permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/feb/11/bhutan-first-wholly-organic-country>Bhutan
set to plough lone furrow as world's first wholly organic country | Global
development | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/feb/11/bhutan-first-wholly-organic-country

Bhutan set to plough lone furrow as world's first wholly organic country

By shunning all but organic farming techniques, the Himalayan state will
cement its status as a paradigm of sustainability
  Stooping to conquer … Already an overwhelmingly agrarian state, Bhutan is
aiming to become the world's first completely organic country. Photograph:
Alamy

Bhutan <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/bhutan> plans to become the first
country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning
the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and
farm waste for fertilisers.

But rather than accept that this will mean farmers of the small Himalayan
kingdom of around 1.2m people (according to Pema Gyamtsho, Bhutan's
minister of agriculture and forests; the World Bank estimates it at around
740,000) will be able to grow less food, the government expects them to be
able to grow more – and to export increasing amounts of high quality niche
foods to neighbouring India, China and other countries.

The decision to go organic was both practical and philosophical, said
Gyamtsho, in Delhi for the annual sustainable
development<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/sustainable-development>conference
last week. "Ours is a mountainous terrain. When we use chemicals
they don't stay where we use them, they impact the water and plants. We say
that we need to consider all the environment. Most of our farm practices
are traditional farming, so we are largely organic anyway.

"But we are Buddhists, too, and we believe in living in harmony with
nature. Animals have the right to live, we like to to see plants happy and
insects happy," he said.

Gyamtsho, like most members of the cabinet, is a farmer himself, coming
from Bumthang in central Bhutan but studying western farming methods in New
Zealand and Switzerland.

"Going organic will take time," he said. "We have set no deadline. We
cannot do it tomorrow. Instead we will achieve it region by region and crop
by crop."

The overwhelmingly agrarian nation, which really only opened its doors to
world influences 30 years ago, is now facing many of the development pangs
being felt everywhere in rapidly emerging countries. Young people reluctant
to live just by farming are migrating to India and elsewhere, there is a
population explosion, and there is inevitable pressure for consumerism and
cultural change.

But, says Gyamtsho, Bhutan's future depends largely on how it responds to
interlinked development challenges like climate change, and food and energy
security. "We would already be self-sufficient in food if we only ate what
we produced. But we import rice. Rice eating is now very common, but
traditionally it was very hard to get. Only the rich and the elite had it.
Rice conferred status. Now the trend is reversing. People are becoming more
health-conscious and are eating grains like buckwheat and wheat."

In the west, organic food growing is widely thought to reduce the size of
crops because they become more susceptible to pests. But this is being
challenged in Bhutan and some regions of Asia, where smallholders are
developing new techniques to grow more and are not losing soil quality.

Systems like "sustainable root intensification" (SRI), which carefully
regulate the amount of water that crops need and the age at which seedlings
are planted out, have shown that organic crop yields can be doubled with no
synthetic chemicals.

"We are experimenting with different methods of growing crops like SRI but
we are also going to increase the amount of irrigated land and use
traditional varieties of crops which do not require inputs and have pest
resistance," says Gyamtsho.

However, a run of exceptionally warm years and erratic weather has left
many farmers doubtful they can do without chemicals.

In Paro, a largely farming district in south-west Bhutan, farmers are
already struggling to grow enough to feed their families and local
government officials say they are having to distribute fertiliser and
pesticides in larger quantities to help people grow more.

"I have heard of the plan to turn everything organic. But we are facing
serious problems just getting people to grow enough", said Rinzen Wangchuk,
district farm officer.

"Most people here are smallholder farmers. The last few years we have had
problems with the crops. The weather has been very erratic. It's been
warmer than normal and all the chilli crops are full of pests. We are
having to rely on fertilisers more than we have ever had to in the past and
even these are not working as well as they initially did."

Dawa Tshering, who depends on his two acres of rice paddy and a vegetable
garden, says that for decades his farming was chemical free.

"But its harder now because all our children are either in the capital or
studying. Nobody wants to stay, which means we have to work harder. It's
just my wife an myself here. We cannot grow enough to feed ourselves and
take crops to the market, so we have to use chemicals for the first time.
We would like to go back to farming how we used to, where we just used what
nature provided."

But in a world looking for new ideas, Bhutan is already called the poster
child of sustainable
development<http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jan/02/nature-teacher-bhutan-conservation-classroom>.
More than 95% of the population has clean water and electricity, 80% of the
country is forested and, to the envy of many countries, it is carbon
neutral and food secure.

In addition, it is now basing its economic development on the pursuit of
collective 
happiness<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/01/bhutan-wealth-happiness-counts>
.

"We have no fossil fuels or nuclear. But we are blessed with rivers which
give us the potential of over 30,000megawatts of electricity. So far we
only exploit 2,000 megawatts. We exploit enough now to export to India and
in the pipeline we have 10,000 megawatts more. The biggest threat we face
is cars. The number is increasing every day. Everyone wants to buy cars and
that means we must import fuel. That is why we must develop our energy."

Agriculture minister Gyamtsho remains optimistic. "Hopefully we can provide
solutions. What is at stake is the future. We need governments who can make
bold decisions now rather than later."

• This article was amended on 13 February 2013 to attribute the figure
given for the population of Bhutan