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Devinder Sharma is an award-winning food and agriculture policy analyst. His writings focus on the links between biotechnology, intellectual property rights, food trade and poverty. He is a regular contributor to STWR and a full full list of his articles can be found below.

The WTO talks actually collapsed because the US did not want to make any commitment to cut its massive subsidies to cotton growers – regardless of pushing cotton farmers in developing countries further into penury, writes Devinder Sharma.

The collapsed Doha Round has staved off a further import surge into the developing world - which would have been no less devastating than the trail of human destruction left behind by a powerful tsunami, argues Devinder Sharma.

The push for more trade to solve the food price crisis is actually aimed at bringing more profits for a handful of multinational corporations rather than providing food to hungry millions, says Devinder Sharma.

It was on the cards. With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announcing the formation of a new rehabilitation policy for farmers displaced from land acquisitions, it is now official -- farmers have to quit agriculture.

Devinder Sharma examines the links between globalisation, trade, and corporate interests, arguing that aggressive trade interests have topped the EU economic and political agenda, even though many developing world increasingly seeing through the inequities of international trade.

China and the US know how to regulate the seed industry, but in India, the seed industry is holding farmers to ransom. Allowing the seed companies to play robbers at the expense of subsistence farmers is a cruel joke that the policy makers can no longer allow, writes Devinder Sharma.

Nearly eleven years after the WTO came into existence, as the impasse over a multi-lateral trade regime continues, it is the ‘development’ aspect that has been sacrificed at the altar of international trade, argues Devinder Sharma.

He came, he spelled out his bias and he threatened. Pascal Lamy hasn’t changed. Unable to throw away the grotty hat he had been wearing all these years, as trade commissioner for the European Union, he now operates as if he is the chief trade negotiator for the rich and industrialised countries.

Agricultural reforms that are being introduced in the name of increasing food production and minimising the price risks that the farmers continue to be faced with, is actually aimed at destroying the production capacity of the farm lands and would lead to further marginalisation of the farming communities, argues Devinder Sharma

As multinationals tightened their monopoly control over rice, a staple food for more than half the world's population, we are witnessing the beginning of a scientific apartheid against all Third World countries, writes Devinder Sharma.

Devinder Sharma argues that much of the agrarian crisis in India is the result of such 'unwanted' and 'cost-intensive' technologies that have been forced on small scale farmers.

For the beleaguered cotton farmers, who consume an overdose of harmful pesticides every year, and are now being lured to adopt genetically modified cotton, there is finally a silver-lining on the dark and polluted horizon. No pesticides, no Bt cotton and there are no pests!

Devinder Sharma examines the unreported, commercial factors which resulted in the Asian Tsunami of December 2004, exacting far greater devastating than would have otherwise been the case, such as agri-business and the tourism industry.

A true reform in agriculture is only possible when the global community accepts the guiding principle that food for all is an international obligation. It can only be achieved when the need for national food self-sufficiency becomes the priority. Developing countries therefore cannot afford to be silent spectators and should protect their agriculture as vigorously as the rich nations do, argues Devinder Sharma.

This was the underlying message of a comprehensive speech delivered at the national seminar on "Alternative Strategies for Development" held in Bhopal, India last month, by one of STWR's contributing writers, Devinder Sharma.

In a recent letter to Tim Grosser, Chairperson of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Committee on Agriculture, a large number of politicians, NGO's and individuals have petitioned for the right of each nation to protect its own agriculture.

We were made to believe that everyone cannot be be fooled at all the times. Ten years after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) came into existence, and looking at the outcome of the sixth Ministerial Conference at Hong Kong, it is time to bury the age-old adage under the heaps of trade drafts.

Devinder Sharma exposes the real beneficiaries of farm subsidies, and explains how approximately 80 per cent of the entire subsidy for agriculture goes to the agri-business companies.

The so-called 'drastic' cuts in farm subsidies promised by the US and EU in the run up to the Hong Kong Ministerial in December are, in reality, merely an eye wash and based on the expectation of further market liberalisation in developing countries, writes Devinder Sharma.

It was too late. By the time, Jai Lal, a landless agricultural worker of Bandali village, in Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh, in the heartland of India, returned to share the good news with his wife – that he finally managed to get a petty job with a shopkeeper – she had succumbed to hunger. A week later, graves were dug for his two children, both unable to continue with the prolonged fight against hunger.

Developing countries negotiators have once again failed to understand the implications of consensus building exercise. Such was the debauchery of ‘consensus’ agreement this time, that the developing countries have allowed the rich countries to increase their agricultural subsidies and at the same time agreed to further open up their markets.

Some 320 million people, a third of the world’s 840 million hungry, go to bed hungry in India. It is not because there is not enough food in India. It is because these people cannot buy food even at ‘below the poverty line prices’. The world has suffered enough from economic lunacy. It is time to stand up and make mainline economists accountable.

Water is an area of growing concern, writes Devinder Sharma, but don’t blame the farmers, it is the seed industry and the agriculture scientists that need to be held accountable.

The World Bank has strange ways of eradicating poverty. Considering that sustainable agriculture is the established link to poverty eradication, the World Bank/IMF forced developing countries to shift from staple foods (crucial for food security needs) to cash crops that meet the luxury requirement of the western countries.

Under the EU's plans to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), big businesses will continue to get most of the subsidies that create starvation and death in the developing world, writes Devinder Sharma.

Despite the World Bank repeatedly painting a faulty picture of the gains that would result from the implementation of the WTO trade agenda, the fact remains that surging food imports have hit farm incomes and had severe employment effects in many developing countries, writes Devinder Sharma.

Green revolution has not only gone sour, it has now turned red. The unexplained number of huge number of suicides a testimony to the entire equation going wrong. However, the fundamental issue of destruction of sustainable livelihoods is not at all being addressed.

Bollywood (and for that matter Hollywood) has to learn to re-write the script for its blockbusters. Robert Zoellick and Pascal Lamy have emerged on the scene. They are both waiting to be hired as script writers. Is Michael Moore and Mahesh Bhatt listening?

The ongoing agricultural crisis has resulted in numerous suicides in India. Devinder Sharma analyses the structural causes and the possible solutions.

If the new proposals for the upcomming WTO talks are accepted, they will accerbate the process of mass displacement of farmers from agriculture in the developing world, writes Devinder Sharma.