The Hindu Business Line : Western cow vs Third World farmer

IT IS a strange world. For all we know, it is also an unequal world. The glaring inequality is not only confined to the ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor, between the elite and the masses and between the people and the powers that be.

Perhaps, the most debasing and demeaning inequality mankind is faced with, that too in an era of globalisation, is the manner in which even the cattle in the West are pampered at the cost of several hundred million farmers in the developing countries.

It is a strange paradox — the story of man's exploitation of the available resources for his own selfish and immediate needs. Of his inhumanity and cruelty towards a fellow human being. It is in essence a gory tale of bestiality, utterly flawed economics and an imperfect development paradigm.

It certainly is a cultural shock for any visitor from the rich and industrialised countries to see stray cattle on Indian roads. The face of an emancipated cow amidst swanky cars adorns the cover of many a travel guide on India. Move a little outside the metropolitan cities, the picture frame would predictably move towards an Indian village. And you will see a hardworking farmer toiling in his crop field with a mud-plastered house in the background. In addition to the smiling face of the farmer, you are likely to see the picture of his wife, clad in a ghagra choli, cutting the grass and tending the cows.

This is the amazing story of an Indian farmer and for that matter any of the 1.5 billion small and marginal farmers from the developing countries. This is the face of a Third World farmer who, on an average, owns not more than two acres of land and still continues to feed himself and his family of five, year after year. He lives under a thatched or a tin roof, and has never had the luxury of central heating or air-conditioning.

In fact, a majority of these small farmers do not even have electric fans, have little or no sanitation facilities and have never received any government support in the form of subsidies. Compare this with a western farm. Whether in the US, European Union or Australia, in midst of sprawling fields, you are likely to see a cattle farm. Well-fed and huge, these cows are provided with well-designed cattlesheds, well-lit, and with fans and showers. In most places, especially in the US and European Union, these barns are centrally heated. Computer chips worn around the neck of cows enable feeding machines meet the exact nutritional requirement of each animal.

Moreover, on average, each cow requires about 25 acres of land to meet its feed and nutritional needs — enough for ten farming families from the Third World to earn their livelihood. The inequality between man and beast does not end here. The amount of subsidies a cow in the developed world receives is almost twice the annual income of an average farmer in the Third World.

In European Union, for instance, the annual support for an estimated 300 million dairy cattle in 2000 was 2,735 million euros for milk and milk products, and 4,465 million euros for beef and veal.

Much of the support is in the form of direct payment to farmers and falls within the purview of the "Green Box" and "Blue Box" stipulations under the World Trade Organisation. These are the subsidies that have not to be reduced under the phase-out of market-distorting support mechanisms. For the dairy sector too, the aggregate quantum of subsidy as a percentage of the value of the milk produced, is measured in terms of a Producer Subsidy Equivalent (PSE). In 1997, the PSE index stood at 82 per cent in Japan, 59 per cent in Canada, 54 per cent in the European Union, 47 per cent in the US, and 23 per cent in Australia.

The protection provided to milk producers by the developed countries is such that even with the stipulated reduction in both the volume and the amount of subsidies, the EU and the US continue to flood and dump its highly subsidised milk and milk powder. While the dairy subsidies continue to be on the upswing, the PSE index indicates that farmers in India and in most developing countries were negatively taxed all these years. For India, which alone has one-fourth of the farming population of the world, the PSE index stood at minus 2.33 per cent whereas for Colombia, it was minus 60 per cent.

Still more shocking and shameful is the fact while the world makes no effort to feed its estimated 800 million people almost entirely in the developing countries, who go to bed hungry every night, no effort is spared to feed the cattle in the rich and industrialised western countries.

In the recent years, the new system of direct payments to farmers (since 1992) in the European Union has stipulated increase in consumption of cereals from 134.8 million tonnes in 1993 to 178.2 million tonnes in 2000, largely through increased use of EU- produced cereals for animal feed.

That feeding cereals to animals and that are subsequently slaughtered for human consumption, requires six times more grains than what is needed for the average dietary intake, causes no regret in the West.

Ironically, the number of cattle reared in such luxury in the rich and industrialised countries (including the OECD countries, the richest trading block), do not exceed 1.5 billion. Strange, that the number of small farmers who live in penury and are faced with further marginalisation too does not exceed 1.5 billion. The clash of civilisation, therefore, is too apparent, too loud and clear.

Under such circumstances, to be amused at the abundance of stray cattle on Indian roads is, perhaps, a folly. After all, when the conflict for survival between man and the animal reaches such extremes, it is the cattle in the developing world that first pay the price. No wonder, then that there are stray cattle battling for their lives with over 20 tonnes of polythene in their stomachs. But then, with due respect to George Orwell: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than even humans".

(The author is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst.)

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