Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture

and Biodiversity Conservation

Anna Marie Nicolaysen, Ph.D.

University of Connecticut, 2012

“Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture and Biodiversity

Conservation” investigates how, through conversion to organic agriculture, with its

postulated socioeconomic, environmental and health benefits, and through biodiversity

conservation, by, for example, creating community seed banks, local farming

organizations enable and empower small farmers to become independent and self-

sufficient. Local farming organizations are defined as movements to improve the

economic, health, and social status of independent farmers in the face of global

agribusiness through the adoption of sustainable agriculture. I explore the philosophy of

these organizations; the agricultural and political ideas they transmit; the challenges they

face in involving small farmers; and how farmers who become involved assess this

experience.

Fieldwork for this study was carried out during 2007 and 2008 in the Indian states of

Punjab, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. Living in villages in these states–

approximately three months per state–I completed 89 in-depth and 16 focus group

interviews with female and male farmers, and with the farming organizations’ staff, for a

total of 250 participants. Interviews and field observations, primarily those carried out in

Punjab and Uttarakhand, constitute the data for this dissertation.

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I found that farmers who get involved with these organizations do perceive that their

food security is improved through conservation and the revival of traditional crops.

Additionally their economic situation is strengthened with less expenditure on inputs

such as seed, chemical pesticides, or mineral fertilizers. Finally, it is argued, training

provided by these organizations prepares farmers, many of whom become more self-

reliant and confident individuals, to stand up for their democratic rights in the midst of

the formidable power of globalized corporate agriculture.

This study contributes to a growing understanding among small farmers, researchers

and international human rights and farming-focused organizations (e.g., the United

Nations Human Rights Council and the Food and Agriculture Organization), of how

reinvestment in sustainable agriculture is vital to the realization of the right to food, and

to rural economic development, issues that were accentuated by the 2008 global food

price crisis and current return to a pattern of rising food prices that are reaching 2008

levels.

Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture

and Biodiversity Conservation

Anna Marie Nicolaysen

Cand. Mag. (B.A.), University of Oslo, 1997

M.A., Northern Arizona University, 2000

A Dissertation

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

at the

University of Connecticut

2012

ii

© Anna Marie Nicolaysen, 2012

The author has granted ProQuest/UMI a non-exclusive right to reproduce and

disseminate this work through the UMI® Publishing Agreement.

The author retains ownership of the copyright in this dissertation.

Neither the dissertation nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise

reproduced without the author’s permission.

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APPROVAL PAGE

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture

and Biodiversity Conservation

Presented by

Anna Marie Nicolaysen, B.A., M.A.

Major Advisor __________________________________________

Merrill Singer

Associate Advisor ________________________________________

Samuel Martinez

Associate Advisor ________________________________________

Alexia Smith

University of Connecticut

2012

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Acknowledgements

My first thoughts and gratitude go to all the farmers and the people working in the

farmers’ organizations in India, who happily participated in my research, generously gave

of their time, and accommodated me in the villages. The best part of India is its resilient

people, who struggle and thrive despite abject poverty and widespread corruption.

I would like to thank my major advisor, Dr. Merrill Singer, who was my professional

mentor and colleague before I entered the Ph.D. program and my major advisor during

most of this endeavor; his interest in my research and his contributions and suggestions

have made this dissertation what it is. I would also like to thank my other committee

members; Dr. Alexia Smith, for many constructive alterations and much appreciated

encouragement, and Dr. Samuel Martinez.

I am obliged that I was given the opportunity to work as a research assistant for Dr.

Pamela Erickson and Dr. Merrill Singer, and a teaching assistant or instructor during all

but one of my years at the University of Connecticut. I would like to thank the Head of

the Anthropology Department, Dr. Sally McBrearty, for offering me the valuable

teaching experience and Terese Andrews for making it all work smoothly with her

friendly help in the office. I also extend my thankfulness to the University of

Connecticut and its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for awarding me the CLAS

Dean’s Fund Graduate Fellowship in April 2011 and to the Graduate School for giving

me both a Doctoral Student Extraordinary Expense Award in the summer of 2009 and the

Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship Award in the fall of 2008. I appreciate the Norwegian

State Educational Loan Fund granting me travel funds for annual travel between Norway

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and the United States from the Spring semester 2009 through the Fall semester 2010, as

well as travel funds for my fieldwork in India during 2008.

It was my friend, and colleague at the time, Dr. Claudia Santelices, who inspired me

to start taking classes while she was still a graduate student at the University of

Connecticut. I would like to thank her for her personal and academic interest in and help

with this undertaking.

My mother, Bjørg, is the person who made this possible with her backing in all

aspects and almost endless patience. My father Reidar, who was also always very

supportive of my education, sadly passed away shortly after I started my M.A. program.

I would like to thank my siblings, Øystein, Bente, and Atle, for their help and support and

my sister-in-law, Monica, for her interest in my work.

I am grateful to Dr. Kuldeep Singh Punian for his belief in my abilities,

encouragement, friendship, and affection. I would also like to thank my friends Line

Kampe and Erna Skaug in Norway, Gilbert Ramos, Ashwinee Sadanand, Dr. Sadanand

Nanjundiah, Chris Ogolla and Dr. Evelyn Phillips in the United States, Yoko Ishikawa

and Dr. Kyoko Murakami in Japan, and Josephine Packiam, Jaspal Singh and Abdul

Nasir in India for their support. In addition I appreciate Abdul Nasir’s skills as a research

assistant and his and Mohammad Yusuf’s efficient translation and transcription of my

interviews from Punjab and Uttarakhand.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank Dr. Ernesto Gutierrez-Miravéte for very

useful discussions and comments during the final months of the writing process and

defense preparations and his wife Sylvia Jalil-Gutierrez. All the encouragement and

support is very much appreciated and I could not have completed this task without it.

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Dedication

To my mother, Bjørg, who made this possible with her help in every way,

and to my nieces Mona and Kajsa and nephews Eirik and Mikael:

may they enjoy a biodiverse future.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS: Abstract Title ...…...……………………………………………………………………………...… i Copyright ..…………………..…………………………………………………………....ii Approval Page ………………...………………………………………………………... iii Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………....... iv-v Dedication ...……………...…………………………………………………...………… vi Table of Contents .……………………………………………………….……...…... vii-ix List of Acronyms and Glossary ..………………………………………………………x-xi Map of India …………………………………………………………………………… xii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 Context of the Study 1 Hunger and Food Riots 1 Trade 3 Global Warming and Farming 8 False Solutions 10 Gender Inequality and Health 14 Motivation for this Study 16 Fieldwork 20 Getting Access to the Farmers 22 Challenges 24 Interviews 25 Ethical Issues 27 Organization and Selection of States 29 CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 33 Early Agriculture 33 Empires Built on Agriculture 35 Colonization 35 Revenue and Landownership 36 Illiteracy 37 Agriculture Suffers 39 Canals, Famines, and Malaria 40 Independence and Partition 42 Land Reform? 43

Continued Marginalization of Agriculture 45 Political Background of the Green Revolution 46 The Green Revolution 48 Critique of the Green Revolution 50 Agricultural Policies and Poverty 52

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CHAPTER THREE: PUNJAB 55 The Green Revolution and its Discontents 55 Introduction 55

Environmental Consequences 62 Implications for Agriculture 64 Effects on Human Health 70 Economic and Social Implications 82 Farmers’ Organizations with an Alternative 91 Training of Farmers 94

Conversion to Organic Agriculture 97 Barriers to Conversion 98 Changes after Conversion 100 Continued Challenges 105

Conclusion 110 CHAPTER FOUR: UTTARAKHAND 111 Mountain Agriculture and Agroforestry 111 Introduction 111 Forests and Social Movements 120 Navdanya in Uttarakhand 124 Environmental Consequences 128 Uncertainty of Income Due to Climate Change 132 Farmers’ Experience with Organic Agriculture 136

Training of Farmers 139 Conversion to Organic Agriculture 159 Changes After Conversion 152 Activism at Navdanya 154 Hybrid Seeds 156 Seed Saving 158 Marketing Organic Crops 161 Continued Challenges 164 Conclusion 168 CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION 171 Contrastive Experiences with and Reactions to the Green Revolution 171 General Overview 171 A Second Green Biotechnology Revolution 176 The Alternatives 181 Kheti Virasat and Navdanya 183 Seed Banks 183 Local Knowledge and Climate Change 186 Environmental Degradation and Organic Agriculture 188

Food Security 191

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A Romanticized Past? 192 Traditional Gender Roles 196 Backward and Anti-Modern? 198 The Agrarian Question 202

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION 206 Key Findings 206 Significance of Findings 211 Thoughts about the Future 214 APPENDIX: Interview Guidelines 217 REFERENCES: 221

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LIST OF ACRONYMS: AIIMS All India Institute of Medical Services AKST Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology AoA Agreement on Agriculture B.C.E. Before the Common Era BDO Block Development Officer BHC Benzene Hexa Chloride BKU Bharatiya Kisan Union (Indian Farmers’ Union) BSE Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Bt Bacillus thuringiensis C.E. Common Era CIKS Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems CIS Center for Interdisciplinary Studies CPI Communist Party of India DAP Di-Ammonium Phosphate DDT Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane DNA Deoxyribonucleic Acid DRCSC Development Research Communication and Services Centre EED Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (Church Development Service) EU European Union FAO Food and Agriculture Organization GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GDP Gross Domestic Product GHG Greenhouse Gas GM Genetically Modified GNP Gross National Product GR Green Revolution GWP Global Warming Potential HCH Hexa Chlorocyclohexane HYV High Yielding Varieties IAASTD International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and

Technology for Development IFOAM International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements IGADA Indo-German Agriculture Development Agency IMF International Monetary Fund IMO Institute for Marketecology IMR Infant Mortality Rate IPCC Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change IPM Integrated Pest Management IPR Intellectual Property Rights IRB Institutional Review Board IT Information Technology JFM Joint Forest Management LPG Liberalization, Privatization, and Globalization MAPs Medicinal and Aromatic Plants

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MSP Minimum Support Price NGO Non Governmental Organization NOFA Northeast Organic Farming Association NSDP Net State Domestic Product PAU Punjab Agricultural University PBR People’s Biodiversity Registers PKZU Punjab Khetibari Zamindara Union (Punjab Agricultural Landholder’s Union) REDD Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation RFSTE Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology SEZ Special Economic Zones UN United Nations UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change UOBC Uttarakhand Organic Commodity Board UPL United Phosphorus Limited USAID United States Agency International Development USOCA Uttarakhand State Organic Certification Agency WB World Bank WHO World Health Organization WRI World Resources Institute WTO World Trade Organization GLOSSARY: Bigha 1 bigha = between one-fifth and two fifths of an acre Desi In the context of agriculture desi refers to native or traditional breed

(of e.g. cattle) Jan Life of the soil Lassi Traditional yoghurt-based drink Paddy Rice in the field, or after harvesting before the husk and bran has been removed Ryotwari Tax system where peasants pay tax directly to the government Quintal 1 quintal = 100 kilogram Urea Nitrogen Zamindars Landlords Rs. Rupees (Rs. 50.00 ≈ $1.00)

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MAP OF INDIA The four fieldwork states: Punjab, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Context of the Study

Hunger and Food Riots

In the world today, almost one billion people are hungry, over 70 percent of the

people suffering hunger are rural, and around 80 percent of these are either working on a

farm, or are farmers themselves (IFAD 2011). These people depend upon agriculture for

their livelihoods, but loss of soil fertility, climate change, water shortage and higher cost

of obtaining water for irrigation where available, low rates paid in exchange for their

produce, rapidly increasing prices on fertilizers, pesticides, and seed, and loss of

biological and agrobiological diversity, all present critical challenges to millions of small

farmers. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there are 530

million farms in the world, where 40 percent of the world’s population make a living.

Eighty-five percent of these are small farms, defined as having less than two hectares of

land, but because of their considerable number they occupy about 60 percent of the

world’s arable land (FAO 2008). The world population reached equal distribution

between rural and urban locations in 2008, and in addition to the poor farmers, poverty in

urban areas is also increasing (UNFPA 2007), despite the United Nations (UN)

Millennium Development Goals and other international bodies’ aims at reducing it.

Despite the low rates paid to small farmers in many developing countries, the food

price index calculated by the FAO rose by nine percent in 2006, and leaped by nearly 40

percent in 2007, a trend encompassing almost every agricultural product. The wheat

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price in the international market more than tripled since 2000, and the maize price more

than doubled. In the first months of 2008 prices continued to increase, and in March

2008 rice reached record levels (von Braun 2008). Various forces drove this sharp price

increase. These include higher costs for energy, increasingly intertwined with the

mechanical cultivation of agribusiness and its inputs and massive shifts in cultivation

towards subsidized biofuel feedstock like maize—rather than soybean and wheat—

among U.S. farmers. Higher demand for grains used to feed livestock for meat

production, globally, and lastly commodity speculation and poor weather also contributed

to the escalation. In Australia, for example, severe drought for years has reduced the

country’s generally large contribution to the total world wheat harvest (Schneider 2008;

von Braun 2008). Changing patterns in the timing and amount of rainfall affect food

prices, as rainfed farming makes up 80 percent of the world’s croplands, and produces

about 70 percent of the world’s food (Castillo, et al. 2007).

The impact of the price hike has had radically different effects across countries, and

although some net exporters benefited, Argentina, China, India, Mexico and Russia

among others restricted exports to protect consumers. Net food importers on the other

hand struggled to meet domestic food demands. There were hunger riots during 2008 in

over 25 countries, mainly in Africa, where almost all countries were net importers of

cereals, but also in Asia, the Americas and the Caribbean, and the Middle East (Schneider

2008). The price hike caused political instability in Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines and

Indonesia where, as in most places, it harmed the poor the most, limiting their diet and

making it even less balanced, and affecting health in the short and long term.

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Discussing the food riots, Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank (WB), said

to the New York Times in April 2008, “We have to put our money where our mouth is

now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that” (Weisman 2008).

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then managing director of the IMF admitted in the same article

that the food crisis poses questions about the survivability of democracy and political

regimes; “As we know in the past, sometimes those questions lead to war,” he said, “we

now need to devote 100 percent of our time to these questions” (Weisman 2008). At the

same time other leaders such as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned against the

dangers of protectionism in his remarks to the 12th UN Conference on Trade and

Development, in Accra, (Ghana) in April 2008. According to Ban Ki-moon, “More

trade, not less, will get us out of the hole we’re in” (Ban 2008). But the roots of the

global food crisis are deep, and quick responses as well as a continuation of current

policies could do great harm in the long run. Without appropriately diagnosing the

causes of the crisis, well-intentioned treatments could fail or even exacerbate the

problem.

Trade

Many small farmers around the world, such as the members of Vía Campesina

(translates into The Peasants’ Way), a global movement of 148 farmers’ organizations in

69 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, would argue against Ban Ki-moon

when it comes to trade in agricultural products. They contend that shipping more food

around the world only increases the price, and the carbon footprint (Vía Campesina

2007b), and they encourage farmer NGOs to discuss and promote alternatives to

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neoliberal policies for achieving food security. For small farmers and their organizations,

the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994

provided the forum where the international trade agreements that would create major

changes to the structure of their agricultural economies and rural communities were

sealed. The GATT, which created the WTO, seriously altered the relationship between

farmers’ organizations and the state, because from this point on control over national

agricultural policies was passed on to the WTO. In 1995, when the WTO’s Agreement

on Agriculture (AoA) came into force many countries, that until then had been producing

enough food to feed themselves, were required to open their markets to agricultural

products from abroad (Lyson 2005). Mexico started importing maize, Indonesia rice, and

Europe soya, to mention a few examples. The United States became the major exporter

of cereals, and Australia and New Zealand of dairy products. Since that time, most state

regulations concerning buffer stocks, prices, production, and import and export controls,

have gradually been dismantled. As a result, small farmers around the world have not

been able to compete on the world market; rather they collapsed as economic units

(Welch and Graham 1999; Wise 2009). The focus on export left the majority of the rural

poor vulnerable to volatile market conditions and international competition with

subsidized producers in the global North. The globalization of agriculture concentrated

market power away from local producers and into the hands of a limited number or large-

scale trade and retail agribusiness companies. Not only small farmers in the global South

felt the impact of trade liberalization. Farming no longer dominates the rural economy in

the United States. Between 1995 and 2000, 38,000 small farms went out of business and

between 1990 and 2000, farming dependent counties were reduced from 618 to 420

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(among the more than 2,000 non-metropolitan counties) (Ghelfi and McGranahan 2004),

and the debt of the U.S. farm sector was an estimated $240 billion at the end of 2008

(Harris, et al. 2009). In Europe, 20–25 percent of farms disappeared between 1995 and

2005. Central and Eastern Europe were hardest hit during this period, where new

member-states in the European Union (EU) such as Poland lost 30 percent, Estonia 43

percent, Latvia 47 percent, and Lithuania 49 percent of their farms respectively.

Significant reductions were also registered among the old member-states in the West, in

Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and France. From 1998–2003, the

number of farms in Norway decreased by 18 percent (Chivu, et al. 2005).

The globalization of agriculture, from the Green Revolution (GR) through the

development of international structural adjustment programs, regional free trade

agreements, and the WTOs Agreement on Agriculture, was officially aimed at improving

productivity and making large and small-scale farming more prosperous. The idea

driving these changes was that through increased trade and leveled playing fields, the

competition would make the world’s food producers more effective, farmers would

improve their conditions, resulting in a decrease in food scarcity and hunger. However,

the globalization has led to the spread of non-sustainable industrial agriculture, the

destruction of small farmers’ livelihoods, and a dramatic reduction in their incomes as

they experience declining terms of trade and competition with low-cost producers.

Discussing the modern transformations of agriculture, Richard Manning, in his book

Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization, which is based largely on

anthropological work on agriculture through time, concludes that “I have come to think

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of agriculture not as farming, but as a dangerous and consuming beast of a social system”

(Manning 2004:119).

In India, where approximately six hundred million people are farmers, the

globalization of agriculture has been exemplified during the last few decades by small

farmers affected in a drastic way by the introduction of the new paradigm of business-like

food production, an approach in which indigenous crops and knowledge are being set

aside in favor of monoculture practices directed by international agriculture-related

industries (Shiva, et al. 2004; Upreti and Upreti 2002). In several parts of the country the

village economy is in crisis. The number of landless rural farmers had already increased

from around 28 to over 50 million between 1951 and the 1990s (Datt and Ravallion

2002), and almost eight million people left agriculture between 1991 and 2001 according

to the last census (Kapur 2010). Loss of status, uncertainty of income, indebtedness, and

unfulfilled needs are among the factors that drove mostly men and youth to search for

opportunities elsewhere. While they often end up unemployed in urban slum areas,

lacking skills and subsisting through the poorly-paid informal sector, women, the elderly,

children and youth have been left on the margins of economic, social, and political life in

the village (Akram-Lodhi 2009; WDR 2007).

The Chairman of the National Commission of Farmers (government of India),

agricultural scientist, M.S. Swaminathan has expressed regrets about the decades of

ecological neglect and the increasing unsustainability of farming in India. He is often

referred to as the father of India’s GR, but in his foreword to Raman’s Agricultural

Sustainability he now admits to “a growing understanding of the harm done to the basic

life-support systems of soil, water, biodiversity, forests, and the atmosphere by

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ecologically insensitive technologies and public policies” (Raman 2006:xiv). He also

coined the term “Evergreen Revolution,” defined as improving productivity without

associated ecological or social harm, in order to emphasize that yield improvement

should be environmentally sustainable (Raman 2006). One expression of the crisis in

Indian agriculture is that almost 200,000 farmers committed suicide between 1995 and

2009, many as a result of rising debt from increased cost of cultivation, and the resulting

economic and existential despair (Posani 2009; Sainath 2007). In the last week of

January 2010, the Indian president, Pratibha Patil, called for a “Second Green

Revolution” to stem spiraling food prices and declining supplies (Kapur 2010). Is this

possible, or even the best way to go? Many among the more than 400 scientists, experts,

and development specialists who worked on the International Assessment of Agricultural

Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) think not, and rather

call for a change in current mainstream farming practices (IAASTD 2009). An initiative

of the FAO and the World Bank, this international assessment of agriculture started in

2002 as a global consultative process, and the IAASTD published reports in 2009

(accepted by the governments of 58 countries) that draw lessons about which agricultural

systems have been positive or negative for humans and ecosystems. The reports

formulate potential opportunities to move away from destructive and chemical-driven

industrial agriculture, and rather to focus on environmental, modern methods, which

could benefit biodiversity and local communities, and improve the situation for poor rural

people (IAASTD 2009:viii). The reports were not fully approved by the large

monoculture producing countries, Australia, Canada and the United States, and the

biotechnology industry left the process a few months before the signing of the reports

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took place, in April 2008 in Johannesburg. Representatives from Canada, for example,

say in their reservations “there remain a number of assertions and observations that

require more substantial, balanced and objective analysis” (IAASTD 2009:12). The

move of these large countries and the biotechnology industry had no effect on the overall

acceptance of the reports, which, similar to the World Climate Report by the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a global scientific stocktaking of

the state of agriculture, an evidence-based guide for policy and decision-making that can

provide the basis for designing agriculture in a way that mitigate detrimental

development dynamics such as growing disparities and the degradation of ecosystems

(IAASTD 2009).

Global Warming and Farming

The global food system produces almost half of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG)

emissions, partially due to the fossil fuel used for food processing and transportation, and

is therefore the single most important factor driving global warming (IEA 2006; Vía

Campesina 2007a). While carbon dioxide is the most prevalent GHG, causing more than

80 percent of GHG emissions related to human activity, agricultural practices contributed

to about 15 percent of the global emissions, primarily as a result of nitrous oxide release,

mainly from nitrogen fertilizers, and secondly because of methane release from enteric

fermentation in livestock and flooded rice fields (IAASTD 2009; Smith, et al. 2007).

Global agricultural emissions increased by 17 percent from 1990 to 2005 (US-EPA

2006). According to the global warming potential (GWP) concept, which uses carbon

dioxide as the reference with a value of 1, methane and nitrous oxide have values of 23

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and 296 respectively, so these gases trap much more heat in the atmosphere and

contribute many times the impact of carbon dioxide to global warming (Massey and

Ulmer 2010). The increased pressure on agricultural land is likely to lead to more

deforestation and thereby add further to GHG emissions (Nabuurs, et al. 2007). Over the

last 50 years the use of fertilizers, primarily nitrogen fertilizers, has increased rapidly, and

while this has contributed to an increase in crop production (IFA 2006), only a portion of

the nitrogen supplied is taken up by crops; the remainder is lost in to the environment and

causes progressively serious environmental problems (MA 2005).

In the same time period there have been great investments in irrigation systems, but

aquifer depletion and groundwater pollution now threaten the livelihoods of millions of

small farmers in South Asia, for example (Shah, et al. 2007). In the United States,

agriculture is the main cause of pollution in rivers and contributes to 70 percent of all

water quality problems identified in rivers and streams (Walker, et al. 2005).

The destruction of the forests and environmental degradation caused by the

agricultural sector are products mainly of industrial agriculture. Large agribusiness

plantations and vast monoculture fields make extensive use of oil-based chemical

fertilizers, pesticides and machinery. They convert carbon-rich forest and prairie into

“green deserts,” called so because they are poor at retaining soil and water and

unproductive, compared to the original vegetation, and in the end depend on a long and

energy consuming chain of secondary processing and transport links (Smith, et al. 2007).

In addition to implications for the environment, agribusiness, or “factory farming,” has

been shown to have negative impacts on both humans and animals; not only in the form

of producing unhealthy food, or severely mistreating the animals, but by being a source

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of deadly pandemics, like the recent swine flu (H1N1), which possibly had its origin on

large pig farms in Mexico (Singer 2009). In the cases of Bovine Spongiform

Encephalopathy (BSE) in cows and avian flu (H5N1), transmission was linked to low

standards in the animal feed industry and the increase of antimicrobial resistance arising

from the use of antibiotics in industrial farming systems (Taylor, et al. 2001). Three-

quarters of the new human diseases that have emerged over the past decade have arisen

from pathogens originating in animals and animal products. Complicating this situation,

many countries lack effective public health or veterinary systems, and even less the

multi-sector environmental health practices, to prevent the spread of this type of disease

(WHO-VHP 2010).

False Solutions

As scientific predictions of climate catastrophe continue to grow, world leaders met

in Copenhagen in December 2009 for the United Nations Framework Convention on

Climate Change (UNFCCC), and discussed “solutions” that will continue to allow large

energy consumers to pollute with impunity, while paying others to implement projects

intended to capture carbon (Lohman 2010; Smith, et al. 2007). Previously, the Kyoto

protocol and the market mechanisms it implemented had failed to reduce GHG emissions

and to slow down climate changes. In the eyes of many climate scientists, the situation is

urgent, but the Copenhagen convention failed to radically question the current models of

consumption and production. Instead carbon, for example, has become a new privatized

commodity for trade in the hands of speculators, who use it as a new product in the same

economic pattern that lead to the current crisis (Kill, et al. 2010; Lohman 2010). For

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many small farmers around the world, some of the solutions proposed during the climate

talks at the UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen, for instance “the Reducing Emissions

from Deforestation and Degradation initiative (REDD), the carbon offsetting mechanisms

and geo-engineering projects are as threatening as the droughts, tornadoes and new

climate patterns themselves,” according to Vía Campesina (2009). Other proposals that

were considered, such as producing biochar, or charcoal, by burning crop-residues,

manure or wood, and genetically modified (GM) seed, are those of agribusinesses, that

many analysts believe will only further marginalize small farmers (Vía Campesina

2007a; 2009). Genetic modification can be done through various methods. One is to

incorporate a small piece of DNA “in a bacterium that has the capacity to insert its own

genes into another plant genome,” and incubate this with tissue from the target plant.

The DNA can also be “coated onto small particles of metal and shot into the target plant

tissue at high velocity” (Tripp 2009a:11). An important issue in the GM debate is food

safety. There is very limited data available concerning effects of long-term nutritional

consumption of GM foods, and potential concerns include allergenicity, for example

when proteins are transferred across species boundaries into completely unrelated

organisms, or toxicity, antibiotic resistance, or just alteration in nutritional quality of

foods (Arregui, et al. 2004; Seralini, et al. 2007). While concepts and techniques used in

evaluating food and feed safety have been outlined (WHO 2005), the procedures for

authorizing GM crops are considered insufficient (Spök, et al. 2004), and often left to the

industry itself.

The general discourse of seed companies is that industrial GM and hybrid seed are the

best solutions, in that these seed will have the capacity to respond to irregular climatic

12

conditions, and feed future generations. But these seed, called “stable and uniform” by

the industry, are not well suited for adapting to varying conditions, because they are

reproduced as the exact same specimens. Tested for use in a research station or other

atypical favorable locations, these seed have demonstrated to be poorly adapted to small-

scale farmer conditions and environments. They also often do not meet the farmers’ need

of multipurpose use, e.g. fodder and seed, or postharvest characteristics like ease of

threshing, good taste or good storability (Curran, et al. 2004; Witcombe, et al. 1998).

The seed the farmers replant each year, on the other hand, are continuously improved

through their selection in the field, and these seed’s variability and diversity are what

make them better suited for adapting to their environments (Witcombe, et al. 2001). The

hybrid seed, produced by artificially cross-pollinated plants, lose some of their yield

potential in the second generation, and this makes them not worth saving. The farmers

who start using hybrid seed must therefore purchase new seed each year from the

industry. The seed companies also have other mechanisms that provide intellectual

property protection and control access to their crop varieties such as the GM crops,

including patents, purchase agreements and seed laws (Tripp 2009b). When the farmers

stop replanting their traditional seed, the biodiversity of crop varieties grown is reduced

or eliminated. This reduction of biodiversity reduces societal capacity to adapt to the

challenges of climate change. In addition the seed sold by the industry are tied to

industrial forms of production, require energy use in the form of chemical fertilizers,

more water, and are destructive to the fertility of the soil. These crops have much lower

capacity to sequester carbon because it is the organic material in the soil that stores

important quantities of carbon (Matthews, et al. 2000). Industrial forms of agriculture, by

13

impoverishing the soil and replacing the organic matter with synthetic inputs, liberate the

carbon stored in the soils, thus increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the air

(Wassmann and Vlek 2004). Agricultural systems collect carbon when organic matter is

accumulated in the soil, or when above-ground woody biomass acts either as a permanent

sink or is used as an energy source that substitutes for fossil fuels (Pretty and Ball 2001).

To address global warming by subsidizing and encouraging conversion of maize,

sugarcane, and other food products into substitutes for oil is another controversial

solution. Competition between land for food production, energy and environmental

sustainability (Kojima, et al. 2007) can already be seen for example in Brazil, Indonesia

and Malaysia, where expansion of crop plantations for biofuel production have led to

deforestation and draining of peat lands (Curran, et al. 2004). The development of

biofuel monocultures on lands previously occupied by forests or by small-scale farming

practices weakens the capacity of the soil to store carbon because younger plantation

forests have lower capacity to store carbon than older natural forests (Dauvergne and

Neville 2010; Smith, et al. 2007). Consequently, many climate scientists believe that the

solution to the energy crisis and to climate changes is not to substitute fossil fuels with

biofuel and that it is therefore necessary to change our production and consumption

methods and patterns and, in industrialized countries, to drastically reduce our

consumption of non-renewable energy (Nabuurs, et al. 2007). The heavy promotion of

industrial monoculture plantations and biofuel as solutions to the crisis actually increase

pressure on agricultural land and available water resources as massive afforestation

grasslands may reduce water flow into other ecosystems and rivers (Jackson, et al. 2005),

change soil fertility and properties, contribute to soil erosion (Carrasco-Letellier, et al.

14

2004), and reduce biodiversity (Wagner, et al. 2006). The economic competitiveness of

biofuel is also debated, and depends on local market conditions and production methods.

Even in Brazil, the world leader in efficient ethanol production, biofuel is competitive

only under particular favorable market conditions (Kojima and Johnson 2005). It has

already led to massive “land grabbing,” or the purchase or lease of agricultural land by

transnational companies, foreign investors, or other nations. From 2006 to 2009 around

40 million acres of farmland was secured for the production of biofuel, but also of food,

in poor developing countries, in order to produce crops for export, while expelling the

local farmers from their land and pushing indigenous communities, sometimes with non-

traditional land titles, out of their territories (Borras Jr., et al. 2011; Shepard and Mittal

2009; 2010). To these farmers, rather than being a solution, the development of

industrial biofuel is a peril. The land grab that is going on today is only increasing the

food crisis, displacing food production and its producers. Instead of promoting an

agriculture that can feed everyone, it focuses on large-scale monocultures that eliminate

plant biodiversity and on fossil fuels. It gives priority to feeding cars over people, and

will enrich a few, but not alleviate poverty for the many. Further, investment is

channeled towards huge farms controlled by a few large owners, instead of the local

markets and the four billion rural people globally that currently produce most of the food

consumed on the planet (McMichael 2010; Shepard and Mittal 2010; Zoomers 2010).

Gender Inequality and Health

Gender inequality is a central issue in agriculture, as it relates to poverty, hunger,

nutrition, health and natural resource management. Women and men have different roles

15

and responsibilities in productive households, and these vary widely by context and

culture, but while women often have a key role in agricultural activities, they tend to have

limited access to and control of productive resources, such as land and capital. In Asia

women produce at least 60 percent of the food, and in Africa it is as high as 70 percent,

but their work is underestimated and does not normally appear as part of the Gross

National Product (GNP) (CED 2003). Proportional representation is nowhere the rule,

and financial dependence and lack of access to political processes often excludes women

from participating in public life. Agricultural developments have often strengthened

patterns that are not favorable for women, for example in rural extension systems, where

men generally act for the state and its agencies, control information and communication,

and represent the farming household in public matters. Industrial agriculture implies

more investments, which again often exclude women, who sometimes are not eligible for

credit (McC Netting 1993). Less than ten percent of women farmers in India, Nepal and

Thailand own land, for example, and even if these women live and work in close

association with natural resources, their power to make decisions regarding these

resources is socially restricted (FAO-Gender 2010).

Health is also a major concern. The fatal accident rate in agriculture is twice as high

as in other industries, and exposure to pesticide and other agrochemicals constitutes one

of the main hazards leading to illness and death. The WHO reports a rough estimate of

between two and five million cases of pesticide poisoning each year, some unintentional

poisoning, others suicide attempts, in either case leading to at least 40,000, but maybe up

to 220,000 fatalities (WHO 1986). In developing countries there is widespread use of

toxic chemicals banned in other countries, often accompanied by unsafe application and

16

lack of information to the farmer about safe use and storage (ILO 1999). Living and

working conditions may raise the threat of environmental spillover from pesticide use in

the form of contaminated groundwater, food, or diversion of chemically treated seed for

human consumption.

South-Asian countries like India and Bangladesh have the highest mortality and

morbidity rates of diarrhea and malnutrition attributed to climate-change, and these are

expected to increase (McMichael, et al. 2004). In general their often extremely

rudimentary living and working conditions, frequently without adequate food, water

supply or sanitation, let alone health care, determine the morbidity-mortality pattern

among poor farmers. A poor diet combined with the presence of diseases like malaria,

tuberculosis, gastrointestinal disorders, and anemia create a vicious circle of poor health,

reduced working capacity, low productivity and shortened life expectancy, especially

among those in subsistence agriculture, or who are wage workers in plantations, landless

laborers, migrant workers or child laborers. It is estimated that around 175 million

children are engaged in labor on farms and plantations around the world, and national

policies to prevent agricultural child labor are lacking (ILO 2006).

Motivation for this Study

Since the mid-1980s, several social movements and farmers’ organizations have

opposed the farming trends driven by agribusiness by promoting the conversion to

sustainable, organic agriculture, and the re-validation of indigenous knowledge. In 1987,

for example, Navdanya (translates into nine crops, representing India’s collective source

of food security), a social movement led by Dr. Vandana Shiva, a physicist,

17

environmentalist, and agricultural activist from India, engaged in the struggle against

neoliberal economic globalization and the industrialized model of agricultural

development. Navdanya started as a program of the Research Foundation for Science,

Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), a participatory research initiative founded in 1982 by

Dr. Shiva, “to provide direction and support to environmental activism” and undertake

“independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues, in

close partnership with local communities and social movements” (Navdanya 2009b).

Navdanya started to work with local farmers, educating them about chemical free organic

agriculture, creating local seed banks, fighting against the establishment of intellectual

property rights (IPRs) on traditional knowledge, and defending their food rights and food

sovereignty in the face of national and international agribusiness (Shiva 2003).

As a member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), I attended their

annual summer conference in Amherst, Massachusetts in August 2004. Vandana Shiva

was invited to give the keynote speech at that year’s conference, and she talked about

organic farmers as “the heroes of tomorrow” and why industrial agriculture cannot feed

the world. Food production has to be addressed, she argued, not by a few corporations,

but by millions of microbes and millions of people. She caught my attention, and I

became curious to see her organization’s work in India, and learn more about conversion

to organic agriculture among small farmers there. In March 2006, I traveled to attend a

course on organic agriculture organized by Navdanya at its research farm, Bija

Vidyapeeth (translates as School of Seed, or Seed University), outside Dehradun, in the

northern state of Uttarakhand, India.

18

I wanted to look more closely at how this, and similar organizations work, how they

teach small farmers about organic agriculture and biodiversity conservation. The course

gave me a glimpse into Navdanya’s work, and the opportunity to meet some farmers, and

the Navdanya employees at their research farm and those who worked in the nearby

districts. I decided to go back and do fieldwork in some of the states where Navdanya

works, because even though a growing body of research indicate that the farmers using

sustainable, organic methods are better off, both economically and in terms of health

(Brandt and Molgaard 2001; Gala and Burcher 2005; Magkos, et al. 2003) little research

has been conducted on the work that social movements like Navdanya have done in

facilitating this conversion in India, and more importantly on how the local farmers

perceive, and adopt or reject this “traditional,” now called “alternative,” farming

philosophy and strategy.

I wanted to focus on understanding the socio-economic and political conditions that

led small farmers to accept an alternative model, how and to what extent they have

converted to it, or more importantly, who has adopted it and who has not and why. Some

key questions: Are they actively and consciously resisting mainstream industrialized

agriculture through the Navdanya model? How do they view their role in an increasingly

globalized agricultural economy? How do they view their futures? I also wanted to look

at the scope of the rural grassroots resistance directed towards the adjustment programs,

the free trade agreements, and the patenting of plants. Who are the ones taking part in

this resistance and who is opposing it, how does this type of resistance manifest itself?

There are many types of social movements, but most have in common a collective

identity, and their efforts through organized protest or resistance to obtain or prevent a

19

certain social change (Hamel 2001). Navdanya is one of several new social actors, such

as women’s organizations, environmental or human rights groups or peasant

organizations, that create new structures of collective action among traditional social

actors and a space where their concerns and demands can be articulated, negotiated and

accommodated in the context of a contested globalization and a continuing debate over

development (Escobar and Alvarez 1992). In this political struggle for greater control

over their traditional means of production, the farmers also fight a cultural struggle, for

traditional knowledge and indigenous beliefs. Rejecting the notion that neoliberal

globalization is the only possible framework for development, Navdanya seeks to

construct an alternative, sustainable path, where the farmers convert to organic

agriculture and maintain community seed banks to protect themselves from the regime of

chemical, industrial agriculture and GM seed. Navdanya proclaims the farmers’ right to

biodiversity, and to not cooperate with imposed intellectual property rights systems that

make seed saving and exchange a crime.

This research examines how Navdanya is working with the farmers to conserve

biodiversity and establish community seed banks, how they advocate conversion to

organic agriculture at the farmers’ level in India, and how their effort to empower the

rural community through promotion of indigenous knowledge is implemented. Do the

farmers perceive that their local food security is improved through biodiversity

conservation and control over their own seed and other inputs? To answer these

questions, I examine how Navdanya’s and other organizations’ work are affecting small

farmers and their communities, why their work is having the effects it is, and I explore

the nature of the social and political economic context in which this is occurring.

20

I will also discuss the critique Navdanya and similar organizations are facing from

several quarters. In addition to agricultural related industries, producers of chemical

inputs and hybrid and GM seed, which dismiss organic agriculture and other natural ways

of food production as ineffective and something that would create widespread hunger and

scarcity, there are critiques from scholars who argue that what they call the “new social

movements,” like Navdanya, are romanticizing pre-capitalist society and being backward

looking (Brass 2000; Guha 2000b; 2002; Rangan 2000). Some suggest that the small

farmers are being convinced to continue a rural lifestyle with few amenities, while others

argue they are distracted away from more important and basic class struggles (Brass

2006; Das 2007). There are also those who critique what they see as the new social

movements’ lack of grappling with gender inequalities, for example concerning property

rights, especially in land, economic rights, and the division of labor and also for situating

women in a special relationship with nature (Agarwal 1998; Cochrane 2007). I would

like to take part in this ongoing debate by attempting a more nuanced analysis. While I

think the critique is very useful to consider for the new social movements, and much of it

is on target, I would challenge the analysis that dismiss traditional agricultural knowledge

as backward, and emphasize the important environmental perspective of movements like

Navdanya.

Fieldwork

Following my initial visit in March and April 2006, I returned to start fieldwork in

February 2007, and during the next two years I spent twelve and a half months in India,

and divided my time between field sites in the states of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Tamil

21

Nadu, and West Bengal. Living in the villages, I interviewed farmers and staff from

Navdanya and other farmers’ organizations, and data from these interviews and field

observations are the basis for this study. Specifically, I recruited a total of 250

participants for my study, and conducted in-depth and focus group interviews with

female and male farmers, and social movement and farmers’ organization staff. I

completed 89 in-depth interviews with 62 farmers (15 female and 47 male) and 27 social

movement/farmers’ organizations staff (six female and 21 male), some of whom are also

farmers. I conducted 16 focus group interviews with a total of 51 female farmers, 100

male farmers, and seven female and three male social movement/farmers’ organizations

staff. In addition I carried out informal conversations with many farmers, community

members and social movement/farmers’ organizations staff on the 77 farms in the 56

villages, and in the three towns and five cities, where I did interviews.

I had planned to work first and foremost with Navdanya, but it was not always

possible. This did not create a problem though, because it was informative to get to know

and work with other organizations that cooperate with Navdanya, or had done so in the

past, in addition to independent organizations with similar concerns. In Punjab, where

Navdanya used to work, an organization called Kheti Virasat (The Heritage of Farming)

has taken over at the local level. In Uttarakhand, Navdanya is heavily involved, and has

several “Navdanya Villages” that sell their organic produce through Navdanya’s

distribution net, locally, and to Delhi and other large cities further south. In Tamil Nadu

in the south, Navdanya has worked with several organizations in the past that now do

similar work independently. One of them is the Center for Indigenous Knowledge

Systems, (CIKS), which I worked with in the coastal areas of northeastern Tamil Nadu.

22

In the highland district of Nilgiris in the central part of the state I worked with the Earth

Trust. In West Bengal in the east, Navdanya has field coordinators in several villages,

and I also met with the organization Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, (CIS) which

used to work with Navdanya, and Development Research Communication and Services

Centre (DRCSC), an organization based in Kolkata.

Getting Access to the Farmers

I had discussed with Dr. Vandana Shiva my interest in doing this study during my

first visit in 2006, and she agreed to give me access to her organization’s network of

coordinators in the villages where they work in Uttarakhand and West Bengal. The

Navdanya coordinators are farmers in the respective villages themselves, but often hold

additional leadership roles in the village, like being part of or the leader of the Panchayat,

the village council. Some of the coordinators had higher education and were involved in

agricultural research, independently, or in cooperation with Navdanya, while others were

involved in activities like trekking and mountaineering in the Himalayas, or herbal

farming for export. The Navdanya coordinators worked part time for Navdanya, got a

symbolic compensation of Rs. 1,000 ($20) a month, received training at their research

farm, Bija Vidyapeeth, in Dehradun, and were reimbursed when traveling there for

training and regular coordinator meetings. Lodging and food were included. (As a

reference, a teacher salary e.g. could be Rs. 15,000 a month). I attended these

coordinator meetings a few times and also trainings at Bija Vidyapeeth, which lasted

from one to three days. There I had the opportunity to meet and talk to several of the

coordinators, and make arrangements with them for later travel and stays in their villages.

23

I also did some individual interviews there with coordinators I would not be able to visit

in their home village, and organized a focus group interview with some coordinators

working for Navdanya in Uttarakhand. Several of the coordinators spoke English, and

that was a huge benefit for me in the villages. In addition to traveling with a translator, it

was very useful to have at least one more person in the village that spoke English,

although some places there were many who did. In the village, the coordinators would

introduce me to farmers, and often suggest farmers that could be interviewed, for

example based on their involvement with the organization, or their engagement in

farmers’ issues in other ways, and also farmers who thought organic agriculture was not

viable or not possible for them. As I got to know the place and people, the farmers

themselves often referred me to people who they thought would be interested in talking to

me about their farming, and I also approached people myself, after getting to know them

a little through staying in the village. I talked to conventional farmers, those in the

process of converting to organic farming methods, and those who had been organic

farmers, for a few or several years, in all four states. I mainly talked to small farmers, but

in Punjab and Tamil Nadu I also met and interviewed a few medium sized and larger

farmers.

In Punjab and Tamil Nadu I would approach the farmers in a similar way as I had

done places where Navdanya was present, initially through the staff and coordinators of

the local farmers’ organizations. The organizations were often helpful in finding

appropriate housing for me at one of the farms, with a family who had an extra room, and

also very generous in providing me with the support from the English proficient among

their staff as translators.

24

Challenges

Translation was sometimes a challenge, as I worked in four different states, each with

their own language; Punjabi in Punjab, Hindi and Gharwali in Uttarakhand, Tamil in

Tamil Nadu, and Bengali in West Bengal. That said, many people speak English in

India, and for some urban residents, English is their first language. Although I had taken

one semester of Hindi at my university just prior to traveling to India, and studied the

language full time for ten weeks at Landour Language School in Uttarakhand in the early

part of my fieldwork, most of the time I traveled with a translator. A good translator was

often very hard to get, since it was difficult to find someone who would be available to

travel for weeks and agree to stay in the villages in sometimes simple conditions, and at

the same time not charge too much. It was also a problem finding female translators,

which would make housing issues at the farms easier. Most women are married, and

therefore could often not leave husband and children to travel, and in some places those

unmarried are not supposed to travel alone, or with an unrelated woman. I had to leave a

male translator behind once, when a coordinator who had agreed to have me live at his

farm would not accept a male translator on the farm, because of his unmarried daughters

living there. I worked at one field site, in northern Uttarakhand, with a young woman as

my translator, whose mother worked with Navdanya, and she trusted her to travel with

me, also because she knew the coordinator in the village we were going to live. The

remainder of my fieldwork, with one other exception, in Darjeeling, where I worked with

two local young women who spoke very good English, I worked with male translators.

Transportation was another challenge. Travel can be very time-consuming in India,

and also risky. The roads are often in a poor condition, and in the mountain areas it can

25

at times be rather “exciting,” with steep hillsides, and rarely a fence of any sort on a

narrow road between the car and the deep valley below. I used both buses and trains,

especially for longer distances, but often it was necessary to hire a car and a driver to get

around in the area where I was staying. The farms could be located miles apart, and

sometimes there were no buses in rural areas.

Interviews

I had developed my interview questions after my first visit to India, and the

University of Connecticut’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved them prior to the

start of the fieldwork, (the complete lists of interview questions can be found in the

Appendix, p. 217–220). I used the same list of questions during my whole fieldwork.

During an interview, a participant would often talk more about a certain topic than

another, and in some instances I would not ask a question from my list, because I would

be familiar with the likely response (if for example I knew the person and the situation

after staying some time in the village). Otherwise I did not find that I wanted to change

the interview questions in any significant way. In the in-depth interviews with the

farmers I would start asking about their personal, historical background with focus on

their connection to farmland and agricultural activities, household composition, and type

and size of the family’s farmland. Then we would discuss types of changes;

demographic, socio-economic, political, ecological and agricultural; land reforms, use of

technology and agricultural input and output, as well as gender roles and changes in

relation to agricultural work. I would ask specifically if agricultural work provided for

their families, whether they received any help from the state or other institutions (e.g.,

26

loans to buy fertilizers, pesticides, seed, or farm machinery). We would talk about

indigenous, traditional farming methods, and conventional agriculture, and benefits and

negative aspects of either. Conversation focused on whether they had converted to

organic agriculture, how it worked if they had, and the benefits or negative aspects in

socioeconomic, environmental and health terms. I also asked about cooperation with

other farmers in the community, and the local farmers’ organization. We would discuss

how the local seed bank functioned in the community where they had one, and potential

impact on biodiversity conservation. I would ask them about their experience and

relationship with the local farmers’ organization or NGO, whether they perceived the

organizations as useful to them, disagreements with the NGO, and needs, for training, for

example. Finally I would ask about patents on seed and plants, international trade in

agriculture, and GM seed, whether they had tried them, the results, use of water and

inputs with such seed, and how that would differ from cultivation of traditional seed.

In the focus group interviews I would ask the participants to describe their

community in terms of connection to farmland and agricultural activities, their level of

participation in local farmers’ organizations, and what challenges they experienced and

how they confronted these; and how and to what extent these issues were addressed by

the state, the local government, or their local organizations. We would discuss the level

of cooperation among farmers, and I would ask them to evaluate the role of the

organizations in their area, and what motivated farmers to work with these.

Interviewing the organization staff or the coordinators, I would focus on their work

with the organization, what had motivated them to join this work, and the challenges they

experienced. I would ask them to describe the community they worked for including its

27

attitude toward the organization’s program and assistance. I also inquired about how

many people their organization reached, and relationships with other farmers’

organizations, and the state and local government. Finally I would ask them to evaluate

the success of their organization, and their views on the future of farmers’ organizations

and small farmers in India.

All of the interviews were digitally recorded. Most of the interviews were between

45 minutes and an hour in length. However, a few of the interviews were relatively short,

ten to 20 minutes, if it turned out that the participant did not have much to say, while

other interviews lasted for one and a half hours or more. In some cases, I would do two

interviews with the same person on different days.

All the interviews were translated into English, and transcribed, by two of the

translators I worked with in India, and the brother of one of them who works as a teacher.

Ethical Issues

In some regions of India converting to organic agriculture is controversial. If a

farmer stops buying seed offered in the local shop, for example, it might exclude him or

her from buying anything on credit, or receiving loans for other purposes. Some farmers

said they had been laughed at by other farmers, or considered the “crazy” farmer of the

village, when they first starting converting to organic farming, or even talking about it. I

did not, of course, want to add difficulty to any farmer’s life, and when I encountered

farmers who were in a controversial or challenging position in the village, I always

discussed with them potential positive or negative aspects of their participation in the

study, before doing a recorded interview or taking a photograph. I did have a consent

28

form for them to read, sign, and keep a copy of. Since some of the participants were not

able to read English, the IRB agreed that, in such instances, I could have a consent-

discussion with the participant, using a translator, and then get their oral consent instead

of a signature prior to conducting an interview. All the farmers I approached were happy

to talk to me about their experience though, and nobody declined to do an interview.

They seemed glad that I took interest in their work and situation. Most of the names of

persons are pseudonyms, except for some of the people working in the farmers’

organizations who agreed that I use their names. People were also eager that I take

pictures of their farm, their produce, and themselves, and gave me permission to use

these. I therefore have pictures of all the farmers and other people I interviewed, in

addition to many more I met, and countless children who enjoyed looking at themselves

afterwards in the digital camera.

Some female farmers in Tamil Nadu commented, while laughing, during a focus

group, that they had never had so many visitors to their village interested in agricultural

questions, as after they had converted to organic agriculture, and they said they found that

a pleasant and unexpected side effect. Sometimes people working with farmers’

organizations would be very frank with me about negative as well as positive aspects of

their organizations. One of them emphasized that I not use all he said, because he was

afraid it would harm “the cause.” I will avoid “internal” organizational matters, because

that is not my focus here, and rather try to portray the situation of the farmers.

29

Organization and Selection of States

I kept in contact with Navdanya after my initial visit, and we discussed potential field

sites. I realized that I wanted to include places where Navdanya was not present and the

decisions to include Punjab, and Tamil Nadu were mine. I was encouraged to visit

Navdanya villages in several other states, but since traveling is time-consuming, and I

wanted to stay for a few months in each state, I limited myself to four states. I had two

“main” field sites in each state, and spent roughly half of the time allocated to that state in

each place. I say “main” sites, because I also talked to people I met while traveling, and

on several occasions we would stay a day or more at a farm on the way to the next site,

and I would sometimes use the opportunity to do an interview or at least talk informally

with the farmers, and look around while there. The order in which I traveled to the

different states was arranged ahead of time, but plans changed due to availability of

translators to travel with, presence of coordinators in the villages, and other situational

factors. I started in Punjab, the breadbasket of India and the cradle of the GR, and I also

returned there over a year later, at the end of the fieldwork. From Punjab I traveled to

Uttarakhand, where I stayed long periods at Bija Vidyapeeth because of all the activity

there, and the ease with which I could visit other farms nearby. The second field site in

Uttarakhand was high up in the hills, at the entrance to the Himalayas, and a few villages

we visited on the way going there. I returned several times during the two-year period to

Uttarakhand, where I studied Hindi in Mussoorie during the first year, a beautiful hill-

station with spectacular views of the mountains. After Uttarakhand, I flew to Kolkata, in

West Bengal, but while travelling experienced a general strike there due to the unrest

concerning Special Economic Zones (SEZ). The state government in West Bengal was

30

involved in distributing farmland for industrial development, and there were protests and

discussions regarding prices paid to the farmers for the land, and other issues. No one

could leave the airport, and there was no transportation into town; I was able to get

another flight going further south to Tamil Nadu, and therefore changed the order in

which I visited these two states. I was able to go to West Bengal the following year, for

three months during the spring, before I again returned to Tamil Nadu, and Punjab, later

that year. I spent some time in urban settings as well, when I visited the offices of

Navdanya in Delhi, Development Research Communication and Services Centre

(CDRCS) in Kolkata, and Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems (CIKS) in Chennai.

The four states where I did fieldwork not only differ in terms of landscapes and agro-

ecological zones, but also in language and traditions. They have quite different cultural

and political histories as well as place in India’s political economy. In Punjab, the

farmers have landholdings three times the size of the national average and are much more

mechanized. They therefore have a very different relationship to credit and subsidies

from that of farmers in many of the other states and small farmers are a minority there.

Uttarakhand, on the other hand, is a relatively new state, separated from Uttar Pradesh in

2000, where small farmers abound. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu both have greater

diversity in their agricultural economies. Given this complexity, and the fact that I

cooperated with a number of farmers’ organizations, each with their way of working with

the communities, I made the decision to present in detail here two of the four states I

visited; Punjab and Uttarakhand, and therein two of the six organizations I cooperated

with; Kheti Virasat and Navdanya. In terms of conversion to organic agriculture—the

farmers’ attitudes towards this and the barriers they encountered—the trend was the same

31

in all four states. The farmers are positive towards conversion, but most small farmers

feel that there is a need for support for the first few years of conversion, if not always

economic, at least in terms of practical education in the alternative methods, and help in

producing inputs and acquiring seed. Punjab and Uttarakhand are very different in many

aspects and therefore allows for a comprehensive presentation of the variations existing

in the ecological environment, farming practices, as well as in socio-economic structures,

and the contrasting of these. I also think the presentation of my findings will be clearer

when discussing two, instead of all fours states here, especially because comparing the

work of six organizations in one act could easily become repetitive. I will therefore

present the work from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal separately elsewhere.

The remainder of the dissertation therefore proceeds as follows:

Chapter Two provides a brief review of the history of agriculture in India.

Agriculture has been practiced on the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years, and the

Indus Valley civilization was one of the pristine states. The colonial period saw radical

changes in land and agricultural matters, and the purpose of this chapter is to show briefly

the background for much of the state of agriculture in India today.

In Chapter Three, I focus on the place where my fieldwork started, in Punjab. In

Post-Independence India agriculture was modernized, and in the mid–1960s the GR was

introduced in Punjab and in neighboring Haryana and the western parts of Uttar Pradesh,

of which Uttarakhand was carved out. It later spread to other states, to varying extent.

While it started with imported seed, India soon began its own GR production of plant

breeding, and agrochemical production. Punjab is a state of large, mechanized,

32

conventional farms, and many farmers explained the viewpoints of those who do not

convert to organic practices, for various reasons, such as the struggle with cost of

conversion and of certification and not least political and structural constraints. This

chapter shows evidence of the lack of sustainability of conventional farming, at the

individual farmer level, as well as on the larger environmental level.

Chapter Four continues in Uttarakhand, also in the north, east of Punjab, and a self-

declared “organic” state. Many social movements and NGOs started their work here,

concerned with forest use, dam constructions, and the new agricultural paradigm. I focus

on Navdanya, and peasant activism, in this chapter, and some of Navdanya’s main issues,

such as farmer control over seed and food sovereignty.

In Chapter Five, I compare and contrast Punjab and Uttarakhand in terms of their

particular conditions, and social and ecological environments. I discuss the impact of

social movements such as Kheti Virasat in Punjab, and Navdanya in Uttarakhand. I

address the questions: Are these social movements able to help empower small farmers

and create social change? In this chapter I also discuss the critiques against the new

social movements, mentioned above, and relate these to my findings.

Chapter Six, the final chapter, draws together the threads of my work; reviews key

findings, and presents thoughts about the future of agriculture and small farmers in India.

As part of this discussion, I review the significance of my findings in a world of rapid

globalization and growing food insecurity.

33

CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Early Agriculture

Agriculture is an inseparable part of India’s history, as it has been adapted to its

different ecological regions for thousands of years. People are thought to have settled

down to an agricultural way of life around the middle of the sixth millennium B.C.E. in

the foothills of Sindh and Baluchistan, in today’s Pakistan, and there is evidence of the

adoption of agriculture and domestication of animals by the Harappan culture along the

Indus River, (which gave its name to India). The Harappan culture developed around

3000 B.C.E. and had a broad agricultural production based on wheat and rice, a diversity

of fruits and vegetables, and cotton, which was woven and dyed for cloth (Fuller and

Madella 2001; Kulke and Rothermund 2004; Vishnu-Mittre 1974). After centuries of

stability, the Harappan culture declined around 1600 B.C.E., arguably due to flooding,

causing soil salinity and subsequent desertification, but elements of this tradition were

inherited by later cultures (Heitzman and Worden 1995; Kulke and Rothermund 2004).

During the first centuries of settled agriculture, division of labor became increasingly

sophisticated, and a hierarchical system that subordinated people into different caste

groups developed. These castes later became hereditary, as Vedic “religion” gradually

evolved into Hinduism between the sixth and second centuries B.C.E., and still exists in

urban, and to a larger extent in rural India today (Leach 1990; Robb 2002), where

untouchability, although now an illegal custom, persists to distress the lives of millions of

people (Shah, et al. 2006). Already in the Upanishad and Brahmana texts, reference is

made to wealthy men, villages and food grains, and it is believed that agriculture came to

34

be regarded as the foundation for Indian society from about 600–300 B.C.E., and it likely

had much deeper and older roots than that. Land control and water management

consequently became important and enduring parts of social and political organization,

and are still often at the center of controversy and conflict (Heitzman and Worden 1995;

Robb 2002).

Throughout the centuries various principles of land use and ownership have existed;

one of the first written sources is found in Arthashastra, from around 250 B.C.E.,

authored by Kautilya, a minister in the Mauryan Empire (326–184 B.C.E.) (Heitzman and

Worden 1995; Kulke and Rothermund 2004). Arguing that royal protection of

agriculture is needed, Kautilya wrote: “He (the King) should allot to taxpayers arable

fields for life. Unarable fields should not be taken away from those who are making

them arable. He should take away fields from those who do not till them and give them

to others” (Shiva and Holla Bhar 2001a:110). During the classical age (C.E. 320–550) of

the Gupta Empire, agrarian conditions were documented and land taxes were introduced.

Under the changing rulers the cultivators who farmed the land could own it, and taxes

ranged from one-tenth to one-fourth of the produce. Prices of grain were at times fixed

through regulations, allowing them to be within reach of the poorest groups of society

during periods of scarcity.

Agriculture improved over time as a result of new canal construction and irrigation

methods, but methods of tax collection often exploited the peasantry. There were

disasters when tax rates were too high, and no provisions had been made to make food

available. Peasants have risen up on many occasions during the centuries (Heitzman and

Worden 1995; Kulke and Rothermund 2004; Shiva and Holla Bhar 2001a; Stokes 1986),

35

but while the peasantry has played revolutionary roles in various parts of the world (e.g.

China, Vietnam), it has never reached that point in India.

Empires Built on Agriculture

In the sixteenth century, the Mughals built South Asia’s first empire based on

agrarian taxation. At that time the revenue demands varied from one-third to one-half of

the crop, and were stipulated according to regional customs of crop growing and soil

conditions. The Mughal emperors transferred the responsibility of collecting the revenue

to land-holding zamindars, who were able to keep a portion as their salary. Overall,

during the Mughal period, the financial situation of peasants deteriorated; there were very

few if any improvements to social structure, instead there was a general decline in

cultivation during parts of the Mughal period as many peasants fled agriculture. The

Mughal’s dependence on land revenue collected through dominant Hindu zamindars and

village leaders, whose self-interest was not the same as that of the empire, was the

beginning of the breakup of one empire, only soon to be replaced by another imposed by

the British (Heitzman and Worden 1995; Kulke and Rothermund 2004; Robb 2002).

Agriculture and the peasants were to suffer to an even larger extent during British rule.

Colonization

With arrogant authority, the British introduced harsher taxes and appropriated

communal land, the fallows and the forests. These vast areas that the new government

called “wasteland,” had been part of the foundation for agriculture in India, as an

important source of fodder and fuel. Through control of the land the British colonialists

36

controlled the economy, destabilized village resource management institutions, and

subverted the country’s social process. Rather than creating a positive impact in India

through Western intellectual or technological innovations, the British added to the

consolidation of feudalism. The revenue was not invested in domestic economic

development, or industrialization (as occurred in European feudalist states to some

extent), but was shipped back to Britain, or used to expand the Empire (Agarwal 1998;

Sethi 2006).

The degree of impoverishment from increased taxation soon became evident, as the

first of many tragic famines during the era of the British struck in the Bengal Presidency

in 1769–70, after months of drought. The price of rice increased, and resulted in a

famine that took the lives of one-third of the population—total of nearly ten million

peasants in one year (Greenough 1983:265)—in what had been fertile and abundant

provinces (Visaria and Visaria 1983:477). Rather than lessening the pressure on land

revenue after this disaster, the British governor-general from 1786–93, residing at the seat

of British power in Calcutta, Charles Cornwallis, was worried about the consequences of

the lack of income, and made an agreement with Bengali zamindars in a Permanent

Settlement system, which allowed the zamindars to continue residing on their large

estates in exchange for efficiently collecting taxes for the British (Heitzman and Worden

1995; Sethi 2006).

Revenue and Landownership

Under British rule, peasants were completely powerless when trying to claim their

traditional land-use rights; centuries old landownership arrangements concerning the land

37

they lived and worked on. For the vast majority of peasants and tribal groups, the

historical land-tenure system of their communities was delegitimized and replaced by the

institution of private property. The land became the legal possessions of the zamindars,

or landlords, in bargains facilitated by the British. The landlords could then develop their

added acreage for cash crop plantations or other projects as they saw fit for the best

possible economic outcome from the land and the cultivators (Heitzman and Worden

1995; Sethi 2006; Shiva and Holla Bhar 2001b; Whitcombe 1972). The zamindari

system later became the template for colonially imposed feudalism in large parts of

northern India, while in the south, a system called ryotwari, was often used, in which the

peasants paid their taxes directly to the government. In the northern areas, the zamindars

routinely acted as the moneylender for the tenant farmers, who sometimes had to borrow

to pay their taxes. Often, unable to even keep up paying the huge interests on their debt,

an initially small amount could go on to haunt their children to continue the toil, even

after the death of their parents (Heitzman and Worden 1995; Sen and Deb 2001; Shiva

and Holla Bhar 2001b).

Illiteracy

The British added force to the caste and class discord in society, and their education

policies increased the levels of literacy and education only among the urban elite, not the

rural masses. English replaced Persian as the language of public administration and

instruction after 1835, and this further increased the divide between the illiterate peasants

and the rulers. Education of the farmers was left up to each landlord, but among the rural

elite, education of the peasantry was not in their interest. Their fear was that teaching the

38

peasants “the three Rs” (reading, writing and arithmetic), would open their eyes and they

would learn to resist, a pattern also seen in American slavery (Guha 1983; Heitzman and

Worden 1995). Many farmers looked upon writing as a symbol of dominance, which

they often had felt through their own painful experience. Any landlord, judge, or lawyer,

could rob them of their livelihood and property, or claim they had a bond that could keep

a farmer and his family in servitude, by referring to official papers. For the peasant,

writing was therefore frequently perceived as one of his oppressor’s mysterious weapons

(Guha 1983). A similar view of the written word was put forward by Lévi-Strauss:

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes . . . it seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment . . . The use of writing for disinterested purposes, and as a source of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure, is a secondary result, and more often than not it may even be turned into a means of strengthening, justifying, and concealing the other. [Lévi-Strauss, 1974:299] During the colonial era there were many uprisings among the peasants, and virtually

all of these were at least partially focused on destroying written evidence of peasants’

debts, rent rolls, bonds and deeds. Ranajit Guha (1983:52) calls this “the objectification

of the peasants’ hatred of the written word.”

Literacy in India is still very low in many of its states, and India has the largest

illiterate population in the world. The last census from 2011 reveals a literacy rate of

74.0 percent: 82.1 for males and 65.5 for females. The state of Bihar has the lowest

literacy rate at just 63.8 percent, 73.5 for males and 53.3 for females, while Kerala retains

its top position with a 93.9 percent literacy rate. Kerala also occupies the top ranking

both in male and female literacy with 96.0 and 92.0 percent respectively. The urban–

rural divide is still extreme, with rural literacy rates as low as 34.8 percent for males and

39

25.0 percent for females in the most disadvantaged districts. The states I worked in have

average rural literacy rates of 72.5 percent in Punjab, 73.0 percent in West Bengal, 73.8

percent in Tamil Nadu, and 77.1 percent in Uttarakhand (India Census 2011).

Lévi-Strauss observed during fieldwork in villages in East Pakistan in the early

1950s, an area that today is part of Bangladesh, how moneylenders also often held the

roles as the local scribes, giving them a sway over the peasant that they knew how to take

advantage of. Virtually everyone with a hold over the peasant during the last centuries,

from officials to landowners, used writing as a method for operationalizing this power

(Lévi-Strauss 1974). Unfortunately, with today’s continued low literacy levels in rural

areas, this problem is still a reality in the villages. The illiterate farmers are unable to

fully understand the calculation of interests, and may be manipulated by the local supplier

of seed and fertilizers when their harvest is sold.

Agriculture Suffers

Despite subjugating the cultivators and appropriating their land, the British did not

take much interest in changing the agricultural methods or investing resources in order to

increase the food production. Peter Robb argues that “the crops and methods of

production in ancient India would have seemed broadly familiar to the early nineteenth-

century observer, except for the introduction by that time of the New World crops such as

the tomato, chili and potato” (Robb 2002:47). The focus was instead on increasing

production of cash crops for exports, and this meant that subsistence crops increasingly

were cultivated in less fertile areas, contributing to scarcity and increasing prices (Robb

2002). Although there is no evidence indicating that pre-modern cultivators invariably

40

exercised wise restraint in their use of resources (Sivaramakrishnan 2009), many

traditional and ecologically sound harvesting and management systems were changed

during this process, and scarcity of water and manure became apparent (Shiva 1992).

The commercial endeavor of the new government exploited Indian production on many

fronts.

During the Mughals, Indian textiles were renowned, and sold on national and

international markets. The British introduced heavy taxation not only in agriculture, but

also in the Indian textile- and other industries. The domestic industry became unable to

compete with the textiles produced from Indian raw materials in Britain’s mills.

Thousands of factory workers lost their jobs because of this, and increasing numbers had

to subsist on agriculture (Heitzman and Worden 1995). A “deindustrialization” occurred

within many production areas, and even if there had been landless laborers in India for

centuries and the social structure was certainly already one of inequality—with

oppressive caste and class divisions afflicting the poor, the lower castes, and women

worst—all these aspects of society were aggravated under colonialism (Agarwal 1998;

Kumar and Desai 1983).

Canals, Famines, and Malaria

In the 1850s, the railroad and telegraph were introduced in Bengal, and this work was

then continued to connect the colonial capital, Calcutta, with other cities. The forests

were cut down in vast areas, used to build ships and railways, and for construction and

fuel, often causing significant ecological degradation. One example of this took place on

the fertile Doab plains between Ganges and Yamuna rivers in North India two decades

41

earlier. Deforestation destroyed the natural resource base and caused drought, and

indirectly the famine of 1837–38. To prevent another disaster like the drought in the

Doab region and to be able to effectively continue revenue collection, the British invested

heavily in canal construction from the Ganges and Jamuna rivers in the 1870s, partially

renewing canals built by the Mughals, but also adding many new lines and distributaries.

The canal system destroyed the well-irrigation system, which had served the production

of semi-dry millets and pulses—the staple crops—and instead encouraged the production

of wheat, sugarcane, indigo and opium. The price of water was doubled after the

renovations, and producing cash crops aided in paying increased revenue for the irrigated

lands. This displacement of staple crops contributed to the famine of 1877, when drought

struck again, and the canal-irrigated land was used to grow cotton, indigo, and sugarcane

(Whitcombe 1972). Unfortunately, a developmental theme emerged as what was

intended as sincere attempts at developing infrastructure and improving production

conditions, instead often caused ecological adversity, followed by increased social

suffering. The canals brought changes in the environment that the cultivators did not

have resources or knowledge to adapt to. Swamping created breeding places for

mosquitoes carrying malaria, which reached an alarming extent during the 1870s

throughout the canal irrigated areas including Punjab. Road and railway embankments

also caused water logging, and added more of the same negative consequences that the

canals had created. This way, artificial irrigation and improved means of

communications meant to reduce the destruction and the often high numbers of victims

after erratic monsoons, instead caused deadly diseases to flourish and spread (Visaria and

42

Visaria 1983). In 1936, endemic malaria was estimated to have an annual mortality of

two million people, and a many times higher morbidity rate (Whitcombe 1995).

Between the two World Wars, India suffered economically, as did most countries

involved in the worldwide recession, the following depression, and the disruption of

international shipping caused by the wars. The last full-scale famine in India was the

Bengal Famine in 1943, when an estimated three million people died, and poor rural

women were amongst the hardest affected (Agarwal 1990). There are several theories as

to the cause of this famine: interference of the wholesale rice market (Greenough 1983),

continued export of food grains, and lack of food distribution by the British government,

along with accumulation among the rich, are among these. There was not a lack of rice

per se, but the price was too high for starving people to buy it. Many of those were from

rural areas, moving into cities to get help, but often succumbing along the roads (Sen

2004). The difficult situation in agriculture and food production during the first part of

the 20th century was not going to improve soon, with independence, and simultaneously a

partition of the country.

Independence and Partition

The partition of Punjab province in the west and of Bengal province in the east,

contributed to a crisis in the food production after independence. Punjab was the

country’s most fertile, naturally irrigated agricultural area, and Bengal had been among

the most fertile areas before the British rule, but was now impoverished after almost two

centuries of revenue extraction. The dislocation of over 12 million people during

partition, which devastated the Sikh community in Punjab and caused loss of life in the

43

hundreds of thousands among all religious communities, created lasting hostilities and

political disputes that still rank among the top of India’s security issues (Shiva 1992).

At independence, India had a semi-feudal agrarian system, with the control and

ownership of the land in the hands of a relatively small number of landlords and

intermediaries. The cash crop production and long-distance trade, developed primarily

under colonialism, continued after independence. While this had enriched many among

the Indian elite, in addition to the British, it had damaged the lives of the vast majority of

the population (Robb 2002). In this system of inequality and oppression, excessive rent

and uncertainty surrounding tenure, there was no economic incentive for tenant farmers

or sharecroppers to try to improve cultivation methods or the soil, to increase cultivation.

Agricultural production stagnated, and the repression of the tenants caused increasingly

depressing conditions (Sethi 2006).

Land Reform?

In the years after independence, several five-year plans initiated by the central

government included land reforms; targeting the elimination of intermediaries, protection

for those who rented land, and limits on the size of landholdings. While certain changes

were implemented in some districts, and in a few states, most of these plans were never

carried out. A considerable share of land therefore remains with the large landowners,

which in the Indian context means five acres of land or larger, and these constitute less

than three percent of the landowners (Rawal 2008:46). There is substantial variation

from state to state in terms of inequality in ownership holdings. Punjab and Tamil Nadu

have the largest inequalities in landownership, and Tamil Nadu also has the highest level

44

of landlessness. Most of the large landowners are found in Punjab, followed second by

neighboring Haryana, formerly a part of Punjab. The three states where significant land

reforms have taken place are Kerala, Tripura, and West Bengal, and in these states large

landholdings occupy only minor land areas (Rawal 2008:47). Kerala is a successful

exception in terms of literacy, land reforms, and healthcare, and also has the highest life

expectancy in India; 74.7 years, well above the country’s average of 63.6 years (India

Census 2011).

On the whole, inequalities in India have not diminished, but rather amplified in the

years since independence. The landholdings among the most affluent ten percent of the

population are larger now than six decades ago; about 15 million acres are part of

holdings of 20 acres or more. In 1951, 82.7 percent of the population was rural, while in

2001 that had been reduced to 72.2 percent, and the class structure and landownership

within the rural populations changed even more. Whereas 71.9 percent of the rural

population was farmers and 28.1 percent landless agricultural laborers in 1951, the

proportion of farmers had been reduced to 54.4 percent, and that of landless laborers had

increased to 45.6 percent, by 2001. This is a large rise in a very vulnerable and uprooted

part of the population, often without any representation, and landlessness continues to

increase with roughly half a percent every year (Herring and Agarwala 2006; Rawal

2008:47). These figures indicate that there is room for land reforms in several states, but

the farmer lobby and the rural landholding class of today is no more likely than their

predecessors to agree to redistribution of land if they experience it as a “loss” of property.

In addition, increased agricultural exports have created a new group of middle-income

farmers with newly required status and economic influence that they are not willing to

45

share with the less fortunate. Land reforms have largely been left aside by the

government and the urban, educated elite, who are the decision makers. Their new focus

is on “liberalization, privatization, and globalization” (LPG) (Sethi 2006:74), where land

is investment, infrastructure, and housing for the privileged. Land as a basis of livelihood

such as subsistence farming is struggling in this battle. Agriculture’s part of the Gross

Domestic Product (GDP) has dropped in recent years, but almost 58 percent of India’s

population still depends on agriculture for their livelihood, and the larger part of these

(nearly 63 percent) are peasants, with tiny holdings; less than one acre in size (Sethi

2006:75).

Continued Marginalization of Agriculture

In the last couple of centuries, agrarian life has played an important part in the

formation of nation-states in many parts of the world. People of the countryside often are

part of the “origin myth” of many nations’ rural-based, national identity. This image of a

national rural identity also exists in India, but many people living in urban areas today are

very detached from, and often simply disinterested in the problematic reality of poor rural

dwellers or small farmers, land reform policies, or how the use of land in rural areas is

connected to the wider economy (Sethi 2006). The image of a romantic countryside has

unfortunately not contributed to improving the life of rural populations. At

independence, the new government of the Congress Party had extensive plans of

eradicating poverty, in the spirit of Gandhism, and of creating economic progress and

development. Nehru was, despite what is called “Nehru socialism,” more like his

predecessors and not in favor of allowing just anybody to participate in governance, but

46

saw that as the responsibility of the privileged. His government continued the trend of

the British, who had focused on developing the cities and educating the urban elites

during their rule. These policies marginalized the villages and agriculture, while the

brunt of investment was in industry. It was assumed that the majority of the country’s

population could carry on in a traditional lifestyle and produce inexpensive food and raw

materials, without even basic infrastructure or proper education in the rural areas

(Omvedt 2005; Sethi 2006).

Political Background of the Green Revolution

In the political climate of the 1950s, the United States was wary of India’s ties with

Russia, and feared a move towards communism. Given the impoverished situation after

independence and the conflicts after partition, India was in need of food, and the United

States could provide food aid. In China, land reform was implemented after the Chinese

revolution, and this had increased their agricultural production. Nehru proposed to the

Indian parliament that they could try out a cooperative land management system in India,

between the landowners and the tenant farmers, but this never caught on among the

landowners or their representatives. Even if the vast majority of the country’s population

was in favor of land reforms, the government did not dare oppose the politically powerful

landowners or urban upper classes. The food aid from the United States did not

encourage increased food production domestically. Indian farmers were in no position to

compete with the American subsidized wheat, and Indian investments were still focused

on urban industrialization, not rural development. During the 1960s domestic production

47

started to decline, and the food aid imports were increased, making India gradually more

dependent on these (Patel 2007).

In 1964, following Nehru’s death, there were food riots in several parts of the

country, as food became scarce. Nehru’s successor was Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was

critical of U.S. policy and U.S. bombing in Vietnam. The Johnson administration feared

this indicated a turn towards communism in India, and decided to change food aid to be

organized on a month-to-month basis, rather than on a yearly foundation, as it had been

until then. The Americans offered to continue food aid on a more stable basis again, and

also to assist with new agricultural technologies, if Shastri would demonstrate a more

agreeable attitude towards the U.S. foreign policy in Asia, and abandon Nehru’s ideas

about redistribution of land (Patel 2007; Perkins 1997). Other conditions for India

included signing an agreement to purchase fertilizers with foreign exchange, with the

amount spent on that to be used to determine the size of the Food for Peace deliveries, as

well as the loans from the USAID (Belair Jr. 1965). Private actors like the Rockefeller

and Ford foundations were also instrumental in preparing for future investments and

trade, as the agriculture of developing countries became tied into capitalist national

economies. During the five-year plan period from 1966–71, the Indian government

purchased GR related technology and inputs for about $2.8 billion, or about six times

what they had spent on agriculture in the previous five-year period (Brooks 2010; Sethi

2006:78). Seen against this background, the GR became a solution that would increase

food production and feed the poor, support U.S. business interests, and at the same time

the Indian Congress could avoid pursuing controversial social- and land reforms.

48

Several peasant organizations protested the argument of the government that the GR

was the only way out at the time. They felt that radical change in the agrarian structures

was necessary to challenge the tremendous social inequalities arising from unequal

access to means of production, in this case land. After fighting, often violently, for land

reforms for years, they saw the GR as a defeat to domestic and international conservative

forces. The GR was therefore perceived by many as a substitute for the red, and a

strategy specifically to avoid the need for land reforms and institutional change (Frankel

1971; Griffin 1989).

The Green Revolution

The GR was first introduced in the plains of the North West, in the states of Punjab,

Haryana, and the western parts of Uttar Pradesh in the mid–1960s. One reason for this

was that this area had a canal system connected to the rivers, and the constant access to

irrigation was necessary for this to work. Later electric tube-wells and pump systems

were constructed. Other assets of this region were that it was not as densely populated as

other states, the institutional framework was better developed, and the landholdings were

larger than anywhere else. The Indian state made credit, regulated markets, and

agricultural extension and research available, and improved a rural road system and

energy inputs. This way commercial agriculture was established, and the use of imported

High Yielding Variety (HYV) seed, farm machinery, pesticides and fertilizers began (Gill

1994; Sethi 2006). The previous low-cost, low-input agriculture was supplanted by a

capital- and chemical-intensive system, where the external inputs were produced with

fossil fuels, and the World Bank (WB) provided the credit required to make it work (Patel

49

2007; Sethi 2006). The new hybrid seed did produce a higher yield—under optimal

conditions with their required input—than the traditional varieties, but some have argued

that any seed variety would probably have produced a little more with equal amounts of

water, fertilizers and pesticides. While Punjab and Haryana experienced annual yield

growth rates of above eight and six percent, respectively, during the first decade of the

GR, from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, the arid and semiarid central and southern regions

of the country had annual yield growth rates of just one, and 1.5 percent. The HYV

wheat and rice technology did not have the same progress under those conditions. In the

eastern region of the country, including Assam, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal, the

annual yield growth rate was 1.4 percent during the first decade, but declined to 0.5

percent from the mid-1970s. Although not lacking in rain, this region is more densely

populated, deficient in infrastructure, and is fraught with annual flooding (Patel 2007;

Sharma and Poleman 1993; Shiva 1992).

The WB helped to subsidize the imports necessary for the GR, but at the same time

they negotiated import liberalization, removal of domestic price control on staple

products like milk and grains, and attractive terms for foreign investment in the growing

domestic fertilizer and seed industry. The Terai Seed Corporation, for example, received

a loan from the WB in 1969, of $13 million, and in the latter part of the 1970s, the

National Seed Projects obtained $41 million, for projects that would develop state

institutions that could provide the infrastructure necessary to support the growing

production of GR seed varieties. These projects were the beginnings of corporatization

and homogenization of agriculture in India. This shift entailed a turn away from

agriculture as a family matter and a way of life, with implications for the social and

50

ecological system it was situated within, towards an industry, or a science of food

production, with the more narrow production goal to maximize profits. After a fourth

loan in 1988, of $150 million to the seed sector, the WB recommended that India

privatize their seed industry. The new seed policy allowed multinational seed companies

like Cargill, Ciba Geigy, Continental, Hoechst, Monsanto and Sandoz, to freely enter the

Indian market, and today these large companies are present with mayor interests in the

Indian seed sector.

These developments were defended by pointing to the large growth in crop output at a

time when India was facing food shortage. After a few years the national food security

concerns were relieved and grains stored, but widespread hunger and malnutrition in rural

areas persisted. In this new scheme the farmers produce commodities for the global

market, rather than food for the local market (Sethi 2006).

Critique of the Green Revolution

About a decade into the GR, in the mid-1970s, criticism of the new production model

began to emerge as proof of detrimental environmental impacts and negative

socioeconomic consequences of the GR increased (Freebairn 1995; UNRISD 1975).

Only farmers who were able to receive credit could afford fertilizers and the resources

required to access irrigation. The need for rising levels of fertilizer to maintain the same

level of crop output caught many farmers in a vicious circle of soaring costs, leading to

poverty among a third of the region’s farmers in the 1980s and 1990s (UNDP 2004). The

level of debt among farmers in Punjab is nearly four times the national average. Many of

the small farmers who went bankrupt were forced to sell or lease their land to more

51

wealthy neighbors, or companies, who had the economic and technical resources, and this

has led to a steep reduction in smallholdings in Punjab (Brar and Gill 2001; Patel

2007:126), down 41 percent just between 1990 and 2000 (IFPRI 2007). Many argued

that this model had been intended, not primarily to assist the farmers or feed the poor, but

rather to produce cheap food for the urban consumer. This urban consumer may be

unaware of the environmental degradation, bankruptcy, and displacement in rural areas,

and how this relates to for example higher urban crime rates and social costs (Sethi

2006).

Norman Borlaug, the founding father of the GR, and many with him, have trivialized

the environmental consequences of the GR, and argue on the other side that the GR

preserved millions of hectares of forests and other wildlife habitat from being cultivated,

thanks to the increased production on existing farms (Borlaug 2000). That may be the

case, but this type of increased production cannot continue forever on the same land area.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) and others point out that about 8.5 million hectares

of agricultural land had been left infertile already by the early 1990s, from environmental

pollution and falling groundwater levels, leaving higher salt deposits in the soil (Byerlee

1992; Patel 2007; Shiva 1992; WRI 1994).

The majority of expenditures on GR technologies were invested in Punjab, which had

the most fertile land in India and the largest average farm size. The government

disregarded the marginalized majority of farmers with smaller pieces of land, living in

resource scarce regions and states with fewer resources. They constitute 75 percent of all

farmers in India, cultivating on just above 30 percent of the land (Patel 2007:128).

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Agricultural Policies and Poverty

The trend from earlier years of focusing on urban areas continues in India today, and

there has even been a reduction in the government’s expenditure on rural development

from 14 percent to less than six percent from the late 1980s to 2000 (Patel 2007). These

funds are much needed in rural areas. Many irrigation systems are inadequately

maintained, there is lack of extension services in many districts, and the extremely poor

road system in many regions makes it very difficult, or sometimes impossible, for

farmers to efficiently access markets, especially with perishable produce. There is also

great need of storage facilities, especially cold storage. Grains have sometimes been lost;

rotting in humid storage conditions, or eaten by rodents. There are of course advances as

well, although some are due to changing ways of measuring improvement, rather than

real change on the ground, or in the lives of the people who work the land.

Based on government statistics, between the early 1970s and the early 1990s, the

number of poor people reported in India had seemingly declined from over half, to about

one-third of the population. Sadly, this shift did not indicate that important advances

were being made in poverty alleviation, but rather reflected a governmental change in the

official poverty line from 2,400 calories per day to 1,970 calories per day during that

same time-span. In 2000 this threshold was lowered even further, to 1,890 calories per

day, at which point just over one-quarter of the population was designated as poor. If the

calculations of how many people are living under the poverty line had used the 2,400

calorie intake level, the number of people living in poverty in India today would be 75

percent, and not about 27 percent, which is the official figure (Patel 2007:30).

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During the 1990s, the average calorie intake actually went down among the poor, and

malnutrition became more widespread. As of 2007, at least 233 million Indians are

considered to be lacking in protein/calories and micronutrients. The hardest affected are

children, especially those below the age of three among whom 46 percent are suffering

malnutrition, compared for example to eight percent among the same population sector in

China (Patel 2007:128; Sen 2011). Despite these dire figures of poverty in rural areas,

the Indian government has continued the same model in agriculture for the last decades,

supported by international financial institutions like the WB, which has focused its main

activity in agricultural projects. Since the 1950s the WB has financed 130 agricultural

projects in India, with about $10.2 billion (Sethi 2006:80). Many of these projects are not

visible in rural areas, because they were invested in banking institutions and used to

finance industrial agriculture and the fertilizer industry. Other projects focused on

launching the new HYV seed, or constructing systems for extracting groundwater with

pumps driven by gas or electric power.

For some years after the GR, it seemed like India was on the way to obtaining food

security, with the new increased crop outputs, the government supported Minimum

Support Prices (MSG), subsidies for agricultural inputs, and a closed market. After

embracing liberalization; the imports of cheaper agricultural produce and the removal of

much of the agricultural subsidies for domestic agriculture, food security may be even

harder to ensure. If the Indian state does not see itself as having the central role in being

responsible for food security, but leaves this to market forces, it may explain the dramatic

and persisting level of malnutrition. It is not promising for increased access to food for

the majority of poor Indians in the near future (Sethi 2006).

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As mentioned in chapter one, several organizations and hundreds of thousands of

farmers are not willing, or able, to continue with a business model of agricultural

production. They have for some years tried more sustainable ways of producing food,

both for nature and for the small farmers. In the following two chapters I will look at the

situation for a number of these farmers, and also for several of those who continue with

GR production patterns, starting in Punjab.

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CHAPTER THREE: PUNJAB

The Green Revolution and its Discontents

Introduction

In this and the following chapter I discuss the main themes identified in the

introduction as they pertain to each state. For Punjab, these include non-sustainable

agriculture; the environmental consequences for soil, water, and air, implications for

agriculture; loss of biodiversity, a new seed regime, effects on human health, and finally

economic and social implications; inequality, indebtedness, suicide. Then I proceed to

talk about sustainable agriculture: farmers’ organizations with an alternative to

agribusiness, training of farmers, conversion to organic agriculture, barriers to

conversion; economical, practical, and psychosocial, changes after conversion;

environmental, economic, and lastly continued challenges; marketing, certification, seed

saving and biodiversity conservation.

I start with a short description of the state before I continue with the above-mentioned

topics. Some issues will be discussed more in this chapter and less in the next, because

of inter-state variation. For example: the GR is emphasized in this chapter about Punjab,

because the farmers who I interviewed in this state are more involved in industrial

agriculture than most of the farmers living in Uttarakhand, and especially in the mountain

regions of Uttarakhand I visited.

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Punjab is the state known for being the breadbasket of India, and an example of how

the GR and industrialized agriculture greatly increased the yield of grains. It is also an

illustration of how this pattern of production, supported by large subsidies, led to

development of infrastructure and increased wealth among some, but at the same time

environmental degradation and serious negative health consequences for many in the

population. The amounts of water and costs of inputs currently required to continue with

these methods make it unsustainable, and some farmers are trying out alternative ways of

producing food.

Located in the northwestern part of India, Punjab was first divided under the dramatic

partition after independence, and then again in 1966, under the Punjab Reorganization

Act, which separated the southern, Hindi-speaking part of the state into Haryana, while

the hill areas in the northeast became part of Himachal Pradesh. With the 50,362 square

kilometers left, the state is now similar in size to Costa Rica, and the smallest of the four

states in which I did fieldwork. Punjab (meaning, five rivers), is divided into three agro-

ecological zones: the sub-mountainous region of Kandi in the northeast, with abundant

rainfall and more diverse cropping patterns than the other two zones, comprises

agricultural production that emphasizes production of fruits, vegetables, corn, and

oilseed, in addition to rice and wheat. The central region includes the districts of

Amritsar, Jalandhar, and Patiala, where rice-wheat rotation is the main cropping system

and irrigation depends mainly on tube-wells that tap underground water. The

southwestern region which includes the districts of Bathinda and Faridkot, among others,

is often called the cotton belt, although farmers there also grow other crops. It is drier

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than the other two zones, with sandy soils. During my fieldwork I visited the three

districts in the central region mentioned above, Patiala in the southeast, Jalandhar further

north, and Amritsar in the northwest. In the cotton belt, I visited Faridkot and Bathinda,

both in the semi-arid southwest.

The division of the state in 1966 mentioned above was largely due to Sikhs’ wish for

a separate state, which they had failed to obtain after independence. Sikhism is the main

faith in Punjab with 60 percent of the population adhering to it, while 37 percent practice

Hinduism. About 66 percent of the population lives in rural areas and 70 percent are

engaged in agriculture, which contributes to almost 40 percent of the state’s GDP,

compared to 20 percent at the national level. Punjab comprises just 1.6 percent of India’s

land area and three percent of its cultivated area, but contributes ten percent of the

national rice production, and 20 percent of the wheat production, the two major crops

grown in three-quarters of the cultivated area. Eighty five percent of the state’s area is

used for agriculture, and 97 percent of this farmland is irrigated (Punjabgovt 2011;

Tiwana, et al. 2007).

Farmers in Punjab have a much larger average landholding than farmers in the other

three states I visited. The average holding in Punjab is about ten acres compared to the

national average of about 3.5 acres, and many farmers hire agricultural laborers to do

manual work on their farms (Indiastat 2011). Most Sikhs are of the Jat, or landowning

caste, and will do any work on their own farm, but will not work for others, because that

would mean a decline in social status. They can help a fellow farmer, but will not accept

payment for such work; hence most agricultural labor comes from out of state.

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Immigrant laborers, often of the scheduled castes1, who come from poorer states with

high unemployment like Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, and neighboring Rajasthan, now

make up 15–30 percent of a total population of about 27.7 million people (India Census

2011).

Punjab lost its position as the state with the highest per capita income to Maharashtra

and Delhi in 2000–01, a rank it had held for four decades. Today, 64.5 percent of its

farmer households are in debt. While high levels of debt are found in several other states,

including Andhra Pradesh at 82 percent and Tamil Nadu at 74.5 percent, the individual

Punjabi farmer’s debt is much higher than in these two other states (IFPRI 2007). The

average amount of debt per household in Punjab is Rs. 41,576 compared to the national

average of Rs. 12,585, which contributes to the large number of farmer suicides, which I

will discuss below under economic and social implications (Tiwana, et al. 2007). While

in many Indian states women play a central role in agricultural work, Punjabi women are

hardly visible in the agricultural fields. This practice has increased with the

modernization of agriculture, and with higher income and status women were withdrawn

to the domestic sphere. Gender segregation in the public as well as the domestic sphere

is stark today, and on the Sikh farms and in the villages I observed, women spent most of

the day separated from men including at meals2.

As discussed in the previous chapter, Punjab was at the center of the GR, and over

four decades after its introduction many older farmers that I spoke with remembered their 1 The “scheduled castes” is the legal and constitutional name collectively given to the groups that have traditionally occupied the lowest status in Indian society. Not a homogenous group but divided into many castes and sub-castes, specific caste names are more likely to be used locally at an everyday level. Another term used in official Indian terminology is harijan, while members often call themselves dalit. 2 The state has a skewed sex ratio, with 893 female per 1000 men, compared to the Indian average of 940 females per 1000 men. Kerala, which has the highest levels of literacy and life expectancy, is also the only state with a “natural” sex ratio at birth of 1,084 females per 1000 men (Census 2011).

59

former agricultural practices and the changes that came with the GR. Some spoke of the

time before the GR with nostalgia, while others argued that intensified production had

brought higher income, mechanization, and other benefits. Many talked about the

environmental problems they experienced in terms of depleted soil, low water tables, and

polluted rivers. Several were also worried about health effects after decades of applying

chemical fertilizers and pesticides in large amounts. There are increasing rates of cancer

in a number of villages, in addition to other serious health problems.

The landscapes I visited in the Patiala district consist mostly of plains, and the

farmers have leveled their fields further for rice production. There are some trees lining a

few of the fields, but little is left of forest that once covered much larger areas before they

expanded farming here in the 1950s and 60s. After cutting down the trees, farmers

plowed and sowed pulses, wheat, and mustard. As Akalpreet, a farmer with ten acres

(and therefore would be classified as a large farmer) explained while he showed me

around on his farm, “we used to just scatter the seed and they grew without much effort.

In those days we did not need any artificial booster; the land itself used to give us a good

harvest. We kept the strength of the land by leaving the fields fallow for one season.”

Akalpreet is a former leader of the Panchayat (village council), and knows most of the

farmers in the area. I asked him if he could invite some of them to come and talk about

farming, and the following Sunday morning at least thirty farmers appeared for a focus

group meeting. They were mostly small farmers and were very interested in discussing

farming with a visitor. One elderly man commented, “We are not able to travel around in

India to see the conditions of other farmers, like some are, we are just barely able to feed

our families.”

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We started talking about the period prior to the GR, and one farmer sitting in front

said, “All of us are experienced, there is no way we forget that farming. We used to put

cow dung, compost, and green manure;3 everything was natural and its effect remained

for three years, and the crops were very good.” Several mentioned leaving the land

fallow, for six months or a year, and one added that in those days farming did not have

the pressure of feeding so many people. Increasing the food production and feeding the

poor was, of course, part of the idea behind introducing the new seed and farming

methods, while, as mentioned in the previous chapter, at the same time the Indian

government avoided other more controversial social- and land reforms, and the industries

producing the various inputs now needed, embarked on what was for them a

revolutionary success.

The Department of Agriculture and the agriculture universities introduced the new

seed: hybrid High Yielding Varieties (HYV), as well as new farm machinery, fertilizers,

and pesticides in the early 1960s. One farmer told me, “our indigenous wheat seed were

low yielding so the university brought new varieties of wheat from Mexico and other

places where wheat was grown. They experimented and invented HYV, which they

prescribed, saying that if you grow this variety it will give more yield.” More land was

cleared for agriculture, and the farmers were asked to grow rice, a crop that would require

increased use of water (IFPRI 2007). They started to grow wheat and rice alternatively,

two crops in one year; wheat in the winter, rice in the summer. The fields they earlier

had left fallow were now cultivated in both seasons, year after year. Some even

3 Green manure is a traditional way to supply nutrients to the soil and improve soil fertility. Often a nitrogen-fixing legume crop, e.g. cowpea, mungbean, or clover is grown in a field, then cut and incorporated into the soil, or left on the surface to decompose.

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increased to three crops per year in the same field, one wheat crop, and two rice crops,

because one of the new rice varieties could be harvested after just 60 days. Explained

one farmer, “We began to use more and more urea [nitrogen] and chemicals with those

seed, so that the crop would give more yield. We started to misuse it.” There were

increased pest attacks on the new rice varieties grown outside the traditional cropping

season, and without considerable chemical use it became difficult to get rid of those

problems. Gradually, in the view of many farmers, the jan (life) of the soil was lost, as

the use of chemicals increased.

Balraj, Akalpreet’s 93 years old father, like many others was initially positive about

the new inputs. “When we were young we were using natural fertilizers along with the

cow dung, but when we started using chemical fertilizers we began to get more yield.

Everywhere I would see there was urea, and we were getting a good profit by using it.

We began to add a lot of water, and more water gave more wheat.” They used to have

animals work the soil, but as more land was cultivated they started to use tractors,

because “it became very difficult to cultivate in large fields, the tractors could do

everything and slowly people forgot the old ways.” Now Punjab has a tractor density of

106 (per thousand hectares of net sown area) compared to a national average of 22. In

other words; 1.8 percent of India’s cultivators operate 14.6 percent of the country’s

tractors (IFPRI 2007).

While not all farmers were excited about the new seed, and some resisted adding

chemical fertilizers to the soil, the Agriculture Department and the Block Development

Officers (BDOs), tried to convince them of the benefits associated with the new practices.

The BDOs came to the farms to encourage farmers to start using fertilizers, which they

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initially supplied to the farmers free of cost. Explained one farmer, “They persuaded the

farmers, saying: that will give you more yield that will give you more money.” Another

farmer said that the BDO would come at night and throw fertilizers in his field. When he

thought the crop was growing healthy, the BDO said, “We have put some fertilizer to

your field at night. Now see the result.” Through these methods they convinced the

farmers, and the same pattern was repeated in other areas of the state. “I think I have

used urea and Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP), for thirty years,” said Charanpal, a

farmer in a southwestern district of the state. “The more urea we used the more yield we

got. Even if our yields were good we would put ten or 20 kilogram urea extra next year

just to increase the yield.” Soon, applying chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and using the

new seed had replaced traditional methods among most of the farmers. Deepinder, a

large farmer in Patiala, noted, “I don’t know of anyone who did not participate in the GR,

because it was the easiest way to make a profit at the time. The gain was larger despite

the cost of the chemical inputs, and it really compensated for your expenses.” As the

crop increased, there were immediate economic gains, but after a few years there were

signs of strain on the natural environment.

Environmental Consequences

Today Punjab consumes double the Indian average use of fertilizers, consuming 163

kilogram of urea per hectare rather than the recommended 125 kg per hectare for this area

(IFPRI 2007). “We use more than 150 kilogram of urea in one acre of land, while when

we started using it, only 50 kilogram or less was used per acre,” Akalpreet said. The

farmers participating in the focus group discussion agreed that the situation has changed,

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“nowadays there is a lot of strain on the fields and the quality of the soil has deteriorated.

We have to produce a lot, and we have to use chemical fertilizers to get two, three, or

sometimes four crops in the same field in one year.”

While the use of fertilizers and pesticides has steadily increased, the yield has started

to level off. The annual agricultural growth rate based mainly on rice and wheat,

averaged four percent during the 1970s and five percent in the 1980s. It fell to 2.6

percent during the 1990s, and from the early 2000s, the agricultural sector growth fell

below one percent per year, while the crops sector had a negative growth rate (IFPRI

2007). Akalpreet said, “The capacity of the soil is decreasing, and every year we have to

put more urea.” Before they had a lot of earthworms and microorganisms that provided

nutrients to the soil, now they hardly exist in the soil here anymore. “These days, if you

add urea you get a crop, if not, you cannot grow anything on these farms; the soil is

dead.” The pesticides have taken a toll on friendly insects as well, and have caused many

birds to disappear. “The way we are growing our crop we will deplete the soil and the

earth, and it is bad for everybody’s health,” he concluded. The mono cropping pattern

distinguishing the GR have resulted in a significantly reduced genetic base for crop and

livestock production (Knudsen, et al. 2005), and decreased the nutritional value of the

crop (Kataki, et al. 2001). The intensive rice-wheat rotation has deprived the soils of

micronutrients and contributed to the soil’s deficiencies (Aulakh and Bahl 2001).

The intensified production is also polluting the environment through the burning of

rice straw (23 million tons) and wheat straw (17 million tons) every year. This causes

severe air pollution in the affected areas, especially during the months of March and

April, and October and November (Tiwana, et al. 2007). Jaspal Singh, an organic farmer

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in Jalandhar district, explained that the wheat straw could be fed to cattle, and the rice

straw, which is moister and tends to rot, could be returned into the soil to add nutrients.

Instead, now it is often burned, in conventional farming, to quickly make way for the next

crop. “Many of the farmers have got rid of their cattle as they have tractors, but instead

of collecting this residue, the shortcut method is to just burn it. It means millions of tons

of straw are being burnt just in one state. Imagine the pollution and the organic carbon

that is being destroyed, and not replaced into the soil,” he said. There is a law that bans

farmers from burning their crop residue, and the fine is Rs. 10,000 if you are caught, but

Jaspal said, “The police only enforce it if there is a complaint registered, but no one

complains, because everyone is burning.” The practice of burning the straw started with

the rice-wheat rotation introduced early in the GR.

Implications for Agriculture

Farming with HYV required a lot more water than the earlier method of cultivation

did. A problem in much of Punjab today is that groundwater levels have fallen

dramatically since the beginning of intensified farming. In the central region (Amritsar,

Jalandhar and Patiala districts, among others), the water table has fallen at a rate of 0.23

meter per year since the mid-1990s. Tube-wells in that area have increased in number

from 192,000 in 1970, to 1.2 million in 2004 (IFPRI 2007). One consequence of this is

elevated arsenic concentrations in the groundwater in most of Punjab, much higher than

the limits set by the WHO for safe drinking water, making virtually none of the tube-well

water suitable for drinking. The excessive amount of arsenic is caused by “the oxidative

release from sulfide and iron hydroxide minerals when alluvial aquifers are exposed to

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atmospheric oxygen, due to depletion of water through tube-wells or hand pumps for

irrigation or domestic purpose” (Hundal, et al. 2007:2274). “This land soaks a lot of

water, and if there will be no rain then we cannot get a crop without pumping water.

These days we are digging deeper to pump out the groundwater, and it is getting lower

every year. If the water problem continues we would have to stop growing rice. Not by

choice, but by force,” said one farmer. In Jalandhar and Patiala districts and in the cotton

belt districts in the southwest, where large areas are being lost to water logging and

salinity, farmers I spoke with are also worried about the water situation. Water logging

and salinity are sometimes the result of inadequate drainage, but Jaspal explained that “it

is also caused by urea and other chemicals which sink into the soil and make a layer, and

in some places a hard crust forms, which prevents the water from reaching down to the

water table. It makes the land muddy, with a white layer everywhere in the fields

because of more salt, more urea, more DAP, phosphate and other inputs,” he said. He

told me how he had to dig down and crush the crust with the help of the tractor when he

converted to organic farming methods, because it was so hard he could not break it by

hand. He also described how excess water around the plant root prevents the aeration

required for proper plant growth and may change the environment and thereby the

availability of nutrients, while the salts restrict the plants from taking up water, and may

cause toxicities in the soil. Punjab is divided into 17 districts and 140 development

blocks. The number of development blocks with a water table beyond the critical level of

ten meters was 35 in 2000. If the current trend continues it is expected to reach 72 blocks

in 2030 (IFPRI 2007), and that would make farming difficult in large areas of the state.

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Another serious problem of the GR and its farming methods is that many of the

traditional seed varieties adapted to different conditions and climates have been lost. At

the focus group in Patiala, one farmer said, “Our native seed that our elders were using

required much less water and they were good for our environment.” But, as another

farmer commented, “I don’t think that any farmer has saved those seed, because everyone

is buying seed from the store, our local varieties are not found here anymore.” The

farmers remember well the seed that were used before the 1970s, but as the agriculture

universities introduced the new varieties, all of them started using the new seed. “The

yield is better, that is the difference, but they also require a lot more water, and fertilizer.

We did not water those native seed as much; it was not compulsory to water them.

Sometimes when there was no rain, they still used to grow, and we still used to get

something out of it,” said Ekanjeet, a large farmer in Patiala. The BDO convinced the

farmers to start using hybrid seed by giving them away, the same way as with fertilizers.

“The hybrid varieties give higher yield and that is the reason the farmers are attracted to

them,” he continued, “but before the hybrids came we used to save and use our own seed.

Now we are dependent on the seed companies. We have no indigenous seed at home,

like earlier.”

While hybrid HYV have been used for decades in Punjab now, a new controversial

GM seed, the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cottonseed was introduced in 2002 to control the

main pest of cotton in India, the American bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera). Bt is a

naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a toxin, which has been used in

conventional as well as organic agriculture since the 1920s to control Lepidoptera species

(butterflies and moths). When used in its natural form it biodegrades easily and has no

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harmful side effects. In the transgenic cotton a gene sequence from Bt is inserted into the

cotton genome, producing an insecticidal protein for a built-in resistance to the American

bollworm (Altieri 2004; Pinstrup-Andersen and Schiøler 2001; Srinivas 2002). One of

the first Bt cottonseed, produced by Monsanto, was the patented Bollagard cotton,

planted in the United States, Mexico and Australia in the 1990s. Since then many

varieties of insect and herbicide resistant Bt seed have been commercialized, and in

industrialized countries the herbicide-tolerant trait has been the most important. One

example is Round-up Ready, tolerant to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, and there are

cotton varieties with both insect- and herbicide-tolerant traits in the same seed.

In countries like India with many smallholders, insect resistance is of most interest.

The first Bollgard seed had variable effect on the American bollworm, which was not

controlled completely, and Bt resistance was soon reported from the field. A later

Bollgard II, and many other varieties have since appeared, but success for the Bt cotton

crop also depends a great deal on sufficient water and nitrogen fertilizers. The farmers

are supposed to leave a mandatory refuge of non-Bt cotton crops around the Bt fields to

slow down the development of resistance, but this is very difficult to enforce, especially

in India with many small fields.

Mahyco Monsanto Biotech is one of the Indian Bt cottonseed producers (the

Monsanto Corporation owns about a quarter of the company). Its varieties of cottonseed

were approved in 2002 by the Indian government, and by 2010 about 70 percent of

conventional cotton in India was derived from GM seed (Blake 2010; Showalter, et al.

2009). India is the world’s second largest cotton producer after China, and the largest

producer of organic cotton. A concern for the organic cotton producers is the risk of

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cross-contamination of their locally adapted crop varieties from the Bt cotton fields via

cross-pollination (Lalitha, et al. 2009). The Bollgard was sold around the world to

countries where the growers would sign license agreements and pay a technology fee to

use the Bt seed, but Monsanto was afraid that would not work in India, so they made it

available only in hybrids, to deliver and protect the Bollgard technology. Each

succeeding generation of the hybrid loses a certain percentage of the yield advantage and

any transgenic traits, such as the Bollgard gene. The cost of hybrid seed production

would normally have been prohibitively expensive because it relies on pollination by

hand, and therefore many laborers to do this at specific times. India and China are

therefore the only countries that use hybrid cotton to a significant extent. An estimated

25 million children are employed in the agricultural sector in India and the seed

companies keep production costs down for the hybrid seed by employing female children

at very low wage rates (Majumdar 2001; Qaim 2003; Venkateshwarlu and Da Corta

2001). The area planted in Bt cotton in Punjab increased by ten times from 2003 to 2005,

and Bt is now grown in almost 30 percent of the total cotton area there (Tiwana, et al.

2007).

Organic farmers argue that to introduce the Bt toxin into the crop is neither necessary

nor a good solution, since most butterfly and moth species that damage the cotton crop

are pesticide-induced secondary pests, allowed to flourish because the beneficial insects

which controlled them have been reduced by pesticides. They would rather see the pests

controlled through crop rotation or intercropping with other plants (Altieri 2004). But

that was not initially on the mind of the farmers in Punjab, when the “worm-period,” as

they called it, began in the mid-1990s, and the American bollworm became immune to

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the pesticides they had used to control it. One farmer explained how “generation-by-

generation the bollworm became stronger, and slowly so powerful that the pesticides

would not affect it.” They applied heavy loads of pesticides for some years, without

getting much crop. One farmer described the situation as “very miserable, we would not

get a reasonable yield even with the pesticides, and they were so costly that sometimes

we had to pay from our pocket rather than getting a profit from the cotton crop.” Some

said they started growing Bt cotton because they had to. “We had no option because our

traditional crop was a failure every time because of those insects.”

Although the farmers were content with the resistance to the bollworm, the resistance

had already started to decrease in some places. Farmers do spray much less pesticides

than before in this area, but since Bt cotton is resistant only to the American bollworm

(and rarely 100 percent), and the Bt toxin does not have any significant effect on

secondary pests, most still spray once or twice for aphids and other insects. There have

been serious attacks from other pests, like the mealy bug, that have destroyed large

amounts of Bt cotton. Other insects are likely to become a more serious problem for Bt

cotton production, due to the decline in the bollworm populations and changes in crop

ecology. Some farmers said growing Bt is too costly for them; “We used to grow cotton

here, but the last ten years we have been growing rice instead. We changed, because the

American bollworm was destroying the crop, and Bt cotton is expensive to grow; it

requires a lot of water and laborers, which also is expensive. Bt costs a lot more than rice

and with rice you don’t have any labor.”

The price for the Bt seed has gone down from what it was initially, but as one farmer

said, “We still think it is expensive to buy Bt cottonseed, because we have to pay for it.

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Once you grow Bt cotton you cannot use its seed for the next crop as we used to do with

our traditional seed.” There are counterfeit seed in the market, and that could be

contributing to lower cost, but also to less resistance and less yields. Still, those who

could afford the seed, and the increased water and fertilizers, have had better income

from the cotton crop these first few years of growing Bt cotton. Before the American

bollworm came the farmers said their yield of conventional cotton was around 800

kilogram per acre. Then for a few years it was negligible, during the “worm-period”

when so many pesticides were used. These days they get between 800 and 1,600

kilograms per acre, with an average yield of 1,200 kilograms per acre. However, the Bt

cotton carries a lot of uncertainty because of the variation in output, and the continued

need of high-cost input in fertilizers and pesticides.

Effects on Human Health

There was controversy around Bt cotton before it was introduced, and today several

farmers’ organizations and many in the general public, in India and around the world, are

still discussing potential risks of GM crops in the environment, and potential effects on

the health of humans as well as of animals (Aris and Leblanc 2011; Burke 2003; Seralini,

et al. 2007; Spök, et al. 2004; Torres and Ruberson 2006). A frequently expressed

concern is the desire for further research on the ecology of the Bt plant, such as its

interaction with various ecosystems and the possibility of adverse impacts on non-target

species like beneficial insects, in order to make an informed decision regarding use of

engineered crops.

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In the past, the farmers would extract the oil from the cottonseed and feed the seed to

the cattle, but now many farmers sell the seed along with the cotton to the factories; they

dare not feed those seed to their animals because they fear the poison could negatively

affect their health. One farmer said, “The leaves and other products of Bt cotton is not

good fodder for the cattle, since it has the poison.” Another farmer mentioned that rashes

affect dogs that roam through the Bt cotton fields, and that several people who work in a

Bt cotton field complain about rashes, itching, and other skin problems. One cotton

picker said, “It affects very badly on the skin, we have rashes and sometimes the skin just

tears off. Even when we pick up the dry stems we have rashes on our hands, it emits

something that affects the skin.”

Bt toxin is present as long as the plant residue is present, and while the farmers’

comments on side effects of Bt cotton should be investigated further; one fear has been

that the gene may produce unintended toxins and allergens. There are conflicting reports

from field and laboratory studies where Bt crops and herbicide resistant GM crops show

great diversity of impact on non-target organisms and plants (Altieri 2004; Burke 2003;

Torres and Ruberson 2006), and some argue that basic experiments related to

environmental impacts are still missing (Snow, et al. 2005).

One area that does have a lot of research clearly indicating its detrimental effects on

human health and the environment in general is the use of chemical fertilizers and

pesticides, and that is something that greatly affects the lives of many of the farmers I

talked to. “Here in our district people get diseases, so there are side effects. We know

the harms of these chemicals but we have no other option,” one said. They were

convinced that if they did not use the chemicals their crop would fail. In Faridkot district,

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part of the cotton belt, one farmer admitted that, “I’m aware that doctors and even the

government tell us to use less chemicals and pesticides, and people know that they will

get health problems from these chemicals, but still they use them because they want a

good crop.”

In addition to people getting poisoned through contact with the chemicals and

contaminated water, ingestion of farm produce with residue is also a health risk here.

India has one of the highest rates of residue on farm produce in the world, and the results

of several studies in Punjab, by the government, NGOs, and various researchers, indicate

residues of chemical pesticides at levels dangerous for human health. Unsafe levels have

been found in humans, milk, water, vegetables, and other food products (Battu, et al.

1978; 2004; 2005; Chattopadhyay 1998; Joia, et al. 1978; Kalra and Chawla 1980; Kalra,

et al. 1994; Mathure, et al. 2005).

From 1976 to 1996, Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane (DDT), Benzene Hexa

Chloride (BHC) and Hexa Chlorocyclohexane (HCH) were the major pesticides used in

farming in Punjab. While DDT was banned from agriculture in 1989, which lead to a

reduction of its contamination of milk and butter, it is still used in public health programs

and is found in river water used by humans and cattle, with potential continued adverse

health impacts (e.g., liver and nerve system damage) (Longnecker, et al. 1997). The

frequency of contamination by less persistent, but more toxic organophosphates and

carbamate pesticides (organic compounds derived from carbamic acid) are on the rise in

the state (Tiwana, et al. 2007).

Some farmers avoid using any chemicals on the vegetables they grow for their own

consumption, even if they use it on crops they grow to sell in the market. They say they

73

do it mainly because of the taste, but also because they perceive the chemicals as a health

hazard. Many people also buy vegetables in the market, but as one woman told me,

“After eating those vegetables from the market, we do not feel energetic.

Psychologically, or whatever, in the morning we don’t get up fresh, because they spray

chemicals on them.” She said after eating her own vegetables, she feels ok. “I do feel

that is the effect of those chemicals, indeed, and I think washing them doesn’t help,

because it is still inside.” Studies suggest that she is right because apart from the residue

left on the plant itself, the source of pesticide contamination of vegetables is mainly the

soil where they are grown. The amount absorbed differs greatly between crops; carrots

are not as sensitive as chili plants, for example, and hence chili plants can also be used as

“catch plants,” to absorb residue of HCH from contaminated soil, and to prevent leaching

to ground water (Karanth 2002).

One of the potential harms from pesticide use is increasing rates of cancer (Alavanja,

et al. 2004). A study comparing cancer rates in Bathinda district, part of the cotton belt,

and Rupnagar (now called Ropar) district in the sub-mountainous region, found 103

cancer cases per 100,000 population in Bathinda compared to 71 in Rupnagar, while

cancer deaths per year were 52 and 30 respectively (Kumar 2005). Conventional cotton

production is much more pesticide dependent than rice and wheat. This has led to

popular concern about cancer; as one farmer said, “Wherever they grow cotton, the

percentage of people having cancer has increased, and it is finally coming up in the

news.” Even if farmers have reduced the spraying of pesticides on the Bt cotton to one or

two sprayings per season, a lot of pesticides have percolated into the groundwater,

because the soil is sandy and the water seeps through the ground to the groundwater

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below. One farmer told me they know the facts and they can very well see it in their

health, “everybody is sick, everyone is suffering from some disease, so everyone is on

medication.” Another study analyzing pesticide residue in human blood samples from

villagers in Punjab, found up to 12 types of pesticide residue. The average pesticide level

in the blood samples was four times higher than the short-term exposure limits for

humans set by the WHO and FAO (Mathure, et al. 2005). Many farmers mentioned “the

cancer train,” a regular train that has been carrying cancer patients from Bathinda to

Bikaner’s Prince Bijoy Memorial Hospital in Rajasthan, for chemotherapy or

consultation for the last four years. There are government cancer treatment facilities in

several districts in Punjab as well, and a cancer department opened in 2010 at the Guru

Gobind Singh Medical College in Faridkot, near Bathinda (Menon and Mukherjee 2011).

Several people mention that they have trust in that hospital in Bikaner because people

they know had recovered after treatment there.

Balraj, Akalpreet’s father mentioned above, had changed his views about the food

they have been producing during the last several decades: “There is an effect on the

health of those who eat food grown by chemicals and urea, of course. They will for sure

get weaker; there will be no strength. It will be bad food, you don’t know what you are

actually eating with the bread, what has really been put in it.” He said nowadays people

are getting so many health problems you cannot count the numbers. When he was

younger they used to have fever because of mosquitoes, but otherwise he never heard of

any other disease. “Many used to get fever and we did not have a cure for it or use any

medicine, but it used to go away by itself, maybe by drinking lassi, (a traditional yoghurt-

based drink), we had no access to a doctor.”

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Farmers and laborers working on the farms are the ones most at risk for direct

poisoning by pesticides. “There is still a lot to be learned among the laborers,” said a

farmer, “sometimes they don’t even wash their hands with soap after spraying, they just

rub their hands with sand and then start eating.” But a study on farmer knowledge

surrounding pesticide use in Jalandhar and Moga districts in the central region found

there is much information needed among the farmers as well. Twenty eight percent of

the respondents were not aware of the instructions written on the pesticide containers, and

more than 50 percent did not follow these. Sixty four percent said they were not aware of

the recommended dose, and 75.5 percent said they did not dispose of the empty

containers after use, but rather reused them in household activities (Sharma, et al. 2005).

“Sometimes we inhaled the pesticides while standing by the field and it made us sick

several times,” said one farmer, who also mentioned examples of laborers getting drowsy

after inhaling the chemicals while spraying, and one laborer who got sick and was

hospitalized for a month. He said masks to protect the respiratory system were not

available at the time, and although they are now available he did not think that the quality

of them is very good. The farmers often hire laborers to spray chemicals in the farm.

Charanpal, a farmer who hires sprayers said, “We usually stay away when they spray the

chemicals, so we don’t have any problem.” The work is done on a contract basis, and the

laborers specialize in this. One person can spray several acres in one day by starting

spraying early in the morning. They charge Rs. four or five per drum (20 liters), and in

one acre they spray four or five drums, so the cost is Rs. 25 ($0.50) per acre. “We also

feed them and give them lassi to drink,” Charanpal said. It is believed here that eating

before working with pesticides is important. Charanpal continued; “they eat well before,

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because if you are spraying on an empty stomach, then it would affect you more than if

your stomach was full.” The laborers are given soap, and after spraying they take bath

and wash their clothes. They also provide them with lemon and salt. That is the local

formula practiced everywhere in Punjab, Charanpal said. “If somebody is getting drowsy

he takes lemon. Whenever there is some effect of pesticides, the worker feels better after

drinking lemon juice with salt.” Charanpal has two permanent workers on the farm, but

they will not do the spraying. Those who spray, do only that work. Some do get sick,

and some have eye irritation and other health problems, Charanpal explained. “There are

some people who look like drug addicts afterwards; they look drunk or intoxicated.

When you see their strange appearance for the first time, you get scared, such ugly

figures, but when you live with them… we see them every day, they don’t seem that

scary to us,” he said.

Fateh is a 40 years old laborer in Bathinda district who works picking Bt cotton and

spraying pesticides in the cotton fields. He works with his whole family in the fields,

including women and children. He said the children go to school, and that they come and

work in the field if they want to, after school. He does not really have a problem after

picking Bt cotton, he said, if he takes a bath afterwards to wash off its effects. The Bt

cotton harvest is ready a little earlier than the traditional cotton used to be. While it was

chilly when they picked cotton earlier, now the crop is ready for harvest in the summers,

and it is quite hot. If it is very hot, he gets some kind of rash, and itching on his body, but

he said it may be because of sweat. Before the Bt cotton came, when they used to spray

again and again, they applied the local prevention method which is to rub mustard oil on

the whole body before spraying, and then to take a bath immediately afterwards. “If

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sometimes a mask, protecting clothes, or gloves are included in the package with the

pesticides, then I use those. If it is not there, then I just spray without any protection,” he

told me. Once he was spraying and the pesticide container he was carrying on his back

was leaking and he felt the aftereffects of that. “My eyes swelled, my body became stiff;

the whole night I could not get up and I was feeling drowsy. Later I got better, and I

recovered.” He said he plans to continue with his work because this is what he can do.

Even if negative health effects are clearly visible, some farmers still expressed

uncertainty. “We do not know what harm may be caused by these chemical sprays, we

just do whatever the Department of Agriculture suggests,” one said. This statement could

be an example of “toxic uncertainty” as discussed by Auyero and Swistun (2009) and by

Singer (2011). In these two cases, as well as among some of the farmers in Punjab, there

is uncertainty and confusion among the ones who suffer the consequences of toxic

pollution concerning the facts and seriousness of the problem. This is caused by the

contradicting messages given by state officials, companies, health professionals or

journalists, for example, about the dangers of pollution, and their explanation of the

origin of the health problems experienced by the population.

All of the farmers from the focus group in Patiala grew conventionally, using urea

and DAP as well as pesticides and herbicides. One said, “When we go to the shops

where they sell pesticides, the shopkeepers tell us to use more pesticides because they

have their own benefits in this. The more they sell the more commission they get.”

Another said that it is not very labor intensive to add the pesticides and herbicides, “but I

mixed herbicides with urea or DAP, and then just scattered that in the field, so I would

have no other plants or weeds.” Many times it is the farmers’ own mixing of different

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products which creates especially hazardous situations (Sharma, et al. 2005), in addition

to overuse. One farmer described how, “initially we were using pesticide spray if there

were insects on the crop, but later we sprayed three or four times just as a precaution,

even if there were no insects,” and thus increased the use of pesticides unnecessarily.

Some argued that this is also because the effects of the products are less than what it used

to be.

Charanpal explained that the government used to spray from planes, when the whole

area around his farm was a cotton-growing area. Then someone started cheating the

pilots and they sprayed only water, and the original pesticides that they were supposed to

spray were sold in the market. After that, people started spraying on their own. Several

farmers told me they are suspicious about the quality and authenticity of the pesticides.

They said widespread corruption has made them doubtful of whether the products being

sold to them have the original content. “People in the Department of Agriculture who are

involved with the pesticides business used to recommend only certain pesticides, and to

increase the rate on those,” one farmer said, “I guess they keep the money in their pocket

and supply inferior quality, because people who drank it didn’t die.” He talked about two

farmers in his neighborhood that had tried to kill themselves by drinking pesticides, but

after sleeping for a few hours they got up again. “They got really sick, but were given

some first aid; water mixed with lemon and salt, and after drinking that they vomited.”

The farmer claimed that if the pesticide had been genuine, they would have died; “this is

how we have seen the lack of authenticity of the pesticides, on the effect it had on these

and other men.” There have been accidents where the workers inhaled the chemicals

while working and died. “Those who get the proper medication may recover, but their

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health does not become as strong afterwards.” He said that some years ago the pesticides

were so powerful that if somebody inhaled while spraying they used to get sick. They

used to mix 20 milliliter of pesticide per 20 liter of water and spray on the fields, “now

we increased that mixture to 100 milliliter per 20 liter, but it doesn’t affect the humans

the way it used to,” he contended.

Charanpal compared his drinking habits with the habit of adding pesticides and urea

in the field. “We read in the newspapers, listen to the radio, and even the government

officers and the Department of Agriculture, doctors and other people, talk about reducing

the use of urea and pesticides.” Nevertheless, he said, it is like alcohol; people drink a

little when they start, but then they get caught in the addiction and drink more and more.

In the same way people are addicted to using urea, and even if they listen to everything

said, they do not follow it. “These chemicals will harm our soil the same way too much

liquor has harmed my heart, but people will not listen, they need an output.” He agreed

that the condition of the soil has deteriorated with excessive use of pesticides and urea,

but that many people are not concerned with the deterioration of the soil. “They would

do whatever it takes, they don’t care what happens next year; they cannot afford thinking

about a future plan,” he said, “Because their need is now.”

In Punjab, some do care about what happens now, and in the future, and one of them

is Surinder Singh, a 44 years old man working with the organization Kheti Virasat

(Heritage of Farming), in Nabha, Patiala. Kheti Virasat is a NGO that teaches

environmental awareness among the general population, and works with farmers on

conversion to organic agriculture, marketing of organic produce, and certification.

Surinder has worked with Kheti Virasat since its beginning in 2000 when it started

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highlighting the environmental health problems related to chemical farming, as the

community experienced increasingly poor health and environmental pollution. In 2003,

Kheti Virasat cooperated with Greenpeace India on a study of the impact of pesticides on

the mental development of children. Conducted in six cotton-growing states where the

use of pesticides was very high, and reports of pesticide-related problems had emerged,

the study Arrested Development (Greenpeace 2003) revealed that children exposed to

pesticides displayed lower abilities in cognition, memory, stamina, motor skills and

concentration—significantly lower in some abilities, and marginally so in others, but

consistently lower abilities—compared to those in the control population in less polluted

areas. Surinder said there had already been a few reports indicating that cancer was

reaching alarming rates in the farming community in the Bathinda area. These problems,

as well as other health problems farmers are facing such as anemia, infertility, fetal

malformations, premature ageing, early graying of hairs, and a lot of neurological

problems, were observed in the villages during the course of this study. When the study

was published in 2004 it got a lot of media attention. Surinder said one consequence was

that United Phosphorus Limited (UPL), a global chemicals and seed company

headquartered in Mumbai, filed a defamation case against Kheti Virasat; a doctor who

worked with them (from All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, AIIMS), and

himself. Unfortunately that doctor became frightened and withdrew, claiming he had not

done any study. “Nevertheless he has given very good evidence to us, and on that basis

we are fighting in court,” Surinder said. Agricultural input companies threaten them

regularly, but they are not planning to withdraw. “It’s a long battle,” he said, “you know

the structure of our judicial system; there are a lot of cases pending for ten or fifteen

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years. Maybe we also have to wait that long,” he said, “but these are very important

questions.” He continued by saying how unfortunate it is that scientists, doctors, and

others who can help the people affected are frightened and withdraw. But Kheti Virasat

is going ahead, and there are a lot of people who are supporting them, in the lawyer

community also, so they have not had to pay anything yet. “One lawyer who knew us

from earlier who is working in the Mumbai High Court is dealing our case free of cost.

When I had to travel there, an organization in Mumbai sponsored my trip and my stay.”

Punjab provides a large market for the pesticide companies, and Surinder said the

companies fear loss in sales, and do not want any negative publicity, providing an

incentive to stop Kheti Virasat’s activities by filing these types of cases. When the

findings from the study were published, the pesticide companies formed their own group

for protecting their products and countering the results, he said. They published a lot of

research arguing that pesticides do not cause cancer or the other types of diseases Kheti

Virasat observed, and they spent a lot of money delivering this material to the media and

the farmers. According to Surinder, “companies like Monsanto and other big

multinationals are supportive of such universities who teach their chemical agenda and

they wouldn’t like if it changed”, which is why, he believes, the Punjab Agricultural

University (PAU), and the government of Punjab are not promoting organic farming.

While some scientists are working at the university they are also working for the

pesticide companies, and when they retire from the PAU, they move to work directly for

the pesticide companies. Recently the PAU hired a person who used to work with

Monsanto. “It’s a close connection, but now the situation is changing, and also the

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mindset of people. People are thinking about this as a problem, and people listen to these

problems in the media,” he said.

Economic and Social Implications

Economic and social transformations following the GR, and the even more recent

agrarian innovations, like GM seed, have benefited those sectors of rural society who

already possessed land and capital. Marginal and small farmers had less or nothing to

gain, and many have not been able to sustain their farms. While the initial economic

success of the GR has had a large impact on the socio-economic structure of the state and

increased per capita income for the largest farmers, what characterizes the farming

economy now is the record high debt the farmers are struggling with. Farmers’

outstanding institutional loans increased from about 25 percent of the Net State Domestic

Product (NSDP), from agriculture and livestock, in 1990, to more than 38 percent, or Rs.

124 billion, by 2006. But this is just half of their debt, as non-institutional sources,

mainly commission agents, meet around 50 percent of the credit needs of the state’s

farmers. Farmers with large landholdings have the benefit of institutional credit facilities,

while marginal and small farmers more often depend on commission agents or

moneylenders for both their agricultural and social credit necessities (Tiwana, et al.

2007). There have been policy measures from the central government (Union Budget of

2008–09) for reducing the debt of marginal and small farmers who owe money to state,

commercial, and regional rural banks, as well as cooperative credit institutions, but most

farmers are not helped by this aid, since that is not where they have their loans (Rediff

2008). The reason they take up increasingly larger loans, and struggle with repayment, is

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that the prices of farm inputs, and expenses like diesel, have increased manifold

compared to the price they get for their crop. During the last ten years diesel has

increased from Rs. 10 to Rs. 30 per liter, urea from Rs. 70 to Rs. 250 for 50 kilogram,

DAP from Rs. 180 to Rs. 450 for 50 kilogram. Tractors used to cost from Rs. 6,000 to

Rs. 7,000, but for that amount you do not even get a trolley, or trailer, to the tractor now.

A trolley costs Rs. 50,000 and a tractor around Rs. 400,000. One farmer said, “we

bought a good tractor a few years ago for Rs. 176,000, now that costs about Rs. 800,000.”

Every time there is a new state government, it announces a better rate for farm produce,

the farmers said, but it is not comparable to the cost of the input, which is increasing

almost day by day. The cost of cultivation of rice increased by five percent from 2001 to

2006, and for wheat the increase was eight percent during the same time period (Tiwana,

et al. 2007). Another farmer analyzed the situation this way: “our income has gone

down; we continue to add urea in the fields to get a crop, but the yield is decreasing

because the soil is depleted, due to the same inputs we pay a high price for.”

The farmers I talked to in the southwestern cotton belt all do their transactions with

the commission agents or moneylenders. The agents lend them money, sell them seed,

fertilizers, and pesticides on credit, and later buy their crop. When the agent sells their

crop he gets two percent commission on the produce. Lack of storage, the need to pay

debt, or selling through the commission agent, all make the farmers vulnerable to price

fluctuations on their crops. This year, when the cotton was fresh in the market, they sold

it for Rs. 1,800 or Rs. 1,900 per 100 kilogram. Shortly after, when there was no cotton in

the market, the prices increased to Rs. 2,600 per 100 kilogram. A similar price jump

affected wheat. The government procured wheat for about Rs. 600, and when farmers

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had all sold out, the wheat was sold for Rs. 1,200. One farmer complained that, “if we

don’t find a buyer, we end up selling it to the moneylender for much less than regular

price, and then he can keep it and sell it later when the price is up.” They have this

economic flexibility that can give them an extra income. Normally the government

procures the wheat and rice and pays the moneylender, and then he would settle the

accounts with the farmer.

Capital and current expenditure on farming matters are the largest cause of

indebtedness, and account for almost 60 percent of outstanding loans. Family events like

marriages are the next largest cause, accounting for 11 percent of debt, while medical

expenses contribute 3.4 percent, and education 0.8 percent (Tiwana, et al. 2007).

Marriages are expensive because of the dowry system, and “there is a lot of social

pressure to have large weddings, and give a generous dowry. We spend more than we

can afford,” one farmer admitted. The moneylenders are not regulated, many operate

without formal written records, and the potential for their practices to be regarded with

suspicion is therefore large. When the farmers ask for a loan for a marriage or another

ceremony, with no security in the crop, the moneylender will sometimes ask the farmer to

sign a blank piece of paper, called a pro-note, where the amount and the date of the loan

is not mentioned. Several farmers said the moneylender does the accounting later, and if

there is some discrepancy between the farmer and the lender, he could fill in these blank

pro-notes with double the amount, and ask the farmer to pay. “Because farmers have

given a signature on the document the lender can take us to court any time,” he said.

Those who have land for security can get loans in the banks, where the interest rate is

seven to 12 percent, compared to the 24 to 36 percent rate of the moneylenders.

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If a famer cannot get a loan on the land or from the moneylender, they may try to get

a loan to buy a tractor or other equipment, which they say are quite easy to get. Then

they sell that tractor at a loss to a landowner who can give them cash. This is one way a

farmer with poor credit may get into deeper debts problems when they do not have a

moneylender they can rely on. One farmer said, “I was short on paying a moneylender

after selling my crop. I still owed him Rs. 5,000 ($100), and he refused to give me

further loans for the next crop.” Like most of the farmers, he depends on the

moneylender for the inputs for his crops. He said that his dealing with the moneylender

had been very good; he always used to repay his loans. “I think he refused giving me

money because some third person had told him that I would not repay my loan. The

social system has become very bad here; people pull each other’s leg.” Then he went to

another moneylender, but that year it was not easy to change moneylenders. “I didn’t

have any money for the household expenses, but finally some other moneylender lent me

money to do farming, so I carried on.”

The Bharatiya Kisan Union, (BKU) is an independent farmers’ union, formed by

politically engaged farmers who deemed the state’s political leadership did not

effectively address their economic concerns linked to the GR. The Punjab branch of the

BKU became a separate organization in 1980, but had been active under the banner of its

predecessor Punjab Khetibari Zamindara Union, (PKZU) established in 1972 (Gill 1994).

While the BKU has participated in some seminars organized by Kheti Virasat on widows

of farmers who committed suicide and on the effects of agrochemicals, Surinder Singh,

and some of the farmers I spoke with argued that their main concern was that the

government should raise the minimum support price, and that they did not have much

86

interest in organic farming. Surinder said, “A lot of our farmers in Patiala district

participate in BKUs one or two annual demonstrations, but BKU does not have regular

activities.” In Bathinda district, the small farmers I met there were not members of the

BKU, although they said there are branches in almost every block. The BKU are fighting

against price increase on inputs while there is no comparative increase in the price the

farmers get for their crop. “The union is very active and has a very strong lobby,” the

farmers said, but “now the union has started pressurizing the moneylenders and telling

the farmers not to repay the loans, and supporting them when they don’t.” The farmers I

talked to in this area felt that this was too drastic, and said that instead of having a benefit

from being a member of the farmers’ union, “rather we lose, because this way the union

spoils our relationship with the moneylenders, whom we need, to sell our crop and to buy

inputs. When we don’t have good relations with the moneylender he may try to cheat us,

or he could take revenge.” They said the moneylenders would avoid lending money to

farmers who are members of the union. “He will not even help us to sell our crop if we

have relations with the union.” This is because the moneylender fears that these farmers

could say that they would not repay the loan later on. “The union doesn’t offer economic

help or loans, but they help the farmers to not return the loans to the moneylenders.” In

cases of farmer suicides, the union supports the farmers’ families by accompanying them

to the police station to register a case against the moneylender, whom they may accuse of

having threatened the farmer if he did not repay a loan. They said the union blames the

moneylenders for the farmers’ suicides, and sometimes the moneylender opt to pay the

union some money and waive the loan to the farmer, to avoid police and courts.

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The suicide rate among farmers in Punjab was higher than the general suicide rate

from 1988–97, and reached 3.17 percent between 1991 and 1997, but has since declined.

The general rate rose from 0.57 percent in 1988, to 2.04 percent in 2001, according to a

report funded by the Punjab State Farmer Commission in 2006 (Kumar, et al. 2006).

This report also indicates that the districts in the cotton belt, including Bathinda and

Faridkot, were highly prone to farmer suicides from 1991 to 2005, and that the actual

numbers could be much higher, as not all suicide cases are registered as such. The

farmers said there are various causes behind suicides, but many may be related to crop

failure. From 1997 to 2002, during the “worm-period” when hardly a single crop

survived the American bollworm, the farmers spent a lot on chemicals. After this period

with negative budgets more people committed suicide. In addition to the cases where

famers have killed themselves because of heavy debt, the farmers said there are also

some suicides because of personal problems in the home, health problems, or problems

with alcohol, drugs, or medications. Quite a few argued that the government’s policies

are also responsible for many of the suicides that have been committed, whether due to

debt or for other reasons. With an agricultural system where those who are producing the

food need to acquire debt just to do their job, something is wrong, they said. “This new

kind of farming requires a lot of money to grow a crop and if you don’t get that money

back from your crop for any reason, then people have no option. They have to feed their

families, their workers, and if there is no income in addition to a heavy debt, some

despair.” Some farmers complained that the esteem for farming as a profession had been

lost, especially among the younger generations, during these last decades of structural

and cultural change imposed by the new farming methods. An enterprise that had been

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based on family labor on the land is now largely replaced by machinery and external

labor.

While many marginal and small farmers in Punjab, with less than five acres of land,

hardly get by, there are also large farmers, with ten acres or more. Many of the marginal

and small farmers have been bought up by the larger ones, increasing the average size of

the landholdings from 9.4 to 10 acres from 1995 to 2001, and decreasing the total number

of landholdings in the same period from 1.09 million to 997,000 (IFPRI 2007). Some of

the families leaving the smallest farms probably end up in the urban slums, while the

majority of slum dwellers are from out of state. In Punjab the average slum population in

the 28 major cities and towns is almost 14 percent, just below the national average of 15

percent, of urban populations. Ludhiana has the highest number with 314,000, followed

by Amritsar with 307,000 (Tiwana, et al. 2007). In 1961, in the infancy of the GR, the

number of agricultural laborers in Punjab constituted 9.65 percent of the state’s total

work force. That number increased to 23.31 percent in 1991, but has since decreased to

16.32 percent. Only 6.22 percent of the agricultural laborers are females. Numerous

laborers are employed during the sowing and harvesting seasons, and then laid off when

the season is over. The total agricultural work force, laborers and the cultivators, has

decreased from 62.8 percent in 1971 to 38.95 percent in 2001 (Tiwana, et al. 2007),

mainly due to mechanization and the rice-wheat crop rotation.

A few of the larger farmers I met in Patiala district hire laborers from Bihar during

the harvesting of sugarcane. One farmer said, “Local Punjabis are not so willing to work

in the fields, and they would charge much more salary. The Biharis, on the other hand,

don’t have any source of income in their home state, and they need to work for whatever

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they are paid.” The farmers also admitted that they do not want to pay much for the

labor. One of the farmers said he does give them quite high salary, Rs. 20 more than the

rest of the village. “Then maybe they are more loyal,” he said, and confirmed that,

“whenever I need them to work, they come to me.” The average pay for a day laborer is

Rs. 100 ($2.00) to Rs. 120 per day, and some farmers include food while others do not.

The farmers who include food give them the raw materials and they cook themselves,

sometimes living in a small hut on the farm during the seasonal work. The same farmer

said, “I give the labor from Bihar for sugarcane harvesting a little extra raw materials for

cooking, and I give them food even when there is no work in the fields, because then they

don’t have anything to eat. It is social work at the same time.” Cotton pickers are paid

per weight, Rs. 10 to Rs. 12 ($.20–$.24) for five kilogram of cotton. They pick around

60 to 65 kilogram of cotton a day, and can make around Rs. 120 to Rs. 150 ($2.60–$3.00)

a day, a little more than the regular labor salary. Since 2005 the number of migrant

laborers has decreased, and the state has faced a shortage of labor during the paddy

season since then (Tiwana, et al. 2007).

The subject of laborers, and bonded labor, in the growing Indian economy is vast and

I will not go into it here, mainly because the farmers I worked with, in all four states,

were primarily marginal and small farmers. These farmers cannot normally afford to

have laborers, albeit some of the small and medium sized farmers in Punjab do. I will

just add here that the growth of capitalist agriculture and the GR in Punjab has been

based in part on large Punjabi landholders’ exploitation of laborers from other states as

unfree labor, and that the perpetuation of these social relations has probably been a key to

finance their production (Brass 1999; Singh 1997).

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There are several subsidies for farmers in Punjab, and during 2003–04 the total input

subsidy for the state was about ten percent of the state’s GDP from agriculture. The

largest portion, 59.7 percent, of the subsidies is given towards electricity, and electricity

for agricultural purposes was therefore free from 1997–2002, and again from 2005.

Much of the electric power was used for water extraction, contributing to the decline in

the water table. Fertilizers are subsidized with 37.6 percent, and probably a partial cause

for nitrogen fertilizers being applied above recommended levels, while 2.7 percent is

given for irrigation. The government of India, like many other governments around the

world, thereby subsidizes the fertilizer manufacturing industry, especially the urea, or

nitrogen products in this case, by reimbursing them the difference between the price the

farmer pays, and the retention price which the manufacturer receives. These subsidies

have also been accentuating regional and personal income disparities in Punjab,

providing proportionally more to the central region, and to the larger landholders, rather

than smallholders. The marginal and small farmers who operate eight percent of

agricultural land, with five acres or less each, receive about two-thirds the level per

hectare of cropped area compared with medium and large farmers, who operate 70.2 of

the area, with ten acres or more each (semi-medium farmers operate on the remaining

21.8 percent of the area, and their landholdings are between five and ten acres in size).

Subsidized fertilizer, canal irrigation and power are also being disproportionally applied

towards rice, in particular, and wheat (Tiwana, et al. 2007).

Awoken to the fact that the rice-wheat rotation monoculture is harmful to the natural

environment and the state’s economy, the state government is exploring diversification

towards less water intensive crops, like citrus, horticulture, and organic farming. Four

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“Councils” for this purpose were set up in 2006, of which one is Organic Farming

Council of Punjab. It has set up a model farm for demonstration of organic farming in

the northeastern district of Ropar, and is supporting commercial vermi compost4

production, and has provided a small subsidy for bio-fertilizers5. In addition to this

recent government initiative, a few NGOs, like Kheti Virasat, have been working on

environmental awareness, water conservation, and organic farming practices for a decade

or so. There is also a Faridkot-based NGO doing similar work under the name of Kheti

Virasat Mission, as well as some smaller organizations in other regions of the state.

Farmers’ Organizations with an Alternative

All the small farmers I met in Punjab who had converted to organic agriculture or

were in the process, and most of the larger ones as well, had been in touch with Kheti

Virasat before or after conversion. Most of these are living in the district of Patiala, near

Nabha, where Kheti Virasat has its offices and a research farm. They employ extension

workers that go to the farms and teach the farmers in this and other districts, and arrange

trainings for the farmers at their research farm.

Inderjeet Singh is a 52 years old organic farmer and the chairman of Kheti Virasat in

the Nabha block of Patiala district. He converted to organic in 2004, and is one of the

4 Vermi compost is composting made by earthworms that can turn almost any type of organic matter into worm manure; a rich, dry vermi compost that contains nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium among other micronutrients. It also contains organic carbon, and can increase the soil’s content of organic matter. The worms consume their own weight of residue daily and one kilogram of worms may produce ten kilograms of worm casts in 45–60 days. 5 Bio-fertilizers are microorganisms that have a symbiotic relationship with the plants and produce organic nutrients for the soil. The living microorganisms increase microbial activity and enrich the fertility of the soil, for example by converting ambient nitrogen into forms that the plants can use (Nitrate and Ammonia), like the Rhizobium bacteria that live in the root nodules of legumes and fix nitrogen from the air. Blue-green algae are used to fix nitrogen in rice fields. The bio-fertilizers are applied to the seed before planting, or directly to the soil, and they also increase soil porosity and help to defend against pathogens.

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few who converted all his land at once. In addition to wheat and rice, he grows some

maize and sugarcane and has a kitchen garden, as well as cows for production of organic

milk. Explaining why they started Kheti Virasat, he said most of the farming in Punjab is

conventional, and farmers are using far more chemical inputs than what the universities

recommend. As a result of exposure to chemicals, people started to get sick. Some had

problems with their eyesight and others with internal diseases, which were not noticed

immediately, but took as many as four or five years for symptoms to develop. Inderjeet

and some neighbor farmers arranged a meeting where they asked, “Why should we not

get rid of these chemicals and save our health by using a poison free farming system?”

They talked to many farmers who attended the meeting, and everyone agreed that

chemical farming is harmful, but nobody dared to give up their current way of farming.

Then Inderjeet took the step and converted all his land into organic farming. He said he

had less yield the first couple of years, but soon it stabilized to what it used to be. Now

he is actively involved in giving trainings to other farmers, and arranging meetings for

farmers and consumers.

At the Kheti Virasat’s research farm and demonstration center for organic farming

staff hopes to soon be giving trainings on organic farming for farmers from all over

Punjab and from other states as well.

In addition to working with the farmers, Kheti Virasat focuses on awareness

programs among consumers. They organize a weekly farmers’ market in the town of

Nabha, and try to inform consumers of the benefits of eating healthily. Selling their crop

at this market, or through other organic markets Kheti Virasat has arranged, has helped

the farmers to get a better price for their organic crop. “We have not done any

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certification yet, but we still sell products on the local market as organic for a higher

price. People are aware of the issues in this city,” Inderjeet said, “and many people opt

for buying organic produce when available.”

Surinder, also one of the founding members of the Kheti Virasat, explained how he

joined this work, and said that when he first learned about the bad state of agriculture,

and farmers’ communities under debt, being a Punjabi and being an agriculturist, he

became very concerned: “Some of us came together and discussed these issues, and said;

we are Punjabi, we belong to this earth, we must do something for the people of Punjab.”

After talking to a lot of people, including meeting Vandana Shiva and others from

Navdanya, they decided to work full-time on these issues. “If somebody is dedicated and

very honest in his job, there are few obstacles,” he said. “Even with the defamation case

against us, I am not feeling uncomfortable.” The local university is supportive, he

explained, and Kheti Virasat is engaged with it. The agriculture university’s scientists

have visited Kheti Virasat, and many of the farmers they work with. Another

government agency, the Farmers Commission, is more skeptical, and their scientists have

argued that Kheti Virasat “are not benefiting Punjab, and that promoting organic farming

means less production,” Surinder said, “but we show them, and tell them to go and see

the farmers and their results. Our farmers are well satisfied with their own work.” But

“the Agriculture Secretary didn’t know that organic farming is increasing,” he said, “and

after having faced questions in the Punjab Assembly, the state government, he called

Kheti Virasat, and asked about their work; where are you, what are you doing there?” and

they went and talked with him. There are a lot of central government funds for organic

farming, Surinder said, but the funds for Punjab are not reaching them. “The Punjab state

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government uses the funds badly, and the money disappears,” he argued, and said that the

government is not doing anything for an organic market, they just purchase for a regular

price. He said that there is no policy for organic farming, and that the government and

the politicians are not convinced, because the chemical companies give them money.

Surinder told me that politicians are quite corrupt in India, and that the north is worse

than the south, in terms of government corruption, but it is not a problem specific to this

area, he said, it is all over India. “We do get very frustrated and angry at the corruption,

but there is nothing we can do.” Surinder said Kheti Virasat now has a name on its own,

though, and does not have a direct connection with any government agency. The number

of farmers adopting organic farming is increasing, and they are successful in “changing

the mindset of the people.” Many want to convert, he said, but they do not have adequate

funding to support rapid expansion, because there is a need to support the farmers already

involved.

Training of Farmers

To the farmers who say, “I would like to change but I cannot afford it because I have

so much debt,” Kheti Virasat tells them that initially they have to change for themselves.

They encourage all to grow an organic kitchen garden as a start with the vegetables they

need for their own consumption before they continue with the rest of the farm. It is easy

to convince the farmers to set aside a small area, half an acre or one fourth of an acre, and

then they can expand gradually. Surinder said, “There are a lot of our farmers who

initially started with one acre, and now they have converted their whole land, with their

own efforts, and with their own experience.” Kheti Virasat tells them to convert little by

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little, because it is difficult to start in a large area, but it is not hard for a farmer to

increase the area. When they adopt organic farming, and gradually convert, the economic

aspect should not be an issue, Surinder argued. He said, “Now we have a lot of

experienced farmers, and those we have taught can teach and make other farmers aware.

When the farmers see the organic fields in their own area, they are more easily

convinced. Inderjeet explained that they start by telling the farmer about the harm that is

done by pesticides and chemicals, and how they can purify their environment by using

organic methods of farming. During meetings, or trainings with the farmers, they also

show documentaries and educational films about environmental topics and their health

hazards, to not use too much written material and lectures. “Some of the farmers we

work with are educated, and they can understand the reason for organic farming, but on

average farmers are less educated, and among the illiterate farmers there are those who

need to be taught the relation to the environment.”

First Kheti Virasat informs people about the environmental and the health problems

Punjab is facing, which is directly connected to conventional farming practices. Then

they discuss the international issues related to farming, because indirectly that is affecting

the Indian farmer as well. They give practical advice on how organic farming is done;

how organic pesticide can be made, how to use all the organic waste to make compost,

and how, for example, vermi compost can make the soil recover faster. “The small

farmers here do not have many years of education, but they understand us.” Most can

read and write in their own language, Punjabi, while some also understand Hindi and a

little English too. The farmers they work with have from three to seven acres on average,

which is considered to range from marginal and small to semi-medium in the Punjabi

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context. At present, they are working with about 150 farmers of whom some have

converted and some are in the processes of converting. Kheti Virasat has funding to help

them; they cannot compensate farmers for their losses during the conversion period, but

they are providing some inputs, initially, for preparing bio-fertilizers, manures, and bio-

pesticides6, until the farmers are able to prepare all inputs on their own.

Kheti Virasat has some conditions they want the farmers to follow, in order to work

with them. First the farmer has to own or borrow a desi (native) cow. A lot of farmers

have cows, but if they do not have one Kheti Virasat will give them a cow, or just dung

from their research farm, and cow urine, which is used as a pesticide to spray on the

crops. Kheti Virasat teaches biodynamic agriculture, which, in short, is a type of organic

farming that, in addition to the use of manure and compost, adds fermented herbal and

mineral preparations to composts and bio-fertilizers. The sowing and planting is based

on an astronomical calendar indicating the rhythms of the sun, moon, planets, and stars.

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, a philosophy that postulates the existence

of a spiritual world that is accessible to direct experience through inner spiritual

development, developed the biodynamic principles in the 1920s in Germany. Kheti

Virasat and the farmers who used the biodynamic preparations argued that the damaged

soil would come alive again faster with a formula of fermented cow urine and dung that

works both as manure and as a soil treatment. One of the farmers convinced about the

beneficial and powerful effects of biodynamic preparations is Jaspal, who is discussed

below.

6 Bio-pesticides control pests in a nontoxic way through the use of compounds that are obtained naturally, for example with microorganisms such as bacterium, fungus, or a virus as the active ingredient. Bio-pesticides will most often affect only the target pest, and generally decompose without polluting or affecting other organisms.

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Conversion to Organic Agriculture

Jaspal, who lives in Musewal village, is one of the large organic farmers in the central

region. His father, now retired, used to regularly visit Punjab Agricultural University in

Ludhiana at the time of the GR in the early 60s. The university would give them seed,

and on one acre of his farm they had a demonstration plot. Jaspal said his father took

courses at the university and acted as a link between the university and the farming

community. He was one of the pioneers of the GR. Today Jaspal said his father is very

glad that his son converted to organic methods; “he knows that it’s right and of course he

feels that he was misled. I always tell him that you have been doing what you thought

was best. You brought money out of the farm to educate us, and today that I am educated

I have the capacity to understand all this and undo the harm which you unintentionally

did to the farm.”

Some argue it is the larger farmers who can convert to organic farming without

economic assistance, because they can afford to have a loss for a couple of years, or they

can do it gradually, while still producing enough to cover the costs of running the farm

and keeping up with debt payments. But I met medium size farmers who had converted

all their land at once, without much loss, and many smaller farmers who converted

gradually with minimum, if any, economic loss, because they reduced their spending on

costly inputs simultaneously. The farmers who have started converting, and have learned

about the effects of chemicals on the environment have also started to used much less

fertilizers in the fields that they are yet to convert. Because they now have more

knowledge of a proper dose, they do not add excessively like many of them used to.

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They believe that by using this approach the conversion will be easier as the fields will

have a little less contamination than previously. The conversion process differs from

farmer to farmer, and also depends on the quality of the soil, and how much restoration is

needed in each area.

Barriers to Conversion

The biggest obstacle for farmers who would like to convert is that most of them have

so much debt to manage that they need a certain cash income each year, and therefore

have very little flexibility to weather a slightly smaller income for a year or two. Already

living with few means and high debts, they are understandably hesitant to enter any risky

undertakings, as one farmer explained: “Farmers are not financially strong; we have to

keep taking loans in order to continue farming. Most of us are in debt, and therefore we

are not motivated to convert even a part of our land into organic, despite our concerns

about health. We do not have any extra money to do something else or to think about

anything else.” Especially the smaller farmers are afraid of entering conversion, at least

without some guidance and moral support from others, like the extension workers of

Kheti Virasat. The majority of the small farmers I met, both in Patiala and Bathinda

districts, had yet to see that kind of support though, and the large majority of farmers in

this state are conventional, or “chemical farmers,” as they call themselves. They were all

very interested, however, in learning more about conversion when we discussed organic

methods versus conventional farming, and some asked if we could show them a farm

where organic farming is done and how it is done. Many said that if someone else

converts first, or if many others do it, they will join in. Charanpal is one of those, he said

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he would do what all the other farmers are doing, but he does not know anyone who does

organic farming in his area. There is much uncertainty and lack of knowledge, but a

willingness to try conversion among many of the small farmers exists. Kheti Virasat’s

extension workers said the farmers are knowledgeable about the traditional natural

methods of their elders, but not of the current organic farming methods. After decades of

chemical farming and advertisements only from chemical companies, they would also

need to be educated on the benefits of change for the environment, biodiversity

conservation, and their own health. Many farmers said they feel positive towards

conversion as such, but “we are concerned about the economy in the first three years,

after that we are of the view that the yield would be similar.” One farmer said, “If there

will be an income without urea and pesticides, then we would prefer to convert to

organic, of course, it will be good for our soil. If we will be supported for those years

then we will grow organic for sure.” Others agreed, “If there were help available for

converting to organic, then we would definitely grow it, then everybody would start

doing it.” They said that anybody, it could be the government, or a NGO, should help the

farmer economically, “then he will adopt it, and he can change quicker; if it will give us

Rs. 10 thousand to Rs. 15 thousand ($200–$300) a month, we will go for it.” While we

talk, some start calculating how much they will save if they stop buying urea, fertilizer

and pesticides in the shop, and one said, “If we don’t buy all these chemicals and

pesticides then it will save us money, the price of input would be less, and we could be in

profit.”

Changes after Conversion

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Although there is not a program assisting the farmers economically Kheti Virasat is

assisting many with conversions, and I met and talked with some of these farmers, with

land of various sizes, who were in the process of conversion. Akalpreet is one of the

farmers with a medium size farm who had recently started conversion. He said he had

too much debt to convert all at once, but has started with one of the ten acres of the

family farm that are his, to see how it would go. Akalpreet said he got around 95 percent

of a conventional harvest on the crop the first time he used compost and cow dung as

fertilizer. “If we work hard and improve our compost and dung fertilizers, I think we can

get an equal crop even in two years. If a farmer adopts this farming with a proper plan

and preparation, then there is not really a loss in his income, because of less cost for

inputs, and a higher price, at least for organic wheat for now, in the market.”

While some farmers said they found that already in the second year there is not a big

difference in the yield compared with the chemical way of farming, Inderjeet said he did

feel the economic impact during the first two to three years. “I have only five acres and

converted all my land to organic at once, so my income went down.” He used to have

around 18 quintals (one quintal is 100 kilogram) of grain per acre, but after he converted

to organic he got only five quintals from the first crop, but next year it went up to 15 and

in the fourth year he got around 16 quintals per acre. “For the first year I had no grain to

sell in the market, only for the family’s consumption.” Next year he expects at least 16

quintals again, and the price of the 16 quintals will be double that of the conventional

wheat. “I am not worried about the economic aspects of organic farming, because what

prompted me to convert was to save people’s health and to save our environment. I read

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the Greenpeace study, Arrested Development, and am convinced that pesticides affect our

memory and physical power, our health,” he said.

Deepinder is another farmer who is convinced about the needs of changing for the

environment. “We have to save planet earth and I would like to carry on with organic,”

he said. He learned about organic farming from Ricchpal Singh Grewal, one of India’s

famous organic farmers, from Sirsa in Haryana. Then he studied it further himself, and

learned from those who came to do the certification of his fields. He also said that just

“talking to old people you get many clues, it’s very educating; interacting with them, they

tell you what they used to do before 1965, when India was organic.” Whenever he meets

people he tells them about the health hazards of conventionally grown food in Punjab.

“People get the message, but still, it’s about money, and they are not ready to convert.”

Deepinder said the many large farmers around are also reluctant to convert to organic,

because they do not see it as economically viable, unless the government supports them.

He said the government is supposedly supporting organic now, but not much is actually

happening. “For these things to survive you need active government support,” he said,

“The government should come willingly forward to help the farmers. Right now Punjab

and the whole country are divided on this issue, and families are being divided, so a very

bold political step is required of people to come forward and do organic farming.”

Gunbir is one of the few large farmers (60 acres), who had started conversion. He

began with eight acres in 2007 and added another eight acres in 2008. After that he has

increased four acres a year, and said he will continue at that phase. The soil structure is

not very good on his land, so the yields decrease a lot, and that is why he is converting

slowly, he said. "I didn’t talk to anyone about changing to organic; it just came from my

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inner voice.” Four years ago he was doing the same as most other farmers in Punjab.

“Then I started thinking how we are putting high loads of poison in the crop we are

eating, and how at least a person who is educated should not go the same way, and that

changed my mind.” He is concerned with farming in a more natural way, closer to

nature, because, he said, “we have to take care of the environment; it is our duty to do it

and people should be made aware about it.” One day he heard an interview on the radio

with a person from Kheti Virasat, and the next day he contacted them. Now he receives

seed and information from them. “This year I used traditional seed in the organic field.

The taste is better when we use traditional seed; in crop from the hybrid seed there is no

taste. In chemical farming or in hybrid seed, the size is quite good, they look very

beautiful, but the taste is not there.” Many people comment on the lack of taste in

conventional crop in Punjab, and how that has prompted many to grow their own

vegetables, as a minimum, which they had often left years ago when the focus became

more on wheat and rice only. Ekanjeet, another large farmer said, “I started converting to

organic in 2000, and I actually started because my father said that the quality of the food

is not good; it is not tasty, not healthy.” He said his father thought about the taste,

because originally they had been doing farming without chemicals in the 1960s, and he

remembered the taste and quality of that produce; and he realized that what he was

growing now was not comparable to that. Ekanjeet believes more people will convert to

organic farming; “as people are realizing that they are getting a lot of diseases from

polluted food, slowly they are coming toward organic” he said.

Hargun, a 50 years old farmer working with Kheti Virasat, said, “I used to talk to the

neighbor farmers about organic farming, but they did not care, because they were used to

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doing chemical farming.” In the beginning they called Hargun foolish for doing organic

farming, they told him, “if you are growing organically your production will decrease,”

but nowadays people are convinced when they see his crop; they come to learn about it

and some farmers nearby are converting to organic. “I am fully trained and totally

convinced that organic farming is better,” Hargun said, “I did not have much problems

converting to organic.” In the first year the yield decreased, but now there is balance, he

said, “it’s the same as the other yield, and I produce all the input on the farm.” He has

three desi cows, and three buffalos. “We use cow dung and cow urine as fertilizers, and

vermi compost. In a few years I would have everything organic.” He also gets

traditional seed from Kheti Virasat. “I use those local seed for everything, also in my

conventional fields.”

One of Hargun’s neighbors, also working with Kheti Virasat, is Ikhtiar. Ikhtiar has

seven acres, and said, “Already now, two years since I converted, the yield is very good.

I will convert the remaining land, but conversion is labor intensive, so I convert slowly.

If I did all at once, that would be costly.” While he admits that some organic methods

require hard work, he sees an almost day-to-day improvement in the structure of the soil.

He is working with his son, and he has one permanent laborer. Ikhtiar proudly showed

me an article about him and organic farming in the Hindustan Times, an Indian daily

newspaper. “I am very happy that I converted, and I’ve learned a lot and keep learning

every day.” He said that he feels secure about the knowledge he has, and he feels

confident about telling others that he successfully converted. “I am not very educated,

but I have good knowledge of all this because we are doing it on our own. I would grow

organic even if there is no good price for it, I would do it for our own consumption.” He

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continued, “These chemical companies do not want anybody to follow organic, but all

this land should be organic. I am late to start this. We didn’t know. I should have

started earlier, but it’s better late than never, and now our son is also convinced about

organic farming.” The son replies, “Yes, it is very good.” The whole family is working

together, and Ikhtiar, directing his head towards his wife said, “I have help of her also, all

the milk is organic, and we grow vegetables for domestic consumption.” Ikhtiar had

gone to trainings with Kheti Virasat, and he commends their fieldworkers who are

visiting that day. “These two boys keep coming and tell us all the new things, they tell us

all about organic farming, and if we have a problem with something, they give technical

help.”

Many of the farmers talked about the changes they observe in their fields after

converting, for example; as friendly insects are increasing, many birds return. Surinder

said farmers realized the importance of this. “They now understand that with organic

farming we preserve our biodiversity, flora and fauna, our nature.” He continued, “We

are very confident that the farmers are happy with our work, and we see this every day,

when they enthusiastically report their progress.” The first change they see, even while

the yield may be lower, is a change in the soil. The texture of the organic soil is soft and

humid; there are earthworms and insects. In the conventional soil, insecticides have

killed the earthworms and most of the small living organisms. When the soil is

increasing its fertility, the crop is healthier, and there are also fewer pest attacks

according to organic farmers. The soil also smells very good to them when it becomes

organic, after two, three years. One farmer said natural plants are stronger and more

resistant. “Before we converted we were getting many more diseases in the plants, and

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the weed problem is also less now, we are very happy about that because we are doing

both manual weeding and chopping; cutting the weed and putting it back in the field.”

Soon the converted fields also require less water. “We even save a lot of water, and on

the cost of running the pumps.”

Continued Challenges

In many places there is no marketing of organic produce and the price is not higher

than for the conventional produce. Kheti Virasat has a network of buyers in Nabha town

and in the surrounding towns like Govindgahr and Patiala, and industrial areas nearby.

People living there do not mind paying more to get organic produce, and the demand is

not met yet. “That’s why more farmers are doing organic farming here, because they

have the market,” Surinder said. They also sell organic wheat in Chandigarh, the state

capital Punjab shares with Haryana, where there are a several organic shops, and the price

difference between organic and regular processed rice, for example, is almost three times.

Last year the government price for wheat, the MSP, was Rs. 1,200 for one quintal.

Surinder said, “Kheti Virasat’s farmers got above Rs. 2,000, approximately Rs. 2,200, for

organic rice and wheat, that’s almost double rate.” In other places the farmers said they

have buyers only for organic wheat, not for the paddy, or rice, so they sell that in the

market for the conventional price. Often there is market for organic wheat, but not rice,

because rice is a not a traditional crop in Punjab and local people, especially the elderly,

prefer wheat.

Currently, there are no modern processing machines for organic produce in Punjab.

The only way available to make flour organically is a mill operated with water, a very

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slow process to make flour, but in 2008 Kheti Virasat had received funding from the

Nabha Foundation to buy the processing machines. The Nabha Foundation7, which is

supporting sustainable rural development and heritage conservation in Punjab,

approached Kheti Virasat in 2004, and expressed its wish to support their work. Kheti

Virasat developed a proposal for their projects, and was funded from 2007 on. Surinder

said, “Earlier we were facing financial problems, but we had gained useful experience

while working with the farmers, trying to teach and assist with conversion with few

means. Our experience shows that it is possible to convert with no economic support, but

it is great to get funding for the processing machines, because buying those would

otherwise not have been possible.” They need separate processing for organic produce,

and the machines will be installed in their locales in Nabha, one for making wheat flour,

one for abstracting oil, and a small one for spices. Surinder said farmers and consumers

would be able to use the processing machinery free of charge, and run it themselves.

“They will run it in their own way. It will be a place where consumers and farmers can

meet, and the farmers will sell their own produce. They will both benefit, farmers will

get more and consumers will pay less for a good produce.”

Another aspect Kheti Virasat’s work is assisting the farmers with is certification.

Some of the larger farmers do their own certification separately, while Kheti Virasat

organizes certification for several of the smaller farmers jointly. It is expensive, and they

save on doing larger areas at a time. Kheti Virasat is helping with the cost, and they have

7 The Nabha Foundation is an affiliate of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, an Indian public charitable trust.

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been working with Institute for Marketecology (IMO)8 an international certification and

inspection agency founded in Switzerland in 1990. They have machinery for packaging

their certified organic brand, which they sell from a small store in their locales in Nabha.

They currently have 45 acres of land in certification and hope that this will aid in the sale

of organic produce. Rice, in particular, will be easier to sell to other cities and states

when it is certified. Kheti Virasat teaches the famers to grow organic in a way that will

qualify their produce for certification. This includes requirements such as growing seed

of crops that can pollinate themselves; no organic certifying agency allows the use of

hybrid seed, and definitely not any GM seed. IMO requires buffer zones between organic

and conventional crops on neighboring farms, uncontaminated water sources, and control

of all inputs and preparations on a certified organic farm.

In 2004 Kheti Virasat also started a seed bank. They have not found many

indigenous seed left in Punjab, but in neighboring states to the north, where traditional

seed are still used, they have collected seed that they are now growing in Punjab. Some

of the farmers Kheti Virasat works with grow several of these varieties and have started

to store the seed for distribution to other farmers. Ikhtiar, one of the participating farmers

said, “We are very happy, Kheti Virasat are helping us with the seed, and they have

booked our wheat for seed purpose, we store it collectively with them.” There are many

reasons for returning to the use of traditional seed. The farmers want to be able to save

their own seed, and not buy hybrids. The hybrids also require much more water and

fertilizers, and the farmers contend that the hybrid varieties are more exposed to pests

8 IMO is one of the first international agencies for inspection and certification of organic production and handling. They also do quality assurance of other eco-friendly products, and social accountability monitoring.

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than the traditional varieties. Inderjeet said that the hybrid sugarcane variety, for

example, is very high yielding, but it is plagued with the stem borer, an insect the farmers

are spraying pesticides against up to six times on one crop, and still they cannot get rid of

that pest problem. He has a 50 years old local variety that does not have a borer problem.

While the traditional seed disappeared, the cattle of Punjab are still alive, although in

smaller numbers than previously. As agriculture intensified, there has been a decline in

diversity and number of livestock. The total cattle population decreased by 22.7 percent

just between 1997 and 2003, while the indigenous cattle among this population decreased

by 37.3 percent in the same time period (Tiwana, et al. 2007). Many of the farmers say

that a practical problem regarding conversion now is lack of cow dung. One farmer

explained that “we have to use cow dung cakes as fuel, so we cannot use it as fertilizer,”

and another farmer said, “We are using cow dung, but we have to buy from other people

who have more cattle.” A few of the farmers have installed a biogas generator, which

provides clean, renewable gas for use in the kitchen, or for lighting or other needs, while

still leaving liquid dung for compost use. The cost of this generator is too high for many

of the farmers, they said, while it would certainly make a good investment, not least for

the health of the women, and the environment, they believe. In rural areas women often

cook with wood or dung, either outdoors or in kitchens that become filled with unhealthy

smoke. Cooking with biomass has been strongly related to tuberculosis (Mishra, et al.

1999), and lung cancer (Gupta, et al. 2001) in women, and reduction in pulmonary

function for children (Behera, et al. 1998), who also often spend time near the cooking

area. Indeed, global health research has found that indoor use of biomass fuels for

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cooking and heating is a significant source of global respiratory problems (Smith and

Mehta 2003).

Akalpreet’s brother, Jagdesh, said “If there is a dairy or poultry farm you can get a

constant supply of the waste, but here people do not have as many cattle anymore. We

have only six cattle, enough to supply milk for the family, but their dung is not sufficient

for the whole farm, just for one or two acres.” Some think that without manure the

organic farming cannot be successful, but Navdanya and other organizations teach

farmers how to do organic farming without cattle; as there are many types of composting.

Kheti Virasat still recommends dung in the initial stages of conversion because there is

little forest litter to harvest for use in compost, and it would take more time to grow green

manure, or cover crop, and add nutrients and organic matter to the soil that way, because

the soil is often very depleted in Punjab. For small farmers who have cattle, two or three

animals are sufficient to provide fertilizer for their land, something most households

have. The compost is most needed in the newly converted land, and less in what is

already converted, because after three years not too much compost is required to maintain

the soil.

Although a small organization, Kheti Virasat, along with many of the farmers

working with it, is helping to make important changes for people, their health, and the

environment in Punjab. The farmers I met there were satisfied with their work, and many

had suggestions of things that have to change in Punjab, to make it a more sustainable

place to live. They mentioned that more awareness and education is needed in the

general population, not just among the farmers. Surinder said they are developing a

network of farmers and consumers in the whole state, called the Punjab Organic Farming

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Association. “I am very confident that the future is bright for organic farming in Punjab.

I think more and more people will convert; we have no other alternative.”

Conclusion

In this chapter I have attempted to give a glimpse of the state of conventional and

organic agriculture in Punjab, through the farmers I interviewed and the people working

with Kheti Virasat. It seems clear the intensive rice-wheat rotation cropping system

reached stagnation in the beginning of the 2000s (IFPRI). The potential of the new seed

varieties has been exhausted; additional doses of fertilizers do not bring extra output

anymore, and declining soil fertility and water tables are the reality in increasingly larger

areas of the state. Some marginal and smaller farmers, and a few large farmers, are

learning alternative ways of producing food, after years of chemical agriculture. The

state government of Punjab has slowly started supporting alternative ways of food

production, with a growing demand for organic food due to increasing awareness of

health and environment issues in conventional agriculture and pressure from local

farmers.

Punjab and its experience with the GR stand out compared to the other three states I

visited. The other state I will discuss here, Uttarakhand, has had almost no encounter

with the GR, and recently declared itself an organic state. That does not mean that all the

famers there are growing organic, yet, or that the marginal and small farmers do not have

their share of challenges. Still, it is one sign of the level of movement toward organic

farming and away from the GR and all that it represents in terms of industrial farming in

India.

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CHAPTER FOUR: UTTARAKHAND

Mountain Agriculture and Agroforestry

Introduction

In this chapter, like in the previous, I start with a description of the state, and then

proceed to discuss the main topics, here as they pertain to Uttarakhand state. I begin with

a brief history of the role of forestry and social movements in the state and Navdanya’s

work here. Then I discuss non-sustainable agriculture: the environmental consequences

and implications for agriculture and biodiversity. In this state climate change and its

impacts on farmers is significant, and I include a section about that, before I proceed to

talk about sustainable agriculture. I describe the farmers’ experience, training of farmers,

conversion to organic agriculture; environmental and economic changes, activism, hybrid

seed, seed saving, marketing of organic produce and lastly continued challenges;

economic sustainability, and migration.

Uttarakhand is a state primarily composed of relatively homogeneous small family

farms located in a still largely inaccessible mountain region. Farmers here participate in

a traditional agro-forestry system that developed over centuries of coping with the

challenges and opportunities presented by the local environment. The topography is a

barrier to significant mechanization in the hilly areas of the state, but modern farming

methods have entered this region to some extent. Local farmers still maintain a rich

biodiversity, both in crop species and other plants grown or collected from the wild, such

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as those with medicinal and herbal properties. This state has not seen much use of

agrochemicals, and consequently fewer environmental and health effects of these,

compared to many other parts of the country. Local farmers do face other challenges,

such as how to employ a growing population and how to counter the effects of climate

change.

Uttarakhand (which translates into north country) is located east of Punjab, and used

to be the northern part of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh (with a current

population of 199.6 million). It became a separate state in 2000, with 10.1 million people

on its 53,566 square kilometers, just 3,204 square kilometers larger than Punjab, and the

next in size of the Indian states (Indiastat 2011). A majority of its population, around 85

percent, practices Hinduism; while roughly ten percent follow Islam and about two

percent adhere to Sikhism. Uttarakhand is part of the Western Himalayan region of

India, bordering Himachal Pradesh in the northwest, Tibet in the north, and Nepal in the

east, in addition to Uttar Pradesh in the south. The state is about 90 percent mountainous

and includes the second highest mountain in India, Nanda Devi, at 7,816 meters. The

state consists of two regions: the northwestern Garhwali region, which includes the

districts of Chamoli, Dehradun, Haridwar, Pauri Garhwal, Rudraprayag, Tehri Garhwal,

and Uttarkashi, and the southeastern Kumaon region, which includes the districts of

Almora, Nainital, Udham Singh Nagar, and others. Nine of the 13 districts are located

entirely in the hill region, while Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar and parts of

Dehradun and Nainital are in the plains, which constitute only about ten percent of the

state’s geographical area. The rivers Ganges and Yamuna originate in the southern slope

of the Himalayan range in the northern part of the state. Forests cover about 60–65

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percent of Uttarakhand’s area, and only 14.5 percent of the land is cultivated (Mittal, et

al. 2008; Sati 2005; Singh 2009).

The climate and vegetation vary greatly, from snow covered mountains, glaciers, and

bare rock at the highest elevations, to moist forests in the plains at just 300 meters above

sea level. Alpine shrub and meadows are found at 3,000–5,000 meters and the subalpine

forests start below the tree line. There are five distinct agro-ecological zones, and the

highest is the cold zone from 2,400–3,600 meters, where barley, potato, wheat, and other

crops are grown in the summer season only. In the cold zone the forest consists of birch

and blue pine at the highest elevations, followed by fir, spruce, cypress, rhododendron,

chestnut, and oak at lower elevations. In the Upper and Middle Garhwal-Kumaon zones,

from 1,200–2,400 meters, finger millet and rice is cultivated in addition to the three crops

mentioned above, and the temperate broadleaf forests grow here in a belt from 2,600–

1,500 meters. These forests consist of oak, blue and chir pine, rhododendron, deodar and

sal. Further down are pine forests, in the Upper Dun, Bhabar, and lower Shivaliks zone,

where finger millet, maize, rice, and wheat are grown. The lower Dun and Tarai zone

constitute the plains, with moist deciduous forests, drier savanna, and grasslands. The

plains have largely been cleared for agriculture, and wheat, rice and sugarcane are the

main crops here. Together with other cereals, like maize and finger millet, these crops

are produced in 80 percent of the cultivated area (Guha 2000a).

On most farms in the hills they grow between three and five varieties of grain (wheat,

rice or millets), two to three pulse crops, and supplement their diets and income with

vegetables, fruit, and animal husbandry. While agriculture with mixed crops and animal

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husbandry is the main livelihood for more than three quarters of the state’s population, it

contributes only 22.4 percent to the state’s domestic product.

Most of the farmers own their land, which is largely farmed with family labor, and

there is hardly any external labor involved. The farmers often work on each other’s fields

in turns for labor-intensive tasks such as sowing of paddy, weeding, hoeing, and

harvesting.

The majority of the farms are small and fragmented subsistence holdings, often sited

on steep land where many of the slopes have been made into field terraces. Irrigation is

difficult with the fields in the hillsides located high above the rivers, and merely 10.2

percent of the agricultural plots in the hills are irrigated, while in the plains, 88.8 percent

of the fields are. A total of 43.6 percent of the net sown area in the state is irrigated, a

little above the national average of 40.3 percent (Indiastat 2011; Mittal, et al. 2008; Singh

2009). Land distribution is relatively equal with rare cases of land holdings of over 5

acres, and landlessness is low. The average landholding size is only 2.3 acres, compared

to the national average of 3.5 acres, and almost 70 percent of the holdings are marginal

(smaller than 2.5 acres, with more than half of these being smaller than 1.2 acres): 18

percent of the holdings are small (2.5–5 acres), 12 percent of the holdings are semi-

medium or medium (5–25 acres), while only one percent are large, or above 25 acres.

The larger landholdings are in the plains, where 56 percent of the population resides.

Forty-seven percent of the female population and 42 percent of the male population

reside in the hills, and the majority of the population, 78.3 percent live in the rural areas

(Mittal, et al. 2008).

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Traditionally, land distribution in the hills has been more equitable than in the plains,

and while socio-economic differentiation has increased in recent years, the communities

in the hills are still relatively homogenous. “The (attenuated) presence of caste

notwithstanding, hill society exhibits an absence of sharp class divisions. Viewed along

with the presence of strong communal traditions, this makes Uttarakhand a fascinating

exception which one is unable to fit into existing conceptualizations of social hierarchy in

India.” observed Ramachandra Guha in The Unquiet Woods (Guha 2000a:14). He

explained this in terms of the geography and ecology of the mountains where there is

limited access to arable land and virtually everybody depends on the monsoon for

irrigation. These constraints and the limited amount of surplus production have

contributed to solidarity among the majority of small landowning farmers, rather than

sharp class divisions. Production for the market also has been limited historically due to

the lack of infrastructure and transportation; this situation remains into the present, with

over four thousand villages still not connected by road (Guha 2000a; Singh 2009).

Eighty percent of rural households earn over a third of their income from livestock,

mainly from the sale of meat and milk. In addition to the economic benefits, animal

husbandry provides substantial energy and protein nutritional gain, and supports

improved soil nutrition through manure, widely used as a natural fertilizer. The animals

are mainly fed leaves and crop residues in addition to cultivated green fodder and grasses

from permanent pastures. Geographic inaccessibility, remoteness, environmental

diversity, and ecological fragility have maintained this historic agro-ecological

production system, which is mainly sustained with inputs from the forest. Agriculture in

the hill areas is not as mechanized as in the plains, but some farmers own a tractor, or in

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some cases three or four farmers share one tractor, instead of hiring in times of need.

Bullocks are easier to maneuver in undulating and hilly terrain, and none of the farmers I

interviewed here used a tractor, compared to all I had met in Punjab. Horses and mules

are the core of the rural transport system, especially in Uttarkashi, Garhwal and Chamoli

districts. On the whole, the hills are significantly less developed than the plains in terms

of infrastructure like roads, electricity, and irrigation, but also with respect to education

and health services.

In the four districts located wholly or partially in the plains, on average 70.1 percent

of the households have electricity, compared to 50.4 percent of the households in the

hills. While 60.3 percent of the households in the plains have toilets inside the dwelling,

only 29.9 percent of the households in the in the hills have this facility. Drinking water

amenities inside the dwelling is found in 67.2 percent of the households in the plains, but

only among 22.2 percent of those in the hills. There is more than double the length of

paved roads per thousand square kilometers in the plains (799.9 kilometers) compared to

in the hills (318.8 kilometers), and only 58 percent of the villages in the hills districts are

connected by road (Kar 2006). Increasingly, an income disparity has been growing

between the hills and the plains, and of the 47.2 percent of the state’s population who live

below the poverty line; the majority is located in the hilly areas. The average income in

the hills is less than two thirds of the average income in the plains (Kar 2006; Rais, et al.

2009; Subrahmanyeswari and Chander 2008). The presence of banks remain limited in

the hills, and most farmers there do not take out loans for agricultural purposes at all;

indeed only 7.2 percent of the state’s farmers have loans through official financial

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institutions (Singh 2009). Self-help groups and micro-finance institutions are the main

providers of credit to the people in the villages of the hill districts (Mittal, et al. 2008).

Subsistence agriculture is the main economic activity in each of the hill districts, but

in this difficult terrain, cultivation and cattle rearing are not enough to live on, especially

when the holdings are divided with each generation. As a result, there is extensive

migration from remote rural areas to the state capital, Dehradun, to the more developed

plains, and to Delhi or Mumbai. A secondary remittance economy has emerged that is

helping to sustain many communities (Jain 2010).

One consequence of many men leaving for work elsewhere is that women often are

solely in charge of agriculture. Women have traditionally had an important role in hill

agriculture, and the ecological constraints here have created the need for multiple

economic activities. However, many would call the division of labor here oppressive,

because women not only work equally with men in the fields and in looking after

domestic animals, or do so alone when needed, but they also take care of the family.

They are responsible for collecting fodder for the animals, fuel for cooking and water for

drinking and other uses, and, in addition, for cleaning and childrearing. These chores

often give them a hard day’s work comprised of about 17 hours. The men living in the

villages work far fewer hours than the women, and I often observed them sitting around

talking, while their wives worked hard from early morning to late evening. The state has

a sex ratio of 963 females per 1000 men, a little above the Indian average of 940, but still

far below the more “natural” sex ratio at birth of 1,084 females per 1000 males found in

Kerala (India Census 2011).

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The state’s urban literacy rate is 80.0 among females and 89.8 among males, while

the average rural literacy rate is only 66.8 percent among females, but 87.6 among males.

In Uttarkashi district where I conducted research, the literacy rate among females was

just 46.7 percent, the lowest in the state. The teacher-pupil ratio varies by district, but the

state average is one to 50 up to class eight. The national literacy rate is 74.0 percent, 82.1

for males and 65.5 for females (India Census 2011; Mittal, et al. 2008).

To make the most of the tradition of the state’s farmers using natural farming

methods—for economic and ecological reasons among others—the state government

identified organic farming as an arena for future agricultural development, and declared

Uttarakhand as an organic state, the first in India. This does not mean that pesticides or

chemical fertilizers are forbidden, or even that they will not be sold there, but their use

has been reduced since 2003 (Singh 2009), and the government encourages and supports

farmers who want to use organic methods. The government established the Uttarakhand

Organic Commodity Board in 2003, to coordinate and promote organic farming

throughout the state, and emphasized the importance of the forest for rural mountain

agriculture. The forests and their associated grasslands provide fodder for livestock and

regulate the hydrological and nutrient cycling for the sustainability of the fragile hill

agro-ecosystems, located just below the forest ecosystems. Millions of tons of leaf litter

are available every year after the ecological needs of the forest are fulfilled, and leaf litter

collection is an old practice that together with traditional manure systems can maintain

the nutrients in the soil in the hilly areas.

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The state has an exceptionally rich biodiversity, with farmers in some villages

growing up to 40 different species in a year, and at least 175 species of aromatic and

medicinal plants are known to grow there (Mahajan 2009; Mittal, et al. 2008).

As mentioned in the previous chapters, the western region of Uttar Pradesh was part

of the initial area, together with Punjab and Haryana, where the GR was introduced. The

area of today’s Uttarakhand that is located in the plains used to be part of western Uttar

Pradesh and its highly fertile Gangetic plains, prior to the separation in 2000. The

farmers in the plains have therefore been familiar with chemicals and hybrid seed since

the first decade of the GR, and there is still widespread conventional agricultural

production there, despite the state’s declaration of Uttarakhand as an organic state.

Bija Vidyapeeth, Navdanya’s research farm and training center, is located half an

hour by car southwest of Dehradun, the state capital, in the Doon Valley. The hills rise

up just north of the city, and I focused my research on the hill areas and mountain

agriculture in this state. Because organic farming training for farmers and coordinators

and other meetings takes place there, I stayed several weeks at Bija Vidyapeeth and

attended a course there given by Navdanya in 2006. I also visited farmers in the nearby

areas. My other field sites were villages in the hills, in Uttarkashi, the northernmost

district of the state. In addition I traveled to the three hill stations Mussoorie (in

Dehradun district, where I studied Hindi and Urdu for ten weeks), Ranikhet (in Almora

district), and Nainital (in Nainital district), and the pilgrimage towns of Rishikesh and

Haridwar on the bank of Ganges River, in Dehradun and Haridwar districts respectively.

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Forests and Social Movements

The management of the extensive forests has long been central to social and

economic organization in these hill societies. Large-scale felling of the forest in this area

began with the railway construction under the British colonization, and a forest

department was set up in 1864, initially to identify strong and durable timber such as

deodar, teak, and sal, which could be used as railway sleepers (Gadgil and Guha 1992).

In order to control the right to the forests, a comprehensive all-India act was introduced in

1878, to provide for establishment of closed forests, where the people living nearby were

deprived of their rights to use the forest, so that it could produce timber for the state, and

its imperial needs. Working plans for the forests were introduced to regulate the

extraction, and gradually the entire forests of the state came under these plans, and

became valuable items of revenue. The farmers soon began protests against this so-called

scientific forest management by the state—which in effect was commercial forestry—

disrupting their patterns of resource utilization, and against their loss of community

ownership of it. They started not obeying the restrictions on their customary use of the

forest for fodder, grazing, and construction. Over time the protests grew into rebellious

movements using new means of protest in the form of attacks on forest officials or arson

directed either at blocks of forest valuable for the administration or at official buildings

(Guha 2000a). Among the many post-colonial forest movements in Uttarakhand, the best

known is the peasant protest against commercial forestry, Chipko, which started in 1973.

Villagers, and among them many women, often in leading roles, protested the state’s

forestry policies that restricted the small farmers customary use of the forest for

subsistence and the state’s commercial exploitation of the trees. Despite women’s central

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role in this movement, important decision-making positions within the movement

remained mostly with men, except in a very few cases, and women’s domestic work

burden, rights in property or other gender relations were never included as a part of group

goals. Women are responsible for the collection of fodder and firewood, and sometimes

water, from the forests. They often have to walk far to accomplish these tasks, and would

be burdened by restrictions to their use of the forest. Their daughters would sometimes

be asked to assist them, even if this would negatively affect their school attendance

(Agarwal 1998).

The protest was part of a centuries old conflict between scientific forest management

and village management, on ecological and social grounds, and the villager’s dependence

on the forest for their continued existence as farmers in this environment (Guha 2000a).

One problem was that the Forestry Department started to grow monocrop conifer

plantations for commercial purposes, while the traditional mixed deciduous forest was

more useful for the farmers for fodder, fuel, timber and other basic requirements.

Another point of dispute was the Department’s use of outside contractors, depriving the

locals of employment and income (Rangan 2000). Population growth had also placed

increased pressure on the forests, and resulting reduced forest cover and density had

contributed to soil erosion and weakened the forests’ capacity for water storage. Large

floods in 1970 made people in the region more aware of the relationship between

deforestation, soil erosion, floods and landslides (Baviskar 2005).

Ultimately, Chipko succeeded in obtaining a fifteen-year moratorium on clear felling

above 1,000 meters through the Forest Conservation Act of 1980, and restrictions on

conversion of forests to non-forest uses were also included. The opponents to the act

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argued that these changes came at the cost of local infrastructural development and

employment opportunities. New national parks were also constituted, where traditional

activities of grazing and collection of fuel and herbs were prohibited (Guha 2000a).

Many of those who had played a prominent role in Chipko went on to oppose the

construction of Tehri dam, and to develop a movement for regional autonomy. They

formed the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (Uttarakhand Revolutionary Party), which, like

Chipko, critiqued the ecological and social policies the government of Uttar Pradesh had

implemented in their hill areas, as well as the fact that in their opinion state policies

benefitted the plains over the hills. They fought to protect hill ecology in order to

maintain their subsistence agriculture, and after protests and demonstrations through the

1980s and 1990s, they succeeded in obtaining a separate state in 2000 (Rangan 2000).

Nevertheless, many argue that the historic inequalities between the plains and the hills

perpetuated by previous governments have not been reduced in the new state (Kar 2006;

Mittal, et al. 2008; Singh 2009).

The state government of Uttarakhand has continued in a pattern similar to what

Chipko and others protested in the former state, namely continued forest exploitation and

dam construction. About 70 percent of the state’s forest area is controlled by the Forest

Department, while the villagers only manage 11 percent of the forest area through Van

Panchayats (forest committees), which were established back in 1931. At that time, the

communities were granted the use of the forests surrounding their villages after protests

against the British management of the forest resources. In 2001, after the formation of

the new state, the Forest Department was given a larger role in the functioning of the Van

Panchayats, but it is still considered by many as a good example of a state-people

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partnership. Today there are 12,067 Van Panchayats, found only in Uttarakhand, which

are managing small forest resources, and in addition there are some privately owned,

community managed forests (Mittal, et al. 2008). Some of the functions of the Van

Panchayats are:

To develop and protect forests by preventing indiscriminate felling of trees and to fell only those trees that are marked by the forest department and are useful for silviculture. To ensure that there is no encroachment on Van Panchayati land and no violation of rules … and that no land is encroached on for agricultural practices without prior permission. To distribute its produce amongst right holders in an equitable manner. 20 percent of the area of the forest must be closed for grazing each year. [Mittal, et al. 2008:75] In addition to the Van Panchayats there are Joint Forest Management (JFM)

Programs, which encourage partnerships between villages or fringe forest-user groups

and the Forest Department. Based on mutual trust and jointly defined roles and

responsibilities, they work to protect and develop the forests in a sustainable way. About

50 percent of rural households in Uttarakhand depend on village commons and the forests

for their basic needs (Mittal, et al. 2008).

One project that the Chipko activists and others initiated but lost was against the

construction of Tehri dam, started in 1978. The Tehri dam was built on the Bhagirathi

River, one of the main tributaries of the Ganges, and submerged Tehri town and 37

villages. The land of an additional 13 villages was acquisitioned for the project works,

which involved relocating over 100,000 people. The government of Uttar Pradesh had

proposed the dam construction in 1969 and phase one was completed in 2006, while the

current government continues phase two and three, which will submerge nearly 50

additional villages (Adhikari 2009; Mittal, et al. 2008). The dam project is controversial

on many grounds. These include the displacement of so many people and the

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resettlement policies, the submerging of the town of Tehri, a historical capital, and other

towns and villages. Archaeologists lament the destruction of archaeological sites once a

dam is constructed. There are also concerns regarding the construction of such a large

dam, the 8th tallest in the world, in a region vulnerable to earthquakes (Mittal, et al.

2008).

Navdanya in Uttarakhand

Vandana Shiva had been volunteering with the Friends of Chipko after returning from

her education in Canada. In 1987, over a decade before Uttarakhand was separated from

Uttar Pradesh, she started Navdanya. Darban Singh Negi, a 39 years old farmer from

Pauri Garhwal district was one of the first to join Shiva in her work in the spring of 1990.

Negi had been working with Mira Shiva, Vandana Shiva’s sister, in another NGO prior to

joining Navdanya, and had heard about their work with seed conservation in Uttarakhand

through her. Negi has been part of the work at Bija Vidyapeeth since Navdanya bought

the farm, and now divides his time between Bija Vidyapeeth and his own small farm in

Garhwal and the coordinator work, training farmers in biological agriculture in local

villages. At Bija Vidyapeeth, he stays a couple of weeks during transplanting and

harvesting, and participates in the courses they teach, in addition to doing research in

both locations. The eight-acre farm produces, and keeps in a seed bank, diverse varieties

of millets, pulses, oilseed, vegetables and medicinal plants, in addition to around 30

wheat varieties and over 250 rice varieties. There are several courses taught there during

the year, where those who are interested, both from within India and from abroad, attend

classes. They also have large meetings and trainings for their coordinators and

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participating farmers, and celebrations like that of Biodiversity Day, where politicians

and other leaders are invited to participate.

Negi recalled the earlier days when they started the work at the farm, and said, “Many

people used to tell me that Vandana and I were wasting time and money, and that we

needed more food fast. You are going back, they alleged, to traditional ways; organic is

not the future. Now, many NGOs are working on organic farming and seed saving and

we are working in 16 states in India, so I travel a lot.” He noticed today people are

talking about organic and seed saving everywhere. “For me, this is the success of

Navdanya, that they withstood that critique and have inspired so many to do similar

work,” he mentioned proudly. “In some regions we are working alone, like in these hill

areas where we can reach the farmers easily, while in other states we cooperate with local

organizations and share information. We cannot go everywhere,” he adds, “and there are

people with local knowledge in their areas.”

The director of Navdanya, who works both at Bija Vidyapeeth and at Navdanya’s

office in Dehradun, is Dr. Vinod Kumar Bhatt. He came to the organization in 1997 after

teaching botany and working in a NGO called Environmental Economics. He has a

degree in botany and “a doctorate in mushrooms, the poisonous as well as the edible

family,” he told me. When they first met, Shiva had asked him to write an article about

his perception of biodiversity conservation: the importance of biodiversity in his field,

and how it can be conserved. He came back after one month with an article, and started

working with Navdanya. He has conducted various research projects over the years, the

first of which was a three year study of the productivity potential of traditional crops;

specifically whether local varieties in a customary farming system are able to produce

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more than commercial varieties. He also looked at the overall production of a mixed

cropping system. “I found that even in the worst conditions when it was a drought year,

some of the crops did very well, although one or two failed. The farmers were never at a

total loss, although they had some loss. The farmers actually did quite well, because the

drought resistant varieties performed very well,” he said. “That was as learning

experience for me too,” he continued, “had it been a monoculture system the farmer

could have been in a 100 percent loss.” Other studies have also found that local varieties

show greater resistance in tolerating water and cold-temperature stress. For the farmers,

these qualities in the grains are crucial to avoid financial and environmental risks, and

therefore provide a more robust agricultural production system. In addition, valuable

genetic resources are conserved in the cultivation of local varieties (Rais, et al. 2009).

Some traditional varieties of rice produce 23 percent higher yields compared to the

conventional hybrids in Uttarakhand (Panneerselvam, et al. 2010). In a comparative

study, greater grain yield was found in rice plots treated with cow manure, which

contributed to greater nutrient availability, less pest infestation and improved soil quality,

than the conventional plots treated with chemical fertilizers. This study also found that

organically grown rice is richer in total iron and magnesium, phosphorous, and potassium

contents than crops from conventional fields (Saha, et al. 2010). Others have reported

that the concentration and uptake of iron by rice is significantly higher with organic

manures (Mishra, et al. 2005), maybe because cow dung sustains the supply of iron in

soil (Saha, et al. 2010). When farmers in the irrigated areas of the GR convert to organic

agriculture, their yields reach about the same, or sometimes a little less than crops from

conventional systems, after the initial conversion period (Kler, et al. 2002; Rajendran, et

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al. 2000). In traditional rainfed agriculture with few external inputs, organic agriculture

has shown the potential to increase yields (Ramesh, et al. 2008; 2010).

Bhatt talked about how he learned about farming, in his father’s kitchen garden. “My

father was a skillful farmer, and also had a government position as an Ayurvedic doctor.

I’m from Rudraprayag district here in Uttarakhand, and my mother is also a competent

farmer. She tried urea once, but thought it was going to harm the land and the insects in

the field,” he remembered. “I used to plough and work in the field during my childhood,

and I also worked with my father in his kitchen garden.” Wherever his father was posted,

he made his own kitchen garden. “We asked him, why are you doing so much hard work,

you could buy that. He told me, it’s not that I can’t buy it from the market, but it is

always better to grow your own, and I have plenty of time, so if I can produce something

and my successors see it, they can also benefit from it.” They never bought vegetables

from the market, Bhatt said, and people used to come and see the vegetables in their

garden. “Now I’m doing research and I look after the agricultural projects here at Bija

Vidyapeeth, that is my primary responsibility.” He also travels to the fields. “I love

teaching, and I love working in the fields. That’s my passion. I want to make things

easier, as my own teacher used to do. I want to make farming techniques very easy to

understand, and easy to use. My mission is to make farming fun, not an obligation or a

difficult or boring job.” He admitted that he never liked fungi while he was doing his

B.Sc., but he still did his doctorate on fungi. “Fungi are fabulous, they are very diverse in

nature; you can also call them one of nature’s scavengers. They convert the worst things

into the best things. They can convert your biomass into very nice compost. They can

make it fragrant.”

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Environmental Consequences

Many farmers in the hill areas of Uttarakhand practice what can be termed organic

agriculture by default, because they live in remote areas and their fields are far away from

transport facilities. These ecological and social factors notwithstanding, there is still

widespread sale and use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the state, although in the

hill areas the use is much less than in the plains. A change in cultivation towards

vegetable cultivation, with increased use of agrochemicals, started in the mid-nineties.

Initially the chemical fertilizers were used as a supplement to manure, and their negative

effects on soil fertility was therefore greatly reduced. It is more recently that the use of

fertilizers and pesticides has increased, and I did therefore not observe the environmental

degradation in Uttarakhand that is very widespread in Punjab. For many farmers there

had nevertheless been changes, and like in Punjab, the farmers here easily recalled the

farming they had practiced during the last decades. Surbeer is a 51 years old farmer who

lives in Sour, a village in the northernmost district of Uttarkashi, with a spectacular view

of the Himalayas. The 75 houses on the hillside are made of wood, some with decorative

carvings, and all have stone roofs. The neatly terraced plots and fruit trees surrounding

the village make it an idyllic sight. Surbeer told me, “our farming in the past was natural;

we applied cow, sheep, and goat dung in the fields and we used to farm only by plough

and hands. The road was built in 1975–76 and means of transportation to the village

became available little by little. A few people started to use chemical fertilizers to grow

potatoes from the 1980s.” Sour village farmers first started to use chemicals when the

village became linked with the road to cities further south and a state cooperative was

opened there. The Department of Agriculture began providing the cooperative with

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fertilizers and hybrid seed, and the members of the cooperative gave the farmers inputs

on credit. When the farmers would sell their produce they paid for the inputs they had

received earlier. “By using chemical fertilizer the production increased,” Surbeer said,

“and the local people started to make more money.” After planting one sack of potatoes

they could harvest 10–12 sacks, so people sowed potatoes, but after four to five years the

yield started to decrease and they had to move the crop to a new field. “We found out

that the whole farming got ruined, and the soil on the top became like ash, as if the soil

had burned and the crop completely stopped,” he said. “When Navdanya came to the

village and talked to us in 2002, we told the coordinator, Raghubir Singh Rawat, that our

farming is dying,” Surbeer said. “The chemical fertilizers burned the soil, and no more

potatoes were growing in that land. Now many people have stopped to put these

fertilizers,” he added. In a study about fertilizer use in four of the hill districts of

Uttarakhand (Singh and Singh 2004a), almost half of the farmers (46 percent), said that

they are decreasing their use of chemical fertilizers, and climatic conditions such as

insufficient rainfall is cited as one cause for this.

In more accessible parts of the hills, government interventions introduced HYV, and

distributed fertilizers for free, e.g. in a project organized by the Indo-German Agriculture

Development Agency (IGADA) in the 1970s. Many farmers continued to buy the

fertilizers, but 65 percent of the farmers in Singh and Singh’s study expressed that they

would have to reduce their present level of fertilizer consumption if the subsidies were

removed and the cost increased (2004a). A third of the farmers who use fertilizers (33

percent), said they felt that the chemicals have a negative impact on their fields, such as

causing loss of soil fertility and change in the soil structure. Other effects on the soil

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mentioned were; creating a hard upper crust which requires a heavy plough for tilling,

and declined porosity and water holding capacity (Singh and Singh 2004b). Farmers also

argued that the fertilizers do not give the proportionate returns, and that they are looking

for alternatives, because they found that the price of the agrochemicals increased the

input costs in an excessive way (Singh and Singh 2004a). Comparing the input output

ratio, paddy is the most profitable crop—because it does not require fertilizers—followed

by pea, potato, capsicum, tomato, cauliflower and wheat. Between 1997 and 2003, the

returns decreased in almost all the crops, mainly because of increased use of chemical

fertilizers (Singh and Singh 2004b).

Even if the inputs of the GR came late, especially to the hill districts of Uttarakhand,

agrochemicals are used throughout the state today. With a slowly improving

transportation and road system, the farmers in the hills are becoming connected, and both

the government and some NGOs have focused on changing their production towards cash

crops such as off-seasonal vegetables and fruits. This diversification towards cash crop

vegetables is part of a strategy to increase the income of the hill farmers, but these

introduced crops are hybrids, which require fertilizers. In the vegetable belt, the use of

fertilizers is therefore comparable to that in the plains. These hybrid crops would also

more often have pests, than native varieties, so the use of pesticides has also increased

considerably (Singh and Singh 2004a).

In a study undertaken by Rai et al. (2008), to determine residue levels of carbaryl, an

insecticide used on a variety of crops, collected from different places in the Kumaon

region of the state, residue was found in water, meat, poultry eggs, in milk, and in grain

and green fodder. This study looked at residues both in the hills and the plains, and

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found that the percentage of positive samples for carbaryl residues was higher in plain

areas than in the hilly regions of the state (Rai, et al. 2008). According to this study none

of the sample contained residual concentration above the maximum residue limit as per

guidelines of FAO/WHO (1986) for humans. Carbaryl is lethal to many non-target

insects, including earthworms and honeybees, however (IPCS 1992). Farmers growing

vegetables argue that the incidence of pest attacks is increasing and that new pests are

appearing. They increase the frequency of spraying against pests every year, and some

pests are developing resistance against their pesticides. The friendly insects who are the

natural predators of crop pests are often killed by the pesticides instead of being able to

aid in the control of the destructive pest population (Singh and Singh 2004a).

This development model applied to the hill region has not increased self-reliance or

livelihood security in the agricultural community, but has changed the whole value

system. From being a self-sufficient agricultural system with very few if any external

inputs, where agricultural traditions were intertwined with social practices, rituals and

festivals, it has now to a large extent become a commercial activity, where farmers are

supposed to make an investment, and hope for profits. The farmers regarded the soil as a

living medium, that they would feed, and in turn the soil would feed the plants. Biomass

from the forests, or residue from the crop, went via livestock back to the cropland as

manure. Keeping land fallow was also a practice to prevent drainage of soil nutrients,

and to let the land rejuvenate. With the high yielding varieties, there is less straw, and

therefore less fodder, and with the new vegetable cash crops, the same problem occurs.

Many farmers now find it hard to feed several cattle, and the reduction in available

manure encourages the use of chemical fertilizers. Di-Ammonium Phosphate and urea

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makes up 90 percent of the total fertilizer use in the hills. While urea is used in most

crops, DAP is applied more often in vegetable crops such as tomato, cabbage, potato,

cauliflower, capsicum and pea. In the cereals or other traditional crops, neither of these

chemicals is used to a large extent. The use of urea increases after rainfall in the rainfed

areas, and a new way of applying urea is to promote grass growth for cattle on vacant

land (Singh and Singh 2004a). Singh and Singh found that 43 percent of the farmers they

interviewed apply from 0.25 to 40 kilogram of fertilizers per acre, while 24 percent apply

between 40 and 80 kilogram per acre. Thirteen percent of the farmers apply more, while

17 percent do not use fertilizers at all (Singh and Singh 2004a). According to this study,

only about 25 percent of the hill farmers apply similar amounts of fertilizers to what is

the average in Punjab, about 65 kilogram per acre, and the remaining 75 percent of the

farmers apply less or nothing. Fertilizer use in the plains of Uttarakhand is similar to that

in Punjab. In addition to negative effects from chemical fertilizers and pesticides on this

sensitive agro-ecological system, the farmers in this state are vulnerable to the effects of

climate change.

Uncertainty of Income Due to Climate Change

There are four seasons in Uttarakhand: the southwest monsoon from June to

September (with August traditionally being the month with most rain), the post monsoon

in October and November (the driest month), the cooler winter from December to

February, and the hot weather from March to May. Less than 20 percent of the annual

precipitation falls in the winter, most of it as snow at the higher elevations in the hills

(Pande and Akermann 2010).

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There is evidence of climate change in various areas of the Himalayas, for example

studies indicating a greater warming of this area than the global average of 0.74 degrees

Celsius during the last century (Lal 2004; Pande and Akermann 2010). These changes

have induced longer dry periods and severe heat spells, and as recorded in meteorological

data in the state capital Dehradun, the mean daily temperature there for the winters has

increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius, and that for the summers by 0.6 degrees Celsius, from

1990 to 2008 (Devial 2010). Forest fires have also increased in frequency, range and

severity during the last two decades (Singh 2010).

In the Hindu-Kush Himalaya, many rivers are sustained by glacier melt throughout

the summer season. The ice mass has started decreasing during the last two decades, and

with higher temperatures there will be increased melting, causing long term loss of this

natural fresh water storage of the region. The Gangotri glacier (the source of Ganges

river), located in Uttarkashi district, is India’s longest with its 26 kilometers, but currently

retreating at an unprecedented rate. As this and other glaciers in the Hindu-Kush

Himalaya retreat, the river flows will first swell, before diminishing over the subsequent

decades. This will potentially have very serious impacts on millions of people who

depend on this glacial water supply, both in India, Pakistan, and in China. Projections

about impacts of increased temperatures in Asia include concerns about water supplies,

both flood and drought, and increased frequency of other hazardous weather events. This

is expected to adversely impact the agricultural output as well, with up to ten percent, and

put millions at risk of hunger in less than a decade (Barnett, et al. 2005; Freeman and

Guzman 2009; Singh 2003).

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Rawat and Dobhal (2010) monitored annual trends in rainfall in several districts in

Uttarakhand from 1992–2009, and found a sharp decreasing trend in annual rainfall:

District Average Annual Rainfall (mm)

Present Rainfall Less Than Average Annual

Rainfall (mm) Bageshwar 1169.6 mm 20.0 mm Chamoli 1334.1 mm 630.0 mm Nainital 1546.9 mm 430.0 mm

New Tehri 961.9 mm 105.0 mm Rudraprayag 759.5 mm 50.0 mm Uttarkashi 1393.8 mm 15.0 mm

The current, and any further reductions in the rainfall patterns, cause droughts, and

prevent a healthy growth of the winter crops. They also delay the planting of spring

crops if there is lack of moisture in the soil (Pande and Akermann 2010). Vinod

Chamoli, a 36 years old farmer from Rudraprayag who has been working with Navdanya

since 1999 as a part time farmer fellow and a coordinator, explained how this affects the

economic condition for most of the farmers in the hill areas. “They don’t have much

land, but an added factor to their economic uncertainty is the changing climate. We see it

mainly in the monsoon,” he said, “sometimes the monsoon comes earlier and sometimes

it is very late, or it doesn’t rain at all. Sometimes there is very heavy rain, sometimes

very little rain. It is warmer now, and not snowing as it did in the past.” In areas where it

used to snow it has not snowed at all in the last two or three years. In the higher areas the

snow used to stays for two or three months, but now it melts in weeks.

Farmers in other districts of the state report similar experiences. In Chamoli district,

farmers alleged that the rainfall pattern there had become erratic during the past few

years, with occasional, heavy showers during the rainy season, but fewer days with rain

overall. The precipitation during the winter was also considerably less, causing drought

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problems. Many farmers expressed that the rain now had changed season, and instead of

coming in the winter, from December to February, it would come as heavy showers in

March, something which did not use to happen earlier (Jain 2010). In Kothi village,

farmers said that the frequency and quantity of snowfall had also declined. This caused

some local springs to have less water flow, to dry up earlier in the summer, and thereby

adversely impacting the local vegetation. Some elderly residents of Kothi village who

talked about what they perceived as hotter summers and warmer winters, explained how

they had to wear less warm clothes now, especially during the summer months (Jain

2010).

In Tehri Garhwal district, west of Chamoli, farmers had many of the similar concerns

about the weather’s impact on the agricultural productivity. In Takoli village, the whole

winter crop of 2009 was lost due to drought, and not even the cost of the seed had been

recovered. The farmers in this district also reported the water in the streams in their areas

had declined significantly during the summer, leaving little for irrigation. A few farmers

in Takoli village also expressed more frequent pest attacks in recent years, but they were

most concerned with the warmer and drier summers, which caused a decline in vegetable

production and their income from that (Jain 2010).

Vinod said, “The future is going to be harder in the hills because the water level is

going lower, and all the agricultural land depends on the monsoon.” When he was 15

years old the summer monsoon used to be in June and July, he remembered, but now it

rains in the end of July and in August. It is less rain for a shorter time; earlier it used to

rain a lot during the whole monsoon time, but now it rains a little, then it stops for two

weeks or so, and it rains less. If it does not rain on time it is very difficult to get a good

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yield, he explained. “The winter monsoon used to be two to three months long, but it is

changing also, it is shorter, and two months late. We sow wheat in October/November,

and the rain would come in November/December, but now it comes in February instead,

and this affects the wheat.”

Rawat noted the same occurrence in Uttarkashi district, northwest of Rudraprayag.

“The rain is very irregular. July is the rainy month here, but last July was dry, there was

no rain,” he said. In the winter there was no rain from October to February, for four

months. “In the upper region of the hills it rains almost every day, in the Gangotri area,

while in lower lying areas it is hot and dry, and in some areas, some pockets, there was

no rain for four months. These types of changes I have noticed only for the last ten years,

before that it was not so erratic. Nowadays it is totally unpredictable,” he concluded.

The structural differences between women and men, and the gender specific roles for

domestic life and work, make women much more vulnerable to some of the effects of

climate change. The activities they are involved in and the resources they depend on are

closely connected to availability of water, fuel wood, and vegetation for fodder. In

Uttarkashi district, for example, 20 percent of the population is lacking drinking water

(Mittal, et al. 2008). This means that women need to spend more time and energy to get

water for daily household use, and it may have a negative effect on health issues, and the

care given to dependent children and elderly, also women’s responsibility (Mirza 2003).

Farmers’ Experiences with Organic Agriculture

Raghubir Singh Rawat is a 45 years old farmer who has been the Navdanya

coordinator for the district of Uttarkashi and part of Dehradun since 2001. He works

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part-time with Navdanya, as do most of the coordinators, and is joined by four field

coordinators, whom he supervises. Rawat explained, “some villages located near the

roads were using urea and DAP but these were few, because at the time the economic

conditions in the area were not good and farmers did not have money to buy fertilizers.

There was also not much knowledge about it.” When he started working among the

farmers it was at a time when nobody was willing to convert to organic farming.

“Everybody wanted to be a more productive farmer with new technology and new

fertilizers.” Rawat said that later on these were the farmers who joined Navdanya first,

because in their experience of using chemicals for a few years they had seen the effect on

the hill environment. This whole region is rainfed, and there is no irrigation. Rawat

explained what happened when the farmers used urea and DAP; “if there was no rain

everything would be dry and the chemicals would burn the crop, including the potato

tubers.” This happened many times, because the climate is changing, he noted. “If it

rains, the crop is good. If it is not, then the crop is bad.” The farmers could not

understand why it was happening, he said. “They thought that the fertilizers were not

good; that the cooperative sold them a bad type of fertilizer that was not giving results,

but later on they understood the connection, because we held some meetings and

explained it to them.” Navdanya suggested that they stop using chemical fertilizer

completely. Surbeer said, “We added cow dung and compost and fertilizer in the field, to

get back the fertility.”

Vinod argued that the government policies are the biggest challenge to their work.

Earlier there were more subsidies for farmers, he said, but after India signed the treaty

with the WTO in 1995 the government reduced the subsidies for farming so there are less

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bank loans and other assistance. Between 1996 and 2001 the central government

removed trade protection for agriculture, and during that five-year period the prices of

primary products like food grains, sugar, cotton and jute fell by 40 to 60 percent (Walker

2008). “Maybe the government would help with chemical farming, but never with

organic farming,” he thought. “The WTO has been putting pressure on our government

to reduce the subsidies, while the cost of seed, pesticides and fertilizers are increasing.

Farmers have to invest a lot of money and if there is no rain on time or if there is a

disease in the crop then a farmer will be at loss.” He explained how these are the

challenges for the farmers, while the challenges for the NGOs are to inform the farmers

and to help them stop using chemicals. “The cost of the conventional crop is high,” he

argued, “and compared with organic farming you are spending a lot more money to get a

little more crop. The government’s policy towards chemical farming is a big challenge

not only in the hills in our state, but for the whole country.” The problem in Uttarakhand,

he continued, is that the state government’s policy is not clear; it is a “dual” policy. On

the one hand they declare it an organic state, and, on the other hand, they support

cooperative societies selling chemicals and hybrid seed and the Department of

Agriculture gives money to buy fertilizers and hybrid seed. “If we invite some

government people they talk of promoting organic and how it is good for health and the

community in general. If there is a seminar by a chemical company or a seed company,

then the same government people would talk about chemical farming and how the

modern world can face the challenges in farming,” he explained. Vinod argued that the

change in state government policy since they declared Uttarakhand an organic state is

that the state government representatives in their statements and actions present local

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farmers with a contradictory message: they are supporting the use of native seed and they

are promoting chemical fertilizers at the same time. The Uttarakhand Organic

Commodity Board recommends a variety of practices to support organic agriculture and

they are involved in training farmers in organic methods and initiating programs designed

to facilitate the sale and marketing of organic produce. The state’s extension programs

also provide information on conventional agriculture that applies chemical fertilizers and

pesticides (Rais, et al. 2009).

Training of Farmers

Vinod, the coordinator in Rudraprayag, is also involved in advocacy work, and

among his other tasks are organizing farmers’ meetings, training programs, and work on

the People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBR). The latter is a program initiated by the

Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions in several Indian states to record

folk knowledge about the status and use of biological resources. Since 1995 several

NGOs, among them Navdanya, and members of the academic community, have been

involved in setting up registers where local information is recorded with full

acknowledgement of the sources, so that any benefits that may come from future

economic use of the registers can be shared. While in some areas the focus is on

recording folk knowledge of medicinal uses of plants, Navdanya and other farmers’

organizations are also recording the occurrence and management practices of land races

of cultivated crops to support their on-farm conservation, and to promote farmers’ rights

(Gadgil, et al. 2000). Vinod explained that, “awareness programs are different in each

area we work. It depends on the particular village, and its crops.” In the villages he

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works personally, Vinod keeps track of how many farmers have been diverted towards

chemical farming and are buying pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and hybrid seed from

the market and of how many farmers are using native or hybrid seed. He also reports to

Navdanya on how many farmers are saving and exchanging seed and if farmers have lost

their seed. They regularly arrange meetings with the farmers and give advice. “I appeal

to them to save their seed and to not use chemicals, but rather use cow’s manure, make

vermi compost, and if someone has lost their seed and does not have any native seed left

we give them seed,” he said.

There are hundreds of NGOs working in Uttarakhand, and Vinod indicated most of

them get funding from the government. They work in diverse fields like health and

hygiene, educational programs, or water issues, and some in organic agriculture. Vinod

said the NGOs normally work in a village for one, two, or three years, and then their

projects are over. Navdanya sometimes cooperates with other NGOs, “if some NGOs

invite us and ask us to give them information about organic farming, then we go there

and support or train them.” The other NGOs sometimes give money to farmers, Vinod

said, and he does not approve of that. “Because we think that the farmers should not be

given money, they should be given training. Giving money is making them dependent,

and that is not our philosophy. We educate the farmers, we empower them, we give them

information, and we give them inputs, but not money.” In his experience the farmers

who join other NGOs still normally remain with Navdanya. “They can be part of both,

that is not a problem, the only thing is that those who are members of Navdanya won’t

compromise with the chemicals,” he alleged.

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While Vinod is officially working in more than 50 villages that he goes to regularly

and works according to a plan, unofficially he works in about 200 villages, he explained,

because sometimes they visit some villages on their way through an area. “Whether we

are visiting a village, celebrating a ceremony, or going to visit our in-laws house, we

always sit down and talk to people about our work, farming issues, and the themes of

Navdanya.” He said he feels that the work of Navdanya is important and that is why he

wants to share it with other farmers. He emphasizes that he is doing this work because he

has an interest in this field, not for the Rs. 2,000 he is paid per month. “It requires a lot

of time and energy, but because we are farmers and we have some land, we survive.

Otherwise the money we get would never be enough for anything. It is worth it to work

with Navdanya to get a positive experience, not to get any financial benefit, but it gives

you a lot back.”

Concerning the government there is no problem, Vinod explained, “we have two

different ways, they follow their path of chemicals and we follow our way of organic.”

He admitted, “Sometimes they do not like us, or our work; we are their biggest hurdle

because we oppose their policies and we ask the farmers not to use their seed or chemical

fertilizers or other chemicals.” He explained how the government sometimes holds

meetings in the area where he works, and once he went to a meeting and asked them what

they wanted to promote, and what types of seed they wanted to sell. He told them, “If

you want to suggest to farmers that they buy hybrid seed then we will protest that, and

you are only welcome if you have native seed.” He said the extension workers know that

if Navdanya is working in a particular area, the government cannot be successful in their

program there.

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“Most people are positive about Navdanya’s work and they want to be members,” he

said. Since 1999, around five thousands farmers have joined Navdanya in Rudraprayag

district. Vinod said farmers are normally not hesitant to give up using the hybrid seed,

but that there have been those who have continued using a little urea. “We go back and

talk to those farmers and ask why they are using urea. Sometimes they would say that

they just wanted to try it, and see the results, and then we tell them to use vermi compost

and natural inputs instead, because they contain urea and nitrogen naturally.”

Another coordinator who said he enjoys working for Navdanya is Negi, who, as

mentioned above, has been with the organization for two decades. “This work comes

from my heart and my interests: organic farming, and forest and water conservation.”

Negi argued, as others, that the water resources are shrinking with the declining snow

cover in the mountains, “we need management of water, and we are losing a lot of forest

also. There is replanting, but normally only of one type of tree, but we need to bring

back the variety of trees, diversity plantation, for both timber and medicinal use, and for

the animals to have something to eat.” He explained how he starts by talking to the

farmers about water and forest issues first. “If you don’t have any moisture in your land

how can you grow anything? The forest gives moisture, as does organic farming. If you

have good forest behind you, you will get moisture. Oak, for example, takes water up

from the ground and provides water to the surrounding area.” He emphasized that they

need to transplant the types of trees that will give them a variety of benefits. Oak wood is

strong and hard, provides lasting building material, is good for firewood, and in addition

bears and other animals eat the fruit or acorns. “Medicinal plants also grow well under

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the oak,” he said, “but the government policy is to grow bamboo, to get money fast for

their own pockets,” he claimed.

While Negi does not see any real obstacles preventing the small farmers from

converting to organic agriculture, he argued, “We need to give them alternatives to stop

them using chemicals.” He argued that the government should actively give the farmers

an organic alternative to the chemicals. “Without a substitute it is difficult to change the

farmers’ mind.” He said it is important to explain that if they would use these

alternatives they would save on their inputs since the natural things are free. “We need to

teach them the methods practically, then we do not need to go and tell them again and

again.” He believed with practical demonstrations in the village, the farmers learn very

quickly, but if you give them lectures they will forget it. “Lectures are difficult for them,

but practically they can learn after one crop, and when a farmer would see how they can

do it and how much benefit they can get from it then they will change their mind,” he

believed.

In some of the so-called Navdanya villages, where about 70 percent or more of the

farmers are growing organically, they have organized what they call biodiversity groups.

These groups get training from Navdanya, and then train other farmers in their village,

and beyond. Surbeer is the president of the biodiversity group in Sour, and told me about

how he and the group share their knowledge in the village. He said they arrange

meetings and in some places they hold dramas. “We explain people through drama and

songs what harms we get by the chemicals. We tell people not to use fertilizer and to use

manure instead, we have dug up the land here and we teach them about earthworms and

compost.” Surbeer said that Sour village has 75 families, but they teach in other villages

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as well. “We don’t get money for this work but I like it. We teach the farmers about

practical things, and when we talk about not using fertilizers, we tell them why it is not

good for them and what the advantages of the compost and green manure are. We teach

to save your land, the environment, your seed, and your health,” he explained. They also

teach villagers to keep the village clean, not to pollute the river, about the dangers of

plastic, and to throw garbage in a hole in the ground and bury it. Further down the river

valley, in Purola town, I saw a lot of garbage thrown in the river. Surbeer said people

throw garbage in the market and in towns, but not in the villages. “We tell people it is

harmful for the farming, and we collect the garbage and burn it. The government should

ban plastic bags completely. A ban has been imposed on the sale of plastic bags by the

district administration, but it has not been enforced, and people do not obey,” he

complained. In addition to garbage, plastic bags can often be seen along the roadside or

floating in rivers. They cause damage when clogging up drains, creating overflow of

water or sewage.

Surbeer told me, “I do feel that I have gained a lot of knowledge after working with

Navdanya and their coordinators. When we went for a meeting in Delhi we got to know

about patents on seed, so we tell the other villagers about that as well. Navdanya also

had a meeting to make people in the village aware of these things,” he said. While many

of the villagers never migrate for work and rarely, if ever, leave their area, Surbeer, by

contrast, has gone to meetings and trainings by Navdanya in various places. “I even went

to Delhi three or four times for conferences, and I attended meetings and went to a rally

from Haridwar to Delhi, a safe water rally,” he explained.

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Kala is a 47 years old farmer born in Sour, but now living in her in-law’s village,

Jakul, a few hours walk away, in the home she is married into. “My husband and I are

both farmers, both our families have been farming for generations,” she relayed. Kala is

the president of the biodiversity group in Jakul, and has been a member of Navdanya

since 2001. “I learned about Navdanya from the coordinator who came visiting, and in

this village we all grow organic now.” Navdanya organizes meetings and distributes

pamphlets and literature, and one of their areas of focus has been how the farmers can

protect their seed. Kala explained, “I have learned from Navdanya how our seed are in

danger, and further information about saving and protecting seed, and also making our

own natural fertilizers.” In the village farmers have cows, oxen, sheep, goats, and mules.

The mules are used to transport cow dung, potatoes, and firewood, all the heavy things.

“We have more than enough dung here,” she smiled, “these big trees we have been

chopping down for the fodder for goats and sheep,” pointing to some trees lying on the

ground with the branches full of leaves. She said she now understands why organic is

good, “it is better for our health and the environment. I feel better having this

knowledge, and I would like Navdanya to give more trainings; information is important.

When we get training, then we will pass this information on to others, we can teach our

neighbors and other women,” she held. Kala went to school for a few years in her

childhood, but not for long. “Later with a literacy program here I learned to write my

name. For our generation the average years in school depended on the family, and it was

very difficult to study, some could not afford sending their children outside the village.”

Today it has become easier to have education, she reported. Normally people go six

years at least, and some go 12 years. “But there are many ways of getting knowledge, for

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example through Navdanya,” she noted, and then, speaking to the Navdanya coordinator,

Balbeer, from Sour village; “you come here month after month and endure cold water

and cold air and teach us how to put fertilizers and how to farm.” In this area there are no

other NGOs or organizations that are working with the farmers apart from Navdanya.

“We did not have any farming organization before, but we made an organization after

Navdanya came,” she explained. Kala has planned many times to go to Dehradun to visit

Bija Vidyapeeth and even to Delhi, but it was always cancelled. She has a lot of work,

and there seem to be no one willing to take over her duties for a few days.

To the south of Sour and Jakul villages, and at a lower elevation, in Purola, Navdanya

is also popular among the farmers. In Chara village in Purola, I meet Lakshana, a 53

years old farmer and a member of Navdanya since 2002 who also is active in a local

women’s welfare organization. She has not gone to school. She was born in this village

where she has 18 bighas and a seed bank and said, “We are farmers generations back and

farming provides for the family.” A bigha is the local measure of land, and varies by

region from one-fifth to two fifths of an acre. Lakshana and her husband started organic

farming after joining Navdanya. “In the past I used a little of urea for potatoes, peas, and

tomatoes, but I didn’t use any other fertilizers or pesticides, so it was not so much

change,” said Lakshana. “The potatoes used to grow bigger, but they did not have much

taste. Now this has changed, but they are a little smaller.” She sells paddy rice and peas,

but not the potatoes, so it does not matter if their size is smaller. The Purola area is

famous for a variety of organic red rice, which they sell through Navdanya. The

cultivation of certain crops and combinations of these have been developed by the

farmers and adjusted to the varying micro-ecological niches in these deep valleys for

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centuries (Singh 1998). However, the change in the cropping system in the past few

years with emphasis on conventional vegetables as cash crops has prompted farmers here

in the Purola region in Garhwal, as well as for example in the Garampani region in

Kumaon, to grow pea and potato during the winter, and beans, capsicum, cauliflower, and

tomatoes during the summer. This change in the cropping model has reduced the

diversity in the food production and lead to a market driven agricultural production.

Although the farmers observe how the chemicals used deplete the soil, many continue,

because it gives them larger economic gains for the time being (Singh and Singh 2004a).

Lakshana said Navdanya taught her to get a good crop throughout the year, but added

that, “the tradition that we had learned from our forefathers is also good.” Lakshana told

me she had traveled down to Dehradun to attend a course at Bija Vidyapeeth once.

“They told us not to use chemical fertilizers, but make our own compost to use as

fertilizer.” Lakshana felt that because of the training she is now better prepared to make

decisions about farming and they have sheep and three buffaloes, so they have enough

fertilizer for their fields.

One of Lakshana’s neighbors is Madhusree, an 18 years old farmer. She, her mother

and three siblings do the farming, while her father has a government job in the water

supply department, so they have an income from that in addition to farming. They have

many small fields, around 30 bighas in total, which gives them a semi-medium sized

farm, among the largest in this area. People have different size parcels of land, but most

farmers have less than Madhusree’s family. Madhusree’s mother has been a member of

Navdanya since 2002, but she did not change her farming methods since she became a

member, because in this area many people never used chemical fertilizers. “Historically

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we have not been using chemical fertilizers, even in potatoes, we get a lot of manure and

that is enough for our fields,” Madhusree concluded. Her mother attended a course at

Bija Vidyapeeth last year, and Madhusree said, “I would like to go to trainings at

Navdanya and learn more about this type of farming, but now I have no time to go there.

I am so busy farming every day, and I go to school too. I’m in inter-school, 12th grade.”

She is in the second year in High School, and said she would like to go to college after

that. “I will just study more and see what happens. I am already a farmer. I would like

to do some other job also if I get one.” Madhusree explained, “We learn about the

environment and pollution in school. I know that is why it is good to do organic

agriculture. I like to do farming. My mother taught me. Here women are better farmers

than men.” The coordinator in Purola commented, laughing, “Many men are also lazy.”

After having stayed some time in the villages, my impression was that the women

worked considerably more than the men, an issue discussed further in the next chapter.

In addition to the coordinators who visit villages at varying intervals, Navdanya has a

system of training some farmers in organic methods, who then teach others in the village.

Dr. Bhatt explained why he thinks this is so important saying “the farmers who we have

worked with who converted to organic several years ago, all have seen changes. They

are healthier now and wealthier also. Their knowledge has increased, they understand

and they are also teaching.” He gives an example of Nandrani who lives in a village not

far from Bija Vidyapeeth. “She was one of the first persons we taught about organic

agriculture, and she has now converted almost the entire village to organic,” he

concluded. Bhatt argued that, “once you have converted to organic you feel the change

in the taste, and then you think, why should you waste money in buying chemicals? Even

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if the crop is a little less sometimes, it’s not a harmful production.” He alleged many of

the farmers, like Nandrani, feel inspired and share it with others. “All the time she’s on

the move, on campaign, and she is not getting any money out of that, she is doing it

voluntarily,” he said. “In addition to work in her own fields she brings farmers to work

in the fields at Bija Vidyapeeth, she says that Navdanya has given her so much, and that

it is her duty to contribute to Navdanya.” He continued, “Once a farmer is convinced,

then I’m sure that he or she won’t go back to chemical methods, but it’s a big challenge

to convince them at first, because they’re in a dilemma. They don’t know whom to

believe.” Bhatt explained that the advertisements by Monsanto and Cargill, and

advertisements by the government agencies all promote the benefits of chemical farming.

“The farmers say that they are skeptical; they are not sure who is correct. It’s hard for

them to judge or read more about it themselves. That is why in the new villages we work

we select a few farmers and ask them to demonstrate,” he said. Navdanya asks them to

start with a small plot, and experiment on it, and then the other farmers can come and see.

“The other farmers will come and ask how they do things and what techniques they are

using, which seed they are you using, and it starts like that.”

Conversion to Organic Agriculture

In his home district, Pauri Garhwal, Negi works with farmers in more than 100

villages together with three local Navdanya coordinators, and over 50 of these villages

are now completely converted to organic methods. “I started to talk to people in 1993,

and the following year we started to sow organic. More converted in the last part of the

90s, so they have been growing organic for more than ten years. Most of the farmers

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were using only a little amount of chemicals earlier, and those who converted completely

have not gone back to using chemicals,” Negi held, and gave an example of an incident

that made many farmers convert. A few years ago the farmers lost almost the whole crop

of onions and had to import from Pakistan. Onions, a basic ingredient in Indian cooking,

which normally sell at a rate of Rs. 4 per kilogram increased to Rs. 40, end even, for a

while, Rs. 60 per kilogram. The conventional farmers had sold the few onions they had

for the regular rate, because they could not keep the produce for long before it went bad.

The organic farmers had onions for three months, and could benefit from the price

increase. The farmers became interested in how the organic onions lasted so much

longer, and several stopped using fertilizers, Negi said. “If you don’t use chemicals, the

vegetables can be stored much longer, they keep better. Onions can be stored for six

months. With fertilizers they stay fresh for only one and a half months.” Several

comparative tests in various countries have reported that the quality of organic produce

after storage is better than that of conventional produce (Benge, et al. 2000; Raupp 1997;

Reganold, et al. 2001). Negi believed farmers in the hills are going to convert to organic,

because they are more aware of the harmful effects of chemicals and fertilizers. He told

me that the village leaders of Kotdwara have gone to visit the Uttarakhand Agriculture

Department to talk with the government along with Navdanya and expressed that they do

not want urea or other chemicals in their area, and they asked the government to stop

distributing these. They also invited the Minister of Agriculture of Uttarakhand to the

village to meet the farmers. The farmers came and talked to him, and explained that they

are converting to organic. They expressed that they did not want chemicals and

fertilizers or hybrid seed to their area, but that if the Agriculture Department wanted to

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give them seed, they should give them native seed. The farmers organized a big

campaign along with Navdanya and told the government to do other projects, like

planting trees, but not distributing chemicals. Negi admitted he sees the state

government’s proclamation of Uttarakhand as an organic state more as a thing on paper

than on the ground. He said the farmers in the plains, for example in Udham Singh

Nagar, practice wheat-rice rotation cropping and they are still using chemicals like they

had been doing before Uttarakhand became a state. Negi said this is partially because in

the districts spanning the plains like Dehradun, Haridwar, Nainital and Udham Singh

Nagar, the landholdings are larger, and the land was initially fertile, like in Punjab. The

size of the farms here reaches 40 acres or more, and these farmers are using only hybrid

seed and chemical fertilizers. “We cannot call Uttarakhand an organic state as long as we

have these large exceptions,” he said. “If the state government has declared it an organic

state they should ban the sale of hybrid seed and chemicals, and provide the farmers with

organic products. But some of the government extension workers who are monitoring

organic farming have no idea about organic at all,” he said. He further argued that the

farmers who chose not to adopt hybrid seed and chemical fertilizers do it because

organizations like Navdanya are working with them, not because the government is

helping them.

In Uttarkashi district, Rawat is more positive about the government’s work for

organic policies, and how Navdanya contributed to that. “I think our efforts worked

because when this state was formed we talked with the government officials. Navdanya

expressed their views on how mountain agriculture may survive, and some people in the

government agreed with Navdanya’s view. Soon after they declared it an organic state

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and an herbal state,” he said. After declaring Uttarakhand an organic state, the extension

workers have been given training about organic methods, and the government has started

various programs, such as one designed to make pits needed for preparing vermi

compost. “In every block they have chosen 20 to 30 villages where they are giving

farmers almost 75 percent subsidy to build these pits.” The government is also involved

in a program of certifying land through the Uttarakhand State Organic Certification

Agency (USOCA). “Farmers are given support for buying bio-fertilizers, and bio-

pesticides, and they are being trained on how to prepare vermi compost and other organic

inputs.” He said this shows that the government is willing to invest in organic

agriculture. “It is great they are doing what we do, so they are helping us. Now we do

not have to make pits for the farmers because the government has already supported a lot

of pits in the villages.” But Rawat explained that the government’s people do not go to

the villages to check whether the farmers are actually using the pits or not. “We have to

keep asking the farmers to keep it up with these things, but the government is providing

them facilities that we can’t, and the farmers are benefited by these polices,” he said.

Changes After Conversion

Negi and Dr. Bhatt have studied farmers who converted to organic methods. They

looked at the changes in the farmers’ life, and each year’s expenditures and savings.

“Every year they saved a lot, and made more money,” reported Negi, “especially on

crops like ginger, onions, and other vegetables.” Most of the farmers they studied have

between half an acre and ten acres. “There are so many that are doing great, the small

farmers also, when they are getting good prices,” explained Negi, adding that “they don’t

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know about import and export, because they stay within their state and district, but they

are aware about what’s going on here.” Surbeer in Sour village argued Navdanya had

saved them from taking loans and getting into debt. “They told us about a better way of

living and to do farming, and we are even saving our money by growing organic.” He

explained that even if they could get loans from the state to do agriculture, he would not

like to do that. “So far I have not taken a loan, how would we pay it back?” he asked.

“They gave us subsidies, we got fertilizer for half price, and initially they even used to

give us fertilizer” he said. Some in the village used to get loans from the government to

buy fertilizer, maybe ten years ago, before they converted to organic, but after they

started working with Navdanya they do not want or need loans for fertilizers. “We had to

pay a heavy interest on that money,” Surbeer said, “We had to take up loans, because it

was so expensive. Now we are completely independent economically, we do not need

any loan and we are self-dependent.” First they reduced the use of fertilizers, and then

they stopped completely, he said. From 2002 the whole village of Sour has been organic.

“Organic farming has saved some of our farming, but the production has been reduced,”

he noted. He mentioned there are other villages further up on the hills where they cannot

take cow dung and they are still using chemical fertilizer. “People depend on farming

and they do not manage to get a good price for organic. If they could get good price for

organic produce, then they would stop conventional farming completely,” Surbeer said.

“Their main source of income is farming. They had to give up farming other crops, but

they make their living out of potatoes. They use fertilizer in potato only, because with

fertilizer they get more crops,” he admitted. Kala in Jakul village nearby said they had

also used fertilizers previously for potato, but not for grains and beans. “Now we are

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using compost and cow dung as fertilizer for the potatoes as well, and the potatoes are

tasty and they have no disease. I had noticed a change in the soil in the last four to five

years when I used chemical fertilizers; it turned hard like cement,” she said.

Activism at Navdanya

Dr. Bhatt explained that Navdanya recognizes that organic agriculture is closely

related to larger institutional and policy questions. They therefore engage in activism to

build awareness and try to change policy. This is done in a number of ways, for example,

by organizing protest marches, seminars, signature campaigns or public hearings. The

issues include water rights, patenting, hybrid and GM seed, and the preservation of

traditional crops. “We teach the farmers because they must know about these things in

order to know about their rights. We provide them with the information and tell them

that if they think it is ok, that’s fine. If they feel that it is not good, they should fight it.”

Bhatt argued that in order to teach the farmers, especially those who have less education,

they have to make it simple for them to understand. “If I say that this seed will stop you

from saving your own seed, that is very simple. Then farmers will come and say no, they

can’t do it, and they will resist that.” That’s what happened in the campaign they

organized against the Seed Bill 2004, which they were able to fight after submitting half a

million signatures to the Prime Minister of India, together with several other

organizations. “In this Seed Bill there was a provision for compulsory registration of all

seed by the farmers. Whatever they were growing, they were supposed to register all the

seed, which is impossible,” Bhatt alleged. “It is a farmers’ country and the farmers have

a right to save their seed, but this was proposed with the aim of replacing the farmers’

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seed faster by seed from outside, sold by the seed companies.” This also implied that the

farmers’ seed were not good, he argued, and should be replaced with new ones, which

may not work so well for the farmers as the ones they had developed over time. “There

was also a proposition that the police, or a seed inspector, in the presence of two people

could search your storehouse to see if your seed were registered,” he said. The bill was

not implemented, and in this case that was due to Navdanya’s cooperation with other

organizations. Bhatt explained, “We have networks for different things; we have a

network for campaigning, we have a network for advocacy, and for agriculture. Some of

the other organizations just do campaigning, and some of them just do agriculture. But

we are into both; we are right from the grassroots level to the highest level.” In 1995,

Navdanya joined the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements

(IFOAM), and other organizations in mounting a legal challenge to a patent on the

fungicidal properties of the neem tree, by the W. R. Grace Company. The European

Patent Office in Munich revoked this patent in 2005, backed by countless signatures

collected by Navdanya and many others who supported the case. The neem tree,

indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, has been known and used for its fungicidal

properties there for centuries. Farmers apply neem to treat various illnesses, and not least

for pest control on their crops. In two other public interest litigation cases filed in the

Supreme Court, Navdanya and others have challenged a patent on basmati rice by

RiceTec Inc., and a patent on a wheat variety, which was based on a traditional Indian

variety, by Monsanto (Sustainet 2006).

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Bhatt explained that Navdanya’s financial support comes from various sources,

among them Bread for the World, and EED9. “Now we have Bija Vidyapeeth and we are

making some money from people who stay there and the courses we run. When Vandana

Shiva goes abroad to give lectures, she gets a fee for that and she is putting all that money

into Navdanya,” he said.

Hybrid Seed

Negi said he had seen big changes in the awareness of hybrid seed among the farmers

during these last several years. When the government distributed hybrid seed, the

farmers started to adopt those, he recalled. “Then we started to teach them about the

climate and about the resources hybrid seed needed to be viable. In many villages now

they have their own seed, and they’ll ask you a hundred questions if you bring a new

seed. They may try the seed in a very small patch, but they have become more careful in

adopting new seed, because they have lost many times,” he said. When the hybrid seed

were introduced, there was often no information given to the farmers about the fact that

they could not save and use them the next season. Vinod, the coordinator in Rudraprayag

alleged, “government policy is incomplete; they develop a seed and give it straight to the

selling agencies without proper information and no training for the government workers

or the farmers. Even I didn’t know.” At the time Vinod became a member of Navdanya,

he was the chief of the cooperative society and selling chemicals and hybrid seed to the

farmers. “I became a member of Navdanya as a farmer. My mother and I were using a

9 Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED), or Church Development Service, in Germany, which receives funds from German Protestant churches and from the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany.

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little bit of urea in those days. We also used manure, but not vermi compost. When we

joined Navdanya, we learned the techniques of vermi compost and all these things that

we do today and we slowly reduced the amount of fertilizers.” He explained that he

wrote to the government and asked officials to stop its chemical promotion policy,

especially in the hills, because the fields are located at high elevations, far from water

resources and agriculture depends on rain, and the use of chemicals and fertilizers

requires more water. The farmers in his area have their own land, mostly small fields,

less than half an acre, typically one bigha. He did not get any response, but in the

cooperative society he gradually sold less chemicals, and later also stopped selling hybrid

seed. “When I noticed that the farmers had their own traditional seed, enough for the

next crop, I stopped selling hybrid seed.” He observed the crop from hybrid seed were

getting pests, so farmers bought pesticides. “The government reminded me several times

how poor my society was doing by not selling chemicals, and alleged I was losing

money.”

The position as a chief of the cooperative is not paid, but elected by the village. The

government has a paid staff that runs the society. The farmer members have a share in

the society, depending on the income they make, and the money is shared among all the

members of the society. Vinod recalled they asked people from the government to come

to the villages and see the fields, “when they visited, we showed them that some farmers

used the hybrid seed and saved them for the next crop and how that crop was a complete

failure.” The farmers also told the representatives that they had received no information

about the hybrid seed from the government and that villagers were not aware of the

qualities of these seed. “Then they stopped to put pressure on us to sell their seed,” he

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said. Only when he joined Navdanya and got training about seed did he understand the

cause of the farmers’ inability to use hybrid seed from a previous year. He explained to

people in the villages how hybrid seed work and asked the farmers to stop using hybrid

seed and to use their own native seed instead. Farmers still have native seed in that area,

because not everyone had started to use hybrid seed. Some who could afford to save a

large amount of seed had done so. Vinod explained that his problem in teaching farmers

about hybrid and native seed is that many people have little prior information, not only

about hybrid seed, but agricultural politics, economic reforms, and multinational

companies’ involvement in agriculture in India. “We give them the example of the

British East India Company, and how they came to do business in India but ruled us for

200 years. We make the farmers aware that these companies have the same intentions,

and that we should follow a policy of self-dependence.” Vinod said, “I have an

impression that they do not instantly understand when I tell them these things, but

gradually.” He mentioned he discusses these topics both with educated farmers who are

somewhat aware, and those who live in interior areas, far from the roads and “other

modern things” as he put it. “Basically, as I have observed, farmers know more or less

about the seed, because the seed are the most important things.”

Seed Saving

Seed saving is one of the practices all the farmers I spoke with in Uttarakhand were

familiar with. In Uttarkashi district there were many old seed banks, some smaller ones

on individual farms and other larger ones maintained by whole villages; some of the latter

were embellished with decorative woodcarvings. Most were constructed with thick wood

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walls and stood on a base of stones. Kala in Jakul village said that her community has

had seed banks for a long time. “We never used to buy seed from the market. We did

not learn to save seed from Navdanya; we have been saving seed historically.” She

showed me the seed bank in her village, and as a leader of the biodiversity group, she

kept the key, a large black iron key, in her home. They store their grain and other food

items in the same unit. “We have made shelves to keep different seed; each upper part is

for the seed,” she said, pointing, “we also keep the potato seed in here. We had a loss

from our seed, so we exchanged with another village. Now we are self-dependent in

terms of seed again.” She continued, “sometimes we sell seed, but not between us.” If

the villagers have no seed left Kala will give them some. “We give the seed only on

good relation and on friendly values.” She confirmed she does not charge farmers from

any of the surrounding villages for seed. “We have a crop and seed as well and we will

see whether or not we get this crop, and then we will sell those seed when we get the next

crop,” she explained. Community seed banks not only make farmers independent, they

also recognize women’s knowledge as valuable, because women are often in charge of

the seed bank. This gives women greater influence in village affairs and the opportunity

to participate in the broader seed conservation movement.

In Sour village, Surbeer explained they also exchange seed and borrow from each

other, and when the crop is harvested they return the seed to farmer that provided them.

“Some places the seed banks are old, other places Navdanya has started new seed banks,”

he said. “We have many seed banks, we keep seed for three or four years and they don’t

get bad.” He emphasized they are concerned about having variety, and keep the seed of

pulses, vegetables, paddy, and wheat; all the crops that grow in their area. “We think

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saving seed and biodiversity is good for us and for the whole country.” He noted most of

the seed they have had for many years and adjusted to the environment here. “This is

what we have been doing from our ancestor’s time in the whole area. These are all our

seed from many generations back; we do not even recall when we started to use these

seed.” Surbeer said they never bring seed from outside. If they have to buy seed,

villagers buy from other local people and the area. Some seed, which were becoming

scarce, are now exchanged through Navdanya. As an example, he cited “the Rajma

(kidney beans) from Chakrata, famous in Garhwal for good quality kidney beans, and

they also gave us ginger seed.” Vinod, the coordinator in Rudraprayag explained that

they encourage farmers to save their seed and exchange them with others, “we approach

the farmers who have more seed than their need and encourage them to save these extra

seed, and share with those who have no seed.” In Purola, the farmers have seed banks on

each farm. “We have seed banks from long ago,” Madhusree noted. “I know about

hybrid seed, but we have decided to use the traditional ones, and I know it is important to

save the different traditional seed, to conserve biodiversity. Since we have our own seed,

why would we buy seed from the market? We do exchange seed with our neighbors, but

we do not buy seed from the market,” she said. Lakshana also showed me their seed

bank, and explained, “Our grandfather built that seed bank, and it is more than 100 years

old. When it gets too old, we will build another one. Even when there is not enough for

food, we still save grain for seed; rice, wheat, mustard, all those seed we have.”

Lakshana said there is a shop in Purola town that sells both chemical and organic

fertilizers and hybrid seed for peas and tomatoes, but she does not know anybody who

buys seed there. “Sometimes if there is crop failure we take seed from our relatives and

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neighbors. We exchange seed. There is good cooperation between people here," she

explained. Similarly, the coordinator in Purola reported that most farmers in his area do

not buy hybrid seed and he has not had to teach people about them, because people have

their own seed. “When somebody brings a new seed, the farmers ask to save some of it

for them. Nobody pays any money for the seed; they exchange them,” he said.

Marketing Organic Crops

One challenge for the famers is to get a higher price for their organic produce, and to

get it to the market in the first place. Surbeer said, “We sell our produce here in the

village mostly; sometimes Navdanya buys from us, and the rest we just sell here.

Navdanya gives us an okay price. They buy our Rajma (kidney beans), paddy, wheat,

and organic vegetable seed from us, but they do not have a market for our potatoes.”

Surbeer added they now sow Rajma and get good rates for those beans, and that they

have reduced growing potatoes. When the wheat is harvested, they sow Rajma in the

same field. “That way we get two crops in a year. In one field we have pulses and

potato, for example, and in another we have rice and wheat and then some vegetables

separately, in a kitchen garden. We grow vegetables like peas, tomatoes, potatoes, chilies

and beans that we sell to Navdanya,” Surbeer explains, who distributes further to their

sales network. The closest market is in Dehradun, which is ten hours away with the local

bus. Organic potatoes are sold there at the same rates as what the fertilized potatoes are

sold for. “People do not recognize their value,” said Surbeer. “They grow less,

compared with fertilized potatoes, but our potatoes last longer, they do not rot quickly

and they are very tasty.”

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Navdanya has a network for selling organic produce in Delhi and Mumbai. They buy

directly from the farmers, and Vijay Bhatt, 32 years old from Rudraprayag district, has

been working with Navdanya doing that since 2003. He said, “I joined them as a

volunteer in 1999 when they made a Jaiv Panchayat, a biodiversity related village

festival, in Rudraprayag, because I liked their work; it is good for the state and good for

our farmers. Now my job is to go and buy the produce from the farmers,” he explained.

Madhusree is one of the farmers who sell some of the produce they grow as organic

produce to Navdanya. She noted, “We also sell it in the village in Purola, but there

organic produce is sold at the same price. We don’t even inform the customer whether it

is organic or not, people don’t know or care,” she commented.

Navdanya pays one or two rupees more for organic produce than what the farmers get

in the village. Vijay travels to the farms, to villages like Sankari and Purola in Uttarkashi

district. He stated, “I travel with bus, and sometimes in the office Jeep. I only go and

check the produce, while the coordinators later collect it in a Jeep. I talk to the farmers,

check the quality of the produce, and decide the rates.” Navdanya is not an official

certifying agency, but they have their own type of Navdanya certification. Vijay

explained, “I go with the certification agency and check the field, and their soil. We

collect soil samples and check the location of the field.” He commented that they

currently have some farmers under certification, and next year they are adding a lot more

farmers. He does the Navdanya certification, and then he recommends the names of the

Navdanya members for organic certification by the Uttarakhand State Organic

Certification Agency or other national or international agencies. All farmer members of

Navdanya are Navdanya certified members. “I do the certification for Navdanya when I

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talk to the farmers,” said Vijay. “In the certification process various forms are to be

checked, but the farmers are not doing all the steps. They are supposed to do those

themselves, but then they don’t do it, and many things are done wrong so I have to do it

again when I go to see the farms. Other problems are the rates,” he continued. Navdanya

pays ten percent more than others, he explained, “but sometimes the farmers say we give

them a low price. We have had farmers meetings where the farmers have decided on one

rate, but sometimes some farmers want more.” Vijay mentioned he always works with

the coordinators, “I don’t go separate from them. I like to go out in the field and buy

from the small farmers.” Navdanya also buys from larger farmers, where it may collect

50 quintals from one farmer and 100 quintals from another, but Vijay admitted he prefers

to go to the farmers where he will buy one or two quintals. “It takes longer time, and we

often buy only 20–25 quintals in one day because we buy a few quintals in each farm, but

I like to buy from small farmers because I want them to receive a good price. I want to

support them so they can live from agriculture. The big farmers can sell in the market,

and they have contacts,” he added.

Navdanya buys some of the surplus in each area they have members. For example, in

the Chakrata area there is a special type of bean the farmers grow which Navdanya buys,

and from Sankari it buys many types of kidney beans, amaranth, and other crops. Vijay

explained, “The price of the end product is excessive because of the transport and

package, but people are interested in buying organic in the cities, mainly Delhi and

Mumbai, and it is possible to sell more. We have plans for expanding, next year we are

taking various farmers in certification. I think it is going to grow every year.” He said he

thinks organic farming has a good future.

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Continued Challenges

Dr. Bhatt is also very optimistic about Navdanya’s work. “People used to laugh at us

and say, how is it possible, why are you anti-development? Why are you sticking with

the old things? Do you not want people to become wealthy, or modern and developed?

But now people are realizing,” he emphasized, “and the government of Uttarakhand is

also supporting us, because it is a big success. The government has decided to go

organic, and also to be GM free, so that is a big victory for us. They have not banned the

selling of chemical input yet, but slowly I think they will ban it.” Bhatt argued that what

is happening internationally concerning agriculture is not very good. “I think the only

solution is if the farmers do biodiversity based organic farming. That is the only way for

their sustainability and it is also better for the environment, and biodiversity.” He

thought the best solution for small farmers who live in the countryside, is to continue

living there instead of moving. “They should continue with what they were doing earlier,

and of course they should continue doing innovations. Even the small scale farmers can

afford sending their children to school, because up to 12th standard it is almost free in

government colleges, even if now the fees are increasing, so it is has become tougher to

manage,” he admitted.

Many of the farmers I met were balancing various activities to earn enough income

for their families but all wanted to continue family farming, even if some members of the

family look for work outside of farming. In many of the higher lying villages, like in

Sour, the farmers grow fruit in between their fields. “The land we have is barely enough

to get an income for the whole family, but these days we are also getting some money

from apples. We have goat and sheep, so we are busy, we don’t want more to do,”

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Surbeer said, laughing, “we make some wool clothes from the sheep wool, and that dung

is also used for fertilizers.” Their sheep and goats are taken for grazing to alpine pastures

during the summer and lower hills during the winter, while the cows and buffaloes graze

in areas near the villages. Kala in Jakul village said the farming is enough to provide

economically for the whole family, and they only buy paddy from outside. “We are

selling French beans and potato and other local crops, and buying rice. We don’t need

any help from the government. We get enough food supply from our farm, except for

rice.” They do not grow rice in her area because climatic conditions are not right for

paddy growing they explain. It is because the water is very hard there, and the hard water

changes the soil and makes it different from that of Sour village. “Because Sour is so

close, one would think it is the same,” she said, but it is not so. Their fields are better for

pulses and buckwheat, and buckwheat is the specialty of the place. “We are selling

buckwheat to Navdanya who put it on the market in Delhi and Dehradun,” she explained.

The variety the small farmers in the hill areas grow, like rice, pulses, vegetables, spices

and fruits, makes it easier for them to be self-sufficient in food than for the farmers in the

plains that are more prone to grow just wheat and rice. Negi said that in his region some

farmers produce enough to provide for their family, while others buy food from outside.

In general, in the hill areas, women work in the fields and men go out to do some other

jobs where they earn the cash. Only when they have time, the men come to help the

family in the fields. “Like me” he said, “I help my family to plough the fields and with

sowing, and then my wife looks after the fields until the harvesting time when I go back

to help her.”

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Throughout the world, people living in mountainous regions face geo-physical

challenges that traditionally have triggered migration. In Uttarakhand, the districts of

Almora, and Pauri and Tehri Garhwal have had parts of their population migrate since the

1870s (Singh 1990). Initially some men migrated to join the British Army, and this

created a tradition of migration among young men that is still going on today. Chamoli

district has also been supplying young men to the Army for more than 100 years, and

having a member of the family serving in the Army contributed to a good reputation.

This probably gave a positive perception around the idea of basing livelihoods on

migration (Jain and Nagarwalla 2004). Today, most of the migration in Uttarakhand is

seasonal and rural-urban, while a very small extent is international. In 2001 about 38

percent of the population of the state migrated, roughly two-thirds of this number (3.1

million) was women who migrated for marriage or moved with their households. The

majority of men migrate to work, and the largest group are between 20 and 29 years of

age at migration (Jain 2010).

Although most of the migrants work as semi-skilled laborers, some do acquire skills

and work as teachers, drivers, or in the hospitality industry. In a study on migration from

Uttarakhand, Jain found that although many wives of migrants (63 percent) see the need

for the economic input, and agree with their husband’s migration, their workload has

increased by an average of four hours per day. In 2006, the Indian government

implemented a National Rural Employment Guarantee Program to deter seasonal

migration, which guarantees rural households 100 days of paid work per year in and near

their villages. Many women alleged that this only added to their drudgery, because they

were pressured by the family to do the daily wage labor under this program in addition to

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their household responsibilities in their husband’s absence. Migration was also found to

have negative effect on women’s health because of the increased workload. There is

often little attention to their health concerns, and access to healthcare may be difficult.

Women reported to be shy to access care at health centers when the husband was not

present (Jain 2010). In addition to marginal landholdings with a small agricultural

output, some of the main push factors for migration today are lack of infrastructural

development, inadequate education, and alternative employment.

Climate change is also seen as one factor driving migration in recent years, because

changing conditions, such as less rainfall have contributed to a decline in agricultural

productivity. Complementary income from seasonal migration is the main source of cash

income for subsistence agriculture households. This income, generally ranging from Rs.

3,000–10,000 for a season, is not enough to keep the household above the poverty line,

though (Jain 2010). The commercial vegetable farming taken up in the last couple of

decades has reversed the migration trend to some extent, because it has created more jobs

for men. Organic cultivation of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) is a fast growing

activity that can increase the income for marginal farmers in a more sustainable way.

Rawat has had his own NGO for the last eight years working with organic farmers

who cultivate medicinal plants. “I have my farmers in this area and in other parts of

Uttarkashi. I am working with organic farmers and I’m growing in certified fields. We

help farmers to grow by giving them seed and then we buy back their produce,” he

explained. The state of Uttarakhand is developing several MAPs projects for increasing

this cultivation. Another area the state could pay more attention to is healthcare services.

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There is a serious lack of services in many of the rural areas, and in Sour, Surbeer

talked to me about their most pressing needs. “Mainly we have childbirth related

problems, delivery cases,” he said, “the government is supposed to help, but it doesn’t

help us. They must have visited the village only at the time of election.” There is no

hospital in this area; the closest is in Dehradun, almost a ten-hour drive away on a very

bad road. “In the higher areas there are not even immunization programs for the children,

which is supposed to be a national program,” Surbeer said. Uttarakhand has high infant

mortality rates (IMR) in all districts, but Uttarkashi district has the highest IMR at 98 per

1,000 live births, more than double the lowest IMR at 40, in Almora district (Mittal, et al.

2008).

Conclusion

Uttarakhand is a relatively new state, with a long history of social movements, like

Chipko, working for the rights of farmers to the forests resources they need for marginal

mountain farming. Navdanya has been working with farmers in Uttarakhand, as well as

in several other states in India, for almost three decades, with the aim to teach the farmers

to be self-sufficient through organic agriculture and biodiversity conservation, in order to

maintain sustainable livelihoods and preserve the ecological resources.

The state has suffered some negative effects of chemical fertilizer use on soil fertility,

but not to a comparable extent of that in Punjab, or other similar mono-cropping areas.

Climate change is an increasing problem for farmers in Uttarakhand, especially

decreasing rainfall and erratic patterns of the monsoon, which make rainfed farming

difficult to control. Navdanya and other organizations working on sustainable farming

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methods see that multi-cropping, use of locally adapted seed—which require less water—

and natural fertilizers in the form of dung and forest litter to replenish the soil, are the

best way to adapt to these changes. Navdanya staff carries out research on organic

farming methods, natural pest-controlling mechanisms, and economic and environmental

effects of converting to sustainable farming and water conservation in their villages.

Moreover farmers are involved in political aspects of sustainable farming, and take part

in courses, meetings, signature campaigns, and other forms of activism related to issues

such as international trade, patents, and GM crops. They learn about the real cost of

using hybrid seed, and are encouraged to use local varieties and keeping seed banks.

Marketing organic produce and securing a good price for the farmers is a challenge

here as in other states. A growing demand for organic produce, and a potential for

expanded sale, enable many farmers to support their families through sustainable farming

and livestock. Navdanya has a network for distribution, and buys produce from their

member farmers at a slightly higher rate than what they would get in the regular market.

Uttarakhand has declared itself an organic state, focusing on organic agriculture,

herbs and medicinal plants as avenues for niche-products and to diversify, but the state

faces many challenges in supporting a growing population with mainly rainfed mountain

agriculture. At the same time the state continues to support conventional agriculture, for

example through the development of cash-crop production of off-seasonal vegetables,

which require chemical fertilizers and irrigation. This is to create more income

opportunities and employment in rural areas, and to reduce the high seasonal and out of

state migration for work. There is a large need for improved infrastructure; roads,

electricity, and water, in addition to better education and healthcare. There are

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considerable, and increasing, social and economic inequalities between the hills and the

plains.

Agricultural production in Uttarakhand is very distinct from that in Punjab in so many

respects, such as the size of landholdings, the degree of mechanization in farming, mono-

cropping versus multi-cropping systems in the fields, and in the use of agrochemical

inputs, to mention a few. In the following chapter I will discuss some of these

differences, and also the critique that organizations like Kheti Virasat and Navdanya

encounter from various sources.

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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION

Contrastive Experiences with and Reactions to the Green Revolution

General Overview

In this chapter, I review the characteristics and considerable differences between

agricultural practices in Punjab and Uttarakhand states. I then discuss key issues about

contrastive experiences with and reactions to the GR, as these are the main areas of the

work of Kheti Virasat in Punjab and Navdanya in Uttarakhand. I also discuss some of

the negative appraisals of these and similar organizations, which are criticized as being

backward not only by those convinced of the of the superiority of technology-based

agribusiness methods of farming but also by some intellectuals for being part of a

conservative populist movement or for promoting traditional gender roles of inequality

and discrimination.

Punjab and Uttarakhand states are similar in size and both are located in the

northwestern part of India, but otherwise they differ in most aspects, as described in the

previous two chapters. Punjab has almost three times the population of that of

Uttarakhand, and a much more developed infrastructure. This is especially seen in a

better road system, statewide access to electricity, and not the least in irrigation of almost

all of its farmland. Eighty-five percent of Punjab is cultivated while only three percent of

the state is forest, whereas in Uttarakhand less than 15 percent of the predominantly

mountainous terrain is cultivated, and forests cover more than half of the state’s territory

(DFWP 2011). Input-intensive plains agriculture with mechanized production on large

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landholdings characterizes farming in Punjab, in contrast to primarily mountain

cultivation in Uttarakhand with the use of animals and manual labor on small plots. The

integration of agriculture with forest use has prevented soil erosion, and preserved agro-

biodiversity as well as the natural biodiversity. Although both Tamil Nadu and West

Bengal also have hill agriculture within their states, in addition to larger plains areas, tea

plantations developed for commercial production by the British East India Company

characterize the hill areas of both these states. Tea production never became large scale

in Uttarakhand, and the state produces less than one percent of India’s tea crop, while

West Bengal and Tamil Nadu produce 21 and 15 percent respectively, although the

largest producer is the state of Assam, which is the source of 53 percent of India’s tea

harvest (Mauskar 2007).

Punjab is dominated by a rice-wheat crop rotation system, and many landholders hire

laborers to do manual work on the farms. In Uttarakhand, there is mainly multi-cropping,

and the farming is largely done by women and other family members and rarely with

hired labor. Whereas Punjabi women normally do not work in the fields, women in

Uttarakhand are heavily involved in agriculture, in addition to their domestic duties and

childcare, and therefore work several hours more per day than their male counterparts

(Guha 2000a). The two states are currently close in per capita income (Unidow 2011),

but farmers in Punjab have much higher debts, and about two thirds of the farmer

households are in debt, whilst in Uttarakhand less than ten percent of the farmers have

loans through official institutions.

Punjab was one of the main areas of implementation of the GR, and has, since the

1960s, been a center of the use of HYV, chemical fertilizers, and irrigation to produce a

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crop. This has significantly increased agricultural production, and the state contributes

large amounts of rice and wheat to the national distribution system. Like most regions of

marginal and small-scale farming in India, Uttarakhand was not a central area for

distribution of GR technologies. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides were introduced

there one to two decades later than in Punjab, and never to the same degree. The GR

apparently increased social inequalities in Punjab, as seen in a pattern of larger farmers’

purchases of smaller farmers’ land (IFPRI 2007). There is less socio-economic

differentiation between the farmers of the hill regions of Uttarakhand than in other parts

of the country, due in part to limited access to land, and the fact that the farmers depend

mostly on the monsoon for irrigation. The income disparity is large between the hills and

the plains within the state of Uttarakhand, though, and also in terms of health services

and education. There is migration from rural areas in Uttarakhand, and the men often

seek work in the cities, and support their families with remittances.

As more and more farmers started using the new seed introduced during the GR in

Punjab, their traditional seed fell into disuse and was not saved. In Uttarakhand there has

been some transition to hybrid seed, but to a much lesser extent than in Punjab. There are

many old seed banks still in use, some over a century old, and more have been initiated in

recent years. One of the areas Navdanya and other organizations focus on is in assisting

in the protection seed biodiversity and retrieval of farmer seed varieties. They arrange

seed exchange programs and organize seed fairs, where they spread information among

the farmers. Farming with multiple crops is also beneficial for household nutrition,

contributes to food security and protects the livelihood of farmers. Mountain agriculture

with its blend of forest use, horticulture, and agriculture with animal husbandry, has been

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able to preserve a high level of agro-biodiversity. This include traditional cultivars of

grains and pulses, fruits and vegetables, often specific to the temperate climate in the hills

and not found many other parts of the country, as well as many species of medicinal and

aromatic plant resources that are grown as a supplemental-income by farmers (Rais, et al.

2009).

The government in Uttarakhand has declared the state an organic state. This means

that it has implemented some policies to help farmers who would like to convert to

organic agriculture, and also farmers who did not leave natural farming methods, to get

access to new technologies and knowledge in ecological crop production. Even if most

of the crop produced in the hills of Uttarakhand is not yet certified organic, the farmers

often get higher prices because the quality of the hill agriculture is known outside the

area.

Animal husbandry in the small mountain households, which often lack capital

resources, adds to both income and employment, and also to nutrition and health in the

population (ILRI 2006). In Punjab, Kheti Virasat recommended that farmers keep cattle

for dung production and milk, and several small farmers returned to keeping cattle when

they converted to organic methods. In both states, each farm does not make a large profit

from the cattle, but a cooperative enterprise of dairy can produce a good livelihood

(Kurup 2000).

Over the years the intensive agriculture practiced in Punjab negatively affected the

environment, depleted the soil, and caused the water tables to fall. Some areas of the

state have become deserts, and the crop yields have stagnated or are falling (IFPRI 2007).

The adverse environmental effects from industrial agriculture have been significantly less

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extensive in Uttarakhand, because much less agrochemicals have been used there, and

they started their use later than in Punjab. Still, the soil in some places has turned dry and

infertile, or “burned” as the farmers called it, when chemical fertilizers were added, and

the rain did not come as expected, as the monsoons appear to have turned increasingly

irregular in the last couple of decades. The ecological environment of the hills is fragile

and the soil is prone to erosion from deforestation and more intensive rainfall. Other

environmental challenges include scarcity of water and increased temperatures due to

climate change. (In Chapter four about Uttarakhand, as well as here in the discussion, I

refer to the hill areas of Uttarakhand, which comprise the vast majority of the state, and

not the relatively small areas in the plains, where farmers practice conventional

agriculture to a larger extent.)

Practitioners of conventional forms of agricultural production have a way to calculate

costs that fails to include the price of damage done to the environment and to the social

fabric or to people’s health; for example from living in and consuming the produce of the

highly chemical production methods in Punjab. Unsafe levels of pesticide residue have

been found in the water, food, soil, and in humans themselves. There are increased rates

of cancer in several districts of the state, and research has indicated developmental

problems for children living in the most chemically polluted regions. While the use of

some of the worst poisons like DDT is now forbidden in agriculture, the use of less

persistent but more toxic pesticides is increasing in the state. Knowledge about the

dangers of these chemicals and safer ways to use them are still lacking among a majority

of the farmers and laborers who apply them.

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Promoted as a solution to reduce the pesticide use in cotton production, a genetically

modified Bt cottonseed was introduced to farmers in Punjab in 2002. The resistance in

the Bt plant was tailored toward the American bollworm, but not towards other common

secondary pests on the cotton plant like aphids. The farmers therefore continued to spray

against these, although in smaller amounts than prior to growing the Bt crops. Another

problem with the Bt hybrid seed in regions with mainly smallholder agriculture is that

seed need to be purchased each year, and the crop requires fertilizers and irrigation. It is

therefore a costly variety for small farmers to grow, regardless if the pest problem of the

bollworm is even temporarily solved.

The widespread and escalating use of GM seed in the United States, Canada, and

Australia, and increasingly in South America, South Africa and South- and East Asia, has

been called a Second Green Revolution. This Second Green Revolution looks to

biotechnology such as GM seed, high-tech livestock breeding and other advanced

industrial agricultural methods to increase food production and thus achieve the elusive

goal of solving world hunger.

A Second Green Biotechnology Revolution

During the GR, much of the initial research was undertaken through public efforts,

and the seed and other inputs were also initially distributed largely via the universities

and agricultural departments. The biotechnology revolution, by contrast, is mainly driven

by the private sector, often by the same multinational companies who grew large during

the GR. The result is that the technologies are tightly controlled by patents, and not

available in an affordable way to small farmers (Josling and Nelson 2001). Multinational

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agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and others are deeply involved in the present

drive for genetic engineering in agriculture and see India, Argentina, Brazil, China and

South Africa as their current main target markets for GM crops and accompanying

required inputs. Many of these companies, although considered private bodies, are

already larger than countries in economic terms and have gained disquieting and

increasing power over world food production. At the same time they have demonstrated

little regard for environmental or social impacts in the communities that they are seeking

to sell their products (Paul, et al. 2004), but instead focus on controlling the farmers, the

seed markets and the resources. This is facilitated by WTO agreements, which are

designed to give corporations liberty to work where their profits are the highest (Paul, et

al. 2004).

Agricultural (and other) research is suffering by the increasing corporate influence at

universities and in research institutes. A consequence of research dominated by

corporations is that the focus shifts towards results that can be patented or in other ways

controlled, so that they make certain they will profit from it. The exploration of

methodologies to regenerate traditional practices that are unable to ensure this aspect of

private gain is largely ignored. Farmers’ knowledge and traditional practices in farming

built up over centuries in all parts of the world accompanied by the farmer varieties and

their germplasm are considered raw material, something potentially useful when

developing the privately owned technologies, but not worthy of support or protection

unless the corporations can make use of it (Paul, et al. 2004).

As more farmers start growing GM crops, the power of these companies will be

reinforced. The choice the farmers have is therefore clear, between the safeguarding or

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rebuilding of their self-sufficient local food systems and their biodiversity, or reliance on

monoculture and a food system controlled by industry. The Vía Campesina, Kheti

Virasat, Navdanya and other farmers’ organizations see as the only alternative solution

that farmers keep and grow their own seed.

While some call the increased use of GM seed and other modified organisms a

Second Green Revolution, there is doubt that this will lead to more food production, in

contrast with what the industry claims, transgenic crops do not produce higher yields than

organic or conventional crops (Gurian-Sherman 2009). This technology will therefore

probably not resolve the problem of hunger, but rather continue and intensify an

industrial model of agriculture that has not lived up to its own promises or expectations.

The Union of Concerned Scientists presented an assessment of peer-reviewed research

from almost two decades concerning the yield from genetically engineered food and feed

crops in the United States in a report called “Failure to Yield” (2009). They found that in

the United States it is only Bt cotton that has achieved a noteworthy yield increase among

all GM crops. Bt corn had a yield increase of three to four percent during the 13 years

that it has been grown commercially in the United States, but conventional corn breeding

methods had larger yield increases during the same time period (Gurian-Sherman 2009).

Some plant scientists are suggesting that experience to date with creating transgenic

plants indicate that these plants may not contribute to a sustained increase in crop yields

to the rate announced, because it turned out to be more difficult than anticipated to try to

understand how the transgenic plants interact in various environments, outside of the

laboratory (Sinclair, et al. 2004). In addition to insect resistance, the other major

transgenic quality is herbicide resistance, but this is only valuable for larger farmers who

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can afford to buy expensive herbicides, and are willing to use those toxins. It is not a

good option for small farmers who would like to avoid unnecessary risks. They aim at

producing stable yields with as few external inputs as possible, and would rather avoid

methods that require additional water and are less viable during drought. The claims that

GM crops would be better adapted to marginal ecosystems or have environmental

benefits are contested and many researchers are uncertain whether costly GM seed will

make productive gains (Pretty and Ball 2001; Villar, et al. 2007). Some argue that rather

than having any additional useful properties, transgenic crops are actually contaminating

the genetic diversity of the world and exposing the planet to ecological risks that we do

not know the consequences of (Quist and Chapela 2001). To know about how genes

control important traits in plants is one thing, but to achieve consistent, sustainable

genetic improvement is a very complex issue, not least influenced by the environment

and the genetic context in which the control is undertaken (Kroymann and Mitchell-Olds

2005; MacMillan, et al. 2006).

The critique against GM crops comes from people with various distinct concerns.

The emphasis in the developed countries has been primarily on whether these crops are

safe to consume, and questions such as toxic accumulation in the food chain and whether

this is similar to that of chemicals from pesticides. The GM crop’s potential

environmental effects have also been raised. These may include the flow of, for example,

Bt genes to related plant families where they can interact with unknown outcomes on

insects that do not target the crops, on other organisms, or on the ecosystems in the soil.

Many doubt GM crop’s biological sustainability, as early on there was development of

insect-resistance to the Bt proteins present in the plants. While these concerns have also

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been brought up in India, the economic performance of GM crops, and issues of food

security have been more central to the debate over their use there. A GM crop is a

possible threat to food security for small farmers for whom it is critical to maintain traits

of their own crop varieties that contain what they feel they need. These traits include

quality food with the desired taste and cooking properties, but also fodder and storage

quality, and resistance to drought. These traits could be destroyed if contaminated with

GM crops, which may lack these qualities. Transgenic flow may also create liabilities if

it results in economic damage, which could occur if an organic farmer lost certification

and therefore revenue because of contamination. There is therefore a need for border

crops and sufficient distance from organic growers, but while the transgenic flow may be

prevented to some extent by methods of physical and biological containment, it will be

hard to prevent it completely (Heinemann 2007; Kershen 2004; Shelton 2007; Smyth, et

al. 2002). If transgenic crops are to be the important contribution some think they are

destined for, there needs to be more information convincing the public that research on

safety is done and to make this more transparent, so that the public can gain confidence in

these production forms. That only the industry itself is permitted to undertake research

on these crops does not give assurance of their safety for consumption nor for the

environment (Eicher, et al. 2006; Herrero, et al. 2007; Marvier, et al. 2007). During the

GR, the farmer became “forced” to buy the chemicals the HYV needed to grow and to

control the increased pests. It turned into a costly circle of debt and smaller profit

margins for the farmers. That the same companies who produced the pesticides and

fertilizers are those who now create these GM crops does not enhance confidence in the

need for these among many farmers.

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For some time the seed producers have pledged that they would develop new

generations of salt- and drought tolerant GM crops. This is presented as a completely

new invention, and they fail to mention that worldwide there are farmers growing local

varieties plants with these qualities, including in India. These varieties are safe for

human consumption, environmentally friendly, and much cheaper (Deb 2004). There are

also nontoxic and effective natural ways of controlling pests, developed by farmers who

work with the soil, its ecology and other species, instead of considering them all as

enemies. These are practiced among organic farmers and some conventional farmers

through integrated pest management (IPM) practices. The benefactors of using these

methods are the environment, the soil and water, as well as people who work in

agriculture and those who eat agricultural produce; not the agrochemical companies

however (Altieri 2004).

The Alternatives

Many farmers, not only in India but all over the world, have started to change the

farming methods they use, searching for sustainable ways of farming that do not poison

their environment or require extensive inputs. This trend towards a change in agricultural

methods has been going on for several decades in Punjab, and about three decades in

Uttarakhand, and of course many other places in the world. Presented in the IAASTD

reports (2009) is an exchange of ideas among the around four hundred researchers who

contributed with their work on agricultural sustainability. Discussing the problems we

are facing with ecological and social crises, scarcity of food, water, energy, and the

uncertainties involved with climate change, they maintain that to continue in the same

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pattern is not an option. The report expresses serious doubts as to whether a global

agribusiness with industrial agricultural methods and GM crops will be a solution to

produce more food. There is not only a need for more food, but the market needs to see

this in connection with the climate, energy and water spent. So far the market has

focused narrowly on food production, without including the whole picture of resources

and food security. The report recommends alleviating poverty and achieving food

security by adopting sustainable agricultural practices such as organic farming and other

agro-ecological approaches, and that the market should include in its calculations the

environmental services these farming methods include. It also argues there should be

incentives for taking care of the environment and securing farming being possible in the

same area in the future, not only for shortsighted high outcome (IAASTD 2009). These

could include appreciation of the multiple functions of agriculture, such as ecological

services contributing to resource conservation provided by sustainable agriculture

through its low-input and carbon sequestration, agro-forestry, watershed management,

and conservation of agricultural biodiversity. The IAASTD emphasizes focusing on the

need to educate farmers and have professionals work with the local farmers and

contribute agricultural knowledge, science and technology (AKST). There is also a great

need in many rural areas of improved health services, and education. The UN Special

Rapporteur on the Right to Food said recently in his report that “Agro-ecology or organic

farming delivers advantages that are complementary, and strongly contribute to the

broader economic development” (De Shutter 2010).

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Kheti Virasat and Navdanya

Kheti Virasat and Navdanya are two, of the many organizations now working with

farmers to help change unsustainable ways of producing food. While making use of the

farmers’ experience and skills, they integrate this traditional knowledge with new

farming technology and methods. They work to improve the farmers’ self-reliance

through independence of costly external inputs, thus contributing to economic self-

sufficiency. These organizations also contribute to conserving biodiversity and

indigenous seed, well adapted to their environment, and to build appreciation of the value

of traditional farming methods. They are working to give the farmers a choice, an

alternative to a second GR, or a biotechnology revolution, because they have seen the

negative effects on people’s health in the farming communities and the dire consequences

on the environment of the first GR, and they know that there are other more viable

strategies for small farmers to survive and thrive. One way by which Navdanya and

similar organizations give the farmers another choice is by offering seed that will be

suitable and tolerant to their local conditions, and which the farmers can reproduce

themselves.

Seed Banks

During the GR, many of the crop varieties the farmers used to grow and the

agricultural diversity that had been developed over generations disappeared when the use

of HYV became more common, as seen in Punjab, and around the world in both

developed and developing countries. When these varieties are lost, we also lose

irreplaceable germplasm that had been selected and built up in each sort. In the early

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1990s, a national campaign to protect seed varieties was started in India and called Bija

Satyagraha. Bija means seed, and Satyagraha means non-violent resistance and is a well-

known term in India since its use by Gandhi during the fight for independence. Initially

meant to protect farmers’ traditional seed rights from patents, Bija Satyagraha now also

includes protection from GM seed. In 1930, thousands of Indians walked to the sea to

collect salt, during the Salt Satyagraha, in defiance of the British tax on salt. Following

that same spirit of independence from foreign rule or multinational companies, the Seed

Satyagraha encourages farmers not to buy GM or patented seed, and to defy the Indian

seed patent laws. The trend of neglecting seed varieties is no less prevalent in this second

biotechnology revolution, than it was in the first GR. When the companies developing

GM crops are investing money and time in this endeavor, it is not to provide a large

number of varieties the farmers can select from, but rather to center on a very few

fundamental crops. This way they contribute to uniformity in crops and fields of

monocultures. As seen in many cases in the past, this may increase disease attacks and

pests on more vulnerable monocultures, and some of the first generation of GM crops

soon lost resistance to the pests they were supposed to withstand (Paul, et al. 2004).

Community seed banks and the continued use of a wide range of seed are therefore

crucial to conserve and prevent further loss of seed varieties, and in providing farmers an

alternative to HYV, hybrids, and GM seed. Seed banks would also sometimes be where

the villagers stored their grain for consumption. The seed banks make seed available in

an affordable exchange system, for example by letting the farmer return some seed after

the first harvest. This way, farmers can access seed without taking up loans, unlike what

is often the case when they purchase the GM and hybrid seed. When farmers are

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dependent on returning a loan with the surplus from their crop, this can be disastrous if

the crop is not good, or fails completely. The cause of farmer suicides is complex, but

most agree it is related to indebtedness. Debt is closely tied to the cost of the seed, and

the inputs they require. The risk of losing the crop, for example in a drought, is higher

with hybrid or transgenic seed because these are more prone to fail in inclement weather

conditions than locally adapted seed are.

In the village, a seed bank is often central to cooperation and reciprocity between the

farmers and along with the seed, the farmers exchange information about the seed and

how to grow the various crops. In the villages in Uttarakhand there were often the

women who had the key to the seed bank and were in charge of the exchange and

distribution of seed. They had customarily been engaged in seed saving and preservation,

since women for long had been active in agricultural work on these multi-task, small-

scale farms in the hills. The responsibility of managing the seed bank would give women

certain status, but it could also be regarded as yet another chore for them to be in charge

of and include in their numerous work hours; part of their double responsibility for the

family and for the farm. As women have to ensure that the family is fed, the seed banks

are vital in conserving and storing the seed necessary for a sustainable agriculture, with

crop varieties that suit their environmental conditions, and for replacement when pest

attacks, droughts or other calamities would occur. Local knowledge about the seed and

its farming methods is increasingly appreciated, as science becomes aware that local

varieties and knowledge about growing them has valuable aspects that can be

incorporated in modern farming practices (IAASTD 2009).

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Local Knowledge and Climate Change

As pointed out in the IAASTD reports, it is now widely acknowledged that

particularly in small-scale farming, agricultural knowledge, science and technology can

make use of and be based on local knowledge. The best results of agricultural

development are where the project principals have taken the time to understand the agro-

ecology of the systems they are trying to improve. From there the challenge is to develop

them to be economically worthwhile and expand them in an ecologically sustainable way.

In Uttarakhand, this is seen in conserving the natural resource base both for agricultural

and non-agricultural ecosystems such as the forests. Continued protection of the

environment is essential for agriculture in this fragile ecosystem, and also beneficial for

human health. The approaches that have integrated local, farmer-based innovations with

formal research have been the most successful. In mountain agriculture here, as in other

regions of the Hindu-Kush Himalayas, an important problem is the exodus of men and

the young from agriculture partially due to the small landholdings. Farming must offer a

livable income, and one way of increasing the productivity of farming systems is the

more intensive use of space and time, in intercropping for example, which traditionally

has been used together with agro-forestry as a way of intensification. Because the

climate varies a lot by elevation in hill regions, different varieties are grown at each level,

and varieties that are tolerant to cold and large temperature fluctuations between night

and day are planted at the beginning and end of the growing season.

Future climate change may well create new pest invasions or intensify those pest

problems already existing. With warmer winters, insects and pathogens have better

conditions to survive (Gan 2004; Garrett, et al. 2006; Gutierrez, et al. 2006; Yamamura,

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et al. 2006) and this is already seen for some plant pathogens (Rosenzweig, et al. 2001).

In Uttarakhand, cropping system diversification has been successfully used for pest

control. This has been done for example by sowing a variety of beans in the same field,

in addition to the traditional practices of intercropping and planting of beneficial non-

crop plants such as flowers that attract friendly insects, crop rotation, and leaving land

fallow. When using biodiversity for pest control, friendly insects act as natural enemies

of the pest populations, and it will not be just one host plant that suffers an attack from

any one pest (Altieri 2002). If, on the other hand, we kill the pest insects off with

pesticide, we also often decrease the friendly predators that feed upon them (Winston

1997). The knowledge of how to maintain a biodiverse system that naturally achieves

this balance is often locally specific. This is another reason to carefully preserve and

learn from local and traditional knowledge when developing or maintaining diverse agro-

ecosystems.

A meta-analysis of 66 publications comparing conventional and organic farming in

several European countries, indicates that the farming methods that most successfully

enhance species richness, especially that of plants, predatory insects and birds, is organic

farming (Bengtsson, et al. 2005). The farmers in Punjab soon saw the return of birds and

insects on their farms after converting to organic farming, and the soil fauna and local

densities of insect predators increased. Even if there is greater variety of insects in

organic farming systems, there is not more pest damage there than on conventional farms.

Rather, Bengtsson’s meta-analysis supports the notion that a higher diversity and

abundance of natural enemies contributes to better pest control in organic farms. The

farmers I spoke to in Punjab who had converted emphasized the fact that their current

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pest attacks were not as serious or devastating as some attacks were when they were

growing conventional monocultures.

Environmental Degradation and Organic Farming

The soil in the hill areas of Uttarakhand has not been contaminated to the same extent

as the soil in Punjab. There is not as much residue of pesticides and the water quality is

therefore also better. Underlying factors for this are remoteness; lack of accessibility for

the industry to promote inputs, small landholdings, and lack of irrigation needed for HYV

and therefore limited returns on investment in these crops. Shortage of finances among

the farmers or a lack of interest in investing in fertilizers (which they considered they

already have in their immediate environment in the form of forest material and animal

dung) has also contributed to this situation. Nevertheless, the hill environment is very

vulnerable and some farmers have suffered loss of soil quality due to chemical use, loss

of topsoil due to deforestation, or changed character of the soil with changing climate

conditions (Maxwell, et al. 2001). There is not much room for other livelihoods in these

hills, but mountain agro-forestry is one that has been working for centuries, and can be

further improved with education of the farmers in agricultural technologies and by

improving infrastructure and access to a market. Agroforestry practices improve and

maintain soil fertility for the future (Jiambo 2006; Rasul and Thapa 2006; Schroth, et al.

2004), which is crucial for continued small-scale agriculture and food security for the

majority of small farmers in this fragile environment.

If the farmers here were to turn to HYV and hybrids, they would need external inputs,

which would have to be brought in through improved roads and additional irrigation

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systems. It would be hard to maintain the crop diversity at the same time as allocating

areas for the input of intensive crops. Instead, the state is to some extent supporting the

farmers in making ecologically sound and lasting cropping practices and managing the

area’s ecosystems and natural resources in an integrated, sustainable way. Rather than

growing hybrid varieties that are probably grown better in other areas, they can make a

viable livelihood focusing on getting a higher price for their unique, indigenous varieties,

and special niche markets for beans, amaranth and finger millet, all among the sponsored

products of the Uttaranchal Organic Commodity Board (UOBC), together with fruit and

vegetable juices (Rais, et al. 2009).

Kheti Virasat, Navdanya, and other community based farmers organizations have also

been able to help the farmers come together and pool their resources to reduce otherwise

prohibitive costs, such as for certification and labeling. They also organize the

transportation, marketing and sale of their own crop. Marketing is often a key concern

for smallholders (Bernet, et al. 2005). Potential market niches for small-scale farmers are

networks of organic and fair-trade markets, although Navdanya focuses on meeting local

food security needs and local market needs first. When considering exporting food, the

local production in other countries should be considered, and only supplemented if there

is lack of a crop, or if a crop cannot be grown in that place.

When farmers convert to organic methods in the hills, they are able to sustain their

livelihoods and contribute to employment outside the farm in local processing and

marketing. This increased activity would not only have social and economic benefits, but

also contribute to less migration from rural areas (Bavec and Bavec, 2006; FAO, 1999b;

Parrot and Marsden, 2002; Halberg et al., 2007; Kilcher, 2007; Scialabba, 2007). The

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UOCB is also involved in marketing strategies, and developing branding and distribution

locally, but in Uttarakhand access to the market is still limited by inadequate

infrastructure, poor road systems and lack of refrigerated storage or transport. Punjab

does not experience these same problems, as infrastructure is much better developed

there.

While representatives of industrial agriculture argue that small-scale farming is

ineffective, there are many studies indicating that small biodiverse farms are more

productive than larger farms. In one analysis of 208 projects which examined how to

improve household food production in 52 developing countries, it was found that the

environmentally friendly, locally available, and low cost practices, where those that

contributed to most growth in food production (Pretty, et al. 2003). Yield increases have

also been achieved where farming systems have been converted to organic, low-input,

traditional practices (Halberg, et al. 2006). What is emphasized in these studies is that

small farms are more flexible in terms of improving the food availability of the

household. It also shows that modest investments in AKST give good results for these

small-scale diversified farms, and improves the situation regarding poverty and equity in

the communities, as they can contribute to the farmers being more involved in value

chains, or independent value-adding practices, that increase income-generation. The

small-scale farmers are more flexible in terms of changing to market needs. Increased

interest in food quality, safety, and traceability, all favor small-scale organic production

that can easily meet these quality needs and participate in short food supply chains in the

domestic market. As seen in Uttarakhand, small farmers with diversified production had

the potential of improving both the quantity and quality of their nutrition, while

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conserving agro-biodiversity. “With organic farming you get a lot of produce in a small

piece of land. The farmers have realized the fact that organic is commercially

profitable,” said Rawat, one of the Navdanya coordinators in Uttarakhand.

Panneerselvam et al. (2010) found in a study comparing organic and conventional

systems in the states of Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu that conventional and organic

farming had comparable yields in most cases. In Uttarakhand, intercropping in organic

systems had helped farmers increase the food available for consumption in the household.

They also found that organic farmers spent less on inputs than conventional ones, and

that this reduced their risk of debt. Organic farmers are therefore better prepared when

there are sudden climatic or economic changes, as they are not tied up in selling their

entire crop for making debt payments, as is the case of many small conventional farmers

in Punjab. It is exactly this risk of not having any flexibility in terms of income or

disposal of crop, which frequently causes food insecurity and can lead to despair among

the small-scale farmers in India (Panneerselvam, et al. 2010).

Food Security

Food security was described in the World Food Summit as existing “when all people,

at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to

meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 1996).

It is more likely that farmers in India will enjoy well-balanced diets when a variety of

produce is available, and they do not need to buy additional food from the market after

selling a crop. These qualities are beneficial anywhere, but particularly needed in small-

scale agriculture, where food security should be given higher priority than production for

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a market. In terms of yield per acre, intercropping that produces grains, fruits,

vegetables, animal products and their fodder, produces much more than monocultures.

The way several crops and intercrops are grown in sequence during the season makes the

use of the land more effective.

Despite the benefits many see from conversion to organic agriculture, biodiversity

conservation and the value of local and indigenous knowledge, there are many who have

opposite views. In addition to the arguments that originate in agribusiness about the

superiority of their seed and mineral fertilizers or chemical pesticides, there are others

who perceive the teachings of organizations like Navdanya, as being backward, populist,

and not in the long term benefitting the small farmers they propose to empower. I will

discuss briefly some of these viewpoints here.

A Romanticized Past?

In This Fissured Land (1992), Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha narrate the

political ecology of India from the time of British colonialism, which they refer to as a

turning point, or watershed, in India’s ecological history. They describe the past as being

more coherent and stable, with self-sufficient village communities, but they are not

entirely nostalgic about an idyllic past. They discuss the resource usage practices

introduced by colonialism and capitalism as entailing: “the elevation of commercial over

subsistence uses, the delegitimization of the community and the abandoning of restraints

on resource exploitation” (Gadgil and Guha 1992:116). Under the British, some of the

first conflicts over forest policy were between the new state monopoly and what the

villagers and farmers saw as their customary rights. In Uttarakhand, these policies

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seemed to separate forests from agriculture. Gadgil and Guha argue that here, as in other

states, the colonial policies allotted large areas of forest for increased hunting, or for

plantations growing coffee, tea, or rubber, and note that the dismantling of the traditional

forest management practices caused dramatic ecological degradation during this period.

They criticize the post-colonial governments of India for continuing colonial procedures

in forest management, benefiting the commercial and industrial sectors, while ownership

and technical expertise remained with the state and its forest department (Gadgil and

Guha 1992). They warn that further environmental degradation and increased social

conflicts will follow if the state continues expropriation of forest resources. Instead of a

continued industrial mode of production, they suggest that forest management in India

should learn from the resource allocations of the past, and reintroduce the integration and

cooperation among agriculture, livestock herding, and gathering of fodder and medicinal

plants in mountain agriculture.

Farmers I interviewed in Uttarakhand lamented the lack of sustainability in the state’s

“scientific” forestry. They argued that the state grow trees for commercial use, but not

what is needed for maintaining a healthy forest, protecting against soil erosion, and

giving fodder, much the same pattern as during colonialism. This pattern has

impoverished the farmers and provoked the many social protests that the state has seen

during the last decades. Even some forms of local resource conservation that had been

maintained during the colonial period have been lost during the recent decades of

“scientific” forestry management (Gadgil and Guha 1992).

Vandana Shiva uses many of the same arguments that Gadgil and Guha put forward

in their ecological history, in her books Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development

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(Shiva 1988), and Ecology and the Politics of Survival (Shiva 1991). Critics contend that

this view of past methods that were more sustainable is simply not accurate, and that the

narratives of forest users in Uttarakhand that have been presented ignore the hierarchies

and socio-economic differences that existed. Shubhra Gururani says “There is a tendency

to view rural India, especially the Himalaya, as a model of equality and unity.” (Gururani

2000:183). She argues that the hill societies in Uttarakhand is lacking clear-cut class

division and have strong communal traditions, making this state an exception to the social

hierarchy elsewhere in India. “The largely egalitarian social organization of Uttarakhand

helps construct an image of the Himalaya as an archetype of authentic India where social

hierarchies were and are insignificant and provide the basis for sustainable resource use,”

while caste and class relations were and are very different in other areas of the country

(Gururani 2000:183). According to Sumit Guha, the caste system and class commonly

controlled Indian society and village communities, and therefore the relations would be

based on hierarchy, dominance, and inequality, rather than equality and unity. Under the

old regime, the most powerful groups would control both agrarian and highly politicized

environmental resources (Guha 2000b). Sivaramakrishnan (2009), claims that there is no

reason to think that in pre-colonial India the natural resource use was balanced or

managed in a wise way, as assumed by Gadgil and Guha. He says there is little evidence

of this customary use. A similar argument is raised by Sumit Guha, who criticizes

Vandana Shiva for not presenting historical material that indicates how earlier

communities managed their natural resources and that therefore to describe them as

balanced in their resource use, or as being careful and sensible in their land use practices

is not based in reality (Guha 2002). Another critic of Gadgil, Ramachandra Guha, and

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Shiva, is Haripriya Rangan (2000), who has applied historical data to contradict what she

calls romanticized populist10 accounts of a better past in India, prior to environmental

degradation started affecting the Himalayas. Rangan argues that the populists in India

blame the environmental decay on British colonialism, population increase and economic

growth, but, she contends, there was no ecological harmony prior to the colonial era. She

says that rather than being a pristine and uncomplicated region, the Himalayas was

troubled by prolonged conflict that had started prior to colonization and that there had

also been devastations of the countryside in the form of flooding, earthquake and other

natural calamities, and famine (Rangan 2000). These natural disasters are not necessarily

connected with resource use, but Rangan contends that sustainable policies have to

expand the right to use the natural resources now, and not conserve the environment in

the hopes of restoring a past that probably never existed (Rangan 2000).

Despite these critiques from various people, Sivaramakrishnan argues that Shiva’s

portrayal of the past is still prevalent in many camps. He points to the Indian

government’s ninth national five-year plan, from 1997–2002, as an example, where the

approach to forest management reiterate some of these ideas (Sivaramakrishnan

2009:307). What is important today is not how the resources were used in the past, but

rather to apply the knowledge we have at this time about sustainable forestry, to conserve

what we have left of forests, and to let more forests grow.

10 Populist is here used in a derogative way; about political parties or social movements which are said to lack in theory, the appeal to “the people” without differentiation based on class or political leanings, and to play on religious, cultural, or national political feelings in times of change which may cause uncertainty in the population. (Historically, as well as today, populism is part of factions from left to right, and sometimes with fascist overtones.)

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Traditional Gender Roles

In Uttarakhand, hill women are heavily involved in the work in the forests, such as

collecting firewood and fodder for the animals. The attitude among men towards women

is that women provide a form of free labor, given that they can relax and watch the

women of the family work extended hours, regardless if they were their aged mothers,

their wives, or their daughters. In her research on Panchayat forests that are managed by

the village councils, Gururani (2000) discovered that despite women’s efforts and

involvement in the use of the forests, social restrictions prevented them from taking part

in the councils, and therefore also from participating in the forest management. She also

found in her study that men regarded women as unable to grasp how to advance forest

restoration, and that rather they accuse women of being responsible for the deterioration

of the forests. Gururani concludes that eco-feminists, and some include Vandana Shiva

as one, romanticize the idea that women have a special connection with nature and are

more knowledgeable than men when it comes to insights about agro-ecological matters,

and that they are more responsible in the management of environmental resources

(Gururani 2000). Her research also indicate that the role of women in these communities

is very vulnerable, and one of severe inequality, and discrimination.

This does not mean that many of the women of Uttarakhand who collect fodder and

medicinal herbs in the forest, tend to agriculture, and save seed, do not possess extensive

knowledge of the forests they have worked in all their lives. In Punjab, the relatively

wealthier Jat-caste women who never participate in agricultural work in the fields, nor are

involved in gathering from the forest, due to social restrictions on where they can work

and move, would of course have a very different area of expertise. Therefore, even if

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women in Uttarakhand are taking part in agricultural work and collecting from the

forests, one cannot from those examples make generalizations about women necessarily

being caretakers or defenders of the environment, better farmers or managers of natural

resources.

The vulnerability of women in agricultural economies is primarily influenced by their

comparative lack of rights to resources and income, especially agricultural land (Agarwal

2003; Jackson 2003). Other key factors that contribute to increased powerlessness

among women are higher levels of illiteracy and social constrains on their mobility and

work opportunities (Fordham 2003). In Uttarakhand, like in many other regions, women

have the main responsibility for producing food for household consumption, while men

are more often involved in the crops produced for sale, or they migrate to cities to look

for wage work.

Gender differences in these rural communities reflect the wider patterns of structural

gender inequality. In this context of widespread disrespect and harassment from men it is

hard to work for rapid change and to try to foreground women’s perspectives. Neglect of

efforts to address gendered power structures is prevalent.

Navdanya, and other groups often argue for a protection of a farmers’ culture which

is perceived by critics as encouraging traditional gender roles and inferior status for

women, or a conventional gender role where femininity is within the limits of working

the land, regeneration, and transmitting cultural values, without giving the women an

independent voice. Navdanya does include women in their various programs, trainings,

and as coordinators in some villages. They have a gender program called Diverse

Women for Diversity, where women work in local, national and international fora to

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promote biodiversity, cultural diversity and food security, and engage in non-violent

resistance to monoculture and monopolies, genetic engineering of food crops and patents

on life forms (Navdanya 2009a). They do emphasize women’s alleged closer ties with

nature, and agricultural knowledge, although these ties are more likely based on culture

than nature. Women’s considerable experience through their work has probably given

them knowledge of the use of the forest and wild plants. Navdanya celebrates women’s

work and knowledge, but might pay less attention to what would be considered

promoting radical change of women’s rights, in order to get a wider support among the

population in the traditional, rural areas they work. In Uttarakhand, I heard appraisal of

women’s work capacity, but not discussions on how to ease their double burden. The

fact is that women work longer days while they do not have the power to decide many

aspects of their lives. Navdanya mentioned ideas of how to make some tools better

adjusted, to ease women’s workload, but not to change the division of labor. Some

oppose that fact that Shiva is called an ecofeminist, or a feminist, because rather than

gender equality, they argue, she emphasizes complementary roles and preserving

tradition (Agarwal 2001; Cochrane 2007; Nanda 2003). I would agree it is hard to call

Shiva a feminist, based on the idea that feminism is about equal opportunity and

liberation, and not about protecting customs that are oppressive for large parts of the

population.

Backward and Anti-Modern?

Navdanya and Kheti Virasat and other movements in India which claim they are

inspired by Gandhi, focus on what they see as a moral necessity of controlling resource

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use, for social justice, and inclusion of the poor. They refer to the farmers as independent

and empowered when they are more or less self-sufficient; produce their own inputs such

as seed and fertilizers with compost and dung, control pests with their self-made pest

deterrents, and have food security through biodiverse multi-cropping. The alternatives

these organizations teach to farmers are based on traditional agricultural techniques, and

the use of local seed. When the farmers convert to organic methods and stop purchasing

fertilizers, pesticides and commercial seed, they avoid going into debt, because the cost

of these input have risen so dramatically that they cannot be bought without borrowing

money. When these practices are recommended by (new) social movements, farmers’

organizations, or NGOs, they are not only criticized by proponents of industrial or

conventional agriculture, but many argue that the work of these NGOs puts a damper on

and complicates class organization (Das 2007; Herring and Agarwala 2006). Their

argument is that a change of an unjust order must come through a class struggle and that

other concerns are secondary to this, but a class formation continues to be elusive.

Should the concerns about the growing number of rural people ending up in urban slums

and severe environmental degradation from conventional agriculture wait for class

conscience to develop? Or can multiple concerns be targeted at the same time, and

maybe even with more cooperation between groups that have things in common. The

agricultural sector is under increased pressure from globalization and the capitalist state

with accompanying neoliberal policies and the increasing power of multinational

companies in various aspects of our lives, such as the central one: food production. The

environment is being polluted and degraded at a fast rate, and all attempts at preventing

that and aiding survival of farming communities are commendable.

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Politics are fraught with corruption in India, and many government projects for

farmers and rural poor never reach the recipients for these reason. In West Bengal,

farmers I interviewed argued that the rampant local stealing of funds from farmers took

place within every party, even, for example, the Communist Party of India (CPI) in their

case. In many inaccessible areas in Uttarakhand there were not many politicians, social

movements, or NGOs. The people there would have to relate to the very few they met, as

most were also unable to travel to seek out alternative organizations. I think the task of

converting to sustainable agriculture to improving people’s livelihoods and their

environments can be done while creating class conscience, and fighting for basic services

such as health care and infrastructure. The question is not who approaches the farmers

first, and “monopolize” them, or “prevents” them from engaging in other causes, but who

approaches them at all.

Development of varieties in crop and domestic animals has been going on since the

beginning of agriculture. People always tried to breed for increased yields, with traits of

tolerance to weather and resistance to pests. Agricultural technologies have been

invented, and many have been left again, like some types of irrigation or fertilizing,

tilling, or rotation systems that have not produced the desired results. Centuries old

practices that survived probably did so because they were beneficial, but many academics

and scientists in agribusiness corporations dismiss as backward and anti-modern the

acknowledgment that there might be something to be learned from traditional knowledge.

I found that the fact that many farmers now are opposed to the use of chemical

fertilizers and chemical pesticides has not necessarily anything to do with a rejection of

“improvement” or new agricultural knowledge, or of science or technology per se. The

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farmers I interviewed in Punjab, for example, do not accept without reflection a

conversion to organic methods, based on whether the GR methods where new or old, but

rather because their soil lost fertility and became impossible to work with, without inputs

at such a high cost they could simply not afford farming that way anymore. These

farmers saw the pollution of their environment and experienced the associated health

problems in their community and wanted to leave that way of production, when there

were options for doing it in a healthier and more sustainable way. With severely depleted

soil, organic or other ecological farming methods with low external input systems can be

a way to ensure sustainable management. Conversion to organic methods in Punjab can

also be seen as rehabilitation of degraded land. Soil fertility can be improved through

various methods, and in addition people see that soil rich in hummus controls erosion

better than depleted, sandy soil. Farmers are realizing that they can protect biodiversity,

sequester carbon in the soil, and promote the natural enemies of disease, pests, and

weeds, and improve the scarce water availability in the state through organic means.

Along similar lines, the farmers’ opposition to a second GR based on a new

biotechnology revolution, with GM seed, is not based on a rejection of this technology on

principle, but rather practical factors like affordability of the seed and the input necessary

for the crop to grow, the need to purchase seed each year, and limitation of their choices

in terms of what to grow. Another aspect is that many farmers think GM seed lacks

testing for safety for human or animal consumption. Shiva has framed the debate of GM

seed and their introduction to India as something she would fight as an anti-colonial

struggle, with a focus of protecting farmers’ choice and economical rights. It can also be

seen primarily as an environmental and social justice issue. The farmers should have the

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right to make their own decisions, and not be dictated by external economic factors or

outsiders. Production methods that are more labor intensive may be preferable to those

that require more capital and often high loans, because that could mean complete

dependence of the farmers on a moneylender for all their needs. To have a choice in

what to grow can also be considered a political right, for example when a farmer wishes

to emphasize growing traditional, often nutritious crops, like the millets in Uttarakhand,

rather than hybrid wheat which many said they find tasteless by comparison. Organic

farming benefits from the security of using seed adapted to local conditions, and thus not

risking the crop with input intensive seed that may succeed if the rain comes but may be a

disaster if it does not. New technologies do not automatically fit small-scale agriculture

in marginal conditions that need to produce for subsistence.

The Agrarian Question

Whether social movements romanticize the past to create change, or not, the situation

in India is that conventional capitalist agriculture or large agribusiness enterprises have

not been able to alleviate hunger or poverty. Instead, land degradation and other ills have

followed. The neoliberal policies introduced in India and elsewhere, have contributed to

increased landlessness, through forced sale due to bankruptcy, expropriation by the state

for Special Economic Zones (SEZ), industrial areas, or the loss of traditional land use

rights. These policies have therefore, directly and indirectly pushed hundreds of

thousands of rural people out of their previous livelihoods and means of survival. In

many countries there are increasing numbers of the rural population who work as

laborers. In India almost half the rural population, 45.6 percent, now work as laborers,

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compared to 28.1 percent in 1951, while the remaining small majority still work on their

own land (ASG 2008). The greater parts of these laborers do not stay in agricultural

work, but end up in urban slums, as cheap, expendable labor. In classical Marxist

conceptions, the resolution of the agrarian question in Europe was via urban

industrialization (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010). During the 20th century, many laborers

moved from rural to urban sectors in the industrializing global North. This strategy

worked to some extent in the past, and maybe more so in the industrialized areas or the

core countries, rather than in the peripheries (Amin 2003). In today’s India, as well as in

other parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the enormous numbers of displaced or

dispossessed farmers, rural dwellers, workers and their families, cannot be absorbed by

an industrialization that is taking place to varying extents. Today there is no rapidly

increasing manufacturing sector or industrialization to hire laborers or farmers who leave

agriculture. The farm workers or newly landless therefore frequently end up in the slums

around cities, as discussed in Chapter 3 about Punjab.

The Information Technology (IT) industry in India, although a quickly growing and

successful endeavor for a few, needs only a tiny amount of specialized labor and not a

large, unskilled labor force. There is a growing urban middle class in India, but they

seem to live in a separate world from the rural poor. Enclosed in their own radical

consumerism, with often no more than scorn although they reap the benefits of the

exploitation of rural resources (Das 2007). On several occasions when I was asked (e.g.,

in a hotel or in one of the Western style coffee-bars in Delhi), what I was doing research

on, people expressed surprise when I said I worked on small scale farming in rural areas.

They referred to the rural areas as backward and completely uninteresting and

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recommended that I change subjects, or see other parts of India. Their way of talking

about rural areas was as if it was another country they did not have, or did not want to

have anything to do with, and much less any responsibility for contributing to things like

infrastructure or schools. The author Arundhati Roy (2007) describes this as a way

Indian’s are colonizing themselves, the urban middle class plunders resources and

generates slave labor to feed their consumerism and greed. They therefore need to grab

land, water and resources from the vulnerable. Roy contends that the middle and upper

classes are withdrawing from the remainder of the country. After taking over control of

natural resources, such as coal, minerals, bauxite, water and the electricity produced by

the dams, they now want the land (Roy 2007). Land is in effect the principal form of

both peasant and working-class struggle in India, as well in other parts of the global

South today. Rather than through industrialization, the answer to today’s agrarian

questions may be to let the farmers and laborers have direct access to their means of

existence: land (Walker 2008). The population in India certainly can use the food

produced on these plots, and people need the livelihood.

Most of the rural poor will have to continue living in their marginal areas and depend

on agriculture. The industrial development paradigm is not helping these farmers to

survive, let alone move forward. Rather, sustainable small-scale farming could offer a

solution to many of today’s challenges not only India, but in the world. It puts forward

effective food-production, improved food-security and poverty alleviation, maintains and

improves the ecosystems, and stores carbon. Therefore there seems to be a need for more

sustainable farmers, not a larger unskilled workforce migrating to the cities.

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Should social movements include class-consciousness and gender equality as part of

their agenda? I would argue yes, because if they do not take issue with these struggles

they could be considered actively promoting the opposite values. Whenever injustice and

discriminating situations are apparent they should be addressed.

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CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION

This last chapter summarizes my findings and outlines some recommendations for

farm sustainability in India.

Key Findings

I carried out this research to learn how small farmers are coping under increasing

liberalization of global agricultural trade, with ever-escalating prices on agrochemical

inputs at a time when the rise in crop prices is not increasing comparatively. I found that

many farmers continue a pattern of conventional farming methods introduced by the GR

in the 1960s, while some farmers are converting to organic farming methods to become

more independent in terms of seed and other farm inputs. Those who convert to organic

also cite ecological reasons for this change: to restore soil fertility or manage farming

with less water and to avoid pollution of the environment and negative impacts on their

health from excessive application of agrochemicals.

In Punjab, most agricultural production is conventional, based on the use of mineral

fertilizers, chemical pesticides and hybrid seed. All of the conventional farmers I

interviewed there had problems with stagnating yields, despite high application if urea

and other mineral fertilizers. The farmers said the soil was now so depleted that it would

not grow anything without substantial amounts of agrochemical inputs and water. Other

serious problems included salination, desertification, and very low water tables in an

increasing number of blocks in several districts of the state. The farmers generally are

making a living, but most are highly indebted, and feel trapped in a system of farming in

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which they are forced to take loans, often from uncompromising moneylenders, in order

to be able to buy seed and the other inputs required for continued production. Extensive

environmental pollution from pesticides exists in some districts of the state, and these

areas also see higher rates of cancer, developmental problems in children, and other

serious health consequences. The traditional seed used in Punjab prior to the GR is

believed to have been lost due to disuse. Conventional farmers use HYV and hybrid

seed, and many of those who grow cotton use the genetically modified Bt cottonseed,

which is resistant to the American bollworm, larvae of the moth Helicoverpa armigera.

A relatively minor number of predominantly small, but also some medium and a few

large farms in Punjab have converted to organic farming methods. The number is

increasing, although still less than a percent of the farmers, according to Jaspal, one of the

large organic farmers there. Some convert independently, and some do it through

cooperation with Kheti Virasat, an organization that assists farmers with training in

organic farming methods. The organic farmers use traditional seed brought in from

nearby states, which they now grow and conserve in seed banks in Punjab. When the

farmers convert to organic, they experience a period of roughly three years of lowered

crop yield while they transfer from using mineral fertilizers to using compost and dung,

before the soil has regained fertility and moisture related to enhanced organic matter

within the soil. This pattern of reduced yields is common, ranging from ten to 30

percent, depending on the crop (Badgley, et al. 2007; Mäder, et al. 2002). While yields

are lower initially, the organic farmers obtain similar levels of profit compared to

conventional farmers per given unit of land, because of less expenditure on inputs. Some

farmers reported that crops grown organically would later give a similar yield to that of

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conventional methods, while others argued that they got a little more, or a little less yield

compared to conventional methods. As in any agricultural approach, the yield in organic

systems depends on the farmers’ knowledge of organic production methods and on the

quality of the soil (Bruinsma 2003).

Many farmers who converted were able to become economically independent in the

years after the transition, as they could gradually repay their loans taken up in earlier

years. Some farmers cooperated with Kheti Virasat to sell their produce locally, directly

to the consumers in some towns in the state. As part of a cooperation through Kheti

Virasat, they worked together to finance certification, buy machinery needed for grain

processing, and equipment to pack their own brand of organic produce for sale in Punjab

and in other parts of the country.

In Uttarakhand, farming is dominated by mountain agriculture on small landholdings

in the slopes and on terraces in the hills. The challenge in this region is to produce

enough food to maintain a family on a relatively small plot, while preserving a fragile

ecosystem. The surrounding forest is frequently used for grazing cattle and the collection

of fodder, firewood, and medicinal and aromatic herbs. Some farmers had experienced

depletion of the soil with the use of fertilizers, especially when rain did not come as

expected, but the influence of the GR was much less in this state than in Punjab. It is

estimated that roughly eighty percent of the farming in Uttarakhand is organic by default

in rainfed areas, and in the hills, ninety percent of the agricultural land is rainfed (Sitling,

et al. 2008).

The mountain areas are less developed in terms of infrastructure and thousands of

villages are still not connected to a road. Many do not have access to electricity or water

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for irrigation, and women often walk long distances to collect water for household use.

There is contention between the state and farmers over forest use, although some forest

areas are managed in cooperation with the local population. The farmers I interviewed in

Uttarakhand all said they experience difficulties in their farming due to irregular

monsoons. Lack of rain at the right time may cause most of the harvest to be lost to

drought. Climate change with warmer temperatures in the larger Himalaya-Kush region

is causing the glaciers that feed the rivers of Uttarakhand to retreat faster than recorded

earlier and small springs in the mountains to dry up portending ever more uncertain water

availability in the future.

In contrast to the handful of organizations working with farmers on conversion to

organic or other ecological farming methods in Punjab, Uttarakhand has many NGOs

working in this field in rural areas. One of them is Navdanya, which has been working

locally and in several other states for nearly three decades. The organization trains and

supports farmers converting to organic practices and helps to improve the farming

methods of those farmers who have been using traditional, natural methods all along.

While a reduction in crop yield, especially during the conversion period, is seen in

intensive production systems such as those in Punjab, traditional, low-input production

systems often see an immediate increase in the yields after converting to organic

methods. This is because in organic agriculture, farmers make use of a number of on-

farm fertility sources including vermi compost, crop residue, and animal manure. Multi-

cropping is also a way to increase production on small plots and to reduce the risk of loss

where there is drought or other difficult climatic conditions.

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Hybrid seed, mineral fertilizers, and chemical pesticides are sold and used in

Uttarakhand, but the government has taken steps to encourage and support the teaching of

organic farming. Uttarakhand has a rich biodiversity both in wild plants and agricultural

crops and there are ancient as well as new seed banks in use around the state. Local

farmers cultivate a number of traditional crops that are famous for their taste and quality;

these include for example, red rice, basmati rice, and a variety of beans, which are sold as

niche produce in Delhi and Mumbai, but there is a need to improve marketing so that

farmers can obtain stable and fair incomes.

Part of the problem in Uttarakhand is the small size of landholdings, resulting in

insufficient income from farming and resulting in labor migration from rural to urban

areas. While men leave for work outside, women do the bulk of work in agriculture.

Agro-forestry provides a means for continued rural development and organic produce

supplemented with cultivation of medicinal herbs are ways of securing employment and

increased income. Together, these lead to a diminished need for migration and the

sustainability of rural areas is enhanced. Confronted with the current challenges of

poverty, environmental degradation, threats to biodiversity, and climate change, rural

development requires significant attention to agriculture as well as to other areas of life.

The approach must include policies regarding how to maintain the vitality of the whole

ecosystem that supports rural livelihoods. This can be done through a strengthening of

the living and working conditions in rural areas, and the promotion of equal opportunities

in terms of education. Uttarakhand suffers from high illiteracy levels, a poor public

healthcare system, and underemployment. In addition there is a need for improved

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transportation in the hill region. Such transportation would provide added incentives for

the young to stay.

My research indicates that it is possible for farmers to convert from an intensive

conventional system to organic farming, or to make a living on a smallholding in difficult

terrain. Both alternatives can provide a good livelihood with sustainable methods. More

importantly, the organizations that assist the farmers in this transition are crucial, because

they teach the farmers new methods and give practical and moral support during a time

when they feel uncertain making such a large change in how they make their living. The

combination of being economically independent, if still poor, and having control over the

inputs and production methods on your farm, is really empowering.

Significance of Findings

My findings are consistent with much research on agricultural systems and

sustainability in recent years throughout the world; for example the extensive scientific

literature that the IAAASTD reports and reports presented by the UN Human Rights

Council are based on. In one sentence it could be phrased as:

Reinvestment in sustainable agriculture is vital to the realization of the right to food

for all, rural economic development with economically independent farmers, healthy

environments, adaption to climate change, and biodiversity conservation.

The GR and the productivity gains of conventional agriculture gave the world more

badly needed grain as well as larger farms with increasingly mechanized production, but

this model did not solve the problem of hunger. The number of people who go hungry in

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the world—a very large portion of whom live in India—increased during the decades

when the agrochemical methods and the HYVs of seed were producing more and more of

the world’s food. Progress measured in increased food production and total food

available per person did increase, but this rise in food production is not enough to ensure

that hunger is reduced. The transition from lack of food to a global surplus did not

correct the unequal distribution and the loss and waste of food in an increasingly

industrialized food system that with more transportation and trade is greater than ever.

One route to assuring that food is distributed in a better way is to have more food

producers with the resources required to produce food: land. When land is available they

can secure the right to food, or the food security of their household and community and

prevent a continued food crisis. Real political action regarding land redistribution is

something most governments, including the Indian government, strongly prefer to avoid.

As a replacement for land reforms, the general inclination, supported by new

technologies, has been for extended consolidation of land, supposedly for the sake of

efficiency based on economies of scale.

In the face of ample evidence from the last few decades that reveals the acute

environmental, social and economic failings of the first GR and intensive conventional

agriculture, much international investment in agriculture and aid is currently being

poured into a new GR for the global South, based on biotechnology and GM seed, again

with the postulation of increasing food production and reducing hunger.

Some Navdanya coordinators used the example of the British East India Company,

which started in trade, and ended up ruling India, when they explain to farmers why they

should keep their own seed, and not buy from international companies. Today’s

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corporations are even more influential than the British East India Company was in its

time, and we should examine more thoroughly not solely the technology of genetic

engineering and its application in food and feed production, but maybe more importantly

the bid for power and control that it represents. It is time to scrutinize the legal and

financial structures that the corporations have developed and are taking advantage of.

Social development is increasingly driven by technology, and in agriculture

biotechnology and its technological optimism is jeopardizing the principle of scientific

skepticism (Paul, et al. 2004).

In the 1960s India needed to boost its grain production, but today it is not lack of food

per se that is the problem, rather the country faces a complex problem that combines

climate change, financial uncertainty, and a food crisis, and the key question facing

farmers is how we are going to produce our food? A new GR based on biotechnology is

likely to repeat the failures of the first, but the consequences may be even more drastic in

terms of environmental effects and loss of biodiversity. We should try to learn from the

consequences of the last revolution, and instead apply methods that have proved to be

sustainable, productive, and healthy. There is increasing evidence of the effectiveness of

ecological methods to produce food (Badgley, et al. 2007; Magdoff 2007; Pretty 1999;

2003; 2006), and research has also indicated other positive side effects of these

production forms, such as less strain on water reserves, preservation of soil fertility and

carbon sequestration, as well as preserving or enhancing the biodiversity (Albrecht and

Kandji 2003; Altieri 1987; 1999; 2002).

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Thoughts about the Future

The diversity of peasant and indigenous societies in India and other parts of the

world, which constantly renew their local and traditional knowledge, constitute an

enormous wealth for humanity. Small-scale farming and the defense, not only of plant

and animal biodiversity, but also of the diversity of human cultural models, can respond

in a sustainable way to the current environmental crisis. In order to prevent the loss of

cultural wealth for later generations, the rural exodus and the destruction of farming

communities should be attended to. Millions of landless farmers and their families suffer

hunger and indecent living conditions in the shantytowns. Their labor could be used on

the farms, instead of being replaced by mineral fertilizers and chemical pesticides.

Farming must be something a family can make a living from, in order to encourage

populations to remains on the farms. Populations using forest resources must also be

protected from displacement. Giving up rich agro-forestry systems of great biodiversity

and selling the rights to exploit these areas to systems of large-scale monoculture is also a

loss of a heritage of knowledge and agro-ecological practices.

In order to adapt, seeds and animals must be diversified and variable. Only a

biodiversity conserved and renewed in the fields of small-scale farmers will permit the

development of plant and animal species that can adapt to the context and climate of

tomorrow. Instead of investing millions of dollars in the ex-situ (off-site) conservation

and laboratory research on genes, it is urgent to support field-based conservation and

participatory selection. To collect traditional varieties for storage in gene banks (ex-situ

conservation) has been one of the responses to genetic erosion, and as of today these

banks are relatively stable, most genes from crop populations can be included, and crop

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breeders can access them for crop improvement (Cohen, et al. 1991). These collections

are also vulnerable, however, because the gene banks do not preserve the ecosystem that

generates crop germplasm (Brush 1993); the collections are subject to genetic drift

(Soleri and Smith 1995) and they do not include diversity that arises after collection; and

most importantly, gene banks do not conserve farmer knowledge, which is an intrinsic

part of the crops-based resource (Cleveland, et al. 1994). Traditional farmers’ varieties,

or landraces, are geographically or ecologically distinctive and clearly diverse in their

genetic composition. Being linked to humankind’s primary food supply, the landraces

are a very important genetic resource. The fact that they are managed and manipulated

by people have also made them an important research object of anthropologists, some of

whom argue that human knowledge should be included as a component of plant genetic

resources for these species dependent on human activity (Moock and Rhoades 1992).

Most of the agriculture in the world is done on small-scale diversified farms.

Research for the last several years has indicated that sustainable agricultural systems such

as organic farming, or other ecological ways of farming, can produce enough food to

maintain food security. Pretty et al surveyed over 200 projects of sustainable land use in

Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Pretty, et al. 2003), and while there were variations in

the individual projects, the main trend was clearly toward increased yield and

sustainability. These agricultural systems with low external inputs therefore increase

yield while causing less negative impact on the environment. When comparing organic

methods with conventional agriculture in various parts of the world, there is indication

that sustainable agriculture would be a better way to produce enough food for the present

population or a larger need in the future. With sustainable methods this can be done in

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the same area, because farmland will not be lost to salination, desertification or other

negative impacts from chemical use and excessive water use (Badgley, et al. 2007; Bunch

1999; Pimentel, et al. 2005; Rasul and Thapa 2004; Tiffen and Bunch 2002). While

industrial agriculture is a net energy negative, small-scale agriculture produces more

calories than it consumes. The reduction of our energy consumption therefore depends

on maintaining and developing sustainable local food production, which uses more

human energy, the work of female and male farmers, and less energy derived from fossil

fuels. Sustainable farming gives employment to 2.8 billion people around the world. If

these farmers are given access to land, education and health, and are supported by food

sovereignty policies, they may keep feeding the world and protecting the planet. This

would be an important step in a wider project of planet sustainability, a critical goal in a

world suffering from multiple, intertwined eco-crises.

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APPENDIX: Interview Guidelines General Guideline for In-Depth Interviews with Farmers

Personal, historical background with focus on participant’s connection to farmland and agricultural activities. Questions will include: household composition and type and size of the family’s farmland. Emic description of family life at the farm. Historical development of the community. Types and magnitude of changes: e.g., demographic, socio-economic, political, ecological and agricultural changes; land reforms, use of technology and agricultural input and output. Gender change in relation to agricultural work and land property relations. - Is agricultural work something you like doing? If yes or no, what do you like or dislike about it? - Does agricultural work provide for your family? - Did you receive any help from the state or other institutions? - Did you get loans to buy input (fertilizers, pesticide, herbicide) or seed? - How did that go? Did it give higher yield with those inputs? - Did you get enough help? Please elaborate. - Did your family use indigenous, traditional farming methods before? If so, until when? - How long was conventional agricultural practiced? What are the benefits and negative aspects? - Have you converted to organic agriculture? Why? Why not? - How does it work for you on this farm? What are the benefits and negative aspects in socioeconomic, environmental and health terms? - After converting to organic agriculture, did you return to grow traditional crop that had been grown on this land before? Why, why not? How did that work out? - How do your relate to neighboring farmers. Do you cooperate with other farmers in the community? Do you socialize and help each other with work, tools, advice, and money? - In what way are you organized in this community? (Religious, political, economic, cultural, sport groups). Are you part of a local farmers’ organization? - Do you have a local seed bank here? If yes, since when? How does it function in this community? Has it been a good experience? How? Does the seed bank take care of all your seed needs? Is the seed what you need most in terms of agricultural support? - How is the seed bank organized? Are farmers responsible, and return new seeds to the bank when they have had a good harvest? - Has the local seed bank had an effect on your economic situation? If so, in what way? - Are there farmers who are not members of the seed bank? What percentage of the farmers would you say are members or use the seed bank?

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- What do you think about biodiversity conservation? Do you think it is needed in this area? Is it necessary for farmers to take part in this? Would you prefer to have less variation in plants? - If you feel that biodiversity conservation is important, do you think that your efforts here locally are playing an important role in preserving plants for the future? - How is Navdanya working with local farmers? Tell me about your experience and relationship with the organization. Indicate positive and negative aspects. - What do you think about Navdanya’s ideas? Have they been useful to you? - Is there any part of Navdanya’s philosophy that you disagree with? Why, why not? - Please indicate other training needs if any? - Are you working with local farmers’ organizations? How do they help you in your work as a farmer? - Have they helped you understand your role as a farmer in the wider economy? - Are you familiar with patents on seed and plants? Tell me about it. What do you think about this? Positive, negative aspects. - Are you familiar with the World Trade Organization, and its role in agricultural development? What do you know about it, and how does it affect you? - Are you familiar with genetically modified seeds? - Have you tried them on your farm? If yes, how was the result? Did it give a better harvest? Did you use more or less water, and inputs in the form of pesticides and fertilizers?

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General Guideline for Focus Group Interviews with Farmers In the focus group interviews I will ask the participants to describe the community they are part of in terms of connection to farmland and agricultural activities, their level of participation in local farmers’ organizations and the history of farmers’ organizations in their area. - How has their community evolved through the last decades? - What challenges have they experienced and how have they confronted these? - Has farmers’ participation in farmers’ and community organizations increased or decreased in the last decades? If yes, why and how? - What are the most pressing issues for local farmers today? - How and to what extent are these issues being addressed by the state, the local government, and your local organizations? - How would you evaluate the level of connectedness and cooperation among farmers in this area? - Have you worked together in a cooperative way, like you do now with the seed banks, before Kheti Virasat/Navdanya and other local farmers’ organizations came on the scene? - How would you evaluate the role of Kheti Virasat/Navdanya and other organizations in your area? - What motivates farmers like you to work with Kheti Virasat/Navdanya and why do you think other farmers may not do that? Tell me about your experience and relationship with Kheti Virasat/Navdanya and other local farmers’ organizations. Indicate positive and negative aspects.

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General Guideline for In-Depth Interviews with Non-Farmers - For how long have you been working with Kheti Virasat/Navdanya/other farmers’ organizations? - In what capacity have you been part of this organization? - What motivated you to join this organization? - What are some of the challenges you experience in your everyday work? - How would you describe the community you work for: Are they receptive to the organization’s program and assistance? Why, why not? What do you think may keep some farmers from being part of or cooperating with Kheti Virasat/Navdanya? - Is there any particular aspect they are more receptive to and interested in? Please explain. - How many people does your organization reach? - From the time you started this work, has the number of members and people you cooperate with increased, and to what extent? - How would you describe the relationship between Kheti Virasat/Navdanya/other farmers’ organizations and the state and local government? (Is it cooperative, antagonistic, non-existent?) - How do other local organizations perceive Kheti Virasat/Navdanya’s work and role in this community? - What could prevent Navdanya from pursuing its objectives? - How would you evaluate the success of Kheti Virasat/Navdanya? - How do you see the future of Kheti Virasat/Navdanya/other organizations and small farmers in India?

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