Across wide swathes of Tamil Nadu, a surreal sight: abandoned farms with packs of angry, hungry emus. According to the state government, over 12,500 of the great Australian flightless birds — the world’s second-largest, after the ostrich — have been abandoned by the plantation’s promoters, who were fleeing angry investors. Perhaps as many as 40,000 people invested heavily in the plantations, lured by promises of fantastic returns. Emu meat, they were told, is one step away from being on plates all over the nation and in Japan; the feathers could be used in clothing; and even the birds’ skin was used in handbags or shoes. Investors who put in Rs 1 lakh would double their money in a few years. It sounded too good to be true; and, like all things that sound too good to be true, it wasn’t true.
The possibility that even arid land can be put to extremely profitable agricultural use, for large-scale husbandry or plantations, has a seductive appeal. It is this hope that underlay the importation of the emu, a bird accustomed to the stark semi-desert of the Australian interior, capable of eating almost anything as well as of going for weeks without food and days without water. Indeed, in the absence of regulatory intervention, it seems emu plantations are now spreading from the south to the north. Some companies have tried to make money in similarly arid areas off jatropha plantations, expecting the biofuel from the plant to fetch them a good price in the market; but it turns out that jatropha is like any other plant, and needs water and nutrients. And it turns out emus don't thrive in Tamil Nadu — and there isn’t much of a market for them anyway, because the Indian non-vegetarian is a finicky eater who doesn’t exactly experiment with new meats. Before jatropha and emus, there has of course been a long history of plantation swindles centred on teak and other hardwoods. Several of these plantation scams promised enormous returns, but after a decade-and-a-half; so authorities are still dealing with complaints from those who gave swindlers money in the mid-1990s.
The belief that cheap, relatively unproductive agricultural land or degraded forest land can, if turned into agricultural or livestock plantations, bring in enormous returns, is clearly common — and mistaken. The Planning Commission, investigating whether degraded forest land should be handed over to companies for “industrial plantations”, discovered that it would be unproductive unless there was at least one metre of fertile topsoil. But that would be enough topsoil for the forest to restore itself, or for most sorts of multi-cropping anyway.
Meanwhile, thousands of hapless emus, victims of greed and ignorance, are being fed out of state funds by low-ranked government officials terrified of their red eyes and, with reason, of their powerful kicks. (The emu’s thigh muscles are among the strongest in the animal kingdom, and it is a tough fence indeed that can keep them penned in.) Nobody is quite certain what will become of the birds, now that the government has been forced to take responsibility for them. Perhaps there are synergies with other government schemes? Perhaps there is a surplus of foodgrain in the PDS that must be used as fodder or wasted? And perhaps, Tamil Nadu’s famous mid-day meal scheme can be used to give the state’s children a taste for emu meat?