back to article India pauses Big Tech's march onto one hundred million farms

India has scrapped plans to reform its agriculture sector – a decision that looks like a win for the nation's farmers, but a setback for Big Tech. Reform of India's agricultural sector, which employs over half the nation's workforce, is a signature policy of prime minister Narendra Modi. In 2020 his government passed laws that …

  1. Chris G

    Modi's as well as previous governments have already done a lo of damage allowing the likes of monsanto and others to virtually force farmers into using their products that require even more of their products to continue.

    Cotton being one example that require more irrigation than traditional crops, damages the soil and water tables.

    Look it up on the usual culprits along with Indian farmer suicides.

  2. vtcodger Silver badge

    Interesting Problem

    This is an interesting problem. Here in North America small farmers have pretty much been decimated because it seems that every economic shock of any sort makes their life more difficult. A century or so of that and it's no wonder that most farmers have sold the family plot and taken up web site design or retired to someplace warm. Currently, the percent of US population engaged in agriculture is slightly over 1 percent. And US/Canadian farms mostly weren't/aren't all that small by Asian standards.

    China seems to be doing much better agriculture wise than most developing countries, but they seem to have developed a weird system with some family members intensively farming their leased plot while living in a house they own built on land they lease. And other family members work in sometimes distant cities. It's difficult to imagine such a system working at all much less being transplantable to India. Maybe Japan or Europe offers some answers that will work for India.

    So Modi is probably correct that Indian agriculture needs massive structural changes. His problem is that any such revolution is likely to involve politicians hanging from lamp posts. I doubt he favors that part.

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