Multiple Traps of Dependency (a.k.a How people are screwed in modern times)

When Shashi and Niroj saw that much land has became available in Pharping on cheap rental fees, they are thinking of using them for agricultural production to earn some income for sustaining their development work--including running their open school, women school, community school and other activities. So they started a farming school, hoping to establish a place where farmers can come and exchange information and receive training.

In the early years, they intended to make the school a demonstration site for nearby farmers who are still farming, while running their agribusiness side by side. However, labor is hard to procure and inconsistent productivity and thus profit makes it difficult to sustain the project. So Shashi and Niroj thought "Why don't we support schooling and living expenses of some youth from nearby villages, make them live in the farming school and contribute while learning in the field, so that they can earn skills and capital to work on agriculture in their home village when they graduate?" After all, the land became available in the first place as people increasingly favor employment, rather than agricultural work, not only to achieve better material aspirations, but also social status. But the employment opportunities are not sufficient, especially in the rural area, while more and more land resources are being left untended.

Indeed, Nepal currently imports 13 times more than it exports , and the country has been heavily reliant on agricultural import from India, as well as other packaged food products, for consumption. On the other hand, the country has been busy exporting migrant workers to the Gulf countries and Malaysia. The dependency theory argues that migration causes transfer of greater value from exporting societies, than the return to the individual in remitted wages (Amin, 1974). Migrant labor fulfills the needs of economic sectors in host countries and is usually only employed when it is needed--so that host countries don't have to pay for other costs in sustaining the labor force beyond the periods of demand, such as schooling and social welfare (Gibson and Graham, 1986). In addition, the lower status of migrants in host country also exclude them from legal and political protection (Goss and Lindquist, 1995). Nepali migrant workers often face enormous risks of exploitation, including “not being paid on time, working in difficult conditions, being exposed to harassment and abuse such as passports being taken away by employers.” (ILO, 2017). A total of 726 migrants death was recorded by the Government of Nepal in 2013, an increase of over 100 people compared to the previous year (see my previous post for a Nepali's experience in Malaysia).

So providing jobs, especially in the field of agricultural production makes complete sense from the perspective of local and national development, as it can utilize local resources to provide employment, and increase self-sufficiency of the country. Niroj thinks, the only way for attracting youth into agriculture, is to modernize it and maximize its production, so that it makes a viable livelihood comparable to an employment. To be truthful, this is a far-sighted vision, that will reduce Nepal's dependency on foreign employment and foreign products. The project won a global award in "education for sustainable development" in 2018.

But we all know how maximizing productivity above all else can be extremely dangerous--is it not why most environmental resources are degraded? Nonetheless that is what Niroj intends to do and one of the major ways he knows how to increase productivity, is to use imported foreign hybrid seeds (like everybody else). They describe that the foreign hybrid seeds are expensive to purchase, but with almost 100% of germination rate. The local seeds, they acknowledge, produce tastier and more nutritious food with much higher prices, but with far too little productivity (How diet in the past used to be tasty and nutritious are repeatedly mentioned by all of my elder informants). What is my problem with hybrid seeds? Well, you see, hybrid seeds are terminators seeds and cannot be reproduced. That means it is not possible for farmers to save seeds from hybrid varieties and grow them again. Worse still, cross fertilization of hybrid seeds with local seeds will actually deteriorate the latter and make them sterile as well. So if you have local varieties grown nearby to hybrid varieties, your local varieties will have decreasing fertility. In time the farmers will have to rely solely on hybrid seeds, which is rather expensive. Activists call this a 'seed sovereignty' issue. And the diversity of plant species will diminish, including those tasty and nutritious varieties which have been bred with the local soil for generations by their ancestors. Once they are gone, they are never to return. And with climate changing nowadays, we need as many varieties as possible for resilience.

And it is not that local varieties are not productive. The farming school uses a local variety of cucumber, which Arbin, the agricultural technician, said to be extraordinarily tasty. There is also a local variety of cauliflower that can grow to become as heavy as 8kg in season. But nowadays, few people are working or experimenting on improving these varieties through cross breeding (like our ancestors did for thousands of years). Arbin claimed that it is very costly to have a seed-saving research center and bank, as now strict separation from hybrid plants are necessary (hybrid sterile seeds did not exist before commercialization). The farming school is now promoting off-season farming, which means the use of foreign hybrid varieties is necessary. Apart from the cucumber, all vegetables planted in the farming school is from hybrid seeds. On the contrary, as hybrid seeds is a for-profit business, there are intensive research activities surrounding it.

So what is the worst that could happen with hybrid seeds? The mass farmers' suicide in India had something to do with it. Basically farmers cannot repay debt after their crops fail. Those debt include seeds and other agricultural inputs, which often comes with growing hybrid seeds, such as fertilizers and some pesticides. So there is reason to be concerned. In any case, isn't nutritious and tasty varieties worth preserving? Ultimately, is it right to patent seeds, or lives contained in them?

The farming school is trying to promote substitutions of pesticides and inorganic fertilizers with organic ones, but people maintained that completely organic farming is difficult to attain, especially if high productivity is desired. However, even with production, the farming school team acknowledge that sometimes the market prices could be so low, as they were competing with imports from India. "Why focus on productivity then since the prices are so unpredictable?" I asked. Niroj said that it is up to the government to regulate market to ensure they gain fair prices. I pushed Niroj for devising marketing strategy instead, such as branding a local variety (even when in my heart I prefer a subsistence with surplus agriculture, rather than cash and profit oriented one, but I know this might be difficult to sell, especially when these people are not starving in the first place, but have higher material aspirations). At least marketing allows one to sell unique, exotic goods with higher prices, so that productivity ideally is not that much of a pressure (in Pharping for instance, their pears and lapsi have been quite famous. I for one am totally tantalized by the idea of drinking pear wine)

Thus, in the effort to get out of the dependency trap on external employment and production, which is a noble vision, Niroj and his team might be pushing people to another dependency trap--a trap of dependence on foreign seeds. The only alternative I could think of that will still fulfill Niroj's goal for earning profit, is to focus on processing into food products, branding and marketing local varieties, so that there is less pressure on productivity and hybrid seeds. However, this might also bring other risks, such as the complete replacement of food crops with market crops--this could again lead to another dependency, a dependency on market. In a vacuum, my position would be to grow and process food for subsistence with surplus to sell, rather than making it a profit-maximizing business. But in Nepali socio-political realities, I have been helpless in convincing people (thus the term 'screwed' in the title), as I could clearly see the logic by Niroj--that in order to sustain the field of agriculture in the current times, we must make it profitable.