‘Contract farming will convert farmers into servants’

G R Hegde, organising secretary of Rashtriya Kisan Sangh, said on Saturday that contract farming, which was being touted as a solution to the problems facing Indian agriculture, would only convert farmers into servants of their own lands.

He was delivering the keynote address at the "Raitha Samavesha" (farmers' convention), organised by Udupi District Krishak Sangha, here.

Hegde said that under contract farming, the farmers would be reduced to servants of private companies carrying out their diktats on the kind of crops to be harvested, seeds used and agricultural practices to be followed in their farmlands.

Should there be even a small change in the specifications suggested by the companies, for instance, the colour of the onion produced, the farmer would be held responsible and his produce could be rejected.

"Contract farming will create more problems than providing a solution," he said.

Stressing the importance of traditional and organic methods of farming, he said farmers were better off before the 1950s. The construction of big dams had done little good to agriculture. The result of the "Green Revolution", which was touted as a panacea for problems facing Indian agriculture, was now evident. It had led to excessive use of water and fertilizers, gradually bringing down the fertility of the soil. "It was a revolution in the use of water and fertilizers," he said.

Traditional agricultural practices included judicious use of water and relied on the use of organic manures that retained soil fertility. A survey by the Director-General of Agriculture in British India, Allan Octavian Hume, who founded the Indian National Congress, had revealed that agricultural practices in India were tailor-made for local conditions.

He said a critical look at the "White Revolution", which focused on dairy farming, was essential. The number of Indian variety cows had gone down significantly. Earlier, there were local varieties of cows which used to yield good quantity of milk.

"It is incumbent on farmers to spend more time in their fields. A district-level agricultural policy is needed," he said.

A new threat facing the farmers was the acquisition of lands at low prices for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to promote development, he said.