Konchowki: One of my friends, a teacher with a secure government salary, made a sympathetic statement on September 27 while chatting on the recent passing of the farm bills and its assent by the president.
“I feel really sorry for the farmers; these Acts will affect them dearly.”
I asked him, “How about you?”
He replied: “My father was a small farmer. Now I do not cultivate anymore and I purchase everything from the market. So, the farm bills do not really affect me directly.”
Is it true?
He too will learn soon that the farm bills do affect him, may be not as severe as they affect the poor, the daily wage laborers, the lower middle class and the middle class.
The government hails the three farm bills as landmark legislations that will make the farmers self-reliant.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his 69th Mann Ki Baat radio program, said, “They have the freedom to sell not only fruits and vegetables but grains, sugarcane, mustard and anything that they grow, they can now sell to anyone and anywhere they like.”
Is it so simple and direct?
No, say the food activists. The farm bills provide a completely different vision.
A statement from food activists says the three farm bills will have serious implications on farmers and agriculture. “They will also increase food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition in the country,” it adds.
Let us look some aspects of each Act.
The Farmers’ Produce, Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 permits the sale of agricultural produces outside the markets (mandies) regulated by the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMC) set up by state legislations. The new bill does away with this committee.
The bill is silent on the Minimum Support Price (MSP). The small and medium scale farmers will be severely affected once their right to bargain with the traders.
Before this, farmers were guaranteed MSP in the state registered mandies and they have some form of secure payments.
This provision directly affects the Public Distribution System (PDS) scheme because of the entry of private players. The might even stop purchasing ration for the distribution under this system.
More than 800 million people depend on the ration from the PDS.
There is pilot testing of cash transfers that failed but they would try to push through the neck of the hapless and voiceless poor.
The Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, clearly encourages contract farming.
Although seemingly harmless, the terms for pricing farm produce and process of price determination is not mentioned in the agreement.
The bill says that the quality parameters can be mutually decided by the two parties in the agreement.
It will deeply hurt small and marginal farmers who are not in position to put their demands to the second party.
Since prices are subjected to variation, a guaranteed price for the produce and a clear reference for any additional amount above the guaranteed price, including bonus or premium, must be specified in the agreement.
But the quality aspect will become crucial when a few corporates will try to usher in uniformity which might adversely impact the already skewed agro-ecological diversity in the country.
The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020, limits the possibility of government intervention.
It allows only the government to impose stock limit on agricultural produce based on price conditions only — 100 percent increase in case of Horticulture produce and 50 percent in case of Non-Perishable Agriculture Food Stuff.
The Act empowers the central government to add or remove a commodity in the essential commodities schedule. Only by declaring a commodity as essential, can the government control the production, supply, and distribution of that commodity, and impose a stock limit. However, the conditions may vary across states.
The central government will do so, if it is convinced such a step is necessary in the public interest. This will lead to a sharp rise in rural poverty because of the population’s dependence on public distribution system.
Foodstuffs like pulses, onions and edible oil are part of a common man’s daily essential commodities.
By not regulating the supply of such food items will lead to hoarding and subsequent price fluctuations.
The bill provides no upper limit for stocks. This would help directly corporates like Ambani who now owns Bigbasket, which makes bread, to purchase huge stocks of agri produce and take over the food markets.
When needed the company can export the food produce for their financial gains instead of feeding the countrymen.
There are suspicions that our small farmers will stand to lose even the small stretch of land they own as production for the company’s demand may not be viable.
There is a possibility of big agro-industry and agro-business funded by corporations, who may not even need such a huge stretch of land for a multi-crop produce of high breed varieties.
There is a growing fear of strong push for genetically modified food entering through agro-industry.
The corporate will decide what you and I will eat next and how we eat.
It is shocking that in times of Covid-19 pandemic when the rights of citizens, children, women, farmers and workers should be protected even more, the Union Government has enacted such disturbing legislations.
It may take time for my teacher friend to realize the seriousness of the matter. But he will realize one day soon that getting food on his dining table is not that easy as he thought with all the money he possesses.
(Jesuit Father Irudhaya Jothi is a food activist working at the grassroots in West Bengal state.)