How so very sad. And once more, "profits before people" strikes again.

Can anyone say, "Monsanto"?

Beyond sad. Poor souls. I like this line-it is accurate: "Major corporations are like serial kllers." Yes, they are. This is heart-breaking.

I wonder where this story was in the mainstreet news?

We can and probably should choose to forgive people who knowingly and systematically misuse power to harm others, yes; just as Mandela chose to forgive the racists who had murderously imposed Apartheid on South Africa for generations.
As Mandela well knew: revenge is never an enlighted motive, and only leads to more harm.

But some would hold that it's not practical to actively forgive entrenched evil until it's been displaced by the rule of reasonable decency {cf: Mandela}.
To act-out forgiveness ahead of such time, this argument goes, also leads to harm.

Consider then, that there's a likely-meaningful difference between the avoidance of vengence and the adoption of active forgiveness: while the former is always enlightened, the latter can easily become, if pre-mature, nothing more than cowardice and masochism.

Our native Tribes of this land didn't belive anyone could own the earth as the earth is God's creation, but we sure found out how those who think they can own the earth can make things miserable.

Regardless it is always best to forgive. I am happy to live upon God's creation earth. I am happy to be a part of God's creation but I am only a part. Happy to get see all the critters & other life forms God creation.

Merely passing through this world of whatever it is?

If they didn't pay their debt, that would certainly be something...Hopefully if and when farmers stand in solidarity there will be a simultaneous outcry of solidarity from around the globe supporting them. We need to develop an ethic of paying attention -deep attention- to where our food comes from, how the workers growing it (if we don't grow it ourselves) are treated, how the land is stewarded, how the natural resource uses impact the local people, wildlife, soil, etc. This is a learning curve more and more people are embarking upon, but it needs to become the new norm if we're to avert very dire social and environmental consequences.

"One of the most important descriptions of farmer suicide has come from a South Korean farmer, a former leader of a Korean producer's movement, who killed himself in 2003. These are his words, from a pamphlet he distributed on the day he died.

Once I ran to a house where a farmer with uncontrollable debts had abandoned his life by drinking a toxic chemical. Again, I could do nothing except listen to the wailing of his wife. If you were me, how would you feel?...Wide and well-paved roads, and big apartment blocks and factories, cover the paddy fields that were built by generations over thousands of years. These paddies provided all the daily necessities - both food and materials - in the past. This is happening even though the ecological and hydrological functions of the paddies are even more crucial today than they were before. In this situation, who will take care of our rural vitality, community traditions, amenities and environment?

On 10 September 2003 at the World Trade Organization Ministerial meeting in Cancun, Lee Kyung Hae, a Korean farmer and peasant organizer, climbed a fence near the barricades behind which the trade meetings wee happening. He flipped open his red penknife, shouted "the WTO kills farmers' and stabbed himself high in his chest. He died within hours. Within days, from Bangladesh, to Chile, to South Africa, to Mexico, tens of thousands of peasants mourned and marched in solidarity, peppering their own calls for national support for agriculture with the chant: "Todos Somos Lee" ("We Are Lee")."
-quoted from Raj Patel's "Stuffed & Starved"

I'm thinking of the bad old days of the free market, when hundreds of newly captured African slaves were packed like sardines in slave ships and many died on the voyage to Western Hemisphere plantations. The richest man in America in 1800, a Mr. DeWolfe, was a slaver. He bought off the state and federal government in order to keep slaving. He supported his home town's economy and had a fine mansion.

The free market doesn't work when it isn't regulated, and governments are regularly bought off. Governments don't have to plan to fail. They go to extreme lengths out of their way to fail to plan.

In this case, the farmers' wells that had been working for centuries suddenly had no water. Whoever had the deepest well and the strongest pump survived or won, and the other farmers died. Basically the government changed some of the rules by taking away water and giving the water to the government's friends, and technological progress changed the rules too by making old non-gasoline-powered wells useless.

Also, the government joined with Monsanto and the loansharks to strip many farmers of their inherited fields.

What we learn here is that crypto-democratic governments are sometimes a curse upon the citizens. Good luck to all of you!

So, what would happen if all these indebted Indian farmers refused to pay their debt?

"Greg R April 15th, 2009 2:02 pm

Apparently India is a nation completely lacking in social programs and proper bankruptcy laws. This is one of those times when one must say thank goodness I live in the USA. Still, all farmers understand that crop failure is a real threat. How do so many choose suicide?"

Bankruptcy law in the USA doesn't help you if you've lost so much that you can't afford the costs of filing for bankruptcy, if my understanding is correct and which is based on when I went bankrupt in the U.S., but having only $700 left to my name, I chose to not use up a third, half, or the whole of this to try to file for bankruptcy. I would've had to pay hundreds of dollars and only had $700 left to my name and with no other money for the then year ahead.

"Still, all farmers understand that crop failure is a real threat. How do so many choose suicide?"

You really should spend some time [reading] and viewing good videos. The article doesn't say that the farmers are committing suicide due to crop failures, but because of the debts money sharks led farmers into accepting and the crop failures then meaning no harvests and therefore no revenues means being unable to pay the debts. The problem is not one of crop failure this year, but of indebtedness to sharks and this much due to corrupt, callous, sociopathic, ... government(s).

It's apparently these damn debts that are the killers' instrument(s). The article leaves it understandable that if it wasn't for these debts, then the farmers would likely not be committing suicide just because it's a bad year for cropping. Farmers there must've gone through bad crop or harvest years before, but likely enough aren't really accustomed to these debts they've accepted and while they didn't sufficiently understand the risks involved. An honest and competent government would have made sure that the farmers would know before accepting debts what the related risks are, what consquences might come to be serious hardship, ....

There's also the fact that some people jump to grab on to what's presented as deals without sufficient understanding and this only due to hopes, hoping to improve one's economic status, or some other status a person desires to attain.

The suicide rate in the province of Quebec, Canada, was around 10% for farmers (meat farmers anyway) just a few years ago and the problem wasn't lack of education, or Monsanto, or .... The problem was [corrupt], callous, bourgeois, fascist, corporate-fascist, corporatist, ... government of Que. or Qc and PIG slaughterhouse and grocery store businesses. The farmers were getting almost nothing for the meat of the animals they raised, while slaughterhouses and grocery stores definitely didn't lose out; they gained and plenty. Even if the grocery stores didn't necessarily raise prices, the money robbed from the farmers was definitely being grabbed by these two other middle-party businesses. Farmers lost and consumers also lost, but while farmers definitely lost the most critically.

It's not difficult to understand why people commit suicide.

"edpell April 15th, 2009 6:12 pm

Over population. How much farm land per person in India? How much farm land per person in the US?"

That's a somewhat fanatical perspective. I believe a more balanced, fair, reality-based one is not a question of lack of land, but lack of humanity; there's too much overinflated selfishness, greed, etcetera. There's plenty of land, but owned by very few people, and they have little or no intentions of releasing their grip on OUR environment, natural world, pretending that they have some sort of God-granted right to be so excessively land-greedy while others despair in serious poverty and hardship.

Well, a big part of that problem is [corrupt] governments, of course, as usual, as always. NO sane government can allow individuals to buy up and deprivingly own major amounts of land! No sane government should allow any particular farmer or farming family to own more than perhaps 200 acres of land. Hey, if they can't make a reasonable living from 200 acres, then confiscate the farm and give it to someone else who'll do something real with the farm, instead of being a lazy louse.

In reality, NO farmer needs 200 acres of land, either. A single farmer can make adequate income from 50 acres of land; can live quite comfortably with this amount of land, and no farmer should own this much (or little) land if they're not going to make revenue use of it or aren't owning it for sake of conservation of the environment, nature.

We never need to own anything we don't productively use or put to use!

Overpopulation? My ass! Try GREED! Oh, and also trashingly awful education. Try brats, greed, sociopathia, ...! That's by far more the problem than overpopulation is.

Overpopulation is also not why our ocean fishes are drastically depleted. Again, the problem is [corrupt], hell-bent governments and medium to large businesses, although some, if not many, small businesses also contribute to the depletions of species on Earth (don't know of any species anywhere else yet, but maybe there are some, elsewhere).

"raydelcamino April 15th, 2009 8:13 pm

Global corporations do have a lot in common with serial killers."

Try [psychopaths]! Global corporations are serial killers, mass murderers, plunderers, etcetera, and psychopaths, but then this is wrong. Corporations are only business entities. It's the people running the corporations and all of their "dirty work" workers and filthy profiteer shareholders who are the serial killers, mass murderers, ... and psychopaths. Corporation does nothing; it's the people who make a corporation a producer of ... something, whatever the corporation produces, and for many, production is hell on earth, brought to us by Corp. X (of course with complicit governments), directed by CEO et alia ..., acted by ..., and so on.

"willflow April 15th, 2009 7:12 pm

A mass murderer doesn't kill all the victoms at one time. Its the accumulation of victimes which give them the terminology."

That [depends]. A mass murderer could kill potentially thousands or more people quite simultaneously. F.e., someone walks into a crowded place and starts shooting everyone present; or, for another example, the U.S. a-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bombings of wedding celebrations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ... etcetera.

What willflow seems to be referring to is a 'serial killer', instead of a mass murderer, and a serial killer can turn out with such a high count of victims that he or she is a mass murderer, only not having killed all at the same time; or the person could turn out with a low count, too low to really be considered mass murder, but not too low to be important.

===============

MONSANTO?

I appreciate people being concerned about the Monsanto-government racket, this global racket, and that Monsanto's very guilty for the suicides of tens of thousands of farmers in India. BUT the article only makes one reference to seeds.

Quote: ""The crop is so bad this year that we will not even be able to save any seeds," said Lakhnu's friend Santosh. "There were no rains at all.""

The article doesn't say the farmers referred to in the article are committing suicide due to Monsanto or GMO, GM, GE, only stating that the problem this year is that "There were no rains at all", and the 'money lenders' leading farmers into debts that can't be repaid when bad years happen for croppers.

From what I've read, Monsanto and other GMO cies are guilty in India, but not all farmers of India have bought into these cies' seeds, instead sticking with their traditional methods of obtaining seeds. There are other problems that badly affect farmers and these problems should be treated, instead of buried under constant references to GMO, etc., when those don't apply.

Iow, people should try to comment on the article in this page. Adding info. re. GMO, etc., is fine, but people posting about this topic should also comment in a way that specifically relates to the article the page is for.

Dr. Vandana Shiva [http://www.navdanya.org/] has written numerous articles about the deeper causes of the farmer suicides. Links below.

Also, a great new doc film "FOOD Inc" opening in June has a scathing section on Monsanto's devastating effect on US farmers.

________

"Seed monopolies, genetic engineering and farmers' suicides"
http://www.navdanya.org/news/25feb09a3.pdf

[excerpt] According to official data, more than 160,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.

Increasingly, the supply of cotton seeds has slipped out of the hands of the
farmers and the public system, into the hands of global seed corporations like
Monsanto. The entry of seed MNCs was part of the globalization process.

Corporate seed supply implies a number of shifts simultaneously. Firstly, giant
corporations start to control local seed companies through buyouts, joint ventures
and licensing arrangements, leading to a seed monopoly.

Secondly, seed is transformed from being a common good, to being the
“intellectual property” of Monsanto, for which the corporation can claim limitless
profits through royalty payments. For the farmer this means deeper debt.

Thirdly, seed is transformed from a renewable regenerative, multiplicative
resource into a non-renewable resource and commodity. Seed scarcity and seed
farmers are a consequence of seed monopolies, which are based on renewability
of seed, beginning with hybrids, moving to genetically engineered seed like Bt-
cotton, with the ultimate aim of the “terminator” seed which is engineered for
sterility. Each of these technologies of non-renewability is guided by one factor alone – forcing farmers to buy seed every planning season. For farmers this means higher costs. For seed corporations it translates into higher profits.

Fourthly, the creation of seed monopolies is based on the simultaneous
deregulation of seed corporations, including biosafety and seed deregulation,
and super-regulation of farmers seeds and varieties.

___________

"Toxic Genes and Toxic Paper: IFPRI covering up the linke between Bt. Cotton and Farmers Suicides"
http://www.navdanya.org/news/25feb09a1.pdf

"IFPRI Report: Bundle of Lies and Contradictions"
http://www.navdanya.org/news/25feb09a4.pdf

I wonder how this news is received at Monsanto today?

For more of the revealing backstory on this startling and underreported topic, see the excellent documentary "The World According To Monsanto" at the link below. That is if you still can find it on the daily-ever-more-controlled internet.

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/the-world-according-to-monsanto-a-documentary-that-amer...

Or better yet, purchase a dvd of this fine film and host some showings!

Fight the globalists!

If the average farmer was in debt 400 pounds, and 1500 committed suicide, then 600,000 pounds would have brought them up to date. 1,200,000 pounds would have doubled either the payment per farmer or the number of farmers.

An emergency bailout of $1,800,000 might have saved these lives. That is less than some execs pay to redecorate their offices.

But then there is the longer term thing that must start with getting Monsanto et al out of there. Beyond that we need more agronomists, birth control and political will to start growing more food locally everywhere.

Joe

Indebted to the Loan Sharks for Monsanto's GMO seeds?

America is 'solving' the world's hunger by making fewer mouths to feed.

Perhaps Bill & Melinda can fund a few MicroBanks to drive out the Loan Sharks.

Over population. How much farm land per person in India? How much farm land per person in the US?

And this is the price these people pay as the big multinationals set up their offices on their farmlands. From rural works in the open to slave labor. I got to clear my eyes for a minute. :.(

Jeevee

Why don't the farmers consider what will happen to their wives and children?

I can't hardly stand to liv in this world. There are no winners.

NPR did a story on this very thing yesterday morning. Very informative and important story, even though quite sad. These Indian farmers had eschewed their traditional farming methods for the "modern" and western technologies of chemicals and GMOs. Crux of the story: these methods have NOT worked, numerous farmers in India are now in debt and destitute, and the environmental destruction is immense.

I posted the link to the story (it has audio too) on another article here yesterday. Here it is again if anyone wants to check it out.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102944731

Apparently India is a nation completely lacking in social programs and proper bankruptcy laws. This is one of those times when one must say thank goodness I live in the USA. Still, all farmers understand that crop failure is a real threat. How do so many choose suicide?

Greed + global warming = poor get a zero sum and India is supposed to be a democratic country.Tony

Deepa

Some of the major causes for the suicides of the poor, hardworking farmers are: drought, international trade agreements, policies of international loan agencies (IMF, World Bank).

The international trade agreements are mostly influenced by the transnational corporations. A trade agreement between the United States and India, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA), was backed by Monsanto and other transnational corporate giants. This allowed for the seize of India’s seed sector by Monsanto, its trade sector by Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, and its retail sector by Wal-Mart. This amounted to a war against India’s independent farmers and small businesses.

The World Bank loans to the poor countries pave the way for the transnational corporations to take control and exploit local markets and natural resources. In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open its seed sector to transnational corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill. As a result of this adjustment, traditional farm saved seeds have been replaced with genetically engineered seeds which are non-renewable. So the farmers have to purchase seeds for each growing season, which is a costly investment for them. In most cases this has led to poverty and severe indebtedness. In order to relieve themselves of debt, some farmers have even sold their own organs. When these attempts have failed to rectify their financial situations, many farmers committed suicide.

Since the government represents the rich and powerful, the poor and the weak are left in the cold and to fend for themselves. The increasing rhetoric in the time of general elections in India in this month (April) is FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM (NOT FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY). This rhetoric benefits the rich and powerful in the form of getting kick-backs in weapon deals (Israel replaced Russia as the major weapons exporting country to India). This is how political leaders/parties and transnational companies feed each other.

In their rhetoric "terrorism" is narrowly defined. According to the academic definition: "Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to assassination – the direct targets of violence are not the main targets."

From the above definition of terrorism, I understand most of the political leaders, political parties and governments are TERRORISTS. Because their actions and policies are: 1. "anxiety-inspiring" to and "violent actions" against the poor and the weak; 2. for "idiosyncratic, criminal and political reasons".

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data record, there have been 166,304 farmers’ suicides in a decade since 1997 in India. Of these, 78,737 occurred in five years between 1997 and 2001. The next five years - from 2002 to 2006 – proved worse, seeing 87,567 take their lives. This means that on an average, there has been one farmer’s suicide every 30 minutes since 2002.

This is obviously horrible however it happened, but I am not understanding... did 1500 people commit suicide at the same time? In an organized protest? That's what a "mass suicide" is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_suicide

I cannot find any reports that state this explicitly.

God bless the small farmer.