Is Cutthroat Capitalism Pushing a Growing Number of Baby Boomers to Suicide?

[HiPointDem]

23. I don't think so. From 2012:

There are many reasons why food prices have risen at such a rapid rate, and all of them point to major failures of state policy. Domestic food production has been adversely affected by neo-liberal economic policies that have opened up trade and exposed farmers to volatile international prices even as internal support systems have been dismantled and input prices have been rising continuously. The prices of all key agricultural commodities have risen sharply. Significant price increase has been observed in commodities like arhar dal, sugar, potatoes and onions...

Part of the agricultural inflation is due to Government action or the lack of it. The Government is sitting on a buffer stock of 65 million tonnes and it is not clear why this stock has not been progressively released at least in part into the open market to control prices.

...the Government should not hesitate to release sufficient quantities of food from its buffer stocks. After all, the buffer stock is meant to deal with situations of price rise and shortage. Considering the impact of agricultural Inflation, it is very important for the Government to try and control the inflation or at least try and ensure that these circumstances do not arise again in the future...

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2171027

1999:

"Indian policy makers have traditionally coped...by resorting to...trade restrictions, price controls, price support operations....These instruments are now progressively being either reformed or abandoned...to spur agricultural growth..."

http://books.google.com/books?id=UtiFxg25KuMC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=india+agriculture+price+controls&source=bl&ots=1dVEBK_SR3&sig=ZrC8vNhAd-p1kWeNQYdlaNjL5Lo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1kWPUf2bBMbOiwLn14H4DA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=these%20include%20pervasive%20external&f=false

2006:

As we shall see, the wheat imports are part of a broader policy which will further degrade India’s “food security” and serve the interests of foreign and domestic big capital:

1. India’s production of foodgrains is being allowed to stagnate. That is, production per head is falling. This will create a large market here for imports of foodgrains (particularly wheat) from multinational corporations of the US, Europe and Australia.

2. Step by step the Food Corporation of India is being dismantled; the system of minimum support prices (MSPs) is being surreptitiously scrapped; the warehousing system is being privatised; and multinational grain firms are being allowed a free hand to purchase directly from peasants (in the absence of any state intervention). These corporations, besides, will be allowed massive speculation in foodgrains, at the expense of Indian consumers.

3. More land is being diverted to horticultural crops for export or for the urban elite. With the entry of giant multinational retail firms like Wal-Mart and Indian corporations like Reliance, such crops will be produced increasingly by contract farming.

In this larger process, millions of Indian peasants – already in the throes of a profound agrarian crisis – would be displaced by imports, bankrupted and dispossessed of their land. At the same time the food security of the vast majority of people would be made the plaything of speculators and multinational corporations.

http://rupe-india.org/42/wheat.html

The most significant changes in the marketing law is the removal of regulation of MultiNationalCorporations for location of purchase, price and volume. The APMC acts prohibited purchase from producer by traders outside the "mandi" or market yard. In the "mandi" or market yard the sale of agricultural produce was only by open auction, commission agents were barred from auction on behalf of the producers, payments had to be made the same day...The mandis also gave facility for storage of agricultural produce in case of non-sale.

The marketing laws were thus primarily laws for prevention of exploitation of farmers... However, amendments in the Marketing Acts are designed to remove legal instruments for preventing farmers exploitation. In affect, the model act is an act to legalize exploitation by removing all regulation on price and volume of purchase...The model act promotes the creation of monopolistic buying by agribusiness. Giant corporations can now set up private markets, not regulated by the market committee.

Act 5(1)(iii) of the Model Act allows ne or more than one private yards / private markets managed by a person other than a market committee". This is how ITC has set up its e-chaupals in Madhya Pradesh against which there are protests and statewide strikes. Nothing in the law exists to prevent ITC to buy cheap from farmers after one or two years of getting them hooked into a dependency on seeds and chemicals from the ITC chaupal. Since input costs have out stripped prices of produce, without market regulation agribusiness corporations will make profits selling costly seeds, buying cheap farm produce, and locking farmers in debt. This has been the process by which the small family farmer has disappeared in U.S.A, Argentina, Europe.

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-great-grain-robbery-by-agribusiness-mncs-by-vandana2-shiva