Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Editor's Note: Agricultural policy stressing high input farming, while 
initialing increasing yields, exhausts soil over time and productivity begins 
to fall off. Many farmers become embroiled with debts to incur ever more 
fertilizers and pesticides. In India last month, small and organic farmers 
from many parts of the country met to create a plan to help bring organic 
agriculture to the core of agriculture policy to address ecological 
destruction, farmer poverty and food security. This gathering in India comes 
on the heels of the First World Conference on Organic Seed held in Rome in 
July (http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2004/47867/index.html).

Organic Farmers Organize to Save India's 700 Million Farmers and Rural 
Villagers

Farmers' Meet On Organic Farming Gets Off To A Start In Dehradun Today

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=64918

ASHOK B SHARMA
New Delhi, Aug 1

Country's growers engaged in organic farming are converging at Ramgarh
village in Dehradun district in Uttaranchal for a two-day conference
begining on August 2 for formulating an `India Organic Vision 2020.' The
vision document will enable Indian farmers to successfully tap the $ 37
billion global market for organic foods.

The conference will also deliberate on the issue of recent suicides
committed by farmers on account of being debt-trapped and use of spurious
pesticides and fertilisers leading to crop failure. The event named
`Vasundhara : A National Gathering of Organic Communities' is being hosted
by Navdanya Biodiversity Farm in village Ramgarh in Uttaranchal.

More than 250 organic growers, seed savers and biodiversity conservers
from Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat,
Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Orissa, Bihar, West
Bengal and Chhattisgarh are slated to participate in the event.

Speaking to FE, Dr Vandana Shiva of Navdanya said "we will work together
to strengthen the solidarity among organic communities, identifying the
strengths of the organic movement and the problems faced by organic growers.
We will also set an India Organic Vision 2020. The objective of the Vision
2020 will be to put small and marginal farmers and organic farming at the
centre of India's agriculture policy."

The organic farmers believe that much of the cases of suidicies committed
by farmers are due to the use of suprious fertilisers and pesticides which
has lead to crop failure. In such cases the farmers are unable to pay back
the loans and become debt-trapped. Therefore, the alternate way is to go for
organic farming which is less expensive, environment friendly and ensures
higher yields.

The factor productivity decreases as the soil is degraded due to excessive
use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The crop productivity and
production gets plateaued after a certain level. But when the soil is
restored back to health after use of different varieties of biofertilisers
through organic farming, the crop productivity marks an increase. The
productivity of sugarcane crop is found to increase by 25 per cent through
organic farming. Similarly the productivity of some cereal and horticulture
crops increases on account of organic farming. Besides the consumers
worldover have become conscious of organic food having no pesticide residues
and the global market for organic food has grown to the size of $ 37
billion.

In this context, Dr Vandana Shiva said "the need of the hour is to make an
ecological transition to produce more food using fewer resources. This is
possible only through adopting organic methods of farming. The success of
our organic growers has shown that farm incomes can increase threefold by
giving up the use of chemicals and by using inputs produced by on-farm
biodiversity. It is irrational, irresponsible and unscientific to continue
to destroy our vital resouces and fragile ecolological fabric of our planet
through chemical farming and transgenic technology driven agriculture."

Dr Shiva said that Indian agriculture is in a critical phase. More than
300 farmers committed suicide in just six weeks during May-June, 2004 in
Andhra Pradesh and more than 25,000 farmers in the country in the last five
years. The agricultural crisis is aggravated by unfair practices of trade
liberalisation and globalisation and the consequences of deepening farmers
debts, she said.

She further added :"the present government has recognised the fact that
farmers are committing suicides and have also taken steps in mitigating
their distress and desitution. The path taken by the government to solve the
agricultural crisis, however, takes the same route of liberalisation,
providing more credit to farmers, deregulating the seed sector and promoting
export-oriented crops. In our view, this is not the lasting solution. This
would put the farmers off their fields by making agriculture less
remunerative and increasing unemployment."
----------------------------

http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/dehradun080304.cfm



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