By Vikas Parasram Meshram
Farmers are fighting for their rights not only in India but also in several other countries in different parts of the world. These countries include Germany, Holland, France, among others.
German farmers are dissatisfied with the lack of fair prices for their produce and new environmental protection practices. A few months ago, more than 40,000 farmers gathered in the German capital, Berlin, with thousands of tractors. The biggest complaint of farmers in Holland is the new environmental regulations. Because most of the farmland is going to be taken over by corporates. Still, the government will have to subsidise the crop heavily.
Every peasant movement is a battle of hunger and the agricultural market. It would not be wrong to say that landlords, landlords or rulers have always had some form of authority and control over the market. This is the reason why 19 crore people in India are starving despite higher grain production than demand. This is according to the United Nations Food Security Report 2020. Famine persists in many resource-poor countries in Africa.
The ongoing peasant movement in the country is part of this struggle. This is literally a conflict between market owners and farmers. As the dependence of countries around the world on the market has increased, so has the weapon of snatching away the rights of farmers. Those who dominated the market found it a way to take possession of the cultivated land. This has been done in many countries in the US and Europe.
Dr William Heffermann consistently considered the idea of ​​taking possession of farmland from market regulators rather than farmers. Head of the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri, Dr. Speaking about the industrialization of agriculture based on a study, Hefferman said that in the next few years, few companies will dominate the entire food chain.
Dr Hefferman said in his findings that structural changes in the food chain would be so pervasive and strong that they could not be considered within the scope of agricultural policy planning. He called these changes ‘industrialization of agriculture’. And, as a result, phrases like ‘food production’ are now being used economically. He said it would not be possible to formulate agricultural policy outside the new food system.
In this context, it is also important to know that a total of multinational companies have stockpiled the entire food chain. Such as Cargill, the global food buying, storage and selling company founded by William Wallace Cargill in 1885, ADM (Archer Daniel Midland Company, Congra Food Processing Company, and Monsanto Seed Manufacturer. Monsanto produced seeds that are used in a crop Thus, with a handful of companies taking over the entire farmland, it has become difficult to get accurate information on seeds, fertilizers, irrigation, yields, etc., as these companies are doing business globally, so we cannot understand which countries have implemented which policies. We have dozens of small companies as partners in our vast business.
An American sociologist like Hefferman and a businessman who followed his ideas about the future of agricultural farming had already created exactly one blueprint. He had said that in the next decade, if the total number of farm owners remained at 25,000, a large number of people would be freed from this work. The US government then began implementing these recommendations and made arrangements to provide adequate funding to farmers who were willing to donate their land. “We cannot save every farm but we will save every farming family,” the government declared.
The duties of developing countries like India have been threatened by the WTO agreement. If you want to farm, now the farmer has to farm as a laborer and not as a farm owner. They will get paid for their wages. America became his first example. There, until the early 1980s, farmers struggled to get a fair price for their produce. In the United States, American in the case of the farmers protesting on the Delhi border, several thousand farmers went to the capital, Washington, with tractors. As a result, the government made it a rule that farmland was gradually taken over by corporate MNCs in the name of meeting the demands of the farmers.
The same work will be done by three new laws aimed at improving agriculture. The interests of American multinationals are behind these laws. That’s why Biden’s government has backed the legislation. New laws were being drafted since the 1990s. Dr. William Heffermann spoke not only of agriculture in his language, but also of controlling the trade in animals used for carnivores. He studied the problems of various birds, dairy animals and animals used for food from the point of view of agriculture and rural society and said that food is a necessary and constant need of mankind. As a result, in the future, economic power will be in the hands of the person who controls agriculture and the food chain. We have warned that there could be fierce competition for this control in the near future.
It will be useful to know that ADM is the largest multinational company in the world involved in food processing and their trade, with revenue of. 64.66 billion in 2019. The most important message of this American development is that the decision to transfer the business of agriculture to the farmers of India, to the multinational companies there, was not taken by a majority or by popular vote. This ideological decision was imposed on them and the number of those who support them can be counted on their fingers. However, at present, new questions are being raised about the food system and answers are being sought by citing future generations. Of course, the Indian peasant movement, the German movement, will serve as a guide for those struggling in other countries.
Well informed sir, this information will be worthwhile.