Season at Stake.

Wonderful video on the plight of small farmers in Maharashtra. By Vikrant Bachhav, Abhivyakti.

Too much money. Too much poverty.

Just change in ways of consumption by the world's privileged few will do a lot more good to the many who are not so privileged than all the aid money or government support. Everyone makes a choice at almost every moment of life. Whether it is bath with hot or cold water, wheat bread or millet for breakfast, plastic bottles or glass bottles, coke or lemonade or coconut water, travel by car or bike or public transport, pay for a movie or donate for a granny, eat in a luxury hotel or at a roadside stall, ....etc. What if every choice is made with the less privileged in mind. The world will surely be a better place.

World Water Day - How many people know that, in 2002:

■ 1.1 billion people lacked access to improved water sources (tap water in the house or yard from public distribution systems, protected wells and springs, public stand posts,
rain water collection), which represented 17% of the global population.
■ 2.6 billion (42% of the world population) lacked access to basic sanitation.
■ Of the 1.1 billion without access to improved water sources, nearly two thirds live in Asia.
■ 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases (including cholera); 90% are children under 5, mostly in developing countries.
■ 80% of the population without access to drinking-water were rural dwellers, but future population growth will be mainly urban.

World Water Day - March 22nd 2010

By 2030, one third of the global population, mainly concentrated in developing countries, will have only half the amount of naturally renewed water available they need.

 If this trend is expected as the general scenario in developing countries, it will be even worse in Marathwada :-(  It is time for consumers to change their lifestyle. For instance, by consuming the foods that require less water for cultivation and processing. Example - millets.

While the world is rightly moving to address the challenges presented by climate change and depleting supplies of fossil fuels, the same awareness and consensus does not exist when it comes to addressing our usage of water. ... Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8577326.stm

The World of Small Farmers.

• 450 million small-scale farms worldwide
• (IFAD, 2008 -- defined as farms of two hectares or less of land)
• Support a population of roughly 2.2 billion people (Singh, 2009)
• Represent roughly 85 percent of the world’s farms
• ¾ of world’s poor are rural (smallholders, wage labour)

Excerpts from the presentation of Bill Vorley, IIED

Her name is Dhanabai. The name literally means a woman of wealth. Perhaps, the wealth she has cannot be measured by money. She certainly has some unseen wealth and she has the smiles to show that she is indeed happy with the wealth. She stands outside her hut having just gathered the wheat grains that she had kept out for drying in the sun. Most of the grains are insect infested and rotten but she may be able to find some of the grains suitable enough to eat for the week.

Cattle market in Solapur

A busy cattle market in Solapur district of south Maharashtra in central India. Hope these indigenous cattle remain.

Copenhagen - everything but the small farmer.

Quote from a friend's email about happenings in Copenhagen -

Two weeks ago, huddled in a warm room of a community complex as temperatures hovered around -3 degrees Celsius in the freezing Copenhagen, were a group of animated people from Africa, Asia and Latin America with a sprinkling of Europeans. Everyone was discussing what should be the text of a defiant draft to be sent to the negotiators inside the Bella Centre, the official conference venue where the big and the powerful of the world had congregated for the Climate Summit. Suddenly one of the indigenous persons from India burst out with a long statement. I was stunned into inaction for a while. But as I regained my composure, I started fighting back my tears and started clapping. The entire room burst into applause even though it had not understood what she had said in her native Madhya Pradeshi Hindi. I realized that I had to translate this and started doing so in a choked voice: Tell them that WE are making no demands. No demands at all. If THEY want to retrieve life on this plant, let THEM make a demand on us. Because only we have the Power to Help Life Survive On This Earth. This is what she had said.

Native bulls matter in India.

Bulls hoeing the farm

Bulls decorated for Pola festival

Pooja at the Pola festival

Bulls at the race

Life in an Indian village will be boring to say the least if not for the native bulls. Bulls are traditionally used for manure, farm cultivation, and bull races. They play a significant part in festivals too.

Small organic farms Vs Large industrial farms.

Industrial type agriculture concentrates on one target crop for ease of operation using heavy machinery in land preparation and harvesting. The present form of agriculture based on energy-intensive inputs is no longer deemed viable. This could be seen from the evidence of massive agricultural subsidies given to farmers not only in the developing countries but more so in the developed countries. The solution to the agricultural sector is to combine production, consumption and disposal of waste into smaller units based on multiple crops so that large scale processing and transport is avoided. Further, this will cut down the off-farm energy requirements and labour-intensive small farms will hugely contribute to poverty reduction.  This will create opportunities to supplement soil fertility by integrating waste and by-product management into farming activity. Since organic systems receive no chemical inputs for fertility, weed or pest control, the yields would be lower in the organic systems during the first few years. However, in subsequent years, organic systems will actually outperform conventional systems. Small farms are no less technically efficient than large farms and increasing their productivity will have a major impact on production. Read more at Low Carbon Industry and Agriculture - Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka.

"Poor Story" has some relevance to farmers in Marathwada too.

Quote from "Poor Story" by Giles Bolton -

Are you European? You're paying to subsidise every cow in the European Union at Euro 2.50 a day (while 300 million Africans live on less than Euro 1 a day). Are you American? In 2005 you spent US$ 4.2 billion subsidising the US cotton industry, which may be more money than the entire value of the cotton it produced (while 10 million African cotton farmers would have seen fewer of their children die from preventable diseases if your taxes hadn't been spent on a few thousand farms in the Midwest). Are you Japanese? You recently spent more than 1 percent of your annual income - at least 600 US$ per household - on rice through a combination of high prices and farmer support (while farmers in countries like Ghana couldn't even sell their produce in local markets, let alone abroad, because of subsidised exports from rich 'competitors'). Something is wrong here.

Findings of the Organic Bazaar Impact in Aurangabad

A Japanese team from Kobe University, Japan, independently evaluated the Organic Bazaar in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra. The survey was done over a period of 3 months. The team consisted of two senior professors and one senior researcher. This expert team conducted an independent, unbiased, and detailed assessment. Now, here are the findings that I am excited to share with you -

Findings –
i) For the grain, farmers get 53% higher price in the organic bazaar and the organic link than to conventional markets.

ii) For the leafy vegetables farmers get 118% and the other vegetables 87% higher market price than conventional market .

... and 40% of farmers own less that 2.5 acres of land (considered really small)

Model Appropriate Houses for Small Farmers.

Towards building a model low-cost house in 100,000 INR (US$2300). Two rooms + Kitchen + Toilet/bath, appropriate for the hot weather in central India. Many say it is impossible but some say "Yes, we can." Any comments/ suggestions welcome. Visit Housing Programme in Marathwada

Endosulfan - a Deadly Chemical

Environmental Justice Foundation EJF: Endosulfan - a Deadly Chemical

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Water, how it matters, in Marathwada

In the afternoon heat, women and children are running towards the only source of water located outside sarpanch Achyut Gangane's house. Mr. Gangane has sunk a borewell behind his house which caters to the entire village with a population of 1500. Hindu, Chennai Edition, Oct 5, 2009. Read more...