Brazil’s President Bolsonaro, is the chief guest at India’s Republic Day Parade on January 26 this year. But sugarcane farmers around the country are not happy with his visit and protesting around the country for the last three days.
Brazil, largest producer of sugarcane and sugar exporter in the world complained to WTO (World Trade Organization) questioning the support of Indian government to the sugarcane farmers and alleges that WTO domestic subsidies and support rules are violated. Also other top sugar producing nations- Australia and Guatemala have also complained to WTO with similar allegations. The major complaint lodged by them against India is Along with Brazil, Australia and Guatemala have also lodged complaints against India. These countries allege that subsidy given by Indian government to farmers is excessive ie.. many times crosses WTO permitted 10 percent support of production value and causes enormous losses to other sugar producers in the global sugar market. In short they demand withdrawal of all crop support prices to farmers and other incentives given to domestic sugar industry. By inviting and rolling red carpet to president Bolsanaro present NDA government wants to please major multinational corporations in world sugar trade on the expense of five crores of small marginal and tenant sugarcane farmers and to destroy their livelihoods. President Bolsanaros, a known destroyer of Amazon’s natural environment, rights of indigenous people is now collaborating with another right wing Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi to destroy the livelihoods of 50 million poor Indian sugarcane farmers.
They want Indian government to withdraw all Minimum Support Prices (MSP) given to sugarcane farmers presently. Brazil’s complaint includes India’s FRP (Fair Remunerative prices) announced by Union government and the SAP (Special assistance Prices, announced by some state governments) have been challenged in addition to export subsidy concessions extended to sugar mills to clear over burdened sugar stocks. According to the WTO rule book MSP or MPS & ERP (market support price and External Reference prices respectively) are calculated based in reference to 1986-88 cost of crop cultivation. The Support price announced by government in 1986 was Rs 156.16 per ton. After several militant struggles waged by various Kisan organizations in the country citing sky rocketing cost of inputs and cost of cultivation the government was forced to revise periodically MSPs. Current MSP for sugarcane stands at Rs 2,750 per ton. Even this price is not adequate and Kisan organizations demand the government to follow DR. Swaminathan Farmers commission’s recommendations i.e. Rs 5,000 per ton as MSP keeping in view of inflation, increased cost of production and fmily expenditure. Organizations. While Brazil and other nations cite the Price gap between Rs 156.16 (from 1986) and current price Rs 2,750/ton as excessive increase and a market trade distoration dolled on to Indian sugarcane farmers liberally. And this price difference exceeds the alleged 10 % WTO permitted support price levels.
In fact the state does not pay guaranteed support price to cane farmers but asks sugar mills to pay them instead. The sugar mills chronically default payment of sums towards the cane supplied by farmers. The unpaid aerials to farmers by sugar mills often runs in to thousands of crore rupees, thus impoverishing crores of small and tenant farmers leaving no money for next season crop expenses and family expenditure. Again after pressure from farmers for payment of unpaid dues, government has recently paid thousands of crores of rupees, bank soft loans and various other export and transport incentives. The Sugar mills receive huge sums of money from government and never clear the unpaid dues to farmers. Thus the alleged (by Brazil and Australia in their complaint) excessive crop support given to Indian farmers never reaches them. Even the level of support calculated keeping the inflation in view amounts nearly 2.6 % but not the alleged 10%as alleged in WTO complaint.
Of late India’ s sugar production is gradually rising and in 2019 it touched 31.0 milliion tonnes. This has been achieved due to red rot disease resistant high yielding sugarcane varieties developed by breeders in ICAR and hard work of small farmers. Today India is the second major producer of sugar after Brazil. During 2018-19 we exported nearly 3.68 million tons to clear excessive domestic stocks. While Brazil exports nearly 42.0 % of its sugar production and dominates world sugar markets. Australia too exports 90 % of it’s production. Sugar is a big business in the world running in to more than 100 billion US dollars in world commodity trade with links to brewarage & biscuit industry. The world trade is precisely controlled by major wesrern multinationals such as Sudzucker (Germany), Cosan Cmmercio (Brazil) and others. The multinationals want to destroy Indian self sufficiency in Sugar by ruining livelihoods of 5 crore sugar cane farmers so that they can enter and dominate the huge 130 crore Indian market.
Present NDA government as part of it’s anti people neoliberal economic agenda wants please multinationals from Brazil and other western nations by destroying the livelihoods of Indian sugarcane farmers. Similar to recent farmers resistance to avert RCEP diary import agreement with Newzeland & Australia, our farming community should continue present united struggle and force Union government to convince Brazil and other nations to withdraw their complaints to protect interests of Indian sugarcane farmers.
Dr Soma Marla, Principal Scientist (Biotechnology), New Delhi, India
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