The pulse of life

fertilisers is a GHG which has 300 times more impact than carbon dioxide in destabilising the climate. Nitrogen oxides also react with water in the atmosphere to form acid rain.

Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers are based on fossil fuels and use the same process that also made explosives and ammunitions for Hitler during World War II. Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers started being promoted in agriculture when large stocks of ammonium nitrate munitions, left over from World War II, were marketed for agricultural use. The energy intensive HaberBosch process is used to make ammonia — the feedstock for all synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, as well as for explosives. It uses natural gas to artificially fix nitrogen from the air at a high temperature to produce ammonia. To make 1kg of nitrogen fertiliser, the energy equivalent to two litres of diesel is used. Energy used during fertiliser manufacture in 2000 was equivalent to 191 billion litres of diesel and is projected to rise to 277 billion litres in 2030. This is a major contributor to climate change, yet largely swept under the rug.

Green Revolution displaced pulses from the fields, and replaced them with Bt cotton and soya monocultures. 11.6 million hectares of Bt cotton were planted in India in 2014. If pulses had been planted on half this land, we would have had an additional 4 million tonnes of pulses available. In 2014, 12.12 million hectares of land were planted with soya instead of growing the 10 million tonnes of pulses we needed. Why are we growing soya for export and importing the pulses we eat?

With the artificially created pulse scarcity, pulses have become unaffordable for many Indians. This artificially created scarcity is being used by the government to import pulses from corporations like Cargill India Pvt Ltd. Today, we are the biggest importers of pulses. And since the rest of the world does not grow the diversity of pulses we grow, what is being imported cannot replace the diversity necessary for the Indian diet. Large quantities of yellow pea from the US and Canada are imported for billions of dollars. . In 2015-16, India plans to import more than 5 million tonnes of yellow pea from Canada and the US. In 2012, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India had audited the pulse imports and had questioned the repeated import of yellow pea stating, “The ministry of consumer affairs and food and public distribution decided in 2008 that the agencies need not go for further contracts of yellow peas, but the Union Cabinet in 2009 decided to allow the agencies to import these. The agencies continued to import even when they had huge unsold stocks, resulting in a loss of `897.37 crore, 75 per cent of the total loss of `1,201.32 crore.”

But the loss is not only to the exchequer. Import of yellow pea translates into importing nutritional deficiency for people and the soil, and decline in soil health. Yellow pea has only 7.5 per cent protein compared to indigenous pulses having 20-30 per cent.

2016 is the “International Year of Pulses”. It provides an opportunity to remember how important the diversity of our pulses is to the health of the soil and our health. We need to rejuvenate the pulse of life on our farms and our thalis. Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of the

Navdanya Trust