The Truth about Green Revolution of India
"In 1950s, Indian farmers had more than 2 lakh varieties of Traditional paddy seeds. These seeds has been breeded and cultivated by Indian Farmers for thousands of years"
Dr.R.H.Richhariya,
Former Director, Centre of Rice Research Institute.
📜 Ancient Breeding Mastery of Indian Farmers
India's Traditional Farmers developed rice with specialized traits—diabetes-friendly, anemia-treating, ADHD-calming, Alzheimer’s-slowing, and even varieties that could stop deaths due to pneumonia and diarrhea due to its rich nutritional properties. Traditional rice is also proven to be anti oxidant powerhouse loaded with micro nutrition and rare phytonutrients that are need for a healthy body and mind.
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Our traditional farmers were also able to breed aromatic rice which gave unique pleasant smell to the rice. They were able to breed rice that doesn't need cooking at all. Just after soaking for a few minutes, the rice will be ready to eat. They were able to breed rice which is healthy for lactating mothers. They were able to breed rice varieties that could improve male sex hormone, testosterone levels. The list goes on.
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Farmers were also able breed paddy varieties that were flood tolerant, saline resistant paddy that could be grown near sea shores, drought resistant paddy that can be grown without much water. Many villages in India had breeded their own paddy seeds that grow well according to village local conditions that are resilent to soil and other local geographic and climatic conditions. Such was the diversity and the genetic wealth of India's traditional paddy. It thousands of years and many generation of farmers to develop such a sophisticated diversity of Traditional rice.
📉 The Crisis of Genetic Erosion
From an estimated 200,000 Traditional paddy seed varieties in 1950s, fewer than 2,000 remain with farmers. Over 99% of Traditional paddy seeds are extinct within just 65 years of the “Green Revolution”.
Green Revolution - Indian Government's policy
that changed Indian Agriculture forever
Green revolution was a policy initiated in 1960s by India Government for agriculture that promoted the use of high-yielding seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, to increase food grain production and achieve food security. It was also promised that increased productivity will increase the farmers income. This initiative was backed by Rockefellar foundation.
John.D.Rockefellar was the America's first Billionaire. He founder of Standard Oil. In 1900s, the company controlled approximately 90% of the pertroleum & oil production in the United States. By 1904, this control extended to about 91% of oil refining and 85% of final sales, a dominance allowing it to acquire competitors and control all stages of the oil business, from extraction to sales.
Standard Oil was accussed of monopolising the petroleum business illegally and making huge profit at the cost of killing competition and which was later proved in Supreme court of USA in 1910. Then, John. D. Rockefellar founded Rockefellar foundation and moved away from Standard Oil. Through the foundation, Rockefellar family was working to monopolize agriculture in the name of improving the food productivity.
Centre for Rice Research Institute(CRRI) in Cuttak, Orissa was the pioneer in Rice Research in India functioning under Government of India. Dr.R.H.Richhariya was the director of CRRI during 1960s. Good research was carried out by the institute where indigenous rice varieties with high yield were breaded and distributed by CRRI to Indian farmers. Rockefellar foundation wanted Indian government to give CRRI to them. But, Dr. Richhariya was against it. He did not favor this transfer and argued that to establish an international organization on the soil of India would be unhealthy because we would not have any control. He felt that the Central Rice Research Institute should function an independent institution and should not be handed over to the Rockefellers, who, after all, were a private party.
Finally, Rockefeller foundation funded International Rice Research Institute(IRRI) in Phillipines. This IRRI in Phillipines worked to create fertilizer reactive hybrid rice crops due to its reactivity to the synthetic fertilizers. These were popularly called as High Yielding varieties(HYV). Typical example of this is IR 8. Indian Government and Rockefellar foundation jointly was in opinion of introducing dwarf high yielding rice varieties that were developed by IRRI throughout India. But, Dr.Richhariya, as a director of CRRI, had other plans to increase the food productivity of India.
Proposal by Dr.Richhariya to increase the food productions
Rainfed agriculture is crucial to India, covering about 55% of the cropped area and employing 61% of the farming population. Despite challenges, it contributes approximately 40% of the country's food grain production, with a larger share of special crops like millets, pulses and paddy. Most of the high yielding varieties introduced by IRRI are not suitable for rainfed agriculture as they need more water and irrigation.
Richhariya points out that Indian council of Agricultural Research in its own reports states that most of high yielding varieties of IRRI has a narrow gene base with alarming uniformity, causing serious vulnerability to diseases and pests.
High Yielding Varieties of IRRI requires more fertilizers and pesticide usage leading to overall decline in quality of food. He also warned that introducing a handful of high yielding varieties of IRRI throughout India will adversely affect the India's indigenous seed diversity.
Richhariya also tabled a report on high yielding indigenous rice varieties. In Madhya Pradesh alone, between 1971-74, 8 per cent of the indigenous rice types were observed to fall under the category of high yielding types, which had yield of minimum 3705 kg/На.
These were some of the indigenous high yileding varieties of paddy that have high productivity compared to high yield varieties promoted jointly by Rockefellar foundation, IRRI and Government of India.
But, there was a problem. These indigenous high yielding vareities doesnt require much synthetic fertilizers and are naturally pest resistance. So, it requires very less fertilizers and pesticides. This was naturally good for farmers and consumers. But, this goes against the interest of Rockefellar family idea of making profit from Indian agriculture.
Richhariya was immediately called to Delhi by then agriculture minister C.Subramaniam.
Richhariya was against introducing IRRI's High yielding varieties' and stated that it will lead to adverse effects on Indian farmers and indigenous seed diversity of India.
C.Subramaniam, then Minster of Agriculture replied to Richhariya,
“I don’t know all this. Now that the Rockefellers have sent the material, you have to accept it."
Richhariya was removed as director of CRRI and IRRI's rice seeds were introduced throughout India as per the wishes of Rockefellars.
This changed the course of Indian agriculture leading to extinction of 99% of our indigenous paddy seeds. C. Subramaniam was awarded Bharat Ratna, (India's highest civilian award) for his work in 1998.
This is not the story of indigenous paddy alone. India had more than 200 varieties of millets.Majority of them vanished after Green revolution.
Green Revolution - The reason for Farmers' suicide
In India, sad reality is, for every half an hour a farmer kills himself. This puts his entire family in limbo. Studies show this has been happening for many decades now. As we saw above, during Green revolution, farmers were encouraged to grow high yielding seeds that require more synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. This increased the input cost of farmers to their crops. On the other hand, prices of their farm produce didn't get right prices in the market. This pushed them into debt.
Before Green revolution, farmers were into kind of zero budget organic farming where they were using cow dung and other locally available material as a fertilizers. As there were thousands of indigenous seeds that were naturally pest resistant, they didn't require pesticides. Their input cost was so low before Green revolution. After the introduction of foreigh technology, things changed for the farmers. They have to buy fertilizers, pesticides, seeds from shop.
Rainfed agricultural lands are areas where crops are grown relying solely on rainfall for water, without any irrigation facilities. 60% of our food even today comes from rainfed lands of India. They places had their own model of agriculture with their own drought resistant seeds that can grow