Shikaripur’s Organic Farming Problem

Shimoga

Shikaripur’s
Problem

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In Gama, a small village in Shikaripur Taluk,Shimoga district, in the Indian state of Karnataka, one farm stands out from the rest. “I practice double cropping; I grow ginger and arekaon my farm and both of them are grown using bio-organics,” said Devendrappa H., the owner of the farm. He says that in addition to increasing his income, this method promotes soil sustainability and enhances crop quality.However, in the rest of the Taluk, the word ‘organics’ itself in unknown to the people, let alone its practice. But Davendrappa shifted to organic farming because of one major problem chemical farming causes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DZihxoUK-0

Organic farming helps in maintaining biological diversity of the environment and soil fertility. It is a sustainable method of farming. It also includes biological pest and weed control and recycling of farming offsets. Even livestock is raised organically without the use of growth hormones, and genetic boosters and fed with 100 per cent organic feed ingredients.The Research Institute of Organic Agriculture(FiBL)—an organic farming research and information centre—and The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement(IFOAM)—an umbrella organization for the global organic farming movement—estimated that there were 1.8 million producers in organic farming in the world in 2011. A report published by the FiBL and IFOAM said that Thirty-four percent of the world’s organic producers are in Asia. India had the most number of producers at 547,591 producers according to the report.

“Karnataka is one of the leaders in Organic Farming, we are in fourth or fifth position,” said D Anuradha, Deputy Director, Organic Cell, Department of Agriculture, Karnataka. In 2004, the Government of Karnataka initiated the Karnataka State Policy on Organic Farming. The policy was aimed at promoting and implementing organic farming on a large scale across the state. Under this policy, the government formulated the Organic Farming Mission in 2008 to convert nearly 90,000 farmers throughout the state to 100 per cent organic farming. But a year later, it seemed to have hit a roadblock and the policy appeared to be largely a failure, evidenced by the departure of L. Narayana Reddy who was one of the most prominent members and face of the state organic farming policy. On his departure,he said the mission had not helped or benefitted any farmers. But in April 2017, the Karnataka government made a fresh advance to encourage organic farming in the state through the Karnataka Organic Policy, 2017 to increase farmer incomes and boost exports. Currently, according to the Karnataka Department of Agriculture, Karnataka has 96,612 organic farmers. However, there still remains a problem of implementation, as D Anuradha says, it is up to the farmers to decide to what extent they will practice organic farming which, a farmer can be practicing 20 per centor 70 per cent organic farming, therefore leading to the real extent of organic farming in the state to be vague.

With the exception of Davendrappa and a few others, the practices of organic farming in the farms of Shikaripur Taluk are nowhere to be seen despite the region receiving good rainfall and having a high moisture content, conditions which are ideal for organic farming.

Prabhakar B.N, Assistant Director of the Department of Agriculture in Shikaripur Taluk said, “Organic farming is practised by around 10 per cent of farmers in the Taluk. The organic farming policy might not even be implemented successfully. Farmers in the Taluk practice commercial agriculture, which isyield and income target oriented and adopting organic farming would not allow for these targets to be achieved.” He added that organic farming takes time, “In five years if practised continuously, it can be a great success but till those five years are complete, the farmers will incur losses. This is one of the main reasons why farmers shy away from practising organic farming.”

This was confirmed by many farmers in the Taluk. Nagappa, a farmer in the village of Issuru said, “For the health of the environment, organic farming is good but it takes around three tofour years to give results.” He also said that only “educated” people do organic farming. He added, “farmers are more concerned about the yield and prefer that over any health side effects that occur.” Babu Thomas, a ginger wholesaler and farmer, said, “the benefits of organic farming are less, for example, it offers a low yield. For me to run my business properly, I need to make use of chemicals because they are faster.” He showed little interest in the effects the chemicals have on the environment.

Hebbar Shankar, a scientist at Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research(ICAR-IIHR)said, “My group has been doing studies with vegetable crops for the last 14-15 years and in our experiments, we observed many vegetable crops having up to 20 per cent reduction in yield, mainly because we are not able to supply the required nutrients in a sudden spurt. Furthermore, use of chemicals increases the durability of the crops by 15-20 per cent.” One of the reasons behind this, he explained, is that in the initial stages of the crop’s life, the occurrence of diseases is less but in the later stages, managing of diseases and pests becomes difficult in organic farming. “So for example, a cucumber crop can survive for 120 days in chemical farming but in organic farming, it grows for only 90 days because pest and disease control was difficult at a later stage of growth ” he added. He said even in other crops he observed 25 per cent deduction happening in the overall growth.

In Kotta, a remote village in the Taluk,  Basha D. and Nazeer, who are both farmers said that government officials had told them about organic ways of farming but they said, “logo kedimag me nahijata” meaning, the people don’t understand it and rather practice conventional ways. His farm doesn’t have the features of organic farms; he only grows corn and uses fertilizers instead of manure. He uses Antracol fungicide and Matador Syngenta insecticide, both of which are highly toxic in nature. Rasheed Sab, a farmer in the village of Beguru, whose entire family is engaged in farming, said that he had no knowledge of organic farming and no one in the village was engaged in it. He also depends heavily on chemical-based products for farming.

Thomas also added that that the government hasn’t undertaken any organic farming awareness or teaching initiatives. Nagappa also mentioned that although the government tries to educate people about organic farming, but they are not far-reaching. In fact, D Anuradha said, “Accordingto the 2017 policy, assistance will be given to only those farmers who are fully organic cultivators.” Since organic farmers practice organic farming atvarying levels, most of them will be blocked from getting much-needed government assistance. Hebbar Shankar said, “Farmers have to toil more in organic farmingand cannot sow certain crops at an unfavourable time but in chemical farming, you can do it. Additionally, organic crops are more expensive, for example, if a farmer is selling a crop for Rs. 10 per kg, an organic farmer must get Rs. 15 per kg at least for the same crop.

Why Organic Farming?
But what’s the big fuss about organic farming? And why are governments everywhere encouraging it? Further, why should farmers shift from conventional farming systems, since they provide increased food production and better incomes? A report in the Scientific American said that around33 per cent of the world’s soil has already been degraded and the main causes of the soil destruction included chemical-heavy farming techniques. The report quoted a UN official saying “generating three centimetres of topsoil takes 1,000 years and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s topsoil could be gone within 60 years. Further, the negative effectsartificially engineered livestock has on humans has been well documented. This will not only affect local ecosystems but also make the quality of crops that are grown in the future poorer.” Hebbar Shankar said, “An organic farmer can harvest 20 tons per acre, for example, but many chemicals farmers get 60 tons per acre and that makes people say organic is not profitable, feasible etc. but nobody calculates the cost of that 60 tons in terms of chemical inputs, pesticide spray, health issues the farmers’ suffering, soil that is going to be affected etc.”

In Shikaripur, heavy chemical farming and failure to adopt organic techniquesare causing major problems for the crops, soil and the environment. Prabhakar explained that the failure to adopt organic farming is also affecting the quality of the crops, in the sense, “any crop requires 21 nutrients but farmers are dealing with only four-five nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous, potash and that is causing an imbalance. Because of this, not only isthe quality of the crops being affected but also causes a lot of health issues in the crops. The local eco-system is also damaged because of the chemicals, as many animals, many of whom are not harmful to crops like insects, birds, snakes etc. also die because of the chemicals.”

Devendrappa left chemical-based farming because of this, “I used to use a lot of chemicals while farming before but that destroyed a lot of my crops and caused diseases in some, now I use only pure bio-organics,” he added while showing pictures of his infected crops. “Now with bio-organics, the crops and soil don’t get spoilt nor does it cause any health damage. This also gives me a good income.”

Devendrappa showing the harm chemicals did to his cropsDevendrappa showing the harm chemicals did to his cropsDevendrappa showing the harm chemicals did to his crops

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The widespread use of chemicals in Shikaripur and the scant presence of organic farming in the Taluk can also be determined from the farming utility stores in the taluk from where most farmers buy their produce and utilities. In these stores, if one goes through the different products they sell, it can be seen that all of them are chemical based products. Common names that come out are BASF Tynzer, Indofil, Tractor brand, Mangalore chemicals and fertilizers, Danitol, Tata Reeva, BR Agrotech, Galigan, Omex agrifluids, Gromor, Godavari z12, Coromandel. Manjunath, the store’s owner of Jai Kisan, said, only two out of 10 farmers buy organic fertilizers and they reach their sales targets for chemical based products easier than organic based products. “The 18 per cent GST on organic and bio-pesticides and fertilizers are discouraging to farmers and they prefer buying chemical alternatives which have a 5 per cent GST on them.”  He also said that organic based products don’t give an immediate result. Nataraj, the store owner at M/s Nataraja Traders, another dealer in farming utilities said that very few farmers ask for organic versions of pesticides, insecticides etc. Yogesh, an accountant at Namma Gromor said out of 10 farmers, only three-four farmers ask for organic products. 50 per cent of his Rs. 60 lakh revenue comes from pesticides, 95 per cent of which are chemical based. He also said the sales of fungicides are on par with pesticides and fungicides have no organic alternatives available. Clearly, if the demand for these chemical based products is so high, farmers are not implementing organic farming approaches.

Prabhakar also warned that the fertilizer requirement of the Taluk is 13,000 metric tons but the farmers are demanding and utilizing 22,000 metric tons, which is almost double the required amount. This, he said, causes severe soil degradation. He added that one big reason for organic farming not being implemented on a large scale is because organic products like organic fertilizers are not available right now, “To maintain their yield stability, they’ll (farmers) require a lot of organics, which isn’t available just yet. Moreover, farmers need to be encouraged to start implementing organic farming systems through incentives and reducing the GST on organic products. Different farmers who have been successful in implementing these systems are encouraging and helping fellow farmers to start practising these systems.” Hebbar Shankar added, “Whatever waste is there in the farm you can compost and use it. If you can recycle and make manure it is good. But this brings a labour problem leading to the farmers burning their farm wastes.”

Another possible reason why many farmers are not interested in shifting towards organic farming is related to the market of organic goods. Not surprisingly, no organic food outlets were present anywhere in the taluk. Additionally, nobody really cared much or even knew how their daily fruits and vegetables were cultivated in Shikaripur. Shankar said, “If you go to the rural areas and ask them if your rice is made from chemical or non-chemical farming and what are the effects, 99 per cent people are not aware of it and in the cities, people are aware, but how many people put their knowledge to practice? only a small percentage do.” Vriksh Organics, an organic goods outlet in Bangalore said that the demand for organic products is mostly in the big cities and thus catering to a small customer base. Amrinder Singh Bawa, a Fellow at Indian Institute of Agricultural Sciences said, “all these products are highly expensive, how many people in India can afford them?”

Another possible reason why many farmers are not interested in shifting towards organic farming is related to the market of organic goods. Not surprisingly, no organic food outlets were present anywhere in the taluk. Additionally, nobody really cared much or even knew how their daily fruits and vegetables were cultivated in Shikaripur. Shankar said, “If you go to the rural areas and ask them if your rice is made from chemical or non-chemical farming and what are the effects, 99 per cent people are not aware of it and in the cities, people are aware, but how many people put their knowledge to practice? only a small percentage do.” Vriksh Organics, an organic goods outlet in Bangalore said that the demand for organic products is mostly in the big cities and thus catering to a small customer base. Amrinder Singh Bawa, a Fellow at Indian Institute of Agricultural Sciences said, “all these products are highly expensive, how many people in India can afford them?”

Dr. Shankar Hebbar on the demand for organic products.(Audio) 

Solutions and Conclusion

Organizations like Savayava Krishi Pariwara(SKP) and Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) are helping farmers implement organic farming systems and reap its benefits. The KVK is present in every district in Karnataka is pursuing this policy. D Anuradha said, “We built a demonstration village in every Hobli showing different aspects of organic farming. We did this in a phased manner and have covered almost all the Hoblis and through this, we spread awareness about organic farming.” Under the organic farming policy, several programmes and initiatives are being implemented to increase the area under organic farming and bring more farmers under its purview. Devendrappa said that he encourages farmers to take up organic farming and actively helps in assisting many farmers in implementing organic farming practices. Shikaripur Taluk has a long way to go in implementing organic farming on a large scale and it won’t be possible without government intervention and support. Therefore, there is a need for the Taluk to involve entities from the smallest villages to the biggest farms plus NGOs and government officials and programmes for it become a leader in organic farming both in Shimoga District and Karnataka.

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