Thread by @leofsaldanha

deccanherald.com/opinion/in-per…

Agri culture in India involved raising livestock to support farming, for milk and meat, and also to support the leather industry. It has evolved over millennia and weathered quite a variety of challenges: socio-political and environmental. 1/15

Caste was exploited. In post independent India it was eminently possible to attack caste based occupation & discrimination in farming and livestock rearing, without destroying millennia old knowledge that constituted agriculture. The opportunity was forfeited. 2/15

First by the Congress pandering to upper caste pressures, and now BJP, have targeted livestock rearing and turned the farms and livestock into a battle of political ideologies. 3/15

Newer parties that have come up in the past two decades have ridden piggy back on this ecologically and socio-economically vacuous approach to Agri-culture. 4/15

Following the Hindutwavaadis holding out the cow for garnering majoritarian vote shares, and this is not limited to BJP, we have a gargantuan crisis in access to fodder. 5/15

And to add to this, we have the nightmarish reality of millions of feral cows and bulls - especially those too old to be productive on farms and thus cannot be maintained by farmers - roaming around eating into food crops. 6/15

Farmers are literally forced now to sleep in machaans to drive away cattle hordes, much like it is done in farms along forest fringes to protect farms from wildlife. 7/15

India has over 350 million livestock - and they consume much much more food than as many humans would (for comparison USA human population is 360 m). 8/15

If we don’t find a culturally acceptable and ecologically wise way to address this politician made fodder crisis soon, and this cannot be by turning food growing areas to raising fodder, we are likely to face unprecedented ecological and food crises at once. 9/15

It’s important to note that farmers are already finding it increasingly difficult to find fodder, thus sending its cost over the top: more than a blue chip share. 10/15

Which means, we are unlikely to find fodder donations as UP is hoping for, to feed the million plus cattle in goshaalas, indicative in the emaciated state of most cows held there. 11/15

And we must worry about the spread of diseases when cattle are so packed, unfed and with weak immunity. Their proximity to human populations increases risks of spread of zoonotic diseases. 12/15

“something soured by the turn of 2021, and it was precisely the price of the fodder fed to the cows. 13/15

It jumped from Rs 4,250 per tonne in November 2021 to Rs 15,000 in May 2022, a rise of 352%, which works out to a monthly increase of 58.8% — an unparalleled increase for any item sold in India.” 14/15

#agroecology #farming #livestock #ecological #crisis #food #security #farmer #goshala #fodder 15/15

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