rful revolutions India has witnessed is the Green Revolution. It not only enabled the country to combat the food crisis but also helped in attaining self sufficiency in food production. The Indian farmers were more than overjoyed as the Green Revolution fetched them lucrative yields and profits. Since then there has been a drastic transformation of age-old traditional agriculture to modern farming.
“All that glitters is not gold”, is often unnoticed. The Green Revolution turned out to be a bane in disguise. It was based on the assumption that technology is a better alternative for nature’s limits. However, the assumption of nature as a source of shortage, and technology as a source of plenty, leads to the creation of new technologies which create new scarcities in nature through ecological destruction.
Use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, for instance, has resulted in irreparable damage to the biodiversity and the health of soil. Also, the residues of pesticides on the vegetative parts of crops have proved to be a threat to health. We can never forget the incident at Kasargod district in Kerala. An organochlorine insecticide, Endosulfan was aerially sprayed on cashew plantations here for more than two decades. This led to physical deformities, reproductive failures and neurological disorders amongst the people living around the cashew plantations. Small children were the worst affected in the entire affair. Apart from Endosulfan there are other pesticides like DDT which tend to accumulate in the adipose tissues in the body when exposed to them. It takes about eleven to fifteen years to reduce the content to half of its quantity. Thus, it is evident that the technology has harmed mankind more than helping it on the path of development.
These problems have alarmed our country and have led them to go back to the arms of nature and follow what is called “Sustainable Agriculture”. The Indian Government, though at a smaller scale has been encouraging the concept of “Organic Agriculture”. As organic production shuns the use of any chemical inputs, it is likely to be free from any pesticidal residue. Hence, it becomes extremely important to demarcate it from the rest, which is brought about by certification. It is intended to assure quality, prevent fraud and to promote commerce. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India launched the National Programme on Organic Production (NPOP), in the year 2000. The NPOP was responsible in providing mechanism for implementation of national standards for organic products through certification programmes. The Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, has also set up a Regional Centre of Organic Farming (RCOF) at many places around the country like Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Nagpur, Hissar, Jabalpur and Imphal. The objective of the RCOF is to promote organic agriculture, encourage production of organic nutrients, initiation of research in organic farming, provision of training and extension to the farmers and assessment of organic market demand.
In spite of all the efforts taken by the Government, why are the farmers still reluctant to go organic? The farmer is quite aware that his organic produce without certification is of no value to the market. On the other hand, certification norms and procedures are quite stringent and demand a conversion period. Farmers succumb to heavy losses in this transition period. The cost of commercial organic fertilizes like the fishmeal, bone meal or the poultry manure is much higher than the chemical fertilizers used regularly, and hence the per unit input expenditure of an organic field increases manifold. Besides, the market for organic produce is sparse and not well developed. Also, there is no allocation of subsidies for organic production from the Government.
It is very simple to blame farmers and condemn them as non-Environment lovers. But what we generally forget is that making them care for the environment will not fetch them their daily bread. It is impossible to think about environmental protection and conservation when a person is struggling to arrange for two square meals a day for his family and himself. In the past it was us who lured them to the Green Revolution and now again we want them to abandon this technology and go back to the traditional methods of farming. It is time now that we stop expecting too much out of the farmers.
As responsible agricultural scientists, at this juncture what we should advocate is an integrated approach to farming, where the farmer can gradually decrease the use of agro-chemicals and replace them with the organic ones. Thus, the farmer will be exposed to meagre losses during transition. We also need to provide them with concrete evidence regarding the superiority of quality, of nutritional value and of yield in organically grown products. The Government and the non governmental organizations should work synergetically and impart training to farmers. The organic farmers must be encouraged to work in teams where they can handle issues related to production, market and processed goods independently. In this way, the dependencies on the middlemen can be kept at a bay.
Sustainable agriculture does not only show concerns towards environment. It aims at empowering both the society and environment. The farmer is a magician who can turn soil to gold. Let us take small efforts in the right direction to make him realize this fact.
(The author of this article, Ms. Samarpita Roy, is a PhD scholar at the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Pune and is presently working on organic farming.)
Related posts:
- Droughts, Debts and a Death – The fate of Indian Agriculture
- My concerns for “Bt” and hope for “Brinjal”
- My Little Green Room..
No Responses to “Organic Agriculture: From The Indian Farmers Viewpoint”