Why things are so bad
There is a drought so the land is barren. This means that the farmers have to pay for chemical fertilisers and pesticides to grow their crops. They’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s difficult to tell them something different. The people who supply them charge far more than they should, and more than the farmers make when they sell their crops. This means that the farmers are all making a loss. Initially cotton yields were high but then the soil gets used to the chemicals and the amount of cotton grown drops.
‘What would you do if you were in their shoes?’
The farmers were poor to start with but now they have so little money it’s hard to imagine. They cannot support themselves, let alone an entire family. Most of the farmers who have taken their own lives have been deeply in debt. They are driven to the edge and then cruelly pushed over. If you can’t support yourself or your family, you don’t have enough food or water, you don’t have crops that grow properly, you don’t have any money, and you don’t see any way for the future to get better – then what have you got left to do? These farmers can only see one way to end their pain and misery. What would you do in that condition? It’s easy to say that you would just keep trying, but I think that would be a much harder decision if you were in their shoes.
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