12 replies to this topic

[sheepdog]

I find this information about farming in India very fasinating. No wonder the growth in that country is so big! At least they are smart enough to realize where their food comes from. While they may be getting tons of high tech jobs, or at least answering telephones, they haven't forgotten they have to have food to buy with all that money they are making.

With the benifits in place for farming, I suspect that there will always be people who can't handle the life style in the big cities and will be more than happy to stay down on the farm as long as they can make a decent living. I feel much that way myself. Young people may all do a stint in the big city, but when they get a little older (and dare I say wiser?) they may had back to the farm in droves.

[k_nitin_r]

sheepdog,

The problem with farming in India is that the workers have got construction jobs that pay better than farming jobs so farmers have either got to match the pay rate of construction jobs, which is hard to do, or switch to a different business. Some large-scale farmers are able to bear the higher salary expenses but other people have simply sold their farms and decided farming isn't for them any more.

Having said that, I still see farms with crops on both sides of the highway that I drive past every month so when folks say that they've stopped farming or that farming is not profitable, it does not seem to be the case at all - the plants and trees are still out there.

The folks who grow up in cities cannot really head to the farms - they simply cannot adapt to working in the heat and after being couch potatoes all their lives, they can't take the hard manual labor. The older folk who decided to head back to their roots did manage to take to farming at least on a small scale.

[sheepdog]

The fact that farming has never been a high paying job has always been a big part of the problem. I know, I've tried it nearly my whole life. Even when I had other employment, I still had the farm too. With livestock, by the time you buy a little feed for them, and keep them wormed and other things that are absolutly needed, there isn't enough money when you sell off the kids or calves or whatever to pay the cost of what you have put in them.

It's kind of a sad state of affairs. Especially when you realize that you have to have farmers or you won't eat. My fears is that the huge corperations will eventually take over, and then they will forse changes, and we will then have to pay at the grocery stores whatever they demand. Not something you really want hanging over your head. When you control the food supply, you control the people.