Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide

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Combating this problem has been one of Amma’s main projects in recent years.

Monsanto is the villain here:

http://www.amma.org/humanitarian-activities/social/farmer-project-report.htm

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LINK

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-T

housands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.

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The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after

using genetically modified crops

 

By ANDREW MALONE

Last updated at 12:48 AM on 03rd November 2008

 

 

 

Excerpt:

 

 

 

In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had committed suicide after being

sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their

dead husbands - only to kill themselves as well.

 

 

 

Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed - two years after

her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much.

 

 

 

She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. 'He cries

when he thinks of his mother,' said the dead woman's aunt, sitting

listlessly in shade near the fields.

 

 

 

Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after

being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.

 

 

 

The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared

with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.

 

 

 

But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these

were 'magic seeds' - with better crops that would be free from parasites and

insects.

 

 

 

Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties

were banned from many government seed banks.

 

 

 

The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology.

Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the

Indian government had agreed to allow new bio-tech giants, such as the U.S.

market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.

 

 

 

In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated

country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted

International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to

launch an economic revolution.

 

 

 

But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers' lives

have slid back into the dark ages.

 

 

 

Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years - up

to 17 million acres - many famers have found there is a terrible price to be

paid.

 

 

 

Far from being 'magic seeds', GM pest-proof 'breeds' of cotton have been

devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.

 

 

 

Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of

water. This has proved a matter of life and death.

 

 

 

With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply

withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of

paying them off.

 

 

 

Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates,

hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the

expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh

crisis.

 

 

 

When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant

them the following year.

 

 

 

But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That's because GM seeds contain so-

called 'terminator technology', meaning that they have been genetically

modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their

own.

 

 

 

As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive

prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.

 

 

 

Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week,

leaving a wife and two children.

 

 

 

As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while

sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that

their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT

Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto.

 

 

 

'We are ruined now,' said the dead man's 38-year-old wife. 'We bought 100

grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed.

He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.'

 

 

 

 

Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted

farm roads. 'He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was

sorry,' she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her home to pay

their respects. 'He was dead by the time they got to hospital.'

 

 

 

Asked if the dead man was a 'drunkard' or suffered from other 'social

problems', as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering

erupted in anger. 'No! No!' one of the dead man's brothers exclaimed.

'Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes.

 

 

 

'He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they

will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same

seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the

world what is happening here.'

 

 

 

Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a 'factor in this tragedy'. But

pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a

spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as

'untimely rain' or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been

part of rural Indian life.

 

 

 

Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want

GM seeds - no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.

 

 

 

During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra, I encountered three

'independent' surveyors scouring villages for information about suicides.

They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more expensive - and then

later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.

 

 

 

(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed is 'only double' the price

of 'official' non-GM seed - but admitted that the difference can be vast if

cheaper traditional seeds are sold by 'unscrupulous' merchants, who often

also sell 'fake' GM seeds which are prone to disease.)

 

 

 

With rumours of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths,

many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. 'We just

want to escape from our problems,' one said. 'We just want help to stop any

more of us dying.'

 

 

 

Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of the suicide farmers that he

is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those

affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM.

 

 

 

India's farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed

distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is

taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.

 

 

 

This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about

£1,000) in debt when he took his own life. 'I told him that we can survive,'

his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. 'I told him

we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.'

 

 

 

But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of

paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children's schooling. They

will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by

the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.

 

 

 

Cruelly, it's the young who are suffering most from the 'GM Genocide' -

the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and

misery by these 'magic seeds'.

 

 

 

Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified

future is murderously high.