FW: Western Cow vs Third World Farmer

[Guest guest]

The author of this piece, Devinder Sharma, is with the Forum for

Biotechnology & Food Security in India and is very well regarded within the

antiglobalization movement. Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security is a

partner in Global Hunger Alliance, which is an international coalition of

animal liberation, environmental, and social justice organizations promoting

effective, ethical, and environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger an

malnutrition. Contact me for more information about GHA.

 

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(The Hindu Business Line, Jan 31 2002)

 

Western Cow vs Third World Farmer

THE CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS

 

By Devinder Sharma

 

It is a strange world. For all we know, it is also an unequal world. The

glaring inequality is not only confined to the ever widening gulf between

the rich and poor, between the elite and the masses and between the people

and the powers that be. Perhaps the most debasing and demeaning inequality

that perpetuate the mankind, and that too in an era of globalisation, is the

manner in which even the cattle in the western countries are pampered at the

cost of several hundred million farmers in the developing countries.

 

It is a strange paradox, the story of man's exploitation of the available

resources for his own selfish and immediate needs. It is a strange story of

man's inhumanity and moral cruelty towards a fellow human being. It is in

essence the gory tale of man's bestality, the utterly flawed economics and

the imperfect development paradigm.

 

It certainly is a great cultural shock for any visitor from the rich and

industrialised countries to see stray cattle on Indian roads. The face of an

emancipated cow amidst swanky cars adorns the cover of many a travel guides

on India. Move a little outside the metropolitan cities, the picture frame

would predictably move towards an Indian village. And invariably you will

see a hardworking farmer toiling in his crop field with a mud-plastered

house in the background. In addition to the smiling face of the farmer, you

are likely to see the picture of his wife, clad in a ghagra-choli, cutting

the grass and tending the cows.

 

This is the amazing story of an Indian farmer and for that matter any of the

1.5 billion small and marginal farmers from the developing countries. This

is the face of a Third World farmer, who on an average owns not more than

two acres of land and still continues to feed himself and his family of

five, year after year. He lives under a thatched roof or a tin roof, and has

never had the luxury of central heating or air-conditioning. In fact, a

majority of these small farmers do not even have electric fans, have little

or no sanitation facilities and have never received any government support

in the form of subsidies.

 

Move the picture frame to a western farm. Whether in the United States,

European Union or Australia, in midst of the sprawling crop fields, you are

likely to see a cattle farm. These cattle are well-fed and huge, with big

dangling udders. Take a peep inside the cattle sheds, and you will see a

well designed concrete structure fitted with tube lights, fans and showers.

At most places, especially in the US and European Union, these barns are

centrally heated. Computer chips worn around the neck of cows enable feeding

machines to meet the exact nutritional requirement of each animal. Moreover,

each cow requires about 25 acres of land on an average to meet its feed and

nutritional needs - enough to enable ten farming families from the Third

World to earn their livelihood.

 

The inequality between the man and the beast doesn't end here. The amount of

subsidies a cow in the developed world receives is almost twice the annual

income of an average farmer in the Third World.

 

In European Union, for instance, the annual support for an estimated 300

million dairy cattle in the year 2000 was to the tune of 2,735 million euros

for milk and milk products and another 4,465 million euros for beef and

veal. Much of the support is in the form of direct payment to farmers and

falls within the purview of the " green box " and " blue box " stipulations

under the World Trade Organisation (WTO). These are the subsidies that have

not to be reduced under the phase out of market distorting support

mechanisms. It is however another matter that all subsidies that the

developing countries provide to their farmers and that too indirectly are

considered to be market distorting and therefore have to be removed or

drastically pruned.

 

For the dairy sector also, the aggregate quantum of subsidy as a percentage

of the value of the milk produced is measured in terms of a Producer Subsidy

Equivalent. In 1997, the PSE index stood at 82 per cent in Japan, 59 per

cent in Canada, 54 per cent in the European Union, 47 per cent in the US and

23 per cent in Australia. Such has been the high level of protection

provided to milk producers by the developed countries that even with the

stipulated reduction in both the volume and the amount of subsidies, the EU

and the US continue to flood and dump its highly subsidised milk and milk

powder. While the dairy subsidies continue to be on the upswing, the PSE

index indicates that farmers in India and in most developing countries were

negatively taxed all these years. For India, which alone has one-fourth of

the farming population of the world, the PSE index stood at minus 2.33 per

cent whereas for Colombia it was minus 60 per cent.

 

Still more shocking and shameful is that while the world makes no effort to

feed its estimated 800 million people, almost entirely in the developing

countries, who go to bed hungry every night, no effort is spared to feed the

cattle in the rich and industrialised western countries. In the recent

years, the new system of direct payments to farmers (since 1992) in the

European Union has stipulated increase in consumption of cereals from 134.8

million tonnes in 1993 to 178.2 million tonnes in 2000, largely through

increased use of EU produced cereals for animal feed. Even though the

feeding of cereals to animals and then their subsequent slaughter for human

consumption requires six times more grains than what would be needed for the

average dietary intake, there is no regret.

 

Ironically, the number of cattle that are reared in such luxury in the rich

and industrialised countries (including the OECD countries, the richest

trading block), do not exceed 1.5 billion. Strange, that the number of small

farmers who live in penury and are faced with further marginalisation too

does not exceed 1.5 billion. The clash of civilisation therefore is too

apparent, too loud and clear. But then, with due respect to George Orwell:

" All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than even humans " #

 

(Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst.

Responses can be emailed at: dsharma)