They have a point — most of Indian agriculture is undertaken by small farmers, is rain fed and will be severely hit by climate change. But they were not whining in Cancun. They offered a solution to the planet's imminent crisis. It lay in how they cultivated land. Sitting far away in Mexico, they explained how their farming was based on low inputs, was sustainable and therefore low carbon intensive. A supporting group, Bharati Jan Vigyan Jatha, pointed in a note that the low-input sustainable farming consumes only 1.5-2 calories of energy input to produce each calorie of food energy, whereas the ‘modern' industrial mode of agriculture consumes 7-8 calories of external energy to produce the same food-energy and that 80% of that energy comes fossil fuels (such as huge machinery). Read the full report here.
Source: Bharti Chaturvedi, Hindustan Times, New Delhi.
