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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

The solution to saving native cattle breeds lies in organic farming practices, not jallikattu -Aparna Rajagopal
-Scroll.in

A farmer describes her efforts to preserve 12 breeds of draught as well milch indigenous cattle.

On Monday, the so-far peaceful protests against jallikattu on Chennai’s Marina Beach turned violent as the police sought to clear agitators from what had become ground zero of the movement against the Supreme Court ban on the bull-taming sport. Though an ordinance cleared on Saturday allowed the sport to take place this Pongal, the controversy and debate surrounding the issue refuses to abate.

Those who are opposing the ban on the sport argue that this is part of Tamil Nadu’s tradition and that it is the only incentive to rear indigenous bulls, instead of the high-milk yielding hybrid varieties.

It is sad that things have come to such a pass that many feel jallikattu is the last hope for indigenous cattle breed in the state.
 
Then and now

There was a time when animals, particularly cattle, were at the heart of every agricultural unit. They were the source of all the manure for the fields and dairy products, all of which contributed immensely to sustainability. Even after their death, they gave their leather and horns for saddles, sandals and horn manure. They were worshiped because they were so useful and were integral to agrarian life.

However, today the tractor has replaced the cattle in every farm and urea has replaced manure. Instead, animals are reared for meat at factory farms, where they stand in an assembly line from morning to night, waiting for a slow and agonising release from an unremarkable life.

No one knows the names of India’s fast-vanishing indigenous cattle breeds anymore and hardly anyone cares. Traditional cowshed management practices are dead and forgotten, Ayurvedic medicine systems to care for cattle have given way to horrid vaccines and antibiotics hitherto unheard of, pumped in by the pharmaceutical industry.

No one grows the crops that once gave both food and fodder: bajra, jowar, kangini, kodo, sama and mandua. These are now packaged as multigrains and sold in urban organic stores for the upper class. No one cares that we do monocropping, or grow the same crop on a plot of land every year, which increases productivity but depletes the soil, instead of multi-cropping. No one cares that we grow more cash crops than food crops or worry about yield instead of soil and milch instead of mulch.

No one cares that agriculture is dying as a vocation. Farmers are starving (a terrible oxymoron), indigenous seeds are vanishing and traditional practices are all but extinct. Multi-cropping, inter-cropping, companion planting and crop rotation are Greek and Latin to modern farmers, who are all children of the green revolution, with its focus on mono-cropping. Farmers’ children do not want to continue in agriculture and feel ashamed to say that they work with soil. They are all in cities, many in menial jobs earning a paltry sum while their lands lie waiting or are being grabbed bit by bit by developers and land sharks.

While our lands lie unused and our farmers starve, the government is taking on lease land in Brazil and Mozambique to grow food. More and more subsidies and loans are being offered to buy chemicals to grow food and destroy precious top soil. The companies that make chemicals and fertilisers also make the medicines for cancer.

Beautiful cows with sad eyes languish in dark, damp dairies giving birth again and again until they are exhausted and are then towed away to be eaten. They cannot nurture their calves or feed them. They watch their babies starve to death and have their male calves snatched away from them for slaughter. The tiny calves who could become the sturdy beautiful bulls we all are fighting over today are thrown into trucks with their legs broken, heading to an early death all so that our babies can be nourished with milk and we may make more sweets, shakes and ice creams than we will ever need. What a tragedy.

When cow slaughter is banned, buffaloes, which are also indigenous cattle, bear the brunt. The government has now succeeded in convincing China to import buffalo meat from it.

The cattle that are not in factory farms are in gaushalas or shelters running on crores of rupees that come by way of donations. These funds are often misused, while hundreds of cows and bulls lie there without proper food, water, sanitation and medical facilities. Above all, they have no freedom. Many gaushalas are nothing but dairies. The animals stand in their own waste, in a cloud of flies and mosquitoes. No one visits them, volunteers with the shelters or helps contribute to their welfare.

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