What do we eat?
29 August 2009
Sir, I am particularly worried about last week’s Bhutan Observer story on fallowing of wetland.
Bhutan is considered an agrarian society with little landholdings. As the editorial rightly said, less than 8 per cent of the total area is arable. This is a concern especially because if we lose such a little land to development and fallowing, when will we fulfill our dream of self-sufficiency.
Today, we are importing everything, starting from rice, vegetable oil and salt, from India. If tomorrow, there is a problem in India, what can we eat? Even our farmers would go hungry let alone the urbanites.
Today, the bulk of vegetables we buy from our vegetable markets is brought from India.
How much of it is organic or local. This shows that we either do not have enough land or our farmers are not into commercial farming.
Lately, we have heard that due to shortage of sugar in India, there might be an impact on Bhutan. That is true. It will not only have an impact on the Bhutanese market like price rise like egg, but also send many of us to office without tea to office.
Another issue is the agricultural land lost to construction. We can see that in Thimphu and Paro, a lot of farmland (wetland) is lost to construction every year.
For the name of modernization and development, we sacrifice our land which has fed generations of Bhutanese before us.
During our forefather’s time, Bhutan never depended on any country for food.
Now, we are increasingly depended on India for food although today we talk more about self-sufficiency and food security.
By Sonam Ugyen
Trongsa
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