Khet Jyoti Fund was created to provide debt relief to farmers in dire circumstances in India’s suicide belt. This fund is a participatory action fund intent on transitioning farmers from input intensive agriculture to self-sustaining, organic agriculture that creates it’s inputs on-site, and disconnects the farmer from the need to take out further loans.
In Depth
Most rural farmers do not have official documentation for their land. Consequently, they do not qualify for banks loans because of a lack of proovable collateral. They choose to deal with private money lenders, though private money lending is officially illegal. When a farmer can no longer pay their debt, their options are bleak. Often they commit suicide or have their family land seized by debt collectors.
Our goal is to disconnect the farmer from the expensive seasonal input cycle, by making him/her self sufficient, saving seed, and a successful profitable organic example in their community.
Khet Jyoti Means Farm Light
The Khet Jyoti Fund. Khet Jyoti Fund, or Farm Light Fund was given life by generous donors like yourself. It structures debt relief packages for struggling farmers in India’s suicide belt, while offering a four-year participatory remediation program from chemical to organic agriculture to restore the vitality of their land, create better managemment strategies, and create their own organic fertilizers and pesticides onsite. Additionally,Act Naturally works with the farmer to provide non-GMO seedstock, insurance against crop failure in the interim years, and farm education and resources sourced locally.
Act Naturally Steps in Where Government and Corporations Fail
The debt relief packages provided by the Indian government have restrictions that disqualify many people in urgent situations. Act Naturally will provide debt relief regardless of credit qualification based on demonstrated need. The farmer and family is interviewed. Local farming unions, associations and groups are consulted informally to discuss any history that maybe associated with the indebted farmer. Local N.G.O.Ss and civic organizations working in the area will also be consulted. These interviews are conducted to understand the cause and scope of debt.
In the cases where the debts are categorized as an effect of globalization, the farmer can opt for a conditional sponsorship for four years. The sponsorship is in place to migrate the farmer away from industrial agriculture which ties the farmer contractually to seed providers such as Monsanto, loan sharks, and pesticide manufacturers. These ties create a cycle of dependency and debt, and devalue agriculture as a healthy, profitable and nutriative alternative to poverty and urbanization. The final product available after four years of remediation, is a value added, healthy, low carbon footprint produce – a profitable preferred alternative at the local market place.
Our goal is to disconnect the farmer from the expensive seasonal input cycle, by making him/her self sufficient, saving seed, and a successful profitable organic example in their community.
When you donate to the Khet Jyoti Fund, you are donating to the first of its kind grassroots initiative that goes beyond handing out money and food for those marginalized and starving, to handing over tools to empower their own transition.
In an article posted to Yes Magazine critical of the World Food Program, Eric Holt-Gimenez, states,
“International trade agreements and pressure from the global North opened up entire continents to cheap, subsidized grain from the North. This put local farmers out of business, devastated local crop diversity, and consolidated control of the world’s food system in the hands of multinational corporations. Today three companies, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill, and Bunge control 90 percent of the world’s grain trade.”
The situation is same in India, who became victim to the quick-fix, top-down Green Revolution of the 60s, which handed India’s fields over to mega corporations who sold war chemicals as agrichemicals, and stripped India’s fertility and earth movers of their prana.
The Khet Jyoti fund also covers Act Naturally’s operating costs. A full schedule of these costs are published bi yearly and are made available to all members and subscribers. Our goal is to keep all operating costs, including payroll below 30% of al monies collected. That means we direct 70% of all monies into our mission with full disclosure to our members.
A donation of $100 can mean the difference between a family losing their ancestral land, feeding their family or making ends meet for one more month! In these situations, so little, can mean so much!
The Problem: Farmer Suicides
Summary of Causes
There are many causes for the stress in the farming community that leads some farmers take their own lives, and/or the loss of their ancestral lands. They are dominantly related to public policy and economic strategy.
- Threat of violence to farmer and family from illegal debt collectors
- Lack of support from a government that is focused more on India’s technological future
- Legal tender system forced through majority rule on communities that bartered
- No advice from the government on how to conduct agricultural operations or adjust to changes in climate
- Income from farming is not enough to meet the minimum needs of the family
- Widening gap “price scissors” between industrial and agricultural prices
- World Trade Organization and developed nations’ subsidies that make India’s products uncompetitive in world markets thus lowering demand and price. This is particularly true in the case of cotton farmers in Vidarbha whose cotton competes against subsidized U.S. cotton
Corruption at every level of government siphons off certain relief monies before they reach the intended - Absence of adequate social support infrastructure at the level of village. No counselors. Issue is taboo.
- Rising prices of dowry causing huge hardships on family. The price of everything in the open economy is more, and the husbands families are demanding more as they seen grander lives advertised
- Relief packages organized by the central government did not take in account farmer’s demands, or those of civil society organizations, local government bodies or panchayats as reported by an audit of the state done by Green Earth Social Development Consulting.
- The same open market policy followed by India which has been a boon to foreign investors coming into the IT industry and benefiting Indian IT Engineers is causing an ever widening price gap between the food the farmers must eat to survive and the price the farmers get for their food in the market.
- Rising cost of cultivation
- Lowering water tables and lack of irrigation facilities. Expensive bore wells are now needed in some states. Poorer farmers can’t afford, and their lands are bought out by larger more successful farms.
- Reduction in agricultural subsidies
- Agricultural pollution such as nitrates, salts, pcbs, organochlorines, creosote, and sulfates causing dead water zones, eutrophication and higher levels of cancer where these have entered the drinking water supply
- A push for cash cropping and mono cropping means a total loss of income when crop fails
- Pressure to use genetically modified seeds that are not acclimated to the fluxes in India’s climate. Pests are adapting.
- Subdivision of land through successive generations of sons in certain areas make the size of land too small to grow enough food to sell
- Compensation for acquired lands are often mismanaged by farmers who have not had experience or education on money management.
- Money is spent quickly. After it’s gone there is no land to produce a livelihood
- Compensation for lands acquired under the Land Acquisition Act and SEZ are often under the fair market price