booking some farmers in haryana.

booking is useless. Why not run some trucks to collect the stubble like garbage collection and pay farmers some stipend?

 

[Sushubh]

agricultural experts have been asking for that for a while now. but i guess the problem is the same. lack of intent. government can do so much for the farmers. but here they are not even even willing to pay them the cost price for their crop. forget helping them with stubble. farmers are destroying their product because the sale price is so low that it is cheaper for them to just destroy it than carry it to mandis and sell it there. i follow a few twitter accounts where they reveal the actual state of farming in india and it's baffling.

 

[dextermorgan]

as I mentioned here somewhere, my dad now does coconut farming after his retirement. I too have first hand dealing with the issues. First, If you have no support of "big" person aka sarpanch/local caste leaders/MLA/Mp, you're shit out of luck.

second, with this minimum pricing bullshit, govt has indirectly set the MRP of product. I cant imagine the plight of farmers who toil away on leased land for months, only to be told their tomatoes will only fetch 2rs per kilo. Its heartbreaking. Many farmers indulge in alcoholism to numb their pan whereas wifes watch televsion to escape their reality.

seriosuly, for a country which calls itself agrarian society, we are seriosuly letting our farmers down. We grow more than enough to feed ourselves and yet there are hundreds of thousands of people going hungry everyday

 

[Sushubh]

yeah. i don't get the msp thing. farmers cannot sell their products directly to retailers? or directly to consumers? set their own price for the product? or msp is just the minimum that government guarantees if they just want someone to pick their crop and pay for it?

 

[dextermorgan]

Technically in a free market, farmer sells his product at best price (ie price depends on demand). What was happening is middlemen were not letting farmers sell their products by blocking buyers from city. Most of these middlemen are connected to various political parties and pay bribes to both mla and police. And since we seriously lack refrigerated warehouses to store fruits and vegetables, they good bad fast in our hot climate (like tomatoes etc)

so farmers used to pay outrageous prices like 1rs per kilo tomatoes in wholesale farmers market. So government decided to enforce minimum selling price. Govt official will set a minimum price at wholesale markets and buyer have to pay it. What this ended up being is govt indirectly setting the mrp of fruits and vegetables so that farmer doesnt have to sell his vegetables at loss and instead have somethingtoeat

Most farmers cant even get enough money to eat and they cant handle transportation costs too (especially in todays rising petrol prices) and unless you're a big farmer, village sarpanch and police will stop you from skipping middleman and directly selling it to city retailers. There have beein instances where few lorries were torched by local sarpanch because a farmer dared to sell his product directly to retailer,skipping the sarpanch.

 

[dextermorgan]

for example, we sold coconuts at 10rs per piece last week. Those coconuts were taken from our farm by a middleman aka lorry transport guy and sold to retailers aka wholesale plus roadside coconut shop guys for rs 25/30 per piece. Now tell me, who did the majority of work? Us or lorry guy? Why does he earn the same as us who planted the tree, spent lakhs getting the soil healthy and look after the farms for 3~4 months it takes for coconut batch to grow or a fucking lorry guy who sent his camchas to collect coconnuts from our farm and transport it to city?

 

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[r19]

That's interesting. What's the selling price for farmers in developed countries? I used to think one reason farmers here are poor are that they have less produce per person due to lack of machines

 

[amish]

In Mumbai we buy coconut for 45Rs!

 

[dextermorgan]

That's interesting. What's the selling price for farmers in developed countries? I used to think one reason farmers here are poor are that they have less produce per person due to lack of machines

USDA ERS - Farming and Farm Income

Basically corn and soya beans account for half of USA production because of massive subsidies offered by USA government and usage of soya beans in poultry feed plus useage of high fructose corn syrup which is in virtually everything from sodas to candies. Main reason why USA is obese now.

And 90% of farms in USA are small farms and only 3% is large farms but large farms account for 45% total production.

But in india, majority of farmers don't even own their own farms. they take it on lease and grow their crops, just like their ancestors used to do before british people came to india.ur caste system meant that zamindars became owners of large parts of land and majority of "low caste people" were deprived of land to call their own

In usa, land is cheap. But its not the case in india. Now in my dads village, an acre of agricultural land goes for 1crore. Thats how costly land is. That means, in future these poor villagers are fucked. They either have to toil away while educating their sons and daughters and hope they will et a good job and get them out of poverty. seriously, india is fucked up

 

[Sushubh]

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