Protect Your Health

Ajit Govind Sable’s family have owned their farm in India’s western Maharashtra state for 10 generations, which even for a region that has been farming for more than 10,000 years is long enough to witness plenty of changes. Two generations back, they started cultivating sugar cane here in Shivthar, a village in Maharashtra’s highlands near the Krishna river. India’s most industrialised state soon became its largest sugar producer.

Today, it’s not sugar the 35-year-old Sable is talking about as he sips sweet tea in the front yard of the low, two-storey farmhouse where half the ground floor houses his turmeric crop. He’s discussing peppers, which he is now growing under polythene plastic coverings. Like an increasing number of farmers in India, Sable is exploiting a shift in taste towards fruits and vegetables among Indians. My colleagues grow flowers under poly, Sable says. But the investment for that is too much for me, so I’m trying out peppers. You can’t eat flowers if you can’t find buyers for them, he notes.

The result is overflowing stocks of these carbohydrate-heavy staples and a huge subsidy bill that is adding to a ballooning budget deficit.

India, many agricultural experts say, is spending billions to prop up a traditional farm sector at the expense of investment in new crops and agricultural innovation.