Farmers persist with organic, see results
For a number of reasons including frustration with chemical agriculture, improved economic prospects and concern for nature, some farmers in Punjab are growing organic. Kavitha Kuruganti travelled around parts of the state to meet a number of farmers and dealers of organic products last month.

22 October 2005 - Driven by a great sense of respect towards and love of nature, Harjant Singh, a 42-year-old farmer from Rai-ke-kalan village (Sangat block in Bathinda district) chose to go organic in 2002. He has 35 acres of land on which he grows cotton, wheat, cattle fodder, greengram, etc. He recalls that between 1985 and 2000, there was intensive use of chemicals on his farm. However, he found that the costs were increasing constantly while the quality of produce was decreasing, even as the pest problem could not be controlled.

Harjant Singh started appreciating the fact that while his gross income is high, his costs were increasing constantly and he was left with very little at the end of the season. He began to think seriously about ways out of the trap he had fallen into. He tried out kinnu (a fruit) nursery-raising, flower and vegetable cultivation and so on. However, he found out soon enough that he was using more pesticides than ever.

In the name of diversification, many farmers in his village shifted to soybean cultivation but that did not help either. There was no market support for them. "The vicious circle did not get broken," Harjant Singh observes. Around that time, a friend of his from Doomwali, Kuljeet Singh Sidhu brought him a newspaper clipping which mentioned that four villages in Rajasthan have gone organic, with support from the Agricultural University there. He went visited these villages. Though he found that the organic farming being done was being only on small scale, it inspired him to explore some more.

Harjant Singh then went to the farm of Chowdhary Krishnakumar Jhakhar in Rajasthan. Though Jhakhar was away on that day, Harjant Singh decided to wait a whole day for him to come back. He was very happy to have done so. He understood that to be organic, one of the first pre-requisites is to possess organic seed. Jhakhar himself had 19 varieties of traditional wheat and Singh bought two varieties for five thousand rupees. With this, he began his organic farming.

That year, he raised organic wheat on six acres. Towards the end of the season, the crop started becoming yellow during heavy fog. Singh panicked and ran around for some advice. Jhakhar took some time off and visited him around this time. He advised Harjant Singh to spray some cow urine and cow dung solution. It worked wonders. Harjant's conviction in this kind of farming grew.

Today, Harjant Singh grows traditional cotton on 10 acres of his land. He also grows fodder crops on 2.5 acres of land. On the remaining land, he grows a mix of green manure crops like sunhemp, greengram, blackgram etc. He has been practicing crop rotation amongst his different plots. In his cotton field, there are bird perches arranged and he finds that many birds have made their nests in his fields.

In the beginning, he found that his yields in wheat were almost half his earlier yields. The market prices were low too. He decided to advertise his produce and put out pamphlets in Bathinda and Giddarbaha newspapers, which urged consumers to eat organic and protect their health. He soon found a set of committed consumers, who buy from him on the basis of trust.

Harjant Singh uses a variety of natural products like neem oil, pongamia, ash, cow urine and cow dung, vermi-compost etc., to replace chemical pesticides and fertilisers. Many of these are being bought from dealers right now.

In the case of cotton, he has not been maintaining any accounts about his costs and returns. "It is important to allow the farm to stabilize and revive. I do not want to start calculating profits right now and would like to focus on reviving my land," he says. "There is no other way out. How much can a person run? Punjab is very tired now, with no stamina left. Organic is the only way out," he adds.

Harjant Singh hopes that he can make his farm look good for others to emulate. Earlier, his neighbours used to think he was mad. Now, they are changing and want to learn from him. "I want nature to be protected. I feel good when I eat tasty, nutritious food and when I can feed others as well," he says. Singh says his hope is that Punjabi farmers will change their agricultural practices at least when it comes to producing something for their own households.

For Harjant Singh, the message of organic agriculture comes from his religion too. "Our Gurus have always talked about preserving millions of life forms. We cannot afford to upset the natural balance, just like we cannot afford to upset our body's balance," he says. He urges that farmers need to walk on the path that Gurus have shown and revert to practicing human values instead of destructive demonic values.

Harjant Singh's wife Veerpal is fully supportive of his efforts and feels that some reduction in yields is not as important. "This is better for the health of the family and I feel that our health has really improved," she says.

Hartej Singh of Mehtagaon in Bathinda district is emphatic that organic farming on cotton is definitely more profitable than conventional chemical farming. He has been farming for 45 years now and has always felt a great attraction towards agriculture. On his 12 acres of land, he grows various crops like cotton, wheat, mustard and vegetables. For the past four years, he has given up the use of chemicals on 4 acres of his land where he grows cotton. He chose to go organic on it because it has a road on two sides and does not get contaminated with the chemicals used by his neighbours. But this year, he had left 2 more acres of his land fallow because he wants to try out organic wheat for the first time in the rabi season.

In 2002 Kharif, Hartej Singh decided to grow his cotton without fertilizers and pesticides. "Even with a lot of pesticides, there were no yields on cotton. I used to read in the newspapers that cotton can be grown without pesticides and that there are many farmers trying it out across the country," he says. He adds that in 1986, he got very fed up with pesticides and wanted to become an organic farmer. However, he was not successful in that attempt as he was not very equipped with knowledge about alternatives. "Now, it is different," he says.

Organic farming takes hold in Rajasthan
Large numbers of farmers have opted for a way of cultivation that does away with chemical pesticides, and most importantly, uses less water in a water-starved state. The dramatic results are nowhere more visible than in Rajasthan's Shekhawati belt, reports Deepa A.

21 March 2005 - Shekhawati, Rajasthan - When 55-year-old Banwarilal Jangir decided to turn to organic farming four years ago, he wasn't very sure of its benefits. He hoped it would improve the harvest in his 1.94-hectare farm in Nawalgarh, Rajasthan, where he cultivated wheat, fenugreek, chickpeas and isabgol. The yield wasn’t high in the first year, but he wasn’t disheartened. He struggled for a while, often selling the produce at market value, without making much profit.

Three years down the line, Jangir's efforts have finally paid off. Two companies have lined up to buy his crop this year and he’s hopeful of getting a good deal. “I am sure I will earn at least 20 per cent more,” says the elated farmer.

 A stall selling organic foods at the Shekhawati Festival usually held in mid-February. Pic: Morarka Foundation.

His story is echoed across Rajasthan, where thousands of farmers have opted for a way of cultivation that does away with pesticides, and most importantly for a desert region, uses less water. Its dramatic results are nowhere more visible than in the Shekhawati belt, comprising regions such as Nawalgarh, Jhunjhunu, Mandawa, Sikar and Churu. Standing in the middle of a farm, with large red roses blossoming on one side, and green wheat fields stretching on the other, it’s difficult to imagine that sand dunes can be found just a few miles away.

Much of the transformation has been due to the work of the M R Morarka-GDC Rural Research Foundation, started in Jhunjhunu over a decade ago. The foundation is a non-profit organisation funded by the firm Gannon Dunkerley and Company Ltd (GDC), and its founder-chairperson is industrialist Kamal M Morarka, also the head of GDC and currently the vice-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Apart from promoting organic farming, the foundation works in areas such as micro-credit, primary healthcare and education, biotechnology, waste management and heritage conservation in the fresco-filled havelis of Shekhawati.

The foundation estimates that hundred thousand farmers across the country (with an average landholding of four acres) have switched to organic methods because of its efforts, and claims that farmers in Rajasthan make up half this number. It has helped them find a market for their products, while also facilitating exports. Its main contribution, though, is perhaps something more enduring: organic farming methods reduced the farmer’s dependency on rainfall.

“Under the usual method of farming, if there is only 80 percent rainfall, then the output goes down by 50 percent. If there is 60 percent rainfall, there is no output at all," explains says Mukesh Gupta, executive director of the foundation. But, for a farmer who has opted for organic techniques, the output remains at 100 percent even at 80 percent rainfall, and 50 percent at 60 percent rainfall. This is because organic methodology promotes conservation of water, and in general, improves soil conditions so that returns always remain high, says Gupta.

The fact that pesticides are out of bounds in organic farming techniques is another reason the process requires less water. Use of chemical pesticides such as urea means that plants have to be watered more often, but organic farming — which uses only herbal pesticides — cuts back on at least 40 percent of the water usage. As a result, farmers are even able to cultivate crops that are high on water consumption, an avenue that wasn’t open to them earlier.

The absence of chemical pesticides also automatically improves the market for the products, as they are thought to be healthier. Gupta says that an apple in Himachal Pradesh reaches the market after at least 40 applications of pesticides. Undoubtedly, munching into a gooseberry that has seen no pesticides is considered a better guarantee to keep the doctor away. Confirming this, the foundation avers that any farmer who has switched to organic farming has seen his exports go up from 30 to 300 percent.

The ratio of exports, however, is still not clear as figures are not available. Usually, the products are sold to traders, who in turn market it abroad or in India. The Morarka Foundation estimates that 60 percent of all the farm products are exported.

New technology is being adopted to further boost exports. For one, farmers get a US certification for their organic products, thanks to the foundation’s tie-up with a US agency called Winrock International. Secondly, plans are afoot to work out a way in which clients can see the products for themselves without even stepping on Indian soil. Explaining that this is not a fanciful proposition, Gupta outlines the strategy: “We are in talks with a US-based company to get electronic tags for fields, which will send out signals. Base stations will transmit these signals to satellites and we are hoping to show clients satellite images of the fields.” The cost of such a process has not worried the foundation officials, who insist the wherewithal — such as base stations currently used by cellular operators as well as companies specialising in satellite imagery — is already in place.

 Vermiculture at the Ganga farm at Sikar. Pic: Morarka Foundation.

Harpal Singh, who runs the beautiful Ganga Wadi farm in Sikar with his brother Madan Singh and other family members, is excited by the possibilities. Bel, roses and lime trees grow on the farm, as does wheat and several medicinal plants. His income has gone up tremendously ever since he opted for organic farming eight years ago (the income the farm makes is between Rs 15-20 lakhs annually), and new technology can only send it soaring higher. He is also thrilled that the soil fertility has improved considerably. “We have cows and horses at home, so getting manure for vermiculture was never a problem," says Madan, whose farmhands show off the earthworms in compost pits with a measure of pride.

Red roses bloom across a field in the farm, and Ganga Wadi has in fact made a name for itself because of the flowers. The roses, huge and fragrant, are a sell-out at a market nearby. But the rows of compost at one end of the farm, where vermiculture is carried out, get the most attention. The foundation, along with its partners produced 10 lakh tonnes of vermicompost last year. This year, by March-end, they would have produced 35 lakh tonnes.

Though it has taken time for the foundation to mobilise farmers in the area, "it was not difficult", says Gupta. The Shekhawati belt is a politically active region, and awareness levels were high in general among people. And farmers, in fact, were eager for solutions that would boost produce at low costs. The foundation started with 123 villages in Jhunjhunu, addressing sectors such as primary healthcare and education. Realising that the best way to ensure self-sufficiency was to improve the livelihoods of a people whose mainstay was agriculture, a research centre was set up to study organic farming, among other things.

Farmers were called in groups and shown the organic farming techniques, and its benefits were explained to them. The staff at the Foundation -- a spokesperson says it employs as many as 600 people -- fanned out and met people across the state, persuading them that organic farming would work best in semi-arid areas such as Shekhawati. Today, hearing the success stories of many farmers, people come to the Foundation to learn about organic farming.

Buoyed by the success, most farmers in the area are now eager to adopt organic farming. In the initial transition phase, when vermiculture is introduced and chemical pesticide usage stopped, farmers often do face a low output. But as the cost of cultivation in organic farming is less, the income usually evens out. Some like Jangir, who didn't have enough herbal pesticides and manure when he started out, suffer more losses than others. But within three-four years, the farmers usually do well.

The promise of organic farming is that it is considered to be better than Genetically Modified (GM) products. Up to now, GM has mostly been about ensuring that crops are resistant to pests, like Bt Cotton, for instance. But organic farming promises the same benefits without tweaking genes. "This method of farming creates an ecological balance, so that the soil is fertile and the plant is healthy. In such a situation, pests are simply unable to attack a plant," says Gupta. In the years to come, when people look for healthy food, they will automatically think organic, he adds. This is better news than what the farmers of Rajasthan may have hoped for. ⊕