Amarillo by morning

January 3, 2017 The terrible news from Amarillo—4 kids killed by rat poison—isn’t any better because it was accidental. Apparently, the rat poison—aluminum phosphide--was under the house and somebody tried to wash it out. The water created a chemical reaction and the rat poison turned to a gas, seeped into the house and killed people. Googling “aluminum phosphide,” you find out that it’s a commonly used poison in grain storage areas (hello, wheat industry!) and a killer used in fighting bed bugs. It is also blamed for the rash of farmer suicides in Northern India and here again farming, food and politics collide. Like many so-called “undeveloped” areas, northern India had a complex culture where people in small towns lived an agricultural year, raising small patches of crops typical of their ecosystems and developing traditions, celebrations, religion and foods around those crops. The many types of Indian foods with their unique flavors and spices were developed over centuries by these little pockets of distinct flavors. If you like Indian foods, you know there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of kinds of curry. You could link each one with a particular village if you wanted. On their own, the microbes and earthworms, the seasons and the farmer traditions kept this land productive. Not over-productive. But enough production to get by. Then, about thirty years ago, American agricultural scientists came to the areas to improve them. Basically, that meant taking over large swaths of land, using machinery and chemicals, and turning in monster amounts of crops. Mostly corn. You might have seen pictures of grinning peasants holding weirdly huge ears of corn. If you haven’t, look at Monsanto’s website. Taking over ancestral lands and plowing it with machinery is nothing new to America's agricultural heritage and we’ve taken it global. BUT we ignore the ecosystem and the complicated cultural traditions that underpin life in those places. Long story short: The peasant farmers and their governments have ended up selling their land to the machinery owners or they have ended up buying machinery and chemicals, borrowing money for the new system. Either way, the peasants lose their culture. And, like in Midwest America, the deep plowing and chemical use resulted in land that cannot produce without American-style management. The microbes and earthworms are diminished, and maybe even extinct. Debt is constant, just as it is in the U.S. and there’s no easy way out of the system. To escape, farmers have killed themselves. It happens. In India and here in America.