The problem with ideologically biased people like Vandana Shiva is that their solutions are usually incoherent and will not resolve the problem. See this interview for example. Do you see anywhere that there is a coherent, pragmatic and possible solution to the increase in food prices? no. Consequently, this entire interview was polemical and frankly bizarre.
See this question. What's the reason for the increase in food prices? And Vandana talks about farmer suicides. She talks about wheat production and then says mutually contraditory things like, "We are still self-reliant in food, but we are being forced to import". The interviewer asked about food inflation and she is talking about paying MORE for food to the farmers. Besides being incoherent, she obviously does not know anything about how end consumer prices are formed, the farmer cut is tiny. She forgets that it is only due to the utilisation of nitrogen based fertiliser that India became self reliant on food.
Consequently, reading the rest of the answers made me wonder. Look at the very short term solution that she is providing: "There is a very short term solution – give up the industrial agriculture using fossil fuels, high cost imports. " The mind boggles, Comrade Shiva, the days that a state could order something like that to happen has long gone. No discussion about the distribution system, no talk about crop credit, no talk about the corruption of the state, no discussions about the deficit financing, nothing about the sheer productivity hellhole of the tiny farms, nothing about the local labour market in India, nothing about the problems with local mandi's, zilch, zero...
But yes, I do agree that Governments have to do something about the provision of food for the poor, but thank god, nobody hears much about what intellectually incoherent suggestions that are being pushed forth like this. This will cause more problems than it will resolve.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
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