Carbon Credit for Farmers

The way the climate-friendly manufacturing is rewarded by carbon credit and carbon trading; the policymakers should explore ways to reward our farmers who practice natural farming, organic farming, and traditional farming which leads to reduced carbon footprint by rewarding cash in lieu of their efforts or in some format of carbon trading. — Alok Singh

The world is being controlled, and centralized, and is driven by the branding, and marketing of products and services using the power of financial wealth. Our daily life is a victim of such business processes as taxi booking, food delivery, telecommunication services, hotel booking, flight booking, medicine purchasing, entertainment services, education services, health services, banking services or food we consume, and many more. All these are ruled or are aspired to be led by a few giant technology companies. We need to awaken and demolish the conspiracy to control our food on an urgent basis. The big companies cover making life easy but their ultimate target is to create an indispensable world system for their business and establish themselves as irreplaceable.

The people of the world choose their leaders through a democratic process. If the leader fails to perform as per the commitment to their people, then such leaders are replaced in the next election, maybe after four years or after five years. But who will change the dominant big few technology companies, that wish to rule the world without participating in a democratic election process?  

These technology companies model their business to attract users, kill competition, and finally dictate terms to live, change lifestyle, change food habits, to change the education system, and also delete the traditional assets, traditional knowledge, and traditional habits of their targeted empire. The new business conspiracies are being modeled around the issues of environmental concerns and climate change.

Climate change is the most discussed global issue today. The developed as well as developing countries are committing themselves to chase the benchmarks which support the climate and in the process are remodeling the trade policies and business policies which are climate-friendly. Few players see it as an opportunity to discourage and discard the technology development process of developing nations and argue that since their technology is more climate-friendly so the developing countries should either match the climate-friendly benchmarks of technology access or not rely on polluting indigenous technology but should buy the technology from the already established global technology players who are in a better position to produce and meet the benchmarks of climate-friendly production. 

Technology adaption is usually a step-by-step process but there are routes to jump to higher and better technology from nowhere. There are sectors where the traditional is the best way, the knowledge already exists, a mass awareness campaign needs to be created. In the agriculture sector we have assets which are spread over fifteen agriculture-climatic zones namely- Western Himalayan Region comprising of Jammu and Kashmir, and  Uttar Pradesh; Eastern Himalayan Region comprising of Assam, Sikkim, West Bengal and all North-Eastern states; Lower Gangetic Plains Region comprising of West Bengal; Middle Gangetic Plains Region comprising of  Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar; Upper Gangetic Plains Region comprising of: Uttar Pradesh; Trans-Gangetic Plains Region comprising of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan; Eastern Plateau and Hills Region comprising of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal; Central Plateau and Hills Region comprising of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh; Western Plateau and Hills Region: Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan; Southern Plateau and Hills Region comprising of  Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu;  East Coast Plains and Hills Region comprising of  Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry;  West Coast Plains and Ghat Region comprising of  Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Karnataka, and Maharashtra; Gujarat Plains and Hills Region comprising of Gujarat; Western Dry Region comprising of Rajasthan; and The Islands Region comprising of  Andaman and Nicobar, and Lakshadweep. These fifteen zones are not homogenous and are further classified into seventy-two other sub-zones to attain homogeneity of agriculture climatic zones. 

The diversity of our assets is reflected in these classifications. The big companies engaged in the food business; the other non-food technology companies are aspiring to control this business. In the economies of a scale model of profiteering i.e., high-volume standardized products are the enemies of our agriculture sector. They have already done huge damage and our policymakers are engaged in damage control. The world has realized this conspiracy, Sri Lanka tried to execute organic farming in one stroke and our central leaders are moving towards promoting migration to natural farming.

In the agriculture sector, we are the leaders in producing foods that meet climate-friendly practices and we have an opportunity to emerge as the food supplier to the world by satisfying the constraints of climate-friendly practices. We are capable to change the food habits of the world by promoting natural farming, traditional farming, and chemical-free farming.   

The manufacturers of the world are rewarded with carbon credit if they are able to meet the benchmarks of climate-friendly emission norms for the manufacturing processes. The same carbon credit reward system can be designed to reward our farmers that practice climate-friendly agriculture practices. The contemporary agriculture practice is market-driven, subsidy-driven, minimum support price declaration driven, differential price offer scheme driven, or in one word money-driven. Despite all these policies, the majority f the farmers are at a loss and dependent on government support for survival. 

It’s painful that again the climate change-dependent reasons are being seen as an opportunity by the big seed and chemical fertilizers companies as an opportunity to replace the contemporary chemical fertilizer-dependent agriculture crops with new climate-resistant but chemical fertilizer-dependent other latest crops, seeds, and new chemical fertilizers.

Health and food are the two biggest sectors for profiteering by global companies. We need to act swiftly.  The way the climate-friendly manufacturing is rewarded by carbon credit and carbon trading; the policymakers should explore ways to reward our farmers who practice natural farming, organic farming, and traditional farming which leads to reduced carbon footprint by rewarding cash in lieu of their efforts or in some format of carbon trading. We need sustainable food supply model and not a model driven by marketing budget and profiteering by standardizing the foods for global citizens.

(Alok Singh is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management Indore, a freelancer academician, and associated with AGET Business School, Jhajjar.)
 

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