Dr Samhita Barooah
Education, Research and Writing
The colonial perspectives of trading forests for cash incomes and products for future has not changed. In today's era capital comes as loan which is a fatal debt trap. Dreams of cash economy, smart cities, elitist development and global market players at the doorstep are the prime movers of the shifting ecologies of doom. We often find ourselves either at the middle of nowhere or at the fag end of the tunnel when there is no turning back.
Policy decisions and trade deals are made in such a way that people are caught unaware of the consequences. Land resources are very crucial for communities. At times lands are part of commons, sometimes they are reserved and mostly they are private. So cash can be the biggest influence for trade deals to engage in monocropping contracts. Communities in Assam doing farming have been cash hungry and ill treated for very long. Land owners are primarily male and they are interested in profits from their rather wasted lands which are either forests or farm clusters. Tea is an industrial crop and people are fascinated by the colonial hangover of being a tea estate planter or owner not particulary as a tea labourer. Similarly the industrialisation of agriculture has fascinated the farmers in Assam in a big way. In this backdrop palm oil plantations was sheepishly introduced by the central government as a part of settling the conflict ridden areas of Lower and western Assam around Kamrup rural to engage with tribal assertion for Bodoland. The central authorities and companies using palm oil for their profits and sale engaged in contracts of different kinds to grab the sal tree growing and rubber plantation areas for palm oil plantation work. No environmental assessments or ecological studies were done to understand the impact of such projects. Competition was more in terms of which state benefits more in production of palm oil as a global producer. Farmers are happy with the palm oil deals as its instant income for them. Experts would also speculate that if palm oil plantations can stabilise the flood prone areas as well as it is an water intensive crop. The flooded areas will be sucked up by the palm oil groves and the water logging problem will automatically get resolved. Why are palm oil plantations critiqued all over the world in that case? Its an extractive plant. It takes away the groundwater and all possible soil nutrients as well. There is no undergrowth in this crop and the produce is sent off to the oil pressing industry outside the northeast region in Kolkata. The land area required for this crop are huge and rainforests are depleted and even flat grasslands are used for the same. Industrial agriculture in India especially in Assam is limited to tea, jute and mustard atmost. Palm oil cultivation is unheard of. But with the new government policies, palm oil is the new found economy leveller. Communities are hardly consulted for an opinion, they are simply given incentives to switch to palm oil. Our communities are followers, they ape those who show them results of economic gain. Land use and choice of commercial crops in the context of Assam is never a matter of ecological balance but always an economic pursuit. The agriculture policies are such that chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides are abundantly distributed to farmers for their use and abuse as well.
Consistent erosion, land alienation, siltation, bund breaches, wild animal attacks of farmlands have always jeopardised the farmers in Assam. So farmers are bound by debts, diseases, destructions and distress sale of farm produce most of the time due to lack of adequate pricing and storage of the farm produce. Under these circumstances, farmers are liking the palm oil plantation options which might be minimum input and maximum gain. But the hidden costs of land degradation, groundwater depletion, fertilizer and pesticide debts is not a concern yet as the political clout is influencing the crop choice for farmers for petty gains of a few edible oil giants in the world.
Basic issue is that monocropping cannot resolve food and nutritional safety, security in a pandemic hit area. How long do we in the Global South remain as producers and collaborators for a consumer driven processed food industry? Why are the biodiverse indigenous varieties not gaining more or equal focus as immunity boosting farm produce in this covid era when health and well-being remains to be of top priority for everyone? Are farmers unions, farm producer companies, farm based SHGs aware of the impact of the palm oil growing hazards on soil, water, nutrients and labour exploits apart from loss of biodiversity and animal habitats? We need homestead farms, organic food crop farms and biodiverse forests much more than these palm oil farms to promote sustainable development goals and biodiversity conventions.
