Poison on our Plate | Ramanjaneyulu GV | TEDxHyderabad

We are what we eat, but how many of us know what we really eat? How many of us know what food does to the environment before it reaches our

plate

? How many of you know what food does to the farmer who produces it? Know? Have you thought? How many of you think, when you eat food, about the farmer who produced it or the fate of the farmer who produced it? These are some of the questions that plagued me when I was studying agriculture. While doing my PhD in agriculture, I had a choice. Like all the youngsters of the 90s, I was also crazy about joining the Indian civil services.

He was reading about the Indian economy. I really understood the Indian economy by reading for an exam. Finally, when I joined the services, I was selected for the Indian Revenue Service. But I also had the option to join as an agricultural research scientist. It was a difficult decision. I made the decision to join as an agricultural research scientist. I thought I should continue working with farmers. (Applause) But that didn't last long, I'll get to that. Before we get to that, let's understand: what is our food? What do we eat? How safe is our food? You all saw this news some time ago.

Pesticide residues in soft drinks and bottled water. But forgotten the next day. Have you ever thought about how pesticide residues got into bottled water or soft drinks? If bottled water and soft drinks had pesticide residues, the water you used to make tea or coffee should also have them. But we never worried about that. The news is short, the next day we forget about it. At least this should remain in your memory: noodles with heavy metals. How many of you thought, how do these heavy metals get into noodles? If lead has to be added to the noodles, the lead is probably more expensive than the noodles.

No one will add it, but it came. How did it come about? If the ingredients used to make noodles had lead, then the 'aata' you used to make your 'chapati' must also have it. Or the 'samosa' you are eating must have it too, right? But we don't connect the dots. The same story when we hear about pesticide residues on vegetables. You are all horrified, but at night you forget it. We all think that if we buy food in a good place or eat it in a good hotel, it is safe. Food is only as safe as it is grown.

End of pipe solutions don't work. Less than 1% of pesticides used in agriculture kill insects, 99% reach the water, air and return to food. We looked at it very casually. We look at everything that happens around us with great indifference. I will give you an example. While I was having lunch, I saw people painting there. What's that? Spray paint. Where is he going? One part goes to the board and the other to the air. You were all eating there. It comes there. We are all educated, we feel we can make connections. We never do them. We hope the farmer will make those connections and produce safe food for all of us.

I think there is a disconnect between what we observe, what we know and how we act. It is a serious problem. It's not just about pesticides. Do you know the eggs you buy in the market, what kind of eggs you are buying? They are haploid eggs. Haploid means that they are produced without male and female meeting. Therefore, if you incubate the eggs, they will not produce chickens. But how are they produced? They are produced through the use of estrogen. And what happens to those estrogens? When you eat those eggs, they will come back to you. That is one of the reasons why puberty in girls has advanced today.

Gynecological problems in women have increased. Breast development in men has increased. Last year's India Today survey shows that the largest number of plastic surgeries performed in India are to remove breasts in men. We find ourselves in a situation where fruit, which is supposed to be healthy, is creating all these problems. Not only are pesticides, antibiotics or growth hormones used in production, but also how they are processed. You may have heard, last week, 10 days, floating around in all the media: artificially ripened fruits. But why are fruits ripened artificially? If you all want to eat fruits out of season: how do you do it?

If you want mangoes in May, how do you get them? Those that are not ripe must be cut, ripened artificially and sold. Bananas that look uniformly yellow. What are they? They are all carbon matured. The apples, the shiny apples that you see. What are they? When were they produced? Where were they produced? Know? California apples, you get California apples. Can you keep it fresh? They are covered in wax. Go back to your house, take an apple out of your refrigerator. Just scratch it. You will see the wax. We are eating all of that. Watermelons that are red are injected with color.

They are injected with growth hormones. We have seen in the news in recent years that the milk being sold says: "The milk is contaminated with synthetic milk." If you want to have milk at 40 rupees a litre, that's what you get. We want cheaper food and there is competition between companies. They pay low prices to farmers. They also contaminate it and then get away with it. All brands of milk sold in Hyderabad tend to be contaminated with synthetic milk. Transgenic foods. How many of you know about this? How many of you have heard of this? Bt eggplant.

I will simply tell you what Bt Brinjal is. When pesticides are sprayed from outside, it damages the environment. As I said, 99% goes into the environment and only 1% kills the insect. So scientists thought: "Why not produce pesticides in the plant itself?" The plant then produces insecticides, so any insect that eats it will die. But what happens to us? Who eats that? Therefore, we have before us several biosecurity issues that were never addressed. What you see here, yellow, white, golden rice, which is going to arrive soon. Do you know why it was done? They say that vitamin A deficiency is a serious problem, that is why we will produce vitamin A in the plant.

If you eat that rice, you will be able to consume as much vitamin A as possible, but did you know that vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin? It is not enough to have vitamin A, you also need to have enough fat, but if you have enough fat in your food you don't need golden rice. In 2005, we came across a farmer in Guntur who was growing Bt Bhendi. We were shocked. I said, "How did you get it?" He said: "The company gave me the seeds." We went to the company and they told us: "We are doing a test." We went to the government.

The government said, "Yes, that's your seed." They said, "You are not allowed." It was eliminated in 2005. In 2013, we also encountered cotton, a cotton that is grown with tolerance to herbicides. No permits. In 2009, when Bt brinjal was allowed, there was a public debate. It was the only time there was a public debate to introduce whether we need a food or not, and it was banned. Sometimes wise politicians make better decisions. But otherwise we would have been inundated with genetically modified foods. Today there is a case pending in the Supreme Court, there is a committee of experts appointed by the Supreme Court that said, "We don't need this for the next 10 years.

Let's wait." There is a parliamentary standing committee that also said: "We don't need it." But you don't know how they're going to get to your

plate

. Food is not only useful energy, but also good for health. It can treat many of the diseases. Food is medicine. It can act as preventive medicine and also as curative medicine. I know many people who work on treating autism with good food. Many of the problems you are seeing (obesity, diabetes, blood pressure) are all due to the foods you eat. You must make a correct decision about your food. Second: what food does to the environment.

Let's look at the ecological footprints. How many of you have seen rice fields? Almost all of them, right? What comes to mind when we think of rice fields? Full of water. How much water does it take to produce an acre of rice? 6 million liters. 6 million liters per acre of rice. Which is equivalent to the annual consumption of 100 families. A family of five eats about a kilo of rice a day. Which is equivalent to a water tanker truck: 180 showers. We all want to eat rice. More and more water is needed for rice production. Let's do a calculation: how much does a meal of rice in Hyderabad cost the environment?

It's probably as big as an entire dam. We need to worry about ecological footprints. It's not just about water, pesticides or growth hormone. All. What does agriculture leave behind before reaching your plate? And not only that. What does it do to farmers? The more pesticides are sprayed, the insects become resistant. They do not work. The first time you spray it, the second time you spray it, the third time you spray it, the fourth time you drink it. That's what we've seen all the time, farmer suicides. The consequence of all this is the increase in the cost of cultivation, but prices do not increase.

A kilogram of rice costs 2,100 rupees to produce, according to government calculations, but today the price for farmers is 1,400 rupees. Today a ton of sugar cane costs 2,000 rupees. A ton of firewood costs 4,000 rupees. How can farmers live? Policies are also unbalanced. Today, the average income of 83% of the farmers in this country is only Rs 5,000. So the farmers have lost their economic independence. Not only economic independence, but also physical independence. These are photographs we have taken of farmers queuing to receive fertilizers. Queuing to receive seeds. Seeds that can produce. Fertilizer that they can make through composting, but they are not subsidized.

If you buy it in a market, they are subsidized. Unbalanced government policies. All this leads to farmer suicides. In the last 20 years, 300,000 farmers have committed suicide. Every day around 48. What's the point of simply discussing the dark side of the image? How much and what we can do to change the situation. Some of us who work in agriculture at various institutions got together and started an organization called the Center for Sustainable Agriculture, in 2004. We started working with farmers, telling them how they can move from high external input agriculture to low external input agriculture. external inputs. basic agriculture.

It wasn't easy, but what we found is that there were wonderful experiences throughout the country. But all of those experiences were taught in ideological frameworks. They don't talk to each other. There are good things and bad things, if they argued among themselves it would have been good, but they never talk to each other. Traditional institutions never cared about them. So we put all the practices together and developed what we call sustainable agricultural practices. The first success came in Kulukulla. Kulukulla is a village in Kamang district that was made completely free of pesticides. The town, which spent around 6 million a year, completely stopped using pesticides. (Applause) The Minister of Agriculture came and said, "Wonderful.

What do you want?" The farmers said, “Make Andhra Pradesh pesticide free.” He was amazed. He said, "Of course I will. But what do you want?" I said, "We're happy with what we have. Let's just change all the farming practices." He brought together all the scientists in the agriculture department to see and then make a change. They said, "Sir, this is a village. We can't do it. It's not possible." Then came Enabaví. It is a completely organic town about 80 kilometers from here. In the last three years, more than 10,000 people have visited the town to find out how farming is going.

But this has not changed anything under the government either. But consumers have changed. Many people have begun to understand what is good for them. This is an advertisement that The Hindu uses for itself. This is a town called Dorli. Dorli is in Vardha. After Telangana, many Vardha suicides are heard. In 2005, the village was put up for sale and the farmers decided that we could not farm. They put the town up for sale. We went there in 2006 and said, "Can we start working together?" Today everyone has paid off their loans and everyone has gone back to farming. (Applause) It is possible.

It's possible. All the examples are in front of us. We also started working with women's self-help groups in Andhra Pradesh. These are the covers of the magazine "Down To Earth", which followed the whole change. We started with 225 acres in 2005. Today it is 3.5 million acres in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana together, free of pesticides. (Applause) Pesticide use has been reduced by 50% in the state. We were third in the country in terms of pesticides used per hectare, today we are 20th in the country. (Applause) This was part of a program by Satyamev Jayate, some of you may have seen it.

On this program we had an interesting discussion. The other side was the largest seller of pesticides in this country. Towards the end, Amir Khan asked me a question: "I am fully convinced of what you say and what you do. Is it possible to do it in theIndia. But how can I convince this man sitting here?” I said, “Ask his brother.” His brother is the largest organic exporter in this country." (Applause) And he said, "Yes." That shows that people see it as a business. If they sell pesticides, they sell pesticides, if they sell organic, they sell organic.

You buy pesticides or other organic pesticides or you certify to us that you have not used any of these things. Farmers become consumers But what are our consumers doing? Then what we did was bring together some consumers from Hyderabad to form a consumer cooperative. called Sahaja Aharam. We also bring together all the farmers to form a farmers' cooperative, so that they can market directly. Today we have 20 farmers' cooperatives that produce organically and sell directly in the market. While many of you worry about the prices. For organic foods, Sahaja Aharam organic prices are 20% lower than market prices, and 75% of what the consumer pays goes to the farmers.

In the normal market, only 20% goes to the farmer. (Applause) What do I see from here? I see a ray of hope. It's possible. If we can all join hands, we can make a change. But there is a long way to go in terms of Government Policies. There is still a serious crisis in agriculture. Yesterday you may have seen about a farmer's suicide. Today, this morning's newspaper, you may have seen it. Many farmers are dying. It is a responsibility of all of us. Business as usual is not an option. We need to change as consumers, we need to change as farmers.

We must all come together to pressure the government to make a change. Otherwise, the future is very, very bleak. Thank you. (Applause)