Farmers Struggle Far from Over — Corporate Capture of India’s Agri Sector Continues
Colin Todhunter
Bayer, which profits from various environmentally harmful and disease-causing chemicals like glyphosate, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) “to develop resource-efficient, climate-resilient solutions for crops, varieties, crop protection, weed and mechanization”.
The ICAR, an apex public sector institution, is responsible for co-ordinating agricultural education and research in India. Predatory corporations like Bayer attempt to co-opt government agencies that can provide access to extensive networks in order to wield influence and market products. It’s a key business strategy.
And this is not lost on the Peoples’ Commission on Public Sector and Services (PCPSS), which includes eminent academics, jurists, erstwhile administrators, trade unionists and social activists. In a recently released statement, it expressed concern that Bayer will exploit the ICAR’s vast infrastructure to pursue its own commercial plans within India. [Statement given below]
And those commercial plans are clear: to boost sales of toxic proprietary products by opening up new markets in India as sales stagnate or plummet elsewhere.
For example, it was reported in July that German-based Bayer expects to take a €2.5bn ($2.8bn) hit due to slower demand for its glyphosate-based products. Penetrating the huge Indian market represents a massive cash cow for foreign corporations, especially if their genetically engineered (GE), herbicide-tolerant food crops get the go ahead. Proprietary GE seeds are designed to be used with agrochemicals like the herbicide glyphosate.
An analysis of a database of 2018’s top-selling ‘crop protection products’ revealed that the world’s leading agrochemical companies made more than 35% of their sales from pesticides classed as highly hazardous to people, animals or ecosystems. The investigation identified billions of dollars of income for agrochemical giants Bayer, BASF, Corteva, FMC and Syngenta from chemicals found by regulatory authorities to pose health hazards like cancer or reproductive failure.
This investigation was based on an analysis of a huge dataset of pesticide sales from the agribusiness intelligence company Phillips McDougall.
Inadequate state funding is driving the ICAR to enter into agreements with companies like Bayer. However, the PCPSS says that such MoUs make a mockery of the stated government aim to boost self-reliance in India’s agricultural sector.
It argues that considering corporations like Bayer promote the use of toxic chemicals in agriculture, a partnership between the ICAR and Bayer of this kind is irreconcilable with the nationwide mission recently launched by Prime Minister Modi to propagate natural farming as a more sustainable alternative. In this respect, the ICAR’s MoU with Bayer is clearly counter-productive and out of place with the stated priority of the government.
The PCPSS notes that there are several ICAR-sponsored research institutions and state-level agricultural universities which are engaged in outstanding research relevant to Indian agriculture. A number of states have launched their own natural farming missions to free debt trapped farmers from the use of costly chemicals and other unsustainable practices. The PCPSS says it is therefore not clear as to why the ICAR should choose to promote Bayer in multiple areas of agricultural research.
Instead of Institutions promoting agrichemical products marketed by Bayer, the PCPSS asserts that the ICAR should shift its focus to agroecological approaches, biological inputs and integrated farming systems, which will help Indian agriculture in the long run.
Although the government revoked the three farm laws passed in 2021 that would have sounded a neoliberal death knell for Indian agriculture, it now seems to be accelerating the marketisation and corporatisation of the sector through other means. The year-long farmers’ agitation led to the government to revoke the farm laws, but these types of MoUs are one way of achieving what the farm laws failed to do.
The PCPSS wants the government to assure farmers a minimum support price for their produce on the lines recommended by the Swaminathan Committee so that farming may become a remunerative activity. It also urges the government to review the ICAR-Bayer MoU and similar agreements entered into by other official agencies with large corporates, not only in agriculture but also in other fields.
One such MoU was entered into by the Indian government in April 2021 with Microsoft, allowing its local partner, CropData, to leverage a master database of farmers. The MoU seems to be part of the AgriStack policy initiative, which involves the roll out of ‘disruptive’ technologies and digital databases in the agricultural sector.
Microsoft is supposed to help farmers with post-harvest management solutions by building a collaborative platform and capturing agriculture datasets such as crop yields, weather data, market demand and prices (data is the financially lucrative ‘new oil’ for those who own it). In turn, this would create a farmer interface for ‘smart’ agriculture, including post-harvest management and distribution.
CropData is to be granted access to a government database of 50 million farmers and their land records. As the database is developed, it will include farmers’ personal details, profiles of land held, production information and financial details. Microsoft will know more about farmers than farmers know about themselves.
The stated aim is to use digital technology to improve financing, inputs, cultivation and supply and distribution. The unstated aims are to impose a certain model of farming, promote profitable corporate technologies and products, encourage market (corporate) dependency among farmers and create a land market by establishing a system of ‘conclusive titling’ of all land in the country so that ownership can be identified and land can then be bought or taken away.
The plan is that, as farmers lose access to land or can be identified as legal owners, predatory institutional investors and large agribusinesses will buy up and amalgamate holdings, facilitating the further roll out of high-input, corporate-dependent industrial agriculture (and the massive health and environmental costs that it entails).
Indian agriculture has witnessed gross underinvestment over the years, whereby it is now wrongly depicted as a basket case and underperforming and ripe for a sell off to those very interests who had a stake in its underinvestment.
The PCPSS says it is not clear as to why the ICAR should choose to promote Bayer in multiple areas of agricultural research, especially given the government’s stated commitment to natural farming.
However, India has submitted itself to the regime of foreign finance, awaiting signals on how much it can spend, giving up any pretence of economic sovereignty and leaving the space open for private capital to move in and capture markets.
That much has been made clear by the Research Unit for Political Economy in the article ‘Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington DC’. The piece states that current agricultural ‘reforms’ are part of a broader process of imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy.
A 1991 World Bank memorandum set out the programme for India. At the time, India was still in its foreign exchange crisis of 1990-91 and had just been subjected to an IMF-monitored ‘structural adjustment’ programme that involved shifting 400 million people from rural India to the cities and corporatising agriculture.
The current administration is attempting to dramatically accelerate the implementation of the above programme. The aim is to drastically dilute the role of the public sector in agriculture, reducing it to a facilitator of private (foreign) capital.
There has been an ongoing strategy to make farming financially non-viable for many of India’s farmers. The number of cultivators in India declined from 166 million to 146 million between 2004 and 2011. Some 6,700 left farming each day. Between 2015 and 2022, the number of cultivators was likely to decrease to around 127 million.
We have seen the running down of the sector for decades, spiralling input costs, withdrawal of government assistance and the impacts of cheap, subsidised imports which depress farmers’ incomes.
The PCPSS is not the first to express concern about the deepening penetration of large, profit-hungry corporations. In late November 2018, a charter was released by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (an umbrella group of around 250 farmers’ organisations) expressing similar sentiments.
The charter also expressed alarm about the economic, ecological, social and existential crisis of Indian agriculture as well as the persistent state neglect of the sector and discrimination against farming communities.
The repeal of the three farm laws in late 2021 was little more than a tactical manoeuvre. The powerful global interests behind these laws did not simply disappear. As big tech giants team up with traditional agribusiness companies like Bayer, the goal to capture and radically restructure the sector remains and is gaining momentum. The farmers’ struggle in India is far from over.
(The author has an interest in food, agriculture and development. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org.)
Review ICAR-Bayer MOU and Others to Ensure That Official Agencies are Not Becoming Marketing Avenues for Corporates
People’s Commission on Public Sector and Public Services
The People’s Commission on Public Sector and Public Services (PCPSPS) finds that the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Bayer, an MNC on September 1, 2023 without even having guidelines on joint research with multinational corporations (MNCs) in place. The agreement has the mandate “to develop resource-efficient, climate-resilient solutions for crops, varieties, crop protection, weed, and mechanization. The collaboration will focus on working together on agriculture sustainability program efforts by providing quality agricultural inputs and advisory services to farmers in a systems approach.” Earlier, ICAR signed similar MOUs on research collaboration with Bayer, one on cultivation of pomegranates and another on “Development of Drone-based Potatoes Crop Management Technologies”.
We feel distressed that the Council, which is an apex public sector institution of eminence, the largest of its kind in the world, with its vast network of research associates and field-level extension agencies spread across the length and breadth of the country, which has been coordinating, guiding and managing research and education in agriculture including horticulture, fisheries and animal sciences in India for more than nine decades, an institution which spearheaded the Green Revolution that transformed India’s agriculture and made the country self-sufficient in food grains production, should choose it appropriate to enter into an agreement with a profit-driven MNC and allow it to exploit the Council’s unique brand value, its public credibility and its vast infrastructure to pursue its own commercial plans in the country. In the field of agriculture, ICAR has much more to offer to others than what a private company like Bayer can give.
We understand that inadequate state funding is driving the ICAR scientists to enter into the agreements with the companies like Bayer. Today India has a research intensity of 0.37% only. This is much lower than 3.1% for advanced capitalist countries, 0.62% for China and 1.8% for Brazil. In FY 2020–21, as per the Union budget, India’s expenditure on agricultural R&D (ICAR budget) was a meagre INR 7762 crore (about USD 1.1 billion) (Government of India 2021a). There lies a huge scope for achieving better results. The expenditure on agricultural R&D needs at least to be doubled immediately. Decline of quality of technology generation and human resource development in state agricultural universities (SAUs) is attributed to structural factors with reasons in lack of sufficient support from State Governments and Central Government, reduced faculty strength, inadequate faculty development programmes and ageing of scientists. Only a few SAUs have been able to retain a critical mass of scientific manpower. While the national agricultural research system did realize some increase in the strength of faculty in the SAUs after 2003-04 (till 2012-13), but a large part of the increase went for recruitment done for the benefit of standalone single faculty SAUs. The shortfall began after 2013-14. The decrease was more in SAUs than in ICAR institutes.
We are not sure whether the Union Cabinet had a prior opportunity to consider the pros and cons of ICAR’s proposals to sign MOUs with Bayer, as such arrangements not only lend undue authenticity to Bayer’s commercial products and services in the eyes of the field-level agencies functioning under the aegis of ICAR but also allow Bayer to gain an undue advantage of ICAR’s credibility as a premier agency in India in the field of research in agriculture. In our view, such MOUs make a mockery of the so-called “Atmanirbhar” effort of the government, in so far as agriculture is concerned. Considering that MNCs like Bayer promote the use of chemicals in agriculture, a partnership between ICAR and Bayer of this kind constitutes an antithesis to the nation-wide mission launched by the Prime Minister recently to propagate natural farming as a more sustainable alternative. An official press release on March 19, 2023 stated, “Natural farming is the only way for conservation of earth- (the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi is continuously working to promote it). In that context, ICAR’s MOUs with Bayer are clearly counter-productive and out of place with the stated priority of the government in agriculture.
It is important to note that several chemicals promoted by MNCs like Bayer are known to cause carcinogenic and other diseases, for which the concerned companies are facing litigation in several countries. The products marketed by such MNCs are patented, carrying prices which are not affordable in the Indian context, whose active ingredients (AIs) are being imported from the parent company located outside causing the drain of foreign exchange. Though the Patents Act empowers the concerned regulatory authority to grant compulsory licenses after the end of a three-year timeframe to domestic firms prepared to manufacture and sell those products at more reasonable prices, there have been instances of the MNCs dragging the regulator into expensive litigation at the cost of the public. Against such a background, it is distressing to find official agencies like the ICAR allowing those very same MNCs to take advantage of their name and facilities to market their products and services.
In the federal allocation of subjects under the Constitution, the subjects, “agriculture, including agricultural education and research, protection against pests and prevention of plant diseases” lie within the jurisdiction of the States. ICAR which is an autonomous organisation under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare , Government of India, functions within such a set up, in close association with the States, providing advice to them in matters relating to agricultural research, innovation and extension of knowledge to the farming community, through its field-level agencies. There are several ICAR-sponsored research institutions and State-level agricultural universities which are engaged in outstanding research work relevant to Indian agricultural environment. Several States have launched their own natural farming missions to free the farmers from the use of chemicals and other unsustainable practices. It is therefore not clear as to why ICAR should choose to promote Bayer in multiple areas of agricultural research. Even in fields such as the use of drones, there are many domestic firms which have developed highly innovative, affordable technologies that need to be promoted. ICAR has the ability to apply such domestically developed, innovative technologies to improve agricultural practices and render them more efficient.
Though India has become self-sufficient in terms of food grains production, as a result of its increasing dependence on chemical fertilisers, pesticides etc., it is becoming more and more dependent on imports, a situation that has got accentuated recently, when the prices of imported fertilisers spiked, as a result of the ongoing Ukraine conflict. The domestic fertiliser manufacturers have therefore shifted their focus to making available organic fertilisers. Institutions such as ICAR should, instead of promoting chemical agro-products marketed by MNCs like Bayer, should shift their focus to agroecological approaches, biological inputs and integrated farming systems, which will help Indian agriculture to sustain in the long run.
Though, as a result of a continuing agitation by farmers across the country against the three egregious farm laws, the Central government had no other alternative than to revoke the same, the latter seems to be providing entry for private agencies through the backdoor, by resorting to arrangements with them as in the case of ICAR’s MOU with Bayer. In our view, in the long run, opening agriculture to large private firms will expose the farming communities to undue risks, impoverish and disempower them. Such an approach would not augur for the well-being of the farming communities. Instead, the government should assure the farmers of a minimum support price for their produce on the lines recommended by the Swaminathan Committee, so that farming may become a remunerative activity.
We request the government to review the ICAR-Bayer MOUs and similar other MOUs/ agreements entered into by other official agencies with large corporates, not only in agriculture but also in other fields, so as to ensure that official agencies may not become marketing avenues for corporates.
[About Peoples’ Commission on Public Sector and Public Services (PCPSPS): Peoples’ Commission on Public Sector and Services includes eminent academics, jurists, erstwhile administrators, trade unionists and social activists. PCPSPS intends to have in-depth consultations with all stakeholders and people concerned with the process of policy making and those against the government’s decision to monetise, disinvest and privatise public assets/enterprises and produce several sectoral reports before coming out with a final report.]
