PUNJAB PAYS THE PRICE FOR UNSUSTAINABLE AGRIBUSINESS

India's Punjab Region Now Paying the Price for Unsustainable Agribusiness Practices

Contaminated Water Supplies, Depleted Aquifers, Genetic Deformities Are the Unintended Consequence of the Previous "Green Revolution"

Before today's pretend green revolution, which mostly consists of marketing green products, there was a global agricultural revolution of sorts. Driven by newly developed western seed and intensive monocultural practices, this techological miracle doubled the world's average yields of corn, rice, and wheat between the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s. As a statement about the hubris of Western Agribusiness miracle science, it is both a tribute and a warning.

Paying the price for the arrogance and brilliance of monoculture agricultrual practices are the people of Punjab, a state in northwest India. Ground zero for the heady ag science triumph of the 1960's - 90's, today Punjab is plagued with contaminated ground water, a pandemic of cancer and a sharp rise in genetic mutations. So many people take the train from the state's Malwa region to the cancer hospital in Bikaner that it's known as the Cancer Express (the word Bikaner has become a code word for cancer amongst the villagers of the area). The water table has dropped in many areas and drinkable water is scarce.

This situation is attributable to the unrestrained use of irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides and the monocultural ag practices once considered a godsend. It is also a cautionary tale for the rest of the world on the long term viability of industrial agriculture. Including and especially the U.S., where the lessons of the Dustbowl have not yet been learned.

HISTORY
A global agricultural "revolution" that nearly tripled the wheat production of Punjab is credited in saving tens of millions of people who might otherwise have starved. New high yielding dwarf wheat seed varieties from the U.S. changed the way Indian farmers worked; their undeniable success was followed by new varieties of magic rice.

The glitch in the plan was the need for great amounts of water and synthetic fertizer. In order to avert a famine, the Indian government was more than happy to subsidize the digging of canals, the drilling of tube wells and provided the necessary mountains of fertilizer and pesticides at no charge. The new agricultural science also introduce large scale, non-organic single crop methods to an area that had previously practiced subsistence farming.

The use (or some say abuse) of monoculture farming methods has taken a toll after fifty years.

Punjab's cancer train transports victims to Bikaner

Read on for details.

JULY 2009
As a result of squeezing a century worth of agricultural output into a few decades, a terrible price is being paid in the villages of the Punjab:

Ironically, agricultural production has leveled off as the soil have become depleted by overly intensive farming methods. Water tables are significantly depleted, soils are water-logged or salinated and micronutrients in the soils are depleted.
Perhaps more ironically, the technology that was first used to save lives has caused a new set of life-threatening and life taking conditions - a whole new industrial strength world of misery.
Backaches, headaches, arthritis and skeletal fluorosis in small children due to the contamination of the water supply by pesticides and fertilizer runoff. The general contamination affects the entire food supply, including fruits and vegatables.
Cancer caused by the now toxic environment has become a epidemic in the area. Although any good American corporate attorney worth their salt would argue that the cause can't be proven within a shadow of a doubt, the statistics are overwhelming, and the deaths are real.
The drought in Punjab has exacerbated the overall ecological problem to the point of collapse. Subsoil water in most places is too saline or contaminated with residues of aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin and heptachlor.

Some scientists credit increased rice yields alone with the existence of 700 million more people on the planet...and therein lies a problem as old as the humammal species. Whenever means of food product rise, the population rises to meet and and exceed it. Whether the benefits of this life saving technology are worth the ultimate price being exacted of the Pubjab villages is a question that speaks to the oldest recurring challenge of humammalkind.

Predictably, gene pimps such as Monsanto, who are intent on a non-sustainable future bsed on their monopoly of the seed supply, believe that the future lies with genetically engineered crops. This only makes sense if you are Monsanto, perpetrator of the Rbgh (bovine growth hormone) fiasco. In Monsanto's world, soil is first treated with Roundup® - the company's all-purpose herbicide - and then planted with Roundup® Ready soy, corn or sugar beets. These are the only things that will grow in Roundup treated soils. Sound organic enough?

More on Monsanto Madness here

Until something changes, sustainability remains the problem with all high tech agricultural methods. High nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides are manufactured from natural gas; they run off from cultivated fields into streams and rivers, eventually to the ceans, creating dead zones where nothing lives.

There are over 400 dead zones worldwide. Will they eventually merge into a single planetary dead zone?