Absolutely loony. For example:
>10) The recent spate of suicides in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka
>reveal the human costs of these strategies. Farmers often get into
>debt to buy the Chemical inputs and the GM crops to ensure a good
>harvest; when these crops fail they are often left with no income and
>with all their assets such as land and equipment mortgaged Over the
>last three years there have been over 2,000 farmer suicides in
>Karnataka, forcing the govt. to set up a commission to enquire into
>the causes behind it. Use of GM and HYV crops while more productive
>are more unstable, prone to less immunity to pests and to changes to
>the weather unlike natural varieties and show production instability
>has increased over time even though yields and trend output have
>risen - the large corporations involved in selling machinery and the
>seeds have benefited as have selected financial institutions from the
>increases in average output but the risks have been borne by the
>farmers and labourers who suffer from the greater temporal instability
>of production.
Isn't that the farmer's choice--whether to try to attain greater yields at greater risk? Or is the farmer to be told what to do by the wise leader?
>
>...is
>it not time we at least paid some attention to distributing the
>ever-growing surpluses we already have rather than just pursuing in a
>narrow-minded fashion the elusive Holy Grail of evermore food
>production.
>
>Conrad Barwa
You rarely hear people speak so plainly that, in their view, India grows too much food...
Brad DeLong