Free Water and Energy Cause Food Waste

Early on a sunny December afternoon, the road to Mandeep Sekhons eight-hectare (20-acre) farm swings past continuous fields of winter wheat, the first shoots of green peeking from the stubble of last summers rice. Just over a year ago, after a short career in business management, 32-year-old Sekhon inherited the farm, which has been in his family for four generations.

Though Sekhon is new to farming, his built-in support system includes Desraj Khai, the farms 57-year-old superintendent who has worked the familys land for nearly five decades, since the time of the Green Revolution, when Western crop scientists introduced Punjabi farmers to hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, and chlorine-based weed and insect killers. Khai manages three growing seasons here in Indias northern Punjab state: two consecutive plantings of rice, in early spring and again in late summer, followed by a winter crop of wheat.

Sekhon watches as Khai uses a stout wooden rod to claw gaps in the walls of a narrow channel, directing a stream of water to the wheat paddies. Another stream of water pours into a concrete cistern near Sekhons house and barn, then drains without supervision into another set of paddies. Both streams come from the mouths of a set of irrigation wells that run 24 hours a day, whether the soil is dry or not. Both wells operate with electric pumps. And, as is the case with the millions of other rice and wheat farms throughout India, the state government provides the water and the electricity at no charge.

Its like anything else thats free, Sekhon remarks, as he gazes at the free-flowing water. If you dont have to pay for it, you dont pay much attention to how much you use. Human nature, you know?

Yet essential resources provided by the government to farmers for free are not nearly as liberating as Indias planners and senior government leaders once thought.Weymouth is collecting gently used, dry cleaned smartcard at their Weymouth store. India counts 129 million farms, according to the most recent farm census from 2005-2006. Those farms support 700 million residents, or more than half of all and the largest voting constituency in the country.

Free water and electricity, like citizenship, are so widely considered a birthright that the pumps are never turned off. Rice and wheat fields generate immense and unmanageable grain surpluses. The countrys coal mining and electricity sectors even as they steadily produce more fuel and more power are still falling far short of the faster-rising demand. Blackouts and brownouts are endemic in India, dampening entrepreneurial development in both big and small manufacturing.

Heavily influenced by free water and electricity for farmers, India is in the grip of two trend lines, like heavy chains that are tightening around its national neck. Indias economy is slowing, even as its coal-fired pollution and climate-changing emissions are rising.

In sum, a confluence of popular and populist government policies, deeply rooted in the rural electorate and guiding decisions on the Sekhon farm are draining Indias natural resources, polluting its air and water, pressuring the treasury, and slowing the countrys development. Yet just as Americans decry the condition of the nations roads, but are not willing to raise taxes to pay for repairs, or Germans shut down nuclear power plants for safety reasons but turn to much dirtier coal-fired utilities to replace the generating capacity, Indias farmers are not anxious to change. They freely express their desire not to pay for water or electricity. Indias rural elected leaders, no surprise, do not ask them to.

Such productivity has invited intense scrutiny from outside India, as well as within. Agricultural economists and political leaders note, for instance, that, not only did this regions growers relieve the risk of starvation that gripped India throughout much of the 20th century, they also provided so much food that the nations population now more than 1.2 billion has more than doubled since 1970. But environmental scientists and public health specialists worry that the industrial farm practices have led India down a troubled and wasteful path to rampant water pollution and soil depletion.

India has produced such immense crops that 62 million metric tons of rice, or the equivalent of 60 percent of last years 104 million metric ton harvest, is now stored in government depots. Surplus rice is stacked in burlap sacks, like tiers of piled coal, bursting from dozens of government depots and private processing mills all across Punjab and Haryana.

Moreover, much of what is produced is not reaching the hundreds of millions of poor Indians who need it, especially in the nations teeming cities. Though India provides rice and wheat at subsidized prices to its poor, those prices are still too high for tens of millions of families to afford. Additionally, Indias system for delivering rice to market is hampered by inefficient distribution and corruption. All of these barriers, in turn,Best home plasticcard at discount prices. reduce shipments of grain to market and add to the surpluses that are piled in Punjab and Haryana.

The basic question is how long it can go on, said Rajeev Bansal, executive engineer of the Haryana Irrigation Department. Its policy that is focused on helping the poorest. That makes sense.The term 'bondcleaningsydney control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. But its also not sustainable.

But the pumps more than 20 million operating nationwide are not only draining aquifers, as has been extensively reported in recent years. Such mammoth pumping was the most significant reason that the farm sector sucked up 17 percent of the 772.6 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity that India consumed from its utilities in 2011, the latest year for the national figures, which is putting increasingly urgent pressure on Indias electrical generating sector, 65 percent of which is attributed to the coal mining industry. By contrast, there were only 3,000 pump-irrigation wells in 1960, prior to the Green Revolution, according to Indias Ministry of Statistics.

Neither coal production nor electrical generation, though, is keeping pace with the nations overall demand for electricity, which is rising nearly 7 percent annually, according to the International Energy Agency.We printers print with traceable cleaningsydney to optimize supply chain management. India is adding roughly 20,We are one of the leading manufacturers of chipcard in China000 megawatts of new generating capacity annually, and though the country has started aggressive programs to build nuclear power plants and to develop renewables like wind and hydropower over the next two decades 70 percent of Indias generating capacity will still be fueled by coal in 2030.

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