NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON AGRICULTURE

According to the Dictionary of Economics by John Black globalization is defined as, “The process by which the whole world becomes a single market. This means that goods and services, capital, and labour are traded on a worldwide basis, and information and the results of the research flow readily between countries. The rise of cheap sea transport and the telegram contributed to this process in the 19^th century. Cheap air travel, the telephone, and the computer, together with the rising importance of multinational companies and general relaxation of controls on trade and international investment, continued the process in the 20^th century. It is possible that the rise of the internet and the start, which has been made, on liberalizing international trade in services will continue this movement in the 21^st century. The world has still a very long way to go, however, before its economy is fully globalized. In particular, international mobility of labour is tightly restricted and poor transport and communications in most less developed countries (LDCs) mean that only the economies of the richer and more economic countries are at all seriously globalized.”

Through this paper, I will be discussing the negative impacts of globalization on agriculture. Globalization has had a major impact on agriculture. It has affected agriculture and hence life in many ways. We have witnessed three waves or phases of globalization so far. The first wave occurred between 1870 and 1914. During this period there was lot of migrations. The investment in the developing countries tripled during this period. About 60 million people migrated from Europe (primarily its less developed parts) to North America and other parts of New World. Similar flow of people from densely populated China, India to less densely populated Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. was seen. The total labour flow during this period was 10 percent of the world population. But, though the global per capita income rose, it was not fast enough to catch up with the growth of poor population.  Among the globalizing countries there was a convergence in income per capita, driven primarily by migration. And, thus began an inequality among the countries of the world. The first wave fell with the two major wars and the Great Depression. The inequality among the countries kept increasing. Hence, the gap between the haves and have nots kept increasing.

The second wave happened between 1950 and 1980. During the second wave the world witnessed the integration of the rich countries and this resulted in the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor nations. Globalization was supposed to bring an end to all these issues, but it had a reverse effect and ended up affecting the common man. The rich remained rich and led a decent life. It was the poor who had to sacrifice something every time something new came up.

Since 1980 to the present day, we have been living in the third wave of globalization. The rich, developing countries were able to invest a lot and with the help of technology and communication in the other poor nations. This helped them prosper economically. The poor nations also did develop little, but their dependency on the rich countries always remained and was increasing too. Globalization reduced poverty by a large number since 1980, but the gap always remained there.

In simple words, during globalization, there was mechanization of the world. As facilities started improving, people wanted to make more and more out of it. The people were not happy with themselves. But in this chase, they forgot to realize that nature has its own limitations. And wherever the tried to interrupt with nature, they have all witnessed destruction.

During this third wave, we have seen the most destruction. There was a bad situation during the first two waves. But it did not witness destruction as much as the third wave is doing. During this period, there were a large number of farmer suicide cases. The reason for this were many, but the end of the thread always lead to one big factor, globalization. It was during this period that the new economic policy was implemented. It was also roughly around the same time that the Green revolution took place. During this many new methodologies of agriculture were adopted. The need for this arose because the consumption rate increased and more than that, the greed of the people. The farmers were left with no other option other than adapt to these new methodologies. They were stuck in this whirlpool of competitions of MNCs, increase of demand, less output, etc. Due to many such factors, the farmers had no other option other than to adapt themselves. Many new machineries and fertilizers were introduced. Due to rising demand, the farmers had to use them in order to get a high yield. But all these had a very adverse effect on the agriculture sector.

One of the major reasons for farmer suicides was indebtedness. When all these new machineries and fertilizers came into market, the farmers had to borrow money from money lenders and banks. The money lenders were also too smart and they increased the interest according to the demand. The farmers who had land and could afford to get loans, managed to get a loan and start using the modern methodologies of agriculture. The mentality of the people had totally changed now. It was only profit oriented. And the poorer farmers among them had a bad hit. They could neither afford to invest in new machineries nor get a loan to get fertilizers. Hence, they were totally struck with nothing to do. Many shopkeepers now started giving away fertilizers on credit. And after all these, when they faced a crop failure, due to natural reasons, they were left with nothing but lots of loan to repay. In the earlier days too there were many crop failures, but we never so many cases of farmer suicides. So why does it happen only now? The reason for this is that, in the olden days the farmers still had some things left like seeds, some stored food. They had some rays of hope left. But now-a-days all they have left is loans. He might have invested all he had in that particular farm. And when it was all gone, he will be left with no other option other than suicide. For a farmer, his pride is the most important thing. Even if he is not very rich, he has always been proud of what he does and his land. But now that all his possessions are gone and he is sure that he cannot repay the loan, he kills himself. They can never live on that situation where he owes someone money and cannot pay it back. A farmer can never live in indebtedness. His pride never allows him to do so.