Sunday 5 January 2014

Mutton, Chicken, beef and 'farming'

There is chicken and mutton everywhere. Almost all Indian tastebuds are being converted to Non-Veg. Normally Indians used to have a menu of meat only on Sunday when it was considered a premium.  Now population is so desparate that they want it for every meal. Some even proclaim in office parties that they cannot live without it. When you go out for lunch, only 2 out of 10 will order for Veggie curry. Pure Vegetarian hotels are becoming a rarity. Even they sell more chinease varities than idly and dosa. What KFC has introduced just a few years before, now many local companies have started cashing in on this growing market.  Recently i saw TV advertisement of a popular (local ready masala maker) brand which has started packaging chicken pieces.

Thanks to Govt funding, the entire infrastructure development and investment is going more in favour of animal farming. Agriculture universities are training farmers day and night (take a look at any of KVKs training schedule) on 'goat farming' and chicken harvesting. Farm lands are being installed with poultaries. Farmers are being made to believe that the returns are high only on animal farms. Animal feed production is another market that is getting popularised. Even popular magazines on agriculture which support organic farming carry more articles about stories of animal farming.  While it is natural and essential for any natural farm to have a healthy cycle of food and manure through upkeep of few country animals, poultry and birds, here we are talking about large scale farms of the size of giant factories.  The 'animal factories' which produce juicy chickens  grow animals using various chemicals - growth hormones (roxarsone or nitarsone, arsenical antimicrobial drugs that also promote growth) steroids, antibiotics, injections and drugs. It is funny that educated India reliesh them knowing fully well about what harm the residue chemicals can do to them.  This is at a micro level.

On a macro level, think tanks and market survey companies are publishing statistics to potential foreign investers that meat consumption is the lowest in India compared to other countries. Prompting more investment and creating 'market potential' in a country which has highest population (stomaches) after china and highest number of agriculture farmers with small land holding. Govt wants to solve micro nutritional deficiency of population through costly poultry chicken and not through greens, pulses and vegetables which are cheap.

Net Net there is going to be more animal production for consumption and hence necessity for producing animal feed. What happens in America will happen here. Complete deforestation. Country lands will be converted to gracing land. One can see for example such acres of lands around Pune which had been converted to gracing grounds to supply beef to the erstwhile British colony.  Only corn, maize and low quality high volume vegetation will be produced in all farms because they have the potential to sell, consume less water and maintenance. In the garb of easy farming, many have already destroyed their food grain and vegetable farms and have ventured into maize cultivation.  Already India with its weak agriculture policies and a declining Food production (Inflation of food and dependency on imports are evidance of this) will having to compete with a strong industry backed Fodder production and bio-fuel (another evil).

More the animals, more feed and water will be required. Growing meat is not efficient. More Methane will be produced (much larger than the threat of carbon di-oxide) punching bigger hole in Ozone. Even Al-Gore who comes from a country having highest per capita meat consumption (Americans alone consume 28 billion pounds of beef each year) could not touch this topic as it has grown to epic proportions.  It takes 12 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of hamburger. 11 times fossil fuel is required to produce on calorie of meat. 2,400 gallons of water is required to produce 1 pound of meat, where it takes only 25 gallons to produce 1 pound of wheat.

To satiate hunger of Americans, already many of the forests in third world countries (example malasiya) have been de-forested to grow Sugarcane, corn, oil palm and the like. As Mahatma Gandhi Said in 1926, "To make India like England and America is to find some other races and places of the earth for exploitation. So far it appears that the Western nations have divided all the known races outside Europe for exploitation and that there are no new worlds to discover. What can be the fate of India trying to ape the West?...."   We now see that more of Indians have started exploiting Africa. Millions of acres of farm lands are being acquired from that poor country to be exploited growing fodder, biofuel and food to be exported at high cost to other countries.

RMF will not grow fodder and bio-fuel on commercial scale. RMF will grow them only for immediate, internal and local consumption for neighbourhood, that is if necessary.



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