The cost of profit – Punjab’s farming decline
It's an agricultural story emblematic of capitalism's obsession with scale, speed, and profit. The shift to monocultures and mass production for global markets has hollowed out local food systems and reduced centuries of wisdom. Creating a disconnect between people, their land, their food, and their traditional knowledge.
Once the cultural backbone of India, the Punjabi farming community is now fighting for dignity, fair prices, and survival. What’s heartbreaking is the story of Punjab is not an isolated one, its reflective of the world we live in where profit has replaced purpose. Communities rooted and based in wisdom now bear the cost of feeding an insatiable global economy.
It mirrors broader patterns globally, where there seems to be a trade-off between short term GDP gain and long-term sustainability. Exacerbated by accelerated climate change which intensifies environmental stresses and vulnerabilities in agricultural systems. Driven by economies of scale, land has become a resource to be mined not stewarded.
What once was the 3rd highest income earning state has declined over the last few decades. Passed down through intergenerational memories, we’ve heard it from our parent to our grandparents – of a Punjab that once thrived. But that prosperity has eroded, chipped away by decades of neglect, political incompetence, and misguided reforms. Hailed as the breadbasket of India, the shift from farming being an honourable and sustainable livelihood to now a debt-ridden struggle has left the community in crises.
In its glorious past, Punjab took pride in its textile manufacturing and craftmanship. Playing a crucial role in India’s food security, the state was a major contributor to the central grain pool. Its economic trajectory is shaped by its established canal system – from which it derives its name ‘Punjab,’ meaning land of five waters (panj āb), referencing the five rivers - and position on international borders. The economy was as loud and bold as its culture and music. But the forces of modernisation and political agenda transformed this prosperous landscape.
The green revolution, what can be seen as both the turning point and slow undoing of Punjab, initiated by Norman Borlaug the developer HYVs of wheat. Borlaug who ironically won a Noble Peace Prize for his work, a prize for having transformed India from a ‘begging bowl to a breadbasket’, forever altering the landscape of Indian farming. Just not for the better.
Due to Punjab's established canal system, fertile soil, and then politically stable environment - the state was chosen as a pilot region for the agricultural experiment. The green revolution introduced a new package of technologies and practices, including High-Yielding Varieties (HYVs) of seeds, chemical fertilizer and pesticides, irrigation expansion, and mechanisation. Farmers replaced seeds with HYV, resulting in a higher yield, and agriculture productivity skyrocketed.
From a country that once faced food shortages, recurring famines, and a growing population in the 60’s, Punjab was now feeding millions. So, in order to prevent widespread hunger and reduce dependence on food imports, the government with support from international governments, rightfully so, rapidly rolled out the new model of high yield agriculture.
Wheat production increased from 1.9 million tonnes in 1960 to 15 million tonnes by the early ‘90s. With greater output and higher revenues, farmers could now afford tractors, better homes, and access to education. Resulting in a rapid modernisation of rural life and a flourishing economy. So where did it all fall apart? The answer lies in the fundamental shift in the role and relationship. Farmers became producers in the supply chain rather than guardians of the earth.
This might sound idealistic, but there is growing school of economic thought that supports this vision. Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, for example, proposes that economic development must operate within both social foundations and ecological ceilings. Punjab’s agricultural crisis is a perfect example of what happens when those boundaries are ignored in the name of growth.
Replacing diverse and climate appropriate crops with monocropping, primarily wheat-rice cycles depleted soil fertility and lowered groundwater tables. Water was overused for paddy, a non-native crop, chemicals were used in excess and without proper dosage. Pests grew immune to pesticides and the excessive chemical use contaminated the air, soil, and water table. Exposing all of Punjab to adulterated pesticides.
Serious long-term consequences have shaped its identity and future. Punjab paid the price for food security. In a study by Thakur, “Epidemiological study of cancer in Punjab”, he found the 'environmental contamination from agrochemicals is a key driver behind rising cancer rates in agricultural belts’. Cancel, renal failure, stillborn babies, birth defects, these are all health issues disproportionally affecting high-yield farming regions of Malwa. ‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson also documented the harmful effects pesticides have on human health, but also the environment.
A loss of biodiversity and overconsumption due to modern food systems has completely destroyed the ecological balance. Today Punjab is facing a water crisis, desertification, and disappearance of heritage seed varieties. A state that relied on farming as its economic backbone is now left vulnerable and struggling. Resulting in rising farmer debt and consequently farmer suicides.
A way of life and occupation no longer enough to survive. Farmer resistance movements – such as the 2020-21 protests which are still ongoing – were not merely about one law or fair pricing, they represented broader struggles and decades of disillusionment and dispossession. These environmental challenges go beyond ecological degradation, system issues like political interference have compounded the crises.
The shift to monoculture farming is not the only contributing factor. Politicians’, in other words industrialists, are marring competition rather than encouraging free markets, discourages investors from spending in the state. Slow development in other industries, leaves Punjab to rely entirely on agriculture. Incentivisation to farm non-native crops such as basmati rice which can earn up to 100,000 rupees as opposed to cotton that only yields 30,000 rupees, has eroded the textile industry too. Combine that with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 90’s, one of Punjab's major textile export markets, and the states industrial base took another hit.
General rise in production costs, automation, and rapid modernisation has disrupted traditional economy, without providing farmers the necessary support and resources to adapt and thrive. Stack on top of that corrupt politicians and the hand they had in flooding Punjab with drugs.
And while the government of India is seeking to solve this problem, their solution and rhetoric is the same - replace old technologies with a new band aid revolution. Introduce new biotech and substitute wheat and rice that was grown for domestic consumption for fruit and veg to export. The narrative remains the same, the relationship with land being profit driven.
This pattern can be seen across many cultures and groups - where farming was once in harmony with the land, soil fertility, climatic conditions, and indigenous traditions, and now against this natural system. A lot of this ties back to the colonization. Elders in Punjab recall being coerced and pressured by settlers to stop planting indigenous forms of plants. In Punjab it was the swap from native cotton to a longer staple form that could be shipped back to the UK to be processed, sold, and profited off.
The green revolution, colonisation, and political corruption all played a part in changing Punjab from a proud agrarian society into a zone of agro-industrial overexploitation. The shift did not just replace seeds and tools, but entire ways of thinking and living. What Vandana Shiva calls the ‘monocultures of the mind’. The rich traditional ecological wisdom was discarded for a singular western model of ‘productivity’. The core notion being that modern industrial agriculture is rooted in a narrow western view, where only one way of extractive farming is legitimized. But diversity - in both crops and knowledge - is what sustains resilience and is essential for ecological balance.
We might not see the pain and suffering caused by our convenience driven way of life, as we stand further down the supply chain as consumers. But those at the source, are bearing the brunt due to the irreversible consequences of our collective greed, indifference, and excess.
Degradation of indigenous systems as a result of colonisation and capitalism is a global phenomenon. In Kenya, the British forced a cash crop system displacing local food production. The quinoa boom driven by western demand displaced the traditional ‘Allyu’ system of Peru and Bolivia. Coffee and flower exports have commodified Ethiopia’s land. Brazil experienced deforestation and displacement of tribes due to industrial soy and cattle farming. Across the ditch in NZ is sheep and cattle. The meat and dairy industry are being driven by export greed. And monoculture livestock farming has become one of the biggest causes of freshwater pollution. Communities are left to deal with the negative social and environmental fallout of western consumption, and suffering as a consequence of our wants and needs.
So, where capitalism pushed for uniformity and volume, we need to pivot back to traditional rhythms of cultivation. Leaning into diversity, seasonality, interdependence, and circular economic systems. Old ways of thinking and living are not as primitive as we make them out to be. Punjab’s story echoes a broader pattern of non-western regions being told to modernize by mimicking the European path. Where Shiva critiques monocultures of crops, Dipesh Chakrabarty critiques monocultures of thought in ‘Provincializing Europe’. The imposed logic that Punjab needed to ‘catch up’ by copying western models is a myth, one that flattened diverse cultural systems into a narrow development script.
This is when alternative economics becomes essential. Economist Tim Jackson in his work on post growth economies advocates for systems that rely on access rather than ownership. ‘Prosperity without growth’ , he champions ways of living that echo many pre-capitalist, community based economies. Concepts of renting, sharing, and repairing. A general degrowth movement can help mitigate the net negative impact we’re leaving on this planet. Infinite economic growth on a finite planet is ecologically suicidal.
We’re slowly seeing the shift back in decentralised local communities and native ecology is experiencing a revival. The cultivation and incentivisation of indigenous crops could create a more ethical, resilient, and climate conscious supply chain. The physiography of regions and indigenous knowledge needs to be capitalized on to create a sustainable future.
We must imagine futures where food systems nourish people, cultures and the planet - not exploit them. Non-western communities have their own modernities, temporalities, and knowledge systems. And so rather than imposing the monocultural western way of ‘modernity’ we need to make space for plural modernities. Perhaps then we can reimagine the golden past of what Punjab once was - rooted and romanticised.
