To the greener pastures
“I want to be a farmer when I grow up.”
That’s the kind of sentence which is never heard inside a classroom. Why? Because none of the parents want their wards to be toiling under the sun. Firefighter? Maybe. Farmer? Fuck off. The wholesome idea is to escape the drudgery associated with farmers. Our immediate forefathers eschewed rural landscape to merge our destiny with urban realities. They moved from their villages to the cities in the hope of finding a better tomorrow. They realized that it’s best to escape the mud and cling to the concrete. This migration helped shape the world we have for ourselves today. Going back from cities to villages would be perceived as demotion.
The bigger question is, would that be so in absolute truth?
If one collates all the available data on the condition of an average lifestyle in a city, it won’t be surprising to learn that we are paying a huge price for industrial modernity. From the polluted air we breathe to the contaminated water we drink to the processed food we consume to the stressful existence we can’t do without, there is more than enough reasons to believe that we are very similar to that frog in the pot of boiling water. We’ll stick to our current situation as long as we can. No amount of studies or reality checks would deter us. We’ll remain here, stuck in a gargantuan traffic, blaming others for the crowd conveniently forgetting we are the crowd. In other words, we aren’t bouncing away to a less crowded, more peaceful place.
Not happening. Anytime soon.
In such a scenario, how exactly does farming and its plethora of derivatives sustain in the larger picture? The simple answer is, you’ve got to know where to look. There are plenty of individuals who proved it’s doable. All one needs is the right sort of information and the zest to lead by example. There are fertile lands — the real worry is about them turning fallow; in fact, a quarter of India’s total land area is turning into desert due to lack of cultivation — and if more initiatives were in place, we might be able to stem this decay. The success stories of urbaners who made it in farming are heard but not loud enough. They are pushed to the fringe of news. You don’t read about them as often as you read about layoffs in tech industries. And that’s where the difference lies. Exposure.
One can argue, why expect the urbaners to turn rustic when the should-be-farmers are busy abandoning their farms for urban promises? Well, maybe they are in dire need of replacement. And in the process, they and their following generation might replace us in the cities. The show will go on, just that the characters will vary. Once we start migrating away from cities, it will complete a circle of sorts: rural-urban-rural.
Of course, these assumptions here are stretched and might never come to fruition but then, we live in a world where the fringes are no more the exception. The world is changing at a pace we can’t keep up with. Trump was a talking orange balloon 5 years ago. He’s the talking orange balloon who happens to be the president of the world’s most powerful country today.
No, wait. That was a terrible example.
How about the spread of Internet or biometrics? 20 years ago, it’d have been a distant dream to imagine a world where technology would be so ingrained in our psyche but lo and behold, here we are sleeping with our phones and waking up to its pings or happily leaving our iris with the government. In so far, we might become something or at least vouch for something we never thought was possible. They say change is constant. I think resistant to change is more constant. In the end, we change and accept newer options.
Who knows, in the coming years, the agro industry, especially the agro-tech, could make us more responsible and in sync with nature. After all, didn’t our ancestral shift from rustic to modern also play a role in our detachment from the environment thus harming it ruthlessly? The answers may either convince us some day or just startle the shit (read: fertilizer) out of us. Either way, it’d be interesting to notice how we cope with our hunger for something real.
Besides, the day more and more parents become acquainted with the possibility of leading a productive — literally and figuratively — existence far away from this rotting mess, more and more kids will be able to raise their hands to utter the beleaguered F-word inside the classroom.
