Poison On Our Plate?
Every morsel of food and sip of water we take is important for our health and well-being, right from the time we are newborn infants. Yet, for decades our food and water have been contaminated by powerful, harmful pesticides which have been promoted as necessary for better agricultural output. But the reality is that we don’t need pesticides for better yield, and the use of these pesticides is not only deadly for health but results in expensive farming methods. The solution is to adopt organic farming, which is possible and profitable, as the state of Sikkim has shown.
Chemicals on our plate
The episode deals with something vital – the food we eat. In the audience are people who take care of their family’s food needs, from buying to cooking. Audience members say they prefer to shop for ingredients themselves so as to ensure that the food they eat is fresh and good for health.
When does nutrition begin? From the time a child is fed with its mother’s milk. Mother’s milk is known to be best and safest for the baby. But the research that Dr Rashmi Sanghi carried out at IIT Kanpur left her shocked. She found that there was 800 percent and 400 percent more than the permissible limits of pesticides in the samples of mothers’ milk that she tested. The pesticides were entering the mothers’ milk through the air, water and food that the mothers consumed.
One of the pesticides found in Dr Sanghi’s study was Endosulfan, which has left a black footprint in Kasargod, Kerala. In 1976, to protect the area’s cashew crop from pests, the government carried out treatment of 15,000 acres of land with Endosulfan, sprayed by helicopter. The air, water and entire environment was suffused with the pesticide, as treatment continued for some 25 years. At least 5,000 people have died and for countless others, life became worse than death as cancer and deformities began to become prevalent among the people.
A doctor who was practicing in the area realized that something was amiss when he noticed the large number of abnormalities in the population. Dr Mohan Kumar found out that the area had been aerially sprayed for years with Endosulfan, and the people were coming down with cancers, miscarriages and deformed births. The spraying was stopped by a court order, and Dr Mohan Kumar, who stayed on in the area to continue looking after his patients, says that he has seen a fall in disease and a general increase in well-being over the years since the spraying stopped.
Farmers themselves have realized that chemical pesticides result in harm, and many farmers in various places all over India are cultivating two sets of crops – the majority for sale and a smaller amount for their own family’s consumption.
Commenting on this, Kavitha Kuruganti of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) says that while we have seen only a few farmers talking about following this practice, in actual fact there are thousands of farmers who grow organic crops separately for personal consumption. She says they cannot be blamed because they are under various types of pressure.
The fact is that traditionally farming in India was carried out without the use of harmful pesticides, which were introduced only about 50 years ago. What makes it worse is that there are some 67 pesticides being used in India which have been specifically banned in other countries on environmental and health grounds. In a study carried out in 2003 the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) found that all the samples they took were contaminated. A 2010 study in Delhi also revealed that banned pesticides were still present in the samples. And we are not consuming one or two pesticides in this way through our food and water – it is a cocktail of pesticides, says Kavitha Kuruganti. And only one percent of the pesticide actually acts on the pest – the rest goes into our system through food, water and the environment.
Dr ShriGopal Kabra, who has extensively researched the effects of pesticides on human health, says that the incidences of cancer, particularly in women, and blood cancer in children, have been shown to have risen drastically due to the rampant use of pesticides in areas such as Punjab. Certain pesticides are known to inhibit the development of folic acid in the brain, resulting in stunted and deformed growth in children from birth.
Death by pesticide?
In Jajjal village, Punjab, Master Jarnail Singh has a terrible story to tell. Before the Green Revolution, he says, there was no grave illness in the area. But with the modern agricultural wave came barrels and barrels of pesticides, chemicals which he was sure would kill everyone. That is what has practically happened. People began flocking in greater numbers to the hospitals and clinics, and at least 45 people have died of cancer in his village alone, he says.
Ecologist Dr Vandana Shiva explains that it is a fallacy to say that production would be less without use of Green Revolution techniques. In fact, she says, today prices have gone up because much of our food is imported, such as dal and oil. One reason for this is monoculture, where only one crop is cultivated. In the organic farming universe, crop diversity plays an important part because certain crops when grown together give each other benefits in a natural system called symbiosis. But modern farming has resulted in greater land and water use, as well as greater use of chemicals for fertilization and pest control. Moreover, the commodification of agriculture is based on a cycle of debt – the farmer borrows for seed, for fertilizer, for pesticides, and goes on, caught in the maze of debt in which he is trapped. He is also encouraged to use more and more pesticides as he is told that it is medicine – whereas even when the doctor prescribes medicine there are restrictions on taking it. Not so with pesticides; the farmer is told that the more, the better. The measure of a modern, progressive India should be how well its people are doing, how well its farmers are doing. In the suicides of two and a half lakh farmers, it is clear that debt, and the total dependence on the debt-based pesticides system, is what has led to their desperation, she says. On the other hand you have the growth and spread of disease.
The next guest is the person who runs India’s single largest pesticides company. Rajju Shroff is the chairman of United Phosphorous, the largest player in the Rs 18,000 crore pesticides industry. Its annual turnover is Rs 8,000 crore. Mr Shroff says that the harmful effects of pesticides are exaggerated and misrepresented, and that it is the overuse of pesticides in doses far more than permissible, which causes the harm. Pesticides by themselves are not harmful if properly used. He points out that even a medicine such as aspirin, if taken in excess, will cause problems. Moreover, he says he has met several farmers who claim that they use organic crops for their family, but they are only saying it for effect and to gain publicity.
Dr Kabra interjects that we are not taking into account the effect of persistent pesticides, which remain in the environment long after their actual use is discontinued. Mr Shroff replies that every pesticide has a certain duration of persistence, and even DDT is not harmful if sprayed in the right proportions and not overdosed. He says that 99 per cent of farmers are aware of what they are doing and they would never knowingly sell harmful produce to their customers.
To examine the question of pesticide use further, we go to Punjab which constitutes 2 per cent of India but where 25 per cent of all pesticides are used. Dealer Surendra Maheshwari says that sale of pesticides is encouraged by the companies, which offer incentives for higher sales. And due to lack of knowledge and misinformation, farmers and agricultural workers often believe that the more they add, the more effective the pesticide will be. Social activist Gurpreet, worried about the deteriorating health in the region, found out that the overuse of pesticides had resulted in pesticide presence in everything. “You spray it in the morning, and the vegetable is in the cooking pot that evening,” he says. Where earlier incidence of cancer was rare, now there is a cancer patient in every ward.
In fact, because cancer treatment is not available in the region, patients go to Bikaner in Rajasthan. And so high is the number of patients that the train from Bhatinda to Bikaner has been named the Cancer Train, and is even called by that name at the booking office.
Trapping the pests
Pests are one of the biggest threats to our foodgrain crops. The use of pesticides, while it gets rid of the pests themselves, results in higher farming costs and severe damage to our health. Is there a way out?
Not only is there a way out, it has been proven to be effective and productive. Pheromone traps are one way of getting rid of pests, which get attracted to the trap and die without the use of harmfull chemicals. Another simple method is the yellow trap, which attracts pests and traps them on a sticky surface. Agricultural scientist Dr Ramanjaneyulu, more familiarly known as Dr Ramoo, began encouraging the use of non-chemical pest management in Andhra Pradesh, when he received complaints especially from women farmers that pesticides were costing a lot and having an adverse impact on their health. He also realized that by using chemical pesticides, we are destroying both the plant-eating pests as well as those pests which eat the plant-eating pests. Thus, the problem as well as its solution was being eradicated, and resistance was also being built up among the pests, in addition to the lakhs of rupees spent on pesticides which could go as profit to the farmers.
In contrast, the pheromone trap costs only Rs 15. And the yellow trap costs some Rs 5 or Rs 10. In fact, Dr Ramoo says, one does not even need to buy the yellow trap. Any surface can be painted yellow and coated with the sticky substance to trap pests. Moreover, using natural methods of pest eradication has not affected yield, he adds. The women farmers vouch that using natural methods has not diminished their yield, and has resulted in better quality of crops and cleaner environment.
Organic benefits
Farmers all over the country are turning to organic cultivation, and they have no regrets about doing so. Jayant Barwe is a farmer who realized in the mid-1980s that spraying chemicals was bound to affect people’s health, and he switched to organic farming on his own initiative. Other farmers too have taken to eschewing chemicals over the last four to five years, and they say it has been a change for the better.
Leaving aside villages and districts, organic farming has been adopted and thrives in an entire state of India – Sikkim. Since 2003 there has been a ban on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the aim is to make the whole of Sikkim totally organic by 2015. Chief Minister Pawan Chamling explains that the government wants to make Sikkim’s soil fertility sustainable, and ensure productivity as well as good health. Besides banning chemical fertilizers and pesticides, farmers were educated and thoroughly informed about the benefits of organic farming, he says. If the other states of India follow Sikkim’s example, India can be a world leader in not just organic and non-harmful farming, but also in health care.
Hukumchand, who hails from Manpura village, says that output has increased after organic methods were adopted, and with only a little more effort. Slowly, he says, farmers have begun realizing the vast benefits of adopting organic farming. He has been practicing organic farming for the last eight years, and says that it is every citizen’s duty to ensure that pollutants and chemicals no longer threaten our lives and our health. He says that we can ensure a healthy lifestyle by adopting organic farming and harnessing the power of the micronutrients present in the soil and our environment.
Kavitha Kuruganti says that a marketing model needs to be evolved so that organic produce is affordable for all, and so the demand will spur supply. Dr Vaibhav Singh, research associate at Navdanya, says that agricultural subsidies should be given to organic farmers, so that the tide turns in favour of organic agriculture.
The Sikkim solution
This episode’s SMS question is: Do the people of India want the Centre and all State governments to follow Sikkim’s example and aid farmers in adopting organic farming?
From our morning cup of tea till the last meal at night, what we put into our system is of paramount importance. We owe a great debt to the farmers and agricultural workers of India for this. And we need to give farmers all possible support so that they can shake themselves free of the cycle of pesticides and costly farming methods, to make the change to sustainable, healthy farming.
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