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it's been called the largest protest in
human history
for more than a year hundreds of
thousands of farmers choked off three
highways leading into new delhi
they faced several violent crackdowns
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more than 700 people died during the
demonstrations
this attack was carried out by a
politician's son
farmers were willing to stake their
lives because they feared corporations
would have taken over their arms if the
government did away with a guaranteed
minimum price subsidy on certain crops
then in november prime minister narendra
modi announced that he'd take back the
laws
it was a huge victory for the farmers
while their win was a blow to corporate
interests the subsidies they fought to
keep prop up a way of farming that's
destroying their finances their health
and their land
this is sukpura a village in punjab
state which is known as india's
breadbasket
almost everyone here had been to the
protest last year
including just for years
farmers here are mainly in the business
of harvesting wheat and rice
the only two crops subsidized by the
government's price floor guaranteed
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singh's father committed suicide eight
years ago after finding himself almost
48 000 in debt and he's not alone
financial stress drives about 10 000
indians in agriculture to take their own
lives each year
his family had to sell off all but their
last acre of land to pay off what his
father owed but that's still not enough
the generational debt began after the
government incentivized farmers like his
dad to give up traditional crops for
wheat and rice
the green revolution started in the
1960s when parts of the country were
crippled by famine
the immensity of india's food problem
is baffling and frustrating
punjabis were always farmers but they
took on the burden of feeding india by
switching to wheat and rice strains
developed by american scientists many
new types of hybrid seed have been
developed and the farmer remains unaware
of their potential
even though punjab is just one and a
half percent of the nation's land area
the state supplied up to 70 percent of
the country's wheat and 40 of its rice
for decades after making the switch to
monocultures
those are crops designed to be grown one
at a time in order to boost yields but
they require chemical fertilizers toxic
pesticides heavy machinery and use up
lots of water
this particular model of industrial
agriculture the only value it has is
quantity it's giving you a lot more but
it's also giving you a lot more because
you're putting a lot more into the
system
dr richard kumar is an agricultural
policy expert
she says these practices were
unsustainable for family farmers
we know punjab farmers have the highest
debt rate in the country they basically
got locked on to what is known as the
technological treadmill
of monoculture farming
at first farmers were given monoculture
seeds funded by the rockefeller and ford
foundations and the us government
they continued to buy those varieties
because they were the only crops their
government would subsidize
cultivating the same monocultures year
after year depletes the soil and makes
pests more resistant
so farmers must continue to buy more
toxic pesticides more fertilizers and
newly engineered seeds that can tolerate
those extra chemicals
so farmers are constantly taking out
loans larger than the last
growing monoculture rice and wheat is
hugely costly that model can only work
until and unless there is some kind of
price guarantee support for farmers and
what you're seeing in the farm protest
is this realization of farmers that you
remove that and we are going to collapse
farmers like singh get that subsidized
rate at a government authorized auction
yard
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the earnings are enough to pay back
loans he took out for the fertilizers
pesticides and machinery he's used for
this harvest
he's left with less than 20
of the profits and most of that is used
as down payment on the seeds of his next
crop
singh's children hardly ever see him
these days
to pay for the rest of his family's
bills he has to drive a truck for months
at a time after he finishes his harvest
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if monoculture techniques are ruining
their finances it's because they're
destroying their farms too
punjab literally means the land of five
rivers
but growing rice here is super water
intensive and will turn the state into a
desert within 25 years according to
government data
the environmental damage isn't confined
to the region either it's got global
impact
honda
india ranks third in greenhouse gas
emissions and agriculture is its second
largest source of the pollution
an estimated 84 million metric tons of
stubble are burned on farms around the
country each year
and at the end of punjab's rice harvest
a smog cloud can be seen from outer
space
north indian cities like new delhi have
the worst air quality in the world in
part because of stubble burning unless
and until we take the agricultural logic
and redefine it within ecology we are
not going to be able to find solutions
not only is there runaway climate change
not only is it affecting our health but
farmers will not be able to farm
tomorrow
no the resources on the farm are
finished
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but it doesn't need to be this way
rough deep singh is a farmer who saw the
harm in monoculture techniques and
joined a movement that's trying to make
farming sustainable
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apparently
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foreign
he does polyculture which means he grows
more than 30 kinds of fruits and 40
crops on this farm altogether
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his farm used to look much like his
neighbors
he grew rice and wheat for eight years
because that's what he learned at the
punjab agricultural university
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being called india's cancer capital and
studies have linked the overuse of
pesticides and chemical fertilizers to
the disease
singh ditched them in 2011 when he met
human foreign
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farmers to transition to organic since
he started the heritage farming mission
in 2005.
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subsidized
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foreign
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the protests ended farm unions are
waiting on the government to make good
on a promise to expand the wheat and
rice price floor subsidies to more crops
they say it'll help farmers diversify to
other monocultures
but that says that's a temporary fix
because it props up a system that's
fundamentally broken
the green foreign also in india didn't
happen overnight and it only happened
because a lot of investment was put
behind it and so if that kind of system
can actually be put behind natural
farming but you'll see a transformation
farmers themselves will jump on board to
want to do things differently
but everybody
m
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singh's village sukpura maintained the
presence of at least 10 people at the
new delhi protests for more than a year
harchar and singh is their union
representative
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foreign
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says all but two households from his
village of 3 500 people had sent family
members to the protest
foreign
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foreign
you