Question 1: To what extent is Rice in India embedded in and shaped by globalized sets of relations, such as global commodity markets and the agroecosystem?
Market Demand
Modern market demand in India can be traced to the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Traditional rice varieties (pre-1950) were tall, long duration varieties that used very little chemical inputs. Human preferences for better biomass partitioning and nutrient stores within the rice head, combined with economic requirements for nation states (export capabilities) demanded this adaptation of rice varieties (fix). The Green Revolution gave us just that, a modern, semi-dwarf variety of rice created through research by industry experts and tested by the farmers. However, the new rice genotypes required a high increase in chemical fertilizers which affects soil fertility and water resources. In the 1990s, hybrid varieties took over, producing twice the number of seeds per head of rice, but required even more chemical inputs (Krishna, 2010) and severely limited the genetic variability available to farmers.
Within Basmati rice production (India’s primary rice variety export), extra care and fiscal concerns arise. Market cost for Basmati rice can range in price from $625 per metric ton to $1155 per metric ton, whereas Long Grain Parboiled Rice only costs $445 (RajExim Group of Companies, 2017) .
While these are the Market costs, the Farmer costs include the procurement of seed stock (between 42 RS/KG and 55 RS/KG), but this cost is dependent on if the seed is cultivated for domestic production or the global market (IndiaMart, 2017) . Other inputs include fertilizer, mechanization, labour, and water. With the commodification of the ecosystem in India, where every aspect has a price tag, even if some are harder to see than others, consumers are paying for much more than the 42RS/Kg.
Basmati seeds need to be handled with care and planted at very specific depths and times, increasing the labour costs for farmers. Within the supply chain, middlemen/brokers add their fees, polishers and mills add theirs, and final distribution centres (stores) add theirs’. However, these costs are typical, understandable, and in many ways, built into the consumer’s expectations. Other costs are hidden, soil degradation and damage from dry-cracked farming practices, water contamination from pesticide usage, soil compaction from mechanical tractors, thin layers of organic matter deposits due to shallow root systems and others are rampant within the farming structure. So while market demand keeps growing, the farmer’s must contend with these environmental and fiscal concerns.
Retail Opportunities
The Market demands are felt and embedded within the retail opportunities. In India there are four primary retail formats: private domestic retail (grocery stores), online stores (mainly for the upper-class), international sales, and the Mandi stores. India grows around 6,000 varieties of rice. Most are for the domestic market and show up in the traditional grocery stores and the Mandi system (which is somewhere between a co-op and a grocery; a housewife or a large retail chain can both show up and purchase rice at the Mandi).
While Basmati is, of course, sold domestically, it is more cost effective for the producers to sell internationally. Some rice ends up online, where the wealthy in India and overseas can purchase it, but mostly it ends up in the international market. The International market has a primary preference for Basmati Rice, which influences what farmers plant since they can make more money from Basmati than domestic production of alternative varieties. However, Basmati seeds cost more to purchase, plant, and manage, which leads to labour concerns and the relationships between labourers, farmers, middlemen, and producers.
Labour Relations
Within this labour concern we see a primary issue surrounding migration from rural areas to urban centers. This is due to more attractive jobs with higher wages and causes a lack of labour availability in rural areas. This in turn forces the farmer to mechanize, which can only be viable in combination with intensification and expansion of the production, or alternatively through co-operations. Thus, dependency on external technology and knowledge, as a feature of modernization, becomes inevitable.
A primary consequence of this lack of labour is the aging of farming communities with less generational renewal. Thus the nature of the bonds within communities is shifting as more young people leave and family farms are often abandoned or sold. Community services become more commercial, with an increasing role of currency, rather than on communitarianism. An external consequence is the empowerment of women. It does not correspond to a change in mentalities but is a direct consequence of the absence of men; women take the roles of farm managers while their husbands and sons are in the cities working.
Although farmers’ general conditions have improved due to increases in yields and income (which allows for diversified diets), rural communities still face poverty, which is typically localised. In North-East India, for instance, 93% of the population lives off agriculture, while almost 50% of the population are under the Indian poverty line. This can also be linked to the increasing prices of agricultural inputs of chemical fertilizers and new research methodologies as promoted by the demand by the global market.
Research
With modernization, the farming systems for Indian rice have also changed. These include a variety of new practices incorporated within the traditional receding rice agriculture (flooded paddies surrounded by channels which assist with irrigation). These practices include: “State Recommendations of Fertilizers,..Precision Farming (PF), Site Specific Nutrient Management (SSNM), [and] a System of Rice Intensification (SRI)” (Krishna, 2010) ; all new research methodologies coming from State-Sponsored Research Institutions.
An example of one of these research methods can be found in Southern India, where rice cultivars are planted in upland areas which receive little rainfall. The lack of water requires farmers to rotate their arable crops with their rice fields, which assists with nutrient and soil degradation (Krishna, 2010) . This crop rotation scheme allows for nutrient cycling and soil resting.
Another method is the new SRI (System of Rice Intensification), whose practice falls into the Fix, Fit, Flow model. When the issue of intensified rice production was brought to research institutes, they came up with a new method of planting and maintenance for Basmati rice, which they test in cooperation with farmers. Currently the results from the farms are back at the research centres for tertiary testing and modification. This methodology falls between the Fix and Fit sections, as the institute and farmer are working together to solve the problem.
Relationship Building
The relationships between labourers and farmers is easy to see within the labour system, less workers means that farmers are either paying more for the workers they have or mechanizing their farm, or a combination of the two. This can affect the selection criteria the farmer makes on what type of rice to produce, as well as the type of farming system they utilize.
The relationship between the farmers and the markets can influence to other two relationships, as market demand for Basmati rice can influence a farmers’ labour requirements and a new research method (rice variety, farming system, chemical input, etc) can either limit or increase labour requirements or ability for the farmer to grow the required Basmati rice.
Question 2: What is the impact on globalization of the food system on the resilience of the food system and to what extent has this been countered by re-embedding or re-localization, making the food systems more place-based?
The globalization of rice production in India can be countered in some ways by local adaptations to make agencies and products more resilient. Resilience covers several factors within Indian Rice production: biodiversity, market shock management, networking, and access to products and services.
Biodiversity
The integration of Indian Rice production into the global market has caused a declination in rice genome varieties, as most export-geared production is focussed on Basmati rice. This specialization causes dependency on the very product that is being specialized upon: if the Basmati harvest fails for a particular year - say due to extreme weather conditions caused by climate change – then the specialized Basmati farmers risk bankruptcy, and the rice exporting economy fails with them. This lack of resilience within the export industry in India, does not however, affect the resilience of the country, because India has two rice production sectors: Domestic and Export. The Export side may fail, but India’s Domestic production is high enough that the country is actually self-sufficient. This is especially true since there still is a rich collection of rice varieties that are mainly used for the local market.
Market Shock Management
Since India is self-sufficient, it limits the shock of a bad harvest or global market failure. In 2008, on the heels of the global food crisis, the Indian Government imposed a rice export ban which lasted until 2011. Due to the soaring domestic price of rice, the Indian government installed a total ban on the export of all non-basmati rice varieties (Tobias et al. 2012); as a result, the government managed to keep the domestic rice price low and thus maintain domestic food security. However, the Rice Export Market would only truely recover in 2011 when the ban was lifted and rice was once again able to be sold on the global market (Tobias et al. 2012).
Access to Products and Services & Networking
The rising awareness of the impacts of modernization in the agricultural production of Basmati rice in India presents an opportunity for transformation. It prescribes a moving away from commodification, distancing, and dependency, towards a model of autonomy and the democratization of technological solutions (Sherwood, 2015). This includes participatory technology development, farmer–researcher collaborative platforms and localization of production processes, examples of which are found below.
HAFED (The Haryana State Cooperative Supply and Marketing Federation Limited) is the “largest apex cooperative federation of Haryana State in India” (Haryana State Cooperative Supply and Marketing Federation, 2010) . They focus on supply chain networking, procurement and distribution, and warehousing in the Haryana State. They also manage a smaller distribution outside the country, mainly to the USA and Australia (Haryana State Cooperative Supply and Marketing Federation, 2010) . This cooperative allows farmers to sell to each other, the domestic market within their geographical local, and house their goods until they are sold, minimizing food waste.
Another possible shift from modernization is to shorten distances between producers and markets (consumers). An example of transforming this abstract connection to one where there is increased accountability between parties is FairTrade Basmati rice production.
While HAFED works internally at the village and state level, HELVETAS Swiss Incorporated helps the farmers themselves gain access to the global marketplace. Their Organic and Fair Trade Rice Project in India and Thailand “supports small rice farmers in improving their livelihoods through organic farming practices and access to markets via a direct long-term partnership with Reismuehle Brunnen and Coop Switzerland” (HELVETAS, 2017) .
This alternative approach to trade ensures that farmers’ groups have a democratic structure and transparent production processes. On the side of the consumers, people can buy products that are in line with their values and principles, thus directly supporting the type of agriculture they choose. This offers a strengthened sense of responsibility between parties and establishes a relationship based not only on currency but also on considerations for welfare and environment, allowing those farmers to continue or expand the practices that are environmentally, societally, and ethically responsible/resilient.
On a Nation level, there are arrangements being made like that of the Encanto Potash Corporation, who, in collaboration with the Muskowekwan First Nation peoples of Saskatchewan, the National Federation of Farmers’ Procurement, Processing and Retailing Co-operatives of India (NACOF) and the Metal Mineral Trading Co. of India (MTTC) are scheduled to provide a minimum of 2 million metric tonnes of potash annually to MMTC, which would in turn, provide the potash to the farmers’ cooperative (Jasamie, 2017) . The NACOF “comprises 72 State Level Federations, District Level Cooperative Societies and large size/primary level societies from 25 States and UTs’ of India” (NACOF India, 2016) . Arrangements such as this can greatly improve the resilience of local fertilizer companies and farmers, as they deplete natural resources slower and can offset nutrient requirements from the purchased potash.
Conclusion
A move towards autonomy means less dependency on expert solutions. A step towards re-embedding and re-localization is taking a ‘participatory approach’, where lay knowledge of farmers is integrated with the expert knowledge of researchers, thereby reducing the dependency of “uneducated farmers” on “expert solutions” (Sherwood, 2016). The various options, listed above, for farmers, retailers, and companies are at all levels (local, state, and nation) and builds-in resilience for those same agencies to handle supply chain, networking, and product/service disruptions. The combination of biodiversity research, outsourcing of fertilizers, a separated domestic and export system, governmental over-site, co-operatives, and alternative marketplace access allows for the entry into the global market. India’s ability to maintain its relationships (internally and externally) will shape further resilience measures in the future.
Bibliography
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