Actor Kamal Haasan said the farmers were pushed to adopt fertilisers-based farming instead of traditional organic farming as the emphasis of the government’s agriculture policy shifted to mass production.
In an article titled ‘Uzhavukku Vandhanai Seiyum Padai’ in his column in Ananda Vikatan on Thursday, he detailed how agriculture has been destroyed by various stakeholders over the years.
Elaborating on how the decline of agriculture and farmers had unfolded, he wrote that chemical fertilisers and insistence on growing a single crop (only rice or sugarcane) had made the soil infertile over time.
“Farming became less profitable. In addition to the inter-State water disputes, delayed monsoons and dry rivers have forced the tired farmer to look at his balance sheet and decide that farming is not the occupation for him,” wrote Kamal Haasan.
Further criticising the unbriddled urbanisation that affects agriculture in rural areas, he said that politicians and rich people, dabbling in river sand mining, began constructing engineering colleges in the suburbs of cities and towns on agricultural land.
“The farmers send their sons and daughters to the same engineering college built on the land that they had sold. The senior who was studying in the same college the previous year becomes the teacher for his juniors. What he learnt through rote learning he transfers it to his juniors now. This is why they are neither able to become scientists nor farmers and neither learn Tamil nor English properly.”
