Organic cotton project helps farmers of India avoid suicide

In the Akola region of India, 5,000 debt-ridden farmers killed themselves in 2005 and 2006. Their deaths are part of India’s 11-year catastrophe of 10,000 or more farmer suicides a year.

The suicides -- most of them in four of India’s 28 states -- have been blamed on despair in the face of high-interest debts, international competition, droughts, and the high cost of seeds, fertilizer and pesticides.

According to The Economic Times, the Arvind company went to Akola last February to test an organic cotton growing project that allows farmers to grow a money-making product without fertilizer or pesticides.

Simple success. Since February, the 33 villages involved in the project have reported no farmer suicides.

Arvind Ltd. is on to something. It’s called hope. India’s government should encourage more of it.

Frank Warner