Indian Food, Inc.

In the mornings at KLB, Principal Ramdev and I like to take a look at a few Indian newspapers, and today something especially interesting caught my eye. On the front page were two stories that seemed to contradict each other. The first story was about the upcoming merger of several commercial food brands in India by a Mr. Biyani, who had previously revolutionized retail in India (at least according to the article, I don’t know much at all about his story). This merger is expected to push India’s commercial food market from about $200 billion in 2006-7 to $300 billion by 2015, making it competitive with worldwide industries like Kraft and Nestle. The second story was about a recent decision by the Indian government to suspend the introduction of a certain strain of genetically modified crops into farming. According to the minister of environment, the decision was made with the intention of waiting until independent scientific studies could confirm its safety to both the environment and human well-being.

Fascinating, if you ask me. What I saw was two huge developments in Indian agribusiness that seemed to contradict each other. On the one hand, India is starting to merge agriculture with business on a level that is really only seen in the U.S. Only in the states and in American corporations operating globally do you see this much of an oligopoly in agriculture and food production. In America, huge companies like Monsanto, Cargill and Tyson control the production of almost everything we eat, and Monsanto is even spreading their influence and control over international borders. On the other hand, food production on the scale that is being practiced in America and India hardly ever comes without scientific intervention. Since the Green Revolution in India, government and farm owners have been scrambling to get their hands on any technology or advancement that could potentially increase food production. These advancements are generally patented processes that are tightly connected to one of the aforementioned food industry giants. After all, there are over a billion people and counting in India, and while supply has barely kept ahead of demand thus far, it has only done so though the advancements brought about by industrial and scientific development.

So when I saw that the Indian government actually said no to a potentially major advancement in crop yields, while at the same time a huge development in agribusiness was brought about, I was confused. This kind of thing hasn’t happened yet in the entire world, at least on this scale. In America, genetically modified (GM) crops and Green Revolution technologies have created the largest agricultural sector in the world, but only because those advancements were monitored and controlled by big business and corporations. In Europe, agribusiness doesn’t even come close to the same scale of production as in the states, but that is probably because the European community has stayed away from much of the interaction between science in nature, preferring organic and natural crops to GM foods. Because of their aversion to biotechnology, big business simply hasn’t had a fighting chance to grow as much as it has in the U.S. Of course there is some science mixed with farming in the EU, and Nestle reigns king in Europe, but still, it doesn’t quite compare to the level of production seen in American agriculture.

One of the reasons why the Green Revolution was embraced in India 50 years ago was because feeding their rapidly expanding population was their biggest concern, and it still is. I discussed these stories with Mr. Sood, a math teacher here, and he was very upset that his government had declined to explore this new wave of biotechnology. He stated that so many people in India go hungry, and he is used to his government expressing the most pressing desires of its people very well in the past. If the people say they want something, the Indian government usually complies with their wishes. Denying GM developments, according to Mr. Sood, was a big mistake, and he believed that India would need all the help it could get if it was to keep up with the growing demand for food.

I found this relevant because it gives hope for the American food industry. The organic and free trade movements that have gotten so much popularity in recent years express the innermost wishes of the people to return to a way of eating that is more in tune with their environment. There are so many sides to the issue, and I recommend reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, or watching the recently released movie Food, Inc. if you would like to get an introduction to the issue. Don’t think, however, that simply by reading these books you will know all there is to know about the problems facing food production and how they can be solved. They’re really just one side of the issue. In short, agribusiness is, according to some people, ruining the environment, our health and our way of life. Agribusiness personalities would respond by saying that there is simply no way to provide enough food to feed the nearly 7 billion people on the planet without agricultural conglomeration, biotechnology, GM crops and merging small farms and farm owners. Both sides have merit, and until now, there seems to have been very few places in which these opposing interests can find common ground.

That is why the Indian government’s decision is so significant. Maybe it’s just a shot in the dark, and maybe they will eventually be forced to give in to the demands of its hungry people. But for now, Indians have shown the world that small-scale, organic farming can coexist at least on some level with high demand, high production and the advancement of business.