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In a valley in India there was a community of subsistence farmers. They grew locally adapted crops, primarily rice I think. This they supplemented with wild food from the surrounding forest. They had a pretty good existence based mostly on exchange trading and gifts. In good years they had a surplus to take to market to buy the things they couldn't or didn't grow, and in bad years they worked harder, but generally they had a lot of leisure time and their system never left them destitute.

Then along came the aid workers. They brought new technology with them in the form of diesel water pumps, and were determined to show these ignorant people how to do things properly. The unanimous initial reaction of the people was to tell the aid workers to get lost. The people were perfectly happy with things as they were and saw no reason to work their butts off for 'more' when they had enough already.

The aid workers didn't give up. They worked away at individuals and finally got two or three to agree to try the system out, by appealing to the greed that is there in all of us. The system involves the new strains of rice that required more water but produced a higher yield, so the farmers allowed the workers to install the pumps, which were a gift, and the grain, which was ridiculously cheap, and got on with it.

Of course when harvest time came around there was a glut of rice. The price crashed locally so the other farmers lost out on their surplus. As a result of the price crash, a few more farmers got hooked in, compounding the problem, particularly for those still sticking to the traditional land use. To make matters worse the water table was getting lower as a result of the extraction. This reduced their yields.

As the other farmers realised that they would have to embrace the new technology, mysteriously the aid project finished and they found they would have to buy the generators and pay for the boreholes to be sunk. Most could not get the bank loans to do this and some just refused anyway. Many lost their land and the farms became consolidated into bigger and bigger ones. The water table went even lower neccessitating deeper boreholes and eventually there were no small farmers left.

The valley is now a monoculture. I don't know where the people went, probably a shantytown.

- Savage, www.eco-action.org