![]() Look, how many farmers committed suicide.” Building your economy on tourism and exports is very volatile. The veteran journalist was not in agreement with the thrust to improve exports when pointed out that Finance Minister Arun Jaitely in his budget speech had said the country had the potential to export food products to the tune of $ 100bn as against $ 30bn now.Ĭriticising the policy, the veteran journalist said, “Allow exports where you have surplus. Speaking on the farmers’ issues, the founder editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India and the former rural affairs editor of the Hindu, said the aim of government policies was to push people away from land and encourage the corporate farming. This killed a large number of farmers,”said Palagummi Sainath, Ramon Magsaysay Award winning journalist and author of “Everybody Loves a Good Drought”, during a programme at the Chandigarh Press Club. Next year, when other countries started producing it, vanilla prices crashed to Rs 70 per kg. At one point, they were paid $100 per kg. ![]() ![]() The US Vanilla Federation paid them a handsome price. In Kerala, people shifted to vanilla in 2003 as the Mexican vanilla crop was destroyed. ![]() ![]() When prices come down, you can eat food crop but you can’t eat cotton, rubber or tea. “Cash crop farmers are much more vulnerable and small farmers cannot take the risk associated with cash crop. Shifting millions of farmers from food to cash crop has been disastrous, noted journalist P Sainath said here today. ![]()
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