In September 2020, India passed new agriculture laws that make it much more difficult for farmers to sell their produce at assured rates, as they allow for big corporations to bypass state-controlled markets and buy crops at much lower prices. Since then, various labor unions, political parties, and retail groups have banded together in a standoff against the government to protest this legislation. Strikes are happening in over 20,000 locations across the country; November 26 and 27 of 2020 had a record 250 million people take to the streets in protest, and the marching has not stopped. While farmers continue to hold out in the hope of agriculture legislation reform, it is difficult to get the most current information from the country due to massive communication disruptions. This video details the situation in December 2020, providing an intimate look into the lives, aspirations, and fears of the farmers most affected by the new laws.
The Potala Palace in Tibet’s capital city of Lhasa. H Bieser. CC BY 2.0.
Chinese Labor Camps Threaten Tibet’s Culture and Identity
On Sept. 22, the Jamestown Foundation reported that the Chinese government is running large-scale “training centers” in Tibet. These camps, extremely similar to the secret camps currently used to detain China’s Uyghur population in Xinjiang province, have processed over half a million Tibetans since January.
Tibet is an autonomous region of China with just over 3 million inhabitants who largely work in agriculture. The number of people processed in these camps is staggering, with 543,000 rural surplus laborers having completed the training program in seven months—around 18% of Tibet’s current population.
In the report, researcher Adrian Zenz details China’s efforts to systematically train Tibetan farmers and transfer them to other regions of Tibet and across China. In the government’s efforts to eradicate poverty, Tibetan farmers are offered vocational training and wage increases in exchange for handing over their land and herds.
Farmers in Tibet. Antoine Taveneaux. CC BY-SA 3.0.
With this structure, jobs are created prior to training, and laborers are conditioned to fit the country’s employment needs. Companies benefit from creating jobs for trained laborers; the largest state-owned food company in China, the COFCO Group, is a major transfer location in Tibet.
While the Chinese government maintains that participation in these labor camps is voluntary, the report details that “the systemic presence of clear indicators of coercion and indoctrination, coupled with profound and potentially permanent changes in modes of livelihood, is highly problematic.”
The forced cultural assimilation in these camps is a severe threat to Tibetan culture and history. “In the context of Beijing’s increasingly assimilatory ethnic minority policy, it is likely that these policies will promote a long-term loss of linguistic, cultural and spiritual heritage,” Zenz writes.
While these camps are not identical to the Uyghur detainment camps in northwest China, they bear a striking resemblance. Both programs target the same group—rural surplus laborers—and modify traditional livelihoods through the militarization of education and training. With the removal of religious influence, these camps also “emphasize the need to ‘transform’ laborers’ thinking and identity.”
Ultimately, Tibetan identity is being directly targeted by the Chinese government as it forces Tibetan farmers into the formal Chinese economy. In the effort to eradicate poverty in the region, the Chinese government also seems determined to destroy traditional Tibetan culture.
Sarah Leidich
is currently an English and Film major at Barnard College of Columbia University. Sarah is inspired by global art in every form, and hopes to explore the intersection of activism, art, and storytelling through her writing.
The Amazon Rainforest Was and Still Is On Fire
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the dangers that threaten the Amazon rainforest
The Amazon rainforest during “fire season.” diversityphotos. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
There are a multitude of dangers ranging from climate change to human destruction that threaten the fragility of the Amazon rainforest. The destruction of the Amazon is largely attributed to consumerism and the extraction of natural resources. Without the existence of the Amazon, the world loses a crucial contender in the fight against climate change along with the likely deaths of many Indignenous people and already endangered species.
Reports from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research recorded 2,248 fires last month, a 13-year high and a 20% increase over the norm. Last year around this time, there were about 1,880 fires. However, the worst is likely yet to come as burnings in the Amazon tend to increase until September, the end of “fire season.”
In 2019, the greatest destruction of the fires correlated with the peak of fire season. The increase in the number of fires was likely fueled by President Jair Bolsonaro’s decision to decrease the fines for environmental violations. It gave more leeway for commercial groups and loggers to disregard regulations that help preserve the Amazon. Bolsonaro has been nicknamed “Captain Chainsaw” for his policies that prioritize development over conservation. In an interview, Bolsonaro stated that “the Amazon belongs to Brazil,” so it can do as it wishes with it. As a result, it was estimated last year that every minute, a portion of the Amazon equal to the size of a soccer field was lost due to deforestation.
The process of deforestation results from loggers trying to clear land as quickly as possible. That includes the use of chainsaws to cut down lumber for manufacturing and development. Then, farmers burn the downed trees that remain to make room for crops and pastures. Fire season, then,is the mark of when farmers begin to set these fires. It is important to acknowledge this is not a new practice, but an unending cycle of extracting from the land without replenishing it.
Another sign of deforestation in the Amazon. rosamariavidal. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
A similar phenomenon is occurring this year due to the lack of authority in the Amazon. Just as with last year, many of the fires started so far have been due to illegal loggers. For instance, in the first four months of 2020, deforestation rose by 55% due to a lack of governmental enforcement as Brazil’s attention focused on combating COVID-19.
The spread of COVID-19 also caused many activists and field agents to pull out of the region. As a consequence of the lack of protection by field agents and thin numbers of police, loggers and miners have been able to overtake the Amazon. To show the magnitude of this problem, April’s extent of deforestation was 64% higher than that in April 2019.
Due to international outcry last year over the fires, President Bolsonaro was forced to deploy enforcement to help monitor the fires and enforce regulations. Most new enforcement agents were unable to be deployed for this year’s fire season, though, due to COVID-19. And to make matters worse, the authority of troops currently in the Amazon expired on June 10, so there is currently no one monitoring fire conditions.
Eva Ashbaugh
is a Political Science and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies double major at the University of Pittsburgh. As a political science major concentrating on International Relations, she is passionate about human rights, foreign policy, and fighting for equality. She hopes to one day travel and help educate people to make the world a better place.
Water purification at a modern urban wastewater treatment plant involves removing undesirable chemicals, suspended solids and gases from contaminated water. arhendrix/Shutterstock.com
Microwaving Sewage Waste May Make It Safe to Use as Fertilizer on Crops
My team has discovered another use for microwave ovens that will surprise you.
Biosolids – primarily dead bacteria – from sewage plants are usually dumped into landfills. However, they are rich in nutrients and can potentially be used as fertilizers. But farmers can’t just replace the normal fertilizers they use on agricultural soil with these biosolids. The reason is that they are often contaminated with toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium from industry. But dumping them in the landfills is wasting precious resources. So, what is the solution?
I’m an environmental engineer and an expert in wastewater treatment. My colleagues and I have figured out how to treat these biosolids and remove heavy metals so that they can be safely used as a fertilizer.
How treatment plants clean wastewater
Wastewater contains organic waste such as proteins, carbohydrates, fats, oils and urea, which are derived from food and human waste we flush down in kitchen sinks and toilets. Inside treatment plants, bacteria decompose these organic materials, cleaning the water which is then discharged to rivers, lakes or oceans.
The bacteria don’t do the work for nothing. They benefit from this process by multiplying as they dine on human waste. Once water is removed from the waste, what remains is a solid lump of bacteria called biosolids.
This is complicated by the fact that wastewater treatment plants accept not only residential wastewater but also industrial wastewater, including the liquid that seeps out of solid waste in landfills – called leachate – which is contaminated with toxic metals including arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium. During the wastewater treatment process, heavy metals are attracted to the bacteria and accumulate on their surfaces.
If farmers apply the biosolids at this stage, these metals will separate from the biosolids and contaminate the crop for human consumption. But removing heavy metals isn’t easy because the chemical bonds between heavy metals and biosolids are very strong.
Gang Chen microwaves some biosolids, separating the organic material from the toxic metals. Gang Chen/FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, CC BY-SA
Microwaving waste releases heavy metals
Conventionally, these metals are removed from biosolids using chemical methods involving acids, but this is costly and generates more dangerous waste. This has been practiced on a small scale in some agricultural fields.
After a careful calculation of the energy requirement to release the heavy metals from the attached bacteria, I searched around for all the possible energy sources that can provide just enough to break the bonds but not too much to destroy the nutrients in the biosolids. That’s when I serendipitously noticed the microwave oven in my home kitchen and began to wonder whether microwaving was the solution.
My team and I tested whether microwaving the biosolids would break the bonds between heavy metals and the bacterial cells. We discovered it was efficient and environmentally friendly. The work has been published in the Journal of Cleaner Production. This concept can be adapted to an industrial scale by using electromagnetic waves to produce the microwaves.
This is a solution that should be beneficial for many people. For instance, managers of wastewater treatment plants could potentially earn revenue by selling the biosolids instead of paying disposal fees for the material to be dumped to the landfills.
It is a better strategy for the environment because when biosolids are deposited in landfills, the heavy metals seep into landfill leachate, which is then treated in wastewater treatment plants. The heavy metals thus move between wastewater treatment plants and landfills in an endless loop. This research breaks this cycle by separating the heavy metals from biosolids and recovering them. Farmers would also benefit from cheap organic fertilizers that could replace the chemical synthetic ones, conserving valuable resources and protecting the ecosystem.
Is this the end? Not yet. So far we can only remove 50% of heavy metals but we hope to shift this to 80% with improved experimental designs. My team is currently conducting small laboratory and field experiments to explore whether our new strategy will work on a large scale. One lesson I would like to share with everyone: Be observant. For any problem, the solution may be just around you, in your home, your office, even in the appliances you are using.
Biosolids after collection from a waste treatment facility. Gang Chen/FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, CC BY-SA
Gang Chen is a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION
Cocoa production is an important cog in Ghana’s economy. Wikimedia Commons
Ghana’s Cocoa Farmers are Trapped by the Chocolate Industry
The chocolate industry is worth more than $80 billion a year. But some cocoa farmers in parts of West Africa are poorer now than they were in the 1970s or 1980s. In other areas, artificial support for cocoa farming is creating a debt problem. Farmers are also still under pressure to supply markets in wealthy countries instead of securing their own future.
In research published last year I explored sustainability programmes designed to support cocoa farming in West Africa. My aim was to identify winners and losers.
I looked at initiatives such as CocoaAction, a $500 million “sustainability scheme” launched in 2014, and concluded that they were done in the interests of large multinationals. They did not necessarily relieve poverty or develop the region’s economies. In fact they created new problems.
To sustain their livelihoods, the cocoa farmers of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana need to diversify away from cocoa production. But multinational chocolate companies need farmers to keep producing cocoa.
Diversification
Farmers choose to diversify their crops for a host of reasons. These include a reduction in the resources they need to produce a crop (such as suitable land), and a reduction in the price they can get for the crop.
Cocoa farming requires tropical forestland. This is limited; it is not possible to keep expanding to new land to keep producing cocoa. So when the land is exhausted, farmers would benefit from diversifying to products like rubber and palm oil. They do not need to grow cocoa for its own sake.
A great deal of diversification occurred during the cocoa crisis of the 1970s in Ghana. Cereal output increased from 388,000 tonnes in 1964/1965 to over 1 million tonnes in 1983/83, and decreased when cocoa was “revitalised”. The same was the case with coconut, palm oil and groundnut.
But such diversification is more recently being prevented by multinationals and other stakeholders who want cocoa cultivation to continue. Multinationals that depend on cocoa as a raw material openly (and rightly) regard diversification as a risk to their business. So they keep spending on cocoa farming inputs.
Why there’s a limit to cocoa
In West Africa, cocoa has historically been cultivated using slash and burn farming. Forest was cut down and burned before planting, and then, when the plot became infertile, the farmer moved to fresh forestland and did the same again.
The new land offered fertile soil, a favourable microclimate and fewer pests and diseases. Growing the cocoa took less labour and yielded more.
This explains the link between cocoa farming and deforestation in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. A recent investigation showed that since 2000, Ivorian cocoa has been dependent on protected areas. Almost half of Mont Peko National Park, for example, which is home to endangered species, as well as Marahoue National Park has been lost to cocoa planting since 2000.
In Côte d’Ivoire, the area covered by forest decreased from 16 million hectares – roughly half of the country – in 1960 to less than 2 million hectares in 2005.
Forestland is finite. Slash and burn is no longer an option, because so much of the forest is gone. In West Africa, planters are now staying on the same piece of land and reworking it.
This has created its own set of problems.
Rising costs and threats
In both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, several estimates of the cost of maintaining a cocoa farm show that the investment costs required for replanting have approximately doubled. One estimate of labour investment put the replanting effort at 260 days per hectare, compared with 74 days per hectare for planting using slash and burn.
The extra labour needed for sedentary cultivation is leading to child trafficking and child labour in cocoa cultivation. Child trafficking generally occurs when planters are searching for cheaper sources of labour for replanting.
Planters who have successfully diversified into other crops have stopped using child labour. In the cocoa industry, however, the use of child labour is increasing. For example, the number of child labourers in the Ivorian cocoa industry increased by almost 400,000 between 2008 and 2013.
There has also been a massive increase in the use of fertilisers and pesticides to aid cocoa production without slash and burn.
The increased input (labour, fertilisers and pesticides) for replanting land amounts to a higher production cost. It cannot be adjusted by price setting. Cocoa producers have no control over price; they are price takers. So the higher production cost reduces the profit made by cocoa farmers.
This explains why cocoa producers in Côte d’Ivoire are poorer now than they were decades ago.
In Ghana, the government, through the cocoa marketing board, COCOBOD, has managed the transition from slash and burn to sedentary farming. The government created a mass spraying programme to control diseases and pests. It also subsidised fertiliser and created a pricing policy that has sometimes amounted to a government subsidy this links need users to subscribe. Due to the extra free input provided by the government, sometimes supported by NGOs and multinational corporations, farmers have not become poorer in Ghana. But the approach has led to huge debt for COCOBOD. For example, COCOBOD incurred GHc2 billion (US$367 million) debt for subsidising the price of cocoa for the year 2017.
Although cocoa planters are faring well in Ghana, it is not clear that Ghana’s cocoa sector is really a success story. The shift to debt financing has artificially produced the success.
The way forward
Cocoa “sustainability” activities are not the way forward. Cocoa sustainability is a new form of colonisation in Africa, because its real goal is to prevent African planters from diversifying away from cocoa into other crops. These programmes keep the cocoa industry going under deteriorating conditions.
The way forward is to switch from cocoa to crops that do not require forestland (new or exhausted), extra fertilisers or more labour.
Research has shown that cocoa planters in Côte d’Ivoire who have diversified into other crops, such as rubber, have succeeded in escaping poverty.
But that is seen as a major threat to the supply of raw material to Western multinationals. One representative of a large chocolate multinational explained “my enemy is not my competitor in the purchase of cocoa, but the rubber industry.”
In conclusion, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire have to think about what is best for them instead of what is best for the chocolate industry and consumers in the developed world.
MICHAEL E ODIJIE is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION
CANADA: Nova Scotia
The Perennial Plate spent a month in Nova Scotia, documenting the province's fishermen and farmers in a series of films, this is montage compiles some of their favorite moments from the shoot.
NEPAL: Invisible Farmers
In the southern lowlands of Nepal, where the cold still bites harshly in winter, lives a voiceless, landless community of marginalized ethnic groups who have spent their whole lives working for others. With no piece of land in their names, and no opportunities, they are Nepal’s invisible farmers.
NO LAND FOR US
“I have worked on farms for more than forty years for landlords, and yet I don’t have a piece of land. What else can I do?”
Above: Jaga Majhi, a landless inhabitant of Bagaiya village.
Meet Jaga Majhi, an elderly inhabitant from the small village of Bagaiya in the Bara District, located in the southern lowlands of Nepal. Like many of the older generation here, Jaga tells me that he can’t remember exact year of his birth, although his citizenship card states 1938. He died of old age in August 2015.
Jaga's grandchildren play within their home.
Over the last few decades landless squatters in this region have built meagre huts to house their families. They have been here for all or most of their lives, and yet have no formal title to the land they live on, and most of them work on farms for their landlords, on a daily wage basis.
Above: [1] Locals struggle with the cold in the early winter morning. Poor housing and lack of sufficient clothing make life difficult during winters. [2] Shyam Chaudhari works in the field for a daily wage. [3] Keeping goats can help earn a living. [4] Daily wage workers.
Most of the inhabitants here belong to marginalized ethnic groups such as Tharu, Musahar, Chamar, and Majhi. These ethnic groups are also viewed as ‘untouchables’ by the traditional and complex caste system, that is still present in many parts of Nepal.
Above: [1] Children inside a classroom at the local primary school. The school has two rooms with no furniture inside. They were able to make this school building at the end of 2010. Around 60 children come to study here. [2] An old man walks into a village of landless squatters.
With no piece of land in their name and an utter lack of opportunity, they remain as impoverished as ever. This is the story of those who have spent their entire lives working for others — they are Nepal’s invisible farmers.
Above: The women also work in the fields on a daily wage basis, but receive a lesser payment than men for an equal day’s work.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA
KISHOR SHARMA
Kishor is a freelance documentary photographer based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He studied Photojournalism at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and is interested in using photography as a means of storytelling.