The prices of key staples have surged nearly three times from a month ago because of the disruption of the supply chain due to the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 infection, reported Hindustan Times.

Market data from the consumer affairs ministry and agriculture produce markets (APMCs) reviewed by the publication shows that there are three main factors are sending food prices to sky high levels.

Reasons

The first reason is that the arrival of farm commodities in APMC markets have plunged sharply, with commodities falling to almost 60 percent in some markets from a month ago. The second reason is that land transportation have gone up sharply due to the difficulty to cross interstate boundaries even though they have exemptions from the lockdown. The third reason is that the quarantine measures put in place have resulted in labour shortages, thereby affecting the loading, unloading and sorting of commodities.

A report by the International Labour Organization too on April 8 said that the lockdown could potentially shatter the incomes of 400 million marginalized Indians. An economist explained that restrictions in supply and regulations in movement have caused a spike in food prices. And soon supply shocks could turn into demand shocks. An economist with the Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University, Himanshu, said, “Loss of income will lead to a drop in demand for food in the coming months. A possible decline in food consumption could result in malnutrition too.”

However, prices of cereals, such as wheat and rice are steady due to adequate supply from state-run granaries.

Coordination mishaps between Centre and States lead to wastage

It is reported that there has been no drop in winter crop production. It is instead that state and federal officials who have failed to coordinate supplies and ensure deliveries at fair prices and at the right time. It has been said that states are regulating supplies only with selected agents who are being given passes to deliver commodities, to reduce crowding and maintain social distancing.

“The home ministry’s orders have not percolated to the ground level even though operators want their vehicles to move. Trucks are still being stopped at various state borders,” Kultaran Singh Atwal, president of the lobby group, All-India Motor Transport Congress, said.

Atwal said once trucks dump their consignments, they are then stuck as state authorities don’t allow them to ply back empty. This problem of one-way traffic needs immediate resolution and has pushed up road transport costs by at least 15%, he said.

Farmers are unable to harvest crops too as there is no labour available, reported Anadolu Agency. Plucked vegetables too are lying unused in various states, shattering hopes of profits for farmers. Aakash Patel, a farmer from Sagar district of Central Madhya Pradesh said, “We cannot sell vegetables due to the lockdown. No means of transport is available to take them to the wholesale markets. We pluck cabbage, cauliflower, and other vegetables but are forced to feed them to cattle.”

Prices surge, supplies at APMCs drop

And idea of the supply crunch is represented by the prices of onions and vegetables which have been gathered in a rather novel way on directions of the National Statistics Office – through telephonic inquiries, in light of field agents being unable to go on ground.

From April 1 – 6, for instance, Andhra Pradesh’s Mulakalacheruvu APMC market, a tomato hub, received just 60 tonnes of tomato that went for a modal price of Rs 550 a quintal (100 kg each) or Rs 5.5 a kg, according to official data.

Data from the National Horticulture Research and Development Foundation showed that in Lasalgaon, Asia’s biggest onion market located in Nashik, arrivals have dropped by 80 percent from until a month ago.

While in the first week of March, onion arrivals in Lasalgaon were 73,955 quintals, the first week of April saw an 83 percent drop with only 11, 878 quintals coming in. The average retail price of onions in Chandigarh and Guwahati were Rs 40 and Rs 50 respectively, double their usual rates.

 Though on April 8, the Union Ministry asked states to invoke provisions of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, which included the capping of edible items, the state hasn’t put a cap on prices of food staples yet.

Farmers are dumping produce due to being unable to source buyers. “My neighbour had to dump one tonne of chillies and two tonnes of chickpeas because there were no buyers at the mandi,” Amra Ram, a leader of the All India Kisan Sabha, said over the phone from Rajasthan’s Sikar APMC.

Assam reiterates India’s plight

In Assam, where the NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) is involved in activism in the fields of citizenship rights and forest rights among other causes, has reports from ground zero that show that the food crisis is more of a dire risk than the coronavirus. CJP has taken up exclusive relief work in Assam, reaching the needy with ration imperative for sustenance during the lockdown. CJP volunteers have been active in the various villages of Lower Assam especially those in the Chirang, Bongaigaon, Kokrajhar, Barapeta and other districts.

Farms of tomatoes have been drying up due to the farmers not being allowed to care for their produce during the lockdown. In many villages where tomatoes grow, they are now seen withering away due to the shutdown of water supply.

Abdul Hamid, a small, marginalised farmer from the Hawriapet village under Gosaigaon police station in Kokrajhar district, told CJP, “I cultivated cucumber on 1 bigha of land this year. As the time was ripe to sell this cucumber, the lock down was suddenly declared. If we can’t sell vegetables, what we will eat? Will the government help us?”

CJP reports that the sale of vegetables in large quantities has been unilaterally shut down for the past twenty days. The absence of a supply chain has led to the waste of ripe vegetables. Faced with the turbulence caused by the countrywide lock down, these farmers face a sudden dip in the prices of corn. What will this mean for their sustenance?

Bishnupur in Chirang district, on which Guwahati is dependent for 90 percent of its demands of lemon, is also hit due to the shutdown. Revenues have taken a hit. Though lemons have been harvested, the sudden shut down in communications had ruptured the supply chain. Small portions are being sold:  while the price was Rs 1200 per bag before the lock down, this has dropped to Rs 800 per bag, which means a loss of Rs 400 per bag.

The most heart wrenching sight witnessed by the CJP team was to see, at many homes of farmers, cultivator families boiling brinjals, cauliflower and feeding these to the cows! In the small urban centres, with the acute rise in price of vegetables and other essential food items, the working poor people are compelled to eat rice only with salt.

Another farmer, Abdul Aziz, told CJP team that the chilli he cultivated on three bighas of land is now sitting in the godown as there is no way to sell it because of the disrupted supply chain. In Bongaigon too, farmers are sitting stranded with large quantities of watermelon.

Milk producers and sellers are also in dire straits. In another part of Bongaigaon district, the Kirtanpara area, people earn their livelihoods on two kinds of occupation. The first is agriculture and the second is cheese and curd production from the fresh cow milk, which is then sold in different cities. With the lock down, farmers’ crops are being destroyed, and accumulation of curd and cheese is causing a wasteful and desperate situation for these producers.

Particularly for those who sell milk in the sweet shops, the situation is acute as shops are shut due to the lock down. No alternative arrangements have been made by the government to sell milk at this time of crisis.

CJP has received testimonies of unspeakable hardship with the poorest battling against hunger and searching for food, rather that surviving the Covid-19 pandemic. Food intake has been reduced to days long hunger or just a single meal in a day. The state of Assam is in a state of anarchy and faces worse in the days ahead.

When CJP goes to homes, ensuring safety protocol and working with the regulations of the administration, reaching widows, orphans, children and all others, it asks, “How are you, farmer?”

The only answer it hears, “Our war is against hunger, much more than Corona.”
 

Endnote: CJP’s community volunteer, Nanda Ghosh has authored the ground report on Assam which may be read here

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The film centres on its maker, Aube Giroux, who resides in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her interest in food and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was inspired by her mother, Jali, who also appears throughout. Aube says that when her parents bought their first house her mother immediately got rid of the lawn and planted a huge garden where she grew all kinds of heirloom vegetables, berries, flowers, legumes and garlic.

“She wanted me and my sister to grow up knowing the story behind the food that we ate, so our backyard was basically our grocery store,” says Aube.

During the film, we are treated not only to various outdoor scenes of the Giroux’s food garden (their ‘grocery store’) but also to Aube and her mother’s passion for preparing homemade culinary delights. The ‘backyard’ is the grocery store and much of Giroux family life revolves around the kitchen and the joy of healthy, nutritious food.

When GMOs first began appearing in food, Aube says that what bothered her mother was that some of the world’s largest chemical companies were patenting these new genetically engineered seeds and controlling the seed market.

In the film, Aube explains, “Farmers who grow GMOs have to sign technology license agreements promising never to save or replant the patented seeds. My mom didn’t think it was a good idea to allow corporations to engineer and then patent the seeds that we rely on for food. She believed that seeds belong in the hands of people.”

As the GMO issue became prominent, Aube became more interested in the subject. It took her 10 years to complete the film, which is about her personal journey of discovery into the world of GMOs. The film depicts a world that is familiar to many of us; a place where agritech industry science and money talk, politicians and officials are all too eager to listen and the public interest becomes a secondary concern.

In 2001, Canada’s top scientific body, The Royal Society, released a scathing report that found major problems with the way GMOs were being regulated. The report made 53 recommendations to the government for fixing the regulatory system and bringing it in line with peer reviewed science and the precautionary principle, which says new technologies should not be approved when there is uncertainty about their long-term safety. To date, only three of these recommendations have been implemented.

Throughout the film, we see Aube making numerous phone calls, unsuccessfully trying to arrange an interview to discuss these issues with Health Canada, the department of the government of Canada that is responsible for national public health.

Meanwhile, various people are interviewed as the story unfolds. We are told about the subverting of regulatory agencies in the US when GMOs first appeared on the scene in the early 1990s: the Food and Drug Administration ignored the warnings of its own scientists, while Monsanto flexed its political muscle to compromise the agency by manoeuvring its own people into positions of influence.

One respondent says, “We’ve had a number of people from Monsanto, many from Dupont, who have actually been in top positions at the USDA and the FDA over the last 20 years, making darn sure that when those agencies did come out with any pseudo-regulation, that it was what these industries wanted. The industry will often say these are the most regulated crops in history… I’m not an expert on the law in many other countries. But I am an expert on the laws in the United States and I can tell you… they are virtually unregulated.”

Aube takes time to find out about genetic engineering and talks to molecular biologists. She is shown how the process of genetic modification in the lab works. One scientist says, “In genetics, we have a phrase called pleiotropic effects. It means that there are other effects in the plant that are unintended but are a consequence of what you’ve done. I wouldn’t be surprised if something came up somewhere along the line that we hadn’t anticipated that’s going to be a problem.”

And that’s very revealing: if you are altering the genetic core of the national (and global) food supply in a way that would not have occurred without human intervention, you had better be pretty sure about the consequences. Many illnesses can take decades to show up in a population.

This is one reason why Aube Giroux focuses on the need for the mandatory labelling of GM food in Canada. Some 64 countries have already implemented such a policy and most Canadians want GM food to be labelled too. However, across North America labelling has been fiercely resisted by the industry. As the film highlights, it’s an industry that has key politicians in its back pocket and has spent millions resisting effective labelling.

In the film, we hear from someone from the agri/biotech industry say that labelling would send out the wrong message; it would amount to fearmongering; it would confuse the public; it would raise food prices; and you can eat organic if you don’t want GMOs. To those involved in the GMO debate and the food movement, these industry talking points are all too familiar.

Signalling the presence of GMOs in food through labelling is about the public’s right to know what they are eating. But the film makes clear there are other reasons for labelling too. To ensure that these products are environmentally safe and safe for human health, you need to monitor them in the marketplace. If you have new allergic responses emerging is it a consequence of GMOs? There’s no way of telling if there is no labelling. Moreover, the industry knows many would not purchase GM food if people were given any choice on the matter. That’s why it has spent so much money and invested so much effort to prevent it.

During the film, we also hear from an Iowa farmer, who says GM is all about patented seeds and money. He says there’s incredible wealth and power to be had from gaining ownership of the plants that feed humanity. And it has become a sorry tale for those at the sharp end: farmers are now on a financially lucrative (for industry) chemical-biotech treadmill as problems with the technology and its associated chemicals mount: industry rolls out even stronger chemicals and newer GM traits to overcome the failures of previous roll outs.

But to divert attention from the fact that GM has ‘failed to yield’ and deliver on industry promises, the film notes that the industry churns out rhetoric, appealing to emotion rather than fact, about saving the world and feeding the hungry to help legitimize the need for GM seeds and associated (health- and environment-damaging) chemical inputs.

In an interview posted on the film’s website, Aube says that genetic engineering is an important technology but “should only take place if the benefits truly outweigh the risks, if rigorous adequate regulatory systems are in place and if full transparency, full disclosure and the precautionary principle are the pillars on which our food policies are based.”

Health Canada has always claimed to have had a science-based GMO regulatory system. But the Royal Society’s report showed that GMO approvals are based on industry studies that have little scientific merit since they aren’t peer reviewed.

For all her attempts, Aube failed to get an interview with Health Canada. Near the end of the film, we see her on the phone to the agency once again. She says, “Well I guess I find it extremely concerning and puzzling that Health Canada is not willing to speak with me… you guys are our public taxpayer funded agency in this country that regulates GMOs, and so you’re accountable to Canadians, and you have a responsibility to answer questions.”

Given this lack of response and the agency’s overall track record on GMOs, it is pertinent to ask just whose interests does Health Canada ultimately serve.

When Aube Giroux started this project, it was meant to be a film about food. But she notes that it gradually became a film about democracy: who gets to decide our food policies; is it the people we elect to represent us, or is it corporations and their heavily financed lobbyists?

Aube is a skilful filmmaker and storyteller. She draws the viewer into her life and introduces us to some inspiring characters, especially her mother, Jali, who passed away during the making of the film. Jali has a key part in the documentary, which had started out as a joint venture between Aube and her mother. By interweaving personal lives with broader political issues, Modified becomes a compelling documentary. On one level, it’s deeply personal. On another, it is deeply disturbing given what corporations are doing to food without our consent – and often – without our knowledge.

For those who watch the film, especially those coming to the issue for the first time, it should at the very least raise concerns about what is happening to food, why it is happening and what can be done about it. The film might be set in Canada, but the genetic engineering of our food supply by conglomerates with global reach transcends borders and affects us all.

Whether we reside in North America, Europe, India or elsewhere, the push in on to co-opt governments and subvert regulatory bodies by an industry which regards GM as a multi-billion cash cow  – regardless of the consequences.

Modified won the 2019 James Beard Foundation award for best documentary and is currently available on DVD at .modifiedthefilm.com/dvd. It is due to be released on digital streaming platforms this summer.

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer. Join him on Twitter.

Countery: Counter Current

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