This week your columnist was invited to two conferences on organic agriculture : the first, Jaivik India , was a ‘market-led’ conference by Exhibitions India group , sponsored by the leading organic brands and organic accredition bodies , and the second was brainstorming at TERI on ‘policy and institutional support for organic agriculture’ . Many speakers and themes were common to both – though as mentioned earlier, the first conference was looking more on the ‘demand side’, and the second on the production or the supply side. While there is no apparent contradiction in both, a holistic policy should perhaps look at farmers and livelihoods as the primary concern.
The main highlight of the first conference was the keynote address by Som Pal, a former member of the Planning Commission and a practicing organic farmer himself. In an erudite address, he quoted from the Bhoomi Sookta of the Atharva Veda: O Earth, all the energy, including the nourishments is born of you to energize all lives. You are our mother, and the rain water, our father. You bear and rear us. The Sookta goes on to say: Whatever I mine (take out) of you, may it get replenished, or grow soon. O the purifier and protector let me not harm your productivity, nor heart your feelings.
However, the commercialization of agriculture, and the increasing dominance of the agribusiness corporations has taken away the balance, and in the short term quest to achieve production targets, the harmony between soils and plants has been lost. He questioned the tall claims being made by the ICAR system on food security: the point made by him was that one did not have to go by the ‘volume’ and ‘weight’ of the produce, but on the nutrition index. Thus the newer varieties of wheat and rice did have higher yields – but in terms of protein values where significantly lower than the indigenous varieties. These seeds retained a lot of water – and it was the most inefficient way of moving water from water stressed areas of Punjab and Haryana to the East and the North east.
Again, the support that was available to the fertilizer industry was five times the support given to the Agriculture Ministry , and was directed mainly to the large and medium farmers who had the ability to access fertilizer for their farms. This was something which the ‘organic industry’ had to challenge – for unless the market dynamic was mainstreamed in organic production and retail, it will continue to be a niche product. He said, “it is therefore high time that organics be developed into big business, because only business can take on business. Production and supply of inputs and techniques, including organic manures, biological control of pests etc., organizing certification, inspection and marketing with duly labeled consumer assurances can only be done by big business.”
The encouraging news was that both the domestic and global demand for organic produce was growing, and given India’s biodiversity, it was possible for our farmers to produce the largest variety of foods, spices aromatic and medicinal plants. Moreover, in the vast stretches of the rain fed areas which had been by-passed during the Green Revolution, this was a golden opportunity to leverage the ‘natural farming systems’ as an important growth driver for the economy. However, to tap this potential, a partnership with corporates and entrepreneurs was essential, and as this column has reported, it was possible to establish these linkages under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana.
The TERI brainstorming addressed policy and institutional support for Organic Agriculture in India. The discussion paper, prepared jointly by TERI with NISTADS for the Agriculture Ministry had identified ‘domestic demand’ and ‘input management’ as the two critical areas. For while it is good to look at the high returns from the export market for organics, in the long run, organic production made sense, not just because it was good economics, but also because it was ecologically sustainable and better suited to the livelihoods of marginal and small farmers. Without a robust domestic demand, and without developing integrated value chains for commodities that were naturally organic, the ‘boutique’ model may not work beyond a certain scale. Again, just by having a policy on organic farming, or establishing a Centre for organic farming, or setting up yet another mission was not the panacea. Organic cultivation had to be mainstreamed in crop and horticulture sector by providing the same level of assistance as was being offered to farmers who were using chemical fertilizers. In fact the support to organic farmers should be higher because they were also helping to restore soil health and restore the ecological balance. The main issue was that our research system had focused on individual crops and achieving world class productivity levels on specific crops – rather than study the interaction with the ecosystem. Thus one cannot look at milk production without looking at crop residues which are a natural fodder for the animals.
Another important learning was that in organic farming, some states had done much better than the government of India in terms of establishing policies and institutions to mainstream organic agriculture. Sikkim and Uttarakhand are hailed as the best exemplars – though Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh were not far behind. The civil society was also promoting organic agriculture at the grassroots level in a significant way. The need of the hour was to listen to voices from the ground, and encourage a meaningful dialogue among the stakeholders, and these two interactions were a good beginning in this direction.