A Changing Landscape for Farmers in India: An Interview with Tanya Matthan and Aarti Sethi

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In countries around the world, the "Green Revolution" has changed the scale and economy of growing crops, as pesticides, fertilizers, and new kinds of hybrid seeds have transformed the agricultural production process. In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley scholars who study agrarian life in India, where farmers have been forced to adapt in the face of new technologies, as well as environmental and social change.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href= "https://www.tanyamatthan.com/">Tanya Matthan</a> is a S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in Berkeley’s Department of Geography. An economic anthropologist and political ecologist, she finished her PhD in Anthropology at UCLA in 2021. Her current book project, tentatively titled, <em>The Monsoon and the Market: Economies of Risk in Rural India</em>, examines experiences of and responses to agrarian uncertainty among farmers in central India. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href= "https://anthropology.berkeley.edu/aarti-sethi">Aarti Sethi</a> is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Berkeley. She is a socio-cultural anthropologist with primary interests in agrarian anthropology, political-economy, and the study of South Asia. Her book manuscript,</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Cotton Fever in Central India</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, examines cash-crop economies to understand how monetary debt undertaken for transgenic cotton-cultivation transforms intimate, social, and productive relations in rural society.</span></p>