As in India, US farmers caught in crushing agribusiness debt trap turn to suicide in spiking numbers
With
Bayer-Monsanto now the largest seed and agrochemical company in the
world, its near monopoly on prices and its disregard for farmers and
environmental health mean that the despair that has consumed India’s
farmers will soon be planted in the United States.
by
Whitney Webb
Over a
decade ago, a disturbing trend among farmers in India captured
headlines, as suicides among Indian farmers began to spiral out of
control. Many of those farmers were indebted to giant agribusiness
corporations like Monsanto, which – after gaining access to India’s
seed sector in 1998 – enticed poor farmers to buy new
“bioengineered” seeds every planting season along with the
associated agro-chemicals required to grow them, promising bigger
yields that would offset the costs.
When
such benefits failed to materialize, many farmers – confronted with
an ever-growing debt snowball – were faced with losing their land,
leading many to take their lives by drinking the very same
agro-chemicals that had helped trap them in debt. Though it has faded
from the headlines, the crisis has continued unabated, with over
12,000 farmers in India still committing suicide every year.
While
the crisis in India may seem a distant problem to many Americans, new
reports have indicated that the U.S. is developing a farmer-suicide
epidemic of its own.
A new
report in CBS News notes that farmers in America now die at a rate
higher than that of any other occupation and five times higher than
that of the general population, even as the national suicide rate as
a whole has jumped over the last few decades. As CBS notes, the
increase in suicides mirrors a similar phenomenon in the 1980s, when
U.S. farmers faced economic hardship related to debt, and suicides
spiked.
Jennifer
Fahy, communications director with Farm Aid, told CBS at the time
that “the farm crisis was so bad, there was a terrible outbreak
of suicide and depression.” Fahy now warns that the current
situation is “actually worse.”
The
newly reported increase in U.S. farmer suicides — much like the
crisis for India’s farmers – is related to debt, specifically to
global seed and agribusiness corporations that continue to raise
prices as farmers’ incomes fall. Farm income has been dropping
steadily since 2013, with the average this year set to be 35 percent
less than it was five years ago. Meanwhile, farmers have seen a 300
percent price increase in recent years on products like seeds,
fertilizer and agro-chemicals produced by giant agribusiness
corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, Syngenta and others.
Many
farmers in the U.S. are dependent on “bioengineered” seeds and
their requisite chemicals, molded by decades of U.S. policy that
pushed for farm consolidation and favored the adoption of these
products. As a result, most American farmers have become dependent on
these commodities and, because they must be purchased again every
planting season, have been taking out loans just to be able to plant.
As Todd
Eney, a fourth-generation farmer in central Montana, told Business
Insider last month: “Our farm has been out here since 1935, and
I’m 40 years old and I’ve watched a lot of small family farms in
our area go under. They can’t compete because they can’t pay the
price of input because of what these companies are wanting to charge
for input now.”
The
growing debt burden has been known for some time, with reports
warning five years ago that U.S. farmers would be the next group to
“be slammed by debt.” Yet now — in addition to the
massive debt accumulated by many farmers — President Trump’s
trade and tariff war, as well as the Federal Reserve’s raising of
interest rates, have compounded to put even more financial pressure
on the nation’s farmers.
Bayer-Monsanto
merger leaves American farmers fearing worst is yet to come
Unfortunately,
the situation for American farmers is soon likely to get much worse,
thanks to the merger of agribusiness giants Monsanto and Bayer, which
concluded earlier this month. The resulting mega-company now controls
around a third of the U.S. seed and pesticide market and has inspired
the other largest agribusinesses in the world to plan mergers,
including Dow Chemical and DuPont. After the merger was announced,
many farmers voiced their concerns that it would allow Bayer-Monsanto
to consolidate even more of the seed market and use its privileged
position to further increase prices.
Beyond
an imminent jump in prices for farmers, the merger affects farmers in
yet another way, as their products, time and again, have been shown
to cause mass die-offs of farmers’ most important pollinator: bees.
Many Bayer and Monsanto products have been found to harm bee
populations, even in studies they themselves funded. As a result,
over 340 native bee populations are facing extinction and over half
of all bees in the U.S. are actively declining. With the bee
population facing unprecedented die-offs, any worsening of their
precarious situation will have a major impact on U.S. farms and, by
extension, farmers.
With
Bayer-Monsanto now the largest seed and agrochemical company in the
world, its near monopoly on prices and its disregard for farmers and
environmental health mean that the despair that has consumed India’s
farmers will soon be planted in the United States.
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