While industry figures are not known, Tropicana took the well-publicized step early in 2009 of calculating the carbon footprint of a half-gallon carton of their not-from-concentrate “Pure Premium.” Only nine per cent of the 1.7 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) total resulted from distribution, while a staggering 35 per cent came solely from fertilizer and another 18 per cent from agricultural fuel use.

Not-from-concentrate OJ is pasteurized in an energy-intensive process, stored for up to a year, and shipped in enormous tankers to world markets. Frozen concentrate orange juice takes less energy to ship but uses more in the initial evaporation process. According to a 2000 Sustain publication, 100 kg of fossil fuels are used to produce every ton of OJ, and each glass requires 22 glasses of processing water (Tropicana says this number is now closer to 2.5 glasses of water per glass of juice).

Regardless of the type of orange juice in your glass, chances are even that it came from Brazil, where half of the world’s juice oranges are now grown. Other major orange producers include the US, Mexico, and China.

Brazil’s Institute of Food Technology (ITAL) produced a life-cycle assessment of frozen-concentrate orange juice in June 2009 and found that only 21 per cent of farms in the province of Sao Paulo showed “good” environmental performance, as defined by consumption of pesticides, fertilizers, soil correctors and land use below the weighted average. Most local farmers are over-consuming fertilizers, which can lead to eutrophication and human health impacts. Growing oranges for juice can also reduce native biodiversity through habitat conversion, especially as farmers increase their acreage beyond prime river bottoms and up steeper slopes where soils are less stable and require greater inputs.

But this trend has levelled off in recent years, says the World Wildlife Fund’s Kevin Ogorzalek, who adds that growing oranges is “a relatively decent use of land.” He adds that the industry’s main sustainability challenge is not the environmental impact of chemical inputs, but rather maintaining or improving yields to “use the best available growing methods in the most suitable places.” In countries like China, where yields are half of Florida’s, a lack of technological and financial resources means that production falls short despite relatively favourite geographic and climatic conditions. This not only leads to excessive consumption of land (increasing habitat conversion and diversity loss) but also reduces the industry’s financial sustainability. Unlike palm oil, where rampant deforestation and destruction of habitat for several critically endangered species renders orange juice’s inherently unsustainable, what environmental challenges are not insurmountable: basic shifts such as maintaining complementary vegetation to reduce erosion and keep the soil healthy, thus minimizing the need for inputs, would improve its impact markedly. “Right now orange juice is a relatively sustainable choice,” Orgoralek says. “And it can become more sustainable. There’s no doubt about it.”

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With high-temperature geothermal energy, it’s possible. “The rig and personnel who drill for oil and gas can be the same rig and personnel who drill for geothermal,” says Alison Thompson, founder and chair of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CanGEA), which now counts 30 companies, including Enbridge and Nexen, as members.

High-temperature geothermal is different from the low-temperature geothermal energy that fuels geo-exchange or geothermal heat pump systems for commercial and residential heating and cooling. Located a few kilometers underground and often visible at the surface as hot springs, this “conventional geothermal” can be used to generate electricity on a large scale. Closed-loop geothermal systems produce virtually no emissions or waste, as all water is re-injected back into the ground to eventually be reheated by the earth.

“This is a huge renewable on the scale of hydro dams,” says Thompson. A 2009 report from the Pembina Institute estimates that 21 billion gigawatt hours of energy are released every year underneath the surface of Alberta, at depths of less than five km.

“Even with the conservative assumption that only 0.5 per cent of this potential is recoverable, it represents more than 1,100 times the current total installed generating capacity in Alberta,” says the report. CanGEA estimates that at least 5,000 megawatts (MW) of high temperature hydrothermal potential are available in B.C., Alberta, and the Yukon, and could power 3.7 million homes.

A January 2009 Credit Suisse report finds that geothermal energy is the least-expensive form of alternative energy at 3.6 cents per kilowatt-hour; cheaper than coal, which costs 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (assuming a 1.9 cent/kWh savings from U.S. tax incentives). And it makes sense to produce: forty-year old Nevada-based geothermal company Ormat Technologies is steadily profitable. “Long before Kyoto, geothermal was already making money without incentives,” says Thompson.

Geothermal is “not new, it’s new to Canadians,” Thompson adds. First used to produce electricity in 1904 in Larderello, Italy, geothermal fluids such as the Roman Baths have been used as therapy for hundreds of years. Currently, there are 10,000 MW in operation in 24 countries such as Iceland, Germany, the US, and Mexico—and yes, still in Larderello, Italy. The US is the world’s largest geothermal producer with 3,000 MW installed, powering the equivalent of almost three million homes.

Because it is continuous and reliable, geothermal “behaves in a way that utilities are used to,” says Tim Weis, Director of Renewable Energy and Efficiency Policy at the Pembina Institute. This means that geothermal can fill in the gaps of variable renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

“We are the trunk line of the renewables industry,” says Thompson.

So why doesn’t Canada have any geothermal on the grid? For starters, since drilling for geothermal is a capital-intensive undertaking, industry needs to know where to look—but data on geothermal potential is woefully outdated. Since Canada’s formal geothermal energy program, under the auspices of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), lasted from 1975 to 1985, much of the data available on geothermal heat flow is a quarter-century old. With two decades of technological improvements, these maps may have failed to catalogue what is now a viable geothermal site.

“Technology’s marched on,” says Thompson. “Power plant technology can now operate with water as hot as your cup of coffee.” In addition, most countries have improved the detail of their data, mapping not only heat flow, but also underground water (which is used to transfer heat), permeability porosity (which allows hot water to move through the rock), and land surface features such as national parks.

Without formal direction or funding from the federal government “we’re decades and hundreds of millions of dollars behind,” she says. “The Americans are spending $350 million on their geothermal program. We’re still spending effectively nothing.”

“It’s really a catch-22,” responds GSC research scientist Steve Grasby. “Until there is active need for the information, it doesn’t necessarily make sense for the government to invest in providing it. But if you don’t have it, you don’t get [outside] investment.”

Red tape at the B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum resources has added to the frustration from industry. Despite sitting on the geothermal-rich Pacific Ring of Fire, the last B.C. land tenure auction occurred back in November 2004. Meanwhile, 14 different companies made approximately 175 tenure requests from late 2007 into 2008.

As a result, says Thompson, many Canadian-listed geothermal companies like Magma Energy, where she is Vice President of Corporate Relations, are spending “every single dollar in other countries, except for on the lights in our head office.” Consequently, Canadians with drilling expertise are missing out on hundreds of green jobs.

The B.C. Ministry is now targeting three dates for tenure disposition in 2010, says spokesperson Jake Jacobs. Four parcels of land are out for referral with industry, First Nations, and local governments. As all parties move forward, Thompson urges Canadians to learn from the experience of New Zealand’s Maori indigenous people, who are owners and operators of key geothermal generation properties.

Nicholas Heap, Climate and Energy Policy Analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation, says that such caution is required to maintain a social license to operate.

“Geothermal can be low-impact and sustainable, but it’s not necessarily going to be that,” he says. “If the public perceives this just to be more dirty, high-impact power, we’re not going to get the kind of support that we need to effect a large-scale transition to a renewable and sustainable energy system.”

Part of this perception may come from the fact that while almost all of the steam produced from geothermal plants is water vapour, other particulates including hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide may be present in extremely low amounts. But these can be controlled and utilized in beneficial ways. The Blue Lagoon geothermal spa in Iceland is fed by the output of the nearby geothermal plant Svartsengi, and its warm waters are reputed to be therapeutic. The plant also uses a heat exchanger to heat the municipal water system.

A 2009 report by Northwestern University researchers found that geothermal has the least land use per generated power. “If that land was previously agricultural, most of the use could continue unabated,” says Dan Schochet, Executive Vice President of Ram Power, which operates the Meager Creek Hot Springs exploration project in B.C. (currently on hold).

David Gowland, Policy Director for Can- GEA, stresses the need for a long-term view, citing the short-term approach that has caused some Californian sites to run down the resource too quickly. “Countries like Iceland and New Zealand recognize they will be relying on the resource for the longterm so they draw out heat at a sustainable rate,” he says. “They are attuned to successfully managing the resource.”

Despite these benefits, until Canada has a commercial-scale geothermal operation, public awareness and demand will likely remain low.

Tim Weis compares the geothermal industry to a fledgling wind industry. “It really tipped the balance for wind energy when we got a couple of commercial projects in the ground,” he says. “Then that set the stage for substantial, long-term policies.”

Despite lagging behind our peers, Nicholas Heap of the David Suzuki Foundation thinks there’s still time for Canada to create “a planning and development system that makes low-impact renewables a core goal”.

“A lot can be done in a short time if there is the will to do it.”

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A global population of almost seven billion people requires lot of food, and a lot more of them, those with growing disposable incomes, are starting to be able to afford grain-intensive meat. Add the bio-fuels surge into the mix, and you can see why demand for potash, one of three key fertilizer nutrients, is shooting upwards.

Export cartels have helped to push the price of fertilizers, particularly potash,past the point many farmers can afford,and beyond what poor countries are able to subsidize. For India, total fertilizer subsidies tripled this year to US$22.5 billion (with almost $3 billion of that going toward cushioning potash prices), matching the country’s defence budget.

On April 21, 2008, PotashCorp, a Saskatchewan-based fertilizer company many Canadians had never thought twice about, rocketed to top spot on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). While the company’s stock ranking on the TSX has slipped a few spots in recent months, CEO Bill Doyle is bullish about the future. In a December 2008 speech, Doyle told investors that by 2012 it is “feasible that rising prices and additional volumes could push our annual potash gross margin toward $25 billion.” For 2008, the company expects its gross margin of net potash sales to be 80 per cent. Margins like that can entice battered investors to stop licking their wounds and start licking their chops.

An OPEC on steroids

For some reason the Creator chose not to spread the potash wealth around, bestowing just a small handful of countries with any substantial endowments. PotashCorp happens to be sitting on the world’s biggest pile of potash (and a tonne of cash) in a market cornered by export cartels. Seven companies in just twelve countries produce 85 per cent of global potash stocks (with Canada, Belarus and Russia accounting for four-fifths of production), and 160 countries consume it. In contrast, OPEC’s 12 countries control a mere 37 per cent of oil flows. Add in PotashCorp’s thousand-plus year supplies and its 75-percent share of unused capacity, and it might be enough to make Saudi Sheiks trade in their Arabian horses for Saskatchewan Roughriders jerseys.

Times were not always so good for PotashCorp. Back in 1986, as a crown corporation of the Government of Saskatchewan, it lost $103 million. Potash prices trolled $45.36 per tonne (FOB mine) as producers duked it out in a price war. As Doyle laments, “you never hear from anyone complaining when prices are low.”

Nineteen-eighty-six was a wake-up call. The Saskatchewan government overhauled PotashCorp’s management, bringing in some American talent. Former executives of competitor IMC Global joined Potash as CEO (Charles E. Childers) and president of the sales arm (Bill Doyle).

On September 25, 1986, Doyle drafted an internal “Corporate Plan” that stated ending the price wars would require joint action: “It is not possible for a single producer to affect a turn-around; however, joint action by a group of producers or governments could achieve this.” Doyle swiftly “match[ed] supply to demand,” and over the next two years, potash prices spiked by 82 per cent.

Then communism collapsed, plunging fertilizer demand in the former Soviet Union, and bringing a glut of supply onto the market, which took most of the nineties to sort out via PotashCorp pulling back on production coupled with demand growth in other parts of the world.

In between then and now, PotashCorp has invested in beefing up production capacity as well as making strategic investments in China, Chile, Israel and Jordan. The North American industry has also consolidated from eight to three players, who export the bulk of their foreign production through Canpotex, an export cartel permitted under Section 45 (5) of the Canadian Competition Act.

In April of 2000, PotashCorp announced that they were rolling part of Russian potash magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev’s haul at Uralkali into the Canpotex export cartel. In addition to controlling Uralkali, Rybolovlev jointly owns 25 per cent of Russia’s other major potash producer, Silvinit.

In April of 2003, PotashCorp announced that the Uralkali was leaving Canpotex, with Doyle noting, “The good news is the global potash market has grown and Uralkali has gained valuable experience in the nuances of the offshore market.” Doyle later noted at a 2005 investor conference in New York that “the big jump in offshore prices came early in 2004 when Russian producers reached their production limits and became more focused on price.”

The Saskatchewan- Belarusian Axis

In 2005, Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko decreed the Belarusian Potash Company (BPC) to have the exclusive right to market Belarusian potash. Uralkali quickly signed on as a cofounder rolling its Russian production into BPC. Together, with Uralkali’s recently acquired appreciation that price matters more than volume, the two export cartels had the power to set potash prices at will.

In October of 2005, representatives from the world’s potash players gathered for a meeting. Bill Doyle (CEO, PotashCorp), Michael Wilson (CEO, Canpotex), and James Thompson (Executive VP, Mosaic Company) attended a meeting in Russia with their counterpart, Vladislov Baumgertner, CEO Uralkali, as well as representatives of Belarusian potash powerhouse, Belaruskali and Russian producer Silvinit. Although PotashCorp could not confirm to Corporate Knights if this meeting took place, their less discreet Russian colleagues have a press release on their web site marking the occasion.

Doyle describes the potash market dynamics metaphorically: “When temporary factors reduce customer buying, we take our foot off the gas rather than force production into a market that is not prepared to buy.” Uralkali takes a more literal approach: “Two major export associations [Canpotex and BPC] ensure a stable pricing environment.”

About the time that BPC was formed, prices starting spiking everywhere, especially in North America where they had lagged international prices. For the first time since 1987-88, the North American and international potash prices converged. Today, potash is a seller’s market. “We believe the tight potash market is allowing producers to raise prices at will,” Goldman Sachs analyst Edlian Rodriguez concluded in April 2008. Recent potash contracts in Southeast Asia have closed at $1,050 per tonne of potash, compared to $120 in 2003.

Take it or leave it

The days of producer price wars and undercutting your competitors have been replaced by a steely discipline and camaraderie, to the point where potash export cartels can say, “here is my inflated price. Take it or leave it”. This can make for pitched battles, but as long as one export cartel is confident the other will not undercut it, countries like India and China have nowhere else to go, so they have to swallow the price increases, or risk their people not having food to swallow.

With this type of export cartel discipline, as Doyle noted this December, potash prices have proved remarkably resilient in a down-market for commodities: “While prices for commodities in general have declined substantially in recent months, the same is not true for potash,” adding “for the first half of 2009, buyers have accepted increases of $200 per tonne, taking the price above $900 per tonne on a delivered basis—a new record.”

The big potash producers know the trends and can plan supply accordingly. The International Fertilizer Industry Association keeps track of industry data projecting potential surpluses. The latest data published on their site says: “Derived potash supply/demand balance shows a potential surplus rising from 5.8 Mt K2O in 2008 to 6.4 Mt in 2009.”

This kind of information helps suppliers to adjust production for optimal prices, “rather than force production into a market that is not prepared to buy,” as Doyle puts it. This December, for instance, despite around the board predictions that potash needs are soaring, PotashCorp announced 940 miners would be laid off at three of its mines for two months in order to reduce production by two million tonnes, or 20 per cent, in 2009. Agrium Inc. followed up with 380 layoff notices to employees at its Vanscoy mine. Mosaic Co. soon followed suit issuing layoff notices to a total of 1,000 workers at two locations in Saskatchewan this January, saying that the company would reduce production by up to one million tonnes by the end of May 2009.

The reason potash production is being cut is not because there is no demand for it, but that buyers do not want to pay the prices the potash producers are demanding. In fairness to the potash producers, they claim they need these high prices to justify investments to increase production, which will avert an even more abrasive shock down the road. But as the company just wrestled free a huge provincial profit tax concession so that any production beyond 5.7 million tonnes in Saskatchewan (where they already have existing capacity of about 10 million tonnes) is taxed at a rate of 0, those potash prices might not need to be as high as their “black box” model says.

Down on the farm

For farmers, potash prices have spiked more than any other input they require to grow food. “When I was out west in Alberta, people were asking for a high level investigation into the spike in fertilizer prices,” says Ron Bonnett, Canadian Federation of Agriculture, 2nd Vice President. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was at the top of the agenda for our annual meeting in February.”

Further afield in Brazil and Russia, governments appear to be taking matters into their own hands. Brazil’s government is considering nationalizing the country’s fertilizer deposits to help reduce farmers’ production costs. In March, the Russian antimonopoly regulators mandated Uralkali to slash domestic prices for potash, after battling over its pricing behaviour in court.

In response to potash prices shooting through the roof, in September and October of 2008, six complaints were filed in the US on behalf of potash buyers against producers, including Potash-Corp. Alleging a conspiracy to fix potash prices under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, as well as various state antitrust laws, the plaintiffs are seeking unspecified treble damages, plus attorneys’ fees. PotashCorp denies the allegations.

Corporate Knights polled half a dozen analysts, most of whom have been briefed only by the company on the matter. They didn’t seem worried. “Even if it looks that way [price-fixing among potash producers],” the managing director of one Bay Street bond rating house said, “it is going to be hard to prove in court, unless a company is so dumb to have emails lying around.”

Trade 101: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Under The Canadian Competition Act, companies are permitted to form price-fixing cartels for export purposes as long as it doesn’t increase prices at home. The provision which allows this, Section 45(5), dates back to 1960 and was revised in 1986. Section 45(5) was not designed for a flat trading world where commodities are priced the same everywhere, or arbitrage makes it so. But if you are one of a handful of companies controlling a necessary and rare resource that the world needs to grow food, then this provision can be a path to riches leaving in its trail bumper crops of hunger.

For the past ten years, the Canadian Competition Bureau has pushed for the revision of The Competition Act in a number of areas, including Section 45, that provides cover for PotashCorp’s export cartel, Canpotex. These defences for export cartel activity are known as “beggar thy neighbour” defences. The Competition Bureau proposes a regime whereby any hard core cartel operating in Canada would be unlawful regardless of its anti-competitive effects or where they were aimed or felt.

In a world where there was much less trans-border activity than now and where antitrust or competition laws were few and far between, permitting export cartels aimed only at your trading partners was viewed in a much different light than it is today. Over the past couple of decades there has been a proliferation of competition laws around the world, to the point where over 100 nations have them today. All of these laws recognize that cartels are generally wrong and harmful to anybody they affect. So regardless of any exemptions offered for Canadian export cartels, it is just a matter of time before other nascent competition regulatory bodies are able to turn on export cartels like Canpotex if they suspect price-fixing or output restrictions.

J. William Rowley QC, Chairman at McMillan LLP points out that Canada, compared with any other economy of its size, is more reliant on external trade. “That being the case,” he parlays, “we don’t want to do things that beggar our neighbours. And intellectually we disagree with cartels, because they hurt consumers.” The OECD agrees, calling export cartels “the most egregious violations of competition law,” as well as issuing reports detailing how hardcore cartels— cartels which price fix, bid rig, and restrict output—harm consumers in developing countries the most. Another report by the American Bar Association on antitrust law and NAFTA from 1994, suggests prohibiting hard core cartels that harm other NAFTA nations.

In June, L. “Red” Wilson, Chair of the Competition Policy Review Panel, completed his final government commissioned report reviewing Canada’s competition policy (“Compete to Win”). The report calls on the government to “repeal the existing conspiracy provisions and replace them with a per se criminal offence to address hardcore cartels [e.g. price fixing] and a civil provision to deal with other types of agreements between competitors that have anti-competitive effects.”

“From PotashCorp’s perspective, the difference in a per se regime is that it would almost certainly remove the export cartel exemption,” says Rowley. It appears that Prime Minister Stephen Harper agrees something needs to be done in this area. During the 2008 federal election, the Conservatives promised that they would implement some of Wilson’s recommendations—so the legal curtain behind which companies have been hiding may soon be lifted. Canpotex may have to urgently review its business model.

“We like potash best because it has the fewest competitive pressures and least government involvement,” Doyle told the Credit Suisse First Boston Chemical Conference in September 2008. Well, if Harper sticks to his word, there could soon be a lot more competition and government involvement in busting up price-fixing export cartels like Canpotex.

Crack. Can you hear that? That’s the sound of export cartels being broken up.

The post Potash politics appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But another attack has been taking place for over a decade, steadily and surely, with little major news attention. From 1997 to 2007, over 180,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide. Rather than the affluent echelons affected in Mumbai, this tragedy strikes at the agricultural heart of India: a nation where about 70 per cent of the population is still involved in a 5,000-year-old tradition of agriculture.

Indian farmers in crisis

“You could see the suicides coming,” says farmer Karuna Futane. She and her husband live in the “suicide belt” of Vidarba, Maharashtra.

“All around us, farmers were losing their children to the cities; they were becoming lonely and hopeless,” Futane says. “All their money was going out from the village, and nothing was coming back. In society overall, there has been a loss of sensitivity, dialogue, and connection among people. It was only a matter of time.”

“Suicide has become so common that no one takes it seriously anymore,” says Giridhar Patil, an agricultural activist in Nashik, Maharashtra.

The big picture

In 2007, 16,632 farmers committed suicide. Since records are likely to exclude tenant and women farmers, this is actually a conservative estimate.

According to a study by Professor K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, nearly two-thirds of all suicides occurred in five states: Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. These states were leaders in the high-yield agriculture program known as the Green Revolution. They have also embarked wholeheartedly into the SEZ (Special Economic Zones) program: a program that invites multinational corporations into their areas to set up shop, with promises of more relaxed environmental regulations and tax breaks.

“[There is] an acute agrarian crisis across the country,” says Nagaraj.

Indian government policies favour large-scale, industrial, and corporate farming. Mechanization on large farms has dramatically reduced the number of people working in agriculture, leading to rising unemployment and an influx into urban areas.

As state investment in agriculture has disappeared, land and water stresses have worsened. Operating costs have shot up, with some inputs seeing cost hikes of several hundred per cent. This has forced farmers to take out high-interest loans from banks and private lenders to stay afloat.

Meanwhile, crop prices have crashed due to massive US-EU subsidies to growers, casino-style commodity futures markets, and price rigging by large corporations. Farmers often don’t make enough revenue to cover their interest payments.

Stories of difficult industrial agriculture transitions have played out worldwide for the last half-century, reaching as far as Canada’s own Prince Edward Island. The province has lost 325 of its 400 hog farmers in the last six years due to centralized retailing and international commodity pricing.

In India, the additional burdens of changing weather patterns and irregular rainfall have pushed farmers into an endless cycle of debt, depression, and despair. Often, suicide is the only way out.

“Even as subsidies for corporate farmers in the West rose, we cut our few, very minimal life supports and subsidies to our own farmers,” says Nagaraj. “The collapse of investment in agriculture also meant it was, and is, most difficult to get out of this trap.”

The other Green Revolution

To Western ears, a green revolution sounds promising. But in India, the Revolution has signaled a major switch in Indian agriculture over the last 50 years.

“Out of the Green Revolution, only 10 per cent of farmers made money. The situation of the other 90 per cent was not improved at all,” says Vasant Futane. “The government is now promoting corporate sector farming and helping companies like Monsanto and Reliance to acquire large plots of land. They are ruining the environment, leading to the permanent degradation of the land.”

In 1961, Norman Borlaug, a Rockefeller Foundation affiliate who created hybrid grains, traveled to India to pitch the use of hybrid seeds to solve its looming food crisis, ostensibly due to unusual droughts, incomplete land reforms, and population increases. Rather than addressing these root causes, the government launched its own program of hybrid plant breeding. Crop yields increased dramatically, and the leaders of the Green Revolution were highly praised.

But India has seen the Revolution’s dark side; though food exports are booming, famine lingers because biased distribution channels are limiting the ability of the poor to access food.

The suicides are just one of many environmental and socioeconomic effects of the Green Revolution. The new ‘high yield seeds’ require chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow. Farmers must repurchase these seeds every season since they cannot be replanted. Every year, crops require additional fertilizers and pesticides as nutrients diminish and pests grow resistant to the chemicals. And with everyone planting the same seeds, a single disease can devastate an entire nation’s harvest.

Such difficulties manifest themselves as suicides. Tragically, the majority of the farmers have been committing suicide by ingesting the very chemicals that have destroyed their land, families, and communities.

An oasis in the desert

In this midst of this destruction, Futane and her husband Vasant are creating an oasis in the desert. Inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution—a small-scale organic farming system that does not require weeding, pesticide or fertilizer applications, or tilling—as well as the non-violence practices of Vinoba Bhave and Mahatma Gandhi, they are attempting to cultivate Swaraj, a state of self-reliant living. Swaraj emerges when people begin to take their lives in their own hands and take responsibility for the whole — self, nature, and community.

The Futanes practice contour bunding and sowing, a type of watershed management. Crops align with the landscape to maximize water use and conserve topsoil. Farmers use free, natural fertilizers, such as cow dung and cow urine. Mixed cropping is also practiced.

“We try to show local farmers that through these methods, they can improve the quality of their soil and increase their yields,” Vasant Futane says. He also suggests that reducing spending on luxury and consumer items like extravagant weddings and motorcycles will help communities to prioritize spending on food.

“[Villagers] can decide to give loans to each other and avoid banks with their high interest rates,” he says.

Futane also advocates seed banks for traditional seed varieties to reduce market dependencies. His greatest hope lies in a direct link from farmers to markets.

“In 1990, we planted 25 local variety papaya trees. The fruit were beautiful. If we went to sell it in the city, we would have gotten a lot of money for it. But we decided to sell them in a nearby large village,” he recounts. “There, people discarded the artificially ripened ones and would save up money to buy our papayas. Other farmers began growing these varieties, because they saw the value in them.”

The Futanes feel it’s unlikely that the Indian government will support them in making these changes happen.

They explain that today, farmers can only find genetically modified cotton seeds on the market. In fact, homegrown seeds may soon become scarce in India, since the government wants farmers to use corporate varieties only.

“I feel genetically modified crops (GMCs) have to be banned and boycotted,” Vasant says. “Manmohan Singh [the Prime Minister] is signalling to Monsanto to help launch India’s second Green Revolution. The government has turned a blind eye to the situation of farmers. It is time to protest for only direct subsidies, not indirect subsidies by way of company products.”

Indeed, given the lack of media attention, as well as the government’s active courtship of transnational agribusiness giants, its openness to GMCs and its following of World Bank policies, India’s government seems locked on this course. Support for large-scale factory farming and export-oriented agriculture will make the country dependent on foreign private investment.

“India’s minister of finance, Palaniappan Chidambaram, envisions a future where 85 per cent of India’s population lives in cities and only 15 per cent are engaged in agriculture,” writes Mira Kamdar, author of Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the Largest Democracy and the Future of Our World.

“[He sees] an India with a heartland as empty as that of the United States with its few remaining farmers completely beholden to the agribusiness giants who sell them their seeds, their fertilizers, and their pesticides, and then buy their harvests.”

An organic future?

To critics who say that organic farming cannot produce enough food to feed the country, Karuna Futane responds: “Actually, if city people – who are respected – started coming back to the land, farmers would recover their pride and dignity. They would encourage their children to be part of it again.”

“Consumers need to understand that you can’t rush or substitute with farming. To be farming-literate is as important as being computer-literate. Without food, everything else is impossible.”

Vasant puts it simply: “City people can’t eat nuts and bolts and survive. Why don’t they connect with the land? If they do, then they won’t put such a burden on the farmers.”

Town and country

ReStore is an urban citizens’ collective created in Chennai by Sangeetha Sriram and her friends in response to a growing quest to relate the suicides to city-dwellers’ lifestyles.

“We wanted to create a space where people in the city could come together, look at what’s happening, and experiment with new ways of doing things. We thought food would be a good starting point, because there is already a lot of awareness around pesticides and organic foods,” says Sriram. “Though they want safe, whole food, and are aware of chemical residues, most people look at food in isolation. Eating well and responsibly is not just about [consuming] organic.”

ReStore sources produce from reliable rural organizations that work with small farmers and then sells this produce at a twice-weekly bazaar. ReStore also makes sure that farmers are producing enough food for themselves first. “We don’t want them to just grow millets for Chennai,” Sriram says.

To further bridge the gap, they have launched ‘Restore Earth Connections’, a program that takes city people on farm visits for mud-building, cow dung plasters, sowing and harvesting millets. Over 100 people signed up in the first week.

Groups committed to small-scale farming, organic produce, local ecologies, and whole and healthy foods have sprung up in other parts of India and the world. Southern Ontario has the CRAFT network which is helping to train the next generation of organic farmers and Saskatoon’s own Percy Schmeiser has become a global hero for taking on Monsanto single-handedly and bringing the issue of GMO contamination to the forefront of global food issues.

Cuba also converted its predominantly input-intensive agriculture to over 95 per cent organic farming, including large tracts of city farming, when the Soviet Union collapsed and its oil pipeline ended. With government support, this large-scale conversion took place in less than four years — a clear sign that more suicides and further disaster can be averted.

“We get hopeless sometimes, but we still have to keep going,” Vasant Futane says. “We will keep our fire lit, so that when someone needs light or heat, they will come to us. This is the Gandhian way. Mother Earth can satisfy everyone’s need, but not anyone’s greed.”

“When people start living according to their needs, we will find our way to true Swaraj.”

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