GLOBALISATION - THE GRIM REAPER OF THE 21ST CENTURY

by Lesley Millar
Farmers around the world are oppressed and disadvantaged by government policies that undercut their prices and markets, often leaving them with no other option but suicide.

Indian and Australian farmers may be separated by distance, language
and
culture, but they are linked to a grim, almost worldwide suicide club.
They share the same problems and the same enemy, global corporations,
and
they are committing suicide in high numbers.
The big supermarket leeches, focused on technology and profit at all
costs, and supported by the government, are slowly but surely sucking
the
lifeblood out of our farmers and their land. The supermarket companies
control purchasing and even dictate the crops farmers are allowed to
grow.
It’s a reality that is unacceptable.
According to Daily News India, almost 2,000 farmers have committed
suicide
between January 1, 2001 and August 19, 2006 with over 50% of them aged
between 20 and 45, their most productive years. Tragically, in the
last
three months, there has been a suicide every eight hours.
In the late 1960s, after a severe drought, an imbalance in food imports
forced the Indian government to rethink its agricultural policy. The
World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the U.S. Agency for
International Development assisted farmers to develop high-yield rice
and
wheat ‘miracle seeds’. Along with the ‘miracle seeds’, came the
exorbitant use of high cost chemical fertilisers. Though the use of
these
chemical fertilisers gave satisfactory results in the beginning,
eventually they caused degradation and infertile soil. That
information
was withheld from Indian farmers who were encouraged to keep on buying
and
using chemical fertilisers which ultimately destroyed the vital energy
of
the soil turning it lifeless and unproductive.
Globalisation is the reason for the world’s dead and dying land.
Products
of global corporations and global markets have sucked the goodness out
of
the earth and left it poisoned and unproductive and turned farmers into
an
endangered species.
The NSW Farmers Association says rate of suicide among Australian male
farmers and farm workers is more than twice the national average and,
according to the peak body of General practitioners, one Australian
farmer
commits suicide every four days, defeated by a mountain of debt.
In Queensland, dairy farmers are giving up farming in ever growing
numbers. Why? Because the price they are paid for milk by supermarket
giants is below the cost of production. And yet low income families
have
to bypass the dairy section in supermarkets because the price of milk
is
too expensive to fit into the family budget.
Farming has always been hard work with crops often at the mercy of
errant
weather patterns. Whatever the country, farming methods are unique to
that area. Australian farmers use a different method of farming from
Indian farmers because they have different soil and a different
climate.
This difference has developed over many generations and cannot
successfully change to the one system fits all agriculture demanded by
the
WTO and multinational corporations. To do so will create disaster in
terms
of primary producers’ ability to deliver a sustainable supply of food
for
us all.
Australian farmers are amongst the most efficient producers of food in
the
world. Every piece of meat you buy from the butcher, every kilo of
fruit
or vegetables you get from the green grocer or supermarket is there
because our farmers worked long hours to produce it. Doesn’t that show
you how important our farmers are? And yet family farms are now
perceived
to be under threat.
Although the number of farmers being forced off their land is greater
in
India than in Australia there are the same worrying similarities such
as
the complete lack of dialogue with grassroots farmers by both
governments.
Governments need to discuss with farmers ways to improve their incomes,
not just for the sake of trade but with primary producers’ profits
being
supreme. In both India and Australia it is vital for farmers to be
empowered in the marketplace and the market power of corporations needs
to
be limited by government legislation.
The government has to wake up to the fact that food and farmers are
vital
to our very survival. The government must be prepared to listen and
learn
from farmers and make decisions for a sustainable method of food
production which does not exploit rural people and the environment for
the
financial gain of the greedy few.