Statistic shows that every two hours an Indian Peasant commits suicide.
India is technologically advanced, is an economic and military power, but the same India leaves no hope for people which, day after day, try to survive farming the land in the same way their ancestors.
For nearly three decades the policy of American and European multinationals was oriented to the intensive production of seeds and agricultural products.
Millions of hectares have been transferred from intensive traditional farming to extensive cultivation of grain handled by large corporations.
The productivity per hectare has incredibly increased, but its benefits went to corporations.
Despite the relentless economic boom in the country, led by the industry and the new economy, the agricultural sector employs two-thirds of the Indian workforce and contributes to the wealth of the country with 30% of GDP. About 74% of the Indian population lives in rural areas, which cultivates more than 10,000 years, but in recent decades there has been a shift away from the land of rural society, the cycle of the seasons, biodiversity, becoming more dependent by the global market.
The bounty of the land has been replaced by the greed of multinational corporations and the sustainability of small farms has been destroyed. Production costs have been exponentially increased due to the forced introduction of chemical and technological unsustainable products, while prices for farmers have dramatically fallen as result of uncreased supply on the global market in favor of large products.
All this has lento the suicide of more than 150,000 Indian farmers over the last 10 years, squeezed by debts and forced into poverty.
In Tamil Nadu, one India’s poorest states, the challenge is to start producing through organic farming and direct sales, transforming organic resources into economic wealth in an environmentally and socially sustainable way.