Published on Monday, October 15, 2012 by The Asian Age
Giant Walmart vs. the Small Farmer
India is a land of
small farmers. According to the United Nations, the smaller the farm, the
higher the productivity. Left party activists are herded into a bus as they are detained by
police, during an anti Wal-mart protest in New Delhi. (AP)
Small farms grow
biodiversity. They are falsely described as unproductive because productivity
in agriculture has been manipulated to exclude diversity and exclude costs of
high chemical and capital inputs in chemical industrial agriculture. When
biodiversity is taken into account, small farms produce more food and higher
incomes.
In the heated debate
on FDI in retail, those promoting it repeatedly claim that the entry of
corporations like Walmart will benefit the Indian farmer. Reference is made to
getting rid of the middleman.
Any trader who
mediates in the distribution of goods between producers and consumers is a
middleman. Walmart is neither a producer nor a consumer. Therefore, it is also
a middleman; it is a giant middleman with global muscle. That is how it has
become the world’s biggest retailer, carrying out business of nearly $480
billion. So the issue is not getting rid of the middleman but replacing the
small arthi with a giant one. The Walton Family is the global arthi located in
the US, not in the local community. And this new kind of arthi combines the
functions of all small traders everywhere from wholesale to retail. Instead of
millions of small traders taking a two per cent commission at different levels,
Walmart gets all profits. If three small traders mediate at two per cent
between the producer and consumer, the difference between the farm price and
consumer price is just six per cent. When Walmart enters the picture, the
difference jumps with the farmer getting only two per cent of the consumer
price and Walmart and its supply chain harvesting the 98 per cent. So the issue
is not the number of middlemen but their size and their share of profits. It
was to avoid this concentration of power over the agricultural produce market
that India created the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act.
Our mandis are
governed by cooperatives, which include farmers. No trader can buy more than a
certain amount. This prevents monopolies. It creates a decentralised,
democratic distribution system from wholesale to retail.
The government,
especially the Planning Commission, has been trying very hard to dismantle the
APMCs and mandis to facilitate the entry of big business in agriculture. The
announcement of FDI in retail will radically change Indian agriculture. It
threatens the survival of the small Indian farmer and the diversity of our
farming systems.
Given the size of
Walmart, it creates a monopsony through its buying power. It does not go to
each small farmer and buys the five sacks of extra produce. It works through
giant supply chains and giant suppliers which have no place for the small.
Walmart and the small, independent farmer cannot coexist. When Walmart
dominates, agribusiness dominates. Industry and corporations start to control
agriculture.
We can already see
early attempts at the industry takeover of agriculture to match centralised and
giant production systems with centralised and giant retail. On March 5 this
year, the government announced a new policy for the corporate control of
agriculture called Public-Private Partnership for Integrated Agricultural
Development (PPP-IAD) — a scheme for facilitating large-scale integrated
projects, led by private-sector players in the agriculture and allied sectors,
with a view to aggregating farmers, creating critical rural infrastructure,
introducing new technologies, adding value and integrating the agricultural
supply chain.
The department of
agriculture and cooperation has launched the PPP-IAD, which is proposed to
cover 10 lakh farmers across India during the period 2012-17. Each of the
integrated agricultural projects would involve engaging a minimum of 10,000
farmers. The scheme would accept proposals from private corporate entities on
integrated agricultural development projects with the proviso that intervention
must cover all aspects from production to marketing.
Subsidies will now go
to corporations, not the farmers. In effect, 10,000 farmers will no longer be
independent producers, but bonded to the corporation. These corporations will
be Walmart’s partners, not the small farmer.
This scheme , and the
policy framework of which it is a part, is in effect a subversion of both land
reforms and our food security. Land reforms in India got rid of zamindari and
put land in the hands of the tiller. Land ceiling was introduced to ensure
there would be no concentration of ownership over land. What the government is
calling “reforms” are, in effect, anti-reform reforms, aimed at undoing every
policy and law that we have put in place in independent and democratic India to
ensure the rozi roti of the last person.
Walmart will harm and
wipe out small farmers and businesses in India the way it has harmed farmers
and retailers in the US. And because the density of small farmers and small
retailers is higher in India than anywhere else in the world, the destructive
impact will be magnified manifold.
The argument that we
need FDI in retail was made when the government allowed Walmart to enter
wholesale business in 2007. No infrastructure has been built, even though five
years have passed. In any case, the government has given away crores in
subsidies for warehouses and cold storages since it introduced “reforms”. We
need a black paper to assess all the public money that has already been spent
on what the government says only Walmart can do.
And the more the
government pushes policies towards monopolies and monocultures, the more
committed I become to defend our economic democracy and diversity as a saner,
more sustainable, more just alternative to the disease of giganticism.
© 2012 The Asian Age
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher,
environmental activist and eco feminist. She is the founder/director of
Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author
of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental
Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis;Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking
of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice,
Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology,
and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments
in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on
Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the
Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right
Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.
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