We are What we Eat TEDxHyderabad Talk
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how food, farming and farmers are linked and why we know about what food does to environment and farmers before it comes to your plate
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We are What we Eat TEDxHyderabad Talk
- 1. We Are What We Eat How Safe is our food?
- 2. August, 2003 Pesticide Residues beyond acceptable limits
- 3. Lead and other heavy metals June, 2015
- 4. Our food is only as healthy as it is grown
- 6. GM Foods
- 8. Do we care about our ecological footprints
- 9. Ecological Foot Prints of Paddy
- 10. Harmful effects of current farming methods Do you remember I was this small when we first met!
- 12. Life in queues
- 19. Toxic Food Episode - Satyamev Jayate
- 20. Sahaja Aharam A victory of sorts
- 21. The present and future - As I see it
- 22. Business as usual is not an option
Editor's Notes
- What made the headlines Pesticide Residues beyond acceptable limits - August, 2003 (Cold Drinks) Lead and other heavy metals - June 2015 (Maggi) Mixed vegetables or a “cocktail of pesticides” Hormones and antibiotics in milk or chicken We become alert when news stories about soft drinks having pesticide residues or noodles having heavy metals beyond acceptable levels, break out Soon, Life Moves On As Usual Once Things Settle Down Our Memory On This Is Very Short
- For most of us food safety is only about label, packaging and cleanliness of the place where it is sold So we are happy buying products from supermarkets and think we are having healthy food That’s not the case - “Our food is only as healthy as it is grown” As consumers you need to care for your food, not only about how it is packed and sold but also about how it is produced Examples of common harmful farming practices - The residues of pesticides used to control insects in the field Growth hormones given to chicken to lay eggs without fertilisation Antibiotics used to protect honey bees growing in a box all make their way into our food and water
- Today, single largest reason for illnesses is eating unhealthy food Apart from the production process, the way food is processed also makes it unhealthy and harmful to us Did you know? That the red water melons which you get during off season are actually coloured? The uniform yellow ripened mangoes and bananas are ripened artificially using calcium carbide which is a carcinogen Trans-fats mixed in the vegetable oils during the solvent extraction process makes our edible oils harmful Sugars and salts used in the process foods are higher than our daily intake limits? The fad towards unseasonal/off season fruits and vegetables means that they are grown and preserved with use of high chemicals and high energy The shift towards rice (particularly white rice) from millets led to increase in diabetes and today we are diabetic capital of the world
- Many of us feel that agriculture is not something connected with us What happens to the pesticides used? All of them are washed into the water bodies and gets back into our drinking water The residues make their way into our food. The urban solid waste and industrial waste which is let out freely into the water bodies like Hussain Sagar and Musi comes back to us as heavy metal contamination in the food (vegetables, grains, milk) grown with these waters. We need to care for the way food is produced, if we want to have access to safe food
- Apart from chemicals high water use also has serious environmental impacts. How much water a kg of rice takes to grow? Do you know how much water is consumed in producing one kg of sugar? Paddy takes about 6 million litres of water per acre which comes to about 5000 lit per kg of rice. Average household consumption is 135 lits/day . 6.0 million litres of water is annual consumption of about 100 families. 5000 lit of water is a tanker for which we pay about Rs. 500/- how much we are paying for rice? A family of five which consumes about a kg of rice a day, consumes about 20 times more water through rice than all their daily needs. If more and more people switches over to eating rice, more and more farmers will switch over to paddy from less water consuming crops like millets...which are far more healthier. Don’t you all think we need to care our ecological foot prints too? Paddy takes 6.0 million litres of water/acre/season Rice consumes about 5000 litres of water/kg Which is equal to taking 180 times shower
- Paddy takes about 6 million litres of water per acre which comes to about 5000 lit per kg of rice. Average household consumption is 135 lits/day. 6.0 million litres of water is annual consumption of about 100 families. A family daily consumption of about a kg of rice a day, consumes about 20 times more water through rice than all their daily needs. Agriculture consumes about 80% of India’s fresh water over 50% of this is for rice production finding water-saving methods for growing rice is becoming more and more urgent
- Harmful Effects as a result of farming methods Effect on people The increasing cancer rate or early puberty in girl children Growing antibiotic resistance Effects on Farmers It is not only about harm to the environment but also about increased costs of cultivation Increased risk in cultivation (Frequency of crop failure cotton crop for example) Farmers are forced to use more and more inputs to produce the same Markets are very unfair to farmers. Life in queues (Fertilisers and Seed queues) Effects on Environment Damage to our natural resources Increasing dark zones due to groundwater depletion 30 % of soils are reported to be saline by the recent study by ministry of environment
- Reasons for our current farming methods The regulatory systems in the country are very weak and highly corrupt At least 61 pesticides which are banned in more than one country are still in use in India. The monitoring systems are also very weak Taxation on food produce is a minimum of 4% while gold is taxed only at 1% Paddy which costs about Rs. 2100/kg as per the Governments own estimation is priced at Rs. 1400/kg. It becomes Rs. 50 by the time it reaches consumer Results of such farming methods Average farmer share in consumer prices is less than 20-30 %. All the shocks and costs have to be absorbed by the farmers 95% of farmers live on less than 5,000/ month Small family farms - 83% of farmers own only 1 hectare of farming land Farmers are drawn into a vicious debt cycle leading to maximum farmer suicides
- Farmers who were lost their self sufficiency to make India self sufficient in food
- The data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that more than 3 lakh farmers have committed suicide in the country in the last 20 years. About 38,000 of them were from the erstwhile combined states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Pesticide poisoning is serious in rural areas and is one of the big occupational hazards which has never been talked about In Warangal district alone an average of 500 people were hospitalized every year Pesticides also forms a major portion of the costs of production for farmers 3,05, 926 farmer suicides between 1995 to 2014
- This is where we began our journey India has lot of alternative models tried out by farmers, NGOs and other organisations. Unfortunately all of them are islands of successes. Caught of in their ideologies and rigid frame works. Call it organic farming, natural farming, biodynamic farming or any other…all evolved to adapt to their situations. we started understanding the basic principles of agroecology and tried to resolve the differences between these schools of thought. A few villages completely shed pesticides. One such village was Punukula, in Khammam district and it showed the way Centre for Sustainable Agriculture was launched in 2004 to institutionalize our efforts to identify and scale up alternatives As a first step we focused on “Non Pesticidal Crop Management” and supported farmers to come out of the pesticide trap and thereby the debt In 2004, Jayati Gosh and Sri. Raghuveera Reddy visited Punukula and recommended to spread such models. But Department of Agriculture and Agriculture university were not keen…said its not possible… The then Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), CEO Sri. T. Vijay Kumar garu was very open to try it out…to establish proof of concept We quickly brought together best of the NGOs in the state to provide support to the women farmer groups The program which began as ‘Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture’ in 2005, spread over 450 villages in 10 districts, expanded to over 7 lakh acres spread over 3,000 villages by 2007-08 We synthesized from best practices from several experiments by farmers across the country and developed a community managed extension system to reach out to large number of people effectively Villagers from ‘Dorli’ in Wardha district of Maharashtra came together and put up their village for sale due to prolonged distress and apathy from the government Today, all the farmers are back to farming in Dorli and most of their dues are cleared off Now they have become members of a farmers’ producer Company. For this remarkable shift they won the best rural innovation award in the 1st Maharashtra Rural Innovation Awards in 2014
- From across the world several students came here to learn about this change and more than 10 PhD theses have been produced on this model till now Several national and international news channels, magazines and newspapers carried articles about how this model has transformed the lives of the people From The Hindu, Down to Earth, to New York Times and the Ecologist all have carried case studies from our villages with a critical analysis of how shift to ecological farming model will help farmers and the environment apart from providing safe food for the consumers These had a good reach to academicians and the learned
- 2004-05 started with 225 acres in one dist and reached 7 lakh acres in 2007-08 in 18 dist. Later spread to 35 lakh acres in 22 dist Now replicated across the country
- In 2012, the 8th episode in the first season ‘Toxic Food-poison On The Plate’ carried a comprehensive show on how pesticides are invading our lives and making it miserable The serious problems associated with pesticide in manufacturing (Bhopal gas tragedy) in use (the cancer train in Punjab) and alternatives (Non Pesticidal Management in Andhra Pradesh) have been well presented This show took the message to every house hold and overnight pesticides in agriculture and food became an issue of discussion nation wide. Whether it is farmers from remote villages in Bihar or an urban consumer in Bangalore the show was well received It also shattered the myth that agriculture is not possible without chemical pesticides The major boost came from the Aamir Khan’s talk show ‘Satyamev Jayate’
- This is where we started helping groups of farmers to produce and market safe food directly to consumers We started Sahaja Aharam as a consumer cooperative which helps farmer cooperatives to directly market their products Now all the farmers’ cooperatives and consumer cooperative came together to form Sahaja Aharam Producer Company and is directly reaching out to consumers Sahaja Aharam is one initiative where consumers came together to support producers to make a shift
- Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture - Now replicated across the country Enebavi: the green village We moved on to build farmers cooperatives from 2008 and this program reached more than 6000 villages, currently Pesticide use has come down by more than 50% in the state All these experiences are generated over a period of 10 years in spite of lack of proper support from the state and central governments CSA won the best rural innovation award in the 2nd Bihar Rural Innovation Forum, 2014
- This is a non bt cotton field in Adilabad. Seed produced by Naisargic Beej Producer Company Maharashtra grown without any chemical under high density condition “There is no escape”, as International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) rightly puts it We need to make a shift towards sustainable production and sustainable consumption and the governments and consumers have to support it As far as possible buy directly from farmers and their organisations so that it also benefits them By changing your food purchase and consumption behaviour you can not only help farmers and environment and help yourselves