Fauji Mandis

Agriculture : Agriculture is not the same today as it was a few centuries ago, leave alone when man started realizing the value of land and turned settlers rather than hunter gatherers. That’s when man started settling down growing fruits, vegetables, grain and livestock. Agriculture was always about growing for one’s own family and for self sustenance. Not today or a couple of centuries ago. The colonial powers focused on cash crops like tea, coffee, cotton, cocoa & sugar in their colonies. Eventually with rising populations, agriculture and animal husbandry started becoming a source of income for the small farmer, common man and for traders. It was then, that agricultural communities started getting dumped with chemicals, fertilisers, pesticides and performance enhancing chemicals – aka poison. The food wars had begun. It became all about growing more with less land and lesser resources and also for more and more people. Dwindling land holdings, a rush towards urban and semi urban centers and also better work and life opportunities, started drawing the younger populations from villages to towns and cities. This made the available manpower scarce and hence the smaller farmers started getting marginalized. He could grow more produce with the locally available poison but didn’t know where and how to sell it. That’s where we are today.