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Bihar School Deaths Highlight India’s Struggle With Pesticides
India is still reeling from the deaths of
23 schoolchildren in the village of Dharmasati Gandawa in Bihar on July 17
after they ate a free school lunch that was made with cooking oil tainted with
the pesticide monocrotophos. The police say that the cooking oil might have
been kept in a container that once held the pesticide.
The devastating event in Bihar reveals a
larger problem in India that stems from the wide use of biocides in myriad
forms, in cities and villages, in homes and fields. The organophosphate
monocrotophos is widely used in India even as other countries, like the United
States, have banned the chemical because it has “high acute toxicity,” according to the World Health
Organization. In fact, the W.H.O. pressured India to bar the use of the
pesticide in 2009.
In 2011, India’s Agriculture Minister
Sharad Pawar acknowledged that 67 pesticides prohibited in other parts of the world
were widely being used in India. If they are cheap and effective, these
chemicals often remain legal, though their specific instructions and proper use
are often flagrantly disregarded or simply unknown to the users. There is evidence that even pesticides banned in India
continue to be used.
Indians are getting sick or dying from
the widespread use of these chemicals. From 2004 to 2008, one hospital in
Bathinda, Punjab recorded 61 deaths from accidental inhalation of pesticides
while spraying crops. Other poisonings are woefully deliberate in the case of
widespread farmer suicides, most commonly accomplished by ingesting the
chemicals once used on their crops. The northern state of Punjab, which
produces nearly a fifth of the nation’s
wheat and
inhabits merely 1.5 percent of India’s landmass, accountsfor 17 percent of the country’s
pesticide use. The landscape is as silent as Rachel Carson’s unnamed town in
“Silent Spring,” eerily bereft of the mewing calls of peacocks, India’s
national bird, or any other of the avian fauna that were once abundant
according to locals. In the fields, the nimble fingers of women and children
pluck cotton for the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day while men walk
barefoot through the rows with pesticide sprayers lashed to their backs.
Studies have detected known carcinogens
such as heptachlor and ethion in the blood of Punjabi citizens and the
breast milk of new mothers, as well as in grains, cotton and vegetables
harvested from the fields. While productivity soared for several generations
with the thick application of pesticides and fertilizers promoted in the Green
Revolution, yields have plateaued, as cancer cases soared, surpassing international
and national averages.
Meanwhile, the water table is plummeting.
The National Geophysical Research Institute has found that every year, the
level drops another two feet. Punjab has, in less than 30 years, depleted
groundwater reserves that took over a century to accumulate, and the nitrate
levels in the water have increased tenfold since the Green Revolution began in 1972.
In a proactive measure, The Punjab State Farmers Commission has just released a draft of new agricultural policy that would
seek to alleviate the drain on water resources by diversifying crops and
reducing the acreage under water-intensive wheat and rice paddy production. Across India, there is a movement to
lighten the heavy use of pesticides and other agrochemicals that began 40 years
ago. The Indian states of Sikkim and Kerala are already working toward
converting their states completely to organic methods by 2015, and the
breadbasket of Punjab is haltingly heading in the same direction. Although
certified organic farming still accounts for only one percent of India’s
agricultural production, (the US is only .57%), there is a grassroots effort
underway to increase the numbers, much of it beyond the realm of certification.
In Punjab, many small farmers are transitioning to natural farming on at least
some of their acreage with the aid of the nongovernmental organization Kheti
Virasat Mission (KVM), which has trained hundreds of Punjabi farmers in organic
farming methods since its founding in 2005.
Swaram Singh is one such farmer. Singh is
beanpole thin, lanky in his white cotton kurta, an emerald green turban atop
his head, a symbol of his Sikh faith. He gives two reasons for turning to
natural farming in 2002. One was that the pests that the chemical companies
promised would disappear were still destroying his crops. The other reason was
his mother was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, and he suspected that all the
chemicals he and other farmers were putting on their fields might have
something to do with it. “I remember the gram sewak, the village
officer, coming to the house with a cart full of urea, offering it for free,”
Singh recalls of the first time he saw the pure nitrogen fertilizer in the
1970s. “It looked like sugar.” His grandfather was skeptical. “Don’t take
anything they give you for free,” Singh’s grandfather warned them. “It’s like
the tea that the British gave us and now it’s like a drug.” But Swaram Singh and
his brothers were young men, excited about the new chemistry, and it was free.
“When grandfather found out, he told us we’d regret it.” It took 34 years for that regret to set
in, and on two of his six acres, Singh switched to natural methods. He says
that he would do all six acres if he could find enough labor to work the land.
Singh grows a traditional variety of cotton, along with guar, vegetables and
fodder for his livestock. Using the leaves from a neem tree, datura, and bitter
plants, along with the urine and dung from his cows, he says he’s able to keep
his soil healthy and his plants free from pests. He and many other farmers in
Punjab recognize that there is a transition period as they rebuild the soil
after years of pesticide and fertilizer application, which breaks down natural
soil health, an admitted challenge for the small farms that make up the bulk of
India’s agricultural landscape.
Some farmers with larger landholdings are
also making the switch. Vinod Jyani was a baby when the carts of free
petrochemicals and the spray planes began to show up at the family farm just a
few miles from the Pakistan border. Growing crops with chemicals was all he
knew — until the fall of 2005, when he went to a meeting “to oblige a friend”
and heard Umendra Dutt, the founder of KVM, speak about organic farming. His
response was akin to a religious conversion.
“That was it,” he says, as doves coo from
the eaves of his house, a sprawling complex set amid the 130 acres that has
been in his family for seven generations. It was like a “light went off.” A few
weeks later, he attended a two-day meeting organized by KVM.
“The very next day, I took all chemicals
from my farm. I started with a passion — and a zero budget.” He is smiling as
he sits in the center of his now-successful organic farm, but when asked about
the transition, he laughs. “It went bad,” he says, shaking his head. “Bad! For
three years it was a struggle, but I was committed.” He was in his early
forties. There was time to adjust to change and he had the financial resources
to cushion the transition. Back in Bihar, another method is being
implemented that also forgoes the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Known as System of Crop Intensification, or S.C.I., farmers carefully cultivate seeds until the plants are established
and then transplant them out into the fields to mature. A recent World Bank study found that productivity increased 86
percent in rice production and 72 percent for wheat. It’s too early to tell if these initial
forays into minimizing the rampant presence of pesticides on the Indian
landscape, at least in the realm of agriculture, will lead to a new way of
growing food that doesn’t impact human and ecological health, but any steps
taken toward minimizing the ubiquity of biocides could benefit Indians. A
large-scale study commissioned by the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures
project of the UK government demonstrated that a move toward agroecology –
using integrated pest management in which chemicals are used as a last resort,
building soil health, improving crop species, and incorporating diversity
through tree planting and animal husbandry – more than doubled crop yields over
a 3-10 year period on 35 million acres in Africa. Such tactics, if implemented
at a broad scale in India, could produce enough food for a growing nation while
simultaneously offering the prospect of lessening toxic exposure for life forms
from honeybees to humans, preventing the poisoning of water and land,
alleviating farmer debt, and cultivating food free of chemical residues. It would also mean there would be fewer
empty containers of monocrotophos floating around, too easily converted to
storage containers for food that might be used to cook a free midday meal for
hungry children, hoping for some simple food, as well as a future.
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