The Human Right to Eat
By JOAN P. MENCHER
Somini Sengupta’s front-page article, “India’s Growth Outstrips Crops” (New York Times, June 22, 2008) points out various reasons for the current shortage of staple foods in India– including rapidly sinking water tables, inadequate government investment in agriculture and especially in irrigation and access to loans for farmers, agricultural land being sold for residential use since the profits from agriculture were so poor. Between 1968 and 1998 India’s production of cereals had doubled, but between 1998 and 2008 it has gone down due to the cancellation of government support prices, which followed the advice of the World Bank and the United States economists. Based on my own field research on agricultural issues in India over the last fifty years I have always been surprised by the disconnect between what farmers tell me and what I hear from economists (most of whom rarely visit many farms). I see a very different picture.
