The Hindu Business Line : Kerala tragedy sounds a warning

The inadequacy of the relief measures for the farmers of Kuttanad, Kerala’s rice bowl is all too evident from the first signs of distress in the region.

K. P. Prabhakaran Nair

It was on March 29, when one of the main constituents of the UPA was holding its mammoth rally in Coimbatore and the principal constituent of the UPA was debating the cascading effect of price rise, that Pushkaran, a farmer in Kuttanad, the ‘rice bowl’ of Kerala, ended his life, consuming the very insecticide meant to control the stem borer in rice.

The reason? He lost his entire rice crop of slightly more than three acres (that is more than two hectares) due to the torrential rains that hit the district, ruining thousands of hectares of paddy — a calamity of such magnitude that never before happened in Kerala.

Pushkaran had an outstanding loan of Rs 1.5 lakh and so would be automatically eliminated from the election eve largesse of the Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, as the loan waiver is not applicable to farmers holding more than two hectares, even if by a few cents. And the Rs 10,000 per hectare that the Kerala government offers is no lifeline for a sinking man. So, what better way out than to end his life?

The party delegates in Coimbatore will return to their oft repeated “pleas” for the common man, while those who discussed the price rise in New Delhi will return to their five-star comfort. For Pushkaran’s family, the chapter is closed. And all this, while the much publicised ‘Kuttanad Relief Package’ is being ‘considered’ for implementation.

Like the Prime Minister’s relief package in suicide-prone Vidarbha region in Maharashtra — the ‘cotton bowl’ of India, where suicides continue even now, Kerala has flashed the first warning signal in its ‘rice bowl’.

The root of the tragedy

One only needs to go back a couple of decades to get at the root of the unfolding tragedy of the rice farmers in Kerala, in general, and Kuttanad, in particular.

Then, Kerala needed around 4 million tonnes of rice per annum, while the production was just around 0.7 million tonnes. The deficit was made up by import from neighbouring rice-rich States such as Andhra Pradesh. Palakkad had about 1,21,000 hectares under rice and produced about 2,62,500 tonnes per annum, a mere 2.2 tonnes per hectare.

During the heyday of the so-called “Green Revolution”, the dwarf varieties — such as IR 8, followed by IR 20, IR 36 and IR 50 — that came from the Philippine-based and primarily Ford Foundation-funded International Rice Research Institute were thrust on India as the ‘miracle’ varieties. And these pushed out the traditional tall varieties such as Thavalakannan and Chenkazhama.

While excess fertilisers got lodged in these varieties, they, however, scored much higher over the so-called miracle varieties, in starch content and palatability and were better suited for the preparation of breakfast food in many South Indian homes.

But the commoditisation mindset — higher the yield, higher the profit — pushed out other considerations. Soon, the miracle varieties fell prey to a host of pests and diseases, and unless the farmer invested heavily in inputs, sustaining the yield was impossible.

Even from a physiological and soil management point of view, the ‘high-input technology’ is a ‘low-yield’ system. A look at the grain-to-straw ratio of all the miracle dwarf rice and wheat varieties shows that eventually the fodder obtained for cattle and the carbon that is added to soil to build up its inherent soil fertility will be of a low order from these dwarf varieties, as they have far less straw output.

The sight of bullock carts carrying haystacks as feed for milch cows has all but vanished. And our milch cattle have to subsist on feed concentrates often mixed with ingredients of animal origin. Water became another important constraint.

Distress sale

Soon, Kerala farmers, to their utter dismay, realised that the ‘high-input technology’ was no longer sustainable.

Unlike in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, where farmer barons owned hundreds of acres, the Kerala Land Utilisation Act rendered mechanisation impossible because of the smallness of individual farmers’ holdings. Labour started migrating to the cities or across the seas to the Gulf region and the rice fields became a burden. This writer has personally interacted with hundreds of rice farmers of the region who complained that it was impossible to make a profit of even Rs 100 per day from a five-acre rice field.

The minimum support price offered by the government does not speedily reach many farmers, because farmers cannot hold their produce for lack of warehousing facilities, and this writer has seen many of them drying the paddy on the roads.

When cooperative banks do not touch the farmers’ produce and the government does not step in quickly, only distress sales result. And the private mills step in and swoop on the produce to make a killing.

There are farmers who have sold their paddy harvest in distress sales for a third of the price offered by the government, because they cannot risk to lose everything in the event of a downpour, as has happened this year.

It is ironical that when rice sells for Rs 20 plus a kg in the open market in Kerala, a farmer cannot get even 25 per cent from this price-hike for his produce.

Even without the rain havoc, a situation in the country is emerging where crop yields are slowly, but certainly, plummeting due to aberrant weather.

Normally, summer rains occur in March-April, but not the very heavy type one observed during the past fortnight in Kerala and parts of Tamil Nadu and even in normally dry Andhra Pradesh, to some extent.

Climate change threat

The torrential rains are part of the global warming phenomenon. This is a warning signal. Rice and wheat are most susceptible to weather changes. A 2-degree Celsius rise in ambient temperature would lead to 15-17 per cent fall in rice and wheat yields.

Almost four years ago, simulation studies done at field level showed a decrease in yield of both rice and wheat due to increase in ambient temperature. This was communicated to the UN as part of the “national communication” on climate change.

And yet, there is no thought or word in the Union Budget on how India must face the slow but steady change in climate.

Where has all the water gone?

The most worrisome aspect of the deluge of the past weeks is that the water level in the reservoirs in Kerala has not shown any significant increase. Where has all the water gone? Into the Arabian sea, of course. And with this flowing water, what has Kerala lost? Millions of tonnes of fertile top-soil.

Put another way, do we have a sensible soil conservation/soil management strategy in place so that we could capture all the water and not lose the soil in such aberrant weather situations? Do we have contingency plans in place? It is not only important to predict climate change and detail its consequences but also evolve contingency plans.

As of now, there is nothing on the shelf. The Pushkaran tragedy is also a pointer that loan waivers alone will not redeem Indian agriculture.

(The author is an international agricultural scientist.)

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