That goes against logic, right? That is from William Dar, from his Manila Times column of today (Thursday, 27 June 2019, "The 'New Thinking' For Agriculture," 3rd of 4 parts (manilatimes.net), where he says, "We must learn from India." He speaks from experience – and from the Indian initiative led by the National Institution for Transforming India, NITI.
Mr Dar stayed in India for 15 years, from start of January 2000 to end of December 2014, when he was Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT. I know because I was international consulting writer for ICRISAT from January 2007 to December 2014, when Mr Dar retired.
From a report on the NITI, one lesson from India is this, Mr Dar says:
Despite the success of India in increasing food production by 3.7 times from 1965 to 2015, resulting in a 45-percent increase in food production per person, poverty persists among its farmers.
Indian farmers multiplied India's food by 370%, that is, 1.7 times more than double, but they have yet to double their incomes. Why is that? Double the yield of the farm does not necessarily double the income of the farmer. And so, "Poverty persists among its farmers."
And why is that? Mr Dar says:
The NITI paper said that even with India's success in increasing food production over a 50-year period, it admitted that the "strategy did not explicitly recognize the need to raise farmers' income and did not mention any direct measure to promote farmers' welfare."
The above photograph, which I shot on 15 October 2015 in Los Baños, shows women thronging within a makeshift National Food Authority, NFA, store to buy rice cheaper than the nearby retail market. Farmers increase rice production and NFA decreases rice prices – terrific for rice eaters but terrible for rice farmers! Our government loves the Filipinos – except the farmers! Our government promotes the welfare of our rice consumers, at the expense of our rice farmers.
Mr Dar says that is what the Indian government did:
In essence, the ranks of farmers in India were simply used as the tool to increase food production, which is a paradigm that is blindly or unintentionally implemented in many (developing) countries, including the Philippines.
The Indian data showed that farm families relying "on self-employment (in) agriculture as their main source of income were earning below the poverty line." I must emphasize: These are farmers producing more food for their country and yet earning less than the poverty line for their families! And, Mr Dar says, "This is similar to the Philippine situation based on latest statistics of the Philippine Statistics Authority."
Why must the food welfare of the country come at the expense of the family welfare of the producers of food?
So, Mr Dar says, India has laid out plans that by 2022-2023, Indian farmers will have increased cropping intensity, diversified toward high-value crops, and improved "the system of trading farm products so farmers get fair or real prices for their produce."
It's The System, stupe!517
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