Indian farmers oppose UK aid plan

Its supporters say Vision 2020 will eradicate poverty: Its critics say it will worsen it

By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent

Six Indian farmers are in the UK to urge the government not to support a radical farm restructuring plan.

They are visiting the Department for International Development (DFID), asking to see the Development Secretary, Clare Short, to make their case.

They say DFID has promised £65m ($93.5m) for the plan, called Vision 2020. But DFID says it has made no specific promises, and there is no formal plan.

A DFID spokeswoman told BBC News Online: "We are giving the state of Andhra Pradesh £65m for poverty reduction, but it is not tied to Vision 2020.

"And it is wrong to call it a plan anyway. It's just a consultation document, covering sectors like health, education and employment as well as farming."

The Andhra Pradesh Government, which has developed Vision 2020, says it will "totally eradicate poverty". It has obtained a World Bank loan to help to elaborate it.

Rural exodus

On farming, it foresees the consolidation of small farms into larger ones, increased mechanisation and the introduction of modern methods, and the use of genetically modified plants, so as to produce food for export.

Farmers fear Vision 2020's effects

The farmers say implementing Vision 2020 would mean 20 million people losing their land or their jobs in farming - a reduction by 2020 of the number of people on the land from 70% to 40%.

A London newspaper, The Guardian, reported last July that it had obtained an internal DFID report on Vision 2020 which expressed "grave reservations".

The Guardian said: "While the report praises some of Vision 2020, it also complains of 'major failings' in the proposal and says the implications of many of the changes have not been thought through.

"'There is nothing about providing alternative income for those displaced', it notes. It also remarks on the 'negative consequences on food security' for the poor if the state's programme of industrialisation is carried out."

Bleak prospects

The farmers who are in the UK to argue against Vision 2020 say the state government has not sought the views of the people who would be affected by it.

Three Indian groups were involved in challenging Vision 2020 - the Andhra Pradesh Coalition in Defence of Diversity, the University of Hyderabad, and the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. The main UK participant was the International Institute for Environment and Development.

The Deccan Development Society (DDS) is a rural development organisation working in Andhra Pradesh.

Clare Short: Helping to reduce poverty

Mr P V Satheesh of the DDS said: "Vision 2020 is an aid package for big farmers and corporations.

"We've reached a fork in the road for farming around the world, and the UK Government is about to send the people of Andhra Pradesh down the wrong track.

"Vision 2020 means huge farms, pesticides, mass mechanisation and GM crops, but it offers nothing but a loss of homes and livelihoods to most of the people who actually live and farm in the region."

Contrary aims

Dr Tom Wakeford, of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, spent six months in Andhra Pradesh working to encourage debate on farming policy choices.

He told BBC News Online: "It's clear these people had never been asked how this development could best be designed to help the poorest people like themselves.

"They said: 'We want our basic food security', which is absolutely contrary to what Vision 2020 would achieve.

"Anything spent there by DFID has to include voices like theirs, or it'll just be about gizmos without addressing inequities."