The Pain of Modern Agriculture for Farmers

The Pain of Modern Agriculture for Farmers

Shreeram Chaudhary

As a person born into a farmer’s family, I know a great deal about our agricultural system in Nepal and its dynamics, especially during the past three decades. Sometimes I am traumatized when I remember the history of our community. When my grandparents were alive, I used to go with my grandfather to graze the animals in the forest. We had dozens of buffalo, goats, cows, sheep and pigs in my house. Our long house had 12 rooms where we used to stay with our family and our animals. It was a very simple structure made of bamboo sticks and mud. Every household in our village had the same status. Our labor was our exchange system. Life was not easy, but was rewarding, at that time.

Shreeram Chaudhary, left, participated in an organic farming workshop that Interfaith Cooperation Forum (ICF) held in Sri Lanka in 2009.

We got fresh food, milk and meat from within our household. We had our own storage and saving systems. We used our own compost as fertilizer and used our own traditional knowledge, skills, tools and agricultural techniques to farm and raise food. We used to celebrate many festivals that were related to our agricultural system in Nepal—the Muthlhai Festival when we started a seedling, the Hardhawa Festival after planting, the Auli Festival after harvesting and, when we collected the harvest in our house, we celebrated the Pendiya Festival.

In the last few years, however, all of these traditions and culture have been lost. People have begun to cultivate with modern technologies that do not need laborers; rather, they need money for tools and techniques. Small farmers though have been in a crisis after using modern technologies. They have had to buy all farming inputs—tools, seeds, fertilizers, pesticide and even agricultural consultations and training—everything! It has ruined the previous relationships within the village; the previous relationships in the community have been broken.

It has hardly been five years since people began to use commercial fertilizers and hybrid seeds in our village, but dependency has been rapidly created. People had no money to buy the seeds, fertilizers and other tools that are required. Consequently, every farming family is now burdened with bank loans and private loans with high interest. The people are at the mercy of this new technology.

This year we got another shock: the rice did not grow properly. As a result, the harvest decreased 75 percent in the village with 57 hectares of rice spoiled. The farmers were sad and angry. Corn cultivation was the same. The people asked the company superstore for compensation but didn’t receive anything. At last, they filed a case in the Supreme Court against the superstore with the case now pending in the court. Farmers are waiting anxiously to face hunger and possibly starvation with the demands of their bank loans and landlords in the back of their minds. This outcome is the negative impact of the monopoly of multinational companies and their agents on our food production.

Meanwhile, we are challenged to ensure food security for a growing population in Nepal. In the better days of the past, we were able to produce more with less; we looked beyond the claims of the biotech industry. We have discovered through our experience that the biotech industry, as well as other modern agricultural interventions, have failed in producing better harvests. Those farmers affiliated with the factory system of production in which different inputs are bought to produce various crops and fruits and vegetables have suffered. A factory is not a living entity though but a multinational of lifeless materials. The assumption that agriculture and its production can be modeled after the modern factory system has led to the wrong belief that somehow the extremely complex soil ecosystem is irrelevant in the production process. The soil, however, is an extremely complex entity with billions of microbes and organisms actively involved in breaking down organic matter and constantly recycling nutrients. Good seeds play a great part in this process too. For the long-term ability to sustain food production, however, we pay serious attention to enhancing the health of the soil. This basic fact of farming that has been known in Nepal and elsewhere for generations is apparently not known, or is ignored, by multinational agricultural companies for whom the land is just another type of factory for producing profits.


* Shreeram Chaudhary attended the first School of Peace (SOP) that Interfaith Cooperation Forum (ICF) held in Bangalore,